Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (226 page)

***

With the sun almost completely setting behind Alex, the tiny cluster of buildings in the distance signaled the final few hundred yards back into the community. But before he passed through the community’s checkpoint he made a detour to the dead forest.

Alex stepped over logs and crunched the smaller twigs under his feet. The dead cousins of the lone tree that he’d seen on his hunt were clustered together here in a single mass grave. Whatever life was abundant here had disappeared long ago, and with it the sustenance that Alex used to survive on. Now, he had to trek farther and farther away from the community in order to hunt what fresh game was still alive. And he wasn’t sure how much longer that was going to be.

He walked all the way through the forest to the other end and started digging at the base of the biggest tree trunk he could find. The goliath he had settled on was at least six feet wide, and despite having no nutrients left in the soil beneath its roots, it still gave a solid thud when Alex thumped the trunk with his knuckles. He tossed the two rifles in the hole and covered it up. He pulled his knife from his belt and carved two scratches into the bark.

Alex checked the perimeter of the forest before exiting, then headed down toward the cul-de-sac where the community’s citizens’ housing was located. He stopped at the back of one of the houses and knocked on the door. The door cracked open, and Alex was greeted with a sliver of Daniel Harper’s eye staring back at him.

“You alone?” Harper asked.

Alex pushed the door open and stepped inside. “No, I brought a few sentries with me.” Harper quickly shut and locked the door as Alex made his way to the kitchen. The counter rattled from the weight of the pack when Alex slung it off his shoulder. He unpacked a quarter of the meat and handed it to Harper.

“How far did you have to go this time?” Harper asked, grabbing a knife out of the sink.

“Why don’t you keep your utensils in drawers like normal people?” Alex asked, peering into the sink filled with knives, forks, and spoons.

“What? They’re clean. So how far?”

“Forty miles.”

Harper almost dropped the deer meat onto the floor. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve got to get the rest of this to town before the sun goes down. The sentries are getting stricter with curfew.”

“All right. I’ll get this canned and handed out to everyone by tomorrow.”

“Tell everyone to be careful. We’re overdue for a blood sampling.”

“Will do. Thanks, Alex.”

Alex slipped out the back and headed toward the community’s official entrance, where he was greeted by the same thick-skulled, wide-jawed, mindless sentries every time he came back from a hunt. Each of them was weighed down with Kevlar and helmets and armed with fully automatic weapons, which thankfully hadn’t been fired in quite some time. And Alex wanted it to stay that way.

Alex extended his hunting papers, and the sentry ripped the pack off of Alex’s back and dumped the contents onto a makeshift table. The sentry’s partner then manhandled Alex in a pat-down.

The mechanical motions of the security check was a ritual he’d grown accustomed to. The time of his absence was recorded into the Soil Coalition database, the meat was weighed, the rifle was locked up, the hunting knife was seized, and the sentries checked every item he had to ensure nothing more nor less had been brought back with him.

The sentry shoved Alex’s pack and hunting papers into his chest with a force that made him stumble backwards. “Drop the meat off at the meal station and return to your home immediately.”

Alex’s boot sank deep into the community’s main street, which was nothing more than a long stretch of muddy filth. A few of the community members hurried over to Alex, their eyes glued to the pack of food on his back.

“Get anything, Alex?”

“Yeah, did you have any luck out there?”

“You were gone a long time.”

If Alex would let them, they would eat the deer meat in the back of his pack raw. The responsibility of providing fresh meat for the forty-plus community members rested on his shoulders, and even though the bodies of the people around him were thin, he still couldn’t help but feel their weight starting to wear him down.

“Tracked a buck north of here, just south of the Nebraska line,” Alex answered then leaned in close. “Harper will be making some deliveries tomorrow.”

Their bony hands gripped Alex’s lean arms and shoulders. The thankfulness in their eyes and touch that helped fill him with purpose lingered on him until it was replaced by the forceful hands of the sentries at the meal station that seized every last ounce of meat, which would be distributed evenly to all communities across the state of Kansas. His community members would be lucky if they saw three pounds of that deer.

It was the Soil Coalition’s belief that each citizen had to contribute to the greater good of feeding the nation. The famine brought on by GMO-24 had taken the lives of over a third of the country’s population and decimated whatever soil its seeds found their roots in, leaving nothing but the dry ash that Alex had spent the past two days trekking through.

Aside from the meal station, the only other community buildings were the water unit, medical center, communication building, trade post, work station, the community hall, and the sentry housing. Each was constructed and maintained with the same care and efficiency of a tyrant keeping his people alive only to feed on them once he was hungry.

The only source of power a community had rested in its generators, which kept the lights on in the sentries’ quarters, refrigerated what food needed to remain cold, and provided any electricity needed to keep the community work stations operational. Aside from those three buildings, the rest of the community was living in the 1800s.

The leaning walls and sagging roofs of shacks mirrored the faces and bodies of everyone in town, most of whom were just getting out of the wax factory, scuttling back to their homes before curfew. Everyone wore the same mass-produced rags from some community in the west. Each community had a separate discipline, providing a desired product that was distributed to the rest of the Coalition. Their discipline was candles.

The skeletons that Alex passed walked with a limp and a hunch from the perpetual curl of their bodies clawing at the hunger in their stomachs. Movements were slow, groggy, disoriented. The hollowed eyes shielded minds too tired to think beyond the prospect of their next meal.

Between the narrow alleyways of the buildings that Alex passed on his way home, he could see the quick movements of a shadow. The shadow stayed in step with him, and when Alex stopped to tie the loose laces flopping around on the top of his boot, he heard the rapid succession of feet sprinting toward him.

“Got you!” Meeko yelled.

But before Meeko could pounce, Alex rolled forward, sending Meeko face-first into a pile of mud. The young boy lifted his face and wiped away the thick clumps of earth covering his eyes. Alex extended his hand to help him up. “If you’re going to surprise someone, kid, you need to make sure you make yourself known after you’ve gotten hold of them. Giving them time to move out of the way isn’t a smart call.”

“But I almost got you,” Meeko replied.

“Almost doesn’t pay the bills, kid.”

Alex used what he determined was the cleanest part of his shirt to help wipe the mud from Meeko’s face to where the boy could at least see, and the two of them walked home. The little street rat was distributed to Alex’s community by the Soil Coalition when the communities were first established three years ago. Alex caught him trying to sneak an extra ration card out of a sentry’s pocket. He immediately liked the kid.

“So did you get anything?” Meeko asked.

“It’ll be venison for dinner tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Deer, kid. It’s deer.”

The cul-de-sac where the community members lived were comprised of fifteen small two-bedroom homes. Each home housed no more than four individuals and no fewer than two. Some of them were families by blood, most by association.

Once Alex and Meeko made it to the top of the hill, Alex gave Meeko a playful shove, and the two stopped, both bending their knees slightly, each eyeing the center house with its two front windows shuttered closed.

“Same bet as last time?” Alex asked, his muscles twitching in anticipation for the race.

“Double or nothing,” Meeko answered.

“That’s bold. You think you have enough gas in the tank?”

“Eat my dust, old man!”

Dirt kicked up through the air as Meeko got the head start. The fatigue from earlier lifted as Alex chased him and caught up with Meeko halfway to the front door. He could feel Meeko’s small hands smack the side of his leg, attempting to push him off kilter, but Alex was too big for the boy.

The two were neck and neck down the final stretch, both reaching their hands out to touch the door handle first. Just before they reached the front steps, Alex took two leaping strides and beat Meeko by only a few feet.

The two bent over, panting, trying to catch their breath. Meeko threw a punch into Alex’s arm. “C’mon. Can’t you just let me win once?”

“What? You think I should be taking it easy on you? I’m doing you a favor.”

“How is beating me every time a favor?”

“Because when you do beat me, you’ll know that I didn’t let up. It’ll be more gratifying for you.”

Meeko rolled his eyes and twisted the doorknob. “It would be gratifying not to have to give you what chocolate I have left.”

“Hey. A bet’s a bet.”

Alex rested his pack against the wall next to the front door, and Meeko disappeared into his room. The light from the oil lamps in the house cast the front living room with an orange glow, which included Warren, who seemed to have become a growth on the chair he was always sitting in.

“How’d it go?” Warren asked, not looking up from the book he was reading.

Alex looked down the hallway to Meeko’s room, making sure he was still back there. He took a step onto the living room floor, and Warren dropped the book onto his lap with a smack. Alex froze.

“Really?” Warren asked.

“What?”

“Shoes, Alex! How many times have I asked the two of you to take your boots off? It’s like living with farm animals.”

Pig noises squealed from Meeko’s room on cue.

“I will eat that boy,” Warren replied with raised eyebrows.

“I heard that!” Meeko said, his voice slightly muffled behind his closed bedroom door.

“I know!” Warren shouted back, returning to his book. “I don’t even know why you keep that punk around. He doesn’t do anything but make my life a living hell. The latrine sits right behind the house, so it’s bad enough I have to smell shit when I’m here, let alone hear the nonsense that comes out of that boy’s mouth.”

Alex tossed his boots next to his pack and headed into the kitchen. The cabinet Alex opened, just like the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen, was completely empty. But he reached over the second shelf along the side wall. His fingers wiggled a loosely fitted piece of wood on the back corner. Alex pulled the wood out with his fingertips and grabbed the key hiding behind it.

“C’mon,” Alex said. “It’s inventory time.”

Warren snapped the book shut and scooted off his chair. He pushed his glasses up to the top of his head then slammed the book into Alex’s chest, passing him on the way to the garage.

“Your willingness to help is always appreciated,” Alex said.

Meeko came out of his room reluctantly, holding two chocolate squares in his palm. “Here.”

Alex pocketed one, then tossed the other back to Meeko. He winked and Meeko smiled. “You are getting faster.”

Warren was already in the garage lighting the oil lamps when Alex joined him. The floor seemed slightly rippled in the lamplight, like a part of it had been scrunched up. Warren moved to the corner of the garage then stopped to look back at Alex. “I can’t do it when you’re standing on it.”

Alex jumped back into the hallway, and Warren bent over and worked the corner until he had a good grip on the flooring. He walked backwards, bringing up a thin layer of plastic that crinkled and curled from Warren rolling it up.

Once the top layer was removed, it revealed the garage’s true floor and a small latch door. Alex tossed Warren the key, and he opened the lock. The hinges on the latch door creaked as Warren opened it. His foot found the first rung of the ladder, and he began his descent. A slight metal thumping echoed until Warren made it all the way down. Once the thumping stopped, Alex made his way down.

The lamp Warren was finally able to light cast its glow onto a narrow hallway that extended back under the house. Both of them shuffled sideways to squeeze through.

“Christ, you’d think you could have made it a little bigger,” Warren said.

“It wasn’t built for comfort, Warren.”

The tiny hallway finally ended and opened up into a much larger twelve by twelve foot room. Just before Warren reached it, Alex grabbed his collar and pulled him backwards.

“Be… careful,” Alex said.

Alex released him, and Warren elbowed Alex’s ribs. “I didn’t forget.” Warren bent down and slowly removed a pin from the side of the wall at ankle height. A thin, translucent wire ran the width of the hallway, then ran into the room, where a pack of C-4 explosive was wired to bring the whole place down on any intruder’s head.