Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset

by James Hunt

  Alex shook his head. “You won’t always have that power.”

  A few sentries tried helping him walk, but he pushed them away. Alex shed what was left of the torn and burnt cloth that was his uniform and let one of the medics still on site attend to his shoulder and give him some oxygen. He would go back to Kansas. He knew the Coalition was establishing one of their “communities” close to his hometown, and if this was a sign of the things to come, then his neighbors would need all the help they could get. That was his mission now. And he didn’t need a sentry uniform to accomplish that.

  Chapter 2 – Three years into the Soil Crisis

  The smooth surface of the bucket of water reflected the grey sky morning from the window above it. A small ripple distorted the peaceful images as Alex rested his foot on the floor off the edge of his bed. He rubbed the dark circles under his eyes and reached for the bucket of water by the window. His hands caused the still water to ripple violently and he splashed his face. Water dripped from the thick beard on his face and landed in sporadic patterns on the floor and the tops of his feet. He pushed the bucket aside with his foot and dried his hands on the front of his dirty, community-issued t-shirt.

  Alex kept his face buried in the soiled shirt, hesitant to start his day. The unfamiliar bedsprings cried in strained squeaks from the restless, foreign body that had tossed and turned on it the entire night. Finally, Alex pulled his face from his shirt and dressed. He pulled the hunting permit out of his left boot before slipping it on, slung his leather sack over his shoulder, and took his first step out of the bedroom.

  The transfer to the new community happened yesterday, and he’d yet to meet his new roommates, who were already asleep by the time he arrived the night before, as he hoped they’d be. Alex just wanted to make this as quick and painless as possible. Once it was done, then he could get back to Kansas. Get back to his friends, his family, one of which he’d already lost to his foolishness. And now the fate of two communities rested in his callused, tired hands. One of which he would leave as a traitor, the other he would return to as a hero.

  When Alex entered the living room, one of his housemates was sitting on the only piece of furniture the common area offered, a square card table with a warped leg that caused it to slope. The old man had his leg crossed and was dressed in the same uniform cloth shirt that all community members wore. Judging by the condition of the stitching around the sleeves, Alex figured he’d had that shirt since his first day. He had an old newspaper folded on the table with a pencil in his hand. Some of the smaller print had faded, but the headlines and pictures still looked intact. Alex hadn’t seen an actual newspaper in over three years. The only thing that was printed now was that damned Soil Coalition propaganda. It was filled with bullshit nutritional facts and overly exaggerated progress of their work on solving the soil crisis. Alex had stopped reading them and started using them as toilet paper the day he quit the sentry program.

  The balding head and worn face gave the impression that the man was old, but these days everyone looked ten years older than they actually were. What hair the man had left on his head still retained its color, and his thin frame held the remnants of a once-sturdy physique. The man finally looked up from the paper to acknowledge Alex with a pair of vibrant blue eyes. “Morning.”

  Alex’s throat cracked slightly from a combination of no sleep and a dry throat. “Morning.” Before he had a chance to say anything else, a shoulder smacked into Alex’s back and jolted him forward out of the hallway entrance.

  “Gonna stand there all day?”

  In contrast to the blue eyes he’d just seen, the ones now staring at him were a dark green, almost black. The young, wiry man they belonged to kept his eyes on Alex until he was out the door. Another man around the same age followed him, giving Alex the same cold stare until he too left the house.

  “Don’t mind them,” blue eyes said. “The old hunter was a close friend of theirs. The fact that you’re staying in his room now is a bit of a sore spot.”

  “Right,” Alex replied.

  The man jotted down something on the paper with his pencil, and Alex slipped out the front door to avoid any further interaction. Alex buttoned his jacket, shielding himself from the cool morning air. The house had remained surprisingly warm despite no heat, and he hoped it would stay that way for the rest of his stay.

  Lines of men and women in their dirty and torn khaki uniforms exited their homes and headed down to the community’s Main Street to begin their day’s labor. The women were housed on the left side of the buildings, with the men on the right. The Coalition didn’t believe in mixing sexes. It had the potential to create too much of a distraction.

  Main Street was the same in this community as it was in Alex’s previous one. The mass produced structures were designed in the cheapest, most efficient way possible to allow community members to have the basic necessities to survive and continue the work needed to keep the Coalition functional. The meal station rationed out one meal in the middle of the day, and the water buckets each citizen was assigned and able to fill at the water pump gave a person enough water to last a few days when filled to the brim, so long as they didn’t try and use any to wash themselves.

  The majority of the community members marched into the factory building where their assigned jobs waited for them. Each community had its own commodity to contribute to the whole of the Coalition. Alex’s previous community made the candles used in the buildings of communities where there was no power, while this community sewed clothing. But while citizens worked in slave-like conditions, living with no running water or power, the sentry’s housing unit had a generator that hummed twenty-four hours a day to provide heat and cooling to ensure the community’s guards were comfortable and well-fed.

  While the rest of the community filed into line at the factory, Alex made his way to the front gate. On his way, a woman he’d met the day before upon his arrival saw him and rushed over.

  “Hey, you’re our new hunter, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Emma.” She extended her hand, and Alex let it linger in the air between them before shaking it.

  “I’m the one that gave you directions the other day when you came in. How was your first night?”

  “I remember. It was fine.”

  The line of workers had almost completely disappeared into the factory, and Alex could see one of the sentries stationed in front start to eye the two of them.

  “Where are you from?” Emma asked.

  “Kansas,” Alex answered.

  “Well, hopefully you’ll find this place as nice as your old community.”

  “They’re all the same.”

  “Hey!” the sentry by the factory said. “Let’s get to work!”

  Emma turned back to Alex and smiled. “Well, I’ve got to go. And just so you know, I happen to like duck if you find any out there.”

  Once Emma had disappeared into the factory, Alex continued his march to the front gate. There the sentries patted him down, took inventory of what he had in his pack, presented him with a meal’s worth of rations for being out in the field, and handed him an old, worn hunting rifle that had a crack in the stock. Alex checked the magazine and saw that it was empty.

  “Where’s the rest of the ammo?” Alex asked.

  “Both of us know that you won’t need that.”

  The sentry recorded Alex’s departure time on his hunting permit then shoved it into his chest. Alex slid the paper into his back pocket and headed out into the dead fields of Wyoming.

  ***

  The sewing machines hammered away in a unified rhythm as the community members ran the pieces of bland, bulky fabric across the mechanical needles that stitched the seams together. Drops of sweat rolled down each face of the workers and landed on the clothes they sewed. The heat from the number of bodies combined with the machines’ relentless motor made Emma sopping wet before lunch.

  When the whistle sounded for their twent
y-minute mid-day break, they all rushed to the meal station to collect their daily food rations. Slops of tomato mush and blocks of synthetic mineral and protein gels lined the trays as community members wolfed down their fodder. Emma found a seat next to three others sitting on the edge of Main Street.

  “I wouldn’t feed dogs this shit,” Ray said, letting the goop slide from the makeshift ladle used to shovel what the Coalition passed as “food.” Ray was shorter, almost as short as Emma, but his mouth had always distracted people from his height. “You never see sentries eating this garbage.”

  “It could be worse,” Nelson said, taking a bite of his protein gel. The thick, black-framed glasses slid down the bridge of his nose and he pushed them back up, smudging his lenses in the process. Out of the four of them he was the thinnest, but that was a burden he’d had long before the soil crisis.

  Emma sat down next to Todd, the only one of them with his shirt tucked in and his sleeves neatly rolled up his forearm, exposing his thin forearms, which accentuated the strong, sturdy hands they were attached to. Todd picked at his food and Emma leaned in.

  “You need to eat something. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself,” Emma said.

  Todd picked at the meal on his plate and then dropped the ladle. He scratched his left ring finger, a habit he had yet to break. Emma grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I still haven’t gotten used to not wearing it,” Todd murmured.

  “Me either,” Emma answered.

  One of the sentries made his way down to where they were, making sure nobody was sneaking extra rations, and Emma quickly released her grip on Todd’s hand. Once the sentry had passed, she picked up the ladle and stuffed it back into Todd’s palm. “Eat.” Emma nudged Todd’s arm and he reluctantly took a bite from one of the gels.

  “Well?” Todd asked once the sentry was out of earshot.

  “He didn’t say much,” Emma answered.

  Ray ducked his head low as he leaned over Nelson’s lap and whispered, disrupting their conversation. “You think you’re gonna bring the new hunter in on this?”

  “I don’t know,” Todd answered. “I’ll have to feel him out.”

  “We’ll need to do something soon,” Nelson said. “The results of the tests should be done by the time we take our next trip out to the lab.”

  “And we need a way to message the others,” Emma added. “None of us can do it. We miss roll call at the factory or a curfew check and they’ll have this place swarming with more sentries than we did last month after the blood tests.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Todd replied.

  The sentry moved back into range where he could hear them speak, and they went silent. They sat there in the dirt under the shade of the rusty awning outside of the meal station, chewing on their synthetic replacement meals with their mouths watering at the prospect of the future that was so close they could taste it.

  ***

  The Wyoming dirt under Alex’s boots left the same trail of footprints as the dirt in Kansas. And just like Kansas, the fields here were dead. A part of him wanted to believe he’d find some remnant of life out in the vastness that this countryside provided, but found no such promise. There wasn’t a corner of this country that GMO-24 didn’t turn into the faded grey ash that he now trudged through.

  Alex was told to keep heading west and that he’d know when he’d reached his destination. After walking for almost four hours, he’d seen no such sign. Then, a gust of wind that sprinkled his cheek with some of the dead earth also carried the rumble of an engine. He looked south and he could see a truck cresting the top of a small hill.

  Alex adjusted the strap of the rifle over his right shoulder and rubbed it gently. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could still feel the mangled, disfigured flesh underneath. The Humvee came to a stop and two men stepped out.

  The first was Jake, his hair shaved down to the nub and his black leather jacket concealing the pistol underneath. He had the face of a street thug and the brains of a deviant. The second man was small, mouse-ish. He walked behind Jake with his head down. Alex couldn’t place his face, but he felt like he’d seen him before.

  “You’re late,” Jake said.

  “Well, it’s hard to find your destination when your only directions are head west,” Alex replied. He pulled the empty magazine from the rifle and tossed it to Jake, who caught it without breaking eye contact with Alex. “And if you want me to do this, I’ll need bullets to hunt. It’s going to look odd if I’m brought here as the community’s hunter and I don’t bring back any game,” Alex said.

  “Fine,” Jake answered, tossing the magazine back. He snapped his fingers, and the rat-like creature behind Jake handed him a picture, which he extended to Alex.

  “Who’s this?” Alex asked.

  “Your suspect. Todd Penn. He’s the one we think planted the soil we found. His community was the closest in proximity to the location of the soil, and when his blood samples were drawn at the inspection last month, his nutrition levels were through the roof.” Jake snapped his fingers again and the tiny creature behind him handed him a briefcase. Alex opened it and found a small laptop and a thumb drive with an exposed USB port. “Tell him,” Jake said, grabbing the rat from behind him and shoving him forward.

  “The computer is for communication with your old community per your request, and I took the liberty of downloading each of your community member’s nutritional files on the desktop so you can keep track of their results,” the rat said, fiddling with the tips of his fingers and keeping his head down while speaking. “The battery should last at least three days, and that’s if you keep it on all the time. If you run it thirty minutes a day, it should last you for up to a week.”

  “And Meeko has one of these as well?” Alex asked, holding up the computer.

  The rat nodded. “You can message him whenever you like. Both are connected to a satellite link since you won’t have any other form of connection.”

  “And make sure you send us a message when you find something,” Jake added. “I’ve alerted the sentries to your situation, and I think it goes without saying that you need to make sure the other community members don’t see you with that.”

  Alex stuffed the computer into his sack and dropped the briefcase on the ground. The rat picked it up, and Alex caught a good look of his face when he came back up. “Wait. I do know you. You worked in one of the seed silos.”

  “He’ll be analyzing the data you send us,” Jake said. “The good scientist has informed us that whoever fixed that patch of soil we found couldn’t have done it without some serious processing power. When you find the lab, just stick that USB drive into one of the computers you find there, and it’ll take care of the rest.”

  The rat scurried back into the truck and Jake took a few slow strides until he was only inches away from Alex’s face. Jake stood a few inches shorter than Alex, but the air of arrogance that surrounded him suggested that Alex was the one looking up. “I just want to make myself clear that if you don’t get this done, I’ll personally slit the throat of every single member of your community back home. Then I’ll cut out each of their eyes, shove them in a plastic bag, and send them to you at whatever farm camp Gordon will stick you in. That way, no matter where you go or what you’re doing, the eyes of everyone you cared about and who depended on you will be there to judge your final, miserable days on this planet.”

  The Humvee’s tires kicked up a puff of grey dust as it drove away, which drifted through the air and added to the layer Alex was already covered in. The Coalition had him cornered, and right now the only way to get out was to play their game.

  Chapter 3

  The moment the Humvee came to a stop at the sentry depot where Jake and Sydney were stationed, forty miles south of the community where Alex was located, Sydney scurried out the door and into his lab.

  One of the Class 2 sentries came out, and Jake tossed him the keys to the truck. “Make sure you lock it up. I don’t want anyone
taking any joy rides.” The sentry nodded and Jake grabbed his arm, “And I want you to put a bug on his communications,” nodding to Sydney, “Anything that he sends or anything he receives, I want to know about it. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jake pulled a phone out of the inside of his jacket and dialed a number. He paced around in the hanger while it rang. Finally, Gordon picked up.

  “Well?” Gordon asked.

  “He’s got the equipment. Now it’s just a waiting game.”

  “Good. Any trouble from Sydney?”

  “No, but I’ve got a wire on him in case he tries anything.”

  “I don’t need him getting anywhere near his father, so make sure he doesn’t make contact.”

  “You want me to keep digging on Todd Penn?”

  “Yes. If Alex doesn’t deliver, then I want a contingency plan.”

  “Understood.”

  ***

  The white glow of the office’s fluorescent lights illuminated a map of the United States that took up every inch of the table it was spread out on. Red dots broke out in clusters along the Midwestern states and a few states in the south. Gordon ran his finger from Kansas all the way to California, and by the time he made it to the west coast, the red dots were nowhere to be seen.

  Dean Grout, Gordon’s Chief of Sentries, stood on the opposite side. His rounded, boulder-sized shoulders hunched forward and the table creaked under the strain of his weight as he pressed his gorilla-like palms flat against the Atlantic.

  “The coasts will present a challenge,” Dean said.

  “What do our resources look like?” Gordon asked.

  “Ammunition stockpiles are solid. We still have a lot of the weaponry left over from the Army acquisition from two years ago, and we have sentries stationed at the refineries in Texas. The Coast Guard has a few ships in the Gulf of Mexico, but they don’t have the range to cause any trouble. And even if they did, the collateral damage wouldn’t be worth the risk. They need those refineries as much as we do.”