The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

by Michael R. Hicks

  But if he’d had the credits to start with, he could have skipped months of development.

  The currency of Hanford was labor. Labor produced the food they needed to survive. If he could expedite the food-creation process, they could skip months or years of development, peeling off farmhands to learn other trades. They had more electricity than they could ever use, but gasoline was limited. Unrenewable. Without it, the labor-saving devices of old civilization—the tractors, cultipackers, backhoes, and flatbeds—sat idle.

  He walked the cornfields, pushing himself until his back burned. Amid the swaying green crops and their waving yellow heads, he found his solution.

  He asked and received Larsen’s permission to go into town. The driver took him to the abandoned library at the WSU Tri-Cities branch. The agricultural department was extensive. Without computers, it took several hours to find his material, but once he collected his texts, he discovered that producing corn-derived ethanol was shockingly simple.

  He scheduled a meeting with Larsen and Daniel.

  They met him at a conference room inside the white-capped building that controlled the reactor. The air conditioning calmed Ness’ nerves. He laid out his plan very simply. Begin immediate experimentation of ethanol fermentation. Set aside a percentage of their corn yield for the production of fuel. Once their production methods were sound, start widescale fermentation at once. Devote that fuel to the harvest of this year’s crops and the growth of next year’s, increasing production several-fold over their projections.

  Daniel removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. “That is...ambitious.”

  “It fits your philosophy to a T,” Ness said. “How much food are you shipping to Spokane? Why not use that food to create our own fuel? Their gasoline won’t last forever. As long as we depend on them, we won’t be independent.”

  “This makes sense,” Larsen said.

  Daniel raised his gray brows. “How long before this investment begins yielding results? What if we’re struck by crisis while our food stores are tied up in the production process?”

  Ness pushed a paper across the table. “Fermentation only takes a few days. All we need is yeast, ammonia, a couple other things. They’ll have yeast at the wineries. Ammonia anywhere there’s farm stuff.”

  “Farm stuff,” Daniel muttered. “And what expertise do you have to oversee this endeavor?”

  “None.”

  “A ringing endorsement.”

  “That’s why I’ll need a few of your people. You’ve got some chemists here, don’t you?”

  Larsen drew his thick lips into a smile. “A few.”

  Daniel gestured at the walls, the rumble that permeated every inch of the plant. “We’re short-staffed as it is. I propose our limited pool of labor is best spent ensuring the nuclear reaction going on beneath us continues to react as intended.”

  Ness scratched his neck. He hadn’t shaved in days. “Ask for volunteers. All they have to do is teach me how to do it myself. I’ll pick a couple of farmhands to help me over the long-term.”

  Daniel shifted in his chair. “Well.”

  “I’ll ask,” Larsen said. “We’ll see.”

  Ness rode home with a smile. Across the river, the workers ate at the tables beneath the tarps. Ness hobbled up to Nick. “Well, I’m now an ethanol baron. Want to help me run my empire?”

  Nick wiped salsa from his mouth. “You sit on your ass all day and they promote you to baron? Man, I thought this was a meritocracy.”

  He got his volunteers two days later: Brandon, a man in his forties who walked with a sway to his shoulders and looked more like a surfer than a chemist, and Kristin, a woman who didn’t look much older than Ness and whose quick eyes flew to every caw of the crows or sway of the wind. The three of them drove to the college and filled the pickup with a still, bags of chemicals, glassware, hydrometers. Brandon guided them to a winery across town and they combed through the warehouse with flashlights for yeast.

  “So what’s your background, Ness?” Brandon asked on the drive back.

  “Computers,” Ness said.

  “Programming? Web stuff?”

  “Games, mostly.”

  “Design?”

  “Playing.”

  Brandon glanced across the cab. “And now you’re in charge of our fuel supply. Brave new world.”

  “Ever play EVE?” Kristin said.

  Ness laughed. “For like two straight years.”

  “Oh my God.” She sat in the middle. Her slim leg jostled his. “The scams I used to pull. They hated me.”

  The process was as simple as it sounded. They mashed up corn still in the husk and dumped the lumpy meal into a watery drum, then boiled it for about an hour, keeping careful track of the temperature. After it cooled, they stirred in the yeast and moved the drum to the corner of Ness’ room, where the straining air conditioner would keep the heat from getting lethal. Brandon was a chronic over-explainer, breaking down every part of the process no matter how trivial or tangential; Kristin spoke up rarely, augmenting and contradicting Brandon’s points. Ness kept a close watch on the drum. Even at room temperature, bubbles churned constantly, toiling viscous mash to the surface.

  After three days, the bubbling ceased. Kristin plumbed it with the hydrometer. “5.7%.”

  “Is that good?” Ness said.

  “We are approaching Natty Ice.” Her eyes darted to him. “Hey. We should make beer. We’re running out of the good stuff.”

  “You guys have beer?”

  “The fact I haven’t committed suicide indicates that yes. Yes, we do.”

  They boiled away the ethanol, separating it from the water and condensing it via tube in another, smaller drum. They poured the purified fuel into a red jug and brought it to a tractor waiting in the yellow afternoon. It wasn’t yet quitting time, but most of the farmhands had gathered to watch, grinning, joking about all the naps they’d be taking if the tractor turned over.

  Brandon planted his hands on his hips and rocked his heels. “Fill ‘er up.”

  Ness tipped the jug into the tractor tank, smelling the sharp tang of the fuel.

  Kristin pressed the keys into his hand. “Want to go for a ride?”

  He smiled uneasily and climbed into the high seat. He put the key in the ignition. An intense wave of heat washed over his body, prickling the scarring lash-lines on his back. A week ago, the stuff in the gas tank had been swaying in the wind. Brandon and Kristin, did they have the first idea what they were doing? Why did they think they could do this? What if it exploded, coating him in flaming fuel, crackling his skin, killing him in a final minute of shrieking agony?

  Kristin vaulted into the seat beside him. “What if this whole thing just blew up right now?”

  “Stop it,” Ness smiled.

  “We’d look pretty stupid, wouldn’t we? Boom!”

  “Maybe you should turn it on while I manage from a bunker.”

  She reached for his hand at the ignition. “Will you turn the damn key already?”

  He nodded, took a deep breath, and turned the key. The engine coughed. Rattled. Roared. Outside the dust-streaked windshield, fifty men and women grinned and clapped.

  Brandon and Kristin returned with him to the college for more and bigger stills. Ness boiled a big new batch, then experimented with several smaller ones, varying the temperature at several points along the way. The old woman cleared space for his vats and drums at the warehouse, where the air conditioning was potent enough to keep the temperature in the yeast-friendly 80s even with the full might of the sun pounding the metal roof. With Brandon and Kristin busy at the power plant, Ness asked Larsen whether Nick could be spared to assist him. When Nick heard that he was going to be pulled from fieldwork, he bent at the knees and pumped his fist.

  In the warehouse, Ness pulled the lid from one of the smaller vats, releasing the sweetish smell of fermenting corn. Bubbles and chaff turned the surface. Ness dipped a pH stick into the fluid and shook it.

&nb
sp; Nick leaned forward, frowning at the sludge floating on top of the mash. “What’s all this for, anyway?”

  Ness glanced up from the stick. “You don’t even now what we’re doing? Then why were you so happy to help me?”

  “Because I don’t have to pick any more damn strawberries.”

  “We’re making ethanol. Gasoline, basically.”

  Nick gave him a look. “Oh, is that what you used to start the tractor? Gasoline?”

  “I can bust you back to scything corn in no time flat.”

  “What’s it all for?”

  “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want everyone to be mad at me if it doesn’t happen.”

  Nick shrugged. “I promise.”

  “I want to have enough to power all the machines for the harvest.” Ness replaced the lid on the vat and wandered past a row of coiled hoses. “If I get them running, the harvest won’t take weeks, it’ll take days. I’m going to ask Daniel if we can use our free time to go into town and pick up a few things to make life here a little less cave mannish.”

  “Like what?”

  “Real air conditioners. Something to eat besides pasta. More washers and dryers.”

  “No joke,” Nick laughed. “The lines on Sunday are so long I just take my stuff down to the river.”

  Ness wiped off his hands, gave the stills one last check, and walked out into the afternoon. The heat wilted him, stole the breath from his lungs. “Anyway, that’s my hope.”

  Nick gazed across the river at the steam rising from the wasteland. “They got all kinds of gas already, don’t they? How come they won’t let us use that? Think they’re huffing it?”

  “They don’t want to spend more resources than they take in.” Ness watched the plant with him. “They’re being kind of stingy, aren’t they?”

  With Nick’s help, he boiled a new batch of mash each day. With limited corn at hand, they walked a wagon to the untended orchard up north where apples browned in the grass. Ness collected a truckload of big blue jugs and filled them one by one. He didn’t know how much they’d need—hundreds of gallons, most likely—but the main harvest wouldn’t come until late October. He thought they might make it.

  Brandon came twice more to check on his process, then ceased making off-hour visits across the river. Kristin still visited regularly, delving into the nitty-gritty of the chemical process, interrupting herself with wistful comments about making beer and loading up an old copy of Doom on the Hanford computers. Ness made a note to track down some hops. Shawn dropped by now and then, too. He seemed genuinely impressed with the mounting collection of blue jugs.

  Weeks passed. The days cooled. Ness’ back scarred. He gathered unwanted vegetation, boiled it, fermented it, purified it. On a trip into town for more yeast, he found some old hops and attempted to put together a batch of beer.

  One day in early October, with a morning rain drying in the dust, Larsen came to the warehouse and said he needed to take the jugs back to the plant.

  “All of it?” Ness said. “Why?”

  Larsen shrugged. “Daniel wants to do some tests. And doesn’t like the idea of incendiary matter sitting under the same roof as our farming supplies.”

  “So we’ll build a shack for it.”

  “It’ll be right across the river,” Larsen said. “Stop worrying.”

  Ness watched in stony silence as the big man loaded the truck with his fuel. He found himself on the verge of tears. He’d worked toward this for weeks. He knew it wasn’t gone—it would still be waiting for them come harvest time—but the river made the nuclear plant feel much further away than the mile of road separating it from the farm.

  Volt didn’t come home that night. Ness couldn’t sleep. While the others snored, he went to the fields to find her, bringing the same things he always took when he walked in the night alone: some water, a snack, a knife, his walking stick, binoculars, a flashlight. He stalked down the rows, calling Volt’s name, pausing to listen for her querulous mews.

  An engine hummed to the south. Ness wandered through the tall, dark corn until he emerged into the thin strip of green grass between the field and the river. Russian olives rose from the shore, smelling of a sick and artificial sweetness. Headlights headed up the road to the plant. Ness had never heard a truck out this late. He lifted his binoculars. A large truck pulled to the gate where he and Shawn had first been stopped. After a moment, the truck pulled through. It disappeared behind an outbuilding, then drove into the floodlights surrounding the white-capped control center. Ness couldn’t make out the truck’s lettering, but he recognized the orange stripe across its side. It was a U-Haul. And it appeared to have a machine gun mounted to its roof.

  It stopped a stone’s throw from the control center. Men debarked into the pool of light. Others emerged from the command building. The two groups faced each other, gesturing. The Hanford men returned to the building and emerged a minute later, great blue jugs dangling from their hands, and delivered them to the back of the U-Haul, where the arrivals were busy offloading bulky wooden crates.

  Ness made sure his knife was still on his belt, then ran straight for the bridge across the river.

  20

  Lights whirled miles away across the desert. Tristan’s bare feet pounded the pavement, her soles scraped and stinging. The other prisoners dogged her heels. Weeds lined the road. She saw nothing in either direction along the highway—no houses, no stores, no cars, nowhere to get lost. If they left the road, their feet would be destroyed in minutes. Their only hope was to find somewhere to hide before the aliens tracked them down.

  Engines keened. Searchlights slashed from light and low-flying craft, scouring the desert floor. Tristan headed up a gentle rise. The other captives strung out behind her, breathing hard in the cool night. Lights splashed from wheeled vehicles fanning across the flatland toward the road. Tristan crested the hill. A half mile down the road, a small cluster of buildings rested in the starlight.

  A craft whined nearer and nearer. Its searchlight swooped forward, gushing over the pack of prisoners. Some stopped, pinned in place, deerlike. Others ran harder. The light followed the runners down the road, leaving the ones who’d stopped in darkness; the jet banked, taking its spotlight with it, and circled around for another pass.

  “There are buildings down the road!” Tristan shouted. “I think I see cars!”

  “No way the batteries aren’t dead,” said the blond man she’d punched on the way to the prison camp.

  “They’ll grab us any minute,” she said. “What other chance do we have?”

  The red-haired woman sprinted forward. Like schooling fish, the others followed her lead, racing downhill toward the dark buildings. Tristan fell back. Once she was a few yards behind the bald man, who panted heavily, grasping his gut, Tristan cut off the road and flattened herself among the weeds.

  The searchlight caught up to the prisoners just before they reached the cluster of buildings. The alien cars reached the road and sped downhill. Tristan ran through the dust, putting a hundred yards between herself and the highway, then hid behind a wall of sage. Headlights blared past. She got up and ran again. The jet circled, painting the rooftops with light. The ground vehicles converged on the site. Screams joined the moans of the circling craft.

  Tristan was a mile across the desert by the time the cars pulled away from the houses and returned to the city of blue cones. The jet made three wide circles, searchlight zooming through the yellow grass.

  After a few minutes, all Tristan heard was the crickets.

  She took stock while she waited. Her feet bled from a dozen different cuts. Dust clung to the bloody lines of her soles. She needed to find disinfectant cream. Antibiotics. Then again, she was buck naked in the night. She needed to find a lot of things.

  She supposed she was better off than the others.

  She laughed, startling herself, then sunk under a wave of horrified guilt. She
’d tricked them. Wielded their own willingness to follow against them. She’d known there wouldn’t be any working trucks at the farmhouse. No way to run or place to hide. A couple of them might have been smart enough to hide in the weeds like she had, but most had been returned to the pen.

  It was their own fault. They should have listened to her when she told them to split up. When they refused, they left her with no choice but to look out for herself. Being recaptured with them would have served nothing. She did not regret what she had done. She would do it again right now if the universe called a do-over and reset to the moment the searchlight had first hit them. She wouldn’t hesitate.

  And that was exactly what scared her.

  She sat on her feet and thought things through. She’d probably die if she spent a full day naked in the sun. Her mouth was already dry, her tongue pebbly. Who knew how far she’d have to walk to the west before she found any place with food and water. Her best option was to go to the farmhouse where the others had been captured. If she wanted to get any further than that, she’d better take the road to get there, too. Another mile shoeless through the desert night could leave her feet too shredded to use.

  She waited another hour, watching the black plain, listening for the whine and whuff of foreign engines. The alien settlement had once more gone silent, a handful of white lights gleaming from its cones. She rose and rejoined the road. Asphalt yanked at the cuts on her feet. She slowed to a dawdle; she had hours before daylight. She paused a couple hundred yards from the farmhouse. Crickets chirped innocently. No sign of life, human or alien.

  An analog gas pump stood from the gravel and dust. Paint peeled from the house’s wooden walls. A truck sat on blocks, its windshield opaque with dirt. Her heart grew grim—the site might have been abandoned decades before the Panhandler—but the home’s windows were intact, and inside, the dust on the floor looked months old, not years. It was incredibly dark. She eased the door closed and shuffled to the kitchen. With no real hope, she tried the faucet. Dead. She opened the fridge and wished she hadn’t. The stink of rot overwhelmed her, cloying and diarrheal. Too dark to see if there were any untainted bottles or cans. She closed the door, unwilling to reach inside blind.