The brick shell of the town hall still stood, but smoke stained the walls above most of the first floor and half of the basement windows. The upper course of windows were all missing their glass. In some places, so many bullets had hit the building that bricks were missing entirely, having been shattered by repeated impacts. It would take a very long time for the building to be repaired, assuming it could be. There was way too much work to do elsewhere in town to spare the time and effort to give the building a good inspection to see if it could be salvaged or not.
His first visitors for the day were three Amish farmers that lived a few miles south. They were willing to trade food, lumber, and guidance in rebuilding houses by hand for security details. They not only wanted to protect their own lands, but they had kin out near Black River Falls who wanted to get away from that city, whose leadership was deeply infiltrated by the same cartel that Prange, Carter, and their muscle had all worked for. They were asking for men to help their folks by Black River load up their buggies, and then to protect them en route to land closer to Bowman.
Grossman knew that a lot of his people would want no part of tangling with the cartel and would be resistant to drawing any attention back to themselves. He knew he had more that would be happy to stick it to the cartel again. Already, a few people had volunteered to go to Black River and get the word out to friends they had there about what exactly their government’s new “friends” were all about.
Not long after the Amish left, Jerry Grossman came in, shouldering a heavy rucksack.
“What’s that?” Tom Grossman asked his brother.
“I ran up to my old cabin this morning,” Jerry said, setting the ruck down and fishing a large, dark-green can out of it. It was the brand of coffee they’d grown up with.
“Please tell me that isn’t just a bunch of loose nails and bolts,” Grossman said.
Jerry shook the can to show it wasn’t just holding a bunch of spare hardware. “I laid in a good stock up here once it started getting harder to find in stores.”
Grossman couldn’t believe his eyes when his brother pulled out two more cans and set them on his desk. “If you’re trying to make a peace offering, you’re off to a really good start.” Jerry was right about the brand disappearing from store shelves. It had been ubiquitous when they were kids and young men, but as tastes had changed, newer, hipper brands had crowded it out.
“I’ve seen the kinds of hours you pull. You’ll need it a lot more than I will.”
“What are you doing with yourself these days?” Grossman asked. It had been a few days since he’d even seen his brother, much less had a chance to catch up.
“Keeping my head down, mostly,” Jerry said with an uncomfortable laugh. He’d sided with Prange when he first got to Bowman and had played a big part in overthrowing Tom. “Trying to help out where people will let me. Doing a lot of shit jobs, to tell you the truth.”
“About that,” Grossman said. “Peter Meier’s in town right now. Saw him in passing a couple hours ago. He says he’ll be by some time this morning to drop something off for me. Just so you know.”
Jerry nodded. “I should make myself scarce, then. I don’t think it’s time to try and make amends there yet.”
“The time will come. Peter’s got it in him to forgive you, but it’ll have to be on his terms,” Grossman said. He’d just found out a few days earlier that Peter’s father had been killed when Jerry had taken a couple of his buddies onto the Meier land on the morning of the Event, and one of them had lost his temper and kicked off a shootout. “When that time comes, I’ll do what I can to help you settle things with the family.”
“I appreciate it,” Jerry said. He drummed his fingertips on one of the coffee cans. “Now that you’re getting patrols moving farther out, I’m thinking of moving back up to my cabin. You should come over for dinner some night after I get settled in.”
“I’d like that,” Grossman said.
After his brother left, he made a stealthy run to the school cafeteria and commandeered a stray camp stove and enamel coffee pot. Just as he had his first cup of honest, strong coffee in several days, Peter Meier came into his office, carrying a box.
“Nice hat,” Grossman said, looking at the ball cap Peter was wearing. It was a light-blue trucker hat, faded to an even paler shade from a few years under the sun. The Air Force logo was embroidered on the front, along with the silhouette of an old-style jet plane.
“Got it from my neighbors to the south. We finally met in person yesterday,” Peter said.
“The guys with the dirt bikes?” Grossman asked.
“Yeah. They’ve got that big swath south of the highway on your map.”
Grossman nodded. Not only had they sent a good dozen men in to help with the fight in town, none of the cartel men that tried escaping to the east after the battle had turned had gotten very far.
“You’ll need to keep their lands as red,” Peter said. “They’re very much of the live and let live persuasion. They’ll lend a hand here and there if they think you’re all right, but they don’t want anybody that isn’t one of their families on their land.”
“Fair enough,” Grossman said. He looked inside the box. It was a shortwave radio, with a small notebook. “So, this is it, huh?”
“Yeah. We get an English-language translation every other day. Nothing has really changed since the first one, but it’s good to hear another voice and to get at least a little bit of news about the rest of the world.”
“I’ve found some German speakers in town, as well as two French and one that can stumble through Italian, in case there are transmissions in those languages, too. It’ll be good to compare notes if there are, to see if everybody’s being given the same information.”
“My dad would be proud,” Peter said.
“He might want to adopt me, after disowning his son.” Grossman snatched the cap off of Peter’s head. “I mean, if you had to leave the Army for a different service. Come on.”
“I’m not switching teams,” Peter said. “I’m taking it as a sign of respect.”
Grossman opened a desk drawer. While his office was being moved, he’d brought a bottle of bourbon from his house and stashed it away. He uncapped the bottle and poured out a couple fingers into two of the school cafeteria’s plastic coffee cups. “On the subject of respect.”
Peter accepted the offered drink. The two men clicked their cups, and each took a sip.
“I do owe you more thanks than I could ever put into words,” Grossman said. “I know it was a risk for three of you to come down, especially with two already wounded. I agonized over asking for your help, and I never would have if I hadn’t been sure that Carter was going to throw everything he had at me.”
“We wouldn’t have come down if we hadn’t thought the same.”
“How are Larry and Irene holding up?”
“So-so,” Peter said. “Anything that was truly valuable and portable had already been brought up. They lost some furniture that had a lot of family history, and even though they’ve long been thinking of my land as home, there were a lot of memories in those old walls, you know?”
“Yeah. I saw them yesterday, raking through the ashes. Looked like they needed the time alone, so I left them be.”
“Good call,” Peter said. “He won’t say it out loud, but Larry’s got some pretty strong feelings toward you. Like, he knows it was the right thing for us to come down and join the fight, but if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gone into his house, and the cartel thugs wouldn’t have tried to burn us out of it.”
“Yeah. There are a lot of people that have good reason to not like me at all these days.”
“If you lose your job down here at the next election, you know we could always use good people up top,” Peter said. “Even with Bill and Irene mostly recovered and back on the rosters, there’s no shortage of work or patrol shifts.”
“I honestly don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Despite everything, I think
there are more people that would chain me to this chair than would run me out of town on a rail. I suspect I’m stuck in my current career for quite a while.”
Peter sighed. “If what we’re getting off this thing is true,”—he rapped the shortwave radio with his knuckles—“things are going to be this way for a very long time. I’m not going to be switching careers any time soon, either.”
“Well, speaking of needing good people, you ever want to take politics lessons, eventually I’m going to want to retire and will need to pass this on to someone else.”
“I thought you respected me?” Peter said, raising his cup of bourbon.
Grossman laughed, and offered him a top-up from the bottle.
“No, thanks. I’ve got way too much to do today to have too much of this before lunch.” Peter leaned back in his seat. “In all seriousness, though. I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think being a mayor is in my future. I like living up on the ridge with a tight family taking care of each other and our little plot of land. Whatever the next normal turns out to be, I wouldn’t want to meet it any other way.”
39
Later that day, Peter came off a patrol shift. He wasted no time putting his rifle into its rack, stripping off his gear, and getting cleaned up.
The last half hour of the shift had been murder, smelling corn, pheasant, and garlic potatoes roasting. There was a loaf of fresh-baked bread, hand-churned butter, and a small amount of really good coffee for dessert. Everything but the corn had been sent up from Bowman, thanking the folks up at the homestead for watching over the highway and twice sending people down to help defend the town.
Peter needed Irene to shuck his ear of corn and butter it for him, since his hands were still healing from throwing red-hot magazines at Carter. Considering how intense the fighting had been, he was glad that his burns were the worst that he, Larry, and Chuck had come away with.
The empty space at the table where the radio used to be seemed odd. Ever since the first clear transmissions, it had been the focus of attention whenever people had been in the kitchen. While it was a smart move to send it down into town where it could be more reliably monitored, Peter still missed the low hiss and occasional squawks it had made, the excitement of hearing another human voice and wondering what it could tell them.
On the other hand, for the first time ever, the entire homestead “family” was at the table together. Not only had the townsfolk sent food up, but the delivery had come with four armed men who offered to take over patrol of the property for the evening.
They weren’t just there to cover for a few hours. One of Grossman’s initiatives was to put together sector teams to get to know the lands the town was renting or annexing and provide a constant security presence farther out. Peter and Larry had spent a good amount of time earlier that day showing the guys around the homestead and the fields surrounding it.
Once everybody had a plate in front of them, Peter stood up. Everybody fell silent.
“Since the Event, things have changed for all of us. We have all given things up, lost things.” Peter looked at Larry and Irene, then at the portrait of his father that hung over the table. “Lost loved ones.”
There was a moment of silence, then Peter continued, “Out of that, we’ve all gained things as well. We’ve learned more about ourselves and each other, we’ve learned how many people we can rely on, how many people will step up when something needs to be done. We’ve shown others that they can rely on us when we need to take care of each other, and protect what is ours.”
He looked at each person at the table. Over the past few weeks, they’d all been in harm’s way, either because it had come to them or they’d gone to it. They’d patched each other’s wounds, covered each other’s shifts, listened to each other in the darkest hours of the night as they’d walked patrol together. He saw the way his mother was looking at him, and knew that his father would have been proud.
Peter then looked into the eyes of each person at the table, one after the other. Every one of them had earned a seat at the table. “We’re surviving. Together. Every person here is making this plot of land more than it was before. I used to think of it as home, but I don’t think I ever truly understood what that meant. Home used to just be the place I lived. Now, I know that home is much more than that. It is the place I belong. I think it would have taken me a long time to understand the difference if it weren’t for each of you and what we’ve been through together.”
By some unspoken cue, everybody at the table raised their glasses simultaneously. There wasn’t bourbon or beer or wine in them. Each glass contained clear, cool water drawn from the homestead’s well.
“I am proud to share this table with each and every one of you,” Peter continued. “I know that whatever we face tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, we will face it together, we will defeat it, and we will come out the other side stronger than we went in.” Peter took a drink from his glass. Nothing in his life had ever tasted as sweet to him as that water that came from the place he called home.
# # #
THE END
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Also by JJ Holden
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** NOTE: The Dark New World series contains strong language and graphic depictions of violence **
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About the Authors
J.J. Holden is the co-author of the AGE OF SURVIVAL, DARK NEW WORLD, and EMP CRISIS series. He lives in a secluded cabin and spends his days studying the past, enjoying the present, and pondering the future.
Mark J. Russell is the co-author of the AGE OF SURVIVAL and EMP CRISIS series. An avid outdoorsman, he enjoys reading and writing stories of survival.
For updates, new release notifications, and more, please visit: www.jjholdenbooks.com
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Age of Survival Series | Book 3 | Age of Revival Page 21