“I sat near them in the mess hall, and some of them were talking about Kentucky. Some land out there or something. They were talking like they didn’t want anyone to hear.”
The puzzle was just getting stranger. Kentucky? What did Max want to go to Kentucky for? John knew they didn’t have any familial connection to Kentucky, and he didn’t think Max had ever been there before. Maybe someone in his group had family out there.
“Listen,” said the guy, glancing over his shoulder. “If I were you two, I’d get the hell out of here. They’re still looking for women.” He glanced meaningfully at Cynthia.
“Got it,” said John, turning around. “Thanks, by the way.”
The guy nodded, turned, and started walking in the opposite direction.
John and Cynthia walked quickly back towards Dale and Kiki.
“You don’t think he’ll tell anyone we’re here, do you?” whispered Cynthia.
“Let’s hope not. They sound like a dangerous bunch.”
“What’s the word?” said Dale.
They told him the story.
“Kentucky, eh?”
“That’s what he said.”
“What do we do now?” said Cynthia.
“I don’t know,” said John. “Kentucky’s a way’s away.”
“That’s for damn sure,” said Dale. “And who knows what lies in between here and there.”
“Well,” said John, glancing at Cynthia. “I think the thing to do is to head out there. There’s a chance it’d be better. What do you say, Cynthia?”
Cynthia shrugged. “I say we go for it. If we don’t make it, at least we’ll get a nice walk in.”
Dale laughed, but John remained serious, his lips tightened in a grim expression.
“What are you going to do, Dale, if we continue west?”
Dale shrugged. “Head back, I guess. I don’t see myself heading all the way out to Kentucky, even if you two are good company.”
Cynthia chuckled.
“You’ve come far enough already with us,” said John. “And I appreciate it.”
“Me too,” said Cynthia.
“It was nothing,” said Dale, flashing a smile. “Gave Kiki some exercise. She was putting on a little extra weight, so she needed it.”
“You’ve done so much for us. You introduced us to your friend. Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to find this community.”
“Didn’t do you much good, though, unfortunately.”
“Well, at least we know where Max is headed.”
“Hopefully,” said Cynthia.
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know if he’s telling the truth.”
“He seemed like an honest guy.”
“You can never know. Remember Drew?”
“Yeah, but I had a bad feeling about him.”
Cynthia shrugged.
“So how can we repay you, Dale?”
Dale laughed. “Keep your hats on.” John didn’t know that expression, but he got the gist. “No need to thank me. You know me better than that. Like I said, it gave me a chance to get out a little. Gave Kiki some exercise.”
That was an understatement if John had ever heard one. They’d been walking for a solid week, camping during the night in the cold darkness. But Dale was a strange guy. Good and honest. But strange.
“I’ll camp with you tonight,” said Dale. “Then I’ll head back my way. I doubt you want to get moving yet. It’ll be dark in a few hours.”
“Sounds good, but let’s get away from this area. If we saw one guy, we might see more.”
The three of them hiked through the trail-less woods for twenty minutes before they found an area that they thought would be suitable for camping.
“You think we can risk a fire?”
Dale laughed. “Not a normal fire. But I’ve got a couple tricks up my sleeve that I still haven’t shown you. Give me a hand and we’ll get a little pit dug right about here. No one will be able to see the flames.”
John and Cynthia were both exhausted from the days of walking, but they got to work with Dale, digging a pit for the fire. They used a small collapsible shovel that Dale had carried with him in his pack, as well as rocks and sticks taken from the surrounding area.
“So the idea is to keep the flames below ground?” said Cynthia.
Dale nodded.
“Won’t people still be able to see the smoke?” said John.
Dale chuckled. “That’s where the real trick comes in.” Dale explained how they were going to build a small tunnel that led into the pit. The tunnel provided additional air flow for the fire. “And this extra airflow makes the fire burn so hot that there’s hardly any smoke.”
“I wish we’d known about that,” said Cynthia.
Dale really knew what he was doing, and less than twenty minutes later, the fire was roaring in the little pit. Sure enough, there wasn’t much smoke, and the flames weren’t visible to anyone who wasn’t right next to it.
They ate a meal of dried meat and dried fruit that Dale had brought from his food stores.
Soon, the light was beginning to fade. Dale started telling some stories from his trucker days, and Cynthia laughed along with him.
John, on the other hand, became lost in his own thoughts, about where they were and what they’d have to do next. They currently were in the middle of Ryerson Station State Park, in southwestern Pennsylvania. They were a long way from the farmhouse, but an even farther distance from Kentucky.
Should they really continue to Kentucky? After all, it was a big state. Without phones, there wasn’t much chance of contacting Max. It wasn’t like they could send him a telegram. Their only hope was the radio, but as far as John knew, Max didn’t have a radio of his own. And even if he found one somewhere along the way, the chances of connecting with him were slim to none. Unless there were other communication networks of radio operators springing up across the country, John didn’t see how it could possibly work out. To make it all worse, Max had no idea John was looking for him.
But where else could they go? The cities were certainly in ruins. Maybe there was a town somewhere that hadn’t fallen to chaos, but would they be interested in accepting newcomers? Probably not. New people meant new problems.
Dale had told them more than once that they should build a little shack near his cabin. But John and Cynthia weren’t having any of that. They knew that it was too close to the area the militia was spreading to. And too close to the cities. Dale’d told them not to worry, but they knew better. Dale was his own man, though, and he could do what he thought best. That was the way John saw it, at least.
“You doing OK, John?” said Cynthia.
“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine,” said John, waking up out of his reverie.
It was dark now, and it was almost time to hit the sleeping bags. They got them out of their packs, as they’d done so many times before. The bags were covered in dried mud with a healthy coating of good old dirt. John’s had been torn when it’d snagged on a branch, and Cynthia’s had become threadbare in portions after many nights of not realizing she’d chosen to sleep on small rocks.
“Who’s going to keep first watch?” said John. He said it out of habit, forgetting the pattern they’d established the last week with Dale.
“Come on, John,” said Dale, laughing. “Kiki will keep better watch than any of us. I’ve got her trained.”
“I hope so,” said John, glancing over at Kiki, who turned an eye towards him. She was a good dog, but he wasn’t crazy about putting his life in the hands of a dog. But each night that they’d had this discussion, John had been too tired to protest. It was easier to give in, not to mention get a full night’s sleep.
The pit fire gave off very little light, but with his darkness-adjusted eyes, John was able to see Kiki curling up next to Dale in his sleeping bag.
Cynthia, in her own bag, squirmed over until she lay next to John. “It’s cold,” she said sleepily.
And it was cold. John
tightened the drawstrings of his own bag. His body was exhausted, and he knew he’d be asleep in less than a minute. Sleeping on the cold ground instead of a bed no longer meant anything to him. He couldn’t even remember what a bed felt like.
His thoughts turned to the man they’d met earlier that day, and the compound. He’d seemed like an honest man…
4
Kara
After the disaster of the escaping visitors, Kara had taken extraordinary measures to eradicate any traces of democracy from the compound. She now ruled with an iron fist, and she wasn’t going to let that change.
She enjoyed the way the others cowered when they saw her, the way they averted her eyes.
Max had killed Jeff. He’d been too useful to Kara, and it’d been hard to find a replacement. Right now, she was relying heavily on a tall muscular man who went by the name of Smitty. He was power hungry, just like Kara. He wasn’t as subtle or intelligent as Jeff, but he was willing to do almost anything to advance his position in the compound. That was just how some people were.
Kara’s trick was to use Smitty to her own advantage while not letting him get too far ahead. She knew that his loyalty would only go so far. The minute he smelled an opportunity to undermine her, he’d take it and try to seize total control for himself. Her plan was to use Smitty until he was just at the brink of being out of her control. Then she’d make him destroy himself with his own momentum.
“Anything to report?” said Kara in a low voice.
She was sitting on her bunk bed in the building that was her own. She was still the only woman in the community.
Smitty sat on an empty bucket opposite her. “Everything’s going well,” he said. “Everyone’s fallen in line well. Not many murmurs of dissent.”
“We can’t afford any. When you say ‘not many’ what do you mean?”
“I’ve heard a few grumbles. Some are resentful of your takeover.”
“’A few’ is far too many,” said Kara. “They need to be too scared to even grumble. Give me names.”
“Well, there’s Mark Koppel. I heard him whispering something to one of his friends, something about democracy.”
“He’s a trouble maker,” said Kara. “Bring him in.”
“What? Now?”
“Right now,” said Kara.
“He was on shit duty. I’ll go see if he’s back yet.”
“Fast,” said Kara.
She sat there as Smitty left, tapping her foot impatiently. She had dreams of power, dreams of growing the compound to something that everyone would know, something that would continue past her own lifespan. She’d go down in history as one of the new founders of law and order. Sure, there’d be some skeletons in her closet. People would have to die, but that was the way things worked. Only the truly powerful understood the costs in human lives required to establish true order.
People like Koppel should have been on their hands and knees thanking Kara that they had a place to live, that they were safe from the chaos of the cities and surrounding areas. But instead they were grumbling, complaining, and trying to undermine her new rule.
Smitty came back a couple minutes later, dragging Koppel by the collar. Smitty was much bigger and stronger than Koppel, and he threw him roughly to the concrete.
Koppel hit the floor hard, and looked up at Kara with a pleading look. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. His voice reeked of weakness. Kara couldn’t stand him. Maybe it was time to eliminate him. But he might know something. If there was a plot underfoot, Kara needed to know about it.
“I’ve heard,” said Kara, “that you aren’t happy with the changes here.”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Koppel. He stayed on the floor. He knew better than to get up.
Kara gave a nod to Smitty, who took his .357 Magnum out and pointed it at Koppel’s head. Koppel stared at the gun, terrified. His whole body started to shake.
“Now you know how things go around here,” said Kara in a sickly sweet voice. “You know that it’s better to just tell the truth. It’s better not to keep things inside. It can be damaging psychologically. We’re a group, and we all have to look out for one another.”
“I don’t know anything,” said Koppel. “I was just saying that I was still hungry. That was it. I swear.”
Smitty moved rapidly. He gave a hard kick to Koppel’s torso. Koppel cried out.
“Enough of the bullshit,” shouted Smitty. “I heard you. I know what you said.”
“There’s only one way out of this that I can see,” said Kara. “You’ve already outlived your usefulness and now you’ve become a real threat to our community. We can’t have rebel elements like you. We have to put out the sparks before they start a big blaze. The only way we’ll let you live is if you give some real information.”
“I don’t know anything. Really.”
“It’s easy. Name names. Give me what I want. Tell me who’s plotting against me.”
“No one,” said Koppel, his voice shaky and weak. “No one’s plotting.”
Smitty shoved his Magnum against Koppel’s skull, cocking it. He had a touch for the dramatic at times. “Try again,” he whispered.
“There’s no one. Really. But I have something better. There’s a woman in the area.”
Kara was stunned into silence. There hadn’t been any newcomers since Max and his friends.
Kara needed more women there. She craved to have more women there.
“Where are they? Who are they?”
“There’s just one woman,” said Koppel, his voice straining. “She’s with Max’s brother. They came looking for the compound. They’re looking for Max.”
“And you turned them away?”
Koppel was too terrified to speak. He just nodded. Tears were streaming down his face. He knew that he was going to die, despite giving her what she wanted.
“And where are they?”
“I don’t know. But they couldn’t be far.”
“We can make this easy for you or hard for you. You’re going to die either way. Might as well be as painless as it can be, right?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I saw them towards the north. They must have been coming south.”
“Did they have a vehicle?”
“I don’t think so. They looked dirty, like they’d been hiking for a long time. There were just the two of them.”
“Smitty,” said Kara. “It’s time to show Koppel that we mean business.”
Smith flashed her a grin. He’d do anything for her, so long he thought it benefited him. “With pleasure,” he said.
Smitty drew his fixed blade hunting knife from the sheath on his belt. In a flash, he grabbed Koppel’s ear, pulled hard, and sliced it off with his knife.
Koppel’s scream echoed around the four concrete walls. Blood spurted from where his ear had been.
“It can get a lot worse,” said Kara, her voice still sweet. “Now tell us what you know.”
“I swear. That’s it! I swear!”
Smitty looked at her. “I’ll cut the other one off. Or maybe an eyeball?”
Kara shook her head. “He’s telling the truth. Let’s not waste our time with him any more. Finish him.”
Smitty gave her the nod. He thrust one arm around Koppel’s neck, jerking it back. His other hand ran his knife across his throat. Koppel managed to scream for a split second. Smitty let Koppel’s body drop with a hard thud on the concrete.
“Get someone to clean that up,” muttered Kara. “I don’t want to see a speck of blood in here when I get back. Now come on, we’re going hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“For that woman, idiot.”
“You’re going to go yourself? Don’t you think you should stay here? You’re too valuable.”
“I’m going,” said Kara. “I’m not trusting such a delicate operation to an idiot like you. We’re not going to have any more screw ups here. Get two good men. Maybe Johnson and McCarty. We’re going light and tight.”
“When?”
“Right now, you moron. We’re not letting them escape.”
Smitty practically ran out the door. He was eager not to displease her.
Kara stood up, checked her handgun, and gave Koppel’s body a kick with her boot. She gazed down at his expressionless face and his open eyes. She felt no horror or sadness. She felt no sorrow from the killing.
Fifteen minutes later, the group was assembled. Kara stood in front of them and stared them down, saying nothing for a long time. Smitty, Johnson, and McCarty were all tall, strong men. They had endurance. They could outrun most others. Johnson and McCarty had both worked in private security before the EMP. They were tough as nails, and willing to do whatever she said.
The men all had handguns and rifles. Kara wanted to go light, so she didn’t carry a rifle. Each of them had a flashlight. The community had been able to recharge the batteries with their homemade electrical generator.
“You all know the mission,” said Kara, finally speaking. “There’s a guy and a girl. Kill the guy like a dog. He’s of no use to us. But the woman is not to be hurt. We need her in good health. Now, they hiked in. If they were smart, they’ll have hiked all night. But we’ll still get them. If they were stupid, they’ll have stayed nearby, camping for the night. We’ve got the advantage. We’re well rested, and we’ve got flashlights. We’ll split into two groups and track them down. Everyone clear?”
The three of them nodded.
The four of them moved out into the darkness. Their boots tread heavily on the ground. The night was cold.
5
Max
There wasn’t anything Max could do. He didn’t know why the men were being hanged, whether they were innocent or guilty.
Max left the front yard. The noise of the crowds followed him. He heard them cheer when the stool was kicked out from under the first man.
None of the man’s noises reached Max, but he could imagine the man’s face contorted terribly as he struggled to breathe with the rope pulling tight against his neck. The man hadn’t been high enough to break his neck. Those makeshift gallows hadn’t been designed for killing swiftly and painlessly. They’d been designed to torture, to provide public spectacle.
Surviving Chaos Page 3