Shadow Sun Survival

by Dave Willmarth

  Luther stammered, still absorbing the magic display. “Why… why are you so willing to take us in? We don’t have anything of value to bring with us.”

  Sam shook his head. “You are valuable. You and your people. We need to work together to survive this year and claim as much of Earth as we can before the alien overlords who kidnapped us take over. We need every willing soul to make that happen.”

  Luther looked blankly at them. Meg asked, “Have you not seen the information about how they moved Earth and all that?” Luther and George both shook their heads.

  Allistor sighed. “Alright, before dinner you should have all your people read this.” He went on to explain to them where to find the information on their interface. Both men’s faces paled as they read. As soon as they were done they got up and began circulating among their people, instructing them as they’d been instructed. The place became more and more quiet as people sat and read.

  Allistor spent the rest of the afternoon talking with George and Luther as Sam and Meg began preparing dinner, and Amanda went back to administering to the health of the group.

  “We can fit everyone in the box truck if necessary,” Allistor was saying to George. “But it would be better if we could grab a working vehicle or two from around here. Ideally something like a camper or a school bus.”

  George grinned at him. “Take your pick. We got both. More than one of each, actually. There are buses about a mile from here, parked behind the elementary school. And an RV lot not five miles away.” He looked around, then pointed at a woman up on the wall. “Katie there used to work there. She’ll know where they kept the keys.”

  Allistor had visions of selling off a whole lot’s worth of RVs on the market. He’d settle for just one, for now. “Does this mean you’re going with us?”

  The two men looked at each other. George spoke for them. “Yeah. I mean, we’ll take a vote tonight after dinner. But most all of us have decided to go. A few may want to stay behind, but I don’t think they’ll have the stones to do it alone. Evan’s people are still out there.”

  Allistor got to his feet. “In that case, how about we go get a couple of those RV’s right now? I’ll drive. You two can come along. Do we need to bring Katie? Or can she just tell us where to look?”

  Ten minutes later the three men were in Meg’s pickup and headed out of town. Before they’d even gotten halfway to the RV lot, Allistor spotted a landscaper’s trailer in front of a house along the road. It had two commercial-sized riding mowers on it, and several leaf blowers and weed whackers hung on its sides.

  Allistor pulled into the driveway. “Help me unload this stuff. We can hitch up the trailer and use it to haul back whatever personal items your people want to bring with them.

  The three men had the job done in no time and were back on the road in less than ten minutes with the trailer rolling along behind them. When they reached the RV lot, Allistor said, “Let’s take two of the biggest, fanciest ones we can find.” The father and son grinned in agreement, and they got to work.

  Katie had given them keys to the office, and they let themselves in. There was a sales area with brochures full of shiny images and spec sheets. Luther went to Katie’s desk and found an inventory sheet that listed the makes and models of everything on the lot, along with the prices. Not wanting to spend a ton of time on research, they picked the two most expensive vehicles on the list. Allistor found a brochure for that make and model and grabbed it. The info would help him with his market listing.

  Luther located the keys, as well as a key to the gas pump behind the office. He also grabbed a hand pump with a hose, since the power was out. He and George located the two RVs and pulled them around to the pump. It took some finagling, but they managed to fill both vehicles’ tanks. Allistor had them fill four 55-gallon metal drums with fuel as well and rolled them onto the trailer. It was rare to be able to forage so much gas at once.

  George dropped the pump keys through a slot in the office door, and they were off. He took the lead, followed by Luther. Allistor brought up the rear in the pickup. They didn’t make any stops on the way back, not wanting to push their luck. The gates opened for them as they approached, then closed behind them as friends and neighbors whistled and cheered at the fancy vehicles. George especially had a good time showing off the top of the line luxury features.

  One of them was set up as a standard sleeper camper, with a bedroom in the back, small bathroom, kitchen, and dining/seating area. There were four captain’s seats in the front. It could comfortably seat eight or ten people as they rode. The other one was more of a tour bus style, with the same four captain’s seats up front, but long benches along either side in the middle. There was still a small kitchen and bathroom in the back. And two fold-out bunks on either side about two-thirds of the way back.

  Between the two, they could comfortably transport all of Luther’s people. And even let some of them sleep inside overnight. Allistor decided finding a school bus wasn’t necessary.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent loading up people’s belongings. Both RVs had huge storage capacities, their sides lined with doors that opened to reveal capacious compartments for gear. They were filled with bedrolls and suitcases, anything that wouldn’t do well out in the rain. The trailer was loaded with crates and plastic containers filled with everything from photo albums to household appliances. There were bags of guns and ammo, boxes of valuables looted from the town that could be sold or traded. Two wooden chests full of kid’s toys were loaded up as well.

  George had some people strap large tarps and tents to the rails atop the RVs. Then they pulled a trailer from one of the garages that held two snowmobiles. That was hooked to the back of his RV. Allistor laughed at that. The thought of getting around in winter snow hadn’t even occurred to him. It was late summer still, and he hadn’t thought that far ahead. They’d have to find a few more before the snows came. This close to the mountains, winter was no joke.

  The last surprise George sprung on Allistor came after dinner.

  They’d gathered everyone together for the meal, leaving the walls unguarded for a time. Meg and Sam had served four giant roasts with potatoes, carrots, and onions. As folks ate their dinners, Allistor explained to all of them about their new world. How attributes worked, ways to obtain skills and level them up. He let Amanda talk about how healing worked, and her discovery of the tiny nanobots, or whatever they were. Allistor convinced Dillon to be his lovely assistant, telling the boy to get up and run. When he was a few steps away, Allistor hit him with Restraint and the boy froze mid-stride. When Allistor canceled the spell, Dillon stumbled and fell, causing the other kids to laugh and point. Allistor targeted the most obnoxious of those kids and levitated him up out of his seat. Not letting him down until he apologized.

  When the food was gone and the lessons were done, George motioned for Allistor to follow him. They stepped inside a gas station, then turned into the attached garage. Allistor took one look at what was inside and whistled. “Damn, George! With this you could have taken out Evan and all his guys.”

  George shook his head. “Only if I could have gotten it up on the wall somehow. We didn’t want to risk opening the gates long enough to use it.”

  Inside the garage was a military Humvee. Painted in desert camouflage, it was fully armored and had a fifty caliber machine gun mounted on its roof. When George opened the rear hatch, Allistor saw the back was filled with ammo cans. “Where did you get this?”

  George looked slightly uncomfortable. “There was a train wreck right after it all happened. The tracks are five miles north of here, but we heard it and saw the smoke. A few of us went to investigate. There were a bunch more of us back then. The killing hadn’t started. Anyway, when we got there, we saw the train was loaded with tanks and vehicles and artillery batteries. Most of them were damaged or half buried. But there were a couple of these babies still intact on a flatbed. We rolled this one down and brought it back.”

  Allistor
looked alarmed. “Did Evan and his guys get the rest?” He didn’t like the idea of facing an angry bunch of guys with machine guns when they left.

  George shook his head. “As far as we know, they don’t even know the wreck is there.” Their place is south of us. Don’t think they ventured that far. At least, not yet.

  Allister’s pulse was racing. “Were any of the artillery still intact?

  George stroked his chin. “Maybe? I mean, I didn’t look all that close. They were all spilled off their rail cars. Might be one or two?”

  Allistor hugged the man, lifting him off his feet. “With those, we could even kill a titan! Or the big-ass turtle we have to pass on the way home. Let’s go see if Sam knows how to fire cannons!”

  George snorted at him. “Son, I was fightin’ in the dirt ‘n’ snow before Sam was a glimmer in his daddy’s eye. Artillery can’t be all that different now. Between us, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

  Allistor practically pulled the old man out of the garage, yelling for Sam. When they filled him in, the old marine started laughing. “Oh, hell yeah! Let’s go find us some big guns!”

  They unhitched the trailer from the pickup and emptied its bed. Then Sam and George got in the pickup, and Allistor and two other men followed them in the box truck. All of the food and equipment from the back had been transferred into the RVs.

  Twenty minutes after exiting the gates, they turned onto a gravel railroad access road that runs alongside the tracks. Ten minutes after that they came upon the wrecked train. The sun was lowering in the sky, leaving them maybe an hour of daylight. Allistor practically flew from the truck and began to make his way past twisted metal and burned grass.

  George led him to where he’d seen the overturned artillery. The flatbed they’d been on had tilted nearly ninety degrees, dumping its load onto the gravel road. Behind it, there were three cars that were more or less intact, just tilted on two wheels. Allistor noted a couple dozen grave markers near the tree line. George saw him looking. “Yeah, we buried all the bodies we could find.”

  Allistor focused on the downed cannons. Sam informed him that they were 105mm Howitzers as he petted one and practically drooled on it. They worked together to roll the nearest one onto its wheelbase. Sam went over it quickly, pointed to something that Allistor didn’t recognize but was obviously bent, and then shook his head. “Nope. Can’t fix this. There are probably parts in one of these cars, but we don’t have time to search for them.”

  They moved on to the next one, which Sam pronounced in good condition. Two more were badly damaged, the barrel of one having been partially sheared off by a train wheel. The final one they inspected also met with Sam’s approval.

  While Sam had been checking out the Howitzers, George had disappeared. When Allistor went looking for him, calling his name, George shouted, “Over here!” He ducked under some wreckage and turned back toward the tracks, following the sound. He found George standing in a field on the other side of the train. He was looking down the incline at another Humvee. “If we can get that one on its feet, it might run. Doesn’t look damaged.”

  Allistor agreed. This one didn’t have the gun mounted on the top, but otherwise, it was identical to the other. It had clearly fallen off and rolled a few times, but the armor was only slightly dented. It lay on its passenger side. Allistor shouted for Sam, and the two of them together managed to roll the vehicle back onto its tires. It bounced a few times, the metal frame groaning in complaint. But when George got in and pushed the starter, the engine coughed a few times, then started up. The group cheered as he drove it around the wreck and back up the gravel road next to the pickup.

  They spent another ten minutes hooking up the Howitzer trailers to the pickup and the Humvee. Then they began exploring the train. Sam pointed out that the big guns did them no good without ammunition.

  The third of the three cars that were still on the tracks near the back had what they needed. Crates upon crates, each with two rounds suspended on wood rails inside and packed with foam. One of the guys backed the box truck up as close as they could to the train car and they formed a line to pass the crates down. Sam took the front of the line, carefully lifting each crate so that others didn’t fall. They loaded sixty crates into the box truck before he declared that moving any more of them could be dangerous. That was fine with Allistor. More than a hundred rounds of 105mm badassery meant that the Warren could hold its own against pretty much anything.

  A search of the other cars turned up a few crates of M16’s and ammo, two large crates each containing a dozen antipersonnel mines, and about a thousand MREs. They also found more than a hundred sets of desert BDUs in various sizes. Allistor insisted they take these as well. If they didn’t fit the survivors, he was sure Lilly could make good use of the durable fabric.

  The setting sun took away their light, so they abandoned their search and hopped in the trucks. Allistor was a little nervous as he pulled away in the box truck loaded with giant bullets full of explosives. But once his pulse-rate normalized, he began to fantasize about shooting titans in the face. He imagined George and Sam in one of the Humvees comparing notes on firing the big guns. Having never been in the military, he bowed to their experience.

  Back at the Stronghold, the survivors all gathered around, eyes wide as the two cannons rolled down the street. The Humvee that Sam was driving turned halfway around so that the gun behind it was pointed southward. The two old men got out of the truck laughing.

  Allistor approached, pretty sure he knew what they were planning. When he asked, George held up a binder. “This here manual says the gun has a range of about eight miles. Evan’s base is just about ten miles in that direction.” He pointed in the same direction as the Howitzer. “Me and Sam had a chat on the way back. We figure we should test fire this bad boy before we hit the road. I mean, to make sure it’s okay.”

  The moment he stopped talking, half a dozen men and every single kid in hearing range volunteered to help. Chuckling to himself, Allistor left them to it. He could learn how to fire the things later. He wanted to spend some quality time with Amanda.

  Luther had graciously given them a small house near the wall to sleep in. It had running water, but no electricity. Allistor found her sitting on the sofa in the living room, reading a well-worn magazine by candlelight. He sat next to her for a while, just relaxing and enjoying the quiet. At least, until a cannon blast shattered the silence about ten minutes later. She looked up in alarm, and he explained what they’d found, finishing with, “So, they just sent a warning shot toward whoever is left of Evan’s crew.” Amanda rolled her eyes. Snuggling up against his chest, she closed her eyes. He did the same. He and Amanda had claimed the smaller of the two bedrooms in the house, but they never used it. They slept through the night right there on the sofa.

  *****

  Chapter Eleven

  RVs and BFGs

  They rose early in the morning. Meg and Sam already had breakfast ready. Simple bacon, sausage, and oatmeal. The kids were given some fruit to help with the malnutrition.

  Sam and George had discussed the roadblocks, and George had produced maps taken from the gas station. They were full atlas books, with maps of every state. They put one in each of the RVs and Sam took one with an alternate route marked on it in the lead Humvee. He’d chosen to take the one with the gun on top. Meg rode with him, hoping for the chance to blast something.

  As the sun rose, everyone loaded into one of the vehicles, and they opened the gates. One of Luther’s men closed them behind the convoy as they left, not wanting the place to get overrun by critters. Then he ran to the top of the wall and lowered himself down atop of one of the RVs. A minute later, they were on their way. A convoy of two RVs, two Humvees, a winery truck, three pickups, and trailers pulling snowmobiles and ATVs along with two cannons in tow. Allistor felt a twinge as he thought how much his father would laugh at the sight.

  They kept a faster pace on the way back, now that they had some idea of th
e condition of the roads. No creature in its right mind would attack such a large noisy convoy, so they worried less about attacks.

  A quick stop at the house where’d they’d stopped before, and the group made short work of loading up the rest of the jars from the cellar. Others searched the house and barn for anything useful, and they were soon on their way again. They took side roads to avoid the two large pile-ups, and it was only mid-afternoon when they reached the ancient shellback’s lake.

  Sam and George, two twelve-year-olds in the bodies of old men, had devised a plan to deal with the monster. They stopped the convoy well short of the lake and gathered everyone together. Meg began sending out party invites to every single survivor there, including the kids. Sam and George unhitched both Howitzers and placed them on the road in front of the lead Humvee. Each of them chose three people to serve as their ‘gun crew’, and spent a little time showing each one what to do. The gun required one person sighting, one to load, one to feed rounds to the loader, and a crew chief that directed the others and actually pulled the trigger.

  The sighting bit was different than normal. Usually, there would be map coordinates for a target miles away. The person sighting needed to know complicated formulas for aiming the weapon to hit that spot. But in this case, they were going to be shooting a target the size of a tank from a couple hundred yards away. Sam sighted in both guns on a spot in the median. The same spot where it had gotten bogged down the other day.

  Their plan was simple. They had volunteered Allistor to take one of the ATVs down the road to attract the shellback’s attention. When it charged at him, he’d gun his engine and get out of its way as it sped across the road into the median. When it slowed down to turn and pursue him, the two big guns would fire. Meg was up in the gunner’s port ready to fire the .50 caliber machine gun. And everyone except the small children had rifles ready. Everyone had instructions that if the big guns didn’t take it down, they were to jump into the vehicles and haul butt as fast as they could while Allistor or one of the smaller vehicles distracted it.