EMP 1500 MILES FROM HOME (21 page)

"They are cannibals, Yeti. They were going to eat me," Julie said.

"I still will!" the man said, producing a small pistol from under his shirt. When I saw the gun I squeezed his neck. The gun fell from his fingers as he choked. I heard his neck snap and I dropped him to the floor.

"Are there any more?" I asked Julie as I cut her free.

"No, just the two of them." Julie hugged me. I could tell she was distraught. "You saved my life Yeti. They were going to kill me and eat me. They did that to the people who lived at this ranch. I think they were cannibal serial killers."

"I thought that was just in the movies," I said.

"Me too, Son, me too."

Julie told me the story but I got the feeling she was leaving something out. Oh well, that was her business. I was just glad she was safe. She stayed close to me as I built three smoky fires in the ranch yard. I kept feeding them most of the day, while Julie kept a lookout. Well, she tried to keep a lookout. She was too upset to pay attention.

I fixed her some supper, but she wouldn't eat a bite. She would not stay in the house, so we camped in the mesquite. About two o'clock the next day Dan rode in, soon followed by the rest of the men.

Wayne

For two days I have had a feeling of dread. Suddenly it left me and I was better able to settle down to work. Our routine is simple. Dig, eat, sleep.

By day 21 we had extended the new tunnel about 24 feet. Then we hit hard rock. I cut the sledgehammer handle even shorter so I could swing it better in the tight space and then started drilling a series of holes with the hand drills. Dave scrounged through the mine and came back with a half dozen sets of what he called feather wedges. These each had a center wedge and two 'feathers'. The center wedge was a small steel wedge. The feathers were just flat strips of steel with bent ends.

Dave said to put both feathers into drilled holes so that the flats were parallel to the direction of the split we wanted to make in the rock, insert the wedge into the crack between the two feathers, and then lightly pound the wedge home.

Dave marked the first set of holes, which ran in a straight line, for me to drill. I thought they would go quickly. I was wrong. Max and I took turns holding and twisting the drill and hammering. Dave said a little water in the holes would have helped, but we had none to spare. Once the line of holes was drilled, we inserted the feathers and drove the wedges home. After some hammering on the wedges a big block of rock split off. It took all three of us to get it out of the tunnel and into the cart.

The going was slow, but we kept at it. In five days we drilled and split about two feet of hard rock. Then we hit the soft stuff again and progress was much faster.

We also took turns watching the activity outside the gate. The guards were on 12-hour shifts and changed at noon and midnight. Max tried to start conversations with several of the guards, but they all ignored him. It seemed like our best chance to escape was to dig our way out and run like hell. So we kept digging.

We managed to make our three-cart-a-day goal every day except three, so we ate as well as we could. We even tried delivering six cart loads in one day, but they gave us no extra food. Max had been hoping they would so I gave him half of my portion that day and so did Dave. Max thanked us but said he could not accept the food from us.

The work was tiring and we slept like the dead. Max must have lost 30 pounds, and I lost another fifteen. Dave looked like he had lost 20 pounds. We were each cut, and our arms and shoulders were packed with muscle now. I felt stronger than I ever had. Max and Dave said the same.

My shirt was in rags. I had to tear the sleeves off to accommodate my enlarged upper arms. Max did away with his shirt entirely, as did Dave. We were a filthy and bearded lot for sure.

The nights were cold and we had no blankets. We built a small rock shelter and piled tailings over it for insulation of sorts. With a kerosene lantern burning inside, we managed to keep from freezing to death.

Our tunnel wasn't pretty. It twisted and turned because we dug the softer rock, or gouge as Dave called it. Dave shored the tunnel where needed. We used scraps of timbers from the main mine. We sawed them with a flattened shovel head that Dave cut saw teeth into with some rocks he knapped for the purpose. He had true patience.

Max and Dave were steady men. They did not give in to fear, nor did they rave and rant, as many people would have done in our circumstances. That meant we all just got down to business.

Sometimes when we were too tired to dig, we talked for a bit before we fell asleep. I learned that Dave graduated at the top of his college class, but could never find a job in his field after college because, as he put it, he was not of standard office size. Dave's parents passed away a couple of years before in an auto accident and he had no brothers or sisters. The rest of his family wanted little to do with him. I understood his problems, although being really tall seems to have less stigma than being really short, at least for a man.

Max still had relatives in Samoa, but none here in the U.S. I discovered he was born in Samoa, but grew up here. His English was unaccented and better than mine. He told a similar story to Dave's. He wanted a normal job, but could only find work as a dockworker where size and strength were admired.

I knew his troubles well. I tried for office jobs but only found work on construction crews, until Cap found me the job in sales. Sales school also taught me to minimize my height when I was with normal people. I learned to keep my knees slightly bent, and my shoulders pulled down, and my head bent a bit. After practicing for a while I could make myself seem almost four inches shorter. Of course, that didn't help on airplanes, but I managed.

I only had one business suit. It was custom made and therefore expensive. I envied people who could buy off the rack. Cap said my extra size, if I trained hard, would make me a better fighter, but that was the only advantage I saw to being outsized.

Dave joked we were the GGD's, two giants and a dwarf. Well, Dave was a genuine dwarf, but I never thought of myself as a giant as I was less than seven feet tall. I met a couple of seven-footers over the years. In each case, a look of understanding and shared difficulty passed between us. I hoped my son Ben did not grow up outsized. Since Cap was of normal height, I thought Ben might grow up to be shorter than his dad. I hoped that would be the case, for his sake.

The hardest part of my forced imprisonment was the time before I fell asleep. I longed for Lucy and Ben, and Julie and Yeti. After a few weeks I started having vivid dreams about Julie, intimate dreams. I couldn't understand why these dreams were not about my wife, Lucy. Once Lucy and Julie were both in the same dream. They were talking about me but I couldn't hear what they had to say. I woke up without ever finding out.

We were getting closer to breaking through to the outside. I hoped the guards couldn't hear us working, or, if they did, just thought it was somewhere in the tunnel. By now we were digging on our bellies. Max said we looked like prisoners tunneling out of a jail. Dave said that was exactly what we were; only we were death row inmates. I tried not to think about it and just kept digging. We were digging only at night now because we didn't want to break through in daylight. Three nights later, we broke through. We still had four days before the end of the 60-day deadline. We had not seen so much as a fleck of gold.

Julie

It has been two months now and still no sign of Wayne. We have visited all of the ranches in the area with the group of armed men from Mountainair accompanying us, and we have seen no sign of Wayne. I don't know what to do next. I think I have recovered from my ordeal with the cannibals, but I still wake up screaming sometimes.

The men from Mountainair are leaving in the morning. They are going home. Dad said enough is enough, that I, and Yeti, have to get on with our lives. I am still hoping Wayne comes back. I still feel he is alive, but I am so afraid I am wrong.

Yeti says the search time was not a waste. He has lost another 50 pounds and is starting to look a lot thinner and move much better. He is a son to me and I love him very much. We have grown much closer since he saved me from the cannibals. Yeti has started to open up and talk to me. I had no idea that a child could be so sensitive or have such a rough childhood.

I see a lot of Wayne in him. I know he is not Wayne's, or my, son, but I think he has emulated many of Wayne's attitudes, manners, and ways. If it is possible, Wayne may mean more to Yeti than he does to me.

They say you don't know what you have until you lose it. Well, I knew what I had, well, wanted to have. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I have been trying to get into the day-to-day activities at the ranch, but nothing interests me very much. I am just going through the motions. I don't think Yeti is doing much better.

Wayne

On my belly, I widened the tunnel where it broke through. I was as quiet as I could be. Dave, who could move through the tunnel the fastest, was at the mine gate, banging around and generally making noise to cover any sounds I might make breaking through. We hoped it would be enough noise to cover our activities. Max was right behind me with our pick-handle weapons.

Once the opening was big enough, I slithered from the tunnel onto the ground. It was breaking dawn. Max passed the pick handles out and followed me. Dave was still making noise as Max and I crept up behind the guards. A few quick strikes of our clubs and they were sleeping quite well. I hoped they were sleeping anyway, I was getting very tired of the killing, but hey, it was them or us.

Max signaled Dave at the mine gate and soon he was standing beside us as we stripped the gear from the guards. Armed with M4 carbines, each with a full magazine, and provisioned with all of the food and water we found, we headed into the desert. We made it 100 yards before the Boss’s men surrounded us. There must have been ten of them and they had the better vantage points. Our escape was over almost before it started.

Wayne

This time instead of being tossed into a mine, we were pushed into a 10'x14' stone building with a single window. The window had bars just like an old jail cell.

"What's with all these bars?"

"I don't know Max," Dave said, "maybe it is an old movie set."

"At least they didn't kill us," I said.

"Give that bastard time. He is a very sick man," Max said. "I have seen more of his doings than you guys."

"I have seen enough," I said.

"Me too," Dave agreed. "How are we going to get out of this one?"

We looked the inside of the building over. There was a table holding a five-gallon bucket half full of water. There was no toilet, no beds, no blankets, and no trash—nothing. The building had been swept clean.

I tested the bars in the window as I stared into the face of a grinning guard. The bars were firmly cemented into the wall. I could use a table leg to pound on them, but the table was old and weathered. I doubted it would do any good. Besides, I doubted they would leave us unguarded.

Max tried the bars as well and even stuck his tongue out at the guard. He said at least it made him feel better. The guard just laughed.

We were tired from digging the night before so we stretched out and slept for a few hours.

I awoke about two hours before sunset and looked out the window. A different guard was there. It looked as if they were guarding us 24 hours a day. I was pretty sure they had another guard or two outside the door as well. I glanced at the table. No one brought food while we were sleeping, nor did they put more water in the bucket. Max and Dave awoke about sunset. It was growing dark in the building. After our last stint in the mine, we were used to the dark so that didn't bother us.

I laughed to myself. There were a lot of things that bothered me before the End of the World that I accepted as a matter of course now. I was much tougher than I had been. I thought Cap might even be proud of me if he were here, unless, of course, I got killed. Then he would probably call me a dumb ass, but only out of Lucy and Ben's hearing.

Max boosted Dave up so he could look through the window in the fading light. Max held him as if he were a feather until Dave said, "set me down, you human crane." Max grinned and dropped Dave who landed on his feet like a cat.

I took a seat on the floor against a wall and they both sat near me.

"Well, Wayne, what do you think we should do?"

"Rest," I said, "and be ready for whatever happens. If we see an opportunity to escape we will take it."

Yeti

I have made a decision and I will discuss it with Julie later today. If Wayne doesn't return by spring, I am going to put the trading caravan together and take it east myself. I hope Julie will go with me, but I think she would be better off to stay at the ranch with her dad and her dad may convince her of that. I know the town in Indiana where Cap lives and I know the location of his retreat. Wayne told me when I asked.

I will find Wayne's wife and son, tell them about Wayne, and I will help Cap take care of them. It is the least I can do for the only man who ever loved me like a son. I want to take care of Julie too, so I am thinking about how I could come back for her later. I think once the really bad times have passed and the die off is over, that she, and George, for that matter, would be better off farther east where it is possible to have a garden and where local trade might be easier.

Wayne

About two hours after daylight, the door opened, and a rifle barrel motioned us outside. We went. The Boss and eight armed guards stood in a line waiting for us. Four guards stood on each side of the Boss. As usual, we were outgunned.

"Here is the deal gentlemen, tomorrow morning Max and Wayne will fight each other to the death. The winner, if there is one, will kill the dwarf. I will then let the winner go free. If neither Max nor Wayne survives, I will kill the dwarf myself. I can't stand dwarves." The boss paused and stared at us for almost a full minute. "If you don't fight, you will be killed—all of you."

The Boss abruptly turned on his heel and walked away. His eight guards followed him. We were hustled into the back of an old pickup truck by the other guards and taken to another location. When we got out of the truck, I saw a natural depression before us. It looked like an arena of sorts. The walls were almost vertical and just over four feet high. The depression was some sixty feet across.

"What is this?" I asked Dave.

Dave shrugged. "Maybe a deflation basin, made when the wind blows the sand out of a small area? I have never seen one with such steep walls before though."

"Maybe the edges were dug out by people?"

"Could be," Dave said, "But I don't know why."

The guards motioned for us to jump into the basin. Once in the basin, the guards tossed a pitchfork, a piece of half-rotten netting, a sword of sorts, and a wooden shield into the basin. The place was beginning to look more like an arena.

"You men take those weapons and practice with them. You," he pointed to me, "take the trident and net.  And you,” he pointed at Max, “take the sword and shield."

I took the net and trident while Max picked up the sword and shield. Then the three of us went to the center of the depression. I noticed there were six guards with rifles around the rim of the pit. Not much chance of escape for us right now.

I looked at the trident. It was an old, three-tined pitchfork with straightened tines. The net looked like it hung for too many years on the wall of a seafood restaurant. It was about six feet square and didn't seem to be very strong. Max's sword was a machete that had been reshaped to resemble a Roman short sword. I think the Romans call this kind of sword a gladius. His shield was just a round disc of plywood with a couple of straps made from a leather belt on the back.

"The Boss is one crazy dude," I said.

"Yeah, but he seems to keep winning," Dave said.

"Well, there is that."

We spent some time playing with the crude weapons. Our only intention was to amuse the guards and ourselves. In short, we played. We played like children and it felt good.

We were given lunch, which we gobbled like pigs. Then we napped on the sand in the arena. I think our nap bored the guards, but we didn't care. That afternoon we played some more.

Just before dark, the guards collected our weapons and took us back to the stone building. We went without supper.

That evening we discussed what might happen the next day. We each vowed not to harm the others no matter what happened. I believed both Max and Dave would not harm me, nor would I harm them. If we were going to die, at least we would die as men and not as playthings of an insane man. We worked out a plan as best we could and went to sleep.

Julie

Yeti told me about his plan today. I am going with him. I hope Dad will come too, but his life is, and has always been, the ranch. I want to meet Lucy and Ben. I want to tell them about the kind of man Wayne is—was—so Ben can grow up proud of his father.

Yeti and I will begin making plans for the caravan without Wayne in the morning.

Wayne

The next morning breakfast was delivered. There were half a dozen plates containing scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, biscuits, jelly, and more. It was the best meal since I left the ranch. I wondered where they found the food, but then, after thinking about it a bit, I wondered how many people the Boss and his gang had killed for their supplies?

We ate sparingly in spite of the wealth of food before us. Today we were supposed to fight in the arena. We needed to be as fast as possible and alert. I hoped we would succeed with our plan and survive, but more likely we would die.

When we finished breakfast, we each clasped the others forearms in a Roman handshake. It seemed like the thing to do at the time and it felt good. If a man must die, let it be with friends like these.

We were again transported to the arena. This time the Boss was seated on a throne-like chair on a small platform at the edge of the area. His eight personal guards were scattered around the edge of the arena. Apparently this fight was to be only for the amusement of the Boss. I wondered where the hell he found that butt-ugly chair?

Once we were in the arena, a guard tossed the weapons to us. Max and I took them and the three of us again went to the center of the arena.

"Well, if nothing else, I think there is a chance we can kill that crazy son of a bitch," I said.

"That is the least we should do," Max said.

"Do you guys remember what to do?" They both nodded and we clasped each other’s forearms in a three-way Roman handshake.

"Get on with it!" The Boss yelled. "Or I will just have you shot where you stand."

We nodded to each other then Max and I took a fighting stance with our weapons. Dave ran to the edge of the arena like he was scared. I laughed. That was one tough dwarf. Nothing scared him. But, of course, the Boss and his guards did not know that.

Max and I began sparring. He would swing his sword in my direction and I would swing the rotten old net at him. We moved very fast to hide the fact that we were trying not to hurt each other. As we sparred we made our way toward the platform where the Boss was watching. Dave was already there, having moved hunched over around the edge of the arena rim.

Soon we were almost at the edge of the arena and immediately in front of the Boss. Max was pretending to drive me backward with his sword. When my back hit the rock rim, I stepped to the side and Max followed. We pretend fought like that for a couple of minutes, moving as fast as humanly possible to make it more difficult for the Boss and the guards to see what we were actually doing.

I glanced at the Boss. His face was strangely contorted. I think he was anxiously anticipating seeing one of us killed. I gradually moved until I was facing the Boss. Max had his back to the rim. On my signal, Dave fell flat on the ground directly in front of the Boss. Max turned and made it look as if he tripped. He ended up lying across Dave's torso. I dropped the net, and as planned, used Max's back as a stepping-stone to leap onto the arena rim. I could see the shock in the boss's face as I stepped onto the rock and then his platform. He was still in shock when I drove the center tine of the flattened pitchfork into his neck. While he was choking, I grabbed both revolvers from his holsters, tossed one to Dave, who Max had just boosted out of the arena, and began firing at the nearest guards. Dave shot at them too, holding the old single-action in both hands.

I was sure we would be killed, but the return fire from the guards was desultory. As soon as they saw two of their number fall, the others ran away leaving the three of us standing over a dying Boss, in shock at the fact we were still alive and unhurt.

The Boss choked on his last breath and died. Dave then fired a single shot through the center of the Boss's forehead. "I want to make sure that bastard is dead. I need to be sure this is over."

"Well, he is dead for sure now," I said.

Max pointed at the Humvee that sat 20 feet behind the Boss. Max headed for the Humvee while Dave and I went through the Boss’s pockets. We found a few more cartridges for the antique 44-40 revolvers he carried. We also took the guns, ammo, and gear from the two guards who had fallen. They were both dead. The old 44-40s were a more potent round than I imagined.

Max had the Humvee running when we got in. He drove us the hell away from there while Dave and I watched with the guards rifles pointed out of the windows.

Dave found an old atlas in the Humvee and we studied it to figure out where we were. We weren't certain but it seemed we were north of Highway 60 somewhere in the desert. Max pointed the Humvee south and we went looking for the highway. An hour later we found it.

In another two hours we were at the beginning of the Double H Ranch road. We drove just far enough up the road to see the ranch headquarters clearly. I could see people at the ranch taking defensive positions.