EMP 1500 MILES FROM HOME

by Mike Whitworth

  "I guess he had a big bladder?"

  Yeti

  I asked Dan to capture a sentry and he did. The man is on the ground before me, bound and gagged. I tried to interrogate him a little while ago, but he would say nothing.

  He has a gang tattoo on the back of his neck. It makes sense to me. Gangs are the most organized criminals in the country. It is an easy matter for them to take control in some areas after the EMP. They already have the guns, the will, and the skills.

  I couldn't figure out why there was gang activity so far away from other people though. It made sense to me that gangs would stay close enough to populated areas to easily raid for supplies.

  Wayne

  "Let's move out."

  My assignment was the house. Dave was with me. Yeti and Larry handled the bunkhouse, and Dan and the two newcomers handled the vehicles.

  At the front door of the house, I took strips of fiberglass cloth and epoxied them over the edges of the door. Then we went from window to window and epoxied fiberglass cloth over the entire window and frame. We also painted all of the windows with black paint so no one could see out. I think Yeti had a thing for black paint. Yeti and Larry were doing the same thing to the bunkhouse. They also ran a rope all the way around the building and tied it off so the door would not open outwards if the fiberglass gave way.

  Dan and the two newcomers removed the batteries from the Humvees and the truck. Then they removed the machine guns and packed them back to our position, just in case. Once they gave us the signal, we waited an hour until the quick-drying epoxy was hard enough, thoroughly doused the buildings with gasoline, and set them on fire. The old, dry wood burned hot and fast. None of the gang survived.

  I threw up when I heard the first screams, and again at the smell of burning flesh. Dave put his hand on my shoulder while I was puking. "Wayne, it had to be done. It was us or them."

  I stood and wiped my mouth. "I know that, but I still don't like it."

  "Neither do I," Dave said. "Neither do I."

  Yeti

  The plan went off without a hitch thanks to the dedication and skill of our people. We did not lose anyone, nor did we have a single injury.

  The fires burned hot. Soon after the screams stopped, the ammunition they had stored inside cooked off. It sounded like the forth of July for almost 20 minutes. I was hoping they stored their ammo somewhere else, but that is just the way it was. There was nothing we could do about that.

  Wayne

  When daylight was strong, we set sentries and a guard on the captured sentry and went to check out the damage. We were careful just in case there might be some survivors. We cleared the smaller buildings first. We found no one but did find some supplies, including food. Then we checked out the barn. It was a huge building, about 100 feet by 180 feet. Dan said it was the biggest barn he had ever seen on a ranch.

  The door was padlocked, so we knocked the lock off with a hammer. We swung the big double doors open and stood there in surprise. Almost the entire barn floor was covered by equipment, bulldozers, track hoes, road graders, and a lot of oddball stuff I didn't recognize. Dave said much of it was mining equipment. There was an open space in the front large enough to park the Humvees, and the truck. A lot of the equipment had military or state markings.

  "This stuff was stolen," Dan said. "See the state markings on the road grader. That truck looks like a National Guard truck."

  "So whoever had this place was stealing equipment?"

  "I think they kept everything they stole," Larry said.

  Dave wandered off through the equipment. "Hey guys, you need to see this."

  We found Dave at the back of the barn. The stench of rotting flesh was horrible. Yeti put his kerchief over his nose and ran out of the building. I was sorely tempted to follow. In front of Dave was a pile of bodies. They were all female.

  "I guess this is where the women went?" Dan said. "Some sick bastards, those."

  There must have been at least a dozen bodies in the pile. By now we all had kerchiefs over our noses.

  "There is a stairway back here. It leads up," Larry said.

  The stairs opened into a long hallway that ran the length of the barn. On either side there were rooms. Some had plain doors, and many had heavy wooden doors with barred windows. Some of the rooms were empty, and some contained rotting bodies, all female. Some of the bodies were in chains. Some of the fresher ones looked like they had been beaten to death. I threw up again. As soon as I tossed my cookies, the two newcomers did too. I was glad Julie was standing guard and didn't have to see this.

  Dave moved quickly down the hall, peering into each room in turn, except for a couple with locked doors. "Guys, come on down here! This one is alive." We all ran to see.

  We opened the door and the woman, a girl really, just stared at us. "Dan, can you bring Julie?" I asked.

  "Sure thing Wayne."

  "Larry can you get some water and some food. I don't think she has had anything for a while."

  "Will do, Wayne."

  I stepped into the room and picked the girl up in my arms. She didn't weigh much. I carried her down the stairs and out of the barn. She just stared into my face as I walked. She didn't make a sound. We met Julie about 100 feet from the barn.

  "What in the world? Who is that? Is she OK?" I set the girl down in the back of one of the wagons. She was staring at Julie but she still said nothing. Julie motioned me to follow her. Out of earshot of the girl, she said, "Wayne. She looks harmless, but I won't trust her until we know for sure. I want you to cover us with your rifle. Keep it pointed at her at all times. If she tries to harm me or anyone else, kill her."

  "The rifle might scare her."

  "If she is for real, she is already scared. Just do it, please."

  "OK, Julie." I covered the girl with my rifle while Julie saw to her. Julie managed to get her to drink some water and eat just a bite of food before wrapping her in a blanket.

  "I think she is doing as well as can be expected," Julie said. "Now that I have looked her over, I don't think she is a danger to us. I will keep an eye on her."

  "OK, we need to check out the rest of this place. Be careful.""

  Dan and I went back to the upper floor of the barn. We checked to see if there were any more survivors. There weren't. Then we started investigating the storage rooms. Some had file cabinets full of porn. Other rooms were piled floor to ceiling with clothes. We didn't think we could ever get the stink out of them so we moved on. One room was a neat little office, with a desk and three file cabinets. The desk was empty except for a few pens, pad, and the usual desk accessories. Two of the filing cabinets were full of money, one-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, and twenty-dollar bills. There was a lot of money there.

  "Is this how the Boss paid his henchmen?" I asked.

  "With the money and with the women, I suspect."

  We left the money where it was. It was worthless now. The next room was full of stuffed animals, almost floor to ceiling. We just shook our heads and moved on. After a couple of empty rooms, we opened one full of S&M equipment. We didn't even go in. There seemed to be no pattern to the contents of the rooms. We were both starting to get creeped out.

  The last room we explored was the most interesting. It was another office. We dug through the stuff in the desk and found a .38 revolver, which Dan pocketed. The file cabinets held papers, but none seemed of interest now. It was the diagram on the wall that drew my attention. It was a large plan of the barn showing the layout.

  "This thing has a basement," I said.

  Dan studied the plan. "No shit, it does. Let's go check it out. I saw some kerosene lanterns by the barn door."

  We gathered Yeti and Larry and looked for the entrance to the basement. Yeti found it first. It was a hatch in the floor. Of course, it was locked. A hammer fixed that and Yeti raised the hatch while Dan and I covered the opening with our rifles. Larry lit the lanterns and, pistols in hand, we descended the stairs into the basement. There w
as a long central hall that ran the length of the basement.

  "This thing must have cost millions to build," Dan said. "The floor above us must have cost a million dollars all by itself."

  "I guess the Boss was rich. He must have inherited his money because he was too crazy to earn it," I said.

  The rooms in the basement included a machine shop and a wood shop, from which I appropriated a couple of chisels, three hand saws, and a jack plane, all in pristine shape. There was also a sheet metal shop, a small foundry, and store room after store room filled with materials—lumber, nails, screws, bolts, and stuff I had no idea what it was used for.

  Then we found the trophy room. There were dozens of mounted heads on the walls. All were human. We left that one quickly.

  "Do you get the impression that we are in a monster's lair?" Dan asked.

  "I don't know what else to call it," Larry said. The rest of the rooms, except one were filled with random junk. That one was filled with nothing but toys.

  "This place is nuts," I said. "Let's get out of here."

  Yeti

  I could tell that the man who owned/ran this place was a psychopath, and a dangerous one. I assumed that was the man that Wayne killed with the pitchfork. I was not surprised to hear about the contents of the barn. The equipment was probably stolen just for the thrill of getting away with it.

  The random pattern of stuff in the basement rooms suggested that whoever owned this place had difficulty staying focused and had plenty of money to pursue anything that obsessed him. The dead women were just another obsession, as were the mounted heads, for someone who did not value human life at all.

  It was time to interrogate the prisoner again. I asked Dan to help me, and I asked Julie to stay away. She agreed and stayed with the girl.

  Dan removed the duct tape from the prisoner's mouth, and we propped him up against a rock.

  "Who were those people?" I asked.

  "Fuck you!"

  "Attitude won't do you any good," I said. "I am patient."

  "So fuckin' what?"

  "My, you have a sub-standard vocabulary and probably a below average IQ too."

  "Fuck you."

  Dan smiled and retrieved a hammer from the wagon. "This will do nicely." He held the claw hammer up. “I am going to shove this thing up his ass.”

  I thought Dan was bluffing. Max and Wayne lifted the prisoner and placed him face down over the rock. Max cut his pants off of him and left him with his bare butt sticking up in the air.

  "You want an anal probing with this hammer? Is that correct?" Dan asked.

  "Fuck you."

  "I will take that as a yes."

  Dan put the head of the hammer against the man's anus and began pushing. The prisoner gasped and shouted, "Wait a minute motherfuckers, wait a minute."

  "No need to delay your pleasure," Max said. "Keep pushing Dan."

  Dan said, "I need some help with this. Max, give me a hand and let's get this thing shoved where this sick SOB wants it."

  "No," the prisoner screamed. "I will tell you what you want to know."

  "You may as well," I said. "You are the only survivor from your crew. Turn him over please, Max."

  Once the prisoner was once more sitting, I asked, "who are you and what are you doing out here?"

  “I am a member of the Los Chochas."

  "The Los Chochas are a gang?"

  "Yes, from El Paso."

  "Why are you here?"

  "These two guys hired a bunch of us to be their body guards. They paid very well."

  "Two guys?" Max asked.

  "Yeah, two guys."

  Max leaned down, "do you remember me?"

  "Yeah, who could forget you, you fucking giant?”

  "The Boss was one of the two men?"

  "Yeah, him and his twin brother. The Boss was the main dude."

  "Do you know how they got their money and why they chose this spot?" I asked.

  "This was their papa's ranch and they inherited it from him. I think they may have killed him for the money. They were some really cold dudes. Totally fucking crazy."

  "Yeah, we looked in the barn. They were crazy for sure." I motioned Wayne, Dan, and Max a few feet away. "Do you think you have enough information?"

  "I think we at least understand the basics. Just two psychopaths with a shitload of money and a hideout where they could do what they wanted."

  "What should we do with the prisoner?"

  "Allow me," Max said. Before I could react he shot the prisoner between the eyes. I was shocked speechless.

  "Don't you think that was excessive, Max?" Wayne asked him.

  "No," Max said. "I saw that bastard kill two women who were in the first load of the Boss's captives after the EMP. The world is better off without him.”

  Wayne

  There were only a few gallons of fuel in the Humvees; not even enough to get a single Humvee back to the ranch. Apparently planning was not the Boss's, or his followers', strong suit.

  One of the newcomers put the Humvees out of commission so no one could use them against us. There were only 23 rounds of ammunition for the 30-caliber machine guns so we just buried the machine guns.

  We headed home with a boatload of small tools, a girl, and the food we found loaded in a wagon pulled by two of our horses. We were all ready to leave the place.

  Julie

  I took care of the girl as best I could on the trip home. This time we traveled by daylight. So far the girl had not said a word, even when I asked her name. We made the trip more quickly in the daylight. Before dark the second day, we rode into the ranch yard. Everyone gathered around to see what we found. Wayne told the story with an occasional interjection from Yeti. I think everyone was disappointed we did not bring more stuff back, but all were happy that everyone returned with no injuries. I was ready for a bath and a real bed but first I got a couple of the ladies to help me clean up the girl.

  We dressed her in a dress that fit her quite well. She really was quite pretty. She still had not said a word, but maybe, given enough time, she would.

  Yeti

  I was hoping I would be able to make a trip to Mountainair soon. I thought the Mayor should know about what we found in the barn. There was much there that the town might find useful.

  I would have liked to bring a bulldozer and a track hoe back to the ranch, assuming they would start, but it was too far for us to move them, and we certainly didn't need them on caravan.

  Chapter 19

  Wayne

  There was snow on the ground as I hitched up a wagon. Yeti and Max hitched up the other wagon. The wagons were old freight wagons, real Conestogas that belonged to the ranch. They were both over 140 years old, but had been exceptionally well cared for. Most of the wood was original. I thought it would be dry rotted by now, but the wood had been painted with an oil-based paint every few years. I had to replace a few boards, but the wagons were strong. We hitched four half-Percherons to each wagon. Most of them were grays.

  In an hour Max, Dave, Yeti, and myself were going to look for abandoned 18-wheelers. We would have to go back to Interstate 25 to find them. Julie and I remembered seeing several on the highway. Most food would likely be gone or spoiled, but there could be things we could use for trade goods. We had no idea what we would find, but it was a good test of the wagons.

  We were just about to roll out when Julie threw her bedroll on my wagon and climbed into the seat. Yeti smiled, jumped down, and climbed onto the other wagon.

  "You can't go," I said.

  "I am going."

  "No you aren't"

  "Yes I am. Listen Wayne, I can't lose you."

  "This might be dangerous."

  "My mind is made up. I would rather die with you than live without you. I truly love you, you know."

  "I know. I love you too."

  "You have never told me that before."

  "It isn't an easy thing for me to say. I am a married man."

  Julie punched me in the
arm. "Yeah, with two wives no less. Ain't life grand."

  George was waiting at the gate. He handed me the Sharps in its case and a small bag full of cartridges. "You may need this, Wayne."

  "Thanks George. I hope not."

  It took us two days to reach Interstate 25. We stopped at the little squatter community where Bill was killed. It was empty. I suspected they had taken the old truck and left for somewhere better. We did not see a single living soul between Mountainair and Interstate 25.

  We drove the wagons onto the interstate and turned north. Julie and Yeti scanned the road ahead and the surrounding terrain with binoculars. They saw no one.

  The first 18-wheeler was only a mile up the interstate. The trailer was still locked. Max cut the lock and we looked inside. Julie, Dave, and Yeti stood guard. The work would have gone more quickly with fewer guards, but I was paranoid after being captured by the Boss. Max and Dave agreed with me.

  Max opened the boxes as I removed them from the pallets. It took us two hours to determine this load was electronic appliances, none of which was useful to us. We moved on.

  The next truck was more interesting. Again Max opened the boxes as I removed them from the pallets.

  "Take a look at this, Wayne. "I looked. Max was holding up an AR15. "There are six of them on this pallet as well as some other guns. They must have been headed to a gun store." We loaded the guns in the first wagon and kept looking. This truck was a good find. We found six AR15s, several .22 rifles, some pistols, some boxes of axes, shovels, and other yard tools, and a couple of cases of thread and several rolls of cloth.

  We were picky. Other than the guns, all of which we took, we chose a dozen axes and a dozen shovels, all of the thread, and most of the cloth. We left behind some of the stranger patterns. I just wasn't sure how popular zebra stripes would be in the post EMP fashion world.

  We went through six more 18-wheelers before nightfall. Only two of them had been broken into but, in each case, the thieves didn't bother to examine the entire load.