It was a simple question, but the implications went far deeper than any of us realized at the time. You have to bear in mind that after the Big Blast civilization had pretty much broken down to the extent that the remnants of the human race were living in isolated camps of maybe a couple of hundred people maximum with limited communication between camps and those camps at least fifty miles apart. It was only about fifty years ago that we finally managed to get the radios up and running and started to be able to communicate, and even then it was sporadic as each camp had learned to be pretty much self-sufficient and in the main distrustful of other groups. Hell, for a good while I reckon most camps though they were the last human beings on the planet! So you can imagine that the idea of forming an alliance with another camp was not one that we took lightly, but here we were asking the leader of a group that was obviously stronger than ours what we could do to help!
Lord Alexander looked around out control room, his steel eyes taking in the cracked computer monitors, the spaghetti cabling running to the old radio set, the stack of small arms piled up against one wall and said
“Have you got transport? You need to know that you are now the furthest Southern camp left. Everyone South of you and that’s twenty six camps has already gone and it looks like you’re next. We’ve got a similar problem further North but we’ve also got better facilities and one or two little bonuses that are going to be useful, but you’re going to have to get together everything you can and head north.”
“You mean leave everything that we have built up here?” Natasha asked, with what I’m pretty certain was more than a hint of sarcasm “When do you want us to be ready?”
Lord Alexander smiled, the first time I had seen him do so since his arrival and said “How soon can you be ready? I’ve seen a few of these Wyrm attacks now but this is the first time I’ve seen one defeated and I have no idea how long it will be before another one shows up so sooner the better”
Sirius pursed his lips and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying “We have six transport trucks and a handful of heavy troop carriers, we can get loaded up in six hours, fueled and ready to go. We’ve also go some seriously talented people here that I think will be useful to you.”
“Ok, that sounds like a good plan to me” said Alexander “Get yourselves together and I’ll give you the co-ordinates of our camp. It’s just over a hundred miles North and it’s quite a bit bigger than you are used to.”
With that he turned and left the Command Centre and we started to make the preparations. Orders were barked and basic belongings, supplies, food, water and fuel were loaded into the transport trucks piling them high. In the end it was more like eight hours but we got there and with barely a backwards glance we left our home for what we knew was almost certainly the last time. We didn’t know what our future held, only that if we stayed we had no future at all, and if the aerial drones were anything to go by, we should have a better chance with our new allies than we could possibly have alone. We would probably have been a little happier if we had known what we were heading towards but that would have to wait.
The journey passed pretty uneventfully. The land between camps was pretty desolate, large scale farming never having re-established itself due to the nature of the contamination of much of the soil, but scrub grass and low trees broke up the featureless landscape as the miles rolled by. We mostly sat in silence, crammed into the troop transports our meager belongings clutched on our laps. I saw a few people dozing, the efforts of the previous night finally forcing sleep onto them but in the main people just sat and stared, and as we travelled through the night most of us managed to catch a few zees and as the sun rose we could see in the distance the defensive walls and gates of a camp that was much larger than the one we had left and looked much more heavily defended. Only time would tell how it would affect us all.
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