Welcome to the Occupied States of America by Peter Cawdron

Author:Peter Cawdron [Cawdron, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N13
Published: 2016-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Confidence

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Jai says. “This is the safe house they brought me to yesterday. It’s off the main route. You’ll be okay up here. I need to go back and help the wounded.”

“No problem.”

Once a medic, always a medic. I’m not going to argue. It took us almost an hour to get to the top of the hill, which is roughly a mile from the border post. I’m exhausted. I can see the Rio Grande in the distance. The shattered frame of the dead spider-walker has become a landmark of sorts, allowing me to get my bearing within the city. Between here and the border there’s a scattering of houses, but it’s mostly rough, rocky ground covered in low shrubs and the odd cactus. Coming from North Carolina, I could never understand the Southwest. Why would anyone want to live in a desert when you could be surrounded by lush green?

“This is an observation post. It’s quiet up here. No grubs. You’ll be fine.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” I say. Jai smiles as I add, “Go.”

Jai jogs down the path, out into the street, and disappears behind the buildings further down the slope. I want to call out, “Be careful,” but it’s redundant and kind of corny. What else would he be? Jai is too smart to be reckless—I hope.

I wheel myself around the small lounge. Like the post near the border, there are no glass windows, or window frames. Cinder blocks line rectangular openings in the walls. It’s as though the house is only partially built, even though it was once a mansion. Seven years of war has demanded everything of value be stripped and reused. The resistance can commandeer any house they want, but I guess they tend to gravitate to locations like this that afford clear views across the valley.

The house has been stripped of almost everything. There’s a couch against the back wall, but there aren’t any other furnishings. No pictures. No tables. No chairs. No carpet. No books or magazines. No curtains. No pots or pans. Nothing a grub could imitate so as to lie in wait. I bet the couch gets a few good prods before anyone sits on it—not that the couch itself could become a grub. The grubs would produce a second, quite obvious couch, but grubs could mimic a cushion on the couch. If they did, the soldiers would turn it into a pincushion, for sure. Twins and triplets, any time there’s more than one seemingly identical object in an area, survivors get nervous.

There’s a pair of binoculars in one of the drawers in the kitchen, but I don’t dare touch them. I check the other drawers to see if there are any more lying around. Grubs tend to lack imagination. They highjack nearby objects. So long as there’s only one set of binoculars, I’ll be fine.

After rifling through the drawers, I satisfy myself these binoculars are real. Even so, I’m cautious, opening the carrying case slowly.

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