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After a couple of minutes it was Chuck who asked the question that both of them had had written all over their faces while they blushed.  “So, um, ma’am,” just not eloquently, “I absolutely didn’t mean to presume anything, not at all, really, but um…”

He was saved from terminal embarrassment by Sheri launching herself from her sitting position at him and bowling him over.  “Your place is fine, big guy,” kiss, “although I really am tired,” kiss, “and this is all so sudden,” kiss, “and that’s all you’re getting tonight,” kiss “Now let’s go get some of my stuff.”

Interlude Four

Societies, communities, and civilizations are different things, and people post-event were finding that they weren’t necessarily complimentary sides of the same three-sided coin.  Not every group of people who’d had the presence of mind to get out of town early had an ethical leader in charge of their group.  Not every town that had been sufficiently removed from a population center had been sufficiently prepared to provide for itself long term.  Not everyone who had a plan to keep civilization intact had a society or community with which to surround themselves, and not every society that remained had civilization at its core.

What remained of the U.S. Government, for example: the President, Vice-President, Cabinet, fifty-seven Senators and one-hundred and fifty-three Representatives from the House, had a plan to keep civilization intact.  They had a society that numbered less than 2,500 people, however.  Without a much tighter command and control network and the ability to communicate with more than just a handful of military entities, there was no hope of implementing the plan on the books.  They did have a society, though, and it did have almost 2,500 people.  Those people were currently located at an Air Force base, and they were doing as well as anyone could expect to be doing under the circumstances, they just weren’t running the country anymore.

There were other societies and communities now, too--some not more than one-hundred miles away from where the President currently called home.  Many wouldn’t have been at all opposed to what the former U.S. Government would have proposed had they been able to hear it, but they couldn’t, and so they went their own way.  One group of less than three-hundred people, just up the road, would continue to farm on their land, milk their cows, gather the eggs from the chickens, and slaughter the pigs.  Simply put, they would continue on as they had been for the last couple of generations, if a little slower now that it was all done by hand.

Of course there were other groups, calling them a society really would be going too far, who were nothing more than roving bands of modern-day marauders and land pirates.  Their only concern with civilization was that it seemed to have come to an end.  If they happened to encounter it they would take advantage of it as long as it lasted, feast on the corpse until even that was gone, and then move on again.  They couldn’t really be said to be anarchists as many of them didn’t even know what anarchy was.  They were just hooligans who’d finally gotten a free rein.

There were the rare groups, however--true communities—which, regardless of their size or location, were determined to maintain civilization.  They were few and far between but they did exist.  In Massachusetts, a group that came to be called the Freemen finally proved they weren’t all wacko’s and established law and order in an area that encompassed almost 4,900 square miles and had towns begging to be brought into the “Freemen Coalition”.  In San Antonio, Texas, using the Alamo as the center of operations, a group calling themselves the New Texas Rangers kept a rough circle sixty miles wide peaceful, orderly, and civilized.  The Freemen did it with 1,800 people; the Rangers started with only two-hundred and eighty-five.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Just as the sun was peering over the horizon, fourteen fully loaded, combat ready Army vehicles came roaring into Gratefille from both the East and West sides.  As Mallory had said, there were no guns blazing, but Humvees and LAVs are not quiet at the best of times, and when you deliberately downshift, they can wake the dead.

It took about three minutes for the newly reinstated leadership of the town to present themselves in response to a very politely phrased request, albeit phrased at a fairly high decibel level, at which point parlay could begin.  Everyone from the “meet-and-greet” was there--from the town, that is.  Neither Sheri nor Sergeant Keeler was present.  Sheri wasn’t there since Mallory had put her foot down and declared this a purely military operation as the security of the base was entirely the province of the Guard.  She’d been tempted to use the excuse that Sergeant Keeler had been the only one physically injured until Halstead had reminded her that Pete had slugged Sheri in the back of the head as well, just not left any permanent marks, which both cooled her down and pissed her off all over again.  Keeler wasn’t there because he wasn’t quite seeing straight yet and, frankly, in his shoes, Mallory wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have just shot all six of the “front men” and been done with it.  Screw permission, forgiveness was usually easier to come by and required less paperwork.

“Before you say anything, we’re going to get a few things out of the way,” Sergeant Jackson began.  “My name is Sergeant Jackson and the first thing you need to know is that we are,
I am
, pissed.  Sergeant Keeler is, and I say is because he is still with us thankyouverymuch, under my command, he is in a squad in MY platoon.  That means you dicked with one of MY boys.  I don’t care who threw the rock.  I don’t care that he’s dead.  No, I take that back, I do care that he’s dead.  I’m
glad
HE is dead but the point is MY boy was there because of YOU people.  YOU people are DIRECTLY responsible for what happened to him yesterday.  Period.  End of discussion.”

The group as a whole flinched at every capitalized word, and they were very obviously capitalized when Jackson said them.  He let the silence hang for a few seconds before he continued, “All of that aside we are not here for reprisals.”  The group from the town visibly relaxed at that and the two women let out a slow breath.  “I’m not done, and I’m still not happy.  This isn’t The Hague, you aren’t on trial, and I think we all know that the, well, mastermind certainly isn’t the right word, but the individual ultimately behind yesterday’s joke of a meeting is no longer around to be a thorn in our sides.”

“Our sole purpose for being here is to find out just what yesterday’s little production was all about and what it was supposed to accomplish.  We aren’t going to take anyone back to the base and water board them and we can’t and won’t force anything from anyone but today won’t go like yesterday.  Is that understood?”

After a few seconds and a few head nods Jackson just couldn’t help himself, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

A chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘Yes, Sergeant’ was the reply.  “At least I know you heard me.  There’s a reason we have a protocol in the military and not all of it is to stroke the Officer’s egos.  So, just what was yesterday all about, anyway?  And I’m not talking about the little drama that got resolved last night, because we’ve already been told that you didn’t have anything to do with that so save the ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘moral outrage’ for some other time.  I’m talking about the waste of time, energy, man and woman hours, and resources--not the least of which is the fuel which could have been either saved or put to better use.”

The townspeople looked at each other for a few more seconds and then the oldest one of the bunch, the same one who had originally stood up to Pete the afternoon before, took a half step forward and became spokesperson for the group.  “Frankly, we aren’t entirely sure.  Pete was keeping his cards close to the vest, what few cards he had left, and I think he was making things up as he went along.  He started out drinking and in just a couple of days started smoking weed like it was cigarettes.  I know that he wanted us to get as much information about you all as a group as we could but without committing to anything, and then try to set up another meeting-- outside of that, not much else.”

“I think he had some grand design that only he knew all the details to, and like I said, I doubt he was playing with a full deck there near the end.  He was threatening people for no reason, swinging his dick, trying to act like some combination magnanimous ruler and cruel overlord, and nobody had the guts to call him on it or stand up to him after the first day.  I think that’s when he snapped, actually.”

“What happened the first day?” Jackson asked.

The old guy ran his hands through his hair and looked over at the sunrise through partially closed eyes for a couple of breaths before he continued, “The first morning, when Pete showed up, he pulled in here in that hotrod of his about 10:30.  He’d apparently been listening in on the CB, since we’d been using it to communicate with each other since Friday after the power went out.  He had that ridiculous antenna on his car that let him pick up from farther than he could transmit and he’d evidently been driving around, listening to the signal as it got weaker and stronger, sort of a poor-man’s triangulation, trying to find a population center that wasn’t falling apart outside of Nashville.”

“So he pulls in and asks, fairly politely, who’s in charge.  We don’t have a police station in town, we were covered by the county; and we don’t have a Mayor, we had a City Council.  He drives over to the Municipal building, where the library and City Council are--and the one remaining councilman was, since the rest took off within a couple of days of the power outage-- and asks to speak to him.  When Mike comes out he doesn’t think anything of the fact that Pete’s wearing a gun as there’s probably ten or twelve people in town doing the same.  Too bad, because after Pete asks if Mike’s all that’s left of the City Council and Mike says yes, Pete hauls off and shoots him.  Bang, right there in front of the library.

“There were a half a dozen people there who saw it, including me.  Didn’t bat an eye at the time, just turned to us on the sidewalk and said ‘I’m in charge here now.  You all might want to run along and let everyone know, and if I see anyone else with a gun in town, they’ll end up just like Mike here.  No questions asked.’  Then he turned around, got a good look at Mike, turned green, and threw up all over himself--didn’t even make it to the bushes or the gutter.”

“He grabbed me before I could turn away and asked me where Mike had lived--what the address was--and then he moved in.  After he did what he did to Mike, even the few of us who had some sort of gun didn’t dare try to do anything.  Nobody knew when or where he’d show up or what he’d do.  That evening he saw some of the kids, um, smoking… and when he asked them where they got it, they didn’t answer because they didn’t know if he wanted some or if he’d be pissed that they were getting stoned.  When they didn’t answer, he beat the crap out of my nephew, broke his nose, gave him a black eye, and cut up his face pretty bad with the butt of his pistol.  “Turns out he wasn’t opposed to the idea of taking a hit or two himself, and when he finally got his joint he cooled off for a while.  But I swear, I’ve never seen a chain pot smoker before and I’ve been smoking it all my life.  The man was a natural.”

“Correction,” Jackson said, “Pete was a coward, blight on the human race, and a dozen other choice colorful metaphors that I’m choosing not to use right now.  He may have been an adult male human being but he was absolutely, definitely not a man in any sense of the word.  I have very little respect for you but given what I’ve heard so far and the fact that you are even talking to me means you are more man than Pete ever was.”  Jackson decided to leave it at that, he could have gone on about the fact that they were surrounded by prime examples of Men right now, and Women for that matter, each of whom embodied the finest ideal that Manhood or Womanhood could hope to attain but he could always rub the salt in that wound later if necessary.

“I stand corrected and I see your point.  To get back to your original question, I don’t really know what the end game of yesterday was all about but I can guarantee that it won’t happen again.  To put it bluntly, that crap ended last night.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Mr.?” Jackson asked.

“Lawson, Lyle Lawson.”

“Like I said, I’m glad to hear it Mr. Lawson but please understand where I’m coming from when I say that I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I do, really.  Basically because, well, some of the folks in town want to be part of the group at the base, but a few here that don’t want to leave the town for the base, they would basically like the town to be ‘occupied’.”

Jackson raised his left eyebrow at that.  “Excuse me?”

“Those that would like to stay here figure that if it’s occupied, it has a better chance of being defended if necessary because it’s home to those doing the defending,” Lawson finished.

“Makes sense, sort of.  Which do you prefer, between joining the base and occupation?” Jackson asked.

“I’d actually prefer to stay here--partially because I’ve been asked to but also because the folks who stay are going to need someone to be in charge on the civilian side, and I know everyone here.  It would make more sense that I stay than just about anyone else.”

“Well, I’m authorized to OK just about anything.  That, however, was never even considered, frankly.  This is going to take some discussion above my pay-grade, not that any of us are getting paid for this right now,” Jackson finished in a mutter.

…

“They want what?  Over.” Mallory asked, trying and failing miserably to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“That’s about what I said and they know we’re in the park, even if they don’t know specifically where we are.  That, in and of itself doesn’t surprise me, so I think either bringing a couple of them in to talk to us or having you come somewhere where they can talk to you would be a good idea.  This group is going to need a little more administrative involvement than the others have, I’m afraid, over.”

“That’s probably a fair assessment of the situation.  Give me a minute, over.”