“We are in our territory,” Russell tells him, scratching at his beard. “And we didn’t do nothing to stop shit. The camp was wiped out on our watch.”
“There’s still the smaller camp at Mason,” Joe Hanley chimes in. “Camp Nightingale. They need protection, too.”
“Cashtown couldn’t hold out,” Martha Grimes says in her raspy voice. “How can Mason hold out, shit for brains?”
“They’re next,” Russell mutters. “You can bet your ass they’re next.”
“We don’t know that. There are forty thousand there. They need us.”
“Your country needs you,” Chase says, but it falls flat. Some of the men openly laugh at him.
“My country is Ohio, boy,” Moses growls. “And we need to take it back before it’s too late. As for America, it can take care of itself. I don’t see it looking out for me and mine.”
“America expects each man to do his duty,” the young officer grates. “I would expect all of you, being military men, to understand that.”
“Dumb shit thinks this is the real Army,” someone snickers.
“Who said that?” Toby roars, shutting them up. “We are, in fact, nominally an Army operation, which means we will give the LT real respect as an Army officer. Whoever disrespects him again will get my boot so far up his ass, he’ll be flossing with my shoelaces.”
The men grumble, sizing him up. Wendy tenses, putting on her game face. There are dozens of commanders here, and just four soldiers. But nobody challenges them.
“So what do you think, Sarge?” someone calls from the back.
“This is not a local problem,” Toby answers. “If we don’t take all of America back, we’ll never be truly safe anywhere. We got to start someplace, and that place might as well be Washington. That’s where the Army is, and we should help if we can. Plus the LT says he’s going to get us supplies that we need. It’s a good deal. We should honor our end of it.”
“Sarge, with all respect, I am sick of this man’s empty promises,” Russell says. “The Federal government promised help on the first day of epidemic, and it never came. They promised to protect us in the shelters, and those shelters didn’t last a goddamn week.”
The fighters growl, remembering. The shelters became deathtraps.
“They promised us a vaccine, and there was no vaccine, and no cure,” he continues. “They promised to send troops, and then sent them all to Washington.”
The fighters glare at the officer with open resentment.
“I’ll tell you what, sir,” Russell tells the Lieutenant. “If those supplies don’t show up by tomorrow morning, I’m taking my crew and going west.” He glances at Moses. “All right, Ackley?”
“That’s fine,” Moses tells him.
“What about Camp Defiance?” says Joe. “There could be survivors.”
“We could split the NLA in two,” Fred White chimes in. “Half head west to Defiance, and half east to Washington to join the fight.”
“And be too weak to do either one right,” Martha says.
“Put it to a vote,” Fred says.
“Vote for suicide?”
“We’ll go,” Wendy says. “Me and Toby and Steve, with our shooters and the Bradley. We’ll backtrack to Morgantown and then go north to check out the camp. We’ll catch up with you in Washington.”
The men glance at Toby, who shrugs. “You heard the lady,” he says. “All right, Fred?”
“That’ll work, I guess,” Fred says. The other commanders nod at this, but reluctantly; they’d all rather have the Bradley riding along with them.
“It’s on you, then,” Russell tells Chase. “All this talk is pointless if our resupply don’t show up here tomorrow. If it don’t, then, well, we’re all going west.”
The mob breaks up. Toby and Moses exchange a nod of understanding. Wendy blows air out her cheeks and tries to relax; she feels like she could run a mile.
“Wow, I thought they were going to crucify the LT,” Steve says, grinning.
“By the way, Sergeant Wilson, thank you for supporting me,” Chase says.
Toby shakes his head. “Next time you see a fire, LT, try throwing water on it instead of gas.”
“So if you go west and the rest of the NLA goes east, who am I going to ride with?”
Wendy says, “Try to find the crew that hates you the least, sir. In the meantime, I’d lie low if I were you. A lot of people here still blame the Army for what happened to Defiance.”
“But why?” Chase asks in a childlike voice.
How to explain human nature? She shrugs. “Got to blame someone.”
“So it’s going to happen?” Toby says. “You’re going to be able to deliver?”
“I don’t know. Look, can I be honest with you guys?”
“Please,” Steve tells him.
“The policy is only the militias that make it to Washington get the supplies. Otherwise, there’s too much risk they’ll take the resources and do nothing, or get killed on the way to Washington and waste them. It’s supposed to be an incentive.”
“Well, LT,” Toby says, “I’d say you have a pretty strong incentive to get on the horn with your people and convince them to cough up the gear, or they’ll get no help from the NLA and you’ll be hitchhiking to Washington.”
“Assuming I can even convince them, will your people honor your side of the deal?”
The tank commander shrugs and says, “Probably.”
Wendy takes Toby’s hand.
“Enough of this,” she says. “Come on.”
Once they are out of earshot of the Lieutenant, Toby asks, “Why do you want us to go west?”
“You know why. These idiots wanted to split the army.”
Toby shakes his head; he doesn’t believe her, but it doesn’t matter. “Are you going to tell me why you’re pissed at me?”
“I’m not pissed at you.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re pissed at the world?”
They stop in front of their tent.
“No,” she says, ducking inside.
“Tell me,” he says in the dark.
She whisks her T-shirt up and over her head, steps forward and kisses him. Minutes later, they make love on top of their bedroll. She clings to him fiercely, squeezing him so hard it makes him gasp. Come on, she says. Harder. She wants to forget everything. She wants to fall inside of him. That’s it. They grind against each other in a growing frenzy. Oh, fuck, yes.
He climaxes just after she does and they fall asleep sweaty and panting.
The next morning, she straddles him.
“Sergeant Wilson, it’s reveille. I want you at attention, bud.”
Toby awakes and grins, studying her face, the spill of her blond hair covering her left shoulder and breast. “Christ, you’re beautiful.”
Wendy places her hands against his chest, covering his tattoo of a bear claw, the symbol of his dead regiment.
“Shut up,” she says, maneuvering her hips, and then gasps as he enters her.
She wants him to know that despite whatever she may feel about her life, he is her man. That every time he touches her, she feels safe.
Outside the tent, the fighters cheer as a dull metallic roar fills the store.
Toby and Wendy throw on their clothes and emerge from the tent to see the fighters streaming out of the camp, leaving their frying pans and coffee pots untended, and toward the parking lot, where a massive Chinook aircraft lands in the light of the morning sun.
Anne
As the sun pales the eastern sky, Anne steps outside the hangar doors and inhales the stench of wet decay. Trimble Airport features a forty-five-hundred-foot runway, now blanketed with fallen leaves and branches, as well as landing facilities and fueling, maintenance and other services for a variety of aircraft. Private operators here once ran aerial tours, commuter flights to the big cities in the region like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and weekend jaunts to private cabins around Tappan and Piedmont Lakes. Now the planes and helicopters are gone, the fueling station drained and idle, the facilities falling into rust and ruin, the ground covered in garbage and debris swept here by the storm. The world is starting to look more apocalyptic every day, she muses. Everything is falling apart. She finds it sad nobody will clean up the mess. Anne has always been a bit of a neat freak.