“Help yourself,” I said. “Make a good case.”
“Oh, I’m using my lawyer mode. I’ll tangle them up so tight they’ll never wriggle loose.”
“Glad you’re on my side,” I said.
“You should be. I’m a rock star.”
I said, “Send all that to my morphon. Thank you both.”
As we cruised through Logan, armed guards began to appear, wearing khaki pants and brown shirts, like uniforms. They stood on every other street corner, eagle-eyed, wearing comms, and murmuring into headsets as we passed. No one tried to stop us. One woman ticked two fingers at Jagger, like a salute. I wondered if she and he had gotten together on his previous visit. Then I decided I didn’t need to know. We were expected, that was the main thing.
Jagger pulled out and took point, turning down a side road, out of town, and onto a new road with an actual street sign. It said Hatfield Road. On it, we passed Hatfield Apartments, Hatfield Laundry, Hatfield Spa, Hatfield Diner, and Logan County Coal Yard which looked well supplied. Then a stand of timber, still green enough to be tall and ready to be cut and lumbered for housing, the Hatfield Wood Mill, and a big pond that hadn’t been there before the war.
A tributary had been dammed and a small coal and hydro plant had been built to back up the solar, wind, and battery system of Logan’s old grid.
Devil Anse had built himself a small empire.
We came to a crossroads with nondescript buildings, and Jagger slowed to a crawl. Hatfield Pawn was doing a bustling business. The building beside it was unremarkable until I spotted the mostly hidden sign proclaiming it was HQ of the Logan Wildcats Militia. Across the intersection from it was a gate and a sign proclaiming Devil Anse Scrap and Junkyard. Onthe other corner was a stone mansion behind a high stone wall. Had to be Anse’s house.
Jagger pulled into the HQ and stopped. Got off his bike. Met my eyes.
I had no idea what he was trying to convey, but I canted my head a millimeter or two.
The sun was setting as Amos, Cupcake, Jacopo, and Mateo pulled into formation behind us. Mina’s bike moseyed silently down the road, her camo shielding flickering into place. Reconnoitering.
“Don’t shoot, stab, cut, or blow up anyone, Mina,” I said into comms.
“Spoil sport,” she said back.
“Jacopo, check out the building,” Jagger said. The rest of us waited with bikes rumbling softly. We weren’t powering down if we had to run.
I grinned slightly as the door opened and Anse Hatfield stared at us. His red-rimmed eyes squinted against the dawn. His shirt was wrinkled and soiled as if he hadn’t changed in days. I was sure he hadn’t slept. He waved us inside, leaving the door wide.
Jacopo entered, his hands on his weapons.
The cats followed, Spy sending me a burst of excitement that meant she was having fun and hoped there was prey here too like at the diner. I received a burst of images from her, coupled with a sad emotion that said there was no protein here to chase.
A moment later, Jacopo returned, weapons still holstered. He held the door open, telling us it was safe to enter, his head moving back and forth, keeping everyone and everything in sight.
Mateo’s Quadro carved a circle in the gravel and backed up against the building. He aimed his two weaponed arms alongthe crossroads. Cupcake took directions from him and moved her laden quad out of the way of his weapons and powered down. She climbed in the back of her vehicle and removed the ghillie-tech tarp from the mounted, Vietnam-era-style M 45, a .50 caliber machine gun, affectionately called a Meatchopper by military types. Four “tombstone cans” of belt-fed ammo were at her feet. Her sequins glowed red in the dawn.
When the two were in place, we powered down. The protocols weren’t anything we had talked about, simply the lessons learned in war and living.Trust no one. Verify everything. Be ready to run.
Amos followed Jagger and me, taking our six. We stopped inside, on either side of the door as it swung shut.
The entry room took up the entire front half of the building. It was part relaxing-drinking area, part meeting room, with a bar along the side wall and a podium on a dais at the back between two cracked-open doors. One door was marked Weapons, the other Workout Room, lights off in both. The bar room was empty except for Anse and his wife Martha who were sitting at a round table and two well-armed, uniformed guards sitting at the far side of the bar. The man and woman were dressed in outdated US military green-camo, and each had a sergeant’s three-bar chevron, worn point down and surrounded by what could have been intended to be water droplets.
There were two containers of take-out food from Anse’s Diner on the table. The stuffed potatoes were dry and cracked as if they had sat in the open for hours, untouched.
Anse and his wife were huddled together. The couple had suffered in the hours it took us to get here. They were shriveled, wan, worn to the bone, as though all life had been sucked out of them. Martha raised her head and met my eyes, hers full of hope and fear and horror. Anse sat up straight, remembering who he was, and what he had to represent to keep his people safe. It wasthe look of a wartime military man, one who thought he had it all together finally, and then it came tumbling down around him. Hanging on by his fingertips as a chasm yawned below.
Jagger and I settled around the table. Amos checked out the building again, a more thorough inspection. Jacopo took a shooting position at the back corner. No one spoke. We waited. When I decided it had been long enough, I ripped open the Velcro seal, pulled out two syringes of antibiotics, and placed them on the table in front of the couple. The implication was that the syringes were a loss leader. A freebie in exchange for future favors. Or just free. “One dose today. One dose tomorrow, twenty-four hours apart.”
Tears welled in Martha’s eyes. “Thank you,” she managed.
Anse snapped his fingers, and the man jerked upright and strode over. “Please see that Joey has the first syringe administered immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, sharply. He all but ran out the door.
