Harden (Lee Harden Series (The Remaining Universe) Book 1) Read online

  The wall adjacent to Tomlin’s gear locker held a large paper sign, on which was inscribed in bold block letters, one of Lee’s favorite exclamations upon walking into The Cave and seeing Tomlin’s area: JESUS CHRIST, BRIAN! POLICE YOUR SHIT! Abe and Nate had erected the sign so that, if Lee was ever not present, Tomlin would still be reminded to police his shit.

  The team was now gathered at the only empty space left in the room, which was the section of the left wall between Tomlin’s area and Lee’s desk. On this wall was a large cork board, and on the cork board was tacked several maps of the southeast.

  Lee stood to the side of the corkboard and indicated a red circle on the map of Georgia, in the center of the state, and a little bit to the west. This was the Butler Safe Zone. One of only five Safe Zones that existed in the United Eastern States.

  “We’re going to stay a night in Butler,” Lee said. “Catch up on sleep and refuel. Reload, if necessary, but we’re hoping to make a clean run, starting early tomorrow morning.” Lee glanced at them quickly. “Hoping being the operative word there. Our last intel on the route to Butler is nearly a month old. It was clear at that time, but who knows what the fuck popped up in the last few weeks. So, we’re going to proceed down the route with due caution. Hopefully, the malcontents and primals will stay out of the way.”

  Not everyone in the four member states considered the UES to be legitimate. Many of them held similar views to the Lincolnists. And some of those pockets of survivors had become problematic for their convoys in the past.

  “If we do encounter any trouble,” Lee continued. “We will not have QRF, so we will respond appropriately, and make a game-time decision on how to proceed.”

  Abe tilted his head. “Why no QRF?”

  “Partly because we’re going to be a long way from Fort Bragg.”

  “We could arrange QRF with nearby Safe Zones as we come into their territory,” Abe pointed out.

  Lee nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s the other part of it. We’re going to be keeping this operation quiet. We’re not alerting any of the other Safe Zones about it. We’re not even calling up Butler until we’re right on their doorstep.” Sensing additional incoming questions, Lee held up a hand. “In light of what the Lincolnists have been up to, we don’t want them trying to sabotage our efforts.”

  Julia frowned and shook her head. “Getting fuel benefits everyone. Including them.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, but it also benefits the UES,” Lee said.

  Carl nodded along with Lee, then turned to Julia. “These fucks just want to see the UES fail. I wouldn’t put it past them to try to throw a wrench in our gears, even if it negatively impacts them as much as us. I think secrecy is called for.”

  Julia shrugged and said nothing more about it.

  Lee turned back to the map, looked again at the Butler Safe Zone. “Once we leave Butler, we’re going to be crossing the border into Alabama, and from there, we’re in The Wilds.”

  They’d been so busy trying to get the power back on and secure themselves against the constant probing by primals, that they’d had no chance to mount expeditions beyond their borders to see what the rest of the southern states looked like. With the exception of the northern interior states, which they knew aligned with Acting President Briggs, the rest of the country was a mystery.

  AKA, The Wilds.

  “Once we cross into The Wilds, our mission is to make friends and try to figure out how to get fuel back to Fort Bragg. Ideally, we want the pipeline that runs straight to Bragg up and running again, but that requires a helluva lot of infrastructure that I’m not sure we’ll be able to take advantage of. So, we’re just going to have to play it by ear.” Lee held up two fingers and ticked them off: “Make friends, and figure out how to get fuel.”

  Tomlin crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. “Sounds like we’re going to be doing some subvener-atin’ and refectus-in’.”

  Lee finished Tomlin’s litany: “Co-ordin-atin’, for sure.” He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his pants. “Of course, we don’t know how friendly everyone down south is going to be. So we’re just going to be very careful and take it one step at a time.”

  The team nodded their assent to that. But no one moved away. And Lee didn’t conclude the meeting. He stood, looking pensively at the ground in front of his feet.

  The others, sensing that there was something else, waited.

  Lee drew his eyes up and met their gazes, his eyes circulating the room. The people he knew best in the world. The people who had his back through thick and thin. And now it was time for him to have their backs. It was time for him to get them out of this shit-cycle.

  “I know we’ve talked about it in the past,” he said. “So it won’t be a complete shock. But I wanted to tell you guys first, before I made it official with anyone else: This is going to be our last mission together.”

  No one spoke to that. They all just kept watching Lee.

  “We’ve all been doing nearly continuous operations for close to three years straight. I think it’s about time we pass the baton. So, once we get back from this mission to the Gulf, I’ll be removing myself as your operational leader, and I’ll begin training replacements for each of us. The hope being that soon after we will all be replaced and there will be an entirely new team here in The Cave.”

  There were a few small nods along with this.

  None of them could really decide whether this felt like an immense relief, or whether it scared the shit out of them and left them feeling empty and purposeless. For the last three years, the team had been their entire world. The work stretched them thin, and chipped away at them. But it was difficult to imagine doing anything else.

  “And besides giving ourselves a break,” Lee continued, with a note of caution in his voice. “If things continue the way they’ve been with Acting President Briggs and Colorado…well, we’re going to need more than just the six of us. We need new teams trained up. We have willing recruits. But we’ve been so busy keeping the UES afloat, we haven’t been able to give them the training they need. And I don’t think that’s something we can continue to ignore. Not if we expect to be able to stand up to Briggs.”

  “So,” Tomlin spoke up. “We all gonna be training cadre after this?”

  Lee shrugged. “I trust each and every one of you. I’d love for that to be the case. But it’s also up to you. And it’s also up to the needs of the UES. I can’t guarantee we’ll all be working together. The other Safe Zones need experienced training cadres, too.”

  Julia inclined her head and flicked a finger into the air. “Did you bring this up to Angela yet?”

  Lee shook his head. “No, she’s got enough to think about. I’ll tell her when we get back.” He looked at them all pointedly. “Actually, we’ve all got enough to think about. So let’s not put the cart before the horse. We’ve got a mission. Let’s focus on getting that done first.”

  nine

  ─▬▬▬─

  promises

  Lee left the Soldier Support Center as the sun touched the horizon, splashing the Fort Bragg Safe Zone in orange light.

  The broken windows at the entrance of the Support Center were now boarded up. The glass swept away. A lone shell casing that had escaped the cleanup glittered on the pavement.

  Lee stopped. Looked down at it. Grabbed it and pocketed it.

  “Fuckin’ day,” he mumbled.

  He walked toward home.

  Home.

  The word had lost much of its meaning to him.

  At the moment, home was a single-family dwelling that used to house soldiers and their dependents, and now housed Lee, Abe, and Tomlin. A few years ago, it had been an old trucking facility called Camp Ryder. Sometimes, it was The Cave, or the back seat of a pickup truck. Other times, a musty, abandoned house, out beyond the borders of the Safe Zone.

  Home was…wherever it had to be.

  He felt sometimes like a rootless drifter. He went where his business took h
im. And mostly his business was violence.

  The streets of the Fort Bragg Safe Zone were starting to empty out. People were going home from their day’s work. Most folks led an agrarian lifestyle—they were up at dawn, and in bed shortly after dark, and they put in a lot of work in between.

  Lee still wore his combat pants, but he’d doffed his combat shirt in favor of a light gray hoodie, which concealed the Glock 17 on his hip. It was his secondary weapon when he was in full gear, and his primary when he was in “semi-civilian” clothes.

  It was his companion at night. Sometimes he kept it on the nightstand by his bed. Sometimes, when the night seemed to stretch blackly over him and his heart wouldn’t stop telling his brain he was in danger, he would leave it on an empty chamber and grip it under his pillow.

  He walked on. Hands in his hoodie pockets. Heading west, away from the Support Center, and into the glow of the setting sun. A cool breeze blew at his back. Smelled like spring, and dusk.

  The topic of stepping down as operational leader—of breaking the team up, essentially—terrified him. On the one hand, there was a part of him that wanted desperately to be done with…all of this. It was the part of him that recognized the inherent toxicity of living that life without ever having any relief from it.

  There was only so long that you could live in the black headspace of constant conflict. There was only so long you could be switched on and ready to roll at a moment’s notice, before it began to reshape the very structure of who you were.

  And, unfortunately, Lee suspected that that point had already come and gone for him.

  He knew he needed to get out. Or at least take a break.

  But there was still a part of him that was scared shitless that he was wholly incapable of doing anything else, of being anything else. This was such a monumental part of who he was, of everything that he had become over the last few years, he wasn’t even sure if he would know himself without it.

  And wouldn’t it be giving up? Wouldn’t it be abandoning the mission?

  The only thing that gave him solace was his hatred of Briggs. And hatred was not too strong a word. Briggs had sent people to kill Lee on multiple occasions, so Lee felt that he was justified in wanting to rip the man apart.

  But if they ever wanted to beat Briggs, they would need more fighters.

  More teams.

  More operators.

  And who better to train them than Lee?

  So, the objective of training the next generation had been the only point in which he could make the two discordant halves of himself reconcile their differences. At the end of this mission to the Gulf, he would step down and begin to train the next generation of operators. It would give him and his team the break they so badly needed, while ultimately still pushing the mission forward.

  On the sidewalk ahead of him, a man and his young son were walking in the opposite direction. The boy seemed oblivious at first, prattling on about something to his father, but as they drew closer to Lee, the boy looked up, stared at Lee like he was spotting a mythical—and perhaps dangerous—beast.

  The boy grasped his father’s hand.

  Lee nodded to the two of them, then looked away, his chest tightening with the fervent desire not to speak with anyone.

  The boy whispered: “Is that Captain Harden?”

  The father gave the boy’s hand a small tug. “Shh.”

  They kept walking.

  Lee wasn’t looking at the boy. But he felt the gaze on him. Hot and pressing.

  The father drew his son to the edge of the sidewalk, allowing an exaggerated amount of space for Lee to pass by. Lee gritted his teeth, forced a smile and another nod, and kept going.

  Two paces past them, the boy’s voice lilted up again: “Thank you.”

  Lee felt his mouth twitch in an unpleasant grimace. He stopped. Forced neutrality into his face. Turned and looked at the boy.

  The father seemed flustered. “Sorry. He’s just…we hear a lot about you.”

  Lee thought about asking what the hell the kid was thanking him for, but instead decided on a more tactful approach. “Sure,” he said, figuring that covered a gamut of things.

  The boy looked pleased, simply to have garnered a personal reaction from Captain Lee Harden. The father gave Lee a look that said, Hey, we’re adults, I know what’s up.

  “Thanks for what you and your people do,” the father said.

  It was useful for Lee to remind himself in these situations, that this “civilian” wasn’t the same as the civilians that had populated the country a few years ago. Most of those civilians were dead now. This civilian was a survivor. He’d made it this far, and kept his son alive, to boot. So maybe he did know what was up.

  Lee bowed his head. “No problem,” he said.

  The father and son turned, and continued on their way.

  Lee turned and continued on his.

  No problem.

  Dead friends? No problem.

  Dead enemies? No problem.

  A life spent fighting, with no end in sight?

  No fucking problem.

  He encountered no one else, which was a relief.

  He walked across Reilly Road, through a path in a thin stand of trees, and out onto the street where his home now was. Down the sandy, tan sidewalk. Identical, single-family dwellings on either side. Down towards the last house on the corner. The one he shared with Abe and Tomlin.

  Less than a block from the place he currently called home, he spied a bit of paper, stuck to a light pole.

  He knew what it was before he approached it.

  There was a part of him that wanted to pass it by.

  But there was a larger part of him that couldn’t help himself.

  He stood, looking at the paper. Wondering how it made him feel. Realizing that he didn’t feel much of anything at all. The anger was there, simmering low inside of him. But it didn’t jump up to him like it had in the past. These stupid flyers didn’t get to him like they used to.

  This one was very similar to the others. It was a cartoon, drawn by someone with less than stellar artistic skills. It featured a caricature of a soldier, with helmet, body armor, and a rifle with the bayonet attached. The face of the soldier was wild and insane. Teeth bared. Eyes wide. No pupils drawn into them, so the soldier looked like a mindless drone. Blood dripped off the bayonet. A cluster of skulls lay beneath the soldier’s feet.

  An over-large nametape on the cartoon-soldier’s chest read HARDEN.

  Down below the picture were the hand-printed words: FUHRER ANGELA’S DEATH SQUAD.

  Lee grunted. Sat there for another moment, waiting to feel angrier about it. But he didn’t. He thought about ripping the thing off and tearing it up, but that felt like a childish and silly reaction to someone else’s childish and silly reaction.

  Whoever had stapled it to the light pole had probably considered themselves very brave for posting it there, such a short distance from the place where the monster in question slept.

  Lee took it down off the light pole, but was careful not to tear it. He folded it in fourths, then pocketed it, and continued on his way.

  Inside his house, he found Abe and Tomlin at the kitchen table, playing dominoes. Deuce was laying on his side on the floor. He scrambled up when he saw Lee, wagged twice, as though relieved, then adhered himself to Lee’s left leg, as usual.

  “Hey-oh,” Tomlin greeted him, not looking up from his tiles.

  Abe turned to see who had come through the front door. “What’s up?” he said, then turned back to the game.

  “Gentlemen,” Lee said. He stopped at the table and drew the piece of paper from his pocket, which he then unfolded and placed on the table. He forced a chuckle. “We got a new one.”

  Abe leaned forward. Eyeballed the drawing. Rolled his eyes and sat back. “Fuckin’ people.”

  Tomlin craned his neck to see the picture right-side. “I dunno, man. They’re getting better. I think it looks like you this time.”

  �
��Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ve seen you make that face before. You psychotic bastard.”

  “Fridge,” Abe intoned.

  Lee took the paper and turned to the fridge, which was not even plugged in and held nothing in it. But, on its surface, held by old magnets, were four other, similar posters. Different artwork. Same sentiment. Captain Lee Harden was a psychotic killer. Angela’s little attack dog. He lived only for death and destruction.

  He posted this one with the others. “Good to be famous,” he sighed.

  “You want us to deal you in?” Tomlin offered.

  “Nah. Gonna make it an early night.”

  “Suit yourself. Don’t murder any neighborhood kids on your way up, you scary fuck.”

  Lee left the kitchen, and Deuce followed him. He trudged up the stairs to the second level. Lee’s room was the one on the end. He went in and closed the door.

  Deuce posted up on a mini-fridge in the corner of the room. This one was plugged in, and it contained Deuce’s food.

  Lee took the metal dog bowl from the top of the mini-fridge and set it on the floor. “Sit,” he instructed, and Deuce obeyed. His big, pointed ears rotated as far forward as was caninely possible. Staring at the mini-fridge.

  Lee opened the fridge. Drew out the white bucket, which was the only thing that it contained. The smell of animal’s blood wafted up at him. Deuce’s meals for this week were from last week’s cow slaughter.

  There really wasn’t a part of the cow that the humans didn’t eat. They were good about that. But most of the “mystery meat” that was left over was ground up into big, mushy bricks, and divvied out as a sort of gristly sausage. This included trachea, tripe, tails, intestines, and testicles. Perhaps some other stuff. Lee wasn’t sure.

  People ate it, but they didn’t like it. Lee was usually able to score a brick or so of this stuff for Deuce, who was the only being in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone that looked forward to eating it. Still, despite everyone else’s hatred of the stuff, and Deuce’s obvious infatuation with it, Lee had to keep this quiet. He went discreetly to the guy that ran the slaughtering of the cows, and the guy would pass him a few pounds of the stuff on the sly.