The Last Full Measure

by Trent Reedy

  “What I mean is that, you tried to warn me about getting too far into it. Into the war or into fighting. And you were right. I loved the fight too much. The thrill. That adrenaline rush. And yeah, sometimes, lots of times, the fight was for something good, like saving you and JoBell outside of Lewiston. But the power to take out the bad guys and do something good is still power. I think I got hooked on that.” He drew his sword and pointed it ahead of him.

  “Would you watch it with that thing?” I said.

  “I got like addicted to riding in like cowboys and shit and being like” — he stabbed the air — “ ‘You’re done, asshole! I’m Cal Riccon, and I’m going to tell you how things are going to be.’” He shook his head. “It’s like a drug, man. And I think my old man was addicted to it too. That’s why I knew I couldn’t talk to him before we left. It’s the thrill of the fight. The power. I gotta give it up.”

  * * *

  Chow was kind of messed up. There weren’t close to enough seats or plates, so people sat outside on the rocks or on logs. A lot of people ate caveman style, just holding their whole piece of steak or chop in their hands and biting into it. Mr. Morgan’s wife had her flute and his daughter brought her violin, and they played a couple songs while we ate. When I first heard about it, I thought bringing the instruments was a stupid waste of space for the trip, but then I realized how long it had been since I’d heard music, how much I missed it. With our playlists from our comms all in the cloud and the Internet all jacked up, our songs were basically gone.

  After chow, we hit the rack. The school had sixteen rooms in the big guest dorm, nine student cabins, and six faculty cabins, but space was still scarce, so people had to pack it in. Kemp wanted the people scheduled for guard rotation in the big guest dorm building, so me and JoBell wound up sharing a room with two twin-sized beds with Sweeney and Cal. Sweeney had tried to get Becca to crash with him, but she wanted to spend some time with her family, who was bunked in faculty cabin four.

  In the past, we all would have bitched about having only two racks for the four of us, but all of us had been through hell and dealt with worse. Sweeney and Cal insisted JoBell sleep in one of the beds, an offer she accepted right away. She fell across the bed and pulled a ragged quilt over her head, using her sweatshirt for a pillow. Us three guys argued for a couple minutes about who would get a bed and who would get the floor. I didn’t want Cal or Sweeney to be screwed over just because I was dating JoBell.

  “Shut up!” JoBell finally yelled, holding up the quilt. “Danny, get in here. Sweeney, Cal, you’re both fully dressed. Share the other bunk. It’s not like you’re getting married or anything.”

  “Um, right,” Cal said. “Plus, it won’t be weird because you can sleep under the blanket and I’ll be on top so —”

  “Oh, good thinking, Cal,” JoBell said. “That way neither of you will get pregnant. Now go to sleep, or don’t, but shut the hell up.”

  I laughed at that and then lay there on my back with JoBell pressed in next to me, her head on my chest. I breathed deeply, forcing air in and slowly and steadily letting it back out, trying to calm myself, trying to wipe all the bad thoughts from my mind.

  * * *

  Kemp woke us all up at about six. Someone had brought chow over from the dining hall, and coffee, heated over the fire, would be available down in the library all night for the guards. But when we got down there, we could hardly get to the food and coffee. The library was so stuffed with people that part of the crowd had spilled into the big, empty entryway right next to it.

  Becca came up behind us and kissed Sweeney on the cheek. “Maybe they could hand us our food?”

  TJ found us too. “Right? And maybe they could hurry? We’re on duty in less than an hour.”

  “Screw this,” I said, starting to push my way into the crowd. “Excuse me. Excuse us. We just need to get in here to get … Excuse us. Can you just —” As I plowed my way through the mass of bodies, my friends followed close behind.

  When we finally made it into the library, we found Mrs. Pierce and her family up by the fireplace. Other family clumps were crammed in throughout the room. The Robinsons were behind the Macers. The Grenkes were back in the corner by the table, Skylar perched up on one of the rolling ladders. The Monohans, Blakes, Beans, Ericsons. For a moment, I was kind of pissed that I had been left out of whatever this was all about. But then JoBell squeezed my hand, and I smiled. For me and my friends, the hard part was over. We’d helped them make it here. They could figure out the rest.

  “Now, see, that just doesn’t seem right to me, ma’am,” said Mr. Robinson.

  “Oh, come on, Dwight,” said Samantha Monohan’s stepmom. “You were a national champion fisherman. You’ve been on TV for catching fish.”

  Mr. Robinson held up his hands. “I haven’t fished a serious tournament for years. Anyway, fishing is what I do for fun, to get away from work. I’d feel guilty out there by the water with everyone else working. I want to earn my keep.”

  Mrs. Pierce smiled. “Mr. Robinson, we need fresh food. You can fish, and teach others to fish. We also need you to figure out how to make one of those old-fashioned icehouses. We’ll harvest ice from the lake this winter to use through the summer.”

  “I saw some old photos of an icehouse at a bar once,” said Lee Brooks. “It’s a big pit with some shelves and an insulated roof. You pack the ice with sawdust. I can help.”

  “That don’t hardly seem fair,” said Dylan Burns’s stepdad. “What if other people want to fish?”

  “You want to fish, Mr. Ratcliff?” Mrs. Pierce asked.

  The man looked down. “Well, no. It’s nothing I’ve ever enjoyed for myself, but, well, someone might like it.”

  Tucker Blake’s dad spoke up. “Years ago I had this idea that I was going to be a chef. But you know how it goes. One thing leads to another, and I never found the time for culinary school. But if we’re picking jobs, I’d really like to work in the kitchen.”

  “Please let him!” said Mrs. Carmichael. “We need a lot more help. We need people to help prep, cook, and wash dishes. And we’ll need people to fill in for the kitchen staff sometimes so the same workers aren’t in there all day every day. We need a rotation.”

  Mr. Blake smiled. “My wife and I would love to help.”

  An old man standing next to them held up his hand. “I used to be a butcher. You bring in that fish, I can prep it. Or if a hunting party bagged us a deer or moose.”

  “Now hunting I can do,” said Mr. Ratcliff. “Never got into fishing, but I was always a good hunter. Got me a good-sized deer most years.”

  More people started jumping in to volunteer to hunt. Me and my friends finally made our way to our food, meals on metal plates wrapped in paper. A little pork chop and a scoop of mixed vegetables from a can. It wasn’t much, but I passed the plates to my friends and we all scarfed it down.

  “The other problem is that there’s a little gas left to run the ranges and ovens, but once that’s gone, we’re in trouble,” said Mrs. Carmichael.

  “Can they be converted to wood stoves somehow?” Mrs. Pierce asked.

  Our old shop teacher, Mr. Cretis, raised his hand. “We brought that welding gear and other tools for a reason. With all that and the tools in the shed at the back of the rec lodge, we have a pretty good shop. I could probably figure out a way to rig those stoves and ovens to burn wood. Might not be pretty, but I bet I could get ’em to work.”

  “I want to know what I’m getting for those steaks and chops,” Caitlyn Ericson’s dad said. “I had to trade my Harley for them. How am I being compensated now that everybody’s had something to eat?”

  “Are you being serious?” Becca said.

  “Well, I don’t see you complaining while you’re eating,” Mr. Ericson said.

  My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Van Buren, put her hands on her hips. “If this is going to work, we’re going to have to share.”

  “What are you going to share, Rachel?” Mr. Erics
on asked. “Teaching?”

  “Yeah!” said Mrs. Van Buren. “We’re going to want our kids to get an education.”

  “And what about when my kids are too old for grade school?” Mr. Ericson said. “What then?”

  A lot of people chimed in, arguing.

  I didn’t come all this way to live in some communist compound.

  What are we supposed to buy things with? Our money is useless.

  We can trade! Trading works fine.

  Then who gets the food in the kitchen?

  What’s a fair trade for child care? Or for education for your kids?

  What about the people too old to work?

  I am not turning over my family’s food!

  “Everybody shut the hell up!” I climbed up onto the big wooden table. “I didn’t bring any food, Mr. Ratcliff.”

  “Well, Danny, you should have been thinking ahead.”

  “Oh, I was,” I said. “I was thinking about the Brotherhood guys and other thugs we ran into along the trip. So I brought bullets. Me and my guys and Mr. Grenke here risked our asses to steal diesel from the Brotherhood so we’d have enough fuel to get here. So when we get the diesel generators working again, maybe you don’t get any electricity. Hope you brought candles.”

  “Now hold on a second,” Mr. Ericson said.

  “We are going to have to work together,” I said. “Like Mrs. Van Buren said, we must share to make it through this.”

  “Just giving away what’s ours? That’s socialist-style,” said Craig Rankin. “That’s just un-American.”

  JoBell climbed up and stood on the table beside me. “America is dead,” she said.

  “Fine,” Mr. Keelin said. “But I’ve lived my whole life by conservative principles. Danny, you’ve been on the Buzz Ellison Show. You know how he stands for everybody working hard and then getting the rewards that come from that hard work. You’re sounding like some liberal Democrat.”

  “Democrats are dead,” JoBell said. “By the millions. So are Republicans. There are no parties anymore.”

  I felt weird up here above everybody else, so I led JoBell down to stand in the middle of the group. “Damn it. Don’t you get it yet? All that political bitching, the stupid arguments? They’re what got us into all this!” I shook my head. “Buzz Ellison … You know who used to love listening to Buzz Ellison? My business partner, Dave Schmidt. Now Schmidty’s dead! Ellison used to bitch about President Rodriguez all the time. Rodriguez is dead. Millions are dead, because everybody was busy trying to find someone else to blame instead of fixing the damned problems in the first place.” I put my empty plate down on the table. “Now me and my friends gotta go on guard duty to protect everybody through the night. We ain’t doing it to get paid, to see what people will trade for our time, but because it has to be done. I was a mechanic once.” I held up my M4. “Now I guess my main skill is fighting. I’ll do whatever you think I’d be good at. However I can help.”

  “No offense, Danny,” Mr. Grenke said, “but the war was also caused by people trying to one-up other people, shouting them down like this.”

  I was about to fire back when Mr. Shiratori cut me off. “Ryan brings up a good point, Danny. So did Craig. I’m not saying he should get direct compensation for his food, but say what you want about our old capitalist system, it provided reasonable order for our society, with the expectation of reward for hard work. If you take away the direct reward, do you also take away the incentive to work?”

  “I had an uncle,” said Lee Brooks. “When he was young, he joined this artist colony commune. It was a whole bunch of hippies sharing everything. My uncle was a carpenter. He joined up for the free love, I think, but also because he wanted to spend his days making wood sculptures and stuff like that. The problem came when he kept getting tapped to fix up their ancient house. He and the farmers who spent their days plowing fields in the hot sun didn’t think it was fair that some of the others used all their time for painting or writing. The commune lasted for less than a year.”

  “The alternative to these systems of sharing is to force everyone to work, often under the threat of force, like in the old Soviet Union,” said Mr. Shiratori.

  “We’re nothing like them,” said Darren Hartling.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Shiratori said. “We’re going to have to spend some serious time discussing how we’re going to make this little society of ours work.”

  “And we’ll need to be patient,” Mrs. Pierce said, her eyes fixed on me.

  I knew what she meant, so I nodded at her. Then me and my friends squeezed through the crowd, heading for a long night of patrols.

  When we got outside the building, we found Jaclyn Martinez standing on the pathway, a tactical shotgun leaning back against her shoulder.

  “Jackie, what are you doing? Are you okay?” I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it, and the look on Jaclyn’s face told me she thought the same thing.

  “I’m pulling guard duty with all of you,” Jaclyn said. “I want to help protect everyone.”

  I noticed Cal tightly gripping the wooden railing on the steps to the porch. He stared at Jaclyn openmouthed.

  “Thanks, Jackie,” Sweeney said. “But we got this.”

  “Why don’t you get some rest?” Becca said.

  “Everybody’s been telling me to rest, as if that’s my problem,” Jackie said. “Not that my parents were murdered, but that I’m tired.”

  “It’s not that,” said JoBell. “Just that you’ve been through a lot, and you should take some time to try to recover.”

  “Spare me your psychobabble bullshit,” Jaclyn said. “They’re dead. There’s no recovering from that.”

  Becca hopped down the steps and tried to put her hand on Jaclyn’s shoulder. “But we’ll be up all night, and you probably didn’t sleep much on the trip.” Jaclyn pulled away as Becca continued, “I know nothing can make up for what happened, but you have to take care of yourself. Why don’t you try to get some more sleep?”

  “No!” Jaclyn said. “Don’t you get it!? I can’t sleep! I don’t want to sleep! Whenever I close my eyes, I see the ropes around their necks. Too much jacked-up shit has happened for me to sleep!”

  The murder of Jaclyn’s parents had been a nightmare for me. It had to be a thousand times worse for her. My mother’s death had been different, but even now, it still cut me deep. I knew something of what Jaclyn was facing. I saw the looks on my friends’ faces, and I hated like hell that they too understood what Jaclyn was going through.

  “All right,” I said. “Welcome to the team.”

  —• which might at first seem trivial, but is, in fact, becoming a serious problem. Before the civil war, there were nearly eighty million pet dogs and ninety million pet cats in America. Now many owners aren’t able or around to take care of their pets. The result? Dangerous packs of feral animals. The dogs have become a particular danger, with hundreds of reports of children being viciously attacked when •—

  —• This is BBC Television from London. Normal programming has been suspended, and we now join Michael Lancaster in the news studio.”

  “I’m instructed to advise you that the entire United Kingdom has been elevated to Alert Condition Three. All nonessential travel and communications are suspended. Be prepared to proceed to your local designated emergency shelter, but do not conduct movement to that location at this time. Moments ago, NATO’s automated missile defense system came online, warning of short-range missiles fired from Soviet-held Ukraine and Lithuania. Most of these missiles have been shot down, and it must be stressed that so far, these missiles are armed with conventional warheads. However, the world is on full alert against a possible nuclear attack. Soviet troops and armored units have entered Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. Soviet bombers and fighter planes are attacking NATO positions in those countries, with some Soviet air assets headed toward Berlin. British and French aircraft are moving to intercept and join the fight. British Royal Marines have deployed to German
y to supplement the German defense and help secure Poland. The Soviet leadership is justifying this blatant aggression, saying, quote, ‘The Soviet people have a right to defend themselves against attacks from an unstable NATO.’ End quote.

  “I’m also authorized to reveal to you at this time that the Soviet Union has signed a mutual defense pact with the People’s Republic of China as well as with Iran, Syria, and Iraq. They have dubbed this alliance the Free Federation of Nations. In response, all NATO member countries as well as Japan and South Korea have signed on to an alliance. Prime Minister Dennis Carman has confirmed that as of five a.m. United Kingdom time, World War III has begun. •—

  —• Soldiers of the First Oklahoma Infantry Division, in addition to well-armed area civilians, fought a bloody battle in the city of Clinton against United States infantry and armor, finally pushing US forces back into Woodward and the Oklahoma Panhandle. President Fergus’s office estimates over two thousand Oklahoman casualties. •—

  —• Frank Wood was a young man barely out of high school when he participated in the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Now in his nineties, Frank has depended on a wheelchair to get around for the last several years. But that has never stopped him from showing his pride in the flag he helped defend all those years ago. As a result, Frank Wood has not missed one Fourth of July parade in Bristol, Rhode Island, in over fifty years.”

  “I come home from the war in ’45, married Beverly in ’47, and we moved here in the spring of ’50 when I got a job fixing boats. I marched with the other veterans behind our flag in every Fourth of July parade since then. ’Course, in … 1953, I was worried I’d miss it, but my daughter decided to be born July 2. She and her family were in New York when … Every year, we’d lose some of the old-timer veterans like me, but I never thought it would come to this.”

  “This year, since Rhode Island is now a part of the independent nation of New England, there is no Fourth of July Independence Day celebration in Bristol. Worse, many Bristol residents have fled the city for fear of radioactive fallout from New York. Mr. Wood is making this year’s Fourth of July observation alone.”