To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
If some foreign government had done to our major cities what we have done ourselves, their capital city would still be a glowing sheet of radioactive glass.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They’d stayed on the move until after midnight. Every time Ed wanted to rotate south the squad heard a Growler in that direction, a Kestrel flying low, or more gunfire. They were forced back north even as they moved west, making their way slowly through old neighborhoods which had been woody before the war had broken out; now they were downright rustic.
After several hours of careful trekking through backyards and small city parks and down tree-lined streets the squad was finally able to turn south. Through the light of the bright moon they hiked through treelines and parking lots and fields overgrown with waist-high grass, and finally crossed the 18-hole golf course of a now-defunct country club. They spooked two deer bedding in a thicket between two high-grass fairways. The animals bounded away silently, beautifully, moving as if they existed on a planet with lower gravity.
On the south side of the golf course were a few residential streets. Before the war the houses there were a bit secluded, sitting on large, heavily treed lots. Ed didn’t care about the tree cover as much as he did the river winding its way south through the golf course. Well, technically it was labeled a river even here, but it didn’t rate the name. Ten miles south it grew into a true river, but here it was just a large muddy stream… but it was only four hundred feet from the back doors of those secluded houses. One of those houses had burned and then been abandoned. Or abandoned and then burned—Ed didn’t know exactly the order of what had happened, all he knew was that the house was vacant, secluded, blessed with great tree cover, and a stone’s throw from running water. It had served them well on past patrols.
A quick search showed them the house was unoccupied, and after establishing a watch schedule the exhausted squad went to sleep in the half of the house untouched by fire, although everything still smelled of smoke and mildew.
“Nobody thinks of there being streams or even rivers in cities and neighborhoods, but there are,” Ed told Jason the next morning. While they’d been diverted from their route they were nowhere near behind schedule, so he’d let everyone sleep until eight. Rest while you can, he’d learned that lesson years ago. “Some of them are sealed away, or walled off, but they’re on most maps, and easy to find.”
“And when in doubt, head to a golf course,” George said, chewing on an energy bar. “There’s always ponds, and usually a stream or two. The nice neighborhoods, you can find swimming pools every block.”
“Now, none of it is safe to drink, untreated,” Ed went on, “but cities aren’t nearly as dry as you might think.”
Jason looked between the two older men, then around at the rest of the squad. “How come none of you wear helmets?” They were all wearing what he’d learned were “plate carriers”, vests which held armored plates front and back to cover their vitals, but unlike the military, he hadn’t seen a single dogsoldier wearing a ballistic helmet. Half of them were bare-headed, the rest wore baseball caps. The ball cap snugged onto George’s head bearing an Olde English D was so sweatstained, faded, and dirty it was impossible to tell its original color. Which meant it was nicely camouflaged.
George answered. “The last two generations of ballistic helmets for the military have had tracking chips, locator chips, embedded in them just like the soldiers’ rifles.” His eyes tracked up to the brim of his baseball cap. “A helmet would be a pain in the ass in this heat, but I’d surely appreciate some Kevlar up there when the bullets start flying.” He cocked his head and eyed the baby-faced new member of the squad. Jason was staring intently at the energy bar in his hand. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”
“The pigeon yesterday.”
“You don’t have any food of your own in that pack?”
Jason shook his head. “I ate up all my food looking for you guys.”
George made a sound, and held the bar out to Jason. “Here, finish this, I don’t want you collapsing on us.”
Quentin was in the other room, heating up several pots worth of water carried from the nearby river. They had the time, and boiling the water wouldn’t tax their already overwrought water filters.
Weasel and Early returned to the house within a few minutes of each other. Weasel had his pockets stuffed with edible greens including dandelions and daylilies, and Early had a squirrel and a rabbit that he’d shot with the suppressed .22 he carried. The gun was so quiet none of the men in the house had heard it go off, but then again the woods stretched almost half a mile south from the edge of the golf course in a point-down narrow triangle shape.
Early looked at Quentin, boiling the water, at the greens Weasel had, then at Ed. “Well, Cap’n, I was gonna clean these critters and stick ‘em on a fire, but it looks like we got us all the makings of a soup pot here.” There was a question in his statement. Ed looked at Weasel, his eyebrows up.
“Yeah, some of what I brought would do for soup,” Weasel said. “The dandelion leaves and wild carrots will taste better after a boil.”
“Then cut ‘em up,” Ed told the two men. “Looks like we’re having rabbit-squirrel vegetable soup for breakfast.”
“I’ll see if I can find bowls or cups or something,” Mark said, standing up.
“See if you can find any herbs as well,” Weasel said to him. “Maybe salt. I’d kill for some salt.”
“I think we’ve picked the cupboards pretty clean,” Ed cautioned him.
“And rice. Dry rice lasts forever, if you can keep the bugs out of it, and it’s perfect for soup.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mark told him.
“Should we follow the river south?” George asked Ed as the squad—minus Weasel and Early, who were on watch—ate and drank the soup from a motley collection of bowls and cups Mark had salvaged. Mark had also found a small plastic bag of uncooked white rice in a house two doors down. Not much more than a cup’s worth, but it was unspoiled and went into the soup, providing some desperately needed carbohydrates. Looting was stealing what you didn’t need, and was not something they ever did. Salvage, on the other hand, retrieving unused items that you needed to survive… that was something they did as often as they could. Still, they were very careful not to take anything from houses that weren’t clearly unoccupied. “Then turn east once we get far enough south and head to the general store?” Ed had his map of the city laid out on the table before them, and George used a finger to suggest a route.
For most of its southward wend through the city the river was bordered by narrow city parks or just strips of undeveloped land thick with trees. Not quite two miles south of them it meandered through a large cemetery.
“I like that it’ll keep us away from prying eyes, but it also keeps us away from cover,” Ed replied. “A Kestrel rolls over us we’re going to want more than tree trunks to hide behind.”
“Haven’t been on this side of the city for a while now,” Mark observed. “I’m curious how much of that land around the river is gardens.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s a good point,” George admitted. “Ready source of water… we could be tromping through tomato plants and dodging scarecrows. If there’s anybody living in the area, they’ll be getting water from the river.”