It puzzled Albert that they had mutually, though independently without any formal consensus or vote decided not to run once they were detected. They could have moved twenty miles away by now and lived to fight another day. There was no explanation for it except that they were tired and worn down by a fight that could not even be defined very well, never mind concluded. They killed the enemy but not to capture targets, not for ground, not for strategic advantage, not for anything except the killing itself. That's what they did now. Maybe they just weren't prepared to move. Fatalistic. They would fight from this little cleft in the limestone fields of southern Indiana until they were destroyed.
Strangelove returned and set up his kit and an M16 with ten or fifteen magazines and another crate of bullets.
"Still time to get away, Albert," he said.
"I'm thinking of it," he said.
"Don't think too long."
Albert had given himself a deadline: Sundown. If Deserter and the others hadn't returned by sundown, he was going to boot it. They had not taken anything from his vehicle except what he offered and the rest of it wasn't much use to them. One man, a former sniper took the M24 and some of the mechanics tools had proved useful in minor repairs, but this was a low-tech operation and nobody seemed much interested in equipment. He offered them the pipe bombs but only a few took them, wary of their instability. He would just get into his truck and leave. No one would stop him but they'd always wonder if he'd been caught and it would leave them on a state of permanent alert.
Sundown came and went and the night crept in. It was warmer than usual because of the cloud cover and he took off his jacket.
A few minutes later, Strangelove said: "There."
Someone on the outer perimeter flashed a light at the camp twice.
"There's two of them," Strangelove said, getting up.
Deserter and Rumplestiltskin came in from the dark and dropped their kit. They looked tired and Deserter was scowling as he pulled out an MRE and ripped it open.
"She died on the way back," Rumplestiltskin said. "We carried her about five miles but she died."
The other woman wiped a hand across her eyes briefly and came out of the shadow.
"What happened?" she asked.
"She got hit right off in the chest after she threw that mine at the Humvee. The mine landed and blew the shit out of them but they got a shot off from somewhere and she took it. Didn't seem too bad. She was still walking okay when we left but after a while she couldn't and we dragged her along between us for a while but she got real heavy all of a sudden and I looked ever and she was dead," Rumplestiltskin said.
"You sure?" an unknown voice asked.
"Yes," Rumplestiltskin answered.
The alert was off and everyone just went back to sleep. One man walked the perimeter while two others remained ensconced in cover.
The woman sat down beside Deserter and Albert heard her say: "She said it was going to happen this time."
"She made it happen," Deserter replied, but it wasn't accusatory or critical; it was just an observation. Cindy had set herself up for the kill. She'd had enough.
Albert walked away and went into his tent. No lights of any kind were permitted and he lay in his cot unable to read or do anything except think; he couldn't even smoke to pass the time.
The next morning was more of the same dull, grey weather with the threat of rain and the distant flicker of lightning.
Deserter came into Albert's tent and sat down with his MRE.
"It was a good ambush," he said without pause, as though he were picking up the conversation from last night.
"She was high up on the slope and we were way down on the other side in the grass. The Humvee came around at about forty and she tossed that thingy of yours and it blew the fucking thing all to hell. Man, what you got in there?"
"Pure fucking hatred," Albert replied.
Deserter nodded, understanding.
"It killed the guy on the fifty and she starts shooting down at them so they all run to the other side of the vehicle for protection and their backs are to us and me and Rumples, we hosed 'em right there. They never saw it coming."
"Too bad about-"
"She made her own choice. I know there's some others getting ready to look for their seventy two virgins."
Albert couldn't understand it. Why would you give up before you had to?
"Because there's nothing to win," he answered. "You've seen these fucking people out there; are they worth it? Fuckin zombies. And what's the point unless you're going to have something for all your pain and trouble, you're going to have a little house and a dog and hamburgers and like that..."
"So go hide in the jungle somewhere until things improve."
"And what, eat bugs?"
"If you have to. Stay alive, for fucksakes!"
"What for? That's what I'm asking you?"
Albert shrugged and looked away.
The ensuing silence was too much for Deserter after a few minutes and he started talking again.
"I never would have believed it even six-eight months ago," he said. "I mean all that shit about HR this and HR that, secret laws to take over the fucking country and the fucking BatFaggots planting dope and guns on people and doing hits and the fucking CIA...you know, all that shit. I listened to that jackass on the radio and man I thought he was the biggest dumbfuck I'd ever heard. Fuck me, man I saw those planes hit in 2001. I was there, so what's all this shit about bombs inside the buildings and drones and all that stuff, right? But I start to think about this passport, this paper passport that they say flew out of one of the planes after it exploded in the building and burned at two thousand degrees or something, melted the steel and all that but not this paper passport, which floats down through the fucking smoke and cinders and dust and shit that is flying around there and lands completely untouched on the sidewalk where an FBI guy picks it up and says: "Look what I found!" That's the thing that got me, see? All the other shit I can live with, but not that. And once that started working on me, I just...I don't know...I just couldn't feel the ends of my fingers anymore, kind of like. I saw it but what did I really saw?"
Albert shrugged and bit into a fruit bar.
"And then when I actually saw UN troops in this country rounding up American citizens it finally occurred to me."
"What, the nuts were right all along?"
"Shit no. They're all liars. Fucking liars. The whole fucking thing is just a big lie and all that ever happens is that people without conscience screw people with conscience. That's it. That's the whole meatball. That's how come we let them into this country, all those stinking fucking Ragheads with their Mudslime religion and tiptoeing around the fuckin Niggers who are laughin the whole time and the fuckin Jews stealing everything that ain't nailed down and all of it...you know?"
"Just poor innocent white guys getting screwed," Albert said.
"Ya. You ain't a Jew or something, are you?"
"Fuck you," Albert said.
"No, really. I had lotsa Jewish friends...I-"
"Man, I'm telling you to fuck off with that. What I am or what I am not I do not discuss with you or anybody else."
"I know you're a Nigger-lover; I've seen that in action," Deserter said, but Albert wouldn't take the bait.
"As I said before: Go fuck yourself," Albert replied.
"Okay, okay. You don't play well with others," Deserter laughed.
Albert resettled himself and continued to eat quietly and Deserter played with his breakfast by stirring the plastic bag of yellow vomit that was described on the label as scrambled eggs.
"You figure it was Rags that started this?" Albert said after a while.
"The army didn't know, that's for sure. They got caught sleeping just like everyone else. I personally think it was rags. I kill every fuckin Mudslime I see, I don't give a flyin fuck. I hate them bastards more than hell itself."
Albert wasn't so sure that Islamic terrorism explained what had happened. It was the
kind of simple, well-organized and deliberate plan of people who wanted to get away with it, who wanted to live to reap the rewards, to live to kill again. People just like him.
"They rounded up everyone, like I told you, no questions asked. I don't even know what happened to 'em. I can tell you this. The military had a hacker program that could get into just about any computer and you couldn't find it to save your life. It just sent every keystroke back to some headquarters and they could tell every word you wrote, every site you went to...everything. It makes me kinda think they probably knew something..."
"And they just let it happen, right, so they could have the excuse they needed to take over the country. Fuck that."
"Na. I think they fucked up. Left hand right hand, department jealousies, fifth column inside the government...you name it. But deliberate?...I don't know. That's an awful lot of smart planning and keeping things quiet, wouldn't you say? Not that it matters now, huh?" Deserter said, grinning and standing up.
Cindy's death was acknowledged a few days later when her belongings, which amounted to another set of fatigues, a few female things like brushes and some photographs of unknown people: a large family with three others in uniform. Cindy was grinning in the middle. The other woman took most of it and the rucksack and a poncho were left for anyone who needed one.
At the end of his second week of convalescence, Albert decided he'd had enough. He was walking and could put weight on it. There was a constant, stabbing pain that seemed to cycle with his blood flow or his pulse but it was manageable.
Fully armed, he decided to go for a walk and several heads turned his way as he headed out the "front door" into the woods. This was a portion of Hoosier National Forest that had been kept in its original state as much as possible and the trees were huge, some five feet in diameter. The Ash was all dying from the Chinese Emerald Ash Borer, which had by 2013, ruined a million acres. He took a quick sighting with his compass and headed straight down the first deer trail he came to and walked along as quietly as possible, planting each footstep with care and hoping to see something of the old world still alive. And he was not disappointed. He surprised a pair of yearlings with their mother and saw them vanish into the kaleidoscope of greens and browns and yellows hushing in the breeze. There were plenty of squirrels and birds and he remembered walks with Ludwig who leapt through the holes in the foliage that Albert couldn't even see. It was a long time ago, it seemed. He didn't cry about Ludwig anymore. He remembered him as he was and not how he died, his own wound having worked some kind of voodoo on his mind that allowed him finally to abjure the constant revisiting of that scene, that precipitous moment that had started this machine in which he was trapped. He found some mushrooms, late in the year though it was and plenty of wild onion and garlic. He found a dark pool in a corner of the Emit River and thought briefly of jumping in but decided against it. At one time Bluegill were plentiful here and a half dozen made a meal but he had no fishing gear nor the inclination, really to remain static. He'd had enough of that.
The land rose and fell in gentle undulations of clay and limestone and the occasional sink hole that revealed the dark underworld of Karst that was said to run for hundreds of square miles below. It seemed that he had found a primitive, almost innocent corner of the world in which a variety of languages were spoken, but only rarely and the wind in the leaves was the principle orchestra.
That is why the sound of human voices was so startling. His heart began to pound and he broke out in a sweat of fear as he stepped off the trail and got himself behind some cover.
There were men and women, but he couldn't make out their words. With a terrible, burdensome slowness, he pushed and pulled aside the branches and leaves that clung to him as he worked his way to the campsite. He smelled the fire and heard the argument now that was ongoing between two women.
One said: "I'm not going and I don't give a damn."
And then the other said: "Mom, you have to come. We can't stay here. We've got nothing to eat."
And then a man's voice said: "You want to die here, that's fine with me."
Albert expected he didn't mean that and probably already regretted saying it. The woman was crying and he heard the daughter comforting her. In a few minutes he heard the scrabble of their bodies pushing through the foliage and after waiting another five minutes or so, he walked out into their campsite and saw the fire pit, which was still smoking. He smothered it and then pissed on it and stirred it, just like Smokey the Bear would have told him to do and then he sat down on one of the logs they had dragged in. They had been sleeping in a small lean-to and keeping themselves alive with at least one rabbit and some raspberries. Then he saw the reason for the mother's recalcitrance. The arm of a boy, maybe three years old was just visible in the dirt where the mice had started to uncover it. He piled some flagstones over it and checked the fire again and headed back.
When he arrived, Deserter was waiting for him.
"Good," he said.
Albert shrugged.
"We're going to hit their base at Brantford. You wanna come?"
This was the largest attack they had considered so far. The Brantford base was an old stone library surrounded by sandbagged .50 caliber machine guns, a tank and about fifteen heavily armed, regular soldiers who were not bound by any conventions or treaties regarding the treatment of their enemies. The American government had told the UN troops explicitly that they were all immunized against prosecution for anything they might have to do "in the interests of the country."
"We know you are honorable and you will never use this extraordinary power to further personal ends, to resolve individual grudges or indulge in private profiteering. That is why we are giving you immunity from prosecution in advance. We know we can trust you, just as you can trust us."
One of the men Albert had seen around but never spoken to was Randolf, a black marine from Ghana who had been part of a UN unit out of Valparaiso. In a fire fight outside of Chicago, his troop had been wiped out. The enemy in this case had been a black gang from Gary who jerked him to his feet and asked him what he was doing in America? He had been told that black people in the U.S. would, to a man, welcome UN intervention and assist them in every way in order to destroy "the racist, fascist, war-monger, lap-dog capitalist, etc. etc. regime..."
A few weeks later, the Blackest Of Souls who adopted him, were destroyed in a shoot-out with MS-13 Latinos and once again, Randolf escaped. In his thick, African-English he explained that now all he wanted to do was kill the people who made him come here.
"I got nothing against you Americans," he said. "Let's just kill everybody and go home."
He was the one who convinced the group that negotiations, surrender and humanitarian rules did not apply.
"You just better kill them because they going to kill every body," he said. "They been told it's okay, don't worry, be happy," he laughed.
Albert listened to Deserter's plan and the comments of some others. It sounded reasonable, considering they weren't certain about what was waiting for them. But it was a long way away...almost 40 miles.
"I'm not going to be part of a column of fifteen men walking for two days," Albert said after the conversation had lulled. No one said anything. That was the rule. No one was ever persuaded to do anything.
"I know a few back roads to Brantford from here. What I am suggesting is this: We have my truck, which can carry maybe ten plus one up front with me and you have a couple of vehicles that could take the rest. I know it's dangerous but it means the difference between getting there in let's say an hour or two or taking two days of marching and then getting into a fight."
"I suppose any way you do it, it's a suicide mission," one man said and there were several nodding heads in the crowd.
"I think Albert's got something there," Deserter said. "Even if we have to retreat on foot, at least we didn't have to bust our asses gettin there."
"The roads are watched all the time," another voice commented. "They sweep them
constantly with satellite and who knows what else they are using that we don't even know about."
"But they can't cover every road all the time," Albert said. "What I am saying is, we take a bunch of different roads, short hops here and there and come out about a mile from the library."
And so it went for several hours until a workable plan was devised to attack the library at Brantford. Of the fifteen or so members of the group, twelve had decided to go along. The other three were packing a few belongings and heading out into the woods. One of them was the other woman in the group, a slight girl with a plain, forgettable face.
"Where are you going?" Albert asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I think I might just start walking. You want to come?"
Albert shook his head and absently massaged his leg. She didn't seem surprised and went back to tightening her pack straps. No one even said goodbye.
Albert returned to his tent and began sorting through his weapons and trying to decide what to bring and what was a waste of space and weight. The .22 could stay along with the boxes of ammo and-
"Shit," he said out loud. "Nobody's coming back."
The only thing he left behind were the weapons he'd taken from the men he had killed. He didn't have enough .223 to make use of them and he didn't want their 9mm pistols. He kept Monteith's pistol for a special purpose, but the rest he left in the tent. He noticed the others packing and gathering equipment did not bother to take the tents down or remove the camouflage netting. They were leaving behind hundreds of MREs.
Deserter signaled to him and Albert followed him through the brush to a small clearing where they had parked the three vehicles. Albert started the truck and a blast of heavy smoke shot out the exhaust.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 30
