Harden

by D. J. Molles

  ***

  Lee and Julia were back in the kitchen.

  Lee watched Julia carefully. She had her arms crossed over her chest. Contemplating her feet with a frown.

  She realized she was being watched and looked up. “What?”

  Lee’s mouth made a grim line. He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have made you do that,”

  “You didn’t make me do anything.”

  Abe, Mitch and Paolo trundled down the stairs, looking expectantly at Lee.

  Lee found Paolo and motioned with his head towards the basement. “Make it quick. That was the deal.”

  Paolo snarled. “He doesn’t deserve quick.”

  Lee didn’t budge. “Make it quick.”

  Paolo stared at him for a long moment, rage flushing his face, tears shimmering at the bottom of his eyes. Then he nodded once, and went down the basement steps. His footfalls were slow and heavy.

  Lee gestured Abe towards the table. “You got the maps?”

  “Yeah.” Abe stepped to the table and opened the map pouch on his vest, behind his magazines. He brought out a tumble of folded papers, limp from his sweat. “What do we need?”

  “Alabama,” Lee answered. “The southern portion, if you got it.”

  Abe fished around through the pile of maps, came up with one. Swept the others to the side of the table and laid that one flat. “Okay. Southern Alabama. What am I looking for?”

  “City’s called Andalusia,” Lee answered, peering over Abe’s shoulder. “Should be east of it. Looking for a regional airport.”

  “Hm,” Abe nodded, his finger tracing over the map. “Everyone loves airports these days.”

  “Good fences,” Lee said.

  “Here’s Andalusia,” Abe tapped his finger. Traced eastward. Found the tiny airplane icon. “Must be this right here.”

  Lee nodded. Felt a measure of relief. “Well, he wasn’t lying about it. So that’s good.”

  A gunshot rocked the house.

  Everyone twitched at the sound of it, but otherwise didn’t react.

  Abe glanced at Lee, then back at the map. “Good thing we confirmed that before he died.”

  Lee shrugged. “There’s no confirming anything until we’re there. Could still be a trap.”

  Mitch hunched himself over the map with them. “What’s the significance of the airport?”

  “Airport is where the fuel is. Some diesel, some regular automotive.” Lee straightened up. “Pumping station is out, for now. Guy said there’s no working pumping stations until you get down into Louisiana. I don’t want to push us that far. However, this airport right here is where they cache tanker trucks. The trucks get filled up, then they get stationed here, then they get dispatched to whatever settlement needs them. According to the guy.”

  “How heavily guarded?” Abe asked.

  “Pretty heavy.”

  Julia spoke up from beside Lee. “He estimated between ten and twenty guards. Said he’d only been there once. Hadn’t really paid attention.”

  Abe looked at Julia. “You believe him?”

  She shrugged. “If he was trying to lead us into a trap, I’d assume he’d try to make it sound like an easy target. I think he was telling the truth.”

  Abe crossed his arms. Rested them on top of his magazines. “Next question: Do we wait for the Marines or try to roll on our own?”

  Lee made a pained face. “The ten of us to assault a possible twenty, in a fortified location?”

  Abe let out a heavy breath through his nose. “We wait for the Marines, that still only evens the odds. Nowhere near what we need. According to the book.”

  “There are other intangibles that can make up the difference. Good intel. Surprise. Speed. Better weapons. Better training.”

  “Better weapons—maybe,” Abe pointed out. “Better training—we hope. A lot of these fuckers in these cartels are ex-military. Depends on who they decided to staff their fuel cache with. A bunch of locals pressed into service? Or a bunch of hard-charging true believers?”

  Mitch cleared his throat. “Lee, there’s something else we need to think about.”

  Lee looked at him.

  Mitch went into the side pocket of his pants. Came out with a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it, then passed it to Lee. “This was pinned to one of the bodies out on the road.”

  Lee took the paper.

  Handwritten. Big block letters in black magic marker.

  BUTLER GEORGIA

  Lee stared at the letters for a while. Until they started to burn a pattern into his eyes. When he blinked, he saw their negative image hovering there in the momentary blackness. He laid the paper down on the table, to the right of their map.

  Julia grabbed it by one of the corners, as though she were about to read it, but she already had, and she whipped it away from her. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean? Is that a threat? Like ‘turn back or else’? And how the fuck do they know about Butler?”

  The paper had drifted to Mitch’s side of the table after Julia’s toss. He picked it up. Folded it again. “You read what I read.”

  Abe swore. “If we move on that fuel dump, we leave Butler exposed.”

  Lee held up a hand. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. All we got is a scrap of paper with the name of a place on it. That doesn’t mean shit.”

  Abe frowned. “It means they know about it. And why the hell would they tell us that if it wasn’t a threat?”

  Lee shook his head. “Abe, it won’t be the first time we’ve had to make a gamble.”

  Abe didn’t like it. “Shit, I understand where you’re coming from Lee. I do. I just don’t…I don’t feel good about it.”

  Lee faced him, irritated. “You don’t feel good? Well, fuck, Abe, I don’t feel good either. I don’t feel good about any of this shit. But we do what we have to do.”

  “This is how Lucas died.”

  Lee’s hands clenched reflexively. He felt a wash of heat descend on his head. “How long have you been wanting to get that off your chest?”

  Abe’s lips pulled back like he had a biting remark, but then he seemed to snap it off with his teeth. “Lee, I’ve been with you every step of the way. I never fucking brought it up. Shit happens. But you can’t make these gambles with peoples’ lives.”

  “It’s always a fucking gamble,” Lee said through his teeth. “Every time we leave the fucking Safe Zone, it’s a goddamned gamble.”

  Mitch had edged his way around the table and now interjected himself between them. “Alright. Both of you shut the fuck up. This isn’t helping.”

  Before either Abe or Lee could retort, Julia spoke quickly. “We hit the fuel dump.”

  Three sets of eyes looked at her.

  She nodded. “We wait for the Marines, then we hit the fuel dump. If we do it quick—like in the next day—then they’ll react to that, and they won’t go after Butler.”

  The basement stairs creaked.

  Lee looked back, saw Carl standing at the top step, looking in at them.

  “Everything okay up here?” he asked.

  There was the slightest pause from the four of them.

  Lee waved Carl off. “Yeah. It’s good. Just…passionately exchanging viewpoints.”

  Another gunshot rocked the house, coming from the basement.

  Carl spun around in the stairwell, jerking his rifle up. “The fuck…Paolo! You okay?”

  There came no answer from the basement, and then all five of them were tumbling down the stairs in a rush of feet…

  At the bottom, they stopped.

  But they didn’t move closer.

  They just sort of huddled together at the base of the stairs.

  The man that they’d interrogated still hung from the rafters, his body slowly twisting on its axis, a hole in his forehead, the back of his head still dripping.

  On the pull-out couch, Paolo lay, in an almost peaceful repose. His silver pistol was still in his right hand. Gunsmoke seeped out of his mouth and nostrils. The wall beh
ind him was speckled with blood and bone and brain.

  It was like they were all waiting for someone to come up with something intelligent to do, but for the life of them, they couldn’t figure out what that was.

  “Motherfucker,” Carl finally muttered. “I left him for two goddamned seconds.”

  “Why the fuck did he kill himself?” Julia wondered aloud, her tone only mildly curious. Almost academic.

  “He found out about his people,” Lee answered her.

  After another long moment of silence, Carl reiterated, “I left him for two goddamned seconds.”

  The moment felt strange. Removed from reality.

  Maybe they were all waiting for it to punch them as hard as they thought that it should.

  But it just didn’t.

  After the violent deaths of people that they loved, the suicide of this relative stranger seemed like a distant tragedy. Something you hear about through the rumor mill.

  Yesterday there had been an entire group of people. And Paolo had been their leader. And now they were just…gone.

  But it didn’t rise up in any of them.

  They had already paid out their own grief, and gone bankrupt.

  They could not afford to grieve for the loss of strangers.

  They didn’t have anything to say.

  They didn’t have anything to feel.

  At the most, perhaps they felt bad for not feeling much.

  Slowly, gradually, their eyes fell away from Paolo, and wandered over into the corners of the room, and then to each other.

  Abe met Lee’s eyes, and he dipped his head. “Sorry.”

  Lee wasn’t sure if he was sorry for Paolo, or sorry for bringing up Lucas. He supposed it didn’t matter which. He gave Abe a single nod. Water under the bridge.

  Grudges were hard to hold onto when you lived in the shadow of death.

  Julia shuffled her feet. Cleared her throat. “The little airfield where they held Carl and Brian. It’s only a few miles from us now. I think we should try to secure it. Meet the Marines there.”

  Lee nodded slowly. Turned away from the scene in the basement. “Let’s get our shit together. Get out of here.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ─▬▬▬─

  BREACH

  It followed the scent trails.

  It followed the beaten leaves.

  The way was clear and required no thought. The Alpha could follow the path easily at a strong trot, and its sharp ears heard the movements of its pack mates following it.

  The scent was the smell of the Easy Prey.

  The Alpha knew that there were many trails through these woods, through all the land that it hunted, and all of those trails were from prey, because everything was prey.

  But The Alpha also knew that some prey were hard and some prey were easy.

  Some prey had teeth and claws. Some prey had horns on their heads that could gouge and gore. Some prey ran very fast.

  This prey was none of those things.

  This prey was slow, soft, clawless, fangless.

  Easy Prey.

  The Alpha gained speed as it followed the trail, faster and faster until it was loping through soft pine forest.

  The trail ended in water. Water that trickled from a cave that was not a cave. A big, perfectly round cave. Something that the Easy Prey had made. The Alpha knew this, vestigially.

  The Easy Prey’s only defense was that they were clever.

  But The Alpha and its pack mates were also clever.

  It bent down to the murky water. Smelled it. Determined it was good enough to drink, and then refreshed itself. Then it sat on its haunches and looked at the cave, while the pack gathered around, chuffing softly to themselves, scenting the air.

  The cave was where the scent of the Easy Prey was coming from. Strong.

  The Alpha sidled up to the cave. Tilted its head to look at it from different angles. Deciphering it.

  The mouth of the cave was covered. With sticks that were not sticks. Sticks that could not be broken. These sticks were cold to the touch. Not like sticks in the woods. It was familiar with these sticks. These sticks were also something that the Easy Prey had made with their cleverness. Like the long, thin strands that hummed menacingly and would kill you if you touched them.

  The sticks that covered the mouth of the cave didn’t hum. But still, experience told The Alpha to be cautious, so it reached out and batted at them to test them.

  The sticks weren’t dangerous.

  It wrapped its long fingers around the sticks and tugged at them.

  The sticks rattled. It didn’t know what made them rattle, but it knew that if they rattled like that, then they could be defeated somehow. It chuffed to itself, then louder, to its pack mates. Turned in a short circle of frustration, and then came back to the mouth of the cave. Grabbed the sticks. Shook them again, but this time much harder.

  And this time something else rattled.

  The Alpha looked at the thing that had rattled. It was a small thing. Kind of a circle, but not quite a circle.

  Intrigued, The Alpha pulled on the sticks again. The small, circle-thing caught. Kept the sticks from pulling away. Just that one, small, circle-thing. That was all that held the sticks in place.

  One of its pack mates squeezed in, shoulder-to-shoulder, reached out and hooked a finger around the circle-thing. It tugged violently at it, but the circle-thing wouldn’t budge. The pack mate retreated, mumbling disconsolately to itself.

  The Alpha was more patient than its pack mate. Experience had taught it that it could go most places where the Easy Prey went. It just took time to figure out their clever tricks.

  It played with the circle-thing for a time. Tugged it. Rattled it. Pushed it.

  Finally, it squeezed the circle-thing.

  The circle-thing broke.

  Except it didn’t really break. Not like a stick would break. Because when The Alpha released its grip, the circle-thing made itself whole again.

  It grunted loudly at this discovery. Its half-human brain logged it in with the rest of its experiences. Learning. Adapting.

  It squeezed the circle-thing again and again, repeatedly breaking it and making it whole.

  If it could break the circle-thing, then it could remove the circle-thing.

  The Alpha eyed the thing for a few beats of its rapid heart. Leaned forward and smelled it. Then leaned back again. Grasped it one last time. Squeeze. Break. And then lift.

  The circle-thing came away.

  The Alpha tossed it to the side, then pulled at the sticks again.

  This time, the sticks came away from the mouth of the cave. They creaked with a familiar sound. A sound that meant the way is open, the path is clear.

  The cave stood open before it.

  The Alpha chuffed softly at its pack mates who had gathered excitedly behind it, and then they went in.

  ***

  Sam met Charlie at the same spot in the woods as they’d met before.

  It was earlier this time because Sam had overnight guard shift. The sun was just setting below the tree line and casting the woods in a dull blue, but he appreciated the light. The woods weren’t as worrisome when it wasn’t full dark.

  Part of him was disappointed that he wasn’t going to make it to…well, whatever it was that they called it when they met in the house beyond the Safe Zone.

  A party? Not quite.

  A hangout?

  But he was also relieved that he wouldn’t have to be outside at night.

  Why did they even meet out there? Charlie had said that they did it so they could hangout without rules, but Sam had gotten the distinct sense when he was there that there was more to it. The sense that those who regularly hung out there were holding back because he was present.

  Charlie was waiting for him out in the open this time.

  She smiled when he got there, but it was constrained.

  “Hey, Charlie,” he said, and reached for a hug.

  She accepted the hug
and gave him a quick pat on the back.

  He was hoping for a bit more than that and pulled back with a small frown that he quickly hid from her.

  “You mentioned that you had something?” she said.

  Cutting right to the chase then.

  Sam felt off kilter. Couldn’t help feeling dejected. “Right. Yeah.”

  She watched him, like a teacher waiting for their stuttering student to finally spit out the right answer.

  After planning all day to tell her, Sam hesitated. “Charlie…” he shuffled his feet. “Why do you need this information anyways?”

  Exasperation flashed across her features. “Because I want to know what the hell’s going on around here. Don’t you?”

  “I guess. Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  He nodded slowly, trying to see it from her perspective and not really getting there. But the big motivator was those eyes looking up at him, waiting for him to prove himself to her. And he felt keenly, though he couldn’t articulate it to himself in that moment, that he needed to show how useful he was to her. Maybe that would impress her.

  “Colonel Staley was at my house last night,” Sam said, taking a glance around as though to make sure they were alone. He instinctively lowered his voice. “He was leaving just as I got home. He and Angela were having some sort of meeting. They didn’t seem happy.”

  “Did you hear anything they were talking about?”

  “No,” Sam shook his head. Watched disappointment come over her face, and immediately jumped in to mitigate it. “But I heard some talk amongst the other guards.”

  Her eyebrows went up. Re-engaged.

  Sam felt a bubble of satisfaction. “Some of the guys were saying that some Marines were gearing up today. Rumor was that they were going to head south tomorrow morning. But they didn’t say what for.”

  “How many Marines?” Charlie asked him.

  Sam felt surprised by the question. Why would she want specifics like that? “I’m not sure. The guys made it sound like it wasn’t that many. Maybe a squad or two.”