He stormed off towards the armored Tesla and spoke quietly into his headset. There were others and Gunny was pretty sure they were ready to pull more rails if the talks didn’t go well. Or worse, collapse a tunnel, there were still quite a few to go through before they reached the desert floor.
“You’ll have to forgive William.” The man said in a grandfatherly way. “He lost his entire family because of a bridge that had been destroyed.”
“I’m sorry.” Gunny said. “We tried to warn people. It was months after the outbreak and we announced it on the radio for weeks before. We blew the bridges and passes through the mountains because it was the only way to keep the hordes out. If we hadn’t, we would have been overrun. We were holding on by a thread back then.”
“I understand.” Simon said in his soothing, caring voice. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made. Some must die so that others may live. Were I in your position, I may have done the same but it doesn’t change the fact that you trapped us here, many died when they came to a dead end and had to abandon their cars. The hordes caught up to them and tore them to shreds or they perished in the desert.”
Gunny remembered the violent, chaotic month when the outbreak first happened. The convoy from the Three Flags, the battle for Lakota, the mad dash to get the walls built and then feeding and caring for all those people. He’d sent radio messages from the first week about where they were going and had invited all to come. They’d broadcasted that they were shutting down all the roads and bridges across the Mississippi and along the western mountain ranges. Men had volunteered for the missions to keep the hundreds of millions of undead out of the central states and many never made it back. It was the only way for some remnant of the country to survive. If anyone was trying to escape from California, it would have been by car and they should have heard the transmission. Gunny listened to the man wax philosophic about choosing who lives and who dies and didn’t interrupt. Like a slick politician, he took a kernel of truth and twisted it into something else. He’d get to the point, he’d get around to his demands in his own time, after he thought he’d laid enough guilt. After he’d elicited sympathy for all those poor, lost families the president’s decisions had killed.
Gunny felt no remorse. He did what he had to do and if he hadn’t, the whole country would be dead. The central states wouldn’t be well on their way to rebuilding. There wouldn’t be walled cities, trade routes, crops planted and cattle being raised.
Gunny kept his tongue in check, a trait Lacy didn’t think he possessed. The Californians held all the cards at the moment. He had no doubt they could stop the train and he didn’t think they could get a convoy of trucks all the way to the ocean. The few reports he’d had told of millions of undead, massive uncountable hordes milling around the cities on the coast.
Gunny offered to resettle them to the central states, supply transportation to any of the walled cities, but was firmly refused. Simon eventually got to his point. He would allow the trains to pass through his territories but they couldn’t come back the same way without reassurances. They would be leading thousands of undead back to their settlements and he needed promises they would backtrack and eliminate the threat.
“Done.” Gunny said. “We’ll clean up our mess.”
They spoke at length as the sun climbed, talked of the dangers of the trip and came to an agreement.
“And you are sure, one hundred percent positive, your plan will work?” Simon asked before he stuck out his hand to seal the deal.
“No.” Gunny said. “Nothing is one hundred percent but we’ve gotten pretty good at leading the hordes. You have my word we won’t lead millions in. We’ll take care of them.”
The gray-haired man nodded and finally shook the proffered hand.
“And there is one other minor thing we need from you.” he said. “A trivial matter, really, but we require it to ensure your safe passage.”
15
Guns
“That’s it?” Hollywood asked as Gunny introduced them to Xavier and the list he was carrying. “They didn’t have to sabotage the tracks, all they had to do was ask.”
The boy sat in the dining car with them after they loaded his rail rider. He was a little enthralled and kept sneaking glances at Bridget as Gunny explained how things were going to be if they wanted safe passage on the rails. Simon wanted guns. He wanted to be able to arm everyone in his community.
“They knew an awful lot about the Navy and what they carried onboard.” Gunny said. “Some of his members are vets and they’re demanding all the small arms and crew serve weapons.”
Griz shrugged. They obviously didn’t know Gunny very well. Why shouldn’t a community be able to defend itself? There was no need for the strongarm tactics, Gunny would have happily traded guns or anything else they needed but the Californians didn’t trust them. Simon had made vague threats about removing a few sections of rail a mile ahead of them or burning down one of the many wooden bridges they had to cross if he didn’t get what he wanted. He’d basically said he’d kill them and destroy the train. But in a polite way.
The chairman had said some of the people in the Utopia collective were engineers and scientists from Silicon Valley who had been on a retreat when the apocalypse started. He refused to listen to any requests for his people to join with the Central States, they had been cut off and left to die he insisted. None would leave the perfect society they were building. Gunny thought it sounded like a
