Ash
Rise of the Republic
Campbell Paul Young
Copyright 2015 by Campbell Paul Young
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
About The Author
Prologue
Three ragged men held the bloated, stinking body while a fourth sawed at the thin rope. Their faces were wrapped against the swirling ash. They laid him down carefully, almost reverently, and began scraping out a grave with their hands. The rest of the band watched their work silently, impatient but unwilling to disturb the solemn proceedings. An hour later they stood over the shallow hole and spoke inadequate words. One man’s silent tears, running lonely rivulets through the grime on his face, were quickly wiped away with a filthy sleeve. They moved on before they made camp, wanting to be clear of the boy’s ghost. He had died hard, abandoned by his friends.
Conversation was subdued around the dim campfire. Each man was lost in thoughts of cowardice and despair. They failed to notice the cloaked figure slip from the shadows and take his place among them. They looked up in surprise when he spoke. His voice was grim and rasping.
“I saw you, today, what you did. I saw you run from them.” He raised a thick, scarred hand to ward off a protest from the bravest of them. “I don’t blame you. What could you have done? They come out of the ash, silent. They hunt you for miles, day and night. They always do. When they catch you it’s a rope and a tree and on to the next.”
“What do you know of it, stranger?”
“More than many, less than some. I know there was a time when a man was free to roam, to make his own way. A time when a hungry man could take what he wanted and burn the rest. A time when free men didn’t run from the threat of a rope.”
“Yes, well, that’s progress I guess. There’s nothing we can do short of moving on. We’re headed out east in the morning. We’ve heard the people there aren’t so organized. You look like you can handle yourself, and we’re a man short now. Want to come along?”
“East! It’s much the same to the east, or it will be soon. No, no, what would you say if I told you there’s another way? A way to stop the noose and the fear? A way for a free man to run wild again?”
“I’d say you’ve been out in the ash too long, stranger.”
“Fair enough, but you don’t have to take my word for it. You’re free men, you can make your own choices, but if you have any sense you won’t go east in the morning.”
“No? And where would we go if we had sense?”
“You would follow me.”
“Where?”
“To see the Chief.”
Chapter 1
July, 0 PC (2015 AD)
*
“It was shocking how quickly civilization disintegrated in the panic. Rampant looting began almost immediately. Local, State, and Federal government agencies were crippled by the ash. By the end of the first week, the country had collapsed; it was every man for himself.”
-Kristen Harrisburg, ‘The Grey Panic’; RNT University Press, 36 PC (2051 AD);
*
I was on a drilling rig south of Cotulla when it blew. I had been running MWD tools for a small directional outfit for a few years, and I was burned out. It was actually a relief, to have a monumental disaster as an excuse to pack my bags and leave. Walking away from that kind of money is hard to do, even when you’re miserable making it. So when the directional driller and I saw the news bulletins and stepped out to see the pillar, I told him he’d better make some phone calls, because I no longer worked for him.
I was packed up and on the road within an hour; the clouds were already boiling in.
I saw my first death when I was sitting in construction traffic. It’s funny to think they were still working on the roads, no one knew what was coming. You kids don’t understand a thing like traffic do you? It’s still strange to me to have to explain a thing like that. You see, in those days we actually had the resources to maintain the roads. Crews were constantly patching, or widening, or resurfacing. They couldn’t shut down the whole highway, so they would block off a few lanes at a time. This made for a vicious bottleneck on a busy road, so they would advertise the lane closures for miles before you reached them. If everyone would just move to the open lane as soon as they could, there would be no problem, but a few assholes always waited until the last minute to get over. Of course, people let them in, which slowed down traffic in the open lane, which caused impatient people in the back to think that maybe the signs were wrong and switch to another lane, which would cause both lanes to back up past the lane closure signs, which left no one with any idea what to do other than flick each other off and scream at their mirrors, which caused them to smash into the backs of the cars in front of them, which would back up traffic further.
It was a frustrating cycle. It was probably the cause of most of the misery in the world. It didn’t take a huge logical leap to understand the solution, which was simply to figure out the correct lane and stay there. So you would sit there in the lane, irritated by the delay, but not enough to make it worse for everyone else, and you would watch these pricks fly past you in the wrong lane expecting someone to let them in.
Anyway, I had just crept past the worst of it, proud of myself for keeping a particularly obnoxious convertible from cutting in. I was enjoying the sight of the driver screaming at me in my rearview when the first of the bombs fell right through the top of his skull. It scared the shit out of me at the time, and I didn’t stop to think about much once a few more fell around me, but now I chuckle a little every time I remember the look on his face. Served him right: he should have been in my lane earlier…plus I could swear steam was coming out of his ears like some old cartoon…but that could just be an old man’s memory playing tricks on him.
There wasn’t much in the way of death the rest of the way home. We were so far from the blast that the only bombs that made it to us had mostly cooled into lumps of glass, and yeah, they killed some folks, burned a few houses down…they definitely made short work of assholes in convertibles, but they didn’t do much damage overall, not compared to what was to come. There were plenty of wrecks to get around, people are always distracted in a situation like that, but I made it without incident. Things went downhill from there.
I had called ahead and had Deb do some shopping. She bought a few canned goods and other non-perishables, filled up the tub with water. At the time, there was a lot of talk in popular culture about so called ‘preppers’. There were a string of TV shows detailing the lives of various crackpots gearing up for their favorite disasters – plagues, riots, floods, wars. I know it sounds crazy, but there were plenty of people who were honestly getting ready for a zombie apocalypse. People spent thousands of dollars and hours gathering guns and ammo and machetes to fend off the imminent marauding hordes of undead. We never bought in to that fad in a serious way, but don’t take that to mean we didn’t take any warning from any of it. I was never a boy scout, but that doesn’t mean their motto doesn’t make sense. No, we weren’t ‘preppers’, but I had a few firearms, a modest amount of ammunition, and a tendency to keep a good stock of dry food in the house. We didn’t really think we would need anything. At that point, we were definitely more worried about how other people would react to the situation. It didn’t seem like a global disaster, we were feeling about the same level of anxiety as for a major hurricane landing in Galveston. Then the ash started to fall.
&nbs
p; It came down wet at first. I guess all the water in the atmosphere condenses on the ash and drops out of the sky. I wasn’t really scared until I saw those first black streaks on the windows. We were so far South, if it was raining ash here, how big was this thing?
Within minutes, everything was wet and grey. I had a feeling it would stay that way. As the wind picked up and our satellite connections began to sputter out, I decided I had better take careful stock of our modest supplies. I pulled everything out of the pantry and sorted it on the kitchen table. In terms of non-perishables, we had probably a week’s worth of canned food, mostly beans, chili, and tuna. The refrigerator held another few days of provisions, but if we lost power we couldn’t count on those for long. All told, I figured we could stretch it two weeks with the food we had. I made the decision to make a run in to town for more before things got any worse. Outside, the siliceous downpour intensified.
We threw on our rain gear and loaded up in the truck for the supply run. We didn’t live in the best part of town, so I decided to throw my pistol in the glove box in case we ran into any overeager looters. I didn’t think it would be a problem, but hey, once again, the old boy scout motto always made a lot of sense to me. I kept my speed lower than usual because the wipers were struggling to keep up with the dirty rain. Wet ash was beginning to pile up in some of the low spots so I flipped the transfer case into four-high to keep from bogging down.
Traffic was a nightmare as soon as we got close to town. We crept along past multiple accidents. Soggy, ash covered cops were doing their best to keep the rubberneckers moving. We made the twenty minute drive to Wal-mart in around an hour, only to find a parking lot packed to the road. Instead of wasting time circling the aisles for a spot, I hopped a curb and parked in a growing row of muddy trucks in a greenspace not far away. I did something then that I had never done before: I pulled the pistol out of the glove box and stuck it in the back of my waistband. We raced a number of other couples to the doors, eager to get the shopping done and head back to the relative safety and sanity of home.
We ran into one of our neighbors on the way in. He was piling groceries into his SUV. The fact that the majority of the food he had bought was frozen seemed shortsighted of him, but he gave us his shopping cart so I kept my mouth shut.
As we moved through the sliding doors, the throbbing roar of thousands of angry and desperate people battered at us. A third of the city was here for the same reason, and not a single one of them was feeling particularly altruistic or conciliatory. We had made the mistake of entering through the doors closest to the market section of the store, and the shouting and shoving were evident almost immediately. You youngsters won’t remember, but there used to be something called Black Friday. Walmart and the other big box stores used to advertise absurdly cheap merchandise only available on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Families would gorge themselves and then head down to the store to sit in line outside the doors for hours. When the doors opened, these people, decked out in their oversized holiday sweaters, would make a mad rush for the cheap crap, elbowing and cursing each other all the way. There were a number of fatalities and countless injuries due to this sort of shopping every year. As bad as that was, the scene in that store was worse.
Ten feet past the doors, instead of the traditional geezer greeting, a big idiot in a wife-beater and sweatpants told me to give him our cart. I tried to reason with him but he socked me in the nose before I could say much. Stars danced, my shirt got bloody, Deb cussed a storm, and I was halfway to the ground before I remembered the pistol. I pulled it out (I remember thinking it wasn’t a fluid motion like you always saw in the movies) and leveled it in his general direction. He got the hint and, with a parting snarl, went in search of less well armed cart holders. After a welcome like that, we proceeded with more caution.
It was quickly made clear that it was a poor time to shop for food. We weren’t the only armed customers that evening. A relatively well organized group had the produce section effectively held hostage, and the angry words and screams I could hear from the rest of the market made the two weeks’ worth of food back at the house seem suddenly sufficient. Since we had made the trip, I figured we might as well pick up some less vital goods if we could, so we moved away from the food riot into the clothing section.
We stocked up on warm clothing. I had the feeling it might be getting cold soon, and I wanted options. There were a few other forward thinkers like us in the department, but they kept to themselves and we had no trouble loading up what we needed. We found an empty cart hidden from view by a few racks of shirts and we requisitioned it: it was starting to look like this would be our last trip into town for a long time and we needed to get everything we could.
We made our way towards sporting goods and found that it had been mostly picked over. I wasn’t terribly concerned; I used to be an avid camper so I had quality survival gear at home. For some reason, the fishing aisle was largely untouched so I grabbed all the line and hooks I could get my hands on. At that point I was still considering heading out to my family’s lake house to ride this out. I wasn’t thinking about pH balances, I thought fish might be an easy source of immediate protein.
Moving on, I rounded the aisle toward the ammo section only to find shattered glass and empty display cases. There were a few boxes of the less popular calibers so I grabbed them, thinking that the powder and primers might come in handy at the very least. Since we were near the toy section, I steered us over to a rack of board games and started piling the more interesting ones in the cart. I had a feeling we would appreciate them once the power went and we were stuck inside.
Next, we headed to automotive and I grabbed several five gallon gas cans. I had hopes of filling them on the way home, but if the state of this store was any indication of the hell we could expect at the gas stations then I thought we could still use them for water storage. We passed a big rack of car batteries and I filled the bottom racks of the carts with them. I had seen plans at some point for a wind generator that involved the alternator from a car and a bank of 12V batteries in parallel. I hoped with my limited electrical expertise I could throw something together.
We swung over to hardware and I grabbed a generous supply of nails, screws, nuts, and bolts. I also picked up a few hand tools that I had been putting off buying. I had my fingers crossed for a small gas generator, but the shelves were empty in that section. I remember when Hurricane Ike came through the region was sold out of generators for months afterwards. I didn’t think my chances were good for getting my hands on one. I kicked myself for putting off buying one for all those years.
Deb pointed out that it might be useful to have some sewing supplies so we headed to over to crafts. We grabbed a dozen packages of needles and a few spools of thread. I considered a sewing machine but a glance at our quickly filling carts kept me from pulling the trigger.
While we were debating whether to move on to the market section, the shooting started. Looking back, I think it was probably the twitchy, well-armed group we had seen pillaging the produce that started things, but whether they ran into another gang or the cops finally decided to sort things out, I’ll never know. What I do know is that gunshots are loud. Multiple gunshots in an enclosed space with a horde of already terrified people will cause a stampede. That was the first one I saw, but it wasn’t the last.
We were at the back of the store, so we were spared the trampling, but the screams were enough to send us looking for a place to hunker down. We started moving further back when we ran into a trembling store associate, Tracy Goodwin, one of Deb’s former coworkers. She was thin and tall, her long brown hair was in disarray. Her eyes were wide and brimming with tears, her mascara was beginning to run. She seemed rooted to the spot. I asked her if we could head to the warehouse and possibly leave through the back before I noticed the spatter of blood on her blue smock. The small pocket knife in her hand was dark red and glistening, making a mess on the floor. I started to raise the pistol to ward her of
f, expecting an attack, but Deb jabbed me in the side before I could bring it to bear. She nudged me again and nodded to the body on the floor behind the shivering girl. He was lying on his back, arms wide, blood oozing from the side of his neck. She had nicked his jugular with a lucky jab. His fly was unzipped, belt still on, his penis was still mostly erect. Deb hugged the girl as she burst into tears. As we moved toward the warehouse I noticed his nametag had a yellow section that said ‘Store Manager’.
Once we made it through the double doors marked ‘Employees Only’, Deb sat the girl down in a chair in the hallway to comfort her. I hoped she had made her lucky jab before he had made too much progress. That wouldn’t be the last time Deb would have that conversation with a poor hysterical girl. The rapists came out of the woodwork in those first few months.
While Deb calmed the girl down, I started scouting around for anything useful. We had piled a good load of gear in our carts, but we still hadn’t found any food. Shockingly, the warehouse was deserted. I saw the evidence of some light looting here and there, probably the work of the more forward thinking store associates. I thought back and realized that the poor girl in my wife’s arms and the disgusting sack of shit bleeding out back in electronics were the only employees I had seen since we entered the store. The rest must have bugged out once the horde had descended. I didn’t blame them one bit. What that meant for me was a warehouse full of everything I needed and no one to stop me from taking it. Not being a thief, and knowing that credit cards would probably be useless soon, I gently asked the still shaky girl to log in to the register in the site-to-store bay just outside the double doors. I had her run my card for five grand. It was probably a uselessly noble gesture, but it kept me from feeling like a scumbag for everything I took. Sometimes I wonder if that charge ended up on my account. The records are probably still sitting in some independently powered backup server farm somewhere out in the desert.
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