John Ringo - Cally's War

At one of the cut-throughs you could still see the scraps of exotic rubble where they blew the Wall and relaid the road after the Green River Gorge drawbridge came on-line as part of reopening the route to Charleston harbor.

There was no delay at the drawbridge, the lead truck having radioed ahead the time-synchronized codes to signal the attendant. Cally was reassured to see the unusually alert and attentive man obviously watching the convoy and all his sensors as the van clattered across the lowered bridge.

After the first exit past the bridge, they started to pass some local traffic — the occasional ancient pickup truck or SUV from the mountain communities that, after the great postwar RIF of the surviving soldiers, had gone back to living mostly as they had for the past four hundred years. A bit poorer, perhaps, but for a people who had come to love these highlands as their ancestors had loved an earlier home, they had their mountains, and they had their neighbors, and the mild poverty wrapped around them felt more like a comfortably broken-in and familiar set of work clothes than any true hardship. Their mountains weren’t for the soft, or the greedy, or the lazy, but they had protected them from a hazard that had gone through softer and richer peoples like a hot knife through butter. This knowledge had cemented the locals’ attachment to their mountains from a rough affection to a respectful devotion approaching reverence, so that rural Appalachia had one of the lowest out-migration rates on the planet. While the mountain folk knew there were many places men could live in the modern galaxy, this one was theirs, and they reckoned they’d keep it.

It was early evening but still quite bright when the convoy entered Baldwin Gap, home of the Southeast Asheville Urb. Turning off the Blue Ridge Parkway onto Victory Road, they came into the valley through the dilapidated remains of forty-year-old fortifications, topped with a mishmash of sensor boxes and transmitters probably emplaced and maintained by local farmers who were more interested in protecting their stock than in any bounty. With power, protection, and ample refrigeration, Asheville was cattle country, selling much of its lower grade beef to the local Urbs and shipping the better cuts back down to Charleston for the tourists’ surf ’n’ turf dinners. Her driver, obviously city-bred, had switched back to closed windows and the AC at the first whiff of rural cow manure — not that she minded.

The first thing Cally noticed when they came in sight of the Asheville Urb Vehicle Assembly Zone was the increased number of people manning the wall and their relative inattention to that job. Some wore headphones which, judging from the rhythmic nodding of the wearers’ heads were for music rather than information. At one corner of the wall, a female in a guard uniform was chatting up a male in civvies. One of the more alert guards was standing over the entrance gate facing outward. While she looked out, eyes scanning the hills, most of the time, judging from her hand movements she also appeared to have a game of solitaire going on the top edge of the wall.

“I guess they don’t get many ferals this close to civilization,” she said, slipping her sandals back on and closing up the novel on her PDA as they drove through the gates.

“Huh?”

“Those were just, you know, some pretty bored looking guards. Not that I have much to compare with. We don’t have them back home,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded. “They’re like, pretty laid back here, you know? I hung out with a couple of guards on one of my trips through. This girl I talked to said it pays pretty well, and they’re feds, so they get good bennies.” He swallowed hard and added a fresh piece of gum. “It wouldn’t be the gig for me, man. I mean, okay, it’s not major stressful or anything, but I just couldn’t, like, handle being a fed.”

“Me neither,” she grinned. “So what happens now?”

“Well, like, I gotta wait for this chick from one of the restaurants and, you know, see how much stuff she wants to buy, and put my van down for the convoy out tomorrow. Then I guess, like, food and someplace to crash. Maybe find a party, if, you know, there’s one mellow enough that I won’t be too fucked up to drive in the morning.” He looked sheepish for a minute. “Oh, like, sorry.”

“You must come through here a lot. I hate to ask when you’ve already done so much for me, but could you recommend anywhere to eat and, well, stay that’s okay but not too expensive?” she asked, dropping her eyes and scuffing the ground a bit with a foot.

“Oh, like, no problem. I’m, um, meeting a friend, so I’m gonna be like totally out of the net until morning, no offense. Um… the cafeteria is totally bogus, so don’t even go there. They sell the food in Asheville Urb Calorie Credits, and they seriously scalp you on the exchange rates. Your best bet is probably the mall food court. The Taco Hell was okay the last time I tried it, but that was like a few months ago when I was majorly low on cash. For rooms, I’d tell a guy to take the no-tell motel outside the walls and leave all his stuff in the van, but if I were you I’d honestly pick up an Urbie dude for a one nighter before I did that ’cause it’s not exactly your high-rent district.” He frowned, scratching his chin through the beard and looking glum. “Shit. Why don’t you hang around until Janet gets here? Maybe she can, like, find you some crash space for the night. Urb hostel prices are, like, well, the bogosity is beyond belief, I kid you not.”

“Oh, no, it’s all right. I don’t want to horn in on your date or anything. I mean, I saved the bus fare up here, and I’d planned to stay overnight. I’ll be okay.” She put a hand on his arm and smiled reassuringly.

“Aw, hang around anyway. You can meet Janet and we can all walk in together. I can at least keep them from cheating you too bad when you rent your hostel room. Oh, ’scuse me.” He left her and walked over to a plump, middle-aged woman with a clipboard and a little red wagon with a bucket half full of water.

Cally went back to Marilyn’s romance novel on her PDA while Reefer and the restaurateur dickered and made their trade, leaning against the van as strains of music came drifting through the open window… dog has not been fed in years. It’s even worse than it appears but it’s all right. Cows giving kerosene, kid can’t read at seventeen…

After a bit the older woman dragged her wagon back off, bucket sloshing a bit as she went. Reefer stayed in the back, fiddling quite a while with the tanks while the afternoon sun sank to the edge of the mountains. Finally, he sighed and came around to her side, scratching the back of his head with one hand and looking up at the impending sunset.

“Um… look, it would be like a major favor if you could wait here for Janet for a minute while I go sign up for tomorrow’s convoy. I mean, like, she knows the van, so if you see her… uh, like she’s tiny, okay? And she’s got straight black hair about down to here, looks about your age. Do you, like, how do I say this? Have you ever heard of the Goths?” he asked.

“What, you mean European Franco-Germanic barbarian tribes from the dark ages?”

“Um… no. Not like that at all. Just… she wears a lot of black, okay? And silver jewelry. She’ll probably be wearing, like, lots of silver jewelry. And she has this really cool Celtic knot kind of bracelet tattooed around one wrist. Like, left, I think. You can’t miss her. So, if she like shows while I’m gone, which she probably will, could you tell her I’ll be right back?” He bit his lip and craned his neck back over towards the Urb entrance as if he could make her appear just by looking often enough.