by Nathan Combs
Jesse looked into Noah’s green and blue eyes and enthusiastically nodded yes.
“These are gonna be easy questions, Jesse. Number one, how many men are there in Nirvana?”
His pronounced Adam’s Apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed fearfully. “Hell, man, I dunno.”
“Take a guess, Jesse.”
“Maybe… three thousand. Honest, man, I dunno.”
“Okay. I believe you. How many females are there? If you don’t know, just guess.”
Jesse thought hard for a second, then said, “Well, Colonel promised everyone o’ us his own woman, but that ain’t happened yet.”
“That’s a statement, Jesse, not a guess. Give me a number.”
“Couple thousand. Honest… I ain’t sure. You gonna kill me?”
“Dunno yet. I have a few more questions. Who’s the Colonel and where does he live?”
“Colonel is, well… I dunno what his old name is. He’s the Colonel. He lives in Fort Oglethorpe som’where.”
“Okay. How often do patrols go out, how big are they, and where do they go?”
“Patrols’re out ever’ day. They ain’t all the same size, though. Some’re small. But most of ’em are purty big and—”
“How big is ‘pretty big’?”
“Some of ’em are a hun’erd men.”
“Where do they go?”
“Ever’where. But mostly we go down toward Atlanta, over to Birmingham and East t’ Spartanburg. We jest started goin’ north ’bout a week ago.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.”
“Are the women kept in a specific location or does every guy keep one?”
“Some guys have ’em one at home, but most of ’em are kept inna compound called the Bitch Pool. They do the laundry and the cookin’. You know. Wimen things. If you want one fer the night you jus’ go pick ya one out.”
Noah glared into the frightened drunk’s eyes. Then he punched Jesse in the head three times with the butt of the knife, knocking him out. I should kill you, you piece of shit, but you’re too stupid to know any better. Rising, he headed back through the woods, skirted the Racetrack, and headed up the Interstate 75 exit ramp.
The existence of Nirvana made Noah wonder if his sister and maybe even his mother could be part of the slaver world. He thought about it briefly, then decided it made no sense to consider the possibility or what to do about it until he checked out his home. In hindsight, he regretted not eliminating Jesse permanently. The moron would probably tell his superiors about the encounter. Which meant he might have a problem infiltrating the group if he determined his family was part of their world. There weren’t too many guys running around with one blue and one green eye. But Jesse said they hadn’t gone very far north yet, and Delano was close to sixty miles north of Fort Oglethorpe, so he put it out of his mind and set out for Cleveland, Tennessee, thirty miles away.
Just outside of Cleveland, he headed east on US-64, which took him alongside Lake Ocoee. From there, he took Highway 30 north to Reliance, and headed to his childhood home in the mountains off Powerhouse Road.
The house was still there. The words from the song, The Green, Green Grass of Home, flashed through his mind. The old house is still standing, though the paint is cracked and dried, and there’s that old oak tree I used to play on. It was in sad shape. The huge oak tree he used to play on had fallen on the roof, windows were broken out, and the front porch was rotted. No sign of life or evidence of his family was visible. He cautiously opened the front door and went inside. The interior was moldy and dank. In the dim light of the Tennessee afternoon, he wandered from room to room, taking the inevitable trip down memory lane.
Here’s where his mother and father read the bible to him and his sister every night. There was his old room just as he’d left it. Over there was the chair his mother knitted in. He stared at the cold dead fireplace that brought back vivid memories of family evenings spent together. He stood for several minutes assimilating them, then sat on the familiar but musty sofa. A plume of dust popped into the air. He shook his head sadly. Although it was what he expected to find, the reality was considerably harsher than the thought, and sad tears filled his eyes. He sat for over an hour, lost in vague recollections of a life that seemed to be more dream than memory.
Reluctantly, he shook his head and stood, surveying the room, then peered out the window that overlooked the backyard. Opening the sliding door, he gazed at the weed-infested lawn decorated with patches of dirty snow and stared at the garden shed sitting forlornly in the far corner of the lot. His father had prepared a cache of survival gear in a small cellar underneath the shed. The door hung limply from the hinges like a broken wing, flapping haphazardly against the wall in the light breeze.
He looked inside. Everything of value was gone but the indoor/outdoor carpeting covering the trap door was undisturbed; he moved the rack covering the cellar entrance, pulled the carpeting away and opened the small rectangular door. The rusted hinges protested but yielded, and he shined his flashlight into the opening. In the beam, dust motes swirled and wandered upward. Reflection off the undisturbed containers was gratifying.
All right.
He looked behind him, then crept back to the shed door. He stood quietly for a minute, watching and listening. Silence. Satisfied no one was nearby, he lowered himself into the hole. At the time, Noah thought his father’s obsession with survival was excessive, but he respected his father’s intellect, and together they prepared and cached the supplies. Standing in the center of the hole, a vivid memory of his dad standing on the floor above him and lowering the boxes to him worked its way osmosis-like into his memory. He remembered the day in stunning detail. He could even smell his father’s Ice Blue Aqua Velva. Tears welled again.
I have to get the hell off this memory train.
Since he helped pack and store the cache, he knew what was in each box. He played the light over them until he found the ones he wanted. One contained an inflatable four-man boat with a foot pump and paddles. He hoisted it to the floor, then added four buckets of dehydrated survival meals and a smaller box containing a lantern, batteries, and a few other items. Finished, he replaced the trap door and covered it with the carpeting. Standing in the shed, staring at the supplies, he made the decision that for better or for worse, this was home. If he could repair the house, he would live in it. If that wasn’t possible, he’d find another somewhere in the area.
Noah preferred to recon in the dark using his night vision, and by the time he dragged the raft to the Hiwassee River, it was pitch black. He decided to go downstream as far as the Hiwassee Ocoee State Park, and check out his hometown, Delano. Patches of intermittent fog hovered over the river, limiting the effectiveness of his night vision, but he shoved off and within seconds was a ghost.
Within twenty minutes, he passed the Tellico Reliance Bridge and stopped paddling and listened. Voices. Indistinct. Muted by the fog. Dipping the paddle blade quietly, he rounded a bend. Feeble campfire light rippled over the narrow waters of the river and bounced softly off the hull of the inflatable boat. The laughter and cheers of two men near the encampment was unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night. Noah slouched low about fifty feet from the campsite, intending to drift by unseen. The soft plop-plop-plop of water dripped from his lifted paddle.
Before the current could take the boat beyond the area, the fabric of the night was shredded by an anguished, feminine scream. The chilling wail hung forlornly in the cold night air, then wormed its way into his brain and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A surge of adrenaline coursed through his veins, and—disregarding his self-imposed rules of engagement—he swung the boat toward shore. When the bow crunched softly on the gravel bank, he pulled it onto a thin strip of sand and moved swiftly to the campsite. Hunkered just outside the circle of fire
light, he screwed a silencer onto his Glock. A thud from a tilted log falling into the campfire, followed by a fizz of sparks, swirled upward and highlighted two men cheering on a third who was attempting to rape a young woman. The rapist punched the girl twice in the head and she went limp. He ripped her pants from her body and rolled her onto her stomach. One of the cheerleaders stood facing Noah’s position with his feet on either side of the young woman’s head. The other squatted directly behind the rapist. Young and skinny with long, scraggly hair and full beards, they urged him on.
Noah didn’t hesitate. He put two rounds into the stander’s face. Before the body hit the ground, he shot the squatter in the back of the head. A bloody mist of skull and brain matter splattered the rapist’s back. Startled, he began struggling to his feet with his pants around his ankles. Wallace delivered a sidekick to his head. Grossly over-weight, matted greasy hair covering his bloodshot eyes, he lay on his back like a bloated walrus. Pants around his ankles, he stared at the barrel of Wallace’s gun inches from his nose. He looked up. Their eyes locked. His meaty lips parted, exposing brown, broken teeth.
Wallace shoved the barrel of the Glock into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Turning, he looked at the girl, who was sitting up and staring into space, then kneeled next to her and whispered, “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
There was no response. She was holocaust-thin with long, black hair and remarkably white skin. Her upper lip was swollen and her left eye was blackened and beginning to close. Whimpering softly, arms folded across her chest, she rocked back and forth. Her mouth hung open and a stream of bloody saliva worked its way slowly down her chin.
Knowing she was traumatized, Noah gently touched her shoulder.
Her reaction was instantaneous. Spittle flying from her mouth, fingers hooked like claws, she launched herself at his face. “You fucker!” she screamed.
Grabbing her wrists, he whispered, “Calm down. You’re safe.”
Ignoring him, she struggled to pull away. “I’ll kill you!”
Grabbing both of her wrists with one hand and using every ounce of his two hundred ten pounds to control her, he slapped her with the other. Hard.
She gasped and her head snapped back. Her eyes opened wide and locked on his camo-blackened face.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
The girl continued to stare, but said nothing.
Grabbing her by the shoulders, he shook her gently and breathed, “Snap out of it.”
She blinked.
He leaned in, placing his mouth near her ear, and said softly, “Do you want to live or do you want to die?”
For a moment, she sat frozen and glaring at him. Then, hesitantly, she nodded. “Live. Yes, I—I want to live.”
Standing, he turned his attention to the din behind him. He crouched down and moved to peer over the low berm separating the campsite from a sparsely wooded clearing and saw dozens of campfires. The aromatic smell of wood smoke mingled with cooking odors hung heavy in the air. Faint, frantic sobs of protest from distressed females mixed with the drunken laughter of men, signaling no alarm had been raised so far. In the distance, he could hear dogs barking. The forlorn baying of a hound lingered in the cold night air. A gentle breeze was steadily gnawing the fog and an abrupt gust provided a momentary glimpse of a cache of barrels a hundred feet away.
Turning back to the girl who was now standing in nothing but boots, he moved back to within inches of her. He whispered, “What’s your name?”
Shaking, eyes glazed, she opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. She shook her head from side to side. “I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know or you don’t remember?”
“I—I don’t… I don’t remember.”
“Get dressed.” He turned his attention to the campsite tent.
Inside, on a small folding table, was a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam, an M4, a bandolier of magazines, and a case of M67 frag grenades. Hell of a combination, he thought as he stuffed eight of the frags in the pockets of his tactical vest. Grabbing the M4 and the magazines, he exited the tent to find the girl wearing tattered fatigue pants that were much too large for her bony body. She was topless.
Their eyes met. Wallace arched his eyebrows, pointed at her, and, with hands spread, mouthed, “Top?”
The girl was now alert and animated. Although she was bruised, dirty, and disheveled, her piercing blue eyes radiated intelligence and defiance. Wallace drank her in and acknowledged she was deceptively beautiful.
Unembarrassed, with her breasts exposed to his gaze, she casually shrugged and whispered, “It’s not wearable.”
Holding up the M4, he asked, “Do you know how to use this?”
She took the rifle, ejected the magazine, checked it for ammo, reinserted it, and charged the weapon.
Nodding, he said, “Find a top and a jacket. I’ll be right back.”
In a crouched run, he headed toward the cache of barrels. His nose confirmed they were full of gas. Working quickly, he secured two of the grenades in the middle of the stockpile, fastened trip-wires, and strung them to saplings on the other side of the campsite path.
Noah hurried back and found the girl wearing a dirty t-shirt that was several sizes too large. She stood shivering, staring at the bodies. “You did this?”
“It wasn’t the tooth fairy.”
He stared at her for a second, then went to his first target and removed the dead man’s jacket. Putting it around her shoulders, he asked, “Are you coming with me?”
She nodded.
Towering over her, he handed her the M4, took her by the arm and steered her toward the boat. “I booby trapped their gas supply. We need to get out of here before one of those derelicts trips it.”
The girl hunkered down in the rear of the raft and Noah pushed off. The river began carrying them away and he paddled for the opposite shore. Because he didn’t believe in coincidences, he decided the derelicts were part of the northern Nirvana patrol Jesse had mentioned. By the time the boat touched the opposite shore, the current had pushed them a hundred feet south of the campsite. Since he couldn’t paddle upstream, he decided to hide the boat in the brush. As he was pulling it from the river, a shout from the campsite creased the cold night air.
“Hey, someone kilt the boys. Hey!”
A powerful beam of light played across the water. Before he could react, he and the girl were caught in the beam. Ducking, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the thin strip of woods and away from the river. The man at the campsite ran down the opposite riverbank while his light bounced haphazardly over the water and off the brush on their side of the river.
“Over this a’way,” he yelled. “They over here.”
Seconds later, the gas dump exploded.
Chapter Seven
Cold Day in Hell
Thirty days after Nina and The Light were removed from the face of the Earth, the majority of Fort Hope’s new security protocols were nearing completion. The passageway between the front and secondary gate was built, and the body scanner was installed and was operational. The fences were moved to a circular pattern, and watchtowers with bulletproof glass were manned twenty-four, seven. The woods around the perimeter were cleared to a distance of a hundred feet, and Claymores were set and armed every hundred feet on the backside of the complex. The watchtower atop the operations center and the stable for visitors’ horses were nearing completion. Resident forms and visitor badges were in use. Sean located a suitable building for the hydroponics garden, and was training people to maintain it. Sniper hides were manned at strategic locations and horse patrols covered the area to five miles in all directions. The villages of Gateway and Zion were constructing walls with watchtowers and, with the exception of the body scanner, duplicating Fort Hope’s security protocols.
; Wade sat with Stuart, Randal, Bill, and Little Soldier in the cafeteria sipping bitter chicory coffee.
Bill said, “Man, I’d do almost anything for some fresh java.”
Tyler said, “Why don’t ya make a trip to Brazil and get some?”
“Why don’t you shut up and go get yourself some herbal tea, ya little faggot?”
Wade shook his head. “Randal, remind me to keep these two children separated.”
They all grinned, and Stuart, who had been diligently working on his number crunching, arched his eyebrows, nodded in agreement, and said, “I’ve finished the population estimates. For the most part, they look good. We’ve installed over five hundred wood stoves in the new housing units. We’ll need two hundred more. Give or take. But they have to burn around the clock, and that’s a lot of wood. We have woodcutters out seven days a week from sunup to sundown, but at some point we’ll have to go greater distances to secure burnable wood. And, of course. it won’t last forever. I have special crews cutting standing dead wood, but honestly there’s not enough, and as you guys know, it takes months for green wood to dry out in order to burn efficiently. That’s a problem. Fortunately, the nuclear plant can supply unlimited heat to the connected units, which includes everything except the newest dwellings. Bottom line, we’re looking at a total of seven hundred wood stoves with another three hundred in reserve.
“Using single-family living quarters and four people per household as a baseline, I’ve projected the maximum population of Fort Hope will top out at six thousand. We could increase that figure by fifty percent by adding two more people per unit. So the population cap would be right around nine thousand. We’re at thirty-six hundred now so it won’t be a problem for a while. Maybe never. Worst case scenario… if it gets really bad, we can double up the families and increase the cap to a maximum of twelve thousand. Feeding that many people would prove a problem, though.”