Carl was excited; the day he had been waiting for had finally arrived. He had been training for months. He worked out every day with the security forces, and every evening he had read or watched videos on his online training software. They had even done some war games in the nearby jungle. At first, the superior experience of these veterans had made him a liability to whichever team he was assigned to. After many embarrassing mistakes, Carl started to hold his own as his reflexes were trained, and he improved his observational and tactical skills. It didn’t hurt that his built-in computer allowed him to see in low lighting and had software designed to identify people. After three months, his teams were winning more often than not, and Sergio said he was ready for a real mission. In Carl’s mind, he was picturing some kind of warzone.

Flying into Hobby airport, Carl was a little disappointed that people seemed to be going about their business as usual. There were no soldiers patrolling the terminal or military vehicles outside as they took a shuttle to a rental car place.

The van they rented wasn’t nearly as good as the one back in Mexico. Carl had been so excited to help install armor plating and the concealed rail gun turret. The reality was that it was hours of hard work and not nearly as fun as it appeared on TV. He realized it wouldn’t just be a two-minute montage, but Carl hadn’t appreciated how much work it took to actually build things. He was determined to let Matt’s robots do the work in the future. The other guys teased him a bit about whether he would try to add armor plating. Since this was a rental van, he could just relax and ride in the back.

Most of the rental companies were out of business and the prices were a bit of a shock. Carl thought you could buy a used vehicle for a little more than the rental fee. Oddly enough, they still offered insurance at only slightly more than what it cost a year before. The government had bailed out insurance companies, so the companies offered insurance at fixed prices that didn’t match the reality of current risk levels.

Driving outside the city, Carl noticed a few military Humvees and regular traffic was light. There were hundreds of cars that had stalled and were pushed to the shoulders, probably after running out of fuel. The person at the rental place mentioned that filling up outside the city might be difficult. There had been stories of gas trucks hijacked and stolen, so stations farther away from refineries and ports had trouble keeping gasoline supplied, even with prices over $30 per gallon. Texas had not mandated a cap on prices, so they were better supplied than most states. In States that had passed laws against price gouging, the oil companies simply stopped sending gasoline there. This forced the government to buy and transport fuel using military infrastructure. Cities in these States were mostly under martial law now. Regardless of location, most people had abandoned or stopped driving their cars.

An hour’s drive Southwest of the city, they stopped at an old-fashioned diner. They met with a man who was selling them weapons. Carl confirmed with his heads up display that he was the “Arms Dealer” they were supposed to meet. Instead of watching cat videos, Carl had enjoyed identifying people he saw walking around and browsing to see if they had hidden talents. The man they met had a nice selection of pistols and modified automatic rifles. He would not accept dollars, but they brought gold and silver ingots for this trade. Carl had brought ballistic armor in a checked bag and was already wearing it. Adding a pistol and rifle made it all feel real. Carl checked his weapons a few too many times and was scanning actively for the first hour.

After another long drive, they reached Carl’s former hometown of Spring Vale, which he didn’t really remember. The trip was uneventful, but as they approached the suburbs, there was a roadblock with an armed man gesturing for them to stop. He was wearing police gear but completed the look with a cowboy hat. Carl identified him.

Name

Rory Poole

Role

Bandit

Seriously? Bandit? Carl sometimes wondered about this software. He warned Terrance and Sotera this guy would be trouble, but they probably had already figured it out. Carl remembered his training and scanned for other threats. He spotted two other guys in ambush positions and indicated their locations to his team. They pulled short about 100 feet away from the roadblock and Terrance got out with his gun pointed down.

“Hello Rory!” Terrance announced. The man looked startled to be addressed by name. “We’re aware of your little operation here, but it doesn’t concern us. Why don’t you let us drive on by, and we can both go about our day without any bullet holes.” Terrance seemed to imply they were on some kind of government business.

“The government has no business in Spring Vale. You should know this town is run by the Brewer gang. I’m feeling generous, so I'll let you just turn around and leave,” Rory declared. He seemed confident, like a guy who was pretty sure he had the drop on whoever was in the van.

“Carl, come on! Tell us about this guy’s organization, so Terrance has something to work with.” Sotera muttered. Carl was already looking at this guy’s org chart, but realized he wasn’t sharing it verbally. The three of them had earpieces, so Terrance could hear as Carl rattled off the name of this guy’s boss and how many were in their organization. He started listing a few of the top gang members.

“Right, so here’s the thing, Mr. Poole. I’m not with the government, but I have some goods I need to deliver to Lamont Gordon. He’s going to be pissed at you if he finds out you attacked my organization.” Terrance said with a calm voice.

“You know Gordo? Is this like a food delivery or something?” Rory laughed.

“I can’t tell you what it is. Ask your boss, Mr. Fisher if you’re allowed to see what’s in this van. Maybe he’ll let you help unload it if you ask real nice.” Terrance said.

“No one calls him Mr. Fisher. Who are you guys?” Rory demanded.

“Well, I don’t know him that well yet, but you aren’t giving me a very good impression. We are with the Cortes Cartel, and we’ve been moving into South Texas lately. There are a lot of opportunities right now. We can be good allies or bad enemies.” Terrance claimed. He was starting to think his bluffing was not going well and had planned how to take down this guy and one of the snipers. Hopefully, Sotera would take the hint when he said “South” that he was going to hit the guy to the South. Terrance was counting on Sotera to take the sniper North of the road if he took the hint. He wasn’t sure if Carl was quite up to speed on their codes, but the guy had already done a great job with his HR software locating the two snipers. They had tested this a lot during training, and it spotted all but the best camouflage using IR and visual cues. It seemed like the software worked better now than when they had first taken Carl on a mission. Terrance wasn’t entirely sure if Scott had improved the code or if the machine was somehow learning based on feedback from Carl.

“Hold on a second.” Rory held up a hand and pulled out his phone. Terrance knew his story wouldn’t hold up, so he readied himself to take the first shot.

“Yeah, some guys from the Cortes Cartel showed up. They seem to know Gordo and said they have a delivery.” Rory was saying. After a pause, “No, I don't think it’s food.”

Rory glanced around, seeming to feel the tension had increased a bit, “Right, I’ll tell them to wait until you can come out here to talk…”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Terrance was running towards Rory while spraying bullets at the person trying to ambush them from south of the road. He saw a couple red sprays indicating a hit and dive rolled the last few feet. He ducked under some hasty shots by Rory, who had dropped his phone and pulled up his rifle.

Carl had exited the passenger side door and was running at an angle to the man on the north side of the road. He was running to a flanking position instead of directly at the man and changed his speed slightly a few times to throw off the man’s aim. It probably would have worked for a sniper looking through a scope, but the man had an automatic rifle. At least one bullet hit Carl, who fell to the ground.

Sotera also stepped out of the car, firing a short burst at the man on the south side then taking cover behind the car as he shot the second man who had focused on Carl. The man went down quickly and stopped firing.

Terrance had already knocked Rory down and disarmed him. He was tying him up with zip ties. “Go check on Carl,” Terrance ordered.

Sotera hustled over to where Carl was already trying to get up. He had taken a shot to one arm, and another hit his armored vest. Neither had done serious damage due to the ballistic protection in his clothing.

“Nice distraction Carl. Did you forget to shoot him while you were running?” Sotera teased.

“Ouch, yeah, I thought I’d draw his attention so he wouldn’t shoot Terrance. I guess I should have shot while running. It’s harder to remember everything when the bullets are real.” Carl said, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Don’t worry, you did great! Most people freeze up their first time, but your instinct was to protect your teammates. Trust me, your instincts are good and I’m glad to have you on our team,” Sotera said.

Carl wasn’t pleased about his performance, but he appreciated the encouragement. He was already picturing in his mind how he could do better next time. Carl asked, “So what now?”

Terrance was heading back, carrying Rory over his shoulder. Terrance was strong even before their enhancement, but now he carried the 200-pound man with ease. He replied calmly, “we’re going to avoid the welcoming committee and ask Rory here a few questions about what is going on in town. Go check on the other two we shot. If they are alive, see if you can stabilize their condition. We don’t kill unless we have to. You have two minutes before we move on.”

Carl sprinted to the man who had shot him. It looked like one bullet had punctured his lung, and another went through his arm. The other attacker had taken at least five bullets, including a headshot, so he was already dead. Carl slapped a couple med patches on the man who had just shot him. He identified him as Joshua Watson.

“Hey Josh, those patches I put on you should seal up the wounds and fight off infections. You’ll need to go to the hospital soon to take care of the punctured lung. Honestly, breathing is going to be a bit tough with fluid building up in your chest cavity. Um, I think some of your teammates are on their way, so hang in there,” Carl didn’t really know what else to say to the guy. He hustled back to the van, where Terrance and Sotera were waiting.

They drove into town and pulled into the parking lot of a nearby strip. They never saw whatever backup the Brewer gang sent. The stores in the area looked abandoned with broken or boarded up windows.

“This place has really gone downhill,” Sotera muttered. Terrance had gone to the back of the van and was talking to Rory. After a couple of minutes, he let the man out of the van and left him on the sidewalk, though he was still zip-tied.

“OK,” Terrance said, “Rory didn’t have a problem talking, since it was obvious we already knew a lot about his gang. He said they run their operation out of the police station and a couple were former police. They started with good intentions, trying to keep other bandits out of town. They weren’t getting enough donations of food and supplies, so they started taking a ‘tax’ from people traveling through town. I think he feels bad about some of the stuff they have done, but he’ll probably go right back to robbing people after this.”

Terrance continued, “The local cell towers were destroyed by a group called Apache Revenge who is roaming through Southeast Texas. They came through town a few months ago and caused a lot of damage. The group is well armed and have avoided the National Guard by killing cell towers and not staying in one location for more than a couple of days. The Guard and Texas Rangers also have their hands full dealing with hundreds of other incidents all over the State and have been ordered to focus on protecting the major cities. Rory said his group formed to try and protect the town from groups like that.”

“Mexico didn’t seem this bad. Is the rest of the country like this?” Sotera asked.

“From what I’ve heard, a lot of the country is like this in smaller cities. Ironically, Mexico is doing better because the cartels were well-equipped to put down rival groups, and they are keeping order. Shortages and unemployment are still a problem in Mexico, but they don’t have the same problems with bandits hijacking trucks. People there are also used to getting by on items produced locally. The U.S. is heavily dependent on international supply chains and systems that were optimized for maximum profit. Break a few parts of the chain and these systems fall apart.” Terrance finished his lecture.

“How do we find our targets?” Carl asked.

“We’ll start with last known addresses. There are a couple of government camps outside town where people gathered who lost their homes.” Terrance replied.

They drove to a suburban neighborhood. Many of the houses had burned down, and others had heavy barricades. The team confirmed that Adriana, Matt and Barry’s parents were no longer at their houses. Marta’s parents had an impressive barricade of logs and abandoned cars around a medium-sized house that had boarded-up windows and a fair number of bullet holes. They stopped outside.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lopez. Are you here?” Terrance called out.

“Go away!” A voice answered.

“We work with your daughter in Mexico. We’d really like to talk to you.”

After a pause, a stocky man came out carrying a shotgun. He was staying behind partial cover, “Which daughter are you talking about?”

“Marta, but you only have one daughter.” Terrance replied. He knew Marta had two brothers. He trained with Marta regularly, and they knew each other pretty well.

The man lowered his shotgun, “Is she all right?”

“Yes, we are doing better in Mexico. I have some pictures if you want to see. We are trying to round up family members of company employees to transport them back to a safe community we are building.”

“All right, do you mind setting down your rifle and showing me those pictures?”

Terrance put the gun down and walked over. A woman and a young man also left the house to come look. Terrance showed them pictures of the house and base. They had a few shots of Marta, who had now lost a lot of weight. She was looking glamorous and happy in one picture of the company party.

“Is that really her? We’ve all lost a lot of weight lately, but she looks great! Is there enough food where you are?” Marta’s mother asked.

“Oh yeah, we eat really well! We still get most of our food locally, but they are starting to grow stuff at the new base.” Terrance showed them a picture of the cafeteria, complete with the huge windows looking out underwater. They talked some more and the family agreed to join them. Terrance’s team still had to find the other families but promised they would check in on the Lopez family in a few days to arrange transportation.

Elsa’s family lived in a gated community that had so far avoided major attacks. They had clearly reinforced the security and had what looked like a 50-caliber gun and sandbags around the entrance. Terrance greeted a suspicious looking guard.

“Hi, can we visit the Pittman family?” Terrance asked.

“Armed visitors are not allowed.” The guard said.

“Can we get them a message? Or can I visit if I leave my weapons behind?” Terrance asked politely.

“Sure, I’ll see if they have a phone available and if they want to talk to you.” Terrance gave them his information, and mentioned he worked with Elsa. After a brief discussion, he was allowed in.

The Pittmans were surviving the apocalypse better than the Lopez family, but they were fully aware things were getting bad. Mrs. Pittman was a surgeon who was now helping at one of the government camps. She was given food, supplies and transportation. The community they were in had a lot of abandoned houses, but over half were still occupied and had power.

Terrance was able to learn that Barry’s family was staying at one of the camps. Mrs. Pittman knew Barry and Elsa were dating, so she had made an effort to contact his family once things started getting bad. She didn’t know Adrianna or Matt’s families. Elsa’s family wanted to stay in town. Their situation was not terrible, and Mrs. Pittman thought it was important to stay and help. Mr. Pittman wanted to help the community rebuild and thought they would recover once the government could establish security and fix some of the infrastructure.

Carl thought the Pittmans were making a mistake, but his group would not force anyone to leave their homes or communities. They moved on, heading out of town towards the camps.