From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  She shook her head no, still in shock. Finally, she spoke. “My name is Becky. I…I was fishing, and they grabbed me. No one heard me because I was upstream of Helen, near the tube rentals.”

  “What’s Helen like?” Rylik asked, hoping the conversation would help calm the girl.

  “We ain’t got no power,” she said, talking fast. “The mayor says they’re working on it. Something about a paddle wheel. All the tourists left when it happened, headed home. I ain’t never seen Helen with just the locals in it. Some of the farmers and people that live out of town are staying in the hotels. Everybody is sharing with each other.”

  “Any news from outside of Helen, like from Cleveland?” Rylik prodded.

  “No,” she answered. “There was a truckload of men come into town demanding food and stuff. The chief of police and his officers run them off. One of them was sick. Real sick.”

  “It’s already started,” Jason said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Rylik. “Have they blocked off any of the roads?”

  “Yes, there’s a roadblock on 17 down near the mill. Not too many people have come up that way, and if they don’t have anything to share or any kind of skill, they’re being turned away. We only have so much food. That’s why I was fishing. People have planted stuff, but it will be a while before the crops come in. The mayor says we should have enough to last.”

  “You’d better get back to Helen,” Rylik said. “Can you drive? How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen,” she answered. Rylik saw red. He kicked one of the downed men, breaking his ribs. “I can drive,” she continued, staring at the moaning man on the ground.

  Rylik took a shotgun off the rack in the truck and a box of shells from the center console. He gave them to Becky, put her in the last truck, and instructed her to drive straight to Helen and to be careful on the turns. She assured him she had driven the pass many times, and she would go straight to the chief of police and tell him what happened.

  Then, Rylik started throwing bodies into the back of the second truck. He didn’t care how they landed or what he broke. He slapped the man that seemed the least injured, waking him up. The man tried to scramble backward, away from Rylik, but Jason stopped him with a boot to his back.

  “Where are you from?” Rylik demanded.

  “Young Harris,” answered the man, fearing for his life.

  “You get in that truck and drive,” Rylik said his voice low and mean. “Go back to Young Harris, and don’t any of you ever come south of Hiawassee again. You hear me?”

  “I won’t mister, I won’t,” the man said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

  The man left in a hurry, spinning tires and driving the truck faster than he needed to on the mountain roads. Rylik couldn’t have cared less. Maybe they’ll drive off a cliff, he thought.

  “How did you do that?” asked Jason, after the truck was out of sight.

  “They were all talk,” Rylik said, shrugging. “None of them could fight.”

  “No, I mean, how did you move that fast?” asked Jason, looking at Rylik sideways as he looked over the truck they had acquired. “You never even pulled your pistol. I’ve seen plenty of fights and been in a few myself. I always held my own, if you know what I mean. You moved faster than any man I’ve ever seen, and when you hit that one fella, it was as if you hit him with a sledgehammer. I heard his jaw break, and I was still a good way away, coming down the road.”

  Rylik looked over at his best friend’s father-in-law, who was now a good friend of his. He decided to tell him the truth. “I’m an Agent. We can do…things.”

  “Oh,” was all Jason said. “That explains it.” Many people knew about Agents. Facts, rumors, and half-truths were mixed together in the stories. Agents were superhumans whose bodies had been altered by the Corporation. What he had just witnessed proved a lot of the stories true.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  The next time it happened was a month later. This time Rylik killed someone. Several people, actually. So did Shmitty, Jason, and Lena. If Big Un could have gotten off his tether, he might have, too.

  Schmitty and Rylik had torn apart one of the larger generators so they could disconnect the motor from the alternator and voltage regulator. Their goal was to use the windmill or some other device to turn a shaft and produce energy. They were starting to run low on fuel, and they wanted to have it working long before they actually needed it. At least it was cleaner work than running pipe from the RV and the trailer to the waste lines up at the museum. Jason was up top keeping watch.

  Rylik’s head snapped up when he heard a man scream. Big Un dropped low and started growling. Someone had stepped on one of the bear traps hidden beside the road to keep people from sneaking up the mountain. He had no idea if it was a single person or someone in a group of men.

  Rylik drew his pistol and sprinted for the wood line. He shouted at Shmitty to get the women into a restroom right before he leaped the fence. Once he was in the woods, he circled around to the right, moving silently without thinking about it. In the distance, he saw movement. Several armed men, wearing hunter’s camouflage, were advancing on the visitor center.

  Rylik was easing forward to get behind a large tree when a shot rang out. He heard it hit the tree just above his head, and bark rained down on him. Frustrated that he wasn’t dressed in something other than jeans and his favorite red t-shirt, he spun, ducked low, and shot the man in the chest from 20 yards away. The man crumpled to the ground. Rylik dropped into the brush and crawled several yards to place another tree between him and the rest of the men.

  Looking around the tree, he spied another man just as the man saw him. The man’s hunting rifle barked, and Rylik felt a burn across his left shoulder. He quickly double tapped with his 1911, and the man’s face was no more. Pulling back behind the tree, he dropped to his knees and looked for the last man. He glanced at his shoulder and saw where the round had grazed him. Damn, a tear in my favorite UGA shirt, he thought. Damn!

  He heard several shots ring out from the direction of the visitor center. The sound caused the last man to turn away and look uphill. Rylik made his move, sprinting to another tree to get an easier shot. Two more rounds and the last man was dead. Rylik turned uphill and ran as hard as his enhanced physique would let him.

  He ran out of the woods and jumped the fence, landing 15 feet into the newly growing pasture. He rolled when he hit the ground, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and came up ready to fire. There were no targets left.

  Lena stood over a man in hunting clothes, her .380 in hand. She was near the restroom where two more men lay unmoving. She kicked the shotgun away from the nearest man’s outstretched hand. The other body was missing an entire shoulder. That had to be a shot from Jason with the 50-cal, thought Rylik. Big Un continued to bark and snarl, straining at his collar and cord. The puppy wanted a piece of them too.

  The restroom door opened, and Shmitty walked out, dragging a man almost as big as he was. He threw the body to the ground, its head at an unnatural angle. He looked at Rylik and shrugged. “I couldn’t take the chance a stray round would hit Ellen or her mom,” he said. They came out of the restroom with the other three puppies on leashes, visibly shaken but holding it together.

  Rylik looked deliberately up toward the observatory, waved, then gave a thumbs up. He turned toward Shmitty. “There’s three more dead in the woods. We need to bring them here, strip them down, take what we can, and pile them in the bobcat’s bucket. We’ll go down and find the one in the trap. I haven’t heard him scream in the last few minutes, so he must be dead too. We’ll take them down as far as the bobcat will go, then drag them across the highway and throw them in the ravine.”

  Rylik thought for a moment, then said, “We’ll take their vehicles and put them in strategic places on the road, so we can move them to block it when we need to. Then we’ll push some trees onto that path so it can’t be found from down below.”

  “We need to get that po
wer source working.” Shmitty nodded toward the disassembled generator. “We have solar power for the greenhouse, but we need to recharge the trail cameras and plug in my laptop. We’ll have a continuous video feed as long as we have a power source.”

  Rylik glanced over and saw Lena stripping one of the bodies. They would leave the underwear, but the hunting gear could come in handy in the future. Still shaking, Faith walked over to help her. Ellen mentioned the wash tub and walked toward the other restroom. You couldn’t waste anything in this Fallen World, except someone else’s dirty underwear.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Two weeks later, Rylik and Shmitty sat in the shade looking at their handy work. They had built a small paddle wheel out of scrap wood and placed it in the stream running from the spring. It was enough to create the energy needed to charge the trail camera batteries and the laptop. Some of the chickens scratched the ground around them.

  Rylik grinned at Lena and winked. She laughed, shaking her head. “If you two are done playing with your toys, you could give us a hand canning these tomatoes,” she said.

  Faith had packed several cases of quart-size mason jars and lids. Every year, she canned fresh produce from their garden in Clarkesville, and she had figured out how to make it work, there, with several large pots and the wood-burning grill. They had plenty of tomatoes, with more ripening each day.

  “I’ll give you a hand eating them,” Rylik countered, “but canning is not one of my skills. I lack the imprint. And I burned my hand the other day, helping you can squash.”

  “You really felt that?” Lena questioned with another smile.

  “I…” Rylik started to say something but stopped when he noticed a truck pull up to the first roadblock on the mountain road. “Hey, isn’t that the truck I gave Becky?”

  “Never saw it,” Shmitty said. “I was on overwatch, and it wasn’t within my view. A boy’s getting out though.”

  “Turn the volume up.” Rylik indicated the laptop.

  Shmitty turned up the sound, and they heard the boy yelling. He reached over and blew the horn several times, then continued to yell. The boy banged on the hood of the truck and blew the horn again. Finally, he reached into the truck, took out a shotgun and fired three shots into the air.

  “That’s a distress signal,” Faith said from over near the grill. “Hunters use it.”

  The boy yelled again, and Shmitty turned to Rylik and asked, “Did he just yell what I think he did?”

  “Let’s go,” Rylik said.

  Rylik and Shmitty jumped on their dirt bikes. It took several tries before Rylik’s cranked, but in no time, they were headed down the mountain, blowing blue smoke behind them as their bikes warmed up. They weaved in and out of the barriers and pulled up next to the boy who looked about 15.

  “What’s your problem, and why are you driving Becky’s truck?” Rylik asked.

  “She said you would know the truck, so that’s why I drove it,” the boy explained. “She’s my sister. She said you took it from a bad man named Willy.”

  “I did,” Rylik said. “When you see her, you tell her ol’ Willy got caught in a trap and won’t bother anyone ever again.”

  “You can tell her,” the boy said, remembering why he came. “We need you in town, sir. Becky’s joined the police, and they need you in Helen. Bad.”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Rylik said, raising his hands. “Who needs me and why?”

  “The whole town,” the boy explained. “There’s City Slickers trying to bust through the roadblock on the Cleveland side of town. They’re waiting until they get more people, then they’re planning to come through it. They say they get what they want, and they want Helen.”

  “Why me?” Rylik asked. “Why did Becky send you to find me?”

  “Becky didn’t,” the boy said. “The mayor sent me.”

  “But, why me?” Rylik asked again.

  “Why…you’re King of the Mountain, ain’t you?”

  * * * * *

  Kevin Steverson Bio

  Kevin Steverson is a retired veteran of the U.S. Army. He is a published songwriter as well as an author. He lives in the northeast Georgia foothills where he continues to refuse to shave ever again. Trim…maybe. Shave…never! When he is not on the road as a Tour Manager he can be found at home writing in one fashion or another.

  * * *

  Follow Kevin Online

  Website: www.kevinsteverson.com

  Instagram: kevin.steverson

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.steverson.9

  Twitter: @CallMeCatHead

  * * * * *

  A Smile for Napalm by Philip S. Bolger

  Lucia Frausto smiled. She smiled at strangers, at friends, at the council of Mankato. She’d grown used to wearing her smile, plastered across her bronze features, her teeth immaculately white despite the shortage of good dental supplies. Her healing factor kept her looking young, much younger than the 54 years she’d walked on this Earth; her dazzling smile suggesting, at a casual glance, she was another young, pretty woman without a care in the world. Lucia liked to be perceived that way.

  Her smile had different variants—one for when she saw an old friend, one for when she had to pretend she was enjoying a meeting she detested, one reserved only for her husband, Alan. She tried different versions—a smile to show gratitude, a smile to be flirty, a smile to show pride. She used her smiles as masks, ways to open doors.

  She hadn’t always been Lucia Frausto, though it was the name she’d had since birth. She’d held others—Teresa Reyes, Christina Thorpe, Giovanna Castellano, and of course, the Frost Dancer. She’d learned to smile when she’d been the Frost Dancer, many decades prior to assuming her role as Mayor of Mankato. At the time, it was taught to her as a tool. Smiling put people at ease. It helped them trust you, especially as a woman. Smiles were disarming, and disarmed people put up less resistance.

  The smile she wore on the morning the siege began was a typical smile for her council—a blend of happiness, pride in community, and general satisfaction. At least half of it was a lie, but the council didn’t need to know that. They had enough on their minds.

  There were 12 people plus her in the Mankato City Hall meeting room. In the dim candlelight, she could make out their faces clearly. She knew all of them. They were predictable, salt-of-the-earth types. Joanna Olmstead, the doctor. Greg Stein, the engineer. The three men representing the town militia, wearing their tattered camouflage. The only person missing was Father McClaren, one of the town’s spiritual leaders. Lucia assumed he was at his church. He preferred the company of refugees and the poor to that of the council, in part, she suspected, because it was her council.

  They looked to her for guidance, as they had every day since she rid the town of raiders nearly 10 years ago. Some looked to Lucia with respect. Some with barely-concealed fear. Some with envy. Lucia wasn’t concerned about their motives, as long as they obeyed.

  “In conclusion, Mayor Frausto,” the man said, hat in hand. “The city’s still struggling to keep everyone fed. Twenty years after the Fall, we’re still dealing with the consequences. The radiation, the infertile soil, it’s all rough, and it’s compounding. Each year, our crop yield goes down a little more and a few more fields become fallow, and if we keep taking in refugees, we’re going to stress our systems further. When winter comes, a lot of folks are gonna starve, unless we find new sources of rations.”

  Lucia nodded, once. She dropped her smile at such grim news, doing her best to affect a look of maternal care.

  Hard decisions to make, she thought.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sorensen,” she said, her voice carrying a hint of long distant Central Mexico. “It’s grim news, but we had to know. Lieutenant Griswold, what’s become of the security situation?”

  Hank Griswold, one of the militia’s representative, stood and saluted. He was dressed in the same camouflage mishmash as most of the town’s militia, though his pinned-on silver lieutenant’s
bars gave him a tiny air of authority. He usually wore a bus-driver style hat with a star pinned on it, but now he held it at his side.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to report that Mankato is safe. Our strategic ethanol reserves are low, but we have enough grain to keep the horses fed, and the troops are doing well. Our explosive stockpiles are untouched, and the ammunition plant continues to produce. Right now, there aren’t any major outside threats.”

  “What about the genetically modified crazies in the Twin Cities?” Greg Stein interjected. “Or the rumors of raiders crossing over from Albert Lea?”

  “No sightings, sir,” Griswold said. “There’s been no major activity in the wastes for a bit. The Twin Cities are still in ruins. There’s nothing bigger than a rat living there—and most of the rats are dead. We heard the rumors about the raiders, and our trackers found some fresh tire marks in the wastes, but nothing conclusive. No scavengers, or remnants of the megacorps. Best guess, sir, is that they’ve written off this whole area as destroyed.”

  Based on Sorensen’s food estimate, they’re not totally wrong, Lucia thought.

  “We don’t know, for sure, that there are still megacorps around,” said Doctor Olmstead. “Or any semblance of civilization. If there are, they’re far from here or well hidden. Correct me if I’m wrong, Lieutenant, but it seems to me that most of what you’ve encountered are ruins.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Griswold. “Nothing we’ve found around here is permanent. If there are any raiders, they’ve either moved on, or are moving much faster than our men can track. Nothing else around here is dangerous.”

  The lieutenant only understands threats he can shoot at, thought Lucia. Or, perhaps, he has a remarkably blasé approach to radiation.