Outland (World-Lines Book 1)

by Taylor, Dennis

  Richard drove the van towards the university, watching for unexpected obstacles like fallen structures or cracks in the pavement. Dust and smoke hung in the air—Erin assured them that it had all been kicked up by the earthquake. While the earthquake hadn’t been severe enough to open a fissure capable of swallowing the van, something big enough to total the suspension would be sufficient to end their expedition.

  “Sure is dead,” Erin commented. “Er, I mean deserted.”

  Richard chuckled. “I’m guessing everyone headed for home as soon as the shaking stopped. That’s probably some kind of instinct.”

  “And it’s Sunday,” Kevin added.

  “Look, over there.” Erin pointed to a couple of people walking slowly along the sidewalk, with one supporting the other. They drove up and rolled down the window.

  The pair stopped. They were two youngish men, casually dressed. Their clothes looked like they’d been rolling around on the ground.

  I’m sure that’s exactly what we look like, Erin thought.

  “Don’t suppose your cell is working?” one of them asked Erin.

  “No,” she replied. “That’s a general problem right now. I wouldn’t get your hopes up either.”

  “Hmm. Looks like you’re going in the wrong direction, or I’d ask for a ride. Gerry here twisted his ankle in the quake. I’m Rick, by the way.”

  “There’s a place close-by you can go to get some help,” Erin replied. She gave them the warehouse address. “They’ve got supplies and stuff there, and it’ll be the safest place to be once the ash starts to fall. Unless you’ve got a ride out of town waiting wherever you’re heading to.”

  Rick frowned and replied, “And why in particular would you be making this offer?”

  “Because if I don’t, you’ll probably die,” Erin replied. His face registered shock at the brutal frankness of her comment. “Your choice,” she continued. “If you see anyone else, give them the address as well. We’re going to try to save as many people as we can.”

  “Uh, yeah… Okay,” Rick said, still looking shocked. Erin rolled up the window, and they drove off.

  “Why did you do that?” Richard asked. “Not that I disagree, but…”

  Erin replied, “Richard, publishing the portal information when we were first talking about this could have saved a lot of people now. I don’t blame any of us; this is all twenty-twenty hindsight. No one thought Yellowstone was actually going to cut loose. But now we have a situation, and we have a way to help, so I guess I feel a moral obligation.”

  Richard offered a bleak smile. “Well, you ain’t wrong.” He paused.

  “How serious are you about that 100% prediction?”

  “For animals out in the open,” she responded, “it’s certain. For people who have masks, they’ll be okay. Even drywalling masks are good enough. If people stay indoors for a couple of weeks, they’ll be okay, as long as they turn off forced-air furnaces. Of course then they’ll have the problem of no water and probably no food left. Water treatment plants will choke and die pretty fast. At that point, people will go out and try to look for supplies or help. If they get too much gunk into their lungs, their lungs can’t clear it out. And that’s fatal.”

  As they continued towards the university, they would sometimes see other people walking along or just standing looking dazed. Wherever they could, they gave them the address of the warehouse and told them to go there if they didn’t have an alternative plan. Most people looked skeptical. Erin hoped that at least some of them would make the right choice.

  It took some inventive driving by Richard, and more than one parking meter had to be sacrificed, but eventually they did make it to the university. They pulled up into the grassy area near the University Health Center. It was central to the campus and a likely place for students to gather after the quake. In any case, it was as good a place as any to start. They opened the van, pulled out the portal equipment, and set it up. They started up the generator but didn’t open the gate yet. While the university’s population in summer was low compared to the rest of the year, there were still a significant number of people around. By the time they had the portal ready to go, they had attracted a crowd of perhaps forty.

  Erin stepped to the fore and took a breath to talk with as much volume as she could manage. “Can I have your attention please? As you’ve probably heard by now, Yellowstone has erupted.”

  If Erin had been arranging it for showmanship, she could not have done better. At that moment the sound from the eruption arrived in Lincoln. The Krakatoa explosion had been audible up to 2000 miles away. This was orders of magnitude more powerful. People fell to their knees holding their ears. Windows cracked or shattered in several buildings. a few minutes lapsed after it died down before everyone’s ears recovered enough for Erin to continue.

  “Yellowstone has erupted. I guess you know that.”

  There were derisive laughs from the audience and shouts of “Thank you, Captain Obvious!” and “What gave it away?”

  Erin ignored them and continued. “In a couple of hours the ash will start to fall. Within two or three weeks, you’ll all be dead unless you have some way to get at least five hundred miles from here in the next twenty-four hours.” That produced a loud silence. “Breathing the ash causes pulmonary disease. It also destroys equipment. Chances are there will be no food deliveries into town for quite a while. Chances are the power will not be coming back on, at least not for long. Chances are the water system will fail within a week.

  “In the longer term, we may be able to get back on our feet. In the short term, it’s not going to be pleasant. We have a way out, through here.” She gestured to the gate. “It’s not civilized, so we’re going to bring out some shotguns before opening it. Please don’t be alarmed.”

  Students looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Some started laughing until Richard and Kevin came around carrying shotguns. Kevin was visibly uncomfortable.

  Richard pumped the shotgun with a loud clickety click and looked over to Erin. She held up her tablet and pressed OK.

  The gate came to life, and showed trees, meadow, and a very large and very startled moose. The moose gave a bellow of alarm and left in a hurry. Several students showed signs of having the same idea.

  “If you don’t want to come, we understand. It’s a free country. You can go ahead and try whatever you think will save your life. But you’ll know by now that there’s no easy way out. If you’re here right now, you probably don’t have a ride out of town, and getting out of town is your only alternative. We have a location on the other side with supplies. We have weapons in the van. We offer no guarantees, just a chance at getting out of this alive. If you’re interested, please hang around. Everyone else, better start on whatever it is you are planning to do.”

  There was a lot of shuffling of feet and uncertain looks. A few students went running off, but most stayed.

  “Now,” Erin continued, “we want to save as many people as we can. I need as many of you as possible to make an attempt to find other people on campus and send them here. Don’t get long-winded. Just tell them someone’s organizing something here.

  “Also, if you have anything or know of any equipment or supplies that’s easily accessible and would be useful, now would be the time to go get it,” she added.

  Many students broke into groups, discussed tactics, then took off in ones and twos.

  The students who continued to hang around the portal asked some questions, and several people peeked through the gate to convince themselves it was real. A couple of students were allowed to walk through the gate with Richard. They stepped through, looked around for a minute or two, and stepped back through the portal looking boggled. One remarked, “Frigging cool!”

  There were many questions, and Richard tried to give a capsule summary of the gates. Erin kept repeating that right now they should be searching for other people to bring along or supplies and equipment to take.

  A couple of students came
forward and stated that they had weapons experience. Richard questioned them briefly, then started handing out shotguns and assault rifles.

  “Holy crap,” one student said. “You’re not playing games!”

  Richard smiled and replied, “Wait until you meet your first smilodon. You’ll be happy to be carrying that, believe me!”

  Richard stepped forward to face the crowd. “All right people,” he announced in a loud voice. “We need to move some of the items in the van through the gate to the other side. These guys,” pointing to the two recruits, “will guard. Could I get a couple of people to help haul things across?”

  People were happy to have something to do, even manual labor. There was no shortage of volunteers, and in short order they had moved the weapons and other supplies that had been grabbed in a hurry at the warehouse.

  Soon more people were trickling into the area. Many of them were injured and were being supported by others. It was obvious that the searchers were finding a lot of people still on campus. One of the very few pluses of the earthquake was that it had kicked the attitude out of most people. Now they were willing to stand still and listen where there was an offer of aid, food, and shelter.

  By now the explanation for the gate had been repeated enough times that Erin and Richard no longer had to be involved. As new bodies came to the group, they received explanations, albeit not always completely correct, for the gate and the guns. Students would discuss the situation, then one or two would take off at a run. And people were coming back with supplies.

  “Medical supplies,” Richard nodded with approval. “I think we might have skimped on those.”

  “That’s because Captain Reference can’t stand the sight of blood,” Erin commented.

  Kevin meanwhile set up the second portal on the other side. At this point Kevin stopped, looked stricken, and said, “Oh, fuck. Fuckitty fuck fuck.”

  Richard looked at Kevin in surprise, this being very un-Kevinish behavior. “What?” he asked.

  “We have two portals, and one generator.”

  Richard looked at the gate, at the generator, and at Kevin. “Oh fuck”.

  “Wait. Inverter!” Kevin said. “I think the van has one!” He rushed off to the van. “Yesssssss!” he called from the cab.

  It took some talking to convince several students that they weren’t about to be abandoned on the other side, but soon they had managed to turn off the first gate, plug it into the inverter, move the generator through the reactivated gate, and start up the second portal on the other side. Everyone was relieved when a second gate opened beside the first one on Earthside.

  One of the students who had just returned to the group came up to Richard. “Hey, listen. There’s a bunch of livestock in the Animal Sciences Complex. Can we do anything about them?”

  Richard looked at Erin, who looked stricken. “These gates aren’t big enough to push a cow through, even if the cow was cooperative, which I very much doubt would be the case. Horses ditto. Chickens, yes. Pigs as long as they’re greased.” She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Look, Erin. We need that livestock, so we’re not going to abandon them. People come first, but once we have everyone safe, we’ll come back for them. Is two days in a livestock building going to harm them?”

  “If the building collapses, yes,” Erin replied.

  “Aw crap. Okay.” Richard turned to the man they’d been talking to, whose name was also Richard.

  “Call me Dick,” he said.

  “Well, better you than me,” Richard replied. “Okay, Dick, how many people would it take to herd all the animals through a couple of miles of wilderness?”

  Dick thought for a moment. “We’d lose the chickens and pigs right away. But the cattle, sheep and horses would be okay, as long as the horses were being ridden. There are eight horses in residence right now, I think. So eight people minimum.”

  “Right.” Richard turned to Erin. “Erin, we’ll get everyone through, then come back with the truck gate and do what we can. Good enough?”

  Erin sighed. “We don’t have a choice. None of this is ideal.”

  Richard assigned Dick the task of organizing the rescue party. Dick walked away, already calling to people and discussing details.

  “You know,” Richard said to Erin, “there’s a good chance that there are a lot of other things we should be looking for right now at the university. Seeds from Plant Sciences, tools and equipment from Engineering, God knows what-all else. You have to know we’re going to think of them too late.” He looked around at all the activity. “Not that there will be time to act on any of it anyway.”

  Erin nodded in silent agreement. She looked around, looked at her watch, and thought for a second. She called to some people who were standing nearby. “Hey, guys, this is taking a lot longer than I expected. We won’t be able to get to our warehouse camp before dark. So we’re going to have to camp tonight. We’ll need fuel for fires. Can you organize a scavenger party? Furniture, bookshelves, whatever. Enough to keep a dozen small fires going all night.”

  The students talked to others nearby, then about twenty of them scattered.

  Erin heaved a tired sigh. Unbelievable. I’ll have to get Bill to explain to me why this stuff is so simple on TV.

  Reactions

  The eruption was a ratings hit for local and network news. Throughout the Midwest, people hurried home to sit glued to their TVs. In the modern era, where so much violence and calamity happens on TV without any effect on the viewer, it was unsurprising that people took a concerned but casual attitude towards the eruption. Yes, the pictures were dramatic, and yes, there had been an earthquake, but that was over. And yes, experts were predicting a fall of volcanic ash, but there had been ash from Mt St Helen’s, Mt Pinatubo, and that unpronounceable Iceland volcano. The worst effect of those had been some cars needing a new paint job when owners unwisely tried to wipe the ash off.

  So there were volcano house parties, volcano barbecue parties, and volcano cocktail parties. People invited neighbors over, set up the TV on the patio, and chatted, comparing notes. Officials continued to advise calm. Law enforcement continued to reassure. And many people, accustomed to listening to the voice of authority, took them at their word and stayed put.

  Other people took the issue a little more seriously, but still viewed it as a hunker-down-and-wait-it-out situation. There were runs on banks and grocery stores. Weapons shops did a brisk business, especially if they were flexible about paperwork. Home-improvement stores sold out of dust-masks and respirators in record time. People made a point of refilling their water coolers and stocking up on spare jugs of water.

  The smart ones got out right away. Families that threw the absolute basics into the car and headed for the highway would make up most of the survivors.

  Moving Out

  The model shows that the fallout from a Yellowstone super-eruption could affect three quarters of the US. The greatest danger would be within 1,000 km of the blast where 90 per cent of people could be killed.

  BBC— Science & Nature. “Supervolcano: The World’s Biggest Bang.”

  Bill, Matt, and Monica were busy for most of the afternoon. They had amassed a lot of equipment and supplies over the last few weeks.

  Monica was scrupulous about her guard duties. She made frequent use of a pair of binoculars to scan the area for movement. And of course she got plenty of practice spotting local wildlife. Which isn’t a bad thing, she said to herself. Herd of deer grazing equals no goons or predators nearby.

  Matt and Bill were having a great time with the bobcat. In fact they were arguing constantly about whose turn it was to drive it and how long someone had worked with it. Boys and toys, she thought—while conceding that she’d like to have a go at it too. Of course I’d never admit anything like that.

  In late afternoon, the walkie-talkie started squawking, and they had an exchange with Kevin. The exchange went slowly because Kevin couldn’t keep the push-to-talk/release-to-listen co
ncept straight, but eventually they determined that the university group was running behind and would have to do an overnighter.

  Then Kevin started explaining about the livestock in the Animal Sciences Complex.

  “Crap, we have to save the livestock if we can,” Bill said.

  “And not only because we’re wonderful, caring people,” Monica added. “If we have to stay in Outland for a long time, livestock will be good to have.”

  “True dat,” Bill replied. Monica faked gagging at him.

  Matt said, “Y’know, I think we can make this work.”

  In The News

  We have received reports that an increasing number of merchants, closer to the location of the eruption, are no longer accepting credit cards. One vendor when contacted said, “Cash only. A bunch of information on a computer tape doesn’t put food on my table, especially if the mainframe goes down. I’ll take cash, gold, or barter. Nothing else.”

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  There have been unconfirmed reports of more explosions in Washington DC. Officials have commented that witness descriptions are indicative of terrorist-style attacks. So far, no group has taken responsibility.

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  Fundamentalist churches throughout the nation have declared the Yellowstone eruption to be the first volley in the final war of Armageddon. “The unbelievers, the atheists, the idolaters, are being punished. The only hope is through God,” said one pastor on a local cable broadcast. It is not clear however that the faithful are faring any better than the average person. Critics have been quick to point out that the southern, primarily fundamentalist states will be right in the path of the Ash.

  ---

  Police are reporting runs on banks, food stores, weapons stores, and construction and home improvement retailers. There have been reports of violence in cases where weapons retailers have insisted on the legally mandated waiting periods before purchasing weapons.