Read Online The Remaining: Trust: A Novella by D. J. Molles - Free Book Online Page A

it wasn’t the truth. Maybe it was just the words of a desperate man who wanted to live. Maybe he would have said anything to keep from having Abe pull the trigger on him. Statements given at the point of a gun can’t really be trusted.
    He wanted to share that information with Lucas and Tyler. But here were muddy waters. They could be knee-deep and easily navigated. Or they could be a layer of silt hovering on the surface of an abyss. There really was no way to tell.
    Keep it to yourself.
    Abe swallowed it down. Ugly bits and all.
    With a look of distaste, he shook his head. “I have no fucking idea. All I can tell you is that this shit cannot get out. I want you both to understand that. No one talks about this back inside the Green Zone.” Abe drew himself up a bit. “I’ll pass the debrief along to the others. Bandits attacked Fargo Group. QRF responded and helped neutralize the threat. And that’s as far as the story goes.”
    Tyler rubbed his face. “Holy fuck, man…”
    Lucas’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Why are we doing this?”
    Abe glared at him. “Lucas…”
    “Why can’t we just tell the truth here? They attacked us. It doesn’t get much clearer than that. There’s no way anything we did here can be construed as anything but them ambushing us .” Lucas shrugged and lifted his eyebrows. “That’s not our fucking problem.”
    Abe leaned toward his friend, heat coming in his words now but his volume still low. “It is our fucking problem, Lucas!” He stabbed the air with an index finger as he said it. “And it’s a big one. It’s got a dozen dead bodies behind it, and a dozen starving families behind that.”
    “Starving families?”
    Abe gritted his teeth. Closed his eyes. He just kept thinking about what the man had said. How convinced he’d been that Abe was a part of it. That all of these soldiers were a part of it. Some military conspiracy against the civilians. How many people shared that view? And if they heard even a rumor about this, could they be convinced that it wasn’t just a massacre?
    Abe took a deep breath to cool himself off a bit. Lack of sleep. Lack of eating. Stress. His fuse was short, but that wasn’t an excuse. He didn’t need to bark orders right now. He spoke much calmer. “Lucas. Tyler. I need you both to trust me on this one. I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t think it was necessary. Please. At least until I have some things sorted out. Just keep it bottled up.”
    Lucas seemed miffed that Abe was holding something back. “Abe…it’s us.”
    Abe just shook his head. “Trust me, guys. Let me handle this one.”
    *  *  *
    They rode back with the convoy.
    Abe took the shotgun seat in Tyler’s Humvee. Lucas sat in the back right. They flew down deserted streets and dusty lengths of highway, heading south with the wintering sun glaring at them, reducing everything to browns and tans. Like the world was bleaching and weathering before their eyes.
    They rode in silence.
    The gates were opened for them by men they didn’t recognize, who wore Greeley Green Zone identification but were not uniformed soldiers. Instead they wore black tops and green pants and their tactical vests bore the patch of a red logo that Abe had trouble making out.
    The convoy rode quickly through American streets that had once been alive with the calm coolness of a Midwestern town, but now they teemed with refugees. Camps took up entire shopping malls and continued to sprout up like some strange and aggressive plant among the short, squat buildings. The roofs of them were uniform in height and gave the appearance of large, flat leaves covering the earth. They were made of metal and wood and tarp. Some of them were tents and others were shanties. Campers. Anything that could be turned into a place to sleep.
    People mulled around. Washed clothes in giant troughs of sudsy brown water. Built fires in trashcans. Ripped apart old buildings to find supplies for themselves. Things to burn to