“And you think we can make a difference in that, Sir?”
Sharp didn’t hesitate with that answer. “Absolutely we can, Mr. Sawyer. And it starts with redesigning our tactics, indeed our very goals.”
Chapter 11
A bullet train, the last thing someone who’d spent six months running from zombies and sleeping in filthy corners would expect to see zipping through the American West, was a silver plane with no wings. The view from inside probably wasn’t as thrilling as say someone on the ground who didn’t hear the train coming and turned around just in time.
Captain Sharp was calmly reading a newspaper, another casual and almost bizarre thing Daniel would have to get used to seeing all over again. Daniel had a cup of coffee in front of him too, hot and fresh from the dining cart, but then that was twenty minutes ago. The brown liquid had stopped steaming already, hot food was something he hadn’t gone without for very long this entire time, but that it was served in a porcelain cup with a tea plate below it, for some reason disgusted Daniel. Why was manpower and resources wasted on this?
“When did we build this? I remember they’d broken ground on the Chicago to St. Louis line like what, last year… Sir? Sorry, it’s been a minute. I’ll work on my decorum, Sir.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Sharp said, sipping the last of his own coffee. He motioned to the steward to bring him another. “You’ll be promoted to Second Lieutenant, second only to myself, the day after we arrive. Not sure we’ll be back in time for the evening news, which is a shame because the more PR the better.” Sharp finally put down the paper. He preened his stupid looking mustache. “Normally we’d clean you up, make you presentable and up to Army standards, but you know how the PR game is played. We need to make a show of you as a survivor, then we’ll let you shave and get you a new uniform.”
“Yeah, why the old ‘new’ uniforms?”
“Plague Victims either can’t tell or done care what you’re wearing. We had lots of ACUs still in stock, not as many of the new ones. Front line units sucked up all the supplies, now more Vics are wearing our cammo than we are. Not to mention Texas is fielding old style woodland cammies now, and every Last Man Standing is wearing every generation of cammo we used to field… It’s a mess. If we didn’t have a uniformed enemy to fight as well right now I’m sure the Brass would have us wearing Construction Yellow.” That was supposed to be Sharp’s version of a joke, but knowing the Army that was all too feasible.
Daniel pretended to smile. “Well, Sir, thank you for your perhaps premature faith in me, but this is all just… so much.”
“Premature?” Sharp stopped preening his lip ferret.
Finding the right words as he looked out the window, the train passed a refugee camp where a construction crew was trying to build a sound and “zombie proof” wall around it, naturally starting with the side that faced the luxury train line. Some smartass had graffitied the wall in an older section, The Odds Are Never in Our Favor. Two kids, presumably the ones who thought they were being clever in the first place, were washing it off. Daniel only got a mental snapshot of that, but the image would stick in his mind forever, perhaps even unduly influence his decisions in the future.
“If we’re being totally honest, Sir… I just lost my best friend, the bubonic plague has turned Donner Party on us… I just want to see my mom. I want to eat pizza till I get fat, play Xbox until my eyes explode, find a girl and fuck till my dick’s sore, then maybe, just maybe, find out if there’s even a vague chance my dad is still alive.”
“England is dark, son. We get intermittent signals from survivors, a few of their ships and subs have joined the UN Fleet in the Atlantic, but…” Sharp could see he was losing Daniel’s attention. He needed this boy. “I’ll pull some strings. The same satellites that used to work for Google now work for us. Maybe an image could be taken, if the address were provided.” Sharp slipped Daniel a napkin and a pen like they were school kids passing notes.
Writing down his father’s address Daniel felt like he might as well be signing his soul away in blood. For this favor, and it may not really be a favor but more a confirmation of death, Daniel would owe Captain Sharp more than just his soul. “I put his cell phone number on there too, Sir. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but maybe the NSA can do something with it.”
The Devil’s Advocate put the napkin in a breast pocket. Suspiciously though, not a single indication of a Combat Patch or a Combat Action/Infantry Badge anywhere on Sharp’s uniform. Just what was his job, and how had he attained Captain during the Global War of Terror without seeing action?
With only one scheduled stop between the airstrip where they’d landed and home, Daniel was treated to the view of their arrival at Warren AFB while it was still light outside. The place had changed, that was for sure. Hesco bastions and those fake rock soundproof walls one normally sees alongside freeways separated the military installations from a city that was beginning to look incredibly dystopian. With so many more people there now than Cheyenne was ever meant to hold, shanty towns, tent cities, trailer parks that stretched the horizon surrounded the already huge city of hard buildings. Daniel couldn’t tell from inside the pressurized cabin of the train, but he imagined this new American ghetto smelled absolutely as bad as it looked. People lived in the streets, walked everywhere, porta-johns were left doorless or tipped, fires in barrels kept the people who surrounded them warm. Daniel would learn later these barrels served the dual purpose of waste removal.
Despite what he’d expected, the cool fall wind smelled pleasant and of the open plains again. Wheat, corn, a dozen other crops, all ready for harvest or being processed by a cross section of American Industry surrounding the city proper. Whole factories had been hauled in by train and reconstructed in temporary buildings. Daniel’s attention now away from the shanty towns, he saw a statue being built in the center of a long oval industrial park. A two thirds scale Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument and (a clean) pond in between them, went straight through the center of the industrial park. The wastefulness of such a structure when people lived in tents wasn’t the true insult, though. For an astute History student, the way Daniel and his father both were, the final insult was seeing his homeland turned into the American version of Pyongyang. Daniel followed Captain Sharp to the closest door and mimicked his pose, steeling himself for another wave of reporters that could be just as difficult to navigate as a small herd of zombies.
The doors opened with a nearly silent swishing whisper and the failing daylight cast deep shadows over the gathered crowd. Just as the cameras started flashing and the noise of people speaking into microphones drown everything out the sun dipped below a satellite dish and finally he could see inside the shadows. The closest one made his heart jump into his throat and Daniel completely forgot for one brief moment that his mother was a General and he only a Private and he hugged her as hard as he could after leaping off the train down to her on the ground. Annette embraced her precious, grown but forever baby, boy. The media had a field day with it, and in fact a photographer in the crowd, just a little girl with her bright pink Barbie camera and a reload of black and white film, crawled under the people until she had a front row seat less than a foot off the ground. Her image of the “General Mother” showing General Brown’s human side when reunited with her long lost son, home at last from the Front, won the Pulitzer Prize and was featured on Times Magazine’s front cover the next week.
All on the platform for the train, introductions and speeches were given by various officers and politicians who’d made a name for themselves since the Envier Plague. The last speaker before Daniel, who had no previous knowledge of being expected to stand up in front of people and talk, was his mother. The speaker introduced her as the Savior of the Pass, a media darling the Administration was all too happy to parade around. First she’d gotten her star, next she’d gotten her son back. The end of the world may have been the best thing that ever happened to Annette Brown.
Her spe
ech was placating and full of meaningless filler that people gobbled up like a fat-ass in denial drinks artificial sweetener. She alluded to maybe one day she might run for office, and this was all the perfect setup for that. Suddenly Annette handed the microphone to Daniel, who was staring off into space and hadn’t heard a word she’d said in five minutes. That pizza and a marathon of playing Counterstrike was calling his name. Now his mother was, and instead of the normal perception that her voice was akin to nails on a chalkboard, nothing had ever sounded better than hearing her say, “Daniel...”
For a moment he froze, feeling very stupid being seen in public with chin stubble, a dirty uniform and no identifying patches whatsoever. Then something clicked, besides the compulsive disorder drilled into you in basic to look professional, probably the part he’d inherited from his mother and in that moment in front of the cameras was the only place he wanted to be. He was comfortable there, he belonged there.
“Good evening.” He began, “My name is Private First Class Daniel Sawyer, Wyoming Army National Guard. Brigadier General Brown is my mother, and I cannot begin to express to you all tonight how relieved and overjoyed I am to finally be back home in Cheyenne, with her. At least until I can find my own place.” He lead with that joke. The crowd of people, most wearing color coordinated mechanic’s coveralls depending on their job, the kids still in school uniforms despite it being late, this festival of sorts had probably been going on for many hours before Daniel’s train arrived, cheered wildly for him. This was a first, nobody had really ever cared he existed, let alone celebrated it. The mass’s attention felt like electricity, and after a quick glance back at his mother and Captain Sharp, Daniel went on. “I’ve been told I’m supposed to say something about what it’s like out there. Give everyone hope and reason to go on…” He paused for effect. “Well I aim to deliver.” Another slight cheer. “There is every reason to go on, every reason to keep fighting for the America we know and love every day, even long after this plague is but a small chapter in the history books. Many of you, I’m sure, have seen more than your lifetime’s worth of horrors. I’m right there with you. I was out there… with you… And I survived. I fought every day until by the grace of God and a few good men, I came home to my family. Thank you all for keeping alive, a home under the flag of liberty and freedom, for all the men and women in uniform to come back to. God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America!”
What a bunch of bullshit. Daniel looked back at his mother again, and unlike the rest of the gathered witches and warlocks, she wasn’t taken in by his God Bless America speech. At some point he was more or less cobbling together a bunch of different catch phrases he’d heard over the years, kind of like what she did but with more charisma. Annette had once accused Daniel of being so apathetic he wouldn’t care if he lived in North Korea so long as they let him play video games. Now he was only just monumentally more popular with the people, not five minutes after his arrival, than she had been after twenty years of service. It was good, however, to see that he and his mother’s relationship hadn’t changed.
Weeks later…
Annette adjusted the copy of Times Magazine she’d had framed and mounted on the wall next to other framed pictures of Daniel as a young boy, most of which had been in storage probably until after he’d gone missing. Right now, though, she could hear him upstairs with a girl he’d met at his arrival party. Some Army brat whose father meant something to someone, but not to her, and frankly she didn’t think his airhead daughter was good enough for her son. Not then, and not after two days of her visiting all night long while Annette and Calvin, her husband of only a few years, tried to sleep.
The morning paper, fraught with nonsense stories about crap that didn’t really matter, was tossed aside almost as soon as she opened it. If a zombie hadn’t eaten her Pomeranian, Mr. Smitty, during the first outbreak in Cheyenne she’d have let him piss on it. Instead she opened a Steven King novel she’d read a dozen times already and ignored the many reports stacking up on the far side of the kitchen table. Calvin was already off to work, his crew was putting in a new electrical line that would finally restore power to a refugee camp that had been without since, whenever. She couldn’t remember anymore, and it didn’t really matter. Calvin was a halfwit, nice, devoted, patient, but unable the grasp the full weight of how desperate and almost pointless their fight against the undead was. Every day a hundred thousand people died, and that was only the ones they could count. Most of it was blind estimation, vague ideas taken from aerial reconnaissance that was more focused on finding where the Texans were and were not, just to satisfy the Big Man’s personal vendetta against the hubris of the Lone Star State for seceding. How many states had seceded during the collapse? Five, maybe six? Most of the same states who’d been part of the original Confederacy, except for maybe Maine. It wasn’t that the state had left the Union, it was more that no one was left to keep the state’s government solvent.
Choosing the exact right moment to use the bathroom, Annette missed the girl’s departure. Oh darn. Daniel wasn’t far behind her, barely making the effort to put a sleeveless shirt and boxers on before he flopped down on the couch in front of his new Xbox. She noticed OffiSiRDooFy95 was his new gamer-tag, his old one had more than a thousand friend requests now that he’d suddenly become famous and he didn’t want to deal with them. The NSA was also tapping that account for sure, so he’d just skipped trying to fix it with all the glitches their spying programs would cause and bought a new one. His backpay had come through almost as soon as he’d gotten the gold bar slapped to his chest, so he was sitting on six months of backdated 2nd Lieutenant’s pay. Apparently someone had decided he’d been a lieutenant since he graduated Basic Combat Training. Probably a gift from now Major Sharp, the lump sum assured him enough of his own money for a brand new, last generation gaming console for the express purpose of ignoring the world.
Until he’d physically recovered, because he’d lost almost thirty pounds even with his time of being well fed in Crystal River, Daniel was on indeterminate medical leave. He did have to report to his new unit eventually, but it wasn’t for at least two weeks. Until then he was just going to get fat and do everything he told Sharp he was going to do despite his mother’s wishes. Technically he wasn’t in her chain of command, and given that they were directly related she could actually be reprimanded for attempting to unduly influence him as an officer. The premise was vague, but if she kept being a bitch it wasn’t beyond Daniel to submit the paperwork. If anything, being that low of a snake in the grass might impress her.
“Have you read today’s news?” Annette asked.
“Was it on the Xbox leaderboard? Because otherwise, no.”
“Important things in there, Daniel.” She prodded more.
Daniel finally paused his game. “What do you want, Mom? We had our reunion, you’re still bossy and impatient, I still don’t know what happened to my father… What do you want from me? I directed even more fame toward you than you had before, your next star is probably already a guarantee.”
Annette thought about hitting her son with a vass, but decided it was too expensive to waste on that. Maybe if the plastic one in the kitchen had been handier. “You’re an officer now, Daniel. You can’t shut the world out anymore.”
“Yes I can. For a little white, I can damned well shut it all out.” Daniel stood up, looking kind of dirty with chin stubble and sweaty hair still sticking to his forehead. “What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you lately, Mom? Losing track of me? Well, now you know I’m okay. When’s the last time you were hungry, Mom? When’s the last time you were genuinely scared of what might be around the literal next corner? So you’ve had to make some tough calls, I get that. Too bad the chances you’ll be forced to make that call, and others like it again, comes with the uniform and that shiny fucking star you’ve been chasing since I was like ten. Have you even once had to sleep outside this whole time?” Daniel had been taking ground and moving
slowly toward his mother this entire time. She was stoic, this was true, but she had tears welling in her eyes ready to fall. “Mom… Don’t tell me that you of all people had no idea how bad things were in the beginning. You could have told me to come home earlier, fuck, you could have told me to stay in England! But no. You knew DC was being attacked and yet…” Daniel choked back his own tears. “I lost people, Mom. People I loved, and I don’t just mean Jose. They weren’t statistics, they weren’t dots on a map or units with replacements just behind the lines. There weren’t any fucking lines…”
Daniel let all that set in first. Then he let the final bomb drop. “When did you lose contact with Dad? Did you even bother to warn him?” Annette was stunned to silence, but her whole body was quivering with anger. Daniel reveled in it. “Of course not.”
“Daniel… Communications were blacked out, I couldn’t-”
“Bullshit! Fucking bullshit, Mom! Dad could have gotten out. Made it somewhere, anywhere that might have been safer than the suburbs of motherfucking London! Nothing survives the cities, not in the Red Zones, you again know this. I’m still waiting for Major Sharp to come through on satellite images of Dad’s house, which you should already have cared enough to have on hand, by the way... I’ll decide if I’m going to sabotage your brakes after the images are confirmed.” Annette tried to speak, but Daniel had already flopped back down in his favorite recliner and plugged his headset in.
Chapter 12
“Stand up straight, don’t slouch, Lieutenant. Today is a big day for us.” Sharp reminded Daniel for the hundredth time. It might have helped if Daniel weren’t hung over, but he did his best not to look it. Army doctors had cleared him for duty and now he had to meet the men and women he’d be leading into battle against the undead.
World of Ashes II Page 21
