Colonel Reid started to reply, but Benny wasn’t finished with her. “I read enough about the way things were before First Night to know that people were always fighting. Not just wars, but political fights, social fights, all sorts of things. I swear, sometimes reading those history books I wondered if people wanted to fight more than they wanted to survive.” He straightened and fixed her with a cold stare. “When we saw that jet, we thought that things were going to be okay. We thought that it represented a chance for a better future than the one we were handed. I can’t even put into words how sorry I am — how cheated I feel — to find out that things are just the same.”
The silence in the hangar was absolute.
Finally, Riot murmured, “The boy’s right… we’re up to our eyeballs in the alligator swamp and y’all won’t let us in the boat.”
Colonel Reid brushed nonexistent lint from her lapel. Nix balled her hands into little fists that she squeezed hard enough to make the knuckles creak.
In a calmer voice, Benny said, “Right now you need us.”
He produced the sheets with the coordinates.
Reid’s face went scarlet, and she wheeled on Ledger. “You said that you had the coordinates.”
“I did,” admitted Ledger. “And I gave them back to Benny. After all, he found them.”
“That’s treason. I could have you shot for this.”
Joe smiled. “You could try, Jane. But I don’t think that would work out for you as well as you’d like.” He shook his head. “Besides, those papers belong to Benny.”
“They are the property of the American Nation.”
“Excuse me,” cut in Nix, “but exactly where are the borders of the American Nation?”
“Is that a joke?” demanded Reid.
“No, it’s a straight question. We found those papers out here in the Ruin. Benny took some off a reaper and the coordinates from a walker. Are you saying that that happened inside your legal boundaries?”
“The whole continent is the American Nation.”
“From the Atlantic to the Pacific?”
“Of course.”
“So — central California is part of that, right?”
Reid snapped her mouth shut, but it was too late. Her foot was in Nix’s bear trap.
“You’re saying that our town, Mountainside, and all the other towns in the Sierra Nevadas are part of the American Nation?”
Reid kept her mouth clamped shut, but her face darkened by at least two shades. Benny wanted to laugh, but he kept his own mouth shut.
“You admit that our towns are part of your new nation, and yet never once did you send anyone to us. What were we? Inconvenient? Too much trouble? Did you just write us off?”
When Reid didn’t answer, Lilah gave a derisive snort. So far it was her only contribution to the conversation, but it was eloquent.
Finally Reid couldn’t hold it back anymore. “You arrogant little snots. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I’ve dedicated my entire life to protecting this country.”
“Really?” asked Benny. “How much of that time was spent protecting the people?”
Reid shook her head. “You’re not capable of understanding what it takes to protect a nation.”
“I am,” said Joe quietly. “And the kid asks a good question. My rangers put together maps of all the populated settlements. I was in Asheville three times over the last two years to request permission to establish connections and resources to provide technology recovery services, medicines, and communication equipment. People like you argued against it every time. It wasn’t the best use of resources. The distances were too great. The indigenous populations of those settlements did not include a high enough percentage of scientists and researchers. Lots of excuses, none of them worth a drop of moose spit.”
“It’s not in your pay grade to question policy, Captain.”
“It’s not in anyone’s pay grade to devalue tens of thousands of human lives because protecting them is inconvenient. I can’t begin to tell you how deeply ashamed I am for not taking matters into my own hands. I should have told this boy’s brother about the American Nation. I should have told everyone. I should never have followed orders about leaving it to my superiors. Never. They deserve to know.”
“They would have been contacted at the appropriate time. There’s a timetable for this.”
“Contacted when?” asked Nix. “After we were all dead? After the reapers or the zoms slaughtered us? When exactly would the ‘appropriate’ time be?”
“This conversation is ridiculous,” Reid said with a dismissive shake of her head. “You’ll hand over those coordinates so I can assign a team to—”
“No,” said Benny.
“Don’t test me, boy.”
“The answer’s no. You don’t get them.”
Reid laid her hand on the pistol holstered at her hip. “You want to play games, boy? Do you want me to take them from you?”
Nix and Lilah drew their pistols as fast as lightning. Riot, however, very casually took her slingshot from her belt and socketed a ball bearing into the pouch. Joe Ledger folded his arms and leaned a hip against the table.
Benny did nothing except give Reid a small, cold smile. “Like Captain Ledger said — you can try.”
But Reid was not easily flustered. “Captain Ledger, I order you to—”
“Colonel Reid, I hereby resign my commission in the army of the American Nation, yielding all rank, pay, benefits, and privileges effective as of right now.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Just did. In fact, a long time ago Tom Imura offered to let me sleep on his couch and help set me up as a bounty hunter in Mountainside. So I’m retroactively taking his offer, which means that I am declaring myself a citizen of Mountainside, one of the Nine Towns of the Sierra Nevadas. You can’t tell by hearing it, but I’m capitalizing Nine Towns. If no one else has declared them a sovereign nation, then I am.”
“You—”
“Unless,” Joe said, “you would like to formally accept those towns into the American Nation, extending to the citizens the full support and resources of the American Nation.”
Before Reid could answer, Joe stepped forward. His smile was strange, Benny thought. Feral, like a wolf’s. It was almost as if a different person — more savage and more intense — glowered out through his blue eyes.
“Listen to me, Jane, and you’ll do yourself a lot of good by keeping your ears open and your mouth shut,” he said, his voice as soft as a whisper. “I’ve fought for my country and I’ve fought for my world. You sat behind a desk. You haven’t logged an hour of field time in thirty years. You don’t understand what it was that built this country in the first place. You take a lot of pride in being an officer in the ‘American’ Nation. So do I, but that rank and uniform comes with a price — no, an obligation — to protect the people as well as the real estate. Some of our colleagues didn’t always grasp that before the Fall. Some did, a lot didn’t. Those were the boneheads who thought it was a smart idea to nuke the cities rather than try to protect the survivors and retake the land. Those were the ones who used ‘assets’ and ‘collateral damage’ to describe people and loss of life. Well, guess what… that ends right here and right now. America was born in the fires of a revolution, with people who wanted to push back against oppression. It was made tougher in the furnace of a civil war to make everyone free. In every single decade there were people who stood up and spoke out, people who made a stand. I look at you and what you represent, and I look at these four kids here and all their integrity and potential, and sister, you don’t measure up too well.”