Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Motherfucker!” someone bellows from the truck behind her, and flame from a return round blossoms along the treeline, its glare picking out a flurry of movement in the shadow of the trees. Then nothing.

Tacoma scrambles out of Cougar 1, careful to avoid the recklessly canted driver’s door as it clangs shut behind him. “Two of you come with me! The rest stay with the trucks!”

Not turning to see who follows, he slogs into the grass, still only knee-high by the roadside. With a wave of her hand to Poteet, Koda follows, pausing to exchange a grin with her brother where he holds down the lowest two strands of barbed wire so that they can duck into the sea of waist-high purple-top that was once a cultivated field. Some stalks, grown tall, brush at her face, their deep burgundy seeds shining along their spikes like garnets dangling on golden scepters.

“Spread out.” Tacoma waves them off to either side of him. “Watch your footing. Keep your eyes on that ridge.”

Tacoma sets off through the grass, its deep green parting for him, then closing like a wake behind him. Koda strikes out a few yards to his left, Poteet to the other side. She holds her rifle high, ready to fire without aiming at their attackers’ position, but, like Tacoma, she suspects that they are already gone. They may have simply fled in the face of greater numbers and bigger guns. Or they may have abandoned their position to report to whoever stationed them here.

Which would be a troubling thought all by itself, but Manny’s flight over Offut has only confirmed what they already knew. The remnants of Ellsworth and Rapid City are not the only survivors of the uprising, nor the only armed survivors. The F-15 her cousin met in the sky over Nebraska might have gone east when he outran it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t take off from Minot.

And if it did, we’ve got a whole lot of trouble, right where we don’t need it.

Right when we don’t need it.

Tacoma tops the rise slightly ahead of Poteet and Koda. She watches as he sweeps the line of sight with the muzzle of his rifle, head up and alert for movement, then drop it to part the grass at his feet.

No one home.

Lowering her gun, she sprints the rest of the way up the side of the windbreak to join her brother. The grass along the ridge lies broken and beaten down where two men have crouched to set up a grenade launcher, its abandoned tube tossed down halfway to the narrow blacktop road blow. By the roadside twin ruts run through the grass and weeds, a partial tire pattern visible where it has been printed in dust on the asphalt.

“Shit,” Koda observes.

Tacoma glances at her sharply, one side of his mouth canting up in a crooked smile. “Oh yeah. This road’s still got enough traffic that they pull off to park. Not good. Not good at all.”

“What now, Cap?” A frown crosses Poteet’s sunburned face. “Any chance these guys are friendlies?”

“Well, they don’t seem to think we’re friendlies, and I’m gonna defer to their opinion until proven otherwise.” He shoulders his rifle and heads back down the slope. “From now on, we keep close, drive fast, and shoot first.”

*

Bright sunlight streams through the windshield, almost blinding Jackson. Squinting, he flips down the visor, but that action brings no relief. With a grumbling sigh, he turns his head to look at his Commander-in-Chief, who is currently humming a song he can’t begin to identify as the passing wind tousles her golden hair.

“Problem, Lieutenant?” Kirsten asks, not taking her shaded eyes from the deserted access road before her.

“No, Ma’am. Except….”

“Except?”

“Well…could you maybe clue me in as to where we’re going?”

“You’ll know soon enough, Lieutenant. We’re almost there.”

This statement does nothing to calm the fears of a man who has spent the last three plus hours imagining one Doctor Dakota Rivers filleting him with a butter knife and dragging what’s left over shards of broken glass. He seriously, albeit briefly, considers jerking open the door, diving out, and taking his chances with the androids, or whatever other unsavory characters make up this stretch of backwater nowhere. His reverie is disrupted by a gentle pat to the knee.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Kirsten comments, smirking as she divines his thoughts. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I, uh, think that’s supposed to be the other way around, Ma’am.”

Kirsten’s laughter is rich and surprisingly uncomplicated, and he decides he likes it, even though, in the end, the privilege of hearing it will likely cost him latrine duty for the rest of his natural life. And beyond.

A short time later, he feels the truck slow, and watches as it pulls to a stop behind a large, thick copse of trees. It’s not what he expected, but years in the military have him prepared for almost anything. “I take it, Ma’am, that you didn’t drive us all the way out here just to commune with nature.”

Kirsten laughs again as she gathers her things. “You guessed right, Lieutenant. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” She levels her sternest look at him. “Stay in the truck, if you please.”

With a sigh, he gives in to her soft-voiced command, slumping back against the seat and waiting for whatever may come.

‘Whatever’ comes sooner than he expects as he suddenly finds himself staring into a pair of android eyes. The only thing that keeps him from depressing the trigger of his weapon is the smile beneath those eyes; a smile that he has come to be acquainted with these past several hours. He blinks, shakes his head, then blinks again. The vision does not change. “M-Ma’am? Ms. President?”

“In the flesh, so to speak. You like?”

“If ‘like’ suddenly means ‘get the shit scared out of’, then yes, Ma’am, I like.”

Chuckling, Kirsten holds up a hand. “Here, take this.”

The cup of his palm suddenly holds a blob of flesh colored plastic. He looks at her inquiringly.

“Put it in your ear.”

With a bit of skepticism, he does as she asks, surprised to find the device sits easily in his ear canal.

“Good. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, but….”

Kirsten lifts a brow.

“Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but you’re like six inches away. It’d be pretty impossible not to hear you.”

“You have a point,” Kirsten replies dryly. “Hang on a second.” She disappears behind the truck. “Can you hear me now?”

“You sound like one of those old time cellphone commercials, Ma’am.”

“Should I take that as a ‘yes’, Lieutenant?”

Jackson fights the urge to snap off a salute. “Yes, Ma’am. I can hear you fine, Ma’am.”

“Good.” The android face appears in front of Jackson, taking another few years off of his life. “Now, this is what I need for you to do Lieutenant. See those trees over there?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I want you to patrol them, but stay hidden. Just beyond them is a small manufacturing plant. I have some business to attend to there. You’ll be guarding my back.”

“With all respect, Ma’am,” he protests, “wouldn’t it be easier to guard your back if I could actually see it?”

Reaching through the rolled down window, Kirsten claps Jackson’s broad shoulder. “Not this time, Lieutenant. I need to do this alone.”

“But—.”

Kirsten’s face goes stony. “No ‘buts’, Lieutenant. I’ve given you a direct order, and I expect you to obey it. Without comment, and without question.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he shoots back, “but your safety is more important than any order you could give me. I can’t—I won’t let you walk into some unknown structure alone and unprotected.”