The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

  The Blastlands Saga

  D.K. Williamson

  Copyright Notice

  Copyright 2016, DK Williamson

  Dead Eye Fiction Manufactory

  . . . . .

  http://darrenkwilliamson.wordpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Map

  The Blastlands: Rangers

  Herald Old Pains and New Beginnings

  Chapter 1 Why We Serve

  Chapter 2 Where We Come From

  Chapter 3 Reaching for the Star

  Chapter 4 On the Job

  Chapter 5 Some Trouble down South

  Chapter 6 A Gathering of Crows

  Chapter 7 Old Enemies, New Challenges

  The Blastlands: Chasing Ghosts

  Previously

  1 - As Always, the Job

  2 - Go South Young Man

  3 - Sowing and Reaping

  4 - Trails of Death

  5 - A Burden Borne

  6 - Bring out your Dead

  7 - Bunkering In and Busting Out

  8 - Do Mutants Dream of Radioactive Sheep?

  9 - Backtracks and Trailing Ghosts

  10 - A Ranger’s Rest

  11 - Raiders, Rangers, Reckonings, and Recons

  12 - When Raiders Call

  13 - Old Hands, Old Knowledge, and New Tasks

  14 - Proper Planning…

  15 - A Stroll Into Hell

  16 - Convergences

  17 - Ranger Hill and Down a Deep Dark Hole

  18 - Partings and Reunions

  19 - A Blast from the Past

  20 - Wayfaring and Means of Separation

  Extras - Very Small Glossary, Ranger Rank System, 24 Hour Clock

  Map

  1. Archie - 2. Ashdown - 3. Baxter Springs - 4. Boot Liquor’s - 5. Camp Bushwhack - 6. Chanute - 7. Checotah - 8. Demon Station - 9. De Queen - 10. Deva State

  11. Durant - 12. Eastwood - 13. Falla - 14. Fateville - 15. Fat Horse Hollow - 16. Fitzhugh - 17. Ft. Towson - 18. Geneva - 19. Girard - 20. Gravette

  21. Heaven - 22. Hell - 23. Horns - 24. Hugo - 25. Humboldt - 26. Joplin - 27. Kansas - 28. Kings Town - 29. L-01 - 30. L-02

  31. L-10 - 32. L-11 - 33. Lane - 34. Louisburg - 35. Madill - 36. Mead - 37. Mena - 38. Mill Creek - 39. Noel - 40. Nosho

  41. Old Ada - 42. Old Davis - 43. Old Drexel - 44. Old Garnett - 45. Old Norman - 46. Old Rantoul - 47. Old Seminole - 48. Old Sulphur - 49. Oldenville - 50. Oldiola

  51. Pea Ridge - 52. Pink - 53. Pittsburg - 54. Princeton - 55. Quinton - 56. Rancid - 57. Ranger Hill - 58. Refuge on the Cimarron - 59. St. Paul - 60. Sallisaw

  61. Seligman - 62. Seneca - 63. Silo Springs - 64. Tishomingo - 65. Troy - 66. Washburn - 67. Wetumka

  . . . . .

  The Blastlands: Rangers

  Herald

  Old Pains and New Beginnings

  Herald, a foreshadow of things to come.

  June, 2020

  There’s two of them left. No way they can miss the blood trail and no way I can stop the wound from seeping, at least not till I deal with these bastards on my tail, the man thought as he moved through the thick brush as fast as his wounded leg would allow.

  It was a simple matter of time now and all that remained was to see if he could double back on his own trail before his pursuers reached his intended ambush position.

  Whoever gets there first has the advantage. You finish second and you die, simple as that.

  The man came to a small clearing and looked for the fifty foot tall white oak that marked his destination. There it is. A hundred feet to go, that’s all. Move your tail, Ranger. Despite his wound, the man—a Ranger from the Freelands—moved quickly and quietly to a small rise overlooking the trail he had traveled just minutes earlier. He crept up the shallow incline and went prone, listening intently for his pursuers. He heard nothing except the wind passing through the leaves that surrounded and concealed him.

  Where are you? Quiet bastards. As good as me and they ain’t wounded. There! Movement on the trail. The Ranger waited for the men to move farther along the path to a spot where the rise he was hiding behind would give him maximum cover. Don’t move, let them walk in front of your rifle muzzle. If they take the bait, I have a chance.

  The men pursuing the Ranger moved steadily down the trail, one moving while the other provided overwatch. They did not speak, letting hand signals suffice for communication. As the lead pursuer entered the Ranger’s kill zone he stopped and knelt to look at something on the ground, a piece of blood-soaked bandage left there on purpose. The man picked it up and turned to show it to his companion.

  Big mistake, bastard just killed himself and doesn’t even know it, the Ranger thought. He fired two rounds in rapid succession, striking the kneeling man in the upper back. The man grunted and dropped the bloody bandage and his rifle as he crumpled to the ground.

  The remaining pursuer fired a long burst from his rifle in the Ranger’s direction, bullets punching through the brush nearby.

  He’s closing on me, but which way? the Ranger thought as he moved down the backside of the rise. The Ranger moved away from the trail, guessing his remaining opponent would be coming that way. He found his guess was correct. The Ranger heard the pounding steps of the man and saw movement through the leaves. He fired several rounds into the brush just as his opponent fired another long burst.

  The Ranger heard a cry of pain as rounds passed by to his right, clipping branches and tearing through leaves. He fired more rounds at his opponent as the man returned fire in turn. The Ranger felt the agonizing pain of a bullet passing though his abdomen, causing him to fall to the ground. He looked to see if his opponent was still closing and saw the lifeless eyes of the man gazing back at him from just a short distance away.

  “Serves you right, you TGG bastard,” he muttered through gritted teeth as he glared into the dead man’s stare. I have to get out of here, get closer to the main trail. Maybe I can find help. I’m going to need it. Gut shot. Damn it.

  . . . . .

  Spring, 2025

  The merchant caravan approached the remnants of a small town, the pack mules and horse-drawn wagons slowly winding their way along an old and well-used road, the painted yellow lines down the middle worn and chipped by weather and time. On the right side of the road among the encroaching trees was a faded decades-old sign that read

  WELCOME TO VIAN, OK

  POPULATION 1414 Zero

  1990 census 1995

  Nobody left-Just us ghosts

  I was the last - I was Roy

  “Why don’t they tear that old thing down and put up a new one?” a teenager asked the elderly merchant walking beside him as he pointed at the sign.

  The man sighed and looked at the young man. “The town named on that sign doesn’t exist any longer, Jim. Not as a town anyway. It’s just wreckage, a ghost of a place. The Freelands and the lands outside are littered with places like that, overgrown rubble, fading footprints of a past that a lot of people would like to forget, or a past that some people don’t understand.”

  “I think I’m one of those, Mr. Carson, one of those that doesn’t understand I mean. What does an old sign have to do with, well... anything?”

  “That sign is a reminder, a memorial of sorts. That fading paint is likely that man’s epitaph. Roy, that was his name. Last words of a flickering life to a failing world. I imagine he was hoping that maybe somebody might someday read it, like we just did. If nothing else he was saying, ‘I was here.’ Had circumstances been different that sign might have my name on it instead, or yours had you lived then. That sign reminds me of the agony so many of us felt in those days. You don’t know what it’s like to be that desperate, and I hope you never do.”

  “Di
d you know him?”

  “No, but I knew an awful lot of people just like him. As I said, I could very easily have been him, but for the favors of strangers, I probably would have died alone like he did.”

  “How do you know he died?”

  “I don’t, but you need to remember barely anyone survived that time. If he was alone… well, his chances were slim.” Carson looked at Jim. “You’re what, fifteen, sixteen?”

  The young man shook his head. “No, sir. Fourteen.”

  “Kinda young,” Carson said, slightly taken aback. “Out on your own?”

  “No, Dad and Ma wanted me to go out for the first time. They said I was old enough. They wanted me to take the roads instead of the train because I’d see some things, maybe learn something. I’m going north to see my uncle in Geneva settlement. Dad was going to go with me, but he got tied up working on the power lines in Horns that got knocked down in the storms, so I got a job helping with the cargo and I’m going alone. Ma wasn’t so happy about it, but Dad said he thought it would be good for me. He worries about me and my brother growing up soft.”

  Carson nodded, understanding why someone as young as Jim was out with the merchant caravan. It wasn’t uncommon for some parents to send their children out to see what life was like outside the secure and comfortable towns in the core of the Freelands. He laughed softly and smiled. “That makes you a real caravaner then.”

  The teen smiled back, suddenly proud of himself.

  “It’s been thirty years since the Calamity,” Carson said. “But it still hangs over everything.”

  “That’s what I don’t get, Mr. Carson. It’s important, but nobody wants to talk about those times, not even in school. Do they think I won’t understand? Ma said you went through it grown, said I shouldn’t ask you about it.”

  Carson smiled, but there was sadness in his eyes. “It’s okay. There aren’t that many of us left that went through the Calamity as adults and many won’t talk about it. Sometimes folks want to forget those bad things, and that’s fine. Some probably need to. But there are things we as a people should never forget, no matter how painful or awful they were. Some things must be remembered. They must be. That sign back there is kind of like that. It’s faded and worn, but it still has a story to tell, a lesson to teach. It’s there so we don’t forget, at least not just yet.”

  Carson shifted the leads to his pack mules from one hand to the other as the caravan entered the edge of the dead town.

  On one side of the road, a sagging metal skeleton protruded from an overgrown concrete pad, the area nearby littered with the decaying accoutrements of a defunct convenience store. Scattered and rusted paper machines lay with their doors bent and ajar, stubs where fuel pumps once stood jutted from the ground, an ice machine lay on its side, gutted for parts. Off to one side of the skeleton was a bent metal box on a leaning pole, the word AIR still visible on its face.

  “I haven’t been in a place like this before,” Jim said as he looked around. “They talk about the Calamity in school and I know it happened, but it always seemed as if it was from centuries ago, like ancient Rome or something.”

  “This town wasn’t much different than any of the towns you’ve been in,” Carson said. “Folks worked jobs. Kids went to school. They played sports, went to dances, fished, hunted, watched TV, listened to radio. But it all went away. Some places went in a flash,” he said with a snap of his fingers, “some places succumbed to alien attack, and in some places it took awhile for a town to die. A town without people is dead, and this place died in Ninety-five. These old streets, the overgrown buildings, they were all used by people until every last one of them died or were forced out, and those that were forced out faced long, long odds. Most of them didn’t survive. This world is covered in places just like this.”

  “Let’s take fifteen minutes,” a voice yelled from the front of the caravan. “See to your wagons and animals, then we’ll make the push for Sallisaw.”

  “Is it safe to stop here?” Jim asked as Carson halted his mules.

  “It should be. There’s likely to be Rangers around. We’re a large caravan, and the trouble down Kings Town way has drawn a lot of the raiders from around here down there, so we’ll be fine.”

  “Will you tell me what happened?” Jim asked. “I mean you were there, you said so.”

  Carson nodded, his eyes looked distant. “I was there. I’ll tell you my story, but it’s just mine. Others that went through the Calamity have their story too, remember that.”

  Carson took a canteen from a pouch on his belt and took a drink. He glanced at a sign, or what remained of it, a rectangular metal frame with the shape of an arrow on top pointing at a brushy mound that was once a building. In the head of the arrow was a single light bulb that had somehow survived intact for so long. Carson smiled at the oddity as he slid his canteen into its carrier.

  Across the street, the remnants of a brick building, mostly collapsed, caught Carson’s eye. He briefly acknowledged that part of it was still upright, still fighting time and decay. A bit like me, he thought.

  “The world was a different place before the Calamity, Jim,” he said. “Billions of people, hundreds of cities that had hundreds of thousands or millions of people living in them. I visited some of those places. The town where I lived had more people in it than the entire Freelands does now, and it was considered small back then.

  “I worked as a representative for a small company trying to make a go of it against bigger competitors, so we had to work hard. Hustle we called it, and we were making a go of it. I travelled all over this area and met all kinds of people. I was married to the finest woman I ever knew and we had a nice home in Texarkana. I thought life was pretty good. In the spring of Ninety-five, in a matter of just a few days, it was all but gone.”

  “Texarkana was south of here, right?” Jim asked.

  Carson nodded. “I was in Tulsa, a big city that was northwest of here,” he said gesturing with a thumb, “when the aliens started their attacks in Australia and South Africa. It was afternoon here as I recall. I decided I would cut my trip short and head back to Texas the next morning, but I never made it home,” Carson said, his voice cracking a little.

  “The attacks began up here the next morning and the traffic was a mess. They hit the big cities first, those giant gasbags as they called them. I saw the one that bombed Tulsa. That’s what we called the attacks, bombing runs, because that was pretty much what they were like, except they dropped brown muck. That one over Tulsa, it was like a giant airship. Do you know what they were?”

  “Like Zeppelins and blimps?” Jim said.

  “That’s right. I don’t know how long the gasbag was, but it was huge, the biggest thing I ever saw fly. Those things dropped brown muck all over everything, and then the yellow gas that came out of the stuff spawned creatures. I was on the highway moving south with thousands and thousands of other vehicles. Some idiots stopped to watch, like it was a show,” he said with disgust, then his expression softened and he sighed. “Then again, none of us fully understood what was happening. Nothing could have prepared us for that,” he said with a shake of his head.

  “I just wanted to get home and see if my wife was okay. The phone lines were jammed, so I had no idea of what was going on. It took me two days to make a trip that normally would have taken several hours, and I never even got there.

  “I made it to Antlers, that’s what they called Horns back then, and found some state and emergency management people had set up a staging area and camp for refugees. I was stuck there because of the traffic and I learned a lot of people were fleeing Texarkana because aliens had attacked the place. I thought my wife might have headed to Antlers so I spent two days checking every vehicle that came in, but I didn’t find her.

  “The news was saying that nuclear weapons could destroy the gasbags and the nations that had nukes were using them,” he said shaking his head, “but that didn’t work out so well.”

  “Is that what
started the nuclear war?” Jim said.

  “Part of it, but I think it went back earlier than that. For decades before the attack we had what they called a cold war, a standoff between the democracies of the world on one side and the communist nations on the other. That ended in the late Eighties, and we all thought the world was going to be more peaceful, but then the Russian rebellion happened, then the war in Europe. There were rebel Russian Spetsnaz attacks in North America and by the time it was over in 1994 the world was tired, scared, and on edge. A year later the aliens attacked and if the rumors are true, the Russians and us had our nuclear weapons on some kind of automatic response systems. It doesn’t really matter though. Everyone that had them used them.”

  “What caused it? The nuclear war, I mean.”

  “On the second day I was in the camp the Chinese set off a nuke over Russian territory while attacking a gasbag and the Russian response was to launch weapons at everybody else and then every country that had nukes followed suit. After that, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “That was the end, or that’s what we thought when everything went off the air. Television, radio, the phones, all dead. Most of us thought an all-out nuclear war would be the end of us, but it wasn’t.

  “I found out Texarkana got hit by a nuke. I was frantic. For some reason I thought a nuclear hit was worse than an alien attack. I felt like I had to do something so I somehow got my car out of the giant glut of vehicles near the camp and drove out of Antlers toward Texarkana. I went as far as I could until my car ran out of gas, then I started walking.

  “On my second day out I found there was another government camp at De Kalb in Texas. It was once a nice little town, but it was becoming a madhouse. Thousands of sick and injured people. Thousands more were refugees, and more were pouring in from the south and east every hour. They said the aliens were thick down south, and Houston, one of those cities that had millions of people, was gone. What the aliens didn’t destroy the nukes did.