DAY 749 • 2:50 A.M.
As each member of the lead assault team went into the drainage pipe that ran under Interstate 240, John offered them a pat on the back, a soft word of encouragement. Seventy were going in, divided into five assault teams, each one guided by one of the reivers. It was a route they had used for over a year to infiltrate in and out of the area of Tunnel Road to scavenge for supplies from the abandoned stores that had once lined the road—and also for raids for food. They had even been so bold as to pull a raid and holdup on Mission Memorial and disappear back through this concealed approach, which emptied out onto a trail that took them back over the parkway and then over the mountains to their home base.
This whole thing was one desperate gamble, but the report that had come in even as he was leaving Forrest’s bedside had sealed the decision for John. A transport plane had touched down at the Asheville airport, apparently loaded with supplies for the choppers. If they didn’t do this now, come morning, the nightmare over Black Mountain would resume. It was obvious that Fredericks would just keep pounding from the air until either they submitted or the entire town was destroyed.
John looked down at the illuminated dial of his old-style wristwatch. Five minutes to go. He leaned back against the embankment, breathing hard. It had been a day and a half since he had slept, and he cursed the fact that he was getting older. He felt utterly exhausted, his chest, head, and mouth aching, but in the next few minutes, he had to be sharp and ready to go.
Everyone had made clear to him that his forays to the front were finished, and he reluctantly agreed. The concussion was clearing up, but all the running, ducking for cover, and slamming Makala up against the protection of the wall in the surgery ward had cracked his barely healed rib open again. Each breath was a stabbing pain, a sneeze or cough absolute agony.
To ensure he stayed back from the front line, Kevin Malady gladly conspired with the town council, assigning Grace and a half dozen of their best as his security and communications team, along with his neighbor and friend Lee Robinson, who was given the order that if need be, he was to knock John down and sit on him, something Lee could easily do.
He kept staring at the watch. It was still three more minutes before everyone was to be in place, especially the one crucial player for this entire attack plan who needed the most time to infiltrate into position.
Suddenly, a shot rang out, and then another, and then a long staccato burst of automatic fire, followed by a white flare going up, the magnesium light burst flooding the area around the mall with startling brilliance, revealing many of his troops out in the open, not yet across Tunnel Road.
“The shit just hit the fan!” Lee whispered. John looked back at his reserve team, mostly students but veterans, as well, whom he would have to commit if the lead assault failed—which, at this moment, he feared just might be happening.
Deployed out on the east side of I-240 were several hundred, nearly every person in Black Mountain and the reivers who could carry a gun and were not part of the lead assault teams. They had force-marched seven miles after sunset once dropped off near the Exit 59 barricade.
The only vehicles he had dared to send beyond that point were those that were relatively quiet, which would serve as ambulances. Nearly everyone else had come up on foot. Leading the advance were carefully picked teams of “hunters,” mostly reivers. They had to run on the assumption that the enemy had night-vision gear and would have advance patrols out. If his assault columns were spotted, the entire plan would disintegrate, and chances were that nearly his entire force would be annihilated, caught out in the open if the Apaches got up.
There had indeed been a couple of patrols out, and John now had a night-vision set, old military issue from fifteen years earlier, to observe the action. The other night goggles were issued out to Iraq and Afghan vets in the lead assault teams who knew how to use them.
The bursting of the flare blinded him for a moment. Snapping off the headset, he could see by the light of the flare several of his people, caught out in the open as they attempted to sprint across Tunnel Road and the approach to the helicopter base, being cut down by a sustained burst of machine gun fire.
“Go, damn it, go!” John hissed as more and yet more weapons opened up. And then he heard it—one of the Apaches was starting to wind up. If it got airborne, the entire operation was finished.
Fredericks had committed one serious tactical blunder: basing the helicopters at the abandoned mall on the far side of Beaucatcher Mountain rather than in the middle of downtown. It was a logical position in some ways; it had several acres of open tarmac, the old Sears building—which had not been gutted out and was a good location for barracks, storage, and workshops—and the covered parking lot behind Sears as a place to move the choppers in bad weather and for maintenance. The tactical mistake was that it was indeed on the outskirts of town, closer to Black Mountain. If he had positioned them on the west side of town, across the French Broad River, this plan would have been next to impossible.
The rotor of the first helicopter was picking up speed, even as his assault teams continued to charge in. No one needed to be told that if even one of the copters lifted off, all was lost. John grimaced at the sight of half a dozen of his troops crumpling up and collapsing, those surviving continuing to press in toward the defensive perimeter of concertina wire and piled-up highway barriers.
The helicopter began to lift, and in spite of the random shots streaking over his head, John stood up, binoculars focused on the Apache. In a few more seconds, it would be clear, and he prepared to give the signal for retreat.
From the roof of the mall, there was a flash of light. An RPG!
Handled by an old marine with the reivers who had been handed the launcher and two warheads taken the year before from the Posse, it was the one heavy shot the entire community had other than homemade shoulder-mounted weapons that might be good from fifty feet away but not much beyond that and were as much risk to the shooter as the target.
The marine had grinned with delight when handed the weapon, promising to get the job done or die trying. The missile streaked in, striking just behind the tail rotor assembly, knocking out horizontal control. It was a very good shot, shrapnel tearing into the gearbox housing and the spinning rotors. The Apache lurched sideways from the blow, the pilot struggling to throttle the engine back.
The Apache careened in nearly a full circle before crashing into the parking lot, pieces of rotor flying off in every direction, igniting into a fireball as its fuel tanks ruptured, the blast engulfing the second Apache. The pilot of the second Apache popped the canopy, he and the gunner attempting to roll clear.
Regardless of his feelings for the Apache crews and what they had done, John felt a wave of sick remorse. They had been on his side at one time, and he could see the two men writhing in agony as they struggled clear of the spreading fire and then collapsed.
John held up his flare pistol and fired off a round—green, the signal for the reserves to come in. Turning to his own unit, he shouted to get up and move forward.
The advance assault teams were into the concertina wire that had been strung around the makeshift base, throwing heavy planking over it to form pathways in. An old pickup truck, which had been hand-pushed the last mile to its preattack position down at the bottom of the long, sloping road approaching the mall, had roared to life and careened up the hill, a plow mounted to its front. It crashed through the gate and then burst into flames as the security team riddled the vehicle.
They were taking heavy casualties, and John was furious. The driver was ordered to wait until it was clear that fire from within the compound had been suppressed, but he had charged in regardless and was now undoubtedly dead, as were many who were trying to weave through and over the wire. A couple of explosions ignited—claymores—cutting down more of John’s personnel.
The attack, which he had prayed would infiltrate, gain positions, and take out the Apaches with two RPG rounds, had unraveled. His advance teams were pushing in regardless of loss, now seemingly an attack of desperation.
He could not stay out of it any longer. “We’re going in!” John shouted, and before anyone around him could object, he sprinted up the last few feet from concealment and started across the highway, his security team racing to catch up and then push ahead, Grace in the lead, Lee Robinson by his side, cursing at him to hang back.
His communications team, a man with a portable ham radio strapped to his back followed by two gunmen and Maury—who just still might be the most valuable person in this attack other than the marine who had knocked out the Apaches—was by John’s side.
“John, we’re too old for this crap!” his friend gasped. “And both of us wounded already.”
John did not reply, trying to ignore the pain in his chest with each breath he took. Maury no longer had his arm in a sling, and he could see his friend wincing with each step, as well.
More explosions echoed around the mall—claymores and grenades—and they were taking a devastating toll.
The rotors of one of the Black Hawks started turning, and an instant later, sparks from half a dozen semiautomatic and full automatic weapons slapped against its side. Smoke began to pour out of the engine housing, the pilot and copilot bailing out. The fourth chopper had not started up yet and John hoped that the plan just might work.
And then a roar of gunfire erupted from inside the abandoned Sears building at the north end of the mall. The gunfire rose to fever pitch, rounds, perhaps fired from his own side, zipped over John’s head, causing him to duck down below the edge of the road bordering the mall.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, the firing slacked off, cries going up to cease fire, Grace on the one megaphone owned by the town ordering the opposition to lay down their arms and surrender and that prisoners would be taken.
The firing had all but ceased, and John finally stuck his head above the berm and cautiously stood up. He could see his people inside the perimeter, weapons held to shoulders, shouting for the security force to get down on their knees, hands over their heads. Several were up alongside the fourth chopper, weapons aimed at the cockpit, the pilot and copilot coming out with hands raised over their heads.
A burst of explosions erupted, and all ducked, ammunition aboard the first Apache cooking off, and all stayed low for a minute. Finally, they were back up, and John trotted across the road and through a gap in the wire that someone had cut open. The cry was up for medics, wounded being carried out to the side of the road.
John turned to his radio operator, motioning for the mike. “Position secured. Bring up the ambulances. I want our wounded out of here now!”
He handed the clumsy mike back to the ham operator. Malady was shouting orders, calling for all prisoners to be herded to the north side of the compound, wounded from both sides to be carried out to the road for the ambulances, which were mostly pickup trucks, now coming out from the reserve position they had taken back on Highway 70.
A scuffle broke out with the prisoners. John turned and saw two of them being dragged out of the lineup, one of his men—a former student—kicking a prisoner in the groin and then straddling his writhing body and pulling out a pistol.
“You there!” John cried. “Stop!”
The former student ignored him, shouting curses at the prostrate man at his feet, holding his pistol up and then lowering it to aim at the man’s stomach.
“Stop him!” John shouted, and several now rushed in, pulling the young shooter’s arm up. The gun went off once, and the prisoner on the ground began screaming. The more than fifty who had been taken prisoner recoiled back, several of them trying to break free but quickly stopped at gunpoint or clubbed down.
John strode up to the shooter, whom Kevin had personally disarmed. John slapped the young man hard across the face. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“He’s the pilot of one of those damn Apaches. They killed my wife, and damn him to hell, he is going to pay now!”
“I was following orders!” the prisoner gasped, curled up in a ball, his scorched face contorted in agony. “I was following orders.”
John looked down at him with contempt, half tempted to kick him, as well, so sudden was the rage he felt at what this man had done and the words he chose to defend his actions.
John turned away before he lost control.
“All prisoners to be checked for weapons, hands secured behind their backs.” He paused for a brief instant as if to indicate that he was debating a decision, knowing that cruelty should be beyond him. “My people will escort you down the road to the pickup point for transport back to safety. As long as you cooperate, no one will be harmed. Do all of you hear that?”
There were cries of relief, several actually going down on their knees, sobbing with relief, so intense had been their terror. As he gazed at them, he could sense that these troops were barely above the rank of amateurs.
“Are you ANR?” he asked, focusing on a girl who looked to be in her midtwenties with bright twin bars on her shoulders. He motioned for her to come over and pointed at her shoulder bars. “Incredibly stupid to be wearing something like that, especially at night.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I’m not talking to the lamppost behind you.”
“Yes, sir, Army of National Recovery.”
“How long have you been in?”
“Six months.”
“Merciful God,” John whispered, turning his back on her for a moment. Her words had at least deflated a bit of the battle rage with his troops of a few minutes earlier.
He turned to look back at her. The young woman’s dark features were drenched with sweat, and she was actually trembling with fear, almond-colored eyes wide, gazing at him with obvious fear. He stepped forward and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and could feel her shaking. “The fighting is over, Captain. No one is going to hurt you. Are you hearing me clearly?”
She stifled a sob and nodded.
“I want you to help me with your people to make sure there are no mistakes now. Will you work with me on that?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, her voice trembling.
“Where are you from?”
“Plainsboro, New Jersey,” she replied, her Jersey accent obvious.
“I grew up near there,” he replied as an offer of reassurance. “Now tell me why are you here?”
“I was drafted, along with most of the others here. I got to be captain because I had a college degree.”
“In what?”
“Business leadership.”
“Oh, just great.” John sighed. “All right, Captain, what’s your name?”
“Deirdre Johnson.”
“Listen to me, Deirdre Johnson. We don’t abuse or execute prisoners here, and I want you to work with me to keep your people in check as we get them the hell out of here. Can you do that?”
She took his words in wide eyed, and her shoulders began to shake again.
“Why are you crying?”
“We were told that you rednecks—” She paused. “Sorry, sir. We were told you people execute prisoners.” She paused. “That African Americans would be lynched and women raped, so I’m down on two counts.”
He stepped closer, shaking his head. “How they turn us against each other,” he said sadly. “Look at me. Do I look like a racist and rapist to you? How many women do you see in my ranks? How many of African descent? Tell me!” His voice rose in anger so that she recoiled and then lowered her head.
“You really promise none of us will be hurt or killed?”
“I was a colonel in the United States Army, and on my word of honor, I promise you that as long as you listen to my people and do not try to escape, you will be taken back to Black Mountain and there held until I figure out what to do with you—most likely paroled after this is over.” He looked past her to the others. “Did you all hear me clearly?”
There were nods of thanks and several replies of “Yes, sir,” more than a few openly crying.
“Are you the superior officer here?”
She looked around at the group and then shook her head and nodded to the pilot still writhing on the ground. “Major Cullman there. He was in overall command here for the airbase. The helicopters crews and maintenance teams were National Guard units, the rest of us ANR.”
John stepped away from her and knelt down by Cullman’s side, roughly grabbed him by the hair, and pulled his head up. The man’s face was scorched, the scent of burned hair and flesh wafting around him.
“You hear me, Major?”
There was a barely audible reply.
“Are you army? I sure as hell can’t see you flying the way you did with six months’ training.”
“Yes. Six years.”
John leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper. “Personally, I would like to shoot you myself for what you did to us and the reivers. You broke the code, Major, and I detest you for it. But I won’t shoot you, nor will you face trial, because—let me guess—you were only following orders.”
Cullman gazed up at him, eyes wide with terror, unable to reply.
John looked over at Grace. “Make this bastard walk, no matter how badly he hurts. Lock him up in some basement along with his gunner and the other pilots and ground crews if you can find them still alive. Regular army we hold for negotiated exchange after all this is over. Now get him out of here before I change my mind.”
The sad procession started to shuffle toward the gate that the truck had burst open, while out in the street, the first of the pickups converted into ambulances had pulled up to haul away the wounded.
Maury came up to his side, grinning. “The first Black Hawk is badly shot up, looks like the engine is fried, but the other one is checking out okay, no leaks sprung. I’m going to make a go of it.”
John smiled and nodded. “Let’s see if you can remember anything.” He followed Maury over to the Black Hawk, which several members of his team were guarding. The first of the reserve attack wave was across Tunnel Road and fanning out, scrambling over the supply trucks that apparently had come up from the Asheville airport just after dark.
Another of his strike groups should have been hitting the airport ten miles to the south at this same moment. If the transport plane was still there, it was to be captured or burned. All supplies found were to be taken, and then, in a most crucial move, work crews were to tear up the runway and taxiway at five-hundred-foot intervals, marking both ends with broad Xs, the international sign that a runway was shut down. There would be no more transports from Bluemont, Charleston, or anywhere else until this issue was clearly resolved.
Maury, favoring his wounded arm, climbed awkwardly into the pilot’s seat of the Black Hawk and strapped himself in.
Billy Tyndall, who had never even had five minutes in a chopper, took the copilot’s seat, looking over at Maury wide eyed as he flicked on a flashlight, pulled out the preflight checklist, and scanned it. He then looked back at John. “Like I told you, John, it’s been more than twenty years since I flew one of these, and that was in an old Huey with the National Guard.”
“I heard it’s like riding a bicycle,” John offered, trying to sound humorous, but given the moment, his comment fell flat.
Maury shook his head and looked over at Billy. “Do you have any idea where the starter button is?”
If not for the seriousness of the situation, John would have started to laugh, but all were interrupted by a shout from out in the compound.
“Incoming!”
A couple of seconds later, a shell impacted a couple of hundred yards to the south.
“Mortar!” a cry went up.
“Maury, stop screwing around! Find the damn starter, rev her up, and get the hell out of here!”
Maury fumbled with various switches, cursing under his breath, and then he finally found his goal, the rotor overhead beginning to turn slowly, turbine engine whining to life. It sounded rough, rumbling, Maury working what he thought was the primer, adjusting the fuel mixture, grasping a lever, the pitch of the rotors changing, cutting deeper, louder.
“I’m not sure if I got it yet!” Maury cried. “Get the hell off, John, unless you want a quick ride to Black Mountain or one helluva crash!”
John stepped back out of the chopper, ducking low and looking to the side of the road where medics were working on the wounded.
“Worse cases that won’t make it back to the hospital, load them up!” John shouted.
Six of the wounded, two of them their foes, were carried over. One of the wounded was the old marine, a close friend of Forrest’s who had nailed the Apache with the RPG. He was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds across his stomach. John doubted he had more than a few minutes left, but those carrying him did so with tenderness and respect.
John grasped his hand and squeezed it. “You won this one for us, gunny, knocking out that Apache,” John said, voice even, the man’s eyes drifting out of focus. “Semper fi.”
“Didn’t get time to fire the second one. Did it get away?”
John held his hand tightly. “You got both with that one shot, Sergeant.”
“Incoming!”
John crouched down, the gunny’s stretcher-bearers dropping him down and covering him with their own bodies.
The shell detonated fifty yards to the north. They were definitely bracketed, most likely a firing position staring down their throats atop Beaucatcher Mountain.
“Get it up, Maury! Get it up!” John shouted.
The speed of the rotors picked up, Maury working the collective to get the feel of it, sound changing to the distinctive helicopter thwump, thwump, thwump. For a brief instant, it flashed John back to Desert Storm, the fleet of helicopters passing overhead in the opening moments of the attack into Iraq.
John ducked back down, and the next mortar round blew just twenty yards away, over near where the wounded were waiting to be loaded onto trucks. More screams echoed even above the roar of the Black Hawk as it lifted half a dozen feet, dropped back down, and began to lift yet again. Then its tail swung violently, nearly crashing into John so that he dived for the pavement. As the chopper swung back the other way and started rising straight up, another mortar round exploding in the wreckage of the burning Apache.
“Come on! Get out! Get out!” John cried, and he could see that most of his personnel were ignoring the incoming, looking up at the captured Black Hawk as if willing it to get up and away. It banked slightly, nearly drifting into the roof of the mall, rotating drunkenly, nose edging over, and then it just sped off into the darkness toward Black Mountain, disappearing into the night.
Another mortar round clipped the procession of prisoners, dropping several along with one of his guards. Grace shouted for them to run down the street to where the flatbed truck waited, John crying for the ambulances to back up, as well.
A thought seized him, and he shouted for one of his troops standing nearby to run down to the prisoners and bring back their captain, and then he ordered everyone to take cover inside the mall.
There was no need for urging. John shoved Kevin Malady through a shattered doorway, his ham radio operator behind him. Lee Robinson brought up the rear, cursing out John for being in the middle of it all.
Within was a dark and haunting sight. He remembered the weekly trip here with Elizabeth and Jennifer years earlier and the ritual of having to drag Jennifer past where the Disney Store had been, negotiating with her as to whether she wanted a Beanie Baby that week or one of the Disney stuffed animals—they cost more and were equal to two Beanies—Economics 101 for a four-year-old. Though painful in a way to recall, he did smile for an instant as he gazed down the darkened corridor, as if half expecting to see his little girl alive again.
Beside her would be Elizabeth, reaching the age where she would slow at the sight of the gaudy jewelry offered at a corridor kiosk, and then they would head to the food court for a snack before going across the street for a movie, where minutes earlier he had ducked low along the roadside to avoid getting shot.
All of it was abandoned ruins, completely looted out in the first week after the Day, though there was hardly a store in the vast complex that contained a single item necessary for survival. Much of it had then been burned by looters gone wild and left to sink into moldy ruin. Once one of the iconic images of affluent American society, a shopping mall, it was now a ghost building filled with ghost memories. He turned away from the memories to examine the building they were in.
The huge Sears building had been turned into a barrack and storage area for the chopper crews and their security team. There was even an electrical generator still running, some fluorescent lights casting an eerie glow on the ruins of fire-gutted wreckage—shattered display cases, a mannequin with a broken face sporting what would have been the summer fashion of two years earlier, debris of a squatter’s camp, most likely driven out by the arrival of Fredericks’s troops. A disquieting stench of moldy, decaying clothing and waste hung over it all. The wreckage had been pushed back to make way for nearly a hundred bunks, a chow line, and storage area in what had once been the first-floor section devoted to tools and automotive supplies, which of course had been one of the first areas looted.
Several mortar shells crumped onto the ceiling high overhead, but nothing collapsed down from the upper floor.
“Malady, post security. Once the annoyance stops outside, get people into their supply trucks and move them into hiding; get others to check out what we have here.”
John took a moment to get on the radio and announce in the clear. “We have one chopper—a Black Hawk—coming back. It is definitely ours.”
If Fredericks was monitoring that, it would certainly set him off, and he could imagine the cheers erupting back in Black Mountain.
“Prepare the hospital for at least fifty more wounded coming in.”
He clicked off and looked around as his troops, many armed with flashlights, began to search about, and as they rifled the personnel bunkers, there were cries of excitement as MREs, snacks, comfortable sleeping bags, and personal items were snatched up.
“All right, people, listen up!” John shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Personal looting stops now. Second squad to secure a perimeter around this building. They won’t take their defeat lying down and might try coming back before dawn. Set up firing positions as you were trained to do, keep back from the doors, and stay low. I want the chow area secured by first squad and what rations we can find, one only to then be distributed to each of you. Third squad to that storage area over there; I bet we’ll find one helluva stash of weapons and ammunition. Fourth squad to the vehicles outside once the shelling stops, and get them moved. Keep your ears open and ready to run if the shelling resumes. If any of the fuel bladders have not been hit, find a way to move the damn things. They’ll weigh several tons each and that is gold for us.”
He turned back to his radioman and clicked back on again. “Reserves, move to objective two, then hold in place.”
Within the half hour, he wanted them holding the southeast-facing pass of Interstate 240 cutting through Beaucatcher and the old tunnel of Tunnel Road.
John came up to Kevin and put a hand on his shoulder. “Pick out half a dozen of your best, and find the surviving reivers with us; they should be good at this. Give them fifteen minutes to rest and get something to eat, and then I want them to get up atop Beaucatcher Mountain, hunt down that mortar team and any observers, and take them out.”
Kevin nodded.
“And, Kevin, what was the butcher bill?”
Kevin sighed and shook his head. “Didn’t have much time to tally it yet.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cluster of dog tags that had been manufactured for every serving soldier in the town’s battalion, stamped with name, blood type, and next of kin. “I’ve collected eighteen of these so far.”
He offered them to John, but John did not take the burden. There would be time later after the fight was truly finished.
“Let’s see what we’ve captured,” John said softly, a reassuring hand on Kevin’s shoulder, “and what can be used immediately.” He looked at his wristwatch. It was ten past four local time. All of this in little more than an hour. Sunrise in another hour and a half, and then to the next step, which he prayed would end without another fight. “Where’s the captain we took prisoner?”
Malady gestured to where one of his troops was escorting the girl. Someone had tied her hands behind her back.
“Wake me at six, but I want to talk with her first.”
John went over to the prisoner, and as he approached, he drew out his pocketknife and snapped it open. At his approach with knife drawn, the prisoner looked terrified, and that reaction filled him with pity. The kid thought he was going to kill her.
“Deirdre, turn around, please.”
She just stood their gazing at him.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Deirdre, I’m just going to cut your handcuffs off. Now turn around.”
She complied, still nervous, as he carefully sawed through the twist of rope that bound her wrists while telling the prisoner’s guard to get something to eat and relax.
Once freed, Deirdre turned back to face him, rubbing her wrists. “Thank you, sir.”
“I have your word you won’t try to bolt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine, then. Now let’s go over to your food supply, find something to eat, sit down, and talk.”
He let her lead the way to where a small crowd was rummaging through shipping boxes stamped with the old FEMA logo containing old commercially packaged cans. He pulled out one stamped Bacon and Eggs and a plastic-wrapped packet of utensils. He motioned for her to lead the way, and she walked over to a small temporary cubicle.
“This was my bunk,” she announced as she sat down on the collapsible camp bed. He looked around. Pinned to the canvas wall that had offered her a modicum of privacy were half a dozen photos.
“Your family?” he asked, his gaze lingering on what was obviously her college graduation day.
She nodded.
“Mind if I look?”
“No, sir.”
He unclipped the photo and held it close, examining it with his flashlight. Deirdre was in the middle, beaming with pride, holding her diploma, a tall young man by her side, elderly couples to either side of them, several children in their early teens on both sides and standing in front of her. He forced a smile, yet another frozen memory of the time that was lost, and he respectfully handed the photograph to her. “Who is in the picture?”
She did not reply.
“If you don’t want to talk, Deirdre, I understand. I have a photo of my daughter in my wallet. She died from diabetes. It’s still hard for me to talk about.”
Deirdre looked at the photo, hands shaking slightly.
“That’s my parents to my right. My fiancé, Jim.” She paused. “He was going on to med school at Rutgers. Those are his parents. The kids are his younger brothers and sisters.”
He did not reply. Either she would end it with that or, in a moment, blurt out the rest.
“My parents owned a nursery for roses. I was helping them to run the business side of it.” She sighed and then chuckled. “What with the way developments had swept through the area, land value was through the roof. I kept telling them to sell the place; they were sitting on millions, but they loved their rose business. When everything hit the fan, it was only a matter of days before we got looted. As if a dozen acres of a rose farm actually had anything of value to keep you alive. That’s when Daddy got killed.”
She continued on, falling into a monotone, a recounting of the horrors that to John had become all so familiar, the story of survivors, repeated over and over in a flat, emotionless tone, the story of a nation going into collapse.
She and her mother managed to scratch by until the first winter, thanks to a small garden. Fending off other groups of looters, killing a rapist, not being so successful with killing the second one until after he fell into a drunken sleep, waiting for her fiancé to show up but never hearing from him again, her mother dying of pneumonia the first winter … it was a somber, ten-minute recounting of horrors spoken of without emotion.
“When I heard of the ANR, they had set up a recruiting station in Princeton. I joined. I actually believed their line that they were helping to rebuild America, and besides, it was a couple of real meals a day, and frankly, it was safety, as well. They were taking anyone who walked through the door voluntarily. An hour later, they said I’d make officer. I went into a training camp at the university campus, and it darn near felt like heaven at first. A warm building, real food … I actually put ten pounds back on within a month, and then they shipped us out.
“My first tour of duty was guarding the approach out of New York City. My unit was down in Hoboken with orders to shoot anyone trying to get across the river.”
“What?”
She gazed at him and shook her head. “Didn’t you hear, sir? Plague, ebola—you name it—was rampant on the other side of the river. Rumor was there was still a hundred thousand or so living in the wreckage. It was medieval, the way the city was still burning. Hard to believe anything could still be found to burn. Those trying to get out we were ordered to shoot on sight.”
“And did you?”
She sighed. “At first, I couldn’t. Tried warning shots. They’d be in rafts, small boats, even some trying to swim across. But after a while, it was them or us.” She lowered her head.
“Yeah, I helped shoot them. We were told if any of us even touched one of them, we would be shot, as well.” She looked up at him. “What would you have done, sir?”
He had no reply for her question. “Go on, tell me the rest.”
“After that my unit was pulled with orders to report to Bluemont for special training.”
He sat up a bit at the mention of Bluemont. At last, someone who had actually been there other than Fredericks.
“What did you see? Did you meet the new president? Is the government really up and functioning?” The eagerness in his voice was obvious.
She sighed and shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone other than our trainers. Our unit was there for a month of advanced infantry training in urban combat. Sorry, sir, but that’s all I saw.”
He sat there silent, frustrated.
“We thought it weird. I mean, I had some interest in history, even thought of majoring in it in college. Old films of presidents and generals talking with troops. Morale boosting and all of that. We just went into an encampment in a town nearby that any surviving civilians had been cleared out of and practiced taking buildings. Rumors were that we were going to be sent to the Midwest. No one wants to go to Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and that had us worried.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you heard the news?”
“We tune into BBC, that’s about it.”
She shook her head. “Other ANR units were coming in, same as us. Forming up into battalion-level strength. We bunked in with a unit recruited out of Ohio. They said most of that part of the country is level five. Gangs forming into their own armies, some of them nut job religious cults, others just, well, just barbarians.”
He thought of their own fight with the Posse but said nothing, just letting her go on as she talked about the rumors, the execution of a trooper who tried to desert, the fact that there appeared to be an abundance of food and supplies—at least in the Bluemont area—that lulled them all into compliance, and then finally the wave of fear when their company was pulled out of the assignment to Chicago with orders to accompany a new administrator to North Carolina.
“Why fear?”
She hesitated.
“Go on. There’s nothing to be afraid of now, Deirdre. Once all this gets straightened out, I’m giving prisoners with the ANR the option of staying on with us or trying to make their way back to their homes.”
“Really, sir?”
He actually reached out and took her hand. She was only a couple of years older than the students who formed his own “army,” and though battle hardened, he still at many times saw them as his kids.
“We were told that you people didn’t take prisoners. And like I said earlier, me being black, we were told…” Her voice trailed off.
“Those sons of bitches,” he whispered.
She just looked at him.
If her words were the truth, it was a stunning revelation of just who was in charge in Bluemont and reinforcement that his decision not to comply, to fight back, was the right one.
“Remember, I’m from Jersey too,” he finally replied.
“Which exit?” she asked with a touch of a smile, offering the old standard joke.
“Near Exit 150 off the GSP.”
“Around Newark?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t sound it now, sir.”
“Live here for a while; it changes things.”
He smiled and then turned serious, feeling that they had broken down barriers a bit. “I first came south over thirty years ago to go to Duke. Yeah, all the old stereotypes had me going too. Friends up north used to joke that I’d wind up like that guy in the movie Deliverance.”
“They actually showed us that movie one night. Said things had reverted back to that way down here.”
“Those bastards.” John sighed. It was the standard routine of dividing one off against the other with fear. No wonder the prisoners were petrified. Some of the reivers were definitely tough looking, but to play on that sick stereotype? “So you got shipped down here and thought we were all toothless rednecks and moonshiners?”
“Yeah, something like that. The entire unit is recruits from Jersey. I did start to wonder about that, why were they shipping us here and taking recruits from down here and shipping them up north.”
“Standard routine, Deirdre. Never set one’s own people against their neighbors and kin. Tell them the other side is different and hates you. They were going to take a hundred or so from my community and offered me the job of major general.”
“You a major general?” she asked, obviously surprised.
“Something like that.”
“And you turned it down?”
“Again, something like that. It’s kind of what this entire fight is all about.”
She was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t know. We were kept separate from the day we got here. Told any of the civilians we encountered could be terrorists and all of you were in open rebellion against the new government.”
“If you guys had been allowed just a few days’ leave to mingle about a bit, you’d have seen different. We’re still Americans here.”
“What about Chicago, Cleveland, places like that?”
“I know just about as much as you do, Deirdre. Yeah, we faced gangs, and chances are they’re still out there. But most of us who survived the Day? I think we want nothing more than to come together again as a country and rebuild. Instead, it seems like some are turning us against each other.”
“Bluemont?”
“If Fredericks is representative of what they are, I’ll have to say yes.”
She took that in and sighed. Absently, she popped the lid on the can of dried scrambled eggs and bacon, scooping up a handful to munch on and offering the can to John, who refused.
The sight of it was tempting; he could not even recall the last time he had actually tasted real bacon. He recalled reports of how, prior to the Day, the government had brought up literally billions of dollars of such rations on top of the huge stockpile of MREs the military always kept on hand. Except for the day a battalion of regular army troops had come through Black Mountain more than a year earlier, he and his neighbors and friends had never seen such emergency rations. It filled him with a deep bitterness.
“We both need to get a little rest. But first, a few questions. You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to.”
“Name, rank, and number–type things?” she asked.
“Yeah, you could call it that.”
She did not reply.
“How many troops came with Fredericks?”
She hesitated.
“Deirdre, you’re going to have to make a choice. If you don’t answer, I’ll leave it go at that. No torture or any of the other crap they filled you with about how we fight down here. Regardless of what you decide, there is going to be one helluva fight for Asheville in a couple of hours. Maybe what you tell me can help save lives, both of my people and those with your unit.”
She took another handful of the dried eggs and bacon, started to chew, and then began to shake, stifling back a sob. “Seventy-five here as security for the helicopter pad, a hundred or so downtown, billeted in the county jail,” the other half garrisoned in the county jail downtown,” she began softly. “Nearly all of us came in within the last week by transport to the airport south of town. We thought it strange the way we were moved in at night and forbidden any contact with the locals. Also a tech and support unit from what was supposedly the old army for the four choppers. And finally, a personal security squad for Fredericks. Those bastards, we don’t know where they came from, but none of us liked them, and they were kept separate.”
He patted her on the shoulder as she truly let go.
“Guess this makes me a traitor.”
“A traitor to traitors, Deirdre?”
She looked over at him.
“You did the right thing. Now try to get a little rest. I want you with me when we go in; maybe you can help convince the others not to fight and save lives.”
He stood up, and she curled up on her cot, clutching the open can of dried eggs and bacon.
He walked back over to Kevin, who had been conveniently standing close by.
“You hear all of that?” he whispered.
“Everything.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a fight; we’ve lost too many already.”
Kevin was silent.
“I need a few minutes’ sleep. Is that okay with you, Kevin?”
“Wide awake here, sir.”
John smiled and patted him on the shoulder. He hated to admit it, but he was pulling rank. Twice Kevin’s age, he was definitely feeling it now. He found a quiet corner, lay down on the bare floor, and slipped into dreamless, exhausted slumber.