Private Bryant flinched when the man raised his hand tohis face. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the first bit of pain, and thenit was over. The man had pulled the duct tape off of his face with a loud rip.
"I'm sorry about this. Any last words?" the mansaid. Private Bryant hesitated. The man pulled his knife hand back, ready toplunge it into his body.
"Wait!" He didn't scream the word so much as heprojected it, making it as commanding as possible. The man had an army bearingabout him that he recognized, and the tone of voice worked.
"What?" the man asked.
"You're not out of the woods yet," PrivateBryant said.
"What are you talking about?"
Private Bryant looked around the room, making eye contactwith everyone he could. "The DVD's are only half of it. You also need todestroy the hard drives. The discs only record the last 24 hours, the harddrive saves everything, and I'm not the only soldier here who can access thesecurity cameras."
The white man looked over his shoulders and waved theothers over to the monitors. "Find that hard drive."
The group moved over to the desk, and began looking atthe smashed up console. Private Bryant felt relief. They had no idea what theywere doing.
The young girl spoke to the fat man, "Can't you findthem, Rudy? Aren't you some sort of computer expert?"
Rudy threw his hands up in the air. "I'm not thatmuch of a geek. My only real experience with this type of stuff is videogames."
The black man kicked at the console, trying to breakthings.
The blonde girl and the brunette squatted down and tookturns yanking on parts of the console to no avail.
The man with the knife sighed. "We don't have timefor this." Without warning, he jerked Private Bryant to his feet, theknife held to his throat. "What do we do?"
Private Bryant was calm. "Free my hands, and I'llshow you."
The man with the knife hesitated for a brief second, butthen he sawed the duct tape off of Bryant's wrists with the knife. PrivateBryant sank to his knees, and slid the entire console out from the wall. Heworked fast, sweat springing to his brow. He popped the console open neatlyafter removing a handful of screws with his ever-present screwdriver. Hereached into the back of the console, and pulled out a metal box, and held itup the way a doctor holds up a newborn baby for the mother to see.
The man with the knife snatched it out of his hand."Nice work, Private."
The man examined the device, threw it on the ground andcrushed it. It came open a bit and was dented, but Private Bryant knew that hisboys could still get the information off of it. "Here, let me."
He held out his hand for the knife. The man looked at himlike he was crazy, and then he took a leap of faith and handed the knife toPrivate Bryant. His heart jumped in his chest. Bryant knelt down and crackedopen the hard drive's case, pulling the disks free. Then he handed the silverdisks to the big white man and said, "This is what you need. Mess thoseup, and they'll never know."
The man crushed them in his hands, grabbed the knife fromPrivate Bryant, and drew deep furrows all over the disks. Then he slid theknife into his belt and turned to Private Bryant. "Thanks for your help.The way I see it, you just saved our lives and your own. You helped us, so nowyou're in it with us. Do you agree?"
Private Bryant shook his head.
"Good." The man held out his hand. "Thename is Zeke."
Private Bryant shook the man's hand in a firm handshake.
"This is going to sting a bit," he said.
"Huh?"
Bryant blinked his eyes, waiting for them to clear, thenhe heard the sound of duct tape and felt the man wrapping his wrists. When hisvision finally cleared, the man stood over him with the tape in his hand."Sorry about the punch, but I figured you might want to mess that face upa little more before you went to that Colonel and told him you got overrun in thebooth."
"It's alright. I was kind of expecting it."
"What are you going to tell them when they findyou?" Zeke asked.
"Men in masks came, jumped me, and destroyed all ofthe evidence."
"Good. We'll see you around..."
Zeke left the words hanging there, so he filled them in,"Private Hugh Bryant."
The man smiled. "We'll see you around, Hugh."
The group filed out of the room. The black man nodded athim, and gave him a salute. Hugh Bryant closed his eyes and took a nap.
****
When he awoke, the Colonel was there, squatting over him.The Colonel's jaw muscles pulsed with fury as Hugh told his story. He wasfurious, and for his negligence, Hugh Bryant pulled extra duty on the fences.He didn't complain. Lives were saved, including his own. Sometimes the army hadto protect itself from itself, and Hugh figured that's what he had done.
Chapter 31: On the Fence
The refugees of the Coliseum were issued bayonets. Theywere not issued the rifles to attach them to. The Major made sure of that. Whenthe sun came up, the refugees lined up outside, dry-heaving amid the stench.Rudy was in the first batch of refugees to take a shift. With the handle of thebayonet in his soft paw, he was marched out to the fence and was ordered todispatch the enemy.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
The soldier that he was talking to was mean-looking, andthe last thing he wanted to do was piss the man off. He had suffered enoughembarrassment in the last few days, but his cooperation didn't matter becausethis soldier in particular seemed to be taking the death of another soldier asa personal affront to his honor. He stepped up to Rudy, towering half a footover him. With Rudy's face in his chest, the soldier leered down at him andsaid, "Are you fucking
