Hell Follows After (Monster of the Apocalypse Saga)

by C. Henry Martens

  The locals did their fair share of inspecting the newcomers. Men in shop aprons came to their doors and stood to watch and evaluate. Women with flour-dusted hands and hair brought laden baskets out, handing fresh, paper-wrapped pastries to those leading the oxen.

  One young lady seemed particularly engaged with Cable, who had borrowed his old buckskin to ride through town. She found it easy to keep him immobile with her flashing eyes and quick smile. Walking alongside in a passing wagon, Jody noticed and felt a strange burst of jealousy that surprised her. She was not the only one. The local young men standing on the boardwalks were studying the exchange with frowns, dark looks, and quiet commentary as well.

  A man with a metal star beneath his outer coat, pinned to his vest, stood watching both groups. He knew the locals, every single one, as part of his profession. Some he knew quite well and better than they would like. As he watched the parade of newcomers, he evaluated those who drew his attention. The man on the buckskin was one, and there were several others. He knew there was an adjustment period with any two groups of people coming together, and in this town there were more than two. His job was to keep the peace, and that was what he and his deputies would do.

  §

  Walking beside her lead team through Boulder, there were many of the young, local men who noticed the striking blonde with the flowing, long hair. Several of the bolder men hooted, gave catcalls, or whistled. Olivia paid them little mind as she pretended to ignore them.

  Finally, noting what he saw as disrespect, Edge asked Jody to take over walking with his oxen, and he moved back to protect Olivia. It was a lost effort as the catcalls were then directed at Jody. It was Cy’s turn to dismount his pony and walk beside his sister. Still, there were some rude noises made to illicit a response from the young women.

  An open air market at the center of town was passed to one side. Broad avenues with wares spilling into them from covered stalls shocked the eye with strange contraptions and variety. People in leather leggings and bone breast-plates vied with others in finely woven dashikis worn long over open sandals.

  One of the small vehicles seen earlier pulled out from a lane and surprised everyone by moving past without an animal pulling it. The strange contrivance whirred and whined quietly as it made its way into town, a spectacled man directing its course. The oxen stepped sideways with wide eyes, keeping their attention on the vehicle as it passed.

  A slight hill, down and through a grove of aging orchard trees heavy with fruit, led to an open area surrounded by simple structures. Cabins with sides constructed with large, hinged doors that could be lifted and supported to provide a shaded area and ventilation lined the perimeter closely. The largest was built as a pavilion with sliding walls that nested together when open. A community kitchen and dining area occupied the space within. Another building next to it held outhouse facilities and a communal shower. A small stable with a reasonable corral stood beside the outhouse facility. There was a large, security fenced area on the other side that would protect their wagons from casual theft and a low fence delineating the boundary between the lodgings and another facility next door.

  Oxen were unhitched and the younger children assigned the duty of taking them and the excess horses to a location further down the road. Till had made arrangements for a pasture close to town and on the main thoroughfare so that the animals brought to be sold could be displayed, and the bulls went the opposite direction.

  As everyone was so well practiced at packing and unpacking after a summer on the trail, the cabins were occupied quickly. The Renoites shared two, and the others were divvied up between the people from Roseburg. There were enough single men that one cabin full of bunk beds was filled and a smaller cabin by unattached women. The married couples were allotted space in cabins divided into four equal quarters by movable, temporary walls.

  Occam stood, looking about. This was the first time he had to make a decision as a new widower. He did not know whether to take a place in the bachelor quarters or a place in a cabin. His newly lean face lengthened in a sad hopelessness in his confusion.

  The Vintner’s wife came out and took Occam’s hand, leading him to an unoccupied space in their cabin. She left him at the door to his area as she had things to do. He stood looking into the room, not sure of what to do first.

  What little Olivia had to do could wait. She noticed the Vintner’s wife lead Occam into a cabin, and glancing in she realized he had likely never been in the position of making a home for himself. Moving to his wagon, she chose a light chest that she was sure carried personal items and carried it inside. She nudged Occam as he stood in the door, and he moved aside. He watched her place the box on the floor. After she returned with a second load, he joined her. Soon his personal items lined the walls, and the raised platform was filled with his bedroll. The space was small but uncrowded with only one occupant.

  Olivia gave him a sad smile and gripped his forearm in assurance as she passed wordlessly out and back to her tasks.

  After the initial unloading, the men manhandled the wagons into the fenced yard. By then late evening was upon them. A light snack for some, and a bed without any meal for those too tired to eat, and the camp was put to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  The last of the magnificent leviathans sank to the bottom of the world’s oceans soon after the plagues took humanity to the brink. The songs of the deep… hushed. The largest creatures ever to have lived on earth, recorded at up to one hundred feet long and a hundred ninety tons, died a slow and agonizing death by starvation.

  Baleen whales, blue, humpback, and the others, fed on the smallest of creatures drifting in the currents of the vast seas. When the Great Ocean Die-Off rose up to swallow the largest protein source on the planet, the krill, they disappeared from an inability to form chitin exoskeletons. So, too, followed the animals that fed on them.

  The many rorqual species of whales possessed a filter to sift small animals from seawater, and as those small animals became fewer, the whales became desperate. Several washed up on beaches with evidence of having choked on silt. They were attempting to find calories in the sludge of river deltas or in deep canyons where mud accumulated.

  There was food left in the seawater they filtered. Copepods, small fish, and some squid supplemented the absent tiny crustaceans, but it was impossible to replace four tons, forty million krill, with ancillary protein sources.

  The huge beasts were not unfamiliar with famine. Part of their natural cycle of life was feeding as they migrated north and then a cessation of feeding for some months as they headed to their calving grounds. Birthing and raising their offspring in warmer waters, they went for months without eating. The normal cycle was one of tremendous gains in weight and immense weight loss as they nursed growing calves that gained in the hundreds of pounds a day.

  But they could not sustain a double whammy. Returning to the north with nursing offspring, they found virtually nothing to eat. The krill had been threatened by the warming oceans previously and had experienced a smaller die-off several years before. This time the level of demise reached extinction levels. The krill died, and the whales followed. The big bulls with the thickest blubber reserves suffered the longest.

  Two hundred years after the plagues, the largest animals on the planet were sperm whales. The business of evolution went on with them and their smaller cousins that hunted large prey. It was a question whether mammals would ever become as massive again.

  §

  An unusually early weather pattern triggered the Olive Ridley sea turtle to seek the beach of its hatching much earlier than normal. She had met a male from the western pacific in the open ocean, and after a brief encounter had developed a clutch of eggs that needed to be laid in deep sand.

  At one time Ridley numbers were listed in the millions, and they were harvested commercially. But just as most things used by humans, numbers plummeted as bad management and greed worked against them. In the middle of the twentieth century, after t
he Great War, the beaches were lined with turtles turned on their backs by people making money from the products they could supply. By the time the plagues hit humanity, the nesting grounds of the pacific side of Mexico had become bereft of females laying eggs. All of the hundreds of locations were barren except one.

  With the sudden departure of man from the landscape, almost all of the animals recognized as threatened with extinction had rebounded. There were exceptions, and the sea turtles were one.

  A man and woman had survived the plagues in Acapulco, and they had wandered the beaches of the coast until finding others. The group swelled as children were born and, within the first fifty years after the plagues, had found the one remaining nesting site of the Ridleys in the Playa Escobilla in Oaxaca.

  The oldest man in the group remembered and spoke of the necessity to control the harvest of turtles and eggs. After his passing, others of less knowledge and interest in history forgot the stories and did as they wished in the interest of immediate gain. The wondrous animals that had started to rebound declined in a steady trajectory to extinction.

  Now, two hundred years later, the last female nesting on the west coast of the Americas cast her shadow in the moonlight. She moved up the beach on her belly, forging ahead in the strange surroundings so alien to her, determined to procreate.

  Children, playing on the beach in the evening hours, found her trail and followed it to the laboring reptile. They kicked sand in her face and hit her with sticks before running to their parents and describing what they had found. The parents walked down to the beach and found the big turtle before she had even had the opportunity to begin digging a nest. Regaling in their good fortune at the early find, they flipped the turtle on its back so they could come back the next day and butcher her. The eggs, so precious, would be harvested not from a sandy hole in the ground but directly from the turtle’s womb.

  §

  What was left of the great apes rebounded with wonderful results. After the pressures of the bush meat trade were reduced to nothing, the apes lived in a virtual nirvana. They multiplied until their numbers stabilized naturally.

  So, too, did many species. The last large cats left in the wild became the top of the food chain once again. Population growth was a result of increased habitat. Territories were suddenly free of high powered weapons and tree-destroying chain saws. They reclaimed lost lands as the forests reclaimed lost acreage, and soon the cities of India, Mexico, Brazil, and the Congo were home to tiger, jaguar, puma and leopard, much like the ancient cities of Cambodia and the Amazon jungles had been reclaimed by the wild in long past centuries.

  There were some close calls and some failures.

  An aged male Siberian tiger managed to escape a private preserve in a famous Russian’s compound and found a mate before he died of starvation. His was a vital component to the wild population that had been thinned to genetic exhaustion levels.

  A pregnant hippo was turned loose by a well-meaning zookeeper in Florida. She had a male offspring and they started a herd in the waters of the everglades. But there were genetic issues, and the last one died within the first hundred years.

  Domestic animals filled the needs of the hunting felines as natural prey rebounded. By the time there were enough tapir and red deer, the bovine and equine populations had been thinned to manageable levels. Natural herbivore populations stabilized as domestic livestock became feral or disappeared.

  There were oddities in how animals repopulated. Prairie dogs from the northern plains of the United States had become a popular pet in China, and they spread quickly and in great numbers after escaping or being released in Asian fields. Ostrich roamed the plains of Texas and the northern states of Mexico. Similar large flightless birds, rhea occupied the adjoining state of Louisiana and spread east and north into Arkansas and Mississippi. Llamas roamed in small herds from Yellowstone in Wyoming, north into Alberta and Saskatchewan and east to northern Minnesota. The large Llama population of southern California died out due to the predation of dogs as the canids went feral. Then the dogs disappeared for many reasons, mostly disease. Alpaca became native to the lower slopes of the Tetons, competing with the bighorn sheep that had been rehabituated there.

  The European starlings that had plagued the North American continent and were spreading through Central America were dealt a lethal blow before man’s self-inflicted decline. A cheap and easy facial recognition system was used by a smart young techie, and the starlings’ demise made room for the cloning and reintroduction of passenger pigeons. They did well after some troubling years and then had a population boom leading to numbers that darkened skies as they had before the age of shotguns.

  The large herds of American bison reestablished. The animals were fully capable of pushing through fences that would contain cattle until they starved. The bison gathered into herds and propagated. It was not long before they started to migrate in seasonal patterns. Both the northern and the southern herds moved much as their ancient counterparts had. Transplants in California formed a herd which never established a migration pattern, and they changed suddenly as a genetic anomaly became dominant.

  Man had a tough time. There were so few survivors in many places that those who rode out the initial contagion often thought themselves alone in the world. Accidents due to stupidity and depression-induced suicides took more than eighty percent of the remaining survivors. But man cannot fail, even when he should. Those who persisted gathered into tiny enclaves, and when they were not killing each other for little reason, they bred. Breeding led to greater numbers, and greater numbers led to societies and governments and civilization. Religion would surely follow.

  Man would live to threaten the planet once more.

  §

  The tall buildings of Denver loomed on the horizon south of Boulder. The huge city became dangerous as structures aged. Anticipating the creeping deterioration and the hazards, the three people who decided to inhabit the smaller community north appreciated the homey feel of the little burg. They saved what they could, gathered others with similar ideas, and because of a commitment to planning and effort, the tiny population and the small city of Boulder swelled once more.

  There were many wanderers, traders, and lost souls who visited the east slope settlement. Some stayed just long enough to stock up or sell their wares, and then they disappeared with anything of value they had accumulated. Others stayed for extended times. A long stay was usually due to distance and weather. If a trader came all the way from beyond the Mississippi, they would not be traveling back the same summer. The planners made allowances for this, as they encouraged any business they could get.

  The bustle of the open market drew the people of Reno and Oregon like a magnet. This was what they had come for and was so much more than they expected. Renoites who had made the trip before were always surprised by something new.

  The handcarts were assembled and loaded with goods once again. Trade had begun.

  §

  After so much effort on the trail, the Smithy and his apprentice took some time to wander and investigate. Occam’s priorities were readjusting. The loss of his wife had made him introspective and appreciative of life and time. He was no longer in such a hurry. Oxen in need of shoes or wagons in need of crucial repair were given priority but then gave way to relaxed study and introspection. Taking advantage, Edge investigated not just the market but the entire town.

  With nothing else to do, Cable and Cy accompanied Edge in his explorations. Cy and Edge had become fast friends on the trail, and the three were comfortable with each other.

  One of the responsibilities left open by Arc’s disappearance was the trade in draft animals. In the case of the large bulls, those that had been brought as both drayage and trade goods, there was substantial investment by the Company providing the capital for the expedition. Someone would have to show the animals and act as a sales agent with those interested in buying them.

  Now that the duties of Wagon Master had been fulf
illed, Till transitioned to the duties of managing the camp and assigning people to tasks in the interest of the Company. He had no confidence in any of the Company hires in regard to handling livestock trade. Looking to those outside of the Company, he studied three, Edge, Jody, and Olivia. Arc’s young widow was considered by Till only because of her association and knowledge from being married to a Master of Oxen. He considered the others for their demonstrated skills. They were all so young, but they were also the most experienced animal handlers and in many ways the most competent.

  §

  The two laden pack horses followed Bluehawk’s sorrel stud closely, joining the convoy through town. Some noted that none of the horses were bridled, haltered, or restricted by even a light lead rope. Bluehawk controlled his charges through intense and effective training.

  As soon as the wagons halted in the area of their camp, the native man in buckskin leather guided his ponies back into town and toward a home he was familiar with. Leaving the horses in front of the fenced entry, he strode toward the familiar door of a good friend who would be expecting him. The man occupying the attractive dwelling met him on the porch, arms open wide, and bear hugged him. The short man was swarthy with tight, curly hair surrounding a hairless pate and huge shoulders, neck and gut. Tipping the scales at three hundred sixty pounds, Angus Mills contrasted the fit native man who towered over him. Bluehawk was glad to be returned after the long summer months. Now the conversation would become interesting.