The collapse of human civilization wasn’t exactly the best topic for meal time, making the eggs and rabbit in his mouth taste like ash.
“So ya know where ya wanna start lookin’ today?”
“I tried the radio this morning but I couldn’t pick up anything. I think the mountains are blocking us from getting clear reception. I think we should head to higher ground and try it again.”
“And if ya can’t raise ‘em?”
“I guess we start searching the ranger stations I circled on the map.”
He shrugged his shoulders as he crammed the last of his breakfast in his mouth and washed it down with the coffee.
“Least it’s somethin’ to do. I don’t like not havin’ somethin’ to do. Idle hands and all that shit.”
Probably came from his stint on the inside. They always made sure the cons were occupied, worried about what they’d get up to with too much time on their hands.
“Sounds like you just volunteered to break camp and pack it up,” she said with a wink, sipping on her coffee as she glanced at the van. “Speaking of which, we might have to consider switching up our vehicle. We’re going to be coming across some rough terrain and I’m afraid she’s not built for it. The park rangers have jeeps that are meant to go off road. If we find one, we should seriously consider taking it.”
“S’fine with me. I ain’t really attached to it. Much rather have kept my Harley.”
“You had a Harley, huh?”
He nodded and she closed her eyes, leaning back as a grin split her face. “What?”
“I’m just picturing you on the bike in leather pants. It’s very nice.”
He was glad she kept her eyes closed because it meant she couldn’t see the way his cheeks burned with embarrassment and anger. Anger because she kept making him feel embarrassed. He didn’t like that she could do that to him.
He never cared what people thought about him. Then she comes along saying things and making him care what she thought about him. It pissed him off. It also pissed him off that he couldn’t figure out if she was teasing him or not and that he had no idea if he wanted her to be or not.
“I’ll do somethin’ useful and get the girls movin’,” he grumbled, leaving her by the fire and stalking over to the tent. He lifted the flap and poked his head inside. “All right ya rugrats, rise and shine. Breakfast is gettin’ cold.”
They both grumbled as they woke up, hands rubbing over their eyes as they looked around, trying to remember where they were today.
“Can I have Cap’n Crunch for breakfast?” Hannah said around a loud yawn.
“Cap’n is out to sea today. Y’all will have to suffer with eggs and…chicken.” He figured telling a couple of little girls they were about to eat a bunny wouldn’t go down so well. “So getcha ass--I mean butts in gear.”
He turned back to find Veronica crouched at the fire filling plates with food and he could hear her humming a happy tune. She smiled widely when the girls stumbled out of the tent, calling out a cheerful good morning to them. She got them situated with their plates and bounced over to the van with his dirty dishes, back to humming. She had a lot of pep in her step for someone at the dawn of the apocalypse.
“How much of that coffee did ya slug down before I got up?” he asked her.
“Only a cup.”
“Ya eat any weird mushrooms out in the woods?”
She laughed at that one. “No. I’m just in a really good mood.”
He scratched his head at that one. Not a one of them had a reason to be in a good mood today or any day in the near future. Except here she was, giddy as a damn schoolgirl. Maybe it was a side effect of trauma. People acted all kinds of weird after something real bad happened to them.
He sidled up beside her and ducked his head to get a good look at her. “Ya sure ya feelin’ okay?”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m fine, really. I’m not on drugs, I’m not sick and I’m not losing my mind. I got a good night’s sleep, I had some good food and I have a plan on how to find my family.”
She bit her bottom lip as she looked away, like she needed time to think about her next words.
“I don’t know how to explain it but in my gut I just know that today…well, it’s going to be a good day.”
Subject File # 742
Administrator - You’ve done a good job training civilians.
Subject - They were motivated students. Nobody left to protect them so they had to learn to protect themselves. They needed to know how to win the wars that would come.
Administrator - You think there are wars to come?
Subject - Sweetheart, they’ve already started.
Target practice was going well as far as Malcolm was concerned. Trey was a fast learner and had a good eye, which he attributed to playing Call of Duty. Kim hadn’t been a crack shot when they started but she was improving with more practice. It had been Lorraine who had surprised him the most though.
A few days after arriving at the park they had gone out for their first practice. Lorraine had seemed terrified of the weapon, her thin arms seeming to bow under its weight but her slight frame belied her strength. As he watched her easily absorb the kickback, he remembered that she had been a nurse, hauling patients on and off of gurneys. She had proved to be their Annie Oakley, only taking a handful of shots before she started hitting bullseye after bullseye. She had only improved as he pushed her to put more and more distance between her and the target. With the proper gun, she would make an excellent sniper.
They had been at it a couple hours now, working on hitting a moving target. They were coming along well enough, though Trey had yet to make contact with the target and he was getting visibly frustrated at his failures.
“Let’s take a break,” Malcolm called out. “Clean up your casings, reload your clips and get a drink.”
He could hear Trey mumbling quietly to himself as he picked up the casings from the grass. The frustration swirled around him like a dark cloud and Kim watched him with a pained expression.
“He wants to be good at this so bad,” she said to Malcolm as they both watched the boy. “It hurts to see him down. I want him to be good at this so he’s proud of himself. Then I feel like a bad mother for wanting him to be good at shooting things.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in so he could press a kiss to the top of her head. “You aren’t a bad mother. You’re a smart mother. Don’t you start doubting yourself now. Let me talk to him.”
She nodded, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him and went to join Lorraine as he walked over to Trey.
“You know, it took me practicing for two weeks straight before I hit the target,” Malcolm told him.
“Yeah right,” Trey snorted in disbelief as he reloaded a fresh clip.
“It’s true. Some people are naturals but not me. I had to work hard to become good at it. There’s no shame in working hard at something.”
“I’m not ashamed. I’m just pissed off because we don’t have time for me to get good at it. I need to be good now. After what happened to you guys in town, I’ve
got
to be a good shot.”
The kid was scared. He wanted to feel safe and he thought being a deadeye would do it.
“Let me give you a good piece of advice. Ninety percent of firefights aren’t about accuracy. It’s about putting out enough bullets to keep the enemy pinned down instead of coming at you. As long as you keep them from pushing you from your position, you’re doing a good job.”
Trey didn’t seem to be listening to him, focusing on checking the chamber of his gun. He was too caught up in his head, berating himself for his perceived failures. Malcolm knew that feeling. He’d only been a couple years older than Trey when he’d gone into basic training and, like he told the kid, he’d struggled. The doubts in your head could get to you worse than any loud mouthed drill sergeant.
He didn’t want Trey to get lost on that path of self doubt. He was young and he was scared, caught up in a terrifying new reality. He identified the ability to shoot as his only protection against what was out there. He needed to know that a gun was not the only weapon he had at his disposal.
“Look around you,” Malcolm told Trey. “What do you see?”
“A bunch of trees and mountains,” Trey replied, giving him the side eye since it seemed an obvious answer.
“No, look at the bigger picture. You come into this clearing, where are you going to take cover?”
Trey shrugged his shoulders as he dug the toe of his shoe into the dirt. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” Malcolm said, his voice sharpening and drawing Trey’s gaze up. “Think about your video games. You and your men are being followed in the game, you come into this place, what do you do?”
“We’d take the high ground,” Trey said and finally turned his head to look around the clearing and pointed to the copse of trees on a rise. “There. Trees provide cover and it gives us the high ground advantage.”
“But what about if the enemy sends someone around to take your rear?”
“Once we take the rise, I’d send two groups around through the underbrush there to flank the enemy,” he replied, pointing out the movements. “When they break the tree edge, we’ve got them boxed in. They’re done for.”
The kid was good. He’d spelled out almost exactly what Malcolm himself would have done.
“You’re right,” Malcolm said. “You’ve got an eye for it. Too bad those parent councils weren’t still around, we could tell them video games do teach you good things.”
Trey cracked a smile. “I don’t think they’d see swarming a group of people as a good thing.”
“Probably not,” Malcolm grinned, “But it is good. Knowing this stuff, that’s what’s going to save your life. It’s what’s going to help you save other people’s lives.”
Trey scratched his toe in the dirt a few more times, weighing his words, before he nodded his head, coming to some sort of decision. “You worked for the CIA so you’ve got to know a lot of things about fighting and stuff. I want to know all of it.”
“I don’t know what I could teach you. What I know from my work, it’s not really something you can teach.”
“Bullshit. I saw you hot wire the cars. You got that gun away from Alan. I bet you know how to pick locks and build bombs and all sorts of other stuff. That’s what I want to know.”
He smiled at the similarities between mother and son. Kim had asked him to teach her and now her son was doing the same. They both had a big, brave streak. They could have just asked to be protected but instead they wanted to do the protecting.
He looked over his shoulder to where Kim was chatting with Lorraine. She must have sensed his eyes on her because she turned in his direction and smiled. Her gaze drifted to Trey before moving back to him and she tilted her head as if to ask if everything was okay. He nodded and she smiled, the happy light in her eyes punching him straight in the gut. Yeah, he was definitely in love with this woman.
“You want to learn, I’ll teach you. I can make you a great soldier but it’s going to be a lot of hard work. You ready for that?”
“I’m ready,” Trey replied with a big smile.
And there was that same happy light in his eyes and, what did you know, that one hit him hard in the gut too. That love he felt wasn’t limited to just her. Without any intent on his part, he’d got himself his own little family.
It should have scared him how fast it happened but things happened so fast nowadays, it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was keeping all of them safe and passing along everything he knew would go a long way towards achieving that goal.
“All right then, break is over,” Malcolm said, pushing himself to his feet and Trey followed him. “We’re going to work on moving in formation. Keeping in formation helps you be aware of where your people are at all times. You avoid anyone getting caught in the crossfire.”
The radio sitting on top of his backpack crackled to life with static, drawing all their attention. He moved to grab it as it spit out more static before he heard a voice.
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
The voice was slightly garbled by residual static, as if they were just on the edges of the radio’s range, but he recognized it as a woman’s voice.
“My name is Veronica Alpert. I’m looking for my brother Quinton and my sister Claudia.”
He turned to the others, who were looking at him with wide, disbelieving eyes and he knew he probably looked the same. Who the hell would have ever thought they’d find their missing people like this?
“They were with your friends, Jose and Malcolm. I was with Travis Wakefield. Please, just tell me if Quinton and Claudia are okay, that’s all I need to know.”
He grinned a mile wide as he lifted the radio up and hit the call button.
“Veronica, it’s Malcolm. Damn is it good to hear from you.”
“Malcolm, are they okay?”
“They’re both fine. They are at our camp. We tried to find you guys but then things went to hell in town. Is Travis with you?”
There was a long pause and the longer it went on the elation he had felt began to fade away. When the radio clicked back to life, he already knew what she was going to say.
“He didn’t make it, Malcolm, I’m sorry. Those rednecks ran our car off the road and he died. There was nothing I could do, I’m so sorry.”