The four men sat in silence for a moment before John turned to Barry. “What makes you so special to the government?”
Barry shrugged. “Don’t know. There are a lot of men and women who are special,” he mused.
“Yeah, and they’re all probably on the lists we used to work off,” John shot back.
Barry laughed quietly as if he knew something these people couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “Lists? What lists? I’d like to see the list so I can understand just how stupid the remaining people trying to run this country are.”
Without a word, John got to his feet and went to the back of the house. A few moments later he returned with a piece of paper in his hand. He dropped it in the center of the table. “There’s your list. I wrote it down from all the missions I went on and the missions I remember other teams on. The last three are all I could remember from upcoming missions.”
Barry took the paper and read through the twenty-three names. After he read all the names on the list, he held it up and pointed, starting with the name on top. “Cheryl Wiley, idiot, couldn’t find her ass with both hands and probably dead.” He moved to the next name. “Tom Whitehead, good God, what a moron, this guy was about as sharp as a wet bag of mice. Claire Thurman, ladder climber, she ran a rather successful division on the backs of people who really were the actual smart ones. She’s a politician, is that why she’s on here?” Barry looked straight at John, who didn’t flinch.
Barry looked down at the paper for a second longer, then pointed to another name. “You got to be kidding me, Mark Clancy, really? Come on, man, this guy should be riding ponies and sucking his thumb. Who put this list together?” Barry dropped the paper on the tabletop, then flicked it in John’s direction and looked away as if he were too disgusted to rest his eyes on these people.
John just stared back at Barry with a less than enthused look painted across his chiseled features. Finally, he spoke. “Not my list, I’m just the body snatcher—remember?” The tension in the room had spiked, causing even Essie to stop her schoolwork and stare fearfully at the group of men at the table.
“Listen, this is getting us nowhere,” Jared interjected. “So, you think the list is a joke, okay, whatever. John isn’t dealing with the list any longer, so it’s a moot point to even discuss it.”
“Fact,” Calvin rasped, tired of hearing Barry’s rhetoric and wanting to get the conversation moving towards what this stranger wanted with them.
“Are we done jousting over the list, then?” Jared questioned; then without waiting for an answer, he continued, “We recently lost a member of our group here, and everyone’s a bit strung out from that. Now add the fact that no one here has had four showers in the last month or slept eight hours straight and, well, we don’t appreciate a stranger coming in here and talking down to everyone while simultaneously lobbying to join our community.”
Jared waited for a response, and when he got none, he continued, “A friend of mine used to say you have to weigh the risk-reward factor, and I think that applies here.”
John slowly nodded his head in agreement as he watched the younger man taking charge of what had been a free-for-all just a few minutes prior.
Jared was locked on Barry, who had turned and faced the group now. “I propose if you want to stay here with us, we would have to decide whether or not your reward outweighs your risk. After that, you will be here on a probationary basis.” John smiled inwardly as Barry remained silent. “How long would the food you’re carrying last you?”
Barry looked around the table. Everyone simply stared back, waiting for his answer. “Two months if I ration,” he replied, the arrogance mildly evaporating from his tone.
“Okay—well, I see no need for a two-month probation, but how does two weeks sound?” Jared observed.
Barry shrugged and nodded in a noncommittal yet agreeable manner.
“For two weeks you use your own cache of food and water, you pull watch with one of us, and you can sleep inside the house. After you’ve passed the probationary period, you combine your supplies with ours, and we work together for the greater good of the group from that day going forward,” Jared finished. He glanced about the table, searching the faces of his two friends as he waited for Barry’s answer. Neither John nor Calvin appeared to disagree with Jared’s proposed plan, which gave Jared great relief.
“How much food do you guys have up here?” Barry asked, getting straight to the point.
All three adult residents of the house looked at each other in obvious discomfort at the thought of divulging that information to an unknown entity.
“We have enough,” John said in response to the question.
“No, you don’t,” Barry shot back.
“Why don’t we worry about that stuff later?” Jared said, trying to head off another pointless argument.
“No,” Barry said, shaking his head. “I have to know the people I’m taking up with are not only serious about living to see their next birthday, but that they are smart enough or are capable enough to achieve that goal. I’ve seen nothing to indicate to me you all won’t be dead within the year.” Barry leaned back and crossed his arms after finishing.
John leaned in. “I think we’re doing just fine; we have a car, a water source, and plenty of food.”
“For now, but what happens when the food runs out? Do you have a plan to start a food source before that happens, or are you all a bunch of reactionaries here?” Barry gestured towards the paper still lying on the table in front of John. “That list is all wrong, and I assume it was put together by what the government considers intelligent people. I know all those people, and they are not the ones I’d choose to help rebuild the world.” Barry scoffed, looking at the paper again with disdain.
“Enough about a list no one in this house put together,” Jared said. “Let’s hear what value you bring to a community.”
Barry nodded and squared himself up to the table. “Okay, here’s how I would do it. Trusting you have enough food for, let’s say, six months, we could potentially get up and running before we all die of starvation. I would make a different list of people who really are smart and really could help your community.” Barry emphasized the word really each time he used it.
“The people on your list”—Barry gesticulated in John’s direction—“are useless and would spend months pontificating about matters they know nothing of—then they’d die. Jared, you and I have skills in the electronic world that can and will have to be applied in the current world. We understand how electricity works, and after a few scavenging outings, I am sure we can start getting some crude elements of our lost society working. Maybe a water heater or some lights, things like that.”
Jared’s mind raced as he thought about what Barry was saying. Up to this point, Jared had only thought about how not to get killed and where he was going to get his next meal. Water had been fairly easy to find so far, but even that would become an issue as their community grew in numbers. Now Barry was talking about hot water, which Jared thought was one of the things he missed the most.
“First,” Barry continued, breaking Jared’s daydreaming session, “we have to figure out a way to produce food and do it in a way we can sustain year-round. Won’t be easy, and we may have to move from this house you all have here. Of course all this is what we do after I make a new list and we go bring those people up here to be part of the community. They can help out using their individual skill sets.”
“Now you want to kidnap people?” John quipped, looking down his nose at Barry.
Jared laid a hand on John’s arm. “How would we find these people, and why would they want to come with us, and are they even still alive?” Jared pressed.
Barry smiled. “’Cause I know ’em all. I grew up in that mess, knew more billionaires than I knew normal people. I went to their clubs in the city…The Battery Club for instance, I was a member and so was everyone else. I was a member for a different reason than most, of course, but everyone wanted
to show how diverse they were, so they would join a club that preached diversity, but cost thousands just to join and thousands more every year in dues. How much diversity do you boys think were in those clubs?” Barry leaned into the group, a smile on his face.
“Not much, I can tell you that. Yeah, there were females and Indians, and your Asians had a good showing, but they all worked in the top tier of all those Silicon Valley companies. I never saw a janitor or someone who worked in Google’s cafeteria at The Battery, not once. Funny thing is they didn’t even realize how un-diverse they all were. They were all the same, working for the same goals in the same region of the same state and most of the time for the same three or four companies. Voted the same, ate the same food, drove the same electric cars—diversity, ha, they were about as diverse as they were prepared for this mess.”
Barry breathed out loudly and leaned back again, keeping his hands on the table. “So, you guys need me, or you’re not going to make it.”
Chapter 6
Barry mapped out his plan with help from the other three men. They needed to work off of Barry’s list first since the chances of valuable human assets dying in a world with limited supplies and no order was a very real thing. After they had exhausted Barry’s list, they could start working in groups, one working on power while the other worked on a food source or crops. It was decided that Jared, John, and Barry would work in a three-man team in order to contact the people on Barry’s list. While they were on these missions, they would also scavenge for things Barry and Jared deemed necessary to produce power for their group.
John insisted that the three spend at least a couple of hours shooting both rifles and pistols before they ventured down into the city. John asked Calvin about a couple of horses for their trip. Horses would prove much quieter than their Volkswagen Beetle. Barry suggested they try putting together a portable solar unit like ones sold at Lowe’s. The panels would be too heavy for any of the men to carry back to the ranch house, so the horses were a must.
Jared and Barry agreed that the solar panels, along with the other components, would still feasibly be in the stores, since people were trying to figure out the food shortage and hadn’t yet moved in the direction of a more progressive approach to remedying society’s situation.
“I’m pretty sure the type of battery we’ll be looking for will not be in a Lowe’s or Home Depot,” Barry told Jared as the two sat at the kitchen table the following morning after Barry’s arrival.
“What kind of battery do we need?” Jared asked. He had never worked with batteries and hadn’t the foggiest idea about how they worked or where to procure specialized ones like the batteries needed to supplement a solar unit.
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I know someone who can answer those questions if he’s still alive.”
John walked through the door and propped his weapon against the wall before sitting down at the table with Jared and Barry.
“I think we have our first mission,” Jared said.
John didn’t say a word as he fired up a small stove and brought a cup of water to a boil. He poured instant coffee into the steaming hot water and stirred it with a spoon. Jared sat patiently waiting for John to finish what appeared to have become his routine after coming from the OP and out of the morning cold. Barry looked as though he was going to say something, but a sharp look from Jared put a stop to any of Barry’s inappropriate comments.
John blew gently on the hot beverage, then sipped at it and sat back with his hands cupped around the warm mug. “Tell me about it,” he said in a tired voice.
“Barry and I have come up with a possible way to get some power out here.”
John sipped at the coffee as the tired lines in his face were slowly replaced with the tiniest tenge of intrigue.
“Solar panels, portable panels, only thing is we aren’t too sure about the batteries or where to get the right batteries. Barry knows or knew—I hope knows—a guy who worked with batteries.”
“Where is this guy now, or where should he be?” John queried as he continued sipping the hot coffee in an attempt to warm his insides.
“He has a place in Woodside. It’s a pretty safe place for what just happened, so I feel good about him still being there,” Barry replied.
Right after the solar flare, John had been briefed on the operation to retrieve Barry and made himself familiar with the area around Barry’s old residence, but he was far from familiar with the Bay Area overall. He shrugged and looked to Jared. “Where the fuck is Woodside?”
“On the other side of the bay,” Jared said, his voice filled with dread.
John placed the cup on the table and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his neck, staring at the ceiling before returning to the upright position. “Nothing’s easy anymore,” he said with half a laugh.
The next several days were spent going over tactical and weapons-related topics. John wanted to ensure both Jared and Barry were at the very least semi-proficient with both the pistol and a rifle since they would be his backup on a trek across some very dangerous areas. Barry’s marksmanship turned out to be accurate out to about one hundred yards with the rifle and fifteen yards with the pistol. Anything past those distances was a coin toss on whether he would hit his target or be donating lead to the environment.
Jared, on the other hand, seemed more comfortable with the weapons, which surprised John since Jared had been caught completely flat-footed after the solar flare. John made a mental evaluation of both men based on their stories and the manner in which they handled themselves on his range.
Barry was a resourceful, pompous son of a bitch who somehow knew a societal collapse was headed their way, and prepared for it. Jared, on the other hand, was a bit of a babe in the woods and had presumably never thought of preparing for so much as an earthquake, which regularly rocked Californians. As John studied the two men, he was fast coming to the conclusion that he would prefer Jared accompanying him in a fight over Barry.
John formed a portion of his opinion based on stories Bart had told him about Jared and how Jared had handled himself during a couple of sketchy incidents. When Bart had explained how Jared came to find Essie, John was skeptical. In the end, Bart would have had no reason to lie about Jared’s past, so John took Bart at his word and just scratched his head.
A computer engineer, just a couple of weeks into a world-altering event, had murdered several gang members and done it in a very thoughtful and meticulous manner. John was impressed with the well-thought-out plan Jared had employed. He was even more impressed with how utterly focused and violent Jared had to have been to stay in the fight to the end even after being wounded twice.
John had been in plenty of close-quarter gunfights and knew all too well how frightening they could be. When you see the flash from your adversary’s weapon and hear his battle cry, it makes a man realize real quick just what he’d gotten himself into. John harbored no doubt Jared was terrified, but Jared had pushed past his fear and finished what he came to do. John admired Jared for his ability to immerse himself in an the unknown and triumph.
After the third day, John felt he had done all he could do with the limited ammunition they had at their disposal. The three spent a fourth day working on some movement tactics, which included hand and arm signals as well as some outdoor patrolling techniques. John explained that, while they were moving, they needed to be spread out a bit. John wasn’t too worried about a hand grenade taking the group out, but he knew from experience it was much easier shooting three guys if they were clumped in a group rather than spread out over several yards.
Near the end of the day’s training, Barry wanted to see the water source Jared and his people were using, in order to assess whether it could sustain crops if they decided to stay at the ranch house. John used this hike to polish their outdoor movement techniques. John, along with Jared and Barry, reached the creek, then followed it for several hundred yards to a twenty-yard-long riffle that ended where the creek smo
othed out into a deeper pool where the water wasn’t moving as quickly. The creek had been flowing since Jared had arrived at the ranch house, which was a little past summer, but before the rain.
Most creeks in California were seasonal and would be dry at the end of summer and only come back to life after the winter rains began to fall. This creek was different because it was fed from a natural spring and appeared to run year-round. Barry was excited about the spring since this meant the property provided them with sustainability, meaning the group might not have to move. Barry immediately began jabbering about digging out a reservoir near the ranch house and pumping water so they would no longer have to carry buckets from the small stream.
“Listen,” Barry exclaimed, his voice ripe with enthusiasm. “We have a water source like a well, only on the surface. A well doesn’t gush water, it seeps it, and that’s what this natural spring seems to be doing; otherwise it would be flooding this area. It’s just enough to feed our creek with what I hope will be an endless supply of H2O, baby,” Barry exclaimed, the excitement evident in his voice.
John shifted the rifle on his broad shoulders, cocking his head toward Barry as if silently urging the man to get to the point.
“It’s all part of the big plan. We dig out a pool near the ranch house and set up a pump to draw water to the house for cooking, baths and drinking. Next, we set up an irrigation system and get ready to plant crops.”
Jared frowned. “There isn’t much flat ground around here for crops, man.”
Barry slapped his hands against his knees. “So what, man? We can grow crops wherever we want or wherever we can get water to. I say most of them would be along the edge of the creek in order to make watering easier. We can use a gravitational system, moving water from up top to plants down in the lower areas. Maybe we have a few things growing on the flat area around the house, and those would have to be watered using the gravitational system.”
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 4
