River of Night

by John Ringo

  “How can it not be critical?” Jason said, carefully not raising his voice. “You could’ve saved a lot of people! Ones with important skills.”

  “Could have is the operative phrase, Mr. Young,” Green said, raising one finger in ritual protest. “At this time, nearly everyone has been exposed to the virus that is going to be exposed to the virus. The calculus is clear. Fifteen percent of those exposed die. Three quarters become mostly insensate cannibals and the remainder recover and…live. Of course, the surviving ten percent is being rather heavily winnowed by the current harsh conditions. That’s where I come in. And perhaps you, as well.”

  Jason drank some ice water, marveling at the feeling of refreshment that a simple cold beverage was creating. Still, he held his peace. He might not be a cop any longer, but letting suspects talk at their own pace without interruption was practically the first thing that he had learned as a rookie.

  “From the beginning I required my associates to have a certain skillset,” Green said and looked back towards his guard. “Mr. Loki here is a former law enforcement officer, like yourself. His assistance has been invaluable as we managed certain members of our team.”

  “Eva, Miss, said that you recruited from prisons?” Jason said. It wasn’t really a question. “Convicts and cops aren’t known for being on good terms. Why pick them to begin with?”

  “I needed the nucleus of a team I could rely upon,” Green answered, gesturing towards Loki. “Even as the pandemic progressed, my forecasts predicted the fabric of our old society would wear completely through. Criminals aren’t without a code, Mr. Young. They merely have a very different code from those you call civilians.”

  “Do you mind if I asked how you got started?” the cop asked. “You’re pretty far along and it hasn’t been even four months since I left metro D.C.—you even have an MRAP outside.”

  “I don’t mind, Mr. Young,” Green replied, smiling. “A lot can happen in a few months and I’m not your average criminal. Make no error, by the standards of the recently expired civilization, I am a criminal. I laundered digital funds transfers for anyone that could pay my fees. I hacked into every level of government and law enforcement networks, I funded and later directly participated in the illegal collection of human tissue to manufacture vaccine. But by the standards of the world-that-is, I’m just a survivor.”

  He chuckled.

  “A very well equipped survivor, with access to some military grade equipment that had been seconded to a local police department, courtesy of the now expired War on Terror. More importantly, I have the only organization that is clearing zombies, reestablishing the road network and enforcing any kind of discipline. At the final analysis, I am still just a survivor.”

  “I see,” Jason said. “That’s a lot to take in. But your system is already working. Why me?”

  “As we move forward, my organization will require new skills in order to succeed,” Green said, gesturing expansively with his glass. “As we transition from simple clearance and asset collection, we will have to create a different framework for governance. The communities that we rebuild will need some symbols of reassurance. The presence of former law enforcement personnel will be attractive to certain kinds of survivors. A sort of familiar symbolism, you see. In addition, some of my existing team exhibit a certain overenthusiastic moral flexibility and that requires…the occasional enforcement of a Gleaner boundary, as it were.”

  “What kind of boundaries are we talking about, Mr. Green?” Jason said, falling naturally into the cadence of his host.

  “Excellent question,” Green replied, setting his drink down with a slight click. He steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. “Boundaries. Well, whichever boundary I select, and drawn to whichever extent I dictate at whatever time I choose. In general my goal is to preserve life and well-being where I can. However, I have no intention of reestablishing some sort of illusory representative government. I mean to be in charge. Mine will be the first word, and the last word and my Guards…” he inclined his head towards Loki’s bulk “…will be my sword.”

  “That doesn’t seem too drastic, given the current conditions,” Jason said, reflecting for a moment before continuing. “This is the first organized group that I’ve seen so far. But there’s got to be more to it than that, no?”

  “Tell me, Mr. Young,” Green countered. “Are you a particularly religious man?”

  “Parochial school as a kid,” Jason replied honestly. “Not so much as an adult. Law enforcement can make you question the concept of a god.”

  “Just so. Our current total personnel at this base, from laborers to entertainers to technicians and Gleaners, is just under three hundred and fifty,” Green said with a smile. “About that many again are living in the original areas where we found them, maintaining our presence at potentially important points. You see, when you have less than ten percent of the population to work with, and little industrial age machinery on hand, what works is feudalism. And the true authority is the feudal lord, not God.”

  “So when you say ‘governor’ what you really mean is ‘baron,’ right?” Jason asked, finally grasping what his host was selling.

  “Baron, count, duke, prince,” Green replied cheerfully. “Who knows? What I know is that in order to save even a quarter of the survivors I’ve encountered since the collapse of civil authority, a form of governance rather less random than democracy and much less benevolent than religion is required. And I say this from experience: if the old American government had acted quickly and decisively, they could’ve saved much more. They might even remain relevant.”

  “A quarter?” Jason was still digesting the implications of Green’s…confession? He finally asked. “What of the rest?”

  “They weren’t required for our operations,” the would-be king, warlord or dictator-for-life answered, quite simply. “And I couldn’t leave them behind me.”

  There was a pause in the conversation while Green allowed Jason to consider that tidbit.

  “Eva explained about your name, the Gleaners,” Jason said, electing to pursue a different tack. “Is that an official label or just your team’s nickname for themselves?”

  “Gleaning was the old practice of carefully searching an already harvested field for useful bits of the original crop,” his host replied before collecting his whiskey and sipping again. His smile was distorted by the rim of the crystal glass, making his teeth seem abnormally large. “Sometimes the bits you find are edible, lifesaving. Other times they are rotten, dangerous. Very dangerous. This virus has already reaped its harvest. We now look for what’s left. What’s valuable. What I value most is people. I mean to rebuild civilization, Mr. Young. What I need to know is if you are as useful a bit of gleaning as you appear to be.”

  * * *

  The interview went on for a few hours. Green carefully interrogated him, not just about what Jason had seen during his journey from the Washington D.C. area, but about the decisions he’d made as he fought to survive. He probed rather more deeply about Jason’s reasons for walking away from his job, from the city and ultimately from his police partner. Neither the details of his decision to honor his infected partner’s dying wish for a quick death nor his ultimate decision that it was every person for themselves had occasioned a comment from Green. Even Jason’s Irish Catholic roots came in for discussion, not that Jason, a self-described Easter and Christmas Catholic, was especially devout.

  Green had closed with a provocative statement, signaling the end of the meeting.

  “You seem to have decided that the world was over and therefore, your responsibility was over. I am telling you that a new world will rise from the wreckage. You’ll have to decide if you want to be a part of it. In the meantime, Mr. Loki here will further orient you.”

  The giant standing behind Jason rumbled affirmatively.

  “He’ll insert you into our organization. You’ll get an escort for a few days while you look around and regain some amount of personal e
quanimity. You won’t be armed, of course. I give my team considerable latitude, but I expect complete loyalty and obedience. After you clean up and get used to eating regularly, I may have a little job to do, and you can help. It might go a little way towards earning yourself a place among my people. Or not.”

  * * *

  Tom’s close call in the garage had become a minor matter of contention. It was time for a formal debrief, Bank of the Americas-style.

  “Go on,” Tom said, turning to place his back to the counter of the farm kitchen they’d used overnight. He jumped up and twisted around to use the countertop as a seat. “Gimme the rest, because so far this isn’t news.”

  “The first thing that’s going to help is realizing that we’re not fighting people,” Kaplan said, writing on the white painted wall with a piece of charcoal that he’d scavenged from their breakfast fire. “They’re human all right, with the same physiology, the same autonomic nervous system, but they don’t think like they used to, not like us. The tactics that we’ve drilled during our entire lives are bass-ackwards now.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Durante replied, leaning against the far wall. “Stealth is the first lesson. We get it, that’s how we survived in the old SAFE.”

  “We’re used to being tactical,” Kaplan went on. He drew a long straight line at shoulder height, horizontal to the floor and put an X at one end, labeling it “Kap.” “We’re taught to be silent, to see without being seen, that the first person to be spotted gets dead.”

  Most of the survivors were either in the surprisingly clean house, or taking care of last minute post-breakfast chores before they loaded up and hit the road again. A few poked their heads in and began quietly listening.

  “Thing is, when we get sneaky, we sneak right into the zombies’ turf, and let them choose the distance of the engagement,” Kaplan said, drawing another X midway down the wall. He labeled it “twenty-one feet.” “When we let them get within twenty or thirty feet, we’re relearning the Tueller rule all over again.”

  “Okay, I’ll geek,” Worf said. “What does a physicist have to do with zombies? We’re going to nuke them now? If this is up for a vote, I vote no.”

  “That’s Teller,” Tom said, without turning his head. “He said Tueller. American cop who made the case that once a man with a blade closes within twenty-one feet of a gunman, the gunman has a second to a second and a half to draw and shoot to stop the attacker before the shooter is eating steel.”

  “That rule is so much bullshit,” Durante scoffed, still holding up the wall, crossing one leg over the other. “The distance is an approximation. The time is an approximation. The level of competency Tueller specified is an approxi—”

  “The point, Gravy,” Kaplan said, cutting his teammate off, “is that once zombies get close enough, you’re gonna get dogpiled and shooting contact distance with a rifle is hard. We need something else. And before you say pistols are the answer, Tom’s little rodeo where we got the Durango doesn’t help that argument. If they’d run into a few more infected, they would’ve gotten bit, and vaccine or no vaccine, your nose ain’t gonna grow back, or any other soft bits neither.”

  “We’re wearing armor, no?” Risky pointed out. Behind her, Vinnie winced and nervously stroked his proud Roman nose.

  “Yeah, armor that’s good against guns, but that has limited protection against half a dozen infected trying to eat your face.” Kaplan continued, adding a long pointy knife in the hand of his stick figure avatar. He added a few drops of what was presumably blood dripping into a puddle. “We need more complete coverage in order to be bite resistant. That way, getting dogpiled isn’t the end. Not if you’re covered up, have pistols and a machete, and you can keep your head.”

  “Rain gear is too light,” Tom said, pulling at his chin. “Leather is heavy. Neoprene is hot. MOPP gear is heavy and hot.”

  Tom was referring to the military Mission Oriented Protective Posture gear worn when biological or chemical weapons were expected or suspected.

  “But okay, I see your point, we need a different armor concept,” he added.

  “We can sort out the armor by scavenging,” Kaplan said, riffing off his boss’s interest. “What we need to think about is making noise on purpose before we go into any more dark rooms. The groups of live infected we’ve seen have all had two things in common so far. They tend to like dark spaces, usually inside, and they are near water. So, if we’re thinking about going into a house or near water, we should make noise and let them come to us, so we can use distance to take maximum advantage of our ranged weapons.”

  “Look, I like getting stuck in as much as the next guy,” Durante said in a reasonable tone. “But if you put enough armor on to cover every extremity, you’re gonna be slow, noisy and a pushover for the first nonzombie gunman you come across. And if everywhere you go you start ringing the dinner bell, you’re calling the infected. That means dozens, maybe hundreds of infected. And this is the really dangerous bit: sooner or later that’s going to get noticed by someone who isn’t infected.”

  “We’re going to have to mix it up,” Tom said, breaking in. “I see your point about going into potential close-quarter combat blind. We’ll adapt our procedures.”

  “How about spears?” Ralph asked. “The old boss, he was always talking about pig hunting with great big stickers, boar spears. Nice long spear would keep a zombie off you better than a knife.”

  That stopped everyone from speaking for a moment, surprised at the actually useful contribution from an unexpected quarter.

  “That’s…actually interesting, Ralph, thanks,” Tom said, eyeing his clearance partner from the day before. “It almost makes up for nearly shooting me yesterday.”

  Ralph began to smile widely.

  “I said almost,” Tom added, before continuing. “Seriously, we need to observe all the safety rules all of the time. The Big Four are always in effect, got it?”

  He was referring to the pre-Fall rules of fundamental firearms safety.

  The ex-gangster looked sheepishly around the room and then at his shoes. Everyone had heard the story of how he’d panicked in the darkness. It was…embarrassing. Dutifully, he began to mumble.

  “Every gun is loaded, all da’ time, don’t aim at nothin’ you ain’t gonna kill…” he began.

  “Booger hooks off the bang switch unless you’re about to shoot and know what’s behind your target!” the three teenagers caroled loudly from the sidelines. Apparently one of Astroga’s lessons had stuck.

  “I’m not going to beat your ass, Ralph,” Tom said, favoring Astroga with a tight little grin. “I’m going to do something worse. At our next camp, you’re going to be teaching a formal firearms safety class, for everyone, including the kids, who have clearly been learning from Astroga already. Your students will also include Ms. Bua. If anyone fails to pass the quiz that I will administer afterwards, you’re eating the vegetarian omelet meals out of every case of MREs we have till they do pass. Do not mistake my resolve.”

  “Boss!” Ralph protested, suddenly over his embarrassment. “They smell like puke and taste like ass!”

  Astroga made a capella retching sounds.

  “Yep, the good ole Vomlet,” Copley said raising a hand to his temple as if trying to think. “You better teach me right. I hate those things. Oh, oh, I feel a memory lapse coming on!”

  “And that’s the point,” Tom said. “Gravy, Kap, load ’em up.”

  He watched as his trusted lieutenants briskly moved out, herding the civilians toward the vehicles. He rocked back and forth on his feet, satisfied with the progress of his little group. They’d made a couple of mistakes, but things were looking up.

  * * *

  “There is no way to tell how much gleaning you can get of these podunk towns, Boss!” Biggs said, complaining again. “Some places you might find ten survivors. Out of that you might have two or three worth feeding. Other places you can’t find anything worth the time to collar ’em up or the gas to bring ’
em back.”

  Biggs was keeping his voice down, keeping the exchange private despite the open setting. The town of Laurel wasn’t much more than a slightly built-up crossroads.

  “Did you sweep the entire town, Mr. Biggs?” Harlan asked.

  “Naw, Mr. Green,” the broader man said, chewing on a candy bar with his mouth open. “It was the second place we hit and we’d already mostly filled the trucks, so when I saw you coming I stopped, figured we’d finish after talking to you.”

  Harlan dropped his initial appraisal of the prisoners that he had to convert into productive assets and rounded on Biggs.

  “You left the town incompletely secured after you took people out?” he asked mildly. “You left potential assets behind armed with knowledge of our tactics and awareness of our operations? And you plan to go back?”

  “Sure, Boss,” Biggs, replied, spraying a few bits of candy bar. “Soon as we drop this batch off.”

  Sometimes the inability of these convicts to think past the next day blinded them to the consequences of their actions. Harlan made a mental note to address this in future recruiting. In Biggs’s case, he couldn’t think past his next meal. If the ex-con wasn’t a perfectly aggressive, somewhat biddable creature, Harlan would’ve already liquidated him. Lesson learned.

  Harlan deliberately relaxed, striving for control. Hasty decisions yielded suboptimal results. Biggs was what he was, and no more. The self-styled governor returned to his scan of the new batch of potential recruits.

  “Standard priority selection for the assets that we extract from recovered towns goes to mechanics, engineers, doctors and…entertainers,” he asked skeptically. “Do any of these three fall into those categories, Mr. Biggs?”

  He didn’t have to point to the three men in question.