World of Ashes II (34 page)

That night the wall stayed manned by the Headshed platoon, despite their protests, and occasional rifle shots echoing through the stars. The men of 1
st
VR and the survivors enjoyed an impromptu festival to celebrate being rescued. Daniel was listening to a trio of guitarists play against another trio of banjos when he spotted a familiar face in the crowd. A friend from high school, Hugh Garner, was standing across a few tables with a gap toothed grin that was recognizable even if he wasn’t. Good friends are people you’d recognize even if they’d survived a concentration camp from looking like John Goodman before. Hugh was one of those people for Daniel. Being too fat to join the Army after school, Hue had disappeared from all but Facebook until the dead came for them, and then he was gone for good. The scars from a tough time of it were a much different color than his dark skin.

Making his way to Daniel’s side, a skinnier Hubert Garner, with significantly fewer teeth and some gnarly battle scars, bear hugged his friend. Kemper almost pulled his riot baton, but then he realized Daniel knew this guy and he wasn’t a threat.

“I’m so glad you’re alive.” Daniel tried to bear hug Hugh back, but he really wasn’t big enough to reach all the way around him despite the weight loss.

Hugh let go and Daniel almost fell into his chair. “When I heard there was an officer named Sawyer pointing his fuggin’ sword at the corpses I just
knew
, just
knew bro
, that it had to be you.” Hugh had promised his mom a long time ago he wouldn’t use foul language, so he had his own menagerie of pseudo-curse words. Apparently he’d stuck to his promises even after the end of the world.

“Well, I was just trying to give the folks back home something to talk about besides rationing and heavy handed policing. We’re only just able to hold our ground, and hope is as valuable as food these days.” Daniel admitted while the music died down for a minute.

“The People?” Hugh mocked. “Look at you. The poster child for millennial disconnect turned Army golden boy. I’m proud of you, bro. I’m serious.”

“Are you thuper therial, Hubert?”

“Thuper duper therial.” Hue waited for the moment and they both shouted, “
Exthelthior
!”

“The world ends and what literary culture do we hand down to the next generation?
South Park
.” Kemper said, pretending to look at a newspaper dated the week before the first EV1 cases were reported. It wasn’t the first time Daniel had seen him doing that, maybe it reminded him of a better time and place.

“So what’s it like?” Daniel asked. “Being trapped here I mean.”

Hugh thought about it for a moment. “Lonely. Moms died of pneumonia a couple months ago, I ain’t had many friends around since then. I just make bread in the mornin’ and mind the wall in the afternoon. I tell ya what though, I could be the Black Robin Hood I’m so good with a bow now.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your mom. We’ve all lost someone.” Daniel thought about admitting to Hugh that his father was probably dead too, but this wasn’t about seeing who’d lost more. The easy answer was Hugh, but things would be better for this man now, and that was why Daniel was wearing this ugly gray, pixelated uniform, why he was so far from home. He had an opportunity and the firepower to make life better for Americans, for people everywhere. He’d fight the zombies the rest of his life if every night he could see a newly liberated face think about their own future beyond the next meal for the first time in months, maybe even years.

“So where do I sign up?” Hugh asked.

“What?”

“Look, my asthma hasn’t flared since my Junior year, I’ve lost a hundred pounds…” Hugh was going to continue, but Daniel cut him off.

“This isn’t a militia, Hue. This is the United States Army. We go to Basic Training, we get
assigned
a unit, rarely can we choose. I can’t guarantee you’d be in my unit. And even then, I’m an officer now. I wouldn’t be allowed to treat you like my friend. Your name would just be Private Garner, and I’m sorry but I can only be so impartial before I remember growing up with you, bro.” Daniel laid it all out, blatantly honest. Hugh appreciated that and took a moment to consider.

“So again,
Sir
, where do I sign up?”

Daniel and Hugh got shitfaced drunk the night 1
st
VR stayed in Lincoln. It was maybe one in the morning by the time our hero had the wherewithal to put down the moonshine and let his buddy sleep it off on his bedroom floor. Daniel had to try not to stagger on his way back to the platoon and arrived just in time for the armored convoy to enter the gates. Without so much as a pause they began refueling from tankers they’d brought with them and started evacuating the meek and injured before the real fight to reclaim Bismarck’s bountiful croplands began.

There was semi-organized chaos in the Tactical Operations Center, and Daniel found it reasonably easy to avoid letting anyone close enough to him smell the booze while he made for their bivouac. It wasn’t like he’d get in trouble, Captain Rambo was making an ass of himself in a makeshift bar, his thundering baritone voice could be heard laughing until the convoy’s diesels drown him out. Taking a wrong turn in the Army’s tent city Daniel ended up in the TOC again. This time the only person there was a radio operator, and he wasn’t looking around him while coordinating the convoy’s movements with 1
st
VR’s. Remembering quickly that Major Sharp kept a bottle of Kentucky Bourbon in his tough-box, Daniel thought it would make a good gift for Hugh and went to snatch it.

Whist quietly humming
Smooth
Criminal
to himself, Daniel crept into the tent’s separated “office” compartment. He was glad that Sharp had forgotten to zip the flap before departing to make certain he was in front of the cameras when the convoy rolled in. Just as the radio man looked back for whatever reason, Daniel slipped behind a filing cabinet and remained unseen. He crawled to the backside of the desk, slinked up and into Sharp’s favorite ergonomic chair, and began looking for the bottle of pre-war hooch. He found it next to a spare Beretta M9 and some loose ammunition, but on his way up he bumped his head on the desk and knocked over a stack of papers.

Rather than curse or panic and run, Daniel began to restack the papers just the way Sharp liked them. He could mess with the man’s contraband, but to interrupt his meticulous filing system was about as bad an idea as poking a badger with a spork. Just as he finished, Daniel’s normal respect for other’s privacy faltered and he found himself reading the latest report Sharp was planning to send up the pipeline when they’d completed their mission in Lincoln. What struck him as odd, though, was that the report wasn’t exactly a shining example of an officer who was glad to have won a battle. If anything it was a spiteful, narcissistic rambling that outlined how much it irritated Sharp when people didn’t do exactly what he said, when he said it. The report wasn’t about anyone in 1
st
VR, which was what Daniel immediately suspected when he started reading, but instead it implied that the reason the Joint Chief’s plan to level the Bismarck area hadn’t gone through was because the “
local rebel leader, former Gunnery Sergeant Tony Lampkin (USMCR) and his private militia intentionally disrupted Army battle plans for the sake of sentimentality.
” Daniel couldn’t believe the last words as he almost read it out loud. That wasn’t why Gunny Lampkin had refused to evacuate, it was because the entire fucking town had refused the order, he was just their elected representative. Sharp went on to then make the most heinous suggestion that when they reached the Cheyenne Community Complex the defenders of Lincoln, ND should be court-martialed for their insubordination. The last sentence, though, was the real kicker. Major Sharp not only demanded he be promoted to Colonel, but that the use of 1
st
Viral Response Company and his dream of a new Viral Response Battalion, should be fulfilled and put under his express authority “post haste.”

Just who the fuck did Sharp think he was? And who the hell says “post haste” anymore? His justification for all of this, besides personal promotion and the fame that came with it, was that he alone had the strategic mind to put down the Envier Virus once and for all. From the sound of it, Sharp was gearing up in subsequent letters to suggest his strategy was what would reclaim the entire continental United States. He just needed the men (cannon fodder) to do it.

It all made sense now. Well, not all of it, Daniel was still little more than a knight among pawns, but at least now he could see the game for what it really was. Sharp didn’t give a fuck about winning the war so he could go home and be a good American like everyone else. He wanted to win the war so he could take credit for it. What other goal could a charismatic sociopath in Sharp’s profession be after? This man’s ambition was probably nothing short of the ultimate ego stroke: Commander in Chief. Well, that would be the day, Daniel decided, shoving the letter down his pants, rubbed it anything that felt sweaty, and then put it back in the pile. Sure, it was an immature thing to do, but for good measure he still took the bourbon.

Waking to the sound of screams and incoming artillery was a terrible way to start a hangover, but then Daniel had brought that one on himself. Before he could do more than sit up with his feet over the side of his bunk, Lieutenant Anders threw open the zipper to the tent he shared with Daniel. They weren’t good friends, but it wasn’t like they didn’t get along, they’d just not spent much time together yet. In that small window of time, though, Daniel had never seen the chiseled looking former football star look more terrified.

“Dafuq is going on out there?” Daniel asked, trying not to let the glare from outside blind him.

“It’s Sharp. You have to come now, he won’t listen to me or Donovan.”

Daniel threw on his boots without tying them and started out of the tent as a Predator drone released a payload of the bouncing Anti-Plague bombs.

“The first half of the convoy’s already out the gate. We expected them to get swarmed, but it’s not that. Whoever’s in charge in the Big Bunker has a hard-on for those fucking new bombs, they’re dropping them- time now.” He checked his watch. “Major’s calling in the airstrikes danger close to the convoy, if even one bomb bounces into them it’ll cut through the trailers like butter. They’re only protected against zombies trying to claw their way in, they won’t stop a bullet, I checked them last night as part of my safety check-list. Captain Rambo doesn’t believe me, that or his wood for this shit makes Sharp’s look like the prick he is.” Everything had to be about finding a phallic or profane way to put things with Lt. Anders, typical of someone who was fifth or sixth generation West Point.

“I can’t stop an airstrike, Anders.” Daniel protested. “Are you sure Sharp knows the buses can’t take the punishment?”

“He won’t even let me in the TOC.”

Daniel had to agree that was weird. “Fine, I’ll go in and see what’s up.” He tried the doorknob on the entrance to the reinforced trailer. It was locked. He tried knocking, but the windows were covered in foil tape and he couldn’t tell who was near the door. “Major Sharp, it’s Lieutenant Sawyer. I need a moment of your time, Sir.” He said, trying to look through the window on the door.

It swung open and almost hit him. Captain Rambo was standing there with a fucking cattle prod, “You have somewhere to be, Lieutenant.”

Offended to the enth-degree by the unfriendly gesture, Daniel snatched Rambo’s wrist and twisted the prod back until it caught him in the forehead. Dropping 220lbs of useless, he stepped over him and entered the darkened trailer full of high-tech equipment and radios. He saw Sharp in the corner of the room, standing over a table and map of the area.

“Sir. A moment of your time.” It wasn’t a request.

Sharp sighed. “Make it quick, Daniel.”

“Sir, Lt. Anders tells me the buses aren’t hardened for shrapnel.” He said as Anders and Lt. Donovan stepped over Rambo’s bulk. Daniel looked at the other NCO’s and Soldiers in the room. “Get out.” He said harshly and the room scattered like mice.

“This is a war, Daniel. Casualties are to be expected.”

“That’s as dumb as saying ‘It’s the Army Way.’ We’ve discussed this, Sir, you know that’s not a reason or excuse for anything but incompetence, lack of imagination and complicity. I mean, are you
trying
to get people killed? We took the town with
zero
friendly KIA. That’s a damned Christmas miracle, Sir. So why are two other commissioned officers waking me up during the world’s most heinous hangover to come and stop you from getting civilians killed?”

Sharp glared at Donovan and Anders, then back at Daniel. “Do you know what a fiscal year is, Lieutenant?”

“…what?”

“If we don’t incur what the check-signers consider casualties or expended ordinance, we won’t get new or more resources
next
fiscal year. Does that make sense to you?”

Daniel held his hand up in a pause, he was feeling quite sick, but none of it was from the liquor (okay, maybe some of it.) “Okay, I’m still dreaming, because there’s no way you’re actually that motherfucking stupid.”

“Dan, the birds are incoming.” Anders warned, edging toward the radio operator’s station. “We gotta call ‘em off.”