The Day After Never - Legion (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 8)

by Russell Blake

  “What about it? Salem isn’t anywhere near it, and neither is Newport,” someone called from the back.

  “Good question.” Art rubbed a hand over his face. “We’ve talked to some people with scientific backgrounds, and the news isn’t good. It’s melting down, and it’ll continue to do so for way longer than any of us will be alive. What that means is that the river will poison the ocean, and the entire coast will eventually become uninhabitable. I won’t bore everyone with the implications for the Pacific ecosystem. Let’s just leave it at the future doesn’t look good.”

  “What can we do to stop it?” another voice called.

  “Nothing. We don’t have the technology or the know-how. But even if we did, there’s not a lot we can do. Look at that one in Japan – Fukushima. It’s been dumping three hundred thousand gallons of radioactive water into the ocean a day for years, and they’d been trying forever to come up with solutions before the collapse. So the bottom line is all we can do is predict how fast the West Coast will become uninhabitable. The guys I talked to said the currents carry the radiation south, so even someplace like Newport isn’t going to be safe for long.”

  “How about Seattle?”

  “It should be okay for now, but eventually it’s going to get hit too. The damage to the Pacific will mean no fish, and some of the radiation will make it north. It’s all just a matter of time. It could be okay for one year, or ten, but make no mistake – it’s not going to survive forever.” He sighed. “Having said that, I was also told that it’s impossible to predict with any accuracy how long the city has. The experts suggested regular testing of the ground water and the Sound, which seems like a good idea. That way the locals will get plenty of warning as things start to go bad.” Another pause. “The bigger deal is radioactive rain. It’s going to poison a lot of Oregon and Washington.”

  “Rain? How does it get radioactive?” someone from Sam’s group called out.

  “When the river water and radioactive ocean water evaporate into the atmosphere, the radiation doesn’t just vanish. It’s still there, and when it rains, the showers will be radioactive. The only way to avoid all this is to relocate from Newport and Salem, just like Portland did. There’s no other way. I’m sorry. I wish I had better news.”

  “So what are we supposed to do? Move everyone to the middle of the country? That’s crazy.”

  Art’s expression softened for a moment. “That’s about the only option other than dying of radiation sickness. Look, maybe Seattle will be safe for twenty more years. Or two more months. We don’t have the equipment and models to know with any certainty. But the rain issue is real, and it’s eventually going to affect everything within a few hundred miles of the coast. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m informing you so you know what we’re dealing with, not making recommendations. All I ask is that you discuss it among yourselves and come up with some options you can live with. I would recommend moving your families to somewhere safe, but these days it’s hard to say that anywhere is totally risk-free.”

  Art wound up the questions after patiently answering a dozen or so more, and then motioned to Lucas, who replaced him center stage.

  “Got to admit, leaving sounds pretty appealing,” Lucas began. “It’s no secret I want to get back on the road. But we’re not quite done here yet. Appears we have some Chinese stragglers who’re hiding out with a gang, and word is that they’re expecting another boatload – sooner than later.” His gaze bored into the audience. “We can’t just ride off and leave the locals to be slaughtered by the next batch. We need a plan, or all of this will have been for nothing.”

  Sam cleared his throat. “Sounds like the place is going to melt down anyway. Why not just leave it, like Portland? Let the gang and their buddies fry?”

  “As Art made clear, that could take a generation or more. In the meantime they’ll terrorize the residents and, whenever the Chinese make a reappearance, will actively work to help them take over the city. From there they’ll spread east, and nobody will be safe.

  “So as I see it, there are a couple of things we need to do before we can leave. The first is help the locals organize a real defense force that can drill to defend the city whenever the next invaders show up. We can work with the new city council to organize it and decide who it reports to. But we’ll also need to take down this Chinese gang before they sense weakness and start guerilla attacks.”

  Lucas paused and regarded the front row. “Word is there’s a price on my head, so this isn’t an empty threat. Only reason they’d want to take me out is to hobble us. Same for Art – it’s a given they’ve put one on him, too. That can’t stand. So we’re going to have to go after them.”

  “It’s not just the Chinese,” Sam agreed. “We’ve been hearing reports of attacks from the outlying neighborhoods.”

  “Right. So we have to send a clear message that we’re not going to tolerate that, and we’re going to stand by the council until they’ve got it under control. I have a feeling if we eradicate the Chinese, word will spread pretty fast, and things will settle down.”

  “So…we’re not leaving yet?” Sam asked. “I kind of miss Salem, Lucas. Not that Seattle isn’t…whatever.”

  “I’m with you there. But no, we have to knock out these two problems, and then we’ll hit the trail. Which brings me to another point: we’ve now got almost six thousand troops, which is going to be hell to feed once we’re on the move. That means we need to plan our route and send advance scouts to forage and pick sites to camp. A group this size is going to attract a lot of attention, and we can’t depend on local help for supplies. We have to be self-sufficient or we’ll bog down before we get anywhere. Art and I have been discussing it, and he’s got some good ideas. Next meeting he’ll go through them with you, so we can work on implementation.”

  Art nodded from his seat. “That’s right.”

  Lucas drew a long breath. “If nobody’s got any more questions for now, let’s get the council in here and have a powwow. Everyone below the rank of captain can go. We don’t need a full house for their meeting.”

  The majority of the men rose and filed out, talking in hushed tones as they left. Lucas knew that the news about the western seaboard becoming a toxic wasteland had shaken the group, but they needed to understand what they were dealing with, and there was no point in sugarcoating the situation, which was dire and getting worse.

  The council members entered and took their seats, and Lucas’s eyebrows rose when Levon strode in moments later and joined them. Levon tipped his hat to Lucas and took a seat at the end of the row, arms crossed, his expression serious.

  Art rose and walked to the front of the stage. “Everyone, thanks for coming. We have a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it. The main issues we need to tackle today are setting up a defense force and a functioning law enforcement arm, which will probably be the same group. And we need to alert you to the latest findings on the nuclear plant that’s poisoning Oregon.”

  Two hours later, a tall man named Eric had been named the commander of the self-defense force, due to his armed forces background and willingness to take on the job. The first order of business would be to assemble several hundred recruits to serve as the city police and put a stop to the robberies and assaults that had been increasing since the Chinese had been defeated, and then to grow and equip a militia that would be able and willing to stave off an invasion.

  When the meeting broke up, Levon approached Lucas, hands on his hips. “Heard you ran into some trouble.”

  “Lost a good man,” Lucas said.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help with the Chinese, let me know. I thought about what you said, and it made sense. I appreciate your coming to talk to me. And I’m sorry your man got killed.”

  “What do you know about the Chinese gang?” Lucas asked.

  “They keep to themselves. Our guys don’t talk to theirs. You could say it’s more like mutually assured destruction than any kind of cooperation. They got the
ir territory and we got ours.”

  “We need intelligence on them.”

  Levon nodded. “I can nose around, but you’d do best to get one of their own to do it. Someone who won’t stand out.” He laughed humorlessly. “None of my boys can pass for Chinese.”

  “Don’t suppose they could,” Lucas agreed. “See if you can find anything out, and I’ll put out some feelers. Between us we might be able to locate their headquarters.”

  “Yeah, might. They’re smart, though, so they move it around. It won’t be easy.”

  “Don’t suppose anything is these days.”

  Levon nodded again and turned to go.

  “You made a good call,” Lucas said.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Levon replied, and then marched from the hall without looking back, leaving Lucas and Art standing by the stage with their entourage.

  Chapter 10

  Sacramento, California

  Amos and Scott crossed a wide street and continued to what had once been the train station, where a swarm of men was busy loading a long row of railway cars with guns, ammunition, and provisions. Thousands of fighters were seated around the platforms or leaning against the walls, waiting as the loaders went about their work. Heavy wheeled carts packed high with crates fresh from the armory waited by the boxcars, and crews of laborers hoisted them into the boxcars, their torsos slick with sweat. Amos watched the activity with an approving gaze and turned to Steve.

  “How much longer?”

  “We should be ready to get underway within the hour.”

  “And we’re sure that the engine will make it to Oregon?”

  “Our engineer says it shouldn’t be a problem. The coal carrier holds enough for a five-hundred-mile range, and the water tank almost two. There are rivers along the way where we can pump it full and coal-fueled power plants, so it’s a done deal, assuming the tracks are intact.”

  “And if they aren’t?”

  “No reason to believe they won’t be. But we’re bringing tools in case someone sabotaged them. Although to what end?”

  “We don’t want any surprises.”

  “Which is why we’re taking precautions.”

  “How long will it take to make it to Salem?”

  “Depends on how hard we want to push the engine. Caution says a couple of days, tops. The slower we run, the more efficient the coal and water burn.”

  Amos nodded, and they walked along the platform. The working men scampered out of their way as they approached. “How many cars can the engine pull?” Amos asked.

  “Between fifty and seventy if we take it easy. The thing’s over a hundred years old, but the museum kept it well maintained for tourist rides, so it’s in good shape.”

  Amos licked his lips. “Who would have believed ten years ago that the only reliable transportation would be an old steam engine?”

  “I know. We’re just lucky we have someone who used to work on it. Otherwise it would take weeks to make it to Salem.”

  The Blood Dogs had used their possession of a fully operational steam engine to expand their reach beyond the city limits, and ran it on trading trips up and down the line for a hundred miles. But that was hauling only a few cars of goods. This was a completely different trial, carrying five thousand troops and their weapons and supplies, and Amos was concerned that the weight would be too much for the locomotive.

  “We’re positive it can handle it?” he asked again when they arrived at the engine.

  Scott called to a man who was turning a valve in the cockpit. “Clark? Get down here. Amos has some questions.”

  The man straightened, wiped his face with a stained bandanna, and dismounted from the engine. “What can I do for you, boss?”

  Amos studied his lined, sunburned face and weathered skin. Amos had met Clark a few times, but only in the course of him issuing orders – they’d never had a discussion.

  “You sure that this thing can make it north without any problems, with all the weight?”

  Clark patted the black side of the engine. “Hell yes. I’ve kept her up. We’ll have to be careful on speed and coal consumption, but she’ll get ’er done.”

  “There are a lot of cars.”

  Clark shrugged. “Fifty-eight. But in the old days, this baby hauled ore, so we know she can take it. Not saying it’ll be easy, but where there’s a will…”

  Amos squinted at him. “If you’re wrong, I’ll have most of my men stranded hundreds of miles in hostile territory. I don’t need to tell you who I’ll blame if that happens, do I?”

  Clark’s expression hardened. “I’m not wrong. I’d bet my life on it.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “Sounds like you just did.”

  Clark’s grin was skeletal. “The engine won’t let you down. Neither will I.”

  Amos clapped a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “You pull this off and you’ll have a blank check. Anything you want. But if you don’t think you can do it, speak up now.”

  Clark studied his boots before meeting Amos’s stare. “We’ll make it.”

  Amos grunted and turned away. “Then don’t let me hold you up. We’ve got a date we don’t want to miss.”

  It would take three days to get to their destination, assuming all went well, and the Illuminati messenger had pushed Amos to mobilize his men as quickly as possible. After taking Stockton, the preparations had been accelerated until a force of five thousand fighters was ready for a foray into the unknown.

  The loading continued, and when the innumerable weapons crates were secured in the boxcars, Scott directed a shrieking whistle at his subordinates, who began herding the fighters onto the carriages, a hundred on cars designed to comfortably accommodate fifty. When they were filled to capacity, fighters began climbing the sides and taking up position on the roofs, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. Last to go on the two ancient livestock cars at the rear of the train were sixty horses – the maximum the locomotive could safely carry.

  Clark ordered one of the two men in the cab to continue shoveling coal into the furnace – a process that would repeat every fifteen seconds for the trip in order to keep the steam steady and sufficient to pull the load. He checked the pressure gauges and wiped them with his sleeve, and then jerked on a rawhide cord. The train whistle’s wail pierced the air, and the old engine’s steel wheels spun on the track for a moment before gripping with a tortured screech of metal on metal.

  At first nothing seemed to happen in the slow-motion tug-of-war, and then, inch by inch, the long line of cars began easing forward. Black smoke belched from the locomotive’s smokestack. Clark yelled at the firemen to shovel coal faster, and the string of carriages slowly moved away from the platform.

  Amos watched the train trundle down the tracks until it disappeared, leaving a contrail of smoke in its wake, and made his way to the depot exit, his brow furrowed. The Illuminati man had made incredible promises, which so far he’d kept, but Amos couldn’t help but wonder just how irreplaceable he was in the organization’s scheme. He ran a major metro area, but being a successful local warlord hardly qualified him to run a whole swatch of the country, and he wasn’t kidding himself that he wasn’t merely a means to an end for them.

  Which didn’t bother him. Amos was pragmatic and had low expectations from the world. That he’d managed to climb to the top of a pile of corpses and plant his flag as the ruler of the Northern central valley had pleasantly surprised him, but it didn’t mean that he trusted the Illuminati messenger any more than he would a venomous snake. Once his army had slaughtered the enemy force from Seattle, his usefulness to them would largely be over, and he fully expected some sort of betrayal, although he couldn’t see what it would be. But years of hard-learned lessons in prison had taught him that trust, faith, and hope were useless contrivances that predators used to their advantage against the weak and vulnerable, and he had no plans to join their ranks.

  His big vulnerability now was that he’d only kept a few hundred fighters to maintain
order in Sacramento and Stockton, so until his men got back from Oregon, it would be laughably easy for one of the big Bay Area gangs to overthrow him. Stockton would remain in a state of uneasy flux until any of that gang’s loyalists among the locals had been flushed out, but the men he’d stationed there would get the job done – he’d left some of his best in charge. He wasn’t terribly worried about Sacramento’s civilians rising up against him; after years of terrorizing them, they had no will to fight left.

  Which left only the chore of tightening up the possible exits from the city, where a disloyal informant could slip through and make it to the Bay Area to alert his enemies there that he was virtually defenseless. He’d have to impose a curfew so nobody was on the streets at night, and devote all of his resources to patrolling to enforce it, as well as to ensuring that the roads west were impassable.

  Two things that were well within his capabilities, even with a skeleton crew.

  Brett had disappeared east after Amos had committed to sending his men to tackle the Seattle group; the Illuminati had received a broadcast that they were planning to leave shortly and travel to Salem. The plan was to ambush them as they approached Salem and wipe them out, although Amos would leave the actual logistics to Scott once he scouted out the lay of the land. The Illuminati man had convinced Amos that the Seattle group would be tired after the long slog from Washington, while his men would be well rested and garrisoned in Salem, so it would be an easy victory, especially considering the armaments they now had.

  Amos wasn’t so sure of the inevitability of the outcome, but the win in Stockton had emboldened him, and he saw no way to reject the messenger’s offer. How it actually turned out was another matter. In Amos’s experience, no plan was foolproof, and when dealing with an armed force of unknown size, assuming that victory was assured would be dangerously stupid.

  But Scott was the best he had, and if anyone could defeat Seattle, he was the man.

  Amos just hoped he’d chosen wisely. If not, his hold on the valley would come to a decisive and ugly end.