Jason took a sip of tea. “Yes, indeed. I’m about ready to give myself a negative performance review. In my defense, my job description did not include managing megalomaniac neighborhood control freaks.”
“I wasn’t even talking about that Masterson dipshit. I meant you’re doing a crappy job with the Love and Light crowd here.” Jeff pointed down at the courtyard, bustling with people. All fifteen acres of the Homestead grounds were packed with survivors going about the business of the Apocalypse.
“Why? What’s happened now?” Jason prayed he already knew all the bad news.
“By my estimation,” Jeff told him, “the anti-war group here is about a third of your two hundred people, and that includes about a third of our men-in-arms. A good chunk of the men of this group can’t be counted on to carry out orders because they’re of two minds about shooting trespassers under any rules of engagement.”
Jeff took a breath, then continued. “The wives resist the idea that their husbands should be pulled away to train, patrol and work guard duty. Half of the people here are depressed as hell. Another bunch are experiencing culture shock that’s nearly debilitating. A growing number are mildly sick, slightly injured or are otherwise hampered by little things that might have been a big deal to an office worker back in the old world, like a pulled muscle, a cough or achy knees. A bunch of your guys are being crybabies and are hanging back with the womenfolk.”
Jason thought about it for a second. “Basically, you’re saying that our men are wussies.”
“Yeah,” Jeff replied, “but being a wussy these days has consequences.”
“Okay. I’m on it. Do you have any good news? I could use some good news right now.”
“All I’ve got are good news/bad news combos. We still haven’t taken the refinery, but it hasn’t burned down yet. We’re getting the Homestead guys up to speed on firearms training, but I’m not sure we can count on them in a fight. We recruited eighty guys from the barricade, and we’re training them. Their families have been moved to the shanty town just above the barricades. That’s costing us eighty loaves of bread per day, plus we’re burning about a thousand rounds of ammo per guy we train—and that’s with us being miserly with the ammo. It’s not anywhere close to the best training I’ve conducted. Even so, we’re burning through our .223 and 9mm stockpile fast. We still hold the hospital and the two pharmacies, but that pulls about fifteen of the Homestead troops off the line every day. So we have eighty recruits, sixty Homesteaders and just about every one of the neighborhood men is now training with Dewey Dumbass down there on his lawn.” Jeff pointed at Masterson’s house.
“Here’s my biggest worry.” Jeff handed Jason a hand-held radio.
“Is this one of our radios?” Jason asked.
“Nope, we pulled it off a dead Hispanic kid in that gunfight yesterday on top of the mountain.”
“This is a ham radio,” Jason said, considering the implications.
“I believe we are being probed.”
Jason’s face fell. “I think I know, but please tell me what that means.”
“That means someone is thinking about making a move on us. You don’t use radios unless you’re communicating. You don’t communicate unless you’re coordinating. You don’t coordinate unless you’re thinking. Whoever is on the other end of this radio is thinking. They’re thinking about us, and they’re not thinking about inviting us to a neighborhood picnic.”
“God help us. This soon?” Jason set his tea down on the limestone railing.
“We killed every last one of those guys from their recon patrol, so maybe they got the idea we’re a hard target. Maybe they’ll look for greener pastures elsewhere.”
“It’s ironic,” Jason mused. “You killing those Hispanic kids…”
“Soldiers,” Jeff interrupted, “those guys were soldiers.”
“Okay. Killing those soldiers triggered even more drama among our people. Our members are now even more convinced that taking up arms is wrong. Every time you shoot an aggressor, we get weaker. How are we supposed to win this fight if we get weaker every time we defend ourselves?”
“Sounds like a political problem to me.” Jeff turned to Jason. “And it’s a more serious problem than this radio.” Jeff took the radio back.
The door from the office burst open and Alena rushed onto the colonnade. “Jeff Kirkham, come now! Fast!”
Before anyone could ask, the nurse turned and ran back through the office with Jeff and Jason in tow. The three rushed down the stairs and through the door of the garage-turned-infirmary. A small knot of doctors, one working a blood pressure cuff, stood over a gurney. Tara Kirkham was there, too, looking scared.
Jeff pushed his way into the group and his eyes fell on Leif, his youngest son. The boy laid on the gurney, flushed and breathing rapidly. Jeff could see nothing wrong—no open wounds.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
Doctor Larsen replied curtly, busy working to save the boy’s life. “Jeff, your son has been bitten by a rattlesnake. I’m going to need you to step back now.”
“The FUCK I’m going to step back,” Jeff bellowed as he allowed the doctor to nudge him aside. Doctor Larsen moved around the gurney to take the boy’s pulse.
“Get him away,” Doc Larsen ordered Tara Kirkham.
Jeff’s wife, holding herself together, put her hands on Jeff’s shoulders and steered him away from the nurses and doctors, guiding him to the camp chairs set up on the far side of the garage. “Jeff, you need to calm down.”
“What the FUCK happened to our boy?” Jeff shouted again, startling the nurses.
“Leif was helping with firewood, and a baby rattlesnake was hiding in the wood pile. The doctors are doing their jobs, and we just need to stay out of their way.”
“Ross!” Doctor Larsen shouted over the din.
Jason turned.
“Do we have antivenin in your stocks?”
Jason shook his head slowly, regret in his eyes.
Doctor Larsen talked while he worked on the boy. “I didn’t think so. It’s not something they keep in a pharmacy or that they’ll have in that hospital. Antivenin is perishable and it used to get shipped in from the university when the locals needed it. We’ll just have to make do.”
13
“…HERE’S SOME SLIGHTLY GOOD NEWS from this ass pellet of a world: our joint base in Lakenheath, Great Britain called in to say that they’re doing okay. England closed its borders, suppressed a huge riot in London―killing over fifteen hundred rioters. Now they’re not letting any U.S. military stationed there to leave base. Not that anyone really wants to be in the United States. So England’s doing better than most. Maybe they can throw a little of that good fortune our way. Hopefully, they’re not still pissed over that Boston Tea Party thang…
“Got a call last night from Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida. Check this out. The rain flooded their sewer system and a pump failed. Without civilian contractors, the toilets backed up into a literal shit-storm. The brass moved their HQ to another building, which caused rumors that they’d abandoned the base. So then everyone abandoned the base. So Tyndall Air Force Base was literally taken out by shit. Literally.
“And, if the FCC is listening―which I doubt―I’m sorry about fucking up your frequency allocations and saying so many bad words. I’m very, very sorry. In my defense, you government bastards did let the world burn…”