The Horse Soldier: Beginnings Series Book 10 (16 page)

A
s much as the news of Hal entering Beginnings floored everyone there, it also floored George. “No,” he spoke on the phone. “When did he arrive there? Shit. I thought they wouldn’t find this out. Have you met him? I see.” George drew up a thinking look. “All right. I’m gonna have to head back to Quantico since my top man is there. If this is a joining of forces, I’m gonna have to move ahead with this plan. Are you ready?” George nodded. “Thank you. But . . . no. I take no chances with you. You’ll only do what I instruct you to do, no further. If they find you out they may kill you on the spot and then what? Huh? No. No chances. Just do what I tell you to do and no more . . . I know you want to help, but be patient, please. I have to go. I have to instruct my new CO on what needs to be done.” George snickered. “Isn’t that hysterical? I’ll call you back. Be careful. Yes. Bye.”

George’s inside person always brought a smile to his face.
This person was so unknown, so brilliant on George’s part. But for as much as he wanted to smile in his aftermath of his call, he couldn’t. He had other things on his mind, the fact that Hal and Joe found each other. But that didn’t weigh as heavy as the scary portion of that thought. The UWA and Beginnings becoming one.

^^^^

Hal stopped walking in awe as he, Joe, and Robbie entered the living section. “This is amazing.” He looked at all the houses. “Everyone lives here like a little town. It looks so lived in.” He looked at the street sign. “Frank Street? That’s really nice.” Hal smiled. “This is so nice.”

Joe gave him a double pat on the back. “You know
, Beginnings has enough land to expand this living section to easily house your people. But I have a feeling you want to expand your people, so I have a few thoughts we’ll discuss another time”

“Sounds good
,” Hal said as they moved to Joe’s house. “Dad, is this your house. Look, flowers.”

“Yeah
,” Joe grumbled. “Anyhow, let’s go in.” He opened the door. Joe grunted when Robbie sneaked in first, then Hal.

Hal sniffed. “Wow
, is that brownies?”

“Halberd!” Andrea shrieked his name with excitement as she darted from the kitchen.

Hal immediately looked with a weirdness at Robbie to the woman who now plastered him with kisses.

“Meet our new mom, Andrea.” Robbie snickered.

Hal whispered. “Dad’s still doing the same thing?”

“Oh Hal!” Andrea caught her breath. “You poor boy, lost out there in this world while your father lives here. Are you all right sweetheart? Look at you.”
She stepped back. “So handsome. Oh Joe, he’s handsome.”

Joe sort of cringed.

Hal flashed a gloating grin. “I like this mom. No mom ever thought I was handsome.”

“That’s because you’re not
,” Robbie said.

“One hour
,” Hal said. “One hour I’m back and you’re starting?”

“Yeah.”

“O.K.” Hal shrugged. “Just checking. Get ready though.”

“I’m the master
, Hal. I’m worse now. Wait, that’s not what I meant.”

Joe shook his head. “Can we just sit down and talk what we need to talk about
? Andrea? Are you staying?”

“Oh no
, sweetheart. Not me.” She laid her hand on Joe cheek. “Got to get to Gemma’s. A few of us gals are cooking a community dinner for Hal tonight. Danny’s reprogramming a few of the SUTs again for waiters.” She kissed Joe. “See you. Robbie, take my brownies out of the oven in ten minutes, sweetie.”

“Sure thing
, Mom.” Robbie gave a thumbs up.

“And don’t eat them” Andrea instructed as she walked to the door. “They’re for tonight.”

Robbie responded with an innocent smile and another thumbs up as Andrea left.

Grabbing the large ashtray because he knew it was going to be a smoke fest, Joe set it on the coffee table and sat on the sofa. Robbie sat in the chair and Hal sat next to Joe.

Hal took in the view of the house. “This is great. Your wife is nice, Dad. Robbie hasn’t scared her away.”

Joe lit a cigarette. “Where’s she gonna go? Now let’s . . .”

“Joe!” Henry came barreling through the front door. “Whoops forgot to knock.” Henry walked out, knocked then barreled through again. “Joe!”

Joe held up his hand. “Hal meet Henry.”

Hal turned around on the couch and looked. “Henry?” Hal turned to Robbie. “I thought you said he was fifty, stocky, and black.”

“No that’s what
you
said he looked like. I merely agreed. He looks that way to me.”

Henry flipped Robbie off then shook hands with Hal. “Nice to meet you. Wow do you look like Joe.”

“Thanks. You look a lot different than I thought.”

Joe only looked up from his seat on the couch. “Henry is one half of our Asian community.”

“Joe.” Henry tsked. “I’m Japanese, so technically I’m not . . .”

“Henry
, I don’t want to hear it. I’m always hearing it,” Joe bitched. “Anyhow, we’re gonna be busy for . . . Robbie? Where are you going?”

Robbie pointed backwards. “To check the brownies. I don’t want them to burn.”

Joe groaned. “Back to you, Henry. I need you to take the wheel for a while. I’m gonna be busy with Hal, catching up.”

“Sure thing
, Joe. I have to get back to fixing generator two. It’s making this noise.” Henry shrugged. “I’ll just beat on it again.”

Joe winced. “You do that.”

“Worked before.” Henry raised his hand. “Hal, nice to meet you. Hope we can get along better than Robbie and I.”

“I’m positive of that
, Henry.” Hal winked. “I’m the nice Slagel brother. Always have been.”

Henry snickered amongst the Joe moans. He waved once more then left.

Joe waited until Robbie returned and sat down. “All right, Hal. I’ve waited long enough. Where the hell have you been for seven years?”

Hal whistled and let out a long breath. “It’s a difficult story.”

“Try me,” Joe told him.

“Wait
,” Robbie interrupted. “When I spoke to you and when Dad talked to you, you were sick.”

“Yes
, I was.” Hal nodded. “I had the plague.”

A ‘what’ came from both Robbie and Joe.

“I had the plague like everyone else. I was on border patrol outside of Honolulu when I started getting worse. I dropped about eight hours after I talked to you, Dad.”

Joe closed his eyes and blinked. “Then you didn’t have the plague. No one we knew beat it.”

“Ah.” Hal held up his hand. “No one you knew. I knew thirty-seven guys that beat it. Elliott Ryder is one of them. We lost contact when we left the Islands. We met up again. We were all at the same med station.”

“What?” Joe was lost. “We had the top scientist working on it. He didn’t beat it until last year.”

“He was using modern medicine, wasn’t he. He used the resources science gave him.”

Joe nodded. “Yes he did.”

“Well that’s why he didn’t get a reaction. He needed to go back to basics, back to nature.”

“And that’s exactly how he ended up beating it.” Robbie said. “Using all natural stuff. But how did you . . .”

“Not me,” Hal answered. “I was out of it like I said. Had all the symptoms, bad too. There was this Korean doctor who was working the med station I was at. He was a homeopathy specialist. He tried these herbs on us. He said it was his cure. It sort of was. It took me three weeks to come around but I did. I remember reading his notes on how in his tents he had over two thousand patients, including himself. The herbs worked on fifty of us and everyone else died. Eventually thirteen more died in the next three weeks. They weren’t strong enough to fight the symptoms I guess.”

Joe was astounded. “Wait until Dean hears this. So this doctor, what happened to him?”

“Died of the plague. His medication prolonged him for a week but that was all. It didn’t work on everyone, just some. I guess it was our gene make up.”

“Dean is going to be fascinated by this
,” Joe commented. “Be prepared for a lot of questions and tests.”

“And . . .” Robbie added. “Be prepared to jerk off in a cup.”

“Robert!” Joe yelled. “Then what, Hal?”

“Then . . .
then . . . jerk off?” Hal shuddered in confusion. “Then we searched the islands, all of us, for survivors. They were all men. The herb didn’t work on any women at all, not even to prolong their life. We started thinking that the female species was wiped out.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Pretty much they were. Dean estimates one percent of the population remained, maybe less
, but he estimates eighty percent of the survivors are men. The virus was gender prejudice. Males survived. Females didn’t. We’re still having an uneven ratio when it comes to births. Three to one. So go on. I’m sorry. You searched the island?”

“Yes
,” Hal answered. “Four of our group were Islanders, so we searched for their families and for survivors.”

“All the islands?” Joe asked.

“No, it would have been too much, just the bigger ones. Anyhow, we were this group and we devised a plan. We grabbed a map of the mainland, charted out a course based on where all of our families were, and we were going to break down into five groups. We were going to travel the country looking. So we got a boat, stocked it with food, a lot of food, and headed to the mainland. At this point, there were close to sixty of us.”

“You arrived in the main land when?” Joe questioned.

“Let’s see,” Hal thought. “It had to be August. We devised a central meeting place and a time we would all meet. I didn’t figure for some to return. I knew I would. So we split up with each group going separate ways.”

Joe tossed his hands up. “Hal, I’m a little miffed. I spent my life beating it into your head about the contingency plan.. Why in God’s name didn’t you follow it? If you would have you would have seen we went to Ashtonville.”

“Yeah,” Robbie added, “and I made sure dad left word there where we went.”

“I did.” Hal was insistent. “I remembered the contingency plan
, but when I got to Gaithersburg, I figured since there was no note, no one but me survived.”

“What the hell are you . . .” Joe saw
, through the corner of his eye, Robbie standing up. “Robert.”

“Getting the brownies
, Dad.” Robbie hurried into the kitchen. There was some clanking as he took the brownies from the oven. He came back feeling guilty. “All right. When I went with Miguel for a final weapons run around late July, we stopped at Gaithersburg to check on the note. I figured it had been months and Hal was sick so I uh .. . I took the note for a souvenir. I have it, Hal, if you want to see it.”

Hal’s mo
uth dropped open. “I wandered the country thinking my family was dead and you took the note? Dad! He wasn’t supposed to take the note! Robbie, you asshole.”

“Hey.” Robbie pointed at him. “I resent that.”

“Dad.”

“I know.” Joe held up his hand. “What’s done is done. Robbie’s done a lot of things through these years he shouldn’t have. I won’t get into it. Anyhow
, you went home. No note. What then?”

“Well
, we searched out the other families, picked up survivors, food and such and eventually made it to the meeting place. We were the first ones there and in another month or two, thirty five out of the original sixty had made it back, but we had all picked up people and we were about two hundred strong. Big community. Ten women I think.” Hal nodded. “So at that point we knew survival was an option. I moved us all to Mexico where there are a lot of natural rain forests. We planted, we harvested, and we lived there.”

“Then what happen?” Joe asked.

“We got hit, big time. Soldiers in these uniforms raided our town, shooting any of us who fought. I made my escape, me and about twenty other men. The rest . . .dead or taken.”

“The
Society,” Joe said.

“Exactly. Which I didn’t know
at the time. I thought it was another country finishing us off. I mean, what did we know? Another four months go by. It’s winter and this man told us the United States is rebuilding and they needed strong people to work and fight. He told us the President had lived. They had a truck and food for us. Why wouldn’t we believe him? So I went. I was in Tennessee with the Society.”

Robbie was shocked. “You worked for the
Society?”

“Yep.” Hal nodded. “And I’m not proud of it. I started noticing that some men were like zombies
, doing exactly as instructed. Those who were disruptive were never heard from again. Then one day they told us we were making a sweep, looking for survivors. When they said we were to shoot anyone who fought, I knew it was not my game. I mean the world died. Why kill anyone else? So I started to talk to men and one night we left, figuring we can feed ourselves. We don’t need them. I gathered close to fifty and we went west. That’s where the Society was least active from what I knew. And that’s where the Alliance all began. Us fifty decided we would fight what the Society was trying to do, a worldwide take over and through the next couple months, we began a Society of our own. People were joining. Defectors. Those zombie type soldier we would take and train ourselves. The more people that joined, the more regimented we became. We took on a gimmick so we could stick in their minds when we hit them. The world had been reduced to animals. Technology has been eliminated to most. We grew more so recently in the past nine months to our present size. And the bigger we got, the more difficult we knew surviving would get so we really started to pay attention to Beginnings at that point.”

“Do you have any women?” Joe asked. “We have eighteen.”

Hal whistled. “Eighteen out of a hundred and some? Wow. We have thirteen, but we weren’t concentrating on finding women for reproduction. We want the country back and we needed soldiers. When we found out through Sgt. Ryder what the Society does with women, we sheltered them.”

“What does the
Society do with women?” Joe asked.

“Lobotomizes them and farms them. They are shells of women reproducing manufactured embryos. It’s like something out of a horror film as Sgt. Ryder put it.”

Joe swallowed harshly. “I didn’t know that. So you shelter your women. You mean protect them?”