by Steven Smith
Ann looked at Jim and nodded. "That sounds reasonable."
Jim looked around the group and saw everyone nodding. "Okay, sounds good. Let everyone know that the new fees will go into effect the first of August."
He looked back at Naomi. "Anything else?"
Naomi smiled hopefully. "We could use bigger vehicles to carry more people."
Kelly looked at Jim. "We could use the buses that the scouts used to go to Fort Riley."
Jim nodded. "Okay. Get them on the routes as soon as you can. Anything else?”
Naomi shook her head.
Jim looked at Mike. "How about scouts?"
"We've got two hundred and thirty-two through phases one and two who are considered full scouts. That's fifty-eight pods, twenty-nine squads or nineteen teams. We have another sixty-some completing second phase and twenty-eight starting first phase in a couple of weeks."
"We're going to need more," said Jim. "I'll talk to you about it later. Go ahead."
"We've pushed our security zone out to a hundred and seventy-fifth street in Overland Park on the north, the Missouri state line on the east, just north of Louisburg on the south and just east of Spring Hill on the west."
"What, exactly, is a security zone?" asked Bill.
"It's the area that we keep our eyes on and concern ourselves with any activity within it," answered Mike. "We don't claim ownership of it or responsibility for it like we do our safe zone, but we consider it a buffer between us and the rest of the world."
Bill nodded his understanding. "What about the people who live in the security zone? What is our relationship with them?"
Mike shrugged. "There aren't really that many people in the zone. We stop short of the towns, and many of the farms and small housing developments are vacant. We talk to anyone we find, tell them who we are and explain our interests to them. So far, everyone we've contacted has been at least marginally appreciative and many have been grateful."
"We're going to push our safe zone out farther," said Jim, looking at Bill. "I'm going to meet with you, Christian and Mike about it."
He looked back at Mike. "Anything else?"
"I want to talk to you about special units later. I can see a need and I think we can form a couple."
Jim nodded. "Okay.”
He looked at Tom. “Tom, do you have anything?"
"Nothing local, but I think we should send a recon team to take a closer look at the city, or at least the suburbs. The smoke is getting more frequent and I'd sure like to know what's going on."
Jim looked at Mike. "That could be a dicey one. What do you think?"
"We have a couple of teams that I think are up to it," replied Mike.
Jim thought for a minute, then nodded. "Okay. We'll get together later and discuss it."
He looked at Bill. "Judge?"
Bill straightened up in his chair, cleared his throat and looked around the table. "You all may remember that Jim asked me to formulate a system of statutes under which our community would operate. He charged me with constructing an entire code in no more than ten pages, a task I thought to be an impossibility at the time, so he graciously allowed me ten and a half pages if it was absolutely necessary."
He looked around the group again. " I have given this a great deal of thought. I have thought about the great historical legal systems from the Ten Commandments to the Mosaic Law to the Code of Hammurabi to the United States Code. Blackstone spoke to me in my dreams. I considered how each of these were administered and how their administration affected, and was affected by, the societies in which they were applied."
He paused, reaching into his shirt pocket and withdrawing a piece of paper which he unfolded. "Then I looked around me to study and understand the code that drives the most cohesive, mutually supportive community of which I have ever had the pleasure to be a part, and I realized that my job had already been done for me by a mind far greater than my own."
He looked at the paper, reading what he had written, the handed it to Jim.
Jim read it in silence and passed it to Kelly, smiling.
Kelly read it and passed it to Naomi.
The paper made its way around the table, each person reading it silently until it had made its way back to Bill, who handed it back toward Jim.
Jim shook his head, smiling. "You read it."
Bill looked back at the paper, hesitating. "I must admit that I feel wholly inadequate to read these words," he said, his voice constricted.
He paused again, wiping something from the corner of his eye with the tip of a finger, then read. "The law of Stonemont and its protectorates shall be this: that you shall do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Jim nodded and looked around the silent table, his eyes finally resting on Christian. "I want a sign bearing that inscription posted in the compound, on the town hall and at every road that enters our security zone saying that this is the law of the Stonemont autonomous area."
Lunch was barbecue brisket on freshly baked ciabatta bread, coleslaw and peach pie with sweet tea on the veranda, after which they saddled up horses and took the sheriffs for a tour of the fields, the orchards and Jamestown. Finishing on the highest point of Stonemont, the hill on which the watchtower stood, they stopped, looking out over the expanse to the west, north and east.
Jim looked at the sheriffs and pointed out to the west. "Most of you are to our west. Lawrence and Topeka are between us, but pretty much the only thing of consequence on the other side of you is the Rockies."
He looked at Leach. "Dean, you and some others are south of here, between us and some smaller towns in southeast Kansas and southwest Missouri. I'm sure there are some bad apples out there, but I imagine that it's mostly good people."
He pointed to the north. "North of us is Johnson and Wyandotte counties. From what we've been able to tell, most of Johnson County has been wiped out. It has been removed as a buffer between us and Wyandotte County, which is a mixed bag. There are a lot of good people in ‘the dot’, but it has always been one of Kansas' biggest problems as far as gang activity and violent crime."
He pointed to the northeast. "That smoke is Kansas City. It was dangerous to go into before the collapse and I can't imagine what it's like now. All the good folks are probably gone and the ones who remain, well, who can imagine what they're like."
He walked his horse forward, then wheeled to face the others, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at the smoke. "That's what's on our doorstep."
He paused to let the situation sink in.
"You all are suggesting a mutual assistance agreement. If any of you have trouble and need help, you'll want us to come help you because we have the resources." He nodded his head. "I understand that, and we will if we can."
He paused again, looking at each sheriff. "But if we have trouble, will you be able to come help us?"
4
Maurice 'Force' Johnson looked down at the man and woman being held on their knees. The couple had been brave, or maybe just foolish, first trying to reason, then trying to resist when his men had entered their house.
There had been little to take. Furniture, clothing and personal items were of no use to him, the many pictures, posters and books espousing world peace and human kindness, not to mention a framed and signed picture of Bernie Sanders, explained the lack of guns in the house, and the basement room of canned food the couple had survived on was almost empty.
He looked to the east. His life had started not far from here, but he had come a long way. Basketball had kept him from sharing the fates of his brothers, the older one having been killed by an off-duty police officer in a liquor store robbery and his younger one in a drive-by shooting.
He had played basketball, where his skill, anger at life and ferocity had earned him the nickname The Enforcer for his penchant for punishing opposing players for real or imagined offenses. The moniker had followed him to college, where a coach had shortened it to simply Force in an attempt to civilize it, then on to p
rison after he had accidentally killed another student during a fight at an off-campus party.
Prison was his finishing school where he lifted weights and learned the psychological games of domination. He thrived in the environment due to his physical prowess, his innate intelligence and his rapidly diminishing empathy for others. Beating a guard into a coma earned him time in the SHU, and the officer's subsequent death resulted in a conviction that had him headed to death row when the lights went out. The state's decision to release all prisoners not currently on death row gave him another break, and he was soon headed back to Kansas City.
If prison had been his higher education, the trip back home was a post-graduate course. He travelled slowly, going from farm to farm, attacking at night and fine-tuning his skills. He usually watched the farms for a day or two, relaxing, eating food he had taken from his last victims and learning the habits of the residents. Then he would sleep and attack just after sundown, take what he needed and move on.
The trip should have taken him a week, but he had stretched it to a month, and by the time he walked back into his old neighborhood he was ready.
He looked back at the man and woman still being held on the ground. They were not his kind and, therefore, could not be allowed to stay with them.
"Bring them," he said, turning away. "We’ll give them to the Irish."
5
Brody concentrated as he put the squirming night crawler on his hook. "Do you think this hurts them?" he asked.
The sheriffs had left shortly after sunup, after talking with Jim and Christian into the previous night about possible ways they could work together, and Jim and Brody had made it to the pond soon thereafter.
It was a continuation of a tradition the two had from before the collapse when Brody would come down early to sit with Jim for a while before the others got up. It had been a special time for both of them, and, as things settled down, they were starting to renew the practice.
Jim smiled. His second son was the most soft-hearted of his children, though he could be someone to reckon with when riled. "I don't know, buddy. I don't know much about worms."
"Well," said Brody, lowering the hook into the water, "I hope he doesn't hurt for very long."
Jim chuckled. He had never done much fishing and was surprised when Brody had expressed an interest, so he was learning along with his son.
"Do you like this new life, buddy?"
Brody nodded, keeping his eyes on his bobber. "Uh, huh."
"What do you like about it?"
"Everything."
Jim smiled. Brody's simple answers often camouflaged the complex thoughts going on in his mind, but it was usually just a matter of cracking open the door enough to get them spilling out. It was like the unbelievably intricate pictures he drew.
"Like what?" he persisted.
Brody kept watching his bobber intently. "Fishing."
Jim nodded. "Anything else?"
"Yes. I like playing, riding my horse, shooting my rifle and running the obstacle course. And I like not going to school." He paused, looking up at Jim. "And I like being with you."
Jim nodded as if to himself. Ever since the kids had been old enough to say bedtime prayers, they had first gathered around as a family to talk about the best parts of their day. Brody had shocked him the first time he had looked at him and said being with you, and he had said it every night since.
He smiled. "Me too, buddy."
"Maybe they're not hungry," said Brody, looking back at the bobber. "Or maybe they don't like worms."
Jim chuckled. "Let's just be patient. So, you've been running the obstacle course?"
Brody nodded. "Uh, huh. Not the big one. The one they're making for the junior scouts."
"How are you doing?"
"Good. Aedan still beats me by a little bit, but I beat Grayson and Ashton."
Jim chuckled. "Good for you. But remember that the important thing is for you to keep getting better, no matter who you beat or who beats you."
Brody nodded. "Okay."
The bobber jerked beneath the water and Brody was pulled forward by the sudden tug. "I've got one! I've got one!"
The bobber stayed beneath the surface as Brody pulled back, bending the pole. "I think it's a big one!"
Brody worked the pole like Jim had shown him, pulling to keep the line taught whenever the fish got closer and letting the pole tip out a bit when it tried to swim away. Within a minute, the red and white bobber reappeared, and the fish broke the surface, thrashing to get away.
Brody kept pulling, backing up a step to pull the fish closer to the bank while Jim stepped into the pond and grabbed the line, lifting the fish out of the water.
The fish continued to thrash on the line, it's tail whipping back and forth as Jim stepped back onto the bank and laid it on the ground, its shimmering scales sparkling in the sunlight.
"That's a beautiful one, buddy! Nice job!"
"Thanks!" beamed Brody, leaning over to get a better look at it. "Would you take the hook out? I'm not very good at it yet."
"Sure." Jim picked up the fish, removed the hook, slid a secured stringer through the gills and set the fish back in the water. "You want to catch some more?"
"Yeah!" Brody grinned. "I want to catch enough for everybody!"
They continued fishing for another hour until they had caught thirteen crappies and talapias, then headed back to the house where they found Kelly and Morgan in the kitchen with Jasmine.
"Look what we caught!" announced Brody proudly, holding up the stringer of fish. "Can we have them for dinner?"
"My gracious!" exclaimed Kelly, walking over to get a closer look. "Did you catch all of those?"
"Daddy and I did," Brody beamed.
"He's being modest," said Jim, walking past them to wash his hands at the sink. "I caught three and he caught ten."
"Brody, do you want to help me clean and cook them?" asked Jasmine, taking the stringer from him and laying the fish in the large prep sink.
Brody gave her a questioning look. "How do we do that?"
Jasmine smiled. "I'll show you. You'll like it. All boys do."
"Here come Christian and Mike," said Kelly, looking out the window. "Would you guys like some omelets?"
Jim nodded. Jasmine was good, but Kelly made the best omelets. "That would be great, babe. Thanks."
He kissed the top of her head and walked to the door, stepping out onto the veranda just as Christian and Mike were stepping up onto it.
"You're too late," he said, taking three mugs off the sideboard shelf.
"Too late for what?" asked Christian.
"To go fishing. Brody and I already caught them all. None left." He filled two cups from the pot staying warm on one of the rocket stoves and pushed them to the side. "Here. Start waking up and have a seat. Kelly's making me an omelet. Maybe there will be some leftovers."
He filled his Pine Tree mug, put the pot back on the stove and sat down with them. "You guys missed a beautiful sunrise."
"I saw it," said Mike, "but I think it's going to be a while before Christian sees another one."
Christian smiled. "Could be." He looked at Jim. "So, what do you think?"
Jim took a sip of his coffee. "Well, sometimes I think about the problems of the world and sometimes I just sit and think about how handsome I am."
Christian shook his head and pushed his hat back. "I mean what do you think about what Freelove and them were saying."
Jim leaned back in his chair. "Well, they're right in some respects. Most respects, probably. It's important that we stabilize our areas in order to begin re-establishing community security and continuity. By working together, we can increase the size of the area, which will help both in local commerce and protecting against threats from the outside."
"So, what's the problem? You didn't seem like you were too excited about the idea."
Jim shrugged. "The idea's good. It’s the implementation I question."
"Why?"
Jim took a long sip and set his mug on the table in front of him. "You're too young to remember SEATO, but do you remember NATO?"
Christian nodded. "Sure. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization."
Jim nodded. "It was a mutual defense alliance between a bunch of countries who couldn't protect themselves and us, with a capital US, who protected ourselves and everybody else. The agreement was that an attack on any member nation would be considered an attack on all member nations, and all member nations would come to its aid."
Christian nodded. "I remember."
"So, we had troops stationed all over Europe, a Europe we had rebuilt after the second world war with American taxpayers' money through the Marshall Plan, spending more billions of American taxpayers' dollars to supposedly defend them against the soviet boogeyman they couldn't defend themselves against, all the while enriching their economies while stressing our own."
He looked at Mike. "Were you ever a part of a multi-national force?"
Mike nodded. "A couple of times."
"How many so-called multi-nationals were in it compared to Americans?"
Mike shook his head. "Not many."
Jim nodded, picking up his mug and taking another sip. "Exactly. Then look at all of the other places in the world we sent troops, military aid and humanitarian aid. Every time there was a disaster or a hard rain somewhere, we sent aid. If there's a country in the world we haven't helped, I'm not aware of it. And we asked very little in return. So little, in fact, that many of those countries came to expect it as their due. Essentially, they felt it was our responsibility. But when things happened here, who helped? Nobody. We helped ourselves, because we could.”
He took another sip. "Not only that, but because we had adopted the role of the world's sugar-daddy, we built up other countries while driving our national debt up over twenty trillion dollars and unfunded liabilities of many times that - all to be paid for by American citizens driving over deteriorating roads and bridges the government said they couldn't afford to fix."
"So, what's the solution?" asked Christian.
