GMO 24- The Coalition- A Tale Of Prepper Survival (GMO 24- A Tale Of Prepper Survival Book 1)

by Hunt, James

  “Or what, old man?” the sentry replied, aiming his rifle between Warren’s shoulders.

  Warren waved him off and walked out the front door, where more sentries were stationed outside. He didn’t know where the hell all of them were coming from.

  The muscles in Warren’s back popped as he bent over to stretch. He plopped down on the edge of the curb and rubbed his hands together. He had never wanted a smoke so badly in his life. He would have mowed down anyone in the community for the chance at another drag, but the fatigue in his muscles beckoned him to stay put.

  A few of the neighbors poked their heads out of their homes to get a look at the spectacle that was his house.

  “Why don’t you come over?” Warren yelled across the street. “We’re having some MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS FOR DINNER!”

  The doors quickly shut, causing a few of the sentries to turn their heads, but Warren knew most of them didn’t care about the crotchety ramblings of an angry old man. He traced the liver spots that covered the tops of his hands. Every movement of his fingers highlighted the bones underneath his skin. He felt a quick tap on his shoulder and jumped. “Jesus Christ!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “God dammit, Alice! Are you trying to give me a stroke?”

  Alice Harper was a mouse of a woman, and not just because of her size, which was tiny. Her ears were far too large and round for her head, and she had buckteeth and an overbite. This, accompanied by a way of always keeping her hands at her chest, curled like the top of a candy cane, only exemplified the comparison. Warren couldn’t imagine the woman ate much even before the crisis. He didn’t think her world changed at all compared to the rest of them.

  “What do you want?” Warren asked.

  Alice took a seat right next to him and scooted close. She cupped her hand to her mouth and pressed it to his ear. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Warren pushed her off him. “Well, don’t bring attention to yourself by acting all clandestine now!”

  “Clandenwhat?”

  “Never mind.”

  “They questioned me for over an hour, but I just told them that I didn’t know anything.”

  “I know you didn’t say anything, Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Oh.”

  The words came out in a defeated whisper. Alice kept her head down and fiddled with the rags she wore as a shirt. Warren gently nudged her am.

  “Hey. You know Alex went to go and get Daniel, right?” Warren asked.

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. I told him he was an idiot, but he did it anyway. And judging by the amount of company we’ve received today, I’d say he made it.”

  “Do you think he can do it? Can he bring Daniel back?”

  Warren remained silent. He was focused on the ruckus coming from inside the house. The sentries were shouting at one another. The next moment, a few of them started running outside with their guns pointed at Warren.

  “You! Get up! Now!” the sentry ordered.

  Warren pushed himself up, using Alice’s small shoulders to help steady him. “What is it?”

  The sentry’s answer was a pair of cuffs around Warren’s wrists and a shove face-first into the ground. “We got you, asshole. We found your stash.”

  Warren immediately started squirming, trying to thrust the sentry off of him. “No! You idiots!” He quickly turned to Alice. “Alice! Get dow—”

  The explosion that followed rocked the foundation of the house and shook the whole community from the ground up. Concrete and broken glass rained down and littered the yard. A solid ringing sounded in Warren’s ear, and when he looked over at the house, the front half had been completely blown away.

  Chapter 6

  The desk in Gordon’s office crashed to its side, toppling piles of papers and office supplies, and his computer smashed to the floor. Gordon rammed the tip of his foot into the underbelly of the desk repeatedly, splintering the wood underneath, spouting as many curses as he could come up with.

  Once the rage had exhausted him, Gordon stopped. The tip of his foot throbbed as he sat back down In his chair. What was left of Alex’s seed bank and food storage was blown to smithereens, along with a portion of his men. The brutes that made up the muscle of the Soil Coalition were only good at one thing: breaking things.

  It was an attribute that Gordon had exploited many times to his benefit. The goons could break bones, doors, walls, windows, and from time to time, the defiance that some of the community members exhibited, but that same brute force and less-than-delicate touch also caused quite a bit of collateral damage. However, this was the first time they’d ruined something this important.

  The door slammed against the wall when Gordon made his way out of the office. The two sentries guarding Alex’s cell stepped aside and let him enter.

  “Bad news. My guys found your stash, and a majority of them are dead and crispy. Smart rig with the explosion. But then again, it doesn’t take much to fool these guys,” Gordon said.

  Alex didn’t say anything. He continued to cradle the side of his swollen face and pushed himself from lying on his side to a sitting position.

  “So the deal’s off the table,” Gordon said. “You’ll be taken to a farm camp immediately. And I’ll make sure it’s one where your friends won’t be.”

  Gordon turned to leave, but before he made it out of the cell, Alex pulled his hand away and mumbled through his swollen cheek and lower lip, “What makes you think that was all of it?”

  “Bullshit.”

  Alex flashed something that Gordon thought resembled a grin. Gordon tapped his foot. The throbbing had lessened and was replaced by a slight tingling. “Where?”

  Alex shook his head. “No. This time I go. I don’t need your guys blowing up any more of my stuff.”

  “Fine. But we leave now. Guards!”

  It was a four-hour drive to Alex’s community from Topeka, and that was if the weather conditions remained favorable.

  Gordon chose to ride with Alex and sat right next to him. It was a three-row seat SUV, with two sentries up front and two in the back. “They’re from the seed silo, aren’t they? Is that why you joined that detail when all of this shit went down?”

  The vibration of tires on potholed asphalt was the only response, along with the slight clink of metal when the sentries adjusted their rifles. Another dip in the road jerked their bodies from side to side. The car’s shocks squeaked under the strain of its full load. Gordon leaned a little closer, looking at Alex’s reflection in the window as he looked away.

  “You ever miss it? The power?”

  The lumps on Alex’s face made it hard to read, but Gordon could swear he saw Alex’s jaw tighten in the window’s reflection.

  “No?” Gordon asked. “Well, more for me then.”

  ***

  They were only ten minutes away from Alex’s community now. He’d run through all of the different scenarios of how it would play out. The seeds he had stored under Harper’s house were his only real bargaining chip now. Once those were gone, he’d lose all leverage. And he wasn’t even sure if the pardon deal was on the table anymore. This would end in one of two ways: either he would be sent to a farm camp, or they would kill him. Alex didn’t like either of them.

  The Main Street community structures came into view. Less than five minutes away now. Alex tried concentrating on the last time he had been in Harper’s house. Did he have anything there that he could use? The cloud of hunger loomed over his mind, fogging his train of thought. Focus. Alex shook his head sharply, fighting off the pain throbbing in his head when he had his answer. The kitchen.

  The tires of the SUV splashed through the mud road, past the community stores and buildings, and made its way up to the cul-de-sac. The brakes squealed to a stop. The driver got out and popped the door open. Warren was in similar cuffs outside the house.

  “Well?” Gordon asked.

  Alex nodded to the Harpers’ house. Two of th
e sentries walked on either side of him, with Gordon right in front. They stepped inside Harper’s house. Like most of the homes, it was fairly empty. Most people had burned their furniture for warmth during the first winter.

  “Show me,” Gordon said.

  “Through the kitchen. In the back,” Alex answered.

  “You first.”

  The restraints around Alex’s wrists hid the trembling of his arms. He controlled his breathing to steady himself. He stepped through the doorway into the kitchen, the two sentries following him. His eyes immediately went to the sink. Each step closer brought the bottom of the sink into view, and every inch that appeared without the outline of a knife caused panic to overtake him. Alex moved closer to the edge of the counter, trying to get a better look inside the sink. And then, just before the bottom of the sink appeared empty, he saw the faded black handle of a knife.

  Using both cuffed hands, he swiftly snatched the handle of the knife. The doorframe to the kitchen was small, causing the two sentries to cluster, making it awkward for them to reach their rifles. Alex brought the tip of the blade into the side of the first sentry’s neck. An eruption of blood spouted from the contact. Blood squirted between the sentry’s fingers as he tried to stanch the bleeding. Before his partner could reach for his sidearm, Alex brought the blade of the knife across his throat as well.

  With both sentries clutching their wounds, attempting to hang on to the last few seconds of life they had left, he shoved both into the kitchen’s hallway, bottlenecking the only entrance, keeping the knife in hand, and sprinted out the back. Dirt flew up from his heels. One hundred yards away was the forest of dead trees, clustered together in a decaying shamble.

  The sentries finally made it through the kitchen, and shouts quickly transformed into gunfire. The bullets ripped through the air close enough to Alex’s head for him to feel the vibrations of the shots. Alex pumped his legs, pushing toward the tree line. His legs burned, and the metal from the cuffs cut against the skin on his wrists. Finally, he made it into the cover of the trees, which would grow thicker the deeper he went.

  The cloud cover blocked out what moonlight was shining. The gunshots fired behind him lessened. They couldn’t see him now.

  Alex pushed his body beyond the limits of what it wanted to do. It begged and cried out for him to stop, to rest, to eat, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He had to keep going. The constant placement of his feet one after the other on the uneven ground was the only thing keeping him alive. And if he was dead, then so were Meeko, Harper, and the rest of his community. So he pushed on, running to the thick tree at the other end of the forest to collect the rifles he’d stored there the day before.

  ***

  Limp arms and a trail of blood were all that was left of Alice when the sentries dragged her out of the house and tossed her into the dirt. Warren, like the rest of the community that was forced to kneel on the hard asphalt in the street, looked at her body, praying they’d see some movement from her. But it never came. Her body was tossed next to the two dead sentries that Alex had killed.

  When the leader of the Coalition himself, Gordon Reath, stepped outside of Harper’s house, he was wiping his hands with a rag. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing dark stains that decorated his arms. He tossed the bloody rag onto the mound of dead flesh then pointed at Warren. “Him.”

  Warren’s knees were relieved from the pressure grinding them against the lumpy asphalt as two sentries picked him up by his armpits. The sentries dragged him inside after he wasn’t able to get his legs underneath him after having knelt for so long. On his way inside, he caught a glimpse of Alice’s body. Blood and large lumps disfigured her face, making it unrecognizable.

  The sentries dragged Warren over the bloody boot prints that smeared the tiled floor. They dropped him into a chair in the kitchen next to a lantern that illuminated the concentrated splatters of blood around the chair’s legs.

  “Your friend is a pain in my ass,” Gordon said.

  “Welcome to my world,” Warren replied.

  Warren’s knee popped as his foot slipped on the slick blood-soaked tile beneath him. The metallic heat and taste overwhelmed his senses. He felt like he was swimming in it.

  “Where are the seeds?” Gordon asked.

  “Go to hell.”

  The remark earned Warren a blow to his cheek, which tumbled him out of the chair, and his shoulder smacked against the tile. He pressed his palm against the floor to push himself up and his hand glided through an already-smeared streak of Alice’s blood. Once Warren was stabilized and on his hands and knees, Gordon kicked his side, cracking his ribs. Warren collapsed back to the floor. Short, sporadic breaths that caused the slightest upheaval of his chest felt like broken glass grinding inside of him.

  Gordon stepped over him and leaned down. “Six of my sentries are dead because of your friend. And on our way here, he said that there was another stash of seeds in this house. Now I ask again: where are the seeds?”

  Warren lay there motionless, paralyzed by pain. Alex will come back. He’ll get us out of this. He won’t let us die.

  Gordon delivered another crushing blow to Warren’s face, breaking his nose. A gush of blood spurted, momentarily distracting him from the pain of his broken ribs. His vision blurred. The people around him turned into nothing but distorted figures. He felt Gordon pick him up by the collar of his shirt, but the fabric was so weak it ripped, and Warren crashed back to the floor. The symphony of agony reached its crescendo as Warren trembled on the floor, disfigured and maimed like the bodies out front. He would be joining them soon. There wasn’t any other way.

  “Where. Are. The. Seeds?” Gordon demanded.

  ***

  When the gunshots and shouts of the sentries faded behind him, Alex’s legs finally gave out, and he collapsed to the dirt and roots of the dead forest. His thighs twitched from exhaustion, and fire burned in his lungs. Whatever water was left in his system had been sweated out and had crystallized into salt on the edges of his face. His body wouldn’t let him up. He lay there, spent and completely empty of any fuel to burn in order to continue his journey. But his community still wasn’t safe. Get up. His muscles shook in defiance as he pushed himself off the ground and grasped a tree trunk to steady himself.

  The blade he’d used at Harper’s house was still in his hand. He positioned the tip of the blade into the handcuffs’ locking mechanism. After a few tries, he managed to loosen the teeth on the locking bar enough to pull his hands free. The cool night air landed on the cuts left from the cuffs along the skin of his wrists, which cracked as he rotated them in their newly appreciated freedom. He tucked the cuffs into his pocket and continued his journey north toward a creek he knew that ran through the area.

  The slight babble of water against rocks grew louder. When he made it to the riverbank, he cupped his hands in the flowing water and slaked his thirst. He cleaned the wounds on his wrist as best he could and splashed his face with the frigid water in an attempt to wake himself up.

  The tree where he stored the weapons from the day before was a few hundred yards north. He took a few more sips from the creek then continued his journey. The water had given him a brief burst of life that he didn’t want to waste. Every second he was idle was one more Meeko and Harper were in the farm camp. But with this recent stunt, he wouldn’t just be able to walk up to the front doors and expect to get them out.

  A small farm camp was north of the forest. He’d passed it a few times while hunting. The security was lighter compared to the larger camps closer to Topeka. There he’d be able to look up which farm camp Meeko and Harper were being held at and steal a uniform and one of their trucks. After that, he’d be able to sneak into Topeka with no questions asked.

  Chapter 7

  Todd was still in shock. He and a few other community members lingered behind, wondering how they were still alive. Todd peeled his shirtsleeve off the puncture left from the needle’s prodding. Claret-colored specks of dried blood rest
ed in its place.

  Eventually, the other community members that had stayed behind left and headed toward the main community building, used for assemblies or the quarterly “social” gatherings that the Soil Coalition put on, which were nothing more than an ancient speaker system blaring old music. The only reason people showed up to them was because they were mandatory, as if forcing the community to be “social” would somehow cause them to forget their troubles.

  When the community building wasn’t helping “strengthen” their societal bonds, it was used as a place to vent frustration against the very organization that built it. The poorly crafted walls, leaking roof, and musty air fit well with the complaints that filled it.

  Most of the sentries stationed outside rarely entered the building. They remained at their posts, offering their obligatory glares and pat-downs upon entry. Todd extended his arms to the sides as the sentry patted him down roughly and robotically. Once cleared, he grabbed one of the wax candles from the barrel and lit its wick from the massive candle which acted as a lighter for anyone entering.