Chapter 5
Caleb Martin
Period 4
February 9, 2013
I woke up face to face with the darkness. My body ached all over and I was trapped under a mountain of rubble. Between the pain and the rubble I could move no more than a foot in any direction. I sat motionless for a while in the dark, formulating a plan to get out of what must have been five feet of rubble on top of me. I would try to dig myself out with a smashed plank of wood lying beside my leg. It must have been dark outside as well as no sunlight shone through the cracks in the mountain. After spending a half hour only to go half a foot I took a break. I heard some faint sounds from up above and tried to listen in closer. It sounded like scratching and crunching. I looked through one of the crevices in the rubble and saw it. A hulking beast was there and it wasn't alone I could hear others further away. I laid there silently trapped, observing the huge mutant as it began to dig through some rubble only feet away from myself. The beast looked like the mutant descendant of a bear but the radiation had done its damages. Patches of its fur were missing and red sores covered some parts of its body. It continued to dig and I watched as it picked up the body of a trapped Confederate soldier and eat his torso. The soldier must have died some time ago, perhaps when Fort Reaper exploded because when the creature continued to eat the soldier he didn't make a single sound. These beasts were searching for food and this was perhaps vengeance for us killing so many the mutants for our needs. They served us well, they supplemented our Brahmin herds as food, some of their exoskeletons were used to reinforce our soldiers' armor, and some had toxins that could be used to lace darts and knives with. But to these foul creatures the slaughter here was a free buffet to them. They were scouring for more dead bodies to try and conquer their endless appetite. Soon they would come for me and I renewed my effort to dig myself out.
At first it was difficult, I felt like a snake slinking around these artificial catacombs for a way out but with time it became easier as I remembered the way to move different types of obstacles. It had been almost an hour and I could begin to feel the cold air blowing in from an entrance back onto the surface. I was so close to finally escaping the mutants and the underground labyrinth when I passed a dead body I recognized. It was the body of General Bustamante. The building didn't actually but instead it had appeared as if he had been shot in the head. Despite the general's fascination with calculations and numbers, he couldn't formulate a plan to save himself. I crawled out finally and stealthily walked away from the fort as to not attract any attention from the mutants feasting nearby. After being a hundred feet or so past the church my slow walk turned into a full-blown sprint. I set up a makeshift camp on a small cliff where off in the distance Longview's twinkling lights shone and maybe a mile behind me sat the collapsed and smoldering Fort Reaper. I was surprised that I had just survived the ordeal I did but my journey was not over. If the Confederates had in fact already made the first, surprising, move than I had to warn others to prevent more surprise attacks like that on Fort Reaper. I was exhausted and fell asleep.
I woke up the next morning and set off on my quest. I would make my way to Dallas and alert the government to their impending doom. As I started walking towards Interstate 20 I saw a huge camp of Confederate battalions set up along one of the onramps. They were preparing to take Longview and eventually Dallas and Houston by surprise and all these cities would be caught off-guard and overrun. The Interstate was no longer an option so I would take the southern back roads for a while and when I met the nearest Interstate I would head north towards Dallas. I found the nearest highway, Highway 259, and trudged down the endless road. Hours went by and yet I had gone only thirty miles. As the day wound down, I could see the lights of Henderson, Texas. Henderson was part of the State of Longview and in fact was the state's second largest city besides Longview itself. Henderson was another farming town and the economy was also mostly driven by Brahmin ranching. The town seemed friendly and had not been overrun yet but it was only a matter of time. I was able to get a small hotel room at a rundown La Quinta after bartering a pack of cigarettes. Henderson was far enough from Longview to be spared by the nuclear holocaust and the only damage here was from time and some of the more rowdy inhabitants. In fact, my hotel room had looked as it might have before the war. I had done enough walking and was ready to sleep.
The next day I woke up from the hotel room and set out again I hoped to achieve another thirty miles today and started walking further south along Highway 79. The land was humid and merciless as I walked, the roads had been cleared of all the broken down cars and it made the walk that much more miserable. I only passed the occasional traveler, farmer, or businessman every couple of miles. I was approaching the thirtieth mile marker when an oasis appeared. I had reached the outskirts Jacksonville, Texas. It also lay untouched (mostly) by the war and people lined the streets offering wares of all kinds. It was a town of scavengers and it was clearly thriving. Jacksonville had recently become the Texas Union's 26th state also called Jacksonville. It stretched from the northeast area around Jacksonville to the southwest in nearby Palestine, TX. The economy was based around scavenging and the inhabitants would irradiate themselves by crawling into abandoned buildings and looting nuked cities like Austin. They would bring back Old World luxuries like toilet paper, cigarettes, and new weapons. In fact the profession was so widespread in this state that in the center of Jacksonville stood a makeshift statue devoted to idolizing perhaps one of our nation's greatest scavengers. His name was known all across the Texas Union, "Wild Bill", he discovered a huge pre-war Army facility loaded with weapons and enough ammunition to last a lifetime. The newly formed government quickly moved in to secure the facility and it has since been nicknamed the "Birthplace of the Texas Union Armed Forces".
Jacksonville, while much smaller than Longview, looked a lot bigger. There was constant traffic along Highway 79 no matter what the time was. Brahmin, trucks, people, and bicycles hauled their treasure to here to be distributed to other cities like Dallas and Longview. I had to rent a tent as the town's two hotels were full due to the constant influx of businessmen to the area. I needed to get further than Palestine today so I caught a ride with a clan of scavengers headed towards Austin. It only cost me my harmonica and the condition that I treat one of their men who had a broken leg. I got on and tended to my duties and then took a lengthy nap to make the trip go faster. I woke to see the dead city. It was huge. The burnt and smoldering skeletons of skyscrapers could be seen in the distance. We were still twenty miles from the actual city but I could go no further as huge mutants spawned there and prowled the streets plus it was a radiation hot zone and I didn't have a protective suit with me.
They dropped me off and warned not to go into the city as it would be suicide. On the beltway going around Austin sat a small town of survivors and it was there that I met a lone Texas Union sheriff. His town was comprised of some of the survivors that were in a nearby bomb shelter. I told him of the disaster at Fort Reaper and he was shocked. I told him I needed to meet President Pierce in Dallas but the sheriff insisted that I would be better off meeting Secretary of Defense Hughes. I agreed and asked for the quickest route to Dallas but according to the sheriff Hughes was not in Dallas but instead visiting the legendary city of San Antonio. That meant I would have to go even further south and gaining entrance to mighty San Antonio was not easy. The sheriff had a beat up old Ducati that I could use to get to San Antonio. I took it and drove. The freeways were so much smoother than the backwater highways I had been walking and driving on all week. I was pushing 90 mph along I-35 and would be to San Antonio in no time. I was getting closer as the density of houses increased every mile I drove forward. I kept passing small towns of no more than thirty people. They were guard points for the power lines that spewed like tentacles from San Antonio. I was finally there.
I slowed the motorcycle as I approached the great walls of San Antonio. It wasn't easy getting in. Paranoia was king in this town and every visitor was carefully inspected and asked for proof of Texas Union citizenship. The walls around the city were huge, made up of abandoned vehicles such as buses, SUVs, and trucks. It was about twenty feet thick and roughly forty feet high. The city-state of San Antonio was a Sparta in its own sense. Every resident from six to sixty was trained to fight no matter their profession. The reason why? While most of San Antonio is a radioactive hellhole, once the fallout settled one building stood out from the wreckage. A lone intact nuclear power remained and while the façade contained minor damage the reactor continued to churn out power even with the absence of people. For a while the electricity was useless, all the power lines had become a twisted mass of steel and wood. The government realized the potential of the facility and sent hordes of technicians and engineers to restore electricity to our slice of the wasteland. Once the lines were repaired the power was flowing to almost everywhere in the Union and San Antonio was generating two-thirds of all electricity in the Union. The town became nationally-renowned for its technicians who could supposedly fix anything.
Meanwhile, the Old World American government had left us a parting gift in San Antonio. There was an Air Force base on the far side of the city, Randolph AFB, and shortly before they were nuked they made a frantic attempt to launch so biological weapons against the Chinese. Well the bombs hit before the bio-weapons could leave the ground and all kinds of vile diseases and ailments escaped the military vials. The bio-weapons coupled with the radiation spawned some rather large mutants that bullets alone could not stop. The nuke plant was regularly attacked by raiding Mexican drug gangs and the demon spawns from Randolph AFB so the Texas Union built a wall of defense around the half of San Antonio that contained the nuke plant and had all citizens train for battle should they end up getting attacked. A small city sprung up inside the walls which were filled with technicians who could build any useful device from the detritus of the previous wasteful society.
I saw the great city with my own eyes and had never seen a bigger place. I had never been to post-war Dallas and the biggest city I had visited was my hometown of Longview. No more than five years had passed since the Great War and already humanity had already seemed to be rebuilding the world it had lost. New societies had already emerged in the course of a year we as a species had adapted to accept our new world. I digress; the city had streets that went on for over a mile before hitting the wall and at the end of the main straight thoroughfare sat the towering power plant. Tramps, curious visitors, and traders lined the streets. Even the occasional beat-up truck would be seen attempting to push through the crowds. The streets were electrified and one could tell that the nuke power plant was clearly bringing a lot of dough. I needed to find Secretary Hughes but there were so many people it was like finding a needle in a haystack. I kept asking residents and they all pointed towards the monstrous power plant.
Then that was my destination. I started walking the boulevard with the crowd and remembered a childhood visit to New York City. I remembered the mass of people walking along the sidewalk as daily life and how San Antonio was that same thing but on a smaller scale. Perhaps someday we will be able to build our own new New York City in San Antonio. I continued along and stopped at a small café selling Turkish kebabs. I had never had one and was surprised that such culinary experiences had not been lost with the rest of the world. After finishing my food I continued to stroll down the avenue and was nearing the mighty power plant. The place was surrounded by a platoon of soldiers who made it clear that none shall pass. I needed to get inside the power plant but the soldiers would not listen to my cries for help. To them I was a Siren trying to lure them away from their post for God knows what. I was desperate and pulled out my pistol, ran into the crowd and fired a few shots. Panic ensued and that dragged the soldiers away temporarily. That was all I needed and quickly ran over to the entrance. I swung open the huge iron door and lay shocked. Secretary Hughes lay slumped over in the corner and a small group of worker surrounded him crying. He was dead.