Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  There were a number of different people who threw ideas out; one of the best was also one of the simplest: pushing some of the cars onto the bridge to make it difficult if not impossible to get across. Another idea was to not actually block it off, but rather, to restrict it so that anyone who wanted to cross would have to cross single-file, which would make any attackers have to bunch up and cross precisely where we wanted them to.

  “I liked the cars idea and the restriction idea, but in both cases, I just realized it’ll work both ways. We need a way where we can control who comes over the bridges, or close it off so we can ‘control’ that flow down to zero people. We need to be able to take the carts across for trading – Yeah, Tonka, I’m not gonna make you and your peeps haul that shit over by hand, at least not forever. Keep thinking, everyone, let’s talk this over again in a couple of days. Best idea gets a bottle of booze out of my private stash.”

  “I also want suggestions for how to close off the other bridges, although we already know we can’t lock them all down. Redskinny, you’ve been doing the patrol thing for damn near as long as we’ve ever done it; I want you to incorporate teams for those two closest bridges, as well as a zone along I-87 or Broadway – it’s one straight shot, so we don’t really need to patrol the whole thing, we just need to have people watching it.”

  “Yeah Boss, can do,” he replied, “ but there’s the two level thing – people could cross above or below, and not get seen.”

  “Fair enough, figure out a way. The goal is to close off our area and make sure that no-one but NO-ONE gets in without us knowing. That’s harder to the north, but ain’t many people up there to worry ‘bout. The fucks in the arkscrapers, and the streetgangers from over there are the bigger issue.”

  The rest of the discussion went along the same lines – it was strange to me that my people – yeah, MY PEOPLE – didn’t really understand strategy, didn’t engage in any long-term thinking. I was always trying to think at least a couple of steps ahead, so that when whoever was doing whatever, I already had most of the possibilities planned for, and had also figured out how to handle what they might do after that, before they were even thinking about it themselves. I’d just sort of assumed – incorrectly – that as we gained stability, way more than we had in prior circumstances, that people would just naturally start thinking further ahead like I already was.

  Regarding the bridges, we eventually came up with a half and half of both ideas. We had our own machine and tool shops at this point – electrical power, although not much of it, so we could use some of the power-tools. That meant we were in a position to strip down cars that were still out there, unused, and turn them into… other things. In this case, the ass-end of a truck, split off from the front half, but with handles balanced properly, meant one guy could push down on the handles till the other end lifted up, and then wheel it wherever. We weighted them down with dirt so they were heavier than otherwise, and put jacks on “our” side, so that when you jacked up the handlebars we added, the wheels had no contact with the ground - it would take a good number of people pushing to move one of those out of the way. The dirt made them heavier, and therefore slower to move, but that was also a part of my plan – put four of those side by side, and the bridge was effectively impassable from the other side.

  Those machine and tool shops were pretty slick, or at least, I thought so. We actually got Fathead to get off his ass and go supervise a couple of them, and come up with a sort of “standard” way to run them. Remember I mentioned Fathead’s secrets? Yeah, he knew more, a lot more, than he let on. How much? Yeah, I’ll get to that.

  They were good for tearing down other things we collected into component parts that we could make use of, and were starting to get pretty good about figuring out ways to build stuff up, like we saw in the billboards that hadn’t fallen down, or the posters we saw in houses. We had one shop that had some other fun stuff rolling into it… literally. We’d continued to find books on cars and trucks – and some of the houses we’d found had cars and jeeps that were in pretty good condition. If things continued as they were, we might even have a running car for transportation in the not too distant future.

  Anyway, the truck asses… We kept it simple since it worked, and there was no point in making something more complicated – was also used to create carts that we leveraged for trade with the tenements. It worked, we used ‘em, and we actually had one tenement group that asked if we could make some for THEM – they were using little rinky-dink carts made out of something, I don’t know what, but they looked really weird, and they weren’t particularly impressive. The tires on our “carts” weren’t great, but they held air and we could roll over smaller debris in the streets, without having to struggle too much with it.

  The trading played out nicely, too. Tonka managed to get in touch with a couple of “store manager” types in the tenement gangs between us and the arkscrapers, and got a nice little bit of trade going. We made out pretty well from that – it meant not only trade goods that we wanted, and couldn’t easily find, it also meant cash – dollars were fading out of popularity to some degree but we still collected them. We occasionally collected cash money from inside the houses we tore down, or the other buildings we cleaned up, but that was infrequent and irregular – we needed regular cash inflow, and this did it.

  Tonka did a good enough job of handling the trade that I promoted him, and had him start working with Fathead. By this time, Fathead was more like a teacher for those who had aptitude for learning, to get more up to speed on different ideas. Damn I hated how hard it was to get these people to think. I probably sounded pretty stupid when I finally started hearing about people coming up with ideas… It didn’t hurt that I told the gang leaders to start offering their people bonuses for when they came up with good ideas to share all around. I knew some of the gang leaders were skimming off of that, but I didn’t care – the ideas were worth more to me than the bonuses were, because one good idea helped literally thousands of us.

  The one area I wasn’t comfortable with was that we still had some supplies that just weren’t available. Turns out there were rubber gaskets in engines – who knew? Those, we just couldn’t get anywhere. I knew we could probably get them from the arkscrapers, but I wasn’t quite ready yet for them to know what I was up to. In the end, I had to bring Tonka into my closest group of captains, to explain to him what I wanted, and why – and he delivered beautifully

  The goal was mobility. We’d found older Jeeps – They were called YYs or something like that – and based on some of the records we found with them, they sounded like they had ran forever without much trouble. We stuck with the ones that didn’t need computers in them, because the less we relied on the arkies for stuff we needed, the better. Anyway, we had one machine shop that was big enough to hold a dozen or so of these, and they were all mostly the same – different colors, but they were all the same general design. Only two doors (which we took off) and not a lot of space in the back, but all of them were in good shape, and with a bit of work, we’d have a fleet of vehicles for rapid response.

  Between Fathead’s book exploring, and Tonka’s acquisition skills, we were able to get new versions of the “gaskets”… something inside the engine that apparently got pretty rough over time, especially when you weren’t driving the thing. Not just new versions, but better-than-original versions, that wouldn’t need to be replaced as quickly. Unfortunately, that was only the jeep itself, and there was a lot of other stuff we needed to find as well, different kinds of liquids – including gasoline – that we had to have before the jeeps were functional. If we could find a way to get reliable supplies of fuel and other “consumables” (another word I didn’t learn, until later on), we would be a serious threat to anyone else out there.

  Fathead was starting to “discover” some of this stuff just a little too easily, and one day, I decided to question him on it.

  “Fathead man… how you doin’?”

  “Good boss,
good… “ He sounded a little absent-minded, but was at least listening. “I might have a way for us to change how we’re doing the power thing…” his voice drifted off as he seemed to go somewhere else in his head.

  “Fathead, step away from it dude. Need your attention.”

  When he didn’t move, I took a step towards him and slapped him in the back of the head. “Fuckhead, wake up! Pay attention.”

  He snapped out of it then, flinching a bit when I didn’t pull my hand back right away. “OWW man, the fuck’s your..” His voice trailed off when he saw my eyes go hard.

  “Fathead, you’ve done some great stuff, the last couple of years… In fact, there aren’t many big things we’ve done that didn’t have you involved, at least a little bit, or a lot, or totally. Something’s not adding up.”

  “B-b-b-ut… “

  “No buts, bub. Your time here is up unless you start giving me some explanations, and fast.”

  “I swear man, I just get stuff faster!” He sounded a little panicked, a little desperate, and a whole lot dishonest.

  My pistol came out of the holster on my belt, finger on the trigger as I lined it up on his left eyeball. “I won’t ask you again, Fathead. Last chance.”

  I swear, that fat slob started making noises like he was sobbing like a baby. I stepped forward and tapped him on the forehead enough to leave a red mark. “We got history, Fathead, but if you don’t start talking, we got no future.”

  His eyes un-scrunched themselves, and there were… no tears? What the fuck?

  “Fine. Yes, I know more than anyone else here, you included, knows or is likely to ever know. What do you want to know?” I was starting to feel a little unsure of myself, because this was absolutely not the Fathead I knew.

  “Fine, you don’t even know what questions to ask. How about… how old am I? Fifty three years, seven months, two days, eighteen hours, and seven seconds.”

  “Wait wha..”

  “Nine seconds. Ten Seconds. Eleven seconds.”

  I realized my mouth was open and I was unconsciously pulling the trigger of the gun I still had pointed at his head, and stopped myself, putting the gun down.

  “How the hell would you know that? You making shit up to get my attention now?”

  “No James. I really am that old, I’m not making it up. I didn’t grow up like you, James. I grew up in the Washington Arkscraper.”

  “Wait… you’re an Arkie? C’mon man, quit fuckin’ around.”

  “No, I was an arkscraper inhabitant; when I was about twice as old as you are now, I did some things that other people didn’t like, and they cut my connection, and while they didn’t evict me, my only option was to sit on my derriere and do nothing, and collect BLS while doing it.”

  “Sit on your..”

  “My ass, James. They disconnected my implants, so I said fuck them, renounced my citizenship, and left. I’d been living a few different places, until I met your mom when she was out scrounging one day, and followed her back, and convinced Pip to let me stay, as long as I helped teach some of the things he wanted the gang members to know.”

  “Fuck you, next you’re gonna tell me you’re my dad, right? Bullshit.”

  “Yes, bullshit, I’m not your father, I just happened to really like Mary, she made me smile.”

  “So… uhh… you’re really not my dad?”

  “Correct, I am not your father. I actually never fucked your mother either; although that was more because of Pip than her.”

  “Okay, so… what are these plants in your head? You got a fuckin’ potato or something inside your skull?”

  “No. IMPLANTS. It’s a small computer – you remember the electronic tablets you see arkies using at the exchanges? Kind of like that.”

  “Woah… someone fucked you up pretty bad if they jammed one of those into your head… Fathead.” I laughed at my own joke, but he didn’t seem to find it funny.

  “An implant. I could do anything, call anyone, read a book in seconds, watch a whole movie in barely more time than that. I have, literally, more books stored in my head than you’ll ever see, your entire life.”

  I was shocked, to say the least. This was a lot to take in; I’d seen the little tablet he’d mentioned, seen a lot of them in fact, but I had no idea they could put those things into someone’s head.

  “So all this time, you’re just reading out of a book in your head, then?”

  “No, I actually am far more intelligent than most of the people you’ll ever know, as well – yourself included, although you are a smart young man. I used to teach, and I used to… Let’s just say that I know a lot about implants, both how they’re made, how they’re controlled, and how they can be used. A lot more than…. Most people.”

  “Okay, fine, so you’re a walking set of books and you understand what’s in them, not just reading out of them. That explains a lot, but it doesn’t explain why, if you’re so smart, we’re still living like we are and not doing a lot more than we already are. What’s the deal?”

  “Think about it. If we went too far down that path, we’d be noticed far faster than you’re okay with – and I’m quite aware that until you started trading, you didn’t want to be known at all.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense, but… there’s gotta be shit you can push us faster on, that will help.”

  “Such as?”

  “Fuel, Oil, and Antifuzz for the jeep fleet.”

  “Antifreeze.”

  “Whatever. Better ammo, more guns, better fighting training, better storage, shit, REFRIGERATION.. goddammit, if you tell me you can make chocolate and have been holding out, I swear to fucking god I will still shoot you.” My pistol came back up – I was not joking.

  “No, I cannot make chocolate – it needs ingredients that we cannot grow, and are unlikely to find. All the rest? Yes, we can find, and, yes, I know how to make… not so much better ammo, as more ammo. Firearms, we were extremely fortunate to find, however, I know of several likely sources that will satisfy what I expect you’re looking for. There are other issues that will come up, but they’re easy to solve.”

  That got us really far down the path I wanted to go, but I was starting to see some holes in my plans – I’d completely missed a resource that, had I been paying more attention, meant I could have shaved months – maybe a year – off of the total timeline I had in my head. The real pisser there was that a year, now, made a difference of multiple years, down the road.

  I tossed my head, then looked back at Fathead. “Okay, fine. You and me are going to be having some much longer discussions over the next few days, because we need to make bigger plans. Effective right fucking now, your time is mine, first call, unless you can give me a good reason why you should be doing anything else.”

  The next few days were, to put it mildly, pretty eye-opening.

  Chapter 7: Growing Out.

  “The first thing is transport – without, the rest of this is going to be far more difficult. That means fuel, first.” Fathead sounded unlike any other person I knew, when we were in private – he didn’t even sound real.

  “Yeah, no shit. What about oil and the antifuzz?” I knew the answer, but I asked anyway.

  “Antifreeze. Better yet, call it ‘coolant’ – as that is the purpose it serves.. Fuel – ‘gasoline’ for our needs – will last indefinitely in a properly sealed container. We will need to revisit all of the places that the jeeps were found at and look for fuel storage. Do not get your hopes up; we are far more likely to have to make it, or trade for it, and due to the nature of it. The likelihood that we will find suitable quantities is unlikely.”

  He was right, too – or at least, he said he was. I didn’t have anyone to double-check his shit, so I was pretty much at his mercy where that was concerned. Every storage tank we found that was labeled “gas” or “gasoline” looked and smelled the same to me – but according to him, that was a bad thing, and it wouldn’t run in the engines we’d spent so much time, energy, and resources to resto
re.

  In the end, Fathead came up with a suggestion I reluctantly decided to implement. Gasoline was available in the exchanges; that plus engine oil (a substitute, really) became something we got a short-term supply from several different exchanges to get the jeeps up and running. Tonka’s teams split it up across the exchanges, with multiple teams, so that we managed to collect and stockpile enough gas to last us a few months of light use, without anyone starting to suspect too much.

  Long-term, though, I was uncomfortable with relying on the arkscrapers – we needed independence. Any major supplies that the arkies controlled meant they could simply not sell, trade, or give us – which meant we either had to steal it and risk being caught, or make our own, and stay completely out of their view.

  We took the latter route, although it was no easy path. Long-term, though, I knew it was the better option. Fathead, still talking like some kind of superhuman to me in private, explained the process and then became “real” again, when we brought in other people to acquire the parts and start the process. We started making what I called “booze for cars”… Ethanol. It wasn’t great, but it worked, and it was actually rather cheap. The drawback was that it meant we needed a ridiculous amount of organics – we had small supplies from the arkies to get us by, but we ended up gardening literally tons of corn and fruit to make this ethanol stuff.