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

by Lee Deadkeys

  “I think her idea is sound, Frank. Better they see us now than come upon us when we’re scrambling from cover. We should appear ready,” Rudy said.

  Mason was the first to move, and then Jess went to him and stood at the edge of the water. Ox followed, putting Jess between him and Mason. And then Rudy joined the group from his spot beside the cabin.

  Frank finally stood, his knees popping and complaining like a bitter old wife. He stood beside Rudy. From the angle of the boat’s approach, it would appear that he was their leader. The thought made him smile and shake his head wearily. This was his army of misfits, his fortress of twigs.

  They stood there with their shoes at the water’s edge, a gentle wind pushing tiny waves to kiss their feet. They watched and waited. The boats meandered closer, the music and talk growing louder and more coherent. Frank rested his rifle vertically against his shoulder. He was tired; he was too old for this.

  A woman from the third boat threw something over the side as she laughed hysterically. The man at the bow of the first boat turned and yelled for them to quit fucking around and keep their eyes open for Fat-ones.

  Frank felt a hint of relief, it would seem they were people just looking for a safe place to hole up until the world decided what it wanted to do. Maybe people like them.

  The man at the bow faced forward again and scanned the shoreline. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He had a machete in a sheath on his back. Worn over the shoulder and across the chest like a bandolier was an AK-47. He wore a desert camo Boonie hat. He was the leader, Frank was sure of it.

  “Hey, Victor!” A man from the second boat yelled, the sound traveling smoothly across the water. The man in the first boat turned again to look behind him. He stopped abruptly midway through and looked directly at Frank and the others on the shore.

  Victor started so badly that Frank was sure the man would pitch over the side, but caught himself at the last moment and sat down heavily. He was up a heartbeat later, pointing and yelling for the people in the other boats to kill the damn music and grabbing recklessly at his rifle.

  The others began to scan the place where Victor was pointing and, as they would spot Frank’s group, a handgun or rifle would raise in response. One woman went so far as to bash the bottle of beer she’d been drinking against a cleat and then thrusting the jagged end in their direction.

  Frank smiled despite the icy cramp settling in his gut. They suddenly seemed awfully nervous for people just looking to outrun the end of the world.

  Through sheer force of will, Frank widened his grin into what he hoped would convey peace and goodwill. Victor didn’t budge, his rifle still pointed directly at them as the woman with the broken bottle shouted for him to shoot them.

  This could be it, Frank thought, the last kick in the teeth for our little band of survivors.

  “Shut up,” Victor said to the babbling woman and then mercifully lowered his weapon by half. “You’re not sick?”

  Frank opened his mouth to answer, found it dry as the desert and bit down on his tongue to coax forth saliva.

  “No, no one is sick here,” Frank managed, hoping his voice was steadier than his legs.

  Victor surveyed his own group. “Lower your weapons everybody, last thing we need is another accident.” Only about half of Victor’s group complied. The ones still pointing their weapons at Frank’s group were mostly men from the third boat; they seemed itchy for blood, especially the big bald one at the helm.

  Frank sensed Jess stiffen, just a small uplifting of her rifle caught from the corner of his eye. His peripheral vision narrowed painfully as he tried to gauge her intentions without taking his eyes off the boats.

  Frank’s eyes began to water as he wondered how long it would take Jess to break formation and start shooting. He risked turning his head slightly, hoping for a clearer look and maybe, through some small gesture, to communicate with her to remain calm and—

  Movement from Frank’s left stopped his thoughts, his head jerked toward the mass and his finger tightened on the trigger. Rudy was rushing the water, sighting down the big AR-10 he’d selected from the cache as he moved forward.

  “You’re first, ya big bald bastard! Ya hear me? You’ll be the first man I kill!” Rudy moved knee deep in the water and stopped, his aim steadily on the man at the helm of the third boat.

  A couple of the men stood up, weapons raised.

  “And you three will be next!” Mason said as four long strides brought him beside Rudy. Frank and the others followed suit. Rudy stood rigid against the lapping waters, his stance emitting a sense of controlled violence, an explosion searching for a flash hole.

  Victor looked from Rudy to the bald man and then back again, looking for an answer to a deadly riddle, an answer that would see them all alive on the back end of this situation. Frank wondered if he should yell a threat of his own when Victor swung the rifle off them and pointed it at the bald man in the third boat.

  “Lower your weapon, Claus, or I’ll shoot you myself,” Victor said and then gestured with the barrel of his rifle at the others. “You all, too.”

  Claus seemed to weigh his options for a moment as he cocked his head in Victor’s direction.

  “You going to shoot us all, Vic, after all we been through together? Shoot your friends over a bunch of strangers?”

  “We were strangers before three days ago, Claus. And if memory serves me correctly, you had a gun on me when we met.”

  Claus lowered the rifle in a quick motion and turned toward Victor.

  “Now that ain’t fair, Vic. I told you already, we thought you might be after our food and guns, thought you might be looters, or worse, sick or something.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I remember that I thought you were a crafty enough bastard to realize you were outgunned and cowardly enough to not risk your own ass. But it went down differently when we met that other bunch, didn’t it?”

  Claus hung his head as if shamed. “Now that was unfortunate, it’s true, but not something that needs discussing in front of people that, I might point out, still have guns on us.”

  Victor turned his attention back to Frank’s group as if he’d forgotten they were there. “What say you, folks, we going to part neighborly or spill some blood?”

  Rudy spoke up first. “You people are running out of lake. Seems to me if you were looking for a place to camp and rest, you’ve passed a peck of fine real estate getting this far. What, exactly, are you hoping to find?”

  Victor lowered his rifle. “Just that, friend, a safe place. We’ve had a terrible last few weeks, lost half our number to either the sick ones or in shootouts with one sort of asshole or another. Most of our food and water has been used or thieved in the night by said assholes.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “It’s been rough going, to say the least. We just need to rest, get some nourishment and figure out what to do next. You folks been out here long? You do know what’s happened out in the world, right?”

  Rudy lowered his weapon without answering the other man and leaned in close to Frank. “What you want to do, boss?”

  Frank shrugged, honestly at a loss. He didn’t want these strangers here, didn’t want them within sight, but what right did he have to make demands? On what authority could he order them away?

  By order of the gun, he thought, by the authority of force. He sighed heavily, feeling that the world had suddenly gotten very small and only daring to wonder briefly, what it must be like in the big cities where the world had been small and cramped to begin with.

  “I don’t want them here. Other than that, I don’t have a clue.”

  Rudy nodded once and turned his attention back to Victor. “We know what’s going on out there. We can’t tell you where to set up, but this is private property and we have enough people and guns to defend it. I should also tell you that we’ve already had an incident this morning with one of the sick ones.”

  As Rudy spoke, Victor’s posture began to sag. He was reading
the rejection clearly, understanding that they would have to move on or fight to stay. At the mention of the sick ones, he jerked to attention, alert and ready for action.

  “Which kind was it, the Skinnies or the Fat-ones? Were they packed up or only just the one?” The boat rocked gently as an animated Victor jittered out his questions. The others in the boats had also tensed and heads were swiveling around the shoreline as if an attack were imminent.

  Rudy held up a hand. “No need to fret, the thing was dealt with. My point is, we are attached to a road, a primitive one sure, but still a road. You folks might be better off somewhere on the other side of the lake where you can put a cliff at your backs.

  There is an area just like that a few miles east of here. Just follow the shoreline until the land begins to rise and turn to rock. It’s only accessible by boat from this level and if they come across the desert, they’ll have a fifty-foot drop to get down to you. I think it’s your best bet.”

  Victor conferred quietly with a woman sitting near him. Frank lowered his voice also and asked Rudy if such a place actually existed. Rudy nodded once. “Absolutely. It’d do us no good to lie to these folks when they could easily come back here, pissed off.”

  “If it’s such a great place, then why aren’t you people there? You already said you had a run in with a sick one, so why stay here?” Claus said. “They could be setting us up, Victor. Think about it, why send us away? The more guns the better, I always say. No, there’s got to be a reason they want us gone.”

  Victor considered this as the woman next to him spoke quietly. Victor held up a hand to quiet her.

  “This could get sticky again,” Rudy said to Frank. “That bald bastard, Claus, is trouble.”

  Frank nodded and watched as Victor struggled with a decision. He had sympathy for Victor, hooking up with the likes of Claus and realized just how fortunate he’d been to stumble across the people he had. All of them basically good people doing the best they could in a horrible situation.

  A part of him thought that Victor would be an asset to his group, another sound head, and steady gun. But Claus and his bunch were part of Victor’s baggage now. There would be no getting rid of them without violence, and that was just too high a price for Frank to consider for more than a moment.

  Victor dabbed at his sweaty face with the crook of his arm. “Listen, why don’t I come ashore, we could talk things over? I could help you folks, I’ve studied the Sick Ones and I might have information that would be valuable to you.”

  It was hard to watch as Victor nearly pleaded with them, and Frank felt his conviction falter.

  “What sort of information?” Jess said.

  “Let me come ashore.”

  “No, just tell us what information you have,” Jess said clearly, with no hostility that Frank could detect.

  “I think you should do like our man said and go find a place to camp. We’ll talk things over and then you come back, alone, and we’ll decide then if sharing information is beneficial to both parties,” Mason said.

  The woman next to Victor spoke quietly again. Victor let her have her say, nodding twice before looking back to the shore.

  “Grace needs to be at the talk too, that’s the only way we’ll agree,” Victor said.

  Everyone turned to Rudy and Frank, waiting. Rudy nodded.

  “So be it,” Frank said. “Be back before nightfall, otherwise everything is off.”

  Claus started to protest but Victor stopped him with a look. One of the men in Claus’s boat must have sensed that Claus was pushing the situation and grabbed him by the arm, roughly pulling him into a seat.

  They started the engines and began to head back along the far shoreline. As soon as they were underway, Claus tipped a bottle filled with brown liquid and halved the contents in four long pulls, then threw back his head and brayed at the heavens.

  “God, what a fucking asshole,” Jess said, turning and making her way out of the water.

  “Truly,” Rudy said and turned to follow.

  Jess glanced at the dead thing in the yard as she passed and sat heavily in one of the chairs on the porch. They others followed, taking chairs or leaning against the railing. She propped her feet on the opposite railing, a thin stream of water running from her Bellevilles to the dusty porch.

  “I think we should burn that thing in the yard. It’ll probably stink like the Devil’s asshole but it should kill any contagions it might be carrying,” she said with a thrust of her chin.

  “Good idea,” Frank said. “I’ll tackle that as soon as I rest a bit and we talk about what to do with Victor and his people.”

  “Should we bring the others in on this?” Mason asked.

  “Might be the way to do it, although I’m fairly certain they’ll go along with whatever we decide,” Frank said.

  “I know I will,” Annie said, coming through the door with drinks and crackers topped with an orange-colored cheese spread. “I hope you don’t mind powdered lemonade. There’s obviously no ice but the water from the well is mountain cold.” She set the tray down on the ottoman and smoothed the front of her dress with her hands.

  “That was mighty thoughtful of you, ma’am,” Rudy said, picking up a cup of lemonade and a cracker.

  Annie nodded and smiled, then turned to head back into the cabin. “I’ll get the others something to eat and ask if they want to be included in the discussion.”

  Everyone helped themselves to refreshments. The sounds of crackers being munched made Frank smile. This almost felt normal, this taking of drink and food while relaxing on the porch. He bet if he closed his eyes he could leave the reality of their situation behind, if only briefly. He tried it and it felt fine.

  Heavy boots moving through the cabin brought him back to the present before he was ready and he wished the owner would have given him just a little more time.

  “Are the assholes in the boat what you wanted to discuss?” Sam asked, shoving a stack of six crackers in his mouth as he came through the door. He took a drink of lemonade and swallowed hard. “‘Cause I just had a look out the backdoor and they haven’t gone far.”

  Frank opened his eyes and sat forward. “What do you mean, they haven’t gone far?”

  “They’re just across from us and up a little. They’re unpacking their shit as we speak.”

  Jess jumped up, her boots squishing loudly as she moved around the side of the cabin. Frank followed a second behind.

  “I’ll be Goddamned,” Jess said stomping on the dusty ground. “They’re right fucking there!”

  “Jess, language, please,” Frank said as he raised his rifle and scoped Victor’s group.

  “Yeah, but they are right there! For Christ’s sake, I thought we made it pretty clear to find another place.” Jess turned and looked at him. “I bet this was that asshole, Claus’s, idea. We should have shot him when we had the chance.”

  “Quiet down now, Jess.” Frank found Victor in the group right away. He was following Claus around as the man carried things from the boat and set them down or handed them off to the other men. Victor’s body language said this was not his idea and that he was not happy about the decision.

  Frank looked at the first boat, Victor’s boat, anchored a few feet offshore. It was still loaded and Grace appeared to stand watch at the helm, a rifle held ready. “This could be bad for Victor, looks like he’s not planning on staying and maybe trying to talk Claus out of it.”

  Victor threw his hands up in exasperation and looked across the water toward the cabin. The distance at this narrow inlet between their camp and Claus’s was only about three hundred yards. Not right on top of them, but still too close for comfort.

  Fragments of words carried over the water, but not enough to assess the situation other than Victor’s obvious physical agitation. Victor said something to the people in the first and second boats. Whatever he said caused Claus to pause in his unloading and also address the people.

  The drunken woman from the second boat, who
had earlier brandished a broken beer bottle at them, stood abruptly, a satchel in her arms. She made her way unsteadily to the side of the boat and tossed the satchel as hard as she could toward Claus, the movement causing her to pitch overboard as the satchel splashed a few feet from shore.

  Two men from the second boat leaned over the side, looking almost casually into the water. The drunken woman finally surfaced, screaming laughter and stumbling toward the shore, retrieving her bag as she went.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Jess asked.

  “Looks like they’re dividing up into groups, Victor’s and Claus’s,” Mason said. “I think Victor’s group’s going to be the smallest.”

  “Are those cases of booze?” Frank counted five cases that he could clearly see. Three others were obscured by bags and other supplies. “I think Victor’s leaving. He’s getting back in the boat.”

  They heard the boat start, Victor maneuvering it closer to the second boat. Three people from the second boat tossed over their belongings before climbing in. After the swap, Victor pointed his boat at their side of the shore and Frank worried that the man would break the deal by bringing all of the five people with him. Victor only waved at him and then turned, heading further up the shore.

  After Victor was out of sight, Frank turned his attention back to the twelve people making up Claus’s group. A woman with pretty blonde hair stood looking after Victor’s boat, even though Frank was sure it was out of sight. One of the men let out a long loud bray as he hoisted one of the cases of alcohol above his head.

  The blonde woman flinched, cowering slightly. Frank had to wonder why on earth she would have stayed with this group instead of leaving with the others. He realized he could question the actions of others until the end of time and never come to an acceptable answer. Bad choices and their consequences came a little too easily for some people and he was beginning to grow weary of them all.

  “Think he’ll be back?” Rudy asked, shading the sinking sun with a hand. Frank didn’t answer right away. Instead, he raised his eyes and squinted into the sun before looking away with a wince. Where had the day gone? Jess had been right when she said time moved differently now.