rounds and a few dozen rounds for handguns.”
“That’s not much, is it? Not if you’re going to keep twenty people alive over the next few months.”
“Like I said”-Tony rested his hand on the pistol butt where he’d pushed it into his belt-“we can find more.”
“But where? The towns are picked clean.”
“We’ll do it.”
I moved in close to meet him eye to eye. “Tell me: When was the last time you found some gas? Some ammunition?”
Tony glared back. “Two weeks ago. A stack of rifle shells.”
Michaela sighed. There was a defeated look in her eye. “Greg, it was three weeks ago, and we found three rifle shells in the trunk of a wrecked car.”
“Three shells won’t win a war, will they?”
“Michaela.” Tony glared at her as if telling her to keep her mouth shut.
“What have we got to hide, Tony? It’s looking like crap. We haven’t found any gas in a month. In a couple of weeks we’ll have to dump the bikes and go on foot.”
“We can manage, Michaela. We got by in the past.”
“ ‘We got by in the past’?” I echoed. Boy, oh boy, this time I let them have it. Words came out like machinegun bullets. “What good is that? Don’t you see? You can’t live like this, grubbing for cans of beans in ruins and running from place to place. Listen to me; it’s time to stop living like hobos. It’s time to start living like Vikings!”
“Like Vikings?” Tony gave a dismissive laugh. “Yeah. What do you suggest, Valdiva?”
I took a deep breath. “Do you have any dynamite?”
“Dynamite! Hell no.”
“What do we need explosives for, Greg?” Michaela asked, astonished. “We carry what’s essential. Food. Ammunition.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“And what’s this talk of Vikings?” Ben asked, be-mused. “What do Vikings have to do with anything?”
“Because, Ben, we’re going to start taking what we need to survive.”
Zak scratched his bald head. “Well, Valdiva, you talk the talk, I’ll grant you that. But how we going to take what we need?”
I looked ’round at the faces that were either puzzled or downright hostile. Only Michaela’s had softened. I sensed she trusted me to offer some kind of hope. Jesus, I prayed I could. “Listen: This is the plan. There’s a Jeep back at the garage I’ve been staying in. All it needs is gas. Once I have a full tank I drive to Sullivan. There, I’m going to pick up explosives. I’m sure they’ve got dynamite and detonators, haven’t they, Ben?”
“Sure, there’s a place that supplied the quarries, but-”
“Once I’ve got the dynamite we open up that nuclear bunker. There’s a crazy guy there who’s sitting on enough gasoline to float a ship. There’ll be military hardware. Mortars. Rocket launchers. Grenades. Machine guns. And probably a million rounds of ammunition. See? We’re going to start living like Vikings. We’re transforming ourselves from losers to winners. We’re taking control of our lives again.”
Michaela’s face lit up. Zak nodded, a grin breaking across his face. Even Tony’s expression changed to one of excitement.
Only Ben looked worried. “Greg, that’s a great idea. But everyone in Sullivan will hate our guts. How do you propose to get them to hand over dynamite? All you’re gonna get is a bullet between the eyes.”
I shot him the devil of a grin. “Trust me, Ben. We’re Vikings now. We can do anything.”
Forty-five
When people-or the goddam world in general-push you around it makes you unhappy. When you lose control of your own life you feel powerless. You feel dead from the neck up. Believe me, that’s one thing guaranteed to saturate your life in complete and utter misery.
Live like Vikings! So far that was all I’d been able to tell them, but as they funneled gas into the Jeep back at the garage their faces shone; they laughed, cracked jokes. They were happier… they were taking control of their lives again. Suddenly they were optimistic about the future.
After the confrontation over those paltry gallons of gas, they’d really locked themselves into the dream I’d sold them. By now it was evening. Zak had already ridden back to the cabins with the news: We were going to crack open the Aladdin’s cave stocked with more food than we could ever eat. Those half-starved devils had cheered him. With an almighty grin pasted across his face he’d returned with more guns and ammo. For a while we worked on the Jeep, pumping air into the tires. I greased up the cable linkages in the engine. Michaela and Ben checked the guns.
Tony still tended to question everything I suggested. But it seemed now more from habit than any real desire to wreck my scheme. “Why don’t we use the bikes? They’re more maneuverable than the Jeep. They’ll use less fuel as well.”
I slapped the hood of the Jeep. “Because I’m going to need dynamite-lots and lots of dynamite. More than the bikes can carry.”
“How’re you going to blast a way into the bunker, Greg?” Michaela’s dark eyes looked searchingly into my face. “The walls are thick enough to withstand nukes.”
“There’s a way, trust me.”
The question bug catching, Ben looked up from where he loaded a rifle. “And I still don’t see how you’re going to just turn up in Sullivan and ask for dynamite. Those people aren’t going to hand over their stuff because they’ll be too busy ripping your head off.”
I smiled. “You’re thinking like a nice middle-class boy, Ben. You’ve got to think like a warrior who drinks his enemy’s blood from his shattered skull.”
“Yeah.” Ben grinned. “Silly me, I never thought of that.”
Michaela chipped in. “So who is the enemy, Greg?”
“That’s easy. Everyone.” I wiped my hands on a cloth. “Everyone who stands between us and survival… Now, let’s see if this little beauty’s going to deliver.” With the battery long dead I slotted the starting handle into the engine socket that exited through the radiator grill.
“You think it’s really going to start?” Ben asked.
“It’s going to have to,” Zak said, looking through the open door. “Here come the bad guys.”
Got to make this work, Greg, I told myself. We’re using the last of our precious supplies on this venture. At best we go hungry if it fails. At worst… well, fill in the blanks.
There they were. Hornets. Lots of fucking ugly hornets. Big, bad and monstrous, just like they’d come lurching out of your worst nightmare.
“Jesus,” Ben breathed. “There are hundreds.”
Zak looked at me, then at the Jeep. “Is that old junk pile ready to run?”
“It’ll work. These babies were built for battlefields.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
“Don’t worry about me. You get the bikes.” I ran to the front of the Jeep. Glancing out through the doors, I saw the road that ran up through the forest. It was thick with hornets. They shuffled forward in the evening sun. If the wind had been in the right direction you could probably have smelled their greasy hair alone. In a little while the Twitch would set my stomach muscles jumping. Ben, Zak and Tony fired up the bikes and eased them through the doorway onto the driveway that led to the road. Michaela hopped into the open-topped Jeep in the driver’s seat.
“Make it quick,” Tony shouted. “They’ve seen us!”
I glanced back through the doorway. They were still two hundred yards away, but all those feet were raising a dust cloud nearly as high as the trees. They’d spotted us, all right. They were coming this way. And as the saying goes, they were walking like they meant it.
