Echoes of Family Lost Page 7

  “A bunch of tanks and stuff just came over the hill!” She looked out the other windows. “I think they’re all around us!”

  Now the trench gun was pointed.

  “Just retrieving some equipment, huh?”

  “I never said we were alone,” Carell said easily. “And how did you think we were going to transport what we want?”

  Cummings eyes remained cold and impassive. “But, tanks?”

  “Armored fighting vehicles and scout cars, actually,” Leslie said. “Your sharp-eyed daughter mistook my Dragoons for tanks. You will please note that they’re staying put. Unless they don’t hear from me in about three minutes.”

  Still staring at them, Cumming called out, “Laurie! How many do you count?”

  “Uh,” she replied. “Seven that I can see. If they’re all around us, I guess that many more I can’t.

  “What I said is true, Mister Cummings,” Carell said softly. “We’re just here for some equipment. We load, we leave. You’ll never see us again.”

  The shotgun’s nose went down. Better.

  “Call your men, Mister…Hartmann, was it?” Then, louder. “Clay! Keep them covered while I tell the others.” So at least one more in this building.

  As Leslie raised his radio, Cummings withdrew a few paces and spoke in a low voice into a walkie-talkie. I wonder how many are in these buildings? Carell pulled a thermos from his backpack and gestured at a nearby table. Cummings nodded. The girl stayed where she was and there was no sign of ‘Clay.’ These are careful people.

  “If you’ve a cup…?” Carell asked. Cummings pulled one from a nearby shelf.

  “Honest to God coffee,” he said. “It’s been months! Oh. Here.” He passed them some jerky. Venison, Leslie thought.

  “Are you familiar with this facility that you, your family, and friends, are calling home?” Carell asked.

  “A little. Some kind of experimental nuclear reactor, but really small.” Carell nodded.

  “This was to be a proof of concept; not designed for large power output. It was just about live when everything went to hell. I’d hoped that the facility was still intact.” He nodded over his coffee. “Thank you for that.”

  Cummings shrugged. “We just live here. If I could have sold all this stuff,” he gestured about, “I would have.”

  “Perfectly understandable. Family comes first.”

  Surprised, Cummings nodded at Carell.

  “So, you don’t mind me taking what I want?”

  “No….” He said slowly. “But you did mention being willing to pay…?”

  Carell smiled thinly.

  “I will not pay you for property that’s not yours.” Don’t blow this, you idiot, Leslie thought. “However, I am more than happy to compensate you for your time. And the chain. More than happy.”

  “Sounds alright to me.” Cummings said. “Help yourselves.”

  That drew a sound from above. The girl snorted.

  “Callie’s gonna be pissed to hear that!”

  The three men walked towards the fourth building. Leslie had radioed for the transport trucks to start in, covered by two scout cars. The other units stayed where they were; some pointed in, some out.

  “…when the mobs stopped killing each other in Columbus,” Cummings was saying, “they started moving out into the suburban, then rural areas. Like a bunch of damned locusts. Burning everything they couldn’t take or eat. The farms along our stretch of road had about a day’s warning before they came down our valley. It was something of a fighting retreat until Bob Parks remembered this place.”

  “And it’s you and the others that spread the rumors about contamination?” Leslie asked.

  “Yeah.” Cummings smiled for the first time. “My wife’s idea, actually.”

  “A good one,” he said. “Always better to attack the mind than the body.”

  Carell opened the door to building four. Unlike the other, this had fewer skylights. Beyond the small open office area just at the door it was dark. A gas lantern stood on the corner of one of the desks.

  “From a comment like that, and all that hardware outside, I’m guessing you’re military?” Cummings asked. Carell lit the lantern and said he was going to take a look around.

  “Careful,” Cummings said before he passed through a door labeled ‘No Admittance!’ with radiation trefoils on it. “There’s junk everywhere in there.”

  “Perfect!” Carell smiled. Crazy.

  “To answer your question, yes.” Leslie said. Let his crazy boss stumble around in the dark next to a reactor. “We were in the 16th Cavalry, at Fort Knox. When everything began breaking down, we sort of struck off on our own.”

  Cumming nodded. He didn’t seem to hold that against him. “And now?”

  “We did have a nice arrangement at Bardstown, Kentucky,” Leslie continued. “Until that fellow in there came along and shook us up. Now we’re here to move him and his stuff to… wherever he wants us to.”

  “What did he do to – ”

  There was a crash of metal. Carell shouted, “What the HELL have you done! Uff!” Another crash.

  Leslie was through the door in an instant. His small flashlight from his pocket in his left hand, his pistol in his right. He could just faintly see light ahead.

  “Carell! Are you okay?” Nothing. Then: “No.”

  Around one pile and another, Leslie came around a huge pump to see Carell against a control panel with his hands up. The lithe figure in front of him held a long black dagger to his throat. He raised his pistol.

  “I’m right behind you with a pistol. Lower your knife and live.” Leslie called. No one moved. He heard Cummings come up behind him.

  “Put it down, Callie.” He said.

  The blade came down slowly. Leslie now realized she was a girl. She turned, squinting her Oriental eyes into his flashlight. Her round face betrayed none of her thoughts.

  With her knife still out, she looked to Cummings.

  “Who are these guys, and what do they want with Pookie?”

  What?

  Leslie, Cummings, and the girl stood in the lit office area. Carell continued his assessment. Her knife was back in its sheath at her waist, on a tool belt that divided her overalls. Her hands were dirty but not greasy. Her long hair, brown as to be almost black, was pulled back with a band. She must have been about five feet six, or thereabouts. Thin, but who wasn’t these days, but in surprisingly good shape. Nineteen or twenty, he guessed. Cute, too, he thought.

  “Sorry about the misunderstanding…” Cummings was saying.

  “Some guy starts yelling and grabs me in a dark room, what else am I going to do?” She said flatly. She had a point.

  “On behalf of my employer, I apologize for that, miss.” Leslie said. “He can be bit, er, absorbed in his work.”

  She scowled, her brows knitting together.

  “His work?” She looked again towards Cummings. “Who are these people?”

  Just then they hear the rumble of the motors. Going outside, they saw the transports entering the compound. One scout car led them. The other parked at the gate. The light rain was now little more than a mist. Now her face showed shock.

  “You… you’re taking Pookie!” That’s twice now….

  “I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “Pookie?”

  Cummings had to laugh at that. “It’s what she took to calling the reactor. She dotes on it.”

  “But why that name?”

  Her face fell back to its reserved blank look. “Because it’s cute.”

  Carell took that moment to step out and join them. He looked bewildered.

  “Who… how did…?” He stopped and started over. “That thing is further on than I was told! Who’s been doing that?”

  Cummings looked puzzled. “So far as I know, Callie’s the only one that ever comes to this building.”

  Carell stared at the girl.

  “You. You did all that?” She held his look and shrugged.

  “What’s up
?” Leslie asked. Carell shook his head.

  “It’s almost ready to be activated.” He pointed. “She somehow finished prepping it. I’ve got to have her!”

  Her hand went right to her knife.

  “Like hell, pervert.”

  Leslie had to laugh at that. “It’s okay, miss! He doesn’t mean that in the way you’re thinking.” At least he better not. He looked to Carell. “You said ‘almost ready.’ What does that mean?”

  “It’s can’t start itself. It needed power to get the pumps started and the control systems up.” He raised his hands. “After that, it’s self sustaining.”

  “How much power?” Carell considered that. Ah. He saw what Leslie was getting at. “One of your Dragoons should do it. This unit just isn’t that large.”

  He smiled. “And there’d be a colony of the modern world right here. If,” he looked significantly at Cummings, “there are people willing to defend it.”

  “You mean that you can get that thing running,” Cummings asked, “giving us electric power?”

  “Enough for a village of about five hundred, yes.” Carell was thinking now. “I’ll have to train you as quickly as I can; I want to be out of here before it starts snowing….” He looked at Callie.

  “She could probably run it, but I want her with us.” There went her eyebrows again.

  “The young lady is staying wherever she wants, Carell.” Leslie said. He looked at Cummings. “Time is short; we can do this now and leave in a month, or retrieve what we came here for and be gone tomorrow. Your call, but we need an answer by nightfall.”

  Cummings pulled at his beard. “I… I’ll get everyone together. Yes. Excuse me.” He pulled out his walkie-talkie as he moved off. Leslie went to the transport and told the men to get with Carell and start loading. Turning, he was surprised to see that the girl, Callie, had followed him.

  “Who are you people?” She asked.

  “Me? I’m just the hired hand to get him,” he wave in Carell’s direction, “where he needs to be.” She blinked as she took that in.

  “So, who’s he?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. But it seems he and some like him are trying to re-boot modern civilization.” He paused. “And I meant what I said: we’ll not force you to go anywhere. You can stay here with, ah, Pookie, and the rest of your family –”

  She stopped him with a sharp look. “My family abandoned me. I was staying with my friend Laurie when everything fell apart. The Cummings have been taking care of me.” She looked at the ground. “I guess I don’t belong anywhere.”

  He sighed. The Breakup claims another victim.

  “Hey,” he said. “Let’s start over. I’m Leslie Hartmann.” He held out his hand.

  “Better than you pointing a gun at me with it,” she said, taking it.

  “I’m Callie Barrett.”

  They stayed a month.

  There turned out to be six families living at the compound. Leslie and his men set about training them as best they could while Callie instructed Carell as to the changes she’d made. When he’d asked, she said that she’d always been good at math and had a knack for puzzles. ‘Pookie’ was a combination of the two.

  Leslie also suspected it was a way to keep herself occupied and not thinking about what might happen next.

  After two weeks, they started the reactor. It was Carell’s show at that point: first getting it up, running, and stable; then, training a cadre to keep it up, running, and stable. That had left both Leslie and Callie with time on their hands. Time that they seemed to spend more and more with one another.

  As the day of departure grew nearer – and Carell increasingly concerned about the weather – some of Leslie’s men, from central Ohio, asked if they could stay. With an armored car. Thinking about that, Leslie knew he’d still have enough strength to get them to Knoxville, and leaving such behind would be a huge deterrent to wreckers and raiders. Cummings was overjoyed at the news.

  On Thanksgiving Day, they loaded the last of their gear and went to their vehicles. Just to his scout car, Leslie saw Callie come out of building two, with a bag over each shoulder. She walked across the muddy ground to him.

  “I’m coming with you.” In her steady, quiet voice.

  “Excellent!” Carell called. “You’ll be a great addition! I’ll make room in my hummer—”

  There went her eyebrows again, thought Leslie.

  “Not you, pervert!” She took one more step, not quiet touching him.

  “I’m coming with you,” she whispered.

  Chapter 7

  The eastern sky was a pale rose as Orloff slowly walked back to the wagon, not wanting to awaken Lily. Their third morning after crossing the Mississippi. Camped in small forest outside of the highway loop, just past Collierville, there had been no signs of any windmills, nor any other power sources. And with Fausta having to return fire from that sniper near the Memphis airport, her power reserves were quiet low.

  He carefully leaned over the wagon’s edge: Fausta in her customary position, glasses up for night, and Lily huddled next to her under several blankets. Both her and Orloff’s breaths visible in the chill of the early morning.

  “You dote on her,” Fausta said quietly.

  “As does your entire family,” he replied in his gravelly voice as low as he could. “We all have our reasons. And shouldn’t you be conserving power?”

  “Operating this speaker at this range is fine, Mister Orloff. We still making for Corinth?” He nodded, knowing she could see just fine in this light.

  “The old US72 is straight, flat, and sparsely populated. I’m hoping to find an abandoned factory or farm with a generator, for you, Miss Fausta.”

  She opened her jaw just slightly. Next to her, Lily shifted and gripped at Fausta arm.

  “…Ai…” she murmured. Orloff grimaced at that.

  “It’s alright, Mister Orloff. She and I are friends, but I don’t think even you appreciate the bond between Lily and my sister. I just….” She trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “I just wonder how everyone is doing. I wonder how I’m doing.”

  Fausta had explained that when they first started into southern former Arkansas: the consciousness that her android body supported was only a fraction of the entirety of her mind. When she’d reacquired signal in Pine Bluff, she actually had to get to know herself again. Orloff had wondered if there would be a point where she would be unable to reintegrate herself, essentially creating a new person. Fausta had said the totality of her would simply absorb the android’s personality. Lily laughed at his reaction; ‘they’re not like us!’ she had said.

  “I’m sure everyone is doing fine, Miss Fausta.” He replied, leaning forward to touch Lily’s leg. “Lily, it’s morning, wake up.”

  “Huh?” She said groggily.

  She was still blinking at the morning sun as they clattered down the road to the east. As usual, Orloff tried to look everywhere at once for possible threats. Lily rubbed at her eyes. Blinked, rubbed them again. Is that…?

  “Hey, Orloff,” she said pointing, “you see those?”

  He squinted through his monocle. Just over that tree line, maybe five miles away….

  “Windmills. I count six, with two turning,” he said. “What do you see?”

  “…five, six. Yeah. Two moving.” Lily reached back and squeezed Fausta’s shoulder. “A power source, friend!”

  Orloff proceeded with his typical caution. If they were working, there was a very good chance that someone was defending them. As they passed a rusted ‘Welcome to Mississippi!’ sign, he mused that perhaps they’d been built here on the border to show off, rather than generate electricity. Another idiocy paid for by debt and fiat currency. Of course, they were all paying for that now.

  A gravel road led off the highway to the small wind farm. There was a chain link fence stretching around it, but the gate was wide open. Inside, he could see three buildings. One looked like an office, so the others must be controls
. He brought the cart to a halt about twenty yards from the gate.

  “Hear anything, Miss Fausta?” He asked.

  “There are at least two—” Just then the door to the office building opened. Two men with rifles strolled out. Dirty tee shirts and faded jeans. Orloff thought they’d not had a bath in a week or more. Not exactly the types you’d expect to see caring for a relic of modern civilization. They walked to the open gate.

  “Let’s be on guard here,” he said under his breath.

  “What’s you be wantin’?” The shorter of the two called.

  Orloff slowly pointed at the windmills. “I’ve got some batteries I need to recharge. Those things work?”

  “Pretty much,” the shorter one replied, his eyes sliding to Lily. “But it ain’t free.”

  Orloff nodded. “We can pay.” The taller one spat some tobacco juice into the dusty road.

  “How? We ain’t takin’ no paper!” He said.

  “Would you take minted silver coins?” Orloff asked. The other two looked for a moment at each other.

  “That’s a good start,” the short one said, again with a glance at Lily. “Why don’t you bring you’s wagon over here to this building.” He waved at the one just beyond the office.

  “Much obliged.” Orloff started Clyde forwards at a slow walk. As they came abreast of the two men, the taller one exclaimed, “Hey! Another woman! You a slaver or sumthin’?”

  So slavery has been reintroduced in this region, he thought. Wonderful.

  “Not at all. That’s my wife; she was taking a break back there. This is my niece, Lily.”

  “Pretty,” said the short one from her side. Orloff stopped the wagon where they indicated. Lily had her hand on her pistol while Orloff climbed down, then she followed. Fausta stood and leapt down.

  The taller one took a look into the wagon. “Just what is it you gonna charge up?” He asked.

  “That,” said Orloff slowly, “is not your concern.”

  No one said anything for a few moments, then the taller one laughed.

  “That’s fine! You take what you needs on in there,” he said with forced humor, “but since we’s don’t gets many visitors, you can leave your niece out here to chat!”