“Because you aren’t sure yourself, or if you are sure, you can’t say?”
“Damn it, John, don’t press me on this!” Bob shouted back, an action so rare in the past when they served together that it startled John.
He stared straight into his old commander’s eyes. “I believe you at least suspect something is up. That perhaps I’m even tied into it, directly or indirectly.”
Bob returned his gaze without blinking.
“I suspect you are disobeying them right now,” John whispered as if someone might overhear their conversation. “You said you had orders to detain or kill me. But here you are when it would have been just as easy to lure me into this meeting, confirm I was here, and then take this whole place out.”
Bob stood back up. “I’m freezing. Let’s at least go outside and stamp around a little bit and stretch.”
John followed him out of the hangar. The glare reflecting off the snow was so intense that John wanted to put on his old scratched sunglasses but decided against it. Sunglasses were often the cheap trick of concealing a man’s eyes—or worse, the way some cops used to wear them to intimidate.
The air was sharp, crisp puffs of wind kicking up crystals of snow that glimmered and danced in the morning sunlight. If not for the presence of the Black Hawk, the landscape would have been one of peace. It was an unnatural sound now after more than two years of near-total silence with the death of nearly all man-made machines. There were times he missed those sounds, the hum of traffic on the interstate, the near-constant whispering of jets passing high overhead, all the multitude of sounds of an advanced technological world.
Now it was usually silence except for the whispering of wind in the trees, the delightful sound of summer thunderstorms coming down off the mountains, and what had always been his favorite, the winter sound of wind cracking the ice out of trees, the hissing and tinkling of snow swirling down, and the scent of wood fires carried on the breeze. As they walked along the row of hangars, he could catch a glimpse back to the airport’s cinderblock clubhouse. Smoke was wafting up from the chimney, a bit of a crowd gathered outside, weapons shouldered, his people pumping Bob’s for information, and Bob’s troops undoubtedly doing the same.
His orders had been that if such a situation developed to be friendly but reveal nothing about their numbers under arms, praise the food situation as well supplied—though the reality was that it would be tough going by spring—and convey confidence that all was well. The precious supply of moonshine that Forrest had brought along was to be applied liberally to any of Bob’s people who were willing to try a swig, but except for Danny and Forrest, who seemed to have a prodigious capacity for holding their liquor, the others were to refrain.
He assumed nearly the same orders had been given by Bob to his personnel.
“Things seem okay over there,” John announced, nodding back toward the clubhouse.
“I understand you have created a highly capable fighting force.”
“Old tradition of militia. Remember a favorite movie of ours, Drums Along the Mohawk. We had to defend ourselves or go under.”
“John, there are a lot of places like yours, actually. Not around the cities—they all became death traps. The enclaves of those who had tried to prepare beforehand, some survived a year or more, and then the barbarians just finally overran them. You most likely know that every major city of a quarter million or more east of the Mississippi is gone—a twisted, burned-out, perverted wasteland. They just were not sustainable without modern technology. That and all social order broke down within a matter of days.
“But once you got farther out, some of the smaller cities like Asheville somehow hung on. Those in the south had a better chance during the first winter, but even in the north, remote rural areas banded together. A fair part of West Virginia rallied around an eccentric old congressman a hundred miles west of here in Tennessee; there’s an area nearly as big as what your community claims to be the State of Carolina. They’re reviving the old name of the State of Franklin. More than a few, especially in mountain areas where folks rebuilt long-abandoned hydro dams, even have power again. So you are not just the only pocket of survival.”
“So why does Bluemont want us suppressed?”
“I saw my mission as assimilating back in.”
“Ever hear of the Borg? Jennifer was fond of the old reruns of that show. And, Bob, it looked like you had one hell of a fight going around Roanoke when I was up there a few weeks ago. Obviously, whoever was there was not happy about being assimilated.”
“It hasn’t been easy. I heard about that Posse group you took care of. There’s a lot like that still out there. Most have pulled back into what is left of the cities, gleaning whatever can still be looted and raiding out into nearby countryside. That’s why nearly every major urban center is dead ground. As for Roanoke, that was what we were fighting to put down. A number of decent folks were hidden in there and glad to see our return, but there were holdouts who we had to finish off. Did you know a group of maybe a thousand or more are still dug in at Winston-Salem? Chances are they’ve been eyeballing you for some time.”
That did catch John by surprise. Of course they would be fools not to assume that Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and major urban area were hotbeds of groups like the Posse, who had taken to settling in to one spot and systematically stripping out anything that could provide another meal until absolutely nothing was left and then striking out again. It was a good bit of intelligence. With the small city of Hickory coming into the State of Carolina, he’d have to look at beefing up their security.
“Thanks for that info.”
“It is the upside of why I took on this assignment. The ANR was a total failure. I saw my mission as reaching out to communities like yours. In more than a few, I had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and it got tough. But most survivors want to be pulled back into the fold. Bring stability and law and order back. That is the upside of my job, tough as it is. Network them together. I heard you’ve got electricity strung up. Sooner or later, after you get some electricity flowing again, you might start digging around in closets, basements, and realize that computers that had been tossed aside and not online the day we were hit just might still be functional.”
That caught John off guard. Had someone leaked that info, and if so, how had it reached Bob so quickly? Surely it had to be a guess or an observation of what had happened somewhere else. But as he looked at Bob, he was all but certain that it was a warning that someone within his own community was at the least talking too openly, or perhaps far worse, was a spy for Bluemont, maybe slipped in by Fredericks.
“Interesting guess, Bob.”
“Just an observation, that’s all.”
“Sir, we’ve drifted from the question I asked earlier.”
“And that is…?”
“Do you trust Bluemont? Are they truly the legitimate government of the United States as defined by the Constitution?”
There was no reply.
“Do you?”
Bob remained silent, finally breaking the moment by shading his eyes to look at the snow-covered mountains to the north. “Beautiful spot you have here. Linda wanted us to retire to Florida and after following me from pillar to post for near on forty years—how could I say no to her? But this is where I wanted to come. I even remember visiting this airport once. Thought about after retiring, getting my pilot’s license again, buying a plane like the one in the hangar we were just in. A nice club here to join.”
“Sir, dare I press that you are dodging me?” John said softly.
“Yes, John, I am.” The old general sighed and slapped his hands together several times to get the circulation going. “I’d better head back.”