David nodded. “I know. None of us are. But she wants to know, and she has a family to worry about.”
He stood, stretching his back, and continued, “We’d wondered why we hadn’t been hit yet, and now we know. The bandits are taking their time, methodically stripping every little village they come across. What we saw was only one of their scout parties. The prisoner says the whole group was moving in segments, or packs as he called it. Said it moved like something with a mind of its own. He also said that it seems a lot of places like Weldona are still completely unprepared for a coordinated attack, so they’d hoped to hit us themselves and get the prime loot and food before reporting back to their leader. They didn’t expect organized resistance, but we sure showed them differently.”
Orien frowned. “I don’t like how Cobi had him questioned.”
Cobi leveled his gaze at David’s partner. “I didn’t like it, either, but it worked, and time was of the essence. David can make different choices, now that he’s in charge, but I won’t apologize for doing what I thought was needful, to protect my people.”
David clapped Cobi on the shoulder. “Of course not. Orien’s right; it’s not how I would have done it, but it worked, and there’s no going back. We’ll let the legalities of it sort themselves out, later.”
He looked back to Christine, and his smile returned. “What all this means for your family, Chrissy, is that we have as much as a couple more days before the main swarm arrives. That’s good, because we have a lot to do. You have a knack for organizing things, though, so I’d like to put you in charge of the team making I-E-Ds for us.”
Christine’s jaw dropped. “You want me to make landmines? What if someone gets hurt?”
“That’s the idea,” Orien said.
David shook his head. “We’ll mark them on a map for later retrieval. In the meantime, though, we need them as both a force multiplier and to funnel the attackers. We’ll put up signs around the minefields. But we have to put up better defense on the open easterly side of town, because right now, there’s nothing to stop them but a few livestock, if they encircle us and pin down our other forces at the bridges and elsewhere.”
“Signs, eh? And we’ll take them down, later? Fine, I’m in.” Some ideas were already running through her head on people to grab for the project… “But I don’t know how to make them.”
Cobi nodded. “We have people who do. Apparently, it’s not hard with common farm chemicals, particularly something called ‘tannerite.’ You’ll get the details.”
“What else did he say about the bandits? I’m hoping we know more about what we’re up against.”
David leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. “We know we’ll be outnumbered at least five-to-one. They’ve gotten more organized as they drifted east from Aurora, mostly in response to the few little towns that put up a fight. Most just ran, or joined the mob.”
“The survivors, at least,” Orien added. “But make no mistake. This mob is hungry, and it’s desperate. Our prisoner said some of them are even talking about cannibalism, if they don’t find enough food really soon.”
David hissed at Orien, then looked back to her. “Don’t listen to him. They aren’t about to eat us. For one, according to the prisoner, they’ve resisted the idea of any kind of organized cannibalism. There’ve been a couple incidents, he said, but so far only against those who died in the fighting.”
“That’s… It’s evil,” she heard herself saying. “They can’t do that! Eating people? Are you f’ing kidding me? Monsters, they’re—”
Orien snarled at her. “Stop that. These are not monsters, they’re human beings. If you had to choose between watching your children die of starvation or cooking what is to them just mystery-meat stew from a resource that was already dead, what would you do? For your kids, Christine.”
She bit her lip, looking down and taking a deep breath. The truth was too ugly to look at, and she felt her cheeks redden. “I don’t know. But evil or not, you said they slowed down. They’re going to be even hungrier when they get here.”
David moved from around the desk and wrapped his arms around her.
Christine froze, but then relaxed. He felt strong under her hands. Strong enough to stop a horde? Not a chance. “David, we’re going to die. They’re going to kill you, me, and then my kids. And that’s if we’re lucky. Darcy… She’s still got baby fat, David. She’s going to be a cannibal’s stew. And Hunter… He’s not strong enough. He’s going to be the hunted.”
As the words rolled off her tongue, her heart beat faster, and faster still. The walls seemed closer than before, the room growing smaller. The air was hot. Too hot. She couldn’t breathe; she had to get out, get her kids out, run, run, run—
“Chrissy.” David, still with his arms around her, leaned back far enough to look into her eyes. They were magnets that locked onto hers, and she couldn’t look away. “That’s not going to happen. Your heart is pounding so hard I can feel it, but listen. I have work parties already arranged, people I trust. We’re making bombs—I-E-Ds—and we’re going to blow them up. But you know what? You don’t have to worry about anyone eating anyone. There’s so much food here, they couldn’t possibly eat it all if they tried. You understand me? We’re going to be okay. We’re all going to be okay.”
Orien snorted. “Some got away, and they saw how much food we have here. They won’t eat your kids. They’ll just kill us all to get to our overflowing pantries.”
Christine lunged into David, pulling her arms around him tight, and wished she could somehow pull herself into him, into that strength and courage, for her kids’ sakes… “Shut up, Orien,” she murmured.
For a long moment, the room stayed blissfully silent, and all there was in the world was her and David, and she didn’t even care enough to wonder why that made her feel better. It just did.
71
Sunday, July 12th
“Everybody in?” David glanced over his shoulder at the man and woman in back, townies both, one with a bolt-action deer hunting rifle and the other with a long-barreled shotgun. Orien sat in his usual place up front.
The crew confirmed they were ready, accompanied by the clicks of seatbelts, and David threw the Jeep Wrangler into first gear, pulling out of the town hall parking lot where they’d met up just before dawn.
The woman said, “I hope we can find them and scout them out before they all wake up.”
“Yep.” David thought that unlikely, though. The binoculars they each carried were not just to get a better view, but to hopefully find them before they found David and his team.
Once through the checkpoint—the south choke point—he drove to the highway and headed west on I-76, or Highway 6. Roggen drifted by first, but it had been abandoned weeks ago. Tampa, likewise. The terrain was flat to the horizon, out there, but it was devoid of any movement, no smoke from campfires…nothing.
“Keenesberg is coming up,” Orien said. “It has an RV park on the north side of the highway, and it reaches all the way to the road. We might want to off-road it south, go around them.”
David grunted acknowledgment and drifted across the barren median, then off the road entirely, until he was a couple hundred yards south of the road, before inching the Jeep westerly again. “Be on those binoculars.”
Seconds later, the man in back, behind Orien, said, “Well, I’ll be a G-D monkey’s uncle. Check straight north.”
David glanced at Orien, who shifted his binoculars from peering through the windshield to his side window and let out a low whistle. “At least a dozen tents, and armed people milling around. Think we should ticket them for loitering?”
Oof. Not funny. There was no way that could be the main army of refugees, of course, but since the scouts who had hit Weldona had surely been through there, he had to assume those were from some forward element. He kept the Jeep running parallel to the road. “Okay, assume two dozen. Odd, they have no fires going.”
“Ain’t much to burn, out here,”
replied the man in back.
David slowed as they approached a road heading left-to-right. “I’m taking County Road 55 down to Co-Road 4. We’ll go around Hudson, that way.”
He sped up, once they were on the pavement heading south.
“Probably smart,” Orien replied. “It’s not much smaller than Weldona, and we should pass close enough to see it through the ’nocs, see if it’s inhabited.”
The woman said, “Isn’t that nature preserve down there on the 55?”
A blur of movement from the right; something darted onto the road. By reflex, David slammed the brakes.
The thing on the road halted, and turned to stare at them. Something hung from blood-stained jaws…
Orien said, “No effing way. Is that a frikkin’ tiger?”
It was indeed. The huge creature didn’t look all that hungry, as it stared at them. It bared its fangs, hissing like the giant cat it truly was, then bounded away, off the road.
The woman said, “Do not ask me to get out of this car anytime soon.”
“Darn right,” the man said.
David couldn’t have agreed more. He accelerated, leaving the tiger crossing behind.
As the road continued arrow-straight to the south, though, Orien pointed out the front window, to their right. “Smoke signs.”
David looked, confused, until he saw what Orien meant. A dozen thin plumes of gray smoke rose up into the brisk morning air, up ahead, west of the road. A camp—a big one.
Without being told, three sets of binoculars rose to his passengers’ eyes.
“Pull over and look,” Orien said.
David let the Jeep drift to a halt on the road, stopping behind an isolated cottage. “Help me up,” he said, then stepped into Orien’s interlocked fingers. As his partner hefted him up, the other two helped stabilize him, and David scrambled for purchase. At last, he was on the cottage roof, which pitched steeply upward, a necessity on those flatlands, where winter snows could crush a flatter structure. “Keep an eye out for that tiger…”
Peering over the apex, he reached for his own binoculars to take a look—and gasped. What had been a nature preserve had become a killing field, a hundred yards of sliced meats and pelts drying over dozens of low fires, or stretched out on wood frames. People moved around them, thicker than flies. No wonder the horde had stopped, instead of showing up a couple days ago…
He started counting, both people and the guns they carried, his trained eyes spotting them easily, but even so, it took a few minutes to get a rough count.
“My Lord,” he muttered. He’d counted at least six hundred… It was only a fraction of Aurora’s population, of course, but several times more people than all those who called Weldona home. Those poor, damn animals… The escaped tiger was likely one of the few lucky enough to have escaped or been set free, but whatever angel-hearted workers had loosed them, they couldn’t make the poor creatures run away. They must have been such easy prey for the bandit army.
He hefted his binoculars to recount, just to verify, and drew about the same numbers the second time. Then, as his glasses swept over the bandit army’s camp, he spotted a cluster of wood frames farther back, away from the road. He had to zoom in as far as they’d go to get a clearer image.
He immediately wished he hadn’t. Ten frames, set in a circle, and from each one, a human being hung by their wrists, tied to the corners with rope. They wore what had to be uniforms—the nature preserve’s workers. Maybe they’d tried to release as many animals as they could, when the horde arrived, or maybe they’d been stupid enough to resist. Or maybe the bandits had strung them up for no reason. Thankfully, they appeared to be out of their misery.
A bitter taste of bile rose in the back of David’s throat. He’d seen enough. He scrambled backward, to the roof ledge, and dropped down to his waiting companions, near the Jeep.
Hastily, he explained to his companions what he’d seen. “…And, they’re organized. I think someone has to be in charge—a warlord, basically. No way they did all that on individual initiative. We’re facing an army, and they have a leader.”
They all stared at one another, for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts and fears.
Orien broke the silence. “David, we can still go. We could just drive west and keep going, all the way to Denver.”
David’s scowl matched their companions’.
The man said, “If you leave, we all die. Bandits are coming, and you’re the only one who can get us organized to stand a chance.”
David said, “Don’t worry. Leaving now, putting Cobi back in charge, would be like killing you myself. I’ll stay until this is over.”
Orien’s face flushed, cheeks reddening. “Seriously? We have orders, David. I’ve supported you every step of the way, but dammit, man. It’s just another step toward staying for good, if we don’t all die, and I don’t want to stay forever in that town. Our orders—”
“Which is worse,” David interrupted, “disobeying an unconfirmed order of dubious legality, or doing our damn jobs? I’m saving as many as I can, Orien. You can do what you want, but I’m not running away; not now, not yet. We got a reprieve, rookie, because they stumbled onto those poor animals, and I’m going to use that window to get Weldona unified, organized, and ready for this horde. This is happening, Orien.”
His partner looked down, breaking eye contact and clenching his jaw. “David… There’s always going to be another horde. Another bandit army, another threat.”
David spun and stomped back to the Jeep, slamming the door behind him. As the others climbed in, Orien’s words repeated in his head. Was he right? Would there always be another threat? Because if that were true, it meant this new world wasn’t a hiccup. It was the new reality.
He shook his head to clear that thought, suddenly hot despite the early morning chill, and threw the Jeep into first gear. He had people gathering what he’d need for IEDs, and bombs, and stuff to go boom, tannerite-filled light bulbs, all sorts of explosives. Thank goodness he’d already started that process and left Christine to see it through, because Weldona was going to need those just as soon as that veritable army finished eating its way through the former nature preserve’s inhabitants.
And he’d be damned if he’d let them do to Chrissy’s kids what they’d done to those poor nature workers.
72
Monday, July 13th
Christine wiped her forehead with her sleeve, then bent back over the table, with soldering iron in one hand and tweezers in the other. It was nerve-wracking work, making IEDs. One wrong move with the heated iron could cause her to have a Very Bad Day. She and the team David had put under her had been busy for the last twelve hours, though, since before dawn even, while other, smaller teams took the devices they created and put them in the fields around her.
They were on the east side of town, now, where most of the improvised landmines were destined to go. The ones along the other approaches were already set and in place, and David had put their few fully-automatic weapons in crossfire positions near those. The enemy would be funneled to the chokepoints, or that was the plan.
On the east side, however, there were no choke points. Only fields and forests. Copses of trees, actually. She would have put the mines in them, since they’d be where the enemy took cover if they attacked from the east, but David’s idea had been better, she had to admit. Sandbagged bunkers dotted the copses, with overlapping fields of fire, surrounded by minefields.
Well, given how badly they were outnumbered, according to David’s little scouting trip, they needed to protect that flank with as few human beings as possible. Even the rivers that surrounded Weldona on three sides had been accounted for. If the enemy tried crossing, she was pretty sure they’d be in for a nasty surprise, though David hadn’t said much about his plans for that, only that he had plans.
Christine folded the spring-loaded hinge, securing it with a cotter’s pin. The device was “live,” now; if the pin came out, boom. Cautiously, she
sat up and set the clothsack-covered bundle aside, where waiting hands took it with equal caution and whisked it off to wherever that mine was destined to go. She wiped her brow again, and looked around, stretching.
She froze, mid-stretch. Dust clouds rose, east of her. She scrambled to her walkie-talkie, set a few feet away to avoid any possibility of some weird electrostatic charge setting off her explosive projects, even though David had said that was pointless.
“Da—Whiskey One Actual, this is Charlie Three.”
“Go for Whiskey One,” came the reply.
“We’re under attack; they’re coming from the east. Dust clouds, so there’s got to be dozens of them. We’ll fall back. Out.”
She clipped the unit to her belt, then turned to Mary, ready to order them to break down the workshop. They had minutes, at best. Before she could, however, her radio chirped.
“Charlie Three, this is Whiskey Actual,” David’s voice said through the radio. She caught the subtle correction, and promptly ignored it. “Disregard. Those aren’t the enemy. Be advised, Michael is incoming. He just radioed us. Over.”
Michael? The diplomat Fort Morgan had sent to try to seduce Weldona into bowing down to them, as far as she was concerned, was coming back? She clicked the radio, her eyes narrowing. “Why now?” She paused, no response… She clicked it again. “Why now? Over.”
“A bit busy, Charlie Three. But he said they’d rather have a friendly neutral in Weldona than a hostile bandit army. They’re sending some toys. You should see them soon—they’re stopping at your station first. Out.”
She tucked the radio away again, and Mary shrugged, so she shrugged back. She didn’t have long to wait, though. Only five minutes or so later, a small convoy of pickup trucks cruised to a halt near the IED “factory.”
Michael, the Fort Morgan diplomat, stepped out, grinning. “Chrissy, Right? David said to meet you here. Congrats on the mayoral upgrade, by the way. Cobi wasn’t the right man for the job, though he really, really wanted to join us.” He shrugged. “Better a living neutral than a dead ass-kisser, I suppose. Anyway, got toys for you.”
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 43