Age of Mystics (Saga of Mystics Book 1) (14 page)

Meyer moved his men down the street. They had been patrolling on Fine’s orders for days now, and he was a little annoyed by it. He hadn’t even heard it from Fine, but from that little weasel, Damiano. It really irked Zane Meyer to take orders from a guy who washed out of the Army a few years back. Meyer had been Damiano’s squad leader in the sand, he was a screw-up of epic proportions, and somehow he was now in charge of things for Fine.

Meyer, on the other hand, was a great soldier. He had led his men to setting up, and clearing, the entire perimeter. It was now at nine square blocks, with the original block in the center. Surely Fine would see this was his, and his men’s doing, not that prick Damiano. Up ahead, his point man held up the sign for halt and everyone took positions more appropriate to squad maneuvers than close combat, but what could he expect, that is how they were trained. Meyer ran to the front.

“What’s up?” he said as he knelt next to Griggs.

Griggs pointed up about a block and Meyer saw the movement. Using hand motions, Zane got them to spread out and move slowly toward the building where they saw movement. He could feel the power in his men, somehow Fine had given them some of the power he had in their morning trainings, and these guys were itching to try it out. Two young men walked out of a small building just ahead of them.

“Halt,” Meyer called out, and the guys turned toward them.

The one closest looked right at Meyer and said, “Man, fuck you. I don’t have to halt for no one.” He turned to his friend and laughed, but his friend wasn’t laughing. Meyer’s men moved forward. His point man grabbed the guy in front and swung him around, the guy suddenly had a knife in his hand and he buried it into the gut of Griggs, who immediately grabbed his stomach and fell down. If Meyer could have stopped his men, he wouldn’t have. In the wars, they had always had rules of engagement, but Fine had taken those away. He told them that if someone attacked, it was their duty to put that person down. His men did just that. The guy was hit by power kicks from the two closest soldiers and then beaten to death by about five others. The rest caught the man’s friend and proceeded to give him much the same. The guy cried out for mercy and Meyer held up his hand to stop them.

“What did you say?” Meyer asked him.

“Please,” the man gurgled through a busted jaw and missing teeth, the blood flowing freely from his mouth, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Wrong. You came into downtown with this man and robbed our store. You are a criminal and will now meet your just punishment.” Meyer nodded to his nearest soldier, who stomped on the man’s knee with the power of his new found ability. The knee was liquefied in that moment and the guy yelled out before the soldier stomped his boot into the man’s throat, silencing him. The men all laughed and patted that warrior on the back.

“Okay, form up,” Meyer called out, “mark Griggs so the villagers can collect his body, and let’s get back to patrol.”

Griggs wasn’t dead yet, but they had no way to help him with a stomach wound. He was going to die eventually, and there was no reason to waste resources on him. One of the men tagged him with an orange road-worker vest, and the group moved on.

They rarely lost anyone, but Griggs wasn’t the first. Clearing the camp area was grueling. They were attacked by villagers, and occasionally someone who exhibited powers. Most of the time, Fine wanted them to bring him anyone who exhibited powers. Sometimes that wasn’t possible. Corcoran had been power kicked off a fourth floor balcony by a person they took to be a villager, now that person who killed one of his men, was being trained by Fine to be a Tiger. Meyer did not like Fine’s men, they were misfits. They just had more ability with this new energy thing than the rest, but Meyer’s men were better soldiers. He knew that Fine was a US Army Major, so he knew that he recognized this. There must be a reason for his choices. All Meyer knew is that he didn’t want to mess with Fine. That guy’s powers were downright scary, and he had a history of how angry and compulsive the man could be. When they had served in the sand, Fine had been so mad at him for not stopping another squad leader that he nearly killed him. That was before all of these powers started to manifest themselves.

His team covered two more blocks and their duty was almost complete, they just had to patrol back to meet the next squad on duty. On the way back, his new point man dropped and held up his fist.

Meyer ran up to the front whispering, “Let’s not lose another soldier, keep your heads about you.”

When he reached the front, he didn’t have to ask what was up. Off to the south, just beyond a turn he could not see from where he was, they could see buildings burning, a lot of them. There were also people running around up there, too far away to hear anything, but Meyer could see them. This was a turn of events that he needed to tell Fine.

“Double time,” Meyer told his men, “we are headed back to camp to tell Sensei about this.” He didn’t really like calling Fine Sensei. He much preferred his military rank of major, but most of the men had begun to call him Sensei and it had stuck. Meyer thought it meant teacher but he wasn’t sure.

Meyer and his men ran in the direction of camp, making more of a bee line than the route he had originally planned for his patrol. They slowed when he saw their replacements patrolling. Meyer ran up to their squad leader.

“Looters and burners about a click and a half past the patrol area, south, southeast. I need to run and tell the Major,” Meyer told him, “You guys cover that area to make sure they aren’t heading this way. I will make sure you have reinforcements inbound.”

The other squad leader nodded, “Move, move, move.” His men took off at a run in the direction Meyer had sent them.

See, that is a soldier,
he thought and turned his men toward the camp. In less than ten minutes, they entered the perimeter and another five brought him face to face with Fine.

“Major,” he began, “there are looters and burners about a click and a half past the patrol area. It looks like a bunch of villagers running around too.”

“Could you tell if they were headed this way?” Fine asked, seemingly unconcerned.

“Didn’t look like it.” Meyer replied.

Eric Fine nodded, “okay, hold here a second. Miles!” he called out for that sniveling twerp, Damiano. The man came running up and bowed, Meyer always forgot that part.

“Yes, sensei?” Miles said.

“Send a squad of watchers to the south, where Meyer tells you. We do not respond unless we have to. Let the others hurt each other. Double the patrols.”

“Yes, sensei.” Damiano turned to gather squads and Eric looked at Meyer.

Meyer bowed, “Anything further, Maj…Sensei?” he asked.

A short grin passed the leader’s face. “No, Meyer. Good work, though, get your men some rest. And join us at the Tiger meeting tomorrow.”

“Yes, sensei.” Meyer said, and bowed again. Fine had noticed him, and he was one step closer to replacing that useless hack, Damiano. He turned to his men. “Get some rest, men, we may need to hit the patrol again tonight and keep our people safe.”

Meyer headed toward the rest area, where the single women had to work serving food and water to the warriors. He had his eye on one, but she wasn’t one of these, she was one who served the Tigers, one who Damiano had taken. Meyer planned how to take her from him, along with his position.

Jenny had enjoyed her stay in the hotel. No one had bothered her, she had rarely even seen anyone out the windows. What she could see out the windows was that the south side of town was burning. It had been on fire for days now and it had grown closer and closer each day. She had good rest here, and had ransacked the other floors to make sure she had food. This was mostly comprised of chips, nuts and other such snacks. She hated to eat like this, but it was better than starvation. Her yoga kept her calm, and she ate as little of this crap as she could.

The last four days she had spent here were almost a vacation, and she would have stayed longer, but the fires were getting closer. It almost seemed intentional and she assumed that half of it probably was. If she was right, that would mean whoever was burning the town was headed this way, and that meant it was time to move on. She was maybe a day of cautious walking away from her home, and she decided that the time to leave was now. She gathered her things into a duffel bag she had found on the second floor, including all of the snacks and the few water bottles she had left. It was a little bit heavy, but she could manage and she made her way down the pitch dark staircase and out into the lobby. Outside the stairway door, she listened for any movement, and finding none, she headed out into the street.

Turning north and west was the plan, but she needed to stay relatively hidden and it was just before mid-day. So she walked slowly behind houses and in between blocks, even though it would have been easier and faster to use the streets. She listened at houses, and only got close to those that were very quiet. She had no idea where the residents of all of the houses had gone, but most were empty, and the ones that weren’t she stayed away from. She passed more bloated corpses, it seemed like people were just leaving their dead in the street, the smell was awful.

Closer to the mountain, and after a bit of a walk, she came up to a golf range and took a break in the shadow. The day was hot and the sweat was pooling on her neck. She drank some more water and then saw some stairs that led up to a patio that she assumed had a restaurant or something. She slowly crept up the stairs and activated her inner sight, but there was no one there. She saw the auras down closer to the river now.
There must be hundreds of them down there
, she thought to herself. This was not a place to hide. While it gave her a great advantage from which to view the town, it was also possible for anyone who looked closely to see her. Without police, she had already seen what people could do. She just wanted to be home.

Jenny made her way farther to the north and out of the golf range into an industrial district. Off to the west, she could now see the Garden of the Gods rock formation and knew she wasn’t far from the small house she had bought last year. Seeing people milling around the shopping center parking lot up ahead, her first thought was to go wide around it. But, there were many people there, probably close to fifty. She figured there would be some safety in numbers, and a week without any news made her feel like she didn’t know what was going on. Maybe some of these people had heard from the authorities.

Jenny crossed the large street there and walked on to the shopping center lot. As she looked, almost all of the windows of each business were busted out. Some had people inside, some did not. There were people near the grocery store talking, so she walked up to see what was going on. She saw an older woman with a kind face and approached her.

“Hi,” Jenny said tentatively.

“Hello, sweetie,” said the woman, “you here to trade?” The woman looked at the duffel bag.

Jenny didn’t know what she meant. “Trade?” The woman nodded and pointed to Jenny’s bag. “Oh,” Jenny exclaimed, “no. I was just looking for information.”

“Aren’t we all, kiddo.” The woman said and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Jenny called out to stop her. A few people turned to look at Jenny, but she continued anyway, “Do you know what is going on? With the power outage and all, have you talked to any of the authorities?”

A man who was coming up with a bag of his own answered her, “There are no authorities, miss. Do what you can to survive.”

Trying to comprehend what he was saying, Jenny just looked at the man. What did he mean there were no authorities? There may be a power outage, but government doesn’t stop just because of no power. She said as much to the man. His reply already gave her information she did not have.

“It isn’t just power,” he said, “it is communications, vehicles, medicine. Some people think it is the end times, others that we were hit by a comet or something. I don’t know, I just know that you have to survive. And don’t expect people to help. There is no community any more, it is every man (or woman) for himself.”

“So people just looted these stores?” Jenny asked.

“These stores here have been picked dry for days,” said the woman she had first talked to, “you are up a creek without a paddle if you haven’t already got something to trade. We setup here during the daylight to try to trade and make sure everyone gets what they need.”

“Please,” Jenny was about to start crying and it showed in her voice as it cracked, “can you tell me what is going on?”

The woman took pity on her and put her arm around Jenny’s shoulders, pulling her toward the shade. “Not much, but we did meet some cadets from the Academy who were riding bikes around to check on people. They are the ones that told us there was no civilian authority now, and that we were sort of on our own. They said the Academy was not taking people in, but we could head down to Fort Carson if we wanted, they were setting up a town or something. They did mention that the law would be martial there.”

The man who had spoken with her walked by and spit at that comment. “I don’t serve the military; they are supposed to serve us. I will keep to my own affairs, thank you very much.”

“Do you need water, honey?” the older woman asked, “I could probably spare one. Do you have anything at all to trade?”

Jenny sunk her head in despair, shaking it from side to side, “No. All I have is chips and candy and other snacks.” She was surprised to hear the woman laugh before she gave Jenny’s shoulders another squeeze.

“Young lady, you have a gold mine then. Snacks is what everyone is trading big for.” She said with a big smile, “Here, I will help you. What have you got?”

As the woman went through Jenny’s duffel bag, others came around and traded with her. When she left the “market” an hour or so later, she was loaded up with water, canned food, a knife and she still had half a bag of tradeables left. She walked away with the warning to stay safe from the people she had met, and headed the last few blocks to her house.

She couldn’t take everything in that they were claiming about government and all, as it was just too hard to wrap her head around. They had tried to tell her that after a simple week without power, total chaos reigned in America, and she couldn’t accept that. Then she walked up to her house and despair set in. People had broken into her house, broken every window and smashed the door in. The place was ransacked, her clothes and even her cutlery were taken. Anything even mildly useful had been removed. She wandered around the house and looked at how value had changed. Untouched were her big-screen TV, and any kind of electronics. Gone were all draperies and most of the clothing she had there. She wondered if there was any reason to remain.

After having a good cry on the floor of her broken house, Jenny got up and left. She couldn’t head south, due to the fires and whatever lawlessness might be there. East seemed an unlikely area to be hospitable, and the west was straight into the mountains. She knew where some caves were just north of here, near the Hillside Restaurant. She and her girlfriend had hiked around them multiple times. People were going house to house, perhaps the caves were safe. Scared, alone and uncertain of what to do, Jenny Martinez walked into the open space (as it was called) park and headed toward those cliffs.