Issue In Doubt - By David Sherman Page 0,9

from the lot to take positions. Day and PFC James D. La Belle went fifty meters left, to the far edge of the parking lot. Lance Corporal William R. Caddy and PFC James D. La Belle headed the other way. They didn’t have to go quite as far to reach that end of the lot. Sergeant Grant F. Timmerman remained where they’d exited and watched into the lot.

Fourth squad was on a narrow street, with the lot on one side and the backs of buildings, mostly one story, none more than three, on the other. Doors and windows all along the block had their doors and windows knocked out from the inside. Timmerman was nervous about being so close to so many buildings he and his Marines hadn’t cleared, so he only kept his squad in place for ten minutes before calling his men in and leading them into the middle-most building.

The interior was a cavernous space, with only three doorways to smaller rooms; the wall next to two of the rooms was marked with the universal symbols for male and female restrooms, the third with the word “office” next to it. The doors were all broken in. Stains on the floor showed that water had flowed out of the restrooms, though it no longer was. Day and Ozbourn checked inside the rooms while the others covered them. All the fixtures were broken, which explained the water stains on the floor outside them.

A more-than-waist-high counter separated a kitchen area from the larger area; the space had obviously been a restaurant. That was confirmed when the Marines examined the broken chairs and tables—and broken crockery—that littered the floor. The front door and windows had been blown in.

The Marines didn’t linger in the restaurant, but began methodically searching the buildings to the right of it. Timmerman always had someone watching the buildings on the other side of the street. Everywhere they went they found destruction; nothing inside the buildings had been left unshattered. There were no bodies or body parts.

They had almost completed a circuit back to their starting point when there was a burst of fire, and La Belle, who was watching the street, pitched to the ground, bleeding profusely.

Jordan, East Shapland

Fifth squad landed a klick away from Jordan, a farming town a thousand kilometers from Millerton and the McKinzie Elevator Base, located on a river of the same name. Like first squad at Millerton, the five Marines dashed away from their pod toward the points of an imaginary star and settled in place to watch and wait. But they didn’t spend as much time in observation before moving.

“Up, move out,” Staff Sergeant William G. Harrell ordered after twenty minutes in place. He didn’t have to tell his Marines what direction they to head in, or in what order to go. Corporal Hershel W. Williams led off, followed by Harrell, Lance Corporal Douglas T. Jacobson, and Sergeant Ross F. Gray. Corporal Anthony Casamento had rear point. Williams and Jacobson recorded. Their first objective was a small cluster of farm buildings about three hundred meters off, on the way to Jordan. They went through a field of chest-high corn. The Marines went at a normal walking pace. They weren’t concerned about being seen; they knew how effectively the camouflage pattern on their uniforms tricked the eye, and the rows of corn were far enough apart that they didn’t give away their movement by pushing through them.

The first thing the Marines encountered was some kind of native avians that rose complaining to fly away from dead animals they’d been feeding on. The Marines guessed the corpses were dogs, but it was hard to tell; the carcasses had been thoroughly scavenged and the bones scattered.

“Be sharp,” Harrell said. He wondered how the crow-like avians had detected him and his men, and knew that their noisy flight would alert anybody in the area to the Marines’ presence.

The first of the farm buildings they examined was the barn. It had large double doors. One side of the door was down, the other was hanging on one hinge. Inside, whatever stalls the barn may have held were buried under the debris of what had been the floor of the barn’s hay loft. The Marines carefully made their way through the debris, but didn’t see anything that looked like human remains, though there were obvious cattle skulls. Elsewhere, a grain silo had been torn open to spill its contents. A shed was broken apart, as were the vehicles