by Nova
“Bill, I see you raise that barrel up another inch and I am going to have to hurt you.”
He was undecided on what to do. Not being able to make a decision is the same as making one. I didn’t stop until I was in his face. He was holding the M-16 across his body, barrel pointed down. Now he had no room to swing it up without stepping back or pushing me. Neither was a good option for him.
“Bill, I want you to drop your weapon on the ground for me.”
“Why should I? What’s up, G?”
I drew and went upside his head with the Ruger. He crumpled. I looked down at him and shook my head. “Bill, you got to learn to listen.” I picked up his M-16 and walked back to Junior.
“It looks like me and you are going to be working together for a bit, Junior.”
He had a bit of a frowny face. “Why did you do that to Bill?”
“Junior, he was bad, but he will be okay. Go drag him into the shade here so he doesn’t get hot or run over.” I smiled at him. “He’ll be okay. Go on now.”
I went in the booth and got Gunny on the CB. I told him to send the patrol officers to my location ASAP and to have them bring a med kit. He asked if everything was okay.
“Yeah. Just a minor mishap.” I hung up the mike and took a look at Bill. I pulled his handgun. “Thanks, Junior. I appreciate it.”
He started to walk over to his watch post when I called out to him, “Hey, Junior. Were you in the army?”
“Nope. Semper Fi, Gardener.”
I nodded and went inside the booth, where I could laugh my ass off in private. I was still laughing when the patrol officers showed up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I rode back with the two patrol officers, who had shown up in one of our functioning Crown Vics. It dawned on me that we should look into golf carts for transportation. They would be a lot cheaper to use on these short runs.
I’d had to wait for the patrol officers to show in order to restrain Bill, not that he had moved any. They had restraints ; I didn’t. Yet another thing we were running low on. I made a mental note to call the state police barracks and ask if they had any they could drop off. We needed to find some old-fashioned metal ones or see if come-alongs would work for us.
At the station, I told the officers to charge Bill with theft, log it, and arrange his hearing with Edna. He was already showing signs of coming back to life. They left him in the cell after a quick head wash and wrap.
“So, you getting soft, G?”
“No, Gunny. I figure shooting strangers is one thing. Locals, well, that could cause some resentment.”
He laughed. “Hell, that peckerhead is my sister’s nephew, and I wouldn’t have grieved too much if you were in the right.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Anything happening other than that?”
“You’re supposed to be at a meeting in twenty minutes at the town hall.”
“Says who?”
“Says the calendar on your desk that you never look at, that that girl of yours fills out every day for you and reminds me to remind you.”
“Oh. That calendar.”
“Yeah. That one.”
I walked over to my desk and looked at it. It had way too many meeting entries. “I got ten minutes to kill, Gunny. Tell me something good.”
“Well, Shelli lost her freezer again ’cause of power failure. She got some of the church ladies to help her try and preserve the meat.”
“You mean the Bible thumpers are jerking the meat?” I started laughing.
“Yep. Actually it is mostly the Baptist ladies helping, so they should be done in no time.”
“Thanks. I need to wash my head out now.” I headed for the door. “On second thought, I guess I will get there early. Thanks for sharing, Gunny.”
“No problem.”
I walked into the town hall and headed for the meeting room. Everyone else was already there. Everyone in this case meant Night, Max, Miss Edna Jacobson, the pastor, and a really old lady who was sitting next to a much younger woman—meaning she was in her early fifties. I said my hellos, squeezed Night’s shoulder, and grabbed a seat next to Max.
I got the nod of approval from Miss Edna. She hated it when I was late or went to sleep.
“Very well. Please, someone close the doors.” The pastor got up and took care of it. I looked at Night. She had on her most serious face, and Max was looking a little more grim than usual.
Edna wasted no time. “Thank you for coming. We have two guests whom I will introduce in a few minutes. Ms. Night brought something to my attention early this morning and I thought we should discuss it immediately. Would you like to explain the situation or should I?”
Night shook her head. “You go ahead, Miss Edna.”
“Thank you, my dear. Based on her calculations, and checked again by me, it is pretty much certain we will be starving to death in about three months.”
Apparently, this came as news only to me.
She continued, “I will summarize what we know and what we don’t know, and then we will discuss what we can do.”
She began reading from a sheet of paper. “As of today we have approximately 875 people living within the town limits. Of those, 373 are between the ages of forty and sixty, and 202 of those are women. We have 102 people over the age of sixty, and 71 of those are women. The remaining 400 people include 52 children under the age of fourteen; the rest are adults—190 women and 158 men.
“Our official unemployment rate is not even worth mentioning. The reality is that this town lived off of tourists, people commuting to nearby towns for work, and government checks that arrived every month. All of that has dried up, in that order. The town is our biggest employer, and it’s broke. Our food problem is not just from one cause.” Here she paused and looked around to see if everyone was paying attention. We were. I didn’t even feel like sleeping.
She started again. “Our food problem stems from many different things coming together all at once. First, our people have limited funds to buy anything. We have been making up the difference with the church food bank, hunting, and gardens. The problem we have with the electricity randomly failing is not helping. Food storage is yet another major problem. It is also getting colder, and the gardens have not produced enough this year to feed the gardeners, let alone everyone else.
“Hunting is not going to work. A year ago, deer were everywhere. Now you have to be a good hunter to get one. Same with anything else you can cook in a pot. What is available in the stores costs too much, especially when too many of us in town are living on a fixed income that, for the most part, isn’t coming in. When it is does, it buys a week’s worth of groceries at most.
“In addition, we will have problems keeping people warm. We are fortunate that a lot of people still have fireplaces. The problem is our demographics. We don’t have enough people to do the work needed to support everyone. If the older people do not get deliveries of wood and food, they will die—not that they aren’t dying as it is. The lack of insulin and blood pressure medicine, or the difficulty in getting it, is killing off a handful every month.
“I have invited Ms. Faith Weiss and her granddaughter, Sarah, to this meeting because they are going to be our food experts. Faith, because she is, well, knowledgeable—”
Faith interrupted her. “Oh, say it, Edna. I’m older than dirt.” She laughed a raspy, dry, old person’s laugh. “Because I am older than the hills, I remember stuff about living here that just about everyone else has never learned. My granddaughter here is smart because she majored in agriculture at Tech. Isn’t that right, Sarah?”
Sarah did not relish the sudden attention. “Yes, well, it was not quite agriculture—”
“It’s close enough,” her grandmother cut her off, “especially as most of these people think corn grows on trees.”
“Grandma, you know that’s an exaggeration.”
Edna cut in before they could get rolling. “We need to come up with a plan. Otherwise this town won’t survive. People
will go to the Zone camps before they let their kids go hungry.”
The old lady knew a lot. It was just that it took her a while to get to the point. She loved the attention. Plus, she and Miss Edna had known each other for a million years, and they were suddenly tripping down memory lane together. Even the pastor was getting into it.
I wasn’t. I knew this was some important shit, but what happened sixty years ago at the prom was not.
“Excuse me. . . Excuse me!” I was pretty loud the second time. I figured if they didn’t stop talking, I would just bust a round through the ceiling. That would get their attention. But they actually fell silent.
“Look, I am glad your son Adam got a seven-pointer back in 1968, but that isn’t going to feed anyone today.” I watched Miss Edna start to puff up and then sigh and deflate.
“Sorry, Mr. Gardener, you are right. This is not why we are here. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Send out teams and hit every store in a twenty-mile radius. They are going to have what we need, and, hopefully, we will be a little bit ahead of the crowd. Me, I am hitting the road to Bruxton tomorrow. If what you say is true, and I believe it is, then we’re going to need more than beef jerky to get through the winter.”
“Bruxton? No, Gardener. That . . . we . . . no.”
Why was Night getting so upset? I wondered. “Night, we can talk about it later, but seriously, who else is there? Who else was asked? Besides, I’m just going to take a look.”
Night laughed. It was a mirthless laugh. An odd laugh. One that sounded too close to the edge of a sob. “You never just look. I know you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going with him.”
I looked at Max. Surprise and delight shot through me. “Well, alright!”
Night stood up. Her fists were clenched at her side. She screamed, “You’re an idiot! Do you want to get killed?”
I spoke my “Not really” to her back as she exited the room. She was moving fast. But she stopped at the door long enough to look back and scream, “Assholes!” Then she left.
The silence was, well, silent. Miss Edna got up and glared at me. “I’ll go see if she is all right.”
I looked at Max. He shrugged.
“Tell Night I’ll be back at the trailer. Dawn is going to come early.” I looked at Max. “Dawn’s good?”
“Yeah. We’ll take my truck most of the way. I figure four days’ rations should do it.”
“Good night, ladies. Good night, pastor.” I could hear Max’s boots clicking on the floor behind me as I left.
Just as I cleared the door I heard Ms. Weiss say, “Bruxton? Of all places. Even Wal-Mart wouldn’t go there.”
I was asleep when Night came home. I had spent about an hour cleaning weapons and getting my gear together. I could have done it faster, but I dragged it out in the hope that I would hear her car coming in.
Ninja was still over at the “hospital,” otherwise known as Donna’s spare bedroom. He didn’t seem in any hurry to come back and was suspiciously cheerful when I visited him. The Old Guy was asleep and snoring loudly in the room next to ours. Sometimes, when he really got rolling, Night would pound on his door or on the wall and yell at him to roll over.
One night we were lying there and she told me, “Between his snoring and Ninja’s cheesy farts, I feel like I’m living in a frat house.” I thought it was funny. She didn’t.
I woke up when she came in but I pretended to be asleep. She grabbed my foot and shook it to wake me up. We always woke people by kicking or shaking their feet. In the field people had a tendency to wake up ready to go, so it was a good idea to stay at arm’s length until they focused.
After she shook my foot she said, “I know you are awake, so open up them eyes and look at me.”
I sat up, stuffed a pillow under my head, and stretched back out. “Hey. What’s up?”
She sat down on the bed and looked at me. Her hair had grown back nicely and it hung like a silk curtain, the tips brushing my chest. “I’m sorry. I am . . . well, I am just a little more emotional lately.”
“Why? What’s bothering you?” I was surprised at the rush of protectiveness I felt. I didn’t say it, but inside I was thinking, Who’s bothering you?
She smiled and brushed her fingertips across my face gently. I loved it when she did that. “Well, I think it has to do with me missing my period.”
It took a bit for me to process what she said. All the time she was looking at me with a half smile.
“You mean?”
She nodded.
“Holy shit!”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“This is great!” I sat up. “When do we start thinking of names?”
She laughed. “Not now, silly.” Then the silk curtain came down to cover me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Max and I headed out the next morning. I dumped everything in the back of his truck except my weapons and I climbed into the cab. He greeted me with a sardonic, “Good morning, sunshine.”
“Yeah, whatever. Wake me up when we get there.”
“Damn, G,” Max said, shaking his head. “We’re going to be looking for a place to hide the truck in less than an hour.”
I didn’t reply. I wadded up my coat, stuffed it in the corner of the cab interior, and went to sleep. I woke up when my head slammed against the window. Max had decided to drive through, rather than around, a pothole.
“Damn.” I rubbed my head. “I know you did that on purpose. You’re really an evil freaking asshole sometimes.”
He laughed. “I need your eyeballs. Look for a turnout or a side road. Maybe an abandoned gas station”—he cut the wheel to the right—“like this one.”
It had been a country store and gas station once; now it was just another empty building in a country full of them. The front door was boarded up, but the back door had been opened with a sledgehammer—the official key of the new millennium.
Max took the truck to the edge of the parking lot in the rear and began backing up. He didn’t stop when he hit bushes. He just kept going until he found a spot he liked. Then he shifted into first gear and drove out.
“Just checking.” He backed into the spot again. We got out, stomped down some bushes to make room to move, and stretched. “Hang on a minute.”
He popped open the tool box and pulled out a brown sheet that had black and green stripes spray-painted on it. “Give me a hand.” We draped it over the front.
I cut off some branches and threw them on the hood. I looked at him, shrugged, and asked, “What do you think?”
He stepped back, squinted at it, and said, “Close enough for government work.” We grabbed our packs out of the truck and got ready to roll.
“You ready to do this, G?”
“Yeah. We got a plan?”
“I do,” Max replied. “I am sure it is more detailed than whatever the hell you had planned.”
“So, you going to let me in on it?”
“Yeah. Let’s move into the woods a bit. Then we can go over the topo map I peeled off the wall in the trailer.”
“Uh-oh. Night is going to kick your ass when she finds out.”
“Yeah, well, I think we should blame it on Ninja.”
“He’s not even here. He’s never here anymore.”
“Exactly.”
We walked past the ring of trash. It was the rare building out here that didn’t have a ring of plastic bags, oil cans, beer bottles, and the ever-present, rusted fiftygallon drum. We kept moving past it all, the low-growing brambles grabbing at my boots. A squirrel peered at us as it clung to the side of an oak.
Max kept going, the leaves crunching under his boots. I was looking around for ginseng. Actually finding any was about as likely as winning the lottery was a few years ago. It would be nice if I found some. Night could send it into the Zone to her clan contacts. They loved it.
I was thinking about what kind of gun to get the baby when Max held up his hand for HALT. We had only been walking about
twenty minutes, all of it steadily uphill, yet we could have been a hundred miles from civilization. I never understood how people could get lost and die a mile or two from civilization until I started doing this. Hell, left on my own, I wasn’t sure I would do much better.
“Okay, G.” Max dropped his pack and dug the map out. Sometimes I wondered about Max’s pack. It was almost magical how much stuff came out of it. Sometimes I imagined peeking into it and seeing a black vortex. I would be sucked into it and deposited on the floor of an army surplus store in Oregon. Scary stuff.
He shook out the map and picked up a twig to use as a pointer. “This is where we are. This is Bruxton. We are getting into Appalachia here. Whatever we are supposed to see is probably tied into the coal mines. A lot of shafts were sunk around here. You ever been in a coal mine?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I’m not sure what we are looking for.”
“Yeah. I keep picturing the gates into NORAD or Mordor.”
“Well, my guess is it will be a little more subtle than that. This is the route I want to take. It will put us up high enough to look down on the town without going into it. Plus, it’s an approach from the back. They may have motion sensors and sentry posts with thermal imaging on the main approaches. Hopefully this way we can avoid all that shit.”
I looked at the map more closely. The little squiggly lines were awfully close together. I knew what that meant: serious sweating despite the chill in the air.
“How long do you estimate to get to your observation point?”
“Maybe a day and half up, a day back. We are going to push hard going in until we get within three klicks of where I want to be. Then we’ll take our time.”
“These little black squares are houses, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. We’ll stay away from them. Could be bunkers. Or it could be Jed Clampett, Junior, and his crew of inbred meth-shiners. Whatever. I don’t want to jack around. This is a pure recon mission. We go, we look, we go home. Any more questions before we button up?”