The Remaining: Trust: A Novella (8 page)

Abe found Lucas and Tyler at the front of Tyler’s Humvee.

Tyler shook his head when Abe approached, a sign of relief. He was a thickly built guy, with a head that seemed a bit large for the width of his shoulders—a source of amusement for all of his fellow Coordinators. At thirty-two years old, he was prematurely gray, and his short salt-and-pepper hair was matted on the sides in perfect squares that would match the inner padding of his helmet.

Tyler extended his hand. Abe took it, slapped the man’s shoulder.

“You good?” Abe asked.

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Could’ve been worse.”

Abe glanced left. Met Lucas’s gaze.

Lucas seemed to know. “What happened out there?”

Abe lowered his voice. “We need to talk.” He looked around them. There was no one within earshot. No one watching them or concerned with them. Everyone was doing their job. Abe cleared his throat. “You find anything when you were clearing your rooms?”

Lucas pursed his lips. “Yeah. Green Zone day passes.”

Tyler’s eyes ricocheted between the two of them. “Wait…what are we talking about?”

Abe scratched his beard. Wondered how to say it, but then decided to just come out with it. “The people who attacked you,” he said to Tyler, still keeping his voice down. “They were all from the Greeley Green Zone. They all had day passes.”

Tyler’s expression said that he thought this might be an ill-conceived joke. “That…uh…that doesn’t make any sense.” He shifted his weight. Seemed to grow a little agitated. “Why the fuck would they do that? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

Lucas still stared at Abe. Waiting.

The conversation with the man out on I-25 rattled around in Abe’s brain. The truth loud in his ears, struggling to get out of him. Like a punch in the gut, the air wanting to be expelled from his lungs. Or maybe it wasn’t the truth. Maybe it was just the words of a desperate man who wanted to live. Maybe he would have said anything to keep from having Abe pull the trigger on him. Statements given at the point of a gun can’t really be trusted.

He wanted to share that information with Lucas and Tyler. But here were muddy waters. They could be knee-deep and easily navigated. Or they could be a layer of silt hovering on the surface of an abyss. There really was no way to tell.

Keep it to yourself.

Abe swallowed it down. Ugly bits and all.

With a look of distaste, he shook his head. “I have no fucking idea. All I can tell you is that this shit cannot get out. I want you both to understand that. No one talks about this back inside the Green Zone.” Abe drew himself up a bit. “I’ll pass the debrief along to the others. Bandits attacked Fargo Group. QRF responded and helped neutralize the threat. And that’s as far as the story goes.”

Tyler rubbed his face. “Holy fuck, man…”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Why are we doing this?”

Abe glared at him. “Lucas…”

“Why can’t we just tell the truth here? They attacked us. It doesn’t get much clearer than that. There’s no way anything we did here can be construed as anything but
them
ambushing
us
.” Lucas shrugged and lifted his eyebrows. “That’s not our fucking problem.”

Abe leaned toward his friend, heat coming in his words now but his volume still low. “It is our fucking problem, Lucas!” He stabbed the air with an index finger as he said it. “And it’s a big one. It’s got a dozen dead bodies behind it, and a dozen starving families behind that.”

“Starving families?”

Abe gritted his teeth. Closed his eyes. He just kept thinking about what the man had said. How convinced he’d been that Abe was a part of it. That all of these soldiers were a part of it. Some military conspiracy against the civilians. How many people shared that view? And if they heard even a rumor about this, could they be convinced that it wasn’t just a massacre?

Abe took a deep breath to cool himself off a bit. Lack of sleep. Lack of eating. Stress. His fuse was short, but that wasn’t an excuse. He didn’t need to bark orders right now. He spoke much calmer. “Lucas. Tyler. I need you both to trust me on this one. I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t think it was necessary. Please. At least until I have some things sorted out. Just keep it bottled up.”

Lucas seemed miffed that Abe was holding something back. “Abe…it’s us.”

Abe just shook his head. “Trust me, guys. Let me handle this one.”

*  *  *

They rode back with the convoy.

Abe took the shotgun seat in Tyler’s Humvee. Lucas sat in the back right. They flew down deserted streets and dusty lengths of highway, heading south with the wintering sun glaring at them, reducing everything to browns and tans. Like the world was bleaching and weathering before their eyes.

They rode in silence.

The gates were opened for them by men they didn’t recognize, who wore Greeley Green Zone identification but were not uniformed soldiers. Instead they wore black tops and green pants and their tactical vests bore the patch of a red logo that Abe had trouble making out.

The convoy rode quickly through American streets that had once been alive with the calm coolness of a Midwestern town, but now they teemed with refugees. Camps took up entire shopping malls and continued to sprout up like some strange and aggressive plant among the short, squat buildings. The roofs of them were uniform in height and gave the appearance of large, flat leaves covering the earth. They were made of metal and wood and tarp. Some of them were tents and others were shanties. Campers. Anything that could be turned into a place to sleep.

People mulled around. Washed clothes in giant troughs of sudsy brown water. Built fires in trashcans. Ripped apart old buildings to find supplies for themselves. Things to burn to keep them warm. Things they could use to build other things they thought might make their lives easier. They worked on cars to help them scavenge outside of the Green Zone. Dirt bikes were popular tools for that, though they obviously couldn’t carry much. Whatever vehicle you chose, it had to be a gasoline engine. All diesel fuel was appropriated by the military. Your ration card could be revoked for a period of two weeks if you were found hiding diesel fuel. But not much in the military ran on regular gasoline, so if you could find it and reinvigorate it, then you could use it.

As the convoy rolled through the streets, some of the people stood and watched them.

A few excitable children waved. Yelled for the candies from MREs. They’d learned quickly about some soldiers’ superstition on eating Charms candies out of an MRE, and they knew that it was the most likely treat to be thrown out.

“Mr. Army Man!” they yelled. “Got any Charms? You guys got Charms?”

“They’re bad luck! Throw them out!”

Someone in the truck behind Abe threw one, pegged a kid in the forehead with it. Abe wasn’t sure whether the aim was deliberate or not, but the kids didn’t seem to care. They hooted and hollered and mobbed the kid with the candy, all trying to get a piece.

Abe disliked how much all of it reminded him of the Middle East.

His eyes stayed on the adults now, slightly narrowed, his jaw clenched. In his seat, behind his door, he had gone “southpaw” on his rifle so he could more easily bring it up through his open window. He watched their hands for weapons. Made eye contact with a few of them. And he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing.

The Greeley Green Zone had seemed hopeful to him at first.

He could ride through the streets and see the positive sides of it. The people getting back to basics. Using their ingenuity. Being resourceful. Working on the same team as the military to try to rebuild what they had lost.

Whether or not it actually was, or was only perceived that way, it all seemed different now. Darker. Oppressive. The people seemed resentful. In their eyes he saw the thoughts of insurgents, waiting for Abe’s Humvee to wander into the blast radius of a cleverly disguised IED, sitting under a heap of trash on the side of the road.

One big boom, and then ball bearings through your brainpan.

Abe saw stacks of concertina wire and knew they had reached The Strip.

The gate to The Strip was guarded, but only one of the men guarding it was a soldier. He wore ACUs and he stood back, a rifle slung on his back. He seemed to be in a supervisory role. The other two guards were the men in black and green with the red logo patch on their vests. They approached Abe’s Humvee, one on each side.

“Who the fuck are these guys?” Tyler griped.

Abe waited for them to draw close enough that he could read the patch. Then he answered, a mix of disdain and disappointment in his voice. “Fucking Cornerstone.”

“Cornerstone?” Lucas spoke up from the backseat. “Like the military contracting company?”

“Yeah.” Abe nodded, pulling out his Greely Green Zone ID.

The two men reached the driver’s and passenger’s side windows.

“ID, please,” the man in front of Abe said.

Abe handed it over, eyeing the man in front of him. “That was pretty fucking fast. They were just talking this morning about using you guys.”

The man looked at Abe’s ID, then handed it back with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. “They’ve been talking about it for weeks, actually. You guys are good. Have a nice day.”

Abe pulled his ID from the man’s fingers, a little sharper than was necessary. He wasn’t known to pull rank on people, but he resented this newcomer ignoring any pretense of military formality. No “sir” or “major.” Just “you guys.”

“Yeah,” Abe said under his breath, feeling a brick forming in his gut. “You, too.”

The gates were rolled back and the convoy proceeded through.

They passed empty parking lots where soldiers were dousing heaps of trash in diesel fuel and tossing road flares into them. Trash collection and general public sanitation were basically still nonexistent in the Greeley Green Zone. Another one of the “top priorities,” depending on who you asked. Right along with water treatment plants, power grids, oil pipelines, and everything else that people missed.

They reached the warehouses, and here again were the men in black and green, with only a few soldiers in ACUs standing around to watch them. Abe wondered how long it would be before the soldiers were not needed anymore and the men from Cornerstone were in complete control of everything.

Control
, Abe thought.
It all comes down to control.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

Except for nowadays, it’s food. Food and medicine.

Tyler pointed the Humvee toward one of the warehouses, and the Cornerstone men opened a large rolling door for them. Abe stared at them. Reading the writing on the wall. Seeing the signs as clear as day.

“Let me out here,” he said.

Tyler stopped the Humvee.

Abe opened his door, glaring baldly at the mercenaries.

“You okay, boss?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah.” Abe stepped out, slammed the door behind him. “I’ve got some shit to take care of.”

*  *  *

He entered the command center, helmet in hand, sweat-covered, smelling of dust and the musty smell of gun smoke when it permeates your clothing and sits on your skin. Corporal Nunez was still in the command center, and he half stood up, looking a little surprised to see the major.

Abe glanced around, saw they were alone. “Corporal, I need you to do me a favor.”

Nunez followed Abe’s cautious glance. He seemed to understand instantly what the look meant, and that what he was about to be asked would be…sensitive. “Yes, sir,” he said with a note of hesitation. “What do you need?”

Abe went to Nunez’s desk, set his helmet down, and then began fishing in his pockets. “You have access to the Green Zone census lists up here, right?”

Nunez’s index finger tapped nervously at the side of his keyboard. “Uh…yes.”

“Can you plug in a ration card number and tell me what shows up?”

“Yes.”

Abe waited.

Nunez stared.

“Okay.” Abe pointed at the computer. “Do it.”

“Yes sir.” Nunez spun in his chair and hunched over his computer. Cursors flew and the keyboard was rattled on and windows popped up on the screen and gave way to other windows. Abe watched but didn’t really follow. He’d never really mucked around with the census lists, which were strictly civilian. Come to think of it, he didn’t even really know how many people were in the Greeley Green Zone.

Imagine that
, he told himself.
A Coordinator who doesn’t know how many people he’s taking care of.

Because he wasn’t taking care of them anymore.

He wasn’t in control.

That had been taken from him. It had been whittled away in subtle chips and scrapes by something called Good Intentions. And Complacency. He’d been complacent. He’d allowed it all to happen because it was easier. It was easier to just give in to full bird colonels and acting presidents. But what the fuck was he supposed to do about it now?

“Okay,” Nunez said. “What’s the number?”