Dark Days of the After Special Edition | Prequel & Book 1

by Schow, Ryan

  “For them,” he replied.

  This was the point where he should grin, just to put a stamp on his flexed masculinity, but the truth was, he was just as scared about going back home as he was in staying there with Harper. So he did not grin, he only ate his Irish oatmeal slowly, chewing every last ounce of flavor out of each and every bite.

  “Something wrong with the food?” Orbey asked, concerned.

  “It’s not like food from back home. This is real, full of flavor. I can’t wait to get to the next bite, but the closer I am to hitting the bottom of the bowl, the more I’m starting to panic.”

  “So that’s a compliment?” she asked. The lovely older woman smiled, her warmth radiating, her Scottish-Irish accent like a smooth drink of bourbon after an exceptionally long day.

  “It’s the mother of all compliments,” he said with a smile.

  “There’s more for both of you, if you’d like.”

  “After we see the barn,” Logan said, “I’d like to get some sleep. I need to get back on the road as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll take you to the barn,” Stephani offered.

  “You’re the beekeeper,” Harper said, as if Skylar had mentioned her before. “I’ve heard good things about you.”

  “People underestimate honey and a dry sense of humor.”

  “Your sense of humor is Death Valley dry,” Logan said. “But in a good way, I think.”

  “She called us used tampons,” Harper explained, causing Connor to belt out a laugh and Orbey to turn red and shake her head.

  “She has a point,” Connor replied when he was done laughing and wiping his eyes. “Do you want to shower first or see the barn first?”

  “Barn first,” Logan said, looking at Harper who was nodding in agreement. “I want to shower and crawl into bed and not wake up.”

  “I have some guns you can take with you,” Orbey said. “I’m assuming you can shoot?”

  “At close range,” Harper said. “But it’s impossible to fire a long gun inside the city. We’ve been fully disarmed so we’re slightly out of practice.”

  “How’d you get those pistols then?” Connor asked.

  He had gray hair that had the final embers of red here and there. With bright blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, the man somehow made them feel better about being there.

  “Same way we got this blood,” Harper said.

  “It wasn’t easy getting here,” Logan replied. “But then again, that’s why you’re dug in all the way out here. You’re insulating yourself from what’s going on in the big cities.”

  “What is going on down there?” Stephani asked.

  “Chaos,” Harper replied.

  Logan hit the bottom of his bowl of oatmeal and was actually full. His stomach had apparently shrunk against the lack of food in the city, specifically the lack of good food.

  “Can I help you clean up, Orbey?” he asked. “I don’t want to run off and leave you with all the dishes.”

  “No, but that’s sweet of you. Dishes are Connor’s job.”

  “We don’t mind helping,” Harper said.

  “If he doesn’t have something to do, he’ll just fart around here taxing my good mood. Besides, he likes doing the dishes, right Connor?”

  He looked at her with a blank look that said nothing of the sort. It was the kind of look that said, I hate it, but I’m forced to do it when what I’d rather do is anything other than dishes.

  “See that face?” Orbey joked, pinching his cheek and giving it a tug. “That’s the face of a man who knows how to keep his bed warm.”

  “I don’t really have to do the dishes. It’s more like a choice.” He said this with a rather unconvincing look.

  “Yep,” Orbey said. “The choice is do the dishes or sleep on the couch.”

  “I have a bad back,” he said sheepishly, causing everyone to laugh. “What? It’s true!”

  Cooper gave a sharp bark, startling everyone. Stephani hushed him, then said, “He’s at that stage where he just loves to piss on everything.”

  “I’m at that stage, too,” Logan said.

  “Well then you two will get along just fine,” she smiled. Bending down slightly to Cooper, she said, “This semi-good lookin’ fella will go with you today. How do you feel about that, huh boy?”

  Cooper sneezed, looked up at Logan and whined, then turned back to Stephani and made heavy eyes.

  Stephani rubbed behind his ears again and said, “Yeah, he’s a little suspect, that’s for sure.” To Logan, perhaps in an attempt to save grace, she said, “But he’s halfway cute and a little dangerous, so maybe we’ll keep him around.”

  “On that note,” Harper said, heading for the door and having no more of this, “nature is calling.”

  “Let’s go, Kotex,” Stephani turned and said to Logan.

  As they walked up the hill into a slight clearing, Logan saw about nine large boxes sitting on a small stands made of four-by-four posts run through cinder blocks. There seemed to be a fair amount of bees buzzing around them.

  “Are those the hives?” Harper asked. “I’ve heard about them.”

  “They are,” Stephani said.

  “What do you do with all that honey?” Logan asked.

  “Eat it, sell it, store it. Well, protect it now, too. We’ve had a problem with poachers here. Lots of white tail deer on our property. Had some Roosevelt and Tule elk migrate through here, too. One of these assholes took down a Roosevelt last year. It was a thousand pound buck, apparently. The next week we had a problem. Two guys turned to four and four to eight and next thing we know, one of them comes up on our hives. I was splitting hives when two clowns came into the clearing. They were just ‘checking things out,’ but I told them they were on private land.”

  “And?” Harper asked.

  “They leered at me, asked me what I was doing. I told them I was planning on shooting them if they didn’t take their asses off my property. They took their time. Next day I found one of the supers pulled off my single brood. That’s the box in layman’s terms. They took off the queen excluder, that’s the screen between the super and the frames, and then I think they got stung.” Shaking her head, she said, “So far they haven’t bothered the hives, but I think we’ve got a different kind of problem now.”

  “What do you mean?” Logan asked.

  “One of them shot a bear a few hundred yards from here. Orbey went after them. Those idiots were shooting the poor thing like it was gangland murder. Orbey shot one of them. Had the Sheriff up there. We told him what went down, that they’d been warned, but they didn’t listen.”

  “Did they arrest Orbey?” Logan asked.

  “No, but the Sheriff said to call next time,” she replied, eyes as serious as ever. “You need to know something though, especially you Harper. We aren’t calling the Sheriff. We’re going to make an example out of them. Maybe even disappear one or two just to get the rumor mill humming.”

  Logan looked at Harper who was a bit wide eyed.

  Harper said, “Do you think they want the honey? I mean, would they take it, or do something in retaliation?”

  “This is the process, not the finished product. These guys wouldn’t know the difference between single brood and double brood if you stuffed a shotgun under their chin. To them, this isn’t honey, it’s a hive. But if they get pissed off and decide to even the score, all they have to do is pump some double-aught buckshot into each of the hives and the colonies will scatter and swarm. You do that, it’s like killing my kids.”

  Logan said, “When was the last time you saw them?”

  “The elk have been bugling a little early this year. These guys have been sitting on that ridge up there”—she said, pointing to a ridge on the other side of the tree line—“glassing and throwing bugles of their own, trying to locate any more. The cows, when they’re here, keep to the tree line, but these guys, they just don’t get it.”

  “So…” Harper asked again.

  “We saw them last nig
ht,” she admitted. It was clear she wasn’t sure how he and Harper would take the news. “Orbey can put on the best of faces, but she’s really mad. I am, too. We all are.”

  “Are you worried?” Logan asked.

  “I worry because of the times. We have the Sheriff, but the big cities are run by the Chicoms now. People are making their way out of the cities, and even though the Chicoms are intercepting them and assassinating them on the spot, more than a few are getting through. We’re far enough away from town to be okay, but we have the river nearby, and these hills tend to attract hunters and poachers and people who think they can camp anywhere. Obviously we can’t watch all hundred acres, but Connor tries to walk as much of it as he can.”

  “He seems pretty reserved compared to you and Orbey,” Logan said.

  “Orbey is not like this usually. The woman is one hundred percent heart and love, but cross ways with her and she’s as tough as a grizzly, I can tell you that.”

  Stephani headed out of the tight, clean meadow toward what looked like a very large barn in a clearing. The landscape was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It made him really not want to go back to San Francisco. The mere thought of it sent a deep roiling through his stomach.

  Harper looked at him and said, “You alright?”

  “I haven’t seen this much green in so long. I almost forgot this world wasn’t made of concrete and brick.”

  Stephani was trudging through the field just behind Cooper, moving faster than the two of them. They picked up their pace, catching up.

  “I knew when Skylar said you’d be coming that we’d have to deal with this problem. The poachers. Your timing is bad, though. We’re going into hunting season and the elk have been like a magnet. The guy who hit that Roosevelt last year, he’s telling everyone it’s four-hundred and fifty points. I don’t think it was that big, but when you look at the head—he has it mounted in his tavern—you could easily think he was spot on.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Harper said. “What is this point system?”

  She waved a hand and said, “It’s okay, you’ll learn. Anyway, I’m afraid what we’re doing with the barn is going to attract some attention. Contractors are already lined up to start, but they’ll be grabbing lunch in town, and gossip is like a currency itself down there.”

  “Are you really concerned with this?” Logan asked.

  “Skylar said there was no choice. She said we’d need to get moving ahead of schedule on account of a hastening of the timeline. Come on in, let me show you the plans.”

  “Is that a garden?” he asked, looking out to what appeared to be quite a few raised beds.

  “It sure is. This is Skylar’s and Harper’s, and yours if you want. We have our own down near the house. Connor built the frame, got the soil, mixed in the right compost. It’s ready for planting. We needed to make sure someone’s here to guard it, though. With the big game migration, with the confusion and the desperation of the times, Skylar says we’re moving into a shoot first, ask questions later type of scenario. Is that right? Is that how things really are out there?”

  “We weren’t bloody because things were civilized, Stephani,” Logan said.

  She looked between Harper and Logan.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Three yesterday for me,” Harper said. “Four for him. Although, admittedly, his were harder and a little more gruesome.”

  “Of the two of you,” Stephani said, looking at Logan, “I figured you’d be the killing kind.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  “The nerdy looking guys, they’re always the worst. They look harmless, a little awkward, but then when the sun sets it’s hunting time. I just want you to know, we’re not calling the Sheriff anymore.”

  “I’m not a serial killer,” he said.

  Harper and Stephani looked at each other, then started laughing. He smiled awkwardly, realizing they were messing with him.

  “C’mon in,” Stephani said about the barn, “this thing is pretty big inside.”

  Inside the barn, there were eight stalls and a loft. It was maybe twenty feet at its highest point with the run of lofts all the way around. The construction was professionally done, but it didn’t look particularly new. This was definitely a work in progress.

  “It’s huge,” Harper said. On the packed dirt ground were spray painted lines. “What are these lines for?”

  “One of the cousins of a friend of the guy who started Atlas Underground Shelters started doing this the second Forty-Six took office,” she said, referring to the current President. “He thought he could jumpstart his underground bunker business on fears of a new regime, but now that the Chicoms took over California and have been infiltrating Oregon and Washington, he’s taken his operation full time.”

  “What about that one over there?” Logan asked at the other end of the barn.

  “There’s a fallout shelter here connected to a ten foot round culvert big enough to sleep four. Beyond that it leads to the smaller culverts for two different exits. Ventilation comes up on both sides of the barn and will be concealed in brush, or planters.”

  “That’s three ways in,” Logan said.

  “And three ways out,” she replied. “Either way, if it’s seen, people will know it’s here. We have to make sure people don’t know exactly where. Construction on the barn will come first, and the dig will come second. We need the work done here before we do the underground bunker. You never know what people are going to do when times get tough.”

  “How many guys are working on this?” Harper asked.

  “Maybe six or seven on the construction. The General Contractor was here yesterday, creating a materials list. His guys, they’re all from out of town, same as him. They’re going to have cots set up here and we’ll try to keep them fed and on the property. The GC promised me he and his guys are self-sufficient, but we’re trying to contain word of this. After the buildout is done, we’ll get a back hoe up here to dig out the underground bunker and the root cellar. All the pay dirt will go to a larger garden you and Connor will have to frame out and seed.”

  “You really think we’ll need all this?” Harper said.

  “After what Skylar told me?” Stephani asked. “Hell yes, we’ll need it. Even if we don’t, do you really want to be back there?”

  “No,” both Harper and Logan said in concert.

  “Well this is your home, if you want. Yours too, Logan.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was part of the party or just one of the planners. To be formally included made him feel better. But how would that be with these two women? He burned one and was burned by the other. He could probably deal with Harper, but when it came to Skylar, he was tired of wanting to matter to someone. Hell, he was just plain tired.

  “What about these stalls?” Harper asked walking through a pair of them.

  Sunlight cut through the rafters and slivers in the slats, dusting the large space with light, highlighting dust motes and tiny flying insects. For a moment, there was a romanticized feel about it that opened Logan’s heart. He knew the feeling wouldn’t last, not after they framed the structure out and completed the buildout, but for a moment, he let himself enjoy it.

  “We’re turning them into rooms,” Stephani answered. “We’re knocking down a couple of the walls, reinforcing the space, turning it into two masters. Just outside, Connor’s got a two hundred and fifty gallon storage tank. He’s putting faucets and spouts in there to run gravity fed water lines as the garden’s drip system. The roof has been set up for water reclamation. That’s why there are fifty-five gallon drums on the corners. We’ll screen the barrels off, then get filters set up inside. There’s a well up at the house, but you’ll hate humping water up the hill every day which is why we put this system together. It’ll keep you in the lap of luxury, wink wink.”

  “We’ll have Logan do it,” Harper grinned, patting his stomach. “Hard work just might turn him into eye candy. That and a clean shave
on that head of his.”

  “Why weren’t you this personable back in the city?” Logan asked, ignoring the teasing he was getting from the two women.

  “No one sees the real me if I’m on camera,” she said, serious.

  “No cameras here,” Stephani replied. “Anyway, the well’s a hand pump. Like everything here, we’re completely self-sufficient. But that’s only if we can keep these local idiots from finding out what we’re doing here.”

  “The second things go sideways,” Logan said, now realizing the problems ahead, “everyone’s going to be hunting here, and if they figure out they can practically live off honey, you’re going to have yet another problem.”

  “That’s why we have to develop a bad reputation,” Stephani said.

  “By scaring these guys?” Harper asked.

  “By killing them,” Logan replied. He got it now. This was what Stephani was trying to warm them up to. Waving his hand through the dusting of daylight, his eyes elsewhere, he said, “That’s what you mean, right Stephani?”

  “It’s a necessary evil,” she said. “But yes, that’s the mentality here.”

  Harper took a deep breath and said, “Well then, at least we’re all on the same page. What about power?”

  “We’ve got what we need for a solar system,” she said. “Nine panels, the inverter, the outlets, everything. We need to make sure we get everything else built out first. Also, and this is important Harper—and maybe Logan too, if you decide to stay—the barn has been designed with short hallways and turns. Skylar said it needs to be both sensible and tactical.”

  “She’s expecting to fight inside here?” Logan asked.

  “She expects a war,” Harper said.

  He let that sink in, but with the revelation, he felt the fatigue working its way back into his bones.

  “Is there somewhere we can lay down?” he asked. “I’m dead on my feet.”

  “The GC slept up there last night,” Stephani said, pointing to the rafters. “Broke open an old hay bale, said it was more comfortable than his bed. There are blankets too, but there’s a good draft this time of morning so you may not need them.”

  “What’s on the other side of the hill?” Logan asked. “I saw a small shed.”