The driver shook his head slowly. “No sir, never. Never. I think you poked a big stick in a hornet’s nest back there, killing those officers.”
“So do I, Sergeant Amory. And that’s why we’re going to Tennessee.”
****
The truck convoy rolled northward up the eastern flank of Mississippi on Highway 45. The dual-lane road was almost like an interstate highway, running ruler-straight while ascending and descending long gentle slopes. Every few miles they passed in and out of rain showers, including some hard downpours. Their headlights occasionally shone across billboards, many featuring General Mirabeau in different heroic poses among workers, farmers and children. Sergeant Amory maintained a distance of fifty yards behind the humvee that was the last vehicle in the convoy. Without turning his head the medic quietly said, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
By the dash lights, Carson could see Sergeant Amory’s white eyes flickering in the rear view mirror, trying to get a look at his captor in the seat behind him. “Keep your eyeballs on the road, Sergeant, or you’re going to kill both of us.”
Amory slammed a fist on the wheel. “You think this is a damn joke?”
“Am I laughing?”
“You are going to kill me,” the medic stated flatly.
“Is that really what you think?” said Carson.
“Of course it’s what I think. You shot three officers, what do you think I think? You’re gonna just let me go? You must think I’m some kind of stupid. You’ve got a gun at my back, and we’re going fifty miles an hour following a military convoy. That means you’re crazy too.”
“Listen, Sergeant: it wasn’t my plan to shoot anybody tonight. I made a deal with Doctor Foley. We shook hands on it, man to man—and he pulled a gun on me. What do you think they were going to do to me back there at that trailer? Throw me a Christmas Eve surprise party? Before that scene at the trailer, I thought I’d be across the river in Louisiana by now—and you’d be on your way back to Camp Shelton with the doctor. So okay, Foley double-crossed me—and he paid the price for it—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to kill you. After we get to Tennessee, you can go. You can have the truck and the rest of the gas. Twenty-five more gallons will get you all the way back.”
“What, you think I can just drive back to the base now? Just show up, turn this truck back into the motor pool like nothing happened tonight, when three officers have been shot dead? Including probably the base XO? Man, what do you think is gonna happen to me now, no matter what I do? I’m screwed any way you cut it. And besides, we can’t just drive into Tennessee anyway. The state border is closed except for official business—which we ain’t—and they check every damn thing going over that border with a microscope. And only in the daytime.”
“Then just get me close, and I’ll hump it the rest of the way.”
“Huh, you think you’re some kind of geriatric Davy Crockett? Or Rambo maybe?” Sergeant Amory glanced at Carson in the mirror, and shook his head.
“Don’t you have family somewhere in this state that could put you up?”
“Yeah, but so what? What good would that do, except bring heat on them? How am I gonna hide out under martial law? How can I stay hid when they’re looking everywhere for the black medic who signed out a truck for Lieutenant Colonel Foley, who just happens to be dead now? I can’t wear my uniform while I’m AWOL, and if I’m wearing civvies, I gotta wear my badge like everybody else. First time I’m scanned, I’ll be busted. Then I’ll hang for sure, just for desertion—even if they can’t get me for the three murders.”
Carson mulled this over for a while, ready to dispute the medic’s assertion that what he had done constituted murder. He dropped the thought: it was pointless. To the Mississippi Guard, the three dead officers would certainly be seen as victims of foul play, and their deaths would be investigated as murders. He could shout self-defense from the gallows platform while the noose was cinched around his neck, for all the good it would do. Instead, he refocused on more practical matters. “How do the badge scanners work, Sergeant?”
“Scanners? Oh, I think just like the supermarket things that used to scan your groceries—back when the supermarkets were open. Back when they had electricity all the time. Now they got a portable laser scanner at the checkpoints.”
“Portable, so it runs on batteries?”
“Yeah, what else? I mean, I guess. They look like a square flashlight.”
“So how does it know who’s who, there at a checkpoint? It must be hooked up to a central database somewhere. It has to get updated, and compare the badges to a central list.” Carson was thinking aloud. Then he asked, “How’s the wireless network in Mississippi these days?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cell phones, all of that.”
“Oh, we don’t have cell phones anymore, hardly. Not for regular folks, anyway.”
“What about the military, the government?”
“Yeah, they got it, some places. Not everywhere. Jackson, Hattiesburg, Greenville…around the cities they got it.”
Carson removed the stack of ID cards from his left pocket and examined a black-and-white scan badge by penlight. It had a small, grainy photograph of his face, a thumbprint, a bar code, and a data bit field on the front side. The name on the card matched his new military ID card: Jonathan T. Brice, but the face was his. A spring-clip on top allowed it to be attached to a collar or shirt pocket. “How often do they check the thumbprint?”
“Depends on where you are. Up here, things are kind of loose—until you’re right close to the border. They don’t check your thumbprint hardly ever. Seems like a waste they even got the thumbprint on it. Most times, they just look at the picture and your face. If you’re in a big line of folks, getting food or water, say, then they don’t hardly check at all. Just so they see you got a badge, that’s all they’re looking for most of the time. Least that’s how it was in October, last time I was up here on leave.”
Carson reflected some more, and asked, “How many people died in the epidemics? Must have been thousands, right?”
“Thousands? Thousands was an average week. Almost three hun-dred thousand died in the whole emergency zone, that’s the number I usually hear. Nobody really knows for sure.”
“Then there must be a lot of ID badges from dead folks, right?”
“I see what you’re getting at, but it won’t work,” said Amory. “When folks die, they take the badges. They keep track. And a lot of those folks didn’t have badges when they died—the badges came later.”
“But the point is, they can’t keep track of everybody all the time. It’s impossible. It’s a bluff, basically. Put badges on everybody, and they’ll conform like sheep. It’s simple psychology.”
“Man, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Carson asked, “Okay, so what do you want to do? If you have any bright ideas, I’m all ears. Seems to me like neither of us has a whole lot of good options. If you can’t go back and you can’t hide, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Guess I’d go back to Pontapola, where I got family, lots of cousins. Maybe use my cousins’ scan badges when I gotta be out and about. Things are a little more chilled out up around there, especially away from the main roads. I might be able to blend in with the scenery, you might say. And maybe I could pick up a badge from somebody who died, like you said. Sometimes whole families died, and nobody checked. Nobody counted them. Death records are still a mess, you’re right about that much.”
“Where’s Pontapola?”
“West of Tupelo.”
Carson studied his road map. “If I jump out near the Tennessee line, then you’d just disappear?”
“What choice would I have? I’d have to. Otherwise they’ll connect me with those officers you shot back there.”
“You could be a witness against me. You could save your ass by going to the police.”
“Oh man, what planet are you from? Think about it�
�this is still Mississippi, and some things don’t change. No matter what I said, I’d hang for those three dead officers, one way or the other. With you or without you.”
Carson leaned over his map, studying it closely by penlight, thinking aloud. “We’re about fifteen miles from Tupelo—the convoy might stop there for gas. Or it might just stop there for the night, or it might just stop there period, end of the mission. It’s been almost two hundred miles since we hooked on. We’ve pushed our luck far enough. So right now is probably our best chance to split off, and go for the Tennessee border on our own.”
“Whatever. You got the gun.”
“State Road 61 is coming up in a little bit. Slow down now and drop back a little, just ease off the gas. No turn signal. That’s good, that’s good, there’s the turnoff, ready?”
“Are you sure? I don’t like taking these back roads, especially not at night.”
“It’s not a back road; it’s a paved state road. It should be all right. Okay, go ahead and take it.”
****
Sergeant Amory asked, “You see a road on the map a few miles from the Tennessee line? Runs right along it on the Mississippi side?”
“I see it. State Road 72. Goes most of the way across the top of the state. What about it?”
“It’s a security zone north of it. From 72 to the state line is called the ‘buffer zone.’ Like a no-man’s-land, a few miles wide. No way can we drive across State Road 72. We have to stop this side of it, and then you’re on your own. Then it’s maybe three or four miles from there to the Tennessee line.”
“Why can’t we drive across 72? It’s Christmas Eve and it’s raining. They can’t be watching it all.”
“Look, if there’s any checkpoints in this whole damned state on Christmas Eve, it’ll be up there. They don’t want refugees from Tennessee coming into Mississippi, and 72 is the line the Guard patrols. You want us to get caught? You want to get shot or hung? Then you just try to make me drive across State Road 72.” Rounding a downhill curve, Amory hit the brakes, screeching the pickup to a stop. A tree lay across the road. Another moment of observation revealed that it was a tree trunk, with most of its branches crudely chopped off. A hand-painted sign, black letters on a scrap of plywood, was nailed to the trunk: “BRIDGE OUT AHEAD.”
Carson looked between the road blockage and his map. “What bridge?” He examined his map with the penlight. “It doesn’t show a bridge on this map, it barely shows this road. You know what bridge is out?”
“Hell if I know, it must be further up ahead. I can’t see anything past the tree but more road. But we’re getting closer to Memphis, and that earthquake shook everything up but good. Even before that, it was the floods from Matilda. Lot of bridges got busted up or washed away. I don’t know this road. We have to turn around. Go back and find another way.”
“Go ahead, pull a U-turn.”
Sergeant Amory did as he was told. The road was only two lanes wide, with narrow shoulders and steep slopes down to swampy lowlands on both sides. He accomplished the turnaround in three cuts, using great caution on the slippery pavement.
“This map doesn’t show any roads smaller than this one we’re on,” stated Carson. “We might have to go back ten or twelve miles to pick up another road big enough to be on this map. Or we can try one of these local roads and just use my compass. Kind of feel our way north.”
“Use the back roads? Feel our way north? Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
“Because this is Mississippi! I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Turn right here, Sergeant, this one looks okay. The pavement is just as wide as the road we’ve been on. It looks like it runs about northwest, so that should work for us.” There were no homes or buildings visible, nothing but dripping trees surrounding their small area of headlamp illumination.
“You sure about this?”
“Come on Sergeant Amory, we’ll be all right. When we get to State Road 72, we’ll know it. If this map is right, it’ll be a big road. Dual lane, like 45 was. We’ll know it when we reach it. Then I’ll bail out, and you can backtrack on your own. You’ll be in Pontapola before daybreak.”
“Look, these back roads don’t run straight like the big ones, they run more like spaghetti. See? We’re turning already. Which way are we going now?”
“Northeast. That’s still okay. Just go slow, we’ll be okay. Thirty-five is fast enough…”
“We’re still turning, so if that was northeast, now we gotta be going east.”
“Okay, we’ll try the next left turn that looks like it’s going north.”
After ten minutes of winding and weaving through more woods, swamps, small farms and smaller properties, their headlights occasionally sweeping across scattered house trailers and homes, they were heading almost south again. Few of the houses showed even the least glimmer of light within. Almost all of the dwellings had some crude fence or wall between them and the road. Homemade palisades protected against unseen night dangers.
Carson said, “Okay, turn left here, we’ll try this one.”
“Seriously, I don’t like this, I really don’t like it!” They were driving on a narrow one-lane asphalt road, between overhanging pines so thick they formed a solid canopy. Beyond their headlights was the darkness of the tomb, with only a slight fire glow from the windows of some houses set back among the trees.
The curving road rolled downhill and ended without warning at a T intersection, and they stopped. Carson looked at his wrist compass again. “I guess right takes us more north. Let’s try it.”
Amory pulled out, ruefully shaking his head. The road narrowed again, the asphalt badly cracked on both sides, the tree branches sometimes brushing the sides of the truck. Both of them were peering hard into the darkness beyond their headlights. “Shit!” the medic yelled and hit the brakes.
“What the hell is that?” asked Carson. They stared ahead at a plank of rough two-by-ten lumber lying completely across the road, with dozens of long and short nails protruding upward from it. The board was tied to trees at both ends with heavy wire. Driving over the improvised spike strip would cause four flat tires.
“Somebody’s own private night barricade,” said Amory. “They do that up here nowadays. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to try these back roads, but you wouldn’t listen, you…”
A single shot rang out, and a muzzle flash flared through the under brush to their left.
Carson yelled, “Back up, back up!” but Amory already had the truck in reverse, skidding backward on the slick road. The truck lost traction and fishtailed sideways, the rear wheels going over the shoulder into a shallow ditch, stopped hard by an unseen tree behind them. They had not made it a hundred feet from the defensive barrier of nails.
“Come on Amory, show me what you can do!”
“I’m trying!” The truck grabbed traction as he downshifted to low and slowly goosed the accelerator. They dragged through brush on the other side of the narrow lane, found the pavement again, and were soon sliding through S turns at better than fifty miles an hour. They were totally lost, completely disoriented, the map useless. They blew past the last T intersection, and the road curved several more times while dipping and rising.
Carson peered at his dim mini-compass and laughed. “Well, at least we’re heading north again—for the moment anyway. Oh, and nice driving, Sergeant Amory.”
“Yeah, anytime. Be sure and tip your driver when I let your white ass out.”
“Don’t you worry about my white ass.”
“Believe me, I won’t.”
“So, Sergeant Amory, it seems like not everybody in Mississippi got the word about the new gun laws.”
“You noticed that too?”
They both laughed in relief.
Carson said, “Imagine that, shooting visitors coming around tonight. They might’ve hit old Santa Claus himself. Good thing they missed.”
“Missed? No, Colonel, they didn�
�t miss. They weren’t shooting at us.”
“How do you figure that, Sergeant Amory?”
“These boys out here? If they were shooting at us, they’d be stretching us out on the road right about now, and going through our pockets. They wouldn’t have missed, no sir. I know—I grew up with these Mississippi crackers. Deer hunting and fast cars are about their two most favorite things in the world. You think they’d miss if they were aiming right between our headlights?”
“No, I guess not.”
“That was just a neighborly warning back there. Pure Christian charity. Next time we might not be so lucky. Next time, they might not be in such a friendly mood. Not at all. Colonel, I do believe we have used up all of our good luck tonight.”
“Well, Sergeant Amory, it is Christmas Eve. You gotta believe in something.”
****
An hour later Carson sat with his pack against a thick tree, watching State Road 72 from a few yards inside the woods. He’d chosen the tree carefully, so that he could lean back against his pack, his butt on a wide root-branch, keeping him above the mud. The tree’s branches were winter bare above him. His green poncho covered his up-folded knees, protecting him from the cold drizzle. Only his face was exposed, peering out of the poncho’s hood. Beneath the vinyl poncho was a gore-tex camouflage Army rain parka with its own hood, part of the gear that Sergeant Amory had assembled from his list. Beneath the parka was his field jacket and uniform, and still he was chilled to shivering.
The four-lane road ran east to west in a shallow valley. During the half hour before two in the morning, not a single vehicle had passed by in either direction. Carson already missed the warm, dry interior of the truck. He wondered if he was up to the task of walking the next few miles out of Mississippi, and then more miles into Tennessee. A lot depended on his knees holding up. Hiking well into Tennessee before dawn was his goal. With the addition of the items from the back of the truck, his backpack now weighed at least forty pounds. It was also much bulkier, with the sleeping bag in its waterproof compression sack strapped beneath it and his foam ground pad rolled up and lashed on top.
Foreign Enemies and Traitors Page 14
