by Logan Jacobs
It wasn’t very tall and the whitewash had mostly been eroded, but the roof still looked intact and the wide barn door was still in place. We drove up to the barn, which seemed to be the only part of the farm that was left, and eased the minibus inside. I parked in the darkest spot I could find, with the front end pointed toward the barn door for a quick escape. We hid the rifles and the ammo bag, struggled out of the chest rigs, and slipped out from the minibus.
The barn was dusty and smelled like hay, though it probably hadn’t been used for anything in years. There was a rusty bale hook hanging on one wall and a sack of grain that had long ago been eaten by the mice. It was hard to see much detail because the barn was so dark, and we moved toward the barn door slowly in case there was something on the floor we couldn’t see.
Back in the gray light of the day, we closed the barn door again, and then we started off across the field. We circled around toward the road, so it would look like we had walked there from Whittlesey rather than across the barren land. We were close to the lane when we heard the sound of voices from nearby.
We ducked behind the ubiquitous stone wall, and we crept along in a crouch until we were close enough to hear what was being said. It was two men, and neither sounded very happy to be out on the road that morning.
“All I’m saying is, why are we the only two who seem to get this job?” a nasally voice complained. “And why do we even bother checking the roads in the morning? It’s been how long since anyone has tried to pass by?”
“Not one since those soldiers,” a deeper voice replied. “Everyone’s holed up.”
“Exactly,” the nasally voice said. “No one’s dumb enough to be traveling. And if they were, they wouldn’t be coming to the likes of Coates.”
“Still,” the deep voice said. “Someone’s got to check. We’ve lost a few workers to dino attacks, and we need to replace them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” nasally voice sighed. “I’ve heard Dean’s speeches as well. And look, I’m all about letting the dinos eat someone I don’t know, or someone I don’t like, rather than me and my mates. But we aren’t going to be finding any replacements this way.”
“And what do you suggest, Mr. Einstein?” deep voice taunted.
“There are plenty of towns nearby,” nasally voice said. “We could stage raids, like the Vikings. Just go in and grab some people that could work in the fields for us.”
“You’ll be startin’ a slave market next,” deep voice replied.
“Naw, nothin’ like that,” nasally voice said but it was hard to miss the excitement in his voice. “Besides, Dean’s made it clear the workers work for all of us. And when they’ve paid off their debt, they can leave.”
Deep voice laughed and it sounded like he slapped the other man on the back.
“Right,” deep voice said. “They can leave. Do you really think Dean’s going to just let them walk away after we sent them into the fields and such and let them get eaten by dinosaurs? They’re here until the work kills them, the dinosaurs eat them, or Dean gets bored with them.”
“I like that one soldier,” nasally voice said in a speculative voice. “She’s really pretty.”
“Forget it,” deep voice said. “She’ll kill you before you get a chance to do much more than pinch her butt.”
“She will if I have a gun,” nasally voice sniffed. “Or if I threaten to put that other soldier out of his misery.”
“Well, you haven’t got a gun,” deep voice said, “and she’ll probably kill you before you could do anything to the other one, so just forget about the soldier. There’s plenty of other cute girls out there.”
“Yeah,” nasally voice replied. “And they all want to be with Dean. What’s left for the likes of us if the boys takes all of ‘em?”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” deep voice said. “Maybe some pretty little thing will walk down this road today, and you’ll be able to claim her for your own.”
The two voices moved away, and I peeked over the top of the wall. The men were heading back toward Coates at a slow pace, and though neither appeared to have a gun, they both carried what looked like homemade machetes.
I heard the snick of a trigger and ducked down to find that both of my girls had pulled their Glocks and looked determined to kill. I placed a hand on Becka’s arm, then I lifted a finger in front of my mouth until the men’s voices had faded completely.
“Did you hear them?” Becka hissed angrily. “They’ve taken people prisoner and are sending them out to work while they sit on their arses and lord it over people.”
“Why haven’t the other townspeople fought back?” Hae-won asked.
“Those two didn’t have guns, but someone else in the town probably does,” I said. “And it sounds like they captured the soldiers, so they’d have whatever weapons they were carrying.”
“We should have killed those two bastards and made a statement of our own,” Becka sniffed.
“We’d still have the same problem we had before,” I said. “We’d end up in a shootout, and we have no idea where the prisoners are being kept. We need to find the crew from the power station and get them out of Coates without getting everyone killed.”
“We could take them in a shootout,” Hae-won replied.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t know how many people are involved in this, and we don’t know how many guns they have. If it’s just one guy with a gun, then sure, we could do it. But I’m guessing the soldiers probably had rifles of their own, and probably sidearms. So, that’s at least four more weapons.”
“So then what do we do?” Becka asked. “Do we try to sneak into the town and find where they’ve taken the prisoners?”
“Wouldn’t they just take them to the jail?” Hae-won asked.
“It depends,” I said. “Local jails in towns like this aren’t very big. They’d only hold one or two people at a time. And if they have the soldiers, the power station team, and any other out of towners who were unlucky enough to be here when this started, then they wouldn’t have enough room in the jail.”
“If it hasn’t been destroyed,” Becka added. “So where, then?”
I peeked over the wall again, then I sat down to consider our options. We needed to get inside Coates without arousing anyone’s suspicions, and we needed to find the engineers. We could try sneaking around the perimeter of the town until we found a way in, but that meant conducting a building by building search and hoping we didn’t get spotted. The easier and faster way was simply to walk down the road and present ourselves at the barricade. After all, they were looking for workers, and we were three able bodied people.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to say that we had a car but lost it in a dino attack. We’ve been walking along the smaller roads because we figured we wouldn’t run into so many dinos. We’ll say we’re impressed by their barricade and ask if they’re letting people stay.”
“That’s it?” Hae-won asked.
“That’s it,” I said. “Keep it simple. That should get us inside, and we can find where they’re keeping everyone. Once we do, we can arrange a breakout.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very American plan,” Becka chuckled.
“Cause I’m not going in guns blazing?” I laughed.
“Yep,” she giggled. “I’ve seen those Fast and Furious movies.”
“You know Jason Statham is English, right?” I asked as I did my best to stop laughing.
“Yeah, but he’s just in the movies to add an air of sophistication.”
“We could be like ninjas,” Hae-won offered. “But it might take days of watching before we found out where the prisoners were.”
“Would you rather spend days trying to sneak around the town without anyone seeing us?” I asked.
“No,” the blonde Brit admitted. “Okay, I guess your plan is better.”
“Just make sure your Glocks are well hidden,” I said. “And keep your swords visible. We want them to think those are the only w
eapons we have.”
The girls nodded, and after I took yet another peek to confirm the road was empty, we slipped over the top of the wall and started toward Coates. The girls had their swords in their hands, while I carried the tire iron on my shoulder. We could have been any ragtag trio that had gotten lost on the backroads, and I hoped whoever was on the barricade wouldn’t wonder why we’d passed on the larger town of Whittlesey.
“There’s the barricade,” Becka said in surprise when we were within sight of the town. “Reg was right.”
“It’s impressive,” Hae-won said. “There are the concrete barriers and the sandbags. And it looks like they added to it.”
“It is a piece of work,” I agreed. “But as we know from our own experience, it doesn’t do you much good if a portal opens up inside the wall.”
“I guess that means they haven’t had a close call with a portal yet,” Becka mused. “Or they’re as dumb as the folks in Whittlesey believe.”
We stopped a short distance away and took in the barricade. As Reg had indicated, it was an impressive thing, especially given the size of the town it was protecting. There was a wooden wall nearly as tall as a one-story building, surrounded by concrete barricades that looked like they had been stolen from the bridge construction site, and a wall of sandbags in front of that. And it wasn’t just the road that had been blocked. It looked like there was an ongoing project to extend the wall around the entire town.
“Well, shit,” was all I could say as we stared at the town of Coates. “Maybe this isn’t as simple as I thought it would be.”
I’d pictured a basic barricade, despite the warnings from Reg, but this thing was more substantial. I realized that once we were inside, it wouldn’t be such a simple thing to get back out. I wondered for a moment if we should go with Becka’s plan, but that had been made even more difficult by the presence of the wall as well. Posing as strangers lost on the road was still our best bet then.
“Is there a way in?” Becka asked.
“I guess we should find out,” I replied.
The three of us started slowly forward as we tried to figure out how someone was supposed to go around the barricade. We were close to the sandbag wall, when something hit the ground just in front of us. We stopped, and backed up without thinking, and when I looked down, I saw that an egg had been tossed at us.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” a deep voice demanded from above us. It wasn’t the same man we’d heard on the road, though they both had the same deep timbre.
I looked up and saw a man studying us from a tree just on the other side of the wall. He was hidden in the leaves, which made it hard to see many details beyond his moonlike face and unruly hair.
“We were attacked by dinosaurs and lost our car,” I replied. “We thought it would be safer to walk along the smaller roads where there aren’t as many dinosaurs.”
“Did you now?” another voice laughed.
This voice belonged to a scrawny man with eyes that were too big for his narrow head and a goatee that was nearly long enough to reach his chest. He had stepped around a section of the wooden wall that was open, but that fact was cleverly hidden by the angle of the wall and the position of the barricades. Unlike the man in the tree who appeared to be armed only with eggs and a slingshot, the skinny man carried an axe in one hand and a revolver in the other.
“Now, how does a Yank end up in small town England in the middle of a disaster with a pair of sexy women on either side?” the scrawny man asked. “Are you from one of the air bases or sumthin’? Or maybe you’re one of ‘em rich techies what was buyin’ up mansions in the countryside?”
“We should find out,” the man in the tree suggested.
“I think you’re right, Chester,” the skinny man replied.
He kept the axe on his shoulder, but the other arm came up and pointed the revolver at us.
“Why don’t we go somewhere and discuss this,” the scrawny man suggested.
I was about to make a suggestion of my own about what the scrawny man could do with his gun, but Chester and the skinny man weren’t alone. Two more men stepped through the gap, both carrying rifles that had been taken from Walston’s soldiers. And both men had their fingers on the triggers and cold eyes on us.
Chapter 7
“Look,” I said. “We don’t care what you do to protect your town. In fact, it’s rather impressive, this wall you’ve built. Would you be willing to let us stay here?”
The scrawny man started to laugh but the other three men remained silent. They cast speculative glances over me and the girls, and I saw one rifleman’s look linger on Becka. She turned her nose up at him and looked away toward some point beyond the town, and the rifleman scowled.
“Why would you want to stay here?” the scrawny man finally asked.
“As I said, this is impressive,” I replied as I waved the tire iron at the wall. “In fact, that was before we knew you had guns. We’ve been trying to find somewhere safe to stay, and I can’t imagine that there’s any place safer right now.”
“That’s true,” Chester agreed from his spot in the tree. “It’s very safe here.”
“For some folks,” the rifleman who had leered at Becka added.
“Which folks?” Hae-won asked innocently.
“Those who know how to follow the rules,” the scrawny man replied.
“Oh, I’m very good at following rules,” Hae-won assured him.
“You didn’t answer the question,” the one rifleman who hadn’t spoken yet said. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”
“We were at Cambridge together,” I said. “Stuck on campus during the break. We finally had to leave because it was getting too dangerous, and we’ve been trying to find someplace safe.”
“Oh, uni students,” the scrawny man sniffed. “Fat lot of good you are. We only take in those what can contribute to the greater good.”
I doubted those were his own words, a fact confirmed by the eyeroll the second rifleman made. Still, no one had turned us away yet, nor had anyone mentioned what ‘contributions’ people might be expected to make.
“We don’t have anything,” Becka said. “We didn’t have time to grab much. Just these swords and armor.”
“We ate all our food,” I added. “If you won’t let us stay, will you at least offer us something to eat? We could find a way to repay you. Clean dishes or something.”
“Maybe we should take them to Dean,” Chester called from the tree. “Let ‘im decide.”
“Dean’s not the only one who can make a decision,” the scrawny man sniped.
Dean was apparently the assshole currently in charge, but it was clear the scrawny man had ambitions of his own. An interesting fact to know, and maybe something we could use when it came time to make our escape.
“Take ‘em to Dean,” the leering rifleman said in a firm voice.
“He’s our mayor,” Chester offered.
Scrawny man scowled at the man in the tree, but he didn’t challenge Dean’s current claim to the title.
“Then he sounds like someone who can help us,” I replied.
Scrawny man turned his scowl on us, then backed up a few steps to huddle with the two men with rifles. There was a brief discussion, in angry voices, though I only picked out a few words. The two men with rifles were firmly in Dean’s camp and continued to insist that Dean should talk to us. The scrawny man didn’t see the point, though it wasn’t clear what he would do with us instead. I’m pretty sure we could have walked away from the wall at that point and no one would have noticed until we were out of sight, but I still didn’t feel like spending hours or days ducking in and out of Coates to find the engineers.
“We should just kill them,” Hae-won whispered. “They are stupid.”
“Probably won’t help us in the end,” I whispered. “And the one with the revolver doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He handles that thing like an actor in a bad cop show.”
“Th
is is more like a Monty Python skit,” Becka sighed.
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” I replied.
Becka snorted while Hae-won stared at the two of us in confusion.
“It was a running joke on Monty Python,” I explained when I saw the Korean’s puzzled look. “Someone dressed as a grand inquisitor would run into the middle of a different skit and yell ‘no one expects the Spanish Inquisition’.”
“Ah,” Hae-won replied, although I could tell she still didn’t understand why it was funny.
“You have to see it to appreciate it,” I sighed.
“I’m sure it’s very funny,” Hae-won assured me. “I have seen their movies.”
“Really?” I said. “Which one is your favorite?”
Hae-won pondered that while the three men continued to argue, and Chester in the tree grew bored and started to play with some of the leaves.
“I like the one about King Arthur,” Hae-won replied. “But I also like the one about the fish.”
“Well, technically that wasn’t a Monty Python film,” I said. “Although it does have quite a few ties to the Monty Python troupe.”
“Gods, those movies are so old,” Becka groaned. “You’d think the BBC hadn’t done anything since the 1970s. What about The Office? Or, um…”
“I like the one with David Schwimmer,” the blue-eyed Korean supplied.
“Friends?” I suggested.
“No, the one he does now on SkyOne,” Hae-won replied.
“Intelligence,” the busty blonde Brit said. “Yeah, that one’s okay. Though I like Toast of London better.”
“Huh,” was all I said.
“Haven’t you watched any TV since you arrived?” Hae-won asked.
“Well, mostly I’ve been streaming stuff,” I hedged.
“Let me guess, shows from America,” Becka replied.
“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “I gotta have my Rick & Morty fix.”
“I like Powerpuff Girls,” Chester added.
“That’s a great show,” I replied. “Did you see the new ones? They came out a few years ago.”
“Yeah!” Chester agreed. “They made me laugh.”