The Wolves Within

by David Lucin

  Desolation 3: The Wolves Within

  Copyright © 2020 David Lucin

  www.authordavidlucin.com

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  ISBN: 978-1-9991458-7-3

  Cover art by Covers by Christian

  Cover typography by Deranged Doctor Design

  Table of Contents

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Ground Zero: A Desolation Novella

  Afterword

  About the Author

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  For more about me, my books, and the world of Desolation, visit my website:

  www.authordavidlucin.com

  1

  The only thing worse than night patrol was the fifth night patrol in a row.

  Jenn yawned and fantasized about crawling into bed. She and Sam had moved into one of the empty houses on Gary and Maria’s street. With little more than a mattress, two fold-out chairs, and a bedpan in the bathroom, the place wasn’t exactly home yet, but it gave them some much-needed privacy while keeping them close to family.

  She just wished he would stop calling it the “love shack.”

  Yawning again, she adjusted the AR-15 slung across her chest and made her way through a sea of ponderosas near the eastern edge of the Beaumonts’ property. She wore a black long-sleeve sweater, black exercise pants, and her black Diamondbacks cap. The air was crisp and chilly and smelled of pine. Above, the moon glowed red. Eight weeks had passed since the bombs, but still that familiar blanket of smoke, the remnants of cities from around the globe, hung high in the atmosphere. The world lived in perpetual shadow now. Jenn wondered if she’d ever see blue sky or stars again.

  Squinting, she strained to read her watch in the dark: 3:28 a.m. It was time to check in with Valeria, tonight’s shift leader. She pressed the talk button on her radio and spoke into the mic clipped to the neckline of her shirt. “Jenn for Val.”

  A half-second later, Val’s voice came through her earpiece. “Go ahead.”

  “All clear on the east.”

  If tonight had a positive, it was that Dylan, the Beaumont family’s new head of security, had assigned Jenn to this side of the property, where it was usually quiet. After the expedition to Phoenix, Sophie and Ed went to work. They hired dozens of additional farmhands, many of them refugees whom they paid in food, and oversaw the planting of as much corn, wheat, beans, lentils, and potatoes—all high-calorie crops—as possible until they ran out of seeds and soil. Ed also struck deals with his neighbors to farm on their land as well. Almost overnight, the Beaumonts became Flagstaff’s largest food producer and one of its most powerful organizations. That made them a target for theft. Thus, the security personnel.

  Dylan didn’t even ask Jenn to join his team. He didn’t need to. All he did was show up at the Ruiz house, crutches under his arms and still wounded from Phoenix, and say, “Jansen, got a job for you at the farm. Be there at six tomorrow.” She was there at five, ready to do whatever was needed. Within her first week, she’d learned how to use a rifle—properly this time, thanks to Val showing her and helping her practice. By her second week, she was patrolling on her own. It took a while for Sam to accept what she was doing, but eventually, he came around and stopped worrying. Gary was proud of her, and she liked to think her brothers would have been proud, too. Most of all, she was proud of herself. The men she killed in Payson and Phoenix were distant memories. If anything, they were reminders that she could do what was necessary to protect the people she cared about.

  “Copy,” Val said through the radio. “Your turn for break.”

  Jenn’s stomach rumbled as she thought about lunch. Or was it breakfast for her? Dinner? Whatever it was, all she had was half a potato, some beans, and a sliver of deer jerky. Growing up during the depression and then living through World War Three, Jenn was used to scarcity, but even during the worst times, she never went hungry. Now she was hungry by default. Before the bombs, breakfast usually comprised potatoes or toast and cheap powdered eggs. For lunch, she’d eat sandwiches with meat substitutes packed full of soy and a hundred ingredients she couldn’t pronounce. Dinners were the special meal of the day. If they had real meat, they’d eat it then. After nearly two months without power and no delivery trucks restocking the grocery stores, those meals seemed like fine cuisine. In New River, Lionel had promised a shipment of food and medicine from the federal government, but as of yet, nothing had come. Jenn was beginning to doubt it ever would.

  Mouth watering, she said to Val, “Break time. Copy that. Heading in now.”

  “And remember that your break is thirty minutes long,” Val added. “Take the whole thing for once. Don’t wharf down your food too fast and finish early.”

  “I think you mean wolf it down,” Jenn teased. “Not wharf.”

  “Yes, yes, this is what I said.”

  “You guys heard ‘wharf,’ right?” Jenn said to the other ten guards on the channel. “Because I’m pretty sure she said ‘wharf.’”

  “Can confirm,” one of them answered. “Heard ‘wharf.’”

  “Quiet,” Val scolded, but her tone was mostly playful. “Cut the chitchat. Jansen, go eat.”

  Downed branches snapped beneath her feet as she trekked toward the guest cabin, the spot where the guards stored their gear, suited up, and took their breaks. Trees closed in around her, and she batted at one as she passed. She loved the smell out here. It was fresh and natural and made her forget, if only for a minute or two, that tens of thousands of atomic bombs had reduced the world to cinders.

  In a chair on the cabin’s front deck sat Bryce Unwin, a hunting rifle across his lap and a black beanie pulled down over his ears. He was even bigger than Carter; his arms and thighs were like tree trunks, and his hands were the size of oven mitts. His round face was freshly shaved. Most men in town, Sam included, had let their beards grow, but Jenn had never seen Bryce with more than a faint five o’clock shadow. Maybe shaving was a habit that carried over from his days as a firefighter. Without running water, there wasn’t much for the fire department to do anymore. It still ran a skeleton staff, but most firefighters had left and found new ways to contribute. Bryce and two of his colleagues volunteere
d to join the security team, and Sophie was more than happy to have them, probably because they were a tough, reliable bunch who were used to working long hours.

  “Jansen,” he said with a slight nod. “What’s for lunch today? Burger and fries? Leftover spaghetti and meatballs?” He licked his lips. “No, wait, let me guess. Steak sandwich?”

  “Are you always thinking about food?” she asked and climbed up the two steps to the deck.

  He patted his belly. “What can I say? I’m a hungry boy.”

  “You’re really not doing yourself any favors by imagining steak sandwiches.” Jenn pushed open the door. “And don’t ask me to share my jerky again. You know the answer’s no.”

  He made a derisive sound with his lips. “Whatever, Jansen. Leave me to starve out here. See if I care.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and went inside. The cabin was dark, but she knew her way around by heart and found the dining room table. After laying her rifle aside and flicking on a battery-powered LED lantern, she fetched her Tupperware from a bank of cubbyholes built into the nearby wall, then flopped into a chair with a sigh. Her eyelids were heavy and she thought again about the warmth of her bed, but no matter how tired she was, she wouldn’t fall asleep, not for a second. This job was too important. Nicole had begun volunteering at the hospital, and Sam was working with Carter at Minute Tire, now the town’s only reliable public charging station. Jenn was the fighter of the family. Phoenix taught her that.

  Fork in hand, she cracked the lid on her Tupperware. In a world without refrigeration, salt was far too valuable as a preservative, so there was none on her potato. No butter or margarine, either. The only item in her lunch that had any flavor was the deer jerky—because that was where all the salt had gone—but it was only a few bites. In total, it amounted to maybe 350 calories. She’d eat no more than 1100 or 1200 today, well below what she would burn, especially considering that she spent eight hours per day on her feet. Funny how people like Sam’s mother used to count calories to lose weight; now they counted them to stay alive.

  When she finished, she still had twenty minutes left in her break, so she adjusted the lantern and opened her paperback: Rainwater by Madeline Bogaerts. The last time Jenn read a book for pleasure, she was in middle school, but without Internet, she was desperate for some kind of escape. It was Val’s, and she’d recommended it. The premise was absurd—a time-traveling historian from the distant future visiting early 2050s Seattle only to fall in love with a young, single mom who lived in modular housing—but Jenn couldn’t put it down. Sam laughed out loud when he first saw her reading it. He called it trashy romance. But it wasn’t trash. It was optimistic and heartwarming. And who was he to talk? The only thing he’d read since the bombs was the label on a shampoo bottle.

  The cabin door squeaked open. “Yo,” Bryce said. “I gotta use the facilities real quick. You mind covering for me outside?”

  “Just go in the bushes,” Jenn told him without looking up from her book.

  “The facilities, Jansen.”

  “Ah,” she droned, understanding. “Gotcha.” Her watch said 3:50. “Make it fast. I’m back out there in ten.”

  “Yeah, no worries.” He gave her a lazy two-fingered salute. “You’re the best.”

  Leaving the door open, he rushed away. Jenn reluctantly packed up Rainwater and her Tupperware, then switched off the lantern. Outside, she leaned against the banister and breathed in. It was still cool at night, cooler than usual for July. Gary had expected as much, thanks to the smoke in the stratosphere. “Nuclear winter,” he’d called it. The term made Jenn shiver. She’d heard it before, of course, but always imagined a science fiction world of endless radioactive tundra. The reality was less dramatic but equally as frightening. Gary likened nuclear winter to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The actual asteroid impact didn’t wipe them out; what killed them was centuries of global cooling caused by dust and ash swirling the globe and blocking out sunlight. Hopefully he was wrong and it would warm up in the summertime so the farms could—

  Snap.

  The sound came from her right. Her training took over, and silently, she dropped to a knee behind the banister and readied her rifle, holding her breath and listening. No way Bryce would be back already, not if he was doing what Jenn thought he was doing. And even if he was, he’d walk along the gravel driveway to the outhouse, not trek through the woods. An animal likely wasn’t wandering past, either; the forests around town had mostly been hunted dry.

  Snap.

  Jenn’s pulse kicked up a notch. Someone must be out there. Would-be thieves usually snuck into the fields where the food grew, but occasionally, they would try the house or the cabin. Only last week, in the middle of the night, two people attempted to break into the underground pit the Beaumonts used to store meat. One of the guards caught them while on her way to use the outhouse.

  She peered through the banisters circling the deck but only made out the vague shapes of pine trees. No movement. That didn’t mean she was alone. Protocol was to call for backup if she heard or saw anything suspicious, and she wasn’t going to take any chances, so she whispered into her radio, “Possible contact at the cabin. No visual.”

  Val’s response was immediate: “Maggy, Yannick.”

  Nobody answered, but Jenn knew they were coming. Val would be, too.

  In the dark and with her black clothes, Jenn should be mostly invisible, especially behind these banisters. So she remained motionless and focused on the woods beyond the deck.

  Still nothing.

  As she was beginning to think she’d imagined those sounds, a woman, faintly illuminated by the orange moon, crept out from the trees. Had she been hiding out there, waiting for Bryce to run off? Did she somehow not know Jenn was here as well?

  A bead of sweat rolled off her forehead. Instinct told her to pop up and shout, Stop! Hands up and get on your knees! But she knew better than that. There could be more than one person out here.

  Staying low, the woman crept forward. Each movement was careful, deliberate, like a single wrong step would trigger a landmine. A messy ponytail swung back and forth as she twisted her head left and right. Jenn didn’t see a weapon. She thought about updating Val and the others by telling them that she’d spotted an apparently unarmed and lone intruder, but another whisper might give away her position.

  The woman was close—and coming for the cabin, almost certainly in search of food. Despite assurances from the mayor and the police that everyone in Flagstaff would receive free rations, people were apprehensive about the future, particularly the winter. There was work to be done, sure, like at the Beaumonts’ farm, but every seed in Flagstaff was already in the ground, meaning there was a hard cap on how much could be grown and a limit on how many jobs were available in farming. Really, unemployment now was far worse than at the height of the depression. To supplement their meager supplies, then, some around town had turned to theft.

  Adjusting her grip on the rifle, Jenn tensed her leg muscles and prepared to leap to her feet, but the woman stopped mid-stride and went stone still. She was staring right at Jenn. Then, after a long, stressful second, she spun on her heel and took off in the opposite direction.

  Jenn acted without thinking: “Hold it!” she cried, her rifle’s sights square on the woman’s back. “Drop to your knees or I’ll shoot!”

  She didn’t want to fire on this woman. Probably she wouldn’t. Instead, she’d radio Val and the others, who’d move to intercept in the woods. They’d catch her, but it’d be a lot easier if she listened and did as Jenn told her.

  After a few more strides, Jenn shouted, “Do it! Now!”

  The woman tripped over her feet as though she couldn’t decide if she wanted to stop or keep running. Either way, she tumbled to the ground, and Jenn darted over, weapon up.

  “Jansen?” Bryce said from behind.

  She signaled for him to join her. The sound of boots on gravel told her that he was en route. Squirming, the woman flung her
hands out to the sides, palms down, and splayed her legs in a sign of submission.

  Jenn loosed a long breath but kept her rifle ready. “How many more of you are there?” she asked firmly, the way Val had taught her.

  “What?” the woman shrieked. “More who?”

  If she’d answered with an immediate “none,” Jenn wouldn’t have believed her. The question had thrown her off guard, though, which suggested that she was, quite possibly, out here by herself. “Bind her,” Jenn commanded Bryce, and the big man rushed into view, brandishing a zip tie.

  “Please,” the woman said, her voice weak and cracking. She might have been crying, but Jenn couldn’t see her face. Her ponytail flopped as Bryce jerked her arms behind her back and bound her wrists. “My family . . . I have a family. A son. We’re so hun—” She squealed when Bryce tightened the zip tie, followed by sobbing and a sniffle.

  A twinge of guilt poked at Jenn’s ribs. This woman was only trying to survive, the same as anyone else. She was so desperate that she had resorted to sneaking onto a well-defended farm. Now she’d be turned over to the Flagstaff PD and detained for several days. The police didn’t have the resources or manpower to hold nonviolent criminals indefinitely, so she would be released soon, but as a punishment, she would lose a fraction of her ration stamps for the next month or possibly longer. How many people depended on those rations? She mentioned having a son. Did she have any other children? A husband? Parents?

  Straddling the woman’s legs, one hand planted on her spine to keep her still, Bryce craned his neck and said to Jenn, “Just my luck. I leave for five minutes and you steal all my thunder.”

  2

  A wave of applause greeted Jenn as she stepped inside the guest cabin.

  There were fifteen or twenty people in here: farm staff starting their shifts and security guards preparing for changeover. All were standing and facing her. At the front of the crowd, Bryce, his freshly shaved head shining like a cue ball in the faint morning light, put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, while Val lifted her hands in a double thumbs-up.