The Gordian Event: Book 1 (The Blue World Wars)

by Lee Deadkeys

  He jerked a thumb back towards the heads and smoldering bodies heaped in the fire pit. “These guys were hardcore, though. Miles worse than the glorified vandals and looters who call themselves anarchist. These dudes would eat those dudes for lunch,” Ox realized what he’d said and winced.

  Mason shook his head. “Why would anyone want this?”

  “They don’t want it, not really. They just want to talk about how great life would be with absolutely no rules, no God, no law. You think they wouldn’t call the cops on someone breaking into their house or beating the shit out of them? They would, trust me.”

  “Sam thinks they might have come from the prison,” Mason said.

  “Yeah, they all had prison ink on ‘em. Sure didn’t take long for people to turn to shit.” Ox lowered his head. “I know you don’t agree with what I did to the bodies,” he paused, waiting for Mason to deny it. He couldn’t, so he remained silent and Ox finally went on. “But look, it’s bad enough we have to worry about those things killing us, infecting us or whatever the hell they do, but having to worry about people killing us too, eating us even. And what do you think they did to that girl, what they would do to Jess if they had caught us. Think about it Mason, those bastards got off easy with a little postmortem mutilation.”

  Mason thought about it, thought about what that woman must have gone through before she either died or they finally killed her. He thought about Jess in the woman’s place and his heart slammed in his chest. He let his eyes glide over the encampment.

  Ox couldn’t find enough pikes for all the heads so he’d hung one from twine threaded through its nose and lips. As he looked upon the scene he thought back on Jess screaming for Frank and imagined instead that she was screaming in agony. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them and looked at the scene again, he saw the message Ox had left. It was a very fitting message, after all.

  * * *

  They made few stops the rest of the way. Two stops for them to relieve themselves beside the road and once to move a few burned-out vehicles that blocked the road completely. They passed a small caravan forced to stop due to a congestion of abandoned vehicles.

  They approached slowly, driving on the wrong side of the road to put as much distance as they could between them and the strangers. Four men emerged from cover, guns held to be seen but not threatening and motioned for them to pass and not stop. They did so, driving off road at the last vehicle and onto a well-worn detour. It seemed others had the same idea and had also left the city.

  Night came upon them almost at once. Jess became increasingly agitated as she steered Mason down the wrong road twice. She cursed the dark, cursed her memory and inexplicably cursed the moon and stars. Two correct roads later and they left the pavement behind for rutted dirt. They snaked through darkened desert for miles until they came upon a faded bullet-riddled sign that made Mason laugh out loud. The sign read, Caution Primitive Road.

  “Oh, this ought to be good,” he laughed a little too loud, a little too long. Jess reached a hand out and patted his leg.

  “We can make it. It gets too rough, we’ll go off road. On the bright side, we should be the only ones out here, most people would turn back at the sign.”

  The going was slow, to say the least. The gear in the back shifted dangerously, despite being strapped down and Mason had to stop more than once to re-secure it. The Jeep bottomed-out twice. Ox and Mason grunted and strained against it and finally managed to push it free.

  The Jeep’s headlights bounced and bobbed in the truck’s rearview mirror, catching Mason’s eye. He glanced in the mirror for the hundredth or so time, checking to make sure the Jeep was still moving forward and saw two forms in the back of the truck.

  Frank was sitting up, hunched against the rear window, his head turning now and then toward Ox as the two men spoke. A grin stretched across Mason’s face and he silently thanked God for small miracles.

  The road stopped abruptly at a stand of Palo Verde trees and large multi-armed Saguaros. The truck’s headlights cast splintered shadows across a line of boulders roughly the size of Mini Coopers.

  “Looks like a dead-end. You sure we took the right road?” Mason asked, craning his neck. The boulders sat close together, enough for a person to pass and appeared to circle around in both directions behind the spiny trees and cacti, until they were lost in darkness.

  “No, this is it! The cabin should be just inside the circle of stones,” Jess said excitedly and was out of the truck in a flash, a kid again. When Mason didn’t follow immediately, Jess poked her head back into the cab, a look of restrained urgency on her face.

  “Let’s go, what are you waiting for? Bring flashlights.”

  Mason sat behind the wheel for a moment longer, wondering what the cabin had to offer; if this would be their oasis, a stronghold where they could make a stand, or just another disappointing pit stop.

  He felt a pang of homesickness, for the familiarity of his things, the place he’d called home for so many years. On the heels of this fuzzy feeling, he remembered the splintered door, those things attacking them and lastly, the demise of his neighbor, Mr. Broaden. The warm memory turned mind-numbingly cold in an instant and he couldn’t help but feel lost, adrift in a sea of uncertainty, the way forward as bleak as the way back.

  Mason’s stomach growled loudly enough to make him jump, his head snapping from side to side. His stomach protested again, this time accompanied by cramping bowels and leaving no doubt as to the source of the sound.

  He bent slightly, pressing his hands into his midsection at the point of pain and tried to remember the last time he’d eaten, the last time any of them had eaten anything of significance. A wave of nausea hit at the thought of food and he scrambled to get his door open. He leaned out the open door, not trusting his legs to bear him.

  The cool desert air touched his face, tousled his hair and cleared his head. Taking a long deep breath, he held it for a moment, enjoying the hint of sage and dampness before releasing it slowly and helping himself to another.

  “Dad’s up. I think he’s going to be okay, too. I think we all are,” Jess said, poking her head in the cab once again. She was smiling openly, clearly happier than he’d seen her since the world went to hell. Mason allowed himself a smile of his own as he listened to the soft murmur of his group gathered around the back of the pickup; his survivors about to cross into the Promised Land.

  Frank was being helped, not without protest, from the bed of the truck, Ox doing his best not to make Frank feel like an old man that had just had a bad break with reality. Annie stood at the tailgate, offering a hand and a warm smile.

  Mason stepped out, tested his legs and found them sound. His stomach had quieted some, the fresh air helped. He felt around under the seat and retrieved his Maglite, tested it against his hand and found the batteries still had life. Some discoloration on his boots caught the light and he directed the beam onto the toes, illuminating a thick spider web of multicolored splatters; a gory history of their ordeals.

  He redirected the beam to the happy group, refusing to dwell on a past he couldn’t change. This, too, shall pass, he thought and followed the bobbing lights toward the cabin.

  Jess reached the door first. “Son of a bitch,” she swore as her light moved over the mat at the threshold. “Goddamned door has been forced.” Mason felt his heart sink.

  “Do you think someone is inside?” Annie asked as she clutched her children closer, moving them from the opening.

  “I’ll have a look.” Ox gently moved to the front of the line, shotgun leading the way. Jess moved aside and motioned for the others to do the same.

  Ox disappeared through the opening, boards creaking out his progress. There was the occasional crash as leg met furniture, followed by a quiet curse as he made his not-so-stealthy inspection. After a few minutes of this, he gave the all-clear.

  The semi-large main room wasn’t completely destroyed, but at first glance, it looked enough to force a
groan from everyone. Their lights moved over the scattered cushions, water and food containers, old clothes; a ransacked masterpiece.

  “Oh, this is just great!” Jess said as she kicked at a bag of half-eaten pretzel sticks. Frank moved into the center of the room, paused and then picked his way to the fireplace. “Hold on now, don’t get too discouraged.”

  Every beam turned toward Frank as he fumbled at one flagstone, then another. “You remember, Jess, your grandfather spent his entire life savings on building this place. Ah, here maybe.”

  Frank tugged and then pushed at a stone with a slightly reddish tint to it. A simple knick-knack table against the wall near the fireplace rose a few inches on one side before toppling over. Frank clapped his hands together and walked to the raised floor, gently pushed it down an inch and slid his gnarled hand into the gap. His hand searched along the underside before finding a lever.

  There was a faint click and Frank lifted a 3x3 section of the floor, pulling it open all the way until it rested against the wall. He stood and grasped the edge of the floor in front of him and pulled back another 3x3 section, laid it back on the floor to reveal stairs descending into the darkness below.

  “I never knew this was here,” Jess said as she illuminated the ten steps down to a concrete floor.

  “Your granddad didn’t want you kids messing around down here. You do remember the false wall though, right?”

  Jess pointed her light across the room to a wall of books set in a cheap-looking bookcase. “Oh yeah, I do remember, behind the bookcase, right?” She moved to the far wall and pulled a copy of Hugh Howey’s Wool from the shelf, reached into the space and pushed a button in a knot of the wooden backing.

  A thin gap appeared in the middle of the bookcase. Jess grabbed both sides and pulled out, revealing a recessed area brimming with an arsenal of guns, ammo, gas masks, body armor and various other tools of combat.

  Ox whistled, “Look at all the boomsticks….”

  Jess giggled, “It’s like Tiffany’s for gun nuts.”

  Ox wiped a mock tear from his eye and grabbed Jess into a rough hug, “It’s. So. Beautiful!”

  “Hate to kill the moment, but from what I saw of this place from the outside and this room, my first thought was, what a dump,” Sam said. “Glad there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

  Frank nodded, “My old man might’ve been crazy, but he was crazy like a fox. Trust me, the first time I brought the kids out here, I thought it’d been thrown together with stuff that’d washed up on the shore. I said, you spent how much building this?” Frank laughed. “When Dad said five hundred thousand and change, I about had a heart attack.”

  Sam walked to the trapdoor and looked down the hole. “But I’ll also say that unless those are marble floors with solid gold pilings, he still got robbed.”

  “Not really,” Frank said a touch defensively. “The building itself didn’t cost that much, even with the hidden rooms. Most of the money went into stocking the place with food, guns, ammo. There’s also a fully stocked medical room and a generator that would keep a small town in power for months. Oh, and a well, couple of them. We’ll have a look at them tomorrow, but for now, I say we get some grub and some sleep. I’ll show you all around when the sun is up.”

  Ox clapped Frank on the shoulder. “Your old man probably saved our lives.”

  Frank looked thoughtful for a moment. “I guess he did. I should have listened to him. Looks like he was right about the end of the world, even if he wasn’t around to see it happen.”

  * * *

  Frank dreamt of blood, was thick in it when the screaming started. He woke in a startled rush, his surroundings alien and hostile.

  “What is it, what is it?” Jess yelled, the sound of his daughter’s voice grounding him. Frank fumbled in the darkness for the Coleman lamp he’d pushed under his cot before he collapsed into a death-like sleep.

  His hand struck it, almost knocking it over before finding the switch. A small band of light illuminated the puffy, red-eyed faces of the others as they scrambled for lights and guns.

  Annie sat on her daughter’s cot, soothing her, trying to quiet her as best she could. Alex’s eyes were glazed and wide as saucers as she continued to blast out screams.

  Sam moved quickly and clapped his hand together in front of Alex’s face, shouting Hey loudly. The clap sounded out like a cannon blast, his voice the booming echo. Alex blinked, her scream trailing off as she looked Sam in the eye.

  “Look at this, Alex, here is your mom right beside you and your brothers, too.” She blinked again, looked at her mother briefly before turning her attention back to him. “I’m Sam Story, a friend of your mommy’s and this is Jessica and her dad Frank. This is Mason, Jessica’s boyfriend, and her friend, Ox. We’re all friends of your mom, your brothers and you.”

  Sam spoke calmly and clearly but managed not to sound patronizing. “Would you like something to eat, Alex, or would you like to go back to sleep?” Alex nodded and then yawned.

  Sam continued, “I was dreaming about unicorns. Did you know that if a bunch of people dream about unicorns that sometimes the unicorns will come to you in the daytime?” Alex shook her head, no. “I’m going to dream of great silver unicorns, so shiny to look at that you almost want to close your eyes. Close your eyes, Alex.”

  Alex’s eyes fluttered shut as her mother eased her back onto the cot. “Will you help me dream up a silver unicorn, Alex?” Her head moved slightly on the pillow and then she was still. “We will only dream of silver unicorns, silver unicorns that leave behind rainbow hoof prints as they play with Alex in a beautiful field of flowers.”

  Frank found his own eyes getting heavy as he listened to Sam’s monotone murmur. He yawned hard enough for tears to spring forth and shook himself, willing his eyes open.

  Sam began to hum a deep resonating tune and Frank once again felt his lids threaten to close. After a few bars, Sam lowered his tone to a soothing drone and Frank felt his consciousness being pulled from him. He let his eyes slip closed, his head so heavy now it sagged to his chest.

  He sat on the edge of the cot, burdened with sleep, his body tipping until one of his hands slipped off, causing him to pitch forward and nearly crash to the floor. He jerked upright. Sam had gone quiet and the only noise in the room was the gentle snores and breathing of the newly dreaming. He glanced at Jessica as she lay upon her cot, her face dressed in peaceful slumber.

  Frank looked at Sam, the only other person in the room still awake. “That was quite a trick you pulled. You almost had me believing in unicorns,” Frank said as Sam stretched gracefully before falling clumsily back on his cot.

  “Eh, used to work on some of the major nuts in the joint.”

  Frank nodded, remembering that the man had worked in a prison. “They respond well to stories and songs?”

  Sam seemed to puzzle the question before answering. “Seemed to work for some of them, not all, though. Most people tend to regress after experiencing severe trauma, so things like unicorns and kittens seem to calm them. But others are just too far gone. You can’t reach them anymore, except maybe by bashing them about the head,” Sam laughed softly.

  Frank cringed at the thought, not yet ready to deal with the implications of being within reach of people beyond reach.

  “It’s kind of strange, when you think about it. I’d take anyone of those crazies into my loving arms just to have things back to normal. Give me a guy that shits on the floor of his cell, cuts his dick off and then uses the steaming pile as a dip over these bloated puking fucks from another world.” Sam nodded twice, his hair making a sound against the pillow that reminded Frank of a sick foot dragging across a dirty floor. “Yeah, I’d take crazy number one any day.”

  Frank’s stomach rolled, the contents wanting to rush up and out. He placed a hand to his mouth and burped quietly. His stomach settled some and he lay back on his own cot, his hands clasped against his chest, and closed his eyes.

  This day was a
lmost over. He sensed the sun about to rise on this side of the world even though the room was without windows, and was glad for it. The new day may hold more horrors, but at least this one was gasping its last. Sam began to hum softly again and Frank let himself be pulled into blessed oblivion.

  The Cabin

  “Just let him sleep,” Jess whispered. Mason kept his back to them, pretending to be asleep.

  “I’ll come get him when breakfast is done,” Ox said and Jess hushed him.

  Mason faced floor-to-ceiling shelves with various foods stacked ten deep, a can of beef stew directly in view. His stomach growled loudly and he heard Ox snicker. Jess shushed him again as she leaned over Mason and fetched a large, three-pound can of pears from the top shelf.

  He was half-tempted to flip over quickly and roar, maybe grab her and pull her down on top of him and hold her for a while. He wondered if she would laugh and bat playfully at him or storm out in a huff, pissed at him for scaring her.

  “Morning, Jess,” he said, startling her anyway and cringed as she lost her grip on the pears, the can hurtling toward his head.

  “Shit, sonofabitch!” She yelled as she grabbed at the can with both hands, falling on him in the process and narrowly securing it before it caved his head in. He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly to see her.

  Her eyes were wide, staring at the can in her outstretched hands as she lay atop him, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ as she took in quick breaths. The big can might as well have been a live grenade for her stricken expression, her body thrown over a fallen comrade.

  Mason started to laugh, Ox following suit with his own boisterous bellow. Jess tried to silence him with a scolding glance but her lopsided grin gave her away and soon she was laughing with them.

  “Tried to off me with them pears, did ya?” Mason said through laughter. Jess squeaked for breath and waved a hand for him to stop. Ox bent forward, hands on knees and roared laughter.

  “What the hell is so funny?” Sam said from the stairs. Annie’s two boys pushed past him down the stairs and began jumping up and down, screaming and giggling, eager to join the fun.