Emergency Transmission

by Sean McLachlan

  “Drop your weapons!”

  “Let me handle this,” Clyde said.

  Just as he cupped his hands around his mouth to yell out at the two men on the left flank, a quick burst of shots came from their right. Yu-jin pressed herself closer to the earth. Clyde’s guards on the right returned fire.

  “What the hell is happening over there?” Clyde demanded.

  “At least five on our right!” one of his men shouted. He said more, but it got drowned out by more gunshots.

  Fire came from their left too, forcing everyone to keep down.

  “Shit, flanked on both sides,” Clyde said. He popped up, gave the men to the left a burst from his M16, then dove down again before the response could catch him.

  The fire became heavier on both flanks. Peering through the underbrush, Yu-jin thought she could see more than two attackers on their left now.

  “We got to pull back!” she shouted.

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, we can hold our position,” Clyde shouted, firing off another few rounds.

  A cry behind her made Yu-jin spin around. One of the guards gripped his shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers. Yu-jin checked the man’s wound. It was only a graze. She bunched up a bandage Reginald had given her from his dispensary, pressed it against the wound, wrapped another around his shoulder, and tied it off in order to keep it in place.

  By the time she finished, Clyde had changed his mind about withdrawing.

  “Pull straight back. Lay down covering fire on both flanks.”

  They moved through the underbrush, a few men boldly popping up and blaring away on full auto to keep their opponents’ heads down.

  After a few meters they entered a swale, out of sight of the men dogging their flanks.

  It was, unfortunately, in clear view of the ravine two hundred meters to their rear.

  And that’s where they saw the next line of muzzle flares.

  Everyone dove back into the underbrush as bullets whined all around them. Clyde grunted and fell. Yu-jin threw herself down beside him.

  “You hurt?”

  “Ow, crap. No, got my Kevlar. Gonna have a hell of a bruise.”

  The firing increased in tempo, coming at them from three sides. To their rear they could see some more Weissberg troops peeking out of a ravine. That group held their fire, obviously worried about hitting their own men.

  “We’re surrounded,” Yu-jin said.

  “Thanks for your expert assessment,” the Head of the Watch growled, reaching his hand under his Kevlar to nurse the bruise he’d sustained from the bullet.

  His men returned fire, but they were outnumbered, surrounded, and outgunned. After a few minutes the firing died down on both sides.

  A shout came from the ravine to their rear.

  “You still alive, Clyde?”

  “Is that you, Derren? I heard that scumbag boss of yours made you the Head of the Watch here. Yeah, I’m alive and kicking, you piece of shit!”

  Now is not a good time for posturing, Yu-jin thought. She knew it would be pointless to tell him.

  “You got no way out, Clyde. Give yourself up!”

  “I can punch right through your line!” Clyde replied, and tried to prove his point by firing at the ravine. This brought on a fusillade from both sides. After a minute it died down again. Both sides were too firmly dug in to take any damage. No one else in her group had gotten hit, and Yu-jin hadn’t seen any of the Weissberg faction go down.

  “No use, Clyde. You’re stuck here. Sure, you might break out in a rush but you’d lose half your guys.”

  “We could radio for Rachel,” one of Clyde’s men suggested in a whisper.

  “She’d never get through, and then they’d have two of our vehicles instead of just one,” Clyde said.

  There was a long pause.

  Please make the right decision, Yu-jin thought.

  Clyde snarled, studying the terrain and the Weissberg positions, looking for a way out. He didn’t find one. Yu-jin couldn’t see one either, and she’d been raised in the wildlands.

  “Will you promise the safety of my men?” he called out.

  “You come out with your hands up and we won’t shoot you. Is that good enough?” Derren replied.

  “You have to promise they won’t be harmed. We got a woman here too. You got to promise she won’t be harmed either.”

  There was a pause that went on too long for Yu-jin’s liking.

  “Yeah, I promise. You got my word.”

  “His word don’t mean shit,” Clyde whispered.

  “We don’t have much choice,” Yu-jin replied.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he snapped.

  He paused for a moment, then slipped a tiny little automatic out of his boot.

  “Here, take this in case you need to defend yourself.”

  Yu-jin smiled and slipped it in her own boot. “Are you trying to be a gentleman?”

  “It would help if you were a damn lady,” Clyde growled, then shouted, “OK, we’re coming out!”

  How am I not a lady?

  Clyde set his M16 and pistol on the ground and stood up with his hands raised above his head. The other men followed suit. Taking a deep breath, Yu-jin did the same.

  Once they reached open ground, the Weissberg guards emerged from behind their cover. Yu-jin saw their own group was outnumbered at least two to one.

  “You made the right choice, Clyde,” she said.

  The Weissberg guards approached warily, guns leveled, except for one tall, lanky man who swaggered ahead of the rest.

  “Hello, Clyde,” he said with a smile.

  “Hello, Derren,” Clyde said and spat.

  “Search them,” Derren ordered.

  Some men moved forward and patted them down. One of the few women in the Weissberg group moved over to Yu-jin.

  “There’s a gun hidden in my boot,” Yu-jin told her.

  Clyde gave her an angry, astonished look. She shrugged.

  “If I didn’t tell them and they found it, I’d be in even more trouble than you’ve already put me in,” she told him.

  Derren had a walkie-talkie. He pushed a button and talked into it.

  “We got them, Mr. Weissman. Brion got hit, not too bad. One of theirs got winged. Now they have their hands up like meek little lambs.”

  Derren smirked at Clyde, who snarled back at him.

  A voice crackled over the radio.

  “Bring them in.”

  Derren gaped at the radio. “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Bring them to the fork. I’ll meet you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Weissberg guards marched them across a creek and through a thicket to a stretch of rough, rocky hills. None were very high, but Yu-jin soon got confused. Their captors took care to lead them through a winding path of little hardscrabble valleys instead of humping over the hills. They obviously didn’t want the intruders to get their bearings. After a couple of kilometers, Yu-jin remained sure she could get back, and yet she had no clear idea where they were and didn’t have a clue what the surrounding landscape looked like.

  Eventually the terrain opened up for a few hundred meters, with a plain stretching to the east all the way to the mountains. They headed for a cluster of high hills straight ahead.

  They entered them through a narrow defile that made a blind turn, impossible to spot from further away than a few hundred meters. The smell of moist earth filled Yu-jin’s nostrils, a welcome change after the sun’s glare and the wind’s dust.

  The defile grew greener, with little rivulets of water trickling down the sides. The pass opened up into a broad valley, about two kilometers wide, of fertile land well-watered by a broad stream. The ground smelled clean, without a bare patch in sight. Near the center stood a steep hill with a wooden palisade ringing the top. Watchtowers stood at several points, and on the peaks of the hills Yu-jin spotted sentries.

  Up ahead the path forked. One way went left to an expanse of rich fa
rmland, and the other straight to Abraham Weissman’s settlement on the hill. Standing at the fork was an older man wearing gold glasses and a fake smile. Ranged to either side of him stood several men and women with hunting rifles. All had white faces.

  “Hello Clyde, wish we could have had this reunion under better circumstances,” the older man called. Yu-jin figured this must be Abraham Weissman.

  “Never wanted to see you again, traitor!” Clyde spat back.

  “Some people are saying that about you, with your kneejerk reaction to the freighter.”

  Before Clyde could sputter out a reply, Weissman turned to Yu-jin.

  “And this must be Song Yu-jin. Strange you’d be keeping Clyde as company, but maybe you’ve won him over like you won over The Doctor.”

  “How do you know about me?” Yu-jin asked.

  “I hear things. I suppose you’re here to check on what we got from the freighter? Oh, don’t look surprised that I’m admitting it. The Doctor and Clyde both keep their ears to the ground. They’ll have heard rumors. I don’t mind if they know. Why shouldn’t everyone do business? Sure, we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but now that we’ve had a voluntary separation of communities we can mend fences and become good neighbors.”

  “We’ll never trust you, you conniving piece of shit,” Clyde said. A guard stepped towards him but Weissman shook his head and tut-tutted. He turned back to Yu-jin.

  “Always flying off the handle, not like Doc, but Doc goes too far in the other direction and ends up trusting too much. I don’t think his trust is misplaced in you, though. I’ve heard he’s become quite attached to you.”

  Yu-jin cocked her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Weissman’s laugh rang out. He shook a finger at her. “That wasn’t the only rumor I disbelieved about you, but it was the most amusing.”

  Yu-jin blushed.

  Weissman went on. “I’ve heard there’s been quite an uproar in the Burbs over their realizing they have Chinese living there. Such nonsense. You people weren’t any more to Blame than anyone else. I suppose you don’t know this, but when we first founded New City I was the one who brought up the idea of making Blame illegal. So many people pointing fingers. How can you build a community on mistrust? I don’t have anything against anyone who wants to live peacefully. So when the Chinese came I welcomed them with open arms. It’s a big opportunity for all of us. I don’t know what we would have done considering how bad the harvest was. Never thought I’d taste rice again!”

  Yu-jin looked at him, confused. Was this man trying to be her ally? That was going to make Clyde hate her even more.

  Weissman motioned for them to come closer.

  “But come, neighbors shouldn’t have secrets. They always get found out anyway, eh? That’s fine.”

  Weissman turned and led the New City group towards Weissberg. He stopped near the base of the hill. People worked in the fields to the right and left, breaking new ground in anticipation of spring planting. Herds of goats and sheep grazed on the slopes. The town itself remained hidden behind the palisade, but they could clearly see a string of four wind turbines poking over the saw-toothed edge of the wall.

  Yu-jin had seen these at New City and a few lucky farms. Each could probably power a few lights or a machine tool. Weissman smiled proudly as he looked over the fields.

  “As you can see, the hills shelter us from most of the toxic rain, so we should get a nice first harvest next autumn. A lot to do to get the land ready in the meantime, though. How are your fields doing? There seems to be a lot of toxic rain lately. Good thing we’re away from the coast now.”

  “Nice setup,” Clyde grunted. “I see you keep the turbines out of sight. You’d get a lot more juice sticking them on top of the outer hills.”

  Weissman shook his head. “I value my privacy. There’s no need to broadcast our location to every bit of trash coming in off the wildlands. New City Radio was a mistake. I see that now. Attracted too many scavengers and drifters. I should have never set it up.”

  Clyde got a smug grin on his face. “Well, you won’t have to worry about running it anymore.”

  Weissman’s gold glasses glinted in the sun as he adjusted them. “Ah yes, temporarily confiscated along with my lands and my nonportable property. A shame things had to turn out that way, but perhaps The Doctor will have a change of heart?”

  Yu-jin shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

  “So you’re going to hold us for ransom?” she asked.

  Weissman shook his head and laughed. “No, I’m going to let you go! You can even keep all your gear. Minus your ammo, of course. Clyde’s too jumpy to be trusted right now.”

  Clyde narrowed his eyes. “What’s the catch?”

  Weissman smiled back at him. “No catch, just that he and I get to talk.”

  “He won’t talk to you,” Clyde said.

  Yu-jin’s heart sank. It was true. Reginald turned his back on people he thought had betrayed him. He’d done it with Ahmed, he’d done it with Weissman and the whole Merchants Association, and he’d do it with Clyde if he could.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not a precondition. You’re all free to go now that you’ve seen what you wanted to see. Just to be clear, we traded a bunch of gold and silver I’d been gathering over the years for those four wind turbines, some rechargeable batteries, some wiring, a few machine parts, and a quarter ton of rice. I tried to get some photovoltaic cells but Captain Wang said he wasn’t allowed to trade those. Oh, and I gave the good captain a wish list and made a preliminary deal for each item. He promised to get me as many of the things on the list as possible. I just put in an international order. Imagine that! I feel like I’m in the days of my grandfather. So folks, go back and make a full report, and tell him that I’d be happy to meet him at any time. Tell him there’s peace between us.”

  You might want that, Yu-jin thought as the guards led them out of the valley, but Reginald doesn’t.

  CHAPTER TEN

  David was beginning to think the Lord really was on his side. That morning he had gone up to the hilltop above the bunker with his faction in tow. Aaron had struggled up the slope and needed to be helped by a couple of others, but had insisted on coming along. David knew why. He wanted to be at David’s side in case any shooting started.

  It didn’t. As his comrades gathered around, standing a bit too close and with their hands gripping their guns a bit too hard, David had turned on the radio to the marine band. Right on cue, those two boys started talking to each other. Several of the true believers fell to their knees and gave out loud prayers of thanks to God. The more practical ones craned their necks to listen while David turned up the volume.

  They didn’t speak long, and the ship itself was hard to hear, but it came through clearly enough to convince everyone. Even the cynics looked heavenward, whether out of commitment or to toe the line, David couldn’t tell.

  It didn’t matter. He had them now.

  The conversation had also given him some more clues as to where the ship was. The boy at New City said a motorboat would meet up with the freighter and would make it in a day. That meant they weren’t far out to sea. It would take some time to catch up, but with the radio to guide him, David would find the ship, God willing.

  It took a lot more convincing to get them to go along with the next part of his plan. They still wanted to send someone else, the wary ones still mistrustful, but the true believers, with Aaron adding his weight behind them, numbered enough for the whole group to agree. The doubters held out for adding another man to the boat, a fellow named Robert, one of the leaders among those who mistrusted him, the faction that David had seen appear within his own faction. David couldn’t figure out a way to object so reluctantly he agreed.

  The rest of the Righteous Horde took it surprisingly well. They were too desperate for a miracle to openly doubt, and David felt the Lord move him as he gave an uplifting speech about how they would soon be saved by the freighter. Per
haps, David reasoned, they were not moved at all. Perhaps they didn’t care if he disappeared over the horizon, never to return.

  He named Aaron as his voice while he was gone. After sealing up the bunker, he told his friend to take them along the shore northwards, back in the direction of New City. There would be more food to scavenge along the shoreline, and if they got desperate they could always fish. The Pure One had banned fishing, but since they had camped so close to the shore, some of his people had slipped away to spear fish, drying them in the sun and packing them away in anticipation of lean times ahead. He ordered the guards to look the other way. Under their old leader these people would have been put to death, but the old order was crumbling fast.

  David needed to hurry up and establish a new one. That was another reason he had ordered Aaron to lead his people north—it would shorten the time it would take to get back to them.

  At the edge of the water David raised his hands and spoke to his people for what might be the last time.

  “I will bring the freighter to you, and the ship will take us across the sea, where we will find our just reward.”

  In his head he had no picture of what that reward would be. All he wanted to do was get on that ship. He had enough people to overpower the crew. Would it be big enough for all of them? God would provide.

  David steered the little boat out to sea as the wind filled his sail and the Righteous Horde sang his praises from the shore. Robert hunkered low in the boat, not knowing how to help but smart enough to at least stay out of the way. They had enough provisions for two weeks. They needed to be back by then or, they knew, they had better not come back at all. That hadn’t been said, of course, because it didn’t need to be.

  “Stinks out here,” Robert grumbled as the singing of the Righteous Horde faded behind them. All two thousand of them were nothing but a dark line on the shore now, the bright sun glinting off the metal of their guns and machetes.

  “The Lord will protect us,” David proclaimed.

  Robert gave him a dubious look. “Of course. His will be done.”

  David studied his opponent out of the corner of his eye. Robert was a tough warrior and a damn good shot. They’d fought side by side in a dozen battles. But he’d never been a hundred percent on Robert, because he could tell Robert wasn’t a hundred percent on him. He was one of those white men who could never look at a black man with complete trust. Robert only threw in his lot with David because it was the logical thing to do. David had no doubt Robert would cap him if he made a wrong move.