Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (11 page)

When nobody said anything, they filed out and got to work making the place livable.

W
hile Tony
, Pete, and Mandy were out scavenging, Greg discovered something amazing: a portable generator tucked inside a rain-protective hood, hooked up to a plug in the wall of the Saskatchewan. Jack had missed it because he hadn’t been looking for one. None of the cabins had power lines connected to them, and Big Timber was too far off the beaten path for an underground connection to the grid.

In hindsight, when he’d come here with his parents, there were working lights and an instructional video on how to build log cabins. There had even been cold drinks and air-conditioning.

“Awesome job,” Jack said and gave his smiling friend a high five.

“Too bad the tank’s empty or we could try it now.” He frowned in thought. “You know, we could always snag some gas from the bus. Just need a hose.”

Jack shook his head. “First, I think the bus uses diesel, and it looks like this uses gas. Second, just because we have a generator, I’m not sure we should get too comfortable using it.”

“Why not?”

“We shouldn’t rely on our parents’ technology.” Seeing his friend’s crestfallen expression he added, “Maybe for movies or something, once a week, or recharging batteries.”

Greg snorted. “And that’s not relying on technology?”

“You know what I mean: houselights, electric stoves, that kind of thing. We can’t be constantly scrounging to feed it gas.” Jack inspected the engine, not understanding any of it. “How big’s that tank, anyway? Five gallons?”

“Looks like,” Greg said dejectedly. “We could always stockpile some.”

Jack nodded. “And we will. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Come on, let’s go see if the Skyline has the same hookup.”

There wasn’t a generator connected to the Skyline, but it did have the special plug on the wall. Jack called in Lisa, who was helping Olivia rearrange the mattresses.

“Wow,” Lisa said, admiring the generator. “Great job, brother mine.”

It turned out the Skyline’s hookup would work. The generator had wheels to assist moving it around, but it was heavy and clunky. Brad helped them wheel it over the uneven ground. The protective housing was detachable and fit easily over the unit once they had it and the tank in place.

Greg’s find was a great moment for everyone, and Jack felt upbeat about their chances. There was still plenty to do, as well as the ever-present fear of someone getting hurt or seriously ill. Not to mention starvation. They still hadn’t successfully acquired food that didn’t come in a wrapper or can. But at least they didn’t have to worry about maniacs like Blaze, or whichever gang attacked them at the Welcome Center, or freezing to death.

Jack laughed softly.
Or TV.

* * *

T
he three scavengers
returned later than Jack would have liked. Just as he wondered whether there’d be time to dig the sanitation ditch before dusk, Pete got out of the car and stormed toward him sporting a puffy eye.

“That jerk hit me!” he shouted, pointing back at Tony, who got out slowly with a wide smile on his still-chubby face.

Mandy jumped out too, frowning in anger. “Tony’s a bully, that’s what
he
is!”

“What the hell, Tony?” Jack said, checking Pete’s eye to make sure it wasn’t serious. They couldn’t afford serious.

“He didn’t wanna go in the house,” Tony said, “so I made him.”

“It had dead people in it!” Pete yelled.

Tony’s smile fell away, replaced with an angry frown. “So? I went in. Everyone goes in. You gotta go in.”

As much as Jack agreed with the sentiment, he couldn’t condone the brutality.

“You two, in my cabin, now,” he said, then turned around and entered the Paul Bunyan without looking back.

Wondering if they’d follow, he grew angry at the prospect of being ignored. He drew on that anger—he’d need it.

Pete came in first, followed by Tony, who shut the door behind him.

Like the other cabins, the Paul Bunyan had a vaulted ceiling with big windows to let in as much light as possible, so he could see them both clearly. Tony stood with that lazy smile still on his face. Pete settled for glowering, his hurt eye demanding justice.

Jack moved his hand casually to the butt of his gun. “Take out your pistol.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in charge. You want to sleep here tonight, not walk out of here in the cold with nothing, you’ll do it. And you’ll listen when I give an order. You’re useless to anyone if you can’t follow orders.”

Tony opened his mouth to speak.

“
Quiet!
” Jack shouted. “Give me the damned gun!”

Both boys jerked like they’d been smacked. Tony took out his pistol and handed it barrel-first to Jack, who shook his head at the dangerousness of it. He should have put it down for Jack to pick up, but he’d deal with that later. It was about to get more dangerous.

“Is it loaded?”

“I think it—”

“All guns are loaded,” Jack said. “That’s your first lesson. Here’s another: in a world with no police, filled with people who don’t have anything, you don’t bully.”

“But I was doing all the work! It’s not fair!”

Ignoring that, Jack checked to see if the gun really was loaded—it was. He racked the slide, flicked the safety, then put it down.

To Pete, he said, “Now pick it up.”

Tony breathed in sharply.

Pete swallowed, reached down, and picked it up. He stood stock-still, holding the weapon like it was slithery and poisonous.

“That button on the side is the safety,” Jack said. “Just flick it forward so it shows red and it’ll fire if you pull the trigger.”

Pete stared at the switch, hands shaking in fear. His gaze moved from it to Tony, and then his expression edged back to angry. He flicked the safety off.

Tony reared back and sort of shrank in on himself.

“Finger off the trigger,” Jack said quietly, then relaxed when Pete did so.

“Don’t you touch me again!” Pete shouted, causing the other boy to flinch.

“Easy, Pete,” Jack said, then turned to Tony. “Everyone carries guns except Pete and Olivia. So far. But there’s guns everywhere. My rifle’s upstairs, and I’m not watching it every minute. There’s going to be more guns and more people, which means way more chances for tempers to flare. In the Old West, they called the gun the great equalizer. It didn’t matter how strong you were. If you had one, you could take out the biggest bully in the world.” He shifted his gaze to Pete. “Go ahead and put it on the table.”

Pete held onto the pistol for perhaps five more seconds, still glaring at Tony, then put it down. When he did, the tension eased out of him like a spring uncoiled.

Tony sighed, visibly relieved. “Sorry for hitting you, man.
Real
sorry.” He looked at Jack. “Can I have my gun back?”

“No, you can’t. Tomorrow, you and Pete are going to get trained. Your gun safety sucks, and Pete needs to be able to defend himself from bullies. I would have liked to see about bagging a deer in the morning, but this is more important. Dismissed.” When the two boys just stood there staring at him, he added, “That means get the hell out.”

Nodding as one, they beat a hasty exit.

Jack went over to the door, locked it, then dropped down into a chair and exhaled loudly. He noted his heart was racing, and wondered if either of them had seen the tremor in his hands. Being a homeschooler didn’t give him many opportunities for tense confrontations, armed or not. He wondered if he could have handled it differently.

Probably,
he thought.

Still, he didn’t think he’d done too badly. Nobody had died, and if it kept Tony from hitting people, and Pete from getting hit, that was a win.

Probably
, he thought again, and went out to inspect the results from the scavenging expedition.

In addition to about ten different watches and rolls of toilet paper, the two boys had returned with an assortment of picks, shovels, and axes. They’d also brought back several buckets, which Olivia set in a row outside the Skyline’s front door. She told each child the rules: use the bucket and then leave it there for the next person. Every morning, a leader would take it and dispose of it.

Because of the lateness of the hour, Jack and Brad held off on any digging.

“I suppose we should think about building an outhouse,” Jack said to him. “Unless you feel like dragging kiddie poop back and forth every day.”

Brad made a face. “Is there more to outhouses than just digging a hole and putting a little house on top?”

“I’m sure there is. Just like everything else.”

* * *

B
efore Jack had ever fired
a handgun, his parents made him take a class on gun safety. They’d attended it with him, even though they were both trained already. That had been an early first lesson for him: “You’re never too smart to learn more about safety.”

Jack told Pete and Tony to meet him in the field behind the cabins, then found Olivia and took her aside.

“How you feeling these days?” he said cautiously.

“What do you mean?”

“Before we came here, you were sort of …”

“Suicidal?” She shrugged, then smiled. “Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. I don’t know. I try not to think of my parents with people around because I get all leaky.” As if proving a point, she wiped her eyes and laughed. “I’m okay. Knowing the children need me helps.”

He told her how he wanted everyone old enough to carry a gun armed and trained in their use.

“That’d be cool, actually,” she said. “I used to love action movies. But I’m not going to kill myself, Jack. Like you said—if I wanted to, I could have done it a hundred ways.”

He nodded, patted her uncomfortably on the shoulder, and said, “Well good. That’s just good.”

He led her to where the others were waiting.

Thinking back to his safety course, he tried for the same air of competency the instructor had filled the room with that day.

“I’m going to be repeating myself a lot,” Jack said, “because when it comes to safety, everything bears repeating. You’ll be sick of it before we’re done, and then you’ll get to repeat it all back to me. If I’ve done my job properly, you’ll probably mumble it in your sleep, too.”

The basic rules for handling weapons were simple, and he wrote them out with a dry-erase marker on a whiteboard snagged from the sales trailer:

1) Finger off the trigger until ready to fire.

2) Never hand someone a gun. Put it down and let them pick it up.

3) Muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times.

4) Treat every firearm as loaded.

5) Before handling a gun, understand how it works.

6) The safety switch is NOT to be relied upon.

7) Never goof off when handling weapons.

8) Address unsafe behavior immediately.

Jack turned to Tony. “Last night, I asked for your gun and you handed it to me, muzzle first. You also didn’t check the chamber to see if it was empty.” He turned to Pete. “I picked up the gun and chambered it, flicked the safety, and put it down. Then I told you to pick it up—someone untrained and obviously uncomfortable with guns, not to mention pissed off at the time. That was dumb of me. Can you think of the second thing I did wrong?”

The two boys looked at each other and shrugged.

Jack grinned. “
I
was pissed off, too.”

That brought tentative smiles all around.

“Okay,” Jack said. “Shooting rules.”

He told them what not to shoot at, glass bottles being high on that list, as well as rocks, buildings, and bushes.

“And don’t shoot up in the air like they do on TV,” he said. “What goes up must come down.”

After ensuring they were still listening—they were—he covered the proper care of weapons and ammunition, and demonstrated how to take apart his .40 caliber.

“Later on,” Jack said, “I’ll show you my cleaning kit, and we’ll sit down together to clean and oil everything. We need more cleaner and gun oil. My kit isn’t big enough for the whole group.”

As he went on, Olivia peppered him with an endless number of hypothetical questions. Soon Tony, and even Pete, joined in.