Threat Ascendant

by Brian M. Switzer

  They stopped 200 yards from the front gate. Will, Justin, and three returning invaders walked the rest of the way- they saw no reason to pull up and scare the Bejusus out of the people inside. The returnees gave a quick explanation to the women guarding the gate; the big doors swung open and the guards waved them forward and motioned them through.

  Will surveyed the grounds through a window as his bus rolled through the compound. He noted the livestock pens full of cows, hogs, and dairy goats, and the sizable coop containing dozens of chickens. They drove past the grain silos and the equipment sheds full of machinery, sitting in front of enormous fields plowed and ready for planting. As they approached the sanctuary he saw the earth moving equipment parked in the distance and the roofs of the homes in the enormous subdivision not far away. The view outside his window sparked a anger inside him. It reminded him again what a waste the attack was, how needless the loss of life and treasure for both sides.

  Word of the bus's occupants must've spread fast, because folks came running from all directions. They climbed over the fences that penned in the livestock and hurried out of the sheds and outbuildings. A long line of residents hurried out of the church and more dashed down the road that led to the subdivision.

  They rolled to a stop in front of the building; the driver pulled the lever that opened the doors and Will’s boots clanged on the metal steps as he got off. He was met by an attractive woman with pale skin and black hair that hung straight to the middle of her back. She observed him with eyes that were big and clear and introduced herself in a polite and cultured voice.

  "Hello. I'm Olivia."

  Will nodded a greeting. "Hello, Olivia. My name is Will Crandall."

  She offered her hand, and her shake was firm and dry. "Will Crandall from the quarry?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "May I ask your intentions, Mr. Crandall?"

  He jerked a thumb at the buses idling behind him. "To return what's left of your army."

  She let out a breath and regarded him with a solemn expression. "I thank you for that. When so much time went by with no word, we assumed things must not have gone as Kayla planned."

  Tara and Terrence had joined Will opposite the woman, and Tara regarded her with a cool expression. "That’s the correct assumption."

  A cacophony developed around them. Women scanned the dejected and defeated faces of the survivors, looking with grim desperation for husbands, sons, boyfriends, and fathers. Wives and children cried out with joy when they spotted their loved ones; others cried out in anguish when they found out theirs didn't return.

  Olivia looked around and took in the growing crowd and rising clamor and wiped raindrops from her cheeks. "Would you please come in so we can discuss this in quieter and drier surroundings?" She gave Will an expectant look as she awaited his response.

  Will glanced at Terrence, who shrugged, and Tara, who gave him a nod. He dipped his head at Olivia again. "Sure. We'd love to."

  73

  * * *

  She led them up the church steps and through the front doors, into a large foyer with high ceilings and dark paneling. Two women followed them at a discreet distance. One was a waif with reddish hair and the other a heavy blond with an upturned nose. They kept their distance, but Will detected the outline of a handgun on both of their waists. He cleared his throat and caught Olivia's attention. "I don't mind you having people keep an eye on you, but I want them unarmed."

  She responded at once. "Of course." She looked back at the pair of women and raised her voice. "Marjorie, Susan, wait outside, please? And let our people know that no one is to come around our guests armed." When the women hesitated, Olivia laughed, a tinkling sound much like Kayla's. "Seriously, girls… no guns. I doubt our new friends returned our soldiers just to kill us all."

  They entered the sanctuary. Once inside, Olivia gestured at some seats, then touched the tips of her long, graceful fingers together in front of her waist. "Let's talk here for now. I can take you up and show you the offices later."

  Tara took the lead. "What is it you wish to discuss?"

  Olivia held her hands out, palms up. "Your intentions for us, to start. Your expectations, and how you intend to rule."

  Tara peeked at Will and snickered. "Our intentions are to return to our home and pick up where we left off when you invaded. We expect you’ll never do anything that stupid again. We have no intention of ruling you."

  She stared at them in disbelief. "We attack you with no provocation, we lose, and your response is to do nothing?"

  "Oh, sugar, I wouldn’t say we ‘did nothing’. In case you didn't notice about 800 of your people didn't make the trip back. And your Queen's laying in an unmarked grave with her chest air-conditioned"

  Olivia looked at the ground. "Kayla died in the attack?"

  Will joined the discussion. "We executed her at nine in the morning two days ago, and her guards in the blue uniforms the day before that."

  She pursed her lips and peered at him through sad eyes. "I feared something like that had happened. Kayla and I had a special relationship; I was her assistant. She could have done great things, but she couldn’t overcome her ego or her appetites."

  Tara shrugged. "You can eulogize her later; I didn't care for the woman. What you need to know is what we have already explained to the folks we brought back- what happens if you guys ever try anything again." Olivia tried to object but Tara held up a hand to stop her. "Save it. I don't want to hear about how opposed to the idea you were. You didn’t oppose it enough to prevent it. Anyway, if you should try again… well, get the gist of it from a survivor later. Suffice it to say, it's an absolute promise we will kill every one of you and burn this church to the ground."

  Olivia nodded and sighed, then turned to face the pulpit. "I understand. And thank you for not retaliating in that manner now. I promise you'll have no trouble from us going forward."

  They made small talk for a few more minutes, then said their goodbyes.

  On the bus ride back to the quarry Will spied Tara looking troubled. “What’s the problem, Blondie?”

  “Her ‘promises’. Do you think we can trust her to keep them in line?”

  Will set his mouth in a grim line. “She will. She knows we’ll bury them if she doesn’t.”

  74

  * * *

  The first half of March flew by, and by mid-month signs of spring abounded. Almost overnight, the brown and yellow grass turned a brittle green that became darker and lusher as it grew. Buds sprouted on the trees and flowers shot up everywhere- buttercups and toothwarts, violets and orange puccoons, downy phlox and in every ditch, field, yard, and pasture, any place that held enough dirt to give it a foothold, spring beauties of every color.

  Butterflies and honeybees returned to work and all manner of beetles could be found trundling along the quarry bottom. A plague of ants struck the kitchen. The tiny black pests invaded by the thousands, their busy lines trailing through the cabinets and across the clean dishes. They infested the sugar bin and the kitchen’s supply of cooking oil and ruined seventy little pour-jars of maple syrup. Betty Ryan, the well-bred and patrician director of the dining room, was apoplectic. Jiri showed up one morning to assess the situation, took one look at her red face and the violence in her eyes, and promptly handed off the dilemma to the first person who wondered by- a hapless teen named Jeremy.

  “Hey, Jeremy, where are you working right now?” Jiri asked, draping a long arm over the boy’s bony shoulders and turning him toward Betty.

  Neither Jiri nor anyone else important had ever singled Jeremy out for attention and the teen swelled with pride. A sad collection of short, soft whiskers made his chin look dirty and an enormous zit turned the end of his nose bright red. “Becky has me working with the grade school kids as a teacher’s aide.”

  “What?” Jiri stepped back in shock. “That�
�€™s no work for a man like you. Congratulations, you’ve earned a promoted. From now on you are the official community exterminator, and Ms. Ryan has your first job for you.”

  Betty took Jeremy by the bicep and pulled him toward the kitchen.

  The teen looked back over his shoulder, his features etched with confusion and alarm. He resisted Betty’s pull and called out to Jiri. "Are you sure? I kind of like working with the kids, and I don't know much about killing bugs."

  Jiri pumped a fist in the air and shot the kid a wink. "You'll do great!" He spun on his heels and almost trotted to the exit, chuckling to himself all the way.

  Hunting no longer presented a challenge for Coy. The woods and fields exploded with game. A second year had passed with no hunting season to thin the deer, squirrels, rabbits, and game birds, and getting run down on the highway wasn’t a leading cause of death anymore. With such a bounty to choose from, predators flourished. Spotting a coyote while hunting used to send a thrill shooting through him; now they were as common as dogs used to be. Bobcats roamed the countryside in droves. One day he stood motionless for twenty minutes and watched a cougar sunning itself on a rock outcropping fifty yards away.

  Fishing was no different. With no more men in low-slung boats pulling their daily limit out of the local rivers and lakes, the fish practically jumped in his nets.

  Becky wiled the day away in the three big vegetable gardens near the quarry entrance, attacking wayward weeds, working compost into the soil, and planting early season crops. One whole garden was dedicated to potatoes and onions. She had planted the slips and seed potatoes a month earlier; now the onion greens were 6 inches long and the bushy tops of the potatoes were an inviting sea of green.

  Outside alone time with her son and husband (a sad rarity these days) her happiest time were the hours she worked in her plots. She smelled the earth, heard the songs of nearby birds, felt the sun’s warmth and promise on her skin, and watched her plants grow. The environment was so familiar she pretended she was back at the ranch, tending to her vegetables in a world where the outbreak had never happened.

  Will and Danny put in fourteen-hour days overseeing the work in nearby fields. A half hour before dawn they fired up a pair of brand-new John Deere tractors pilfered from a dealership east of town. They left the plows, planters, drills, and tillers in equipment sheds near the worksite. But they feared the five-ton track-driven behemoths would attract attention from the wrong type of people so they drove them back to the quarry at the end of the day.

  They planted 800 acres of wheat for harvest in late July or early August. They readied another 600 acres for corn they would plant in early May and 400 for sorghum they’d plant two weeks after the corn. Last was a 200-acre field they'd planted with fescue at the first of the month. As the thick, lush grass grew over the spring and summer, they would cut it three or four times. After it dried, they’d bale it and feed it to the livestock as hay.

  A season's worth of planting had rotted in the fields after the outbreak, and they'd gone untended for another year after that- they were in poor shape. First they had to cut and remove the silage. Then it took pass after pass with cultivators, chisels, harrows and fertilizer cats before the soil was ready for plowing and planting.

  For Danny, it was humiliating work. As a life-long rancher, he looked down on crop farmers with their expensive equipment and government subsidies. A rancher either made it or he failed; he didn't depend on a check from the government to make ends meet each year. And he certainly didn't have to go hat in hand to the bank and beg for a quarter million dollar’s worth of machinery to make the ranch succeed.

  At least he wasn't behind the wheel of the tractors. The mind-numbing back and forth through the fields all day was the most excruciating way to spend a day he could think of. When he and Will drove them to the fields in the morning and back at dusk, they each pulled a trailer full of workers behind them. Most of them took a position in a perimeter around the field and put down the creepers drawn by the noise and activity. Other workers guided the tractors across the fields, and a few kept busy working with the implements and running errands.

  Danny's focused on the middle of May, after planting when the crops only needed routine care. That was the start date for the project that excited him. 820 acres of good pasture sat on the other side of the four-lane highway north of the quarry. The half-section was already fenced and cross-fenced, with solid pipe-fencing on the perimeter. A lush mixture of alfalfa and clover covered the pasture and four man-made ponds dotted it. The land was livestock heaven, and the plans were in place to put it to use. They'd raise cattle on and the biggest part of it- 150 cow and calf pairs, with six or seven bulls to keep the cows content.

  They’d leave room for hogs, too, and a flock of free-range chickens. Three long, low-slung poultry houses sat on a rocky and tree-studded thirty-acre parcel of land directly west of the cattle operation- somebody's turkey farm before the outbreak. He had visions of converting one of the skinny but lengthy houses into a milk shed and putting dairy cows on land nearby. It would take at least five years, but if everything played out according to plan, a glass of milk would be a common sight in the dining room.

  All across the quarry, people spend their days making improvements. Cyrus refined his fuel project. His tinkering and testing were never-ending, and he improved the quality of the fuel and the quantity produced. He had a dozen side projects going, and, miracle of miracles, his people skills improved to where people tolerated being around him.

  A crew worked at stringing lights in tunnel two, where most of the community lived, and tunnel four, the shaft that housed the kitchen and dining room. They still couldn’t produce the amount of fuel it took to run the generators that sent electricity to the lights; but when the day arrived when they could, the lights would be up and ready. Clark and his mechanics kept the twenty-four cars and trucks in the quarry's fleet in tip-top shape, along with the farm equipment, the dirt movers, and the semi-trucks. Terrence assigned permanent guards in the towers and did away with the rotation system. He set up a shooting range deep inside tunnel seven, where the tons of earth swallowed the noise of gunfire, and drilled the guard teams for hours each day. Robert McGrew took on two apprentices and began teaching them the fine art of blacksmithing. A seventeen-year-old named Trevor Lopez approached Robert in a shy and embarrassed manner one day. They talked for half an hour. The next day, the carpenters built Trevor a leatherworks shop and Robert spent a week forging the awls, punches, mallets, and setters the teen needed to be in business. Tess and a team of five changed how the community's children and teenagers spent the day. Up to then, the youth spent their days together in an all-day childcare center. She and the other teachers put them in three groups- preschool, elementary, and junior high. They acquired the supplies and material needed for classrooms and age-appropriate curriculum. The Hendrickson girls expanded their corrals and increased the number of horses, goats, and chickens under their care.

  The Council didn't assign the jobs or suggest the changes. Nobody in authority suggested any of the changes or improvements. The community members came up with the ideas and took it on themselves to put in the work.

  The quarry was becoming self-sufficient.

  75

  * * *

  Tara wandered alongside the river south of the quarry, soaking up the sun’s rays and not thinking about much. It was the kind of glorious weather she enjoyed every day in Los Angeles but seemed to only visit Missouri and Kansas for a few weeks in the spring and the fall. The sun was high and bright and the temperature warm but not hot. A pleasant breeze rustled the tree leaves, instead of the fierce, blustery wind that marked most spring days in the Midwest.

  Spring River crossed under Civil War Road and then turned and ran alongside it for a short distance before turning again, running away from the road this time. This stretch of the river was a muddy brown, the color of old leather. The water was dee
p and moved at a slow and languid pace. She knew from innumerable scavenging trips she could turn at a crossroad just before the city limits and follow it through an old, poor part of Carthage. The southern edge of town was blotted with factories, warehouses, and industrial centers. Broken roads, scrub brush, and dirty parking lots dominated the landscape. She found the view depressing.

  But if you followed the river out of town, the factories and gravel roads petered out. You passed through untamed grasslands and overgrown pastures before coming to the man-made lake. It sat adjacent to one of the worst sights she’d seen since leaving home- the after-effects of a furious battle between the creepers and the armed forces.

  Will drove The Judge and a quartet of his lieutenants out to the battle site not long after they’d showed up at the quarry. At that time, the old man was still convinced government and the military would prevail and surviving meant holding on long enough for the powers-that-be to regain control and put things back to the natural order. It took seeing the crashed helicopters, overturned Humvees, burned up troop carriers and mangled bodies for The Judge to understand no cavalry was riding to the rescue; they were on their own.

  Later that night, Danny related the details of the trip to her. "Those guys saw the hundreds, maybe thousands of creepers that used to be soldiers and finally got it. All those kids in gore-stained khakis, stumbling around with limbs missing or holes gnawed into their midsections or their throats ripped out. Even more of them laying in the mud, too torn up or chewed up to turn. That's when he realized not even the military could stop these things, and the world as he knew it was gone and wasn't coming back."

  She pulled a water bottle from her pocket and took a long drink. Water dribbled down her chin and onto her shirt; she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked around. She stood in the middle of the crossroad. The quarry was behind her, Carthage and the old Burger King in front of her, the industrial park to her left, and an old, rundown neighborhood to her right. She picked a pebble up off the ground and tossed it in the air, watching it as a landed and bounced in the direction of the industrial park.