Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  “I checked, and they didn’t make it. Their gear was stolen or trashed, but I don’t know if their radios survived the power surge from the CME. Doubt it, though.”

  “Damn it.” David whispered under his breath. A tap at the door made Luke and David both reach for their weapons, but the double knock followed by three fast knocks made David relax and turn out the light. Regina opened the door and whispered, “Pineapple coffee,” before she came up the metal steps and pulled the door shut behind her. When she turned the locking mechanism, David turned the light back on. Sleepy or not, the young girl possessed the presence of mind to give the signal to Tammy before approaching the entrance.

  “You good, Regina?” David asked.

  “Yeah, I’m going to get another hour of sleep before the sun is up. That greenhouse is wearing me out.” She shuffled to the back and crawled back into her bunk.

  Luke lowered his voice, so he didn’t bother Regina. “How are the kids doing?”

  “Better than me. Why do you think I’m up at this hour?” David shrugged.

  Luke nodded, “Yeah, me too. I’m worried about the fuel situation. Do you really think they can get that mini plant up and running?”

  “We’ve got to, Luke. If Tim can get that refinery in Tyler up and producing, who do you think is going to waltz in and demand we give everything to them? They have the weapons to take everything away from us in one airstrike.” David lowered his voice, “That’s why I don’t want to unload everything into a house and put down roots just yet. I can still hitch up and haul ass if I need to, and no offense to your father, but I can’t jeopardize my family if Fort Hood gets all froggy about confiscating necessary industries. You know they could come take our gardens we put in if they feel like it.”

  “I’m worried about that, too. If General Rayburn gets desperate enough, he could cause us a heap of trouble, and butting heads with the guys out of Fort Polk won’t help the situation either.” Luke took a seat and thought about the situation. “On the other hand, if we can prove the fixes Tim wants to make can work at the Tyler refinery, then General Rayburn might be more inclined to simply ask for our help in getting a refinery up and running closer to his base of operations.”

  “That would be nice, and if I recall correctly, there’s a 20,000 barrel per day refinery in San Antonio that might work, and it was designed to produce diesel,” David added. “That’s a lot closer to Fort Hood than Tyler by a long stretch.”

  Luke thought on that for a few seconds before getting the conversation back on the topic at hand.

  “David, in all seriousness, I need your help with the communication situation. We have some resources, but we will also need to scrounge up additional supplies. And I need someone with the knowledge and skills to help,” Luke explained, his voice full of youthful sincerity.

  David sighed before replying.

  “Those HAM operators you mentioned, did you get the antennas, too?”

  “No. I didn’t think to. As far as I know, they are either burnt up or still standing at the houses,” Luke shrugged, “I don’t plan on going back there anytime soon though, so what’s your point?”

  “Luke, I know electrical, but not radio. What do you want from me?”

  “We need to go back to the HAM operators around Ripley,” Luke responded quickly. “Their radios were trashed, but I didn’t check on the status of their antennas. If push comes to shove, we can cobble together a Yagi and some dipoles strung up high enough to do the job,” Luke mused at the end.

  David pointed at the pile of books. “So, you are leaving me homework? That’s new.”

  “Can you shake loose today and ride shotgun? We’ll need some help, if those rigs are still up in the air. Heck, I didn’t even look in the attics. They could have an indoor unit up there.” Luke stood and collected his gym bag. “Say around eight in the morning? Is that enough time for you to get some help?”

  “I’ll check the roster, but I can probably scrounge up some help. How does Angel, Joseph, Kofi, and Melanie sound?” David asked.

  “Who’s Melanie again? One of your crew?” Luke asked.

  “She’s Angel’s girlfriend. I guess that’s what we are calling it. When I first met her, she tried to get me to kill her,” David chuckled.

  “She still crazy?”

  “Man, you know how it is. Crazy is the new normal around here. Yes, to answer your question, she’s much better now. I’ll ask the Amazons to trade off, if they don’t mind. Tammy has a tight group, and they are always willing to help.” David glanced at the stack of books, his notebook filled with production numbers, and one of Luke’s books with a chapter heading Resistors in Series and Parallel.

  “I really don’t like you right now, Luke Messner. Just putting that out there,” he grumbled. “I stopped with this homework thing after I got my last degree.”

  “Just remember, Mr. Metcalf: knowledge is power.” Luke slipped out the door before David could throw something at the young man.

  David organized the books into logical order, retrieved a blue spiral notebook from the cabinet over his head that’d left the throbbing lump, and started taking notes. He muttered under his breath, “Damn you, Luke.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The next day, breakfast came early on a working ranch, and even though Luke’s mission for the day took him off the property and got him a temporary reprieve from his chores, force of habit had him out of bed with the chickens. He and Amy took their turns with showers, and after playing a little grab-ass getting dressed, hustled into the kitchen for breakfast.

  They sometimes ate in a cafeteria-style setup in the bunker, but today, Claire and Paige wanted to put on a family breakfast in the eat-in kitchen in the front of their home. No particular reason, Luke’s mom claimed, but Luke thought it might have something to do with a need to be close to family. His injured return home, after the costly trip to Kingwood, remained a fresh worry for his mother.

  “So, you’re really going to try to get the local radio net back up?” Claire Messner asked her son, who took a sip of milk before replying.

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, David is. I can help some with the purely electrical parts, but he’ll be over the whole setup.”

  “Setup is right,” Amy added with a smirk, and Sam Messner, occupied with trying to bolt down his pancakes, gave the teenager a shrewd look.

  “Did Luke do that thing where he volunteered somebody to do something, then acted like it was their idea to begin with?”

  Claire guffawed in a most unladylike manner and Paige added her little titter of laughter. Amy grinned at her fiancé’s obvious discomfort.

  “Come on, Mom, it wasn’t like that,” Luke protested. “I know Mr. Metcalf taught science in school, so I figured he would have enough of a background to figure out the books. That’s all I did. I did say I would help. We’re going to see what we can salvage today.”

  “Yep,” Sam confirmed, and looked over at Amy. “You got to watch this man of yours. In the Corps, we called that ‘volun-telling’, when a sergeant had to pick some of the privates for a particularly distasteful task. Had it happen to me when I was a youngster, then did it plenty of times later on once I got some rank. Some of us are better at it than others, and I’m not quite sorry to see it seems to be a genetic trait.”

  That little observation garnered a laugh from everybody, including Luke, while they finished up their food and prepared to meet the day. For Sam, that meant running a patrol out toward Highway 69, while Claire would be occupied over at the Big House, working with another project.

  “Seriously? Knitting?” Amy sighed at the idea of performing such a mundane task in this changed world, once her future mother-in-law explained her plan for the day.

  “Netting?” Rachel asked, her now-chubby cheeks screwed up in a curious expression. Since Connie’s death, Claire and Sam had all but adopted the little girl, giving Paige a much younger little sister. With regular meals, a stable environment, and love, the little girl blossomed. No
one, not even the orphan herself, was exactly sure of her age, but based on Beth’s observations, the child couldn’t have been more than three years old.

  “Knitting, sweetheart,” Claire repeated carefully, trying to teach Rachel the word. “And it will become a very important skill when manufactured items grow more scarce. Angelina and I will be teaching a class. We even have a few boys who’ve enrolled.”

  “Sure,” Luke teased, “the ones who couldn’t find a girlfriend elsewhere.”

  “What?” exclaimed Amy, “That’s a mean thing to say!”

  Luke gave her a confused look before replying.

  “Why would you say that? I just meant, if you were a boy looking for a girl, the right place might be in a class that attracts more girls than boys.”

  “That makes sense,” Claire conceded slowly. “Hey, is that why you took Homemaking as an elective?”

  Luke tried to hide the grin and the table erupted in another round of laughter. Luke loved this, and he was so glad to see his mother finally acting like she’d accepted Amy into their family as a member, not just someone passing through. They still had some rough patches, but for now, there was acceptance and peace. On the homefront, anyway. No more talk of moving out, at least, even though Luke retained that as an option.

  Just half an hour after their breakfast, Luke arrived at the collection of vehicles David and his people used as their primary residences. The once-open field, the unused farm laying between the Messner property and that owned by Gaddis Williams, reminded Luke of pictures he’d seen once, depicting the campgrounds of a traveling circus. He figured it was the tents, used to cache salvaged goods out of the weather, and the plethora of old Winnebagos and pull-behind trailers. He even saw makeshift corrals for the animals, but fortunately, no lions or tigers. An elephant would have been nice, though. They could pull a really big wagon, after all.

  Once he’d cleared security at the gate, Luke drove slowly over to the trailer used by David. He was again surprised David and all the man’s adopted kids managed to fit in such tight quarters, but Luke knew they did it for security. Kofi and Dale in one room, Regina and Alex in the other, and David on the pullout sofa in the main living area. Cozy, but with the kerosene stove, they had less space to heat when winter really started.

  He was pulling a lowboy behind one of the big one-ton crew cab diesel trucks, and already had his own security team along for the ride. Luke wanted Joseph and Kofi but couldn’t pull the men off their watch rotation for this kind of mission, so he’d compromised. That’s what you call it when your fiancé puts her foot down, right? Instead, he had Amy and Lori Thompson taking turns riding shotgun, except instead of shotguns, they were decked out with M4s and full battle gear. Luke, with his bum wrist, carried the UMP45 he’d stripped from the dead Homeland agent a few days before.

  As soon as the truck came to a halt, David emerged from the trailer with Angel and Dale in tow, along with an unknown woman with chopped-off hair. Luke noted they all carried rifles slung and pistol belts. The stranger looked like she’d been sick, but Luke knew from his own experience, that was just the look of starvation. He’d seen it many times, including in the mirror.

  “Looks like you lined us up some first-class shooters,” David commented when he took in the presence of the two young women.

  “Amy’s good, but Lori is better than average on the long gun,” Luke confirmed. Though not much taller than David’s ten-year old Regina, Lori carried an extra thirty pounds, and it was all muscle. She’d also spent the better part of a month, familiarizing herself with the Springfield M1A Super Match she now called her own. The black synthetic McMillan stock gave the bulky rifle a sleek, deadly look that Lori claimed made her more accurate, but Luke figured she was just getting comfortable with the 10x scope. ‘Better than average’ might be a vast understatement.

  “Luke, this here is Melanie,” Angel said as he directed the gaunt woman into the bench seat in back, joined by Dale. He then climbed into the truck bed, standing behind the cab. David, unslinging his pack, clambered up to accompany Angel in the back of the truck.

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Luke said as he glanced back to meet Melanie’s eye. She nodded slowly, making sure Luke saw the motion, then looked out the window with her rifle at the ready. A woman of few words, he realized, and approved.

  “Amy, like we discussed, with Lori on the window, I need you to navigate for me,” Luke reminded the young woman when they proceeded out the gate and onto the rural road.

  “On it,” Amy replied, and she was. With the paper map in hand, Amy was ready to give directions once they’d reached the end of the gravel road and intersected with the highway. Left would take them toward Center, and right intersected with the deserted community of Ripley just five miles away.

  “How many targets today, Mr. Messer?” Dale asked, and Luke felt his head jerk around as he looked back at the younger teen.

  “Dale, I’m barely two years older than you!” Luke cried out. “You can ‘mister’ my dad, okay? Just call me Luke.”

  “Okay, Luke,” Dale started, then continued after a pause. “How many targets today? And what exactly are we looking for? David said radio equipment, but I take it that’s not stereo components.”

  “Two targets,” Luke replied. “Two houses near Ripley. Abandoned. They have antenna and masts, so I’m banking on them having some of the stuff David needs to cobble together some repeaters and such. So, we are taking a right here.”

  Luke grinned when Amy picked up the microphone and gave the code phrase for their destination. Nothing to give away their position, unless the Committee had a spy in their communications shack to copy the code book.

  “Cool,” Dale responded. “David’s been sweating over those books you brought him. He says he’s too long out of school, but I think he secretly enjoys teaching it to the rest of us.”

  “Yeah,” Melanie chimed in, surprising Luke. “He wants us to learn everything he knows and brings in other speakers to teach us stuff he doesn’t know. I know I’ll never go hungry again. Not after learning about foraging for wild foods and how to build traps.”

  Melanie sounded so sincere, Luke could only nod. He knew what she meant.

  “First stop is the Ferguson residence, three and a half miles on this highway, then a right turn onto FM 1662,” Amy announced, trying very hard to sound like the automated voice that used to accompany turn-by-turn directions. Luke was amazed by the accuracy of her impression and they exchanged a quick, private smile before Luke began the route. Lori, perceptive as she was, caught the glance and gave a snort.

  “I wonder what Luke’s getting for his birthday?” Lori sang out, making Amy blush. Luke managed to avoid the color change, just, and took the high road by not responding. His birthday was three days away, but Luke wasn’t expecting much. Times being what they were and all. Having a birthday in the middle of December and with Christmas right around the corner, had long accustomed him to birthday gifts of clothes, or other practical items. This year, he was hoping for some warm socks.

  They quickly arrived at the abandoned Ferguson homestead, and Luke set up a security perimeter while David and Dale inspected the looted and partially burned single-story wood frame house. At least all of the damage came ‘after the fact’, as they liked to call it. Luke knew the old man who once lived here was dead, another victim of missing medications, this time for his failing heart, that resulted in his death when his two-month supply ran out. Sheriff Henderson had personally discovered the corpse while making a check on the seventy-nine-year-old retiree.

  Even the fire damage looked more like accidental than arson, some traveler tried to build a fire in the kitchen sink that appeared to have gotten out of hand. Probably squatters, Luke reasoned, and building a controllable fire indoors could be trickier than a novice might think.

  Whatever the case, the house turned out to be stripped of anything remotely close to food, down to the condiments in the refrigerator. Luke, leading with
the UMP45 submachine gun, cleared the house with David, and Luke was surprised to see David take the time to strip the silverware from the kitchen drawer and dump them all into a salvage bag he wore on his hip. The heavy burlap bag, something David made in his scant spare time, was reinforced with grommets and a canvas covering to help keep the contents dry.

  “That’s not silver, you know,” Luke commented drily as David completed his pilferage.

  “I know,” David replied, his face set in a slight smile as he secured the pouch. “Gaddis said to pick up all the stainless-steel eating utensils we came across,” he went on, “something about them making fine hunting points. That old man is certainly thinking ahead.”

  “Huh,” Luke grunted at the blacksmith’s plan. “That’s a freaking brilliant idea. We already hunt with bows a lot anyway.”

  “That’s what he said. Claimed he got the idea from a book, but he’s already made dozens of the things. Broadheads, too. Now, get back on the perimeter, so I can put my assistant to work, since you’ve dumped this chore on me and all.”

  David laughed when he ordered Luke out, and the teenager thought about what Melanie said in the truck. Maybe David was enjoying getting back to teaching, and Dale was one of his prized pupils. That made Luke freeze for a second.

  “Are you and Mom still planning to get classes started back up after the first of the year? If so, we need to make a run to pick up more textbooks. We got a lot of kids to educate, after all.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’, youngster? You start classes along with the rest of the gang,” David said, with more humor in his voice and Luke managed a smile as well. One room classroom, here I come, he thought, as he emerged from the dim confines of the house and back out into the scant morning light. The sky remained a sullen iron gray and overcast, but Luke couldn’t smell any rain in the air when he sniffed. He’d brought his poncho anyway and made sure everyone else packed one as well. No sense catching a chill.

  “Dale, you’re up,” Luke called out softly, bobbing his head toward the house. Luke left the submachine gun hanging across his chest, stubby barrel resting on his left forearm and pistol grip in his right hand. Working with Angel, Melanie, and Amy in maintaining a perimeter, and having Lori up on the roof of the two-car garage in a quickly improvised sniper hide, Luke felt fairly confident they could hold off any random raiding party that might have spotted their vehicle on the road.