by D W McAliley
Marcus walked through the empty halls and corridors, climbing his way out of the basement levels slowly. The Chief stayed a few steps behind him and to the left, an ever-vigilant pair of eyes in the back of Marcus' head whether he wanted them there or not. He didn't stop on the way directly to Commander Price's office. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to be rid of the report and back to his bunk for a shower and a much needed rest.
Two armed guards stood outside the door to the Commander's office, which was open. Another pair of body guards was inside in the back corners of the room. The two door guards came to attention as Marcus approached, but the two behind the Commander remained relaxed and poised to move if a threat somehow made it past the threshold. The Chief stopped just inside the door and took a position next to the opening. His back was against the wall and his gun arm was on the far side of his body from the door.
Commander Price looked up as Marcus came in. He keyed a few commands into his keyboard, shut down whatever process he'd been running, and sent the screen into a graphic display of fractal geometry.
"I take it you found something, Marcus?" Commander Price asked.
Marcus dropped the secure portfolio onto the desk. "The full report is contained in the notes, sir," he replied. "I pushed the prisoner as far as I physically could. We'll restart the process in a few hours."
Commander Price heaved a heavy sigh. "Thank you, Lt. Commander," he said in a weary tone. "Is there anything else?"
Marcus paused and really looked into Commander Price's face for the first time in weeks. The man was tired, and his age was showing more than Marcus had ever seen. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face had thinned noticeably. Commander Price's cheeks were more sunken in than they should have been, and his shoulders slumped.
"Commander Price, you once told me you needed someone to trust," Marcus said hesitantly. "I have done everything you have ordered me to do, to the letter, sir. Haven't I earned your trust yet?"
"You've followed your orders," Commander Price agreed, nodding, "but you've also voiced some pretty strong objections, repeatedly."
"Moral objections, sir," Marcus replied, standing his ground. "Would you expect anything less? And regardless of my objections, as you said, I've followed orders. Now, you're neck deep in something, and it's wearing you down, but you hide it from me every time I enter the room. Your paranoia is going to kill you, sir, and that may mean it kills a lot more than just you."
"Lt. Commander, the burdens of command can be great," Comdr. Price said after a long moment. "But they are the burden of the Commander, not his men."
"No," Marcus grated through clenched teeth, "the Commander's men get only the burdens of execution. He answered a question for the first time, said who was giving him orders. The position, not the man, but that should be easy enough to figure out given your system."
The file was in Commander Price's hands before Marcus was done speaking. The tired, deflated man that had stood there a moment before was suddenly invigorated. He leafed through the notes quickly, nodding as he skimmed the major bullet points.
"You're sure this is what he said?" Commander Price asked.
"Trust me," Marcus said, "When you have to look into his eyes while he's saying it, the words tend to stick. You can listen to the audio file if you really feel it's necessary. Sir."
Commander Price nodded absently, choosing not to hear the bitterness in Marcus' voice. "Thank you, Lt. Commander, you may go now. And close the door on your way out, please."
Marcus ground his teeth, came to attention, spun on his heel to leave.
"And Lt. Cmdr.," Commander Price called, just before Marcus actually reached the door, "I do trust you. And as soon as I can tell you about this project, I will. You have my word."
Then Marcus was out the door with the Chief in tow. The door closed behind him.
Ch.57
While It's Hot
The rain had finally slacked off enough to rightly be called a drizzle when Eric slipped his poncho over his head and stepped out from under the covered portion of the front porch and bounded down the steps. He walked across the front yard in an eerie diffused glow that seemed to radiate from the sky and the ground equally, which made it impossible to tell what time of day it was, only that it was light. Eric knew from the steady movement of the clock hanging over the fireplace that it was a little before three in the afternoon, and that helped some.
As he neared the guard post set back in the trees to the left of the gate, Steven stepped out and pushed the hood of his own poncho back, a broad grin splitting his face. "They're cooking the tenderloins, aren't they?"
Eric nodded. "Yeah, and you'd better hurry to get some while it's hot."
"Thanks, Mr. Eric," Steven said, already running for the farmhouse. "I'll bring some out to you!" he called over his shoulder.
Eric chuckled to himself but didn't put too much hope in there being any leftovers. The buck wasn't small, but the tenderloin strips in a big deer are never really large. Eric had managed to snag one piece on his way out the door, but it was small and too hot to really taste when he ate it. Still, he'd had plenty of tenderloin before, and some of those in the farmhouse never had, so Eric didn't think too much about it.
In fact, as he settled into the cold dampness of the dreary afternoon around him, he tried his best to keep his thoughts off warm smells and hot comfort food. Instead, he focused on the sounds around him, limited as they were. Mostly it was drizzle sifting down from the canopy overhead to patter in large drops from the branches onto the dead leaves below. Every now and then, a squirrel would chatter, or a bird would fly by, but it was always a short and random spurt of activity followed by the monotonous dripping.
To keep himself tuned in, Eric practiced sighting at targets with the iron sites on his AR-15. He'd taken off the tactical scope to keep it out of the rain and had replaced it with some previously adjusted iron sights for guard duty. In low light he had a hard time really focusing down range with this type of sight setup, and it worried him that he might get caught at a disadvantage down the road.
Eric put the gun to his shoulder, settled into a sitting position with one knee raised in front of him, and rested the rifle on his knee. He picked a pine cone in a pine tree on the other side of the road and a good thirty yards down from him. He practiced breathing slowly and rhythmically, steadying his hands and painting the sight picture his father had taught him years ago at the river field range. He kept the safety engaged the whole time, just in case, but practicing the movements of aiming helped steady his hands and kept him occupied
After a while, Eric heard footsteps to his right and turned to find Christina behind him with a small bundle wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. She stepped into the little cleared out area they'd labeled as the guard post. It was nestled in the center of three small cedar trees that offered dark shade but still gave a good view of the gate and the driveway on both sides of it. The position was difficult to see when coming down the road, but it gave a perfect field of fire on the gate.
Christina wore a dark gray poncho of similar material to Eric's camouflage one. She handed the bundle to him with a nudge of her elbow. "If you're going to be out here in the cold, you've got to eat something, babe."
"Yes ma'am," Eric teased as he opened the package carefully. There was a plastic bowl inside with three fried tenderloin cutlets in homemade biscuits. Eric unwrapped the towel that tightly covered the top of the entire bundle and then opened the first biscuit. The warm smell of Nanny's kitchen rose to meet him, and his stomach growled.
"Have you eaten?" Eric asked.
"I had one," Christina said absently, but she took one of the biscuits when Eric offered it to her.
"You need to eat too," Eric reminded her and gave her stomach a meaningful look.
Christina looked down and blushed prettily for a moment, but her face was serious when she met Eric's eyes again. "We need to tell them, Eric," Christina said firmly. "I know you'
re scared, and so am I, but we need to tell them sooner rather than later."
Eric sighed and nodded, "I know," he said softly. "It just worries me."
"Do you think your parents are going to flip out or something?" Christina asked, twisting the diamond solitaire on her left finger. "I mean, it's not like we're kids or just dating or anything. We're supposed to get married next year."
Eric shrugged. "I don't know; maybe it's that," he said, picking at the last biscuit. "Maybe it's more that I'm just not sure if now's a good time to bring a kid into the world the way things are."
"Is it ever?" Christina asked, pushing against him with her shoulder.
"Yeah, well, you know what I mean," Eric replied, refusing to meet her playful looks. "Besides, I'm not sure if I'm really the person who needs to bring a kid into the world anyway."
"And what do you mean by that?" Christina asked, her head suddenly snapping around, and her eyes sharp.
"I haven't exactly been the model of good civilized behavior," Eric mumbled, his hand going absently to the necklace beneath his shirt.
Christina reached up and gently pulled his hand away from his neck with one hand and lifted Eric's chin with the fingers of her other until his eyes met hers. "There is NO other person in the world I would rather have a baby with, Eric. And I mean every word of that. You are a good man, and you're going to be a good husband and a good father. You do what you have to in order to keep us safe, secure, and fed. Don't ever get down on yourself like that."
Eric didn't reply for a while as Christina's words settled on him. This was the first time he'd come out and said what had been pressing on him since she'd first hinted she might be in a delicate condition. It felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and chest, and he could breathe easily for the first time in days. His mind had been so focused on Christina that he hadn't even considered how his parents might react to the news.
"Wait," Eric said as the implications of Christina's question dawned on him fully for the first time, "do you think Mom and Dad will be upset?"
Christina shrugged and settled her head against his shoulder again. "I don't know, Eric, they're your parents," she replied.
"Yeah, well, that brings up something I wanted to ask you," Eric began hesitantly, then stopped.
Christina sat expectantly, waiting for him to finish the thought, but Eric was suddenly focused down the road. "What is it, Eric?" Christina whispered softly. "Do you see something?"
Eric shook his head. "I heard voices, though," he answered just as softly, "but it was only for a minute. Sounded like someone coming down the road."
They were both quiet, and then Christina thought she heard something too, like a muffled laugh. Eric looked back at her, and she nodded. He set the bundle carefully behind a stump to his left so it would be visible from the gate. Eric rose and eased out from under the cover of the cedar trees, but motioned for her to stay put. Christina drew a small .380 from a holster belted around her poncho, and she clicked the safety off, then nodded to Eric.
Eric walked around to position himself right next to the gate, and he waited. After a moment, two figures materialized out of the rainy gloom that obscured everything past the end of the woods and the beginning of the fields leading up to Cutler's Run. The figure on the right was Tom, and he walked a few feet away and a couple of paces behind the man on the left. Every few steps, Tom's shoulders would shake with a nasty sounding wet cough, but his hands were steady on his rifle as he walked.
The man on the left was the would-be poacher, Danny.
Eric relaxed a bit as the two men got closer to the gate. Tom stopped and nodded to Danny. "Eric, you need to get your father," Tom said, "The Captain's gonna want to talk to this guy."
Before any of the men could answer or make a move, Christina stepped noiselessly out of the woods, the neatly wrapped and tied plastic bundle in one hand and her .380 in the other. She made a show of carefully clicking the safety on the pistol and holstering it, then leaned over and kissed Eric soundly on the lips.
"Don't worry, babe," Christina said with a wink, "I'll go get your dad. You stay out here and get reacquainted with your new friend."
Christina whirled and started walking away before Eric could collect his thoughts enough to form a response. When he turned back to the other two men, they were both trying unsuccessfully not to chuckle. Eric's teeth clicked as he closed his mouth and glared at them.
"Shut up," he mumbled, his cheeks warming. He walked over to the other side of the gate and leaned against the tall pine tree to wait for his father. He tried to ignore the water dripping down his neck from the pine tree overhead as brooding thoughts rolled over and over in his mind.
Ch.58
Half Heard Words
Mike was dreaming. At least, he was relatively sure that he was. He knew he wasn't awake; that much was certain. There were voices speaking around him, but none were his. That was a comforting fact. Mike tried to understand the voices, tried to focus in on them and understand the words, but they kept slipping away.
He was hot again, and sweating.
Mike sat up in bed, and a shiver ran through his body. He blinked, and confusion slowly gave way to a dim impression of memory. It was dark in the room now, and the first thing he was sure of was that he felt better. His muscles weren't as stiff or sore as he'd thought they would be, and his head was no longer pounding. His sheets and pillow were damp with fresh sweat, and he wondered if he was fighting off another fever.
Mike listened carefully as he sat in the darkness and tried to pick up even the faintest sound. He heard the deep, rhythmic breathing from outside the open doorway, but he couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. Someone was deeply asleep, in any case. Other than that, a cricket chirped loudly from some hidden corner inside, echoing the dimly heard songs from outside the high window behind his bed.
Mike cursed under his breath and lay back down. One of the only sounds that had always kept him awake at night was crickets chirping. He once slept through a category three hurricane in an open garage, but a singing cricket would get him every time. He briefly considered tracking the insect down and squashing it, but he quickly discounted the idea. Not only was he far too weak to crawl along the floor, he was fairly certain he’d make enough noise to wake the dead.
So, Mike stared at the dark ceiling overhead and listened to the night sounds, trying to ignore the crickets, both inside and out. After a while he was pulled from his reverie by the sound of distant footsteps echoing down the hall. There was some muffled noise from out in the hallway, and whoever was sleeping was roused.
Two shadowy figures stepped into the room through the door at the other side, and Mike heard Maria's voice whisper. "How is he doing now? Did the fever break?"
"Yeah, I hope it did anyway," Alyssa answered. "He was mumbling something earlier, but I think he might have been dreaming. What's it like outside?"
"The rain's stopped, finally, at least," Maria said. "Everyone's gone, though. They left us what they said they would, but they're gone."
"And Alex?" Alyssa asked quietly after a long moment of silence.
"Still nothing," Maria answered.
Mike decided he'd heard enough, and he sat up slowly and a little painfully. "How long was I out this time?" he asked nervously.
Alyssa snorted hard. "Don't be dramatic, Mike. You were only asleep for a few hours. Your fever went up to about a hundred, but I think that was probably more because you overexerted yourself than anything else."
"Then what did you mean about everyone being gone?" Mike shot back.
"Shouldn't listen to people’s conversations, Mike," Maria scolded him, and much to Mike's surprise he actually felt bad for intruding. "But we meant exactly what was said. We're the only three left at the White Water Center. The rest are gone. North to get around the city, or West to leave it behind."
"Jesus, and you stayed because of me?" Mike rasped, his heart sinking suddenly. "You should have left with the
others."
"Not just for you, Mike," Alyssa replied. "You remember Alex? Well, he helped a lot while you were under the weather. As soon as it started looking like you could possibly turn the corner and get better, he went out for a supply run. He hasn't been back since."
"How long?" Mike asked weakly.
"Three days ago now," Maria answered.
Mike shook his head and tried to stand. "That's too long to be out on his own. No way he could carry enough water to last that long, and it's got to be hard to find clean water outside."
Alyssa shrugged slightly. "You've got to be creative, but it's not impossible. Alex is tougher than I thought when we first met him. I think he'll be back...eventually."
Mike's eyes had adjusted enough to make out Maria as she frowned at her older sister. "We may not have that long to wait. We only have limited supplies now ourselves, and things are getting desperate in the city. Before many more days pass we're either going to run out of water or we're going to have someone come knocking on that gate and they're not going to leave. What then?"
"Before this fight really heats up," Mike interjected, "can I get something to eat and drink?"
Alyssa shot him a glare, and Maria giggled a little as she stepped out into the hall to get a protein trail bar and citrus flavored sports drink. Mike tried to follow the sisters' conversation as they debated the merits of either staying or leaving, but his brain was still moving slower than normal. He was slowly feeling stronger as his body clawed its way back from the infection that had nearly killed him.
Both the meal bar and the drink were gone surprisingly quickly, and Mike stretched back out on the infirmary bed. His eyes grew heavier and heavier as he tried to listen to what they two women were saying. Eventually, their half-heard words faded to a dim hum, and then they were gone altogether as Mike drifted into a deep, untroubled sleep.
