The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

  Jim Barstow, Ralph Sikes, and Thomas Young climbed aboard with Jack, the latter two destined to stay at Geneva once they arrived.

  The train rolled out for the short trip to Camp Mead, followed by Durant, picking up those going to Geneva for Hardin’s funeral. The train traveled east, stopping several times, with many Rangers climbing aboard at Hugo, Fort Towson, Hell, and Ashdown. The tracks carried them north, picking up even more people from Broken Bow, De Queen, Mena, and other places in the southeastern part of the Freelands.

  Through most of the trip, Jack sat alone, saying nothing except when those boarding might stop and offer condolences or wish him well. Ralph came from the front of the car and sat next to him.

  “I talked to your uncle Gordon.”

  “He mentioned it. Made his week I think.”

  “Gordon said that between him missing half his leg and me missing half an arm, the two of us combined had seven limbs.”

  Jack laughed and shook his head. “That’s my uncle.”

  “Why isn’t he still doing anything with the Rangers? He’s Art’s age. He has the same look in his eyes he did when we first met. Art has the same look, so do you. He ought to be training people at least.”

  “I don’t know, but I think maybe it’s the Ranger Commander. Could be it’s because he lost his brother. Gordon isn’t talking though.”

  Ralph took in a deep breath and let it out. “I sat there in his house and kept thinking that this is the man that carried me to the medicos. I had lost my hand, I knew that. I was scared. My folks were hurt and on the way to help, so I felt alone and small. Gordon and Pete Anders wrapped up my arm, then he picked me up like I weighed nothing. He kept talking to me the whole way, telling me I’d be all right. He sounded so sure that I believed him. He said, “You’re a tough one, kiddo. tougher than me, that’s for sure. Tough guys like you make good Rangers.” I never forgot that. I sat there listening to him and thought, this is the man that made me want to become a Ranger.”

  “So you blame Gordon for your poor career choice?”

  Ralph canted his head and glared at Jack, then broke into a laugh. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  He left after a while, only to be replaced by Thomas Young a short time later.

  “You okay, Jack?”

  “I’m fine, just tired.”

  “I’d imagine. I meant about your dad.”

  “I know. I was ducking the question. This has been hanging for five years, but now… I guess it’s the finality of it. We’d adjusted to Hardin being gone, but now we know for sure he’s dead. There’s no more hope sitting in the back of my mind that he’ll show up one day with a great tale about what happened. I can’t say I understood how it would be once we knew for sure he was gone, but if I were to guess, this wouldn’t be it.”

  “I wish I had something to say, but I don’t. Just know you have a train full of Rangers you can lean on.”

  “Thanks, but if I decide to start blubbering and want to empty my soul onto somebody, I’m coming to you.”

  Thomas sighed and then smiled. “Fine. That’s the last time I’ll ever try to be nice to you.” He stood and pointed to the front of the car. “I’ll be right up there,” he said in a gentle voice.

  Not long after, the train pulled into Heaven where the passengers disembarked to switch trains.

  Jack walked Jenny off the stock car and to another awaiting her on the other train. Thomas and Ralph promised to see her to the livery in Geneva.

  Jack said his goodbyes and stood on the platform until the train was clear of the station, then made his way to the Ranger Center. It was late in the day, but they were expecting him and were ready to start with the questions.

  They began with the alien he had seen. The three-person intel team queried him about its size, gait, weight, speed, appendages, coloring, and many other things. Many of the answers were beyond his experience and knowledge, but he provided as much information as he could.

  “Could it be a mutant?” Jack asked.

  “If its coloring is as you described it, no. Mutated humans, aliens, and crosses are almost universally mottled or spotted in at least a few colors.”

  Jack nodded and thought of the Changed. “What are you going to call the thing?” he asked.

  One of the trio held up Jack’s notepaper with the sketch and description he had written while in Old Norman. “The centaur, I think.”

  An artist came in and worked with Jack to create a depiction of the creature. By the time they were finished, it was late. He was to return in the morning.

  . . . . .

  The debrief began early, and thanks to Jack’s concise report, it consisted of detailing points of interest for the trio of specialists. By late morning, they had just one last area of questioning, the air force facility in Norman. During the conversation, one of the Ranger Center trio asked aloud, “I wonder if this PFC Fisher has any connection to the Fisher family here in Heaven? It’s probably a ghost chase.”

  Chasing ghosts, Jack thought. I guess that’s what I was doing going after my father. The aluminum cases and the letter in the facility have their ghosts as well. “The world’s full of ghosts,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, just thinking out loud.”

  The debrief was completed well before noon and the train north wasn’t departing until 1400. Jack thought about what he might do until then. Why not chase a couple of ghosts?

  He went to the watch desk and asked for the addresses for any Fishers living in Heaven. That done, he went down a hall to the archivist’s office and found a bespectacled white-haired man jotting notes, one finger under a line on a book’s page, the other scribbling furiously with mechanical pencil onto a yellow legal pad.

  The man was either ignoring Jack or didn’t notice him. He waited until the man paused in his writing, then cleared his throat. The man started and looked up.

  “I’m sorry. Can I assist you?”

  “I’m looking for the identity of a salvager. All I have is his mark, TC-Six. The salvager may not be active anymore. The mark was left thirteen years ago, so—”

  “Oh, an archivists dream,” he said as his eyes lit up. “A chance to dig in the musty, dusty old files.” He slid his chair out and stood. “Follow me,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Jack walked behind him to a nearby filing cabinet.

  “TC-Six, you said?”

  “That’s right.”

  The man hummed as he flipped through folders. He stopped and smiled, pushing the file drawer closed. “Good news! We have nothing in the active folders.”

  “That’s a good thing?”

  The man walked down a narrow passage between boxes and more filing cabinets. “Yes. It means we get to delve deeper into the records. Come on. We have a mystery on our hands.”

  “Or a ghost to chase,” Jack said quietly.

  “Ghosts? In a metaphorical sense, this post-Calamity world in which we live is positively swarming with them. At least I’ve always thought so. Ah, here we are,” he said stopping at a file cabinet. He pulled open a drawer and flipped through folders once again. “There! TC-Six.” He pulled a folder from the cabinet and leafed through the few pages it contained. “A salvager all right. Active from the earliest days of the Freelands it seems. That means he was likely doing it prior to that.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  The man smiled. “No longer active as a salvager, but could he still be living? Another mystery! Follow me.”

  The two men moved to another even more cramped aisle. “Here we are.” The archivist knelt and rifled another drawer. “We have him! Terrence Carlisle.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Apparently. A business owner here in Heaven.”

  Jack looked over the archivist’s shoulder and saw the address. “That’s near Pinpoint Guns. I know where that is.”

  The archivist stood. “What is your interest in this salvager turned businessman?”

  Jack
quickly rattled off the tale.

  “Fascinating, positively fascinating. And what of this Fisher? Do we know his location?”

  “He was a private first class in the Oklahoma National Guard and was in Norman during the immediate aftermath of the Calamity. His name was Allen C. Fisher. That’s it. I have a list of addresses.”

  The archivist smiled again. “That’s enough for us to start cracking the mystery.” He pointed behind Jack. “That way.”

  Jack turned and made his way back the way they came. “I set out to chase ghosts….”

  They came to the end of the aisle and the man tapped Jack on the shoulder. “This way.”

  They went to a set of cabinets at the front of the office. The man knelt and opened a pair of doors, removing a large tome from a shelf. He passed it to Jack. “Follow me.”

  Jack looked at the cover, Freelands Genealogy, D-F was imprinted into the cover.

  “On the desk if you will,” the man said as he opened yet another filing cabinet. As he flipped through file folders, he said, “I know some of the Fishers. Should we fail in our search here, we can take our investigation to them.”

  “We?”

  “Do you have some objection?” he said over his shoulder.

  Jack laughed. “None. I didn’t intend to drag anyone into my curiosity.”

  “Too late. Curiosity might kill a cat or two, but mysteries rarely get solved without it, and I imagine curious cats that survive eat better that those that lack that particular trait.”

  Jack shook his head. “Who are you?”

  “On my desk. There’s a nameplate.”

  Jack looked, but there was nothing but books, paper, pencils, pens, and other such material. “If there’s a nameplate, it’s buried.”

  The man looked over his shoulder at the desk. “I do have a nameplate, I assure you. I am Jackson Lewis, Freelands Rangers Head Archivist.” He pulled a folder from the drawer. “Got it,” he said as he pushed the drawer closed.

  “L-O-U-I-S or L-E-W-I-S?”

  “The latter,” he said as he sat at his desk.

  “Are you related to Ranger Jennifer Lewis?”

  “All Freelanders bearing the name Lewis of the latter spelling are related as far as I know, though we’ve never taken an official census. We trace back to a rather large family that survived the Calamity relatively intact. Most live in or around the Fateville area. Another band lives in the south, in the Horns, Hugo, Fort Towson triangle. Of course, many others live in disparate areas, some out of the Freelands altogether. Do you know Ranger Lewis?”

  “She has the misfortune of being in love with me.”

  “And you would be…?”

  “Jack Traipse.”

  “Traipse? I just filed an archival record concerning a Traipse just yesterday. The recovery and final disposition of a Ranger Sergeant’s remains. A sad duty for whomever they tasked with that.” Lewis’ eyes wandered to the nametape on Jack’s BDU top then to the Ranger star with sergeant’s chevrons. His eyebrows rose. “Sergeant Traipse. Were we in error?”

  Jack shook his head. “That’s my father Hardin you were speaking of. We bury him tomorrow. I have to leave for Geneva later today.”

  “I fear I was rather insensitive. My apologies and sympathy.”

  “No worries. He was not a maudlin man. If he knew about this he’d be laughing.”

  “You are too kind.” Jackson scanned the pages within the folder and genealogy volume quickly. “I see no Allen Fisher in the records but one, a young man of fifteen born here in Heaven. Still, if this PFC Fisher is related, they might like to know of what he did in Norman. It’s something, even if we don’t know his fate.”

  One of the intelligence specialists who debriefed Jack walked into the office with a stack of folders in his hands. He seemed surprised to find Jack there. “Got some more stuff for you, Jack,” he said, placing the folders on Jackson’s desk. He pointed at Sergeant Traipse. “Watch out for this guy. He’ll fill up your filing system in no time if he doesn’t end up dead first.” He smiled and left the room, ignoring Jack’s dirty look.

  “A copy of PFC Fisher’s letter ought to be in that stuff,” Jack said.

  Lewis found it within a few seconds. He read the letter. “Extraordinary. Let’s take this with us,” he said. He stood and waved. “Come. I have a wagon.”

  Jack smiled and shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  “I suggest we go see Mr. Carlisle first. We know where he works.”

  The pair passed by Pinpoint Guns. Jack’s inner shooter cringed at not stopping. A short distance up the street was Carlisle’s Quality Salvaged Goods. The two Jacks went inside.

  “Welcome to Carlisle’s,” a weathered white-haired man said. “Browsing, or looking for something in particular?”

  “We’re looking for TC-Six,” Jack said.

  The man was taken aback, but quickly recovered. “That’s me, unless I owe you money.”

  “I’m not collecting on debts or for charity.”

  The man laughed. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. You correctly guessed I am the man who once used that identifier as a salvager. You are Ranger Sergeant Jack Traipse. I know of you as well. The Hays couple of Geneva have spoken of you. That only leaves two things: the identity of your distinguished companion, and why you seek an old salvager.”

  Jack made introductions and gave Carlisle a brief version of his experience within the old air force facility.

  “I remember the place. Those were the days. My hip went south on me six or seven years ago, so I had to give up the long treks. Can’t salvage much anymore, but I know good gear when I see it. We went out there as an eight-man team to do a prelim, you know, preliminary survey. Our team broke up to do salvage evaluation of the area. A bad place that. A lot of folks died out there in those dark, dark times after the Calamity. A warhead buried itself west-southwest of the facility, so there was the possibility rads might be around. Necros were starting to rebuild a place west of there because of the mass graves and bone piles. Lots of odd and bad sorts there,” he said with a hard smile.

  “I found a hole at the front the concrete building to make entry. Somebody had gone out there long before I was there and it had eroded away enough to show me how to get in. I went in at night. Looked around inside for a couple of minutes. Saw it was American Air Force. Pulled a few pieces and marked the exit. Covered my tracks. Left necro lethal hazard marks on the outside hoping to keep them dead heads out of there. Hoped maybe we’d get back, but never did. By any chance the necros gone?”

  Jack laughed. “Alive and doing quite well, but your marks have kept them out of the facility.”

  “Heh, small victories are still victories.”

  “Did you go to the subterranean level?”

  His eyebrows shot up as he shook his head. “I was only in there a short while. Found it odd there weren’t any windows, but it was radar station or some such. Thought maybe that was why. What’s downstairs?”

  “A command post. Big computer banks or something down there.”

  Carlisle’s eyes lit up, his salvager instincts forming plans. “That might be a nice salvage, but rough. Even rougher with the deaders. Not sure what to do with that kind of gear anyhow. Tough trip back too. Need electronics and computer experts to chime in, like Grier over in Horns or our friends the Hays family up Geneva. Eggheads could probably do something with all that if it was still functional… maybe blow up the world again.” The hard smile returned.

  “Did you see any human remains inside?”

  Carlisle shook his head. “No. Just a list of the dead on a wall and abandoned pictures of folks some held dear. A pretty common thing in the salvager business. Figured they belonged to all those listed as deceased. A sad thing unless you don’t give a damn. Wish I could be more help.”

  “You have been most helpful,” Jack Lewis said. “Details are important, and you’ve filled in some blank spaces.”

  “I’m glad.” Carlisle smiled. “Remember tha
t when you need goods.”

  Lewis and Traipse left and climbed aboard the wagon.

  “What time does the train north depart?” Lewis asked.

  “Fourteen hundred.” Jack looked at his watch. “We have time.”

  “Then let’s go visit some Fishers. Do you have an interest in history or just this particular case?”

  “It’s always been a subject I’ve enjoyed reading about. My mother is a teacher and I spent a lot of my time growing up in Geneva’s library.”

  “You must be aware of Marian’s efforts at developing a curriculum concerning the Calamity for the schools in the Freelands, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re a part of it then. There is also an initiative to gather stories from those who lived through the Calamity. Have you—”

  A loud and distant boom interrupted Lewis. It was an explosion to the east. “Limestone?” Jack said.

  Lewis chuckled. “I am sure.”

  Professor Limestone, the Freelands resident mad scientist, had a testing ground well outside the city of Heaven for tests and experiments such as the very recent explosion.

  “Some argue the stories will amount to be but a collection of similar anecdotes. I say, perhaps, but much of our most valuable history is stories of people who had the misfortune to live through interesting times.”

  “I don’t know who said it, but ‘enough anecdotes equals data,’ seems to apply.”

  Lewis smiled. “That it does.”

  Jackson took them into a residential area and they stopped in front of a small home set in a grassy lot surrounded by large trees.

  “This is the home where the fifteen year old Allen Fisher resides. I thought if the soldier from Norman were related, perhaps the young man here might be a namesake.”

  “Good thinking.”

  The pair went to the front door and knocked. A woman answered. She appeared to be in her late twenties.

  “I am Jackson Lewis, an archivist with the Ranger Center. This is Ranger Sergeant Traipse. Could we ask you a few questions? We don’t wish to bother you, so if it is at all inconvenient, please say so and we will leave.”