Don't Call Me Ishmael

by Chris Kennedy

  “Clanton, Alabama,” I replied. I’d removed the tags from the car on the thought that no one really needed to know where I was from or how far from home I was.

  “And whatcha doing up here?” he asked. “That seems a long way from home, with gas so scarce.”

  “I hadn’t heard from my grandma, and my mom asked if I could go take a look. She lived in Chattanooga.”

  “Well, if she was downtown, she’s dead,” the man replied. “Chattanooga took one right on top of the City Diner. You won’t be getting any more cake from there…not for a long while.”

  “Well, shit,” I said, trying to look distraught. “Mom’s going to be sad.”

  I could tell by the look on the man’s face he wasn’t buying it. His rifle slid off his shoulder and down into his hands. That was my cue I’d overstayed my welcome. “Okay, well, I have to get back to my mom,” I said. I put the car into reverse and started backing away.

  “Stop!” the sentry ordered. Avarice and distrust had won out in the end, apparently.

  I spun the car around, and he fired, putting a chip in the center of my back window. The other two fired as well, and I could hear impacts on the car as I gunned the motor, although none appeared to penetrate or hit anything vital. They hit the car another couple of times before I made it to the next corner and out of sight. I checked the gauges and everything appeared fine, but the handling was off slightly. The little yellow tire light illuminated right at the same time I figured out what had happened—they’d hit at least one of my tires.

  That put me into a quandary—did I get as far as I could before trying to change the tire? The men at the barricade probably knew they’d hit my tire and might come looking to catch me when I stopped. Or, since it seemed like there was a decent chance I’d just found Boudreaux’s group, did I stop and try to link up with him? I shook my head as I contemplated. There really wasn’t anywhere good to stop along the way to fix the tire, and I’d come all this way to meet Boudreaux…

  I made a decision and pulled off down Frontier Bluff Road, a side street which ran off to the left, further into the forest and slightly down the backside of the hill. There were a few houses buried deep in the woods that it serviced. I passed them slowly and coasted to a stop a little further up the road and got out of the car. I had to know if it was Boudreaux, and I had to know now, even if the guys at the barricade sent someone out looking for me.

  Sometimes you just have to do what feels right in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Once I got out of my car, I could hear gunfire, and I knew I was close. It sounded like it was coming from just over the hilltop, but in the thick trees, I couldn’t tell for sure. I grabbed my pack and threw it over my shoulders, as well as all the ammo I could carry. With my pistol in its holster and my rifle in my hands, I set off toward the sporadic gunfire. As I listened, it seemed more like nuisance fire—just meant to keep people’s heads down and irritate them.

  I doubted it was Boudreaux’s men; as Agents, they would be better disciplined. They wouldn’t waste rounds just to be irritating, especially if they were holed up somewhere; they would be conserving their ammo.

  The random fire, though, let me figure out where they were, and I crept through the woods doing my best not to think about what I was doing. As I reached the edge of the woods, I could see a road and a number of large buildings that sat on the crest of the hill. There were a couple of small buildings on my side of the street a little way off to the right, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there.

  It didn’t take long to figure out where Boudreaux’s men—if they were really his—were located. It was the enormous building on the left at the top of the hill. At least five stories high, the building would have made a great castle, were it not for the windows, many of which had either been shot out or broken out to allow the defenders to fire through. The structure even had what looked like a bell tower on one end of it, and I could see motion in it—it made for a perfect sniper’s nest, and I stepped back into the forest—if I could see them, they could see me, and I didn’t want them to kill me after getting this close. If I was Boudreaux, I would have a sniper-trained Agent sitting up there picking off the opposition as they showed themselves.

  A couple of smaller buildings were next to the fortress-like building, and off to the right as well. There may have been buildings on the other side of the fortress, but I couldn’t see them from my vantage point.

  I could, however, see people in a number of places around the building, keeping it under observation. Most weren’t firing, and might have been trying to get a shot at the people inside the building, but not much was currently happening. It looked like a stalemate, where the people on the outside were hoping to starve out the folks on the inside. Neither side looked particularly like they wanted to change the status quo.

  As I watched the situation for a few minutes, I realized one thing—it was going to be really hard to get to the building without being shot. By my “friends” even more so than my enemies.

  * * *

  I watched the siege for a couple of hours, staying inside the tree line and, I hoped, out of sight of the sniper in the tower. All I could hope was that he’d see me sneaking around and figure out that I wasn’t with the people who had them holed up in the building.

  What I didn’t understand was why they were there in the first place. If Boudreaux had an army of supermen, how had he allowed himself to be trapped like that? Alternately, why didn’t he stage a breakout? If I knew either of those answers, I was pretty sure I could help them…but I didn’t, and I couldn’t figure out a way to communicate with the people inside the building without getting shot.

  I was going to have to get closer, which meant going into one of the buildings that were next to the main building and trying to signal from there. Dangerous—as it would mean putting myself into contact with the enemy—but not as foolhardy as standing in the open where both sides could shoot at me.

  I waited until dark to move, staying in the cover of the trees as much as possible. The buildings were at the top of a hill, which meant a sprint uphill across the overgrown lawn, with at least a little of it under the watchful eye of the shooter in the tower. I got as close as I could before making the final sprint to the smaller building.

  There was a building a little further down that had seemed to be their headquarters, with more people coming and going throughout the day, but there had been plenty from this one, too. As I approached it, I decided it was a maintenance building for the college, where the engineers and their minions had worked to keep it running.

  I ran up to the back of the building and took a minute to catch my breath before sneaking a peek into one of the windows. There was only one doorway in, and on the other side there appeared to be a lounge area. Several people were sitting around and shooting the breeze by candlelight while having a drink. There was no way I was going to sneak past them, nor did I think I could bluff my way past.

  Not seeing any other way to do it, I drew my pistol and burst into the room. The three may have thought themselves tough warriors—they were big and burly, with bushy beards—but caught unaware, they all went down in my initial barrage.

  I raced across the room to check them, but heard a door open across from me. I spun, but the man was already running back out the way he’d come. I fired into the door a couple of times, but didn’t hit him. “It’s one of them!” he yelled as he ran. “There’s one in here!”

  I loaded a new magazine, grabbed a candle, and went to follow him, but he was gone when I opened the door. I knew I would need to go up two stories, so I looked for the stairs. I found them at the end of the hall by two non-functional elevators. As I opened the door into the stairwell, I could hear the man. Judging by the sounds, he’d gone up the stairs as well.

  I quickly went up one flight, and could hear several voices from the floor above me. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, I set the ca
ndle down, and slipped out the stairwell door. As I suspected, there was a hallway that ran the length of the building, which I could just barely see in the moonlight coming through the windows.

  I went as quickly as I could to the other end and found another stairwell that I used to go up. As quietly as I could, I eased open the door and looked down the passageway to see a group of people huddled at the other end. Apparently, no one had thought about the second set of stairs, and they were all arrayed at the stairwell—one person held the door open while the other three pointed pistols into the yawning abyss.

  I crept as silently as I could toward them, and had made it to within 20 feet when one of them sensed my presence somehow. As he started to turn, I shot him, the flash of my pistol strobing in the dark hallway and messing with my vision. I had them all pegged though, and I fired a couple of rounds into each of the ambushers with guns. Only one got off a shot, and it buried itself in the wall between the guy holding the door open and myself. I shot him an extra time for scaring me.

  That left the guy who had been holding the door, which he’d let go in all the gunplay. The man was young—probably a college student who’d never seen gunplay like that before. “Don’t kill me,” he whined.

  “I don’t want to,” I said, “and if you just tell me what’s going on here, perhaps I won’t have to.”

  “O—okay,” he stuttered. “You—you’re not one of them?”

  “No, I’m not. I was just passing through looking for someone, and your guys attacked me. So, who are those people in the next building, and what’s going on here?”

  “From what I heard,” the young man said, “some out-of-towners came and holed up in the building next to us. Some of the locals took exception to it and told them to leave. There was a gunfight, and a lot of the locals were killed. That made everyone else mad, so they put together a big group to trap them in that building. I got recruited to help with that. The leaders thought we’d starve them out, but then realized there was a cafeteria in the building, and there’s probably still some food that hadn’t gone bad…which is making this take longer than everyone thought.”

  “I see.” I thought for a moment. “How long is it going to be before someone comes to find out what’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Think harder,” I said, pushing the barrel of my pistol into his stomach.

  “Uh…well, the shift changes in about an hour. Someone would come then, if they don’t come to find out what the shots were all about.”

  “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen, then. If you help me out for a few minutes, I will let you go.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” I smiled. “I don’t want to kill you, kid. Didn’t want to kill them either, if I’d had the choice.” I shrugged.

  “So what do you need me to do?” he asked.

  “I need a light source. The candle is fine, but I need a match or something to light it.” I indicated the men. “Search them and see if you can find some matches.”

  “I have matches,” he said. “I’m in charge of candles.”

  “Awesome,” I said. Finally, something that went my way. I motioned him toward one of the doors that lined the hallway. “Now we go in there and signal the men in the building next to us.”

  “We’ll get shot if we do that!”

  “I hope not,” I replied. “I have a plan.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “I don’t know. I think I may know who they are. If so, I think I can end this whole confrontation.”

  “Really?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, really.”

  “That’d be great,” he said as he went in. “A lot of people have died here.” I surveyed the room in the moonlight. “So,” he asked, “what do you want me to do?”

  “Well, come away from the window, for the first thing,” I said. “You’re no good to me if you get yourself shot.”

  He jumped like someone had hit him with an electric prod.

  “Now, give me your T-shirt.”

  “My T-shirt?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “I want to make a white flag. You know, like, ‘Hey, don’t shoot us?’”

  The shirt came off like he saw a co-ed waiting for him in bed, and he handed it over to me.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Bring that easel over here and see if you can find a black marker.”

  He brought both of those to me, and I wrote on the paper.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take care of this. You just stand out of the way of any of the windows and light that candle.”

  “Now?”

  “No, why don’t we wait until the sun comes up and light the candle then?”

  “But why—”

  “Yes, light the candle now!” I exclaimed. Kids these days.

  He pulled out his matches and lit the candle. It wasn’t bright, but I figured it would have gotten the attention of everyone in the building alongside us. I picked up his T-shirt and waved it in front of the window without putting more than my hand in front of it.

  Hopefully, they got the message.

  I risked a peek out the window, but couldn’t see anyone across the intervening 50 feet. I pushed the easel out in front of the window, with the single word, “Boudreaux?” on it, then leaned forward and looked out the window again.

  Across the small courtyard, a light snapped on, and a man’s face was briefly illuminated. He nodded twice, then the light went off. A gun fired outside, and the window the man had been behind shattered. I doubted he’d want to highlight himself like that again, and hoped he didn’t think I was trying to draw him out to be killed.

  I quickly wrote, ‘I’m coming over,’ on the easel.

  “So, what do we do now?” the kid asked.

  “Now we put the candle out, so we don’t highlight ourselves anymore,” I replied.

  He blew out the candle, and I opened the window. The ground rose on this side of the building, so it was only about a six foot drop to the ground, very manageable.

  “Here’s where I leave,” I said, scooping up his T-shirt. “Tell your friends to be on the lookout for a white flag tomorrow.”

  “You—you’re taking my shirt?” he asked.

  “Better than taking your life,” I said. He nodded vigorously. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

  I turned and slid out the window, then looked at the 50 feet of open space between the buildings. It seemed like forever. Summoning my nerve, I burst forth from the cover of the building and ran toward the door on the other side of the courtyard as fast as I could. Of course, someone shot at the movement, and I heard the crack! as the bullet went past, but then I was across, and I lowered my shoulder to ram through the door.

  Someone opened it as I was about to crash into it and I dove forward, sprawling across the entryway floor. The door slammed shut behind me, and I rolled over to find the dim outlines of four men with rifles pointed at me.

  Very slowly, I raised my hands. “Hi guys,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Boudreaux.”

  “And you are?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m one of you, I think, but the war killed my imprinter and left me with nothing. I’m also a good friend of Mr. Boudreaux’s nephew.”

  “You believe him?” one of the other men asked.

  “Perfect alibi,” a third said. “There’s no way to prove the story, right or wrong.”

  “Well, how many people even know about Agents?” I asked.

  “If you were an Agent,” the first man said, “and you got left with nothing from the imprinter, then how do you know about imprinters and Agents in the first place?”

  “I didn’t, for the longest time,” I replied, “and I wandered around for a long time trying to figure out who I was, but then I met up with Mr. Boudreaux and helped get him to Pensacola. While I was there, I talked to a few of your Agents and figured out what must have happened.”

  “And just where was this imprinter,” a ne
w voice asked.

  “Boss, should you be up?” the first man asked.

  “I’ll lie down again in a minute,” the new man said, “but first, I want to see who this is.” He walked up to me and stared at me in the dim light. “Where are you from?”

  “I woke up in New Orleans,” I said. “I have no idea if I’m really from there, though.”

  “You’re not.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  The man snapped on a flashlight and held it under his chin. “I’m Luc Boudreaux,” he said. “I’m the head of the Agent program, and I know everyone that I accepted into it.”

  My jaw dropped. After all I’d been through to find the man, here he was, finally in front of me. I was at a loss for words, and my jaw just hung open as I stared at him.

  He chuckled and turned out the light. “So, if the imprinter failed, you don’t know anything about yourself.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know anything. I appear to have some skills in my muscle memory that would tend to make me believe I’m an Agent, but I don’t know what kind or who I am in real life.”

  Boudreaux coughed and slumped a little, and two of the Agents grabbed him and supported him. “Let’s get you back to bed,” the first man said.

  “Okay,” Boudreaux replied. They turned to leave.

  “You guys mind if I get up?” I asked the other two men who were still pointing their guns at me. They withdrew their rifles, and I stood and joined the procession to Boudreaux’s bed. I had to smile.

  Sometimes lost things can be found in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Forty

  I followed Boudreaux up to the second floor, where they laid him on a bed in one of the dorm rooms, then we all went into the passageway where the first man who’d spoken started giving out assignments. When all the others had left, I said, “Let me guess; you’re Williams, right?”