Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning

by Allen, William

  The idea behind a cache tube is to store certain supplies, usually offsite, for recovery later as needed. The tubes could contain anything, well, anything that fit inside the tube. It was a common strategy for preppers, though I imagine there were plenty of misplaced tubes out there that might be more akin to buried treasure, map and all. I also knew that the wet state of the ground would sometimes result in cache tubes floating to the surface and becoming fair game for anyone who happened by.

  That’s why Mike had buried it deep, much like my gun box back at the house that contained Nikki’s discarded P95. Sure, a metal detector could find it, but if you buried it in the right place, say, for instance, next to an underground pipeline or under the foundation of a building, good luck to the searchers trying to find it. Like a needle in a haystack the size of a farmhouse.

  Using the nylon rope he’d brought, Mike fashioned a quick noose and fastened it around the top of the tube, catching onto barely noticeable notches in the sides of the cylinder that allowed him to pull the cache tube out of the ground. Not without a lot of straining, as the earth did not seem to want to part with this particular treasure. Probably due to the suction effect of the wet soil underneath, I decided as I watched Mike come close to bursting a blood vessel as he heaved. Finally, the tube began to rise, and I found myself wondering just how long this darned thing would turn out to be.

  All said and done, the tube turned out to be six feet long and eight inches in diameter. Mike lifted the cylinder to his shoulder and I took the shovel up, refilling the hole as best I could. This process went much faster than the initial digging, but that was often the case. I made a point of stirring the mess of mud around enough to hopefully disguise the depression left behind, but there was little else I could do.

  We trekked back to Mike’s backyard, re-engaged the gate locks, and headed around to the side door of the garage, still without speaking. The trailer was backed into the second stall, usually occupied by Marta’s SUV, but Mike had elected to leave the truck outside, giving us enough room to work. The workspace seemed oddly outsized, as Mike had previously packed up all the tools and equipment that’d previously occupied space here. Now, the lonely hacksaw and paired sawhorses seemed out of place in the otherwise cleared area now only filled with vacant racks and empty cabinets.

  “Get the door,” was all Mike said as we stopped to use the floormats to wipe off the worst of the mud on our boots. I did as he asked, then glanced up at the wall clock to judge the time. We still needed to hit the road soon, and I hated the idea of driving after dark, especially pulling a trailer, but the outsized timepiece that used to hang on the wall was missing, no doubt already packed away somewhere.

  Mike set the cache tube on the sawhorses as I pulled my cell to check the hour. Ah, just a smidge after three p.m. We could still make home in the light if we left soon. As I was making the mental calculations, I heard the rhythmic hiss as Mike began using the hacksaw to remove the cap on the storage cylinder.

  “Can’t we just load that thing and go?” I asked impatiently. I knew Marta was still cleaning inside, and in fact I could hear the vacuum cleaner running as I spoke, but the house looked nice enough to me as it stood. Other than a little dust, the interior had already been well-cleaned before they’d come down the last time. Plus, it wasn’t like they were trying to get their deposit back on a rental apartment.

  “Just a minute, and while I’m doing this, why don’t you explain your earlier epiphany? What were you saying about the storage place?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking hard about it while we were at the realtor’s office. Those guys didn’t strike me as your typical looter gang. At least, not like we’ve seen before. Hell, that one I shot in the leg, if those necklaces were real gold, even if it was ten carat, would have been worth several thousand bucks just by weight. No, that was a gang that was probably around before the storms started.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking they were there trying to recover something hidden. A stash made there in one of the storage units. Obviously, they didn’t know which one, but I remembered seeing locks on the ground. A lot of them. Somebody had already either gone through all the smaller rooms or was in the process.”

  “How do you explain what we found in the office?” Mike asked, his lips twisted in a grimace at the memory.

  “I think they were sick fucks, obviously, but I also think they were looking for information. Maybe those were the original owners of the merchandise, and these shitbags were trying to get the location.”

  “Doesn’t work,” Mike countered, grunting a bit as he finished cutting through the cap in the fiberglass pipe. “If any of those people knew which room, they would’ve given it up. That was some medieval shit, and after the first one was dead, all they would’ve needed to do was show his remains to the others to get them to sing like a canary.”

  “Point,” I conceded. “Maybe they all worked there, and the gang nabbed them over time as they came to check on the place. You said they didn’t all die at the same time, right?”

  “Well, I missed that day in coroner’s school when they taught that particular skill,” Mike retorted, and I knew the memory of those twisted bodies were playing on his nerves, “but yeah, I think so. What the hell were they looking for that would drive someone to do…that?”

  “Drugs, I bet,” I replied immediately. “My guess is someone was using one of those lockers as a stash point for a shipment of drugs, and these thugs want to get their hands on it. Maybe they heard about it from another source, maybe just the location that was being used, and decided to liberate the supply in all this disruption.”

  “As good a guess as any,” Mike conceded, then turned the pipe in his hands so the items inside began to slowly slide out onto the built-in worktable. With his back to me and his body in the way, I couldn’t make out what he was removing.

  “What was in there that was so important you decided to stash it behind Trey’s house? Risky move, by the way. Anybody could have stumbled over that tube.”

  Mike gave me a tight grin as he turned, and I saw what he was holding in one hand, cradled like a baseball.

  I’d never seen one in real life, of course. Plenty of fakes and disabled ones, but something told me this was the real thing.

  “You asked me about these earlier,” Mike explained, “and I might have been a little deceptive in my answer. Though honestly, they aren’t mine. I was just holding them for a friend.”

  Mike was holding an M67 fragmentation grenade. Encased in a brown cardboard casing, the grenade looked just like what you would see in the movies, except something was missing.

  “You pulled the fuses?”

  “Of course. I might be crazy, but I’m not that crazy. Got them stored separately.”

  “Where the hell…” I started, then nodded. “Heyward. I knew that guy was shady. But why the heck are you holding them for him? And don’t tell me you have a tax stamp for those things. Two hundred dollars per grenade is just stupid, and the ATF would still come crawl up your ass for something like that.”

  “Actually, I think Charles bought them as a public service, to keep them off the street. I don’t know the full story, but from what I could wriggle out of Charles, he got approached by some meth head who used to be a supply clerk with the Guard before they kicked him out.”

  Mike shrugged. The ‘where’ was immaterial now.

  “Is Charles going to come looking for his product now? Like those gangbangers? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I’m planning to give you up as soon as Charles takes out his nail clippers. Just so you know.”

  I wasn’t kidding, much. The words were a coping mechanism. I knew it, and so did Mike.

  The images of those four people, all horribly burned and cut up while restrained, unable to resist, would haunt me in my nightmares for who knew how long. Some things, you just couldn’t unsee. Anybody who would do that, I would gladly kill without a moment of hesitation.

 
“I sincerely doubt it, Bryan,” Mike said placatingly. “Best I can recall, Charles was up in Utah when the rock hit. Doing a show up there, either in Salt Lake or Provo. Anyway, he squirreled away most of these, but he asked me to help remove the fuses for storage, and gave me the dozen of them to hold for him in exchange. I stashed them behind Trey’s house because I figured if they did turn up, people would look at him first as the culprit. I made sure I didn’t leave any fingerprints behind, and there’s some other stuff in there I didn’t want found, either.”

  “Why do you hate that guy? I mean, he’s a douchebag, but is it something over and above why Scott hates him?”

  “Oh, yeah. He saw us getting our gear loaded up in the truck one day to go play paintball. Yes, we were hauling out camouflage backpacks and plastic gear cases, but shit, you see that all the time first day of hunting season. He called the cops, told them it looked like his neighbors were getting ready to go rob a bank. Said he saw machine guns being loaded into the truck.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. “They roll in hot?”

  “Oh, just twenty city cops, lights and sirens. Had us lay down on the lawn, with Bea inside watching the kids and freaking out. Had us handcuffed and then started taking the fear bags apart, but all they found were the paint guns. We had just about talked our way out of the cuffs when the Feebies showed up. So rinse and repeat.”

  “That must’ve been tense. Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”

  “What would you have done to the guy?”

  I thought about the question, and realized Mike was probably right. Even back then, before the Rockfall, I might have done some very bad things to Trey Crenshaw.

  “How did you know it was him who dropped the dime on you?”

  “One of the cops who showed up played in our league. Not on our team, obviously, but we were tight enough that he got word to me later. Unofficially.”

  “So what else was in this cache?” I asked, trying to change the subject, and with a tinge of dread. Grenades, outside of the smoke variety or the decommissioned version used as a paperweight, were scary as hell. I wondered what else he could have in that tube that he worried enough about that he was prepared to lose them, and potentially frame a disliked neighbor.

  “More suppressors, off the books. Oh, and conversion kits for some of our ARs. For fully automatic fire.”

  “Oh, is that all? Just things that would earn you a private cell in a supermax prison for the rest of your days,” I joked, but the reality was much more permanent. Given that Texas had been added to the State of Emergency list, the likely outcome would be an appointment in the death chamber of some Federal facility. Or a bullet in the back of the head.

  Mike appeared unfazed by my sarcasm.

  “I brought the tools to convert Marta’s AR,” he went on. “That and some of the one hundred round Beta-C mags will give us a poor man’s squad automatic weapon. Just in case.”

  “Because we’re hauling a box trailer, so road agents might consider us fair game,” I said, finishing Mike’s thought. “I guess we’re approaching that point, then.”

  “What point?”

  “The one where there’s no return,” I replied grimly. Then, more softly, I allowed myself to wax philosophical. “Our world changed, and continues to change day by day, ever since that damned meteorite fell.”

  Mike couldn’t come up with a good response to my maudlin statement, so he retrieved his tool bag from the truck and began making his alterations in a heavy silence that fit the mood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We left Mike and Marta’s house a few minutes before 4pm, and the overcast sky made the hour seem later than that. I suspected our trip might need to be completed after the curfew, or we would need to pull off on the side of the road to lay low for the night. Mike, for his part, seemed unconcerned, only saying that he knew a place on the way if we needed it. I just shrugged and made sure all my gear was set and ready.

  After our eventful self-storage visit, Mike reorganized our seating, with Marta in the driver’s seat, Mike in the shotgun sea, and me in the backseat. I was jammed in like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag, but Mike rewarded me with a party treat in the form of Marta’s short-barreled AR with the giggle switch installed and a hundred round magazine seated in place. Mike carried another AR in his lap, this one with a twenty-inch barrel and a reflex sight, and the fully automatic mechanism replacing the semi-automatic one, and from the way Mike clutched the pistol grip, I knew he was worried about the trip.

  While Mike was busy gunsmithing in the garage and Marta touched up the cleaning in the house, I’d spent extra minutes turning the backseat into a nest. At first, I was dubious of Mike’s plan, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I might not be able to sit comfortably on the seat, but I could sprawl with the best of them.

  We’d been standing in the garage when Mike explained his plan before Marta came out to join us.

  “Bryan, I need you to cover Marta’s side. If we get hit, someone’s likely to go for the driver,” Mike had explained, and I took his meaning instantly. If she was busy driving, then she wouldn’t be able to defend herself.

  “Maybe I should drive,” I had suggested, and Mike shook his head. “Marta’s a good shot and I have no doubt she would do what was necessary to defend the kids. But…she’s not like us, Bryan.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember when you explained about why you recruited Sally?”

  “Yeah. She was telling me about her experiences during the war.”

  “And you picked up on the fact that she killed those Iraqi soldiers like she was whacking the heads off chickens. Just something she needed to do, and no fuss or bother about it,” Mike reminded me. “Some people can do that and go about their business, but they’re fewer than you might think. Some soldiers are horrified by doing it, but they force themselves to pull the trigger if it means saving their buddies, or their family. Marta’s like that. Then there are others who, well, they get to liking the power.”

  “And what does that have to do with me?”

  I asked the question, but I suspected I already knew the answer.

  “You’re one of the ones it doesn’t bother, brother. You have that in common with Sally. Pat, too. You do what needs doing, and you don’t have to suffer the nightmares after. I knew it after your first fight there in town.”

  “And you?”

  Mike had ignored that question, but I thought I knew the truth. Mike did the job, and then he wrestled with the nightmares after. That was his curse.

  “I’ll take care of her, Mike. I swear it.”

  That was my oath, and I meant to keep it. So, while Marta adjusted the seat and Mike hooked up the trailer, getting ready to leave his home for the last time, I laid down in the bench seat as best I could and arranged my gear bag on the floor. We were back in our body armor, plates inserted, and I left the FAL in the floorboard but made sure I had extra magazines stacked for the AR. In addition, I had the Marlin Camp Carbine positioned on top of my bag, extra magazines webbed to the buttstock.

  Limited magazine capacity was one of the shortcomings of the carbine, at least as a defensive firearm. The 1911 was a fine pistol, and I liked the knockdown power of that fat .45 ACP round as a sidearm, but the seven and eight-round magazine capacity made it less than desirable for longer engagements. That was why I liked my Springfield XD with the factory thirteen-round magazines.

  At least the Camp Carbine had the aftermarket ten-round magazines that made the 1911 look funny, but that was still a low count for what might be needed. However, the decision to use the weapon was premeditated, and something I might explain to Mike later. Or maybe not. The ideas were still a bit nebulous at this stage, and nothing I needed to worry my brother about at this stage.

  I also had one of the hand grenades Mike had recovered. This one had the fuse replaced, and I treated the thing like a coiled snake, ready to strike. It was an unreasoned fe
ar, but one I respected. A bullet from a negligent discharge might kill you just as dead as shrapnel from a mishandled grenade, but I had training on how deal with firearms. Grenades, though, were outside my experience save for the thirty second demonstration Mike had given. Pull the cotter pin, release the handle and throw. Or in this case, as I would be inside a moving vehicle, drop it out the window. That last part, he stressed, was the most important. I vowed to leave that particular viper resting in its nest.

  As we pulled out of the driveway, Marta paused and Mike exchanged farewells with Scott and a wave from Allison. Something changed hands between the two men, keys being exchanged, I thought, and Marta shifted back into gear.

  We’d barely made it out of the subdivision and onto Loop 360 before the headlights on the truck automatically kicked in, a clear sign of the fading light. I took that as a bad omen, of the impending darkness, when something else came along that was even more worrying.

  “I have two cars coming up fast behind us,” Marta announced, and I craned my neck to look back. With the box trailer blocking my view though, I couldn’t see anything. Mike, at least, had the side mirror he could use.

  The presence of other vehicles wasn’t that big of a shock. We had other cars on the road around us, just not that many. Mostly it was big rigs using the road, I realized. This part of the loop was three lanes wide, though I remembered from the trip in that it narrowed down to a pair of lanes a few miles ahead, where the road had been narrowed for construction. The roadbed had been torn up on the outer lane, part of a now abandoned widening project.

  “Where are they?” I urgently demanded, my own anxiety feeding off Marta’s obvious concern.