The day after: An apocalyptic morning (114 page)

              "So don't yell at me then, Skip Adams," she said quite huffily. "I was just doing what I knew you wanted done anyway."

              "I think she put you in your place quite nicely there," Paul, who was listening in along with everyone else in the helicopter (as well as probably half the town), noted with a smile.

              "It would seem so," Skip said, reluctantly smiling. He keyed back up his microphone. "My sincere apologies, Christine," he told her. "You did the right thing and I'm letting my emotions get in the way. So where are our guests now?"

              "I have them under guard in one of the storage rooms in the community center," she replied. "I let them take baths and I've given them fresh clothes. Right now they're eating some of our leftovers from lunch. They've been living on canned food for the past eight days now."

              "We know what that feels like, don't we?" Skip replied. "Good job. Have the guard posts reported anything unusual since you picked them up?"

              "Negative," she said. "I've had them on high-alert ever since the first sighting and everything seems to be as it should be. However, I would suggest you make a pass around the perimeter and check everything on visual and with the FLIR, just to make sure that there's not an attack force out there."

              "I concur," Skip said, taking a quick glance at his fuel gauge. It was getting pretty low but there was still enough for a quick run around the area. "We have just enough fuel to do that. It should take about ten, fifteen minutes or so. We'll report anything to you as it comes up."

              "Copy that, Skip," she said. "See you on the ground."

              The aerial check of the area revealed nothing but hills and trees and mud. There was no sign of a hidden attack force hiding anywhere within ten miles of Garden Hill's borders. With less than ten gallons of fuel in the tank, Skip landed the helicopter its accustomed place. He then allowed Jack, his apprentice, to go through the power-down procedure as part of his training.

              "Good job," he told him after he had flipped all of the switches and turned all of the dials. "Do you think you can handle refueling by yourself? I wanna go meet our new friends as soon as I can."

              "No problem," Jack assured him.

              "You the man," Skip told him, opening his door and stepping out onto the wet parking lot. Behind him Mick and Paul had already gotten out. They carried their rifles, which were now safed and unloaded, over their shoulders and their packs upon their backs. Together, they all walked to the side entrance of the community center, said hello to the guard stationed there, and went inside.

              First and foremost, Skip and Paul gave Christine a thorough debriefing on her contact with the two women so far. She only had a few details to share that she hadn't already told them over the radio. Basically the women were offering to trade everything they knew about Auburn and its inhabitants for sanctuary and citizenship in Garden Hill. As proof of their identity they had dropped Jessica's name and revealed the fact that she was now living in Auburn. As an enticement to take the deal, they had made vague assertions regarding both an upcoming attack by Auburnites and an aborted earlier attack.

              "What do you think?" Paul asked Skip after hearing all this.

              "I say we should go talk to them," he replied without hesitation. "It sounds like they might be a wealth of valuable intelligence."

              "Should we agree to their deal?" Christine asked.

              Paul shrugged. "Why shouldn't we? Truth be known, there's no real reason to exclude people with the... uh... vigor that we used to. Now that we have access to enough food to carry us through, a few more mouths to feed is no longer potentially the difference between survival and death. I would probably be inclined to offer them citizenship even if they didn't have information for us. As long as they don't pose a danger of any kind, why not?"

              "Jessica wouldn't be very happy with that attitude," Skip told him.

              "No," said Christine, who still had more than a little lingering hatred for Jessica. "I wouldn't think she would. And she was president of the homeowner's association you know."

              "Yes," Paul said. "And we all saw what that got her in life, didn't we?" He silently dismissed the subject of Jessica and turned back to Skip. "So how do you want to handle this? You're the expert at questioning people."

              "I wouldn't say expert," Skip said, "but I did do my fair share of it back in my patrol days. If this were a criminal investigation, I would have them separated from each other so they couldn't collaborate on stories, but in this case, we might as well leave them together. They've already had a couple of weeks to get their details straight if they're planning on scamming us in some way. I'll do most of the questioning of them and hopefully I'll be able to pick up if they're feeding us a bunch of bullshit. If I start to feel that that is the case, then we'll separate them at that time."

              "Sounds like a plan," Paul said.

              " Christine," Skip continued, "you should be in the room during the questioning, just so they see a familiar face. And you Paul, you should be in there as well since you're the one that has the authority to grant sanctuary or not. But I'll ask both of you to keep your questions and comments as minimal as you can."

              "Okay," they both agreed.

              "And we should videotape the interview," Skip added. "That way we can go over it slowly and in detail later if we need to. We can also use it against them if it turns out they're lying or misleading us in some way. A real good technique in interrogation is to confront your subject with contradictory information that they gave earlier."

              "It'll take a few minutes to rig up a power supply and the equipment," Paul said.

              "We have all night," Skip told him.

              "True. Christine, why don't you dig out the camera and I'll start running a power supply?"

              Skip started off very low key with the two women. He introduced himself and Paul and then reintroduced Christine to them as well. Hands were shaken all around. He then explained to them that - if they had no objections - the interview would be recorded for the town archives. He strongly hinted that this was a routine Micker - as if every conversation that took place in the community center was videotaped. They both agreed to this stipulation without debate.

              As he went through these initial steps he looked the two of them up and down, his sharp, observant eyes not missing a single detail of their appearance. Though they were now bathed and fed and dressed in designer jeans and sweaters that had come from Garden Hill's abundant clothing stock, it was quite obvious that they had been through quite an ordeal to get where they now sat. Their faces were somewhat gaunt, with a few premature lines and crow's feet - factors which bespoke of both a considerable amount of recent stress and near-starvation. Their hands were callused and worn, the surface marred by multiple cuts, scrapes, and abrasions. Their fingers had ground-in mud beneath the nails. Most telling of all were the eyes - one set brown, the other set blue - which were haunted and filled with desperate hope. Without even broaching the meat of the Micker, Skip was able to develop a pretty good idea that they were on the up and up.

              "You say you came from Auburn," he asked them. "Is that correct?"

              "Yes," Anna, the apparent spokeswoman for the duo, replied. "I lived in Auburn before the comet. Jean is from Meadow Vista."

              "Meadow Vista huh?" Skip said, turning to the younger woman. "We flew over that in the helicopter once. We saw bodies down on the ground everywhere."

              "The militia attacked it," Jean said in a quiet voice.

              "The militia?"

              Jean opened her mouth to say more but was interrupted by Anna. "Don't tell them anything, Jean," she said. "Not until they agree to give us sanctuary."

              "We've already agreed to do that," Skip said, unoffended by the interruption. "Even without your information, we more than likely would have allowed you to stay. As long as you don't prove to be dangerous or spies or anything like that, you're in."

              "Really?" Jean said, beaming.

              Anna was a little more cynical however. "How do we know that you're telling us the truth?" she asked shrewdly. "How do we know that you're not just telling us what we want to hear to get our information from us?"

              Skip smiled a little. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "the truth of the Micker is, that you don't. I have no way to prove to you that I'm sincere. No way at all. I could put it in writing for you if you want, but what good would that do? We seem to be a little short on courts and lawyers to enforce verbal or written contracts now, don't we?"

              "Yeah," Anna said. "I guess we are, aren't we?"

              "All we have is our word," Skip said. "It might not mean much, but it's all we got. I promise you that as long as we don't discover some fact that indicates you are a danger to us, we will let you stay. We have enough food to feed two additional mouths. We have enough houses to house two more. We have enough clothing to keep you dressed warmly. And we most certainly have enough work that needs to be done to appreciate two more sets of hands to do it with. So what do you say? Shall we talk or what?"

              Anna still seemed a little doubtful.

              "Look," Skip told her, leaning forward and softening his voice a bit. "I was in your shoes not too terribly long before. I led Christine and her brother through the woods after the comet fell just trying to get us all to some place resembling safety. I found this town and they were keeping out all outsiders at that point. I snuck across the bridge one night just to prove to them that I had something valuable to offer them - namely, my knowledge of security and military tactics. I've sat in that same position that you are now sitting and I've wondered and obsessed about the same things. I don't know how I can assure you that you're all right, but you are."

              Anna sighed, uncertain about how to feel but pressing on anyway. "All right," she said. "I guess we'll have to take you at your word, won't we? What other choice do we have?"

              "I don't know," Skip said, leaning back a little once again. "What choice do you have?"

              "None at all," she told him. "None at all. Let's talk."

              "Right," Skip said with a smile. "Let's talk."

              They talked. For more than two hours they talked. Jean and Anna told their story in semi-chronological order, starting with the comet fall and their pre-comet lives and working through their eventual escape from the town that had become a fascist prison camp. They told about the militia and its early missions to conquer and loot the surrounding towns. They told of how the men in these towns were then incorporated into the militia and the women were then utilized as slaves, both for sexual and work purposes. Skip moved them along from point to point, place to place with his questions. Occasionally, very occasionally, Paul or Christine would toss in a question as well, unable to help but ask for some point to be clarified in the horrible tale they were being told. Skip was simply amazed at the quality of the information that Jean and Anna possessed. Had these men that ran Auburn really been so dumb as to talk freely of these things in front of the women and assume that they weren't absorbing any of it? Did it never occur to them what a potentially catastrophic information drain that represented? Apparently not.

              "So let me get this straight," Skip said after the descriptions of women's rights in Auburn, such as they were. "You're not allowed to carry a weapon or participate in any sort of military training?"

              "That's right," Anna confirmed. "And the men are not allowed to do any sort of cooking or cleaning chores - except for their weapons of course."

              "They love to play with their weapons," Jean said with a hateful smirk.

              "What an incredible waste of manpower," Skip said as he pondered this. "The population of Auburn is around three thousand, right?"

              "Right," she replied, reiterating the answer to one of the first questions asked in the interview.

              "And of that number, more than 2200 are women?"

              "Yes."

              "Jesus," Skip said, shaking his head. "In a way we're kind of lucky that they're doing things this way. Can you imagine how formidable of an army they'd have if they trained up the women like we do? They'd outnumber us by more than twenty to one."

              As shocking as the tales of life in Auburn were, more shocking was the plans that the Auburn militia had for Garden Hill. This portion of the talk took up the most time.

              "So they were watching us when we were attacked by those assholes the first time, is that what you're saying?" Skip asked.

              "From one of the hills overlooking town," Anna confirmed. "There was just a single platoon of forty men that had been sent out to observe your town. Bracken was in charge of this mission, as he has been all of the follow-up missions."