Manny clenched his jaw. I plan to be on a plane out of there in the next twelve hours, if possible. But “I don’t know, sir” is all he said. It was hard to meet Mr. Peron’s eyes. When he did, he was sure the older man saw the guilt in them.

Mr. Peron didn’t say anything though. He just led Manny and Reggie over to where the convoy was assembling and slipped them a pair of MREs and some bottled water. “The best I could do,” he said apologetically. He left them at the disembarkation point. Manny’s last clear sight of the man who had helped raise him was of his slumped, sweat-stained shoulders trudging back to the firebase’s command center.

They sat there for hours. Neither of them talked much. One by one the wounded men were loaded carefully onto the assortment of old half-tracks, buses, and trailers that made up the convoy. Once they were seated, there was another two hours of wait time before the convoy got moving. Both Reggie and Manny found time to nap, but neither of them were really rested when the dawn broke and the convoy set forward.

By the time the ramshackle assortment of trucks and broken soldiers started on its way to Waco, the sound of mortarfire was so constant it had almost become white noise. The small-arms fire wasn’t as loud, but it was also clearly much closer than it had been when they’d arrived at Firebase Jiminez. As the convoy rolled out onto the old access road that led, eventually, to Waco, a flight of drones roared past them and toward the new front line.

“Those aren’t SDF drones, are they?” Reggie asked, without actually looking at Manny. His gaze was focused on the two medics in the back of the truck as they moved from soldier to soldier.

“No,” Manny confirmed. “Those are Austin Civil Defense forces.”

The Brit whistled through his teeth.

“So, you think this means the SDF ran through their drones?”

“Could be,” is all Manny said. The track, and its escort, lumbered through cracked remnants of the old highway system. They accumulated hangers-on, civilian vehicles piled high with refugees, as they rolled along. The civilians stayed back, leery of the convoy’s guns but trusting in its presence for protection. By the time the convoy finally left the Dallas sprawl, their tail stretched back to the horizon line.