Appalachian Overthrow

by E. E. Knight

  I found the arms locker, but it was wired in such a way that I decided it would set off an alarm if I opened it without punching in a key code (unfortunately, no one had written the code inside the plastic cover, as so often can be found thanks to the lazy owners of such systems). I left it for now.

  Following the exposed conduit sheath, I came to the main electrical junction box for the building and the garage. There was a large red lever on it. I turned the main breaker off, then used the shovel to break off the handle. Emergency lighting flashed on, fitfully. More than half the spotlights failed to function.

  Typical KZ attention to detail.

  Power outages were frequent in most KZs, especially at night when it would least be missed for the performance of maintenance.

  Now, for the killing.

  I took the stairs three at a time, shovel in my right hand and the knife in my left. At the top of the stairs I met my first Beckley fireman, moving toward the staircase, supporting himself and feeling his way along with a hand on one wall, blinking in the darkness as he headed to the garage and occupied office to discover what had happened.

  I buried the knife in him, then used the shovel to push him out of the way.

  Next I burst into a dormitory. About half the beds were occupied. There were shouts and I heard the clicking of someone hitting a light switch.

  From my side, the fight was an easy one. I simply lashed out at anything that moved with the knife or the sharpened shovel. When a body dropped, I stomped on it. I don’t believe I made any sounds other than breathing, though there were numerous cries and confused shouts from the Beckley firemen.

  I threw one body through a connecting wall—one would think a fire station would have more robust construction—and followed it through into the next room. There were two in there, but only one tried to fight; the other had to be pulled from under his bed.

  In the entire fight, I only received one serious wound. A woman stabbed me in the ribs with a sharp pair of scissors. She was dead before I realized I was fighting with a female, but on later consideration I decided that if she passed all the examinations and tests in order to be one of those who dragged the elderly, sick, and halt off to their deaths, who was I to deny her a place with her comrades.

  Finally, the fire station was quiet, save for the sound of my breathing and the steady drip of blood here and there into pools. There was one hiding in the showers—I saw a pair of ankles, probably female, as I quickly rinsed my hands and feet and put a cotton dressing on the scissors stab—but left that one alive. It never hurt to have someone spread the tale.

  I decided it was safe to crack open the arms locker. I had my choice of fire axes to use, and I broke it open with two swings of the biggest axe. I found a short machine gun with a hand-finds-hand grip-magazine of the type favored by Georgia Control officers and helped myself to all the ammunition I could find for that. I also took a full-length battle rifle and a shotgun. Between that and the big .50, I had enough to get started.

  On a whim, I took a permanent marker from the office and etched an icon that looked like a reversed, inverted “L” on the inside of the arms locker. The symbol is used by a tribe of Nebraska Gray Ones that were long enemies of my people—it denotes a revenge killing.

  That would puzzle whoever was investigating it. Perhaps they’d think the murderers had begun a word game of hangman and done nothing but put up the gallows before being interrupted.

  I loaded the shotgun, pocketed some extra rounds, and threw the rest of my prizes in a sleeping bag and headed out the door.

  With that, I went out and joined Longliner. He’d produced transport, a big sort of three-wheeled motorcycle with two tires in front for steering and a fat drive tire in back, like a wheeled snow machine in a way.

  “I thought for sure you’d never come out again,” Longliner said.

  “Then why did you wait?” I asked.

  “I figured if you were killed, I’d put some rope burns on my wrists and say I was your prisoner. Tell them all about you.”

  The boy, oh, how would some phrase it—the boy had balls.

  “What’s that machinery?”

  “That’s a Cobra. Faster than an ATV, and almost as rugged.”

  He revved it, a pointless, silent exercise with an electric engine. The hardwired programming prevented a rider from wasting energy on burn outs. “How do you like it?”

  “How do you know how to work it?” Too late, I hoped that didn’t sound suspicious.

  We stood, looking out over the ugly scar on the torn-away hills and the mining gear, trucks looking like toys in a child’s sandbox from this height.

  “Well, Longliner, time to be on your way.”

  “Aren’t you going to give me a letter or something?”

  I almost felt sorry for him. He’d wrought considerable evil when he’d plunged Number Four into violence against the Order, but then it was surging back on the regime in unexpected ways. Time would tell whether he’d triggered a rogue wave or a tsunami.

  “Tell them you need to speak to the Special Operations Department. Give them this code word: ‘spoonbread.’

  “You may take the Cobra. I’ve always been more comfortable on my legs.”

  “Nah, I have a feeling you’re going to need it. I’ll steal a bicycle somewhere.”

  “Use that talent of yours sparingly. But you can help me further by lighting a few fires on your way out, from a distance. Just something to divert attention.”

  “I told you, it doesn’t work so well from far away. Whatever it is has to be really inflammable.”

  “All the better. You’ll be able to see it from a distance, then.”

  The Cobra had an interesting recharging system. A sort of metallic-and-rubber shepherd’s crook was clipped in two pieces to the back. There was a good deal of naked wire in the Coal Country. You simply screwed the two ends of the “staff” together, plugged it into a power converter about the size of a loaf of bread, and hung the crook on any live power line—with a spark and a faint crackle of ozone, so it was something that attracted attention, unfortunately. The machine did the rest. There was also a plug that you could put into an ordinary wall outlet, but those were harder to find accessible and slower to use.

  “I’ll be out of the territory soon. Sure like to know what you have in mind. Don’t see how you can do much on your own.”

  “I still can’t discuss it.”

  He seemed a lucky fellow. He’d probably make it to the Ordnance. What would they make of him? The fire-starting trick was too deft for them to waste; perhaps he would get his dream of training as an agent.

  So began a strange six weeks of my life. I crisscrossed the Coal Country several times, silently going up and down jeep trails in the lush, windblown hills, using the rifle and my own abilities. I shot perhaps once every two or three days. I didn’t snipe individuals, I saved my bullets for machinery. The Coal Country could afford to replace a few firemen or troopers. What it could not afford was a loss of productive equipment.

  I had to kill on two occasions, both times when breaking into a garage to destroy fireman vehicles under repair—and the machine tools used to repair engines. I had tried to knock the guards unconscious, but that sort of thing works best in movies. In practical life, they topple over and twitch as bowel and bladder empty and respiration fails. Several guard dogs also met their demise in a more direct fashion, with a crossbow I fashioned out of a leaf spring and an old rifle stock.

  It was a matter of an hour’s work with an acetylene torch to render any engine unfit for future service.

  I survived by taking to brush, or holding up in a remote attic, grain elevator, or abandoned cell tower used by the Reapers. Reaper nests are not the most comfortable, usually it is a blanket or two thrown over a piece of foam from an old couch cushion, but it served as a hideout from dawn to dusk, giving me a chance to work on my gear and plan the next strike.

  My greatest coup, while operating alone, was the very satisfac
tory destruction of three mining vehicles, two earthmovers and an excavator, which had been incautiously parked under a cliff so they had to be guarded on only two sides. I obtained some explosives from the mine office and planted them above and brought down a substantial chunk of hillside on them.

  Replacing entire ambulances and mining site loaders was an expensive prospect for the Maynes Conglomerate. They were having a bad coal year because of Number Four and events elsewhere, despite labor drafts to increase production. Only one currency had any real value in the Kurian Order, and that was from living human beings. For the first time, the Coal Country lost something other than miscreants and social outcasts to “repurposing.”

  At this, the embers of revolt smoldering all over the Coal Country heated up.

  Accusations have been leveled at me, since, that I was responsible for the deaths, as I was the one doing the damage that resulted in levies of vital aura being sent to the Georgia Control and elsewhere to replace the machinery I was wrecking. That is between my conscience and me. Few of those making the accusation ever lived under the Kurian Order or supplied any kind of other idea for its destruction, other than “spontaneous” and “organic” uprisings of those trapped behind the fangs and claws of the Reapers.

  I’ve also been accused of deciding, on my own, that the Coal Country should be plunged into revolt, rather than letting the locals make up their own minds. I assure you, it would not have been difficult for the people of these coal-filled mountains to turn me in, if they’d so desired. A furry creature the size of an outhouse gets noticed, moving from one valley to another, even if it’s only by boys and girls out fishing for a supplement to the family supper.

  The Coal Country Kurian made his worst mistake, however, when he decided to clear the hills of the mountain people. They expected nothing of the Kurian Order save the right to be left alone, and when carriers full of troopers and firemen suddenly pulled up to either side of their valley, deploying horsemen and bicyclists to empty their settlements and carry off whomever they could catch, they made a bitter and resolute enemy.

  MY WAR BEGINS

  I don’t know how long I could have carried on my one-Xeno war. Winter would cut down on the nuts and berries and fish I could gather and make getting around more difficult. I might have retreated into Kentucky and started up again next year, if the temptation to bargain for a legworm ride back to the Mississippi didn’t prove too strong, that is. In any case, a chance meeting cut it short.

  A small fire had heated a couple of cans of beans and WHAM!, and I’d just smothered the small fire over a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes I’d buried under it as my breakfast, when I heard an approach to my camp. If they’d meant to backshoot me, they probably would have done it while I was framed by the firelight.

  “Want some beans?”

  They showed themselves, two adults, male and female, and a boy. Each adult had an infant strapped across the chest, wrapped in a sort of blanket roll of thin insulating material. They looked haggard, except for the boy, who held a squirrel rifle with a water-bottle silencer in his arms, cradling it like a ten-year veteran Wolf.

  The man had a long-stem pipe and a long-barreled pistol in his belt; the woman two knives, a big butcher model and a small paring or skinning version. They had the wary, foxlike look of hill people.

  “Want some beans?” I repeated.

  The boy produced a spoon quickly enough, but the mother held him back until the father nodded.

  “You’re that Golden Eel.”

  “Yellow, maybe, in the right light. It’s only poetry to call my kind ‘Golden.’”

  “Well, that’s what I heard you called. Slippery enough and lots of teeth. Thanks for the hospitality.”

  They sat down and produced small pannikins from their bundles. They politely waited for me to decide how much I wished to share. I divided the beans and WHAM! into four portions, pushed a couple extra chunks of meat into the portion for the (probably) nursing mother, and distributed the food.

  They ate eagerly. “Nothing like hot food,” the boy said.

  The woman turned discreetly sideways and took the infants for nursing. The father took a gallon plastic water container out for her and held it so she could drink easily at intervals.

  The mother produced a bag of hard candy. She gave one striped treat to the boy and offered another to me.

  I shook my head. “Thanks, I’m not much for candy.”

  He extracted a sample of the recent output of the Maynes photocopier, unfolded it, and passed it to me. It wasn’t the latest password, but a wanted poster with my identification photo with the cropped-off ears. I was worth twenty thousand dollars and a house on Maynes Mountain, it seemed.

  I glanced at the reverse side. Someone had drawn a crude map of a trail west.

  “There’s a bad spot for Reapers on the fifth leg, just before the Kentucky border,” I said. “Picked up some bodies there.”

  “Oh, they’re mostly operating around the mines and railroads these days. Showing themselves, even in daylight, to scare off saboteurs.”

  “You’ll want something to trade in Kentucky,” I said. “They’re a good bunch, but sharp dealers.”

  “We have about thirty yards of silk folded tight,” the father said. “Plus there’re a couple of old gold coins my father saved for his escape. He never made the try; died of a broken pelvis in a rail accident. With the troopers scared to go out in less than a squad size, we thought we’d try our luck.”

  “I’ve no particular destination. I’ll give you a ride tomorrow.”

  “You’re not on your way to Hopkins Hollow?” the girl said through a mouthful of beans. “They’ve been looking for you. Looking for you in a good way, I mean.”

  “Not sure I’ve heard of that.”

  “It’s not on the maps.”

  THE HOLLOW MEN

  Hopkins Hollow was owned by the MacTierney clan. They were, in fact, distantly related to my old “partner,” but I did not find that out immediately. The Hopkins family had been gone for decades before the Kurians even showed up, but they never changed the name because tradition and common use meant more than family ego.

  Pre-2022 it had been touched by a road, but a washed-out bridge turned it into another of the many jeep trails crisscrossing the Coal Country on disused roads and rail lines, marked by old post boxes covered by creepers and filled with squirrel scat.

  A stream ran through it year-round and a largish open meadow was the divide between the MacTierney clan and the Bilstriths. Other than water, they shared every bounty that came their way. If the MacTierneys slaughtered a pig, they invited the Bilstriths over to enjoy roast loin, and the Bilstriths would then insist that the MacTierneys use the Bilstrith smokehouse. Weddings and births to one clan or the other were celebrated as if they’d happened at home, and there was an unspoken rule against intermarriage between the two groups—though from what I observed, a Bilstrith’s first sexual explorations were usually with a MacTierney and vice versa.

  It was a little piece of saddle country between three higher hills, two to the south and a third to the north. The MacTierney clan had the wider south end for its plots and pastures; the “neck” to the north was under another group, the Bilstriths.

  “Hell, it’s the Guerilla Grog from Number Four,” a boy whooped as I approached.

  A sparse-haired, hawk-nosed man who introduced himself as “Old Leslie” showed me around. “You picked the right day to come; a hog has met its fate.” Old Leslie’s accent was noticeably different from that of the other hill people, even to my inexperienced ear, drawling as opposed to their gentle modifications of vowels, adding an “ah” sound where possible: “Ahhh dooon’t riiightly knoow” against “Ah doan’t ratley know.”

  He’d fled another revolt farther south, escaping up the spine of the Appalachian Mountains until he landed here. It turned out he’d worked in a rum distillery as a boy, and he added that experience to the family’s own somewhat famous still. Now “M
acTierney White Whiskey” was the closest thing to a famous label that you could get with moonshine. He’d become a local favorite as a toastmaster for gatherings, having a remarkable memory for names and incidents.

  “That’s Kemper Bilstrith there. She’s run the family since her husband died in the ’fifty-eight fevers. He married in, took her name. Curious, eh?”

  He pointed out a man in a shovel beard with bright red suspenders with polished brass fittings. “That’s Red MacTierney, more or less the head of the MacTierney clan, but he looks at it as more a ceremonial post and defers to the heads of household for most everything. He’s eager to meet the giant Grog that put the whole of the Coal Country into a revolt.”

  “I followed my own instinct for what seemed the right thing to do,” I said. “I think everyone was ready to turn on the Kurians; I just happened to be here when the moment came.” I find that statement very easy to remember; I have repeated it many times since then.

  “Reminds me of the snakebit preacher. You ever heard that one, big fellow?”

  “No.”

  “Well, in these hills there’s still a strong Pentecostal strain. Don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but on occasion they prove their faith by handling serpents, because God decides when the asp bites—and the righteous don’t get bit. So this preacher fellow was famous, when the mood was upon him, for giving his whole sermon with a snake or two draped around him. Sometimes they’d crawl right inside his shirt and go to sleep, as a matter of fact.

  “So one day, one of his parishioners has a cousin visiting from a couple of watersheds away, and the visitor wants to see a man so favored by the Lord that venomous serpents go to sleep in his shirt. At first, the preacher joked that it was because his preaching was so boring, it put man, babe, and beast alike into a slumber. But his parishioner and the visitor insisted, so he went and got the snakes out, picked them up, and sure enough, he got bit right off.

  “‘Serves me right,’ the preacher said. ‘I should remember that it’s only safe to pick up a snake when God tells me to. Doing what man asks me to do requires prudence and judgment.’”