Decimated: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 3)

by Flint Maxwell

  19

  Gunner

  The man called Gunner sat in a chair, a computer in front of him. His hair was long, but it looked like he normally wore a hat, for the top of his hair featured an impression of possibly a baseball cap or maybe a soldier’s helmet.

  The woman that led them into Gunner’s room was squat with a hooked nose, but she had a pleasant smile. Her skin glowed, too, like she was well taken care of.

  Logan thanked her. Then the woman cleared her throat, but Gunner, who was sitting in front of the computer typing away, paid no attention to the noise.

  “Mr. Gunner?” the woman said. “Our newest arrivals are here.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Gunner said.

  He shifted to the left in the chair he sat in. Logan saw what was on the screen; a map of the United States. There were red dots in areas all over the country, and around these red dots were pale pink circles spreading for miles. Logan’s spine tingled with the realization of what those dots and circles represented. They were where the bombs had hit. There were so many red dots, in fact, that it was hard to see the green land beneath it.

  Gunner closed the laptop. Logan was wondering whether anyone else had noticed what was on the screen. He really hoped not. If ever there was a reason to be hopeless, it was seeing what had become of the country, the great U-S-of-A.

  Gunner stood and turned to face them. He was rail-thin. Face gaunt, eyes a cold blue that reminded Logan of ice. There was a scar under his left eye and a bandage under his nose. The bandage was clear, the contents beneath it visible.

  Stitches, Logan realized. Only a few, but stitches.

  Gunner put on a diplomatic smile. He spread his arms out wide, as if he were about to hug all of them. “Welcome, all, to the Falls. Yes, I know that kind of rhymes. It wasn’t on purpose.”

  He came closer to them. Logan smelled alcohol clinging to the man, sour beer and maybe vodka. Gunner’s hand came out and shook Logan’s.

  “Logan Harper,” Logan said.

  “Pleasure.”

  “Jane Harper,” Jane said as he shook her hand. None of that weak stuff, either; he gave her a full-on, bone-grinding shake. She gave one right back.

  “Husband and wife? Or siblings?” Gunner asked.

  “We’re married,” Jane replied.

  “Oh, how lovely! And how lucky!” Gunner crowed. He continued down the line, shaking Brad’s and Grease’s hands. After he shook Grease’s, he said, “I was under the assumption that there were six of you, yet I only see four standing before me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Logan said. “The other two decided to go on east.”

  Gunner closed his eyes and exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “Unfortunate. Had I met them, I may have convinced them not to leave.”

  “They were dead-set on going, Your Highness—you mind if I call you that?” Grease asked.

  “ ‘Gunner’ is just fine, Mr. Grease.”

  “Oh, you flatter me, Gunner. I go by ‘Grease’. No need for the ‘mister’. That there was my father, may his drunken soul rot.”

  Gunner grinned at this and then nodded.

  “Well, I am pleased to have you here in the Falls. As you can see, we’re quite the budding community,” he went on, “growing bigger by the day. In fact, there are three pregnant women in the compound. I’m sure you’ll see them around.”

  “Wow,” Jane said. She gave Logan a sidelong look.

  It was no secret that before the apocalypse came, Jane had wanted to start a family of her own. Logan had been warming up to the idea, and might’ve agreed to ditch the contraceptives had the voids never appeared all over the world. Things had changed, though; this wasn’t a world you brought children into. Not yet, at least.

  “And you’re in charge?” Brad asked.

  Gunner took a step back and spun around to face the wide, double sliding doors that looked out on the ruined city of Cuyahoga Falls beyond. His suite didn’t face the river, and Logan thought that peculiar. If you had your pick of the place, why would you choose to look out at nothing but destruction? It was something he didn’t know, but perhaps he would learn in time.

  “Am I in charge?” Gunner repeated the question. “I wouldn’t go that far. The people here, well, I guess they look up to me, but am I in charge?”

  “Yeah,” Brad said in a bored tone. “I’m trying to find out if you’re a closet psycho, like the governor in that show The Walking Dead. I figured it would save us a lot of conflict if you just outright tell us whether or not you’re keeping your infected daughter in a closet somewhere in chains and a straitjacket.”

  “Whoa, dude,” Grease said. “Spoiler warning next time.”

  Brad turned to him, incredulous. “What do you mean? That was like season three. The show was on its like ninth season or something when the world ended. I didn’t spoil anything. You pretty much know the governor is crazy from the get-go. Did you not use Twitter or any social media at all?”

  “Twitter?” Grease repeated, arching an eyebrow.

  “Never mind. That wasn’t much of a spoiler,” Brad summated. He looked at Gunner. “So, yeah, just tell us yes or no. If it’s a yes, we won’t bother you. At least, I won’t.” He cocked a thumb at Logan. “I can’t say much for Captain Do-Good here, but I don’t give a shit about your zombified, half-monster daughter. I just need to know whether or not I should move on.”

  Jane was shaking her head. “Real nice, Bradley. Real nice.”

  She only called him ‘Bradley’ whenever he was ‘being a dick’—her words, not Logan’s. Logan guessed that, right now, Brad was being a dick, but that was okay. He understood. The kid had gone through so much in such a short span of time; he was young, too.

  Logan remembered being that age, in his early twenties, saying ‘Screw the world!’ any chance he got. Then one day, he woke up, took a good look at himself in the mirror, and asked, ‘What happened?’ It was a question he couldn’t answer.

  Getting older was both simple math and rocket science; you knew each year you were closer to death, but at the same time, you wondered how the hell it had happened so fast.

  Gunner took this jibe well enough. He was smiling. And he didn’t strike Logan as a guy that took too many things to heart, which made him like the guy all the more.

  “I assure you, Bradley, that I am not a cannibal or a maniacal leader. Not everything is like the post-apocalyptic shows and movies you might’ve seen in the past. My main goal here is to help restore some semblance of civilized society to our people. I know it won’t be an easy task, but someone has to try, don’t they?”

  Brad didn’t answer, but he also looked away from Gunner, and to Logan, that seemed like an answer enough.

  “I realize that will be harder now, after the bombs,” Gunner continued. “Less monsters, though, and that’ll help.”

  “But what about the voids?” Logan asked. “As long as they’re still standing, won’t there be a risk of another invasion?”

  The smile vanished from Gunner’s face. He looked solemn and sad, a man who had lost a lot.

  “Yes,” he said finally, “there’ll be that risk.” He paused, and the smile came back, though not as strongly as before. “But we have scouts in Stone Park that keep an eye on the void. Army men and women, good people, honest people. They have reported no signs of activity since the initial…arrival.”

  “That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again,” Jane said.

  “Very true, Mrs. Harper. However, we take this as being as good of a sign as any. There is not much positivity left in this world. It is up to us to manifest it when we see fit. Do you agree?”

  Jane shrugged. “I’m just being logical.”

  “As am I,” Gunner replied. “We can’t know if more will ever come from wherever they came from, but we can remain vigilant and, most importantly, hopeful. If the voids can come as randomly and as inexplicably as they did, then they can certainly go out the same way. Right?”

  Jane didn’t reply.

&nbs
p; Gunner studied them.

  Logan agreed with him, however. It was important to remain hopeful. Hope was the very thing that had gotten them to where they were now. For that, he was grateful.

  “Right,” Logan replied. “I like that.”

  “I knew you would, Mr. Harper,” Gunner replied. He motioned to the couch against the wall. “Please have a seat. I didn’t ask you all up here to discuss hope and what may or may not happen to the world now. It seems that’s out of our control.”

  The map on the computer screen flashed inside of Logan’s mind. As the others sat down on the couch, he remained standing. “Where did that map come from?” He pointed at the closed laptop.

  A grave expression crossed Gunner’s face. “That map, my friend, came from what was left of the United States government.”

  “How many cities?” Logan asked.

  “All of the major ones, I’m afraid,” Gunner replied.

  Logan sat down, but not on purpose; his legs gave out on him, and he hit the cushion with a thump. He brought a hand up to his forehead. His flesh was sweaty yet cold at the same time. Didn’t you expect this, Logan? he asked himself. Didn’t it make the most sense?

  Yes, but now it was confirmed.

  “What about the other countries? The world?” Brad asked.

  Gunner shook his head. “Not much known about them. Communications are dark, but my intel tells me that it’s not looking too good out there.” He paused. “We should count ourselves lucky. Aside from Stone Park, the bombs that hit Ohio—in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus—were small; at least compared to the bombs that hit the likes of New Orleans and Los Angeles. Therefore the fallout wasn’t as bad, and neither were the casualties outside of the blast zone.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “We certainly felt the wrath of the one dropped in Stone Park. Our electricity was down for the better part of three days, and a few of my men outside the compound escaped with some nasty injuries: burns and mild radiation poisoning that they are still recovering from. However, there were no deaths.”

  “I wish we could say the same thing,” Jane said. “Our whole place collapsed and caught fire. We lost about a dozen people.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gunner said, and he looked legitimately sad, as if he was about to shed tears for those gone from Ironlock. “I really am. It’s a terrible thing, what has happened in the past six months.” He sighed. “I’m afraid we’re getting off track again. The purpose of this meeting isn’t to reminisce and mourn. There was a time for that, but that time is gone. Now is the time for action. For rebuilding. For our species to rise up again from the ashes and take back what is rightfully ours.”

  “Easier said than done,” Grease said. “It’s tough out there.”

  “I know,” Gunner replied. “Oh, I know. But we’re a tough breed, aren’t we?” He faced the window, his back toward Logan and the others. The initial shock of where the bombs landed had passed. Logan didn’t feel better, but he accepted it. That was all he could do. “We’re a tough breed. Especially us—all of you and me—because we are still here. We are still standing. We can get knocked down time and time again, but we always rise to our feet. Persist. Persist. Persist.”

  Logan had to admit the guy was a great motivator, if nothing else. If Tyler and May were here like they were supposed to be, Logan thought Gunner would’ve convinced them to stay. Easily.

  “So let’s get into the meat of this meeting.”

  Grease chuckled, and Brad shook his head at him, as if to say don’t give the guy props for being lame. Logan knew that’s what Brad would be thinking.

  “All of us here in the Falls carry our own weight. It’s the price of living here and it’s the reason this place has grown so rapidly while everything seems to be dying outside of the fence. No one minds the work, either. If anything, it’s a good way to get your mind off of the bad things.”

  Brad twirled his fingers, and Jane elbowed him.

  “Bradley,” she barked.

  He blanched, muttering an apology.

  Gunner didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he laughed and said, “I know, I know. I can drone on sometimes. I don’t blame you one bit, Bradley.”

  “Just ‘Brad’, please.”

  “Or B-Rad,” Grease said, grinning. “He loves that.” Brad punched Grease in the shoulder. “Ouch, you asshole!”

  “Like two teenagers, I swear,” Jane muttered.

  They stopped their shenanigans pretty quick after that. Teenagers, they were not.

  Logan could only shake his head at their banter and general silliness. He loved those two guys like they were his own brothers—just as he had loved Mike Ryan and Derek Fritz and Devin and Regina and all those who had been lost in this terrible cataclysm.

  “Mr. Harper—Logan,” Gunner said, “what did you do before the world went to hell?”

  “I was an assistant manager at an arthouse theater,” Logan answered without pause, but just thinking about those days and nights at the Monolith with Derek, Mike, and sometimes Uncle Tommy seemed like a lifetime ago. All of it did—Stone Park, the voids, the military invasion of his hometown.

  “And you, Brad?”

  “I was a college student—well, I don’t know if you could call it that. I was about to flunk out.”

  Gunner nodded and smiled. “I can sympathize with that. How about you, Jane?”

  “A nursing assistant. Almost a nurse. About a year away.”

  “Beautiful!” Gunner said. “We always need people that know medicine.” He clapped his hands. “Grease?”

  Grease shrugged. “I did a load of odd jobs. I’m pretty handy with cars. Worked in a garage for over a decade.”

  Logan nodded. “He is pretty handy with cars. He got our Ford up and running after the EMP messed it up.”

  Grease shrugged. “Wasn’t nothing. Really.”

  “Great! You can never have too many mechanics,” Gunner said.

  “Where does that leave us?” Brad asked, pointing to Logan and himself. “I’ll fail a couple of college courses while Logan threads film through a projector? I can’t imagine that’ll help the community much.”

  Gunner shook his head. “No, no. It’s not like that. I’m just trying to get to know you all better. Some of the skills of your past will come in handy, sure, but you’ll never be forced into labor you don’t like. That, I promise. Besides, I can guarantee all of you have come a long way in the past months, haven’t you? You all have done things and completed tasks you never dreamed of. Yes?”

  Logan began thinking of the people he’d shot in Cleveland. Of the monsters, too. Gunner was right.

  “We will get your jobs sorted in time. For now, I have a favor to ask,” the man said. He was looking directly at Logan, and then his eyes flicked to Brad.

  “Anything,” Logan said. “We’re just grateful to be here.”

  “And we’re happy to have you,” Gunner replied. “Do you remember when I mentioned a few of my men were down with burns and radiation sickness?”

  Logan nodded.

  “Those men, God bless them, were part of a group known around the compound as ‘Scavengers.’ It’s not a name I am particularly fond of, but I guess it about sums up their job,” he said.

  “Which is to…scavenge?” Jane asked.

  “Exactly. Since those men have been down, we have held off on supply missions—a much better term, I think. Most of the men and women here are shell-shocked, still coming to terms with what happened—”

  “And you’re looking for volunteers,” Brad said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Correct. Just a couple, to accompany myself and another guy named Hector.”

  Jane was shaking her head. Logan knew her stance on this. After what had happened in Cleveland, she’d never wanted to go out again. The only thing that could have driven her from Ironlock was literally a nuclear strike.

  Logan reached out and grabbed her wrist. He gave it a squeeze.

  She looked at him apprehensive
ly, but Logan knew what needed done. He had to go out. He had to help. Without meeting Irving and Blake, without coming to the Falls, who knows where they’d be. Coming here had saved their lives, had given them another chance when they thought they were out of chances.

  “It won’t be bad,” Gunner said. “You won’t have to worry. We are only going a few miles north. Hector and I know what we are doing, and I’m sure your husband knows what he’s doing.”

  Jane said, “He does. He’s the strongest person I know. I don’t want him to go, but I understand.”

  This caught Logan by surprise. He looked at her, both eyebrows raised. “You’re okay if I do this?”

  Jane nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But only because if I said no, you would go anyway.”

  Logan smiled. “Brad, you down?”

  Brad said, “Yeah. What else is there to do?”

  “I’ll go, too,” Grease said.

  “Thank you, Grease, but that won’t be necessary,” Gunner replied. “You know Irving. He’ll take you on in the garage. We need you there.” His eyes drifted to the wrapped bandage showing through the holes in Grease’s jeans. “Besides, you need to heal up. You’ve been through enough.”

  Grease nodded. “I could use some rest. You’re right.”

  “Where are we heading?” Logan asked.

  “Redwick,” Gunner answered. He put his hands on his hips. Logan never saw a man who stood as straight as this man did. Not even Devin.

  Logan nodded.

  “You know the place?” Gunner asked.

  “I do,” Logan answered. “Jane and I, we’re from the area.”

  Gunner grinned. His teeth gleamed white, showing they were well taken care of. “Even better.”

  He went to his desk and pulled a map from a folder. He unfolded it and laid it on the table in front of the couch they all sat on. Red lines crisscrossed all over Northeast Ohio.

  “When the president declared the country under a state of emergency, FEMA set up a refugee camp in Redwick.” He pointed at the large circle in the heart of the town. “Right here. It didn’t last long. But there’s a good many supplies still there. Now that the monster population seems at least partially eradicated, I feel it’s safe enough to go there.”