From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  “No,” Rylik said. “Helen is not bad, as far as defense goes. There are really only two roads—the main one into the valley and the one leading out—and both run through gaps in the ridges. There are a few small roads through the mountains, but they could probably block those off if they wanted to. The town folk should be okay if they do it right. I plan on occupying Brass Town Bald.”

  “The mountain?” Ellen asked.

  “The mountain,” Rylik confirmed. “The whole area is a national park. The visitor center and overlook tower at the top are a fortress. There are four-foot stone walls all the way around the top, so tourists don’t fall. It’s about a two-mile drive on a winding road up the mountain to the visitor center and parking lot and another half mile or so up to the museum and overlook tower.”

  “Genuis,” said Shmitty. “There is a spring at the edge of the parking lot. A pump moves water from there to a holding tank at the top. Gravity does the rest for the buildings up top and the buildings and restrooms near the parking area. I did a report on it in high school. And there is a huge septic tank behind the restrooms.”

  “I remember,” confirmed Rylik. “I plan on using the buried power lines to send power from a windmill on top back down to the pump. If nothing else, we’ll have a good water and sewer system.”

  “How soon do you think the power will go out?” Shmitty asked, standing up.

  “The first launch will happen at eleven in the morning on the west coast,” Lena said.

  “Corporate headquarters, major subsidiaries, and a lot of cities will get hit,” Rylik said. “The whole world will go dark that day. There is no telling how long it will last. Years, at least. Small pockets will find a way to get power back, but a lot of places will be dark in the beginning.”

  “The ones that get power back will get overrun,” Shmitty observed. “During my tour, I got a taste of how people can turn into monsters, with no cares except their survival, any way they can achieve it.”

  “Does it have to be just us?” Ellen asked quietly, looking back and forth from Rylik to Lena.

  “Who do you have in mind?” Rylik asked. He felt bad about not asking earlier. He and Lena had no immediate family left. Shmitty either, for that matter. But Ellen’s parents were still alive and living in Clarkesville, Georgia, a town about 20 miles southeast of Helen. She was an only child, so she was close to her parents.

  “Mom and Dad,” she said, “I can call them and tell them to come here, now, in their RV.”

  “They have an RV?” Rylik asked.

  “Dad bought it last year,” Ellen said. “He said he’s been busting his ass all these years, building fences, so it was about time to wind down, think about selling the business, and see the country. They’ve been to the beach a few times so he could fish off the piers, and they went to some lake in Oklahoma so he could enter a catfish tournament, of all things. Mom caught a bigger one than he did. She won’t let him live it down.”

  “He said he was going north to try his hand at moose hunting next winter,” Shmitty added, “I don’t think that’s going to happen now.”

  Rylik reached for his phone, “What’s his number? My phone will scramble the call. It’s a perk of my position in the Corporation.”

  Jason Helton answered the call expecting it to be a potential customer. It was, after all, a number he didn’t recognize. Ellen spoke to him on speaker phone. At first, he thought she was pulling his leg, but when Shmitty spoke, and Rylik confirmed, he became serious. Rylik explained what he needed him to do. It included loading clothes, food, weapons, fishing gear, and anything else they thought they may need into the RV and getting to the farm as soon as possible. Before they disconnected the call, they heard him calling out to his wife.

  “Thank you,” Ellen said, tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t think about them sooner,” Rylik apologized. “You two need to go. Stop at the new Walmart and buy a crib and all the diapers you can. Load the back of the truck with all sizes, or do they only come in one size? I have no idea…I’ve never dealt with a baby before. Aw, hell, Lena, follow them. Load your SUV too. Get some toys or something. Here’s some money. If you see sleeping bags and tents, grab several of those too.

  “What are you going to do?” Lena asked.

  “I’m going to see a man about a dog,” answered Rylik.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  When Lena and the Smithers got back to the farm, they pulled up the drive and saw Rylik playing with four puppies. Two of the odd-colored dogs were decidedly older, but they were still puppies. Shmitty stepped behind Lena’s SUV to check the straps holding his old dirt bike on the small trailer behind it. When they were teenagers, he and Rylik had ridden on mountain trails. Lena walked over to Rylik.

  “What do you have there?” Lena asked as she knelt to pet the puppy jumping up against her leg.

  “They’re Catahoula Leopards,” Rylik said, grinning. “I bought them in Clarkesville. There’s a guy there who breeds and trains them, but these are too young to be trained. The big brindle is from the Wright line of dogs. I call him Big Un. He’ll be at least ninety pounds when he’s full grown. The other three are what they call Blues. They are from two blood lines, both different from Big Un’s. Don’t ask what they cost, not that it matters.”

  “I still have some money left,” Lena said.

  “I filled up my truck and the corporate sedan,” Rylik said. “Grandpa’s tractor has a full tank, and I filled two of his old cans with diesel. Why don’t you take the money and fill your SUV and Shmitty’s work truck and spare cans? When Ellen’s parents get here, we’ll convoy up to the visitor center. We’ll have to bust the lock on the gate, but it shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll unload my truck, then you, Shmitty and I will come back, hook up Grandpa’s old travel trailer to my truck, the horse trailer to your SUV, and the wagon to the tractor. It will be a slow process, so it will take us a while to drive the 18 or so miles back to Brass Town Bald.”

  “Is the travel trailer full yet?” Lena asked.

  “No, why?” Rylik asked. “What do you have in mind?”

  “You two are going to help me load mattresses, blankets, quilts, the table and chairs, the rockers, all the cooking utensils, the grill, the curtains, and anything else I can think of from the house.”

  “We might as well get started,” Shmitty said. “Ain’t nobody sleeping tonight anyway. Let’s load your dirt bike on my trailer first, though.”

  Just then, Ellen’s parents pulled up and parked along the road just past the mailbox. Jason Helton was driving a shiny, new RV. It was thirty-six feet long, pulling a trailer with a small johnboat loaded to overflowing behind it. Everything was held in by a blue tarp strapped to the boat. His wife, Faith, pulled in behind the RV in his work truck, a large Chevy 3500, towing a long trailer loaded with the small construction bobcat he used to clear and level land in his fencing business. Surrounding the bobcat were stacks of fence poles and barbed wire. A built-in diesel fuel tank, a generator, and several of Jason’s workboxes were stacked around the gooseneck in the back of the pickup.

  “Looks like you brought everything you had, Mr. Helton,” Rylik said, shaking his hand.

  “I did,” he admitted. “I figured some fencing couldn’t hurt. If it gets as bad as you say it will, going all the way back to Clarkesville will be out of the question for a while. I brought farm fencing, not chain link. It’s lighter, and I was able to load more rolls on the trailer. Oh, and call me Jason.”

  That evening, they received a few stares from some tourists drinking outside the eating area as they convoyed through Helen on Highway 17, heading north. After a few twisted miles, they slowly crossed over a mountain pass, the RV and Jason’s truck straining under their loads. Several miles on the other side, in another valley, they turned left on Highway 180. When they reached the turn off for Brass Town Bald, Rylik got out with one of the sledgehammers from his Grandpa’s farm and busted the lock on the swinging gate. Slowl
y, the procession made its way up the mountain.

  After unhitching the trailers, they headed back to the farm. It took a few minutes to move the horses into the trailer, as they were not used to being loaded at night. Rylik placed the four saddles he bought in one of the vehicles, then Rylik and Shmitty manhandled the antique one-horse pull plow and put it in the wagon with the hay. It was late when they got back to the entrance to the visitor center.

  Rylik stopped the tractor and walked back to the green sign pointing the way to the visitor center. With several hard pulls and one mighty heave, he yanked the sign out of the ground and put it in the back of the wagon, then he pulled the one facing the other way. Looking at the brickwork entrance, he saw yet another sign indicating Brass Town Bald and the visitor center, and he had an idea.

  He climbed back on the tractor, then turned and bumped the weights mounted on the front of the old Massey Ferguson against the brick wall. The bricks finally gave way, and the structure collapsed in a pile. Shmitty, realizing Rylik’s intent, kicked some of the bigger pieces over and turned others, so it was hard to see them in the growing grass. A half hour later, they finally made it up to the parking area.

  “What do we do now?” Lena asked as she handed him a cup of coffee from the pot Faith had made in the RV. “Wait for them to hit? There’s a chance I could be wrong, you know.”

  “Do you really think you’re wrong?” Rylik asked. He had not questioned her belief, and he wasn’t now, but if she wrong, they could have some problems. Like, empty bank account problems.

  Lena looked up at the stars, for a moment, then back at Rylik. “No. I don’t,” she said with conviction.

  “Well,” Rylik said, “then we still have work to do.” He turned to Shmitty and Jason. “We need to haul the bobcat back down, at least below the switchback, and push a couple of trees over. We can hook a chain to them and park the bobcat up around the bend. If we need to leave, we can move the trees, but I don’t think we will. And, we can always take the dirt bikes.”

  “Let’s go,” Jason said and held up his keys.

  “After the power goes out, I’m sleeping the rest of the day away,” complained Shmitty. “Fat guys gotta rest, you know.”

  “You shouldn’t have let yourself go,” said Rylik with a laugh.

  “Oh, I’m still in fighting shape,” Shmitty assured him. “I’ve just got a bit of a gut…like a power lifter, yeah, that’s it, a power lifter.”

  “I hope so,” Rylik said. “Before this is all over, we’ll have to fight to keep what’s ours. You can be sure of that. Let’s go. I think we’ll position several trees so only a bike can weave through down near the entrance and below the switchback. There’s a spot, there, with a cliff on one side and a drop off on the other.”

  The men worked through the night, and by the time the three men pulled back into the parking area, it was one-thirty in the afternoon, and they were exhausted. Rylik knew that if he was that tired, the other men were near collapse. No one said much as they sat in one of the restrooms, away from the windows, waiting. Rylik had decided that was the best place, in case any of the missiles fell close by. He figured Atlanta was sure to be hit. They listened to a popular country station out of Atlanta on a small radio, their position on top of the mountain allowing it to come in clearly.

  “We went up top to look into the museum and the observatory,” Lena said. “Do you know there is a steam locomotive in there?”

  “It was there when we were kids,” Rylik said. “I think we can take the wheels off, fire up the box, put water in it, and use it to heat the whole museum like a green house, and we can probably rig something up to take advantage of the steam power and the spinning axel. We might even be able to attach an alternator to it when we run out of fuel.”

  “Nice,” said Shmitty.

  Two PM came and went. Rylik looked at Lena with a raised eyebrow, and she shrugged. Shmitty sat against the wall with his wife pulled close, their heads together. Jason and Faith leaned against one another. Then, mid song, the early warning buzzer sounded on the radio. All four puppies whined at the sound.

  “Don’t look out the windows,” Rylik said. “Protect your eyes. They’ll use small tactical nukes, but Atlanta is only 100 miles away. We’re protected from the blasts by several mountains and ridgelines, so we should be ok. If these were weapons from 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be.”

  Light flashed outside the windows from the direction of Atlanta. It was as though lightning had struck right outside. As they sat quietly, several more flashes threw shadows across the room. The radio went silent, and the lights in the restroom went out.

  In the near darkness of dawn, Rylik King said quietly, “The world has fallen.”

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks later, the first time it happened, Rylik didn’t have to kill anyone. He wanted to, though. Badly. They were down near the highway entrance discussing whether to fell more trees or dislodge several boulders on the ridge to keep vehicles from coming up the road. So far, no one had tried. Rylik figured everyone was busy learning to survive. No news reached them on the mountain, but he could imagine the chaos.

  “Listen,” Rylik said, shushing Jason. “Do you hear that? Several trucks are coming from the direction of Helen.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” admitted Jason. The older man reached down and loosened the pistol in his holster. All of them had been carrying weapons since the day the nukes fell. “Maybe they’ll go on by.”

  Rylik glance up the road toward the visitor center. He couldn’t see it. The women were up there working in the garden he had planted, hoeing the first weeds. The first few days after the nukes fell, the three men had used the tractor and the bobcat to break up the parking lot and push the asphalt into several piles. They pushed away the gravel and spread dirt over a flat area. They built fences to corral the horses and planted grass in some relatively flat areas. They moved the RV and the trailer against the back of the observatory, away from the road, so they were out of sight if anyone got that far.

  At the moment, Shmitty, who was on duty, was up top looking through the 50’s scope or one of the huge, mounted, tourist binoculars. For the last several days, they had seen smoke rising from Hiawassee to the north. The town seemed to be burning to the ground. But that was not the first indication of fire they had seen.

  “Take the bobcat up the road and pull it out of sight,” Rylik instructed.

  Jason didn’t hesitate. He jumped into the seat, fired it up, turned it around, and headed up the road as fast as it would move. Rylik stepped out of the road, hid behind a tree, and ducked low.

  Three trucks turned in and pulled up to the first fallen tree. Two men, in their early twenty’s, Rylik surmised, hopped out of one of the trucks. They each held a bottle in their hand. More men climbed out of the other two trucks. Rylik counted seven, two of which were no older than sixteen. One of the older men held a young girl by her arm. She tried to jerk away several times, and she was crying.

  “Bitch!” shouted the man jerking her arm, nearly dragging her down. “I said stand still.”

  “We can’t go up there, Willy,” one of the other men slurred. He took a drink from his bottle. “What are we gonna do? You said we could play with her once we got up top.”

  “Well, shit!” Willy said. “I reckon the blasts knocked a few trees down.”

  “Like they flattened Atlanta,” one of the men laughed. “Serves them City Slickers right.”

  Several of the men grunted or laughed in agreement. Rylik’s sensitive nose picked up on the fact that none of the men had bathed recently. Probably since the power went out two weeks ago, he thought. He waited to see what would happen, suspecting he already knew their intentions.

  “We’ll just have to get a little right here, then,” Willy said. “Drop that tailgate. I’m first. After we’re done, she can walk back.”

  Rylik stood and stepped away from the trees. “I don’t think so.”

  His
appearance startled the men. Several took a step back. One of the young ones moved toward an open door.

  “That’s far enough,” Rylik warned the youngster, thinking of the pistol concealed under his shirt. “Let her go, and be on your way.”

  “You need to mind your own business, mister; that’s what you need to do,” said Willy. “We can do whatever we want to. Ain’t you heard? There ain’t no law no more. Ain’t no corporations to enforce anything. Hell, I ain’t seen no deputy since the bombs fell. Folks are doing whatever they have to to survive. City Slickers are coming up, taking people’s food and guns and everything else. We’re taking a little for ourselves, starting with her. Now, you best go on, iffin you know what’s good for you.”

  Rylik stepped toward the men, angling so he could reach the shifty one before he got to whatever weapon he had in his truck. “I’m not telling you again.”

  “The hell with you!” Willy shouted. He threw the girl to the ground. “Ain’t nobody died and left you king! Get him fellers!”

  Rylik felt the adrenaline surge. He was moving before the last word came out of Willy’s mouth. In a blur, he brought his right foot up and kicked the shifty man so hard his face smashed against the truck’s open door, knocking him unconscious. He turned and blocked a slow swing from a second man, and shattered the man’s jaw with a punch. Ducking, punching, and on one occasion, throwing his opponent, it only took him moments to put all seven men down for the count. For good measure, he stomped Willy’s forearm and heard the bones crunch. He was breathing a little heavily, but he had to admit to himself that it felt good to fight…a little…even if it wasn’t much of one.

  “I was born a King,” Rylik King said, emphasizing the word ‘King’ with the last stomp.

  The young girl stared at him with her mouth wide open. Rylik heard footsteps behind him but recognized the sound of Jason’s boots on the paved road. “Are you ok? What’s your name? Did they…do anything to you?” he asked her. He glanced at the men, planning what he would do if they had.