Mallory smiled. “No plan survives initial contact with the enemy, Eric, and apparently the useless meat-sacks haven’t finished killing each other off.”
…
“We were on I-40 almost the whole way,” Dan said. The only time we really got off was to make camp, or the one time we actually went into a town in Kingston Springs.”
“Had you run into many groups on the road?” Sergeant Blackwood asked, the same Sergeant who had brought them in when they were so close to collapsing.
Dan thought back. “Probably a couple dozen groups total,” he said. “I think the largest group we encountered was almost twenty people. It was an even mix of men and women with just a couple of kids. I think that was the biggest worry we ever had and we just sat it out with the rifles and the shotgun in plain view as they passed.”
Blackwood nodded while Dan spoke; talking about each group they ran into until the last. “Do you remember seeing the last group before the middle of the night?” He asked.
“I think we may have passed them that day but I really can’t be sure.” Dan said. “I know we didn’t pass anyone else after we had the bikes stolen, though, and I didn’t get a good look at them when they turned on the flashlights.”
“Well, from your description of events it sounds like they’ve done it more than once and used that tactic before.” Blackwood said. “It’s also possible that you passed someone else on the road, a scout or a group of scouts, and then the raiding party came in later. Where were you on I-40 when it happened?”
Dan made a face. “Probably about a mile past the Buffalo River I think.”
“And they took off towards us, towards the park.” Blackwood said.
“That’s right.” Dan said.
“You’ve got a pretty good eye for details, Dan.” Blackwood said. “There’s not a lot within a couple of miles of there, right off the highway that I would want to try to get to in the middle of the night. We’ve got some topographical maps, and I have a few ideas, and I think we might pay a few visits.”
He stood up and shook Dan’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “If this group is the one that’s been causing the majority of the trouble then you may have just fixed a major thorn in my side.”
…
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Yes,” Marissa said in triumph to an empty room, and then looked around. “I am so pathetic.”
The city offices had proven to be both a treasure trove and a frustrating mess for someone like Marissa. On the one hand, they were very well stocked with paper, toner, and ink cartridges, forms that had to be filled out by hand, and, of all things, two manual typewriters—with spare ribbons. They had a case of blank certificate templates for heaven only knows what, and the secretary’s desk even had a calligraphy set.
On the other hand, nothing was organized, or if it was, it seemed to be by the third letter in the second form in the folder. Things seemed to have been literally stuffed in filing cabinets as they came into the office, starting with the upper left drawer and moving down as they filled up! It was driving Marissa insane. It had taken her two days to find the marriage license forms and another six hours to find the book to register the marriages in.
Marissa shook her head and brushed the hair that had escaped from her braid out of her face. She was slowly reorganizing the office using the drawers she had emptied, but this was going to be a full time job all by itself. She looked around the room at the organized chaos she’d made and noticed the box of certificates and her brows furrowed.
“Where did I see…” she muttered as she put the registration book with the license forms so they wouldn’t get separated again. She seemed to recall seeing some software for printing certificates and one of the printers in the office was a color laser printer. If the printer had actually been off when the spike had hit, and if she could get a laptop from the Major, and get the software installed, and then get the printer up to the base…
Sure it was a lot of ifs, but it was worth a shot. And if not, they could still use the calligraphy set in the secretary’s desk.
…
“I know the ideal time for a wedding is in the spring,” Chuck said.
“I don’t care,” Sheri said and kissed him. “The ideal time for my wedding is when I get to marry you.”
“How did I get so lucky?” He asked.
“I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll come to you.” She smiled.
“So how does Friday, October 5th sound?” Chuck asked with a grin. “I know we don’t really work normal schedules but I thought we could at least pretend we could have a long weekend.”
“That would be nice.” Sheri closed her eyes. “We could even set the alarm early on the wind up clock and then turn it off and pretend we’re sleeping in.”
They both laughed. It seemed that nobody ever really got enough sleep anymore. There was plenty of food, and so far none of the roofs leaked for more than a single day or night, but everyone, Mallory included, complained about not getting enough sleep.
“So, what are you going to wear?” Chuck asked.
Sheri frowned. “I don’t know,” she said and looked a little off into the distance while she thought about it. This had been nagging at her for a while and it bothered her that it…bothered her. Sheri had never thought she cared much for dresses in the first place, much less big flouncy fluffy white wedding dresses. The closer it got to her wedding day, though, the more she realized that maybe she did want at least a nice, pretty white wedding dress. The fact that she even cared was more than a little distressing.
Chuck had asked the same question once before and received the exact same response, and was trying to decide how to react. He didn’t want to push it, but also didn’t want to blow it off. He’d been a bachelor for a long time but he was pretty sure that Sheri wasn’t happy about not having a wedding dress; she just wasn’t saying anything about it.
“It’ll be ok.” Chuck said and gave her a squeeze and a kiss.
“I know.” She said and kissed him back.
…
“Eric, what am I going to do for a wedding ring?” Chuck said.
“Oh wow, I hadn’t thought of that.” Eric said. “I’ve just been so happy that you finally decided to ask that…wow. I’ve got mine already in my sock drawer and—that was really crass of me to say, wasn’t it. Sorry.” Eric blushed.
“No, don’t worry about it.” Chuck said with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been prepared for however long and that’s cool. I have a week and a half to come up with two rings and, short of knocking over a jewelry store, which I am not going to go do, I’m out of ideas.”
“Well, if you can come up with the metal I’m sure we can smelt it,” Eric said. “Don’t look at me like that; you came to me with the problem, man.”
“Sorry,” Chuck said, “but where am I going to come up with the metal? I don’t even have any silver to melt.”
“Silver,” Dan Clark had been walking by when he heard the last bit of the conversation. “You looking for some silver to melt?”
“Um, yeah,” Chuck said and held out his hand. “You’re…Dan right? You lived in the same neighborhood as Joel and Eric, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Dan shook Chuck’s hand. “Took us long enough to get the hint and follow suit. Wish we’d been closer friends and left at the same time, frankly. How much silver do you need?”
“Well,” Chuck said, looking sheepish and then shaking his head, “enough to make a couple of wedding rings.”
Dan snapped his fingers and pointed. “Ok, right. You’re the guy who’s getting married. Congratulations!”
Chuck was back to the kid-in-a-candy-store grin he’d been wearing for the last couple of weeks. “Thanks.”
“Tell you what,” Dan paused for a second and made a little bit of a face, and then smiled and decided to just say whatever he’d been thinking. “I’ve got a few 90% silver half dollars, enough that you could melt down and make a couple of wedding rings for sure. C
onsider it a wedding present.”
Chuck shook his head. “I couldn’t do that.” He said. “I couldn’t just take them.”
“And I’m going to do what with them?” Dan asked. “On the way here they had a little bit of value so I used a couple for barter, but they weren’t worth nearly what I’d hoped they’d be. Now that I’m here this is the first time they’ve had any real value at all. Just do me a favor; don’t tell anyone where they came from? The last thing I need is someone who thinks they have value deciding I’m rich.”
Chuck’s eyes were a little moist when he held out his hand. “Deal,” he said. “And, Dan, I owe you one. I don’t just consider this a wedding present, I owe you.”
…
“Sparky,” Sergeant Ramirez had finally cornered Evan. “What do you know about laser printers?”
Sparky shook his head at what seemed to be a truly random question coming from his boss’ boss. “Um,” Sparky said stalling for time as he got out of radio mode. “I’m good with the fundamentals. Basically you have a…”
“I don’t need a lesson, Sergeant,” Ramirez said, interrupting Sparky before he could get going, “I need one fixed down in Redemption—assuming that’s possible.”
“Any idea what’s wrong with it?” Sparky asked.
Ramirez just looked at Sparky for a few seconds and then said, “I would assume it was plugged in and in power down mode when the spike hit, son.”
Sparky blushed, realizing he’d asked a really stupid question. “Yes, Sergeant. Stupid question, Sergeant,” he said. “Do we already have a truck headed down there any time soon?”
Ramirez chuckled and slapped Sparky on the back to let him know it wasn’t that big of a deal. “The Mayor is heading down in about a half hour, you can hitch a ride with him,” he said. “He already knows he may have company but don’t keep him waiting.”
“Will do. Sorry about that, I’ve had radios on the brain for a couple of weeks.” Sparky said. “Where is the printer at?”
“It’s over at the Post Office.” Ramirez said. “It’s the only building with power right now and I assumed you would need electricity to test and or repair it.”
“I’m on it,” Sparky said as he started collecting the tools and scavenged parts that might come in handy on his repair assignment.
…
“You don’t talk about your job much anymore,” Joel said as they were enjoying a few minutes of quiet time before one or the other collapsed into unconsciousness for the evening.
“We don’t get much time to talk about anything, recently,” Rachael said.
“True,” he said. “So, what’s going on at the school? I ask as your husband and an involved parent, not as the mayor.”
“Mm hmm,” Rachael said. “Well, your daughter has decided her Math class isn’t challenging enough for her and is pushing us for more advanced stuff. Unfortunately, unless we put her in one of the Junior High classes, we don’t have anything for her.”
“We can’t just start shuffling her, or any of the kids for that matter, from one class to another whenever we want though.” Joel said.
“No, we can’t.” She said. “We have too many kids to start doing that, and even though the majority of kids are just about at grade level it would set a bad precedent. It would be a logistical nightmare.”
Joel paused for a minute and then asked, “Please don’t take this wrong, but is this why she was frustrated at school before?”
“Maybe,” Rachael said and shook her head, “probably. We’re falling into the same rut and doing the exact same thing that the school system was doing before. You bring up a good point. We don’t need to do it the same way just because that’s how it’s always been done. I’ll see what we can do, and not just for Maya.”
Joel nodded. “Any other issues with Maya in school,” Joel asked.
“Let’s see,” she said. “She almost set the ‘Chemistry tent’ on fire because she wanted to actually see the reaction that was described, and she is taking after her brother in Biology.”
Joel had his head in his hands. “Did the dissection at least go ok?” He asked.
“Oh, that went fine,” Rachael said. “She was the only girl who didn’t get all grossed out and actually helped the butcher when he asked for volunteers. Even some of the boys weren’t interested, but since she was the only girl who raised her hand, he chose her.”
“Nice,” Joel said shaking his head. “I have to ask because she talks to you about things she doesn’t, can’t, or won’t talk to me about. How is she doing maturity-wise? We can’t skip her a grade, can we?”
“No, I really don’t think it would be fair to do that to her,” Rachael said. “Especially with the school year already started.”
“Ok,” Joel said. “Asking as either husband or Mayor, anything else going on?”
“Well,” she said, “the kids are all pretty excited about the wedding. It’s going to be the first real celebration since the power went out. For the most part, we completely missed Independence Day—which a lot of people feel really bad about—and even though the elections and voting were exciting, the wedding is basically going to be a big party.”
“True,” Joel said. He’d realized a couple of days after July 4th that they had missed it and been really depressed for a couple of days.
“The kids all want to do something for the wedding,” Rachael said. “We’ve taken a couple of field trips out and around, letting the Major know so that the patrols would know we were out there, looking for wildflowers. We’ve only found a couple of different kinds, and the kids have come back with more ticks than flowers we can use, but they are still enjoying it.”
Joel became concerned at the mention of ticks. “What about ticks?”
“Not deer ticks,” she said. “I had the medics take a look to be sure, and we removed them as soon as we found them. We kept the ticks and the medics and Dan assured us that the worst thing we have to worry about is Rocky Mountain Spotted-Fever.”
Joel relaxed and nodded his head.
“Once we realized they were going to be a problem,” Rachael said, “we made sure that everyone wore hats and long sleeves and pants when we went on the field trips. They complained until they realized they weren’t coming back with ticks anymore. Or at least the ticks were on their clothes and not stuck to them.”
“Since we haven’t found enough flowers,” Rachael continued, “we’re having everyone save any and all paper and the kids are making folded and cut-out flowers for the wedding. Some of the bouquets are really pretty.”
“I know Sheri has been really stressing out about the wedding,” Joel said. “Having all of this come together for her is really going to mean a lot.”
Rachael nodded. “Did you hear about the wedding rings?” She asked.
“No,” Joel said. “I was kind of wondering what they were going to do for rings, actually.”
“Well, you might want to have a chat with Dan, then, because I’m not going to say anything.” Rachael said. “I got it from Marissa, but Dan specifically asked that it not get around.”
Joel rolled his eyes.
…
“This is becoming a logistical nightmare,” Mallory said to her assembled command staff. “I’m not throwing stones here but we’re getting too big for what we initially planned for this location.”
If Ramirez bit his tongue any harder, he would be spitting blood, and Stewart was curious to see what the Major and the Captain were going to propose that didn’t include abandoning everything they had already built.
“When we first moved out here,” Captain Tripp picked up, “the initial idea was to avoid anyone else who might have either already staked a claim or still been here from before the power went out. Over the first couple of weeks we kept an eye on the half dozen cabins and sites that had people in them, and eventually everyone took off.”
Eric looked at the assembled group. “Let me be clear,” he said; his voice hard. “We did not run anyon
e off. They all left on their own and we didn’t have any contact with anyone. Since then, we have checked on all of the facilities that the park has to offer and secured them all. At this time we feel that it would be in our best interest to make full use of all of those facilities while still maintaining everything we’ve built here.”
Lieutenant Halstead chimed in at this point. “The infrastructure that is already in place would allow for us as a group to do a number of things,” he said. “First and foremost it would allow as many as four hundred people to more easily weather the winter indoors. There is a dining hall that could be brought online immediately. with facilities to establish land-line telephone communications almost immediately between all of the buildings in the park with the PBX they have in place. It doesn’t require that there be any live Telco connection in place.”
“What about Redemption and Promised Land?” Ramirez asked out of genuine curiosity.
“A very valid point,” Eric said, “and one we are working on. Our biggest problem right now is one of actual connectivity, either laying wire or using some kind of existing wire from here to there. We have a couple of groups out to try and…requisition…enough to get from here to Redemption but that’s a pretty long haul. It’s not as far from the nearest building to Promised Land but it’s still a bit of a distance.”
“I assume there’s a reason we aren’t using wireless or radios to bridge the gap,” Sergeant Bowersock said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, there is,” Mallory said. That was all the answer she was willing to give at this point.
Everyone knew that new orders had been given and there were rumors, but they hadn’t made their way all the way down yet. The fact that they were deliberately going to avoid the radio for certain types of communication, and that Sparky had been spending so much time working on HAM radio gear was interesting indeed.
Speaking of radios, just then Eric’s radio squawked and he excused himself.
“Captain Tripp,” he said.
Dark Grid (Book 2): Dark Road Page 25