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0900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +201
CARL SAT LEANING against one wall in his decrepit safehouse, deep in the unclaimed sectors of Elizabethtown outside the Liz Town walls. Although he had some storm lanterns, he didn’t use them. Light would only draw attention from the starving Bums—those who hadn’t managed to join a Band before Liz Town got its act together—and the occasional band of raiders.
He was enjoying a cold breakfast of canned raviolis, which he split with one of his contacts, Sunshine. She had turned twenty-one after the EMPs hit. She was a ratty-looking thing, dirty and scrawny, but even through the grime he could tell she had once been beautiful, and still would be if given a bath, and some clothes that weren’t torn, dirty, and four sizes too big. Before the war, she would definitely have been his “type”—a bit tomboyish, high cheekbones, almost almond-shaped crystal blue eyes, and a strong but not manly jaw that curved gracefully down to a sort of pointed, elfin chin.
That didn’t matter now. More importantly for Carl’s purposes, she was cunning and smart. He had snuck food to her for months now when he was in town, along with a revolver, and she helped him get things in the wild that he couldn’t find in walled-up Liz Town. She also provided news, and was part of a gang of ten or so other Bums, all of whom worked for Carl from time to time, like in setting up this safehouse (though Carl had stashed the food under the floorboards). She swore up and down they had never resorted to cannibalism, and he chose to believe her because it was expedient to do so.
“Thanks for the grub, dude,” Sunshine said with her usual gap-toothed smile. Starvation often caused teeth to fall out, and she had lost two. The rest were still neat, perfect, white.
Carl smiled back at the waif. “No worries, girl. You know I got your back, whenever I can. Thanks for having mine.”
“Pshaw. Of course I got your back. My crew and I wouldn’t have made it this long without your help, probably. Want some Ecstasy? I got a few bars.”
That meant batches of three Ecstasy pills. Despite the misconception before the EMPs, “X” didn’t necessarily make one want to hump trees or whatever, but did give the most intense euphoria. Carl didn’t want his mind clouded for the next twelve hours, though. “No thanks. Not in the mood.” That was the easiest way to say no without pissing people off, or risking them thinking he was being judgmental.
“One of these days I’m going to get you to smash.”
Surprised, Carl grinned with sudden embarrassment. She had been trying to get him in bed for months, and he always said no. He didn’t like the idea that it could be taking advantage of her—she’d do anything to eat, after all. “Maybe, but not today, beautiful. You and I both need a bath before that could happen.”
Sunshine laughed, then caught herself. “You and I both know I’m the one who needs the bath. I can’t wait for spring, when the daytime will heat up enough for me to scrub down in the streams. Then you’ll be all smitten, and I won’t have to ask. You’ll take me like a pirate and plunder some booty.”
“Ha! That’s hilarious. Arrr… Then maybe you’ll stop trying to shiver me timber.”
Sunshine gave an uncharacteristic giggle, probably her kid coming out, the one everyone without dead eyes still had inside somewhere. He grinned back.
The two talked cheerfully for a while about normal things like finding food, whether rats were edible, and how best to hide from cannibals. Carl was glad for the company because the worst part of hiding out in a safehouse was the boredom. There was quite literally nothing to do. He’d almost have slept with Sunshine just to relieve the monotony, but he suspected she was crushing on him, and he didn’t want to give her mixed messages. That wouldn’t be right.
Then, mid-sentence, Sunshine froze. Carl had a moment of confusion, then he too froze, listening and looking around. He didn’t see anything… He whispered, “What?”
Sunshine held up her hand for silence. A moment later, Carl heard a faint noise outside, like boots on gravel. Sunshine drew her revolver, the one Carl had given her a while back.
Carl drew his 1911 pistol, a heavy .45-caliber handgun. He preferred a slightly smaller round such as a .40-caliber, but ammunition was easier to scrounge for the 1911. He rose to his feet, slow and silent, then went back to listening. The odds were good that it was just one of the many feral dogs that roamed the streets, but maybe not.
Carl took two light steps to a window. It had been spray-painted black on the inside, but he had put a few small pieces of tape on each window. When lifted, it allowed him to look out without being too obvious. Pulse racing, he lifted one piece of tape and put his eye to the window. Nothing.
He moved to the next window and did the same. He saw a blur of movement outside but it went immediately out of view. Then through the window, he heard faint footsteps outside. Definitely a person, though he hadn’t seen them long enough to get anything about him or her.
Carl waved at Sunshine to get her attention, then raised both eyebrows and pointed at her. Was it one of hers? But she shook her head, then went to a different window and lifted a flap of tape. Carl did the same. He didn’t see anyone outside, but dammit, he had heard at least one. Where were they?
Sunshine crept across the room to the area just in front of the fireplace, avoiding one particularly creaky floorboard, and moved the small rug there. Carl saw the outline of a trap door there, though he would probably have missed it if he didn’t know it was there. She swung the trapdoor open on its well-oiled hinges, and stuck her head through. She looked all around before she came back up, then left the door open and got to her feet.
She whispered, “I see eight legs out there. Four people, eight if they’re amputees.”
Carl gave her a half-smile. Sunshine always had that sass, that attitude, and it was one of the things he loved about her. Her personality was the reason he thought of her as a friend almost as much as an asset. “No one should know we’re here,” he whispered back. “Maybe just scroungers, but that’s a pretty big coincidence. How can we get out of here?”
“Either hide in the crawl space under the house, or out that window,” she replied, pointing at the south-facing ones. “There were two on the north side, and two on the west side, so we can bolt out the window and to the left. There are some bushes for cover, but not much until we got across the street. Then only abandoned houses, so we could maybe ditch there or find another place to hide.”
“Opening the window will make noise. Maybe under the house is the better bet,” Carl whispered. “C’mon, let’s go. You first.”
“Always the gentleman,” Sunshine said with a smile, and slid quietly through the hole into the crawlspace beneath.
He heard a crash from the other end of the house, someone kicking in the door. Time was up. He dropped through the hole and closed the trapdoor. He pulled a string attached to the rug, which moved it back over the trap door—even as well hidden as it was, the carpet would help.
Below, he and Sunshine kept pistols drawn and aimed toward the trapdoor. Either they’d find it or they wouldn’t, had seen it close or hadn’t, but now he was trapped. There was nowhere to run. For long minutes that felt like hours, his heartbeat drumming in his ears, Carl and Sunshine waited. They heard the clomping noise of booted feet going back and forth above them on the hardwood floor. Crashes and the sounds of shattering glass made it clear that the people above were searching carefully, and not being careful about what they broke.
Sunshine tapped Carl’s shoulder then pointed to his left. He looked in that direction and, through the fine mesh wire of the air intake opening, a pair of booted feet. He glanced behind him and saw another—they had posted two at opposite corners of the house, able to see if anyone ran out. Never mind the noise the window would have made, if they had tried to flee they would have been seen. Hiding had been the right decision.
The two inside spent some fifteen minutes both searching and looting the place. Thankfully, most of his food was down here, but of course now Sunshi
ne knew where it was hidden. Anything up top would no doubt be taken by their visitors.
A voice above his head shouted, “Clear.” Another at the other end of the house shouted the same thing back. Footsteps as they met in the middle of the house. “How the hell did he get out?”
“I don’t know. A window, maybe. A hidden exit.”
“Well, we aren’t getting paid without at least his corpse, man.”
“There’s a lot of crap here that’s worth something. We can get paid that way.”
“We’re supposed to burn the house down after we catch him.”
“Did we catch him? Don’t think so. Maybe he’ll come back. We can set up a stakeout and then if he comes back, we catch him inside. If we burn it down now, he sure won’t come back, and then what? No body, no payday.”
“Fine. Grab that box of food, I’ll get this one with the other crap, and then we can get the hell out of here.”
Once he heard them leave, he and Sunshine peered through the screened ventilation holes. He didn’t relax until all four had gone, headed north somewhere. Then he let out a long breath, releasing tension. “That was close,” he said.
“Sounds like you made some new friends,” Sunshine replied, eyebrows furrowed. “Where will you go?”
Carl paused to think, but there wasn’t really anywhere he could go. Liz Town was too dangerous, and now his bug-out house in the “wildlands,” the parts of Elizabethtown that weren’t walled off, had been compromised. How the hell they knew about his safehouse, he couldn’t say. “No idea. I have the food in this crawlspace, the clothes on my back, and my gun. I’ll have to get it out of here and to a new vacant house, somewhere no one knows about. Or leave and try to get somewhere else.”
Sunshine said, “I’ll tell you what. Give me a quarter of your food and I’ll help you carry all this out to another place I know. It’s two blocks away, and I’m the only one I know of who ever goes into it. It should be safe, so long as you stay inside and away from the windows.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do that for food. Don’t flatter yourself, you aren’t that cute.”
“You know I am,” he said with a grin.
“Maybe. Probably. But I’m hungry. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Sunshine grabbed a box of canned raviolis and set it up through the trapdoor, then went to get another. Within fifteen minutes they had it all stashed out of sight across the street, so they could move it more easily at their leisure.
* * *
Samuel rode at the front of the troop column, winding along the road. A squad rode ahead to scout the way, so he could relax a little and enjoy the scenery.
At least until Brett interrupted his reverie. “So, Cap, how long before we get to where we’re going?”
“Slept through my briefing, did you?” Samuel replied, and shot Brett a disgusted look.
Brett shrugged. “If you weren’t so boring I wouldn’t have to.”
“We should make Canton, Ohio by tonight. They’re a recent Republic addition, after seeing what happened to that graveyard we just passed, Wooster.”
The road hit an incline, and the conversation stopped long enough to crest the hill. Then Brett said, “Wooster was stupid to vote no. So after Canton, we’ll be in Pennsylvania, right?”
Samuel let gravity do the work, the bike accelerating without pedaling. “Yup. From there we’ll spend half our nights outside, and the other half with friendlies. It’ll take us about a week to get where we’re going. The towns will resupply us.”
“Since when do we have friendlies in Pennsylvania?” Brett took his hands off the handlebars and coasted, arms outstretched.
“Knock that off. You eat pavement out here, I’ll leave your ass. Anyway, the Republic sent some settler groups to claim vacant homesteads along the way. They’ll farm in the spring so we have supply lines into the west and south Pennsylvania. Right now they’re acting as independents, and I heard one got set up to join the Confederation we’ll be fighting. So we’re going there to cause havoc in the meantime.”
“Pretending to be bandits—that’ll be fun.”
“Well, orders are orders,” Samuel said. “And when you gotta do something…”
Brett grinned. “…You might as well have fun with it! I can’t wait. We haven’t seen any real action since Cincinnati.”
“Oh, believe me, we’re going to have a ton of fun. Our orders are to scorch the earth on anyone who won’t join the Republic, and we got a hundred people on bikes to make that happen.”
Brett was quiet for a moment, and Samuel figured he was relishing the thought. Then Brett said, “Sam, we’re going to be like modern-day Vikings, with the roads as our rivers. I almost wish we had swords so we could do it up close and personal. I like to watch the stupid looks on their faces when they get a blade shoved through ’em.”
“Yeah, that’s great, but these days the peasants have guns. You don’t bring a sword to a gunfight.”
Brett nodded, the wind flipping his hair around wildly as they pedaled onward. “A guy can dream, Sam. A guy can dream.”
Several hours later they saw the unwalled town of Canton ahead of them, and Brett let out a whoop. Samuel felt pretty happy about it, too—getting off these damn bikes was the best part of his day. A member of one of the scout teams was riding back toward the main column, and Samuel slowed to a halt to pull up next to him.
He said, “Captain, all is well. They’re expecting us, and will have supplies and houses ready for us. I get the feeling they want us out of town just as soon as possible.”
“I’m sure they do. They only voted to join the glorious Midwest Republic because of what happened to their neighbor, and because they were next in line. I call it a motivational tactic.”
“What, burning down their neighbors?” Brett said, smirking.
“More or less,” Samuel replied. “Okay, let’s move out. Brett, get them moving.” To the scout, he said, “Let them know we’re coming. And I’ll expect some entertainment from the locals, or a bunch of rowdy, armed bandits are going to be awfully hard to control. Think you can remember that?”
The scout nodded, saluted, and rode toward town, and Brett went down the line getting the column straightened out. He liked to enter a town looking as impressive as possible.
Two minutes later, the column began to move again, Samuel at the head. He rode in and headed toward the “town square,” an open area in the center of the still-inhabited portion of Canton. Several buildings had been cleared out, turned to rubble for the beginnings of a town wall that was still far from complete. The vacant space left behind had been converted to a market and storage area. It also provided a central area to park their bikes.
While Brett got busy assigning the night’s guard posts, Samuel met the Canton leader, a middle-aged man whose name he forgot as soon as it was mentioned. Why bother with it? The unit would be gone in the morning. “You have the supplies we require?”
The town’s leader said, “Yes, sir. All your supplies are over there.” He pointed to a pile of canned and dried goods and some gear. “You realize this means some of us will go hungry before spring, don’t you?”
Samuel put on an expression of pained sympathy, put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and said, “I do, and for that I apologize. I follow orders just as you must. I hope that when we come back through here next year, we will have a lot of gear and supplies we can give you to make up for the terrible inconvenience. Thank you for putting us up for the night—our mission is important, and you’re a key part of making it possible. The Republic thanks you.”
The other man looked away, and only nodded.
Samuel walked away and found Brett organizing bicycle storage. He was lining them up neatly, making it easy to guard them overnight.
Brett saw Samuel and said, “Nice of them to give up their stuff for us. Did you give him the ‘Republic thanks you’ speech or the ‘we all have duties in this world’ speech?”
“The Re
public one. Of course he probably didn’t give two shits about the Republic’s thanks, not when his people might go hungry before some crops come up.”
“Do you care?” Brett smirked.
“Not really, just so long as we get to eat.”
Brett shrugged. He probably didn’t care much either. “Hey boss, do you think they got some chicks here? To the conqueror go the spoils, if you know what I mean.”
Samuel paused, then said, “Come to think of it, they were supposed to entertain us. You should go let their leader know how much we’d appreciate some companionship tonight. Give him the ‘we all have duties’ speech. And let our troops know that rank has its privileges—I’m not getting stuck with some fugly chick. I think I’m in the mood for a blonde or maybe a redhead.”
* * *
Nestor turned once to see the friendly folks of Manheim waving goodbye. He and his guerrillas were welcome there, so long as they didn’t overstay their welcome and put undue burden on the town, a Confederation member. To them, he was protector, not parasite. It felt good.
Riding beside him, Ratbone said, “You sure it’s good to run around outside Hershey?”
Nestor nodded. “Yes, I’m sure. Liz Town has let too many hungry bands of refugees through into Confed territory and they’re not all kosher, so we have a target-rich environment there.”
“Too true. I figure we’ll probably run across some when we get up around I-76, really. Are we going to camp out in those State Game Lands again?”
Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection Page 12
