I let the three of them get up while I stayed flat on the pavement. Charlie stood up and moved to the edge of the hill, while Mike and Russ took the first dolly and tanks down. I slowly craw fished over to the opposite side of the ramp while they were moving down the hill. I waited and slipped under the guardrail just as I saw Mike make the top to help Charlie with the second set of tanks.
Chapter 6
The grass was tall and I knew that I had to stay along the edge of the guardrail to keep the grass from giving me away. My plan was to move all the way along the edge until I got to the overpass. That would give me the high ground with what should be an unobstructed view of everything below the overpass. It was slow moving along that edge. Mainly because I was trying to do it without making the grass sway more that the wind might or making any noise to scare off our watcher.
I got to the edge of the overpass and slowly slid down to where I had a view of everything along the bottom of it as well as a good view of the shadows under the structure. I almost missed him. He was in the upper corner, tucked up tight against the bottom of the bridge. It wasn’t the kid, but someone older and bigger. He wasn’t really dressed any better than the younger kid and he was slim. I knew that it was going to be pretty well impossible to sneak up on him, like sneaking up on a wild animal. My only hope was that Mike would scare him back my direction.
I watched the kid as he watched the others. He seemed to tense up all at once and slowly started moving back along the underside of the bridge towards me. I slid up out of the way and unlimbered the M-16 just in case. This wasn’t a sixty pound ten year old, this was a teenager that could very easily be stronger than I was and probably quite a bit faster. He got about twenty feet from me and turned around and started running my direction just as Mike cleared the other side of the bridge.
The kid put on the brakes for a second as I stood up and stepped out around the abutment. I threw out a “Stop” and knocked off a three round burst from the 16 about ten feet in front of him. He stopped cold. He knew he was dead if we wanted that and his only hope was that we may let him go.
Mike was moving down hill and in front of him while I was moving up behind. She started talking to him, much as she did the kid when I had brought him back. Telling him how we weren’t going to hurt him and that we just wanted to talk to him. She told him that she wanted him to come back out from under the bridge with her and he just stood there. I couldn’t see a weapon on him from the back. He was dressed in an old pair of denim pants that had seen better days and like the boy was so dark that you couldn’t tell where the tan started and the dirt ended.
I said “I don’t see any weapons from this side” and Mike replied “None here either, I’m going to put away my weapon and lead him back out to the others.” Of course I wasn’t too keen on that but with Mike you didn’t bother arguing, it was a waste of time. She shouldered the 16 and stepped forward and took the boy’s hand. He seemed to go willingly, but he also knew that I was behind him with a gun that was loaded, that was if he knew what a gun was.
Charlie and Russ already had the tanks up to the pavement and were sitting there with some of our rations out. I think that the boy noticed it before I did. It seems that he knew what peanut butter and potted meat when he saw or smelled it. Mike walked up the pile of rocks holding the boy’s hand the whole way. When she got him to the top, she set down opposite Charlie and Russ and pulled him down next to her. I stayed on my feet.
As before, Mike took a bite out of a peanut butter cracker and handed the rest to the boy. She had just handed him a second cracker when a male voice from behind me said “If you feed him he may follow you home.”
I dropped and spun at the same time but didn’t see anything except grass. The voice had come from about ten feet over my right shoulder. I didn’t see a thing. And then from about the same spot I heard “If I had wanted you dead, then you would already be dead, much like you with young David there.” “Young David” seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He had picked up the entire package of peanut butter and was eating it with his fingers as he grinned as wide as I had ever seen a kid grin.
Mike said “put away the weapon Ray, he’s right. We’ve been out maneuvered and out flanked and it’s time to lay it down.” I didn’t like it, but Mike was right. I shouldered the 16 and backed away from the shoulder of the road. About that time a man with gray hair and a gray beard stood up out of the grass and stepped forward. He wasn’t really dressed any better than the teenager. His shirt and pants were made from what appeared to be buckskin that was well worn but with no holes or tears. He said “I am Thomas. I assume you are the visitors from the shuttle that I saw land the day before yesterday.” He was carrying a sling shot that he pocketed as he stood up. He moved up out of the grass and motioned behind him and said “Come on men, I don’t think that our new friends will hurt us.” I saw eight kids stand up out of the grass, they ranged in age from about five or six to teenagers, all armed with slingshots and one smaller kid armed with a combat knife. The kid with the combat knife walked right up into camp and stood next to David. You could see the resemblance between the two. They were probably brothers at the very least. The younger kid grinned pointed to my uniform shirt and said “see, home of the brave.”
Thomas said “Yes Robert, they are brave, extremely brave to have landed knowing that they may never be able to take off again. May I sit?” he asked. I stood there stunned, Mike finally replied with “Please, sit with us.” He sat down cross legged and motioned to the children to move closer. He looked at Mike as she sat down across from him and said “I’m to assume that you are in charge of this crew ma’am?” When Mike nodded, he continued on “It appears that your mission is critical or you wouldn’t have gambled one of your shuttles on a landing from which it may not return. I understand that you may not be able to fill me in on the details, but we would like to know what we could do to help.”
Mike sat there for a few seconds, as if thinking over how much she should tell this strange man who looked like an underfed Santa Claus, finally she said “I am, Mikka Nikolaevna, the Commander of the International Space Mission’s Shuttle Nemesis”, she pointed around the circle, “Steven Ray, co-pilot, Charlie Miller, our Engineer and Russell Curtis, our electronics tech and medic.” We each nodded in turn, Mike continued, “we landed here on a mission to pick up parts at Lambert International from McDonnell Douglas. Our initial plans were to land on one of the airport runways, but they are pretty much covered with debris, so we picked the next most likely spot to land.”
Thomas looked thoughtful for a second and said “Your landing must have been rough. I assume that you picked up these torches for repairs. I would like to offer the assistance of myself and these men to aid in your mission.”
I had been listening closely all the while keeping an eye on the “men” that accompanied Thomas. There wasn’t a one of them old enough to shave. I couldn’t put it together, but something had been bothering me and then it hit me, all of these kids were boys, not a girl in the bunch. That seemed just a bit unusual, but so was the fact that we were here in the first place. I spoke up, “why would you want to help us? I can’t see that there is anything that we can do other than offer you a few of our supplies and other than things like peanut butter and jelly, these kids look like they need a bit more than that.”
Thomas nodded “You’re absolutely right. I guess that I should give you some background on what’s going on here but I think that we should do that closer to your shuttle. If you would like, David and a few of the others will push those dollies with the tanks and as we walk I will tell you a bit about this world that you used to call home.”
With that he rose smoothly to his feet and motioned to David and a couple of the older boys who stepped forward to help. Charlie and Russ looked at Mike, who just nodded. Thomas was right, if they had wanted to hurt us they probably could have taken us out, assuming that they were armed with more than just slingshots.
We were
about a mile and a half from the shuttle based on what my GPS was reporting. The freeway was actually straight and flat enough that we could see it in front of us. I knew that looks could be deceiving and that even at a brisk walk we were a good ten minutes away. At the pace that we were going to be walking we were anywhere from twenty five to thirty minutes out. As we started out on the freeway, I noticed that several of the younger kids hit the grass on each side of us and disappeared. It was uncanny, one minute they were there, the next they were gone. Not a blade of grass moving or out of place. I looked at Thomas, but he just winked and started off down the road.
As we walked, he began to speak, “I was a history professor at Washington University here in St. Louis. When I saw the news reports of the first nuclear explosions in the United Stats, I knew that things were going to be much different. I didn’t know how bad it was going to get but I knew that we were going to have to fend for ourselves for a while. So I decided that we were going to hole up and barricade ourselves in. The neighborhood that I lived in was a gated community just a little ways west of here. My neighbors and I pulled back behind the fences and started fortifying ourselves in. We took in a few of the surrounding neighbors that asked to be taken in and then locked up tight. We had our own wells and there were many of us who knew how to deer and turkey hunt and most of us were at least a little familiar with weapons.”
He took a deep breath, like the next thing was something that he dreaded, “The first two years were extremely tough. We had to kill as many as we saved. There were attacks from out of the inner city. Mostly underprivileged youths who were hungry when the system fell apart. It’s hard to kill game or pick fruit in a concrete jungle and they had nothing to survive on except rats and each other. I’m not proud of those years, but the only choice we had was us or them. I know that Robert heard you speak Spanish to him. That’s one of the reasons that he was afraid. I’m troubled that our children are going to have to relearn tolerance of others that have different nationalities, but in truth that intolerance was the only thing that saved us in the early years.”
He continued, “We grow enough produce and raise enough livestock to stay self sufficient now. My neighbors and I organized and formed our own local government. We have elections and we school our children in what’s important to us. Part of which is our heritage, that is why Robert recognized the American Flag on your uniform. The other part of the education of these young men is how to survive and live off what the land will provide. These young men learn how to hunt, fish, how to defend themselves and how not to be seen. Their sisters learn to make bread from corn, rice and acorns, weave material, stitch up flesh wounds and how to deliver babies, among other things. Everyone learns to read, count and write. Someday they will have a civilization of their own that was built on their standards and beliefs, not ours.”
We had moved a good way down the freeway and although Thomas had most of our attention, I and I’m sure Mike as well, were keeping an eye on the other boys, the ones that we could see at least. There was at least one flanking us on each side, but they were tough to see, we probably wouldn’t have seen them if we hadn’t of known they were out there. The rest of them had vanished. I knew they were there, just not exactly where they were at.
I asked Thomas “Were these boys watching us from the day that we landed?”
“These boys, as you call them, are perfectly capable of surviving alone out here for several days at a time, but no, they weren’t watching you. We saw you land from home, but Robert and a few others were out hunting and I guess Robert decided he wanted a closer look,” Thomas said.
“He got a much closer look than he bargained for”, I replied, “I can’t imagine letting a boy that age roam around by himself with everything that could happen here.”
Thomas stopped walking to look at me and said “but you wouldn’t have thought twice about letting a boy the same age walk home from school by himself, with child molesters roaming free on the streets! No, this boy, as you call him, is thirteen years old. He brings in over seventy five pounds of fresh meat each week and has had to defend his life by killing another at least twice that I know of. His father taught him and his brother how to find fresh water in the driest of weather, how to find a dry spot in the worst downpours, how to provide for his family along with how and when to defend himself, the when part is what kept you alive Mr. Ray, because otherwise he would surely have slit your throat as you grabbed him yesterday. He has learned this from his father, because I taught it to him. You see, Mr. Ray I am fifty six years old, ancient by this world and I only have a few good years left. Robert and David are my grandchildren and I want to make sure that they are able to survive.”
I was speechless. This man was less than ten years older than I and yet he looked thirty years older. The boy looked no older than eight or nine at the most, but thirteen! I’m not an expert on genetics, but that seemed a little extreme for two generations. I was just getting ready to ask Thomas if all the children had been born small when I saw Mike’s hand darting for the forty cal on her waist and looking back over my shoulder. I dropped and turned just in time to see one of those dogs leaping from the tall grass alongside the freeway.
If I hadn’t of seen it myself, I would never have believed it. One of those kids came from nowhere and let loose a shot from his slingshot. I saw the dog drop and roll. It lay still when it hit, apparently dead before it hit the ground. Those slingshots weren’t toys, they were strong enough to kill whatever needed killing. I didn’t know what to say. Russ pretty well summed it up by saying “how the hell did he make that shot?” Charlie looked at Mike and I and said, “shit!”
I had the forty out and walked over to the body. That kid had put that rock in the dog’s eye from at least thirty feet and had done it before we could get a shot off. That gave me a whole new appreciation for these “kids” and their “toys”.
“He’s dead, but we had better get back toward your shuttle. The scouts tend to roam alone in the daytime, but the hunters run in packs at night,” Thomas said as he started walking again.
“Is that a dog, wolf or something in between?” Charlie asked as we started back down the freeway.
“That is a story for the campfire tonight, not something that I can explain on a stroll down the highway”, replied Thomas.
The younger boys had disappeared again into the tall grass. I couldn’t help but admire the way they just melted away. I was never sure exactly how many there were with us. The number seemed to change every time I tried to count. I’m sure that would be a nightmare if I had to run an offensive against a troop like this one. They were well trained, silent and deadly. It made me wonder if Robert had actually wanted to get caught the day before. All the boys seemed much younger than their abilities portrayed.
We were quiet again for a few minutes when, Mike spoke up “Is Robert of average size or is he small for his age?” It was like she had been reading my thoughts. I was curious about the same thing.
Thomas hesitated for a second, kind of like he was thinking about the question, before he replied. “I was wondering how long it would take you folks to notice that. I don’t know if it’s from the radiation or the lack of nutrition or just the quantity of food that we were missing in the early years, but every child conceived after the bombs dropped has had a steadily declining birth weight. Robert weighed just about five pounds at birth. Full term, completely healthy, but smaller than what was considered a normal birth weight from my age. The five pound mark seems to be the median now.”
We were quiet as we approached the shuttle. Mike and I did a quick visual inspection on the outside. Mike doing a clockwise rotation while I did a counter clockwise, both of us with a sixty pound shadow that wasn’t missing a thing. The outside of the shuttle seemed untouched but I noticed the boy who had been tailing me keeping a close look at the pavement. He stopped and knelt at several spots. I stopped and looked at him for a moment and he just pointed to the ground. I almost didn’t see it at
first, but after getting right on top of it noticed a single strand of coarse brown hair on the ground. It could have been from any animal but I’m pretty sure it was from one of the dogs that had been tailing us.
The amazing fact was that the kid had seen it. His eye sight and powers of observation were better than I would have ever thought. You get used to the fact that the younger folks can see better and notice things that adults don’t. But this was a hair not much thicker than a human hair and he had spotted it lying on concrete pavement with his naked eye. That was pretty impressive.
Mike and I met on the back side of the shuttle. She looked at me and said “anything?” I said, “yeah, my shadow found a couple of wild animal hairs on the pavement.” She said “mine too” and gave me a look that was full of questions that I didn’t think either one of us was going to answer.
By the time we had gotten back to the south side of the shuttle the kids had gathered up enough firewood to last for a day or two. One of the boys had the start of a fire in the spot where we had built our fire the first night and another had about eight decent sized rabbits on a spit and was setting them up for the fire. The rest were nowhere to be seen.
Thomas had set down about 3 feet from the edge of the fire and said “Ma’am, and gentlemen, I think that I owe you a story. If you would like to settle in while David prepares dinner I would enjoy the conversation greatly. These men of mine will maintain a four by four watch throughout the night and with them on watch, you needn’t worry about anything getting to within a hundred yards of us without us knowing it, although if you feel the need to keep a watch we will not feel offended.”
The End of the Beginning Page 6
