At the End of the World

by Charles E Gannon

  “Well, that’s how they survived here,” Prospero muttered.

  “You mean the rats or the infected?” Steve asked.

  “Both. Because for every place the stalkers could get into, the rats must have wormed into a dozen more.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. The rats fed on whatever stores only they could reach. Their population grew. The stalkers hunted them.” I glanced backwards. “Maybe vice versa, sometimes.”

  “Yeah, sounds right,” drawled Chloe. “Now what?” She was bored; there’d been nothing for her to shoot.

  “Now,” I grinned at her, “we do the dull stuff.”

  “You mean, the more dull stuff,” she corrected with an eye roll.

  The “dull stuff” took the rest of the day and part of the next. First, we got every window and door into every building wide open. Then, Steve and Prospero drove back to town to announce that, as expected, the clearance was complete and we were ready for the salvage teams. While the two of them were gone, Jeeza spotted two stalkers coming towards us from Lady Hill.

  Chloe took them out at three hundred yards (showing off) just before the guys returned with the Rover Rover, and this time, it really did live up to its name: there were more than a dozen dogs crowded into it, sniffing and eager. We just let them loose on the airbase, where they terrorized—and significantly reduced—the local rat population and performed an independent sniff test for any remaining stalkers. Result: nada.

  As we were regathering them to do the same job at the housing complex, the first of the salvage teams arrived: about twenty folks in pickup trucks and vans. The island has plenty, given all the military loads that had to be moved from one site to another.

  Our first job was to compile a quick-and-dirty catalog of the contents of each building. Not that we didn’t trust the council, or they us, but, well, if you start with an inventory, you are less likely to have anything disappear and then get into an argument about who should have gotten what.

  If anyone who reads this is interested, the full inventory, and what we took from it, should be among the papers stored with this journal. I’ll only mention a few highlights here.

  Guns galore. Mostly M4s and M16A2s. A couple dozen M9s and a few Brit HP35s. We passed on the handful of Brit L1A1 uh, “bullpups,” with Prospero strongly encouraging that decision. There was more 5.56x45mm ammo than you could shake a forest-worth of sticks at, and a good amount of belted 7.62x51 NATO, but no sign of a machine gun to fire it.

  There wasn’t much in the way of body armor, but enough so that everyone was able to have a full rig—except me, because I’m just that fucking small. A reasonable number of smoke and tear gas grenades, but nothing else except for a few frags. Plenty of personal medkits, but about half of them had been opened and used for wound management. Which meant that there was no way of telling if the dried blood on the packaging was infectious or if some invisibly small drop had contaminated the other contents. So everything that came in a waterproof container we boiled and saved; everything else had to go.

  There was some surgical gear and anesthetics. Some really excellent maps. Clothing for all weather and climates. Milspec tactical gloves, knee and shoulder pads, face- and eye-pro, comm gear. SCBA and all the gear for the airstrip’s fire and emergency response team—pieces of which did fit me. So while everybody else gets to walk around looking ready for combat, I get to walk around looking like I’m ready to put out fires. Honestly, I’m thinking that the others should go for fire coats as well. We need full body coverage if we want to be protected against bites and scratches. But if they want to spend a few days looking all tacticool, let them. I, the always-dull voice of reason, can wait that long.

  Lots of meds, both OTC and prescription. However, (no surprise) we came up short on aspirin, NSAIDs, analgesics: all the stuff people gobble down when they’re suffering from a cold or flu.

  All sorts of handy containers; all sorts of toiletry items; all sorts of prophylactics. Tons and tons—literally—of fuel of all kinds. Tons and tons (again, literally) of food, and especially wonderful: a treasure trove of carbs, mostly in rooms or containers that neither the stalkers nor the rats could get into. We had already been rehearsing various cautionary mantras about reintroducing carbs slowly. Just like getting water after long dehydration, you may want to gulp down as much as you can, but you will regret it.

  I know this list seems pretty long, but it barely scratches the surface. The super-short version is this: if there was something we needed, the odds were that it was there. Or that you could jury-rig an equivalent out of what was.

  Back before the plague, you usually didn’t have a lot of needs, really. Most of them were defined by what you were going to eat or do over the coming week. Some stuff, like clothes and sporting gear meant thinking ahead a little farther. But then the plague came and the only thing you had enough of was breathable air. Everything else was either in short supply or unavailable. So you either got used to doing without or building work-arounds. Or you died. I can’t begin to tell you how many times since the Captain bypassed Valparaiso that we’ve had to improvise or cross our fingers and hope for the best.

  But a military base is essentially a stockpile of ninety-five percent of the things you’d really want—really need—after the apocalypse. So when we suddenly had access to the mostly undiminished stores of a combined U.S. and RAF airbase? It was like Christmas and deliverance all rolled into one. Nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for the almost physical shock of relief I felt as all that gear got inventoried and trucked away.

  In the weird new reality of the post-apocalypse, we had gone from being paupers to Warren Buffett in the blink of an eye.

  October 31

  After a week back at sea, I am finally forcing myself to take up this journal again. Particularly since we’ll soon see Fernando de Noronha on the western horizon and have been preparing to make our first landing in the dark of the night.

  We left Ascension Island late on October 25, having spent all of the 24th and the morning of the 25th loading and haggling. We hadn’t anticipated any deal-making but once we were done bagging stalkers, we had the time to think about next steps in detail. And Prospero felt enough a part of our group to make some really good suggestions.

  Specifically, he pointed out that there were two items we could really use that hadn’t been available at the base: a compact solar array and reverse osmosis membranes for our water purification unit. Fortunately, both were available from various locals, so we could use salvage to trade for them.

  But then the council stuck their long noses in and ruled out a private trade. They hastily designated both solar panels and water purifiers as “critical technologies” that were necessary for the survival of the entire island. Consequently, all sales of such items had to be approved by the council who were also muttering about applying surcharges. The actual owners rolled their eyes but didn’t complain. They weren’t the ones who’d be paying the surcharges.

  There was one little wrinkle in the council’s shifty plan, however; we hadn’t finished declaring our cut of the salvage. So we told them we were going to take all of the carb-rich foods—every bag, can, box, sack, and crate of it. The council cried foul. We shrugged and called those foodstuffs “critical to our survival” and folded our arms. At which point they relented about the solar set up and the purification membranes, and we, in turn, relented about taking all the carbs. The trades went through as originally planned. The only additional cost was in bruised feelings, which, in the post-apocalypse, isn’t as unimportant as it might sound.

  However, that was just the council. The rank and file locals proclaimed us heroes and were happy to trade for all sorts of other useful items (too many to list here). Then they hosted us at the Obsidian, where we suffered through a few rounds of their worse-than-death booze.

  Some of the goods we picked up in trade were things we hadn’t thought about until we were about to leave. For instance, we acquired quite a collection of Fodo
r’s and other travel books that detailed (and included some maps of) almost every island in or near the Caribbean. Including our next destination: Fernando de Noronha. Since we’d ultimately need to grab supplies and salvage from those presumably stalker-infested islands, those stupid little guidebooks and port maps could prove the difference between life and death.

  We also got a parting gift from the townsfolk: two of the dogs that had helped us clear the airbase. One was Cujo. The other was Daisy, who outweighed Cujo by at least twenty pounds, was totally dog-smitten with him, and was getting pretty round with their pups.

  The idea that we’d soon be up to our collective asses in puppies did cause some muted grousing about food and water and space and how to train any dog not to crap or pee all over a boat. However, in the end, all those potential problems had solutions. In fact, what the airfield mission had taught us was that dogs were the solution when it came to living in a world teeming with infected. Whether as guards, detectors, or fighters, they had proven their worth so many times and in so many ways during the clearing of the airbase that no one seriously entertained the possibility of not taking them with us. If we didn’t, the odds were much greater that, someplace along the way, one or more of us would be surprised by a stalker and that, as they say, would be that.

  Which was totally unacceptable. There was nothing we wouldn’t do or spend to minimize the chance of that happening. Because if one of us was bitten, the only thing we could do was provide a mercy bullet. And no matter who fired it, it would be like each of us putting the barrel right against our own hearts. Yeah, our crew was weird and sometimes dysfunctional, but we were a family: the one thing that felt a little bit like the way the world had been before. The one thing that just might keep us sane.

  When we weighed anchor late on the 25th, there were a handful of people to see us off as we headed toward the setting sun.

  Most were gone by the time we’d pulled out beyond the other boats riding in the shallows.

  So much for being heroes.

  * * *

  The first day at sea, the solar panels proved to be a big help, particularly since we now have a new milspec radio, with a civilian back up, and a second (and better) radar set that was installed by locals with real skills. We’d also grabbed a bunch of other electronics, everything from laptops to CD players. Collectively, they made navigation a little more certain and life at sea a lot less monotonous. Rod had been like a kid in a Willy Wonka version of Radio Shack, finding the best, most rugged, least Internet-dependent programs and computers he could.

  We were also able to begin recharging batteries and could tap the panels to boil the water before feeding it into both purifiers (yeah, we got a portable backup). We were told that this pre-cleansing step would extend the life of the reverse osmosis membranes. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Either way, I figure it can’t hurt.

  And toilet paper. Even the stuff that had been water-damaged at the base—oh, the wonder that is toilet paper. By necessity, we’d gotten pretty used to living without it. You just get less fussy and keep reminding yourself that all the seawater surrounding you has lots of different hygiene applications. Until, eventually, you come to believe and accept that toilet paper is just a thing of days gone by, a past luxury to which you have become indifferent.

  Until, that is, you get hold of some once again. On the one hand, you realize why people cut down hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest every year just to wipe their butts. But in the very next moment, you can get depressed, realizing that—even if we do take back this world, somehow—it’s gonna be a long time before humans have the necessary luxuries of time, effort, and resources to produce Charmin again. And until we do, I’m not sure we can consider civilization to have been fully and firmly reestablished.

  However, while the rest of us were droopy-eyed with delight over sufficient carbs and the return of what had once been called “bathroom tissue,” Prospero was eagerly learning his way around every laptop and computer that technonerd Rod had cherry-picked for us. As soon as he finished that, he started burning CDs and copying data to thumb-drives like he’d been possessed by a digital demon.

  A seventy-foot ketch may sound big, but it’s not. So when Prospero started stalking feverishly back and forth between various special machines while muttering what sounded like incantations cribbed from his namesake, everybody knew it. We just figured it was his own (admittedly weird) business. But when he started showing up late for his shifts on deck or at the wheel, I had no choice but to drop by and ask, “Uh…whatcha doin’?”

  “Protecting ephemeral reflex,” he replied.

  It was structured like a sentence, but it didn’t make sense. “What?”

  “Sorry. Just a tick.” Which in English-English means, “just a sec.” He finished messing with a Linus (Lynust? Line-uks? Linux?) machine that he had dubbed “the pick of the litter” and turned toward me. “The GPS rescue software was code-named Project Ephemeral Reflex. My copy may be the only one.”

  I looked at all the hardware. “Couldn’t you have burned copies back in Georgetown? I mean, I know electricity was rationed, but—”

  “Powering the computers wasn’t the problem: storage media and formatting was.”

  “Huh?” muttered Chloe, who had drifted in behind me. I heard the others approaching.

  “Is that why you needed the Linus machine?” I said, cocking my head at his “pick of the litter.”

  He stared, baffled for a moment, then looked away awkwardly. Like he was embarrassed for me.

  Rod muttered, “It’s a Linux machine, Alvaro. Probably much better for his purposes.”

  “What do you mean, ‘his purposes’?” Steve asked.

  “I mean that I’m pretty sure that the code for Ephemeral Reflex didn’t start life in a Windows or Apple OS,” Rod murmured. When he resorted to that extremely gentle tone, we knew that the discussion had just moved into the very special Twilight Zone where only compugeeks can live, work, and speak the language.

  “Spot on,” Prospero said with a quick nod. “I wanted to make sure we have plenty of backups on plenty of different media. There’s no knowing which we might need when we get—”

  “Prospero,” I said.

  He stopped, turned.

  “Back up a bit. You said you may have ‘the only copy’ of Ephemeral Reflex? What about the team at Kourou?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe, but we can’t be certain they got a complete copy of it.”

  “What?” exclaimed Rod.

  Prospero sighed. “The code for Ephemeral Reflex was being worked on around the globe. Everybody was on everybody else’s distribution list, but the comms became unreliable. Stations stopped responding. My Yank friend got all the pieces just before—well, you saw how he wound up.”

  “And Kourou never confirmed receipt of the same, uh, pieces of, uh, code?” It was like I was trying to deliver a bad line from a bad spy flick.

  Prospero shook his head. “No, and Dortmund—they sent the last bit—went dark minutes after we got it on Ascension. But it may be that they went permanently dark before they sent the packet to Kourou.”

  Rod nodded. “Makes sense.”

  I looked at him. “Explain that.”

  Rod shrugged. “Well, Kourou has that big dish—Diane—on-site. So if they got complete code, then they should have immediately uploaded it and made GPS safe. But since it isn’t, they didn’t. Upload the program, I mean.”

  “Clearly not,” Prospero agreed. “Fortunately, the Kourou team had taken precautions for a worst-case scenario. They sent all the other teams technical details on Diane, their computer systems, the relevant power plants and backups.”

  “Typical nerds and computer jocks,” Chloe muttered with rolled eyes.

  Prospero frowned. “Scoff if you must, but that gives us a blueprint for how to load the program, power the array, and send it. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know why they didn’t. Could be that they lost containment, were breached and
overrun, or had a severed data or power line. Or maybe, they never got the last bits of code from Dortmund. In which case, this copy”—he held up a thumb drive—“could be all that’s needed to complete the mission.”

  “Or,” said Jeeza, frowning, “maybe that antenna—Diane?—was damaged. In which case, nothing we do will fix the situation.”

  Prospero shrugged. “True, but we can be bloody sure of this: if we don’t go and see if we can fix it, GPS will be lost. For good.”

  Jeeza nodded. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. “Meaning that, even if there’s nothing to be done, some of us could still die. For nothing.”

  I nodded and stepped in between them. “Which is why Fernando de Noronha is more than just a water and salvage stop. It’s a training opportunity.”

  Jeeza stared at me, not understanding. “A…a training opportunity?”

  “That’s right,” I asserted, partly discovering the truth of what I was saying even as I made it up, word by word. “The only way we can reduce the danger of a mission to Kourou is by training for it. For real. More live ammo and more live stalkers. But in a slightly less controllable environment. Fernando de Noronha is perfect: small area, small buildings, small pre-plague population.”

  “Are you suggesting we—we cleanse it?” Chloe asked, eyes round. “Like Ascension Island?”

  “No. We don’t know enough about it to determine if that would even be possible. But we do need to restock water and top up on fuel. And while we’re there, we should assess the island. At least to the extent we can do so at night.”

  “At night?” Jeeza’s voice was louder and higher.

  I nodded. “Think about it; daytime is worse. If enough stalkers see us coming, they’ll dogpile us. But at night, we could sneak ashore, stay on the fringes, take a look around. The original population was only three thousand—”