“How much?” Grover asked, never one to accept generalizations when specifics were required.
John looked down at the table, obviously searching for words, until Carlo came to his rescue. “I can answer that,” Carlo said. “We peaked after the Lockwood Mission. We had a net gain, even after all the battles, because we grabbed so many weapons from the bad guys after they took off. Ammo, too. We took a new inventory after they came back and the dust had settled. I don’t have the exact figures with me, but I remember them, mostly. I could go get my lists if you want.”
“No, just tell us what you remember,” Grover said patiently.
“We had about one hundred seventy-five rifles and about ten thousand rounds of ammo for them,” Carlo said. “A lot of that came from Lockwood. Apparently those guys had cleaned out Fort Dix, but they left most of it in town when John’s men drove them out. Now, after the defectors robbed us on their way out, we have about forty rifles and four thousand rounds.”
“Ouch,” Mark Roman said.
“We had a hundred and twenty pistols,” Carlo continued, “including the thirty-five revolvers we brought back from Lockwood. Now we’re down to about twenty or thirty. For the semi-automatics we still have, we have three-thousand rounds left. We don’t have many bullets at all for the revolvers. I guess John’s men didn’t run across any stashes of those up in Lockwood. Just the guns themselves.”
“Correct,” John said. “We took everything we came across. I’m not sure where they were keeping the bullets.”
“Oddly enough, the grenade launchers are still in The Armory,” Carlo said. “My weapon of choice. The ones we got from the National Guard. We’ve been lugging them around ever since. I’m guessing that whoever broke in didn’t know what they were, so they left them. So we have six of those, and plenty of ammo.”
“Hmm,” Grover said. “I’d heard we were a lot worse off than this. It’s not as bad as I thought.”
“I think the biggest concern was that there’s somebody out there who’s all of a sudden well-armed,” John said. “Thanks to us. And we don’t know where they are or what they’re planning to do. Or even who they are. It’s not like they don’t know we’re here.”
“Right,” Grover said. “My thoughts exactly.”
“I’m more concerned about the ammunition levels,” said Sue Stocker. “I feel like we have enough guns. I mean, we only have so many Sec Forces, and we’re only talking about defending the camp now. Rounds are the same as bullets, right?”
“For the purposes of this meeting, yes,” answered Grover. “Although they work differently. Am I right, Carlo?”
Yes sir,” Carlo answered. “Right on the money.”
“We’ve already got the Blacksmith Shop up and running, right?” asked Sue. “What are the chances that we could make our own bullets for these guns? Weren’t blacksmiths melting metal down and molding bullets during the American Revolution?”
“Nick the blacksmith already thought of that,” Carlo said. “He swung by and I talked with him about it. I told him the same thing I’m about to tell you.”
“Nick the blacksmith,” muttered Roethke. “A man of many talents, isn’t he?”
“The problem is that the ammo these modern guns use is way beyond anything we can expect to make ourselves for a long time,” Carlo explained. “You’re talking about very primitive weapons back in the days of Paul Revere. They were shooting muskets back then, which were basically just fire sticks that launched hunks of metal in a general direction. Nick could make those hunks of metal eventually, I’m sure. But we don’t have any muskets. We have guns that fire precision-made, jacketed, um, projectiles, I guess you could call them. We won’t have the technology to make them here for a long time, if ever. Nick said that himself once we’d talked it out. We’d be better off trying to find muskets than trying to make ammo for these sophisticated guns. Or even making muskets ourselves. Dumbing it down, if you know what I mean.”
“Dumbing it down is definitely something our esteemed blacksmith can handle,” Roethke said with his usual sneer.
“Your act is getting old,” Mark told him. “We get it, all right? Give it a rest.”
“Speaking of the blacksmith,” Grover said, “he does have an assignment that’s relevant to what we’re talking about. He’ll be producing metal spears, and he’s going to try making some swords after that. So in a way, we’re already dumbing it down, as you describe it.”
“Last I heard, he was making shovels,” Mark said. “He already delivered the spears. He told me so himself.”
“That’s on his plate, too,” Grover answered. “I think we’re going to have to get Nick some help. He’s been asking for an assistant, but so far we haven’t found anybody we can spare. We better get on that. He’s got a lot of work to do.”
“What about Atlantic City?” John asked. “Every time I bring it up, nobody wants to talk about it. What’s the plan? I need to know so I can move on, one way or another. Are we doing anything about it?”
Grover sighed and looked around before speaking. “Is everybody up to speed on this?” he finally asked. When nobody responded, he told John to brief everybody on what he knew.
“It’s not that complicated,” John said. “Linda Brown and Dex Bailey followed some of the thieves on their way out of camp. In one of our vans. They met up with another crew driving around in another one of our vans, and then they disappeared into Atlantic City.”
“What?” Mark asked as a low murmur of sudden conversation filled the room. “I never heard any of this!”
“So the point is,” John continued over the noise, “we know where these rats went, and where all our stuff is. I say we do something about it. Whether you all like it or not, we showed what we can do up in Lockworth. Why don’t we go after these jokers? The last thing we want is to get a reputation for laying down when we get attacked.”
“What’s that old saying?” Carlo asked. “That was then and this is now. We can’t do what we did in Lockwood anymore. We don’t have the guns. That’s the whole point. The defectors took what we would need.”
“Yeah, yeah,” John said dismissively. “I don’t want to argue about it. I just want to here it from the top that we’re not retaliating so I can put it out of my head.”
“What kind of operation were you thinking of?” Grover asked. “Just for the sake of discussion.”
“And keep in mind that we have no idea who or what would be waiting for us if we managed to get ourselves across the bridges and into the city,” Carlo reminded him. “There’s a reason why Linda and Dex turned around and came back without firing a shot. Not that we have the capability to move our fighters much further than our own borders anymore. And don’t forget that—”
“Just forget it,” John retorted. “I can see that it’s not something anybody else is even considering. I just had to know, since nobody’s talking about it.”
Sixteen
After what he’d seen, Matt was thankful that the last few hundred yards of the walk were uneventful. If the few minutes he’d just endured were typical, and Rollie hadn’t given him any reason to believe otherwise, life in Atlantic City was going to be difficult to deal with. His desire to do whatever his kidnappers demanded and get back to Tabernacle had multiplied exponentially by the time they were on the doorstep of The Wonder Bar, where clean water for the settlement was produced. Or so some claimed. Apparently there were a lot of corpses lying around town that would say otherwise about the water if they could.
“Levan?” called Rollie after they’d stepped inside. “Anybody home?” Matt followed his guide inside and closed the door behind him. They wandered through what used to be a dining room, complete with a bar along one end. They pushed through a swinging door and into a kitchen. There, too, there was nobody. It was obvious to Matt that this was where the work was done around here, though. There was a bank of stovetops, gas-fueled if he wasn’t mistaken, with several huge metal cauldrons sitting on the burners. Whil
e Rollie continued to search the building for its chief occupant, Matt surveyed the scene and tried to make some assessments.
Setting aside the puzzler about how gas burners could work in this day and age, Matt tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It appeared that they were boiling the water to prepare it for human consumption. Maybe they added a chemical or two to sterilize it, but he saw no evidence of that. From what he could see, they were relying on cooking the bacteria out of the water. They’d considered that method themselves at Tabernacle, discarding it only because of the logistical nightmare of keeping the fires burning.
The situation was a lot different here in Atlantic City, though. Unlike at Tabernacle, they had two issues to deal with: cleaning the water, and desalinization. A simple boil might remove some salt. Matt wasn’t entirely sure about it. But he was reasonably certain it wouldn’t remove enough salt. When the water cooled, most of the salt would still be there. So after two minutes of inspection and rumination, Matt thought he already knew why the people of Atlantic City were getting sick. In fact, he’d already been reasonably sure he knew based on his earlier conversation back at the Trop. Simply put, they were drinking ocean water. It was clean, but it likely had levels of salt that were known to be fatal to human beings.
The final observation Matt made was that however the burners on the stove were being fueled, they were still hot. Somebody had been cooking in the last few minutes. Now, however, the fires were no longer burning, and the cook was gone. That was as much a mystery as the fuel source was. But that was Rollie’s problem.
Rollie stuck his head into the kitchen as Matt was dragging a step stool over to the stoves. “He’s out on the deck. Something’s wrong. He’s either sick or on drugs or something. But he ain’t usually like that.”
Rollie disappeared back the way he’d come, so Matt followed until he found himself on a dock that extended out into the channel of water that separated the island from the mainland. Tables, umbrellas and chairs were stacked neatly along the edge. This used to be a nice place to grab a beer and dinner, probably seafood, and sit outside on warm summer nights, Matt could see as he gathered his coat and pulled the collar tight to shut out the cold breeze that was whipping off the bay. But those days were long gone.
Closer to the buildings was a contraption with a rope, a pulley, and a crank. This was obviously where the water was pulled from the bay to be brought inside. And that’s also where Rollie had found the cook, sitting against the railing and watching the two men who’d invaded his space. “Matt,” Rollie said. “Meet Levan Drucker. Also known as ‘The Water Man’ around here.”
Levan was a dark-skinned man who, like nearly every other male over the age of sixteen these days, wore a heavy, messy beard. Rollie was right. Although Matt had only just met Levan, it was obvious even to him that something was wrong. He reached a hand down to the lethargic man, who shook it weakly without looking Matt in the eye. That’s telling of something, Matt thought, although he had no idea what that something was.
“So what’s up, Water Man?” Rollie said. “You doin’ okay? You don’t look so good.” When Rollie extended a hand toward him, the same way Matt had, Levan took it and pulled himself to his feet. It turned out that he was a huge man, both in terms of height and girth. In a time when most people were trending lean, Levan looked like he still managed to find plenty to eat. Must be in his genes, Matt thought. Just like the Bailey brothers. But Levan’s even bigger than they are.
“Just takin’ a smoke break,” Levan said. “Same as I always did out here. Cept’ I don’t have any smokes.”
“Levan worked here for years as a cook,” Rollie explained to Matt. “He lived over on the mainland in Egg Harbor, isn’t that right?” Levan nodded without a word.
“So you live here in the city now?” Matt asked.
“I got an apartment upstairs,” he said. “The owner used to stay in it sometimes. He’s gone now.”
“How about family?” Matt asked. “Are they here too, or are they still on the mainland?”
Levan paused before answering. “They’re all over, I guess. I couldn’t tell you, really.” He turned to Rollie. “So what’s up?”
“Matt here is, uh, visiting us right now,” Rollie said. “He’s the water man at his own place, up in the woods. Seeing as how we’re having trouble with our water, we thought he could work with you and try to fix it. What do you think?”
Levan looked Matt over, as if he was seeing him for the first time, before shrugging. “Sure, why not? If you’re so sure the water’s the problem.”
Matt was hesitant. He didn’t want to make Levan look bad. On the other hand, the sooner the problems were fixed, the sooner he could get back home, assuming his captors would allow it. Bruised feelings were going to have to take a back seat. “I saw some issues already,” he said. “But first off, I have to know. How does that huge stove still work? Isn’t it a gas burner?”
“Propane,” Levan said. “The kitchen is hanging over the water. Guess they didn’t want to run gas lines out here when they built it. There’s propane tanks right through the wall from the stove.”
“But it can’t last forever,” Matt countered. “I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
“The boatyard’s loaded with propane,” Rollie said. “Gardner’s Basin. At least it used to be. We just roll in a new tank once in a while.”
“But still, it won’t last forever,” Matt said again. “Eventually you’ll have to do something else.”
“That’s for the future,” Rollie said. “Right now let’s just fix it so people can drink the water without dropping dead.”
~~~
“I’ve never seen you before. You’re not one of them?” Levan asked after Rollie had made some excuse and left to go take care of unspecified business. As he spoke he flopped back down against the railing and resumed the posture they’d found him in. “Where’d you come from? And why would you come here?”
Matt paused before answering, unsure of how much he should reveal. Then he laughed at himself. What did he have to hide? To lose? He was the one who’d been snatched. “I’m from a camp up in the Pine Barrens. About an hour north of here, probably. And I had the same job there that you have here.”
“And you came here to help a brother out,” Levan finished. “Now why would you do that?”
“No offense,” Matt told him. “But I didn’t have any choice. They kidnapped me and my family and brought us here. My wife and kids are being held back in the hotel. It’s more of a jail, if you ask me.”
Levan had been staring at the decking between his knees, but now he looked up at Matt. “You jivin’ me? Kidnapped?”
“I don’t know what else to call it,” Matt said. “It doesn’t matter now. If I want to protect my family, I have to do what they brought me here to do. That’s all there is to it.”
Levan sneered. “Let’s say everything you just told me is true. If you’re so smart and can fix all this, they ain’t gonna’ let you leave, boy! That’s not how they do things!”
Matt’s shoulder’s slumped. “I was kind of afraid of that. But even so, I have to try. What else can I do?”
“These are some mean folks you got yourself tangled up with,” Levan said. He turned and gazed at the bay. “I guess it means somethin’ to me that it wasn’t by choice,” he added, without looking at Matt. ‘You’re not one of them.”
“You almost make it sound like you’re a prisoner yourself,” Matt said. “You’re a pretty important guy around here, it seems to me.”
“They don’t treat me like no important person,” Levan said indignantly. “When everything went down and all the water ran out, I thought of a way to make more. I wanted to help. I was glad to do it. Until I saw what they were up to and what they were doin’ to my people. But now I’m a hostage, and that’s all there is to it. Just like you are.”
“I thought you didn’t have any people,” Matt said. “You said they—"
“I had to say that
,” Levan said, interrupting. “The man was standing right there, wasn’t he? I got people. They live in the ghetto. But the man don’t know that.” He glared at Matt. “And I don’t want him findin’ out.”
Matt put his hands up defensively. “He won’t find out anything from me. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“It ain’t gonna’ matter,” Levan said. “Not for me. They won’t need me much longer, now that they got you here.”
Matt glanced at the building, unsure of when or if Rollie would be back. It wouldn’t be good for Rollie to return, only to see Matt and Levan still shooting the breeze out on the back deck. But Levan had opened a door in the conversation, and now there were things Matt had to know. “I still don’t get it,” Matt said. “If you’re from that, um, neighborhood, the ghetto, why do they let you stay here, doing the most important job there is?”
“I told you,” Levan said impatiently. “They don’t know. I was here in this building when the power went out. I did work here. That much is true. By the time they got around to checkin’ me out, I knew what to say. I saw what they were doin’. So I lied and said I was from the mainland.”
Ah,” Matt said. “Got it.”
“And by the way,” Levan added. “Do you know what the ghetto is? It’s a tiny square of land up near the top of the island. It’s a slum, jam-packed with starving people.”
“Man,” Matt said. “Now I’m getting the picture, I think.”
“Them people that kidnapped you ain’t from here,” Levan continued. “Not by any stretch. Not all of them, anyway.“
“Rollie told me that,” Matt replied.
“I didn’t even know that was his name,” Levan said. “Because I don’t care, even a little bit. Anyway, it’s a good thing you told me you’re from someplace else. Otherwise, seein’ they left me alone with you and all, I mighta’ cut you and thrown you over the rail. That woulda’ been for killin’ my brother.”
Super Pulse (Book 4): Defect Page 14