Filling in the Cracks
Book 4
By
Thomas W. Larson
Part of The Event Series
@ Copyright March, 2016
All rights reserved
Acknowledgement
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have helped in the creation of this work. It has been a rewarding and challenging effort. First of all, a thank you to Marianne Stefanov and Ariana Patterson for being involved in the project. Also, Beth Burke, a big thank you for the help in proof reading and keeping me from going too far astray in the story. You all were so much help.
This is the disclaimer:
Aka the fine print
Although a number of locations in this story are real, the people involved in the story are all fictitious and do not really exist except in my mind, and now maybe yours. Any similarity to a person living or dead is strictly coincidence.
Preface
Almost four years ago I set out on an adventure of the imagination that took me to places that I have seen before as well as places I have not. In that time I have created persons, places and things that are now part of me. It has been a wonderful and rewarding experience.
In the end, when The Event Trilogy was completed and published I still felt that there were some parts and pieces missing. This work was designed to fill in those pieces and perhaps bridge some of those gaps.
Enjoy,
Tom
Unexpected Visit
It was an awesome day; I spent much of it out on the Harley Road King Classic. It is a 2008, but still, an old friend, a means of freedom and a time to think. I had done the southern route of my drive stopping at the Flanders Fish House for an order of fried clams, not as good as the ones from the Summer Shack at the Mohegan Sun, but they probably were about $400.00 cheaper because I didn’t drop a bunch of money into the $5.00 slot machines. On the way home I overshot it a little and rolled into the parking lot of the Starbucks on Pleasant Valley Road. I had a hankering to sit and enjoy an iced green tea with lemonade, vente.
I settled down at a table outside the shop, it was warm and sunny and this was their quiet time of the afternoon so there were only a few people coming in and out of the shop. As I sipped the cooling drink I sat thinking about the ride, the fresh mowed fields of the farms, the smell of the pines from the forests, and pungent odor of the road kill that I had passed along the way. I wondered if there was a muse waiting in those sights and smells. I had finished the books of my trilogy, and now I needed a new writing project.
I drifted deeper and deeper into my own little world, really rather oblivious to the surroundings other than to notice and chuckle at the cars trying to exit the parking lot by means of using the wrong way of the one way entrance road.
“Tom, you’re Tom Larson, the writer.”
I was jarred back to reality by someone saying my name; it was an Asian woman, pretty, about 35 years. I knew her, but I did not know how or from where. She was small, the naval BDUs she wore struck me as odd, but they matched the military air about her.
“Hi, ah, I, I’m sorry…..” I sputtered; my mind drew a blank as to a name.
“Asuna,” she replied.
I stood up, “I’m sorry; I should have… sit down, please.” I saw she already had a Frappuccino of some type.
“Thank you,” she said as she joined me.
I was still at a loss. As I said, there was something familiar about her, even alluring. I guess I have always had a thing for Asian girls, women, a waifu kind of thing. And if I had ever had the chance back in my younger days this was the kind of woman I would have found as perfect.
“Tom, they sent me to talk with you.”
“They?” I asked, this was kind of getting weird.
“The others, you haven’t finished, you haven’t completed the world, our world yet, there are things out there that aren’t done, you owe us,” She replied.
“I’m sorry, I am kind of at a loss here, I owe? I haven’t finished? What do you mean?”
Just then the door to the Starbucks opened and banged my chair without even an apology. I shifted, looking at the door to see who had come through the door and jostled me. When I turned back I was alone at the table. I stood and scanned the parking lot, there was no ‘Asuna’, just me, and a large woman in black yoga pants. She was the one who burst through the door and now was climbing into her silver BMW.
I sat, no, more like flopped back into my chair. I looked at my watch; it was later than I thought by about 30 minutes. Had I fallen asleep? Had Asuna…..shit…she was the woman, the one from the Event, the story I wrote. What did she mean, I owed them.
I did not sleep well that night, images, stories and ideas that had come to mind while writing my trilogy came back. Asuna, she, and the others are still here, in my mind and there are still adventures and details to share.
Uncle Elgin
It was another day out on the Harley, the weather was great, warm, but not hot. The skies were sunny and the roads were open and not very busy. In the course of the ride I thought about the dream from the other day where I had apparently fallen asleep at the tables outside Starbucks. I thought about the Asian girl, Asuna, a character from my books who had visited me. I wondered…
As I rode, it got to be a little after one o’clock and there were pangs of hunger reminding me I had a light breakfast. I found myself on Route 10 in Southington, my old hometown. I decided that while I was close I would stop at this little restaurant called Saints. It was named after the old owner, Bob St. something or another.
I rolled up. It was a little after the lunch rush, it was kind of quiet with only a couple of construction workers seated at the lunch counter. I overheard snatches of their conversation as I walked by, something about how the union and the company were screwing them and that their new contract negotiations were not going well.
I took a booth near the back of the dining area and pulled out the menu. I looked at it but I already knew I would be having my usual, two hotdogs, one with chili, mustard and onions, and the other with mustard, relish and onion. But even so, while I waited for the waitress I stared blankly at menu.
He slid into the booth opposite me and settled in with grunts and groans, an older man, balding with a light comb-over. He was dressed in shabby plaid shorts and a Patriots T-shirt. He was thick through the neck and middle with that old man’s body, the spindly legs, and arms. I would guess he was in his mid-70s.
“Hi Tom, glad you could make it,” he said.
I don’t know how, but I knew, “Elgin, good to see you.”
“Yeah, it has been a while, you buying?”
“Sure,” I answered just as the waitress walked up.
“I will have 2 hotdogs, one with mustard, relish and onion, the other with chili, onions and mustard and a club soda with lemon or lime and my friend will have the scallops.” I told her.
She looked at me funny, I was not sure why.
“So I understand that you ran into a mutual friend of ours recently.” Elgin said, with a smile, “I am glad she caught up with you.”
“Well, it was kind of a surprise, and I am still not sure what it was all about, but it was good to see her, and now, you,” I replied, but I am not sure it was that good, it was weird, I will go with that.
“So do you have some questions for me? Do you want to know what parts you missed?” he asked.
Just then the waitress arrived and put my dogs in front of me, and the scallops on the other side of the table. It was odd, she never looked at Elgin, just set the plate down, and asked me if there would be anything else.
I
sat quiet for a minute or two staring at the plate of seafood and fries. Then finally I asked, “You’re not real are you, you’re an imaginary character from my story, right?”
He laughed, “Well, what is real, what’s imaginary, and can they co-exist? Philosophy is not my forte. But as far as you are concerned, I am real, heck; you ordered me scallops didn’t you.”
“I, well,” I stammered.
“Look, I’ll make this easy for you. I have some more of the story for you, and it fills some of the gaps that you left open. I mean at the time you wrote it the gaps were fine, but for me and the some of the other characters; we need a little closure too. We can’t deal with just the meteor hit the planet and everybody died. Some of us had parts that you did not put on the stage.”
I stared at him for a minute, and then said, “Okay, I guess you’re right, but what did I miss?”
“That’s better. Okay, for me, or about me, not so much, but there are a few things. I mean aren’t you curious about what happened from the time your group escaped Otis until when they came back to try to save us?”
Actually, I have never thought much about that, in the original timeline of the story it was not all that important, but there may be some readers who want to know.
“Okay, I think you may have a point there. But before that, why didn’t you go with Tom’s group, with your family?” I asked.
He looked at me for a moment, and then simply said “The Otis people were my family. Since I bought the place in the 80’s it was where I lived, who I saw and interacted day to day. Yeah, the group, Tom, Teckla, Nick were family by blood, but the Otis family, well there was a different bond there. Otis was my home. The house that was where I lived, had lived for 30 years; I was not going to just walk away from it.”
I thought about this for a minute, and then asked, “But you didn’t try to get them to stay, in fact you told them to get away, why?”
He laughed, “Well, it is what I will call the Williams factor. I knew the group, the blood family well enough to know that they would not fit at Otis. They were not going to be good little sheep and I knew that it would be a bad situation in the end with Nate and Barry.”
“What do you mean?”
Elgin looked around a second then stared straight at me. “See, Nate demanded absolute loyalty, his way or the highway. I could step around it because I was a known entity, but newcomers had to be able to fit in. I knew Tom wouldn’t, and Teckla, she would not go for it either.”
I just nodded my head, I understood, after all I had given life to those characters. His assessment was really pretty much right on target. Tom & Teckla would not have fit well. Nick, he probably could have but a definite not on the other two.
“That all makes sense I guess, but in the end it did not turn out so well,” I offered.
He looked down at his scallops, still untouched and then back up at me. “No, it didn’t. I expected more from Barry and Nate, I thought they were good for our group, the Otis people, but in the end they were not what we thought.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“A lot of it I found out later, when we were nearing the end. But let me back up a little. I will fill you in on what happened after they, the family, left, and where it all ended up.” He said.
He went on to detail about what had gone on. He told me that at first, in the first spring, the place, Otis, became a nice little Utopian society. They were able to raid some supermarkets and warehouses so that food was plentiful. All of those who could had to make what they called ‘home gardens’ that grew things like beans, corn, and other fruits and vegetables. The food was stored away and was distributed in a fair and reasonable manner. Everyone got a share of the food, and everyone did a share of the work needed to keep the place going.
Of course, there were some who did less physical work because they were administering what was needed in the community. I mean they kept up appearances, made it look like they were just part of the group. People like Nate, Barry, and a few others and to a lesser degree, he, Elgin all kind of slacked, he admitted.
It made kind of sense I thought.
Elgin went on that over that first summer the numbers at the camp and the lake area grew. They went from a couple hundred to a couple thousand, and in doing so the space and the food began to get a little thin. Foraging for food became a bigger and bigger issue as the teams that were searching for the food had to go further and further out into the region.
The demands on space became a problem also because there were those, and he admitted to being one of them, who did not like the idea of having his property overrun with squatters. By autumn it was bad. The woods around the lake had become a huge tent city. And as the tent city expanded, the area became less and less defensible.
Barry came up with the idea that it would be best if the ‘powers to be’ put together almost a kind of zoning thing. They created a grid, or community design that would put the ‘high value’ people in the safer areas.
“I’m sorry,” I had to stop him here, “What do you mean by high value?”
“Ah, those were the people who had skills, like medical people, or military people, those with knowledge that could help the community,” he said.
“And there were low value folks?”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “The old, the weak, those that the assignment committee felt were a drag on the community, the ‘expendables’ was what we called them.”
I let this sink in. I can sort of understand the concept. At the end of the world we would want to save the best and the brightest. It has been the theme of a lot of sci-fi movies and books. I just never considered that it would really come to that. But then, in writing this story I had also expected more from the government and the military.
Elgin picked back up telling me that it was where the problem with the ‘changers’ started (*Changers were the term that the Otis people used for the re-animated), but then said he was getting ahead of himself because before that happened, the changers, there was other stuff that happened.
Over time, a core group had developed, an elite little collection of the chosen, Nate, Barry, the Major (Bob Johnson), and a few, maybe thirty people who had it a little better than the rest. The good food, the wine, and the comfortable houses were theirs. They were across the lake from Elgin, on the north end, near the causeway. Although he was ashamed now to admit it, but yeah, he was one of them.
Orwell’s Pigs, I thought to myself.
As the supplies ran lower and lower there were some fires in the outer camps, the low value areas and people died when the camps were burned. The people who survived were turned out, really chased away from Otis. Nate was good at making them look like a big hazard and for the greater good he was able to get the rest of the community to turn against them. Those poor folks had to really leave or face some nasty….they would be killed, it was that simple.
I sensed that there was a true touch of remorse.
Elgin said that as time rolled on the scavenging teams began to suffer more attacks and casualties. In some cases teams never returned, in other incidents 20 people would go out and only 5 or 10 would return. But when they came back, they were always checked for bites or marks. Those who were bitten, or in any way damaged were removed from the community.
“What do you mean removed?” I asked.
He looked at me for a moment; I knew what he meant but I needed to hear it. He said the bitten were moved to a special area, a hospice, or so we told everyone, but in the end, they were killed. At first we would give them a shot, a kind or lethal injection, but as the meds ran out, Sal, a guy named Sal, a short Italian looking guy, an ex-marine, would come up behind them while they were sitting in the exam chair and smash their skull with a piece of rebar. Elgin said he never saw it happen, but heard about it. It was merciful, and for the most part it was just one hit.
“One of the mistakes we made was we were too slow getting to Westover and some of the police stations. We never
got enough guns or ammunition,” he told me.
He explained that although they had tried, they waited too long and others had cleaned out those places. They had some guns but not enough to arm more than 100 people and most of the weapons they had were small handguns or hunting rifles. They never came up with the military grade stuff that could have made a difference.
There was some training given by ‘Basher Sal’ on to how to defend oneself with a piece of pipe, or rebar, or in Elgin’s case an old antique sword that he had. Elgin also said that he had an old police 38, and a box of bullets, but in the end it was mostly the sword that he used on the hill.
“So bit by bit the community went sour?” I asked.
“Yeah, we had too many people, too little room, and not enough in supplies. It was just a ticking time bomb,” he replied.
“So what happened? What was that first bad thing?” I asked.
He looked at me hard, and then said “It was all bad”. He explained that as time passed it began with a horde of the changers that had followed a scavenging crew back from the Springfield area. The crew knew they were there, following them and tried to out run them, but it didn’t work. The changers hit the outer ring of the camp in a low value area and from there it was on. The horde grew, and spread. Elgin said he took charge of a bunch of people and tried to defend and hold the part of the area. He looked for support and help from Nate and Barry and their strike team, but they had run out, abandoned them. They had seen the handwriting on the wall and left the community. By that time the lake community was pretty much surrounded and locked in. The only way for survival at that point was to try to beat down the horde. A group tried to build an outpost at the hill on the little peninsula.
“We held, for a while, we called for help, tried to get Nate and his people to come back, they never answered. My nephew Tom and a bunch of people came and helped us. They flew in with a chopper and stopped the advance. It looked like we were going to be okay, but …..” He stopped talking for a moment, then, “A couple of the group had been bitten in the battle, or a couple of changers got through, or something, and it was over. I held on the best I could but in the end, I had the illness, I could feel it, it was hopeless. In the end, I used the 38.”
The Event Series (Book 4): Filling in the Cracks Page 1