The day after: An apocalyptic morning (31 page)

              "Interesting," Bracken said. "Very interesting."

              "It sounds like they got the same kind of set-up going up there as we do," the point man opined, spitting a spray of brown tobacco juice to the ground.

              "I don't know who would be running it," Bracken said. "There ain't no militia members up there far as I know. That's more of a rich town, full of fuckin' bureaucrats and shit. I know those people didn't have the know-how to do something like that."

              "Somebody did."

              Bracken nodded. "Sure sounds like it, don't it?"

              "Uh... excuse me?" Rod said. "Did you say that you're from Auburn?"

              "That's right," Bracken agreed. "We're in charge of Auburn now. Got it all organized up and running nice and efficient-like. Colonel Barnes is in charge of it."

              "Colonel Barnes?"

              Bracken nodded. "He's the head of the militia. We keep Auburn fed and running and protect it from scavengers. What did you two do before the comet?"

              "What?" Ron said, confused by the abrupt change of subject.

              "We need people with skills in town," Bracken said. "What did y'all do for a livin?"

              "Oh," Ron said, getting it now. "We were both electrical engineers for Intel."

              Bracken scowled a little. "What the fuck's that mean? You computer nerds?"

              "No, no," Ron replied vehemently. "We were in charge of power usage and wiring and all that. We made sure that there was enough power to run all the equipment."

              "I see," Bracken said, although it was fairly obvious that he really didn't. "And y'all know how to use guns, right?"

              "Right," they both agreed, sensing where this was heading. Could there be salvation in these people? Granted, they were not the savoriest characters in existence - in fact, they were downright scary when you came down to it - but beggars couldn't be choosers, could they?

              "Give 'em some food," Bracken told one of his men after a moment's thought on the Micker.

              A pack was opened and two army issue MRE's were tossed down to them. They immediately grabbed hold of them and began trying to rip them open.

              "You need to use a knife," Bracken said, somewhat amused. While they both began reaching for their hunting knives he looked at his cohorts. "Let's leave third squad here with them and get 'em rested up and ready to move. Then we'll have them take 'em back to Auburn and talk to the Colonel."

              "What if there's trouble in Foresthill?" the other man asked. "Will we be able to handle it short a squad."

              "We'll be able to handle it," Bracken said confidently. "You know what our mission is."

              While Christine and Jack remained in the community center building to get cleaned up and fed, Jessica and Paul led Skip around town. Jessica had objected to taking him with them while they went and discussed his fate with the various members of the town on the basis that they would be giving away their "secrets" which he might use against them after he was kicked out. But Paul had vetoed this idea telling Jessica that she knew as well as he did that the townspeople were going to vote to allow them to stay and that they might as well give their newest member and future security chief a tour.

              "Security chief?" Jessica said, blanching.

              "Well sure," Paul replied. "Isn't that the whole basis of inviting him to stay in the first place? Remember, we're not a charity. He'll have to work for his room and board."

              Jessica, who seemed to sense a great deal of her power slipping away by the minute, looked physically ill at this prospect. She favored Skip with an evil look but said nothing more on the subject.

              They started within the community center itself. It was a 25,000 square foot, two-story facility stock full of rooms of all shapes, sizes, and purposes. Most of these rooms, no Micker what their original purpose, were now being utilized for storage of supplies. Food was the primary stock, mostly canned or dry goods. There were literally thousands of cans of soups, vegetables, beans, fruits, meats, and anything else that could be stuffed into an airtight piece of tin. There were also glass jars of all shapes and sizes as well as stacks and stacks of flour, sugar, rice, and cornmeal.

              "We pretty much cleaned out the grocery store of everything that doesn't spoil and moved it over here where we can defend it better," Paul told Skip as they moved from room to room. "It was a lot of work and took the better part of three days to accomplish, even with vehicles, but it's a good thing we did. Every day we find outsiders sneaking into the store to see if anything's in there."

              "Is there anything in there?" Skip asked.

              "Rotting meat and spoiled dairy products mostly. Also some vegetables that we couldn't store long-term. We took some of the meat and either dried it or salted it. It's not the best you've ever had, but it's edible."

              "It's hard to believe that all of this is not enough," Skip said, looking at the mountains of food.

              "Hard to believe but true," Paul replied. "We've done the math more than once and update our estimations once a week. At the rate we're consuming it we've got maybe two, three months worth, depending on how severely we ration as we get lower. We try to keep upbeat about it, but we all know that if we don't secure a food supply of some sort, we're going to starve."

              "So you see," Jessica said, her voice uncharacteristically humble, "why we aren't too fond of bringing in outsiders here?"

              He nodded, making an uncharacteristic assuagement of his own. "I guess something will have to be done about food, won't it? Are you working on anything?"

              Paul shrugged a little. "We've rigged up some lights in one of the rooms and we're trying to use them to grow vegetables with. We got the seeds from the little garden display at the store and we power the lights by using a lawnmower engine to turn a car alternator."

              "Smart," Skip said, impressed.

              "Yeah," Paul said. "One of my ideas if I do say so myself, but its just not enough. We don't have enough gasoline to expand the program and what we've planted, assuming it does grow, won't be able to extend us by much."

              "How much gasoline do you have?" Skip wanted to know.

              "We don't know exactly," he replied. "We figure that the tanks over at the gas station have close to six or seven hundred gallons in them. There's a little bit of water contamination of course, but luckily, that sinks to the bottom and we've figured out how to keep any more from getting in. There's also what's in all of the gas tanks of the vehicles that were at people's houses. We haven't done any kind of count, but that might be as much as five hundred gallons there. Who knows?"

              "We should find out," Skip suggested. "And make it a priority."

              "We?" Jessica said icily.

              "Or you," Skip allowed, not bothering to look at her. "I'm just trying to offer suggestions here, okay? Don't take them the wrong way."

              They moved on to the armory. It was located in what had once been the male locker room adjacent to the basketball court, directly across the hall from the bathing area. Stacked neatly on shelves in the shower stall were about sixty rifles, mostly of the hunting variety but with a few .22s mixed in. Below them were twelve assault rifles of varying design: Five AR-15s, five AK-47s, and two H&Ks. Next to this were nearly fifty shotguns ranging from simple skeet guns to 12 gauge Remington police models. On the bottom two shelves were the handguns: everything from .22 target pistols to .40 caliber police issues to .44 magnum "Dirty Harry" guns. There was even, wonder of wonders, a chrome-plated .44 Automag that had probably cost close to a thousand dollars before the comet.

              "Damn," Skip said, looking at all of the firepower. "Did all of this come from town?"

              "You betcha," Paul said. "It was a big part of the psyche of the people that bought houses up here. Kind of a 'my dick is bigger than yours' thing for the yuppie mountain folks. Most of these guns have hardly been fired and their previous owners probably had no use for them whatsoever. I mean, nobody burglarized houses up here and most of the men didn't have time to go hunting or target shooting, but they had to have them all the same, thank God."

              "I'll have you know," Jessica put in, "that my husband used to go target shooting on a regular basis. He was quite good too."

              Skip and Paul ignored her. "And how about ammo?" Skip asked. "A gun's kind of useless without it."

              "Well luckily for us," Paul said, "we're reasonably well set up in that category as well." He led him around to another shelf where box after box of bullets of every conceivable category were neatly stacked. "Most of the men who owned the guns had obscene amounts of rounds for them as well. Why did they need two hundred rounds for their hunting rifle or their magnum? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? We have it now."

              "The AR-15s," Skip said immediately. "How many rounds for those?"

              "Let me check," he said, walking over to a clipboard that was hanging from a piece of string on the end of the shelf. It had several papers clipped to it, which he consulted. "That would be the 5.56 mm jacketed rounds, right?"

              "Right," Skip said, "the same thing the M-16s fire."

              His finger traced up and down the page for a moment. Finally he found the entry he sought. "Well well," he said. "We seem to be rather wealthy in that regards. We have 24 boxes of that."

              "You're shittin' me," Skip said.

              "Nope," Paul assured him. "This inventory is done daily."

              "Twelve hundred rounds," Skip whispered, already formulating the basics of his town defense now that he had heard that. "Glory hallelujah. What about reloading equipment? Do you have any of that?"

              Paul looked a little confused for a moment. "I'm not sure," he said. "If someone in town had any, we probably left it where it was. Nobody here knows how to reload as far as I know. At least nobody suggested that be something we look for during our scavenger hunt."

              "We need to find out. Reloading equipment will be more valuable than gold. If there's an adequate powder and primer supply, we can extend our ammunition supply by maybe half, especially on the high value weapons like the rifles."

              Jessica gave him a sour look. "Exactly what kind of conflict do you think we'll be fighting here?" she asked him. "I've told you, there's nothing but scavengers and thieves out there. Even if those so-called bikers you told us about show up, we wouldn't use up all of our ammo fighting thirty men."

              "You'd be surprised how fast you burn up your rounds during a battle," Skip told her. "And I'd be surprised if those bikers were the worst we had to worry about out there."

              From the supply rooms they went to the main gathering area of the community center: the basketball court. In here a chow line had been set up and breakfast was in full swing. Cafeteria tables were sitting on the polished surface of the court and each one was filled with people eating the course of the morning - pancakes and orange juice - from a variety of fine looking china. At each table there were two or three men, three or four small children, and eight or ten women shoveling food into their mouths and talking, occasionally sipping from their glasses. Each man was very obviously the focus of attention for the group around him and Skip saw that not a single one actually went up to get his plate himself. In every instance a woman did it for him. And in every instance where a woman disappeared from a man's side to accomplish this task, some other woman would immediately home in and try to engage him in conversation. They weren't standing there more than two minutes before a fight erupted near the back of the building when a woman came back to find that someone else had actually taken her seat.

              "Christ," Paul muttered, shaking his head sadly as he watched the verbal battle turn physical when the first woman pushed the second one to the floor. "Here we go. The first of the day." He tromped over quickly, Skip and Jessica trailing him. By the time he got there the fight had degenerated to the two women rolling around on the floor, scratching and trying to punch each other. The onlookers in the immediate vicinity stopped what they were doing to watch. Some cheered for either one or the other women. It reminded Skip strongly of high school.

              "Goddammit!" Paul yelled loudly, standing back away from them and making no move to actually pull them apart. "Jenny, Lisa, knock that shit off right now. Break it up!"

              They immediately did as he said, separating from each other and standing. Both started pleading their cases to him.

              "This slut was trying to home in on Steve," the first women, who had blood dripping from her nose, yelled.

              "I didn't do anything!" the second protested. Her hair was tattered and torn in a few places. "I just sat down to eat and she came over and attacked me! And don't you be calling me no slut, you bitch!"