“How is it you still have power?” Whitley asked as they filtered through the doorway. Peter was looking around as she spoke. They were in a hallway that seemed to lead straight into the original house portion. Up ahead he could see a weathered door that had been the house’s front door prior to the modifications.
“It’s sort of a complicated answer.”
“I’m an electrician.” Whitley said. “I can probably keep up.”
“Oh, really?” Brenna said, sounding eager. “We could definitely use you then if you’re willing to help us.”
“Do you have a power plant on site somewhere that you’re still operating?”
“Not really. Let’s sit down and I’ll explain. About more than just the power.”
The townswoman preceded them down the newly built hallway and opened the second door. Peter heard music playing, something rock based that he didn’t recognize. And also a pair of men in the middle of an argument.
“You cheap bastard.”
“Lamentations, sweet, sweet lamentations.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Those are the rules.”
“You wrote those rules.”
“It’s not my fault you suck.”
“That is a totally unrealistic result.”
“You had three guys there. The horde survived all their fire and got into base-to-base contact.”
“You’re using your loaded dice again aren’t you, you cheating asshole.”
“No, want to reroll? Here, I’ll reroll.”
Peter heard dice rattling across a table. The first voice cursed, and the second laughed.
“See,” the second guy said, “eleven zombies in melee with three humans, two-thirds chance to successfully grapple; and five-sixths chance to successfully bite unless resisted or blocked.”
“You know damn well that they can’t block seven zombies all biting at the same time.”
“You could’ve moved, but you choose to stand and shoot last round.”
“This game is bullshit.”
“Odds are odds. This is the way things are asshat; look outside the wall once in a while.”
The house, the original structure, had a short entry hallway that ran straight ahead into what looked like a dining room of some kind, with two open doorways on either side of the corridor before that. Taking a few steps up, Peter looked to the right — in the direction of the sounds — and saw two guys sitting on the floor in front of a table strewn with little painted figures, dice, tape measures, and several sheaves of paper printouts.
“Hey retards, we’ve got company.” Brenna said, easing past Peter and positioning herself on the far edge of the room’s doorway.
The guys turned their heads, and both blinked in unison when they saw Peter standing there. One scrambled up almost immediately and nearly tripped over his own feet. The other just pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and frowned.
“Are we being taken over.”
“No.” she answered.
“Jeez B, don’t do shit like that.”
“This is a dorm now, not a house. What are you two doing up anyway?”
“We’re off today.” the one who’d nearly fallen said, having managed to stabilize himself in the space between the coffee table and television. “We can do what we want.”
“Well good, then come into the other room and sit down to talk with these peeps with me.”
“Why?”
“Who are they?”
“Just shut up and come join the adults for a change.” one of the town men said as he shut the hallway door.
The gamers traded looks, and one muttered something under his breath, but the other lifted a remote and pressed a button. The music cut out, and they both stepped toward the hallway. Brenna went into the dining room, where Peter saw the table was setup like it was ready to host a holiday dinner. Leaves had been inserted into it, stretching the length enough to seat twelve comfortably. The chairs around it were a mishmash of styles though; only four seemed of a piece with the table.
Peter settled down in one of the chairs on the far side of the table, where he could watch the entry hall and kitchen without having to turn his body. The others found places, but he didn’t wait longer than it took Brenna to drop into the chair at the end nearest the kitchen and start unbuttoning her coat.
“Okay, so now we’re all here. Talk.”
“Yeah, what’s up with the Thunderdome setup.” Smith asked.
“You might have missed it, but things are dangerous these days.” one of the men from the supply run said.
Brenna sighed. “Introductions first. I’m Brenna. That’s Max with all the hair, Craig next to him, and these two are Doug and Justin.” she pointed around the table in turn, ending with the pair of gamers.
“Peter Gibson, Sarah Whitley, Ty Smith, and—”
“Just call me Crawford.” Crawford said abruptly, loudly so she overrode Peter’s voice.
Peter grinned suddenly and shrugged. “Yeah, just Crawford.”
“You don’t have ranks?”
“We do.” Peter said. “Why, does it matter?”
“It does if you’re signing up with Ellsworth.” Max said. He looked like he was somewhere in middle age, but Peter couldn’t really place a guess as to where; the man might have been in his thirties or approaching sixty for all Peter knew. Part of the problem was the hair; Max sported a truly impressive amount of beard and hair that was long, wild, and expanded the size of his head considerably. There were some braids in the beard to keep it more or less clear of his mouth, and part of the hair was pulled back in a pseudo ponytail to tame it. He was also fairly round, though there were some signs of tightness in his cheeks that seemed to indicate he had recently lost some weight.
“What problem are you having with Ellsworth?”
“We’re not having a problem with Ellsworth. They’re having a problem with the rest of us.” Brenna said.
“Assholes.” Craig muttered. He had tobacco stains on his fingers and teeth, and a truly impressive amount of scar tissue visible on his left hand that made Peter want to just wince. An injury like that had to have hurt whenever it had occurred, and keeping the scars from hardening up and making any use of his hand constant torture couldn’t be easy.
Doug and Justin nodded, and Peter took a moment to absorb that. There was a curious mixture of anger and fear in the townspeople’s tones. He returned his gaze to Brenna. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
She sighed again. “When the outbreaks started—”
“Before everyone figured out it was zombies.” Justin interjected.
“Yeah, when they still thought it was just a virus.” Doug said.
Peter looked at them just in time to see Justin rolling his eyes.
“Of course it’s a virus.” Justin said.
“Well it could be bacterial.”
“It could be my foot up both your asses if you don’t shut the fuck up.” Max said, his chair creaking alarmingly as he abruptly leaned forward.
Both younger men blinked at him, then — almost in unison — scowled.
“You know you can’t treat us like we’re kids.” Doug said with a note of defiant complaint in his tone.
“Yeah, we’re critical resources.”
“Guys!” Brenna said, just short of snapping. “Seriously.”
Max, and Justin and Doug, studied one another for a few more moments, then all three dropped their eyes to the table. Brenna shifted in her chair and drummed her fingers on the table twice. “Let’s see, oh yeah, outbreaks. You probably don’t know it, since you’re not from around here, but South Dakota isn’t exactly a metropolis state.”
“I’m not specifically familiar with the Dakotas, but I’ve clocked some time in a lot of places here and there.” Peter said. “And I know the Midwest is less populated than either coast.”
“Yup.” Brenna nodded. “Sioux Falls is actually the biggest city in the state, and is the biggest within a coup
le hundred miles as far as I know unless you head down to Omaha or Des Moines, or over to Minneapolis. Because of that, there are . . . were, a lot of medical resources concentrated there. Multiple big hospitals, VA center, several regional ambulance companies, stuff like that.”
Peter could see where this was going. “And when the outbreak really got going it came down on the city hard.”
“You got it. The hospitals and clinics and all the medical staff were stretched past capacity, and, well, I guess we all know how that kind of thing went no matter where you were.”
Heads nodded around the table, and Brenna sighed. “Zombies tore the city apart from the inside out. It was bad. I mean, not as bad as some of the things that got out about New York and most of the Northeast, but still, pretty bad.”
“Yeah.” Peter said. “We were stuck in the middle of downtown Atlanta when it all blew up, and it sucked.” Each of the Guard soldiers sitting at the table nodded in unison with the others.
“Anyway, Sioux Falls took a big chunk of the East River with it. A lot of people had flooded into the city seeking help, bringing friends and family who were early conversions or who had been hurt during the initial wave. Me and some of the Geeks have run some numbers—”
“Just some loose stuff.” Justin put in.
“—and we figure a low estimate might have been maybe around three hundred kay people were there when it went down.” Brenna finished, flicking her eyes at Justin momentarily. “And by the end of the week, well, I guess if you’ve come up here from Atlanta then you probably have a better idea than us how depopulated things have gotten.”
“There are holdouts.” Peter said, gesturing vaguely around the room. “Like here.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I’m getting to. Most of us aren’t from Canton, but we ended up here one way or another. Me and about half the Geeks were in Brandon when things got bad, and when it was time to get out we ended up here. Along the way we ran into a few others, and banded together. One thing led to another, and we started turning Canton into a safe spot.”
“Hold up.” Crawford said. “Who are the Geeks?”
Max snorted, but said nothing even when people looked at him. Brenna shrugged. “That’s me, Doug and Justin, and a handful of others.”
“Why are . . . whose idea was it to start calling you that?” Whitley asked.
“Ours.” Doug said immediately.
“Yeah right.” Craig said, shaking his head.
“If the shoe fits, own it.” Justin said.
Peter glanced around the table, then fixed his attention back on Brenna. “Still not following you.”
“We were hanging out at Wes’s house.” she said. “He was hosting a weekend party.”
“Party.” snorted Max.
“You do your shit, we do ours.” Justin said, irritation lacing his tone. “You’re lucky we’re here.”
“Listen you pasty—”
“Chill!” Brenna said loudly, standing up quickly enough to make her chair tip over and hit the floor with a muffled thump as the carpet absorbed some of the impact. “We’re in this together.” Max and Justin looked away from one another again, and Brenna laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles in a rippling crunch.
“The point is, we were away from others when the problems started, and when we heard what was going on we managed to keep our shit together better than most.”
“How, exactly?” Peter asked calmly, carefully avoiding making it sound as if he were taking sides in the internal division.
“When everyone else was screaming, zombifying, running around looting grocery stores and stockpiling guns, we were pulling together stuff that really matters.” Doug said, staring in a not-quite glare at Max. The big bearded man sort of shrugged and shook his head, but said nothing.
“When we saw what was going on, we sort of assumed it was zombies after a couple of hours.” Brenna said quickly. “I’m not going to try and brag like we were right there with the figuring out, but I’m pretty sure we jumped to the zombie conclusion a lot sooner than most people did.
“When we decided that, and decided it wasn’t just bullshit, we assumed zombies meant things could end up like they have, and we started getting ready in the best way we knew how.”
“We started assembling information and gear to store it.” Doug said with a considerable amount of triumph in his voice.
Peter rolled that around in his head for a few moments, then gave up and asked the question. “Still not following you.”
“While the rest of us were watching our family and friends die, while we were beating back zombies and trying to survive,” Max said, leaning forward again, “they were having a computer party.”
“We started downloading as much information as we could.” Brenna corrected him.
“Yeah.” Doug and Justin said in unison.
“And a lot of that information has come in damn handy too.” Brenna went on. “Some of us Geeks might not be your kind of people Max, but you can’t sit there and say we haven’t helped, haven’t pulled our weight.”
“It’s usually guys like me who are out making things happen.” Max half muttered.
“And it’s us Geeks who usually come up with, or adjust, what needs to happen.” she replied with just a trace of firmness.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Smith cut in. “When the zombies started munching, you guys . . . what, made a copy of Wikipedia or something?”
“Not just Wikipedia.” Justin said. “And we don’t have a complete copy, just a lot of the really useful entries. But also a lot of survival guides, first aid and medical information, engineering stuff, farming and gardening instructions, food and nutrition details, how-to guides for things, all kinds of stuff.”
“We were having a LAN party at Wes’s place, and we were planning on being there until Monday afternoon.” Brenna said, stepping back in as Max started to draw breath to retort. “We had our computers there, and a lot of other gear too. When we decided this thing was for real, we jumped on the internet and stored a lot of data before most of the power and networks began dropping out.
“And when we left, when things got too screwed up in Brandon, we didn’t mess around very much with grocery stores and places like that. We focused on the kind of gear that’s turned out to be in really short supply two months after the fact.”
“Oh man, cool.” Smith said, a grin starting to spread across his face.
“Like what?” Peter asked.
“Everyone else was bum rushing Sam’s Club, we were cleaning out Best Buy. While people were fighting over what was left in the Hy-Vee, we were stripping hobby stores and tech shops and Radio Shack.” Justin answered.
“Between leaving Brandon and ending up here in Canton, we laid our hands on as many laptops, tablets, battery packs, solar chargers, and stuff like that as we could find.” Brenna explained. “External hard drives. Thumb drives. SD cards. Printers.”
“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about the Office Max we cleaned out.” Doug said.
“When Canton started turning into more than just us Geeks, it came out that a lot of the time when someone had a question about how something was supposed to work or what to do about a problem that was developing, we still had reference material to explain it.” Brenna said. “And between the ten of us, we have a lot of hands-on skills in useful things like the drones and fixing radios and so on.”
“So you’re, what, super geeks?” Crawford asked, sounding skeptical.
“That’s so cool.” Smith said again. “Wes must have had a great fucking connection at his place.”
“Yeah, gigabit.” Justin said.
“Really?” Smith said in surprise. “Full gig?”
“Well, not always.” Doug said.
“You know how the companies lied. But one time we clocked it at 812 on a torrent download.” Justin grinned.
“Nice.” Smith said, sounding impressed.
“You—” Crawford started, but Whitley cut in abruptly b
efore the other Guardswoman could finish her inevitable insult or snide comment.
“Yeah, I get it; it was fast. Wonderful. So, your group is a tech resource?”
“More or less.” Brenna said, straightening up from righting her chair. “What we don’t already know, we can usually look up in our data somewhere.”
“So you’re running the power in here off solar?” Whitley asked, sounding skeptical.
“Solar, wind, even a bit of hydro.” Brenna said. “And one hell of a battery bank. It all started with the portable stuff we had with us, and has expanded as the group’s grown.”
“It’s being built up daily.” Justin said.
“Hydro?” Crawford said.
“Yeah, hydrodynamic generators. Well, homemade ones.”
“You need waterhead for that don’t you?” Whitley said.
“No, you just need flowing water.” Brenna said. “It doesn’t have to necessarily be dammed up.”
“Where are you getting the water.”
The locals stared at her. “You know we’re right next to the Big Sioux, right?” Brenna said carefully.
“What’s that?”
“River.” Brenna said.
“Yeah, over there.” Max said, pointing east.
“It’s dark outside.” Smith pointed out.
“And we usually look for zombies and stuff first.” Crawford added.
“Well, it runs directly past us here; it’s one of the reasons we picked this spot.” Brenna said.
“And there’s a processing plant.”
“What kind of processing.” Peter asked.
“Water plant.” Craig said, pointing in the same direction as Max was. “Right across the street. Canton Public Works.”
“You still have running water?”
“Yeah.” Max shrugged. “We had to close off all the pipes that lead out of our little piece of the city, and it needs pumps to keep pressure on the pipes since we don’t have a water tower on site, but . . . yeah, water just like normal.”
“Safe water?”
“Yeah, until we run out of treatment supplies.” the bearded man said.
“We’re careful about usage.” Brenna explained.
“I still say if we just made everyone boil what they use for consumption, we could stop treating and open up most of the taps again.” Justin complained.
Apocalypse Atlanta (Book 4): Apocalypse Asylum Page 24