Dark Grid (30 page)

“Oh,” was all Cooper could come back with.

Clint wasn’t ready to let it go yet, though.  This was going to be a recurring problem and he needed to know just how big a problem as early as possible.  “Yeah.  So is there anything else you’d care to question while we’re at it?  The decision to send them out in the first place, perhaps?  The fact that I put Earl in charge of the group instead of you or Tony?  Work details, water rations, the women here not to your liking?”

“Hey, that’s not where I was going man, honest,” Cooper was backpedaling.

“Then make sure it’s perfectly clear in the future you don’t intend to go there.”  Clint and Cooper locked eyes until Cooper nodded and looked away.

“Ok, just so we’re clear we are not going to pin the raid on the group as a rogue action and we are absolutely not going to plan another raid on what we now know is the U.S. Army.  That having been said, I have no intention of rolling over and playing dead.  I got us out of Nashville because there were too many people there for comfort in a crisis and nobody else was stepping up to take charge.  The fact that we still aren’t picking up any radio stations and the Army has set up a base in a National Park pretty much cinches the escalation from crisis to catastrophe.”

Clint was pacing again and thanking his lucky stars or the fact that Venus wasn’t in retrograde, or the fact that his mother had lived a mostly good Christian life, that the weather had been good for the last several days.  “Madison was coming unraveled a little more quickly than I wanted to stick around for but Lexington looked to have enough rural area that we could hunker down and start to put things together again without too much outside interference.”

So far that plan hadn’t worked out too badly as they’d picked up some additional people on the way and found what had appeared to be a promising area.  “I have a feeling that our independence here is about to be threatened, or at least questioned.  I’m not going to hand everything over just like that.  How was I supposed to know that the Army had set up shop there?  Regardless of who was in there I wouldn’t have sent my people in unarmed, right?”

“Of course,” Cooper just nodded and agreed at this point for more than one reason.  This wasn’t the first time they had sent a raiding party out into what may or may not be an undefended small town or slowly depopulating or abandoned neighborhood.  Each time, Clint would go through this same process, justifying it to both himself and anyone else who would listen.  Technically the reasoning was sound; ethically it had more holes than a screen door.

Each time Clint would tell Earl to give anyone he encountered the opportunity to join up and come back with him but with fairly tight restrictions.  None of the new folks could bring guns with them, although Earl could bring their guns for them if they were of the correct type.  They had to have a skill that the group needed and be willing to work,
hard
.  They had to bring virtually everything portable that they owned with them and it was pretty much a no questions asked, all or nothing agreement.

If people didn’t want to join up then Earl should try to convince them to join up.  Not like ‘protection racket’ convince but try to help them see the light if at all possible.  Ultimately, the security of the group came first and anything that could threaten that had to be dealt with.  Anything short of wholesale slaughter was Earl’s call and there had been one time where a group didn’t want to band together but decided to follow Earl and company back.  That proved to be a very bad, very costly decision for the hold-outs.  Of the four followers only one survived and that was by design--to tell everyone what had happened to the other three.

In another situation, Earl had confiscated all the firearms he could find and taken them with him when he left.  It was part object lesson and part personal protection, as he was sure that as soon as his back was turned they otherwise would have put a bullet between his shoulder blades.  To his credit he dropped all the weapons that didn’t meet Clint’s requirements, which was most of them, about a half a mile away.  He’d then sent one vehicle back--with enough firepower to ensure its safety--to tell the group where they could find their weapons, but not to leave for five minutes.

Cooper was wondering what he’d signed on for when Clint turned to him and asked, “So, what do you think?  Aside from another raid and passing the buck.”

Eight years of being a beat cop was all that kept him from asking if there was any way out of this Mickey Mouse outfit, which is
not
a question that is limited to the enlisted ranks of the military.  “I’m working on it.  They did give us several days to get back to them.  It sounds like they are going to set up duplex repeaters around the base and that’s going to take a few days.  Until we answer they can’t know we’ve even heard them.”

“You’re way off base with that one as well, Coop.  They didn’t send out a broadcast until they knew who was in charge  over here.  They questioned, or interrogated, long enough to get Earl’s middle name.  That might not sound like much, but what doesn’t sound like much to you and I is the chink in the armor that an interrogator uses to get inside your head.”

Clint sat down for a minute to take a drink under the awning of his trailer.  “Coop, we picked up the transmission, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“On what channel?”

“19.”

“Which is a simplex channel, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Which means it has definitely not been sent through a duplex repeater, correct?”

“Yeah.  I know how a CB works, Clint.”

“Then
think
about how a CB works, Coop.  Let’s go back to when the FCC was still around and nobody wanted to go to jail.  How far can you broadcast without skipping with the rig and antenna in your cruiser?”

“Oh, probably max out about sixteen miles.  In country like this I’d be lucky to get that.”

“And let’s say that the Army knows this and they are, say, between fifteen and sixteen miles away from us as the crow flies.  I’m making assumptions here but I’m trying to prove a point.  If they sincerely didn’t expect an answer until the repeaters were in place do you think they would be broadcasting now?  Do you really think that nobody has told them where we are?  Someone told them my first and last name and I’m willing to bet that they even still have their fingernails to boot.”

Clint got up and started pacing again.  “Coop, the term Army Intelligence is used as an oxymoron on purpose to lull the enemy into a false sense of security.  I’m willing to bet they know where we are, how many people we have left, the layout of camp and even have a decent idea of our resources.  Military brass may very well be incompetent but the guys at the pointed end of the stick are usually sharp as hell.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Joel, have a seat.” Mallory indicated the folding chair in front of the makeshift desk she’d been using since the final move from the Armory and made yet another mental note to find something more permanent.

“You look kinda tired,” Mallory laughed at the absurdity of what she’d just said and went on.  “More so than I’d expect, I mean.  Everybody is worn out by the end of the day but you don’t look like you’re sleeping well.  You ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Joel replied.  He didn’t snap at Mallory but something in his voice didn’t sound normal.

“Bull, Joel.  I’m not the barista at the corner coffee shop or the security guard in your office building.  I didn’t ask to be polite so you don’t have to spare me the details and get the entire sentence out before you’re two steps away.”  Mallory tilted her head a little as she looked at Joel, who squinted and frowned at her slightly.

“What’s going on?  If it’s between you and Rachael then I don’t want to know, but if it’s anything else then I do,” Mallory said.

“Well, that was blunt.”

“You don’t look like you’re up to subtle right now.”

“What if I don’t think it’s any of your business?” Joel asked.

“I need your help, Joel.  You had some very good insight back at the Armory and I need some of that right now.  Frankly, I have a civilian problem and you’re my civilian point man.”

Joel’s shoulders had been relaxing a little from the defensive, slightly hunched posture he’d started to take when Mallory asked him what was going on.  At this point, he put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and let out a shuddering breath.  When he looked up and ran his hands through his hair and then continued looking upwards, the only way Mallory could think to describe him was…haunted.

Joel was pale, with dark circles under his eyes that were even more noticeable now than they had been less than a minute before, almost as though he’d been keeping them away by sheer force of will.  Now that she looked a little more closely he looked like he’d lost weight as well.  Today was exactly two weeks after the event and the manual labor and constant physical exertion was beginning to tell in subtle ways on just about everyone.  Food wasn’t a problem, yet, and everyone seemed to be toning up, but Joel looked to be losing weight and not gaining muscle like most of the men.

“Joel, talk to me.  What’s going on?”

“I’m taking my own advice.”

“Meaning?  You’ve said a
lot
over the last two weeks Mr.  Narrowing that down a bit without help is going to be tedious to say the least.”

“Do you remember what I said about anti-depressants and bipolar medications?  How those were going to eventually run out?”

“Oh no way, Joel.  Tell me you didn’t quit taking that cold turkey?”

“Ok.”

“Ok, what?”

“Ok I won’t tell you.” Joel grinned.

“Joel Taylor!  Does Rachael know?  Do you have any idea what you could be doing to yourself?  Have you never heard of titrating, perhaps by its more common term ‘weaning’?  For an intelligent person you can be an incredibly stupid man!”

“She says to someone who’s been diagnosed as clinically depressed and bipolar
and
who hasn’t been on his medication for a week,” Joel replied with another slight smile.

“It’s not funny.”

“Actually it kind of is.  I think this is the first time I’ve smiled in two or three days.  If it makes you feel any better the headaches are gone and I don’t get dizzy when I stand up anymore.”

Mallory put her head down on her desk and covered it with her arms.  “This is why I haven’t gotten out of the Army.  You people on the outside are just insane.  You know it, you take medications for it, and then you
stop taking them on purpose
!”

“You do know you’re taking this harder than Rachael, right?”

“So she does know.  And she hasn’t killed you, yet.  Which means I can’t kill her, yet.”

“I’m functional, Mallory, I just look like hell and I have a short fuse right now.”  Joel shrugged.  “If it gets really bad and it looks like I simply can’t get by without them then we’ll figure something out and somehow I’ll get back on the meds.  We’ll stage a raid on a pharmacy while there’s one still standing.  We’ll loop Tim in so we can take a semi and we’ll grab
everything
they have so nothing gets ruined.  Hell that might be a good idea anyway.  People are going to get sick and need antibiotics and pain killers and pseudoephedrine and a thousand other things that you could only get behind the counter.”

“See, that’s what I mean, Joel.  I don’t need you doing something stupid like killing yourself because you got off of some medicines all at once.  I’m not saying you can’t get off them, not at all.  I just think that stopping cold was a bit dangerous and rather stupid, and I know I keep using that word but that’s because it fits.”

“Ok, that’s fair, but I did just come up with that on my own so I’m not completely broken.”  Joel was fighting to keep his temper now and Mallory wasn’t used to his moods or the signs that he was swinging from one to the other and it wouldn’t be fair to lash out at her with no warning.

“Alright, point made.  As long as you’ve been off it would probably be a bad idea to jump back on all at once anyway, so you’re probably better off to see how things go for a while at this point.  I may take you up on the pharmacy raid in the near future, though.  Right now I need to pick your brain about something else--specifically, Clint.”

“Ok, shoot.”  Joel tried to settle back into the uncomfortable folding chair.

“That’s the problem, I don’t want to shoot,” Mallory smiled.  “I’d rather be a bit more diplomatic about this whole situation if at all possible.”

“Nice.  What do we know about him so far, other than the fact that he’s still using creep factor for a right-hand man?” Joel asked.

“Well, let me start with that.  Although Earl is creepy and I’m not arguing that fact, he does seem to be rather capable and intelligent.  Don’t let the fact that he gives you or the women the willies make you think otherwise.  Clint’s not the hick he made himself out to be when you ran into him on the freeway, either.  Earl either couldn’t or wouldn’t shed any light on that little bit of playacting other than to say that Clint isn’t like that and he has no idea where it came from.”  Mallory was afraid she was going to have to get used to doing briefings like this from memory and notes rather than reams and reams of paper.

“The day after you picked up the saw mills, Clint seems to have gotten his act together.  That’s when Earl says they appropriated the weapons, trucks, and RVs.”

“They have RVs?” Joel blurted.  Mallory closed her eyes and Joel could see her mouthing counting to ten.  “Sorry, I’ll shut up, continue.”

“Thank you.  Over the next three days, while they were still in Madison, they joined up with two other groups and raided another car lot for trucks and SUVs and grabbed more trailers.  They actually have more than they can use right now, but that was the plan.  Get as much as they could while it was available and grow into it if possible or simply use it as long as they could.”

“How many people do they have right now?” Joel asked.

“If all thirty-three went back today they would have one-hundred and fifty-eight.  We’re holding nearly half of their adults right now.”