The first raindrops hit moments later. “Rain,” he said as he examined the terrain for the first time in what daylight fought its way through the mass above.
A hill that continued to almost become a mountain loomed. They were at the beginning of the first foothill. Higher elevation saw a forest and even a cliff. Maybe there was a cave, but it wouldn’t be big enough for all of them. The wolves woke up, shook wet dirt and mud everywhere, then slowly and quietly disappeared into the trees up the hill.
Ted stretched, while Timmons rolled over, huddling more tightly with himself. Then the real rain started. It turned into a near white-out. Wet wolves, wet horses, and wet humans. Everything they owned was getting wet.
“Rifles inverted people, barrels down,” Terry ordered James, Lacy, and Gerry. They spun their rifles around. They knew what to do, but had just woken up. Still, taking care of the rifle was their first order of business.
Always.
“The rain’s warm. I suggest everyone find a place where you can wash yourself and your clothes. Keep your dignity, people.” Terry and Char headed to the side. James and Lacy went the other way. Ted, Timmons, and Gerry remained with the horses.
Soon, everyone was naked and scrubbing the road filth from their bodies. Terry started taking liberties but Char shooed him away. Their clothes were the hardest to get clean, scrub, rinse, scrub some more. They needed a rock to beat them on and there weren’t any where they had gone. Terry took his and Char’s clothes back to the spring, where he found the other men doing exactly the same thing.
The five of them jaw-jacked while they were there, doing what needed to be done.
Lacy’s scream pierced the air and the men froze. Terry threw the clothes down and ran toward her cry. The others followed.
Slipping in the mud, Terry cursed his slow recovery. Lacy screamed again and he tried to run faster, only slipping and falling into a pile of rocks. Ted jogged past, followed by the other three. Terry worked his way out of the rocks, noting the rain washing blood away from an ugly gash in his thigh. He ignored it and ran.
A wolf snarled nearby. Terry tried to reach out with his senses as the Werewolves could do, but he couldn’t feel anything.
More snarls, growls, and a fight!
When Terry reached the trees, he found a black bear backed against a tree. Lacy hung from a branch above the creature’s head. A claw mark trailed across her naked back. It wasn’t deep, but it dripped blood. Hanging upside down wouldn’t help it heal, either.
The wolf pack had arrived and were circling. Ted and Timmons changed into Werewolves before his eyes. Timmons limped on his three legs. His front left paw was gone, the leg ending in a stump that looked exactly like his human stump.
The bear’s eyes were wide and it searched for an escape.
There would be none. In this world, right then and there, there existed only predators and prey.
A shot rang out, the bullet whizzing uncomfortably close to Terry’s head. It took the bear in the eye. It stood and bellowed. The wolves attacked, dragging it down, where they were on it. Ted and Timmons changed back into human form.
Soon the bear ceased to move, and Ted called off the wolves. Char stood at Terry’s side, her 9mm pistol in one hand. James helped Lacy from the tree. The wolves whined as they wanted to feast.
“You’ll wait, just like the rest of us,” Ted informed them.
Everyone stood there, naked and studiously avoiding looking at each other.
“All righty then. Ted, are you good with taking charge of cleaning the bear?” Terry asked. Ted nodded.
Terry Henry took Char’s hand and they walked back toward their camp.
“Keep your dignity, isn’t that what you said? Is this what you had in mind?” Char prodded. Terry looked back. Naked people were everywhere going about their business.
Terry didn’t try to answer. The rain had lightened up, but it was still a downpour.
Char was staring at his leg. “What’d you do?”
“Fall down, go boom,” he answered. The wound was sewing itself together as they watched. In a few more minutes, no one would know that he’d ever been injured.
“Corporal James! Make sure you clean Lacy’s wound,” Terry yelled over his shoulder. It wouldn’t do at all for one of his people to get an infected wound.
“To the laundry, bitch!” Char told him. “I want my clothes cleaned, dried, and properly pressed.”
He looked at her and then to the spring. When he had thrown the clothes down, he missed the rock. They were in the mud, half-buried.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
“Engineer, we can’t take all of that,” Mark said, looking at the mountain of tools and equipment the engineer had set aside.
“But Billy said I could take what I needed, and this is it!” the engineer countered.
“I’m not carrying it. Food takes priority, you should know that. We only have five carts and three hundred and fifty people. This stuff would take up three of the carts and strain the horses pulling them. I’d love to tell you yes, but don’t see how it is physically possible. If you had only one backpack, what would you take?” Mark asked, using a minimalist visioning technique that Terry often demonstrated.
For the Force, they always had a knife. Every single one of them carried a knife. With that, they could get food, skin animals, make clothing, and cut branches to make a shelter. If you could carry one more thing, what would it be? A water flask, to increase mobility and improve chances of survival. And so on.
The engineer wasn’t in the FDG and wasn’t at all receptive to the exercise. “You’re limiting me to one backpack? Bullshit. I’m going to talk with Billy, right now!” The engineer stormed off.
Mark wasn’t going to waste any time explaining. Shonna stood nearby and gave him the thumbs up. Merrit was somewhere deeper inside the plant, responding to the most recent life or death crisis.
The engineer was upset because his plant was dying. Everything they’d done to service it was all for naught. He was angry and nothing was going to change that.
Mark approached Shonna. “We can’t take all that,” he pressed, hoping to find someone who would agree with him.
“I see taking a variety of crescent wrenches and a pry bar. I sure as hell am not going to carry that heavy crap.” She laughed and returned to what she was working on, some leaking valve. She was tightening a homemade patch around it.
“We’ll see what Billy agrees to. I hope he doesn’t fold. That stuff would drag us down. Maybe the colonel will return with word that there’s an identical power plant, but it’s missing that one valve. Without that? I’m not packing any of that crap!” Mark wasn’t happy. If anyone could make trouble with the mayor it was the engineer.
But the colonel would screw himself into the ceiling if Mark hadn’t tried to put his foot down.
“Should I wait?” Mark asked Shonna, who had returned to what she was doing.
“Why?” she answered his question with a question. “Do we need to pack and leave today? No? Then go on your merry way. It’ll all get sorted out. Don’t worry.”
She was completely unconcerned and couldn’t wait for the day when she wasn’t elbow deep in steam, rust, and grease.
The worst part was the grease was mostly animal fat and it stunk to high heaven.
Mark was fine with leaving. As he passed the massive pile of metal in the middle of the main floor, he kicked one of the valves. Not his smartest move since it didn’t budge. The only give was in his toes…
***
The group stood around in their wet clothes. No one wanted to sit because they were already uncomfortable enough. Ted had enlisted James’s and Lacy’s aid in cleaning the small bear. Lacy moved stiffly, but James was confident he’d cleaned her wound out well.
They worked without complaint, saving the bear skin to use as needed later, even if only to soften the seat of a saddle. They delivered the guts, the limbs, and the head to the wolf pack. They gnawed, snapped bones, and made
short work of their lunch. They stayed close where they could pile up beneath a tree to get some relief from the rain. Terry looked at the ground. He wanted to cook the bear but there wasn’t a dry limb anywhere.
“A quandary, to say the least,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “How do we cook a bear when we have no kindling?”
“Me, me, I know!” Char called thrusting her arm in the air. People would have found that funny if they weren’t wet and miserable. “Lava!”
“And we don’t have any lava at present. Any other ideas?” Terry probed, making a face at Char. She rolled her eyes.
“We need fire, which means we need a dry spot,” James said.
“Exactly.” Terry pointed up the hill, where a cliff face rose out of the forest.
“You want us to haul the bear up there?” James asked, but not belligerently. If he was ordered to carry it up there by himself, he would do exactly that.
“Unless we want to eat it raw, we have to take it someplace dry,” Terry said, embracing the reality.
They cut the bear up into man-portable chunks and the humans headed up the hill. Char waved goodbye as she volunteered to remain below with the horses, Timmons, Ted, and the wolf pack. They also left plenty of raw meat for the Werewolves. They preferred eating it that way. They left enough so the wolf pack could get a few extra pounds of meat each, which cut down their load significantly.
They set out, climbing steadily at first, but then it became steeper and steeper. It wasn’t long before Terry fell out of love with his plan. “Halt!” he called. The others were breathing heavily and more than happy to lean against a tree.
“Other options?” Terry asked the group.
“See if we can start a fire right here? The thicker trees look dry underneath,” Lacy suggested.
“The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m not climbing all the God damn way up there.” Terry pointed to the cliff. “You all thought I had something in mind, didn’t you? Never assume. None of us is as smart as all of us. Let’s try what Private Lacy suggested…”
***
“Would you settle down?” Billy insisted. The engineer had been pounding the table and stomping his feet since he arrived fifteen minutes prior. Billy still wasn’t sure what he was so angry about.
Besides the fact that the mechanic had died and left Roman by himself. The Werewolves had filled in and were doing what needed done. Billy didn’t see anything to complain about.
“They won’t take my tools! I need all of them if I’m to start up another power plant. Heaven knows, the next one could be in worse shape!” The engineer flopped down in the chair, spent.
“We have to travel light, my friend. You did an amaze-balls job here, but it’s time to move on. Let’s leave the past behind us as we forge ahead, find a new world out there waiting for us to shape it in our image,” Billy waxed poetic.
“Fuck off!” Roman sputtered.
Felicity left within the first minute of Roman’s tirade, so she wasn’t there to hear his latest outburst.
“Engineer, listen closely because I’m not about to repeat myself. We need to move three hundred fifty people, cattle, chickens, food, and water over two thousand miles, assuming that Terry Henry finds what our mystery man said was there. To do that, we carry only essentials. There’s not a single God damned tool you have to take with you. We’ll find it there or fabricate it there, because we have to. We cannot carry excess crap. Do you understand me?” Billy asked, glaring at the engineer.
Sue sat to the side, taking it all in. She figured to have a good conversation with her house-mates later.
Roman looked crushed and as if he’d aged ten years overnight. Billy knew what was wearing on the old man. He stood up and walked around the table, pulling a chair up next to his old friend.
“Listen, you’ve done an incredible job and we would not be where we are without you, without the power you’ve provided. We’ve weathered the worst of the God awful summer because we had freezers. We’ve enjoyed real lives, because we have lights and electricity. But we can’t survive one more summer here. It’s just too hot. We pack the carts with seeds, food, and water. There won’t be room for anything else. In the interim, you gotta keep the lights on. We need to make it to the point where we can choose to leave. I don’t want to see another person die, not here, not on the long road to a new home.”
Billy hesitated. He wasn’t good at making speeches. Everyone was put out to some extent, but he needed the engineer if they were to make a go in a new place. If they wanted to hold on to the gains they’d already made.
Most of all, their humanity, compassion for their fellow man.
Damn you, Terry Henry. Compassion. Ain’t that the shit? Billy thought.
***
Mark found the platoon scattered between the five greenhouses. The mechanic had given his life repairing the pumps, and his sacrifice was paying dividends. The water had helped bring the crops back to life.
The farmers were running around like their hair was on fire. They couldn’t believe that they might have only two months before they walked away from something they’d spent the last twenty years building.
But then they were reminded of the devastating summer. One more like that and there would be no crops. They couldn’t feed dirt to the townsfolk. It was a bittersweet feeling.
And some of them simply cried.
The members of the Force were less than sympathetic. They had a mission to accomplish, but Mark arrived in time. He’d known the farmers and the original group from New Boulder for his whole life. He’d bullied them, as part of his job, but he apologized to them after Terry Henry showed up.
He sympathized with the farmers, shooing the members of the Force away. He held them and let them vent. Then he told them they’d be back the next day to help with whatever the farmers needed.
In the first four greenhouses, he did the same thing, but in the fifth, Pepe and Maria were happily issuing orders to a small group from the FDG, who was sorting, stacking, and packing. The others were weeding and distributing small amounts of fertilizer.
Mark had to ask. “The others are really upset. Why aren’t you?”
“Because that nice couple, Terry and Char, told us that life was out there, not here. He said two years ago that it was going to get hotter and hotter. Here we are, melting. It is time to leave, and we’ve been thinking about it for a long time. When we get where we’re going, we’ll start over, but we have our seeds, we have our experience, and we have people. It will be fine. We appreciate the help of the nice strong men. If you come tomorrow, we will feed you a wonderful breakfast.” Pepe smiled broadly as he hugged his wife.
Attitude can make all the difference, Mark thought. You’re all going, might as well be like these two and see the bright side of it.
***
They finally managed to make a fire, but it smoked to high heaven. They cooked the bear meat the best they could, slicing off pieces to eat as they were ready.
“I like black bear,” Gerry said. “I think this is the tastiest meal I’ve ever had.”
“They say that hunger is the best condiment,” Terry admitted.
“I don’t know what that means, but it’s the best, hands down,” Gerry stated firmly.
They continued to eat, letting the smoke add flavor while also preserving the meat so they could carry it with them like jerky. They needed a stock of food to cross areas lacking game or edible wild plants.
Terry was settling into his survivalist mode, doing what needed done to live to the next day.
They stripped the carcass and tied the meat together in bundles. There wasn’t as much as Terry had hoped, maybe three days if they skimped, one if they shared with the wolves.
“One day it is,” Terry said to himself. “Wait. Take the rib bones for our furry friends.” The others gathered those and they headed down the steep hill.
The camp was as they left it. Even though the rain had stopped, everything was still wet. The ground
was mud after getting churned up by hooves. Char, Ted, and Timmons had moved the horses downhill to stop the intrusions into their small spring. They’d also banked rocks along the high side to divert water running downhill. For that moment in time, the spring bubbled clear. Terry urged his people to drink and then to refill their flasks.
Carefully, they stuck their faces into the clear water.
“Water is life,” Terry mumbled. Gloom had seized him. He didn’t care about the rain and he’d just eaten his fill, but he started to lose faith in his ability to move the townspeople. That many people would never have survived this.
He started to think that he would end up killing them all while trying to save them. Char took his hand and pulled him away from the others.
Ted was as happy as could be watching the pack dig into the treats that had been brought for them.
“I know that look, TH,” she started. Terry kicked at a small rock on the ground. His toe stuck in the mud so he kicked a big clod away, splashing both of them.
“Stop,” Char said softly. “My big tough Marine thinks that he can’t save the people?” Terry was instantly angry and glared at her through narrow eyes.
“Don’ you dare give me the hairy eyeball!” she quipped and poked him in the chest. He wasn’t in the mood. “Those people all survived for decades before they met you. I think you’ll find that they are heartier than you give them credit for. You be the one to give them a reason to survive. They’ll take care of the rest.”
“What are you seeing that I can’t?” Terry asked before adding, “And why?
“You’re too close,” she whispered, purple eyes sparkling in the setting sun. She poked him once more, this time softly, “You are Terry Henry Walton, the savior of all mankind! That’s how you see yourself anyway. You won’t accept anything less than that, a very high bar indeed. I’m on the outside looking in, and whether you believe it or not, it’s true. You need to let me in there with you, TH.”
Terry looked at the sky, the sun was setting. They’d have to spend another night on this hillside.
“Our nanocytes have shown us we are better together,” Terry said, talking more to himself than Char. “Maybe we were destined for this.” He looked toward her, “I’ve never heard of two people like us before, a new generation of enhanced humans, built to survive a harsh new world, built to protect those who couldn’t survive on their own.”
Nomad Omnibus 01_A Kurtherian Gambit Series Page 52