The day after: An apocalyptic morning (38 page)

              "Somebody's surrendering to us?" Mark, who had come up behind Stu to observe as well, asked in confusion. "What kind of idiot would do that?"

              "That's not just a surrender flag," Stu said thoughtfully. "It also means that someone wants to approach for negotiations."

              "Negotiations?" Harley asked. "What the fuck for?"

              Stu chewed his lip for a moment, trying to think. "I guess we should find out, shouldn't we? Harley, don't fire at him unless you see a weapon and he looks like he's going to use it."

              "All right."

              Stu walked back over to the door and stuck his head out, looking towards the upper floor of the church where several of his men were aiming their rifles outward at the flag waver. "Don't fire at him unless he shows a weapon," he yelled at them. "I repeat: Hold your fire unless you see danger! Pass it on!"

              He waited a minute for the word to spread to everyone and then he stuck his head out the window of the bait shop. "Approach us slowly!" he yelled to the man. "Keep your hands in sight at all times!"

              The man nodded his understanding and dropped the flag to the ground. He put his hands up and began to walk, his pace steady but slow. When he got close Stu sent Harley and Mark out to him while he stayed inside and covered them with his rifle. "Check him for weapons," he ordered. "And then bring him in here."

              They searched the man thoroughly, patting him down much the same way that they had been patted down numerous times by cops in their previous lives. He kept his hands in the air and his bearded face expressionless as they performed this task.

              "He's clean," Mark yelled when the frisking was complete. "We're coming in."

              The first thing that Stu noticed was the man was young, only about twenty years old or so. The second thing was that he was not starving. There was no hollow look to his cheekbones, no sinking of the eye sockets. In fact, he looked like he was in very good shape. "Who are you?" Stu asked him, keeping the barrel of his rifle trained downward. Mark and Harley were back at the window, keeping an eye out for any further intruders.

              "I am Private Stinson with the Placer County Militia Group," he said.

              "The what?"

              "Placer County Militia," he repeated. "We have a force surrounding this town right now, hidden from view. Lieutenant Bracken, the commanding officer of this force, has sent me here to request a meeting between your leader and himself."

              "How big of a force?" Stu asked, raising his rifle a tad.

              "I am not at liberty to say, sir."

              Stu raised it higher, so it was pointing at his abdomen. "You fuckin' well better say!" he said. "How many goddamn people you got out there?"

              "Will all due respect, sir," Stinson said, his voice even, "I am just a messenger. Lieutenant Bracken can provide you with the information you request and more. I am an expendable member of the force out front but do be warned that if any harm comes to me it will taken as an act of war and will be dealt with severely. I am authorized to say that we do have enough people out there to defeat your group in battle and we have the advantage of knowing where all of your men are."

              Stu bit back on the urge to strike the young punk that stood before him. "What does he want to talk about?" he asked instead.

              "I am not at liberty to say," Stinson replied. "He will explain everything when you agree to the meeting."

              "And if I don't agree?"

              "Then that too will be taken as an act of war, sir."

              Stu fought to maintain control of his temper. He was not a man accustomed to being threatened in any way, especially not by young punks like this one. Though it was a struggle, he kept himself from striking or otherwise harming the man. "All right," he said. "I'll meet with him. What now?"

              "I will walk outside and give the go-ahead signal," Stinson replied. "Lieutenant Bracken and Sergeant Johnson will approach your encampment unarmed and meet you beneath the overhang in front of the church. You will provide chairs for them to sit in and they will discuss the Micker at hand with you. They will not enter the building with you or walk anywhere besides to the meeting place. Any attempt to harm them or force them to go somewhere else will result in attack by the rest of the force. Taking them hostage will do nothing but force an attack as well. Lieutenant Bracken and Sergeant Johnson realize that they too are expendable. Do you agree to these terms?"

              Stu stared at him for a moment, feeling a pit of fear in his stomach. "Yeah," he said. "You give the signal. I'll tell my men and get us some chairs."

              Stu did not bother searching Bracken or Johnson for weapons when they entered the town. He knew that their goal would not be a close assassination attempt. Instead, after the introductions were made, he led them to the overhang in front of the church where four chairs had been placed in a small circle. Mark and Stu sat down in two of them while Bracken and his sidekick took the other two. Harley had been placed back in his guard post and the other members of the convict team were still on heightened alert in their battle positions.

              "So what is it that you want?" Stu asked, lighting up one of the last of the cigarettes and taking a drag.

              "Before I tell you that," Bracken said, lighting a cigarette of his own, "let me first explain a little bit about who we are."

              "Sure," Stu said.

              "We are the third platoon of the Placer County Militia Group based in Auburn," he said. "We are well armed and well trained and we are dug in around your town and have been so for the last two days."

              "Impossible," Mark said. "We would've spotted you."

              "Really?" Bracken said, dipping his ash on the ground. "You seem a bit overconfident in your abilities. Perhaps I can convince you that I speak the truth."

              "Please do," Stu said.

              "There are twenty-one of you here," Bracken said. "You had some women a few days ago but they are all dead now. You are armed with M-16 rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles as well as pistols and you have some rudimentary knowledge of military tactics and fairly good discipline. Your guard positions are the bait shop, the upper floors of the church, and the storage shed behind the burned out gas station. You routinely send out two-man patrols that circle the town and probe into the hills a little bit. Your battle plan is to reinforce these guard positions with your remaining personnel and to keep a small reserve force inside the church itself, ready to move to wherever it is needed. You seem to be getting short on food and you drank up the last of your alcohol yesterday. When one of the women dies you carry the body over to the gas station and put it with the other bodies that were burned up in there."

              Stu and Mark both looked at him slack-jawed as he recited this to them. Bracken simply smiled. "Not a bad defensive plan if I do say so myself," he told them. "It would have been sufficient to keep just about everyone except us away from you. However, as you can probably see, we know where to hit you if need be. Our positions are set up specifically to counter yours. If we go to battle with each other, we will kill you. If you try to flee, you will find that we've covered all escape corridors with overlapping fields of fire. In short, you are trapped here and you only continue to draw air because we have chosen not to attack you."

              "You're lying," Stu said, feeling that pit of fear getting bigger.

              Bracken shrugged. "I don't need to prove myself," he said. "If you think I'm lying then you are free to try us. I would prefer that you do not since I am currently sitting in a very bad spot if the bullets start to fly. So how about we try to come to some sort of arrangement instead?"

              Stu swallowed with a mouth that was very dry. "What kind of arrangement?" he asked.

              "We need people in Auburn," Bracken said. "Specifically, we need people for the militia so that we can continue to keep our city running and continue to secure supplies until such time as food can be grown again. We have nearly a thousand people in the city and our food supply is dwindling fast. Now all over the mountains are little towns like Colfax and Baxter and Grass Valley and Nevada City. Many of these towns are still standing and have food stocks in their grocery stores or their warehouses or their residential houses. For the most part there are people left alive in these towns and most of them have guns and have organized to some degree. Our plan in Auburn is to raise an army that is big enough to take control of these towns and seize the supplies within them. We will also take any women that are of breeding age and any men who have skills that will be useful to rebuilding civilization when this is all over. When the sun comes out again we will be alive and well fed in Auburn and ready to begin expanding our influence throughout the area. We do not know what is going on elsewhere in the country, but we will control this region and be able to defend it. We will remake civilization when this is over and we will do it right this time."

              Stu listened to all of this carefully. "So you want us to be a part of your army?" he asked.

              "That is correct," Bracken said. "A couple of hunters that we picked up a week past impact saw you take this town. They were rather shocked by the methods you employed, particularly the way you got rid of the men, children and older women"

              Stu said nothing to this.

              "I must say, that we were rather shocked by that as well. Colonel Barnes, he's our commanding officer, was inclined at first to just destroy you as a menace because of that. Eventually however, he decided that your obvious military skills could be useful to us so he dispatched my platoon to observe you in action. What I've seen has impressed me enough that I made the decision to try to recruit you. You must understand however, that actions such as you took in this town cannot be repeated."

              "You're willing to take other towns and steal their food but you get mad at killing people?" Stu asked.

              "In the barbaric way that you did so, yes," he replied. "Our way is the natural order. We take what we need from a town and we bring it back to Auburn. We kill anyone who tries to fight us because that is the way you win a battle. But we do not kill prisoners and we especially do not kill children. True, they will probably die of starvation after we leave, but that is simply natural selection. God's law, you see. Some of them may be strong enough to live through it and that too is God's law. It is the strong who will survive and if someone can live after we remove their food supply, more power to them."

              "Interesting philosophy," Stu said.

              "And you must also realize," Bracken said, "that if we take you into the militia, you will be subject to military discipline and orders. You will do as you are told by your commanding officers without question, whether you agree with what you were told or not."

              Stu felt himself turning a little red in the face. "I'm not a real good order taker," he said.

              "You'll have to learn to be. And real fast too. Now I imagine that with your abilities to lead, you'll probably be made a sergeant and given a squad. But your squad will be part of a platoon that is commanded by a lieutenant and that platoon will be part of a company that is commanded by a captain, and so on and so forth. You will be expected to follow certain standards and to follow every order that you are given."

              Stu and Mark looked at each other for a moment. "Maybe we'd just better forget this whole thing," Stu said at last. "I don't think that my people will fit in too well with yours."

              Bracken shook his head. "I don't think you understand," he said. "My orders are to either bring you under control and recruit you to our side or to destroy you. There is no forgetting about it."

              "Destroy us?" Stu asked. "What happened to natural selection and God's law and all that? I thought you didn't kill prisoners."

              "You're not prisoners," he said. "You are a potential threat to us. If you do not join our ranks and agree to abide by our rules, you will all die."

              "And you will die too if your people attack us," Stu said.

              "That too would be God's law," Bracken said. "But perhaps I should tell you a few things about Auburn before you make your decision."

              "Like what?"

              "We have hot baths, hot food, and dry houses for you to live in. We also have four times as many women of breeding age than we do men. And while we do not tolerate rape, most of these women are quite desperate for the company of a good man and will do damn near anything to keep him happy. In a way, its kind of like that way things should be."

              That statement by Bracken served as the clincher. Though they continued to talk for sometime after, the decision was pretty much made at that point. Early the next morning Bracken's platoon and Stu's convicts - the newest recruits of the Placer County Militia - began the three-day march to Auburn.