Clara lifted up the leg of her jeans and regarded herankle. She had badly sprained it only a few weeks ago, and her leap from thethird floor of the building had only made it worse. It throbbed and it lookedlike her foot was attached to her leg by a softball.
The soldiers, having gone through all of their gear nowturned their attention to the group of survivors sitting in the circle. Thered-faced man stalked up to them and looked them over. Clara knew in her heartthat the first words out of this man's mouth weren't' going to be anythinggood.
"You are free to go," the man barked at them.
The group looked around at each other, confusion on theirface. Clara couldn't believe what the man had just said. In every apocalypticmovie she had ever watched, the military had always turned into just anotherset of enemies that survivors had to watch out for, but here was a man who wasgoing to let them go just like that.
"Can we have our weapons back?" Lou asked.
The red-faced man looked up at the sky and sucked on histeeth for a second, as if thinking. "No. I'm afraid we're going to have tokeep those. We can give you some machetes and knives, but we're going to keepthe guns. We need all the ammunition we can get."
Lou looked at the others and saw them looking back at him,waiting for him to take the lead. Clara didn't want to admit it, but he hadbecome something of a de facto leader since the loss of Zeke. She waited tohear his reaction.
Lou wiped a hand across his face, unsure of what to say."You can't just send us out there with sticks and stones."
The red-faced man laughed. "I'm not sending youanywhere, mister. The fact is those guns will be put to good use by my men. Yousee, though the military has essentially disbanded..."
"Disbanded?" Clara breathed.
"That's right, disbanded. The President, or at leastthe man that used to be President, basically told us all to go home. But wedon't want to go home. We want to fight."
The group looked at each other. Trying to figure out ifthe man was in fact crazy. "But there are thousands of those things outthere. Hundreds of thousands! How can you and these men hope to defeatthem?" Joan said.
The red-faced man looked down at her and smiled."You know. That's a good question, but I'm not going to answer it. Thiscountry is our home. I was sworn to defend this land and so were my boys. Thequestion isn't, 'How are we going to defeat them?' The question is 'Can weafford not to try?' You get me?" Various survivors nodded their assent tothe question.
"The guns you have will be put to good use. Everysingle round of ammunition we can get will be used to put down one of thosethings. That's the way this war will be one, one dead Annie at a time."The red-faced man smiled at the group. Clara felt as if she were in thepresence of either a saint or a madman; she couldn't decide which.
"Now, I'm not just kicking you out of here. If youwant to stay here and take this city back with us, you are more than welcometo. But, if you go your own way, you go without the guns. That's just the wayit is." The wind began to pick up. It ruffled the military man's salt-and-pepperhair.
He looked up at the sky and held out his hand as thefirst of the raindrops moved in. "Looks like a storm's moving in. Whydon't you guys take the evening to sleep on it? Keep yourself out of the rain.There's plenty of vehicles around here to sleep in. In the morning, we can talkabout it."
The red-faced man turned to bark some orders at his men,but Lou stopped him by asking, "What's your name?"
The man looked over his shoulder and smiled again,"Sergeant Tejada of the United States Army... whether it exists ornot." Sergeant Tejada turned around again, giving orders to his men, pointingin the distance with his arms that were like steel cables covered in brownskin.
****
Clara felt relieved. They were safe. They wereessentially without weapons, but for the time being they were safe. Of course,their time at the Coliseum had taught her just how flimsy the illusion ofsafety could be, but for now, they would catch their breath. Clara stood up andcracked her back, looking back the way they had come. One mile, maybe a mileand a half, and it had taken them all day. In the process, they had nearly diednumerous times. They had fought their way through the dead outside the movietheater, escaped the horde that had trapped them in the streets, jumped out ofa third story window, and been shot at by the military. She almost laughed athow crazy it all was. She thought about the Clara she was before the world haddied and how insane the story of her day would seem to her were she to travelback in time and tell herself what was in store for her future. The only thingthat kept her from laughing was the sight of the west bank of Portland. Therewas still an entire city to get through on the other side of the bridge.
But they had done it once already, and the west side ofthe city butted up against a set of hills that kept the population less dense.She looked at the hills rising over the city. The houses set into the sidelooked forlorn, lost. She wondered if anyone was up there and if they weresafe. Was there someone in the hills, sitting in their grand mansion, lookingdown at her, piles of canned food spread out all around them? She doubted it.But she liked to think that there was someone; it made her feel as if theyweren't the last dregs of Portland slogging through the dead, fighting theinevitable.
She watched as the sun began to set behind the hills,turning orange as it went.
