Enduring Armageddon Read Free Page B

was a different challenge every day,” I replied.
    “Nope, don’t think we’ll be doing too much investing around here. What about you, Rebecca. What skills do you have?”
    “I was an elementary school teacher,” she said as we continued to follow Samantha down the street.
    “That, we can use. I don’t know what happened to them, but less than half of the school’s original teachers are around. We’ve got about forty or fifty kids per class, so that will be a huge help.”
    “The town is still doing school?” I asked incredulously.
    “Yeah. Allan says we’ve got to continue educating our kids, so he’s made it mandatory for them to attend up until twelve years old. Then, if the parents can spare them, he recommends that they be allowed to continue. Right now, most parents are letting their kids go, but everyone knows it won’t always be that way. We’ll need more wall guards as things get worse and we’re already beginning to need more people to do the long-range scavenging… I mean gathering.”
    “Gathering, scavenging, it’s the same thing, right? What difference does it make what you call it?” Becca asked.
    “The scavengers are the crazies out there, so Allan doesn’t want us associated with them. He forbids anyone from calling the gathering of supplies for the town ‘scavenging’. If you end up working with one of those groups and call it scavenging, Jesse will beat your ass.”
    “Well, it’s an intellectual difference at best,” Rebecca pressed.
    “I don’t know what you mean by that, but just remember that we ‘gather’ we don’t ‘scavenge’ and you’ll be alright,” Sam said as she stared over her shoulder at us pointedly.
    “Who’s this Jesse person?” I asked.
    “He’s like the number two guy in town. He was a big football player back in the day, then was in the army and came back to Virden after his tour of duty. He’s a good guy, but you definitely don’t wanna cross him.”
    “You’ll meet him soon enough,” she continued. “Look, here’s the registration office. This is as far as I go. I gotta go back up front in case anyone else comes in for the evening. I’ll see you guys around.” She waved goodbye with her free hand as she headed back towards the gate.
     
    * * *
     
    We walked into the registration office and stood at the end of a short line of men and women of various ages. While we waited, the décor reminded me of better days. The building must have been some type of travel agency or something since of all the posters on the walls were of far off destinations and smiling, happy people in bikinis. I tapped Becca on the shoulder and pointed at the picture of the couple on the beach in Aruba. Her eyes crinkled in a smile. In a different lifetime, Aruba is where we had our honeymoon.
    Besides the posters, the rest of the past was a distant memory. The thing that stood out the most to me was the four or five men seated at a table in the corner on the same side of the counter as the unregistered people in line. The men were playing cards, but each one seemed like he was capable of violence at any moment. They were all armed with baseball bats and knives, one man even had an axe. Given the handcuffs they also wore on their belts, I assumed that they were what the town was using for police officers. Leaned against one of the walls behind the former travel agents’ desk were several white boards with lists of occupations and the number of people who were currently performing them for the community. I assumed that the boards were placed prominently for travelers to examine in order to quickly determine if their skills were of any value to the residents of Virden.
    Unusable computers and monitors were stacked carefully in the back corner in the hopes that the power would one day be restored. In their place on the desks were large notebooks full of lines and lines of handwritten text. As we stood there waiting to be seen, I tried to think what I could possibly