by D Krauss
Collier chuckled to himself. Amazing how many people actually bought that crap. And it was crap. The Reds had shown iron discipline, and you don’t get that from team-building exercises.
Collier found the lighter and fired up the foot, puffing hard to get the spark going while keeping an eye peeled at Price and a hand ready to grab the pistol. Hard to draw, blockage, but what can you do? He peered at the corporal through the smoke.
Price was watching with interest, a longing on his face. A cigar man too. That’s a plus. So, doing a job or not, maybe avoiding some kind of reorg which involved a lot of promotion moves, maybe pissed off his sergeant. Maybe a lot of things, with the temper this little bastard apparently had. Collier decided to leave it alone.
He savored the roll of the smoke along his tongue and throat before leaking it from the side of his mouth. Collier tipped his head towards the package, still keeping the danger eye on Price, “What’s this?”
“It’s a package.”
Collier chuckled. “Okay, funny. What’s in it?”
“I don’t know, Sarge, it ain’t addressed to me. It’s addressed to you.”
Collier blinked. Not surprising the corporal didn’t snoop; he seemed an honorable guy and mail did hold some kind of sacredness, even these days. But, who would send him a package? Who did he still know in the Valley? All the Fishburne guys were dead or scattered. None of the syphilitic skanks he’d bedded in Waynesboro would send a postcard, much less a package. Odd and odder.
He took another slow puff, “Who gave it to you?”
“Some guy in a refugee camp.”
Collier’s heart stopped. Everything stopped. He held the cigar about halfway to his mouth. Refugee camp? No way, absolutely no way.
“Sarge, you all right?” Price’s eyes narrowed and a look of actual concern crossed his face.
“Describe him.”
“Short fat white guy. Fat guy in a refugee camp, you believe that? Said his name was Bill.”
The sudden hope blew out of Collier like a puff from the cigar, but he didn’t let his disappointment show. Okay, so, not Dad. Did you really think it could be, you simpering little girl? Knock it off. Hope is foolish, a distraction, gets you killed.
Dad would never agree with that – au contraire, Dad would be aghast, say without hope there is no reason for anything and even false hope keeps you alive. Wrong, Dad, wrong. Hope does not keep you alive. Murderous rage does.
Collier gestured with the cigar, “Go on.”
“You know, Sarge, you could just open it.”
“I could, but humor me.”
Price shrugged, “Okay, have it your way. I did duty at the camp about a year ago, down near Bristol. This guy, Bill, was some kind of engineer, did a lot of work around the place. Kept him out of the tents, I guess. Anyway, he was always doing us favors, fixing radios, giving us old CDs, that kind of thing. Scrounge, but a good one. He asked me one day if I knew you. Said no, and he asked me to take the package, if I ran into you to give it. Said he was doing a favor for someone else.”
Bill, short fat engineer... something tugged at Collier’s mind, a hint only, but he couldn’t wrap a clear thought around it. “Who was the someone else?”
“He didn’t say.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
Price shrugged again, “Wasn’t my business. Figured you could open it and find out all this shit for yourself.” He made a meaningful glance at the package.
Collier ignored that, “Why you?”
“I’m a nice guy.”
Collier laughed, “So you been carrying this thing around for a year just waiting to run into me, huh?”
“Not a year, six, eight months, tops. And, like I said, I’m a nice guy.”
“Still doesn’t explain why he picked you.”
Price frowned, deep and ugly, stirring Collier’s hand slowly back to the pistol, “I get around a lot.”
Ah. Now he understood. Black-market hire, running favors for one officer gang or another, messenger and assassin, immune to desertion or travel restrictions, handling merchandise and collecting debts. Collier stared at him. “Okay,” was all he said.
Price visibly relaxed. Man in his position didn’t brook a lot of questions. Collier took one more puff while eyeing him and then reached over and grabbed the envelope, one of those thick padded ones, definite quality, definitely pre-Breakout, hell, Pre-Event. It was heavy. ‘Collier Rashkil’ was inked across the front in a spidery thin hand almost obscured by dirt and water stains. Nothing else, no address, no rank, not even his Division, just the name. Collier blinked. Bill, Bill... there was something, but it evaded him.
“You gonna open it?”
Collier looked up. Price hovered, a look of expectation on his face. Like a kid at Christmas.
“You got some stake?”
“Just want to see the end of it.”
Collier nodded. Reasonable. Price didn’t do a lot of favors without some payoff and this was probably as good as any. He holstered the pistol and drew his boot knife, a thin-bladed Airborne he traded a can of coffee for a couple of years ago, and ran it carefully along the top. Didn’t feel any wires, but you never knew. He also kept the blade pointed at Price. You never knew about him, either.
The blade was true and made a thin, perfect cut along the top. Collier eyeballed Price to see if he needed a thin, perfect cut along the neck, then pouched the opening and peered inside. What the hell? Some kind of metal box. He pulled it out and set it on his lap, sheets of paper dragging out with it. Price craned his head around but Collier held the papers so only he could see them.
Really good paper, definitely Pre-Event. The same spidery hand that addressed the package covered one side. He read:
Dear Collier,
You do not know me, but I saw you from time to time when your dad visited the Gate. I was the guy running it. This is a box your dad wanted me to pass on to you.
“Holy shit,” Collier breathed.
“What?” Price asked and moved closer but Collier ignored him.
Be damned and blown to hell. The things that happen, that just come out of nowhere. Here, right here in his hands, a gift from Dad. Freakin’ unbelievable. He went back to the letter:
Your dad came to the Gate about 4-5 years ago.
Collier looked for a date but there wasn’t one. Okay, have to puzzle out the timeline later. He continued:
He was hurt real bad, suffering from gangrene. I do not know how he made it. He got here on some kind of electric scooter. The docs had to take his leg off, I am sorry to tell you.
“Sonofabitch.” God, Dad, not your leg.
“What is it?” Price got a little more insistent and moved even closer but Collier shoved him away.
I tried to call you, but I did not know where you were, all I remembered was you were somewhere down south. Your dad was in and out of consciousness for a long time and could not help. Sorry.
Before he could recover enough to tell me how to find you, Breakout happened. I barely got away. I do not think your dad did. I am really, really sorry. He was a good man.
Collier stopped breathing. Dad. That iron ball of grief he’d been holding in the pit of his stomach for years stirred and knocked against his heart, surprising him. He thought all those sentiments were pretty well secured but, damn all the angels, who expected this? A looseness trembled up his chest and quavered, setting the iron ball rolling. He had never truly mourned, had he? No reason, really, until just now. He felt like something was breaking, a rickety dam overwhelmed by a sudden unexpected tide. Too much, far too much.
“Sergeant,” Price spoke softly and Collier looked at him. Price was wearing the expression everybody did from time to time, no matter how tough or inured you were – shared grief for dead friends and the never-had-families and the war and the loss, just the sheer loss of the last ten years.
No matter the coldness of the heart or the crimes committed, the grief was there ready, at times like this, to surge. It ma
de them all brothers, was gang sign and tattoo, the whip scar they all bore.
So he shared with a whip-scarred brother. “It’s a letter from that guy, Bill. He knew my father. He’s telling me what happened to him.”
“Oh, man,” Price rocked a little and stepped back, respect for a hard moment, memory of his own.
I ended up in a Valley camp farther south after running for a while. I had managed to grab a backpack out of my tent just ahead of the hordes because I kept a lot of emergency supplies in it. I also kept this box in it. Your dad gave it to me almost first thing, before he would let me take him to the hospital. He made me promise to get it to you. See, he thought he was going to die any minute and he wanted you to have it. Best I could figure out from his fever raves, he got into some big fight with the guys who did Breakout and they ended up burning down your house and he dug it out later. If you saw what kind of bad shape he was in, you’d know how much he really wanted you to have this box to spend his strength getting it out. I have no idea what’s inside. He said you’d know how to open it.
I do not have any more time to tell you anything else. They are packing us up for Atlanta right now
“Bill went to Atlanta?”
Price nodded grimly, “Yeah, they sent all the refugees there, thinking they could get some new cure out of them for the Phase Two.”
Collier shook his head. Atlanta wasn’t there anymore.
and I am writing this letter real quick so I can give it to Price. He owes me a few favors and gets around a lot, so I figured he has the best chance of finding you. I figure you have your dad’s genes so you survived Phase Two, and I figure you are in the army, like everyone else. At least I’m hoping you are still alive because I made the promise and I want to keep it.
I have to go. Best of luck to you. I really liked your dad.
Bill
Price stood quietly while Collier read the letter again and then pulled the box to him. Flat black metal with four buttons and a switch on the top. Portable gun safe. Dad’s old portable gun safe, obviously, the one he kept under the bed and over which he threatened to dismember Collier the one day he caught him playing with it. “This is serious stuff, Coll, not a toy. You treat it with respect.”
Was a bit banged up, but secure, and smelled a little of burning. Dad had never showed him how to open it. “When you’re man enough,” he’d said, an event pre-empted by Collier’s going off to Fishburne, one step ahead of truancy and juvy. How he’d cursed Dad as the old man had packed Collier up and driven him south and left him at Fishburne’s gate. He thought his life was over. Turned out his life was saved.
But for what, Dad?
He fingered the box. It had a series of buttons on top, pressed in a sequence to release the latch. He had no idea how to open it, despite what Bill wrote. He supposed with a crowbar—
“Christ, Coll! You memorized the entire script of Ghostbusters! This should be easy!”
Like a bullet, Dad’s exasperated phrase went through his head. “Sonofabitch,” Collier said, softly.
“What is it?” and Price craned to get a better look at the box.
Collier held up a hand to silence him, to get the thought, to remember... “Two times at two and four, once at three.”
“Say it,” Collier whispered.
“Huh?” Price blinked at him, puzzled, and Collier spoke to the box, “Two times at two and four, once at three.”
You’ll know when you see it.
Collier punched in the combination, twisted the switch and the box lid popped. Price crowded closer and Collier pushed him back, again. He opened it.
Gold coins. Diamonds, other pieces of Mom’s jewelry. Worth a lot and he noted Price’s eyes widening. A folded piece of paper lay on top of something square and he unfolded it. A map, of all places, American University, with a red ‘X’ drawn in the center of what looked like some kind of field. Dad must have buried something there for him to find but, fat chance, Dad, the Reds stood between, and he picked up the paper and underneath was a book…
He gasped. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. “Un-fuckin’-believable,” he said.
“What?” and Price moved in, staring at the gold and jewelry first and making instant calculations and maybe he’d make an offer, fine, but it was the book Collier held up.
“Un-fuckin’-believable,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“What’s so special about the book?”
“My dad loved it. He found it in a thrift shop one day and went ballistic, said it was one of his favorite books from being a kid. He read it every year, on his birthday.” Collier stared at the cover. Red cloth binding, badly stained, spine broken and barely holding the pages. Old book smell. Dad’s smell.
“What’s it about?”
“An orphan,” he said, quietly, and gently stroked the cover. “Don’t really know. Never read it.”
He thumbed the book gently, seeing one or two illustrations like old books had, some hillbilly boy with some dog. “Schmaltz,” Dad had said, but there was a pleasure in his eye when he said it.
Collier turned to Price, “I owe you. I owe you big. Anything, don’t care.” He pulled out one of the cigars and handed it to the corporal. Price savored the bouquet, nodded, slipped it into his upper pocket and, without another word, grabbed his backpack and left. Collier watched him go. Be seeing him again, no doubt.
Collier slipped the book and the jewelry and letter back into the safe, locked it and stuffed it in his backpack. Amazing there was room. He slung the pack, grabbed his helmet, the cigar clamped between his teeth and stepped outside the warehouse, pausing to survey the area first.
Troops walking by, most of them blouses out, some with no blouses just Ts, ripped pants, sandals, and no haircuts, a very few squared-away in the mix who Collier promptly ignored. They weren’t a problem. The ragged ones, though... Collier scrutinized them. No visible weapons; that was good. Only patrols got weapons these days and always under the watchful eye of some vet. But you never knew if someone had squirreled away a 9 and everybody had at least a knife, so look.
They barely gave him a glance but imperceptibly shifted away, not so much because he was there but because it was A Company housing and they had a troubling reputation. Recruits never knew when some vet was going to storm out the door, grab somebody and haul ’em back inside for some kind of amusement. Collier shook his head. That wasn’t his thing. He tried to be fair to everyone, like those fabled Pre-Event non-comms, but he had stripes and was standing on the Company’s porch and that was enough to make the field wary. Big brush tarred us all.
Nothing threatened so he stepped all the way out, paused, took in a large, luxurious curl of smoke from the cigar and let it flow in the March breeze. Not a bad day, clear skies, cool but not uncomfortable. Fighting weather. Railroad tracks rusted about fifty yards away, coming around a ramshackle building that only needed one firm breeze to collapse it. This used to be some kind of construction site where they made doors or frames or something Before, but was long abandoned. As was everything.
He stepped off briskly, heading for the Pemberton-Ft. Dix road that became Hanover Avenue once it crossed the railroad tracks into town. A right at the broken asphalt and he was heading up the hill into Pemberton itself.
Battalion was located in a three-story townhouse on the next corner above Paul’s North End Bar, or at least what used to be Paul’s, according to a rusted sign lying in a trash heap in the back of the parking lot. It was the armory now and a couple of corporals on guard there eyed him and gave little waves as he strode by. He waved back. They were good guys.
Pemberton. How ironic. He took in the two- and three-story Dutch saltboxes, most still intact, marching up the hill that protected them from Red artillery. You’re home, Dad, he thought, and slapped the bottom of the backpack a couple of times. He didn’t know exactly where Dad had lived in town because they’d breezed through here only two or three times while on their way to Uncle Art’s, and that at sixty miles
per hour.
Dad usually stayed on 206 and had detoured this way just to take a rare quick glance because Mom hated the place, for reasons Collier never found out. Collier had been too young to remember much, anyway. Dad had gestured at some apartment complex on the north side but all that remained of it were piles of shelled rubble. Collier’s grandmother had lived somewhere on this street when she was a little girl, but he had no idea where.
About the only fixture of Dad’s life still around was the high school out towards Ft. Dix. It was an artillery park now. Collier had gone through the trash-strewn halls, picking his way over racked out gunners while peering into classrooms, trying to imagine Dad, eighteen years old, carefree and young and vital, running through these halls with his best friends and Mom. Couldn’t really picture it; Dad was always an old man.
And what gods of coincidence had decided that this, Dad’s hometown, would be the last stand of the Blues? Collier shook his head. He did not believe in gods, or God, for that matter. Demons, maybe, but they were not raving red-colored creatures making little girls throw up pea soup. They were, instead, the inexplicable way people behaved, so ridiculous and illogical there had to be some external, malicious prod to it. People’s stupidity was all the evidence of demon existence Collier needed. He’d seen no concomitant evidence of God. In this world of hate and murder, God was irrelevant.
He smiled to himself. Dad would be apoplectic, but Dad’s world had known moments of peace and good so he could afford to seek God. In Collier’s world, God was not sought because good simply didn’t exist. There was just survival.
And precious little of that. Here they were, battered and chased and beaten across Virginia and Pennsylvania and brought to heel behind Rancocas Creek, the water and its impenetrable woods serving as screen and flank protection.
