From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  A Winter’s Day by David Carrico

  Gus Allen lifted his oculars to his eyes and scanned the little valley that lay below the rise he was standing on. A cold breeze bent its way around the mesquite tree he was standing in front of and blew down the collar of his heavy coat, bringing a definite chill to his spine and causing the hairs on his neck to bristle. Eastern Montana in late January wasn’t the most hospitable country. It was often the textbook definition of cold. His saddle horse, a big gray gelding named Ranger, stomped a hoof and whuffled. “Yeah, me too,” Gus muttered. Fortunately, the snow that the clouds had been promising all day hadn’t started yet, and he was hoping to make his kill and be home before that happened.

  He touched a control on the oculars, and the focus locked in so he could see the deer herds clearly. There were two groups: one of close to a dozen does, most heavy with fawns that would be born in May or June, and some distance away, a small group of bachelors with a pretty good-sized stag, a couple that looked to be about three years old, and a couple of young bucks that were more than yearlings but not quite two years, Gus judged. He’d been hunting for over ten years, and his dad and granddad had both done a good job of schooling him in the art and craft of the hunt.

  Gus lowered the oculars and looked at them. Teledyne models—not quite as good as the comparable units from Obsidian, but they’d gotten a better deal on the Teledynes when they’d bought a case of them. And since the Teledyne/Obsidian corporate war had ended so badly a couple of years ago, they’d have to be happy with what they had. Neither one of the big megacorps would be designing new products for quite a while…if ever. They’d gutted each other in the war, and destroyed much of North America besides. Their liberal use of nukes had devastated all the major cities and most of the smaller ones. So, just about everyone was now in a mode of salvage, scavenge, and make do, which to a great extent explained why Gus was out hunting, and on horseback, to boot. Long distance transportation networks were shattered. Food wasn’t plentiful now, and fuel was downright scarce. The game rangers had all lost their bosses when Billings was nuked. Most of them had either taken off their badges and gone home to the family farm or ranch or had gone to work for their local sheriffs. And the sheriffs had all quietly stopped trying to enforce the game regs. They were just as hungry as the people they were trying to protect, and a slice of venison or bison fried up just as well as a slice of beef or horse. And the few refineries in the region had become fortified camps, according to what Gus had heard.

  He put the oculars back in their pocket and lifted his rifle. Time to be about it. He put the scope to his eye and sighted down the valley. The big stag swam into view, and he spent a moment focused on him, admiring his rack. “Surprised you’ve still got that, pal.” He knew the antlers wouldn’t last much longer. Most bucks in Montana lost their antlers in January, and no later than February.

  Gus felt the urge to take the shot but kept his finger off the trigger. “Not looking for a trophy today, buddy,” he said to the buck. “You just keep making fawns.” He made a mental note to come back this direction in the summer to look for the shed antlers, then he swung his rifle to the right until he picked up on the three-year bucks. He’d decided to take one of them because they had more meat on them than the yearlings, and with six people and two dogs at the compound, they needed the meat. They were similar in size, but he focused on the one that had a misshapen antler. Cull the herd, his grandpa would have said. Take the weakest first.

  He lined up the shot, laid his finger on the trigger, and squeezed slowly.

  * * *

  Gus cursed as a fat snowflake landed in his eye. It melted immediately, but it caused a pinpoint moment of intense cold, which caused his eye to water. He rubbed the back of his deerskin glove across his eyes, then looked up, blinking. The snow had held off until he’d field cleaned his kill and loaded it up on his pack horse. It began just as he started back to the compound, and he decided that if you’re going to go riding through a snowstorm, even a light one, you shouldn’t be surprised if you got some snow in your eyes.

  The falling snow was actually a good thing, as it meant the weather was being influenced by a low pressure system. High pressure systems, with their clear skies and bright sunlight, invariably produced weather that could only be characterized as frigid, especially after the widespread use of nukes by the megacorps in the recent war had almost triggered a nuclear winter. Every “expert” who was supposedly in a position to know had sworn for years that wouldn’t happen, because modern weapons were extremely clean and wouldn’t produce fallout. Problem was, post-war analysis indicated that everyone who was in a position to know had underestimated the extent to which big explosions, even clean ones, would kick a lot of dust and debris into the air, not to mention causing firestorms with attendant smoke. Burning cities put a lot of particulates in the air. And even small nukes qualified as big explosions by anyone’s standards. So, winters had been noticeably colder the last couple of years, and although the prospects of starting another ice age weren’t serious, the revised forecasts all pointed to the effects of colder weather hanging around for a while longer.

  Gus shrugged his shoulders under his coat. He was dressed for really cold weather, and he knew how to handle it, but it didn’t break his heart that he wasn’t having to. His hunt had been easy, and he really didn’t want to push his luck. The snow was just a light dusting at the moment, nothing approaching a major storm, much less a blizzard, and that didn’t bother him. If it was all the same to whoever was in charge of the weather these days, he’d just as soon be home and in the house with a big mug of something warm before anything major dropped from the clouds.

  He turned his head enough to check on his packhorse out of the corner of his right eye. She was still trailing along. The old mare, Ellie, had gotten a bit skittish when Gus loaded the tarp-wrapped deer carcass on her back—smell of blood, probably—but she settled down almost immediately. She was still following in Ranger’s tracks. All good.

  As he turned back around, Gus’ gaze ran across a patch of ground that caught his eye. There was a bit of wind-drifted snow in the lee of a hummock of grass, and therein was a recent hoofprint—a horse’s hoofprint—not a deer’s—headed more or less in the direction he was going—toward the family compound. Glancing around, he could see evidence of other hoofprints to both sides.

  The after-effects of the war were being felt all over North America, but so far, the northwestern states had mostly gotten off lightly. Well, lightly if you considered that Billings was the only town in the state that had been nuked. The population in Montana was low compared to other states and was heavily decentralized, which meant they would mostly survive the war. And they were, by and large, pretty self-sufficient, although food was a bit tight in some areas. The suburbs around Billings, those that were still standing, were mostly ghost towns, but the outer towns—smaller towns and county seats—were making do.

  The big ranchers had lost a lot of stock since the war, between the crash of the transportation network and the really cold winters. They couldn’t ship stock out or feed in, and even moving hay around was a major issue. Modern stock didn’t do really well on a diet of winter grass. Gus was a bit envious of the ranchers who were running longhorns or bison.

  But food wasn’t the only issue Montanans faced. Gus and his dad had talked about the recent war and the implications rising out of the destruction it had caused. Gus had been a bit blasé about the risks, figuring they knew their neighbors. But now, seeing several horses’ hoofprints coming from a strange direction had put a knot in Gus’ stomach, and it occurred to him that, maybe, he should have spent more time listening to his dad and less time arguing with him. He nudged Ranger with his heels and chirruped to Ellie. The two of them broke into a trot.

  Meanwhile, Gus unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out his oculars. He quickly scanned the area ahead of him...nothing. He thumbed them to thermal...small blobs in the grass from wildlife. Even at their most di
stant setting, the oculars weren’t showing larger returns. That didn’t necessarily comfort Gus. He tucked the oculars away and nudged Ranger to a canter.

  * * *

  A quarter hour later, Gus pulled Ranger to a stop by a stand of three cedar trees that marked the northwest corner of the berm around the family compound. Gus’ grandfather, the retired marine sergeant, had come home after retirement a changed man from the youth who’d left the ranch twenty years before. He’d seen too much action in too many strange locations, and he’d seen too much politics, even in his own country, to make him comfortable with what he saw the future portending. He hadn’t become a political fanatic, but he had come home with plans, and constructing the berm had been the most visible of them. The Rocking A Ranch had more equipment than most of the others, and their supply storage went a lot deeper. Grandpa’s military retirement had paid for a lot. And he’d raised his descendants to take the long view.

  The horseshoe tracks Gus had been following had veered toward the main gate in the southern face of the berm. Gus was feeling a bit paranoid, so he decided to come in from a different direction. He hoped he just ended up looking foolish.

  Dismounting, Gus loosely tied the two horses’ reins to low branches, then pulled his com unit out of an inside pocket. The national communication networks had all dissolved, between the damage caused by the war and the breakdown of the power grid. The lack of available parts and replacement units to fix the damage didn’t help. But the compound still had electricity, partly from the solar panels on the roofs of all the buildings, and partly from a generator fed by an old gas well located a half mile away that they had been extracting gas from before the war. How long either of those would last was anybody’s guess, but they were providing power now.

  The compound’s local wireless network was still up and running—as long as the router was up—and Gus was close enough now that he could check it. They couldn’t talk to each other over it, but they could send texts. It took a moment for the com unit to synch with the network, but then he got a message: X☹X. The lump in Gus’ stomach turned to a ball of ice at the sign for trouble. He responded with ??? and bit his lip, waiting.

  It took over a minute for an answer to come back.

  6-8X

  Between six and eight intruders. Not good.

  IN/OUT? He sent.

  Response was quicker.

  Y

  The knowledge that some of the intruders had entered the house made the ball of ice in his stomach grow to the size of a soccer ball. That wasn’t going to continue, if he could do anything about it.

  COMING. G.

  BC was the response. Gus snorted. That had to be his mom. BC was her standard shorthand for Be Careful. That wasn’t going to be high on his list of concerns for the next little while, though.

  Gus put the com unit away, then made sure his pistol was secure in its holster and his knife was still tucked into his boot. He pulled his rifle from its saddle scabbard. It was a venerable AR-10 platform—older than he was, probably older than his father—that had been tweaked to perfection by his grandfather, who had turned gunsmith after retiring from the Marines. It was his favorite hunting gun, because its .308 round was heavy enough to stop almost anything except a grizzly bear and the magazine held twenty rounds. Since he’d only used one round in the hunt, the magazine was almost full, and he had another in his coat pocket. Unlike his father and older brother, Gus wasn’t a revolver fan. He liked having more rounds, so his pistol was a 10 mm with a 15-round magazine, and he had two spares in his other coat pocket. If he ended up needing more firepower than that, he was in trouble.

  Gunfire sounded from inside the compound. Gus dropped his hat on his saddle-horn and sprinted around the trees and along the face of the berm. When he got close to the midpoint, he angled up the side of the berm, dropping to his belly to slither through the dry grass the last few feet. He stopped when his eyes barely cleared the crest of the berm. He pulled the oculars out and quickly scanned the interior of the compound.

  The compound inside the berm only measured about ten acres, so it wasn’t huge—about 660 feet on a side. It was big enough, though, to enclose the house, three large structures, and a couple of small ones. His grandfather had planned well when he’d built the berm a lot of years ago.

  From where he was, Gus could see the back sides of the hay and equipment barns, the two major outbuildings in the compound, and most of the central stockade and open areas north of the house and east of the horse stable. He could see three saddled horses standing loose between the stockade and the house, reins on the ground—a couple of nondescript bays and a tall, lean dun. They were all geldings from the look of it. The horses weren’t any of the family stock, so they had to be what the intruders had ridden in on. From what he could tell, they weren’t phenomenal pieces of horseflesh, but they weren’t walking dog meat, either.

  More shots sounded from the other side of the house while Gus was making a second scan. His mouth tightened. Self-defense mode was now in order, he decided. He’d been avoiding that thought, but now it was forced upon him.

  He couldn’t see anyone standing around, and the garage and workshop doors to the back of the house still seemed to be closed and locked, which was good. That meant the intruders must have gotten in through the front door, and they were in the family part of the house, which wasn’t good.

  It looked like there might be a couple of bodies on the ground between the stockade and the house. The ice in Gus’ gut spread through him. He couldn’t tell who the bodies were from where he was. The thought that they might be his father or brother tore at him. He had to get inside and get a better vantage point.

  Gus put the oculars away and pushed back from the crest of the berm, sliding through the grass until he knew he was well below the point where he could be seen, then he rose to a crouch and moved back toward the west, toward the corner where he’d left his horses. About halfway there, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled back up to the crest. Great. He was right behind the hay barn. No one was there, and no one could see him from the rest of the compound. He crawled over the crest and slunk down to stand against the back wall of the barn beside the only door.

  The door looked like metal, but it was actually a high-tensile ceramic that would resist almost anything. One of his survivalist grandfather’s provisions. The door handle was mainly for show. Gus peeled the glove off his right hand and rested his palm against the upper right corner of the door. The cold bit through his skin and settled into his muscles, but then he felt the click of the latch releasing. He pulled on the handle and slipped through the opening just before the door closed and the latch re-engaged.

  Gus pulled his glove on and stood motionless for a long moment, listening, breathing in the sweet smell of hay. When he was satisfied no one else was in the barn, he slid along the wall until he reached the stairs to the upper level. He moved up them as quietly as cowboy boots would allow, just in case he was wrong about the barn being unoccupied.

  The second level was packed with hay bales. Gus’ family had always preferred the square bales to the huge, round ones that had become so common in previous generations. One of the reasons was that they didn’t need heavy equipment to move the square bales around. He was glad for that, now, as the building was full and somewhat warmer than outside. Moving down the outside aisle, he turned the corner into the center aisle and made his way to the ladder that led to the third story cupola. He slung his rifle and climbed up, blessing whichever one of his forebears had included it in the building design.

  Once he arrived, he pulled out the oculars and scanned the compound again. After a quick look around didn’t show anyone moving, he focused on the area between the stockade and the house. Yeah, there were bodies down there. The one in the center of the compound was partially covered by the body of Rowdy, their male Rottweiler/German Shepherd mix, who would not have taken well to strangers advancing on the house, especially if guns were out. “Good boy,” G
us whispered around the lump in his throat. It was good that Rowdy’s mate Princess was at the vet with a problem pregnancy. If she’d been there, she’d probably be dead, too.

  Gus moved his gaze onward. The sight of the body that lay in the grass before the steps to the back porch froze him through and through. He couldn’t see the face, but he could see that it was wearing his older brother, Ben’s, favorite shirt. No one else on this side of the state had one like it. Gus examined the immediate area...there...that was Ben’s favorite pistol, a Ruger revolver, lying in the dirt by his hand. “Shit!” If Ben was down…

  Gus closed his eyes, throttling down the fury surging up. After a moment, when he was sure he could talk, he set down the oculars, lifted the intercom handset, and punched the button for the house. He heard it buzz a couple of times, then he heard his father’s voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me,” Gus said. “I’m in.” Stupid. That he was in was obvious given that the intercom panel would tell where he was calling from.

  “Good. We’re pinned inside, but Ben and Rowdy are out there somewhere.”

  Gus’ heart sank as he realized his dad didn’t know. “They’re dead, Dad. I can see them from where I am. But they took at least one of the bastards down with them.” Gus felt both fire and ice inside him at that moment.

  “Shit.” His father was silent for the time it took to draw a deep breath and release it. His voice, when he spoke again, was considerably colder. “That changes things.”

  “Yeah.” The coldness in Gus’ voice matched his father’s. He pushed his emotions down. Time to focus. “I can see three loose horses by the stockade. How many are there?”

  “Security cam, before they shot it out, showed six riding in the main gate, but I’m not sure if that’s all. There are at least three different guns shooting at us inside the house, and a couple of rifles from outside. If you say there’s one down out there, that leaves five.”