The Disunited States of America ct-4 Read online

  "I bet you could if you set your mind to it," he said, and he still sounded serious. "You've got a way with words."

  Beckie suspected a way with words wasn't enough to get her a book. The idea might be worth thinking about, though. Writing was a better job than plenty of others she could think of.

  "I don't reckon we want any writers in the family," Gran said. Beckie didn't know she'd been listening. Her grandmother went on, "We go in for things that are a lot more ordinary, a lot more reputable."

  If anything could make Beckie bound and determined to try to write a book, a crack like that was it. But before she could give Gran the hot answer she deserved, somebody rang the doorbell. "Who's that?" Mr. Snodgrass said. He went off to take a look. Beckie followed him so she wouldn't have to talk to Gran. Her grandmother followed, too, so she could go on giving Beckie what she imagined was good advice.

  "Hello, Ted," Mr. Brooks said when Mr. Snodgrass opened the door. "And good-bye, too, I'm afraid."

  "What's up?" Mr. Snodgrass asked. "Why do you think you can get out of here? Why do you want to try?"

  "Because Ohio soldiers are coming up the road from Park-ersburg," Mr. Brooks answered. "They're not coming very fast. I think the Virginians mined the road before they pulled out. But I don't want to get occupied, thank you very much. I'm going to try to get back to Charleston. I have a chance, I think."

  "Take me with you," Gran said.

  "What? Why? I can't do that!" Mr. Brooks yelped.

  "Because I'm not about to let my sister lord it over me on account of her state's stolen the part of my state where I'm staying," Gran said. That probably made perfect sense to her. It didn't make much to Beckie, and she would have bet it didn't make any to Mr. Brooks.

  She would have won her bet, too. He said, "I'm sorry, Mrs., uh, Bentley, but I don't see how I can take you."

  But then Beckie said, "Maybe you'll need help finding Justin."

  Mr. Brooks looked at Mr. Snodgrass. "Will you tell them they're crazy, Ted? I don't think they're paying any attention to me."

  "Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren't," Mr. Snodgrass said. Mr. Brooks looked as if he'd been stabbed. Mr. Snodgrass went on, "When the Virginians come back—and they will—there's liable to be a big old fight around these parts. Can't blame a couple of furriners 'cause they don't care to get stuck in the gears."

  "I'm no furriner!" Gran said indignantly. Beckie stepped on her foot. Gran was too dumb to see Mr. Snodgrass was doing their work for them.

  "I suppose you want to come along, too," Mr. Brooks said sarcastically.

  "Nope—not me. Don't want anything to do with the big city," Mr. Snodgrass said. "If a fight rolls by here, I'll take my chances. Don't mind a bit."

  That flummoxed Mr. Brooks. He looked at Gran and Beckie. "You sure? I'll find you a hotel or something when we get there. With Justin and his mother in town, my place is crowded like you wouldn't believe."

  Did he think that would stop Gran? "My credit card still works, I expect," she said. And if she ever ran low, Mom and Dad back home would pump more money into her account. Maybe cell phones in Charleston weren't jammed. If they aren't, Beckie thought, / can talk to California again. My folks must be going out of their minds. Then something else occurred to her. Maybe they're worried about Gran, too. That wasn't kind, which didn't mean it wasn't true.

  Mr. Brooks opened and closed his mouth several times. He looked like a freshly caught fish. He didn't want to take them— that was as plain as the nose on his face. But he wasn't rude enough to say no. "How soon can you be ready?" he asked. "I want to get out of here, and I'm not kidding."

  "Twenty minutes?" Gran said.

  "Be at my motel at"—Mr. Brooks looked at his watch— "half past, then."

  Most of the time, you could count on Gran to take too long to get ready to go wherever she was going—and to complain that everyone else was making her late. Here, she seemed to see that Mr. Brooks wasn't kidding and would leave if she didn't show up on time. She threw things into her suitcase as fast as she could. Beckie didn't pay a whole lot of attention to her, because she was busy doing the same thing.

  "Thank you for taking care of us and putting up with us for so long," she told Mr. Snodgrass. Gran might have waltzed out the door without saying good-bye.

  "I was glad to have you here, especially after. . . ." He didn't finish that, but Beckie knew what he meant. He went on, "Are you sure you're doing the right thing?" He answered the question himself before she could: "But you want to find out about your young man, don't you?"

  "He's not exactly mine," Beckie said, which wasn't exactly a denial. She added, "Besides, I've got to keep an eye on Gran." That was all too true. Mr. Snodgrass nodded, understanding as much.

  Gran had already started trudging up the walk to the street. Pulling her wheeled suitcase along by the handle, Beckie hurried after her. Mr. Snodgrass closed the door behind them. It seemed very final, like the end of a chapter. What lay ahead?

  Eleven

  Justin wore a dead man's uniform. He ate from a dead man's ration cans, plus whatever else he could scrounge. The real soldiers called it liberating or foraging, depending on whether they smiled when they said it or not. A lot of it was just plain stealing. They didn't seem to care. Once Justin's belly started growling, neither did he.

  The real soldiers . . . Justin grimaced. If he wasn't a real soldier himself by now, he never would be. He'd helped a wounded buddy. He'd shot somebody. He'd killed somebody. He might have killed other people, too, but he was sure of that one kid. He expected to have nightmares about it, maybe for the rest of his life. The only thing he'd missed was getting shot himself. Even if the Negro rebels had a better cause than the Commonwealth of Virginia, he couldn't make himself sorry about that.

  "Smitty," the sergeant said.

  "Yeah, Sarge?" said Justin's newfound friend—comrade, anyway.

  "Take the new guy here and go on over to that sandbag revetment on the corner for first watch. Cal and Sam will relieve you in three hours."

  "Right, Sarge," Smitty said, which was the kind of thing you said when a sergeant told you to do something. He nudged Justin. "C'mon, man. If they couldn't shoot us out in the open, they won't shoot us when we got sandbags in front of us, right?"

  "I guess," Justin said. "I hope." Smitty laughed, for all the world as if he were joking. He'd proved himself, so Smitty must have thought he was. Oh, joy.

  "Safer here than back there," Smitty said when they got to the revetment. He kicked a sandbag. "Bulletproof as anything."

  He was bound to be right about that. The sandbags were two and three deep, and piled up to shoulder height—a little less on Justin, because he was tall. "Yeah, it'd take a rocket to punch through this stuff," he said, and then, "Have they got rockets?" He wondered if Beckie's uncle had smuggled in some along with the rifles she'd had her feet on.

  "I reckon they do," Smitty answered, and then said something rude about Ohioans' personal habits. "But they've got a lot more small arms. We came up against everything from the stuff we carry down to .22s and shotguns. Must give them nightmares about keeping everybody in cartridges."

  "Yeah." Justin hadn't worried about such things. If you had an empty gun, though, what could you do with it? Hit somebody over the head—that was about all. He looked west through the smoke. "Sun's finally going down. I don't think I've ever been through a longer day."

  "Not over yet. Some of those people"—again, not the exact word Smitty used—"will be sneaking around at night. IR goggles are good, but they aren't as good as the real eyeball."

  "Uh-huh." Justin hoped his voice didn't sound too hollow. He didn't know how to use his goggles. Adrian had been trained with them. Justin hadn't. I'll turn them on and hope for the best, he thought. That should be better than nothing, anyhow.

  With all the smoke in the air, it got dark fast. Justin flipped down the goggles, then fumbled till he found a switch. Now he watched the world in shades of black and green. Night
-vision goggles in the home timeline gave much better images. A fire a couple of hundred meters away seemed bright as the sun. Justin didn't know how to turn down the gain.

  He wished Smitty would fall asleep. Then he could put on his own clothes and find the coin shop . . . find his mother.

  Smitty seemed much too wide awake. What did they do to sentries who fell asleep at their posts here? Shoot them, the way they had in lots of places (including the U.S.A.) in the home timeline? Justin wouldn't have been surprised. One thing he'd already found out about war: both sides played for keeps.

  When Justin yawned enormously, Smitty reached into a pocket and pulled out a little plastic bottle. "Want a pill? You won't worry about sleeping for the next two days."

  "I'll be okay." Improvising, Justin went on, "I don't like to use 'em unless I really have to. I'm liable to run down just when I ought to keep going."

  "Then you take another one." But Smitty didn't push it. "You've got a point, I guess. Take too many and they'll mess you up. Every once in a while, though, you gotta."

  "Sure," Justin said, and then, "What was that?" Was it an imaginary noise, a noise that came from nerves stretched too tight? He wouldn't have been surprised. Still, better to think you heard a noise that wasn't really there than to miss one that was.

  "Where?" Smitty's voice was the tiniest thread of whisper.

  "Over that way," Justin whispered back, pointing in the general direction of the fire. "Can't see anything much."

  To his surprise, Smitty slipped off his goggles. When he did, he started to laugh. "Those sneaky so-and-so's," he said. "They know we'll be using the IR gear, and the fire masks them. But when you just look that way ..."

  Justin raised his goggles, too. The fire lit up three men crawling toward the revetment. They were almost close enough to chuck a grenade. That would have been no laughing matter. Smitty started shooting: neat bursts of three or four rounds, so his assault rifle's muzzle didn't climb too high. The advancing Negroes never had a chance. Justin fired a few rounds, too, not aiming at them, so he'd seem to be doing something. It hardly mattered—inside of a few seconds, the blacks were all dead or dying.

  "Good thing you had your ears open," Smitty said. Killing people didn't bother him much. Yes, they would have blown him up if they got the chance. Even so ...

  "Don't know how I can hear anything after all the gunfire." Justin's ears were ringing.

  "Gun bunnies have it worse than we do," Smitty said. "Artilleryman's ear is no fun at all. It makes you deaf to people talking and lets you hear the stuff that doesn't matter half as much."

  "Wonderful," Justin said, and Smitty nodded. Justin wished he had ear plugs. Maybe he did—he didn't know what all was in the pack or in the pouches on his belt. He couldn't very well start fumbling around to find out now. One thing did occur to him: "Why don't you leave your goggles on, and I'll take mine off? That way, one of us will be sure to spot any kind of trouble." And I won't have to mess with what I don't understand.

  "Good thinking," Smitty said. "We'll do it."

  Every time anything made any kind of noise, close or near, Justin flinched. Adrenaline rivered through him. "I don't need your little pills after all," he told Smitty. "Nothing like fear to wire you."

  "Wire you?" Smitty frowned. Justin realized that wasn't slang in this alternate. After a second, though, Smitty got it. "Oh, I know what you mean. Yeah, being scared cranks me, too—you betcha." That made sense here and in the home timeline.

  Nobody else came close to them while they were on watch. Justin supposed three corpses lying not far away discouraged visitors. He knew they would have discouraged him. After what seemed like forever, their reliefs came up. "Had company, did you?" one of the soldiers said, pointing to the bodies.

  "Yeah. They got cute." Smitty explained the trick the Negroes had used. "Don't let 'em catch you the same way, or you'll be sorry." He also mentioned Justin's idea for having one soldier use goggles while the other went without. "He's pretty smart," he finished, and thumped Justin on the back. "Glad we brought him along."

  "He got Eddie to cover when they shot him, too, didn't he?" one of the new men said. Eddie nodded. The other soldier turned to Justin. "You're good in my book, buddy."

  "Thanks." How much that meant to Justin himself surprised him.

  He and Smitty made it back to their company's encampment without any trouble. As he unrolled his sleeping bag, he thought about waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking away. He thought about it. ... Then he lay down. Sleep clubbed him over the head. Whatever happened after that, he didn't know a thing about it.

  One of the amusement parks in Southern California had something called Mr. Frog's Crazy Ride. It was—loosely—based on a famous children's book. Beckie had always liked The Breeze in the Birches. All she could think now, though, was that the fabulous Mr. Frog was only a polliwog when it came to crazy rides. Getting from Elizabeth to Charleston beat the pants off anything at Mortimer's World.

  Mr. Brooks started going by the route he'd used to come up to Elizabeth: over side roads west to the main highway south. That probably would have worked it he were able to get to the main highway. But he wasn't. A couple of kilometers west of Elizabeth, the road stopped being a road. There was an enormous crater that stretched all the way across it, and something—a bulldozer?—had piled the rubble into a neat barricade.

  "Well. . . fudge," Mr. Brooks said. "I guess they didn't want anybody from Ohio coming down this road. They know how to get what they want, don't they?"

  "Can you go around?" Gran asked. As far as Beckie knew, that was her second dumbest question of all time, right behind Did anything break? when the shell put a hole in Mr. Snodgrass' kitchen wall. That topped the list, but this one gave it a run for its money.

  "If I had an armored personnel carrier, I might try it," Mr. Brooks answered with what Beckie thought was commendable calm. "In a Hupmobile that's seen better days—thanks, but no thanks."

  "What will you do, then?" Gran asked.

  "Go back and try the long way around. What else can I do?" Mr. Brooks said. Even going back wasn't easy. He did some fancy driving to turn around on the narrow road, then started east towards Elizabeth again. "I hope we don't get there at the same time as the Ohio troops do."

  They beat the Ohioans, but not by much. Somebody yelled at them through a bullhorn. Somebody else fired a couple of shots at them. Beckie thought the shots were aimed their way, anyhow. Mr. Brooks took two corners on two wheels and got away. Beckie would have been more impressed than she was if she hadn't been scared to death, too.

  "Are you trying to kill all of us?" Gran squawked.

  "No, ma'am," Mr. Brooks answered, polite as a preacher. "I'm trying not to." The Hupmobile's brakes squealed as he jerked the car around another corner.

  "Well, now I know why we wear seat belts," Beckie said. Gran hadn't wanted to put hers on. Mr. Brooks had been polite then, too: he'd politely told her she could walk in that case. He wasn't kidding. Even Gran, who was stubborner than most cats, could figure that out for herself. She had the belt on. So did Beckie, without argument.

  As they sped east, away from Elizabeth, Mr. Brooks said, "I hope the Virginians didn't mine this stretch of road after they went down it."

  Gran found another smart question to ask: "What happens if they did?"

  "We blow up." Mr. Brooks sounded remarkably lighthearted about it. Would that make Gran stop asking questions? Beckie would have quit a lot sooner herself, but her grandmother never had known how to take a hint.

  "Do you think we can get there without blowing up?" No, Gran had no clue that she might be irritating.

  "Not a chance. I came this way on purpose, just so I could go sky-high," Mr. Brooks answered, deadpan. "And when you and Beckie wanted to come along, I really looked forward to blasting a couple of innocent bystanders, too."

  Beckie giggled. She couldn't help herself. Gran was not amused. "Young man, are you playing games with me?" she demanded. H
er tones suggested she would take Mr. Brooks to the woodshed if he dared do such a thing.

  He stopped wasting time being polite: "Mrs. Bentley, get out of my hair and let me drive. I didn't want to bring you. You wanted to come. Now pipe down."

  Gran opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. Chances were nobody'd talked to her like that since Beckie's grandfather was alive. It didn't do him much good, not from what Beckie'd heard, but Mr. Brooks took Gran by surprise. The silence was chilly, but he didn't seem to care.

  Then they came to a checkpoint. A soldier strode out from a sandbagged machine-gun nest and held up his right hand. "Where y'all think you're going?" he demanded. "There's not supposed to be any civilian traffic on the road."

  "I know that, but we've got a medical emergency." Mr. Brooks pointed to Gran.

  The soldier took a step back. He brought up his assault rifle. "If she's got the plague, you really can't take her anywhere."

  "No, nothing to do with that. You can see for yourself— she'd look sicker if she did," Mr. Brooks said. He was right about that. Gran, as usual, looked healthy as an ox. She also looked surprised to hear she was sick. Usually, she complained about her health. It would be just like her to say she was fine now. To Beckie's relief, she didn't. Mr. Brooks went on, "She's been getting her therapy in Parkersburg. We can't go there now, so I have to take her down to Charleston for treatment. You don't want her to die, do you?"

  By the look on the soldier's face, he couldn't have cared less. "Let me talk to my sergeant," he said at last. "You stay right there till I get back if you know what's good for you."

  He walked back to the revetment. When he returned, he had an older man with him. "What the devil's going on here?" the noncom said.

  Mr. Brooks went through his song and dance again. "She's a sweet old lady," he said—with a straight face, too, which proved he was a good actor. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to, believe me."