Desolation

by M. L. Banner

  “Where are these people?” he demanded of his men.

  “Don’t know, Jefe,” another man said from the kitchen. “But I think they leave today,” he reasoned. “Look, no dust on the sink.”

  How did they know? He wondered. He and his men rifled through a desk in the storage room, full of papers, craving an answer to this question. Some papers told him the owner’s name was Miguel Fernandez. Searching further, they found a hand-drawn, folded map. El Diablo glanced at it and recognized the location immediately. “I know this place. This is where they are. And this is where we’ll find all the supplies we need. Get our men and meet me back in front in two minutes,” El Diablo ordered his man in Spanish. He dropped the map on the desk and left. The map showed the ocean and several beach houses. One house had an “X” over it, and the name “Max” written on it.

  ~~~

  Miguel knocked on Max’s door again. He and Maria waited patiently.

  “Where is Señor Max? Why doesn’t he answer?” She was rocking Ana, swaddled from the sun, and keeping her quiet. She and her husband wore clothes more suited to the winter: hoodies, long pants, and sunglasses. Yet, it was at least a hundred degrees today, probably a lot more. They were hot, sweaty, and very tired, but they were protected from the sun.

  “Maybe Max’s friends, Señor King and his family, are home,” Miguel beckoned his wife, as he advanced quickly to the house next door. Maria seemed unwilling to step out of the shadows and into the baking sunlight once more, but reluctantly followed.

  It only took one knock this time and Bill King opened up, with a welcoming grin and handshake as if Miguel and his family were old friends. They had met once when Max had him help him work on both their homes. They shared the same friendship with Max, and many of the same secrets.

  “Max told us that you might come by. Come on in and let me get all of you some water to drink. You look hot,” Bill said.

  “Where is Max? He no home.” Miguel frowned and wiped his forearm across his brow.

  “The Ochoa drug gang has him,” Lisa responded from the kitchen. “I’m Lisa. Our daughter Sally is next door at Max’s house, but we told her to not answer the door. Please come in, take off your hot jackets, and introduce me to your baby.” Lisa came out wiping her hands on a towel, smiling warmly to them, taking much joy in offering comfort to Max’s friends.

  22.

  New Friends and Enemies

  Laramie, Wyoming

  Melanie led a dozen men and women down Grand Avenue two blocks east of the Union Pacific railroad tracks in the old town center, or what its residents now referred to as Fort Laramie.

  By any measure, Fort Laramie was an amazing creation: forty city blocks walled off from the rest of Laramie by up-ended cars and a wood scaffolding walkway on top, running the entire perimeter of the wall’s squared shape. The walls were bounded by and ran parallel to the railroad tracks on the west, the University of Wyoming campus on the east, North Clark Avenue on the north, and Custer Street on the south. This area’s college-based population was at its lowest level this time of year; the university kids were on summer break and the owners and employees of its symbiotic businesses were on vacation until the fall. That left four hundred and six close-knit residents in their walled community, many of whom had known each other their whole lives.

  Fort Laramie had been Melanie and Carrington’s home for the last twenty-two days, where they lived together under the same roof and perpetuated the little white lie of being husband and wife. It started as a slip of her tongue, when one of the town’s young men made a pass, but from there it just grew. Pretty soon her hometown of Laramie, where she’d lived through high school, bought into her story. It felt safe and with what she had been through, the last thing she needed was unwanted advances from the single men, whose chances of finding any unencumbered woman in this sealed-up town were dwindling with each day. After she told him her reasons, Carrington played along completely, as she suspected he would.

  Their relationship however, was no mere contrivance; they felt an instant connection, born out of mutual respect. Maybe it was his older age, or his chivalry, which he somehow demonstrated without being sexist, or simply that they were both scientists. Regardless, she felt safe with him. Their (admittedly phony) marital status and their work for the town earned them a private room, off a workshop—what was once a waterbed store, so they could work together in the day, and sleep together at night. The bedroom only had one bed, but Carrington had been a gentleman and insisted on sleeping on the floor.

  Their affection for each other grew as they spent many hours working together. After a few days, it no longer felt to either as if they were perpetuating a ruse. To everyone around them they appeared to be a happy couple, because they were. Had their civilized world not ended, Carrington and Melanie would have explored their romance further. However, the passion they focused on at present was the town’s ability to defend itself. Every waking hour was devoted to it.

  The idea for this project had germinated in Carrington’s head for years, and especially over the many miles he traveled before reaching Laramie. He conceived a tangible design when he pedaled, near death, over the Highway 130 bridge and saw the railroad tracks below. The image was one of the last things pasted into his consciousness before he passed out from gastrointestinal illness and exhaustion. When he shared his idea with Melanie and the town, everyone was excited about making it work, believing it might be the town’s only salvation from the threats building outside its walls. The town council, led by the town manager, Bob Smucker, assigned them almost thirty men and women from the wall detail and supply teams to help them put it into place.

  “Watch out, don’t get too close to that track, you know the jolt could be deadly,” Melanie called out to her group as they hauled the single steel rail through the town, each desperately trying to hold onto the rail-tongs. They were trudging much too close to the connected single rail-spur, which snaked from the existing tracks down Grand, the main road down the center of town, to one of the rail-lines. Melanie had quipped that from above, it must have looked like some errant eyebrow hair that needed to be plucked.

  When they reached their destination, they dropped their rail with a thunderous thud near the end of the one-sided spur. Except for Melanie, they all collapsed in a heap where they stood, lungs frantically trying to take in air, already punished by the town’s high altitude.

  “Great job, take five,” Melanie ordered, barely out of breath. She turned her attention to another group of eight, lumbering toward them from a different direction, with less difficulty. Their cargo was a large rectangular metal plate, and their job was made easier by a dolly system Tex had rigged up. The plate was formerly used to temporarily cover holes in a roadway. This would be laid lengthwise, end-to-end to the others, connected to one another by metal shims. “It’s perfect right there,” she said. They flopped the heavy rectangle into place at the end of the runway that ran down the middle of Grand Ave, away from the spur. The spur and runway of plates were now only a few feet away from one another. Two more lengths of rail and they’d be done. Perfect, she thought. “You guys take five as well,” she said as she headed back to the workshop. “I’m going to go check in on my husband.” She smiled as she said it, enjoying the ease with which the word fell from her lips, even if it wasn’t really true. Yet.

  ~~~

  Carrington was standing over a model of the town in their workshop, describing how his defense plan would be orchestrated and what still needed to be done to an audience of Tex, the sheriff, Bob Smucker, and a guy everyone called Frank, who had been in the military at one time and ran the lookouts around town. Frank wore fatigues and a gun belt holding his Beretta and his lucky hand grenade, which made them all nervous.

  “Once we have the Executioner up and running, we can focus on other concerns, but until then, I think you’re going to want to put more people on that wall,” said Carrington.

  “How much longer until ya think it’ll
be done?” asked Tex.

  “It depends on Mel… Here she is now. What’s our ETA on the rails and plates?” He beamed now that she was here.

  “We’ll be done by tomorrow at the latest,” she answered, grinning back.

  Tex couldn’t help but notice, and he found himself smiling too.

  “That’s great,” said Smucker. “Once that’s functional, we can put more on the supply detail. The pickings have been very thin lately and so we’re going to have to extend our search out farther.”

  “What are your supplies like now?” Carrington asked.

  “We’re doing damn good if I say so myself. We have enough non-perishables to feed everyone in the Fort for close to a year,” Smucker said, with an obvious sense of pride.

  “Please don’t take any offense, but this Event is permanent, not just a year or two. You will never have power again. You’ll have to make your own food and you’ll have to be very creative, because much of what you see around you will die off from the excessive radiation and a drought that started even before the Event. So, you will need a lot more food before you even can hope to have any sustainability.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” Frank cut in. “There are a couple of supply warehouses east of here that might be good places to search. A lot of the food that was transported by rail through Laramie gets broken down at those warehouses and then sent out on semis to other points out west. The cold stuff would be bad by now, but they should have a lot of dry food as well, assuming it hasn’t already been taken.”

  “That’s brilliant; we’ll send tonight’s team that way. But, why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?” asked the sheriff.

  “As you can see, Sheriff, I’ve been a little busy,” he said, pointing to the corners of the town, and then resting his hands on his gun belt.

  “All right, I think we’re done for now,” said Tex. “Let’s give the love birds some private time with one another.” He winked, smirking at Carrington and Melanie, who were standing beside each other.

  Bob spoke next. “Thanks, every—”

  A loud horn blared a long, deep tone, followed immediately by three short notes.

  “Dammit, we’ve got a sighting on the eastern gate,” said Frank, who grabbed his rifle from its resting place against the wall. He had designed a warning call with Jeff Rohrbach, who used to play the French horn professionally and was now Fort Laramie’s Paul Revere. Jeff blew one long blast, which indicated there was a threat coming to their wall. Then, each of the short blasts that followed told them at what point on a clock the threat was coming to, with 5th and Clark Street being twelve o’clock. So, the three short blows indicated that trouble was coming from three o’clock, which meant the eastern gate at Grand and 9th Street.

  23.

  Resistance Is Futile

  Rural Illinois

  “You’re now members of God’s Army,” Thomas told his newest batch of recruits. “You’ve been issued rifles, which you will always carry. You have been given armbands, which you will always wear in public. As long as you are with us, you are part of this army until Teacher or one of us tells you different. You will always protect your fellow man or woman in God’s Army and serve the Teacher. From now on, you will be staying together in quarters we give you. We will assign you a buddy, who will be with you always. If you came here with other family or friends, you will be given visitation at certain times of the day. The rest of your day will be ours; you will use this time for training, working for the community and performing service to the Teacher. Do you all understand? Signal by saying yes sir.”

  “Yes sir,” Darla and the several dozen others yelled out while standing at attention. Darla noted the loose formation of men and women, young and old, skinny and overweight, representing all ethnic persuasions and all socio-economic classes, banded together for one of two reasons: survival or the desire to follow the Teacher. Many were volunteers, but others like her had been conscripted. She considered how she arrived at this place, as the Teacher’s first in command continued to tell them that all of their freedoms were now sold to the GA and in return, the GA would grant safety.

  When she and Danny had started walking with them, that first day after sleeping in the vacated house, they stayed at the back of the line, on the periphery. When they all stopped for the evening, she noticed they took over a small bedroom community somewhere outside Joliet, Illinois. She heard no clatter of guns, nor any evidence of violence. Yet, only now did she suspect that this group she had been traveling with gave the communities’ residents an ultimatum. Their modus operandi was offering everyone the chance to leave or become one of them and follow their leader, the Teacher. Like her, most had assumed nothing but benign intentions until it was too late.

  The first morning on the road, Darla and Danny had met one of the Teacher’s confidants. The man wore an armband with “GA” written on it in black marker. He had introduced himself, but Darla had long since forgotten his name. Then he’d informed them that they were following the Teacher out west to find a place where they could be safe and take care of each other and serve God. There were rules about sharing food and water with the community. They were free to go, but if they stayed, they would have to contribute. He offered positions performing various duties. They both jumped on the scavenging party detail, the first of which was to leave a few minutes later. His welcome gift to them was several doses of Albuterol and an inhaler for Danny.

  The scavenging parties branched out from their community like worker ants from their anthill, finding untended supplies in surrounding areas and bringing them back to the community so that all would benefit. Water and food were to be shared equally, but any other personal items they wished to carry were theirs. On their second day of scavenging, Darla and Danny grabbed a two-person tent from an abandoned outdoor supply store, two sleeping bags, and a better backpack for Danny. In a community already numbering over a thousand, most—including them—didn’t have a roof over their heads, so this was a good addition to their personal supplies.

  After several days, they still hadn’t met the Teacher, much less any more of his close followers, each easily identified by their arm bands. One day, a woman named Martha stopped by with pen and clipboard in hand, taking a census of each of the people that had joined their group. The expected questions were asked: name, home town, vocation, marital status, and who they had been separated from. Although that last question was simple enough, Darla hadn’t spoken about this with anyone but Danny. Even then she’d had to be strong for her brother.

  She thought for a moment, her face instantly struck with emotion. She had a room full of held-back sadness, the door locked for her own protection, and she opened the door wide, letting the tears overflow while she described her family and then her—she didn’t know how to label Steve Parkington. “My fiancé,” she blurted out, knowing it wasn’t true, but it felt true. Then, she opened more doors to more rooms she didn’t even know she had and she bawled to this stranger asking her private questions. She had never cried like this, even while breaking up with Dylan, and certainly not since the Event; it was long overdue.

  After several long minutes Darla regained her composure. Martha asked in a comforting tone, “Is it okay if we continue?” The questions went on: about her physical health, what talents or skills she had that could be beneficial to the group. It all made perfect sense; if you wanted the community to work together and survive, it had to rely on the strengths of all these disparate individuals.

  Then, Martha’s questions became very personal. “Are you still a virgin?” Yet, Darla answered truthfully that she was. Although the query seemed strange and way out of line, she assumed at the time it was just some way to assess who might be sexually active and potentially prone toward pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease; either would affect their little community. The episode was forgotten, her emotional doors locked up once again, and she and Danny continued scavenging with their fellow community members.

&nb
sp; On their tenth night with the group, their tent had a visitor. A man cleared his throat, and then said as if projecting from a stage, “The Teacher would like to talk to Ms. Darla King.”

  Darla unzipped her tent opening and emerged like some mud-spider opening up its lair, making itself vulnerable to the predators outside or preparing to pounce on its prey. She felt like the former. “I’m sorry, who are you?” She knelt halfway out of the tent, attempting to straighten the mess of tangles that made up her hair and the larger mess of her thoughts still groggy from sleep.

  “You have been granted the honor of an audience with the Teacher,” said a man whose face was so pale, in the light of the moon and the auroras above, he looked like a ghost. This image sent shivers through her body, which was hot and sticky from the swamp-like air in their tent. “He would like to talk to you about your place in this community. Not everyone is granted this honor, Ms. King, so I would recommend you not keep him waiting.” The man finished, his arms folded and his face impatient as if he was put out by her lack of excitement—or was it boredom from performing this duty? Darla couldn’t tell.

  “Hang on, let me put on some clothes,” she replied. Without waiting for permission, she loudly zipped the tent flap in one quick motion, and proceeded to put on her shorts and change her shirt. She looked at Danny, expecting some comment from him, but he slept through this, being deep in REM sleep as he was. “At least one of us will sleep well tonight,” she said upon exiting, this time zipping the tent a little more quietly.

  She was ushered through the throngs of people settled in everywhere and finally to the largest house in the small neighborhood of houses. She could see as she approached a multitude who sat or lay prone on the front lawn of the stately home, some sleeping, bodies intertwined in any case, most awake, waiting for what she didn’t know.