One Year After: A Novel Read online

  John gazed at Dale, a bit startled after all their previous conversations—which, though grating at times, reminded him of a typical smiling midlevel bureaucrat in the prewar world. “Go on.”

  “I sure as hell have—or at least seen reports you never laid eyes on. Every major city in America is down, most of them abandoned wastelands, those left controlled by ruthless mobs like those you call reivers. More than fifty thousand of them control Chicago and have declared a dictatorship under some whack job who calls himself ‘the Great.’ The prisoners he takes? The lucky ones get thrown off the top of the old Sears Tower. The rest he crucifies along the shores of Lake Michigan. If those at Bluemont do decide to pop a neutron bomb, I hope he’s the first to get it. Reports of human sacrifices with some cult running Saint Louis—another good candidate for a nuke. You want to see the reports, John, of what’s left of our country?”

  John shook his head sadly. “No, I was ‘just here,’ as you put it. But it was my town that stopped the Posse, and I saw more than enough of the depravity of men when turned desperate.”

  “That is what I am fighting to prevent here,” Dale replied sharply.

  “So perhaps using nukes in the cities and machine-gunning kids and women here is part of the reconstruction program now?”

  “John, it was a combat situation, and you, veteran of Iraq, should understand that. They reported taking heavy ground fire and had only seconds to react. Air to ground, mistakes happen, including fratricide at times. You know that.”

  “Train your people better,” John finally said coldly. “I could see they were kids, women, old folks—so could your pilots.”

  “Precisely why we need people like you, John, to see to things like that.”

  “And because you wanted to talk with me, you ordered your pilots to harass the crap out of my pilot and damn near kill us when we finally tried to land.”

  “John, I felt it essential to talk to you at once regarding the whole affair. My pilot got a little carried away, that’s all.”

  “And once we landed in Asheville, you’d confiscate our plane?”

  “Of course not,” Dale replied smoothly as he reached back behind his desk for the bottle of scotch and offered John a drink.

  “I’ll pass for now. My stomach is still a bit queasy from that ride.”

  Dale poured himself another shot and put the bottle back into the cabinet. “I’ll look into it and get back to you. These kids that fly can get wired up, and we both know that. Most likely, he figured your man could handle that final pass after the chase he had been led on, nothing more.”

  “Tell him to stand well clear next time.”

  “Or what will you do?”

  “It’s already been a long day, Dale. I didn’t expect the ride I went on this morning. I think it’s time I went home.”

  “Sure, John.” Dale extended his hand. “No hard feelings.”

  “For what happened to me, no. But what happened to those civilians, yes—damn hard feelings. I’d like it thoroughly investigated. And believe me, Dale, this is from long experience here. Whether they did raid that convoy or not is no longer the issue. They will seek payback, and you just triggered a war along your northern border.”

  “Well, if they come at you, call me at once.”

  John just nodded.

  “And, General, when can I announce your acceptance of a commission and get plans rolling for you to head up to Bluemont?” He asked the question as if the conversation of the previous twenty minutes had never taken place. “Arranging a transport flight just doesn’t happen overnight.”

  “Let’s talk about that some other time,” John replied.

  “Why not now?”

  He fixed Dale with a hard stare. “Because frankly, I just don’t feel like discussing it at the moment after what I saw this morning.”

  Without waiting for a reply, John headed out the door, stopped at the desk to pick up his Ruger, and found Ed sitting in his patrol car, still fuming mad.

  “Ed, I don’t want to hear a word, not a word for right now. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAY 743

  He sat in the town hall for most of the day, refusing to discuss anything of what happened in Asheville or during their earlier flight. Billy, however, had eagerly shared what he had seen, and the entire town knew. Reactions were mixed. Some were furious over the harassment of their flight, but many shrugged off the fate that had come down on the reivers.

  John requested a town council meeting for noon, and behind closed doors, he reviewed what happened both in the air over the reivers’ camp and in his subsequent meeting with Dale.

  “I have a confession to make now,” he finally announced. “While being held by the reivers, I struck an informal truce. No killing raids. Neither of us can fully control everyone when it comes to stealing some pigs and chickens and running stills up in the mountains, but their leader—his name is Forrest Burnett, ex-military, wounded vet who fought in Afghanistan—struck me as an honorable man. We shook hands to just back things off between us.”

  “I know Forrest,” Ed interjected. “Lived up in Burnsville. A good kid. One of my cousins married into the Burnett family, so I had some dealings with them. Heard he volunteered for the army right after 9/11. Got shot up real bad in Iraq, or maybe it was … Afghanistan … anyhow, one of those places. Came back a bit messed up. I mean, his wounds—an arm and an eye—would mess up anyone, actually. Folks said it was that posttrauma thing. Couple of brushes with the law after he got back, but cops up there understood where he was coming from and tried to keep it light on him. So he’s running the reivers?”

  “It’s what he claims,” John said.

  “A question, John,” Reverend Black interjected. “When you got back, why didn’t you just tell us?”

  “My mistake. I realize now I should have been up front. Given that the Stepp family lost several in skirmishes with them, I knew that saying I had negotiated something of a truce wouldn’t fly well with folks living over in the North Fork. Some might have seen it as me trading off for my own freedom. I was planning to go up there personally, talk to the families one-on-one, and smooth things over before going public. Things just got ahead of me.”

  “Hell, John,” Maury interjected, “when you’re a prisoner like that, anything is pretty well fair game as a promise to get you out as long as you don’t compromise the military code. We know that.”

  “Forrest had promised that they were going to decamp and head north, which obviously he did not do. As we know, the Stepps did launch a vengeance raid over the weekend and walked straight into an ambush, and the reivers let them off with one man slightly wounded. Even the Stepps admitted the whole crew could have been wiped out but were let off. Maybe I screwed up by not going up there sooner. I’m sorry.” John shrugged and looked out the window, no one speaking for a moment.

  “So you figured on letting things settle down with these reivers,” Reverend Black interjected to break the embarrassed tension, “and then go public, is that it? We stay on our side of the mountain, they stay on their side?”

  John looked back over his shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief with the nods of agreement. More than once in the previous two years, he had held information back at times until he felt the timing was right. This had been a tough one, though. The reivers were viewed as outlaws in the old, literal sense of the word—that they were outside the law and thus fair game.

  Ed, who had until this morning been the most passionate about confronting the reivers or any other raiders without remorse or mercy, had now changed his tune completely upon learning that a kin through marriage, a vet, was running the outfit. He spoke for several minutes of old friends he knew on the north side of the mountain—that they were decent, hardworking folks and perhaps the last year had been a tragic misunderstanding that could have been solved by talk rather than raid and counterraid.

  “So what are you suggesting we do?” Reverend Black as
ked, looking to John and then Ed.

  “I’m waiting for that right now,” John replied. “I set up a signal with Forrest if either of us needed to parley. That was the three American flags I asked Ed to raise this morning down at the old auto dealership, and I’m waiting for a response. I hope to God he is okay and he does respond and not believe that we had anything to do with that attack. If he’s dead and one of his hotheads takes over, and there were more than a few of them, we are in for a bad summer of raids. Even if he is alive and decides to fight rather than talk, it is going to be a bitter summer along the mountain slope. We’re going to have to mobilize up a fair portion of our trained personnel for full-time border guard duty who should be working in the fields and rebuilding things instead. But the position I know they observed us from, Craggy Gap, there is now a squad of troops from Asheville up there now. So I don’t know if he got the signal or not—or the one I dropped from the plane.”

  “Why did they deploy troops up there?” Maury asked.

  He had not really thought about that up to this moment. Did Fredericks known more than he’d let on about what had happened between John and Burnett and for the time being was cutting communications between the two? Was there a plot within a plot on this one?

  “I have no idea,” John replied. “Perhaps they saw some of the reivers posted up there and went for it.” He looked around at the group, which remained silent for several minutes.

  Finally, it was Maury who spoke up. “Let’s just keep it in here for now. There are a lot of conflicting issues to think about with this. Folks are still not settled on the draft, John, though most assume you are taking the commission to help out at least half the families, and there is a lot of gratitude for that. Regarding the reivers, everyone knows about what happened, and everyone is assuming a vengeance raid is coming. What is your suggestion?”

  “For right now, we put all our reaction squads on full standby and move one up to near the reservoir to help keep an eye on the Stepps and their property. Other two squads here. Rest of our formations at the college, here in town, and in Swannanoa on notice for immediate mobilization. If I was Burnett, saw our plane, saw the troops up now at Craggy, I’d assume that we had shafted them over and it’s time for payback. I just pray that he sees our signal and asks for a parley first.” He looked around the room, and there were nods of agreement. “Okay, let’s get moving on this. I’m heading down to the old Ford agency. You can call me at the hangar, which is just a few yards away.”

  He went out to the Edsel, Makala insisting that she drive, and once the doors were closed, the tension that had been between them since the dinner meeting with Fredericks let go. John sat silently as she roundly cursed Fredericks, John’s decision to accept a commission, his foolishness for going into a combat area in a plane not yet fully tested out, and finally back to the point that it seemed like he was going through with the commission. There were less-than-veiled implications that she thought that the concussion really had addled his thinking.

  They were parked by the flagpole for a good half hour before she was finished with the chewing out. He had learned that at such moments, silence was best until she was finished.

  He didn’t get time to reply, as Billy came running down from the hangar shouting there was a call from the town hall. John actually felt relief that he was getting out of the Edsel, and then he followed Billy up to the hangar and came back less than a minute later.

  “Makala, would you mind driving me up to the reservoir?”

  “What?”

  “There’s two men there, sent by the reivers. Forrest Burnett survived the attack and wants to meet.”

  “And you are crazy enough to go personally up to meet him?”

  He leaned across the seat and kissed her on the cheek, a gesture that she did not respond to. “Am I supposed to send someone else in my place?”

  She gave him a sidelong glance and then continued to stare straight ahead even as she started the car. “They damn near busted your skull, you still have a concussion, and you almost got shot by them this morning and nearly shot again by those stupid pilots. How in the hell do you think I’m supposed to react, John Matherson?”

  He forced a smile. “Just saying you love me would be sufficient for now. We can argue about the rest later.”

  “You can be a manipulative bastard at times,” she snapped. With tires squealing, she turned on to State Street, heading west, and a moment later, her hand slipped into his.

  * * *

  John stopped at the border watch station, which was positioned at the face of the reservoir dam. The two young guards gestured up the path.

  “They came out about thirty minutes ago from right there. One had a white flag; the other handed me this, sir.”

  The young man, just a few years earlier a freshman in one of John’s history classes, handed him the message streamer he had tossed out of the plane. Just below his scribbled message was a one-line reply: “Meet today, now. Otherwise, all bets are off. Forrest.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They backed off. I tell you, sir, I feel like I’m in a crosshairs if I stick my head back up, and so are you.”

  John was glad he had convinced Makala to wait back with the car and had told the reaction forces to stay there, as well.

  “You did good, son.” John took the streamer, waved it above the top of the sandbagged watch station, and then just stood up.

  “Sir? They can drop you. I swear they’ve got us scoped in.”

  John tried to smile, stepped out the back of the bunker, remaining upright, and started to walk up along the west shore of the lake along the old maintenance road. Barely out of sight of the bunker, he heard a rustling, and two young men—lean, tough looking, one cradling an M4, the other a deer rifle with a high-powered scope—came out from hiding and wordlessly pointed for him to continue up the road. They walked thus for a half a mile or so, passing the north shore of the lake, the road turning, getting steeper.

  “If you guys are proposing I walk all the way back to your territory, I hate to say it, but it’s not going to work. My head is killing me, and I just don’t have the wind I once had.”

  They didn’t speak, just gesturing for him to continue on.

  Have I just made myself a prisoner again? he wondered. For that matter, the two could have been a couple of survivors who had gone rogue and decided to kill for vengeance, and he had just walked into their trap. Burnett had most likely been killed in the raid, anyhow. If so, he truly felt a fool. Makala was right; of late, he was taking too many risks, and he wondered why he had lost an earlier sense of instinctive caution.

  And then he reached a bend in the trail and stopped dead.

  It was a caravan of half a dozen four-wheel-drive vehicles, all of them painted in camo pattern. How they had managed to negotiate the long-neglected fire road was beyond him. As he approached the lead vehicle, he saw Forrest sitting in the front seat, face ghostly white.

  “Forrest?”

  “Yeah, Matherson. I don’t have time to bullshit around. I need a favor, a big favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Take a look in the beds of these trucks.”

  John nodded and realized he didn’t need to look; he could hear them—children crying, the moaning of people in pain, the all-so-familiar sounds of this world they lived in.

  John looked into the bed of the truck that Burnett was in. Half a dozen kids were crammed into it, all of them wrapped with bloody bandages. Several were sobbing, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes. A boy of about twelve or so, yet another victim of war, just gazed at John. He was cradling a toddler, and the way the little girl hung limp in his arms, John could see that the child was dead. Blood was dripping off the open tailgate of the truck.

  John did not even bother to go look at the other trucks. He pulled open the passenger door.

  “Move over, Forrest.”

  “Yeah, but give me a second. I got one in the gut this time, damn it.�
�

  John grabbed hold of him and saw the bloody bandage—thank God on his left side; at least his liver was intact—and helped him ease over. He looked at the driver, who was gazing at him coldly.

  “Drive, damn it!”

  “Where?”

  “Into town, you idiot. The hospital. Now drive!”

  The road was rough, rubble strewn, in places nearly washed out, the truck swaying and rattling, and John winced with each bounce, the kids in the back crying in anguish. They finally reached the level stretch of the maintenance road and began to speed up, and then the thoughts struck him. “Slow down here. Let me get out!”

  “Why?” Burnett gasped.

  “You want to get shot again? I got a reaction squad down there. We weren’t sure of things. I’ll signal for you when you can start up again.”

  “You playing me straight, Matherson?”

  “May I burn in the hell if I’m not,” he snapped, jumping out of the vehicle and running down the road until he knew he was within sight of the observation bunker. He raised his arms, waving them. “We got vehicles coming in. It’s okay!”

  He looked back to the lead truck and motioned it to come on. Nearly out of breath, his cracked rib sending a wave of pain coursing through him with every breath and every step, he ran ahead of the vehicle, leading the way. He saw several of his reaction troops stepping out from concealment, weapons raised, and he motioned for them to lower their rifles.

  Reaching the bunker, he jumped in and grabbed the phone, cursing under his breath, waiting for Elayne to pick up at the switchboard.

  “This is Matherson!” he shouted. “We got a lot of wounded coming in. They’re okay—friendlies. I want the alarm sounded. Get medical personnel over to our main hospital, and open it up. Move it. A lot of these wounded are kids. Get on it!”

  He hung up and ran back to the lead truck. His lead reaction team had slung their rifles. A couple of them were crying as they looked into the flatbed.

  “Damn it!” John shouted. “You’re all trained in first aid. Stop crying, get into the vehicles, start helping these people. A couple of you stand up where you can be clearly seen as we drive into town, so everyone knows it’s okay.”