E E Knight - 09 March in Country by E E Knight

Author:E E Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

The Trails:

North America is once again a land of trails. With so much wartime destruction and neglect to land corridors, outside of an individual Kurian Zone or the free territories, getting from here to there proceeds mostly in fits and starts. One makes a fast, exhausting dash of long days of travel to the next safe area, where packs can be refilled, animals rested and exchanged, fuel and munitions purchased—if they’re available, that is. Complex does not even begin to describe it.

It’s possible to carve out a new trail, of course. One just needs the manpower to establish waypoint bases for rest and resupply. There’s already a well-established trail between Southern Command and Fort Seng; the only thing that changes are the river crossing points on the Mississippi and the Tennessee. Escapees from the Kurian Zone flow one way, a trickle of replacements and supplies travels the other.

What Valentine and company propose to do has not been tried before on this scale. Their plan involves establishing a one-shot “river trail” from the Mississippi bank north of Saint Louis to Evansville. There are no substantial Kurian forts on the river between the two points, as the area largely belongs to the Grogs. While the land route would be much shorter in miles, the river will allow speed, which could prove vital for transferring a stadium full of Golden Ones without it turning into a late twenty-first-century trail of tears.

“You know, David,” Brother Mark said, “there’s a fine old saying ripened by the distinction of years. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is one definition of insanity. Which is how establishing a new freehold in the mid-South is beginning to look to these weary eyes.”

The old renegade churchman smelled like mothballs and spiced aftershave to Valentine. It was an oddly comforting mixture, suggesting generations of familial secrets. He was bone tired from putting the fort back together after the air raid, seeing the worst of the wounded into the Evansville hospital, and finishing the plan with Ediyak. “I think ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’ is even older.”

The battalion officers sat in the big entrance hall to headquarters, overstuffed chairs pulled into a circle and sentries posted at the doors and windows. Lambert had finished presenting the plan she, Ediyak, and Valentine had worked out for moving whatever Golden Ones wanted to come to Kentucky.

“It might be wiser to pull back down the Ohio to the other side of the Mississippi,” Brother Mark said.

Ediyak gulped and grew wide-eyed. She’d spent much of her life in the Kurian Zone, and when a churchman spoke, you listened and complied.

“The new freehold was your idea,” Lambert said. “We military types, once we get hold of something, crack our heads against it until one gives way.”

“Can’t stop now. The Kentuckians have thrown in with us,” Valentine said.

“Nobly spoken,” Brother Mark said. “But we’ve brought with us all four horsemen, and they’ve had a run of the land. The Western Coal fields and much of the Pennyroyal is empty, thanks to the ravies virus.

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