The machine gunners blankly watched the car out of sight. A rifleman thought to replace the round he had fired. Silence settled over the bridge.
5
EX-CORPORAL GARY carefully stamped out the remains of the small cooking fire and with his shoe scraped a bit of loose dirt over the embers. The skillet he cleaned by scrubbing it with a handful of grass, and then turned it upside down to thump it on the ground. Finally he ran his tongue over teeth and gums to lick away any remaining taste of the egg.
“That was the last one,” he announced.
“Pity,” Oliver said. Oliver was seated on a hillock twenty-five or thirty feet from the fire, a rifle lying in the crook of an arm. “Maybe we shouldn't have killed the hen.”
“You wanted fried chicken, remember?”
Oliver closed his eyes, dreaming. “I remember! She was a tough old bird but she was fine eating. So we were tired of eggs anyway.”
“Mention that to me this time next week.”
“Will do. Pity these farmers are so narrow-minded.”
Gary glanced down at his arm, ran his fingers along the frayed sleeve of his jacket where hastily fired buckshot had grazed him. “Yeah. No respect for the United States Army.” He hugged his arms tightly about his chest as though to ward off the creeping chill, and turned his attention to the overcast skies. Behind the thick cloud blanket the sun had not yet surmounted the low range of mountains to the east. Around them the skimpy grove of trees was silent but for their few noises. “This weather is ready to turn. We'd better be moving south.”
“These hills always snappy in the morning.”
“Snappy, he says.”
“How's the ammo?” Oliver wiped his mouth on his sleeve after emptying the contents of the tin cup down his throat. He shifted the rifle to the other arm and ran his eyes along the nearer range of hills. “Enough?”
“Plenty. The damned mountains stay cold all day long.” He stacked his utensils in the skillet and pushed them aside. “I say we get out of them and head south.”
“Willing. But we'd be safer staying around here. There were — and still may be — moonshiners in these hills the government agents never found. Did you know Daniel Boone opened up this country? Came through the Cumberland Gap and down into Kentucky; settlers followed him so fast Kentucky couldn't hold them all and they spilled over into Tennessee here.”
“Daniel Boone should see it now.”
Oliver shook his head. “He wouldn't approve.”
“Look here,” Gary persisted, “we can go down through Knoxville or Chattanooga — might be something there worth picking up. Everybody can't be bright like us and maybe they haven't thought about the warehouses, like that one in… Where was it?”
“Covington.”
“Yeah — Covington. That watchman was a crazy little dope; who the hell needs night watchmen these days with everything shot to hell anyway? Well — we should have thought of the warehouses before, and left the stores go hang. Small stuff. If they haven't found out about ’em in Knoxville or Chattanooga we can stock up where we're short.” He jerked around in pleased surprise. “Say — Fort Oglethorpe is just outside of Chattanooga! I'd sure like to get my hands on an automatic rifle.”
Oliver ducked his head to peer intently through the trees. After a long moment he relaxed and swung around to grin down at Gary. “What do you think the troops in Oglethorpe have been doing all this time?”
“Drinking Chattanooga dry for all I care. I'd like to make a stab at it. It's getting cold here.”
Oliver nodded and swung back to watch. “Can take a look if you like. No risks, though.”
“I like my hide,” Gary retorted. “I've hung onto it this far — most of it.” He gathered up his eating utensils and climbed the hill to retrieve Oliver's. Stacking them all together in a slipshod pile he walked over to where the mail truck was parked, half hidden and neatly blending with the turning foliage. He tossed the gear into the back and closed the doors.
The mail truck had been an inspiration, a fairly new olive green job that did not blatantly advertise its presence when parked off the road, and having the added advantage of heavy steel construction, construction which fitted the government's specification to the manufacturer of “armored truck.” Gary stepped-up the armored truck's mileage by adding a water-spray injector to the carburetor and pumping the tires hard beyond their rated capacity. They transferred their stock of staples and ammunition from the farm truck they had been using, and took leave of the remnants of civilization which clung to the river. The truck was not comfortable and rode hard, crawling through the hills at a snail's pace, but it offered a safety to themselves and their provisions otherwise lacking.
They had journeyed back to the river and that particular bridge twice, just twice. One visit each month.
Lieutenant MacSneary had not changed his mind during those eight weeks and on both trips the answer had been the same, with a pair of machine gunners beside him to enforce the refusal. On that first trip back, Gary and Oliver had found a dozen or so people camped ground this end of the structure, patiently prepared to wait out the quarantine. There had been a brief conversation across the length of the bridge with Oliver's ragged flags, and that was the end of it. Oliver ended it by flagging out a single word addressed to the officer, a word much loved and used by the army's rank and file. The officer stiffly turned his back.
The second and final trip to that bridge had been far different. While still some distance away they saw that the refugee camp had been abandoned; closer inspection showed the abandonment had been in haste. Three bodies sprawled out on the steel span, bodies that while still alive had foolishly attempted a dash for the barricade. The machine gunners had been faster. Oliver stepped out of the newly acquired mail truck and signaled his question, carefully avoiding the bodies with his eyes but unable to escape the stench of them. The answer was a curt no, and thereafter they refused to answer at all. Gary turned the truck around and started back.
“You should have asked them about our pay,” he said.
“Have a good idea what that answer would be.”
“Those boys ain't slow on the trigger.”
“No. I wonder what I'd do, in their place?”
When another four or five weeks had rolled by and the time arrived for the usual monthly trip, neither of them suggested the journey. With unspoken accord they thought it best to avoid the bridge. And so they remained in the hills, meeting no one, watching the woods slowly turn color with the approach of autumn and the coming of cool nights, chilly dawns. When they could, they raided an occasional isolated farm or cultivated hillside patch, taking what could be stolen on the run. The hen and her few eggs had come from one of these.
More than three months had passed since the bombing.
Gary kicked each of the truck tires with his foot, testing them, and carried a bottle of dirty water from a near-by pond to pour in the radiator. He didn't bother to check the gas, knowing it was low.
Flat on the side of the hillock, Oliver hissed against his teeth.
Gary snatched his rifle from the cab of the truck and hit the ground, rolling sideways to get away from the vehicle. He came to rest behind the trunk of a tree and looked up at Oliver. Oliver raised one finger and pointed to the west. Gary commenced a slow crawl over the ground, putting distance between himself and the ashes of the fire, circling around to the west to move completely away from camp. He waited to see who was coming.
A woman.
She walked toward them with no attempt at concealment, a very tall girl whose bare feet moved noiselessly and without effort over the ground, carrying her body with a peculiar grace. A thin girl with tanned face and blue eyes, who wore a faded cotton dress and uncombed hair. The dress had once been a shade of red or brown. Her legs and toughened feet were nearly a matching shade of brown, and sturdy despite her thinness. The girl paused a dozen yards from Oliver and stared at his rifle.
“Hello.”
Oliver nodded to her, searching behind her. “Hello. Where did you come from?”
