TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story (19 page)

He'd walked up the center of the main road to within five hundred yards of the gate when he heard a loud sharp "HALT!" coming from what looked like a low grassy knoll to his right.

Beacon raised his empty hands to shoulder height with his palms out and slowly turned towards the well camouflaged pillbox.

"You are trespassing on private property!" the high pitched voice came from behind a rifle barrel sticking out of a small opening "Turn around and leave at once!"

Touching the tips of the fingers of his left hand to his MultiCam boonie Beacon said, "Tell Rich Bitch and Adonis, the guy in the pretty sombrero is here with news."

"I don't know what you're talking about." came out of the hole but the kid's voice didn't sound very convincing.

"Good OPSEC," Beacon opined, "but I need to get a message to Doc Savage and Barbie Doll."

"Good what?" rattled by the recitation of radio call signs he knew but outsiders weren't supposed to know the kid forgot he was supposed to be ordering Beacon off the property.

"OPSEC is short for Operational Security" Beacon smiled at the rifle barrel, "just tell'em Beacon is here. I don't have a radio handle."

The rifle barrel disappeared and Beacon heard the 'Rrrrrr rrrrrrr rrrrr' of an old Army hand cranked field phone cranking out a ring tone to another set somewhere. Then there was excited whispering followed by silence.

A minute later the rifle barrel poked out of the hole again and the high pitched voice authoritatively commanded "You wait right there for an escort!"

Beacon waited until a teenaged girl on a horse rode out the gate. He couldn't be sure but he thought she was the same rider he'd seen earlier in the distance. She took charge at once.

"Billy, Doc says to report back to the castle at once like you were supposed to do when the whistles blew." The boy said "OK" in a subdued voice but noting the kid didn't join them on the road Beacon reasoned there must be an underground tunnel from the pillbox to the castle.

The girl had a radio microphone clipped to her left epaulet and was a lot more tactically cognizant than the kid in the pillbox requiring him to walk ahead of her as she cradled a Ruger ranch rifle across her saddle.

"You can tell them that I'm alone," he said glancing over his shoulder, "How do you keep those radio batteries charged?"

"They'll decide that for themselves," she didn't sound stressed out like the kid in the pillbox, "Solar panels."

"I'd have thought those and the batteries for radios would be wearing out by now." Beacon was curious and fishing for information.

"Not if you buy the best and take care of them. One of our members used to manufacture them. We've got spare parts, extra radios, batteries and panels that'll last until I'm a grandmother; I'm Molly by the way."

"Hi Molly, I'm Beacon, do you remember me from the convoy after The Blowup?"

"The Long March? Yeah, I saw you get those Romeos and Juliets back together when we got the other Humvee that's why the rifle's across the saddle and not aimed at you."

"Thanks, I should think the guy in the pillbox would have been there too."

"Yeah, but this is his first day taking a turn at guard duty so you puckered him up real good."

"Sorry about that. I didn't mean to scare him."

"Not hard to do, he's only thirteen." I don't think children that young should have such responsibilities," she said haughtily, "but if the kids didn't pull guard duty then us older folks would have to pull more shifts so I keep my mouth shut."

"Thirteen?"

"Yeah, had his birthday and coming of age ceremony last night, traded his pellet gun for that twenty-two rifle you saw the wrong end of. You're his first big huhu. You're lucky he didn't shoot you by accident."

"So he takes turns riding around on horseback with you?" Beacon fished.

"Hell no! Riders have to be at least fifteen and Outriders gott'a be seventeen. I'll be an Outrider next spring," she added with a touch of pride in her voice.

"Before The Blowup they wouldn't even let you drive a car without adult supervision," Beacon thought to himself, "and now they send you out alone riding in harms way with a semiautomatic rifle." Then aloud, "What do the Outriders do?"

"Guard the wood wagons mostly, but if you're good they let you scout the mountains and do some trappin' in the winter."

"Wood wagons?"

"Doc says if we chop wood on the valley's hillsides for heat an soap an stuff we'll eventually denude the ridges and wash away our topsoil so we gather firewood down in the lowlands. It's a win-win. Once things settle down to where it's safe we'll establish farms and maybe eventually a town down there by the river on the ground we're clearing now."

"Seems safe around here." Beacon fished again.

"Not hardly! We had to fight off a bunch of marauders two weeks ago."

"Did you get any?"

"I think I got one, but Doc wouldn't let us go after'em; said it might be a trap. But we should'a gone after'em, hell they were runnin' like scared rabbits!"

"Doc's right that's one of the oldest tricks in the book," Beacon said earnestly, "retreat and make it look like a rout so the enemy will follow you and then ambush'em." Beacon didn't want to argue with the girl, but hoped he could reinforce Doc's teachings so the girl would learn tactics the easy bloodless way.

To assuage her disappointment he added, "That one you got made it one less when they hit us last week."

"They attacked you?"

"If your barbarians were wearing blue bandanas on their heads they were the same horde that hit us."

"That was them! We called'em the Blue Meanies," she sounded excited now, "You really think I got one?"

"They're scum; Beacon answered without answering her question, "they abandon their wounded, dead and dying as they move. Even if you only wounded one of'em chances are he didn't live long enough to reach our settlement."

Molly was just finishing up a long detailed description of her 'kill shot' when they reached the low log duplex cabins about a hundred feet beyond the two towering rock gatehouses flanking the main gate.

Set on either side of the road each single story wooden duplex consisted of two buildings connected by a roof over the space between them. With flat roofs slanting downward away from the wall and narrow horizontal windows they looked more defendable than the cabins back at Beacon's settlement.

The low slanting roofs gave defenders on the walls clear shots at anyone trying to get up to the log houses.

The sides of the two log houses facing the road between them had only loopholes for windows. The higher walled side of the log homes faced the stone gatehouses and had regular doors and windows.

In times of danger the log houses inhabitants could flee through the gate to the safety of the castle complex abandoning the expendable wooden structures to attackers who'd likely burn to death in it when the defenders set fire to the place from the stone gatehouses.

Beacon was reminded of the medieval towns that grew up outside the walls of castles and cities during the Middle Ages. As civilization and safety reestablished themselves these wooden houses would become the seeds of a town that might eventually grow to be bigger than the castle that protected it.

Trudy Peace rushed out of the wooden gatehouse on the right to hug him and offer lunch as soon as Rick and Keith got back with the wood wagons which she promised would be soon.

As he neared the main gate Beacon was amused to see a sign hand painted on the stone over the gate reading "DDL&BSG LLC".

A few feet behind the open main gate the portcullis was up and behind that Beacon walked through a stone passageway with upper walls punctuated by loopholes in the stone on into a small courtyard where Elaine were waiting with two armed men.

She wasn't happy to see him. "We're not accepting Vassals."

"Nor are we," Beacon countered, "but we might be able to work out some sort of trade agreement. By the way, nice sign you've got over the gate."

"And we don't allow strangers with weapons inside our walls, hand over those guns!"

"Free men are armed, serfs are unarmed," he looked her in the eye, "and they don't give reliable information." he added with a smile, "I'll leave if you'd rather not hear what I've come to warn you about, but my guns stay with me."

The situation was turning ugly fast Elaine was ordering the two men to disarm Beacon when Doc hurried into the courtyard and dismissed them sending them back to their posts with a hearty "We'll take it from here!"

Turning to her with a hard look he added in a lowered voice, "We'll talk about this at the next Board of Directors meeting."

Doc's attitude towards Beacon was more receptive. "Welcome Beacon, what brings you to this neck of the woods?"

"An invading army with cannon," Beacon said shaking Doc's hand.

Elaine's mouth snapped shut in mid retort.

Doc led them up the stairs onto the wall while answering Beacon's questions about the citadel inhabitants he knew. Barbie was fine. Cindy and Keith had married and taken over the Eastern main gatehouse upon arrival.

They were merely tenants for the first year as required by the corporation's bylaws. Had the owner, a full member of the corporation, shown up in time they'd have been required to turn the gatehouse over to him and return to live with their parents, but the owner had not been heard from since The Blowup. Rich Bitch and Adonis were married the day after the bylaw's limitation expired.

Elaine was chomping at the bit to find out about the cannon and could barely contain herself as she followed the two men up the stairs. Both men enjoyed her frustration and drew out their reminiscing until the three got to the top of the wall.

As castle life got back to normal around them Beacon told Doc about the two machine guns he'd seen. Hearing Beacon's short verbal report Elaine became enraged. "Every time I see you it's bad news! We're safe in here!"

Doc stepped between them and in a harsh voice said, "Don't shoot the messenger!" Then he led Beacon to the opening between two merlons.

"I was hoping we'd meet again under better circumstances." He said looking out over his fiefdom.

Standing in the shade of the concrete parapet Elaine said to Beacon in a voice edged in iron, "You're standing on top of a steel CONEX. These concrete block walls are backed by 20 and 40 foot long metal freight containers which serve a triple propose."

She stomped her foot hard on the one they were standing on. "First the freight containers provide safe weatherproof storage for us here in the castle."

"Second the roofs of the CONEXes serve as a floor for defenders behind the parapets formed by the walls which extended five to seven feet above the steel CONEXes," she turned to Beacon defiantly, "these cement blocks are rodded and poured so they're highly bullet resistant to all but the largest caliber rifles." They both knew he was referring to Doc's fifty caliber Barrett and its ilk.

She paused as if considering whether to tell him something secret then went on "And most importantly the metal containers are secured right up against the concrete blocks forming backing for the cinder block walls."

"From the outside the entire wall looks the same, but any attacker blowing a whole in the cinder block wall will then be confronted by the eight foot high metal side of a freight container. Blowing a whole in that would only get them inside the CONEX requiring them to blast yet another hole to get out into The Castle's yard." She stared at Beacon with defiance in her eyes.

"Elaine, you're smart, but you're not trained in the military arts…"

Elaine interrupted Beacon, "The CONEXes are placed alone or back to back forming 20, 40, 60 or 80 foot long backings for the concrete blocks! There are no openings!"

Beacon could see she didn't want to hear anything that would impugn the security of her castle complex. The Blowup had dragged her, kicking and screaming, from the safety and comfort of her home in the big city to the citadel and now Beacon was threatening to destroy her recently reestablished feelings of safety and wellbeing.

She pointed to a bee hive on the corner of the CONEX saying "We keep bee hives all around the wall to thrown down on attackers, we're safe here" she ended angrily.

"There's noting like a thousand angry bees to distract someone trying to scale your wall." Beacon agreed. He knew he had to shock Elaine into listening to him. "They won't shell your houses because they plan to live in them after they take the citadel from you." Now he had Elaine's full, glaring, attention.