The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

  . . . . .

  “Well, hello,” said a pleasant voice as Jack walked to the Ranger post for afternoon training. He turned and saw Jennifer Lewis, the source of the greeting, walking toward him.

  He smiled. “Hello to you. Did you attend to all personal business you needed to this morning?”

  “Yes I did, thank you. You?”

  He nodded.

  “Amanda tells me you don’t have a girlfriend or anything.”

  Jack was taken aback. “And what else did Amanda say?”

  “She told me you were terrible at flirting, a bit awkward, a little guileless with women,” she said as Jack grimaced, “tough, honest, faithful, loyal, and the best friend anyone could ask for.”

  He flushed slightly and smiled, taken aback once again. “That sounds like something Amanda would say. Did she volunteer that information or did you ask?”

  Jennifer smiled coyly and blushed slightly as well. “I asked.”

  “Really?” Jack asked raising his eyebrows.

  “Yes. I have a thing for tall, awkward, quiet, smart guys who can shoot.”

  Jack was briefly wide-eyed before blinking a few times. “They didn’t have any of those down in Fateville? They’re a dime a dozen around here.”

  She smiled. “I don’t want a dozen. One will do. And I never saw a one in Fateville.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Well, if I can help you in your search, just let me know.”

  “I’ll do that, Jack Traipse. Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of service, Miss Lewis.”

  The two of them walked to the Ranger post together where they joined their fellow trainees in the training room.

  Ranger Barbara ‘Barlo’ Louis—a long-serving Ranger in charge of the Geneva Ranger post’s communication and intelligence—was tasked with instructing the trainees on communications, equipment, and the TROG. Most of the communications gear was fairly simple, ex-military radios and their civilian counterparts, which the trainees took to quickly. The tricky part was learning to safely handle the lead acid battery packs used in place of the alkaline batteries originally equipping the radios.

  The TROG was a bit different though.

  “All right, you all probably know what this is, right? This is the TROG,” she said hefting a box about sixteen inches by twelve inches by three inches thick. It appeared to open like a briefcase. She set it on the table in the headquarters training room. “I doubt too many of you have ever used one.”

  Barbara opened the device and positioned it so the trainees could see the screen and keyboard, “Before we get to the technical nitty-gritty, let’s look at the features this bad-boy sports. This is an ad that was part of the promotional campaign for this beast just before the aliens showed up and wrecked everything,” she said, holding up a glossy, full-color, ad page.

  TROG from ACME Inc., The Acme of Technology

  Coming Summer ‘95, The TROG!

  21st Century Technology, Now!

  Available wherever top-shelf technology is sold.

  The TROG - Telephone, Radio, OIPS, Guidance

  Features:

  Telephone - Mobile Cellular, Conventional Wall Phone, and Satellite. Call from anywhere.

  Radio - Microphone, AM, FM, Satellite, Shortwave, Citizens Band, and Emergency Frequencies. If it’s on the air, you can hear! Whether Bach or Rock, you’ll hear it all through Ultra-quality speakers! At home or at the mall, you’re carrying your own personal concert hall!

  Optimized Information Processing System(OIPS) - A computer on steroids! 12” full color screen, Full Keyboard, 3.5” floppy drive, CD drive, Plus a galaxy-shattering processor - Acme’s patented OIPS is faster than ever. OIPS, we did it again!

  Guidance - Programmable electronic display map, compass, LORAN, GPS, Ground-tracking terrain compensating pedometer - Walk, crawl, or run! No matter where you go, you’ll know!

  The TROG is waterproof, shockproof, dirtproof, fireproof, EMP proof, and power surge proof! Tough enough you just might call it Bulletproof!

  Take it on the go with hours of use from the TROG’s integrated battery! Charges from a standard wall socket! No electricity? No problem! The TROG has a hand-cranked generator built right in!

  At 16”x12.5”x3” and under 10lbs, it fits in a briefcase with room to spare.

  A Cutting Edge Device, At An Affordable Price!

  The TROG from ACME, Inc.

  This Summer, Everything Changes!

  “That gives you a pretty good rundown on what it can do,” Barbara said. “Of course you might have a hard time making a call in mobile cellular mode unless you find a city with towers still intact, and if you do then I’m moving there,” she joked. “I’ll show you what this puppy can do.”

  “Let’s go down the list one by one. First up, telephone. No mobile cellular. You can plug this into a phone jack and talk, but since the only phone system I know of is here in the Settlements, and you can just use a regular phone for that you really don’t need to use the TROG. Satellite phone? You’d think no, but you’d be wrong. On some days you can find a satellite and use it. We have yet to figure out how many satellites that are operational up there. Sometimes you can find a signal, sometimes not, but it is very spotty at best, so don’t count on it.

  “Next we got radio. There are AM and FM stations here in the Settlements, as you likely know. You can pick up distant AM broadcasts at night on occasion if you want to listen to automated government broadcasts. Satellite, if you pick something up on that, you let me know. You can receive shortwave signals, but not transmit. If you are way the hell out there we can send you messages via shortwave, very often we do so in code. You can send and receive on CB and some emergency bands. Under normal conditions, you ought to have five miles range, more if you use a taller antenna or optimal broadcast position. You will be able to receive from a lot further from here since we have a big antenna and boosted signal, conditions permitting of course.

  “The OIPS. A very nifty computer in a tiny package. Most of you have seen or used desktop computers? This is on a par with any of them. It is power hungry, so if you use it in the field be ready to crank the generator handle that folds out of the back, like this,” she said as she demonstrated. “Not too hard to figure out and not particularly entertaining.”

  “Finally, there is guidance. This has a compass, but you’ll be better served using your lensatic compass. LORAN, nope. GPS, yes! Unfortunately it’s only for about thirty-five minutes a day starting at a little after thirteen hundred hours. There are three of the very few nav satellites that come overhead at that time, and you need three sats to get an accurate reading. It can come in handy to pin down your location if you are way out there. Then we have the ground-tracking terrain-compensating pedometer. It’s fairly accurate. You have to calibrate it to your gait and carry it on your person, and if you go up or down steep terrain it will screw things up. Still, it’s useful.

  “We’ll go over all of this in detail. It’s not terribly hard to pick up, and you might just enjoy it. Any questions?” she asked.

  “Do we each get one of these?” asked Thomas Young.

  “No, they are issued on an ‘as needed’ basis. Usually one will be issued to a team that will be operating far from the Settlements. On occasion more might be needed by one team, so there will be as many issued as are needed. Unless something goes awry, the TROG will be returned for maintenance upon return. Another question?”

  “How did we acquire the TROGs?” asked Amanda.

  “Highway robbery,” Barbara replied with a smile. “Well almost. In 2001 a Ranger team was escorting a recovery crew near Old Fort Smith and they encountered a scavenger group of some sort trying to break into a semi trailer abandoned on a highway. The Ranger team ran the scavengers off and after the recovery team got the trailer unlocked discovered an entire truckload of TROGs. The truck manifest said they were destined to be delivered to a retail store somewhere, but they never got there of course. We probably have the largest col
lection of them anywhere.

  “Okay, let’s get you up to speed on this thing.”

  . . . . .

  Within a few days the trainees had gained proficiency with the TROG. Amanda Hays excelled, which was a surprise to no one. The last part of training before field exercises began was Know Your Enemies and Know Your Limitations, taught by Lieutenant Geiger and Corporal Sierra.

  “We start field exercises soon. That means going out in the field and getting dirty. It also means you stand a chance of encountering members of various groups who are our adversaries. TGG, radiation worshipers, alien worshipers, religious cults, necros, mutants, raiders, aliens, ferals, crazies, and more await you out there. When you pin on the star you can feel flattered that so many people and things out there want you dead,” Art said with a grin.

  “Normally we’d spend a few days familiarizing you with each of these groups, but we ain’t got the time, so this morning the LT and I will give you a quick rundown on the groups you’ll be most likely to encounter.

  “Some like the crazies, ferals, and religious cults are not much of an issue up here in Geneva, but in other areas of the Freelands they are, so we’ll not go into them much.

  “Lieutenant Geiger will speak on rad worshipers and TGG, and I’ll follow up with raiders and aliens.

  “LT, take it away.”

  “Thanks, Corporal. I’ll start with TGG. Do you remember the part of Frank Parkes’ journal that covered his group in Salt Lake City? The people with the crazy pamphlets they had to escape from? That group would become TGG, or The Greater Good.

  “A quasi-religious-statist cult is the best way to describe them. They use a religious text called The Good that spells out their core beliefs and from where they, by their reckoning, derive their authority. To explain their philosophy simply: individuals must always submit to the will of the whole body, and the ruling clique, called the Apostles, determines that will.

  “They are apparently still based in Salt Lake City, and have expanded into the Rockies over the years. As far as we know, they have not tried to push farther east, but they do send long range patrols out regularly to search for technology and scout settled areas east of the Rockies. They have been in the Freelands on numerous occasions. Rangers have tried to communicate with them, but TGG teams usually meet such attempts with violence. These encounters are rare.

  “They are very skilled, and very well equipped. Do not take them lightly. It is likely they slip in and out of the Freelands undetected more often than we encounter them. Lately we have been getting reports of armed men up north of us that sound like they may be TGG. Because of the trouble down south we cannot spare Rangers to investigate right now, so keep that in mind.

  “The next group I’ll talk about are the radiation worshipers, also known as rad worshipers or, as they are commonly called, rads,” Lieutenant Geiger continued. “They are not one single group, rather they are a collection of groups that share a basic belief. That belief is that radiation is a manifestation of something holy. A god or a manifestation of a god.

  “Why they believe this varies greatly. Some groups think the alien invasion and the nuclear hell that followed was a judgment from on high. Because of that judgment, sinners need to be baptized in radiation to be redeemed. Other groups see radiation as a blessing and to deny this blessing is an affront to a god or their belief system.

  “Some of these groups are benign, in that they do not proselytize or seek to harm people outside their group. These kinds of groups are the exception. Most others are much more dangerous.

  “Some groups will raid settlements and seek converts. In other words, they kidnap people. For this they prefer children, but that is not a hard-and-fast rule.

  “Some groups seek to convert people by poisoning water supplies or food stores and in some cases attempt to place radioactive material into gatherings of people in public places. These groups will often attempt to sell tainted food to travelers or settlers.

  “Many rads believe in a figure called Father Atomic. He is revered as a leader and figurehead by most rad groups. He is likely a mythical figure. The texts that are attributed to him speak of preparing for ascension, exposing oneself to low levels of radiation and progressively to higher and higher levels. Once a rad is deemed ready for ascension, they are exposed to very high levels of radiation in the hope of mutation. If successful the resulting mutant is treated as a holy object or being. Before you ask, yes there are mutants out there. The books from before the war say it can’t happen, but they also said we were alone in the universe. Trust me, you’ll see them.

  “Most rads —nearly all in fact— who seek ascension die in the process. This is seen as a holy death. They have a vast list of ways to die a fitting death, including attacking settlements as part of a holy war.

  “Rads seek out radioactive spots. They make pilgrimages to them. The holiest of holy places for them is a little less than twenty miles northwest of here,” he said with a gesture to the northwest. “The former Wolf Creek Generating Station is located there. It was once a nuclear power plant. It survived the Calamity intact somehow. We expect it had a meltdown at some point after the war. Apparently it was left unattended following unrest or a disease outbreak. The radiation is enclosed inside and as long as the containment building is there it’s not much of a danger. Various groups fight over the site pretty much constantly.

  “Some groups have been known to ally with one another, but most view others as rivals or heretics.

  “I would also like to touch very briefly on Necros and mutants.

  Necros are worshipers of the dead. These groups are similar to the rads and alien worshipers except they revere the dead, especially the death fields.

  “For those of you that don’t know of the death fields, they are huge piles of bones from the dead near some towns and cities. Most of them are from those who died from injuries or radiation from the alien attacks or nuclear detonations, or the plagues, famines, and other depredations that followed the Calamity. Near some of the major cities, they are said to be immense. A mountain of bones it is said.” Nearby, Art nodded a confirmation.

  “The necros tend the piles of bones and are more than happy to find or create fresh bodies for the piles. There are not many near here, but if you ever go near the dead large cities of Kansas City or Tulsa, you’ll likely encounter them. They are not friendly and they will likely try and kill you. We do not know if they have a theology or not.

  “Mutants. Not an uncommon sight, but not a huge problem either. There are all kinds out there and we keep adding new ones to the catalog every year. There are mutations caused by radiation, alien exposure, combinations of the two, and some that defy explanation. Some are humans mutated into something horrific, some are animals, some are aliens, and some are a combination of two, or more, of the three.

  “There are various theories as to what caused this, but from a Ranger standpoint it doesn’t much matter. They exist and some of them are hostile and dangerous. If they threaten Freelanders or innocent humans outside the Freelands, Rangers will engage them. Otherwise you are best served observing and avoiding contact with them.

  “There are reports by travelers and people who have settled here that there are intelligent mutants out there. Seemingly they have retained their humanity, if the reports are true that is. I have never heard of a Ranger making contact with an intelligent mutant, but I would not be surprised if they exist. If they do I’d be careful, but try and feel them out. If they are in fact peaceful and intelligent I don’t see how we can justify killing them.

  “You should be able to recognize a mutant very easily, if six or eight sets of genitalia don’t give it away,” the lieutenant said as the trainees laughed, “by the rotted corpse appearance of their flesh. I don’t think any of you will have any trouble identifying a mutant in the field.

  “I’ll turn this over to Art. If you have any questions about any of this we can go over them this afternoon.”

  “All rig
ht, aliens and raiders. Both pretty unsociable, wouldn’t you say?” Sierra began as he stepped to the front of the trainees.

  “I imagine all of you know something about each of these groups, some up close and personal. Ralph lost an arm to raiders, you all know the story by now, right?” Art asked. Every trainee nodded. “Jack grew up listening to a houseful of Rangers talk about the terrible things these folks are capable of. You all know about Jack’s pa and uncle, right?” he inquired. Once again everyone nodded.

  “Jim Barstow there has a cousin been a Ranger for a decade. Jim’s been on the Kings Town militia for about that long, and I don’t know how many times one of these groups has caused trouble down there over that time. Jennifer’s uncle got killed by raiders when they attacked his merchant train, Amanda’s folks have spent years dodging both those groups and more. I could go on, but I reckon you get my point. To one degree or another we all got an idea of these groups, and they ain’t good.

  “I expect the aliens are probably the group you know the least about, same for me. We’ll start with them and I’ll tell you what I know. I know there ain’t a one of them any smarter than a dog. I also know whatever kind you deal with, large or small, they will try and kill you if you venture close enough. If nothin’ else, remember that.

  “Let’s start small and work our way up. I see Mr. Young there all eager to hear about the giant ones, been itchin’ to hear about them ever since Marian read to us about them, right Thomas?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes, Corporal,” Thomas said returning Art’s smile. “And you’re gonna make me wait a little longer I’ll bet.”

  “You’d win that bet, too,” he said with a point of a finger. “Add some drama and everybody pays attention. All right, we start small.