The World Burns: A Post-Apocalyptic Story

by Boyd Craven III

  +++++

  Blake was still out hunting when dark fell. Not long after he fired a single shot, Sandra came running toward him. She was calling out to him, panic in her voice. And not only that, she had her Beretta raised and aimed in one hand, and a sandwich in the other. She looked as though she had been right in the middle of making dinner when she’d heard his gun go off. The panic left her eyes when she saw it was him, and he smiled. “Hey, great, you brought me dinner.” Blake smiled wider as he walked up to her and took the sandwich from her shaking hand.

  “Dammit, Blake. You didn’t tell me you were going to be gone all day and half the night.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to either. I didn’t see any deer, but I did run across some running bacon.”

  “Bacon?”

  “Look,” he pointed to the gloom.

  She approached it, irked that he’d assumed the sandwich was his, but she smiled when she almost tripped over a black-furred shaggy creature.

  “They sure smell in real life.”

  “Yeah. I jumped this hog heading in for dinner.”

  “I’m surprised you could see him in the dark. It looks like a spine shot.”

  “Yeah, I had to wait for him to step into some good lighting, otherwise I was going to drag you out here tomorrow and help me find their sounder.”

  “Sounder?”

  “Group of pigs. Family unit.”

  “Oh. Uh…that thing is bigger than you. How are we going to get it back?”

  “Did you ever get a chance to check those quads out?” he asked. He then kicked himself at her pained expression.

  “No…I uh…”

  “Tell you what, I’ll go get the truck. Wave your arms when you see me so I can find you in the dark.”

  “Do I have to worry about any more of them coming out? I mean, aren’t they supposed to be mean?”

  “If you’d feel better, you can get the truck?”

  “Uh...you do it. I just wish I would have brought a flashlight.”

  “Naw, don’t feel bad. You brought me a sandwich.”

  “That wasn’t actually for you.”

  “I know.” He laughed at her shocked expression and smiled. He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the lips and left before she found her voice again.

  “What was that?” she called after him as he jogged away into the dark gloom. He could hear the smile in her voice.

  +++++++

  Blake butchered the hog when they got it in the barn and hung large cuts of it from the rafters. It was cooler in the barn than the outside, but he wasn’t going to leave it for more than half a day.

  “I’ve had a project I was always meaning to do.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “I was going to make my own smoker and then blog pictures of it and make an eBook out of it. I just never had the time.”

  “Do you need a hand now?”

  “Sure. Let’s get that dolly and go into the scrap pile.”

  In most old homesteads, folks never threw anything away, instead saving up broken appliances, jars, cans, etc., until they had enough to run it to the scrap yard or the dump. Blake’s grandparents had done much of the same, and when his grandpa retired, he decided to fix appliances. In various states of use, there were probably twenty or thirty different appliances stored in the barn. One of them was an old upright freezer with wire racks.

  “This is the one,” he said, pushing the cart under it and moving it into the open doorway.

  “What is that?”

  “My smoke chamber. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They cut two circular holes into the freezer. One was down along the bottom and about six inches in diameter, and the other was a small one-inch diameter hole in the very top back corner. Blake kicked through his old pile of piping and came back with two pieces of black pipe about four feet long each. They had been from the old wood stove that his grandpa had used to heat that part of the barn. The first one fit perfectly into the bottom side of the freezer, and he left it hanging out a couple feet. He split the next pipe almost a third shorter and squeezed it into a somewhat circular shape. He pushed it in to test it for size, then pulled it out and made it about eight inches long with a hacksaw. He fit it in again and smiled.

  “That’s the hardest part.”

  “So where’s the rest of it?”

  “Come on, let’s find something.”

  They went back into the pile and found a rusty cook stove. They brought it to the old freezer and set it down. Blake was thinking hard when apparently a light bulb went off in Sandra’s head. She laughed and said, “I know, we can set the freezer on the old work bench and use an elbow to make the connection to the stove.”

  “That’ll work. We’ll have to play with the flue adjustments. We don’t want to cook the food so much as smoke it.”

  “It’s better than smoking it over an open fire.”

  “True,” he smiled.

  It took them another hour to get things set up the way that she’d envisioned. He’d need a ladder to get to the upper rack of the new “smoker,” but it should work, in theory. The last thing he did, which he kicked himself for almost forgetting about, was put some wire screen mesh over the top hole. He held it in place by wrapping the pipe with bailing wire.

  “To keep the critters out?”

  “As much that as to keep a spark from coming out of the freezer and landing on something in here.”

  “Ready to fire it up?”

  “I am.”

  They left one of the hams whole, but sliced everything else into strips that were an inch thick or less before filling the smoke chamber and firing it up for the first time. It was apparent that there was too much heat coming through the smoker chamber, so Blake brought the hacksaw out, and Sandra made some cuts to the pipe, making a small flap on the side. Her thoughts were that the smoke would rise higher than the heat, and the cut would let some of the heat vent out. They tested it, and that did the trick, so they wrapped the flap with more screen door mesh and bailing wire.

  They kept the fire smoldering with downed fruit tree branches—pear wood and apple wood that was trimmed back every year from his small orchard. They had one more day before they would test the meat, so they made sure the fire was stoked before heading in to shower and go to bed. It had been a long week.

  Chapter 7 -

  Both of them awoke before the sun and hurried to get out the door first. Bacon had become the new obsession, and both were hungry to try it. Sandra squeezed out the door first, but stopped dead when she heard a buzzing sound. Blake crashed into her in his excitement and noticed her worried look right off.

  “Somebody is coming.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Listen,” she told him, and he did. It almost sounded like the buzz of a chainsaw, but far off. It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing quad motors. More than one or two.

  “Do you think one of them could be your dad, coming up here for you?”

  “Dad doesn’t have a quad.”

  “He could have found one.”

  Blake stepped inside. He grabbed his rifle and stepped back outside.

  “You set up off the porch, Blake, to the side by the rain barrel.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Stand here on the porch and see if they are friendly or not.”

  “What if they are not?” he asked, worried now.

  “We’ll convince them to leave.” She pulled out her Beretta and held it in her right hand loosely by her side. “But if I tell you to shoot, don’t let up until I call for you to stop.”

  Blake nodded and got into position. He knelt down and made sure his rifle was topped off and on safe. He could see the field in front of him through the gap between the barrel and the house, but to anybody coming up the hill, they’d have to be right on top of him to see him. He had no way to pre-aim the rifle without standing, so he just sat there on his haunches, waiting. Sandra gave him a qui
ck smile and stepped down on the bottom step as three quads came racing up, the riders whooping and hollering to each other. Each of them had a pistol in hand, and one had a rifle strapped across his back.

  Sandra held her hand up so they could all get a glimpse of her gun, and she trained it on them until they stopped over a hundred feet away.

  “What do you want?” she called out, her voice harsh.

  “We smelled the cooking. Figured we’d come up and see what’s shakin’, bacon,” the middle rider said. He started laughing at his own joke.

  “We don’t have enough to share here. You guys go on back down the hill.”

  “Now lady, you aren’t being very nice. Why aren’t you being nice? Nervous without your husband here, perhaps?” the one on the left asked. Blake could just make out the tattoo on his face. Two teardrops. If it hadn’t been done oversized and if the man hadn’t turned just right, Blake would have missed it.

  “Sorry guys, keep moving. Nothing here for you.” She swung her gun up, pointing it in their direction. They all stepped off their quads.

  “I take my turn first this time,” the one on the right said, raising his gun and rubbing his crotch.

  Blake took his first shot just as Sandra shouted. The biker on the right was blown off his feet by the crossfire, and the other two almost fell backwards in shock. The middle rider slid behind the quad and lifted his head up enough to try to take aim at Sandra. Blake had a funny angle, but took the shot anyways. His .30-06 blasted a hole through the flimsy plastic and fiberglass of the quad’s body panel and knocked the man over on his back like he was a kicked mule. Blake worked the bolt on the gun as the last guy took off running for the woods that Holloway Lane was known for.

  He centered the crosshairs of the scope on his back and was pulling in the slack from the trigger to take the shot when a distant shot rang out and the man tumbled.

  “Oh shit, there are more of them?” he asked Sandra, half panicked.

  “I don’t know. That shot came from a ways off. Let’s reload and get behind some cover.”

  She hurried off the porch and squeezed in behind the barrel, which was full from the last rain. It wouldn’t stop every bullet, but it would stop quite a few. They waited until the sweat was trickling down the insides of their shirts and the bugs came out. A portly figure slowly walked out into the open, holding a rifle over his head.

  “Who is that?” Blake asked.

  “Let me see your gun,” she replied.

  He handed Sandra the rifle, and she held it up. She looked at Blake, smiled, and looked through the scope again before letting out a whoop of joy and taking off running. Blake could only check her progress with the scope and cover her as she ran towards the man.

  “Daddy…” The words floated up to the pastor, and he smiled as his daughter jumped into his arms, knocking him over with the full-body hug. Blake smiled and lowered the rifle.

  He checked to make sure the dead were really dead and tried not to look at the pair as they walked up the hill, their chatter running a mile a minute in excited voices. He stripped the raiders of guns and ammo and turned their pockets out, not finding much. He opened the pack strapped on the quad and stopped dead, his hand afraid to reach in when he saw what was inside.

  “Hey Blake, it’s my…” She rushed to his side, seeing him transfixed. “Don’t touch those.”

  “I won’t,” he mumbled.

  “What’s got you two so spooked?” Pastor Duncan said, walking up and holding his hand out.

  Blake shook it absentmindedly and nodded to the bag. The pastor looked inside and rubbed his chin a minute.

  “If the pins had been pulled, they would have already gone off.”

  Inside were half a dozen grenades sitting on top of a package wrapped in plastic.

  “Who are those guys?” he asked Blake and Sandra, who’d wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace again.

  “I think they are convicts.”

  “Why do you say that, Blake?”

  “The tattoos on them. They look like gang tats.”

  “He’s right, Dad. Look at this guy.”

  They poked around for a little bit, and then Blake loaded up the truck and drove the bodies out past the silo and dumped them into a shallow ditch. None of them wanted to spend the time and the effort to bury them, and it’d been obvious to all what their intentions were. Once Blake made it back to the house, he sat down at the tiny table in the kitchen to smell the agonizingly delicious aroma the frying bacon was making. Pastor Duncan had sliced it in thick slabs and was working the griddle while Sandra had her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. Blake got some for himself and sat back and listened to Duncan tell his tale.

  “…and when all the cars on the highway stalled out, I knew it was something bad. My watch and phone were dead, so I figured an EMP. I grabbed my bag and the case I keep my rifle in and walked towards Greenville. I saw the planes fly over me, and I turned to watch as they crashed. There were two of them, and it looked like they fell close to town. I headed north and tried to stay by the roads as much as I could. I traveled by night mostly, because on the third day, people got desperate. There was no water, the stranded motorists were starting to fight and steal from each other, and then some of the hard cases showed up.”

  “Hard cases?” Blake asked.

  “The prison in Greenville. They had to do something with the prisoners, and less and less guards were showing up for work. Probably taking care of their families. They just opened the doors and ran before they could be caught. Rapists and murderers, along with the gentler purse snatchers, were suddenly free in a world without anyone to stop them. That’s when I went into the woods and tried to avoid everyone.”

  “Oh my God, Daddy, was it bad out there?”

  “The little town I skirted between here and there was on fire. Not from the planes, but from the looting. People were going crazy. Have you two had anyone else give you problems before today?”

  “No,” Blake admitted.

  “Well, if you guys plan on running that smoker for any length of time, you may want to put out extra security. I smelled it from miles away. It’s how I homed in on you. When I got close, I could hear the quads coming, and I ran the rest of the way up here.”

  Blake couldn’t help but look at the portly man before laughing at the thought. Soon Sandra busted up as well.

  “What’s so funny you two?”

  “How many miles did you run, Daddy?”

  “Well, it felt like all the way but…Say, you aren’t making fat jokes when I’m making you bacon and fried potatoes, are you?”

  “No sir,” Blake came to a sobering end of the laugh. “About that security, what would we need? To fortify or whatever we need to do here?”

  “Make it damn hard for anybody to even get up the lane. You’re the only house up here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, my grandparents left me ten acres, but the rest of it is owned by a lumber company. They logged it years back and let my family farm it for something like a dollar an acre.”

  “Good. So nobody has any business back here?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Pastor Duncan laid out his plan. It was devious, and his experiences in brush wars across the world became evident. He hadn’t always been a holy man, only becoming a man of the cloth once his wife had died when Sandra was born. Still, it was scary how much about war and death the pastor knew.

  Chapter 8 -

  The next morning, Pastor Duncan got up early, having already given the two kids instructions on what they would need. He dressed in his camo outfit after letting it air out overnight and headed off down the lane. Today would be a day for making traps.

  Blake and Sandra spent most of the previous afternoon scrounging in the barn for metal posts, old barbed wire, bailing wire, pipes, and scrap metal. The first thing they did was close in the lane where Blake drove along the fence line up to the house. Now it just looked like any other barbed wire cow pasture
that was overgrown and ready for hay to be cut or cows to be let loose in it. They tried to brush out the tracks where the quads had come up as best as they could, and then they started with the tricks and traps.

  Blake used a spool of monofilament fishing line. He and Sandra nailed old rat traps to trees about head high and loaded them. A small stick was jammed in the bottom of the tree to complete the lever, and they tied it off on the other side on small saplings. They brought out glow sticks from the camper and taped them in place. The theory was that you can’t be everywhere at once unless you literally have an entrenched army close by, so an early warning system was what they were building. If somebody walked down the lane and stepped on or tripped on the monofilament line, it would pull the release on the rat trap, making it snap the glow stick. The illumination could be seen for quite a ways, and in the now quiet world, it would sound like the bark of a small rifle.

  Another trap they made also utilized a rat trap. They drilled a hole and sanded through one end so a shotgun shell would rest inside of it. When the trap was sprung, it would hit the end of the shell. To set it off, they nailed a trim nail into the tree, leaving a small nub sticking out. The trap was nailed closed with the shotgun shell primer almost pressed tight against the nail. Dozens of these were set out, but they made Blake nervous. One wrong move and the shell would explode outwards instead of down a straight path to the barrel. The triggers were also set up using the monofilament. Good thing grandpa hated rats, Blake thought.

  Then they pounded the sharpened pieces of scrap at odd angles into the ground. Blake wrapped some rusty barbed wire around it tightly, making a tangle foot trap in random areas heading up to the house. They cut all the three-quarter-inch black and galvanized pipe they found in the barn down to about eight-inch lengths. Pastor Duncan then drilled screws into one-inch caps, the sharp point pointing into the pipe. The caps screwed onto six-inch pieces of one-inch pipe, and a shotgun shell was inserted into the three-quarter-inch pipe and then lowered carefully into the one-inch pipe.