American Apocalypse Wastelands (10 page)

“What about computer people?” Ninja asked.

We all grinned. Most adolescent males were in heat all the time. With Ninja it was a close race between women and online gaming. He hadn't been getting either one with any regularity lately, if at all.

“Yeah, them too, Ninja.”

Well, he was back to being a happy camper with that news.

“What I am hoping for are creators, not destroyers. Finding someone who will raid a farmer's corn is not going to be a problem. Finding people who can grow, store, and sell corn at a fair price will be.”

“Teachers, not demagogues,” Night added.

“Exactly.”

“Once we find them, Max, then what? Do we invite them to dinner and let everyone take a look at them?”

“I don't know, Gardener. Probably we will all vote on inviting them into our clan.”

Ninja and Night liked this. They understood clan recruitment policies.

“So, Max, when we get to our promised land, what do you see our roles being?” Whenever Night opened a sentence with
So
, I knew she wanted more than a casual reply. It was a good question, too.

“I don't know, Night. What do you want to be?”

Damn
, I had not thought this out at all. If we created or ended up running a small town, well, then Night and I would be like minor nobility. We could have kids to keep her happy, and I would still get to kick ass!

Night frowned and paused. She was thinking this out carefully. “I'm not really interested in killing people . . . but I like figuring out what they plan on doing. I guess that would make me, oh, the S2?”

Huh?
I didn't know what an S2 was, but Max sure did. They were grinning at each other. Whatever it was, she was now it.

“How about you, Ninja? What you want to be?”

Ninja did not even hesitate. “Head of IT. Computer king!”

Yeah, that made sense. Who was left? Me. I started thinking furiously. What was the socially acceptable job description for gunslinger?

Max looked at me and grinned. “Gardener, we already know your answer.”

“We do? What would that be?”

They all answered at once: “Chief of police!”

I liked that. “Yeah. Except I want to be called Marshal.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We talked for a bit more. Then Max figured we might as well make camp for the night. We started into the usual routine and even had extra time to do odds and ends, like maintenance on our equipment.

When it grew dark Max called me over. He didn't say anything other than “Follow me.” We went to the far side of the mound. An old SUV had been left there. The vegetation was reclaiming it but it was still recognizable. Max climbed onto the hood and extended his hand to me.

“I would try the roof but I don't think it will hold.”

I looked at him quizzically.

“Just look around. Scan the horizon.”

I did. There were lights in a handful of houses off in the distance. Not far from them, a few miles off to the right, it looked like a cluster of businesses still had power and a reason to be open.

“I don't get it, Max. All I see is darkness with a few buildings lit up east of us.”

“Right. Happy Fourth of July.” Then he jumped down off the truck and headed back to camp.

We moved out the next morning. Every morning before we shouldered the packs and stepped out, Max gave us a five-minute brief on how much distance he wanted to cover, what we would pass through—open country or built-up areas—and often what he had noticed in us the previous day that he thought needed improvement.

Today was different in that we had literally hit the end of the trail. We had run out of county-maintained asphalt or gravel a while back and had started to follow a mix of power line clearings and local paths that led in the right direction.

The utility clearings had trails. People used to hunt and run dirt bikes along them, and we saw signs that they still did. For the first time, we came across tire tracks from ATVs and four-wheel drives. Besides hunting, someone had been back here dropping trees for firewood.

Max cautioned us about hunters. We had passed a fairly fresh gut pile the previous day. “I doubt if the dumb-asses who used to shoot anything that moved still hunt around here. Whoever is hunting here now is probably good at it. Remember, if they're hunting, they are probably in camo and carrying a rifle. That means they out range us. If you're in shotgun range and they point the barrel at you, take them. If they are in a stand, and you see them first, freeze and fade us. We'll scope them and see what we see. Last thing I want to do is shoot Billy Bob by mistake.”

Who gives a shit if Billy Bob doesn't come back?
I thought. But I realized the point Max was making. Billy Bob might have a bunch of cousins. Why stir up unnecessary trouble?

Max told us we were going to change our tactics. “I want to walk the edges of the woods or follow the streambeds,
which are usually wooded, if we need to cross open fields. We'll follow the power lines when we can, staying to the edge of the tree line. I want to minimize our time out in the open. In three more days we should be at our pickup point. Any questions?”

Night asked him, “This farm has showers, right?” She had asked the same question the previous day.

“Yep. You can even be first in.”

She grinned. Myself? I had visions of sharing that shower.

Being off the asphalt was a lot better in some ways. Less heat, I noticed. But in other ways it wasn't. Where the bikes had torn up the trail, you had to be more careful with your footing, especially when you got tired. I didn't want to be the one to twist an ankle and delay Night from getting to her shower.

About two hours later we faded into the woods when we heard the whine of motorcycles coming up fast. We were on the power lines so I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me were the riders—just a couple of teenagers racing along the path, going way too fast and enjoying the hell out of it. One of them had a girl on the back wearing a visorless helmet. Her grin was delightful, even from a distance.

It was a bit surreal seeing them, a reminder that there was still a world out there that lived, at least partly, in the old reality.

We weren't clicking off the miles. The main reason was that we had to freeze and fade three or four times a day. We did it for light planes, helicopters, bikers, and Movers that we didn't want to deal with. Plus, we moved with the cover. Not a lot of straight paths to follow.

We learned the rudiments of land navigation using a compass. Ninja turned out to be a natural at it. We also learned the correct way to walk a hill line or rise. Basically, it came down to not silhouetting yourself. That part was easy. Online gaming had been good training for some of this stuff.

Days ago I had asked Max, “Why didn't we bring a GPS?”

His reply made sense. “Because I didn't want to raise a bunch of tech cripples.”

It was the same reason none of us had cell phones. With cell phones you had the added bonus of becoming a beacon for trackers. I knew Ninja still had his iPod in the hope that someday he could put a charge on it. He'd have to be somewhere safe enough that he could relax enough to listen to it.

The Burners had a point. What use were half the electronics we owned other than being delivery systems for addictions to that all-consuming product?

 

We moved on. The next three days were rather uneventful. On the third day we started running parallel to a county highway.

The biggest excitement came when I disturbed a water moccasin that was sunning itself on a rock in a creek bed. It scared the living crap out of me. I was lucky. It decided not to be aggressive and faded back into the water. They can be mean. I have thrown rocks at them to chase them away and had them decide to chase me away. They usually won, unless I was feeling especially ornery. I really hate snakes.

Our pickup place was an abandoned gas station off the same county road we had been paralleling for the last day. We had camped within half a mile of it the night before.

Max disappeared around 0400 hours to take a look at the place. Before he left he told us what it looked like, how we would approach it, and where we would meet if we had to run. I hoped we wouldn't have to. I was really looking forward to that shower.

Tommy, Max's buddy from the marines, was supposed to be there every morning at 0630 for the next week. He would chalk a X on the wall of the gas station if he had been by. A circle meant go away and find a way to contact him.

We came up behind the gas station about an hour early. There was a little patch of brush and trees about a hundred yards from the station. We would stay there while Max went to wait for Tommy. We sat around, not speaking, watching the sun come up. Before he left, Max gave me the Barrett.

“Hopefully, we won't need it,” I told him.

“Better not,” Night answered for him, “or we are checking into a motel for the night.” I was beginning to think the woman had a shower fetish.

About forty-five minutes later we saw an old pickup truck with a shell on the back pull in. I recognized the truck. It was Tommy's, and it looked like he was alone. Then Max whistled. I sent the others in while I broke down the Barrett and wrapped it up. No point in advertising that we had quality toys.

Everyone was in the truck by the time I got there: Max in front, Night and Ninja in the back. I jumped in back
and Tommy pulled slowly away. His muffler had gotten worse since the last time I'd ridden with him.

Once he hit the county road, he slid open the back window and yelled over his shoulder, “Damn, you sure got uglier. I didn't think that was possible.”

I flipped him off. “Fix your muffler, Billy Bob!”

He grinned. “Yeah, maybe I will when they start making parts again.” He turned back to say something to Max, and I stretched out in the truck bed, elbowing Ninja to make space, and tried to fall asleep.

Our arrival was uneventful. Nothing much had changed since the last time I had been here. Tommy's kids came out to meet us. It was kind of cool to see them again. Not only did they remember me, but they also seemed happy to see me, in that shy way little kids have. We did the introduction thing and went up to his house to catch up on things.

To my delight, there was my old good nurse, Donna, who had been babysitting the kids, putting breakfast on the table. Real coffee, pancakes, and eggs. Syrup, too! My sweet tooth went into overdrive. I was really wolfing them down when it registered that the table had gone quiet.

I looked up from my plate and saw everyone grinning at me. “What?” I asked. Not waiting for an answer, I went back to eating and they went back to talking.

Night slipped into the kitchen to talk to Donna. She came back, grabbed her pack and went upstairs without looking back. I was torn for a second. What to do: Eat pancakes with syrup or join Night for a shower?

The pancakes won.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I tuned back in when Tommy started talking about what was going on around the new homestead. He was having problems. I listened for a bit and realized that Tommy couldn't handle his neighbors.

Then again, from the sound of it, neither could anyone else in town. Oh, there were exceptions. Apparently there were a couple of guys in town who had been let go from the army when they did the great downsize.

I didn't quite understand what he was saying here. Something about it not just being them; it was the family network they were born into. Apparently they had a shitload of homicidal kinfolk that they could call upon somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Or nearby trailer parks. Or the next town.

Yet it didn't ring true. If so, where were they? I didn't hear any mention of these kinfolk actually being spotted. I could picture them easily enough: white trash tweaker heads who needed to call going to a wedding by its real name—a family reunion.

I had run across a few of those peckerheads in my time. Never any obvious muscle to them, but, just like Juan from tortilla land, they could work all day. Forget fist fighting with them. You had to kill them. They were smart in a sly way. If prison or drugs didn't get them, then the Lord did. We got along well together the few times I had to hang with them. Usually it was because Mother had landed us in a neighborhood infested with them.

Tommy's neighbors, the McKinleys, were trying to fill the power vacuum left by the resignation of the local police. Funny how if you didn't pay them and provide health benefits, the police just didn't want to die protecting your F-150 from part strippers.

The evil McKinleys consisted of Ma, Pa, and two boys. One boy was a bit “slow” and the other was a nut job with issues. Supposedly he was married, but his wife had fled with their three kids two months ago. So the boys were living at home, probably back in the same rooms they had grown up in. I wouldn't be surprised if they had the same posters on the wall. My guess was Nut Job had one of Pamela Anderson. She was probably still considered hot around here.

The family also had heavy equipment that still worked. The old man was the only way people got snow removed from the side roads and the main road in town. There were locals with plows on their trucks or tractors. As long as they stuck to their driveways and service roads, then the McKinley family left them alone.

But try to plow a road in what Pa McKinley called “the Franchise” and you would come out one morning and find your vehicle didn't run anymore. Push the issue and
somebody would find your body slumped over the wheel. They only had to go that far once. It was enough.

The McKinleys got their franchise because folks couldn't be sure the county and state would show up anymore. The county crews would still plow, but they wanted cash or something of equal value before they showed up. Little towns with out-of-the-way roads were especially vulnerable to this. Tommy's little town had had all of its snow removing equipment repossessed three years ago.