Fourth Quadrant: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book Two, page 11
She’d barely sipped the rich brew before Mike Vinich walked in. He was in uniform, wearing ACUs, pants dressed in the tops of his boots. He glanced around, fixed on Lauren, and beamed a smile.
She stepped out, gave him a big hug, and pushed back. “Damn, it’s good to see you.”
“You, too, Lauren. God, when I heard you were here? Well, call it a gift from the gods.” He studied her with soft eyes, as though truly glad to see her. Except for the uniform that hugged his muscular body, he didn’t look much different than last time she’d seen him: Brown hair, brown eyes, square block of jaw. That little scar on the right cheek and the bigger one on his brow. She remembered that his older brother had talked him into shooting their dad’s scoped .338 Winchester from a bench when Mike was eight. When the big magnum’s recoil had blown the boy back, the scope cut a deep crescent in his forehead.
Families were like that. Like the time Jim... No, Lauren don’t let yourself fall down that rabbit hole.
She slipped back onto the seat. After ordering an IPA, he settled across from her, asking, “How the hell did you get out of Colorado? That’s where you were. The Springs, right?”
“Ty told me to go when this all came down.” She took a deep breath, fingers rotating the glass of stout. “I hung on until Sunday morning. Figured, despite what Ty said, that it would blow over. Then my supervisor from the bank showed up. Said it was all going to hell. So we made a run for it.”
“Glad you made it.”
“I did. He didn’t. A guy shot him down south of the line.” She felt a fist tighten around her heart. Fought to keep Randy’s face from forming in her thoughts. “Listen. I don’t want to talk about it. How about you?”
The look he was giving her was unsettling. Worried. Studying her intently.
Absently, he replied, “Not much to tell. Dad wanted more time fishing, so he let me take over the dealership. Then the chip shortage hit. Small, low-volume, dealership in Douglas, Wyoming? We didn’t have the clout the big urban dealers had, so we got one, maybe two new vehicles a month. Whatever they wanted to send us. Most were sold before they hit the lot. And then there were none. For a time we did a bang-up job with used trucks and SUVs. Until people figured out that there was nothing to replace their current rides. Doesn’t matter what trade-in value is if there isn’t anything to upgrade to.”
Mike shrugged. “Since the car business was going nowhere, I joined the National Guard. One weekend a month, two weeks duty a year, and a paycheck. Then, wham. I’m in Cheyenne, made a sergeant, and put in charge of the food program at Buffalo Camp.”
“That’s the refugee camp, right?”
“Yeah, it’s on the buffalo ranch south of town. They trucked the last of the bison off to a place up around Iron Mountain somewhere, and people now have a home where buffalo roamed, but without the romance of the old West song.”
She took a sip of stout; Mike’s sensitive smile had always reassured her. “What about Pam? Tiffany said she dropped you cold for a lawyer in Casper.”
Vinich took a deep breath, eyes on his beer. “To use an automotive analogy, Pam’s like a hot Italian sports car. Great to look at, fast, classy, and she’ll make your heart race. Hot, with fantastic curves and body work. But she’s an expensive investment, and you’d better be ready to pony up. What you’d call way-high maintenance and really temperamental.”
He paused, glanced away. “She’s in it for herself, and only for herself. As soon as she figured out that the car business was gone, so was she.”
“And the lawyer?”
Vinich snorted. “The guy’s twenty years older than Pam is. Ditched a wife and three kids for her. She married him the day the divorce was final, and now she’s living in a million-dollar house up Garden Creek at the base of Casper Mountain.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. The best lessons are the ones that are hardest learned.” He arched an eyebrow. “How about you and Tyrell Ramirez? Last time I talked to Tiffany, she said you were engaged? That still on?”
“Yeah.” She played with her stout glass. “You’d like him, Mike. He’s a lieutenant in a Delta Force team. Grew up in Los Angeles. Has a wicked sense of humor. Likes a lot of the things I do. Camping, outdoors, hunting. The plan was that I’d get my degree in business, then wherever he was deployed, I’d have the skills to just pick up and go. I’d always be able to get a job accounting, in a bank, managing a business, whatever.”
Mike was giving her that intent inspection again, and she could see the doubt.
“What?”
“Thought you and Breeze were going to be high-stakes financial gurus. Wasn’t that the deal? You’d both be millionaires living in Manhattan, traveling to France, gambling in Monaco? Kick off your dusty Wyoming shit-stained boots and don Jimmy Choo’s for the stroll down Wall Street?”
She avoided his gaze. “Yeah, well, Breeze and I planned a lot of stuff once upon a time.”
He let the silence hang, then said, “Lauren, life’s a complicated business that’s full of mistakes you can’t see coming. Yeah, Jim was your brother. But he was one of my best friends, and he and I talked a lot. About all kinds of things. If you’ll recall, his string of mottos consisted of, ‘Shit Happens’, ‘Stuff goes sideways’, ‘Nothing’s for certain’. You grew up with him. You know he’d be really unhappy that you’re punishing yourself like this.”
Lauren tightened a fist. “When I took hold of the steering wheel that night, I assumed the responsibility and I—”
“Bullshit!” Mike’s jaws clamped, his eyes narrowing. “Those are the general’s words. Coming right out of your mouth. God knows, if Jimmy had been driving that night...” He waved it away. “Lauren, living comes without a warranty. You were eighteen. Drunk. And Jim’s not exactly a blameless victim in all of this.”
She bowed her head, pinched the bridge of her nose. “He comes, you know. Talks to me at night. Tells me about all the things I’ve fucked up.” She paused. “Sometimes I wake up in the darkness, sweating, my heart racing.”
“That’s your brain making stuff up. The guy I knew would never punish his sister that way.” Vinich smiled, shook his head. “Lauren, if Jimmy were around, he’d tell you that he loved you. You and Breeze were his life.”
He read her disquiet, smiled, and asked. “Enough of the past. How’d you know I was here?”
“Saw Tiffany in Laramie.”
“Yeah? Spoke to her just before the phones went dead. What about Breeze?”
“Tiffany says she hasn’t heard anything.”
“But you haven’t heard from her?”
“Some things just can’t be undone,” Lauren whispered.
“You know, you’re not the only one carrying a cross up Golgotha. Breeze is bearing part of that load, too.”
“You trying to pick a fight?”
“Nope. I’m trying to help a friend see past her own blinders. That’s horse talk, by the way. I do more than just car analogies.”
She glanced up, shared his smile, even if she didn’t feel it. “So, what about Buffalo Camp? What do I need to know?”
His smile faded. “You ever heard the term TEOTWAKI?”
“Yeah, shorthand. Stands for ‘The End Of The World As We Know It’.”
“Call it your introduction to The Line.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was called a Medium Tactical Vehicle, or an MTV. Lauren wondered why they didn’t call it an ugly 5-ton cab-over truck. She rode in the back of the bouncy thing, perched awkwardly atop boxes stamped with an American eagle and labeled “FEMA Emergency Food Supplies”. The six-cylinder Caterpillar C7 engine roared as they barreled down I-25 at a barnstorming fifty miles an hour.
Vinich sat on a crate across from her—sort of wedged in between the boxes and the tailgate. Within his reach, a battered black M16 hung from the bouncing truck’s side rack. They had just passed under the interchange that once hosted the Wyoming Welcome Center.
“Lauren, you still sure this is a good idea?” Vinich asked as they passed a group of people walking resolutely north on the other side of the right-of-way fence. Two of the men carried rifles, and the women and children looked haggard and hungry.
“I thought you needed help. And I want to get an idea of what’s going on.”
“We do, but I’d just as soon you went somewhere safer.”
“I will. Eventually.”
“Think Tyrell would approve of you going into a refugee camp to toss out boxes of food?”
“I doubt it.” She grinned. “Not unless he was here to keep an eye on things. Maybe help toss out a couple of boxes.”
Vinich nodded in approval. “Then he’s a good guy.”
“A very good guy.” She repressed the emotion in her voice.
Climbing to her knees, she squinted into the wind and looked south past the cab to the dark-brown haze. Whatever was burning in the Front Range communities should have been consumed long ago. Instead, the smoke just seemed to get darker, more malignant as it drifted east across the Plains.
As the truck crested the rise and headed down into the old buffalo pasture, Vinich said, “Good Lord, there are more people today than yesterday.”
When Lauren saw the cars, tents, and make-shift shelters that spread across the rolling grass-covered hills, it took her breath. There had to be ten thousand in this one camp alone. People were living in the lines of vehicles; they’d been pulled into rows that glinted in the sunlight. Looked like some bizarre flea market or Renaissance fair.
“Any of the bison left?”
“No. Some of the big bulls hung on for a while. Magnificent old guys. I guess they get feisty when a lot of strangers start crowding around them. Some idiot figured he’d kill one and use it to feed people. So, the damn fool stands in front of the buffalo, shoots it in the head with a little .22 pistol, and the buffalo charges and kills him and half his family. Right there on the spot.”
“What happened to the old bull?”
“Another refugee with an aught-six put him down. Same for all the others they couldn’t round up. Thank God they got the rest shipped out to Iron Mountain. They’ll be out of reach of the refugees. Unless, of course, we can’t hold the border.”
“Any other ranches sending animals up there?”
“Yeah. A few of the ranches close to the line. They know what’s happening to livestock in Colorado. People are figuring out that all those cows, sheep, and horses are edible. I hear it from the refugees. If you can shoot a farmer’s cow, get it back to the city, you can trade the meat for just about anything you want.”
“How are the farmers and ranchers taking that?”
Vinich gave her a dead look. “They’re shooting back. Heard an outfit down on Owl Canyon Road drove an entire herd north, crossed the line over on Harriman Road. Just left their whole ranch behind. Said it was too dangerous.”
“Hard to believe we’d ever see people stoop to this.”
“What would you do if you were down there, electricity off, water doesn’t work. Stores are empty. You’re on your last tank of gas, assuming no one carjacks your wheels, how far would you go to feed your children?”
“Don’t know.” She’d already killed Masterson. Maybe she had a better idea than Mike did.
“Yeah, well, those are the kind of questions folks in Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Greeley, and on south are asking themselves these days.”
Vinich pointed to the west where black thunderheads rose over the Rockies. “If that comes over, those poor refugee bastards are sure going to be miserable.”
“Why’s that?”
“We only had five hundred tents in the government inventory. The people who showed up with gas in their tanks were allowed to park their cars and live in them, then we set up the tents in the pastures. Lot of the others, people without any kind of shelter, are in the corrals. But most of them sleep out in the open.”
“How many people will be waiting for food today?” Lauren asked, watching the verdant pastures as they passed. It was a beautiful day for June.
“Hard to say. Numbers keep climbing. Just looks like a sea of people,” Vinich told her.
“Where are they all coming from?”
“They come from all over, walking up the interstate, carrying whatever they’ve got on their backs. Some come on ATVs. The lucky ones carry guns to keep from getting mugged. And the armed ones can always hijack some other poor bastard’s ATV. When they arrive, they’re given a choice: They can turn over their weapons at the gate or turn right around and head back south.”
“Do they?”
He gave her a grim smile. “Most spout the Second Amendment and head back south, at least far enough that they can cut or jump the right-of-way fence and try to circle around through the ranches in an attempt to cross the line in a different place. Didn’t take us long to figure that out. We’ve got drones monitoring the easiest routes. After a couple of attempts, most head south for good.”
“To do what? There’s nothing to the south but⎯”
“To prey on others, Lauren.” Vinich looked defeated. “That’s how it works now. Whatever somebody needs, a coat for their kid, a blanket, they take it from another refugee. Nothing we can do to stop it.”
A moment later, he pointed. “There’s the distribution center.”
Lauren climbed on top of the ration boxes and hung onto the steel rack to get a good look at the big barn that had once housed pens, alleys, and the squeeze chute. Being a buffalo ranch, the perimeter fence was higher than in a normal cattle operation, and— though mostly barbed wire—the fence had an electrified high-tensile wire running along extensions wired to every third T-post. Humvees with mounted machine guns were parked every two or three hundred yards along the outside of the fence.
“Call it built to order,” Vinich told her. “Not only was it fenced, but that electric wire? We monitor it constantly. Any time someone shorts out a section of fence, it alerts us as to where the breach is. We can have a squad on it before the infiltrators get fifty feet beyond the wire.”
People stood in lines waiting for food, and the lines stretched for as far as she could see. Two privates with M16s guarded the barn doors. She prayed there were more soldiers inside. If this crowd decided to erupt, those two privates would be dead in a heartbeat.
The truck rocked and bounced, forcing Lauren to hang onto the rack with both hands.
The tents on the northern end were not government-issue, but colorful camping and backpacking tents. People gathered round them in little clusters. Then the numbers increased and ranks of heavy dark-green military tents covered the trampled grass. Beyond them were the pens that used to be the feedlot. These were filled with cars, trucks, trailers, and motor homes. All in neat lines.
“What about sanitation?” she asked.
“We scoured Cheyenne for porta potties. Wasn’t even close enough. Ragnovich finally requisitioned the rancher’s backhoe. We’re digging slit trenches.”
He made a face. “At this rate, we’ve got four days of rations left in the warehouse. Maybe less. People are still coming. We’ve flown recon, Lauren. Denver’s a nightmare. Burning cars, burning buildings. Gangs in the streets. Entire city blocks with barricades protected by people with clubs and knives. That’s what bothers me most, the ones hanging out in their houses praying for a miracle. Lambs waiting for slaughter.”
Neither spoke while the truck rocked over the ruts in the road.
She shook her head, voice breaking. “The hackers were brilliant. They hit us where they could do us the most damage. The money system.”
“Speculation is that the computer virus went everywhere.”
“It would have,” she replied. “Banks around the world are all connected. Tens of millions of transactions pass across the internet every day—”
“What does that mean?” He sounded frustrated.
“Basically? Means the Federal Reserve is helpless.”
They turned into the ranch entrance, passed the tourist cabins and restaurant. In the southern sky Lauren could see the sickly looking brown smudge that smeared its way east. She’d seen Denver smog before, this was different: a dense, dirty plume that boiled through the blue.
A couple of ATVs with loaded luggage racks waited to be processed at the main gate. The people dealing with the armed guards turned to stare longingly at the MTV as it passed.
The truck rumbled across the cattle guard and past the first fence with its guards; people came from all sides to line the road, watching the truck, faces hopeful, many waving, all calling for food.
Lauren had seen scenes like this in the movies, in newsreels from places like Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and Pakistan. In real life, here, within miles of Cheyenne, it tore a hole in her soul.
So many of them!
What stunned her was the view from her elevated perch on the ration boxes. To the south, it was a virtual ocean of humanity. All desperate, praying for salvation.
“So, here’s the routine,” Mike called over the roar of the truck. “We unload the ration boxes into the barn, then we get the hell out of there before anybody tries to steal our truck. Understand? Crew in the barn handles distribution. That’s not our job.”
“Got it.”
A low roar built in the east, like a brutal thunder, rising, filling the sky.
“Holy shit,” Vinich murmured as the first of the long formation of aircraft streaked from east to west across the sky to their north. On either side, the crowd had gone silent, eyes fixed on the northern horizon.
Hutch Daniels—the private driving the truck—slowed to a stop and leaned out the driver’s window to call, “You see that? Those are A-10 Thunderbolts!”
“Fuck me,” Vinich answered.
At the sight of the air armada, Lauren tried to swallow, couldn’t.
“A-10s were built to attack tanks.” She could hear her father’s voice saying those words.
His eyes on the fading Thunderbolts, Mike squinted, and said. “Yeah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
