American Apocalypse Wastelands (3 page)

Server farms were their version of Swiss gold. They were totally secure from the waves of government attempts
to control the digital flow of information, that being the only truly valuable currency left in the world. Along with the ability to host, they had the tools and the desire—especially after being so thoroughly screwed—to broadcast. And what they broadcast was the truth—or at least what the U.S. government managed to suppress with the assistance of those who controlled the media.

“Damn, what time is it?” I asked.

Night answered. “Eight.”

“Daytime or night?”

“Nighttime. Come on, sit down with us. The president is going to make a speech.”

I groaned. “Who cares? Obama wore me out years ago when he was president.”

“You might want to listen, buddy,” Jake said. “I got a feeling it's going to determine what's next for a lot of people.”

“Yeah, Jake. Whatever.” Jake was, of course, sitting in his favorite chair. I thought of it as “the throne.” It was a leather recliner and I decided that from then on I was going to sit in it whenever I had the chance.

As usual, Jake was armed. What was interesting was how he was armed. He was wearing a Colt, a Peacemaker it looked like, in a hand-tooled holster that was tied down. A lot like what I wore, but far more expensive. That was weird. Why that gun in that style? I had noticed it when I first saw him. He kept wearing it, too, which surprised me. I figured he would switch to something more modern. He seemed like the black plastic type, after all.

Iceland News cut to the White House and the president appeared on screen. She sat behind her desk dressed in military camo. No rank insignia that I could see. I wondered
if she had a cute little beret to match. She wasn't as hot as Palin was a few years ago, but she wasn't as obviously ignorant either.

She dropped the bombshell right off the bat: martial law. Jake and Night responded with “Wow!” and “Damn.” Max added, “She's going to lock us all down. For our own good, of course.”

She wasn't done. It really was for our own good. As she put it:

 

In this sea of internal turmoil, where so many seek to profit by undermining the authority of the state, we have decided to increase everyone's personal and professional security by creating Zones all across the United States. Furthermore, we will stamp out the terrorist groups that have, through their wanton embrace of vandalism for the sake of vandalism, harmed so many of you, my fellow citizens.

 

She went on and on, of course. She was a politician, after all. Night wanted to watch the analysis of the speech afterward but Max overruled her. “You need to sleep and heal up, kiddo. We are going to need to move soon.”

She went reluctantly. I joined her. I liked lying next to her. If we were both up to it, we talked in whispers. I liked feeling her breath in my ear. We had no privacy. Our bodies were willing, but with her burns and my thigh there was not a lot we could do even if we had privacy.

CHAPTER THREE

One thing Jake had going for him was his inventory. The man had taken seriously the warnings of doom and The End of the World as We Know It. He had it all: ammo, weapons, and the high-end and hard-to-find pharmaceuticals that we were burning through.

He didn't say anything about it. He didn't have to. He pretended everything was just fine, but there was an edge to him that I didn't like, a hint of arrogance that came out only when he was dealing with me. I also caught his eyes lingering on Night's ass when he thought no one was looking.

After I was able to start moving around for more than fifteen minutes at a time without bleeding too badly I found out what he was after: He wanted to join our elite team of commandos.

I was standing on the deck outside holding on to the railing and trying to look like everything was just fine. The reality was that I was trying not to scream from the pain I felt. The sliding glass door opened behind me and I fervently hoped it wasn't Jake. I think he knew that Mr.
Pain and I were constant companions whenever I moved. He even offered me some painkillers, but I refused them.

He was almost successful in hiding his disappointment over that. It just confirmed what I already knew. I was going to have to kill him. The problem was that I was going to need to get a little stronger first, which meant he was going to get to live a little longer.

It wasn't him. It was Max. I knew it was Max as soon as he closed the door. I can't tell you how I knew; I just did. He came over to where I was standing and rested his hands on the railing, joining me in looking out over the overgrown lawn.

Jake wasn't really big into lawn care. It didn't look like he ever had been. I bet his neighbors loved that, especially as they were living in McMansions built after tearing down the houses that had once been there. Probably houses that had been a lot like Jake's: a three-bedroom, two-bath 1950s rambler with a basement.

“How are you feeling, G?”

I looked over at Max. He was staring straight ahead, his face expressionless. I was hurting too much to come up with something snappy. Instead I gave him what was running through my head.

“I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to walk right again.” I paused and went to what was really bothering me, “I'm not as fast as I was. My stance is off and it's messing up my timing.”

“Yeah, I imagine it would. What you going to do about it?”

“I don't know, Max. I really don't. Walk it back. Walk until it heals, and heals right.”

“Yep. You're going to hate life for a while once you start.”

“Shit, something to look forward to. God, I love having a goal-directed life.”

Max laughed. “Yeah. There is that.” He spat, and we both watched as it arced out into space and landed in the overgrown grass below us. “You know, he's practicing with that six-gun of his. He has a room upstairs with a timer and a mirror just for that.”

I shook my head. “Doesn't make him less of an asshole, Max.”

He didn't laugh. “In all seriousness, G, try not to shoot him until I think I know where everything is. He has a couple of safes I want to see opened first.”

“You mean be a ‘team player'?”

“I know it's hard for you to restrain yourself but give me this one. Okay?”

I grinned. “Sure, Max. No problem.”

“We both know how it's going to end. Just don't let him get behind you until then.”

I stood there and thought about that for about ten minutes after Max went inside. Then I found Night and told her we were going for a walk.

She was rather dubious about my idea. “You sure you're up to it?”

“Hell, Night. I think I might jog back. You think you're going to be able to keep up?”

Her eyes searched mine. She didn't say anything at first; she just shook her head. Then she took a deep breath, looked up at me, and said, “Hang on. I need to get ready.” She came back carrying a daypack, really a kid's schoolbook bag, and told me, “Okay. Let's go walk.”

That first walk was a bitch. Actually, all of them were for a while. The first was the worst because of how bad
it hurt. The second was just as bad, but at least I knew what to expect.

The first time all I could do was fifteen minutes down the trail behind Jake's house. Once we were out of sight of his house I asked Night, “Anyone watching?”

She looked around. “Not that I can see.”

I hobbled over to a tree, leaned against it, and screamed into my arm. Night came rushing up to me. I felt her hand on my back as she whispered, “You sure you want to do this?”

I growled at her, “Got no choice,” and waved her back. Pain makes me snappish and I didn't want to let it spill over on her. I wiped the sweat off my face, looked at her, and asked, “You see that tree down there?” I pointed down the trail.

“There are a lot of trees down there, G.”

“I know. That's where we are walking to.”

I barely made it back to the house that day. Night ended up having to replace the dressing on my wound as soon as we got back.

Soon enough I would be showing her how much I enjoyed her help by “saluting” her when we returned from our walks. This was as much as I could do, with all the pain, to express how I really felt about her, what I intended to do when we were strong again. The first time I “saluted” her, she made my day by exclaiming, “Oh, my God! It's back and it's bigger!” I wished it could have happened that first day after that first walk, but the process took time.

 

Outside of the house, the world was getting stranger by the day. Jake had DSL, but he and Ninja both agreed that
we had to be very careful about what blogs and web sites we visited.
Calculated Risk
had already been shut down, as had a number of others.

Their theory was that the Feds would be tracing IP numbers and making visits based on your viewing content. Iceland said it was cloaking traffic, but you had to get there first. Even getting bounced to them through Europe wasn't a good idea.

The price of gold continued to rise. That got Jake all excited but didn't do a lot for me. I didn't have any.

Martial law was not going very well apparently, based on reports that government troops had begun clashing with so-called domestic terrorists as soon as it was declared. The government was spinning this as a good thing. It saw the situation as justifying its actions. To me, it sounded like the state was losing control.

We saw smoke from fires almost every day. The Burners were still torching buildings they believed belonged to the “CorpState.” The mainstream media hated, vilified, and generally made fun of Burners. Last week a special on the group had aired via every media format available. It included footage “never seen before” and was heavily promoted. I watched part of it. It looked like being a Burner was fun. They did attract seriously hot women.

 

Jake was pushing for a plan. Where were we going and how were we getting there? What was the plan once we got there? Did we have other people in mind? What was the organizational structure going to be? Would people be assigned ranks like in the military? I rolled my eyes and didn't bother to hide it as I heard that last item.

“What, you have a problem with that?” he asked.

“No. Just curious. What rank have you picked out, Jake?”

We were all sitting around the kitchen table and it got very quiet. He knew he was on the spot. I watched him as he reconsidered what he thought his rank really should be and dropped it a couple levels for modesty's sake.

“A major. After all, I'm pretty much bankrolling this operation.” If he had looked around instead of trying to do the death stare at me, he would have seen how well that had gone over.

“So what do you see yourself as, Gardener?” He tried hard to make it sound like a casual question.

I let the silence hang for a bit and replied, “A contractor. That's where the money is.”

The laughter following my answer almost broke the tension in the air. We stared at each other. I don't know about him, but I knew now it was just a matter of time.

My walks were getting longer. Max started going with me in place of Night. I pushed myself pretty hard but he took it to another level. He also had me do stretching exercises.

We were taking a breather—well, I was—when he told me, “It isn't about bulk where we're headed. It's about endurance. You want to be the wolf, not the buffalo. Bulk, even when it isn't chemical, is costly. It takes a lot of calories to keep it on. We are not going to have them.”

“I should be good, then. I'm skinnier than I was when I was working, that's for sure.”

Max laughed. “Yeah, a lot of that is going around.”

 

Max had already told me the plan. We were headed to the farm where I had spent time healing from my fall on a rake and avoiding the people who didn't take it kindly
that I had killed a few of their friends. People had a tendency to do that, I noticed.

Once I began to get in shape, we started to scout our route. This part of Virginia had a trail for every direction you wanted to go. Some of them had been county bike trails once, and the asphalt surfaces still remained in a lot of places. There was a lot of traffic on them now, most of it legit. All that bike riding was doing wonders for the asses of America's women. Work may have been disappearing, but women's bodies were coming back strong.

Max and I came back from one outing and found Jake had moved his fast-draw machine into the living room. It was a draw timer. You stood there and drew when the light flashed, and it gave you a readout of how fast you were. I'd been tempted to try it when I first saw it in his practice room, but then I would have had to ask Jake how to use it—and I did not want to do that.

I knew Jake had heard us come in, but he ignored us while he went through his routine. Ninja and Night were watching—Night reluctantly, and probably only out of boredom.

He was fast. Very fast. I had a feeling what was coming next.

“Hey, Gardener! Come on over here,” he called out.

I looked at Max and shrugged. I walked over to where he stood. “Whatcha got, Jake?”

He was beaming. He even had his thumbs in his gun belt with his elbows sticking out like wings. He reminded me of a preening pigeon. “This is a timer for fast draws. You can set it for different times. As you know, the faster you are on target, the more likely you are to be the one who walks away.”

He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to everyone else. Very casually he asked, “So, you want to give it a try? I have two. We can compete against the clock.”