Fireside

by Brian Parker

  He continued to stare after the strange procession while they drove past. Then they disappeared behind the trucks out into the wastes. A sign said that they were six miles from their destination so he put the odd animal behavior out of his mind and yelled to the men and women in the back of his truck to get ready to go.

  They rolled down the highway until they passed a sign proclaiming Garden City’s pre-war population was only three hundred and twelve. Almost immediately, Tyler saw a large, one story building on the left side of the road with a sign out front that said it was the Garden City Community Center, which is where they were told the food warehouse was hidden. It looked like a typical, abandoned building like they’d seen hundreds of times in their journey. They’d done an excellent job disguising the place.

  Aeric’s lead truck rolled past the building and they made a few turns down the narrow, dusty town streets to check out the town. It looked uninhabited. Their informants had told them that only a few people were left alive when they’d come through, maybe the residents had actually abandoned it. There wasn’t much around in the way of infrastructure either. Even before the war, the residents had obviously been poor. The only highlight that he could see was the football stadium. The town was tiny, but they still had that famous Texas football culture and built a nice stadium. Maybe that weirdo Justin had been correct about the old society’s priorities being misplaced. These people couldn’t have afforded the stadium. Regardless, they still built it in the hopes that their team would do well enough to win an obscure six-man football championship.

  As the trucks continued through the town, no one in Aeric’s party saw anyone, so they returned to the community center. A few trips around the building didn’t turn up any residents, or anything out of the ordinary, so Traxx decided to move in. They dropped a small squad of Gatherers behind the building to secure the back side and then parked the trucks across the street. He wanted to keep their primary means of escape out of the way of stray gunfire if it came to a firefight.

  “Alright, buddy. You ready?” Aeric asked Tyler as the squads were getting off the trucks.

  “Yeah. I know what to do,” Tyler replied. He glanced around the Gathering Squad members until he saw Nicole. The fact that she wanted to get in his pants could be overlooked because the girl was one of the most tactically-proficient Gatherers on the squad. He usually chose her to accompany him on the more dangerous missions. “Nicole, you ready to go see if anyone’s home?”

  She broke away from the others, slinking over to him. “Are we just gonna walk up and knock?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “We could try and sneak in a door on the back side or go through a window. Hell, we could even breach the side of the building and then storm in. Pretty much anything is better than knocking on the front door.”

  “That’s not how Traxx wants to play this one. We’re gonna try to recruit them instead of attack. If anyone’s inside, he wants to point out that Midland-Odessa is only a little ways down the road and they’re obviously all alone here. He’s willing to offer a spot in San Angelo for whoever’s here if the haul is good enough.”

  “I thought we had a population problem,” she stated flatly.

  “Yeah, well…” Tyler trailed off with one of his trademark shrugs.

  “Fine. Come on, big boy,” Nicole muttered and hooked a hand through his arm.

  Tyler allowed her to lead him across the street while the remaining members of the Gathering Squad and the Shooters spread out around the sides of the building.

  The moment that Tyler and Nicole stepped from the pavement onto the community center’s concrete parking lot, a loud hissing noise came from the building and the clanging of metal grates falling into place over windows and doors filled the silence of the afternoon. He dove to the ground with his rifle pointed towards the building, willing someone to appear.

  When they’d scouted the community center, it appeared totally abandoned. That obviously wasn’t the case. “What the fuck was that?” Nicole asked. She stood above him, exactly as she’d been when the gates were released from their hiding places.

  “No clue. Get down!” He pulled on her arm to bring her down to his level. Dammit, combat training 101 was that when you get fired on, you either take cover or get down immediately, he thought. What is she doing standing up?

  “I’m fine. That wasn’t gunfire,” Nicole whispered in his ear.

  He ignored her and continued watching the community center. Besides the metal grates that now covered every possible entrance into the building, it seemed just as abandoned as before the commotion. Tyler rolled slightly to his side and looked down the length of his body to where Aeric and the Shooters waited.

  Aeric raised both hands up to shoulder height with his palms up in an exaggerated motion that could be seen from all the way across the road. Tyler took it to mean basically that he didn’t have any fucking clue what to do.

  “Okay, somebody’s home. I guess we still try to go up and see if anyone wants to talk.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Nicole snorted. “They’ve probably got the parking lot wired with explosives.”

  That made him pause for a moment. He didn’t know if the EMP that wiped out all the non-hardened electronics in the US also knocked out things like detonators. He wondered if the old school box and plunger-type detonator from the Old West would still work. About the only thing he knew was that it created an electrical charge by pushing the plunger downward. Did the EMP destroy things that created an electrical current via kinetic means or what about items that were constructed after the EMP?

  Then he remembered the old truck that he and Aeric had seen driving in Corsicana those first few days after the war. The driver had been able to get that old beast to crank, so the EMP hadn’t knocked out everything. Tyler wished that he’d paid more attention in his high school shop class or that he’d signed up for an engineering class at the University of Texas before things went to shit. It was the simple things that he’d overlooked as a kid that could end up saving his life now that they were living in the apocalypse.

  He thought for a moment longer and shook his head while he pushed himself to his feet. “There’s nothing that we can do. We can’t just sit here, and then go back to San Angelo, with Russ dead and nothing to show for it. I’m going to the door.”

  The big man stormed towards the metal grate covering the entrance and smiled to himself when he heard Nicole’s boots scrape against the cement a step or two behind him. “Hold on, Tyler. I’m coming,” she breathed heavily.

  They reached the door and saw that the grate was comprised of two large pieces of metal that collapsed into place from either side of the door. The large, fake plants in the planters flanking the door had hidden them from sight while they were on the road. He glanced off to the right, the ones covering the windows had slid down from above. By hiding the security gates, anyone driving by wouldn’t have noticed that there was anything different about the building. Hell, he’d had his own doubts about the community center as a place holding a lot of food. He would have thought to look in a school cafeteria, gas station, bank, or a grocery store, not the community center. The person who’d set this up knew how to deceive others.

  It was also fascinating to see the ingenuity in the metal grates’ construction. Whoever built them had drilled holes through the thick metal rods to allow bolts to pass through. They used large bolts with the ends bent over and wrapped the joints with heavy wire, finally securing everything with some type of soldering so the joints couldn’t be easily broken. The molten metal would ensure that nothing short of a large hacksaw, and hours of hard work, would get past the grate.

  They stared at the door for a long time until Nicole reached around him and pounded the flash suppressor on her rifle into the door. It echoed loudly outside, Tyler could only imagine what it sounded like inside the large cinder block building.

  After a full minute without any indication that anyone was inside the building, Nicole
banged on the door once more. This time, in response to her knock, a small metal plate set high in the door opened.

  “What is it?” a man’s voice drifted from the hole above their heads.

  Tyler tapped Nicole’s arm and said, “Hi, sir. Do you have a moment to talk about your lord and savior, Jesus Christ?”

  “What the hell?” the voice asked. “No, I don’t want to talk to you. I’m doing quite fine on my own. Please go away.”

  She slapped him hard across the bicep. “I’m sorry. My idiot friend thinks he’s funny. We’re from a city called San Angelo. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of it. What do you want?”

  “We’d like to talk to you about becoming a member of our community,” Nicole continued.

  “Why on earth would I ever do that? I’m perfectly safe here.”

  Tyler recovered from his amusement and interjected, “Did you know that the residents of Midland-Odessa are out, actively looking for supplies?”

  The man inside the community center snorted, “They should be. We’re all so stupid for living out here in the middle of nowhere without any resources or way to replenish what gets used.”

  “Do you have many people living with you?” Nicole questioned.

  The voice didn’t immediately reply, prompting Nicole to ask, “Sir, did you hear me? Are you alone?”

  “I… Yes, I heard you. I’ve been alone since my wife was killed back in December. One of the pumpjacks collapsed on her.”

  Garden City was surrounded by the useless pumpjacks—the large, above-ground pumps that pulled oil from the ground and fed the crude into a storage container nearby. Tyler absentmindedly placed a hand on the metal grate blocking the doorway. The metal could have come from the oil pumps.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Nicole answered quietly. “What was her name?”

  Tyler nodded; she was trying to appeal to his emotional side. “Her name was Emily,” the voice in the door responded.

  “That’s a very pretty name. What’s your name?”

  “Ted,” he replied. “What do you want?”

  “We’d like to talk to you, Ted,” Tyler replied.

  “Is that why you brought your army?” Ted asked bitterly.

  “We didn’t bring an army,” Nicole stated. “We brought a few people to help protect us. The world is a dangerous place nowadays.”

  “It sure is. I’ve heard some stories from people passing through. That’s why I chose to hole up in here.”

  “There was a group of people that came to us in April, led by John Pavlik and his wife. They met you and told us that you would be a good addition to our community.”

  “The Pavliks made it?” Ted asked, obviously relieved.

  “Yes, sir,” Nicole affirmed. “John said that you had a brilliant mind and could help us in San Angelo.”

  “They said that, huh?”

  “Yeah, they said that you know your way around machinery.”

  Tyler nudged her and mouthed, What are you doing?

  Nicole held up a finger and smiled when Ted replied, “Yes, ma’am. I’m a trained mechanical engineer, worked on the pumps in the oil fields for more than fifteen years.”

  “Ted, can we speak face to face instead of through the door?”

  The man behind the door paused and Tyler began to feel uncomfortable. How much had he even interacted with the Pavliks? For all they knew, he could have turned them away like he was trying to do to the two of them. Nicole had taken a major leap to say that John Pavlik had recommended him to them.

  The silence was almost palpable until finally, they heard a crank turning behind the door. The metal grate stayed in place while the door into the building opened inward, revealing a thin, wiry man who Tyler guessed to be in his mid-thirties. It was difficult to tell though because the skin on his face and arms had seen years’ worth of damage under the harsh west Texas sun. His head was bald with a few spots indicative of skin cancer, and he wore a faded rock band t-shirt and jeans over standard work boots.

  He opened their face-to-face conversation abruptly with, “My finger is on a button right now that will dump a hundred gallons of crude oil on your head and light it. It’s highly flammable. The good news is that it will kill you in only a few seconds, so you won’t suffer much.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Ted,” Nicole replied. “I’m Nicole and this is my friend, Tyler.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he replied. Tyler mumbled a likewise response that he didn’t feel since he was potentially moments away from a horrible death.

  “So, like we were saying, we want to offer you the safety of living in San Angelo.”

  Ted snorted once again, “Safety! You folks don’t have any idea about safety. I can already tell your type. You think rolling around with overwhelming firepower is the way to go. Strongholds, that’s what will see us through now.”

  “We agree,” Nicole replied adamantly. “We have basic walls around the habitable parts of our city, but we need an expert to help us make them better.” She pointed at the metal grates covering the doorway. “You’re obviously the expert that we need, Ted. You did all of this by yourself and without any power tools.”

  He beamed under the pretty young woman’s compliments. “Yeah, I guess you could say that I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.” His laughter at his own joke seemed a little off to Tyler. Maybe the months of living alone in his fortress had slightly unhinged the man.

  “There’s something else, Mr.… I’m sorry, what’s your last name?” Tyler asked.

  “Winston. Ted Winston,” he replied.

  “You may have been safe before, Mr. Winston, but the cities are running out of food. Depending on how many people are left, they may already be starving. I guess you could say that San Angelo was lucky because we had our revolution early on, only days after the war. More than two-thirds of the population was killed, so we have a lot more food than other places. I traveled to Missouri right afterwards, and a little more than a month after the nuclear bombs fell, the people in Springfield were starving to death. They did some pretty awful things to each other.”

  Tyler tried to shut away the memory of baby Kayla’s mother. He and Aeric had been outside on the street when they heard her screaming. They rushed in and interrupted her rape, but she was shot and killed during the fight with the two men who’d attacked her. They brought Kayla back to Aeric’s childhood home and she’d been a part of their family ever since.

  He focused his thoughts and heard the end of Nicole’s comment, “And it will happen to you too.”

  Dammit! What had she said? he chided himself. “Yeah, she’s right. You’re in grave danger living here all alone.”

  “I don’t know about that, Tyler,” Ted answered. “I can pretty well take care of myself. You guys wouldn’t have been able to get in.”

  “What if I strapped some C4 to the wall and blew a hole in the cinder block?”

  The engineer seemed to consider it for a moment and sighed, “You’re right. This place won’t stand up to explosives. Holed up in this building, I don’t have any sort of stand-off distance to keep marauders away. So far, I’ve relied mostly on staying hidden. If you folks knew where I was, then that probably means that others do as well.”

  “It’s a good bet that they do, Mr. Winston,” Tyler replied. “We can take you back to San Angelo, where you’ll be safe, in return for your help with designing our defenses.”

  It certainly wasn’t the mandate that they’d been given when they were told to go clean out the warehouse in Garden City, but Tyler thought that the engineer’s addition would be a huge help to the city. He obviously knew how to design defensive systems and had done all of the work on the community center himself, imagine what he could do with a force of a couple thousand workers.

  Ted Winston thought about it for a moment longer and made an exaggerated effort to remove his thumb from the button that would have coated them in oil. “Alright, I’m listening. What do you p
ropose?”

  *****

  The rest of the day went by quickly as the Gathering Squad loaded the two trucks with food and supplies. Mr. Winston had amassed quite a bit of food from all over the town as the former residents left Garden City for the safety of Midland-Odessa, abandoning what they couldn’t carry. They stacked water off to the side, if they had room for it, then they’d take it, otherwise it would be left behind and they’d have to continue to use water from the lake.

  Once they’d cleared enough space on the floor, Traxx moved the trucks inside the community center’s cargo doors and closed them so they could secure the location against the coming darkness. Their experience in Sterling City showed them that they didn’t know much about this part of the country and all of them thought it was best to take as many precautions as possible. The crews worked long into the night to ensure that everything would be ready to go by morning.

  Aeric had been prepared to offer Ted Winston a home in San Angelo, so he was fine with Tyler and Nicole’s offer to the engineer. Ted seemed to be the real deal when it came to engineering—the type of person they desperately needed. The security upgrades to the building would have been impressive back in the old days, when there was electricity and scores of people to do the work. The fact that he’d dismantled oil pumps, dragged those parts here and turned them into near-impregnable gates on the doors and windows was amazing. And hiding the defenses so the building looked to be abandoned was a stroke of genius. If Ted could apply his expertise to the walls and checkpoints of San Angelo, it could improve the city’s security a hundredfold. The possibilities were nearly limitless.

  Aeric was sure that he could convince Mayor Delgado to allow Ted to stay, even with the current ban on new citizens. The city was overpopulated and the addition of another person wouldn’t help. However, with the death of the Russ, it would technically be a zero sum gain in population for the city. Semantics.