Apocalypse Atlanta

by Rogers, David

  The only thing unfamiliar about the utilities when he put them on was the faint scent of the fabric softener Amy used on the laundry. He wasn’t used to the utilities smelling Downey fresh. It was odd. He shook his head and laced his boots back up, then filled his pockets once more. With a second set of clothing tucked under his arm he left the bedroom and went into his ‘man cave’.

  The closet there was dominated by a large object with an old blanket draped over it. Pulling the blanket aside, he bent to the keypad of the gun safe to enter the combination. His fingers hesitated a little over the numbers, as yet again something reminded him of Amy. The combination was Amy’s birthday added to his in a certain order. He drew a deep breath as he managed to get it entered correctly and opened the safe.

  The interior was divided into two halves; the left filled with shelves for pistols and other small items while the right was left open for long guns. He only had two, the AR-15 that had all the modifications and toys that made shooting it a lot more fun than a military issue M-16 was, and a Benelli Super 90 shotgun. He had never had any interest in hunting or long range shooting, so those two weapons were all he needed if he wanted to shoot something besides a pistol.

  His holstered M45 was on the top shelf, where he could get to it quickly at need. The next shelf down had filled magazines and a partial box of rounds, and the one below that more unopened boxes of .45 and 5.56 rounds and twelve gauge shells. All neat and orderly, ready for whenever he wanted to head out to the range.

  The M45 was ready to go, he knew, but he checked it over anyway out of habit. He was as particular about his weapons as he was about anything else he did. Or, he liked to tell people who commented on it, especially about his weapons. Mistakes could result in something getting killed, and not always the right someone either.

  His fingers flew over the modified 1911, his eyes a little distant as worked. The pistol reminded him of his lost phone. When he was satisfied with his inspection, he loaded and safed the M45, then reholstered it and clipped the holster onto his belt. The remaining filled magazines went into his breast pocket, and he left the safe open for the moment and dropped into the desk chair.

  He kept his address book, the same one he’d had since he was a teenager, in the top right drawer. The creased leather binding creaked a little as he opened it, and he had to remind himself to be careful as he flipped through the age stiffened pages. There, his finger tapped the entry he wanted, and he turned to the phone.

  Scooping it up, he cradled the receiver against his shoulder and dialed quickly, then sat back and waited. It seemed to take a long time, longer than was normal, but finally the call went through and he heard it start ringing. And ring, and ring, and ring some more.

  Peter listened with an absent frown, paging idly through the address book and staring at the names while he waited. If Dan didn’t answer, he could maybe try to reach him through the administrative office at Clay, but failing that he’d have to decide if he’d call someone else or–

  The line was picked up, and he heard Dan’s voice. “Foreman.”

  “Captain, it’s Gunny Gibson.” Peter said quickly, letting the chair come forward. Dan sounded distracted, he thought.

  “This isn’t a good time Pete.”

  “That’s why I’m calling sir.” He thought he heard activity, a lot of activity, in the background of Dan Foreman’s side of the conversation. Voices, engines. Something was going on. “I know a little about what’s going on.”

  Foreman laughed humorlessly. “Then you know I’m busy.”

  “Sir, I was wondering if maybe you could use another man.”

  Peter waited. He heard a few engines starting up in the background. “Pete, we’re only being called up as a precaution. We haven’t been given any deployment orders yet.” said Foreman finally.

  “It’s only a matter of time sir.” Peter said. “You know how long it takes higher authority to decide. Especially civilian authority.”

  “I think you might be over reacting just a bit.” Foreman said, a note of careful patience creeping into his tone. “And anyway, I don’t have a shortage of bodies.”

  Peter frowned. “What, everyone’s already reported in?” Foreman hesitated. Peter waited a few moments, giving him a chance to maybe say something, then pounced on the pause. “How many have acknowledged the call up?”

  Foreman still hesitated, and Peter stepped in again after another couple of seconds of pause. “You need me sir.”

  “What about your wife?” Foreman finally said. “You’re out Gunny. Doesn’t she need you?”

  Now it was Peter’s turn to hesitate. “Amy’s–” he closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and forced himself to say the words. “Amy’s dead sir.”

  “Oh – I’m sorry Gunny.”

  “Thank you sir.” Peter replied. “But I need something to do, I want something to do. I can’t just sit on my hands and watch this on the damned television.”

  “Okay look, I’m not gonna lie. There’s . . . it’s half cluster-fuck and half sky-is-falling right now. A lot of the command staff at Clay isn’t even on base. The civvies are doing a lot of yelling and screaming right now. It might take hours before we even get the confirmations we need to legally roll out.”

  Peter shrugged involuntarily. “Then there’s time for me to maybe get there sir.”

  “Where, from Snellville?”

  “That’s where I am at the moment sir.”

  Foreman sighed. “Nothing for it.” he said, the words not sounding like they were really directed at Peter. “Look, I managed to get some of the base admin staff to agree to organize themselves into an ad-hoc intel group. They’re keeping track of what the news is saying and are updating a report for me every half hour.”

  “I’ve seen some of it first hand sir.” Peter said. “It’s not good.”

  “No. Look, the chances of me managing to get the paperwork to properly recall you anytime in the next week are fuck-all, but I’m willing to worry about that later if you are.”

  “This isn’t about pay sir.” Peter nodded. “There’s things that need doing.”

  “No shit.” Foreman sighed again. “Okay, grab your gear and haul ass. If we do roll out, or if they give you any crap at the gate when you get here, just call me back.”

  “Hoorah sir.”

  “Watch yourself on the drive over. The roads are a fucking disaster.” Foreman said, then the line went silent. Peter hung the phone up and pondered for a moment, then turned back to the closet. His pack was in the closet next to the gun safe. He heaved it out and started checking through the contents.

  * * * * *

  Darryl

  Darryl turned comfortably in the seat of his Softail, holding the bike in-line one-handed when he heard the horn behind him. He was riding nearly on the painted dashes separating the two eastbound lanes of Highway 78 and was last in the little column of cycles. They were all riding in ones and two in the right hand lane, cruising steadily east at just under seventy miles per hour, and Darryl had settled in at the end of the column just so he didn’t have to do much except keep his bike humming along.

  Behind him however was Big Chief in his F-250. When Darryl looked back, he saw Big Chief making a ‘come here’ motion at him. Darryl checked the left lane, but the closest other vehicle was about a mile back, so he swung over and let his speed fall off. As the truck moved up to pace him, Darryl snapped up the visor on his helmet.

  He loved his Harley, but he also didn’t like eating bugs when he rode. So, full helmet. He was a minority in this view among the Dogz however; most of them wore little pot helmets, or open faced helmets . Darryl didn’t care what they liked, or what they said. He didn’t have to pick shit off his face, or spit it out of his mouth, at the end of a three hour ride, and that was how he liked it.

  “DJ!” Big Chief yelled, leaning out his open window a little.

  “Yeah?” Darryl shouted back. The wind whipping past them made it hard to hear, but he was used to it. The tri
ck was to watch the other person’s lips as much as you could, sort of lip reading to fill in the gaps when their voice was snatched away by air currents or roaring motors.

  “Bobo say call him.”

  “What?”

  “Bobo.” Big Chief repeated. “Call Bobo.”

  Darryl stared at Big Chief for a moment, then checked forward automatically. He was pretty sure he knew exactly where they were, and unless he was very far off, they were close to the turnoff for the clubhouse. Once they left 78 behind, it was less than a few minutes of little back roads before they’d be there.

  “Now?” Darryl yelled, making an exaggerated shrugging gesture with his right arm. “We almost there.”

  Big Chief lifted his phone to his face and said something, then listened for a few seconds. He nodded, said something else, then put the phone down. “When we there.” Big Chief yelled out the window.

  “Alright.” Darryl said, irritated. Their ride was pretty normal now, but back in Snellville and Loganville, where 78 was more a regular road than an almost interstate, it had been pretty chaotic. It had not been pleasant threading through all of that, and he had been enjoying the ride since. For some reason there were a lot of wrecks this afternoon, more than Darryl thought was explainable simply due to all the business closing at the same time.

  Well, most of the businesses. Some places they’d passed either hadn’t gotten the word yet, or were ignoring it for some reason or another. They’d hit up a Kroger in Snellville that was still open, though it was very busy with people clearing out the milk and bread aisles. Darryl had never understood that peculiar Atlanta tradition, that of all the stores immediately selling out of milk and bread the second anything bad happened to the city.

  It didn’t bother the Dogz. They’d used ATMs, ATM cards, and a couple of credit cards to pay for their groceries. Most of it was beer, a lot of beer, but there were the typical cook-out and party foods as well, like burgers, hot dogs and ribs. Darryl was sort of hoping no one’s bike broke down before they made it to the clubhouse; the back of the F-250 was pretty full with the food and stuff they’d loaded into it around Big Chief’s bike.

  Still wondering why Big Chief, or Bobo, or both of them, hadn’t just waited the less than ten minutes until they were at the clubhouse, Darryl added throttle and pulled back ahead of the truck again. He swung back over into his spot at the end of the column and switched hands on the handlebars, controlling the bike with the right only while he flexed his left hand a few times.

  Sure enough, they were right where Darryl thought they were. A few minutes later he saw the little sign on the side of the road that announced Smith Cemetery Road was coming up. Almost as soon as the sign whipped past, Darryl saw the flashing yellow light at the intersection ahead.

  Dropping his throttle off again, Darryl coasted the last half mile to the turn and braked only at the last little bit before leaning into the turn lazily. They were an hour outside of Atlanta and about twenty minutes from Athens. This was farm country, probably would be for the next hundred years. They’d been passing actual farms, with crops planted or herds of cows or horses grazing, regularly for the last fifteen miles.

  Darryl liked it out here; not that he was ever going to be a farmer himself. He liked the city, with all its bustle and money and conveniences. But allowing for that, it was nice to leave that crap behind and get out to where you could party and make some noise without worrying about the next door neighbors calling the fucking cops on you.

  People lived out here, people who weren’t farmers; but it was about half and half. And it was hard to find someone this far out who wasn’t inclined to leave others alone so long as they themselves weren’t being bothered. Not like in the city, where the slightest thing could set people off. In a lot of places in Watkinsville, going to see your neighbors meant walking a half mile or more.

  They rolled down the little back roads without incident, though Darryl was struck by something that seemed off. It took him most of the five minutes from 78 to the clubhouse to finally put his finger on it. There didn’t seem to be anyone out. The houses were all shut up tight with no one out in the yards. It was unusual for a Friday, especially a holiday weekend Friday.

  Darryl was still musing about it as he turned onto the lake road. It stretched off through densely packed pine trees, interrupted only by a paved or, more frequently gravel, driveway that would head off to one side of the road or the other to a house. The lake, such as it was, made this a slightly better part of Watkinsville to live in, but even here the crush of development had been successfully staved off. The houses were still spaced well apart.

  The road finally broke out of the trees at the southwestern end of the little lake. It technically was a lake, but calling it that made it sound a lot cooler than it really was. It was definitely too big to be a mere ‘swimming hole’, but it wasn’t nearly big enough for boating or any of the usual activities you saw on a lake these days.

  A couple of locals kept canoes, and every spring the county would spend a couple hundred dollars on fish to make sure it stayed stocked, but it wasn’t the kind of lake that was a tourist attraction. For all that, it was still a pleasant little spot. The near side, along the south and eastern shores, still had trees that ran right up to the waterfront except where a house had displaced them.

  What Darryl had always found rather stupid about the lake was its name. Lake Oconee. That didn’t seem to be worth even a tiny amount of fuss, unless you knew there was another Lake Oconee in Georgia. The other one was enormous, with hundreds of miles of shoreline filled with docks and waterfront houses. It was about thirty miles to the southeast and was the other half of a reservoir lake that Georgia Power operated for one of its hydro-electric dams. He’d never figured out which one had been named first, but however it had come about, he’d always thought it was petty silly.

  The land along this Lake Oconee’s northern edge had once been a farm, or probably several farms. Darryl could never remember. The land had been clear cut of trees back when that was real work that took months of back breaking labor. Well before the invention of chain saws. Half of that side of the lakefront, the southern half, was now owned by a local company that cut lawns, trimmed trees, and grew and transplanted grass sod.

  The other half of the cleared area was owned by Bobo. A rickety split rail fence, old as hell and not good for anything except letting squirrels and groundhogs climb to get away from snakes, marked most of the border between the lawn company’s lot and Bobo’s. That was only indication of where the edges of the section Bobo owned began and ended, but it was a good couple of acres that stretched back from the lake a ways.

  Two buildings stood on the land. An old clapboard barn that desperately needed most of its old lumber replaced with newer, less weather worn wood; and an even older stone farmhouse that was right next to the barn. And stone meant stone. Not concrete blocks or bricks. Actual stones, some of them three and four feet in diameter, had been mortared together into walls that would proudly serve a European castle.

  The farmhouse, now referred to as the clubhouse, dated back to the late 1800s. Bobo’s great-great grandfather, or great-great-great grandfather, or however many generations back it was, had built the building when he’d worked the farm. As originally designed, the building was laid out with two very large rooms. Bobo’s grandfather had added an expansion in the back that was regular concrete block, so it didn’t match.

  But that was fine, since you couldn’t see it from the road. And it doubled the inside area. And he’d also put in a rather scenic porch that stretched all along the front, a nice seven foot wide covered porch where he could sit and smoke or drink after the day’s work. The Dogz did much the same thing on it, though that was probably where the similarities to Bobo’s family’s use of the building and the Dogz’ ended.

  The barn no longer contained farm equipment; all that had been sold by Bobo, either to other farmers or to metal scrappers, when he’d been discharged from the Army. No
w it was used only to park motorcycles when the Dogz were in residence. There was a loft, but none of the Dogz went up into it. The wood didn’t look all that safe.

  As for the farmhouse nee clubhouse, it was basically one big party pad. There was a single bathroom with modern plumbing, and five little bedrooms that effectively served as ‘hook up’ rooms for when a Dog wanted to get private and horizontal with a woman at one of the parties. A ‘modern’ kitchen had been installed at the same time as the addition had been put in, but in this case the only thing modern in the kitchen was the refrigerator, which was less than five years old, and the microwave, which was even newer.

  Those changes to the original design left about two and a half big rooms; half because the kitchen and bathroom had been carved out of one of the three remaining spaces. The other half had been turned into a TV and game room, game in this case meaning video games. The televisions were old ones, but there were six of them hooked up to a pair of game consoles, some DVD players, and a satellite dish.

  The smaller of the two remaining ‘big’ rooms had been turned into a game room, game this time meaning pool and darts and foosball. The biggest room had couches and chairs lining three of its walls with a fairly rough bar on the fourth; this tended to be where general hanging out and occasional dancing happened. It and the game room both shared a sound system with speakers hung in each room, so you could hear whatever was being played both places. Though, to be fair, when the Dogz were partying, you could stand a hundred yards out from the clubhouse and hear what was being played.

  Darryl rolled slowly across the patchy gravel ‘driveway’, occasionally walking his feet across the ground to keep the bike upright, as he wove his way around the deeper potholes. The driveway was sorely overdue for some fresh gravel, but the Dogz kept putting it off. Or, more precisely, they’d voted to upgrade the speakers a couple of months ago and put off the gravel for another time.