by James Axler
Less than an hour later, more cars arrived, some of the passengers wearing work clothes or only pajamas. They also headed straight to the gas station, filled their tanks, bought all of the spare cans there were, plus emptied the convenience market of everything in cans. No fresh food, just cans. When they went to the gun store, Ed refused their credit cards, and they paid cash for a brace of shotguns, and a hundred boxes of shells, all types.
Everybody in town was getting more than a little scared at this point, and a lot of the stores closed. The elementary school teachers sent the kids home early, but the high-school principal decided to stay open for the coming football game. Slowly, the stadium filled with people eager to forget all the weird events and to watch the Falcons beat those damn Wildcats!
But the other team never showed, and everybody nervously left the deathly quiet stadium, the fright openly talked about, and for the first time people started using the word war.
As the skies darkened into evening, the word came down that the long-lines from across the Huckleberry gorge were not working; the entire community was being powered by their small hydroelectric dam. Again, this had happened before because of the hard winter snowstorms, and everybody knew the drill. They turned off unnecessary electric devices to reduce the demand on the transformers operated by the boys at that dam, and then folks hauled out their kerosene lanterns. Dinner was cooked over charcoal grills, music was played over car radios from the local station and a thousand CD players, kids played video games, couples watched romantic movies on DVD players. But when the families were asleep, a lot of husbands went to the gun store to buy extra ammunition. These were friends and family, people Ed had known all his life, and the three-day waiting period had nothing to do with them. Bob wanted a Remington 30.06 he’d been eyeing for years. Sure, sign here, ol’ buddy. The clerk from the bookstore was a little short on cash? No problem, you could pay next week. Nobody in town was refused a gun or ammunition.
Secretly, the police chief had a meeting with the mayor and the town council. In hushed whispers, they laid out plans for a prolonged…well, siege. If there had been a disaster of some kind, the town might have to take care of itself for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month, before the government would arrive and set things straight again. The town elders checked the level of the water in the reservoir, how much grain was in the silos, how much gas in the tanks, propane, how many crates of dynamite there were stored in the sheds just outside of town, and a hundred other miscellaneous things.
The mayor and town council were still making lists and checking inventories when the first busload of men arrived. They crossed the bridge at top speed and almost crashed into the Swifty Mart. Piling out, they started taking spare gas cans and propane tanks, then shot Mary-Lou in the face. But they didn’t empty the cash register, just took food and gas and left hell-bent for leather, squealing to a stop in front of the gun store. Bursting inside, they started grabbing stuff off the shelves, and Ed fired a warning shot with his S&W revolver, which was the last thing he ever did.
The sheriff and his deputies got there too late. The two bodies were laid out on the street for the ambulance. Ed’s wife and daughter had been in the storeroom, but had come out when they heard the gunshot. The men beat the women, raped both of them, then blew off their heads with a shotgun. Then they’d left with all the ammunition their car could hold.
As word of the brutal murders spread, a large group of men gathered in the town square with hunting rifles, rope and pickup trucks to go after the dirty sons of bitches and lynch ’em from the nearest tree! Stepping boldly in front of the truck, the sheriff tried to talk some sense into the furious men, when several cars careered into the town across the Huckleberry Bridge, the vehicles packed full of people like rolling sardine cans. The armed mobs of townsfolk converged on the Swifty Mart just as the strangers were smashing open the control box to make the pumps work without paying. The sheriff fired a warning shot into the air, the out-of-towners drew guns, and the seasoned hunters mowed them down with a concentrated volley of high-velocity steel-jacketed rounds.
Afterward, it was discovered that many of the new arrivals had died with the safety catch still engaged on their weapons, as if they had never fired a gun before. Oddly, one of them carried the pistol of a state highway patrolman.
Inside the convoy of cars, the sheriff found a couple of people wrapped in blankets, too weak to move, coughing up blood, with their hair falling out. Since they had done nothing wrong, the poor souls were taken to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, where the doctors soon confirmed that all of them were dying of radiation sickness.
In the hushed still of the snowy winter night, the townsfolk of Cascade heard from the dying people about the nuclear war. Washington was gone, blown off the face of the earth, and there had been hits in or around New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, every place that anybody had ever heard about. What small towns remained, the rampaging mobs were raiding for food. People were turning against one another.
Madness filled the streets, and guns were being bought at unbelievable prices, one man trading a gasoline truck for a revolver and a box of ammunition. He ran off only minutes before the screaming mob arrived to steal the gas and ruthlessly kill the lone policeman who bravely tried to stop them. The hospitals were filled with the dying, fires raged unchecked, police were overwhelmed and the military was decimated. The rule of law was gone. It was dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle.
As a light snow fell from the stormy sky, Mayor Gordon called an emergency town meeting while the sheriff got his deputies and used their patrol cars to block the bridge. Aside from an abandoned mining road that even at the best of times required a major four-wheel drive to traverse, the Huckleberry Bridge was the only way in or out of the isolated farming community.
However, the meeting barely got started before gunshots rang out, followed by the dull thud of a distant explosion. Hurrying outside, the townsfolk paused on the snowy streets at the sight of the thick plumes of smoke rising from the direction of the bridge. Charging over on foot, they found the sheriff and his deputies dead in the street, right next to a school bus for the Central City Wildcats. The bus was full of canned food, guns, ammunition, medical supplies and a dozen dead men still wearing their prison uniforms. The cops and the convicts had died killing one another, the last man bleeding to death alone on the road in the strobing lights of the patrol cars.
Declaring martial law, Mayor Gordon impounded the bus and all of the supplies, dispatching them to the VFW hall for temporary storage. The bodies were sent to the hospital morgue. Then every small child was sent home with their mother, the men and single women standing guard on the Huckleberry River Bridge, while farmers hauled over bales of hay to form a wall across the bridge as a temporary barrier. A trucker named MacIntyre who lived in the town between hauls suggested draping the bales with barbed wire and backing them with parked cars, so that folks couldn’t smash through or climb over. The mayor offered him the job of sheriff on the spot. MacIntyre agreed, hesitating for a moment before pinning the bloody badge of the fallen sheriff to his plaid shirt. Then he strapped on the gunbelt.
Reinforcing the barricade as best they could, the sheriff and the army of deputies prepared for the fight of their lives, gathering everything that could be used as a makeshift weapon: crowbars, fire axes, chainsaws and matlocks.
Dawn was just starting to lighten the eastern sky when the armada arrived, the terrified people riding in cars, taxicabs, station wags, limousines, fire trucks, police cars, motorcycles, anything that could roll. The staggering array of vehicles was covered with a bizarre assortment of possessions, as if the drivers had simply grabbed whatever was handy and tied it to the roof. One car was stuffed completely full of money, the driver behind the wheel hysterically laughing nonstop, his eyes wide with insanity.
Using a bullhorn from behind the barricade, Sheriff MacIntyre denied the outsiders access into town and was immediately shot by a crazy wo
man dressed in filthy rags and diamond jewelry. The wound sent him to a knee, but the sheriff blew her open like a can of spaghetti with a Remington 12-gauge. That started an all-out battle between the townsfolk and the invaders. The fight lasted for three bloody hours, and when it was over, what remained of the invaders streamed back over the hill and out of sight.
Recovering their dead, the sheriff had the barricade taken down, and everything on the opposite side that was of any conceivable use was appropriated: cars, shoes, guns, knives and forks. Then the barricade went back up just in time as more invaders came over the hill. Once more, they were forced to retreat, but again they returned, larger, stronger and more savage than before.
Three more times the insane mob was repelled, but they kept returning, ever stronger, more wild and desperate.
Finally the sea of people broke through the barricade to find only the sheriff left alive. As they poured across the bridge, the bleeding man lowered his handgun and fired at a wooden box lying amid the dead and the dying.
The dynamite was only farming grade, sixty proof, designed for blowing up tree stumps and cracking boulders. But the one hundred sticks obliterated the Huckleberry River Bridge, along with all of the invaders. When the smoke cleared, the carnage spread for over half a mile.
Working fast, the mayor directed the people of Cascade to erect a new barricade on their side of the gorge, an orderly array of cars and trucks all facing the destroyed bridge as if trying to get across. The corpses of the people from the hospital morgue were placed behind the steering wheels. Next, every light in town was turned off, piles of rubbish were set on fire at strategic locations and the townsfolk waited, praying to God and loading their rifles.
Only a few hours later, more dying strangers arrived, saw the destroyed bridge, the cars of dead people on the other side of the deep gorge and turned away, too tired and hungry to do anything but keep running toward some imaginary salvation.
That evening the first of the ash storms began, the black flakes covering the wintry landscape and turning clean white snow into a dense gray mud. But that only served to aid the illusion, making Cascade seem as desolate and ruined as every place else. As the sky darkened and incredible storms filled the heavens, the townsfolk stayed hidden for months, moving only when absolutely necessary. Eventually, there were no more survivors from the big cities, and the cleaning began, a systematic purge to remove every trace of the town’s existence from anybody standing on the Edge of the World.
Billboards and street signs were removed, then the curving road itself torn to pieces, carried away by hand in wheelbarrows. Telephone poles were cut down, water towers lowered, the tower for the radio station disassembled, and the high-tension power lines from the dam buried underground. Soon, there was nothing visible past the dense pine tree forest.
Preparing for what was coming, the people of Cascade quickly built greenhouses and planted crops just in time before the brutal arrival of the long nuclear winter, and any further work had to be suspended for years until the world began to have seasons once more.
During the decades of darkness, an occasional straggler would wander into Cascade from the mountain trails. If the newcomer possessed useful skills, such as bricklaying or plumbing, or was a healthy woman, he or she was allowed to stay; if not, the person was summarily executed. The people of Cascade were not soldiers, and the town was not a fortress. They simply could not stop the never-ending tidal wave of humanity blindly streaming across the countryside. That was flat-out impossible. But they could hide, and let the starving thousands of diseased killers go elsewhere to rape and loot other towns on their way to a slow, painful death by radiation poisoning.
Over time, the townsfolk learned a new way of life, keeping careful books on who married whom to avoid any potentially devastating effects of inbreeding. The old coal mine was reopened to produce coal oil for the lamps and fertilizer for the greenhouses. Then the exhausted tunnels were painstakingly expanded into subterranean workshops to produce fuel, tools, medicine and weapons. Trapping became prevalent, and people started wearing a lot of fur and leather. Children were taught to recycle everything, and elderly people trapped pigeons to raise them in coops for the nitrogen-rich waste products that could easily be converted into black powder and eventually a crude form of gunpowder.
To save precious ammunition, folks became good shots with crossbows, and armed guards walked the city streets at night to keep a careful watch for any of the winged muties that sometimes made it across the gorge, horrible, twisted things, living nightmares that flew fast and killed even faster.
Life became harder, tougher and more crude. Belt knives became as commonplace as wristwatches had been before the war, boots replaced sneakers and every home had a fully functioning fireplace out of sheer necessity.
However, the schools remained open, and when the old textbooks began to wear out, the town elders found a way to make paper and ink, and new editions were crudely printed. There were still organized baseball games, church socials, community theater, a Fourth of July picnic and a winter pageant decorated with both menorahs and a manger. Everybody used soap, everybody could read, there hadn’t been a rape in over a century, and most folks died in their beds of old age.
“TO DIE IN BED, that alone is worth killing for,” the mayor muttered, trying to steel herself for the coming task. Thomas Paine once said that the tree of liberty needed to be watered with the blood of patriots now and then. True words, indeed. If this was her day, so be it. That was part of her job as the mayor of the town.
Pulling out her Cascade Deluxe, the woman dutifully checked the load in the 9-shot cylinder, then closed it with a practiced snap of her wrist. They had to be ready. Everybody in town had to be ready for whatever was coming. A convoy was on the way!
All too soon, it would be time for the Harvest.
Chapter Twelve
The air was thick and heavy above the polluted lake, the water almost gelatinous with oily waves lapping the barren shoreline. Scattered among the pitted rocks were animals skeletons, mostly birds fallen from the sky, and irregular piles of rust that may have once been machinery of some kind, but at this point that was purely speculation.
As the UCV rolled along, the companions covered their mouths with handkerchiefs in an automatic gesture, in spite of the fact that at the first burning whiff the vehicle had slammed shut every air vent and window. There was no smell of the lake, but being this close to the toxic chems made the companions’ skin itch anyway. There were no animals in sight, no birds or stingwings in the sky, no signs of life. There was only the horrid lake and the distant glow of a hot rad pit behind a low mountain range. It was as if they were the last humans alive.
“Yeah, it’s a bomb,” J.B. said, lowering his knife. The cut he had just made in the cushion from the bottom of the duffel bag showed a small radio receiver wired to two sticks of dynamite. “Clever little thing, I must say.”
“Why they try boobie?” Jak demanded from behind his mask.
“I’d guess the bomb was just insurance,” J.B. said, detaching the wires and tucking the dynamite into his munitions bag. “In case we tried to use the brass on them to get more.” Rolling down the window, he tossed away the cushion. It sailed off to land in a puddle and sink from sight.
“Fragging Roberto,” Jak growled. “No, was probably Jessica. From what told, she triple hard.” The implied insult angered the youth, then he remembered a line from some oldie play that Doc liked to quote about smiling villains. True enough. A show of teeth usually only meant that the other fellow was getting ready to bite.
“Can’t really blame them for taking precautions,” Mildred said from behind the wheel.
“I can,” Ryan said, adjusting the cloth over his face. “A trader is no damn good if he can’t tell who to trust.”
“Amen to that, brother,” J.B. said. “I just wish that we could test the Fifty. Until we fire off some of that brass, we’d better not count on it working.”
; “But we did fire off a round,” Krysty said, strips of fabric wrapped tight around her mouth. “Well, we fired off one round, but it worked.” She paused. “Unless you think a couple of cartridges might be live and the rest dummies filled with dirt.”
“It’s unlikely,” Ryan admitted. “A trader only does business on the rep of his word. Then again, he might consider me a special case.”
“I also opened the last cartridge on each belt,” J.B. added. “It was filled with silvery powder, not crude black powder, or the dull gray of gunpowder, and when I touched it with a match, the stuff flashed, but there was no smoke.”
“Silvery and smokeless,” Ryan mused. “That sounds like predark military propellant, all right. I half expected them to give us black powder or old cordite.”
“What about the primers?” Mildred asked.
“Primers seemed okay. I tossed the empty brass into a campfire, and they cooked off after a couple of moments,” J.B. replied succinctly. “As near as I can tell, that brass is live.”
Then the Armorer frowned. “Only thing I’m worried about is this remote control. Being able to fire the Fifty from inside the vehicle is a sweet deal, but there’s no way of telling if the damn sights are still aligned. We could aim for a stickie and easily end up shooting nothing but sky.”
“Guess we’ll find out eventually,” Ryan replied philosophically. “You never have to wait in a convoy before something tries for a jack.”
“You got that right, old buddy.”
Slowly leaving the rocky shore of the toxic lake behind, the UCV reached a wide expanse of white soil, the heavy tires leaving wide depressions in the ground. The soft material wasn’t sand, or even ash, but simply dead earth as devoid of life as the surface of the moon. The deadly fumes wafting off the lake apparently had a considerable reach, as the sterile zone extended for hundreds of yards, only slowly darkening to a normal color, and then tiny tufts of grass appeared like tropical islands in a smooth black sea.