David Robbins: Twin Cities Run

OUR STORY SO FAR …

It’s one hundred years after World War III.

There are survivors.

Before the inevitable came to pass, a wealthy filmmaker named Kurt Carpenter established a survivalist retreat in northwestern Minnesota, near Lake Bronson State Park. Carpenter planned wisely, providing ample provisions for the Home, as he dubbed the site, and detailed instructions for his followers, the ones he called his beloved Family. One of those instructions: to protect themselves, the members of the Family should not attempt to contact the outside world until it became absolutely necessary.

It’s necessary.

A form of premature senility is affecting Family members. The current Leader, wise Plato, decides to send one of the Warrior Triads out on a dangerous mission. Using the SEAL, a prototype vehicle Carpenter spent millions developing before the war, the Warriors must travel to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and attempt to find certain scientific and medical equipment and supplies.

Life after World War III has done a radioactive flip-flop, and between the radiation and the chemical weapons unleashed on the environment, those still alive never know what to expect next. Menace is everywhere.

There are the clouds, mysterious green vaporous substances, appearing out of nowhere, devouring all flesh in their path. Hordes of mutates roam the land, deformed former mammals, reptiles, or amphibians, endowed with ravenous appetites, attacking every living thing. Inexplicably, bizarre strains of giantism have developed in select species. New threats arise daily.

Before the Warriors can leave for the Twin Cities, the Home is assaulted by the vicious, plundering Trolls. The conflict between the Family and the Trolls is chronicled in The Endworld Series #1: The Fox Run .

A month after the battle with the Trolls, three Warriors and another Family member set out in the SEAL for the Twin Cities. They manage to reach Thief River Falls, where their trip is abruptly curtailed by their confrontation with the enigmatic Watchers and the deadly Brutes. This adventure is related in The Endworld Series #2: The Thief River Falls Run . The Family Warriors, and a woman they rescue, a resident of the Twin Cities, are injured in their fight with the Watchers, and they elect to return to the Home to recuperate before attempting to reach the Twin Cities.

Which brings us to: The Endworld Series #3: The Twin Cities Run

“Did you guys just hear something?”

The four men stopped their activities and listened for a moment.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” the lean gunman in buckskins replied. His blue eyes twinkled as he grinned at the beautiful, muscular woman standing next to their vehicle. “You must be getting jumpy in your young age!” He placed his hands on the pearl grips to his Colt Pythons, one revolver in a leather holster on each hip, and chuckled. “I knew you’d get antsy,” he stated, “the closer we got to Home.”

“I ain’t jumpy, White Meat!” the woman responded indignantly. “I thought I heard something move in the woods.”

“Did you hear anything, Geronimo?” the blond Warrior asked one of his friends.

Geronimo, a superb hunter and tracker, and the only member of the Family with any vestige of Indian blood in his veins, shook his head.

“Nope. Sure didn’t. But I was talking to Blade.” His dark hair swayed as he turned his head, his brown eyes probing the surrounding forest.

Blade, the head of the Warrior unit known as Alpha Triad, rose from his kneeling position by the fire he was preparing for their midday meal.

His massive muscles rippled in the sunlight, his brawny hands hovering near his prized Bowie knives, as he faced the woman. “Are you positive you heard something, Bertha?” he demanded.

The dusky woman nodded, her curly hair bobbing. “I’m a soldier with the Nomads, remember? I know my business,” she affirmed with conviction.

Blade ran his left hand through his wavy dark hair, his gray eyes scanning the nearby trees. It was possible Bertha was mistaken. After all, she had spent her entire life in the Twin Cities, and she was not accustomed to the outdoors and the normal sounds associated with the creatures inhabiting the tall timber.

“I wish we were back at our Home,” the fifth and final constituent of their party said, a tall man with flowing brown hair and a beard and moustache.

“We’ll be there by tonight. Josh,” vowed the gunman. He raised his right hand and felt the stubble on his chin and the corners of his blond handlebar moustache. “Good thing too. I can use a bath and a shave.”

“You sure can, Hickok,” Geronimo said.

Blade was still trying to detect movement in the nearest undergrowth.

Nothing. Bertha must be wrong. He could feel the burning sunlight warming his naked chest, soothing his wounds. The run-in with the Watchers and the Brutes had been costly. He still experienced sharp pain every time he moved, both in the gaping tear in his right shoulder and the bullet crease in his right side.

“You’re not exactly a rose either, pard,” Hickok commented to Geronimo.

Blade smiled, wondering how Hickok was holding up, knowing the Family’s supreme gunfighter was in even worse shape, with a nasty gash over his right eye, and four relatively minor bullet wounds: a nick on his neck, a scrape on his left heel, a furrow along his left side, and a hole in the fleshy part of his left shoulder, almost in the same spot where he had sustained another gunshot during their struggle with the Trolls. If his injuries were bothering him, Hickok was doing a superb job of disguising the fact.

Bertha, the woman they’d saved from the Watchers, had also been hurt.

Her left arm was heavily bandaged, the legacy of a Brute’s attempt to consume her, to literally eat her alive. Bertha was wearing a baggy flannel shirt, covering the bandage, and jeans confiscated from one of the dead Watchers.

Geronimo, still attired in a green shirt and loose-fitting pants sewn together from the remnants of an old tent, had received several bumps and bruises, but nothing serious.

Of all of them, only the Empath, Joshua, was uninjured. He was standing calmly at the rear of the transport, his hands folded in front of his waist, serenely gazing at some white clouds on the far horizon. Even his clothes, faded brown pants and a light blue shirt made from a discarded sheet, were the least torn and worn. Joshua wore a large Latin cross around his neck.

Blade lazily stretched, relishing the peace and quiet. He had taken a pair of green fatigue pants from one of the larger Watchers, to replace his ragged jeans. Like Hickok, Geronimo, and Joshua, he wore moccasins.

Bertha had placed new black boots, again from one of the vanquished Watchers, on her scarred feet, toughened from years of going without shoes. She had giggled when she placed the boots on, delighted at the luxury.

“While you’re getting the fire started,” Hickok said, addressing Blade, “I reckon I’m going to go water a tree.”

“Water a tree?” Bertha repeated, puzzled.

“It’s his quaint, if dumb, way of saying he’s going to take a piss,” Geronimo explained.

“I still can’t get used to the way he talks sometimes,” Bertha mentioned as Hickok strolled off.

“He thinks he’s talking like the real Wild Bill Hickok would,” Geronimo said, grinning. “Let’s keep it as our little secret that he sounds like a jerk.”