The Remaining: Trust: A Novella (7 page)

“Put me down!” Abe ordered.

The helicopter banked left, swung a wide circle across the interstate and back toward the plume of gray and brown smoke that was settling slowly, revealing the bulk of the blue SUV laying like a felled beast in the median. As they raced back toward the vehicle, Abe could see a side window, all the glass shattered out of it, and it sprouted two arms. Then a pair of legs. Then a head.

“Got one exiting the vehicle,” the pilot stated.

“I got him,” was Abe’s only response, though he kept thinking manically,
Put me down! Put me down! Put me down!

The Little Bird lowered within five feet of the ground and Abe already had his lanyard unhooked. He slid off the outboard bench, hitting the ground heavily but coming up quickly with his rifle shouldered.

Ahead of him, maybe twenty yards or so, the man was still squirming out of the window.

“Don’t fucking move!” Abe bellowed. “Stay where you are!”

The man—a middle-age black guy—turned to look at Abe. His eyes met Abe’s and relayed the same look of fear and loathing as when they’d seen the helicopter alongside of them. The man was out of the vehicle window now, but he reached back inside, eyes still on Abe as he closed the gap.

Abe knew. He fucking knew. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Lemme see your hands!”

His finger left the magazine well. Touched the trigger.

The man pulled out of the vehicle. He held a rifle. Some sort of AK variant.

Abe put a double-tap into his chest.

The AK fell from his grip, and the man seemed to lose all stiffness in his legs. They went to water underneath him, and then he pitched forward, face-planting into the side of the vehicle, still on his knees, hands clutching his belly. He slid forward just a bit and then lay still, ass half in the air. One arm splayed off to his side. Blood poured out of his mouth and onto the dusty side of the vehicle. He was still blinking when Abe reached him, his mouth still moving like a fish out of water.

Abe didn’t speak to him, because he knew he would get no response. He stared at the man for a fraction of a second, his lips seized down to a bloodless grimace. He just kept thinking,
You stupid, stupid fuck!
He pivoted as the man’s eyes stopped blinking, their wetness drying over like a glaze. Abe worked his way around to the front of the vehicle, getting low to try to see in through the windshield. It was broken and caved in, and great pieces of it were missing.

The driver was slouched there, his back against the crumpled windshield.

He was moving.

“Hey!” Abe shouted, his finger already on the trigger, expecting a repeat. “Lemme see your hands!”

The driver held up both hands. Empty. He shifted, almost rolling on his back, until he could crane his neck far enough to see who was yelling at him. His eyes were a little hazy, but there was recognition there. His nose looked flattened, his face bearing a thick mustache of blood. A gash on his forehead was bleeding profusely.

Abe transitioned quickly to his pistol. He tucked it in close to his chest with one hand, then reached out with his weak hand and grabbed the man by one of his wrists and dragged him forcefully out of the broken windshield. The man howled, and Abe could feel the separation of the man’s wrist bones, the way they ground together just underneath the skin. Broken in the crash, Abe assumed.

“Shut the fuck up!” Abe yelled at him. He glanced up quickly over the top of the SUV, over the hump of the dead man’s body that lay on it, and could see the Little Bird still sitting there in the roadway, the rotors spinning, the pilot and copilot looking at him.

He crouched down over the man he’d just pulled from the wreckage.

Out of the view of the helicopter crew.

Abe grabbed the man by the face. Felt the slickness of his blood on his palms. “You tell me what the fuck is going on here!”

The man shook his head, still moaning. “I don’t…I don’t…”

Abe bared his teeth and shoved the man’s head into the ground. Then he began to pat the man down, searching for the feel of the little laminated placard. He felt it in the man’s coat and reached into the inner pocket to get it. He clutched it in two fingers and pulled it out.

A green piece of paper, laminated. A four-inch square.

DAY
PASS
—
GREELEY
GREEN
ZONE
, it read.

Abe waved it in the man’s face. “You don’t know? You don’t
know
? What the hell is that, then? What’s
that
?” Abe flicked the card at him. “Why are you doing this?”

The man’s face turned abruptly from pain to anger. He leaned up off the ground and shouted at Abe. “Because my family’s gotta eat, too!”

Abe stared at him. He wanted to punch the man in the face—not sure why—but there was something about what he said that made Abe feel suddenly clamped. Like hearing a startling sound and freezing while your eyes searched for the threat.

He shoved the man in the chest halfheartedly. “What are you talking about?”

The sound of rotors beating the air, the wind from them buffeting in his ears. The smell of radiator fluid and gasoline and burned rubber. The taste of dust in his mouth, gritting between his teeth. His own dry throat. All of these things became suddenly and inexplicably apparent to him.

“My family hasn’t eaten in three days!” the man said, enraged tears coming to his eyes. “Do you have any idea how that feels? Do you?”

Abe’s jaw worked.

“Of course not! You’re fucking military! You get all the food you can eat while the rest of us fucking starve!”

That’s bullshit.

What is this guy even talking about?

“What about your ration cards?” Abe felt slightly off-balance.

The man looked at him with an odd expression. Like Abe’s question confused him. “Is that a fucking joke?”

Frustration boiled over. Tension broke. Abe screamed at the man. “Does it look like I’m fucking joking?”

“You’re one of them! You have to know!”

“Fuck this.” Abe put the pistol under the man’s chin.

Wasn’t sure if he meant to do it or not.

Thought that probably he did.

Thought about his soldier on the roof, bleeding out.

But the man cried out when the muzzle touched his skin. “Our rations cards don’t work! They don’t work! I swear to God! Don’t kill me!”

“What…?” Abe blinked dust out of his eyes. “What do you mean your ration cards don’t work? I see civilians getting food all fucking day long! I’m in charge of those supplies. I’m the one who brings them in! I know they go to civilians. You’re so full of shit!”

The man held up a hand for mercy. “Not everyone’s cards! Mine…and the others…and our families.” He stumbled over himself, trying to explain. “We spoke out against President Briggs, and we don’t eat. We spoke publicly against him, and the next thing we know, our ration cards aren’t good anymore. The soldiers check our serial numbers in the system and tell us we’ve already got our rations for the week. I thought it was a glitch at first. But then I found out the same thing happened to every one of the people who spoke out against Briggs.”

Abe was shaking his head.

The man looked terrified. Uncertain. Bewildered. “How did you not know?”

“That’s…” Abe kept pressing on the man with his bodyweight, like he wished the man would stifle and suffocate. “That’s not true. He wouldn’t do that.”

He wouldn’t do that.

He wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t let him.

“He’s using food as power,” the man said, his voice barely audible over the background noise. “He’s using it to control everyone. How did you not know? I don’t understand…”

Abe stood up from the man, his lips pressed so firmly together that they disappeared under his mustache and beard. He just kept shaking his head.

The man continued, shouting to be heard, his voice hoarse. “It’s true! I swear to God! I do. I swear on everything. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“But you’d try to kill me and my men?” Abe barked. Then kicked the man’s legs.

The man yelped. Scooted away from more blows. “Ask him! You know him, don’t you? You know the president? Ask him about it! Look up my ration card number. See what the system says!”

“I don’t fucking believe you.”

“Look up my ration cared!” The man blinked rapidly. “Do what you’re going to do with me. But please don’t punish my family. They didn’t know. They didn’t know about any of this.” He pointed with a shaking finger to another coat pocket. “Take my ration card. See for yourself. But please, don’t let them starve.”

Abe regarded him for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, his mind like a tiny little life raft in a storm surge. His index finger tapped rapidly on the frame of the pistol he still held in his hands, staring the man in the eyes but not truly looking at him.

The radio in his ears crackled.

“Major, you okay over there?” It was one of the pilots.

Abe never took his eyes off the man. He keyed his radio. “Yeah. I’m good. Gimme a second.”

He bent over the man, keeping his pistol tucked in cautiously, still treating him as a threat. The fingers of his weak hand quested through the man’s coat pocket and came up with the laminated white card, similar to the green day-pass placard. It had a name and a serial number on it. The number of dependents related to that serial number. The letters stacked, one on top of the other: A/F, J/M, J/M.

One adult female, two juvenile males.

Adult males received rations for 1,000 calories a day.

Adult females were 800.

Juvenile males were 700.

Juvenile females were 500.

“Blake Donahue,” Abe read aloud. “Three total dependents. Wife and two boys.” He put the card slowly into his own pants pocket. “What the fuck am I supposed to do right now, Mr. Donahue?”

The man looked blank. Out of ideas.

“What am I supposed to do with you?”

“Just let me go.”

“Let you go? After you killed US soldiers?” Abe gritted his teeth. “Leave your family by themselves?”

“I’ll go back for them.”

“You’ll never go in the Green Zone again. You’re an outsider now. You’re a fucking bandit.”

The man was beginning to cry. “You killed everyone. All their families are going to starve.”

Abe shook his head. “You and your friends went out to scavenge. You went a little far. Hit some bandits. Called in a distress signal. We responded and killed all the bandits, but you and all your friends were already killed. Your families will mourn. Then they will apply for new ration cards.”

The man wept openly now. “I want to see them again! I want to see my family!”

“No,” Abe said. Then he pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger.

Before he could talk himself out of it.

Just kept thinking,
Not true. Not true. Not true.

Abe holstered and walked away. He walked numbly, like his feet were not touching the ground. He leaned into the wind. Dirt and scrabble stones and dried brown grasses passed underneath his feet. The residue of them clung to his boots like memories and fell away just the same. The dirt turned to dust-covered asphalt. He crossed over worn and barely visible road lines. Lines that had once been bold and plain, but now you didn’t even know you were crossing them until they were already under your feet.

He climbed onto the outboard bench. Secured himself with the lanyard.

One hand lying loose on his rifle.

He keyed the radio. “I’m good to go, One-Three. Good to go.”

FIVE

The Little Bird landed him on the bridge. The smoke cloud from the IED had mostly blown away, but the wind had kicked up and stirred a layer of fine dust that seemed to have settled over everything in the Midwest. Little dust devils spun up in the rail yard below them. Trash skittered along the bridge. The sun was high over the horizon, dispelling the shadows. It dimmed and brightened rapidly as clouds raced across the sky, sailing the wind from northwest to southeast.

Both Blackhawks were nowhere in the sky. They had already loaded up the troops and the wounded and were headed back to the Greeley Green Zone. Abe instructed the pilots of the Little Bird to check the convoy’s route back and make sure there were no other hang-ups. They acknowledged, and then lifted off, and then they were gone.

The bridge was a mess of military vehicles, all of them being shuffled around like a tile puzzle as they tried to make way for the HEMTT with the wrecker attachment to get through and clear a path through the south side of the bridge. The soldiers from Fargo Group stood on perimeter, sweating despite the cold and bearing that certain edginess that came from being in a firefight. They huddled in small groups that spewed cigarette smoke and tobacco juice, cussing and bitching.