“Maybe you need to talk to Doc, see if he can give you something to help you sleep.” I started to get up, meaning to get Doc, but he shook his head no and walked over to the ruined stairway. Before I could stop him, Jacob had jumped down and run out the front door of the building. I called for the others. We grabbed out gear and climbed down after him, but by the time we got out the door, he was long gone. I stopped at the door and told everyone to go back to bed. We would find him in the morning, or not. Most likely not.
As we watched the sun rise at stand-to, we heard a single shot echo through the woods.
We found him just down the road. Leaning with his back against a tree, a picture of his wife and kids on his lap, his pistol still in his hand. He had waited ’til dawn so he could see them one more time. The four of us dug him a deep grave, shouldered our packs and started walking.
“Hey Nick, you think Jacob is in a better place now?” Jonesy dropped back as Doc replaced him on point and walked beside me. He could tell I was in a foul mood. Three men killed, Brit wounded. This was a tough mission and it was getting to me.
“I don’t know, J. Maybe this is a nightmare, and he managed to get out of it. Lord knows I wish the old world would come back.”
“I don’t. Old world, I got shit on by the man. Five years in a state pen like that joint we just cracked, all because I beat the crap outta some dude that raped my sister. I like this world, Nick. I am the right hand of justice, and I can serve it out like jelly on a cracker. Just not on you crackers. YEAH, I MEANT YOU, DOC, YOU CRACKER-ASS BIKER!”
Doc flipped him the finger over his shoulder, not taking his eyes from where we were going. I actually smiled a little and Jonesy dropped back to talk with Ahmed. I felt a little better.
Who knew, psychotherapy from an ex-con?
Chapter 20
We headed out down the railroad tracks, both for survey and to keep off the roads. Walking down railroad tracks were a bitch because the rail ties never seemed to land under your foot. It made for a more tiring walk, but on either side of the grade was swamp and mud. It was hard keeping on our toes with the sun beating down on us. When you hump a rucksack, you sweat. I don’t care how hardcore you are, humping a ruck is hard work, and we were soaked in sweat before we had gone a mile. So much for being clean.
As I walked slowly along the tracks, scanning my sector for movement, my mind wandered. Half paid attention to what was going on around me. It had to, or we would be dead. The other half thought back, remembered, dragged up conversations with people long dead, replayed events in my mind. I tried not to think about before the plague. Some things are too painful. Instead, my glance crossing over Jonesy’s pack as I did a slow turn to walk backwards for a few meters, checking our six, I thought of how the team had come together.
It had been at the FEMA camp on Grand Island, just west of Buffalo. The Feds and the Army were just gearing up for Task Force Empire, and Doc and I had reported into the base, reactivated under Presidential executive order to our old ranks. Everyone who ever served, up to age 65, was reactivated and automatically made part of their old branch of service. In theory, anyway. I had made contact with a small “clear and hold” unit that had airdropped into the high ground just west of Schenectady. They had flown me, along with a dozen others, to the Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes. While waiting for assignment, and starting to chafe under the usual Army chickenshit rules, I had run into Doc, whom I knew from way back. Together we came up with the idea for the scouts and pitched it to a Major we knew in the Infantry. We resigned the next day and we were hired as Irregular Scouts. Next thing we knew, we were on a UH-60, flying over the ruins of Buffalo on our way to the camp on Grand Isle.
I stood in front of the ragged group of civilians and looked them over. A sadistic-looking little man wearing a drill sergeant hat was barking at them, trying to get them to stand in ranks, doing the usual “YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW, MAGGOT” crap. Most of them looked at him with contempt. These people were the survivors. They had lived through the plague and everything after, volunteered to serve. Maybe some were there for three hots and a cot, but I doubted it. They had carried the other ninety percent milling around the FEMA camp who sat in their tents, relieved the government had finally gotten there so they could kick back. Deadweight. I had seen them as I walked through the camp, the vacant looks on their faces. The ones who had been carried through the plague by the fighters. The same fighters who stood before me in this group.
I stood for a minute, then whispered to Doc “Watch the big black dude.” The sergeant had gotten in his face, or more like his chest, and was yelling obscenities up at him, ending with “DO YOU HEAR ME, BOY?” At which point, the black guy punched him as hard as he could in the face. The sergeant went down for the count, flat on his back. The other around them laughed, until they heard the rattle of bolts being drawn back and rounds being chambered in the rifles of the Military Police team nearby.
“HOLD IT!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and walked forward to address the crowd. Doc knelt down and checked out the sergeant, who was trying to sit up, holding his face. I told the Military Police team to stand down, which they did, staring angrily at the group.
“My name, for those who care, is Sergeant First Class Nicholas Agostine. Just so you know, the Army you just volunteered for isn’t the kinder, gentler Army anymore. You, black guy, what’s your name?”
He stepped forward. “Jones. LeShaun Jones.”
“Well, Jonesy, you aren’t back on the block anymore. Those guys” and I motioned to the three soldiers who were helping the Drill Sergeant sit down on a bench, “will shoot you for something like that. Matter of fact, they probably are going to shoot you, just as soon as I leave here, to make an example out of you. I don’t have to explain to you how cheap life is nowadays.”
Most of them acknowledged what I had said. Jones just stood there and glared at me.
“Can you run? Or is that all just muscle?” I asked him, poking him in the chest. Holy crap, this dude was big.
“Yeah, I can run. Bet yer ass.”
“Good, because I’m taking you with me.” I turned my back to him and faced the crowd again.
“Like I said before, my name is SFC Agostine. This is SFC Hamilton, my team medic. I’m recruiting a few volunteers to serve on my scout team. Our job is to go out and be the eyes and ears of Task Force Empire, the Army’s push back into New York State. It’s going to be dangerous as hell, but we will be on our own, detached from the regular army bullshit, not even part of the command. Our actual overhead is Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. If you’re interested, Doc and I will be over here for the next few minutes. Think about it.” I pointed at Jones. “You, come with me if you want to live.”
We walked away, Jones following, and sat down on the steps of ruined library building. A dozen people walked over to us and we formed them in a line, interviewing each one. We had picked out six of them, all tough, competent survivors, when a vaguely familiar, dusky-skinned man stepped up to me.
“Name?”
“Ahmed.”
“Last name.”
“If I told you, will you torture me again, Nick Agostine?”
I looked up from the laptop where I had been punching in people’s names and shielded the sun from my eyes. I recognized him at once. He had been on our capture list for months in Afghanistan, leading a band of independent tribesmen who fought us and the Taliban with equal ferocity whenever anyone trespassed into his valley. At one time, he had been a member of the Taliban but had gone off on his own, disgusted by their attacks on children. He had hated America with equal vehemence for an airstrike which had killed two of his own children. We had him in custody once, but the last I heard, he was in Guantanamo Bay Prison.