by LeMay, Jim
He heard Lou sitting up, muttering sleepily. “What the fuck ... ?”
“They’re shooting at us!”
“Wh – Who?”
“Who gives a shit who? They’re shooting at us!” He found Lou in the dark, pushed him down, and shoved his ass to tumble him out the back of the tent. Instinctively, he grabbed the first weapon he touched, his machete, and his hat, scratch bag, and poncho. And followed Lou through the hole his big body had made in the tent. Then they were in the brush with the tent between them and the gunfire. Later he would think that pitching their tent next to the trees might have saved their lives.
He huddled in the brush, trying to shake off his terror, trying to decide what to do. Lou had disappeared. No time to worry about that now. He gradually sorted the sounds out – rifle fire, a shotgun blast, the screams of men and mules. He could see very little in the dark cast by the overcast sky.
Then he heard a quieter but more ominous sound from the trees across the clearing, the thut-thut-thut of a Kreutzer impact rifle. A sudden calm soothed his terror as it often did in times of conflict. With deadly purpose he crawled through the brush around the clearing toward that sound.
He came up behind the man with the Kreutzer. In a flash of lightning (yes, the rain was coming, and soon) he saw the man kneeling, intent upon reloading. He didn’t have time to retrieve his pistol from the scratch bag. Devoid of thought or emotion, moving as one in a dream, he raised the machete above his head with both hands. He brought it down with all his strength. Deeply into the angle between the man’s neck and shoulder. The man screamed and pitched forward; his blood fountained into the clearing.
“George! You okay?” came a panicked whisper from nearby.
Matt charged the voice, chopped at it with the machete.
“Watch out!” it cried. “They’re in the trees behind us!” The man parried Matt’s first slash with his rifle in the darkness. Matt raised the machete again and swung it down toward his face – or where he thought his face was in the dark. Matt never knew whether his machete would have killed the man or if the man would have rallied his rifle in time to kill him. A pistol shot exploded at the side of the man’s head. Its flash briefly showed the man’s face, someone who hadn’t expected to die just then.
A big hand grabbed Matt’s shoulder so hard it made him wince, and Lou’s bass whisper said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“Go on,” said Matt. He picked up the Kreutzer and fumbled over the former owner’s corpse until he found and removed the belt with the ammunition clips for the rifle. He followed the too-loud sounds of Lou’s retreat toward the creek. The gunfire suddenly ceased, making Lou sound even louder. Then a shot rang out from the direction of the creek, tore through the leaves to Matt’s right.
“Don’t shoot!” Lou’s loud panicked whisper. “It’s Matt and I!”
Shots answered this from the enemy side of the clearing. Friend or foe, thought Matt, somebody’s going to kill us yet! Then he was crawling down the slope of the creek bank, saw the shapes of men lying there. He found Mitch.
“What the hell’s going on?” he whispered.
“Chadwick’s boys,” Mitch answered. “I reckanized one a his main men, Matheson. Shot at him, don’t know if I got him.”
“Is Chadwick with them?”
“Can’t tell. Ain’t seen him.”
“Who’s here?”
“Now that you an’ Lou’s here, everybody but Johnson, Dodd, and Downing. Johnson and Dodd’s in the clearing...”
“I know.”
“...an’ I’m sure they got Downing right off the bat. He was standin’ guard.”
“How is everybody?”
“I’m hit. In the thigh. Don’t know how bad. Doc wrapped it up. He’s checkin’ the others.”
Doc Garson, the gang’s self-appointed medic, crawled up to Mitch, Matt, and Lou, found that the latter two had not been wounded. “’most ever’body else’s hit,” he said, then ducked as a few sporadic shots flew over their heads or spanged into the bank in front of them.
A shot rang out from somewhere down the gang’s line, which drew a few answering shots. Mitch told them to hold their fire, then told Matt, Lou, and Doc his escape plan.
* * * *
Matt, Lou, Leighton, and Big Miller held their position along the bank while the others crept off. Mitch had wanted to stay with them, but Doc wouldn’t allow it because of his injured thigh. Even though he was uninjured, Doc had to accompany those fleeing to care for the wounded and help those less ambulatory. They were to retreat to a well concealed (they hoped) culvert they had run across a half day’s hike away. Those remaining behind would make their way there after, and if, they were able to get free.
All at once Matt felt a few raindrops. There had been sporadic distant thunder and flashes of lightning for some time. For a while everything was quiet. No shots were fired. Matt and the others waited nervously on the creek bank.
Then one of Chadwick’s men called from the other side of the clearing: “Throw your weapons down and come out. We don’t wanta hurt nobody. We just wanta talk.”
Yeah, right, thought Matt. They wouldn’t stop with the murder of Johnson, Dodd, and Downing. They would remain hidden under the trees until dawn so they could see to slaughter the gang. Matt knew they had to get out of there before long.
Then he realized that Chadwick’s men hadn’t heard the Kreutzer for quite awhile. They probably assumed that its owner had stopped firing when the others did, and didn’t yet realize it was no longer in their possession. This gave him an idea. They certainly wouldn’t expect to hear it from the creek side of the clearing. A few shots from the Kreutzer from here should shock them pretty acutely, maybe enough to allow Matt and the others time to escape. The shock would be more effective if he could see some targets through the darkness and actually hit them. He thought he knew a way to do that. By utilizing the talent of the most obnoxious gang member.
“Draw some fire, Leighton,” he hissed. “Holler at ’m. Mention Chadwick’s sister. Then let’s all be ready to move out.”
He could hear the grin in the kid’s voice. “Y’ got it.” Then, in his loudest most strident, disagreeable voice Leighton called out: “Hey, motherfuckers, why don’t y’ come over here an’ git us? Chadwick’d be ashamed a you cowardly assholes tonight. ’Specially if he knew we was takin’ turns fuckin’ his sister. When you ball-less wonders sneak back home, tell him she liked it. Ugly women ‘preciate all they can git!” Then he stood up – Matt hadn’t thought he’d do something that stupid – fired a couple of rounds and immediately hit the ground.
Stupid, maybe, but it worked. A dozen flashes of rifle fire blossomed in the trees across the clearing. Matt had been sighting his rifle in that direction, waiting for those flashes to give their enemies’ positions away. He aimed carefully at them and fired. When the answering fire stopped, Matt fired at where the flashes had been. Matt wasn’t a very good shot; he had never owned a gun before the Last Days, and ammunition had become too precious to waste in target practice since then. But the clearing wasn’t very wide, he had aimed very carefully and this weapon, powerful though it was, had very little recoil to throw his aim off.
He thought it likely that he had gotten off at least one or maybe more fatal shots because, despite his lack of skill, he thought he had struck a few of the blossoms right in the middle. If he had killed someone he would never know it. A man killed by a Kreutzer didn’t live long enough to make a sound. He knew for sure that he hit at least one man because he heard the scream, a scream that faded finally to a whimpering sob. That had not been an immediately fatal shot, but the man probably didn’t live for long.
The Kreutzer impact rifle was a devastating weapon. Striking any solid object caused its missile to detonate with disastrous results. When it struck a man, the missile entered the soft flesh a short distance before exploding. A hit in the arm or head caused that body part to disintegrate. A strike at waist level nearly severed the
body.
Firing from across the clearing stopped abruptly after Chadwick’s men recognized the Kreutzer. His strategy seemed to have worked, but the shock would soon wear off and Chadwick’s men would be after them, more fiercely determined to kill them than ever.
“Let’s move, guys,” he said and started downstream through the willows along the creek bank as quietly as possible. The others followed.
That’s the moment the skies decided to dump on them. There was a flash of lightning followed by a crash of thunder that made Matt jump, and the next instant he was drenched. He thought they had made it far enough downstream for the trees to hide them from being seen in the lightning’s glare, and the sound of the rain should hide whatever noise they made crashing through the brush, but the mud would betray their footprints. He started wading through the shallows of the creek and motioned for the others to do the same. A glance behind during the next lightning flash showed him that they had.
* * * *
It was nearly mid-morning before they got to the culvert. They had followed the creek as far as possible and, after leaving it, had tried to follow paved roads or forested areas that would be the least likely to betray footprints. The thunder and lightning had moved on, and the rain had decreased to steady monotonous drizzle. There had been no sign of pursuit, but Matt knew that Chadwick’s men had long ago begun the search and now they’d be really pissed. It had been a miserable trek. Only Matt and Leighton had gotten their hats and ponchos. Miller didn’t even have a shirt so Matt gave him his poncho to wear.
The culvert was a large concrete box under a section of highway that they’d found on their way to Summerfield Crossing. Lou, who had been a civil engineer with a lot of experience at highway design, had commented that there was probably a culvert under a low point in the road they were approaching. It was obscured by a landslide on one side and overgrown with brush, tall grass, and a thick stand of willows at the other end. Nobody particularly cared except for Leighton who always took delight in challenging the older guys even though he usually lost the arguments.
“How can y’ tell that?” he demanded.
“By looking at the drainage patterns around here. And those willows are a sure sign of water standing at the low end of the culvert where the outfall ditch is blocked.”
Leighton snorted. “I don’t know what the hell y’r talkin’ ’bout, but I bet you a beer at the Brass Ass they ain’t no culvert there.”
“You’re on. Easiest beer I ever won.”
The two had slid down the roadway embankment to where the willows grew; the landslide on the other side of the road would have concealed all signs of the alleged culvert. Sure enough they found the culvert’s opening. Lou gloated over his win to a sullen Leighton for awhile and then the matter was forgotten.
Until Mitch brought it up as a place to retreat from the ambush.
When Matt’s group reached the culvert, they found that the gang had done a good job of concealing the entrance. Doc Garson let them in to a dank interior, though it was reasonably dry after they got past the wetlands where the willows grew.
“How’s everybody doing?” Matt asked Mitch.
Mitch’s face was drawn with pain. “Oh, I reckon we’ve seen better days.” He brought the four up-to-date on the list of injuries and their shrunken resources.
Nine of the twelve gang members survived, including five of the older guys: Mitch, Matt, Lou, Doc Garson, and Stony; and all four of the young ones: Leighton, Miller, Rossi, and Kincaid. The injuries weren’t as bad as Doc had thought. Mitch’s was the worst. A bullet had ripped a long gouge in the inside of his upper thigh. It wasn’t as deep as Doc had thought, but its location made walking difficult and painful. And, Doc said, if they didn’t get somewhere where he could boil water to clean the wound and bandage it properly, there was a danger of infection. The same went for a wound in Stony’s shoulder. Rossi and Kincaid had minor injuries: the former had sprained his wrist and scraped the skin off his arm when he jumped over the edge of the bank; Kincaid’s face and upper body had been sprayed by splinters when a bullet struck a tree next to him. There was one particularly deep gouge in his cheek.
The reduced state of their resources was a major concern. They had been forced to abandon almost everything of value at the campsite, including the mules they had transported it on. All they had left was whatever each man had had the presence of mind to grab before jumping over the creek bank. Fortunately, automatic reflex had caused all of them to snatch up their weapons.
A scrounger gang owned two kinds of belongings: scratch and truck. Scratch included the personal belongings each man carried with him and supplies owned by the gang in common. Personal goods usually consisted of a coat or, more often, a poncho, the poncho and broad-brimmed hat being the unofficial uniform of the scrounger, a bedroll, and other items contained in a bag slung over one shoulder and hanging down the opposite side: the “scratch” bag. Supplies owned in common included food, cooking utensils, medical supplies, miscellaneous tools like axes to split firewood, and animals to carry scratch and truck like the mules Johnson’s gang used. Scroungers called the goods they gathered to sell to their sedentary customers “truck”. (When gangs left to collect such goods, they called it going trucking.) Of course basic ethics provided that truck did not include the possessions of others but was to be gleaned from homes, retail stores, or other places that were, beyond question, deserted. Because of the fine line between gangs who observed this rule and those who ignored it when it suited their purposes, scroungers were generally held in questionable repute. In spite of Johnson’s sometimes capricious observance of ethics in other aspects of life, he strictly followed the rule of respect for other people’s belongings.
At least those of settled people; the possessions of other gangs were sometimes open to seizure. The ambush by Chadwick’s gang was the latest chapter in such a dispute between the Johnson gang and Chadwick’s.
Vast changes had occurred to Boss Johnson’s gang in less than a day. When they had gone to bed the evening before, they had been wealthy in truck and adequately provisioned with scratch. Now they were paupers in both. And they weren’t even Boss Johnson’s gang anymore – he was dead. Most terrifying of all, they were on the run from a superior force of enemies. The only advantage they had over their pursuers was that the latter didn’t know where they were. Their only chance to escape was to keep it that way.
One other difference in the gang occurred to Matt. They were no longer the quasi-paramilitary force they’d been under Johnson’s leadership. Johnson, Dodd, and Downing had been members of an elite Army Corps that fought guerilla actions wherever they were needed, whether behind enemy lines in other countries or in the terrorist-infested slums of American cities. They were well-trained in arms, martial arts, and the ability to live off the land indefinitely if necessary. Of those that were left, only Mitch and Doc were capable with firearms.
But they lacked Johnson’s and his henchmen’s other skills and their ruthlessness.
I wonder if it’s sunk into the others yet, thought Matt, just how inept we have suddenly become in defending ourselves and how vulnerable we are to people like Chadwick and his lieutenant, Matheson. Matt had heard that Chadwick valued the latter because he had come from the same military background as Johnson, Dodd, and Downing.
Mitch lay on his back with his trousers leg ripped open and his thigh wound packed with sterile dressing – fortunately Doc had retrieved his medical kit – held in place with a bandage torn from his shirttail bound around his thigh. He said, “While we waited for you guys, we talked ’bout what t’ do. We gotta find a better hole-up than this, where we can git our shit together an’ figger out what t’ do next. We thought we’d try t’ sleep through the day and send a few uninjured guys ahead to look for a hole-up tonight.” He lay back for a moment with a frown of his thick black brows to hold back a wince of pain and continued.
“We figgered t’ send three guys. Matt ’cause he’s got more sense �
��n any you others an’ Red ’cause he’s quick and quiet like a cat and Lou ’cause he’s big an’ ain’t hurt none an’ can travel longer and fu’ther ’n any a us. Matt’s in charge.”
He glared at Leighton after noting the youth’s expression. “Don’t git cocky, Leighton. You might be as quick as a cat, but y’ ain’t got no more sense ’n a mule so do what Matt says. And Lou, you might be able to cover more miles than all a us combined, but y’r a fuckin’ klutz in places that matter so stay behind the other two and try t’ keep quiet. Ever’body agree with this?”
He looked everyone in the eye. Leighton had a wide-eyed confrontational look, cheek muscles bunching and unbunching. He started to speak.
Doc leaned forward, toward Leighton. “We had a vote, decided Mitch oughta take the boss’s place. We didn’t wait for y’ t’ git here ’cause we didn’t reckon you guys ‘d have a problem with that.” Still looking at Leighton.
“Of course we don’t,” said Matt, glaring at Leighton, daring him to speak. “Do we guys?” Lou shrugged agreement. Miller nodded. Leighton looked away, face red, eyes glaring. He knew when he was outnumbered.
Chapter Three
The world population of 2072, as in most times, could be divided into the haves and the have-nots, and as always the two groups were defined by conditions unique to their culture. The gap between the technical knowledge of the scientists, engineers, and technocrats and that of the great masses of non-technical folk widened exponentially every decade. The new knowledgeable classes, swiftly becoming known as the “technics” who practiced the arcane craft of “techne”, were the new haves. All the others, those without the technical expertise, were the new have-nots. The wonders of the world seemed ever more like the spawn of wizardry to non-technics.
A general distrust of techne and the scientific world generally increased among non-technics, especially as their wealth and power grew at the same exponential rate as their magic. Several developments increasingly differentiated the technic and non-technic classes. One was the amount of education. Higher education having become so expensive, society no longer wished to include so-called “classical” or “liberal arts” curricula in its programs, as these did nothing to further technological advancements. Further, subsidizing education on students unable to pay their own way became untenable.
