by Nova
People were slapping themselves on the backs and talking shit about how good we were doing. They weren’t feeling what I was feeling. I am not a coward, but I felt the steadily increasing pressure of badness building. I wanted to take Night and get the hell out of town.
The farm had already reported incidents in which three people had been shot. Granted, Hawk was fast on the trigger. I told him to leave the bodies there for now. Let them be a warning. If they got too rancid, we could throw some lime on them.
Yet flood of migrants kept coming, and the crowd mix was changing. For the first few days, people had plans and preparations. They had somewhere to go. They were interested in one thing generally, and that was getting where they planned to go as quickly as possible. The current wave seemed to be people who were running only because they felt that somewhere else had to be better than where they had left.
I would go down the line when it wasn’t moving. Nobody wanted to go far from their cars in those first days because they had all they owned inside. But after the third day, that began to change. In fact, I started noticing cars that didn’t match the drivers: the Volvo with Juan, Rico, Marta, and Tito inside and a Harvard sticker in the back window. When I walked the line, I would talk to people. Actually, people would complain to me, and then I would ask questions. I had hoped that the cars would move smoothly and steadily past us. It didn’t work that way. Someone always had to stop and talk, or break down, or both.
Most of these cars were overdue for servicing, because the owners hadn’t been able to afford the upkeep. When they broke down, getting parts was a problem. There were not a lot of parts available, at least not new ones. So we had to make repairs with used parts. Then there was the gas situation. People had been joking for a while that the quality of the gas in Mexico was better than in America now. Some folks converted their cars to run on other fuels. That worked in an urban area, but out here in the sticks it was harder to find alternative fuels.
Food was its own problem, and what people told me was not good. The Zones never had a lot of food stockpiled, but there had always been food available. Even outside of the Zones, food had still moved, just not as much and often at a higher price. But that began to change. The rich and well-connected could still shop at stores that accepted the currency backed by the International Monetary Fund. The rest of us, though, began to experience chronic shortages, with only certain items available. One month everyone had potatoes—but only potatoes—because they miraculously appeared everywhere in quantity. I like potatoes, so I was happy. People who didn’t like potatoes were not, especially since their trade value was low.
Skipping a meal was one thing; everyone was used to that. Eating food that could best be described as marginal was okay because it filled your belly. People starved, but not that many of them. The ones who did starve were usually old, sick, or unable to hustle their daily bread for some reason. Now things were worse.
By Day Three, there was nothing left on the shelves to buy or steal. The trucks didn’t deliver because the warehouses were not getting shipments. Warehouse weren’t getting shipments because no one was guaranteed of getting paid. We were long past accepting checks or “Net 30.” Who was going to sell a truckload of anything on credit when you couldn’t count on the buyer still being in business the next day, let alone thirty days from now—or be certain the truck would even arrive at the warehouse with a load at all?
What I was hearing was fear morphing into panic. People living in the Zones had relied on government help for so long that when it stopped, they reacted as if Christmas had been canceled. When the full realization hit that the government was no longer able to provide any help, the Zones were going to go nuts.
Hell, they were already starting to. Airdrops of expired MREs did not inspire confidence. People told me the big camps were getting restless.
That’s what had flushed these citizens out ahead of everyone else. Watching “those people” going on a rampage was not what they had signed up for. The problem was the Feds had concentrated too many of those people into small areas and then made them totally dependent on the government’s largesse.
They had gone along, sucked it up, skipped getting high, and taken the shit, but now where was the payback? Where was the food?
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
On Day Six the line broke. It failed because the community failed. It may have been due to maliciousness or it may have stemmed from sheer stupidity. When it comes to my fellow man, I never rule out either one. After five solid days, everyone was getting burned out. It was cold. The hours were long, and the people were increasingly obnoxious. You could see the attitude of the locals change from “Oh, those poor people; I am so glad I am not one of them” to “What a bunch of assholes.” I had already been there on Day One, but that was my default mode.
What broke the line was a couple of dumb shits doing exactly what we told them not to do. We had told both the militia and the patrols, “No food or drink in front of civilians.” We explained why. Everyone nodded their heads. Everyone understood. So what motivated two dipshits to have a picnic on the hood of a car in front of the migrating hordes, I will never know.
Not only did they have a picnic, they also invited a local woman to join them. My guess is that these dickheads thought she’d be so impressed by their manly, carefree behavior and wealth, that it would lead to them getting their knobs polished.
It didn’t work out that way. The sea of humanity saw the steam coming off that food. Even more, they rolled down their windows and caught a fragrant noseful. They slapped those cars into Park and bailed right there.
It was immediate chaos. Even inside the station, I felt the change like a bolt of lightning. I grabbed my old BAR and a belt filled with magazines and hit the door. About the time I cleared the threshold my radio was talking to me about a “problem.”
I made it to the tollbooth in record time. But the word that we had food and were giving it out had already spread at the speed of sound.
Meanwhile, the two idiot patrolmen had started arguing with the crowd. It was their food and they did not have to share. Less than a minute after it reached the yelling stage, somebody fired the first shot.
All this brought the migration to a halt. People got out of their cars and heard that it was a disturbance about “Food!” Since we had a line of cars that stretched for miles at this point, who knows what people were telling each other by the time it traveled a few hundred cars back.
The situation deteriorated rapidly. Bursts from M-16s and small arms echoed along the main line. I found out later that the militia had gotten spooked, thinking they were going to get overrun, and had just cut loose. That triggered a chain reaction among our people. They slaughtered civilians like so many cattle in a chute.
Not all of them went down without a fight. But the chaos just poured blood in the water for the predators. We had more than a few of them that we barely held in check as it was. They heard “Food” and gunshots and smelled opportunity.
Three cars that seemed to be a pack suddenly pulled off the road and gunned across the field, heading for a side street into town. With them moving, the dam broke. Everyone spooked and the herd stampeded.
I saw the cars hit the field and I laughed. I felt good. No more dicking around with containment and gently moving people along.
It was time to dance, and the BAR led off with a backbeat that was as steady as anything that came out of Muscle Shoals back in the day. These guys may have been predators back in the city, but they didn’t have a clue about driving in wet Virginia clay, especially in frontwheel drive Hondas with low clearance.
I saw the lead driver’s face contort as he fought the wheel. I saw his face change as he realized that perhaps this was not such a good idea after all. I confirmed that for him by splattering his head all over his buddy, who was riding shotgun. Then I walked the next three rounds across the passenger windows.
The second car, a Honda with a double-deck spoiler on the ba
ck, came screaming off a small rise and bottomed hard. I punched a couple of shots into the engine compartment, and the engine screamed at me in rage. I shot out the back window and refocused my attention; the third vehicle, an SUV, had decided to change course and was heading toward me.
I wasn’t alone; it just felt that way. The patrol screamed at people to get back in their cars. It didn’t do any good.
I started punching rounds into the grill and windshield of the oncoming SUV. Finally, one of the squad members detailed to the tollbooth realized that he could be more helpful by shooting the shit out of it instead of screaming at people who were not going to listen anyways. He hit the SUV with at least three bursts in the side.
Like a rhino it just kept coming. It took out the tollbooth and the female guard and caved in the side of an old Dodge van that was in the way. I heard screaming from inside the Dodge a few seconds after it hit. It sounded like kids.
That’s when a man standing behind the passenger door of a BMW about seven cars down the line decided he wanted to kill me. I shot him through the door as I swung the BAR around; then I shot the driver through the windshield.
I looked across the field; the three-person team assigned to patrol about a mile back must have shown up. I didn’t see them, but I heard them. I don’t think anyone in the cars had figured out even approximately where they were firing from. That was a good thing. As Tom Clancy would have said, “They were operating in a target-rich environment.” Not that they cared right then what he would have said.
About then I had my Oh, shit moment. At least seventy-five cars peeled out of formation and began an awesome demolition derby straight for town, using the field as an off ramp. Night was right: I didn’t have enough bullets to kill all these people. In the meantime, people in parked cars were still shooting at us.
I ducked, rolled, and came up on the other side of the SUV. That’s when Max got into the game with the Barrett. He was killing cars with single shots to the engine blocks. I realized immediately what he was trying to do: Let the cars come and he’d build himself a wall of dead iron.
Meanwhile I knew what I needed to do. I had to clear out the shooters who were too close to the booth. Eventually someone would move the militia down to the dead car wall. My job was to help hold the new line until then.
I undid the BAR magazine belt and slapped the squaddie who was raining fire on the assembled multitude on the road.
“Use this!” I handed him the BAR. He nodded. Then I was gone.
I could see in my head what needed to happen. Max would stop the headlong approach and fill the field with dead cars. The reserves would push into it to clear it. The three-man team firing from the field would nail anyone on their side. The tollbooth people would have to plug the road gap from hostiles moving in on foot. I had to clear the parked cars of hostiles far enough back that we could create a dead zone.
Then we’d torch the cars. Max would love that, the crazy little firebug that he was. I actually thought that, too. It was funny.
I ran around the white van, jumped onto the hood of the first car behind it and laughed. Crazy little firebug! Crazy little firebug! played on a loop in my head as I drew the Ruger and the Colt and shot the two people inside the car. They died staring at me goggle-eyed.
I hopped from car to car shooting anyone who was out of his vehicle. I leaped off one hood, hit the ground, rolled, and came up face-to-face with a mother and her kid. I screamed at them, “Run, you stupid bitch!” and shot the guy who was searching for me with a scoped deer rifle four cars down. Iron sights would have worked better.
I remember getting hit in the chest once. God bless armor. The force of the slug pushed me backward, and I let my momentum take me down. I rolled under a car, scrambled out the other side, and tried to spot whoever had nailed me. I didn’t see anyone so I kept moving.
I made it back to the tollbooth. I was limping a bit. I had leaped onto a car hood that was slick with blood and had slipped off, landing awkwardly. I was also running low on ammo. There was a lull in the storm, at least where I was. I needed it.
We were holding the new line for the moment. But it wasn’t going to last. The people on the other side of the cars were not stupid. And they were motivated by one of the strongest drives a human can experience: hunger.
When they did decide to advance, they would easily move around us and any barrier we could throw up. We didn’t have enough bodies to set a wall around the town.
We might be able to hold part of the business section for a day or so. But then we would run out of ammo, and they’d be on us like the weevils of death.
Where was Freya? We could use her magic aerial display right about now.
I told the people manning the tollbooth area at our new wall that I was going for ammo and water and that I would be back. An occasional shot zipped past me as I ran.
Max was about three hundred yards down. I found him trying to organize the handful of militia that had made it over from the massacre. He was yelling, “Set some of those cars on fire! Come on, we can do this!”
I could tell it wasn’t going to happen. One of the guys was crying, and not quiet tears. His were gut sobs with snot running from his nose. I knew he wouldn’t be moving from where he sat.
Then the lull ended. I didn’t know if the car people had seized the moment and organized or it was just a spontaneous charge.
What I did know was that a horde at least four times the town population was moving toward us. One little group rallied behind an American flag on a pole that some unlucky guy had gotten stuck carrying. Another group raised a Washington Redskins flag. Really? I thought. The crappiest team in the NFL was going to inspire them? They probably couldn’t have given you a coherent answer if you asked them—and I had no intention of doing so.
I looked out at the approaching mass and I felt drained. There was no killing rage. No desire. No focus.
I knew it was over for me, at least for the time being. No way did I have it in me at that moment to shoot down all the children in front of me. Because that’s what it would have taken to stop them. Hose them all and bury them in a pit.
I looked at Max. More hung in the balance than just the lives of the people marching toward us. I think, just for a second, he was considering the pit. And then he stepped back from the brink.
“Safe your weapons!” he roared at the militia that were scattered around us.
“It’s over.” This was not roared. It was spoken, yet it carried to every ear.
Almost every one of them looked relieved—almost, because there’s always an asshole.
He heard Max, looked at the people, and yelled, “No!” Then he swung his M-16 up to his shoulder.
That was as far as I let him go. I had the Ruger holstered again before he hit the ground. I started walking back to the station. I made it about six paces when I stopped to look back at Max, “You coming?” He nodded.
I waited for him, and we walked together, headed toward the station. Usually I could read him. I wasn’t seeing anything now. His face was stone. My radio was going nuts. I turned it off.
“So, Max. What’s our Plan B?”
He didn’t answer immediately, and I didn’t press him. He stopped and we stood there. I saw smoke, from a house probably, since that was the only thing over that way.
Max spat on the asphalt and said, finally, “Well, I am going to get weaponed up, go over to Shelli’s, eat some apple pie, and kill people until I am down to two rounds.”
“Yeah. If Night doesn’t want to try our luck elsewhere, then I guess I’ll be doing the same.”
We stared at each other. I held out my hand and we shook goodbye. “It’s been real, Max.”
“Yeah. Real fun.” We both laughed and started walking to our fates.
I had gone about twenty paces when two assholes came racing around the corner, headed for the station. I dropped both of them and picked up my pace.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Radio Freya beg
an broadcasting in my head. Digital quality, too. “Do you really think it is over?”
“Yep. Unless you got a Plan B?”
“Of course I do. It has only just begun for me.”
Then she went aerial on me. It was like looking at a high-resolution gray-scale Google map taken from a lowflying helicopter.
“Shelli and Night await you in the station. Ninja is on the way. You have three minutes. This is the current status.”
The helicopter or hawk pulled up a little higher. The view was ugly. We were being overrun. The hawk—if that’s what it was—suddenly switched to a view from perhaps ten thousand feet.
I laughed. I could sense her amusement also. Whoever thought they were gaining themselves a town were in for a rude surprise before they finished their first stolen meal. Behind them was another wave, and another, and another. The town was just a tiny sand castle on a North Carolina beach, and the tide was coming in fast. Maybe a New Jersey beach—someplace where the water came rolling in with all kinds of nasty shit in it. Beach-closing nasty.
“Hey, Freya.”
“Yes?”
“Can you do a conference call?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, can you have Max, Night, Ninja, and Diesel all hear me at the same time?”
“Yes.”
Max had changed direction and was heading toward the station in long loping strides.
“Night. You there?”
I got a hesitant, “Yes . . . ?”
“You ready to go? Are you getting the aerial feed?”
“Yes. Please hurry.”
“Oh, my God, Max! They’re in the diner!” This was Shelli wailing into my ear “Shit! They’re going to ruin it!”