The day after: An apocalyptic morning (33 page)

              "They didn't even get anything to eat first," Janet, Paul's official companion and the woman that had taken charge of getting them bathed and clothed, told him. She smiled affectionately at them. "They just wanted to sleep."

              "That's kind of how I felt last night," Skip replied. "We've been sleeping on the ground in the wind and rain all this time. After that, you can't imagine how nice those cheap roll-aways and fresh linen look. If I never see those arctic sleeping bags or a lean-to again, it'll be too damn soon."

              "Poor things," Janet said, shaking her head a little. "Paul told me what you've been through and what they went through this morning. It's a shame that people so young are forced to have experiences like that, isn't it?"

              Jessica, who was standing with them, gave a little snort of disgust - she still seemed to think that Jack and Christine had made up the tale of their gunfight this morning - but said nothing. Janet shot her a brief look of annoyance - a look that Skip had noticed nearly every person they contacted give at some point - but kept her mouth shut as well.

              "Well," Paul said, "On that note, shall we go tour the outside now?"

              "Sure," Skip said. "Let's do that."

              They went on a two-hour walk around the entire subdivision and its guard posts, Paul showing him the defenses that he had set up and introducing him to the guards that were currently on duty. Though Skip had been able to catch brief glimpses of the terrain on the walk to and from the bridge that morning, he was now treated to a detailed look of everything in Garden Hill.

              Skip found that Paul, in setting up town defense, had not done too terribly badly for someone without military of law enforcement experience. Even before the tour he had figured out that the former firefighter had a healthy amount of good old common sense and seeing what he had done for protection only served to reinforce this view. For the purpose of keeping isolated stragglers from entering the walled area where everyone lived and worked, he had covered every base, leaving no part of the subdivision exposed to someone slipping inside during the daylight hours. Except for the bridge approach, all of his guard posts were located in the upper floors of two-story houses along the outside wall. He had four of these positions, each manned with two guards armed with scoped rifles and binoculars. Between the four of them, the entire perimeter of the irregularly shaped subdivision was visible as long as the guards did their jobs and kept watch.

              The problem with this set-up however, was twofold. In the first place, while it effectively kept stragglers at bay, it would be almost useless against a concentrated attack by more than ten or fifteen people. They were simply allowed to get too close to the walls before they were spotted. Along those same lines it was a defense that depended heavily upon the guards maintaining a diligent watch - something that they had already proven themselves incapable of - since there was potentially only a Micker of a few minutes or so between when an invader would first appear and when he reached the safety and invisibility of the wall. Another problem was that, when they did spot a straggler heading in, the way they drove him or her away was to fire at them, not aiming to hit, just to persuade them that they did not want to be there. This was a horrible waste of ammunition since it usually took two or three shots to accomplish this goal. Skip, as diplomatically as possible, pointed out these flaws in the plan as he observed. Paul seemed to take it well.

              As for the guards themselves, they tended to be male and female teams. Of the four interior guard posts, three of them were coed posts. Though they did not actually walk in upon any coitus in progress - probably since the guards knew that they would be getting a visit from the boss on that morning - it did not take extra-sensory perception to figure out that there was a great deal of sexual tension between each pair. Nor did it take much to figure out that a guard position was the ideal place to carry out an affair since they were located inside of an actual bedroom and had an actual bed in them.

              "Who makes the guard roster?" Skip asked as they left the final post and began heading out towards the hilltop position that overlooked the bridge.

              "I do," Paul told him. "I do it mostly on a volunteer basis since I don't really want to send people out there that don't really want to be there. Of course the cost of that is that I end up having couples with an agenda volunteering. I do make sure that everyone who mans a post is able to shoot their rifles and pistols, but that's about the only qualifying factor at this point."

              "Might I make a suggestion?" Skip said.

              "Hey," Paul told him, "You're the new security chief. You don't make suggestions, you make changes."

              "If he's voted into town," Jessica said from her position right behind them. "And only if the committee approves them."

              "Right," Skip said. "Well, the first thing that will change is that male and female combinations will no longer be allowed on guard duty. It's going to be either two males or two females. That should cut down on the 'fornication' wouldn't you think?"

              "People aren't going to like that," Paul said dubiously. "You're going to have a hard time getting volunteers if you implement that rule."

              "Guard duty is not for people to like or dislike," he said. "It's for people to do. It is a job, not a fuckfest. Nobody here seems to realize that that is the most important job in town. Without an effective security force, you might as well just set all of your food outside the wall right now because at some point, someone is going to take it away from you. We'll need to develop teams of people who specialize in this duty and will take it seriously. And they will then be the only ones to do it. We'll partner them together every shift so they can learn to rely on each other and I'll train them up into an effective fighting force that can back each other up if it becomes necessary."

              "These are not military people that we have in this town," Jessica said. "They're women of breeding and men who fix things or mow lawns."

              "They're going to have to be military people," Skip said. "And in addition to the guards, every person in this town needs to learn how to shoot and fight. Everyone. If we're ever attacked in force the job of the guard force is going to be to simply hold until the rest of the town can grab weapons and man whatever positions are needed to fend them off."

              "You must be kidding," Jessica said. "These people can't do anything like that."

              "If they want to live to see the sun again, they'd better learn," Skip said.

              "Well, let's find Skip and his friends a house, shall we?" Paul said as they reentered the main office in the community center. It was just before lunch and the odor of cooking food - it smelled like some kind of rice dish - was wafting upwards from below.

              "A house?" Jessica immediately said. "Don't you think that's a bit premature?"

              "Yeah," agreed Dale, who was going over some paperwork at his desk. "We haven't had the vote yet. We don't know if they're going to be staying."

              "They'll be staying," Paul said. "You know that as well as I do. So how about we concede the inevitable and start figuring out a place to put them."

              "But, Paul..." Jessica started.

              "If I'm wrong," Paul said, giving a little roll of the eyes, "then how much trouble is it to move them back out? They don't have anything anyway."

              This argument seemed to do the trick. Skip, who watched the conversation from his position in the corner, wondered, not for the first time, just what it was that Jessica had against him anyway. True, he had upset her little power trip but he was not directly responsible for that. That had just been Paul insisting upon what he knew was a needed addition.

              "All right," Jessica said, opening a drawer on her desk and pulling out a sheaf of papers. "I guess we can at least look. I think a small house would suffice for them, wouldn't you?"

              "By all means," Paul said. "I certainly wasn't suggesting that you give him a bigger house than yours. How about the one on the corner of Sycamore and Cypress? It's one of the small, three bedroom models. That should do them, don't you think?"

              "That was Bob and Vickie Whalen's house!" Jessica immediately protested. "They were good friends of mine."

              "And they're dead now, aren't they?" Paul said, quite exasperated. "That's what they get for both being at work on that particular Thursday."

              "That's not a very nice thing to say."

              "And that house is empty and it's not a freaking shrine. It's close by the community center in case Skip has to get over here fast and it has furniture in it. All we'd have to do is move a couple of beds over there for the kids and give them some linen and they're all set."

              They argued back and forth for a few minutes about the appropriateness of that decision, Dale echoing everything that Jessica said, but eventually they were worn down. With only one warning that Paul was 'forgetting his place' it was agreed upon. 415 Sycamore became the official residence of Garden Hill's unconfirmed security chief.

              "I'll take you over to look at it," Paul told him. "And after lunch we'll get you all moved in and set up."

              "Cool," Skip said, following him down the stairs.

              He checked in on Christine and Jack, hoping that they would be awake so they could go see their new home as well but they were still quite unconscious in their beds, both in the same exact position he had last seen them in. He shut the door on them, leaving them to their slumber, and then donned his rain slicker once again, following Paul out into the rain.

              "Why does Jessica hate me so much?" Skip asked as they walked over. "I mean, Dale, I can understand. He's just pussywhipped and takes whatever position Jessica does. If she hates me, then he hates me. But why does she hate me?"

              "Ahh, Jessica," Paul said, a queer smile upon his face. "She's a very complex and interesting psychological phenomenon. Are you familiar with psychology at all?"

              "Not really," he said. "I mean, I know human nature from my job, I know it all too well in fact, but as far as formal training goes, I haven't had any."

              "Well, neither have I, but I did take quite a few courses while I was in college. Jessica is the epitome of the classic, textbook, inferiority complex. Something, somewhere in her childhood has led her to believe that she is worthless and inferior to nearly everyone else. Now she is smart, crafty, and before the comet she was quite rich, but still, she always compared herself to other people and found herself lacking in some way. So to compensate for this feeling of inferiority, she tries to make herself look superior in everything to everyone, to the point that she becomes quite annoying and possibly dangerous under the right circumstances. Her entire reason for living is to prove to everyone that she is better than they are because she feels that she is not. Her husband was richer, her house was nicer, her car was more expensive. If someone bought something nicer than she had, she would immediately go out and top it. If you told her you had the flu and you were in bed for three days with it, she would tell you that she had it worse but that she didn't have to stay in bed at all. If you told her your kid got an A in school, she would tell you that hers got an A-plus."

              "Okay," Skip said, nodding. "I'm following you so far. I've known a few Jessicas in my time, but that doesn't explain the hatred for me."

              "Oh, but it does. Don't you see? Her position in this town is very important to her. She is a leader, a committee member, someone who makes the rules and enforces them. She helps control the food that we eat and can potentially get someone exiled from town. Having such a position helps her to convince herself that she is not inferior, that she is somebody. But at the same time, deep down inside, she realizes that anybody could do what she is doing. She tries to come across like only she has the strength and the smarts to help dole out food and make decisions, but she knows that she doesn't and tries to hide that fact from everyone. And then you come along. You are someone who does possess skills and knowledge that no one else in this town has. You truly are an important person and you will be doing something that she could not do or even pretend to do. This town really does need you."

              "But I am someone who can help this town," Skip protested. "Doesn't that mean anything to her?"

              "No," Paul said. "That's what is scary about this. The terror she feels at being exposed as just another person is greater than her fear for the safety of Garden Hill and everyone in it. In a way, her response to you is almost sociopathic. She would rather see our town overrun and destroyed, all of our food gone, all of the men killed, all of the women raped and captured, than admit that she's just another citizen that relies on others to help keep things running."

              "That is a rather scary thought," Skip said slowly.

              "Yes it is. And I'm going to be keeping a close eye on Jessica as things progress here. I have no idea how far she is capable of going to protect this image she tries to maintain. The more it slips, the more likely she is to do something drastic."