Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (21 page)

I motioned toward the instructors’ barracks. “Let’s step inside. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

He gave a single nod and turned to step down from the podium. On his lower back, he carried a knife in a simple, hand-tooled rawhide sheath. The weapon had a leather grip, a brass finger-guard, and a turquoise ring set near the pommel. It looked old, the opening of the sheath frayed from frequent use. I remembered hearing somewhere that the Apache were renowned for their skill with knives. Supposedly, the ancient tribe had produced some of the best knife-fighters in the world.

It occurred to me that I might want to tread carefully around Lincoln Great Hawk.

*****

I filled him in on everything I knew, starting with the firefight against Ronnie Kilpatrick and his band of traitors, and ending with the previous week’s skirmish against the larger Legion force. He stayed mostly silent while I spoke, asking few questions. His only reaction was to tilt his head back an inch or two when I mentioned that many of the raiders had been armed with AK-47s. Other than that, he was as still as a statue.

I leaned back in my chair when I had finished, and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for him to respond. He kept me waiting a long time, long enough that I started to wonder if he was going to speak at all. I got the feeling that Apache patience operated on a scale of geological proportions—far in excess of what most white men could manage.

Finally, he said,
“These men who call themselves the Free Legion; they are better trained and better armed than most of the thieves and murderers I have fought. Most of those were slow and weak. Stupid, like sheep. These may actually test me before I kill them.”

He said it like it was the sunrise, or the tides. I felt a chill go down my back.

“Well, our first order of business is to find them. You and Grabovsky have any luck searching the battlefield?”

“Tracks. Many of them, leading in all directions. Too many to follow. Then there is the matter of their weapons. I have seen rifles like the ones the Legion used before. They are Chinese-made.
Everywhere I go, where there are people fighting the government, I find these rifles. The symbols are all the same. They were all made at the same factory.”

“You can read Chinese?”

The sides of his mouth titled slightly upward, and his shoulders hitched in what might have been a laugh. “No. But there are people in Colorado Springs who can.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, what do you make of it? Where do you think these rifles are coming from?”

“China, most likely.” 

I frowned at him. “What I mean, is how did the Legion get their hands on them?”

“Either someone gave the rifles to them, or they traded for them.”

This was starting to get on my nerves. “I realize that, thank you. I’m talking about what it means in the bigger picture. What does it have to do with the forces aligning against the federal government?”

The Apache shifted in his seat, just barely. “This is what I think: There are people who have these guns, and they are giving them to the enemy of their enemy. Who these people are, I do not know. Perhaps General Jacobs knows. If he does, he has not shared that knowledge with me. Regardless, it does not change the fate of the Free Legion. It just means that they may put up a fight before I send them to their ancestors.”

  I met his eyes for a long instant, and I could see that he meant every word of it. It wasn’t bravado, or even confidence. That would imply the possibility of failure, of an outcome other than what he expected it to be. What I saw staring at me from across my desk was certainty. Absolute, immovable certainty. Lincoln Great Hawk was not a man who bragged about what he was going to do. He simply stated the facts.

“On that account,” I said, “you and I are in agreement.”

We were both silent after that, thinking our own thoughts. I stood up to leave, and Great Hawk stood up with me.

“I have heard what the militia says about you, Gabriel Garrett.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? What did they say?”

“They said you are like a ghost. Like a nightmare that kills from out of nowhere. That you never miss. I thought they were all liars until Grabovsky told me the same thing. I know him to be a man of truth. He would not have lied to me.”

“I don’t know about that. Soldiers have a tendency to embellish.”

“Not Grabovsky,” he said flatly. “He speaks the truth, and there is no bragging in him. That is why I listen to him, and ignore others.”

“How do you know Grabovsky, exactly?”

“We worked together on a mission in Iraq. Long ago, before the Outbreak. I was happy to find out that he was still alive and serving here in Tennessee.”

I stared at him for a few seconds and thought about how small of a world we lived in. He stared back with glacial patience, giving me time to gather my thoughts.

“Why are you telling me this?”  

“Because I may ask you for your help. Because you fight like one of us.”

“One of us who?”

“The
Mashgalénde
. The people who are close to the mountains.”

“You mean the Apache?”

He smiled then, showing his white teeth, and a pair of longer-than-normal incisors. It was … eerie. “Whatever suits you.”

The smile slowly disappeared, the sharp teeth hidden again behind the wooden mask of his face. I blinked a few times to clear the image and opened the door.

“If you need me, you know where to look,” I said.

He nodded and walked out the door without another word, turning southward back toward town. I watched him go for a while, then shut the door and sat back down at my desk. The room seemed lighter without the big Apache in it. Like a shroud had been lifted, and the air was easier to breath.

“Well, that was strange,” I muttered to myself.

Shaking off the uneasy tension, I got up and made my way toward the mess hall. If Great Hawk needed my help, I would give it. But for the time being, I had to focus on training my recruits. There was plenty of grief on the road ahead of me, and I didn’t feel like borrowing any from tomorrow. As my mother used to quote me, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Allison Laroux, M.D. is, for the most part, a gentle woman.

At least until you piss her off.

When that happens, her temper comes boiling to the surface, and when it does, it is a hell of a thing. 

A few days after I talked to Gabe, Allison and I went for a stroll along the walkway that connects all the guard towers. The evening started out amiably enough. We held hands and talked about little things, like how cold the weather was getting, how encouraging it was that there were so many pregnant women in town, what was going on with all the single folks, who was sleeping with whom, that kind of thing. We had fallen into a comfortable silence, both of us smiling and watching the sunset, when I had to go and ruin things by bringing up my mission against the Legion, and when I would be leaving.

I had practiced this conversation and, at least from my perspective, it boiled down to a series of salient points:

Where am I going?

To infiltrate the Legion and spy on them.

How long will I be gone?

I don’t know. As long as it takes.

How am I going to accomplish this without getting myself killed?

I can’t talk about that.

Am I out of my goddamned mind?

It is a possibility.

I should have prepared better, and maybe solicited a little advice from my friends because, to put it mildly, things did not go well. In fact, I’m fairly certain that if she had been strong enough, my petite girlfriend would have lifted me bodily, hurled me over the wall into a ditch full of sharpened stakes, and saved the Legion the trouble of wasting ammunition on me.

And that was
before
she started yelling at me.

Long story short, she kicked me out of the house and refused to talk to me for a week.

You might have thought, with Gabe being my oldest and best friend, that when I asked if I could crash in my old room for a few days, he might have offered a little sympathy. You know, cut an old buddy some slack.

You would be wrong.

Instead, I endured jibes, barbs, thinly veiled sarcasm, and Gabe snapping his hand forward in a whipping motion and making an annoying
wha-pssshhh, wha-pssshhh
sound every time he asked if Allison had agreed to talk to me yet. All I could muster in response was an irate glare and the extension of my middle finger.

He was not deterred. 

As bad as that was, waking up alone in my bed every morning without Allison there was even worse. I missed being able to reach out and touch her hair, or wrap an arm around her and pull her close. I missed her warmth, her smell, and the softness of her skin. I missed talking to her, laughing with her, and seeing her smile at my stupid jokes. And yes, I missed making love to her, but that wasn’t the most pressing thing on my mind.

What bothered me most was that I didn’t know for sure if she would ever get over it. Time was growing short, plans were moving forward, and the current of events was sweeping me inexorably along. What would happen if I had to leave before we had a chance to patch things up? I couldn’t stand the thought that if something went wrong, I would leave this world knowing that Allison, the only woman I had ever loved, thought badly of me. 

It didn’t take Gabe long to recognize that my mental state was deteriorating rapidly. I wasn’t eating. I hardly slept. My frame grew gaunt, the hollows under my eyes deepened, and no amount of levity on his part could get a rise out of me. Finally, he agreed to have Liz talk to Allison for me to see what she could do to help. (Mayor Stone and I got to know each other during that time, and she insisted on first-name status.)

As it turned out, Allison wasn’t doing so well herself. Liz gave me very specific instructions, reminded me that Allison was a good friend of hers, and laid out the consequences for failure to comply. Not wanting to add any more names to the list of formidable people pissed off at me, I swallowed my pride, screwed up my courage, and did as I was told.

I went on a short expedition to the greenhouses on the south side of town and, after paying an exorbitant sum of tea and sugar in exchange for a dozen roses, I left a bouquet on Allison’s front porch along with a handwritten note:

Allison,

I get it.

I understand why you’re mad at me, I really do.

I walk into your life, I let you care about me, and the next thing you know, I’m about to leave on some dangerous, stupid assignment that is as likely to get me killed as it is to succeed.

I’m not asking you to forgive me, all I’m asking is that you try and understand why I am doing this. It’s not just for the Army, or for the people of this town, or even for retribution against the Legion for everything that they have done to us.

I’m doing this for you. Because I love you, and I want you to have a safe place to live. Giving you that is worth fighting for, and if it comes down to it, worth giving my life for.

Even if I don’t get to spend it with you, I want to make sure that you have a future. 

I miss you.

I’m sorry.

E.

The next morning, when I got up to leave for training, Allison was waiting for me on the front-porch swing. When I froze in place, she looked up at me with her soft brown eyes—eyes that looked nearly as red, haggard, and exhausted as mine—and patted the seat next to her. I sat down slowly, not daring to make a sound for fear that I might scare her off.

“You’re an asshole, you know that, right?” she said, softly.

The sun rising over her shoulder shone through her eyes, her pupils isolated tiny and clear in the golden light. The tightness in my chest became sharp, like fabric stretching around the tip of a knife. I looked down at her hands, and saw that her skin was dry and cracked. Probably from all the hand washing she had to do at the clinic. I wanted to reach out to her, but the timing didn’t quite feel right.

“I have been told that, once or twice,” I said.

Her lips turned upward, ever so slightly. “You know, it occurred to me this morning that I hardly know anything about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“It also occurred to me,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that you don’t know much about me.”

I shook my head. “I know everything I need to know about you, Allison.”

She turned her shoulders to look at me fully. “Like what?”

“You’re kind. And strong, and caring, and you deal with situations that would send most people running for the hills like they’re no big deal. You have courage, and grace, and you’re about ten times smarter than I could ever hope to be. I don’t know what you’ve done in your life, or what kind of person you were before the Outbreak and, to be bluntly honest, Allison, I don’t care. You’re here now, you’re the best woman I’ve ever known, and all I want is for you to love me half as much as I love you. Without that, not a whole lot else matters to me anymore.”