Free The Unit by Terry DeHart

that my second-in-command is giggling like a little bitch.
    I sit by the dead fire and a short stretch of time comes that doesn’t have any pain in it. I know that I’m a sight. It makes me kind of happy that Luscious and the men got over on me. It’s a mild thing for them to do after they watched me shoot Ookie. It’s the middle road between them obeying me out of fear, like beat-down dogs, and them killing me. They’ll be in a good mood today when they wake up, and maybe this will be one of the days we’ll remember.
    “Someday we’re going to say these were the good days, right?” I say to Luscious.
    “Yep. It’s just like that.”
    He stands next to me for a few seconds too long, not saying anything about Ookie. I’m weak from the hangover and I start to mist up. I think that Luscious is misting up, too, but I look over and he’s only wasted out of his gourd. He’s flying high and looking at the empty firepit like he can’t remember how to make a fire, so I tell him to sit down before he hurts himself, and I go for firewood.
    One of the chores I’ve made the men stick to is firewood detail. We have maybe five cords stacked in the motel parking lot. We’ve cut and burned most of the trees close-in, so the men have to walk farther for it, but they’ve done a good job. It won’t be long until we’ll need to get a regular logging outfit going, and I’ve even had ideas about getting one of the town’s lumber mills up and running again. It wouldn’t be a bad way to put the men to work after the law comes back. The rich city fuckers will have to rebuild the places that got smoked, right? Maybe if I put the men to work doing something useful, something legal that makes money fair and square, the law won’t put us back into our cages. Yeah, there’s more than one way of taking advantage of bad times, but my head hurts too much to do any planning this morning.
    I load up a wheelbarrow of wood that was split from a windblown pine. I’m careful when I load the wood, so it doesn’t make any noise to hurt my head. I’m standing bent over and breathing hard when I hear the sound of people walking. I think at first that my men are waking up, but it’s not them. Then I think it’s only the wind or my hangover playing tricks with my ears. But no, it’s real. The sound is coming from the road. We have visitors.
    I run as quietly as I can back to the firepit. Luscious is zoning out with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and I wake him and shush him and he hears it, too, and then we’re back in the world that’s been left to us. Luscious comes back into himself then. He goes from room to room and wakes the men. They gather around me. They’re wasted on downers but they squat on the ground and load magazines and strap on their ammo pouches before I even tell them to lock and load.
    There’s no way strangers should’ve gotten this close to us. I’ll leave it for another time to punish the ones that didn’t stand their watch last night and this morning. I split us into two groups and we move to surround the strangers. The eyepieces of my binoculars are cold against my eye sockets and they give me a monster headache, but I keep looking until I see that there’s four of them, one of each kind of human being, man, woman, boy, and girl. I hold up four fingers and the men hunker down without a sound, like the good, stoned hunters they are. The people head for the market, just like any hungry animals naturally would.

Jerry

    We’re hungry and cold. I’m tempted to go into the junkyard and see if I can get one of the cars to start—one of the big SUVs, maybe, with a good, strong climate control system and seat heaters. But no. Everything with a computer is down for the count, and the fact remains that running vehicles attract death.
    We circle the market. Nothing. I take us around again. It takes ten minutes, but peace of mind is worth its weight in time. It’s about eleven in the morning and the light