Rolling Hunger

by R W Krpoun

  “Did they kick him out of the Army for that?” JD was aghast.

  “Nope, his uncle was a Senator, he has a cousin who had served on the White House staffs of two Democrat Presidents, and dear old dad had major bucks for political contributions. The best they could do was keep him from getting a combat command and tried to keep him from making General. Lucky for all of us his dad lost everything in the real estate bubble thing in 2008, and uncle Senator finally dropped dead. They managed to unload him before he got anyone killed.”

  “Great. We’re serving with George Armstrong Custer,” Dyson rolled his eyes.

  “Nah, it’s not so bad. The whole train philosophy is that the contractor groups operate separately. Personally I think it’s a great idea if we can get our vehicles on and off the train without damaging them. It will save lots of fuel and let us bring in much more salvage in less time, which will translate into more money for us.”

  “You haven’t mentioned Hodges,” Addison pointed out.

  “Yeah.” Marv surveyed the other Gnomes. “The train option cleared away Dyson’s needs and puts us in Minnesota pretty quick. If we can get a line on what Hodges is up to we could have a chance to grab him. The bounty and the boost to our reputation would be a very good thing for us.”

  “Can you get a line on where he was heading?” JD asked Addison.

  “Maybe,” the dark Gnome shrugged. “I’ve been working on it from a couple different angles. Let me see what I come up with.”

  “OK, the big problems we have to solve are ensuring that there is enough winter clothing on hand, and how to secure our place and our trailers while we’re gone. This is a decent location and I want to keep it.”

  Before the outbreak “Herc’ Holloway had been the struggling proprietor of Herc’s Gas, Guns, and Groceries, a small multi-role business that also served first-rate ribs and pulled-pork sandwiches. When the 618 virus hit he found himself sitting squarely in the center of a safe zone with a business devoted to the three most in-demand commodities around. In the few free hours he had had in the last month he praised the Lord that he had never bothered to haul the dusty leftover inventory from his father’s failed Army Surplus store to the dump, or sold as scrap the sixty Carcano carbines his old man had picked up for a song in ’62 and hadn’t had the heart to sell after JFK got tagged by Oswald using the exact same model.

  Unlike his father Herc was an unsentimental man when it came to business and in any case he had no use for politicians in general, Democrats in particular, or people from the East Coast. He did have a clear understanding that he was a very small frog in this suddenly-changing pond and that time was money. The big fish would come in and get things organized in due course, but in the meantime a small but hard-working frog could make himself a good deal larger, and with luck could become sizeable enough to be useful to the big boys, and eventually sell out, leaving the table a winner.

  He had sold gas, guns, and groceries to the right sort of people, and had parlayed the dusty old military gear and obsolete but still zombie-lethal carbines into friends and connections. He had realized that the spirited informal volunteers and the corporate security forces that were steadily easing the former out of the picture were the cash cow of the future. Friends were important, and new struggling companies needed credit and the occasional loan, favors that meant that cases of beer and booze could come in on the down-low and end up in a honky-tonk catering to the government’s hired guns in which Herc had a quiet half-ownership.

  He had sold his multi-purpose store to the Federal Government for five times its pre-outbreak value and moved his operation into the Quonset-style warehouse that had once housed his father’s business. He held court in an office decorated in Patriot, Texas, and Near-Porn-Commercial-Advertising themes, doing business with contract security types and people who didn’t trust the set-up of the Patriot Homesteads.

  “So how did you guys do? You weren’t out long,” Herc popped the top on a soda and leaned back in his executive chair, propping his boondock work boots on the top of his battered government-surplus gray metal desk, the back of his John Deere gimme cap nearly touching a poster displaying nearly all of a curvy oiled model clutching a socket wrench. Herc was a big, broad man running to fat and baldness, but there was still layers of muscle on him from his days as an oil roughneck, and above the sandy walrus mustache that was going gray his eyes were hard and shrewd.

  “Two tons of food and about a ton of personal hygiene items from a grocery store just south of the state line,” JD popped his own soda and took a sip. “DSR called us back early but gave us credit for a full load. We just turned the stuff in.”

  “Sweet deal. What did the Feds want with you?”

  “We’re being tapped for a showcase job, testing new mobility concepts with a reality TV crew riding our coattails.”

  “No kidding? You’re gonna be on TV?”

  “Nah, they got a celeb to do the face time stuff. Still, its bonus pay and rep-building, so it’s all good.”

  “Who’s the celeb?’

  “Dirk Chambers. Every heard of him?’

  Herc’s boots hit the bare concrete floor. “Dirk Chambers!”

  “Yeah,” JD shrugged. “Never heard of him, myself.”

  Herc jabbed a thick finger at the framed magazine which occupied the place of honor between the US and Texas flags on the opposite wall, along with autographed photos of President Reagan, both Bushes, Oliver North, and Lieutenant General Norman Schwarzkopf. “That’s an autographed first issue copy of Soldier of Fortune! Signed by Colonel Robert Brown himself!”

  “Yeah, I wondered why it was there.”

  “Dirk worked for them, did a lot of on-the-ground exclusives for the war in Iraq. Guy’s incredible. Any chance you could hook me up with an invite? Just a handshake and a signature? I got a copy of SoF I would love for him to autograph.”

  “If you’re handy on the fourteenth I’m sure I can make it happen,” JD made an expansive gesture. “You’ve always been good to us.”

  His business instincts flared at that comment, and Herc studied the promoter warily. “What do you want?”

  “Who says I want anything other than the usual, Herc?”

  “I do. You’re a slimy bastard, JD: you could follow a guy into a revolving door and come out ahead of him.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  “Bullshit,” Herc grinned. “Come on, make your pitch.”

  “We need to have our place secured. We have to leave our trailers and take everybody.”

  “Huh.” Herc pivoted in his chair to look at the clipboards hanging in a row on the wall next to his chair. “You can put your trailers in my north lot. I’ve got a couple guys, one’s on crutches with a busted ankle, other’s got a wife who just delivered, wants to stay home for a bit. I’ll park the first one in a little travel trailer alongside your loading dock, he can heal up and watch your place at the same time. The other guy’ll swing by, act as back-up, help out. Both are solid, honest and heavy hitters. I can get ‘em for you at a decent rate.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “What else have you got?”

  JD flipped open a notebook. “We’ve got some beer, some booze, a decked-out one-owner Cherokee perfect for survival work, and maybe some excess manual-action long guns.”

  “Yeah,” Herc looked up from the clipboards. “I’m a bit light on cash at the moment, but I got a couple odds and ends we might be able to work with.”

  “OK, how did the briefing go?” Marv asked Dyson. The senior Gnomes, Bambi, and Sylvia were eating supper on the loading dock.

  “Good. Everybody got the point.”

  “Chip, what about the winter gear?”

  “I broke out the field jackets and added extras to our on-truck gear, dude. Everyone has gloves, a watch cap, an OD green scarf, extra socks, woolen underwear, and a sleeping bag, but that tapped out Herc. When we get further north we’ll have to look for more because I checked and North Dakota in late October is a l
ot colder than Texas.”

  “That reminds me,” Marv snapped his fingers. “Warn the guys that a lot of chemical stuff for heating, like military heat tabs, Sterno, stuff like that, the fumes can be toxic if they build up in an enclosed space.”

  “Look for Chapstick and stuff like that,” Bear pointed out.

  “Yeah, got it. Anyway, we’re good on food, the water cans will be full and I’m bringing the PAUL unit.”

  “OK, good work, Chip. Brick?”

  “CB radio installed, Gnome 2 and 3 have new seats, all trucks ready and full, fuel cans full. Range without fuel trailer not so great.”

  “We’ll scrounge on the way. Did you make more saps and tactical flashlight mounts for the weapons?”

  “A few, more tomorrow.”

  “Great. JD?”

  “Dyson and I did some haggling with Herc, but it turns out he’s a Dirk Chambers fan, so I promised him a photo op. Anyway, we got a lot of the winter stuff, a dozen tactical flashlights, six reflex sights, and four Colt AR6951s, semiautomatic only; they’re the short-barreled submachinegun version of the M-4, in nine millimeter. The downside is I traded in our excess long guns and two pump shotguns that had been already issued. However, that means we’ll equip the girls, and every Associate but two will have a semi-auto weapon; the other two carry pump-action shotguns by preference.”

  “Good work,” Marv nodded. “We’re not likely going to pick up any recruits on this trip, and we’ll find more weapons along the way. Ultimately I want three more bodies and five full sets of equipment in reserve, but that’s a long-term goal. At full strength I want eighteen line Gnomes and two refugee reps when we roll out, and two combat-ready Gnomes securing our place, so I figure three reps and twenty line Gnomes at max strength.”

  “Anna would be great as a rep,” Dyson offered.

  “Good. We’ll worry about other recruits after we get back, I don’t want unknown factors when TV cameras are around. Now, tomorrow night we’ll have a formal gathering, promote George Sanchez to Operator, and have a cook-out with beer afterwards. Add a little unit unity and keep the troops close to hand at the same time.”

  “Some of the guys have asked me about mission markers or something similar,” Chip ventured. “You know, something to show off.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Marv conceded. “The big issue is the markers themselves: it’s not like we’re in a position to custom-order them. Maybe something like service stripes, hash marks on your sleeve, one for every three or five operations that see action, something like that. The thing is that we can’t wear anything that the US military uses, so it has to be civilian in origin. We only get away with the ROTC insignia because the cadets aren’t actually military.”

  “A lot of outfits use ROTC insignia. Others are using foreign army ranks,” JD observed. “We might consider awards for exceptional behavior while we’re at it. A little recognition will go a long way.”

  “Good idea, let’s kick the concepts around and look for ways to implement them in terms of the actual awards and markers. Addison, any luck with our buddy Hodges?”

  “Some. A lot of material has surfaced on him on the CATL website; they moved his reward to $750,000 recently. He is a research-quality viral expert, something he did not advertise before the outbreak. He spent most of his working career in administrative posts, and his employers never really understood that he was a first-class researcher in his own right. From the way the material is worded and some hints I’ve gotten off the Deep Net, I think he used his admin position to stay current in the field and to do research work on company equipment after-hours.”

  “Why is a guy of that caliber wandering around alone?” JD asked. “He sounds like a terrorist rock star.”

  “He is,” the dark Gnome mumbled. “I don’t think he was on the clock as far as FASA knew. I think he normally operates in Minnesota but made an off-the-books run to Texas and back without his comrades and especially his bosses knowing about it.”

  “Why would he do that?” Chip asked. “FASA would have had him in the middle of a convoy. After the nuclear strikes they must have very few scientific assets.”

  “Because he is playing his own game. I think he came to Texas to get something he stashed, something important to an agenda that is not FASA’s.” Addison toyed with a pen, thinking hard. “I think he drove non-stop, got the item, rested at the safe house, and then drove back.”

  “It’s doable,” Bear mused, looking at the battered white road atlas that had led them from Florida to Texas. “Around fifteen hours, give or take.”

  “The safe house people did not know who he was. When he suspected that they knew or were looking into his identity, he killed them,” Addison held up a pamphlet. “The ERF material was for FASA, not the authorities. He wasn’t coming back so he didn’t care about the government, but he knew FASA would check into the loss of a safe house.”

  “Is there any way to tell what he came for?” Marv asked.

  “No, other than I expect it was in north Texas and not too large or heavy; from the tire tracks Dyson found behind the trailer he was driving a sedan. He worked in the Dallas area, by the way.”

  “OK, it all hangs together well,” Marv was impressed. “Can you give us an idea of where he was going to in Minnesota?”

  “Sort of. I pulled the wireless router from the safe house and found their password on a business card in the desk it was sitting on. Extracting the data wasn’t easy, but there were two entries of interest: someone tried to check a Minnesota license plate, and someone checked the weather in three places. From the times I think the plate check was made by the dead couple looking into who their guest was, and the second item was Hodges checking on his route. The weather checks tie to his trip north, with the last check centered on Bagley, Minnesota. I don’t know if the couple got a return on the plate, but when I ran the plate it came back to a couple in Grand Rapids.”

  “Around a hundred miles apart, dude,” Chip announced, studying the battered road atlas. “Maybe a little more.”

  “OK, figure both places are not where he is going, but probably not too far off-base, either,” JD mused. “He’s running a black op so he has to work with what is in hand, and he’s driving a sedan onto county roads so he needs reasonably accurate weather data. That gives us a patch of ground, a pretty big patch, but a lot less than just a state.”

  Marv pondered the information, looking at the Minnesota page in his road atlas. “That’s not a densely populated area.”

  “We won’t have much time,” JD observed.

  “It will be cold up there, getting down to freezing each day,” Dyson pointed out. “If FASA has an establishment of any size it’s indoors and heated.”

  “Everyone up there will be indoors and heated,” Bear shrugged. “That’s winter in the north: life sucks.”

  “Still, it narrows the options.”

  “I think we can spend a day or two looking; hell, I could take a detachment for as long as we need and then drive back,” Marv closed the road atlas. “I promised someone I was going to make these people my hobby, and my dear old mother always told me that you should always keep a promise.”

  “I’m trying to imagine your mother, dude,” Chip admitted.

  “I am something of a disappointment to the family,” the Ranger smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “The rest all turned out well.” He jerked his chin toward Addison. “Anything more?”

  “Some small points which support my theory without being conclusive.”

  “Outstanding work; if you’re right we need to create a medal for intelligence work. All right, let’s enjoy tonight; tomorrow the work starts in earnest, and I expect we’re in for a rough trip. One more thing, Addison: I want you to teach Bambi and Sylvia to run the drone; we need to ensure that too many key skills are not concentrated in just one person.”

  Chapter Five

  Doctor Cyrus Davenport, PhD, was a man of few uncertainties and fewer doubts. A short, heavy-set man in
his fifties who preferred tailored British suits and a minimum of Human interaction, Cyrus was a child prodigy of a Haitian father and Vietnamese mother, a creature of intellect best suited to the processing of data, the study of patterns, and the administration of lesser intellects. He was a man who valued the mind over any other qualification, creed, race, or gender.

  He had begun his activism serving in the trenches of the pro-choice and environmental movements as a teenager, albeit a teenager who had had his first BA at sixteen. Over the years since those early days and early causes he had become disenchanted with American liberals and later with American leftists. His philosophy had evolved into a hard, narrow focus that ultimately centered upon the core issue of the problems besetting Mankind: mediocrity.

  Doctor Davenport held the unshakeable view was that there were simply too many people on the planet, and that of those billions who currently existed the least viable candidates were reproducing the most prolifically. Virtually every problem in the modern era, he believed, could be traced back to the population’s size exceeding nature’s and society’s ability to manage it, and to the exploding numbers of third-rate minds.

  He had formed The Humanity Accord to study methods to rectify this problem, but it wasn’t until he was contacted by General Nawaz, the man who had created FASA, that the way was made clear: a viral purge of the lower orders, leaving the world with a sustainable population built around a high concentration of the best minds.

  General Nawaz had appreciated Cyrus’ brilliance and the value of his group, so much so that Doctor Davenport was placed in control of all FASA operations in District 12, the southern USA, and despite having the most warlike and heavily-armed portion of the USA to cope with had made amazing progress in the early days of the outbreak.

  But Mossad had assassinated General Nawaz even as FASA made its opening moves, and the loose confederation of organizations had suffered badly in the face of world-wide resistance. With the loss of the retired Indian General FASA had unraveled until it was now just a third of its pre-outbreak size; but for the dedicated work of Doctor Davenport and a few dozen other key administrators and leaders it would have expired as an organization by now. With Herculean efforts these visionaries had managed to gather much of what remained into a coherent body so that the fight could go on.