Against the Storm: A Fortress Farm Novel

by G. R. Carter

  “Now each of you will be given a short interview. We’ve got your files and will call your name when we’re ready for you. Please just relax until then,” she instructed.

  “I’m worried, Malik,” Brian said as people relaxed and began to mill about again. Marcus didn’t answer, instead turning to look at Renaldo. But the man was gone from his side, now talking to another group with his back turned to him. Marcus finally answered, “I know what you’re thinking, Brian. Don’t worry, just do whatever they ask you to do. I’m going to find some way to get close to the people in charge here. Then I’ll come find you. Until then, just play it cool. I think there’s a bigger network of folks like us around here than we realized. And stop getting my name wrong, Brian. It's Marcus, remember?”

  Marcus stopped Brian’s next question with an upraised hand. “Just trust me, man. I think we’re gonna be fine here. New start for the family, but we’ve got to stay under the radar for now. Right?”

  Brian simply nodded, standing in silence until Marcus’s name was called. Marcus grabbed his younger cousin’s arm and looked him in the eyes. “Brian, you can’t say anything about who we are, or were. Understand? I’m serious. Not a word. Not bragging, not complaining, just go along and get along until I get to you. And absolutely no rackets,” Marcus said, this time clenching his teeth to emphasize the seriousness of the command.

  “Right, man. I got you. I’m good,” Brian replied.

  Marcus turned quickly and made his way to the front. The tall woman making the announcements greeted him with a firm handshake, and he followed her into a meeting room just off the main terminal. As he entered, he took in the features of the room. Opaque glass windows let in just enough of the brilliant sunshine from outside, but only shapes passed by with no detail. There was a large wooden table with four chairs on each side. She waved her hand to one of the chairs and as he sat she made her way over to an interior door. She opened it and leaned inside, saying something he couldn’t decipher.

  As she stood back, a shorter woman looking to be about fifty or sixty entered with a smile and nod. Marcus instinctively rose, sensing this was a person a bit higher on the Shawnee food chain then just an interviewer.

  “Mr. Nielsen, I’m glad you’re here,” the older woman said with a smile. “Do you by chance know who I am?”

  “No, ma'am. But if I had to guess, I’d say you are related to Governor Olsen in some fashion. Maybe even his mother.”

  The woman smiled bigger this time. “I am, in fact, Maryanne Olsen. And yes, Governor Olsen is my son. I’ve taken the task of handling both immigration and economic affairs, two things I consider closely related. That allows the Governor to focus on security concerns and the building projects we need to move forward to improve our citizens' lives.”

  The words were heartfelt, but Marcus got the sense she had repeated the same statement a thousand times, as if explaining why a powerful leader’s mother was here instead of a qualified bureaucrat or even a political appointee.

  “I’m honored you would meet with me personally, Mrs. Olsen. I can’t imagine everyone moving to Grand Shawnee gets the same level of scrutiny, however. May I be so bold as to ask why?”

  “Indeed you may. Your test results were top one percent of all the applicants we have had since we began our current system. I choose to meet with anyone matching that criterion. Just to get an idea if the person got lucky filling in the blanks,” Mrs. Olsen said. “Tell me, how did someone of your intellect get to be in a refugee camp?”

  Marcus hesitated slightly. He had practiced his story a million times in his head, and tried to make sure Brian remembered it also. In the end, he decided that closer to the truth was better, though they had changed the geography a bit and put in some pieces of real events they heard about in the camps.

  “Truthfully, ma'am, it took every ounce of brainpower my cousin and I had to make it this far. We had others in our group not so lucky…” Marcus hung his head a little, the emotion more real than he planned when thinking of his lost comrades. A reassuring smile and nod from Mrs. Olsen brought his eyes back to hers. “We were helping out a Blackhawk community that got wiped out by Ditchmen,” Marcus said, using the local term for the very men he once recruited to fight for him. “We were lucky enough to be out fishing when it happened. I’m not sure how they missed us coming or going. Just lucky, I guess.”

  Mrs. Olsen again nodded in acknowledgement. All of those still alive this long after the Reset, maybe one in ten from the peak of population, all counted at least one lucky instance where the odds said they should have perished. Marcus finished the story for her. “The Blackhawks needed fisherman, not scholars, so we did our best to pull our weight. After we realized the village was gone, we used the fishing boat to float down the river. We knew going north was no good from other folks who passed by. We just decided to try and get as far away from the Jijis as we could. When we saw the Renaissance Tower all lit up, it was like seeing a little bit of the past. Or Heaven, or something like that.”

  Mrs. Olsen wore a hard smile at the mention of the tower in what was once St. Louis. “Indeed, most individuals with your skills tend to stay with our ARK friends. Intellectuals prefer the trappings of modern technology in City Center instead of hard work in the country. So tell me, Mr. Nielsen, why not stay there in the city?” Mrs. Olsen asked, studying his face for any hint of deception. Uh-oh, Marcus thought. She’s a lot smarter than the sweet little old lady I mistook her for. That’s her trap for catching people with something to hide. Marcus and Brian had thought this question through a million ways. She was right, only people with something to hide would choose the potential hard labor of Grand Shawnee over the electricity and engineering of ARK. So why would he choose not to face RenOne and the facial recognition programs?

  “I…was a lawyer for a group that got caught selling Syn,” Marcus replied with an exaggeratedly defeated expression. Selling synthetic drugs was about as bad a story as he could come up with and still have people forgive him, even in this post-apocalyptic world. Drugs were still around; he had manufactured them himself and handed them out to the Ditchmen and Rateaters he used to attack the Red Hawk capital city. People, especially older people, still hated drugs and in particular the people who dealt them. This story was a risk, but a believable one, and one most people could live with if you had something to offer them.

  “I see. That’s quite serious. You understand we execute drug dealers here in Grand Shawnee? There’s no jury trials or defense attorneys yet. A magistrate hears the case, and if you’re guilty, you hang.”

  Marcus suppressed a shudder. Mrs. Olsen was clearly quite comfortable with the sentence and the expeditious nature of their legal system. “Yes, ma'am,” he replied. “I feel like I pay for that bad judgment every day. Even if I never touched the stuff or sold a single square of it, I understand I helped the people who did hide their money. That made me guilty, and I have to live with that.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy something in Mrs. Olsen’s brain, as though admitting to wrongdoing meant she could now trust him. Marcus took a chance to keep the momentum of the conversation going in a positive way for him.

  “If I may ask, ma'am? How did you come to escort Governor Olsen to Mt. Vernon? It’s my understanding that you’re from somewhere up north?”

  “Yes, I am. When the Founder of the Republic…do you know about Alex Hamilton?” Marcus detected tension in her voice, then it suddenly faded and she continued without waiting for his answer. “When Governor Olsen was asked to take over what was Little Egypt at the time, I didn’t have anything else going. My late husband was killed in the Ditchmen uprising. Our home was the Fortress Farm at Tower Hill. With it in ruins and my husband gone, I decided a change would do me some good.”

  “Now I can put the pieces together,” Marcus said. He knew this information already, having learned the details of how the Red Hawks defeated his attack on their capital through secondhand information in the camps. Adding what he knew fr
om his perspective, he embellished a story that made Maryanne Olsen smile. “Your husband was Sheriff Olsen. I heard in the camps about his last stand and about how that turned the tide for the Red Hawks. Saved the capital city, right?”

  Mrs. Olsen smiled. “Some don’t see it that way, but yes, I believe it to be the case. Listen, Mr. Nielsen…may I call you Marcus? Good. Marcus, I need somebody to help me put together a real legal system for Grand Shawnee. Would you be interested? I can’t spare many people; most of our workers are needed just to keep the citizens warm and fed. But a couple of others and you might be spared for such a task. Do a good job, develop a good framework, and I’m sure the Governor will have other projects for you. The pay is zero for now, but you’ll have a room and three daily meal tickets.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Olsen. I’d be more than honored to help in any way. I won’t let you down. You spoke of a couple other staff to help me. Do you have them already picked out?” Marcus asked.

  “A couple of people got my attention, why?”

  “I met someone I think would be a great addition, ma’am,” Marcus said with earnestness. “Dr. Louis Renaldo. I believe he would be an excellent candidate, and he’s right here in this building, right now.”

  Chapter One

  Founder’s Day - Year 12.08 A.G.R. (After the Great Reset)

  Okaw Conference Room

  Red Hawk Republic Capitol Building

  Capital City of Philippi

  The Founder of the Red Hawk Republic felt his head throb. This time not because of nearly fatal wounds received in the Battle of Philippi five years before, but frustration caused by the critical functions of keeping a fledgling young country alive.

  “What do you mean, ‘we’re running out of stuff?’ Can you be a little clearer, please?” he demanded.

  “Fuel in particular,” Celeste Kuhn told him. She wasn’t afraid to speak to Alex Hamilton in a way the room’s attending assistants would never dream of. Even though many were the eldest children of prominent Land Lords and so important in their own right, none of them were married to the Founder’s only brother. More importantly, Celeste Kuhn was the Chief Wizard, leading the group of engineers created by her grandfather right after the Great Reset. They were the ones that kept the Republic’s farms and factories running.

  “It’s not that we’re running completely out of fuel, Alex,” she continued. “What I’m trying to tell you is that production can’t keep up with how much we’re using. The Self Defense Cooperative is burning thousands of gallons a week. Plus we devoted some of the regular production to refining aviation fuel for the Raptor patrols, which is really inefficient. Now we’ve got land ship convoys and trains running supplies down to Grand Shawnee, plus subsidizing America, Mt. Horab, Lafayette, Riveoria, Paducah, Evansville…shall I continue?”

  “Why can’t we just produce more?” Alex half asked, half demanded. He shot a look at Paul Kelley sitting at the end of the long conference table. Paul was the driving force behind the original biofuel refinery used by the small town of Shelbyville to keep its citizens warm and fed. Their success became a beacon, setting off the chain of events let led a small farmer cooperative to become the founding core of a nation now covering millions of square miles across what had once been Illinois and Indiana.

  Paul said nothing, unwilling to get into an argument over something he’d soon have no control over. He’d recently accepted an offer from his sister Nicole Diamante to join her at ARK, the Republic’s oldest ally. Nicole and her husband were the rulers of an empire that stretched from the former city of St. Louis west across the Great Plains. Alex couldn’t argue with the move to reunite family, though part of him couldn’t help but feel slightly betrayed.

  The Founder suddenly felt himself in a very bad mood, surprise not being an emotion he enjoyed. “We’re supposed to be the clever ones of this world, remember? Because we can keep our homes warm and chase away bad guys!” he shouted, pounding the conference table that took up most of the conference room his father had used to create the framework for the Republic. “We’ve got these amazing machines and now we won’t be able to use them? Or run our generators? I’m trying to expand the Republic! I’m trying to keep the Caliphate out! Tell me how I’m supposed to do that with no fuel!”

  “Here’s something else you probably don’t realize,” Celeste cut in. She wasn’t backing down from a fight that needed to happen. “I’m certain the growing seasons are getting shorter. For some reason, we’re just not getting the same amount of growing days we used to. That, along with the loss of hybrid crop genetics, means we’re getting smaller yields out of our crops. We’re planting more acres to get the same production, but guess what that means?” She stopped, staring and challenging the most powerful man in the Midwest.

  Alex finally broke eye contact with her. “It means we use even more fuel to produce less, I get it,” he sighed, furious with himself more than with anyone else. I should have known that, we’ve more than tripled in size and I just expected the Wizards to keep up. He looked at Bishop Hart seated at the end of the table. The patriarch of the Unified Church said nothing, his face impassive yet comforting. Calm yourself, breathe deep, understand the person’s intentions, he told himself, attempting the techniques Hart taught him to control the mood swings he experienced since his near-fatal injuries.

  He gathered himself and replied in an even tone. “Celeste, the Wizards are doing an amazing job. I’m sorry I yelled at you.” He gave her a small smile, accented by the wrinkles around the patch covering his bad eye. “I think we just assume you’re always going to pull a miracle out of your hat. Your grandfather would have kicked me for that. I appreciate you being more understanding and putting up with my expectations.”

  Celeste nodded. Since taking over leadership of the Wizards, she had witnessed Alex swing from fury to compassion in a millisecond more than once. The pressures of leading a quickly-expanding nation made up of little communities of survivors ground down even the strongest of wills. His injuries amplified some of his natural personality traits, not necessarily for the better. Celeste and the rest of the Founder’s inner circle learned to deal with the tides and save their input for the times it counted most.

  “So give me some options. What do you suggest we do? Increase production or cut consumption?” Alex asked.

  “First off, in a couple of seasons we should have some form of hybrid genetics back. Not like before, but at least we’ll be back on the upswing,” she said with satisfaction. Alex smiled and nodded, but Celeste wasn’t done yet.

  “Hear me out on this before you say anything. Coming from engineers, this is going to sound weird…but we need to start thinking of alternative means of transportation.”

  “You mean trains or bicycles? That doesn’t sound crazy, we're already trying to use those,” Alex said.

  Celeste lit up with a grin. “I mean using horses.”

  The look on Alex’s face almost made Celeste spit out the chicory tea she was sipping. Once he regained his composure, he arched his eyebrow.

  “This is no joke, Alex. Lori has been working with folks who know how to handle the animals. Applied Science faculty from Old Main already has several hundred on pasture right now,” Celeste told him. Lori Hamilton was more than just Alex’s sister, she was the head of the Republic’s agriscience efforts. Her talents were critical to keeping their people supplied with a steady diet of protein.

  “Next you’re going to tell me to start training Deputies in cavalry tactics. Do your Wizards have a way to produce swords and lances for my knights?” Alex asked sarcastically.

  Still smiling, Celeste reached under the table and produced a slightly curved blade approximately three feet long with a basket-hilted handle. She chuckled, laying the weapon on the conference table in front of Alex.

  “Actually,” she informed him, “that is precisely what we have in mind. Truth of the matter is that we can’t produce enough high-quality gunpowder fast enough to replace what you’re using
. So to answer your question…yes, I think we do need to start carrying simpler sidearms. I spoke with the Steinbrinks, they can produce what we need without interfering with production of the new Model 76 battle rifles. We’ll still have revolvers, but we need every ounce of gunpowder for the Raptors and Razorbacks. Interior patrols and guards need to use single-shot weapons and blades.”

  “Celeste, there are still Ditchmen and Rateaters out there. Our Deputies are always outnumbered, and technology is our main advantage,” Alex challenged.

  “And how many of them have you seen in the last month? What about the last year? According to Dr. Glenn, by now the Ditchmen have been almost completely wiped out by tick diseases like Lyme. West Nile and other mosquito-spread illness seem to be spreading…sheesh, all those old pools and abandoned basements make perfect insect breeding grounds. We’re lucky we haven’t lost more people to the buggers ourselves,” Celeste told him.

  “So biological warfare and cold steel will be our new secret weapons? Hardly the technological breakthrough I’ve been praying for. I suppose the Creator—and the Wizards—work in mysterious ways?”

  Celeste smiled back.

  “Who’s this horse expert? Why haven’t I heard about him?” Alex asked.

  “He's outside waiting to see you,” Celeste answered.

  A brief flash of annoyance, then acceptance as Alex simply waved a hand to retrieve the mystery guest.

  Celeste opened the office door, said something Alex couldn’t make out through his still-damaged ears, and watched a tall man with a long gray beard enter in. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and a short-sleeved gray shirt held tight by black leather suspenders attached to his dark trousers. A sly grin belied a mind tuned to the genius of nature.

  “Why ‘ello, Founder Hamilton. I’m Elmer Schrock and I’m helping your sister wit’ the horse breeding program for da Republic,” the man said with a widening smile. The hint of accent rounded out some of his words, the telltale sign of a community that still spoke their own version of German at home.