Rescue Mission

by Linda Jordan

  The third window was on the north side of the house and wasn’t as much of a problem. She’d deal with it later. All the windows had metal screening on the other side of the glass. She opened the north window and a cool fragrant breeze from the forest blew through. She smiled. This house came with everything. She could leave the windows open and bugs would stay outside.

  She took her filthy clothes off and changed into fresher ones, then lay down on the hard wood platform. Swimming to clean up could wait till after sleeping. She’d miss her feather bed though. Tomorrow she would go looking for dried grasses to stuff her now empty mattress with. She’d considered bringing it filled with all the feathers, but that would have been too bulky.

  Cady fell asleep even before the next thought. Dreaming about a new life.

  14

  Damon

  Damon woke abruptly. He’d fallen asleep sitting up in a chair and his back hurt. Hell, everything hurt. He was sitting in the common eating area of Morrigu’s workers’ housing. The cooks had just began making their last meal there. It wouldn’t be hot, there was no electricity.

  Generators were out. Gasoline almost all used up. There was a bit left that would be used in two of the three vans they’d bring with them, to carry the weapons and heavy equipment. The third van was electric and fully charged. Wouldn’t last long, but they’d use it as long as they could.

  Damon stood and stretched, trying to loosen his stiff muscles. He hadn’t slept long, maybe an hour or two, but it had to be enough.

  What a nightmare this was. Leading all these people, descending on that poor village and taking it by force if necessary. It was a mistake. Morrigu expected to be welcomed. Well, they wouldn’t be. They might have to fight. The village was armed. Prosperous enough for that. But they probably didn’t have enough food to feed double their population. And winter was coming on.

  Morrigu’s people would never make it otherwise. Not most of them. They didn’t know how to grow food. And if they wanted warmth and any sort of electricity, they’d have to re-engineer all their tech to work on solar or wind. Damon had no idea if there was anyone at the Zoo still alive who had the knowledge or skill to do that.

  He rubbed his face. It was covered with stubble, but there’d be no more shaving for him. Damon walked over to the counter where a pitcher of water sat near empty glasses. He poured a glass of water and drank the entire thing. It was cold and tasted flat and flavorless. Water too would become something they’d have to think about. Surely the village had clean water. Was it lake water? Or was there a nearby creek that was clean? Or a well?

  Late into the night, Morrigu and he had talked. Rather, she’d paced around the room and he’d tried to work out other solutions than descending on the village without warning.

  Morrigu had been thinking and Damon felt sure it wasn’t about how they’d survive till spring. She was thinking about revenge. Still.

  Damon grabbed a ripe apple from a metal bowl and a hunk of meat that had been roasted last night, in the coals from Morrigu’s burned castle. The cooks had been scrambling to deal with perishable food and make it edible without using any electricity. He didn’t envy their work.

  The ham was delicious, juicy and moist. He finished eating it, just standing there and licked his fingers. Wiping them on his smokey-smelling pants. Everything he owned, which hadn’t been much, had been burned along with Morrigu’s Castle and almost the rest of the Zoo. He hadn’t taken any of the clean clothes, leaving them for others. He had taken a jacket though. It would be getting cold during the nights soon and he had no confidence they’d be living indoors any time soon.

  It was getting light outside and people were filing into the room to find food.

  Damon left and walked outside. It was still smokey. He headed towards where people had put together packs for everyone to carry. There was a line of people already formed. Waiting to leave. Their faces grim.

  He got four water bottles from one line. Two of them were flimsy plastic, the others stainless steel. He’d use up the plastic ones first. Minimize the leaching of nasty chemicals into his water. He clipped those to his belt, with clips that lay in a pile nearby.

  He chose one of the heavier packs, putting the other water bottles inside it. Took off the jacket, rolled it up and stuffed it inside. Then shouldered the pack. It would work, but he’d be tired at the end of the day.

  Then Damon moved down the line to where Gregor was handing out weapons. He’d assigned Gregor the task, knowing the man would be able to do the job. Most of the people he’d assigned to jobs Damon didn’t feel the same confidence about.

  Gregor stood near the electric vans. Three of them were still running and would carry the heavy stuff for the community. Mostly weapons and arms. One held the tech equipment Carlos was able to salvage at the last minute, at least two functioning computers and other components. They had lots of information on them, but there’d be no way to hook into any network where they were headed.

  Gregor nodded at him and handed Damon a couple of belts of ammo and a large rifle. Damon automatically checked if the rifle was loaded, even though he could already see the magazine in it. He was tired. Too tired.

  “Do you have enough ammo for your handgun?”

  “No, I’ll take some.”

  Gregor pointed Damon to the row of open plastic bins. Damon found the right size and put three cases in his pack. Then put the pack on, the belts on and slung the rifle strap over the top of it all, arranging it for easy access. If they were attacked out on the trail, there would be no warning.

  Gregor went back to talking to people about what they could handle as a weapon. Many people didn’t want a weapon.

  Damon looked at the other bins. Some of them were full of handguns and knives.

  He took a big knife and strapped it on. Not for fighting, that wasn’t his weapon, but for living outdoors. It was a shame to use a fine knife for cutting kindling or skinning game, but there it was. They were reduced to that.

  The last stop was a pile of clothes. Coats, hats, heavy boots. Damon took someone’s old canvas hat. It was waterproof and had a wide brim all the way around. A bit warm for this weather, but he’d be glad of it when the rains came. And it would keep the hot sun off his head. His hair was thinning and he hadn’t seen the sun this much in years. He didn’t need a sunburn on top of exhaustion.

  Then he stood in a clump with everyone else. The Zoo had once held a multitude of people. Now they were down to a couple hundred people. And he only counted twelve kids. All of the children of Roosevelt’s people had been lost, along with most of their parents. So many people gone.

  Things went faster than Damon anticipated they would and in no time, the group was off, following Morrigu and Eamon, who was leading them because he remembered the way.

  Morrigu was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, all her belongings burnt too. A long green tunic of silky material, green pants and low-heeled boots. She too, wore a pack, a fairly heavy one from the looks of it. And a very long knife, as well as a bow with a quiver of arrows.

  Damon worked his way to the edge of the middle of the crowd. People with guns had been instructed to stay to the edges and be guards, alert for trouble, but not firing, unless fired upon. The three vans, also heavily guarded, brought up the rear.

  They left the Zoo by the front gate, he heard the clank as the gates closed and locked. Then they went up the street running next to the compound. They traveled north for a mile, maybe two. It felt like two. Walking down the wide, four lane road. Abandoned cars lined the edges. They were missing all the mechanical parts, those long ago salvaged and repurposed.

  A couple miles north the group turned right onto a one lane road. It was still asphalt and it might once have been a wider road that was being reclaimed by trees and bushes. Some of the bushes were clumps of blackberries and people were picking and eating them as they walked.

  Damon picked one, but it tasted tart. He spat it out.

  “You need to pic
k the soft ones, those come off easily with your fingers,” said a woman behind him. He recognized her as one of the cooks.

  He tried again and found a soft one. The flavor was rich, intense and sweet. Definitely good.

  As they moved farther away from the Zoo, the side streets became more ragged and overgrown. Nature had taken back what humans had stolen.

  Side roads held downed trees and old rotten power poles that had fallen, dragging their wires with them. Most of the cables near the Zoo had long been taken and reused, but as they got farther out, scavenging seemed less common. Most of the houses had fallen, but some still stood, rotting away gracefully.

  The sun rose in the sky and heat poured down on them. Damon was sweating from the exertion, but he didn’t take the hat off, no matter how hot he was. He could smell that most of the people nearby were sweating too. None of them were used to carrying heavy loads for mile upon mile.

  Surrounded by trees, bushes and tall plants, the only open space was the main road, kept in repair. Where the asphalt had cracked and buckled, someone had removed it, replacing it with gravel. Who was that someone?

  At midday they stopped in the middle of the road to rest. Damon took off his rifle and pack. Put his rifle back on. He stretched and drank water. Ate a ham sandwich which had been put in his pack, savoring the succulent ham and tangy mustard.

  Morrigu was walking through the crowd. Damon knew she had no actual need to eat, she just did it for pleasure. Her sustenance was from people following her and from the land. She stopped when she saw him.

  “I wondered if you’d come.”

  “Did I have a choice?” he asked.

  “Perhaps not. I know you like the villagers and are worried we will hurt them, although I admit, I don’t understand how we could hurt them. We just want them to take us in. To give us a place to live and hide for a time. To allow us to find a new spot and rebuild.”

  “And what if we decide we like their village and we’ll rebuild there? What if they are pushed off their land or if we bring our war to them? They are not warriors. They’re farmers and craftspeople. They can’t survive a war.”

  She said, “We need farmers and craftspeople. We have very little food. They can teach our people how to find and grow food.”

  “Then we will become farmers and herders. Not warriors. Who will fight the war?” asked Damon.

  “I don’t know. I’m not convinced we need to fight a war to kill Collins. I have a plan, but it’s not finished yet. I’m not ready to share it. Right now, I just need to make sure my people survive and thrive.”

  He nodded. He wanted that too. Just not at the expense of the villagers.

  Morrigu moved on through the crowd. Damon later saw her talking to Evangeline, far back on the edge of the group. Evangeline looked tired and angry.

  She sure hadn’t signed up for this. She’d been hired by Roosevelt and had probably expected a life lived in luxury. Where they were heading wasn’t going to be that.

  They’d just gotten started again when they heard the planes.

  “Take cover everyone! Under the trees!” yelled Damon.

  He pushed people in front of him, under bushes and trees. The vans pulled as far underneath as they could, mostly hidden.

  The planes flew overhead, en route to the Zoo.

  It wasn’t long before the bombs dropped again. One. Two. Three.

  This time were was no artillery fire from the planes. There was no one running away to shoot at. At least there shouldn’t be. If some fool had stayed behind. …

  Damon heard the planes bank and dive, probably searching for any survivors of the attack. Satisfied, they finally flew off. Heading back to the Eastside, he hoped. Reporting that everyone from the Zoo was finally all dead.

  When he could no longer hear the planes, Damon signaled they should move on. The day had grown hot and the sun blasted down on the cleared road.

  People were sobbing. For some of them, the Zoo was the only home they’d ever known. For him it held a few good memories, but mostly bad ones. During the time before Morrigu and then when she was first climbing to power, he’d lost a lot of friends. Until he learned to stop making friends. Those had been dark years and he wouldn’t allow himself to feel that pain again. He hadn’t made any friends since. Refused to let himself care about anyone.

  They passed by a cleared area. Damon could see a house and fields that had been planted. Stout, short brick walls surrounded the fields and cattle grazed there. Dogs leapt up on top of the wall barking and baying at the group as they passed. Damon could see four men with guns in the shadows of the porch.

  They kept walking.

  There was another homestead they passed later. Wire fences keeping in goats, sheep and other animals Damon didn’t recognize, but could smell. There were several houses and a large garden fenced in with wire. There were many more people with guns standing around. And several large aggressive dogs.

  It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that Eamon found the narrow, one lane, gravel road walled in by the hedge of blackberries and glossy-leaved bushes. It felt cooler in the shade of the tall hedge and their group stretched out into a line four to five people deep.

  Damon motioned to the other guards and gradually moved up to the front. No one was going to be able to attack them from the side here. And the next break would be at the wide turnaround. After that the village.

  He didn’t want to have any part of this, but he’d long ago bound himself to Morrigu. For bad or worse, there was no going back now.

  Soon, the first three rows behind Eamon and Morrigu were filled with guards. And Evangeline, who he guessed was a guard now too.

  As they approached the gravel area, he saw no signs of the villagers. Morrigu stopped, allowing everyone to move into the open area. She looked at Damon.

  “I have no idea what to expect,” he said.

  “I shall go in first and talk to them. Alone.”

  “I’ll go too,” said Evangeline.

  “No,” said Morrigu. “I must go alone.”

  Evangeline shrugged.

  Damon knew better than to argue.

  “I’ll wait for your signal,” he said.

  Morrigu went down the trail Eamon pointed to alone. She disappeared behind a thick tree and obscuring bushes. There was too much noise coming from the crowd behind Damon to hear anything.

  He turned and motioned to silence everyone. Even the vehicles shut off their engines. There was still no sound from the village. After a time, Morrigu reappeared.

  “They are all gone. The village is deserted.”

  “What?” asked Damon.

  He ran down the trail, followed by Evangeline. There was no sign of any people, or animals. A few small brown birds flitted through the towering trees. He checked several buildings as Evangeline checked others. Sometimes old furniture had been left, and a few scattered belongings like books or cracked cups. Crops had mostly been harvested, although there were a few shriveling vines left. It looked like they might need water.

  There were no fires burning anywhere, those were long cold. He checked Cady’s house last, puzzled by the tracks of a massive creature intermingled with her bootprints. Had some large beast chased the villagers away?

  But her house looked clean and tidy. The mattress was there, but not the blankets or pillow she’d had on her bed. Books seemed to be missing from the bookcase. It smelled pleasantly of herbs, but there were none hanging to dry. It didn’t look like she’d fled. Not suddenly anyway.

  He went back to the center of the village, everyone had gathered there and was sitting down, resting. Damon took his rifle off, dropping his pack.

  He took Eamon’s arm, “Have the vehicles been hidden?”

  “Yeah, I had them park under the trees. They’re cutting branches to cover them.”

  “Good.”

  Damon stood there, watching the crowd. There was some cut firewood the villagers had left and the cooks began making a fire in a pit in the center of the aban
doned village.

  Someone else was walking between buildings and writing things down, as if taking a count of beds. Others were organizing a watch. Still others carrying buckets of water.

  Where had the villagers gone? And when? They couldn’t have been gone more than a week. The tracks around Cady’s house were fresh. Not overrun by animals. And why had they left?

  They had a seer. One who could see long term. Had they seen the remnants of the Zoo coming? Or was it something else?

  People were assigned houses to stay in. There were more houses than people and some chose to sleep on the floor of already full buildings rather than be off alone in single room houses. They were afraid, wanting to cling to each other, he knew.

  Damon wasn’t assigned a house and Morrigu told him to choose an empty one. She didn’t feel the need of a bodyguard out here in the woods. Not yet anyway.

  He wandered through the village, listening as people made discoveries. Most of them had never lived in a house before, just in Morrigu’s large warehouses, converted into apartments. These houses had windows that opened to let in fresh air. Some had large tubs to bathe in. And there were wood stoves to keep each of the houses warm during winter. The former villagers hadn’t taken the cut firewood with them. They must have been traveling light. In a hurry to get somewhere or leave here.

  Gregor found several handwritten books with diagrams in one of the houses. He brought them to Carlos, who had invented Morrigu’s network that all the wristbands ran on. The older man sat at a table in the village center and pored over the books and made surprised grunting sounds. Then he’d hand them off to his daughter, Martina, who read them and also exclaimed.

  “We can do this, can’t we?” she asked.

  “What?” asked Damon.

  Martina said, “These books explain how the former inhabitants made a solar and wind powered electrical system. They took the wiring with them, but we saw plenty more on our journey here. It would be easy to collect. We can have electricity by the time cold weather comes. That’ll give us light and then we can rebuild our system.”