CHAPTER TEN
We kept moving. It took us almost a week to get beyond the heavily built-up areas, partly because the sprawl covered so much land, but mostly because Night and I were not physically up to the challenge yet.
Instead of pushing for miles, Max would run us through tactical drills. He would stop, pull us off to the side of the trail, and ask us questions: “What would you do if we began taking fire from over there?” Over there, in this case, being a creek bed. Or, “Suppose the point tells you he suspects there are people waiting to ambush us. How are you going to do a counterambush?”
We would work each scenario from the perspective of being in charge, and we'd create a plan and detail what was expected of each person when the plan was executed. There was no sense of unreality anymore about doing this. This was our reality.
We met only one organized group along the way. We came up on them from behind. They had someone watching their back, and he reacted as we approached. I got a brief glimpse of women and children ahead of them, but
they moved off the trail within seconds after I had been spotted. It was tense for a minute or two.
I had point and gave the FREEZE AND FADE sign, followed by FORM ON ME. I wanted to talk to them. They must have been doing the same thing, because within a minute four more men joined the drag guy. They spread out and stared at us.
“Feel like talking?” I yelled at them.
“Yeah.” This came from their leader, a black male in the chocolate-chip camo pants that were worn by soldiers in Iraq at the beginning of that misadventure. He had on a green T-shirt and a military load-bearing vest similar to what Ninja wore. So did three of his other men.
We wore regular hunting-style vests. Max and I had taken to wearing them in the city in order to tone down the GI Joe vibe. Later, when we sewed on our Fairfax City Police patches, we stayed with them. In the D.C. Zone, hunting vests were the de facto uniform of Homeland Security plainclothes types. We felt it made us more legit.
The rest of his people were similarly attired, if not in camo then in neutral color clothing. The guy on the far left looked to be wearing pleated khaki Dockers, another part of the civilian uniform in the D.C. Zone.
Like us, they were armed with shotguns and handguns. They looked comfortable with them and competent in what they were doing.
I changed my grip on the shotgun so that I was only holding it with one hand, the stock tucked into my armpit and the barrel pointed down. I started walking toward the Leader, who mirrored what I did and moved to meet me. We met in the center of the path but made no attempt to shake each other's hands.
“Let's be quick about this,” he said. “I don't like standing around in the open during daytime.”
Max sauntered up, looked the guy up and down, and said, “I know you.”
“Sonofabitch!” the Leader yelled, grabbing Max in an embrace. “How the hell are you, man? I heard you were around and doing things. Let me guessâyou got to be Gardener.”
I nodded and said, “Yeah.” Now we shook hands. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his people perceptibly stand down.
“Well, shit. Let's get of this sun.” Over his shoulder he yelled, “We're cool. Put out security and let them take a break.”
Turning back to Max, he said, “Damn, moving kids and women is like herding cats. So talk to me, bro. I figured you for a lifer and a bird at least. I was much surprised to hear you had walked away. Man, where is that medal I heard about?”
Max's smile went away. “I left it hanging on Charlie McBride's cross at Arlington. He deserved it a hell of a lot more than me.”
“Ah, shit.” The guy paused, shook his head, and went somber. “Yeah . . . Charlie. Too many for nothing, Max.” He shook his shoulders and brightened up. “So give me some intel. Talk to me, Max, and I'll talk to you. Hell, I'll talk to you anyway. But seriously, I want to know what you're thinking.”
Max gave him a quick briefing about what we had seen so far. While he talked, I was mentally shaking my head in disbelief. Did Max know every marine that had served overseas in the past decade? How did that work?
And how did he get around to killing anyone if he spent all his time socializing? I shrugged it off as just another one of those mysteries of life.
The Leader listened as Max ran things down, only asking a few questions. At the end he said, “You're moving kind of slow, Max. You should have made it this far days ago. You got anybody else out there in those trees?”
“No, just us. Call it a shakedown cruise.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I hear you. I got a lot of dependents back there. It definitely changes things. My people are good. Almost all of them are vets. When they came back they got a raw deal, especially the guard and the reserve. Cutting active duty by 35 percent in the middle of this shitâno work, no anything reallyâhas not helped. Got a lot of well-trained, pissed-off people wandering around out there.”
Max nodded. “So what do you have for me?”
The Leader didn't have anything really new about the local area. But he had an interesting theory about what was going on behind the scenes.
“I think this is the first stage of a counterinsurgency operation. The Feds are going to register and render harmless everyone inside the zone of control. Right now they are picking an area and sweeping it. The Tree People are being given a choice: Go to a planned community or go to a rehabilitation center.”
“What the hell is a rehabilitation center?” I asked.
“Why, it's a place that helps you, of course,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “It is where you can live in an environment that will integrate you into society. They, being the government, realize that many people have suffered traumatizing loss, including PTSD, and need help to become
productive members of the community again. Others need to learn or relearn basic lifestyle skills.”
I laughed. “That sounded like you were reading it line for line from a government web site.”
“That's because it was almost verbatim from one of their posters. I am surprised you haven't seen one. Anyway, the word is that the authorities plan to register everyone, including their DNA samples. Those who, like us, are not getting with the program are free to leave. Of course, they plan to do the DNA thing to us as we leave the Zone. Plus, run background checks, since they do not want to allow âantisocial elements' to escape to other communities. Flush us out now and deal with the leftovers later, I figure the plan is.”
Max nodded. “Yeah, that is what I see happening too. All velvet gloves until they feel secure enough to show the steel fist. So, where you going?”
For the first time, the Leader looked guarded. “We're headed into southern Ohio. There's a lot of empty infrastructure out there. What about you?”
“Pretty much the same, and for the same reasons. Probably not this year, though. This year we will stick around. I'm thinking the Stephens City area.”
“Okay, Max. It's been real, but we got to roll. I get uneasy staying too long in one place now. Why don't ya'll throw in with us?”
Max grinned. “It might come down to that later. Not now.”
“Yeah, that's about what I expected. We'll be around Napoleon, Ohio, probably. Listen, Max . . .”
“Yeah?”
“You always managed to come through when no one else did. So I am going to try you now and see if you can surprise me. You have any tetanus vaccine?”
Max laughed. “You're going to have to try harder than that, Dakota. Give me a minute. You need a syringe to go with that?”
Dakota?
I thought.
Who the hell names a black male “Dakota”?
“No shit?” said the Leader. He was incredulous. “Man, oh man. What do you want for it? We can pay in gold or ammo. I got some frags, too. Perfect for cleaning house.”
“No. No charge.”
“Ri-i-ight. Let me guess. Future favor?”
“Future favor,” said Max.
“Done.”
Dakota turned to one of the guys with him. “Jo-Jo, go with them and bring back what they give you. Don't dick around. Catch up if you have to.” Then, turning back to us.
“Alright, Max. It's been real. Gardener, later.”
They embraced again and he was gone. Jo-Jo followed us back to Night, who had most of the meds in her pack.
Max had us take a break after Jo-Jo got the vaccine and left.
Â
We were sitting on a large mound about twenty yards off the trail. It was a mix of Virginia vegetation and quartz boulders, probably dumped here illegally by someone who was clearing an old pasture for building. Back where we had come from, there had been a number of ancient Indian villages or campsites. The quartz outcroppings drew them, along with the proximity of the Potomac River.
I remembered reading that the strip mall near the motel had once been an Indian village with an estimated fifty to sixty people living there. It had not stopped the bulldozers from building on top of it. Back then nothing stopped the bulldozers in Virginia.
Ninja had found wild blackberries growing off the side of the mound. They weren't ripe yet, and I didn't care for them because of all the seeds, but he was busy stuffing his face. He was supposed to be on watch, but no one, including Max, said anything. We sat there for a bit. There was a faint breeze, and since this was Virginia in the summer no one was in a hurry to get back on the trail. Plus, Max wanted Dakota's group to get a decent lead on us.
After a while Max told Ninja, “Get done stuffing your face. I want you to drag your ass over here.”
“Okay,” Ninja replied. He looked somewhat embarrassed but that didn't stop him from shoving a few more berries in his mouth before he joined us.
Night looked at him and shook her head. “Wipe your mouth off. Damn if you don't look like a two-year-old who just discovered jelly.” He wiped his mouth off on his shirt. Night groaned.
“I have been remiss in keeping you all updated on what I've been considering as far as long-term planning,” Max began. “This is partially because of how fast things have happened and partially because we are now at Plan C, which really has no planning. All I have is an outline that's been forming in my head. A lot of it is still pretty vague. All of it is subject to change. I'm going to tell you what I've got, and if you got anything to add, please do.”
Night and I looked at each other, then back to Max, and nodded. Ninja just stared.
“We know where we are going. The farm should be good enough for the winter. Food is probably going to be an issue but we can deal with it.” He grinned like a wolf. “There is always food if you know where to look.”
We all grinned back at him. We must have looked like a wolf pack getting warmed up for a hunt.
“I just don't see the farm being viable over the long term. It's possible. A lot will depend on the town and how the Feds decide to play it out.”
“Yeah, too close to the Zone, especially if they decide to push it out again,” Night chimed in. “No way are they going to not patrol and police their borders.”
I looked at her in admiration. She caught my look, said, “Quit gawking,” and threw an acorn shell at me.
“She's right, Gardener. We are also going to have to expand. We need bodies, but people we can trust.”
“Why didn't we go with the black dude?”
I knew this one. “Because, Ninja, eventually it would have come down to who was running things, and we may not have won that battle.”
Max looked at me. “We would have won. Long term we might have lost, probably through betrayal. Short and middle range? Yeah, we would have won.”
That made sense to Ninja, I think. At least he didn't ask anything else.
“We'll move on eventually, because we need a place far enough away that anyone will have to work to get to us. I'd like to get past Dakota, or anyone like him, before we settle down. We need a buffer for a while. Let them go through him to get to us. We need a machine shop. We need food. We need established infrastructure that doesn't require major rebuilding. I am not going to be a
goatherd in the sticks for the rest of my life, and neither are you people.”
Well, I was okay with that. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be. Actually, I didn't find what we were doing right now all that bad. A little boring perhaps.
“As I said,” Max continued, interrupting my musing, “we are also going to need people.”
“Like, what kind of people, Max?”
“Good question, Night. I'd like to say we'd know them when we see them, but that is shit for an answer. I've been thinking about it and we really need three types. God, I would give Ninja's left nut for three or four good NCOs with a couple tours behind them. That woman who manned that 50-caliber back at the shelter would have been perfect.”
He paused here; we all did.
Night and Ninja's faces both sank. The female gunner and Night's parents had been in the motel when the missiles hit. We never had time to move the collapsed portions of the building to find their corpses. Night had not cried herself to sleep for the past two weeks. From the look on her face, my guess was she would tonight. Max realized that the conversation was not moving in a productive direction.
“Yeah, well . . . may they rest in peace. The other two types of people are ones with skills. Real skills. One of those skills is the ability to organize. That can be the hardest to find.”
“You mean like Carol?” I said. It was petty, but I got a bit of satisfaction from the fleeting shadow that crossed Max's face.
“Yeah, like Carol.” The look he shot me told me I had scored, and that he also knew why I had gone for it.