“No cop, no stop.” he said to himself as he blew past a sign.
A few minutes later he was on the dirt road and then the drive to the cabin. He pulled up and grabbed the box.
The rattling sound was music to his ears.
Inside he found Fatima using a cold damp rag to try to keep the fever down.
“You have it?” Fatima asked.
He set the box down.
“I have a lot but I don’t know what you need.” John said.
Fatima went to the table.
“Keep putting the rag on his forehead until we can get his temp down.” She looked in the box and saw Tylenol. “Yes, this will bring the fever down.” She took two capsules out and grabbed a bottle of water.
“John, open your mouth, you need to take this.” Fatima said putting the two pills in his mouth and giving him water to swallow.
The pills were old, past the expiration date. She worried she may have to add more because the drug had broken down over time. She could only wait and see what effect the normal dose had and go from there.
John looked down at his son. He was pale and felt hot through the fabric of the cloth.
Fatima went back to the meds and looked for the right antibiotic. She took a few out and debated which one would have the best overall effect she was looking for. John had an infection. She wasn’t sure what. It could be so many things. She picked the one that would cover the most types of infections. After this point, everything was a waiting game.
She gave her son the antibiotic and watched John holding his son’s hand. She knew before they were together that he would make a good father. She sometimes worried that with his responsibilities to the town he wasn’t spending enough time with them but it was a trade. A safe town to have the kids live in or run the risk of being in a more dangerous world.
Little John fell asleep and Fatima organized the meds in the box. All of them were expired, some more than others. She was happy to have it all. She was becoming more accustomed to using herbal remedies but using her old degree made her feel more confident. Before John brought the meds home she was giving little John raw garlic because it’s a natural antibiotic. She wasn’t confident of it and it’s supposed to be taken as the illness is coming on and not during.
She sat back in her chair and watched John with their son. She was confident now that little John would be ok. She was still worried until his symptoms changed and he started getting better. In the meantime, she enjoyed having her husband back, it felt like he was always out and running around these days. It was important stuff but she was missing him. She wondered if there would be a day that they would finally be able to rest like they originally planned.
Odin walked through the market with Ricardo. People did double takes and were surprised to see Odin out of the bar. He normally stayed inside and had other people bring stuff in trade for food.
“You like what we have here Ricardo?” Odin said.
“Of course.” Ricardo said.
“Good, because you may do one of the greatest things to make sure this keeps going on.” Odin replied.
They walked up to Norah’s table. The cart with the large pig strapped to it sat behind her, the pig lying in the shade sleeping. She raised her head assuming she would be looking at customers and her face lit up.
“Is this the young man?” Norah asked standing up.
“This is Ricardo, Ricardo this is Norah.” Odin introduced them and they shook hands.
“I’m hungry.” Ricardo said catching whiffs of food from various vendors.
“Why don’t we all get a bite to eat?” Odin suggested.
They bought two whole chickens from one of the grills and sat at a picnic table tearing into the flesh and eating the thick pieces of meat.
“Has Odin talked to you yet about what we are looking for?” Norah asked Ricardo.
He shook his head and tore into another bite of a chicken leg.
“We are looking for various items, specifically books, tools and seeds involving gardening. We have a list for you so you know what to grab if you find it.” Norah started.
“You people are big on lists.” Ricardo said.
Norah gave Odin a questioning look.
“John’s son is sick, we had Ricardo go out this morning looking for meds and he came back with more than enough.” Odin patted Ricardo on the back. “He did well.”
“Is he going to be ok?” Norah said.
“I think so.” Odin answered.
Norah turned back to Ricardo who was finishing his chicken leg and looking already for his next hunk of meat.
“What we are looking for is a large variety of seeds, any you can find. The books I have here on the list, they will have names like, bio-intensive, permaculture, organic gardening, square foot…”
“So plants, seeds, books about plants, tools. I think I got it.” Ricardo said grabbing another leg off of one of the chickens. “What do I get?”
“What do you want?” Norah asked.
Ricardo sat there chewing his food. His eyes shifting around as he thought about it.
“Free food for a week.” Ricardo replied.
Odin started to laugh.
Ricardo rethought his offer and quickly changed it.
“Free food for two weeks.”
Odin continued to laugh.
“How would you like to have free food for life and a house in town?” Norah said.
Ricardo stopped chewing.
“What?”
“Free food for life and your own house.” Norah repeated.
“Deal!” Ricardo said. A large smile grew on his face and he continued to chew his food and finish his chicken leg.
Odin and Ricardo went back to the bar and Ricardo grabbed his bag.
“So, when I bring back what I find…” Ricardo started.
“You know that you’re going to find it for the town. We are not talking about one bag. We are talking about a bank of seeds, a library of books, and a barn of tools. This is a long project. It may take a year. In the end you have a home and free food for life. You’re just doing what you already do, and in the end you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Suddenly, it didn’t sound as easy as before. But it still had the same payoff and if he was lucky he could get his mom to move here and he wouldn’t have to take care of her like before. He already knew his first stop.
“Ok, we still have a deal. I’ll be back tomorrow.” Ricardo said leaving through the front door.
Odin thought it was strange he didn’t take his case of mead but if he would be living in town it made sense to not leave with it. Odin had a good feeling about this. He cleaned some glasses and waited for customers. The world was starting to look up.
The next day Ricardo was back. A large hiking pack on his back and several tools strapped to it. He still had his satchel and appeared tired as he set the pack down next to the door of the bar.
“Back already.” Odin said.
“Did you doubt me?” Ricardo said, as shovels and rakes clanked and rung as they hit the floor. The backpack appeared heavy and Odin couldn’t wait to dive into it. Ricardo set the satchel on the counter and Odin took the contents out. Seeds, several packages of seeds. Sealed and labeled. There were heirlooms and hybrids and several flowers and herbs. Over all there were hundreds of packages of seeds, more than enough to get started on their project.
“Holy shit!” Odin said. He flipped through the seeds and was amazed at what Ricardo had brought to him.
“Well?” Ricardo said.
“This, this is very nice.”
“Ok, can I get a drink, food?” Ricardo said.
“Oh yeah.”
Ricardo had a feast at the market. The miles he was putting in and the weight he was carrying burned thousands of calories a day. Odin talked to the vendors and they quickly learned to give the kid whatever he wanted. The kid didn’t realize it but his work would be the key to creating a new Garden of Eden.
Little
John’s fever broke and he started looking better soon after. Fatima didn’t know if the antibiotics had worked or if his body had fought it off on its own but either way she was happy to have her son back to normal. A few days later John took his son down to the river and spent the afternoon fishing.
Fatima stepped out on the porch and watched them together sitting on a fallen tree trunk. This was what she was hoping for. She had the feeling it wouldn’t last. Nothing does forever. At least at the moment she could enjoy her family and know that this was perfect for the time being.
A year later Ricardo was finishing his search throughout the countryside. The town had put together maps in order to help him keep track of where he had been and where to look. He used carts and wagons to carry items back for the projects. When he found fields of edible food like blueberries he marked it on the map and told the town about it. By the time he was finished the town had a barn full of tools, a seed bank filled with thousands of seeds kept in several basements out of light in the coolest spot they could find. Three libraries were created. Many books were doubles and kept in separate places around town in case there was a fire. The rest of the books were divided by subject and also kept between the three buildings to keep the majority of knowledge safe.
In the old central park of the town the grounds were dug up and turned into several garden plots. They experimented with several types of gardening like square foot and bio-intensive. Permaculture was the basis for the outlying food forest they were starting. The food bushes, like blueberries, were slowly collected and carefully moved to town. The local bee population exploded. Odin was in no way hurting for honey to make his mead. The trading at the market switched from food to objects of need or desire. Some still used their cooking skills to trade prepared meals for items but mostly food was something they no longer had to worry about. Norah taught classes on canning. The hunters of the town shared their various methods of smoking. Some people built large dehydrators for preserving a majority of the extra food the town if it wasn’t able to be eaten at harvest.
Over the years the project of the garden and food forest provided more food than anyone needed. Stability was finally taking place and the spare time from gardening created the ability to put the kids in school and forming a social structure.
Ricardo, that last year of his mission, moved into one of the houses in town. It was Chuck’s old house and the shower that Chuck had installed was the selling point for Ricardo’s mother to move to town. She didn’t want to walk all the way and Ricardo had to haul all of the bottles of mead she never traded, but finally his mother would be taken care of.
John pushed the idea of training the population for combat but the idea never took off. Some of the younger kids would hang out with him and he would teach them various things. He even started an evening class once a week where he would teach various self-defense techniques from the army handbook. He figured one day these kids may leave their town and travel throughout the country. He didn’t know if those places would be peaceful like his own. It was better to teach them something that might come in handy than to leave them with nothing and have nothing to fall back on.
On the sixth year Ricardo had finished his task of collecting seeds, books and tools. After little John was healthy again John had taken the Jeep with Odin to the greenhouse the brewer had talked about. Many of the books, tools, and even seeds came from that place. They had attached a trailer to the Jeep they found at the greenhouse and hauled back anything they could pick up. Betty was set on the task of organizing and cataloging the seeds that were collected. She had been collecting and storing seeds from her own garden and she added many of those varieties to the seed bank for the town. John also took the Jeep to the librarian and filled the back with several additional copies of gardening books that had been collected. The tall bearded man that John remembered from the year before seemed happy to help and asked that Odin send a case of mead his way when he had a chance.
Last was the library. John had been lucky to find a stash of treated gasoline at a police station filling center in town. He had to pump it out by hand but it kept his Jeep running for what appeared to be his final journey with it. After filling the gas tank and the extra jerry cans in the back he drove to the library he had visited several years before. He had asked the librarian if he knew the books were still there or if they were destroyed. The man simply didn’t know where most of his people collected them from.
John pulled up to the building. The front was a round glass covered dome. The large panels of glass were still intact and the only part that was damaged was the sliding doors that had been pried open and left that way. The foyer between the sliding doors was a catching place for leaves and litter that still blew around the city. The building looked the same to him. This was the first place Fatima and he had stopped after leaving Amir at the house. He didn’t bother to check the building. He hadn’t seen too many people around in his drive in. Towards the center of the library was the curved stairway that traveled to all three levels of the building. He had his pistol on him but figured he wouldn’t need it. He traveled up the stairs still keeping an eye on every corner, a habit he hoped he would never get rid of. He looked at the rows of books. Many were gone now. Some had fallen on the floor. He saw that wildlife had found their way inside due to the mice that were running around on the floor. John went to the aisle that had the gardening books and found two pools of dried blood. The remains of when he protected Fatima from the two men years ago. The library was now a mausoleum to old knowledge and the men who died inside.
He was careful not to step on the dried blood and pulled all the books he was looking for from the shelves. He grabbed a cart that the librarians would have used and piled the books on. He found boxes in the back and filled them with the books. He also grabbed the books that covered survival, self-defense, and wild food plants. After loading the Jeep he still had room. There was no point in ever coming back. He went back inside and browsed the shelves for books that he once enjoyed reading before The Day. He filled his own box with the complete run of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. He grabbed several others. He found military manuals and threw those in. Books on herbal remedies and traditional Chinese medicine were also added. He grabbed hunting books and soon his Jeep was full. The last thing he threw in was a large edition of the Webster’s dictionary and that rested in the passenger seat. The last was a thought of preserving the language and helping the kids navigate through the books on their own when they became curious.
He couldn’t wait to get home. It was a long drive but in the end he would be able to hold his wife and kids. Fatima thought she might be pregnant again. Until they knew he told her he would just keep trying harder until she was. She didn’t seem to mind the idea. He found that little John had become quite the fisherman and they spent many afternoons fishing for dinner and he would share stories and long talks with him. The more questions that little John asked the better John felt about their conversations. He was still younger but he was more mature than any child he had ever known. It was sad but The Day had not only killed a large portion of the population but also the idea of childhood.
He would be home before sunset. He would still have some gas left in the Jeep when he was done but didn’t know when he would ever use it again. It was a tool. He had become so accustomed to traveling on foot that the Jeep was only used for long trips like this or hauling heavy items around town.
As he drove out of the city he felt the breeze in his hair and smelled the clean air. Smog was gone. Jet exhaust no longer littered the sky. This was a pure world that he was living in devoid of the progress man had pushed upon it. The road was clear and he was two hours from home. He sat back and let the Jeep fly its final journey to its resting place that John called home.
Epilogue
Twenty-five years after The Day
Chapter 1: Somewhere in Ohio
Chung and Qi had heads covered in grey and white hair. They were fit for their age but moun
tain life will do that to you. They had become skilled hunters and fisherman. Their flight suits had long been replaced by deer hide and furs. They looked like Eskimos or Native Americans.
It was a spring day when Qi went to the river for his afternoon of fishing. He looked across the river and spotted people on the opposite side. A man and woman waved at him. His jaw dropped. He was lost for words and had no idea what to do. He turned and tried shouting to Chung unsure where he was. His yelling in Chinese echoed through the valley.
The couple walked across the river, careful of the current.
The man tried to talk to Qi but he didn’t understand English. Qi tried to talk to the couple but they didn’t understand Chinese. He even tried using different dialects of Mandarin and Cantonese. Then the girl spoke back. He male counterpart looked just as amazed as him. Her dialect was not quite as good as Qi. Simple words mostly and her accent was off.
Frustrated, he tried to remember old American movies he had seen at one time. The larger biker that killed many people in a movie came to mind. Qi puffed up his chest and put his arms out like they were too big for his body.
“I’ll be back.” he said before turning around and running to the cabin still yelling in Chinese. The couple looked at each other.
“He seems excited,” the woman said.
“I would hope so. I have no idea how long they have been here.” the man replied. “I didn’t know you spoke Chinese.”
She shrugged her shoulders and started to follow the man.
They both walked to the cabin. They figured they would be welcomed with as excited as the old Chinese man was.
When they reached the cabin they found two Chinese men waiting for them. They were frantic and running around through the house trying to get things ready for a fire and making food. They were excited to have company even if they couldn’t talk to them.
The second man they had not met gestured for them to sit at the table.
“Chung,” the man said pointing to himself.
After the Day- Red Tide Page 29