The Living Will Envy The Dead (36 page)

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Mac assured me, cheerfully.  “We’ve got four companies forming up at Clarksburg now, so I take it you’ll be taking them down with you?”

I nodded.  Four companies; roughly three hundred and fifty men between them, a terrifyingly small number.  Once added to the Companies already waiting down near Summersville under Dutch’s command, we would have around seven hundred men, not counting the defenders of Summersville itself.  It sounded laughable to me – the entire 1
st
Marine Division had had twenty
thousand
men – but it was all we would have.  I couldn’t draw off every able-bodied man to the war front or the entire recovery effort would collapse.  Far too often, as I have probably mentioned a hundred times before, the guy keeping a group together would be a vet, or the guy with the knowledge would be a vet…and they couldn’t be spared.

“Yes,” I said, grimly.  “I’m going to the hospital now.  Coming?”

I couldn’t spare Kit either, I knew, but events had played a sick joke on all of us.  The army needed medical support desperately – it’s astonishing what you can live through, provided you get medical support in time, as I was a living example – but most of the trained medics we had were girls.  Three of them had been at Stonewall and had served in dangerous environments before, but the others had barely even left Ingalls, where it was safe.  How could we risk sending them out, I wondered, and even then I knew that we had no choice.  They were going to be needed.

The line of ten girls, three of them rather hard-bitten, the remaining seven nervous and excited, formed up in front of us as we arrived.  They all looked far too young to be put into danger and I felt my heart twist, screaming at me to not even consider taking them out of Ingalls.  There had been female medics, even soldiers, in Iraq, but they’d been far less important than each and every breeder in Ingalls.  I knew it was a mistake, not least because we couldn’t provide enough security to guarantee their security, but I had no choice.  At least – and I’ll be honest here – it was what I told myself.

“This isn’t a game,” I said, by way of introduction.  I probably sounded as if I was being condescending, talking down to them, but I wanted to get the truth across to them.  They were young, young enough – like young men, like I had back when I had been young – to believe that they were invincible, indestructible.  Bad things didn’t happen to them, right?  “You’ve heard the tales from the refugees, particularly the girl.  You know what could happen to you if you fall into their hands.  You have the best fighting training that we could give you, and yet you’re completely inexperienced in a real fight.  I wouldn’t take you along if I had a choice, or I’d have you surrounded by a hundred heavily-armed men.  I can’t do either.”

I looked from girl to girl.  “If you want to back out now, say so,” I said.  “I won’t hold it against you and nor will anyone else.  If not, report to the convoy tomorrow morning and prepare to depart with the remainder of the force.  Remember, you have weapons and you are authorised to open fire, but your best defence might be your training.  I won’t order you to cooperate with them, but…you can’t serve your town dead.  Remember that.”

“That was inspiring, sir,” Mac said, as we walked away.  I hoped he was being snide, even though I would have liked to believe that he meant it.  I had wanted to scare the girls.  The Warriors used rape as a tool to force women to do as they wished and, even though the girls were nurses and therefore incredibly valuable, they might face the same fate.  I could just see some fanatic deciding that the nurses had to be raped to force them to comply with their crazy rules.  “I dare say that none of them will show up for the convoy tomorrow.”

“Shut up,” I said, without heat.  He chuckled and slapped my shoulder.  “I do have a post in accounting and logistics for you, if you don’t behave.”

“I’ll be good,” Mac promised.  I laughed at the mock cringing in his tone.  He spotted someone in the distance.  “Hey, I believe that Richard wants a word.”

I hadn’t seen Richard in a few weeks, but I had to admit that he and the prison guards looked surprisingly good, despite their condition.  They divided their time between defending the prison – which was being converted into a fortress, although depending on the weapons the Warriors had, it might be less useful than I had hoped – and supervising the prisoners.  They had adapted well to living in Ingalls and most of them had picked up a girl in a semi-permanent relationship.  It seemed to be spreading everywhere these days, even with the threat of mutant children or spontaneous miscarriages.  I guess people just want to feel human again.

“Hi, boss,” Richard said, cheerfully enough.  He was growing a massive bushy beard, of the kind that would have been Officially Unwelcome back before the war, but otherwise he hadn’t changed much.  His reputation for poisoning the convicts helped keep the remaining prisoners in line, even though it had been my idea.  I didn’t mind that much.  I would have preferred to forget that entire incident.  “Ben wants to talk to you.”

I followed his pointing finger and lifted an eyebrow.  Ben had been one of the borderline cases, a man who had murdered his wife when he had caught her in bed with another man.  The prison psychologist had figured that he would never kill again, but he had been midway through his sentence when the Final War extended it indefinitely.  He was a tough-looking man, a trucker in a previous life, and Richard had decided to keep him alive.  I wasn't sure that I agreed with his judgement – I have little pity for a man who murders his wife, regardless of the circumstances – but so far he’d been a model prisoner.  The cynical part of my mind suggested that the chains shackling his legs might have had something to do with that.

“He does?”  I asked, puzzled.  Richard nodded in agreement.  “Very well.  Call him over here and we’ll talk.”

Up close, Ben looked surprisingly respectable, almost like a Marine.  “Sheriff,” he said, bowing his head.  He obviously hadn’t heard of my promotion to Colonel.  I had hoped to keep news of the war from the prisoners, least some of them see opportunity in chaos and rebel.  The worst threat to any society always came from its discontented minority.  “I was hoping to have a word with you on a subject of mutual interest.”

I quirked an eyebrow, inviting him to continue, which he did.  “I confess that I didn’t believe you at first when you told us about the war,” he said.  “I thought that you were just playing a power game of your own or something.  I didn’t believe you until you started adding prisoners from the surrounding area to the work gangs.”

“I didn’t kill over a thousand of the most evil sons of bitches in the world for shits and giggles,” I snapped, impatiently.  I’m a pretty direct man, as my ex-girlfriends would probably testify.  “What do you want?”

Ben frowned.  “What will happen to us after the five years are over?”  He asked.  “We’re not going to be welcome in Ingalls, are we?  If we’re not part of a community, not now that there’s no social support or anything, what’s going to become of us?  Are we going to be doomed to living forever on the fringes of society?”

He leaned forward.  “You see, we don’t get anything out of this,” he said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper.  “We’re doing everything from digging latrines to building defences against the outside world, but what’s in it for us?  Oh, we’re alive, and you could have us killed at any moment, but you can’t expect us to be enthusiastic about it.  What do we get out of it?”

I considered it for a moment.  “You are here because you owe society a debt and you are going to pay it off,” I said.  “I could say that what happens to you afterwards is not my problem, but…I suppose you have a solution?”

Ben nodded.  “Most of the remaining prisoners are people like me, who won’t kill again,” he said.  I gave him points for not trying for the sympathy vote.  I wouldn’t have been willing to talk to a man who claimed that killing his wife had been right, even if she had cheated on him.  “We could be valuable members of society if you gave us a chance.”

“I suppose,” I said, carefully.  I recognised a bargaining position when I heard one.  I just wanted to know what he had to offer.  “What do you want to offer us?”

“We want to build a stake of our own in society,” Ben said.  “If you have…say, a couple of dozen of us working on our own farm, or manufacturing plant, or even fighting for you, the remainder of us will work to the best of our ability, rather than doing as little as we can get away with doing.”

“I assume you’d want to rotate the people on the outside,” I said, thoughtfully.  I wasn't going to trust them with weapons, not yet.  They would make great fifth columnists for the Warriors.  “I’ll think about it and discuss it with the Mayor and the others.”

“Please think quickly,” Ben said.  “The longer we just do as little as we can, the less time we’ll have to do what you want us to do.”

I laughed.  “Very well,” I said.  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

That night, I discussed it with Rose.  “That’s what they want,” I concluded.  “Is it worth making the agreement with them?”

Rose thought about it.  We’d already argued over her exclusion from the military deployment, but I needed at least two of the deputies back in Ingalls.  If you believe that it was a mere coincidence that it was Rose and Deborah who stayed, I have some bottom land in Florida I’d like to sell you.  Rose was a good shot, as I would be the first to admit, but she couldn’t go into combat.  I was nervous enough about taking the nurses.

“It might be worth integrating them into society,” she said, finally, “but who would trust them that far?”

I nodded.  I didn’t want to see the prisoners attacked at once, or treated as the usual suspects, even though both were likely.  It would be simple enough to develop one of the wrecked towns – redevelop it, I should say – as a home for them, but it would take a lot of work.  It was also something that would have to be done after the war had concluded, along with a million other ideas for grinding out a new tech base and rebuilding the United States.

“Good point,” I said, finally, and reached for her.  She leaned back at first, teasing me, and then came into my arms.  “Come here…”

I’ll draw a curtain over
that
part of the story, thank you, and take you straight to the meeting the following morning.  We had considered marching the entire force straight to the FOB, but considering that deploying there was a matter of urgency, we decided to use trucks instead.  They’d been adapted to run on ethanol instead of gasoline, which probably meant that their useful lives had been shortened considerably, but we had little choice.  I was reviewing the Companies and thinking how badly my old Drill Sergeant would have taken their appearance – we didn’t have a uniform yet, let alone a standardized kit – when the news arrived.

The Warriors of the Lord, as I had expected, had kicked off the offensive two days ahead of schedule.  Their first blow had been precise and carefully planned.

Summersville had fallen to the enemy.

The war was bound to be merciless.  Wars that begin with sneak attacks always are
.

-Robert A. Heinlein

I should have had Sheriff Emerson removed from his position.

He wasn’t a bad person, not really.  He was pretty much a basic small-town cop.  He was slightly overweight, wore a massive pair of spectacles and was generally adored by all and sundry.  I used to think of him as a slightly more benevolent version of Chief Clancy Wiggum; he wasn't corrupt, he wasn’t incompetent and he wasn't a stooge for the evil owner of a nuclear power plant company.  What he was, unfortunately, was a man with a tendency to get complacent.  He’d served as a Military Policeman during his stint in the Army, but he had never been closer to a combat front than a few miles and had never seen a shot fired in anger.  He had had a very uneventful career. 

Summersville should have been a hard place to take.  The terrain favoured the defenders, who were armed to the teeth, with hundreds of people in the area who owned guns and were experienced in their use.  They'd managed to keep the tidal waves of refugees from the cities out, mainly through blockades and the occasional gun battle, and had survived the first isolated months reasonably well.  They’d joined up with us when we made First Contact with them and were the first to hear, for all the good it did them, about the Warriors.  I hid nothing from them.  They had copies of the transcripts from the interrogations and the brief autopsy in their hands.  They should have been prepared for an attack.

And then the Warriors took the town.