“Yep,” I interrupted. “He’s a Guynoceros.”
“What the hell have you been doing while I was gone?”
“Found a few friends on my last run. We have a whole new set of problems now.”
“That circus bunch Collins was talking about?”
“Yep. A bunch of them are Agents. Jimmy says they’re mostly corporate guards, but a couple are higher level. On top of that, they seem to have an Imprinter, and they’ve been printing a psycho onto anyone they damn well please.”
“Isn’t Jimmy one of the highest-skilled imprints?”
“Yeah, but he’s just one guy,” I said. “He could take out several of the clowns, but not fifty of them. I don’t even know where I fall in that bunch, but I can’t take fifty Agents, either.”
“What are Agents doing there?”
“Guarding three Corporate Heads.”
“Son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “So what happened?”
“I had to give a lot of damned supplies to get the slaves they were holding,” I said. “We need an alternative. That’s what you guys are doing. You’re scouting an alternative to giving them all they want. You’ll be scouting the nuclear plant at Limerick.”
“You’re thinking of getting the power turned back on.”
“If Spriggs is right, that plant could run the city for decades before we have to move to coal production. We’ve got the hydroelectric plant that’ll run everything we need up here. And the output needed from the plant down there would be a fraction of what it used to be.”
“And the Circus would have to meet in the middle if they want power.”
“Exactly. It should help in dealing with anyone in the city. We’ll have food and power. Everyone needs the first and wants the second.”
“It sounds like a workable plan,” he said. “You know it won’t be easy.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
“No doubt.” He sighed. “I got to go pack a few things and get a shower before I go out again. I’ll catch up before you camp tonight.”
“See if Terry will join you,” I said. “Spriggs needs some of the best with him. Can’t afford to lose him. He knows way too much.”
“Definitely. How many guys you already have going with him?”
“Gary has twenty Guardsmen with him. You on the Barrett, with Terry as spotter. Try your best not to let anything happen to our engineer.”
“I agree with that wholeheartedly. I’m about to take a hot shower, and he’s the reason I can.”
“I was thinking about the electric farm equipment of Sam’s that’s keeping us from having to harvest all the damn corn by hand. But the more I think about it, the showers probably have more impact on our lives.” I chuckled.
“Yep. No doubt about that at all.”
Guess you have to have priorities in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 32
I rode ahead of the caravan to meet the approaching line of wagons. Kalet rode ahead of his folks and stopped alongside of me.
“You look a little rough around the edges, David.”
He had a bandage around his head and his arm was in a sling.
“Ran into a bunch of cannibals. We had a difference of opinions. They wanted to eat us, and we didn’t want to be eaten.”
“Looks like the not being eaten won out.”
“Yep, but there were a lot of the bastards. Had a hard time figuring out where they got all the leather they were wearing until they got in close.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“There are no tanneries in Philly.”
“Nope, I don’t want to know.”
“We burned all the bodies and left that area behind us. After we picked up all the brass, of course.”
“I’m guessing Alan will have a bunch of reloading to do.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, is there any good news?” I asked.
“We found another place like that Wilderman fellow established. A woman named Kathrop ended up in control of it. She was management in Obsidian. Pretty low management, but she had an armory under the office she ran. Gave her weapons to those she trusted and held the zone.”
“She decent?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty decent. She’s a hardass, but she takes care of her folks.”
“Glad to hear it. We can use all the good ones we can get.”
“Also found some folks in a bunker out to the east. They were good folks and welcomed the food. They traded some books for extra rations. I know we aren’t as well stocked on books as you want to be, so I dealt for some of the stuff they had extra copies of. Found some interesting stuff we might be able to use. Got a few dozen fiction novels as well. We have some readers out on the Farms.”
“I’m one of them,” I said. “Most places have already started burning anything that’ll burn. We got lucky with the natural gas that’s still piped through the city. That’s still working at the moment. I expect that to change soon enough. Books will be a lot rarer to find when the gas stops flowing.”
We moved to the side of the road as his wagons started to roll by. There were some people I could see hadn’t really recovered from what they’d seen on this trip. It was written in their expressions. I’d seen it many times while fighting in the war with JalCom. A lot of new recruits weren’t prepared for what they saw when it got really ugly.
“I guess it was pretty rough?”
“They had leather covering their shields with faces stitched into them, Zee. Who does that? Who tans human skin and uses it for armor? It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t that long ago people walked to work down those streets. How does something like that happen?”
“The evil we’ve found in just this small chunk of what used to be Obsidian makes me glad the bombs took most of the rest of it. I’ve seen some of the darkness that lurks in the Human soul, David. When this happens, it’s like watering and fertilizing that darkness. A person has to fight the darkness harder than before, or succumb to it. Too many succumb.”
“All I can say is, thank God for the Farms. You guys kept the darkness at bay.”
“We never reached the bottom of that pit where there was nothing to eat and no way out. I hope we never have to see that darkness grow out here.”
“I think you’re wrong about that. Most of the people out here came from in there,” he said. “I saw that bottom and chose to leave rather than succumb. The majority of us have seen it. Some of us have horrible memories of things we did while inside that monstrosity. The Farms gave us sanctuary and a place to redeem ourselves.”
“I guess you’re right. There’s a group of us who haven’t seen that bottom. I hope we don’t ever have to make the choices the others had to make.”
“Some of us have seen the pit in different ways,” he said. “You were in that pit when you returned from the city, all shot to hell. When you came to, you were at that point of choice. We saw it, and I won’t lie, many of us were scared of the choice you would make.”
“I’m just one guy,” I said.
“You’re one guy with a brother who would follow you into hell, and hundreds of us that would have gone with you. We would’ve burned everything if you’d asked. Instead, you asked us to save it.”
“That was Pop.”
“Pop isn’t the one who asked us to save it. He asked you to. You’re the one who came to the Guardsmen and asked us to save that cesspool. I’m not sure if I would have done it if Pop had asked. I saw you come out of that pit and choose to do something good. If I’d said no, I wouldn’t have been able to live with the shame.”
“The longer we work at it, the more I feel it was right,” I said. “A lot of people don’t deserve what I would have done with that sort of power.”
“Things you chose not to do. Not because you couldn’t do them. Because you wouldn’t. And that’s what we see when we look at you, Zee. And that’s why we go back, even after seeing crazy bastards with
human skin armor charging out of a zone to kill us. We’ll go back again and again until we save that place, or kill them all, depending on how far down in the pit they are.”
He turned his horse toward the Farms as the last wagon rolled past. “Now I’m going to go take a hot shower and try to scrub what I just saw from my brain. Hopefully this arm won’t be in the way too much. Could say I injured it fighting cannibals, but I sprained something loading a barrel after the fight. It fell backward and cut my head, too.”
I chuckled. “You might just not mention it at all and let everyone come to their own conclusion. I was seeing you in hand to hand combat with cannibals in human skin armor.”
“It does sound a little grander than dropping a barrel on my head.”
“A little.”
He chuckled and lightly nudged the horse to get him moving.
I watched the wagon master ride toward home. I didn’t know why the Guardsmen had chosen to follow when they were asked. The task of saving the city was daunting, to say the least. The revelation that they’d come because I asked was overwhelming. I’d asked them all to put their lives on the line for strangers, and they did. Hearing that they would’ve followed me down that darker path was terrifying. It was also enlightening. Perhaps things could be better for some zones with the removal of a few rather than destroying the whole zone. Would removing the Corporate Heads make the clowns better, or worse? I didn’t see a way to do that against what defended them. There were limits to what we could do, and it’s important to know your limitations in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 33
“These guys are new,” I said.
“Yes,” Jimmy answered.
“Which ones?” Phil asked. “I can’t see much more than blurry shapes this far out.”
“We see a bit better than normal,” I said. “There’re a couple of new guys waiting for us up there.”
“Is Daniel with them?”
“Yep,” I said. “The others are probably new to the zone.”
It took another twenty minutes to get to the edge of the city. We’d passed several old subdivisions already. Most of the houses were empty, and a lot of them had been burned, but they were like that before, and none of the damage was fresh.
Of the two men, I pegged the one in the rear as the dangerous one. The guy standing with Daniel, the leader of the first zone, was about the same age as Pop. He was thin, but looked capable enough. But the guy in the rear was something else. I was pretty sure he was an Agent.
“Be ready, Jimmy.”
“I see him. He’s an Agent.”
“Let’s go see what they want.”
I raised my hand to halt the wagons well out from the small group and rode forward. Jimmy dropped from the wagon and strode alongside.
“Zee,” Daniel said in greeting. “You look like you’re about to hurt someone. These are good guys. They showed up last week so they could be here to greet you when you came in.”
“This guy I could hurt,” I said looking at the older fellow. “That one I’m not so sure about.”
The guy in the rear grinned, and the older one stepped forward.
“My name is Samuel Mardin,” he said. “We’re peaceful unless attacked.”
“I’m Pratt, Zebadiah Pratt. This is my brother Jimmy.”
“This dangerous fellow behind me is Grady O’Neal.”
“Same one who took the Rift? You don’t look like him, but I know how it works. Bodies change sometimes.”
“Yeah, I was at the Rift. I seem to remember a sergeant went by the name of Pratt. You do look like him.”
“I was there.”
He nodded.
“The reason I came here to meet you is my zone isn’t readily accessible to folks, and we need trade as much as any others,” Mardin said. “I hoped we could set up a trade agreement.”
“Isn’t accessible?” I asked.
“We’re down in the tunnels under the city. Have you wondered how the water is still flowing? It’s largely due to my people keeping the pipes flowing.”
“Then you’ve saved countless lives,” I said.
“We needed water to survive, and it was easy enough to keep the water going where we could reach. We’ve expanded a great deal since O’Neal chose to join the cause.”
“When you find areas with sporadic or no water, they’re areas we haven’t been able to get to. But what you offer is something we need dearly.”
“I get that,” I said. “Where’s the best place to set up for our trades with your people?”
“My zone is centered beneath the area under the water treatment plants along the river. We can set up trade at any of the plants that pull from the river. Waste treatment is beyond our means, but treatment of river water is much easier.”
“How do you run the pumps?”
“Shortly before the Fall, a new plant was put in place. A ‘Green’ plant. The river turns the wheels that power the turbines that pump the water. It keeps the pressure at about thirty PSI. Not as good as the electric pumps that boosted that to a higher PSI, but it suffices to keep water to the areas we can.”
“It just so happens we’re on the waterfront tomorrow. We’ll be camping here for the night before riding in. I have some business to discuss with Daniel about those lovely warehouses over there.”
“We’ll return and have our people ready for your arrival.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Then we’ll be waiting, Mister Pratt.”
“We’ll be looking for you,” I said and pulled a map from my pack. “If you don’t mind, would you mark where we need to be?”
He looked at the map and his eyebrows raised. “You’ve been busy.”
“We mark out the zones as best we can as we go through. Sometimes they’re different by the time we come through again, but most are still the same.”
“And some are different after you ride through,” he said.
“If you’re talking about the Blues, they decided to attack. Killed six of my men and wounded twelve.”
“I hear there are no Blues left.”
“We’re here to help people,” I said, “but if you hurt my people, I’ll burn you down and salt the earth where the ashes lay.”
“That’s a far more terrifying statement after what happened to the Blues. Even more so after the latest news. It seems the Barrows is now occupied by a huge pyre that’s still burning.”
“Cannibals?” I asked. “Flayed human skin for armor? That the bunch you’re talking about?”
He nodded. “My people stayed well clear of the Barrows.”
“They’re not a worry anymore,” I said. “They attacked. They lost.”
“I wonder if you would’ve traded with them if they hadn’t attacked.”
“The second they came out of that place with human skin tanned and used for their armor, I think our negotiations would’ve been at an end. I wasn’t present for that particular event, but my people did exactly what they should’ve done. Wiped that evil shit from the face of the Earth. Some people don’t deserve to survive, even in this Fallen World.”
* * * * *
Chapter 34
“That was a little disturbing,” Phil said. “Vegans?”
“Vegans are always disturbing,” I said. “These seemed a little fanatical, though.”
“Glad Angie is at the Farm. I’m not sure if she could’ve kept her mouth shut.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “I could just hear her saying, ‘You don’t eat meat? What the hell is wrong with you?’ We’d have been fighting before we got through the zone.”
“Sad but true,” he said. “She’s better off doing what she’s doing anyway. That primer she’s been writing is invaluable. Who knew all those herbs were good for medicines? She was a font of outdated facts before the Fall and a source of invaluable data after.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Glad she’s heading up the herb gathering. Witch Hazel, Ginseng, a
nd Black Cohosh are all over the place.”
“Yep.” He pointed. “There’s Orthodox.”
“We hang a left here and stop at this zone. Then we’ll move on down to the water plant. Mardin seems to be a pretty stand-up guy. He could’ve just made sure his people had water and left the rest to die.”
“He does have that going for him. It would be rough living in the damn sewers, though.”
“There are tunnels tied to old subway routes down there that aren’t even connected to the sewers. How do they see down there, though? Maybe all the electric isn’t out.”
“That would be something good to ask him as we sell to his folks. Are we going to do any recruiting while we’re there?”
“We will if we need to,” I said.
“You mean if there are slaves,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“What if they just want to get out of the tunnels?”
“I don’t know yet. If people want to leave, I can’t see making them stay. That’s slavery by a different name.”
“Yep.” He looked back toward the zone we’d left. “There weren’t any slaves being held by the Vegans.”
“Something seemed really off about those guys, though. There was a lot of crazy in their eyes.”
“Yes there was,” he said. “They were creepy as hell.”
“Not sure about them. They may be a problem later. It was odd that not a single one of them wanted to come with us. Most zones have a few at least.”
“Not a one showed interest in leaving. Maybe that’s what creeped me out about them. Let’s hope these folks are less weird.”
We’d covered several zones since the Vegans, but they’d been the strangest so far. They were centered at a cancer center next to an enormous graveyard and a good-sized patch of woodland. They were odd, to say the least.
We’d driven down Orthodox Street for several empty blocks before finding several other zones and a collapsed building, causing us to have to work our way south through two more zones.
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