Savages by James Cook Page B

Justin Schmidt, formerly of Delta Squad. I had met him back in North Carolina in the same abandoned textile mill where I had met Ethan Thompson. He was sufficiently tech savvy he had been selected and transferred to a mobile task group assigned to the Phoenix Initiative. In exchange for his services, his wife and three-year-old child had been transferred from Fort Bragg to Colorado Springs. I remembered the day he left. I remembered the hoarseness in his voice. I remembered everyone telling him he was doing the right thing for his family and wishing him luck. I hoped he was still alive, wherever he was.
    “I’m getting tired of this shit,” Holland said. “Tired of losing my friends. We’re down to seven now.”
    Cole patted him on the shoulder. He did not offer words of comfort. They were not necessary. Everyone knew what everyone else was thinking and feeling. No use wasting his breath on the obvious.
    “He didn’t leave a will,” Thompson went on, “so LT asked me if he ever said how he wanted his remains handled. Buried, cremated, whatever. Anybody know?”
    “Cremated,” Cormier said. “We talked about it once over drinks.”
    I looked at Cormier. He was my age, in his very early thirties, one of those who enlisted after the Outbreak. He was five-foot-ten, which put him at two inches shorter than me. Dark hair, brown eyes, olive skin, the strong build of a former football player. He did not talk much, but he fought well and pulled his weight.
    “Okay,” Thompson said. “Good enough for me.”
    We finished eating and went our separate ways. At 1800, Gabe and I made our way back to the headquarters building. Wally had arranged for transport back to Hollow Rock in another Bradley. There were infected along the way, but not as many as before. Starve them out long enough, and they set off for fleshier pastures. The guardsmen on horseback conducting regular extermination raids didn’t hurt either.
    Allison was not home when I got there. Neither were Art or his kids. A note stuck to the corkboard in the dining room said they had decided to stay with a family on the west side of town. A lot of small-time farmers over there. Probably signed on as laborers. There were worse jobs.
    I bathed, ate some dried chicken and cold flatbread that was just next door to stale, and went to bed.
     
    *****
     
    After Fuller’s memorial service, I spent the next few days seeing Allison in small doses and running my business. Caleb Hicks, as expected, leapt at the opportunity to join us on the mission. The guys in Delta Squad threw him a muted celebration for making sergeant, which I attended. After everyone finished their last drink and went back to the VFW hall for the night, Caleb asked if he could come over to my place and talk. I agreed, and off we went.
    Allison was still at the clinic, so I poured us a couple of nips of the increasingly rare pre-Outbreak stuff. We sat down in the living room, the dead television staring at us, its blank black screen reflecting the light from a pair of oil lanterns. Why I had not yet removed the TV I did not know. Laziness, maybe. Or maybe I still had enough pre-Outbreak sensibility the living room would feel empty without it.
    “Miranda’s going to be pissed,” Caleb said as we sat down. I took the recliner, and he sat down on the sofa. “She gets me back, thinks I’m not going anywhere, and now I’m leaving after all.”
    “Start with the promotion,” I said. “It’ll soften the blow.”
    “She’s gonna be pissed at you too, you know. Gabe as well. Leaving her to run the store by herself ain’t gonna go over too good.”
    I downed a bit of Kentucky’s finest. “Yeah. The thought occurred.”
    “So what’s your plan?”
    “We’ll have to hire somebody. Been meaning to anyway. I ask too much of Miranda and I’m starting to develop a conscience about it.”
    “You have a conscience?”
    “Allegedly. Christ, man, I have no idea who to hire. Maybe I should post a help