The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

  In any case we reached I-70 and headed east for twenty-five miles or so. No more aliens, and no people either. We are going to catch our breath for a day or so, then we head for Kansas.

  . . . . .

  July 1999

  We left for Kansas figuring to stay on I-70. The highway cut southeast not very far down the road and when we got near the remains of a town called Limon our plans changed. We stopped north and west of the town.

  Several highways intersect in Limon and there were thousands upon thousands of vehicles cluttering the streets of the town and highways and filling up the areas off the sides of the roads. To the east down I-70 the highway was completely impassable, as far as the eye could see. It was the same to the southwest on a highway that comes from Colorado Springs, with a lot of military vehicles in the mix.

  Most of the vehicles looked like they had been looted, despite the fact that most of them had desiccated bodies and bones in or around them.

  We were a little worried about what might have killed all these people, but it looked like it probably happened back in ‘95 so we hoped we’d be okay as long as we didn’t handle the bodies.

  We decided to scout the area and see if we could find a way through. We left Mark and Laura Jackson with the truck, and the rest of us broke into two groups, Andy, AJ, and me went south and Ron, John, and Karl went east.

  AJ said he wanted to check the military vehicles for fuel and ammo. He said if there was diesel in jerry cans it should still be good, since army diesel is treated to last at least a decade in storage. It looked like whoever did most of the looting was interested in wallets, purses, and suitcases and the like. We found three M16’s and a box with twenty loaded M16 magazines in the back of an army truck along with dozens of full fuel cans. We put them in an open spot near a truck with a tall antenna, which we thought would be easy to find so we could come back and recover them.

  A bit further south, we spotted vehicle tracks running parallel to the road on the edge of the cluster of vehicles. The tracks were not very fresh, but it looked like a lot of vehicles had been through there not too long ago. We decided to head back and see if the others had found anything.

  When we returned we found Ron, John, and Karl had made it back to the truck before us. We were each carrying an M16, several magazines, and two fuel cans each, with more back down the road waiting to be picked up.

  Ron and company said all they found was abandoned vehicles, more abandoned vehicles, and a crazy old man that cursed at them and told them to, “Go to hell,” when they asked him if he needed help. We told them of our discovery and we decided to follow the tire tracks after we picked up the rest of the fuel cans.

  It took a while to wind our way through the town, and along the way we found an army five-ton truck with more jerry cans of diesel and a box of 7.62mm NATO ammo in links. Ron didn’t think we could fit many more cans in the truck, unless some of us wanted to stay there. Nobody volunteered so we went on a search for a trailer. We found one made from an old pickup truck bed that looked to be in good shape.

  A short while later we picked up the rest of the diesel, headed for the tire tracks, and followed them south. Eventually the highway became less jammed and we got back on pavement and headed straight south until we came across a highway headed east that more or less paralleled the Arkansas River. We encountered a few abandoned vehicles on the road, but not a single person until we were well inside Kansas.

  July in Kansas is hot, but with some cover to keep the sun off and moving air in the truck it was tolerable. Near Garden City, we came across a small group of people with a truck who had stopped to rest for the night. They were a little wary of us at first, and us them, but after talking with them for awhile we both figured out we were all decent folks.

  They were returning from a scouting trip to northwest Kansas and parts of Nebraska, and were headed for Dodge City where there was a small settlement. They told us the fallout plume from places like Cheyenne Mountain stretched hundreds of miles to the northwest of there into parts of Kansas and across Nebraska, contaminating an awful lot of ground.

  When we told them where we were coming from they told us they hadn’t heard of anybody coming from the west in about a year. They told us we could follow them in the morning, but we’d need to talk with the honcho if we wanted to stay.

  Early the next morning we traveled the fifty miles or so to Dodge City, where a beat-up sign greeted us with, GET THE HECK INTO DODGE. The settlement uses what I guess was a tourist attraction, a recreation of a wild west street. The folks there said most of the city had been burned not long after the war after a disease outbreak. I won’t swear to it, but a couple of times I thought I saw Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson walking the place.

  Not long after we arrived we met Ned Petillon, the man who, “Got stuck with more or less running things here,” as he put it.

  He told us we could stay for awhile, but they really couldn’t handle many more people staying on permanent. We asked him about Oklahoma and Arkansas. He said he’d heard there were settlements down there, but had never made contact with them. They sent a team into Oklahoma last fall and they never returned. He told us of rumors of warring Indian nations, but never saw any kind of evidence that would confirm it.

  Ned told us that there was a small town called Pratt that was about seventy miles west of Wichita that had a small settlement, but he suggested we go no further east. Wichita was a hellhole that got dumped on by the aliens and was hit with multiple warheads after that.

  Ned suggested that if we were going to make for Oklahoma, we wait till September, because of the heat. According to him, July is bad, but August is worse.

  Karl Lucas grew up in Kansas and he told us, “Kansas is a hard place to live. It’s a place of weather extremes. It’s not the hottest place there is, but it gets hot enough you’ll think you were in hell, if hell were humid. It isn’t the coldest place there is, but the wind and ice will make you think it is, not to mention the blizzards. There are thunderstorms that will make you think you are in a cataclysm. There are more tornadoes per square mile than anywhere else in the world. There’s a saying from the 1800’s my grandmother used all the time, ‘God created Kansas to train the faithful,’ and I think she might have been right.”

  We all discussed it and decided we’ll wait till September.

  . . . . .

  October 1999

  We ‘Got the hell out of Dodge’ in early September, headed for Pratt. We were all glad we waited, August was not pleasant.

  Pratt was about eighty miles or so to the east. What we found there was not what we expected.

  The little settlement there had been attacked just a few days before. The raiders used military trucks with automatic weapons and killed more than half the people living there. The survivors were trying to repair a truck and make for Dodge, but were not having much luck. There were twelve survivors, with four of them injured. Apparently the raiders wanted nothing except the settlers dead or gone.

  We helped them repair a trailer that would be able to hold all of them, hid our fuel trailer near Pratt, and took the survivors to Dodge City.

  Ned Petillon wasn’t sure if they could handle twelve new people, but he didn’t want to turn them away, especially the injured. Fortunately for him a solution presented itself.

  Six of the Pratt survivors, a family, said they would go with us, but of course they had no vehicle.

  A man named Otis Oswald said he’d take them in his truck. His son and daughter-in-law, Lyman and Julia, said they’d go also, with their truck. They were among the group we met near Garden City. They had been out on numerous scouting expeditions including some near the Oklahoma border.

  John Manuel, the father and husband of the Pratt survivor family had been in the area south and east of there and ventured into Oklahoma a little. He and his wife Kara were in their forties and had four children, Jeff, Terry, Tom, and Maria who was the youngest at fifteen, so we didn’t have to worry about small c
hildren.

  We had a talk about adding so many people to our group. The rest of the group told me they’d let me decide. I told them I thought it was better to let everybody have a say in the matter. They said they agreed and that was one of the reasons they trusted my judgment, and I hadn’t steered them wrong so far. I brought up my father, sister, and nephews, how I didn’t serve them very well. They threw back that nobody could have done any better, and mentioned other minor things I’d done, and said I was stuck with the job. I told them I thought they were daft, but I’d do it till we found someone better. Andy thought it was funny as all get out. He said to me, “You really stepped in it this time, Frank.” I fear he was right.

  I figured three vehicles and more people made it harder to find fuel, water, and food, but we’d be safer if a truck went down or we ran into some group like those Salt Lake City crazies or raiders like what hit Pratt. Our group just got bigger.

  The Manuels felt they were ready to travel when we were, so we left the next morning, headed back to Pratt to pick up the trailer we left there.

  When we arrived in the Pratt area we could see evidence that somebody had passed through very recently. There were fresh tire tracks, fresh bullet holes in buildings and derelict vehicles, with brass casings and metallic links all over the ground from machine gun fire. We figured it was probably raiders, maybe the same group that attacked before. It appeared they headed east back toward Wichita. We thought we would head south and then go east near the border till we were north of Tulsa and take the highway south a ways, then cut east once again toward Arkansas.

  John Manuel said he’d been fairly near Tulsa, and from he had seen things there were worse than Wichita, with alien encroachment —as he put it— well north of the city. We turned east about forty miles north of Tulsa and went maybe fifty miles before we headed south again. We stopped for the night west of a big lake. John said it was a reservoir and had a hydroelectric dam on it. We got most of our electricity from hydroelectric dams in Idaho, and that got me wondering if they were still functioning down here.

  The next morning we went south then hit a turnpike east, but we didn’t have to pay a toll. As we got near a sign that said Kansas, Oklahoma, we heard a large amount of gunfire. It was tempting to just clear out, but I thought there might be some folks in trouble and needed help. I remembered thinking about how we might make things better and not knowing how to do that. I still don’t know, but I figure if you can help, then help.

  We stopped and I told everybody that I was going to see if I could help, but I wasn’t going to ask anyone to come with me. That was a decision they’d have to make on their own. That was a mistake on my part, because they all said they were going. I told them we needed somebody to guard the trucks and some had to stay back in case we got into trouble, a reserve force AJ called it.

  I told Ron he’d be in charge of the reserve force, because he was our best driver. I thought to leave the Manuel family back, being a family and all, but ended up taking his two oldest boys who were adults. I insisted John Manuel and Lyman and his wife stay back since they were the most road wise. That gave us ten people going, and seven people as a reserve.

  We drove in as close as we dared, then headed toward the shooting on foot. A lot of the shooting was machine gun fire. I told everybody that if there was too much for us to handle then we’d run.

  We found a group of military vehicles and maybe a dozen men in military uniforms firing at a concrete building. At first we thought they were a military unit fighting raiders or something. There were people inside the building firing back, but they were definitely outgunned. From a neighboring building a small group of people made a run for the concrete building. Two of the group were just little kids and the guys with the military gear fired on them hitting a little girl who was carrying a book in her arms. She went down beside a dumpster, bits of paper flying everywhere from a hit on the book.

  I figured military or not, that kind of stuff ain’t gonna fly. Laura Jackson was ready to charge into them by herself, but she got herself collected and we worked ourselves into a better position so we could fire on them without hitting the concrete building. The military guys had no idea we were there, so when we opened fire on them it was a shock. At least half of them went down almost immediately. A couple of them ran to the other side of their vehicles and were promptly shot by the folks in the building. The remaining guys tried to get into one of their trucks and make a run for it. They didn’t make it.

  We waited a few minutes to see if any of the bad guys were still around, but it looked like we got them all. One of the men inside the building yelled out, “Who are you?”

  I yelled back, “We were passing by and heard gunfire. We came to see if somebody needed help.”

  He yelled back, “Well, if you were trying to help those dead fellers out there you done a pretty poor job!” That made everyone laugh. “You ain’t lookin’ to pick up where they left off are you?” he asked.

  “No, sir. We are not,” I yelled back. “We saw them shoot a little girl so we knew they were up to no good.”

  As soon as I said that a woman dashed out crying, “Oh dear God, not my Marian!” She looked around and saw the little girl’s feet sticking out from behind the dumpster and ran to her. To our surprise the girl was alive! The bullet had hit the book she was carrying and came apart as it passed through, with a piece of the bullet’s copper jacket cutting her left forearm. She’ll probably have a scar, but she’ll live to read more books I hope.

  By then most of the people in the building were coming out, so we got up to move toward them. AJ told us to make sure to not look threatening, since those people had just been through a lot and might be edgy.

  AJ was right, they were a bit wary, but when they saw Laura —she has medical training— go over and patch up the little girl they started warming to us.

  Turns out they were a group from a town called Heaven about a hundred miles south of there. They had a truck break down here a couple of weeks ago while out salvaging and they came up to recover it. They got caught by surprise when the bad guys showed up.

  There were twelve of them to start with, and the raiders—that’s what they called the vultures like the guys we killed—had killed three. Four of them had minor wounds, including the little girl.

  I wondered why they brought kids up here on something like this. They said there was a group in Heaven that pretty much ran things, and they were not nice about it. Even though the gang made up just a small portion of the people living there, they ran the place. Apparently they charged ‘rent’ for living in ‘their’ town and if you had something they wanted, they just took it.

  We asked them why they don’t go somewhere else, or run the gang out of town and they said everyone was too scared and things were too disorganized for any kind of resistance, but the town had electricity and clean water so they didn’t want to leave.

  This was exactly the kind of crap I was talking about back in Utah. I still don’t know for sure how we make things better, but I know we start by getting rid of bastards that want to keep their boot heel on other people’s necks. After that I guess we try and save what we can and rebuild what we can and then, hell I don’t know. First things first, we go south and get rid of the predators. Then maybe we find somebody who knows how to get things done.

  We checked the raiders over pretty good. We didn’t think they were military, unless they went feral. They all had on woodland camo U.S. Air Force uniforms and were driving United States Air Force and Kansas National Guard vehicles. We asked John Manuel if these might be the same guys that went through Pratt. He said they might be, because they looked similar and had the same sort of vehicles. In any case as AJ said, “Our motor pool and armory just got bigger.”

  I talked with the folks from Heaven and our group about what I had in mind, and for the most part they agreed with me. They had some worries about things turning into open combat and things like that. Based on what the folks from Heaven s
aid, most of the people there were normal folks, not looking to harm anyone and just wanting someplace safe to live their lives. They thought a lot of them would stand with us if push came to shove, but most would probably just try and stay out of the way. It looked like we would have the gang out-numbered, so maybe we could convince them to leave without a fight. If not, we had the numbers.

  We left the next morning with nine vehicles! We had our three trucks, the Heaveners had three trucks, and we had an air force pickup, and two hardtop humvees with M60 machine guns on them. AJ was trained on the M60 of course and Lyman was also. He was a machine gunner in the war in Kuwait back in ‘91. There was one truck we left behind. It had a flat tire and a holed radiator from the fight.

  As we exited town we discovered the raiders had parked a small tanker truck off the road, so that made ten vehicles.

  The trip south might have been a pleasant one under other circumstances. Very nice country, but I was worried about whether we were doing the right thing. Maybe I would make things worse or get a lot of these good folks killed.

  We got near Heaven a little before noon and stopped. The man leading the Heaveners was named Harv Bellemy, and he was going to go into town and talk to some of the townspeople, folks he thought might go along with us. He would ask them to meet us out here so we could talk it over. His daughter, Marjorie, the mother of the little girl Marian, was going to go with him.

  About an hour later they returned and said several people were interested, but suspicious, as you might imagine. Folks started showing up in ones and twos over the next half hour or so, till there were twenty-five or thirty of them.

  We talked for awhile. We explained who we were, and where we came from, and why we were there. Their biggest concern was we were trying to take over, replacing one gang for another. I told them, “I’m not looking to take over. I just want to live without having nobody with a leash around my neck, or a gun in my face. As far as I’m concerned, folks can do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt anybody else, or damage or steal property that belongs to somebody else. I think folks ought to look out for each other, help each other when they can. There isn’t a lot of civilization left, and we got all these groups trying to kill off what’s left, so if we don’t do something now, we lose. We have to work together and preserve what we got, keep things going so there is something tomorrow. I don’t want to run things, and I don’t want somebody running me, it’s that simple. I think all these folks with me feel the same way,” I said pointing at our group that came out of Dodge.