James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Jason?” he asked pointedly.

Early looked his leader in the eye as he responded. “Boy was scared spitless, but he stood up and fought when there was fightin’ to do.” He paused. “And hit what he was aiming at, at least once. Saw that much.”

Ed sighed and looked back out the small window. He could see part of a wispy cloud scudding across the blue sky, and listened to the hum of insects on a late summer afternoon. When he looked back at Early his eyes were weary. “Do what you can to keep him safe.”

Early smiled, flashing his big white teeth. “Be back in a bit,” he said.

Jason near the back door, saw him heading out and stood up. Early waved him back. “You stay here, keep outta trouble,” he told the boy.

“Where are you going?”

“Shoppin’,” Early said with a grin. “Practice working that new rifle, shoulderin’ it and flippin’ the safety off. You don’t want to be fumblin’ with it the next time bullets are whuppin’ by your head.” He silently stepped into tall grass of the back yard, slipped between two bushes, and disappeared from sight.

Two hours later Jason was sitting with Ed and Quentin in the downstairs hallway. He was sitting there in armor, with a new rifle, surrounded by dogsoldiers, still having flashbacks of the gunfight… and even with all that, he was bored. They’d been stuck in the house for hours, and now they were going to be spending the night there. He had no cards, no book to read (he’d checked the house) and had practiced shouldering his M4 until his shoulder and hands were sore. So he sat. And thought.

“Sir?” he finally said.

Ed looked up. He’d been daydreaming. “Yeah?”

“I saw a couple of radios with those soldiers. How come we didn’t grab one, to listen in on them?” He figured there was a good reason, he just had no idea what it was.

Ed nodded. “SOP—standard operating procedure—for the Tabs, when they’ve suffered an ambush or had any other sort of incident where they think a radio might have been snagged by us, is to immediately switch channels. All those radios are encrypted, which means to even listen in on a new channel you’ve got to punch in a code. Which we don’t have.”

“And we’re not sure they can’t triangulate our position with one of those things,” Quentin added.

“They kicked our asses at the start of the war,” Ed told the young man. “We had encrypted burst transmitters, military grade, and even though they couldn’t understand what we were saying, they could triangulate our position. We ate a lot of missiles, and lost a lot of people before we figured out how they were locating us, and we figure they could do the same with one of their radios if we took it. It’s not that we don’t have more high-tech gear, we just can’t use it. We’re low tech because it keeps us alive.”

“What the hell is this?” Weasel studied the brown chunk in his hand as he chewed. “I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a brownie or beef jerky.”

Mark had his head tilted back against the wall and rolled it over so he could see what Weasel was talking about. “I don’t know. What’s it taste like?”

The hawk-faced man chewed for a while. “Cardboard,” he concluded finally.

“Then it’s a brownie,” Mark told him. “The beef jerky tastes like dirty socks.”

“You get some?” Weasel held up what was left of the bar.

“I got an entrée, some noodle thing, and a packet of crackers. I don’t know if I want to eat it or not, I think it’ll be just enough to remind my stomach how hungry I am.”

“I hear that.”

The two men were sitting in the upstairs hallway with their backs to opposite walls. They’d tacked up the heat-reflecting sheets on the ceilings in the hallway and the front bedroom, and had the wet mildewed mattress leaning up against the wall in the hallway, just in case. They could pull it down over them in just a few seconds. Quentin’s rifle lay beside Mark. It looked small compared to the SAW, which was still set up on its bipod on a table looking down out a second-floor window. Quentin was with it, taking his turn on watch.

Mark scratched at his forearm, and Weasel’s eye was drawn to his tattoos. He squinted in the dim hallway.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Mark looked down and twisted his arm. The black and red design was now no more than an unreadable splotch. “That’s sign of a misspent youth,” he said. “Was part of a biker gang. Used to think I was tough.” He snorted. “Then I got married and had kids. Tough is getting a real job and sticking to it even if it sucks, and then working double shifts of suck, so there’ll be food on the table and money for clothes.”

“Kids? I thought you just had one.”

Mark stared down at his tattoo, then rubbed a hand self-consciously over the artwork. “I had two boys, teenagers. Toby got killed in the riots. Still not sure what happened. My wife left with the younger to live with her sister until ‘all the craziness stopped.’ That’s how she put it. That was years ago.”

“How are they doing?”

Mark shook his head. “Haven’t spoken to them since November. Fine, then.”

The two men sat in silence for several minutes. Somewhere outside they could hear a blue jay protesting loudly. “I don’t have anybody. Not any more,” Weasel said after a while, looking up at Mark. Mark returned his gaze but didn’t say anything. “I… I don’t know if that’s better or not,” Weasel finally finished.

Mark didn’t answer him, and both men stared at the floor, alone with their thoughts.

“I remember when I used to run five miles for fun,” Parker gasped, the sweat streaming down his face. He looked at the readout on the treadmill as he cooled down after his workout. Three miles, at ten minutes a mile. Pathetic. But still better than not jogging. And he hadn’t thrown up, so there was that.

Lydia was on the treadmill next to him and she’d kept up with him effortlessly. Well, maybe not effortlessly, but she wasn’t gasping, and she wasn’t sweating as much as she was glistening. She gave him a smile, and her big white teeth were brilliant.

“It’s not like you’ve been sitting on your ass watching TV and eating Cheetos, General,” she told him. He gave her a small smile. She’d been telling him almost since they’d met that he should be a General, with all the responsibilities he had, and she liked calling him that when no one else was close enough to hear.

“Still,” he said. He glanced around. He had a four-man security detail—one man by the front door of the big gym, the only formal gym in the Blue Zone, one by the back near the locker room, one about twenty feet away trying to be inconspicuous, and one waiting in the Growler outside. She was the reason he’d started working out again, after however many years it had been. She was younger than him by five years, but looked at least ten years his junior. In her white athletic top and black yoga pants she looked simply fabulous, and he didn’t think she was wearing anything under those pants. Oof. If he ever met the man who had somehow convinced women everywhere yoga pants weren’t lingerie and were acceptable to wear in public he’d put him in for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She noticed him checking out her ass, which he did frequently. “You want to do another mile? Looks like you’ve still got some energy.”

“No, please, I surrender. You win. Let’s hit the showers, then maybe we can walk down Grand and grab a cup of coffee? I don’t have time to do much more than that today.” Coffee was too damn expensive to splurge on a cup just for himself, but he’d happily spend the money on her.

“Absolutely.” Him ending up behind her as they walked toward the locker rooms was no accident.