Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “Of course not,” replied Boone, laughing. “I borrowed them—with permission. Sort of. Zack, are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.” Zack’s compound bow was strapped across his back; a Winchester 30-30 lever-action was jammed into a saddle scabbard. The four horses wheeled and turned together.

  Boone asked the boy, “You remember everything else I told you?”

  “I remember.”

  “Your father would be real proud of you. Okay, that’s it. We’ve got a long ride ahead of us, and it’s not going to snow forever. Let’s go.” Boone reined his horse’s head sharply to the side and made a loud clicking sound with his tongue, kicked his heels and his horse broke into an easy loping canter, eager to be moving. Carson turned his horse to follow, digging with his heels.

  Boone kept the horses moving at a steady walk most of the time, which was easier on Carson’s wound, just a long, slow, back-and-forth heaving motion. He remembered the gaits: walk, trot, canter and gallop. Bumping up and down while trotting was the worst, and they avoided it. Sometimes the trail went uphill and the horses broke into a run. Often he had to rein back his mount as it tried to pass Boone’s horse and gain the lead.

  Carson couldn’t tell a quarter horse from a thoroughbred in the darkness, but it was obvious these four were keen to run. Just a few hours earlier, he had been reading about General Forrest’s cavalry dashing around the Tennessee countryside. Now, improbably, he found himself astride a horse with a gun on his hip. The transition was surreal but exciting, and welcome after three weeks of forced indolence while he recovered from his wound. Horses were nearly ideal for this country and this type of low intensity conflict, he mused. They were not restricted to the roads, where checkpoints might be encountered, and were not bothered in the least by weather that grounded hostile aircraft. He remembered seeing a picture of Special Forces riding horses in Afghanistan. I’ll have to ask Boone about that sometime, he thought.

  He wondered how Boone knew their way, even while wearing night vision goggles. For long stretches, their route seemed to wind through labyrinthine passageways below overhanging branches, so low the riders needed to hug their mounts’ necks. Other times they went right up streams, splashing through water and mud, clattering over rocks, their horses struggling to find sure footing. Once they rode thirty or forty feet through a tunnel beneath some kind of elevated roadbed. Boone shouted back for them to stay low and they did, leaning forward and down until their faces were buried in their horses’ manes. Water streamed through the tunnel, and Carson’s horse balked and needed encouragement to move forward in nearly pitch darkness.

  Occasionally they traveled on asphalt country roads, the sound of their horses’ steel-clad hooves muffled by the snow. They crossed countless fields, Boone opening gates ahead of them and closing them behind, then galloping ahead to resume his position at the lead. Some of the “gates” were clandestine openings, with sections of wire fence cut but left tied in place, pulled to the side for their passage and then returned to their everyday position.

  ****

  The dead man’s boots were not too bad a fit. That had been one of Jenny’s biggest worries, that blisters might force her to stop walking. She knew from painful experience that this was always a risk when going for a long hike in untested shoes. There were a few hot spots, one on her right heel, but they did not get any worse during the first hour. After a year of enduring ill-fitting castoff shoes, she felt as if she had won the footwear lottery tonight. For once, her bigger than average feet were a benefit, matching the dead man’s in size.

  It figured that the traitor would have top quality boots. He had even broken them in for her. Now he was burnt meat, and the boots were hers to keep. This thought gave her no small satisfaction as she trudged along beneath his pack, crunching through the soft snow. Hey, asshole—I’m walking out of your nightmare! Keep right on burning forever—in hell! She smiled in spite of herself. No matter what happened next, she had won the victory of outliving him. He was dead, and she was alive and free, at least for now. She was even wearing his uniform, and carrying his pack and his gun.

  The Russian-style fur hat was perfect with the flaps turned down, keeping her head, neck and ears warm in the blowing snow. She had even found insulated gloves in the pockets of the camouflage parka, another gift from the dead would-be rapist. She walked with her gloved hands gripping the pack’s straps, at chest level. When she finally had to stop, she would search his pack for more of the food she felt sure was inside. Until then, the sausage she had wolfed down would hold her over.

  Jenny McClure had had plenty of experience as a walking refugee, but never dressed so well for cold weather. She had a close familiarity with hypothermia: last winter she had almost died of exposure on several painfully memorable occasions. She had escaped from the ruins of Memphis, from home invasions, road ambushes and night attacks, from the worst horrors imaginable. Her odyssey had covered only eighty straight-line miles, but her route had been anything but direct, and she had walked several times that distance. It had taken her almost two hellish months to reach safety in Mannville.

  After what had happened in Memphis, she would never again trust any happy status quo. The quakes had taught her that the earth could literally tumble off its axis without warning. The world could suddenly tip and spill all of the baby birds out of their cozy nests, onto the cold ground. Ground teeming with hungry predators. A year ago, she had been one such baby bird, blinking in shock at finding herself unexpectedly alone on the hard ground. No more. That innocent girl was gone forever.

  Unlike during her trek from Memphis to Mannville, this time she was not only better dressed, she was also carrying a big damn pistol. A .45, no less. Those big fat bullets would put anybody down with one shot in the chest, that’s what her Uncle Henry had told her. “Aim for center mass,” he had said. Uncle Henry knew what he was talking about: he had been an officer in the Marine Corps. He had been to Beirut, Lebanon, and the first war in the Middle East, the one that he called Desert Storm, back before she was born.

  If anybody tried to stop her, tried again to attack or rape her, Jenny was determined that she would test that 45-caliber theory, personally. Then if one bullet didn’t work, she’d keep shooting. Two to the chest and then one to the head, in case they were wearing body armor or were doped up on drugs. That’s what Uncle Henry said. No more dirty stinking men were going to lay their disgusting hands on her, punch her, and tear her clothes off. From now on she would carry the pistol 24/7, and she would avoid sucker traps like that fenced-in pen at Mannville Senior High. She would get out of Tennessee entirely. Mississippi had to be better. They were turning back refugees at the state border, that’s what she had heard, but she wouldn’t cross at a road. She’d cross somewhere in the middle of the boondocks. She’d get into Mississippi or Alabama, where there were no foreign enemies, only Americans. Things there had to be better than in Tennessee. They had to be. And if they weren’t, she’d keep going all the way to Florida. Or maybe to Texas: she’d heard that most of Texas was still free, almost like the old America.

  Tonight the most important thing was to put miles between herself and the foreign soldiers behind her. Would those soldiers ever be pissed off if they knew that she had burned down their house and ruined their little rape party! They had probably all gotten out of the house, since it started on the floor above them. Jenny wondered about the other girls. Most likely, they had been taken to the next big house down the road. The foreign troops obviously could take over any home they wanted, and nobody could stop them. Maybe some of the girls had managed to escape after they exited the house, but it was unlikely. Well, they could survive being raped, just as she had survived it last year, on the way to Mannville.

  Jenny quickly stabbed out those evil memories, shoved them back down into her bad memory hole, and dropped the iron lid of hate over them. She knew that she had gotten lucky tonight, in being taken upstairs first. Well, it was about time—she was seriously due some go
od luck. The rapist had said it was her lucky night. He was surely right about that, but not in the way that he had intended!

  It was inconceivable that the foreign soldiers might have extinguished the house fire. She had seen it spreading from room to room and up the wall to the roof. How could they possibly put it out? With what? A bucket brigade, from a water well? Or snowballs maybe? Snowballs, to put out a roaring house fire. She laughed at the idea of them tossing snowballs through the windows, into the burning house. Fires still happened, and these days, houses usually burned to the ground. With no more 911 to call for help, there was almost no other outcome possible. With everybody jury-rigging homemade wood stoves and chimney pipes, there were probably more house fires than ever. The switch from gas, oil and electric heat to wood-burning stoves had not been made without an increase in danger.

  The snow continued falling at a furious rate; Jenny could only follow the edge of the first road she had literally stumbled upon. Downhill from the burning mansion, the bramble-filled woods had ended where a stream disappeared into a small culvert. Above the concrete pipe was a narrow paved road. Without a compass, Jenny knew that she could wind up walking aimlessly in circles if she stayed off the road, crossing fields and streams and tree lines and woods. The snow might stop, and she might still be near the area full of foreign soldiers. While it was snowing, she had to make tracks, literally. Tracks that would quickly be erased behind her by the falling snow.

  So she had studied that first road, and some inner sense of direction told her to turn left, which was slightly downhill. Downhill might take her toward the Tennessee River, or the Mississippi state line. It was really just a guess, but without a map or a compass, she had no choice but to pick a direction and walk fast. Even with the pack on her back, she knew she could make four or five miles an hour. It was less than fifteen miles from Mannville to the Mississippi line, but she didn’t know where she was in relation to Mannville. To the east, she thought. She hoped she was walking south. The sky was no help. Somewhere up there, the moon was sending down just enough light to allow her to walk without tripping over every obstacle, but it gave no hint of direction. The road ran in curves and hooks, and at each rural intersection she had to decide again: which way should she go?

  At least the blowing snow kept visibility to only a hundred feet or less, and the smooth white blanket on the ground silenced her footsteps. There were no tire tracks from any vehicles, and no other footprints on the road. She approached and passed infrequent homes with trepidation, her head down, steadily marching on. There were no lights on inside any houses, no curling smoke rising from chimneys. If anybody was in them, they were hiding tonight.

  At an intersection, a sign reading “Shiloh National Battlefield 7 Miles” gave her fresh hope. She knew that Shiloh was not far from the Mississippi state border. The sign also confirmed that she was on the southeast side of Mannville.

  After what she guessed was at least two hours of steady walking, Jenny heard an engine, and a moment later she smelled diesel exhaust. She dashed from the road, almost slipping down the inclined shoulder, and hid behind a car abandoned in the drainage ditch. One of the enormous Army trucks approached from the opposite direction, driving slowly, its headlights illuminating a swirling pool of snowflakes ahead of it. She crept around the side of the derelict automobile as the six-wheeled truck passed her, praying that they would not notice her footprints in the snow.

  The sudden appearance of the truck made her appreciate the danger she was in, walking on the side of a paved road to make better speed. Jenny waited for perhaps ten minutes after it passed before continuing at a slower pace, with more caution. A half mile on, she smelled wood smoke and then saw two moving orange dots. A bit further and the glowing spots illuminated faces behind lit cigarettes. Only soldiers would be smoking out in the middle of a snowstorm. They had probably been dropped off by the truck that had rumbled by.

  She was already too close to them to be safe. She moved away from the side of the road to take a position behind a small fir tree, and observed them. Four soldiers wearing fur hats identical to hers were standing around a metal barrel. Tongues of flame licked up from the barrel like a blazing well from the underworld. Staring at the fire would have ruined their night vision, which meant less chance of her being seen. The four looked like witches or warlocks huddled around the flames.

  They were positioned at a crossroads, where a small store had a tin roof extending out from its front. A hundred feet opposite the store was a boarded-up tavern. The men had set up the metal drum in the shelter of the overhanging roof, where they could watch the intersection while staying out of the falling snow. They were not carrying rifles, at least not that she could see in the flickering light from the flames. They were talking quietly and smoking, keeping warm around their fire, unconcerned about the remote chance of anyone passing their sentry position while it was snowing at night. Still, there was no way that she could possibly sneak past them on the road unseen.

  It was probably already around midnight, and she could not stop for the night anywhere so close to a position guarded by enemy soldiers. Reluctantly, she decided to backtrack and find a place to strike out cross-country to maneuver around them.

  A few hundred yards back she came to a small lane, probably a dirt road beneath the snow, judging by its unevenness. She thought it ran eastward, based only on her previous guess that she had been walking south. In actuality, she had no idea which direction she was going; she just hoped that this narrow lane, with two low ruts, one on either side of a central hump, might take her around the foreign sentries.

  The narrow road could have been a long private driveway. No street sign named it, though the lack of a street sign didn’t mean much in itself. Many if not most street signs had been scavenged or removed over the past year. The steel pipes and aluminum plates were useful for do-it-yourself projects, such as constructing wells or building stoves. In addition, many people felt that street signs only helped bandits, who used paper road maps to find their way to overlooked neighborhoods, targeted for looting or worse.

  This narrow road just didn’t feel like a public thoroughfare. Fifty feet in, a heavy chain hung across the path, shackled around trees on both sides. The trees were the beginning of thick woods, spaced too closely together to allow the passage of vehicles. Whoever lived in here didn’t want uninvited guests.

  If she was caught on private property, she was likely to be shot as a trespassing bandit. This was the normal response in West Tennessee, after the earthquakes. You just did not trespass on private property, period. Especially not after dark. She understood that not one single step she took was without risk. There was just no risk-free option for traveling on foot during the long emergency. Not last year on the way from Memphis to Mannville, and not now.

  After a few minutes of walking through the woods there was a clearing, and she passed a long single-wide trailer, set a hundred feet back from the one-lane road. It appeared to be uninhabited or even abandoned. Cars were parked randomly in front of the mobile home. They could have been abandoned hulks, but under a fresh layer of snow, it was impossible to be sure. Tall weeds grew around them, protruding high above the snow. There was no way to tell if people were inside the trailer without breaking in. Many people intentionally made their houses look like wrecks; pre-looted, and not worth robbing. If they were inhabited and she forced open the front door, odds were good she’d be meeting Saint Peter with a stomach full of buckshot.

  The land gradually rose before her. She walked up a long hill with about a hundred-foot gain in elevation over a winding half mile. The terrain here wasn’t as flat as it seemed back on the paved county road. That paved road’s path had probably been chosen long ago because it crossed the easiest ground. Two hundred years ago, many such Tennessee roads had been Indian trails. Now this snow-covered dirt road forked, and once again Jenny had to guess her next direction. She was in an area that looked like a Christmas tree forest, composed of little firs tha
t ranged from five to ten feet high on both sides of the road. The trees closed in until they were only a yard from her shoulders on both sides. Still, it was a road. A jeep or even a pickup could drive it. It went somewhere with a purpose.

  The gentle uphill shifted abruptly to a much steeper down slope. The land didn’t run in steady, even undulations. Then the road went back uphill again, until it unexpectedly ended at what seemed to be either a junkyard or a landfill, or perhaps just a local dumping spot. There was sufficient moonlight filtering down to make out a landscape of wrecked cars, kitchen appliances, old tires and a thousand kinds of trash, all covered with a smooth patina of new snow. She had no desire to cross the dump; it was too easy to imagine all sorts of psycho monsters hiding behind every piece of abandoned junk.

  She had to circle around its perimeter, between the derelict machinery and household scrap on her left and the small trees on her right. The dump was a few acres in size, seemingly dug into the base of a bluff. Perhaps the hollow was a natural terrain feature, perhaps not. Old cars and washing machines trailed off into the gnarled and twisted pine woods, and the going became more difficult.

  It had to be after midnight by now. Jenny recalled that the moon was not quite full tonight, so it would go down before dawn. She had done enough night traveling to know that when it was overcast and the moon set, the world would become as black as the inside of a coal mine, and she would literally have to move by feel. So she had to keep walking, and find another road or path before the moon went down.

  The junkyard finally petered out, and the land rose on both sides of her. Her path turned, the sides of her valley became steeper, until she recognized that she was in some kind of a cut or cleft in the face of a steep bluff. With visibility at less than a hundred feet because of the blowing snow, she was traveling by instinct as much as by sight. At least there were no more houses up here, neither empty nor inhabited. There was little chance of running into anyone in this desolate landscape—not a bandit, a property owner, or a soldier.