“I was talking with Jameson and Willis. They like you and trust you. I just think we need to go somewhere safe. All of this seems like we’re heading toward the same outcome as my family,” said Luke, pointing to the now-buried bodies of the attackers.
“You and I agree that we need to get out of here, but not until we bury the bishop and the other two. Then we can start talking about leaving.”
“Okay, sorry for bothering you. I’ll leave you be,” Luke said and turned around quickly.
“Wait a minute.”
“Yeah?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Don’t matter to me, anywhere but here.”
Just then, gunfire cracked in the distance.
Sebastian sat up, his fatigue replaced by adrenaline.
“So who—”
“Ssshh,” Sebastian said.
More single-fire gunshots echoed in the distance.
“Sounds far away. Looks like we’re not the only ones having issues,” joked Sebastian.
“Hey, what are you going to do about Brandon?”
“Nothing. I’m not his parent, and looking back on yesterday, I have to say I think what he did was right.”
“But he’s only twelve years old,” said Luke, shocked by Sebastian’s cavalier attitude.
“Luke, I don’t know you, but I’ll open up a bit. What I’ve seen from almost day one after the attacks is people doing crazy things. I judged them for their lack of morality. I placed myself on this pedestal as some kind of moral authority. I’ve witnessed a lot of crazy shit in my day, but what happened yesterday was the most fucked-up shit I have ever seen. You know something? I froze yesterday. I found these men in the barn, I held them at gunpoint as if I was waiting for the police to come. I looked at these people as people. But what I have come to realize is that I’ve been the crazy one. I’ve been a fool. Brandon sees the world for what it’s become.
“If we think we can apply the same moral code we had almost two months ago, we will end up dead. Those people who came in here were once neighbors and acquaintances of the bishop’s. Something changed for them, though: They were hungry; they figured we had something and they were going to take it.” Sebastian paused for second to think about how he wanted to express himself, then continued.
“The light bulb finally went off when I saw Annaliese step outside and start shooting. These weren’t her neighbors anymore, they were her adversaries. We have to pick sides in this long battle now. You, for one, have seen the horrors played out. I know you’re looking for structure and something to help explain this chaos. Why somebody attacked us weeks ago and caused all of this is unknown, and frankly it fucking doesn’t matter. What matters now is we have to protect our own. We have to fight and be willing to kill, like Brandon. You sounded shocked that I didn’t jump at scolding him. Hell, I kinda applaud him for taking the action I should have taken. He was able to see the trees through forest.”
Sebastian stopped again. He hated people who preached, and he knew that was exactly what he was doing now. Tiring of his own his voice, he finished by saying, “If I were to go back weeks ago, before all of this, I would agree with you. But I’m now awake. There’s no one coming to save us. It’s up to us, plain and simple.”
40 miles east of Barstow, California
“When were you going to tell me this is how everyone felt?” Samantha shouted at Nelson.
“Calm down, Samantha,” he pleaded.
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t you dare! My husband and son are out there, and what you’re now telling me is everyone here wants to leave because they think I’m delusional, as Sandy said. What would you do? Huh? Would you leave your family, or would you search and search? I can’t give up, Nelson, and I won’t!” Samantha’s screaming had the entire group staring.
“Of course I don’t think we should stop. I’m with you,” he responded.
“Are you really?”
“Of course. I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t help. I know I needed to protect you from them. All you need to focus on is finding Gordon and Hunter.”
“What the hell are you looking at?” Samantha yelled at Sandy, Mike, and the others.
“Samantha, please calm down,” said Nelson “We need to set out today. We’re losing daylight,” he went on, attempting to encourage her.
Samantha turned away from him and walked to the edge of the camp. She looked north toward the desert.
“My dad has volunteered to go with you,” Nelson suggested.
“Where are you going?” she asked, still looking toward the desert.
“I think we need to split up. We can cover more ground. I’ll head to the mountains, there,” said Nelson. He had stepped up beside her and was pointing to a range of mountains to the northeast.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m not going to answer that question; you know I’m with you on this. If they want to go, fuck ’em. My dad and I are here, and we’ll help you and Haley.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to get geared up. I’ll see you later,” said Nelson, touching her arm.
She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you again.”
“No problem. That’s what friends do, right?” Nelson walked away, leaving Samantha at the edge of the camp.
“Where are you? I can’t do this without you. Please, God, let me find them, please,” Samantha said, looking out toward the mountains.
Tijuana, Mexico
“Where have you been?” asked Alfredo angrily.
“I was taking care of issues on the northern route! So now you’re keeping tabs on me?” Pablo challenged.
“I have to. Ever since you’ve been playing around up north, you’ve been shirking your responsibilities to your family. I thought we’d had this conversation. Did I not impress it on you then? If not, let me tell you again but more clearly. Stop fucking around. Stop these games. We are running a business and we need to take advantage of the changes to our marketplace. I need your help. Does that make it clearer?” said Alfredo. He rarely yelled, but his son’s behavior and absence were frustrating him.
Pablo stood and walked to the bookshelf. He picked up a Waterford crystal vase and looked at it closely, admiring the rainbows it cast when the sunlight hit it. Placing it back down, he turned and finally addressed Alfredo. “Father, I’m sorry that you’re upset with me. I want nothing more than for you to be proud of me. However, this is not working for me.”
Alfredo asked, “What’s not working for you?”
“This, here, our relationship. I’m done taking orders from you. You see, Father, you’re a dinosaur. You’re incapable of seeing the future. You think that we can turn what has happened into a business. You’re wrong, Father. You don’t have a true grasp on what has happened. You’re thinking you can sell things. But where is your marketplace? Tell me. Our currency has collapsed. The American dollar is destroyed. Who’s going to buy your generators? With what money? You’re an old fool.”
“How dare you talk to me that way?” Alfredo screamed. His temper was building. No one talked to him that way, and if they did, they never left his office alive.
“I’m doing something that will truly change the world. I wanted you to be a part of it, but that’s not going to happen,” Pablo retorted.
“What are you talking about? You were always such a dreamer. Always gazing into the stars with fantasies. Wake up, Son,” said Alfredo, his tone softer now. He approached Pablo and stopped a foot in front of him. “Pablo, my boy. What are you doing? Oh, such a dreamer you are.” Alfredo reached out and tapped his cheek.
“Don’t patronize me,” snapped Pablo, slapping his hand away.
“My son, you’re so naïve. You can’t do anything without me.”
“Not true, Father. I’ve been planning this day for a while,” said Pablo, who then reached in his jacket and pulled out a handheld radio. “Andre, you can proceed.”
“What is th
is? Who are you talking to?” asked Alfredo, throwing his arms up in the air, frustrated.
Moments later the sound of automatic gunfire erupted throughout the house and outside.
Alfredo raced to his security cameras and adjusted them to see what was happening. On the monitors he saw in beautiful high definition his men being killed or executed by men he had never seen before.
“Pablo, what are you doing? My son, what are you doing?” asked Alfredo desperately. He reached into the top drawer and pulled out a small handgun. As he began to turn around, he felt the hard tip of Pablo’s gun against the back of his head.
“Put the gun down, Father. I don’t want to hurt you.”
His hands shaking, Alfredo dropped the pistol on the floor and turned to face his son.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Pablo said.
Gunfire now rang out just outside the doors that led to his office. Alfredo jumped each time he heard a shot. “What have you done? What have you done?”
“Not to sound cliché, I’ve done what I had to. You made your decision. I presented to you numerous times the biggest opportunity the Juarez family would ever get and you scoffed at me. Your thinking is outdated. Now, please stand up. This meeting is over. I’m sorry, Father, but you’re now retired.”
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
Cruz was having a difficult time thinking with so much cross talk going on at the conference table. The communications coming in from the midwestern states were bad.
The governors of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas were reporting hundreds of thousands of survivors entering their states. What tent cities they could muster weren’t enough. All the governors were requesting immediate assistance from the federal government.
“Everybody, be quiet,” Cruz loudly said to his assembled staff.
Around the table sat Baxter and Dylan, along with a few new to his advisory team.
Bethanny Wilbur, his new secretary of state, was a communications officer at Cheyenne Mountain. She had recently been assigned to the base after being promoted to major. Wilbur was a smart and savvy woman. Given her educational achievements, she could have gone anywhere to work. Upon graduating from Brown University with a master’s in global and transcultural communications, she chose a life as an Air Force officer. Her relationship with her father, a retired general, was the biggest influence for this decision. She was a steadfast believer in the government and the military as a force for good.
The other three people in the room were lower deputy secretaries for Baxter and Wilbur.
Like Conner, Cruz had not grown his cabinet to pre-attack size. Logic and need had won over. Conner had appointed only the secretary of defense, who now dealt with everything from domestic to foreign relations and defense. He had below him dozens working to handle physical defense, recovery, and rebuilding.
When Baxter replaced him, his first request was to separate out the foreign relations. Especially with the responses from many global leaders following the nuclear strikes, Cruz needed someone who could negotiate with them to provide aid.
Cruz had proven to be an effective politician while governor of Florida, but what he lacked was the presence that Conner had. Conner could command a room.
“Everyone, quiet!” yelled a flustered Cruz, after his first request failed.
The room fell silent, and all eyes turned to him.
“Now we have a major problem back east. I called this meeting to discuss our options. Obviously we don’t have a consensus. What I need are clear options. So, I will start with Baxter and go to each person. I want you to tell me what you think we should do, how you propose it be done, and why. No interrupting the speaker. Now, General, please start,” said Cruz, taking a seat at the head of the table.
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I will be blunt as you all already know my position. What I want to delve into is why,” said Baxter, walking to the map of the United States hanging on the wall behind Cruz. “A week ago we were receiving initial reports of large migrations. Obviously, those reports were accurate, but they did not really shed light on the human tragedy that is happening. The East is a total loss. We all agree on that.
“We all agreed that we would focus on providing aid to the midwestern states because they weren’t heavily affected by radioactive contamination. But here’s the reality. We cannot feed the numbers we are hearing about. In fact we can’t provide support to half. Many of you just found out about the government stockpiles of food, water, and other provisions we had positioned at strategic locations around the country. We hardened these underground bunkers against an EMP. Some of you want us to open those locations to the people. I disagree, and here’s why. We don’t have enough food. The sheer numbers coming into these states are just too overwhelming.
“I am not cruel. I know some of you think my proposal is inhumane. But we’re now at a place where we need to make a tough decision. Do we open these stores and deplete them? Without aid coming in from our allies, we won’t be able to replenish them. We have enough food to feed each one of these people for a couple days. Then what? It doesn’t do anything. We need to keep that food so we have a functioning government. This includes us, our military, and those governors and their staffs,” said Baxter, standing like a grounded statue at the head of the room. When he talked he used his hands to gesture.
“I promised to be blunt, and I will conclude with this. Mr. President, we have to face the facts that we cannot do anything for these people. Using what resources we have left will only leave us unable to proceed with Conner’s plan. I say we contact all the governors and tell them we can only provide enough provisions to take care of them, their staffs, and their families. We can do this by transporting them to these bunker locations. In a nutshell, I think we need to take everyone underground until the bulk of the deaths have ended. We need to keep our forces off the coast. Bringing them ashore risks them.”
“Mr. Vice President, this is insane!” bellowed Dylan.
“Quiet, Mr. McLatchy.”
“But, this is unspeakable!”
Cruz shot back, “Enough, Dylan. Be quiet and let the general speak. None of this is easy. I haven’t made my decision, but we can’t act immature and emotional. Now please keep your opinions to yourself till you’re called upon.”
Dylan sat quietly, but the rage inside him would have been deafening. His face was contorted and his posture stiff. Dylan was stressed, but most of his stress stemmed from not having done a thing to help find Conner. He had promised Julia, but since then he had only offered advice. Deep down he felt he needed to go out and help, but the fear of the outside world prevented him. Shame filled the reservoirs of his heart, but he masked it with anger.
“General, please proceed,” Cruz directed Baxter.
“Again, I promised to be blunt, so I will finish with this: What we must do is protect this government and our surrogates so that whoever survives the months ahead will have a system in place from which to rebuild.”
The weight of Baxter’s words was enough to keep everyone, including Dylan, silent. Many in the room didn’t even look up; they just stared at the papers laid before them. The others’ eyes were fixed on the general. Deep down, all knew that he was right. What he’d said struck at their deepest survival instincts.
Wilbur kept staring at the map. Not wanting to wait her turn, she chimed in. “Mr. Vice President. I disagree with Baxter, but not on the merits that Mr. McLatchy mentioned. If we are to have any success in getting our allies to come back to the table, we can’t be perceived to have abandoned our people. While I understand General Baxter’s reasoning, and I would add that it’s reasonable, I am making inroads with the Australians. However, it would be a one-two punch if we go forward with this plan. I suggest we determine what we have and divide up a percentage of it, leaving us and other government entities enough to live off for six months. I believe by then I will have secured an arrangement for aid.”
Cruz rocked in his chair, his face fi
rmly planted in his hand. He stared at the secretary of state and didn’t respond right away. The silence was unsettling, as Cruz deliberated between the two different plans.
Dylan attempted to say something, but Cruz held up his index finger and shook his head.
“General Baxter, your plan has many merits, but I have to agree with Major Wilbur. We need the aid from Australia and others. We can’t do something that will isolate us any more. I realize it’s a risk, but we must try. General, please proceed with her plan. I want it implemented immediately. Please contact the ARG heading toward Portland and have it pull into the Gulf of Mexico. There we can use their aircraft for support.
“Major Wilbur, contact the governors of Hawaii and Alaska. Ask them what they can provide in the way of ships. Have those ships head to Portland to support our rebuilding. I know they are both seeking independence, but remind them that the equipment they have is the property of the United States. Strike a deal with them. We will officially recognize them as independent nations, but they need to support us,” said Cruz, speaking quickly.
He looked around the room and finished by saying, “People, this country is depending on us. We can’t let them down. Soon, some of us will be in Portland setting up a new capital and a new beginning for our country. I want to thank you all for everything that you have done to this point. No one knows how this all will end, but I am honored to be here beside you, as we set out to get the United States back on its feet.”
JANUARY 15, 2014
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
– Japanese Proverb
40 miles east of Barstow, CA
“Right here. There’s a base of some kind. It’s very small and there are people there. But get this, they don’t look military,” said Nelson excitedly as he pointed on the map to an area that showed only desert.
“You sure it’s not Fort Irwin?” asked Samantha.
The Long Road - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The New World) Page 19
