2nd Earth: Shortfall

by Edward Vought

  I show her a calendar that is on the wall of the office, she says she has seen it many times, but has no idea what it is for. I try to explain, but finally smile and tell her as it becomes important we will discuss it more. That is if time ever does become important to this group of people. To be honest I have to admit that they may have the best idea of all. I open the front door to look out, much to Dayna’s horror. She is afraid I will be attacked by predators. I assure her if those guys yesterday are all we have to worry about then I’m not worried. She is right about one thing, there is someone waiting for me when I open the door. If I didn’t hear them and look down I would not have seen the tiny little girls staring up at me. There are two of them that appear to be the same age, which to my untrained eye for children is approximately four or five. I say hello to them and ask Dayna if she knows where they came from.

  She says she has never seen them before although she has heard children crying for the past few nights and had no idea where it was coming from. We bend down to pick them up when we hear a voice frantically calling to us to please not hurt the children. We look up to see a young woman running across the street toward us, begging now for us not to hurt them. Before I can say anything she tells me to take her, but spare her babies. Finally I can assure her that I wasn’t going to hurt anyone, we just wanted to make sure the children didn’t get hurt. This young lady looks to be a little older than Dayna, but not by more than a couple of years. Dayna introduces herself and me and asks the young lady what they are doing here and where they came from.

  She and Dayna are now holding the little girls. She says they have been staying in the building across the street for the past few days. They left where they had lived because the gangs were getting closer and they lost their food runner three days ago now. They can only guess that he was either killed or captured to be used as a slave. No matter how few people there are on earth some of them will still try to take advantage of the others. She continues saying that they haven’t eaten since he disappeared and everyone could smell the food cooking after dark last night. The girls must have come over here to see if there was any food for them. She apologizes and says she will take them home and make sure they don’t bother us again. Dayna tells her she will do no such thing, she asks her how many people there are in her family. There are a total of six adults and the two children. Five of the six adults are women and one is an older man kind of like Dayna’s father. We tell her to go get them and join us. We have plenty of food for them and us.

  She looks very relieved to be invited. I can imagine how frightening it must be living the way these people have been living all their lives. Tim comes up with one of Dayna’s sisters, we help the lady and her family carry all their possessions to the basement where we are staying. That is going to change today. We will not live where we can’t see our enemies. As soon as we determine whether or not we can get back home, we will begin the process of teaching these people how to survive. I was wrong about having plenty of food so Dayna volunteers to show Tim and me where we can get more. On the way I see an old toy wagon in a storefront. I ask Dayna why they don’t use something like that to carry more food. She tells me that they always have to grab what they can and run. That is getting to be increasingly more difficult because the food supplies are starting to run out. She says being able to open the cans without ruining the food will help a lot because there are plenty of cans left.

  We take the wagon in the window and find another just like it inside the store so we take both. When we get to the store we see a couple of guys that look like the ones that chased Dayna yesterday, lurking around outside the store. Dayna says we will have to find another store because this will be too dangerous. Tim agrees, but only for those guys if they try to stop us. We walk right into the store and fill the wagons with food, until we can’t carry any more, then walk out the same way we came in. The guys across the street yell at us, but no one gets close enough to do any harm. I even find a new can opener in the store, it’s still amazing to me how people can grow up and not even know how to use a can opener. Everyone is excited to see the food when we get back. They are even more surprised when Dayna tells them we went right in past the predators. They think we have some kind of magical powers to be able to do the things we do. Those two little girls are much happier now that they have their bellies full.

  After we eat, Tim and I ask Dayna if she knows where the old subway station is. We got kind of turned around when we chased those guys and then came here. At first she doesn’t know what we are talking about then understands. She says there is nothing there though. You can’t even get below the ground. We tell her we came up through there only yesterday and it was totally open. She says she will be happy to show us, so we head out to answer that question once and for all anyway. We have plenty of company on the way there, most of the girls don’t go out much because of the predators, but they feel safe with us. That fully loaded Sig makes me comfortable, plus violence has been a way of life for me the past six years and four for Tim. Compared to most of the fighting we have done, those predators are nothing to worry about. Not that we underestimate them, we are just confident that we can handle whatever they throw at us.

  The subway station is only about ten blocks away. I am looking for certain items on the way because I am pretty sure what we are going to find. When we get there, the entire subway station including the stairs and tunnel leading down to the trains below is totally caved in. Tim and I turn around to see the area as viewed from the entrance and it is definitely where we came out yesterday. We both recognize the street signs and the signs on the stores. Dayna has not let go of me since we left the building where we live. She asks me if I am going to leave her now. I take her arms in my hands gently and look her straight in the eye.

  “I have no intentions of leaving you, if we could have found the way back to where we come from, I was going to help Tim go back and I was going to stay. I have no idea why, but it feels like I have known you for all of my life and I don’t ever want to leave you or have you leave me.”

  She gives me a big kiss much to the delight of the other women with us. Tim tells me he thought I wanted to go back, he says he has nothing back there except a family that hasn’t seen enough of him in the past six or seven years to miss. He says he feels the same way about Dayna’s sister Charity. She hasn’t let go of Tim since we left either. I tell Tim what I am thinking about our living arrangements. He agrees totally so we decide to tell the family what we are proposing and then get started making the move. When we get back we outline a sort of plan, and then see what they think. They agree that with us being here they have the confidence to do whatever we want to do. Tim agrees to stay with the family while I go with Dayna and a couple of the others to look for a new place to live. Dayna says when she was younger she used to explore all over this area. She asks what exactly I am looking for. When I describe it in more detail she says she knows just the place.

  She takes us to a very nice office building that is three stories high with lots of glass windows facing all directions. The windows are frosted glass so you can see out, but no one can see in. The third floor is plenty big enough and even has offices that have doors for privacy. For bathroom facilities people have been going pretty much where they can. This building like many from that era has a large reservoir of water in a tank on the roof just for the purpose of flushing the toilets. It uses gravity and will be far superior to the way they have been doing it. Also like many buildings of that time there is a generator on the roof that runs on propane. That may become a problem, but the tank on the roof for that purpose says it is over 95% full and should last us quite a while if we use the electricity sparingly. We find furniture on some of the other floors as well and move it to the third floor where we are planning to live.

  When we get back to the office basement everyone is ready to leave. The new family asks if they can live here until they can find something better. We tell them they are more than welcome to join us if t
hey would like. We made sure there is plenty of room and it will be no problem at all. They are very happy to hear that and it’s obvious they were hoping that we would invite them. When we get to the new home everyone likes it better than the dreary basement. The office has a kitchen that we can use to cook our food and even some cupboards for storing food in. Today we are seeing more groups of people, but they all seem to be afraid to even make eye contact much less talk to us. We spend the rest of the day cleaning and making the new home comfortable. In the store where we found the wagons we found some children’s toys and even some books. The children are having a great time playing and just being children. One of the ladies in the new family points out the window to a group of people a couple blocks away. She says that’s the young man that used to get their food for them. He is carrying some packages and is surrounded by predators.

  Tim and I tell them to wait here and we will go and see if we can get him away from them. Apparently he is not the only one because there are two others also carrying packages or something obviously for the others. Every once in a while one of the predators will slap the ones carrying things and they all laugh. Tim and I angle up the street to come out right behind them when they cross the street at the next block. We can hear them talking about wanting to find some women that they can take back instead of only guys like these. Our plan works perfectly and when they cross the street we step around the corner telling them to stop right where they are. They do just that, then turn around to see who is talking to them. Four of them are the same ones that I tangled with yesterday. One of them has a black eye where my elbow hit him in the face. They take one look at me and run forgetting all about the young men they are supposed to be guarding.

  They don’t know us so they are not sure if we are here to hurt them or help them. If their captors are afraid of us then they feel kind of obligated to be as well. Tim tells me I have the same effect on people here as I always did with the girls on the base. I ask him if he thinks I should try a new deodorant. He says it has nothing to do with smell, I’m just plain ugly. We ask the captives what they are carrying. They tell us they don’t know so we tell them they may want to see if it’s anything their families can use. They put down the boxes and opening them, find that they are carrying food for the predators. They all say their families can really use this food badly because they have been gone for several days now and most of them are their families’ only way to get food. Dayna and Melissa who is the mother of the little girls come running around the corner. When the young man from her family sees her he is concerned that she has been taken prisoner. She explains what has happened in the past several hours and he is excited to hear that his family is safe and well.

  The others ask if they are allowed to take this food back to their families. We tell them of course and tell them that if they need help don’t be afraid to come and ask for it. There is much more safety in numbers and there is plenty of room for several more people. They tell us they will talk to their families about it and see what they think. On the way back to the new home we stop at a different market and get as much food as we can carry. After we get home for the day Tim and I spend the next couple of hours going over the generator making sure it will work. It takes a couple of tries, but we do manage to get it to fire up and keep running. Dayna’s father, whose name is Tom, says he remembers electricity, but hasn’t seen an electric light since the destruction. Most of our family is shocked to have light without fire. Our second night in this new world is a lot more comfortable than the first one. Dayna tells me how proud she is to have me for her husband. She tells me she just knew when she saw me yesterday for the first time that everything was going to be okay from now on. I wish I could guarantee that for her, unfortunately we still have no idea what lies ahead for us.

  4

  In the morning, the young men of our family and several of the girls tell Tim and me that the predators were looking around the building during the night, but no one tried to get in or anything. While we are eating breakfast one of the young ladies from the new family comes over and tells Dayna and me that there are some people outside the building looking around. We go to look and we recognize one of the young men who we took from the predators yesterday. Dayna and I go down and invite them up to our home. It is easy to see they are unsure of whether or not they should be here. The young man who we talked to yesterday starts saying that we offered for them to join us, they are curious to know if the offer still stands. We assure them it does, we invite them to join us and they are more than happy to do that. Tim and I want to go for more food today. Dayna refuses to stay home so we take some of the young men along with us and go looking for stores that we have not been to yet.

  Dayna and Charity tell us which directions they have lived because most of the food is already gone from the stores in that area. Of course they don’t remember much about canned goods because they didn’t know how to open them without ruining them. Apparently these are kind of nomads moving from place to place in the city wherever they can find food and shelter. It is beginning to sound like our fears are well founded. Even though there are not as many people using the food eventually it will run out and in the city there is not much chance to grow more. We don’t even know what month it is, heck we don’t even know what year this is. We decide to visit a couple of the stores from the area they used to live in just to see if there is anything salvageable. In the first store we find a couple dozen cans that are still sealed and in the second store there are about fifty. I ask if we should leave some for others, but the new members of our family assure me that most of the families or groups kind of stay in the same area. I ask them why they haven’t joined forces before this and they say they were always afraid to trust anyone before this.

  Dayna says that the predators have tried to join some of the other families pretending to be alone. She says she knows of one whole family that was wiped out by the predators after doing that. They all say that now they have seen that Tim and I are not afraid of the predators, and that the predators are actually afraid of us, so they want to be safe with us. We decide to look for some stores farther west of where we have been looking. Dayna tells me she has not come this far west before because she was over this way once and saw a mutant. I should have known this is going too easily, besides every science fiction movie I ever saw had some kind of mutant in it. There was even one really stupid movie that had killer tomatoes in it. I wouldn’t mind finding a giant mutated tomato. Actually it wouldn’t do much good because we don’t have any bread or mayonnaise to go with it. We find one store that hasn’t been wiped out yet, there are a few hundred jars of food and it looks like a couple thousand cans.

  We are loading the wagons with what we can carry, I am a little ways off from the others when I get hit from behind by what feels like a ton of bricks. Whatever or whoever it was hit me across the shoulders knocking me forward. I manage to stay on my feet and turn to see what hit me. Now I know what Dayna was talking about. I am facing a man who is at least a foot taller than me and must weigh a hundred pounds more. He looks a little surprised that he didn’t at least knock me down. If the predators are who he is used to fighting, I can see why he would be surprised. I am looking for a way out without going through him, but the aisle is blocked behind me so the only way out is either through him or to climb over the shelves. I take a step toward him telling him I don’t want any trouble. I will leave if this is his store. He seems to be thinking about it, but he is still not moving so I take another step, braced to kick if I have to. I’m not going to waste a punch on that massive body of his and I doubt if I could get close enough to hit his face or head.

  I take one more step closer. He raises his hand as if he is getting ready to strike out again. I am ready to kick at his knee hoping to put him down long enough to get past him. I could shoot him, but I don’t want to kill someone over a misunderstanding. He pulls his arm back and just as I start to raise my leg for the kick we hear a frightened voice saying please d
on’t hurt him. I’m not sure if she is talking to him or me. Dayna follows the lady who spoke into the aisle where we are. She tells me this is the mutant she told me about. The other lady says he isn’t a mutant, he’s just big and people are afraid of him so they chase them away all the time. It looks like the threat of getting hit with that gigantic fist again is over, for the moment. I ask him why he hit me. He speaks well with a voice that sounds like thunder coming from deep within that huge body of his.

  “I am here to get food for my mother, my sister, and myself. I have never seen anyone here so I was surprised when I saw you and thought you may be one of the predators. They have tried to take my mother and sister before. I should have known you don’t look like them. Please accept my apologies. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  I assure him I will be okay in a month or two, at least he smiles. Dayna is now talking to the mother and the sister, they don’t go anywhere without him being close. Tim comes down the aisle and says he doesn’t blame them. He asks me if I have gotten suicidal on him, starting a fight with someone that big. He tells me I really better go to some anger management classes before I hurt myself. Even our new super size friend laughs about that. Dayna and Charity have already invited them to come with us. Dayna tells them that we are living in a very nice place high up so we can see around us and we have lights and can cook right in the house. They are not sure they believe all that, but they are curious enough to come and see for themselves. We actually find two shopping carts in the market so we load them and the wagons and take them back to the house. When we get there we find that the other families, of the young men we rescued yesterday, have asked to join our group. It is getting crowded so we decide to let the women, which there are a lot more of than the men, stay on the third floor. We men and our wives will stay on the second floor so that if anyone tries to get to the women they have to go through us. Billy and his mother and sister want to stay on the second floor as well. I’m not going to be the one to tell him they can’t.