Dark Road (31 page)

“No, sir, I want to give everyone the
ability
to take themselves off the satellite if they want to.” Sparky said. “My original rewrite of the code was an either or, on or off. I’ve spent a little more time on it and I’ve been able fine-tune it so that you can turn it on and off at will. You can even program a button to…”

“Stop,” Eric said. “You’re geeking out again.”

“Sorry,” Sparky said, but couldn’t suppress his grin.

“Oh, be proud, just don’t explain.” Eric said. “How big is this…package going to be?”

“Zipped, it’s a little over a meg,” Sparky said.

“Ouch. That’s not going to go unnoticed—you do know that, right?” Eric said.

Sparky nodded. “Yes sir, and I’ll understand if we don’t do it. I’m just saying that’s what I would prefer to do.”

…

“Alpha Prime calling…” Mallory paused, she couldn’t believe she was about to say this, “Optimus Prime.”

“Which one of you two idiots came up with that name?” She asked.

“He did, I swear.” Sparky said. “He heard what I used and immediately came up with Optimus Prime.”

“Idiots and practical jokers, if this was corporate America I would swear I was surrounded by job security.” Mallory keyed the microphone on the encrypted HAM radio and made the call again. “Alpha Prime calling Optimus Prime.”

“This is Optimus Prime, authenticate…” Mallory was relieved that at least they were taking their radio discipline seriously.

Once authentication was taken care of she got Ben on the radio.

“I need a favor,” she said.

“Sure, what’cha need?” He asked. “A cup of sugar?”

“No, more like a gross of Stingers.” Mallory said. “I have four Humvees with Stinger racks and nothing to put in them. We’ve even got a Sentinel unit already.”

There was silence for several seconds but Mallory was willing to bet Ben was swearing or choking—or both.

“Mallory,” Ben said, when he finally came back on the line. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry, should have made sure you were sitting first and not drinking anything.” She said. “I’m not
doing
anything, yet. I’m sure you heard about South Carolina, though, and I have no intention of having a repeat here. Having the ability to paint incoming 'Hawks with SAM radar would make anyone think twice about trying it a second time.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, drawing out the word into three or four syllables. “They’d also wonder where it came from.”

“Good point,” Mallory said, “Then again, eventually we’re all going to be in this boat together anyway, right?”

Chapter Thirty-One

“So, I have a couple of questions,” Josh said. “Why can’t we use the same radio—or one like it—around camp? I remember reading about building a radio in an Altoids tin in one of my Boy Scout magazines, and I’m pretty sure it was a HAM radio. It was supposed to be super easy to build. Couldn’t we use something like that?”

Josh and Maya were in class learning the basics of radio theory from Sergeant Lake; Josh couldn’t bring himself to call a man almost twice his age “Sparky”.

“Well, you’re jumping ahead quite a ways, but the biggest problem you run into using a radio like that is the frequency it’s designed to operate on, which is HF. All of our radios for local use are VHF or UHF, which we’ve discussed a little already…” and then the lecture, which was actually quite interesting, began again, and Josh had to wait almost a day and a half to ask his next question.

…

“Why aren’t we getting more groups onto the HAM system?” Josh asked. He’d almost said encrypted system, but it wasn’t public knowledge that they had a means to encrypt their communications yet. Josh only knew because it had come up at home, and he and Maya were sworn to secrecy.

Sparky paused for a few seconds to gather his thoughts. “Mr. Taylor,” he said. “If you had a secret that you wanted to share with a bunch of your friends but you weren’t sure which of your friends you could trust, how would you go about sharing that secret?”

Josh opened his mouth to answer but no sound came out because there was nothing to say, so he closed his mouth and had to think about it. It hadn’t occurred to him that the Colonel might be at one of the bases they had been in communication with all this time, and that giving them an encrypted radio would literally be giving them a key to the new, secret system.

Sparky nodded his head and went on with the lesson.

…

“There’s going to come a point when we’ll need to actually send files to people,” Eric said, “and that is going to raise some eyebrows if they are paying attention up top.”

“That’s a risk we’re going to have to run.” Mallory said. “The satellite link is still the fastest way to send large amounts of data and we still have it available to us. Sparky says that as long as we only use it for software, then the system is still secure, and we have got to be able to get some of the software out to a wider base before that link gets denied to us.”

Eric shook his head. “You really think it’ll come to that?”

“No way to know, but I’m hoping for the best and planning for the worst,” Mallory said, “and expecting Murphy to show up at any time.”

“How many sites are in the ‘net now, including us?” Eric asked.

“By now I think we’re up to thirty,” Mallory said, “and those are all units that I contacted directly a couple of days before that conference call or groups that those units have been in direct communication with.”

“What do you think?” Eric asked, realizing he was full of questions and no answers today.

Mallory shook her head in resignation, not in negation. “I just don’t know. Each one we add to the list could end up burning us, directly or indirectly, but we can’t live in fear or in isolation.” She said. “Eventually we’re going to have to expand. There’re no sure things in life—including taxes, apparently.”

“Too bad nobody thought to ask where the Colonel was when things were still looking all rosy.” Eric said. “Assuming he would have answered truthfully, anyway.”

“Even if he had,” Mallory said, “not all of the units I spoke to before the call are on the ‘net now. It seems that some of them are totally onboard with what the Colonel and the new orders outline. It isn’t just about keeping the base where the Colonel is stationed out of the ‘net.”

Eric sighed. “Who would have thought it would ever come to this?” He said “Once the world came to an end I really thought that we’d all come together and try to pull through…you know, after all the useless meat-sacks died or killed each other off.”

Mallory smiled. “No plan survives initial contact with the enemy, Eric, and apparently the useless meat-sacks haven’t finished killing each other off.”

…

“We were on I-40 almost the whole way,” Dan said. The only time we really got off was to make camp, or the one time we actually went into a town in Kingston Springs.”

“Had you run into many groups on the road?” Sergeant Blackwood asked, the same Sergeant who had brought them in when they were so close to collapsing.

Dan thought back. “Probably a couple dozen groups total,” he said. “I think the largest group we encountered was almost twenty people. It was an even mix of men and women with just a couple of kids. I think that was the biggest worry we ever had and we just sat it out with the rifles and the shotgun in plain view as they passed.”

Blackwood nodded while Dan spoke; talking about each group they ran into until the last. “Do you remember seeing the last group before the middle of the night?” He asked.

“I think we may have passed them that day but I really can’t be sure.” Dan said. “I know we didn’t pass anyone else after we had the bikes stolen, though, and I didn’t get a good look at them when they turned on the flashlights.”

“Well, from your description of events it sounds like they’ve done it more than once and used that tactic before.” Blackwood said. “It’s also possible that you passed someone else on the road, a scout or a group of scouts, and then the raiding party came in later. Where were you on I-40 when it happened?”

Dan made a face. “Probably about a mile past the Buffalo River I think.”

“And they took off towards us, towards the park.” Blackwood said.

“That’s right.” Dan said.

“You’ve got a pretty good eye for details, Dan.” Blackwood said. “There’s not a lot within a couple of miles of there, right off the highway that I would want to try to get to in the middle of the night. We’ve got some topographical maps, and I have a few ideas, and I think we might pay a few visits.”

He stood up and shook Dan’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “If this group is the one that’s been causing the majority of the trouble then you may have just fixed a major thorn in my side.”

…

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Yes,” Marissa said in triumph to an empty room, and then looked around. “I am so pathetic.”

The city offices had proven to be both a treasure trove and a frustrating mess for someone like Marissa. On the one hand, they were very well stocked with paper, toner, and ink cartridges, forms that had to be filled out by hand, and, of all things,
two
manual typewriters—with spare ribbons. They had a case of blank certificate templates for heaven only knows what, and the secretary’s desk even had a calligraphy set.

On the other hand,
nothing
was organized, or if it was, it seemed to be by the third letter in the second form in the folder. Things seemed to have been literally stuffed in filing cabinets as they came into the office, starting with the upper left drawer and moving down as they filled up! It was driving Marissa insane. It had taken her two days to find the marriage license forms and another six hours to find the book to register the marriages in.

Marissa shook her head and brushed the hair that had escaped from her braid out of her face. She was slowly reorganizing the office using the drawers she had emptied, but this was going to be a full time job all by itself. She looked around the room at the organized chaos she’d made and noticed the box of certificates and her brows furrowed.

“Where did I see…” she muttered as she put the registration book with the license forms so they wouldn’t get separated again. She seemed to recall seeing some software for printing certificates and one of the printers in the office was a color laser printer. If the printer had actually been off when the spike had hit, and if she could get a laptop from the Major, and get the software installed, and then get the printer up to the base…

Sure it was a lot of ifs, but it was worth a shot. And if not, they could still use the calligraphy set in the secretary’s desk.

…

“I know the ideal time for a wedding is in the spring,” Chuck said.

“I don’t care,” Sheri said and kissed him. “The ideal time for my wedding is when I get to marry you.”

“How did I get so lucky?” He asked.

“I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll come to you.” She smiled.

“So how does Friday, October 5
^th
sound?” Chuck asked with a grin. “I know we don’t really work normal schedules but I thought we could at least pretend we could have a long weekend.”

“That would be nice.” Sheri closed her eyes. “We could even set the alarm early on the wind up clock and then turn it off and pretend we’re sleeping in.”

They both laughed. It seemed that nobody ever really got enough sleep anymore. There was plenty of food, and so far none of the roofs leaked for more than a single day or night, but everyone, Mallory included, complained about not getting enough sleep.

“So, what are you going to wear?” Chuck asked.

Sheri frowned. “I don’t know,” she said and looked a little off into the distance while she thought about it. This had been nagging at her for a while and it bothered her that it…bothered her. Sheri had never thought she cared much for dresses in the first place, much less big flouncy fluffy white wedding dresses. The closer it got to her wedding day, though, the more she realized that maybe she did want at least a nice, pretty white wedding dress. The fact that she even cared was more than a little distressing.

Chuck had asked the same question once before and received the exact same response, and was trying to decide how to react. He didn’t want to push it, but also didn’t want to blow it off. He’d been a bachelor for a
long
time but he was pretty sure that Sheri wasn’t happy about not having a wedding dress; she just wasn’t saying anything about it.

“It’ll be ok.” Chuck said and gave her a squeeze and a kiss.

“I know.” She said and kissed him back.

…

“Eric, what am I going to do for a wedding ring?” Chuck said.

“Oh wow, I hadn’t thought of that.” Eric said. “I’ve just been so happy that you finally decided to ask that…wow. I’ve got mine already in my sock drawer and—that was really crass of me to say, wasn’t it. Sorry.” Eric blushed.

“No, don’t worry about it.” Chuck said with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been prepared for however long and that’s cool. I have a week and a half to come up with two rings and, short of knocking over a jewelry store, which I am not going to go do, I’m out of ideas.”

“Well, if you can come up with the metal I’m sure we can smelt it,” Eric said. “Don’t look at me like that; you came to me with the problem, man.”

“Sorry,” Chuck said, “but where am I going to come up with the metal? I don’t even have any silver to melt.”

“Silver,” Dan Clark had been walking by when he heard the last bit of the conversation. “You looking for some silver to melt?”

“Um, yeah,” Chuck said and held out his hand. “You’re…Dan right? You lived in the same neighborhood as Joel and Eric, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dan shook Chuck’s hand. “Took us long enough to get the hint and follow suit. Wish we’d been closer friends and left at the same time, frankly. How much silver do you need?”

“Well,” Chuck said, looking sheepish and then shaking his head, “enough to make a couple of wedding rings.”

Dan snapped his fingers and pointed. “Ok, right. You’re the guy who’s getting married. Congratulations!”