A semi, two buses, and a long line of military trucks ground to a halt and one by one, shut their engines down. The silence was odd after all the noise, the man-made noise they enjoyed living without but missed terribly.
“Son of a bitch!” Billy yelled for a second time, running by Char’s ride and high-fiving her as he passed on his way to the second dune buggy.
Terry stood in the driver’s seat, leaning on the barrel of the fifty cal.
“We’re riding to Chicago!” Felicity called, sitting on the front step of the house as she started to cry. Sue turned Clyde loose and he ran barking at the strange vehicles.
“Clyde!” Terry called as he extracted himself from the buggy.
A commotion behind them signaled that the bear had climbed out of the bus. Kaeden was running after him. Char took off running after Kae.
Terry was pleased that Clyde came to him and their reunion was joyous, if not too short, as Clyde decided that he needed to join those chasing the grizzly. Sue tried to look humble, but Terry intercepted her.
“I guess you’re a dog owner now,” he started as he pulled her into a hug. She drew back. Alphas weren’t supposed to be nice. Terry’s smile disappeared, but it wasn’t because of Sue. “Can you help Adams, please? We ran into some Forsaken and lost Xandrie and almost lost Adams, too.”
The breath caught in Sue’s throat. She nodded without saying anything, hurrying to Adams’s side. She helped him out, then they stood there, holding each other and crying.
Terry had seen too many people die in battle to continue mourning for too long. He remembered them all, fondly, as warriors who’d gone somewhere else to fight evil. That thought comforted him. Terry didn’t want to believe that someone died and simply was no more.
He hadn’t spent much time with Xandrie, but Char had. Adams was Xandrie’s mate. Sue was in the pack, too. He expected Shonna and Merrit would be crushed.
The pack had been together for decades.
But it was a new and harsh world. Integrating with humanity had come at a steep price, but they’d earned the respect of good people. They made a difference for all of humanity, even though they hadn’t wanted to.
Char had taken an indifferent, self-serving pack and turned them into pillars of a new world. For that alone, Terry was proud of them all. He’d take them to Chicago, and they’d start fresh.
Every single person would get a new chance in the new place.
Terry shook himself from philosophizing and met Billy. They walked from vehicle to vehicle so the survivors could introduce themselves. Corporal Heitz was Terry’s favorite and First Sergeant Blevin was nominally in charge of the new people.
Many remained in their zombie-like state, tragically damaged from their ordeal, but their friends were becoming more and more helpful. And Billy had a town full of people to help the survivors, too.
Billy rushed through the greetings because he wanted to see the trucks.
After jogging from one to the next, he stopped at the last in the convoy, looking confused. “I thought they’d be loaded with stuff. Doesn’t look like much,” he lamented.
“We had them completely full, Billy, but one of the trucks went tits up within ten miles. These are well maintained, but old. First Sergeant Blevin wasn’t sure how many would make it two thousand miles and the absolute last thing we can do is leave arms and ammunition in the middle of nowhere,” Terry droned through his reasoning on the truck count. “If ten percent of the trucks make it, we’ll be able to carry what we took. If we must have what we left in the mountain, we’ll have to ask Akio for help, or do it the hard way.”
Until then, they’d make do with what they had, AK-47s and knives. In the end, the only things that were on the trucks was a ton of C4 explosive, a few claymores, pistols with ammunition, one crate of grenades, and a handful of AT-4 rockets. Members of the Force de Guerre were dressed in a mix of U.S. Marine Corp and U.S. Army camouflage utilities. They wore web belts and harnesses over their standard-issue flak jackets. They had helmets, too, but weren’t wearing those.
Not yet anyway.
Terry looked at his pants. He’d opted for blue jeans because he found a pair that fit like a glove. He had utilities too and would wear them later. He tapped his shoulder holster, feeling the comfort that it brought him. That bastard Sawyer Brown had destroyed his last pistol. Now he had a trusty M1911 tucked on his person. His whip, an AK-47, and one silvered knife blade rounded out his armament. He and Char decided to let Kaeden keep the other knife. This was a new world where you never knew when you’d be in a fight for your life.
And his thoughts drifted back to Xandrie. Sometimes good people died.
“Fuck the funeral dirge!” Terry said out loud. “Let’s get our asses in gear! When the horse troop arrives, we’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Terry’s jaw was set. He wasn’t willing to waste any more time. Chicago called to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Two weeks passed and the six of them collapsed every evening. Timmons was driven like a madman.
He and Ted fabricated a pipeline pig, but getting it to drive the fluid into the tank was a different matter. They didn’t have a compressor to build air pressure of the capacity to drive the pig, so they rigged a pulley, running rope through the center of fence post piping. It took all the horses to haul enough pipe to push the pig past the first bend. They worked it past access hatch after access hatch, repositioning their rope and pipes each time. It took three days of work by all six of them to push seven thousand gallons of old fuel oil into the tank. Ted’s original estimate was off. When he recalculated, he determined that they had about fifteen thousand gallons.
They figured they’d burn forty-three gallons an hour. The math was simple after that. They had enough fuel for three hundred and fifty hours of electricity.
“We need a locomotive,” Timmons told Ted.
“That hasn’t changed since we found the Mini Cooper,” Ted replied. He’d bugged Timmons every single day asking to return to the railyard.
“I know what you’re thinking, Ted. We are wasting time with crumbs when the seven course meal is just a few miles away. As of right now, it might as well be on the other side of the planet. Not only do we need a locomotive, we need track space so we can move stuff around to get to the train we want. It’s a Rubik’s cube puzzle for sure.”
“My record with the Rubik’s Cube is thirty-three seconds,” Ted stated proudly.
“But were you blindfolded?” Timmons asked sarcastically.
“Of course. Would it count if I wasn’t?” Ted asked with a confused look.
“Of course you were, Ted. I’m sorry. Once we make sure the plant will fire and the turbine spins, we’ll go find us a steam locomotive, no matter what it takes. Deal?”
Timmons held out his hand.
Ted shook it. “Deal.”
***
Two weeks later found Terry fuming. “Settle down, lover,” Char said soothingly. They’d pulled into Sheridan having lost three trucks already.
The cattle, four horse-drawn carts, and one squad on horseback were somewhere far behind them.
The farming seed packs were split between the carts, the trucks, and the buses.
The people were crammed into the buses and the remaining trucks. They were refueling from the barrels and dumping them on the side of the road to free up space inside the remaining trucks. They were filling quickly as vehicles dropped out.
The dune buggies were running like brand new and for that, Terry was thankful. Billy drove one with Felicity and Marcie, while Terry and Char shared driving duties of the other, squeezing Kae into the space between them.
It took far longer to leave than Terry wanted, then they traveled at an average of twenty miles an hour. The roads were clear enough that he wanted double that in order to get the gas mileage to help them make it all the way.
At the rate they were losing trucks, he wondered if they’d all be walking the last half of the trip.
“So what? Any part we don’t have to walk now is gravy!” Char argued. It made sense, but Terry was still angry. “Thank God we didn’t bring fully loaded trucks. We would have been in a real shit sandwich, so for the second time, settle down. Things are going way better than I expected, if that’s any consolation.”
“You expected me to fail?” Gloom darkened Terry’s features. He was being caustic but only because of the circumstance, not because he thought his beautiful partner had lost faith in him.
“Of course not,” Char said dismissively. “I have no faith in twenty-year-old trucks that haven’t been driven. That’s all. I honestly think some of the vehicles are going to make it the whole way.”
“That warms my heart,” Terry answered. “I’m still irked at how many people stayed behind. Seventy people risking their lives, taking a huge chance.”
“There’s just as much risk out here, TH,” Char replied, getting close to him, their faces inches apart. “My man who cares so much that he wants to throw the rebels over his shoulder and carry them to a better life.”
Terry chuckled. “Something like that.” Terry turned toward the people and took a deep breath.
“Rally up! Stopping for the night,” Terry bellowed. The trucks were already shut down and the drivers were running through their daily preventative maintenance checklist.
The bus door popped open, and once Hank clamored out, the people started to get off. Many would walk a few feet and then sit down. That was where they’d remain until morning.
It tore at Terry’s heart. Incrementally, one or two were coming out of their shells, but the others could be gone forever. The colonel wanted to leave them behind, but the human being said that they deserved every ounce of effort that Terry could give.
The ruins of Sheridan were as they remembered from their last trip through. Surprisingly, five children, two adults, and their eighteen head of longhorn were still there. When they saw Terry, they collectively hung their heads as the man detached himself from the group and approached.
Terry felt sorry for the people, but it didn’t make him like them any better.
“I’m sorry, mister. We did as you asked. Now what?” the man intoned humbly.
“Join the parade. We’re going to Chicago. There’s a group that’s probably a couple days behind us. Join them and their cattle,” Terry said slowly, trying to assess the man’s level of duplicity. “You know what would help us out? We’d like to butcher one of these cows. We have a big number of people and need a lot of food. Choose one.”
The man pointed to a cow. “She’s the oldest, probably won’t have no more calves. She’s good for meat, but we need the rest if we want to grow the herd.”
“Thank you and done,” Terry replied. He saw Blaine and waved to him, asking him to bring a few people to butcher the cow. The old hunter waved back and hurried away to make it happen.
“It’s good to see him when he’s not so afraid,” Char said, having magically appeared next to Terry. Kae was running after one of the Weathers’ boys. She thought that one was called SC because South Carolina was too long.
“I thought we lost him too, after he saw…after he saw what he saw.” Terry didn’t want to say Char’s pack.
It was the same pack who’d joined the town, but Blaine didn’t know that. He’d stopped hunting, but he was a good butcher and had done a great deal of work preparing jerky and smoked meats to support the journey. Nearly four hundred souls counted on him.
And Claire Weathers. The old lady was a dynamo. Billy Spires had done what a mayor was supposed to do: find people who were good at stuff and put them in charge of it.
Every vehicle carried food. Every person carried food. Blackie forced Hank out to graze because the grizzly needed grain, fruits, and vegetables in his diet, too. Clyde had finally taken a liking to the bear, but never got too close, just in case the feeling wasn’t mutual.
Sue was trying to manage the camp at each stop. She had her work party established and put them to digging a latrine after picking a spot that wouldn’t foul the water supply. They always stopped near a stream, understanding that they could do without food, but not without water.
Adams led a hunting party at each stop, but they were rarely fruitful. Their route didn’t take them past lucrative hunting grounds. The interstate was in good enough shape that they didn’t have to deviate. They used the ram on the front of the semi a few times to clear space for the other vehicles, but outside of that, it was clear sailing.
Pepe and Maria rode the bus with the survivors. From what Terry heard, they maintained a constant litany of stories to entertain the people as they traveled.
Ernie had stayed behind. He didn’t want to leave his home, claiming that he was too old to start over. Charlie from the FDG expressed a desire to stay behind, but Terry squashed that. As a member of the Force, they’d given up some of their free will.
Char argued, but not for long. They needed everyone they had. It ate at Terry because he saw it as a lack of loyalty to the unit, to the mission.
Then he realized that he had kept them tactical. Just like when Mark expressed his reservations because Terry hadn’t sold them on the mission.
Terry found his sergeant.
“Mark,” he said in a soft voice. “Rally the platoon and bring them here. I need to talk with them. Not an emergency, so no yelling. I’ve heard that upsets the civilians.”
Mark nodded, saluted, and ran off.
Char cocked an eyebrow at him. “Sometimes people need to know that what they’re doing is important and why, how it fits into the big picture.”
***
“READY?” Timmons called from the plant floor. One by one, the others sounded off—James, Lacy, Kiwi, Gerry, and Ted—from their positions at critical junctions of the plant. Ted was running the boiler, while two people were responsible for two valves each for manual operation. Timmons was at the turbine, his keen hearing dedicated to listening for any anomalies. One person was at the condenser and one, Lacy, was standing by to go wherever she was needed.
Both James and Lacy were mechanically savvy, but Lacy had more experience in a power plant than everyone else except Ted.
On the roof of one of the buildings had been a wind generator, but thanks to a heavy door that no scavengers had a key for, the roof had been untouched. Ted climbed up the outside of the building, showing the agility of a monkey, and removed the entire system because he needed the little power it generated to run the startup systems of the boiler.
The vent valve was open and the steam valve closed.
The fuel had been circulated through the system and was slowly pre-heating. The power from the wind generator wasn’t substantial. They needed the plant to run in order for the plant to run. It was a dichotomy of modern systems in that the designers assumed there would be electricity before the electrical generator came online.
They filled the boiler drum with water to a point just above the low water line. They had to rig a bypass that fed the boiler with water from the lake after filling one of the water storage tanks outside the plant.
The slow whirring of fans and pumps were loud within the normal silence of the plant. When the boiler came to life, it sounded like a blast furnace. The jets sprayed the fuel oil that became the flame licking the broad surface area of the heating pipes.
Heating the water from room temperature took more time than Timmons expected, but Ted had it calculated and looked bored until five minutes before the steam was of the sufficient pressure that they needed to open valves. Then Ted ran to and fro, giving orders and watching the analog gauges that were in the plant as a backup to their fully digital system.
The steam finally reached the turbine, driving it faster and faster.
When the time came, Timmons threw the switch and the plant came to life.
Ted held his hands over his ears and the others bolted from their positions, heading for the exit. Ted took his hands away, then shrugged and went back to work.
>
“That was awesome,” Timmons chuckled, earning him a one finger salute from the humans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The platoon looked at Terry as they gathered around, unsure of whether to stand at attention or at ease. The colonel looked upset about something, and they had no idea what it could be.
“Why are we here?” he asked rhetorically. The two squads were confused, but tried to answer.
“Because it’s the best route to Chicago.”
“To keep these folks going.”
“Because there’s water.”
Terry put his hand up to forestall further comments. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. The Force de Guerre, the unit that we’ve created. We do little things, and eventually they’ll add up to something big.”
The men were all eyes. A number of the former military from Cheyenne Mountain joined them. The first sergeant, Corporal Heitz, the only other Marine and some of the other drivers.
“Our mission is to bring civilization back to humanity. To do that, we have to be the biggest and the baddest,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the civilians. “So no one fucks with these good people. You’ve seen what we went through with just the power plant and the freezers. Imagine that on the scale of a city. We need to mine the ore, move it to the factories, manufacture things, then make more things. How do you do any of that without the factories working in the first place? It took hundreds of years and a hundred million people to do what we’re asking these four hundred to do. And you know what?”
Terry stopped to take a drink from his flask before he continued.
“They’re going to do it. Why? Because they feel safe. We’re going to make sure they can work without being bothered. We’re going to find help for them, people who’ve been surviving but want more.” Terry looked around the small group. He would have liked to have the whole platoon, but Boris and his squad were riding shotgun with the cattle being driven by the oldest Weathers boys.
“We’re bringing humanity back to civilization,” Terry said, waving an arm to take in the camp, the vehicles, and all the people. “We will carry them on our backs if we have to, because we are the only ones capable of providing stability. Chicago isn’t the end-all, just a place with enough infrastructure for us to grow. If it gets hot there, we’ll head north, start over again; not because we want to, but because we have to. We are the bedrock for these good people. They need to believe that everything is okay because we are confident. Everything we do must be done with the utmost conviction and flawless integrity.”
Nomad Supreme Page 17
