by Harley Tate
Winter and summer squash, beans, peas, potatoes. Even corn if they could manage to till enough land. But they couldn’t take more than a few plants. What Madison really needed were good quality heirloom seeds. The more seeds she could bring with her, the better their chances of long-term farming.
She glanced up at Steve. “Any chance Chico State has an heirloom seed repository?”
Steve smiled. “It’s not a repository per se, but we do have a research lab. It should have what you’re looking for.” He pointed toward the building. “First floor, suite 105.”
“What about animals? There’s a farm here, right?”
Steve turned to Brianna and nodded. “It’s massive. Eight hundred acres, I think. But it’s about five miles down the road. This is just the research greenhouse. The farm is a whole separate undertaking. They’ve got goats, sheep, cows, and a ton of pasture land and plants. A bunch of people work there full-time.”
Stopping by the farm might be worth it, but with that many potential employees guarding the animals, the risk might be too high. Madison hesitated. A pair of dairy goats would give them milk year-round and a first line of defense from potential threats. Goats were as good as dogs for their watchdog skills.
She pointed toward the building as she smiled at Steve. “Can you show us the research lab? Last time we went exploring in a dark college building, it didn’t go so well.”
Brianna snorted beside her and dropped her voice so only Madison could hear. “Better keep an eye on your dad or he’s liable to shoot your tour guide.”
Madison glanced at her father. While she had been talking to Steve, her dad never took his eyes off the man, waiting and watching with his gun ready. Steve wasn’t a threat, Madison knew. But someone inside the building might be. Her father cleared it, but that didn’t mean it was empty.
At some point, they would have to talk. “Dad, can Steve show us where the research lab is? I’m sure he’d like to have you lead the way.”
Steve managed a nod, his face growing red like a ripening tomato. “T-That would be great.”
Madison’s father jerked his head toward the door. “Then let’s go. Tractor Boy, you come up by me. We’ll do this together.”
Chapter Seventeen
WALTER
Agriculture Department, CSU, Chico
2:00 p.m.
Madison bent over a tray of seeds as the graduate student pulled down another tackle box full of them. Something about the kid rubbed Walter the wrong way. Maybe it was the beer belly or the ball cap on backwards or the way he had a habit of checking out his daughter’s backside every time he thought Walter wasn’t looking.
Whatever it was, Walter refused to give the guy any space. He’d kept a gun pointed on him the entire time he walked down the hall to the research lab. Even now with Madison almost forehead-to-forehead with the kid, Walter didn’t let up.
All he could see was Madison in that hallway, blood oozing from a cut in her neck and a shotgun in her hands. He couldn’t lock her up back at the house and keep her out of harm’s way; she was the only one besides Peyton who could pick the best plants and seeds for survival. With Peyton still recovering, Walter didn’t have a choice but to bring her to the greenhouse.
But he didn’t have to like it.
“Are you two about done?”
His daughter glanced up with a smile. “Almost. There’s two more boxes I’d like to go through.”
Walter kept his frown to himself, busying himself with checking the hallway for the twenty-seventh time. As he peered around the open door, Brianna came into view, her gun drawn and eyes alert. The more Walter got to know Madison’s roommate, the more she impressed him.
Her parents had done so much more to prepare her for this sort of world. Had he and Tracy been wrong to shelter Madison? Should they have been fortifying a bunker and teaching her how to siphon gas and start a fire with a battery and a paper clip?
Madison wasn’t as bad off as so many kids these days. She could shoot everything from a handgun to a rifle and knew the basics of animal care and camping thanks to her days in both 4-H and Girl Scouts. And the plant knowledge… that surpassed anything and everything Walter and Tracy could impart by miles.
But she hadn’t grown up anticipating this sort of future. They raised her to think good things of her fellow man and to hope for the best in all situations. Now Walter wished they’d been a bit more pessimistic. He couldn’t help but think she’d be better equipped if she had a bit of Brianna’s cutthroat nature.
He paused. What if none of this ever happened? Madison would still be at college, back from spring break and attending classes full of optimistic peers. When she finished the semester, she would come home and complain about all the college kids who didn’t know the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini and then she would go to work on a farm for the summer.
Her life had been easy. Carefree. She knew hard work, but it was in the confines of plenty and abundance. There was never a time she went to bed hungry or risked her life to listen to the radio.
“You look like someone just kicked your cat.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
Brianna raised an eyebrow. “Fireball’s not even a little bit yours?”
“Nope.” Walter eased out of the doorway and stood beside Brianna, canvassing the empty hall. “How’s the packing?”
“Terrible. We don’t have enough room for even a quarter of what Madison wants to bring. Unless we start lashing some of us to the roof of the Jetta, we’re going to have to leave some stuff behind.”
“We can’t leave anything behind!” Madison’s voice called out from inside the research lab. “I’ve already pared it down to the bare minimum. Without everything on that table and the seeds I’ve selected in here, we can’t produce enough crops to be fully self-sufficient.”
Walter followed Brianna back into the research lab. She stopped a few feet away from Madison, her palms stuck to her hips. “We’re out of space. Unless we find another vehicle, it’s not possible.”
Madison glanced at her father. “Then we need to find a bigger car.”
“I’ve been looking. But there aren’t a lot of vehicles around. With the power grid failing during spring break, the campus is a ghost town. Anyone who stayed behind has already loaded up and left.” He focused on Tractor Boy. “Almost everyone, at least.”
Against all odds, the pudgy graduate student surprised him. “The Ag department manager had a work truck. It’s still out back if you want it.”
Walter cocked his head to the side. “What’s the catch?”
Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “No catch. The keys are in the maintenance locker by the back door. I don’t know if it has any gas, but it’s one of those four-door pickups with a full-size bed in the back.”
Madison swung around to face Walter, her eyes huge and shining. “Dad! That’s it! We can take the truck, load the back with all the plants and still have enough room for a couple goats and some chickens.”
Walter held up his hand. “Slow down. We don’t even—”
His daughter wasn’t listening. She’d already turned back to Steve with a grin a mile wide. “Come with us. We’re headed to Truckee to a place where we can all stay for a while.”
“Hey! I didn’t give you permission!”
Brianna crossed her arms and glared at Madison. Oh, no. The last thing Walter needed was to break up a fight.
Madison twisted around to face her roommate, cheeks turning red. “Do you mind?”
Brianna didn’t say a word. She just stood there, glowering.
“It’s okay.” Steve interrupted the standoff. “I can’t go. I’ve got to finish up this research so I can write my thesis.”
Everyone turned to stare at him, but Brianna broke the silence first. “You do know the University system is basically toast, right?”
He glanced around. “I’ve sort of put that together, yeah.”
“And that most of your classmates and prof
essors are never coming back?”
“That’s probably true.”
Madison shook her head. “So why are you sticking around to finish a thesis no one will ever read?”
“Because I have to.” Steve leaned back on the counter and lifted his ball cap to wipe the sheen of sweat off his brow. “This degree is the only thing I’ve worked on for five years. Two years of classes, three years of research and it’s all leading up to this moment. I’m not quitting.”
“But there’s no one to award you a degree.”
Steve shrugged. “I consider finishing it to be close enough. I can’t leave here all but dissertation.” He glanced down at his hands and his voice dropped a few notches. “My father said I’d never get this far. He thought… plants were a silly waste of time. But he was wrong.”
At last, he lifted his head. “I’m going to prove it.”
Walter exhaled. He understood the need to follow through and finish something that had been the driving force for so long. It was partly why he’d stayed on the airplane that fateful day even when his gut told him to leave. And it was why they were all taking Brianna to her family’s compound in Truckee.
Madison had embraced staying there long-term, but Walter and Tracy weren’t sold on the idea. How could he invite himself to live at another family’s house? He would get Brianna and Tucker to the cabin because he’d promised his daughter to do just that.
He scratched his growing beard. Maybe he wasn’t all that different from the graduate student with the green thumb standing across from him. Walter spoke up. “You’re really okay with us taking the truck?”
“I am.”
“Then, thank you.” Walter reached out his hand and Steve shook it. “I owe you an apology. I didn’t trust you at first.”
Brianna snorted. “Try ever.”
Walter ignored her. “I’m sorry. When my daughter said you could be trusted, I should have listened to her.”
“Yes, you should have.” Madison crossed her arms, but the smile across her face lessened the comment’s sting.
Maybe not everyone in this new world was bad. Steve had proven himself to have no agenda whatsoever. He freely offered plants and seeds and even a truck and expected nothing in return. They should do something for him.
He earned it.
“Is there anything we can do for you?”
Steve squinted as he stared at Walter. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been so generous with your knowledge and time. We owe you. How can we pay you back?”
Steve smiled and his face brightened with youth and inexperience. “Do you think you could help me break into the vending machine in the staff kitchen? It’s got a whole row of Ho Hos I’ve been dying to eat.”
Walter laughed and a weight lifted from his shoulders. Out of all the things to ask for, Steve wanted a pack of Ho Hos. But Walter shouldn’t judge. The end of the world did strange things to people; he knew that firsthand.
Some adapted and some didn’t, but they all changed.
He glanced at his daughter and Brianna before turning back to Steve. “Yeah, I think we can manage that. Lead the way.”
Chapter Eighteen
TRACY
863 Dewberry Lane, Chico, CA
7:00 p.m.
“I’d forgotten how good these iced lemon pies taste.” Peyton licked his fingers, drawing every last fleck of sugar into his mouth.
“I can’t believe you like those things. The ingredient list is a million miles long and every entry is a chemical.” Madison wrinkled her nose as she dumped a cup of flour into a bowl.
Peyton smoothed out the wrapper and jabbed his index finger at it. “Not true. The very first ingredient is water.” His finger moved along the list, pausing every time he found a retort to Madison’s complaint. “And it’s got corn syrup and vegetable oil and sugar. And hey! It’s even got lemon oil.” He leaned back, triumphant in the dining room chair. “It’s practically a delicacy.”
Madison stuck out her tongue and Tracy laughed out loud. Watching the two of them tease each other was a welcome respite from the stress of hoping her husband and daughter would make it back home alive.
“Give it a few more weeks and I bet you’ll be clamoring for your very own little fruit pie the second we come across one.” Peyton held up the wrapper. “Pretty soon these will be the new currency.”
“Peyton’s right. We should be hoarding snack cakes. They never go bad and in a few months people will be desperate for a sugar rush.” Brianna sat at the other end of the dining room table, two handguns disassembled in front of her.
She poured a bit of unused motor oil they found in the maintenance room of the agriculture department into a glass bowl and used it to clean and lubricate each part. “There’s so many things we took for granted before that we won’t be able to get going forward.”
Pointing at the bowl, she continued. “Like gun oil. It’s never something I thought about. Whenever I needed to clean a weapon, my dad just had a little bottle of quality stuff in with the gear. It was just there.”
“But motor oil works?”
Brianna nodded. “As long as it’s clean and synthetic, yeah. I’d prefer automatic transmission fluid, but we’d need to hit an automotive store to get it. You can use Vaseline for the side rails if you need some grease, too. But I couldn’t find any upstairs.”
Tracy shook her head. Watching a group of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds adapt to a world without power was incredible. Instead of moaning and whining and waiting for someone to come save them, they all pitched in and worked together to survive. Brianna with her knowledge of all things survival-related, Madison and Peyton with their plant and farming education, Tucker with his electronic and weather-related skills.
They each brought something different to the equation, but what mattered most was the contribution itself. No one sat around looking to someone else to save them. They were saving themselves.
Tracy opened a can of pumpkin and handed it to her daughter. Without eggs, the muffins needed something to bind them together. It might not be fall, but the smell of pumpkin in the oven would be a welcome change from the growing stink of unwashed bodies and outdoor pit toilets.
Every time Tracy fired up the gas oven, she marveled. She had to light it by hand, but that was easy. The fact the gas still ran surprised her. At some point it would stop and they would need to burn wood or propane if they could find it.
“What type of heat do your parents rely on up in Truckee, Brianna?”
The young woman smiled as she ran her motor oil covered fingers over a recoil spring. “We’ve got a wood-burning stove and a buried propane tank. There’s enough propane to last for one full winter, but after that we’d need to switch to wood.”
Tracy nodded. From everything Brianna said about her family’s cabin, it would be the perfect place to start over after the collapse of the power grid. Tracy glanced through the kitchen window to where her husband crouched with Brianna’s boyfriend.
The two were hunched over the radio Tucker made the day before. Every time Tracy brought up Brianna’s invite to stay, Walter shot it down.
He didn’t want to be someone else’s burden or responsibility. With Drew and Peyton, they had five mouths to feed and bodies to keep warm. She tried to explain that they came with assets as well. Between Madison’s agricultural knowledge and Walter’s ability to fly a plane and defend the group, they were net positive.
Walter didn’t agree.
Madison leaned closer as she stirred the batter. “They’ve been out there ever since we got back. Any idea what they’re listening to?”
Tracy shook her head. “I assume it’s the same types of broadcasts as before. Random people all over the country.” She squinted at the darkening sky. “With the sun down, they should start picking up broadcasts from farther away.”
Drew eased into a dining room chair next to Peyton, groaning as he sat down. “What’s this I hear about a radio?”
“Goo
d to see you up and about.”
“Believe me, it feels good, too. If I spent one more minute on that sofa, I might have lost my mind.”
Tracy answered Drew’s question. “Tucker rigged a radio to a car battery and is picking up broadcasts from all over. There’s quite a few people out there with the ability to broadcast, whether it’s from battery or solar or even wind power.”
Drew glanced around the room. “From the looks on all of your faces I’d say the news isn’t that we’re going to Disneyland.”
Brianna snorted. “More like a haunted house starring the ghosts of America before it all fell apart.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s the truth.” She fit the slide back onto one of the handguns before racking it and setting it on the table. “You of all people should know that.”
“Brianna!” Madison chastised her roommate, but Drew held up a hand.
“It’s all right. She has a point. If losing Anne didn’t put it in perspective, getting shot a block from my condo did.”
Tracy spoke up. “I think we all are aware how much the country has changed in such a short span of time. What matters now is what we do going forward. After what you all heard on the radio, I don’t hold out much hope for aid to reach the majority of needy people.”
“Neither do I.” Walter stepped in from the outside with Tucker following just behind.
“Any new info?”
Tucker’s grim expression said yes.
Walter nodded. “It’s complete chaos in D.C. Half of the embassies are burning, the White House is under heavily armed protection, and the local national guard is patrolling the streets. There’s a dusk to dawn curfew, but that doesn’t do much.”
“All it did was give the bad guys a window of time to act.” Tucker shook his head. “They’ve tried to deliver aid a bunch of times, but a riot always breaks out so the aid workers leave. The man on the radio just now said his family is starving, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s helpless.”