It's Harder This Way Read online

  “When do we get to take a hot shower?” someone in the middle of the group asked.

  “Your commanders will take care of assigning you floor space,” Collins said. “Once that’s done, we’ll begin taking you down to the showers in groups of twenty. You can fight it out amongst yourselves or draw straws or whatever. Just remember, if you’re going to fight, keep it civil. No knives, guns, pipes, nothing of that sort.

  “But try to keep from slugging each other. We’re short on doctors and we’re damn short on proper medical equipment. A broken arm can be set, but the only painkillers available are marijuana and alcohol, and without a way to X-ray the break, it’s likely to never heal properly.”

  I spent the next two hours working with our squad leaders to get our people comfortable. There were no fights about who got to take a shower first, but a few friendly competitions of arm wrestling, insult contests, and favor trading broke out. I was offered the first shower but declined so Tony, Dru, and I could coordinate with our “commanders” and get prepped for the meeting with General Pryor.

  “I don’t like the idea of civilians being part of this mission,” Tony said in a low voice to me and Druscilla when we had a moment to ourselves.

  “I don’t either,” I said. “It changes things for sure.”

  “What are we going to do?” Dru asked, her dark eyes roving back and forth between our faces.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I want to have this pow-wow with Pryor and his people to see how open they’re going to be about the happenings here. Once we have more information, we can decide. In the meantime, let’s keep everyone happy with showers, food, and whatever other entertainment they can come up with.”

  “A lot them just want to shower, eat, and sleep,” Tony said. “It was a decent hike down here, and nothing is happening right away unless you have plans to storm the place in the next few hours.”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “The weapon Livingston showed us means we need to rethink that particular strategy a bit even if we do outnumber them. But I’m starting to hedge toward playing along so we can maybe get our own versions of them.”

  “You’re not really planning to go along with this, are you?” Dru asked hotly.

  “Calm down, Sergeant,” I said with a grin.

  “Do we really need to bring back a large amount of these guns?” Tony asked. He wasn’t upset or even annoyed from what I could tell, just curious.

  “I don’t know. It isn’t like we don’t have overwhelming firepower at The Farm. I don’t know what to do at this point. Their plan is crazy even if some part of me thinks it could actually work if they stuck with it for another fifty years. Especially if they’ve mastered integrating Bull tech into their gear.”

  “You’re starting to sound like you want to stay,” Dru growled.

  “Like I said, I don’t know what I want. Neither do you.” I poked her in the chest. “Keep your temper in check, and remember that we just got here. We don’t know shit about shit at this point other than the ideas we’ve carried in our heads since leaving home.”

  “Just take it easy,” Tony said in a fatherly voice. He put an arm around Dru’s shoulders. “Whatever we decide, we’ll decide it after we get a better idea of what’s going on here. No sense in rushing it. If they have showers, electricity, and weapons tech, they’ll likely have some other surprises.”

  “Hopefully good ones, like a television or such so we can relive the old days,” I said. I put my arm around Dru’s shoulders as well, squeezing the young woman between us. She stuck her tongue out at Tony before slipping away from us.

  “You’ve never seen a movie, have you?” Tony asked.

  “I’ve seen a few pictures from movies,” she said with a sly smile. “They were all sex movies.”

  She walked away, leaving us with surprised but knowing smirks. Like most everything else from the old days when it came to books, magazines, or videos, pornography was by far the most popular. I hadn’t seen an “adult movie” since a week before the Bulls showed up, but just the thought of it made some of my bits stir and come to life as if I were fifteen all over again.

  “Lieutenants?” Collins said from behind. We turned and watched her approach. “If you want to hit the showers before the meeting, now is probably a good time.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am,” I said.

  We followed her out of the barracks and down a wide hallway to a stairwell. I smiled at a dozen of our people coming up the stairs, their hair and faces still damp, laughing and chatting while nodding their heads to us as they passed. They seemed somehow more alive than I remembered. We met Dru at the bottom of the stairs. She looked like she’d been waiting for us.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she said to me loud enough for Collins to hear.

  “Mind what?” I asked, my brain somewhere else for a moment.

  “Mixed shower partners?” she asked.

  “Why the hell would I mind that?” I asked in a low voice. “I’ve seen you naked a dozen times already.”

  “Okay,” she said with a wink. “Just making sure.”

  She smiled at Collins, gave her a salute, then led me and Tony by the hand toward the doorway. The warm, humid room was lined with shelves and a few lockers that looked as if they’d been pilfered from an abandoned school. A stack of mostly white towels sat on a metal table near another opening. I could hear the sounds of multiple showers, talking, giggling, and groaning. I hoped the groaners weren’t having sex in front of everyone. None of us were prudes, but that was a bit outside of proper decorum even for hippies who lived on a converted marijuana farm.

  We weren’t squeamish about undressing in front of each other, nor about accidentally bumping into someone in the showers. The naked walk a few feet into the steam was surreal and for a moment I panicked as a powerful memory flooded through me. My legs buckled but thankfully Dru was watching and stepped in to prop me up.

  “Come on, old man,” she said with a grin that also held concern. “Are you all right?” she asked as we navigated down the middle of the wet, lathered bodies.

  “Sure,” I said, using my hand to prop myself against the tile wall when we arrived at two empty shower nozzles. “I just had a flash of the old days when I was in school.” She gave me a strange look while turning the nozzle to hot. “I played sports and we always showered as a team after a practice or a game.”

  “I’ve heard that people used to shower daily,” Dru said, her tone suggesting pre-invasion society had either been wasteful or just downright weird. “I used to think it was dumb, but suddenly…”

  She trailed off and put her head under the streaming water. I watched her, doing my best to not pay attention to her breasts, the six-pack of hard abs, or the curve of her hips and the heart-shaped narrowing of her legs down to her feet. She shuddered as if having a seizure or an orgasm, shuddered again a few seconds later, then grinned at me.

  I stood in place, hand against the wall, and let the water sting my skin as it blasted off at least a weeks’ worth of grime. I felt the shiver begin in my feet then travel up my legs and into my chest. It made the powerful memory of my teenage years come back with more intensity and I felt myself beginning to cry. I didn’t want to, and was glad the water camouflaged it, but I couldn’t help myself. It felt as if I had waited twenty-three years to finally break down and mourn for the death of civilization—and all it took was a single hot shower under electric lights.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Dru asked taking a step toward me.

  I nodded my head but let the tears flow. The way her eyes narrowed once she realized what was happening made it worse, as if she suddenly saw me as a small, weak child sobbing for his mother. She took another step and wrapped her arms around me. I did my best to focus on my sadness instead of the sudden awakening below when her small, firm, wet breasts pushed into my chest. I held on to her, letting my brain wander out of reality and back to the days before the Bull invasion.

  “You’re not
the only one,” Tony said a few minutes later from my right, just loud enough for us to hear.

  I looked around. A number of older men and women I could make out in the thick fog clutched each other, most in the midst of a tearful breakdown similar to mine. What I initially thought were sounds of sexual pleasure—thanks to the weird warping effect of the steam and ceramic tiles—were actually sobs and in one case, low wailing. I looked back at Tony. He raised his eyebrows then stepped under his shower head and let out his own sigh of pleasure.

  “Better?” Dru asked in a soft voice, her lips near my ears as we still held each other.

  “Yeah, we better separate before I embarrass both of us,” I said.

  I gently pushed her away. I couldn’t tell if she looked disappointed or thankful that I hadn’t responded how my lower brain begged me to respond. She turned away and put her head under the nozzle again, but I was pretty sure the way she straightened her back then jutted her ass out just enough to make sure I would notice was purposely cruel. I closed my eyes and let the water run over me for almost five minutes.

  I sensed Dru was finished by the sudden lack of spitting water from her shower nozzle. I opened my eyes just in time to grab her by the arm and pull her toward me. She didn’t question it at all, but neither did she position herself as if I wanted to kiss her. She pressed her head against my chest and wrapped her arms around me.

  “Listen,” I said, lowering my head to be near her ear. “I didn’t want to say this just in case they have listening devices. That’s crazy I’m sure, but this is important.” I felt her nod her head against me. “When we’re done with the meeting, I want you to head back and find Jackie and Larry. Tell them to pull back and be extra careful. That crazy scope Livingston has on his gun… if their scouts have them, our people will stand out like the sun at night.”

  “Am I coming back?” she asked just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Of course. But you’re the sneakiest one of the bunch so you’re the one who gets the job. Try not to kill anyone on the way there.”

  “What about on the way back?”

  I pushed her away and slapped her on the ass, receiving grins from the others around me when she squeaked. It was a noise no one would have ever thought possible from such a dangerous woman.

  4. Meet and Greet

  The cafeteria was packed, at least four dozen soldiers standing or seated at the wooden tables. Rebecca Collins glared at me while waving us toward her table. I sat to her right, Tony taking a seat opposite me, with Dru on the colonel’s left. A dozen of our squad leaders packed themselves in wherever they could find space.

  I sat in silence while Collins finished her meal, doing my best to not react to the stares from the base’s soldiers. General Pryor and General Livingston arrived just as Collins pushed her metal tray away. Everyone seated stood up at once as the commanders strode down the middle between the tables. I nodded to our people to follow along by standing up as well.

  “At ease,” Pryor said in a loud voice, then waited a few seconds while everyone sat back down. “As you’ve probably heard already, we’ve had a huge influx of new recruits this afternoon thanks to Colonel Hardaway’s efforts. The new people are from ‘The Farm’ up near Waldo Lake, and they’ve brought five hundred bodies with them.”

  The cafeteria broke out in a series of whispers and buzzing voices. I grinned at the reaction. If five hundred of us blew their minds, I wondered what they’d think if they saw three to four thousand of us gathered to vote as a community. The general pointed to us and gestured for us to stand.

  “Lieutenants Greggs and Galliardi are their COs, and Sergeant Druscilla is their second. Introduce yourselves to them and their commanders, and keep in mind they are new to the army lifestyle, so don’t go too hard on them if it takes a while to fit in. Some of you will be pleased because you no longer have to do a shitty job that you hate every other week and can now rotate in every month or two.”

  There were plenty of laughs at this. I wasn’t sure if my people would find it all that funny at suddenly being told to clean toilets or shovel manure (whether human or otherwise). They would do it and do it without question since it was part of the mission to fit in for as long as necessary. But I didn’t think they would be all that amused.

  “Most importantly, there’s a lot of new genitals in the mix,” Pryor continued. “We’ve explained our rules about mingling, and you know the seriousness of such rules yourselves. Have some… interesting times, so to speak, but please don’t make me or General Livingston preside over your court-martial because you used the wrong head to make a bad decision.”

  I noticed that more than half the men’s eyes in the cafeteria were glued to Dru, who pretended they didn’t exist. She passed her bored gaze over them, pausing here and there when her eyes met a woman who stared at her with the same longing as the men. Tony snorted when she winked at a cute Hispanic girl in fatigues and nearly all of the men’s faces fell apart like wet paper.

  “Colonel Collins will coordinate with squad leaders to work on integrating the new people in. We’d like to keep them together as much as possible but we don’t want both camps to be isolated from each other. We don’t need stupid rivalries when we have much bigger issues to worry about. Work schedules will be updated to reflect the addition of personnel but there shouldn’t be any change in daily calorie intake for anyone. More importantly, with this many new hands and brains, we should have all weapon and gear upgrades finished far sooner than projected. We’ll also use our newfound numbers to increase both the frequency as well as the range of our patrols.”

  I let my eyes roam over the soldiers in the cafeteria while Livingston stepped forward and talked about specifics. I knew Tony would pay attention, and even if he didn’t, Druscilla would. She was dangerous for the fact that very little slipped by her, but more so because she always looked to find any weakness that would be invaluable in crippling or terminating her enemies.

  More than a few females caught my eye, some with subtle smiles, others with winks or nods of their heads that were anything but subtle. I also noticed at least five men eyeballing me, which boosted my ego a bit even if I wasn’t remotely interested. It was something I could nettle Tony about. The one thing I noticed and was impressed by was the discipline Base Charlie’s soldiers displayed. Even while winking (or glaring, as was the case with Collins) at me, they listened and absorbed what Pryor and Livingston said. It was both annoying and reassuring how Pryor and his people seemed to believe there was a real chance to accomplish all they fantasized about.

  Livingston finished his speech and everyone stood up once again to salute the two men. The cafeteria instantly became a buzz of voices, laughter, and other assorted noises of metal trays and utensils being cleared away. A stream of soldiers stopped by our table to greet us. One lingered a little too long around Dru to the point I thought she might slug him. I hoped she’d hold her temper enough to neither physically assault the man nor insult him enough to bruise his ego and start a fight.

  Collins saved her by shouldering through the knot of men to kiss Dru on the cheek. I thought Dru might be so surprised she would recoil into a fighting stance. Instead, she leaned into Collins’ lips and smirked at the men. Tony snorted laughter once again as the sausage party broke up around the two women.

  “You owe me,” Rebecca said in a low voice before marching off to yell at the group two tables down from us.

  “It’s too bad Evan likes her and she likes you,” Tony said to Dru, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the beautiful colonel’s backside.

  “I don’t like her like that,” I protested.

  Dru finally broke her gaze from Collins and slugged me lightly in the chest. She shook her head at me then put her arm around Tony’s waist and led him to the chow line. I stood there with a stupid grin on my face until two women I could have sworn were twins engaged me in conversation. I glanced back at Collins to see her scowling at me again, though it might have been at the female sol
diers who acted like they hadn’t seen a man in decades.

  *****

  “Where’s Dru?” Tony asked once we bedded down for the night.

  “Sent her on an errand,” I whispered, not really paranoid that the barracks were bugged, but not quite willing to bet the outcome of the mission on it.

  “Gotcha,” he whispered back. “What do you think?”

  “Ask me again in a few days once we’ve had more time to see how things are really run.”

  “You think they’re putting on a show to fool us?” he asked.

  “No, but they want to present their best face to us I’m sure. Once the honeymoon wears off, we’ll have a better idea of what Base Charlie is really like.”

  “I’m having a hard time not sneaking back down to the showers,” he said with a chuckle.

  “I’m right there with you,” I said, though part of me worried about another emotional breakdown.

  “If it makes you feel better, I cried too.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious,” he said then turned over onto his back. “It’s been almost as long for me as it has been for you.”

  “Who would have thought a hot shower could be so powerful?” I asked the ceiling after I turned onto my back as well.

  Tony didn’t answer. I didn’t mind. He seemed lost within his own thoughts. I let my memories drift in and out of focus, thinking about all of the things I no longer did thanks to the Bulls.

  I thought about the last time I talked to my sister. We’d chatted over the internet with voice and video, both of us as oblivious to the coming decimation of humanity as everyone else on Earth. Her girlfriends, my virginity, grades, cars, pot and alcohol… I hated how it seemed so trivial compared to the horrors of our post-apocalypse world, and even less than trivial compared to the nightmare period just after the Bulls crippled us and the worst of humanity emerged to pick up whatever scraps were left.