The Living Saga (Book 2): Enduring Read online

  “Infrastructure! Ron.”

  “Medical. Dr. Moore.”

  “Agriculture. Jack”

  Cedric knew which was coming next, so he kept an eye on his father. He hoped he wouldn’t win. He didn’t want his dad in charge of the defense. He didn’t think his age or heart could handle it. So, when Eric yelled, “Defense! Garcia!” Cedric exhaled a sigh of relief.

  But, his relief was only to be replaced moments later by dread when he saw Ross counting the offense ballots with a grin.

  Eric grinned widely as he said, “Offense! With only two votes against him, Cedric!”

  Karli smiled and said, “You and Ben.”

  “But I thought you didn’t want me to do it?” Cedric asked.

  “I don’t,” Karli responded, “but if you are going to be a Nighthawk anyway, I do think you’d be the best leader. I wish you’d leave the Nighthawks all together. But since you won’t, congrats!” She kissed Cedric on the cheek.

  The newly elected department heads had a short meeting to discuss what was next, which Cedric was too flabbergasted to pay attention to. Afterwards, he had to name his assistant department head. As soon as they asked, Cedric blurted out “Eric.”

  After this, it was time for his pre-mission briefing. He had always given these with Eric. They still would be part of the same team, but Cedric had always seen Eric as his superior, not the other way around.

  “Alright, guys,” Cedric said. He felt nervous and his palms were sweating. “This one should be a cakewalk. We’ve got no boundaries in the road on this trek. We’ve got nothing inside the fence at the propane depot. It’s a twenty-minute drive there and another twenty back. There are three trucks on site. We’re only taking the cage-roller to conserve fuel.”

  Cedric noticed that the more he talked, the more confident he felt. The nerves were leaving his body as he settled into a rhythm. “We have enough propane for a week. We don’t have enough for Ron to finish the panel job. This mission is either a success, or we lose power. Winter’s over, and our gas usage should go down, but that means more infected beyond the gates. Stay frosty. Stay in formation.”

  Steph spent the next fifteen minutes recapping the exact route and strategy they would use. The challenge was making sure that the propane delivery trucks were full and ready for use. The team surmised that the rest of the plan was fairly straight forward.

  Once the mission objective and plans were set, and everyone knew their part to play, Cedric and Squirrel returned to the mess hall for lunch. After his morning run, Cedric had spent two hours in the shop for the election and meeting—then another hour with his team. He was a bit early for lunch, but he was set to roll out before noon.

  Karli, along with the small group of kids she had to look after, were in the mess hall. Some of the older kids were doing chores while the younger kids were being entertained. Karli, because of her apparent knack for it, had become the group’s child-sitter. She had originally started doing this in the beginning because she was the only one who didn’t have another job, but she actually loved it.

  She didn’t even notice Cedric come into the room. She was right in the middle of changing a diaper when Cedric walked up behind her and started talking.

  “A month ago,” he said, “you nearly threw up when you had to do that.”

  Karli grimaced. “I really wish you hadn’t been here for that,” she said. “That was the first diaper I’d ever changed.”

  “Now look at you,” Cedric teased, “a natural rear-end wiper.” Cedric started to make faces at the baby. He couldn’t help but smile when the baby giggled.

  “What time do you leave?” Karli asked, interrupting Cedric’s laughter.

  “I’ve got about an hour to be completely ready. Wanna grab some lunch with me before I go fuel the truck?”

  “Let me get Lewis finished. And if you can find Paul and Adam, that would be great. They went to go get Ross, but I haven’t seen them since,” Karli responded.

  Adam and Paul weren’t really old enough to have jobs yet, but they weren’t so young that they had to be watched all the time, either. They were typically used as messengers, so long as they were sent together. And they usually wound up in trouble, too.

  “Yeah. I’ll grab my gear while I’m up there, too.” Cedric said.

  He wound his way through the maze of tables and back to the main hallway. The vocational building wasn’t big, so it wasn’t hard to locate most people. The challenge would start in a few days when people began to move to the new quarters.

  Everyone who wasn’t a department head was moving to the main building of the school. All of the department heads had a room for themselves, and in the case of Ron, for him and his wife. All of the other department heads were unmarried. They were to use their bedrooms, which used to be classrooms, for their office and sleeping quarters.

  All of the classrooms on the bottom floor of the vocational building had been repurposed. The agriculture classroom was now the infirmary. The ROTC room was the armory because it already had the gun safes and lock boxes. The culinary arts room was being used as the mess hall. The other classrooms and offices on the first floor had all been used to house some of the extra people before the workshops were used.

  Cedric made his way to the upper classrooms to find Ross working alone in his office.

  “Hey,” Cedric said as he walked in. “Karli had sent some of the kids to find you, have you seen them?”

  “I’ve seen nothing but paper for the last hour,” Ross responded.

  “Then where are they?” Cedric asked. “Anyways,” he continued, “They need you in the kitchens for something.”

  “Right,” was all Ross said as he continued to flip the pages.

  Cedric closed Ross’s door to let him get back to work in silence.

  He decided that the boys couldn’t have gone too far. After all, they had to be in the building somewhere. The crew from defense would have spotted them leaving the building and called it in.

  Cedric opened the door to his bedroom and found them both. Once he saw them, he immediately knew why they had made a pitstop.

  Apparently, in the brief time since the election, some of the supplies for the Nighthawks had been moved to his bedroom—including the machine Anderson had scavenged on their last outing. He had almost gotten Collins killed just so he could dig the machine out the rubble in the middle of town.

  “Did you have to put that thing right next to my bed?” Cedric asked.

  At the foot of Cedric’s bed, right between it and his desk, his crew had placed a couple of chairs and a small table. In one of the chairs, Steph sat leaning back. In the other, leaned over Steph, sat Anderson: tattoo gun in hand.

  Steph’s arm had a small trickle of blood, but her brand was done. About the size of a quarter, in solid black on the inside of her right wrist, was the silhouette of a hawk in flight.

  Anderson wiped away the blood with a small cloth and began changing out the needle on the tattoo gun. “Well, boss,” he said looking at Cedric, “your team. You’re the last one.”

  Cedric hesitated for the briefest of moments before he exhaled.

  “Five minutes,” Anderson said. “That’s all it takes me.”

  Cedric didn’t know all of Anderson’s backstory, but he had made it clear he was an artist from day one. Apparently, a fairly accomplished tattoo artist, from the looks of it.

  “Let me get the kids down and eat lunch first. If there’s time, then I’m in.” Cedric said defeatedly.

  “I wanna watch you get it,” Adam protested.

  “Nope,” Cedric said. “You’re already toast when Karli gets ahold of you. You two have been gone too long. And you didn’t even deliver the message to Ross.”

  After a brief argument, which Cedric had to use all of his persuasion to win, he led the boys back down for lunch. The Nighthawks followed closely behind.

  When Cedric got back to the mess hall, he found Karli sitting at their usual table with all of the kids
. Three extra plates were sitting beside her. Cedric and the boys took their spots.

  “Ced’s getting a tattoo,” Adam blurted out the moment he sat down. He sounded a bit in awe.

  “Say what now?” Karli asked sounding a bit bemused. Cedric could tell that her confusion was an act though. Karli knew that the Nighthawks all had, or were in the process of getting, matching tattoos. She had actually encouraged him to get it.

  Cedric remembered her exact words, “I always thought tattoos were a bit edgy. Not like biker kind of tattoos, but a few here and there are nice.”

  Cedric wasn’t sure though. He had always had it pounded in his head growing up that tattoos were vile. He had given in, though.

  After lunch, Karli managed to get some of the other women to watch the kids while she went with Cedric. The entire crew of Nighthawks showed up for the event.

  “Did you know pigs fly?” Squirrel said aloud when the needle first made contact.

  The crew laughed. Cedric had protested against the tattoos since day one.

  “Solidarity,” Cedric said.

  The pain wasn’t what he expected. In fact, it wasn’t really even pain. He felt excitement at each little pinch.

  After about two minutes, when the bird of prey was just under half done, Karli started to stand.

  “Yeah, Ced,” she said faintly. “I can’t watch all this blood.”

  In reality, Cedric hadn’t really bled a lot, but he knew that Karli wasn’t the best with blood.

  “That’s fine,” Cedric said encouragingly. He reached his left hand out and stroked the back of hers with his fingers. “I’ll be done in just a few minutes. I’ll come out and get you. Why don’t you get some fresh air?”

  “Yeah,” Karli said, “I’ll be out front.”

  As Karli stood up, Cedric added, “Steph, can you help her?”

  Steph stood and reached out an arm to help balance Karli. Karli immediately swatted Steph’s arm away and said, “It’s fine, Stephanie. I don’t need the help.”

  Steph immediately put her hands up in surrender but didn’t react. She just backed up to Adam’s bed and sat back down.

  The rest of the Nighthawks looked a little stunned, but it was Eric who said something first. “C’mon, Karli. Let’s get some cool fresh air.” He led her outside.

  Within a few minutes after Karli left, Anderson pulled his tattoo gun up and sighed appreciatively.

  Cedric looked down at his arm. Looking at it upside down, he didn’t immediately place what was different about his tattoo. He knew something was off but couldn’t tell what. Then, the image cleared for him after Anderson wiped the blood away. Around the hawk silhouette was a set of laurel wreaths. Anderson was placing a large bandage over the tattoo as Cedric thought.

  “Why is mine different?” Cedric asked.

  “Because,” Eric said from the doorway. “You’ve earned that.”

  Cedric was just about to argue with Eric that he didn’t deserve anything of the sort when his CB crackled with a voice. Cedric didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew what the words meant immediately—especially in the fast, worried tone they were said in.

  “Code red. F-R-A.”

  Cedric jumped to his feet pulling his CB from his belt. He clicked the talk button and immediately issued two orders, “Go dark. Coms live.” He flicked the button on his CB to ‘off’ and snagged a short-wave radio from his work table. Cedric had found out the hard way that the First Rogersville Army could tune into their CB channels, so Ron had rigged up a set of short-wave radios so that they could only be used with each other.

  “What’s going on?” Anderson said.

  Despite being one of the Nighthawks, Anderson had only been with the group for just over two weeks. He hadn’t had any encounters with the other group of survivors.

  “It’s the F-R-A,” Cedric said thinking it would explain it. When he saw Anderson’s blank expression, he elaborated. “Code red means lockdown because something is incoming. The F-R-A means it’s the First Rogersville Army.”

  “The bridge guys?” Anderson asked.

  “The assholes,” Eric corrected.

  “Yeah,” Cedric said. “Them.”

  “But how do you know it’s them?” Anderson asked.

  “The treaty says that they have to fly a white flag if they are in our territory. We do the same in theirs. But we usually just avoid theirs.” Eric explained.

  “Did I miss something?” Anderson asked. “What frickin’ treaty?”

  Cedric motioned him to follow and started giving the others’ orders. “Eric, get Squirrel. Head to the back lift and provide ground support. Steph, Collins, go to the roof. Provide coverage.” Then he turned to Anderson and asked, “Didn’t you read that history book I gave you?”

  “All those journals?” Anderson asked. “Nope.”

  Cedric continued to walk toward the front door of the vocational building as the others went to their own missions. He continued explaining as Anderson followed him, “We had some run-ins with this other group. They are a bit of a para-military group. Their leader, Qualls, is a bit of an ass. He’s some kind of military wash-up who’s Hell-bent on starting a fascist dictatorship. Over the winter, we had a pretty nasty skirmish. We lost a few, so did they. We blew up the bridge to stop their assault on us, then met them to talk. We signed a treaty, but it’s been a bit tenuous. It’s a bit like having pre-war Germany as a neighbor.”

  Cedric burst through the front door as he finished his sentence. He saw Garcia, the new leader of defense, behind a recently made concrete wall giving orders in a short-wave walkie-talkie. She was dressed in a similar fashion to Steph without the armor. Only, her hair was dark instead of dirty blonde.

  “Cover from the wall,” Cedric told Anderson.

  He immediately obeyed the order and began to climb a short ladder so he could aim his rifle over the wall.

  Cedric met Garcia and she began to speak immediately. “Sent your girl back inside as soon as the code red came through. She was out here. Looked pretty sick.”

  “Yeah, she came out for fresh air,” Cedric remarked. “What do we have?”

  “Two vehicles,” Garcia replied. She spoke with absolute authority. “Are your guys in place?” She asked.

  “Two under the lift,” Cedric said referring to a truck they had salvaged from the electric company. “Two more on the roof,” he added.

  “Good,” Garcia replied quickly. “I’ll take point. You cover. We can’t lose two department heads at once in case this is an issue.”

  “That’s not protocol,” Cedric said. “Protocol is we always have two present for all meetings.” He turned his head when the sound of the vehicles reached him. He knew they were stopping at the gate.

  “Let two in then retreat,” Garcia said into her radio. She then glared at Cedric. “C’mon then,” she said consenting to the protocol.

  Cedric and Garcia handed their firearms to one of Garcia’s men as they left the wall. As they walked, Cedric saw that two men were coming through one of the entrances of the gate. He saw behind them that there were a half-dozen other men at the cars. They were far enough away that Cedric couldn’t see details, but he guessed that they were each standing in defensive positions with guns pointed at him and Garcia.

  “What’s this about?” Garcia said when the four met in the middle.

  “I don’t know what to think of this,” one of FRA men said in response. He was dressed in full camouflage with greasy black hair. He looked Garcia up and down before briefly glancing at Cedric. “We send a staff sergeant and a corporal. You send a woman and a boy. I feel insulted.”

  “You’re not even a real staff sergeant, Miller,” Garcia spat back. “You’re just one of Quall’s little pups who’s playing army.”

  Miller kept his calm as he replied, “What would a damn woman know, anyway? Where’s the real men we can talk to? Get some or me and Davis walk.”

  “Davis and I,” Cedric corrected him. “And you are speaking to
two of the leaders here. Either say what you came here for or leave in peace.”

  Garcia smirked but didn’t add any comments. She simply stood waiting.

  “Colonel Qualls requested that we bring in a soldier for your doctor to look at,” Davis answered. He was dressed in all black: black combat boots, black jeans, black sleeveless tank-top. His hair was even dyed black. Cedric wondered why anyone would waste time dying their hair anymore.

  “So, Devin wan…” Garcia started but was interrupted.

  “Colonel Qualls,” Miller said abruptly.

  “Devin,” Garcia said stressing the name, “wants our help. What do you offer in trade?”

  “We don’t have anything to trade,” Davis said. “No food. No weapons. We are..” Whatever they were, Cedric wouldn’t find out. Miller had backhanded Davis to quiet him.

  “Shut up, Corporal,” he commanded. He then turned to Garcia, “we offer gratitude,” he said smugly.

  “No,” Garcia stated flatly. “We will not do it for your gratitude.”

  “But,” Cedric said quickly, “We will do it as a sign of good faith. No gratitude required. We don’t want it, nor do we need it. All you need is an examination, correct?”

  “Possibly treatment,” Davis added. Cedric noticed he gave Miller a sidelong glance as he said it like he expected another slap.

  “We will see about that,” Garcia said coldly. “Where is he?”

  “In the truck,” Miller answered.

  “And what is his condition?” Garcia prodded further.

  “If we freaking knew that, we wouldn’t need him to be examined, woman,” Miller spat out.

  “You can address me as Garcia, or Ma’am,” Garcia responded calmly. “Call me woman again, and I’ll beat you down.” Garcia smiled wickedly at Miller.

  “Did you just threaten me?” Miller asked.

  “If you have to wonder,” Garcia said not letting the smile leave her face, “then you probably aren’t the best person to send here.”

  “Enough,” Cedric said. He grabbed his radio from his pocket and called in, “Give me a two-man team on the rover. Pickup for one at the gate.”