by Jessy Cruise
Jessica blanched a little, obviously unaccustomed to being talked to like that. "I don't really think that..."
"I will handle the guard situation," Paul said firmly, in a voice that there was no compromising with. "It is my responsibility. Now how about we move on to the subject of Mr. Adams here, shall we?"
"Fine," she pouted.
Paul looked over at Skip. "Why don't we get right to the point and save everyone a lot of time? What exactly is it that you want?"
"Safety," Skip said immediately. "Since the comet came down I have almost died more times than I care to count. I want to be safe and live long enough for the sun to come back out. This town represents safety of sorts. You are organized and functioning. I want to be a part of this."
"You want to join this town?" Paul clarified.
"That is correct."
"Impossible," Jessica articulated. "We're not a charitable organization here. We don't even know if we have enough food to feed ourselves for more than a few months. Taking on another mouth, especially a sneaking thief, is out of the question."
"Oh, it wouldn't just be one mouth," Skip said, ignoring the sneaking thief remark. "It would be three. After the comet hit I picked up a couple of teenage kids that had been camping with their parents. Their parents were killed and now I'm looking after them."
"Kids?" Paul asked. "Where are they?"
"That doesn't Micker!" Jessica yelled. Next to her, Dale nodded his head in agreement. "We can't take any more people in here! Our food supply is critical enough as it is."
"Why don't we hear the man out before we make any decisions?" Paul asked her.
"There's nothing to hear," she said. "He's a beggar. We've already made the decision that we can't feed beggars. Not if we want to live."
"I'm not a beggar," Skip interjected at this point. "I have something quite valuable to offer you in exchange for taking me and my companions in. Something that you need here almost as much as food."
"Oh?" she asked, looking at him skeptically. "And what might that be?"
"My experience," he said simply.
"Your experience?"
"Exactly," he told them, leaning forward a little. "I have six years of active experience as a military man. I was the pilot of a combat helicopter as part of the 3rd Armored Cavalry. I flew medivac during the invasion of Panama. I flew combat missions during Desert Storm. I know all about natural and man-made defenses because it was my job to penetrate and destroy them. I was also a cop for eight years in one of the shittiest cities in California. I know about security. I can help you defend this little town from invasion by the hordes of starving and desperate people that are outside, because, believe me, they will be here and they will find a way to get in if what I've seen so far is any indication of how you're protecting yourselves. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that you've made it this long without being hit."
"Thanks, but no thanks," Jessica said icily. "Our security is quite adequate."
"No," Paul said, taking a step closer to the table. "It is not."
"Paul?" Jessica said, glaring at him. "What are you saying? You are the one that set up our defenses!"
"And that is why I'm saying it," he said. "I'm a fireman, Jessica. A fireman. My job was to sit in a fire station and wait for someone to get sick or burn their house down. I've never been in the service. I did the best I could because no one else had any ideas, but, as Mr. Adams has shown us, my measures are simply not enough."
"We can't feed him!" Jessica insisted. "Especially not with two kids tagging along with him."
"If we don't take him up on his offer," Paul told her, "there may not be anyone here to feed. He penetrated our most secure line of defense, Jess. That bridge was the one thing I didn't worry about and he walked right across it and sat on the wall less than a half-mile from here. Can you imagine the kind of mistakes I've made on the north side of town or the east?"
"How do we know he's not scamming us?" Dale put in. "So he says that he was in the army and that he was a cop. How do we know he's not just making that up?"
"I agree completely," Jessica said, smiling at the linebacker next to her.
Paul looked over at Skip, giving him a look that told him the ball was in his court. Skip handled that ball nicely.
"I have no way of proving who I am," he said. "All of my identification is buried under a couple of tons of mud up by Castle Point. All you have is my word at this particular point in time. However, as a gesture of good faith, I'll give you some free advice about how to secure your bridge route and keep from being invaded from that direction."
"I don't think we need to listen to any advice from this man," said Dale.
"I do," Paul disagreed. "Let's hear it."
Skip looked at Jessica, waiting for her to parrot the opinion of Dale, as he had done with all of her opinions. She did no such thing, she only looked at him expectantly, an arrogant expression upon her face.
"You need to occupy the hill on the other side of the bridge," Skip said. "The one that I observed your current guard position from."
"Oh that's just brilliant," Dale said, smirking. "You want us to put our people outside of our protected area and let them get cut off?" He turned to the two other members of the committee. "This guy is scamming us."
"He does have somewhat of a point," Paul said to Skip. "What happens if that position is attacked? How would we get them back across the bridge?"
"You don't seem to understand," Skip said. "I'm not suggesting that you place people outside of your area, I'm suggesting that you extend your area to include that hill. From up there you have a panoramic view of every conceivable approach to the bridge. The only blind spot would be if someone came around from the other side of the smaller hill across the road like I did. And even then they would have to cross about a hundred yards of open ground along the canyon ledge before they could access it. You could close that loophole simply by stringing some barbed wire or something like that on that approach. Or you could maintain another watch from your original post."
"I'm sorry," Paul said. "I really don't see the advantage to what you're talking about."
"The advantage," Skip explained, "is that no one could approach anywhere near the bridge without being seen. As it stands now, they're able to walk right up to it before you see them, right?"
"Well, right."
"And as I've proved, they can use the very hill that I'm talking about to conduct a thorough reconnaissance of your defenses. If you position your guards where I'm suggesting, no one will be able to get within a quarter mile or so without being seen. That overlook is perfect and it would be almost impossible for a force to dislodge your guards from there without heavy weapons, mortars, or air power - things which are in kind of short supply these days. The only way up that hill is from the road, which is a very steep climb, or from the south, the way we came up, which is an even steeper one. If you hold that hill, you hold everything within view of it because your guards can just pick off anyone that tries to climb up or get to the bridge. Two guards with a sufficient supply of ammunition could fight off fifty people easily."
Jessica and Dale were both doing their damnedest to keep looking skeptical about him, but he could see that they were carefully considering what he was saying. "Does that make sense to you, Paul?" Jessica asked hesitantly.
"Yes," he said. "It does make sense. I'd have to look the place over to be sure, but I don't see any flaw in what he's saying." He looked over at Skip. "What about at night? That was the problem we had with the original guard position. You just can't see the bridge at night. That's why I came up with the idea of the video cameras."
"And that was a damn good idea," Skip said. "I have to give credit where it is due. I'm not sure that I would have even thought about something like that."
"Thanks," Paul said, beaming a little. "I was rather proud of that."
"And you should be. But your problem is that, although it's a great idea, you did not execute it as well as you could have. You
left a hole that I was able to find and exploit. And the reason I was able to find that hole is because I was able to observe you at will before I made any sort of move."
"So what is your suggestion?"
"I'd have to see the capabilities of your camera system before I came up with a firm plan," Skip said after a moment's thought. "But the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you move the two SUVs on this side of the bridge backwards so that they are between the ladder from the catwalk and the bridge entrance. You can't let people come up behind your position like I did."
"We don't have any more coaxial cable connectors," Paul said. "We made the chain as long as we could."
"Then either splice on some more or move the camera positions back. It's better to do that than to leave yourself exposed from the rear. Also, those ladders should be removed on both ends to keep people from moving up and down on them. Hell, if you can cut holes in the catwalk itself or even drop the whole damn thing into the canyon, that would be even better. The important thing is that somehow, some way, you deny the use of that catwalk to an enemy. Without that catwalk, I wouldn't have been able to get in here from that direction. With that catwalk, I could have led as many people as I wanted to across to this side and you wouldn't have known about it, even if your guards had been doing their jobs at the time."
They discussed other aspects of the bridge defense for more than twenty minutes, Paul and Skip holding up most of the conversation but Jessica and Dale gradually starting to throw in a few contributions and ask a few questions as well. Skip began to sense a thawing of the malevolent feelings that Jessica had for him as the talk went on, a very small thawing but a thawing none-the-less. The look of disgust in her face whenever she looked at him was replaced by a look of something that was almost like interest. He sensed no such warming from Dale, who seemed to perceive him as some sort of threat, but he had also figured out that Dale's position among the town leadership was more symbolic than anything else.
Finally the discussion wound down and the time came to take a vote on the Micker of Skip's leaving or staying. The vote did not go well.
"I still think we should put him back out of town," Dale said when the table was opened for discussion. "I don't like him and I don't trust him. He snuck in here in the middle of the night and God only knows what his intentions are. We have too much to protect in this town to be taking in strangers."
"I have to agree with Dale," Jessica said when he was finished. "While he has proved himself to be knowledgeable in the Micker of defending our bridge, I think that the cost of feeding him and his companions is too high to pay for a few good ideas. As I said earlier, we don't even have enough food to feed the people that we have here already for more than a few months. We don't have the luxury of taking in outsiders."
"I think we should take him," Paul said. "Neither I nor anyone else in this town knows the least bit about defending us from attack. We can put up basic defenses, sure, we can keep out the stragglers, true, but if there were ever any sort of organized attack upon us, we would probably be defeated."
"You're being paranoid, Paul," Jessica said. "The stragglers are all we have to worry about. There is no organization out there."
"I beg to differ," Skip put in at this point. He told them about the bikers that had attacked Christine and Jack's family, killing the parents. He then told them about the interrogation that he had conducted on the survivor of that firefight. "He said there were thirty of them and that they had automatic weapons. That is organization. Those people are probably still out there somewhere and they will probably head for towns where there are survivors to try and secure more supplies. They may eventually find there way to your front door, either by coming to your bridge or by working their way up the other side of the canyon from the west. If they don't get here, other groups like them will. You cannot just assume that you will not be attacked. If that group comes here with your defenses as they are, they will defeat you. I've told you what they were trying to do to Christine and Jack when I interrupted them."
"You're just trying to scare us," Dale accused. "How do we know that you didn't make all of that up?"
"And how do you know that he did?" Paul put in. "Wouldn't the smarter course be to prepare for the worst instead of to hope for the best?"
"Not to the point of paranoia," Jessica said. "I'm sorry, Paul and I'm sorry, Mr. Adams, but we've voted on the Micker. Dale and I voted not to take any more people. That means that you will have to be put back out of town. I'll have the guards lead you back across the bridge."
"No," Paul said firmly.
"Paul," Jessica said. "We've voted! It was two to one against you."
"You're not going to do this to me on this issue," Paul said. "This is not about whether or not to allow three baths per week or only two, this is not about whether or not to increase rations or keep them where they are. This issue is for our very survival and I will not allow an impulsive decision from the two of you that is probably based more on snobbery than it is any practical Micker to stand."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dale said, leaping to his feet so fast that his chair clattered to the floor behind him.
"How dare you!" Jessica said, just as angrily.
"You'd better watch how the fuck you're talking to us or you're going to be walking out with him!"
Skip watched this exchange carefully, with the eye of a man who had seen a thousand angry people arguing with each other. Never before had the argument been so directly connected to his own survival but, interestingly, the tones and the posturing were the same. Jessica, and particularly Dale, were both exaggerating their anger, yelling louder than was necessary. This was usually a sign that people displayed when they were doubtful about their stated position but were afraid to show it for fear of losing face. Paul, on the other hand, showed the kind of determination that came with knowing you were right. He held his ground, his face remaining calm.
"This is too important of a decision to allow you two to piss away with your little voting alliance," Paul said. "This is something that needs to be decided by the entire town, and only after they have listened to the facts. I want Mr. Adams to stay here tonight..."
"No!" shouted Dale. "He is not staying here another minute."
"He will stay here," Paul said, taking a step closer to the larger man. Incredibly, Dale backed up. "That is my decision. I will keep him under guard in this building for the night. I will feed him and allow him to bathe and I will even give him fresh clothing."
"You will do no such thing," Jessica spat. "How dare you..."
"And tomorrow," Paul went on, his voice overriding her, "we will tell our fellow townspeople what Mr. Adams has offered us and what the cost would be. We will then have a town-wide vote on the Micker of whether we should sacrifice a little bit of our food supply for increased security."
"That is not how things work in this town," Jessica said, pointing her finger at him with short jabs. "We are the committee and we make the rules. You are not free to change them just because you were outvoted on something. If you have a problem with that, you would do well to remember that you were not even a resident of this town and that you can be put out of it just as easily as your friend here."
"And you can keep in mind," said Paul, unfazed by her speech, "that you two are not really liked by the other residents of this town. They accept your leadership, Jessica because you have assumed it and none of them wish to take it. They accept yours, Dale because you used to be the friendly grocery store manager that they all had wet dreams about and because you're fucking Jessica now."
"You don't need to be so crude," Jessica said, paling.
Paul ignored her. "They accept my leadership however, because I get things done around here. It was me that organized the defenses. It was me that set up the hot baths and the laundry area. Now I don't know what the result might be if you try to throw out the one member of this committee who actually does anything and who is actually worth a damn, but
it could be that you might find that you are not as well-supported as you think you are. It could be that you two will be the ones walking across the bridge."
Jessica crumbled under this onslaught. Skip saw it happen in the way that her eyes suddenly became full of doubt, in the way that her shoulders suddenly slumped in defeat. Paul had pushed exactly the buttons that needed to be pushed in order to change her mind. He had played upon the natural insecurities that bullying people all had.
"Well," she said slowly and carefully, "since you feel that strongly about this, I suppose we can make an exception to the rules just this once. He can stay until the morning and then I'll talk to everyone and tell them..."
"We will talk to everyone," Paul broke in. "I'm not about to let you go out there and tell your version of the story. We'll do it together and we'll do it objectively."
Her face angered but she controlled the outburst that she so desperately wanted to unleash. "Fine," she said. "We will go out and talk to everyone. But make sure you keep him guarded all night! He is not to be left alone."
"I think I can handle that," Paul said, allowing the slightest smile to touch his face.
"Smoke?" Paul offered to Skip, holding out a red and white box of Marlboros.
"I haven't smoked since I was in the army," he told him. They were still in the conference room although Jessica and Dale had both departed for parts unknown. He had just swallowed down a meal of baked beans, cornbread, and applesauce, easily the best he had consumed since leaving his home in Stockton before the hunting trip. The beans had actually been hot!
"Yeah," Paul agreed, taking one out of the pack and putting it in his mouth. "They're bad for you. Give you cancer and heart disease and emphysema and all that." He struck a light with a pack of matches. "Somehow that just doesn't scare me as much as it used to." He put the end of the match to his smoke and took a deep drag.
"Good point," Skip agreed. "But all the same, I'll pass."
