David Robbins - Denver Run

The wind from the north was bitterly cold.

“Hurry it up,” groused the tall soldier, his brown eyes scanning the surrounding countryside, his cheeks stinging from the icy gusts, as he stamped his booted feet again and again in an effort to keep the circulation going.

One of the two troopers engaged in changing a rear tire on their jeep glanced up at the speaker, scowling. “If you think you can do any better, big mouth,” he snapped, “be my guest!”

The first soldier shook his head. “You’re doing just fine. What are you getting so touchy about? I’m freezing, is all.”

“And you think we’re not?” demanded the second trooper, an older man with a protruding paunch.

The third soldier looked up, glaring at both of them. “Will you two shut the hell up? We’d get done a lot faster if you would stop your damn bickering!”

“I just don’t see why Brandon can’t help,” complained the second soldier, arching his back to alleviate a cramp in his right hip as he crouched next to the jeep.

“Somebody has to keep watch,” stated the third trooper, removing the punctured tire and placing it on the highway next to the lug nuts.

“Why can’t I be the lookout?” demanded the second soldier.

Sighing, his black hair whipping in the breeze, the third soldier stared at the second. “What the hell is the matter with you, Telford? You whine more than anyone else I know. If you moved your arms as much as you flap your gums, we would have been done by now.”

Telford grunted, reaching for the good tire lying on the road next to his left leg. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said in justification of his griping.

“No,” the third soldier cracked, “you never do.”

“Let’s just get it changed, Mitchell,” Brandon remarked, “and get the hell out of here.”

“I’m with you,” Telford chimed in. “I don’t like being left out here in the middle of the boonies.”

Mitchell, the youngest of the trio, took the spare tire from Telford and positioned it on the hub.

“I still don’t see why the captain had to go and leave us here,” Telford went on while Mitchell worked at replacing the lug nuts.

“You know the answer to that one as well as we do,” Brandon commented while watching a stand of trees on the other side of Highway 81. “Speed and surprise are essential to our mission. He couldn’t afford to wait while we fixed the flat.”

“I wish I was an officer,” Telford said longingly.

Brandon chuckled. “You? An officer? Don’t make me laugh. You’ll always be a private, lunkhead, just like the rest of us.”

Mitchell was working on the last of the lug nuts. “It won’t take us long to catch up with the others.”

Telford snickered, his expression slightly sinister. “Won’t the Family be in for a big surprise!”

Brandon cocked his head to one side, listening. “Do you guys hear something?”

“I don’t hear anything,” Telford responded.

Mitchell slowly stood, the lug wrench clasped in his right hand. He stared to the west, back the way they had come, and focused on the distant horizon. Highway 81 stretched for as far as the eye could see in a westerly direction, sections of the road buckling or cracked from age and neglect, a rarely traveled reminder of the technological status of civilization before World War III. “I hear it,” he confirmed.

“Sounds like a truck to me,” Brandon commented, clutching his M-16 a bit tighter.

“I hear it too,” Telford finally affirmed. “What do you think we should do?” he asked nervously.

Mitchell dropped the lug wrench on the ground and walked to the driver’s door. He opened it and removed a pair of M-16’s from the jeep.

“Here.” He tossed one of the weapons to Telford.

The three of them, the lanky Brandon, the cranky Telford, and Mitchell moved behind the vehicle and spread out along the highway. Mitchell took the center of the road, Brandon stood to his right, and Telford edged to his left.

“Maybe it’s one of ours,” Telford said hopefully.

“It probably is,” Mitchell stated.

“Nobody else uses these roads,” Brandon mentioned.

The noise of the approaching truck grew louder and louder. A black speck appeared on the horizon, then grew larger and took on a distinct form as the vehicle drew nearer.

Brandon recognized it first. “It’s a troop transport!” he exclaimed in relief. “It’s one of ours!”

“I wonder what it’s doing way out here,” Mitchell speculated aloud. He knew the troop transport wasn’t part of the special force sent to eliminate the detested Family. Their jeep had been the only vehicle to suffer a breakdown, and the remainder of the convoy would be miles ahead of them by now. Maybe the transport had been sent to join the expedition.

Then again, it really didn’t matter. At least the occupants would be friendly, fellow members of the Army of the Civilized Zone.

Soon, Mitchell mentally told himself, the Family would learn an important lesson: it wasn’t smart to mess with the Civilized Zone. One hundred years after the horror of World War III, the Civilized Zone embraced what was left of the former United States of America. During and after the nuclear conflict, the Government had evacuated thousands upon thousands of citizens into the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain region. Martial law had been declared, and the once-proud people of the United States had found themselves living under a military dictatorship.

The former states of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, most of Wyoming, eastern Arizona, and Oklahoma, the northern half of Texas, and most of Montana had been incorporated into the Civilized Zone and were currently ruled with an iron fist by Samuel II. His father, a man named Samuel Hyde, had been the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare at the outbreak of the war. He was attending a speaking engagement in Denver when the war broke out, and assumed the reins of government after the President, the rest of the Cabinet, Congress, and the Supreme Court had been obliterated in a preemptive strike on Washington, D.C.

The troop transport was barreling toward the jeep.

Telford lowered his M-16 and scratched the stubble on his pointed chin.

“I hope they’ve got a drink with them,” he remarked.

“You know we’re not allowed to drink on duty,” Brandon reminded him.

Telford deliberately belched. “Who’s going to know?” he demanded.

“The captain and Brutus are way up the road, and Sammy is probably playing with himself back in Denver.”

“Don’t you have any respect for your superiors?” Mitchell inquired, peeved, as always, by Telford’s abysmal lack of decorum.

“Of course I do,” Telford retorted, snickering. “When they’re within earshot.”

Mitchell decided to ignore him and concentrated on the rapidly approaching truck. He found himself reviewing the sequence of events leading up to his present situation.

A century after the war, Samuel II had decided the time was ripe to commence reconquering the territory outside the Civilized Zone. His forces defeated the Flathead Indians at Kalispell, Montana, and then prepared to attack a large company of superb horsemen known as the Cavalry based in South Dakota. Before the assault could be launched, and while the Army was in the process of assembling its tactical units at Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the big drive into neighboring South Dakota, something unthinkable happened.

Someone used a thermonuclear device on Cheyenne.

Samuel II was furious. And so was Samuel’s associate, a brilliant scientist known as the Doktor. The Doktor suspected that a small clan known as the Family was responsible for the nuking of Cheyenne. Without advising Samuel II, the Doktor dispatched 2000 soldiers, the majority of whom had been enroute to Cheyenne when it was struck, to the Family’s compound in Minnesota. This 30-acre compound, called the Home by the Family, was situated in northwestern Minnesota. Under the command of Captain Luther and Brutus, the special force had one mission only: to raze the Home to the ground.