by Mark Tufo
“We have to try. There’re mothers and kids, we have to make them listen.”
“I know honey, I know. I’m just not holding out on much hope or how much good we’re actually going to do. And we have our own kid to think about.” Nukes scared the hell out of me, maybe it was growing up with the constant threat of them hanging over our heads. You couldn’t hide from one and you couldn’t outrun one. Even in the off chance that you survived the initial blast and weren’t incinerated completely, odds were you’d lose all your hair and teeth and die a horrible death, wasting away from the inside.
“We should get going.” Tracy was heading for the truck. The chance of anymore debate was pretty much done. The troops and the gangs were heading back to L.A. I’d tried to contact Paul again. Sure I wanted to beat the shit out of him, but if he could bring a shuttle down in the meantime it would give us an immeasurable amount of safety to get done what we were attempting. It had been like sending a message into a black hole. Something wasn’t right. Well, a lot wasn’t right and that was just an added wrinkle.
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Paul
“Sir, long range scanners are picking up a signal.” Paul had been sitting on his bunk, trying to remember a simpler time when the message intruded on his thoughts. He knew that wasn’t good; there was no earthly vessel out in deep space or ally coming to help. No, it was the Battle Cruiser and they wouldn’t be able to catch this one off-guard. Even if they could, they had nothing to hurl at it. The Guardian was running on the absolute minimum staff that could be mustered, and most of the personnel were pulling double shifts attempting to learn their new stations. A few had been on leave and recalled immediately, but the rest were not just wet behind the ears, they were still leaking.
Hitting the respond button, Paul asked, “How long?”
“Weapons range in seven hours at present speed and course, sir.”
Paul arose and went to grab his uniform pants.
“Where are you going?” Beth was on her side and propped her head up on her hand.
“I’m going to figure out how to save this ship.”
“One more time before you leave?”
“Did you not just hear what I heard?”
“Of course I did. I just thought it would be fun. You know, under the threat of the gun and all.”
Paul put his pants and shoes on. He grabbed his shirt before turning to face her. “Mike was right to leave you.” He walked out.
“I LEFT HIM!” she raged.
Paul walked onto the bridge and immediately over to the scanner console. “It even looks big on a twelve by twelve screen.”
“The ship has been picking up speed, sir,” the technician said. Paul could see the sweat rolling down the man’s neck.
“Prepare to buckle.” Paul was moving towards the Captain’s chair. There were glances thrown around as people tried to figure out what was going on.
“To where, sir?” the Chief Engineer asked. Last week the Corporal had been at school learning about this equipment. Now he was in charge of it.
“Plot any course; just get us out of here.”
“What about Earth, sir?” The Corporal turned to look at him
“We can do it no good if we are scattered all over it.”
“But Sir…”
Lieutenant Braverly took a step towards the Corporal who immediately turned back around. “Yes sir,” he stated instead.
Paul had no plan other than to leave. It wasn’t like he could go to the planet next door and ask for help—they were alone out here. The men and women might get more proficient at their jobs but they were still dangerously thin on positions. He could count the number of fighter pilots on his hands and have a couple of fingers left over. It wasn’t going to get any better. His best option was to stay and fight. He knew it and the men knew it. There was a minute chance they could inflict some sort of damage on that Destroyer before it reached Earth and that was better than running with their tails tucked between their legs.
Paul sat back. No one on board had ever been through a buckle. He heard the sensation was akin to being on a falling elevator. He gripped the handholds; his stomach feeling like it was rising and trying to escape through his mouth. “I’m sorry, Mike.” And then they were gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Mike Journal Entry 13
“Fuck, Rut, they should have called you Crater.” Even with the seat belt on I thought I was going to get tossed from the truck with the whole seat. “Did you purposefully have the leaf springs removed from the suspension?”
“Sir, I didn’t have the truck modified in any way,” he said in all seriousness.
“Don’t listen to him, Rut. He likes to be pampered,” Tracy said. BT snorted.
“You do realize I have to put on an air of authority here, right?” I asked my wife.
“You keep trying.” She smiled.
We were trying to lighten a heavy mood. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you just put the thought of a many megaton nuclear bomb going off in a few hours out of your head. We got to the first settlement. For a second I thought I was looking at a movie set. Large metal doors easily twenty feet high were the only ingress into a walled city. I’d not been out much past the military bases in a long time. To see how far we had regressed as a civilization was shocking. This was obviously a community that had a healthy fear of outsiders; my guess was for good reason. Gun turrets dotted the fence every hundred feet or so and from what I could tell they were all manned. Why bother going through all the trouble of walling yourself in and then not protecting it?
“Rut, stop here,” I told him when we were about fifty or so feet away from the entrance. I put my rifle down and got out.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” BT asked.
“He never does,” Tracy explained.
“Nice vote of confidence.” I walked toward the doors, my hands about halfway up.
“Don’t get shot!” she yelled out.
“Best piece of advice I’ve had all day,” I mumbled.
“We don’t want whatever you’re selling!” a guard posted next to the gate shouted down.
“I need to speak to the leader of this settlement.” I was looking up and shielding my eyes because the sun was right behind his head.
“Yeah, know what I need? A shower and a steak dinner. Doesn’t look like either of us is going to get what we want.”
“My name is Colonel Michael Talbot.”
“Yeah and I’m Pope Francis.”
“Really? I’ve never met a Pope. Do you take confession?”
“Are you an idiot? I’m not really a Pope.”
“And yet I’m still Michael Talbot, so it seems our relationship has gotten off to a rocky start. I mean with you lying to me and all.”
“What would the anointed one want with us lowly peasants?”
“Anointed? Really? You have no idea the shit I’ve been through this last week. If that’s part of being anointed I want nothing to do with it. Listen, we could trade taunts and jests all day—it’s kind of what I’m famous for—but I’ve got an urgent message for your leader that pertains to the safety of this entire place.”
“We’re doing fine, don’t you worry your pretty little head over it.”
I turned towards the truck. “Tracy, he’s not listening to me!”
Tracy came out to stand next to me. “Get your damn leader out here NOW! Please.”
The guard looked down at her, shocked maybe to hear such a loud yell from someone so diminutive. “Yes ma’am.”
“How the hell did you do that?” I asked.
“It’s all in the inflection.”
A couple of minutes later the door cracked open just enough to let three men out. Two trained their weapons on us while the third patted us down.
“Hey, man! Watch where you touch her. She’s my wife.”
He looked apologetic. “Just a precaution. They’re clean.”
One of the gunmen waved us through.
A few f
eet through the gate we met one of the leaders. He couldn’t have been more than 5’2”, with wire-framed spectacles that held thick lenses, made his eyes look like an owl’s. His nose was the biggest thing on him. He was what I figured an IRS audit manager might look like. I thought I’d dislike him immensely, it was quite the opposite. A group of people came to see what was happening. I didn’t get the sense that it was with hostile intentions, even though most of them were armed. It was more of curiosity. I had to bet they didn’t get many visitors.
“My name is Harold Treemont. Welcome to Safeville.” He extended a hand, first to Tracy and then to me. We made our formal introductions. “I am part of the community leaders. I’m sorry for all the security. One can’t be too sure about a person’s intentions these days.”
“You’ve got that right,” I blurted out. I was still pissed about Paul.
Harold looked at me a little funny, which was a sight I was used to. “So you are Michael Talbot. I hoped I’d one day be able to meet you.”
“Really?” I asked.
Tracy kicked my shin. “Sorry, what he lacks in manners he completely misses in charm.”
It took me a second to catch it. “Hey!”
“And smarts. Mr. Treemont, we came here with some news that I’m sure you’re not going to want to hear. Do you have a place we can talk in private?”
“We’ve decided, Captain, that unlike governments of old that all information will be available to everyone. We have nothing to hide here. Perhaps if the old regime had thought the same way we would have had more of a chance to prepare for what was coming.”
I doubted that but I had finally learned to keep my mouth shut.
Tracy held no punches, she couldn’t afford to. “Four miles from here there’s a nuclear bomb we believe is set to go off in about five hours.”
Treemont looked like he was going to pass out. I reached over to steady him.
“Yield?” he asked, taking off his glasses to wipe away the condensation that had just formed.
“We don’t know, sir. Big enough so that four miles isn’t going to make much of a difference.” There were gasps at first and then people ran off in different directions.
“Can’t you disarm it?”
Tracy shook her head.
“Harold, we’ve been fighting a Genogerian army for the last few days.” If I thought he’d paled earlier, his pallor now resembled bleached flour. “Our mission has been to stop them from getting to the fighter plant north of Los Angeles.”
“The...the factory?” he was sort of in a daze. “That place hasn’t been operational for six months. Why would you possibly need to defend it and why would the Genogerians want to destroy it?”
Tracy and I looked at each other. “Mr. Treemont, for reasons my husband and I don’t understand yet we weren’t given that information. We were told to protect that facility by all means necessary.”
“And you decided a nuke was the best way to go about it?” he questioned.
“We didn’t know about that either,” I filled in. “When we realized we wouldn’t be able to stop the Genos we went to warn the factory that they needed to get out. All we found was a ticking nuke.”
“Dear God.”
“Mr. Treemont, you and your people need to leave,” Tracy said tenderly.
“This is our home.” He was looking at both of us as if we could do something to prevent the horror coming.
“I’m sorry. I truly am,” I told him.
“How far is safe?”
“I’d say twenty to twenty-five miles north. Stay away from prevailing winds. To be honest, I’d keep driving the entire time until it went off and then some more.”
“We don’t have enough transportation. Are more of your trucks coming for an evacuation?”
“Shit.” I rubbed my hand over my face.
“There is no one else coming. How many people do you have here?” Tracy asked gently.
“Four hundred and twenty-six.”
It was a pretty specific number. I guess in a small closed society like this every birth would be celebrated and every death mourned by the populace.
“How many can you move?” I was going into salvage mode.
“We have a school bus and eight cars we use for scavenger runs.”
The bus crammed to the gills could probably take a hundred people, the cars another fifty or sixty. Nearly three quarters of this community were up shit creek. And not only did they not have a paddle, they didn’t even have a boat. They were just wading in crap up to their necks.
“If you get moving now those vehicles could make that round trip in under an hour.”
“If we go the minimum safe distance away.”
“Mr. Treemont we’re not experts, but twenty five miles is a significant amount of distance away. However, you have to start now to ensure your people make it.”
“You...you don’t understand. There are other things and other people out there that we need to protect ourselves from. Without these walls we’ll be vulnerable.”
I got blunt. “You stay here and you need not worry about anything anymore.”
“Mike!”
“Tracy, it’s the truth. They’re going to have to deal with one problem at a time.”
“He’s...he’s right. I’ll set it up now.”
“Bullshit, Harold! He’s going to wait until everyone is out of here and then just move in. Take over all the hard work we’ve been doing for the last three years.”
“Fuck, man. Why is there always one asshole in the crowd?” I asked. “Tell you what, you stay and make sure that doesn’t happen. Me personally? I’m getting the hell out of here. We’ve got one more township to talk to then I’m having my crazy driver get us as far from here as possible. Then tomorrow I’m heading home so I can see my son again. And then I think I’m going to retire from this shitty military life again and go underground.”
“That sounds like the best plan you’ve ever come up with,” Tracy said as she leaned into me.
“Good luck, Mr. Treemont,” I said. I shook his hand and headed back to the door.
“You can’t just let them go!” I think it was the same jerk, but who knows? When one is quiet another village idiot is always willing to step up and run with the torch.
“We’re leaving. We don’t want your home and we have other people we need to warn before time runs out.”
Harold stepped in front of a man twice his size and stopped him. I nodded to him.
“Good luck and God bless.” And then we were out, headed for the truck and the next stop. I thought I heard engines as we pulled away and I could only hope it wasn’t wishful thinking on my part.
“They leaving?” BT asked.
“Seems that way. One down one to go.”
The ride was mostly quiet except for the tortured metal of the truck as it was bent and twisted into agonizing shapes from Rut’s harsh driving. I felt for the inhabitants of Safeville. It was not going to be an easy road for them to start over. Just one more thing I needed to talk to Paul about.
The clock was ticking and we were in the neighborhood of three and a half hours until presumed detonation. What the hell did we know, though? The Genos could have double-timed it and be pulling up now to the factory or the thing could be rigged to go off when they were ten miles out. We had no clue and having the threat of a mushroom cloud forming over your back was intimidating. The next place we came to, that was all I could really call it. Settlement would have made it sound like they had their shit together. This place was mostly cardboard boxes and sleeping bags. A homeless person under a bridge was less transient looking than this motley crew. But they were armed…oh yes, they were armed. This was evident when we were close enough that they pulled their guns out. We were about a hundred feet away, enough to realize that the barrels of those weapons were huge. Although really anything pointing at you that can shoot a projectile seems huge.
At first two of the grubbiest men I’d ever seen were standing side-by
-side, guns trained our way. They quickly garnered back-up with the rest of the group and began to advance. I’d swear as if it was on cue.
“Back up, Rut,” I said softly.
“Mike, we have to tell them,” Tracy intoned.
“Rut, now.” I turned to Tracy. “If we can we’ll tell them from a safer distance.”
As he ground the truck into reverse, bullets began to fly. I heard the chatter of an AK, which has a very distinctive heavy percussion sound to it. A line of fire came our way. I could hear bullets as they whined off the ground or slammed into the grill of the truck. The engine was getting banged with rounds. Then they raised their muzzles, figuring if they couldn’t disable us then they’d kill us, I suppose. Our windshield blew in, a bullet lodging into the back of the cab in between my wife and Rut.
Red flares of anger ignited in my mind. For me to get shot at was one thing, but for someone to shoot at my wife, well, that was a completely different animal. If it had been possible, lava would have flowed from my ears.
“Fine, fuckers! You want to play?!” I ripped the seatbelt off, leaned back, pulled my foot up and kicked out what remained of the windshield. I blasted blue rounds down range. BT was already leaning out the window, his own AK sputtering in his hands. Two men were blown back as I hit them with a volley of shots. It was amazing to me how quickly their attack ceased once they started taking casualties. Out of the nine, five were dead or dying. I’d taken out the initial two grubbiest to the sheer delight of germaphobes everywhere. BT had unloaded an entire magazine and taken out an additional three men. Rut was still driving backwards, but looking forward, his eyes wide trying to register what was happening. We were now more in danger of him than anything else at this point. I’m guessing the vast majority of his military career had not entailed fighting his own kind. I think he was more in shock that they were firing on us than scared of the bullets.
Genos are huge and vicious, but man is more cunning and devious. If Rut was going to survive the upcoming harshness of the new world it was a lesson he’d better learn soon. The truck was still going backwards, a heavy ticking coming from under the hood, thick black smoke beginning to leak out.