One Year After

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“John, they’re coming.”

It was Maury, who was up at the Swannanoa roadblock just west of Exit 59.

“What do they have?”

“He’s in a Humvee, a deuce and a half with a lot of heavy weapons on board following, and that’s it.”

“Okay.”

“John. He’s got a helluva lot of backup just over the hill. I got a watcher down at Exit 55 who just reported in. A dozen trucks, half a dozen Humvees with Kevlar armor curtains, and get this, they got a Bradley.”

“A what?”

“You heard me straight. A Bradley, a big honking armored personnel carrier. My watcher says a kid came in on a moped by back roads reporting that all four helicopters are prepped, warmed up, and ready to lift off. He’s loaded for bear, John.”

“But just the Humvee and one truck for now?”

“That’s a rog, John.”

John could not help but smile. Fredericks was at least showing some nerve.

“Okay. No hassles. Let them through.”

“You sure, John?”

“Time to talk, Maury. It’s just time to talk and pray it stays that way.”

“It’s your call.”

John put the phone down and smiled at the town council gathered in his office. “We wait here,” John said. “But please, let me do the talking. Okay?”

He looked straight at Makala, who had not had a wink of sleep since the morning before. She had a lab coat on, and it was splattered with blood. He gently tried to suggest that she change but was met with silence and knew not to press the issue. Reverend Black was hollow eyed, obviously in shock. More wounded had come in just before dawn, brought back by Ed and his volunteers, most of them lightly injured, the trucks having been sent back, using town gas, to pick them up, parents of children who had been brought in with the first load making the trek, and Black had to perform the grim task of telling a number of them that their child was dead. The trucks also had four dead on board, and only five vehicles had returned. Slipping across the parkway at night, the last vehicle was ambushed, apparently by troops from Asheville, and it burst into flames, one of the Stepps dying in the ambush.

The way Reverend Black looked at John when he asked that all hold back from the conversation was chilling. Black had been a pillar of strength for the community ever since the Day. He had never fired a shot in anger, but he had presided over hundreds of funerals, he and his wonderful wife, Portia, taking the nursing and then physician assistant courses. They had bravely stood in with every emergency, included the dreaded epidemics that had swept the country in the year after the collapse, and were the moral strength of the community. The two of them were all so crucial to John and his family in the weeks after Jennifer died, stopping by every day to pray with him and offer comfort. And now John could see that long-suppressed anger was about to boil over.

He heard the vehicles pull up into the parking lot and now looked at Black. “Please, my friends, this might be our last chance to talk this thing out and prevent more killing, so let’s stay calm,” John whispered as he stood up to look out the window.

Dale, wearing his usual blue blazer, shirt, and tie, was getting out, and a dozen troops, heavily armed, were piling out of the back of the truck. John had wisely ordered his troops to form a cordon on the far side of State Street, directly in front of the hospital, so the parking lot was empty of any armed response and the potential of an immediate confrontation. There was enough rage on his side that he feared a Lexington Green incident of someone intentionally or accidentally triggering a firefight.

The troops with Dale looked around cautiously, a sergeant, yet again the same one John had taken such an intense dislike for, was leading them. Dale said something to him, and the group spread out a few feet and formed a cordon around the two vehicles. Dale waited for a moment, as if expecting a welcoming committee or some sort of formal greeting, and it began to drag out.

“Oh, damn it, this is ridiculous.” John sighed but did not move. Then finally, in frustration, he rapped loudly on the window. Dale looked over to him, and John just pointed to the front door, motioning for him to come in.

Dale, features flushed, waited another minute and then finally came into the building. Elayne, remaining at her switchboard, stuck her head out the door of her work cubical. “You want John? He’s in his office down that way,” she announced icily as Dale came through the door, and then she returned to work, doing exactly as John had ordered—acting as if nothing out of the ordinary was transpiring with Dale’s visit.

John had left the door cracked open, and Dale pushed it open, coming in. “John, just what the hell—” He fell silent at the sight of the rest of the town committee silently gazing at him. “I’d prefer we talked alone.”

“What you have to say to me you can say to them, as well. They’re the town council and have a voice in all decisions here.”

“This is private between us.”

“It became very public yesterday.”

“I insist we talk alone, and I’ll have time later for the rest of you.”

“It doesn’t work that way here, Dale.” There was a moment of silence, and then John smiled. “And besides, if I take that commission, it will be these folks here who will be running this town after I’m gone. And if Ernie Franklin is on the town committee after I’ve left, you’ll really have your hands full.”

Dale took that in as several of those gathered actually chuckled, the tension easing for just a brief moment with mention of Ernie, who had insisted upon sitting in on this meeting whether he was on the town council or not.

“We have to talk about that commission now, too, John. A lot has happened since yesterday morning. And I think that topic is still private between you and me.”

“Yes, a helluva lot has happened, Dale. So either we talk here in front of the leaders of this community or not.”

Dale stood his ground and then slowly reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, drew out an envelope, and handed it to John. “Open it.” He spoke the two words as a command.

John took the envelope and then deliberately placed it on the desk, his eyes not leaving Dale. “From you, Bluemont, or whom?” he asked.

“I suggest you read it, Mr. Matherson. Then we can discuss the contents.”

John made a very deliberate display of waiting another minute before finally picking the envelope back up and opening it. He scanned the note and tossed it on the table. Reverend Black picked it up.

“That is a legal document for your eyes only, John, not a community gathering.”

“It is an arrest warrant for capital crimes,” Black announced, holding the document up. “A list of names, twenty or more, with Forrest Burnett at the top.”

John looked back at Dale. “You’ve got to be kidding, Dale. Capital crimes? Under what authorization?”

“Federal law. They raided interstate, which, even by prewar standards, brought in the federal government. They have been a threat to national security since the start of the war, and they have killed federal officers, two of them last night. That’s grounds enough.”

“I’ll grant the first point, perhaps, but you damn well better be able to prove it was them.”

“When you were their guest, they talked about raiding into Tennessee, and that is interstate.”

Just how in the hell did he know the content of any conversation while he was being held prisoner? Had Fredericks infiltrated spies in all along and knew everything that had transpired?

“My response. Last night, a column of wounded refugees was ambushed. A truck with wounded aboard, several of them children driven by a member of my community on a mission mercy, was ambushed. Your people fired first; those in the trucks had a right to defend themselves from unknown assailants.”

“Not by the report I got,” Dale snapped back sharply. “They ambushed my personnel and attacked first.”

“What kind of trial will these people get?” Black interjected.

Dale smiled. “Same one you folks gave to the Posse, the drug thieves, and others.”

“That was martial law,” John retorted. “We’re moving away from that.”

“I have not,” Fredericks replied. “The federal government is acting in proper accordance in a time of national emergency. I represent that government and demand that those listed be turned over immediately. If not willing to comply, you know what that means.”

“Whose law?” Black shouted, standing up. “You call machine-gunning kids an act of law?”

“Tragic collateral damage,” Dale said.

“Go down to the hospital, damn you, and take a look at your collateral damage!” Black cried, and for an instant, John feared the minister was about to rush Dale. In all their years of friendship, he had never heard Black use a foul word or see him so publicly lose his temper. The man stood there trembling with rage, Makala standing up to come by his side, whispering for him to sit down.

“I am going down to the hospital,” Dale said, features still fixed in a smile. “I know you have Burnett and most likely others on that list. I’m putting them under arrest and taking them back to Asheville.”

“No, you are not,” Makala said, emphasizing each word sharply, coldly. “They are under my care, and I will not release them, and I say that as director of public health and safety for this community.”

“And this community is under my authority, Mrs. Matherson.” Dale pointed at the document Black had tossed on the table. “You have been properly served with notification. I thank you in advance for your cooperation, and now I have to do my duty as the federal official in charge of this administrative district.” Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heels and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

His departure left all of them stunned, eyes shifting to John. “Stay here,” he snapped. “Reverend, call Maury at the checkpoint at Exit 59. Tell him to report if their helicopters start to lift off, and if so, send someone out to tell me. The rest of you please stay here.”

His voice carried a sharp authority, and Black got up as John sprinted for the door, Makala and Ed moving to restrain him. John hated the fact that he was trailing behind Dale, who was already out the door and shouting orders for his squad to fall in with him. It was the wrong display in public for this moment, but he had to stop him now, or in another minute, there would be a fight… and killing.

John came up to his side and actually grabbed him by the shoulder, the gesture causing one of Dale’s security team to raise a weapon.

“Step away from the director!” the man shouted. “Do it now!”

“So is that your title with them?” John asked sharply, glaring back at the black-clad trooper, that same damn sergeant.

Dale, startled with how John had grabbed him, tried to shrug John’s grip off his shoulder, but John did not let go.

“What’s it going to be, Dale?” he whispered softly. “Either I’m dead in five seconds and the rest of you are dead in ten seconds, or you and I talk this out.”

John let his glance shift to the roof of the fire station to their right, which adjoined the town hall. A dozen of his best reaction team were up there, weapons half-raised but not yet aimed.

“You drop me and, orders or not, they’ll slaughter all of you. Now I am going to take my hand off your shoulder, the two of us will smile as if there’s been a foolish misunderstanding. We walk down to the park, sit down, and have a friendly little chat. It’s your call, Dale.”

And for the first time, John could see hatred in the man’s eyes. After weeks of cat and mouse, of the smooth trained government bureaucrat, the darker gaze of the political maneuverer and climber had flashed out for a brief instant.

“Sure, John,” he whispered. “Now get your hand off my shoulder, you son of a bitch.”

John smiled and let his hand drop.

Dale looked at his troopers, and the threat clearly registered that for the survival of all, a little face saving had to be played out. “Just a brief misunderstanding. Everything is fine now,” he said with a smile.

John returned his gaze to the roof of the fire station.

“Grace, let’s not overreact. I want you and your troops to sit down and relax.”

He chuckled inwardly as the sergeant heading Dale’s security team looked up and for the first time actually noticed that a dozen trained killers, who two years earlier had been typical college students, were staring down at them with weapons raised.

“Your sergeant really is incompetent,” John whispered. “He has a shoe-size IQ, and he’d never have made it when I commanded troops, other than perpetual KP and toilet cleaning.”

John pointed toward the garden-like town square a few dozen yards away and started for it, Dale waiting an instant and then walking briskly, not wishing to lose any more face, coming up to John’s side and keeping pace with him. John motioned to a wooden bench and sat down without waiting for Dale.

“I can signal for someone to bring us something cool to drink, if you need it after that,” John said with a smile. “No booze, though, only water. But if you need some of what the locals call white lightning, I’m certain we can find a mason jar.”

The sight of the troops up on the roof when Dale had foolishly believed he had the upper hand in the middle of what indeed was John’s town had obviously shaken him. It showed John as well that this man had absolutely zero field experience. If it had been his intent to kill Dale, the entire unit would have been wiped out in a few seconds, as easily as swatting down a fly. His men might look tough in their black uniforms, but if they were indicative of what the so-called Army of National Recovery was made of, it was indeed a pathetic indicator. Up against a group like the Posse, they literally would have been dead meat for their dinner table.

Dale, obviously a bit shaken, unbuttoned his collar button and loosened his tie but then shook his head. “You didn’t fall for a drink when negotiating with me; you think I’d fall for the same?”

“Just a friendly gesture in these parts,” John said with a smile.

“You know I can’t leave without Burnett and the others on the arrest list in tow.”

“And you know I will not release them—actually, I should say in all honesty that the director of public health and safety, whose care those men are in, will not release them.”

“Oh yes, your wife. So she follows every order of yours without question, I see. Or is it the other way around?”

John actually did laugh for real. “If only you knew.” But his gesture did not break the tension.

“I have the arrest orders. They are terrorists, and you know it. You are harboring them, and in the eyes of the law, you know what that means.”

“Terrorists, Dale? I recall before the war when it became politically incorrect to use that term when it came to real terrorists and ironically then applied to those who were not—and look at what it finally got us.”

He gestured to the streetlight overhead, the burned-out bank at the corner, the world of silence, a nation with the electric switch thrown off.

Dale was silent.

“So is this the next step, Dale? Everyone who somehow survived the Day but is not in compliance with the central government will be branded a terrorist?”

“You had no problem executing over a hundred of the Posse. I heard their skeletons still litter what used to be a truck stop.”

“You know damn well that was far different. They didn’t even classify as human anymore. They were a satanic, cannibalistic horde gone amok, and it was kill them or be killed. And nearly all such have been wiped out since. Burnett and his people terrorists? Well, those screaming kids dying from gut shots that we took care of yesterday sure didn’t look like terrorists to me. They looked like people to me who once were fellow citizens, not like the scum I was forced to kill.”

“You and the border reivers have been at war with each other for over a year now, and one of my jobs is to clean them out. I thought you’d be glad to see me get rid of them for you.”

“Merciful God,” John snapped. “Was that the reason why? Kill them to impress me? My God, don’t tell me that now.”

Dale again said nothing.

“Or was it to intimidate all of us? You have the gunships, we don’t, so it’s time to obey?”

“It was an act of war, Matherson. We have to weld this country back together again if we are to survive. The Chinese are on our land, same with Mexico. What’s left of Russia, with a nuclear arsenal aimed and the hammer clicked, is watching every move, and it better not be one of weakness. The only thing keeping them from finishing the job is our nuke subs sitting off their coast in the Arctic and Pacific. We have to show strength within, that we are willing to do whatever is necessary to pull this country back together, or else.”

“Or else what, Dale?”

“The president herself said in the briefing to those of us being dispatched to reorganize the various administrative districts that we had an open hand to suppress any type of rebellion. We have a year to get the job done, or someone else will do it for us, and believe me, there are many who would be far more draconian than me.”

John did not reply. The classic administrator told to do the job “or someone else will,” and it was thus a lockstep to follow orders.

“The reivers, they were at war with you and then with me. So I fought war as I was told to do, the same as you did with the Posse.”

“War? Yes, we’ve killed some of them, and they’ve killed some of my people, but they were not like the Posse, and I’ve come to realize that if anything, they were far more like us than some. Maybe if we had figured out how to talk a year ago, a lot of mistakes could have been avoided.”

“And you’d have had maybe a thousand more to worry about feeding.”

John nodded. “Maybe, but what’s your answer? Kill them all, including the kids, and not have to worry about feeding them at all?”

“Either they come into observance of the law or there is no alternative any longer.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“I have to accept that. Did you hear the news about what happened in Chicago? What about that?”

“Whoever was the dumb ass who sent half-trained kids in to fight there is an idiot, Dale. Just who in the hell is running this ANR, anyhow? For God’s sake, it’s an understanding going back to the Romans that it takes up to three years to train troops for that kind of fighting, and the schmuck running that action I bet wasn’t with the kids who were killed or captured and then executed.”

“That schmuck, as you call him, will be your commander,” Dale retorted.

“If I enlist now.”

Dale took that in and fell silent for a moment. “And if it is an order that you enlist immediately rather than a request as I first put it, John? Will you obey?”

“Is that a threat?”

“Not intended to be at all, John,” Dale said smoothly. “But it is evolving out as reality now, and the reality at the moment is that I have an arrest warrant for Burnett and nineteen others for capital crimes, and I intend to see it carried out.”

“And if I say that I will not comply, I am a terrorist, then, as well?”

Dale did not answer.

“So any order from on high, regardless of its moral worth, must be obeyed. Is that what America has really become? Did we let it slip away an inch at a time before we were attacked, and now we are finally driving straight off the cliff once and for all? When I was in the army and stationed in Germany just before Desert Storm, I met more than one man or woman who was called ‘a good German.’ When we did talk about the difficulty of the times they grew up in, they would admit that in the beginning their leaders did not seem all that bad. Oh yes, the Jewish issue was troubling, but no one figured it would really go anywhere serious. Besides, Hitler and crowd did promise social order, create jobs for all, and restore national pride and unity. ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.’ Is that what we are now, Dale?”

“What does that mean?”

“Look it up when you get back to your office, Dale, and then look in the mirror.”

“I’m not liking the tone of this,” Dale finally retorted.

John smiled. “Dale, you do realize I am holding all the cards at this moment? I cannot allow you to move Burnett. Makala dug a jagged piece of shrapnel out of his gut that shattered his spleen. How he even made it over the mountain is beyond me. That is one tough son of a bitch. He needed four units of blood. If he lapses into sepsis, he’ll die anyhow. Makala is an okay surgeon now, but before the war, there’d of been a whole team working on that man. It’ll be weeks before she releases him.”

“Is it that you cannot release him or will not?”

“I don’t see a difference at the moment.”

“I do, John—a big difference. You tell me he can’t be moved at the moment for ‘humanitarian reasons,’ and you give us both a face-saving out for the moment, and I’ll go along with that. Nevertheless, the man is guilty; his case has already been reviewed. And I’ll tell you right now, he’ll be hung in front of the courthouse for his crimes along with the others on that list. But if you want to play a game for a week or so until he can be safely moved, I’ll grant that to get us both out of this confrontation.”

“Oh, I see. Summarily executed. Is that what we are, Dale?”

“You did it too, John!” Dale shouted, standing up so that the guards who had been waiting nervously up by the truck gazed at them intently. “The Posse, you give them a trial? So who in the hell are you to tell me what I can and cannot do now? I have an authorization signed by the secretary of National Reunification and countersigned by the president, and my job is to bring this district back in line to a level-one status. Burnett and his kind are finished. So either you join my team, John, or you know what I’ll have to do.”

John remained seated but was no longer playacting a friendly smile. “Fine, then, you’ve made yourself clear. But, Dale, you need a little bit more training on extracting your ass from a potentially fatal misstep. You are no longer in the halls of the White House or wherever you served, whomever you were assigned to. This is not some public relations job where you bullshit a stupid press corps and when the questioning gets too tough, you say time is up. You got twelve armed personnel fifty feet away, and though I think most of them are ridiculous, I don’t want them hurt. But believe me, there’s at least a hundred or more who are armed watching every move you and your troopers make, and they are ready to react. I want this to end peacefully, Dale, and you’d better want the same. First lesson of command, Dale: your troops come first, but if you are required to spend their lives, you’d better have a damn good reason for it and be the first one to go, as well. You willing to die today and have all your people killed in a vain attempt to get Burnett?”

“Why are you defending him like this, damn it? He’d have killed you without blinking twice a few weeks ago, and chances are, you’d have done the same if you’d had him in your sights when he was leading a raid into your territory.”

“There used to be an old code of warfare, Dale. Hard to believe, a code, actual rules for warfare. Not the bullshit rules of engagement that tangled us so insanely in the Middle East and cost the lives of many a good kid we sent out. I mean the rules as they existed back fifty, seventy years ago.”

“And is the history professor going to educate me?”

“You are damn straight I am, Dale, and in your exalted position, you should know them.”

He sighed, shook his head, and motioned for Dale to sit back down, but Dale remained standing.

“An enemy on the field of action, it is kill or be killed, and that was Burnett and me just several weeks past. But then the next rule comes in, and in a more civilized age, most nations actually signed treaties that they would obey this. A wounded soldier no longer in action was out of the fight. He was not to be fired on. If captured, he was to receive the same medical treatment as one of your own. Some thought it was a paradox—try to kill him, then patch him up. But some saw it as at least trying to be civilized in the madness of war, to lessen its horrors, and I for one believed in it. I remember seeing a video on the computer, shortly before the Day, of one of our medics being hit by a sniper, wounded but still able to do his job. Minutes later, a couple of our troops dragged in the sniper who had hit the medic, and you know what he did?”

“Oh, let me guess,” Dale retorted sarcastically. “He patched him up.”

John nodded, and he felt a lump in his throat at the memory of that, of the pride he felt in the training of the medic and of all the troops he once served with. Had the last two years brutalized everyone to the point that the chopper pilots simply now fired on anything that moved? The thought was deeply disturbing.

“Burnett is my prisoner, and I gave him my word that he and those he brought in with him would be properly treated. He came to me for help after what you did to him. My community took him and those with him into our care without any conditions. To try to move him will kill him, most likely even before you can hang him. So the answer is not only can I not let him go, I refuse to let him go. I’ll talk with you later about the charges against him and the others. Even if the charges are true, the gunning down of civilians who had nothing to do with the attack… in my world, we used to call that a war crime, Dale.”

There was no response.

“Do I make myself clear, Mr. Fredericks? I see it as a war crime, I will report it as such, and if there is to be any trial someday of Forrest Burnett, a wounded veteran, formerly of the 101st Airborne, it will take place here in this jurisdiction and not Asheville, where I believe he will not receive a fair hearing.”

“So you are going against my authority, then.”

“I can’t decide what you think.”

“I thought I could trust you and work with you, Matherson. You had a chance for a job on a national level and could have made a difference there.”

John did not reply.

“And if I come back with an order for you to report to Bluemont?”

“Dale, is that for your convenience, to get me out of the way as a troublesome thorn, to get shunted off into some paperwork cubbyhole? Has it even been the real thing since the first day you offered it?”

“You calling me a liar?”

“No, Dale, just asking a question any man has a right to ask.”

There was no response.

“Dale, in about one minute, we end this one of two ways. You and your tin soldiers try to storm the hospital—and I promise you, you and they will not make it, though if there is shooting to be done, you will have to fire the first shot—or we make a show of it for the hundreds who are watching us that you and your men cannot even see, make a big show of shaking hands, and you get back in that Humvee and go back to Asheville. You do that, and I’ll look deeper into the charges against Burnett’s group and keep you informed of what I find as a face-saving compromise for you.”

Dale looked back at the roof of the fire station where the rest of John’s unit had squatted back down behind concealment, though Grace remained standing, M4 casually cradled in her arms.

John did feel a flash of sadness at the sight of her thus. She was a kid; this should be her senior year. In fact, graduation should have been taking place just about now. Instead, she was a hardened professional, veteran of the fight with the Posse and a dozen other smaller actions afterward. She had even dropped one of Burnett’s group last winter when they were raiding for food, and she showed zero remorse about the girl she had killed who was nearly the same age as she. Yet again, such moments made John think of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed.” “I made the mistake of trusting you, John, when I came here.”

“No you didn’t, Dale. You thought you could bull your way through when anyone with real combat experience would never have walked into my kill zone.”

“I’ll remember that if there is a next time,” Dale said while actually smiling, and his tone sent a chill through John.

Dale stood back up and actually put on the skilled bureaucrat’s show of smiling and extending his hand, though when he clasped John’s, there was no warmth in his handshake. “I expect you in my office in three days to report for duty,” Dale said, again with that officious smile.

“What?” Now John was off guard for the moment.

“Forgot to add that in.” Dale reached into the other pocket in his blazer.

“I’d advise you to do that real slowly,” John whispered. “Some watching might think it’s not just a piece a paper, and maybe, just maybe, you actually know how to carry a gun rather than a pen and paper.”

Now there was a look of hatred, and John smiled.

Dale drew out a second envelope, held it up for a few seconds so anyone watching could see it clearly, and then made a formal gesture of handing it to John.

John did not comply by opening it. “What is it?”

“Your formal orders to report for federal duty in three days, John Matherson. It is no longer voluntary. You have been drafted, as well, for the good of the country. A transport is coming down from Bluemont for you. You have the choice of taking your wife with you or not, though I advise that you do, since the terms of the draft are for, and I quote, ‘the duration of the national crisis as defined by the Secretary of the Office of National Reunification and the President of the United States,’ so it could be for years. The second notice in that envelope is for the mobilization of fifty-six draftees, to be selected by you as your first official act as a major general in the service of the Army of National Recovery. Said draftees to report at the same time you do. I’m still willing to forego the other fifty-seven for the moment, so you can still play the hero one last time. I therefore expect you and your people in front of the courthouse at nine in the morning, three days hence. If not, you know the consequences.” Dale smiled. “Show up, and I don’t report this incident today. Don’t show up, and you know the consequences. Ball’s in your court now, John,” he said, and without waiting for a reply, he headed back to the Humvee, actually waving in a friendly fashion to Grace and the troops on the roof of the fire station and then motioned for his own troops to get back in the truck.

The vehicles turned about, pulled out onto Montreat Road, and headed back to the interstate. John could sense a collective sigh of relief from the crowds that had gathered along the sidewalks in the center of town.

Clutching the envelope, he slowly walked back to the town hall, trying to act nonplussed, though that last maneuver by Dale had indeed put the ball back into his court.

Once inside the building, the town council swarmed about him, some slapping him on the back and bombarding him with questions, but Makala could sense something was still amiss.

John looked at Don King, president of the college. “I’ll need Gaither Chapel this evening, Don. Let the kids up there know that all those who received draft notices are to report for the meeting. Let’s make it for six while we still have plenty of light. Richard, could you go tell Elayne to call around town and let everyone who has a draft notice to please come to the chapel?”

Makala did not say a word. She knew him well enough that there were times it was best just not to ask.