by Lopez, Rob
A gunman sallied out into the clearing. Lauren turned and snapped off a shot in his direction. Flinching, the gunman ducked behind the parked Suburban. No one else came into view.
“Josh, I want you to follow the others. Help Harvey out and make sure everyone stays together.”
“Mom …”
“Do as you’re told!”
Josh looked crestfallen. He reminded her again of the little boy he’d once been. She tenderly kissed him.
“Go. Don’t wait for me.”
Josh was unhappy and he stirred reluctantly.
“Please, Josh. It’s for the best.”
“I don’t want to leave you, Mom.”
“I’ll come find you. Now get moving before it’s too late.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Help Harvey and take care of your sister. Scoot.”
Josh hesitated, then scrambled off through the trees and down the slope to the town. Lauren breathed a sigh of relief and settled down into her firing position.
The gunmen were reluctant to show themselves, but she could hear them moving about. The one behind the Suburban remained crouched behind a wheel and Lauren couldn’t get a clear shot at him. She also only had one magazine left, and didn’t want to waste what she had. A calm descended over the site, and birds tweeted in the branches overhead.
Undergrowth rustled as unseen footsteps worked their way around the site. It occurred to Lauren that they might filter down toward the town, thinking that everyone had gone that way. She wanted to keep them focused on her. Leveling her rifle, she took aim at the toe cap of the gunman behind the Suburban. The recoil thudded into her shoulder, and dust kicked up an inch away from his foot. The gunman pulled his toe back.
Someone whistled: a signal. A figure moved through the trees fifty meters away, attempting to circle around behind Lauren. She fired a shot, and someone returned fire, splitting a branch behind her. Lauren fired twice more and rolled away. Once she was behind a tree, she got up. Rounds thudded into the bark. Several gunmen now moved crossways across the slope. Lauren leaned out and fired several shots, then took off, trying to keep her footing on the loose soil. She headed north, rather than east down into the town, hoping that the raiders would follow her instead of the others. She’d heard no gunfire from the town, so she had to assume the others hadn’t been found yet. Hopefully they’d be able to get away and make it to the rendezvous.
Rifles cracked in the trees and Lauren ducked involuntarily, not knowing how close the rounds were landing. She had no time to look around. Hurtling down the slope, she came out of the trees. Ahead was the rail line and the main highway, and a stretch of open ground that sloped up to another wooded hill. Leaping a barrier, she dashed across the tracks and scrambled up a bank to the road.
The gunmen reached the edge of the woods and paused to aim at her. The air filled with zipping bullets. Reaching the road, she slid over the traffic barrier and, using it for cover, turned, aiming rapid shots at every figure she could see. The gunmen remained in the trees, and within seconds, her rifle clicked empty. Letting the rifle hang on its sling, she drew her pistol, took a deep breath and ran across the road and up the next slope. She made it to the trees and threw herself down, twisting around and aiming the pistol in both hands, ready for when the raiders came across the tracks.
The raiders, however, appeared reluctant to break cover. After a few desultory shots, everything went quiet. They couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see them. The birds sang and Lauren wondered what she should do next.
15
Packy drove the Blazer off the exit ramp for Old Fort. A plume of smoke rose from the hill where their camp was.
“Step on it,” said Rick, flicking the safety off his rifle.
Packy gunned the engine, crazily leaning the SUV around the corner of an intersection. Almost immediately, on the street ahead, he spotted another vehicle flanked by gunmen. They appeared to be searching among the houses. The small hill with the smoke was behind them. Packy spun the wheel, yanking at the parking brake. The Blazer skidded around and sped off before the gunmen could react. As soon as they were out of sight behind a building, Packy slammed on the brakes.
Rick and Scott were out before the vehicle had even stopped moving. Double timing it to the corner, they went into action without hesitation.
There were three gunmen on the street. One in a leopard-print vest had taken the lead, walking ahead of the vehicle, and he raised his rifle. Rick shot him twice in the chest. The other two gunmen took cover between two houses. The vehicle, an old sedan with a cracked windshield, hastily reversed up the street. Scott dashed across the street and around the back of a house, trying to intercept the two gunmen. Rick fired shot after shot at the sedan, shattering what was left of its windshield. The sedan backed around a corner. Rick moved up his side of the street, looking for more targets. There was a screech of tires from another direction, and a different car flashed by the end of the street. Rick took a snap-shot, but the vehicle disappeared. Scott emerged from the gap between the houses where the gunmen had been.
“They took off,” he said.
Rick continued to search the street, but couldn’t find anyone else. On the hill, the pall of smoke grew denser.
Jogging back, he found Packy examining the body of the man Rick had shot.
“Who wears leopard print anymore?” said Packy, bemused.
“Get back in the car,” said Rick, “and get us up that hill.”
“Yes, sir,” said Packy sarcastically.
They piled into the car and Packy burned rubber, weaving down the street.
When they got to the camp, they found it empty. The Suburban was missing, but the Humvee was burning. Rick and Scott scoured the trees, seeing signs of a firefight but no bodies. Packy wandered around, picking up spent cartridges.
“.223 here,” he said. “I do believe that’s your good lady’s caliber. Looks like a running fight from there to here.”
Scott crouched to examine the ground. “There’s multiple tracks here,” he said. “Some go north and some go east.”
Rick tried to make sense of the evidence. It was possible everybody got out in the Suburban, though it would have been something of a squeeze. The raiders wouldn’t have been searching the town if that happened, though. There was no blood that he could see. He could only hope everyone had managed to get away.
“The rendezvous,” said Scott.
Rick nodded grimly. He was still keyed up from the fight, and he wanted to follow the trails, but the raiders had been confronted on what they considered their own turf, and it was likely they’d be back soon in greater numbers. It was better to stick to the plan.
It was his own plan, after all.
“Get us to the rendezvous point,” he told Packy.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“And knock it off with your dumb humor. I’m not in the mood for it.”
They drove to the other side of town, going off-road to reach the small hill with the rusting water tower that overlooked the interstate. Packy pulled into a track that ended in the trees, and Rick jumped out to climb the hill. When he got to the water tower, he found the others, all prostrate with exhaustion. He counted heads.
“Where’s Lauren?”
“Mom wouldn’t come,” said Josh, shamefaced.
“She was holding them off,” added Harvey.
Chuck lay in pain, covered in bruises. Sally checked him over and he yelped when she pressed his ribs. “We got a fracture,” she said.
Lizzy ran over to hug her father.
“We heard gunfire,” said April with Daniel in her arms. “She was in trouble, but we haven’t heard anything in a while.”
Rick disentangled himself from Lizzy and strode back down the hill at a pace. When he got to the Blazer, he pulled Packy forcefully out of the driver’s seat.
“Hey,” said Packy. “You only had to ask.”
“Get up with the others,” said Rick
. “Keep them safe.”
Packy rolled his eyes and gave him an untidy salute. Rick hit the gas as Scott leaped into the passenger side. The SUV bounced down the track, smashed through the fence of a freight yard and skidded onto the road, hurtling toward the center of town. Rick was speeding past the train station when he caught sight of a figure stepping out onto the road in his rear-view. He slammed the brakes on and spun the wheel.
The figure was Lauren. Rick drove alongside her.
“Say, can you boys give me a ride?” she said. She was smiling but, like the others, looked exhausted.
Rick looked at her for a moment. “Don’t do that again,” he said.
“Well, hi to you too.”
“Get in.”
Lauren climbed in the back. “So, are you going to send me to bed tonight without supper, or are you going to spank me?”
Scott rocked back in his seat as the vehicle accelerated. “I can live without the intimate details of your love life,” he said. “But if you want to elaborate, I’m all ears.”
Rick drove back to the rendezvous without a word.
When they got out of the vehicle, Rick waited while Scott jogged up the slope. Taking his wife aside, he held her in a fierce embrace.
“Really don’t do that again,” he whispered hoarsely.
“That’s more like it,” said Lauren, choking as the breath was squeezed out of her. “Maybe I ought to do it more often.”
“What happened up there?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I think they spotted Chuck. Luckily, there weren’t many of them.”
Rick held his wife out and looked down at her. “Scott was right. This wasn’t a good place to be.”
Lauren grimaced. “Too late now. They got the vehicles and all our supplies.”
“They torched the Humvee. Probably because it was too much trouble to get it started.”
“Did everyone else make it okay?”
“Yeah, but it looks like Chuck broke a rib.”
“That’s going to slow us down. What do we do now?”
“Relocate as soon as possible. The raiders know we’re here now.”
They made their way up the slope.
“How did the trip to Marion go?” asked Lauren. “We getting any help from them?”
“No. We’re on our own.”
16
Connors rode through the empty streets of downtown Asheville to City Hall. Most of the inner city’s survivors had moved either closer to the French Broad where they could be better supplied by river, or to the wooded heights of Wind Oaks. When he got to the county courthouse, however, he found the place to be a hub of activity. Leaving his horse to munch on the shrubs at the entrance, he went inside to look for Jeffries.
The governor looked to be fielding several meetings at once, with staffers coming and going, handing him scribbled notes, taking dictation and dashing off to deliver the latest missive to whomever it might concern. Jeffries was in his element.
“Oh hey,” he said when he spied Connors. “I got your message about Biltmore. Can we really confiscate property like that? It is temporary, right? And I loved your idea about the Housing Committee. I’ve got people working on it now. Do you know we’ve only got running water in the lower part of the city? The pressure from the mountain reservoir won’t reach the higher elevations. That’s a serious sanitation risk.”
“Uh huh. Listen, I’ve got something else we need to discuss.”
“Sure. Oh, I’m convening the General Assembly tomorrow. I think we need to get working on some issues right away. It’s not exactly a representative assembly at the moment, what with a lot of people missing, but I don’t think we have time to run elections. Not yet, anyway. As an emergency assembly I was thinking we could bring in more local people, and it’s given me an idea for improving diversity. If we can bring in minorities and women now, they’ll become familiar faces for when people do get to vote. We’ll have an integrated assembly with full civil rights from the get-go, and it won’t have taken us years to do it.”
“Sounds swell. Can we talk in your office?”
“Absolutely. Come this way. Hey, do you know of any gay or lesbian groups we can reach out to? We could really use their representation.”
“Can’t say I do, Governor. Could we have this talk?”
“Sure, sure.”
Jeffries led him into an office and shut the door. “This will be the one time we don’t get interrupted by phone calls. So, how can I help you?”
Connors pulled three handwritten sheets of paper from a satchel. “I need you to sign and stamp these.”
Jeffries read the first sheet. “Authorization to raise a hundred-man militia? Do we need that many?”
“As a start? Yes. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Jeffries picked up the second sheet. “You want to inventory every firearm in the city?”
“Exactly. Anyone in possession of an automatic or semi-automatic rifle must register as eligible to serve in the militia. Anyone with any other kind of firearm has to report here to be issued a permit for the possession of said firearm. Failure to comply will result in confiscation.”
Jeffries was taken aback. “That’s going to involve a lot of work. I don’t know if I have the personnel to handle that.”
“Get the law enforcement guys on it. It’ll be their chance to practice real gun control.”
“What about concealed carry? Do we need permits for that too?”
“That’s not important. We just need to know what kind of firepower we’ve got available, and to put it to good use.”
Jeffries read the third sheet. “Authorization to pacify and incorporate hinterland communities? What does that mean?”
“All the communities that border Asheville. We want them on our side, and they need to be law-abiding. We need to end the chaos, and there’s people out there who require our help. Thus far they’ve been left to their own devices, prey to every roaming gang out there. They have the right to know that, when trouble looms, the cavalry will arrive to save them.”
Jeffries whistled in appreciation. “This is ambitious.”
“It’s a big omelet.”
“And how many eggs do you plan on breaking?”
“Only the ones that need it. By the time we’re done, your name will be a byword for peace in a blighted land. The first leader of the government of the Carolinas.”
“Carolinas? You thinking of involving South Carolina too?”
“It’ll take a while, but I daresay there’s folks down there who’d like to see some order and democracy too. You saw what happened at Raleigh. I don’t think they did any better down in Columbia. From our base here, we’ll be the first to rebuild. It’s our duty to do what we can for those around us.”
Jeffries nodded thoughtfully. “It is.”
“You kept the government together when you could have just skipped out like some of the others, thinking only of your own skin. You didn’t, and we’re here now with a chance to start over. To really do some good. Isn’t that the reason you ran for office in the first place?”
Jeffries smiled nostalgically. “Seems like a long time ago.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Well, it looks like I’m being summoned,” said Jeffries.
“The papers,” reminded Connors.
“Oh, sure.” Jeffries signed and stamped each sheet and handed them over. “Don’t get carried away down there.”
“I assuredly won’t.”
Connors rode at speed back to Biltmore, laughing into the wind. Dismounting in the chateau courtyard, he went over to inspect the unloading of the flatbed trailer. The tarp had been pulled back to reveal boxes of ammunition, an M240 machine gun, grenade launchers and mortar rounds.
“Are we good to go?” said Fick.
Connors picked up an AT4 rocket launcher. “We certainly are,” he said with a smile.
*
The setup that the former residents
of Old Fort had created on the mountain that loomed above the town was even more impressive than Packy had described. They called it Bergen Mountain and it rose to 2281 feet at its ridge summit. Rough wooden huts roofed with asphalt shingles taken from the town were scattered over a wide area, following the route of mountain streams. Ropes running along cleared paths helped with the ascent. Water collected from waterfalls ran through leaky pipes connected by duct tape to faucets for easy extraction. One had a crude filter attached. Overlapping trays lay in a line down the slope, vegetable plants tied in place as water ran along the roots. Small smokehouses dried and preserved meat, and they did indeed have a bee colony, housed in wooden stackable frame hives in a clearing. In spite of all this, the people they saw showed signs of malnutrition, with a variety of sores, skin ailments and infected cuts. Graves topped with crude wooden crosses dotted the mountainside.
“A lot of people died,” explained Doug as he led Rick up the hill. “More so after the winter, actually. People are getting weak.”
“Looks to me like you’ve got enough food to get by,” said Rick.
“It’s not all for us.” Doug shifted uncomfortably. “The guys at Round Knob get a lot of it.”
“You made a deal, then,” said Rick. “Your food in exchange for them leaving you alone.”
“Be nice if they did leave us alone, but it don’t always work out that way. That’s why we keep a camp at the bottom, and the rest of the people scattered. The women stay out of sight near the summit. The raiders are too lazy to go too far up the mountain, and they don’t know how many people we’ve got.”
Doug led him off the track to where two ramshackle huts had been built against a rocky outcrop.
“These used to belong to the Robinson family. They’re buried farther down now. Your folks are welcome to stay here.”
Rick peered inside at the dirt floors. There wasn’t a stick of furniture and there were gaps in the walls he could pass his hand through.
“They’ll do for now,” he said. “I won’t be defending you people, though.”