by D. J. Molles
If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead, Lee kept telling himself. But it didn’t change how uncomfortable he was with this situation. Maybe they want us alive…
But why would they want Hughes and Jared and Noah?
They wouldn’t.
But it was possible they wanted Lee.
An image flashed through Lee’s head, his own imaginings gone dark and rogue inside his skull: well-placed shots snapping back Hughes’s head, then Jared’s, then Noah’s. Blood splashing on the back glass and spattering Lee’s face. Old Man Hughes slumping forward on the wheel, eyes dead as marbles and staring at Lee and through him. The doors opening and men in familiar uniforms hauling him out and slamming him on the ground…
That would be the third time. The third time I’ve been captured.
And then another little movie played. Most of it was the same, but when it came to looking at Old Man Hughes’s cold, dead eyes, Lee took up his rifle, heedless of the firepower pointed in his direction, and shoved it out of his door as the men in familiar uniforms yanked it open, and he fired, even as they fired back. He could almost feel the impact of big, heavy bullets ripping open his chest. But he’d keep shooting until his attackers were dead, or he was dead, or both.
There were no games left to be played.
His life was an all-in hand.
Show your cards and wait for the river.
“Stop there,” an amplified voice said.
Lee glanced about, the morbid visions dancing in front of his eyes clearing and he saw the scene for what it was. Death, or not death. Depending on how Colonel Staley wanted to play it. A bit of a quandary, he thought. Good possibility of being fucked if you show up at the meeting. Better possibility of being fucked if you don’t. So you show up and you say your prayers and you hope for the best.
Behind an armored door panel, a Marine was standing with a bullhorn up to his mouth, speaking to them. Old Man Hughes complied, stopping the vehicle. The man with the bullhorn told them to put it in park and turn off the ignition. In response to this, Hughes looked at Lee.
Lee just nodded. “Do it.”
The shifter was shoved into park. The engine died. Old Man Hughes took the keys from the ignition and put them on the dash.
“Throw your weapons out the windows,” the voice said.
Lee immediately shook his head. “Don’t do that.”
He could feel the other’s abrupt tension like a charge of electrostatic energy hovering in the air. The feeling he thought you might get when you’re standing in the path of a lightning bolt. He shoved both of his arms out the window, displaying his open hands, and then he unlatched the door from the outside handle and stepped out.
The Marine’s voice bore an edge to it now. “Get back in the truck!”
Lee’s rifle dangled on its strap, heavy on his chest, but he would not take it off, nor would he get back in the vehicle. He held his hands high above his head as he stood to the right of his open door and raised his voice, feeling his own hammering heart play with the strength of his voice.
“We’re not going to put down our weapons!” he shouted.
“Get back in the truck or you will be fired on!”
Lee shut his eyes. “We are coming to this meeting peacefully because it was requested by Colonel Staley! But we are not going to do it unarmed! Where is Colonel Staley?”
“Comply or you will be fired on!” the Marine called back.
Someone in the truck swore.
Was it really worth it? What would happen if they threw down their weapons? Would they be better off keeping them than throwing them away? They were outgunned as it was, so holding on to the weapons was more symbolic than anything. And yet Lee couldn’t bring himself to just surrender them like that. Because if he put down his weapons and Marines rushed him with flex cuffs and a burlap sack to put over his head, he wouldn’t be able to do shit about it except fight and most likely get his ass beat. But at the end of the day he would still be alive, and he would be captive for the third time. Held for ransom, he figured. Or as a hostage to make Camp Ryder more agreeable in whatever negotiations they had planned. In either case, Lee was more useful to his people if he was dead, and more hurtful to them if he remained alive. If he was alive, he could be used to manipulate, and his own life would be one of misery far worse than he had known.
But should Old Man Hughes and Jared and Noah pay the price along with him?
Maybe he should have been clearer with them. Maybe they should have known that Lee was going to play this one like a man with nothing left to lose. Maybe that would have changed their decision to come along.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Too late now…
Lee’s gaze was fixated on the muzzle of the M240 and he saw that it was staring right back. He kept waiting for that muzzle flash that would be the last thing he saw.
“I want to talk to Colonel Staley!” he called one more time. “This is Captain Lee Harden with the United States Army. Colonel Staley asked for this meeting and now we’re here! Let’s talk!”
The Marine with the bullhorn lowered it from his mouth. He had nothing left to say. He turned to the gunner on the M240.
Movement from the front of the demolished house. The brick façade still bore the front door and the porch. A man stood at the door. He wore the same uniform as the rest of the soldiers, but he wore no helmet. He glared out across the distance, right at Lee. A slender man whose eyes Lee could not see behind a pair of sunglasses. He had thin hair on the top of his head that seemed as gray as it was brown and matched the desert colors of his uniform like he had been born and bred for the job he had taken.
He held up a hand. “Hold your fire,” he said. It wasn’t shouted, but rather projected, his voice carrying without being pushed, forceful without being strained.
Lee looked back at the M240, still waiting for that little yellow bloom.
Stop and smell the roses, he thought, somewhat madly. Stop and smell the gunpowder.
“You.” The voice carried over to Lee and he turned his eyes to the man on the front porch. The figure stood there with one hand on his hip, the other pointing at Lee. Then he waved. “Come on.”
Lee heard a whine and a growl, and claws scraping across bed liner. He looked behind him and found Deuce halfway out of the truck bed. He pointed at the dog. “No. You stay. Stay,” he said sternly. He’d been working on that one command, but it was still iffy. Deuce was a very independent dog and liked to make up his own mind about a lot of things.
This time, though, the dog stilled. But he kept on staring at Lee, his eyes wide with something like concern, ears as forward as they were physically capable of being. The picture of intensity.
To the men in the truck, Lee spoke quieter. “Back way the fuck up. Don’t do anything stupid. If things go bad, just go back home, you got me?”
“Lee—” Hughes started.
“Do what I say,” Lee said, and then started walking, still holding his hands up and away from the rifle on his shoulder.
The engine started in the pickup truck.
There seemed to be a stir. Lee noticed a few more Marines that had escaped his view before. One of them was prone amid the rubble of what had once been the back of the house. Another was crouched in the ditch beside the driveway. Both had bits of brown burlap tied to their helmets and uniforms and held Remington 700 rifles. Designated marksmen. Or maybe Scout Snipers, like Jack Burnsides. Absently, he wondered if they knew the man.
Lee called out to the man on the porch. “They’re going to wait down the road a bit. Your welcome party has us a little concerned.”
Through the black sunglasses he wore, Lee could not tell whether the man on the porch was looking at him or the pickup truck as it slowly began to back away. But he gave no reaction. He just stood there, both hands on his hips now, and he waited.
Lee kept walking forward. He wondered if they were going to attempt to search him, maybe to see if he had a bomb strapped to his chest, but they
let him pass by. It seemed like they were waiting for the man on the porch to tell them what to do, but he seemed to be finished with security protocols for the time being. If Lee were being honest with himself he knew that they were on opposite sides of the same coin. Both had to show a little bit of trust in order to make anything happen. That the man was willing to set aside his own security protocols for Lee meant that perhaps there was more to this deal than an act of charity. And Lee did not know whether that was something that he should take comfort in or whether it should make him more concerned.
As Lee reached the front porch of the old house, he stopped and looked up at the man before him. “Colonel Staley?”
No expression. “Captain Harden?”
Lee smiled.
The man pushed the front door open. It groaned and the corner of it scraped across the hardwood floors on the inside of the house. Lee realized the door was just barely hanging on its bottommost hinge. The man extended his hand to Lee. “I apologize for the harshness of our first meeting, Captain Harden. I’m sure you understand. Times being what they are.”
Lee took the offered hand and looked the man up and down. Colonel Staley was about a head shorter than Lee. He was older, as most people of his advanced rank were—full bird, Lee noted—but he held himself in a certain relaxed way that belied his command, and his conversational voice was soft, with the slightest hint of a southern drawl.
Lee gave the colonel’s hand a single pump. “I understand,” he said, though he found his voice slightly stiff. For a moment it felt strange shaking hands with a colonel he’d just met. There was a time when he would have observed military decorum in this situation, but it felt like a far-off concept and it only ran through his head fleetingly. Here was not an officer and a subordinate, but rather two men with interests unknown to each other and some issues to work out.
Staley motioned Lee through the open front door. Lee stepped through, eyes quickly scanning. There were three Marines inside, both in full-battle rattle. Lee stiffened when he saw them, but neither made a move toward him. One stood at a crumbled section of wall, around which you could catch a view of Highway 55. He looked over his shoulder at Lee with some curiosity, but mostly apathy. The second stood at a table with two chairs. He watched Lee impassively.
The third was older than the other two, but younger than Staley. Somewhere in his forties, Lee guessed. His hair was a bland color of brown with a heavy sprinkling of gray. He matched Lee for height, but was more thickly built, particularly in the chest. He wore the designation of a first sergeant. He had a rifle strapped to his massive chest, but his hands were clasped cordially in front of him. Casually calculating eyes tracked Lee as he entered what was left of the house. They were the eyes of a large and powerful predator. They were confident, and they seemed to divide all things into two categories: Prey or Miscellaneous.
Lee stopped in the middle of what remained of a room. It was difficult for Lee to tell what the room had once been—a living room, he supposed. Most of the furniture was burned to cinders and then soaked with rain. The table and chairs were dirty, but unburnt. Lee wondered where they had come from. Here he could also see the majority of the old oak tree that had crashed down into the house. It was a blackened skeleton.
The door groaned shut.
Lee turned partially and looked at Staley as he shoved the door closed. The older man removed his sunglasses, folded them, and used them to point at the door. “I know. It doesn’t make much sense to close the door when half the house is missing.” He moved around Lee to the table. “But there’s something about a door hanging open that annoys me.”
Lee didn’t respond.
Staley gestured to the barrel-chested man standing at the table and chairs. “Captain Harden, this is First Sergeant Brinly. My senior enlisted man. Will you sit with me, Captain? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Without the sunglasses on, Lee could see the colonel’s more Icelandic features. The thick eyebrows. The squinting eyes and the wrinkles in the corners that seemed to say that Colonel Staley had spent the better part of his lifetime in deep concentration. A man that did not make decisions lightly.
Lee crossed to the table, watching Staley and Brinly for a sign of what was to happen next. But neither man was giving anything away. They seemed placid, but focused. It struck Lee that both of them might be waiting for him to speak, though Lee had no intention of being the first. Speaking was showing your cards, and he wanted to keep his secret. It was his only defense. After all, they had called the meeting. They chose the time and the place. They could be the first ones to show their hand.
Lee took a seat, slowly.
Staley followed suit.
Lee sat stiffly erect, his feet wide, ready for movement, his hands not far from the rifle on his chest, but making sure that he wasn’t touching it. Staley, on the other hand, leaned back in his seat, one hand resting on his lap, and the other on top of the table, still holding the folded sunglasses.
After a moment, Staley seemed to sense that Lee wasn’t going to be the first to speak. He tilted his head and took a breath, seeming to choose his words very carefully. When he spoke them, they were deliberate and measured, like combining volatile liquids in a beaker.
“First, I want to thank you for making the trip to meet me here. I understand that safe travel is a little more challenging when you don’t have armored transports.”
Lee gave a fractional nod.
Staley continued in the same cautious tone. “In the interest of full disclosure and speaking on even terms, I’m going to say something to you. And when I say it, I would simply ask that you not react poorly, as we’re both here under truce. I don’t mean to harm you, and I hope you feel the same.”
Lee was still as stone.
Staley’s eyebrows lifted. He leaned forward, putting both his elbows on the table, his hands clasping together around his sunglasses. “What would your reaction be if I were to mention the name ‘President Briggs’?”
NINETEEN
TENSIONS
LEE’S PULSE SUDDENLY FELT like a swarm of bees, buzzing through his veins, rattling around in his head. There was a ringing in his ears. He tried to maintain a poker face, but couldn’t help his eyes jagging to the left, where First Sergeant Brinly stood just a single pace away from the table, watching him. The best Lee could manage was not to grab his rifle. He remained still.
Take a breath.
If they want you, there ain’t shit you can do about it.
But they’ll have to take a dead body.
Staley didn’t move much, but his hands spread out, showing both palms. “We’re just talking. No need for action right now, Captain Harden. Just talking stuff out.”
Lee looked at him hard. “Then talk. It sounds like you have plenty to say.”
Staley retracted his hands from the table and leaned back. “Honestly, there isn’t much that I can say. I take it from your reaction—as controlled as it was—that there is no love lost between you and President Briggs. Is that correct?”
“Acting President Briggs,” Lee corrected.
Staley smiled, fleetingly. “I guess that answers the question, doesn’t it?”
“What are we doing here?” Lee shifted in his seat. His index finger touched the polymer grip of his rifle. It was very close, but so was Brinly. And the other Marine standing off to the left. And the one behind him, standing at the collapsed wall. He could hear their breathing all of the sudden, like his ears were suddenly keener. He could hear the creak of rubber boot soles on the hardwood floors. The brush of their uniform fabric as they shifted ever so slightly.
Could I take them?
Sure, I could take them.
But what about the others outside?
“I can see the wheels in your head turning.” Staley shook his head, an almost unnoticeable gesture. “Please. I promise you that we’re not here for you. We’re here to talk. I’m here to talk. To meet you. To figure out the other side of the story.”
<
br /> “What story?”
“Briggs’s story.”
“How long have you been in contact with Briggs?” Lee tried to keep the tension out of his voice. It came across flat and without inflection.
“Well,” Staley picked at something that was stuck to the tabletop. “We’ve been in contact since the beginning, but that implies something worse than the truth.”
“And what would the truth be?”
“The truth is that our communication has been spotty at best. The equipment has failures that are often… convenient.” The corners of Staley’s eyes wrinkled, like he wanted to smile, but wouldn’t let himself. The inference was clear, though.
“So your comms work when you want them to work,” Lee clarified.
Staley answered in a roundabout way: “They’re down more often than not.”
“And when they’re up? When they’re working?”
Beside the table, Brinly spoke for the first time. His voice deep, and accented with someplace in the northern interior. “I think our comms have been down for, oh, two months now?”
Staley’s mouth twitched. Behind his lips, his tongue seemed to be scouring his teeth, like it might find the appropriate words there. “I’ll simply say that this meeting has been a long time coming. Your name has been whispered for so long that some of the men say you’re just like Bigfoot. People have stories, but no one’s ever seen you firsthand. Needless to say, I was surprised to be speaking with you directly on the radio last week. And somewhat dubious.”
Lee didn’t take any of what Staley had said as a compliment, nor was he certain that it was meant that way. Staley did not seem the type to flatter. This was a simple statement of fact. “So what’s being said about me, Colonel? Maybe I can separate some fact from fiction.”
“Well.” Staley rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “The facts I gathered from the first few communications with Colorado—that’s where President Briggs is, did you know that?”
Lee nodded, curtly.
