He smiled as he looked at the two chameleons who had taken over the office that rightfully belonged to Wyatt, and he knew, things had just gone from bad to worse.
19
Palmer stared at Danny on the other side of the desk. The man was seething, to be sure, though that was unimportant to Palmer. Danny would be just as useful as Gary, whether he knew it or not, just in his own way. Black didn’t need him to gain the loyalty of the people of Clarks Crossing—the men and women who’d successfully dominated Nettletown would spread stories of what he did for them, far and wide. He’d killed the person who murdered Wyatt, helped the people who were out on the mission survive the unwarranted brutality that Nettletown’s people had dished out, and come back with a bounty that would add weeks of supplies to the local economy. No, he needed Danny merely to help him crunch numbers and be a “yes-man.” As an accountant in his previous life, Danny would be mighty useful in helping them allocate the resources that Palmer and his crew were going to “salvage” and “scavenge.” And if he’d read the situation correctly, Danny had been instrumental in setting up the efficient, fair distribution system Clarks Crossing used for those supplies. But as soon as this guy ceased being useful, Palmer could easily make him disappear.
In truth, Wyatt had been the best possible leader for the townspeople, and they would have been completely screwed without competent leadership to replace him. That had been a big factor in how easy it had been for Palmer to manage to slither in. The other factor, of course, was the big show that the hero who avenged Wyatt’s death had put on to convince them that he put their needs ahead of his own. He served them, and they couldn’t get by without that service—or get enough of it. He fed into their self-interest, assuaged their guilt, let them get on without having to think too hard—and they were attracted to him like a moth to flame.
Sitting across the desk, as Black, lost in thought, gazed at Danny, someone knocked on the door. “Enter.”
It opened, and a familiar face peered in. “Here’s a copy of the updated inventory sheet, sir.”
“Thanks, Zach,” Palmer said, motioning to Gary to take it.
The redheaded man handed it over, then left the three of them to continue their meeting.
When Gary handed it to him, Palmer scanned the paper. Without looking up, he asked, “How many people did you say are here, Danny?”
“Three hundred, four with the outlying farms.”
Palmer raised an eyebrow. “This won’t get us through another month, not without stricter rationing. Are we adding to those numbers daily?”
Danny nodded. “We’re one of the strongest communities around, and word spreads fast these days. We allow in a few, those who bring us more than they’ll cost us when they come knocking.”
Palmer nodded. He’d seen the ledger, and knew Danny had been all too lenient when deciding who would bring more than they’d cost. Making the decision to slow down the flow of incoming citizens was a no-brainer, if they were to responsibly allocate resources and have them last long enough to acquire more.
That was a black mark against Danny, but Palmer liked the chit system they had set up, which rewarded people for hard work. He’d heard of many communities implementing such a system, and it was obvious why—it rewarded the hardest-working people by giving them the first claim upon the fruits of their labor. It was exactly why he wanted to reward those who put their lives on the line going out on “salvaging” missions.
Hell, he even planned on rewarding people like Danny—but only if he put in the hard work to help Palmer, and thus, the rest of the people in Clarks Crossing.
For a moment, Palmer felt the corner of his mouth threaten to tick up into a smile, and he quickly caught himself from allowing it to display on his face. It was hard not to smile, given how well the town was about to do with so many fresh supplies, and it had been his doing. Many of the people, he had only just met. The others, he had yet to meet. But the town itself…More than just a physical thing, the town was an idea—one he’d had for far longer than he’d had these people. True, it felt great making over-fortunate, over-protected snots suffer a worse misery than the one their kind had forced on him, but it felt even better to make them suck up to him, obey his every command—even the command to murder others of their kind and then lie to their closest friends and family, with the simplest of manipulations—and then have them sing his praises for it.
Maybe, if he was right and his leadership saw them through the hurdles of recovering civilization, he’d even have earned those praises, which would be kind of nice. How he got them there wasn’t particularly important, or even relevant.
It really seemed that the people of Clarks Crossing were hard working, and yet, they were willing to help those around them be their very best.
Oh, if only Palmer had had these types of people around him in his old life…Who knew what he could have accomplished?
But enough what-ifs. Now, he was in a community of people he felt a fondness for. It was a novel feeling, one he hoped to explore further. Hopefully, tying himself to these people wouldn’t precipitate his unraveling…
No. He grit his teeth, dispelling those thoughts. He couldn’t let emotion get in the way, not even doubt. He needed to be pragmatic to get everything he deserved in life, though at the moment, the way he’d get the most out of this place was to let the people here feel as though they were winning, as well. Yeah, his takeover was a classic win-win.
“I’m so sorry we didn’t get the whole way, and had to sleep out here last night,” Owen said for perhaps the tenth time, looking up at the brightening sky. A touch of lavender had appeared on the horizon, barely perceptible against the edge of darkness in that direction, at least to Abram’s older eyes.
Abram fought to keep his irritation from showing. If they’d made it before dark, there would have been no need to bring that up. But, he reminded himself, Owen had chosen a path for safety far more than for speed of travel, though it had meant a morning hike before they arrived. “Never mind that. My hip hurts from sleeping on that packed dirt, that’s all it is.”
Abram hefted his pack, threw it over his shoulders, and began to walk northeasterly. His companions followed his lead, and the last leg of the trip began.
An hour later, Owen stopped to check the sun’s position, which was faster than the compass for staying on a general northerly course. “If I tracked our location accurately, the little township is going to be over the next rise. There’s a gray area on the map, between us and it, that could be anything, really. A mine, perhaps, or a…parking lot? I don’t know. It’s big, though. Bigger than the town, in fact. Then, a bit farther on, Nettletown sits in the corner where two rivers come together at a narrow angle.”
Frank let out an exasperated sigh.
“What did I say wrong now?” Owen asked.
Frank paused, mid-step, before continuing his pace. He said, “Nothing much. As usual. Two rivers don’t come together. One joins the other, small shacking up with the big one. Just like people, the littler ones always try to hook up with the…bigger ones.”
Ugh. Abram narrowly avoided making an irritated tsk sound with his tongue. He usually avoided snapping at those he worked with, but this had been a long, tiring, frustrating trip so far, and he was beyond caring about being polite, but he did want them both to just shut the hell up. “Frank, they’re rivers and this isn’t a pissing contest. Does the timeline change if they join together or one joins the other? Is being right going to get us there any faster?”
Frank’s pace sped a little, his only response. A few minutes later, he was ahead of Abram and Owen by a good twenty yards. Unsafe.
And so what? We’re in the middle of nowhere, what could happen?
So, Abram let him pull ahead, and didn’t bother to speed up. Maybe Frank would stub his toe and learn a lesson. And if not, at least he’d be too far ahead to have to listen to his constant huffing and puffing—
Frank, on the trail ahead, vanished, and left
behind only a trailing shout of surprised profanity.
Abram forgot about his exhaustion and aching, stiff hip, his frustration, his homesickness. His feet moved like lightning, bolting forward and passing a surprised Owen, even as the latter had begun digging his toes into the dirt to go faster.
With the sound of Owen’s pounding feet getting farther behind, Abram put all his might into moving his own feet even faster, flying across the forest’s leafy floor, heedless of the roots and branches that reached up to grab them.
Light ahead, brighter than before, told Abram he was nearing the forest’s edge, perhaps a clearing; the back of his mind noted a total lack of the dense brush and scrub that typically accompanied such edge habitat, but he didn’t have time to ponder the anomaly.
Abruptly, the sun burst through the canopy to strike him in the face, but he couldn’t afford to slow down. One of his people could be in danger, could be measuring his lifespan in seconds without help. Vaguely, Abram was aware that he was screaming Frank’s name as he ran, even as one hand reflexively shot up, palm out, to block the sun.
Abram cursed himself for his stupidity and lowered it, squinting hard against the sunlight—and then the forest vanished.
So did the ground ahead. What the—
His panicked attention became evenly divided between a blur of movement in his peripheral view and the sudden lack of ground under his extended right foot. He didn’t have time to react before the source of the movement became clear, as Frank plowed into him.
Frank’s heavy arms wrapped around Abram like a vice as his two-hundred-pound frame struck Abram, and physics took over the situation. Frank heaved hard and, combined with momentum, the force lifted Abram off the ground, arrested his forward momentum, and sent him sprawling to the ground.
Frank landed atop him with enough force to knock the wind from Abram’s lungs.
Abram sucked air, trying to fill his spasming lungs, and his eyes bulged at a sharp ledge mere inches from his face. Beyond, there was only air.
Frank scrambled to his feet, and Abram rolled away from the ledge and onto his hands and knees. When the other man offered a hand to help him up, Abram squashed a flash of rage at being assaulted, his thoughts finally catching up with his body. Frank hadn’t assaulted him. If not for the superb football tackle, Abram would have run right off that cliff…
Climbing to his unsteady feet with Frank’s help, Abram stared at the ground ahead, or lack of it. As his eyes adjusted, the situation only became more incredulous. A vast pit stood between them and Nettletown. It spanned easily a quarter mile, probably more, and at a glance, it looked like some alien ship had come along and ripped every bit of soil or vegetation from the rim surrounding it in the process of drilling the vast pit. It had a cone shape, manufactured rather than merely blown out of the planet’s surface. A path twenty yards wide began at a point nearby, on their side, and it spiraled down the pit’s inside surface. Abram peered down, but a deep reservoir of water rose up to what he guessed was about the halfway mark, where the path plunged into the water and kept going down.
“A quarry,” he muttered, still trying to regain his breath from having the wind knocked out of him.
Frank grunted. “Looks like it, yeah. You damn near ran right off the ledge. What were you thinking, man?”
“I thought you were in trouble. I was racing to find you.”
Frank’s only verbal reply was a grunt of acknowledgement, but Abram felt the man’s grip on his shoulder tighten up, momentarily. Frank wasn’t a man of many words, unless he was bitching about something, but Abram had worked and lived at his side for a while now, day in and day out, and he’d earned Abram’s respect—in life, and in battle.
Owen, panting, slowed to a stop beside them and, looking over the edge, let out a low whistle. “Damn. That pit’s huge. Gonna have to go around it, though. Nettletown is on the far side.”
He paused, eyes narrowing. “What’s that all over the slope, on the other side? Looks like ants from here.”
Abram adjusted his bag, which he hadn’t taken time to unstrap before racing after Frank, in his haste. “We’ll take a look when we get there,” he replied, and started walking west along the pit’s sharp edge.
Minutes later, just as Abram felt a dawning horror at realizing what the ants truly were, Frank gasped. “Oh my God. Those are people.”
At least, they had once been people. Now, though, they were merely dozens of corpses scattered across the spiraling downward path. Someone had thrown them in like they were just garbage to dispose of. Many more had missed the ledge and floated in the murky waters that half-filled the quarry.
And they didn’t yet stink, Abram realized as the wind blew softly in his face from the town’s direction. They couldn’t have been there more than a day or two, at most.
He unslung his rifle. “Let’s scout the town before we walk in.”
“No kidding,” Owen said, and followed Abram’s lead. “Who could do such a thing?”
Abram heard the tight edge in the man’s voice and reached up to put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Bandits. Organized ones, too. They got rid of the evidence. They must have been in a hurry, though.”
Walking beside him, Frank spat into the dirt. “Good, maybe that means they’re gone. Let’s get the part we need and get the hell out of here.”
Abram sped his pace a little, eager to put the grisly quarry scenery out of view.
20
Outside Nettletown, Abram lowered the binoculars and looked to his companions, who knelt beside him to his left. “You’re right, Owen. They’re mostly kids, and the only adults I see, besides some women, are either old or on crutches, it looks like. What do you make of that?”
Owen’s lips flatlined. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that these aren’t the bandits who killed all those people. These must be the survivors. I wonder why they were spared?”
Frank rose into a crouch. “They probably hid. The ones who stayed behind, those were all the able-bodied ones who owned a gun, maybe. Seems they should’ve hid, too. You think they’ll welcome us with open arms, three men with guns? They might think we’re more raiders.”
Owen let out a sharp, frustrated blast of air through his nose. “Damn raiders. Scary to think how close our own bandits came to doing this to us, too. Well, we need that part to fix the truck, so we can avoid it happening to us, and that part’s in town.”
Frank said, “We’re just going to have to sneak in, somehow.”
Abram grimaced. If he had to guess, he would have bet he’d seen a hundred people through the binoculars, about as many as he guessed had been dumped into the quarry. And, calling this place a town was giving it more credit than it deserved. Village, maybe, but town? And its size meant the auto parts store would almost certainly be on the main drag. Small towns like this had one street where all the main businesses were located, or two intersecting streets if they were large enough, and that was precisely where he’d seen all the survivors.
He said, “There’s no way we can sneak in without being seen. Frank, I want you set up with one of the hunting rifles, to be our hidden protection.”
Frank blurted, “Overwatch.”
Abram nodded. “I think two people going in is going to freak them out less than three. If things go bad, do what you must to get us out of there alive. If you create some confusion, we can probably escape.”
Owen frowned. “Nothing creates confusion like shooting someone in the head.”
“If I must,” Frank said, “but only then.”
A shiver ran down Abram’s back. If someone had to lose their life so that he and Owen could escape, so be it, but the word “tragic” didn’t really do that situation justice. He doubted he’d have welcomed armed men coming toward them, had this happened back at the compound. If they got violent, he couldn’t blame them.
He continued, “Yes, overwatch. Owen and I are going to walk in, unarmed, with a white flag. A t-shirt on a stick will do. Maybe if the
y see only two unarmed people, flying a peace flag, they’ll be less likely to just shoot us.”
Owen growled, under his voice, “Let’s hope you’re right. Well, there’s no time like the present. We need to get that part and then get back to the truck. Whoever did this could still be in the area, and I’d rather they not stumble across our truck full of goodies while we’re messing around with kids and old folks.”
Abram un-slung his backpack and unzipped it. Rummaging toward the bottom, he found the Ziploc bag with his fresh t-shirts and carefully removed one. “Owen, get a branch.”
It took a few moments for him to repack his bag, enough time for Owen to find a good stick. Abram ran it through the shirt’s collar and out the bottom, then tugged so the branch’s rough surface could catch on the cotton shirt’s weave. A shame, as t-shirts would soon be impossible to replace, but for now, they were plentiful. He just didn’t like to waste one like that.
He hefted his backpack by the nylon handle and carried it over to a tree, then leaned the bag against its trunk. “Owen, leave your supplies here. If they kill us, I don’t want them taking goods that belong to our families.”
Frank chuckled and said, “Wow, Abram, that’s cold. But I guess you two had best be off. Anything you want me to tell your families? You know…just in case.”
As Owen opened his mouth, Abram furrowed his eyebrows and said, “No. We’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
Without waiting to see whether Owen was following his lead, Abram walked toward the town, holding his makeshift flag aloft. They could have sentries, even this far out, so he never allowed the flag to lower, though they were still a couple minutes outside of town. They were tense minutes. He halfway expected shots to ring out at any moment, and it was an effort of will to keep his breathing steady, his pace easy and relaxed. With each step, the effort grew, and still no one came out to challenge them.
EMP Crisis Series (Book 3): Instant Mayhem Page 13
