Surviving The Black (Book 4): Betrayal From Within

by Finley, Zack

  Grady stopped me as I turned to leave. "Roger says I'm to shadow you for a few days?"

  "Yep, let's go to the armory to gear up," I said, leading the way.

  Mike rode with us to Justice. He was helping the Gammas with forest destruction. He admitted that he requested an assignment with a lot of hard physical labor and almost no mental exertion after the Helena trip. Now I understood the motivation; I thought it was a positive fit.

  Zeke worked directly with Valley schedulers to slip Gammas and Betas into different daily assignments. He used some jobs as rewards, but carefully balanced the mental, physical, and emotional needs of our people with community needs. My crew maintained a solid reputation with all the resource managers, and they didn't care who we sent most of the time. My mom and her cronies appreciated our flexibility. In a pinch, Zeke could send a squad of physically fit adults to help with any task within minutes.

  Everyone going to Justice wore their Mecklin Defender markings. Purpling up was still new to me. Zeke dressed Grady in full battle rattle, plus our purple swatches. Grady appeared comfortable in the gear, but seeing him reminded me that we needed to formally assess his shooting skills sometime in the next day or two.

  We dropped Mike off with the lumberjacks and drove across the street to the museum. One of the Gammas brought a laptop expecting to inventory what we found. A series of antique structures formed the heart of the Mecklin County Museum. Students, through the years, relocated pioneer buildings from throughout Mecklin County to the area between Justice and the high school. Before the crash, students operated the museum as a special project, which started long after I left the region. Several former students reported the museum contained some helpful pioneer equipment to salvage. Like many in Mecklin County, I never went inside the buildings. Plenty of Valley people attended the annual Heritage Festival but were vague on how much of the "old" stuff remained.

  Jake told Mandy the sheriff's deputies ate the farm animals that lived there early on.

  A quick look revealed a few things of interest, some flintknapping materials, a blacksmith shop, and a lot of books and goodies for young kids. These things could all wait for another day.

  Evidence suggested people broke into the high school several times following the crash, but there was no actual vandalism. The sheriff's office emptied the food out and made a cursory sweep for supplies early on. Schools seemed low on the post-apocalyptic looting list. Here the Gammas were particularly helpful, since nearly all attended Mecklin High.

  The school sported one of Steve's larger solar systems. He advised us to leave it alone, for now.

  Securing the buildings was our first priority. Once secure, we would establish a salvage and preservation plan, then execute it when we had time.

  I last walked these halls nearly 25 years ago, at my high school graduation. The space felt eerily quiet, our footsteps echoing in the emptiness. The musty scent of chalk dust and mold accented the stuffy interior.

  Only the front entrance complex let in enough sunshine to see without supplemental light. Windowless bunkers formed most of the school’s design. When I attended, the community still called this the "new" high school. Unfortunately for generations of Mecklin County kids, architects in that era believed windows that let students look outside were too distracting. Three circular windowless buildings formed the bulk of the school, all linked by the glassy hub.

  While the closed design proved unnatural for students, post-crash it preserved the contents of the school from the elements. In places the roof didn't leak.

  While the teams systematically cleared the complex looking for potential threats, Grady and I toured the grounds. Fencing already formed a significant part of the school property's perimeter, including around the school's two greenhouses and garden area. The presence of the farm area surprised me. I never spotted them from the road before. I now understood why Mandy wanted to grow crops at the high school. The glass greenhouses were permanent structures, and the school garden was definitely larger than the one at Justice.

  Grady and I discussed the challenges of protecting the site. We concluded that while the fencing helped, Justice would benefit need a roving guard during the peak harvest season to protect its crops. That would require manpower, but protecting a prime resource made it an easy call. I hoped if everyone in the area grew their own crops, there would be less pressure on ours. But not enough to rely upon.

  Through the trees, we spotted a few houses and a small apartment complex abutting the school fence. Most looked abandoned.

  I doubted the football fields would thrive as farmland. Even I could tell the rock hard soil was too compressed. The field might loosen up after a few seasons, but I suspected there was little actual topsoil present. Just because the fields were flat without trees or stumps didn't automatically make them suitable for crops. The soccer field and the baseball outfields would be better candidates than the football field. We would wait for the soil assessment before wasting any seeds.

  The football field still had plenty of stadium lights left, and I considered how we might use them to boost security this summer. Placing them on the school roof with a motion sensor activator might work. That might be worthwhile, but a roving guard would still be required.

  Two of our teams finished their initial survey and waited in the hub for the third team to finish its search. Grady and I rejoined them. Bringing the Gammas yielded positive dividends, they knew where the teachers stashed the keys. That made clearing the building quick and painless.

  The Gamma with the laptop, now had a list of potential Tier One and Tier Two supplies to give Mandy for future salvaging. Cooking utensils and spices from the cafeteria and home economics classes, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, lots of chalk, pens, pencils, and paper. Salvaging the microscopes, carpentry tools, and computers in both the classrooms and offices might take years.

  We needed a better consensus about the books before anyone would willingly start moving the library. We found a trove of band instruments and sports equipment. Not a priority, yet. But something to consider after planting season wrapped up. Support for a Valley band was surprisingly strong within the six men I had with us.

  The next place on our agenda was across from Mecklin High to the local campus for the Tennessee College of Applied Technology. Before the crash, the school featured a strong curriculum in hands-on vocational training in automotive, metalworking, computer hardware, welding, and the like.

  I radioed for Joel to join us, as we drove up to the building. The building resembled another bunker. Its exterior doors and hallways hogged all the windows. None in any classroom had any natural lighting. Another architectural effort designed to isolate people from the out-of-doors. For us, it was a potential security gem. The building squatted alone on a hill surrounded by a parking lot, carved out of the hillside and forest. It lacked a cafeteria, and I doubted anyone visited since the crash. There were four cars abandoned in the otherwise empty acres of paving. We needed to check the building, anyway.

  With its flat roof and hilltop location, the school would have benefited financially from a solar power system, at substantial savings to taxpayers. Steve failed to convince the TCAT people to install solar, despite its quick rate of return. The school couldn’t afford it since they paid the electric bills out of a different taxpayer fund. Sometimes bureaucracy just made no sense.

  While the strongest medical TCAT curricula was in the Oneida campus, I promised Tom to check for training props for medical technicians or nurses. The timing of Jamie's surgery kept Tom from exploring it himself.

  All the exterior doors were locked. If any of the teachers or administrators came by after the crash, they left no external sign. We seemed to have the place to ourselves.

  Again, having the Gammas with us helped, one had attended welding classes here as a high school senior. He conveyed the basic layout but admitted some of the details remained fuzzy. Grady and I got behind the line as the teams swept through the building.
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br />   The air in the building carried a strong overlay of rancid decay; the odor surrounded us, but its origin eluded us. I hoped it was just an overripe staff refrigerator. Walking the corridors was creepy, reminiscent of an alien thriller. Muffled echoes, insufficient lights, and that smell. All we needed was a spooky soundtrack and a group of zombies.

  Despite the buildup, the labs were tidy, devoid of aliens or zombies, and filled with modern-looking equipment. I began to consider making this building our main garage and computer lab. Joel loved the hydraulic lift, the computer diagnostic gear, tools, welding and machinist shop. In the Valley, he had a lot of tools, but his garage was still a dusty old barn. The lack of solar power in this building complicated matters, but we could fix that.

  As we surveyed the building, its potential as a storage facility for salvaged electronics and computer equipment seemed obvious, too. We could keep them clean and dry in empty classrooms and labs.

  I would not have considered the possibility, but we were right across the street from the high school and from Justice. Not within our current security boundaries, but too close to reject outright. While Justice still had plenty of empty rooms, my gut told me this was a better choice for the future. I didn't want someone else moving in.

  The medical area disappointed. Most of the training materials required an internet connection. We found a few training dummies for CPR and drawing blood. The guys wanted to bring the plastic skeleton back to the armory, but I nixed the idea, reminding them Dr. Jerrod had first pick. That stopped the discussion, cold. I took photos, as Tom requested. He would let us know what to move. The Physician's Desk Reference for drugs and some basic first aid texts would probably go to Justice.

  We found the source of the funk. A human casualty of the crash, probably one of the administrators. A self-inflicted gunshot to the head from around the time of the CME. Whoever died had a full set of keys to the building and an empty bottle of decent bourbon sitting on the desk in front of him. We salvaged the pistol and box of ammo.

  One of those mysteries, we would never solve. Was he too far from home? Or did he just not wish to live in a screwed-up world. Now he was a funky odor in an empty building.

  We searched the room, took the keys, and closed the door.

  Joel returned to the Valley, hyped up, and enthusiastic with what he saw. I worried just visiting these facilities would make it harder for Joel to work in the Valley. Eventually, we needed mechanical expertise in both the Valley and Justice. With power, these facilities would give us unexpected capability in the mechanical and computer fields that would be hard to pass up. While the potential seemed clear, the work needed to provide power, security, water, and toilets to a new site was daunting. While I suspected we could move the solar from the high school, I'd leave that call in Steve's capable hands.

  We had three more places to visit: the public library, the community college, and the middle school. Unless the library was a lot bigger than I remembered, I imagined we would eventually transfer its shelving and books to an empty high school classroom, for safekeeping. Mostly it carried paperback novels and kid’s books, especially after on-line research replaced encyclopedias.

  I had no desire to return to the middle/elementary school, the building was filled with the ghosts of those who tried to build a community after the crash. A lot of the windows were missing, shot out when we defended the place against the militia. The seniors lived there for months; they must have salvaged anything worthwhile before the sheriff's men killed them. Teaching materials remained on our salvage list, but they were a low priority for me.

  Part of me considered such salvage a waste of time; every adult and most kids knew how to read, write, and do basic math. Teaching future kids those skills didn't require fancy materials from the school. I worried more about preserving knowledge of calculus and other higher-level math, physics, biology, and chemistry. Not everyone could teach those curricula.

  I told myself that justified shifting the priority to the community college. According to Craig, who attended the school before the CME, it had computer labs, a science lab, and some type of medical technician lab. The college was reasonably new to the area, so I had never visited the campus.

  The campus looked beautiful, even in the dead of winter, with a small lake in front, nestled in the forest. Fire had ravaged the front of the building. How much remained intact required a thorough search. A bonfire inside the lobby seemed the ignition point.

  Everything indicated the destruction happened months ago, but we took no chances. A sweep of the building confirmed no current threats. While the fire damage to the building appeared confined to the building lobby, enough smoke and moisture reached into the lab areas to concern us.

  Saving the computers and other equipment in the labs became today's revised mission. Especially since we could store them in the TCAT building. We moved every piece of electronic gear that we thought might be useful from the site. The library, although intact, specialized in law, business, and accounting texts, not anything I cared enough about to preserve. I would have been overjoyed to rescue an outdated set of encyclopedias. That might be useful.

  We returned to the Valley for a late supper.

  I spotted Jules eating at the table with my parents. I waved but joined my team at our 'normal' table. My group sat together, discussing various oddities we spotted in today's forays. The young Gamma with a laptop got a lot of help from the group as he struggled to document everything we salvaged from the college. Some of the instruments were a mystery to all of us. We packed them up anyway to keep the weather from wrecking them.

  My guys were arguing about whether we should go back to rescue the pool table and two ping pong tables from the college recreation room when Jules sat down.

  That prompted a round of introductions, and then condolences. Then we moved on.

  "Jeremy, your dad wants me to find a plane at the airport that I would be willing to fly," Jules said.

  The whole group perked up at that, the airport was a lot sexier than the middle school or library.

  "We could leave now, if you want? My team is mostly done with today's salvage operation," I said.

  Jules noticed my team's eagerness as they leaned forward. He just didn't acknowledge it. "I'm not sure whether there is enough daylight left today, but I'm willing to give it a try. I don't have any other assignments right now."

  "Should we bring a mechanic?" I asked.

  "No need, jumper cables, a charged battery, and a fuel pump should be enough," Jules said. "If the problem is more extensive, we will have to pick another plane. I don't have the chops to break down and repair airplane engines. Joel or Jimmy might, but they are much too busy."

  I looked at my team, "Looks like we are going to the airport. Meet back at the trucks in 20 minutes."

  It was always funny to see the group disappear so quickly without looking rushed. Within seconds Jules and I sat alone at the table.

  "What kind of planes can you handle?" I asked.

  "I'm certified on single-engine land aircraft," Jules said. "Not that the FAA exists anymore. For the last few years, I trained on water landings and took a few multi-engine training flights but not very seriously. I couldn't afford another plane. Keeping one maintained and housed was plenty expensive."

  "What plane did you own?" I asked.

  "A Cessna 182, fun to fly and big enough to venture cross country without a lot of danger. I kept it in a hangar at Mather Field, outside of Sacramento. When I escaped from the feds, I drove straight there. It felt weird to sit in my hangar, knowing the CME was coming and waiting for the crash. Part of me wanted to see it happen in real-time via satellite. But my desire to live trumped scientific curiosity, especially since I was sure no one would be left to appreciate the analysis.” Jules lost himself for a moment, then shook it off.

  “That Monday, after the last vestiges of power died, I flew to Flagstaff. It was spooky, but the weather was good. I intended to convince Andy and Carol to fl
y with me to Oneida, with the kids, of course. My plans changed after I hit a piece of metal on the runway in Flagstaff. It messed up the plane's landing gear and would need major repairs to take off again. I was lucky to walk away from that landing without serious injury.

  "I should have stolen one of the planes in the Flagstaff airport and stashed it in my hangar, but it felt wrong. I don’t understand why stealing a truck was okay, but taking a plane felt wrong. I tried like hell to convince Andy to evacuate to the Valley the day I called you. I kept it cryptic, but he knew I considered it a grave risk. So I abandoned my wrecked plane, stole a truck, and drove to his retreat. Hoping to convince him to come with me. Carol probably would have gone for it if I still had a plane. Without the absolute surety of a suitable airplane, they wouldn’t budge. By then, hunkering down seemed the least horrible option. So I stayed."