Lights Out

by Mr. Unlucky

Life and the new values, after the dead have risen. Set in the Land of the Dead era, but contains elements of Dawn of the Dead '04. Living Dead fiction fans may see familiar themes and concepts.

The team was assembled outside of their most recent assault, the gunsmoke still flowing in small eddies of blue-grey nothing, as the cigarettes found insides the old storefront were being loaded into the cab of the bulldozers parked in front of the former gas station. Inside, the last mop-up was being accomplished by three recent additions to their ranks, all hell-bent on scoring what could be scored, and high-tailing it to more safe and lucrative grounds. One of them, wearing a bandanna, had opened his pack earliest of the three commanders, all resting on their haunches on the bumper of a burnt-out pickup truck. Their 'leader', known as Ren, had just removed the front and center cigarette from the pack, inverting it before placing it back inside the foil-wrapped interior. Another was withdrawn, lit and smoked before he spoke again.

"You flip a lucky, too?" asked the bandanna. His eyes, hidden behind a blast visor were perpetually bloodshot. His look was the generic; four years ago, it would have been considered beyond upsetting. The team's assembly was impromptu, but necessary; today's selected site for disposal work was luckily close to an unlooted fuel retailer, almost a find beyond reasonable prayer's request. None shouted happily, though.

"I always flip a lucky," replied his companion, a wiry-looking Irish logger. His rust-red beard was streaked with gray, as was his sparsely-visible hairline. His attire was a duplicate of his associate. With a practiced ease, his gloved fingers slid across the torn-open pack of Marlboros, and turned the front and center cigarette upside-down. Each man on the team practiced this, sometimes to either mark someone's passing or for personal 'luck'. Few spoke of their reasons; it would offend a moral in some of their minds, possibly.

The Lucky; in a million ways, it meant something, to a million people. Of the million or so left in the U.S,

The two men set themselves down on the hard-packed earth of the trench's lip, staring at the skies, the trees, the houses in the distance; anything but the bottom of the pit. With a shrug, the redhaired man passed two to his associate, who nodded in thanks of the rare gift. The soft red of the pack was a dull comparison for the dimming sunlight as it dropped like a stone behind a wall of lush, green forested hills outside of Portland, Oregon. The sun looked like it was bleeding profusely, the red shined so brightly in the clouds. A thousand topics were spoken of in a million varieties, save for a select and chosen few: the dead of their own unit, the struggle of the new parents of the New World, or of their mutual sleeping disorder of being unable to fall asleep in the dark; they required some comfort from the illumination they'd been denied during the Collapse of the Old World.

The bandanna slid down, revealing a jawline nearly shaved to the bone by an errant shotgun slug, and a cheek tattoo of three teardrops in a straight line. A smirk formed on the Hispanic man's face, as he said his favorite line: "God, thank you for another day."

His associate, pulling up his riot helmet's visor, shot a look, and gave a dismissive shrug. "Pray if you wanna, Ren." He spat into the trench, striking one of its occupants. "He ain't listenin' no more."

Shrugging, Ren rose to his feet, seeing their work laid out for them. "Maybe he's not, but I think he's definitely got something to say, sooner or later." Dropping the subject, he returned to the relaxation at hand.

Both men smoked in silence, looking to the trench's filling; disappointment, pity, rage, fear, hate. Many emotions boiled and churned below the surface of their faces, but neither had to comment on their feelings. After a year of the same work, it meant nothing if one man broke down, clutching his head, bawling like a child. It happened to all of them, at some point; no hardass exterior lasted the full tour, and no one was keeping score. Emotions were private rivers, uncharted by many, and explored by less. Save for Ren.

Across their backs, an over-under shotgun and flashlight/bayonet rest inside a leather carrycase, sidling with a two-liter canteen, nestled between a few days of freshly-stolen convenience store-style jerky. Their slowly-cooling barrels were all marked with their personal mottos or names. Neither carried a medical kit, despite the danger of their occupation; medical care came in nine millimeter, or twelve gauge rounds to the forehead or back of the skull. Little stock was put into any other forms of medical coverage.

Each dressed according to unit's discretion, but vast tolerances were made; many of their compatriot's uniforms no longer looked like their original black BDUs. Unit patches were simple three-digit numerals, with colorcoded markings denoting affiliations. These two were in the 312-Blue; officially, Internment Detail and Security. Commonly, they went by "IDS" on internal memos and notations.

To the people they served, they were known as Gravediggers, Skullpoles, or simply, Grim Reapers. All of them wore black uniforms, eye-covering goggles and helmets, and one large silver-spraypainted axe or single-bladed instrument were their badges of office, and each man had killed more than his age in targets by the time he'd been on the detail for a month. They were ugly, potent and effective at their professions.

This practice had nothing to do with their specific areas of prowess; they usually hired young, used them as cannon fodder and kept the survivors to train the next generation. The 312s had cycled through more manpower in the last four years than any six units in any recorded armeed conflict. Their attrition wasn't due to enemy action; "personal hardship" and "emotional distress" were rated higher than the deaths in field combat by a factor of fifteen to one. Through one reason or another, though, of their original crew of twenty, only two men remained; one was confined to a wheelchair, and the other was under permanent sedation in the coma ward. Butchery ran deep into their history, almost a perverse source of pride, at times.

He'd put the other man into the wheelchair with a machete, and had taken his own eyes out with a fork before he'd been tackled by his NCO. That day was known as Burke's Day, in honor of the man in the wheelchair; Lt. Gerry H. Burke, US Army.

Burke's Day was why no man or woman in the 312 celebrated Christmas anymore.

Both men rose to their booted feet, and looked to the hole. With a dimmed enthusiasm, they took their cigarette butts, took out a match for it, and stuck them both up their nostrils; it cut the smell when the work got started.

"Hit the gas, Jazz," sang out Ren, motioning with his left hand, shotgun in his right. His associate climbed into the large bulldozer, and dropped the scoop down to ground level; on the front of it was a pair of wicked-looking tubes, covered in inward-curving spikes. Each spike was part of an ignition system, and the tubes were connected to a trailer towed behind the rig. With a loud 'whoomph', the air was a mirage of smoke and distortion as the fuel splashed to the bottom of the trench, twenty feet below ground level. As it struck paydirt, so did the ring of igniters, turning the yellowish petroleum burst into a miniature solar flare. All it touched turned black, curled, and withered under the pressure, the heat, the finality of the inferno.

For five minutes, the fuel was pumped into the hole, every thirty seconds, for ten seconds a blast. Each blast rendered down the contents of the trench to ash in smaller and smaller increments, until only the lowest level was still visible in bared patches. The smoke trails climbed to the skies, unhurriedly.

Both men dismounted the rig, unplugging it as their paths went across fuel lines, the igniter battery coils, and the rig's rather impressive neon sign. Written across the air in flickering yellow and red neon lighting, still smoking from the trench, was the four words which described their lives so easily, it hurt.

"CAUTION: DO NOT APPROACH!"

Both men each walked to a bulldozer, unremarkable in any real detail, and turned them on, driving down the path towards the primary settlement for their patrol region, ready to wrap up the last load. Each dozer was hauling a cargo container usually moving furniture, livestock or frozen entrées.

Sometimes, when viewing the perimeter for a future dump site, Ren would sit atop the lookout towers on the west end, and look to the east, almost enjoying the idea of comfort and civilization; such thoughts were common to the occupants, whenever what passed for happiness went through their minds. The draconic policies, enforced by men like Ren and his fellows, could almost be ignored during these idle moments. As such, those idle moments were a private currency, traded with each item of memorabilia and contraband drug. From the walls of cargo containers turned into a sieged castle's defenses, to the towers of stacked cubed cars, few would misunderstand the intention of the former junkyard for anything else than what it was: a solitary confinement cell surrounded by the freed inmates of an insane world. Atop the pikes made from welded rebar stood the phalanx of cameras and banners, the microphones and pennants, all garishly colored in red, black, blue, and green. The forbidden color of yellow no longer denoted a coward; it was the marking placed on a Dead Zone. It was rarely used inside of the Compound, as was official policy.

Dead Zones were growing more common, and larger in size. Each city with a suburb usually marked it with flipped over cars, painted bright yellow with thrown buckets of Glidden. Some homes in civilized areas had hastily painted doors and windows covered in plywood of canary tones; inside of it, each would have one or more dead bodies. Some of those were among the people Ren referred to as the Deadheads. Others called them Infected, Walkers, or simply the Dead. You could hear the capitalizations when they spoke it.

Departing his associate, Ren climbed an outlook tower, laden with his Thermos and lunchbag, determined to make the most of an already bad day. As he prepared for the difficult climb, he passed by someone's bookbag, most likely left behind by the prior occupant of the fifty foot tower of steel. Curiousity was always his strong point, so he opened it, reviewing the contents, looking out periodically over the camp as he did; one never knew if the original owner was nearby, and property rights meant just about nothing in these painful days. Reasonable ownership aside, the single square mile of claimed land was their's, and their's alone. For the past thirty months, they had survived in a junkyard, turning the old refuse of cars and buses into homes, hospitals, and their militia headquarters.

Among the backpack's prizes were a few items doubtlessly left behind either carelessly by one of the old spotters, or as a sort of suicide note by one of the jumpers they got almost every other week. Sometimes, seeing the masses outside the gates, or deep in the halls of their memories, it could get on top of one's sense of security, self, and definition. Leaping to the concrete pad below always was an alternative to waking up in the middle of everyone else's nightmare. Maybe the body was still up in the tower, he mused darkly.

With a slight frown on his face, he lit a cigarette, categorizing the items inside: one spiral notebook, nearly full;.one pair of black ink pens, both gold and black plastic; three shotgun shells, duct-taped together; one bag of Doritos, unopened; one half empty bottle of Evian water, one liter-sized. And the best part of all: finding a wallet. Inside, an ID card (not a license; oddly), one expired library card, and two photgraphs of a pretty, raven-haired woman in her mid-twenties, perhaps ten pounds overweight. The other picture was of a small child, maybe three or four. According to the documents, he was reviewing the life of one Herbert Allen Drover, age 28. Some small certifications indicated membership in some various associations.

With a sigh, he threw the wallet to the floor of the shack atop the steel I-beams, and set himself onto the bench seat formerly occupying the back of a Cadillac, circa 1950. The notebook bore investigation, and summarily was, in great detail. The writing style indicated he was an educated man, of some degree of authority. For such a young man, he lacked the common lingo, but seemed slightly technical, if a bit dull, with a few upbeat phrases etched into the margins of some of the pages. The first forty pages were all about the journaled troubles of life in an office, followed by ten pages of life in a laboratory, in Branson, Missouri. Ren cocked an eyebrow at this; he was somewhere in the range of over two thousand miles away from home. Judging by his taste in luggage, he travelled light and didn't keep many souvenirs. The text drew Ren in, his eyes flickering from page to page, reading in reverse.

For the next two days he had off from work, the notebook was his only company, and his whole world. His only meal came from his lunchbag, and his water would more than last him. The Evian and the Doritos became small relics for this single man, moving across the United States of Not-Dead-People, population unknown, but dwindling. The wallet likewise became a part of his small shrine in the tower, the flickering tube of the neon light his altar, his prayers daily and reverent.

Herbert Allen Drover was an office peon for a medical research company working with, among other things, legal concerns from the use of stem cells and radical treatments for heart attack survivors. Herbert revealed in his journal his medical license to practice was temporarily suspended, as he was found drunk behind the wheel of his parked Honda, but exoneration would soon be forthcoming. The disgraced doctor then took up residence in a rental condo, across the street from Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, and he was an avid people watcher. The solitary doctor was a people-person, but enjoyed his privacy immensely.

Ren smiled; he'd been that way, once before. The book called his attention back, again engrossing him. Some drew to a dull conclusion, as each day began to look like the one prior, terminating in the same fashion; "All is well in the house, heart, and future. I'm signing off."

So the days rolled by, with little occuring out of a given norm; a promotion, the reinstatement of his medical credentials, and a transfer to an office block across town. Contact with his family was negligible, and that seemed to suit the writer just fine. No hard feelings, just no strong positive ones, either. On the dateline listed as 8/09/06, there was a change in the writing speed, style, and content.

The good doctor had fallen in with his secretary's best friend, in almost a warped fashion. She was a surgical addict, and he was in counselling for treating his growing fascination with his feet; almost a fetish, but apparently just a healthy, if bizarre, interest. He would be dropped from the group within a month of sessions. The man had a severe foot-thing issue to work out, Ren decided, but was rock-solid, otherwise. The relationship with 'Gloria' went smoothly, until her own urge to have needless operations reached a critical peak with her winding up in a burn ward, suffering from third-degree burns over half of her legs.

She'd decided to douse her jogging shoes in gasoline, just to get the burn tissue to the point of requiring rare, expensive, and often painful grafts. The resulting burns left her almost a cripple for life, at least physically. Emotionally, she was 'at the top of the mountain of life', the good doctor quoted her as saying. He departed her company, assured that for all of his own problems, 'she was far more fucked in the head'.

"Wow," Ren thought aloud, shaking his head; "Some people's kids, y'know?"

The book beckoned once more.

Quotes from it ran through his mind all day, during the sixteen days he read it, off and on again; at work, it was relaxing, but during his downtime, it was an obsession, to read further, to 'get into' the mind of the man. His life (what he had, at least) almost declined, finding the company of his fellows almost intolerable.

"By mid-December, the first of the reports came in; distant cities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East. Hostilities were assumed at fault for largely deserted outlaying villages across the world, and some places in the Mexico desert were even more barren. Canada was walling itself shut, the day before Christmas. Mexico was running patrols via small aircraft and jeeps, keeping the Rio Grande as a natural barrier against northen invasion. Catalina Island, off of the coast of California, had declared itself immunized against the 'infection', and was surrounded by watercraft of all stripes, including two Carnival cruiseliners.

It was on New Year's Eve that the shit hit so hard, it buried the fan."

"That's putting it mild, Doc…" Ren smirked. The man had a definite way with words, he admitted.

"In New York, the riots turned violent; the Bowery ran red with blood. Chicago caught fire for the second time, as fire and emergency services were inexplicably attacked by phone hijackers, misdirecting vital information to Domino's Pizza parlors across America. Radical eco-terrorists blew Hoover Dam and a score of other hydroelectric dams, putting a sizable chunk of the US into the dark. Power plants were abandoned, across the world, as operators and technicians left their jobs, to be with family and friends. In Nebraska, a small nuclear weapon of unknown make was detonated, deep inside of a corporate plaza's subbasement. The resulting EMP surge knocked out the largest array of telephone services on the planet. No one claimed the bomb was their's. Or, if they did, no one had an idea who it would have been.

"NASA's international space station crew screamed for help, as co-pilot Yvgeny Darsul of the former USSR space program suffered a heart attack, upon finding his hometown was burning to the ground. He reanimated an hour later, biting two of the eighteen personnel on board, prompting him to become the first undead citizen of space. The American crew, headed by Lt. Col. Henry Sable, initiated the protocol enacted by NASA and the Pentagon, to unfold the Black Butterfly project, and shut down the opposition's satellites, ensuring supremacy, as they thought at the time it was part of a conspiracy on behalf of 'suspect governments' and 'insider insurgency cells'. In the confusion, they targetted one third of all current orbitting devices, and shut down a French tracking satellite, which was part of a chain providing up-to-date information on their rotational axis/counter-axis gas release for the ISS. Unable to recorrect their dropping altitude through telemetry, they ejected one half of the station from the orbital mass. It looked like a hooked star, falling to the Earth, trailing debris. Some called it "Wormwood" or the Star Falling in the East.

"The Star landing in the East Bank is easily what set off what was left of the Middle East.

"Erupting violence overseas in the Mediterranean was about as uncommon as Elvis sightings in the Midwest. This would be like Elvis approaching the fifty-yard line in the middle of the Super Bowl Halftime show, and announcing he was the risen Christ. Truck bombs started the atrocity off with a literal bang, detonating outside of every major municipal service and agency in Jordan, Jerusalem, Tikrit, and Beirut. The flare-ups of the past were obliterated by the fury of the suicide bombers entering maternity wards, the shoulder-launched rockets striking oil tankers in port, and the wave after wave of gun-toting, religious extremists determinted to get to Paradise through the opposition's utter decimation. No one knows the final death toll that night; it was assumed to be easier to rate survivors than dead and wounded.

"Meanwhile, back in America, the few people left listening to the Internation Space Station's single remaining broadcast system were forced to listen in horror as the worst of their descent was yet to come; they would in fact not fall into the Earth's warm embrace, as the kick-off from their other half would throw them the opposite direction. Instead, they hurtled into space, away from any tangible gravity wells, spiralling out of the galaxy, screaming when they bothered to turn their audio back on."

Ren shuddered deeply. He'd heard one of those, a few months after the First Night, from someone who had recorded ghoulishly the screams of terror and pain of the doomed astronauts were unwillingly exploring further into space than any man had a sane reason to. Pleas, beggings and cries for mercy, unhalting forever in the vast darkness of the cold reaches of eternity.

"After as long as it would feasibly wait, the end of the world arrived, deposited the survivors, and then left, in search of better territory. The "Apocalypse" was officially an understatement; the world had moved on.

Church became redundant; praying was what you did instead of screaming your head off. Revelations were heard with every wandering priest, guru, and cult leader-wannabe, each spouting off their own personal spin for what worked out to be the one and only release from the United States Office of Homeland Security: 'The recently deceased are returning to life, and consuming the bodies of the living. Any wounded are doomed to return. All citizens are urged to find shelter, remain hidden, and await rescue. We are at Red Alert.'

The response by almost all of America was to very much not give a flying fuck about the color-coded terror alert, grab relatives and friends, and make for what they each believed to be their most secure locations. One by one, rescue stations began going online, formed not by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but by civil militias..."

Militias; armed groups of rapists who'd found either Jesus or a rifle, and wanted to share both violently, Ren thought bitterly. His opinion was somewhat tainted; some had done well, but many were bigots who'd taken to shooting anything other than a white Christian man, or raping it to death.

"These modern-day brigands and road wardens are little more than common thugs with a new purpose; survive on the work and miseries of the oppressed and suffering, reaping a dark harvest of freshly-picked wild vegetables and produce from grocery stores, stealing anything of value, both real and perceived. I have seen them throughout Branson, and am much ashamed of the actions of my species."

One such group is what nearly condemned Ren to a rather terrible fate, he lamented while reading the categorical list of holocausts and tragedies, all written calmly and serenly by the good doctor's decorative script, neatly tucked into each of their own pages, with simple maps detailing each horror, when an obscure territory was mentioned. He seemed to be quite the fan of news radio, as well.

The book was eventually finished and placed deep inside his pack, carried everyday from then on. It would be a source of massive consolation in a world without enlightenment, pity, or remorse; it was his Bible, confidant, and best source of humor in an otherwise hopeless place. His heart grew wings, so to speak, as everyday phrases he'd uttered suddenly came from his lips:

"Life's a garden - dig it!"

"Smile: it's the second best thing you can do with your mouth."

"Always look on the bright side of life."

Always, though, the book beckoned him back, to walk through the hallowed halls of memories, both old and worn, and new and repressed. Almost as if the good doctor were knowing his next move, and guiding his moral compass back to a truer north than he felt in his heart. Nameless dreads were readdressed as old fears, and conquered, while reading of the good doctor's travels to Oregon, fighting in necessary fights, and fixing up needed repairs, both physical and mental, on any and all he came into contact with.

His trail took him down the Willamette River, winding up near a suburb of Portland within the last five months; his calling was to rescue others, and he took up the opportunity to do so, leaving the journal in a pile of welding supplies just purchased by the same community leaders who built the Compound.

"Answers the question about where you're off to now, Doc." Ren couldn't supress his smile. The man had to know the journal would be found, and thusly be read, and this alone inspired him to remove it from his pack, and slide it into a food box given to a family in the primary living quarters, stating it was a training manual when the father of a family of six looked him in the eyes, and asked if it was a "fucking Gideons' Bible". Instead, he sat with the man and read some of the more interesting passages to the man. When it reached the part of the participation he'd had in a hostage rescue in Idaho, neither man could stop from laughing; the image of the skinhead who was holding a gun on the Doc with a live rattlesnake between his feet, while the rest of a small Mormon family tried not to panic or laugh was too funny an image.

Ren's own rescue flashed before his eyes, unbidden; two months after the fall of the habitat support module, he was ushered out of a rescue station in Salem, forty or so miles south of Portland, when he saw his future 'Christian benefactors' riding up to the gates; some had already removed their pants, in anticipation for their 'dating' to begin. They were interrupted, though, by the arrival of sixteen men and women, dressed in what could best be described as outlandish clothing, all bearing smiles, edged weapons, and a large flatbed trailer towed by a mothballed semi-truck, newly-converted to a heavy-duty tow truck.

While he re-lived this unpleasant memory, he politely excused himself, claiming an ill stomach.

The raiders who were ushering them out made an approach on the lead car of the caravan of minivans, station wagons, and VW Beetles, shouting out for their weapons, ammo, and food. The largest of the new arrivals stepped from the cab of the semi, wearing an honest-to-God chainmail shirt, carrying an aluminum baseball bat in each hand. The raider, a prototypical speedfreak with a leather jacket and Glock nine tucked in his jeans, called out for a peace talk, as it were, when the others on the trailer came into view. Each of them had a crossbow or longbow, all drawn back to strike. Some wore odd-looking helmets, made of steel and brass. No one but the new arrivals could have expected the first, and most decisive tactical maneuver.

The struggle, all six seconds of it, was graphic, and burned into his mind in short order. The raider hoisting his gun from his belt found a crossbow bolt lodged in his forearm, pinning it to his stomach, and another bolt found its way into his left temple. The other raiders went for their hardware, in their belts and what was stashed in their command center (an old beater of a Ford van) only to find one of the new arrivals on the roof of it, smiling as he hoisted a flintlock rifle, dressed like a Rebel soldier from the Civil War days.

Black powder, for all of its faults, was in large enough supplies some people still used it, instead of resorting to higher rates of fire. The multiple thousand left crippled and dying in the Civil War can attest to this fact of ballistic; however, its power has rarely been so empathetically proven than on that afternoon.

The shot went through the raider's skull, blowing it into splinters of bone, brain, and poor fashion sense.

Within minutes, the raiders' food supply, weapons, and ammunition was handed over to the leadership of the rescue station, the raiders turned to prisoners (whose fate was sealed the instant they'd declared their intention to rape and kill any who "resisted or put up a fight, regardless of gender") and the van commandeered for the new arrivals, who announced their intention to hire on anyone willing to travel north, to Vancouver, Washington. When asked who they were, and what they were doing, they replied with, "In the Service to His Majesty the King, I am Lord Wallace deFleur of of the Barony of Adiantum, Kingdom of Middle An Tir, Troop Three, of the Three-Score Furies fighting company, at your service. To the mundane world, I am Clark Bekkman, late of Trenton, New Jersey. I used to do taxes, pro bono."

They even had business cards with their logo; they were members of a loose confederation of medieval recreationists, based around the turn of the Renaissance Europe, and some stragglers from a delayed flight's worth of Tennessee Civil War re-enactors who got stuck on the ground when all flights were cancelled or improbable, some months prior. The Rebels announced they were under the command of the 2nd Maryland Infantry, Company H, and were more than happy to offer lessons, equipment, and protection for any willing to join them in their long trek to Appomattox Courthouse. The weird part was, they were serious, as they were from that area, and assumed they would meet up with their fellows back East easiest by hitting the primary battle sites along the way. Such a devoted band of do-gooders, they couldn't be any stranger.

The S.C.A. chapter had twenty converts, and rediscovered almost a dozen members in the three hundred survivors of the Rescue Station's population. One half-dozen heads elected to march east, and one of them had been in a recreation of Gettysburg, in 1998. Few other enthusiasts wanted to leave, or their fellows were less mobile; an aging golf pro asked if anyone knew if they could tend to him and the 2nd Maryland forces willingly signed up for the daunting task, as he was approximately seventy years old and required medication rarely found on the trail. They also asked if they could call him General Robert E. Lee for the duration; their happiness knew no bounds when he agreed, provided suitable costuming was provided. The grim determination was then replaced with something far more dangerous; they had a method, a means, and a motive - they would fight, kill, and claim all in their goal to protect him from all threat, for his whole life.

The departure of the Rebels was heralded with music, sang by all who knew the lyrics: Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans". On the back of the schoolbus requisitioned by the Rebels, one could read at a distance their motto: "APPOMATTOX OR BUST!" in brilliant orange and blue letters, complete with Confederate flags dangling from the sides of it. A more dangerous lot than ever, they went east.

Ren decided that if one must have a goal, it should be reasonable, attainable, and require little to no costumes; an adage by Thoreau came to mind: "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

The next six weeks went by remarkably well; he'd found an old jumpsuit worn by a garbage truck driver who was upgrading his threads for a slick new BDU-style uniform, and a good helmet with a functional light on the front that worked. The good people at the Chapter were able to provide him with modern equipment, some basic training on foraging, and a good road map, with symbols marking off safe water, good hideouts, and some of the first-ever Dead Zones. To keep them in his heart and mind, he carried a three-foot sword gifted to him by one of the fighting-types, who was prone to wearing plate mail while wading into Dead Zones to rescue survivors; the words 'Black Knight' were emblazoned on his chest.

It's hard not to like someone who enjoys their work that much, Ren decided, the day he accepted the sword; it was known officially as a Gladius, carried by the Roman Legions in the time of the Caesars.

The first walls of the compound he now lived in were being constructed, with forty bulldozers, forklifts, and palletjacks moving the supplies into the interior of an old railroad switching station adjoining the junkyard in Portland's industrial ghetto district, home to several breweries (who were still functioning, no less - the machinery and technology to make decent homebrew was hijacked from there, actually). He lent his shoulder and back into every task required of him, eventually taking a good spot in the Burial and Internment Services, hoisting barrels full of corpses into the furnaces, before one of them detonated; it wasn't while he was on watch but the going story was someone didn't notice a dead soldier had a 'Fuck You Charlie' charm on his neck, and the frag grenade took out the boiler and sprayed slag in all directions. The furnace was repaired, and turned into a heating unit for the complex's housing units, and B & I squads were then given their own bulldozers and forklifts, to ferry the dead to the trenches they had dug, which were declared a more fuel-efficient method of destruction of the corpses.

His job lacked all prestige to begin with, but over time his people were viewed as necessary, but they always had about them the dead's taint, both olfactorily and figuratively-speaking. With each and every social event which took place, life began to return to normal. They were never excluded, but invitations to Saturday poker nights faded into nothingness, and the resentment became obvious in a few subtle ways; "state-sponsored" funerals (a nice way to put 'well-paid-for pity parties by the big-wigs') were cancelled, when all of the forklifts and dozers were mysteriously required to 'dig extra trenches' or 'haul the season's catch to the mountain'; essentially, it was their way of saying "fuck you", while smiling. As such, their own dead were dealt with in their own ways, both benign and bizarre. Viking funerals became popular, until boats became scarce, and people began using the remainder to navigate up and down the Willamette River.

The ferrymen of the dead became a subculture all their own over the next year, as they drifted from friends, family, and fragmented culture; they had their own ways of entertainment that the regular folk found distasteful, or terrifying. Many of the squads took to eccentric modes of dress, home decoration, or activities - corpse-found jewelry became windchimes, bones were used in lieu of gearshifts, and skulls adorned their homes. The unit names also were affected; Ren's unit was known as Black Flag. Their nearest unit was referred to as Roach Motel. Insecticide cans adorned their rigs, as did any logos which could be found, scrounged, or designed from whatever materials were at hand. Unit pride was a lifestyle.

The Camp's morning revelry awoke Ren for the third night in a row, breaking his silent slumber; snoring persons often found they were sleeping alone, which could spell disaster in short order. Popping a Yellowjacket, and silently blessing the consumer-safe equivalent of methamphetamines, his weapon already pointed to the horizon, he stood in silent attention to the walls. It was increasingly more common for the dead to begin their own days of wailing and walking when they heard the morning's musical selection blasting out at 80 decibels every day at nine o'clock. Even dead people had routines, it seemed.

Today's morning D.J., known affectionately as 'Mambo Jack' was a favorite of Ren; his parents were from Puerto Rico as well, and they did hang out together in the only functional working man's bar after their shifts, when they coincided. The selection played across the compound was an old-school mambo, by Perez Prado, 'Mambo Pachuco'. The happy, upbeat tempo of it invariably had him moving within short order.

Grinning, he left his now defunct altar to the good doctor in his wake, keeping the notebook's memory with him. His workweek about to begin, he wandered his way to the ready room for the drivers, awaiting yet another inspiring message of hope for the day. Today's icon of good times to come was the man they affectionately called 'Spaz', because of his nervous tics, which grew in number and intensity with each week. Pressure from his job was going have him cracking within a month, said the rumor mills.

The small classroom-looking Quonset hut was also a schoolhouse, when the children were not enjoying summer break (shortened to three weeks in July), and the posters on the wall showed their handiwork. Some were graffitti-style, but others were simple handprints and collages. Even the dark hearts of the B & I squad admired the resilience of children, even if they also heard them crying in the night, when the trucks rolled, knowing a relative or classmate might be in one of the barrels, crates or cargo containers.

"Folks, can we get started, please?" the speaker said, almost stuttering. The rowdy men calmed to a dull roar, and sat on the desks, each holding a daily route clipboard, and their personal worklogs. He spoke again, his voice steadier, and somewhat less stuttered. This was known as his 'procedural norm'; others said it was where he alternately channelled either Porky Pig or Yosemite Sam, it was so cartoon-ish.

"We're hitting the n-n-n-orthern ridge, past K-k-killingsworth, off Interst-st-state, maybe a little m-m-more n-n-north, so be s-s-s-sure to k-k-k-keep your b-buh-backups handy, and the f-firepower c-cuh-closer. You'll be guh-guh-going three to a bus, and three buses per route, two routes per shift. I want puh-puh-parallel lines cuh-cradling Interstate, and when you reach the split, 'A' team goes left, 'B' runs cuh-cover. When 'A' is d-duh-done, reverse, and send 'B-b' left, 'A' c-c-covers. Any questions, c-cuh-crew?"

One of the more vocal of the jokers, Patterson, spoke up, chuckling. "Yeah; whah-whah-why don't we juh-juh-just use the river duh-duh-duh-dump, and save the fuh-fuh-fuh-fucking frequent flier muh-muh-miles?" The stutter dropped to the immense laughter of the crew.

"I mean, it ain't like we're getting any appreciation, eh?"

The river dump: the cheater method of disposal. It fouled the Willamette severely, causing severe problems with clean water, swimming, and fishing. But, it was economical, in the short run.

"If we th-th-throw six m-muh-more buh-buh-bodies into the river, you won't n-nuh-need a buh-buh-bridge to cuh-cuh-cross it; you'll be able to wah-wah-walk to dow-dow-downtown. Then again," Spaz added, with a more serious tone. "… so wuh-would they. So-so-so in respuh-response, its be-be-because we are buh-buh-better thinkers than that. Stick to the northern ridge, and be duh-duh-done with it. Next?"

From there, it went into an alternatively categorical bitchfest or stuttering impersonation contest, as it often did when they had to do a northern ridge ride; it meant cramming three people into the seat of the dozers, and moving extra slowly, due to the increased debris on the roads from fires, riots, and premature explosions. Alternately, one or two would hang from the door panels on the cage atop the rig, and be exposed to the elements and the walking dead. Few wanted such an honor.

His assistant, a little more respected, took over the daily presentation, finding little humor in boss' rapidly devolving speech impediment. He glared to the audience, shaking his head, already knowing their response.

"… And in conclusion, we're collecting cans of food for a first-contact, message-exchange trip to California; Exploration and Reclamation will provide compensation for all supplies donated."

The workers had already left the room by the time he'd finished speaking. No one cared enough to give anything from their personal stashes to anyone, unless they wore a B & I 'uniform'.

Ren was to duty-up with two of his favorite people, and the work would be faster than most other crews; one was Kim, a half-Korean former trucker from Bend, who enjoyed putting pedal to the metal more often than foot to brakes. The other unfortunate soul was Hendricks, who complained constantly that he didn't get his chance to loot, whenever he left the gate. He was missing a finger from a previous encounter on a northern ridge run, and never failed to mention his loss.

"Hey, Hendricks," Ren said, turning to hear him complaining to Kim about the lousy pay, no looting, and bad health coverage offered by B & I service. "… Tell Kim how you lost your fucking finger, and shut the fuck up. I'm sure he'll be really supportive of your lame-assed excuses when he has to haul your share back to camp."

Kim chuckled, and said aloud, "Shotgun," referring to the hotseat on the cab of the dozer labelled "U.S.S. Black Flag - To Infinity & Beyond!" on the doors. The steelcage was taken up by Ren, who shot a look to the now-stunned Hendricks, who seemed almost hurt by the comment he'd said. "I just don't wanna deal with your bullshit, Hend, nothing fuckin' personal. Any guy who gets his fucking finger bitten off by a dog-ugly broad he's fucking in the ass has got to be a fucking waste of skin."

Kim almost fell off of the dozer, laughing hysterically.

The trip north was otherwise uneventful.

Hendricks jumped to the dozer's front scoop, clutching his shotgun/Glock combo; a good handmade weapon made by a few select gunsmiths in the compound; mating a Glock 19 to the slide of the shotgun, after sawing it to fit into a backsling, and welding a bayonet to the whole mass, turning three weapons into one. The B & I crews called them Sawed-Off Glocks, or Spray-and-Prays. Few used them for long; the Glocks weren't built for the misuse, and the handlers often had to get in too close for comfort to use them.

The trio unhitched the trailer, letting the cargo container slide to the ground. Inside, something made a dragging sound, and a semi-loud 'clunk' noise. The men climbed to the roof of the container, sliding into their armor; few wore for too long. Dogcatchers of the late 1990's used their suits to defend against trained attack dogs and the mythical killer pit bulls; the protection offered by it was too hard to pass up for B & I.

Inside the container, the doors opened, and the contents became obvious; a Doberman, wearing a small backpack of canvas and webbing. Inside the pack, a pint of donated blood; the blood drive was taken from the dying and freshly dead, as healthy volunteers wouldn't allow their's to be used. Inside the backpack adjoining the dripping one-liter bottle of human blood, was a small radio/tape player. On a preset cue, each man began yelling at the top of his lungs, each facing a different direction; Ren faced east, Hendricks west, while Kim yelled to the north. Within five minutes, the dog was howling through its muzzle, and low moans could be heard. With that, Kim flicked a switch on the roof, running from the battery to the radio inside the doggy backupack. The sounds of human voices and music filled the air, and the dog almost ran out of the container. Today's lunch menu was Doggy Surprise, and the diners would be showing up soon.

The song selected was by The Vandals; Change the World with My Hockeystick.

Ren began retracting the dog's cord leash to the far end of the container, lashing it securely to a mooring cleat near the top hatch. Popping it open, he looked down, and frowned. Each trip took up a whole dog, and made for one hell of a risk, but the decision was made far over his head; his duty was to simply do it.

The dead came out, in large droves, all moving in their trademark slow, lumbering pace. With their appearance, it was no longer a smoke break for Kim, or a potty break for Hendricks, and Ren went to full alert. While the dead were predictable in their hunger, their actions often changed tactics randomly.

"Let's roll," said Kim, hoisting his sidearm to bear. "… rope 'em, dope 'em, and let's get the fuck outta Dodge. Lookin' like the un-Grateful Dead is back in town…" His side of humor ran a little on the dark, usually. The other two men began the arduous task of lassoing anything walking towards the container, and securing the lines to the winch in the back; their methods ran to the crude, if inhuman, but it worked.

Their lassos were reconditioned spearguns, left in open-topped barrels on the top of the container, and the lines were strong nylon cord, winched in by hand-cranked bike gear wheels. They usually netted upwards of five to six dozen, per trip; today would be a bumper crop, but within their structural and physical limits by a large degree. Once they were collected, the trip back would be slower, and usually with dozens to hundreds more following them. The dog in the container was what drew them in, initially, and when it was released after their catch was secured, they usually let it get torn up. Sometimes the dog ran back to them.

Then, they hit the charge's frequency on the radio, and blew the dog into a moist Technicolor mist. Any late-comer diners who were snacking at Chez Dog would be taken out in the blast, netting more kills.

The loss of a good dog was immense, as they were growing sizably scarce as the days dragged on. The first time they had done this gig, it was done with a non-responsive HIV-positive 'recruit' they'd taken from a raider's warchest, stunned into a stupor through the repeated beatings and rapes he'd endured. The council of the compound met on the matter for a whole ten minutes; this included a coffee break, and donuts. None of the drivers from that crew were compassionate souls, but each one took a little time off from his work week to do something horrible against the people who'd resigned the poor boy to a terrible death.

No one loved the drivers of the death rigs, but the collective often hated the council more than anything else; it was arbitrary at times, and upsettingly pragmatic. Limbs lost to amputations were collected for 'fertilizer'; bait sprayed behind car bombs they used to take out opposition with the walking dead as a sort of secondary effect. Medical research became medieval; most people wounded elected to self-treat, or had friends do it. Few trusted the Labcoats teams; abortions were used for far less savory ideas and plans. Few asked what that was. Drivers were scum, and proud of it; but at least they didn't cook your leg into stew to turn it into a truck bomb's cargo, so it'd draw a walking crowd.

They'd just shoot you in the thigh and let you sink or swim on your own merits and flaws.

They did, however, take special pleasure in interring the bodies of the 'ruling class', when the eventual suicide, bedside death, or 'accident' befell them. It wasn't a secret they had a few necrophiles on their squads, nor was it that they were prone to fucking the reanimated, as well. Everyone has a kink; some are interesting, but few are worth drawing a knife over, unless it was your relative or friend under them.

"Round up is about done, chief," Hendricks said, nodding to Ren. "We got some stragglers, but we'll leave 'em for B team, tomorrow. I'm about bushed, and the asshole in there with the fucking Viking helmet is annoying the shit out of me. Bastard keeps fucking tuggin' his line. I'll be glad when he's steak Tartar."

"Roger that. We are mobile as soon as we have the party guests in lockdown," Ren said, hopping to the cab of the dozer, gunning the engine. All around them, the ring of three-foot rebar spikes resounded with the dull 'twang' of repeated impacts; each rig had a hundred or more, of varying lengths and thicknesses, wound with razor wire, keeping them from being overrun by anything on ground level. They more than packed in around them and would be just driven into the spikes by those pressing from behind.

Lockdown consisted of hopping on the roof of the container, and tripping the heavy-duty springloaded doors into 'close mode'. Each one could withstand almost three thousand pounds of interior pressure before it became a problem; seldom did it. Locks thrown across the tops of the doors rarely let this problem get out of hand, as each was a reconditioned Kryptonite bikelock; those were built to last under harsh conditions, bike thieves notwithstanding. The last step would be tightening each of the nooses around the necks of the contents, pulling most of them off of the floor. Backbreaking, but it kept them from groaning loudly.

"Cue the music, and we're Audi," Hendricks added, smiling as he turned the mooring cleat on the roof of the container, hosting all one hundred and eight members of its interior off of their feet. It made for easier transport, as more were walking in, even as the doors were scissoring closed, snapping off limbs, necks, appendages and one poor mullet-headed individual's body along the centerline.

The speakers began blaring out their given selection for road music, the trio rode on, with Ren in the cab, Hendricks riding on the straddle-space between the cab and trailer, and the trailer's gunner seat filled with Kim's largish frame, settled behind the plated barricade on the rear, locked and loaded at the M-60.

Trailing the dead in their wake, with the dead in their cargo hold, they made tracks due south, engine whistling and screaming, buried in the ample background noise of screams, yells, and cries; Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar was their favorite road tune, and kept them entertained, singing along.

For five miles, they made tracks, the few dead behind them almost half-heartedly giving chase, the rest having been picked off by single shots from Kim, or forced off of their trail by crossing over flooded streets and by debris-locked paths. Crossing the final street, they arrived at the interchange area of Interstate 5; all parties went to full-on alert, and the music was killed with a flick of the switch.

Overhead, the silent streets merged into the overpass and the bridge to downtown, periodically being the site where ambushes, snipers, and random assault groups waged their wars against all foes, real and percieved. Too often the drivers on the return trip were surprised to find their luck running out, and an exploded pipebomb ruining their whole day. As they had high ground, such ambushers could gloat loudly in relative safety. Measures were being discussed as to how to best collapse the support columns, and send their culture to the bottom of the Willamette River.

No one among the drivers gave a shit; they just preferred the idea of them dying off through starvation; as soon as reliable intelligence among their own network turned up who was selling them supplies, they would have gladly turned those suppliers into pulped meat at the second-to-last stop the dead-wagons made every week: the Shop.

The Shop: occupying one quarter of the land of the compound, it boasted all the amenities one would expect of a junkyard's carcrushing facility - advanced steampress, and large stacks of still-unused cubed vehicles, some having been turned into cheap, uniimaginative housing by simply stacking them. Rows of barrels, produced by the on-site barrelmill and lathe were most likely to be turned into water retainers/processors by summer's end, as winter storms could foul water quicker than a corpse; one downed power line to a septic treatment system, and one might be drinking water normally unfit to piss in.

The Shop was always left with a skeleton crew, as the dead rarely found their way through the maze of abandoned, crippled, and stripped chassis to the sparse crew's well-entrenched cabin atop a smelter. The smelter was doing double duty, having been turned to a crude iron mill by an enterprising former steelworker, within a month of the fall of America. It also doubled as a recycling plant for old cars, destined to be turned into pig iron, or fashioned into crude steel for fences, buildings and weapons.

The original owner's death was unremarkable, but it did lead to a good-sized purchase of land, for cheap.

The dozers arrived, their stragglers over a mile behind them, and losing interest quickly; the men referred to their ill-formed attention spans as 'A.D.A.D.D.'; After-Death Attention Deficit Disorder. A few shouted greetings to the personnel at the watchtower as they approached, and they entered through the one-ton crashgate; the duet of VW Microbuses made for excellent doors, once they'd been mounted on steel rails, set in a concrete pad. The dead couldn't muster the traction to shove the doors aside; a three inch pool of motor oil sat in a moat around it, preventing unwanted entrance from small wheeled vehicles, as well.

"Hola, folks," shouted down the guard, climbing from his perch atop the shack, rifle dangling from a handmade strap; homegrown equipment was the norm - military personnel tended to scrounge up the gear they preferred, and keep it to themselves. All others coped, or did without. Most coped, as the guards here did. "Looks like a full-load, and you're our first customer of the day, to boot." He gave his trademark wide grin. Early arriving crews were praised, provided they had full-on filling for their trailers; slackers and quacks got nothing.

"That we do, Hank," Ren added, hopping from the spike-encrusted cage, lighting up a cigarette. Two more were lit, and handed to his crew; such were the rewards for them - small, but meaningful. "And, if you don't mind, we'd probably like to get home for lunch, so I'll start 'er up." He paused. "If it's not imposing, and all."

The techs of the Shop were often it's only caretakers, and few were trusted by them to operate Black Betty; their pride and joy, the largest functional hydraulic press in the county.

"Actually, it's been kinda touchy, and I'd rather you didn't, Ren…" he said, shrugging. "No hard feelin's, but since we lost Vince, we don't want anybody... y'know… who isn't us to touch her."

"Losing Vince": a euphemism that was truly unique to the press operators. It meant Vince climbed into the machine last month, and hit the 'on' switch with a broom stick and a length of cable. He was a quarter of an inch thick and eighteen feet square when they found him the next Friday. However, he was not hosed out for another week. They were often last on the supply chain for deliveries, as far as that went, at least.

"No worries, Hank", Ren decided, electing against comparing his own skill with it to Hank's direct lack of it, but admiring him for his honest answer. "Hook us up, and we're go to go."

A few more minutes of idle conversation followed, chased by a few comments on the newer arrivals from eastern Oregon and Idaho. A skinhead family went on the move four months prior, and had angered several local militias and survivalist colonies along the McKenzie River, due south, and now were begging for safety with the racially-tolerant, bullshit-free people who camped along the Willamette's western shore, near downtown. Word was, they would be offering up service and duty to the Compound within a week. Such gossip was growing more and more common; racial interraction was now a requirement, not a choice.

"Let's get this tub of shit up to speed," Hank said, moving towards the golf carts used by the operators. Each had a large Cheshire Cat on the hood, in five different colors. Hank always drove the cheese-orange model; word had it they were going to a festival in Nevada, known as Burning Man, when they were lost.

Arriving at the heart of the metal jungle, the crews delegated themselves into the various tasks required of moving the unruly dead into the new container, already sealed with fresh welds. They were often necessary, as each one was typically only usable for about eight runs, at the most, and only one had been used ten times; it lead to an unfortunate incident which placed the use cap at eight, and why their sidearms were often shotguns. The incident was a painful memory for Hendricks, who'd been on that crew that week.

Ren took up a posting at the roof of the container, near the mooring cleat, securing the lines in groups of ten to the overhead crane's dangling cablehooks. The crane was operated by Hank, preparing to hoist aloft anything cabled to its five-foot diameter magnetic slab. Kim was securing the locks on the sidedoors, readying a set of rollcages which would be dropped once the lassoed dead were hoisted out. At that point, the side doors on the container would be opened, and the rollcages would allow them to drop cord necklaces to the walking dead's awaiting necks, readying them for their own turn on the reverse claw-grab game. Hendricks was at a small emplacement, sitting behind a wall of Plexiglas, at the helm of a pair of mated M-60's, the belt feeds drawing from a dwindling crate of ammo under his narrow ass.

"Locked and loaded, Kim," Kim shouted.

"Locked and loaded, Hendricks," Hendricks threw in.

"Locked and loaded, Henry," added Hank. Few knew his real name was actually 'Henry'.

"Locked and loaded, Baxter." Ren rarely used his real first name. He preferred 'Baxter'.

At that, the crane began hoisting the dead from the top of the container, which split along the center, running from back to front. Ren sat in the gunner's seat, the lid closing over him as he settled in. The bubble was little protection, but it was necessary - from there, he could cut out and run, with some safety. Hendricks chambered fresh rounds into the guns, sighting down the muzzles. Kim kept a watchful eye on the dangling mass of squirming, stinking corpses as they moved to the press' interior, loaded with a simple rebar cage. Rebar was used as it was cheap, plentiful, and reusable when making the cages, repeatedly.

"Clear," Kim shouted, indicating nothing fell off of the dangling magnetic clamp's collection of cords.

"Clear," Hendricks said loudly, voice cracking embarassingly. It showed nothing needed shooting, yet.

"Clear," came the call from the cab of the crane, Hank stepping to the ground, baseball cap turned around backwards, blast goggles dropped over his eyes already. His small ritual for the routine, he often said.

"Way clear," was Ren's somewhat subdued response. A silent prayer; he'd noticed the bubble wasn't sealing properly over the gunner. He'd also noted that Hendrick's never said a word. The man was a little harder than he'd believed, he thought quietly. Anyone else would have shit kittens and a goose by now.

"Ever see this, Hen?" Kim said with a smile as he locked the last of the cages shut on the left-hand side of the container, preparing for the final moments of the first show. "Just be glad you ain't wearing your best clothes, y'know?"

"No, I ain't," he said, tilting his head to one side, like a dog. He walked close to the cage, finding the bars ample enough protection for his own sense of mind, seeing them almost as sick or crazy people.

"Step back, Hendricks," warned Hank, moving two large switches into the up position. "…And step behind the glass, unless you wanna stink worse than those fucks." He spat, into the eyes of a walker, who didn't blink, had just tried to lick its own eye unsuccessfully, but comically. All body fluids held value, it seemed.

Once all parties involved had stepped back, the machine made several loud, harsh grinding noises, hissing intermittently, and emiting a loud humming sound. The press powering up, filling with pressure, and sliding closed. The sixteen ton weight began moving over the dead, who changed nothing about their demeanor to indicate they knew their fate was sealed. Somehow, it sank into their thick, dead skulls.

"Vaya con el dios, las señoras y los caballeros, " Ren offered. Go with God, ladies and gentlemen.

"Schlafbrunnen und für immer," Hendricks said quietly, his hat in his hand. Sleep well, and forever.

"잘 자," Kim said. Translated, it meant "good night".

"Fuck you, you fuckin' fuckers to Fuckerland." Hank: always clear and concise, emotionally-speaking.

Everyone had their own way to say it. It meant the same thing, all around the world.

The front gates were alit with the sounds of a honking industrial horn; the other crews were overdue. They had no idea how long they'd been reverently giving their prayers for the dead until they noticed that Hank was already powering up the steamshovel, the large scoop already fitted. This was usually where Ren left.

"One scoop, or two, kids?" Hank shouted, laughing.

"Fuckin' gross," Hendricks added, averting his eyes momentarily. The resulting goo from the steampress was utterly unidentifiable as human bodies, until one noticed the blue jeans, the odd shoe, or a still-intact hand with rings on, warped into a semi-solid pool of moistened, stinking, horrid mass of bone and flesh.

The scoop was then used to hoist the goo into the container, and the cages immediately filled along the side, as the dead moved avoid the rain of their former compatriots. Each of the four cages warped outwards slightly, but every one of them held fast, secure.

Ten minutes later, and the second crew began setting up for their own. Their haul was about equal, but was unique; they'd found someone hiding in a disused strip mall, who'd made three unscucessful shots with a high-powered rifle before they realized it's not only impolite to fire at the drivers, but it's damned silly to try to hide from someone driving a bulldozer.

"… So, we ran through the wetwall, and kept on goin', takin' the whole fucking thing to the ground. We got a good eye on who did it. Looks like it was White Feather's little cousin, and she looked pretty pissed off we'd thrashed her happy little home."

White Feather was the nickname given to a local sniper, renowned for her ability to shoot and fade into the background with perfect ease; rumor had it she had several female accomplices, or understudies. Catching her taking a shot at anyone unfortunate enough to be both a male and in her sights was upsetting; she rarely targetted the upper head for her first shot, and usually left the victims alive, but with 'friends' en route.

Owens, Carmichael, and Gwen, all rock-solid, squared-away folk, had their own problems on their route, beyond the sniper and the usual stragglers. "As it turns out, Gwen miscarried," Jones added, looking somewhat dejected. It was not uncommon for the odd relationship to bloom and die on a crew, but they had something truly special: a bona-fide three-person 'marriage'. The practice was known as polyamory, and it was rarely accepted; then again, among crews, little they did beyond the expected was 'accepted'.

"That's fucked up, man," seemed the going concern. The trio had made many friends, and it was not uncommon for a few women to get a few 'others' brought into their bedrooms due to the ministrations of the polyamorists. Ren had tried it for a few months, but the hassle proved too difficult; it was difficult to maintain a relationship as it was, and the concerns of the new routine were often too much to bear as it was.

"Well, there's always hope for the next time, right, guys?" Gwen added, sighing. Her pants were long since removed, replaced with a pair of khaki shorts. Tampons and pads were rarely used these days; Ren had no real idea what actually was being used instead. It was another of the greater mysteries for him to ponder on.

Hendricks spoke up. "True that. You guys wants us to … uhm... take it to the Hill?" Gwen looked to Owens, then Carmichael. Both nodded, shrugging softly. Hendricks looked to Ren, pleadingly. He knew he'd not have a chance with sleeping with Gwen in his lifetime, so the motive was probably honest. He'd wanted to do right not only by Gwen, but his own conscience. The small blue plastic lunchbox owned usually by a child, was handed over, streaked with Gwen's blood. Its content was clear, yet unspoken.

"We can make that trip, no sweat." He gave a look to Hank, who then nodded; one less for the press.

"Let's roll," Kim threw in, taking the tailgunner spot already.

The fill-up finished, the men now mobile, and Ren motioned to Hendricks, stating simply, "Next run, you're taking the driver's seat; been riding your ass uncessarily, and that's fucked. You want me to, and I'll throw in my vote for you to transfer to Patrol and Defense. You deserve the post, I think."

P & D was as close as the compound had to law enforcement; it usually meant long nights, walking along the walls of the complex, but it did mean an upgrade in housing, and a vote on security measures. Popular humor said it best: P&D get laid; IDS just get fucked. Ren's recommendation was as close to a confirmation on the post as Hendricks would receive; his word meant quite a bit, due to his recently acquired upbeat, slightly more 'correct' line of thinking; his acceptance among the IDS crews was already well-established as the man to whom you do not kiss ass, but instead impress your better nature upon.

"Hey, that's pretty cool, Ren," he responded, nodding. His annoying nod almost jinxed the deal. He produced a black box from his jacket liner, handing it to Ren, adding, "Marlboro's 'Special Blends', from around '99. Found 'em in a freezer, when I was still doing housecleaning with the 298's." 298's were Reclaim and Recovery teams; front-line troopers in the new war on recycling other people's personal property to the community. Many were accomplished burglars, from the time when laws mattered.

"You kept these for all this time, and didn't turn them in?" Ren said, smiling. Amazingly, his once-chickenshit coworker had smuggled something past the contraband authorities, to keep as a good bribe, or trade item; with this pack, one could find a warm body to snuggle, or a few bottles of strong drink. The carton was still mostly intact, if a bit once-waterlogged. Beggars, Ren decided, wouldn't be choosers.

"Yeah," he replied, examining his shoes briefly. He pointed ahead on the trail, as they winded back to the main drag, heading to the compound. ".. are we're going to the hill now, or do you wanna get some dune buggies, and do it? This thing reeks, and we're nowhere near finished." He paused. "We got a trench ready, or do we have to dig again?"

Ren paused, thinking back. "No, we're using the old campus. I'm taking the interchange, and heading past the brewery, then moving along Greeley." He paused briefly. "Weird. I once drove this way, to a bar my friend Carol worked at. Russian bar, called 'Yorgo's'."

"Pre or post?" A common question; it referred to the time before the fall, and after, without the messiness of asking the specific year. Time meant little, save in shifts, to those who'd seen the darkest of hours pass.

"Pre-2000, I think. Maybe back in oh-one." He chuckled. "Best burgers I'd had in years."

"Think it'd be open?" Hendrick asked, almost regretting it. A slow shake of his partner's head replied volumes to him. Favorite hangouts always seemed to go first, during a riot. Neither lamented it, thusly.

"So, the trench is a non-issue, as I plan to ditch these shitheads, and make haste for the Hill. Kim wanted me to drop him off at the Chinese Garden and I imagine you're looking for a good time at Lady Mako's shack, right?" Ren said, smirking. The Chinese had done remarkably well; few militias could take on a full-strength Triad gang, armed to the teeth with submachine guns, assault rifles, and high-end tech goodies. Few cops faired well against them, during the best of times, and the training for countering them was rare.

Lady Mako was the name given to the Chinese enclave's semi-exclusive 'massage parlor'. The name stuck due to a large fish tank they kept in the lobby, periodically feeding its sole occupant something formerly dead, and still walking. Much pomp and ceremony was involved in these feeding rituals.

They had a fully grown Tiger shark in their lobby, surrounded by drinking, eating, and contented citizens of their happy enclave. It had a nickname attached, when one of its meals, wearing a prom dress, was dropped in, during their midday and midnight weekend feed ceremonies held every weekend. The prom dress wound up more on the shark than on the gnawed-up victim, and was the cause of massive hilarity.

It was rarely commented on that the victims were invariably Caucasians and Hispanics. Lady Mako was said to be allergic to anything else; no one really wanted to fight for racial equality for the living dead.

A shout from the back ground the rig to a halt, as Kim ran forward, waving at the two in the driver's area. "What's up?" Ren asked, his hand filled with his sawed-off, eyes alert. "Uh, nothin', actually; I just heard you two talkin' about goin' to Mako's, and I wanted to see if it was gonna happen.I'm in, if so."

Ren frowned, and said, "Yeah; we're all stopping off, once we hit the fuckin' Hill." His good mood was shattered by Kim's little overreaction. Perhaps his crew still had an asshole, he'd surmised more than once on the trip to the team's burial grounds. And it was probably himself, he figured.

The trip up to the top of the Hill was scenic, and provided ample opportunity to pass by the smaller, semi-successful urban tribes which had cropped up over the years; their names and decorations often explained vast details on their new lifestyles. Some of the more notable, and interesting, of these tribes were neighbors to each other; a strip mall, abandoned and refitted by a group of survivors who'd changed the marquee formally announcing sales and specials in its two dozen stores to read out their daily message or Bible quote; today's was "StripMall Tribe invites to celebrate the Lord this Sunday!" in blinking red lights.

Adjoining it was a trailer park, sealed off with station wagons, and bristling with the trademark of the Mullet-Mohawk Tribe, each wearing a large assault rifle or aluminum baseball bat, waving to any who passed by; the temptation to stop was almost too much - their homebrew liquors were beauties to behold.

The last of that block's residents was the Chapel of the Bells, a funeral home turned shelter for the homeless and solo scavengers, taking pride in their decision to remain mobile, but strong to their religious roots; buildings they marked as unsuitable for looting were traditionally marked with exceptional fire damage - they carried arson supplies as a rule, and weren't afraid to use it to get a building to fall down.

Atop the hill, looking down at the huddled masses below was the Mecca of the IDS: the Hill House. It was ringed with high iron fences and was the last place one would look for a graveyard, but it meant something to the team; a large house with stained glass windows, long sinced firebombed, strewn with refuse, and dotted with small arms fire. It was the first place the teams had been forced to hide in, when Command sent them too far for their operational range to matter; they'd ran out of gas before they'd hit this location, and they'd had to run the remainder on foot, with almost six hundred of the dead on their tail.

The house, with its shattered windows, doors missing, and basement flooded with rainwater from the year prior, was the final ground they'd run to; from then on, anything which made them turn tail would be that which buried them upside-down, they'd decided. For two days and nights, the teams (formerly a crew of three dozers, five men, three women, a pair of German Sheperds, and a Dalmation named Stewie) held their ground while they fought off the waves of the undead, reduced at one point to using steel pipes ripped out of the walls of the house, each getting bloodier and bloodier. They met the horrors with a fury unknown to most mortal men and women, fighting with desperation and hate fueling their limbs to war against the dead.

That was the fight that during which, Lt. Gerry H. Burke (US Army) fought alongside a skinny speedfreak half-Puerto Rican kid named Rene Guzman, late of San Juan's slums. During the fight, they put their backs together, and waded into the fray, grabbing up the fallen frame of a compatriot, long since bitten the night prior, destined to succumb to her fatal wounds. When she awoke, it was as a living thing, as the wounds hadn't progressed to their terminal mark; her aid in the fight proved beyond immensely painful, and did prove terminal. But as they raged, blood rained from the ceiling, as corpses flew from whole to scarcely intact under the ministrations of machete and fist; their blood ran to the floorboards in unison with their foes, hammered in by boot and by body. Each corpse littering the floor was kicked to the doors, to slow up intruders as they raced against the clock of their bodies waning energies and their foes' endless endurance.

When the combat had subsided, almost three hundred dead walkers, and three hundred or more crippled and maimed of the same, lay scattered around the homestead atop the hill, littering the grounds like apples, stinking of death and well-ripened body odor. They were exhausted, bloodied, and short three members of their team by the third day's end. Beleagured, but not otherwise laid asunder, they took to the house's contents, looting what could be looted, fixing what may be the night's defenses, and waited until the next day's dawning to begin their escape.

During the trip, they lost two more members, dropping them down to a meager three men, one woman, and Stewie, the Dalmation. All others lay in their wake, either burnt from hastily made Molatov cocktails, or by the semi-functional Bernz-o-Matic torch Rene carried with him. From there, they winded their way to the bottom of the hill, to a trashed Suburban, sans its tires. Riding rims to the then-incomplete compound, they issued their reports, finalizing it with a single shot to the duty sergeant's right temple; they blamed him for extending their operational range past what combat pilots call 'Bingo fuel'; when the maximum distance they can move safely from the nearest fueling point is exceeded by operational requirements or conditions.

The next night, the sergeant's surviving cousin took a machete, and his vengeance, to the Lieutenant, crippling him for all time. His story was then made a matter of history, on Christmas.

Returning from his reverie, Ren found a decent parking spot, in the shade of a shattered oak tree's flowering branches; it'd survived the night, but had taken a misfired grenade to its trunk, blowing half of it out of the ground, and it burned for most of the first night. The crew dismounted with minor grumbles and complaints, but made their way to the spookily-lit, candle-filled interior of the House of the Dead.

The House, marked off with its members' atypical grim humor, had a fluttering banner of a white sheet, with red paint smeared across it; it read "THE HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVES." Few people ever travelled to see it, save as sort of a tourist attraction; many people would go there, as sort of a pilgrimage, to retell the stories of what they called 'the First Night Stories'. Each one was a somber, rarely emotional affair. The old Alcoholics Anonymous groups had long since drifted into other masses, but some die-hards still felt it appropriate to gather in important places, to exchange their stories. The meets often held the same themes as the original Friends of Bill meetings.

The House was mostly intact, and had been painted over, in sections: house paint, spray paint, and airbrushes had done the work that was needed. Bullet holes were kept, but the stains were covered over. It was less of an aesthetic issue, more of a philosophical one - no proof would exist beyond the holes and stories that a fight for life and limb had taken place here for three nights and two days. The doors were replaced, reinforced, and covered in the goodbye sigils and marks left by family, friends, and random people throughout the intervening years; some were messages intended for the dead, and others were for the survivors. It bore none of the bravado of the swaggering lie merchants who populated the bars and clubs; it was the quiet, mournful tones of the miserable, the laid-low, and the unfortunate.

The crew went silent, and saw the half dozen people worshipping the fallen with the reverence of early Christians, hiding in crypts under Jerusalem and Rome; few cared to remember the past - the future was uncertain enough to not want to draw attention from one's surroundings long enough to lament the dead.

The worshippers rose from the three bench seats, and their leader, a local street preacher who went professional, smiled, acknowledging them. "The Black Flag," he said, kneeling. To all outsiders, they were reviled, disreputated, and disliked; these people found them as close as one could to the Middle Age's old-school knights: fighting an endless war, dying in alleys and fields, for the privileges they'd abandoned.

"Pete," Ren said quietly, nodding in return. The man rose to his full height, and shook their hands, in turn. Each man was greeted with his rank, as was their custom. "We came to bury another of our own today."

Pete said, "I understand," his head bowed slightly. "Will you be in need of a worker or two, or…?" The question hung in the air like a suicide, dangling on a rope. Everyone knew the miscarriage rate was about eighty percent, or worse; some communities produced no children. Same gleefully blamed fallout from the nuclear blasts, others on poisoned groundwater. Others said less loudly that no one wanted them anymore.

"No," Ren added, holding his black duffle. "We'd like the basement. It's not a large one." Faint frowns went around; murmured prayers began. Pete simply nodded, and lead their way down the rickety steps, into the darkness below. In the cellar of the building, one of the men had become trapped, that distant night; he'd written his life's story, using a crayon and three ballpoint pens; almost an epic poem without the epic.

Almost five hundred stories had filled the remainder of the walls. Sometimes, people came just to read them, or have them read aloud by gifted orators. Culture had shifted back, and the bards of old were now the rare few who felt the need to speak more than just orders, requests, or mindless prayers spoken in dead languages. Many names for the concept were used. The one settled on unanimously was 'First Nights'.

Along with the prayers, small urns, baskets, and boxes had arrived. Some were the bodies of the enchanting storytellers, asking to be kept close to the source of their culture; some just didn't want to be buried, taking up space. No sane person asked to be pressed in the carcrushers, intentionally at least, save for suicides.

Pete took them to the furthest wall, where the largest printed stories hung on the rafters, the exposed wall beams, and the assorted shelves left up or placed. It was where the Teams buried their children. The bodies of their miscarriages, abortions, and a few who'd died from disease, injury, and in one case, a bite attack.

The body was placed on the shelf, near the top. Adjoining it were a miscarriage from Gwen's previous attempt, and a plastic milk jug painted black, filled with something less identifiable, but doubtlessly human in origin, now turned to a reddish-brown dust, hidden in a shadow from above it; a fitting euphemism for the human condition.

"Lord," Pete said, all heads bowed at this point, "… we commit to you the body of another of your flock. They are now your's once more, for all time. Take good care of this one's soul, and return them to the mother's womb, and bring them anew to us, that we may have another believer in your mercy, as all believe in your wrath."

"Amen."

Behind them, a lone figure was backlit by the guttering candles, framed in the darkness of the basement's sturdy construction. Hands drifted to sidearms, and Hendrick's shotgun pointed its muzzle at the newcomer faster than a hummingbird's wing. "Move and die," he said, deadpan and alert. A trick they'd learned from the dead; nothing should faze you in the face of the enemy. The dead never flinched, no matter what.

"I plan to do neither," the shadowed figure said. "I've come on a mission of peace and diplomacy. My credentials are in my left hip pocket. If you will permit me, I will show them, but I must draw them out. My sidearm is on my right hip, and my backup is across my left shoulder, but has a strap covering it. Is this acceptable, my removing my billfold?"

A long pause followed. Without shifting his gun, Hendricks looked to Ren, who was advancing slowly. "New plan; I draw it, and your sidearms. You're in the wrong place to hold a piece, unless you're here for the services of the good father over there," Ren added, indicating Pete. "Drix, he blinks, Poke-rize him."

The shotgun's ratchet was followed by Kim's, likewise pointed to the new arrival, yet unnamed. Pete's own revolver came up, dropping to one knee, braced for the potential of a firefight, however one way it seemed.

Ren found the appropriate identification as specified by the nonplussed, slightly bemused man, who endured the protocol with no apparent disinclination to continue the diplomatic mission he claimed to be on. "This says here you are Lieutenant Ken Drexler, of Salem, Oregon, Air National Guard. That correct?"

"Ken" nodded, and clarified, "Discharged, five weeks prior to the First Night. I was recruited for my experience with helicopter maintenance and refitting, six months ago, in the Service." He spoke the word with a capitalization almost audible. It implied a higher meaning, uncertain to his audience.

"Define your mission in some detail, if you please, Lieutenant," Kim said, relaxing slightly.

"I spoke with the duty sergeant in charge of your shift, at the Compound. They directed me to the Shop, wherein I was directed to a…" He paused, removing a pack of matches from his pocket, almost drawing a bullet to the brain for the motion unannounced. "… Lady Mako's Bar and Grill." A look around, and he smiled somewhat lopsidedly, shrugging. "I'll grant it was a unique experience for me. I have never seen a shark that big before in my life, let alone one eating someone wearing a Viking helmet."

Hendricks snickered. "I remember him," he said, lowering his muzzle slightly.

Ren dismissed it with a wave, tossing back the wallet. "Let's talk, then," he said, giving his approval of the man. He'd followed a logical chain of events to find them at their location, and seemed a low risk, all told.

"I need to speak with someone named 'Ren', actually," the lieutenant offered almost apologetically. "If you could point him or her out, I'd be most grateful."

"Be grateful," Ren said, lighting a cigarette; two inside of four hours -- a rarity unless he was feeling particularly festive or depressed. "That'd be me. Wanna take a walk, while they handle….?" He gestured to his cohorts, who were defensive, but grudgingly accepting Ren's approval of the man.

"By all means, then," Ken said, nodding as they walked to the exit, ducking under the beams as they passed. Arriving at the top of the stairs to the basement, the man tossed a glowstick he'd pulled from inside his pocket, landing it at the last row of pews in the building's primary chapel.

Abruptly, five men bearing tactical gear rose in unison; hardware strapped to them like holy relics to a martyred saint, they took themselves from alert to stand-by with little further ado. Ren raised an eyebrow, and the unspoken question was answered.

"If I'd exitted alone, it'd mean no further complications to your day. If you left first, after gunfire, I assure you, you'd feel almost nothing," Ken said, almost apologetically.

"You're thorough," Ren said, approvingly. His own life was just decided for him, by a stranger. But, to his lifestyle, it always will be. "You're not a militia. The uniforms all match too well. Definitely not military, as you still have functioning radios," he said, making his mental deductions audible.

"Partially correct, actually," he said, stepping to the doorway. Outside, in the valley's dimming light, he could see a trio of Hueys hovering over a square building's roof, as ropes descended from their bellies, uncoiling neatly on the tarred squares below. Within eight seconds, fourteen men were on the ground below, latching onto additionally uncoiled ropes, and descending a building with lightning speed.

Said building was a bank block, its windows gaping open, and filled with the odd walker or crawler. Short blasts of light and sound filled the airways and walls, indicating full-auto fire in three separate areas. Within thirty seconds, they'd cleared the third floor, and were working down to the second.

"Impressed?" Ken asked, chuckling. "We hit office blocks, looking for hard drives from computers, CD records of business, and shipping manifests, when possible. We also hit banks, when we need cash."

"Who uses cash?" Ren inquired, somewhat confused. Cash was usually replaced with barter in most law-abiding towns. In towns where laws meant nothing, so did financial means, as well.

"Mostly, it's countries south of the border, like Ecuador, Brazil, or Panama, as it was always difficult for them to obtain American currency," Ken explained, by which point the descended team were already moving up the exterior lines, each carrying a mesh bag, loaded with goodies of all stripes.

"… So why do you grab the computer stuff?" he asked, still unsure of the situation.

"We're tracking shipments of materials, food, fuel, water, you name it. We run it through a database we've set up, and correlate the easiest paths to the largest depots of undelivered goods. It's sort of like the system used by UPS or Federal Express, actually. We've had no luck finding a hacker good enough to get into their database, but they rarely knew what was in their packages anyways."

"Clever. But, clever doesn't equal smart. Who is all of this good work going to benefit, anyways? You don't sound like you're the fucking United Way charities."

"We're not. Two years ago, a confederation of high-tech, high-finance burglars and thieves banded together, and formed an alliance, which they assumed would be able to access the depths of any system they so chose, and allow them to steal anything they wanted, including nuclear devices. They intended to sell them to the highest bidder, and make an immensely safe living for themselves on private islands, off of the coast of Puerto Rico and Florida."

"Holy shit," Ren swore, laughing. "That sounds fuckin' brilliant." He nodded, impressed with the ingenuity. He stiffened, and shook his head. "Wait. Nothing that fucking clever works out."

"Truer words have never been spoken, Ren," Ken said, chuckling. "The group was in a minivan, exitting their latest heist when they ran across a blockade manned by two ex-cons and a drifter named Skinny Jeet. Fifteen rounds were extracted from the survivor of the thieves' coalition, and Jeet took on the aegis of carrying the videotaped 'confession' he forced out of the poor bastard with a skinning knife and jug of Clorox bleach." He shuddered, deep and long.

"Ouch."

"Ouch, indeed. Jeet is our founding father, and would have been proud, if he'd not died of syphillis a month after passing the details of his plan on to my supervisor, the actual founder-founder of the group."

"So, you're the fourth-generation knock-off of a bad plan, and you're convinced it works?"

"No," Ken said, indicating the skies above. "… I know it does."

Synchronicity can, and often does, make for some impressive opening lines, witty remarks, or entrances. In this case, it did not let down Ken's sales pitch. At that exact moment, the skies above were blackened by the setting sun, the risen moon still concealed by some sparse clouds, and the backlighting just perfect, to reveal a wonderful, strange and immense thing in the air over their head.

"You… have … a huge fucking plane."

"That'd be our Antonov Aye-Enn one-twenty-four. It is the largest cargo plane currently flying, by our calculations. Hauls approximately one hundred and twenty thousand kilos of materials, with a range we're not proud of, but certainly quite pleased with. Our variant seats four hundred troops, with room to spare."

"You have four hundred troops, and you've been hiding them where, exactly?"

"I see you're skeptical. Allow me to explain." Ken smiled, and sat on a flat rock in the yard, brushing off imaginary dust from it before settling down. "Nine months ago, the coalition I described went through some fairly radical alterations; from theft of materials, to the acquisition of what we simply call a better future. We could arm every tinpot dictator-wannabe between Canada and the Rio Grande, and it'd net us some canned food, and radiation poisoning for the next three generations of poor suckers."

"I see a point nowhere near what you're talking about, Ken. Plan on slow-dancing around this any longer?"

"I see you're a man of few words. I'll sum it up. We found someone who was meaner than us, tougher than us, and taught us a lesson we won't forget. We can be petty and stupid, and last forever, and leave nothing but, and I'm quoting a good source here, 'but a stained dick-print on the mirror of the cosmos'. So, we found the missile silos we could break into, and did so. But, we didn't steal the materials."

"You didn't fire them, did you?"

"We couldn't. Firing systems were controlled from within those little sealed rooms, remember? What we did was remove the warheads, and cracked their cases, so it'd leak a little radiation. Not enough to cripple groundwater; we used the lead sheeting to form sort of coffins for them, and labelled them. Anyone who opens them will probably have about five or six weeks of hell, and then death. Last I knew chemotherapy for advanced radiation poisoning was fairly hard to come by these days."

"So I hear. Why crack 'em open?"

"If we left them out, people would find them, and use them, if the chance came up. If we stockpiled them somewhere 'safe', it'd get them stolen. So, we couldn't bury them deep enough quick enough, so the decision was made to make them unusable for anyone, ever. We also do a fair job of ending biological hazards, as well. You'd be startled what some of those cracked casings will do if you put them near a botulism lab, or an anthrax site. Stuff kills everything, so we use it when we have to."

"Exactly why would you get rid of the weapons stuff like that? What if we need it?"

Ken paused long, and inhaled deeply before responding.

"It's ironic I found you here, Ren. Your name was not randomly selected. Someone saw you reading the journal of someone who'd been in a bad situation before; Doctor Herbert Allen Drover, to be specific."

At the mention of his newfound idol, he stiffened, an angry look flooding his face.

"Please, allow me to elaborate."

With that, Ken put his hand over his black duffle, and withdrew the spiral notebook. The spiral was uncoiled, drawing a slight cry of dismay from Ren, his hand drifting to his pistol briefly. Ken assuaded his fears, stating, "I'll show you how we know, what we know."

The spiral was removed in full, and laid on the rock. At the ends, where normally it had twists of wire curling inwards, it instead connected together with a faint strand of copper wire, threaded through with thin circuits. "This coil is an antenna; we can pick up which pages are being moved, and at what rate, by how it sounds when each page is drawn against the wire. We assessed you read at a college level, have a good memory, and didn't make notes in it, showing some degree of reverence for the work. We also detected heavy respirative motion, when the wires were jiggled."

He chuckled, and looked to the skies, pleased.

"Took us four days to figure out you were laughing. We hadn't even figured that part into our equation."

"Wait a minute," Ren said, cautiously. "How did you figure all of that shit out, like the reading level, memory, notes and stuff?"

"If you flipped back to the beginning repeatedly, we'd assume you weren't understanding the 'big words', so to speak. The diary gets progressively more technical, as it goes further on. You never took a page more than a few seconds, to forty seconds, to read fully. Some of the higher end details must have caught your attention, intellectually-speaking, as it would take most physicians less time to read them, but it would take an average tow-truck driver quite some time to 'get it', as it were."

"Oh. Go on, then."

"We tracked your motion, and ran it backwards, for pattern recognition. You have few friends, beyond your unit; it's our understanding this isn't an accident, either. The social structure you're used to is… how to describe it delicately…"

"Fucked?"

"That works, yes. 'Fucked'." He sighed, leaning against the scarred tree's trunk. "To elaborate the 'why' I don't doubt you want to hear." A cigarette was removed from his pocket, and offerred up to Ren. He accepted, finding the brand unusual; Krilova -- Russian. "You are a specialist in ensuring people get back alive. Your unit has the fewest deaths reported over the last six months, with the highest ratio of cargo-retrievals to safe-returns of all the units in your Compound added together and doubled. You care about your command, and take it seriously. You show reverence for the dead, and can be as pragmatic as the rest of us, when the time demands."

"That describes nothing about me, 'lieutenant'. It just means I don't like watching my men die."

"Which is also duly noted; it also indicates you can fight with your bare fists, a two-by-four, a pipe, a shotgun, knife, shovel, rifle, submachine pistol, and if the rumor is correct, a length of baling wire and a staple gun."

"Bar bet I won, eight months ago. I stapled three deadheads together in under a minute."

Ken blinked. He almost looked shocked.

"Don't ask. Continue."

"Uhm... Certainly." Ken opened a small notepad, flipping through it quickly. "We also have several dozen witnesses to attest to your bravery, integrity, and diligence. Quite frankly, you're more of a stand-up guy through force of will than most refined and genteel people are through breeding and education. Quite a feat, in my estimation. I mean, you may not know which fork to use when eating crab, or when white shoes are out of fashion, but you're what we're looking for."

"What do you mean, exactly, by 'looking for'?"

"We need people to fill in field management positions; people who've been there, done that, and survived to tell the tale. You'd have to go through six months of training, but you're probably higher chanced in the running for the chain of command than some of the people I've seen on it before."

"Labor Day."

"What?"

"I said, 'Labor Day'. You don't wear white shoes after Labor Day. I have no idea why I know that."

"Eerie." Ken recomposed himself. "So... you want the job?"

"Depends," he replied, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "You say I'm such a nice fucking guy, it'll come down to you, not me. If I take my two hombres with me, I'll go now. You sell them on this idea, and I'm as good as sold. You don't, and you'll walk away from my hill, naked save for your fucking socks."

He flinched, looking startled. It wasn't what Ren had said that startled him, it was the black anodized gun muzzle pressed against his forehead from above him. Above him, dangling from a hammock, Kim and Hendricks were both levelling their hardware at the top of Ken's head.

"So," Kim said, smiling broadly. "Do we pass the audition?"

SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER

At the back of a crowded movie hall, three figures sat watching the screen, idly smoking; what had once been a luxury was brought again to casual decandence, and permitted anywhere one felt it safe to do. A fifth of Wild Turkey went down the row, passed from their eldest to their youngest, no words spoken. It made its return trip five minutes later, like clockwork. The movie, a teen movie parody from years prior, was a local favorite, and had been seen by all three repeatedly, before their arrival to the city.

A bulldozer passed by, as they exitted the building early, a few others taking the similar cue. All three of them were dressed alike, save for one attribute; from their strapped-down black leather boots, to their BDUs in urban camouflage, to their parka-like jackets covered with unit and tribe affiliation patches, up to their regulation blast goggles, each of them was almost prototypical of their new profession.

Resting on the tallest, and eldest, one's hip was a clipboard, with a radio commlink welded to it. Clicking it to life, he spoke a few curt words, and was greeted in reply with a string of assurances and complicities. He turned to the other two, and said simply, "Next week, right?"

Each nodded their agreement, and wandered off, heading down the corridors of steel-shuttered windows on shops, and grates of iron bars over doorways into homes; the city was huge, but also defended by a proper mindset. The man walked to the top of a nearby dozer, looking to the south, sighing softly.

Smoldering heaps of slag, rubble, and desolation stared back at him, taunting him with the wasted potential of dozens of square miles of destroyed and ruined lifestyles and edifices, daring him to risk his life to change the face of the dying world, one building after another.

Looking behind at the sound of booted feet arriving at his side and rear, he stepped back down, feeling almost exposed as his position was nearest to the reclaimation zone nearest the city's outer perimeter wall. The conscripts staring back at through blast-goggled eyes were streaked in sweat and tension, as he rolled open the sidedoor on the wagon-styled cargo box hauled behind the bulldozer, one of three such vehicles.

"Hop in, kids," he said, gesturing to them. He called out their names, one by one, until he reached the last. Next to each name, he had left a check mark, save for the last. It was always covered in black Magic Marker, and only four people knew what the name on that line read. If all of the others were filled in and checked out, it was safe to think the man whose name was never written had gone and come back, as well.

The door slid shut, securing them all inside. Moments later, the driver manipulated the controls of the dozer from within its cargo box, unexposed to the elements, both benign and undead.

"Sir?" someone below him asked, clutching his rifle close to him. "Are we going to the Containment Zone, sir?" The nervous-looking recruit blinked up at him, shorter than his fellows by almost a foot. The metal plate on his helmet read 'Perkins, J. - B+', saving time on medical information questions. His hesitancy to enter the Zone was understandable; the last time he'd entered, his nearest compatriot was bitten on the foot, requiring its immediate amputation, and his subsequent removal from the squad. Word around the campire had it that the young Perkins may not be coming home today.

"Yes. Stick with the first seargent, and you're good to go."

The officer in question was the best friend of the lieutenant, and from an Asian extraction long considered a hot topic of debate; some say it was Korean, but few could explain his fetish for a Chinese restaurant across the river in Portland. His own sojourns there and back were legendary for any who went with him, to provide backup and help carry home the fifty or so take-out boxes his trips routinely brought back. Seargent Kim was also known for his sincere and devout service to his superior, the enigmatic Lt. Ren.

"Kim?" he said, turning to face his favored cohort in service. "… If, by some chance, something unfortunate should happen to young Mr. Perkins, be sure to have his duties shifted to those slack-jawed sister-screwing layabouts who claim they're in this unit; I believe they're sitting on the far end of the bench, nearest the doors. And, if possible, take some time out of your busy day, Kim, to fuck them up."

The three who'd been making dire threats all week had made no secret of their wish to kill one of their own; such actions were overlooked, if a provable merit could be inferred far enough in advance. In theory, it was as outlawed as hoarding ammunition within city limits, but as difficult to prove as any war's 'frag'.

"… and if they've got word fucking one to say about it, they've got less than thirty seconds before we deploy them ass-first into my boots."

None of the three spoke a word; a month prior, someone had made a comment about the newest member of their unit's inability to fire proper bursts inside a structure, with a near-miss scenario cropping up at inopportune moment. The private who lost his life was joined a few minutes later as Ren found the man, still screaming insults at his victim. The shot which penetrated the man's skull killed him, but also sent a clear message to the other members of his team; frag, and be fragged. Rumor made him a myth; the mythology made him a wonder; his works made him a living god. But, rumor also said he slept with the lights on.

"Listen close, children; in ten minutes, we cross the bridge to Old Town Portland, where we have reliable intel that a great many woogies hide amongst those pretty little buildings; should you falter, fall behind, or fuck up, I will leave you in the dust, until such time arrives as I want your skull on a pike." A pause, as his cigarette dangled from his lip, smoke billowing from his nostrils. "If I have been unclear, speak your piece, or hold it 'til we're home again. I don't need the back-chatter of some sorority-sister sewing circle clogging my radio waves. Message ends."

No one spoke. Few would have wanted to, anyways; his temper with insolence under his command was legendary, as were his prior exploits in training. Someone said that during hand-to-hand training, he put his fist into the stomach of a "training dummy" (formerly a resident of Deadville, Idaho) and then uppercutting an instructor for his racist tendencies. His immediate expulsion would have been required, were it not for a guardian angel's intervention: the man who'd marked him for special training had plans for him.

His subsequent command went further into a Dead Zone than any prior, seeking out a settlement thought lost since the beginning of the crisis; two large-scale ships, complete with the families and friends of their original crews was discovered at a port near Winchester Bay, Oregon, and brought into the harbor in Vancouver, netting the township a never-before-seen view at a more mobile and survival-oriented future; the appearance of two containerships, ladened with food, fuel, and trade goods in enough supply to keep them going for the next five years was more than plenty to propel him into the position he'd wanted; his units would be the ones who converged on the Portland Metro area, and reclaim it, once and for all.

His units' paths left in their wakes families mobilized to survive better, longer, and with a passion; he inspired men to action, and cooled the heels of those ruthless enough to enslave their fellow men. He was an icon of the times, forever moving south. His methods were brutal against the brutal, and utterly human when encountering the tragic and the loss-filled lives of those around him. The final stroke, he claimed, would be the overtaking of a now-rogue unit, in the middle of the northern banks of the Willamette, known simply as the Compound. Their commander had issued a dire threat against his former compatriots, forcing them to join Ren's sojourn north, where they met with fierce resistance, costing several lives in the process.

The Compound had grown in size, power, and fury as more and more families were moving to Vancouver, now known as the seat of the equivalency of a budding democracy; in a matter of a few years, word began to surface of the Compound's draconic policy of 'join or die', with several clusters of resistance being bombed and 'deaded' out, with their trademark truckbomb-and-deadbait method. Where once flags of nations and creeds flew over their complex, now there was the heads and bodies of those who'd resisted them. Ren was supposedly their last convert through what was now known as "the notebook method".

"Sir?" a young voice from below called up to Ren, seated in his command center in the 'turret' of the converted construction vehicle. "… Is today the day?" Many knew of his habit of misquoting, 'forgetting' or altering orders, and engaging in his personal war on the Compound's supporters; he claimed it was to take a day out of their calendar, and he always seemed to enjoy doing it on holidays.

Today was Thanksgiving; none of the men and women had the slightest idea what he'd do, he assured himself. They expected him to take the fight to the enemy's door, but he had a better plan.

"… No. We're going to the river, due south, and crossing the Burnside Bridge…"

Some of the personnel grew particularly quiet; they'd seen bridges fail and few would like to take part in the act of drowning in a metal box, after an unhealthy dive into the river. Earlier in the season, the bridge's repair work was supposedly on par with its initial construction.

Supposedly, it would withstand the test of time, it was said. Taking the trio of dozer/cargo boxes across it would be a test of mettle, and metal, Ren chuckled privately. However, he thought, I doubt they'd expect me to do this…

"… And we're going by way of the Rivergod Barge."

The Rivergod Barge was known as an easy way to cross the river, especially for heavy-load units; reclaimation teams found it remarkably easier to put up with the floating Friends of Jesus pastor who ran the fifty member crew of the flatbottomed barge than the traffic snarls which populated the surface roads. Ren supposedly knew a member of the senior staff of the barge, as did Kim; a former compatriot of their's, from their time in the IDS; few people knew Pastor Hendricks' real name, or why he only had nine fingers.

Ren knew his team had a turncoat on it; he could feel it, deep inside his heart. His mission parameters were often known faster to his men than to his knowledge; standard procedure was to listen to gossip first, orders second, and the read the manuals last. His command was little different, as was those above his pay grade.

Each man and woman checked their gear as he went down the list, calling out names; as each name was given, they also checked that of their neighbors, ensuring the security of the team through being thorough, if not anal about equipment solvency. When the last man had been checked, rechecked, and checked once more, he declared the readymark to be passed, and the pilots rang through on the mikes their arrival at the Barge. Ren stepped free, and motioned for Kim to keep the troops inside.

Stepping into the night air, he waved to the workers on the deck, shaking hands when approached, and handing out his traditional greeting trade good; a folding knife. Each member of the boat crew wouldn't refuse a knife, and it made for conversation pieces, later in the day. In exchange, they attached their own personal trinkets to the hulls of the three duet-haulers, marking it with crucifixes, Stars of David, and the like; religion was a strong point to their culture, and they were proud of their mutual acceptance of it.

"So, Dogfuck..." He gave a long, chuckled pause. "I mean, Pastor John. Been a while, ain't it?"

"Not so long I forget your ugly mug, you P.R. prick."

Both men laughed, and began regailing each other for the next half hour with alternately horror stories, and declarations of bemusement at the follies of their fellow creatures. Neither judged the other for running from home, and both felt a kinship with their newest lives. The tone grew serious as Ren brought up the topic of the day's mission: arriving at a strategic point, deep inside the territory of their mutual enemy.

"… You have the guys I requested, right? I paid for fifty mercs, I want all fifty."

"You got better than fifty; I managed to net the northern tribes, a family from Eugene, and a guy I know who's been dying to meet up with you, and you definitely want to meet them."

"I don't like surprises, John. You know me."

Ren's patience was long, but this new tone shortened it in leaps and bounds, quickly and nearly violently.

"I thought I told you never to take off your sword, Ren."

Turning to face the new arrival, Ren did the proverbial double-take, laughing. As he rushed forward, so did a hulking mass of humanity wrapped in a chainmail outfit, with a matched pair of axes across his back, and a twelve-gauge shotgun on a bungee cord sling on his chest. Sandwiched between the two men, Hendricks was hardpressed for comment, as well as breathing room.

Minutes passed, and more conversation spread throughout the mercenaries, who'd since come on deck from below. Each one in turn shook Ren's hand, as he tried to keep up to date on the goings-on of the caravan who'd rescued him, and on the growing situation on the far banks, where a crowd of a hundred or more walkers was bemoaning their lack of water wings, so as to facilitate dining options on the boat.

"And that was the last we'd heard of those guys from Company H. Last I'd heard, they'd made Appomattox, and the old man is some sort of cult hero, or something. They've got some golf course they turned into a training ground, and they do raids on nearby National Guard armories for more ammo, according to their website." Web service was on in some areas; others were still in the Dark Ages.

The next few hours passed uneventfully, as the men and women of the mercenary corps and the regimental forces from the Vancouver team went into their respective positions; each had been drilled with their primary training, and it had become their reflex, their core programming. The midieval forces began setting up a trio of large-scale wooden constructions, reinforcing them with spot welds and bracings fashioned from auto parts and lathed steel; the regiment set up two squads of six, and four squads of five, each loaded with their speciality: two carried handbuilt flamethrowers, fashioned from field-clearing models, with nitrous oxide tanks harvested from race club cars strapped to the back for added 'oomph'. Two other teams had loaded heavily on the homemade gas grenades made from chlorine and nitric acid; the resulting clouds of which would do considerable damage to lung and eye tissues rapidly, permanently, and thoroughly. The remainder had broken into their respective fire teams of squad gunners loaded with a US M-60 each, and beltfed munitions all around.

One team, at the side of Ren himself, was his handpicked squad of hooligans, miscreants, felons, and assorted criminals. They found their role slightly more fulfilling, and had been looking forward to this opportunity. At this point, they were the only people beyond the mercenaries, Kim and Ren who knew what would be happening in a few short minutes, as they crept to the top of a ridgeline at the rear of the Compound, having moved under cover of darkness and water's edge to arrive at the first rally point.

He went down the line of his squad, and gave each member their final instructions; words of high meaning and emotion would be lost to these unsubtle creatures. The prison tattoos across their arms and necks bore this as testimony to their natures, as well as their crimes.

"Gonzalez, you're on deadhead detail. Anything stank and rank, give 'em something to chew on."

The aged Hispanic former carjacker smiled, revealing shattered teeth in a twice-broken jaw, nodding his agreement. His arms carried his trademark Glock and claw hammer; he was inseperable from his trade's tools, as they'd saved him as much as they'd stolen from others.

"Rudolf, take on the power supplies. Anything with a D cell battery or bigger, turn out the lights."

The German man simply nodded, eyes alit with a smoky fury. His career ran from arson to kidnapping for South American druglords, but his sincerity to the operation was nigh-impenetrable; word around the campfire said he'd been branded by the burgeoning Compound Civil Militia for excessive damage with his rather thorough approach at torching houses of the dead.

"The rest, do your thing. Other than that, we're in the shit now. Take heart, and kick ass. Message ends."

The group broke, splitting into duets of specialists, solo practicioners of dark and unfortunate criminal arts, and small bands of hooligans, bent on their perfected arts of destruction. Molatov cocktails, handbuilt grenades, and the newest of their arsenal, the Grendel, were released into their custodies, preparing them for war on their own kind, as well as the dead's growing legion.

Ren kneeled, giving a silent prayer to the gods assumed to be listening; to Jesus, to Buddha, to Johnny Cash. Give me faith, give me fortitude, give me righteous fury. Hoisting his own Grendel to his shoulder, sliding it into it's handmade sheath, he moved out, as the teams were idling in position, poised to strike.

The Grendel; named after the beast of Beowulf's emnity, it was the pinnacle of 'modern' engineering: deadly, effective and dangerous on all sides. Outwardly, it was a standard fireman's axe, with a gaff hook on the non-blade side, pointed into a gentle curve, sharp as a scalpel. The edge of the axehead had been etched into a saw-like blade, to enhance the 'grip' of the weapon, allowing it to chew through bone and muscle. The opposite end of the weapon was easily the most cruel of the two: pointed to a spiral with a foot-long carbide steel drill bit, it could puncture through thin walls, car doors, and anything organic it was wielded against. A knuckleduster-style grip was welded on, with three inch long nails, reinforced with two nails each, twisted into spikes. One solid swing could go through a deadhead's skull with ease.

The artillery fire teams opened the battle; each was to fire four shots, and then move to their second position, where they would receive additional instructions for all subsequent shots. The spotters were in place, already in the compound's inner yard, operating undercover as new immigrants. The radio they used to call in the strikes was dressed as an infant, allowing them to hide with the women and children, permitting additional safety for the innocent, as well as excluding them from the danger zones.

The first shots went high, arcing over the fences, the barricades, and the inner core walls of cargo containers, landing squarely in the middle of a stack of emptied fuel barrels. The shot was originally designed in the Middle Ages for tower-busting siege weapons; several of those designs were now raining five-gallon buckets of lit roadflares and sealed containers of nitrous oxide. The resulting blasts from each were mushroom clouds of heat, fire and hot death.

From the loudspeakers atop the barge, the messages intended for the camp's occupants rang out: "Surrender, and all the firing will stop. Any who resist will be shot. Surrender your leaders and weapons; resistance is pointless." The message continued, with shouts going in both directions. Hidden by the river's high banks, the rallying forces inside the complex couldn't locate their opposition until it was scaling their walls. Teams had prepared the site in advance, abandoning ladders, handbuilt and factory-style, permitting the walls' breaching to go unaffected by the natural terrain disadvantage.

Ren went into his low crawl, advancing into the furthest tower's base, finding the support beam. Looking up, he could see the five panicked guards, shooting randomly into the night. A belt-fed monster belched out tracers and hot loads, zinging rounds in wild arcs. Applying a pre-prepared charge to the base, he stepped back into the cover of darkness, uncoiling sixty feet of wire behind him. The last look he gave the five souls atop the tower was painfully long, but the blast which resounded when he depressed the trigger on the bomb was easily less timely, but more painful. Rocked by the shockwave, he rolled for a few meters, coming up running as the tower listed to one side, the other two legs already buckling from the weight and concussive force.

The tower landed with a bang and a series of screams: the occupants had lived through the sixty foot fall, and were covered by the small walls of sandbags placed there as protection from below-based opponents. A tossed gas grenade marked off their remaining seconds as Ren entered through the now-larger hole in the defensive outer wall, looking on in awe as a three man team deployed a pair of ladders across the gulf of two cargo container walls. Each of them ran across the ladders, rifles blazing, in 'air guitar' mode. Essentially, it was fire for fire's sake, and wasteful on the ammunition reserves, but it kept heads down.

Moving along, he saw their reason for all due haste; below him, the inner wall had been filled with several hundred of the dead, per section. It added to their protection, and would doubtlessly prove dangerous to all involved. The hungry masses didn't take sides, unless it was sides of meat, on the hoof.

Arriving at the second-to-last wall, the ladder team ahead of him rained down more autofire, landing a few lucky shots on a gun emplacement near the cafeteria's main dining hall. The gunners were pinned down, unable to move, as the first of the three ladder team hurled a nitric-acid cannister at them, shouting exuberantly as howls of pains were added to the soundtrack of the battlefield. The running figures from said gunnery pit were then mowed down with ease, fired by the man flanking Ren.

Nodding his approval, Ren moved into the dining hall, towards the south end of the building, approaching fast and hard. Kicking open the doors, he stood in a panic for a second, finding no one to line into his sights. Something in his mind said "jump", and he didn't ask "how high", he prayed it'd be high enough. The shots which raked the floor he'd been standing on were fired by someone parked at the north end, hiding under a table; a perfect ambush for the south doors.

Running the length of the tables, Ren was peppered with errant strikes from the formica table's being eroded from below, as bullets rang through, striking the ceiling of the Quonset hut. Finding the last table, Ren lowered his gun muzzles to each side of the table, and said one single word: "Out." The gunman stepped free of the table's legs, and moved against the back wall. Staring at him, the man shuddered, a thin line of urine tracing the natural contours of the floor as recognition settled in. The last person to have sent him on the long-painful march into certain death, on Christmas stood before him, trembling like a leaf. Rumor had it his mental state was faked, or was strictly a rumor. Mostly, it was probably due to the unrelenting hatred the Teams felt towards him. Finding him here, almost made it all go away.

"Ren… you… died … a year ago."

"Me? Never happen."

Ren's gun came into his grip, flicking into position from his inner sleeve; a holdout model, normally used as a concealed-carry by police in the mid 1980's, it was small, but powerful: four rounds of .357 hot loads.

"But now, you die, right fucking now."

Ren's gun did the rest of his speaking; the conversation was short, and made a believer of the man. Three shots were placed between his knees and left elbow; the right was left intact, as it was the furthest from his previously well-known holdout: a ten millimeter automatic small frame pistol. Falling to the floor, holding his left knee (apparently the most pain-creating of his injuries), and moaning, he clenched his teeth, and spat at Ren, landing a good four feet short and half that to right.

"Tell me about the oven in the machine shop."

Rumor, speculation and heresay said that the Compound's leaders had been loading in the bodies of dissidents, revolutionaries and 'contra-logical' persons in truckloads. Supposedly, the furnaces ran hot and constant, with a steam whistle blasting during their loading phases, to cover the sounds of the screams. Ren had heard from over thirty near-witnesses of these wretched events. Some claimed the victims were alive, but bound inside sleeping bags, and could be heard praying, begging and screaming.

"Nothing to tell about it, Ren: you know it's real. You know it's the way the council wanted it to be."

Ren's escape and subsequent publicized 'demise' was a shock throughout the industry he'd worked so hard for legitimizing; there were several unsuccessful strikes, and countless acts of mutual retribution by both sides. Union labor lost out in end, Ren had heard: the families of the operators were rounded up, and sent to live in a smaller, less defended compound, three miles south. That compound was a prior attempt at a satellite base, and abandoned due to traffic control problems, and water contanmination. Informally, it was known as "Last Chance", or "Dead End". The patients found infected with terminal diseases and conditions were likewise housed there, without medical care beyond what the operators could beg, borrow or steal.

"Name some names. Each one given means another finger you keep. I might let you live. Talk, fucker."

He prodded the man further, carefully memorizing the names of the offenders, starting with the council, and down the roster until the final totals were reached. In all, there were fifty two names. More than he'd thought by almost two dozen. Some were only minor players, and could be simply imprisoned.

Others would require more serious and drastic steps.

"Excellent. You're up to keeping toes, as well."

Outside the door, the clean sweep was finishing its final tallying of the dead, wounded, missing and deserted; the victory was assured by the strike team's gaining of entry into the primary council chambers under force of arms, dragging them into the center of the complex's inner core.

Ren exitted, keeping a careful eye on the limping, moaning rat he'd been questioning for nearly an hour. All of the assembled militia forces were stripped of their weapons, and in some cases, clothing. Shivering hard in the cold night air, the few errant pops of rounds were doubtlessly subsiding shortly. Stepping to the top of a bulldozer, and raising a salvaged bullhorn, Ren smiled to his rebel forces, nodding his approval.

"Tonight, the Compound is finished. All they have done, we have undone. Where they have made errors, we have solved. They brought starvation, pain and ignorance. We bring food, ease and knowledge."

Cries rose from the rebels, and several fired off rounds from their weapons. They were silenced off quickly by their fellows, who assured them that yelling would be just about perfect, and it would be overkill to act like a Zapatista on this, their most glorious day.

Ren called for quiet, and was joined in the mutual silence of his fellows. They beamed with pride, looking up to him with unabashed devotion and happiness; they'd commited the most grievous of sins: they were victorious in the face of an oppressor who still lived, albeit under their bootheel.

"Brothers, sisters and associates, we are to rebuild this war-torn land, one house at a time, starting with this one!" He raised his Grendel high, and shouted without the aid of his bullhorn, "We will bring peace!"

Someone in the mass of people didn't feel that way, and had been worming his way through the packed and growing crowd, holding something tightly to their body, tears streaming down their face, unseen. Arriving at the base of the bulldozer, they looked to Ren, and motioned to him, nodding slowly.

Ren looked to the base of the dozer, seeing the slight frame of the slender girl at his feet, her eyes flooded with tears. She was holding something in her hand, something bright red and patterned. Something that looked like… road flares. Suspicious of the bundle, he pointed his Grendel at the girl, motioning for her to rise up with him as he stepped down towards her.

Seeing her opportunity, she rose to her full height, holding the bundle closer to her chest, and then turned sharply to the audience, yelling at the top of her teenage lungs.

"This is what your false prophet brings you!"

The crowd gasped as one, and surged backwards, seeing what she clutched in her hands; a two foot long bundle of dynamite: almost fifteen pounds of it, and it was more than enough to flip the dozer over. A faint red light blinked inside the end of it, flashing away in the night skies. Abruptly, three things became apparent to all involved.

First, the Grendel that Ren carried wasn't factory standard.

Second, he was much faster than was assumed prior.

Third, the assassin failed.

The bundle was swept from her hands by Ren's Grendel slickly extending out an additional four feet, the hook reaching into the bundle and almost puncturing a stick of dynamite. The detonator was cleanly sliced into two easy pieces; it would not fire without extensive help from the gods themselves.

Levelling his sidearm at her, he shook his head.

"Lady, I don't know you, but I think I like your style."

He chuckled, almost moving the barrel from against her nose's edge.

"But style don't cut it, honey."

The gun made her a believer.

Swivelling on his heel to face the amazed crowd, he held the smoking barrel of his Glock aloft long enough to exhale sharply, sending the gunsmoke away with a flourish. He smiled broadly, and fired it off in celebration, acting the part of a revolution-drunk Zapatista.

The gunfire echoing from the masses filled the skies, drowning out the moans of the dead.

The early light of dawn crept across the skies like a curious child, peering into the open air cathedral of the church of the human being known as the Compound. It revealed the guilty being carried away to the cells of Vancouver for their trials; it showed the weapons being handed to every soul asking for one; it showed the gleam in the eye of every man, woman and child who would work their lifetimes to rid the world of the injustice of the dead and the living alike.

It also showed the relaxing figure of a Puerto Rican ex-slave who'd made good on his promises, snoring under the shade of a canvas tent, finally at peace.

Sleeping with the lights out.