Chapter 111

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BREN


Tonight, I am going to my grave.

Well, almost, if everything didn't pan out the way it's supposed to. I do not deny that it would be a fucking strenuous slope to climb, but you know me. I am not in the habit of making myself an easy target—not for the vectors, not for the Alphas, and certainly not for the United States Army.

It was eight o'clock in the evening, the sun was still up and bright, and I had observed and watched all forty-two soldiers within the camp for hours. I had mentally tabulated their duties, routines, and patterns, how they took breaks and where they went for one, and who was close with who or who was more annoyed with who.

Contrary to popular belief, men gossiped twice as much as women, and we do love to talk crazy shit about other people, no matter how minuscule.

They called that locker talk.

I merely had to ask a couple of soldiers who had pliable tongues. It took me two minutes to get their lips moving, and boy did they unpack a lot of baggage. Sure, some soldiers were wary about my personal questions, but I had to be careful with my words. I had to sacrifice my self-esteem to deprecate myself. If you're willing to share your insecurities with someone, chances were, many of them share theirs too...and then some.

It helped that Garrett mostly did the talking. Since he trusted Peter and Haskell, his loose tongue went off, painting a pretty picture of the entire unit in just eight hours. So all I had to do was sit back. At the same time, Peter and Haskell chatted him up like whisking butter about West Point, harking back to their early-morning training sessions, to their favorite teachers, and to the memories of their classmates. Then it diverged into questions about the soldiers.

Peter did a phenomenal job pulling Garrett's strings by comparing their classmates with the other soldiers' skills and behaviors. It was clear Garrett wasn't happy working with them (or at least uncomfortable), especially with what he had to say about the "fuck tent" and Drucker and Garcia's willingness to let such a thing fly. If the top brass willingly turned a blind eye, they wouldn't complain if it improved morale. The lack of morale could quickly destroy an army as much as a bullet could.

"I can understand Drucker putting that tent up, but not with Garcia. She's a woman," Garrett spat. "How could she let that kind of thing happen, you know? She should be offended by it." But his opinions were the minority. The soldiers liked having the women around since, according to them, it killed their boredom.

I now got a good read of everyone: Who had the best shot, who could snipe from a hundred meters away, who was more attentive and intelligent, and who acquired more skills with a weapon. I guessed it's pretty standard to ask these types of questions in the military, mainly when you worked with these men for many months and then expected to encounter many life-and-death situations. It was good to know who had your back and who didn't, so Garrett gave Peter, Haskell, and me the rundown information with volition, as well as who he hated the most (and make no mistake, he was not ashamed to say it). Berry and Donahue's names cropped up a few times, one of the regular patrons of the "fuck tent."

I was happy with my work in such a short time frame, given that I am winning most of them. In fact, I would do myself one better and say I am fucking proud of what I had just achieved. Though, I did have a brief talk with Haskell at least twice to make sure he was still on my side. Being in the apocalypse made you paranoid about your allies' allegiances when that needle could swing chaotically to another direction you didn't want. I needed my plan to go off without a hitch.

And it better be.

Aside from Garcia and her crew, most of the soldiers were young, barely hitting the age of twenty-one. Either they joined the Army fresh out of high school and then went straight into boot camp, or some were willing (or unwilling) volunteers from President Marshall's grand initiative to "reclaim the freedom and integrity of the country."

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