Storm Horizon Page 4

  He stretched his arms out at his sides and rotated them at the shoulder. He winced as his muscles and tendons produced a jangle of crackles and pops, and then arched his back in an attempt to relieve the pressure on his sacrum.

  It was six thirty in the morning on a clear day in early February. The sun had yet to pop over the rim of the bluff that towered three hundred feet above the bottom. The strata of vibrant pinks and oranges filling the air just above the rim announced its imminent arrival.

  A cattle rancher all of his life, February used to mean mending fence, readying for the spring calves, and fixing the damage done during the long North Kansas winters.

  No longer. Instead of standing in the middle of his barnyard and assessing the day ahead, he stood at the bottom of an old marble quarry. The puncture in the earth was deep and substantial- three football fields long and one a half across by three hundred feet deep, as best he could estimate. Enormous mine shafts, forty feet high and wide enough for two semi-trucks to pass side-by-side with plenty of room to spare, extended into the bedrock for dozens of miles. Inside one of those shafts, with its bedrock walls and smooth, cemented floors, far enough below the Earth's surface for the temperature to always be sixty-two degrees; that's where he and his people called home now. If there was a better place to keep Will's family and friends safe from the threat of the dead, he didn't know where it was.

  The beetle was a speck on the quarry bottom. Will watched it trundle up to a large boulder and disappear underneath. He sighed, spit again, and moseyed over to see what the dining room was serving for breakfast.

  Nine

  * * *

  Will was self-aware enough to appreciate the irony. In his old life, he detested any organized, sit-down meeting as a waste of time and infernal bore. Now meetings filled his days. Meetings about food, security, the dead, and all the other things necessary for a group of two hundred to survive in a world with no systems of authority and that lacked the production of goods and resources.

  The faint notes of the birds that greeted the day every morning from the protection of the thick mash of pine trees that lined the rim of the bluff filtered down to the quarry bottom. Will was oblivious to it. He stood with a clenched jaw, tapped his foot on the limestone floor, and stared at the tunnel that housed the dining room. Every so often he’d break his stare long enough to look at his wristwatch, blow out an angry breath, and glare at the tunnel entrance again. He waited for Jiri and Danny to show so he could begin the day.

  Jiri showed up first, gliding with the easy grace and confidence that marked him as an ex-athlete. An easy-going smile played on his lips and his gray-green eyes danced with mirth.

  He and Will greeted one another like lifelong friends, though they'd been together for a little less than a year. The Czech-American was one of the first people to throw in with Will and his family after their ranch was overrun.

  Danny strutted out of the tunnel not long after Jiri appeared. Danny walked with the gait of the cocky bull rider he used to be. He lived in a constant state of horniness, was over-emotional, and was too quick to throw a punch. He was also fearless, utterly dependable, and without peer when it came to fighting creepers.

  Will hired him on as a ranch hand four years before the outbreak. By the time they fled the ranch he was a surrogate son to the man and his wife, Becky. He held Will in awe and loved him like a father.

  They said their good mornings while Jiri bent to retie his boot strings. Danny carried a cup of coffee and a hunk of yesterday's bread. He folded the bread in half, dipped it in the coffee, and shoved the fist-sized mess in his mouth.

  Will scowled. "You're disgusting, you know that?"

  Danny's eyes widened. "Wha?" He breathed in a muffled voice.

  Will shook his head and turned away and Jiri tittered as he straightened up. Walking side-by-side, they marched toward the tunnel that served as the group's food locker, kitchen, and community dining room.

  On the way, Jiri filled him in on what Betty Ryan, the patrician woman who oversaw the food supply would say. "Bottom line, we're short on everything and the returns on the scavenging trips are diminishing, as far as food is concerned. There’s no canned or boxed food we can find within twenty miles. Betty thinks if we don't have success with crop and livestock production, we’ll have to stop allowing new people in come autumn."

  "What you think?"

  Jiri didn't hesitate. "I concur."

  Danny squared his shoulders and stuck out his chin. "Now, wait a minute. With all those warehouses, we're still facing a shortage unless we produce our own food?"

  After the marble mine went bust, a group of entrepreneurs cleaned up the quarry and spent millions turning it into a massive underground warehouse and industrial park. They made hundreds of millions leasing the space out. When Will and his team arrived early in the fall, they were stunned to discover the scores of people ready living did not try to go out and find food. Instead, they lived on a diet of breakfast cereal, Hostess treats, and a variety of processed foods sitting on the warehouse shelves.

  Jiri gave a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. "That stuff is stale and nasty, what's left of it. Two hundred people have eaten it for over six months now."

  "Two hundred people and Cyrus," Will interjected. Danny and Jiri snickered. Cyrus was one of the few obese people still around this long after the outbreak. When they'd arrived last fall, they saw right away that the rotund little man ate enough sweets and junk food each day to send an entire third-grade classroom into sugar overload.

  Jiri realized the food in the warehouse was disappearing at a rate way too fast to feed their number for any length of time. To avoid a food shortage, he devised and instituted a program that included cutting off the community’s access to the warehouses. Cyrus lost his mind. He complained, he whined, he pouted. He refused to work on any of his important projects.

  The clash of wills was short-lived; Jiri doubled down and banned the mad inventor from the dining hall altogether. “If you don’t contribute to the community you don’t get to make use of the community’s resources,” he said while blocking the little man’s path into the kitchen at supper time on the first day of his strike.

  The next day Cyrus returned to work. It was an important lesson for The Originals used to The Judge’s administration- things were going to be different. Not to be outdone, Cyrus established a thriving black market for the limited supply of Twinkies and Cupcakes doled out under the new program.

  The meeting with Betty went as Jiri said. She was a tall woman with a button nose and close-cropped blonde hair. Will put her in charge of the kitchen because she had an extensive background of putting on events for service organizations and charities; she, like The Judge, came from old-time Carthage money.

  Will made sympathetic-sounding noises and vowed to do his best without promising her anything. Either the crop and livestock programs would work, and they would have plenty of food for the winter, or they wouldn't, and they would be hungry.

  "What's next," Will grumbled as the trio left the dining area.

  "Tatum Gruver wants to get with you. He says it's important."

  Jiri and Danny braced themselves. Tatum was a shifty and dirty layabout and a suspected drug dealer. Will yearned for the day Terrence caught him in the act so they’d have a reason to throw his ass out of camp.

  "Bullshit!" Will exploded. "I already have to listen to The Judge whine about whatever is on his mind this afternoon. I'm not gonna expose myself to that demented little fucker on the same day."

  Jiri shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, you're the one that wanted to be in charge."

  "I didn't, though! All I wanted to do was get my family somewhere safe. You assholes put me in charge."

  "What can I say? You're a powerful, God-like man." Jiri offered a mock bow.

  "Kiss my ass. Do you realize it only took Germany six days to conquer your entire country?"

  "I don't see what my heritage has to do with it."

  "Ye
ah, yeah."

  As they neared the tunnel that The Originals called home, they noticed that two armed men stood in front of the entrance, one on either side.

  Jiri nodded his head at the sentries. "What's this, now?"

  "Ah, who the fuck knows? Some damn thing dreamed up by The Judge. I'm sure he'll tell us about it this afternoon."

  Inside the tunnel they strode past the rows of sheet metal, squares of pressed wood, and cubicle modules The Others used to construct their tiny living quarters. When they got to Tatum’s room Will banged on the refrigerator door that covered the entrance. The smell of burning incense did little to mask the thick, dank odor of marijuana drifting over the home’s roofless walls.

  Tatum's scratchy voice sounded annoyed. “Who is it?”

  "Will Crandall. I understand you want to see me."

  "Shit," Tatum muttered. "Just a minute, Mr. Crandall." From inside came the sound of drawers gliding open and banging shut.

  Danny leaned close to Will. "He's hiding all the stuff he isn't supposed to have, drugs and black market shit," he whispered.

  Will gave him a frosty glare. "No shit, Sherlock."

  After a short while, the refrigerator door swung outward and Tatum peered at his visitors through glassy eyes. He looked taken aback. "I didn't expect three of you, Sheriff," he said looking and Danny and Jiri with a pointed expression.

  Will pretended not to notice Tatum refer to him as Sheriff; it was one of the things the man did to try to get under his skin. "Well, three of us is what you get. What can I do for you?"

  "Let me step out there. There’s no room in this tiny place for three big guys such as yourselves."

  Danny snorted. "Yeah, plus we can’t see your drugs and shit if you come out here."

  Tatum took on the standard offended loser expression men like Tatum always used when accused of wrongdoing. Squinted eyes, mouth open, palms raised, looking surprised, guilty, and stupid all at the same time. "I have nothing to do with drugs, sir. I don't understand why Y'all always want to accuse me."

  Will pointed a finger at him. "There’s s a bit of dope on the tip of your nose, there."

  The drug dealer moved to wipe his nose on reflex but caughthimself with his hand halfway there. He grinned, exposing uneven rows of brown and yellow teeth. "You tried to trick me, Sheriff."

  "Yup… busted. What do you need, Tatum?"

  The scrawny little punk launched into a long, drawn-out story. The gist of it was everybody considered him a big drug user and dealer but he never touched the stuff because drugs ruined his big sister, and some other guy was really behind the drug use in the camp. He could name the dealer but the guy scared him and he wanted to find out what kind of protection he could get if he ratted the guy out.

  Will maintained for as long as possible but when the story veered toward a double-cross similar to one he remembered from one of the Bond movies he held his hands up in front of his chest. "Tatum, I'm going to stop you right there. You may not have heard, but Terrence took on the job of policeman down here. This is more of a situation for him, so I'll tell him to come visit you."

  "Right, right. Yeah, this is probably more up his alley, now that you mention it. When do you think you'll send that big buck over?"

  Will gave him a level stare. "I don't know, but when he gets here, you be sure and call him a big buck."

  Will suffered a few more minutes of banter before he extricated himself from the conversation.

  As they walked toward the entrance, Danny shook his head and snorted. "He’s probably trying to get rid of the competition."

  Jiri nodded. “Or he was trying to feel you out, suss out what you know and what you suspect.”

  Will stopped walking and stood stock-still with his hands on his hips, staring at the ground. Jiri and Danny traded quizzical glances. After a handful of seconds, he looked up; he furrowed his brow and stroked his beard with his thumb and index finger. He repeated Danny's words. "Trying to get rid of the competition. We've got- what, two hundred-twenty-five people in the camp?"

  "Two hundred-twenty-seven, counting the people who came in last night," said Jiri.

  "How much drug use can there be in a community of two hundred? We suspect Charlie O'Brien and his crew manufacture meth. We think Tatum sells drugs, and now there's this other mystery person out there." He turned to Danny. "You talk to everybody, and they trust you. Is there anybody on our team that uses? I'm not talking about some occasional weed, I mean harder shit. You don't have to give any names, just numbers."

  "We don't have a problem with it, boss. I’d tell you if we did." He snickered. "Hell, we work too hard for anybody to be on serious drugs."

  Will gave an absent-minded nod. "Yeah, you're probably right." He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "Hell, who knows? Maybe the same five people stay busy selling drugs to each other. I'm not going to worry about it, but it is something for Terrence to look into." He brushed his hands together, dismissing the idea for now. "What's next?"

  Jiri withdrew a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and read its words. "Speak of the devil- you have an update scheduled with Terrence."

  Terrence Barnett was a black man with a square jaw, a flat nose, and expressive features. A bounty hunter and soldier most of his life, he had stayed on at the camp after his partner got his throat slit in an empty tunnel. The partner’s name was Steve, and why he was in the tunnel, where the killer came from, and why the killing took place were all mysteries. Steve mortally wounded the intruder before staggering out of the tunnel and dying in Terrence's arms.

  Terrence and Steve had served together in Iraq and Afghanistan, hunted bounties together, and, after the outbreak, roamed the Midwest hunting down those who did evil in a lawless society. Terrence agreed to stay and fill the role of a peace officer for the community while he tried to solve the mystery of Steve's death.

  Will thought Terrence bore a striking resemblance to the old world movie star Will Smith. The bounty hunter fit right in with the rest of Will's crew and fast became one of the camp’s decision makers.

  The meeting was short- it consisted primarily of Terrence bitching about his boredom level. There wasn't a ton of crime to be fought in a camp the size of theirs.

  "It's good you’re bored," Will told him. "Your role is to be a deterrent. You roam around and scare people out of acting up."

  "Well it's working, brother. Except for a half-dozen or so wannabe hard cases down the hill, there just ain't nobody misbehaving."

  Will chucked him on the shoulder. "Good. Keep up the good work. Catch those hard cases doing something they shouldn't so we can throw their asses out."

  Jiri cleared his throat to speak. "Fellas, that brings up something that's been on my mind. Say somebody committed a bad act, say we had a murder. Terrence catches the guy, and we put our heads together and decide on a punishment."

  Terrence cracked his knuckles. "You're damn skippy. I'd punish the shit out of his sorry ass."

  "Sure. That’s the inclination. But absent a set of laws and a system of punishment, you'd be guilty of murder yourself."

  "Say what?"

  "We’d have no choice but to react if that happened. Be it banishment, imprisonment, or execution- "

  Terrence interrupted and mimed shooting a handgun. "Execution it is, my brother. An eye for an eye and all that."

  "And I'm with you," Jiri assured him. "What I'm saying is we can handle it the right way or the wrong way. And if all we do is punish people willy-nilly that's the wrong way. You can base it on old common law, English fealty law, the US code, or something else. We can devise our own set of laws. But to protect ourselves from unwanted consequences when this thing is over, and to just do the right thing, we need to set up a system."

  Will gave a slow, disbelieving shake of his head. "You’re out of your mind. I don't have time to take a shit after supper and now you want me to write our constitution and create a justice system."

  Jiri shrugged his shoulders. "You
don't have to do it. Delegate. Hand it off to a committee to design a plan and submit it for your approval. Have we got any lawyers in this place?”

  He, Will, and Danny spoke in unison. "The Judge!"

  Will threw his head back and laughed. "Oh my God, it's perfect. That over-officious sonuvabitch will piss down the side of his leg with excitement."

  "And you're supposed to see him this afternoon."

  Will worried if he grinned any wider the bottom part of his face would fall off. "It will give him something to do, keep him busy, and most important, keep him out of our hair."

  Jiri nodded as he spoke. "We’ll let him pick the committee members. And of course, none of the four of us could serve- it would be a conflict of interest."

  "Do you think he'll balk when we insist on final approval?"

  "Hell no. He'll be so excited he'd probably agree to give you that plus a blow job if you asked for one."

  Chuckling, the threesome settled down and continued their business with Terrence.

  Ten

  * * *

  Will took a seat in the quarry’s dining room, positioning himself next to Becky and across the small table from Coy. He looked at the food on his tray with apprehension. The centerpiece was an odd-colored meat patty. You couldn’t rightly call it beef, pork or chicken. The kitchen staff gathered up all the scraps of beef and pork left over from the last two batches of jerky. They combined it with almost all of a pair of chickens Coy brought back early that morning, (”Everything but the feet and the feathers,” Jiri had reported in a bright tone of voice) and ran the whole mess through a big industrial meat grinder. Twice.

  He poked at the meat patty with his fork a few times, then ran the utensil through a bowl of rice off to the side. Just keep telling yourself this beats Spam on soda crackers three meals a day, he thought. He listened to Danny and Coy banter back and forth and winked at Becky. She shot him a loving smile and winked back.