The Price of Freedom

by Chris Kennedy

  “I see you brought someone back,” the sheriff said to the first man. “Is he planning on staying?”

  “Hi, Sheriff,” the man replied. “No, he’s just passing through. The captain of the tanker vouched for him and payed for his room and board.”

  “Did he now?” the sheriff replied. He turned to look me up and down. “I’m Sheriff Winston. Am I going to have any problems with you?”

  “No you won’t, Sheriff,” I replied with a smile.

  “Good,” he said and stalked off.

  “Friendly guy,” I muttered to one of the men.

  He chuckled. “That’s his good side, too.”

  “And you don’t want to see his bad side,” the other man added.

  I nodded. And he doesn’t want to see mine.

  I smiled at the men who’d brought me ashore. “So where does someone get a room around here?”

  Everyone has their dark side in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I set off early the next morning, having had a great dinner and breakfast, and the first night’s sleep in a long time where I didn’t have to worry about something bad happening in the middle of it. Both meals were seafood, but they were good, nonetheless.

  One of the men who had brought me ashore was waiting for me when I came out of the house I’d stayed in. “Are you here to show me the way out of town?” I asked. “Thanks,” I added when he nodded.

  He gave me a wry smile. “My pleasure. ‘Course, the sheriff ordered me to, so don’t get too effusive with your thanks.”

  We walked a mile north until we came to a barricade blocking the road. Two men and two women manned the barrier, and all of them were armed with rifles. I also identified a couple of others in camouflaged hides in the woods on both sides of the road. The sheriff was talking to a couple of the people at the barricade, but he walked over to us as we approached.

  “I’m leaving, like I said I would,” I said. “What’s the best way to New Orleans?”

  “Are you armed?” the sheriff asked.

  I pulled out my pistol. “I am.”

  “You’re a brave man to go out into the wilds armed only with a pistol,” he remarked. “Beyond this barricade, there aren’t any laws, and you only own what you can protect.” He shook his head. “That’s likely to include your life.”

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff,” I replied. “I’m tougher than I look.”

  He gave me a hard look. “You look pretty tough.” He shrugged. “Still, my advice would be to acquire a rifle as soon as you can. To get to New Orleans, take Highway 188 to U.S. 90 to I-10 and walk for about three days. When the sand becomes glass, you’re there. Best of luck.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. I nodded once to him and set out. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that it wouldn’t take me three days—his advice about “acquiring” a rifle went double for acquiring a car. Why be there in three days when you could be there in two hours?

  As it was only about a quarter-mile to the turn onto Highway 188, and totally within their view, I decided to take the time to stretch my legs, so I walked normally until I got to the intersection and turned left. Once they couldn’t see me anymore, though, I picked up the pace to a light jog. I could keep that up most of the day, if needed, without using any of my special abilities. The road went through the countryside, with small neighborhoods on both sides. I could see faces in the windows of the houses near the road, and in some places, people sat in rocking chairs on their porches. All appeared to have rifles; it wasn’t going to be hard to acquire one once I was ready.

  It took a little longer than I would have thought for the first person to shoot at me. I passed a neighborhood of small, ranch-style houses, with a six-foot-tall wooden fence separating them from the road. I don’t know why the man shot at me—it could have been anything from robbery to cannibalism. I saw the rifle barrel poke out of the window, and when he fired, I triggered my body into high gear and heard the round go behind me.

  Before he could fire again, I had leaped the fence—in stride—and crossed the intervening distance to his house. He tried to turn the barrel toward me, but I ripped the rifle from his hands and butt-stroked him with it across the bridge of his nose. He fell backward, so I set the rifle against the house and dove through the window. He was just regaining his balance when I stood up in front of him and punched him in the throat, crushing his windpipe into his spine. His eyes bulged as he fell backward, trying to breathe. I looked down at him as he gasped, then felt pity and broke his neck. I was only going to steal a rifle and a car, but he tried to shoot me, so all bets were off.

  I reached outside and grabbed the rifle, set it inside where it wouldn’t disappear, and pulled out my pistol. A quick search of his house determined there was no one else there, and that the house was completely devoid of food. So, he’d probably been trying to kill me for food. I shrugged—had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have been merciful.

  I found the keys to the red pickup truck in the driveway, which I checked out from a window, as I surveyed the houses around me. I didn’t see any movement, but the window was open at the house next door. I watched it for a few moments, and finally saw movement inside.

  I threw open the front door and called out from behind the doorjamb, “You, in the green house. I’m going to come out and drive off in the red truck. If you let me go, you can have your neighbor and everything in this house.” There wasn’t much, but he didn’t need to know that. “If you try to shoot me, you’re going to be a long time dying. Do we have a deal?”

  When there was no reply for ten seconds, I asked again, “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes,” a weak voice replied.

  “You’re not going to shoot?”

  “No.”

  I picked up the rifle and box of ammo the man had, then I used the remote to unlock the truck’s door—only the driver’s side; I didn’t want someone coming out of the green house and racing me to the truck—then I dumped the rest of my adrenaline and sprinted from the house. The truck seemed to start in slow motion, and I could count the individual cylinders firing, but then the motor caught, and I roared off. The neighbor didn’t wait long—as soon as I cleared the driveway, he sprinted across the yard and ran into the house. The man looked thin and feral; I didn’t want to think about what he wanted most.

  I had what I wanted, and I no longer had to walk through this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The truck had half a tank of gas, and I had no idea why its previous owner hadn’t gone in search of food. All I could figure was that despair had won out in the end—he hadn’t known where to go, so he had gone nowhere. That seemed like a stupid way of thinking, but then again, I was trained to find solutions to problems that didn’t have any, which was why I was now driving his truck to New Orleans, and he was…well, I didn’t want to think about that.

  It was only about six miles to where Highway 188 dead-ended into Highway 90 at a T-intersection. The combination gas station and convenience store across the street had seen better days—all the windows had been shot out, and there didn’t appear to be anything left on the shelves inside. It looked like a trap. I had plenty of gas to make it to New Orleans, so I didn’t bother stopping.

  After another couple of miles, Highway 90 came to parallel the interstate as I crossed into Mississippi, about 150 feet away, beyond a small stretch of what had once been farmland but was now an overgrown tangle. There was also a small barbed-wire fence in between, but someone had already knocked it down, so I rumbled across the field and onto the interstate. I drove down the eastbound lanes, heading west, for a little while, just because I could. My last trip on a major U.S. highway—when I had played bumper cars on my motorcycle—seemed like forever ago, although it was just a few months. I shook my head. Time flies when you’re having suck, just like when you’re having fun. You spend so much time trying to stay alive, you don’t have ti
me to stop and smell the roses or notice its passage.

  Pascagoula and Biloxi went by without me seeing a soul. There were a couple of places where people had set up roadblocks, but they had been abandoned. I guess it wasn’t worth wasting time on a roadblock when there was absolutely no traffic on the road. The biggest roadblock was near Highway 49, just past Biloxi. About 10 cars were sitting near the barricade—all with bullet holes in them—and the road was completely blocked off in both directions, but there weren’t any signs that the barricade had been in operation for a while.

  I finally found civilization again as I crossed the Old Pearl River, headed into Slidell, Louisiana. I had just crossed the apex of the bridge when I saw the roadblock at the end of the bridge. I stopped and put the car in park until I could determine what was going on, then my eyebrows went up—this checkpoint was manned. Interesting. Several cars had been used to block the end of the bridge, and it didn’t appear I’d be able to slam my way through without significantly damaging my car. The confines of the bridge only gave me two choices—turn around or go forward. Movement in my rearview mirror caught my eye; a semi-truck was slowly approaching from behind, blocking both lanes as it drove down the middle of the road.

  I smiled. It was an elegant trap. There was only one choice then—forward. I put the car back into drive and eased my way down to the barricade. A man came out from behind the cars and put up a hand, directing me to stop. Despite the urge to gun it through him, I slowed to a stop and got out.

  The man walked up to me. He was tall and thin, but didn’t appear to be underfed. He had long hair and a beard and looked generally ragged. I could see several other men behind the cars; all had the same unkempt look about them, as well as a strip of blue cloth tied around their right arms.

  “Hi,” I said as he approached. “Is the road closed or something?”

  “Depends,” he said, eyeing me and then the truck.

  “On what?”

  “What’s your business in The Dell?”

  “Just that. It’s my business.”

  “Ain’t nothing yours in The Dell. It all belongs to the Caretaker. Once you cross this bridge, it’s all the Caretaker’s. You, the truck, everything.”

  “I haven’t crossed the bridge yet,” I noted, already growing tired of the game.

  “Close enough.” He nodded to the truck. “If you have enough good stuff in there for the Caretaker, we may let you live.” The three men behind the barricade leveled their rifles at me across the hoods and trunks of the cars they were hiding behind. “So…whatcha got?”

  “For you? Nothing.” I reached over and shut the driver’s door.

  An evil smile crossed the man’s face. “Oh, we’s gonna have some fun with you.”

  I gave him the same smile to show I wasn’t impressed. “Who’s this Caretaker, and where do I find him?”

  “You don’t find him. He finds you.”

  “Okay. So, if I stand right here, how long will it take him to find me?”

  “Never, ‘cause you’re gonna be dead.”

  He started to draw his pistol, but I was a lot faster, even before the boost kicked in. I shot him once in passing as I raced toward the roadblock. In the time it took the three men to take the safeties off their rifles, I had vaulted over the closest car and shot the man hiding behind it. Before they could turn around to track me, the other two were dead, too.

  The gunfire wasn’t lost on the semi driver, who gunned his engine and charged toward us. The semi had a plow blade mounted on the front of it, and the driver crashed through my truck, slamming it up against the concrete railing. He continued to up-shift as he raced toward the barricade, and I fired several times at him as he accelerated. Finally, I dove to the side as he crashed through the blockade in a spray of metal and glass. The impact slowed the truck down, so I jumped up, sprinted to the semi, and ripped open the driver’s door. I was still moving faster than normal people, and he slowly turned in his seat as I whipped up my pistol and shot him through the head. I jumped back down as the truck—still in gear—rolled off the road and into the trees alongside it, then I walked back to the barricade.

  As expected, all the men at the roadblock were dead, and the cars were all trashed. My truck was in similar shape; it was probably drivable, but it looked like hell. I took the blue armband from the guy who had stopped me and wrapped it around my right arm. It may not make me one of “them,” but it might at least make one or two of them pause long enough to give me an advantage. I also picked up all of their weapons as I was down to the last magazine for my pistol.

  I shook my head as I looked at the truck—I’d really grown to like it in the short time I’d had it. Maybe not as much as the yacht—which was pretty damn nice—but enough to miss it. I sighed and went to the semi, tossed the driver overboard, and took his seat, trying to ignore the blood in the interior. If I’d known I was going to have to use the semi, I probably would have killed the driver some other way.

  Putting it into gear, I backed up onto the highway, then stopped to grab anything of value from the roadblock. There wasn’t much besides the weapons, but there was a little food, including a bag of potato chips. That made destroying the roadblock worthwhile all on its own; I hadn’t had potato chips in forever, and my blood stream immediately began clamoring for all of the grease and preservatives the tiny bag held.

  Munching happily, I drove off toward downtown Slidell.

  It’s the little things that make life worth living in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  There never was any doubt in my mind where to go; I headed straight for the Teledyne building in what functioned as “downtown” Slidell. Or, “The Dell,” as I guess the inhabitants were calling it now. The roads were clogged with broken down and burned-out vehicles, which I avoided when I could and pushed off to the side when I couldn’t.

  After crashing into the first one, I determined that slamming into a car at full speed was too much like being in an auto accident for my taste. After that, I did it at low speed and just pushed them to the side. That resulted in fewer bruises and internal injuries for my nanobots to fix.

  There wasn’t much to The Dell, at least as far as “city” went. More a suburb for the people who worked in New Orleans before the war, it was neighborhood and shopping mall after neighborhood and shopping mall; middle America at its one-time finest. Now the neighborhoods were in shambles and the shopping malls looted and burned.

  The Dell looked like Dante’s Sixth Circle of Hell, where everyone was condemned to an eternity in flaming tombs. The flames might have gone out, but the broken tombs remained. The city might have been impressive once upon a time, but that was probably a couple of centuries past. Even without a nuclear war and the collapse of civilization, I could still see that living here would have been…grim. Even the main roads looked like they hadn’t been maintained in years.

  Things got better as I approached the one tall building in The Dell, which had been my destination all along. Teledyne’s auxiliary headquarters. I’d been here once before and knew where to find it—in the only good section of town. Why was it good? Because we’d bought a three-block area, centered on the former courthouse, and had leveled everything. Then we’d built the headquarters and the other nice eateries and shops for the workers to go to during their breaks and after their shifts. Before they had to drive to their shitty little homes in the other parts of this shitty little town.

  The auxiliary headquarters was where we met with people who didn’t want the “big city” of New Orleans. It wasn’t a “real” HQ, as much as a place to entertain bigwigs from outside the local area. As such, it had been spared the nuclear hammer—or maybe there hadn’t been enough nukes to send one its way. I wasn’t sure sparing it was such a good thing—just driving through The Dell again was depressing. A good nuking might have improved the town’s property values.

  I reached the good part of town and wasn’t surprised to s
ee all the ways into and out of it controlled by people with blue armbands. Everyone inside the area seemed to have them on, as well. I began seeing them several blocks away from the Teledyne zone of control, and I had to wonder at the power of those little blue armbands—people were walking down the street as if they had nothing to fear. Whereas people everywhere else in America—with the notable exception of Bayou La Batre—seemed to be hiding out and fearful of their fellow man, the people with the blue armbands walked out in the open as if daring criminals to attack them.

  They all gave me strange looks, and I knew I needed to ditch the semi. As the only person on the road, I stuck out. A lot. I found a back road with a number of other junkers and parked the truck. I locked it and took the keys with me, in case I needed a low-speed getaway vehicle. I brought two pistols and two additional magazines with me, but had to leave the rifles in the truck as I hadn’t seen anyone on the streets with them.

  I walked back out to the main road as if I belonged there, which I guess I did, at least as much as anyone else. I tried to watch people’s reactions when they came across each other so I could mirror them. It seemed like all that was needed was a small nod. I tried it, and it seemed to work, so I headed in the direction of the auxiliary headquarters.

  I made it to the entrance of the building, but I was stopped by two thug-looking individuals as I reached for the door. “Where are you going?” one of them asked.

  “Inside,” I replied.

  “We don’t know you,” the second thug said.

  “I’m from out of town,” I replied. “I have a meeting with the Caretaker.”

  “No one told us you were coming,” the first thug said.