Chapter 24 Old friends, New Faces
The next few months passed in a flurry of activity. Protectron bots, wired in sequence, were marched in ten at a time like a chain gang. Almost sixty rebuilt by Bill and his team at the factory and sent on their way.
Virgil spent everyday in the ruins, helping strip anything even half useful. Each evening he went straight to the open eleventh floor of the tower. This had become the snipers nest for the Shrikes, as Suzette nicknamed them. She never asked him about them. He told himself he’d tell her, eventually.
No one really questioned them. People chalked it up to being out in the wastes too long. They were all glad to have the cover they provided.
Most of the survivors from the shelter had been office workers before. There were a few dozen police and former service personnel, nearly all of them out in the wastes most days. And would be for as long as the weather held.
At night Virgil ate a meal with Suzette in the spacious corner suite they shared. Together they would plan, using their combined knowledge to build something that would last in this harsh world.
Six weeks later, the rains started. And Virgil could start the first part of the plan. “You know, a long time ago, I used to throw parties when they were testing H bombs in the desert.” Virgil spoke as Suzette got ready.
“And here I was thinking tonight was my idea.” She teased him from behind an ornate dressing screen she’d been restoring. “How do I look?” She’d altered a workman’s jumpsuit into pants and a jacket.
“Very on brand. Wasteland chic.” He put out an arm for her to take, and headed upstairs to the party.
Everyone had gathered on the open eleventh floor. Drinks being served, music playing. It had been a busy time, and with winter approaching things would be quiet. Virgil took his position on the north side, watching the skies.
“You should say something.” Suzette brought him a drink, and stood by him.
“No, you should. They’re your people.” He didn’t want to be the centre of attention, not any more.
“Everyone, if I can have your attention for a moment.” Suzette stepped out, dinging her glass with a bottle cap. “Virgil would like to say a few words.” She threw him a wink and stepped back.
“I ain’t much for making speeches. Look, I know how hard it’s been, how hard you’ve all worked. Tonight we take the first step towards something new.” He raised his glass of moonshine cut with fruit juice. “To first steps.” The crowd toasted his words and their shared hope for something better.
A flash of green on the horizon caught his eye. “This is it!” The chattering crowd fell silent, and the thunder clap sounded. Virgil pressed the detonator.
Shaped charges cut steel girders with surgical precision. Charges set in walls shattered concrete like glass. Then the buildings began to topple like dominoes, forming what would be the start of a wall. The crowd cheered. The thunder covered the noise. The rain kept the dust from spreading too far. And the deathtrap ruins had become fortifications.
Virgil woke from dozing in a chair. He stood and took in the view from his corner suite. In the thirty years he’d lived here, it had changed dramatically.
Once he’d seen nothing but decay and rot. Empty ruins that served as gravestones for the world that was. Now life bloomed again. The radio broadcast brought people in. The security and stability kept them here.
Soon a bustling marketplace took hold. Then trade routes began to open up. Life returned to a simpler pace. Existing on craftsmanship and bartering, as it had been through most of history.
A knock at the door pulled him from the window. He’d been expecting it and dreading it in equal measure. “Hey Virgil.” Will Junior, Bill’s eldest, had come for him. “Pops is asking for you.” Will’s voice broke. Virgil couldn’t look at him, he just followed him to the hospital.
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Cancer had ravaged Bill, like most of the first generation of survivors. He'd gone from a strapping man to skin and bones in less than a year. “Virgil, my old friend.” Bill greeted him as soon as came in.
“Watch who you’re calling old. If you think I won’t hit a senior citizen you’re wrong.” Virgil gently ribbed his dear friend.
“Can we have a minute.” Bill’s sons, and their families filed out.
“How you feeling boss?” Virgil asked, sitting by the bed.
“About as good as you look.” Bill joked, his laugh turning to a hacking cough.
“Now be nice.” Virgil took a bottle of real whisky from his coat. “Or I’m not sharing.”
“I need something.” Bill asked while staring out the window.
“Name it.” Virgil answered, ready to do anything for his friend that helped him back into the world.
”Watch out for my boys.” Bill looked him right in the eye, fearful for his sons.
“Of course, but you don’t have to worry, you raised them right. They’re good men, kind this world is gonna need.” He couldn’t help but think of Clara and their child.
“They’re better off without you.” Mr. House sneered from the empty chair across the bed. Virgil glared at him, telling himself Mr. House would never get this close to anyone sick.
“You know, I never cared what you did before. Different world, different rules. But whatever it was, you’ve punished yourself enough. Let it be.” Bill always had a perspective he treasured, one he felt unsteady without.
“I’ll try Bill.” Part of him wanted to tell Bill everything, but couldn’t inflict that on his friend.
“Good. Now, back to work.” Bill smiled and sent him on his way. He started to say goodbye, but Bill spared him that.
The passing of the first generation shook Virgil and his people. It was one thing to be told you’re going to outlive teenagers, quite another to experience. The lack of shared experience, shared knowledge, shared memories of the world that was, widened the chasm further. Slowly his people became more inward looking.
Virgil set himself up in the auditorium of the reclaimed school. Skylights kept the room filled with daylight from dawn to dusk. He offered repair services, traded this and that. However the bulk of his income came from weaponry. This not only made him rich, technically, it kept him in the know. Anyone could pick up a crude pipe gun in the market. Anyone serious had to come to him.
Shadowtown, as it had come to be known, served as the closest thing to a city for hundreds of miles. A centre for trade from smaller settlements that sprang up.
He heard all manner of rumours in his shop. Tales of strange beasts stalking the wastes. Whispers of a military power rising in the west. Word of a dead city in the desert protected by robots. He actually believed that one.
Virgil had taken a job, mostly out of boredom. A group of scavengers ran into trouble, and a nest of ferals. They’d offered him a percentage to clear them out.
He’d walked most of the day, reaching the long abandoned street in the late afternoon. Every few feet he took a micro fusion cell from his pack. A sharp squeeze with his prosthetic broke the casing and he tossed it to the ground.
A building on the end of the street caught his eye. Old even before the bombs fell. The steeple fallen. Wooden doors rotted off the hinges. “Why is it always churches?” He mused out loud, seeing the meat wrapped skeletons stir as he walked between the pews.
Something glinted in the corner of his eye. His pity for these wretches, and the fear of becoming one, vanished. Shuffling towards him, a figure in a tattered purple suit, clutched a gaudy gold crucifix. And something behind it, a cylinder no bigger than a beer can. A white phosphorus grenade. Shrivelled fingers gripping it tight, one seized around the pin.
He knew what happened. The preacher wanted to burn, yet his courage had failed, and he’d turned. Still clutching the incendiary grenade. Virgil forced himself to step closer, mirroring the shambling preacher.
The base motor functions of the near lifeless husk responded and fixated on him. Virgil drew within arms reach and stopped. He placed his good hand on the grenade, raised the prosthetic to the preacher’s face, and fired the spike. The fully dead husk collapsed as he gripped the grenade, snapping the desiccated fingers away like twigs.
He let out a sigh of relief and sat in a pew, inspecting the grenade. The rotting flesh had eaten away at the fake gold and fused the cross to the grenade. He couldn’t stop laughing.
Night had fallen as the ferals shambled along the street. Virgil made his way down the line, enthralling the shuffling husks with his movements. Soon they followed him, and he led them to the nearest patch of trees.
Slowly he screwed a suppressor to his carbine, extended the stock, and aimed. He rattled off the better part of two magazines almost without thinking. Clean headshots right down the line. Virgil lit a cigarette and headed home, leaving the bodies to rot where they would do some good.