Tabernacle (Super Pulse Book 3)

by Dave Conifer

  “I gotta’ hand it to Grover,” Nick said. “I don’t like him that much, but you have to admire how he put all this together.”

  “He’s smart,” Carly said. “He started an hour after the power went off, and never stopped. Everybody else was celebrating a few days off from work until the power came back on, but he knew. Before everybody else understood the big picture, he’d already been stockpiling most of what we built the camp with.”

  “It took us longer to catch on, over in our end of the neighborhood,” Nick admitted. “Except for Dewey, I guess. He was talking EMP right away, but nobody believed him. Right, Dewey?”

  “I tried to tell you,” Dewey said.

  A few more words were exchanged, but conversation had largely halted by the time they reached the traffic circle. Nick laughed when he felt the van slow as they approached it, as though there was traffic in the circle to yield to. Old habits die hard, especially driving habits. After they were in the circle, the unrestrained passengers felt themselves pitch toward the wall until the van straightened out on an eastward bearing.

  If all went well, Nick thought, they’d be near Lockworth within a half hour. He heard John telling Dwayne to be ready to pull over without any warning once they got close, so they could take stock and plan their next move. That was wise, thought Nick. They might even want to go in on foot. He replayed Barton Moon’s death in his head and wondered what to expect.

  When he heard a loud smack, Nick wasn’t sure what was happening until he felt the van lurching. By the time they’d stopped he realized they’d blown a tire, presumably one in the front by the way the van was mishandling. “I didn’t see it!” Dwayne was yelling. “Not until I couldn’t do nothin’ about it!”

  Linda had already thrown the back door open and was out on the road, scanning in all directions with her eyes and her rifle. “We’ve got a spare, right?” she asked as Nick scrambled out. They’d have asked Carly, but she was standing near the front of the van with John, where they were staring at the shredded tire. Nick didn’t answer; he was distracted by the mound of jagged metal that must have done the tire in, fifty yards behind the van.

  “I haven’t seen a spare,” Dewey said. “We should ask Carly.” He fished around a cavity inside the back door, which was fully open, and pulled out a vinyl pouch, from which he produced a lug wrench. “There’s, like, one of those jacking things clamped inside the door, too. The tire’s usually hanging underneath, isn’t it?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he dropped to his knees and craned his neck to look up at the chassis of the van. “Nope,” he said as he stood up, brushing off the knees of his jeans. By then Carly and John had come around from the front.

  “We don’t have a spare,” Carly said. “The Sec Forces made us empty the whole van out so they could inspect it. They wouldn’t let us reload until they checked the weapons. When they didn’t show up this morning, I just loaded up real fast and came over. I never thought of it.”

  “We’re, like, in big trouble here, right?” Dewey asked. “It’s too far to walk back to camp.”

  “Way too far,” John said impatiently. “We’re not going back.”

  “We could probably drive on it,” Nick said. “Not very fast, but it’s better than nothing. We’ll eventually bend the rim, but who cares? I mean, seriously, who cares anymore?”

  “What about that, Carly?” John asked.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” Carly said. “But that’s the old world. Nick’s right, who cares? We’ll have to slow way down, though.”

  “How about somebody else takes a turn driving?” Dwayne said. “I’ve done enough damage for one day.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Linda said. “I see all the junk you had to drive through. You can’t see everything.”

  “Especially at that speed,” John said. “We were going too fast.” He might have said more except for the glares that came his way.

  “You know, we can probably snag a tire off an abandoned car,” Carly said. “I’ll keep an eye out. It’s not rocket science. A few holes, a few lug nuts. It’s pretty standard.”

  “Well, if we’re doing that,” Nick said, “there’s one within a mile behind us. I saw it out the back window just before the tire exploded. There was a pickup truck, too.”

  “Might as well check them out,” Carly said. They all looked to John for approval. His power play, legitimate or not, was complete.

  “Good plan,” he said. “We’ll scout both directions. Carly and I will go forward. Dewey and Dwayne, you two go backwards and see what’s there. Linda and Nick can stay here and guard the van. And everybody grab your rifle. Make sure you’re locked and loaded.”

  After the two parties headed off in different directions, Nick and Linda leaned on the side of the van. Linda held her rifle, which she’d never put down. That was a habit Nick knew he needed to learn, rather than leaving the rifle in a convenient place. It wasn’t doing him any good where it was stowed in the back of the van. “We should have just driven to the cars, instead of walking,” Nick said. “Woulda’ been faster.”

  “John’s so busy giving orders that I was afraid to suggest it,” Linda said. “I do believe I’m gonna’ grab some water. I’m parched. You want some?”

  “No, I’m good,” Nick answered. “Maybe one of us should guard the front and the other take the back, right?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Linda called back, already inside the van. “You don’t really think there’s anybody out here, do you?”

  Before Nick could get another word out, two rifle-toting men popped out of the brush on the other side of the road and came towards the van without breaking stride.

  Thirteen

  “Hey there, stranger,” one of the men said. Eying their weapons, Nick scolded himself for carelessly leaving his inside the van. The man who’d spoken wore a white fishing hat that reminded Nick of Henry Blake from M*A*S*H reruns. Like nearly every other man these days, his face was covered by a heavy beard, but this man’s was somehow neat and trimmed. His vest pockets, all six of them, looked as though they were crammed with extra ammunition for his rifle. That rifle, while not currently aimed directly at Nick’s center mass, was definitely pointing in that general direction, and that was clearly not an accident. Blake wasn’t leaving any doubt as to who was in control of the situation.

  “Hi,” Nick said, immediately realizing how silly he sounded. This wasn’t a cocktail party. Far from it.

  Blake’s partner, dressed head to toe in camouflage hunting gear including a green and brown cap, also held his rifle down, but clearly in a position that menaced Nick. This man grinned as he looked around. “Where’d everybody go?” he asked. “A few minutes ago it looked like a backyard barbecue out here.”

  Nick heard nothing from inside the van. Linda had apparently decided not to show herself. “Flat tire,” Nick told them. “They’re all off looking for a spare.” He studied the man in the hunting outfit. He’d carved a fu Manchu out of his beard. The rest of his face showed heavy stubble. He obviously had the tools and the time for some serious grooming. What was going on here?

  “Say, are you from that camp down the road?” Blake asked. “The old scout camp?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, instantly regretting it. “All of us are. What do you know about it?”

  “A lot more than you think I know,” Blake answered.

  “Hey, I seen a couple of women in your group,” Manchu said. “Any of ‘em your girl?” He grinned again. “We’re always on the look out. Better than money. It’s a barter economy these days, if you know what I mean.”

  “What’s it to you?” Nick answered. He looked up and down the road, but didn’t see anybody in either direction. It was just him and Linda for the time being.

  “Whatcha’ lookin’ for?” Blake asked. “They all coming back anytime soon?”

  “Any minute, I’d say,” Nick answered. He felt the van shake. Two feet landed on the pavement with a slap. Linda came around quickly, thru
sting a rifle at Nick before Blake or Manchu had a chance to react. Suddenly their advantage was gone. Nick and Linda gently leveled their weapons toward the two intruders in the same unassuming way that theirs were pointed back at them.

  “You said you’re looking for women?” Linda asked angrily. “What for?”

  Blake held up a hand defensively while maintaining his trigger grip. “Lady, he’s just kiddin’ around. He didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Manchu said. “I’m just shootin’ the breeze.” Something drew his attention. He looked up the road and saw John and Carly sprinting in their direction, both brandishing a rifle. The balance of power was about to change again.

  “What we’re really looking for is food, that’s all,” Blake said. “But I think we got off on the wrong foot here.” He glanced up the road again at John and Carly, who were closing fast. “I think we’ll just be on our way, you know?” Without another word he spun and disappeared into the woods, followed by Manchu. As quick as they’d arrived, they were gone.

  “Well, that was weird,” Nick said to Linda, with the welcome sound of John and Carly’s pounding feet growing louder. “Thanks for saving my bacon.”

  “How about you stop forgetting to keep that with you?” she asked, sounding annoyed as she gestured at his rifle.

  “It won’t happen again,” Nick said. “Trust me on that.”

  “I didn’t like them mouthing off about collecting women,” Linda said. “Once I heard that I had to come out and get in their faces.”

  John and Carly pulled up next to them, both panting heavily. “What happened?” John asked. “Who were they?”

  “We don’t know,” Nick said, before telling John everything that had been said and done while he was up the road. When the others arrived from the other direction, he repeated the story for them.

  “How did their guns look?” John asked. “Shootable? Or just for show, like some of those sad sacks we’ve seen?”

  “As good as ours,” Linda told him. “Definitely well-maintained. And the one guy was a walking arsenal, with all the rounds he had on him.”

  “Hmm,” John said. “I don’t like that. It’s one thing to find a bunch of ragamuffins out in the woods. This sounds different.”

  “They definitely didn’t look like ragamuffins, did they Linda?” Nick said. “They didn’t look hungry or dirty at all. In fact, they looked as neat and well-fed as us. They did a lot of smiling, and their teeth looked pretty good. I wonder where they came from.”

  “They were probably wondering the same about you,” Dewey said.

  “They knew about Tabernacle,” Nick said. “They asked if we were from there.”

  “And at the end, one of them asked for food,” Linda said. “But if that’s what they were really looking for, which I doubt, it would been the first thing they asked about, not the last.”

  “They didn’t look too hungry,” Nick observed.

  “It was almost like he said it to throw us off,” Linda said.

  “How so?” John asked.

  “Well, to make themselves look more like the rag-tag mobs that show up at the gates once in a while,” Linda explained. “They don’t want us to think of them as a threat. To me, that means they are one. They were crafty, like they were hiding something. I don’t like that.”

  “There’s somebody else out there that’s just like us,” Dewey said. “That’s all it is. They’re probably back in their own camp talking about us the same way we’re talking about them.”

  “Just like us?” Linda challenged. “No offense, Dewey, but you weren’t here. Which one of us goes out on the prowl looking to capture women? He said it right out loud. What exactly do you think they do with them, besides spending them like money?”

  “Yeah, Dewey, I don’t think you’d be saying that if you’d seen them up close,” Nick agreed. “They were scheming. If you all hadn’t come back when you did, who knows what would have happened.”

  “I don’t think we want to be here to find out,” John said. “Not until we know what we’re up against.”

  “Yup,” Dwayne said. “There could be a whole nest of them real close to here. No use waitin’ around.”

  “Did anybody find a tire?” John asked.

  “There’s a truck back that way. We should be able to get one off of it,” Carly said. “I thought it might be smarter to drive back instead of trying to roll the tire all the way here.”

  ~~~

  With Nick now in the driver’s seat, they turned the van around and drove slowly back about a mile to where a blue pickup truck had stopped permanently in the middle of the road, probably right around the same time that Nick had stalled in his own pickup back on the Ben Franklin Bridge. The smell of burning rubber, the result of driving on the ruptured tire which flapped violently against the asphalt all the way there, permeated the air. The abandoned truck had obviously been ransacked, but somehow all four tires were intact. They were about to change that.

  After jacking up the truck long enough to strip a wheel from it, they did the same to their van and pulled off the blown tire. The replacement rim was bigger than the van’s, but it would do. Carly was perplexed to find that the wheel bolts on the thirty five-year old van didn’t quite align with the holes in the wheel from the late model truck. She remedied it easily by hammering on one of the bolts with the lug wrench until she’d knocked it off. Then they slid the tire onto the other four and cinched up the lug nuts. Lastly, just in case this happened again, they pulled another wheel from the truck and threw it into the back of the van.

  Now that they were back on the road at full capacity, John decided they’d move faster, despite the junk that littered the roadway, at least until they’d put some distance between them and the two strange men that had them so rattled. Nick managed to keep the speed near forty as he weaved through the obstacles in their path.

  The road signs, a reminder of the pre-EMP world, was jarring to Nick. Nothing could matter less these days than how far they were from the shore, the names of campgrounds in the nearby woods, or where the nearest gas station or motels were. But he remembered when those things were important, and it wasn’t so long ago. Not that it mattered anymore. This wasn’t going to get fixed in his lifetime. It was too far gone.

  Occasionally they passed a farmhouse, an Elks Lodge or a produce stand, or simply open space carved out of the forest, and it made Nick nervous. He doubted he was the only one. Those were the kinds of places where outsiders could be lurking and watching from. The rest of them were probably still spooked in the same way by the unexpected visitors they’d encountered earlier. John told everybody to grab some window room and keep a lookout for any trouble, something they were all glad to do.

  Forty minutes after replacing the tire, the thick pine forest slowly began to give way, although it still so thick that it looked more like a tunnel than a forest. Nick knew that as they continued eastward from this point, the Pine Barrens would loosen its grip and shore terrain would gradually replace it. He didn’t have the map handy now, since he was driving, but he’d memorized the landmarks earlier. “We’re three miles out,” he announced to John when they passed a “T” intersection with county road 539. He wasn’t even sure what county they were in. Probably Ocean, he guessed. His body tingled with nervous excitement. Christie Moon and her daughters, if they were still alive, were close by.

  “So what do we do once we get there?” John asked. “I doubt you’re planning on driving down Main Street, if there is one.”

  “You’re commander in chief here, remember? I was hoping you had a plan.” He waited for a response, but there was none. “Savoy Street isn’t too far from the edge of town. That’s where everybody is, from what I know. We can avoid the center of town to get there, if you’re worried about that.” He paused. “I always thought we should hide the van and hike into town to see what’s up.”

  “Okay with me,” Linda said from behind, obviously following the conversatio
n. “But we all have to be armed. No exceptions. And extra mags. We can hide them under our clothes.” Nick braced for a rebuke from John, who seemed anxious to look like he was in charge, but he simply nodded without a word.

  “Right here is their version of Main Street,” Nick said, while slowing down so they could get a good look at Confroy Road. There were a few scattered houses. Off in the distance the density of the little hamlet’s architecture thickened up into what looked like the center of town. “Savoy bisects it. But I thought we could turn off on Hemlock, drive up a little closer, and then do the rest on foot. What do you think?”

  ‘Yeah, good,” John said. “After we park, we’ll go over our mission again. I keep forgetting why we’re even here.”

  Nick turned onto Hemlock. Now that they were at the outskirts of town he drove slower, knowing as he did it that it was a futile endeavor; a moving vehicle was going to draw attention regardless of its speed. After a quarter mile he veered off-road behind a stand of trees into an overgrown flat space that had probably been somebody’s tomato garden. “It’s show time,” he said after turning the key to cut the motor. Dwayne groaned loudly from the back. Nick snorted. Too much drama for my favorite electrician, he thought.

  Fourteen

  Anthony Palozzi silently cursed everybody on The Committee for the umpteenth time for sending Dwayne Griffin, the only electrician they had, on some cockamamie trip to some place he’d never even heard of. Meanwhile, he was stuck by himself in his so-called lab in the corner of the Food Distribution Center on the verge of success with a mangled solar panel and a rebuilt inverter, but had no idea what to do next. Dwayne had been a big help whenever he was around. Now it looked like he was on his own.

  A budding gemologist by trade, having worked for his father in his shop on Jeweler’s row in Philadelphia for a couple of years after finishing high school in Cinnaminson, Anthony had never been sure why he’d been assigned to work on the solar project in the first place. He supposed it was his experience working on tiny pieces with delicate tools that The Committee thought would translate.