The Living Will Envy The Dead (14 page)

And besides, if the women were defending their homes and families, they’d be more aggressive and determined than anyone else.  Never get between a mother and her child.  She’ll tear you to bits if she gets a chance and never care about the cost.  That’s human nature.  If I could take advantage of it…

My radio buzzed.  “Ed, this is Mac at CP2,” Mac’s voice said.  The static made it almost impossible to hear him.  The nukes, or something, had screwed up reception no end.  (Either that, or they were lousy radios.  The National Guard didn’t always get the best of equipment.)  “I think we’ve got company coming.”

“On my way,” I said.  It had to be serious if Mac was calling for me.  He could normally handle anything to do with the refugees.  “Rose, I’ll deal with it as soon as I get back from this.”

I turned and ran towards CP2.  Trouble was definitely coming.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that “violence never solves anything” I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms
.

-Robert A. Heinlein

“There,” Mac said, as I reached the CP.  The Command Post was a fancy name for the fallback position just above the defences, but it allowed us a good view down the road.  “Company’s coming.”

I picked up my binoculars and peered through them.  There was a small convoy of vehicles driving up towards us; a handful of SUVs, a pair of large trucks and, of all things, a school bus.  At first, it looked like just another refugee convoy, but then I took in some of the markings on the bus. They looked, to me, to be suspiciously like bullet holes.  My combat senses were tingling a warning.  The last time I’d ever seen anything like this had been just before an insurgent had tried to ram a vehicle loaded with explosives through a gate I’d been guarding.  The result of shooting the truck at long range hadn’t been pleasant.

“I see,” I said, finally.  It would be bare minutes before they reached the first warning sign, but I was curious to know what they would do.  If they were legitimate refugees in search of help and shelter, like we had seen before, they would probably be careful not to cause offence.  Th
ey would stop and send someone up to bargain with us.  “They don’t look quite kosher, do they?”

I looked back at Mac as I lowered the binoculars.  I had a nasty feeling that they’d hijacked the school bus, which suggested that it wasn't the Army or the National Guard coming to tell us that everything was going to be fine.  I hadn’t seen any evidence of organised recovery efforts – insofar as there could
be
recovery efforts – in the days since the Final War.  Anyone like us would be trying to ride out the Death Zones and the die-off.  They certainly wouldn’t be charging out to rebuild the country.

“Get the reserves up here,” I ordered, curtly, returning to study the approaching convoy.  It might have been a mistake, but I preferred to be on the paranoid side.  I wasn't going to start shooting, but if they opened fire, I fully intended to win.  “Check with the other posts and see if anyone else is coming to visit.”

“No, sir,” Mac said, slipping back into formality.  It was almost refreshing since starting the training program.  Formality was something of a joke with the conscripts.  “They’re reporting that all’s clear down their way.”

“Good,” I said.  An attack on all three command posts and the roads they guarded would have been a serious problem.  Reserves could only be in one place at once.  If I had to parcel them out, I’d run the risk of being overwhelmed at one of the posts and being forced back into Ingalls.  A gun battle in the middle of the town would be disastrous, even if we won.  “Bring up two of the machine guns as well.  We might need their firepower.”

Mac nodded.  The National Guard armoury we’d opened had included six M240 NATO machine guns and a considerable amount of ammo.  It was something that worried me.  Even the most disciplined soldier burned through machine gun ammunition at a terrifying rate and once it was gone, it would be hard to replace.  Herman had assured me that he was working on ways to repack the cartridges and produce reloads, but I had my doubts.  Firing off non-standard ammunition is asking for a jam in the middle of a fight.  There was a reason we had tended to carry extra weapons while on patrol in Iraq.

“They’re on their way,” Mac said.  I smiled in relief.  We were lucky enough, at least, to have a pair of experts for each of the weapons, even though they were also needed elsewhere.  We were going to have to train some of the kids up as machine gunners soon enough.  “Ed…they’re stopping.”

I turned back and lifted my binoculars again.  The whole unwieldy convoy had slowed to a halt, horns blaring, and a small group of men climbed out for a brief conference.  I watched with a certain amount of amusement.  They either had no idea we were there, which was unlikely, or they were very confident that we wouldn’t open fire.  They were
well
within Patty and Stacy’s range with their sniper rifles.  We could have taken out the dismounts with ease.

“Not soldiers,” I said, feeling a twinge of disappointment.  It would have been a relief to know that there was still some functioning government around, even if some of the complaints about Washington and the IRS had been bitter.  The government isn’t set up to handle the problems of the smaller towns when there are so many voters in the larger cities.  Neil’s only demand when I appointed him Farming Secretary had been to keep out the Washington-inspired bullshit.  “I don’t think they’re even anyone official.”

Mac shrugged.  “Why am I not surprised?”  He asked, dryly.  “Want to open fire now and put them out of our misery?”

“Not yet,” I said, firmly.  I’d spotted a change.  “One of them is coming this way.”

Showing considerable bravery – or, I suspected from the way he was walking – a certain knowledge of a gun pointed at his back, a man was walking towards us.  I studied him through the binoculars and confirmed my first impression.  That was a man who was
certain
that whatever he did, he was going to wind up dead.  I’d seen expressions like that before, in Iraq, when their secret policemen had forced thousands of soldiers into battle against us.  Most of them had died.  Far too many of the secret policemen had escaped.

He wore what had once been an expensive suit, giving me a brief flashback to the first refugees we had turned away from Ingalls.  He had probably been a banker, or a lawyer, before the war, but now…what was he now?  I had a nasty suspicion that the key word was Judas Goat.  That, too, we had seen in Iraq.  He had been slightly overweight at one point, but now he looked sick, as if he were going to fall over at any moment.  He looked as if he had walked out of Ethiopia, or another famine country, rather than America.  It brought home to me just how much had changed in the last few days.  He raised his hands as he passed the final sign and I made a decision.

“Cover me,” I ordered, before Mac could protest.  “I’m going down to meet him.”

I chambered a round in my Desert Eagle before I clambered over the barricade and down onto the other side of the road.  I’d inspected the defences before, of course, but looking at them with a force of possible hostiles just down the road was remarkably reassuring.  It was in our interests to stall, I decided, and so I walked down slowly towards the man, uncomfortably aware of the snipers tracking our every move.

Up close, it was hard to look at him without feeling some kind of pity.  His eyes were cold and utterly hopeless, as if he had lost everything that made life worth living, while I could see signs of a recent beating on his face.  His suit was torn and tattered, while the way he squinted at me suggested that he had once worn spectacles and had lost them somewhere along the way.  I’d seen that look before too, on the first refugees, and I felt an odd stab at my heart.  How could I have turned them away?

I had – have – no choice
, I reminded myself.

It didn’t seem enough, somehow, compared to the desperate look in his eyes.

“That's far enough,” I said, forcing an unaccustomed harshness into my voice.  He looked like a dog that had just been kicked – again.  Somehow, I was sure I knew just what was going on, and what had been done to him.  “Who are you and what do you want?”

His voice was bitter, almost broken.  “I’ve been sent with a message,” he said, breathing harshly.  Someone had broken his nose and – surprise, surprise – no one had attempted to give him proper medical care.  Someone, I decided, was going to pay for that.  “They want food and drink, women and a place to stay.  If you agree to allow them to take what they want, they won’t hurt you.  If you fight, they’ll reduce the entire town to rubble and drag your women into slavery, like…”

He almost broke at that point.  “Like my wife,” he said, forcing the words out.  “They have my wife!”

I felt no pleasure at being proved right.  Life could be a right bitch, sometimes.  I suspected I knew the rest of the story, but I had to ask anyway.  If I played it properly, I would have a chance to learn more about our new enemies than they expected.  They’d done something smart, sending a slave up to talk to us, but slaves…well, do you know what the Romans used to call their slaves?  The tool that
thinks
.  Slaves, despite the best efforts of Confederate apologists, don’t like being slaves.  Give them a chance at victory, or push them too far, and you have a revolt on your hands.  It can be a very dangerous risk for a society to take.

“I see,” I said, as sympathetically as I could.  “Who are
they
?”

The remainder of the story trickled out slowly.  He was a patent attorney back before the war and he'd been out in the countryside on a holiday with his wife and two children.  They’d been thrown out of whatever town they had been staying in – probably rated as four additional mouths to feed – and had been reduced to wandering the country when they had been captured by the gang. 
They
, it turned out, had been a street gang back before the war, but they’d been smart enough to escape and run for their lives in the chaos after the bombs had fallen…

And now they wanted Ingalls.

Over my dead body, I decided, and considered.  I could have signalled Mac to open fire, but that would have exposed the man to our fire as well as that of his tormentors.  I would also be caught in the crossfire – not a particularly comfortable place to be – and would have to crawl for my life.  I thought about just saying no and suggesting that they left, but that would have left them free to pillage someplace else.  It was heartening to know that we weren't the only organised community left – I’d been sure of it, but it was nice to
know
– but I didn’t want to send a pack of angry gang-bangers on to the next town.  They might be in a worse state.

The matter was decided for me by one of the gang members.  He must have gotten suspicious of how much we were chattering and came striding up, carrying am AK-47 under his arm.  It looked, to my inexpert eye, like a cheap knock-off, carried mainly for prestige rather than firepower.  I’d seen that sort of thinking before, in Afghanistan.  Men with Stinger missiles, left over from their war against the Soviet Union, had refused to use them against Coalition forces, because that would have instantly demoted them from ‘big man’ to ‘common or garden fighter,’ if that.

He looked hungry, too, and there was a nasty glint in his eye.  He seemed to be a mixed-race child, showing signs of both Asian and African somewhere in his bloodline, but that might have been a trick of the light.  He wore an ill-fitting policeman’s shirt – we didn’t find out until later where
that
had come from – and looked as if he had been through hell.  I suppose the effect was meant to be intimidating.  I’d seen more frightening people in my life.  Uncle Billy had been nice and very polite to my mother, but he’d been one of the most dangerous people I’d ever met.  The gang-banger only scared people who didn’t know how to fight back.

“You,” he said, addressing the lawyer, “get back in the bus.  Now.”

I watched the lawyer scuttle off, and then turned my attention back to the gang-banger.  He posed for a moment, aware that I was watching, and I considered trying to look afraid, but I decided that it wasn't worth the effort.  Besides, he couldn’t see them, but I could see the two red dots on his forehead, marking out the sniper targets.  I decided not to look at them any longer.  They left me wanting to giggle.  If he had known how close he was to death…