CHAPTER THREE
The next morning it’s overcast, and I’m standing outside again in the parking area, and Thor is lying on the grass, content and breathing softly after scarfing down sausage at this morning’s breakfast. My battle pack is stuffed with supplies and rations, and over my shoulder is my M-10 Colt, freshly cleaned, and I have a bandolier of six shells around my shoulder. I’m wearing a MOLLE vest with the usual stuff hanging off that, and my helmet is dangling from the side. My 9 mm Beretta is holstered at my waist, and I wait.
I should feel pretty good, happy, content. I’m now a lieutenant, I’m well fed, I took a shower last night and one this morning, and I’m safe, relatively secure, and I’m heading home.
But I don’t feel good, happy, or much of anything else. In between eating, sleeping, showering, and getting ready to go home, I’ve talked to a number of Navy personnel and a few civilians at this base, and none of them can tell me anything about the shooting death of Major Thomas Coulson, the father of Serena and Buddy. I get grunts, denials, and shrugs. That’s it.
“Lieutenant Knox.”
Coming up the concrete pathway is Commander Morong, looking fresh and crisp in his Navy khakis. In the short time I’ve been here, I have to admire the Navy: Their uniforms are nice and freshly washed, and they have pretty good chow.
“Good morning, Commander,” I say.
He looks up at the clouds and says, “Rain coming.”
“Yep.”
He says, “Those asteroid strikes in the oceans, not only did they wash away cities and most of the world’s navies, they pretty much screwed up our weather for the next couple of centuries.”
“That’s what I hear, sir.”
Morong crosses his arms. “Sorry you ran into brick walls last night.”
“Sir?”
He says, “Lieutenant . . . for a while this little out-of-the-way naval installation was taken over by Mister Cranston and his . . . associates. Decades ago they did things in chasing terrorists that were highly controversial. Now? They’re doing what they can to kill aliens, and worry about history later.”
“They shot and killed the father of a friend of mine.”
“I’m sure they did,” he says. He lets his arms drop and says, “Those who did that ran for the hills once you and Captain Wallace got here. The ones that are here . . . they don’t want to think about it anymore. You looking for whatever justice last night was a good effort. But don’t let it chew at you. There’s so much more to worry about.”
“I’m not looking for justice,” I say, lying slightly to the Navy officer. “I’m looking for a body to bury.”
The sound of engines comes to us. Thor slowly gets up, stretches, yawns. Morong turns, offers a hand. I give it a shake. Morong says, “I’ll see what I can do. But don’t count on it.”
“Thanks, sir,” I say.
Then he turns, and the convoy rolls in, and I grab my gear.
There’s an up-armored Humvee in the lead, and one in the rear. In between are two old steam-powered M35 transport trucks, an oil tanker, and a battered New York MTA bus. The door to the bus slides open and a tough-looking Asian woman comes out, wearing oil- and dirt-stained fatigues, and chevron pins marking a staff sergeant and a name tag denoting nakamura. She has two pistols holstered at her belt, and is carrying a sawed-off pump-action shotgun in her dirty hands.
“You Knox?” she asks.
“I am,” I say, wondering if I should push the point of her having to salute me, but no, I’ve been a lieutenant less than a full day, and I’m still learning. Besides, I’m a passenger on this trip, not an officer.
She juts a thumb to the open door of the bus. “Then let’s haul it. All right?” She gets back into the bus and I follow her in.
About half of the seats are taken by soldiers, a few dozing with their arms crossed, mouths open. There are overhead bins, doors removed, and they are stuffed with duffel bags, knapsacks, and a few weapons, none of them M-10s. I find two empty seats near the front, by the driver’s seat—occupied by a chubby African-American female driver who’s tapping a dial on the bus’s instrument panel—and take one, trying my best to store my gear, and Thor sniffs the seat, jumps in, and takes up his and most of mine.
“Nice job, bud,” I say.
He just grins at me.
Nakamura comes back and says to the driver. “Let’s go, Diller. Time’s a wastin’.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she says.
Diller closes the door, honks the horn, and the convoy starts moving out, and within a couple of minutes, we’ve left the Saratoga Naval Station.
Nakamura is sitting across from me, looking through a clipboard, and then checks me out and says, “Just the M-10, Lieutenant?”
“And a pistol.”
She laughs, flips through some pages. “Won’t be any good against a Coastie ambush.”
I don’t like her tone. “No, but if a Creeper comes trotting after us, I’d rather have my M-10 than an M-4.”
“Won’t see no Creepers,” she says.
“That a guarantee?”
Nakamura looks up from the clipboard. “I’ve been running this express for three years. We even get a couple of miles close to a Creeper Dome in Connecticut. But I’ve never seen a Creeper out in the open. You know why?”
“Do tell, Sergeant.”
She says, “We move fast, we move on the most remote roads, and we don’t keep to a set pattern . . . and we don’t make any threatening moves, like heading fast to that Creeper Dome. Haven’t seen a Creeper in all those times.”
“Nice to be safe,” I say.
“Oh, we’re not that safe,” she says. “We’ve been hit three times, and each time by a Coastie gang. Looking for food, fuel . . . women. Each time we fought them off. Each time we didn’t manage to take any prisoners. Fortunes of war.”
I nod. “Good job.”
“Yeah, well, they should have stayed in their refugee camps.”
“Those camps have been up for ten years. I guess some get tired of the camps.”
“Well, better than to get tired from a 5.56 mm round through your skull.”
She goes back to her paperwork and there’s a tap on my shoulder. I swivel in my seat and there are two soldiers back there, about a year younger than me, and with each of them wearing name tags saying powers, I make a good guess that they’re brothers.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant . . . but you’ve fought Creepers, for real?” asks the one on the left.
They’ve got rough complexions, black hair trimmed back real short, and are wearing specialist tags in the center of their BDUs.
“That’s right,” I say.
The one on the right says, “Lots?”
“Enough.”
“What’s it like?”
I say, “What’s your MOS?”
“Tommy and me,” the left one says, “We’re mechanics. I mean, we wanted to get into infantry but—”
“Ross and me,” his brother says, almost apologetically, “we grew up on a big farm, north of Albany. Started working with tools almost as soon as we could walk . . . could repair much of everything that had an engine or wheels. Like Ross says, you know, when we enlisted, we wanted to get into infantry . . .”
I say, “Guys, don’t feel bad. If it weren’t for wrench pullers like you, we’d still be running around on horses.”
They smile and Ross says, “That your dog?”
Technically, it was the Army’s dog, but I say, “You better believe it.”
“He hunt Creepers?”
“The best.”
Shyly, his brother Tommy says, “You kill many Creepers?”
I’m tired now, and just say, “Not enough,” and I turn back, rub Thor’s head. He shifts around on the seat so he can drop his leg on my lap, and I let him. I rub his back, past the burnt fur and the scar tissue, and he settles in, legs draped over the aisle. The smooth rocking motion of the old MTA bus makes me drowsy and I fall asleep.
I wake up when there’s a horn honk, and we pull over to the side of the road. Despite ten years having gone for most road and bridge repair, this stretch is relatively smooth, with few potholes and cracks in the pavement. We’re in an old shopping center, something called a strip mall, and it looks like there had once been five stores here, all in a row, but the windows are smashed and the roofs have collapsed. There’s also about a dozen prewar cars, on flattened tires, windshields milky white, paint faded. I get out with Thor and stretch my legs, and he trots over to an old Saab and lifts his leg, peeing against a flat tire.
Funny thing, I see that all of the little doors on the side of the cars, marking where the fuel caps were located, are still open. Some enterprising soul or two no doubt drained these dead cars—dead because the NUDETs fried the electronics—of their precious fuel.
Other soldiers come out of the bus, yawning and talking, a few sharing a cigarette or half-smoked cigar. The armored-up Humvees take covering positions on either end of the lot, and from a wide dirt road in the trees, two horse-drawn wagons appear, riding up to Sergeant Nakamura. It seems she knows the drivers for each wagon, for there’s laughter, handshakes, and papers exchanged, and then the wagons go up to the side of the two transport trucks. Canvas tarps are pulled away and in a few minutes, bushels of corn are being unloaded from the wagon and brought into the trucks.
I wander around, M-10 slung over my back. I’m enjoying being out in the fresh air, and I’m just letting random thoughts roll by, of being back in Ft. St. Paul eventually, seeing Abby Monroe, a combat courier that I’ve been dating, wondering if I’ll ever tell her about Serena, thinking I didn’t have to decide that now, and I just kick at the dead leaves, look around again.
Other soldiers are now sitting on the ground, legs stretched out, chatting it up. The Humvees are still there, but the doors are open, and troopers are hanging around the open doors. Each gunner is leaning over his 50-caliber machine gun.
I suddenly don’t like it.
They’re too relaxed, too unaware.
I pause.
I’m just a freshly made lieutenant, heading home, and this wasn’t my unit. It was Sergeant Nakamura’s, and she knows the turf, she knows the routine.
I don’t.
So it wouldn’t do for me to override her, start issuing orders, and being a pain in the ass. Besides, for a few days earlier, I had been running a platoon for the first time in my life, and I was tired of being in charge. I’m a Recon Ranger, assigned with Thor to go out and hunt Creepers, and that’s the job I was trained for, and one I loved.
The wagons are nearly all unloaded. I check my watch. Not even 10 a.m. yet. I wonder where and how this convoy was going to get lunch. I had rations and other stuff squirreled away in my battlepack, but I didn’t want to start dipping in there yet, unless it was a snack for Thor—
Thor.
Where is he?
I yell, “Thor, come!”
I spin around, checking my 360.
No Thor.
Oh boy, I really don’t like it now.
Where’s my guy?
The last I saw he was relieving himself over by that dead Saab, but right now there’s just a drying puddle of dog pee to mark where he’d been.
“Thor!”
The two Powers brothers, sharing a cigarette, point to the far end of the crumbling buildings and one says, “Loo, I think I saw him over there.”
I start to trot over to that last crumbled building, which looks like it had been a bank, and lots of not-so-good thoughts tumble along in my mind, including that even in some of the more rural stretches, dogs are at risk from hunters for obvious and stomach-churning reasons.
“Thor!”
And just like that, my big boy runs around the corner of the broken-down bank, running straight at me, and I’m filled with so much relief that it takes me a long number of seconds to hear my boy.
He’s barking.
Barking loud.
And not because he’s happy to see me.
I stop in my tracks, put both hands up around my mouth and yell back to the convoy:
“Creepers!”