Tango snorted and made for the river road, and when he was in the clear, Lucas urged him to speed, which direction the horse eagerly complied with, accelerating like a thoroughbred on a racetrack and maintaining the blistering pace until Lucas slowed him to a trot after a five-mile run. Tango settled into a comfortable gait and showed no sign of fatigue after an hour of trotting, at which point Lucas dismounted and took fifteen minutes to water him and allow him to graze while he kept an eye on the trail from a discreet distance. After his rest, he mounted up and rode to the site of the ambush, and navigated along a trail that shadowed the road until he reached the trading post another five or six miles away.
The buzz of flies announced that something was wrong as he neared the building. He slipped from the saddle, rifle in hand, and was walking toward the open doorway when the smell hit him.
Lucas pulled the bandana around his neck over his nose and mouth. The fetid odor of rot was a familiar one, and he was unsurprised after entering the main structure to find three corpses, badly bloated and in a state of decomposition that made it clear they’d been dead for a couple of days. He waved away the flies and crossed the room to where a desk had been overturned, a pair of headphones crushed on the cement floor indicating where the radio had been.
The place had been looted, nothing of any value left, and Lucas gleaned little from an inspection of the sleeping quarters and the storage area, which had been ransacked. Bullet holes in the interior of the building enabled him to piece the rest of the story together – whoever had murdered the traders had been inside when they’d opened fire, there being no evidence of pocks on the exterior of the windows or doorway.
Lucas retreated from the building and swallowed hard, thinking through his next step. Any plan of radioing Elliot had just gone out the window, and with an unknown number of threats lurking on the trail back to Astoria, he wouldn’t be able to blaze along as he’d hoped, which meant a slow retracing of his steps and a night beneath the stars. The thought didn’t faze him, although he knew he wouldn’t get much sleep after what he’d seen inside the trading post. Whoever had done this might still be in the area, and if they were, a lone rider on a pretty pony with weapons to die for would be a tempting target. That meant no fire and a long vigil in the wilds, his stomach growling from hunger and his eyes burning from fatigue.
“In other words, same as usual,” he whispered to himself, and after a final inspection of the grounds, made his way back to Tango, resigned to his one-day jaunt becoming a two-day forced march through hostile territory.
Chapter 31
Astoria, Oregon
Hubert pounded the conference table with his coffee mug in an attempt to silence the heated exchange between Kendall and Loren. The council meeting had stretched for two hours and degraded into barely civil insults and accusations as the differing factions’ ideologies directed their solutions to the town’s problem.
The Geiger counter readings had confirmed their worst fears – the river that the town depended on for life was hot, and getting hotter by the day. Their expert had estimated that within a week they’d have to move elsewhere; the current danger was minimal as long as they avoided eating any fish or drinking from the river, but it would grow as more radioactive runoff drifted downstream with the current.
That would have been bad enough, but they had run into a roadblock on the matter of vaccine distribution. Hubert and Loren had advocated for inoculating the young and the female, including those in the tent city, and passing out the rest on a lottery system that favored the ablest bodied fighters and those with skills necessary for their survival. Kendall and his supporters, which included Caleb and Hayden, were adamantly against injecting anyone outside of the town unless they had a surplus once everyone had been immunized.
Hubert had hoped for a compromise between the two views, relying on fatigue setting in to soften their positions, but all that had happened was that Kendall’s allies had dug in and become further entrenched, Kendall flat out refusing to consider any of Hubert’s proposals.
“This isn’t about some bleeding heart, ‘Kumbaya’ vision of women and children first into the lifeboats, Mayor, it’s about the protection of the town. It’s a security issue at its core, and as such, we have to do what’s best for the townspeople, not what a bunch of parasites that glommed on around us might favor,” Kendall said, his tone as resolute as it had been hours earlier.
“We’re all human beings, Kendall,” Loren fired back. “Why does someone deserve a shot because they live on one side of a gate rather than the other? What’s the logic, other than that you happen to be on this side? Doesn’t that strike you as arbitrary? And you, Caleb – you’re all about religion, but who decided you should get to play God and determine who survives and who doesn’t?”
Caleb waved the question away. “The Lord sent us the vaccine for a reason, Loren. I believe that He chose us because we have shown we are prepared to follow His wishes and reject the sin that brought our current plight upon us. There’s no way He intended salvation for a bunch of sinners and fornicators like the scum outside our wall. I’m sorry, but to me that just doesn’t make sense. To reject our gift and squander it is spitting in His face, which we would be well advised not to do.”
“The reason the vaccine was sent was because the doctor was friends with the head of Shangri-La, Caleb,” Hubert observed. “Because the doc had the skills necessary to manufacture enough to cover our state. The original five hundred doses were intended as a stopgap, nothing more.”
“Then let the technician that brought it make more, and we have nothing to discuss. But for now, inoculate our people and leave the others to the Lord’s mercy.”
“We’re going to have to move the town. We can’t set up vaccine production if we’re packing up and moving, can we?” Hubert countered.
“Right. Which is a sign. A clear indication that those with the mark of the beast are to go without.”
Hayden cleared his throat. “Look, maybe we can agree that anyone past a certain age doesn’t get a shot, and we can do some of the tent children and young women. But that’s about as far as I’d go.”
Kendall shook his head. “And who gets to decide the cutoff point for dying? I’m fifty-one. Am I too old? If not, does my neighbor, Stuart, who’s sixty, get told he has to die? And what about the Chinese? They’re inside the town limits. Do they get shots, or do we count them as outsiders, too?”
“I think they’re here, so they get shots,” Hayden said. “You’re either in or out. They’re in. Got to be consistent.”
The argument raged with nothing decided until Hubert finally relented and allowed the hard-liner faction to carry the day. The truth was that they needed the survivalists’ know-how to set up a new town, and he couldn’t take the chance that they might decide to fend for themselves and let their more liberal-minded brethren try their luck on their own. In the end, Hubert’s main duty was to the town and whatever it took to ensure its survival, and making enemies out of those they’d most need was a poor strategy, no matter how he personally felt.
“Fine. I’ve heard all the reasoning. Time for a vote. All in favor of keeping the vaccine for the townspeople and only inoculating women and children in the tent city after everyone inside, including the Chinese, have gotten their shots, raise your hand.”
The vote was carried by Kendall’s faction, and Hubert cautioned Loren and his people to cooperate now that the decision had been made. Loren grumbled but agreed, and the subject then turned to logistics. That was easier to achieve consensus on, and then the council moved to the matter of the General’s bar, which Caleb had been harping on ever since the doc had died.
“We need to burn the place down. That’s the only way. We can’t have Satan’s temple standing only a few yards from our gates,” Caleb declared, his familiar words drawing an eye roll from Loren.
“We don’t have any jurisdiction outside our borders, Caleb. We’ve been through that a dozen times. All we can do is
what we’ve done: ban the sale of alcohol in town, and forbid the townspeople from frequenting the place.”
Hayden nodded. “Your problem is that many of the townspeople like a drink now and again, so while your puritanical bent may be popular among your friends, in practice it’s working about as well as Prohibition did – which is to say, not at all.” The sheriff let that sink in. “We have bigger fish to fry if we’re going to move the town down the coast. The clock’s ticking on that, and it will be all we can do to be ready when the time comes.”
“In our new home, we have to ban alcohol altogether,” Caleb said. “Otherwise we’ll be inviting the same misfortune we’ve attracted here.”
“We can certainly run that by the town, but remember, our power only extends to the limits of what the majority are willing to tolerate. If many of the men want to drink, they’re going to do it, and your ideology isn’t going to stop them. I can’t enforce a law that has no support,” Hayden countered. “I personally don’t think it’s going to fly.”
“Perhaps we should allow perverts to have sex with our children, too, or the depraved to worship idols?” Caleb said. “If the majority want it?”
Hubert shook his head at the familiar argument. “Let’s tackle one problem at a time, shall we? Right now rampant alcoholism isn’t one of them. Our river turning radioactive is, and the approach of the deadly new variant of the virus is. Let’s stay focused on protecting ourselves from both, and worry about leading righteous lives once we aren’t being irradiated in our sleep.”
“If the spirit is unworthy, the body shall wither,” Caleb said.
“Perhaps,” Hubert allowed. “But right now our job as the council isn’t to provide spiritual guidance, it’s to shepherd our flock to safety. When will the party from Newport return, Kendall?”
“Couple to three days. But I see no reason not to believe that it will be viable. It’s far enough away so the river shouldn’t be an issue.”
Hubert stifled a yawn. “Very well. Then if there are no other pressing matters, I propose we adjourn. Tomorrow we can meet with Lucas and his technician and announce our decision. In the meantime, Hayden and Kendall, if you can put together a plan for inoculating the town, we’d all be indebted to you.”
“What’s wrong with just announcing the shots are available tomorrow, and everyone’s got twenty-four hours to get theirs?” Kendall asked.
“We want to avoid a stampede in the tent city. Once it becomes known we’re vaccinating only the town, it could get ugly,” Hayden said. “We need to be ready for that.”
The men’s faces were grim as they digested that possibility. Nobody wanted a mass uprising – there were far more squatters than townspeople now, and it didn’t require an active imagination to foresee the town being overwhelmed by panicked and indignant refugees.
“We’ll work on it. Best case is we swear everyone to secrecy and it’s done before word can leak.”
“Two people know something, it’s a secret. Five hundred? Don’t count on it,” Loren observed. “This was your decision, and I’ll abide by it, but I think you’ve misunderstood how it’s going to look to everyone outside the gate. You could have a thousand angry people rushing it at once. Better figure out how you’re going to deal with that.”
Hayden nodded slowly, his complexion gray, and Hubert frowned.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Kendall pushed back from the table and rose. “Hope’s about as useful as spit in a foxhole.”
Chapter 32
A pair of rowdies pushed each other in the moonlight in front of The General’s, their disagreement over a woman, both too inebriated to do much more than grapple in the mud left from the earlier cloudburst. One of them slipped and went down hard, knocking the wind from him, and the other tried to level a kick at his head, which only sent him sprawling as he lost his balance and footing.
Art watched the familiar scene with a bemused expression from the doorway of the bar as the music behind him provided a soundtrack to the absurd scuffle. At least two or three times a night a fight broke out over something, but his no-weapons policy combined with aggressive bouncers usually quashed it before it could get out of hand. Tonight was no exception, and one of his help strode over to where the two drunks were staring at each other, covered in mud, and suggested they go sleep it off instead of embarrassing themselves further in front of their peers.
Art checked his old reliable windup Timex wristwatch and ran a hand over his crew cut. The bar was full, as usual, but his boys had everything under control, and it had been a long day. He saw no reason to stick around any longer, and turned to make the rounds, backslapping and joking with his patrons before riding home.
Business had actually increased substantially since the nitwits in town had banned the sale of alcohol, and between smugglers and sales from the bar, he was awash in prosperity, such as could be had in a post-apocalyptic landscape. But he knew that nothing remained static, and he’d already heard the rumors of the radiation problem on the river, which signaled to him that his days were numbered.
That didn’t sadden him. As he’d told anyone who would listen, he could set up shop anywhere within a week and be back at it, his knowledge of making alcohol and operating a watering hole easily translatable anywhere. When the town moved, maybe he’d follow it, or maybe strike out for greener pastures – he felt no sense of allegiance to Astoria since it had been taken over by the prigs on the council, and he’d be completely mercenary about what he did next.
Art said his goodbyes and, after a word to the bartender about inventory levels and pour size, exited through what passed for the rear door with two satchels filled with ammo over his shoulders – the night’s take so far, which translated into a small fortune in barter. One of his bouncers accompanied him to his horse, which was tied to a pole in back of the bar, and they loaded the saddlebags with the booty, which would join the stash at his cabin. Art buried much of his fortune on his property every week and had so many repositories of weapons, ammunition, and precious metals on the grounds that he’d been forced to keep track of it in a tiny notebook he kept with him at all times.
He climbed into the saddle and rode through the tent city at a moderate pace, always modifying his route to avoid the temptation of a robbery. Not that he was much worried about it – his reputation as a badass preceded him, and it would have to be a desperate man indeed who took him on. Still, there was no point in tempting fate, and tonight he kept to the shore, the moon a golden beacon spangling the calm surface of the bay.
His horse veered off toward the hills, familiar with the route from there, and Art considered the change that was headed his way. He’d had a good run since the collapse, but he was pragmatic about moving, and he certainly didn’t need any more riches. The real reason he would open another bar was more to have something to wake up to each day. He’d seen too many abandon hope in the face of a crushing grind of sameness with nothing to do, their survival assured by the town’s ample resources, their loved ones dead, the future as ugly as the past. Art knew that a man had to have a reason to push himself, and his was his moonshine and business. He wasn’t going to fall prey to the despondency that had claimed those who’d found themselves alive for no apparent reason, a cruel trick of fate or genetics keeping them around when their families had perished. His solution was to stay focused on his work, such as it was, and to remain engaged every day, even if it was all pointless in the end. Providence had seen fit to spare him, and he wasn’t about to throw that gift away.
The trail to his cabin was faint in the starlight, but the horse’s steps were sure, and after half an hour the outline of the two-bedroom dwelling he and his father had built thirty-some years earlier from trees they’d felled themselves rose from the hillside before him. As he neared the cabin, his horse gave a snort and seemed agitated, and Art had to calm the animal with a pat on the neck as he dismounted. It was probably wolves or wild dogs the horse sensed. Perhaps even a b
obcat.
“I’ll get your saddle off in a few minutes, boy. Just hang in there. Let’s get the loot inside and then I’ll be right out for you,” he murmured, and the horse settled down, the fright in its eyes fading at its master’s voice.
Art removed the satchels of ammo and slung them over one shoulder, the weight reassuring – the take had again been good. He made his way to the front door and retrieved an old-fashioned key that hung from a lanyard around his neck, and after setting the satchels by his feet, leaned forward in the faint light to unbolt the lock.
His eyes drifted to the window at the side of the façade as he twisted the key in the lock, and they narrowed at a gap along the bottom. He never left the window open – part of his routine before he left each day was going through the cabin and ensuring it was buttoned up tight to dissuade any would-be burglars. His gaze returned to the lock as it sprang open, and then he threw himself backward as a series of deafening detonations shattered the night. The cabin seemed to swell from within before the roof blew into the sky and orange flame shot from the windows. The fireball that was a week’s production of moonshine sucked the oxygen from the proximity in a blinding flash, and the concussion from the explosion was deafening.
The General’s body rolled across the wet grass, blown by the force of the blast, and lay still, his flak jacket steaming from the searing heat. What hair he had melted away as the fire blazed around him, flames licking from the surrounding pines as the inferno swept through the clearing, leaving him a motionless, broken mound on the muddy rise.
~ ~ ~
The roar of the distant explosions stirred Joel from his slumber only momentarily. The half-empty bottle of moonshine Alex had dropped off that afternoon for him to chase away the worst of the hangover trembled on the dresser in his room before falling still. Storms were a regular occurrence on the trip west, and the boom of nocturnal thunder did nothing to alarm him. He rolled over onto his right side, facing the window, and resumed snoring, the alcohol having dulled his senses to the point where he could finally fall asleep.
The Day After Never - Insurrection (Book 5) Page 16