Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (28 page)

She gave him a hard shove with her rifle and Bill turned in the indicated direction. They went through a door and he found himself in a small, very bare office, with an officer standing there. The name-plate said
Lt
Collins
.

“Have a seat,” Lieutenant Collins pointed to a chair, then sat on the edge of his desk. He took a sip from a cup of coffee and made a face. He stared at Bill in silence for a while.

This is the softening-up part,
Bill thought.
I get real nervous, and then try to fill the empty air with an explanation.
Bill stared back with an innocent expression on his face.

After a while the lieutenant sighed. “You’ve been caught looting during a disaster, which means I can have you shot right here and now. So you’re going to give me some answers, and they’re going to be truthful. And I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Bill waited two beats before responding. “Well, no you won’t because that particular type of micro-expression training isn’t standard issue for National Guard officers. Anyway, I wasn’t caught looting, I was caught walking around in the general area of where your soldiers
assumed
some looting had been done.

“And please save the standard interrogation routine for your less educated prisoners. What you really
want is to find out who I am, where I’m from, who else might be with me, and what other resources I might have. And I’m prepared to tell you all of that, in as much detail as you want.”

Lieutenant Collins stared at him for a second, then slowly smiled. “You’ve got some experience with this, I take it?”

“Not personal experience, no,” Bill answered. “This was my first supervolcano eruption. Up until about a month ago, I was an engineering student at UNL.”

“So then why don’t you start by telling us how many people are in your group or whatever it is?”

“Just under three hundred.”

Lieutenant Collins’ eyebrows rose at this statement. “Three hundred people, and we’ve not seen hide nor hair of you. Nothing but a lot of tracks, despite almost a month of patrolling. How does that work, pray tell?”

Bill leaned back in his chair and did his best to look casual. “Well, that’s kind of a long story.”

Lieutenant Collins spread his arms, palms up, looked around, then said to Chavez, “Corporal Chavez, please cancel all my appointments, including my date with the President.”

Chavez grinned and made typing motions into the air. After a few moments she said, “Done.” They both turned to look at Bill.

Bill grinned back, thoroughly
enjoying this, and said, “I think I’m going to like it here.”

This was not the reaction they’d been expecting and it showed on their faces.

You may have the guns, lieutenant, but I’m the
king
of this stuff. Surrender, Dorothy.

Lieutenant Collins looked at Chavez and raised one eyebrow. Chavez said to him, “We might have to get Stevenson to translate.”

Collins raised the other eyebrow and said, “Star Trek quotes?”

Bill interrupted. “Guthrie. Alice’s Restaurant. Star Trek is for amateurs.”

Lieutenant Collins laughed out loud. Chavez muttered something about brain-damage.

Aug 25

Pete

Pete and Phil pulled over once they were out of sight of the camp. They had borrowed the bikes on the pretext of doing some scouting, and Pete admitted to himself that they would do some actual scouting at some point. But for now, he and Phil needed something to relax, and a chance to tend the garden.

He looked at Phil and patted his pocket. It wasn’t that they thought they’d get in trouble for smoking a little pot; after all, there were literally no cops anywhere on this planet. Well, there were the two retired guys, but they didn’t give a damn.

But Pete had a limited supply and didn’t feel like sharing with the entire student body. He motioned to a spot over by the trees, and they rode their bikes over to it.

As they came to a stop, there was a pop, and Phil staggered and fell off his bike. As Pete’s eyes widened in shock, there was another pop, and the world came to an end.

***

Charles

Charles and Bluto hit the kill switches on the dirt bikes. They quickly pulled the bodies into the trees, then rolled the bikes into hiding.

It took only moments to remove the weapons and anything else of value from the bodies. Charles said, “We’ll have to bury them. We can’t spend all day parked next to a couple of corpses, and if animals come along and start dragging pieces of student around the landscape, it’s going to set off alarms.”

“So? Why don’t we just shoot anyone who comes looking?” Bluto asked.

Charles shook his head. It looked like Bluto was back to his normal level of ideas. “Bluto, there’s only two of us. If we give them time to run for their guns, we’ll be outgunned a hundred to two. We have to be able to catch them by surprise.”

“After dark?” Bluto asked. “I’m not thrilled about walking around after dark.”

Charles shrugged an agreement. “Me either. No, I was thinking around dinner time. They all gathered in that fenced area in front of the sheds yesterday. We can approach from behind the sheds. I didn’t see anyone watching on that side.”

***

Bluto nodded. A little more complicated than his idea, but it still included shooting people. A
good
plan.

Aug 25              Suzie

Suzie sat with her friends, enjoying the last bits of her meal. It had been another long day. In the tradition of
familiarity breeds contempt
, she found herself bored more often than not. After a while, even the roars of large, supposedly extinct cats in the distance lost its edge. And once she’d seen twenty or so mammoths, she was good for life.

The days had fallen into a routine. Oh, it wasn’t the same for everyone, of course. The scavenging parties had just run into far more excitement than they wanted. But for kitchen staff, not so much.

She’d helped prepare the meal today, and once it had been handed over to the serving people she was free for the evening. Venison Chili stew again. Suzie sighed. This Bill Rustad had an unholy fascination with chili. He’d stocked up literally gallons of the stuff in those big tins. But it was better than those Meals Ready to Eat. Wow, talk about an oxymoron. She’d tried one and had decided that if someone needed to be punished it would be enough to make them live on those for a day or two.

As they ate, the friends compared notes.

“I got to help make fences again today,” Frankie said. “Oh, what fun!
Not!
I must have poked myself with the barbed wire a thousand times.”

“I’m on chainsaw duty,” said Maddie. “I actually
enjoyed myself. Maybe if I can’t get a job as a history professor, I’ll take up lumberjacking.” She giggled.

Suzie had a sudden mental image of Maddie in a plaid shirt and a tuque. She started singing, “I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay…” and everyone cracked up.

Stephanie said, “I’ve been with the group that’s been inventorying what we have and trying to figure out what we need the most. We’ve finally
finished, and we’re ready to give the scavenger crews a list. Up until now they’ve been bringing back everything they find, and it’s kind of getting crowded.”

It was an enjoyable moment, sitting with her friends, relaxing and talking about whatever came to mind.

Suzie saw movement by the fence, right where it abutted against the edge of the shed. Two figures were moving around. She heard a screech of rubbing metal as one of the figures pulled the fence panel up off the stake that had been holding it in place. Before she could make sense of what she was seeing, the other figure had rushed at her, grabbed her by the hair, and pushed a shotgun in her face!

Aug 25

Monica

Dinner time. Monica settled down with her plate of
something
stew.

The colony had settled into a routine of communal meals. It helped a lot that a good fraction of the students were from rural homes and knew how to convert a deer into food. A couple of gallon-sized cans of chili added to the pot produced a very serviceable stew. Meals might get monotonous, but there would never be a lack of calories.

Meals were always held inside the protected fenced area. The fence had been expanded as much as possible using every available panel. Even so, many people had to seat themselves inside the sheds during meal times.

“Hey, where’s Pete and Phil?” someone asked.

Monica looked around for them.
Wow, they never
miss a meal.

“The stoners are probably
out getting blitzed again,” she said. “Or as they call it, ‘scouting.’ ”

“You’d think hunger would have driven them back by now,” Erin observed drily.

Monica shrugged. “Maybe they’re in one of the sheds. I’ll have a quick look.” She got up and headed for the second shed, plate in hand. Since it contained most of the equipment, it had a lot of convenient places to sit and eat.

She walked slowly through the shed, looking left and right. The lights hanging from the ceiling gave adequate if somewhat uneven illumination.
Going to have to watch our fuel usage for the generators until we can get more in,
she thought idly as she looked for the two miscreants.

Pallets of supplies alternated with crates of equipment and weapons. Off to one corner, the portal equipment had been stored. And there, sitting on one of the portal generators was Kevin, writing in a notebook.

“Kind of primitive, isn’t it?” Monica asked, pointing at the notebook and pencil. She was careful to smile as she said it, as Kevin had a tendency to miss social cues.

Today, Kevin was getting it. He smiled back and said, “Yeah, but running the generator just to recharge a tablet seems kind of wasteful. And in the longer term, we’re going to have to figure out how to live without it.”

Monica considered this for a moment, then brought the conversation back on topic. “So hey, I’m looking for Phil and Pete. Seem them around?”

“The stoners? No, sorry.”

Monica laughed inside at the thought that even Kevin got it where those two were concerned.

***

Erin

Erin watched Monica go into the shed. As she turned her attention back to her food, she heard a sudden grinding and scraping sound from the corner where the fence attached to the shed. She turned to look, and the sight was so unexpected that for a moment she was unable to make sense of it.

It was two of the goons from the warehouse altercation. One had yanked the fence panel off the stake, and the other had moved quickly into the compound. Before anyone could react, the black bald goon had grabbed a student by the hair and held a shotgun to her head.

He gave a nasty grin and yelled, “Nobody moves, or the kid’s brains get splattered all over! If I see a gun, if I see anyone run for the shed, if I see anything that makes me upset, the kid’s dead!”

As Erin got to her feet, she realized that the other goon, the big ugly one with the beard, was bearing down on her. Before she could think what to do, he grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pressed a pistol under her nose. She had time to see that he had a shotgun on a shoulder strap.

“Open your mouth, bitch!” he yelled at her. “Open it, or I’ll break all your teeth!”

Still trying to mentally catch up to events, Erin opened her mouth, and Bluto stuck the barrel of his gun into it.

“Now,” he said, raising his voice so that everyone could hear, “unless you want the top of her head blown off, you’re all going to do what we tell you.”

Someone piped up, “Those are Pete and Phil’s shotguns, aren’t they? Where are they? What did you do with them?”

Bluto responded with a laugh, “You mean the guys with the stash of weed? They’re lion food now, shithead. Which you’ll be in a minute, too, if you don’t
shut the fuck up!”

“Now, where’s the dweeb that runs the time machine?”

People looked at each other in confusion. Finally one student said, “You mean the portal? Kevin?”

Bluto replied, “Geeky, skinny, glasses, pushes the buttons. Get him. Now!”

The student said, “I think he’s in the shed,” and gestured towards the second shed. “Will I go get him?” He clearly did not want to do anything that would anger the goons or endanger Erin or the other student.

Bluto replied, “Yeah, you do that, dweeb. But nobody else moves. And if someone comes out with a gun, boom!” He inclined his head towards Erin to emphasize his point.

***

Monica

Monica and Kevin had missed the first part of the drama out front, but caught all the dialog. Monica peeked around the corner and saw Bluto with his gun in Erin’s mouth. And she heard the part about Pete and Phil being dead. As this all sunk in, Monica’s teeth gritted and her eyes narrowed to slits. She felt herself sinking into a white hot rage, as the world narrowed down to one single imperative.

Monica had learned from her brothers at an early age that you gave no quarter and you asked for no quarter; you paid back all insults with interest; and you always maintained a scorched-earth policy.

Now the goons had killed people she knew and liked, and were holding a gun on her best friend.

This is war, you fat, impotent fucktards. Prepare to be dead.

“Kevin!” She turned to him. “You’re going to do exactly
what they say. You’re going to cooperate. Don’t do anything to endanger Erin or the other student, but don’t tell them I’m here. And if they ask, we only
have one portal here right now, okay? We have two, the other one is with the scavenging party. Got it?”

Kevin was already shaking with fear. As Frankie came up to them and opened his mouth to talk, Monica held up her hand to stop him and put her finger to her lips in a shushing motion. She motioned to Kevin to go back with Frankie.

Monica motioned to a group of students that had been in the shed when the excitement started. She pointed to one and said to him in a low voice, “Get me an AR-15 and some spare clips.” She pointed to a second one. “Make sure there’s an extension cord running to that corner,” and pointed to another corner of the shed. She pointed to a third student and said, “Help me move some equipment over there.”

Moving quickly, they carried one of the portal generators and a six-foot gate over to the indicated corner of the warehouse. She plugged the portal generator into an extension cord that the other student was holding, and connected the feeds from the portal generator to the gate.

Monica had watched the others operate the gates many times, and had made a point of asking questions. Now she took the tablet and fired up the gate. As the gate faded into being, the first student came and held out an assault rifle.

She took the weapon and checked it. She turned to one of the students and said, “When I’m through, turn it off. If you don’t know how, just pull out the plug. But make sure it’s off
.
Do not come through for at least five minutes after they go through. And make sure someone comes to get us later.”

With that, she stepped through the gate.