John did not say anything or reveal that after the cup of coffee and the long hours of being either tied or handcuffed to the bed, he was about to explode.
Burnett, sensing his distress, pulled out a key, unclipped the cuff around John’s ankle, and motioned to the door, which John gratefully headed for.
“John.”
He looked back.
Burnett was casually holding his .45. “Nice gun, John. Hate to shoot you with it if you try to run. It would spoil George’s day, me killing you rather than him getting to.”
Even if the temptation to run had been there, as John staggered off to the edge of the tree line, he knew it would be hopeless. Whoever these reivers were, there were certainly a hell of a lot of them around, and they knew the ground far better than he could ever hope to figure out. The clearing around the mountain crossroads was an encampment, a hodgepodge of old RVs and pickup trucks with canopies rigged over the rear bed. Some fires were burning—over one of them, a pig was speared and being turned over the fire, most likely one of Stepps’ spring sucklings. There were nearly as many children as adults, a ragged lot most of them, just like the children in Black Mountain the winter after the Day, hanging about whenever someone had managed to snag some game. The scent of it wafted out into the street.
Finished with his task, John slowly walked back to the hut they had put him in. Burnett nodded, uncocking the semiautomatic and holstering it, the holster John had been wearing just hours before.
“You ever shoot a man before everything went bad?” Burnett asked as John sat back down.
“I never fired a shot at someone with intent to kill until I had to execute that kid who stole drugs from the nursing home. I think it best not to ask what you went through in Afghanistan.”
“Something like that,” Burnett replied calmly.
“Look, let’s cut the crap with this working-class sergeant from the mountains versus a colonel who you think had a silver spoon up his butt. I didn’t grow up in the mountains, but I sure as hell grew up in a tough place in New Jersey, so I know the game. If you hate my guts for that, so be it. All of us are in a world of shit now, so what is it you want from me if you decide not to kill me? Or is this just some head game for your entertainment before you string me up or blow my brains out?”
Burnett nodded and stood up after several minutes of silence.
“My wife, well, she left me the year after I came back from the war minus an arm, an eye, and half my mind. Had a son—heard they’re dead, along with the bastard she hooked up with… killed or executed.” He hesitated. “They were living down in Charlotte. I heard long afterwards they fell in with that Posse.”
John lowered his head. “Merciful God,” he whispered.
“Maybe you or one of yours was the ones that shot her. I don’t give a good damn about the bum she hooked up with—I hope someone did kill him, slowly. But still, she was once my wife, and my boy was with her. You shoot any kids with that group, John Matherson? He’d have been twelve.”
John looked up at Burnett. “No, we didn’t shoot any kids that day. If any were still traveling with them, they were left behind before the fight and scattered afterwards. If she was with them, Forrest, you know what I had to do. They were literally cannibals, and that was beyond the pale of any civilized society, or at least the civilization we’re trying to rebuild.”
Burnett was silent just looking down at him as if weighing the life-or-death decision.
“What would you have done?” John finally snapped back. “If you had taken any prisoners from that group of cannibal barbarians, what would you have done?”
“Are you pleading with me, Matherson?”
“Hell no,” he snapped back. “Whatever you’re going to do will most likely happen no matter what I say.”
“You shoot my people for snatching a few pigs.”
“And again, in this mad world, you’re doing the same—killing mine. Maybe one of my closest friends is dead because of what happened a few hours ago. And if he is, you know all bets with me are off if you let me go.”
Burnett started for the door and then looked back. “A helluva shitty world we’ve been handed, Matherson. Makes Afghanistan look like paradise. It’s what America is sinking into now, Colonel. Think about it. America, the new Afghanistan.”
“Was that what we fought for over there?” John asked. “Is that what we’re fighting to prevent now?”
Burnett smiled, and for a moment, there was that frightful two-thousand-yard stare. “You’ll have my decision regarding what to do with you at sundown,” he snapped as he slammed the door shut and locked it.
CHAPTER FIVE
“There’s the flag of truce,” Burnett whispered. “Now remember, the slightest wrong move, and everyone is wasted.”
Things were still slightly blurry, the lingering aftereffects of the concussion.
“My people honor their word. I’m more worried about yours.”
They were sitting in an old Polaris four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle that had been upgraded with an attempt at some armor across the front to protect the engine. John and Burnett sat in the backseat, a couple of the reivers—heavily armed men—up front. A half dozen other vehicles of Burnett’s had stopped a quarter mile back above the north shore of the reservoir and with professional skill spread out on foot to either flank. John did worry now that maybe the entire thing was a setup, an ambush to wipe out some of his best before putting a bullet in his head.
It was good at least to be back out in the open after three days locked up in the fetid cabin. He got twice-daily visits from Maggie, who advised him to just stay in bed and let the concussion heal, and the food had actually been rather good—indulgent, even, given that it was pork stolen from the Stepp family, and rather than saving or rationing it, the group had been gorging themselves on it as if there were no concern for tomorrow. Only problem was chewing it, between the sore jaw on one side from getting slugged and the bad tooth on the other side. Maggie actually took a look at it and offered to “pop that little ole thing out,” but he adamantly refused.
Burnett had dropped in a few times, conversations short and a bit taunting that the group was still debating his fate—implying that execution was still an option—but John knew that was just a sham to see how he’d react. Why waste precious food on a doomed prisoner?
Then this morning, they had blindfolded him and led him out of the hut he was quartered in. He could hear the crowd gathered around to watch some jeering, and for a moment, his heart sank. Without comment from Burnett, he was shoved into the backseat of the Polaris, and the expedition left the encampment.
He said nothing, but there was definitely a wave of relief. Execution would have been a public affair. They were most certainly not just driving off into the woods for a private shooting. He could sense they were going back up over the Mount Mitchell range. It was a tedious, hammering, head-splitting climb of a couple of hours and then an equally jolting drive back down what must have been a fire road through the forest until coming to a stop, and Burnett unfastened the blindfold.
“So you’re letting me go.”
“Trading you.” Burnett chuckled. “Your weight in salt. We got plenty of ammo and food, but salt is getting hard to find.”
John took that in, not really feeling humiliated. A long time ago, trading prisoners for salt had been a practiced norm. Weight in silver also? For Burnett’s group, salt was more valuable than silver. Salt meant preserved food. Silver was to those living in a barter world just metal—though Doc Wagner was experimenting with grinding pure silver into a formula for antibiotics—but salt could preserve hundreds of pounds of meat and was a dire necessity of diet, especially in the heat of summer.