World of Ashes II (28 page)

Her speech was placating and full of meaningless filler that people gobbled up like a fat-ass in denial drinks artificial sweetener. She alluded to maybe one day she might run for office, and this was all the perfect setup for that. Suddenly Annette handed the microphone to Daniel, who was staring off into space and hadn’t heard a word she’d said in five minutes. That pizza and a marathon of playing
Counterstrike
was calling his name. Now his mother was, and instead of the normal perception that her voice was akin to nails on a chalkboard, nothing had ever sounded better than hearing her say, “Daniel...”

For a moment he froze, feeling very stupid being seen in public with chin stubble, a dirty uniform and no identifying patches whatsoever. Then something clicked, besides the compulsive disorder drilled into you in basic to look professional, probably the part he’d inherited from his mother and in that moment in front of the cameras was the only place he wanted to be. He was comfortable there, he
belonged
there.

              “Good evening.” He began, “My name is Private First Class Daniel Sawyer, Wyoming Army National Guard. Brigadier General Brown is my mother, and I cannot begin to express to you all tonight how relieved and overjoyed I am to finally be back home in Cheyenne, with her. At least until I can find my own place.” He lead with that joke. The crowd of people, most wearing color coordinated mechanic’s coveralls depending on their job, the kids still in school uniforms despite it being late, this festival of sorts had probably been going on for many hours before Daniel’s train arrived, cheered wildly for him. This was a first, nobody had really ever cared he existed, let alone celebrated it. The mass’s attention felt like electricity, and after a quick glance back at his mother and Captain Sharp, Daniel went on. “I’ve been told I’m supposed to say something about what it’s like out there. Give everyone hope and reason to go on…” He paused for effect. “Well I aim to deliver.” Another slight cheer. “There is
every
reason to go on,
every reason
to keep fighting for the America we know and love every day, even long after this plague is but a small chapter in the history books. Many of you, I’m sure, have seen more than your lifetime’s worth of horrors. I’m right there with you. I was out there…
with you
… And I survived. I fought every day until by the grace of God and a few good men, I came home to my family. Thank you all for keeping alive, a home under the flag of liberty and freedom, for all the men and women in uniform to come back to. God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America!”

              What a bunch of bullshit. Daniel looked back at his mother again, and unlike the rest of the gathered witches and warlocks, she wasn’t taken in by his God Bless America speech. At some point he was more or less cobbling together a bunch of different catch phrases he’d heard over the years, kind of like what she did but with more charisma. Annette had once accused Daniel of being so apathetic he wouldn’t care if he lived in North Korea so long as they let him play video games. Now he was only just monumentally more popular with the people, not five minutes after his arrival, than she had been after twenty years of service. It was good, however, to see that he and his mother’s relationship hadn’t changed.

Weeks later…

Annette adjusted the copy of
Times Magazine
she’d had framed and mounted on the wall next to other framed pictures of Daniel as a young boy, most of which had been in storage probably until after he’d gone missing. Right now, though, she could hear him upstairs with a girl he’d met at his arrival party. Some Army brat whose father meant something to someone, but not to her, and frankly she didn’t think his airhead daughter was good enough for her son. Not then, and not after two days of her visiting all night long while Annette and Calvin, her husband of only a few years, tried to sleep. 

The morning paper, fraught with nonsense stories about crap that didn’t really matter, was tossed aside almost as soon as she opened it. If a zombie hadn’t eaten her Pomeranian, Mr. Smitty, during the first outbreak in Cheyenne she’d have let him piss on it. Instead she opened a Steven King novel she’d read a dozen times already and ignored the many reports stacking up on the far side of the kitchen table. Calvin was already off to work, his crew was putting in a new electrical line that would finally restore power to a refugee camp that had been without since, whenever. She couldn’t remember anymore, and it didn’t really matter. Calvin was a halfwit, nice, devoted, patient, but unable the grasp the full weight of how desperate and almost pointless their fight against the undead was. Every day a hundred thousand people died, and that was only the ones they could count. Most of it was blind estimation, vague ideas taken from aerial reconnaissance that was more focused on finding where the Texans were and were not, just to satisfy the Big Man’s personal vendetta against the hubris of the Lone Star State for seceding. How many states had seceded during the collapse? Five, maybe six? Most of the same states who’d been part of the original Confederacy, except for maybe Maine. It wasn’t that the state had left the Union, it was more that no one was left to keep the state’s government solvent.

              Choosing the exact right moment to use the bathroom, Annette missed the girl’s departure. Oh darn. Daniel wasn’t far behind her, barely making the effort to put a sleeveless shirt and boxers on before he flopped down on the couch in front of his new Xbox. She noticed OffiSiRDooFy95 was his new gamer-tag, his old one had more than a thousand friend requests now that he’d suddenly become famous and he didn’t want to deal with them. The NSA was also tapping that account for sure, so he’d just skipped trying to fix it with all the glitches their spying programs would cause and bought a new one. His backpay had come through almost as soon as he’d gotten the gold bar slapped to his chest, so he was sitting on six months of backdated 2
nd
Lieutenant’s pay. Apparently someone had decided he’d been a lieutenant since he graduated Basic Combat Training. Probably a gift from now Major Sharp, the lump sum assured him enough of his own money for a brand new, last generation gaming console for the express purpose of ignoring the world.

              Until he’d physically recovered, because he’d lost almost thirty pounds even with his time of being well fed in Crystal River, Daniel was on indeterminate medical leave. He did have to report to his new unit eventually, but it wasn’t for at least two weeks. Until then he was just going to get fat and do everything he told Sharp he was going to do despite his mother’s wishes. Technically he wasn’t in her chain of command, and given that they were directly related she could actually be reprimanded for attempting to unduly influence him as an officer. The premise was vague, but if she kept being a bitch it wasn’t beyond Daniel to submit the paperwork. If anything, being that low of a snake in the grass might impress her.

              “Have you read today’s news?” Annette asked.

              “Was it on the Xbox leaderboard? Because otherwise, no.”

              “Important things in there, Daniel.” She prodded more.

              Daniel finally paused his game. “What do you want, Mom? We had our reunion, you’re still bossy and impatient, I still don’t know what happened to my father… What do you want from me? I directed even more fame toward you than you had before, your next star is probably already a guarantee.”

              Annette thought about hitting her son with a vass, but decided it was too expensive to waste on that. Maybe if the plastic one in the kitchen had been handier. “You’re an officer now, Daniel. You can’t shut the world out anymore.”

              “Yes I can. For a little white, I can damned well shut it all out.” Daniel stood up, looking kind of dirty with chin stubble and sweaty hair still sticking to his forehead. “What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you lately, Mom? Losing track of me? Well, now you know I’m okay. When’s the last time you were hungry, Mom? When’s the last time you were genuinely scared of what might be around the literal next corner? So you’ve had to make some tough calls, I get that. Too bad the chances you’ll be forced to make that call, and others like it again, comes with the uniform and that shiny fucking star you’ve been chasing since I was like
ten
. Have you even once had to sleep outside this whole time?” Daniel had been taking ground and moving slowly toward his mother this entire time. She was stoic, this was true, but she had tears welling in her eyes ready to fall. “Mom… Don’t tell me that you of all people had no idea how bad things were in the beginning. You could have told me to come home earlier, fuck, you could have told me to stay in England! But no. You knew DC was being attacked and yet…” Daniel choked back his own tears. “I lost people, Mom. People I
loved
, and I don’t just mean Jose. They weren’t statistics, they weren’t dots on a map or units with replacements just behind the lines. There
weren’t
any fucking lines…”

Daniel let all that set in first. Then he let the final bomb drop. “When did you lose contact with Dad? Did you even bother to warn him?” Annette was stunned to silence, but her whole body was quivering with anger. Daniel reveled in it. “Of course not.”

              “Daniel… Communications were blacked out, I couldn’t-”

              “Bullshit! Fucking bullshit, Mom! Dad could have gotten out. Made it somewhere, anywhere that might have been safer than the suburbs of motherfucking
London!
Nothing survives the cities, not in the Red Zones, you again know this. I’m still waiting for Major Sharp to come through on satellite images of Dad’s house, which you should already have cared enough to have on hand, by the way... I’ll decide if I’m going to sabotage your brakes after the images are confirmed.” Annette tried to speak, but Daniel had already flopped back down in his favorite recliner and plugged his headset in.

Chapter 12

              “Stand up straight, don’t slouch, Lieutenant. Today is a big day for us.” Sharp reminded Daniel for the hundredth time. It might have helped if Daniel weren’t hung over, but he did his best not to look it. Army doctors had cleared him for duty and now he had to meet the men and women he’d be leading into battle against the undead.

              The door swung open and Daniel walked into a room filled with e-vapor that attached itself with a sickly fruity edge to all the cigar smoke from one corner of the room. The biggest cigar was between the yellowing teeth of the smallest woman he’d ever seen in uniform, her lack of giving a damn about Federal mandates to not smoke in government owned buildings worn on her sleeve. Daniel was part of a whole generation unaccustomed to what a bar was supposed to smell like. They’d all had to get used to the breakdown of societal pleasantries the worse things got.

              “Room, attention!” A tall and skinny Sergeant First Class called in a conversationally monotone voice, yet it carried far enough that all the cigarettes and various toys and not so well hidden flasks of hooch went in pockets while everyone locked themselves up.

              Major sharp took the stage. “At ease. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 1st Viral Recon, Envier QRF 1, 1st Federal Infantry Division. I am your commanding officer, Major Jeffry Sharp, for those of you whom I did not recruit personally.” Sharp cleared his throat. He wasn’t a smoker either, but the lax rules were his idea, so he suffered through it. “All of you have been selected from Regular Army and Reserve units for your particular set of skills. All of you have been in the field, far beyond the Red Lines, each and every one of you has faced down large hordes of Plague Victims and lived to tell the tale…” Sharp looked at one man, a clean shaven white male that could have been mistaken for some office drone from Anytown, USA. He’d had his tongue cut out by a gang that tried to take over the subdivision he’d been assigned to patrol and protect. They left him for dead in a train yard, but didn’t finish the job. Before he’d even recovered, and with blood still oozing from his mouth, he went back to retake his post. When the Army liberated the area several weeks later they found the perimeter fence littered with the disemboweled bodies of that gang. Sharp continued, “Or write it down at any rate… I have today your first of three lieutenants who will be filling the platoon leader billets effective immediately. If any of you are promotable, please submit your packets for review and maybe we can just fill from within.” Sharp could see people were starting to pay less attention. “I digress, please give a warm welcome for the Hero of Crystal River, 2
nd
Lieutenant Daniel Sawyer.”

Daniel took the mic and stood there for a moment, glad he didn’t have spotlights in his face like at the train station. It made talking to his unit easier, like addressing people and not shadowy figures behind a glare. It was more personable. “Two months ago I was just another Joe. I don’t like long winded officer’s speeches then, and I still don’t. So I’ll just see you in the field, we’ll have more than enough time to learn to love and hate one another then.” Daniel stepped back off the mike. Already he was the most popular officer in the unit, and there was something to be said for that. If your men like you, they’ll happily do what you say until that special gray line between respect and fraternization is crossed. Daniel wouldn’t let it get to that point, but he certainly wasn’t going to be the kind of officer his mother had raised him to be. If that was to be his fate, he’d have happily died with Lea long ago.