He pulled a radio and some speakers out of an old Bronco and rigged an antenna to the lightning rod at the top of the lighthouse. Using the Merc to charge a few batteries, he was able to pick up a clear signal from Radio Lakota most of the time. It came in especially clear at night when Scratch and Stabby played their god-awful music. The show was pretty entertaining though, the two had a good rapport and covered a lot of the news in the entertainment world. Things were getting back to a sort of normal. Up Jumped the Devil and Pretty Boy Floyds had live music every weekend. There were karaoke nights and school plays, high school football and stock car races. Griz had started three-gun competitions and every settlement had people competing for the grand prize of a set of custom-built revolvers. With all the wars over, Gunny had some free time and blew off his presidential duties by holding fishing tournaments every month.
Jessie enjoyed the clean air, the sun and wind and rain. It had been years since he’d had those things. The other planets he’d been on had been different. Different gravity, different oxygen, different suns. Earth was home and he healed. His heart mended and the days got brighter as time passed. He didn’t wake up thinking about her, spend the day remembering their short time together and fall asleep at night missing her.
He let her go. She was safe with the one she loved and they would be just fine.
6
Gunny
“Gonna add a whole bunch of swinging dicks and this town is already short on the ladies.” Griz said as he carefully tapped the engraving file on the 1911’s slide. “Deb says half the fights she breaks up are over a girl.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Gunny, feet propped up on the big man’s cluttered desk as he idly ran a cleaning rod through his disassembled Glock. “Gonna be tight on housing, too, even if most of them go to other settlements. Probably have to build some new apartment buildings.”
They were in the back of Griz’s Gun Shop passing the time. Griz was working on a custom build for a retriever and Gunny was, once again, hiding from his presidential duties that mostly consisted of listening to people complain about one thing or another.
“We can’t turn them away, though. Carson says they’re overpopulated, getting scurvy from living on fish and San Clemente was never intended to feed and house that many troops. They’re seven and eight people to a room. The Admiral tried to downplay it but they made a mistake putting all their eggs in one basket. The subs are broken, the ships don’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else and they’re dying. Slowly starving to death. You ever been to the island?”
“No.” Griz said. “Had buddies that did some Seal training there at the MOUT sight. They said it looks just like Afghanistan, it’s a desert.”
The bell above the door tinkled as Hollywood, Scratch, Bridget and Stabby barged in, spotted the men in the back and made a beeline for them.
“What’s this I hear about a mission to run out west and pick up a bunch of squibs?” Scratch demanded.
“Where’d you hear such a thing?” Griz asked “You can’t believe every dumbass rumor you hear floating around.”
“Twitter.” Bridget said and Gunny rolled his eyes. The Tower had rolled out the app recently and much like before the fall, anonymity brought out the worst in people.
“Conspiracy theories.” Gunny said.
“In the paper.” Scratch retorted and rattled it for emphasis as he read from Bastille’s headline story. Our well-intentioned but misguided president has once again arbitrarily made a decision that affects us all without the input or guidance of city council. He has agreed to add thousands of naval men to our burgeoning population that have never had to fight the undead scourge, the Anubis army or Casey’s Raiders. They were at sea when the virus was released on the unsuspecting world and have been sheltered from any inconvenience or hardship while spending the winter on a tropical island. Now that they have exhausted all of their resources, they will be invading our town and consuming our very limited supplies.
“What limited supplies?” Gunny asked and grabbed the paper out of Scratch’s hands to skim over the story. “We have warehouses full of stuff and plenty more is out there for the taking.”
“He’s still mad about the time when we ran out of toilet paper.” Hollywood said.
“Booze is getting limited.” Stabby said. “It’s already hard to get Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.”
“They’re Navy.” Griz said. “They’ll drink homemade rotgut and won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“Women.” Bridget said. “I can’t even walk down the street without some body hitting on me. Add another thousand men and that’s another thousand problems.”
“They’re not all coming here.” Griz said. “There are a bunch of other walled cities, we ain’t the only one.”
Gunny scowled at the headline and wondered who had leaked the story. They were still in talks, still considering options. He had tried to negotiate to get a 50 50 mix of men and women with skill sets he needed but that wasn’t going to happen. There were less than a thousand women and almost five thousand men. Most of them had trained on weapons systems or ship maintenance, not exactly the skills needed in a post-apocalyptic world but they were young and healthy. They could learn a new trade. He was okay with that, they were Americans, they were soldiers and it might be a strain at first but everything would work itself out.
Their situation was getting desperate on San Clemente. The big ships that hadn’t been infected had used up most of their
