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Message-ID: <27430asstr$974049004@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Al Steiner <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner-Chapter 4 (Mf) 3/5
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:10:04 -0500
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AFTERMATH
CHAPTER 4 PART 3/5
Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Missing pieces can be found at www.storiesonline.net



About six miles to the southwest of the bridge, on the wilderness side
of the canyon, the two hunters that Brett, Chrissie, and Jason had
encountered two days before were on their last legs.  They had long
since consumed the two cans of turkey chili they had been given and the
brief surge of energy that meager offering had provided was long since
used up.  In desperation they had tried eating a few of the dead
squirrels that they had found lying around, cutting them up and peeling
the stringy, foul smelling meat from the bones.  Since they had no
means of making a fire in the relentless rainstorm they tried to choke
the horrible tasting chunks down raw, but neither had been able to
force it past the back of their throat without triggering
uncontrollable vomiting.

They had staggered on, making increasingly worse progress as the hours
ticked by, lugging their hunting rifles with them more out of instinct
than anything else.  Both had started to think that maybe those rifles
would be used pretty soon to simply end it all.  One quick pull of the
trigger while the barrel was placed in the mouth would instantly quiet
the painful rumbling in their stomachs, instantly end the black fatigue
that pulled at them incessantly.  Neither had suggested this aloud as
of yet but both knew the suggestion was coming.  Both also knew it
would more than likely be agreed upon than not once it was brought up.
Maybe they could shoot each other at the same time?  If suicide really
were a mortal sin, wouldn't the simultaneous mercy killing of each
other be a loophole around that particular prohibition?

"Let's rest a minute Jack, " Rod, the older of the two said wearily.
They were just about to start up another rise.  It was only a shallow
one, no more than fifty feet up at a gentle angle, but to Rod it looked
nearly as formidable an obstacle as Everest.

"Yeah," Jack agreed, breathing hard.  "A rest will be good."  He
slumped to the ground, not caring that he'd landed right in the middle
of a patch of poison oak.

They did not talk, they did not look at each other, they did not really
even think as they sat there, their bodies drawing on whatever non-
essential tissue it could find to burn for energy and propel them
forward.  Their mouths hung open listlessly, their sunken eyes staring
at nothing.  They did not even hear the cracking of branches or the
squishing of boots through mud as three men crested the top of the hill
above them.

All three carried assault rifles and wore camouflage clothing from head
to foot.  They had sidearms on their hips, heavy packs upon their
backs, and military helmets upon their heads.  The first man to spot
the two hunters below them gave a hand signal that Brett would have
been familiar with.  He had taught the same signal to Chrissie and
Jason.  The two men to the rear halted in place for a moment and then
spread out to the sides, their rifles pointed downward, beads drawn on
the two men.  The men to the rear then passed more signals to a larger
group behind them.  This group of thirty, who were all armed and
equipped as the front three, spread out to the flanks and found cover.

The man on the point at first thought he was dealing with a couple of
dead bodies, so slack were they, so motionless.  It was only the lack
of any mutilation caused by scavengers that convinced him that these
two just might be still alive.  Whatever they were, they did not look
like they presented much of a threat.  He waved the two men to his
sides forward and began a slow advance of his own, closing to within
ten feet of the men before they finally looked up.

Both blinked at them, taking in their features without fear or even
much surprise.

"Who the hell are you guys?" asked Rod wearily.

"Placer County Militia," said the point man, his rifle never wavering
from Jack's chest.  "Who are you?  Hunters?"

"Yeah," Jack agreed.  "What's the Placer County Militia?  You the army,
or what?"

"We are now," the point man said cryptically.  "We are now.  Anyone
else out there?"

"No, not with us anyway."

He nodded, his eyes neither believing nor disbelieving.  He pulled a
small walkie-talkie from one of the pockets on his webbing and keyed
it.  "Two hunters armed with rifles," he said into it.  "They look
harmless enough.  They say there's no one else out there and I don't
see any signs that there might be."

"Right," said a tinny voice from the speaker.  "Hold in place.  I'll
send second and fourth squads out in front of you to check things out.
I'll be down in a minute."

"Right."

A moment later came the sound of multiple people moving through the
trees on both sides of them.  A moment after that, 3 men crested the
hill above.  Their carried their rifles over their shoulders, their
stride normal instead of cautious.  The one in front was about thirty
years old, clean shaven, with a few locks of reddish hair protruding
through the front of his helmet.  He stopped just behind the point man
and took in the two hunters.

"I'm Lieutenant Bracken," he said at last, "leader of the third platoon
of the Placer County Militia Group.  Who're you two?"

They told him their names, both speaking quietly.  He then asked them
how they came to be in the woods, which they also answered, explaining
about their annual hunting trip.  He nodded at their words, showing no
other reaction to it.

"Either one of you have any military experience?" Bracken asked them
next.

"I was in the coast guard," Ron said hesitantly.  Jack simply shook his
head.

"The coast guard," Bracken repeated, obvious disgust in his voice.  He
shook his head a little.  "NRA members?"

They both nodded.

"Good," Bracken said.  "That's a point in your favor.  Where you
heading to?"

"We were working our way to the Auburn bridge," said Rod.  "We wanted
to see if it was intact.  We couldn't get across at Garden Hill."

"Oh?" Bracken said, interested.  "Is the bridge down there?"

"No," Rod said.  He then explained about how it was guarded and how the
townspeople would shoot at anyone who tried to cross it.

"Interesting," Bracken said.  "Very interesting."

"It sounds like they got the same kind of set-up going up there as we
do," the point man opined, spitting a spray of brown tobacco juice to
the ground.

"I don't know who would be running it," Bracken said.  "There ain't no
militia members up there far as I know.  That's more of a rich town,
full of fuckin' bureaucrats and shit.  I know those people didn't have
the know-how to do something like that."

"Somebody did."

Bracken nodded.  "Sure sounds like it, don't it?"

"Uh... excuse me?" Rod said.  "Did you say that you're from Auburn?"

"That's right," Bracken agreed.  "We're in charge of Auburn now.  Got
it all organized up and running nice and efficient-like.  Colonel
Barnes is in charge of it."

"Colonel Barnes?"

Bracken nodded.  "He's the head of the militia.  We keep Auburn fed and
running and protect it from scavengers.  What did you two do before the
comet?"

"What?" Ron said, confused by the abrupt change of subject.

"We need people with skills in town," Bracken said.  "What did y'all do
for a livin?"

"Oh," Ron said, getting it now.  "We were both electrical engineers for
Intel."

Bracken scowled a little.  "What the fuck's that mean?  You computer
nerds?"

"No, no," Ron replied vehemently.  "We were in charge of power usage
and wiring and all that.  We made sure that there was enough power to
run all the equipment."

"I see," Bracken said, although it was fairly obvious that he really
didn't.  "And y'all know how to use guns, right?"

"Right," they both agreed, sensing where this was heading.  Could there
be salvation in these people?  Granted, they were not the most savory
characters in existence - in fact, they were downright scary when you
came down to it - but beggars couldn't be choosers, could they?

"Give 'em some food," Bracken told one of his men after a moment's
thought on the matter.

A pack was opened and two army issue MRE's were tossed down to them.
They immediately grabbed hold of them and began trying to rip them open.

"You need to use a knife," Bracken said, somewhat amused.  While they
both began reaching for their hunting knives he looked at his cohorts.
"Let's leave third squad here with them and get 'em rested up and ready
to move.  Then we'll have them take 'em back to Auburn and talk to the
Colonel."

"What if there's trouble in Foresthill?" the other man asked.  "Will we
be able to handle it short a squad."

"We'll be able to handle it," Bracken said confidently.  "You know what
our mission is."



+++++


While Chrissie and Jason remained in the community center building to
get cleaned up and fed, Jessica and Paul led Brett around town.
Jessica had objected to taking him with them while they went and
discussed his fate with the various members of the town on the basis
that they would be giving away their "secrets" which he might use
against them after he was kicked out.  But Paul had vetoed this idea
telling Jessica that she knew as well as he did that the townspeople
were going to vote to allow them to stay and that they might as well
give their newest member and future security chief a tour.

"Security chief?" Jessica had said, blanching.

"Well sure," Paul replied.  "Isn't that the whole basis of inviting him
to stay in the first place?  Remember that we're not a charity.  He'll
have to work for his room and board."

Jessica, who seemed to sense a great deal of her power slipping away by
the minute, looked physically ill at this prospect.  She favored Brett
with an evil look but said nothing more on the subject.

They started within the community center itself.  It was a 15,000
square foot, two-story facility stock full of rooms of all shapes,
sizes, and purposes.  Most of these rooms, no matter what their
original purpose, had been utilized for storage of supplies.  Food was
the primary stock, mostly canned or dry goods.  There were literally
thousands of cans of soups, vegetables, beans, fruits, meats, and
anything else that could be stuffed into an airtight piece of tin.
There were also glass jars of all shapes and sizes as well as stacks
and stacks of flour, sugar, rice, and cornmeal.

"We pretty much cleaned out the grocery store of everything that
doesn't spoil and moved it over here where we can defend it better,"
Paul told Brett as they moved from room to room.  "It was a lot of work
and took the better part of three days to accomplish, even with
vehicles, but it's a good thing we did.  Every day we find outsiders
sneaking into the store to see if anything's in there."

"Is there anything in there?" Brett asked.

"Rotting meat and spoiled dairy products mostly.  Also some vegetables
that we couldn't store long-term.  We took some of the meat and either
dried it or salted it.  It's not the best you've ever had, but it's
edible."

"It's hard to believe that all of this is not enough," Brett said,
looking at the mountains of food.

"Hard to believe but true," Paul replied.  "We've done the math more
than once and update our estimations once a week.  At the rate we're
consuming it we've got maybe two, three months worth, depending on how
severely we ration as we get lower.  We try to keep upbeat about it,
but we all know that if we don't secure a food supply of some sort,
we're going to starve."

"So you see," Jessica said, her voice uncharacteristically humble, "why
we aren't too fond of bringing in outsiders here?"

He nodded, making an uncharacteristic assuagence of his own.  "I guess
something will have to be done about food, won't it?  Are you working
on anything?"

Paul shrugged a little.  "We've rigged up some lights in one of the
rooms and we're trying to use them to grow vegetables with.  We got the
seeds from the little garden display at the store and we power the
lights by using a lawnmower engine to turn a car alternator."

"Smart," Brett said, impressed.

"Yeah," Paul said.  "One of my ideas if I do say so myself, but its
just not enough.  We don't have enough gasoline to expand the program
and what we've planted, assuming it does grow, won't be able to extend
us by much."

"How much gasoline DO you have?" Brett wanted to know.

"We don't know exactly," he replied.  "We figure that the tanks over at
the gas station have close to six or seven hundred gallons in them.
There's a little bit of water contamination of course, but luckily,
that sinks to the bottom and we've figured out how to keep any more
from getting in.  There's also what's in all of the gas tanks of the
vehicles that were at people's houses.  We haven't done any kind of
count, but that might be as much as five hundred gallons there.   Who
knows?"

"We should find out," Brett suggested.  "And make it a priority."

"We?" Jessica said icily.

"Or you," Brett allowed, not bothering to look at her.  "I'm just
trying to offer suggestions here, okay?  Don't take them the wrong way."

They moved on to the armory.  It was located in what had once been the
male locker room adjacent to the basketball court, directly across the
hall from the bathing area.  Stacked neatly on shelves in the shower
stall were about sixty rifles, mostly of the hunting variety but with a
few .22s mixed in.  Below them were twelve assault rifles of varying
design: 5 AR-15s, 5 AK-47s, and 2 H&Ks.  Next to this were nearly fifty
shotguns ranging from simple skeet guns to 12 gauge Remington police
models.  On the bottom two shelves were the handguns: everything from
.22 target pistols to .40 caliber police issues to .44 magnum "Dirty
Harry" guns.  There was even, wonder of wonders, a chrome-plated .44
automag that had probably cost close to a thousand dollars before the
comet.

"Damn," Brett said, looking at all of the firepower.  "Did all of this
come from town?"

"You betcha," Paul said.  "It was a big part of the psyche of the
people that bought houses up here.  Kind of a "my dick is bigger than
yours" thing for the yuppie mountain folks.  Most of these guns have
hardly been fired and their previous owners probably had no use for
them whatsoever.  I mean, nobody burglarized houses up here and most of
the men didn't have time to go hunting or target shooting, but they HAD
to have them all the same thank God."

"I'll have you know," Jessica put in, "that MY husband used to go
target shooting on a regular basis.  He was quite good too."

Brett and Paul ignored her.  "And how about ammo?" Brett asked.  "A
gun's kind of useless without it."

"Well luckily for us," Paul said, "we're reasonably well set up in that
category as well."  He led him around to another shelf where box after
box of bullets of every conceivable category were neatly stacked.
"Most of the men who owned the guns had obscene amounts of rounds for
them as well.  Why did they need two hundred rounds for their hunting
rifle or their magnum?  Who the hell knows?  Who the hell cares?  We
have it now."

"The AR-15s," Brett said immediately.  "How many rounds for those?"

"Let me check," he said, walking over to a clipboard that was hanging
from a piece of string on the end of the shelf.  It had several papers
clipped to it, which he consulted.  "That would be the 5.56 mm jacketed
rounds, right?"

"Right," Brett said, "the same thing that the M-16s fire."

His finger traced up and down the page for a moment.  Finally he found
the entry he sought.  "Well well," he said.  "We seem to be rather
wealthy in that regards.   We have 24 boxes of that."

"You're shittin' me," Brett said.

"Nope," Paul assured him.  "This inventory is done daily."

"Twelve hundred rounds," Brett whispered, already formulating the
basics of his town defense now that he had heard that.  "Glory
hallelujah.  What about reloading equipment?  Do you have any of that?"

Paul looked a little confused for a moment.  "I'm not sure," he said.
"If someone in town had any, we probably left it where it was.  Nobody
here knows how to reload as far as I know.  At least nobody suggested
that be something we look for during our scavenger hunt."

"We need to find out.  Reloading equipment will be more valuable than
gold.  If there's an adequate powder and primer supply, we can extend
our ammunition supply by maybe half, especially on the high value
weapons like the rifles."

Jessica gave him a sour look.  "Exactly what kind of conflict do you
think we'll be fighting here?" she asked him.  "I've told you, there's
nothing but scavengers and thieves out there.  Even if those so-called
bikers you told us about show up, we wouldn't use up all of our ammo
fighting thirty men."

"You'd be surprised how fast you burn up your rounds during a battle,"
Brett told her.  "And I'd be surprised if those bikers were the worst
we had to worry about out there."

 From the supply rooms they went to the main gathering area of the
community center: the basketball court.  In here a chow line had been
set up and breakfast was in full swing.  Cafeteria tables were sitting
on the polished surface of the court and each one was filled with
people eating the course of the morning - pancakes and orange juice -
from a variety of fine looking china.  At each table there were two or
three men, three or four small children, and eight or ten women
shoveling food into their mouths and talking, occasionally sipping from
their glasses.  Each man was very obviously the focus of attention for
the group around him and Brett saw that not a single one actually went
up to get his plate himself.  In every instance a woman did it for
him.  And in every instance where a woman disappeared from a man's side
to accomplish this task, some other woman would immediately home in and
try to engage him in conversation.  They weren't standing there more
than two minutes before a fight erupted near the back of the building
when a woman came back to find that someone else had actually taken her
seat.

"Christ," Paul muttered, shaking his head sadly as he watched the
verbal battle turn physical when the first woman pushed the second one
to the floor.  "Here we go.  The first of the day."  He tromped over
quickly, Brett and Jessica trailing him.   By the time he got there the
fight had degenerated to the two women rolling around on the floor,
scratching and trying to punch each other.  The onlookers in the
immediate vicinity stopped what they were doing to watch.  Some cheered
for either one or the other women.  It reminded Brett strongly of high
school.

"Goddammit!" Paul yelled loudly, standing back away from them and
making no move to actually pull them apart.  "Jenny, Lisa, knock that
shit off right now.  Break it up!"

They immediately did as he said, separating from each other and
standing.  Both started pleading their cases to him.

"This slut was trying to home in on Steve," the first women, who had
blood dripping from her nose, yelled.

"I didn't do anything!" the second protested.  Her hair was tattered
and torn in a few places.  "I just sat down to eat and she came over
and attacked me!  And don't you be calling me no slut, you bitch!"

"You ARE a slut!  Just because you don't have a man you're always
trying to take someone else's!"

"Enough of this shit!" Paul yelled.  "Do you hear me!  Enough!"

They both looked at him sheepishly, refusing to meet each other's eyes.

"What have I told you about fighting?" he asked.  "About scratching and
breaking the skin?  For Christ sake, what if you get blood poisoning?
Do you see any doctors around here?  Do you want to die or cause
someone else to die?  We don't have enough antibiotics to be wasting
them on people beating each other's ass!"

They both turned their eyes downward, looking at the floor.

"Kitchen detail for both of you," he said.  "Three days worth,
breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

"Paul!" both of them protested at once.

"That's my decision!" he said.  "If you don't like it, file an appeal
with the freakin' judge.  You can start with dishes after breakfast
today and if there are any more fights between you two, I swear to god
I'll put you on house arrest!  Do you understand?"

"Yes," they both muttered.

"Good," he said.  "Now finish your breakfast and get to work."

"And who is this?" the second woman, the one who had been pushed down
asked, her eyes locking onto Brett.  Immediately her face went from
pouting to keen interest.  "Do we have a visitor?"

"You know damn well who this is," Paul said.  "Don't try to pretend
this entire room wasn't just talking about him.  This is Brett.  He's
kind of applying for citizenship with us."

"Hi," she said, stepping forward and holding out her hand to him.  She
smoothed back her mussed hair and then put a big, almost seductive
smile on her face.  "I'm Lisa.  I heard you used to be a cop."

"Nice to meet you," Brett said, taking her hand and giving it a quick
shake.  It was soft and dainty, the kind of hand that was not used to
doing much work.  "Yes, I was a cop not too long ago."

Before Lisa had a chance to make another reply there was suddenly a
swarm of women surrounding her, jostling each other to try to get close
to him.  Multitudes of names were thrown at him as they all tried to
introduce themselves at once.  A multitude of smiles was thrown at him
as they all tried to attract his attention.

"Ladies, ladies!" Paul said.  "Please.  Give the man a little room.
Why don't you all go back to your seats and Brett here will come around
and talk to each table, okay?  I'll introduce him and explain what he
wants from us and what he can do for us."

"I know what he can do for ME," one voice proclaimed boldly.  Brett was
unable to see whom it had belonged to.

"Please," Paul reiterated.  "To your seats.  Everyone will get a chance
to meet him."

Reluctantly they retreated, shuffling back to their tables.  Brett
noticed that the men were all looking at him as well, although not with
hostility, as he would have thought.  They seemed to be more amused
than anything else.  A few of them even winked at him before going back
to their breakfasts.

"Well," Paul said.  "Shall we begin?"

"I guess so."

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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