The day after: An apocalyptic morning (41 page)

              Everyone did well except for Georgia Miles, the slinky former housewife who had joined with the hope of gaining Skip's favor. She had jumped in feigned fear each time a cartridge was exploded from her weapon, giving a girlish squeal and constantly trying to get Skip to give her more personal instruction. Twice he had to bat the barrel of her loaded weapon downward as she turned to talk to someone and unconsciously trained the weapon towards them, her finger on the trigger. After the second of these incidents he pulled her weapon from her hand and told her to go back to town.

              "What do you mean?" she asked.

              "I mean I need people a little more dedicated than you are. You're dismissed from guard detail."

              "Dismissed?" she nearly screamed. "What the hell does that mean?"

              "It means you're washed out," he said. "You can leave now."

              "You can't fire me from this shitty detail!" she yelled, standing before him with her hands on her hips.

              "On the contrary," he said calmly, "I not only have the ability to do so, but the obligation. Your services are no longer needed here."

              She had of course gone immediately to Jessica and Dale to complain but her complaints fell upon deaf ears. While the popping of weapons continued from just outside the wall, Georgia went back to the wood-gathering detail she had been on before.

              In addition to firearms training Skip taught them the basics of movement and squad procedures, going into more detail than he had been able to with Jack and Christine on their march to town and also having them practice the techniques as well. His four-person squad was forced to crawl on their bellies in the mud, to practice flanking the grocery store and breaching it under simulated fire. He taught them the various communications signals, both hand and verbal, and went over the importance of keeping in close contact with one's teammates. During the second day of training Paul even participated by giving a two-hour lecture on basic first aid as it applied to the types of injuries they were likely to encounter in battle. His lecture was followed by a practical lab session in which the firefighter made them dress and triage simulated injuries.

              "Well," Skip told Paul after the course was completed, "they're not exactly Navy SEALs or anything, but they're a damn sight better than they were before. Even Christine and Jack, who were pretty tip-top before the class, have shown significant improvement."

              "So you think we're a little more secure?" Paul asked.

              "A little," he agreed. "But not much. Until I get more people to sign up and take the training seriously we're still fighting an uphill battle if we're attacked. But at least I have four people who can take charge of some of the others if the shit hits the fan."

              "You do what you can in this world," Paul said, clapping him on the back. "Come on, let's go get ourselves a little drink from the supply room. I think we deserve it."

              Once the permanent guard volunteers were trained, Skip tried to keep two of them on duty at all times. He did not order them to work double shifts at their posts but they all did this anyway, Christine and Paula usually working the day shifts while Mick and Jack worked the night shifts. The trained guards were never posted together in these early days, although that was eventually what Skip wanted to do. Instead, they were augmented with the conscripts assigned by Paul each night. Skip's orders were of course that the trained guard was in charge of the post but he knew that it didn't always work out that way, particularly when Jack and Christine were involved. Nobody was willing to take orders from them.

              In all it was an imperfect, very flawed system that still utilized sub-standard positions and was staffed, for the most part, with people who did not wish to be there. The fornication on duty, though slowed by the same-sex rule and driven deeper into the shadows, persisted none-the-less, particularly at the posts where one of Skip's people was not part of the team. Skip was rendered pretty much powerless to prevent this from occurring since Jessica was only interested in finding out who it had been so she could try to push the issue of banishment for fornication. She didn't care that it was on guard duty, just that it had occurred at all.

              "I don't give a rat's ass what they do when they're not on duty," Skip had pleaded with her on one occasion after he had caught two of his female guards having sex with a male visitor. "They can stick live gerbils up each others asses if that floats their boat as long as they do it off shift."

              "I cannot differentiate between on guard duty and off guard duty," was her answer to this argument. "They are either punished for every fornication episode - and the only appropriate response is exile - or we don't punish them at all. Now I know Dale feels the same way as I do about this problem."

              "Of course," he said. "We can't have people fornicating. It's wrong."

              "But," she went on, "Paul still will not vote with us to banish these people and, unlike most of our other decisions, banishment has to be unanimous!"

              "I will not vote to kick anyone out of here for sexual impropriety," Paul said before she could get started on her lecture. "But I do think that some form of punishment for those who do it on watch is appropriate. Skip has suggested three days of house arrest. What's wrong with that?"

              "What's wrong with it," Jessica said, "is that by banning fornication in one particular instance, it automatically says it's okay in other instances. I cannot be a party to that. It's either banishment for every instance or nothing."

              "I agree," Dale said, rapping his fist firmly on the table.

              And so the problem persisted, worsening even once the word of the committee's inaction spread throughout the town. Guard detail once again became a favorite assignment for the fornicators.

              "There's gonna be a reckoning in this town one of these days," Skip warned the committee during his morning briefing at one point. "And you'd better hope its not too bloody because that blood is gonna be on your hands."

              Meanwhile, at the house where Christine, Skip, and Jack all lived, tensions remained very high. Christine continued to sleep in the small twin bed that had been provided for her instead of the large bed in the master bedroom where Skip slept. She did not talk to him unless it was absolutely necessary and even then she kept her responses to as few syllables as practical. Whenever he tried to sit down and discuss the Micker with her she shunned him, not even favoring him with a response, simply leaving the room. She spent most of the time that she was not on shift either reading books from the supply in the community center or sleeping. Skip began to wonder if she was ever going to come around.

              Jack of course saw all of this occurring but kept mostly out of it, neither taking sides nor attempting to mediate the dispute in any way. He knew what the problem was of course. The story about Missy and Skip on that first night had not escaped his attention. And though he was somewhat disappointed that Skip had cheated on his sister he thought that maybe it was time for her to get over it and get on with her life. After all, Skip could have practically any woman he wanted. Christine was lucky he had only slipped once. But he kept his mouth shut and remained on friendly terms with both of them and they remained on friendly terms with him.

              Another person Jack remained on friendly terms with was Stacy Keagan of the kitchen detail. After that first morning chat she had made a ritual out of sitting with him and having her breakfast as he wolfed down his own. She always slid him a little extra something in his plate and always poured just a little more of the juice of the day for him, telling him that he deserved it for working so hard. He found her very easy to talk to despite the six year difference in their ages and he typically stayed at the table with her long after he was finished eating, until it was time for her to start working on the full breakfast service.

              As they became friendlier with each other, she began to tell him more personal things about herself.

              "I hear everyone speculating on who the father is," she told him one morning. "It's almost funny in a way. Jessica thinks it's a black baby since I'm not telling anyone. Missy thinks I'm a lesbian and that it's from artificial insemination."

              "Really?" he asked, laughing. "I haven't heard that one."

              "It goes on my list as most original," she said, laughing back. "I guess since I have a nose ring and I dye my hair black and I worked in a Starbucks that makes me a lesbian by default, doesn't it? I swear, sometimes these women here are just too much."

              "At least they don't muss up your hair when they see you," Jack said sourly.

              "You mean like this," she giggled, reaching over and grabbing a handful of his brown locks.

              "Stop it," he cried, though he made no move to enforce his words.

              "Oh, Jack," she cooed in a falsetto voice. "You're just sooooo cute. How's that handsome man you live with doing today? You think he'd like to come over and unplug my plumbing for me?"

              This sent both of them into near hysterics, her words made all the more amusing by the fact that someone had asked Jack that very thing the previous day.

              "Oh God," Stacy said, untangling her hand. "Sometimes I crack myself up." She pushed his hair back into somewhat of the position it had been in before. "There," she said, admiring her work. "Good as new, almost anyway."

              He said nothing, simply blushed. He had really enjoyed the feel of her hand moving through his hair.

              "Do you want to know who the father is?" she asked him.

              "Uh..." he stammered. "Well..."

              "It's okay," she told him. "I never really tried to keep it a secret from anyone until they all started speculating about it. You see, while they were all thinking that its some black football player or some anonymous sperm donor, I realized that the truth would actually be somewhat disappointing for them, anticlimactic even. Far be it from me to spoil the fun they have spreading rumors around."

              "So who was it?" Jack asked.

              "He was the manager of the Starbucks I worked at down in Auburn before I transferred up here. He was a white, middle-class small business manager in a hick town. Nobody in this town even knows him. It's totally boring, isn't it?"

              "Well, uh... yeah," Jack admitted. "It is."

              She shrugged, giving him her smile. "He was married," she said. "I guess that makes it a little more interesting of a story. He told me he was going to leave his wife for me, that he loved me. The same shit that a thousand married guys have told their pieces on the side and I fell for it just like all of the other one's did. And then my birth control pills didn't work the way they were supposed to one month and I got knocked up. Funny how if you forget to take them for a week or so that kind of thing can happen. Funny how when you confront your lover with a pregnancy and try to push the issue of leaving his wife, he never does. Christ, didn't I read enough Ann Landers and Dear Abby when I was growing up? I guess I didn't."

              Jack didn't know what to say. He had never had a conversation even remotely like this one before. He said nothing, only listened. And in doing so he gave Stacy exactly what she had been after: a sympathetic ear.

              "He told me he would pay for the abortion," she said. "That was awfully big of him, wasn't it? I told him to go fuck himself and threatened to call his wife and tell her what had been going on between us. Of course, I wouldn't really do anything like that but he didn't know that. He made the arrangements for my transfer up here and my promotion to assistant manager. I don't know how many strings he had to pull to do that, but he pulled them."

              "You didn't get the abortion though," Jack said.

              "No," she said. "I mean, I think a woman should have a right to do that if she wants to but... it wasn't for me. I couldn't bear the thought of them sticking things up into me and ripping the baby out. I told him that I was going to keep it and he hit the roof. He threatened to have me fired if I didn't get my ass to the clinic that day. He told me if this was all some scheme to get him to pay child support that I could just fucking forget it."

              "Jesus," Jack said.

              "That was perhaps the biggest mistake he ever made," she said with a predatory grin. "And it was a dumb one too since I'd already told him that as long as he relinquished any custody claims to the baby that I wouldn't ask for any child support. He could've been home free if he would've just let it drop. But he didn't. When he tried to pull his strings and get me fired, I filed a sexual harassment suit with corporate and told them the whole story. He lost everything. They fired him a week later and his wife found out the story of how it had happened and she left him too. Then he had the balls to come crawling back to me and asking me for forgiveness, can you believe that shit? He wanted me to take him back. I sent his ass packing and told him if he ever showed his face in front of me again I would get the cops on him. I haven't seen him or heard from him since then."