One Year After

CHAPTER TEN

He sat in the town hall for most of the day, refusing to discuss anything of what happened in Asheville or during their earlier flight. Billy, however, had eagerly shared what he had seen, and the entire town knew. Reactions were mixed. Some were furious over the harassment of their flight, but many shrugged off the fate that had come down on the reivers.

John requested a town council meeting for noon, and behind closed doors, he reviewed what happened both in the air over the reivers’ camp and in his subsequent meeting with Dale.

“I have a confession to make now,” he finally announced. “While being held by the reivers, I struck an informal truce. No killing raids. Neither of us can fully control everyone when it comes to stealing some pigs and chickens and running stills up in the mountains, but their leader—his name is Forrest Burnett, ex-military, wounded vet who fought in Afghanistan—struck me as an honorable man. We shook hands to just back things off between us.”

“I know Forrest,” Ed interjected. “Lived up in Burnsville. A good kid. One of my cousins married into the Burnett family, so I had some dealings with them. Heard he volunteered for the army right after 9/11. Got shot up real bad in Iraq, or maybe it was… Afghanistan… anyhow, one of those places. Came back a bit messed up. I mean, his wounds—an arm and an eye—would mess up anyone, actually. Folks said it was that posttrauma thing. Couple of brushes with the law after he got back, but cops up there understood where he was coming from and tried to keep it light on him. So he’s running the reivers?”

“It’s what he claims,” John said.

“A question, John,” Reverend Black interjected. “When you got back, why didn’t you just tell us?”

“My mistake. I realize now I should have been up front. Given that the Stepp family lost several in skirmishes with them, I knew that saying I had negotiated something of a truce wouldn’t fly well with folks living over in the North Fork. Some might have seen it as me trading off for my own freedom. I was planning to go up there personally, talk to the families one-on-one, and smooth things over before going public. Things just got ahead of me.”

“Hell, John,” Maury interjected, “when you’re a prisoner like that, anything is pretty well fair game as a promise to get you out as long as you don’t compromise the military code. We know that.”

“Forrest had promised that they were going to decamp and head north, which obviously he did not do. As we know, the Stepps did launch a vengeance raid over the weekend and walked straight into an ambush, and the reivers let them off with one man slightly wounded. Even the Stepps admitted the whole crew could have been wiped out but were let off. Maybe I screwed up by not going up there sooner. I’m sorry.” John shrugged and looked out the window, no one speaking for a moment.

“So you figured on letting things settle down with these reivers,” Reverend Black interjected to break the embarrassed tension, “and then go public, is that it? We stay on our side of the mountain, they stay on their side?”

John looked back over his shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief with the nods of agreement. More than once in the previous two years, he had held information back at times until he felt the timing was right. This had been a tough one, though. The reivers were viewed as outlaws in the old, literal sense of the word—that they were outside the law and thus fair game.

Ed, who had until this morning been the most passionate about confronting the reivers or any other raiders without remorse or mercy, had now changed his tune completely upon learning that a kin through marriage, a vet, was running the outfit. He spoke for several minutes of old friends he knew on the north side of the mountain—that they were decent, hardworking folks and perhaps the last year had been a tragic misunderstanding that could have been solved by talk rather than raid and counterraid.

“So what are you suggesting we do?” Reverend Black asked, looking to John and then Ed.

“I’m waiting for that right now,” John replied. “I set up a signal with Forrest if either of us needed to parley. That was the three American flags I asked Ed to raise this morning down at the old auto dealership, and I’m waiting for a response. I hope to God he is okay and he does respond and not believe that we had anything to do with that attack. If he’s dead and one of his hotheads takes over, and there were more than a few of them, we are in for a bad summer of raids. Even if he is alive and decides to fight rather than talk, it is going to be a bitter summer along the mountain slope. We’re going to have to mobilize up a fair portion of our trained personnel for full-time border guard duty who should be working in the fields and rebuilding things instead. But the position I know they observed us from, Craggy Gap, there is now a squad of troops from Asheville up there now. So I don’t know if he got the signal or not—or the one I dropped from the plane.”

“Why did they deploy troops up there?” Maury asked.

He had not really thought about that up to this moment. Did Fredericks known more than he’d let on about what had happened between John and Burnett and for the time being was cutting communications between the two? Was there a plot within a plot on this one?

“I have no idea,” John replied. “Perhaps they saw some of the reivers posted up there and went for it.” He looked around at the group, which remained silent for several minutes.

Finally, it was Maury who spoke up. “Let’s just keep it in here for now. There are a lot of conflicting issues to think about with this. Folks are still not settled on the draft, John, though most assume you are taking the commission to help out at least half the families, and there is a lot of gratitude for that. Regarding the reivers, everyone knows about what happened, and everyone is assuming a vengeance raid is coming. What is your suggestion?”

“For right now, we put all our reaction squads on full standby and move one up to near the reservoir to help keep an eye on the Stepps and their property. Other two squads here. Rest of our formations at the college, here in town, and in Swannanoa on notice for immediate mobilization. If I was Burnett, saw our plane, saw the troops up now at Craggy, I’d assume that we had shafted them over and it’s time for payback. I just pray that he sees our signal and asks for a parley first.” He looked around the room, and there were nods of agreement. “Okay, let’s get moving on this. I’m heading down to the old Ford agency. You can call me at the hangar, which is just a few yards away.”

He went out to the Edsel, Makala insisting that she drive, and once the doors were closed, the tension that had been between them since the dinner meeting with Fredericks let go. John sat silently as she roundly cursed Fredericks, John’s decision to accept a commission, his foolishness for going into a combat area in a plane not yet fully tested out, and finally back to the point that it seemed like he was going through with the commission. There were less-than-veiled implications that she thought that the concussion really had addled his thinking.

They were parked by the flagpole for a good half hour before she was finished with the chewing out. He had learned that at such moments, silence was best until she was finished.

He didn’t get time to reply, as Billy came running down from the hangar shouting there was a call from the town hall. John actually felt relief that he was getting out of the Edsel, and then he followed Billy up to the hangar and came back less than a minute later.

“Makala, would you mind driving me up to the reservoir?”

“What?”

“There’s two men there, sent by the reivers. Forrest Burnett survived the attack and wants to meet.”

“And you are crazy enough to go personally up to meet him?”

He leaned across the seat and kissed her on the cheek, a gesture that she did not respond to. “Am I supposed to send someone else in my place?”

She gave him a sidelong glance and then continued to stare straight ahead even as she started the car. “They damn near busted your skull, you still have a concussion, and you almost got shot by them this morning and nearly shot again by those stupid pilots. How in the hell do you think I’m supposed to react, John Matherson?”

He forced a smile. “Just saying you love me would be sufficient for now. We can argue about the rest later.”

“You can be a manipulative bastard at times,” she snapped. With tires squealing, she turned on to State Street, heading west, and a moment later, her hand slipped into his.

John stopped at the border watch station, which was positioned at the face of the reservoir dam. The two young guards gestured up the path.

“They came out about thirty minutes ago from right there. One had a white flag; the other handed me this, sir.”

The young man, just a few years earlier a freshman in one of John’s history classes, handed him the message streamer he had tossed out of the plane. Just below his scribbled message was a one-line reply: “Meet today, now. Otherwise, all bets are off. Forrest.”

“Anything else?”

“They backed off. I tell you, sir, I feel like I’m in a crosshairs if I stick my head back up, and so are you.”

John was glad he had convinced Makala to wait back with the car and had told the reaction forces to stay there, as well.

“You did good, son.” John took the streamer, waved it above the top of the sandbagged watch station, and then just stood up.

“Sir? They can drop you. I swear they’ve got us scoped in.”

John tried to smile, stepped out the back of the bunker, remaining upright, and started to walk up along the west shore of the lake along the old maintenance road. Barely out of sight of the bunker, he heard a rustling, and two young men—lean, tough looking, one cradling an M4, the other a deer rifle with a high-powered scope—came out from hiding and wordlessly pointed for him to continue up the road. They walked thus for a half a mile or so, passing the north shore of the lake, the road turning, getting steeper.

“If you guys are proposing I walk all the way back to your territory, I hate to say it, but it’s not going to work. My head is killing me, and I just don’t have the wind I once had.”

They didn’t speak, just gesturing for him to continue on.

Have I just made myself a prisoner again? he wondered. For that matter, the two could have been a couple of survivors who had gone rogue and decided to kill for vengeance, and he had just walked into their trap. Burnett had most likely been killed in the raid, anyhow. If so, he truly felt a fool. Makala was right; of late, he was taking too many risks, and he wondered why he had lost an earlier sense of instinctive caution.

And then he reached a bend in the trail and stopped dead.

It was a caravan of half a dozen four-wheel-drive vehicles, all of them painted in camo pattern. How they had managed to negotiate the long-neglected fire road was beyond him. As he approached the lead vehicle, he saw Forrest sitting in the front seat, face ghostly white.

“Forrest?”

“Yeah, Matherson. I don’t have time to bullshit around. I need a favor, a big favor.”

“What is it?”

“Take a look in the beds of these trucks.”

John nodded and realized he didn’t need to look; he could hear them—children crying, the moaning of people in pain, the all-so-familiar sounds of this world they lived in.

John looked into the bed of the truck that Burnett was in. Half a dozen kids were crammed into it, all of them wrapped with bloody bandages. Several were sobbing, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes. A boy of about twelve or so, yet another victim of war, just gazed at John. He was cradling a toddler, and the way the little girl hung limp in his arms, John could see that the child was dead. Blood was dripping off the open tailgate of the truck.

John did not even bother to go look at the other trucks. He pulled open the passenger door.

“Move over, Forrest.”

“Yeah, but give me a second. I got one in the gut this time, damn it.”

John grabbed hold of him and saw the bloody bandage—thank God on his left side; at least his liver was intact—and helped him ease over. He looked at the driver, who was gazing at him coldly.

“Drive, damn it!”

“Where?”

“Into town, you idiot. The hospital. Now drive!”

The road was rough, rubble strewn, in places nearly washed out, the truck swaying and rattling, and John winced with each bounce, the kids in the back crying in anguish. They finally reached the level stretch of the maintenance road and began to speed up, and then the thoughts struck him. “Slow down here. Let me get out!”

“Why?” Burnett gasped.

“You want to get shot again? I got a reaction squad down there. We weren’t sure of things. I’ll signal for you when you can start up again.”

“You playing me straight, Matherson?”

“May I burn in the hell if I’m not,” he snapped, jumping out of the vehicle and running down the road until he knew he was within sight of the observation bunker. He raised his arms, waving them. “We got vehicles coming in. It’s okay!”

He looked back to the lead truck and motioned it to come on. Nearly out of breath, his cracked rib sending a wave of pain coursing through him with every breath and every step, he ran ahead of the vehicle, leading the way. He saw several of his reaction troops stepping out from concealment, weapons raised, and he motioned for them to lower their rifles.

Reaching the bunker, he jumped in and grabbed the phone, cursing under his breath, waiting for Elayne to pick up at the switchboard.

“This is Matherson!” he shouted. “We got a lot of wounded coming in. They’re okay—friendlies. I want the alarm sounded. Get medical personnel over to our main hospital, and open it up. Move it. A lot of these wounded are kids. Get on it!”

He hung up and ran back to the lead truck. His lead reaction team had slung their rifles. A couple of them were crying as they looked into the flatbed.

“Damn it!” John shouted. “You’re all trained in first aid. Stop crying, get into the vehicles, start helping these people. A couple of you stand up where you can be clearly seen as we drive into town, so everyone knows it’s okay.”

They started up again, John back in the lead truck alongside Forrest, heading down the road, past the entryway to a long-abandoned vacation development. He saw the Edsel ahead in the middle of the road. What a difference a week makes, John though grimly. Last time, he had come limping back, head nearly busted open, and now he was leading this pathetic caravan of wounded from the very group he had just tangled with, and had tangled with before throughout the last year.

John leaned out of the window, waving frantically as a signal to Makala standing in the middle of the road. The four trucks carrying the backup reaction squads, which someone had apparently thought to mobilize out when he had gone off on a walk into the woods with two armed men, were behind her. He told the driver to stop fifty yards short, and he got out. Gasping for air, he walked this time rather than run, which might just set off one of his troops who might get trigger-happy, his running misinterpreted as a signal that he was trying to escape.

“Makala, I need you here now!” he cried.

She came running up to him. “Jesus, what is it, John?”

He pointed to the first truck and now emotion took hold. “They’re casualties from the air strike this morning. I’ve called ahead; the hospital is getting ready now to take them in. Just go look, look at what was done to them!” There was a bit of a hysterical edge to his voice. After so much death the last two years, he had wanted to believe that they were coming out of it. But now there was more and yet more, and the shocked boy holding the dead girl was just too much.

Makala went past him, up to the side of the truck, and looked in. Her hand went to her mouth. She stood in numbed silence for several seconds and then looked back to John. “Any of you with the reaction force who I trained as medics, up here now. Move it! Move it!” She climbed into the back of the flatbed.

John went up to the side and looked in at Forrest, who was obviously struggling to hang on to consciousness. “Thank God you came to us, Forrest. Hang in there, trooper. We’re getting your people into a hospital now. Just hang in there.”

Forrest looked up at him with a slight nod and reached out with his one hand, which was covered in blood. John squeezed it and turned to run to his car, shouting for the drivers of the trucks to clear the road and fall in at the rear of the convoy.

John swung the cumbersome old Edsel around and hit the gas, flooring it down the winding road straight onto Route 70, a good four-lane road that made the last few miles relatively pain-free for the sufferers who had somehow survived a grueling, torturous ride of over thirty miles on gravel- and rock-strewn fire lanes to swing around the Asheville troops deployed at Craggy Gap.

Hitting the main road, he slowed long enough for the six trucks that belonged to the reivers to gain the main road behind him, and then he floored it again, black exhaust bellowing out of his cracked muffler. Racing into Black Mountain, where the road began to narrow down as he passed the abandoned pharmacy, he laid on his horn. He could hear the old-fashioned siren that had been installed at the town hall wailing. People residing in the center of town were pouring out, running toward their mobilization points, which meant all doctors and nurses, either those licensed before the Day or trained as such afterward, were dashing to their assigned positions. Few knew yet what was actually going on, and at the sight of the old familiar Edsel, many turned and looked, shouting questions to John as he roared past them, narrowly avoiding T-boning an old pickup that came racing up out of Cherry Street, heading for the fire station. John cursed madly at the fool, actually thinking for a few seconds as the truck swerved to get out of his way that he would find the driver later and personally kick his butt, and then caught a glimpse of the driver—it was Reverend Black. John continued to honk and pointed for him to follow.

The hospital—which, a year and a half earlier, had handled over a thousand casualties after the battle with the Posse—was in the once-thriving furniture store across the street from the town square. After the last of the casualties of that battle had been moved out, Makala took charge of scrubbing the building down, stockpiling some supplies and then sealing it up if ever there were another mass disaster, epidemic, or battle. John skidded to a stop in front of the hospital, pointing for the truck behind him to stop in the street.

Makala leaped out of the back bed of the truck before it even came to a stop, and John could see she was crying. She was normally so professional as a nurse—now acting as a doctor—and trained to deal with such things, but the months of relative calm had taken the hard edge off her, as well.

“Merciful God, John, most of them are just kids.”

He could not reply, and then in another second, as if a switch had been thrown within her heart, she became the professional again.

“Triage right here!” Makala shouted. “Someone get the triage bag inside. Bring it to me, and get a table out here. Move it!”

Several of the recently trained combat medics with the reaction teams were out of the vehicles, racing to follow her orders. She looked back at the line of trucks, her voice carrying as noisy engines were shut off.

“Everyone listen to me!” she shouted. “No one move for a moment, please! Those of you who drove your wounded in, we’re going to offload your people as quick as possible, but wait for my personnel to do so. We don’t want to make any injuries worse than they already are.”

John felt as if he was slipping into shock, even as his wife took charge. Injuries worse than they already are? These people had endured a hellish exodus of thirty miles or more. It wasn’t like each had been carefully strapped to a backboard seconds after getting shot and airlifted to a rear-line hospital.

Doc Wagner pulled up on his motorcycle and jumped off, running to his assigned position in the main clearing room inside the hospital. At the same time, he saw his dentist come running up the street from his office, carrying a precious jar of ether in one hand and a medical bag in the other, sprinting into the hospital to join Wagner.

Makala looked at the crowd of onlookers who were gathering in the park across the street but—as had been drilled again and again—were keeping clear. In the parking lot outside the town hall and fire station, troops were falling into place, having responded to the siren but not sure yet if this was a call for military action or not.

John caught the eye of Grace Freeman, the second in command of the campus company, as she came running down the slope from the town hall, seeking orders. He shouted for her to order all medics down to the hospital and for half the troops to deploy along the road and form a cordon to hold onlookers back, with Ed helping to take charge of that detail.

Makala was already calling for volunteers as stretcher teams, and several dozen citizens responded to her cry, being directed into the hospital and coming out a moment later carrying litters.

“Listen, people!” Makala shouted. “I want a medic to check each casualty before you try to get them on the stretcher. Any suspected back injuries, I want fully trained medical assistants to handle moving them onto a backboard rather than a stretcher. Now move it!”

John went up to the first vehicle and leaned in. “Come on, Forrest, let’s get you inside.”

Forrest smiled weakly. “Hey, Colonel, or whatever the hell you are now. Good officers go last, remember?”

John swallowed hard and took his hand again, noticing how the bandage was soaking wet with blood that was obviously still leaking out of his wound. He debated for a few seconds whether to just override Burnett and call that they had a priority two and move him now. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Makala and her assistant were at work, the first stretcher case coming up. As she had done at the battle with the Posse and had not done since, she was back into the most dreadful of roles—deciding who would receive immediate treatment, who would have to wait because their wounds were not life threatening, and who would be set aside to die because the time spent to try to save them could save half a dozen others instead or because they were simply too far gone for any help in this world other than a prayer from Reverend Black.

The triage bag held several old-fashioned tubes of lipstick. Makala pulled one out and opened it up. The first stretcher case was a girl of eight or so, stoically silent but clutching a blood-soaked bandage just below the knee, right leg leaning out at a drunken angle with a shard of bone visible.

She wrote the number two on the child’s forehead, immediate priority to ensure no arterial bleeding. With what they had available for orthopedic reconstruction, chances were the child would have to endure an amputation later on.

Next one up was a girl in her twenties, broken arm dangling but with very little blood. Makala offered a few words of solace. The young woman grimaced and nodded, and Makala wrote the number one on her forehead. She would have to wait perhaps hours before someone would actually treat her, but she was in no danger of bleeding out or dying of shock.

On another stretcher was a young boy, naked, curled up nearly fetal and crying like an injured kitten as Makala gently tried to pry his hands free from his wound, calling on a couple of the nurses who had just come running in to help her. She gazed silently for a few seconds and then kissed the boy on the forehead, telling him that they would soon make him well, and then John saw her write the number three on his forehead. He was beyond help. What meager supply of painkillers and anesthesia they had on hand would have to go for the number twos facing surgery. She stood back up, wiping tears from her face and motioning for the next case, again a number one.

Then came the boy that John had seen in the back of the pickup truck, the toddler hanging limp in his arms. All those around them and those gathered across the street fell silent at the sight of him as he stoically walked up to Makala, and all could hear his appeal.

“Lady, it’s my little sister. She’s all I got. Rest of my kin are dead. Please make her better.”

Makala knelt down by his side and made a gesture of looking at the toddler, taking off the scarf she had been wearing, opening it up and starting to cover the terrifying, gaping wound in the little girl’s side. She had bled out long ago and had died, her features a ghastly gray.

“Can I hold her for a second and check her?” Makala whispered.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Makala took the body, cradled it, and then went through the motions of acting like she was checking her as she wrapped her scarf around the child’s torso to cover the wound. “I think she’s a real special case. What’s your name, son?”

“Vincent McNeill, ma’am.”

“Vincent, let me take your sister to the doctor as a special case so he can help her now. Is that okay?”

He looked at her wide eyed. “Really? Will she be okay? She got real still as we were driving over the mountains.”

“We’ll treat her special, and you are a very brave young man. Now follow my friend inside, and the doctor will help you with your arm.” Makala looked at her assistant. “Two, and S for shock. Put him to the front of the line. We still have a few valiums. Get one in him.”

The young woman, another of John’s old students, fought back tears as she tried to lead the boy inside, but he suddenly turned to look back. Makala was drawing her scarf up to cover the little girl’s pain-distorted features in a desperate attempt to conceal the ravages inflicted on the little body of his sister.

“No!” Vincent screamed, and then he collapsed, sobbing.

“Get him inside now!” Makala cried.

Several from the crowd broke through the barrier line to rush over and help pick him up. Makala stood silent, clutching the child, breaking down sobbing and then looking at all who were staring at her.

“Is this child our enemy?” she screamed. “God forgive us. Dear God!” She sobbed as hugged the dead child.

John let go of Burnett’s hand and ran over to her. Reverend Black was by her side, and after a brief struggle, the minister relieved Makala of the burden she was holding, John kneeling down to embrace her as she sobbed uncontrollably, pulling her in tightly into a soothing embrace.

Black, holding the child, looked about at the gathering. “I beg each of you to pray. Pray for these people, and pray that this type of madness ends.” He slowly walked into the hospital carrying the dead child. John held Makala tightly.

“Oh, God, John, I thought of our Jennifer. That boy had the same look in his eyes that you did when she died. Why did they do this to these people?”

He looked up. The stretcher cases were lining up, waiting, wounded crying, while across the street, many were openly crying, as well, many on their knees in prayer. It was as if a vast wave of empathy had enveloped the town, and the pain of those viewed just hours earlier as foes had become their pain and source of anguish, as well.

“Makala, you have to get back to it,” he whispered soothingly, rocking her back and forth as if comforting a child. “You are trained for this. I’m not.”

She drew in a deep breath. “Help me get back to my feet, John,” she whispered. She stood up, took a deep, shuddering breath, nodded, and then pushed him away. The assistant who had helped the boy into the hospital was back out, sobbing.

“Focus, Gina. You got to focus on the moment,” Makala implored her. “Now help me.”

John stepped back as Makala picked up the lipstick tube she had dropped and walked up to the next stretcher, leaning over. “Two. Try to get blood type.” The next one was walking wounded, an elderly man, his skull cracked so wide open that John could actually see his brains. Makala wrote a three on his forehead and motioned for someone to guide him inside. The next case was a near-skeletal man in his twenties, gut shot and unconscious, obviously a three. The next case was another two; someone had roughly stitched up the carotid artery, but it was leaking blood and appeared ready to burst. The next one… then the next one… and the next one.

John stood by the truck, Burnett’s hand in his. Burnett’s voice was weak, telling him what had happened, denying they had anything to do with the raid on the convey. A couple of his people coming back from a trading mission with the cultlike reivers over in Madison County had witnessed it from afar and then ran for their base.

“Why didn’t you move as you told me you would?” John asked.

Burnett laughed weakly. “You know how much gas it takes to move half a hundred vehicles and four hundred people fifty miles? Looks like a scene from one of those damn disaster movies. I was bluffing you, John, to see what you’d do. Then we heard those helicopters coming in, and I knew the shit was in the fan.”

John could only nod.

“Thought you were in on it at first when I saw that plane. Yeah, we seen you fly it for the first time last weekend. Craggy Gap used to be a damn good perch to spy on you folks. So, yeah, I thought you were in on it. Your plane take a shot or two?”

“A couple. One damn near blew my head off, hit just behind me.”

Burnett chuckled weakly. “One-armed but still good with a carbine.”

“That was you?”

“Damn straight. But glad now I missed. Glad you dropped that note. Took a chance on believing you. Saw the way those Apaches bird-dogged you, as well.”

He slipped off for a moment, John squeezing Burnett’s hand with his right and reaching out with his left to check his pulse. It was weak and fluttery; he was definitely slipping deeper into shock. Throughout all this, the driver was silent, and John suddenly realized that he was wounded as well and had just quietly passed out.

Christ, these people are tough, John thought. Ragged and malnourished, they had struggled to survive. Black Mountain had managed to pull together in fair part because tactically it was a superb location, with only one pass in and one out, surrounded by mountains. But these people had somehow managed to survive while actually living in the mountains, narrow valleys, and hollows in the same way their ancestors had etched out a living 150 years earlier.

“Medic over here!” John shouted.

Burnett stirred. “Officers last, Matherson.”

“To hell with that!”

A stretcher crew came up to John, and he pulled the door open and went around to the other side and opened the driver door and then recoiled. The driver’s left side under his armpit was drenched red, blood actually trickling out from the open door and splashing on to John’s boots. The young man had silently bled to death while waiting his turn in the old tradition of women and children first, and John wanted to scream with frustrated rage. How he managed to drive with that kind of injury was beyond comprehension. A stretcher team came up, and John shook his head.

“This one’s dead.” He sighed.

He went around to where Burnett was being eased out of the pickup truck and onto the stretcher, protesting weakly for the rest of the kids and women to be tended to ahead of him.

Makala came over to his side, looked down at him, drew a pair of scissors out of her pocket, and cut the bandage off, revealing a jagged hole in his left side just below his ribs. She sighed and raised the lipstick tube.

“He’s a two,” John snapped, and she hesitated. “It’s Forrest Burnett, and he’s a two.”

Forrest, eyes going out of focus, looked up at him. “Officers last,” he whispered.

“Yeah, Forrest, you’re the last case, now relax.” He turned his gaze back to Makala. “A two, and do it now.”

She nodded. “You ex-military?” she asked, leaning down and shouting the question.

He stirred and smiled.

“What’s your blood type?”

He looked confused.

“Trooper, what’s your blood type?” John shouted.

“A positive.” Then he slipped out of consciousness.

“Get him into surgery now!” Makala shouted. “Prep him. I’ll go into him if need be if no one is working on him once I’m done out here.”

John looked at her and nodded his thanks.

“Spleen’s most likely blown apart,” she whispered. “He’s lost a lot of blood, John. We should just let him go.”

“Would you have three years ago? Before everything fell apart?”

She did not reply. Outwardly, she was doing her job, but he could see she was in shock and struggling to barely maintain control.

John turned to face the silent crowd, many of whom were still praying. “People, listen up. We need blood donors now. Most of you know your types. O positives over here. A, B, and AB form separate lines off to the right. Tell the medic what type you are, and that will be marked on your forehead. We need blood now!”

Half a hundred onlookers stepped forward, and again, a lump was in John’s throat. It took him back to the terrible days after the Posse fight, when those near death from malnourishment volunteered blood as a final gesture before dying.

Makala cleared the last casualty, an elderly woman who simply smiled at the lie that three meant they’d see to her soon.

“You’re a good soul, nurse,” the old woman whispered, “but I know I’m seeing my Maker today.”

John looked at her and sighed. It was Nurse Maggie, who had checked his concussion. He went up to take her hand, and she smiled wanly.

“So it’s you. Thank you for what you’re doing for us,” she said.

He could not reply.

“John?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The trucks have to go back. There’s fifty or more wounded waiting back at our camp. We sent the women, children, and badly hurt ahead first.”

“I’ll see to it.”

“Don’t trouble about me,” she whispered, and then the stretcher-bearers took her off to that place that all knew and whispered about with dread—the dying room.

He looked at Makala, who came up and leaned against his shoulder as he put his arm around her.

“Fifty-three packed into those trucks. Nearly half were threes, after that trip. If I could have gotten to them in that first golden hour, we could have most likely saved all but three or four of them.” A shuddering sob ran through her. “Oh, God, I could have saved that little girl if I had gotten to her quick enough.”

He started to break, as well. And his Jennifer could have been saved if only they had some more vials of insulin. He knew hundreds were watching, and again he was forced to act his role, drawing in a deep breath. “We got to get to work,” he whispered to her, and she nodded.

“Sorry we argued, John.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “My fault, and I love you.”

She looked up and smiled. “Same here,” she managed to whisper, and then she drew in a deep breath and backed away from his embrace. “I got to scrub up.” She again sounded all business. “You really want that Forrest character saved, don’t you?”

“Hell yes I do.”

“Why? He damn near had you killed.”

“Because I respect him, that’s why. He did what he had to do, same as I did. And besides, if for nothing else, he gave an arm and half his sight for this country long ago.”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I want to save him too. I’ll try my best.”

He started to step back.

“John, you have to call Memorial Mission. They have enough anesthesia and antibiotics and painkillers on hand now, and we need all of it. We got enough hoarded up to help with the primary surgeries, but to ease the suffering of the rest, there just isn’t enough to go around. We’re giving aspirins out as a primary painkiller, at least to those who aren’t bleeding heavily. We have those batches of antibiotics made up from silver, but I’d prefer some stronger stuff, especially for the gut shots.”

“I know; I was going to make the call. But you know what that means. Release of medications requires authorization, and Asheville then knows we’re taking care of the wounded.”

“Yes, and tell that son of a bitch to come down here and take a good look at his handiwork.”

She kissed him again on the cheek and then went into the hospital. John looked at those of his community, many of them in line to donate blood.

“I need volunteers. Drivers for these trucks. There’s more wounded back in their camp, and we got to get them in here. Two medics to go with each truck. I’ll drive one of them.”

Ed came up to his side, shaking his head. “John, you’re staying here.”

“The hell you say.”

“John, be a leader again. You put your ass on the line once too often for any of us to sit back now. The shit will most likely hit the fan with Asheville when they find out what we are doing. Besides, I hunted the woods since I was a kid and know every fire lane and back trail. I’ll lead them back.”

To his surprise, a couple of the Stepps came forward to stand with Ed.

“Sons of bitches,” one of them growled. “Someone tangles with someone we have fun squabbling with, it isn’t right with us. Okay to shoot at each other man to man, but kids and women like this? We know the trails better than anyone. We’ll get their wounded out.”

Before he could argue any further, Ed and the Stepps were getting into the trucks, and volunteer medics were piling into the backs, calling for additional supplies of bandages, clean bottled water, and gear.

John stood silent, filled with pride, and watched them head out.