by D. J. Molles
He turned to look.
Two black SUVs were hauling up to them. They both bore a red delta symbol on their front doors.
Cornerstone.
The two Cornerstone vehicles went around the left side of the pickups and stopped, creating a barricade between the soldiers and the Cessna.
The passenger door of the lead SUV opened and Mr. Daniels, the CEO for Cornerstone, stepped out. He smiled and waved at them. Over the sound of the Cessna’s dying engines (the pilot had complied and shut them off) Daniels called to the soldier with the bullhorn.
“We got this! Thank you!”
Another Cornerstone operative, a burly merc with a devilishly pointed beard, trotted up to the side of the pickup. He wore black sunglasses that completely hid his eyes, and he had a bare-bones chest-rig with a nametape that read MCNAIR. He was aggressively chewing gum.
The soldier with the bullhorn instantly hated everything about him.
“This plane is here on Cornerstone’s request,” the merc named McNair stated between gum-chomps. “It’s a private matter. Thank you for your diligence. You can stand down.”
The sergeant felt the usual fire in his gut that he felt when he and his men were ordered around by Cornerstone operatives. But this had become commonplace, and though it chapped his ass, Cornerstone had pretty much been given carte blanche to operate as they saw fit within the Greeley Green Zone.
The why of the matter was above the sergeant’s paygrade.
That paygrade being a military ration card for two thousand calories a day, plus 1800 for his wife, and 700 each for his two kids. And in this day and age, you didn’t mess around with that. Getting into pissing contests with Mr. Daniels’s minions was a quick way to get your ration card suspended. Literally taking food out of your family’s mouth.
The sergeant lowered his bullhorn and keyed his radio. “All units, stand down. Pull back. Cornerstone’s got this one.”
He could imagine the general grumbles, but the soldiers did as they were told, mounted back onto the pickup trucks, and then retreated to a safe and unassuming distance.
At the side of the Cessna, Daniels and two of his operatives waited while the cabin door and the built in stairs descended.
A dark-haired man emerged, wearing khakis and a loose-fitting yellow shirt.
The man descended the stairs and took a glance over his shoulder to see the pickup trucks that had accosted his plane, now approximately three hundred yards away.
Daniels smiled and extended his hand.
The man in the yellow shirt took the hand and gave it a casual shake.
“Mr. Leyva,” Daniels said. “I apologize for the ruckus. I figured it would be safer to handle this out here than to notify them ahead of time, based on the information you gave me when you called.”
Joaquin Leyva gave a smirk. “Not a problem,” he said in accented but clear English.
Daniels led Joaquin back to the lead SUV, and the two of them climbed in the back.
Only one operative accompanied them, the man with the pointed beard taking the driver’s seat. The beard seemed to shimmer and shiver with the flexing of his jaw muscles as he continued to gnaw at the gum in his mouth.
When they were secure inside the vehicle, Daniels pointed to the driver. “McNair is one of my most trusted operatives. You can speak freely here, Mr. Leyva.”
The SUV began to move, accelerating away from the Cessna and back towards the gates of the airfield.
Joaquin leaned into the center of the SUV, looking out the windshield at the sprawl of the Greeley Green Zone that they approached. “So, this is where the power sits now? A bit less impressive than Washington D.C., no?”
Daniels just kept smiling, waiting for him to get to the point.
Joaquin sighed and leaned back. “I’m glad we were able to contact you directly. We believe that there is a leak in your organization.”
ELEVEN
─▬▬▬─
PRIMALS
The Alpha headed into the setting sun. The red and orange glow flashed at him like a signal through the trees. He smelled the tang of the pine all around him, the mustiness of the forest loam.
And of course, he smelled the Easy Prey.
He was not trying to go to any particular place, so he did not run.
But he also needed to make up ground. So he moved along at a strong trot.
He was probing.
He circled the place where all the Easy Prey had clustered themselves. The clustering was good for predators, but usually not good for prey. The only thing that kept the Easy Prey safe was their cleverness.
But The Alpha knew that sometimes, their cleverness had holes.
Gaps.
He and his pack had fed well a few nights ago, after they had found one of those holes. They’d returned to it, but the Easy Prey had been clever again, and made the hole so that it would not open anymore.
So now The Alpha was probing again, looking for a new hole.
A new weakness.
To his left, he was aware of the constant, dim hum given off by the very thin sticks that would kill you if you touched them. The Alpha could not decide if they were more like very straight sticks, or like very thick strands of spiderweb. He only knew not to touch them.
Another trick of the Easy Prey.
Behind him, he heard the quiet padding of his packmates, and the susurration of their collective breaths as they followed him.
They would need to feed again soon. If they could not find a way to get at all the Easy Prey inside those humming strands, then they would have to go out into the woods and catch some not-so-easy prey. But for now he could keep probing.
He trotted along for another quarter mile before coming to a halt, his sharp eyes picking out movement on the other side of the humming strands. Behind him, his packmates came to a stop as well. Quiet and still.
In the darkening dusk, he saw a figure moving along. Its body was swathed in something that made it hard to pick out amongst the foliage, but the movement was easy enough to see. And the scent...
It came to an abrupt halt, almost directly across from The Alpha.
The Alpha did not try to hide itself. It sat on its haunches, watching.
The Easy Prey squinted through the humming strands, and its eyes widened when they locked onto The Alpha. Its feet did a little shuffle, and the breeze carried a sudden dank whiff of panic-sweat. The smell tickled something deep in The Alpha’s brain, and its mouth began to water.
The Easy Prey was only two quick lopes away. If it weren’t for the humming strands between them, The Alpha could feed on it now…
But the humming strands were there.
So The Alpha simply sat there, watching it, and the Easy Prey stood there, shaking, and exuding that pungent scent that all prey gave off when they encountered a predator.
The Easy Prey on the other side made some noises with its mouth, and The Alpha knew what the noises were, though he could not remember what they meant. He knew that this was how the Easy Prey communicated, and deep in its vestigial self, knew that it used to communicate the same way.
Now it was just the excited tittering of an animal preparing to die.
The Alpha pulled its attention away from the prey on the other side and gave one last, long look at the humming strands, to see if, perhaps, by some chance, there was a way to take this prey down. But he saw no way past the humming strands.
The Alpha lost interest, knowing he couldn’t get through.
He chuffed, and then continued along the perimeter of the humming strands.
Probing for weaknesses.
***
Sam hadn’t heard from anyone about his name being on the sign up list, and he assumed that it was still too early for them to have made their selections from the available volunteers.
That all changed when he arrived at The Barn for his third shift guard duty.
As he entered the large hangar, he became aware of a bustle of activity down at the far en
d, where two pickup trucks and a gun truck Humvee sat, and a collection of soldiers in full battle rattle lounged about, as soldiers tend to do when they are waiting for someone in charge to finish getting their shit together.
He didn’t give it much more than a glance. There was always something going on that he was not privy to, and he’d learned long ago not to get curious about things, because when you asked about them, you were typically given the look, and told to mind your own business, often in terms far less civil.
He was making his way to the armorer to be issued his M4 for tonight’s long walk around whatever section of the perimeter he was supposed to patrol this evening, when the first sergeant scuttled out of his office with a clipboard in his hand.
“Private Ryder!” It was First Sergeant Hamrick, who was no great fan of “half-boots” in general, and Sam in particular.
Sam rocked to a halt, evaluated the distance between him and Hamrick, and decided that he should sprint closer before offering his salute.
Hamrick didn’t look up from his clipboard as Sam did this. His brow was beetled over his dark eyes, his bristly black hair looking like he was beginning to sweat, thought it was a fairly cool night out.
Without looking up, Hamrick moved his hand in what Sam understood to be a return salute, and he muttered something that Sam interpreted as “at ease.”
When Sam put his arm down, Hamrick turned the clipboard and shoved it uncomfortably close to his face.
“That your fucking scrawl right there?” Hamrick’s blunt-ended index finger was hooked around the clipboard and pointing to slot number 23, where Sam recognized his own handwriting.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, fuckin’ congrats. Thought you’da written in Arabic or some shit.” Hamrick’s eyes finally came up to Sam’s. “Does your mommy know that you signed up for this shit?”
“No, sir.” And she’s not my mother, Sam thought, but wisely kept that to himself.
Hamrick retracted the clipboard. “Am I gonna get in trouble by sending you out?”
“No, sir.”
“So if you get your ass chewed off by a primal, President Houston isn’t gonna want to chew my ass off for letting you go out?”
Sam’s stomach did a little flip flop. “No, sir.”
“Great.” Hamrick tucked the clipboard under one arm, and used the other to form the most rigid knife-hand ever seen, which he used to point to Sam’s head. “Get a lid.” The knife-hand moved to his chest. “Get some flak.” The knife-hand pivoted out to the two pickups and the guntruck on the far end of The Barn. “Report to Corporal Billings.”
Sam blinked a few times. “Yes, sir. Do I need a rifle, sir?”
Hamrick looked at him like a pile of white dog shit on a pristine lawn. “Oh my Christ. Well, you’re going outside the wire, you dumbshit, so yes. But you’re on the turret.” Hamrick frowned. “You do know how to work the M2, don’t you?”
Sam swallowed. No one wanted to be in the turret. The turret was open. They all wanted the suppressive firepower of the M2, but no one wanted to hang out where a primal could leap up from behind and drag you out.
But, yes, Sam had been trained on the M2.
Very briefly.
They hadn’t even been allowed to fire it.
The whole lesson on the M2 had consisted of thirty minutes of nomenclature, how to load it, how to charge it, how to aim it, and how to press both thumbs to the butterfly trigger. Then they’d all been given one opportunity to pull the monstrous charging handle back and click the trigger on an empty chamber.
Viola. You’re trained.
“Yes, sir,” Sam managed. “I’ve been trained on it.”
“My confidence in you is nearly overwhelming,” Hamrick remarked, and then he turned back to his office and tossed over his shoulder. “Don’t die!”
And that was that.
Five minutes later Sam had a helmet strapped to his head that was a size too large, and an old woodland camouflage OTV “flak jacket” strapped to his chest that smelled of someone else’s stress sweat.
He hustled over to the guntruck, his eyes fixated on the big machine gun on the turret, his stomach turning over, first excited, and then fearful. He thought of Charlie, and how she’d feel if she found out he’d gone out and died, and the thought was strangely satisfying, considering the fact that it was predicated on his death.
As though he’d be present to watch her feel bad.
Nope, he told himself. When you’re dead you’re dead.
“You the half-boot?” A hand came out of nowhere and planted itself on Sam’s armored chest, stopping him.
He looked over. He’d been halted by a fair-haired soldier with a scowl across his young face, a helmet under his arm, corporal’s stripes, and a nametape that said BILLINGS.
“You Corporal Billings?” Sam asked, and immediately regretted it for the idiot question it was.
Billings’s scowl turned almost disappointed. “First off, you half-boot fuck, I asked you a goddamned question. Second off, do you have fucking eyeballs and do they fucking see my nametape, and can you fucking read English?”
“Yes, sir.”
Billings dropped his hands and looked even more distraught. “Yes, to what?”
Sam inwardly kicked himself as he stood there, feeling ten years old in front of this guy, and getting pissed, both at himself and Corporal Billings. He was acting exactly how they expected him to act—green and stupid.
But Sam had plenty of experience under his belt. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew how to handle himself.
Sam drew himself up, and let a flash of irritation take his face and squash the nervousness that had resided there before. “Yes to all of it, sir. I have eyes, they can see, and I can read English, and also speak it, as you can see.”
Billings looked partially mollified to see that the half-boot at least had a spine. “Alright, don’t be a fucking sassy pants. And stop calling me ‘sir,’ I’m a fucking corporal.” He stepped back and gestured to a few of the soldiers lounging around the guntruck, and one guy that was clearly not a soldier, and looked about as out-of-place as Sam felt.
Billings did rapid-fire introductions and finished with, “This is our new gunner. He’s a half-boot, and I think he’s a hadji, but we won’t hold that against him, will we?”
“I dunno.” The guy that had been introduced as Jones gave Sam a speculative look. “Say something American, like…like ‘get some, motherfucker!’”
Sam glanced at Billings to see if this was actually required. Billings seemed to be watching him expectantly. Sam shifted his weight. “Uh…get some, motherfucker.”
Jones winced. “I mean…you don’t sound like a hadji, but it’s not great. Can you do like a deep south accent when you say it? Do that. Do a deep south accent.”
There was a series of concurring nods from Billings and the third soldier, Chris. The one that wasn’t a soldier—Allen, Sam thought—merely watched with a dazed expression.
Sam felt a slight burn of humiliation. But he knew he was the new guy, and the new guy always had to prove himself, and at least they weren’t throwing him down stairs in a footlocker.
Sam hadn’t been born in the United States, but he’d lived here all his life. Despite that, he’d never picked up the various versions of southern that were represented in North Carolina, and he spoke without an accent.
He had to think of Mr. Keith, the grizzled old man that had originally given him the little .22 caliber rifle, way back when he was still a scared kid in Camp Ryder, and he did his best to mimic Mr. Keith’s mumbly southern dialect.
“Git sum, muhfuckerr!”
He expelled it with enough gusto that Jones gave him an approving look. “Okay. Not bad. You can ride in my truck.”
Billings let out a long-suffering sigh. “Alright. What’s your name, half-boot?”
“Sam Ryder.”
“Ryder, you know what we’re doing?”
“Going to hunt primals?”
; “More or less.” Billings gestured to Allen, the non-soldier. “He’s like a game tracker or some shit. We tagged a primal. Now we’re gonna see where it went. According to the GPS, it looks like it’s over near the Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville. You familiar?”
Sam nodded. Fayetteville used to be synonymous with Fort Bragg, but the Safe Zone didn’t include it. Fayetteville hadn’t done well after the collapse of society, and during the first year of Fort Bragg being a Safe Zone, they’d picked the remains clean. It was now just a gutted-out ghost town with nothing left to give, and Sam didn’t think anyone had been there in over a year.
“Alright.” Billings pulled Sam around to the open backend of the guntruck and pulled out what looked like a large green ammo can. He opened it and extracted a PVS-14 Monocular Night Vision Device, which he handed to Sam. “That’s our spare set. It’s squirrelly sometimes, but that’s all you got right now. You know how to hook it up?”
Sam nodded again, and clumsily began to attach it to the mount on his helmet with unpracticed fingers. Billings watched him with something like pity, but let him puzzle his way through it. When Sam thought he had it on correctly, he held his hands out and looked to Billings for approval.
The corporal eyed it to make sure it was properly attached, and then gave Sam a wan smile and a pat on the shoulder. “Alright. You’ll do fine, Ryder.” He twirled his finger in the air, signaling to the other soldiers at the pickups. “We’re oscar-mike, gents.”
***
Lieutenant Derrick felt troubled.
They tried to keep things quiet, but the Safe Zone was like a small town, and word spread fast.
Colonel Staley was dead.
He’d committed suicide in his home.
One of Derrick’s neighbors had come over to his house, right as Derrick was rolling out of bed and preparing for his third shift duty as watch commander. Derrick had answered the door in his “Ranger Panties,” rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and scowling as he wondered why someone was banging on his door when they knew he was a third shifter.
