TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story (16 page)

If the woman with the white flag was a ruse he'd expected her to simply disappear into the trees rather than deliver such coveted and deadly firepower to her enemies. But she had returned.

"Why do you want in?" Beacon asked peaking over the palisade.

"I'm hungry and everybody went off and left me."

Beacon got a small bota bag and poured a quarter of a bottle of vodka from the Settlement's trade goods in it. Then he threw the bag over the palisade. While the woman drank greedily from the bota bag he threw an old clothesline rope over the wall.

"More!" she demanded after sucking the bota dry.

"Tie the guns and the bota to the rope," he said adding, "no guns no vodka."

After she'd given up the Tommy guns, backpack and messenger bag while sucking the bota dry twice he started extracting information. The messenger bag was full of loaded 30 round stick magazines, the backpack was full of loaded 50 round drum magazines and the woman was loaded with of vodka.

Alcohol was almost impossible to come by in the post-apocalyptic world since brewing required equipment, supplies and being in one place. From the looks of it she'd been a long time without enough to eat much less booze. Any resistance to the effects of alcohol would have worn off long ago. Figuring she was now too drunk to lie effectively Beacon began asking her detailed questions.

She said the three fat dead men had been part of a large outlaw motorcycle gang that raided a Thompson machine gun collector's home shortly after The Blowup. The collector put up a fight. The three had been the only survivors.

According to her the three decided raiding was too dangerous to do in person so using the collector's guns they'd rounded up a bunch of starving survivors, including the woman and made them, raid whatever survivor camps they found.

The modus operandi was always the same. Raids were planned by the three bikers, led by a few trusted sub-lieutenants and carried out by the vast mass of semi-armed survivors they swept up as the moved across the countryside like a swarm of locusts destroying the remnants of civilization everywhere they went.

The three gang members kept close control of the group's guns and ammo. Only long guns and small amounts of ammo were issued just prior to attacks. Possession of a pistol by any but the favored few was a capital crime with the sentence carried out at once. Beacon surmised that the three feared assassination but didn't interrupt the woman's account.

She pulled back her hair to show a scar on her neck where it joined her shoulder while saying she'd been with the Blue Head group the first time it raided the Sanctuary Settlement.

"Looks like ya' missed that shot" Old Bill hissed in Beacon's ear.

"I was kind'a rushed at the time" Beacon replied curtly.

Her description of the attack meshed well with Beacon's recollection. In the evening the Blue Head leaders; Blue Head, Blue Beard and Blue Balls, they were known to their peasant followers, according to the woman, had infiltrated the swarm of starving survivors to a point just over the hill from the circled vehicles of the Sanctuary Settlement and waited for dark as usual.

Then, in the middle of the night, each of the tattooed blue leaders took a contingent of cannon fodder over the hill to wait for the attack time. The woman said the Blue Head leaders had gold watches and plenty to eat. "While their minions slowly starved." Beacon added silently. At midnight, as usual, they threatened to cut the tongue out of anyone who yelled and sent their troops forward.

She said they'd been surprised by Beacon's rifle fire, but to retreat before the whistles blew earned an automatic death sentence. Usually, she said, when they attacked in the middle of the night everyone in the targeted camps was asleep. Old Bill and Beacon turned to look meaningfully into the eyes of Maggie and the Counsel of Crones who'd edged up close to hear everything the woman had to say.

The Blue Head woman had been among one of the platoons to attack that night and she had been wounded as she tried to run between two SUVs. Too scared to advance or retreat she'd laid on the ground bleeding until the whistles sounded before running off with what was left of the attack force.

The Blue Head swarm had taken terrible losses that night and the leaders had sworn revenge, but it had taken them quite a while to build their forces back up again to a size capable of taking on such a formable opponent as the Settlement.

Beacon guided her into talking about the latest attack as he threw the partly refilled bota of vodka back over the stockade wall yet again.

"We were heading east when we ran into this castle," she said, "it was just too much for us. I mean they had stone walls and towers and an iron gate with a sign -- DDL…something and moats and everything."

"Blue Head said we'd wait in the forest and see if we could sneak in that night, but they had horse patrols out that spotted us and raised the alarm. Then a bunch of the castle people showed up on the walls and covered the horsemen while they herded all their horses and cows and goats and pigs and stuff inside and closed the gate," indignantly she added, "they didn't leave nothin' outside for us."

"Even Blue Head said we'd never get in there but we were running out of food and he had to do something or people would start deserting so we headed back here. That's when we ran into Colonel Darkin's army," she slurred.

"Army, what army?"

"More," she slurred trying to fling the bota bag back over the wall and failing miserably.

"Tell me about the army or it's no more vodka for you."

"OK, OK! There was a bunch of army guys at the bottom of the valley headin' up towards the castle an they had uniforms an a cannon and everything!"

"What kind of cannon?"

"A great big one! They couldn't move it much 'cause it was heavy an they didn't have any trucks or horses or nothin' to pull it with. More!"

"Tell me more about the army and the cannon."

"They're all the way down at the bottom of the valley an they'll never get up to the castle 'cause the bridge is out an there's cliffs an stuff an they don't have any food either."

"How do you know they don't have any food?"

"We tried to trade'em some girls for food but Colonel Darkin said no 'cause he's a mean man. An then they caught some of our guys tryin' to rob some food an started shootin' at us. If they'd a'had food they'd a'traded 'cause them girls was pretty."

"How many horses do they have?"

"Horses? We eat horses, but they didn't have none and they needed'em

'cause horses would'a helped'em 'cause somebody cut down all the trees across the road for miles and there's landslides too."

"How many men?"

"I don't know, a hundred, maybe two hundred. You promised."

Beacon lowered the quarter full bota bag down to her. "And then you came here?"

"Yeah, we were supposed to wait in the trees until midnight like always, but somebody saw some of our advance people and started shooting. That's when Blue Head and Blue Balls got into it. Blue Balls said we'd never get inside since the shooting meant everybody inside would know we were coming and he wanted to bypass this place, but Blue Head said we were out of food and we'd still had the element of surprise if we hurried before the people in here could get organized."

Gail leaned over and whispered to Beacon "She may have been a peon during that first attack, but clearly she's worked her way up in the world since then. She was present when the bikers were planning these last few raids, she's telling us what the leaders said to each other."

Beacon nodded, "In the long run we're all where we want to be doing what we want to do. She's had plenty of chances to leave the Blue Heads if she really wanted to."

"Maggie, I don't think you and the Counsel of Cro… I don't think y'all need to take a vote to reject this one, am I right?"

Maggie and the Counsel of Crones nodded as one.

Beacon's supply of vodka had come from two cases he'd found in the village down by the lake and given to Granny" Reece to hold. Keeping the bota this time he tied a full bottle to the rope and dangled it over the stockade.

"Where's the castle?"

"G'me more!"

"No castle no vodka!" It was a gamble, she might not know north from south or she might lie to him for some reason, but he had to try.

"Over there," she pointed to the northeast, "on the other side of that mountain with the snow on top. Blue Head said we had to come southwest an we had'ta cross a river to get here. More!"

Beacon lowered the bottle just a bit. "This is the last of our vodka. You'll find more vodka in a cabin on the other side of the lake across from that village" he pointed in the direction of the lake as he lied, "You can swim to the vodka if you hurry. Now go and never come back. If you ever come back here again we'll shoot you."

She grabbed the bottle almost tugging Beacon from his feet as she hugged it to her chest and half ran half staggered towards the lake. Beacon fully expected her to try to swim the width of the lake and fully expected her to drown before discovering he'd lied to her.

Road Trip

Beacon, Old Bill and Gail met Maggie and the Counsel of Crones in Maggie's headquarters.

Beacon knew it would be a hard sell but he had some aces up his sleeve.

"You all heard her and she was too drunk to lie much or well so I believe the core of what she said. That "army" of Colonel Darkin's that she ran into is probably a rogue military unit he held together after The Blowup and now he's either scouring the countryside like a plague of locusts to feed his troops or setting up his own kingdom. Either way it's just a matter of time until he gets around to us."

"You don't even know if he knows about us much less where we are."

"Maggie, how many people have you turned away in the last year? A hundred? Three hundred? Do you really believe all of them starved?"

Beacon had hit on a sore spot. Although necessary for the survival of the Settlement, Maggie and the Council of Crones realized their refusal to admit newcomers to the Settlement amounted to a death sentence for many of the people who'd been caught unprepared when civilization came to an abrupt end.

Beacon hurried on so he wouldn't have to listen to the litany of reasons why it had to be that way. "Do you think any of those survivors has any reason to be loyal to the Settlement? They'd trade our location for an apple, a fig or a grape!"

"So what, we've fought off two major attacks we could take them too."

"Maggie, the Blue Heads were an undisciplined, untrained mob with few guns and lousy leadership. If Colonel Darkin comes for us his unit will be a well armed, disciplined attack force with a cannon that'll blow our wooden walls apart and our homes with them."

If they're who I think they are we can propose an alliance for trade and mutual defense."

"Listen, I think I know the people in the castle, I met them on my way up into the mountains and they're good people with their own resources. If we warn them they'll owe us a favor and they'll be able to at least weaken Darkin's army."

"And then they'll know we exist and come after us!" Maggie said sarcastically.

"They've no reason to come after us the convoy was better prepared on the way up to their redoubt than the Settlement is now."

Maggie wasn't convinced. "They can't defend us from that far away and besides, we don't need them, we've got four machine guns now."

"Submachine guns," Beacon corrected, "and they each fire about a thousand rounds per minute."

"So what." Maggie didn't want to admit her ignorance.

"So the ammo in their magazines is all the ammo we have left for them," Beacon said conveniently forgetting to mention the thousands of forty-five caliber rounds he and Old Bill had stashed in the mountains for his own pistols and to trade, "but the castle has a real M60 machine gun and a Barrett."

Maggie had no idea what a Barrett was but wasn't going to admit that either.

Seeing the stubborn look on her face Beacon continued, "If we're attacked again we could fire all of our sub gun ammo up in a few minutes. What I'm proposing is a two purposed two part expedition."

"Like what?" Maggie seemed resigned.

"Old Bill and I have some guns and ammo cached up in the mountains; I'll take Gale, Randy, Jackie and a couple of extra horses with me. Once the ammo is loaded on the horses they'll all head back here and I'll go on to the castle."