“Clear out,” Ted said.

“I was told to be the first through the door,” the bearded man said.

“Go on then?” Ted said stepping back.

The man’s eyes dropped to the small patch of blood on the rough plank flooring. Most of the body and blood had been spread across several carpets.

The explosion woke everyone in the early hours of the morning.

Ted told me everyone believed it was one of the exploration crews, except they were all eventually accounted for and only worked during the daylight.

Two of the men were killed and the third was injured badly enough he wasn’t likely to survive.

We stood there waiting until the man cleared his throat.

I expected Ted to do something, but he hadn’t moved. He wasn’t looking at me either so I didn’t know if he wanted me to do something. It was very difficult to communicate effectively with people. Much of what they meant was purposefully unsaid.

“Are you going in?” I asked.

“No sir,” the man said.

He glanced at the man beside him and they walked out of the room in the direction we came in from.

“Now what?” I asked.

Ted let out a sigh.

“We should clear everyone out and cut power to the building and then wait for three months. And only then check.”

I knew that wasn’t an option because we were leaving tomorrow.

“Why did those two not leave when you told them to?”

“Politics,” he said.

I didn’t know if I believed him or not, but politics was the word he used to convey that the answer would be complicated, and even if he could explain it he wasn’t going to allow me to resolve the problem.

“Drill a hole a look through it,” Ganna said. The big man stood in the doorway with four armed men behind him.

“You resolve this,” I said to Ted, “I will secure the bikes and the printer and wait in vehicle 4.”

“The council has actually decided to use both bikes as scouts,” Ganna said.

“That was not what was agreed to.”

“I tried to convince them otherwise but they would not change their mind.”

I turned to look at Ted who wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Where is the council?”

“Scattered around I’m sure,” Ganna said with a smile, “there is still a lot to be done.”

“Where are the bikes?”

“Who knows?” he said slowly.

They stepped out of my way as I left the room. Vehicle two was visible from where I was.

I lifted the Larkin rail gun and touched the imprint with my thumb. Since it now recognized me as a valid user it quickly came to life. The scope rose up out of the long red rectangle as the grip and trigger lowered.

“What do you think-” Ganna began.

The ammunition was a third of a nail. The boom-crack of the weapon’s fire was louder to me than the impact of the nail as it passed through Vehicle two’s engine.

I was able to fire twice more before someone tried to tackle me.

I dropped the weapon confident the scope would pull back in in a blink and that the heavy strap would catch the weight.

I was careful not to break bones, but I beat the men bloody, even Ganna, who was stepping away with his hands raised and offering no resistance by the time I finished with the four men.

“You!” I shouted to the man who hadn’t left when Ted had told him to, “Go find the two electric bikes and have them delivered to vehicle four. You have six minutes. Then I will continue to disable the other vehicles. I get the bikes or the lot of you are walking out of here.”

The man opened his mouth but the other man pulled him away.

I knelt, squatting down near Ganna and lifted his head by his hair. He pushed himself up with his arms to ease the pain in his neck.

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“Do I need to kill you now? I will make it painless?”

“No sir,” he said quickly, the words garbled but understandable enough.

I stared at him, the gas mask’s goggle ports were tinted enough he couldn’t see the color of my eyes.

“I think you are the type that doesn’t learn,” I said slowly.

“Pete,” Ted said from behind.

“I gave them time,” I said, “I was patient. You said they could be reasoned with.”

“I was wrong,” Ted said easily, “but Ganna is strong. They will need strong leaders when we are gone.”

“He would kill you if he could,” I said.

There was a sigh, but Ted didn’t argue with me.

“Come shoot this wall, it will be better than a drill,” he said as he walked away.

It took him only a moment to point. I knelt so the slug wold travel up and out, and then waited for him to get clear of the room before pulling the trigger.

Firing inside the room was deafening. Literally. I felt the healing fires burning my ears as they repaired the damage.

The bits of metal didn’t explode like a gunpowder bullet did, which was where the noise came from with those types of guns. In this type of gun the noise came from the nail as it left the weapon and hit the air. Apparently it was moving so quickly that it cracked the air like a spike driven into stone would crack the stone.

I thought the explanations didn’t make sense but some of the implant’s explanations mirrored how Ted had explained it. It was likely they both understood while I did not.

Ted reentered the room and spied through the hole.

“Nothing on the ceiling,” he said, “We cut in from the roof.”

The men I’d just beaten bloody were standing, but none of them had weapons in hand.

“Cut in from above,” I said as I passed.

There was a silent crowd staring at me as I reached the vehicles.

“Why?” someone called out, “We need every-” their voices called out but I ignored them.

“The council went back on their word,” I said to the crowd without slowing.

The bikes were both at the loading ramp of vehicle 4’s trailer when I arrived.

“The rest are in hiding,” Pat said. The old man, a member of the council was standing tall.

“I do not understand the choices you continue to make,” I said as I looked over the two bikes for damage.

There wasn’t much room, but I lifted them both and set them down on the other side of the trailer’s chest high gate.

“They assumed no one would risk their survival over-”

“What risk?” I interrupted, “I told you what would happen. I explained it. They said- you said, you understood.”

“You were not willing to change your mind,” he said with a shrug.

“That’s correct,” I agreed.

He opened his mouth and then shut it.

“I cannot trust you,” I said realizing that I likely never could.

“No vehicle will leave until after we have left, and I will need to empty this trailer out and reload it to make sure nothing was taken. I suggest if it was, it is returned.”

Ted found a 9mm ammunition printer in the trapped room while I began to catalog the trailer’s contents again. There were already three of those particular printers in the camp. Possibly more that we had not been informed of once the council had formed.

It took all night to go through the cargo stored in the trailer behind vehicle 4.

A thousand rounds of 9mm was missing, but now that we had a printer, that didn’t matter to me that much. Ted suggesting not killing the council members over it and I agreed.

Besides myself and Ted, sixteen people had decided to travel west with vehicle 4. I had expected more. The trailer it towed was the only one with solar panels and battery cabinets. There were other panels, and other batteries in the settlement that were being loaded into the cage trailers, but not with as much capacity.

We packed up and I was ready for an attack, but it seemed to be a shared worry because many people did not come to see us off.

“I’m sorry our relationship had to sour like this so close to the end,” Nantor, one of the council members said. She and Pat were of an age, both fully gray and stooped as they stood.

I didn’t respond. They no longer mattered.

“I hope we can maintain good relation if we meet as trade partners in the future,” she continued.

“You do not keep your word,” I said simply.

“And you are unreasonable!” Pat snapped. Ganna reached out and took hold of his arm above the elbow.

“Still,” Nantor said, “I hope we can at least avoid conflict in the future.”

Vehicle 4 started up. The massive engine pumping black smoke into the air above the exhaust pipes.

I raised the binoculars as I turned around. A man was climbing onto a roof. He lifted his binoculars after setting a rifle down.

He moved slightly, then saw me looking at him. He set the binoculars down beside the rifle, leaving both as he slid back.

“We need to go,” I said to Ted.

“We are heading west, and then south,” Ted said, “good luck.”

Nantor shook his hand.

The vehicle rolled forward before we reached the cab. Ted climbed up and over the trailer’s gate and I began sprinting towards the gate between the buildings.

The boom-crack of the rail gun drew the attention of the men who had gathered in the trenches an hour before dawn. Like the man who had climbed onto the roof, they were betrayed by their implants.

“Stay in the trench!”

Weapons were tossed out.

Moments later the huge vehicle and the trailer rolled through the open gate and then turned west. The turn was too sharp and the trailer took out a tall pole.

I stood there until the massive dust tail was disappearing into the woods.

Then I approached the men.

Ted told me I should let them live, but they would have murdered us.

There were eleven of them, and they stared at me.

I loosed the straps on the mask and then grabbing the bit that tucked under my chin lifted it off.

I didn’t so much smile, as I showed my teeth.

Six of the men made a sign of protection almost at the exact same time.

“I saved you, and you try to kill us. I should kill you,” I said. None of the men met my eye.

“If I see you again I will. Record their ID tags and set them as hostile.”

“Done,” the system said. I hadn’t dropped my voice, but I didn’t care what they thought.

I sprinted back into town, then circled to the east, keeping clear of the dots that were moving from the back side of the settlement west as if to catch me when I tried to go west.

Eventually clear I moved south across the road and then headed mostly west, but south enough that I would be several hundred meters south of the road.

I angled towards the meeting point.

When I arrived two hours later I had the mask back on.

Ted was to tell them what I was. If they wanted to leave they would have be allowed to.

“They need to see it for themselves,” Ted said when I arrived.

I removed the mask and showed my teeth.

Eight of the sixteen made the sign for protection. There were discussions and arguments while I waited in the cab of the vehicle.

Ted climbed in and sat down.

“How many went and what did you give them?” I asked.

“None,” he said, “but that doesn’t me they will stay. They came with us because they felt that heading back east will just mean more raids in the future. The plan is still to reach the larger settlements, correct?”

“Yes.”

“They will stay until we reach the larger settlements.”