the small band of raiders that supplied the encampment at the Church, which formed during the initial chaos that came after the terrorist attacks on the nuclear facilities.
Allen gave this small group more than just the materials needed to survive, he provided security, the needed shelter from the growing turmoil. Allen’s extreme methods provided them the excesses that were essential to grow in numbers and scope. The super gangs that spontaneously formed were thinned out by shocking drone strikes from the air and the marauding military on the ground. Allen formed the posse that kept the smaller mobs at bay, keeping the immediate area reasonably safe. During the formation of the first fortified safe zone, no one questioned his brutal tactics.
After the group had grown enough in size to commandeer the Warehouse, some felt Allen and his troupe of rogues were no longer needed, and the influences of this new exercise in civility shifted power away from him. They usurped Allen’s posse with the formation of the Police Force to take over matters of security.
Communications were, eventually restored with the National Guard and the new Department of Continuance. Supplies started being flown into Selfridge Air National Guard Base, twenty miles to the northeast, then these infrastructure parts and large pallets of supplies were trucked away to the newly established town of New Warren and the work site around the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant further south.
Given the vast areas and populace that no longer needed to be supplied, the Department of Continuance now had a seemingly endless supply of food to distribute to cooperating towns. Food and fuel ensured compliance from those areas where the D.o.C. wanted to regain control in to serve as staging areas. By using this template, ever so slowly, the D.o.C. began to increase its area of influence.
Allen Moore tried to warn the people of New Warren that the Department of Continuance only brought dependence back with them, but only a few listened. Not surprisingly, each member of the Council and the figurehead of a mayor unanimously felt that the worst had passed. Allen Moore, along with his far-fetched idea of self-reliance, was no longer needed or wanted. The tales of his past brutality and of how he had abandoned or murdered his wife became public fodder to discredit him.
Susan had been one of the few people who knew of the plan to assassinate Allen. It was quietly carried out and his body was stripped and buried. Susan and the mayor at the time, Sam Fouts, elderly father of the current mayor, delivered Allen’s gun and blood-stained clothing back to Daniel at the Moore house. It was now a common practice to bring the recently deceased’s valuables back to their family. To have skipped over this custom with Allen would have been deemed suspicious by his followers.
While Susan had harbored Corinne within the relative safety afforded by the group, Daniel had been left almost exclusively to his own devices. From the time Daniel was thirteen years old, right up to his meeting with Susan and Mayor Fouts after his father’s “death” at age fifteen, Daniel had almost always been alone and he had had nearly zero communication with the outside world, the only exception being his father’s occasional visits.
Not completely unsurprisingly then, Daniel hardly seemed upset about Allen’s passing and barely questioned their well-crafted story of his demise. Survival had dictated that Daniel become very independent. While his clothes and the house were not very clean, the small pot filled with a stew made up of burdock root and squirrel meat buoyed Susan about his chances. Daniel denied any attempt to offer him safe harbor inside the Warehouse. He was, however smart enough to know that he would have to work for any new supplies and he jumped at their offer to find him work within the city’s Maintenance Department.
Two days later, Daniel was apprenticing under the only stone mason the city had been able to scrounge up. It was also on this day that Corinne first saw the brooding, self-assured boy that she would soon grow to love. Daniel worked on almost every one of the city’s ambitious projects, thriving under his easy-go-lucky mentor and he learned to laugh his way through a hard day’s labor.
When his mentor suddenly died of a major stroke, Daniel jumped right into his place and started drawing up the plans for the city. He endeared himself to quite a few by making separate housing units for families, along with ingenious