“Stop!” the guy yelled. Jeff didn’t have to be told twice. He already had his hands in the air.
“I just want to talk,” Jeff repeated.
“How’d you get in?”
“I cut your chain. Sorry, I’ll buy you a new one.” Jeff smiled.
Afternoon Napper held his sights on Jeff, waiting. Soon, another man came around the corner, his rifle pointing at Jeff, too.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” one of the men demanded.
Jeff turned slowly. “I came in for a parlay. How about it?”
Nap-hair guy held his rifle on Jeff while the other guy walked closer. The new arrival slung his rifle and pulled a big zip tie from a pocket in his vest. Both guys wore chest-rigs with six or seven rifle magazines, plus mags for the handguns on their waists. These security guards looked ready for World War III. Of the five refineries in Davis County, Jeff had inadvertently selected the one guarded by the Mall Ninjas from Hell.
Jeff could have pulled some Taekwondo on the guard as he approached with the cuffs, but even if he shot both men with their own guns, which was something he thought he could pull off, he would still have to deal with the shooter on top of the fuel storage tank.
Jeff let the guy cuff him, making sure his hands were in front, where Jeff could quickly snap the zip tie if necessary. Once the security guard had him trussed up, he steered Jeff into the trailer office along with Afternoon Napper.
Jeff couldn’t believe his eyes. The place was packed with Mountain House, ammo cases and three big barrels of water. The office trailer looked like it had once been the security office of the refinery. Now it looked and smelled like an Apocalypse apartment for three single men.
“What’s all this?” Jeff couldn’t help but ask.
“What do you want, coming in here uninvited?” the older of the two asked, ignoring Jeff’s question.
“I want to talk about joining forces. What’s your name?” Jeff reached out his cuffed hands to shake hands.
The older guy, probably in his mid-fifties, made no move to return the handshake. “My name’s None-of-your-business. Why would we want to join up with anyone? We’re doing just fine.”
Jeff could see a security uniform shirt draped over the chair in the corner. The embroidered name on it said, “Morgan.” Jeff walked across the room and sat down in the chair.
“Are you Mister Morgan?” Neither guy responded.
“Okay, Mister Morgan. I’m with the guys camped outside.” Jeff motioned with his head in the direction of his outpost. “We’re here to make sure this refinery doesn’t get burned down by the criminal element. We’d like a little gas for our trouble once things settle down.”
“Does it look to you like this place is getting taken over by the criminal element?” the old guy sneered.
“Nope, looks like you’re doing a fine job. In fact, we’d like to work with you. We can help you with food, information, good company, showers… we even have a few single ladies around our place.” Afternoon Napper’s head snapped around at the mention of single ladies.
We might have something to offer them after all, Jeff thought. The old guy stood up and the smell of unwashed man wafted over Jeff.
“We’re doing just fine. Screw off.” The old guy grabbed Jeff’s cuffed hands, levered him out of his chair and marched him down the steps from the trailer office and out to the chain link gate where he unceremoniously gave Jeff the boot in the ass.
“If you come back, we’ll shoot you,” he said as a parting shot.
Jeff walked back to the campsite, not happy about returning in cuffs, but unwilling to risk cutting his wrists to break free.
“That go well, boss?” one of his guys asked while the others chuckled.
“All part of the plan,” Jeff lied. “Cut me out of these things.”
One of the guys had his Leatherman out and he cut the zip ties with the dikes.
“You wouldn’t believe what they’ve got in there. It’s like they set that place up for Armageddon. I’ll bet they have six months of food and water in that damned office trailer. They must’ve made some kind of prepper pact and supplied the hell out of that refinery right before the world fell apart. There’s no other staff in the facility—just the three security guys. This is their Alamo.”
“What are our orders, then?”
Jeff scratched his bald head. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing. Bottle them up and help defend the place from marauders. I’ll think of something.”
Jeff figured he would just leave the bolt cutters at the gate. They weren’t worth going back for and getting shot. He climbed into the Suburban, grabbed his rifle and said his goodbyes.
Two miles above the refinery, on the mountainside just below the Homestead, Emily Ross sat on a park bench watching women talk and children play. Several hours at a time, Emily could forget that everyone she knew, outside of her dad’s compound on the hill, probably lived in terror, if they weren’t dead already.
But what could she do about it? Absolutely nothing. There was nothing she could do but pray for them. She didn’t know what to pray for. More food? Government relief? Protection from violence? It would be best not to think about it, especially since it made her feel guilty. Perversely, she loved the Homestead lifestyle, especially since the failure of civilization. Perhaps owing to the ever-present risk of dying, living inside the walls of the Homestead felt alive.
As part of QRF Three, she no longer pulled guard duty. Emily spent most of the day training with her team. When they weren’t running react-to-contact drills, they trained on radio protocols. When they weren’t training on radio protocols, they were shooting on the dynamic target range. When they weren’t shooting on the dynamic target range, they were practicing bounding drills.
QRF shooters burned at least five hundred rounds of ammo per week. Emily couldn’t figure out how they could afford the ammo. To support this training tempo, her dad would have had to stockpile a million or more rounds before the collapse. Who would ever have thought that much ammunition would be necessary?
Besides training, Emily spent her day helping in the infirmary, working in the cook shed, tending animals, picking fruit, and canning. Working with her hands, surrounded by family, making food and handling survival needs—something about this life felt profoundly right to her.
Contrary to popular belief, throughout six million years of human development, women had provided most of the calories to the human race. Men had occasionally brought home a shank of woolly mammoth or a dead rabbit. Anthropologically, though, humankind had survived on the labor of females. Most of the calories fueling the rise of man came from collecting roots, nuts and seeds, with men nowhere in sight.
A man’s role, across eons, had been to fight and die on the battlefield, securing peace that would last until the next batch of men was old enough to fight and die on the battlefield. Men were designed to solve a problem created by men. That, and they were nice to look at, Emily admitted.
Just two weeks back, Emily would have argued that the cycle of warfare had ended—that new, modern gender roles would last forever, setting the stage for a peaceful, utopian future. But everything had gone primitive literally within a matter of days. Women were back in the kitchen, producing the bulk of calories and men were back on the battlefield, fighting and dying. She would never have believed it possible for the foundation of society to transform so quickly.
But not everything had reverted to the bad, old days of gender inequality. She’d been tapped to fight in one of the elite units of the Homestead.
I guess that’s progress, she thought.
The other women liked her, even the anti-gun ladies. Regardless of how they felt about guns, the women enjoyed seeing one of their own matching the ability of the men. Emily wasn’t the only woman who carried a gun—many carried sidearms—but she was the only woman on a QRF.