“Not insulted.” Chuck popped a fat strawberry in his mouth. He wore sandals of braided rope with soles made from strips of old tires. “They’ve got some good hackers,” he added. “I’m better, but they’ve got some good ones. I’ll keep monitoring all three bases. Can’t get much direct out of Arlington itself, but I got a clear line to the others, and it leads back. Any changes, champ, you’ll hear about it.”
“And we’ll adjust to them,” Fallon confirmed. “Right up until we strike. Will and I worked out the broad strokes, and some of the finer ones earlier. To start.”
She held up her hands, drew the power up, out as she spread her hands over the air.
The map she’d drawn appeared, standing as if pinned to a wall.
“Excellent,” Eddie said, and crunched into a cracker.
“Tonia and I worked on it. Target bases in red, ours in blue. I’ll have more detailed maps after the targets are scouted.”
“What’s the green?” Flynn asked. No sandals for him, Fallon noted, but sturdy boots he likely made himself.
“Locations where we can potentially relocate the rescues. We’re about at capacity in New Hope, considering housing, supplies, medical. And we need to start establishing bases farther south, west, north. Colin, you and Dad need to pull out some of our experienced troops, ask for volunteers to relocate. We’ll also need the town council to talk to skilled, experienced people—what we can spare—to help with that. Tonia and I will speak to some of the rescues, and Hannah, Rachel, Jonah need to work out who we can spare with medical experience, and if we can spare any supplies. If we can’t, we’ll scavenge as we go.”
She turned back to the map. “The group in Utah taken by the PWs had settled in Nebraska—farming community, and from what we’ve gathered, poor security and defense. We can get them back to Nebraska, but we’ll establish a base.”
“It’s a long way,” Rachel chimed in. She held a glass of wine, but had yet to drink. At her feet sat a small medical kit the doctor carried everywhere.
“We can rotate volunteers, but we need a solid contingent to build and secure not just a community, but a base, one that can defend itself against PWs, Raiders, and the government forces still hunting magickals. We need the same in South Carolina. There’s a forest here.” She gestured to the map. “And access to the ocean. We can set up to mine salt.”
“Roads have to be cleared.” Arlys paused in her note taking, frowned at the map.
“And repaired,” Poe added. “Likely bridges, too. You need water, power, sewer or septic—your basics.”
“Fuel,” Kim put in, “lumber, tools.”
“We transport what we can, scavenge. We build. There should be plenty of game in both locations, and it’s good farmland in the west. We’d clear for farmland, if necessary, in the south. We plan for this, or taking the targets, getting people out … we’ve got nowhere to put them safely. And we need to start adding locations. Once we have these bases, they can scout, scavenge, rescue where we haven’t.”
“You’re talking about doing a lot in a really short time.” Will adjusted the cap Fallon knew his daughter had made in crafting class. Across the forest green it read LAWMAN in precisely embroidered white.
“I know. The new bases would be rudimentary, initially, but we’d claim our ground, then build. Just the way you, all of you, did right here. We need more like you. We have to find more like you, more people like my father, like Thomas, Troy, and others my family and I found on the way here. You don’t know Thomas or Troy or those others yet, but they built communities, societies, and they’ll fight to protect them because, like you, they know survival comes first, but it isn’t enough.”
“We don’t know the world you knew.” Tonia got to her feet. “We only know it through books, DVDs, what you tell us. We were babies, or not even born in those first years where every day was life-and-death, when everything you knew was gone. But we know this world, what it takes to live in it.”
“We’ve seen what you’ve done.” Now Travis got to his feet. “At the farm, Dad, the cooperative, the village back home. Here in New Hope, and all the places we found people fighting to build a life. Here we are sitting together, feeling safe on a really nice night with Eddie’s farm