Partholon Read online

  But Dad would be peeved and the army might just say enough is enough and send a Draft Gang to collect him. The last time they tried that, they got their asses handed to them, so, this time, they’d come heavier. He had no doubt Fishburne would repel them, but at a much higher cost than the twelve they lost last time. And they might end up getting him, anyway. Pass the course. Do Dad proud. Besides, should have an answer from the air force by the end of May. Or June.

  Davis burst out of the bathroom yelling, “Next!” like, who else would it be? Steam followed him out and raised the temperature in the room about four degrees, which was nice. The staff turned on the boilers at 0400, which usually gave enough hot water to shower the Corp and raise the classroom temps to at least the point where you couldn’t see your breath before they shut them off again at 0800. Thank God it was spring; soon, the problem would be cooling the rooms and, since the four-hours-a-day of electricity wouldn’t do the job, everyone would end up sleeping on the Quad or under the overhangs, if it was raining.

  He closed the book and slipped past Davis, who was air-guitaring the bass line from “Smooth Criminal,” Alien Ant Farm version, “DododododoDO, doDO, Do,” and getting it wrong, of course. Man had no sense of rhythm and Collier picked it up in his mind as he closed the door. Yeah. Music from 2001, Before the World Ended.

  Shit, shower, shave, not necessarily in that order but with the special urgency three years at Fishburne had instilled and he was out in seven minutes, all three tasks accomplished to his satisfaction. He kissed the (illegal) poster tacked to the back of the door – Brooke Burke standing in water with a come hither look over her shoulder. “Brooke, Brooke,” he muttered, “come away with me.”

  “Your dreams,” Davis commented, eating an illegal corn muffin. The man ate continuously but managed to lose weight. Tapeworm.

  “Cadet or Provo today?” Collier asked.

  “Cadet.”

  Good. Collier reached for the grays, the day uniform because there was no parade scheduled, just drill, so he could be a little more informal. He dressed quickly and tying his shoes when the first bell sounded.

  “Here we go,” Davis said and they squared each other and eyed each other and Collier punched Davis in the shoulder and he ball-slapped Collier in return, causing him to gasp and hunch over. “Bastard!” he said, with his remaining breath.

  Davis grinned and placed the loaded .45 in his holster. “You betcha.”

  Collier grabbed his own pistol and they both strode onto the landing. Cadets scurrying by dodged them while saluting, some, at this late moment, running from the shower. Collier shook his head. Never make it, so they’ll end up braced later this afternoon.

  They both looked down in the Quad, still dark because sunrise had not yet climbed past the mountains surrounding Waynesboro. Captain Bock was a silhouette there, clipboard in hand, legs apart, the sleeve over his missing arm dangling, a statue, a rock. Davis and Collier squared each other one more time and waited.

  Bong! Officer of the Day rang the ship’s bell, “First call!”

  Doors slammed and the sudden uptick in mutter and scuffle and motion meant the Corp was moving, most of it, anyway. In the early morning, it was a gray mass on black, defined only by the two field torches that threw just enough light to make out figures. The gray tide flowed around the Quad, the companies finding position.

  “See ya later,” Davis said and hit him on the shoulder as he walked away. Davis, as adjutant, would stand with the command staff. Collier watched his own corner and saw that most of Alpha Company was there. Good. God help, though, anyone who was late.

  Briskly he turned and walked to the cement landing, smoothed and grooved down the middle by thousands of boots over the past 120 years, and march-walked his way down to the first floor. Cadets saluted him, saying, “Sir” and he saluted back. He reached the grass and made his way to the front of the company. Farley, his first sergeant, was already there.

  “Sir,” Farley saluted.

  “Everyone here?” Collier asked.

  “Paulie and Jones and Stick aren’t.”

  Collier snorted, “What a surprise,” and they both grinned. Collier walked back to the milling group, slapping shoulders, straightening uniforms, adjusting equipment. The boys were respectful and saluted and thanked him. “Morning, sir,” Hendricks, one of the privates said, “Did you hear from your Dad?”

  “Yep. Last night. I’ll tell y’all about it later.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Genuine gratitude, from him and others who leaned in to listen. Hearing from a dad was gold.

  “Assemble!” the officer called out and the gong sounded and Collier straightened and stiffened and marched to the head of the now formed company. Farley marched up and saluted and just grimaced, confirming those three idiots were late. Out of the corner of his eye, Collier saw Stick stumbling off the landing and falling into place. Other movement told him the last two were racing down the stairs.

  You boys just bought yourselves an afternoon of tours. “Put ’em on report,” he told Farley.

  “Ten... HUT!” Davis called out from the arch and they all hit it. The battalion commander and his staff marched to position and the sun broke the horizon somewhere beyond the brick walls, the sky turning fiery with the early morning clouds. Collier glanced up. Maybe it would be a warm day.

  3

  Made it. John stood the Zap at the top of the Key Bridge. What a pain in the ass going by Ft. Meyer. Easily added another twenty minutes to the ride, although the long hill from the Route 50 gate down to the Bridge ramp was a joy. But an out-of-the-way joy, tempered by the steep climb up the ramp itself.

  He was in the middle of the complicated intersection next to the Rosslyn Metro. A breeze blew, kind of cold, but nice against his sweat, so he stood off the seat to enjoy it. The traffic light above him swayed and pieces of odd paper and cloth rattled and moved threateningly, causing him to jerk around every few seconds; a pain-in-the-ass survival instinct, but one that kept him alive.

  There was a huge pile-up of cars here. DC had made all the streets and bridges one way out when the evacuation was in full swing, so the pile-up was mostly facing him. A given population includes enough incompetent and selfish drivers who can’t maneuver a straight line on the best of days, much less during a panic, so had no hope of negotiating the Parkway/Moore St/110/66 exits and entrances which all seemed to pipeline right here. Result? The inevitable wall of cars, some of them on top of each other, little different from 395. Bones here, bones there, everywhere a bone bone.

  He picked his way through and out the other side where it was, strangely, almost clear all the way to Georgetown. He stood behind a pickup truck and looked but there was no movement, so he made a sudden dash to his favorite wreck, a Chevrolet Caprice down on its rims and turned sideways at the crest of the bridge. He patted its hood as he peered through the busted windshield towards Georgetown, “Saved my life, bucko,” he said, as he did every day since the Hellacious Firefight, or, as it was more formally known, Meeting Metro PD for the First Time After. He spotted movement at the end of the bridge. Yep, there they were. Almost reassuring, now.

  It was what, ’bout a year After when the Caprice saved his life? Something like that. He’d been back to work for a while and everything seemed pretty quiet, so he was completely unprepared when he crossed the Key mid-span, looked up and saw a patrol car barricading the end of the bridge. Behind it were three black-leather-clad and white-helmeted MPD officers, bristling with MP5s and AR-15s, bringing their barrels down on him.

  He’d dumped the Zap and rolled behind the Caprice as they opened up, pinning him with a lead hailstorm and blasting out the car windows, tearing off the hood and all the tires. Thank God. That’s what protected him from under-car ricochets. Gang, he first thought, fuckin’ ass Gang waiting for me. Or maybe he’d thought, Raiders. It was, after all, transition time. He had the shotgun that day, so it was on. They threw enough rounds at each other to qualify for a small war.


  Fortunately, the MPD guys weren’t very good or they would have stitched John in about three minutes, especially since he had to reach over the ruined hood to fire. John, in contrast, was damn good, but fortunately for them, was using .00 which just didn’t have the range (although, right after, one officer said he got sprayed pretty good at least twice).

  John had since switched to pumpkin ball. Lesson learned.

  This is it, John had thought, going out in the proverbial blaze of glory... wonder if Collier will ever find out what happened to me, when he heard a bullhorn. A bullhorn? Intrigued, he stopped shooting and listened.

  “Metropolitan Police Department!” An amplified voice, and then something about emergency decrees and John was in violation of weapons, trespass, disorderly conduct, whathaveyou statutes. “If you don’t want to die, then throw out the gun and approach with your hands up now.”

  Yeah, right. MPD. John hadn’t seen MPD since the Event. Other than CDC thugs, he hadn’t seen anybody in uniform. “You’re full of shit!” he yelled. “You’re a buncha goddamn Gang members!” Or goddamn Raiders, something like that. “I’m the law! You surrender to me!” Like he would have taken them alive. It was just a dodge he hoped they were stupid enough to fall for.

  There was a pause. “You’re the law?” Bullhorn couldn’t hide his astonishment.

  “Yes, asshole, and you’re under arrest!” John had a good command voice, so no problems with being heard. Besides, the acoustics at the end of the bridge were great since there was no more traffic.

  Another pause. “What agency?”

  “American University Police!”

  “What?”

  John wasn’t sure if Bullhorn didn’t hear him or was just incredulous. “I said, ‘American University Police’!” yelling that with everything he had, enunciating every word so there was no misunderstanding. Jack offs.

  They started laughing, which just burned him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Special Police Officer, rent-a-cop, wannabe, security guard, call me what you usually do, fuckers. May be true for most, but not in John’s particular case. This was his retirement job. He’d been a real lawman, an agent, you hear that, you cackling bunch of hyena fucks? A door-busting, gun-toting, maggot-grabbing, ass-kickin’, hard-drinkin’, woman-lovin’, iron-fisted rampaging Viking of a lawman for twenty glorious years. He ran murderers, rapists, drug dealers, burglars and general assholes to ground, tore them up, beat them half to death, stuffed ’em, cuffed ’em, and hauled ’em to Leavenworth before the three idiots chuckling at the end of the bridge were even born.

  He really, really should just shoot them.

  “Show us a badge,” Bullhorn again, laughing.

  Bastard.

  “Don’t shoot!” he yelled, fishing into his vest.

  “We’re not going to shoot. Just stand up and show us your badge.”

  Like hell. “I’m not standing up!” he yelled and started waving his big gold Captain’s badge in their direction so they couldn’t get a bead on it, just in case they decided to become marksmen. About twenty minutes of negotiations ensued that culminated in John advancing, arms out, badge out, coat off, shotgun on ground and .357 beside it, cursing himself for a fool and convinced they would start shooting when he got within ten feet and he’d have to pull the .25 and shoot back.

  He’d lose, but he’d get a couple of them.

  They didn’t, and he didn’t. And they didn’t because they believed him when he refused to stand up – only a cop would do that. Someone pretending to be a cop would have leaped to full view, convinced the badge was holy, protective, and always fooled the stupid pigs. Boom, surprise, you can’t fool cops. Just stop trying. But he never forgave them for laughing at him.

  And for not passing the word. You’d think they’d have done so, after he’d explained what he was about. But no, there were a few more corollaries to the Hellacious Firefight before MPD finally caught on and stopped shooting at him. A little mention at shift change, fellas, would have saved everybody a lot of grief and ammunition.

  He hadn’t seen Larry, Moe, and Curly again, a shame because he wanted to bitch-slap them. They were probably dead but he wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t even know their names. MPD didn’t wear nametags anymore and, the one or two times he’d tried introductions, there was stony silence. Some super-secret government vibe here, probably having to do with the New Order. But, please, be reasonable. Make up a name. At least try to throw off John’s suspicion that they really weren’t MPD at all, but Something Else.

  What, John, what? CIA? NSA? Disney-A? He chuckled and watched the checkpoint carefully as he waved at them. Motion stopped and he saw helmets and sunglasses turn his way and then someone waved back. Okay, now he had only a fifty percent chance of being shot instead of one hundred. He pedaled down and engaged the drive and started coasting towards them.

  Usually they just waved him through onto M Street and watched as he canted onto Canal Rd and down towards GU. His back always itched at that point, anticipating a bullet would split it at any second. But, occasionally, they acted like real cops and told him stuff – some nonsense around the reservoir or some particularly weird Vandals making the rounds on Wisconsin, so watch your ass. Downright stunning and those were the occasions he made the mistake of asking names because, well, if you’re going to act normal, then he’d do something normal back. Got the silent treatment.

  Which was a lesson. They were not friends, they weren’t even compatriots. They’d just grown used to him. They were hard-eyed men who shot first, leaving bodies where they fell.

  John guessed he was a hard-eyed man, too, but that didn’t create empathy. It did create inertia. They didn’t shoot John because... well, why? He was no threat. His showing up every morning of the workweek had settled into routine.

  Besides, history militated against friendship. SPOs and cops didn’t like each other. Virginia and DC didn’t, either, and he lived in Virginia. Hell, even Before, he’d had lots of arguments with MPD because they just didn’t want to take campus crime reports, like an assault on a student or a credit card theft, especially if it happened towards shift change. And they generally dropped the ball on the ones they did take, so John ended up running the cases himself for no other reason than self-satisfaction since the DC courts never prosecuted anyone he caught anyway. MPD, hell, the whole District, was pretty incompetent back then, and he had, on a few frustrated occasions, voiced that opinion. Not that any of the present group would know that, but attitudes remained.

  Best he could hope for was respect. Prove yourself an asset in this war and even your most recalcitrant allies will give you props. And he’d seen a growing, albeit slow and grudging, acceptance, ever since the punk firefight.

  That had been a good one. He’d been walking the rear ball field, checking his stashes, when he’d heard some commotion toward the Main Quad, an acoustic 911 that, obviously, he had to check out. He’d unslung the 14, rushed up through the south complex, which gave a lot of cover, and crept along the McKinley Building until he could see.

  Three or four punks stood in front of the Hurst building. They had piled up a bunch of classroom furniture on the front stoop and were pouring gasoline on it. True punks, the mohawked, purple dreadlocked, all leather, eyes blackened, chains attached-to-everything types.

  John had moved to cover and cut loose, immediately taking out the guy with a pump shotgun and two of his pistol-waving buddies. Six shots, about two-and-a-half seconds, and all they’d got off was exactly one wild round from the fourth guy, who ran like hell. He supposed it wasn’t much of a firefight since it was all one-sided, but he was still pretty proud of it.

  MPD, stunningly, had responded, drawn by the noise. They’d looked at the bodies and looked at John and debated whether to kill him or not, further proof the checkpoint guys weren’t passing along intelligence. John had his badge out but, hey, SPO, unimpressive to these guys, so he gave them his pedigree. They’d still debated, until he pointed out there were now three fewer punks t
o deal with. That, and the slow realization they didn’t have to patrol the campus anymore, won the day. They’d swung their MP5s away, got into their cars and driven off (wonder where they were getting the gas?), but not before one patrolman gave him a wink and a box of .223. “In case anymore show up,” he’d said.

  Since then, the patrols came by from time to time to see how he was doing, tell him about more weirdness, just BS for a bit. John looked forward to those infrequent drop-bys. So many casualties, so many things gone, and, out of all that, one of the things he missed most was simple, old-fashioned, wasting time. Jawing, goofing off, goldbricking, coffee break, whatever your name for it, gone.

  Five minutes shooting the shit with MPD officers, aloof, murderous, apparently with some hidden mission, was like a cold beer on a summer afternoon. John was grateful. He repaid the kindness by showing them where the good tools were. “Have at it, boys. Better you get it before Raiders do.”

  He rolled to a stop near the kiosk and a young one, a newbie, stepped out, eyes wary, looking at John’s 14 strapped so prominently across his back. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Figures. John clucked his tongue in annoyance and looked at an older guy with sergeant stripes, familiar face, who stood idly in the shade of the kiosk. “What, you didn’t brief this guy?” The sergeant just shrugged and looked away.

  “I know you’re up on the campus,” Newbie said, smartass, “I just wanna know why.”

  “Why are you?”

  “I ain’t at the campus.”

  “No shit.”

  Newbie’s eyes narrowed and he got all tense and John smiled inwardly. They always think they’re tough. Well, John was a lot tougher than he looked, something punk-ass here was about to find out.

  The sergeant was now interested and turned his attention away from the empty buildings behind them to watch.

  “Hey,” Newbie said, “you know how dangerous it is out here?”