The War After Armageddon

They arrived all through the night. Some still crewed their vehicles, but most stumbled in on foot. Shocked, panicked. A few maintained a fragile haughtiness, outraged by what had been done to them. But the surprise of their defeat, of their catastrophe, left the MOBIC troops undone. Howling Scripture, a captain stood in the middle of a trail, threatening to shoot the enlisted men passing him by if they refused to fall in and resist imaginary pursuers. The soldiers sensed he was talking to himself, stunned by God’s unpredictability, and they kept walking. The captain did not shoot, and his arm grew weary. At last, he stopped waving his pistol at Heaven and slumped into the general retreat. Men who had bragged the day before of their invincibility begged water or food from Maxwell’s soldiers. Not all responses were courteous, even when rations were shared. And in the terror that had gripped them, the MOBIC troops had forgotten how to pray, but not how to curse.

Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell had stayed busy through another sleepless night. The first problem had been blue-on-blue shootings. His own men had quick trigger fingers after the infiltrations and close combat of the previous night. Even withdrawn to a tactical assembly area well behind the battle, the bleary-eyed tankers of 2-34 alerted at every unexpected sound. Grudges influenced decisions.

For his part, Maxwell did what he could to support the MOBIC officers attempting to impose order on the situation. Not only didn’t he want the fleeing MOBIC troops to spread the contagion of panic, he also remembered his training from bygone years: Troops exposed to significant doses of radiation, as the front-line fighters had been, had to limit their exertions drastically, to let their systems concentrate on fighting the intrusion on their bodies. Those wild men running down roads and trails in search of impossible safety were killing themselves. As little as he liked anybody or anything affiliated with the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ, Maxwell didn’t want them dead of radiation sickness. He hated what they stood for, but they still were his own kind.

Craving sleep, Maxwell had clamored over the land line for dosimeters to measure the exposure of his own soldiers. But his voice had been only one among dozens of commanders, and most of the division’s slight nuclear-defense resources had been sent north in support of the Marines road-marching through dead zones.

In the early morning hours, an order had come down from brigade to organize a demi-battalion from 2-34 Armor’s functional vehicles — those that still had working electronics.

“Be prepared to move, on order, not later than 0700.”

Maxwell yearned for a few hours of sleep. And his men were as tired as he was. Or wearier. But as soon as his operations officer tracked him down and relayed the order, Maxwell rallied to the task, enlivened by the prospect of getting back in the fight. He gave up trying to persuade stray MOBIC troops to halt where they were and rest and started ruthlessly sorting through his battalion’s companies, culling the systems and soldiers he judged capable of fighting on. No one wanted to be left behind, but Maxwell understood the order on a visceral, warrior’s level: There wouldn’t be time to communicate from tank to tank with hand signals and handkerchiefs. The task force that rolled out of the assembly area had to be lean, mean, and ready.

Where would they be heading? The FRAGO hadn’t included routes or objectives or other control measures: just “Be prepared to move.” Maxwell couldn’t believe they’d be ordered up through the nuked dirt the MOBIC survivors had fled. So that meant road-marching north, or maybe south, for a wide flanking attack.

What was happening in the great world beyond the range of his thermal sights? And where was the fuel going to come from? The reduced battalion could get through one good fight with the ammo on board, but Maxwell worried about water and chow resupply, given that his tankers had been handing out their rations, however reluctantly, to the MOBIC survivors.

A pair of his mechanics opened fire on MOBIC troops attempting to steal a vehicle, killing one man and wounding three. Then word came up that the Bravo Company first sergeant had died of an apparent heart attack. The Bravo Company and Charlie Company commanders got into a pissing contest over four replacement radios that had been delivered and dumped by a signals team from division. The spat had grown so acrimonious by the time Maxwell arrived that he threatened to relieve both men — and gave all four of the radios to Alpha Company.

It occurred to him that he should be grateful that the situation wasn’t worse. Worn down as they were, his soldiers just needed an enemy to fight. He wouldn’t have wanted to be the Jihadi outfit that got in their way.

As the first skirmish line of light attacked the horizon, Maxwell wondered where he and his men would be at sunset.