The Barbarians of the Galaxy Approach

I haven't gotten into much detail about the barbarians at the fringes of Galactic Christendom, but they will be a significant presence when I get around to "The Taking of Countess Gabriella Robin". As with the Periphery and beyond in BattleTech, they too are--generally speaking--using technology comparable to the norms of Galactic Christendom. They also are often in thrall to one or another of the Nephalim or the Fallen Angels, usually as the literal progeny of said master or otherwise corrupt in a fundamental way that renders them a subject people- and then their culture finishing the job of yoking them to the master's will.

As such, when they show up it's a big deal. The deeper into Civilization they penetrate, the bigger the threat they present, and the opening of the aforementioned story is one such barbarian raid on a world commonly believed to be beyond the reach of the barbarians. How this happened, and why, is a subplot for the supporting characters to handle while Our Hero chases after Our Damsel to rescue her from being forcibly bound to the barbarian warlord that seized her.

So, later this year, get ready to see our Paladin of the Solar Guard fight his way through a barbarian horde to rescue the beauty of the galaxy from a barbarian warlord set on possessing her- and he alone.

The New Barbarians-12

A bit of an epilogue, as much as anyone is likely to read this deserves one, is in order.

One of the benefits of a secure location is the luxury of thinking further ahead than the next season, or the next Winter, and instead thinking a generation or two down the road. With more children coming, and still more after that, the care and development of future generations of the clan now needed to be addressed. Literacy, in particular, and the prevention of the degradation of the knowledge we had when Civilization fell is vital to ensuring that this Long Night period is kept to a minimum. Furthermore, finding ways to make the most of what is now possible and using that in conjunction with what we once had is what I discuss often with the men and women in the evenings now. We're making plans on what to do about it, as literacy requires things to read and write- something we don't do much around here.

Living closer to the natural world has also restored a sense of rhythm to our lives that we had, at best, a tenuous tie to previously. Paying attention to the cycles of the world, knowing what to do when and where, demonstrated an inherent order to life that we did not appreciate much in the years before. To be fair, with all of the difficulties ahead of us, I am glad to be here and now and greatly appreciate all of it; leadership has forced me to become far greater than I was before, and though I've hardened considerably, I also know better the nature of strength and how it differs from power. So have all of us, even the children.

Clan Anderson, and Anderson Hold, will not endure forever. No man, and no creation of Man, has such power. However, it can last a long time, long enough to see the turning of ages, when we take the time now to build our foundations properly and ensure that our clan values preservation of lore as a tradition to be followed ferverently. If we are the new barbarians, then let us be as the real barbarians were- and be civilized peoples in our own right.

The New Barbarians-11

With the return of Spring, it became obvious that we of the Anderson Clan had irreversibly transformed ourselves into a form better adapted for this crazy world we're in now. Using our new awareness and abilities, and seeing off Ken and Jack, we set about securing anew our homestead and laying claim--as much as anyone can without using force--to the lands around us. You see, it's been two years since this cataclysm brought the world we knew to an end. If there was a government left, it would have reached us by now and the normalcy we knew restored to some degree. This did not happen; that government--and all of the institutions we knew--is now a ruin, a relic of an age now past, and as such only that which exists in nature will thrive.

Other changes came about as a result of the changed state of ourselves and our world. The women and children stopped gainsaying the men entirely, and the men stopped gainsaying me. In other words, I was now undisputed in my leadership. "Chief" acquired some heft that I, quite frankly, always wanted. That came in good stead when, as I knew was going to happen sooner or later, when the zeds came.

With the full muster of our clan's powers at hand, we met and destroyed that horde many miles away from our homestead. We froze them into place with driving sleet and shattered them with massive hail stones. The honored dead, for reasons I did not know at the time, guided our rifles and blessed our bullets. We would make such a display twice more before the Summer, after which we shifted towards concealment and forewarning. The shelter we made for the cars became part of a well-concealed forward post, with a bit of kit to make communication by someone unable to do so by themselves possible.

This marked our emergence, I guess, as The Anderson Clan. Two years of transformation from a band of survivors into a coherent social unit of our own, where everyone has a place and is at home, seems somehow right to my mind. I have seen strong bands of fellowship form faster than that, and last life-long thereafter, but those are always derived from time fighting a war with one's fellows.

I can only conclude, therefore, that we are now--and shall hereafter, for as long as any can foresee--be living in a state of regular warfare, if not perpetual, as the tribal nations of old did in many places in the world. Civilization is gone. We are the new barbarians.

The New Barbarians-10

I agreed to have Ken and Jack stay on, trading the trading of their skills and knowledge for lodging and protection over the Winter. I have to say that this was quite the experience. All of us, young and old alike, spent time with Jack and Ken. We were now in a state of mind, after all of the weirdness going on, that left us open to the idea of shamanism an answer to the inevitable issue of our technologies becoming unable to use due to power or other expendables running out. What happened, however, was not what I expected.

Sure, the guided shamanic journeys we took to encounter and become familiar with our ancestors took some getting used to. Unlike before, now these spirits could manifest physically so we need not rely on altered states and other methods that left reasonable doubt in place. No, we saw them; all of us, all at once. Look, sound, touch- all very real to us. We learned the truths of our pasts, truths left out of the histories, and we learned of the old gods and the past of contact with North America and all of that. It turned out that my choosing a longhouse design was no accident, but instead inspiration from an ancestor who also did so, and that was just one of the early revelations.

As for Ken, he told us more about the zeds, and of other emerging unnatural threats that he encountered--he dealt with a Japanese snow monster last Winter--and warned us of the common threat these things possessed: the ability to mimic living men and women, play on our natural affinities, and use them as a path to preying upon us. I didn't know at the time (but I should have), but he did carry on affairs with some of the women; his sons, in time, would be born and raised amongst us and in time transform into thing-eaters as he was.

The real breakthrough, however, was that some of our children came to the attention of certain spirits of the wind and water. These acquired some affinity with, and control over, those very natural elements. This was something new, something that neither Ken nor Jack had any experience with, so we had to work with it using what we knew. Because this was a mark of spiritual calling, as it were, we thought of it as a form of shamanism and proceeded accordingly. The secrets of the water spirits included healing and cleansing, something we needed; the secrets of the wind gave us ears we otherwise needed a radio for, and both of them had means of fighting by wielding wind or water as weapons- applied physics would find a new home here.

We didn't have much in the way of names for what we created over that Winter. All that we knew for certain was that we were now possessed with a supernatural connection of our own, and we would need it in the years to come when the fuels ran out, the cells ran dry, the ammunition was gone, and all of the associated technologies became so much useless junk.

The New Barbarians-09

Well, one benefit of this weird "Ken" character is that we didn't need to feed him. Whatever happened to make him weird changed what he needed to eat to zeds, and maybe other weird and unnatural things, at least we didn't have to deplete our stocks to be hospitable to him. Since he came in peace, and had something we needed to hear, I decided that he would be heard and allowed to stay the night. A few of the women weren't happy about that, but a look from me was enough to shut them up.

"I heard from The Necromancer's goons that you folks had something he wanted to take out. Since he and I aren't on speaking terms, if you get me, I had to come up to see for myself."

"I have no idea what he's on about." I said, "Ain't nothing weird about us."

"That, I think, is the very thing."

Just then, one of the men came in with someone from the White Earth band. Ken sniffed the air and his eyes widened.

"I think I see now." Ken said, "Shaman don't bother travelling much without need."

"I'm Jack." the name said, "And the dead-eater is correct- I am a Shaman."

I know that this Jack has another name, as all of them do, but he didn't give it and it doesn't matter. "Jack" is fine, no less than "Ken", and I'm not so stubborn a disbeliever that I ignore fortune when I see it. Jack knew--for obvious reasons--that I was the chief here, so he joined Ken and I at the table.

"The spirits told me that a new tribe of white people would come up here, some days away from my people's land, but without knowing why. I am told that many of you have ties to a past tribe of whites, explorers and warriors, who knew the ways of wind and water. True?"

"Yeah. Most of us have ancestral ties to the Norsemen of old. We're German, Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, and so on."

"This new world thinned the walls between worlds. The spirits of my people tell me that your people's spirits are trying to reach you. I can help your people hear them."

I looked over to Ken. "You got a problem with that?"

"Nope."

The New Barbarians-08

The last of the Winter chill faded by the time we arrived. We were well into the northern wilderness, where the border--such as it was--between the United States and Canada used to be. This was once the Boundary Waters, and deep within it we would settle. We followed a known path deep into the interior, eventually leaving our vehicles behind and going the rest of the way on foot. Because we had little concern of the zeds catching up to us, especially since I switched destination sites after the last turning, we concentrated on getting things to the settlement site. Our vehicles we used as an outpost at first, and then build camouflaged shacks to hide them from others once we shifted entirely to the site.

The site had a clear build plan: first we set up yurts, following a plan I got from Bob, and a pallisade around a lakeside area. We cleared paths to nearby clearings which we repurposed as farming plots and built up wooden frames so we could easily keep them clear in the Winter. Clothing lines would also double as the basis for food drying racks. We set up solar cells, water purification and storage tanks, sheds, and everything we needed right away within the first few weeks. After that we began a longhouse, following a historical model I knew from the old days. That would take felling some trees and adapting classic log cabin methods, but we did it anyway.

We managed to get the frame of the longhouse ready by high Summer, but we had to get some distance above the lake to do it lest we get flooding in the basement--and we did not need that--which would ruin its value as a storm shelter and low-tech storage area for stuff needing some degree of climate control. It took a good amount of work on the inside, using old-time methods, to make the log cabin style of longhouse complete and ready for all four seasons. It was, truly, a long house in the ancient style; one big room, with some of us shifting to making smaller things like chairs and tables after that while the rest of us moved most of our work back outside.

Everything was done, in terms of the preliminary work--the stuff we needed to do to get settled properly--by the end of Summer. We had food in the plots coming up, supplemented by the fish we took from the lake and what grew in the wild. So much of our daily life revolved around preparing for the Winter now that the zeds shifted to the back of our mind; it was something we thought of only when we dealt with health and safety, rather than as a clear-and-present threat to our lives. I was far more concerned about our site's long-term viability by this time, to be certain, but the zeds never truly left my mind.

We hunted and scavenged widely in the Autumn, and we again filled our larders and kept the women and children busy with preserving and cataloging all of our resources while the men and I prepared our Winter provisions for getting around the land we claimed as our domain. Our migration was now complete; this is now Anderson Hold, and I am the chieftain of the Anderson Clan.

As we decided to mark the occasion with a well-earned feast, we had a visitor. A man, a single solitary man, with the skin as white as a blizzard and sunken yellow eyes as well a hairless body. He said he was a man named "Ken", and he tracked a bunch of zeds coming this way- and ate all of them. This got my attention, for certain.

The New Barbarians-07

The Winter was a long episode of coping with shut-in madness. Even with the ice on the lake permitting ice fishing, I did not perceive that this was an excuse to relax. Instead, I got the radio up and running and had it manned day and night; we got word out of Duluth, and the man there had kept us informed as best he could as to what was going on, but he soon went silent. When he came back, he assumed the unnatural quality to his voice that led me to believe that he'd been found, hounded, and turned into some sort of smart zed. I was not inclined to keep giving him any attention thereafter, but the men and Bob said that we were safe enough until the thaw and this zed's talk was not without benefit.

Reluctantly, I kept monitoring him. I doubled the watches; something didn't sit well with me, and I wanted mutual support should something go bad. Soon enough, I got vindication: one of the less stable men went wonky one night and the other guy had to tie him down after a tazing. We shut off the radio after that; there was no one else broadcasting, and no reason to release our location by doing so ourselves. As for the one who went off, he began babbling about hearing voices and going on about seeing a city of the dead where the Cities used to be, and knowing about someone--which I took to mean the hive mind--controlling the zeds calling himself "The Necromancer".

I didn't think much of this until he started ranting about how The Necromancer knew who we are and where we were and that we threats to his power due to something about DNA and someone who seemed to be a threat to him called "The Stalker", and if he got to us first he could put a stop to the threat we held to him. Well, it's just as likely that this "Stalker" was no less dangerous- but he was not so much a threat to us as he was to the zeds, so that was in our favor.

In time, the mad man turned for the worse; he choked on his tongue, and we had to put him down before he turned and rose against us. That was it; I called for bugout preparations early, before the thaw, so that as soon as the roads cleared we could get back on the road and towards our original destination. I suspected that we wouldn't have much in the way of leeway either, if these zeds knew where we were and still wanted to come for us. My suspicion turned out to be correct when some scouts reported a horde coming up from the Cities- and I do mean a horde, several hundred strong.

We had little warning, so we hurried to put obstacles in their path to slow them down. Useless cars set up in makeshift walls barricading the road, hidden spikes to impale zeds as they trip up and fall over, and other passive things we don't have to work with actively. We'd monitor them from a distance as we loaded up, and we set up several layers of such obstacles. They were rather aggressive in getting at us, climbing over each other and otherwise acting more like a blob than a mass of corpses, albeit at the pace of shambling corpses. We did not take this lightly; we retreated in good order, but at best speed possible.

As we fled, with the snows barely passed and ice still on the big lake, I resolved to not allow such a threat to get that close again. I hoped to reach out final destination before the Summer, and with things as they were I had good reason to believe that we would not only reach it, but that we would be firmly fixed and settled before next Winter arrived.

The New Barbarians-06

Once we broke the word to the others not present, the reaction was something of a sigh of relief by the adults and a guarded optimism by the kids. Bob and I went around the town and decided that, despite the lack of zeds around right now, this couldn't last and that we should resume travelling further north into the wilderness- but, with Winter coming soon, we decided that riding out Winter here would be the best of a host of bad options.

Having committed to this course of action, we fanned out and scoured homes and farms for everything we could haul away that was of any use to us; hardware stores and lumber yards provided enough tools and materials to start a rushed fortification project at the most defensible option on the lake for us. We got the boats up and ready to run, and fished plenty to fill larders; ice houses we also brought on site so we could keep this up over the Winter. Deer, Elk, and Duck soon came to the kitchens to be cleaned, smoked, and stored. Our arms stores also increased, mostly with the sort of deer rifles and duck shotguns that were commonplace outside of the Cities and the ammunition that they used. We stocked the pantries, the larders, the infirmary (which we made by converting the concierge office), and put up pallisades to constrict unwanted movement. This became our first castle.

As the night grew long and cold, we embarked on our promised skill exchange. My men and I trained the capable adults in how to use and maintain the sorts of firearms we preferred--AR-15s, AK-47s, tactical shotguns, service pistols, etc.--and they taught us how to process game carcasses, how to skin and tan leather, stalking game, and other more outdoorsman applications of skills many of us already had some familiarity with. The children, especially the boys, greatly enjoyed learning how to do all of these things- though there was some teasing over the more messy elements of it.

It was not without incident. Bob said that the older folks were on borrowed time, and for a few that was short in supply. A few would expire in their sleep, and then turn overnight; we had to put their risen corpses down before they spread their infection to anyone else. By the time we got snowed in for the season, all but Bob had died- and so had the weak children. The children who remained now had seen first-hand why we kept on them so much to do as we told them; at the cost of their innocence--there was no way to get through this without getting hardened by it--they ceased to be bothersome and quarrelsome at times, and instead snapped into obedience now that they saw the price of refusal- and they wanted none of it.

I am not bothered by this. We no longer live in a world where this sort of thing can be tolerated. If this sort of ritual initiation, this sort of traumatization, is what it takes to get and keep cohesion between myself and the others at all levels then so be it. We will not endure any longer as anything but a well-knit tribe with a clear chain of command. Even Bob began to refer to me as "Chief" or "Boss" now, and I confess that I like it this way.

I've taken to carrying a machete or a hatchet on me at all times, in addition to a knife. The moments when being armed proved vital have convinced me that this is just a good practice to cultivate now. The other men have now mimicked me, carrying hammers if they can't get a machete or hatchet, and the women are now carrying knives at all times. I've heard the boys complaining that they should have knives too. I'll deal with that shortly.

The New Barbarians-05

We arrived at the former resort town by the big lake, one big enough to barely see the horizon across the lake. At this point, we had quite the temptation to just root here and hunker down for the Winter. We had access to plenty of food by way of fishing, and access to plenty of tools and fuel to do that. We had our selection of rooms. The cost was that securing them would be a nightmare.

While we restocked supplies, we encountered another group. This lot seemed far more friendly; they were locals from the area that hid away when the disaster hit, and they had a plan. Now they came into town to see what they could scavenge, or if they could set up here for the Winter. The men and I agreed to have to a sit-down with them, and we did that in one of the resort restaurants. The leader was an older man by the name of Bob, a retired boat operator and mechanic.

"Look," Bob said, "my people and I know this area well. We've been working here, living here, and moving around here for years. Some of us have been up here for generations, like my family has, making good money off the folks in the Cities playing at being outdoorsmen. You folks, I see, have some steel in you, but you're lacking in the skills you're going to need to make it long-term."

"You're looking to make a deal?" I said.

"You got it." Bob said, "You teach us to do the fighting. We teach you to do the living."

I saw where this would end up. "Bob, you know where will go, right? You've got some young boys in your group, some girls, and not a lot of folks in their prime. You've got old folks and children about to hit adulthood. This deal ain't a cross-train deal; this is fosterage."

Bob chuckled. "You're as quick on the uptake as I figured. True, it is. A lot of us are on borrowed time. Medications we need to keep our problems in check are running low. We're making do with what we find, but we've cleaned out every pharmacy and doctor's office in three counties that wasn't already cleared out. The old folks, like me, we can dawdle on for a while yet but we're gone by this time next year for sure. We've already buried a few, after taking care of them, if you get me. We have a few of the children who also aren't likely to make it for the same reason. Those that remain, however, are screwed if they can't get with another group."

I nodded. Bob here seemed a good man doing what he can. Seemed. I glanced over to the other men, and then to the women looking out from the kitchen, and they nodded their ascent.

"Okay." I said, "It's a deal."

Bob smiled. We shook on it, and my nascent tribe grew once more.

The New Barbarians-04

The plan was simple enough. The old man and the boys would stay with the women and children as they began to widely circumnavigate the marauders, while the men and I decided to lead the zeds to these jackasses.

Getting the zeds' attention wasn't hard. They were already looking for us, so all we had to do was backtrack just enough to engage them at long range with our rifles. One or two volleys was enough to get them after us, so we just hit and fade against them to string them along, keeping out of whatever range their hive mind uses to shift from shambling to running. A shot or two now and again was enough to keep the zeds coming as we'd want them to go. It was boring, dangerous, and tedious- but a slacking of discipline could easily cost us a man.

When we neared the marauders, we didn't let up; we knew that the rifle fire would be sufficient to bring them out in sufficient force to counter a threat. So, what we did was easy; we lead the zeds up a rise, where there was a deep divot dug into the hill years ago for other purposes, and we would run out along the divot for a quarter-mile or so before getting out. The zeds would mindless go up, over, up, and over and continue on toward the marauders- and force them to deal with the zeds instead of us.

We watched from our safe distance as they engaged the flood of zeds coming over the hill. To their credit, they kept discipline and retreated in good order from the oncoming zeds- maybe they already knew, or they had a bad feeling, and didn't want to risk them getting close enough to charge. We saw someone calling out targets, and we saw them use some homebrewed ordinance to break up the clustered zeds, but they looked like they would be overrun until we saw them get out a replica of a Civil War cannon and bring it to bear. Homemade grapeshot cannisters blew apart the zed horde just as they began breaking into runs. Shotguns used behind barricades finished the job.

We didn't stick around to see if they were still looking for us, or if more zeds would come. Instead we marked the location on the map and headed to meet up with our women and children, which we did by sundown at the point I thought we could reach and secure by then. They were fine, but the worry on their faces made it clear to me that my risk was not appreciated yet. Over dinner that night, I reported to the others what we saw and did during the day. Faces changed, becoming more appreciative, even as they gasped over the report of a working cannon with grapeshot cannisters. That night turned around this exchange:

"But the zeds didn't do what you made them do. They're still there."

"For now. The zeds likely think that they are us, and we know what they want with us now don't we?"

As we used to say, we threw them under the bus. I am fine with that.

The New Barbarians-03

This zombie master, whatever it was, had me bothered. It had the other men bothered, which meant that the women were bothered.

I called for a retreat. Even if we won this engagement, sooner or later we'd lose one, and we can't afford to lose a single man at this time. This was self-evident for all of us, and--thankfully--I got no backtalk for my decision. The hard part was deciding where to go and how to get there; at this point, we agreed that north (away from the zeds) was our best option.

Keeping the zeds away was one thing. Organizing a migration was another. Doing both at the same time? Hellacious, even with everyone on board willing and able to pitch in. It wasn't that the zeds were a pressing problem. It was the time. We had to move out, migrate undetected, arrive without incident, and settle in for Winter all within a few short months. This would be bothersome in the best of times, and we were not there.

We were up against an enemy we could not kill. Oh, sure, blow off the heads of the zeds and so on, but that's not enough. Hive minds don't work that way; the best we can do is keep it away, and diverted. So, we went after it while we prepared. We hit sighted groups of zeds at maximum distance for our rifles, fired a few times, and then faded away into the countryside. We hit on one side, then the other, keeping the zeds confused as to where we were. This confused them, until we saw one day that one of them moved with purpose, as if alive. We chose not to engage, but instead to take that as our cue to move out.

We trapped the homestead, rigged it to collapse and burn should they come- and once we moved out, we made them come into the trap. I had no clue if it would work, if it would fool that hive mind, but soon enough it would not matter. We had more pressing problems; we had less-than-helpful folks in the way between us and our destination.

The problem we ran into was the foolish survivalist sort, the folks who think that they could turn marauder after a collapse and succeed, being just as much a predatory presence as the zeds. In other words, they never got the true meaning of Romero's zombie films and instead thought it was an instruction manual. Fortunately we maintained the practice of keeping scouts well enough ahead to warn the rest of us, and warn us our scouts did; stealth and avoidance were our ways in these days, and again they proved their worth.

To deal with them, I had an idea, and it would be dangerous.

The New Barbarians-02

I now lead a raiding band of four men. The women, wisely, stayed behind to handle the children and household matters. Our lives now revolved around keeping our household well-supplied. Fortunately, we could raid ruins for some years yet before we had to rely primarily on our own manufactures, assuming--and, as we now faced a full-on zombie apocalypse, it was a smart assumption--that a recovery was not coming anytime soon. It would be a few years yet before the older boys would be ready to join the men and I on our raids, and this was a fragile time. We presumed that contact with others, living or dead, would be dangerous and should be avoided for now.

The radio I kept was our secret weapon. By now survivor groups either organized or, as I did previously, got rolled over by better ones. However, I also began hearing reports that the zeds weren't just mindless shamblers attracted to noise. Rather, they seemed guided by some form of intelligence and would collude as if controlled by a hive mind. My own encounters lead me to accept these reports as genuine. So, when we made a raid upon a nearby department store to acquire supplies, we took our time scouting the place, on the assumption that these hive-mind zeds would have sufficient presence of mind to ambush survivors at likely locations to raid.

I was right about the scouting, but wrong about the threat. We got into position and saw another band, not so disciplined or equipped--they looked like part of a street gang that somehow escaped the inner city and stayed alive this long, but had damn near gone feral--and clearly unwanted folks in my domain. I signaled to the others to take them down, and in a coordinated maneuver we quickly spotted and beheaded them all. Just to be sure, we also destroyed any mostly-intact heads and torched the corpses.

We cleared the store, located the supplies we sought, and controlled our exit properly. It was on the exit that the expected threat occurred, and we saw the zeds we prepared for. I called for our exit contact plan to go down, and fortunately the men kept cool and did what I told them to do. We escaped and evaded, and when we returned we hunkered down for the planned amount of time just in case. Three days passed, nothing came, so we relaxed and started anew.

We had repeated experiences of this sort. Outsiders, unsuitable for alliance or assimilation, encroaching on our lands often shadowed by bands of zeds. After a few such episodes, which I came to track on a map, I sat the men down after dinner one night and walked them through the notations on the map.

"See this?" I said, "It shows a consistent pattern. Outside bands of near-feral scroungers, often from the cities, shadowed by zeds. They come here, and we put them down. The intervals between episodes decreases with each recurrence. What does that look like to you?"

"The zeds are driving them into us."

"Yep. Someone's certain that we're here, and wants us out. They're looking to nail down where we're at."

The New Barbarians-01

The end, for me, was liberating. Many years of skulking in the shadows, carefully crafting opportunities to cull cancers from the population, now came to an end. No more need to hide away what I really am, and so when the burning ended I emerged ready to carve out my place in this restored world. Using my bolthole as a base of operations, I quickly and effectively terminated--or is it re-terminated--the zeds I encountered within a five-mile radius of my bolthole. Boy, am I glad for all those hours at the range; I got near-perfect one-shot-one-kill ammunition efficiency when engaging zeds.

By the following Spring, I found that I kept my radius clear of hostiles. Food and other supplies were still good, but resupply would become necessary sometime during the coming months because I had not the space to stock for more than a year at a time. During the warmer Winter days, I scoped out some nearby cabins and found them both intact and uninhabited. I found one near a lake, well out of sight, and relocated there before the season turned to Summer. Once I settled in, and dug out a new bolthole, I went about scavenging. Ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies I managed to recover from other boltholes I established as well as from failed hides that I cleared out. So, when Summer arrived, I was ready to go when an opportunity arises.

I had a radio. I monitored it. I heard from desperate folks within reasonable reach of my location, so I went to them. Typical fools. Unprepared, out of supplies, and freaking out now that their world is gone and somehow they survived it. My conditions were the same: "I'm the boss. You do as I say, and I let you live. Pack your shit up and follow me, or I'm leave you to get eaten."

Twelve interventions I made over the Summer, and three did not come with me. I refused two due to their being human cancers that somehow survived the burning of the world; I kneecapped them and let them suffer the indignity of getting eaten by zeds. One refused me, so I shot the man of the group and that got the rest in line. I put them all to work around the household--and yes, I now lead a household--getting ready additional space for living and storage for the winter.

That Winter took its toll. Foolish women and wimpish men acting like children didn't take well to living as their grandfathers did, so I showed no mercy in punishing them. I made examples of them, and once made I took pains to bind the rest together by blood: I took the best women as wives and began making my own heirs. I coined our household "Lakeside Hold", and when one of my wives addressed me as "Master" I went with it. The old world was dead, and with it the unnatural and toxic ideas that could not live without its artificial substitutes for real life. Natural Law abhorred the decadence I hunted in the shadows, and now once more the world is as it once was: a world where family is all, blood is life, and everyone knew their place- or else.

I remembered an article in a magazine from years before, when this was a nascent movement. "The New Barbarians" they called us then. Well, they're all dead and gone and we are thriving. If this is the new barbarism, then I am the new chieftain of the resurgent clan: Clan Thorson.