A Feast for the Living
When the storm of battle had passed and silence settled over the approach road, the trailer doors swung open and every feeling that had been held in check came flooding out at once.
Wolf burst out first. Gray fur streaming, he shot toward me like a bolt, planted his forepaws against my chest as if to throw his arms around me, and whimpered.
Dave's mother, Eleanor, ran to her son and patted him down from head to toe.
"Are you all right? You're not hurt anywhere?"
Frank's wife, Sarah, buried herself in her husband's arms and wept with relief.
Mike and Gunner watched it all with quiet, satisfied smiles. I walked over to Gunner and held out my hand.
"Gunner. You're jjin."
"Jjin?"
"Haha. Korean for the genuine article. The real deal."
I shook his hand and meant the praise. He shrugged and went on.
"You're the real deal yourself. Unbelievable. But how the hell do you shoot like that with no red dot — no optic at?"
"I served in the Korean military. Figured out that iron sights actually work better if you keep both eyes open, and it stuck. Habit's been with me ever since."
"Figures."
Off to one side, Cody was showing Chloe the graze a bullet had left on his arm. She didn't so much as flinch. She drew a bottle of saline from her medic bag first.
"It's all right, Cody. Let me check for fragments before anything else."
With practiced hands she irrigated the wound, picked out the debris with a pair of fine tweezers, laid on antibiotic ointment, and packed the dressing down tight. Her composure settled something in all of us.
We spent a while like that, easing each other down, until I spoke up to the room.
"All right. Let's get this cleaned up on the double and eat."
At that, Eleanor and the other women headed into the farmhouse to start on dinner. I turned to the rest.
"Cody, you and Dave get those hunks of scrap off the approach road. Move them into the front and back yards."
"Jake, Frank, Gunner — bury the bodies. Mike, I'd like you on watch at the water tower."
Jake brought the Skid Loader around and dropped down an old dirt track behind the farmhouse, half swallowed by weeds, that ran straight off the road embankment and into the land below. It occurred to me we might put that path to good use.
"Don't gather the bodies. Bury each one where he fell. Leaves less of a trace."
Watching everyone move as one, I realized we were no longer just a band of survivors. We were a single, well-drilled unit that had learned how to stay alive in this hell of a world.
While the others were busy with their tasks, Gunner came toward me with a hard look on his face. He glanced around once, then dropped his voice.
"Boss. I found something on the bodies. Same thing, over and over."
"Same thing?"
"Yeah. Tattoos."
He pulled off his gloves and went on.
"Not all of them. About a third. Same mark. Placement and design vary — forearm, nape of the neck — but the meaning's identical. The number thirteen."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Can't say for certain. But there's a rumor I used to hear out on the road."
"MS-13. Mara Salvatrucha. Started in El Salvador. Most brutal criminal organization in the United States, and that's not a story I picked up lightly."
He jerked his chin toward where the bodies had gone down.
"Whether these guys were the real thing or some local outfit playing dress-up, I couldn't tell you."
Gangs turning into raiders was natural enough — they had existed even in peacetime. But the disaster had driven the criminal organizations out of the cities, and that was a different kind of danger altogether. Somewhere in that exodus, our farm had become a target. One thing was certain: being out in the middle of nowhere did not mean we were safe.
I climbed into the trailer and came back out with the three remaining tripwire kits and a spare coil of wire, then headed for the mouth of the approach road where it left the highway.
Night watch had its limits. The human eye was easily fooled in the dark, and keeping sentries up until dawn was no small thing. I set the shotgun traps deep in the grass on either side of the road, hidden so they wouldn't catch the eye, and ran the wire across.
Two would probably be enough.
The thought crossed my mind. I shook it off.
No. One of them could fail to fire.
I set all three. From now on, any uninvited guest coming up this road would announce himself with a hell of a bang.
When the cleanup was done we gathered again in the farmhouse living room. Nobody called for it, but an after-action report started up on its own, simple and to the point. Gunner spoke first.
"Enemy, twenty-six. All KIA. Disposal complete."
"Mm."
"Captured weapons, rough count — seventeen automatic rifles, six submachine guns, three shotguns, seven pistols. Ammunition, ballpark, a good four thousand rounds."
"..."
"Ah. And one M110A2 turned up. Semi-auto sniper. Looked like it had Mike's name on it. Haha."
"Well now. That'll do nicely."
A faint smile crossed Mike's face as he answered. Gunner looked around.
"Anything else come out of it?"
"Found something interesting, actually."
Mike let it hang a beat.
"The F-550. Under the rear seat — one Milkor M32 grenade launcher and twenty-four rounds."
The room went still with surprise. The M32 was a revolver-style launcher, six grenades in the cylinder, and it could put them all out in a hurry. Gunner looked at me.
"Really glad we kept that truck."
The mood in the room had climbed a notch by the time Dave took over with the vehicle report, flipping through his notebook.
"What we can use right now — one old International Durastar tanker, three thousand gallons, and one Ford F-550 that's still in one piece. Both diesel."
He turned a page.
"Of the rest, the Dodge Ram and the Chevy Silverado will still run, but they took a beating in the fight. They'll need a serious rebuild. Everything else is parts. Those are gone."
The rest of the haul was nothing to sneeze at, but what set my blood up was that three-thousand-gallon tanker. Dave was thinking the same thing.
"No more lugging those five-gallon jerrycans around!"
Frank piled on.
"Chan can finally pull all those heavy drums out of the trailer. Man, that feels good."
"No need to unload what we worked so hard to pack. Haha."
We were still going back and forth over the spoils when Sarah appeared in the dining room doorway and called us in.
"Everyone — dinner's on the table. Come on in."
The men dusted off their hands and filed toward the dining room, one after another.
"You still need to wash your hands."
At Sarah's scolding, a strange little procession formed at the bathroom door. Nobody's smile had gone anywhere.
And when we all sat down and saw what had been laid out, nobody had a word.
The table looked like Thanksgiving. A great golden turkey from the oven, roast beef, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes still sending up steam.
Dave broke first.
"Good lord... Mother, what is all this?"
Even Gunner couldn't quite keep the surprise off that blunt face of his.
"I can't even remember the last time I saw a spread like this."
Frank wasn't about to be outdone.
"Whoa. You ladies really outdid yourselves today."
We sat there waiting for the meal to begin when Eleanor spoke, quiet and even.
"Now, everyone... let us pray."
Gunner's eyes flicked to me on reflex. An awkward silence hung for a beat. Then Mike eased it open.
"Heh heh. On a day like this, even a man who doesn't believe in God ought to get on his knees and give thanks."
I was hardly a religious man myself, but I found I couldn't refuse Dave's mother. We took the hands of the people beside us, a little awkwardly, and bowed our heads. Eleanor's calm, gentle voice filled the dining room.
Lord, we thank You for watching over us this day.
Grant peace to the souls of those who have gone before us, and to those of us who remain... give us the courage and the wisdom to face tomorrow.
Amen.
"Amen."
Everyone in the dining room echoed it, low and together, like a chorus. Liam and Adam, starving, were reaching for their forks when Eleanor stopped them, gentle but firm.
"Just a moment, children."
She looked at me at the head of the table and smiled.
"Chan, you're our leader — the head of this household, for all intents and purposes. You should say a few words."
Every pair of eyes came around. I hesitated, then lifted my glass.
"To making it through."
I let that sit, then added the rest.
"All right. Let's eat."
The words were barely out before forks and knives came up as if they'd been waiting for a starter's pistol. A feast like this, after so long. The dining room filled with life in a hurry.
"Sarah. This turkey — how did you even cook this? Crisp on the outside, juicy in the middle. That's art."
Dave's praise brought Frank up like a rooster.
"Of course it is. My wife's cooking is no joke. You thought only your mother's food was any good?"
Mike carved his roast beef in silence, then spoke low to Jake beside him.
"Hey. I saw you shooting earlier. You were good. Didn't flinch."
"My father didn't raise Cody and me as just farmers. We completed the full AR-15 course through the CMP — the Civilian Marksmanship Program. Three hundred yards on a fixed target is no problem."
Raven moved around the children, filling plates, every inch the mother.
"Chloe, Adam, slow down and eat properly."
I turned to Mike beside me and asked quietly.
"How did things go with your son?"
"Ah. Got through on messenger."
Relief sat plain on his face.
"Kid's sharp. I told him coming all the way to Tempe was too dangerous, and he said he'd come to the Arizona–California line himself. So I'll need to head out tomorrow morning to meet him."
Gunner, sitting across from him, cut in.
"Mike. Before you leave tomorrow, I'll pull the CB radio out of my minivan and mount it in yours."
"Heh heh. You don't have to go that far. I'll be fine."
Mike tried to wave it off. Gunner didn't budge.
"No. Cell phones aren't something you can trust anymore. If you're moving alone, you at least need to be able to hear what other people on the road are saying. Take it."
I backed him.
"Gunner's right. You should do it that way."
The meal was winding down when Jake, who had left the table first, shouted from the living room.
"Whoa! TV's connected!"
He was fiddling with the satellite receiver.
"Picture's not great, but it's watchable."
We all drifted into the living room, claiming the sofa and spots on the floor, and for the first time in a long while we sat down to watch television. Every channel we turned to was the same — news of the Great Winter, and nothing but grim reports.
Jake was flipping without much thought when Mike sat up hard.
"Wait. Stop there!"
The screen had split between the Texas Lone Star and the Stars and Stripes, and the anchor's voice came through tight and grave.
The picture was grainy, but you could see it well enough: two armies facing each other, muzzles trained, neither side blinking.
The picture cut to file footage of a carrier cutting across the Pacific, then to a column of armored vehicles and tanks rolling without end down a desert highway. Mike watched it with his face set, and spoke more to himself than to any of us.
"Looks like... I should leave even earlier tomorrow."