2nd Earth: Shortfall

by Edward Vought

  LT smiles and plays a recording that was made of the conversation in the building where they were being held. I forgot that we do that to make sure there is proof of what takes place. The Senator says we must be mistaken and wants the recording destroyed. Our C.O. wants both young men placed under arrest until this can be sorted out. We discuss the chances that either of those guys will get what they deserve and decide that they will get off, no matter what they have done or will do in the future. We all agree though that if we are called to rescue either of them, or their fathers, we will shoot them on sight. Luckily for us we don’t get called on to do any more missions before our leave. Timmy and I are catching a flight back to the States in the morning and both of us are looking forward to being somewhere that we don’t have to be watching behind ourselves constantly.

  Tim talked to his mom and family on the phone earlier this evening and his sister told him she would like to meet me. She is a year older than he is, and when he told her there is no way he will let us go out together, she told him that she wasn’t asking, she is telling him she wants to meet me, so he can either like it or get over it. She sounds a lot like Ma Horton when she made up her mind to do something. Gunny could handle men in any situation, but he would get totally flustered when Ma was around. That sort of thing must be common in relationships because I am noticing it a lot more than I used to. Now I don’t feel quite so foolish.

  2

  Our plane lands in New Jersey because that’s the closest military base to where we want to be. I have never been to New York City, so I am totally at Tim’s mercy because I have no idea where we are going. Tim keeps telling me that he wants me to try the different kinds of food that he is always talking about. On our walk to the subway, which by the way is his idea, I would have been happy to take a cab, we pass some places that make me more nervous than some of the war zones we have been in. It is getting pretty late in the evening and Tim says it will be another couple of hours before we get home. That will put it right about midnight. I ask if we shouldn’t get a hotel for the night and go to his house in the morning. He assures me his family will be up. They never go to bed before midnight. The subway station is all but deserted, which is kind of a relief for me. I have never been good with crowds. I keep feeling under my jacket to make sure my 9mm Sig is still there. Tim is packing as well. Just because there is no declared war going on in these streets, doesn’t mean they are safe.

  We are the only ones in the subway car we are on. In fact there is no one on any car that we can see in from here. There was one person a couple of cars down, but he got off two stops back. I am so tired, that no matter how hard I try to stay awake, I just can’t keep my eyes open. Tim must have the same problem because we are both jarred awake by the train coming to a sudden stop. We both look at each other, then at the door to see why we stopped. There is no station here. It looks like we are in the middle of the tunnel somewhere under the streets of New York. We talk for a little while, but when nothing seems to be happening, we decide to go looking for someone to find out what is going on. There are five cars on this train. We try the one behind us first and find no one there. That’s no big surprise. We haven’t seen anyone in here since we got on the train.

  We head forward going through each car and still find no one else aboard. We get to the control section of the train and there is not even anyone in there. We figure that maybe the driver or whatever these people are called assumed that the train was empty and when it broke down decided to walk to the next station. That makes sense, so we decide to do the same thing, only we already know there is no one else on board. Tim says he wishes that he knew what station we passed most recently because he would have a pretty good idea of where we are and how far we have to go. I tell him it doesn’t really matter because it will be what it is, when we get to the station we get there. We look at our watches and see that it is past 1:00 am. We must have slept longer than we thought. Tim says we should have been to our stop a good hour and a half ago. He is trying to figure out how we slept through all those stops.

  I am more concerned with how foggy it is getting in this tunnel. I didn’t even know it got foggy underground like this. Tim says he has no idea because he has never gotten off the subway anywhere other than a station. We walk for another half hour and finally we see a station up ahead. When we get to it, we are surprised to see how much different it is than the one where we got on. It looks like it is at least twenty years older and the décor is more like something we would have seen back in the sixties or seventies. Tim reads the name on the station and says this is crazy. We should be way past this station. We walk up through the deserted station which in itself is confusing. Tim keeps saying there should be someone around even if it is late at night.

  When we get to the surface it is not dark, so now we are totally confused. We couldn’t have slept all night and most of the day on that train. The crowds during the morning rush would definitely have woken us up. While we are looking around for Tim to recognize where we may be, we hear what sounds like someone screaming for help. It sounds like it is coming from a couple of blocks over, so we head in that direction. By the way, there are cars all over the place, but no people on the street. This is starting to get kind of spooky. When we turn the corner we see three young men running. They are being followed by a young lady, who is apparently the one yelling for help, because following her are four other young men who look like fugitives from a punk rock concert. I don’t stop to analyze the situation because the punks are gaining steadily on the young lady, who is yelling at the guys running in front of her.

  I am a fairly fast runner even with my 6’2” height and my 215 lb stature. It only takes me a few seconds to intercept the guys chasing the girl, who have almost caught her now by the way. They are calling her some really filthy names just before I jump into the air, kicking out while still maintaining my forward motion. I take the closest one in the chest as he turns to look in my direction. He falls back into the others knocking two of them down leaving only one standing. My momentum carries me into him where I use my forearm and elbow smashing him across the face with it. He goes down instantly and I turn to see where the others are. They are getting up and running back the way they came. The one I knocked down with my forearm is getting up cussing me out, but runs when I take a step toward him. The young lady has stopped running a short distance off and is watching the fight, if you can call it that, from there.

  Tim comes over and I ask him where he was during the fight. He tells me, as usual, I didn’t need any help. He says if he would have interfered it would have been total overkill and those guys chasing the girl would have been the ones getting killed. The guys that were running in front of the girl are walking toward us, the girl catches up with them and smacks them a good one. I can tell that hurt by the way they are grimacing. These guys don’t look much more inclined to fight than that other bunch. After she smacks all three of them, the young lady walks over and thanks me for helping her. She says she was afraid they would catch her this time and drag her back to their turf to use her for breeding. I ask if this has happened before. She says many times, but usually she has a bigger lead on them. This time they were waiting when she went looking for food and were much closer than usual.

  She says she thought her brothers might help her, but they were more scared than she was or at least just as much. As much as I feel like kicking their butts for being such cowards, I refrain, thinking I better leave well enough alone, so Tim and I can find out where we are, catch a cab, and get to his family’s house. Oddly enough, we still haven’t seen a moving car or anyone other than the people we have already described. Tim looks at the street sign and asks the girl if this is Manhattan. She looks confused and says she thinks that’s what it was called before, but no one calls it that anymore. The young lady hasn’t taken her eyes off me since she came over to us. She is really very pretty. She could use some cleaning up, but considering that she was just running for her life she looks quite
nice. I see a newspaper box on the street corner. I go over and can read the paper that is still in the box.

  The headline says that Russia, Korea, China, the United States, and several South American countries have all developed a neutron bomb that will destroy people, but will not destroy as much property as a conventional atomic or hydrogen bomb. The paper is dated July 6, 1969, that’s forty years ago. The cars parked on the streets are from that era and the clothes these people are wearing are from that same time. Now Tim and I are starting to worry, the young lady, whose name is Dayna by the way, tells us that we really have to be getting back to the group before dark. There are some really bad people running the streets after dark. We need more information to figure out what is going on, so we decide to go along with them. Dayna asks me if I would mind going with her to another place where she can get some food for her family before dark. We all follow her to a store that looks like it has been abandoned, but there is still plenty of food on the shelves. Most of it is canned goods. She seems to be looking for jars or bottles. When I ask her about this she says there is always lots of food in cans, but they don’t know how to open the cans to get the food out without destroying it.

  Tim and I are both carrying P38 can openers from our military rations. I tell her we can show her how to open cans easily. She seems to believe me because we carry as many cans of beef stew, spam, and corned beef hash as we can get into the bags we find. She is so proud when we get to what she calls her family with all the food. Some of the others complain and tell her they can’t open this food, so why did she waste her time bringing it here. I show them how to open the cans and they think it is some kind of magic. When Dayna tells them how I fought four of the attackers they back off like they are afraid of me. We are in the basement of what appears to be an old insurance office. There are dividers separating it into what looks like five rooms, there are four girls and six young men in this family.

  They are starting to eat the food cold. I ask why they are not heating it up. Dayna tells me they have no way to heat it, if they build a fire inside the room will fill with smoke. She says if we would have gotten home earlier we could have cooked the food outside, but now it is dark and way too dangerous. Tim and I both have flashlights in our bags along with ammunition and two more pistols each. That’s one benefit of flying on a military hop instead of a commercial airliner. I tell Tim to cover me while I check out the area to see if I can find some way to cook our dinner. Dayna is scared for me and wants to come with me. I tell her to wait here, I will be right back and she has nothing to worry about. She comes with us anyway. Upstairs in the insurance office we find a propane stove and a large propane tank out in the backyard.

  We can hear the noises of people prowling the streets, but no one comes near us. Outside we find a street sweeper, that is also powered by propane, and it still has about half a tank full. I take the propane tank into the basement and then Tim and I carry the stove down to the basement and hook up the tank to the stove. The stove is an older model with the pilot light, we are happy to see it is not an electronic model. We just happen to be carrying matches in our survival kits that we never go anywhere without. We found some pots and pans in the kitchen upstairs and some spoons and forks that will work very well. We can tell that the family doesn’t believe that it will work, although when we start heating up the stew and frying some spam they become believers fast. While the food is cooking an older man, whom I would guess to be in his forties, comes out of one of the rooms farther back. For light they are using candles that they were able to light off the stove.

  Dayna tells me that they usually light a fire outside and light the candles from that before coming in. I ask her, “If you don’t have matches, how do you start the fire for cooking?” She says there is a flame that burns all the time, everyone goes there to get fire. She doesn’t seem to want to leave my side for more than a minute or two and wants to hold my hand or arm as much as possible. Tim teases me that I seem to have found someone who may actually be attracted to the strong, dumb type. I tell him I will ask her if she has any sisters that are blind that wouldn’t mind someone as ugly as he is. He tells me that’s pretty cold, true, but cold nonetheless. We ask the older man what happened to the city. He says he doesn’t really know much, but will be happy to share what he does know.

  He says that when he was a boy, he and his parents lived in the city and were very happy. Then one day everything changed and there were explosions all over the place. His parents had built a bomb shelter in the early sixties just in case of nuclear war. Well, when the explosions started they went into the bomb shelter and waited for it to stop. His dad had a radiation tester in the shelter and they waited until the radiation levels were at least in a livable range. I didn’t think there was such a thing, but apparently there is because he is still alive. He says he was in his teens when all this happened. When they came out of the shelter, there were others, although not many. There were dead people all over the place or at least skeletons of what had been people. There was very little damage to the buildings except where some of the bombs had actually hit. He says his father told him that most of the world had developed a bomb that would destroy people and leave the land and the buildings pretty much intact. That way when there was a war it would not cost so much to clean up after it.

  He doesn’t know what year this is, but figures it must be in the 1980’s or early 1990’s. That doesn’t help us, when we left on leave it was 2009. Where did the last twenty years go and about eight million people, not counting the rest of the world? He tells us that the young people we see are the generation after his. We ask how most people die thinking that he is going to say radiation poisoning. He says mostly when they are too slow to outrun the predators, they die. He adds that most of the predators are two legged. He says he heard we met some of them today and he thanks us for helping Dayna. She is his daughter and he worries every time she goes out because the other families, as they call them, want her for breeding. If they catch her, the life she would have would be a living hell, being passed from one man to another until they finally kill her. I’m glad we came along when we did.

  Tim and I are speculating whether we have walked into some parallel dimension or another world somewhere. It can’t be a time warp because this never happened on the earth we live on. According to history there was always a threat of nuclear war for most of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, but it never happened. The governments are too civilized for that. They prefer to kill people in smaller bunches over several decades. Apparently much of the technology that helped people thrive back then has been lost. It’s not the people’s fault. They have just never been shown how to use what is all around them. We feel sorry for these people, but like it or not we have to try to find our way back to the world we know. The only place we can think of that we may be able to do that is to go back to the subway station and back-track our steps. We are getting very tired again so we ask Dayna where we will be able to sleep tonight.

  She smiles, and says that her sister would like to sleep with Tim and she and I will be using the section at the end of the room. Tim smiles like a cat that got the canary. I tell her we shouldn’t sleep together. People should be married before they do that. She tells me that her father told her we were married as soon as I saved her from those other men. The old man comes out again and tells me she is right, they have no formal religion or government, to muddy the waters, so if two people want to be married they are. In this case since I saved her life then she owes her life to me so that makes us married. He tells me not to worry, if I find someone I like as much she can be my wife as well. He says if it was good enough for the Mormons, it’s good enough for them. He thanks me again for saving his daughter and tells me he knows I will be a good husband for her. Tim just smiles and says he hopes his strength holds up, he may have to find a store with vitamins tomorrow, just in case we get lucky enough to be stuck here for good.

  We go to the area designated for us to sleep. D
ayna doesn’t seem to mind at all. In fact she is holding me close and kissing me on the side of my face all the way to our room. There is just a candle in here for light, but when she takes off the dress she has on and has nothing on under it, that seems to be plenty of light. At least she can’t see how red I am turning. Speaking of turning, Ma Horton must be turning over in her grave about now. Gunny would have that big grin he used to get all the time. Dayna tells me this is the first time for her and asks me to be gentle with her. I tell her it’s my first time as well, so hopefully I won’t do anything too dumb. She smiles and tells me we have a lifetime to practice so she is sure we will get the hang of it eventually. Surprisingly it doesn’t take long at all to figure it out, we’re both sure it will get better. For now we are both very happy with this arrangement. We are not sure how much our laughter is keeping the others awake as we try to figure out what to do with noses and chins as well as other parts of our anatomy that we are not used to trying to fit conveniently with each other. Now I know why Ma Horton told me that sex is like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. One bite is never going to be anywhere near enough.

  3

  I wake up in the morning fully expecting to be still sitting on that subway car and realizing everything that happened yesterday is a dream. That goes away quickly when I see Dayna sleeping with her head on my chest. Oh well, I’ve never been one to dwell on negatives. We will use today to find out if there is any way back to our world, and if not to see how we can make ours and our new families lives a little better. I try to get up without waking Dayna, but she is awake as soon as I move even a little bit. She smiles at me and Ma Horton’s forbidden fruit theory comes back to haunt me. When we do get up I go upstairs to see what kind of day we are going to have. Through the windows it looks like it is going to be fairly sunny, but it is a little on the cool side. I ask Dayna what month this is and she tells me she has no idea what I am talking about. I try to explain and she says that today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow, you do what you have to do to survive. Other than that it doesn’t matter.