“Take these and call me in the morning,” was all she said, and she walked out.
“That’s one helluva medic.” John sighed, and his host laughed.
“Maggie is the best. She pulled two bullets out of me last fall with nothing more than a quick shot of white lightning before digging in.”
Focus was coming back, and John looked over at his host. The man, like so many now, had that ageless look—on the surface maybe in his midthirties but infinitely older inside. His skin was weather beaten, leathery. He was dressed a bit more neatly than the group of several dozen hanging about the fire station—jeans, a combat blouse with the eagle of the famed 101st Airborne draped around his narrow shoulders, left sleeve empty and pinned up at the shoulder, left eye covered with a patch, and jawline twisted and gnarled like the bark of an old oak.
“Name’s Forrest Burnett, once a first sergeant with the 101st.” He pointed at the empty sleeve with his right hand. “Lost that in some shit hole of a valley in Afghanistan about ten years back.” He smiled, pointing up to the eye patch and twisted scars of his face.
“Actually lost the arm first to an IED. Rest of my squad dead. When the bastards came up to check us, oh good Lord, how I wasted them all, but lost the eye and my good looks before I killed the last of them.” He laughed softly. “Not like your war… it’s Colonel, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” John said cautiously.
Burnett looked to those gathered around. “We got us a special guest here,” Burnett announced loudly so all around him could hear. “A real live colonel. Oh, I know his record. Book-learning-type colonel. Even in the Pentagon, not like one of us grunts they sent out in that last war. Now a hero in these mountains for how he turned back that pagan Posse group.”
“Shit, fifty of us,” one of the group interjected, “would have kicked their stinking asses clear back to Greensboro.”
There was a laughing chorus of agreements.
The leader shot an angry glance back at the man who spoke up. “Keep your damn mouth shut!” he snarled, and the one he spoke to dropped his head and backed up.
John said nothing, for after all, what could he say? In a way, Burnett was right. He had received many an advantage ever since college and his decision to go into the military with the immediate rank of second lieutenant. From the accent, John knew Burnett to be a local, most likely a volunteer out of patriotic fervor or poverty after 9/11, sent back from Afghanistan twisted up in body and mind.
“Got the Silver Star for that, wasting those bastards, and then years of bullshit afterwards. How was your retirement, Colonel?”
John said nothing. Burnett was taking him into the game of who had it worse, and in that case, John would most certainly lose. John would always be the first to admit that, especially in the years just prior to the Day. Retired colonels did get far more perks. A one-armed sergeant with a twisted face and missing an eye might get a lot of sympathy at least and compassion—especially after the crap that had been heaped on the veterans of Vietnam—but in the long run?
“Look, Sergeant. You want to shoot me or hang me, then just do it and get it over with. So let’s cut the crap. It’s your call,” John snapped back, knowing that Burnett had every right to be bitter, and making an appeal for mercy would fall on deaf ears.
Most fell silent, though a few, led by George standing outside the firehouse, offered to help him with his suggestion of a firing squad.
Burnett gazed at him intently, and finally a smile creased his face. “Damn you, Matherson. At least you got some sand in your craw. George, find him a cot; let him sleep off his headache.”
The man who had been his captor sighed, stepped out from the group watching the encounter, and roughly pulled John to his feet.
“Lucky son of a bitch,” George announced to all.
“Just see to him,” Burnett said, “and cuff his ankle to the bed. Bet he got one of those bullshit escape-and-evasion courses, and now thinks he can pull a Rambo and split on us.”
John looked at Burnett.
“I escaped from mine,” Burnett asked. “How’d you do?”
“Got the crap kicked out of me,” John answered honestly.
“Figured.”
“Just one question.”
“Sure, Colonel Matherson.”
“The rest of my unit with me… what happened?”
“Think we killed one, the guy following you.”
John took that in, not trying to show any emotion. Was Maury wearing a Kevlar vest?
“Friend of yours?” Burnett asked.
“Yeah.”
“And if we killed him?”
“You know what I’ll do if I get out of this.”
Burnett nodded.
“Your Stepp friends started it. Traded us some bad moonshine a month back. Had lead in it. Damn near killed George over there. So we were paying a return visit to burn out their still and pick up a bit of food, and it went bad. Didn’t expect you as a prize, though, Matherson.”
“The Stepp family?”
“We don’t kill civilians unless we got to,” Burnett snapped.
John turned to look at George. “If you killed my friend and I get out of this, it’s personal for me, and you’re a dead man,” he said slowly, forcefully.
The punch to the jaw put John out cold for several more hours.
“You are one stupid bastard, you know that, Colonel?”
John forced his eyes open. He had actually been awake for at least a half hour or more but had mimicked sleep, trying to gather his thoughts and figure out what to do next. His defiance might have earned him a touch of respect, but the aching jaw from the uppercut was numbing, and he wondered if a couple of teeth had been knocked loose. Unfortunately, the blow hit on the other side of his mouth, so the toothache was still with him.
Opening his eyes wide, he found he could at least focus somewhat. It was Burnett, chair pulled up by the side of John’s cot, and he was holding a steaming mug. The scent all but overwhelmed John; it was real coffee.
He sat up, stifling a groan, and took the cup. He wondered if this was now “good cop” time with Burnett offering a treat that no one in Black Mountain had seen in nearly two years. But he accepted it anyhow, half gulping it down, though it was scalding hot, regretting it a few minutes later when the coffee hit his empty stomach.
“Here, eat this; it will settle your guts.” Burnett held out a slice of fresh-baked bread slathered with—of all things—real butter. It was slightly sour but still heavenly, which John took and wolfed down, trying not to sigh with delight. God in heaven, he thought. Real coffee, bread, and butter, and we all took it for granted our entire lives.
“What in the hell am I going to do with you?” Burnett opened without any preamble. “The way I see it, I got three choices. One, we shoot you or hang you as a warning to any who try to mess with us. You really have quite a name around here, and killing you would be, as the natives of the region once said, a real coup. Two, we make you a slave. You know what most of the tribes and white folks did two hundred and fifty years ago when they had a captive they wanted to keep?”
“Cut their Achilles tendons so they couldn’t run—and if still a problem, castrate them.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“And the third?” John ventured. “Let me go or trade me back.”
“Good thinking, but still not certain on any of the three,” Burnett replied. “No sense asking you what you think. Pride will prevent you from appealing to the third choice; fear definitely the second one; defiance might make you ask for the first—and at the moment, I think a majority of folks with me would lean towards that. George was the one who put that round into your chest, and believe me, he was shooting to kill you. He’d have finished you if not for that nurse who took care of you. I heard Maggie kicked his gun up and told him to bring you in.”