“You guys think we’ll ever get back to civilization?” Phil’s voice brought Erin back from the brink.
“Honestly,” Pete answered before Erin or Monica could reply, “I couldn’t care less if we never do.”
This made Erin open one eye and look at him. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Mind you, ask me again in a month when we’ve gone through our stash, but I’m not sure we aren’t better off now. Earth was getting way too complicated, crowded, and stressed. I know we’re going to miss some things eventually, but right now I feel like if I had a button in front of me to bring the old world back, I wouldn’t press it.”
“Maybe you should talk to the agro folks,” Monica said. “I’m sure your stash has some seeds in it.”
Pete and Phil both sat up straight and looked at each other. “Son of a bitch!” Pete said.
They leapt off their chairs and went charging off, with a “Watch our stuff” yelled back to the girls.
“You sure know how to clear a room,” Erin said.
Monica took a bow from her chair.
61. Mealtime
August 6
“Wow, what a friggin’ day.” Bill lowered himself into the lawn chair with a groan and arranged his plate on his lap.
Mealtimes had become routine, but there was a large flavor of camping in the process. Kitchen volunteers cooked the meals in some impressively large pots that had been rescued from a restaurant Earthside in the first couple of days. Other kitchen staff served the food cafeteria-style. People lined up, then found a spot on the lawn, as the fenced-off area was now called, and sat down to eat.
Monica glanced at Bill, then returned her attention to her plate of something-chili stew. He looked down at his own plate and considered the contents. Hunting had turned out to be like shooting fish in a barrel. The local wildlife was plentiful, and unacquainted with the concept of weapons that could kill at a distance. As such, there was no shortage of food, and the food was healthier than the average pre-eruption diet had been, but a vegetarian would have had a hard time. Animal protein figured prominently, and most people didn’t even ask anymore. It was something-stew again.
A movement caught Bill’s eye, and he looked up to see Pete and Phil approaching. The stoners could be depended on to never miss a meal, and they sometimes made for some hilarious conversation. Monica in particular seemed to like them, probably because they didn’t give a crap what anyone thought of them.
The two sat down, plates delicately balanced in one hand, nodded greetings to everyone, and started to dig in.
And lastly, Richard arrived and settled down. Bill noticed once again that the blonde in the next group over always seemed to be very aware of Richard’s arrival. I wonder if I can encourage that, somehow.
“I miss bread,” Richard said out of nowhere.
“Eh?” Bill was surprised. Richard was usually all business, even at mealtimes.
“Bread. Buns. Sandwiches. Amazing what trivial things you suddenly get a twinge about.”
Erin smiled. “I know. I never thought I’d find myself wishing for more vegetables. My mom would have a laughing fit if she heard me.”
At the mention of her mom, Erin’s face fell. Silence settled over the group as each person went through similar emotions.
Changing the subject, Matt asked Richard, “How are things in committee?”
“Same old. Too many things to do, not enough time or resources. Bill’s comment about preparing for the long haul just adds an additional layer of complication.” He looked over at Monica. “Any progress on Operation Shenanigans?”
Monica grinned at the bemused expressions from the others, then replied, “We can only do so much without some specific threat, of course, but we’re making progress.” She inclined her head slightly in the direction of Phil and Pete. The message was clear—not for public discussion.
“Are we still going to be here next year?” Pete asked. His plate empty, he’d finally come up for air.
Monica shrugged, and motioned to Bill. Because he watched the satellite broadcasts more than anyone else did, Bill had become the de facto expert on Earthside status.
Bill lay back, supporting himself on his elbows. “I think we’ll be here a little longer than that, Pete. Things are still spiraling downward Earthside, and they aren’t going to stop doing so for a while.
“The ash from the eruption has halted most forms of transportation, which means no food deliveries, no fuel deliveries, and no travel. The only resources available to survivors are what’s within walking distance. Most urban areas don’t have much in the way of food-producing industries close by, so once the supplies in the supermarkets are used up, people will start migrating to look for food. That’ll be generally south, although south of Yellowstone is a bad bet.
“One of the things I picked up a while back was that Mexico has closed its border to the American exodus and, yes, they’re being deliberately retaliatory.
“The bottom line is that there’s now a much smaller percentage of land on the planet that’s suitable for producing food, at the same time that our technical ability to sustain intensive high-yield agriculture is disappearing. Add to that the fact that there’s not much left in the way of fish and wildlife to harvest in our modern world, you can see where it’s going to go …”
“Why can’t we bring more people across to this side?” Phil said.
“Well, we could, if we could get to them,” Richard replied. “The thing is, Phil, on Earthside probably everyone will have left Nebraska by now. In fact, within about fifteen hundred miles of Yellowstone, you could probably go days without seeing another human being. As Bill said, they’ve all migrated, looking for food—other than the occasional individual or family that we’ve managed to find.
“In order to find survivors to bring across, we’d have to travel. East, west, north, whatever. And the highways are probably full of broken-down vehicles that people attempted to use in the middle of the worst ash-fall. So how do we get to California, for instance?”
Phil thought about this for a few seconds, then sighed and hung his head.
“And that isn’t the worst of it,” Bill added.
“There’s more?” Phil looked like he regretted asking.
“Mm, yeah. See, the eruption will knock civilization back to a pre-industrial or early industrial level. Eventually, the ash will clear and ecosystems will start to recover, but then what? Humanity has been intensively extracting all the coal, metals, and oil from the Earth for a long time now. We’ve taken out the easily accessible resources, the moderately accessible resources, and in the last fifty years or so we’ve been attacking the deeply buried stuff that can only be gotten at with high technology.
“When things start to recover, you’ll have a pre-industrial society with no access to any of the raw resources that we had lying around the first time around. No coal, no oil, no huge untouched forests, no surface deposits of any kind of metal. Humanity will never recover on Earthside. There’s nothing left to recover with.”
That was the final straw. Phil picked up his plate, got up, and left, followed by Pete.
“Damn, that’s bleak,” Matt said.
Bill sat up and rubbed his forehead. “Phil’s right, though. In the longer term, we have to go looking for people. We have to bring them across, and we have to start again on this side. There’s simply no other option.”
62. Plan of Attack
It was a long way from the trees to the camp in the distance, but Zeke could make out the general activity, which included a lot of coming and going. Occasionally small groups would drive off on ATVs or dirt bikes.
“We have to get some of those weapons,” Carl said. “We’re outgunned right now. And almost out of ammo.”
They’d been going around and around on this for days.
“I don’t see how we can get close enough to take them out by hand,” Zeke replied. “I don’t want to tip off the camp with gunfire, and we can’t just
set up way far away and hope they’ll show up to be mugged.”
“Dirt bikes make noise,” Carl commented. “Can we use that as cover somehow?”
“Good point, Carl. We still have to wait for them to slow or stop, but I think the engines will drown out any noise from our pea-shooters.” Zeke smiled tightly, happy that they’d come up with an idea; and happier that it would allow him to shoot someone.
Zeke would never describe himself as peaceful. He tended to view violence as a reasonable negotiating tactic, and he enjoyed it. But with these kids, it was personal. They’d outsmarted him and left him to die sometime in the past. He’d been cold. He’d been rained on. He was always hungry. Jimmy was dead. And it was all their fault.
“Little bastards are going to pay,” Zeke muttered. “They’re going to pay for Jimmy, they’re going to pay for what they did to me, they’re going to pay for making me sleep in a tree …”
63. Scavenging
August 7
The scavenging group slogged through the university grounds on Earth, hunched forward, heads down. There was no longer any detectable ash in the air, and recent rains had turned the ash on the ground into a gummy mess up to a foot deep with the consistency of soft clay. This had the desirable effect of allowing them to take off the breathing masks, and prevented ash clouds rising from their footsteps, but made those same footsteps much more difficult. The three were sweating from the walk, and it was not a hot day.
In fact, Curt couldn’t decide how to describe the current weather. He’d read a short story once titled “Becalmed in Hell.” The only details he remembered were the title and floating in a gray mist, and that seemed to be very appropriate for the current conditions. The sky was gray—not from clouds, not from overcast; the sky itself looked gray, as if blue had been deleted from the color spectrum. A brighter patch indicated where the sun must be, but there was no texture visible there, either. The ash, caked onto everything, leached the color out of the landscape and left nothing but a dull brownish-gray.
The air was cool and still, but far more humid than seemed possible for the temperature. Curt felt he couldn’t get a breath, even though from moment to moment his body was getting enough oxygen.
The group had been given a list of buildings to check out and report on. They were currently making their way to the Scott Engineering Center. Curt had started humming the “Volga Boat Song,” but gave it up after a minute as too much effort. No one commented.
Private Andrews watched the figures moving across the campus in the distance. He lowered the binoculars and turned to Private Timminson, who had cleared a space on a low wall and was sitting down. “They’ve got guns, but they’re not doing anything illegal. No real need to pursue, right?”
Timminson grimaced. “I’m not moving for anything short of the crack of doom. Another crack of doom, I mean.” They both grunted, neither having the strength to spare for actual laughter. “This is like a cold, clammy version of hell.”
Andrews made a note of date, time, location, and description of the subjects for his report, adding, “No evidence that these are looters. Pursuit not indicated.”
He put away the logbook and settled himself, trying to find a more comfortable position without actually sitting in crusted ash. “We don’t need more mouths to feed anyway. I don’t know why we haven’t started moving the civilians out of town by now.”
“Sure you do. Because we can’t,” Timminson said. “You heard what the professor said about trying to drive on the highways. Do you really want to end up trying to get to Fort Leonard Wood on foot?”
“Assuming they haven’t also bugged out.”
“Yeah. Couple more days, we can start getting radio comms again, and we’ll know better. Meanwhile”—Timminson waved in the general direction of the figures they’d observed—“Chavez says recon, we recon.”
Matt took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He turned to the rest of the group. “Yeah, it’s a bit dangerous. We have to try, though. If there are any surviving pockets in there, it would be a major score.”
They were standing in front of a supermarket. As was all too common with this style of building, the roof had collapsed under the weight of the ash. The collapse had been uneven, rather than the entire roof pancaking, so the scavengers decided to check for any non-crushed pockets. Matt and a few others were Earthside, providing an outside perspective via walkie-talkie to another team, which was pole-camming the inside of the supermarket from Outland.
Finally, the radio crackled, and a voice announced, “We’ve found an open area. Looks like loads of salvageable items. Definitely cans of food at least.”
Matt and his group whooped, and there were high-fives all around.
A few minutes later, the six-foot gate opened up, and the Outland team walked through, into the supermarket.
It took hours to unload the open section. No one complained, though. They found not only cans and jars of food but also flour, sugar, powdered milk, dried pasta, and boxes and bags of cereal. The crew was euphoric. The haul would mean weeks’ worth of meals free from chili, and months’ worth of meals with some added variety.
Timminson looked at the empty shelves in disgust. They’d just spent most of a day carefully removing debris and shoring up portions of the building, trying to make it safe enough to enter. Now they were finally in the supermarket, the part that hadn’t been flattened anyway, only to find that the shelves had been cleaned out. Every can, every package of food was gone. There were footprints all over the place inside, but there had been no indication outside the building of how they had gotten in.
Chavez will have a stroke, Timminson thought.
“Again? We’ve been beaten to it again?” Chavez was, as expected, not taking it well. The corporal, when angry, got very quiet, and this made the other soldiers more nervous than a good old-fashioned cussing-out would have. Soldiers jockeyed to position themselves behind their fellows, so as not to be in immediate view. Chavez took a deep breath and fought for control.
“Whoever this group is, they have some technique or something that we don’t. More important, though, they’re taking supplies that we need in order to keep our civilian charges alive. We are not keeping up with needs, and I’m tired of it. As of now, we’re on a looter hunt. Weapons hot, and if you happen to shoot one or two of them, I’m not going to notice. Clear?”
Chavez glared around at the soldiers before continuing.
“You see anyone, and I mean anyone, you take them into custody. If they aren’t part of this group we’re looking for, and they aren’t looting, we can apologize and let them go. But no one gets away without scrutiny.”
64. Winging It
August 8
“No wonder our account balance was going down so fast.” Richard stood, arms akimbo, staring at one of two ultralight kits. The other kit had been opened and was halfway to becoming an actual aircraft. A half-dozen people were milling around, looking at instructions, arguing, and generally getting in each other’s way.
“I resent the implication,” Bill replied. “Anyway, we never got around to paying for a lot of things I’d ordered. Yellowstone kind of interrupted the billing cycle, if you know what I mean. If civilization ever does resume, we might have to do an extra gold-mining expedition or two, just to get caught up on payments.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” Richard tried to keep a straight face, but a grin kept breaking through. “So, do you know how to fly one?”
“Um, I’ve taken lessons, but don’t have a lot of hours. A couple of these guys, though”—Bill indicated the group that was attempting to construct the aircraft—“are experienced pilots. One of them has an instrument rating, and several do gliders as well. I think we’re covered.”
Richard smiled. “I noticed someone out with the Bobcat this morning, plowing up an area outside the fence. That’s your doing, I guess?”
Bill shrugged, palms up. “Runway. Gotta have one.”
“Is there a point, though?�
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“Not really sure yet, Richard. They might be more useful Earthside, once all the crap is out of the air. Maybe we can get out to Omaha and scavenge that distributor’s warehouse. Here, maybe for scouting out herds or something. I like having the capability, just in case.”
“Fine. Okay, Orville, but don’t kill yourself, all right? Um, can we get that thing through the truck gate fully assembled?”
“Way ahead of you, big guy,” Bill said. “We measured, and yes we can, sideways. Actually, we’ve been talking about visiting the airport at some point and seeing if there’s anything small we can salvage.”
“There should be a number of small planes,” a woman on the assembly crew added. “Once it’s safe to fly again Earthside, we can start searching for survivors, or even maybe make it to some outpost of civilization.”
Bill gestured toward the speaker. “Helen, here, kept her family Cessna at the airport. I think she’s hoping hers will be in one piece.”
“Good thinking. Keep me in the loop.” With that, Richard turned and walked away.
“And, done.” Goro Yoshida slapped the airframe. He was one of their licensed pilots. It had been an offhand comment of his at one of the sci-tech meetings that had reminded Bill about the ultralights. Goro had been bemoaning the likelihood that he’d never fly again, and Bill had done an immediate facepalm.
“All checked out?” Bill asked, walking around the aircraft.
“Ready to fly, boss-man. I pulled the lucky straw, so I’ll be piloting.”
“Cool. Just a short proving flight, then come back. We’ll refuel, and I’ll go up with you.”
“You got it!” Goro said.
“It looks like the Bobcat’s finished flattening the runway,” one of the crew said.
The group very carefully opened up the construction fence and moved the ultralight out of the protected area. Guards stood around with shotguns, just in case.
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