Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

“Gotta get you cleaned up a little. Don’t worry.”

“Boy, I sure feel weird,” Dave said.

Allison stood by the rear door of the Range Rover, watching blood drip from the seat onto the floor. Dave’s eyes met his.

“Don’t go away, Bob.”

Allison reached in and squeezed his hand. Christ, it was stone cold. “I’m right here, old friend. It’ll be okay.”

He had no idea how long he stood there, holding Dave’s hand while Bert pressed dressings futilely against both wounds. Finally Allison realized Dave was dead. His next thought was that it could just as easily have been himself.

Soldiers had rousted out everyone in the compound buildings: five women, three teenagers, four children. No grown men were among the people on the screened-in porch.

“Isn’t this the dumbest thing you ever heard of?” Mercer said to Allison. “All this yellin’ and shootin’ to protect a fuckin’ side of beef?”

He walked to the porch and looked up at the people standing there. Allison followed him.

“Awright, listen up! Who’s in charge here?” Mercer demanded.

“I am.” It was the tall woman who had escorted Allison the day before. Without her burnoose, Allison could see she had red hair cut almost as short as Frank Burk’s, and a deeply freckled face.

“What’s your name?”

“Helen Burk. I’m Mr. Burk’s wife, and I protest the way you and your men have invaded our home.”

“Get down here, Helen,” Mercer said.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, walking slowly down the steps. Mercer ignored her. She looked at Allison. “Why are you doing this to us?”

“Because — “ His voice was harsh in a dry throat. “Because you stole the Brotherhood’s cow, you lied to me, and now you’ve killed one of my friends and maybe some young men who were only trying to protect us. To protect us from bandits.”

Her eyes met his and would not look away. “Please, Mr. Allison. Please don’t let them hurt us. Please, the kids.” The fear in her voice set off the children. Even after they were sent back inside, their wails filled the air. Mercer kept Helen Burk in the yard. He turned to face her.

“I expect your menfolks will be in the neighbourhood any minute. Maybe they’re even watching us now. Where from?”

“I don’t under—”

“ Yes you do . Somewhere right near here, there’s a little spot where they can see this place. I want you to stand where they can see you and hear you. Do you understand?”

She nodded quickly and walked out through the dead grass of the meadow towards the road. Mercer walked beside her, his .45 in his hand. To their right, trees stood close-ranked along the edge of the meadow. Thunder rumbled not too far away. Allison saw Mercer lean towards Helen Burk, almost intimately.

“Frank? Frank, if you can hear me — they got all of us. We’re all okay. We’re okay.” Mercer prompted her again. “They want everyone to come out, unarmed. Hands on your heads. Or they’ll kill us. Oh, Frank do it, please, please. He’ll do it, he will. Please—”

After a pause, men came slowly out of the woods: six of them, all in their thirties or forties. Hands on heads, they walked across the meadow towards Mercer and the woman. Allison recognized Burk and the two who had tried to block the road; the others he had glimpsed occasionally in the past. Neighbours, he thought. But they’d preyed on other neighbours, and killed Dave Marston.

— Mercer was falling backward, arms flailing. The woman beside him looked startled. The six men, off to one side, hesitated. An instant later shots banged, echoing off the farmhouse and the trees.

Allison raised his .45 and fired twice at one of the men. They were running, throwing themselves back towards the woods. Helen Burk bent over with a gasp and fell. More shots blew little clouds of dust above the clumps of yellow grass.

“Stop it! Cease fire!” screamed Bert. He strode across the yard and yanked a rifle barrel up into the acrid air. Allison ran out into the meadow, with a few of the soldiers behind him. Bert was snarling at the others to stay put. Inside the farmhouse, children screamed.

Mercer got up and dusted himself off. Helen Burk was convulsing, knees drawn up to her chest; she wheezed and panted. Three of the six men were dead. The others, including Burk, had made it back into the woods and vanished.

“Who started shooting?” Mercer asked.

“I don’t know,” said Allison. “I — we saw you fall, and someone was shooting, it was just automatic.”

“Fuck.” Mercer spat in a hole near his feet, then reached into it and yanked out a square of mud-smeared green plastic. A sharpened stick jutted from the bottom of the hole.

“A punji stick. Must be my lucky day ’cause I didn’t step right down onto it. These assholes thought they was playin’ war games. Punji sticks — hey, you want to finish off this poor woman here?”

“Me?” Allison said.

“You shot her. I saw you. Thought for sure you’d get me. Now, you going to put her out of her misery?”

“Jesus, lieutenant.”

“Man, she’s not going to live, but she’ll take a while to die. If you can’t do it, I will.”

Allison lifted the .45 and took a few stiff steps over to the woman. Her freckled face was oddly pale, with blue around the lips Just like poor Dave, he thought. She was starting to groan: “Frannnk… Frannnk.”

“I’m sorry. Very sorry,” Allison whispered, and shot her in the head.

Mercer was already walking back to the farmyard: “You, you, you — get out there and bring in those bodies. Sotelo, you get in that house and tell everybody to shut up. You five, go get some shovels and start digging. Rest of you fan out and try to catch those three dudes who got away. Hurry it up. Gonna start raining soon.”

“Hey, tough break, Bob Tony,” said Bert as he patted Allison’s shoulder.

“They were asking for it. Punji sticks, for God’s sake. They’ve got sharp sticks smeared with shit all over the place, like Vietnam or something. Completely paranoid.”

“Absolutely,” Bert agreed. “You were defending the lieutenant from attackers. No military court would dream of punishing you.”

Allison smiled, then laughed. The idea of a trial of any kind seemed absurd. Justice was dead; now there was only self-preservation. These would-be survivalists had been foolish and unlucky. They’d prepared for the end of the old order, but not for the beginning of the new. They’d thought that violence would protect them during the brief period before other people obligingly died off, like some disaster novel; then they’d inherit the earth. Allison knew better, had known it since Bert had shot the driver of the Trans Am: the violence would never stop. It was the inheritance tax paid by the survivors. So be it.

The day was long. Mercer had the surviving civilians trucked out to Fort Ord for interrogation; they would then be deported out of the Martial Law Zone. Their property would be administered by the army for the duration. “Lots of good stuff here, too,” Mercer remarked to Allison after a quick inspection of the cabins. “Plenty of dehydrated food, lots of guns and ammo, probably a big fuel dump somewheres. If they’d left their neighbours’ cow alone, they’d have been all set.”

Jeremy Lamb was not very horrified when Allison came by to tell him what had happened.

“We shall pray for them all, especially the children. It is terrible to hear of such things. But this is the time of Tribulation; we must accept what is measured out to us. We thank you for your help, Mr. Allison. I wish we had some way to repay you.”

“You have a way, I think,” said Allison. “Three of the men are still loose. One of them is Frank Burk. As long as they’re in the valley, we’re not safe. But if we could keep these soldiers here for a while, they’d track those guys down and keep the peace. It’s just a matter of being able to feed and house the soldiers.”