Forward March

It was moving day again, something I never look forward to. It's not just ripping everything up and traveling to a new city; it's the reasons behind it, and the realization that I would be a fool to try and stop it. We've set up safehouses all over the continent, and only we know which ones we're moving to... It's a perfect system. In theory.

There's 15 of us in this troupe, traversing the country and doing what we can where we can to try and improve things a bit. But we aren't the only troupe out there, so we have to look out for each other. We've never met another troupe, but we leave messages in the safehouses, signed by each of us. They do likewise. By my count, there's a little more than a dozen troupes, but lately communication has been getting more sparse. Then, we are spreading out more, too. Supplies are running low. Though we try to do what we can for the others, too; when we gather food and water, we make sure to leave some for the next weary travelers to take sanctuary in our hideaways. And they could be anything, really: high-rise apartments, minimalls, stockyards, warehouses... even churches, if we can shut things up well enough. It's a well-connected network of buildings spanning the known globe over... at least, the known modified globe. Since the bombs fell, and the satellites followed shortly, we're not sure if anything has survived on the other continents. Then again, we do our best to stay away from the coasts, too. Strange things happen near open water.

But like I was saying, it was moving day. We're on a rotating schedule, never staying more than 4 days in one place. The mutants and ghouls wise up pretty quick when there's fresh, unscorched meat to be had... heard a story once of a cadre that stayed a full week in one town, only to be staring point-blank down the maw of some particularly nasty dretches and skivs. I wouldn't have believed anybody to be so stupid until we happened across the town. San Pablo, the sign said. Ain't no Pablo I ever saw.

Breaking camp is the easy part, really. Siphon the gas there is to be had into the trucks and equalize their tanks, with three "steamers" with completely full tanks. Load the steamers with most of the food and provisions, load the people into the other four rollers with the rest of the equipment. You know, the water purifiers, Giger counters, extra ammo, generators, stuff for making camp outside if absolutely necessary. Three people to each steamer (one to drive, two to defend, one in the cab and one riding bitch while lashed to the tops), one driver to each roller, one gunner to lead and rear guard rollers. Wait for high noon and roll out. Generally we already had our positions planned out by the time we took, but this time we were a little disorganized leaving... and that almost got us killed.

See, all of us can drive, but only a few of us know how to keep the steamers running nice. Since driving steamer is so taxing, the four of them are on rotating schedules, with the one on rest making rear guard defense, arguably the most relaxing job on the trail. This week, Oiler was supposed to take rear guard, but there was some confusion. Bosun wanted it (as did the rest of the steamheads, truth be told), but it really was Oiler's turn. Didn't matter. Bosun wanted to fight for it. Took three people to break up the scuffle, me and Twitch running interference while Head shouted at both of them for being stupid... and he was right, but nobody wanted to hear it from Head. This only got Bosun more pissed off, and he ended up charging Head and knocking him pretty good across the noggin, making him swell up even more. I had to bandage the kid back up, and talk him down from a fight. All in all, Oiler still got rear guard, but we didn't get out of there until near sundown, which meant we had to shoot our way out of town. Had a couple shriekers needed to be picked off (I was riding the whip on top of our lead steamer), but they weren't much of a problem. The dretches coming out of the woodwork were worse, since they're fat and tend to kind of explode when you hit 'em, which gunks up the machines; Twitch got two, and Bosun ran another three over in the steamer. We didn't even get to Omaha until almost midday, which meant a whole morning wasted when we should've been set up and ready to search during the bright hours.

Stupid fucking time. At least we got here safe. As it stands, the troupe's just about ready to go on reconnoiter; let's see if the land of corn and honey has much left to offer instead of old, melted electronics and mutant bovines.

=Dr. Bones, Survivalist, 4 Years Post-Fall Log Completed, 3rd week of Summer, 3:48 PM