AN - This chapter contains a brief appearance from the lovely Grace Mason, OC of the lovely Jemmz.


Chapter 12: Mistaken Identity

After two months nestled in their camp under the bridge, the 2nd Mass were going to be up and moving again.

Weaver called for a camp meeting to announce they were all going to pack up and move forwards. He didn't elaborate on a reason as to why now was the time to leave, he just told everyone to start packing and to be ready to move in the next day or two.

Casey stood amongst her fellow members of the 2nd Mass with Etta in her arms. It seemed that everyone had turned out to this meeting, but the very obvious person missing was Tom Mason. His kids were all there standing right at the front of the crowd, but Tom was nowhere to be seen. Casey wasn't "in" with Weaver, she could hazard a guess that he still didn't know her full name, so she knew if she asked him why they were leaving he would just stonewall her. But the fact that Tom had literally just returned, and now they were packing up and moving on was way too coincidental for Casey's liking.

Weaver dismissed the 2nd Mass, and everyone dispersed. Packing really didn't mean a hell of a lot of stress to Casey. All her stuff was already pretty much packed anyway. Since joining the 2nd Mass, she had grown accustomed to living out of her bags without unloading all their contents. It wasn't like she had shelves or drawers to stock.

It took Casey all of ten minutes to gather all her stuff together with Etta's and have it sitting at the end of her camp bed. It was about time for Etta to take a nap, but the baby seemed to have decided she didn't want to sleep. Every time Casey attempted to set her down in her basket, she would wriggle and cry out until Casey picked her up again. There was a heck of a lot of chattering outside the tent with everyone energized about the move. Noise never seemed to bother Etta much before, the 2nd Mass was never a quiet place to be, but for some reason Etta had decided that on this day it was much too loud for her to sleep.

Wrapping Etta in a blanket to combat the chill in the air, Casey carried her outside with the hope that once the baby realized it was warmer inside the tent and within her basket, she might just go to sleep. That naive hope was dashed given the person approaching Casey at that moment.

"Yo!" Crazy Lee's jubilant yell broke into Casey's thoughts as fell into step beside her. "Hey, MB," Lee pretended to fist bump with the baby. Etta gurgled, and dribbled down her chin.

"Please, call her Etta," Casey reminded Lee as she wiped off the dribble with her thumb. "She doesn't need another nickname."

"But MB's badass. Mini Berserker?" Lee grinned proudly. "Coming up with that is one of my post-invasion highlights." From her inner jacket pocket, Lee pulled two granola bars. "Here, I snagged these from Lyle."

Casey took a granola bar and unwrapped it one handed. "Lyle has a food stash?"

Lee smirked. "He thinks I don't know about it, but I know."

A redheaded woman whom Casey recognized as one of the food preparation crew bustled straight between Casey and Lee with her arms full of water bottles. She gave them a brief apology but didn't slow down. She wasn't the only one, people were rushing all over with bags and boxes, dismantling tents and folding up card tables.

"Weaver tell you why we're leaving all of a sudden?" Casey asked Lee.

Lee shook her head. "But I overheard him telling Mason he thinks the skitters and Mechs are prepping to swarm in on us like in Fitchburg."

Casey faltered in her steps. Etta suddenly became very heavy. "He thinks that'll happen again?"

Lee shrugged, not visibly concerned. "Better to move than to wait and see. Just gotta find a way over the river."

"So why can't we use this bridge?" Casey nodded up at the bridge that had served them well as cover for the past two months.

"It heads straight for the city and there's no cover along the roadway," Lee said with a mouthful of granola. "We might as well honk the horns and holler at the aliens as we drive through. We gotta head," she pointed in the opposite direction. "That way."

Just ahead of their path, Tector struggled past trying to carry a toolbox, two tire irons, his rifle and his shotgun. "Hey Craze," He said when he saw her. "Help me with these."

Lee stuffed the last of her granola bar in her mouth, took the tool box from Tector's arms and followed him towards his rusted up car. Casey walked on but a scratchy sounding tune suddenly caught Casey's ear. It took her a second to identify the source because it had been quite a while since she'd heard that noise. A car radio. Playing an old song.

"Turn around, bright eyes. Every now and then I fall apart..."

"Since when does your radio work?" Casey couldn't hide her excitement as she approached Tector's car, lifting Etta up against her shoulder as she walked. A working car radio seemed like such a luxury.

"Since I figured that it wasn't broken in there," Tector pointed to the inside of the car where he was setting down his guns. "But that it was a loose wire under the hood. Got me some duck tape, fixed it right up."

"Yeah, when the car is stationary," Pope called out. Casey hadn't seen him, he was hunched down behind Tector's car working on his bike. "Second he turns over the engine in that hunk of crap, it cuts out."

"Still. The radio don't pick up anything, so I gotta play it old school," Tector reached into the car and pulled a water damaged shoebox from under the passenger's side up onto the driver's seat for Casey to see.

"Tapes?" Casey adjusted her one handed grip on Etta and reached through the window. The shoebox was full of cracked plastic cassette cases with handwritten labels. "Oh my God, takes me right back. I used to get so depressed when you overplayed it and it warped the song."

"That's why I plan to use them wisely," Tector said. "'Til I find a working car with a working CD player. And actual CD's that aren't smashed or scratched to hell."

"He insists on playing the crappy tapes," Lee told Casey nodding at the wailing coming from the radio. "Wants to use them up first."

Tector gave her an almost incredulous look. "Bonnie ain't crappy."

"She sounds like she's being strangled." Casey said. She was attempting to decipher writing on the cassettes but didn't see anything familiar. "You didn't find any Janis Joplin? That's at least a strangle with talent."

"Or some Bobby Dylan?" Lee added. "Man, what I wouldn't give," She let her head fall back and grinned up at the sky. "To hear that man sing Shelter From The Storm again. When all this is over, he should do some sort of I Survived An Alien Invasion tour."

"Not this again," Tector shook his head and disappeared under the hood of his car. "Lee, there is no way that guy is still kicking."

"Dylan is alive!" Lee argued as she sorted through the toolbox. "He's hold up in a mineshaft in Minnesota rewriting his protest songs into war ballads. Duvall heard one of his broadcasts over that set he built."

"That set don't even work," Tector said. "He only hears broadcasts when he's alone."

"Wait, Duvall?" Casey repeated, Lee Tector over Etta's head. "Isn't he the guy who collects tin cans because he says he likes the smell?"

"He's a savant," Lee explained. "He's got kooky ways, but he's legit."

"Dammit!" Pope swore loudly and jumped up shaking his hand like he'd touched a hot stove.

"What?" Casey turned to him. "Did you break a nail?"

"Yeah," He held up his palm. Blood was pouring out of a gash in the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. "Crappy wrench slipped." He tossed the offending tool back into his toolbox with a clunk and started poking the cut with his finger.

"That's a great way to get an infection," Lourdes said as she walked over from the medic bus. She snatched Pope's hand and looked at the cut. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to poke a cut in your skin? Unless, of course, you want an infection?"

"Thought it might get her to come over here," Pope looked over Lourdes head and smirked at Casey. "Kiss it better."

Casey rolled her eyes and swivelled her top half to rock Etta back and forth. "And yet I'm still all the way over here."

"Dammit!" Pope winced as Lourdes poured antiseptic over his cut.

Lourdes smiled sweetly. "Sorry."

"Don't think this gets you out of weapon training," Pope said to Casey.

"No, 'cos you only need one hand to tell me I'm a crap shot."

Pope looked unimpressed with her sarcasm. "So, what's the deal with the Professor?" He asked Lourdes.

"What do you mean?" The young doctor said.

"Just kinda figured he'd give us all an oral history on alien interrogation techniques," Pope bit his lip as Lourdes blotted off the antiseptic on his wound. "But all we get is brooding silence."

"I'm a medic," Lourdes finished securing a bandage on his hand. "Not a shrink."

"Ha-ha," Casey grinned as Lourdes walked off towards Jamil. "She doesn't like you."

Pope flicked his hair out of his eyes and gave her a half-smile. "But you like me, don't you?"

"Go back to your bike," Casey looked down at Etta, who still wasn't sleeping. "She won't reject you."

A chorus of bike engines ripped through the air, and the blurs of Hal, Grace, Maggie and Dai zoomed past. "Scouts are back!" Pope called out, slamming the lid of his toolbox closed. "Let's hope they found a way across that damn river."

"Hey, Casey?" Anthony rolled another bike towards Pope's and kicked down the stand. "Are you busy?" A former narcotics police officer, Anthony was a highly trusted member of Weaver's scouting team. Back during the assault on the alien command tower in central Boston, Pope had carried Anthony's unconscious body out of danger. That act had caused some sort of thin bond to form between the two men, it was clearly something Anthony felt indebted to Pope for. He was honourable that way.

"I'm getting this ready for a nap," Casey said swaying Etta in his direction. "And then I planned on taking a nap myself. What's up?"

"Tom wants to talk to you. He's in Weaver's tent"

Casey's brow wrinkled, and she was struck with a nervous feeling from her childhood that she was in trouble for some reason. "Me? Why?"

Anthony gave her a friendly shrug as he went to join the Berserkers and the scouts. "Just passing along a message."

Chewing her lower lip, Casey briskly headed for Weaver's tent. It was a space generally reserved for the scouts, not at all a 2nd Mass thoroughfare. And as Casey walked in she could see why. Maps were spread out over card tables, weapons were lined up against beds in one corner, and half the mattresses were weighted down with ammunition.

Etta made a noise, alerting their presence to Tom who looked up from the map he was focused on. "Casey," Tom gave her a warm, but tired, smile. "It's good to see you again."

"You too," Casey smiled but she knew it must have looked weird because her jaw was clenched tight. "Anthony said you wanted to talk to me?"

Tom looked briefly clueless. "Oh, yeah, nothing serious. I didn't mean right this second. Matt was reading to me from his journal. Your name came up a lot after what he wrote about Fitchburg. He has a lot of nice things to say about you. He likes you a lot."

Casey kept biting her lip. He certainly sounded like Tom Mason, but who knew what had happened to him on that ship? "Well, he's been a great help." Casey said. "He's a natural with Etta."

"Charlotte." Tom nodded, looking down at the baby but apparently not confused by the nickname. "I heard about Sarah, about everything that happened in Fitchburg. I'm sorry."

His apology took Casey off guard. She hadn't known Sarah that well at all, it seemed odd to receive condolences for her death. Casey wasn't sure what to say, so she just nodded and gave him what she hoped was a polite smile.

"Dad?" Grace suddenly stuck her head inside the tent. She looked frazzled. "We got a problem."

"Is everything okay?" Casey asked.

Grace checked behind her to make sure no one was close by, and leaned in closer to her father and Casey. "Beamers blew up the bridge," she said quietly. "Well, they tried to. Dai took them down before it was totally destroyed. But it's got a hole in it.

"Great," Tom rubbed the back of his neck and headed out of the tent with his daughter. "Let's get Weaver."

Grace hung back as her father passed her. "You're getting good at that," She said, then she turned to follow her father and let the tent flap fall closed.

Casey looked down at Etta. Despite Casey's walking, talking with Lee, Tector and Pope, then Tom, Etta had fallen asleep with her little mouth hanging open. Afraid she would wake Etta by simply walking out of the tent, Casey lowered herself onto one of the empty camp-beds. Problems with the bridge would have to wait until after naptime.

xxx