The World On Fire Read online

  Spencer and Randolph were crossing into the farm through the same gate we did. Randolph had his gun up on the ready and Spencer looked around nervously. Stu walked out into the light and headed to meet them.

  “Sorry about this, Joe,” I said reaching for his pockets, “But I have to check you over, man. The world has gone all crazy, and I don’t know if you have any family or not but if you don’t… There’s a lot of people who could benefit from anything you have or don’t have. I mean, you may not need it anymore. I’m sure Randolph will have a proper funeral. I just really wish you could tell me what the hell happened here.”

  Of course he didn’t say anything, but I felt guilty rifling through the pockets of a dead man. I looked up to see the three of them examining the bodies that were in the middle of the farm yard. Truth was, when everything ended, the trucks stopped running. Food quit getting delivered. If we hadn’t figured out how to purify our water, we’d have risked getting sick. For us, boiling the water meant that we had to find something to make a fire with, and after a couple months of constantly needing to do it, we were running out of anything coming close to dried wood. Even the mesquite tree we’d talked about had been chopped down.

  The only thing I found of any note was a set of keys. Probably to the house and a car by the look of it. I hadn’t seen a car. I stood and stretched, hoping my hammering heart would slow down a bit so I didn’t feel like I was running a marathon. I slowly walked through the barn and found a pallet of bagged feed for the goats and a funny looking stand that had a V shape and two pails next to it. I went over to look and almost tripped over a stool. A milking stand if I had to guess, but I’d have to ask Randolph if I really wanted to know.

  “You ok in there?” Stu yelled.

  “Yeah, just checking stuff out.” I called back.

  “Oh man, Joe,” Randolph said, walking towards his friend’s crumpled form.

  I kept going past what I had decided was a milking stand and towards a blue tarped shape in the corner. I pulled on the edge of the tarp and a late 70s car sat there, a little dusty, but pretty good looking considering everything.

  “That’s his pride and joy,” Randolph said from somewhere behind me.

  “Does it go fast?” I asked him without looking.

  “Should. He had the motor rebuilt when he got the car.”

  “Does he have any family?” I ask, already wondering what was going to happen.

  I hated to sound like a creepy looter, but the guy had lots of food on the hoof, with the ability to also have milk and cheese, running water… I felt embarrassed by the way my mind was wandering, but in part this was what Randolph was going to set up for the town.

  “Not anymore,” Randolph said, “Not that I know of. Shit. We’ve got to report this, but I’m not going to leave Joe here for the buzzards.”

  “I’ll help dig,” Spencer offered from the open door.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to take turns. The ground is going to be hard pack.”

  “Probably easier in the garden. It’s just behind his house. I guess he said this year’s garden didn’t do too bad.”

  “Garden?” Both Stu and I chorused from different sides of the Mayor.

  “Yeah, let’s go look.”

  6

  They had been on the road for three days. While they’d been stopped, their APC had had maintenance done by Silverman’s Militia/Reserve team who was handling a second training facility. With winter almost upon them, every Mechanic who could, was being pressed into service getting vehicles and machinery ready for the fight that was fixing to spill into the southern states and move up the country.

  “Seems to run better,” Michael said.

  “Purrs,” King agreed.

  Michael had shown King how to operate the controls on the APC, something he was vaguely familiar with, and he’d been driving for the day. They had gone silent today, turning their radios off. They hadn’t slowed down through the areas they had cleared. Instead, they alternated driving and only took meal and restroom breaks. One would drive, one would sleep. Even though they’d traveled much of the same roads to head back towards Louisiana, they were soon going to stash the APC and go in via truck.

  “Your turn?” King asked.

  “I don’t mind,” Michael said, trading seats with him.

  King stood and stretched and pulled the map out and used a penlight to consult it.

  “We want to be quiet when we get close,” King said, “Not even alert the Guard as we roll through an area.”

  “When do you think we’re going to stash the APC?” Michael asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  It had been getting cooler in Kentucky, but when they stashed the APC, it was hot in Texas. They found an abandoned auto shop with cinderblock walls and a deep, almost warehouse-like building connected to it. They stashed it in the back and tarped the front of the APC so even a casual look inside a window would just show a dark bay and an even darker warehouse. It’d already been stripped of anything of use, and the town was dead, literally dead. Both streets coming and going lead to and from Brackettville.

  “Why not stash it closer to a bigger town?” Michael asked.

  “Would you remember if two dudes drove in with that?”

  “Well… Yeah,” Michael admitted.

  “Once we get closer,” King said, “We become ghosts.”

  “Where are we crossing into Mexico, exactly?” Michael asked as they grabbed their gear and checked their laces.

  “Jimenez,” King said, walking now.

  Michael followed. “Ok. How far till the next big town?”

  “If you start saying ‘are we there yet?’ it’s going to be time for more PT,” King grumbled.

  “No, I mean, a couple weeks? Days?”

  “Days,” King said, adjusting the straps on his pack as he walked.

  They’d both been given new packs with camelbacks for water. Michael wasn’t carrying a heavy load out like King was, his pack mostly consisted of the basics. They had planned on doing what he had been doing in the national forest when they weren’t traveling and blowing stuff up; they would be living off the land once their MREs from Sandra had run out, and they’d head north to resupply when they could get secure communications established.

  * * *

  They found a broken down car to use as a windbreak and went to sleep with no fire. It got cold at night, but not horribly.

  “Next time maybe we should sleep in the car,” Michael grouched as he got up.

  “Up to you,” King said.

  They set out after changing out their socks and kept going before the heat of the sun. Slowly their muscles loosened up and the soreness left Michael’s body. He was feeling pretty good when King stiffened and stopped. He pulled his binoculars up and looked in the direction King was looking and saw what looked like a ring of cars in the median. Smoke drifted up lazily from a still lit campfire. Adjusting the focus, Michael saw a ring of men sleeping. He handed the binoculars to King who took a look.

  “Thirteen. I see beer cans and trash everywhere. Guns. No Hispanics, no blacks.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Michael asked.

  “Black man in the deep South, you get a feel for things. I think that’s trouble.”

  They both crouched down and Michael pulled out his map. They were studying for a moment and then made a plan. It worked for the most part. They walked for an hour straight east, and then using the compass, they walked south, paralleling the road. They both sweated and ached. The sun was coming up and the heat of the day was about to hit them.

  “Glass a shady spot,” King said, pulling the vest and backpack off on their break.

  Michael did the same and got his binoculars out again. Much of the area was just desert. Scrub and small brush hung close to the ground in places; finding water was going to be one of the next problems to address.

  “There,” Michael said pointing slightly to the south west, “It’s getting
close to the road again, but I can make out a big rock outcropping. If we put up a tarp we should be able to get some shade.

  “Lead on,” King said smiling as Michael put the map and compass away.

  He’d been teaching the kid some hands-on things. Reading the map, accounting for compass declination. Navigating with his wits and very simple tools. Not that a GPS wouldn’t have been a fun toy for Sandra to have included. The one in the APC wasn’t portable, so they were doing it the old way.

  “Do you think we’re far enough past that camp to go there?” Michael asked.

  “Depends if it was a camp or an outpost,” King said.

  “Oh, I’ll keep my eyes out.”

  King smiled, he would too and he just nodded and started putting his gear back on. After taking a hit of water, they both started walking again. After another thirty minutes, they were able to reach the outcropping and set up a crude quick shelter and they settled to rest underneath it. King looked at the map and pointed to the spot they were at.

  “We’re closer than I thought,” Michael told him.

  “Brackettville by the afternoon,” King told him.

  “I wonder how many people are still alive there,” he said softly.

  “There’s not many people left anywhere. Things are bad, and they’re about to be worse.”

  Michael nodded and pulled his shirt off and used it as a mat and laid his back down on it, letting the sparse wind cool him.

  “What was Sandra like?” Michael asked suddenly.

  “When?” King asked.

  “When you trained her. I didn’t think they let girls into combat roles until a year or two ago?”

  “She wasn’t exactly normal military,” King said.

  “CIA?” Michael asked, suddenly not as sleepy as he thought.

  “Different alphabet, same sort of game,” King admitted, his white teeth flashing in a rare grin.

  “You were too then… I’m just curious. It’s like you’re some beefed up James Bond and she’s the size… I mean, she’s like… My old girlfriend’s size.”

  “You should know better,” King said, “Size doesn’t make a difference. Girl was 19 when they sent her to me. She was smart. Tough. Prayed. I think she had God on her side, but I don’t know much about that. She was good, learned quick. Smart.”

  “You loved her?” Michael asked.

  “In a way. Like a daughter,” he admitted.

  Michael nodded in understanding. He didn’t know the age of the big man, but he was guessing that King was older than he looked.

  “Am I ever going to be that good?” Michael asked.

  “I hope you never have to be.”

  Michael chewed on that for a moment, “You keep teaching me things. Is this part of the training?” he asked.

  “You stop learning, you start dying,” King said and rolled onto his side.

  Before Michael could respond, the larger man started snoring softly.

  “I wish I could do that,” Michael said, rolling onto his back again.

  7

  Sauz, Mexico - The New Caliphate -

  “I am missing Rishaan’s report,” Khalid told his subordinate.

  “He has not radioed back in,” he was told.

  “Find out; I don’t want to send a small force to the auxiliary airport if I do not have to,” he snarled.

  “Yes, of course,” the other man replied, before turning to leave.

  Their main objective had been met months ago, when what was supposed to have been a satellite launch had in fact been a joint effort between the New Caliphate and North Korea - who supplied the material and equipment - to detonate a nuclear reaction above the United States. They believed that they had done what no other country or nation had ever done: utterly defeat and annihilate a government without suffering losses themselves.

  They’d let the Americans throw away their lives, overextending the military, making them spend money they didn’t have… wasting lives. They did not understand that not all wars were fought the way they had been. Khalid Abdul was born to parents who had been killed by weapons that the Americans had supplied to various factions around the Middle East and he’d been raised on the run, from one government or another, by his great uncle. He’d fought in Afghanistan and was heading to Syria when he was called to change his plans and fulfill his lifelong dream.

  Revenge. Power. He wasn’t a religious man himself, not like the Caliphate’s leader, but to admit that would be literal suicide considering the company he kept. He prayed like everyone else, knew what to say and when to say it, but a lifetime of horrors had steeled his heart against any sort of faith. Revenge and power fueled him; that was his course and that was his religion. One of his most trusted scouts, Rishaan, had been sent out three days ago to scout the Laughlin Air Force Base’s auxiliary airport.

  His job was to have been simple: scout the area to make sure it was a backup landing strip. The aerial photography he got made it look as if it was just that’s all it was. If that was the case, the main attacking force would be centered on the main base north of there. His attack would be the first overt move against the government he hated. The government that supplied weapons and money, corrupting men’s minds with their lies. The other commanders had done smaller invasions throughout the southwest United States, but the reason his men called him the ‘Spear of Allah’, was because he planned to strike at the heart of the country.

  “Sir,” the man was back, “Rishaan cannot be raised. He is not transmitting—“

  “Or he’s dead,” Khalid said, “Very well. I want two squads to head to this location where Khalid must have been and—“

  “His radio beacon is still active, and they say it hasn’t moved.”

  “What?” Khalid asked.

  “So we could track his progress; his radio has a GPS chip in it. It hasn’t moved since last night. He’s a little north of the location he was to have scouted.”

  “And you say it hasn’t moved?” Khalid asked.

  “No.”

  “Then he is dead. Send four squads to that location and, once secured, have them join in the main attacking force at Laughlin.”

  “Yes, Khalid,” the man said, ducking back out of the tent.

  Khalid smiled. Tonight, America would tremble in fear.

  8

  Spafford Texas - Brad

  Digging is hard work. I much prefer hunting to digging, but we found the ground by the garden to be easy to dig until we got to the hard pack about thirty inches in. Spencer took over for a while with a pickaxe he found in the barn and we alternated until we had enough space dug to bury Joe properly. Stu finished the filling in while Randolph was inspecting all the weapons, after dumping the four bodies in the desert.

  “Now what?” I asked Randolph, knowing the job was now over.

  “I hate to say it, but I guess we gather everything up that isn’t nailed down. Joe doesn’t have any kin close to here, and we’ve been horse trading forever. I’ll store his stuff till the— “

  “Excuse me, mister?” A small, quiet voice called out, making us all turn.

  There was a young girl, probably no more than seven or eight years old, carrying a glass jug. She looked thin, but healthy. Her brown eyes were staring holes into me.

  “Yes ma’am? How can I help you,” I asked her.

  “Is Mister Joe going to be milking today? Momma’s sick and she couldn’t walk over here herself.”

  We shot pained looks back and forth until everyone looked at me. Great.

  “Mr. Joe had a run in with some folks, and he passed away,” I explained to her.

  “He was shot?” she asked, alarmed.

  “No, I think he had a heart attack from all the action,” I told her, “Do you normally get milk from him?” I asked.

  “Yes sir. We also make the cheese. It isn’t the hard kind like the store, but it spreads good. Other than the tortillas and lizards, it’s the only food we got.”

  Randolph made a choking sound
and I looked up to see him wiping a piece of grit out of his eyes, either that or the wiry Texan was starting to get choked up.

  “I don’t know how to milk a goat. Does anybody here know how?” I asked and everyone shook their heads no, “Do you know how to?” I asked her.

  “I tried to help once, but I got scared. I’ve watched him plenty of times,” she told me.

  “If you can walk me through it, maybe I’ll give it a shot?” I asked her, and for the first time she smiled.

  “Mommy doesn’t let me talk to strangers, but she’s sick and I missed coming over yesterday. You won’t tell her, will you?”

  “Tell you what, my name is Brad Palmer. How about we go check on your momma and ask her if it’s ok if you show me how to milk a goat?” I asked her.

  “She’s sick though. You might catch what she’s got,” she shot right back.

  “Well, how about your daddy?” I asked her. “He wouldn’t let his daughter talk to strangers. Besides, I bet I might have something in my backpack that would make your mommy feel better. Medicines?”

  “Dude….” Stu said, but I waved him off.

  “Ok, well… My name is Maria, and my mom’s Marcy. Daddy died when I was a baby.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you Maria; let me go get my bag.”

  She watched me with big eyes as I pulled out a small red bag that had a flap that rolled it shut, making it mostly waterproof. It was my first aid kit, something I always kept handy, especially when out in the middle of nowhere. Hunting hogs can get a bit dangerous, and getting gashed or gored by their tusks was always on my big list of what not to have happen, so I kept more than the usual Band-Aids; I’d thrown in some antibiotics I’d purchased online. I had a hundred capsules each of amoxicillin, and Keflex, all available over the counter for use in your fish tank.

  It was even the same formula and dosages that humans used. I’d learned about it on the Doom and Bloom blog back before the world had ended with an EMP, erasing everything.