Cauldera

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Chapter Thirteen
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We were having a staff meeting. Missionary Debra was there, of course. While it is undoubtedly true that no one is irreplaceable, Missionary Debra was the closest facsimile that I’ve ever seen. She had a hand in everything. Ministers Sean and Matthew—now having been elevated to Elders Sean and Matthew were also there, along with Minister Tony. Minister Tony, who had a special gift for raising livestock, had recently been made Minister at the age of nineteen. There were also a few other key staff, but it doesn’t bear going into.


Sean was frowning and obsessing as usual. Matthew was implacable, and Tony found reason to smile and be cheerful in almost any circumstance.


“I’m telling you Bishop, people are getting powerfully tired of dormitory living,” Elder Sean said ominously.


“Okay. I want to start a block of about fifty residential houses. We have enough construction materials cached to build about four times that many. Nonetheless, I want our salvaging of construction materials to shift into a higher gear. There’s concrete; lumber; insulation; glass—beaucoup kinds of good stuff that may not be any good much longer. We’ll need it eventually,” I said.


“There are cases where we’d get a much bigger return on our efforts cannibalizing existing structures,” Minister Tony pointed out.


“Oh by all means. Triage everything. Triage, Triage! But what I started to say: put ten percent more laborers on the construction crews. Get volunteers for overtime—both construction and anyone who wants to work OT out of department.


“People won’t like the extra work,” Elder Sean groused.


“People want more housing, but they don’t want to build them. Do they think that I can make houses spring up like mushrooms?” I asked.


I thought for a moment.


“Could we raise two houses ready to move into, during a weekend—if we had a ‘cabin raising’? “


“Yes, if people would participate,” Missionary Debra said.


“Okay, I want a cabin raising every weekend, for the next twelve weekends. Make it fun. Make sure that a reasonable amount of our medicinal pure corn gets there; good food; a party when it’s finished.”


“If the people work on Sunday, they’ll miss church,” Elder Sean objected.


“It might be a news flash to you, but lots of our people skip church anyway,” I pointed out.


“That’s true, but we don’t want to be seen as encouraging impiety,” Missionary Debra said.


“Cool, we’ll appoint a Minister or Elder to have a brief Sunday service on site. Will that suffice? “ I said.


“Could I volunteer to preach?” Minister Tony asked.


He was new, and never got enough chances to speak to satisfy him.


“If you can constrain yourself to be brief. Anyway. In a month or so, we could have the block of fifty built. Figure four folks per household—that’s two hundred people, probably a bit more, removed from the dormitory—plus the weekend built houses. Two hundred is close to ten percent. That should make a noticeable less crowded situation for everyone.


“Let’s say that the weekend houses are awarded by lottery, but to be eligible, at least one family member has to have participated in the building. That will add a nice bit of incentive.


“We also need another pentagonal multi-purpose structure built. It and the accompanying tunnels will allow us to spread the remainder of the folks out some.”



“It will be late Summer by the time the block of fifty gets built. Depending on a number of factors, we may commit to another twenty to thirty unit block of houses then. In the meantime, make it work people.


“With the resources we would expend on building a new pentagon, we could build fifty or sixty more houses—more,” Elder Sean objected.


“True, but we need the building. People are just going to have be patient. There hasn’t been any law passed to prevent anyone from scrounging up their own materials, and building their own house.


“On to other things—I want a factory building built to these specifications, at this location. Doctor Bing-Bing is going to do something interesting.


“Oh Tony, the Boyz have some of the extra large donkeys they’re willing to trade. I want at least one stallion, and three mares—along with an agreement in principle, to sell us stud services when we want some new blood. They also have llamas. Feel them out, but we’re not looking to go into the llama business anytime soon.”


“People won’t like trading with the Boyz,” Elder Sean objected.


“By the way,” Elder Matthew weighed in. “We have a couple of defectors from the Boyz compound. They said they’re tired of that lifestyle, and want to repent. One of them used to own a gunstore, and he claims to have caches of Guns and ammo galore.”


“Welcome both of them to the compound. Feel them out, see if they’re ready to commit to Christ and join the church—but don’t pressure them,” I ordered.


“Oh really now, are we accepting homosexuals into the church?”
Elder Sean sneered.


“No, we’re accepting former homosexuals as candidates for membership. Why the issue? I guar-an-tee that we already have homosexuals and lesbians in the church. They are simply deceitful about it. Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares? Let them grow together. God will sort them out on judgment day.”


Staff meetings were beginning to give me headaches. It is so wearying to have to think for other people; or to refute arrant nonsense.

################# ################## ####################


Aryan made his way surreptitiously to the concrete block garage. He knocked on the door; whispered a password and was hustled in. There were almost sixty people crowded into the garage. Someone had located and liberated a bunch of folding chairs and they were arranged in rows and columns—just like church, or any one of a number of otherwise benign organizations.


There was an American sign on one side of the makeshift podium. There was a Nazi flag on the other. Derek stood up to speak. Once he had everyone’s attention, he introduced someone Aryan hadn’t seen before. He said that he was Comrade Hearst from Georgia.


Comrade Hearst was a powerfully built man of about fifty. He was about six foot tall and close to three hundred pounds. He looked like a man who’d spent many years doing heavy squats; deadlifts and bench presses. He shaved his head and eyebrows.


Aryan thought he looked malevolent and reptilian—like an aged bellicose snapping turtle. When the man spoke, his voice sounded strained and hoarse. It was a bit too high, and it broke frequently. He only gestured with his right hand as he talked. The rest of his body seemed turned to wood, or stone.


“How did a bunch of white folk like yourselves, end up being flunkies for a bunch of black folks,” Comrade Hearst asked rhetorically. “Now I represent an outside organization that could help you folks to set things right.


“I say that we ‘could’. The question is: are you folks worth our effort, or are you so far gone in your black loving, race mixing ways, that we’d be better advised to shun you—consider y’all as part of the problem? As I say, it’s a question. It is you folks place to convince me.”


Aryan was astonished at the man’s words and attitude. He watched him carefully, trying to spot any sign of humanity behind the reptilian face. He had seen evil before, many times. Comrade Hearst didn’t seem so much evil, as he did empty. Gazing into his eyes, Aryan thought that he was the most exquisite example of an empty human shell that he’d ever encountered.


The man droned on interminably. Aryan felt the hypnotic cadence of the man’s voice, and summarily brushed it away. There was something else though—something dark and spiritual that enveloped Aryan in vain. It sought frantically for an opening, but Aryan was indwelt by the Holy Ghost. There was no opening for the unclean spirit, and no room for him inside; even if he could have forced an entrance.


The spirit had encountered this situation before. He was forever barred from entering into Aryan. Nonetheless he could fasten himself on the outside—slowly drain Aryans energy; blight his spirit; deceive him and lead him into error. But there weren’t even any external handholds for the demon to cling to.


Aryan experienced the assault as a momentary and minor irritation. He shrugged it off, never being consciously aware of it. If the thing couldn’t get into or influence Aryan, it still had a season pass into Comrade Hearst’s spirit. It whispered to him. It told him things about Aryan.


The demagogue was finishing up a long riff about “the good of society” and the brotherhood of man. Aryan pondered momentarily. Even if he believed in the fictitious entity known as “society”, he still couldn’t imagine how putting Baldy in charge of anything might accomplish any good purpose. But as he sat, carefully keeping his face expressionless, he noticed that the speaker spent more and more of his time glaring at him.


Aryan gazed blandly back into the man’s eyes. As the fellow put more and more hostility in his gaze, so did Aryan. He’d never backed down from anyone. He didn’t intend to start now. The old bastard might have thirty pounds on him, but he’d go out and dance with him right then, if the Nazi thought he could hang.


“I have spent many years perfecting my powers of observation. I can pick up on the slightest cue—something that none of y’all would ever notice. I can tell that you have a traitor in your midst. That man there,” He said, pointing to Aryan. “Grab him”.


Aryan was lightly armed, but most of the fellows in the garage weren’t packing at all. He drew and fire one round at Comrade Hearst before someone grabbed him from behind. The rude shaking that the back-grabber gave him, kept him from aiming very precisely. Nonetheless he managed two center of mass hits, on two other clients, with the Mag-Na-Ported two-inch Smith and Wesson Model twelve that Pete had given him. They had to break two of his fingers to pry the Gun from his hand. Then the World went black.


Aryan wasn’t out very long, but when he came to, he was bound hand and foot. Comrade Hearst was holding a rag to his face. When he took it away momentarily, Aryan saw that the 158-grain lead semiwadcutter hollow point +P had struck a grazing blow, which had nonetheless done an excellent job of completely evacuating the fascist’s right eye socket. One of his other clients was dead. The last client was gut-shot, but hanging in there for the moment.


“Drag him up front,” Comrade Hearst commanded. “This man is a miscegenist. He has a black wife and three hybrid children. He’s a good friend to the mixed-breed Bishop. What kind of conspiracy are you idjits running?”


“Yeah well,” Aryan told him.” Didn’t whoever told you all that stuff, while he was riding you barebacked—no doubt—tell you that the Bishop is one of the purest examples of Scots-Irish that you’re ever likely to find—with a generous dose of Indian blood thrown in? Even Hitler himself once remarked that the American Indians were ‘Brown-skinned Arians.”


Comrade Hearst struck Aryan a backhanded blow across the face.


“Shut-up!” He screamed. “I am going to kill you very slowly, but first, I’m going to let you watch your wife and your hybrid children die horribly”


Aryan laughed at him.


“I have an appointment with death and it is not within your power to either speed, or delay it. Jesus loaned everything that I have on this Earth to me. That includes my wife and children. When he needs them back, he’ll call for them. In the meantime there is nothing that you can threaten me with. I’m through wasting words on you. You aren’t worth speaking to.”

############# ################# #########################


Larry received a summons to go see Minister Tony. When he got there, he was delighted to see Lloyd and Dave there. He grabbed each of them in a hearty embrace.


“It’s good to see you guys again. What are you doing here?”


“We’re defecting,” Dave told him. “It just kept weighing on our minds, how they threw you out into the cold that way. We talked it over and decided to come here as soon as practical—if they’d have us.”


“You two aren’t like...”


“No, no!” Lloyd laughed. “The Boyz don’t believe in emotional attachments. We want to find a better way.”


“Well you’ve found a very good place to find better ways,” Larry said.


“You don’t have to acknowledge us in public. People knew we were friends, they’d look at you funny.”


“Nonsense! I’ve never turned my back on a friend—for any reason,” Larry declared.


“We both turned our backs on you,” Dave said sadly.


“Then you’ll have to learn to forgive yourselves. I’ve already forgotten.”

############### ######################### ###############


Ronnie stayed busy with his television and radio stations. There had been a small influx of people into the retreat. A disproportionate number of the new members were teens and youths. Ronnie; Travis; Gib along with two of the three engineers from Purdue, were the only inhabitants over twenty-five years of age.


Most of the inhabitants were extremely gifted with at least one special talent. Many of them were multi-talented. Nick led the choir—that was seen and heard all over the world, due to Ronnie’s TV broadcasts. Miriam liked to play with the computer. At the age of seven, she’d started doing her own animation. At the age of nine, she was frustrated by the limits of her computer system.


Gib and the three engineers from Purdue had helped her both to scavenge the hardware, and to wire it together to make her a massive Beowolf system. With no economic restraints, and with several of the best electronic and programming minds of all time working on the design, they soon had something orders of magnitude more powerful than any previous animation system.


At the age of eleven, Miriam had attained the Holy Grail. Her graphics were good enough to be mistaken for live filming. She had made several short features, and three full-length movies to broadcast worldwide. Most of her work had a Christian theme, and all of it was Christian-friendly.


As she said, it would be generations before they could once again have “Casts of thousands”, or even hundreds again. She was making much of the apparatus of movie-making unnecessary.


One of the engineers named “Jake” had made Ronnie a set of prosthesis that surpassed anything yet made. Ronnie said that they were almost as good as his original legs.


There were numerous other projects going on—some trivial, and a few grandiose—but all of them ingenious.


Then the plague hit. They had heard about the sickness over the airwaves, but so far as they knew it had been confined to Europe and Asia until The young people of Ronnie’ Retreat started getting sick.


There had been speculation that the virus could be carried for hundreds of miles on the wind—perhaps across oceans. Certainly, they hadn’t had a newcomer for several months, and none of them had been overseas, or even within a state of the ocean since the eruption.


The plague seemed to perversely prefer the young and the healthy, though no one was exempt. The first sign was itching festering pustules that continued to grow in size and number throughout the course of the illness. The sickness was deadly, but it didn’t kill particularly quickly. Indeed, the victims often suffered for weeks. Death usually came from kidney and sometimes, liver failure. The disease seemed to Cram-jam the system with toxins.


Several veterinarians and chemists from Purdue came down, along with a couple Doctors. The veterinarians and chemists were all PhDs; accustomed to research. They had every confidence that the plague would get to them eventually, and they elected to meet it head-on. If there was a cure, they aimed to find it—quickly.

################# ################### ###################


Aryan had given the barest outline of his plans to Larry. Larry only knew approximately where the meeting place was—and it could very well have been moved. There might also have been alternate sites. He did know that Derek was a ringleader in whatever had happened to Aryan. He talked it over with Pete. The three of them had become fast friends since in processing into the Ark at the same time.


Larry didn’t tell Bishop what he and Pete were going to do. Their actions would not be terribly Christian. Bishop had enough troubles without being implicated in their harebrained schemes. Pete made arrangements for one of her sisters to watch her children for however long was necessary. Larry went to see Doctor Bing-Bing and returned with a small leather pouch.


Before they left Pete’s apartment, Larry started tying his arm off.


“What are you doing?” Pete asked him.


“Well I’m sure not getting high. This will make me immune.”


“To what?”


“Some of the stuff Bing-Bing gave me.” Larry said a brief prayer aloud. “Lord, when I had gas gangrene and they wanted to amputate my arm, I promised you that if you’d save my arm, that I’d never shoot dope again. I kept my promise. You know my heart. This isn’t dope. It’s not to get high and it’s to help a friend. I hope you understand.”


Larry spent an extra long time swabbing his arm down—first with alcohol, then with Betadine. He might get an infected injection site, but it wouldn’t be through not using proper sterile technique. He hit his vein, and injected himself with an ease that astonished, and also reassured him. Despite the fact that the antidote wasn’t for getting high, it had a kick that made Larry think he was going to pass out for several very long minutes. Cocaine had never done that to him.


Pete demanded a complete explanation. Once Larry explained, she turned to him and said,


“Do me.”


“I had one syringe for me, and one for Derek. Oh well, if I give Derek something, tsk-tsk is all I gotta say.”

############### ################## ######################


They found Derek running a Lathe in the armory. Larry placed a large gelatin capsule in his mouth. He walked up behind Derek and chewed the capsule several times quickly. He tasted the foulest thing that he’d ever had in his mouth. Then the capsule started effervescing. He grabbed Derek’s shoulder and spun him around. He opened his mouth wide and blew the thick green smoke into Derek’s face.


Derek faltered, but staggered past him. Antidote or no antidote, the gas stunned Larry. He paused to quickly puke his guts up. Pete had grabbed a hold of Derek. Instead of opening her mouth wide, she pursed her lips and blew a steady stream of the gas into Derek’s face. He fell. Pete fell an instant later.


Thankfully, Larry didn’t much trouble reviving Pete. They wrapped Derek in a blanket, and carried him nonchalantly out of the compound.


When Derek came to, he was bound hand and foot. Larry had a booming headache from the drugs he’d been exposed to and was feeling even more merciless than usual.


“My good friend Derek, Aryan has disappeared. I believe that you know something. You will be here until you tell me what you know—or until you convince me beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt that you know nothing.”


“Tell you nothin’“ Derek spat out.


“Do you see this syringe? I used it earlier, and I didn’t sterilize it. You might catch something from me. That’s life.”


Larry quickly injected Derek straight into his jugular vein.


“Always wanted to try that,” Larry remarked conversationally.


“Truth serum won’t work on me.”


“Maybe not,” Larry said indifferently. “That wasn’t truth serum. It was a chemical Doctor Bing-Bing came up with. It resembles both black widow venom and some of the nastier jellyfish toxins. It will stimulate every single pain nerve in your body to the max. At the same time, it heightens your brain’s capability to feel pain. Pete has the antidote in that syringe over there.”


He paused and turned Derek’s head towards Pete.


“You get the antidote when she’s convinced you’ve told her everything you know about the disappearance of her husband. You know the neatest thing? The drug takes a few minutes to take effect. Isn’t anticipation gratifying?”


.....RVM45

 

Cool.

 

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Chapter Fourteen
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The night air was chill, but Derek was sweating profusely. He writhed in pain, and could only speak in tortured gasps forced between tightly clenched teeth.


“I knew that deep down you were really on our side, Derek. You just needed some proper motivation,” Larry said to him.


Derek was too preoccupied with his agony to argue the point.


“I’ve told you everything—time and time again. I don’t know any more. Please give me the antidote,” He pleaded.


“There’s a problem with that,” Larry said. “There isn’t any antidote. Doc says that it will probably wear off within forty to fifty hours. If either of us survives our rescue attempt, and we’re feeling extra charitable, we may come back to untie you. In the meantime: enjoy.”

################# ####################### ####################


Larry had a bunk in one of the unmarried men’s barracks. He stopped outside the door to have a hurried consultation with Pete. Pete left to go get her gear, and to ask her cousin to watch the children for her. Larry stepped inside the barracks to get his gear.


He decided to take the companion K and N Frame five-inch Smith and Wesson .357s. The Guns seemed almost alive to him. The next Gun he planned to take was a Holmes Designed machine pistol that he’d made at the armory. It was the same size as the .22LR, but chambered for the .32ACP.


Larry had meticulously crafted thirty-two and seventeen round magazines for it. They were essentially downsized Sten magazines. The pistol was a foot long and Larry had made a foot-long screw-on suppressor of his own design. It was more or less a standard monoblock suppressor, except that it had a smaller auxiliary expansion chamber welded onto the bottom of the tube. He’d also added a Skorpian style folding wire stock.


He hesitated. His natural tendency to load himself down with all the Guns that he could carry warred with a desire to travel light. He compromised. He strapped on a 1911A1 style .45auto along with enough magazines to shoot an IPSC match, grabbed a trio of small hideouts, and decided to stop there.


Dave and Lloyd met him at the door. They too looked like they were on their way to a gunfight. Dave gestured him to one side where they could talk.


“I overheard you talking to the warrior princess. It was her husband that disappeared a couple days ago, wasn’t it? You’re mounting a rescue operation, aren’t you?” Dave asked.


Larry shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something intended only to be vague gibberish.


Why not go to the powers that be?” Dave asked.


“There’s a conspiracy. Don’t know who might be involved—or monitored.”


“Well count me and Lloyd here in.”


“Guys, it’s not your fight. You could get yourselves killed.”


“I might get killed, but I’m never going to turn my back on a friend again.”

############# ############################# ##################


“Doc, these boils seem an integral part of this illness, yet from everything that we’ve been able to glean from the airwaves, no one has made a concerted effort to lance them. Why is that?” Travis asked the Doctor.


“There are so many, and even if you got rid of them, more would probably form,” The Doctor said.


“Well Doc, figure it this way: ninety percent of them are going to die anyway and those boils ache and itch something fierce. At the very least it would give them some relief. Besides, this thing seems to progressively poison the body. I can’t help but think that all those boils contribute to that,” Travis told him.


“I think you may be right. It’s worth a try. Nothing else seems to help. Are you a Doctor?” The man asked Travis.


“No, but I’m perfectly capable of playing one on TV,” Travis said with the smallest of smiles.


“Pity, you’d probably have made an excellent Doctor.”

############## ######################### #####################


The veterinarian and a radio technician sat sending a long stream of code over the airways, to Purdue.


“That seems a time consuming operation. What are you trying to accomplish?” Miriam asked.


“We need to sequence the genes on this cursed virus. We got lots of computer power at the University, but with no hard connection it’s slow. Faster than courier, but not by much.”


“Well if you need numbers crunched, you could use my Beowolf. It has more gigaflops than any other yet built.”


############### ##################### ########################


Travis went to find Ronnie. The little man spent many of his waking hours in the chapel, down on his artificial knees in prayer. He wasn’t particularly little anymore though, with his new legs.


“The death count still stands at three. Lancing the boils has proven to slow the progress of the disease considerably, but it’s no cure. We now have eighteen sick. The scientists say that they’re ripping the genome apart with Miriam’s computer system. The question is: will they find a cure fast enough to do any of us any good?”


“Travis, please stay and sit with me awhile.”

############# ######################## ######################


They were holding Aryan in a small concrete block garage similar to the meeting place; only this one was a smaller one-car garage. The concrete buildings had stood up to the ash fall and the snow better than some of the wooden buildings. Also, it was far more likely to find some sort of wood stove in a garage.


There were two guards inside. One of the guards decided that getting Aryan to speak was a personal challenge. The other sat at a table reading a book, and largely ignoring the other two.


Finally the man tired of verbal taunts and started to slap Aryan’s face repeatedly.


“That’s enough of that. We’re supposed to keep him alive,” The other guard said.


Aryan was bound to a straight-backed chair. The man tilted the chair backwards and laid it on its back with Aryan still strapped in. He covered Aryan’s mouth and nose with a small terrycloth towel and poured water on the towel.


As long as Aryan kept his head, and breathed very slowly, it was endurable—though he had a constant feeling of being suffocated. Whenever he lost his composure and tried to breath fast though, the towel would cling tightly to his face, shutting off all air. The towel would dry, and just as it got dry enough to give some relief, the guard would wet it again.

#################### ####################### #################


There were three guards spaced along the building. Lloyd, by his own admission, was no great rifleman, or stalker. Dave was a consummate sniper though. Larry and Pete went to take out the sentries. Dave watched through the scope of his .308 Savage Scout. If they were discovered, it was his job to take out the remaining sentries as quickly as possible. Lloyd stayed with Dave as a spotter.


Larry focused every ounce of his rage on the sentry ahead of him. Some folks said that if you looked directly at a client you were stalking, or focused on him too much, that he’d sense you somehow. Larry was convinced that the idea was BS.


Larry wrapped his right hand around the client’s mouth and nose to stifle any outcry. He had a Cold Steel Corsican Dagger in his left hand. The dagger was okay, but it wouldn’t have been his first choice for any other purpose than assassinating clients surreptitiously.


After he’d cut the client’s throat from ear to ear, the only thing holding the man’s head on was his spine and some spinal erector muscles. Larry was a good butcher with a razor sharp blade. It only took four gentle slices to sever the head. He put it into his shoulder bag. He was going to use it for a psy-op in a moment.


Pete beat him to the third sentry. He had no idea how she’d handled her first client, but she was grimly strangling the third one with a wire garrote.


Larry was more than a little disappointed in himself. While the act didn’t bother him in the slightest, he hadn’t taken any pleasure in it. He thought of himself as less of a Warrior; since the sight of the enemy’s blood didn’t thrill him to the marrow.

############### ####################### ######################


Aryan’s guard had added a new twist to the torture. This time instead of dropping water on the towel, he stood urinating on it. Just then a knock came at the door.


“Get that for me, Will you?” He asked the other guard.


The second guard walked to the door. He gave a sign and Larry gave the counter sign. As he opened the door, Larry hit him in his eye-sockets with a five-round burst of silenced .32s. He shoved the client back, simultaneously tossing the head into the garage.


An unmuffled blast of gunfire would probably have galvanized the client into furious action. However, all he heard was an odd subdued coughing sound, and then something rolled into the room. He never identified the object as a human head; but it distracted him momentarily nonetheless. The man died in a hail of .32bullets with his Gun undrawn, and his business still in his hand.


Aryan was unable to walk right off, so they propped him up on either side. Others might show up at the hideout any minute. They didn’t intend to stay to welcome them.

################### ##################### ####################


Elder Sean walked up to the sentry outpost with a small crowd of brethren along. He was a high-ranking official, and the sentries were geared to guarding against outside threats. So when Elder Sean asked them to have a few words with them, they readily complied. Within seconds they’d all been knocked unconscious and handcuffed.


“That should do it,” Elder Sean said into the microphone. He added a short string of alpha-numerics to prove his identity.

################ ##################### #######################


One of the few places the five friend’s could meet privately to discuss their current state of misery, was Pete and Aryan’s little apartment. They were lucky to have any private space at all. Bishop had sacrificed a Janitor’s closet to give them their own space. It was a large closet—about twelve by eighteen—but it was a small apartment.


Larry had left Prince at the apartment and the big dog was thrilled to be reunited with Larry. They were very seldom separated. While Larry talked to his dog, Dave tended Aryan’s wounds: Pete fixed them all something to eat and drink. With the immediate needs of the flesh attended to they discussed their options.


“Bishop needs to be told what is going on as soon as possible. I’m not sure that his bodyguard would get him out of bed to speak to us at this time of night, or not,” Aryan said.


“They will if you told them what’s happened,” Lloyd said.


“Unless they’re part of the conspiracy,” Dave pointed out. “Then not only would they not summon Bishop, but we get vanished.”


Larry thought that for once Dave’s cynical paranoia was justified.


“Tell you all what,” Larry said. “Lets all stick together ‘till we talk to Bishop in the morning. I understand that he start’s his day rather early.”


“Well before dawn,” Aryan supplied.


“Anyway, if we hang together, we’ll make a harder target for them in the meantime. I’m beat. I can sleep right here on the floor.”


Dave busied himself propping a chair against the locked door, and hooking up a small alarm to the doorknob.

################### ################# ####################


Missionary Debra and I had been up all night going over some of the plans. We had figured out a way to get another thirty or forty houses built before cold weather set in. Every house lowered the population density somewhat. Crowd too many, too closely together for too long and they start acting neurotic.


We tried to get the people outside into the open as much as possible, but many of them had more or less become mole people. Strangely enough, the one’s that you could hardly drag outside, were the most vocal in demanding housing.


Somewhere along the line, I got to reminiscing about the World I knew as a child. That was back before personal computers or cell phones. Part of my childhood was even before they passed the cursed GCA 68.


What I remembered were ice cream trucks and swimming pools; screen doors and summers that were so hot and seemed to last for centuries. I grooved on little corner grocery stores where people would loaf and talk. I talked about Double Colas in returnable glass bottles, and buttermilk that still had flakes of butter in it.


“We had made such a mess of things before the eruption: Wal-Mart’s; the Brady Bill; plastic handguns. Everything had become cheap; uniform and disposable. Tool and die makers were being replaced by CNC. People were compromising their creativity by giving up Drafting for CAD. It was a screwed up world.

“Maybe the World that we remake together will be better—God willing.”


“I hope so,” she said.


I started feeling very sad.


“My father died twenty years ago. I don’t know. I still miss him every day. I miss my mother too, but we weren’t as close. Most of my family was gone, even before the eruption. Our parents and grand parents tie us to the past.

“I mean, even if you never knew them, they existed—like a tree’s roots anchor it to the ground. It doesn’t matter that you can’t see them.

“But without children, there’s nothing to anchor you to the future. You’re like a one-wing dove trying to fly. If it really tries hard, it can rise a few feet, but then it just falls to the ground again.

“Vanity of Vanity, all is Vanity—and chaseth after the wind…”


“Why didn’t you ever have children?” Missionary Debra asked.


“Takes a woman. I never met one that would have me. I suppose it wasn’t my geas to have children.”


Somehow, we’d gotten to sitting too close together. I know that there could be no excuse or justification for what I did next. Even as a Bishop—with my own Bishop’s ring—I found out that deep down inside, I was still a carnal man. I put my arm around the Missionary, and started kissing her.


I can’t answer for what evil I might have gotten up to next, because at that instant the door opened. Aryan; Pete; Larry and Prince, and the two new guys from the Boyz compound were all there. Aryan looked like he’d taken a good beating recently.


“Bishop,” Aryan said without any preamble. “There are folks plotting to take over the Ark.”


They weren’t halfway through telling me about their experiences though, when the alarm started ringing. That particular code meant that the outer defenses had already been breached. We scurried to battle stations.

############### ######################## ###################


“While you’re praying, say a prayer for Bishop Hawkins and his people. We’ve just received word that they’re under attack,” Travis told Ronnie.


Ronnie rose, and sank wearily onto a bench.


“Hasn’t there been enough bloodshed and dying to satisfy everyone?” Ronnie wondered.


“It would seem not,” Travis said. “We need to stay focused on finding a cure for this virus. It will wipe us out, even if the chuckleheads spare us.”

############ ############################## ##################


Travis went looking for Badger. He felt a need for the big dog’s company. Later, he’d help himself to five or six ounces of Ronnie’s single malt Scotch, and read some of Miranda’s journals—but he had a few duties to attend to first.


He found Badger in the infirmary. He was busy licking a little girl’s arms.


“Badger, I don’t think that you ought to be doing that,” Travis gently chided him.


“It’s alright Travis. Badger loves me and his kisses make my sores feel better,” Suzy said


“Does it really make you feel better? Maybe I can get them to bathe you in some warm water. Thing is, I don’t know if dog’s can get the virus. I don’t want Badger to get sick. Besides, he might cause them to get infected—well, more infected than they are.”


He sat by the little girl. An idea came into his mind.


“So you really like Badger?” Travis asked.


“He’s my favorite of all the dogs,” Suzy said.


“Do you like Lee-Ann?”


“She’s okay, but Badger’s my favorite.”


“Well, Badger and Lee-Ann are going to have puppies soon. To be precise, Lee-Ann will have them, but Badger is the father. They’ll have a little of both in them. You get better, and I’ll let you have your pick of the litter.”


.....RVM45

 

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Chapter Fifteen
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My main command post was within a few yards of my quarters. I’d set it up that way for convenience sake. I told my friends to stick with me rather than trying to fight their way to their assigned posts.


I figured that with conspiracies brewing, I might need a few extra bodyguards. Besides someone might still be stalking them. Whatever they could tell me was probably a moot point by then, but maybe not. We could watch each other’s backs, just in case.


I was vastly encouraged to note that both my main Lieutenants were already there. I sat in my chair and grabbed the “Pickle”—a kind of super remote control, though it used a fiber optic cable rather than radio or infrared. I went through a quick survey of the key closed circuit monitors throughout the compound.


Long practice let me get an excellent overview of the tactical situation in moments. Things were bad. Not only would the casualties be much worse fighting at close range like this; but also vital equipment and livestock were at risk. It was quite possible to win the battle, only to find that our survival machine was destroyed in the process.


Elder Sean was having a hurried exchange with someone on the other side of the door, but I only noticed in a peripheral sort of way. Then he opened the door wide, and a couple squads of uniformed men walked into the command post. That got my full attention.


“I’m in command now!” Sean shouted.


Then he leveled his pistol at me. My command chair was many things, but being a good platform for a fast draw wasn’t one of them. I knew deep down that I couldn’t save myself, but with a little luck, I might take the traitor with me. I saw the muzzle of Sean’s Gun. Then Missionary Debra stepped in front of Sean’s Gun to shield me. Sean hit her with a triple tap to the body, then a shot to the head. I could clearly see the impact of each shot.


As I’ve said, the Missionary was no fragile flower—six foot, two hundred pounds, and built like Queen Latifa. Although she could have been put to any number of better uses, she made an excellent shield. Not a single bullet penetrated.



I screamed louder than I’ve ever screamed—part rage at what had just happened to Missionary Debra—part kiai to speed my draw, though I’d never teamed a kiai with a Gun draw before.


Before I cleared leather, Dave had swung his Savage Rifle around in a vicious butt stroke to the face that sent Elder Sean careening back with a ruined nose and quite possibly a broken neck.


In a moment the room was filled with dead bodies and the debris of smashed monitors, and so forth. Most of the bodies wore the quaint uniforms of the invaders. The uniforms weren’t that different, but they had a camouflage pattern that I’d never seen before, and the uniforms were cut differently as well. Sadly, there were several of our folks down as well.


I drew my thumb across my throat, signaling Pete and Aryan to make sure that all the enemy who were down, stayed down. I had just gotten back to my monitors when I saw a much larger wave of the invaders heading our way.


“Tactic: Way-Way-Alpha,” I spoke into the microphone. I repeated it twice. Then I turned to my remaining friends and said,


“Time to bug out.”


We went down the corridor a few yards then I unlocked a door and waved everyone into a small circuit breaker closet.


“We’re sitting ducks in here,” Larry said.


“No we’re not,” I told him.


I opened a small hidden panel revealing an escape tunnel. I’d also had the forethought to lay in some knee and elbow pads—though unless someone was too incapacitated to high crawl, the elbow pads were largely unnecessary.


“Come on dudes, we got about a quarter-mile crawl ahead of us. Hope y’all done been in shape,” I said.


The panel could be put back into position to hide the entrance, from the inside—if you knew how. I did; so I remained behind to close it.


We came out of the tunnel in what appeared to be a small shed—all run-down, and unlikely to contain anything worth looting.


Pete and Aryan went towards Baptist Town. Although radio warnings sent out to our allies the moment we were attacked were part of the protocols, I had no way of verifying that they were sent. Anyway, Elder Brown needed to know just how deep the rot went. At any rate, Pete had sent her cousin to Baptist Town with the children. Her and Aryan wouldn’t rest until they were positive that the children were safe.


Larry, Dave, and Lloyd were to come with me, along with Elder Mathew and a few others. Larry had Prince along, and I had my Bloodhounds. Courbet, Renoir and a nine-month-old pup named “ Manet”.


Minister Tony said that he had kin homesteading a couple miles away. He knew where we were going, and promised to rejoin us as quickly as he could. Although go-it-alone homesteaders were a small minority, there were still more than I could keep track of. Many of the families lacked radio communication gear. I couldn’t rightly keep the man from trying to warn his kinfolk—not that I wanted to.


We hadn’t been parted from Minister Tony very long when the dogs started to whine quietly. They were warning us that someone was stalking us, and doing an excellent job of it.

######################## ################ ####################


Minister Tony approached the house cautiously. Wouldn’t do anyone any good to get himself shot by mistake. His brother Brandon was a hard fellow to sneak up on. Brandon’s wife Theresa was also his second cousin, so he’d known her all his life too. He was about to give a signal, when he noticed that something wasn’t right.


He could see from where he stood, that the house had been ransacked. He watched silently for several minutes. He asked himself where he’d be, if he wanted to ambush someone coming to check out the house. He stalked each spot making little more noise than a tomcat.


He had been hunting coons and possums and running a trap line since he was seven years old. He’d been taking some of Bishop Hawkins’ marksmanship and martial arts classes almost as long. He was a dangerous man in the woods—or most anywhere else, for that matter.


When he’d satisfied himself that it wasn’t a trap, he gave a low warbling whistle, and went in. The fact that there weren’t bodies and blood on the ground outside meant that the perpetrators had to have been accompanied by someone that Brandon trusted.


He found Brandon inside. He’d taken two or three shotgun blasts to the mid section and his guts were all over the floor. Apparently even that hadn’t put him down, because he also had a head wound. They must not have had any fear of the children, because they’d taken the time to shoot each of them once, to the bridge of the nose.


There were four of the soldiers wearing the same unique uniforms as those who’d invaded the Ark. These had been stripped of any gear or weapons that might have had any value, but they’d left them lay. They’d probably be back to claim their dead once their takeover of the Ark was complete.


Tony went inside the bedroom. He found his cousin lying in the bed naked, with a hole in her head. It was obvious that she’d been gang raped before having her brains blown out.


He felt an almost curious lack of emotion. Tony was a black man, and a Minister in a Pentecostal Holiness Church, but he’d grown up a few miles outside of Harlan, Kentucky. He was no less a hillbilly than the people that Hunter S Thompson had once referred to as: “The in-bred Anglo-Saxon Tribes of Appalachia”. In fact, if it could have been traced back that far, there was more than one of the dour Celtic mountain men in his family tree.


He knew the call of kin. He had the way of the blood feud in his very bones. He was capable of actions that would have caused the staunchest Mujahadeen to lose heart. Yet he kept his temper and his blood lust under control at all times. This was the first time he’d ever encountered a situation where there seemed no good cause to hold back. And instead of raging and frothing at the mouth, he felt calmer and more in control than he’d ever been.


It wasn’t hard to follow the tracks. They’d had multiple vehicles—some of them tracked. Even when they’d taken the pothole-strewn road, they left a trail of torn-up asphalt in their wake.


Tony had a Springfield Armory M-1 Garand in .308, and plenty of enblock clips to feed it. He also packed a 1911A1 styled pistol, with plenty of loaded magazines and a six-inch Ruger Security-Six .357Magnum with a Colt Python barrel custom mounted on it. Some folks used to call them “Cougars”. He also had several blades and a Cold Steel Norsehawk.


He had no thought of surviving. He just wanted to take as many of the enemy with him, as he possibly could.

############## ############################ ##################


We took cover and waited to ambush whoever was following us. Lo and behold, it was Doctor Bing-Bing. He had a couple of his right-hand lab techs with him, and his four Warlocks.


Doc seldom went anywhere without the Warlocks. A Warlock is a cross between a Pitbull and a Timber Wolf—to what end, I’m not sure—perhaps to give the Pitbull bigger teeth, and even more jaw strength. It should beef them up a bit too. Doc’s Warlocks all weighed well over a hundred pounds.


Dogs can be hierarchical and territorial, but wolves have these traits much more strongly. If someone who isn’t a wolf specialist tries raising a wolf, there is the constant danger that he’ll steep across some invisible line, or violate some lupine taboo, and get the living daylight savaged out of him.


Thing is, a hybrid either inherits wolf psychology or dog psychology. There doesn’t appear to be any middle position. The folks who’d traded the Warlocks to Doctor Bing-Bing claimed that they’d been hybrids for a minimum of seven generations—more on some branches of the family tree; and they claimed to have been weeding out defectives, and selecting for proper attitude all along the way.


The people he’d gotten the Warlocks from were odd nomads who wandered by every year or two, to trade. They were very reticent to talk about themselves, but my best guess was that they were the result of Gypsies joining forces with a gang of outlaw bikers. They traveled in old-fashioned looking gypsy wagons—that were nonetheless recently made—drawn by oxen with well-made tack. Most of the men rode horses, but some rode choppers, and there were more bikes stowed on the wagons.


I was glad that Doctor Bing-Bing had survived and escaped, largely because I wanted as many of my people as possible to survive, but also because he was a personal friend and an invaluable resource.



We quickly compared notes, and continued to our destination.

############## ########################## ####################


When Minister Tony caught up with the small convoy, they’d joined up with a much larger group. They were parked just out of sight of the outermost fence around Bishop’s Ark. There were scores of big trucks with dual M-2 .50 Caliber Browning Machineguns. There were a couple of tanks and at least a dozen Bradleys—along with all sorts of miscellaneous vehicles, some military, some not. There were maybe two thousand men.


Apparently they’d parked outside so they wouldn’t trip over each other inside. They already had an overwhelming force inside, thanks to Elder Sean, and undoubtedly a few other traitors.


The number of enemies didn’t daunt Tony, but he did see a way of expanding his client list considerably. They were parked within a couple hundred yards of one of the Dragons.


The Dragons were diligently kept in working order, but only a few of them were manned nowadays, and they’d let a bit of brush grow up around many of them, partly through neglect, but also partly because it made good camouflage.


Tony’s master key let him inside. The napalm couldn’t be made ahead of time. It would become too thick to pump. The jelling agent had to be tired in, and agitated for about twenty minutes before it was ready to use. If it wasn’t used in two or three days, it would form big thick ropes of gelatinous resin, and have to be discarded.


The vengeful Minister spent the longest moments of his life waiting for the napalm to form. When it did, he checked and all the other systems were on line. He said a prayer. He prayed for his deceased brother and cousin. He prayed for the children. He prayed for all his friends and kin still living. Then he prayed for himself.


He knew that he hadn’t yet forgiven those who’d despoiled his home and his family. Nonetheless, even if he had forgiven them, tactics and justice would still guide him to do what he was about to do anyway. He just wouldn’t have gotten such a thrill at the thought of all the agony, death and destruction he was about to unleash. As it was, he felt like a little kid preparing to open his Christmas Presents.


He fired up the dragon and started spraying napalm. He sprayed the tongue of afire back and forth among the bivouac tents. He paused to make sure the two-ton trucks got a healthy dose, and covered the armor even thicker. He traversed the flame slowly, making sure that he laid down plenty of fire.


As he saw the occasional burning man running frantically, he cried aloud in delight. Many more were simply swept away by the burning stream, never to reappear. He saw that he had less than a third of a tank left.


About this time, the clients began to figure out which quarter the attack was coming from. Several of the twin .50s were still operational. They started tearing up the hillock the Dragon was buried under. The Dragon was protected by four courses of brick, but it couldn’t hold out against the .50 caliber bullets indefinitely.


Then a couple of mortars got the range. A tank shell struck a glancing blow. While it didn’t penetrate, it tore up the earthworks and the bricks a good deal more than they had been earlier.


Minister Tony felt the end coming an instant before the second round of tank-fire hit.


“It is always a good day to die!” He shouted. Just as he finished his declaration, the second round both blew the emplacement sky-high, and turned it into a blazing inferno. Tony was torn into tiny burnt pieces before the realization that he’d even been hit ever reached his brain.

######### ################################### ################


“Suzy is improving dramatically,” The Doctor told Travis. “ I only wish that I knew what to credit the improvement to.”


“Doc, it sounds crazy, but I think I know the only treatment Suzy got, that none of the other patients did,” Travis Said.


“Well don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me!”


“A couple days ago, I caught Badger licking her sores. It looked like he’d been working on them for sometime.”


A few hours later, the Doctor told Travis: “There is definitely something in Badger’s saliva that attacks the virus. However, beside the puppies, he’s the only dog that seems to have the anti-viral agent. We can harvest a reasonable amount of saliva from badger to treat all of our sick. We’re going to use what small amount of saliva that we can get from the puppies, to try to isolate the anti viral factor.”


“I hope that too many more don’t get sick all at once. As long as Badger’s saliva is the only source of the cure, there’s a major limit on how many we can treat at one time.”

################### ######################### ################


Aryan and Pete, with their firsthand experience with the Horde, had been asked to listen in on the talks between Baptist Town and the new proprietors of Bishop’s Ark.


“So what I’m basically proposing is that we share the burden of capturing the smaller compounds, and split their resources between us,” Comrade Hearst concluded. He wore a black leather eye patch over his right eye.


Elder Brown pushed a hidden button, asking Aryan and Pete to come in.


“Do you remember me, you fat toad? I’m the dude that shot your right eye out. Elder, I wouldn’t trust a word this lying piece of pig doody says,” Aryan nearly shouted.


“You needn’t worry. He’s just trying to use a strategy on me, that’s as old as the Ancient Greeks. It’s called ‘Divide and Conquer’. I’m neither that stupid, nor that greedy,” Elder Brown said.


“You came here under a flag of truce. You’re free to go,” Elder Brown said.


“Maybe I’ll take your little jerk-water compound next,” The one-eyed man threatened.


“Oh please do try,” Elder Brown said.” I’ll give you a taste of what you’d have gotten attacking Bishop Hawkins, if you hadn’t used treachery and deceit. Remember The Alamo.”


“Just one thing,” Aryan said. “I see that you’re wearing my revolver. My wife gave that revolver to me. It means a lot to me. I think you might want to give it back to me.”


“Why would I care to do that?” Comrade Hearst asked arrogantly.


“Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you and all your underlings. Then I’ll simply take it, along with whatever else that any of you have, that I fancy.”


“I’m here under a flag of truce.”


“It’s Elder Brown’s truce, not mine. I’m sure that he’d be justly upset with me for breaking it. However, he’s forgiven me for worse things. Elder Brown, I’m going to shoot Toady first, then his three henchmen. In the unlikely event that one of them gets me, then hold him blameless. “


“For God’s sake, give him the Gun,” One of the others urged him.


Aryan drew his 1911A1 style .45 and pointed it straight at Hearst.


“Do it nice and slowly,” Aryan said, mocking the tone of someone it a dirty movie.


When Comrade Hearst left, he left without a custom Smith and Wesson Model Twelve .38Special, with a two inch barrel.


.....RVM45

 

Getting interesting.

 

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Chapter Sixteen
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When Missionary Debra awoke, she had a booming headache. She had no idea where she was, or how she’d got there. Even so, there was a sense of urgency overlaying everything that caused her to frantically try to get to her feet.


“Please be still! You’ll tear out your stitches,” a disembodied voice told her.


Something about the voice convinced her that it was in her best interests to relax. She lay back and struggled momentarily against panic. A few seconds later the pain medication sped through her bloodstream, and she drifted back into pleasant oblivion.


When she next awoke, she awoke with all her faculties. She could tell that she was in the infirmary. She knew that she had an IV in her arm; that her body ached; and that there was a bulky bandage on her head. Her head was still a bit tender, but the booming pressure was gone.


“Have you rejoined us?” The nurse asked.


“Charlotte, how long have I been here? What’s going on? Where’s Bishop? I want to see my children…”


“Peace, you were shot. You were wearing a bulletproof vest, but it was very light, and somewhat worn. It didn’t completely stop any of the three bullets that hit you in the torso—but it slowed each of them down enough that they had rather minimal penetration,” Charlotte told her.


“Yeah, that was an old Level II vest that I picked up second hand, before the eruption. I liked it because it was thin enough, that it would fit under clothes that a regular vest wouldn’t, and it was comfortable.”


“Well, it saved your life. You were also struck in the head. The bullet struck at an angle. It didn’t penetrate the skull, but it did fracture it badly enough that we had to operate, to take pressure off your brain.”


“Where is Bishop?” Debra asked.


“Listen to me!” Charlotte hissed urgently. “ Archbishop Sean is in charge of the Ark now…”


“We don’t have Arch-Bishops…” Missionary Debra began.


“We do now.”


Charlotte grabbed both of Missionary Debra’s hands before continuing.


“Sean took over with the backing of some skinheads from Georgia. Bishop Hawkins escaped, but he captured the five old Bishops and got them to declare him a Bishop first, and then Archbishop. Two of them refused, and he shot them. Oh, I’m so glad that Bishop Pruitt didn’t live to see this.”


“How could this happen? Why didn’t more people fight?”


“They were inside our lines before we knew it. They took all the strategic strong points. No one was prepared,” Charlotte said sadly.


“Well, lets grab our Guns, and take the Ark back!” Missionary Debra said.


“They took everyone’s Guns. They haven’t gotten all of them, of course. They did get most of them. Most of our folks in singles barracks either carried their Guns, or had them in a locker. Either way, they were easy to take.”


“Well by damn, lets storm these knob-gobblers with our bare hands. There can’t be too many of them.”


“I still haven’t told you the worst of it. They’ve put all our children together, and the Georgians are holding them hostage.”


“Cowards take hostages. Georgians?”


“That’s what they call themselves. We have folks from Georgia that bristle every time they hear the name, but that’s what they call themselves.”

################ #################### ########################


The Georgians had surprisingly sophisticated ideas how to manage a slave labor force. They moved into all the best lodgings and appropriated all the best furnishings for themselves. They demanded the best of the first fruits for their tables. And excepting the occasional outraging of womenfolk (and in the modern World, a few men folk as well) they pretty well left the peons alone.


Most of the day-to-day decisions on how to manage the place were left to “Archbishop Sean”. That meant when they had to work longer hours, eat less or rougher food, or abide by various curfews, it was the “Archbishop” they cursed.


The Archbishop sat glumly on his throne. He’d been more or less the unofficial second-in-command to Bishop Hawkins—though he’d been co-equal to Elder Matthew and Missionary Debra. But back then everyone had liked and respected him. Even Bishop had treated Sean with respect. Now he was sandwiched between people, who addressed him as “Archbishop” with the same tone of voice, and facial expression they’d have if saying “dog turd”, and white supremacists that made a point of calling him “boy” and “dinge”.


Like the Spartans before them, the Georgians made a point to keep their martial skills honed. They also kept a number of guard posts manned—both against external, and against internal threats. They used Sean’s new police force (the Ushers) to maintain a vast and complex web of snitches, informants and double agents.

################### ############### #####################


The Georgians feared me. They had pretty much disrupted the whole countryside looking for me, and they were keeping it stirred up. So I decided to go to Ronnie’s Retreat. Not only did it put me well out of the range of the Georgians, it gave me a chance to talk on their worldwide radio and satellite television stations.


The television appearances in particular, demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that I was at Ronnie’s Retreat, and not still in Breathitt County. I put more store in the radio broadcasts though. There were undoubtedly more than a hundred working radios for every working television—and even if someone had kept a television up and working, they’d still need a satellite dish to groove on our broadcasts.


“People, you don’t need me to tell you that we’re in rough times. We’ve been through bad times. Things in general aren’t bad anymore for us—the survivors; and for those who did not survive, it’s a moot point.


“No, as a general rule, times aren’t bad for most of us. They’re not bad, but they are exacting times. We have very little margin for error. We don’t have any resources that we can afford to waste. Nonetheless, if we persevere things should improve, gradually at first, and then ever more rapidly.


“However, there is one force that can send us all back to the dark ages—or the stone age—or it could wipe mankind off the face of the Earth, though I personally don’t think that God will let things deteriorate quite that badly. That force is a combination of greed—greed for the unearned; Stupidity—the stupidity of a man in a glass boat juggling anchors; and arrogance—the arrogance that causes folks to think they can get away with something.


“No one ever gets away with anything—not even on this Earth. You may steal, and not have to bear man’s censure; but you can never escape the fact that you are a thief. Men may not catch a clever enough liar; but the liar cannot escape the reality that he is a liar.


“I am not talking about conscience. Many folks have consciences that are seared by a red-hot iron, and have grown as hard and dead as a piece of steel. I am talking about the fact that if you are a thief; or liar; or idolater—or whatever—it will inevitably become a part of everything you are and do.


“You Georgians think that you’re getting away with something. You’re not—not even momentarily. You hold the people’s children hostage. That’s clever, but it’s cowardly. Not only that, but it won’t keep you safe indefinitely.


“Well that was more or less the message that I wanted to give; but it’s behind the times now. There is a plague in the land, which may very well wipe us all out in spite of our best efforts. We need to find a cure, but instead many of us are forced to waste time and resources clowning around.


“So, you people who didn’t want to stay on security alert—do you see now why I wanted to keep more sentries? You morons that wanted to disarm everyone—you are disarmed now, are you better off? You folk that thought you could advance your own agendas by bringing in foreign powers—how’s y’all’s agendas doin’ now? Do you hear me, Elder Sean?


“Oh, and just to let everyone know—while I am still the legitimate ruler and Bishop of Bishop’s Ark, I am a ruler in exile. But I have also been appointed Bishop of the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church denomination—and I have another Bishop’s ring to prove it. Good thing that I have two trigger fingers, what say?


“Right now my only advice to everyone is to pray above all else, and keep your eyes open for any opportunity to improve your, or everyone’s situation.”


The speech had drained me. I hoped that it would give at least some of my people some inspiration.

############# #################### ######################


“Good news,” Travis told Doctor Bing-Bing. “The Wolfhound and all of your Warlocks have the anti-viral agent in their saliva. It will help the scientist immensely. They say that it’s going to be a wooly bear to synthesize though.”


Doctor Bing-Bing started to get excited. He started going through maneuvers that would have done a Shaolin monk or a break-dancer credit—all to his weird disjointed staccato rhythms with his characteristic “Bing-Bing!” liberally distributed throughout his outré dance.


“I’m a…I’m a…I’m…I’m a chemist—BEAINGGG-Bing!!!!!!

“Mighty…mighty good chemist—BING-BINGGG.

“They call me Doctor Bing-Binggg; Beeingggg-BINGGG!!!

“I can…I can…I can synthesize anything. Got a…got a structural diagram? Beeeing-Binggg!!!” The Doctor spit out like a psychedelic rapper.


Travis looked at me curiously. I told him that while the Doctor generally acted somewhat demented, that he was a chemical genius and he had was a virtuoso at improvised synthesis. Travis wasted no time in getting him seated at a computer monitor. As Bing-Bing studied the three dimensional molecular diagrams—both of the bizarre virus, and the canine anti-virus, his hyperactivity gradually subsided.


Travis wasn’t a chemist or Doctor. So far as I know, he’d never taken a single college class—but he picked up stuff fast. As Bing-Bing stared at the diagrams, Travis would point out first one, then another oddity that made the cure extremely complicated to synthesize. They kept at it until the wee hours. Eventually I went to bed, and left them to their odd collaboration.

################## ################## ###################


I had Larry and his friends Dave and Lloyd along with me; as well as Aryan and Pete; Elder Matthew; and a handful of others. I tried to get Pete and Aryan to stay with their children. They argued that they were some of the best Warriors available; and that I represented the best chance that their—or anyone else’s children had to survive, in the long haul.


We all gathered to have a strategy session. There were a couple engineers from Purdue, and one history professor who’d taught military tactics for the ROTC. No matter how we looked at it, the situation seemed hopeless.


Even if I had overwhelming force at my disposal, they held the children hostage. Even if it weren’t for the children, it wouldn’t do any good to take the Ark back, if we destroyed it in the process—and we faced the double jeopardy of ruining the Ark through damage to the equipment, or through too many casualties to our people.


One thing that we did have in our favor was the fact that Minister Tony had taken out about sixty percent of their personnel and much of their armor in his brave Kamikaze attack. Also, they’d been invited to leave their compound in Georgia—not because of differences in doctrine, but because they’d backed the wrong players in a failed coup attempt. They weren’t likely to seek support from that quarter. Still, for the moment it seemed that they had all the advantages.

############### ######################### ###############


Natalie had had her consciousness level raised when she was seven years old, and she’d seen her mother shoot two would-be rapist. She could also remember very clearly the sensation of having a knife at her throat as one of the men had attempted to use her as a hostage. Now seven years later, she was a hostage again.


This time though, she had just recently turned fifteen. She’d seen many examples of violence over the years. She’d watched on the monitors, as the breath of Bishop Hawkins’ Dragons had roasted the army that had come to try to take their home. She’d saw friends killed during the Georgian’s takeover.


At fifteen, she’d already absorbed years of martial arts and firearms training. She also had a Seecamp .32ACP automatic pistol, along with an extra magazine, and a small, but razor sharp Buck Esquire—all hidden deep in her panties. She also had another, even stronger weapon in her unwavering faith in God.


The Georgians hadn’t bothered searching the children too thoroughly. Despite their other faults, the overwhelming majority of the Georgians were not pederasts. Also, they had discovered early on, that it wasn’t particularly prudent to rape the women of a Warrior race.


Most of the women weren’t Warriors, of course. Neither were most of the men. However, there were enough Warriors scattered around, that taking a woman by force was not a particularly safe endeavor. Throats had been cut. Eyes had gotten gouged out. Soft body parts were bitten with rare ferocity and a will to hang on that would have done credit to an English Bulldog.


During an occupation, there will always be a certain number of people ready to prostitute themselves for necessities, or even better, luxuries—even in a religious enclave. The vast majority of the Georgians limited themselves to the willing.


One of the Georgian guards slipped Natalie a sandwich—thick slices of home made whole wheat bread, with an extra thick chunk of pork steak between them.


“Thank you, but that won’t buy you any sexual favors from me,” Natalie told him defiantly.


The man, he was barely a man at the age of nineteen, was highly embarrassed by the suggestion. Actually, he had only give Natalie the sandwich because he felt sorry for her. The children were on half-rations, and while that was a modest hardship to the small one’s, Natalie was hungry all the time.


“I’m just trying to be nice. You don’t have to be hateful. I really enjoy listening to you sing and tell the little ones stories,” He said.


“Well then, since you’ve shown me kindness, I’ll repay you by praying for your soul. You do know that what y’all are doing here is wrong—don’t you?”


“You don’t see the whole picture. Unclean races have to be brought under subjection. It’s the will of God.”


“Do I look unclean to you?” Natalie demanded, while holding a forearm up for him to inspect.


“No,” He said miserably. “Look, I don’t want to fight. I want to be your friend. I’m lonely. Do you play chess?”


“Some,” Natalie allowed.


“I’ll bring a small set tomorrow, and I’ll bring you something else to eat. My name is ‘Alan’; but they call me ‘Art’.”


“That’s curious. I’d have thought they would call you ‘Al’.”


Natalie resolved that the first time that the opportunity arrived, she’d turn Art into a corpse, and escape over his dead body.

############ ##################### ######################



Missionary looked at Archbishop Sean and smiled. He though that maybe she’d finally decided to loosen up a bit.


“I can’t help it,” She said without the slightest trace of remorse. “Every time I see what that Homosexual did to your nose, it makes me truly happy. I love it! You weren’t anyone’s idea of handsome before, but now…”


“I’ll catch that pervert someday, and your precious Bishop too. Then it will be pay-back time.”


“Yes, someday it will be pay-back time. What are you going to tell Jesus on Judgment Day? ‘Well Jesus, I got jealous of your anointed—so I sold your people into slavery, so I could be the head slave. That is okay with you…’” Missionary Debra taunted him.


“Are you going to help me, or not? You said you would.”


“I said it and I will—wherever I can cut down on wasted resources. On the other hand, I never promised to like you—or to show you even the smallest possible amount of respect. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a shin-humper. You need to be neutered without anesthetic and then gut-shot and left to die—and I’ll do it, if the opportunity ever arises.”


.....RVM45

 

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Chapter Seventeen
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Art proved to be an avid chess player, though not a particularly good one. He was on guard duty almost every day. Since he was both low ranking, and was younger, and thus less experienced than most of the Georgians; he drew most of the second and third shift watches.


Natalie almost always played the King’s Gambit if Art answered 1) P-K4; with P-K4. Occasionally she’d play a Danish Gambit just for the hell of it. As often as not, Art chose to play the Sicilian or the French Defense and bypass the hectic pace of the blistering Gambits. Natalie always played the French Defense when she was black.


Natalie had told Art flatly, that there was two games that could be played over a chess set: “chess” and “1) P-Q4”. She said that since they were playing for fun, they should play chess. If Art wanted to play Queen’s Pawn openings, he could go play them with someone else.


She did loathe the tedious limp-wristed Queen’s Pawn openings, but she was also attempting to be the one setting limits on their interactions. She had a fair grasp of the psychological games that could be played with captives. Happily though, the Georgians had little interest in winning the hearts and minds of the children.


“Back in Georgia, I had a mule and a couple Bloodhounds before the eruption,” Art told Natalie over the chessboard. “I used to like to hunt coons.”


“Bishop Hawkins had two Bloodhounds that followed him everywhere he went. He always named his dogs after famous painters,” Natalie said.


“Did you ever have a dog, Natalie?”


“Yes, we had a couple Boxer dogs when I was young. They’ve both passed away now. They may very well have been the last two Boxer dogs on Earth—though I like to imagine that the breed still exists somewhere.”


“Why didn’t your Bishop save some?”


“I asked him that once, when I was still a little girl. It was right after Pinky had to be put to sleep. He said that he was sorry, but choices had to be made. He said that Boxers were good dogs, but so were the other two or three-dozen breeds that didn’t make the list. Do you have a dog, Art?”


“Not anymore. Command Central didn’t classify dogs as essential materiel.”


“What was essential ‘materiel’?” Natalie asked, putting emphasis on the unusual word.


“Humans; Rabbits; chickens; pygmy goats and Dorsett sheep. The goats give milk and meat. The sheep give wool and meat. The rabbits and chickens grow and can be harvested quickly. Chickens provide feathers and eggs. Anything not ruled essential was excluded.”


Natalie explained Bishop Hawkins’ ideas for a mini-ecology. She told how he’d carefully preserved honeybees and ants and bumblebees—along with earthworms. She told him how they’d saved a half-dozen species of songbirds. They’d even cached many kinds of weed seeds—though there had been a definite bias towards edible weeds.


“Bishop said that we couldn’t survive long term without forests and meadows. He said that even if we could, it would be a mighty barren existence. He said that if nothing else you’d need lumber and the ground cover that wild forests maintain.

“We had people going out year after year, establishing small groves of trees, and/or small meadows every few miles—complete with their own beehive and complement of worms and soil starting compost.

“We were fortunate, maybe twenty percent of the trees survived somehow. The ash has made the soil very rich. Nonetheless, the ‘gardeners’—that’s what we called them—didn’t expect to see much result in their lifetimes. They were doing it for their children, and grandchildren—and for life itself.

“That’s one of the things that stirred up many of the shortsighted to discontent,” Natalie finished. “In their minds Bishop was wasting resources that could have raised our immediate standard of living.”


Art sat and studied his game carefully. He usually won, because Natalie made slashing attacks for their own sake. Bishop often quoted a champion Judoka from Egypt that he’d once trained under: “Attack, attack, always attack.” He always imitated the man’s pronunciation and accent when he quoted him. Bishop hadn’t been talking about chess, but nonetheless Natalie applied the dictum to her game rigorously.


“You see we have Bloodhounds. We have coons and possums both—if y’all haven’t sacrificed them already, for being ‘counter-revolutionary’; or ‘nonessential materiel’; or some such foolishness.

“We were planting forests. You will probably be able to go coon hunting again in your lifetime—that is you would have been able too. You hobnailed knob-gobblers are doing your best to throttle the goose that lays golden eggs. But then geese aren’t essential ‘materiel’, are they?”


Art sighed. Natalie had managed to work herself into a temper again. She’d finish out the game, though she’d be glowering angrily at him the whole time. She’d even play another game, if he’d set up the board—that is, if he could stand her silent but withering scorn. At least his double watch was almost over.


They were giving junior soldiers double duty to leave the senior ranking ones more time to bollix around. Not only did that smack of unfairness, but also the chronic lack of sleep was giving Art a temper almost as waspish as Natalie’s.


He couldn’t afford to rail at his superior officers the way she railed at him—or anyone else who came within the sound of her voice. He had no desire to yell at Natalie. Though he hadn’t yet organized his impressions, he’d come to think of Natalie as his one and only friend.

########### ########################## ##################


Natalie told herself that she’d have to quit riding Art so hard. She wasn’t really mad at him anyway. She was mad at the whole situation. She hadn’t seen or heard from her mother or her sisters for several weeks. She didn’t think there had been any conscious attempt to separate her from her sisters. They were holding the children at numerous locations and it had simply worked out that way.


She’d heard several tales about her mother from Art. Art hated the Archbishop as much as any of his parishioners. Many of the Georgians felt the same way about the traitor. They loved to pass tales about the latest verbal outrage Missionary Debra had committed against her new boss.


She understood why her mother was working for the occupation forces. She was in a position to influence the Georgians not to throw out all of Bishop’s long-range programs, and to avoid needless waste.


The Lieutenant coming into the enclosure cut her ruminations about her mother and sisters short. He’d been eyeing Pride for the last couple weeks. Pride, despite her name, was an unassuming girl of twelve. Unfortunately she’d developed a large pair of breasts rather early. The large bust line made her stand out. It made her a target.


Natalie could see tears come into Pride’s eyes as the lieutenant whispered something in her ear. Natalie weighed her options. If need be, she’d shoot the porker through the head—but that strategy was not without its drawbacks.


At best, she might kill the officer—maybe even one or two of the guards before they killed her. It was always a good day to die, she kept telling herself. A Warrior chooses death.


Worst-case scenario: she’d fail to inflict a lethal wound with the small Seecamp .32ACP. The guards wouldn’t kill her, but they’d disarm her and watch her much more closely in the future. She held her sanity largely through thinking about the capacity for retaliation or escape that her small weapons gave her.


She assumed a saucy pose straight from one of the music videos her mother had tried to discourage her from watching.


“Pride is just a little girl,” she said. “I’m sixteen. I’d be legal, if there was such a thing anymore. Anyway, I’m much more ‘experienced’ shall we say?”


She licked her lips and stoked her thighs, and rolled her hips suggestively. She had never dreamed that she was capably of such a performance. Her face flushed with shame, but that was okay. It would pass as excitement.


“But not here. I need some privacy to let myself go,” She purred.


Well that was her gambit. It would either be accepted or declined. After a momentary pause, the Lieutenant nodded assent and hollered for his guards to come let him and Natalie out.


Natalie hadn’t expected Pride to understand until later, but the little girl mouthed “Thank you” as Natalie was hustled out the door.

################# ################### ###################


Nick had as many tattoos as Aryan, and they’d both rode bikes. The two big men hit it off from the start, though at six-eight, Nick was a good five inches taller than Aryan. Nor did the coincidence that both of them were married to black women escape them.


Nick had done a lot of exploring since the weather had cleared, both alone and with others. He casually mentioned a huge weapons cache he’d come across serendipitously one day. It hadn’t seemed particularly important to Nick at the time.


They had more than enough weapons and ammo at Ronnie’s Retreat. Traders brought all the cheap but well made machine pistols anyone could want—made to the Holmes Pattern. Finding enough ammo to do much shooting was much more problematic for most, but as noted, not at Ronnie’s retreat.


Nick had simply made a made a mental note, should changing circumstances ever make the cache important. What intrigued Aryan was the large quantity of expensive weapons and gear—enough to stock a small army. So they came to me with a rather odd plan. It all hinged on whether there were any more War Hammers around, and whether Aryan could locate them.


In the meantime, Doctor Bing-Bing and the scientists from Purdue had created not only a cure, but also a vaccine for the virus. It had proved remarkably simple, once they got Bing-Bing on board.


I sat down beside Wayne as he set staring at a monitor studying some sort of molecular diagram. We’d worked out the stratagem of sitting at adjacent monitors, and typing messages back and forth. As long as Bing-Bing multitasked and didn’t get too wrapped up in what we said to each other, we could carry on a reasonably normal conversation. It beat him using hasty asides and crude scribbled notes for his end of the dialog.


“We’re working on growing chitin,” He texted me.


“What for?” I typed back.


“Do you know what chitin is?”


“It’s similar to both cellulose and cartilage, in that like both of them, it’s based on big collections of glucose molecules. Insects use it in their exoskeleton,” I said.


“Not just insects—lobsters, crabs, spiders. It’s very strong. A big sheet—oh, say one-foot square would be a bit lighter than the same amount of Aluminum, and way stronger than an identical plate of steel. They’ve been able to grow it in the lab for a while—just not in large quantities and in useful shapes. That is about to change,” He told me.

############## ################## #######################


“I never was a homosexual,” Ronnie told Dave and Lloyd. “I was more of an omnisexual pervert—tending more and more to voyeurism as time went on. The point is, I know about unclean, unnatural urges. They’re very strong.”


“So when you got saved, did God take away those urges?” Lloyd asked.


“Can’t rightly say so,” Ronnie said. “I’d pretty much lost those urges before I started coming into conviction. Maybe that was by the grace of God. Maybe it was simple satiation. Point is: if God could save me, he can save anyone.”


“You know how some people really enjoy smoking, and other folks smoke largely to fit in? Well, I think that’s how I felt. The Boyz were a family. I wanted to belong to that family so badly…”


“Not for me,” Lloyd said. “I know what you mean, but for me it was different. I craved it. Still.”


“This is a hard point to get across,” Ronnie said. “You can’t get saved thinking, ‘I’ll get saved, then I can do anything I damn well please.’ It doesn’t work that way. You have to get saved knowing that there are certain things you won’t be able to freely indulge in anymore. BUT once you decide to make that step, your salvation isn’t determined by how well—or how poorly you follow through.

“You don’t say, ‘ If I give into that urge, I’ll lose my salvation.’ You won’t. You have to say, ‘If I give into that temptation, I’ll grieve my Lord, my feelings of guilt will come between me and the Lord for some indeterminate amount of time and I’ll damage my testimony—and set a bad example for others.’ There are Earthly consequences too—like my AIDS.”


“I have to think about it. No one ever explained it to me like that,” Lloyd said.


“Me either,” Dave agreed.

############## ################## #######################


Larry walked in on Wayne and me “talking”.


“The Georgians have threatened to take the Boyz compound if they don’t surrender.”


“Set me up for a broadcast. Then I need to send some encrypted messages,” I said.


A few moments later I was broadcasting over the Worldwide radio station.


“I know that you Georgians can hear me. Any attempt to take the Boyz, or any of the other smaller compounds will be met with all the forces at my command. Let me speak plainly, I have quite a few resources left. I haven’t attacked y’all in the Ark—yet, because you are holding both my equipment and my people hostage.

“Step outside and let me take a clear shot at y’all. I dare you! Go ahead, make my day.”


“Why?” Dave asked me.


“Number One: the Boyz are my neighbors. A man doesn’t stand by and watch his neighbors robbed, butchered, or killed—whatever you may think of your neighbor. It ain’t neighborly.

“Number Two: each smaller compound they annex strengthens their hand.

“Number Three: I just don’t like them,” I explained.


“They wouldn’t help you, were your situations reversed,” Dave said.


“Probably not,” I said. “I ain’t them.”


Shortly after my freedom talk, Aryan came bursting into the radio station with a broad smile on his face.


“I’ve located the War Hammers. They’re supplying security for a small compound near Falmouth, Kentucky. They’re back up to platoon strength—and they still have about twenty original members.”


“I thought that they planned to survive by raiding,” I said.


“I guess the battle of Baptist Town cured them of the notion.”


“Take as many folks as you think you’ll need. You have the codes and frequencies to get in touch with any of our units in the field—or in the smaller compounds. This could work.”


“Do you think they’ll still attack the Boyz?” Aryan asked me.


“Not at first. Cooler heads will prevail. Then after a brief interlude, they’ll realize that they really don’t have any choice. That should give us three or four weeks to get ourselves into position.”


“Why don’t they have a choice?”


“They need to be on a wartime footing all the time, or their organization goes to hell. That’s why their home base had to expel them. That’s why they took the Ark. They have to expand or perish. It’s the nature of such things.”

########### ################### ###################


Art had come back to the enclosure to retrieve his forgotten chess set. He overheard enough of Natalie’s words to get the gist of what was going down. He felt a red-hot shower of rage run up and down his spine.


He was an idealist. He’d thought that Natalie was a nice girl. To hear her talking like a filthy whore was enough to unhinge him to the point of physical illness, but his rage ran deeper.


He hadn’t wanted to have sex with her. However, if she actually was the type girl to give it up for little favors; then he’d done her more than enough such favors to earn the right of first refusal.


She hadn’t offered him her charms, but she had to the Lieutenant. To his mind, that could only mean that in some way, she found the Lieutenant superior to him.


Art understood very well why Cain had killed Abel. When someone judges another superior to you; it isn’t the judge who has dishonored you, but the judged. He felt a surge of rage toward the Lieutenant. Such an insult could only be washed off with blood. He intended to kill the Lieutenant and wash his hands in the man’s blood. Then he wouldn’t have to be ashamed at the judgment.


He would have felt that way at any time, but without the chronic lack of sleep; gobbling the odd amphetamine-substitute capsules that the Georgians used in place of speed and the attachment to Natalie that he wasn’t yet fully aware of—well then, maybe he’d have kept his rages to entertain himself. Now though, he was cocked, primed, and loaded—and he had a hair trigger.


......RVM

 

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Chapter Eighteen
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Art followed Natalie and the Lieutenant with rage in his eye and murderous intent in his heart. The Lieutenant led her to a private room. Then he turned to the two soldiers who had accompanied him.


“She thinks she’s up for a little one-on-one, but when I’m finished, you can have what’s left,” The Lieutenant told them with a sneer.


The soldiers laughed at the remark. They knew that the officer liked to play rough, and it struck them as a hilarious practical joke to play on a young black girl.


Art heard and understood too. The rage washed over him in waves. It made all his body hair stand on end, with the warmest and most powerful goose pimples he’d ever experience. Blood would flow, he promised himself.

############ ########################## ######################


Natalie saw the aside to the guards. She only caught a few fragmented words, but nonetheless she guessed the import. She’d left herself open to a bigger downside risk than she’d imagined. She rehearsed one of the Bishop’s favorite combat axioms:


“Concerns with ‘Good or Evil’; ‘Right or Wrong’; ‘Success or Failure’—these are the delusions of a sick mind. The wise man acts purely for the sake of action—without regard for consequences.


“What does this mean? To me, it means you settle your mind about such things before you decide on a course of action, but once you commit yourself, you block anything but the pureness of action from your mind. Second thoughts will get you killed in combat.”


She was concentrating on the Bishop’s dictum when she was grabbed by the arm and thrust rudely into the room. There was a mattress on the floor, a chair and a small table in one corner. Obviously this room had been used for this purpose more than once.


Her ruminations were cut short when the lieutenant slapped her hard across the face. Tears started from her eyes.


“What was that for? I haven’t done anything,” She protested.


“That was because I like it—and you can’t do a thing about it! Here let me show you.”


He cradled her chin lovingly in his left palm, and slapped her even harder with his right hand again. Then he switched and slapped her left-handed; and then he slapped her right-handed again.


“Do you like that?” He demanded.


Natalie’s left eye had swollen almost shut. Her mouth tricked blood from a busted lip.


“No,” She told him quite frankly.


“Isn’t it wonderful? You don’t like it, but you can’t do a single thing about it. I love this!” He exclaimed.

He slapped her again and again, while repeating words of the same general meaning. After a half-dozed slaps, he seemed satisfied for the moment,


“Take your clothes off,” He told Natalie.


Natalie said a brief prayer of thanksgiving. She was afraid that the chucklehead would rip her clothes off of her himself—causing her to loose her Gun. She kicked off her shoes and removed her pants.


She managed to reach deep down inside her panties and gripped the Seecamp .32ACP. She flicked the pocket holster loose. Now she had the .32 hidden in her right hand. She had her panties half removed when the Lieutenant impatiently cut them free with a big blade, and shoved her roughly onto the mattress.


Natalie managed to turn and land on her back. As the Lieutenant cast the knife to one side, and jumped upon her, Natalie wrapped her legs around him in a manner that would have made a Gracie proud. She didn’t intend for him to get away.


She shoved the tiny muzzle of the pistol, as deep into the Lieutenant’s left ear as it would go and pulled the double action trigger. The report was rather muffled, but the effects on the Lieutenant were instantaneous. He went limp as every muscle in his body went slack.


Bishop always said that anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. She pressed the Seecamp against her client’s left eye, and pulled the trigger. Some of the vitreous humor flowed back into the little Gun, jamming it momentarily.

########## ############################ #################


Art took a moment to still his breathing. The guards had no reason to suspect. If he could only act nonchalant, he could walk right up to them. There was no reason that he shouldn’t be walking down the hall. It took him a few more moments to calm himself.


He leaned his rifle against the wall around the corner, out of sight. He didn’t want to be encumbered with it. He walked up to the guards.


“What’s up guys?” He asked them in what he hoped was a normal voice.


“Lieutenant is in there beating one of the black girls half to death. Stick around if you like it bloody and half dead. Myself, I like it anyway that I can get it,” The guard told him with a smile.


Art smote the guard on the right side of the door with a powerful sucker punch to the middle of his nose. It might very well have put the guard down for the count, even if Art hadn’t been wearing the brass knuckles.


He plunged the curious curved dagger in his left hand deep into the right abdomen of the guard who had spoken, and ripped it across.


“Isn’t that special!” He replied to the guard’s comment, as he ripped the man’s intestines to shreds.


He struck the client a couple of times in his right temple with the brass knuckles, then grabbed the back of the client’s head and yanked it into a vicious head butt. He released the man, quickly cut his first client’s throat, from ear-to-ear. Then he did the same for the second client. Making absolutely certain that each client was completely satisfied, before moving on to other pursuits was a mark of the professional.


He used the butt of one of the guard’s rifles to bash the door open. The door, like almost everything in the Ark, was substantial. The makeshift lock that the Georgian’s had added wasn’t. The door flew open with a crash.


Art entered just in time to see Natalie fire the second shot into the Lieutenant’s eye. It hurt his eyes just to see the mess it made of the man’s eye socket.

############### ######################## ################


As Natalie tried to clear the viscous liquid off of her tiny .32, Art came crashing through the door. In his left hand was the odd dagger that most of the Georgians carried. The knife was double edged; had a thirteen-inch blade, and a pronounced curvature.


She aimed her Gun at Art’s eye socket.


“Drop the knife,” She demanded.


Art seemed to be only peripherally aware of Natalie.


“In a minute,” He said.


He grabbed the corpse with his right hand, and rolled it over. I was the work of an instant to rip the abdomen open. He laid the knife to one side and plunged both hands into the cavity. When both his hands were red up to the elbow, he rubbed blood onto his face.


Natalie took advantage of the interlude to thoroughly clear her pistol.


“Are you through?” She asked him.


“Yes.”


“What in hell was that about?” She demanded.


“Do you believe that blood washes away sin?”


“Jesus’ blood—not just any blood.”


“That’s okay. I wasn’t trying to wash away sin, just the disgrace he’d placed upon me.”


“Is that something they teach you? And how did he disgrace you?” Natalie asked.


“No, washing my hands in blood was something I figured out for myself. I thought that he’d disgraced me, because you liked him better than me.”


“Gosh Allen, I didn’t know that you cared, but if you’re jealous, I could shoot you though the eye socket too.”


“I think I’ll pass,” Art said as he wiped his blade clean on the Lieutenant’s clothing and resheathed it.


“Well, I think we’ve both pretty much overstayed our welcome here. If you’d like to go with me, I’ll show you to the nearest hidden escape tunnel.”


Art was so thrilled and surprised that he grabbed Natalie in a big bear hug and lifted her clear of the floor. After a moment, he set her down in some embarrassment.


“You had better put your pants back on, before we go anywhere,” He said.

############### ################## ######################


People have told me that I’m paranoid. I don’t think that some vague syndicate composed of “Them” is out to get me. However, for a long time I’ve assumed that in the course of a long life, more than one person will try to get me at some point. When he does, he probably won’t make a formal declaration of his intentions.


So I had plenty of weapons and ammo and food cached in various semi-secret locations. Only a few battle leaders new where each hidden compound was. Strategy “Way-Way-Alpha” meant drop everything. Get out the best that you can and go to pre-assigned rally points—where your group leader will tell you where to go next.


In the new World, all I had to do to keep my back-up compounds reasonably secret was to locate them about twenty miles away. Who was going to walk twenty miles on a whim? Working vehicles were few and far between; and few who had them would waste alcohol joy riding.


We used surviving structures wherever possible and it was surprising how much useable material we were able to salvage.


So when the Georgians made the mistake of attacking the Boyz, I was in position to slash them to ribbons.


First of all, I had many graduates of my summer marksmanship program. Grown men who’d been training to be excellent rifle shots from early childhood. I managed to put over one hundred three man rifle teams into the field as sniper/spotter teams. They were all armed with the excellent Holmes designed, round receiver bolt actions chambered in .308.


Then we had almost three-dozen five man .50 caliber sniping teams, armed once again, with the excellent Holmes designed bolt action—though these were single shot.


The light rifle teams had dirt bikes so they could continue to leapfrog along the convoy’s route. The heavy rifle teams also had four wheelers equipped with small trailers.


The Georgians started out over a thousand strong. By the time they traveled the thirty miles to the Boyz compound, they were already down to less than nine hundred.


The Boyz could field about thee hundred effectives, and that was what the Georgians had counted on. We’d put enough men inside to double that number, and that allowed them to throw up a larger first line of defense.


It wasn’t anywhere nearly as strong or well made as the original, but the Georgians suffered quite a few casualties forcing them to fall back, while the defenders suffered relatively few casualties—almost none, in fact.


When the Georgians tried to storm the original perimeter, they already had much less of a force than they’d counted upon. And they faced much heavier fire than they had anticipated. My snipers continued to chew away at them from a distance; and once they were inside the first line of defense, we started lobbing mortars in on them.


Then when they desperately tried to take cover in the first line of trenches, we set of the combined explosives and pyrotechnics that we’d lined the outside trenches in—compliments of Doctor Bing-Bing.


From then on it wasn’t so much of a battle, as a rout. My snipers followed the ragged survivors right up to the outer perimeter of the Ark’s compound. A few of the more excited snipers were gunning down folks inside the compound itself, when the Georgians got on the PA and threatened the children. I ordered them to break off, and return to their respective bases.


I doubt if three hundred Georgians got back to the compound—and they’d lost beaucoup vehicles.


When I got on the radio for my Freedom Talk that night, I invited the Georgians to please attack another compound—any compound. I knew they wouldn’t. They barely had enough folks to keep control of their serfs as it was, since the Battle of Boyz Town.

################# ################## ####################


Nick and Aryan marveled at the huge underground cache of weapons.


“Bishop told me that he once seen an ex-KGB agent on TV, talking about how they’d cached arms in America for fifth column use, in the event that they ever went to war against us. He said that it was easier to buy Guns in America than to try to smuggle Soviet arms in. Said that they were so hush-hush that some of the locations were forgotten. This may be what we have here,” Aryan speculated.”


“Could be,” Nick agreed. “Makes as much sense as any other explanation I’ve thought of.”


They loaded a little over a hundred of the .308 H&K 91s. They loaded that many H&K .9MM MP 5s; about fifty of the VP70’S with the detachable buttstocks; a couple hundred of the .45ACP P9Ss pistols; and a couple hundred of the Walther PP .32ACPs with their screw-on suppressors.


They piled the trailer high with ammunition and magazines. Aryan helped himself to a few of the pistols, as did Nick. They also loaded boots, uniforms, knives, bayonets, web gear, and other soldierly gear. Finally they were ready to go.


“We hardly made a dent in the inventory,” Aryan said in amazement.


“If you ever want to come back—take enough stuff to outfit a few caches—that’s cool. Just don’t be hoggish and take more than you can really use,” Nick said.

########## ################### ##########################


Nick, Aryan, Pete and Private Nash, along with Natalie and Art, all pulled into the big “U”-shaped drive at the front of the building.


The Captain—who’d since promoted himself to Major, walked up to meet the group. He was overcome with emotion when he saw the two friends that he’d long since given up for dead. He threw his arms around Aryan first, and then Private Nash.


“It’s good to see you guys again. I thought you were dead,” Major Keith told them.


“Well, like I told you, they’re Christians. Instead of punishing us, they adopted us. This is my wife Pete. Nash’s wife is back in Baptist Town.”


Despite Aryan’s tattoos—which were more of a fashion statement at the time, than anything else, the War Hammers weren’t overtly racist. Major Keith greeted everyone with enthusiasm.


Once they were inside, and they sat down to a nice meal, Aryan started the conversational ball rolling.


“What’s the deal here? This is a nursing home—or was,” Aryan said.


“Well, after the Battle of Baptist Town, we really weren’t in any shape to be brigands anymore. Do you know what drove a lot of these smaller towns,” The Major asked.


“Not really, “ Aryan said. He could have made any number of educated guesses, but he wanted to find out where Major Keith was headed.


“People who farm all their life, ‘till they get too old, often move to these small towns. A lot of times a town with a population of five hundred will have three hundred retirees living in small houses; seventy or eighty in a nursing home and the rest of the people will be in service occupations—grocery clerks, gas station attendants, nurses aids, town Marshal, etc.”


“So?”


“These people are tough. They know how to farm, and how to survive. We combined resources with a couple small Mutual Assistance Groups that we knew would be under capitalized to survive a Calderas eruption, and we tried to save as many of the old time rednecks as we could.

“They are a priceless resource. We were doing greenhouse farming from Summer II,”


“I expect that most of your old folks are dying off by now,”


“Some,” the Major said sadly. “ But we have a surprising number in their nineties, and still able to help garden. We’ve got five over a hundred years old. I don’t know what’s up with that.”


“I don’t either, but now that you mention it…” He let his voice trail off. He had more important things in mind.


“Listen, do you still think that your men could still do the old “Trojan Horse” thingy?”


“I have every confidence. I hate to sound crass, but what’s in it for me?”


“Well for one thing, if the Georgians aren’t stopped, they’ll eventually make problems for you. On the other hand, I have quite a bit of weapons and ammo to give you—gratis. We want you to look like a successful mercenary army for rent. You’ll like these weapons.

“I see that you have rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs and hogs. We’re willing to give you oxen, dairy cattle, horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, turkeys, etc. We’re trying to reclaim a lot of fallow ground. If you’re one of our trade partners, we’ll run a corridor right up to your doorstep.

“We got lots of nice things to offer you,” Aryan concluded.


“What about security while we’re gone? “ Major Keith asked.


“Did you hear what happened to the boarding party that attacked the Boyz?”

“The airwaves are humming with the news.”

“Well the same force is willing to protect your old folks while you’re gone. Art here is a defector, he can tell you a lot about the organization of the Georgians. Natalie is an escapee. She can also provide some insight.

“I’m already burned, but Private Nash—soon to be Lieutenant Nash—will be your liaison. By the way, do you have any black War Hammers?”


“A half-dozen, or so.”


“Well leave them here. The Georgians are white supremacists. Oh and by the way, there are beaucoup secret rooms and passages. This will be dangerous. It’s deadly serious—but it should also be kinda fun. Y’all get to dress up and play secret agents after all.”


.....RVM45

 

Cool

 

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Chapter Nineteen
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Major Keith had been summoned to Comrade Hearst’s office. He’d heard rumors that there had been a few cases of the new plague in the Ark. One look at Comrade Hearst confirmed the Major’s worst fears. The Georgian leader’s face was covered with red angry abscesses—some as big around as a golf ball.


The pudgy little man half sprawled across his desk. A single stream of drool hung unheeded from the corner off his mouth, and sweat ran into his remaining eye.


“I accepted you and your War Hammers into our organization because I thought you were squared-away soldiers. Feh! You ought to call yourself the ‘Wimp Hammers’,” The Commander raved.


The Major was feeling a little smug about the vaccinations he and his men had been given before they embarked on this assignment. The smugness allowed him to shrug off the insult to him and his men—just barely.


“What seems to be the problem Comrade?”


“Last night forty of our hostages, and four of my guards disappeared—just vanished into thin air. They didn’t go out through any of our guard posts. They just left.”


“Were any of my men guarding them?” Keith demanded.


“Well no but…”


“Were any of my men involved in any way?”


“No, not that we know of.”


“Well then, why are we having this conversation?”


Keith wondered idly how many of the guards were now POWs, and how many were defectors. He decided to speak the obvious. Surely the fool in front of him had already thought of it. He was a bit slow, but surely he wasn’t that thick.


“Seems to me that there must be at least one secret passage—maybe more,” Keith said.


“Good luck finding them, you pestilent POS,” The Major silently added.


“Take a half-dozen of your best men and tear that room apart,” Comrade Hearst ordered.


Major Keith gave a mental shrug. There weren’t any secret passages in the room where the children had been held. He knew that for a fact. He was more than willing to lead the Georgians on a merry goose chase though.


However, before he left the room there was a minor matter to take care of.


“You have the plague,” He told Comrade Hearst.


He leaned across the desk and pulled the fat man close enough that he could have kissed him—had that been his intention.


“More than likely, you’ll die slowly over the next several weeks. It gets worse as the disease progresses. On the other hand, you may live. About one in twelve do.

“My point is, if the suffering ever gets too bad; if you ever want someone to put you out of your misery—just speak to me in that tone of voice again.

“When you do, there’ll be sad singin’ and flower bringin’.”

########### ########################## #######################


The plague had struck the Georgians. There was no help for it. They were short-handed and everyone who possibly could stand guard duty, had to. The sight of a feverish Georgian covered with boils; gasping for air; sitting or leaning against a wall while trying to play sentry became a common sight.


The Georgians who weren’t sick were worn to a frazzle. They had to stand double and triple shifts to replace those completely incapacitated. They took plenty of the Georgians’ odd sleep surrogate tablets and drank large quantities of coffee to wash the pills down.


Later when the lack of sleep; fatigue and drugs had weakened their judgment sufficiently, the locals became very generous with an endless supply of Benzedrine tablets; Methedrine powder and Ice crystals. It didn’t occur to the Georgians to wonder how all the drugs came to be in a religious compound, nor to question their supplier’s motives.


The War Hammers had all been vaccinated against the plague. They brought enough of the vaccine with them to secretly vaccinate all the children. Once that was accomplished, they’d managed to vaccinate a large percentage of the Bishop’s people—everyone that they were reasonably sure could keep a secret, and who wasn’t known or suspected of being a sympathizer.


With much of the compound in a drug and virus induced fog, the War Hammers started moving out anything of value that wasn’t nailed down. Cattle and horses went out to graze, under the watchful eyes of both shepherds and guards; and none of them were ever seen again.


More children disappeared. Workers disappeared. Lab equipment; precision measuring tools and caches of valuable chemicals vanished. Much of the losses were unnoticed in the confusion. Sometimes the feverish guards choose not to notice, because it was easier to play dumb than to get a dressing down from their superior officers. Pretty soon almost everything irreplaceable had been spirited out of the Ark.

############### ################### #####################


I pulled my army up in sight of the compound. The War Hammers had made sure that all of the Dragons were inoperable. They’d made sure that all the alarms and electrical systems were down. They’d captured a few key personnel, and ushered a couple hundred of our best close range fighters into the compound.


The takeover was almost an anticlimax. Scarcely a hundred rounds were fired. There were less than a score of casualties—all but three of them theirs. We never actually tried to storm the place. Our infiltrators opened the doors and welcomed us home.


A couple of weeks later, we all met in a meadow outside. A hill formed a natural amphitheater. Our people had gathered to witness the judgment. It was the largest gathering we’d had since the eruption. It may have been the largest meeting held on Earth since the eruption.


The first order of business was Archbishop Sean. My assistants dragged him out. They put him into a special harness that I’d had made especially for this occasion. Its purpose was to hold his head immobile.


“Archbishop Sean, you’ve endangered the Ark. You endangered our livestock. You endangered your brothers in Christ. Worst of all, you endangered the children,” I said.


I took a red-hot brand out of the fire. I’d had it custom made for the occasion. It was an elaborate cursive “A” about two inches high. Sean got a brand on each cheek. They removed his shirt and he was branded on both shoulder blades.


“While I’m sure that hurt, it wasn’t intended for torment. The archbishop had a generous dose of Morphine, and local anesthetic applied to the brand points. He wanted to be Archbishop. So I want to make certain that everywhere he goes, people will recognize him as the Archbishop.

“Archbishop, this is your sentence. My people are commanded to treat you with the utmost respect, kindness and generosity. They will address you as “Archbishop” at all times. When you hunger, they’ll feed you their best—even if it means that they do without. When you lack for clothing, they will clothe you in their best.

“The only restrictions that I place on you are these: You may not take part in any productive work or project. You may not own land within our borders. You may not stay in a particular household for more than a month plus three days. You may not own more than you can carry. Should you acquire horses, you may own what your mount, and one packhorse may carry.

“You will be as the lilies of the field. You won’t sow; neither will you reap—yet you’ll never lack for good food and fine reinment.

“Someday you may find a woman who’ll have you. The one-month rule will be waived in that case. However she can evict you at any time, simply by telling you to leave.

“When you have endured more than you think is possible, feel free to come petition me. Someday I may feel merciful—just not anytime soon.

“Oh yes, emotions are running high at the moment. Therefore you are to be comfortably detained for six months, to defuse the situation. As with the brands, that’s not intended to be a punishment.”


I looked at the two score or so of the Archbishop’s collaborators—our own people who’d turned against us. I paced back and forth in front of them several times. I couldn’t quite quit shaking my head in wonderment.


“I’ve known many of you since you were children coming to my Summer camp,” I paused. “What possessed you? Have you no loyalty? Y’all are jackasses. To hell with it, turn them loose. They’re pardoned.”


Next they brought out the Georgian.


“Those of you that were sick seem to have made a fairly good recovery. Y’all can stay here; go back to Georgia or go somewhere else. We’re going to get y’all’s weapons back to you, along with a going away present—or a welcoming present—however you want to look at it, within a week.

“I will say this: if you are going to stay, I expect a whole different attitude out of most of you.”


Finally they brought out Comrade Hearst.


“You, I am not going to pardon. You were in charge. You started this whole messed up situation. Good people are dead because of you. Equipment is ruined because of you.

“Worst of all, you put the children at risk and stood by while some of them were abused and in some cases, murdered.

“I sentence you to death. Strip him down to the waist,” I commanded.


I borrowed an Enfield and gave the Comrade a half-hearted butt smash to the cheekbone, just hard enough to drop him to his knees. I didn’t want him unconscious.


Elder Matthew brought me two leather blacksnake quirts. They both had a three-foot long lash. I threw one at Comrade Hearst’s feet.


“I’m going to beat you to death. You can try to fight back. I’ve given orders to turn you loose if you should kill me. Fight or give up—it’s your choice.”


“I’ve just gotten over a debilitating illness. I’ve never used a whip and you have a shirt on. Hardly seems fair to me.”


“It isn’t intended to be. However, I am seventy years old—and I’m supposed to be non-violent. Maybe there’s an edge for you.”


I brought the lash down hard three times across his back. Then he screamed and lurched to his feet clutching his whip. I knew the right distance, and I cut him repeatedly.


I avoided his eye, because I didn’t want things to end too quickly. I’d shown enough mercy, that I felt compelled to make an example of someone. Otherwise people would think they could attack us with impunity. I did use feints to his one eye, to keep control of him.


He finally got in one good lick. It cut my cheek to the bone. I have the scar to this day, like a Prussian schmeis. He tried to rush in after his attack. I let him come. I reversed the quirt in my hand, and coshed him over the head with it.


The handle was filled with several ounces of lead shot. That’s largely what a small blacksnake whip was for. Back when towns first started passing laws against blackjacks and saps, a lead-filled quirt was a discrete and legal way for a gentleman to carry a cosh.


I’d counted on Hearst not knowing that. If he had time for any reflection at all, he must have been astonished at the power in the whip’s butt as I smashed him over his head. He dropped to his knees again.


I gave him two more saps across his skull. Reversing the grip, I lashed him across his bare back twenty-five or thirty times. He cried and begged at the end. Finally, I thought I’d made my point. I drew my .32ACP Walther PP and shot him twice in the back of the head.

I’d learned a lesson. I started decentralizing as quickly as possible. Since my secret bases weren’t terribly secret anymore. I used them as the nuclei for many smaller satellite communities. That’s not to say that I didn’t have other retreat spots put back for rainy days. I have no comment on that.


The weather turned positively balmy. Something seemed to have supercharged both the soil and our plants and animals. Horses; cattle; sheep and goats started having twins as a general rule. So did our women—when they weren’t having triplets. Litter bearing females started having much larger litters. Everything seemed to be literally exploding.


I hoped we might have at least a few years of peaceful growing. Three and a half years later, just when it seemed that I might get my wish, we faced another war.


.....RVM45

 

.....Wrote this for another Forum; then thought: "Why not paste and save beaucoup typing. Please ignor the minor irelevancies.
.
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..........I know several of you(at the very least) have enjoyed this story; and have come to be really fond of some of the characters.
.....I've become fond of them too. Nonetheless, I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the story is very near its natural end.
.....Nannygoat, and some others said: "Oh no! Not another War!"
.....Yet it is controversy that creates drama. But we've already done TEOTWAWKI; Several battles; and pestilence. Anything else would tend to get repetitive.
.....You don't--as a general rule--say "They lived happily ever after..."; and then add fifteen thousand words describing exactly how their happy life went.
.....Nonetheless, at the end of Chapter Nineteen, I commited to one more war
.....Someone on another forum asked me what happened to the government. Just for the record, I imagined somewhat less than one hundred thousand survivors in Canada; The US; and the Northern two-thirds of Mexico.
.....Anyway, in the next and last--or at most, next-to-last chapter; I intend to deal with two very minor skirmishes; show a few gubbmint folks; and try to tie up the loose ends.
.....Sequels? Perhaps, if something really good and non-repetitous occurs to me. However, writing about a hypothetical crisis happening fifty years after TEOTWAWKI would almost of necessity, be too far out on the Science Fiction limb to find a happy home here.
.....If Some of you read "Darkness"--a definate SF story; or perhaps Phantasy--you'll note that I really got my word-count up.( "Darkness" weighed in at about 35 000 words; technically a "Novella"; and hard to find a publisher for nowadays. "Calderas" is around 50 000 words.)
.....If anyone wants to read "Darkness"; google "RVM45 AND Darkness". It's around.
.....Thing is, much of "Calderas" was composed as I went along. I might decide--sometime in the future--to rewrite it with an eye to maintaining a little better plot continuity; bulking the word count a bit more; as well as polishing it a bit.
.....So y'all tell me; if I do such a rewrite; does anyone think it is publishable? Worth bothering?
.....I have another story incubating already--probably another Novella--if that.
.....RVM45 :clap:

 

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Chapter Twenty
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In our histories, the small group of white supremacists who briefly seized control of our main compound will always be referred to as “The Georgians”. It turned out though, that there were five other fairly large groups of survivors in Georgia. (Since it had turned out—to no one’s great surprise—that the farther South you went, the more survivors there were—as a general rule.)


Representatives from four of the groups turned up on our doorstep, wanting to talk about joining forces against “The Bund”—which is what the Georgian’s parent group called themselves.


“My name is ‘Lynx’ and I represent The Cherokee Nation,” The young man said.


He was about six-three, blond-haired and blue-eyed. He looked Arian enough to have satisfied an SS recruiting officer. I don’t think I gave any overt indication what I was thinking though.


Nonetheless, he followed up by saying, “No, I’m not Indian. You’re not black either.”


This was addressed to me.


“I don’t really care, one way or the other. However we don’t call ourselves ‘The Black Nation’. Matter of fact, there ain’t much ‘We’, period. ‘We’uns’ been mostly a rather loose Confederacy,” I said.


“Anyway, my point is, The Bund is looking to expand. If you let them knock us off one at a time, and give them time to assimilate our resources, they’ll be very formidable when they finally make a move on your territory. We thought that you might want to be proactive,” Lynx argued.


“That’s assuming that The Bund is strong enough to conquer each of you in turn; and that y’all don’t band together for your mutual defense. That is a couple of rather dubious assumptions. Nonetheless, I’m sick to death of all this fighting; so I tell you what I’m going to do…”


There wasn’t much more to that story. When The Bund started to march on The Son’s of Dixie’s compound, we treated them to an impressive—but bloodless—demonstration of two-dozen our new “Tanks”—if that’s what you want to call them…


We’d taken the basic “Spider Vehicle” design from Purdue—vehicles with eight articulated legs; blown them up to tank size; hardened them with the new sheets of chitin Doctor Bing-Bing had perfected; and equipped them with big-bore Guns and/or Dragons—along with plenty of machine Guns.


They weren’t the fastest things around on a straight of way; but they could turn on a dime—or step abruptly to one side or the other. Bing-Bing had also formulated a hotter, longer burning “Napalm” for the Dragons; and he’d come up with some improved propellants and explosive charges for the big Guns.


The chitinous armor plate was almost impervious to most conventional weapons—and it was far lighter than an equal (and far less efficient) thickness of steel would have been. And in a real pinch, the Spiders could attack by lashing out with their legs.


Our little demonstration caused the Bund leaders to back down. Eventually they wanted to trade. We fed their black market all the drugs that it could possibly absorb. Drugs don’t seem to cause many big problems, in and of themselves. We’ve never had much of a problem with them.


The logistics of a black market causes all sorts of disruptions though. It seems that the more authoritarian a government is, the more its authority is undermined by a thriving underground economy.


Then we also had our propaganda broadcasts. Propaganda isn’t necessarily false. We were very careful to maintain our reputation for total honesty. Propaganda is data, and a certain amount of subjective emotional appeal, with an agenda. Our radio and television shows, as well as our contraband literature, definitely had an agenda—or agendas. Propping up Fascist States certainly wasn’t one of them.


The fact that we welcomed any defectors who could find their way to us, also weighed heavily in our favor. The Bund government fell apart within a generation.


Which brings me to another point—people are living a lot longer than they did before the eruption—animals too. They are also able to have children far later in life than was formerly the case. No one knows exactly why, but it has been a big factor in repopulating the Earth.


For instance, I was seventy-three years old when I married Missionary Debra. She was Thirty-eight. I had some serious misgivings about marrying so late in life—though truth be told, I neither felt nor looked my true age.


Thirty-eight years later, I’m one hundred twenty-one years old. I could still pass for fifty. Missionary Debra and I have had a dozen children together. She had the last one at the age of sixty-nine. Judging by her appearance, I wouldn’t be astonished—though I would be mildly surprised, if she got pregnant again.


I suppose the longer life spans, and the extreme fertility of the land is part of God’s plan to refurbish the Earth. It has been a most interesting time to be alive.

################ ########################## ##################


Josiah looked up from his plowing to see a large cloud of dust on the Eastern horizon. He took the small set of binoculars from the pouch on his belt, and gave the phenomena a long look. He saw a huge convoy traveling down the ruins of the old interstate.


He finished the row, and then pulled his oxen to a stop once more. They could use a break, and Josiah’s full attention was on the wonderment steadily bearing down on him. He’d never seen so many wheeled vehicles in one place before. He thought that they must have an impressive distillery to produce enough alcohol to feed so many vehicles.


The caravan halted when it pulled even with him. Several men got out of the fourth vehicle and walked toward him. He could see three men dressed in suits like people had worn back before the eruption. Josiah’s memory didn’t go back that far; but he’d seen pictures.


Four of the men wore uniforms. One of them had four silver stars on his shoulder. The other three all had lesser numbers of stars, and walked a bit behind. They were joined by a couple squads of riflemen who formed a sort of camo entourage’.


The first man in a three-piece suit stuck out his hand.


“Hello. My name is ‘Stanley’. I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” The man introduced himself. He had a very broad smile that seemed contrived to show as many of his upper teeth as possible.


“Frankly, I don’t rightly need any help; but thank ye for the offer,” Josiah said.


“Once we’re running things, we’ll fix up these roads. You’ll be able to trade freely, without fear of bandits. We’ll build modern hospitals, and grocery stores, and police stations,” Stanley boasted.


“Yeah well. We have hospitals and groceries. The roads are good enough to serve their purposes. We don’t need a police station,” Josiah objected.


“Nonsense! You need government—how else could you get by?”


“We been getting’ along just fine. Anything requires large-scale cooperation is handled by the Council of Bishops, headed by Archbishop Hawkins.”


Stanley was outraged. He was so scandalized that he stuttered and stammered.


“You can’t be ruled by a religious denomination. That would violate the separation of church and state. Really, you must leave it to us. We’ll set up a legitimate government—with taxes and everything.”


“I don’t think we’re quite communicating. The Counsel of Bishop’s doesn’t ‘rule’. As free men, we have no ruler but God. The Council sometimes organizes group efforts. Anyone who agrees with their goals and desires to participate does. Them that don’t—don’t.

“Nor is the Council composed of one denomination. They’re composed of over a dozen denominations. Archbishop Hawkins happens to be a Bishop in two different denominations.

“Now as to taxes, we don’t have any. The Council has considerable resources. When they want to do a public work, they rely on that, plus voluntary donations.”


“Who protects you?” Stanley asked incredulously.


Josiah placed a hand on the grip of his .44Magnum, and said,” Mostly we protect ourselves.”


“He’s got a Gun Sir!” One of the riflemen shouted.


Another rifleman screamed, “Gun!” And tried to grab Josiah.


As Josiah smacked the first soldier in the eye with the butt of his revolver, over twenty men leveled their rifles at him.


“Drop the Gun!” a Captain commanded him.


Josiah had his revolver pointed in the general direction of the soldiers, without pointing at any of them specifically.


“I’m afraid not. I’m on my own property and I’m a free man. A free man doesn’t surrender his Gun. Get off my property! Leave! You are no longer welcome!”


“One more time, drop the Gun, or we’ll shoot,” The Captain barked arrogantly.


Josiah gave a small mental shrug, and started shooting. The first double action shot hit the screaming Captain right in his brainpan. The second shot blew Stanley’s brains all over his partners in crime. Then he headshot the four-star General.


His first three shots were well within his client’s reaction time. As he fired a quick double-tap into the center of mass of one of the other Generals, enough rounds of .223 to almost cut him in two hit him.


All the commotion hadn’t been lost on Josiah’s wife. She was watching from a window in the house, a couple hundred yards away. She couldn’t follow the words; but when they shot her husband into pieces small enough to hide, she didn’t need subtitles to draw the right conclusions.


The new napalm that Doctor Bing-Bing had invented didn’t need twenty minutes to prepare. Josiah had hardly hit the ground when Josiah and Emily’s home Dragon hit the soldiers.


She was too young to remember her Uncle Tony; but his brave stand against the Georgians was a family legend. She’d been brought up to believe that sometimes in life, it is necessary to remember the Alamo; and die bravely.


A few moments later, the small house was blown asunder by the Eastern Army. Emily and her eight-month-old daughter perished. However, at the last possible moment, her thirteen-year-old son escaped through a hidden tunnel. He had one of his father’s best long distance rifles—a scoped .30-06; a trio of handguns; and plenty of ammunition.


The way he saw it, his first responsibility was to tell Bishop Hawkins what he’d seen. Then he’d be free to take his vendetta to the caravan. There was a fast trail bike hidden at the tunnel’s exit.

############### ######################## #####################


They’d flown in replacements for the Generals and the Ambassador; Henchman; Viceroy; Commissar—or whatever his proper appellation was. They’d headed fairly straight for the Ark to parley.


“Archbishop, I don’t think you realize what you’re facing here. The May Day celebration is an old tradition. I’m going to have my Army parade past a grandstand for you, so you’ll see that resistance is futile,” The Ambassador said.


I sat in the blazing hot sun, and watched three hundred and twenty tanks go by. There were five times as many Bradley troop transports. A slew of wicked half-tracks and more Ma Duce trucks with twin .50 calibers mounted in the back than I could readily count. There was also about five thousand Infantry troopers who marched by between the massive armor.


“Well, you sure have more infantry than I could muster anytime soon. I’ll grant you that. Most of your tanks are old M-1 Abrams. Surely they must be obsolete by now…” I said.


“The crisis pretty much halted our arms development program,” He said rather snidely.


“Maybe where you come from. I watched your little parade. Now I want to return the favor—because I don’t think you realize what you’re facing here.” I threw his words back at him.


I had managed to raise fifty-two hundred of the Chitin armored Spider tanks. There were also whole battalions of Infantry; Horse Cavalry; Mule Cavalry and Motorcycle Cavalry.


I was afraid that he wouldn’t be too impressed by the Spiders; so I put on some lengthy demonstrations for the Ambassador.


“How in the hell can you field that many of your Spiders?”


I shrugged.


“They’re far less expensive than one of your tanks. The body and chassis are largely grown. They can also heal; given proper infusions of ‘nutrients’. We have a population of over forty thousand. Almost eighty percent of families choose to purchase and maintain a tank or two.”


“What for?”


“To defend their land from foreign invaders—what else would they be good for?”


“And you trust everyday ordinary people with that kind of firepower?”


“You just don’t get it, do you? I have no authority to tell free men what they can or cannot own; but to answer your question, yes. I not only trust them to own main battle tanks—I do everything that I can to encourage them.”


“Why?”


“Case in point, knob-gobblers from the East show up and try to take over. Isn’t that obvious? Just go back across the Appalachians and rule your original thirteen. We’re tired of that game on this side of the mountains.”


“Call off your snipers then.”


“Not ‘Snipers’; ‘Sniper’—singular. Y’all done killed his father, mother and his little sister. You raised his house. You shot his oxen. He’s declared a vendetta against you. You will have to negotiate with him to get it removed. It isn’t my business.”


“So just anyone can declare a vendetta anytime?” He asked in amazement.


“Well, you’d want to take into account that his kinfolk might declare a counter-vendetta; and if someone declares a frivolous vendetta, he could be embargoed. No one would ever deny anyone arms or ammunition for any reason; but they might refuse to sell you food, fuel, clothing, seed, livestock, etc.

“No, we ain’t had a real vendetta in almost twenty years.”


The Federals decided to take our advice, and take their freak show back over the mountains—minus the fifteen or twenty percent that decided to desert and stay here in the land of the free.


I never got around to telling the Ambassador that that was the just Kentucky Militia. Then there’s Bishop Ronnie’s Indiana Militia; and The Cherokee Nation; along with the Militias from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri.


That was a couple years ago; and we haven’t heard from the “Government” since. Maybe we can enjoy some peace for a while. While I hope so, I sure ain’t countin’ on it.

@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@


I hope everyone thinks this a worthy ending for “Calderas”. Let me know what y’all think.

Robert Victor Martin


.....RVM45

 

While I definatly enjoyed the story, a couple of things that struck me that might help in makeing it sell a bit better was one the fact I noticed that EVERYONE seemed to have their weapons, even small ones, magnaported and otherwise very similar, like the high popularity of the .32. Both of those things in my experience are fairly rare so for the preferences in grips cal and magnaporting being SO wide spread seemed like a very odd thing that might need either clarification within the story as to how all the people even in unrelated groups all came to these same less than common choices like stag horn and such uncommon grips. Other than that I noticed that aside from the church groups or particularly sinful groups like 'the boyz' or raider groups there was no other groups mentioned. If you go to polish it up you might add to the size/word count and flesh it out some by adding a group or 2 (or just fleshing out the small groups briefly mentioned near the end) of secular groups (or those not based on survival rather than common religion) that are also dealing with it without trying to raid that arent degenerates.

The final chapter is great also and could be fleshed out with more detail and expanded easily (like the bishop finding out about the government comeing and makeing plans, where the government was hideing out and so on) to also add 2 or 3 more chapters pretty easy without dragging or being to tangled in minutia.

Like I say, not takeing anything away from it, its a great read, just trying to point out some things that may be helpful for polishing it and or adding to it if wanted to try for publication. As a story for web readers in general no real need, just kind of trying to beta read criticaly to offer the details that might be able to be fine tuned if trying to sell it.

 

One other thought that might help for the audience most likely to go after it would be to get as specific as possible on technical info as you can do accurately. A lot of survivalists love to read stories that include thinly veiled 'how to' stuff in them, which a lot of the more popular survival authors seem to almost use fiction as a disclaimer to be able to offer info on things that might otherwise be getting them lots of attention, basicly like the anarchist cookbook in the context of a story about how a guy made stuff and used it.

Good story line as is, the rest is mostly just polish.

 

.....Thanks. I'll take that into account. I really need to let it sit awhile, and gain a little distance before I attempt a rewrite.

.....A lot of the plot twists--bringing back the War Hammers,for instance--was based on spur-of-the-moment inspirations. Although I'm not sure how, I'm sure that I could write their initial appearance a bit different, knowing how I intended to use them later.

.....Oh yeah, Badger's saliva containing the cure for the plague was another spur-of-the-moment improvisationd.

.....Part of the fun of reading stories like this--for me anyway--is to vicariously own and use all the top rate equipment. Nonetheless, it does need to be tewmpered with reality somewhat. Otherwise it becomes ridiculous.

.....But anyway, Thanks again.

.....RVM45