Everyone One Dies in the End #7
Cindy
The days were bad. The days had hoodlums, gangers, renegade soldiers, rapists, and the occasional good Samaritan. But the nights would be worse. The nights had vampires. So she traveled in the day.
The desolate post-apocalyptic, South Carolina terrain undulated gently, but not drastically, and that flatness helped her. She could spot vehicles from a long way off, but it also hurt. Those same vehicles could see her just as easily, in the case of military vehicles, she guessed they could see her much better. They must have some type of advanced sights, right? Nor were all the military vehicles friendly. She wasn’t sure what state the Union was in, but it wasn’t good, and no one seemed to be in control.
Two mornings after her run in with the vampires, she spotted a small convoy of box-like tanks, they didn’t have any big guns, just a machine gun on top, a jeep paced the column from the front. She had been cooking breakfast just off the Route 176—hot dogs she had appropriated an abandoned mom and pop store. She studied their approach. Debating, wondering. She could go, slip into the other world and disappear, but what was the point? She couldn’t stay on the other side long, and if they hung around, waiting for the campfire’s owner to return, eating her stolen hot dogs, they’d be here when she returned, when she was at her most vulnerable. Cindy might not have know much about the military, but she knew a little about men, especially men inhabiting a world that had gone to hell in a hand basket, a world where the baby of law and order, social norms, and respect for personal space had long since been thrown out in the bathwater of a nuclear strike. She knew all that. And hell, she thought with a shrug, they’ve probably already seen me anyway. A minute later, the jeep rolled to a stop beside her.
Cindy spent a pointed moment studying first the hot dogs strung on the coat hanger over the fire, and then the officer’s—she thought of him as an officer now—face. A thousand smart-ass remarks came to mind, but she bit her tongue. Smart ass didn’t really work in this world. Not when the other guys had the big guns. She stood and squinted through the early morning sun at the man.
“Just cooking some breakfast.” Behind him, the jeep’s driver regarded her with more than a professional interest and she was glad of the fresh T-shirt and hoodie she had pulled off the rack in the store. The officer was young, probably just out of college, about the same age as Eddie. To his credit, his face remained neutral and his eyes remained above her neck.
He inhaled. “Smells good,” he offered with a smile. Cindy said nothing and smiled less. They stood for an awkward moment. The officer glanced down the column.
“Ma’am, be careful, okay? Me and my men are from the 24th Mechanized, the Buck Ninety-Seven Brigade.” He stopped, as if expecting a reaction. She didn’t have one, and he continued. “We serve the United States of America and its people. Not every unit you meet on this road shares our allegiance, and not all of them would treat a lady with the decorum that she deserves.”
She nodded. “Thanks.” She meant it.
“And ma’am,” the officer looked side to side, as if he was sharing a top secret tidbit, “we’ve heard the Soviets landed some Spetsnaz before…” he seemed at a loss for words, and Cindy finished the thought. “You mean before they nuked the ever loving shit out of us?” He nodded, not meeting her eyes. “Yeah, before everything escalated.”
They were the wrong words. Cindy didn’t mind the truth, she might not like it, but she sure as hell preferred it to sugar-coated, politico-speak, especially when it came to this war, and what it had done to her love, her life. The words were a match on gasoline.
“Escalated?” She gestured to the barren landscape, the leaves dead on the trees, grass prematurely brown, fires burning in the distance, smoke-black clouds drifting in the sky. “You call this escalated, G.I. Joe? I call this devastated.”
She pointed at the ground. “Devastated land.” She pointed at the smoke on the horizon, “Devastated cities.” She pointed at herself. “Devastated lives. She took a step closer, and poked the soldier in the chest, surprised when his eyes widened in fear. “Yeah, the shit has really hit the fan, if that’s what you mean by escalated, but I guess none of this would have ever happened if we hadn’t turned on the fan to start with, huh, soldier boy?”
He actually seemed hurt. The look surprised her. “I didn’t start the war,” he answered with more control than his face showed. “Soldiers never start the war. You want to blame someone you go to Washington, find the corpses in the White House, and blame them.” He turned and walked to the jeep, swinging into the passenger seat without a word.
“Hey!” She surprised herself, surprised she called out, surprised she felt regret. In all honesty, she wasn’t the regret-feeling type. He turned, still wordless.
“Where are you going?"
He continued to stare without expression. She thought he wouldn’t speak, but he did. “Why?”
She looked down, stirring the roadside dirt with the toe of the work boots found in a Dollar General a week before, before the vampires. She hated anger, anger was the rawest of feelings, a dredge in the sea of emotions, and it was also the least focused. She wasn’t angry with this man, she wasn’t even angry with this war. In fact, she wasn’t even angry. She was hurt, in pain, and consumed with worry. She fished in her jeans pocket and freed the creased photograph. In it a young man smiled at the camera, sandy hair, blue eyes, genuine smile, and behind him was a bell, but not just any bell, it was the Liberty Bell.
She held out the picture. The officer didn’t move. “Please,” she muttered. He sighed, reached out, and pulled the picture from her hand. It took a few seconds, but when he spoke again, his voice had softened. “Who is it?”
Finally the tears came, hot and defiant. She didn’t wipe them, she didn’t hide them. “He’s everything.”
The officer stared at the picture a moment longer and then he spoke. “Get in. We’ll take you are far as Charlotte.”
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