Outland (Revised Edition)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  “The solution,” Bill said, “is to work more from this side. Pop over only to retrieve stuff, and only indoors if at all possible.”

  “But we’re victims of our own success,” Matt said. “We’ve found so many locations worth looting, er, salvaging. Except, no drivable vehicles. So until we can find some more trucks—without searching from that side, mind you—we’re going to be limited to walking distance on this side, or whatever we can manage with my F-150. Which raises a whole other set of problems. We end up with a trail of predators looking for a chance to pick off a stray human.”

  “Right. That means vehicles become a priority,” said Bill.

  Krista started to sputter, and Richard balled his fists. “I quit.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure you do,” Ed replied. “Should we start breaking into houses, looking for keys?”

  Richard shook his head. “Not a good idea, Ed. People either took their vehicles when they got out of town, or they’re probably still home. Try to break in, and you might find yourself at the wrong end of a shotgun.”

  “Not to mention the ethical and legal issues.”

  “Erm, I think we’re a little past worrying about that. This is a survival situation. But if it helps, if we run into someone, we’ll offer to take them in. That counts for something, right?”

  Silence greeted Richard’s comment, so he continued. “Look, maybe we should concentrate on this problem for the moment. Matt, see if you can round up info on the locations of car dealerships. They’ll have demo vehicles, and keys should be in the offices somewhere. Once we have a few trucks, it will take the pressure off.”

  Matt nodded slowly. “My crew has been watching for people, police, army, or other emergency personnel. We still got taken by surprise. It’d be nice to get them on our side, whoever they are.”

  “If they’re legit, and not another group of looters,” Bill replied.

  “We’re not—”

  “Technically, we are. Let’s go with the assumption that they will shoot us.”

  Richard held up a hand to forestall the argument. “Okay, we understand. But honestly, if we run into actual Army or National Guard, we could just invite them over, right?”

  “I think their policy is shoot first, though.”

  Richard sighed. “I’ve got nothing else for you, Bill. We either continue on this path or we stop right now and take our chances with what we already have. Honestly, if we have to stay here over the winter, I don’t think we’ll survive without a lot more supplies.”

  “Over the winter?” Krista glared at Richard. “Just how long-term are we talking about, anyway?”

  Erin, who had been quiet up to this point, spoke up.

  “Other than the shooting incident, no one saw any movement, from what Matt says. Everyone is either already out of town, or they’ve dug in somewhere. And as I keep pointing out, if they’ve gone out and been breathing the ash, they’ll be dead within another week anyway. The ash is several feet deep, with deeper drifts. You won’t be driving on it, and even if you get some monster truck, there’s still enough fine particulates in the air to destroy an engine. Power is out, communication towers will have collapsed by now, dishes will be buried, so no phone and no internet.” Erin crossed her arms and sat back, looking discouraged. “If FEMA is involved, they’ll be concentrating on setting up refugee camps outside the edge of the ash cloud. And honestly, chances are that line keeps moving as they pull back. Yellowstone isn’t finished spewing, and the cloud is still being pushed into the stratosphere faster than it can get out of the way. So it’ll continue to be pushed outward even after the volcano settles down. They may not be able to move refugees fast enough to get them to safety.”

  Krista closed her eyes and groaned.

  Erin spread her hands, palms up. “Krista, as primitive and frontier-like as this is, it’s at least livable. If we can collect enough supplies and equipment to keep our overly civilized asses alive until we can adapt.”

  “Look,” Richard said, “this is something we put off discussing at our first meeting. Maybe it’s time to clear the air on this and let everyone else know exactly where we stand, based on what we’ve learned since then.”

  All eyes turned to Erin. She consulted some notes, then looked around the table.

  “Yellowstone has been spewing ash and smoke for more than a week now. I could say the worst is over, but that’s only a relative statement. Several more satellite channels have dropped out, but we’re still getting good coverage from the European broadcasters, including the BBC.

  “Total ash ejections are estimated at up to eight hundred cubic miles to this point. That already puts us over any other supervolcano eruption except Wah Wah Springs, which was about thirty million years ago. Unless Yellowstone experiences a fresh eruption, that number probably won’t dramatically increase. But everything that goes into the atmosphere now pushes all the dust and ash already there outward. By this point, it’s probably covering most of North America, and it’s pushing across the equatorial interface. So the Southern Hemisphere is going to get hammered, too.

  “I’ve already talked about fatalities from breathing the dust. I’ve already talked about damage to any equipment with moving parts from the dust. Now we have to deal with the volcanic equivalent of a nuclear winter.”

  “Oh, come on, seriously?” Ed said.

  Erin glared at him.

  “In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. It produced what is commonly called the Year Without a Summer in 1816, in North America and Europe. And lots of other places, of course, but those are the locations we get our history from. The point, though, is that Tambora affected climate half a world away. Snow in the middle of summer, massive crop failures, death tolls in the tens of thousands in the British Isles. And the punch line? Tambora was estimated at somewhere in the range of twelve cubic miles of ejecta, depending on who you listen to. That’s about a percent or two of what Yellowstone has put out so far. I can’t put it any more clearly than this: the Earth, and the human race, is completely fucked.”

  Erin blushed as she finished. Richard knew her well enough by now to realize how upset she had to be to resort to obscenities.

  Krista sighed into the silence. “Thus the comment about being here for a while.”

  “Krista, I could be massively overestimating this. As I keep saying, all my estimates are based on classroom review of historical eruptions, plus what I’ve learned about supervolcanoes. The news channels could be inflating the numbers. Who knows? But I think we have to plan for the worst case.”

  Bill put up a hand to get the floor.

  “Okay. Scavenging is fine for the short term, but if we are looking at long-term residence, then we need to start planning for the time when scavenging is no longer useful. Gas will start to go bad, things like medicines and antibiotics will expire, canned food will run out, and perishable food will go bad. Corrosion and weathering will start taking out buildings and machinery. Eventually, we have to become completely self-reliant.”

  “And try to avoid sliding back into the Stone Age,” Krista said. “Things like medical knowledge will have to be preserved. We don’t have enough of a population to be able to afford to go back to medieval death rates from things like infections or childbirth.”

  “That seals it,” Richard declared. “We owe it to everyone to come clean. And we all need to make some decisions.”

  A short time later, Richard looked over the crowd. Some were stunned into silence, their eyes glazed. Others sobbed openly. One person had exchanged a few heated words with another, then punched him. Bystanders had ended it by sitting on the attacker.

  One man stood, yelling at Richard. It wasn’t coherent enough to make out specifics, but Richard thought the gist was that he blamed Richard and his friends for all of it. A few people were attempting to shout him down, pointing out very reasonably that the Gate Owners had saved them, and had not caused the catastrophe.

  “How do we know that?” the heckler counte
red. “How do we know that they didn’t cause it?”

  “How do we know you didn’t cause it?” another voice yelled.

  “What?” the heckler said, momentarily derailed.

  “Maybe you are responsible,” the second voice continued. “Or maybe it was leprechauns! Or maybe Santa Claus got tired of delivering presents every year, as long as we’re flinging around stupid baseless accusations.”

  The heckler stood for a few seconds more, his mouth working like a fish trying to breathe. Then he put his head down, balled his fists, slowly sat down, and covered his face with his hands. There were a few seconds of sympathetic silence.

  Richard spoke in what he hoped was a reasonable voice. “Look, we’re going to have to take this a day at a time. At least we have options. We can always return Earthside if we decide it’s safe. Meanwhile this place is at least livable.

  “Bottom line, though, we are probably going to be here a long time. We have to stop treating this like a camping trip or summer retreat, and start thinking long-term.”

  “With you guys in charge the whole time?”

  Richard looked in the direction of the shout, but couldn’t pick out the speaker.

  “No. Everyone has to be in on this, which means everyone has to be involved. Which means elections, and rules, and jobs, and maybe eventually an economy. We’ll start by—”

  “And what if we don’t agree to that?”

  Richard looked to his right, where Bill was slowly shaking his head. “Probably the same assholes,” Bill commented quietly.

  Richard turned back to face the crowd and allowed some irritation into his voice. “Nothing’s keeping you here. You can always leave and form your own, uh, whatever it is you think will work. Or go back to Lincoln.”

  “And what if we don’t feel like leaving?”

  “Oh, for fuck sake. Look, whoever you are. You might think you can just plant your feet and act stubborn and no one will be able to do anything. And that might have worked back home where you could run to social media and play the victim. But here, we’re in a survival situation, and we don’t have time for this kind of bullshit. We’ll get a bunch of people together and toss you over the fence and invite you to start walking. Or push you through the gate back to Earthside. You accept the group decision or you get out.”

  “I don’t recognize your right to make those decisions.”

  “I don’t give even a tiny fraction of a fuck what you do or do not recognize. I’ve given you your choices.”

  Richard waited, but there was no response. It was doubtful that he’d persuaded the speaker of anything. More likely, whoever it was would just agitate again later. Richard spotted Monica moving through the crowd and smiled to himself. Things wouldn’t go well for Mr. Anarchy if he kept pushing it.

  Time to wrap this up.

  “We’re slightly over three hundred people now, with the latest refugees. Bill thinks we can get a P.A. from one of the locations we’ve earmarked. At that point, we’ll have a town hall meeting. For now, my voice is done.”

  He gave a wave, to cheers, jeers, and shouted commentary.

  Richard turned as Bill gestured, to see Monica stomping up to their group. Monica had always had a determined air about her, but he noted idly that this gait was becoming habitual. He wondered what would happen if someone didn’t jump out of her way fast enough. Nothing good, certainly.

  “His name’s Adam Velitchkov,” she said as she came to a stop. “Several people recognized him. He’s a general loudmouth, frequents the political groups and rallies, and always seems to be at odds with everyone. Always shit-disturbing. No one had anything good to say about him. He seems to be a professional troublemaker. No one knows what his major is, or even if he has one.”

  “Great, so he’s going to be a problem,” Richard said. “We’ll have to deal with that when we get to it.”

  “It probably won’t be just him,” Monica replied. “He was with a couple of friends. And it’s worth noting that none of them were the two loudmouths who were hassling Bill that first day. So we’ve got at least five assholes.”

  “Things were getting pretty heated this last semester with all the political rallies on campus,” Bill said. “There are already bad feelings, and I’ll bet real money people won’t leave that behind.”

  “Shit.” Richard rubbed his chin in thought. “Bill, as time goes on I’m finding myself moving closer to your point of view. It’s time to use your paranoia superpower again. Please discuss this with Monica and Fred offline. We need to be ready for the possibility that someone is going to try something underhanded.”

  “Got it.” Monica turned to Bill. “We’ll need to talk about available gate and portal equipment as well.”

  “Uh …”

  Monica rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Captain Paranoid, keep up. We need to make sure the equipment is secure so it can’t get grabbed, and frankly I’d like to have some spares that no one knows about.”

  “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Bill said.

  60. Sunny Days

  August 5

  The sun was out again today in Rivendell. Erin and Monica had decided to take a much-needed break. As they lay on a couple of cheap aluminum beach chairs—no doubt salvaged from some summer accessories store—Erin mentally reviewed the last ten days or so.

  The colony had adapted quickly. They’d implemented a routine of two meals a day—breakfast and dinner. A lot of people were having trouble with that, though. Erin chuckled at the thought. A lot of people were having trouble with a lack of snacks. And truthfully, a lot of people would be better off without them.

  Erin had volunteered to work the breakfast shift, and for once there wasn’t a council meeting scheduled today, so she was technically free until dinner. Hmm, I wonder what we’ll make, Erin thought. Venison chili? Or maybe buffalo chili? Or maybe buffalo burgers, without the buns? Or buffalo steaks? Or venison steaks?

  Erin found herself mentally reviewing various council discussions, a new habit that she couldn’t seem to shake.

  One of the first things that the scavenging parties had gone looking for was food. And, unfortunately, that was the one thing that every other resident of Lincoln had also gone looking for after the eruption. Short of breaking into individual homes, there was very little food left to be found Earthside. That left the supplies that Bill had originally purchased, plus anything that could be acquired on this side. They were in no danger of starving to death, but there would be adjustments.

  They’d managed to coax the chickens into an egg-laying routine, but a dozen eggs a day for a couple hundred people wouldn’t go very far. So instead, they were going to hatch as many of the eggs as they could to try to build up the inventory. In addition to their obvious duties, the two roosters had become the colony’s alarm clocks—and the most hated denizens of Rivendell.

  Meanwhile, breakfast very much resembled dinner except for the location of the sun in the sky.

  The aggie students had located wild herbs and onions and a couple of other vegetable-ish plants, so there was at least some variety to the meals. Someone said that they had recovered some seeds from a couple of businesses Earthside and would be trying to grow some late-summer crops. That would help as well.

  Erin sighed. Low-carb diet. No problem now.

  She lay in the lawn chair, enjoying the feeling of warmth, refusing to let herself be consumed by the food situation. As on most days, the sky was not completely clear. Clouds were always scudding through, the fluffy kind of clouds that would block the sun for a few minutes at a time. She looked around. There were a couple of dozen people, sitting or lying down on the folding beach chairs, including that Josh character who never seemed to be working.

  Erin laughed a bit. Monica opened her eyes and turned to her. “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, I was just looking around. This place is such a weird mix of wild west pioneer and modern suburbia. We’re sitting in these chairs, suntanning, while people are riding
around on horses, hunting, and other people race around on dirt bikes. Meanwhile, there’s a crew digging latrines, another hauling water, while yet another crew uses an interdimensional portal to go raiding another universe for supplies. It’s bizarre.”

  “I wonder if they’ll make a movie out of it. Or a TV series. Bill would like that.” Monica sighed. “I guess that’s not very likely right now, is it?”

  “Maybe not this month. But things might improve.”

  Erin looked up. A couple of guys were coming over, carrying folding chairs. She saw it was Pete and Phil.

  “Hello, ladies,” Pete said, as they unfolded the chairs. Erin smiled at them in greeting, and Monica gave them a cheerful hello. Some men were relentless and had to be fended off constantly, but Pete and Phil were harmless and easygoing. They just wanted to find a way to slack off.

  “So what are you guys working on these days?” Erin asked.

  “Scouting,” Phil said. “We kind of used up all our talents on the scavenging end of things when we found the fuel at the gas station. They’ll probably call on us again, but meanwhile our job is to ride around on dirt bikes.”

  “So why aren’t you out there today?”

  “Al broke one of the dirt bikes,” Pete replied. “He’s fixing it right now, and Richard told him he’s cut off for a week. Al is some pissed.”

  “That dude is insane,” Phil added. “Dirt biking is his main thing in life. I think they’re planning on doing a scavenging expedition to his home at some point to pick up all his toys, including all his bikes. Then he can break those instead of the colony’s bikes.”

  “There’s so much stuff we need …” Pete mused. “It seems like every five minutes someone is asking Matt to arrange an expedition to get some other thing. He wants to go hit auto dealerships and scavenge some vehicles so they can grab more things at once. But he can’t get people to leave him alone long enough.”

  They let the silence stretch for a few minutes. There was no feeling of awkwardness, nor need to fill the quiet with chatter. The warmth and slight breeze melted away any feeling of urgency. Erin felt herself start to drift.