Since he’d assumed command of the squad Ed had had to leave over a dozen wounded men at the hospital, knowing that if they survived their wounds the Army would probably take them prisoner. The men were always stripped of their gear and uniforms but the soldiers stationed in the emergency room usually could tell the difference between battle-hardened veterans and random victims of violence. It killed Ed to do it, but he refused to let a wounded man suffer, perhaps die, just because there was a chance he might be captured. Some had died anyway, others had never fully recovered from their wounds, either physically or emotionally, disappearing and leaving the fighting to those who were still whole or, if not whole, still motivated. The Army had its own medical facility downtown, but only soldiers and the rare captured guerilla ever benefited from its services.
The Pres took another sharp curve to the left and they were pointed south again. The hospital tower quickly dropped from view behind them. The street grew a little friendlier; trees lined both sides and hung over the curb lanes, providing some concealment from flyovers.
On the left a chain link fence ran unbroken for half a mile. On the other side of it was a cemetery hidden behind a row of trees and leaning seed-topped grass that hadn’t been mown in years. To the right, concealed behind fences, hedges, and mature trees, were the backyards of a small secluded neighborhood, mostly two-story colonial homes. On the straightaway Quentin got the Ford up to forty miles an hour before he had to brake. Another intersection was coming up quickly.
Although they’d yet to meet up with any trouble, Ed had had enough of traveling on major surface streets. Even though it was faster it was always a bad idea. At the intersection Quentin took a right turn, accelerated, braked, and turned south once again onto a residential side street.
The houses were small, one and two stories, most with small covered porches. Almost all of them were clad in aluminum or vinyl siding which had weathered the years well. Mature, fifty- to sixty-foot silver and red maples lined the narrow street, meeting far overhead, throwing most of the street into deep shadow.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Ed murmured.
There were more cars here, because this neighborhood still had residents. Here as in most areas ringing the city the remaining people had banded together to survive. Behind the fences and blank faces of the houses they’d find communal gardens, catch basins for water, perhaps chicken coops, all guarded by residents who knew their neighbors by name and had developed a healthy distrust of anyone just wandering by. It was in neighborhoods like these that the squad usually hid to heal and re-equip if they didn’t head out into the country. The locals, those part of the ARF Irregulars’ “Underground Railroad”, provided them food, water, and funneled them ammunition and medical supplies, sometimes from the strangest sources. The same was true of the unoccupied safe houses throughout the region—the squad would show up and find the cabinets freshly stuffed with antibiotics from Spain and Poland, ammunition from South Africa and Turkey, batteries and binoculars from the Czech Republic, ghost guns, water bottles, baby wipes, vitamins—they’d seen it all.
The SUV coasted along, bristling with rifle barrels and filled with nervous faces. The street was quiet and for the most part clear; here and there scorchmarks marred the pavement, but the vehicles that had burned had all been towed away. Sold for scrap, most likely, before the scrap yards were closed down.
They passed an old man, shuffling north along the sidewalk with a plastic bag swinging from gnarled fingers. When he heard the car coming he looked up, revealing dark haunted eyes. He stopped, and as the SUV drew close he raised a quivering hand. George lifted a hand in response, and the two men stared at each other until the vehicle rolled by. Then the man began shuffling northward again. George’s hand clenched into a fist, then relaxed and settled around the pistol grip of his carbine.
Jason looked left and right out the windows. Block after block of houses, small, neat, many obviously still occupied. “People live here?” he asked.
“Not nearly as many as used to, but more than you’d think,” Ed told him. “A lot of the people who fled the city had relatives or friends living in the suburbs.” Ed peered down each passing street. Bedroom communities like this one, with absolutely no businesses except on the busiest through-streets, had fared the best in the fighting.
Quentin slowed as they reached the next mile road, and everyone in the SUV looked right and left. They saw a few scattered people on foot, and a short line in front of what was probably a store of some sort, but nothing that looked threatening. Sure, the guy leaning against the front of the store had a shotgun poorly concealed behind his leg, but he was store security, not Army. The old vehicle surged forward across the avenue and continued southward along the same residential street.
Ed bent forward over the seat. “Things seem quiet today. Is gang activity down?” George shrugged. He didn’t know.
They rolled by a small beige brick community church, hardly bigger than a house, then a narrow boulevard with a grassy median narrow enough to jump across. As soon as they passed it Jason noticed the increased alertness in the men around him. He felt the big vehicle slowing down.
“Quentin, you kill the engine before we turn the corner.” George looked over his shoulder into the interior of the car. “I want four on each side when we un-ass the vehicle. Make that three on the left, Quentin’ll stay with the car. Early, you grab the cherry, keep him close.”
“Gotcha.”
“I’ll take right point, initiate the approach,” Ed said. “Watch the houses on either side just before, if there’s going to be an ambush that’s where they’ll be hiding.”
What was happening? Jason realized everybody knew but him. “Where are we going?”
“OP. Observation Post near the Ditch,” Ed told him. “Might be empty, might be occupied, might be hot, might be blown, no way to tell ‘til we get there.”
Ahead, the street they’d been on for almost two miles without incident—Thank God for small favors, Ed thought—rolled through to a tall red brick wall. The residential street dead-ended at the westbound service drive of the Ditch, which was what everybody called the sunken interstate running east-west for twenty-five miles, several miles north of the city limits proper. The wall had been erected to block the noise of the cars zooming by below. Jason could just make out the empty space beyond the service drive where the once busy freeway had been carved deep into the ground in an attempt to make it both safer for the residents and quieter. The effort had proved only partially successful.
A hundred feet before the brick wall, still coasting along at twenty miles an hour, Quentin cut the engine, then swung a hard left onto an east-west side street. It looked no different from any of the other three dozen streets they’d already passed, lined with small houses on small lots. A few derelict cars were in evidence.
They coasted a third of the way down the block, until the Ford had slowed to walking speed, then Quentin pulled to the curb. Before the SUV had even stopped men were bailing out of the car in every direction. Jason frantically slid across the seat and out of the open door, not wanting to be the last man out of the car. He was, except for Quentin, who crouched behind the wheel. Early was jogging heavily across the street, heading for the gap between two houses, and Jason scrambled after him, rifle in hand.