Before the Strandline- Puppies Read online

  The perfume of Confederate jasmine coming from the tangled, overgrown city covered up the stink from the camp’s latrine—almost. Richmond Parrish shifted upwind from the smell, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. It was easy to forget that before the grid came tumbling down people had yards and made gardens and raked leaves just to grow stuff in the dirt because it smelled good or looked pretty. And those same people had crapped indoors—all the way inside, on toilets that flushed. Some of the new kids in the junior militia hadn’t been potty trained when the lights went out.

  Parrish leaned against a concrete light pole at the edge of a strip of asphalt. It had been a road with a name, once, that ran in front of the militia’s latest base camp. Waves on Lake Monroe curled up like white tipped frosting. Seven of the newest recruits chased a soccer ball around like big, dumb puppies. The new ones were always like that: half grown, clumsy dogs. Puppies.

  The Puppies called the place Camp Rock Steady, but that was kid-recruits for you, thinking names made a difference. Camp Rock Steady! It was nothing more than the city of Sanford’s old National Guard Armory with three walls still standing after the Flare-Out Wars. It had a partial roof covering most of the main room, and the Puppies thought that was first class. Well, it did keep the afternoon thunderstorms off.

  What a joke. If the junior militia settled into one scum hole for more than a week, the Puppies were ready to build a tree house and start a babysitter’s club. It was hard for them. They couldn’t remember how many had died that first year waiting for some benevolent government agency to bring back the hum of electricity.

  The new crop of junior militia tumbled by kicking a half-flat soccer ball. Parrish tried not to make predictions, but it was inevitable: that one, the kid with the beginnings of peach fuzz on his upper lip, he was the kind of kid who would want to please so badly he’d be dead in a month—always taking stupid chances, volunteering for crap work, never seeing himself as the body chopped to bits in a ditch.

  In a weird way, predicting their end made what Parrish had to do easier.

  Another of the boys, a stick of a kid, had moves, and didn’t seem intimidated by the older guys. He looked about ten, but it was hard to tell; so many of the kids were on the edge of starvation when they swept them into the unit. He was all arms and legs and crazy footwork. His red hair made him easy to spot in the pileups. Parrish pictured the way he’d looked when they’d pressed him into the militia, scuttling in and out of a ruined storage unit in Tallahassee like a giant, spidery hermit crab: bony, filthy, alone.

  Parrish counted the number of times the kid juked the bigger guys with a quick twist or fake out—some talent there. He moved the ball like it belonged to him with a “come and get it” attitude.

  Sergeant Merritt, a guy built like a retaining wall and about as smart, walked into the tangle of kids, picked up the flabby leather ball, and waited for the bitching to start or someone to step out of line far enough to justify a beat down. Some of the older guys knew better; they faded back and out of range of Merritt’s hard temper and harder fists, but the new kids . . . well . . . they were Puppies, and the good sarge liked Puppy for breakfast.

  Parrish folded his arms across his chest and waited.

  Sure enough, the kid with the red hair and the quick feet turned his head and yelled over his shoulder, “Too quick for you soldier boys? I’ll slow it down if you ask nice.” He pointed in Merritt’s general direction.

  A couple of the Puppies laughed and hooted.

  Merritt walked into the tangle of boys and slammed a fist into the kid’s mouth. The kid hit the ground hard enough to make his head bounce—once. He stayed down, not unconscious but careful, now that he knew the game. Quick study. Merritt pulled back his foot, let it fly, and kicked the kid in the side. A grunt and a yelp punctuated the blow, and the redheaded kid was on his feet, watching the sergeant with hate and shock.

  It was easy to see the boy was trying not to hunch against the pain in his side, probably a couple of cracked ribs. Blood smeared one cheek. Had to admire the way the kid didn’t lose control and go in swinging.

  At Merritt’s nod, two of the First Squad leaders grabbed the kid’s arms and pinned them against his sides. The sergeant waded in, pounding the shit out of the smart-mouthed redhead.

  Parrish stayed patient. It was important to step in at just the right time: Puppies needed to be hurting, on the verge of breaking, but not used up. Didn’t want Merritt to crack him all the way in half; it took too long to get a recruit on his feet and back into the fight. Parrish watched the boy’s eyes; that’s where you always found the truth. Some of them broke before the first blow fell. Some of them took a while. This kid dropped his head to his chin and kept his blazing blue eyes shut, waiting it out.

  Merritt’s ham-sized fists thumping gut sounded like someone chopping wood.

  A minute passed . . . two . . . before Parrish saw it. The kid knew how to take a punch, had taken more than a few in his life. He was actively bracing against the beating, absorbing the blows like a martial artist. This kid was tougher than he looked, a lot tougher.

  Parrish pushed away from the pole. “Hold up, Merritt. Stand down. I’ll take him on. Dump him.”

  The squad leaders released their hold on the redheaded boy’s skinny arms as he fell to his knees.

  “I’ll shape him up. Lay off.”

  Merritt rounded on Parrish, blood fever narrowing his piggy eyes.

  “He’s got a smart mouth. Going to shut it. Besides, you don’t take on Puppies for training. How come you got a hard-on for this one?”

  “I said, ‘Stand down.’ Try not to be a giant pain in my ass. Do you really need a beating of your own? You know I’ll do it,” Parrish said, never raising his voice, never sounding more than mildly interested. He didn’t have to.

  Merritt took a half step back, his eyes sparking fear. He grumbled, threw his bloody hands in the air, and stomped off.

  The boy curled in the dirt at Parrish’s feet. His breath hissed out through his teeth—still had teeth—good. One blue eye was starting to slit closed. He glanced up at Parrish with his good eye.

  “Why didn’t you fight back?” He let the kid push up to his knees before he kicked him back down, face-first into the dirt. No answer. Quick, quick study.

  “Where were you born?” When the kid continued to hesitate, Parrish added, “Now’s the time to speak up. All about timing. Born, where?”

  “Tallahassee.”

  “Then that’s what I’m calling you.”

  “It’s not my name.”

  “It is now. And you don’t get up until I tell you to get up, or I’ll go and get the good sergeant back here to finish the job of shutting you up.”

  The kid, now known as Tallahassee, relaxed face-first in the dirt.

  “I’m Parrish, Richmond. It’s where I was born. You’ll call me Sir.” He thought about Sergeant Merritt, once of Merritt Island, dragged into the militia as a fat, booger-crying pants wetter before he’d come into his own as a meat-fisted bully.

  “Get up.”

  This time he let Tallahassee stagger all the way to his feet. “I’m your best bet to stay off Merritt’s blood trail.”

  The kid swiped a hand across the blood drying on his face, studied Parrish with his one good eye, and nodded. “I get it.”

  “Who beat you down before the world burned to crap?”

  A half laugh and a sigh greeted Parrish’s observation. Tallahassee didn’t bother to lie about it. “Stepdads. Pick one. There was more than a few.”

  He shook himself like a dog shedding water, groaned, and then clutched his side.

  “Come on. We’ll get you taped up, at least.”
/>   Parrish pushed the bruised kid in front of him and watched him limp toward the medical tent.

  “Tallahassee?”

  The boy turned.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care what your name was, who your people might have been, what sad story brought you here. Don’t care. I will feed you to Merritt or one of the others if you don’t fall in line, my line.” Parrish said it quietly, let the moment spin out, trying to figure out why he’d picked this kid to worry about. He was too skinny, probably wormy: hungry all the time, hard to feed. Obviously, had a rough time shutting his mouth. Good with a soccer ball, though. Maybe, that was it. Maybe, it was the soccer.

  Parrish had liked soccer—once.

  Inside the armory, his little sister hustled into healing mode. She adjusted the wick on a battered hurricane lamp. Shadows shifted away from the exam table. It was one of those rare buildings that still had most of its roof, but the high ceiling and narrow windows kept the inside murky—cool in the summer, dank in the winter.

  Darby had a way about her: detached when she needed to be and gentle when there was time and reason for it. She worked with the wounded, and, in a crazy way, had found her calling. Hard to believe she was only thirteen. Hard to believe she wasn’t trying out for cheerleading or playing slow-pitch softball.

  Parrish gave himself a good mental shake. No one could make him fall into the quicksand of memories faster than his sister Darby.

  He smiled at her quick, efficient bossiness: blond hair cut short, blue eyes missing nothing, fingers feeling for hidden hurts. She looked fragile. She wasn’t. Running her hands over Tallahassee’s side, she hit a raw spot. The boy sucked in a sharp breath. Trust Darby to find the problem.

  “Don’t hold your breath. I know you want to because it hurts, but if you don’t use your lungs and breathe deeply you could get sick. Lung sick.”

  “That’s not a real thing. Lung sick?” Tallahassee managed to sound snarky, even with a split lip.

  Parrish admired the kid’s stupid bravado.

  “Yeah, it is. So don’t hold your breath.” She gave him a good poke in his sunken gut. He gasped, air puffing out in a moan.

  Darby caught Parrish’s eye. “Who? Who did this?” She started to wrap his ribs with strips of flannel sheet she’d soaked in vinegar.

  “Doesn’t matter. Don’t you go around campaigning for softer treatment.”

  She shot Parrish a snippy look. “I’m not stupid.” She pointed at her patient. “You! After I tie this off, go over there and try to find something to wear.” He didn’t seem inclined to argue and shuffled to a stack of worn combat fatigues stacked in the corner. It was a step up from the rags he’d been wearing when they’d found him, and they both knew it. Getting beaten had at least earned him a uniform.

  Darby sighed and rinsed her hands in a basin, then turned to Parrish. She reached up, putting her hands on his cheeks. She turned his face and made him look at her, the way she’d done since before she could toddle. Her hands still smelled of vinegar.

  “Don’t worry. I know how to be invisible, be helpful, make myself useful.”

  It was true, but he never made fun of the way she hid her body in shapeless men’s clothes or the ugly way she cut her hair. He knew what she was doing. She patted his cheeks once, twice, and then let a smile soften her tough-girl attitude.

  “Where’s Brevard?”

  A shadow ghosted over her face. Something about that bothered Parrish. “What?”

  She shrugged him off. “Nothing. Scavenging. Out.” She started to clean up.

  Parrish shook off his irritation at the thought of the dumpy, squat medical student that they called a doctor, who kept his head shaved because of an irrational fear of lice. He was older than most of the other members of the militia and knew how to make himself useful too—a first year resident when it all went to ashes.

  They were lucky to have someone with medical knowledge, any medical knowledge. A lot of the units, if you could even call them that, were making do with hospital orderlies or janitors. Yeah, it was good to have someone around like Brevard who could shove your bone back under your skin if you needed it. Always important to stay on the good side of someone like that; gangrene from a compound fracture was no way to die. Yeah, it was luck, and lucky too to have him take Darby under his meaty wing, train her up, and help keep the others off her.

  She turned to Parrish and jerked her thumb at Tallahassee. “You going to train that one?” She studied her brother with a curious grin. “That’s cool of you.”

  “We need warm bodies that can fight.” In the corner, the kid slipped gingerly into an oversized shirt. “He’s tall for his age. Got good reach. He’d be a good fighter if someone worked with him. That’s all.”

  Parrish tried to ignore her knowing smile. She still thought of him as the big brother who’d pushed her on the backyard swing for hours and hours. He hadn’t been that boy in a long time. Still . . . her childish optimism, after everything they’d seen—done—was hard to resist. Parrish messed up her already fussed-up hair. She smacked his hand away and laughed.

  Outside, near the twisted chassis of a burned out mini van, Brevard barked instructions. Darby’s grin slipped away.

  She dropped her face and started to fold bits of torn sheets into triangle shapes as the sound of Brevard’s big-mouthed voice boomed into the corner of the building where they’d set up the triage: a half dozen bed rolls lined the remaining walls and plastic sheeting thrown over a hinged door balanced on two stacks of truck tires served as an exam table.

  “You okay?” Parrish poked at his little sister’s foot with his toe. She seemed . . . more than quiet. She seemed watchful. He had a flash of Ella’s horrified face, and then Brittany screaming his name—his real name—as they’d been dragged away. The quick, sharp vision knocked him back, made his stomach clench. Keep Darby safe. It was the last thing Ella had yelled to him, the day they’d been taken prisoner! She’d told him to take care of Darby, to look out for their baby sister . . . to stay with her and not come after them and try to find them.

  The junior militia had gotten their butts kicked that day near Jetty Park and lost a lot of good people, lost family, lost Ella and Brittany. Then they’d had to fight it out with a group of scum that had been shaking people down for food and supplies and slaves in exchange for using the bridge over the Saint John’s, between Geneva and Mims—Crossing Squatters—another made up name for a new evil. They’d won that battle, massacring the Crossing-Squatters so the unit could make its way inland to hole up and lick their wounds, not to mention avoiding the pirate gangs warring over the endless Florida coastline.

  He shook off the sick guilt and repeated, “Seriously. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. You. Go. Go train your Puppy.” The worry lines settled between her eyes as she hunched inside her giant shirt, hands busy folding.

  Brevard stumbled inside, carrying a roll of painter’s plastic. “Still good. Not that crumbly crap that you find at the old box stores. Must be professional grade.” He slapped the plastic down on the rickety examine table. “Dar! Tuck this away someplace the rats won’t get to it.” He ignored the bandaged, bruised Tallahassee while Darby hefted the roll of plastic.

  Brevard never bothered to check Darby’s patch job. What was another bloodied kid soldier to him? Besides, he knew that Parrish’s kid sister was good at what she did, or he wouldn’t turn so many of the wounded over to her, right?

  “Parrish?” Brevard said. He held a tin can without a label in his hand. “Want to play?”

  He held the can out to Parrish, wanting to play can-can roulette. The idea was to grab the can and jerk it back and forth until someone let go. The winner got to eat whatever was inside, but they had to eat it—no matter what—dog food, sauerkraut, rotten fish eggs.

  “No. It’s all yours. Good luck. I hope it’s Spaghetti-O’s.”

  Brevard shook the can next to his ear. “Yeah, me too. Hey! Think we’ll stay put for a while? Might
be nice, hurricane season coming up and all. Let Commander Titus know without letting him know I’m for it. Right? After Jetty Park, might be good to hide out some more.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Parrish slung his AR-15 over his shoulder, pulled a box of old chocolate covered cherries out of the pocket of his cargo pants and tossed them to Brevard. Food! The never-fail currency of the post-grid-collapsed-world, and with Brevard food was as good as gold. “Let me know if there’s trouble around here I don’t know about.” He glanced at his sister jamming the plastic into a dented footlocker. “If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Right?”

  Brevard blanched, wiped a bead of sweat off the tip of his nose—never looked Darby’s way.

  The guy wasn’t a bad sort, just gutless. Liked to hear the sound of his own voice yapping about how he’d been this close to finishing his residency . . . this close . . .

  Close. As if no one else had been yanked out of a promising future.

  A week later, they found a litter of mixed breed dogs on patrol near the river—just pups, no mother, but she’d dug out a den under the exposed roots of a live oak growing next to one of the drainage ditches that crisscrossed the state: some Army Corps of Engineers project from back in the depression times—maybe—who the hell knew, who the hell cared. The puppies were fat, fluffy, and their eyes were wide open. It was going to be dog for dinner, unless they were ordered to save the dogs, give them to the new guys—a puppy for each of the Puppies.

  Parrish hoped not.

  Their commander, Titus, was a flashy Hispanic guy who’d joined the Junior Militia early and willingly; it had been his ticket out of juvy. He’d outlived all of the grown-ups in charge. With his friend Merritt’s fists, and the rumors that he’d raped or robbed or beaten or burned two high school teachers—who could keep track of the scuttlebutt—before he was fifteen, Titus had shot straight to the top. He was older and meaner and liked the job of giving orders. Parrish wished he cared enough to challenge Titus for the top spot, but he just didn’t.

  Titus ordered two of the new guys down into the den to drag out the litter of eight wriggling bodies. Nobody dared ooh or aah, but it was close. A couple of the males in the litter made a big show of growling, but one good shake and they were cowed.