"I'll have a truck come by here to pick this up in one hour. Wherever you are in your work when the truck gets here, that's where you stop. You got it?”
“Got it.”
“Do you have a forklift?"
“Of course, and I can run it too."
"Why am I not surprised?"
She stuck her hands in her pockets. “Not to seem like a greedy bitch or anything, but when do I get paid?"
Boss laughed at her directness. With the right training, a girl like this could be good on a team. She had the right attitude. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a single Krugerrand.
Her eyes lit up at the sight of the coin and she held out her hand. He placed it in the center of her palm and locked eyes with her.
"You don't lose this. Don't show it to anybody. And don't spend it anytime soon. Got it?"
She nodded enthusiastically. "I know how to keep secrets, dude. I got a stash and no one will see it."
"You do that, Marsha. I can’t afford people asking questions. As I said, this is a confidential operation. I expect you to maintain operational security. If you follow the rules, there could be more work for you in the future.”
She clearly liked the sound of that, although Boss wasn’t sure if it was the money that held her attention or the intrigue that she was contributing to a secret operation.
"Nice doing business with you. You know where to find me if you have something else."
"Appreciate it. Now remember – one hour. You’ll need to button all this up and make sure everything is cleaned up. Flush that thumb drive down the toilet and clear the memory on all the printers, and make sure there’s nothing in the trash. Shred everything."
Marsha gave him a weary thumbs-up and Boss headed out the door.
He double timed it over to the motor pool and spoke with a friend. Boss wouldn't waste a Krugerrand on this service but he did offer him a top-notch bottle of rye whiskey to transport the pallets of flyers to a special hangar. He had already arranged for a friend there to receive the pallets and keep them under wraps until they were ready to load on Gordon’s chopper.
Boss wanted this whole operation to commence quickly. The longer those flyers sat around base, the greater the likelihood that someone could find them. It wasn't like he would face serious repercussions for distributing the flyers but if they were discovered it might scuttle any further plans. Owen might put a guard on him or start having him followed.
He checked his watch again, then looked at the sky. The sun wasn't up yet, though the black was turning to gray and it would be light soon. He had time for another couple of miles before he had to be at work in the war room. He kicked up his pace to a steady run and burned through the cool morning air.
13
Despite Jim’s reservations, Gary, Debra, Will, and Gary’s daughter, Sara, made plans to travel to town one morning. Sara was doing a lot better after Randi gave her some tough love, basically telling her to snap out of it or crawl off to die somewhere. Her instability had been a drag on the family but she was back with a vengeance. Everyone processed grief in their own way and hers had been a hard way. She had to stare her own death in the face and choose to come back among the living.
In the days leading up to the trip, Debra used colorful yarn to tie small bundles of greens and herbs for trade. They were all about the same size, making them a consistent unit of barter. Gary and Will dredged through the odd bits of gear they’d accumulated from the skirmishes they’d had since coming to the valley. When they killed men in battle, they stripped the bodies of useful gear. It was not something anyone was proud of but there was no sense in leaving it there to ruin or be stolen by someone else. In this manner they had accumulated plastic bags of ammunition that didn’t fit their weapons. They had a few extra flashlights and some cheap knives they would take to the market with them. They intentionally chose not to take too much, wanting to feel out the market first.
They went to the effort to make a list of the specific items each person in their family wanted. It included those hygiene items they were running low on, diapers, and baby formula. They were also after seeds, vitamins, and hot sauce, an item Will was craving. They didn’t have high expectations of what they might find at the market but they wouldn’t know unless they went. Before stores came along, this was how it was done and here they were again.
They’d be riding in on horses instead of walking. The tribe as a whole had accumulated more horses over the winter, both through trading, spoils of skirmishes, and rescuing starving animals. They had a growing herd but Jim convinced them not to take too many to town. The valley tribe shouldn’t appear to have a surplus of animals. That might make them a target for thieves. After all, he reminded them, Buddy had been killed by folks wanting his horse for food. Not everyone saw the same thing in a horse anymore. While one man saw a ride, another saw a steak dinner.
They chose to ride double, the four of them taking just two horses. Debra filled an old bushel basket with her trade goods, making a strap of paracord that allowed her to carry it over her shoulder. She hoped it would allow her to carry her greens without mangling them.
Debra plied Gary with questions, trying to get an idea of what they might find there in town, but he was of little help. He hadn't paid enough attention to the vendor tables on his last trip into town, mostly because he was so concerned Jim was going to kill someone. He had no idea if it was the same vendors every time or a rotating assembly of desperate peddlers. They would have to see what awaited them when they got there.
Their ride in was the most relaxing activity the group had undertaken as a family since being driven from their neighborhood. The spring sky was robin’s egg blue and it lifted everyone's mood. The grass was greening up in sporadic tufts. The trees were sprouting buds and diminutive leaves. Birds were everywhere, their lives relatively unchanged by the strife of humankind. Chipmunks scurried erratically. The riders caught occasional glimpses of timid fawns, camouflaged by their spotted hides. Baby rabbits, smaller than softballs, scurried from behind clumps of grass, torn between curiosity and fear.
At the river crossing, the water ran high from spring showers and melted snow but was low enough to cross with no worries. This crossing was used long before cars came along. In a previous century, folks had rolled away the submerged rocks to create a relatively smooth lane beneath the water. It had probably been a pleasant task on a hot summer day.
Just beyond the crossing, where the paved road ran along the riverbank, was the wreckage of a previous battle. Bullet-riddled cars sat askew, tires in the ditch, or tangled together by crumpled bodywork. The very sight of it changed the mood of the group. For a few brief moments between the valley and town they had been able to forget that they were in a survival situation. That moment of euphoria was over.
Death was never far away. The reminders of its presence were constant. If they let their guard lapse it could be them dying on the road next time. If they didn’t work hard enough it could be them starving over the winter. If they didn’t plan sufficiently their family might be smaller come this time next year. Gary had heard the expression many times that dying was easy and living was hard. There was proof of that at every turn. There were more ways to live than there were to die.
“What happened here?" Debra asked, seeing the way Gary looked at the cars.
She’d heard stories about the various fights they’d gotten into but they were out of context for her. She’d never made this trip to town, never seen the sites where the battles took place.
Since he’d brought his family to Jim’s valley, Gary had done what he could to spare them from the ever-present carnage. To some extent it had worked, though the stories of death and sounds of gunfire were inescapable.
"There was a gunfight here. Men were killed. Some of them were good and some were the bad. There was a deputy killed here and it isn’t far from where Alice died, in that cornfield over there. That’s how this whole experience has been. You can’t enjoy a
beautiful day without hitting a reminder that things are far from perfect in the world."
"You have to find some way to enjoy life," Debra said. "If not, why stick around and live it?"
"That's the struggle I go through.” Gary sighed. “If you become so hardened that things like this don't bother you anymore, have you become so hardened that you can’t enjoy the good things?"
"Then tell yourself these cars are here because of an accident. Back when we were growing up there used to be cars laying down over steep hills all over the place. People wrecked them and never went back for them. When those wrecks first happened, I’m sure there were stories attached to them. Eventually everybody forgot the stories. Treat this the same way. There was a wreck and the car just hasn't been towed. Change the old story. Forget the old story."
Gary couldn't imagine he could actually convince himself of that. He couldn’t pull the rose-colored glasses over his eyes and pretend bad things didn’t happen. Wasn’t that a disservice to the people who had been lost? Didn’t they deserve to be remembered? If he tried to lie to himself, tried to rewrite the narrative, his brain would speak up and remind him of the truth.
“I’ve noticed your friend Jim is getting that way,” Debra said.
“What way?” Immersed in his own thoughts, Gary had lost track of where the conversation had left off.
“He’s allowing himself to become so hardened that he struggles to let the good emotions in. The light isn’t reaching him anymore.”
It was an interesting way to think of it, that the light wasn’t reaching Jim anymore. It was an apt description of the darkness that ruled his personality lately. Gone was the sarcastic smartass, gone was the joking. Jim was angry. He was a smoldering firework that had not yet exploded but everyone was afraid to get close to.
“He probably struggles with that every day,” Gary finally said.
Debra frowned. “He’s losing the fight.”
“He might be surrendering the fight,” Gary countered. “I think he sees it as the only way he can save his family. He had to become that way so they don’t have to.”
“I never considered that,” Debra said.
“It’s a sacrifice people sometimes have to make in hard times. If you let yourself become the kind of person it takes to survive, you can become unreachable. You win but at a very high cost.”
“That makes me very sad for him.”
“Me too, and I don’t want to go down the same road. I worry about that a lot.”
Debra shook her head. “It won’t happen to you. You’re different.”
“How am I different?” Gary asked. “I’d really like to know. It might make me slightly less worried about what I’m becoming.”
“I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t make sense to you. I know it, though. I know it like I know my children. I know it like I know the back of my hand. You’re not Jim and you’ll never be Jim. You’re made different.”
Gary thought about that. He didn’t know where to put that information. Was that good? Was it bad? Was it a judgment against him or praise for him? Going beyond his own selfish concerns, what did it say about his friend? What did it foretell for his family?
“You ready?” Debra asked, seeing no more reason to stand around at the scene of bad memories and past history.
“There will be more of it,” Gary said.
“I expect there will be.”
Five minutes of slow riding brought them to the side access to the superstore parking lot. Gary and Will had both been here before but Debra and Sara had not. They’d gotten used to seeing those stores a particular way. They were always open, always illuminated, things were always orderly. None of that was the case now.
Plate glass windows, broken during periods of violence, were patched with plywood and signs ripped from other storefronts. Cars were overturned and pointing in all directions, bullet holes riddling their sheet metal, glass shattered. Trash that would not burn was scattered everywhere.
“It reminds me of the pictures you see of what the Woodstock festival looked like after all the people left,” Sara said.
Debra nodded. “It does.”
Gary reined his horse to a stop and told his family the story, how a few corrupt cops had walked off the job and built a small army. “This was their base. They fortified it with cars and terrorized people who went by. This is where Hugh came from and where Alice died.”
"Why are there so many cars here?" Sara asked.
"Most of them probably came off the highway," Gary said. “They were driving along and got low on gas. They pulled in here thinking they could fill up. When there was no gas available some of them chose to park their cars here."
"What happened to the people?" Sara asked.
"Who knows? The entire country is littered with vehicles like this now. The road back from Richmond was like this. That's why the magnitude of this disaster is hard to comprehend, and why the recovery will be so difficult. Whenever I hear people say we’ll be back to normal soon, scenes like this are what I remember. Even if the power comes back on, how many folks don't have a car or a home anymore? Will insurance companies pay for this or will they all be bankrupted by the scale of it? If they don’t pay to rebuild people’s damaged homes, what will people do? The nuts and bolts details of what’s required to get this country back on its feet are overwhelming."
Debra nudged their horse into motion. "Let's do what we came here for."
Gary held the reins but his mind was elsewhere. Perhaps she was right. Maybe he thought about it too much. Had he let the scale of it overwhelm him when he just needed to focus on the immediate future? People like he and Jim—the prepared folks all around the nation—had been validated. Although they had been singing about infrastructure vulnerabilities and the public’s general lack of preparedness for years, what good had it done? Were they expecting someone to pat them on the back and congratulate them?
That wasn't going to happen. There was no prize for being right. The reward for being right was misery, suffering, and loss, which was exactly the same prize you got for being wrong. It may have been lessened a bit because of the preparation they’d made but that didn’t spare them from the suffering. There was no mercy.
At the farthest end of the parking lot near the gas pumps was the vendor area. The metal canopy covering the pumps provided the vendors some protection from the sun or rain. The size of the event had grown since the last time Gary, Randi, and Jim came through. The better weather might have put people in a trading mood, or at least made them want to get out of the house.
Gary halted his horse and told Will to hold up. “Slide off, Debra.”
“Here?”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “We’re going to leave the horses here at this restaurant.”
Seeing her mother dismount, Sara did the same and asked, “Will the horses be safe here?”
“Will is going to stay and watch them,” Gary said.
“Will he be safe?” Sara asked.
“As safe as any of the rest of us.”
“I’ll be fine,” Will assured her.
“Will, I want you in front of the restaurant there on that grassy patch. Tie the horses off to one of those trees so you can give your full attention to your surroundings. Stay where we can see you. You’re covering us and we’re covering you. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Check your weapon,” Gary said. “Round in the chamber, ready to go. Same for the rest of you.”
Everyone did as he asked. They’d all been excited about going to the market until they were confronted with Gary’s serious demeanor. He acted like they were going to an open-air bazaar in a war zone. The idea that this might be a relaxing outing had fallen by the wayside.
With their weapons dealt with, everyone made certain they had the trade goods they were willing to part with. Sara was carrying the list of things they were searching for. Will collected the reins and led the horses to a patch of overgrown grass directly in front of a chain rest
aurant.
“Let’s go,” Gary said, starting off toward the gas pumps.
Sara and Debra fell in behind him. They walked on the road but the surface crunched beneath their feet in a way it hadn’t before the collapse. The highway department and vehicle traffic used to keep the roadways relatively clean but they were strewn with clutter now. Broken glass and spent shell casings ground beneath their feet. Rotting paper, discarded packaging, and empty cans aggregated against the curbs. Tattered shopping bags were caught in the trees and fluttered like bullet-riddled battle flags.
Nearing the gas pumps, Gary could see that the space beneath the metal canopy was fairly packed with vendors. There were tarps and blankets thrown out on the ground displaying a scant assortment of items the vendors hoped might hold some value. Others dispensed with the formality of any sort of ground cloth and simply lined up their goods on the dirty pavement, hoping they might catch the eye of someone wanting to trade.
Other vendors had elaborate booths like those set up by professional flea marketers. They built crude tables of cinderblocks, pallets, and scrap lumber. They sat on overturned buckets, faded camping chairs, or directly on the ground. Some booths had crude signs listing items they were needing or items they had for sale but hadn’t brought with them to market. One sign advertised that the vendor was wanting to trade eggs for shotgun shells. Another promised live chickens or salt bacon for vials of insulin.
All eyes were on Gary and his family as they approached. Conversation between the vendors and the scattered customers faded.
“Why are they staring?” Sara asked.
“Maybe it’s our guns,” Debra suggested.
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