FACING UNFAMILIAR GROUND _an EMP survival story

by Connor Mccoy

  The handgun still was at his back. Either they had not noticed it there, or they didn’t care that he had it. He hoped it was not the latter. If they knew he had a gun, and he made a motion that seemed as if he was reaching for it, whether he was or not, the man holding the machine gun would mow them down. Of that, he had no doubt.

  He felt the presence of more people, possibly two or three more, entering the room and standing behind them. This would make an escape even more difficult. Escape around the dais then. Perhaps the people coming from the back did not feel the need to be armed, and they could just push them out of the way.

  He heard Mia gagging next to him, and he shot his eyes to the right. She was choking back vomit, he was sure of it. But why? His eyes scanned the floor in front of her and spotted the stain. Now he knew where the smell was coming from. An entire body’s worth of blood had dried into a sticky pool. No wonder it smelled so bad in here. And soon there would be vomit too. Mia would not be able to hold it in for much longer. Why hadn’t they cleaned it up? The room stunk enough like death without the physical remnants of what had happened here. Maybe they had left it for Melvin. They apparently liked to terrify their captives. Why not leave the evidence of what had happened to the last supplicant here? But then why didn’t they leave the body as well? Surely that would be even more terrifying?

  Perhaps the smell of decaying flesh on top of drying blood was too much even for the Court.

  Mia retched and vomited, and Christian followed suit. When Sally and Melvin did not, he realized they, like himself, had had enough exposure to blood and vomit for it not to affect them. Medical professionals were accustomed to the worst of bodily odors. He kept his smile to himself. There were benefits to overexposure, but he was the last person to lord it over his friends.

  A man appeared with a bucket and tossed fresh sawdust over the blood and two piles of vomit, filling the air with the smell of cedar. It was a welcome relief, even to Glen, and he saw Mia gasping, pulling in the fresh smelling air. In fact, all of them were breathing more deeply, and would as long as the cedar masked the smell of decay, blood and vomit.

  His knees began hurting, and he wondered how long their captors intended to leave them here, waiting. Did they expect their prisoners to turn into blithering idiots if they left them waiting long enough? He took a sideways glance in both directions, but his companions seemed steady enough. Good. He would need them to be steady if they were to get out of this alive. And then they’d probably need to leave the city.

  The Koupe Tribinal would not let them live in Detroit if they escaped. They probably should head far from here. Perhaps back to Philadelphia or as far away as San Francisco. It wouldn’t matter where they went, they would be needed. Detroit would not be the only place where the poor were in desperate need of medical help.

  The torches on the walls sputtered as a breeze swept through the room. Someone had opened the door. But still, no one appeared on the dais. Glen felt the pain in his knees spur his anger. He hated these tactics. Either kill us and have it done with or sit down like ordinary people and talk out the issue. The effort to demoralize him was wasted, and it was time he could spend helping people.

  He thought again of the gun at his back. How many of them were there? The man with the gun, the man with the bucket, and at least two others. How many of the others were armed? If he faked fainting and rolled, he might be able to take out the one with the machine gun, but how many others?

  None of his people were armed, leaving any gunfire strictly to him, but could Christian take a man down with his leg in a cast? If he could manage to convey the message to the others, would they know what to do? Would their legs even work after all this kneeling? He doubted his would.

  “How long do you intend on keeping us here?” Melvin asked. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Quiet!” said the man with the machine gun.

  “I will not remain quiet until I have an answer.” Melvin’s voice projected an edge that Glen never had heard. “What will it be, one hour, two, three?”

  On three Glen began his fall. He spotted movement from either side but concentrated on yanking the gun from his pants as he rolled from his right side onto his back. But when he came to a stop on his back, his gun hand pointed up to where he thought the machine gun-weilding man should be, the stock end of the machine gun smacked him squarely in his broken nose and sent a rush of pain and dizziness through him. He felt, rather than saw, the firearm being torn from his hand.

  There were noises of a struggle, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. The pain in his face was excruciating, and he knew who would win this struggle. He heard the grunt as Mia hit the ground, a groan from Christian, and silence from the other two. Their bid for freedom had failed. He guessed it had been doomed to fail from the start, but they had to try. They couldn’t go down without a fight.

  He tasted blood. He wiped it from his face with the back of his sleeve. Gingerly, he put his fingers to his nose, checking the extent of the damage. The thug had been surprisingly gentle. He had tapped rather than smashed the broken nose. He hadn’t inflicted further damage. The thug hadn’t needed to tap hard, Glen’s busted nose was enough to leave him incapacitated by the pain. He became aware of a burning sensation at his back and realized the gun had scraped the skin at his waistline. Nothing but an irritant compared to the pain in his face.

  He lay there a few more minutes, breathing through his nose as the blood ran down his cheeks and into his ears. He must have looked like a mess. He certainly felt like a mess. There was a rustling and movement beside him. He cracked his eyes open to see a woman kneeling next to him, a cloth in her hand.

  She dipped the cloth into a bowl on the floor and went to wash his face, but he put his hand up.

  “Let me sit up first.” He struggled into a semi-upright position, which made his ears ring and his head pound, but he held himself still as the woman began cleaning the blood from his face. She was thorough, swabbing the entirety of his ears and behind his neck where the blood still dripped. She held a cloth to his nostrils and went to pinch the bridge of his nose, but he made a noise of protest.

  “Let me do it,” he said. “It’s broken.”

  She took her hand away and let him pinch his own throbbing nose. She finished wiping him down, shook her head, and went away muttering about brutality.

  The others were released by their captors and sat up by degrees, where they were left for a few minutes of reprieve. Glen’s head gradually stopped throbbing, and his nose stopped dripping blood. He tossed the bloody rag onto the pile of cedar shavings and felt his nose again. Swollen, but not further damaged he thought.

  There was a rustle from behind the dais, and their guards prodded them back onto their knees. They were sloppy now, hurting, not the uptight angry people they were just a few moments before. There was a subtle shift in the attitudes of the people behind them, and even Melvin straightened up as three people appeared on the dais.

  The first was a tall black woman dressed predominately in black, with tall boots and a long pistol on her thigh. She wore a necklace of large orange and green beads, and a scarf of the same colors around her head, partially corralling her hair. Over it all, she wore a judge’s robe, open in the front. She sat regally in the center chair looking directly at the back of the room.

  The man who followed was a younger black man, tall and lean with a shaved head. Under his robes he wore light colored chinos and a button-down shirt, accenting his youth. He crossed to the far side of the dais and sat in the chair set slightly back from the woman.

  The third judge was a Caucasian man with short cut black hair and a strange mask over his face, almost like a jester’s or Punch’s mask, only painted in darker colors with odd symbols on the cheeks. His robes were closed, making him look wizard-like. Glen thought it was about emotional control. This man was about generating fear with anonymity and this ugly façade. He would be cruel and unyielding. He sat stiff and upright in the chai
r closest to where they had entered the stage.

  The three judges sat silent, seemingly looking into space, making them wait, and trying to break their nerve. Glen hated that kind of emotional bullshit. They could try unmanning him, but it wouldn’t work. He was worried about the others, though. He shot a look toward Mia, but she looked steady, her jaw set. He couldn’t see Christian beyond her, but Sally on his other side also looked firm. She was watching the man in the mask through slotted eyes. She had his number as well.

  Good. Well then, assholes, bring it on. Glen straightened up. He may be battered, but he was not broken. They could make them wait as long as they wanted but it wasn’t going to change a thing about how he responded. He didn’t like bullies, and these were the worst kind of bully, using their power to cow the people around them.

  The room was silent, and a tremor of energy was in the air. Glen breathed and waited. He saw Sally do the same, taking deep inhalations to remain calm. Their breath was visible since the room was so cold. Could their captors be cooling it down somehow? Another trick to disarm them? The three judges also left clouds in the air as they breathed. Finally, the woman stood, dominating the center of the dais with her physical presence, all eyes fixed on her alone.

  Again they waited until she spoke:

  “Who is Melvin Foles?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mia was embarrassed by her reaction to the blood on the floor. She noticed it hadn’t make Sally gag, but then Sally had been helping Glen for a while. She was used to blood. Except it wasn’t just the sharp odor and the taste of copper in her mouth, it was also the amount of blood that was drying on the floor. Enough blood that it was clear that whoever had bled there also had died. Had probably been executed. It was that thought that had sent her over the edge. She’d been unable to stop her bile from rising.

  She hated that she’d vomited in front of the thugs who had brought them here. The fact that Christian also had thrown up mollified her somewhat. In her mind, the objective was to get Melvin out of here alive. Then if they had to leave the city, well, that’s what they would do. It wasn’t as if anything was holding them here. Yes, they were needed, but they’d be welcomed anywhere they went. She didn’t question why she had given her loyalty so wholly to a man she had known just a week or two.

  He’d been helping people on his own for years. She was glad he’d found her family’s apartment, and settled in there. They’d discovered him there, and he hadn’t chased them away but instead had welcomed them. He had so much in common with their group he fit right in, a natural addition to their mission.

  For a brief moment, she wondered if they were right to leave the cabin in the woods. They’d been safe there, had allies in New Town. But she pushed that thought from her mind. Regrets wouldn’t do anyone any good. They had to survive the current situation and get far, far away.

  When Melvin began his countdown, she’d been ready and had launched herself onto an unarmed guard. He’d been twice her size, but she’d gotten her arm locked around his neck and had hung on for dear life, but he’d flipped her off, and she’d had the air knocked out of her when she’d hit the ground. She’d looked around when she’d finally been able to draw breath again to find they all were on the ground and Glen’s nose still was bleeding.

  She couldn’t regret that they’d tried to get free, but she was hurting now, not starting from a place of power. Well, they’d just have to be smarter if they weren’t stronger. She noticed Glen’s gun was on the ground just behind the man with the firearm that looked to her like a machine gun. Maybe it was. Perhaps that’s why they only needed one of their guards to be armed. He could mow them all down in a second.

  When the three judges arrived on the stage Mia immediately dismissed the woman as cruel, the man in the mask as manipulative and probably also brutal. However, the younger man on the end closer to her was worried, she could see it in his eyes. This was a man with a conscience. If anyone could help them, it would be him. The man with compassionate eyes.

  When the silence finally was broken, it was the woman who spoke. She stood straight, accentuating her height, which Mia noticed she enhanced with boots sporting at least four-inch heels. The psychological advantage. “Who is Melvin Foles?” she asked.

  Again they waited, only this time they were waiting for one of them. Okay then, Mia thought, they just can wait for their answer. But apparently, Glen had another idea.

  “Where is the jury of our peers?” he spoke up next to her. “What are we charged with? What right do you have to try us?

  “We make the laws. We are the jury,” the man in the mask said, in a deep, resonant bass voice. “We are the judge. You shall live and die by the power of this Court. Who is Melvin Foles?”

  A deep calm came over Mia, she knew they were facing evil, and she knew between them they could counter it.

  “I am Melvin Foles.” Mia rose to her feet. She stood for a heartbeat, then two.

  “I am Melvin Foles.” Glen stood.

  Mia let out her breath.

  “I am Melvin Foles,” Melvin said, also rising to his feet.

  “I am Melvin Foles.” Christian had some trouble rising as he couldn’t put his full weight on his injured leg. Mia reached over, took his hand and helped him to his feet.

  “I am Melvin Foles.” Sally was the last, and her voice rang out and filled the room.

  The woman on the dais frowned. The young black man furrowed his brow. The eyes behind the mask stared at each of them in turn.

  “This is your response?” the woman asked. “You all are Melvin Foles?”

  “Yes,” they responded as one, which Mia took as a point in their favor. They were doing well, considering they hadn’t had time to plan, and wouldn’t have known what to prepare for. As long as they were protecting each other, they would be in accord.

  “You all are willing to take responsibility for the crimes of Melvin Foles?”

  “What crimes are those?” Mia’s voice rang clear. “The crime of feeding the hungry? The crime of healing the sick? Which crime is it that we are to be punished for?”

  “You are to be punished for the crime of wasting resources,” the bass voice beyond the mask answered. “You defied us and healed a man we judged unworthy. The power of the Koupe Tribinal is absolute. Defiance always will be punished. You will be punished.”

  “And yet, you would commit that same crime,” Sally called out. “We are a resource, one this city desperately needs, and yet you would punish us for doing good works in this godforsaken city. Will you then punish yourselves for punishing us? Or do you prefer to be known as hypocrites?”

  Somewhere behind Mia, someone hissed. That had got a reaction. Well, good. Let’s get more reaction.

  “False justice is meted out by the cowards of this world,” she said. “Only bullies drag people in off the street, try, convict, and punish them all in a moment. There are no judges here. You already have made up your minds. There is no trial, only a reckoning of your own making. You believe yourselves to be above your own laws. You rule as cruel dictators, too frightened to allow democracy to flourish.”

  “We are not above the law, we are the law,” the masked man bellowed. “For who is there to keep the streets of this city safe if not for us?”

  “But you don’t keep the city safe,” Melvin spoke up, although his voice was a little reedy with fear, Glen thought. “We’ve been set upon by thugs and criminals, and it was only a sort of neighborhood watch that rescued us. It is the citizens of this city that take care of each other, not you in your dank basement, doing your best to scare people into submission.”

  “What right have you to speak to us of leadership?” the man in the mask thundered. “You who hide in the night, healing the scum, dragging their bodies into the streets, stealing supplies needed for the people and keeping them for yourselves?”

  “For the rich, you mean.” Mia could hear the outrage in her own voice. “For those who can pay or give you favors. Not for the peop
le, or by the people, but for your own gain, and those of your kind. Meanwhile, the rest of us are fighting entropy the best we can, without the help of those with power. Just like the meanest societies in all of history.”

  The woman looked as if she had been slapped. Shocked, outraged, and angry. Surely I am not the first to speak back to her, Mia thought. Are the people of this city so cowed that they dare not speak up for themselves?

  The younger man on the far right looked thoughtful, not hurt or angered by her words. Pensive. If there came time for an appeal, he would be the one she would target. His eyes were intelligent and troubled. There was something about this process that didn’t sit right with his worldview, she could tell, and that was a weakness she’d exploit.

  At a signal from the woman, the men also rose. As they moved to exit the room, the woman admonished the guards not to let the prisoners leave.

  And again they were waiting.

  Find out what happens in part four! Coming Soon!

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