Barry nodded his head, still bewildered.
“I was the one calling you out of the house on the megaphone. You got away, and I lost a teammate to some of your neighbors before we could get out of that mess. Something happened, and our bird crashed. Now I’m living out here with some nice folks I met,” John explained with a smile that wasn’t one hundred percent friendly.
“So—you’re one of the people who tried to kidnap me?” Barry observed hesitantly.
John nodded. “I surely am, but that was the old me. I decided I didn’t care for what the government types were doing for themselves and not for the rest of the people in this country, who are dying from starvation and God knows what else, so I haven’t returned to my command.”
Barry slowly nodded his head in conservative agreement. John let his rifle hang loosely from the sling, no longer pointing it at the defenseless man on the ground.
“You know why the government wanted you?” John asked.
Barry nodded the affirmative. “Do you?” Barry countered.
John pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nope, no idea other than you were considered a current national asset.”
Barry snorted in disgust. “No one owns me or anyone else. They think they do, but they don’t.”
“So what are ya doing sneaking around out here?” John asked, changing the subject and getting back to business.
Barry gave a slight wave of his hands. “No—I wasn’t sneaking around out here. I smelled you guys and was trying to avoid people, since everyone seems willing to kill for a scrap of food. I crawled up here, saw your friend down there, and then you came up.”
John studied the man but didn’t detect an indication Barry was being mendacious. “You by yourself?”
Barry nodded, knowing this would work in his favor. One stranger posed far less of a threat than two with one unaccounted for. “I’m alone and have been since all this happened.”
“Can I trust you?” John asked, a serious look painted on his rugged features.
Barry was taken aback by the question. No one had asked that sort of question in the old world. No one trusted anyone unless they had a contract with that person, and even then, the trust only extended as far as a contract specified. Nowadays, Barry surmised, life was going to be different since a contract would be better suited for helping start a cooking fire than ensuring two parties remained true to their word. Maybe the world could get back to a handshake and a smile being enough to cement a deal between people.
“You can,” Barry voiced, still lying flat on his back.
“Well, then get up and grab your gear,” John said, gesturing to the weapons he’d tossed to the side. As Barry hauled himself to his feet and lumbered towards the rifle and pistol, John stopped himself from letting the man know what would happen if he tried anything funny. At this point in these new relationships, post event, it was important to maintain one’s advantage while also allowing the other party to retain some semblance of their own dignity.
If people were going to get along, they’d have to do little things that showed they respected and trusted each other. John decided to take a leap of faith with Barry.
“Why don’t you grab your bike and meet me at that little OP out there, where my buddy Jared is probably wondering what happened to me.”
Barry agreed and left in the direction of his motorcycle.
Chapter 4
John waited till the man was out of sight before running most of the way to the OP. Jared saw him coming at a dead run and pulled the butt of his rifle into the crook of his shoulder, searching for the cause of John’s need to run. John waved him off as he neared the little OP.
“We’re going to have company. I already spoke with the guy, and he’ll be riding in on his motorcycle, so don’t point any guns at him, but don’t relax either,” John gasped breathlessly as he dropped down in the OP next to Jared. A couple of minutes later, Barry came chugging over the ridge, riding slowly towards the two men.
“He’s armed, man,” Jared hissed.
John laid his hand on Jared’s rifle, ensuring he didn’t bring the weapon up. “So are we. I took them from him; then after we talked, I gave them back.”
Jared cocked his head, but stopped short as Barry pulled up to the OP and cut the engine. He flicked the kickstand down and dismounted, leaving the bike standing upright this time. Next, Barry unslung the rifle and hung it on a handlebar. John liked that Barry was reciprocating a gesture intended to ease John and Jared’s reservations about Barry, who was a complete stranger showing up. John had done it twice: once when he gave Barry his weapons back, and the second time when he allowed Barry to get his motorcycle and meet them at the OP.
Barry knew he could have left and not returned, but he liked the way John had handled a very tense situation where Barry had been at a tremendous disadvantage. He slung the rifle over the handlebar and was about to take off his belt holster, but decided against it. He didn’t want to appear completely defenseless.
“Barry, this is Jared, Jared—Barry,” John said by way of introductions.
The two men shook hands as Barry stopped next to the OP.
“Funny story, Jared,” John started. “Barry here is the Barry I was after the night of my helicopter crash.”
Jared scrunched his brow, then turned to Barry for confirmation.
“Yep, seems your friend and I have a bit of history,” Barry said, looking at John with brows raised. “You’re not blaming me for the crash, are you?”
John wagged his head. “Nope, not at all, that shit had nothing to do with what happened back at your place.”
“So what now?” Barry queried.
Jared looked at John with the same question written on his face. Jared wasn’t sure what had happened out in the hills that resulted in John trusting Barry enough to invite him back to the OP. In Jared’s recent experience, he learned to distrust people more than trust them. This change in attitude came after he was nearly beaten to death, shot at, and witnessed all manner of atrocities perpetrated on people by other humans. Jared wanted to question John about Barry, but didn’t want to do it in front of the guy.
“Why don’t I go get the rest of the crew and have ’em walk out here and meet Barry,” John said as he stepped back, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the ranch house.
Jared dipped his head in acknowledgment, and John was off, sauntering toward the ranch house. Once John was out of earshot, Jared turned to Barry.
“Hard to trust people nowadays, especially when you have something they might want,” Jared declared, staring Barry squarely in the eye.
Barry smiled easily. “You mean like a motorcycle, food, shelter and everything else I have stashed in that pack?”
Jared held the man’s gaze for a second before smirking. “Yeah, like that kinda stuff.”
The two men sat in silence for a bit, staring out across the hill country. Jared’s mind was temporarily taken off the fact that his best friend in a chaotic world had passed the day before. Barry sat wondering what the hell he was doing wasting his time with these people.
Barry had a plan, which was to get farther out into the farmlands and hook up with a community where he could be useful with his technical skills. People would need to get machines running in order to plant and harvest crops, and Barry was fairly sure he had the ability to do just that. Jared shifted next to him, allowing Barry to notice for the first time that although the man was unshaven and relatively unkempt in his appearance, Jared was not gaunt like many of the people Barry had seen after the event.
Jared thought about what Barry just told him and wondered why the man had given up so much information about what he had in his possession. It didn’t make sense to Jared that Barry would have a sinister motive after divulging all the information about what he possessed. Nowadays, people tended to hide anything of value they owned in order to avoid bringing unwanted attention to themselves. Barry must be offering an olive branch of sorts, and suddenly Jar
ed felt compelled to do the same.
“We have it good here, food, shelter and just enough people to run a pretty good security system,” Jared blurted out.
Fuck, thought Jared, why did I say that?
Barry squinted in the bright sunlight and thought about what this other man just told him.
“You all have any plans of planting crops or anything like that?” Barry inquired.
“We have food,” Jared said with obvious reservation returning to his voice.
“Listen,” Barry started, “I’m not the bad guy here. I didn’t turn the lights out, and I sure as hell didn’t fly in riding a Black Hawk and try to snatch anyone. I’m trying to find a community that I can live in, live with, and help.” Barry shifted his body, lining it up straight with Jared. “What did you do before the lights went bye-bye?”
“I was a computer engineer, worked for—”
Barry cut him off, waving his hand and shaking his head. “So you’re unemployed now,” Barry quipped. “You gotta get that who-you-worked-for shit out of your head. They don’t exist anymore; therefore, they don’t matter.”
Jared frowned. “Who’d you work for?” he asked, irritation seeping through in his tone.
“There you go again, with the who crap. I told you it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all gone, man.” Barry swept his hand across his front. “In a flash the foundation of society…gone. Man had the carpet pulled right out from under him, and now he’s paying for his arrogance.”
Jared sighed. “Okay, what did you do before all this?”
“Again, my boy, you are off base with your question. The question everyone should be asking the person next to them is how can you apply what you learned in your former life to your present life?”
Jared thought about it for a moment and realized Barry was right. Whatever he’d done or been before meant zero to his survival unless he could figure out a way to apply it to his current situation.
“I can see you’re just like the rest of ’em down there, only somehow you got lucky and made it out. Don’t know how—you seem—out of your element, which nowadays seems to spell disaster for most people.”
Jared was getting more and more agitated with Barry’s condescending sermon and wished John would hurry up and get back with the others. “How’d you get so lucky? You’re not dead or trapped down in the city, how’d that happen?” Jared flexed.
Barry laughed out loud before answering, “I am not one of the sheep down there dying every single day ’cause of a power outage. I was prepared, I saw this coming, I tried to warn people, and no one listened, and now they’re all dead or will be soon.”
“How did you know this was coming?” Jared asked, concern reflecting in his voice. “I mean, if you knew this was coming, then I think my earlier question about who you worked for is a valid question.”
Barry snorted. “I knew. No one told me. Silicon Valley, along with everyone else in corporate America, was so focused on growing technology and building their empires, they were blinded to any possibility of it all crumbling. The only threats they perceived were government regulations, and they spent billions in lobbying our precious politicians in Washington. They’re all shortsighted, self-serving idiots, every last one of them.”
Jared shook his head slightly. “How—how would you know that?”
Barry threw his hands in the air as he stared into the sky as if seeking some divine guidance in educating this poor ignorant soul standing before him. “Three little fucking pigs, man.”
Jared shrugged. “And?”
“And Silicon Valley was pig number one for sure. Built all that technology on an electrical grid that amounted to straw. When the big bad wolf came knocking a couple of months ago…poof, it’s all gone. To make things worse, those arrogant fucks designed everything they built in a way that the general public couldn’t live without.” Barry grinned impishly. “Including them and every facet of support they relied on.”
Jared nodded his understanding, mulling over what this guy was saying while not particularly liking the pompous manner with which he was delivering his message.
“They built a trillion-dollar house on a foundation of sand, and now we’re all paying the price,” Barry said as John appeared with Shannon and Calvin in tow.
Barry turned and watched as the three approached. All three were armed, but kept their weapons positioned in nonthreatening stances. When the trio arrived at the OP, introductions were made until everyone knew each other’s names. As Jared watched the introductions, he was vaguely aware of a slight personality trait in this new guy Barry.
The man seemed pompous and a bit overbearing, yet he also didn’t seem like he quite meshed with the rest of the group, whom Jared considered normal people. Jared had met and worked with many highly intelligent people in his former life and found many of them were slightly if not highly socially inept when it came to dealing with the majority of their co-workers. Jared had once read an article about people’s IQs and how a person’s IQ could affect their ability to relate to other people of lower IQs. The article was not critical: it was matter-of-fact and informative, and Jared had never forgot reading it.
The article he’d read indicated a person with an IQ above 145 trying to relate with a person of normal IQ, which usually ranged somewhere around 100, could be compared to a normal person attempting to relate to a dog. Sure, they could be companions, but a true peer-to-peer relationship would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The two people simply wouldn’t view the world in the same way, and their relationship would be hampered by the disparity in IQ points.
Jared studied Barry as he started in on John about the frailty of the electrical grid before the event and tried to quantify his pros versus his cons. After about two seconds, Jared chuckled to himself, realizing they would all have to get to know the man better before any decision could be made about Barry’s value to their little community.
The conversation shifted to Barry’s motorcycle, which Barry moved closer to the OP so the group could inspect the machine. Barry was obviously proud of the fact that he possessed enough awareness to predict the coming event and had prepared for it. From what Jared could tell, the man didn’t seem like he was too shaken up about all the people dying in the city below them. Jared was getting the feeling Barry was the type of man who, if someone disagreed with him, he would insist they were wrong and deserved any tragedy that may befall them.
Jared had been out on the OP for quite some time after burying Bart, so Shannon offered to take over the watch while the menfolk went back to the ranch house and talked about Barry’s immediate plans and how they may or may not mesh with their group’s plans for the future.
Chapter 5
Inside the ranch house, Essie recoiled when Barry walked through the door. Jared strode over to the apprehensive-looking little girl and scooped her into his arms, turning to face the newcomer.
“This is Essie,” he said, like a proud father.
Barry stopped short and stared at the little girl with a look of bewilderment on his face. “You didn’t say there were kids here,” he said accusingly.
“And, Essie, this is Barry. He has a motorcycle outside, if you’d like to see it,” Jared continued, ignoring Barry’s quirky response.
There was a second pause as Barry continued to stare at Essie, who shrank into Jared’s clutches.
John broke the awkward moment by placing his rifle just inside the door, ensuring the weapon was on safe. “Barry, we usually check the long guns here inside the door,” John stated with a look that told Barry it wasn’t a suggestion.
Barry altered his gaze from Essie to John, and then to the two rifles leaning against the wall just inside the front door. Barry hesitated for a moment then pulled at the rifle’s sling, dragging it up and over his head and shoulders. He stepped over and placed the weapon next to the door and stepped back.
John watched the entire affair and could tell Barry had experience with the rifle, but his exper
ience didn’t rise to the level of being proficient. John could watch the way a man carried himself and be fairly certain how well the man could handle physical confrontation. Likewise, he could watch a man handle a weapon and know with a substantial amount of confidence whether he was capable of using the weapon with a high degree of skill or not. It all boiled down to the ease with which a person manipulated a weapon. The ease of familiarity came over time, as did things like achieving an expertise or being proficient.
“Sit down. Let’s talk,” John said, motioning all the men toward the small dining table off of the living room.
Jared sat Essie down on the couch, pulled back the curtains, allowing sunlight to stream in, and gave her a workbook Shannon had been using to teach her how to write her upper- and lowercase letters. “Work on these while we talk, okay.” Jared offered Essie a pencil before joining the three men at the table.
Calvin was the first to speak. “So, you say you’re looking for people to connect with. Where were you, and why’d ya leave?”
John shot Jared a quick glance. Calvin wasn’t privy to the fact that John recognized Barry as his target the night of the helicopter crash.
Barry’s face took on a sarcastic look. “Well, I was doing just fine until GI Joe here stopped by and screwed all that up.”
John drew a deep breath as Calvin looked questioningly at the former Marine turned Army Special Forces operator.
“Look, none of that matters now,” John started.
Barry assumed an air of innocence as he responded, “The man asked a question. I only answered it truthfully.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Jared said in a soft tone that stopped the conversation in its tracks. All heads turned to Jared, who usually wasn’t prone to saying anything that could or would lead to a confrontation. “How or why or whatever doesn’t matter now. Yeah, John used to work for the government, and yeah, he tried to bring you back so you could help them get everything going again, but Jesus, now all that’s changed, and we need to focus on what is going to get us through this,” Jared said, emphasizing the word us.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 3
