The Last Gallon (13 page)

After another couple rounds of ouzo Athena stood and announced it was time for the games to start. The family would be in her special box seats
while the convoy could sit among the people. They all filed out of the dining hall and across the park to the stadium.

The games were already underway when they arrived. Mark noted right away that th
ey were played in what was rumored to be traditional Greek style, completely nude save for sandals. These games did feature women competitors though which was something the original games apparently did not contain. Athena told Mark that she thought differently. In Greece there was much less sexual discrimination so why wouldn’t both sexes compete?

Mark was very impressed at the javelin throwers the game featured that night. All the throwing sports were exciting to him and he liked the jumping games as well. They also played an interesting field sport. It was sort of like ice hockey on a field or field hockey plus hitting. Hits like tackles in American football could be performed and if the ball died it was tossed in like a free throw in soccer. It was a tough fast paced sport and Mark was surprised that it was completely co-ed. The girls were giving as much as they got and Kara and Cindy were soon rooting for players they liked.

Around midnight the final game ended and Athena officially shut it down for the night. She sent some of her maidens to usher the convoy to their accommodations and told the family to follow her to theirs.

Back
at the Parthenon Athena showed Joey and Cindy their room and then took Mark and Kara to theirs. She stopped at the door and coyly said “This is your room but I would like it very much if you came to mine.” Oh dear Mark thought to himself, I am so screwed now. To his shock Kara took Athena’s hand, gave it a kiss and told her to lead the way. Oh dear Mark thought, I am gonna get screwed now. The grin was almost comical.

The boss stood alone at an abandoned hotel on I-95 waiting for
Jose Gonzalez of the Zeta cartel. Neither the briefcase nor the young whore had arrived in Atlanta yet even though they had left DC several days prior. The payment had already been processed; in fact, the payment had disappeared along with the agent who accepted it. Basically the pooch had been thoroughly screwed on this deal and the company was going to pay dearly, you don’t fuck over the drug cartels without consequence no matter who you are.

The boss had 4 snipers positioned around him but he knew that the drug boss wouldn’t let anything go down where his cronies could assist in any way. The cartels didn’t get powerful by botching assassinations; they did things swiftly and in the most brutal way possible.

A black Humvee pulled up and blocked two of the boss’s sniper’s view immediately. The back door swung open and he was pulled inside as the vehicle started moving. “Where’s my shit?” the man next to him asked. “It’ll be there, our guy is very reliable” the boss stammered. “It’s already two days late. Time is running short.” The man said, seething. “Your time is running short.”

The boss knew he wasn’t walking away from
this but he tried to buy himself time as he thumbed the GPS locator sewn into his suit pocket. “We can find him and take care of this, no need to worry” he said, trying to reassure the drug boss. “Too late, I sent out an army yesterday. We know he is heading west, we will find him.” Jose said. “You have pretty much outlived your usefulness to the Zeta.”

The
Humvee screeched to a halt outside an abandoned gas-station. “Did you know that there is often hundreds of gallons still left underground?” Jose asked him. “When the power goes out there is no way to get it out so it just gets left. One cool thing about this Humvee is it has a generator.” The boss knew what was coming and began to shake with fear.

“Take off your clothes” Jose told him. He couldn’t help but comply and hope his men would get there soon. The boss took off all his clothes and Jose proceeded to stomp on them. “I’m sure you had some kind of tracking or communications device in there.” He said as he spit on the pile of clothes. His men had already fired up the gas pump after rigging it to the generator and sure enough a stream of rusty, gelatinized gas came
glooping out of the pump.

Jose’s men tied the boss to the station’s roof column with some steel cable. “Rope would burn up and maybe let you out, this shit isn’t going anywhere” he informed the boss, then he turned to
his men and said “Hose him down.” The men complied and bathed the boss head to toe with the dirty gasoline. They then locked the nozzle on and left it at his feet and got back in the car.

Jose rolled down the window on the
Humvee and said “Adios amigo” as he flicked a cigarette into the growing puddle around the boss. The smoke appeared to be snuffed by the pool for a split second and the boss heaved a sigh of relief right as it caught. He felt the rocks kicked up by the Humvee along with the intense heat of the flash.

Burning to death is horrifying. The boss learned this as he slowly melted off his own bones. It wasn’t so much the pain as it was the smell and the sound of his skin crackling like a piece of fried chicken in a deep fryer. He thought back to all the people he had tortured or killed in his life-time and felt a tinge of sadness. Not for what he had done, but that he had failed to do more. He also thought of Mark’s wife, there were so many opportunities that he could have taken her.

The boss’s men arrived and saw the molten pool of death and shrugged their shoulders. He was a bit of a dick and they really weren’t too broken up over his death. “Joe, we’re free, let’s get the fuck out of here!” one of them said. The three other snipers agreed with him and high-fived each other in celebration. They got into the company car and hauled ass towards the west.

Mark awoke before Athena and Kara the next morning. He sat at the edge of the bed admiring their naked forms tangled together. He decided he better get up before he got the urge to wake them up. He tried to slip his clothes on quietly but the girls were stirring before he even had his shirt arranged properly. Kara squeezed Athena in her sleep and her eyes popped open wide when she came up with a handful of breast. Mark chuckled.

“Why do the times when you should have the best memories only occur when you drink yourself into a coma?” Kara asked groggily. Athena chuckled and kissed her on the forehead before rolling out of the bed to put on her regalia. She left Mark and Kara alone while she went to prepare for the day. Mark climbed into bed next to Kara and kissed her on the forehead right where Athena had. “How ya doing baby?” he asked her softly. She smiled and ran her hand down his cheek “I’m wonderful” she said. “Whew” Mark answered then said “I’m glad I didn’t have to remind you that you started all this” he said with a wink. She got a confused look and said “Really?” followed by a “Wow.”

The two were ready at about the same time as Athena and they met Joey and Cindy out in the hallway. The family and Athena had a private breakfast before departing. While eating their crepes Athena warned them about the rest of their trip.

“Memphis is over-run with mutants. They kill for fun; the radiation has made them insane. Just kill every one that you see and get out as fast as you can. After that you are free-running up to West Plains. Your journey will not be without peril though. Please try to remember your friendships and know when to be humble. Lastly, when you arrive waste no time setting up a perimeter, there will be trouble.”

Mark nodded and tried to make mental notes of what she said, she spoke in such generalities that he obviously couldn’t base decisions on her tales until he was already knee deep into what she warned him about but it was always good having a bit of a head’s up about the future.

The convoy got on the road shortly after breakfast and goodbyes with Athena. As soon as they were out of town and back on I-40 Vincent radioed Mark. “You sure know how to broker a toll there buddy-boy” he joked. Mark came back with “You have no idea man; we were apparently picked from the heavens to visit those folks.” Vincent laughed into the mic and asked Mark “So do you believe what every cute young psychic tells you?” Mark shook his head and laughed “I can’t say I have ever met another.” Kara got an angry look that Mark interpreted wrong. He thought it was a ‘don’t even think about it buddy’ look when it was really a ‘stay away from my woman’ look.

The convoy chit-chatted on the trip to Memphis and everyone learned a little bit more about each other. It was nice to hear the various guys and gals stories on how they got to know Vincent and why they decided to help him out. One of them, a young lady named Vanessa, said she was a fighter pilot with the Tennessee Air National Guard and defected when the word came down to attack US cities. This brought up something that Mark had wondered about for years so he decided to ask.

“Why are there no planes?” he asked to anyone who could answer. Vincent chimed in immediately “There are quite a few planes, there are very few pilots. Most people who are wouldn’t admit it. Vanessa here knows she is among friends and isn’t scared to talk about it but most won’t ever utter a word” he explained. “Why?” Mark asked. Vanessa answered “The war. When planes started bombing cities pilots became public enemy #1 and rebel forces started slaughtering pilots by the thousands. Most of us went into hiding or blended into society and never spoke of flying again. A good majority of jets were also destroyed by the people to keep any further carnage from happening” her voice full of remorse and sorrow. “I can’t say I blame the people, you can’t go napalming a city of millions and expect there to be no repercussions, honestly many of them deserved to die, I mean how could you do that to the people of your own country?” she asked, openly sobbing now.

Someone wisely changed the subject to sports people liked to watch before the war shortly after that. Lots of people participated in that conversation but Mark and the family quietly contemplated all the shit that this country and its people had been through. Maybe Athena was right, the country was ripe for people like them to step in and turn things around. It would be a lot of work but Mark felt like he was down for it so he posed the question to the rest of the family “What do y
ou think about what Athena said?”

Joey chimed in first saying he thought she was a bit kooky but it honestly spooked him out that she knew so much about them. Mark couldn’t deny that it was a bit freaky; it was his first time dealing with a psychic but she seemed like more than that, she was able to see the future and seemingly into people’s souls. Kara said she believed everything they were told. She could tell
Athena was genuine and had no intention of leading them astray. Mark knew right then that she was a bit smitten with her.

Since the 50 mile point every sign going into Memphis had WARNING spray painted above it. Mark had no idea what to expect, many of the cities on their route had been bombed out but they had never seen absolute destruction from a nuclear device before.

The story Mark had heard was that Memphis was home to a militia group called the Memphis Marauders. They came up with a plan to poison Washington DC and seemed to have the means to accomplish the task. The group spent months planning the event. They processed ricin by the ton. They loaded the powder into plastic bladders intended to be used for emergency water sources. They loaded those bladders into a freight airliner. The plan was to fly in low and drop the containers throughout the city, spreading the poison everywhere. Nobody knew how efficient the delivery system would be but apparently the government deemed the threat enough to destroy the entire city.

On May 17, 2017 an MX missile, previously thought to be decommissioned, launched from an unknown location in the Midwest on a course to Memphis. It deployed its ten W87-1 warheads at approximately 1:37am. Six of the 300kt explosives were set to airburst over the city at various altitudes while the remaining four detonated on the ground. Memphis more or less ceased to exist in a matter of seconds.

The thought chilled Mark, he could not imagine the government shooting its citizens, let alone using a combined 3 megaton warhead on them. The scale of the explosives could only be seen to believed. We are talking over 100x the explosive power of the bombs dropped over Japan falling onto the heads of American citizens, dropped by a missile bearing our flag.

Arlington Tennessee was about 30 miles from downtown Memphis; this is where the effects of the bombs became evident as there were no old trees standing. There was no grass and only a few wooden structures that didn’t at least show signs of fire damage from the fire-storm unleashed from above.

As the convoy rolled further in to town the damage became more and more evident. 6 miles past Arlington was Garner Lake. It was completely empty, vaporized by the blasts and looked like a crater out in the middle of the desert.

The interstate turned into something akin to a gravel road; luckily some brave souls had pounded the rubble into a useful form though it made travel very slow. The lush forest that separated Memphis from its suburbs was no more, some saplings were trying to grow again but there was no greenery that was older than that faithful day in the whole of the metro area.

I-40 going up and around the city did not exist and the only bridge into the city was via Summer Avenue. Once entering Memphis proper the feeling of grief, fear, anguish, and death were impossible to shake. Mark found it very hard to concentrate even though there was nothing in the way of scenery: a corner of a building here, a scorched light-pole there, sometimes a random mailbox and almost nothing else.

Mark started to think the rumors of any kind of life in the area were completely false when one of the hummers in the middle of the convoy exploded. Suddenly hordes of creatures came up from underground bunkers. The convoy was being ambushed.

Joey did not want to open the turret and breathe the air and Mark could not blame him so everyone used the gun ports to fight off the mutants. One got within 50 feet of the car and realized that these things were human, just severely disfigured. The awful things seemed extremely soft too as bullets seemed to just liquefy large areas where they impacted. Cindy’s buckshot would almost saw them in half. It was putrefying but absolutely necessary to fight them off as they
were relentless.

One of the deuce and a halves got isolated from the convoy and surrounded by the mutants. Vincent ordered the column to stop and try to save the brave souls in the machine. Joey got over his fear of the radiation and popped the turret to put a couple grenades down-range at the invaders. The 25mm grenades were devastating against the soft flesh of the radioactive attackers and they literally flew apart upon impact. Joey used 5 to save the truck but felt they were worth it, he could not imagine what would happen to anyone they actually touched.

The convoy fought on through the city, barely moving more than 5 miles per hour at the fastest. This made getting out of the city before sundown a near impossibility but there was no chance in hell anyone was going to spend the night. Mark had allowed Vincent to send a Bradley forward since the terrain was a little rough to be testing with the little Armadillo, even in full rally mode.

As the sun set the creatures returned to their holes. Mark was certain it was just to refit and re-organize for a strike later as these monsters had absolutely no quit in them. They would attack until they died and then the next one would take their place. Mark started thinking back to his father’s recollection of the
Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War and felt like this was what they were experiencing.

Bradley 1 called Mark and asked them to come forward to help out for a minute. Mark pulled up behind the stopped machine and had Joey check on the crew. They had run into a barricade that blocked th
eir forward progress completely and needed help removing it. Joey came back and enlisted the help of the rest of the family to hopefully make short work of the barrier.

Across the city the mutants burned their dead to provide light and heat. After today’s encounter they had plenty of kindling to put on the fire. When the wind shifted you would catch a whiff of the rotten meat cooking, it was enough to double you over in disgust
, it made taking the barrier apart that much more difficult.

The family and Bradley crew worked
to dismantle the barrier feverishly; they all wanted to get back into their vehicles and the safety they provided. Joey was pulling timbers out of one corner of the barrier when a dark shadow enveloped him. Cindy turned and caught a glimpse of her man being pulled into the ruins of a concrete building about 100 feet away. She didn’t even think to alert anyone and took off in their direction.

Joey caught his first close up look at the people of Memphis. Their bodies were basically
masses of tumors and festering burns. The man who had captured him had no teeth and his breathing was labored like he smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day for 70 years prior to capturing Joey. The figure wore all black to blend in with the night including a black cloak. He pulled a knife from his belt and raised it above his head to deal a death blow to Joey.

Joey closed his eyes, he was a goner and he knew it. The man began to plunge, aiming the knife at Joey’s heart, when Cindy entered the ruins and pumped an entire magazine into him. BOOM!
Chack BOOM Chack BOOM Chack BOOM Chack BOOM Chack CLICK. She almost reached for a sidearm when she realized that there wasn’t much less besides a pair of boots. The knife clanged off the concrete next to Joey and he sat up and could see the outline of his lover through the remnants of his attacker that covered his face.

Joey spit several times while screaming “Shit!” as he tried to get the awful taste out of his mouth. Cindy grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. “We need to go; they are coming out of the wood-work again. Here, I brought you this” she said and handed him his M4. She loaded up some buckshot in her shotgun and they exited the ruins to return to the barricade and awaiting vehicles.

Black masses moved all around the pair as they tried to make their way to the car. They decided standing back to back was their best chance for survival to prevent being grabbed from behind. They would take turns pushing into each other with the recoil from their weapons as they fought off wave after wave of attackers.

Mark and Kara had been frantically looking for the pair while still trying to work on the barricade. They knew they would be stuck until it was clear
and if they had to rescue the kids they wouldn’t be going anywhere so they kept an eye out while pulling debris out of the road. The blasts from Cindy’s shotgun alerted them to her location and they followed the ensuing fire fight with great interest.

The Bradley crew manned up the vehicle and brought the chain-gun to life. The Memphis horde disintegrated upon being blasted with the big 1” rounds. Mark and Kara moved the last of the big chunks of telephone pole when they spotted Joey and Cindy fighting their way back to them. Kara
unlslung her 22TCM carbine and started putting 3-round bursts into the creatures before they got close to the kids. Mark did the same with his M4 on Cindy’s side.

As Joey and Cindy approached Mark fell back to get the car running while Kara continued to defend. By the time they reached the car Mark had everything going and the group got on the move again. The Bradley’s chain gun did its magic and
soon the horde gave up the fight to return to their holes again.