by David Craig
Normally Beacon would have cautioned against parking in an exposed position like that, but this Humvee had been Up-Armored. He could see the inches thick glass in the windshield and windows. As the kids moved to train their scoped rifles on the little valley Doc turned his attention to Beacon. "Nice shooting …
"His name's Beacon," Cindy said as she walked over to join Keith in a prone position overlooking the valley.
Beacon was about to ask the Doc how he'd mounted the Barrett Fifty in the turret when the Humvee's driver got out. Beacon stared.
He was looking at a Barbie doll. The girl looked exactly like a seventeen year old version of the doll. Her face and figure straight off a toy store shelf, only this was a living breathing girl dressed in tailored MultiCam. Beacon started to stutter an apology but she cut him off.
"Everybody does that and no, I haven't had any 'work' done this is all natural" she said holding up double finger quote marks as she spoke in a voice he imagined the doll would have sounded like, "Barbie Doll's my handle on the radio so just call me Barbie everybody else does." She grabbed a rifle from inside the Humvee and called out "Cindy, I gott'a pee will you overwatch for me?"
"Sure if you'll do the same for me." Cindy replied getting up. Talking and giggling the two teenaged girls and their weapons disappeared into the bushes behind the Humvee.
Three more vehicles pulled up behind the skirmish line of 4X4's down on the road. One was an old Army M35 deuce and a half cargo truck painted in MultiCam pulling an old M-106 "water buffalo type trailer also in MultiCam, of course. But instead of water spigots it had a gas station type hose and nozzle. It was followed by two of Trudy Peace's vehicles. Beacon was glad to see they'd ditched the GTO and noted her sons were helping to set up a rearguard perimeter.
"We're looking for extra hands to help out when we get to the redoubt and they're hard working and eager to learn." Doc answered Beacon's questioning look. "Plus they came with your stamp of approval."
"We're still hiring if you'd like to sign on," Doc continued. Beacon declined the offer to become a hired hand/serf but thought it was a good deal for Trudy's unprepared clan.
To Beacon's asked questions Doc explained all of the group's vehicles were diesel powered and the deuce's trailer held four hundred gallons of diesel. Enough, with the spare five gallon cans and extra built in fuel tanks each of the twenty vehicles carried to get them all to their redoubt. Unlike gasoline, properly stored diesel fuel would last for years.
Answering Beacon's unasked question Adonis interjected, "We thought Doc was a nice respectable old widower but then one day this dirty old man showed up at the monthly maneuvers with Barbie."
"I heard that and I ain't old!" rang down from the turret as Doc scanned the valley floor with his scoped sniper rifle, "Besides, there's lots of old laws that won't be around anymore like the prohibition on owning those two submachine guns I see down there."
Four more 4X4's pulled up behind Doc's Humvee. Doc climbed down so he and the newly arrived drivers could talk behind the safety of his vehicle. It was obvious to Beacon that the group's leaders were holding a powwow. Beacon dubbed them "the Board of Directors" which it turned out was exactly what they called themselves. When Doc wondered what all was down there Beacon walked over and handed him the SALUTE report saying "I was just about to come get you guys when the excitement started."
Doc asked what "DDL&BSG LLC" at the top of the page meant. When Beacon translated the acronym Doc and the other leaders burst out laughing and allowed as how it was mostly true. The page was passed around to all the MultiCam vehicles accompanied by laughs everywhere as the acronym was explained.
After the meeting Doc walked over to Beacon and, without revealing its location, described his group's redoubt and again invited Beacon to sign on. Envisioning the group's fortress from Doc's description Beacon came to some conclusions. "You'll need to keep your chattel inside the compound at night until the die off is over."
Beacon had made a Freudian slip. Consciously he was thinking of the cattle, horses and sheep Doc had described; livestock now in the hands of caretaker members at the redoubt that would now have to be protected initially from starving survivors and later from marauding bands of brigands. Subconsciously he'd been thinking of Trudy's family.
Doc didn't miss Beacon's true meaning. "Chattel are chained to the land," he said with a hard edge on his voice, "Hired Hands," he emphasized the words, "will be armed, helping to work the fields by day and guard them at night with nothing to stop them from leaving. We didn't make this happen and could no more have stopped it than you. We both saw it coming and prepared as best we could in our own ways with the tools we had available to us."
"Touché", Beacon nodded. Chastised he realized this might well be the new world order; those who had or gained control over the means of food production would form dukedoms and dynasties while outlaws roamed the land pillaging wherever they found weakness.
Honest hard working folks like Trudy's clan would have to seek shelter under the protective wings of groups like the Rich Guys Survival Club or form groups of their own to claim and defend farmland, crops, livestock and their very lives.
Outlaw bikers and other organized groups with discipline and command structure already in place like urban gangs would have a head start on ordinary civilians who'd have to arm and organize from scratch. Beacon wondered how many military units, militias and police departments would redeploy in the face of the new reality or break apart as individual members scattered to defend their families.
Cindy and Barbie returned while Beacon was watching Doc and the Board of Directors. They began picking up the fired cartridge hulls around Beacon's position.
One of the Board of Directors, a middle-aged blonde woman, approached Beacon identifying herself as "Elaine, of the Board of Directors," then saying, "I'm willing to allow you to accompany us to the castle. I'm sure we could find something for you to do."
Beacon had already turned down a polite offer to become a serf and wasn't in any mood to accept serfdom as an act of charity. He gave a gruff, "No thanks!" and turned as Barbie approached.
Barbie offered the brass to him but Beacon declined. "You keep it; I've got no way to reload it. I figure factory loaded ammo takes up a whole lot less space than reloading gear and supplies plus it's a lot less susceptible to heat and water damage."
"OK, we've got reloading gear at the castle, thanks," Barbie said rejoining Cindy for more girl talk.
When the proscribed thirty minutes was up they drove down into the valley to gather up weapons, ammo and equipment to be added to the group's stock of trade goods leaving one 4X4 plus Trudy and her clan on overwatch/rearguard duty at the crest of the hill. There would be no prisoners. There was no one to guard them twenty-four hours a day seven days a week year after year and, as Doc had said, a lot of the old rules of civilization were being left behind. They intended to leave no rapists behind.
Cindy, Barbie and some of the other women cut the two girls loose and gave them some clothes that weren't ripped and still had buttons and zippers. One curled up in a ball crying. The other picked up a shotgun and said, "Come on Tina we need some therapy." as she kicked a biker corpse. Cindy and Barbie followed the two girls as overwatch ready in case any of the rapists still had fight left in him.
It was a girl thing and Beacon stayed out of it except to point out the bush where the guy in the green T-shirt was. Both young women took turns firing into his hiding place. Miraculously he was still alive and screamed loudly as the shotgun fired again and again. Beacon reckoned revenge was good therapy as the raped women worked their way up from his groin to his head.
The inside of the cab of the fuel truck was splattered with dried blood. The paperwork indicated it had been loaded with 2000 gallons of diesel and 1000 of gasoline on the afternoon of The Game Changer. The LLC's were about to top off all their vehicles from the truck's big tanks when Beacon made a suggestion.
First drain all the diesel they could g
et from the fuel tanks of the beer trucks since they had no use for truckloads of stale beer and would be leaving them behind. Then finish topping off the 4X4's from the fuel truck so as to leave maximum fuel in it.
Then Trudy and her clan could drive the fuel truck for the convoy topping off all vehicles every night until the fuel was exhausted or they reached the redoubt. This, he explained, would leave them with maximum trade goods both for the trip and when they arrived at their redoubt. Privately he hoped it would enable Trudy's clan to retain their gasoline powered cars and some of their independence for the remainder of the trip.
Beacon's plan was adopted but amended to have the fuel truck also top off the deuce and a half's fuel trailer which they'd been refueling from so as to retain maximum adaptability and survivability if anything happened to the fuel truck. The military truck had a better chance of making it all the way to the redoubt than the civilian fuel truck.
Beacon would spend the night with the LLC then they'd separate in the morning. The two raped women could join the convoy or not. Actually they didn't have much choice. Most of their friends and families had been murdered as the outlaw bikers pillaged the small town they'd grown up in. Without protectors and a social network to depend on their chances of survival alone in this new world weren't very good. Their best bet was to join Trudy and her clan as hired hands/ semi serfs of the Rich Guys Survival Club and try to work their way into something better.
Offered a large share of the spoils for saving Cindy; Beacon topped off his truck's hundred gallon tank and took the only three boxes of .308 Winchester ammo to be found among the outlaws plus ten fifty round boxes of factory .45 ACP and five 500 round bricks of twenty-two long rifle ammo; all hollow points. The outlaws must have robbed a gun store he mused as he reloaded his magazines. He donated the rest of his share of guns, gas and ammo to Trudy.
With the hundred gallon tank in the back of his pickup Beacon could have driven all the way to Old Bill's without refueling, the extra gas he'd gathered before bugging out was for trade and he didn't need, or have containers for, more gasoline. Trudy, on the other hand, could use the gas and guns to equip her family and to trade for things they didn't have.
An Armadillo Sleeping in a Pile of Porcupines
The DDL&BSG's board of directors had decided to bivouac in the center of the valley during that meeting on the hill. The stolen fuel and beer trucks were driven to a point next to a stream about 500 yards from the nearest hill then they and the group's MultiCam vehicles formed a circle around the fuel truck like an old west wagon train circling the wagons to camp for the night only the beer trucks would be staying behind in the morning.
"I pre-selected this spot," Doc informed Beacon, "as a secondary laager location during a scouting mission years ago due to that stream running down the center of the valley and the fact that the surrounding hills are too far away for all but the best of shooters to engage with readily available civilian rifles."
"Military machine guns," he quickly pointed out to a criticism he imagined coming to Beacon's lips, "would have been a game changer but our psychological experts think rouge military units will likely still be in the throes of birth and consolidation this soon after TEOTWAWKI so the gamble is worth taking now that it's too late to make it to our primary planed bivouac point before dark."
"Machine guns or a Barrett sniper rifle" Beacon amended with a smile.
"Touché!" Doc conceded red faced.
The beer trucks were parked across the dirt road where it crossed the line of vehicles entering and leaving the laager. One truck snuggled up against the bridge abutments where the road crossed the stream and the other blocking the dirt road on the other side. They'd be roadblocks across the road on which the outlaw bikers had presumably entered the valley. The LLC clearly felt the beer trucks were more expendable than the LLC's tricked out trucks and feared a ramming by some rogue survival militia or the motorcycle gang's stragglers.
Beacon's pickup and Trudy's cars were placed behind the officer of the day's 4X4 just behind the beer truck blocking the road on the side they'd all entered the valley from.
Beacon volunteered for a turn at sentry duty, but was rejected on the grounds that he didn't know the LLC's full chain of command, standard operating procedures or attack reaction plan. Since he'd be leaving the group the next day there was no sense teaching him the group's secrets.
Beacon, the female members of Trudy Peace's clan and the two rescued girls were designated reserve reserves and placed under the immediate command, and watchful eye, of the Sergeant of the Guard. Later, when there was time, the women would be integrated into the group's defensive structure. Trudy Peaces’ boys however were in the process of being integrated in to the LLC’s security protocol and served as secondaries with the early evening sentries under the tutelage of the Sergeant of the Guard.
Beacon didn't mind being rejected for sentry duty but he felt he had to volunteer because he was partaking of the group's protection. There's no such thing as a free lunch; if he was willing to accept the group's protection he should be willing to participate in the group's defense. But he didn't want to be traveling or camping alone tonight so he stayed.
The ruckus raised by the fire fight would have alerted any marauders in the area of their presence. Traveling tonight he'd be like a moth flying into a bat cave, but by laagering with the stronger group he'd be as safe as an armadillo sleeping in a pile of porcupines.
Trudy had brought alone a cardboard box of pots and pans which she was busily unpacking when the Sergeant of the Guard informed her this would be a dark camp with no camp or cooking fires or lights of any kind and asked her to put the pots and pans away as quietly as possible.
That evening Beacon was impressed by the group's light discipline. The LLC vehicles had been modified so that a flick of a switch prevented interior dome lights from coming on when vehicle doors were opened. The trucks and Trudy's cars had their dome light bulbs removed and stowed away before it was full dark.
Noise discipline was practiced too. There was no slamming of vehicle doors and people talked in low tones if at all.
Individual MultiCam clad people came over offering MRE's from their own personal stocks to Trudy's clan of seven and the two girls. Reminding himself there is no such thing as a free lunch; Beacon declined the proffered MRE and dined alone on his canned goods.
Beacon slept alone in his camper and was just lacing up his boots at dawn when a sentry raised the alarm.
Again the LLC reacted more like a military organization than a bunch of civilians playing with guns and off road vehicles. All sentries remained at their posts and, more importantly, continued to watch their areas of responsibility. There was no confusion as each vehicle's occupants took up firing positions beside, under (and in Barbie's case in the turret atop) their vehicles; the area of responsibility and field of fire of each vehicle's occupants clearly being the area beyond the vehicle.
Beacon's analogy of sleeping among porcupines came to mind as, in his mind, the circular corral of vehicles with rifle barrels sticking out in every direction resembled a porcupine. If whatever had caused the sentry to raise the alarm was a feint designed to draw the defenders away from the real intended point of attack the attackers would be badly surprised when the made their move.
Doc and the board of directors met at the Sergeant of the Guard's post and received his report. Not having MultiCams Trudy's sons were instructed to shadow their mentors "like a Siamese twin". With no duties assigned Beacon was free to roam, but chose not to because anyone inside the perimeter not wearing MultiCam might be mistaken for an enemy and he didn't want to cause confusion or get shot. Instead he climbed up on top of his camper and took a look at the cause for all the commotion through his rifle scope.
Romeos and Juliets
It was a military HMMWV up-armored like Doc’s, but painted desert tan and sporting what looked like machine gun in the turret.
The vehicle slowly glided to a halt about a hundr
ed yards away and two young men got out. One of them was wearing a pistol on his belt. He kicked the vehicle’s tire. Beacon volunteered to go out and talk to them.
Leaving his rifle with Trudy, Beacon picked up an unopened MRE and, tucking it inside the wolves' fur of his coat, walked out to the stalled Humvee carefully keeping his hands at his sides palms facing the young men.