“Last night, this citizen of the Republic of America committed anarchy. She assassinated our president.” A smattering of applause sounded from the braver ones in the crowd. “As the new president, I say we cannot condone this kind of rebellion, and it must be dealt with swiftly. She must be made an example of. This morning, and everyday before breakfast, she will be whipped ten lashes by me, until we decide she has been punished enough. Anyone seen giving her any kind of aid or comfort will suffer the same fate. To maintain order in a society, punishment must be severe for those who break the laws. We look forward to the day when each of you will become free and valued citizens of the Republic.”
The speech obviously over, Ben knew the time had come. Strapping the rifles over his back, he picked up the gas can and slopped the gas out in a steady stream as he headed to the other fence. So far, no one had noticed him. He reached the other side in time to hear the man in charge say, “Take her shirt off and tie her up.” That was the first Ben noticed the t-shaped post built onto the back of the platform.
They knew they were going to have to use it, thought Ben. They were planning to punish people all along. Some republic, he thought. He lit the gas on the ground with one of the lighters lifted from the guards in town, just as they were moving her into position. Ben aimed his rifle through the fence at the officer in charge. He also saw the guard who had dumped Lila’s tray yesterday. He was going to be the second to die.
The flame shot across the yard and made contact with the gas on the truck. A giant whoosh sounded as the truck caught fire. He heard a guard yell. He shot and missed the officer, but destroyed the face of the one who had abused Lila. He went down with a scream. Explosions erupted from the truck as, one by one, the other cans and the truck’s gas tank succumbed to the heat. There was bedlam in the compound. Lila, thinking fast, had grabbed the pistol of the downed guard, and was pointing it at the one in charge. Ben couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he looked to be pleading for his life. Lila shot him in the chest.
Shooting into the compound was now difficult, with all of the innocent people running around, although many had dropped to the ground for safety. Instead, he focused his attention on the guard behind the fence by the kitchen. His first shot missed, but his second scored. The man dropped in his tracks.
It was over as quickly as it began. The remaining guards, seeing Sharp down, dropped their weapons and surrendered. Ben limped through the gate, still looking like something that had emerged from a swamp, and made his way toward Lila. She jumped off the platform and ran to him, almost knocking him over as they embraced.
“I knew you were here,” she said in between kisses.
“I had to find you,” replied Ben. “I was so scared I’d lost you.”
“So was I,” said Lila. She held him at arm’s length and stared. “We’ve gotta go clothes shopping for you.
Ben laughed for the first time in an eternity. He looked out to see the whole compound quiet, everyone staring at them.
“Everyone,” said Lila to the group, “this is Ben.”
Then they all started talking at once. Dan and Gordon came over and gave Ben a hug. Suddenly, there were three shots in succession. They turned to see Melissa, Gordon’s wife, holding a pistol on the group of guards. Three of them were writhing on the ground bleeding. The other five were frozen with fear. Melissa didn’t have the stomach to finish the job, and dropped the gun at her feet. Gordon went over to comfort her. She was sobbing. Dan picked up the gun and instructed the remaining guards to drop their gun belts and lie on the ground.
He looked at Ben. “What should we do with these five, as well as the injured ones?”
Ben looked at him with exhaustion in his face. “It’s up to you guys. We’re done.” He looked at Lila. “You ready to go?”
“More than ready,” she replied. “Just one second.”
She went over to the building she was processed in. Ben heard a door splinter inside. She came back a few minutes later, strapping on her Sig and her knife. “All of your weapons are inside that building,” she said to the group. She came up to Ben. “Now I’m ready.”
They said their goodbyes to Dan and Gordon. Lila gave Melissa a hug, and they walked out the gate. Ben went over to retrieve his crossbow and the canteens. Lila pointed out where Dan said the trail was. They had walked about a hundred yards in that direction when they heard five shots in succession.
“I can’t believe they shot the remaining guards,” said Ben.
“You can’t believe what they went through,” answered Lila.
They held hands and looked in each other’s eyes as they walked. They were together again!
*****
That night, they found a quiet spot off the trail and just laid there; no tent, no food, just each other. They looked up through the trees at the night sky, and they shared their stories of survival. Afterward, they fell asleep in the peace and quiet, and the comfort of each other’s arms.
The next day they left the trail in search of some stores. They found a shopping mall and were able to totally restock, from backpacks on down to new boots. Normally, they would have steered clear of a mall, simply due to the large number of bodies, but most of the bodies had reached a state of dried skin and bones, and they were able to ignore them for the most part.
They had fun picking out clothes. They had been stuck in the same outfits for so long, they almost had to peel them off. They were still filthy, but hoped to find a lake or pond later that day to clean up.
They lucked out. Heading back toward the trail, they ran across a hotel. Lila had the bright idea of checking out the swimming pool. It was an indoor pool, and while the emptiness of the building seemed spooky, the need to get clean was overriding. The pool had a layer of film and a funky smell. Using a net, Ben skimmed the surface to open up a spot in which to swim. The water was cold, so they bathed quickly, but afterward felt somewhat clean again. They took that time to dress Ben’s wound properly, as well.
Their whole excursion off the trail had only taken them four hours, so they had plenty of daylight left. By the end of the day, they were deep in the hills again in southern Pennsylvania. They found a small lake and set up camp far from the trail. It was cool, but clear that night, and they lay there, watching the stars.
“Remember when this first happened?” asked Lila, lying with her head on Ben’s shoulder. “Remember how scared we were? We didn’t know what to do.”
“And yet, we didn’t stop,” said Ben. “We didn’t give up.”
“No, we didn’t. But we still had some of our innocence, and I miss that.” She was silent for a moment. “Ben, I’m tired of what we’ve become. I’m tired of the killing. I’m tired of our reputation. We’re the violent do-gooders. People are either scared of us or expect us to perform miracles—or both. I don’t want to be that anymore. I killed a man by jamming a pen through his eye socket. I shot another at point blank range. And neither of the killings bothered me. You’ve killed close to a dozen men, and you probably have no regrets. It’s all very surreal, but really disturbing too.”
“Isn’t it interesting,” started Ben, “how one incident can change your life? If it hadn’t been for Tank and his crew, maybe we wouldn’t be looking at the head count we are.”
“The thing is,” said Lila, “we’ve come a long way in our confidence and our ability to take care of ourselves. I wouldn’t give that up for anything. If it weren’t for our survival instincts, we’d either be dead from Tank and his gang or in that prison camp in a hopeless situation. We know how to hunt and fish. We know how to protect ourselves. We’re probably two of the most competent people alive right now …”
“Which is why others look to us for help,” cut in Ben.
“It is,” agreed Lila. “And I don’t mind helping people. I mind killing people, and I mind having others look at us as though we were super beings. I understand all we’ve gone through and all we’ve become. I understand the skills we’ve acquired and the abilit
y to think clearly in stressful situations. I understand all of that, but …” She was at a loss for what to say.
“But you want life to be simple again,” finished Ben.
“I do.”
Lila put into words what I was thinking. When I shot the three guards by the car, or the guards at the camp, I felt nothing. I had ended a life—a lot of them, actually—and felt nothing. Nothing at all. Shouldn’t there have been some remorse, or some sensitivity? I knew that our whole world had turned upside down and that to survive we had to be stronger than most of the other people. And we were. And I couldn’t say that we had lost any of our humanity, because we were willing to help anyone in need. But the killing part bothered me. Tank, and Slash, and Coke, I could understand. That was pure rage. And if I looked at the other killings, logic told me that we did the right thing … the only thing that we could do to survive. Why then, did it bother us so much now? It wasn’t remorse for what we’d done, but rather, guilt for the fact that we were able to do it so easily. That’s not who we were.
I remembered learning in karate that the reason self-protection doesn’t come easily for most people is because we are civilized human beings. It goes against our nature to be violent. But in that same lesson I was also taught that to survive, sometimes you had to bring yourself down to the level of your attacker.
I knew right then we’d be okay. The fact that we could even talk about it, and that it bothered us, was a sign that we hadn’t lost that essential part of ourselves. I said that to Lila and I think she appreciated it. She needed to hear it. We both did. We now knew that if we had to kill to survive, we could as a last resort, and it wouldn’t mean that we were any worse as human beings because of it. We may have lost our innocence, but we hadn’t lost our souls.
They walked a few more days without seeing anyone. Twice, they felt small tremors. Ben remembered feeling one during one of the violent storms, as well, but these were a bit stronger. On the fourth day, they met Nick and Jason.
They were cooking dinner, a rabbit that Ben had shot with his crossbow, when they heard someone hail the camp.
“Two friendly people out here. Can we approach your fire?”
Their hands immediately went to their guns, but Ben told them to come on in. Two men walked in and introduced themselves as Nick and Jason. Like Ben and Lila, they had full backpacks and carried weapons. But there was nothing menacing about them, and the teens felt at ease right away—as much as when they had first met Phil.
They introduced themselves to their guests. Both seemed to be in their mid-thirties.
“Ah, yes,” said Nick. “There are all kinds of stories going up and down the East coast about you two. Sounds like you’re quite the heroes.” He could see their discomfort and changed the subject. “But we’re just happy to meet some fellow travelers.”
“Where are you headed?” asked Ben.
“Eventually to the coast,” answered Nick. “But we’ve been kind of exploring in all different directions on our way there. We’ve been passing along information whenever we can.”
“What kind, and where are you from?” asked Lila.
“I come from St. Louis,” said Nick, “and Jason comes from California. We were two of the lucky ones … twice. Three times for Jason.”
Ben and Lila looked confused.
“Let us explain,” continued Nick. He looked at Jason and touched his shoulder. “You go first.”
Ben got the idea that they had told this story a few times before.
“California doesn’t exist anymore,” began Jason.
Immediately, Ben’s thoughts went to his brother. Any hope that his brother might have survived was gone now. Lila sensed his thoughts and held his hand.
“A few days after the event, an earthquake struck. It was the ‘big one’ they’ve been warning about for decades. Ironically, the death toll was low because there were very few people left alive to experience it.”
“Can I interrupt?” asked Lila. “We’ve been assuming everyone got zapped by this, but we’ve only met people on the East Coast. So you can confirm that it’s nation-wide?”
“Most likely world-wide,” said Nick, “but definitely nation-wide.”
“Anyway,” continued Jason, “I was lucky. I had found an old truck from the early ‘60s, and a supply of gas cans, and loaded it up. I was west of LA and already on my way east when it hit. How I made it, I’m not really sure. It was a mess. Sometimes I had to go for miles to circumvent the fissures. I know that half of California behind me went into the sea. It stayed messed up through Arizona and New Mexico, then finally cleared up. I was on fumes when I hit St. Louis.”
Nick took up the story. “We met up in St. Louis and Jason told me what had happened, and I knew immediately that we had to head east. You see, I’m a meteorologist—I worked for a local TV station—and a seismologist. I had suspected for awhile what was coming and Jason only confirmed it.”
“Why did you suspect it?” asked Ben.
“Well, I can go into that later, but I think a massive nuclear weapon was involved in all this.”
Ben and Lila looked at each other.
“Someone else we met had that theory too,” said Lila. “But go on.”
“California has the San Andreas Fault, as well as many others, but the Midwest has the Madrid Fault. I figured the chances were good that because of the magnitude of the first earthquake, it would trigger a chain reaction that would continue on to the next weakest fault. A chain reaction like that isn't common, but it's not unheard of either. Or maybe it’s not a chain reaction at all, but just a case of each fault being affected from the initial blast, and the strength of the fault determines how quickly the quake hits.”
“Whatever the reason,” he continued, “I knew we were in trouble in the Midwest, so we found a stash of gasoline and I accompanied Jason east. We felt the quake hit when we were in Tennessee. From the force of it there, I knew it was pretty massive in the Midwest. We eventually ran out of gas, so we started hoofing it. And here we are.”
“So what you’re saying is that most of the country is pretty much in shambles?” said Lila.
“No. What I’m saying is that it’s going to hit here too. It’s only a matter of time before the whole country is destroyed.”
Part Three: Revenge
Chapter 16
Lila shook her head. Not in disbelief, but in amazement. They had something more to look forward to?
“When?” she asked.
“That I can’t tell you,” answered Nick. “It could be weeks, but more likely months. Hell, it could even be years, but I don’t think so. I think the earth is falling apart—not completely, of course. It’s not going to break into pieces and float away, or anything like that. But if I’m correct and it was a massive nuclear device that delivered all this, then I think it was large enough to have severely jolted the Earth.”
As if on cue, the ground moved slightly. They looked at each other, and Nick gave a sad smile.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I think it sent such a powerful shock wave against the Earth, it weakened it. Sort of like a beam in a house during an earthquake. If it’s new and sturdy, it will hold up longer. If it’s unstable to begin with, chances are it will collapse right away. The faults are like that.”
“What about the wild weather?” asked Ben.
“We’ve had a bit of a reprieve for the last couple of weeks,” answered Nick, “but don’t get used to it. It’ll be back. I think the blast had a significant effect on the weather patterns, too.”
“What do you suggest about the earthquakes? Where’s the best place to be?” asked Lila.
“The simple suggestions seismologists usually make wouldn’t work in this case, because it’s going to be too devastating. Obviously, the cities will be the most dangerous places to be. I can’t tell you where the safest place is. We’re headed for the coast. I’m hoping that will get us away from the worst of it.”
“What about tsunamis?” asked
Lila.
“We’ll take our chances. No matter where you are, you’re really just taking a chance.”
“So how is warning people helping?” asked Ben.
“I don’t know,” answered Nick. “I guess all I can say is, wouldn’t you rather know or would you rather it came as a surprise?”
“I see your point,” said Ben. “Although, there are probably people out there who would rather not know.”
“There are,” agreed Nick. “But I guess that’s their problem.”
We were entering a strange new world. With every passing day, our old life in Newton was fading, becoming a wisp of a memory. In some ways, we just didn’t have time to think of that life. And in others, we avoided thinking of it. When we did, sometimes the memories were sad, but more often they were repellant. It was an ugly world we had left behind, made ever so clear when we camped at night and soaked in the sounds of solitude. Our new world had glimpses of paradise, and we hungrily sought out more. But sadly, it also contained too many reminders of the world left behind.
We, the human race, had a chance here for a fresh beginning. But the universe had played a cruel cosmic joke on us all by sparing some of the worst of society. Were they put here to provide challenges? As if just existing wasn’t challenge enough. I thought back to our discussion of killing. By doing away with the scum, were we cleansing the world or just adding to the negativity?
Nick’s warning about the earthquakes had surprised us, but really hadn’t scared us. Overlooking the fact that we—humans—were responsible for them this time, earthquakes were simply a force of nature. Lila and I, in some perverse way, looked forward to them. It was nature at its most powerful. We could respect that. We just wanted to live in harmony with the natural world. If only the human race would let us.
Eden Rising (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 1) Page 14
