CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Char surprised the man that anchored the line on the right side of the road. She killed him with a punch that caved in his skull. She grabbed his rifle as the next man down turned to face her. She shot him and started running, shooting the next two in rapid succession before return fire started.
She was hit twice, once in the leg and once in the chest. She went down and rolled behind cover. Char started to heal immediately, but needed more food. She crawled to the men she’d already killed and was surprised that they had nothing on them. Char thought about it for a second and decided against it. She’d recover without eating any of the humans. She denied Marcus before when he insisted and even now, with necessity calling, she couldn’t do it. She would never do it. It would simply take more time to heal and that was that.
Dammit, TH, you’ve made me the damsel in distress and I hate that shit, she thought as she kept the rifle trained toward the mounds that hid her enemies as they pointed their rifles in her direction.
She waited for someone to come.
* * *
Terry peeked from the cover of the ditch and saw his four men rounding up the survivors in the field to his left. To his right, no one was visible.
“It’s over! Sawyer Brown is dead. Come out with your hands up and you won’t be harmed,” Terry yelled, unwilling to expose himself.
“Come on out, boys! It’s over,” Jagoff yelled as he walked from the field, hands on top of his head. Jim carried an armload of rifles, while Ivan struggled with bags of magazines filled with ammunition. Devlin and Mark watched four of Sawyer’s men as they walked slowly across the field. “Come on! Hands up and get out here!”
Seven men slowly rose with their hands held out before them.
“Char! Come on out,” Terry called as he carefully climbed from the ditch. Clyde was checking out his former master. He peed near the man’s head and then ran around to the other members of Sawyer’s small army.
Terry watched the dog, saw who he liked and noted that.
Terry made his way through the ditch and accosted the first person he came across. “Where is she?” he demanded. The man pointed toward the east. Terry turned to cover the people who surrendered as he moved away from them. When they walked onto the road and Devlin took charge of the newcomers, Terry ran in the direction the man pointed.
He followed the dead bodies until he found Char, sitting behind a mound with a rifle across her lap. He saw the two holes in her clothing and the blood. Her eyes were closed. He kneeled next to her, putting his fingers on her neck and feeling for the pulse. Char’s skin was hot and her pulse was strong. “Thank God,” he whispered.
“Ah, you’d miss me,” Char said with her eyes still closed. “I’m fine, just a little tired is all.” She opened her eyes to see Terry looking at the two bullet holes in her clothes.
“Near misses,” she said. He smirked and helped her to her feet. She stretched and flexed, took a deep breath and declared herself one hundred percent. Terry watched her walk stiffly toward the road.
“Private,” Terry called to Char. She looked at him with one eyebrow raised and her hands up. “Gather up these weapons and ammunition and bring them to the road,” he ordered and strode briskly away without seeing the look of surprise on her face.
The four members of the FDG had eleven prisoners. He looked for the man who told everyone to surrender, the man that Clyde seemed to like. “You, what’s your name?”
“They call me Jagoff…” he said, hanging his head.
“Say what? I asked what your name was, and I don’t want any bullshit,” Terry clarified.
“James, my name is James.” The man smiled sheepishly. It had probably been too long since he had heard his own name.
“Well, James, I’m going to be honest in that I have no idea what to do with all of you. What do you think we should do?” Terry asked.
“We’re not your enemy, mister. He was.” James pointed at Sawyer Brown’s corpse.
“Yes, that reminds me. An old tradition of mine is to give a bottle of twenty-year old, or older, single malt scotch to the team member who took out the target. Since we don’t have any of that, one of my first bottles of beer to the man who shot Sawyer Brown! Was that you, Mark?” Terry asked, looking at his corporal. Mark shook his head and pointed to James.
“You?”
“It was well past the time that he needed to go, but he kept us fed, gave us purpose. I’m not sorry to see him dead, though, not sorry at all,” James said and spit in the direction of the corpse. The others followed suit.
“I really hope that when I die, no one spits on me. So back to my question, James. What do we do now?” James looked to the others and it seemed like some of them wanted to talk, but hesitated.
“What do you guys think?” Terry asked Mark and Devlin. Jim and Ivan were quagmired in trying to get the weapons and ammunition under control. It looked like Jim and Ivan were losing.
“Whatever you decide, sir,” Devlin replied quickly. Terry looked to Mark.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to spend the rest of my days guarding prisoners,” Mark offered ambiguously. Terry rolled his finger hoping to get more. “We need friends, not enemies,” Mark added helpfully.
Char walked up, glaring at Terry as she struggled with an armload of cumbersome rifles and two packs bursting with ammunition. She unceremoniously dumped it on the ground at Terry’s feet and stood there with her arms crossed.
Terry didn’t want to push any more of her buttons. He could tell she was still in pain and needed a break. Terry pulled his last bundle of venison jerky from a pocket and handed it to her. “Thanks, Char. Go get Sawyer’s belt and pistols. I think they’ll look good on you,” he started, then hesitated. “You look dogged, take a break and get something to eat.” It wasn’t an order. He didn’t work that way. He cared about his people, but wanted them to take care of themselves. His job was to give them space to do that.
She chuckled. Dogged. That was it. She ran a hand down his arm as she walked past, taking Clyde with her to find a spot in the ditch a short way off, to sit and relax, eat and recover.
“You. It looks like you had something to say,” Terry asked.
A man who seemed to be Mark’s age spoke out after looking to the others for confirmation. “We have people back in our town. We have to go back for them,” he said, sounding desperate.
Terry nodded, then decided.
“Here’s what I can offer. To the north, it’s a bit of a hike, but up there, we have a town where we’re growing more food than we need. What we don’t have is enough manpower to work everything that needs worked. We even have power, electrical power, and those of you with any knowledge of that sort of thing could find more work than you can do. We’re bringing civilization back to the world. Would you like to join us? It’s going to be a great trip, but there’s some work to do between now and then.” Terry let it hang.
“Talk among yourselves and see what you’d like to do. If we need to go back for the rest of your people, we’ll do that and it’ll take as long as it takes. I hate to uproot your whole society, but we can’t sustain two communities, not right now anyway. Join us and we’ll do right by you as long as you do right by us.”
James huddled the people together and Terry watched. He understood the lessons from history only too well. When you enforced your power at the end of a gun, when that gun was gone, you found out the people had zero loyalty, only fear. North Korea had existed that way, so it atrophied and the people suffered. When the Chinese liberation came, even communism gave the North Koreans more freedom and liberty than they’d ever had before.
There’s no limit to what people will do for you when they believe. Terry hadn’t promised them a rose garden and they seemed okay with that. He doubted any of them were allergic to hard work. These people were survivors.
Just like him. Just like Char. Just like all of them.
* * *
It took two days for the
mob to make their way back to town. All of the weapons and provisions were loaded on the horses and everyone walked, including the FDG. Terry wouldn’t have it any other way. He and Char hunted to provide meat for the seventeen of them. They ate well and they talked a lot.
As usual, when the people got to know each other, they realized that they had far more in common than not. Once they realized that Terry Henry Walton had no interest in lording his power over them, they relaxed and acted as friends.
He regaled them with stories from books he’d read, revealing very little about himself while keeping the group entertained. The trip went quickly because they didn’t push. Terry estimated that they traveled some thirty-five miles.
Not bad for two days.
To everyone’s surprise, when told of the opportunity to live with food, clean water, and power, the rest of the town rose to the occasion and packed up. In two more days, they were ready to go.
Terry had too much stuff and no way to carry it all. He searched his memory for something that would be useful, finally settling on the travois, as used by Native Americans centuries before. They strapped blankets across two poles that would be tied to the saddle and the main contraption would drag behind the horse. It was easier than trying to carry everything and would vastly increase what the people could take.
They built four travois and that was where they loaded the weapons and ammunition, blankets, food, and some water. Those with children would ride some of the way.
Terry pulled James aside. “Have you been down to Colorado Springs, or maybe Falcon?” James shrugged, unsure of what Terry was digging for.
“I’m looking for where they hid their weapons after the fall. If we’re going to rebuild this nation, we need to make sure that no one else has access to weaponry. Peace through superior firepower, eh?” Terry prodded. “Where’d you get the AKs and all the ammunition?”
“Probably the kind of place you’re looking for. Right here in this town, there was a vault and Sawyer Brown found a way in. It was loaded with those rifles and closets completely filled with ammunition. Sawyer didn’t let us waste it, but we had as much as we needed whenever we needed it.”
“Show me…”
James and Terry walked through the dusty old town and found the bunker tucked behind the last building. It looked like a fruit cellar, but had a door like a bank vault. Whatever Sawyer did to get inside, it paid a huge dividend. They’d been set for fifteen of the past twenty years.
Terry did a quick inventory and as much as he wanted it to be something else, he determined that it was simply a private collection that someone had amassed in the years leading up to the World’s Worst Day Ever. This was all surplus gear, rifles from a broad range of eastern bloc countries. Ammunition by all manufacturers. There were only a couple rifles remaining in the vault. Sawyer Brown had pulled out all stops in his effort to eliminate Terry Henry Walton and the FDG.
“Build two more travois and take all this with us. We can’t leave it for someone else to find.” Terry liked seeing the ammunition. Even if he didn’t find the hidden stockpile he knew had to be there, he had enough arms and ammunition to start and win a war of the wasteland.
But that wasn’t good enough for TH. He wanted to search for the stockpile. He hunted Mark down to let him know. “You take this group back to New Boulder. Char and I are going to search for the stockpile,” Terry informed him.
Mark was instantly boiling mad. “That’s bullshit!” he yelled. “You sell these people on a better world, and then you bail on them? You’re not going anywhere except back north with us. Do you understand me?” Mark crossed his arms and stood with feet spread wide.
“That’s not how it works. I give the orders, and you follow them,” Terry said coldly.
“Is your white whale out there somewhere, Terry Henry Walton? I’m begging you, come with us. Search for your mystical Nirvana later.” Mark’s eyes were wide as he unfolded his arms and clasped his hands in front of him, pleading with Terry to change his mind.
“Can’t you take them on your own?” Terry asked.
“Of course I can, but it’s not about that. It’s about you being the leader we need you to be, the person who’s going to bring civilization back to us. I can take them to New Boulder, but I can’t do the rest of it. That’s you, bastard,” Mark said, gaining confidence in being an upstart.
“Fuck me …” Terry hung his head and looked at the ground. Char slapped him on the back while Clyde nuzzled his leg. The people watched, wondering what he was going to do.
The End of Nomad Found
Terry Henry Walton will return
in Nomad Redeemed, January 2017.
CHAPTER ONE
The mountain lion wanted the deer as much as Sawyer Brown’s people, two men tried to push him away, but he snarled and slashed with a paw at their meager walking sticks. He grabbed the carcass and started to drag it backwards away from the offending humans. The people watched, helplessly. One man was running from the front of the long, drawn out line of people and another two from the back. The two from the back were closing at an unnatural speed.
Terry Henry Walton and Charumati ran straight for the deer, wondering where Mark had disappeared to after shooting the animal, leaving the poor people from Brownsville to fend for themselves.
Terry stopped at fifty yards away and dropped to a knee. As he aimed his M4 combat rifle, Char continued to run past, heading straight for the mountain lion. She veered out of his line of sight for an instant, all he needed to pull the trigger. The round hit the great creature between the eyes as it released the deer and prepared to fight the Werewolf. Char leapt and landed on the thing as it dropped dead.
She growled her dismay at not getting to fight her fellow predator, but she quickly relaxed. As far as she knew, her secret of being a Werewolf was safe. She didn’t know that Terry risked hitting her to help her keep that secret.
She stood up and brushed herself off, suggesting they skin the mountain lion and keep the hide. There was always something to be done with such a magnificent hide.
“So, you decided that fighting a mountain lion bare handed was your best course of action? Is there any reason to carry pistols if you’re not going to use them?” Terry asked sarcastically. Sometimes he wondered how hard she was trying.
“Oh, those. I didn’t need those to fight that little thing,” she replied innocently. The others started cleaning the deer and one man looked proud that he was the one given the opportunity to skin a mountain lion.
When Devlin arrived, out of breath from his run, he was happy that no one got hurt, but he was miffed at having run all that way for no reason.
“Where in the hell did Mark go? He should have been here,” Terry stormed, not at Devlin, but he was angry.
“Squirts,” Devlin answered, keeping his voice low and shrugging. He knew Terry wasn’t mad at him. He turned and jogged slowly back toward the front of the line.
“Break!” Terry yelled in his Marine voice, projecting well past the running man. The people stopped walking and found places to sit. Devlin looked back, shaking his head as Terry smiled.
Mark finally appeared and he looked miserable. There was nothing anyone could do for him. He must have eaten something undercooked or gotten water that was bad. It would pass with enough good water and better food, like the venison they were cutting up.
Terry Henry remained gloomy as they walked north, toward New Boulder. Char stayed by his side and laughed the entire time because TH didn’t get his way. Clyde seemed indifferent to it all and was more than happy to feast on mountain lion meat. Terry thought it would be inedible, but this was the wasteland and food was hard to come by.
He asked the man skinning it to do a proper job and cut up the meat as well. The man did as he was told.
Terry told another pair of young men to build a fire that they could use to cook the meat. There wasn’t any firewood handy so they conscripted a few other people in search of anything that would burn.
The wastelands weren’t as bad as they used to be, some people thought. Terry had lived out there, he knew all about it.
For a while anyway, if you call what he did living.
And he agreed. The climate was changing, getting a little cooler with each year. Terry preferred to think of it as less brutal.
Terry stood and walked the line of people, stroking the grazing horses’ necks as he passed. They waved and greeted him kindly. He shook hands and looked at them like refugees, but they weren’t. He’d told them that there was work, a new and better life that they could make for themselves.
He hoped Billy Spires saw things that way. Terry decided to ride ahead and make his own luck by preparing Billy and New Boulder for the influx of refugees…
Author Notes - Craig Martelle
Written December 18st, 2016
What’s there to say? Writing is work, but fun work. The best part of being an author is meeting all the great people out there, other authors, like Michael Anderle, and then all the readers. It is a truly great adventure.
I want to thank Michael for allowing me into the Kurtherian Gambit universe to take a look at things on earth while Bethany Anne was away. After the world’s worst day ever happened and everything changed – the apocalypse, Armageddon, whatever you want to call it. Please people, don’t let that day happen!
Nomad Found: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Book 1) Page 17