“I don’t need a lot of men. I need the right ones,” Carter said. “I need guys that can manage a jail break, which I know we have, and a few extras to sow chaos. We got our asses handed to us before because the mayor had gotten away from us and managed to plan a whole resistance campaign.”
“Remind me,” the boss said. “Wasn’t it your job to get the mayor? Wasn’t it your job to keep that firefighter buttoned up? Seems like your boyfriend Prange wasn’t the only one stepping on his dick.” The boss rolled his chair back and put his feet up on his desk. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re not really high on our list of star employees this month either.”
“I know,” Carter said. “I’m looking to put things right.”
“The Bricklayers are off limits. They’re too valuable for me to risk you getting them killed.”
Carter wished it were otherwise. The Bricklayers were the best the cartel had in the area. They were the ones who could bust a guy out of prison or take down a well-protected rival. If you needed something handled quick and flawless, they were your guys.
“Not only that,” the boss went on. “You bring back every one of the guns you left behind, and my other truck, or don’t bother coming back at all.”
“What resources do I get?”
“I’ll give you two days with the cargo truck you didn’t lose, and as many men as you can convince to go with you. Except for Bricklayers. Let me know when you’ve got your crew put together. Leave me the hell alone and do your regular job until then.”
Carter knew there was no way he was going to get anything else out of the boss. He decided to take what he was being given and start recruiting.
“One more thing,” the boss said just after Carter stepped out of the office. “You bring me Prange’s head, too. Attached to his shoulders or not, I don’t care. But the first thing I want to see when you get back is his head on this desk. Got it?”
“I got it,” Carter said.
The boss was making some heavy demands, but reasonable under the circumstances. Truth be told, he’d gone into the office that morning half-expecting to be roughed up in the basement and reassigned to an even worse detail than crop guard for even bringing it up to the boss a second time.
Carter’s first stop was the soldier who’d escaped from Bowman. He caught him having breakfast. “You want to go get the big guy back, recover our hardware, and put the mayor down for good?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “We stepped on their corner, they pushed us back. Treated me all right while they had me in lockup. I got nothing personal against them.”
“They were willing to kill you.”
“While I was shooting at them. Once I put the gun down, I’ve never been arrested so politely.”
“So, that’s it?” Carter asked. “They were nice to you.”
“They didn’t make it personal, I won’t take it personal. You want to take it personal, go ahead.” The man waved a hand over his plate. “Right now, I’m living as well as anybody else within ten miles. Better off than a lot of them. Don’t see any reason to give that up.”
Carter got up, disgusted at how little the man seemed to care about how the cartel had been bloodied. He and Prange had handpicked their crew for Bowman. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d judged that one.
Of the few soldiers that had escaped Bowman with him, Carter was able to recruit four. With that little boost, he wanted to keep going, but it was time to load into the undersized, underpowered CUCV and go watch the day’s great vegetable migration from fields to trucks.
Out at the job site, he noticed something about one of the men assigned to him that day. He was one of the guys that even the other cartel men tended to avoid. Most of the guys who ended up in the cartel were either desperate or lost. Some gravitated to it because they were violent and dysfunctional with the rest of society. Criminal organizations like the cartel gave them both an external structure for their lives and a license to step outside the normal constraints of morality and law. Of that minority, there were some that could barely be controlled, that were volatile and unpredictable or just plain cruel.
Carter was working with one of them. Where all of the other men had gotten lazy about their shaves and hair, like just about every other man had since the Event, this one showed up every day with a clean face and a proper high and tight. His fastidious grooming and something about his facial expressions and understated insolence made Carter suspect he had come from one of the skinhead groups that distributed for the cartel.
“Hey,” Carter said. “You about ready to get off this bullshit and do something real?”
“What do you mean?” the man asked.
“I’ve got some people that don’t get how things work in this new world. They’d make for a good example to other folks that might think about crossing us.”
The way the man’s eyes lit up disturbed Carter. “Yeah?” he said eagerly.
“Yeah. A lot of people I need to deal with. I’m going to need a real wrecking crew to tear some things up.”
“Tell me about them,” the man said. “Cops, local operation, too curious? Just give it to me in English, will you?”
“We get to wipe a town completely off the map. Every building. Every man, woman, and child. We need to take them all.”
The man looked at Carter, a sneer on his face that slowly melted. “You’re actually serious about this, aren’t you?”
Carter nodded. “One hundred percent.”
“Huh. No holds barred?” the man asked.
“Completely off leash.”
11
“Still no sign of Prange’s guy, one way or the other?” Tom Grossman asked Vic Davis, which had become his customary morning greeting to his new police chief.
“Nothing. So my department is still working under the worst-case assumption that he made his way to Black River Falls and has told his superiors there that we’ve got Prange.”
“It’s the only wise assumption, really,” Grossman said. “If we’re wrong and he got eaten by wolves or didn’t make it past some preppers out there, we’ve still hardened the town in case of some other trouble.”
Davis offered up a travel mug of coffee. This time, it was the vaguely brown water from the school cafeteria, not a cup of the good stuff from Davis’s small personal stock in his hunting and camping kit.
“Shall we go take a tour and see how things are going?” Grossman asked. The coffee wasn’t good, but it was still hot, at least. Not a bad thing after waking up that morning to a light patina of frost on everything.
“You know I’m only half-joking about detailing a couple bored kids to rickshaw you around town, right?” Davis asked, as Grossman picked up his cane.
“I’m not sure that’s the image I want to go for. On the other hand, if you could scare up one of those hand-crank bicycles…”
“I wonder if we’d be able to get the shop teacher on that.”
“I think we’ve got him and his students otherwise occupied. Shall we hit them up first?” Grossman asked.
The school’s shop classrooms were noisy and loud. Not as loud as they would have been with all of the power tools running, but still noisy. Instead of the high-pitched whine of angle grinders, table saws, planers, and jointers, there was the deeper, lower rasp of hand saws and physical labor.
There must have been twenty people, aged from middle-school to middle-aged, busting away at workbenches. In one corner, two men were gas welding pieces of angle iron together. The room smelled like sawdust, acetylene, and hard work. Part of their output was stacked up near the big bay doors. Spike strips, vehicle barriers, and homemade Tesco barrier frameworks were all waiting to be deployed.
There were also several old bicycles being cut up and rebuilt. A few looked like they were being rebuilt as cargo rickshaws, to help haul the other metalworks out to where they were needed.
“I’m telling you,” Davis said, pointing to one of them. “Just put a seat up top there, and you’re goo
d to go.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll add ‘Mayor’s Personal Driver’ to your job description.”
Davis laughed and took a sip of coffee. “I’m fine with being your driver, just not the engine.”
“Point,” Grossman said, stepping up to one of the workbenches to get a closer look at what was going on. One man was using a spoke shave to make a new handle for a pickaxe, while the person next to him used a file to sharpen up a big two-man bucksaw. There were three others like it lying on the floor beside him, clearly having been quietly rusting away in barns for years.
At the next bench, somebody had an old book open while he measured and marked boards. Grossman looked closer and saw it was directions for a portable worktable. “We’re building three of these,” the man said. “One for each of the main roads into town, so we can build onsite instead of having to haul lumber all the way in here.”
Davis nodded, clearly impressed. The book was open to a page showing how to build quick clamping blocks to hold irregular pieces of wood steady to rough them out. “Got any of these finished yet?”
“Nah,” the man said. “We’re doing an assembly line, so all we’ve got so far is stacks of cut wood.” While he was talking, two high school kids came to pick up boards he’d already marked off. They carried them over to another workbench, where two other students were sweating as they sawed away. As they finished up, another student with a hand plane, files, and smaller saws did the finish work.
The scene felt almost overwhelming to Grossman. On the one hand, the amount of work being done amazed him. On the other, despite the progress being made, it seemed like there was still so much yet to be done. Just the process of building the portable worktables so they could haul them out to the entrances to town to build more fortifications. It seemed like there was way too long of a tail for the amount of tooth the town certainly needed.
Then he reminded himself of how things seemed when he first got to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. The amount of work it took to move an entire armored division from Europe to the Persian Gulf dwarfed the effort he was watching at the school, and at times seemed just as disorganized and hopeless. But the job got done. His unit was reunited with their tanks, and they were all moved out to their staging area with plenty of time to get bored out of their skulls waiting for the war to actually start.
Grossman took a deep breath and a drink of coffee, then watched as four football players hopped out of the antique cargo truck the town had captured from Prange and started loading up the pile of obstacles. Within the hour, he knew that everything he was watching go onto the truck would be sitting on a road into town. All the while, the people at the school were going to keep on churning out more barriers, fixing more tools, and building more benches.
“Hey!” Grossman said, as the last of the spike strips was loaded up. “Give me a hand, will you?”
One of the football players reached down from the bed of the truck and helped him up.
“Where to first?” Grossman asked.
The man who’d hauled him up uncapped a canteen and offered it to Grossman.
“No. Drink up,” Grossman said. “You need it more than me.”
“Thanks,” the man said, wiping sweat off his brow despite the chilly weather and downing half his water. “We’re hitting the west side. With the bridge there, we only ran one load out to them yesterday, since they’ve only got to cover a narrow choke point. Most of the haul went east and south, so we’re evening things out now.”
A few minutes later, the truck ground to a halt, and Grossman accepted a hand down instead of risking his bad knee by jumping to the ground. As he’d been told, there wasn’t much built up yet. There were some of the big metal vehicle barriers on the far side of the bridge, and some spike strips already laid out across both lanes on the bridge itself. Two more high school kids and a couple adults were busy with picks and shovels, digging out a trench line parallel to the river. Like the truck crew, they were sweating heavily as they worked. Grossman was happy to see a small table set up, with empty breakfast dishes on it, and two big water coolers. The way these guys were laboring, heat injury was still a risk if they didn’t get fuel and coolant into their systems.
A couple middle school kids were mixing cement with water and river gravel in a wheelbarrow, while another was bailing the already mixed contents from a second wheelbarrow into a mold.
“What do you say?” one of the men in the trench asked. Grossman figured he was the one in charge of the work crew, by the way everybody else took that as their cue to take a break as well.
“You guys are doing great here,” Grossman said. “Seriously, you’ve accomplished a ton of work already.”
“Got any words of wisdom on our setup?” the man asked, indicating the trench he was working on.
“Yeah. First, get an old Infantry officer to advise you instead of a tanker, then call in some engineers to bring in their earthmovers to sling this mud for you.”
“And if we’re short of everything but tankers? Including actual tanks for them to ride around in.”
Grossman laughed, then squatted down to look at the bridge from the vantage point of the trench. “Come here,” he said to all three of the guys digging it. “I see you’re doing a great job of zig-zagging it, like I told you the other day. So, somebody with full auto or any sort of real or improvised grenade doesn’t have a straight shot to take several people out at once.”
He tapped one of the students on the shoulder and pointed at the bridge. “But see how this leg here is lined up perfectly with that pillar there? That’s a perfect spot for a right-handed shooter to take cover, and with the slope of the ground here, he’s going to own this piece of your trench, completely cutting it in half.”
The three men all looked up at the bridge, frustration clear on their faces.
“Don’t worry. I’m not telling you to fill it in and dig a new one. Get some sandbags and see if your guys here with the cement can pour you a short barrier. You want to build up the downhill side of that corner.”
Grossman took the work crew along as he toured the rest of the fortifications. “I’m impressed that I haven’t seen your security yet,” he said.
“Yeah. He’s real good at that,” the crew leader said, and pointed to a small stand of trees just behind the trench line.
There was a short bark of distinctly female laughter and just enough motion for Grossman to get a general idea of where the crew’s guard was. There were enough hunters in Bowman that he wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t clocked the woman when he’d come up. Whether she’d opted to just stay still and unnoticed because she was just that patient and dedicated to her job of providing unobtrusive cover for her crew, or if she was just having a bit of fun at his expense, he couldn’t guess.
“Hey. He’s back,” the voice from the trees said. Immediately, the whole work crew turned to look across the bridge, where a man in military-style camouflage was standing, holding a white flag.
“Comes by about once or twice a day, always unarmed, just to take a quick look and head back. Never had a French battle flag before, though.”
Grossman made a point of not looking over toward the trees where the crew’s guard was stationed. He didn’t know if the stranger across the river had already marked her but felt it best to not draw any more attention. He told the people with him to also keep their eyes anywhere but on her position. “I’m going to see if he wants to meet on the bridge. I see you’ve got a piece. Keep your hands off it, but be ready, all right?” he said to the work crew leader.
He then stepped toward the bridge and waved. “Meet in the middle?” he offered. The stranger nodded, and shouldered the flag, threading his way between the metal vehicle barriers.
Just as Grossman got to the bridge himself, he recognized the person across from him. The brim of his cap pulled low and a month’s growth of facial hair were only able to hide the face for so long. “Rob! Hey, it’s good to see you.”
“You,
too, Tom. Been a bit busy ’round these parts, no? You guys going all old Berlin on us, and a few outbreaks of lead showers.”
“Tell me about it,” Grossman said, holding out his hand. “I take it you were part of one of those?”
“Yeah. That jackass with the trucks,” Rob said, pointing to the big cargo truck. “Didn’t want any part of him up on our land.”
Rob owned a piece of hunting property next to Grossman’s plot outside of town. The two men had always kept to their own side of the property line but hadn’t really bothered marking exactly where it was. Their informal agreement had always been to keep fifty feet or so from where the line was, and to never shoot onto the other’s land.
“Got some news to fill you in on,” Grossman said.
“Yeah. We do, too. Probably ain’t heard anything from the direction of Eau Claire yet, have you?”
12
Daniel Prange was awakened by the sound of a key. He could tell right away it was Davis—he had such a careful and light touch.
“Good morning,” the new top cop said, stepping into the room. In addition to a tray of food, he had a plastic bag stuffed full of clothing with him.
“What’s this all about?” Prange asked.
“Your hearing is today. Remember?”
Prange scrunched up his face. Getting out of his cell every day for a bit had started to reorient him to the passage of time, but he still was having a hard time keeping track of such details as which day it was and what was supposed to happen. “Right,” he said. “Any chance of me getting a shave, too?”
“Yeah, I can get a barber in,” Davis said. He rubbed his own chin. “You’re not going to tame that with just a disposable.”
“Probably not,” Prange said. His beard wasn’t long, but it was unkempt and bristly. He didn’t imagine it’d be pleasant trying to use a cheap razor to get it in line. He took the bag from Davis and looked inside. It was a cheap blue suit and a dress shirt, no tie. He looked up at the ceiling of the room, seeing nothing up there he could anchor a noose to. Not that he’d gone down that rabbit hole, but he could understand. “Thanks. I’ll put these on after the barber visit.”
Age of Survival Series | Book 3 | Age of Revival Page 7