Doug turned to him. “We have to go back,” he blubbered.
“I know.”
“Do you? Do you really?” His voice shifted ever so slightly, becoming more acerbic. “All we’ve done is wander around for days. We haven’t done anything.”
“Doug, what’re we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know…go get them, maybe?”
Corky shook his head. “They’re all dead.”
Doug’s arm shot out and grabbed his shoulder, tight. His grip was amazingly strong in that moment. “How could you say that? We don’t know if they’re dead! Doc might still be alive! We don’t know!”
“Dougie, he got gutted. Sick as he was, I don’t think the dude made it.”
“That’s bullshit.” The kid released his shoulder and punched him in the chest. It hurt, but Corky kept his cool. He owed Doug at least that much. “I don’t get you,” Doug continued. “You know the little girl and the mom aren’t dead. They were taken away, man! Who knows what they’re doing to them! I figured you’d be all gung-ho for their sake, at least!”
Corky swallowed hard. He’d tried to put Shelly out of his mind, and done a good job of it too, until Doug had to go and bring the subject up again. He glowered at the young Marine.
“That’s not fair,” he snarled.
“Why not?”
“What’re we supposed to do? Go up against an army—an obviously organized fucking army—and shoot ’em up? C’mon, Dougie, we don’t know what we’re dealing with. We’re two…fucking…people! We’d be better off going west and forgetting about it all, start up a new life or something. Hell, all that might’ve been a mistake anyway. Maybe the government’s back, and they’re in a better place now. Both of ’em.”
Doug rose to his feet, rolled his neck, and looked at him, aghast. “That’s a crock and you know it. I can’t believe this. You, of all people, giving up. Bullshit. Remember that day in the snow? Remember charging down the hill at them fleshies and saving Doc’s life? Remember how pissed I was? Well you know what? I was in awe of you, dude! You just went in there and charged and didn’t think of no consequences. But now…you’re hiding. I don’t get it. What changed?”
Guilt flowed through Corky’s veins. “A lot,” he whispered.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Doug dropped down to his ass, tossed his rifle aside, and flicked at the mud and with his fingers. “You got attached to her. You don’t wanna see her hurt. So it’s better if you just go away and pretend she’s fine. Right?”
A tear seeped down Corky’s cheek. He nodded.
“We have to do something. We have to help. And no matter what you say, Doc is alive. I can fucking feel it.”
Corky looked at the kid, his vision hazy. “What if he’s not?”
Doug shrugged. “At least I tried. It’ll hurt, but I could probably live with that.”
Corky closed his eyes. “But what’re we gonna do? How’re we gonna get in? Last time we were shot at. These dudes don’t strike me as friendly.”
A hand on his knee. Corky glanced at Doug. There was a sad yet hopeful smile on the kid’s face.
“We think outside the box. We find an ally.”
“And how the hell we gonna do that?”
“I have an idea.”
* * *
The thought had come to Doug during one of their many roundabout ventures through the woods. While they normally encountered roaming patrols that they’d have to hide from, there was one group in particular that didn’t seem to move. He always heard the same voices as they crept through the foliage. Experience taught him that a stationary force that saw no combat was an idle one, which made them vulnerable.
After allowing Corky time to wash his clothes, they slogged through the trees, backtracking through the path they’d walked tirelessly for the last three days. Now that they were in motion, the sorrow he’d felt earlier melted away. This was the time for Doug Lockenshaw to prove his worth. Horace was counting on him. He couldn’t let the old man down. Not again.
It took a half-hour to find the spot he was looking for. An open area appeared to their left, a country road complete with coiled wire guardrails held together by wooden stumps. When they’d first come across it, Corky had suggested they get out of the forest and hike on gravel for a bit. That thought was quelled when a carrier of some kind whisked by, men hanging out the back. Random shots were fired. To Doug that seemed a sloppy way to operate, and when it came to folks with guns, sloppy was deadly.
The area he looked for was secluded, a hidden spot where some of the men would relax without having to worry about responsibility for a while. Again, that struck Doug as strange. The military had always been all-hands-on-deck, all concentration all the time. To see otherwise screamed unprofessional.
The road curved away from the path they’d forged, and they trekked deeper into the canopy. Sure enough, a few hundred yards in Doug heard chattering voices. He picked up his pace, moving at a brisk jog down a slight decline until he was stopped by something he didn’t expect.
A fence topped with barbed wire.
Corky, coming up from behind, almost slammed into him. Doug held out his arm, steadied his large friend, and began walking the perimeter. He came upon a sign when the fence curved. FEDERAL DEFENSE SUPPLY CENTER, the sign read. Doug peered through the rungs and grimaced.
In the center of a huge open space, in front of a concrete structure, was a bigger-than-life metal golem. It was a bit rusty and painted a dim shade of tan. A gigantic barrel jutted out from it, upon which hung what appeared to be the day’s laundry. Two individuals sat atop the beast, drinking out of plastic thermoses and talking, though neither seemed very interested in the conversation. On the side of the thing, written in jagged, spray painted letters, was the word PEACEMAKER.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Corky murmured. “They have a fucking tank?”
“Looks that way,” Doug whispered in reply.
“What we do now?”
“No clue.”
“Great.”
They were close enough that Doug could see the two men, but far enough away that if they moved quietly he and Corky could go virtually unnoticed. He took his field glasses out of his bag and examined the men, studying their movements, their facial expressions, their clothes. He felt his body go rigid as his eyes caught sight of something exciting. He scanned the length of the fence, looking for a way in. Twenty or so feet to his left there was a gap. It looked to have been cut open at some point in the past, and came out behind a row of ground cover on the other side. As long as Corky could squeeze through, they’d be all set.
Doug tapped his friend on the arm, pointed, and crept away. Corky followed.
Though Doug got through the fissure relatively easily, it was difficult to get the much larger man to do the same thing without making a racket. Doug’s fingers stretched to the point of agony while he crouched behind the low-hanging shrubs and held back the fence, making room for an awkwardly crawling Corky. When he finally squeezed through the gap, Corky was panting. There was a spot of blood on his side. He must’ve scraped against one of the links on the way through.
“You hurt?” asked Doug, keeping his voice low.
Corky pointed to his misshapen nose. “Had worse,” he muttered.
Doug nodded. He slipped the rifle strap over his shoulder and placed the weapon on the ground beside his discarded bag. “Don’t use it, just keep it safe,” he told his friend.
“Why? Huh? What’re you doing?”
“Just trust me, okay? I got an idea.”
With that Doug stood up, lifted his arms above his head, and marched out of the brush. The two guys sitting on the tank were oblivious. They hadn’t noticed him yet. He heard Corky gasp behind him and hoped the oaf would stay quiet while he did what he had to do.
He swerved to the left, taking Corky out of the crosshairs in case the sentinels lost their cool and opened fire, squeezed his eyes shut, and puffed out his chest. “Hey!” he bellowed. �
�Please don’t shoot!”
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the two men staring at him as if they’d never seen a human before in their lives. One was a tall, older sort, with patches of white hair sticking out wildly in all directions, making him look like a mad scientist. He appeared calm and even a bit amused. The other guy wasn’t either of those things. He jumped to his feet, arms shaking, and shouldered his weapon. Doug could see his finger twitching over the trigger.
“I am Private Douglas Lockenshaw!” Doug announced, stopping in his tracks and clasping his hands behind his head. “United States Marine Corps, nineteenth division! Please put down your weapon! I am unarmed and mean you no harm!”
The white haired man put a finger to his lips and grinned. “Hold on, Dante,” he said. His southern drawl reminded Doug of Dennis.
“Fuck you, Randall!” the other man shouted. “You ain’t in charge here, I am!”
Randall’s hand shot up, and his palm pressed into the barrel. “Go ahead, pull the trigger,” he said, a taunting quality to his voice. “Blow my friggin hand off…then you can drive this bucket-o-shit back to the lot…see how the big guy likes them apples.”
Dante slowly pulled his head away from the sight notches, glaring at his partner. Randall smirked and gave the gun a slight nudge. Dante dropped it to his side.
“Good,” said the older man. “Now out to pasture with you…and bring me back some…I don’t know…dandelions.”
“Fuck you,” replied Dante. “I ain’t going nowhere.”
The two were completely focused on each other, as if Doug didn’t exist. It took him a moment to break out of his stupor while he watched them snipe back and forth. He took one step, then two, moving gradually toward the massive war machine. The argument then raised a few notches, and he picked up his pace. His inching became a soft-footed gallop. With Dante’s back to him, he arrived at the side of the tank, leapt in the air, and reached out his hand. His fingers latched around Dante’s belt, and he gave it a tug on the way down. The fidgety man shrieked as he was yanked off his feet. He hit the ground with an audible huff, spit ejecting from between his lips. Doug worked quickly, looping the strap of the prone man’s rifle from around his arm, and then dropped both knees onto his shoulders. He swung the weapon around like a baton and shoved the business end into Dante’s face.
“What…the fuck…” Dante moaned.
“Oh shut up,” sang out Randall from behind them. Doug watched the crazy old coot dance some kind of awkward jig atop the steel hull. He nodded to the man, who gave him the same in return. Dante whimpered beneath him, and he gave the guy a swift fist between the eyes.
“Cork!” he shouted. “I think it’s safe to come out now!”
* * *
Florence Ludlow always said you could tell everything about a person just by looking in their eyes. This was why, when Corky sat in the grass beside the tank, with the old guy with the ridiculous hair across from him, he felt more than a little bit uneasy. Doug kept glancing his way while Randall pattered on and on, acting like a father telling his son not to stare at the circus freaks.
It turned out that Randall’s full name was Jeromiah Clarke Randall; he was fifty-eight, and had been retired from military service for fourteen years before being reinstated when Wrathchild swept the globe. Doug informed him it was the 2D Marine Tank Battalion patch on the right arm of his jacket that had given him the idea to approach him. According to Randall, he’d been S-3 of that division for the last twenty years of his tenure, none of which Corky understood. But he also said he’d been honorably discharged because of “development of mental deficiency,” which to Corky made all the sense in the world. The guy’s eyes were always moving, reflecting a sort of jittery caginess he’d only seen in meth heads and coke addicts.
Only Randall wasn’t on drugs. He was just nuts.
Corky sat back and listened as a never-ending surge of words spewed from Randall’s mouth. He spoke like a hyper kid with ADD, all stops and starts as if an invisible crank had to wind in his brain before he rapidly blurted out his thoughts. “So we was in some town in South Carolina,” he said, “some town called ‘Oxenberg’ or something like that…and from outta nowhere comes this buncha dudes scarier’n anything I ever seen…and the whole platoon got shredded, man…I mean fucking tore up…I’ve never…I crawled under my baby to the belly hatch…then climbed inside and lay there for a while…till I thought it was safe to go…and there was no one around…felt like Heston in that monkey-movie…but I didn’t feel hungry and that was weird…but that’s kinda beside the point…”
Doug cut him off by putting a hand on his shoulder. Randall’s lips kept moving, like there was some sort of private dialogue in his brain that just had to get out.
“How’d you end up here?” Doug asked. “Who do you work for now? Government? Military?”
“Ha! That’s something…none of neither those round these parts…though I guess they like to think so…and there’s different guys from different parts of the military….Army, Navy, Air Force, the fucking God-fearing Marines like us…but it’s built all wrong…guy in charge…Bathgate…says he was a general, but I doubt it…calls this group the SNF…Soldiers of New Freedom or some shit…real fucking corny, I know…but how’d I meet ’em…oh yeah, saw a platoon one day over in La Grange, when I was by my lonesome scrounging for supplies…hadn’t seen a soul in a month…and they seemed normal enough…and they brought me to this Bathgate fella, and he seemed to like my baby…said he’d like to talk about bringing her on board…I got the impression it wasn’t really a request, so I said yes…there’s some real pricks ’round here, some really unsavory folk…well, except for Hawthorne, who ran the Bradley that was already here…good guy that one…and me too, I’m decent enough…just roll around with the baby and look mean…” Randall paused, smiled, slapped the tank’s steel hull, and his eyeballs skittered back and forth between Corky and Doug. “But I’ll tell you a secret though…I got it pretty special here…long as I stick around I can do whatever the fuck I want…no one else knows how to run her…and I teach some fellas, courses and shit, but never tell ’em too much…’cause I ain’t making myself expendable…I may be a little cracked, but I ain’t insane. Y’know?”
Corky chuckled. “Sure.”
“Randall,” said Doug, “it doesn’t sound like you like you trust these people at all. Why haven’t you just packed up and left already?”
Randall shrugged. “Opportunity, soldier-boy…can’t do nothing if I don’t got the goods…I’m only one old dude…and the Peacemaker here ain’t invulnerable…even if I tried to roll out of town, they’d shoot me up something fierce…and I don’t feel much like dying…”
“But you helped us out, and that’s a risk, right?”
“Sure…but not much of one…not like y’all wanna throw down with ‘em…and besides, Dante’s a little bitch.”
From his secluded corner, stripped naked and gagged, with tape around his ankles and wrists, Dante squealed.
“Shut up, retard,” shouted Randall, a bit too joyfully.
“Do you think you can get us into the city, Randall?” asked Doug.
Corky shook his head.
“Sure thing,” Randall replied. “We can even roll in with the baby here…I’m expected back tonight anyway, and no one’ll see you inside the cab…”
Doug stood up, stretched his arms above his head, and then hopped atop the tank. He lifted the lower access hatch and peered inside. Randall popped up from his sitting position and joined him in seemingly a single motion. Corky didn’t think he’d ever seen a guy that age move so spryly.
“You like her?” the nutty old timer asked. “Been with me forever…shit, General Cooper did me the honor of retiring her along with me…best honor a TC can get…”
“What can you tell me about her?” Doug asked. Corky rolled his eyes in expectation of another deluge and climbed up on the tank with them. He was starting to feel silly sitting by himself.
“Where do I begin?” said Randall, his eyes growing to the size of golf balls. “This baby’s an oldie but goodie…M48 Patton class, built in 1958…guy who had her before me was named Gloster…nice enough fella, a bit on the rigid side though…looked like he was always ready to have a heart attack…but anyway…originally outfitted with a 90 millimeter cannon, but it was upgraded to 105 in seventy-seven…lots of bang for the buck…diesel motor, 750 horsepower, can bring her up to thirty…used to be forty, but like I said she’s kinda old…sucks gas like a sumbitch…what else is there…oh yeah, up in the TC station we got a 50 cal M2…rip-roaring, my man, thirteen rounds a second…could take out a whole platoon in a couple minutes, long as it don’t overheat on ya…”
“No shit,” Doug said, his mouth hanging low. “How’s she drive?”
“Hot damn, you gotta check this out…” The wacky old Marine flopped down on his stomach. His head disappeared into the hatch, and Corky could hear his voice reverberate like he was speaking in a cave. “Just like a car, only shitloads bigger…handles the turns like a dream…if you wanna drop inside, I’ll show you how she gets it on…”
Doug offered Corky an amused grin and followed Randall into the sarcophagus. “I think we’re in business,” he said with a wink. “We got fucking lucky, man. Randall’s the real deal. I think we’re gonna be spending a lot of time with him.”
“Oh goodie,” muttered Corky. “Can’t wait.”
CHAPTER 16
THE END OF THE LINE
The young man with pitch-black hair stared at Greg while he scrubbed the tires of the old snowplow with Windex. The guy’s last name was Mansetti or something like that, a badass dude, one of the most feared Marauders. Greg didn’t know his first name because he’d never bothered to learn it. He was simply known in the ranks of the fighting men as Corporal Bulldog.
Bulldog strolled across the street, puffing on a cigarillo. Greg tried to make it look like he didn’t see him coming, but he was sure he failed at that, big time. He was sweating and paranoid as hell, like he used to get when Greta smoked him up with that killer herb she somehow always stashed away back in his Tiny Bottoms days. He hated the feeling then—he wasn’t really a pot smoker, more of a drinker—and he hated it now. The last thing he needed was for Bulldog to catch a whiff of his odd behavior and think something was up.
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