John Ringo - Cally's War

“Front door, this is truck seventeen.” The female voice had a distinctly Texan drawl. “We got one dead Postie, one dead medium passenger vehicle, and some minor vee-hicular injuries back here. Negative on Postie emissions and high grade equipment. Negative crest. Just another feral normal. We’re gonna need a EMT and someplace to put ’em, ’cause their van ain’t goin’ nowhere, come on.” Reception was extraordinarily clear for the simple reason that there was so little to compete with it. Oh, there was a little crackle from sunspots and other unavoidable whatnot, but it was a surprisingly cheap method of keeping a convoy together. Besides, it was traditional.

“Ten-four, Seventeen. Johnny, you got your ears on?”

“Ten-four, Front Door. Got my little black bag and I am on the way, come on.”

“Ten-four. Seventeen, get the healthies squared away along the line and have Johnny call me back once he’s got the bleeders stashed, come on.”

“That’s a big ten-f — Larry, quit messing with that thing. You can load the head up after we get them church folks on the… oops. This thing’s still on. Sorry Front Door, over.”

“Hey, uh, Marilyn?” Reefer had walked around to the right side of the bus where she was standing with her back against it, looking outward. “Might as well get back in and put that thing in the glove box, man. I mean, like, I know it’s pretty bogus to have one of those Postie dudes running out on the road and all, but honest, there’s like never been more than one at a time as long as I’ve been driving.”

Cally walked back to the van, looked at the sensor on the dash and climbed back in. She didn’t put the pistol back in the glove box, but Reefer just shrugged and popped another piece of gum. Even twenty years ago the convoy would have circled up, instead of remaining sprawled out like a lunch line of gawking kindergartners. Their complacency made the back of her neck itch, but as she watched the negative sensors on the dash and her PDA screen, tied into the roadside sensor net, the combat-chill gradually leached its way back out of her system and time resumed its normal flow.

It seemed longer, of course, but it was actually only about ten minutes later that the convoy got rolling again, one van shorter but with no human fatalities. On the far side of the highway, just inside the tree line, a yearling whitetail buck placidly browsed through the fresh growth.

Spartanburg’s Trading and Bounty Station was very much like Columbia’s. The upstate city hadn’t been part of Fortress Forward and so the buildings had survived in varying states of destruction and disrepair from Posleen looting and local self-destruct systems. But vacancy during the Posleen occupation and the relatively slow pace of human reclamation had taken its toll on the prewar portions of the city. The station was not, strictly speaking, part of the original prewar city. Instead, one of the least-damaged truck stop and gas station clusters had been repaired, an incinerator and sufficient electrical generation to fuel the station installed, along with the necessary water tower and septic system. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation had walled and manned the resulting facility, along with a few neighboring buildings, hauled in a double-wide to house the staff, and called it a day.

The biggest difference in the routine at Spartanburg was the line at the pay radio as the members of the group from Nashville called friends and family back home.

The station residents were clearly used to their station being the lunch stop on the convoy route. One of the buildings inside the walls was a salvaged prewar short-order grill. Over the years, the sun had faded the plastic around the flat roof of the building to a dingy yellowish-cream. The steel pole that had once carried a lighted sign had been extended and was now home to the station’s radio antenna.

The parking lot of the restaurant had been filled with ancient picnic tables of various materials obviously scrounged locally. Perhaps a third were of clearly postwar construction, made of split and roughly sanded pine logs. A handful of teenage girls in jean shorts and T-shirts waited on the tables. Cally’s omelet was tough and overpriced, though the waitress was obviously eager to please, refilling her water frequently and offering a smile that was tacit apology for the food.

“If you want something that’s actually good to get the taste out of your mouth, try a small jar of pickled peaches from the store over there. One of our neighbors puts them up, and they’re actually good. I mean, if you like peaches.”

“Thanks, I will.” Cally smiled, noticing the girl’s wistful glances at her PDA.

“You’re a college student ain’t… aren’t you? That must be wonderful.” She fielded a dirty look from another girl who was moving a bit faster.

“Yeah, I like it. Where are you planning to apply?”

“It wouldn’t do no good.” The girl flushed. “They don’t take you if you’re out of state, unless you’ve got money.”

“I know a lot of out of state students. And there are scholarships.”

“You gotta pass tests. I checked.” She glared briefly as the other girl moving back by with a stack of empty plates made a rude noise. “I bet none of your out of state friends are bounty farm brats, are they?”

“If you can’t pass the tests, read and study until you can.”

The girl laughed tonelessly. “Library.” She indicated the bounty agent’s trailer. “Two shelves of pre-war encyclopedias and a dog-eared copy of Leather Goddesses of Phobos .”

“You’re kidding.” Cally’s jaw dropped.

“Nope.” She grinned tightly. “Well, unless you count the porno mags under Agent Thomas’s bed. I’ve been that bored. Oop, gotta go. Try the peaches.” She shrank a bit from the face of the middle-aged woman looking out the plastic and duct tape “window” of the grill and began rapidly collecting empty dishes and silverware.

Cally stared after her for a moment before rummaging in her backpack for a battered paperback copy of Pygmalion and staring at it a moment.

I can always get another prop. She tucked the girl’s tip in the inside cover and finished her water, making her way to where the waitress was returning for another load. Her mouth tightened at the reddening print on the girl’s face and her hot eyes. She pressed the book into the girl’s hand.

“Never give up,” she told her firmly, grabbing her chin gently and pulling her face around for eye contact. “ Never give up. Not ever. You will make it out.”

The teenager paused for a second, looking at the other woman as if she had sudden sneaking suspicion that she was far older than twenty, whatever else she may have been. She smiled grimly and tucked the book into her front pocket where it was bulkier but probably safer, and got back to work.

Cally heard her mutter, “Thanks, ma’am,” as she strolled back to the van exactly like a student tourist, trying not to visibly berate herself for breaking cover.

Outside the walls, Cally grimaced at the profusion of roadside kudzu. “Hell of an abat hazard, isn’t it?”

“What? Like, oh, yeah, totally bogus. Happens a bit in some of these places. If it’s not good farmland or right next to your house, it’s somebody else’s problem. It’s a lot of work to get in and clear that stuff and if you’re doing that, like, you aren’t getting bounties or raising your own crops. Until some poor schmuck gets stung by a grat. There’s just totally not enough money in the world to get me to bounty farm, man.”

As the land and the road got more hilly, first the small trees and undergrowth rose beside the highway like green walls, then the huge granite cut-throughs and drop-offs passed by as they climbed into the Blue Ridge, which rose in front of them in a great green wall, softened by the afternoon haze. With the changing terrain eliminating the need for a Roundup zone, clumps of grass vied for purchase in the rocky soil with brown-eyed Susans and some small purple flower she didn’t recognize. Occasionally she caught a dull orange flash of Virginia creeper, or the more brilliant orange splash of what she vaguely remembered were mountain azaleas. Reefer flipped off the air conditioner and opened the windows to let in the cooler, fresher mountain air. She suppressed the urge to wrinkle her nose at the exhaust fumes from the rest of the convoy and pulled her hair back into a quick ponytail to keep the dark curls from flying around her face.