The day after: An apocalyptic morning (37 page)

              "Thirty?" Jessica barked, laughing.

              "As I said, I know I'm not going to get that many at first. But that is how many I would eventually like to have. With thirty I can keep all of the posts manned twenty-four hours a day using the same people all of the time. This would keep Paul from having to assign people the job every day and night. To get these volunteers I will place sign-up sheets on the bulletin board in the gym."

              Jessica and Dale looked at each other, clearly amused by his suggestion. "I'll vote yes on this one," Jessica said, shaking her head a little. "You go ahead and ask for your volunteers. Of course..." she snickered, "you'll have to come to us for approval if you want more than thirty."

              Dale was snickering as well. "You can have a yes from me too. Hope you don't get overwhelmed with volunteers now."

              While they laughed about this Paul added his yes vote to the tally and it became official. Skip Adams, security leader, was now authorized to raise a group of volunteers to help guard the town of Garden Hill. Though Jessica and Dale thought it quite a funny joke - Skip thinking people were going to sign up to be permanently assigned to guard detail - they had no idea that they had just impulsively voted to establish a professional armed forces for their town. In other words, Garden Hill had just added the ability to create an army to its constitution.

              One small victory that Skip had managed to win over the last four days had been the inclusion of Jack and Christine on guard details. As he had predicted, Paul had been able to convince Jessica in a private meeting that packing guns and watching over the safety of the town were where the two kids' talents were best utilized. As such, both of them were Skip's prime volunteers. Each post was manned with two guards that worked six-hour watches, which meant that there were four crew changes each day. Christine and Jack typically worked double shifts in order to keep themselves busy and to reduce the number of people that Paul had to actually assign. Jack preferred the night watches since it allowed him to sleep most of the daylight hours away. Christine, on the other hand, preferred the day watches since it allowed her to sleep with Skip every night.

              At dinner that night, when Skip gave a short, impassioned plea for volunteers (a plea that was received somewhat listlessly by the audience) Christine was working her second straight shift on the east side, awaiting her relief. By the time she made it to the dining hall and ate the plate of stroganoff that had been set aside for her, Skip had already gone off to take care of other duties. When she made her way to the small house that they shared, well after darkness had covered the land, he was still out. She lit the two oil lamps that they had been provided (Paul had rigged them so they could burn gasoline by adding a small amount of motor oil to the fuel) and waited for him alone.

              He came in about an hour later, stomping mud out of his boots and shaking excess water from his rain slicker before removing them in the entryway. He had had a long day that had involved much tromping around from one part of town to another and his muscles ached dully.

              "Hi, Chris," he said, leaning down to give her a kiss on the lips. She allowed the contact but did not contribute to the display of affection in any way. She had a determined expression on her face. He looked at her, puzzled. "What's the Micker?"

              "Where have you been?" she asked, a clear note of accusation in her voice.

              He looked at her carefully, already sensing that something was in the air. "I was out at the bridge," he told her, quite honestly. "I rigged up some trip-wires on the catwalk exit so that if someone comes up that way like I did, it'll at least make some noise. I also checked on the western position on my way back."

              "You weren't out visiting someone?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

              "Visiting someone?"

              "One of the women maybe?" she said. "One of those sluts who are trying to get you into bed with them?"

              He sighed a little. He had known that at some point this conversation was going to occur. This was, after all, a small town with a small town mentality. "No, Chris," he said, sitting next to her on the couch. "I wasn't out visiting anyone. I was out trying to take care of a few things. I wouldn't lie to you."

              "Who was at the guard posts?" she asked, her voice on the verge of hysteria. "Was Cindy Groton out there? I heard that you and she are fucking each other!"

              "Jesus," he said, turning towards her. "Chris, I don't even know Cindy Groton other than the fact that I talked to her for a few minutes at breakfast this morning. She's not even on the guard detail."

              "Everyone says you're fucking her," she said. "They say that she's going to be the one you pick to be your woman."

              "They're just rumors," he said. "I've already got my woman."

              "A woman that you won't tell anyone about!"

              "We've been over this, Chris," he said, trying to calm her. "We need to give it a little more time before we let people know about us. They're still locked up in pre-comet morality here. You know that as well as I do."

              "Pre-comet morality?" she nearly shrieked. "Every time I leave this house I get women coming up to me and asking questions about you. Is it true he's doing this girl? Is it true he's thinking about hooking up with that girl? Out on watch it's all my partner will talk about! I've been asked a hundred times to put in a good word to you about someone. I've been told a hundred times how good of a big sister someone would make for me! I've seen them get into fights over you, Skip! They hit each other and pull each other's hair while they're arguing about who has a chance with you and who doesn't! And it's not just you; they do that over every man in town, even that dweeb Jeff. These women fight over a nineteen-year-old! Does that sound like pre-comet morality to you? Did they used to do shit like that before?"

              "No," he said. "I'm sure they didn't. Their morality does tend to be ruled by self-interest and abandoned for the same thing."

              "So if they can give up the morality when it comes to keeping their hands off of other people's men, why can't they give it up about you sleeping with me?"

              "Because it's not in their self-interest to do that," he told her. " Christine, I am not sleeping with any of these women, okay? I'm not meeting up with them in secret and I'm not looking for someone to replace you with."

              "What about Missy?" she said, glaring at him. "I heard you fucked her your first night here. Everyone seems to be real sure about that rumor."

              His hesitation gave him away.

              "You did, didn't you?" she said.

              "Yes," he said slowly. "She caught me off guard that first night. It just kind of happened."

              The look of pain on her face was almost more than he could bear. Her lips started to quiver and a tear rolled down her face.

              " Christine," he said, sliding closer to her, intending to put his arms around her.

              "Get away from me," she told him. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me again!"

              "Chris, listen..."

              "I said stay away from me!"

              He stayed away from her. She refused to talk to him any more that evening. That night, at bedtime, she slept in the bed that had been placed in her bedroom for the first time.

              Twenty-three miles to the south, in Foresthill, the convicts were still in occupation of the church building they had taken from the townspeople there. The food supply they had captured was rapidly dwindling to nothing thanks to the fact that they had made no real effort to ration it in any way. All of the booze and most of the cigarettes were gone as well, again due to the lack of a rationing plan. The fact that they had had a drunken, weeklong party after they took the town did not help much.

              Even the women they had captured and amused themselves with, they were all gone as well, every last one of them dead. Most had found ways to commit suicide. The most common method of this had been by goading the men that were raping them into beating or shooting them to death (the first woman to try this began laughing and making fun of Harley's admittedly small penis until, humiliated, he had bashed in her skull). Two of them had tried an escape attempt that had not had a prayer of allowing them to get away but that did succeed in getting them shot to death with M-16s. One had actually chewed a hole through the skin of her inner elbow, ripping open the vein that runs there and bleeding to death while everyone slept. Yet another managed to strangle herself by wrapping the sleeve of her shirt around her neck and pulling it tight. The non-suicidal deaths had all been caused by injuries sustained during the party itself. After becoming bored with the more conventional methods of rape, some of the bikers had experimented with the insertion of foreign objects into vaginas or rectums, namely rifle barrels or booze bottles. Two of the women subjected to this had died of internal bleeding from perforated uteruses. Another had died of a particularly nasty case of peritonitis after her colon was torn to shreds by the raised sight of an M-16.

              Even the women that they had had before taking Foresthill, some of them prisoners captured from other raids, a few of them pre-comet wives and girlfriends, they were all gone as well. These women, appalled by what they saw going on around them, had fled into the woods. Their fate was unknown but it was thought that they wouldn't last long. They had taken no weapons or food with them when they'd gone.

              Now that all of the booze and women were gone and the food and cigarettes were in short supply, order among the convicts had broken down a little. Though Stu and Mark were still firmly in command of them the grumbling and the fights were becoming more vocal and more frequent. Stu knew it was about time to move on and find another place to crash for a while.

              On this morning, while most of the crew were still sleeping on the floor wrapped in their filthy sleeping bags, Stu and Mark were sitting in what had once been the pastor's office going over some gas station maps of the area.

              "Foresthill is the only sizable town on this side of the canyon," Stu was saying, tapping the features with a pencil. "At least until you work your way back to Placerville. And we know there ain't much left there. We're gonna have to cross the canyon somehow if we're gonna find more supplies."

              "Right," Mark said. "But how do we get across? Do you think that either of these bridges are still there?"

              "Maybe," Stu said thoughtfully. "The only way to find out is to go there. The question is, which one should we try first?"

              They discussed the Micker for a few minutes, each tossing ideas back and forth. On the one hand the Auburn bridge was located in an area that was more populated, which meant that there would be more targets to scope out and possibly attack. On that same note however, the Auburn bridge was also much more likely to be guarded by a force that they would not be able to overwhelm. The Garden Hill bridge, on the other hand, led to a very small town where there may or may not be anyone left.

              "I think that bridge is a lot less likely to be guarded," Stu said. "And if it is, whoever is guarding it would probably not be anything we couldn't overcome. And if the bridge is out or is too heavily guarded to cross, we can always come back down and try Auburn."

              "That make sense, Stu," Mark said. "But what about..."

              His thought was interrupted by the sound of two pistol shots from outside. Two seconds later, there was a third. It was the pre-arranged danger signal from their guard post.

              "Shit," Stu said, standing up so fast his chair fell over. He picked up his rifle and ran out into the main room. "Everyone up, right now!" he yelled. "We got a danger signal from the guards!"

              They moved impressively fast, shooting out of their sleeping bags and picking up their firearms. Stu and Mark went to the front door and opened it up, looking out over the rainy parking lot to the bait shop, where the perimeter guard that had fired the shot was stationed. They saw nothing out of the ordinary.

              "Battle stations everybody," Stu told his men. "Look sharp!" With that he ran outside, crossing the parking lot and the street at a sprint, Mark right behind him. The other convicts all went to pre-planned firing positions that Stu had worked out their first day in town and had made them practice moving to several times. Within thirty seconds a deadly ring of rifles encircled the church, capable of engaging any target no Micker what angle it attacked from.

              Stu and Mark entered the bait shop, guns ready for anything, and saw Harley looking out the rear window, his rifle trained out over the hilly ground behind it. He looked very tense.

              "What do you got, Harley?" Stu asked.

              "A dude out there about two hundred yards away. He's waving a white flag back and forth."

              "What?" Stu said, walking to the window and looking out. Sure enough, in the distance, was a single man standing atop one of the rises. He was dressed in rain gear and an army helmet and had no weapons in evidence upon him. He had a stick that was about six feet in length and had a scrap of white cloth, probably an old T-shirt, tied to the end of it. He slowly moved it back in forth above his head.