It all happened in an instant. There was a bright flash from over the hills. The power went out. A massive thunderclap followed. The windows shook, but only one pane shattered. A strange sensation passed through the sky, like a heat wave one would see around the flames of a bonfire. Then calm returned. But not the power.
“What the hell was that?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question, the kind people ask when they are afraid. Neither my wife nor our dog attempted to answer.
Our two-year-old twins stopped playing, and both began to cry.
We looked toward the city, the direction of the flash, although there were ten miles, two hills, and a stand of trees between us and Fairbanks. It was late morning, but still mostly dark. This far north, Alaska in the winter was a different world. The sun both rises and sets in the south. It stays mostly on the horizon, visible for less than four hours on the solstice.
We expected to see the house next door burning. The explosion seemed that close.
But it wasn’t. Nothing shone in the darkness nearby. Through the trees and above the hills, we could see the moonlight reflecting off a growing mushroom cloud.
“I think something blew up. The base? Maybe the power plant?” I didn’t know what else to say. I was thinking out loud, and it didn’t make sense, not even to me. Something had just happened, and it wasn’t good.
“Do you think the power will come back on?” my wife asked.
“Not anytime soon. I’ll set up the generator.” It was the usual twenty-below-zero Fahrenheit outside. Snow covered everything. The trees sparkled with the cold frost, even in the near dark. It was pleasant. A few cars were on Chena Hot Springs Road. I wasn’t sure where they’d be going. No one could have missed the explosion. Then again, there were always the curious and the obtuse.
Our cell phones showed no service. Our back-up battery power strips didn’t even beep. A power surge must have preceded the outage. The surge protectors appeared to be dead.
I dug out our wind-up radio and gave it to Madison. She could spin it to life and see what the news said. “Why don’t we just use your battery-powered radio?” she suggested. It had been ten minutes since we lost power and I already acted like we had nothing left.
We had everything left. I got the other radio for her.
Nothing. Static on static. This was an all-purpose radio, so it also had sideband. There wasn’t anything anywhere. Nothing but noise. She set it aside. It was more important to take care of the twins. Two-year-olds require a great deal of attention, no matter what else is going on. No matter what other so-called priorities may exist.
And our dog Phyllis needed to go outside.
I bundled us both up, and we went outside. She did her thing while I set up the generator…
Interested in Reading More?
Endure - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GQLVHXK
Run - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I45F494
Return - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JK7CHR2
Fury - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N0ZJMUJ
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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The raiders attacked at dawn.
Without the surprise they had assumed, however. Terry Henry Walton and the Werewolf Charumati had seen them coming. The raiders were motivated and angry, but suffered from a lack of training.
Weapons fire peppered the walls where the raiders had last seen the members of the Force de Guerre, but it was wasted ammunition. The disciplined unit was no longer there.
Corporal James had split his squad and moved one further up the small valley, drawing the raiders deeper into the ambush. James set the remaining members into firing positions along the enemy’s flank.
The enemy, Terry Henry thought.
These were survivors just like he used to be, but they were using their strength to tear down. He wouldn’t have that. His world was about building up.
When the FDG ran across this group when scouring the more fertile region bordering the Wastelands, Terry had given them a chance to parley, but they were having none of it. They saw the weapons, clean and well-cared for. They saw the extra magazines of ammunition.
And the raiders wanted it all.
They tried to seize Char, and it drove Terry into a frenzy, but by the time he reacted, Char had already killed three of them before the others beat feet.
Terry thought that was the end of it, but when stupid fuckers got angry, common sense went out the window. What a shame. If only he could figure out who was the head of that snake, then he could kill it and talk with the rest. They seemed to be organized but disorganized.
He nodded at their commitment to revenge.
“Fire,” he said calmly. The line of AK-47s opened up in semi-automatic mode, the marksmen of the FDG doing their best to make each round count. The raiders turned to engage the surprise attack, offering their flank to the half of James’s squad that was the bait of the ambush.
In barely fifteen seconds it was over. The dead and dying littered the battlefield. Twelve hearty souls entered the kill zone and none left.
“What a shame,” Terry said, standing to survey the damage. “Report!”
James looked to his people. Each gave a thumbs up, then held up fingers with the amount of ammo used. He waved to the other half of his squad. They did the same thing, one by one.
“No casualties, forty-seven rounds expended,” James reported, not happy with the high volume of fire. He saw the disappointment on Terry’s face. “I’m sorry, Colonel. We need to exercise better fire discipline.”
The Force de Guerre had been training for a couple years, but rarely fired live ammunition.
“What?” Terry asked, shaking his head. He hadn’t been looking at James at all. “Fire discipline. Less than four per kill on a moving enemy? That is not bad at all, Corporal. Carry on.”
James smiled immediately and waved his half of the squad forward after ensuring that the other half had them covered. James stepped from cover, leading the others downhill, aiming his rifle as he walked carefully, never crossing his feet, ready to fire at any instant. The others spread out behind him in a V formation, also looking down the barrels of their rifles.
Terry watched, pleased with the actions of his people. During the before time, he enjoyed the benefits of instant communication with Bethany Anne’s, The Queen Bitch’s people. Often, Terry had counted on the help from the likes of Akio or Samuel, some of her men. He wondered if they’d come back, if he’d ever see one of the honorable once more, Bethany Anne even.
Where are you? he asked himself. She’d gone to fight an intergalactic war, but was she gone forever? Even a vampire like her couldn’t survive getting her ship blown apart around her. Would it be that kind of war?
So much he didn’t know, but for now, the only enhanced beings he knew were he and Charumati. Char hadn’t seen her pack since she left them, and they hadn’t seen any Forsaken, no vampires at all.
He and Char were alone. Or free to do what needed done in order to prepare the world for TQB’s return. He preferred to think of it as they were free and unleashed on a strategic mission.
Terry had increased the size of the FDG and had been scouring the border of the Wastelands looking for people to rejoin civilization. Many, like the group they’d just dealt with, had assumed his overtures to be a ruse.
They weren’t, but Terry gave them enough rope to hang themselves. He would have walked away if they so desired.
They didn’t.
Too bad for them, but not for the people they were holding back. Terry looked forward to gathering the new refugees and heading back to New Boulder for some R&R, a little rest and relaxation. They’d been riding for over a month on their current trip. Terry estimated they were somewhere close to the Missouri River, and they had nearly one hundred people in tow.
&nbs
p; He didn’t know how many people were in the settlement that the raiders controlled.
“One’s still alive!” James called from below. Terry and Char walked briskly down the hill, finding Lacy putting pressure on a bullet wound in the man’s leg while Gerry put pressure on a second wound across the man’s chest. He’d been grazed by the chest shot and hit solidly in the leg, but it hadn’t broken the bone or ripped through an artery. He was damned lucky.
“What’s your name?” Terry asked the grimacing man. The man looked around, knowing that he was alone.
“I am Spartacus,” he replied in a gravelly voice. Both Char and Terry burst out laughing, but the man didn’t look like he was joking.
“Wait, you’re not kidding?” Terry asked after a minute.
“Why would I kid about my name?” the man replied, his face twisting in both confusion and in pain.
“It’s just that…. Never mind,” Terry conceded waving a hand, understanding that this man had probably never watched television, having been born around the time of the fall, the World’s Worst Day Ever.
The WWDE. The day the apocalypse was ushered in.
Twenty-two years ago and finally, Terry thought less about his wife and child. It had taken twenty years of wandering the Wastelands and hiding in the mountains for him to decide it was okay to return to humanity. After that, someone new entered his life. They slept together every night, but they had yet to sleep together.
Her patience seemed to be infinite as she waited for him. The two were inseparable and critical to the long-term health of the FDG, the force that would bring peace to everything that was North America.
Eventually.
One person, one family, one settlement at a time.
“Spartacus, how many people are left in the settlement?” Terry asked.
“Feck off!” the man tried to yell, but gasped in pain from his effort. Geronimo continued to put pressure on the young man’s chest to keep the blood flow staunched.
“Did he say ‘feck’?” Terry asked Char. She shrugged and smirked. The scar on her face, still pronounced after all that time, tugged at her lip. She didn’t seem to care. Terry liked it, expecting that nothing would make it go away. It should have healed within a day, but two years?
It was there for good. Silver did a number on Werewolves.
“No, I’m sorry, Spartacus, but I won’t ‘feck’ off, no matter how much you think you want me to. We’re going back there to have a conversation like real adults, not like what we had with this bunch. You should consider being nicer to people who aren’t threatening you. They may have more bite than bark. I’m going to ask you kindly… How many people are in that settlement?”
The man took a deep breath and struggled to rise, but Gerry pushed him back down. “I suggest you answer the man. Your comrades are all dead and you will be, too, if you keep heading down this path of yours,” Gerry told him in a soft voice.
The man relaxed. He and Geronimo seemed to be the same age. It was hard to tell sometimes in the Wastelands because life was so hard. It aged people at an unnatural rate. Then there were Terry and Char, who seemed ageless to everyone who knew them.
“Forty, maybe, somewhere thereabouts,” the young man finally answered, sighing and leaning back.
“Needle and thread,” Terry called. James pulled his pack off, set it on the ground, and dug through to find the sewing kit. With a needle carefully preserved from the before time and horsetail hair, Terry knelt down and got to work.
The young man thought he was going to be tortured and started screaming. Lacy took his head in both her hands and stared into his eyes.
“Listen, dickless! Those wounds need sewed up, otherwise you will bleed to death, nice and slow. So shut up and sit still!” she ordered, then took his hand and nodded back to the colonel.
Terry started with the leg wound. The bullet had passed through the man’s thigh, leaving a clean entry wound and a mostly clean exit wound, although there was some ripping of the skin on the way out as the bullet tumbled going through. The chest wound was little more than an ugly scratch.
“Water,” Terry called and held out his hand. Someone stuffed a water flask into it. He poured carefully, a little at a time as water was always scarce, even this close to a river.
Spartacus knuckled down and although he winced and gasped, Terry was able to continue without issue, sewing both the entry and exit wounds closed. He wrapped the leg in a piece of cloth they carried specifically to use as a bandage. He decided the chest wound needed wrapping but not stitches, and he took care of that.
“Help him,” Terry ordered calmly. Gerry took one arm and Lacy the other to help the young man up. James had an armload of various items he’d taken from the dead. Spartacus’s eyes shot wide and he started to stammer.
“Relax,” Terry told him. “We don’t steal. We’ll take this stuff back to your people and leave it there for them. It doesn’t belong to us and it’s of no use to them anymore, either.” Terry pointed nonchalantly to the dead, then he waved at the overwatch to join them as the group headed back to the settlement.
“What’s this place called?” Char asked Spartacus. He looked at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. Char’s eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened. “I asked you a question!”
“I ain’t never seen purple eyes before. I’m sorry. It’s called Kansas City,” the man replied.
There was no city, just a small number of ramshackle huts. Terry couldn’t figure where forty people were stashed.
When Terry tried to lead the group back to the huts where they’d encountered Spartacus and the other toughs the day prior, the young man shook his head and pointed in a different direction. “You lead then,” Terry ordered.
With a wince, Spartacus headed over a hill and along its crest until he came to a stream. He followed this to a bluff where he showed them a door. “It leads to a bunch of caves, all linked together. Keeps us safe from the tornadoes and such, plus it’s cool down there. Not much living can be done up here.” Terry took a moment and looked around him at the Wastelands and agreed.
Not much living could be done in the Wastelands, but it was green alongside the river where trees and grass grew.
Spartacus opened the door quickly and Terry dove one way, Char the other, and James and his squad dropped to a knee and took aim. Spartacus let the door go as he struggled to raise his hands over his head. The door slammed shut.
“What the hell was that?” James demanded.
“The wind holds the door shut. You have to pull on it really hard to get it to open.” Terry stood and brushed himself off. He waved Spartacus, Gerry, and Lacy to the side as he pulled on the door.
“A significant variation in the air pressure creates a suction,” Terry instructed. The others looked at him blankly. They had no idea what he was saying, but Char nodded. Terry held the door so Spartacus could be first in.
The three of them struggled to get through the door together. “Whoa!” Gerry exclaimed. “Nice and cool in here.”
“James, you and the rest of your squad stay here and guard the door. We won’t be too long,” Terry said. James looked past the colonel to Lacy. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to her, at least not without one hell of a fight.”
It was the best promise Terry could make.
Clyde tried to join the group heading inside. “I’m sorry, buddy, you need to stay out here,” Terry told the dog, but Clyde was having none of it, starting to whimper and looking to Char for support. “Fine.”
The dog ran past them and into the cave mouth.
James nodded slightly and turned, surveying their position. “Can we rotate people through the cool of the indoors?” he asked.
“Your call,” Terry answered as he followed Char through the door.
***
“I love it here!” Ted said as he waved at the small man to bring him another drink.
“You are such a moron,” Timmons said while cradling his own beverage.
After spending six months on the grounds of what used to be the Air Force Academy, the pack headed southeast through the Wastelands of old Texas and into the perpetual Wastelands of Mexico, where they made their way to the Yucatan Peninsula and the old resort areas.
Most people had died or fled elsewhere, but those who remained had carved out a mini-paradise. There was a major settlement in Cancun, complete with electric power provided by the wave generators and solar systems that had been installed before the fall.
A group of engineers attending a conference at the time of the World’s Worst Day Ever, found themselves trapped in paradise. They used available resources to rebuild Cancun in a way that suited them, with power, utilities like fresh water, allowing them to establish a new way of life that kept the old luxuries alive. They consolidated hotels, abandoning many to provide the resources and staff those closer to the functioning power centers.
The hunters were few and the fishermen many. They converted the tourist sailing ships to fishing ships and that was how they provided for the population. Twenty-two years after the fall, Timmons reasoned that Cancun was probably the most modern city in the world. The barter economy was in full effect, people trading food for services, and it all worked.
They even brewed their own alcohol.
The pack had done some hunting in the marshes outside of the resort to bring deer and peccari, a small pig-like animal, to the market for trade. This type of meat had become a delicacy since it was so difficult to come by. No one had rifles or even bows and arrows anymore. The residents of Cancun hunted using mostly snares, but they weren’t the best for catching the bigger game.
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