#but we know smoky was pissed the marines said it was him he saved the day

[notbroadwaybound]

man it would've been cool to see a Smoker / Crocodile fight during the Summit War battle.

If only so Crocodile would say something like. "so you're the tough guy who supposedly beat me in Alabasta uh? Want to test that theory?"

[graveyarddirtseries]

Graveyard Dirt & Salt

Chapter Ten

After months of everyone on the run, on the lookout, on the defence, it was nice to know there was a wall and someone on the wall with a rifle patrolling it, so everyone sort of gathered around the blazing fire in lawn chairs and on whatever else they could perch on and talk, and tell tales and remember the way things used to be.

Chapter Ten

“So Jack and I, we're facing down ten, maybe twelve dead, we have nothing left to fight with, we're exhausted, dripping sweat. Atlanta was going through a heatwave then, remember?”

They were sitting in the cloister dining room, packed in like sardines, listening to stories, chatting, getting to know one another and the Lieutenant was itching to be anywhere else.

Mena was pissed at him, Benny too, Delgado seemed ambivalent, which was – quite frankly, a goddamned relief.

“Delgado shows up, half a goddamn army, sorry, a lot of marines with him and they mow these dead down like a hot knife through butter. We owe him our lives.”

The man, known as Black Cat Billy, was relating a story to the fascinated nuns about how he and his music partner were touring when it happened. From Nashville, both men had been playing smoky little blues clubs with their brand of bluegrass, roots, and folk music. It at least explained the guitar and banjo, but it didn't explain the damned hats.

Taking up his empty plate and glass, he headed for the kitchens at the back of the cloister building, wanting nothing more than to escape the crowd and get to work digging. He could take his punishment, it wasn't anything he wasn't used to.

“Lieutenant, sir, hold up,” Delgado said, catching up with him in the kitchen. “I'll come help you dig.”

“You don't have to call me sir,” he said, placing his dirty dishes beside the sink where the nuns like them put at the end of the meals. “No corps, no chain of command.”

“It's respect, sir.” Delgado pointed out simply.

“Respect?” The Lieutenant asked with a dry laugh. “For what? Surviving? I haven't accomplished anything.”

They stepped out of the kitchen via the back door and stood in Mena's pretty little rose garden for a good long time, staring up at the sky, before the Lieutenant stepped down from the stoop and headed off, Delgado at his heels.

“I get why you jumped,” Delgado said in his soft, almost chemical purr. It was like a man's death rattle and bedroom voice all wrapped in one.

“Is that so?”

“We take the bastards down,” Delgado went on. “Those were my orders, and I'm assuming they were yours too. So when I say 'Lieutenant, sir', I mean it. Chain of command might be broken all the way to the top, but you outrank me and I respect that.”

“I worked payroll,” the Lieutenant said suddenly, turning around to face the man. “I filled out benefit forms and signed pay stubs before all of this went down.”

Delgado was quiet.

“When I came back from my tour, they sat me behind a desk and I filed paperwork for three years before all of this shit.” He went on firmly. “Just because I'm a Lieutenant, doesn't make me a fighter anymore. I jumped from that damned horse, because if they stopped to eat my ass, it gave you and Benny and Mena more time to get away safe.”

“But you did do a tour,” Delgado insisted.

“Two of them,” he replied.

Delgado nodded. “And they put you behind a desk?”

“It's not what you think it is.”

“You saw action though.”

The Lieutenant inhaled. “Look. Just...thank you for the help in digging, but don't call me 'sir', alright?”

“I'm going to keep calling you 'sir', with all due respect, because as long as you and I are kicking, the chain of command, the corps is still alive.”

“Mais,” the Lieutenant sighed. “Good luck with thinking that. I'm going to move on and focus on the here and now.”

“We started this whole shit show with twenty men under Sergeant Williams,” Delgado said firmly. “Every last one of them died saving these people I have now. I'm all that's left. There has to be something remaining of the corps, because otherwise they died for nothing.”

“They were dying before this conflict,” the Lieutenant said. “Death is a constant, battle or old age.”

“I can't believe you're this callous,” Delgado said. “When I've seen the patches on your pack, names sewn on it that aren't yours. Desert brown, black lettering. Haywood, Scott, Gates, March...”

“...Chartier, Morrison, yeah I know.” He finished. “They were mine. The ones that died.”

“So, you can't say you don't care about their deaths, about the corps.”

“I care about people, Corporal, not institutions. Not anymore. Because at the end of the day, whether you're a marine or a nun, you're just someone trying to survive. I just want to be someone trying to survive too.”

Delgado nodded. “Okay. I get it. What should I call you then?”

“You can call me Lieutenant, or my friends used to call me Faye, my Mamere called me Fate. I don't care, just...I'm not a 'sir'. I was never knighted.” He finished with a small grin.

Nodding the other man seemed to be thinking this over, before he said, “then I'll call you Fate, because we were brothers once, in the corps.”

The Lieutenant smiled wide. “I like that. Ain't nobody around here calls me anything but Lieutenant and to be honest, I'm ready for a change.”

Sitting, dirty and sweaty, legs dangling into the hole they had just dug for the new privy, the Lieutenant and Corporal Delgado watched the sun as it began to set, eyes on the beautiful purple and orange tones of the sunset, mouths drawn into grim lines.

They managed to sit in silence, for once the Lieutenant had nothing to say, he didn't want to say anything. It was a beautiful sunset.

It was only as he took a quick glance around, always cautious these days, that he noticed a small figure watching them from the closest side of the cloister, large, dark eyes solemn.

He held out his hand to invite Annie over and the child approached quickly, hopping to sit beside him.

“You not gonna see Benny?” He asked the child.

She shook her head, clearly still angry at the man.

“Am I your new favourite until I get under your skin?” He teased.

Annie shrugged.

Drawing the girl in close to him, his arm around her shoulders he said, ��don't you think maybe Benny might be lonely without you?”

Again she shrugged.

“Why don't we go and find him together, yeah?”

“Okay,” she relented finally, eyes on Delgado who stared back at her evenly.

“You good?” The Lieutenant asked, as he stood up.

Delgado nodded. “Yeah, just gonna enjoy the sunset for a bit longer.”

“Alright. I'll, uh, send someone over when we figure out where to house y'all.” Leading Annie towards the infirmary, he figured they could look there first for Benny.

The child took hold of his hand as they walked and the Lieutenant faltered for a moment. He wasn't used to children.

Inside the infirmary Sister's Mary Monica and Mary Claire were in a deep conversation with both Medicine Man Jack and Black Cat Billy, the two musicians entertaining the women with stories and legends of the clubs they played, while in the far corner of the infirmary three of the women from the new group settled themselves in for their own deep conversation.

The Lieutenant nodded wordlessly at those who glanced his way, before he backed out, heading next for the church where Benny sometimes liked to linger, haunting the confessional and the pews.

They found Benny just outside the church, standing off to the side, leaning against the shadowy side of the stile. He had changed out of his priestly garb, back into the floral patterned button up shirt he had scrounged from somewhere deep in someone's closet and grey tweed pants. His shoes were once again polished and he looked more put together than he did as a priest. Once more he was the fancy man.

“You lose someone?” He greeted Benny.

Still posted against the church, one foot casually hooked on the decorative stone foundation behind him, Benny said, “story of my life.”

Releasing Annie's hand, the Lieutenant popped a squat comfortably on the grass and laced his boot. The skeeters were out, buzzing loudly in his ear and he was about ready to retire inside to avoid them.

Annie approached Benny slowly.

“You gonna be mad at me forever or just for tonight?” Benny asked her.

She shrugged.

“Well, you better make your peace with me soon,” Benny replied calmly, “because I need my daily workout in.”

Quickly stooping, the man grabbed hold of Annie as the child giggled and flipping her horizontal in his arms, began to do curls with her all the while Annie was laughing and squirming happily.

“You forgive me yet?” Benny demanded, lowering the girl about waist high.

“No!” Annie shouted stubbornly, though her eyes were shining merrily.

“No?” Benny demanded, raising her over his head and beginning to use her to do a shoulder press.

Deciding the two had made up enough for him to get some privacy and some rest before he took over the wall watch, the Lieutenant turned to leave, only stopping when Benny called out to him.

Approaching him, now doing triceps extensions with Annie draped behind him, Benny said, “you see we lost our beds in the infirmary?”

“Ah, it's fine. I'm going to bed in the church tonight.”

“I can't do that,” Benny replied. “Those stained glass saints give me the fucking frights.”

“Are we planning on bunking up together or what?” The Lieutenant teased.

Benny chuckled. “Well, look,” he began.

When he didn't finish that thought, the Lieutenant pressed. “Look?”

Benny shrugged. “I trust you more than them right now, okay?”

“Takes some balls to admit that.”

“It's not that I think they're...I just don't know them.”

“You thinking we stick together?”

Easing Annie down to the ground, Benny covered her ears and leaned in to whisper, “you know, if you ask me, I think we should creep into the cloister and slide in beside that Abbess.”

The Lieutenant laughed. “Sure, she'll castrate us both.”

“Worth it,” Benny returned.

“I do think they wouldn't mind if we crept into the cloister to sleep in a couple unoccupied beds. But maybe it's best to ask, yeah? I like my balls where they are.”

They had found themselves sitting around the bonfire later that night, where it seemed everyone, with the exception of Annie and a few of the older nuns, had congregated out of a need to socialize.

After months of everyone on the run, on the lookout, on the defence, it was nice to know there was a wall and someone on the wall with a rifle patrolling it, so everyone sort of gathered around the blazing fire in lawn chairs and on whatever else they could perch on and talk, and tell tales and remember the way things used to be.

It was half endearing and half torture.

Sitting on the wall nearest the bonfire, his back to the flames, his face out towards the cold, dark of the woods just beside the rose garden in the south, the Lieutenant actively listened to the conversation happening behind him and watched the shadows in front of him for signs of trouble.

“So you find yourself heading for home, but it's like swimming upstream. Between folk who were wishing and hoping for this day to get out their undiagnosed anger issues and the dead, you find you don't get far. Jack and I have been swimming home since this all began, but things upon things happen.”

“Do you think anyone will be there waiting for you?”

“I don't hold out any great hope, no ma'am.”

“You have to hope though.”

“What about you, Father, any one waiting at home for you?”

“Home? No,” it was Benny who spoke. “Haven't had one of those for a long time.”

“Where was it when you had it?”

There was a long pause, before Benny said, “you play those things or do you just like to hold them?”

Glancing over his shoulder, the Lieutenant spied Benny motioning to the instruments in the hands of the two men from the new group.

“We pick, we play, but blues don't get sung without a story to tell.”

“Thought you played bluegrass, Black Cat,” Delgado pointed out.

“What about the Cajun?” Benny said loudly suddenly. “He's a raconteur of the highest calibre. Ask him for a sad yarn.”

Glancing over his shoulder, the Lieutenant studied the group, only six, maybe seven feet from him, their faces lit by the blaze they sat around, all of them staring up at him.

“You want a story to inspire the blues?” He finally drawled after a long, silent moment of being on display, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “We all have our sad stories. Make the misere of yourself thinking of them, but then again the blues always liked to sing deepest in the chests of the miserable and downtrodden. You all want a sad story, look out over that wall, see the dead. See women in wedding dresses, men in their bathrobes, little girls and baby boys, see the way this infection swept over them. Fast food workers, just wiping down tables, thinking about the movie they're going to see with their friends after their shift, old women missing the life they never had because of their old men, granddaddies and mothers, sons and nieces, people who had plans and got up one morning about six months ago, brushed their teeth, showered, put on their favourite shoes and ducked out the door into the world. Think of photographs left on the walls of abandoned homes, cars so carefully saved up for, homes lovingly built with someone's own two hands. Quilts and scrapbooks, paintings in colours of red and orange and fire and some colours I ain't never really heard a name for. All these things created by a race of people on the verge of extinction. Newborn babies that ain't never had a chance to live, dead and rotting in hospitals, forgotten in the maze of halls and the panic of the last days of civilization as we knew it.”

Somewhere in the middle of all of that Black Cat Billy had begun to strum idly on his guitar, picking it in the chord of C Major, the great blues chords struck harmoniously as he spoke.

Continuing on, despite the blues strumming, the Lieutenant said, “even we as survivors had plans that were laid waste by all of this. Retirement, dates, weddings, a baby coming,” he motioned to the young pregnant woman. “Some of us were rotting away before any of this, some of us were living life to the fullest. Do we deserve to survive while others didn't? Nah, I don't know. Maybe in surviving despite all of it, maybe in carrying on the memories of humanity before the fall we as survivors are made into something more like a brazen bull than a golem made of clay.

Maybe we don't deserve this life, so called.

Maybe by thumbing our noses at this life we are thumbing our noses at the dead. Those we mourn and those we fear.

Maybe this was God's will? Maybe this wasn't.

Maybe it was just chaos and chaos is the most frightening thing we're running from.

Maybe there's faith in this world now, maybe there isn't.

Maybe we need to live for the dead or – at the very least, survive.

When my men got to the hospital, where we were sent before it went all wrong, there was no hope. We opened fire on anything that moved.

Maybe we killed innocent survivors, maybe we only killed the dead.

This is chaos.

I wandered for so long by myself after that, after my men left, went AWOL, gone home or died in the woods, that when I found this place, nuns just in their garden like pretty white roses, I thought that this was God.

And maybe it's a balance. Chaos and God.

Or maybe it's just numbers and happenstance.

And that's your blues, right there.”

In the night, the strumming of the guitar, the cracking of the fire, nothing else made a sound.

Suddenly one of Delgado's people spoke up, softly, “my husband and I were just coming back from looking at a cabin we were going to buy once we sold our house. A place to retire to and live out our lives.”

Her name was Beverly, he believed. Beverly...Yeo? Something. And she was weary and small and strong looking.

“I was heading to Atlanta to get an abortion,” the pregnant woman said,

What was her name? Hazel? Hazel something.

“I'd just gotten released,” Kane, the tough kid beside him on the wall, spoke up. “Got in the door and my piece of shit step brother said 'we gotta go'. Dumb fuck got picked off early.”

“We were heading to a gig in Atlanta,” Medicine Man said. “Our van got stopped on the highway, stuck in the rush out of Atlanta.”

“I just got my acceptance letter into Ole Miss,” Auggie said. “I was headed into their School of Law.”

“You'd make a really good lawyer, Auggie,” Hazel said.

The young man smiled shyly. “Thanks.”

“God willing you're the last of them though,” Kane muttered.

“Aw, lawyers ain't bad, it's the cops you gotta watch out for.” Medicine Man replied.

Black Cat, grinning, hummed as he continued to play his blues tune.

“How many of y'all lost somebody on the road getting here?” The Lieutenant asked, turning the conversation back to the blues they had all wanted. “How many lives wasted to the dead?”

When everyone sobered good and proper, the Lieutenant nodded. “There's your blues.”

In the devastated silence that followed, it took Benny groaning loudly to break the mood.

“Fuck man. I was thinking some swampfolk tale of misery, not harsh reality.”

“Why don't you tell us a story then, Paon? Some kind of Vegas 'one moment you're on top and the next you've lost it all' story.”

Benny was stone still for a moment, before nodding, saying, “you want a story? Okay. Let me try your hat on for a night.

There was a young man, grew up in a trailer park near Galveston. His was an unwanted teenaged pregnancy, carried to term and aborted the minute the young mother wanted to go out and live her young life.

He didn't have a bedroom in the double wide, lived in a closet in the hallway, ignored mostly, until it was time to get his ass beaten by whatever lowlife was screwing his mother that week.

Teased, bullied and tormented for trash in school, he kept to himself, minded his own, did okay, not great.

And then one day he was sent to live with his grandparents. Those were the golden days of his youth, as close to a normal life as he could have. Meals, attention, affection, church, though he didn't care much for that. And he was happy and for the first time he begun to think he would make something of himself. He would break the chains of extreme poverty and be a, I don't know, small business owner or veterinarian. Something simple, but better than some poor bastard working in the local supermarket.

And just as this boy began to have ideas of a better life for himself, his grandparents were killed in a car accident, a drunk driver slammed head on into their car as they came home from the store.

They had only gone into town to get the boy a new pair of sneakers for gym class. His old sneakers were fine, but this boy wanted nicer ones, the ones all the other kids were wearing and even though they cost more than most shoes should ever cost, his grandparents loved him so much they broke and went into town for them.

The boy was in the backseat at the time and heard the only people he loved in his young life, dying as they waited for the ambulance. Trapped in the back he heard the gurgling of his grandmother as she struggled to breath with a lacerated throat.

So this boy went back to live in Galveston with his piece of shit mother and suffered through high school.

As soon as he turned eighteen, he joined the army. It promised schooling and good pay, great benefits, and it was a sight better than working at some shithole corporate big box store.

But what the recruiters didn't tell the boy, what they don't tell anyone is that the army fucking sucks. Gruelling workouts, bullshit from bigger, brawnier, bro-ier men and when you make it through bootcamp, they shove a rifle in your hand and send you off to fight a politician's war.

And you kill some people, you hope they're bad guys, but fog of war, huh? And you get good at killing people and you return back from your tour for a couple of months downtime. To cool off a little, a nice little break.

And this boy, on his downtime, meets this pretty girl in a floral dress in Atlantic City and she says she works at the local florists shop in Providence, Rhode Island of all fucking places and she's so adorable and kind and good and this boy is intimated. She's too good for him. He's just some piece of shit kid, doesn't have a goddamn thing going for him except killing.

But fuck if that girl doesn't fall in love with him somehow and the boy's overwhelmed, because holy fuck they're both in love with each other and someone actually wants him.

So he marries her. He has to go back overseas in a week and so he just marries this girl and she accepts.

And so he sends his money home to her, to take care of her. That's what he thought married people did, so he did it too. Like he was normal and had the right to act normal.

But by now she had managed to buy out the florist shop and it's hers and she buys them a house with her money so that when he comes home, after his last tour and he gets his papers to walk, he has this beautiful brick home in Providence and it's beautiful and this boy, now a man, lives in golden sunlight and flowers everywhere and this world is so much different from any he's ever known.

It's heaven and he's actually happy and he feels safe with this girl.

And then one month she gets a period that lasts longer than normal. And her back begins to hurt and the doctor's fuck it all up with misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis. It's arthritis in her back, it's kidney stones.

And she keeps bleeding and she's in pain and she's bloating and the blood turns black and vile and then finally after she collapses, a doctor with a degree that's not from a fucking cereal box diagnosis's her.

Uterine cancer. And it's late stage. This beautiful girl is terminal and dying.

And it begins to dawn on this man, that everything golden he touches turns black and...after the girl...passes away, this man resolves to never allow himself to touch anything golden again. He goes far away from his home, he removes himself from anything he's ever known and becomes someone else. And he resolves himself to the fact that he will always be a piece of shit from Galveston.”

Everyone was quiet again, before Hazel asked, “what was her name?”

Benny inhaled sharply. “I don't know kid, it's a fucking story. Call her whatever you want.”

“That ain't a fucking story,” Kane said.

“You were married, Mr. Malone?” Mena asked in her pretty silver bells tone.

“That's not the point of the story,” Benny argued lightly. “The point is we're all dying, some of us just faster than others. Make of this world what you can or some fucking shit.”

Everyone was quiet for a bit, before Black Cat Billy said, “that's the blues right there.”

“You know,” Mena began simply, “for as much as you loved her, she loved you just as much.”

Benny's face sort of darkened, his brow lowering, before he shrugged and stood up.

The Lieutenant watched the shorter man as he drifted into the shadows of the cloister, before disappearing out of sight and for a moment he thought about leaving the man to his shadows, but he knew of the abject loneliness of shadows and loss, so he also stood up, just as Mena did as well.

They gazed at each other over the flames of the fire, before trailing after Benny together. Not sure why, but the Lieutenant touched Delgado on the shoulder as he passed and motioned for the other man to join them as they all headed towards the cloister.

Benny was sullenly seated on the front steps of the church when they found him, elbows hooked on the step above his shoulders, eyes on the stars overhead. He tensed up as they approached.

“We should all talk,” the Lieutenant said.

Benny leaned forward, less tense now and more curious, clasping his hands and setting his elbows on his knees to brace himself. “About what?”

“Well, there's four chef's in the kitchen now,” the Lieutenant pointed out. “We need a proper chain of command.”

“Ever the marine,” Benny murmured, pushing to his feet. “Okay. I say you put me in charge.”

“I think it should be the Abbess,” the Lieutenant argued. “She runs this place, after all.”

“No offence meant,” Delgado broke in calmly in his soft, smoky sort of voice, “but I don't think a religious leader is what we need right now.”

“You want it to be you, new guy?” Benny demanded.

“No,” Delgado said. “I just...don't think the Catholic church is who we should listen to on the facts of the dead and murdering a bunch of rednecks.”

“But it's her convent,” the Lieutenant insisted. “She has the most right of any of us to be in charge.”

“I can be balanced,” Mena said. “There is a time and place for God, and I understand not everyone is a believer.”

“I think it should be the Lieutenant, he outranks all of us,” Delgado said.

“That you know of,” Benny argued.

“Sorry, I forgot you were in the army,” Delgado said. “Or...do you own a casino? Or...run weapons? None of us know.”

“You'll know all about me when I want you to know,” Benny said. “And as a business owner, yeah, I can run this group.”

“We should let the others vote,” Mena said finally. “Make it a fair democracy.”

“I'm a socialist, let's just raise up a Great Leader,” Benny said.

“Are you serious?” Delgado demanded.

“Always.” Benny said just as the Lieutenant said, “he's not.”

“Okay,” Benny finally said. “Let's do this. Let's worry about democracy when all is said and done with these rednecks, because to be honest, Mena's people are going to vote for Mena and Delgado's people are going to vote for him, we might end up with a tie. Let's give them some time to feel everyone out, see if they have any one else in mind.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“And I need a place to sleep tonight,” Benny added. “Because I need at least a damned pillow.”

“Me too,” the Lieutenant added.

“Same,” Delgado admitted.

“Well, you're going to have to figure something out,” Mena said. “Unfortunately, I offered the last of the empty dorms in the cloister to Kane and Mr. Billy and Jack.”

“Are you shitting me?” Benny demanded.

“Language and no I'm not,” Mena said. “I'm sorry.”

“Alright, then I'm climbing in with you unless you can find me something as good,” Benny stated.

“I'm locking my door tonight,” Mena stated, turning and walking off.

“You...” Benny huffed, before following her, “like hell you are! I need a pillow, dammit!”

“Army,” the Lieutenant offered as an explanation to Delgado who grinned as the two men turned to watch Benny trail after Mena into the cloister.

“Oh shit, he's really going to go for it,” Delgado murmured as Benny followed Mena inside.

Already on the move, the Lieutenant said, “I want to see this...”

Inside the cloister, the two men trailed a good distance back as Benny hurried after a fleeing Mena.

“Mr. Malone, really, I am sorry,” Mena said as she hurried into her room and closed the door in Benny's face.

The other two joined him as they stood by Mena's closed and locked door.

“Trying to sleep with a nun?” The Lieutenant demanded of Benny with a grin.

“Abbess,” Mena corrected from behind her door.

“I just want to sleep somewhere soft for once,” Benny said.

The Lieutenant straightened up, recalling the sofa in the sacristy. “Well, good luck...I'm going to sleep on a pew in the church,” he lied.

Benny narrowed his eyes at him, before it came to him too and he exclaimed, “you bastard! You're going for the couch!”

Running out of the cloister, Benny at his heels, Delgado curious, but also following as the Lieutenant hurried for the church to get to the sacristy sofa first.

They awoke in a pile on the sacristy sofa the next morning, Benny curled up at one end, the Lieutenant at the other, long legs tucked up, Delgado on the soft carpeting beside it sitting up, head resting against the Lieutenant's thigh.

“We need some more mattresses,” Benny murmured as the Lieutenant began to shift awake.

“At the very least some pillows,” Delgado added from the floor.

“I gotta get out hunting,” the Lieutenant said.

“Yeah, I'm gonna head out too,” Benny mumbled. “Find some leads on these men.”

“I can take a few people, do some recon and scrounging,” Delgado said.

“Sounds good, be back by dark though, yeah?” The Lieutenant replied, groaning as he hauled his carcass up and out of the sofa.

Benny chuckled and kicked out his legs. “Sofa's mine.”

Outside at the pump as he had a splash of water to clean himself up a little, the Lieutenant eyed some of the nuns as they went about their pre-breakfast chores, nodding politely to them.

“I spoke with a couple of the sisters,” Mena greeted him, startling him with how quietly she had approached.

“You need a bell,” he teased.

She smiled. “I spoke with some of the sisters and they agreed to share beds so that you and Corporal Delgado may have some beds tonight.”

“What about Benny?” He asked.

“Mr. Malone may share my bed,” Mena said with a small grin.

“With who?”

She laughed. “I'm teasing! He has a bed too. We made room.”

“You're not as funny as you think you are,” he replied.

“I am sorry, I didn't realize you boys didn't have beds until it was too late, most of the nuns were already asleep. Was it awful last night?”

He shook his head. “Naw, I've slept rougher.”

“When you get back today, I'll show you your room where you can put your things.” She said.

“Thank you, Missy.” He returned.

As Mena turned and left him, that dark haired boy -- Kane from Delgado's group sidled up.

“I wanna go hunting with you,” he said. “You got time for me?”

The Lieutenant nodded. “Sure.”

“Good, meet you at the gate,” the young man walked off.

Around the campfire Billy and Jack began to strum and sing a Merle Haggard song, while the others gathered to wait to get their morning coffee. It was beginning to feel cozy around the convent, people everywhere, people on the wall walking with rifles, making him feel safe and not so alone.

By the peach tree, Benny was playing with Annie, chasing the girl around the trunk, as Annie chased a kitten and laughed. Sitting nearby on a lawn chair, Sister Gertrude sat, a kitten of her own in her lap, her sun hat on, Hazel and a couple of others gathered at her feet, listening to the old nun offer up some wisdom as they cleaned guns.

The pregnant girl was leading one of the horses around, petting it and talking to it, while Sister Mary Claire groomed another one of their stolen horses.

They would need a stable or something for the horses eventually, he thought. Hell, right now they needed another dorm building for more beds and rooms, space for people to live comfortably, a little privacy. More privies, more...they could use a power source, if they could get a power source running, the cloister washrooms, complete with showers would be fine for everyone. Their water source was from a couple of wells, so it was unlikely it would ever run dry.

“You have the look of a man planning,” someone said from his side.

That young black boy from Delgado's group stood there -- Auggie, he believed, Grayson beside him.

The Lieutenant smiled. “Just thinking of the possibility of this place. We have something really good here.”

Auggie nodded. “Yeah, a high enough wall to keep us safe inside it. Hidden from maps and anyone looking to cause trouble.”

“You're a smart young man, lawyer, right?”

“I was going to be, yeah.”

“What do you know about running power? Like solar or wind?”

Auggie laughed. “Nothing, but...Billy might.”

“Billy?”

The young man nodded. “Yeah, he was an electrical engineer. Worked on wind turbines.”

“Are you kidding?”

Auggie shook his head. “No. He's smart, but didn't like the grind, I guess.”

“We need to think of building some kind of wagon or something for heavy loads, get those horses into town there's a hardware store there, some kind of agro place too. Maybe get some supplies back here. You think you and some of the others could do a little planning today around here? Find flat ground for new buildings? With the Abbess, of course, don't plan anything on her grounds without her.”

Auggie raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

“Sure, you seem like a smart kid,” the Lieutenant said. “Benny and Delgado and I are heading out today, so you and Mena can maybe work together on that. Grayson, if you could help them too?”

Grayson nodded.

“Sure,” Auggie said with a grin. “We can take care of that.”

“And talk to Billy about making a list of things we might need for getting some power to this place, if you could?”

Auggie nodded. “Sure.”