Don't Call Me Ishmael Read online

  I had already staged some of the things I thought I’d need most if I had to bug out, so it didn’t take me long to throw together a large duffel bag of food, water, and a couple changes of clothes, as well as a handheld bag containing several pistols and a couple of grenades—there weren’t any long arms—and all the ammunition I could comfortably carry.

  I strapped on a large knife that I’d found on one of the shelves and buckled on two holsters for the pistols I wanted to have available—two of the P220s—then walked back into the room with the tanning bed to see if I could learn anything more about my would-be killers. A quick search of their bodies didn’t yield anything worthwhile, although I noticed both men had blue pieces of material around one of their upper arms. I took the one that wasn’t covered in blood, and stuffed it into a pocket.

  As I raced back to get my gear, I realized the sight of blood and death hadn’t bothered me. Perhaps I was some sort of psycho killer, after all.

  Shrugging off the thought—it didn’t really matter since I didn’t want to die, no matter who I was—I shouldered the duffel bag, grabbed my other bag, and left the office. I turned right on leaving, figuring the man who’d gotten away had been headed toward an exit, and, two turns later, made it to where I could see daylight. Unfortunately, that daylight was broken by the shapes of a number of men coming into the building.

  “There he is!” one of them yelled, and I turned and ran.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three

  Several shots rang out as I raced deeper into the building, but they all went wide as I rounded the first corner. I needed space and time to think, and I couldn’t do that on the run, so I stopped and pulled out one of my pistols. Reaching it around the corner, I fired off an entire magazine. I don’t know if I hit anyone—odds are, I didn’t—but I figured that would at least give me a couple of seconds.

  I reached into the bag for another magazine, but my hand hit something else instead, and I pulled out the grenade. I had found two types of grenades and had brought one of each. This one was shaped more like a soda can than an egg, but I figured it would help even the odds, so I pulled the pin and threw it around the corner.

  “Grenade!” someone yelled, and there was a mass scuffling as the men following me ran. I waited for the earth-shattering kaboom, but there was only a fizzing noise, instead.

  “Ha!” a different voice yelled. “It’s a dud!”

  Without warning, the light level in the building grew tremendously, and one of the men screamed. I couldn’t help myself; I looked around the corner. The grenade had turned into a massive fireball, and one of the men was rolling on the floor on fire. Apparently, he had been too close to it when it had ignited. At least six other men were watching either the man or the flames, and I drew my second pistol and fired several times, hitting a couple of them, before return fire forced me back around the corner.

  Grabbing the bag, I took off running again, passing the office suite I had come from. After a couple more turns I saw light again, and I raced toward the back door. I was half way down the corridor when a figure stepped out of a room and a gun went off.

  I threw myself to the right, using the duffle bag to break my crash into the wall, and felt the bullet graze the flesh of my upper arm. The man fired again, but the bullet missed, and then I was on the floor with my pistol up. I fired three times into the center of the shadow, and he fell backward, dropping his pistol.

  I scooped it up as I ran past him—a quick glance showed at least two of my rounds had hit him in the chest, and he was done—and then I was out the door and into the bright light. I drew to a stop as the sunlight hit my eyes and the enormity of my surroundings overwhelmed me. The back door to the building opened onto a major secondary road that ran from left to right in front of me. On the other side of that lay what looked like an interstate highway. Behind me, the office complex and strip mall ran for several hundred yards on both sides of me, with only a gap for a small access road in the middle. A sign proclaimed the collection of giant buildings to be the “Fremaux Town Center.”

  I’d never heard of it, so that wasn’t any help. My choices were north and south. If I really was in Louisiana, then going south wasn’t my best option—it would only take me to the swamps and eventually the Gulf, and would make me easy to track. There was also a lot of lingering smoke to the south. North it was.

  But first, I needed cover, and the only cover was on the other side of the interstate. I ran as hard as I could for it, but the effort of carrying the large bag was already starting to wear on me—my stamina was still sorely lacking. I made it to the short chain link fence that separated the secondary road from the interstate and tossed the two bags and my assailant’s pistol over it. I was just starting to climb over it when a pistol fired behind me, and the round went past my ear like an angry hornet.

  No longer worrying about technique, I jammed a foot into the fence and threw myself up and over, taking scratches from the top wires across my left arm and tearing the pants on my left leg. The pistol behind me fired again, and was joined by a second one that sounded like a small cannon going off. A large divot appeared in the grass in front of me, as I grabbed the pistol and my bags, and I was off again.

  I crossed both lanes of the highway while they continued to fire behind me. They hit the duffel I was carrying once, but I was a long way away and running for all I was worth, making me a difficult target. The interstate was crowned, and I threw myself into the depression on the far side to catch my breath.

  There were four men in pursuit of me, and they had reached the chain link fence. I still had the one man’s pistol, so I checked it—no mud in the barrel—and fired the rest of the magazine at them. It was hard to tell if I had hit any of them, but they all dove for cover, which was really all I wanted.

  I shrugged the duffel bag onto my shoulders again, trying to be careful of the wounds on my left arm. I would have to bind them up soon, but I needed to get away from the men first. I turned and, staying low, ran to the east toward the trees on the side of the highway. Unfortunately, the trees were nothing more than a thin screen for a giant pond—they weren’t more than brush, really—so I couldn’t go any further; I was forced to head back north.

  Although I was out of range, that didn’t keep the men following me from firing off several rounds in my direction. I was almost to the end of the pond when a bullet smacked into the tree next to me. Moments later, I heard a new noise in the clamor following me. I recognized the sound of the rifle firing instantly—don’t ask me how—and was tempted to throw myself to the side, but realized the bullet, traveling faster than the speed of sound, had already hit.

  While the pistols didn’t stand a chance of hitting me from where the men were, the rifleman could, and I dodged farther into the trees. I made it to the end of the pond without being hit, and staggered through about 200 feet of trees to find myself in a residential neighborhood. I tried cutting straight across it, but it seemed like every resident had some sort of fence across their yard, and most of them were too big for me to easily go over.

  I had just turned around in someone’s backyard, deciding it would be easier to keep to the street, when I heard a click that sounded a lot like a rifle’s safety being flipped off.

  “Don’t move,” a male voice ordered.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Four

  I froze. After a moment, I turned my head—slowly—to look in the direction of the voice. An older man looked over the sights of a rifle he was resting on top of a large gas grill. He was probably in his early sixties, with hair and beard unkempt and gone to gray. And then I saw his eyes. Even though the man looked physically old and tired, the eyes said he wasn’t a man to be trifled with—he knew what he was doing and would pull the trigger if given a reason. I didn’t move any further.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man asked.

  “Running, mostly,” I replied. I was too tired to try to come up with any sort of c
over story, and I was pretty sure he’d already figured that much out on his own.

  “I saw that,” the man replied, confirming my guess. “What…no, I guess the right question is, who are you running from?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I woke up in a building that looked like a war had been fought in it. A couple of guys attacked me, and I killed them with a pistol I found in the room I woke up in. I don’t know who they are—who they were—all I know is they were both big guys and had a strip of blue cloth around their arms.”

  “Well then, son, you are well and truly in a world of shit.”

  I cocked my head and looked pointedly at the rifle the man was holding. “I’m pretty sure I already knew that.”

  The man chuckled. “I’m the least of your problems. If you killed a couple of the Blues, they will be coming for you.”

  “I kinda figured that,” I replied. “They chased me across the highway, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be here soon. I’d be happy to be on my way, if you’d just point the gun some other direction.”

  “I haven’t rightly figured what I want to do with you yet. If you’ve pissed off the Blues, I’d probably get a decent reward for turning you in to them.” He looked at me oddly for a second, then said, “You look familiar. What’s your name?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said. Something came to me. “Call me Ishmael.”

  “Is that your name?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember my name; in fact, I really can’t remember anything beyond when I woke up four days ago. I’ve got amnesia.”

  “Amnesia, huh? Well, that’s a stupid name to call yourself. Why don’t you call yourself ‘Fred’ or something? Can you at least remember your last name?”

  “No, although I’d be happy to tell it to you if I could. Especially with your gun pointed at me. I don’t suppose…”

  “You suppose right. I’m going to keep this rifle pointed at you until I get some answers and decide you’re okay, or I decide you’re not okay, and I kill you.”

  “Well, ask me your questions quickly then. Even though I don’t want to die, I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  The man’s brows knit. “What did you do before the war?”

  “What war?”

  “What war? The big war we just had! The Corporations throwing nukes around like they were treats for your kids. You don’t remember that?”

  “No, I don’t. If it happened more than four days ago, I don’t remember it.”

  “Most of the country’s been wiped out. My guess is that Obsidian ‘won,’ if there is such a thing in nuclear war. Teledyne seemed to get its ass pretty well handed to it, although there isn’t much left of Obsidian, either. Nor much of the country, for that matter. I wouldn’t go any further south. New Orleans took some hits during the bomb throwing, and most of it’s radioactive.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Same as everyone,” the man said. “We’re hunkering down, waiting for the reestablishment of law by the police. The first few days were pretty bad as everyone tried to hoard all the food, water, and ammo they could get their hands on—lost my wife at the grocery store to a firefight—but now everyone’s just trying to defend what’s theirs and hold on as best they can.” He nodded toward the house, and I looked over to see two more rifles pointed at me. That was probably a good thing, as I’d been trying to decide if I wanted to try to take the man. My reflexes were improving, but probably not good enough to beat all three. If I didn’t have any other option, I’d still try it, but continued negotiation seemed the better bet. I’d also seen two young kids behind the people with rifles, and I didn’t particularly want to kill their grandpa in from of them, no matter whether I was a psycho killer or not.

  “So what’s it going to be?” I asked. “You going to kill me, hand me over to the Blues, or let me go?”

  The man turned his head and spat. “I ain’t got no problem killing people who’re trying to take away what’s mine, though I ain’t big on killing someone in cold blood.” He waved the barrel of his gun toward the front of his property. “Get the hell out of here. Maybe you can still get away from the Blues.”

  I didn’t have to be told that twice. “Thank you,” I said, nodding to him as I went past. I went down to the street, turned left, and turned left again at the corner to continue north. I’d made it about a block when the gunfire started up behind me.

  Sometimes, there’s no escape in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  “Shit,” I said with a sigh. The gunfire was coming from the exact direction of the old man’s house. He’d allowed me to go free, and now the bad guys—the Blues, I expected—had tracked me to his property.

  And there were two kids in his house.

  I couldn’t leave him to face the trouble I’d brought, literally, to his doorstep. I dropped both my bags and put new magazines into my P220s, then threw several more mags into one of the cargo pockets on my pants. Looking up, I could see a man in the nearest house, staring at me down the barrel of his rifle through what looked to be his living room window. It was like the old man had said; everyone was forted up here.

  I grabbed the other grenade out of my bag and held it up to show the man I had it, then stowed it in a different cargo pocket and tossed the bags into the man’s yard. “Watch them while I’m gone,” I said, pantomiming what I meant. I expected he’d be into them as soon as I was gone, and I didn’t mind sharing some of the food and water. I’d be testy if any of the guns or ammo were missing, though.

  Relieved not to be carrying the bags anymore, there was a spring in my step as I raced back down the street. Sure enough, when I got to the street that the old man lived on, there were a number of people surrounding his house, using the neighbors’ houses for cover.

  I raced across the street and back into the woods by the pond, going as quickly as I could toward the end of the pond where the old man’s house was. The shooting stopped suddenly, and I instantly feared for the kids’ safety—a weird thing for a psychopathic killer, I know—but then I heard a man’s voice.

  “In the house,” the voice yelled. “We don’t care about you, we just want the man we tracked here!”

  “He ain’t here no more,” the old man yelled back. “Get off my fucking lawn!”

  “If you just send him out, we’ll leave you in peace!”

  I could see one of the Blues. He was in the trees with a scoped rifle. “No shot yet,” he said into a throat microphone.

  “I told you,” the old man yelled. “He ain’t here.”

  “Fine!” the man on the street shouted back. “Just let us in so we can look, then!”

  “No chance of that happening! I’ve heard what you do once you get into someone’s house!”

  “Wait a minute,” the man with the rifle said. “He just moved. I can see part of his head.”

  I was almost to the man, but I had no idea what I ought to do. I could easily shoot him in cold blood—it would be hard to miss—like any good killer; however, doing so would alert all the men scattered around, of which I could see about seven or eight. I was tired and didn’t want to start the chase game all over.

  The knife seemed to leap into my hand of its own accord, and I took another step toward the man.

  “I’ve got the shot,” he said into the microphone as he switched off the rifle’s safety.

  Without a conscious thought, I took the last step forward and palmed his forehead with my left hand, dragging his head back so my right hand could draw the razor-sharp blade across his throat.

  The man’s neck erupted in a spray of blood. I wasn’t sure how hard to cut, so I did it too hard, grinding the knife into the bone as I finished. I jumped back—more to get out of the bloody fountain than anything else—and both the man and rifle dropped to the ground.

  I quickly stepped up and grabbed the man’s ear piece. It took a second to get it out because his head was all wobbly. I left the microphone arou
nd the ruins of his neck. I didn’t know if it would work with that much blood on it, and I didn’t want to find out.

  “Take the shot, dammit!” a voice said over the ear piece.

  I grabbed the rifle, happy it hadn’t discharged when it fell, aimed, and shot out the man’s window, missing him by at least a foot. That appeared to be the signal, as all the men on the street began firing again.

  “You dumbass, you missed!” the voice said on the radio.

  “Newp,” I muttered to myself. I’d hit exactly what I aimed for. I found my next target—the guy talking to me on the radio. He happened to be looking in my direction as he continued to berate me—where did I learn a word like ‘berate?’—which made it easy to see the bullet hit him in the forehead.

  One of the other Blues fired, and I shifted aim to him. One hit, center mass, and he went down.

  Which, however, didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Hey!” one of the other guys on the net yelled as I shifted target again. “Someone just shot Johnny! And it looks like the shot came from Fred!”

  I couldn’t find the person speaking, but I saw another flash of blue and put that man down.

  The people in the house must have sensed the flow of battle shifting, because fire from the house increased, pinning several of the Blues down. I picked them off as quickly as possible. As I hit the third one, a branch snapped behind me, and I dove to the left while throwing the rifle to the right.

  The man behind me fired, and the bullet hit me in the right leg. Fire lanced through my leg as I hit the ground and rolled. The man fired again, throwing dirt on me as I continued to roll. There was a third shot—from a different direction—and the sound of a body hitting the ground nearby. I stopped rolling and looked—the man who’d been shooting at me was down with a bullet wound to the chest. His hands clawed feebly for a moment, trying to stop the blood, but then he stilled.