“I’m feeling the love from you, Big D.” Robertson swiped at his dry eyes. “Lots of love. Course it’s a tough love; must be why you’re called S-and-M.”
Old joke. David rolled his shoulders. “Why don’t you take those magazines in your foot locker to the latrine and leave me in peace for an hour?”
Robertson grinned. “I’ll take that as an order.” He strutted down the aisle between the remaining cots. “And speaking of orders…”
David picked randomly at the chords. No point rushing the private. Off-duty, the man lived on his own clock. One where seconds were minutes, and minutes were hours.
“Colonel Lynch wants to see you in his office ASAP.”
David’s fingers stopped. The Commanding Officer wanted to see him? He wasn’t due on morgue duty until oh-five-hundred tomorrow, didn’t have any family and hadn’t broken any rules for days. He carefully lowered the guitar into the red velvet-lined case on the insulated tent floor.
“Don’t you want to know what it’s about?” Robertson hitched-stepped the five feet to the end of David’s cot.
Hell no. A meeting with the CO was never a good thing. David checked the shine on his boots and stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his ACU jacket. Hat? Hat? He’d had it a minute ago. He scanned the area around his bed looking for it. Had one of his men hidden it?
“I’ll find out in a minute.”
“Yeah, but don’t you want to know now?” Robertson bounced on the balls of his feet, a cocky smirk on his lips. “So you can prepare for the big news on the walk over.”
Well, hell, if it made Robertson happy, it had to be bad.
Hooking his cot with the toe of his boot, David lifted it up a foot. How the hell had his hat gotten on the floor? Dropping the cot, he knelt down and snatched the thing up. “What do you know?”
“Talk is our Title Ten will be extended.” Robertson ran his fingers through his black crew-cut. “Once we’re done dumping our buzzard bait, our unit’s being deployed to the Korean DMZ in a show of force against the Young Dear Leader.”
David hoped so. He desperately needed a fight.
Especially, one he had a chance in hell of winning.
Chapter Three
“Do you think there’ll be a war?” Tugging the purple scrunchie from her hair, Sunnie Wilson slipped out of her sneakers and wiggled her toes under the heat vent of her aunt’s Honda Civic. When would things get back to normal?
Real normal.
Not this shattered looking-glass world that had become reality.
Her aunt’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “It’s highly unlikely.”
Like she’d believed that answer the first seven times she’d heard it. But Aunt Mavis being Aunt Mavis wouldn’t say anything else until she thought things through.
And she was definitely thinking.
The air practically hummed with it. Even the silvery wisps of hair at her aunt’s temples fluttered in agitation—like an insect banging on a war drum.
War. Sunnie sucked up a mouthful of Dr. Pepper. Sugar bubbled across her tongue, washing away the bitterness. Like there wasn’t enough dead. After returning her drink to the cup holder, she snapped the scrunchie against her wrist. The sting was sharp against the soft tissue, but she didn’t flinch. Physical pain meant life.
Life was precious.
What was left of her generation would remember that lesson.
Always.
But would there be anyone left if there was a war?
Sunnie stared at her aunt—designer loafers, beige polo shirt under a navy pea coat, brown Dockers and tan socks. Mom had said Mavis was a genius—a government genius with a high security clearance.
A year ago, Sunnie would have believed Santa existed before she bought that line about her middle-aged aunt. But Mavis had warned Mom to stock up on supplies and to take a semester off from teaching a month before the first confirmed Redaction. Mom hadn’t listened.
Now she was dead.
Sunnie snapped the hairband.
And so were her step-sibs, Joshua and Cheyenne.
Snap. Snap. A raspberry patch blossomed on her white skin.
And her stepdad, Michael.
The scrunchie rubbed against her wrist as she stretched it. Snap. The sting was sharper this time. Yet it barely registered on her emotional Richter scale. As for those who’d graduated with her last summer…
Classmates.com read like a morgue roll.
Would it have changed if she’d stayed home to go to college? Could she have saved someone? She stretched the scrunchie. Elastic cut into her forearm. Could she have saved anyone? She’d recovered; why couldn’t they?
Aunt Mavis wrapped her fingers around Sunnie’s. The calloused skin comforted even as she eased the hair band back into place. “North Korea wouldn’t launch ground forces. Although they still outnumber us soldier for soldier, their military technology comes from either Russia, or is corroded from the use of salt water in China’s manufacturing plants. We’d kick their butts with our military at fifty percent.”
Untangling her fingers, Sunnie rubbed at the patch of dry skin around her thumb. One day, she’d get up the nerve to ask Aunt Mavis what she’d actually done for the government during the Redaction. But not today. Today, it was enough that her aunt knew things.
Although, it wasn’t always comforting.
She pinched her pursed lips. “Do you mean half our soldiers are dead?”
“Soldiers? No.” Aunt Mavis’s auburn hair brushed her shoulders. For a moment the car filled with the click-click of the blinker as they coasted toward the freeway exit. “They’re at sixty-five percent, about the same as the Coast Guard and Air Force. The National Guard took the hardest hit as they drew MA duty.”
MA duty. Mortuary Affairs. Refers. The body snatchers who collected families of dead for cataloging and burial, storing them like sides of beef in refrigerated trucks and trailers. Military fatigues had become the new funeral black.
Half a dozen cars crept along the six-lane thoroughfare. Sunnie checked the clock. Six P.M. The height of rush hour. She leaned against the seat as the Civic merged with traffic. Gas rationing didn’t explain the lack of cars.
Martial law might. That still was in force. Anyone left on the street could be eliminated with extreme prejudice. At least they had twenty minutes until it went into effect. Plenty of time to drive the two miles home.
Sunnie’s attention drifted out the passenger window. Black clouds crowded the horizon and gusts of wind shook the thigh-high weeds sprouting from the cracked asphalt. Her ghostly reflection drifted through the derelict strip mall—the only life in the abandoned buildings. A ray of sunlight glinted off the sharp fangs of shattered storefront glass. Dark smears on pocked white stucco testified that not all looters had made off with their booty.
Looters. Soldiers. She replayed her aunt’s words. One service group hadn’t been mentioned. With the Guard occupied, another branch had maintained the infrastructure. The Halls of Montezuma might have been an easier assignment than Main Street U.S.A for Aunt Mavis’s beloved Marines.
“And the Marines?”
In the beginning, people had protested about the armed soldiers who prevented them and their neighbors from getting their groceries en masse, breaking-up peaceful protests with water cannons and rubber bullets, and, later, strafing mobs of looters. But when the Redaction had spread, the pacifists wanted more shooting and less restraint. Still it would be a while before a spit shine could polish the Corps’ tarnished brass.
“They’re at fifty percent.” She smiled. “But I’d take fifty Marines over seventy-two soldiers and seventy-two fly-boys any day.”
“Oorah!” Sunnie repeated her uncle’s favorite saying. Her aunt’s bias was well known. After all her husband, Jack and their son, Joseph had been jarheads.