:pointing: Cow.
Morgan looked at Brown at that remark. “Ask you a question about Before, Sarge?” Some people didn’t like to answer those questions, but Brown just shrugged. “What did you do, back then?”
“Same thing I’m doing now, Ell-Tee,” replied Brown. “42nd Regional Support Group, National Guard. I was a sergeant there, too, before everything went to shit in ‘05, including the Guard.” He shook his head. “Guess I couldn’t take the hint.”
“I don’t know the old units, sorry,” admitted Morgan. “Were you local?”
“Before, I would have said yeah. We were out of New Brunswick. We weren’t what you’d call front-line troops at first, although we learned real fast when things got exciting. By ‘05 things weren’t going too bad in the unit. The rest of the world was screwed, but we were maintaining.” Brown took another swig of beer. “And then we had a giant fucking cow rampage through downtown.”
“Yeah, I saw the aftermath on my way home,” said Morgan. “I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t delirious, though. It looked… pretty messed up, Sarge.”
“Yeah, it was a little messed up for us, too. Took us forever to kill the bastard, and New Brunswick wasn’t worth anything afterward. That’s when they decided to make the Raritan the new southern border of New Jersey. Some of the Guard stuck around, some of us left. Me, I figured the coasties could use the help more, so here I am.” Brown finished his beer. “On the bright side: we had one hell of a barbecue after that fight, so it wasn’t all bad. As long as you ate around the napalm.”