The Blastlands Saga

by DK Williamson

Jack sighed. “I must be as dumb as a sack of hammers.”

  “Not dumb, just a bit dense, Jack,” Amanda responded. “It’s cute.”

  “Great, I need help, and I get wisecracks,” he said with a smile.

  “Speaking of help, what are you going to do for my shooting, Jack?” Sean asked. “in case you missed that too, I didn’t do so hot.”

  “I saw. There’s hope for you. We could work on it after we’re dismissed, if you want. I’ll ask Art if he’ll let us use the range.”

  A short while later Corporal Sierra and a sullen Thomas Young returned to the training area. Thomas rejoined the group, and they were dismissed for the day.

  Jack and Sean approached Corporal Sierra, while everyone else left, except for Thomas, who stayed seated on one of the benches. He appeared to be lost in thought.

  “So, you made it through day one, Jack. How do you feel?” Art said.

  “Pretty good, but has anyone ever been cut the first day?”

  Art glanced at the Ranger post HQ. “Not yet.”

  “I think Jack has a leg up on the rest of us,” Sean said.

  Art nodded. “He does. It’s in the blood.”

  “One generation of Rangers is enough to pass it on to the next?” Jack asked with a smile.

  Art laughed. “Maybe not, but remember, you grew up in the company of Rangers. Your dad, Gordon, and most of all me, plus who the hell knows many other Rangers. Dozens of Rangers bounced you on their knees when you were little, let you play with their gear while they filled your head with tales of Ranger derring-do. Hell, some of those stories might’ve actually been true!” he said with a big smile. “Some kids grow up with their heads under the hood of a truck if their dad was a mechanic. Farmer’s kids know crops, rancher’s kids know livestock, baker’s kids know bread. You know this,” he said tapping the star on his chest. My point is, you were brought up in the culture. You’ve grown up with men and women who do this for a living, and some of that rubs off.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Then you do your year and you walk away. Same as those mechanic’s kids that want to do something else. I think you’ll take to it like a duck to water, that’s my bet. Now, what do you and Mr. Trahearn need?”

  “Would it be all right if I take Sean over to the range and work on some things that might improve his shooting, Corporal?”

  “Jack, when we’re not training you call me Art, and I think it would be a great idea for you to work with ol’ sharpshooter Sean here,” he said with a smile as Sean rolled his eyes.

  “Thanks, Corporal,” Jack said facetiously.

  “Stay safe, trainee,” Art shot back with a laugh. He slapped Jack on the arm and walked toward Thomas as Sean and Jack headed back to the range.

  The two Ranger trainees had covered a short distance when they heard a voice from behind.

  “Hey Jack!” Thomas shouted as he approached at a trot.

  “Tom, not this again...,” Sean grumbled as he stepped toward Thomas.

  “No, I’m not looking for trouble. I wanted to know if Jack would help me with my shooting. I want to know what I’m doing wrong.”

  “Why should he help you after the way you acted?” Sean replied.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t like to lose and when Jack showed me what’s what with a rifle I got mad. It was wrong, okay?”

  “You know it was just an eval, right? You had to turn it into a competition,” Sean replied.

  “Yeah, I know, but I did and got showed up. It’s my own damn fault.”

  “Well, the LT and Corporal Braden did encourage it a little,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, Art—I mean Corporal Sierra—said the same thing to me when we had our little talk. He said the lieutenant wanted to prove a point because of how well you shot. He didn’t think it was a good idea because of the thing with Jason. Still, I’m the one that started it off. That makes me responsible for it, and I gotta own up to my mistakes or forever be a child. That’s what Corporal Sierra said. If I’m gonna be a Ranger I gotta look out for my fellow Rangers and they’ll look out for me and that don’t work if I’m flying off the handle about small stuff. I can’t act that way with the people I serve with, and I can’t act that way with the people I might serve as a Ranger.” He sighed and took a deep breath.

  “If I’m gonna have to shoot as a Ranger then I need to be the best shooter I can and Art—I mean Corporal Sierra—said you were the best shot he knows, Jack. He also said you could make me better, so if you’ll help me I’d appreciate it. I’m sorry I was a jerk.”

  “Forget about it. It happens sometimes. Tomorrow it might be my turn,” Jack said as he smiled. “Come on, we’ll work on some stuff,” he said gesturing toward the shooting range.

  “What the hell, Jack?” Sean said. “I thought you were gonna help me? Tom’s a whole lot better than I am, and Corporal Sierra said I can’t shoot for shit, so....”

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said. “As Corporal Sierra always says, ‘It’ll be fine, really.’”

  Sean laughed. “How many times have we quoted Corporal Sierra in the last couple of minutes anyway?”

  “I dunno. He ought to write all that stuff down or something,” Tom quipped.

  “Ranger Corporal Sierra’s Big Book of Artisms,” Jack replied.

  “Required reading for all Ranger trainees,” Sean said as they all laughed.

  “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Tom said.

  Jack nodded. “Maybe. Art would skin whoever suggested it to him, alive.”

  “Maybe Lieutenant Geiger could tell him?” Sean suggested. “Corporal Sierra wouldn’t skin him would he?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Jack said.

  “How about we start gathering Artisms on our own and see how many we end up with?” Tom said. “I bet I get more than you guys, especially if he keeps having extra talks with me when I screw up.”

  Jack shook his head. “Is everything a competition with you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. But hey, I’m a work in progress.”

  “You and me both,” said Sean. “And right now Jack needs to be progressing with the work of making us better shots, don’t you think? Oh, and no damn way you get more Artisms than me. No freakin’ way.”

  “Ha! we’ll see about that, but now we shoot.”

  “No, now we dry fire,” Jack said. “No point in using precious live ammo until you learn how to do it right.”

  “Was that an Artism?” asked Sean.

  “No that was a Traipse-ism. ‘A missed shot is usually a waste of good ammunition’, that was an Artism. One to zero to zero, Jack takes the lead.”

  “Ah crap, I forgot you’ve known Art since you were a kid,” Sean said. “We may be at a disadvantage, Thomas.”

  “You ought to give us a handicap,” replied Tom. “But what the hell, it’s for posterity and the Rangers.”

  “For posterity!” laughed Sean. “Now, about my shooting, Jack...”

  . . . . .

  Chapter 2

  Where We Come From

  Early the next morning, the recruits were once again seated on the benches in the training area. Absent from the group was Jason Marcus. Many of the trainees speculated as to what happened to Jason, with the most popular theory being that Corporal Sierra took him to a secluded spot and shot him.

  Lieutenant Geiger approached and addressed the group. “Good morning. I imagine you all have noticed Jason Marcus is not with us this morning. You will no doubt be upset to know we will be deprived of his further presence as he has been released from training and will be dismissed from Ranger service shortly. In case you are wondering, he was not hung from the nearest tree.”

  “Actually, sir, the money was on him being shot,” remarked Jim Barstow.

  Geiger chuckled and said, “Not shot either. I would hope he will be seeking employment in a field more suitable to his abilities.”

  “Raider, maybe?” suggested Jennifer Lewis, which made everyone laugh.

/>   Geiger suppressed a smile. “Perhaps, but let’s hope not. But enough about Mr. Marcus. Today we will be covering the history of the Freelands, or the Settlements as many still call them, and how the Rangers fit into it all and why.

  “A lot of you may already know some of what we’ll cover, but I doubt any of us know all of it, myself included. Some of you might be thinking, ‘this will be boring’, but it won’t. As Corporal Sierra likes to say, ‘It’ll be fine, really’,” which caused Tom, Sean, and Jack to smile at one another, “and it’s important,” he continued. “It will help put your place as a Ranger in perspective.

  “For those of you from this settlement, you probably already know her. For those of you who do not, Head Archivist Marian Tyler will be giving the first of two presentations she has for us in a bit, so hit the latrines, grab a drink of water, and be back here in fifteen minutes.”

  . . . . .

  “Good morning, I am Marian Tyler. I am a librarian or archivist, whichever you prefer, here in Geneva Settlement. I usually call myself an archivist because when I introduce myself as ‘Librarian Marian’ people have a tendency to laugh.”

  Most of the trainees and Rangers did just that.

  “As you can see,” she said with a pleasant smile. “This morning I’ll be talking about the early history of our settlements, which is really a story of its people. We are rapidly approaching the thirtieth anniversary of the incidents that nearly ended it all. Nuclear war alone would have been bad enough. Most likely humanity would have survived in reasonably good shape, but with the unthinkable, a preceding alien invasion that destroyed at least as much of civilization as the nuclear weapons, it was truly remarkable humanity was able to maintain some form of culture or civilization.

  “For us it was remarkable because the people who started what we now call the Freelands were remarkable. Remarkable people who did remarkable things resulted in something remarkable. It sounds simple enough, but it was anything but simple.

  “How many of you know the name, Frank Parkes?” she paused. “Nearly all of you I see,” she said as all but a few raised a hand.

  “Some of you knew him personally, or at least met him I would imagine?” Perhaps half the people present raised their hand. “Yes indeed, even many of you younger people met him. That’s good.”

  “The reason I ask is because of this booklet,” she said holding up a small blue book, “which is a copy of Frank Parkes’ first journal. I am sure some of you have read it. I know those of you who attended school in a town or settlement probably read excerpts from his journal, but how many of you have read Frank’s journal since you became an adult?” Only a few hands went up. “That’s more than usual for a group of this size.”

  “This morning we are going to read the first volume of Frank’s journal. He was an exceptional man who did not think of himself as such. His journal isn’t just his story, it’s a story of people that traveled and worked with him to create this place we have today. A place worth preserving. A place worth protecting, and that’s what you will be when you become Rangers, protectors of a remarkable place. Even if you already know how special this place is, I believe you’ll think it even more so when we finish with Frank Parkes’ Journal.

  “Art, if you would give each person a copy so they can follow along if they choose,” Marian said, handing Art a small box of booklets.

  “Frank was not a highly educated man, a ‘simple man’ he liked to call himself. He was a man of the rural west, more inclined to ranching, farming, or hunting, than reading or pursuing formal higher education. He did not think himself a highly intelligent man, ‘smarter than some, but dumber than most,’ he oft said, but he possessed exceptional sense. He was not a trained writer, just a man who put his thoughts to paper. The man shows through in his writing. It reads very much as if he were talking, and for those of us who knew him it feels very much as if Frank was speaking.

  “I will read it aloud, just as Frank wrote it. When we decided to print copies of his journal, we decided to make minor changes, to correct minor punctuation errors, but we did not want to alter what he said or how he said it, so it would remain his, and not something filtered. Frank covered a lot of territory in a few words.”

  Marian looked over the gathering. “Is everyone ready? Good! Then we will begin with, volume one of Frank Parkes’ Journal.”

  . . . . .

  Volume I - Journal of Frank Parkes

  August 1998

  I am not much of a writer, I’ll say that right up front. I don’t really know why I decided to start this journal. Maybe it will mean something to somebody someday. I figure I’ll update it every month or so, sort of chronicle what is happening, and what is happening now is not good, not good at all.

  I’m a thirty-eight year old rancher and farmer, or maybe I should say was a rancher and farmer. Now I’m a survivor trying to keep cattle and crops from dying. No more trying to make a profit or worry about markets, just trying to keep things going. There aren’t any markets anyhow. Most everybody in my family was a rancher or a farmer or both. I mention it because we are a pretty self-reliant bunch. We can take care of ourselves through most anything, but the last few years have been way beyond anything we could have expected. Put simply, they’ve been bad.

  First the aliens show up. I still don’t know what to make of that. Was that really aliens or something else? Don’t really matter now I guess, since some brilliant folks decided to burn down most of what was left of the world. After the aliens and the war—the real war to end all wars, Marge Hatch at the feed store called it—we seemed to have got through it without much fuss here. No bombs or missiles, no fallout, no alien creatures, so we thought maybe we could survive. The towns south of us were all mostly evacuated because of fallout from the west and nobody ever came back as far as we know. We are the last populated town south of the mountains, so that makes us pretty isolated.

  The weather changed after the war, though. Got colder. We thought maybe it was the nuclear winter people talked about, but I guess maybe they were wrong. There was a lot of crap and dust thrown up in the air, we figure that caused it. It did shorten the growing season, which shortens the yield, but that got better as time went on. Maybe winter means something different to folks who live outside of Idaho.

  The sun was a problem too. Got harsh, needed to wear hats and long sleeves for most of the year. Things were real hard on the animals too, like livestock and wildlife. Some folks figure it’s the atmosphere got messed up. That’s getting better also.

  We had quite a few refugees come into the valley in the first months after the nukes, from Nevada and Oregon, even a few from California. Most were decent enough folks just looking for a safe place. There were a few troublemakers that showed up, but we dealt with them.

  Refugees would still show up every now and then until about six months ago. The last few groups said there was a lot of sickness out west. About a month ago some folks in town started getting sick. We figured better safe than sorry and decided to stay at the ranch, my father, my sister Ruby, and her two boys, Richard and Harold. We would call folks in town to find out what was going on. More and more people got sick, then a couple of days ago we couldn’t get anybody on the phone.

  I decided to drive in toward town and see if I could find out anything. Ran into Ray Smith —a rancher up the way— and he told me the place was a ghost town. If the whole town is contaminated, I don’t know what we should do. I guess those of us that live out of town ought to get together and figure something out.

  . . . . .

  September 1998

  Well, things are worse than we thought. A lot of people that live just outside of town have died from the same sickness folks in town did, at least it seems the same. It looks like it is spreading. If Doc Rivers was alive he could give us some idea of what is happening, but he was in town when this thing started and as far as we can tell there wasn’t even one survivor.

  Folks around here are divided on what we ought to do
. Some figure on staying on even though we’ve lost electric power seeing how the relays are in town. Others think we need to get somewhere else.

  Some figure north. They think Canada probably didn’t get hit hard in the war so there ought to be some kind of civilization. Problem is they are just guessing.

  Some of us figure south and west, we know Reno was serving as a refugee camp and were helping people move east. They might have more news and maybe ideas on where we might go.

  We don’t get TV reception anymore since the war and only get local radio. Because of that we don’t get much in the way of news except from refugees. Most of what they tell us is how bad things are south or west of us. Haven’t heard any national news since the nukes went off.

  I heard from a couple different groups that Los Angeles—what’s left of it—is still burning after three years. I don’t see how that can be, but they swear they’ve seen the smoke with their own eyes, and it ain’t that yellow alien gas we saw on the news. Never been there, and sure don’t want to visit now.

  They say Las Vegas got hit hard by both alien bombing and nukes. I figure going that far south would not be smart.

  So it looks like we head southwest. Not sure how many of us are going, but we got several pickup trucks and quite a bit of storage for extra diesel. The gasoline is all bad now, it doesn’t store long. A lot of folks around here don’t have transport because of that. Diesel will be good for a while yet, so we don’t have that to worry about right now.

  . . . . .

  November 1998

  Haven’t written in a while. No time, and the way things are going haven’t felt up to it. Been a lousy six weeks or so.

  We left home in September, Dad, Sis, the kids, and me, along with Ray Smith and his family, Blake and Inez Tucker, ten or twelve of the Brown family, plus five or six teenagers that thought going southwest was the way to go.

  We headed south through the towns that had been evacuated three years ago. Pretty much looked like ghost towns. A little bit of looting happened sometime it looked like, but no sign of anyone. Blake had a Civil Defense fallout meter that didn’t show any sign of radiation in those towns. None of us knew much about that sort of thing.