Chapter 84
The next two weeks passed without incident, but then it all went to hell. Chad was out on patrol near the north side of the oil field, driving along the inside of the tall barbed wire fence, when he spotted a young beta trying to scale it.
It was obviously one of the workers from the camp, his jumpsuit dirty and his hands wrapped in thick cloths, and he couldn’t be older than twenty. Chad was supposed to shoot when someone tried to cross the fence, but that was for people breaking their way in.
“Hey, you!” Chad called out, climbing out of his jeep and walking up to the fence. The beta only climbed faster. Chad called out again, “Get down here!”
The beta didn’t listen, and he was just a few feet away from the rows of barbed wire lining the top of the fence. If he tried to cross those, the cloths wrapped around his hands weren’t going to do a thing to protect him.
“Hey!” Chad called again, preparing to go up after him. The beta slipped, but he only dropped a few feet before he found his grip and started climbing again. His movements were clumsy and jerky, and his nerves were making his climb extremely inefficient.
But he was making steady progress.
Chad radioed his commander.
“Sir, I’ve got a worker trying to climb over the fence up near sector ten. He’s not obeying my orders to come down. Please advise. Over,” Chad said. There was a brief pause, and then his commander scoffed.
“Shoot him down, Brand. Those are standing orders. Over.”
Chad pushed down the button on his radio, exasperated. “Sir, it’s a worker. He’s trying to leave, not break in. Over.”
“Were you dropped on the fucking head as a baby, Brand? Shoot. Him. Down. Over.”
Chad stared at his radio and then up at the beta, now trying to get over the barbed wire, with disbelief. He wasn’t firing at an unarmed beta. Were they crazy?
Chucking off his vest and putting his gun down on the ground, Chad jumped up on the fence and started climbing. Unlike the beta, Chad made the climb in a matter of seconds.
“Hold on, you’re going to get hurt if you try to go over that,” Chad called up to the young man just a few feet above him.
The beta caught sight of him for the first time, his eyes going wide with panic.
He scrambled over the rolled-up barbed wire, Chad calling out to stop him, cutting himself up but managing to get to the other side.
He climbed down much faster than he’d gone up, falling the final few feet, landing on the ground with a pained exclamation. He took off in the opposite direction, running like his life depended on it.
Dropping down to the ground, Chad put his vest back on and picked up his gun. He radioed his commander.
“Sir, beta made it over the fence and now running straight north from sector ten. Over.”
There was a long pause, the radio crackling. Looking down, Chad was surprised to see that his hand was shaking.
“Come back to headquarters. Over.”
The words were clipped and angry, and Chad’s stomach sank. Trudging back to his jeep, casting one last look at the beta still running into the desert, he got behind the wheel and headed back to face the music.
***