Monster Nation(56)

The man with the nickel-plated revolver couldn't seem to bring his arm down. He wore a blue buttoned-down Oxford cloth shirt and tan chinos smudged with what might have been engine grease. Clark was pretty sure it wasn't. 'Somebody'' the man rasped, 'somebody take this baby' it's not mine, oh, f*ck.' He closed his eyes and Clark rushed up to grab the infant before the man dropped it. He knew that look, had seen it hundreds of times before. 'Fuck,' he screeched, and started to fold up, his knees turned to gelatin.

'Someone get this man a survival blanket. He's in shock,' Clark shouted but before anyone could obey the order Clark heard the chittering spring-loaded sound of a cheap firearm being cocked. He looked down and saw the revolver pointed up at his face. He could feel the heat coming out of the barrel, smell the spent powder.

Nobody moved. The members of Squad Three were too smart and too well-trained to point their weapons at an armed assailant. Sudden movements and implied threats could spur on a desperate man instead of convincing him to stand down.

'I'm Rich Wylie. I lived over there.' The barrel of the revolver dipped to the left. 'Nice place, you know? I kept the yard nice, fertilized it, watered it all the time. You have to in this climate. I' paid my taxes. Do you understand me? I paid my taxes every goddamned year, I paid your salary and you were supposed to come rescue me.'

'We're here now,' Clark suggested, his tone as soft and even as he could manage. Bannerman Clark had a full board of medals on the breast of his dress uniform. It didn't mean he could look into the barrel of a loaded gun without quaking in his boots. Absurdly the main thought in his head was that he hoped he wouldn't soil his BDUs. Someone would see it, which would mean everyone would know about it within twenty-four hours and the jawjacking would go on forever. Clark knew'he'd been one of those kids with nothing better to do than trade scuttlebutt about the CO. 'If you'll put that weapon down we can''

'If I put this down you won't listen to me! As soon as I do it your guys are going to tackle me, I'm not a complete moron. You need to hear this. You're coming from Denver, right? Yeah, I saw all about that on the news. You're coming from Denver. You were up there trying to do f*ck knows what, you, you shot some dead people, ooh, how exciting but down here we didn't have any military to help us. Down here we had two cops, and one of them had diabetes! He didn't do so good.'

It wasn't so much news to Clark as the variation on a theme. The Adjutant General had drawn every troop in Colorado into the defense of Denver, leaving the rest of the front range without a military line of defense. Reinforcements from the east were supposedly on their way but for three critical days Colorado had stood alone.

It was hard for Clark to fault the AG's reasoning, though. Four million people inhabited the state of Colorado. Three million of them lived in or around Denver. Or at least they had.

'I want my life back, but you can't' you weren't here in' in time'' a plaintive, high sound came out of Wylie's throat. He didn't have a lot left. 'You can't' stop this. You can't stop this,' he said. His face had gone white. The revolver drifted downward and then fell from his hand to clatter on the street. In an instant Squad Three pushed in, knocking Clark backward, away from the assailant. One of them took the baby from him'it wouldn't stop screaming. Two men grabbed at Wylie's shirt and arms and neck, pulled his arms behind his back, restrained him. It was over in seconds. Clark swallowed though there was nothing in his mouth.

'Fucking spaz,' a troop said, and filled his mouth to spit on Wylie. Sergeant Horrocks stepped up into the soldier's face and stared him down until he swallowed visibly.

Clark adjusted his boonie hat and turned away. 'Sergeant, please find a place for this civilian in one of the vehicles,' he ordered over the sound of the baby's cries. 'And find' find someone to take this. This infant.' He couldn't hear himself think. Alone, he strode away from the vehicles to stand on the shoulder of the road. He stared up over the tops of the quaint Victorian mountain town buildings, at the snow-covered peaks, until his stomach muscles stopped flip-flopping beneath his uniform shirt. It had been a long time since someone pointed a gun at him. He had served in two major wars and nearly a half dozen small conflicts and he'd never gotten used to the feeling. He had believed that he would get through the current crisis without it ever happening.

The convoy got moving again before Clark was ready to go. He watched the HEMTT go by, two of the Strykers. Then the line of minivans and panel trucks and school buses'anything they could find, anything civilian that could hold a few people. The last of the Strykers pulled rear security. Clark swung up onto its back compartment and sat down on the turret, feeling better with the wind in his face.