Chapter 4

[Kat Donovan]

Interstate 90
Outside Janesville, WI
8:38 a.m. March 18, 1998

A pair of figures weaved their bicycles in and out of the stalled vehicles on the freeway. The stranded motorists stared longingly at the pair as they rolled by. Their desperation was etched across their faces. Neither Kat or Jeremiah said anything to them, nor did they make eye contact. These people were the walking dead, only the elements, dehydration, hunger, or plain old villainy hadn't taken them yet. It was just a matter of time if the stayed next to their dead vehicles, and many who did leave would head for the cities on foot, and that in itself was a death sentence.

It had been a cold night, and Jeremiah was exhausted. They had stopped about an hour after midnight and made a cold camp along the side of the highway. It was early spring and the temperature dropped precipitously in Southern Wisconsin. Now that the sun was up the ever present chill started to lift from their bodies. Though, it probably had more to do with the exercise of moving nearly eighty pounds of supplies on his back Jeremiah reflected.

They heard the shouts before they saw the combatants. Cresting a rise Kat and Jeremiah slowed to a stop. Below them two groups were squared off. There were four burly men in the group to their right. Their arms were tattooed and they wore leather of motorcyclists. Kat couldn't be sure but she thought she could pick out Hells Angels patches sewn on their leather vests. They were armed with machetes and galvanized trashcan lids for shields. Which Kat thought might be fairly effective against improvised weapons.

The other group stood defiant against the biker gang. A tall man with a close cropped beard stood in front of two women. They sported actual European style medieval weaponry. She couldn't tell the quality from this distance but the man had a long sword and a large kite shaped Knight's shield, and he looked like he didn't know what he was doing. The women had short swords, and small soup plate sized bucklers, but the way the held them it was obvious they had even less comprehension on how to use the weapons than their male counterpart.

"Give me the bikes and we won't kill you and rape the bitches," the gang leader demanded.

"I cannae do that lad," Longsword replied in a thick accent that Kat thought to be Highland Scot.

Kat glanced at Jeremiah and he nodded. The unspoken agreement that would mean they would intervene. They shrugged off their packs and let their bikes fall to the hard asphalt. Kat stepped against the riser and pushed with her thigh to string her long bow. Without the waste of movement she removed an arrow from her quiver and drew to her ear and released the string.

The arrow traveled in a shallow arc, wobbled slightly at its peak and fell to earth at nearly 140 feet per second. It landed between the two combatants and bounced off the pavement and skittered across the road. "That was a warning. I'll not ask again. Move along and harass someone else."

The biker gang leader smiled and gave her a mocking laugh. "What are you going to do with that toy? How about I kill your friends and I'll show you some respect bitch."

"Stupid mistake," Kat said coldly. She drew to the ear again, and loosed her arrow. The leader raised his makeshift shield to block the arrow, but it didn't stop it. The bodkin head punched through the thin metal and sunk into it's target with a we 'thwack'. The gang leader fell to the ground clutching an arrow in his neck.

Snap!

Snap!

Snap!

Three more arrows had left her bow in as many breaths. All three found their targets, and the Hells Angels fell. A couple screaming in pain as the cloth-yard shafts of cedar and goose feather fletchings stuck out of their bodies. Longsword gave the mercy stroke to one of them with an arrow in his gut. A regretful shot that made Kat scold herself. Jeremiah's first arrow was still nocked to the string.

The stranger approached them, "That was bonnie wee shooting there lass. I owe ye our lives to be sure. Dougal MacDonald an this is me wife Aimee," he said indicating one of the women who was green from the events she had witnessed.

"Kat Donovan, and this is Jeremiah Wallace," Kat introduced. They exchanged hand shakes and Kat indicated Dougal's sword, "May I?"

Dougal nodded, "Aye."

Kat took the swords and examined it. She made a few test swings and handed it back, "It's a fine weapon. Perfectly balanced, and it doesn't have all that extra decoration most of those collector swords are."

"Thank ye lass," Dougal said with a smile. "I make armor too."

"You're a blacksmith?"

Dougal shrugged ,"Aye. I follow Ren-Fairs, made them and armor for a few movies and what not."

"Where are you heading?" Jeremiah asked.

"Chicago and them hopefully figure out a way to get back to Scotland."

Jeremiah winced in sympathy, "There's no planes or ships to get you home. Hell, I doubt there's much of a Chicago." To illustrate his point he pointed south to the rising black cloud of smoke. "And there's little left of Milwaukee either," he said pointing over his shoulder to the smoke rising from the city. "Started when several airliners fell out of the sky. There's no way to put the fires out. No way to get the firetrucks to the scene. Nothing's fucking working," Jeremiah added in dismay.

Dougal started at Jeremiah in dismay and then to Kat who nodded. "I tell you what," Kat started. "I have a friend who lives in Colorado. That's where we are going. I'll show you how to use that thing, and when things settle down we'll figure out how to get you home."

"There's safety in numbers," Aimee said. Kat was surprised to hear that the other woman had a general American accent.

Dougal nodded, "Aye lass. Until we figure out what ta do."

[Angel Ryder]

Milwaukee, WI --

Angelica Ryder was laying on what was left her grandmother's old bed in the old family house not far from Mitchell Field. The entire city was more or less on fire, despite being on the shore of a great lake and with plenty of small creeks and ponds and water channels, it was hard to bail enough water by hand without the benefit of pumps. She was originally on her way from New York to Chicago, but the pilot was skilled enough to glide the plane close enough to Milwaukee and crash landed on Howell Avenue just outside the airport, it was a spectacular crash and dozens of buildings, gas stations and restaurants took the brunt of the crash, but about 29 out of 200 people survived. For the past couple of weeks, she had been in excruciating pain, but the few pain drugs they found in the old doctor's offices across from the Airport had helped. It helped that the old North Shore line rail tracks had provided some measure of protection thanks to the loose landfill after the tracks were removed only a decade or so prior, the fires from Downtown didn't really spread too much near the old 'Town of Lake'. As it once was, it was again the center of a small city. The old water tower which had once been Town of Lake city hall and later government and medical department offices, was now a temporary seat of government. It was decided that the old 'annexes' of Milwaukee would once again be independent, as it was pretty much every man for themselves, and the old annexes were still pretty capable of providing water, even though the pumping stations wouldn't work, they still had basic filtration and while the pressure was only a bit above a trickle, it was still enough to make do.

Angel limped down the stairs from her grandmother's bedroom and into the living room where some of her old staff had taken up residence. Luckily her great-grandfather was a packrat and had a lot of old tools and plenty of junk in the basement and garage that they were able to fashion some basic defensive weapons and armor for the cars they managed to salvage. They didn't run on their own power and even steam power didn't quite work as it once did, nor did other chemical combustion, but some of the MSOE engineers that Angel used to date that managed to make their way to the southside had ideas. Simple gear rigging to essentially turn a light sedan into a pedal powered vehicle with a coil banded drive that would maximise effort. It was crude and primitive, considering they had to do it all without blow torches or welding equipment, but hammers, nails and good old fashioned simple machine skills did the job.

"So what's the word? Anything on the old radios?" Angel asked, despite everyone being now pretty much post apocalyptic, they had designer clothes, thanks to the crates of stock she still had stored in the old house that her father had let her use.

"Nothing, electricity in any form just doesn't work... but we've got people out that are trying to get a better picture of what's going on. It seems world wide, think about it, nothing overhead, no ship horns anymore since those died. Downtown is a mess, the airport area is still on fire until the buildings finally give out." her assistant Ally said as she shook her head. "It's like end times."

"Or the beginning of something different." Angel said and sighed as she looked at the picture of herself with a newborn Trinity in her arms. "I wish I could find out if my daughter and her husband are safe. I almost hated seeing her go that far away, but it may have been the best thing now... at least they can live easier than us here in the cities. Not much farm land here to grow food, not unless we level houses and even then the soil isn't exactly the greatest here, too much clay. I remember helping great-grandma here had to replace so much soil just to get anything to grow more than a season."

[monica Laforge]

Doctor Laforge approached her. The chocolate skinned woman had been one of the first responders to pull survivors from Angel's plane, and she had the bandaged burns on her arms and hands to show for the effort.

"Morning Ms. Ryder," the doctor greeted. She had a deep worried furrow on her brow, but her smile was warm as always. "I thought I would come and check on your injuries." She slid the navy blue Jansport backpack off and opened it to pull out a stethoscope. "I must apologize for eavesdropping. Perhaps you should go to your daughter and son-in-law at her ranch in Colorado. Most of the food we need to eat until we can get something to grow went up in flames, and I'm hearing rumors of a cholera outbreak epidemic out towards Pleasant Prairie. There's just too many refugees and not enough places to keep the sewage out of the clean water. We've been lucky here so far, but I fear it's only a matter of time. And we got summer coming on. The camps are going to attract rats which brings fleas. Without infrastructure and manufacturing there won't be enough antibiotics to combat the bubonic and pneumonic plagues. I've been raiding every pharmacy I come across for things like penicillin, but I only have a couple hundred doses."

[Angel Ryder]

"Hey this city survived before technology it can again. Hell half the stuff we need is still around, although it doesn't help that steam power is worthless... which is annoying. I was really hoping we could have set up those old antiques. And by 'we' I mean the engineers from MSOE." Angel said and sighed. "At least Jack Langer still had plenty of meds in storage. But you're right, it won't last forever." she looked at the picture of Trinity and closed her eyes. "I don't think making our way to Colorado is going to work. It was a long drive from here when I was riding in the truck with her stuff and without cars, planes or trains, it's going to take months to make our way there. I wish I could contact my father. But I have this bad feeling he didn't make it. I may be all that's left. Marcus was killed when the Hoan bridge collapsed after that plane crashed into it. Told him he had to find a different site to guard, but no... he had to work at Jones Island so he could visit his girlfriend of the week at the Coast Guard base. Jack's still in England. I'll probably never see or hear from him again. My sister Olivia... no idea. Last I heard she was in Chicago but she was heading out for somewhere else. Not even sure what she looks like anymore, going undercover again. My mother... " she shook her head. "My mother is probably doing just fine without all of us around in DC. She was always sort of a luddite compared to dad."

[monica Laforge]

Monica nodded, "You do what you need to do." She made a quick examination and stuffed her stethoscope into her bag and rummaged around inside, and extracted an oversized pill bottle, and one of those individual ointment packs. "Place this cream on your stitches twice a day. You don't need a lot just a light film." Shaking out a dozen white pills from the bottle into Angel's hand. "There's a little bit of inflammation in the site. If it doesn't improve I may have to debride the wound. I fear there may be a foreign body inside, but without x-rays or ultrasound there's no way to know. I hope you aren't squeamish about bugs because without a modern operating suite the debriding process will be considerably less sophisticated with the use of maggots, but dead tissue can cause serious complications and it cannot remain. We'll examine it tomorrow. Hopefully the antibiotics worked and you will be in your way to recovery.

"The governor is is asking for doctors in Madison I'm thinking I should go. We should all go. Milwaukee is a dead zone. There isn't any place to grow food so if starvation doesn't kill us disease will, and if that doesn't do the trick survivers are likely to attack us when they are starving. I'll stick around here through the week, but I will be leaving. And you are thinking of the Oregon Trail where it took months. You should be able to cover the distance in two to three weeks on a bicycle. Sooner if you pushed yourself."

Monica pulled her backpack over her shoulders and shrugged, "There's a greatness about you. That much I can sense. I have met people like you all my life. They were always successful. It would be a shame for you to waste those talents clinging to this house in hopes of making it work."

[Angel Ryder]

"Yeah... but until I'm feeling up to it, this is really the only place I CAN be..." Angel said looked at her. "But you're right... well, we're only a street and a cemetary across from the train tracks. Maybe we can rig up a human powered gear driven train, it's just simple physics and gears. Make the right kind of gear driven engine, maybe with a perpetual motion belt, can make our way faster." she pointed to the photos in the bookshelf across from the couch. "I may have gone into Fashion merchandising and design, but I started out as an engineer like my dad and uncle and their uncle. I just found that if I changed majors I could bypass the thesis and get my Master's degree quicker. My husband will probably never find out if I flirt my way to Colorado."

[monica Laforge]

Monica gave it a quick thought, "That could work. You'll have less severe inclines than roads, and there's less friction between the wheels and the rails. I don't have a clue how fast you could go, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could break over 100 miles a day, and carry supplies. Where is your husband?" Monica asked.

[Angel Ryder]

"No idea." Angel said softly. "We've been... estranged of late. I was going to meet with him in Phoenix with his adopted sister but... I don't know." she looked out the window. "After Trini got married, it seemed there was a lot less keeping either of us in the same room. Won't lie, his adopted sister is gorgeous. They used to date years before we met. Wouldn't shock me if they're rekindling something." she put her hands over her face. "Look at me... the world's going to hell and I'm being a damn green eyed monster of jealousy like my mom."

[monica Laforge]

The Doctor smiled, "My friend, you are only human. Don't beat yourself up."

[Angel Ryder]

"Hey I was also raised Catholic it's what I do." Angel chuckled. "Even though mother did not... quite encourage us to adhere to everything we were taught in religion class." she chuckled nervously. "Taught my sister and I how to... get what we want out of the opposite sex without compromising ourselves. Amazing the things people will do if they think it'll lead to more than oh... a handy or a blow." she winced. "Now my sister, she could get any man to do literally anything for her. I had to rely on my wit and charm and brain... she... well, you remember those work out leotards like everyone wore a few years back? She practically wore nothing but that. Left zero to the imagination. I was always the 'prim and proper' one. Of course I ended up being the one who got married had kids and started a business and ended up spending the past decade trying to keep my husband interested in me once our daughter moved on and got married." Angel sighed. "World's gone all to hell... and I'm not as young as I was. But... if this is it... maybe I should just enjoy the little pleasures, flirt my way to Colorado, see my grandchildren. Have a few adventures while i still can. People are still shocked I have grandkids, let alone a grown daughter. The engineering boys... they're old enough to be my own kids."