Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow

by Anderson, S. M.

  “Who’s Murphy?” It was the first time he’d seen Pro smile in a week. “Is it one of those sayings that only old people know about?”

  Jason laughed out loud. “You know Mr. Murphy as well as anyone. I suppose your generation would just say ‘shit happens.’”

  *

  “Welcome back, Jason, Pro.” Skirjanek was waiting outside to greet them when they pulled in. The colonel had a huge grin on his face and pointed up Highway 15, which they’d just come down. “You see Charlottesville’s most recent donation to our war effort?”

  It had been impossible to miss the Black Hawk helicopter, sitting in front of the hotel at the freeway interchange. “Theirs? I assumed you pulled it out of The Hole.”

  “They paid us a visit, three days ago. The pilot decided to stay with us. Things have gotten weird while you’ve been gone.”

  “Good weird? Or other?”

  “Not certain yet.” Skirjanek waved them inside. “Come on, I’ll get you caught up.”

  “Before I forget, Colonel.” Jason pulled out a slip of paper and handed it over. “Hoyt finished his radio tower at the Potomac settlement. These are the frequency schedules and security protocols of the communications plan he pulled together.”

  Skirjanek waved the paper. “Good deal, that’s going to save us some gas. How are things up north?”

  “Getting back to normal. Michelle is going to be in a wheelchair for another couple of weeks, then crutches and a cast, but she’ll make a full recovery. Your people were able to save her. The other work has made huge bounds; I hardly recognized the place.”

  “That’s good to hear, but it wasn’t my people who saved her, Jason.” Skirjanek glanced at Pro for a moment and then back at him. “There’s just us.”

  Skirjanek turned to Pro and held out a hand. “I didn’t get a chance to express my condolences to you, young man. I understand you and Daniel were close.”

  Jason watched Pro shake the man’s hand. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’d understand if you wanted to take some time . . .”

  “No, sir.” Pro shook his head. “If I have a say, sir, I’m fine. It’s been explained to me that the enemy gets to vote too.”

  Skirjanek glanced between them, and Jason gave a slight nod. Skirjanek’s smile looked sad. “That they do. Come on, I’ll get you back to current.” The colonel paused in mid-thought. “Rachel didn’t come back with you?”

  “Michelle needs her up there more than we need another sniper,” Jason answered with what felt like the truth. There’d been something else going on with Rachel, though, and damned if he knew what it was. The day before, Rachel had walked out of Michelle’s room and run into his arms, hugging him so hard it almost hurt. “I love you, Jason. But I can’t go back with you. Not now. I’ll wait for you, here.” He was more than OK with keeping Rachel away from this fight, but he didn’t think anything could have stopped her from wanting to be a part of it.

  “I understand.” Skirjanek grinned. “She’ll be missed. I was hoping to have her help putting a certain Marine sniper in his place.”

  *

  “Say again?” John Bruce wasn’t certain he hadn’t misheard the driver of the eighteen-wheeler that straddled two lanes of the rural road behind them. Steam was still hissing out of its radiator.

  “This is the fifth time you assholes have stopped me. It doesn’t hurt my feelings to say I haven’t gotten through yet—but I am done walking back to town only to have to do it again tomorrow. Where do I sign up? One group of assholes is the same as another.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ed Lawton.”

  John looked down to see the brand-new pair of running shoes on the truck driver’s feet and resisted the urge to laugh.

  “Alright, Mr. Lawton, we’ll take you on board.” He wasn’t sure what the colonel would do with volunteers, but that wasn’t his problem.

  One of the guards from the escort vehicle spoke up. “Don’t do this, Ed. We don’t know anything about these folks.”

  “Like hell I don’t.” Lawton turned on his own group. “I know they ain’t the murderers we’ve been told they are—so do you. Shit, Pauley! That guy gave you a pair of shoes for the walk back to town a couple days back. They could have just killed us every time they’ve stopped us.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing, you do whatever you want. I’m done pretending Cooper and Marks know what the fuck they’re doing.”

  In the end, Lawton and one of the guards, a younger man named Greg whom Lawton just called “G,” elected to stay behind and watch as their former colleagues started a seventeen-mile hike back to where they’d started.

  “What now?”

  It took John a moment to realize their new volunteer was speaking to him. “I have no idea, Mr. Lawton. We weren’t expecting guests.”

  “In short, you’re free to do whatever you want, go wherever you want.” Skirjanek was addressing the half dozen defectors that they’d pulled in. John had figured he’d have some explaining to do regarding his two, but Pavel and Farmer had returned with four of their own.

  “You’ll have to understand,” the colonel continued. “I’m not going to arm you and put you in the middle of my own people. It’s nothing against any of you, but that kind of trust has to be earned. We will see you armed, and driven back down the road to Richmond with some supplies. When this is over, if you’re still there, we’ll make contact. In the meantime, you can go your own way. After, if you still want, you can sign on with us, or rejoin the others in Charlottesville.”

  “Not happening.” Ed Lawton, the loud, angry, and talkative truck driver he’d brought in, took the opportunity to launch a pseudo mumble, loud enough that everyone heard him.

  “Or not.” Skirjanek grinned and held up both hands. “I’m just saying we have no intention of laying waste to the place; you could go back if you want. Rest assured, it will be under new management. In the meantime, go where you want. I will warn you to stay away from this area and Charlottesville. To my people, from a distance or through a rifle scope, you aren’t going to look any different than the people we are worried about.”

  John knew what Skirjanek was doing. This group of volunteers were turncoats, in some sense of the word. They weren’t the released prisoners from last week. They were all former “citizens” of the enemy, and as much as he believed their defection was legit, there was no way to be certain they weren’t here to learn what they could and report back. If that was the case, the colonel was just reinforcing the message that their problem was with Charlottesville’s leadership and not its people.

  “Sounds good enough to me,” Lawton announced, taking in the faces of the other group of men who had elected to jump ship. “Then again, so did what I heard from Charlottesville six months ago. I guess we’ll just see.”

  *

  UVA Campus

  From the top-floor office overlooking the UVA campus, the view was as it should be; ordered, calm, and most critically, hers. From her vantage point, Lisa Cooper had a good view. There was the ever-present crowd of people in what had become the market commons, stretching out from the front of the Madison building beyond the Rotunda. She could remember students sitting out there with their book bags, waiting for class or playing Frisbee, oblivious to how fragile their existence was. Now, it was a makeshift sea of folding tables, tents, and spread-out blankets heaped with the detritus of a fallen civilization. A swap fair at the end of the world.

  She was struck by the crowd. A quarter of a mile away through her window, and she could sense the restlessness. There weren’t as many goods to trade lately. They couldn’t get anyone out of town to forage, and she’d already cut back the generators supplying power to the dorms; what diesel they had left on-site was relegated to keeping Steven’s toys running. To make matters worse, those making yesterday’s supply runs had returned on foot, again, and missing half a dozen people who had elected not to return.

  The militia had stop
ped another group from trying to sneak out the night before. Warnings hadn’t been enough, and they’d had to be shot when they refused to return to campus. The same militia was even now among the crowd in the commons, spreading the story that the “enemy” had attacked the campus last night and been repulsed. Something had been needed to explain the gunfire that had awoken her as well.

  She needed to reestablish a firm hold on her people, and fast. They needed to be as invested in their own survival as she was in her own; that wasn’t going to happen while she sat here and allowed her people’s morale to be sapped by what Steven had labeled a siege. She’d let her “general” convince her that attacking the enemy would lead to a slaughter of their people, and maybe he was right. These Army assholes had certainly been able to run rings around anything that Marks had come up with.

  But beyond blowing up the main bridges out of town, they hadn’t attacked yet either. Maybe Steven was right and there just weren’t that many of them. It was starting to be the only thing that made sense to her. If she’d been in their place, and had the numbers to do, she’d have attacked long ago.

  She took a sip of her freshly ground coffee, and realized forcing the enemy to attack would solve many of her issues. They could afford the losses. It would unite and focus her people, revitalize her authority; and it would have the added benefit of winnowing out the enemy’s limited numbers. Besides, they should be starting to get sick and die by now. Hell, she caught herself smiling . . . Steven might even get himself killed in the fighting. All of his people, most of them men who enjoyed playing soldier, would have a dead hero to revere. Promoting one of them to take his place would just further tie them to her.

  There was only one sure way she could think of to force them to attack. Steven had warned her against it, but it wasn’t the enemy blocking the roads outside of town that she worried about. It was her own people; the crowd milling in the distance, full of insecurity and worry. Steven was incapable of understanding that. When push came to shove, he was stuck in his old-world patriarchal construct where the military was the protector of the people. He would never grasp the simple fact that the people’s insecurity and dependence were the ultimate tools for creating a path to and maintaining power.

  “Karen!” she shouted at the closed door to her office. Her aide opened the door just a few seconds later.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Get a message to General Marks; I need to see him as soon as possible.”

  “Ma’am, he left a message that he was accompanying one of the patrols this morning.”

  Even better. “Do you know if Josh Keynes went with him?”

  “No, ma’am.” Karen shook her head and then waved a hand in front of her face. “I mean to say, he is not with the general. I saw him coming in this morning. He looked to be arranging another training session with one of the militia companies.”

  She knew Karen’s interest in Josh was more than professional. She didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that she believed Josh had fallen for Dr. Vance. She wasn’t sure of it, and she was uncertain about what she thought of it herself. She was going to need Josh going forward.

  “See if you can find him. I do need to speak to him.”

  *

  Chapter 27

  Pro knew what Jason was going to think. But the “what would Jason do?” question hadn’t gone through his head once. There was only what he knew he had to do. He’d known since Daniel’s funeral. The colonel hadn’t said a thing about his presence when he had filled Jason in on everything that happened while they’d been gone. He’d kept his mouth shut and just listened, while trying not to be too obvious as he took in the big map of the UVA campus stapled to the wall.

  They’d learned a lot from the drone, and even more from the people Skirjanek had labeled defectors. Many of the buildings on the campus map now had labels. A lot of them just said “Dorm”; the library had its name scratched out and replaced with “Armory.” One building in particular, labeled “HQS,” and surrounded by a large parking lot labeled “Heavy Equipment,” dominated the northeast quadrant of the campus. While Jason and the colonel talked, he focused on the map, the surrounding neighborhoods, and the roads stretching out to the edge of town.

  He could go where they couldn’t. In his head, it was that simple. He was the best sneak he knew. Even Farmer and Salguero had heaped praise on him for his ability to move without being spotted. Nathans had wanted to get him on a sniper’s slow-crawl course, whatever that was. If he was spotted, he could just be the kid everyone expected him to be. He could use that. He’d use anything he could to get close enough to kill the crazy bitch he knew was responsible for Daniel’s death. He had to do something, and Skirjanek was still treating him like the walking wounded. He was fine.

  Jason, the colonel, Pavel, and John had been planning something all day, and they’d said that he wasn’t yet back to full strength and would have to wait “a while longer before taking an active role.” Screw that! He managed to keep a straight face to hide his disappointment. That had become impossible when Jason had given him some bullshit message to run over to Reed while the rest of them filed into the office of the landscaping company that Skirjanek called his war room. When the door had shut in his face, he’d wanted to scream and kick the damn thing down. Tell them how wrong they were; but he’d delivered the message to Reed, wiping away tears of anger during the long walk.

  His “escape” from the main Gypsy camp at Zion Crossroads almost ended before it started. He’d collected what he needed during the previous day, slowly, never carrying more than a few items at a time. He spent enough time bullshitting with Poy that the big guy had ended up helping him fix up the mountain bike that he was going to use. All the while saying that Pro should just use one of the “cruiser” bikes that Poy liked to use to pedal around the camp because they were somehow cooler.

  Jason had left on a patrol with Farmer and Pavel an hour after dinner. He was left in his tent alone. He was surrounded by friends and people he trusted with his life, but as he snuck out of the tent, through the yard, and around the back of the landscaping office, carrying his pack like a duffel bag, he thought back on the night he’d spent shuttling canned goods out of Pete’s old house. It had been the night he’d first met Jason . . .

  “Dammit, Pro!” Ray’s voice snapped him back to reality. He’d been checking behind him and had almost stepped on Ray and one of the Russian ladies; he thought it was Valeria or Valentina or something like that. It was dark enough that he couldn’t be sure. He did his best not to look as the woman started laughing and tried to cover herself with Ray’s shirt.

  “Kid, you have got to quit surprising me!”

  “Uhhh . . . Sorry.”

  “Where you headed this time of night?”

  He was glad it was dark; he could feel his face flush. “Jason said I could go with one of the patrols in the morning. I’m just getting ready; I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Us either.” The woman laughed again.

  “Oh . . . Jeez, really, I’m sorry.”

  “Pro.” Ray waved him off. “’S OK . . . I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Right!” He felt himself nod in agreement as he remained frozen in place with embarrassment. “OK, then, you all have a good night.”

  “Pro.” Ray was smiling as he jerked his head in the direction of the parked vehicles. “Go . . .”

  “Sorry, really,” he half mumbled as he set off around the equipment shed, thinking that this was what Jason must have meant about “Murphy.”

  “This is why I wanted to stay in my tent!” he heard the woman complain before he passed out of earshot.

  His bike was where he’d left it, and he only had to get his rifle from where he’d stashed it earlier in one of the JLTVs. He had a long way to go in order to avoid the scouts that the colonel had scattered around the eastern edge of the city. He was going to ride north on 15 until he found Louisa Road and then bend west until he ran out of rural roads to follow,
and he knew he would. Hammock’s Gap was like a giant swath of green on the map, stretching out from the eastern edge of the city. The only thing he could see that crossed it before he’d have to swing too far north was one of those massive power lines and a railroad.

  He was aiming for the power lines; he could follow them all the way to where they crossed over Highway 20. From there, it was a straight shot into the city, coming from a direction where he didn’t think he’d be spotted. He wasn’t worried about the pretend soldiers of Charlottesville; it was Jason, Skirjanek, and his Marines that he had to avoid. He checked his water bottle and made sure his CamelBac wasn’t leaking. For the two weeks before Daniel’s death, and since he’d come back, he’d been one of Skirjanek’s gophers. He knew where everyone was scattered around Zion Crossroads, on either side of the freeway.

  He pedaled slowly, past the settling ponds behind the McDonald’s, then around the back side of the massive Walmart supply depot before swinging back to Route 15. From that point, he took off to the north like a rocket. There was enough moonlight that he didn’t need to use his night vision, which was a good thing; he hadn’t been able to scrounge an extra set of batteries the day before. He had roughly fourteen miles of easy pedaling before he’d have to leave the road. By then, the Gypsy camp would start waking up, and his clock would start ticking.

  *

  Charlottesville

  Eric was giving him the “you’ve got to be kidding” look. They’d known each other since the meltdown. Together, he and the big guy had kept control of the situation in the basement of the church where they’d hidden with a bunch of other strangers. Since emerging and falling in with Lisa Cooper, Eric had been pretty much engaged in keeping the juice flowing through the part of the campus they had occupied. He’d been a lineman for the power company before the virus, and not somebody Cooper would have spent a minute of effort on getting to know.