Sampson's Legacy: The Post-Apocalyptic Sequel To Legacy Of Ashes (Earth's Ashes Book 2)

by Ric Beard

  She tried to push away that little aside about her former mentor. He’d helped her accomplish her mission, loved her like a daughter, then revealed he’d killed her parents and orphaned—

  Stop it! Focus!

  These exercises were like her meditation, to see the old world for what it was and rain hell upon those who would stop her from bringing it back, better than before. Lexi knew that Jenna and Lucian would spend the rest of their lives with her, to share the most important lesson in the existence of humanity with the people of this new, fractured world. A century of violence imposed upon those who would take advantage of others, while rewarding in each given moment, seemed to have no long-term effect. Jenna’s way was the way until Lexi’s particular skill set was needed to even the playing field. Lexi respected that.

  But when it was Lexi’s turn, she would revel in it.

  Lexi tapped the corner of the rusted swing set frame with the tip of her boot.

  “What was it like?” Sasha asked.

  Lexi’s eyes continued to trace the rusted outline of a hook welded into the cross frame above.

  “What was what like?”

  In a flash of memory, she saw a scene long lost to the eons, of Sean reaching the pinnacle of his swing, and sending his then scrawny body into the open air and landing heavily upon his feet.

  “The world in your day. A hundred years ago.”

  Lexi snapped her fingers at Sasha, causing the dog to sneer. “That’s right! I was promised an explanation. How did you know Sean and I were over one-hundred?”

  “Moss told me,” she said.

  “More evasion.” Lexi shook her head. “How the hell does Moss know that?”

  “He found pictures of you on the Triangle City network. Pictures from the old world.”

  Mikael’s pictures.

  Mikael Jensen had revealed the pictures to Lexi the last time she’d seen him face-to-face, in the underground bunker beneath City Hall, in Triangle City.

  The pictures he put into the city’s facial recognition system as a tribute to the people he’d wronged a century earlier, when he’d murdered my parents. The pictures that alerted him when I entered the gate under the new name of Lexi Shaw, sending a notification to Jensen that I was still alive. The pictures that changed her destiny.

  “Those fucking things.”

  “Yes. So, what was it like?”

  Lexi gave an exasperated sigh.

  “There were people everywhere. Crowded streets filled with people staring at technology, ignoring each other as they went about their day-to-day grinds. It was an easy world, almost painfully easy, looking back at it. You could get food on any corner, but it took forever just to drive across town because of the traffic.”

  “Lots of people, then?”

  “Billions.”

  Sasha cocked her head to one side. Her eyes rolled to gander at the brim of her hat and rolled around as if she was doing the math.

  She shook her head. “I can’t fathom that many people.”

  “Considering the world imploded because of a lack of resources and the complete lack of effort to control the population, I’d say no one ever could fathom that many people.”

  “I want to hear more about it,” Sasha said. “But I think we should probably get moving. We have more trucks to disable.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. All this sneaking around, gathering intel and training Sean, when I could be out solving problems, has left me restless.”

  “Why didn’t you just do it if it was making you restless?”

  “Because we had a plan, and I was following it. Jenna is as methodical as I am impatient. She likes to do things a certain way.”

  “But if you’re the boss…”

  Lexi smiled. “Who says I’m the boss?”

  “Oh, we just thought…” she trailed off, a confused look on her face.

  “Well!” Lexi clapped her hands. “I guess you don’t know everything after all!”

  “Everything is a lot to know.”

  The deadpan answer annihilated her smile.

  “Jenna’s the tactician. If it were up to me, all the enforcers on those trucks would be dead. But Jenna wants to give this region to the people, and that means cutting the head off the snake by the hands of said people…not by my knife.”

  “Then why follow her?”

  Lexi shrugged. “Because if I have learned anything in my long life, it’s that a level-headed leader is unrivaled by my inclinations.” The dog shimmied violently from neck to tail and water flew off its matted hair.

  The animal’s coat was brown with a fat black snout. She figured it was some kind of Rottweiler mix. “What are we going to do with her?”

  “Take her with us.”

  “We can’t take her with us.”

  “Why the hell not?” Sasha asked.

  Lexi thrust a thumb over her shoulder. “Shit just got hot. We just opened a can of worms. We can’t run around the countryside with a little noise maker giving us away.”

  “Well, she isn’t noisy now.”

  Lexi looked down.

  The dog was sitting patiently, with its ass planted in the mud next to Sasha’s boots, staring up at Lexi. Its unusually light eyes were almost golden against the morning light. On cue, the animal’s mouth dropped open, and its tongue lopped out one side of its jowls.

  The woman in black wore a hopeful smile.

  “Well, shit.”

  Chapter Six

  INDUSTRIOUS

  6

  Inside a tent nestled in the back corner of town, away from the lone road that divided Ripley in half, Jenna adjusted the light to inspect her next patient. The thick canvas of the makeshift structure eradicated daylight, enhancing the effect of the solar bulbs.

  Her patient’s teeth, while discolored, lacked the deep yellowing of the heavier users she’d seen. The tell-tale sores were absent.

  She grasped into her memory for his name. What had he said it was?

  Filcher.

  Jenna pulled her fingers away from his lips. “Filcher, how long have you been using?”

  The man leveled bloodshot eyes on her and smirked on one side of his lips. “About a year, I guess. Avoided it early on, but the lumber mill hours started to drag me down. The others all used it and seemed to do okay, mostly. So, I tried it out, and it seemed to work.”

  “How many hours were you working per day?”

  “Fifteen, sixteen.”

  She flashed him what she hoped was an easy smile. “That would do it. Is everyone there using?”

  “Not everybody, but most. We step away from the cutting line to take a snort every couple of hours.”

  “Hm.” Jenna muttered. “Snort?”

  The man raised a finger and tapped the side of his nose.

  It made sense. In the early days of the drug’s introduction into the region, predominant use was via tea. But, as was consistent with human beings, someone always found a way to smoke something. So that was the next phase. Now, workers were snorting it directly up their noses. More bad news.

  “Good news is you can get off it,” she said. “Bad news is, you still work fifteen hours per day.”

  “I got a plan for that problem,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Gonna join a hunting party. Trade food in Blacksburg.”

  Blacksburg. Jenna knew the old-world college town and new-world trading bazaar. It was out of place for the badlands. But since Horace failed in his raid on Triangle City and Sampson brought a different plan to the MidEast, things were changing. Unfortunately, the new economy brought the amphetamines with it. The fact that Sampson’s enforcers were distributing the substance was the worst-kept secret in the MidEast.

  “Why change jobs?”

  “You haven’t been in the mill. People who don’t use are watched. People don’t trust them.”

  “Pariahs,” Jenna muttered.

  The man shrugged, and Jenna surmised he probably didn’t know the word.


  While The Foundation’s outreach might prove a good way to win hearts and minds, Jenna knew it would be a slow process. Relief trickled only to the volunteers who wanted to get clean and even that was on the down low. Ripley was one small town in a much larger region, spanning from the Appalachians to hundreds of miles south and to the West. The road ahead would be long.

  “You can feed yourself while making a few marks that way, right?”

  His eyes shifted down and to one side. “Yup. Venison, rabbit, plenty of food in the hills. Maybe even score a bearskin or two.”

  She detected a strange quality in his tone, and the way he rubbed his short beard each time he answered a question was like a poker tell. Though she tried to set him at ease with a smile, he was reluctant to make eye contact.

  “That’s good,” Jenna said. “Let me explain what I’m going to do to help you. Stop me if you have any questions.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me yet. You have a hard road ahead.”

  The man scratched furiously at his temple, leaving pink marks behind and dropped his hand hard into his lap.

  “We’ve reduced the potency of the drugs by mixing them with plants from around the area.” She held up a little cloth satchel. “I’ll need the bag back when we’re done. Lawkeeper Jones is going to put you up in a room down the road. The packages inside here are numbered one through three. You’re going to use number three for three days, number two for two days, and then number one for one day. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  If she’d had the benefit of a larger supply, Jenna would ween the people of the MidEast more slowly off their crutch, but limited supplies forced rationing.

  “I’ll give them to Jones and he’ll make sure they’re distributed to you. Halfway through tomorrow, you’re going to start really feeling the withdrawal. Your hands will shake and you might get a headache. Some time after that, maybe as late as day two, you’re going to start sweating, and it’s going to be harsher. From there, it’s all up hill, and it’s going to take a lot of willpower.”

  The man’s eyes leveled on the bag in her hand, and Jenna wondered if the look in his eyes indicated hunger.

  “Lawkeeper Jones makes his rounds all at once. Now, you might hear people yelling and cutting up in the rooms around you, but try not to let it bother you. Now, if you only hear two things I say, hear these.” She held up a finger. “Eat when they bring your food to keep your strength up,” a second flinger flicked up, “and don’t leave the room until you’re told it’s time to go. Any questions so far?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. After you withdraw, we’re going to move you to a town southwest of here. They’ll have some work for you to do to keep your mind off the drugs. Ever worked a farm?”

  “Farm? Don’t the enforcers collect there?”

  She noted his evasion of the question.

  “You don’t need to worry about this particular farm. Just do the work, and when we know you’re clean, we’ll let you go on with your life.”

  “Sampson doesn’t know about it?”

  Jenna parted her lips to answer but pressed them back together. His eyes were leveled on hers now, intent. She shook her head in response.

  “How long would I be there?”

  Would? Interesting word choice.

  “That depends on you. If the withdrawal hampers you, we’ll keep you until you feel you can make it on your own.” She took his hands in hers and locked eyes with him. “You have to be diligent. Just because you finish treatment doesn’t mean you won’t have pangs. If you get where you just can’t stand it and have to have drugs, you come and see me, and I’ll help you get through it. Okay?”

  Filcher nodded.

  Jenna stood. The addict followed suit. She shook his hand and held back the tent flap. She squinted as sunlight bathed the inside of the tent.

  Lawkeeper Jones stepped into the opening. “You ready?”

  “Sure,” Filcher said.

  Jenna offered Jones the bag, and Jones’s wink of one eye caused a smile to creep across Jenna’s face.

  She eyed the back of the addict’s head and cocked her chin up at Jones. She made a peace sign with two fingers, pointed at her own eyes, then at Filcher’s back.

  Jones squinted, swung a glance over his shoulder and looked back. His head bobbed up and down before he turned and led the man away from the tent, toward the two-story structure that housed the addicts across the street.

  The lawkeeper had been the key that unlocked their door into the MidEast. When Lexi performed recon of the MidEast prior to the planning phase of their mission, it was Jones who’d told her about the plight of his people. Though he was one of Sampson’s recruits and was left here by the self-proclaimed governor, he was from the MidEast, and his conscience precluded his ability to march in line.

  When the new governor of the MidEast popped up and started distributing his lawkeepers to the different townships, the economy started to flourish, and the demand for the meth his enforcers distributed increased with the need to man the enterprises Sampson renewed.

  You have to give him one thing: he’s industrious.

  “You’re going to make it,” Jenna said to the man’s back as the lawkeeper led him from the tent. “I know it.”

  But she didn’t know it. The results were sporadic and, at best, she could reduce the addiction with the lower-potency drug. It would be up to him to garner the willpower to beat his demon. All she could do was cross her fingers and hope for the best.

  Chapter Seven

  ARE YOU SICK?

  7

  Two cots rested in back with a curtain hanging between them, so Jenna could have a little privacy when she dressed in the morning. When The Foundation’s new recruit, Nina Schafer, moved into the old-world hotel to help the patients beat their reliance on the amphetamines, Jenna had moved her giant friend and protector into the larger tent.

  Jenna dressed on her side of the partition as Scruff’s even snoring filled the tent. It had become white noise to which she slept at this point, and she snoozed better knowing he was there. The smaller tent next door that he’d evacuated was available on the nights Nina tired of the ruckus of addicts behind locked doors.

  The newest recruit of the organization was a wide-eyed picture of wonderment who looked on the world with the enthusiasm of a delirious child. Having been born in Triangle City and spent the first twenty-five years of her life there, she’d never seen the outside world for herself until the day Lexi Shaw showed up to whisk her away to the mountain compound. That had been two years ago, and though she tried to suppress her eagerness these days, Jenna still caught her glances of of wonderment at the occasional rock outcroppings and snowy mountain peaks.

  She was also as sharp as Lexi’s blades. Her tenure as the chief investigator for the Triangle City Security Services had honed her observation skills to a fine art. Wide chestnut eyes that seemed always on alert flicked from person to person as they came and went. She glared at knives sheathed on the belts of skinners who appeared. Each bulge in someone’s coat or pants was checked at the tent and when new patients entered the hotel. People entering the tent didn’t seem to mind being frisked by her, especially the men, but the prosthetic making up the bottom half of her left arm usually caused the tilting of a head or occasional flinch as cold synthetic touched flesh.

  A small cabinet borrowed from a building somewhere in town and gifted to the project by Lawkeeper Jones, stood beyond a couple of fresh new tables manufactured from wood cut at Sampson’s lumber mill. As she reached inside, Jenna pondered what the governor might think of his wood being used to undermine his loop: the effort to get everyone just addicted enough to make sure they keep working to pay for more amphetamines.

  Inside were vials of liquids and bottles of pills developed in Triangle City and by The Foundation at their underground facility in the mountain compound near Asheville. Nina sat in front of that cabinet, demonstrating the
grip of her prosthetic for a teenage boy who waited in the queue for treatment of a cut over his eye. Judging from the awed expression washed across his dirt-smudged face, the arm was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

  Jenna peered past Nina to Scruff’s empty cot in the back of the tent. His training of local men to use the pulse rifles The Foundation brought with them to Ripley was treacherous ground. It made her nervous every time Scruff exposed himself to the outside world, but the guns had been part of the deal with Lexi when they’d figured out their plan of attack, and Jenna had to admit the truth; the lean, redheaded assassin’s argument made sense. If the people of Ripley were going to stick their necks out by being silent about what The Foundation did here, they had to be prepared if and when their betrayal of Sampson came to bear poisonous fruit.

  Lexi had wanted to kill Sampson outright—don her black combat suit and mask, seek him out, sneak in under cover of night, open up his throat, and set the ball rolling. That was what Lexi had done for many years. The history of the MidEast since the fall had proven one dead dictator always left a vacuum to be filled by another tyrant if the people weren’t given the means to organize and make their own decisions. If they killed Sampson outright, Jenna had argued, conscription of the teenage boys and the majority of adult men into the next iteration of The Chain’s army would continue, more would die, and the society would never evolve. It was the only example the power-hungry had to follow.

  Instead of removing Sampson the old-fashioned way, they would win the hearts and minds of the people, like Jenna wanted, but also arm and train them so they could rise up and create lasting change. The next tyrant would have a much harder time with a coup if the people were organized.

  …And armed to the teeth.

  Their current course resulted from the compromise, with Jenna doctoring those wanting help, Scruff training the people of Ripley to defend themselves, and Lexi traipsing around the MidEast with her brother slapping trackers on trucks to identify from where the drug supply was coming.

  A smile crept slowly across Jenna’s face at the thought of Sean’s always-ready witticisms.