The Event Series (Book 3): The Archive and Beyond

by Thomas Larson

  As we were leaving, I noticed that they had put a ‘Where the Heck is Wall Drug’ bumper sticker on the back of our trucks. They are good people, we have met some on the way, and I hope that if we come back this way again we can stop and visit.

  It was an easy ride as I said. Fred and Jan led the way and we waltzed into Billings, Montana. In the course of the trip, we did see a couple of Hunter A’s buzzing around but they did not seem to care about us, so we left them alone.

  Fueled up okay and ended up staying at a little hunting lodge near the airport in Billings.

  It was a warm day so we did not need to build a fire, but we sat by the hearth anyway. It had not been used in a long time. We talked about the trip and that maybe we should be looking to extend our days travels from the 300 to 400 mile range to 500 or 600 miles, just to cut a day or two off the end of the trip. We are going to find that as we move along we will be more and more out into the wild with greater distances between civilization, or what was once civilization.

  We were all good with it and decided that we would now drive sun up to sun down, which meant from like 5 in the morning to about 9 at night.

  Nothing else to report.

  August 16th

  (Tom) We were going to start back toward Romanica today, but, Osgood and his people talked us into staying for a day or so, just to rest up, and to come to understand where the world, as they knew it, was at.

  The Navy still has a number of ships still operational, mostly submarines that had been submerged when the original meteor had hit. Although the crews had subsequently been infected, in the sense that if they died, they would comeback, but they were protected from the initial die off. The US had 5 subs, the Pittsburgh, was one of them. There was also the Alexandria, the Jimmy Carter, the Mississippi and the North Dakota. Ironically, the most deadly of them was the Carter, go figure that one.

  There were also a half dozen subs from other nations that were in the same situation, one English, one French, 2 Russian, a Chinese and one Iranian. All the subs and ships seemed to get along and worked together. It seems that since the end of the world, much of the hate and discontent has been set aside, it is now a matter of just trying to survive and rebuild, which is the priority.

  Osgood explained that sometimes there was a little butt hurt on the part of someone, but the naval commanders all realized that there were more important things than nationalism or religious fanaticism. At one point, the Iranian boat got a little crazy, but it seems the crew took care of that issue and shortly after requested some assistance from the US boats. An American officer of Arab heritage has taken Sat-Command of that ship.

  Any surface vessels that the High Command was aware of where non-military, small and really few and far between. Most of the commercial and military ships that were encountered in the early days had been infected and had to be sunk. But Osgood added there was still one US, well actually, Allied, surface force out there. It was made up of a US Carrier, the Carl Vinson, an English Battle Cruiser; they called HMS Defiant, and a Russian Frigate that was renamed to Zevtra (Tomorrow). I kind of like it. That group was currently in the area of Midway Island in the Pacific.

  He also told us about some of the known locations that there were collectives of civilians and military bases. They were spread around the world. Island nations like Japan, or England, or Sri Lanka were basically empty.

  There were reports of small groups, like Romanica in places throughout the world, but most were isolated without Satellite links. So really, the actual numbers and locations were unknown.

  “General, do you have an idea of how many humans are left?” Asuna asked.

  “Worldwide the best we can tell, about 8,000 military, 1,200 or so known civilians, like you and we think maybe another 10 to 15 thousand scattered around out there that are just trying to survive,” said Osgood.

  That hit hard, from 7 billion to maybe 25,000, we truly were near the end of the world and had not much to start over with.

  “General, How many bases do you have in North America?” I asked.

  “We have 6 right now. There is us, Knox, Groton, Key West, Groom Lake and Whidbey Island. But except for us and Knox, those other bases are just small service stops of the ships. Well, except for Groom, that is the research base, it is small, maybe 100 people,” replied Osgood.

  “Wait, you said Whidbey, but what about the Fairbanks base?” I asked.

  “We lost it; they went Broken Arrow 4 days ago. They had tried to pack up and move, but something happened. It is gone.”

  I looked at Asuna, then back at the general, “We have a team heading their way!”

  “Can you contact them? Warn them off?”

  “No, we have no radios or anything that strong to reach them,” I said.

  “Crap, okay, well, do you know their route; maybe we can get a warning to them somehow.” Osgood suggested.

  “Yes, we know that they were planning to take I-90 most of the way to the Seattle and then head up the coast.”

  “Then we can have Whidbey keep an eye out for them and advise them,” suggested the general.

  “That should work, I think, my guess is that they should be around the middle of Montana right now, so as long as they hold course that should work.” I replied.

  “General, we could also try to use the remote warning system. Maybe they have their AM/FM radios on, and we could use the old Emergency Broadcast System,” offered a Communications Captain.

  “We can try that too. Get it fired up and put the following message on it. ‘Attention, Attention, Fairbanks has fallen, abort, abort, return home’, that should work.” Osgood said.

  “Yes, but it might be better if I did the voice, Matt or his crew would recognize my voice and realize that it wasn’t an old message. They believe that Fairbanks is active.” I told them.

  “Good idea, let’s do this,” replied the general.

  And so the message was sent, Whidbey was notified, and based upon the estimated time table; they would get some surveillance aircraft up in two days to try to also make contact.

  After lunch we met up with Margo and Cody, she had a shit eating grin on her face.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” she replied.

  I know something happened, and I would find out soon enough.

  Rest of the day was pretty quiet. I want to wait ‘til tomorrow to see if they make contact with Matt, but then, even if he hears the message, we have no way of knowing that.

  (Lance) It was a standard, boring typical day, garden, riding, and thinking about Hadley. I have no data base access, the Internet is long dead, but I thought maybe there was something in one of the libraries or bookstores up in Northampton, at Smith College or close by at U-Mass, Amherst. We drive, actually took a truck rather than the horses up there, but we came up empty, no information on the base.

  It will be good to start seeing people back from the deliveries. I expect the Major will be back tomorrow or the next day. Tom and his crew should be back within a week.

  (Margo) Code and I really have not much to do. We have been given a little room to sleep and stay, and for the most part we are left alone to wander around, kind of forgotten.

  We took a walk out to our truck today and just made sure that we were ready to go, loaded up for the trip back. I think we are leaving in the morning.

  While we were there, I figured I would clean up the Barrett after the incident at Kit Carson. A couple of the army guys noticed the rifle and came over to talk with us. One started mouthing off about how he was the best shot on the base and that he had killed hundreds of what he called Munchers. I told them about some of my shots, the Bikers, the Brother Gabriel tale. I got a couple of calls of “Bullshit little girl” on that one.

  Well, it kind of went downhill from there and before you knew it, we had a little bet going. I guess he figured he was hot shit and all.

  They had a little target range going outside the camp, so what we did was to set
up a shot similar to the Brother Gabriel situation. Two sets of mannequins were set up. Each set had one mannequin a few feet behind the other with just the head exposed. The range was about a half mile away. The object was to ‘kill’ the back manikin without hitting the front mannequin.

  By now there was a crowd, word had gotten out. And there were wagers being made. We flipped a coin to see who would go first; it was him, Gunnery Sergeant Gilbert. I was told later that he talked a lot, but in reality, had never killed another human, nor had he really been in a serious shit storm.

  He lined up on his target, boom, he did hit the second mannequin, sort of, he blew the arm off the first mannequin and it hit the second, but the head was still there. He failed.

  My turn, I lined up the shot, breath in, breath out, boom, slight recoil, and even as I was settling back down and as the targeted head was still spinning in the air, I lined up the second head, his second head, breath in, breath out, boom, the second head blew to pieces.

  It was quiet, a couple of “Holy Shits!” and then applause. I had won, I shut his mouth.

  He walked up to me, looking a little deflated, “Ma’am, that was some powerful good shootin’, I don’t welch on my bets, here’s mah rifle.”

  I looked at him, smiled, took the gun, briefly, then handed it back to him, “Sergeant, I can’t carry two rifles, so why don’t you hold it for me, keep it clean and maybe take it out for exercise every once and again.”

  We shook hands, and then he, the other soldier that had been with him, Code and me went to the cafeteria and had coffee with them. We told them more about what it was like where we were, the camp, the shit we had seen and lived through, and the trip to give them the pills.

  Later that day we ran into Tom and Asuna. We didn’t tell him what had happened, with the little shoot off, but I was grinning, I looked like the Cheshire Lion.

  (Matt) On the road early this morning, we were out of Billings about a half hour after sunrise. It was a long drive today, we usually did about 6 hours or three hundred miles, but we need to move faster, farther. We did almost 600 miles today and reached our final destination, Banff, at just before sunset, about 9:30. The further north we move the longer the daylight, at least for now.

  We had originally planned to take I-90 to Seattle and then head up the coast, but in looking at the maps it seemed that it might be quicker to turn north early and run through the Canadian Rockies, it was still early enough in the season that we would not have to sweat snow.

  The drive itself was not too bad; the roads were clear for the most part with the exception of when we got to Calgary, outbound traffic congestion heading toward the States or Edmonton.

  We had gassed up in Lethbridge and were easily able to make it to Banff on fuel.

  Really, not much to talk about, and at this point, even Tanya and I are talked out.

  Banff is beautiful, up in the mountains, I could live here, but then it is still summer time, I am not so sure that a winter in the Rockies would be so good.

  August 17th

  (Tom) We are going to stay for one more day, just to see if we get any word from, or about, Matt and Company, something to let us know that they had gotten the message.

  Life on the base has to be pretty boring, I mean, there is keep busy day to day stuff, but what else do you do. At least in our case, back home we’re able to visit the cities close by, and explore a little. Here at the base, because the Hunters seem to know there were targets, people, the soldiers were pretty much stuck.

  They did send out patrols, like the one that the people at Kit Carson bush-whacked, but for the most part the patrols stayed in the Hummers, safe from the high velocity pellets.

  It made me wonder how they would have gotten the troops out of the Hummers and then took them down. My guess is that they used the kids, played them as decoys, miserable bastards.

  At the evening meal we still had no word about Matt or his people. Even if they heard the message on the old EBS, what did they use to call it, Conelrad, we wouldn’t know if they got it.

  “Tom, I know you want to leave soon, and I understand. I have an offer for you. A couple of my men, actually Marines, have volunteered, actually requested transfer to the Mass Militia.” General Welles said.

  “Really? Why would they want to do that?” I answered.

  “I am not sure, something about living in the action, seeing the world as it really is,” he replied. “And I don’t think they ever felt they really fit in with us.”

  “Sounds kind of silly to me,” I smiled, and looked at Margo, she flushed and looked down.

  “Well, you could probably use a couple of men for the trip back after the Kit Carson incident, and I, we can give up two if you are willing to take them.” he added.

  “Let me think about that one,” was my response. I was not sure, a couple of bodies, not necessarily fighters would be good, we have lost people, so we have room to feed and house them.

  Asuna and I talked about it after dinner and we decided that it was not a bad idea. I contacted Welles later in the evening and said we were good with the idea and to have the pair meet us by our trucks in the morning. But I told him that before we said okay for sure, we wanted to meet them.

  (Lance) Another quiet day, spoke with Major Barkley, he is on his way home and will be at camp tomorrow as long as everything goes according to plan. He has a second Sat-Comm Unit so we can be in contact along the way. He said that he has access information to the Bare Mountain facility, and a surprise for us all.

  Rest of the day was quiet. Del and I babysat Augustus today. He is cute, I guess, and noisy, and fussy, and damn, does baby poop stink.

  (Matt) The plan for today was to again be out on the road early and make our way along the Trans-Canadian Highway and reach Endako by nightfall. We almost made it, but we were getting some clouds moving in toward the late afternoon and we decided that we would cut out the one hour leg from Prince George to Endako.

  I have to admit that the driving through the valleys and parallel to the river beds was awe inspiring, this is truly beautiful country. We stopped for a little while at Lake Louise, the turquoise waters and the mountain scenery was majestic. I know we should probably have skipped the sight-seeing, but it was worth it.

  As we drove into Prince George, it seemed pretty empty. It had not burned, or actually looked like it hadn’t suffered much damage at all but it was mostly abandoned. I think it was because food supplies were mostly brought in from outside sources. There were a few small farms outside the city but no major agriculture or crop fields. It was mostly a railhead for the mining and lumber industries that had been so Sat-Common in that area.

  We did run into a few people, there were still maybe 50 people living in various parts of the city. They were all kind of cool with each other, there was no, turf wars, or such. There was even a little Sat-Commerce going on. One guy had taken over a little micro-brewery and he would work with a guy at the train yard that had the warehouses to get materials, grain and such to make his beer. They would barter, open bar tab for grain.

  There was also a restaurant, well, actually more a little diner called the Canada Goose. The owner, Dylan, had worked a deal with the brewery, and also some local hunters and fishermen for fresh meat, and a farmer for some fresh vegetables.

  We stopped and talked to the owner, a short old Canadian who had that standard Western Canadian accent…eh….sounded like those comedians Bob and Doug. The diner was empty as we chatted and when we explained what we were doing he looked at us kind of funny. “Fairbanks, Anchorage, eh, ain’t nobody der no more. Deh’re gone, eh.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know?” Tanya asked him.

  “Oh eh, see we listen to the radio, eh. Deh just put up a message, said it was gone. It is a repeat, want to hear it, eh?” offered Dylan.

  “Sure,” I said.

  It was kind of weird hearing Tom’s voice on the radio. But the message was clear, “Attention, Attention, Fairbanks has fallen, a
bort, abort, return home”.

  I looked at Tanya, then Fred and Jan, “What do we do now?”

  Dylan looked at us, “You could stay here, in Prince George, it’s not so bad, eh.”

  I smiled and shook my head, “No, we have to return home. But thank you.”

  I was actually both relieved, and depressed at the same time. I had focused so much on the trip, and the destination, I had never thought about what happens after we got there. Part of me had toyed with the idea of trying to stay in Alaska, and part of me knew I had to go home. But now, we were done, no mission, no destination, time to go home.

  “Dylan, is there somewhere for us to stay tonight here in town, does someone have an inn, or hotel?” I asked.

  “Sure eh, Miss Landry has a little place close by. I think she’d take you in.” He grinned. “But I am not sure what she charges, you know cash don’t fly no more.”

  “Yeah, well, we have some canned foods, and some other things and…..Dylan, could you call a town meeting?”

  “Why, why would you want me to do dat, eh,” he looked puzzled.

  “Because we have something we want to share with you, no trade, no barter, we just want to give you something, for free.”

  “I can do dat eh, free is for me, ….. Jimmy, get your sorry ass out here!” shouted Dylan.

  Out of the back kitchen area came a zit-faced kid about 15, he did not seem to be the brightest kid in the world, but his lanky figure seemed anxious to please.

  “Yes, Mr. Dylan,” the voice almost cracked me up; it was that kind of awkward, voice chance speak.

  “I want you to run over to Doc Smedley’s and tell him to get da word out to everyone to meet us at da Home Depot, eh. Tell him some visitors have rolled into town, eh, and that they got somethin’ for us.”

  “Okay, Mr. Dylan, I am on it!” replied Jimmy.

  About 10 minutes later we heard a series of blasts on an air horn. That must have been their equivalent to the bell we used to keep at the flagpole at Romanica. And about 20 minutes later there was a group of about 40 locals gathered at the Big Box.