“Hell, you ask them, we’re still terrorists,” Quentin said. “Have the government or military ever, officially, called this a war? We’re still criminals to them. Because calling us soldiers would maybe force them to admit that we’re actually fighting for something, we’re not looters or crazies or murderers.”
They reached the water. There was no way to do it without getting wet, so Weasel jumped into the knee-high water and dunked one pot under the flowing stream, then the other.
“So the long story short is that this is an MP5,” Weasel told Jason, touching the gun on his back. He climbed out of the water. “It’s a nine-millimeter sub-machinegun. Police SWAT teams used them.” He lifted the full pot of water with a grunt. “It’s not as powerful as an actual rifle, but I earned it. I fucking earned it. And I’m not giving it up. They’re gonna have to take it.”
“It fires a pistol cartridge, right? So it won’t go through their armor?”
Weasel snorted and said defensively, “Neither will your rifle, or any of the rifles we’re carrying, not even Early’s boat anchor. It maybe doesn’t hit as hard, but it doesn’t have any recoil. In the time it takes Early to fire three rounds I can do a full mag dump, and I like not blowing out my eardrums every time I fire a shot. And it seems like it’s easier to find pistol ammo these days than rifle.” He had thirteen 30-round magazines… the only problem was he only had enough ammo to fill three mags and change. “I’m not the only one on the squads to feel that way, there are a number of guys running guns like this, subguns and 9mm ARs and even one pistol-caliber AK. So fuck off.”
Jason changed the obviously touchy subject. “Rouge means red, right?” he asked Quentin quietly as they were working their way back from the river with the freshly refilled pots. It was quiet underneath the trees and the gurgling of the wide stream behind them was soothing. “Is it called that because it’s muddy?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. You know, it caught fire once.”
“What did?”
“The river.” Jason assumed the man was messing with him and made a sound. “No, seriously,” Quentin insisted. “Back before I was born. They used to dump all sorts of chemicals in it, and it caught fire one day.”
“And we’re drinking it?” Jason said, aghast, staring at the water sloshing in the big pot Quentin was carrying.
“They cleaned it up before the war ever started.”
“You see a lot of industry around here likely to pollute the water?” Weasel asked the kid, grunting with the effort of carrying a cast iron pot that had been heavy before he’d filled with two gallons of water. “This whole city’s turning green.”
“Where’d you learn about which plants you can eat?” Jason asked him.
“Some from Early, but most from Todd. He was a landscaper and ran a greenhouse before the war.”
“Todd?”
“Caught a round in the face. Years ago. Four years? Jesus, has it been that long? This fucking war, man. This whole city’s a graveyard.” Filled with a sudden anger Weasel marched past Jason toward the rear of the house, his subgun bouncing on its sling. Jason looked at Quentin, who just shrugged.
It was nearly noon before they left the shelter of the smoky, collapsed house and began picking their way south through the stand of trees. The belt of trees narrowed to a mere fifty feet wide as it approached the next major road. Just to the east was a large, defunct auto salvage yard.
As the squad took up a defensive perimeter Ed glassed the auto salvage yard (he saw nothing moving but a cat), then turned his binoculars to the massive road in front of them. The border between the suburbs and the city to the south, The Border, was a wide surface street running directly east/west. There were four traffic lanes in each direction, separated by a grassy median as wide as four lanes of traffic. Including the easements and sidewalks on either side of the road, the squad was faced with two hundred feet of open ground to cross. Actually, directly south of their position was a gas station that had been torn apart in an explosion followed by a fire, and there was no real cover there. To make it to the dense neighborhood south of the gas station was another hundred feet.
Before they’d left the house that morning he’d pulled up a fresh overhead photo of the area, but saw nothing that warranted alarm. No roadblocks, no patrolling Army units or armor, no columns of smoke large enough to attract military attention. Still, the battery on the drone jammer was fully charged, although it only reached fifty meters or so. It worked great on the small surveillance and infiltrator drones, bird and bug size, but didn’t do a thing against anything big the military had circling at altitude.
They all heard the sound of a motor, and Ed raised his glasses to see a motorcycle with one helmeted rider appear to the west. The rider—it appeared to be a man—was doing about forty miles an hour, which was about as fast as was prudent given the poor condition of the road and the likelihood of encountering lane-choking debris or abandoned cars in the middle of the road.
“Rice burner,” Mark said derisively, going off nothing but the sound of the exhaust. He was a Harley man himself.
Ed spotted someone walking on the sidewalk a few hundred yards to the east, and some sort of activity in front of a partially collapsed building not quite half a mile to the west. He couldn’t make it out, but it didn’t look dangerous. Some sort of fight between several of the city’s al fresco denizens. Or maybe it was a midday open air orgy. He’d seen stranger things. What concerned him were the figures in the parking lot of the gas station directly south of them.
Ed waved Mark up, and pointed. Then he handed the big man the binos. Mark studied the group carefully.
“What do you think, cross here, or go around?”
Mark handed the Meoptas back to his squad leader. He shrugged. “They’re just doing a bit of private enterprise. Most neighborhoods we go through, we’ve got eyes on us even if we don’t see them. And it’s not like the locals don’t know there’s a war on, but the ones left are professionals at not getting involved. Weren’t there, didn’t see shit, even if they get splashed with blood…. I know you don’t like crowds, but cross here and we’re just more potential customers to any eyes in the sky.”
Ed grunted and raised the binoculars again. His heart rate was up just studying the city through the lenses of his binos. Technically they were in just as much danger where they were now as they would be once they crossed into the city proper. He knew it was more psychological than anything else. South of the border was enemy territory.
“The city… it’s never the same,” Ed mused.
“What do you mean?”
“Every time we pop out of it and come back, it’s a little bit different.”
“Worse?”
“No, different,” Ed said quietly, still staring through the binos. He snorted. “I don’t think it can get any worse. It turns out one can simply walk into Mordor.”
“Oh, it can always get worse,” George, just in earshot, felt obliged to add.
Ed sighed, then motioned at George and Early. “You two first. Rifles down along your sides and walk, all casual like, don’t run. Talk to our entrepreneurs over there, and if nothing feels off, give a wave. We’ll stage up at that house past them,” he pointed.
They were all sweaty with anticipation, but crossing into the city, as was often the case, was anti-climactic. No shouts, no shooting, and best of all no Growlers, IMPs, or Kestrels.