“Ettinger had a chip? He wasn’t in the military, was he?”
“Hardly. Seems he had some trouble with the law a few years back,” Gresch said. “There was something in his file about a traffic stop and a large amount of cocaine and amphetamines found in his possession.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Yes,” Gresch replied. “Most people think the Government started implanting felons around thirty years ago. Actually, they started doing that nearly fifty years ago, although it was kept quiet until the process was perfected.”
“Whatever it took for you to get here, I’m grateful you got here when you did,” Fields said.
“I’d always considered myself unlucky for carrying around that chip,” I said. “I can’t remember how many times I’d considered looking for a doctor who’d find it and dig it out.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Fields said.
“So am I. It’s funny how life always manages to land you a sucker punch when you least expect it.”
“I think it was more than a sucker punch.” Fields drank some coffee.
“It made things easier for all of us,” Shaw said.
“You said they tracked you two,” I said to Shaw. “What happened then?”
“A small group of Marines I’d served with at Brighton showed up at my mountain retreat and asked if I was interested in starting it up again. I learned soon after that they’d already gotten hold of Vaughn.”
I perked up. “You were at Brighton?”
He nodded. “I was Army, Vaughn a Marine. And yeah, we pulled the same duty you had. Riot control?”
“I went after veekays, mostly.”
Gresch huffed. “Who’d you piss off?”
“My CO thought it would give me character.”
“He was wrong.” Fields smiled and winked.
Shaw said, “Horrible duty. While we were in, the mortality rate was slightly more than seventy-five percent.”
“It was close to ninety during my tour.”
My original plan with the .380 now a distant memory, I stared at the two men in a much different perspective. They’d done the same things I’d done, seen the same things, and suffered the same horrors. Most of all, they had my cynical attitude—which went pretty far with me. It told me they felt basically the same about this mess as I did.
But none of this explained why they were picked to track me down. Nor did it explain who’d ordered them to do it, or what they were told to do once they found me.
“What did you mean when you mentioned getting the word out?”
“So far, there are nearly eight hundred at the settlement already,” Gresch said.
“Settlement?”
“That’s what it is right now. I guess you could say it’s roughly the same size as the average small town. But apparently it’s not the only one, and according the daily reports we’ve been receiving, the numbers of these settlements have been growing.”
“Eight hundred in this area alone?” Judging by what Fields and I had seen the last few months, I found that number unbelievable. “I take it there are a lot more still functioning than we’d realized.”
“Definitely,” Shaw said. “Even going by the original stats the Government came out with before the doping process took down many of the grids, a ninety percent hit rate, in a country of nearly half a billion people, leaves close to fifty million.”
“That’s roughly the equivalent of a California, or New York,” Gresch added. “In other words, a lot more people than we’d originally estimated are still wandering around.”
“Are you counting everyone?” Fields asked. “Don’t forget, there are the doped, as well as the ones who weren’t doped but went crazy, like Simon.”
“We can’t be certain of anything right now,” Gresch said. “We’re counting just those we’ve been able to track and who’ve shown up at the various settlements. Since the ones who’ve turned psychotic have also been chipped, we’re monitoring them closely, but not including them in our figures. The doped, unfortunately, can’t be monitored, and have to be discarded—at least, until we’re better organized, and have more manpower to handle the new workload.”
“That still leaves roughly fifty million to find and gather up,” Shaw said.
“So ... where are they?” Fields asked.
“That’s why we’ve got to find those who are chipped first. The more former military we can locate, the more we’ll have on staff.”
“What are you doing about the power?” I asked. “I thought most of it would already be down by now.”
“Not by any means. It nearly went belly-up in most of the larger areas, but now there are enough professionals around like us to monitor the grids and keep some of them running.”
“You did say you were an electrician.”
“I’ve got twenty years’ experience. Vaughn has just as many years as a computer hardware tech.”
“How many places do you have access to right now?” Fields asked.
“We can’t be certain. At this early stage, everyone’s struggling, working mostly by feel. This effort will take a while. Meanwhile, the more normals we can find, the faster we can get the process working.”
“Normals?”
“Those still functioning and capable of contributing. And the more professionals we can find and transport to the settlements, the easier this process will be.”
“We’re not unduly optimistic, believe me,” Gresch said. “This undertaking is going to be enormous. It’ll be years before we get everything up and running.”
“These eight hundred people you mentioned. Just who are they?”
“So far, we’ve managed to find electricians, computer techs, doctors, nurses, a few plumbers, and a number of builders.”
Shaw poured more coffee from the pot. “We can’t guarantee everyone will be still functioning in six months, of course. The doping process can take as long as a year or two to become evident and run its course.”
“I think you need to get these doctors together and work on some sort of antidote,” I said. “If some of us do get hit with it later on, it would be really nice if someone had some idea how to control it, or even slowing it down until they can find a cure.”
“For that,” Fields said, “they’d have to find out more about our immune systems. I imagine they’ll want to examine every one of us once we’re brought in. Maybe by that time, they can finally figure out why some of us haven’t succumbed to this.”
“Right now,” Shaw said, “we’re working on getting the lights back on and everything hooked up and running.”
“I can see why they’d want a nurse like Fields.” I couldn’t understand why they’d be interested in me. I had no intention of returning to active military status. “I ran a tiny auto detailing business. I’m not a mechanic, or anyone you’d actually need for something like this. And auto detailing isn’t exactly what you’d call important nowadays.”
“You’re normal,” Shaw said. “You were also military.”
“I was honorably discharged. That didn’t mean anything to Colonel Hughes or General Forbes when they abducted us and took us at gunpoint to their underground facility a few months ago. But it meant a lot to me, and it still does. Don’t judge me by what you saw me doing in those woods. That was an extreme case. It was an entirely personal matter. I’d never re-enlist. Not in a million years.”
“We’re not talking about starting up another military,” Gresch said. “We’re talking about bringing society back, however way we can manage.”
“You’re saying you won’t need a military once you get everything back into place?”
“We have no idea. I won’t lie to you. We might, later on. And if the other countries are doing the same things we are, I’d say yes, we’ll need our own military in a few years. But at the moment, things are too damned hectic to make any assumption.”
“Right now, we need people,” Shaw said. “Last we heard, they were gathering up as many abandon
ed trailers and modular homes as they could find in a hundred-mile diameter and hauling them to the settlement. The place is in a good location. Apparently it was once a very small town with a couple of hundred fairly-new homes already standing in a five-mile area. It’s rural, of course, near fresh water and miles of open country. We’re finding functioning farmers as well, so food shouldn’t be a problem. Once the satellites and the computers are all operational, you can sit at a desk and help us with our tracking program. Or you could volunteer for surveillance. It’ll be your choice.”
“That’s all you’ll want me to do?” It sounded too good to be true. I began feeling a con in the works.
“The most important thing right now,” Gresch said, “is rounding up as many able-bodied people as we can find. We’ve got to take back this country, get it running again.”
“That’s what General Forbes told me just before he ordered one of his TABs to escort me…”
“Forget all that,” Shaw said. “That idea’s dead. It died with him. And his clone.”
“Did it?”
Neither man replied.
“I know what this is all about,” I said. “I can see it happening all over again. That’s why the TABs were created. A New Order, as Colonel Hughes phrased it.”
“Was it Colonel Hughes who actually wanted it?” asked Shaw. “Or his clone?”
“It was their idea, wasn’t it?” Even after all these last few months, I found myself getting angry all over again. “I may not be the smartest guy on earth, but even I know that you just don’t unleash something you can’t control. That’s exactly what they did. They created the TABs and had no idea what they’d done until their superhuman monsters did what they were supposed to do by taking over.”
“Maybe it was the perfect idea during its initial stages,” Shaw said. “But like all good ideas, it became corrupted as they worked on it and began developing the concept while adding their own individual preferences. That happens, you know.”
“The better the idea,” Gresch said, “the more fragile it is. But that’s all in the past. Let’s not get into something that’s beyond our control.”
“We really have to start looking ahead,” Shaw added. “Everything is behind us.”
“Is it?” Despite their arguments, I still had my doubts.
A brief silence.
“How about it, Moss? Miss Fields?” Gresch’s expression was dead serious. “Do you really want to stay here and keep living like this? You’re prisoners in your own home, and you know it. You know it because every time you leave the house, you have to have a gun in your hand. You have to run to get into your vehicle, knowing full well someone could be hiding behind a tree in your own backyard, aiming a rifle at you. You know that every time you hear the wind, a thump, or even a crack that could be the house settling, you have to go for your gun and investigate because you’re afraid it could be someone sneaking around outside. Doesn’t it seem much more sensible to come with us and help us get everything started all over again? You’ve heard of the safety-in-numbers concept. In this case, it means everything.”
“You honestly think you can start everything up again?”
Shaw sighed. “We have to try. As long as there are still functioning survivors with the will to start over, we’ve got to find them and work together. We can’t just vegetate and wait for the end, can we?”
“Look what’s already happened to society. Modern technology brought us down, you know. Modern technology made it possible for a twelve-year-old computer wiz to hack into databases and corrupt the country’s entire banking system. I don’t know about you, but that kind of shit always made me, well, a little nervous and paranoid.”
“You’re not alone,” Gresch said.
“So what’s to prevent it from happening again?”
“Nothing,” Gresch said.
“It’s a new beginning,” Shaw said. “We’ve got to look at it that way. We can’t let ourselves give up.”
“It bothers me,” I said. “No matter how much I want to start all over, I can’t forget any of this. The computer killed everything for us. It was probably the greatest invention ever, but it was also the most deadly. It brought us all down. Starting over ... to me, that means bringing it all back.”
“Maybe you’re right, but even if history repeats itself...”
“History always repeats itself.”
“Even if it does, that’s out of our hands.”
“It usually is.”
Shaw smiled sheepishly. “The point is, we’re Americans. We’re survivors, hell-raisers, troublemakers, dissenters—whatever history wants to call us. We always have been. It’s in our blood. Otherwise, we would never have pulled away from England in the first place.”
“We really don’t have much of a choice now,” Gresch added.
Fields’ large, glittering green eyes bored into my head. I could tell what she was thinking. Everything that had happened to us in the last few days—her abduction, our encounter with the bikers, Don lying dead in the bedroom of his father’s house, and the fact that I was nearly killed less than thirty feet outside this house—had made this decision easy for her.
We’d lived through entirely too much fear and terror since coming here. We’d never been able to leave the house unarmed. When we did leave the house, we were forced to turn off all the lights and lock and double-lock the doors and windows before sneaking up to the garage and getting in the truck. We hid and snuck around to avoid being shot and killed more times than I wanted to remember. We fashioned booby traps every night before bed. We hid keys and guns everywhere. We kept a gun within our reach at all times. I couldn’t imagine us living like this the rest of our lives. I couldn’t even imagine us surviving like this much longer.
But even though I could not find it in my heart to fully agree with what Gresch and Shaw were talking about, I had to think of Fields. How much more could she take before she’d had enough? She was a tough lady, but this harsh existence could take a toll on anyone. Hell, she’d nearly caused her own demise just a few days ago. I didn’t want to subject her to this anymore, and as I thought about it more logically, I realized I didn’t want to subject myself to it, either.
I stared at her beautiful troubled face and realized once again how much I loved her, how much I needed her, and how much I wanted to take care of her. She didn’t sign on to play war games for the rest of her life. Neither had I, and I certainly didn’t think either of us should—especially since it now looked like the time had finally come when we no longer had to.
I gave her a slight nod, and she smiled and took my hand and squeezed it. We both knew what we had to do.
But even though it now looked like the time had actually come for the sun to shine again, I knew what else it meant. We had to move away from my childhood home. I also knew that once we did, I’d probably never see it again. I could walk up the hill one more time to say goodbye to the graves where my mother, my uncle, and my best friend, Reed, lay in eternal peace. From then on, I’d see my grandparents’ farm only in memory, and would no longer be able to occupy the same rooms or share the same space my family had shared the last hundred years. I could no longer wander the woods, as I’d done with my Uncle Joe those few precious weeks before I lost him, or stand outside on the front porch with Fields at night, holding her hand while we watched the stars and waited to see one or two of them sparkle.
But as I thought about this, I realized what else it could mean, and this strange feeling of warmth made me happier and more relieved than I’d been in a long time. We’d be free again, and would no longer have to live in fear and darkness. I knew at that moment that living in fear and darkness is the same thing as death.
Still holding her hand, I turned back to Gresch and Shaw. A soft wave of sadness drifted through my soul, but my heart fluttered with excitement at that same moment.
“Where exactly is this place?” I asked in a soft voice.
TWENTY
According to Sh
aw and Gresch, the new settlement sat in a wooded valley about a hundred miles north, half an hour south of Jamestown, New York.
Fields and I spent our final day on my grandparents’ farm packing the van. I’d wanted to take the Silverado, but we had too much to bring along with us. This trip had to be practical, not sentimental. I didn’t want to leave any of the guns or ammo, so I bundled up the guns in blankets and piled them next to the six metal ammo canisters I’d shoved in a neat row in the back. The clothing we’d accumulated in the last few months filled up the rest of the available space. I’d put as much of the food with us as I could fit in two large coolers. Shaw and Gresch told us there would be provisions where we were going, but anything we could bring would help the situation.
This, of course, brought everything into a frightening prospective. We were leaving the farm for good this time and would probably never be back to see it again.
The reality of it hit me hard, and I immediately zoned out. For the longest time I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at the knickknacks my grandparents had collected over the years, when I was a boy. When I was finally able to pull my eyes away from the walls and shelves, I found my gaze fixed on the old gas stove. Then I noticed the peeling cabinets, the overhead light, and finally the kitchen table.
We’d all sat there—Fields, Uncle Joe, Reed and me—talking, laughing, eating, drinking and enjoying each other’s company the short time we’d had together. When we’d first come into this house, Fields, Reed and I had sat at this table while Uncle Joe told me my mother had died. Later that night, after I’d visited her fresh grave, he fixed cold cuts for all of us and put coffee, beer and whiskey on the table. Just a few short weeks later, he came in for breakfast one morning, sat down at the head of this table and began spilling his food and slurring his words. Not long after that, he couldn’t remember his own name. Then he was gone.
Years before, I’d sat at this same table with my mother many times. Mom was young and beautiful back then, always smiling and happy. Whenever we visited my grandparents, she acted like a little girl. It was strange—one of those many childhood mysteries I never really understood until I grew up and figured it out logically. But it will always remain among my fondest and clearest memories.
After Darkness Fell Page 21
