Forsaken World (Book 5): Homecoming

by Watson, Thomas A.

  “Told ya we should’ve moved it,” Ian said, sitting down.

  “We have enough shit to do,” Lance replied, and started going through the numbers before realizing he heard suppressed shots. Looking up, Lance saw Rhonda, Lilly, Kathy, Robin, and Allie aiming across the field and keeping the stinkers from entering the valley between the two spurs to the road from Girdler.

  Half an hour later, the playground was covered in dust and Ian climbed out telling David, Larry, and Drew to roll the generator over to the power station. Patrick was still spraying the station down and Ian moved up, touching the metal with his gloves. “It’s okay now,” Ian called back, and showed them where to leave the generator.

  Dwain went over to Patrick before taking the wand and changing out the tip, then started cleaning off the bots. “Whatcha’ doin’?” Lilly asked, walking up to Lance and leaned over, resting on the UTV.

  “Going through screen shots of the bots,” Lance answered. “We’ll never know how many it took down because the stinkers were too close together.”

  He turned the laptop to her and Lilly shivered, seeing the mass of stinkers from over the shredder. Lance tapped the keyboard and the image changed and Lilly saw stinkers that had been further back now in front of the shredder and three in the shredder. “The bot counted that as six,” Lance told her.

  “Hmph,” Lilly scoffed. “That was an easy twenty.”

  “Exactly,” Lance said, turning the laptop back. “If it won’t keep a count, then I can’t figure out when we need to replace them.”

  Hearing the soft hum of the generator, Lance looked up to see Ian walking away from the power station. “The generator started that fast?” Lilly asked.

  “Yeah, two bots suck that battery dry and that Stirling engine can’t keep up. That twelve hundred pound battery hasn’t been fully charged in three days,” Lance told her. “The generator has enough fuel to run eighteen hours. We’ll get Patrick and his crew to refuel the generator if we have to.”

  “Lance,” Ian called out, walking up. “Is the boundary cable still active?”

  Tapping the keyboard, Lance waited and then looked up at Ian. “Yeah, why?”

  “Dude, the ground is like concrete and we ain’t getting it out,” Ian chuckled.

  “Do we need to stay here and shoot stinkers, so the bots can charge?” Lilly asked.

  Shaking his head, “No, bot alfa, the one that was recharging is at eighty percent. Bravo is at twenty,” Lance told her. “With the generator here now, they’ll recharge to max in their twelve hour break.”

  After the bots were washed, Lance moved them back to the playground and everyone loaded up. “I can’t wait to see how this new generation we built does,” Ian said, climbing in.

  Moving back to the road, Ian drove on down the valley, going to take the next road to Girdler. The same road giving Heath fits because stinkers were again using it to come into the valley. “We have lead,” Jennifer called out and passed them. Lilly and Allie were on the roof, shooting the stinkers ahead.

  “Glad most of the stinkers are using the other road to get to the bots,” Ian said as Jennifer turned left, leaving the valley and their three mile patrol area. The road was a very narrow saddle and reaching the other side of the saddle, the road circled left around the hill, but also dropped down a steep incline. “That’s why stinkers don’t like it, this road is steep as hell.”

  “Jennifer, did you see Highway 11?” Lance called over the radio, and Ian looked ahead at the line of stinkers moving down the road heading south. Many he was sure would be at the second battle bot area if they continued on.

  “Yeah, we’ll do like you and Ian did and stop, clearing out the intersection before heading right,” Jennifer called back.

  “Jennifer, we won’t have long fields of fire. Remember, this road comes out by the school,” Lance told her.

  “Hey, Lance, let Dwain and I take the lead,” Heath called out.

  “Dude, you wreck and hurt those bots and you better hope the stinkers get you because I’ll rip the hair off your balls with duct tape slowly,” Lance snapped back.

  Cringing as his mind provided pictures he didn’t want, “We went through more than that passing the battle bot area,” Heath shot back.

  “Dude, let him because we still have another area to set up,” Ian offered.

  Pressing his PTT, “Jennifer, let Heath and Dwain take the lead. You pull to the back, so Lilly and Allie can shoot those pushed to the side,” Lance told her.

  “Copy,” Jennifer said, and Lance heard the diesel engines behind them growl. Heath and Dwain passed on Ian’s side and then Ian moved behind them as Jennifer slowed, letting the others pass.

  “One ton diesels vs stinkers, round one,” Ian chuckled.

  “If they didn’t have those big ass grill guards, I wouldn’t let them take the lead,” Lance admitted.

  They came up to the T and the stinkers were already turned, hearing the engines. Ian stayed close behind Dwain as Heath slowed for the turn and Lance saw bodies getting flung away. Dwain swung wider, taking stinkers out so those behind him wouldn’t get caught as stinkers refilled the void.

  Lance turned back and saw Jennifer swing in at the back. Lilly and Allie up top were doing a good job of mowing them down and then Lance saw Rhonda in the passenger seat opening up. “Rhonda took Dino’s seat,” Lance chuckled, turning around and pulled his gun up. Ian jerked the steering wheel, dodging bodies that fell under the trucks.

  The two large trucks were doing a nice job of creating a path, so Lance started snapping off shots at stinkers on the side of the road. Slowing for a long curve that rounded a hill, Heath chuckled, watching stinkers fly off the cattle guard. Glancing in his mirror, Heath saw Dwain driving over the center line, widening the path for those behind them.

  “You’re washing the truck,” Robin laughed with him. When the road straightened out, Heath slowed and took the dirt path off the road into the field. “I take it, you didn’t tell the boys?”

  “Nah, they have enough stuff to think about,” Heath answered, pulling past the playground and the broken bot, stopping beside the power station. “I could strangle those pirate guys with my bare hands.”

  “They might prefer that to what Lance and Ian have planned for them,” Robin said with a straight face.

  Behind them, Ian and Lance looked at the cleared field. “Where did the bodies go?” Ian shouted then saw burnt spots scattered about. When Dwain followed Heath past the playground, they saw the dust kick up.

  “They came and cleaned the area without us,” Lance sighed.

  “Lance, they get a pass,” Ian replied. “They did it and didn’t get hurt. We have to let the Bear Trap Clan do what they feel they can. We can’t shelter them forever.”

  Rolling his eyes like he was a parent, “We need functioning bodies, not people getting ripped apart from stinkers.”

  “Hey, they put on their big boy pants and stepped up to the plate. That’s what we need,” Ian shot back.

  As Ian pulled up beside Dwain, Lance nodded. “Okay, no lecture.”

  When they stepped out, Dwain was already walking over. “Guys, we knew the area had to be cleared before anything could be done. To be honest, we weren’t expecting you to replace this area since you just lost a bot and power station.”

  Lance held up his hand, “Dwain, y’all did straight and nasty. With this field cleared, we won’t be putting in the last bot area in Dewitt at night.”

  Seeing Dwain cock his head to the side, Ian laughed, “Straight and nasty means extremely good.”

  “Oh,” Dwain said, expecting a lecture and at least one threat of bodily harm. For some reason he couldn’t explain, Dwain felt cheated.

  “Dwain, pull up and we will set up the new power station twenty yards east of the old one,” Ian said, grabbing his AR.

  Hearing running feet, everyone turned to see Jennifer and Lilly running toward Lance and Ian. “Lance, they did it, so back off,” Lilly told him.

/>   “Lilly,” Dwain said, stepping over. “They told us we did a good job. Well, Lance said we did ‘straight and nasty’.”

  “Oh,” Lilly squeaked in shock.

  With wide eyes, “Wow, they said straight and nasty? They are impressed,” Jennifer nodded.

  “Let’s get this set up,” Lance told everyone.

  Having seen one set up, Patrick and his group were able to offer a little help, but could also stay out of the way. Lilly and Jennifer pulled Robin and Kathy back to shoot the stinkers flipping over the guard rail that blocked half the field. The stinkers from the north didn’t have that problem and just stumbled into the field.

  Lance and Ian took out a bunch of thick metal tubes as Heath, Dwain, Patrick, and David offloaded the power station. Lance went over to the power station and had Larry and Drew help Ian. Watching Heath directing everyone and setting up the power station correctly, Lance was impressed.

  When the pieces were set up, Heath stepped back because he wasn’t hooking shit up. He knew the old power station had a deterrent that killed, and he was certain this new one would do much worse than that. “Heath, get someone to drop the trailer on our UTV and dig a trench over to the playground and one to the new recharging station,” Lance told him. “Set the other recharging station in that corner,” Lance pointed, and Heath grabbed David to help unhook the trailer.

  Patrick grabbed the heavy cable to feed the recharging station and laid it out as Lance started hooking up the power station. When he was done, Lance turned and found Patrick in front of him, holding the end coupler to the playground. “Ian hooked up that end,” Patrick told Lance as he took the coupler and screwed it to the power station.

  “We already took down the parabolic mirror. You were going to use that hoist to lift up the power station and back the trailer under it, right?” Patrick asked, and Lance nodded.

  Watching Patrick walk away, Lance headed to the UTV to grab his laptop. “Yeah, having real help is awesome,” Lance grinned. Grabbing the bot laptop, Lance opened it up and sat on the hood of the UTV. The wheeled bot turned on and drove off Dwain’s trailer, then spun around, heading for the playground.

  “Lance, there’s another light post, you want it set up? Because Ian told us to leave the other one up since it still worked,” Dwain called out.

  Before Lance could answer, “Yeah, I’ll show you where,” Ian answered, jogging over.

  Looking back down at the screen, Lance told the bot to hibernate and it rolled over and backed up to its recharging station. “Good boy,” Lance said, turning on the tracked bot. The tracked bot rolled off Heath’s trailer and Lance couldn’t help but grin. He really thought the tracked bots looked more sinister.

  When the bot parked in the middle of the playground, Lance shut it down. “Need this for a second,” Heath said, climbing in the UTV. He drove it to the power station and Dwain dropped the spike and Heath drove up the small hill next to the level area the playground was set up in. Lance looked at the top of the hill and saw Ian a hundred yards away at the top of the hill next to the new light post.

  Seeing he wasn’t needed there, Lance turned to head over to the old power station and saw Patrick and his boys hoisting the old power station up with the frame hoist made from the thick pipe. They’d liberated it from Victor’s shop. They had taken the flat metal tires off and put wide solid rubber tires on it, so they could roll it over ground and not just concrete.

  “Feels weird,” Ian said, walking up.

  “Yeah, and I’m not sure I like it,” Lance admitted, seeing Dwain laying the wire from the far light post in the trench Heath had dug. “Fuck a fifth wheel, I feel like assplankton.”

  Hearing a diesel crank up, they turned to see David pulling off in Dwain’s truck. He circled around and then backed the trailer under the hoist. When he stopped, Patrick pulled the chain lowering the power station onto the trailer. “I say, let’s leave Heath and Dwain here and set up the gun bot across the road,” Lance said. “They can winch the broken bot onto the trailer.”

  “Nah, we’ll have the broken bot loaded and then we can all go,” Ian said. “I want Heath and Dwain to see how we set up the gun bots.”

  Fighting the useless feeling off, Lance walked over to the buggy and grabbed an MRE and ate while watching everyone work and Ian came over and joined him. In ten minutes, everyone walked over to the buggy, seeing Ian and Lance eating.

  Reaching back, Lance started tossing MREs out. “Don’t like what you get, trade,” Lance told them with his mouth full.

  “Setting up the gun bot there,” Lance said, pointing across the road at the hilltop that overlooked the valley. “From there, gun bot can deter others from messing with our shit.”

  “What about the other two gun bots?” Patrick asked, attacking his MRE. Ian reached back in the buggy and threw Patrick a bottle of water. Then he noticed none of the others had water, and water bottles started sailing through the air.

  “One’s going further down the road just past Green Road,” Lance answered with an evil grin. “The other is going on a hill overlooking Girdler.”

  “Um, Lance, there aren’t any open spots just past Green Road,” Dwain said.

  “I know. The bot will be set up on the road.”

  “Lance, there are other people around,” Patrick mumbled with a full mouth. Struggling to swallow, “I know of one group just past Green Road. I think the road is Gentry or something. We spotted them when we were scavenging houses.”

  “Hell, by now, the lions probably ate ‘em!” Lance cried out, throwing up his hands.

  “You’ve seen the lions?” Patrick asked, shoving his trash in the MRE bag.

  “Yeah, and our tigers,” Ian huffed.

  “You seen the elephants?” Larry asked with a grin.

  “What?” Ian and Lance asked in shock.

  “There was a circus in Manchester when this broke out, and their animals got out or were let out,” David told them, finishing off his MRE. “I took the family, not paying attention to the riots right after the impact.”

  “Just what the fuck did they have?!” Lance cried out.

  “Two big ass Bengal tigers that did tricks just like a dog,” David grinned. “A shitload of lions, then white Siberian tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, panthers, basically all the big cats. They had large groups and had their own breeding population, that’s what they were famous for-,” David stopped as Ian levitated off the UTV.

  “That’s right. We saw them last year in Lexington. We took Jodi,” Dwain said, turning to Robin.

  “You don’t keep that much killer pussy around!” Ian bellowed.

  Having never seen Ian’s pussy reaction, “Uh, okay,” David mumbled.

  “David, how many elephants?” Lance asked as Jennifer and Lilly ran over.

  “Over a dozen African elephants,” David said, avoiding Ian’s intense stare. “They were basically a traveling zoo. I remember monkeys, gorillas, giraffes, and even hyenas.”

  “And you’ve seen the elephants?” Lance groaned.

  “Yeah, a week after we made it to grandpa’s house. We siphoned gas from our cars and took the side by sides up near Crane Nest,” David told him. “And there they were, just walking around the valley. At that time, stinkers weren’t attacking animals, but it seemed the elephants didn’t care and crushed a bunch of them. That’s when other stinkers attacked, but it was like a fly attacking a skyscraper.”

  Laying back on the UTV, “Great, now we have the abundant safari around us,” Lance moaned.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The guys took over and let the girls eat, then Lance had everyone climb in the UTVs and buggies and crossed the road. Setting the gun bot up on a point that covered most of the valley, Lance put a chainsaw in each UTV and buggy and everyone fanned out over the hillside, cutting down trees and clearing the line of fire.

  Glancing at his watch, Lance radioed everyone back. “Okay, we aren’t going to set up the gun bot past Green Road today because we don’t have tim
e,” Lance told them, and many sighed with relief not realizing Lance had said, today. The others just didn’t like the fact the gun bots killed anything that moved. “Jennifer, you follow Heath back to the build area and load up the last bots and equipment. Patrick and them will come with us and set up the gun bot overlooking Girdler and relay with us.”

  “Lance, it might shoot an innocent person,” Robin whined.

  Giving an ‘I don’t give a shit’ shrug, “Well, sucks nasty ass to be them,” Lance shot back. “We’re securing this area and if someone moves around here, it’s because we made it safe. I’m not worrying about anyone not in our coalition. We put out signs of warning, so if twat skanks ignore them, tough. Ian and I want some of this stuff set out farther from our perimeter, but we don’t know which route our parents will take to get to Dewitt, so all our deterrents will stay just on the outer rim of our area. Now when our parents show up,” he paused, “we are putting shit everywhere.”

  Slowly, Robin nodded and everyone loaded up. After driving back and dropping Heath’s group off, Lance watched them drive off and then headed into the field with the battle bot. The only stinkers that moved at them were those they had to drive around.

  Ian drove into the trees and up the slope. Reaching a clear spot, “Stop here, Ian,” Lance said, opening the gun bot laptop. “Oh thank goodness, we still have great signal,” Lance sighed. Typing in the password, Lance hit enter and the warning flashed on the screen. When it disappeared, Lance grabbed the binoculars, but saw a stinker on the road fall down.

  “How far out is the kill zone?” Larry asked, walking up.

  “Six hundred yards, but anything moving over three miles an hour becomes a priority target,” Lance told him and Larry sighed, looking across the valley. Even though the gun bot was nine hundred yards away, Larry didn’t like being in front of it.

  Lowering the binoculars, Lance told everyone to load up. Ian drove them along the ridge and came out almost over the school they had passed. “Damn, if that’s not a difference I don’t know what is,” Ian said, looking down at the almost clear road.