Sunburn (Book 1, The Events Trilogy) (5 page)

12.

A terrible smell had begun to fill the cities and towns. It was the smell of all the dead people who had slowly starved to death and the walking skeletons in the streets with their hands out begging would be the next to go. It was this that had prompted some to take desperate action. The cities were in fact already desperate for water since the mains were deep underground and the pumps were no longer working to bring water into people’s homes. Bottled water disappeared from stores and like everything else became almost impossible to find.

For a time there a thriving black market
emerged in food and water, but soon even the black marketers could no longer find product, and if they did there was no way to get it to market.

But there were people who
were ready to take aggressive action to save themselves. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, county seat of Lancaster County, a motorcycle club called the Wild Men wearing leathers with black and red colors met by lamplight in a roadside tavern to make plans. It was a month after the Event and everyone was thinner and meaner, and they had been mean enough to begin with.

Jack
Kelley was their leader, a big man with dark hair tied back in a rough pony tail. Their useless motorcycles were scattered all over town and even a few were here in front of the tavern. They were safe enough—no one would bother to steal something as useless as a Harley Davidson these days.

They had arrived for the meeting on bicycles
. They were good on the bikes, as they had stolen bikes of only the best quality, but still it wasn’t the same. The throb and heat and roar of a Harley engine between their legs was something they all missed. They nursed their warm beers at several tables pushed together at the back, lit by a single kerosene lamp in the middle.

“None of our long guns have slings,” he was saying, looking at the dim light. “So we
can bring only pistols. But there shouldn’t be any shooting. These people are pacifists, like Quakers, see? They’ll just “quake” and run away!”

He laughed at his own joke and his buddies gave an obligatory chuckle.

“But if we run them all off who’s going to work the farms?” Tom Brown asked. He was skinny guy who everybody said thought way too much to be a good biker.

Led by Jack and Tom the bikers put together a plan to take over Amish farms in Lancaster County, and make the present owners work the land for the biker gang who would then “protect” them from other encroachers.

“It’s a sort of feudalism,” Tom commented dubiously at the end.

“Sort of,
” Jack replied. I paid attention in high school when they talked about feudalism in the middle ages. It was a real good deal for the nobles and the other guys on top.”

Will and Mary watched the storm develop in the faraway hills. This one would be a bad one, anyone could see that. There had been a few thunderstorms already and the lighting had been intense, much worse than ever before because there was still so much electricity in the atmosphere from the Event. Several forest fires had started on distant hills and they had watched with binoculars as the fires cut swathes of black in the distance. The wind had been behind them then and the fires had burned over the horizon and away from them. But now they could feel a strong wind in their faces as the super cell advanced like a giant anvil towering in the sky. There was a lot of energy in the super cell, lightning racing here and there and jumping to the neighboring clouds. It was quite a show—but a noisy and terrifying one.

“This is going to be big trouble,” Will
said laconically. “There are no firefighters any more, and any fires from this storm will come right at us this time.”

“Won’t we be okay in the shelter, even if we lose the house?”

Will was silent considering the implications of that. It was impossible to say what would happen if they were in the shelter and the whole hillside burned, as was now very possible. There were vents to the outside that might let in the smoke and superheated fumes and kill them. They would have no chance then—what to do?

“Let’s get the bike out and load it up,” he said. If a fire starts in front of us and is moving towards the house we should have time to get out.
”

He had protected
the Honda motorcycle inside the shelter during the event and replaced some wiring so that he was able to test it outside last week. The tank was full and he now attached the boot he had for a long gun. He was able to fit the Mossberg 12 gauge in, but the fit was tighter than he would have liked. The saddle bags were bulging with food and water.

“Where can we go?” Mary asked. “Isn’t everything destroyed
out there?”

“There’s one place I know that shouldn’t have been much affected by all this.”

He had already told her about his Amish roots. She caught his drift immediately.

“You would go back there? Would they accept
you—accept us?”

“Ordinarily, no.
But these are not ordinary times. Depending on what’s out there on the roads it shouldn’t take more than a day on the Honda to find out.”

Mary’s eyes grew wide as he took a holster with a 9mm Beretta automatic
pistol and nestled in inside the belt of her jeans in back.

She giggled with excitement.

“We look like Bonnie and Clyde,” she said.

“No, no,” Will
laughed. “They used a Browning Automatic Rifle, not a shotgun! And not a Thompson either, like in the movie.”

He grew suddenly serious. The thunder was louder now and lighting flashing down repeatedly on nearby ridgelines.

“I have a BAR in the shelter and several full magazines. It will actually fit better in the bike boot than the shotgun does. What a great idea you had—“

She blushed. They both looked into the distance to see a line of fire coming over the hilltop
less than a mile away. Will went back in the shelter and retrieved the BAR and ammo.

“Time to boogie,” Will
said, putting the bandolier of ammunition across his chest and adjusting the saddlebags on the big Honda. He went back and secured the house and the door to the shelter. He had bought the BAR in a private sale at a gun show last year. It was unmodified and therefore illegal to own as it would fire full automatic. Its rate of fire was slow for an automatic weapon but it was an amazing gun-- a work of genius from the famous gun maker John Browning, which had seen service since 1918, and been a favorite for area fire in Army and Marine rifle companies during WWII, Korea and Vietnam.

They mounted the bike and he looked sadly back at his house. The shelter might survive this fire but the house was a goner. Mary put her arms around him and her head against
his back as the big engine rumbled and they started off down the hill.

13.

The 30 Wild Men pedaled their bikes east up PA route 30. They had not been far from their own area since the Event and even they were sobered by the vastness of the desolation. For miles they saw nothing living and they instinctively clustered closer together as they rode. Sometimes far in the distance they saw someone moving across a field, head down, walking slowly as if through thick mud.

Houses and farms were empty and
abandoned, some of them burnt out but it was hard to say how or why that had happened. Of food there was nothing left to find except a few rotting bits on a table or the ground. As in Lancaster, there were no more dogs or cats to be seen. If there were any left they were hiding. On a serving platter covered by flies in one house were the bones of several smallish rodents.

“Hmm,” Jack observed. “Either very small rabbits
or very big rats.”

No one else said anything. They still had
some crackers and a few meals-ready-to-eat from the army surplus store, but they would be eating rats too, and very soon if they didn’t find a source of food. It occurred to them that perhaps they were not the first to have this idea taking refuge on the Amish farms and they picked up the pace a bit. But their beer bellies got in the way again, slowing them down and forcing more frequent rest stops.

“Am I the only one in shape here?” Jack complained after another stop. But they all saw he was sweating too in the late summer sun.
They gathered around Jack and his map during the stop. They were now well to the east of the town of Lancaster, and the area was becoming very rural. They were also starting to see working farms and people with black Amish buggies parked in their front yards.

It was totally different from the desolation only a few miles away.

“
It’s not far now,” he said. There’s Smoketown a few miles up ahead and after that comes Bird in Hand—“

“Bird in Hand
--!” They all began to chuckle.

“Hey,” Jack cried, “You won’t believe it, but after
‘Bird in Hand’ comes ‘Intercourse.’”

“It usually does,”
Tom said, “Smoke, then bird in the hand and then of course, intercourse—“and they were rolling on the grass laughing so hard they were almost crying. Jack was pointing to the route on the map for anyone who doubted the names of the towns were really just as he said.

Will and Mary, however, were not laughing.

They had stopped just over the border in
the Maryland Panhandle at a diner that appeared to be open. They were seeing a similar desolation as that in Pennsylvania, but there were a few people working gardens with hand tools. Where there had been herds of cattle grazing when Will last passed some months ago, there were empty pastures now and abandoned houses.

There was a sign in the window of the diner that said ‘yes, we’re open,
’ so Will pulled in hoping for a few minutes rest and something to eat.

A
middle aged couple was behind the counter along with an old coffee maker and some homemade pastries.

“There’s coffee?” Will asked, forgetting to even say hello.

“Hello,” Ralph the owner said. “Yes, it’s made the old fashioned way and costs fifty cents, just what it did—well, before—“

“That’s marvelous,” Mary said. “
And there are pastries too?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Ralph’s wife was making the coffee and setting out the pastries as they spoke. She was not a big one for conversation, it seemed.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter what the price is if there’s nothing much to buy with the money.”

“That’s right, of course,” Ralph agreed.

“We have money and could pay, but I think it would be fairer if y’all would accept a pack of Saltines in payment.”

“Real Saltines?” Mrs. Ralph was suddenly animated. “I love those salty things!”

“Well, then,” Will
said and retrieved a pack from his saddlebag which he had brought in with them. He was keeping a close eye on his bike outside and the boot with the BAR in it, but he hadn’t wanted to bring the BAR into the diner for fear of frightening the people.

They all shared coffee, pastry a
nd biscuits, and after a while Will and Mary got up to go.

“Where y’all bound for?” Ralph asked.

“Pennsylvania,” Will replied. “Amish country. I’m sure they still know how to farm without modern ways and maybe they will take us—me, back.”

“Born Amish, were you?” Ralph asked.

“Yes. But we parted company a long time ago.”

“It’s not far
,” Ralph said. “And y’all have a good machine there. I would steer clear of the cities. York, Chambersburg—“

“Really?”
Mary asked. “What have you heard?”

“Terrible things.”

Ralph shook his head sadly, obviously not wanting to say more about it.

“Well, we’ll stick to the high road and small towns. We can cross open fields or even climb mountains with my Honda.”

Will’s bravado rang false in the empty diner.

“Go with God,” Mrs. Ralph said with a soft smile.

“Amen,” said Mary.

14.

Fred and Samuel passed the Wild Men strung out along the Old Philadelphia Pike on the outskirts of Smoketown. The horse was setting a good pace at a quick trot and the buggy moving quietly behind them.  It was a two lane road with the Wild Men pedaling west as they passed going east. They could hear a moan from their passenger from time to time.

The bikers watched them as they passed and Samuel was astonished by what he saw.

“I’ve seen a few such men passing my store on motorcycles. Never have I seen so many, and on bicycles!”

“Where could they be going?” Fred wondered.

Just before the town of Intercourse, Jack took a left and the group pedaled
into open country. In the distance up a long gravel road they saw a farm in distance. They could a see a good size brick farmhouse, a single black silo with a silver top, a big red barn and several large white buildings, as well as a tower with fan of small blades turning slowly. They could see black and white cattle in one field and some sheep in another. A buggy was in front of the farmhouse with a black horse already hitched.

Tom’s mouth was watering like a wolf’s as he looked at the sheep.

“Mmmm, lamb chops!” He said. His friends laughed because they had been thinking similar thoughts.

“We’ll have ourselves a feast tonight,” Jack said. “But we’re not going to eat all the livestock. The idea is to make this work long term. They continue to work the farm like they know how and we eat
what they eat.”

The bikes were not good on the gravel and they were tired anyway so they started
pushing the bikes up the quarter-mile driveway to the farm. They hadn’t gotten far when they saw a man and woman hurry out of the house and get in the buggy. The man wore work clothes and a straw hat and the woman a long plain dress and a little white cap. The buggy started off in the opposite direction and as it passed the outbuildings almost without a pause, two other men got in the back of the buggy. The horse set a fast pace toward the Stumptown Road on the other side of the farm.

“Well, there goes that part of the plan,” Tom said.

“Let’s catch a lamb or a pig for a barbecue,” another in the group suggested. “Let tomorrow come, we eat tonight!”

             
Dr. Claire agreed with Fred that it was appendicitis. She had prodded and tapped and listened and spoken at length to the patient before she agreed.

             
“I would take out that appendix as soon as possible,” she said to Fred and Samuel. “We have an operating room set up with lanterns and mirrors. I found a drawing of one that was set up in Boston in 1850. Of course ours will be sterile and they didn’t know about that then.”

             
“Will he be all right?” Samuel asked.

             
“A month ago I could have said yes almost for sure. Now with so much improvised or missing altogether, I’m not so sanguine. But, that said, I would say he’ll be okay. We have a good general surgeon here and he’s already used this setup with good success.”

             
In the corridor, Samuel was relieved but with more on his mind.

             
“Perhaps we should stay until they operate and then return when we know he is all right.”

             
“What’s the hurry?”

             
“I’m worried about that group of men we saw on the highway. They were up to no good and I have a feeling the Community is in some kind of danger.”

             
Fred had had the same thought so he understood perfectly.

“Okay, I agree. As soon as we know he is well we can start back. Where did you
leave the horse?”

“It was a real problem. Horses are so valuable I had to walk nearly half a mile to find someone from another Community who would agree to look after him. We can’t wait around here too long or something could happen to our horse—“

             
Meanwhile something had happened to Will and Mary’s “mount”. They had turned into a narrow two-lane road in Pennsylvania an hour after crossing the Maryland Panhandle. Luckily they were looking at the fields and not speeding but they were still dumped very hard. The Honda skidded ten feet farther along the pavement.

             
At first, Will couldn’t figure out what had happened. He was on his back on the pavement with his head ringing. He knew that if Mary had not insisted he wear his helmet he would be dead now with his head split open—and Mary, where was she--?

             
Mary was down on the pavement too but starting to move, so she was okay—what had happened? Then he saw the gleam of the sun on the piano wire—

             
“Dirty bastards!” he said aloud.

             
As he said it he saw movement in the woods 50 or 60 yards away. Was it someone who set this trap? To what end? Just to knock people over and take their supplies? Well, these days that was not hard to believe.

             
He tried to get up and felt a shooting pain in his lower back—

             
“Oh, no! Not  now!”

             
The last time he had had this back pain was over a year ago. If he had thrown his back into spasm again it might be days of exercises and hot pads to get it to stop. How could he do that here? And how could he fight off whoever set the trap if he couldn’t stand up?

             
Smothering a groan, he stood up and hobbled to the bike, whose front wheel was still spinning slowly. He pulled the BAR from its boot, took a magazine from the bandolier he was wearing, inserted the magazine and locked and loaded a round into the chamber. Now there someone else would be hurting too!

             
Mary was up and taking off her helmet.

             
“Are you all right?” Will asked her.

             
“I’m okay. Why are you standing like that?”

             
“I hurt my back,” he snarled. “They set a trap for us.”

             
“Who did?”

             
“Those people down there in the woods. See the wire here? If we had been going fast it would’ve killed us!”

             
“Are you going to shoot them?”

             
“Depends what they do. I’m showing the BAR here. If they know what it is they’ll stay the fuck away from us. Let us go on our way.”

             
“Let me help you with the bike. Can you ride like that?”

             
“I’ve never tried. I need to lie flat and put heat on it. How I can I do that out here?”

             
Mary had to pull the bike back up after they realized that Will couldn’t bend over at all.

             
“I’m a mess. I’m trying to hide it from them down there. If they see we’re vulnerable they might come after us anyway.”

             
But that had already happened. When Mary set the bike up and put down the kickstand by herself anyone could see that Will was hurt.

             
“I’ve got to lie down, but I can’t! Look there!”

             
There was a man coming forward out of the tree line. He didn’t seem to be armed, and carried some sort of white rag on a stick.

             
“What now?” Mary asked.

             
“We wait. Let him come to us. If I go to meet him he’ll see how bad my back is. Just stay there by the bike.”

             
The man appeared to be middle aged and thin. His clothes were too big for him as though he had borrowed them from someone else. He had a hunted look and somewhat ashamed as well.

             
“Is this your trap here?” Will asked nastily.

             
“Yes, it is. Sorry about that. It is designed to stop people on bicycles who aren’t usually going very fast these days, loaded with stuff as they tend to be. We never figured someone could get a motorcycle going.”

“Well, someone did—“

“I’m sorry you hurt yourself.” An awkward silence. “I’m Mark Teller.”

He came forward and shook hands with Will and Mary.
By this time the level of static electricity in the air was down enough so that they received only a little buzz from the contact.

“I’m Will and this is Mary.”

“Mark, since you know I’m hurt maybe you can help me. I need a place to lie down and some way to put heat on my lower back.”

Both Mary and Mark could see that Will was in a great deal of pain, now that he was no longer trying to hide it.

“We live just over the hill there. There’s a guest room you can stay in. It’s an ordinary place and now there’s nothing left to eat there, so if you share your food with me and my wife, it would be appreciated. I put this up when we run out of food. I get some supplies from the people it knocks over and send them on their way. No one has ever been hurt before.”

“They just give you their stuff?” Mary asked.

“Well, I have a twelve gauge I threaten them with. They don’t know it’s only loaded with bird shot.”

Will was smiling through the pain.

“Let’s go then, but slowly.”

They walked through the woods and over the hill to Mark’s house. Mark cut himself a stick to lean on.

When they got to Mark’s small brick colonial at the end of a long pipe stem driveway, they found his wife seated at the kitchen table looking out the window. She flashed a look of panic and looked away from them back out the window.

“She’s been somewhat depressed,” Mark said. “Donna, these nice folks fell into our trap and Will hurt his back. They’ll stay here for a bit till he’s better.

Donna continued looking out the window.

In the back of the house was a small guest room with a double bed and other basic furniture.

“Make yourselves comfortable. The bed has a board under the mattress which is good for your back, Will, and the bathroom is right up the hall first door on the right.”

After Will had lain down with much fussing and groaning, Mark brought a hot water bottle. This seemed to help the pain a lot and Will became less cranky.

“Water isn’t a problem for us as I hear it has been for some folks in towns and cities. We have our own well
which we work by hand and the water is very good. But I have been asking the people passing to pay a sort of toll in crackers or canned goods, whatever they may have—“

“After you’ve knocked them off their bikes and threatened them with a shotgun,” Will
said, testily.

“Well, yes,” replied Mark, “But just to get their attention.”

Will threw back his head and laughed. Mary and Mark just smiled.

In a few days Will was better. It was late morning and Mary was rubbing his lower back with oil to loosen up the muscles. As usual, the BAR was in a corner by the bed. Mark had taken his wife for a morning walk. They would go a few hundred yards up and down the road so she could get some sun.

There was a shout from outside. Will sat up slowly.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Mary.

“Yes.”

“Something is up—“

He go
t up and went to the front of the house with the BAR. Mark’s twelve gauge was leaning against the wall by the door. He must have decided it was too heavy to take.

Will peered out of a lower corner of the front window.
It was half open. It was hard to believe what he was seeing. There were five men, or five things that once might have been men. They were filthy and dressed in a hodge-podge of rags and borrowed clothing. Their hair was long and tangled.  The house was downwind of them and Will smelled something that reminded him of month-old garbage. Mark was down and two of the men were hacking at him with machetes. Mark was already showing several obviously fatal cuts. His wife had been badly cut also and was being raped by of the other men. The other two were looking at the house.

Will signaled to Mary with his hand to lie prone. He took Mark
’s shotgun and broke it to make sure it was loaded. He pulled one of the cartridges to see what Mark had loaded. It was 0-0 buck, so he closed the gun with a click and moved back behind the living room sofa to wait. He laid the BAR next to him and propped the shotgun on the sofa arm.

Mary was behind him now.

“Did you bring your pistol?” he whispered.

She show
ed him.

“Did you
load a round?”

She pulled the slide back and forth to put a round in the chamber.

“Take the safety off, and keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot. Keep your eyes open for anyone coming in the back door. I’m hoping you won’t have to shoot. And try not to shoot me in the ass!”