“The lieutenant said… He talked to you?”
“By flag. I'm in Signals — tore up some cloth and made myself some flags the other day. Had quite a conversation. The lieutenant's name is MacSneary, unless I missed a letter. Decent sort but inclined to be stuffy about orders. Mine is Jay Oliver.”
“I'm Gary,” Gary told him moodily, watching the two machine gunners. “I was a corporal until a week ago. No way of getting over to the other side?”
“Not alive. MacSneary was quite positive about that. Pointed out to him that I was still alive and healthy — as well as hungry — but he answered that I could be carrying the plague even though I hadn't contracted it. Yet. Good sense, of course. Said that all of us still alive on this side of the creek were common carriers. He read that last in some army explanation and doesn't fully understand the implications, but it sounded weighty and he used it on me.”
Gary contemplated the machine gun. “There's some books in the car that explains it.”
“Am familiar with it,” Oliver told him. “Was a science teacher until I was drafted.” He smiled at Gary. “And that label is a catchall if there ever was one. Taught science in a small township high school in Indiana; biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, was supposed to be familiar with them all. How to construct a wet cell battery, where Orion is located, on Tuesday dissect a frog, show the girls how to make their own cold creams on Wednesday, and since 1945 every succeeding class tinkered around with the theory of nuclear fission.” He smiled at some memory. “Never did produce a bomb.”
“Ah, this is a hell of a note! Here we are supposed to be defending the country and they won't let us. What if we're invaded?”
“That, friend, is one worry we on this side of the creek will never have to face.” Oliver took another cigarette from the package. “Our friends across the bridge may have a fight on their hands in the near future, but we're out of it. The enemy has made this section of the country so thoroughly untenable that even he can't land here, all of which leads me to believe no invasion was intended.” He paused to light the cigarette. “Our lieutenant yonder is rather vague as to what happened — communications must be in a sad state when the army doesn't fully know what is going on. But the gist of it is that you-know-who unloaded on us. Long-range bombers, flying missiles, and apparently some fifth columnists who polluted the water supplies. They ran in a flock of bombers — the lieutenant doesn't know how many; but between the bombers and the rockets they pretty well blanketed every major city east of the creek here: atomic bombs and at least two types of disease. There may be more that haven't come to light yet — I should think they'd use anthrax on the cattle.” He waved his hand toward the land behind them. “Shrewd tactical move — half the country done for and they lost only their bomber pilots.”
“I'd rather be on the other side,” Gary declared.
Oliver nodded. “Likewise. Prefer to fight the enemy to fighting what's behind us — and will be behind us, shortly.”
“I had a supply,” Gary told him, following the thought. “Guns, food, a good car. A kid ran away with it all.”
“Little buggers learn fast.”
“This one was a girl.”
“Oh.”
“She claimed she was nineteen,” Gary continued. “Looked about sixteen, acted about sixteen the way she ran around picking up stuff. She acted nineteen… once.”
Oliver pulled slowly on the cigarette, watching the smoke. “Would suggest we team up — if you don't mind company. Find us a truck and put away all we can. Stores'll be empty in another week, the idea of this is catching on fast.”
Gary stared at the patrol across the bridge. “You don't think… ?”
Oliver shook his head. “No. Been here three days. MacSneary said no three days ago and he told you no today. I've resigned myself to the idea of waiting out the quarantine — might be several weeks and then again it could be months. Would suggest you do the same.”
“A hell of a note!”
“Food is of the utmost importance. And guns. When these people begin starving they'll begin shooting.”
“Yeah.” Gary stood up and stretched, rubbed a hand across the rubble on his cheeks. “Well, let's get moving. I'm hungry now.” He cast a last look at the men behind the machine guns, and again shook his fist at them, repeating the single descriptive word he had used earlier.
Oliver said, “Likewise.”
They climbed into the near-by car and Gary turned it around, heading back along the blacktopped highway that slowly pulled away from the river and wound through flat, sticky bottomland on its route to the nearer hills. The heat was intense and the air not moving. His eyes kept returning to the rear-vision mirror, watching the bridge fading behind.
“The muttonheads!”
The machine gunners blankly watched the car out of sight. A rifleman thought to replace the round he had fired. Silence settled over the bridge.
5
EX-CORPORAL GARY carefully stamped out the remains of the small cooking fire and with his shoe scraped a bit of loose dirt over the embers. The skillet he cleaned by scrubbing it with a handful of grass, and then turned it upside down to thump it on the ground. Finally he ran his tongue over teeth and gums to lick away any remaining taste of the egg.
“That was the last one,” he announced.
“Pity,” Oliver said. Oliver was seated on a hillock twenty-five or thirty feet from the fire, a rifle lying in the crook of an arm. “Maybe we shouldn't have killed the hen.”
“You wanted fried chicken, remember?”
Oliver closed his eyes, dreaming. “I remember! She was a tough old bird but she was fine eating. So we were tired of eggs anyway.”
“Mention that to me this time next week.”
“Will do. Pity these farmers are so narrow-minded.”
Gary glanced down at his arm, ran his fingers along the frayed sleeve of his jacket where hastily fired buckshot had grazed him. “Yeah. No respect for the United States Army.” He hugged his arms tightly about his chest as though to ward off the creeping chill, and turned his attention to the overcast skies. Behind the thick cloud blanket the sun had not yet surmounted the low range of mountains to the east. Around them the skimpy grove of trees was silent but for their few noises. “This weather is ready to turn. We'd better be moving south.”
“These hills always snappy in the morning.”
“Snappy, he says.”
“How's the ammo?” Oliver wiped his mouth on his sleeve after emptying the contents of the tin cup down his throat. He shifted the rifle to the other arm and ran his eyes along the nearer range of hills. “Enough?”
“Plenty. The damned mountains stay cold all day long.” He stacked his utensils in the skillet and pushed them aside. “I say we get out of them and head south.”
“Willing. But we'd be safer staying around here. There were — and still may be — moonshiners in these hills the government agents never found. Did you know Daniel Boone opened up this country? Came through the Cumberland Gap and down into Kentucky; settlers followed him so fast Kentucky couldn't hold them all and they spilled over into Tennessee here.”
“Daniel Boone should see it now.”
Oliver shook his head. “He wouldn't approve.”
“Look here,” Gary persisted, “we can go down through Knoxville or Chattanooga — might be something there worth picking up. Everybody can't be bright like us and maybe they haven't thought about the warehouses, like that one in… Where was it?”
“Covington.”
“Yeah — Covington. That watchman was a crazy little dope; who the hell needs night watchmen these days with everything shot to hell anyway? Well — we should have thought of the warehouses before, and left the stores go hang. Small stuff. If they haven't found out about ’em in Knoxville or Chattanooga we can stock up where we're short.” He jerked around in pleased surprise. “Say — Fort Oglethorpe is just outside of Chattanooga! I'd sure like to get my hands on an automatic rifle.”