American Apocalypse Wastelands

by Nova

  I had point and gave the FREEZE AND FADE sign, followed by FORM ON ME. I wanted to talk to them. They must have been doing the same thing, because within a minute four more men joined the drag guy. They spread out and stared at us.

  “Feel like talking?” I yelled at them.

  “Yeah.” This came from their leader, a black male in the chocolate-chip camo pants that were worn by soldiers in Iraq at the beginning of that misadventure. He had on a green T-shirt and a military load-bearing vest similar to what Ninja wore. So did three of his other men.

  We wore regular hunting-style vests. Max and I had taken to wearing them in the city in order to tone down the GI Joe vibe. Later, when we sewed on our Fairfax City Police patches, we stayed with them. In the D.C. Zone, hunting vests were the de facto uniform of Homeland Security plainclothes types. We felt it made us more legit.

  The rest of his people were similarly attired, if not in camo then in neutral color clothing. The guy on the far left looked to be wearing pleated khaki Dockers, another part of the civilian uniform in the D.C. Zone.

  Like us, they were armed with shotguns and handguns. They looked comfortable with them and competent in what they were doing.

  I changed my grip on the shotgun so that I was only holding it with one hand, the stock tucked into my armpit and the barrel pointed down. I started walking toward the Leader, who mirrored what I did and moved to meet me. We met in the center of the path but made no attempt to shake each other’s hands.

  “Let’s be quick about this,” he said. “I don’t like standing around in the open during daytime.”

  Max sauntered up, looked the guy up and down, and said, “I know you.”

  “Sonofabitch!” the Leader yelled, grabbing Max in an embrace. “How the hell are you, man? I heard you were around and doing things. Let me guess—you got to be Gardener.”

  I nodded and said, “Yeah.” Now we shook hands. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his people perceptibly stand down.

  “Well, shit. Let’s get of this sun.” Over his shoulder he yelled, “We’re cool. Put out security and let them take a break.”

  Turning back to Max, he said, “Damn, moving kids and women is like herding cats. So talk to me, bro. I figured you for a lifer and a bird at least. I was much surprised to hear you had walked away. Man, where is that medal I heard about?”

  Max’s smile went away. “I left it hanging on Charlie McBride’s cross at Arlington. He deserved it a hell of a lot more than me.”

  “Ah, shit.” The guy paused, shook his head, and went somber. “Yeah . . . Charlie. Too many for nothing, Max.” He shook his shoulders and brightened up. “So give me some intel. Talk to me, Max, and I’ll talk to you. Hell, I’ll talk to you anyway. But seriously, I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  Max gave him a quick briefing about what we had seen so far. While he talked, I was mentally shaking my head in disbelief. Did Max know every marine that had served overseas in the past decade? How did that work? And how did he get around to killing anyone if he spent all his time socializing? I shrugged it off as just another one of those mysteries of life.

  The Leader listened as Max ran things down, only asking a few questions. At the end he said, “You’re moving kind of slow, Max. You should have made it this far days ago. You got anybody else out there in those trees?”

  “No, just us. Call it a shakedown cruise.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I hear you. I got a lot of dependents back there. It definitely changes things. My people are good. Almost all of them are vets. When they came back they got a raw deal, especially the guard and the reserve. Cutting active duty by 35 percent in the middle of this shit—no work, no anything really—has not helped. Got a lot of well-trained, pissed-off people wandering around out there.”

  Max nodded. “So what do you have for me?”

  The Leader didn’t have anything really new about the local area. But he had an interesting theory about what was going on behind the scenes.

  “I think this is the first stage of a counterinsurgency operation. The Feds are going to register and render harmless everyone inside the zone of control. Right now they are picking an area and sweeping it. The Tree People are being given a choice: Go to a planned community or go to a rehabilitation center.”

  “What the hell is a rehabilitation center?” I asked.

  “Why, it’s a place that helps you, of course,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “It is where you can live in an environment that will integrate you into society. They, being the government, realize that many people have suffered traumatizing loss, including PTSD, and need help to become productive members of the community again. Others need to learn or relearn basic lifestyle skills.”

  I laughed. “That sounded like you were reading it line for line from a government web site.”

  “That’s because it was almost verbatim from one of their posters. I am surprised you haven’t seen one. Anyway, the word is that the authorities plan to register everyone, including their DNA samples. Those who, like us, are not getting with the program are free to leave. Of course, they plan to do the DNA thing to us as we leave the Zone. Plus, run background checks, since they do not want to allow ‘antisocial elements’ to escape to other communities. Flush us out now and deal with the leftovers later, I figure the plan is.”

  Max nodded. “Yeah, that is what I see happening too. All velvet gloves until they feel secure enough to show the steel fist. So, where you going?”

  For the first time, the Leader looked guarded. “We’re headed into southern Ohio. There’s a lot of empty infrastructure out there. What about you?”

  “Pretty much the same, and for the same reasons. Probably not this year, though. This year we will stick around. I’m thinking the Stephens City area.”

  “Okay, Max. It’s been real, but we got to roll. I get uneasy staying too long in one place now. Why don’t ya’ll throw in with us?”

  Max grinned. “It might come down to that later. Not now.”

  “Yeah, that’s about what I expected. We’ll be around Napoleon, Ohio, probably. Listen, Max . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You always managed to come through when no one else did. So I am going to try you now and see if you can surprise me. You have any tetanus vaccine?”

  Max laughed. “You’re going to have to try harder than that, Dakota. Give me a minute. You need a syringe to go with that?”

  Dakota? I thought. Who the hell names a black male “Dakota”?

  “No shit?” said the Leader. He was incredulous. “Man, oh man. What do you want for it? We can pay in gold or ammo. I got some frags, too. Perfect for cleaning house.”

  “No. No charge.”

  “Ri-i-ight. Let me guess. Future favor?”

  “Future favor,” said Max.

  “Done.”

  Dakota turned to one of the guys with him. “Jo-Jo, go with them and bring back what they give you. Don’t dick around. Catch up if you have to.” Then, turning back to us.

  “Alright, Max. It’s been real. Gardener, later.”

  They embraced again and he was gone. Jo-Jo followed us back to Night, who had most of the meds in her pack.

  Max had us take a break after Jo-Jo got the vaccine and left.

  We were sitting on a large mound about twenty yards off the trail. It was a mix of Virginia vegetation and quartz boulders, probably dumped here illegally by someone who was clearing an old pasture for building. Back where we had come from, there had been a number of ancient Indian villages or campsites. The quartz outcroppings drew them, along with the proximity of the Potomac River.

  I remembered reading that the strip mall near the motel had once been an Indian village with an estimated fifty to sixty people living there. It had not stopped the bulldozers from building on top of it. Back then nothing stopped the bulldozers in Virginia.

  Ninja had found wild blackberries growing off the side of the mound. They weren’t ripe yet, and I didn’t care for them because of all t
he seeds, but he was busy stuffing his face. He was supposed to be on watch, but no one, including Max, said anything. We sat there for a bit. There was a faint breeze, and since this was Virginia in the summer no one was in a hurry to get back on the trail. Plus, Max wanted Dakota’s group to get a decent lead on us.

  After a while Max told Ninja, “Get done stuffing your face. I want you to drag your ass over here.”

  “Okay,” Ninja replied. He looked somewhat embarrassed but that didn’t stop him from shoving a few more berries in his mouth before he joined us.

  Night looked at him and shook her head. “Wipe your mouth off. Damn if you don’t look like a two-year-old who just discovered jelly.” He wiped his mouth off on his shirt. Night groaned.

  “I have been remiss in keeping you all updated on what I’ve been considering as far as long-term planning,” Max began. “This is partially because of how fast things have happened and partially because we are now at Plan C, which really has no planning. All I have is an outline that’s been forming in my head. A lot of it is still pretty vague. All of it is subject to change. I’m going to tell you what I’ve got, and if you got anything to add, please do.”

  Night and I looked at each other, then back to Max, and nodded. Ninja just stared.

  “We know where we are going. The farm should be good enough for the winter. Food is probably going to be an issue but we can deal with it.” He grinned like a wolf. “There is always food if you know where to look.”

  We all grinned back at him. We must have looked like a wolf pack getting warmed up for a hunt.

  “I just don’t see the farm being viable over the long term. It’s possible. A lot will depend on the town and how the Feds decide to play it out.”

  “Yeah, too close to the Zone, especially if they decide to push it out again,” Night chimed in. “No way are they going to not patrol and police their borders.”

  I looked at her in admiration. She caught my look, said, “Quit gawking,” and threw an acorn shell at me.

  “She’s right, Gardener. We are also going to have to expand. We need bodies, but people we can trust.”

  “Why didn’t we go with the black dude?”

  I knew this one. “Because, Ninja, eventually it would have come down to who was running things, and we may not have won that battle.”

  Max looked at me. “We would have won. Long term we might have lost, probably through betrayal. Short and middle range? Yeah, we would have won.”

  That made sense to Ninja, I think. At least he didn’t ask anything else.

  “We’ll move on eventually, because we need a place far enough away that anyone will have to work to get to us. I’d like to get past Dakota, or anyone like him, before we settle down. We need a buffer for a while. Let them go through him to get to us. We need a machine shop. We need food. We need established infrastructure that doesn’t require major rebuilding. I am not going to be a goatherd in the sticks for the rest of my life, and neither are you people.”

  Well, I was okay with that. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be. Actually, I didn’t find what we were doing right now all that bad. A little boring perhaps.

  “As I said,” Max continued, interrupting my musing, “we are also going to need people.”

  “Like, what kind of people, Max?”

  “Good question, Night. I’d like to say we’d know them when we see them, but that is shit for an answer. I’ve been thinking about it and we really need three types. God, I would give Ninja’s left nut for three or four good NCOs with a couple tours behind them. That woman who manned that 50-caliber back at the shelter would have been perfect.”

  He paused here; we all did.

  Night and Ninja’s faces both sank. The female gunner and Night’s parents had been in the motel when the missiles hit. We never had time to move the collapsed portions of the building to find their corpses. Night had not cried herself to sleep for the past two weeks. From the look on her face, my guess was she would tonight. Max realized that the conversation was not moving in a productive direction.

  “Yeah, well . . . may they rest in peace. The other two types of people are ones with skills. Real skills. One of those skills is the ability to organize. That can be the hardest to find.”

  “You mean like Carol?” I said. It was petty, but I got a bit of satisfaction from the fleeting shadow that crossed Max’s face.

  “Yeah, like Carol.” The look he shot me told me I had scored, and that he also knew why I had gone for it.

  “What about computer people?” Ninja asked.

  We all grinned. Most adolescent males were in heat all the time. With Ninja it was a close race between women and online gaming. He hadn’t been getting either one with any regularity lately, if at all.

  “Yeah, them too, Ninja.”

  Well, he was back to being a happy camper with that news.

  “What I am hoping for are creators, not destroyers. Finding someone who will raid a farmer’s corn is not going to be a problem. Finding people who can grow, store, and sell corn at a fair price will be.”

  “Teachers, not demagogues,” Night added.

  “Exactly.”

  “Once we find them, Max, then what? Do we invite them to dinner and let everyone take a look at them?”

  “I don’t know, Gardener. Probably we will all vote on inviting them into our clan.”

  Ninja and Night liked this. They understood clan recruitment policies.

  “So, Max, when we get to our promised land, what do you see our roles being?” Whenever Night opened a sentence with So, I knew she wanted more than a casual reply. It was a good question, too.

  “I don’t know, Night. What do you want to be?”

  Damn, I had not thought this out at all. If we created or ended up running a small town, well, then Night and I would be like minor nobility. We could have kids to keep her happy, and I would still get to kick ass!

  Night frowned and paused. She was thinking this out carefully. “I’m not really interested in killing people . . . but I like figuring out what they plan on doing. I guess that would make me, oh, the S2?”

  Huh? I didn’t know what an S2 was, but Max sure did. They were grinning at each other. Whatever it was, she was now it.

  “How about you, Ninja? What you want to be?”

  Ninja did not even hesitate. “Head of IT. Computer king!”

  Yeah, that made sense. Who was left? Me. I started thinking furiously. What was the socially acceptable job description for gunslinger?

  Max looked at me and grinned. “Gardener, we already know your answer.”

  “We do? What would that be?”

  They all answered at once: “Chief of police!”

  I liked that. “Yeah. Except I want to be called Marshal.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We talked for a bit more. Then Max figured we might as well make camp for the night. We started into the usual routine and even had extra time to do odds and ends, like maintenance on our equipment.

  When it grew dark Max called me over. He didn’t say anything other than “Follow me.” We went to the far side of the mound. An old SUV had been left there. The vegetation was reclaiming it but it was still recognizable. Max climbed onto the hood and extended his hand to me.

  “I would try the roof but I don’t think it will hold.”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “Just look around. Scan the horizon.”

  I did. There were lights in a handful of houses off in the distance. Not far from them, a few miles off to the right, it looked like a cluster of businesses still had power and a reason to be open.

  “I don’t get it, Max. All I see is darkness with a few buildings lit up east of us.”

  “Right. Happy Fourth of July.” Then he jumped down off the truck and headed back to camp.

  We moved out the next morning. Every morning before we shouldered the packs and stepped out, Max gave us a five-minute brief on how much distance he wanted to cover, what we would pass
through—open country or built-up areas—and often what he had noticed in us the previous day that he thought needed improvement.

  Today was different in that we had literally hit the end of the trail. We had run out of county-maintained asphalt or gravel a while back and had started to follow a mix of power line clearings and local paths that led in the right direction.

  The utility clearings had trails. People used to hunt and run dirt bikes along them, and we saw signs that they still did. For the first time, we came across tire tracks from ATVs and four-wheel drives. Besides hunting, someone had been back here dropping trees for firewood.

  Max cautioned us about hunters. We had passed a fairly fresh gut pile the previous day. “I doubt if the dumb-asses who used to shoot anything that moved still hunt around here. Whoever is hunting here now is probably good at it. Remember, if they’re hunting, they are probably in camo and carrying a rifle. That means they out range us. If you’re in shotgun range and they point the barrel at you, take them. If they are in a stand, and you see them first, freeze and fade us. We’ll scope them and see what we see. Last thing I want to do is shoot Billy Bob by mistake.”

  Who gives a shit if Billy Bob doesn’t come back? I thought. But I realized the point Max was making. Billy Bob might have a bunch of cousins. Why stir up unnecessary trouble?

  Max told us we were going to change our tactics. “I want to walk the edges of the woods or follow the streambeds, which are usually wooded, if we need to cross open fields. We’ll follow the power lines when we can, staying to the edge of the tree line. I want to minimize our time out in the open. In three more days we should be at our pickup point. Any questions?”

  Night asked him, “This farm has showers, right?” She had asked the same question the previous day.

  “Yep. You can even be first in.”

  She grinned. Myself? I had visions of sharing that shower.