Ash: Rise of the Republic (6 page)

Chapter 3

July, 0 PC (2015 AD)

*

“
Communications had broken down so
quickly that most survivors initially underestimated the extent of
the devastation. Without the media to tell them otherwise, each of
the families or groups that huddled together for comfort assumed
that they were only temporarily isolated, that the government was
on the way to help. Nothing could have been further from the
truth.”

-Kristen Harrisburg, ‘The Grey Panic’; RNT
University Press, 36 PC (2051 AD);

*

The ash was still coming down when we woke up. There
was already a foot of it on the ground, and it had piled up on the
north side of the house so high that it was blocking off the lower
half of some of the windows. We had a quick breakfast, suited up,
and trudged up the hill for the neighborhood meeting.

There was only one vacant house in the
neighborhood. It was desirable real estate, so houses didn’t stay
on the market long when someone needed to sell. Mike and I had told
everyone to meet there because it was neutral ground. I wanted to
avoid politics here and I didn’t want someone thinking I was trying
to put myself in charge by hosting everyone at my house.

We set up in the big living room, and over
the next hour couples trickled in, wrapped in an assortment of
homemade ash suits. Everyone had heeded my advice the night before.
Some only had towels or bandannas wrapped around their mouths, but
a number of them had real gas masks. Clearly there were more
‘preppers’ in my area than I had thought.

I wasn’t familiar with everyone, so I took
the time to introduce myself as they arrived. Once everyone had
settled in, muttering amongst themselves, I decided to start things
off.

“Ok folks, first thing, thank you for coming
this morning,” I began, “it’s important that we get on the same
page here. As you’re all probably starting to realize, this is bad.
Things are much worse than they were saying on the news
yesterday.”

“The scientific community has known about
Yellowstone for a long time. There is a tremendous body of evidence
suggesting it has blown regularly over the past several million
years. The USGS has had sensors all over that thing for years. We
went over one of their reports when I was in school – damage
estimates were high but fairly localized. The fact that there is
now two feet of volcanic ash on the ground in Central Texas makes
it clear that that report was naïve at best. Hell, it might have
just been intentional bullshit. The fact is, this thing is probably
going to end up being a global disaster. Think nuclear winter;
think starvation; think extinctions.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”
growled a fat man sitting a few feet away. Richard Werner, the
neighborhood asshole, six feet of selfish, sweating, unnecessary
rage. The one man in the neighborhood who could be counted on to
complain about anything, up to and including children riding their
bikes in the street. When we had first moved in, there was a
neighborhood pet: an old white tailed doe that a little old lady
down the street had raised from a fawn. She would wander from yard
to yard, eating corn out of peoples’ hands and generally delighting
the neighborhood kids.

One afternoon, Werner’s offspring, a fat
little sociopath named Robert, held out a handful of corn for the
poor deer. When she walked up to him he cracked her in the head
with the ball-peen hammer he had concealed behind his back. Luckily
there wasn’t much strength behind the blow so it only dazed her.
She reared up in surprise and kicked him in the chest, knocking him
to the ground. The elder Werner, having watched this display from
his kitchen window, stormed out of the house with a single shot
.22. He walked right up to the docile animal and shot her in the
eye. She immediately dropped to the ground and began twitching and
flailing her legs, attempting to flee.

He stood there with his son for a few
minutes, laughing as she struggled on the ground, and then slowly
walked back inside. He returned a few minutes later and shot her
several more times in the body. He then handed the small rifle to
his son and let him finish her off. To his surprise, the
neighborhood shunned him for this behavior. He could not understand
why people were upset that he killed an animal that had threatened
his son. He really never understood what he had done wrong.

Now, he was sitting across from me on a
wooden chair that threatened to collapse under his bulk. His face
was an unhealthy burgundy. Sweat was forming on his forehead due to
the army surplus NBC suit he had stuffed himself into. His portly
twelve year old son sat next to him, a miniature version of his
father. Their faces shared a gloating condescension.

“I’m sure the ash will stop soon,” he
continued, surprised to be the center of attention, “That thing was
on the other side of the country, I’m sure the government will have
it sorted out in a few days”

“What I’m trying to tell you,” I replied,
calmly, “is that if we’re getting this much ash down here, this
thing is much bigger than the government. There is no way they are
prepared for this. If that thing pumped enough material into the
atmosphere for it to fall down here, it’s going to block out the
sun, maybe for a long time. It’s going to raise the albedo of the
planet. By that I mean that it’s going to reflect too much heat
back into space and things are going to get cold. Plants won’t be
able to grow, animals aren’t going to be able to eat, and a lot of
people are going to get hungry. Not just here, everywhere. Hell if
it’s big enough it might even change the composition of the
atmosphere. If we don’t starve to death we might suffocate.”

“And how do you know all this,” he snarled
back, “what are you some kind of faggot scientist? Sounds like some
global warming/climate change bullshit!”

A grumble from the gathering made me pause.
Many of these people were relatively uneducated oilfield workers,
fiercely conservative and religious. There was a general distrust
of science in those days. I was worried that they would shut me out
if I came across too technical.

“Look I’m no scientist. I went to school for
geology, but I just have a bachelors. I’m not some academic, I’ve
been out on a rig for the better part of the last ten years, just
like many of you. But I did learn a few things in school. I’m just
trying to make sense of this stuff. I could easily be wrong. All I
am asking is that we prepare for the worst. If the government sorts
it all out in a few days, great. If they don’t, and we’ve all been
fending for ourselves, people are going to starve. Hell, if we
still have something to eat in a few weeks people will probably be
coming here to take it.”

“He’s right.” A middle-aged woman in the
corner of the room spoke up. Janet Borger was a veterinary surgeon
who worked at the large animal hospital at the university. “I took
a geology class when I was an undergrad. I remember them talking
about Yellowstone. It was supposed to wipe southwest Montana off
the map. This seems worse. It won’t hurt to prepare a little.”

I was relieved at the support. Janet was
respected in the small community. The group looked back to me,
prompting me to continue.

“The most important thing we can do right
now is cooperate. I know most of us have supplies stocked up. We
need to pool our resources. We should inventory everything and plan
out how long we can last without resupply. Deb and I made a good
haul last night, we have more than enough to share with anyone who
is lacking.”

“You want to turn this into some kinda hippy
commune?” interrupted Werner, “what’s mine is mine. I ain’t
sharin’.”

The rest of the group glanced at him in
annoyance but turned back to me. This was normal behavior for the
bitter man, no one was surprised. I decided I had better just
ignore him.

“We should also consider blocking the
roads,” I continued, “we have a surprisingly defensible little
neighborhood here. We ran into some pretty serious looters last
night, I’m sure there are more out there right now. We could block
one entrance off entirely and put up a gate or a moveable barricade
across the other. Once we get things organized we can rotate on
guard duty.”

“I damn near lost my wife last night to a
couple of thugs at the grocery store,” said a stocky man standing
at the back of the room. Scott Matlidge was a retired auto mechanic
who lived a few doors down from me. “I had to shoot one of them. I
never killed a man before. Some people have lost their minds.
Anyway, I got a mig-welder and a stack of pipe in my back yard. If
someone will give me a hand I’ll rig up a gate we can use.”

“Good plan,” I said, “will anyone volunteer
to help Scott?” A few people raised their hands.

“I’ve got that semi-trailer in my yard,” my
left-hand neighbor, Clint Marrou offered, “if we can drag it over
there I think it’ll block off one road pretty well…”

“Good idea, we should be able to get it up
there with my tractor,” I replied.

Several others piped up and offered
assistance or materials. We discussed the details of the barricades
for a few minutes until we had a solid plan.

“Ok, next I think we should do a head
count,” I continued, “I noticed several empty houses last night,
please check on your immediate neighbors so we can figure out who
is missing. Tonight, everyone should inventory what you have and
we’ll meet here tomorrow morning to hammer out a plan for the
supplies. If anyone can think of anything else don’t hesitate to
bring it up. Clint, I’ll be over in a bit with the tractor. “

The meeting adjourned, people donned their
protective gear and filtered out into the swirling grey morning.
Deb and I straightened up a bit and then headed home ourselves. We
were nearly through removing our makeshift ash suits when there was
a hammering on the door. I reached for the knob as it exploded in
toward me. Richard Werner’s ugly bulk stood framed in the doorway,
lowering his leg from the kick that had sprung the door open. His
son was a few feet behind, sneering sullenly.

He pushed into the room without a word. The
two of us backed away quickly, unsure of his intentions. Moving
surprisingly quickly, he thumped me heavily in the gut, folding me
over. Deb screamed and went for the rifle on the table, forgetting
the pistol on her hip. He reached behind him and produced his own
pistol from his waistband, leveling it at her and growling, “Stop
right there, bitch.”

“Ok college boy,” he turned back to me,
“I’ve decided I ain’t participatin in yer little commune. Since
everybody else is playin along, I guess I better find somewheres
else to go. I’m thinkin I might need some supplies, and somethin to
haul them in. You and yer bitch wife are gonna get out there and
load all that shit back in that truck so I can get on my way. If
yer not interested in helpin, I can just as easily shoot you both
right here and take it myself.”

Still bent double, gasping, I stalled for
time, “Why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk about this.
Do you really want to kill two people in front of your son? Look,
you don’t need to leave. If you’re short on supplies you don’t have
to be embarrassed. We can help you, just be reasonable.”

“Didn’t you hear my Daddy?” snarled his son,
“He said to pack up that fuckin truck or he’s gonna shoot you,
faggot!”

Werner chuckled at the outburst and moved
closer to Deb. Without warning he whipped her in the face with his
pistol barrel, knocking her down and drawing blood.

“Maybe I’ll fuck your wife in front of you
before I kill you,” he said, looking back at me, “that is unless
you’ve decided to get to work?”

Without warning, Tracy, who had slept late
that morning and skipped the meeting, wheeled around the corner and
fired her twelve-gauge from the hip with a scream. The buck shot,
fired at such close range, tore a ragged hole in the big man’s gut.
His son, close behind him, flew backwards and slammed into the
wall, covered in his father’s viscera. Something, either one of the
lead pellets or a piece of bone, had torn off the top of his left
ear and peeled back most of his scalp in the process. He lay there,
stunned and bleeding, while the three of us watched his father
crumple to the ground.

“I’m BLIND, I’m BLIND!” screamed the boy
suddenly, blood pouring into his eyes.

Tracy squeaked in dismay and rushed over to
him.

“I’m so sorry baby, I didn’t see you behind
him,” she began to cry, tears welled up.

I handed her a towel from the kitchen and
she pressed it to his torn scalp. I looked at Deb, we were both in
a haze, unsure what to do. The little bastard had just finished
urging his father to kill us, but now he was just a young boy
bleeding and crying in our living room. Deb shook it off first.

“Tracy, pick him up carefully, we’ll take
him to Mrs. Borger, maybe she can sew him up.” She turned to me and
waved at the twitching pile of dead rapist in the center of the
room. “Can you clean that up?”

****

Once Clint and Mike helped me drag Werner’s body into
the driveway and cover it with a tarp, we hitched the tractor up to
Clint’s semi-trailer and tugged it up the hill to the nearest
highway entrance. It blocked most of the space between the stone
perimeter walls on either side. We borrowed an SUV from one of the
empty houses to plug the remaining gap.

We then headed to the second entrance to
check on the construction of the new gate. Scott was there with his
volunteers. They had made some impressive progress. Two more
welders and a surprising quantity of scrap metal had been scrounged
up and the team already had a fence stretching from the wall to the
road on either side. They were just starting on the gate when we
showed up. An hour later, we had a solid steel gate wide enough for
a car to pass through. We arranged a temporary guard schedule and
left them to head back to our corner of the neighborhood.