Sunburn (Book 1, The Events Trilogy)

by Gorvine, Samuel

  In South America, from the favelas of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela they poured outward, also from the vast slums of Mexico City, Tokyo and Shanghai, Cape Town and Cairo. They poured into the Sahara and the Sinai Deserts where they perished in their thousands, but not before wreaking destruction and death to those who had so far survived the Event.

  Countries that had saved part of their power infrastructure that first day by shutting it down were in much better shape in the second month. Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, others in the area had limited electricity and some communications. This odd group, including the Palestinian Authority but not Hamas, struck a deal with Jerusalem for mutual defense and support. The Event had brought an uneasy peace to the Middle East. Food moved to market via horse, camel and donkey, but the Israelis had found a way to use a few antique cars, those that started with a hand crank. So the auto museums in the Middle East were emptied of their model T’s and there were some trucks and cars on the roads to deliver supplies.

  Gradually other simpler vehicles from earlier times with 9 volt electric systems and without computers were able to run. There was command and control, rations and water were distributed to everyone and civilization survived even thrived, in those areas in which it had begun thousands of years before. Places which had failed to do this sunk into chaos and barbarism.

  The agreement with the Wild Men was much like the one with Fred and his family. They could live and work the farms in the Amish Way, accept guidance in agricultural matters, respect the Amish Way of Life. But they did not have to attend church. It was a forced agreement, much as many the Vikings had made as they had taken over the North Saxon territories in the 9th and 10th centuries and merged with the indigenous peoples to help build a nation to be called “England.”

  Fred made this historical point until people were sick of hearing it. But it had its effect. What made this agreement yet more important was the unspoken threat of a barbarian horde that no one had yet really seen. Would they really get this far? Would they really strip the land clean like locusts? Would even the addition of the Wild Men be enough to secure the Amish land and their lives?

  16.

  The next time Solomon went to the Hospital in Lancaster was with one of the Wild Men who had cut his foot badly with an axe. They wrapped up the limb and sat Bill, for that was his name, on the front seat of the buggy with his bloody foot propped up for the trip to town. What they found when they got there was a looted and gutted building, as were most of the others in the neighborhood. When their horse whinnied a head appeared in a basement window. It was Doctor Claire, looking frightened and very dirty.

  “I hid in a closet when they came through,” she said when she came out, still clutching her black doctor bag, the only thing she had managed to save. “They took all the others, even the patients. I could hear them screaming.”

  “Come with us,” said Bishop Samuel. We need a doctor and of course we can’t leave you on your own here.”

  “We have to hurry,” Claire whispered, looking around fearfully. They are still in the neighborhood even if the advance guard has moved on. I heard many, many—“ Her voice faded away. She was very much changed from the assertive, confident woman of only a few weeks before, Samuel thought as they took the road back to the farms. It was a puzzle now what he would do with her, a single woman. She certainly did not fit with the Wild Men on the three farms, nor with the core Old Order Amish community of which he was still the leader. Perhaps the Goodmans and their children, yes, yes, that might do—“

  He was musing about that when Bill gave a warning shout.

  “Look over there-- coming from those houses!”

  A mob of people. Samuel could think of no other word for such a large, disordered group. He was thinking in the German dialect that was the native tongue of all the Old Order Amish. They spoke English here as they spoke Spanish in their communities in Argentina, as a courtesy to their neighbors and so they could buy and sell what the Community needed.

  “Lieber Gott!” he exclaimed now, flicking the reins to get his mare into a trot and then a canter pulling the heavy carriage. She could not gallop in the traces.

  It was a very near thing. If the horde had been able to move a little faster they would have cut them off. As it was, with his little, sturdy mare going as fast as she could, their pursuers clutched vainly at the passing carriage and were left in a swirl of dust. The people themselves seemed the color of dust and dirt, their grime-darkened faces twisted with hate and rage as they stumbled after them.

  Not the walking dead—the limping dead, the pathetic last-leggers—the dead who wouldn’t fall down—the ghosts of people who had been addicted to their digital toys as Dickens’ Londoners had been addicted to cheap gin.

  It was one thing to hear about the hordes of people surging out of the cities, it was quite another to actually see and smell them, thought Samuel.

  They arrived back at the Church and the docter was given a room in the back to use as a temporary office where she could fix Bill’s cut foot and see other patients too, when needed.

  Samuel called a meeting of the elders and invited Jack and Tom from Three Farms, as it was now beginning to be called.

  He wasted no time getting to the point.

  “I have seen them and so has Dr. Claire, and she has told me things I am glad I did not see.”

  He told them how the town of Lancaster had been devastated and its people eaten by the Horde.

  “They almost caught us on the way out. They are too sick and slow to move effectively and if you can get a start on them, you can get away.” he said. “Their strength is in their numbers. They are so, so many—“

  “Do we have enough men and weapons to make a defense?” Fred asked.

  Samuel thought for a moment as it was an important question and one that all the others had thought to ask.

  “No.” he said softly. “I am no expert like Fred, but even if every bullet we fired at them were to strike home, we would not prevail. And they would not retreat from high losses because they don’t care. They literally have nothing to lose.”

  “We have almost a hundred able-bodied men with my boys,” said Jack. “You don’t think we could—“

  “We only have guns for eighty men. Look how long the perimeter would be—your three farms and then the rest of the Old Order farms. It’s literally miles long. If we set up a smaller perimeter here around this church and these houses we could defend it until we ran out of bullets or we were overwhelmed by their numbers. I’ve seen them too. We are far too few and poorly supplied. They may be here in a week or a month, whenever they run out of—“

  He stopped, imagining the piles of corpses the Horde was feeding on.

  “—food.”

  “So, what do you suggest?” asked Samuel.

  Fred thought, but it was Will who spoke first.

  “Let me take a few days, it seems we have at least that, and go back to West Virginia and see what I can find in the Blue Ridge. Actually there’s an old forestry camp up there that was abandoned a few years ago, near Green Ridge. It’s high and remote and only a few people know about it.”

  “So you want to scout a place we could all move to? Asked Tom incredulously.

  “I don’t know if my people will want to give up their land after almost 300 years,” said Samuel.

  The elders were looking very uncomfortable with the suggestion.

  “I’m not sure we have much choice,” said Fred. “Let’s let Will go look and we can base our decision on what he finds.”

  “Maybe we could make a stand right here,” Said Tom “I saw this movie once called Zulu, where—“

  “Ah, yes, the Defense of Rourke’s Drift. Great movie! Those men were trained British infantry led by experienced NCO’s and officers. They fought an army of Zulus who were brave, badly armed and far outnumbered them, but the Zulus called a halt when their casualties got too high. That won’t happen here, even if we were led by an army engineer, as the British we
re, and had plenty of ammunition, which we do not. And our enemy here will just keep coming until we are all dead. Forget the movies, Tom. Losing here means being invited to dinner—as the main course! You up for that?”

  In the end Will took a few days’ supply of food and prepared for his journey. Mary had a pouty expression and Will knew she wanted to go with him.

  “I would love your company, Mary, but it’ll be dangerous enough just for me, and then there’s the extra gas—“

  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

  “No, no! Of course not!” It’s just that I’m hoping to just make it there and back on one tank full. I can’t be sure I’ll get a chance to get more gas. I will use maybe 20% more fuel with you in back, light as you are.”

  “Go, just go!” Mary said finally, annoyed that he was right and afraid she simply might never see him again and never even know what happened to him.

  17.

  Will was traveling light as he headed back to West Virginia on the Honda. He wanted very much to see what had happened to his home and mountain hideout. With the cover burnt away it would be very easy to see the house from the valley, if there was anything left of it, and the door to the shelter would have been obvious too.

  When he got there after half a day’s peaceful ride, he got a shock. The wind apparently had changed that day and the fire had not ravaged his mountain, but had swung by to the south. The access road was camouflaged just as he had left it, and when he rode up to the house, nothing had been touched, not by fire and not by human hands.

  Somehow this affected him very deeply and he sat down on the stairway to the deck and wept. Something he had not done since he was a child. To find something saved from all the chaos was indeed a miracle and gave him hope. But hope for what? What did it mean, really? Could Mary and he really come back here and live? And how to resupply after the last can and cracker were gone?

  Will had realized that Mary had been lonely here before they left. There had been little to do after the Event except watch TV and read, or look at the changing light in the valley, and Mary was not quite the reader he was. She was much more, as women tend to be, a social creature. He had sensed her restlessness. He now realized that she was more important to him than the fantasy life he had imagined living alone here, the last man on earth—

  Here in the West Virginia hills the roads were narrow and curvy, just what a guy on a Honda likes, but Will Fisher didn’t take advantage of the good riding looking for the Forestry camp. He was cautious, looking for any kind of traps that might have been set for him like the one that had knocked them down in Maryland. In the few days he had spent at home he had welded an ‘L’ of metal vertically on his bike to cut any unseen wires that could be stretched across the road. It still remained to test it.

  The countryside was as it had been weeks ago, barren of people and any life he could see, except for a few deer that had crossed the road far ahead of him. The deer family no longer appeared at the salt lick and Will could only speculate on what might have happened to them. Walter had made an appearance, taking advantage of the now unused salt lick. He seemed to be looking at Will sadly, as if aware of the tragedy that surrounded his wild world. Though the Indians had been known to eat bear meat, Will was sure it was not on anyone’s menu even these days, especially while still alive. While not particularly aggressive as bears went, black bears could be fearsome opponents if threatened.

  Had people eaten the raccoons and the squirrels too, or was he just not seeing them?

  He slowly worked his way higher into the hill country. He had a map of West Virginia he had liberated from a deserted gas station on his first day. He had a GPS at home but that technology would be down until more Atlas III rockets could be built and launched to put new satellites into orbit. All the earth satellites had been fried the first day of the Event. So it was back to this ancient but reliable method.

  Since the Amish didn’t like the BAR because it had been made to kill people, he had taken it with him and so he felt equal to any hostile challenge that might confront him. But nothing happened.

  He didn’t stop at any of the houses or farms along the way. He had gotten close one time and had smelled what was inside and that had been enough for him. He slept two nights in the open and only the mosquitoes and ants had bothered him. The second day he found a gun store that had been stripped of everything of value. There were several cartons of AA batteries in the back of the store and no one would have bothered to take them before, assuming them to be like all the others, drained by the ambient static charge. But Will took a box of six from the center of the carton, wondering if had been somewhat protected like that. He inserted two of them in his Nikon pocket digital camera. He had kept it because he liked it and hoped someday to find batteries again. The batteries in this box when he put them in the camera, showed only half their potency, but it was enough for the camera to take some pictures if he was careful.

  On the morning of the third day he found the abandoned forestry camp. It had been abandoned long before the Event and the paint had peeled and weather to a gray color. There were ten bunkhouses which still had their old iron stoves and double bunk beds and several other buildings that might have been for meetings or laboratories. Will decided that it would be a little tight, but everyone could at least sleep here from the Old Amish Community and the Wild Men. But how to sustain themselves long term?

  He walked about and carefully took pictures of the fields and farm buildings. Too a dozen before he decided to stop to be sure there would be power to show them back in Pennsylvania. The photos showed plenty of land open for cultivation or grazing in the area. But how would they get all their stock and farm equipment here? He was still mulling this over as he rode down into the valley that led across the Maryland Panhandle to Pennsylvania.

  When Will got back he found the Community in turmoil. Bands of Horde people had been spotted to the west and an Amish man passing with his buggy had picked up a teen-aged boy who had approached him. He had somehow escaped the horde. The boy was filthy and deranged with terror.

  “They hate her!” he kept repeating, wringing his hands and pacing back and forth. He could not be induced to eat.

  “How long has he been like this?” Will asked.

  “Since yesterday,” Samuel replied. “We can’t figure out who he is referring to or why they hate—“

  The boy’s recurrent rant repeated again.

  “Wait,” said Will. “Listen! He’s not saying ‘hate.’”

  “They ate her,” the boy said.

  The Community perimeter watch was increased and Will went out on the Honda that day and the next to try to establish how far the Horde had gotten and how many they were really dealing with.

  “I could sit behind y’all with the BAR and do some serious damage,” volunteered Jack.

  “I’m sure you could,” Will replied. “And sooner than later I think we’ll be using your idea. But right now I’m just scouting with these here binoculars, trying to see how much time we have and how we can defend ourselves.”

  Later that day, Will climbed into the bell tower of the Southern Baptist Church of Smoketown. It was a big white church with a tall steeple and he had a good look at the countryside in all directions, but he was particularly interested in the view to the west. He had a good pair of binoculars that Fred had lent him. So good that he was able to see something he wished was not there to see.

  He climbed down from the steeple and got back on his Honda, confused and upset by what was on the horizon to the west. It had seemed like columns, like an army on the move, but more fluid, more disorganized. But there were a lot of whoever was out there. Were they like the five men he had killed at the house with Mary? Better? Worse?

  He decided to go take a look. Nothing too risky. Just get close enough to see if they were armed and with what. Did they carry supplies? How were they feeding so many people?

  On the way he stopped and rested in a field, watched the afternoon fade into
sunset. The Horde would not be moving at night, he decided. That would be the best time to get as close as possible on the bike, then creep closer and try to get a better look. The moon was half full so there would be some light, but not too much.

  But it never came to that. As he maneuvered closer off road that evening he came across a man sitting on a hill by himself.

  “Who are you?” the man asked, looking askance at the Honda.

  “My name is Will. Are you with them?” he indicated with a head motion. “What’s your name?”

  “More or less. My name is Mark.”

  The man looked in his thirties, very skinny and dirty, and stammered when he pronounced his own name.

  “Where y’all going?”

  “Don’t know. We don’t talk to each other much. No one’s asked my name in a long time. It’s as if we don’t really have names anymore. We walk, drink from a stream, fill our water bottles, catch something to eat, put it over a fire for a while, eat it. Move on. Like that.”

  “What is there left to catch?” Will asked carefully.

  “Not much. Animals, when we can find them. Not many left. Any people who are not us. Not so many of those left either. Any of us who die for various reasons. There are more of those. We manage. It’s a little better than dying, but not much.”

  Will was chilled by Mark’s peculiar affect. “A little better than dying.” Will couldn’t see how it was better at all.

  “So y’all sleep the whole night?”

  “Usually we all sleep after we eat and the camp is quiet. I couldn’t sleep tonight. I don’t know why.”

  “Are there leaders? People who decide where to go? What to do?”