James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

Random roadblocks were just another of the hazards they faced; not only did the army like them, but gangs had discovered their merits as well. Armed with whatever weapons they could find the bandits would block a street with cars and dumpsters and rob whoever came along. As the army had an unofficial and technically illegal policy of destroying without warning any unauthorized moving vehicle inside the city limits outside the approved travel corridors the gangs preferred to prowl the bordering suburbs. They took whatever they wanted, or needed—food, water, guns, gasoline—and killed anybody who offered resistance. The gangs tried to avoid preying on anybody too well armed, and stayed out of the way of both the army and the guerillas, but nevertheless there were occasional surprises. The only boring day was yesterday.

George blinked against the wind blowing over the Ford’s dented hood. He had 20/15 vision, and his eyes continually scanned the street through the ballistic glasses he’d donned; the buildings on the left, windows, alleys and doorways, the buildings on the right, looking for any silhouette of a head, a shoulder, movement, the muzzle of a rifle belonging to a new army recruit overeager for the ambush. The streets were dangerous, every one a potential death trap, but his main focus of attention was the sky. Infantry was a problem they knew how to handle; the only way to deal with aircraft when you didn’t have any missiles was to see them before they saw you and get the hell out of sight. Luckily they were so distant from the front, and so few in numbers, that the Army no longer flew armed drones above the city. The drones were too few in number, the missiles too valuable, to waste on small groups of guerrillas performing “harassing actions” far from the real war. Or so they’d guessed, nobody had reported seeing an armed drone, or drone missile strike, in years. Still, they kept their drone jammer active. It did nothing against the large craft, but it would disrupt the navigation and audio/visual feed of the small bird- and insect-sized drones the military used.

George didn’t like the street leading through the industrial park; it was too open. No tree cover, no avenues of escape for almost half a mile to the south. The rest of the squad thought of him as unflappable, a rock, but until they got some overhead cover—and it would be a ways out, almost two miles, before their route provided them with some measure of security from the eyes in the sky—he would be a nervous wreck, even if he did hide it well.

Jason found himself more than a little unnerved at the situation he found himself in. He’d wanted to join the fight, pick a side in the war, sure, but now he found himself packed into a piece of junk car with heavily armed men he didn’t know and who didn’t know him, heading straight into an infamous city that was the stuff of nightmares. The fact that it was a war zone was just one of the dangerous aspects of the urban cadaver they were heading into.

It was surreal. It was terrifying. It was awesome.

Looking around the vehicle, he suddenly noticed the string of birds tied to the outside of Weasel’s pack. Were those pigeons? “Where’d you get those?”

Weasel glanced back to see what Jason was talking about, then went back to scanning out the windows. “I went fishing.”

“What?”

“So many decades of being tame city birds, they can’t get rid of the mentality. You start throwing out bread, or corn, they show up and start eating without a thought to predators. You put a fishhook in a kernel of corn or a wadded-up piece of bread, as soon as they gobble it down you give a yank to set the hook and pull ‘em in. By the time you’ve got the hook out the rest of them have forgotten the squawking and have returned and are pecking around again. So you rebait the hook and throw it back out. You can get a whole flock one at a time. I’ve never seen animals so dumb. Hell of a lot easier to bag than squirrels.”

“Socialism works the same, no matter the species,” Mark said, loud enough to be heard over the wind and engine noise. His belt-fed SAW was pointed out the rear window frame.

“What?”

“Mice die in mouse traps because they don’t understand why the cheese is free. Same thing with those pigeons. And all the fuckers out there,” he gestured beyond the vehicle, “who kept voting for more free shit in exchange for less freedom. When the mouse trap finally snaps, when the fishing hook sinks into your mouth, when the boot is on your neck… you suddenly realize the free shit wasn’t free.”

“Mouths closed, eyes open,” George growled.

Everyone was sweating as Quentin drove southbound. The golf course’s low clubhouse appeared to their left, then the course itself, bordered by more of the same rusty chain link. A small weed-choked parking lot and more grape vines were next, but beyond the scorched, abandoned clubhouse were two majestic weeping willows, silvery in the sunlight, a reminder that things had not always been as they were.

The street dipped and ended at a T-intersection, the traffic signal lights still up but dark. The dip meant the ground rose on either side of the road, limiting their visibility. Quentin slowed to a crawl and eased out into the intersection. To the left the street entered a residential area, the same neighborhood where Colleen lived but further to the south. Tall trees, oaks and elms, shadowed the asphalt. Before the war it would have been called a “charming bedroom community” in a middle-class suburb. No one still in the area thought in those terms any more, cities and neighborhoods were deemed more or less dangerous based on how likely you were to be ambushed or killed travelling through them. The only problem was… even if the chances of that were very low, very low was still greater than zero.

To the right was the reason for the dip: the same set of railroad tracks that ran close behind the shop where they’d spent the night. The tracks were supported by an old concrete bridge that was decorated with graffiti and starting to crumble. Nothing was moving in either direction, on the street or the bridge. Quentin cranked the wheel over and the Ford slowly chugged under the bridge, its exhaust momentarily loud as it echoed off the square bridge columns. Half a mile away, straight west, was another intersection with dark traffic lights.

Past the bridge the two-lane road rose quickly. More small businesses on the right, some but not all abandoned; even with intermittent electricity some owners refused to close their doors. They had seen entire machine shops operating on bicycle and solar power. A few occasionally ran generators on black market gas. Where there’s a will… On the left were tiny one-story homes, once well maintained but still little more than pillboxes. Some were obviously vacant, but a surprising number seemed to still be occupied. No one could afford gas for lawn mowers of course, but quite a few of the lawns had been hacked down by hand, and a few residents had planted flowers in their front yards in addition to the ubiquitous garden in back. Store-bought vegetables were a thing of the fabled past.

“Watch the windows, watch the windows!” George barked over his shoulder. No matter where they were, snipers were a real threat. Not necessarily the trained professionals, the men the Army sent out regularly to harass them, but yahoos, drunks and crazies with guns who liked to shoot at anything—or anyone—that happened by. There weren’t so many of those around anymore, though. They’d gotten bored, run out of ammo, or been shot. George kept his eyes locked on the distant intersection, and let the rest of the squad watch the buildings and the road behind them.

On the far right corner of the intersection ahead sat a small, low-roofed bowling alley. There were two cars in its lot. While they appeared empty, both vehicles looked driveable. George pointed his rifle at them and the bowling alley’s front door as the SUV slowed for the intersection.