Wilson wasn’t falling for the bait. He’d hear this man out, whatever it was he wanted to say. It was all highly unusual. But, then again, Grant himself was in many ways highly unusual. And there was just something about this Max. Something about his presence. Maybe he really did have something to offer. Something unique.
“So spit it out,” said Wilson.
“I heard you’re looking for local militia leaders,” said Max. “I’m here to volunteer, provided everything is up to my standards.”
Wilson’s jaw dropped. “So you’re coming here, a complete unknown, demanding a leadership position.”
Max nodded. “That’s right,” he said. No hint of a smile on his face. His face was dead serious.
“What makes you think we’d do that?”
Max shrugged. “I have the necessary skill set. And I heard you were looking for leaders.”
Wilson said nothing for a few moments, his eyes not leaving Max’s face.
This was completely ridiculous. Completely absurd. A complete waste of time. He’d been duped, apparently, by Max’s “presence,” whatever that was. But he wasn’t taking any more of it. He had things to do. Important things.
Wilson was getting more annoyed by the second.
“All right,” he said, taking his eyes off Max’s. “Enough’s enough. Throw him in the stockade with the others. I’ve had enough of this.”
“Yes, sir,” snapped the lackey, whose name Wilson still couldn’t remember.
Max said nothing.
“Come on, buddy,” said the lackey, grabbing Max forcefully.
Max didn’t resist, but he didn’t go willingly either. He just stood there.
In an instant, the lackey had his sidearm drawn and pushed into Max’s side.
“You don’t have any cuffs?” said Wilson to the lackey.
The lackey shook his head.
“Let me see if I have some.”
Underneath the folding card table desk there were a couple crates packed with odds and ends. After a moment of rummaging through one of them, Wilson came up with a pair of plastic binders that functioned as handcuffs. Likely they’d been scavenged from a police station.
Wilson grabbed the binders and tossed them to the lackey, who, without hesitation, snapped them onto Max’s wrists.
“Maybe we can talk again,” said Wilson. “After the stockades have taken some of the arrogance out of you.”
Max said nothing, but he stared Wilson down as he was led out of the tent, cuffed, at gunpoint.
Good. That was how the camp was supposed to run. Efficiently. No nonsense. People with crazy ideas got sent to the stockade. People causing problems got locked up. There was too much to do to get bogged down in the nonsense ideas of every crazy individual who came by.
Now that the nonsense was over, Wilson could finally get back to work. He grabbed a couple of his clipboards and stared at them. But he couldn’t quite get himself to focus on the work.
There was something about that man, about Max, that stuck with him. Something strange.
4
Terry was headed back home from a scavenging mission. He was weary. His legs were aching. He’d walked too far.
He’d gotten too thin over the last few months, and it felt like his whole body was deteriorating. He wasn’t just losing fat, but muscle too. And he imagined that his lymph tissue and thymus was slowly deteriorating as well.
Terry had been studying to be a nurse practitioner before the EMP. He’d taken enough anatomy and physiology classes to fully understand the effects starvation were having on his body.
His joints ached. It felt as if he had arthritis. The symptoms matched completely with what he remembered reading in his textbooks. But he wasn’t a day over thirty years old. Likely, it’d been brought on by starvation and stress that had wrecked his hormones.
It was almost like mental torture, knowing exactly what hormones were likely out of whack. He knew exactly why he and his family were suffering. But he couldn’t do anything about it.
He felt weak. He felt powerless. He felt that, as the man of the family, he should have been providing for his wife and his young daughter.
And the fact that he couldn’t help them tortured him more than the physical agony of the arthritic joint pain. It was almost too much to take, seeing them deteriorate along with himself each day.
He would have done anything for his wife and daughter. Anything. He would have gladly sacrificed himself if it would have meant that they’d be happy, healthy, and safe.
But sacrificing himself would do no good.
His wife was getting weaker by the day. And she’d never had a strong constitution. She couldn’t go out and scavenge like Terry could. She wouldn’t be able to care for their daughter if something happened to him.
And his daughter? She was too young to be self-sufficient. Far too young.
Terry’s resentment and anger were growing stronger by the day. He’d managed to keep his family alive for so long with his intellect. And now? His intellect wasn’t failing him, but it was no longer doing him as much good as it’d done in the past.
He was running up against real-world problems that no amount of cleverness could solve. It seemed as if each time he went out on a scavenging mission, looking for goods manufactured by the pre-EMP world, he came up empty-handed.
Before that group had moved into the state park nearby, Terry hadn’t had the same kind of difficulties in his scavenging expeditions. He’d known just where to go. He’d known what to expect in terms of confrontations.
But since that large group had come by, the supplies in nearby stores and homes had been dwindling at a depressing rate.
At least that’s the way it seemed to Terry.
Soon enough, there wouldn’t be anything left. And Terry and his family would fade away. Either they’d starve to death or their immune systems would weaken to the point where they’d succumb to some infection in the coming winter. Probably pneumonia. The other possibility was that they’d be too weak to defend themselves against some coming attack.
So far, Terry had relied more on stealth than combat. Sure, he carried a gun. A couple of them. He’d taught himself to shoot after the EMP, even though he’d never been a “gun person” before.
Terry had kept this family alive merely with his wits. Others used their strength.
Terry had been strong enough before the EMP. He’d done his cardio and his light weights at the gym. But now? He was weak. And only getting weaker.
His wife wasn’t doing well. She was too thin. Far too thin. And right before the EMP had hit, she’d been looking good. Putting on weight nicely to go along with the new pregnancy. And then? She’d had a miscarriage. It had either been the stress or the lack of food. Probably the stress though.
So that dream was gone. The dream of having another kid. A sibling for Lilly to play with. But bringing another child into the world wouldn’t have been good.
Lilly wasn’t doing so good either. Neither he nor his wife wanted to admit that their daughter would, more likely than not, die. Sooner or later. Unless she got better nutrition.
The way Terry saw it, he’d done everything he could. He’d kept them alive by hiding them in a small section of the attic, behind a false wall. They’d spent days cowering there, with hardly any room to move. They hadn’t been able to make any noise. They hadn’t been able to do anything, even go to the bathroom properly. They’d had to urinate and defecate while wearing their clothes.
It’d been horrible and humiliating. But they were still alive. The men who’d invaded their home had eventually gotten bored and moved on, leaving behind a wreck of a house.