Conquest ~ Indian Hill 3 ~ A Michael Talbot Adventure (9 page)

Beth’s attention snapped back as Max began to answer her. “Our best guess is that it is some sort of pump house for the Quabbin reservoir. There are other rooms back there
”.
H
e
pointed
to a door past the ‘armory’
.
“
M
ostly
they are filled with machinery, we sometimes use them as offices when we don’t want some of the younger kids to hear what we’re talking about, we don’t want to scare them any more than they already are.”

“Where are their
…
yours
…
all of your parents?”

Max seemed to show
the first real display of emotion with Beth’s words, but he did his best to dismiss it with
a
wave of his hand.

“Most of us here are orphans
—
well
,
I guess all of us are now
,
” Max said a little lower. “Wait
—
let me start over. Us original
twelve
were in an orphanage when the aliens attacked, we made it through that part fine
.
I
t was what happened afterwards that made us no longer wards of the state. Our orphanage was attacked
by a huge gang of militia wannabes looking for food. They killed our head mistress and any adult that stood in their way, some of the older kids they took, for the most part they left us kids alone, and I mean all alone.” Beth’s heart stung with pain
for the kids, not only had they started life with a shitty hand
,
God had decided that wasn’t enough and
took even
those cards away.

“Lady
,
don’t look so butt hurt
,
” Max laughed.

“Does it show
t
hat bad?” Beth said as she wiped the precursor to a tear away.

“Lady
,
your face is droopier than
L
ittle
T
’s
stuffed
bulldog,
”
Max said as he pointed to a small child sitting in the upper bunk. As Beth turned to see the little
boy he immediately pulled his superman blanket over his head.

Max stood on his tip toes to whisper in Beth’s ear. “He’s still a little scared, his dad went to work one day and never came home, his mom…
well
,
she ran into the same gang of thugs w
e did, and it wasn’t pretty.
I
f we hadn’t come along a couple of days later he would’ve starved to death over his mom’s body.”

Beth wanted to run over to the little boy and cradle him in her arms and tell him everything would be alright. Max
,
sensing her motives, grabbed her hand.

“Don’t
—
he hasn’t let anyone touch him since we found him. He eats, plays with whatever toy he wants and sleeps, that’s about it. We figure he’ll come around eventually.”

“How old is he?” Beth asked as
L
ittle
T
pulled the blanket back a little to expose one eye.

“Probably four, but he hasn’t told us. Pretty much everyone here has the same kind of story.”

“How many of you are the
re
?”

“Well
,
of me?” Max said pointing to his chest. “Just the one.”
H
e flashed a brilliant smile. Beth couldn’t help but perk up a little. “
A
ll of us, including you now, there’s
twenty-seven
.”

“Twenty-
seven! How do you feed everyone
?
W
hat do you eat?” 

“For a while
,
we lived off the highway gas station a couple a miles up the road, we cleaned that thing out in a couple of days, we had more
D
evil
D
ogs and
R
ing
D
ings and potato chips than we knew what to do with. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m probably the only
eleven
year old that can’t stand junk food anymore
.
M
y headmistress would have been so proud, I used to steal cookies from the pantry whenever I could, I got my hand slapped more than once. But Mrs. Herron was a really nice old lady
.
S
he always
made that place feel like my home. She died protecting me.”

“Max
,
I’m so sorry
,” Beth said
as she stroked the little boys arm.

He shrugged, “
I
t’s over n
ow.
N
ow we look out for ourselves, all of us here are each other’s family and for the most part it works.”

“What do you do for food now that the junk food is gone?”

“Trust me lady, it’s not gone
.
W
e just don’t want to eat it anymore.” He grimaced as he grabbed his belly, just the mere thought of another
T
winkie did that to him now.

Realizing that he had not answered
her question, Max stated simply,
“We trade.”

“Trade what and
with
who?”

“You sure do ask a lot of quest
ions for a grown-
up, most of you guys could care less what a kid is up to.”

“Well
,
for one thing
,
Max
, I’m not like most grown-
ups and another thing, I don’t think that I’m all that old.”

Max laughed. “Yeah
,
I guess you’re not nearly as old as Mrs. Herron.”

“Thanks, I guess
,” Beth said
sardonically. “So really
,
who do you trade with?”

“There are these people, out in Worcester, mostly decent folk just trying to get by
.
T
here are a couple
of jerks in their group
,
but they leave us alone, at least since they tried to follow us a few months back.”

“What happened?” Beth said, trepidation flowing into her voice. The thought of these kids being stalked like she was, scared the hell out of her.

“We shot one of the guys in the ass and they turned tail and rode away so fast I almost peed myself laughing.”

“That’s terrible!” Beth shrieked, “
Y
ou shot someone?”

“It ain’t that bad, it was only a pellet gun, the only thing that got hurt on him was his pride and his ass, I guess
,
” Max said a little loudly, daring Beth to reprimand him for his use of cuss words. Beth said nothing
,
though, she figured th
e
kid had long ago earned the right to use swear words whenever he saw fit. “Besides
,
if he had kept following us he would have gotten a lot worse.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to know where we were located
,
I guess
,
and where our stash was.”

”Your stash
?” she asked
.

Max stood up without a word and motioned Beth to follow him to one of the doors opposite the armory. Beth
walked in and nearly froze upon gazing inside. The room was nearly as big as the room she had just left
and
was crammed with case upon case of different liquors, vodkas, rums, tequilas, beers, everything
.
It was an alcoholic’s
nirvana. “Where the hell did you get all this?” Beth turned to look at Max who had a huge grin spread across his face.

“Well
,
when the shi
—
stuff
really started to go down, we had first gone up into New Hampshire, a bunch of us figured for some stupid reason that New Hampshire was probably safe.” Max’s face dropped a little. “Lost my best friend in New Hampshire
,” Max said
,
apparently
unwilling to elaborate any
more on that subject.
“
Anyway
,
while we were leaving, one of the kids, Sammie, spotted one of those ‘
n
o
g
oody’ stores on the highway.”

“‘
No
g
oody’
?
Oh,
‘no duty’ stores.”

“Yeah
, whatever.
D
o you want to hear my story
?
”

“Yes
,
sorry
,” Beth said
as she did her best to shield a smile.

“Any
way
,
we trade in the pickup truck we’ve got and Sammie gets one of those big tractor trailer trucks, we spent almost a whole day stuffing that thing with everything we could fit in it.”

“Sammie drove the truck?” Beth asked.

“He’s
almost
sixteen
,
” Max answered defiantly.

“And so how did you find this place?” Beth said motioning her arm across the expansive room.

“That’s a whole
‘
nother story
,
lady
,
and don’t be bringing it up to Sammie.” Max looked at her until she answered.

“I promise
,
” Beth answered.

“His big brother, who worked for the parks department or something used to bring him here and do all sorts of awful stuff to him.”

“His big brother? How awful.”

“Not like his real big brother, but like one of those organizations.”

“Oh
B
ig
B
rother
s
,
B
ig
S
ister
s
. How horrible.”

“Yeah
,
he doesn’t talk about it much
.
H
e got his revenge though. The creep was hiding out here when we took over.”

Again Beth waited for him to elaborate but no new information was forthcoming. Beth figured she knew how that story would play out anyway.

“So about once a month, Sammie and a couple of other kids pack up a car we have and head down to Worcester, we trade this stuff for food. Good food like hamburgers and hot dogs and sometimes even deer if their hunters have been lucky. They tried to follow us once and once they tried to make a bad deal with us. But when we didn’t show up for our scheduled monthly runs, I guess they knew better than to screw with us, it’s gone pretty smooth since then.”

“Max
,
you are just a wonder, not only are you surviving
, you kids seem to be thriving.”

“Yeah
,
I like that
,
it sort of rhymes. We have no choice, we have to do it lady, it’s for the little ones
,” Max said
.

CHAPTER EL
E
VEN

I felt healthy but I found myself just staring off and pondering not only my fate but that of the planet that housed all that I loved. I finally decide
d
to get up off my ass and do something about it,
I
asked for and received a
tread
mill and some weight lifting machines. I did my best to not try and wonder where the
y
had been confiscated from
.
I could allay my fears a little with the knowledge that more than likely the
y
didn’t come out of any homeowner
’
s house. The
y
were top notch machines
,
most l
ikely confiscated from a Bally
or a
twenty-four
hour fitness center. I didn’t think there’d be too many people at the gym these days anyway, trying to find ways to feed yourself would definit
ely take precedence over muscle-
building. I lifted weights with a
vengeance
,
but even that was undone by my
single-mindedness on the tread
mill. I ran
three
half marathons
that final week, I possibly was going to die soon
,
but I wouldn’t be
wind
ed when it happened. That earned a laugh, I was starting to get desensitized to the whole fiasco, I knew in my soul I couldn’t beat Drababan one on one, he was the prototypical fighting machine. He was huge, he was skilled, he was faster than me
,
and possibly
smarter
.
A
nd
he had faith, something I had lost somewhere down my long and winding road. I had no desire to make it easy on him, I wasn’t reveling in self-pity, I just knew the outcome. Oh
,
hell yeah
,
I was still going to try
,
but if I had any money I would have put it on him. The treadmill was my solace it kept me sane, or at least a near proximity to sanity
.
W
hen I was on it
, e
verything melted
away
—
Beth, Deb, Paul, Indian Hill, my family
—
they couldn’t keep up with me when I ran. Drababan was going to win, but I was determined to make sure that I was honored higher than any other warrior he had ever encountered. That’s what I was training like a demon for.