by Dave Bowman
Hopefully today would be the day that Anne would get better, and they could head toward White Pine Falls in the morning. Yes, they should stay put today, Daniel decided. The stress of packing up, leaving, and searching for another town to stay in wouldn’t help Anne recover. Besides, there could be danger anywhere they went. They would stay where they were for now, until they could rejoin their people and enjoy the safety in numbers.
He brought the bucket of water inside and set it to boil in a pot on the wood cook stove. They had no choice but to drink the water from the well.
And just in case, Daniel resolved to keep his gun on him at all times.
12
With their food and supplies slashed, Nick’s group set out on the southern route through the mountains.
Jessa led the way in her Forest Service truck with Trina and Bethany. Liz followed in the Dodge Ram with Charlie, Matt and Mia. Nick brought up the rear in the Ford. He wore goggles to protect his eyes from the dust and any rocks that might find their way inside the open space where they had removed the windshield. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to drive, but they needed the supplies that were loaded in the bed of the truck.
Besides, he considered it his penance for his lapse in judgment. But he didn’t dwell on that too much. What was he supposed to do – let the kids just take whatever they wanted? He felt a certain responsibility in setting an example for Mia and Matt. He couldn’t teach them to let people walk all over them without a fight.
If they could get out of Colorado and into White Pine Falls, things wouldn’t look so bleak. He’d much prefer the pressure to get shelter built before winter to fighting off thieves, gangs, and starvation. Now that most of their food had been stolen, they’d have to scavenge in houses and stores along the way.
An hour into their journey, Jessa’s brake lights came on. As the convoy came to a stop, Nick looked ahead to see a sight that made his heart sink.
Massive amounts of rocks and soil had fallen onto the road from the cliff towering over them.
Up ahead, Jessa closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to even look at the giant pile of boulders. They had run into one disaster after another. Now, a landslide just seemed like a cruel joke.
A sick, nauseous feeling gripped her as her passengers silently opened their doors and stepped out to look at the landslide. She suddenly felt like they were living in a nightmare that never ended.
She took a deep breath and jumped out of the truck to join Nick and the others at the edge of the obstruction. The boulders were enormous, and the soil must have weighed tons. The road was completely buried.
Her heart beat faster as she surveyed the extent of the blockage. She fought back claustrophobia and panic. It was almost as if the boulders were pressing down on top of her.
“Now what?” Trina asked, breaking the trance everyone seemed to be in.
“We’ll have to just turn around, right?” Liz asked, her eyes still on the boulders. “Take a different route.”
Matt went to fetch the map. Everyone stared at the landslide while he was gone. Seeing how a big chunk of the mountain had just slid down like that, with no regard for humans’ concepts about progress and order, had a strange way of humbling even a casual observer.
He returned and spread it open on the light green hood of Jessa’s truck. Nick stepped up to trace the route they had planned back to Interstate 25.
“This is the only way to take this southern route back to the interstate,” he said, pointing out where they were on the map.
“What about this northern route?” Liz asked, indicating another series of roads that led out of the mountains.
“That route is much longer and slower,” Nick said. “But most importantly, it veers too close to Denver.”
Everyone was quiet, remembering their encounters with the gang members.
“So we run a much greater risk of colliding with the BSC up there,” Nick continued.
“Yeah, and now they’re really pissed at us and probably have even more people out hunting for us,” Jessa added.
“I’d really rather not go through that again,” Trina said.
“I don’t think any of us do,” Liz said. “But what other options do we have?”
The eight of them were quiet for a while, staring at the slide.
“Can we haul those rocks off?” Matt asked.
Nick shook his head. “The Ford has maybe an 8,000-pound towing capacity. The other trucks have even less. Look at the size of some of those boulders. They weigh a lot more than four tons.”
Matt looked at the boulders that were taller than any of the trucks, then he looked down. “That was a stupid question.”
Nick gave him a little smile. “I wish we could just make this disappear. But I’m afraid we’re not getting around these rocks. This road is impassable.”
Bethany moved her hands over her belly and leaned against the truck. “How much longer will it be?”
Nick looked at the map. “It’ll add another four hours to an already long trip. Maybe more.”
“Maybe a lot more when you figure in the stops to scavenge for food,” Jessa said. “We can’t forget about that. It will take all day to get to New Mexico this way.”
“I think we can survive the longer trip,” Liz said. “I’m just worried about running into the BSC again.”
Charlie drew closer to the map. “What if we just go the route we took to get to the ski lodge in the first place? Would there be any outlets to the interstate before getting too close to Denver?”
Charlie traced the route with his finger. He shook his head and answered his own question. “That wouldn’t work. That would just spit us out even closer to gang territory, wouldn’t it?”
Nick stared at the map, following the faint, twisting lines that crossed the western half of Colorado. “Looks like it,” he said.
“So our only choice,” Liz said, “Is to take the northern route.”
“And risk running into the BSC again,” Trina added glumly. Her face twisted up in worry. “I feel like we’re driving into our own death.”
Jessa looked over at Nick, trying to read his face. He was staring at the landslide, his face expressionless. She imagined he was cursing their bad luck, just as she was.
Liz looked at each of them struggling with the disastrous development. “Hey, we’ve done pretty well for ourselves so far, right?” She forced a smile. “If we run into them again, who’s to say we can’t fend for ourselves?”
But even Liz knew that their encounters with the BSC could have easily gone the other way. They had been lucky with the gang members, and that luck could run out at any time.
“Another run-in means bloodshed,” Trina said, her voice shaking. “Ours or theirs. And fighting them off means we have to kill them. The idea is sickening to me. I don’t want any more blood on my hands.”
“None of us do, Trina,” Jessa said. “Every time we’ve shot at people, it was in self-defense.”
“Not every time,” Trina said.
Liz opened her mouth to respond, but she stopped herself. Maybe Trina was right. The guys had gone after those teenagers. They had shot at them in an effort to recover the supplies. Maybe they had gone too far.
“What we did this morning was self-defense, too,” Charlie said, glaring at Trina. “Those kids stole our food. Theft isn’t the same as murder, but starvation will kill people all the same. We had to at least try to get our stuff back. So, we didn’t succeed. But we tried. And if we had gotten the truck back, you’d be eating the food right now without any objections.”
Trina looked away.
“That’s true,” she said quietly. “I understand why you guys went after those thieves. I don’t mean to judge anyone here. But,” she said, wiping a tear away, “I just can’t face another confrontation where I have to shoot somebody. There’s been so much death already.”
Jessa sighed and sat on the ground in front of the landslide. She looked at the way the slope of the mountain had bro
ken apart, as if it had simply given up the effort to stay in place and released itself to tumble down into the ravine below.
The landscape had been changing gradually since the dawn of time. Humans had thought they could tame it, and they had kept certain things under control, at least to a degree. Now, nature would take over. In a hundred years, with no one to clear the trails and dirt roads like this one, they would be reclaimed by the wilderness.
The prospect of another battle made Jessa’s stomach tie itself in a knot. All she wanted was to get everyone back to New Mexico where they could get settled and live quiet lives. It was the most anyone could hope for in this new world, among these remnants of civilization.
Nor did she ever forget that she was the reason her friends had gone to Colorado in the first place. The guilt and confusion weighed heavily on her shoulders. She had to do everything she possibly could to get them out of there.
“None of us want to kill anyone,” Jessa said, breaking the tense silence. “I’d never shot anyone in my life until some guys in Santa Fe tried to attack me three weeks ago. As soon as society collapsed, people started going insane. Not everyone, but a lot of them. Maybe the weak ones, I don’t know. The ones who couldn’t cope with having to survive on their own without civilization to keep them safe and warm.”
She stood up, her eyes still on the boulders scattered across the road.
“It’s like the horror of losing everything – family, friends, a way of life, all that gave us meaning – made some people lose their grip on reality. They lost a part of themselves. Their humanity,” Jessa said. “They’re the ones who turn to theft and mindless violence and enslavement. They don’t know any other way to make it. They don’t see any other way to survive without wielding power over others, without hurting anyone they view as weaker or in the way.
“But the way I see it, they’re the weak ones. The people like us, even though we may not have been the most prepared, or have the best skills, or do everything perfectly – we’re the strong ones. We can survive without senseless cruelty.”
Jessa, slightly breathless, looked up at the others.
“That’s a nice speech, Jessa,” Trina said. “But what’s your point? We still have to kill people if they’re dangerous to us, right? In the end we’re all just murderers.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that the difference between us and the BSC is that we’re not hurting people to prop ourselves up. Everyone here would prefer to never pick up a weapon against another human again. And our friends from Los Gatos are like us. They don’t use force unnecessarily. But when it comes to survival, or living our lives freely –”
“You mean not becoming a forced laborer for the BSC?” Liz asked with anger in her voice as she remembered Trina’s story of the work camps the gang ran.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Jessa said. “The rules have changed. We no longer have law enforcement or the justice system to protect us. We’re on our own. Defending ourselves with lethal force is unfortunately what we’ll have to do now, if we want to go on living.”
Her gaze moved over the faces before her. Mia was looking at her, listening attentively with big, innocent eyes. It saddened Jessa that a little girl had to hear this kind of talk. Even worse, Mia had to live through violence and extreme uncertainty. Matt was too young for this, too.
But Jessa couldn’t shield them from reality. She could only do everything in her power to keep them alive.
“None of us here will take a life unless it’s to protect each other or what we need to survive. We’re not fighting for sport. We’re fighting for our survival, for our freedom.”
Jessa turned on her heels and headed back to her truck. She thought she saw a glimmer of a proud smile on Nick’s face as she passed by.
She opened the truck door and paused, glancing over at the rest of the group who still stood by the landslide.
“Are you coming or not?” she asked.
13
Everyone jumped to action.
Daylight was wasting, and they had to face the inevitable. There was no other route but north. They’d have to get closer to Denver than anyone wanted.
Most of them hadn’t eaten since last night. They were saving what little rations they had for the evening, in case they didn't find anything before then. Bethany, Mia and Matt, whom everyone agreed should get to eat more frequently, had only eaten a small breakfast of oatmeal and milk.
They all hoped to find an empty house to raid at some point in the journey out of the mountains. But as the three thieves had said earlier, there was nothing but wilderness in those parts.
Liz tried to ignore her growling stomach as she drove the twisting roads. Being in a stressful situation seemed to make her hungrier. She held her breath on each bend of the road, hoping to see an empty vacation home in the distance, but she saw nothing except alpine forests and river valleys.
She couldn’t believe that just a week ago, they had stocked their kitchen with enough canned and boxed food to last them for months. Plus, they were preparing a garden that was sure to give them fresh food. They had lost so much, and so quickly. It still felt like a dream.
Of course, just a month ago, Liz had been living in a city with what seemed like an endless supply of food. Planes and trucks had brought in food from all over the country and even from other continents. Consumers were taught to expect every kind of food at the market, whenever they wanted it.
Tropical fruit could be found in the dead of winter, grown thousands of miles away. Restaurants served every kind of exotic cuisine she could ever want.
Liz, like many, never had any reason to think that way of life would ever end.
She remembered the dinners with her family before her loved ones had been torn from her years ago – the homemade pizza her dad made, and the comfort food her mom would cook when Liz was feeling down.
“There’s nothing that a big plate of fried chicken, biscuits, and greens won’t fix,” her mom had said.
And her mother had often been right.
Since living on her own, Liz had stopped cooking much. She usually filled up on pastries at her coffee shop job, and then called in take-out food at her favorite neighborhood restaurants. The only times she got home-cooked food were evenings spent with her friend Sarah.
Liz now cringed to think of how she had taken so much for granted. She had let food go bad, buying fresh produce at the store and then never using it, only to throw it out after it rotted in the refrigerator. She had never considered that the supermarket shelves would someday be empty, that the long-distance trucks would cease to ship food all over the country.
As bad as things had been in her life before the Hosta virus, she had never gone hungry or worried about where her next meal would come from.
Now, she would have done almost anything to get her hands on all the food she had expected to appear so effortlessly in her previous life.
She looked over at Charlie, who was jolted awake for the umpteenth time when the truck went over a pothole. He sat up in his seat and looked at Liz.
“Too bad it’s so hard to sleep on this bumpy road,” he said, grinning at her. “I can have all the food I want in my dreams. I was just about to tear into a rib-eye steak.”
Liz groaned to think of a juicy, sizzling steak, putting a hand on her growling stomach. “Yeah, a nice rib-eye with mashed potatoes and green beans. With ice cream for dessert.”
“Hey, cut it out up there,” Matt said from the backseat. “That’s torture.”
“Sorry,” Liz said. “No more food talk.”
Liz looked over at Charlie and smiled nervously. “We’ll definitely need food soon. There aren’t any houses to scavenge from around here. Do you think we could hunt in these woods?”
He looked out the window at the conifer forest whizzing by. “I think so, if the virus hasn’t killed off all the game. I think Daniel told Nick there was still small game to be found.”
“It would slow us down, though,�
� Matt said.
“Yeah, and we’d probably have to wait until early evening to spot anything,” Charlie said. “But if we don’t find any houses to raid by then, I might try my luck with the old rifle.”
Mia leaned forward and looked at Liz hunched over the steering wheel. “Do you think we’ll see the gangsters again?”
Liz looked at her in the rearview. Mia looked so small and frightened. “I hope not, sweetie. But if we do, we need to be ready.”
“Does everyone still have a gun?” Mia asked. “Trina’s gun was stolen, right?”
“Yeah, but we still have enough,” Charlie said. “That’s one thing we aren’t low on, is weapons. We’ve picked up a lot of firearms along the way.”
He thought of the gruesome task of removing the weapons from the fallen gang members after the shootout at Chris’s cabin. They’d even found some extra ammo in their vehicles.
“And they weren’t in Nick’s truck that was stolen?” Mia asked.
Charlie smiled. “No, Nick’s way too protective of those guns to leave them out in the truck. He kept the extras in his room at the ski lodge. Don’t worry, Mia,” he said, turning around to look at her. “We’re well armed.”
“Oh,” Mia said. She took a deep breath. “I was thinking maybe I should carry one, too. You know, just in case.”
Liz looked up at Mia in the rearview, then exchanged a look with Charlie.
“Sure, Mia, if you feel comfortable with that,” Charlie said.
“Well, Nick did teach you all about gun safety and how to shoot,” Liz said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to let you practice some more the next time we stop. Do you want to use your dad’s revolver?”
“Okay,” Mia said. “I mean, it’s just for emergencies, like if…”
Her voice trailed off.
“Like when you and me and Bethany had to hide in the woods?” Matt asked.