“Jesus.” Smith said.
“That’s illegal.” Whitley said.
“Wait, what?” Peter said at the same time. Everyone looked at each other, and Whitley gestured at him as if to signal she’d let him have the floor. But Brenna had finally managed to wedge herself back into the conversation.
“They had documents, they left them here in fact if you want to look at them.” she said quickly. “They claim they’ve legally reconstituted all three branches of the government—”
“They might be right about that.” Peter said, breaking in. “That’s what they told us when we talked on the radio; that the Secretary of Labor had been elevated to President following the legal order of presidential succession. And that they had surviving members of Congress, some Supreme Court justices, and part of the Cabinet too.”
“Yeah, but we’re due for an election a week or something aren’t we?” Smith said.
Doug and Justin, and Crawford, burst out laughing; while everyone else just sort of stared at the Guardsman. Smith reddened a little and frowned. “Well we are.”
“How in the hell do you know that?” Crawford demanded, her tone still vastly amused.
“It was in some of Sawyer’s stuff.” Smith said. “Part of her background packet for long-term emergencies.”
“I’m surprised you remember any of that crap.”
“Hey, that crap of hers was working out pretty good for us in Cumming.”
“Do you really think there’s going to be an election?”
“I don’t know.” Smith protested. “But legally it’s supposed to happen on the 6
th
of November.”
“He’s right, but it’s a complicated question.” Peter said. “The SecLabor can move up to the office, but the term he’s filling in expires in January.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not how Ellsworth sees it.” Brenna said, pulling eyes and attention back to her. “They say they’re the legal government; that they’ve passed a number of laws that give them authority to draft people and demand supplies in order to fund the reclamation effort.”
“They . . . they may be right.” Peter said slowly after several seconds of silence, as his thoughts turned through the information.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” Max said, starting to rise. “How are any of us supposed to survive if they show up and strip everything bare?”
“Calm down.” Crawford said, standing up.
“Make me.” the bearded man said aggressively.
“Okay.” Crawford shot back, just as hot as Max.
Peter’s chair flew back, skidding along the carpet as he came to his feet in a rush. Reaching out, he grabbed for Crawford and managed to seize hold of her arm just as she cocked it back, her hand forming into a fist. “Stand down.” he said firmly in his command voice.
“I’m not scared of you.” Crawford said to Max, ignoring Peter except for how she jerked and twisted her arm, trying to break free from his grasp.
“You should be, I’m like twice your weight.” Max said.
“Crawford.” Peter said, moving closer as he maintained his grip on her. It was a struggle; the uniform the Guardswoman wore was as misshapen and loose as all fatigues tended to be. Beneath it, she was lean and in shape; and he was old and had a lot less snap in his step than he’d used to.
“Try three times you fat whale.” Crawford said.
“I’m not taking shit off some girl carrying a pink fucking gun.” Max said.
“Max, chill out.” Brenna snapped.
“Gunny, if you don’t let me go, so help me—”
“Cindy, shut the fuck up.” Peter roared, finally losing his temper; though, to be fair, he was also about to lose his grip on her arm.
She spun around and glared at him, her expression thunderous. “Goddamnit Gunny!”
Peter saw it coming and threw up his left hand, angled to block. Her punch deflected off his forearm, and he stepped in close and went for the cinch to wrap her up. “Don’t do it!” he warned as he saw her drawing her head back to headbutt him.
“You couldn’t keep your mouth shut?” she all but snarled, flexing against his grip. “Goddamnit!”
“How many times have I told you to let me handle shit?” Peter demanded.
“This guy started it.”
“And I’ll finish it.”
“Yeah right.” Max snorted.
Peter ignored the local for the moment, though he was getting short of patience with him as well. “Crawford, either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, or I’ll break something and you’ll be limping for months.”
“You wouldn’t.” she said. “You couldn’t either.”
“Try me.” he said, throwing as much convincing into the two words as he could, drawing on decades of stare downs and square offs to back his aura and attitude of menace.
Crawford locked eyes with him for several fulminating seconds, then shrugged once. “Fine. Let go of me.”
Peter released her and held his position for several more moments, testing to see if she was about to resume the almost-fight. When she just stood glaring at him, he stepped sideways and pointed at the chair he’d just vacated. “Sit down. Have a cigarette.”
She looked at him a moment longer, then moved past and picked the chair up. Peter turned his own evil eye on Max as Crawford began to seat herself again. “And you, jackass, what’s your problem?”
“My
problem
, soldier boy, is that my wife died in the outbreaks, and I’ve got three boys who aren’t even out of elementary school yet depending on me.”
“One, I’m a Marine, not a soldier.” Peter said, trying to modulate his voice back to something approximating reason and calm. “Two, everyone’s lost loved ones.
Everyone
. And three, none of this stops unless people start pulling together and work on fixing the problem.
“Consolidating people into safe zones that get steadily expanded is solid strategy, and is the only way to clear threat zones like this. And it keeps everyone from needing to hold their own little hideouts if people join together and focus on the big picture.”
“Who’s going to take care of my boys if I go off to fight zombies?” Max demanded. “Huh, Mister Marine? I’m all they’ve got left.”
“Who says you have to leave them?”
“Ellsworth.” Max and Brenna said at the same time.
Peter blinked. “What?”
“They’re not carving out or expanding any safe zones.” Brenna said while Max breathed noisily through his nose and shot daggers at Peter with his eyes.
“Why don’t we all sit back down and dial it back a couple dozen notches, okay?” Whitley said, patting the air with her hands several times. “Everyone’s tense as hell these days, and it’s easy for things to just blow up. Let’s just ease down some.”
“Yeah.” Peter said, nodding and grabbing Crawford’s chair. Sliding it back to the table, he plopped down in it and waited as the others did likewise. Crawford lit a cigarette, and Craig did likewise. Peter didn’t see an ashtray anywhere, but he didn’t really care at the moment. When butts were back in chairs, he looked at Brenna. “Let’s start over with Ellsworth’s requests.”
“Demands.” Max said.
“Max!” Brenna snapped.
He glanced at her, then folded his arms and tossed his head to clear his beard and hair from beneath his arms before leaning back and glaring vaguely at no one in general.
Brenna went on. “They said there was a national draft of all able bodied adults ‘for the duration’, but they had a little leeway because of ‘our situation’.” She was making little quote marks with her fingers as she said certain phrases. “Because there are close to a hundred ‘non-combatants’ here, they would let ten percent of the ‘military age adults’—”
“And teenagers.” Craig said.
“Yes, damnit,
and
teenagers
.” she snapped. “They’d let one in ten stay on here to help those who weren’t enlisted. Everyone else was to report to Ellsworth for ‘training and assignment’. The supplies they were going to take that day though.”
“Until we stopped them.” Max said sullenly.
Now Peter did wince. “How many died?”
“No one.” Brenna said. “Though we nearly had to shoot several of the soldiers that came along with the ‘delegation’ as security.”
That one threw Peter, but he gave up immediately trying to guess. “How exactly did you manage to not kill anyone?”
“It was a town meeting.” Brenna started, but Craig spoke again.
“They insisted.”
“Yes. They wanted to talk to everyone at once, so we pulled everyone together except a couple of volunteers who stayed on watch. When the meeting went south, and they started on about how we had ‘no choice but to comply’, people didn’t take it well.”
Now Peter saw how it had gone. “The delegation was only a dozen or so people, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, and we had them outnumbered.”
“And everyone is armed.” Max said.
“The town basically drew on them and we had ourselves about five minutes of standoff while their negotiators tried to ‘reason’ with us.” Brenna said unhappily.
“And while we told them to get the hell out and not come back.” Max said, glaring at Peter.
Peter sighed. “Yeah, I’m sure that didn’t go over well.”
“No. They’ve been hostile ever since.” Brenna confirmed with a nod. “We’ve had to abort several scavenge runs because we saw one of their teams in the area, and now they’ve started overflying us with jets.”
“Wait, what?” Peter said.
“F-16s.” Justin said, sounding excited.
“Just the once.” Doug said immediately. “The other time it was a Cessna.”
“How are they . . . a Cessna, sure, I can buy that. A lot of those have been modified to use straight gas, not aviation fuel. But a F-16 is a delicate piece of hardware that even an experienced civilian pilot can’t just jump into and get off the ground” Peter said.
“Suddenly you’re an expert on aircraft?” Crawford asked, lighting a fresh smoke from the stub of her first one.
“I was in thirty-six years. You pick shit up.” he said, irritated. “Marines fly too.”
“Not -16s.” she shrugged, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“No, but aviators talk to each other. And I talked to them sometimes. Any combat aircraft since, oh, World War Two is not something an untrained civilian can do much with without time to train up on it.”
“Yeah, well, they were flying one.” Brenna said.
“How do you know it was from Ellsworth?”
“Because it came in from the west, circled us for ten minutes at low altitude, then made a few slow passes back and forth before flying off east.”
“Right on a bearing for the base.” Justin added. “And trust us, we know; we’ve got GPS and a complete copy of Google Earth.”
“If they’ve got Vipers flying, why are they so eager to consolidate everyone?” Peter said, half to himself.
“Vipers?” Doug asked. “Don’t you mean Falcons?”
“Viper’s what the pilots call them.” Justin said. “LTR idiot.”
“Fuck you man, I like ground, not air.”
“Yeah, well you suck at that too since I always beat you in—”
“
Anyway
.” Brenna said loudly. “Your guess is as good as mine mister, uh, Gibson.”
“Have they come back since the standoff?” Peter asked, mentally shuffling the puzzle of the F-16 aside for the moment.
“No, but the second flyover was two days ago, and they hung around for an hour.” she said, sounding worried.
“They were taking pictures, reconning us.” Justin said.
“You’re sure?” Peter asked.
“Yeah.” Justin nodded. “We put some binoculars and telescopes on them. They had two people in the plane besides the pilot, and they had cameras and pads of paper.
“Where are they getting that much gas?” Peter wondered aloud.
“That one’s easy.” Craig said immediately.
“How then?”
“There are a bunch of oil rigs in the area.”
“Not ‘in the area’ exactly.” Doug objected.
“Close enough.” Craig shrugged.
“Even if they have rigs and are working them—” Peter began, but Craig cut in.
“And there are refineries scattered around too. Not as many as there are wells, obviously, but it probably only takes the one to process whatever they can haul in and out, right?”
“How do you know that’s what they’re doing?”
“I drive long-haul through the Midwest and Pac-Northwest. Drove I guess. Sometimes I pulled tankers in and out of wells and rigs. Most of them are west of Black Hills, over in Wyoming; but there’s a whole shitload of rigs up in western North Dakota, and several refineries too.”
“I don’t know the first thing about oil drilling or refineries,” Peter said slowly, “but I’d be willing to bet that’s at least as complicated a prospect as getting pilots and ground crews together for combat aircraft.”
“People survived.” Brenna shrugged. “I guess they found who and what they needed. The way they run around burning fuel up, they’d need something like that.”