“That Bigfoot of yours isn’t exactly easy on the mileage.” Peter pointed out.
“No, but we’ve got three gas stations just in town that are more or less all ours.” she responded. “And it’s not like we joyride in the thing.”
“Sooner or later you’ll run out.”
“We’ve got one tanker trailer on hand, and know where we can find several others that aren’t being used.” Brenna started to say, but Craig broke in.
“Unless Ellsworth picks them up.”
“And there are more we can go find if it comes up.” she continued doggedly. “Lot of things laying around now. If we need to, we can put together a team that can pull some fuel out of Sioux City, or somewhere else if we don’t want to do it there.”
“Still.” Peter said leadingly.
“Still, I think we’ll be okay for a while.” Brenna replied. “So, that’s where we are and what’s going on. So?”
“So what?”
“So, what’s your story?” she said, raising her eyebrows at him before glancing at Whitley, Smith, and Crawford.
“Are you throwing in with them or you going to stick around and fight the good fight?” Max said.
“This is kind of a lot to take in.” Peter hedged.
“Yeah, and you said something about maybe a meal?” Smith said hopefully.
“And some rack time someplace that isn’t freezing would be good too.” Whitley added.
Brenna stood up. “Yeah, I did. Let me show you where you can crash, and then you can wash up a little while I get some food together for you. Most of us have been up most of the night too, so we’ll all get some sleep and go at this again later today.”
Peter stood up and nodded. “Fine.”
Doug looked at Crawford. “Your name is really Cindy Crawford?”
Crawford scowled as she stubbed her cigarette in the pile of ash she’d made on the table. “Shut up.”
Peter woke up with his nose twitching. Blinking sleep from his eyes, Peter propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the room. He saw uniformed legs dangling from the top bunk, wearing socks but no boots, but that wasn’t what he smelled. Then he placed it. “Is that coffee?”
Bedsprings above him shifted and creaked as the feet pulled up out of view, then Whitley’s head appeared past the edge of the upper bunk. “Not just coffee Gunny. Espresso Mocha, with vanilla cream.”
Peter’s mattress emitted a fresh set of noises as he threw back the blanket and rolled out. Catching himself on hands and feet with a grunt, Peter staggered upright with a suppressed groan as his knees and back protested use after hours of inactivity. “Is there more?”
“Yeah, in the kitchen downstairs.” she said, shifting to a cross-legged position and sipping from a steaming mug.
“What time is it?” he yawned. “Wait, your hair’s wet.”
“A little past noon, and yes, it is.” she said, lifting the end of a towel she had draped around her shoulders with her other hand and rubbing at her scalp. She didn’t wear her hair ‘long’, but it was longer than any male member of the military’s would be; long enough that — once he was paying attention — it was obviously damp.
“What’s the deal?” he asked. “Basin scrub down and a dunking?”
“Well, I asked if it was possible to get a shower, and they told me where to go.”
“Shower?” Peter said, trying — and failing — to keep the hopeful note out of his tone.
“Real shower, hot water and everything.” she nodded. “You only get three minutes of water, but—”
“I can make that work.” he said eagerly. “Where do I go?”
“Well, I asked the people in the kitchen. They gave me a code for the bathroom and explained how the shutoff works.”
“Shutoff?”
She shrugged. “They’ve got a valve rigged up that closes the water to the shower off. It only opens for a total of up to three minutes up to three times once you put in the code.”
“It’d be the first real shower I’ve had since—” he began before chopping the statement off. He’d squeezed in a shower in Cartersville the morning after they’d extracted themselves from the nightmare downtown Atlanta had become, but otherwise it had been that fateful Friday morning when everything turned to chaos. The last morning he’d spoken to Amy before she’d been lost to the apocalypse.
“A hot shower would be fantastic.” he said, covering his lapse. Then he frowned and looked around the room again. They’d been given one in the new-construction part of the ‘house’; one that had three bunk beds in a room that otherwise only offered a small amount of free floor space. He and Whitley were the only ones in the room though. “Where are the other two?”
“Well, it turns out Smith decided he’d rather go play with the Geeks rather than go back to sleep.” Whitley said, swirling her mug around. “And Crawford went with him at my suggestion.”
Peter gave her a knowing glance, and she nodded. “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t want us splitting up.”
“But you went and got coffee and a shower while I was racked out.” he said.
“Yeah, and breakfast too.” she grinned. “Don’t worry, I know how light of a sleeper you are if anything goes wrong.”
“Hmmm.” Peter said, shrugging it off. He could pull some temper over it, or just roll with the punches. And nothing had happened.
“What are you thinking about?”
“About what?” he replied, pulling his pack up onto his bunk.
Whitley gestured with the mug while she swallowed, then spoke. “About this. About Ellsworth.”
“I don’t know yet.” Peter admitted.
“They’ve got a nice setup here.”
“That’s cute and everything, but it’s not what I’m concerned about.”
“Ellsworth.”
Peter nodded as he started extracting the clean set of utilities he had packed at the very bottom of his bag. “If they’re running around scooping up all the available manpower and not bringing the survivors together into a safe zone . . .”
“Is it so terribly screwed up if they are?”
“Come again?”
Whitley shrugged. “I mean, look at this place. They’ve got power, plumbing, good security; they’re in a great situation, actually.”
“Okay, maybe — maybe — there’s a point.” he said calmly. “About
here
. What about the other ninety-nine percent of holdouts?”
“Maybe Ellsworth only strips and leaves the really good holdouts, and adopts the others and takes them in?”
“What are you, playing Devil’s advocate?”
“Well, yeah.” she admitted. “I mean, we need to figure out our next move don’t we?”
Peter tossed a roll of socks on the clothes he’d extracted from his ILBE, then stepped back and regarded her. “Okay then, you’re me. What would you do Sergeant?”
Whitley made a face, but he shook his head. “Oh no, this is part of the job.”
“Great.” she sighed. Peter folded his arms and made it obvious he was prepared to stand there waiting, and she finally shrugged slowly. “I’d want more information.”
“Go on.”
“We’ve only heard one side of whatever’s going on here.” she said, her words gathering a bit of speed as she got her thoughts organized. “They might be lying, or just misunderstanding parts of Ellsworth’s plan. They might not have even run into anyone from Ellsworth; it could have been another group they bumped into.”
“So . . .” Peter asked leadingly.
“We finish our trip, or we get in contact with the base; and either way, we need to ask some questions.”
“There’s a reason I promoted you.” Peter said approvingly, scooping up his bundle of clothing. “Put your boots back on and let’s go. I want to see if they’ll let me snag a shower too, then maybe have a cup of that coffee.”
“Espresso.”
“Whatever.”
* * * * *
“—still not listening.” Crawford said loudly.
“No, you’re not understanding.” a thin voice replied.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re using, the way you adjust fire is shell weight, firing angle, or propellant.”
Peter glanced at Whitley. She shrugged wordlessly as they approached the corner. The argument from the far side of the house was pitched enough to carry even over the wind whistling over the top of the defensive wall.
In daylight the ad-hoc nature of that wall was far easier to make out. Rather than the smooth and vertically true layout of a properly formed wall, or even one constructed from laid bricks or beams; Canton’s wall splayed out in a steep slope that left the base wider than the top. Some smoothing had been accomplished, but it was still fairly rough compared to the finish Peter was used to seeing in concrete construction.
Apparently, rather than spending weeks building forms, or even digging and ground-casting sections that were then lifted out and laid into place;
this
wall was nothing more than a pile of packed dirt with concrete poured over it. Peter wasn’t sure how it would compare — structurally if it had to resist impacts — to a ‘proper’ concrete wall, but it sure looked impressive. Though it was more of a very steep hill than a wall.
He and Whitley finally rounded the last corner of the last building before the cleared space behind the curtain wall, or hill, or whatever it was. Peter had told himself — promised himself — that he was going to stop being surprised by the things he learned about Canton. But, even so, and even though he’d meant it, he still drew up short for several moments when he saw what the small group of people were gathered around.
“Is that . . .” Whitley began.
Peter sighed. “I guess so.”
“This is a trebuchet.” one of the Canton locals told Crawford, gesturing at the wooden contraption. “Not gunpowder artillery.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Crawford said.
“Yes it does!” another of the locals insisted.
“Artillery is artillery.” Crawford said. “And fire is fire. It all adjusts the same way.”
“We
can’t
adjust propellant! Or angle.” a third local said in a tone of exaggerated, dangerous patience.
“And adjusting weight means we have to have dozens of different shot types depending on what range line we want to hit.”
“For nerds you guys really don’t think much do you?” Crawford said, walking around to one end of the device. Peter found his stride again and resumed his approach, studying the trebuchet as he walked. A pair of ‘A’ frames suspended a long beam— it looked like a cut-down utility pole to him — between them on a pivot point. One end of the pole had a long rope sling, and the other what appeared to be a stack of wooden blocks on the end of a sort of suspended cradle.
“This thing uses counterweight to provide the throwing power, right?” Crawford continued, tapping the cradle.
“Right, which is—” one of the locals said.
“Which is why you replace this useless shit here with a basket or whatever that you can put weight into or take out.” Crawford said. “That lets you adjust the counter weight, and that means you can aim the fucker properly. Swivel for lateral aim, weight for downrange distance, and the rest is spotting the fall and adjusting.”
There was a long pause, during which most of the locals either looked down at the ground or at each other, until Smith — who had been standing aside and observing the conversation — burst out laughing.
“Holy shit Crawford, you really aren’t as dumb as you look.”
“Keep laughing fanboy.” she said, turning and raising at fist in his direction as she scowled. “We’re still in South Dakota you know.” Then she noticed Peter and Whitley approaching, and her scowl deepened. “Great, Gunny’s here to save your ass again.”
“Thought we’d take a walk around, see if we could offer any suggestions that would help improve security.” Peter said. “Though, so far, it looks like things are doing just fine.”
“They will be after they run a proper series of tests so this thing can be controlled by more than wild guesses and bullshit wishing.” she said.
“We would’ve figured that out.” one of the locals said uncomfortably.
“Eventually.” another added.
“But now you can do it without the stress of an emergency breathing down your neck.” Crawford said. “I assume since y’all built this thing you can handle modifying it, and that you can figure out your field of fire? Work up a grid book for aiming?”
“Yeah, that’s just math.” someone said.
“Great, so go forth and do math and stuff.” Crawford said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and opening them. “Have fun.”
Most of the locals clustered around the counterweight, huddling into a conversation knot, as Crawford got her cigarette going and walked over to stand with Peter and Whitley. Smith trailed after her, still grinning.
“Does that thing work?” Peter asked in a low voice, flicking his eyes at the trebuchet.
“Oh yeah.” Crawford shrugged. “Problem was they didn’t know how to direct it properly without moving the whole thing.”
“And it’s heavy.” Smith said. “More or less takes a car to drag it, and they’ve only got so much room behind the wall before the buildings start.”
“I told them they should put it on wheels, but apparently there’s some ongoing argument they’re all having about how that’ll affect their aiming grids.”
“And it’ll
still
need something with a motor to drag around.”
“What are they throwing with it?” Whitley asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Whatever they want.” Crawford shrugged.
“Whatever they can get to stay in the cradle long enough for the arm to throw.” Smith clarified.
Peter glanced around. “Okay, like what then?”
“Well they’ve collected themselves a decent number of rocks ranging from fifty to five hundred pounds.” Crawford said, turning and pointing at a pile of what Peter had taken for construction rubble.
“What good is that?”
“Well, any zombie they hit with something like that is going to have a real bad day.” Smith said. “And they say most of the rocks they throw hit and sort of roll and bounce along for a little bit.”
“Zombie bowling.” Crawford laughed. “If the ground’s not too soft where they hit.”
“One trebuchet isn’t going to do much to hold off a horde.” Peter observed.
“They say they’ve tested firing a bunch of rocks at once.” Smith said.
“How many? Does that work?”
Smith held his hand out and waggled it back and forth. “I think so. They say it’s like an artillery shotgun shell.”
“Hmmm.” Peter said.
“At the speeds and weights they’re getting on impact, even a zombie’s going to feel it.” Crawford assured him.
“Zombies don’t feel shit.” Whitley said.
“Yeah, but when every bone in their chest is broken they can’t walk or use their arms much anymore. And any limb that gets hit is going to shatter or be ripped off, including heads.” Crawford grinned. “Anyway, they say the rocks are mostly for testing and emergencies. Their plan if they have to use it for a real horde defense is to throw buckets of napalm.”