This Fallen World, page 17
part #1 of Fallen World Series
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “But I have to be strong for the others. You can do this, Gee. Be strong for your family. If you need someone to talk to, I’ll always be here for you.”
He nodded and took a deep breath, “Yes, sir.”
“Okay, I want you to set up in that window over there and keep a sharp eye out for dust on the horizon. You see it, you let us know. Remember, you saved lives today, too.”
I watched the boy take a position beside the window, peering out of the lower right corner. I saw in that youngster a lot of promise and one less victim in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 5
It was almost sunset when Gary jumped up from his perch. “There’s dust!”
I moved to the window to look out toward the incoming vehicles.
“That’s at least four,” I said.
“At least,” Pop agreed.
“Shit,” I muttered quietly so the others wouldn’t hear.
“Grady and Ray don’t have a chance of extracting if things go bad,” Pop said.
“I know,” I said. “We need that vantage. I can’t ask them to do it though. I’ll go relieve Grady.”
He nodded. “I’ll take Ray’s position.”
We both exited the house quickly and climbed the respective silos.
“You know I can do this,” Grady said.
“I know but if they need to retreat I want you with ‘em.”
“You should be with them, Zee,” he said. “I know what happens to the guys up here if you have to pull out.”
I knew he was right.
“You and Kendrick both need to be down there anyway,” he said. “Not one of us can hold a candle to either of you in hand-to-hand.”
“If you see the flare, you get your ass down from here,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I looked at the dust cloud getting closer and climbed back down the silo. I met Pop at the door.
“Ray told me to get the hell off his silo,” Pop said.
“Yeah, Grady did too.”
We slipped back into the house.
“Gonna be ugly fightin’ in the dark,” he said.
“True.”
“It is what it is,” he said and parked on the left side of the window Gary was manning. “You did good, earlier, boy. Ready to show these fellas what it means to face farmers?”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“Alright, son,” Pop said. “When you aim at moving targets, you lead a little and keep it low. He ain’t runnin’ if you shoot his damn legs out from under him. If they’re chargin’ you’ll not get much aiming time.”
“Yes, sir.”
I smiled as Pop kept giving Gary little tips. Everyone looked at Pop to lead us and that position made any words carry much more weight. They looked at Pop as a sort of ruler. Mostly, they looked at me with fear. They knew what I had done to a raider camp of twelve. And they had just seen what happened when Dagger and I hit these raiders. Somehow Pop didn’t give them that feeling, even though he was probably the best fighter in the whole group. We had sparred many times.
Then the roars of the engines came within hearing.
“Get ready,” Pop said.
I took position to the left of the front door. The walls had been reinforced with wood planking and six inches of sand between the planks and the previous walls. Bullets wouldn’t be coming through the sides of the house, at least. I remembered the vids of gunfights where the people hid behind walls. It was ridiculous. I knew what those walls were made of.
I counted four vehicles as they tore into the clearing and spread out in an arc.
“Do I shoot?”
“No, Gary,” Pop said. “Wait a bit and let’s see how they try to do this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ve lost the light,” I said.
“Yeah,” Pop said. “They got headlights pointed in at us.”
All we could see were shadows behind the lighted vehicles. A lot of damn shadows.
“You in the house!” a voice yelled. “We have a couple of ways we can settle this. You see, my boss just can’t let people go around killing his boys. Now he gave me specific orders. I am to bring him the head of the crazy bastard on the horse. I don’t know names, so that’s as detailed as it gets. Now here’s the deal. You give me Crazy Horse guy and I’ll let you keep half the food and half the women.”
“Let me think about that for a second!” I yelled. One of the shadows had been still for a little bit, and I put a round from the Winchester right into the spot I figured his head occupied.
“Son of a…!”
Shadows began to drop below the tops of the vehicles.
“You killed Garvey!” another voice said.
“Was he the one who asked for my head?” I yelled.
“Yes, you son of a whore!”
“Good!” I returned.
“I’ll burn your… Who the hell are you?”
I was guessing he was interrupted.
“What are you…”
Then there were screams. A lot of screams.
“Jesus,” Pete gasped. “What is happening?”
Some of the screams turned to pleas, and some just cut off abruptly. Then it was silent.
One form moved forward into the light. “Don’t you shoot me, Grady Conners. Nor you, Ray Donovan.”
I knew that voice as well as I knew my own.
“Jimmy?”
“Hey, Zee,” the voice returned. “These fellows are through. Mind if I come in?”
I met him halfway across the clearing and swept my little brother into an embrace.
“We thought you were dead, little brother,” I said. “God it’s good to see you.”
“Good to be home, brother.”
Pop was there and wrapped arms around both of us.
“Both of my boys are alive!”
There just may be some hope, after all, for this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 6
“Jesus Christ, Zee,” Grady said.
We were looking at the raiders after Jimmy had gone through them. The best I could tell when my brother had come out to meet us, he was unarmed.
“Shit, Zee,” Ray said. “This guy’s head is completely backwards.”
I was looking at a man who was folded in the middle. It wouldn’t have been as odd if he hadn’t been folded backwards. His spine had been broken. I looked at another with similar injury as the one Ray was looking at.
“I’ve been a deputy for ten years, Zee,” Grady said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This guy’s chest is just crushed.”
Ray’s face was pale as we picked up a body that was just connected at the waist by skin and a few muscles.
“One guy, did this?” he asked. “How is that even possible?”
“I saw something like this in the war,” I said. “It’s possible.”
“How?”
“I have to talk to Jimmy, first,” I answered. “Not really mine to tell. It was classified material.”
I looked off to the west where we had seen the mushroom clouds. “Nothing is really classified anymore, but I still need to talk to him about it first.”
“Okay, Zee,” Ray said.
As we picked up the bodies, I heard both of them making guesses as to how this could be done by one man. Cyborg was the one that they agreed the most with. Neither of them had ever seen what was left of a JalCom company in Egypt. There were close to three hundred soldiers in that company. Obsidian had ordered us to withdraw from the area and they sent in an Agent. One Corporate Agent had done this to that company of soldiers.
I was almost positive that my brother, James Alan Pratt, was an Agent.
I had applied to become an Agent when I enlisted. They had denied me because I lacked of moral ambiguity. They didn’t think I would be able to do what they demanded of their Agents. I accepted that and joined the infantry. What really confused me was how Jimmy could have been accepted. He was always the altruistic one of us. He dreamed of heroes, flying around the world saving the day. His comic books still filled a closet in Pop’s house.
Another body was lifted into the back of the truck. It had to be lifted carefully since both arms were dislocated and the skin was on the verge of splitting.
“Damn it, Jimmy,” I muttered.
We spent the majority of the day disposing of thirty-four bodies. Only one of the newest raiders had a bullet wound. The nine previous raiders had been placed in the barn. All of them were loaded up and dropped down the old mineshaft. Now there were forty-six bodies at the bottom of the old lead mine. Condy would be buried with his family at the graveyard beside their farmhouse.
“How many more?” I said under my breath.
“What?” Grady asked.
“I was just wondering how many more will be at the bottom of this shaft before we get this place in good enough shape not to be a target.”
“What else can we do, Zee?” he asked. “They send more, we kill more. Some of us die in the process. You know, without Jimmy, we’d have had some deaths of our own last night.”
“We need to send a message,” I said. “That map you found in the glove compartment of the car is pretty detailed.”
“They’ve been scouting us for a while,” he said.
“I think it’s time we returned the favor,” I said. “They had their HQ marked on the map as well.”
“The others aren’t gonna be happy if we go hit these guys.”
“Pop would approve of it,” I said. “But there’s no need to get him involved, yet. I want to go and scout the place first.”
“I’m going with you,” he said. “We have all the kids and regulars moving to the compound tomorrow. A lot easier to defend with the wall.”
“We’ll be out a week, at least.”
“Yeah, a couple days walking to get there and a couple days back.”
“We could take one of their vehicles part of the way. The dust shouldn’t be too bad for the first twenty miles or so since the roads are paved.”
“That would take a couple days off the trip,” I answered. “How much fuel was in the car?”
“It’s still got over a half tank.”
“That should be plenty to get us close.” I nodded and continued, “If the other roads are paved, we might get even closer before kicking up too much dust.”
“That crazy horse of yours is going to be pissed when he doesn’t get to come with you.”
“He’s not only my horse.”
“No one else wants to ride him after yesterday,” he said.
“He’s a badass,” I said. “If he wasn’t a gelding, I’d breed him to every one of the mares.”
“You just like him because he acts like you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure,” he said and climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck. “Let’s go back this thing into the lake and wash all the blood out of it.”
“Probably be a good idea.”
* * *
The truck cleaned up well, and we parked it in the barn at Pop’s.
“I’ll get the car out and make sure it’s in decent shape,” Grady said. “Sure you don’t want to run it by Pop?”
“I will if no one else is near,” I said. “I know he’ll approve. Not so sure about the others.”
“I’ll be ready and waiting at dawn.”
“See you then,” I said.
I started toward the house and saw Jimmy sitting on the front porch looking out over the corn field. He just sat there until he saw me. Then he smiled. His smile was off, and I couldn’t tell why for a moment. Then I saw it. His face smiled but his eyes weren’t part of it. I had a suspicion that something was broken in my little brother.
Sitting down beside him in the other rocker Pop kept on the porch, I asked, “How classified is your status, Jimmy? Can you even talk about it?”
“Six months ago it was classified,” he said. “Now I guess nothing is. Obsidian is gone. There were thousands of Corporate Heads, now dead. There were a few that escaped with some Guards but the corporation is done. I’m guessing you figured out what I am?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “How it’s possible, I don’t really understand. I applied when I enlisted and was denied.”
“That was before the imprinters went online.”
“Imprinters?”
“After they started the imprint program, you didn’t need to really have the right mindset for the job,” he answered. “They gave it to you.”
“They changed you?”
“Somewhat.” He shrugged. “What they did was pulled your personality out of your body and replace it with the one needed to do the job. When you return, your old self is reloaded.”
“There’s got to be more to it,” I said. “I can see the difference in you but you have yourself in there.”
“When the bombs dropped, I was in the imprinter,” he said. “I was halfway through the imprint when my imprinter shorted out. I have all of my memories of life as Jimmy Pratt and the skills and emotion package of the Agent.”
“What does that mean?”
“I got no emotions, Zee.”
“What the hell?”
“It could have been worse,” he said. “The guy in the other imprinter had it much worse. His shorted out and dumped the whole database into his head. He screamed for three days. I was about to put him out of his misery when he just shut down. His body was running but his mind was off.”
“Jesus.”
“I have all the memories of what I should feel, so I helped keep him fed.”
“That’s where you’ve been?”
“Yes,” he said. “Some of the Obsidian medical personnel finally showed up to care for the guy so I came home because it’s what Jimmy would do. I need you, Zee. I need you to be my handler. I need someone to keep me from doing things when there is no memory of how I should act.”
I looked into the dead eyes of my brother and realized that, no matter what your situation, there can always be worse fates in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 7
“Decided to bring back-up?” Grady asked. He was a little nervous around Jimmy.
“He doesn’t want to be too far away from me at the moment,” I said after I explained the situation. “So many ways to slip up around old friends. We’re not telling everybody what’s up.”
“Pop?”
“That’s the first thing we did,” I said. “We went straight to him, and he wants Jimmy with me for the foreseeable future.”
“I remember what I should do in some circumstances, but there are many places I won’t know what the right thing is.”
“That puts a hell of a responsibility on Zee.”
“That’s what family is for, Grady,” I said.
He nodded.
There was a splatter of raindrops on the windshield of the old car.
“This could be good,” I said. “If the roads are wet there won’t be any dust.”
“We can get closer in the car, that way,” Grady said. “We may get lucky and have paved roads all the way.”
“True,” I returned. “Depends on the rain, though. You know how dusty the roads get in Destil.”
Destil was the town where the raiders had set up shop. It was about half way along the main road to the suburbs of the great city to our east. The city had become Obsidian years back. Once the cities that ran along the eastern sea board were known by many names, but they grew together over the years. Now the southern half was gone and the northern half was consuming itself faster than anyone ever thought possible.
“Yep,” he said. “I’ve been through there quite a few times on police business. It was the gateway to Obsidian. Any business we had with the city went through Destil. I only got to the city twice before the Fall. It’s filled with skyscrapers and people. Damn, you wouldn’t believe how many people.”
“I’ve seen it,” I said. “And you’re right. So many people. We did some fighting in the lower end during JalCom II.”
“That’s right. You were in the Consolidation Riots.”
“Those were hard times for JalCom employees. Obsidian had finished off the main offices but a lot of subsidiaries didn’t want to fall in line. They started bombing civilian targets, and we had to go in.”
“The vids showed some of that,” he said. “It was bloody.”
“Much of it couldn’t be shown on the vids.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“I never was happier than when I got to the end of my enlistment and got to go home,” I said. “I met Neave and thought it was going to be a ‘Happily Ever After’ story. Then Teledyne raised its ugly head. They had pretty much taken the west coast and tried to hit Obsidian before they could recover from the Consolidation. Jimmy went off to war, and the IIC decided to rain fire down on the world.”
“IIC?”
“Idiots In Charge,” Jimmy said from the back seat.
Grady chuckled. “That just about sums it up.”
“I wanted ‘Happily Ever After;’ I got ‘To Be Continued.’”
“If we can get the Farms protected well enough, maybe you can have it.”
I looked ahead through the rain toward the east. “That monster will always plague us. We have what they need. They’ll never stop trying to take it.”
“That could be true,” he returned. “But we can always hope.”
“Here’s where we get out and walk,” I said as we reached the outermost dwellings of Destil.
“Want me to scout the area?” Jimmy asked.
“Sure thing, Jimmy.”
He was out of the backseat and into the rain in seconds.
“Damn, that boy’s fast,” Grady said.
“You have no idea.”
The garage door opened on the house to our right, and Jimmy motioned for us to pull the car inside. It was a good idea. No use leaving the obviously armored car on the street. The door closed behind us with Jimmy on the outside.
“May as well get geared up,” I said and opened the trunk.
