ROUTE 40
FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
The buses painted a long line of yellow through the gray of the predawn morning. Dez, Trout, and Sam sat in a huddle in the front of the lead bus. They passed a few cars, but they were all driving too fast. Panic speed, thought Trout. A UPS truck lay on its side at a crossroads and several figures were hunkered down around a ragged red thing that twitched even as it was consumed. Off in the distance, on the far side of a massive cornfield, a farmhouse burned, flickering its souls to the winds.
They found an armoured personnel carrier standing alone and empty on the shoulder of the road. Sam and the remaining members of the Boy Scouts got out to check it. Dez went with them and Trout, weak and trembling, stood in the open doorway of the bus. There was no blood on the APC, no scattering of shell casings, nothing to indicate a battle. However, it was completely empty. No crew, no bodies, no traces of how it came to be abandoned there. Boxer, Shortstop, and Gypsy came back with armloads of ammunition and
extra guns. Sam tottered back carrying a heavy metal case of fragmentation grenades.
They stripped the APC of everything of use, and all of it done in a hasty silence. Then they piled back into the buses and the convoy began rolling.
The landscape that whipped by seemed murky and deserted to Trout, though his gut told him otherwise. Twice he saw figures in the woods, pale and silent, watching the buses as they passed.
Inside the bus things quieted down. Many of the children were asleep, dragged into troubled dreams by shock and exhaustion. Others sat and watched the forest with the fixity of attention of a bunch of plastic mannequins. Dez followed the line of Trout’s stare and took his hand to give it a gentle squeeze.
Sam sat nearby thumbing bullets into a stack of empty magazines. His eyes were shuttered windows.
Jenny DeGroot came and squatted down in the aisle. She had somehow conjured hot coffee. “It’s instant,” she apologized, handing out steaming Styrofoam cups.
Trout took his with a greedy sigh. “I don’t care if it’s boiled gutter water.”
He burned his tongue on the first sip, didn’t care, blew on the surface and took another sip.
Sam Imura sat with his head cradled between his palms, eyes unfocused as he stared into his own thoughts.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” said Trout.
“Moonshiner,” murmured Sam, nodding his thanks.
“What was his real name?” asked Dez.
“Staff Sergeant Bud Hollister. Good ol’ boy from Alabama.”
Dez nodded. “He had biker tats. He used to ride?”
A memory put a faint smile on Sam’s hard mouth. “He rode with the Outlaws before he moved from ’Bama.”
“Rough boys,” said Dez.
“Very. He rolled out with them when he was sixteen lying about being nineteen. He was with them until just before his eighteenth birthday, then got arrested for some petty stuff. Judge offered him a choice of jail or enlistment. Not that he stopped kicking ass and taking names as a soldier. Running joke was that he had Velcro on his stripes because he kept losing them.”
Trout cleared his throat and cut a look at Dez. “Lots of that going around.”
“Bite me,” muttered Dez. “You can live small and boring or you can go and tear a piece off for yourself.”
Sam grinned. “You and Moonshiner would have gotten along fine.”
“He wasn’t half bad-looking.”
“Hey, I’m sitting right here you know,” Trout reminded her.
Dez ignored him. She held out her cup. “To Bud ‘Moonshiner’ Hollister. A true American ass-kicker.”
“And a good man,” added Sam, touching his cup. Trout did the same and they drank in silence for a while.
“After we get to Asheville,” asked Trout, “what will you do? Stay there or go back?”
“Back is a relative term. I’m not part of the regular army, so I don’t have to report back. I’ll stay in touch with Scott Blair and if he needs me to do anything special, something that could help, then I’ll do that.”