Fireside (4 page)

A massive construction project began, initially with old cars turned on their side and then shored up with dirt and beams to keep them from tipping back over. They also tore down the homes outside of the new perimeter, using the parts for construction. The walls were five to six feet tall in most places, more than sufficient to hold off the small bands of marauders who’d begun showing up in the recent months. The plans were being drawn up to build a massive inner wall around the university area, including the Provisions Warehouse, that residents could flee to if the outer walls were overrun. The Air Force base would have to fend for itself.

The group drove past Old Fisher, the large lake where the city collected its drinking water. An elaborate system of PVC pipes had been installed, running at a slightly downhill angle from the lake to the city. Workers used bicycle-powered pumps to pull water from the lake into the pipes and residents collected the water inside the wall from a closely-monitored area containing multiple spigots. The water was then boiled at home to remove the contaminants that had built up during those terrible first months after the war. While gathering provisions was hard work, Aeric didn’t envy those poor lake workers. In fact, the town’s police officers used working at the lake and clearing the sewers as forms of punishment.

The lake disappeared behind them faster than Aeric imagined possible, having become accustomed to the speeds that he could achieve on his bicycle rather than the breakneck pace that the trucks moved at. He glanced over at the vehicle’s speedometer; they were going about forty-five miles per hour, barely a crawl compared to the speeds that people used to drive on these roads.

He watched as the countryside
sped
by. The area wasn’t particularly green before the war. The problem was compounded by the months of poor sunlight under the clouds of ash and the resulting chemical rains, turning the surrounding landscape into a bleak mockery of what it had been. They passed by a few abandoned homesteads that the Gathering Squad had already picked clean. Most of the population this far out had either died long ago or joined with the residents of San Angelo, choosing to move into the city.

The ruined land—the wastes as the city folk referred to it—passed by the door of the truck in a blur. Almost everything was a mix of muted, neutral colors since the vegetation had died, revealing patches of earth covered in a grayish residue. He assumed that the stuff was the result of the ash that had fallen to the ground and then the rains had turned it into a plant-killing slurry. Once the sun came out, it dried up and left behind the rest.

Every so often Aeric could see patches of green. Each time, he was hopeful that it was a living tree or even budding grasslands; unfortunately, it always ended up being the outline of a cactus. The cacti in this area had been particularly hardy, most of it staying green until two or three months ago. Most of them had finally succumbed to the devastation that had ruined the rest of the vegetation. He had faith that the vegetation would eventually return after enough clean rainstorms washed away the ash and sulfur.

What if it doesn’t come back?
he asked himself. San Angelo was holding on for now, but the fact that they were traveling more than seventy-five miles to raid a facility that
might
have food was indicative of the long term problem that the city faced. It was a simple fact that he returned to often. There were too many people living there.

It was a problem that didn’t have an easy fix or workaround. Every one of the residents of the city deserved the opportunity to live. How would anyone ever make that sort of choice, anyways? They prided themselves on the fact that they were humane in their treatment of everyone, once they were inside the walls. He was glad that he wasn’t the mayor; he wouldn’t be the one forced to make the call when they were eventually forced to cull the population.

*****

The time—and miles—passed quickly. When they made it to the mile marker indicating that they were five miles from Sterling City, Aeric had his forces go to one hundred percent watch. His Gatherers and the Shooters all readied their weapons, pointing them out from the interior of the truck towards the wastes.

They entered the town minutes later. The road went right down the main drag of Sterling City, which, thankfully, wasn’t that large. The road was wide and open, the few buildings set far enough off the street to allow them a clear view of the surrounding area. It looked abandoned. No roadblocks could be seen in front of them along the route and there didn’t appear to be any junked cars sitting dead where they’d been when the EMP struck. Everyone relaxed slightly and breathed a collective sigh of relief. They’d been worried about the townspeople trying to stop the trucks, which didn’t seem to be the case.

Then they took their first casualty.

They passed a red brick building with a sign on the side proclaiming that the squat, two story structure had been a hotel when the world exploded in gunfire. People had been waiting in the alley between the hotel and a rock-faced building. The rounds peppered the trucks, hitting several of the men and women in the back.

“Go! Go! Go!” Aeric screamed at the driver, who pressed the pedal all the way to the floor.

He looked in the side view mirror to make sure that Tyler, who was in the second truck, followed their lead as they sped through the engagement area. The noise of rifles and pistols firing in rapid succession made it impossible to determine if the San Angelians were returning fire or if they’d hunkered down to take whatever the ambush threw at them.

They were out of the kill zone in seconds. From his vantage point in the mirror, Aeric saw the barrels of several weapons appear around the corner of the stone building to fire blindly in their direction. That told him that the people in the alley were unwilling to follow them out into the street. He saw a few muzzle flashes from the back of Tyler’s truck, so he knew his men were shooting back at the assholes who’d tried to ambush them.

They cleared the town with no further incidents. Aeric called a halt several miles outside of town to see if everyone was okay. Two of the Shooters in his truck had minor injuries. One of them was shot through the shoulder, the other had a broken wrist from when he dove to the floor of the truck. The second truck didn’t fare as well. The townspeople had been able to fire into the cargo area as they drove away.

The most serious injury was to one of his Gatherers. The man had been sitting in the rearmost seat of Tyler’s truck. He’d been shot through the side twice and once in the neck. By the time they stopped, Russ was dead. Several others had been hit as well. Thankfully, none of the other injuries were life-threatening.

Aeric was furious. They all knew that the town was likely going to be a dangerous place. It became real when they’d been shot at, not some imagined scenario during a rehearsal back at the Provisions Warehouse. Although about half of their missions to the various food storage points had resulted in a shootout of some kind, it had been months since anyone flat-out tried to ambush the group. He wanted revenge.

“Nicole, I want you to stay here with the injured and patch them up,” Aeric ordered. “Darren and Sam, you stay here to guard the trucks and help Nicole. The rest of you, drop your gear, except ammo and water. We’re gonna wipe that town off the map.”

Tyler stepped over and whispered, “Are you sure? Our mission is to get the supplies from Garden City, not end up in a firefight in some piss-ant little town along the way.”

Aeric thought about it for a moment, then answered, “Yeah, I’m sure, buddy. We can’t leave these fuckers behind. They killed Russ with some lucky shots as we sped through town going forty-five. What’s gonna happen when we’re all riding our bikes through here on the way back? It’s so quiet now that the sound of our trucks carries for miles. We caught them by surprise this time. You know we’ve got to put an end to them before they figure out another strategy for when we come back through.”

Tyler nodded his head slowly. “You’re right. You usually are in these situations. You make the hard, but necessary call. Alright, let’s go.”

The group rode their bicycles back down the highway until they were about a mile from town and then hid them off the side of the road. Since they didn’t really know the layout of the town, except for what they’d seen when they drove through, Aeric sent half his remaining force, just nine men, to the south of the main strip with Tyler and the other half stayed with him on the north side, where the ambush had originated.

They moved into town rapidly, passing a sign announcing that the pre-apocalypse population had been eight hundred and fifty-three souls. Aeric wondered how many of those people were left alive. Probably not many since they’d been shot at by around twenty or so from the alley.

He led his group around the first building and stumbled into a man sitting in a lawn chair under the shade of an awning. He started to bring his rifle up and stayed his hand. He smiled and slowly raised his hand away from the weapon. One of Aeric’s Gatherers slammed a spear through the watcher’s throat. He didn’t stand up and fire the gun like Aeric thought he would. Instead, he crumpled backwards into the chair and slid off, hitting the porch with a dull thud.

Everyone fanned out quickly, expecting an attack. When it didn’t come, Aeric looked back to the man they’d killed. He wore multiple layers of clothing against the chill. Likely he was some kind of sentry on this end of town. He had some dirty brown water in a jug and a book sitting beside his post. The most interesting thing about his position was a rope that ran off towards the direction of the alley where they’d been ambushed.

Aeric pointed at it and asked, “What do you make of that?”

Charles, the man who’d speared the sentry, said, “I bet it leads to a bell or an alert system of some kind where the attackers are gathered.”

Traxx nodded and grunted an affirmative. It made sense. They could post a sentry on either end of town, equip them with a means to communicate and warn the others of danger, then hide in the building. They likely didn’t have enough people to build solid fortifications and any effort would have been a waste, so this was their answer to keeping the place as secure as they could.

“Hmm, wonder what that means?” Charles asked as he poked the body with the spear.

“Huh?” Aeric sidestepped towards Charles so he could see what the man was pointing at. He wore a tattered Texas flag bandana around his left biceps.

Aeric’s mind was thrust six months into the past when he, Tyler and Katie had fled from Austin. They’d all been physically and emotionally battered, nearly starving and barely hanging on, when they came across the remnants of a massive firefight. Bodies littered the highway, about half of them wearing a Texas flag bandana on their arm. They’d gladly taken the weapons and bicycles from the dead, easing their journey to San Angelo.

Had the survivors who’d fought way out east of San Angelo somehow made it all the way to Sterling City? It was entirely possible that they’d bypassed San Angelo because of the large pseudo-military force that the town boasted and made their way here? If that were the case, what had happened to the original townspeople? They were questions that wouldn’t be answered by staring at the corpse of a dead man, so Aeric had his team follow the rope towards the ambush site, watching carefully for any more sentries.

They made their way past several buildings until they came to a large, open parking lot where he called a halt. The stone building sat right in front of them and on the other side was the alley. Realistically, he knew that the people wouldn’t still be there, it had been almost an hour since the ambush so they’d probably returned to their homes.

Everyone looked to him for guidance, what did he want to do now that they’d made it back into the town? He wished that he had a way to communicate with Tyler on the other side of the road. He thought about it for a moment. They had no way of knowing where the alley led on the back side. The anger that had fueled him immediately after discovering that Russ was dead had subsided now that he’d walked back into town. He thought about why they’d came back and what it would mean if they didn’t clean out this nest of villains.

The idea that they’d have to face them again spurred Aeric into action. “Alright, let’s go around to the back side of that building,” he whispered. “We’ll go two at a time for safety and when we get to the back, we’ll see what’s over there. Try not to use your guns if you run into anyone—unless you have to. Questions?”

There were none, so he sent the first two across the gravel parking lot. He cringed as the sound of their boots crunching on the rock echoed across the small space. Everyone scanned the area for activity in response to their noise. Nothing else happened until one of the men he’d sent across started gesturing wildly for him to come over to where he was.

He jogged across by himself, feeling foolish for crouching at a run. It was something that he’d seen in countless movies.
Guys always crouched when they ran in the movies, it makes sense, right?
he asked himself. When he arrived, he saw that it was Charles who’d waved him over.

“What’d you see?”

Charles held his fingers to his lips and replied, “Listen.”

Aeric did as he was asked, straining to hear what Charles wanted him to hear. Then he heard it. The faint sound of music came from inside the building. It sounded like a couple of guitars and a set of drums. They were having a goddamned concert after murdering one of his people.