CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Everybody Dies Sometime
THE PLAINS
It took weeks to cross Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. Traveling in a Titan quad-cab truck, they took state highways over the snow-swept plains and open spaces. The small farming towns they stopped in seemed to be faring better than most of the country. When they ran out of fuel, they walked.
The people they encountered were mostly generous and kind.
In Elwood, Nebraska, they spent an evening with an entire extended family. The patriarch was an eighty-year-old man named Abraham with a flowing beard and penetrating blue eyes. They’d encountered him at a feed store outside of the town, and he’d invited them to dinner.
Hungry for more than just food, Henry had swayed his companions. There was something about Abraham, something true and good that tugged at Henry, drew him toward the man. A kind of moral gravity.
At a long oak table, the adults dined by candlelight on roasted chicken and potatoes, and Henry ate voraciously. The children sat at two smaller tables, and the atmosphere was like a family Christmas dinner Henry had only imagined as a child, where generations laughed together and were bound by stories, time, tears, and blood.
Abraham’s children and their children lived on adjoining land that had been in the family for a hundred and fifty years. Abraham had served in Vietnam, and two of his grandchildren were active duty, one in the navy, the other in the army.
“Lord, we thank you for this bounty thou hast provided. Please watch over our young men and women,” Abraham prayed before they broke bread. “Give them strength and wisdom. And Father God, please heal our great nation.”
They did not talk about politics, and they did not talk about the war. There was no mention of race, and Carlos and Martinez loosened up within minutes of being inside the farmhouse with the white wooden porch, the sound of children laughing, and the smell of fresh bread in the oven.
Henry was enthralled by the family and he wondered what it would have been like to be raised in a family like this, surrounded by love and a kind of unity and acceptance more rare than diamonds, more precious than gold.
“Remember that time Daddy went out to the lake too early in the season and fell through the ice in that old Ford…”
“What about Harold and that wasp nest up in the barn…”
They were stories everyone had heard before, and there was continuity in them, a shared love and history and commonality. Henry laughed so hard he cried, seeing the old man plunging through the ice, but pulling the fish he’d sought for years out of the sinking car with him, trudging back home through the cold, only to have his wife give him a tongue-lashing when he walked through the front door for his stupidity. That fish hung over the fireplace.
“Was it worth it?” Henry had asked Abraham.
“Well of course it was. Look at that fish. He’s beautiful!”
Abraham said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and everyone laughed. His children and grandchildren knew the story, and they hadn’t forgotten it. Some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth living for, and they’re not necessarily the same things. Abraham knew the difference, laughing and wise with his family and the fish mounted on the wall.
Henry slept on the floor next to the fireplace, and it was the best rest he’d had in months. When they said good-bye the next morning, Henry was sorry to leave. Abraham handed Henry the keys to his truck.
“You boys need this more than I do,” he said. “I’ve got another one.” Abraham was that kind of man.
As they traveled across the plains, they saw evidence of the war. Fighter jets screeched overhead on a regular basis, but there were no columns of troops, no towns on fire. From what they heard from townspeople in various places, the most intense fighting was still in Colorado and Tennessee, where federal forces were engaging rebel troops.
This was not good news for the Wolves, because they were now heading toward Nashville.
Sergeant Martinez reasoned that if they could make it to Nashville, they could find more men to help them, men they knew and trusted. They had a clear sense of mission now, and the only way they could accomplish it was with additional information and assets.
“It’ll be a trap,” Carlos said when Martinez finally told them where they were actually going.
“Yes.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because we have to have more information.”
“Couldn’t we go about it another way?”
“They’re going to find us one way or another. Maybe we can find them first. I know we can get to the Air Guard base, get word to some of our people. They’ll come through for us. I’m certain of it.”
“Then what?”
“Then it’s a trap. Only it’s ours, not theirs.”
“I don’t know, Sarn’t Major,” Henry said.
“We’re going on the offensive,” Martinez said. “We’ve been reacting so far, and we’re losing, and the country is going to hell. I’m sick of it.” He was quiet, intense, and persuasive. “We’ve got to get the word out that some really evil people are pulling the strings. And then we’re going to hunt those fuckers down and kill them.”
“These guys are smart.”
“They’re not as smart as they think they are. Look at this war. They couldn’t have wanted this. Not the guys at the top. It’s bad for business. We’ve got to know exactly what’s on this drive, but we need more than that. We need to have a chat with one of their operators who knows something.”
“How are we going to do that, sir?” Henry said.
“I’m still working on that part,” Martinez said with a rueful grin. “Something will present itself. We’ll recon the base. If we can make contact with one of our guys, we’ll try to slip in. If it looks like we’re burned, then we’ll move on to plan B.
“I’m all warm and fuzzy inside again, Sarn’t,” Carlos said. “You really know how to motivate.”
They cut through the rolling hills of Kentucky, where patches of snow lay on brown fields and the trees were gray and leafless, and finally entered Tennessee, staying well west of Fort Campbell.
They traded the pickup truck for a battered panel van and three Tennessee driver’s licenses, which they altered enough that they might pass a casual inspection at a checkpoint.
In Tennessee, the military presence was obvious. Even in small towns, men and women in uniform stood at street corners beside armored vehicles.
Helicopters churned through the sky, drones buzzed close to the deck, and at night, there were flashes far to the north like a distant lightning storm.
The people were tense and suspicious, and had a feral look about them. Food was scarce, gasoline next to impossible to come by. Civilians armed with hunting rifles stood watch at crossroads over makeshift barricades and signs reading “No entrance,” or “Go away,” or “If you’re not from here, you’ll get shot.”
Henry drove slowly through a tiny community of tobacco farmers, an African-American hamlet of old wooden farmhouses dotting the hills, and a mom-and-pop feed store that doubled as a gas station. Henry had been through the town once, and had eaten a fried baloney sandwich at the old store; he remembered the floor being a bit slanted and that the sandwich was so good he’d ordered another. Everything was burned. The homes, the store, the gas station, and the bodies.
“What the hell?” Carlos said. “Pull over.”
Henry stopped in front of the remains of a farmhouse. The barn and home were still smoldering.
Carlos bolted from the truck and walked toward the ashes. Henry kept the truck idling while Carlos paced around the dead farmstead with his hands on his hips.