The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

  I figured that was better than anything I could come up with, so we agreed. Captain Stockman had three soldiers that were still on their feet and one of them was wounded, he was the fellow in the Humvee that had the grenade explode under it. Stockman asked if any of them would volunteer to stay with Andy and me, they all three did, which I thought was awfully decent of them.

  Captain Stockman picked a soldier named Specialist Andrew James Somerset. I thought it might get confusing with two guys named Andy in our group, but he went by A.J. so it wasn’t a problem. Turns out AJ was a commo specialist, and he helped track down Russian sleeper agents and special forces guys in the U.S. by following their radio signals back when we fought the Russians. AJ was the one who killed the guy with the grenade launcher.

  Captain Stockman took the sergeant’s dog tags and made sure his wounded guys were okay and got ready to take off.

  While all this was going on, people in some of the other refugee enclosures had panicked and were running all over the place. Some of them got in their vehicles and headed toward the city. The guards over there started shooting at them and that made things worse, but that worked for us because anybody coming out of the city would have to contend with all those panicky people.

  Captain Stockman and his troops headed out and did a commo check a few miles away. Everything was ‘Lima Charlie’ which I guess meant loud and clear.

  We took off for some rough terrain about a quarter mile away where we could wait for night. Andy and I grabbed all our ammo and other gear from the truck, picked up Blake’s fallout meter and a spare set of binoculars for AJ who had his army issue stuff, but no optics. We had enough water, jerky, and army chow for several days.

  AJ wondered if the city guards might track us when they finally came out to see what happened. I told him not much chance of that. Andy and I know a thing or two about hunting and tracking. It’s not too big a stretch to turn that around and look at it from the other way. We went across mostly rock and we covered any tracks we might have left, and with the wind that was blowing, there wasn’t any way they’d know where we went.

  Just before dark a large force of armed men went into the refugee area. Some of them were upset, probably had friends or kin among the dead. Mostly they meandered around until after dark, then put up some lights and collected the dead. By midnight they were gone except for a few guys guarding our vehicles, or maybe they thought we might come back.

  By morning we had moved to a good location on some high ground overlooking the refugee camp. I was hoping we could find the hospital tent and see if Sis and her kids were there. Not too long after sunup we spotted the hospital tent. It was easy because there was a sign that said HOSPITAL, but no sign of my sister.

  About mid morning things came tumbling down on us. A group of vehicles came in from the west. We knew they weren’t refugees because many of them were wearing the same green uniform as the leader of the guys we fought the day before. On the back of one of the trucks they had four bodies dressed in army woodland camo, through the binoculars we could see it was Captain Stockman and his men. I don’t know what happened, but they didn’t make it far I guess. No rescue force was coming now, and rescuing my sister and nephews was no longer an option. AJ was shook up by it as most anyone would be I think, he’d served with those four since ‘95. We figured we better come up with something, but first we needed to get clear of this area.

  We could see some forest to the east and stretching south, so we decided to move into there. There was some populated area east between us and the forest and another south of that so we slowly crept between them. A few hours after dark we were in the woods and felt a little more secure.

  We figured to head south a ways and see if we could find how far these crazy bastards’ influence ran. We thought Arizona might be an option.

  Come morning we found the city guys had patrols out all over the place, on foot and with vehicles. We kept moving south slowly, partly to be cautious but also because of the rough terrain.

  About mid afternoon we were near a highway and a lake. AJ thought it was probably Utah Lake. There was a clearing we needed to cross that was maybe three hundred yards from edge to edge. We considered trying to sneak across together, but AJ thought it would be better if we went one at a time so the other two could provide cover if something happened.

  AJ went first and made it across. Andy went next, and when he was about a hundred and fifty yards out he dropped to the ground in some knee-high grass.

  A moment later I could hear the sound of a vehicle headed our way. Sure enough, there came a pickup truck with two guys in it headed straight for Andy. They stopped about a hundred feet from him, and one guy climbed into the bed of the truck and started looking at the grassy area where Andy was hiding. I was watching them through my rifle scope and I saw the driver pick up a handset like you would find on a CB radio. I figured he was calling for help maybe, so I shot him. Bullet went through the windshield, the guy’s head, the back of the cab, and hit the guy in the back of the truck in the left leg. He went down screaming and Andy stood up and ran at the truck. When he got there, he struck the wounded guy in the head with the butt of his rifle and waved at AJ and me to come down. I looked over to where AJ was and saw him headed down, so I took off also.

  When we got there Andy had just finished bandaging the wounded guy’s leg, and he said, “Looks like we got us some transport,” pointing at the truck. AJ asked Andy why he didn’t kill this guy like he did with the man back near town. Andy said, “Because that was personal and it was wrong. I didn’t know I was that kind of man. I ain’t gonna do that kind of thing again, because I ain’t that guy.” We were glad to hear Andy say that.

  We pulled the dead guy out of the cab, there wasn’t too much to clean up. The truck was an army M1008 4x4 pickup and had an almost full fuel tank. There were a few full five-gallon fuel cans strapped in the bed, so if we could get clear of this area without running into anyone, we could get a lot of ground twixt us and there.

  We left the wounded guy on the ground next to the dead guy and headed out the way they came in. There was a radio in the cab like I thought and from what we could hear, they didn’t know anything about what happened.

  We came to the highway and headed south and southeast as the road curved. Ran through quite a few towns and one small city that looked to have been burned and looted a while back and didn’t see a soul.

  We stopped a little after dark and watched north to see if we were being pursued and didn’t see anything. The next morning we continued on and connected with I-70. The ramps heading on and off the highway were jammed with cars. It looked like a massive pileup had occurred. We didn’t have a clue what happened there.

  We headed east a short ways to a town called Elgin. There were some people there who were traveling east, on foot. They were looking to cross the Rockies next Spring. With January just around the corner we knew they were right to put off such an undertaking. We asked them about Arizona and they told us it was a place to avoid. Alien creatures, roving gangs, and warring bands made it very dangerous.

  We wondered why they were crossing the Rockies, and they said they had talked to people on shortwave radio that said there were places in Oklahoma and Arkansas that were surviving and that’s where they were headed. They were living near Lake Havasu City, but fled when a group moved in and took over. The way they described them made me think of the bastards in Salt Lake City, so I showed them one of the pamphlets we had, and they said they were the same group. AJ, Andy, and I talked it over and decided we’d go with these folks if they agreed. They did.

  With the truck we have, they figured we could get closer to Grand Junction, Colorado, where there was supposed to be a small settlement and information on how to get through the passes in the Rockies. AJ pointed out we ought to steer clear of Colorado Springs and areas north of there because of all the places that would have been nuked. Places like Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, the missile fields in the nort
h, and especially Cheyenne Mountain, because as he put it, “The Russians and who knows who else had enough warheads targeted on that place it’s probably Cheyenne Canyon now.”

  The people we are going to be traveling with are John Peterson, Karl Lucas, Mark Jackson and his wife Laura. I was thinking about those two refugee guys that died fighting up at Salt Lake City and how I don’t know their names. Maybe it’s silly, but I figure they died fighting for the same thing Andy, AJ, and me fought for, maybe caught a bullet that might have got one of us and we don’t know their names, and that kinda bothers me. I think it’s important we remember, but it’s more important we don’t treat folks like they are livestock. Seems to me there are not a lot of people left, and those that are trying make things better without preying on other folks deserve a chance to try to succeed. I just don’t know how we do that.

  We’ll head east tomorrow and see how long the fuel lasts.

  . . . . .

  April 1999

  We made it to Grand Junction. We piled all our gear in the bed with enough room for three people back there and we fit four in the cab. Since there was already a hole in the back window from the bullet passing through it, we just took out the glass and fashioned a tarp over the bed to provide some shelter for the folks riding back there. It also allowed us to use the cab heater to keep it a bit warmer back there.

  It was not as far to Grand Junction as we thought. There is a small settlement here, but maybe not for much longer. Food is getting harder to come by and they have to range out further and further to get it.

  We worked out a deal with the folks here, we traded them the truck for food and lodging till the snows clear and a guide through the passes to the other side of the Rockies.

  We have been helping out around here doing small tasks like cutting and splitting wood, making repairs, and standing watch. Been doing a lot of walking to get in shape since we’ll be on foot once we get out of the Rockies to the east.

  AJ checked Andy and me out on the M16A2 rifle. We had three spares, two from the guys we took from the truck plus one more that was mounted inside. Nice little rifle, but I wouldn’t trade my Savage 99 for it. Anyway, we learned how to operate and maintain them and got them sighted in, zeroed as AJ called it. Might be nice to have if things get up close like back in Salt Lake City.

  Our guide is going to be a man named Ron Spanner. He told us that since we did so much work over the last months, he’d try and get us through the mountains by truck. He said it may not be possible to get all the way over, but he’d get us as far as he can.

  We leave in a couple of days.

  . . . . .

  June 1999

  The last couple of months have been an adventure, and not the fun kind.

  Ron Spanner was going to take us through the mountains and bring us out on a highway that runs along the Arkansas River. He had led several groups out that way in the past. Word was if you steered clear of what used to be Pueblo, you’d do all right.

  We left in the morning riding in a big F350 diesel 4x4 stake bed truck with a supplemental fuel tank behind the cab. Karl had done some traveling through the Rockies in years past, so he rode in the cab with Ron.

  Unfortunately there was a rock slide not far after we turned south off of I-70 that looked like it would take a large team weeks or months to clear.

  Ron said he knew the way through to Denver, but he had never been as far as the city because of what folks said about how bad it was there. They talked of aliens and mutants, and how the place was a dead zone.

  Ron said he promised to get us as far as he could and meant to keep that promise, so if we wanted to try for Denver he’d get us as close as he could. We asked him if he’d have enough fuel to get back to Grand Junction and he said they had some diesel stored up west of Denver, so it would be okay. We talked it over and decided we didn’t have many options, so we headed for the Mile High City.

  We discovered there is no more Denver. I mean the place where Denver used to be was still there, but in its place was a giant field of brown muck that looked like it had been turned over and over again like a compost pile. All the low places were filled with a yellow fog or gas. Word was the place got nuked as well. Mark Jackson said it looked like a World War One battlefield for giants.

  We didn’t know how we would ever get through on foot if there were actually mutants and aliens in there. I guess we were a little skeptical about that. We’d seen the aliens on the news before the nukes started flying, but none of us had ever seen one for real, and mutants, I guess we thought maybe they were just another kind of alien.

  Ron said we’d never get through the city on foot, and he said he was game to try to drive through if we were willing to ride. Up till then I thought Ron was sane, but we all decided we’d give it a go. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Ron said.

  When we got to the edge of the real world and where the brown alien shit started we stopped and checked to see if it would hold up to foot traffic or Ron’s truck. The stuff was solid and had a lichen-like substance growing on it that pretty much carpeted the whole place. The skeletons of the big buildings were still visible sticking up into the air, but covered with the brown stuff. It seemed like everything four or five stories or less was covered, buried really, by the stuff.

  We figured to keep heading east as best we could and hoped we could drive out of that crap. We were up and armed in the bed in case something came out of the yellow clouds.

  Ron started rolling east slowly, navigating between gutted buildings and avoiding any low spots where the yellow gas was, we didn’t know if it was toxic and didn’t really want to find out. As we exited what I could only guess was a business district or something, because there were tall building remnants sticking up on both sides, the surface sloped downward to the left. There was the usual yellow gas down there, but we thought we saw movement.

  Ron steered a bit to the right and headed up a slight rise and we could see what looked like giant cockroaches, perhaps a foot long, swarming in the low spot. As we traveled farther we saw more movement, larger creatures in the yellow haze. It looked like whatever was in there was coming out, and sure enough, they did.

  At first we thought they were people. They had two arms and two legs, but as they emerged from the gas we could tell they weren’t people. They were similar in size to humans, but their limbs were too long and most telling, they had no heads! Some of us thought they might be the mutants we heard tell of, but some remembered seeing the same thing back in ‘95 on the news. Either way, they were coming, and coming fast. Half a dozen of them.

  Ron was worried about going too fast and missing some hazard that might be sticking up from the ground. We started firing at them, but it didn’t seem to be having much effect, hell we might not have even been hitting them. They were not gaining on us, but we weren’t pulling away either. I yelled at Ron to pick up the pace when he hit some ground that looked clear so we could pull some space between them and us, then stop so we could shoot more accurately. That caused some of our group to question my sanity.

  Very soon Ron found a clear patch and gassed it. When he braked I sighted the closest alien to us through my scope and fired at what looked to me a little like a face, but it was where a human’s chest would be. I fired and the thing dropped. I yelled at the others what they ought to be aiming at and everybody that could shoot to the rear opened up. The last one dropped about fifty feet behind us.

  Ron got us rolling again. We spotted more movement numerous times in different pockets of gas, but nothing came out after us. As we mounted another rise, Karl—who was still riding in the cab—shouted out he thought he could see the real world in the distance. He was right.

  As we came down the rise we could see another rise ahead, but the low ground in the valley was full of yellow gas. We still didn’t want to go into it, so we headed right, looking for a way through. The gas got thicker the farther we went, so we decided to head back the way we came.

  As soon as
Ron had us turned around, we caught movement in the gas and a moment later what looked like another one of those headless things came charging at us, only this thing was twenty-five feet tall and a helluva lot faster than the little ones! Somebody yelled at Ron to turn right and stand on it. He did, but the creature was gaining on us. We hit the low spot and went into the gas and as we started to come out of it the engine began to sputter. I think we all figured we were done for, but the motor kept turning over and smoothed out once we were clear of the gas so Ron floored it and headed up the next rise, with the creature still gaining.

  As we neared the top of the rise we could see green leaves from the tops of trees ahead. The creature was not more than seventy-five feet behind us now, so I decided to see if the big creature could be taken down by a shot to its ‘face’ like the human sized creatures. The way we were bouncing around I didn’t hold out much hope of me hitting my target. I took the shot and the creature went down and everybody cheered. Then the creature was up again and chasing, but we gained a lot of space while it was down and very soon we hit a road—a real dirt road—and left the thing behind.

  Everyone was congratulating me for my fine marksmanship, but truth be told, I think it was blind luck or maybe providence. They say God looks out for small children and dumb ranchers and just maybe that’s true.

  When we stopped awhile later, Andy asked Ron if he was going to head back to Grand Junction now. Ron laughed so hard his eyes welled up with tears and said to Andy, “No, I don’t think so.” Maybe Ron’s sanity isn’t in question, after all. I’ll tell you one thing though, he sure came through for us and I guess we have a new friend.