“Hands off the wheel, ma’am. And all the way down. There. Why are you off the road? You’re in no man’s land.” The Sergeant gave another finger-signal, never taking his eyes off Sophie, her face, her throat, the pink traces of bloodstain on her armor. In response, some other soldier slammed the S-ATV’s door. Sophie heard boot-steps, someone stalking around the Hummer’s muddy circumference. “We’ve got a block zone,” said the Sergeant, “just up 25. Are you trying to avoid it?”
“No, I just—”
“Where did you come from?”
“Do I need to tell you?” Sophie lowered one of her hands, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the glare. The Sergeant shook his head in a curt and silent warning, and she lifted her hand off the wheel again. “I mean, here? Isn’t there a place where—”
“We can do this here,” he interrupted her, “or you can tell me the same things from an overcrowded mort cell back in HQ.” The grimy and stubble-muzzled Sergeant sighed at Sophie and then called out over his shoulder, “Smelling ammonia and gun oil, captain.” He turned back to Sophie, raised his weapon toward her and she flinched away. “Glove compartment. Is that a pistol magazine?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s empty.”
“What is that submachine gun down there, HK? Hands front I said, lady. Eyes to me.”
“It is.” Sophie frowned, her nose twitched. She could smell cigarette smoke from somewhere. “Do you think I’d survive this long without one?”
“Who the Hell are you?”
“Sergeant, enough.” Another taller and gaunter man came up, put his molded black Nomex glove on the Sergeant’s shoulder. He exhaled smoke out of his nostrils, gave his second a weary smile. “Enough. I’m going to be asking the questions here.”
The Sergeant stiffened his shoulders, and Sophie could see his glistening jaw clench. His teeth were grinding. But he relented nonetheless. “Captain,” he said to the gaunt man, “you’re covered and clear.” He scowled at Sophie. “Ma’am, and you in the back seat, keep your hands out and still. Park the vehicle out of four-wheel. Ma’am, ma’am, with one hand. Put the vehicle out of four.” He waited until she did so and then finally turned away.
The wry and exhausted Captain looked up and down at Sophie, her hazmat, her taped-in water straw, her burned fingers, as if he was trying to figure out how an almost middle-aged woman and a nearly-dead black man could possibly have made it more than twenty feet out of shelter without getting themselves killed. But after a few agonizing seconds, he smiled a little, arched his eyebrow, and carefully put his cigarette out in the palm of his glove. He pocketed the stub away for later.
“Now,” he said to her. “Hal has a way, and I’m sorry for that. Just don’t make any sudden moves and you can put your hands down and be at ease. Where did you come from?”
She had been expecting this question again, had decided precisely how she was going to lie. If she swallowed at the same time to keep the Captain’s eyes off of her own, lowered her hands while she was talking, hopefully he wouldn’t notice the partial lie and that would be all. For now.
“We came down from Lyons,” she said. “Past Loveland. There was authority in Lyons, for a time. We worked there. We fled when everything collapsed.”
The Captain tensed, put one gloved hand on the lowered window so Sophie could not raise it. She saw his other hand drift down to his holstered combat pistol. “Ma’am,” he said slowly, “you do not lie to me. I don’t think anyone’s come out of Lyons for seven nights or days. We lost radio eight nights ago. You try again.”
Hal had been listening. He took a few steps forward, stood at the H4’s bumper. “Captain Raaen, you haven’t given me notice to call this in yet. You want me to start handling the back end of this?”
“No,” said the Captain, his unblinking eyes searching Sophie’s own. “You’re on guard, Sergeant. Remember?”
Hal murmured, “Yes, sir.” The man raised a knee, put a booted foot on the H4’s bumper, and stared at Sophie through the windshield.
“All right,” said Sophie. She did not break her gaze with the Captain, so he could see she that this time, she was telling him the truth. Or at least the beginning of it. “We just now came, some hours ago, from Pearson’s Corner.”
Captain Raaen frowned, but he brought up his other hand. “Really, now.” His fingers tapped at the lowered window in contemplation. “Strange, but maybe not. I could see it. I thought our last south patrol heard more than one set of engines earlier on. You alone?”
“We are.”
“Pearson’s… we’ve been wondering about some things down there.” He licked his lips, tilted his head. Sophie knew he was nervous, yet trying to feign a casual air. “Anyone else alive you might have seen?”
“Yes,” she answered, “but not anyone whom I’m befriended to.”
That brought a genuine smile. He might have been handsome once, he had a look about him that instantly said Married With Children in Sophie’s mind. His grin was a little too much like Tom’s and it hurt her heart to see it. He said: “No one who… whom?… you’re befriended to. I see. Could you de-formalize that a bit? As in, give me a little more of the simple truth?”
“There’s hundreds of trucks down there,” said Sophie. “In the FEMA fortifications. Buses, tow trucks, even tankers at the old truck stop. Some are still running. And fuel. And there’s men, armed men, at least sixty. But they’ve…”
She trailed off. Captain Raaen coaxed her gently. “Yes?”
Sophie relented. “They’ve taken many women hostage. Torture. One died that I could see, at least three others were… dying when I left. I tried to save her. Just outside of my SUV.”
The Captain did not blink. But his smile had faded as he had been listening intently. “She died. To gunshots?”
“Yes.”
“Explaining this cranial blood spatter up your runner and wheel guard.”
She cringed. “I… yes.”
The Captain’s fingers tapped again. Sophie waited, certain that her heart had missed a beat. He thinks I’m a looter, a murderer. It’s over. She slowly moved a lock of hair out of her eyes, trying to show no further emotion. He’ll want answers. Where will they take me? Fort Morgan? It doesn’t matter. My freedom has just been taken from me.
But the Captain said only, “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Hal cursed audibly under his breath, and the Captain shot him a deadly glare before returning his attention to Sophie. “And these… sixty men? All were hostile?”
“We tried to stop for help,” said Sophie, “for fuel, to barter and they fired on us. I ran over some wreckage on the way out as we fled.”
“Explaining these bullet holes,” said the Captain, “and all your fender damage. And perhaps your windshield. And you’re scorched in the back and leaking fuel underneath, you know.”
“Yes.”
“But not explaining, I’m afraid,” continued the Captain, and one of his hands was resting on the butt of his pistol once again, “the two shreds of flannel shirt, or the scalp and hair and brain matter, currently trailing down from the torn mesh and billet of your H4’s lower grill.”
Sophie flushed with alarm. Brain matter? The motorcycle rider… Now she was a murderess, a potential insurgent, and a second-time liar. Her head was shaking back and forth, she felt a tremor of shame, her hands came up trembling. “I…”
“Ma’am,” said Hal from the front of the H4, “do not move.”
Sophie heard a nearby sound of metal and metal, a clicking that sounded like oiled ball bearings. She realized the unseen third man had dimmed down the searchlight to half and was training the swivel machine gun, aiming at a spot just above her head.