by Robert Adams
“In the beginning, I was able to pick up and converse with a very large number of broadcasts— some of them public, commercial-or government-owned, more privately owned and operated—from them, I learned that old hatreds had flared up into new wars, invasions and rebellions nearly everywhere, with all of the deadly side effects of war—wounds, diseases, starvation, terror. I monitored the prideful, often threatening transmissions of winners and the despairing pleas of losers, I conversed with those who would receive my own transmissions. But then the Great Dyings commenced full-force and worldwide.
“Within the short space of three or four weeks, Wahrn, the numbers of transmitters shrank from thousands to hundreds to scores to dozens. They went on going off the air, a few of them doing so quite abruptly, in the very act of transmitting to me or to others. Near the end of my sojourn in that place, there were no more than a dozen other radios still transmitting and receiving in all of the world, death and« chaos and war having silenced all the rest forever.”
“Why did you leave that place?” beamed Wahrn curiously.
“Part of it was sheer loneliness,” Milo replied. “Funny, but when still large portions of the world were swarming with people in the billions, my pleasure was to get completely away from the more built-up, more settled areas for a month or two at the time, never missing human companionship at all. But with mankind rapidly declining to the status of an endangered species all over the world, I began to pine for friendly people among whom I could live, with whom I could talk, eat, drink, share the fast-disappearing human experience.”
Mehrdok nodded, beaming, “Yes, I can understand that feeling, Milo. I was a fur trapper, far up to the north and east of here, for three years after I stopped riding as a sword for the traders. That very loneliness is the reason I packed it in and came back here.
“You said that the place was hidden in a canyon. But you had no visitors at all, in all that time?”
Milo grimaced. “No friendly ones, Wahrn. I had had to kill both of the guard dogs in order to get into the house at all—poor beasts, they were only doing the job to which they had been trained. With them dead, I had no warning of intruders until they penetrated to fairly close proximity of the house. But that house had been built with an eye toward defense of it and was more than adequately supplied with firearms, ammunition for them and even items of antipersonnel explosives.
“As you know from my memories, I had been a soldier for a large proportion of my life up until then and I was therefore well versed in techniques of warfare, as I suspected my dead host had been. I used certain of the available materials, in conjuncture with certain others I manufactured—more silent but no less deadly than explosives—to render the only two routes to my hideaway extremely hazardous to any unknowing of just what was just where. The resultant explosions or screams were my early-Warning system. With that system fully operational, very few spoilers ever got as far up the canyon as the house.
“The blasted and burned-out hulks blocking the only real road up the canyon, the charred bodies still within them, these gave firm notice that the road was mined and there were more than a few hideous, frightful surprises awaiting any who tried to come through the woods and brush on foot or on two-wheeled vehicles, too. After each attempted foray, I’d go up and clean and reset the traps, kill any wounded I happened across, then go back to the radio and the pure horror it was receiving.
“I like to feel that I served my dead host well, that I conducted the defense of his property just as he and his family would have done had they remained alive to do it. And when I finally did leave that house, I cleaned it, shut down all of the systems, locked the doors, bolted the shutters and left all of the mines and booby traps armed and ready to repel intruders.
“Into the smallest of the vehicles, I packed arms, ammunition, food, water, extra fuel, bedding and clothing, along with tools and spare parts for the vehicle and the firearms. I thought myself to be well prepared for any eventuality, but—more fool I—it’s wise that I had brought along a backpack, for long before I reached proximity to any living human beings, I struck a deep, water-filled crater in the road surface and wrecked the vehicle far beyond my abilities of any repair. Knowing of old my capacities at load-carrying, I filled the backpack with food, some items of clothing, a pair of boots, most of the gear I’d used to live off the land up in the mountains, plus ammunition and magazines and parts for the weapons I was taking with me. I lashed my sleeping bag and a rolled poncho atop the pack, filled two canteens and snapped them to my weapons belt, slung a rifle and headed northwest, in search of my own kind … or, rather, what I then assumed were my own kind; in the long years since, I am become less certain.
“Warily, I mostly kept out of sight of the road, moving cross-country and making wide swings to avoid approaching occupied areas by daylight, preferring to reconnoiter under cover of darkness. It was well that I did so, for I witnessed just what happened to two men who simply walked innocently into small towns and subdevelopments. Those residents who had not been driven at least a little mad by the continuing deaths of all their friends and relatives had been given more than sufficient reason by the spoilers to be murderously wary and suspicious of the motives of any strangers, and their tendencies were to shoot first and ask questions later. Under the severe circumstances, no one—and I least of all—could have blamed them for an excess of caution.
“I was shot twice, from a distance, by persons I never even saw, before I decided that until things calmed down somewhat I would be a great deal safer up in the mountains, with the snakes and the bears, then I would in the stinking charnel house that Southern California was by then become. So I sought out and finally found a two-wheel vehicle which had been designed and built for rugged, off-road work, then I headed back west, into the high country, having had my fill of dying but still deadly mankind for a while.”
The trail bike took Milo fairly far up into the wild mountains before it sputtered to a stop, out of gasoline. At that point, he reshouldered pack, sleeping bag, poncho, weapons and all and began to hike farther up while there still was a bit of daylight remaining to guide him. But he had not gone far when he cut the track, a relatively fresh track, of a party of men, perhaps as many as thirty of them, all shod in Army-issue boots. Keeping to concealment, Milo paralleled the track until it was become too dark to see it easily.
Making no unavoidable noises, he made himself a cold camp, in the heavy brush where he had halted, denying himself even the small luxury of a pipe, this night. But he did force himself to sleep for a couple of hours, after making certain that his L.E.S. 9mm auto was where he could reach it quickly and easily, once more silendy thanking his dead former host for his impeccable taste in firearms.
There was no moon when he awakened, but he had expected none, what with the heavy cloud cover that had blanketed the sky for the latter half of the day just past. He made no move to check his wristwatch— that would have required a brief light which, even if it did not betray his presence and position, would destroy his ability to make his way in the darkness for some time. He stripped himself of every nonessential, along with anything that might impede his progress through heavy brush, make a noise at an inopportune time or reflect light. As weapons on this patrol, he retained only the Colt M1911A1 automatic pistol—it did not hold the eighteen 9mm rounds of the L.E.S., but he knew damned well that any man he hit with one of the fat .45 caliber rounds would go down, and that that was not only always the case with the lighter 9mm—a couple of spare magazines for it, a big Randall fighting knife and a small, double-edged Russell boot-knife. Everything else he laid beside the pack, arranged the camouflaged sleeping bag over all, then tossed brush and leaves over that. Using the edges of his bootsoles, he scuffed down to the dirt, urinated there, then smeared the resultant mud onto his forehead, cheekbone lines, chin and the bridge of his nose. That all done, he kicked the leaves back over the wet spot. He now was ready to seek out the men he had been trailing, for bett
er or for worse.
After he had completely scouted out the “encampment” he realized why he had seen no fires, smelled no smoke. Exhaustion, rather than caution, ruled among the emaciated, ill-armed men in their filthy, stained, tattered remnants of uniforms. Many of the sleepers were wearing dirty, blood-splotched bandages, all were many days unshaven and more than a few of the weapons he took from proximity to their sometime bearers were empty of even a single round of ammunition.
When all of the strangers’ weapons were safely hidden, Milo went back to his own campsite at the trot and returned laden with all his effects. He had always had a weakness for stray dogs and abandoned cats. Seated, with his back against the thick hole of an ancient tree, he awaited the dawn, his rifle on his lap.
The first man to wake up wore the dark stripes of a master sergeant on the frayed sleeves of his camo battledress. He yawned prodigiously, stretched stiffly, took out a pair of glasses and meticulously polished them before putting them on … then he spotted Milo. With a strangled yelp, he reached for a rifle that was no longer where he had put it, then slapped hand to a pistol holster that proved empty. Staring at Milo, who had not raised his rifle or, indeed, moved at all, the noncom reached out and shook the shoulder of the man nearest to him, a man whose single remaining shoulder loop bore the muted embroidery of a lieutenant colonel’s silver oak leaf.
“Colonel, colonel!” he whispered, imperatively.
“Colonel Crippen, sir, we got comp’ny come to call.”
Milo willingly shared out all of his supplies of canned and freeze-dried foodstuffs, found a tiny, icy-cold spring and personally refilled the baker’s dozen of sound canteens left among the eighteen enlisted men and five officers, all that now remained of an understrength battalion of California State Military Reserves.
Colonel Crippen was a bit under average height, but chunky, solid and powerful-looking; Milo guessed the officer’s age to be somewhere between fifty and sixty. Considering the circumstances, the quality of his onetime command and the impossible-to-effect orders with which he and his had been sent off, what had happened to him could have easily been predicted, but it still saddened Milo to hear it recounted.
By orders of the state adjutant general—who should have known better, thought Milo—Crippen and his battalion (four hundred and twelve enlisted men, three warrants and twenty-three commissioned officers, equipped with some bare score of Korean War-vintage two-and-a-half-ton trucks, a dozen three-quarter-ton trucks and about that many jeeps that were all about as venerable, a couple of old, boxy field ambulances, and a handful of much newer civilian vehicles pressed into service in the emergency conditions) were sent from the environs of Sacramento via Route 99 toward Bakersfieid, where they were supposed to join with a scratch force of National Guardsmen, United States Reservists and a leavening of Regular Air Force from Edwards Air Force Base to try to restore, some semblance of order to the areas abutting Los Angeles and San Diego, both of which localities had taken one or more nuclear missile strikes.
The battalion had made it down to Bakersfieid in good order, having had only five trucks break down so thoroughly that they had had to be abandoned, stripped and left behind. With a convoy of armed men at his command and a pocketful of state-backed chits countersigned by the governor, Colonel Crippen had experienced scant difficulty in feeding his men or fueling and/or getting emergency repairs on the transport vehicles.
But at Bakersfield, there were no National Guardsmen, not one Reservist and only a few Air Force men, which last group waited in Bakersfield for a couple of days, then headed back to Edwards AFB. The telephones were not working and neither, he discovered, was the radio Colonel Crippen had been issued, nor had anyone bothered to give him spare parts for the thing. When he finally tracked down a civilian repair shop that would even look at the antique marvel, the owner laughed and remarked that he had not seen its like since his days in Vietnam, but he did allow Crippen the use of his own shortwave equipment … with the sole proviso that one of the colonel’s men would use the bicycle generator to recharge the storage batteries after each use.
At length, Crippen got Sacramento on the radio and finally dropped enough important names to persuade the communications-type to fetch to his set one of the adjutant general’s aides, who proved to be no help at all.
“Everyone out there seems to have trouble of one kind or another, Colonel Crippen. I have no idea where the other two units that were supposed to meet you are, but you have received your orders. Just see to it that they are carried out. I suggest, if you need resupply of vehicles and radio equipment, that you route your convoy out to the air base and see if they won’t help.”
But they would not allow Crippen or any one of his men any closer than a strongpoint hastily erected around the main gate. A hard-eyed captain sounded honestly sorry.
“Colonel, if it was up to me, I’d let you all in, but it’s not. When we first spotted you-all, I rung up my superior and he rung up his and so on and the answer came back, loud and clear; Nobody except Regular Air Force personnel and dependents goes any farther than you are now, on account of it’s some real bad diseases killing off the civilians all around here right and left, and the general, he don’t want none of whatever it is spreading to this command. Some nervous nellies are already saying that it could be some kind of bacterial warfare stuff.
“Was I you, I’d take my column back north. It don’t seem to be as bad, from what we’ve picked up on the radios, up north as it is here and points south and west of here. We can give you-all water and gas and a couple of days’ worth of field rations, but that’s all. You-all try to come through onto Edwards anyway, and …“He waved a hand at the bristling fortifications behind him. “I’ll just have to follow my own orders and do my level best to kill ever mother’s son of you. Please don’t make me have to do that, colonel.”
Major Muldoon, Crippen’s executive officer, suggested attacking, forcing their way onto the military reservation, but the colonel would not even consider such a piece of stupidity, saying, “Pat, I think you’ve got shit for brains. Look, take a good hard look at what those flyboys have got there—heavy machine guns, rockets and God alone knows what else that we can’t see, probably, mortars and artillery and a whole hell of a lot more men. And what have we got to throw against them? Rifles, a few automatics and six medium machine guns, not even a single grenade, hand or rifle. There’s no earthly way we could sneak up on them, either; they’ve burned off all of the brush and bulldozed down everything that might give an attacker cover or concealment within rifle range.
“No, we’re going to accept what little they’re willing to give us, say ‘thank you, sir’ nicely and then go our way and do what we can for as long as we can with what we have to do it with. Our only other option is to disobey orders and run back to Sacramento with our tails between our legs, and I, for one, have never been good at running away from a fight.”
“Well, you’re making us run away from this one, David,” grumbled Muldoon sourly.
“This would be no fight here, this would be quick, bloody suicide, and if you can’t see that plain fact, Pat, maybe I need a clearer-headed exec. Our orders are to help the civil authorities in keeping order; they say not one damned thing about taking on the U.S. Air Force, for whatever reason,” snapped Crippen, rapidly losing patience. And when Muldoon opened his mouth to speak again, the colonel cut him off brusquely, saying, “End of discussion, Major Muldoon. I think those trucks up the road, on the base, there, are probably the gas and water and rations the captain mentioned. Captain Peele’s the S-4—have him handle the offloading and reloading. I’m going back up there and see if I can con some ammo and grenades out of that flyboy. We may very well need them … soon.”
The captain went as far as the constraints of his superiors and the pressing needs of his own base would let him … and that was not far: five thousand-round cases of 5.56mm (just about enough to issue eleven more rounds to each man rifle-
armed), eight five-hundred-round boxes of 7.62mm ammo to be divided among six machine guns, one hundred fragmentation hand grenades and twenty-five CN gas grenades, plus twenty-five hundred rounds of 9mm ball and less than half that much of .45 ACP ball. Colonel Crippen thanked the man sincerely for everything, for all that he realized that if push really should come to shove where he was going, such piddling amounts would probably only prolong the survival of his unit for bare minutes.
Beyond Four Corners, which had been incorporated into Edwards AFB, the only signs of life along Route 58 were small animals, snakes and the occasional abandoned car or truck. At Barstow, they found out what had happened to the Reservists who had been originally scheduled to meet them at Bakersfield. The men were helping civilians to man the network of entrenchments and hastily erected bunker strongpoints completely surrounding most of the town.
The senior officer of the Reservists, a slender, feisty brigadier general with short-cropped snow-white hair, was curtly apologetic for his heterogeneous unit’s failure to rendezvous as planned.
“The NGs met us at San Bernardino, Colonel Crippen, some of the units, both mine and theirs, having had to fight their way there through mobs trying to get their weapons. San Bernardino, when we finally got there, was a plump chicken just waiting to be plucked, most of the law-enforcement types having either been killed or seriously hurt or gone to ground in quite justifiable fear for themselves and their immediate families.
“After a conference of the combined staffs, I decided to leave the NGs down there to harden up the area, establish a perimeter and guard it. Not a few of their people had failed to show up for the muster and so they were radically understrength, and their transport and arms were but little better than are yours. I brought my own force on toward Bakersfield, although on the advice of refugees, I kept off the freeways and made it up 15 and 247 almost without incident until we got to the outskirts of Barstow here.
