by Keith Taylor
Abi decided to wait where she was to let them catch up. Maybe they could keep her company while they waited for the folks to fix the train. Maybe they could talk to her for a while. She probably shouldn’t fall asleep, not with the blood still flowing from her head.
It was a few moments before she heard the noise. It sounded like a sad, wounded animal calling out a mournful cry, looooooong and low. Abi looked around curiously, but it wasn’t until the sad cry was joined by a terrifying screech that she realized what was going on.
She span around, dizzy and confused, and caught sight of a second train, a hulking black steam locomotive that looked a century old, following on the same track as her own. It was still maybe a couple hundred yards away but it was clear there was no way it could stop in time. A shower of sparks spat from the wheels as the brakes locked them up, but it was no use. It was just moving too fast.
Abi turned and began to clumsily run away from the track, her feet still leaden and uncooperative, thinking about nothing but putting as much distance as possible between her and the approaching train. She didn’t want to look back, but as she heard the deafening crash of it plowing into the back of the Amtrak train she tripped and stumbled. She fell head over heels and landed facing back towards the tracks.
The second train tore through the rear carriages like tissue paper, the heavy locomotive still braking even as the stopped Amtrak train tipped to one side and toppled from the track. The locomotive seemed to jump, bucking off the track and continuing to rip through the carriages as if they weren’t even there. Abi turned and scrambled on hands and knees away from the track, her cries drowned out by the screaming train.
Abi didn’t see the explosion, but she felt it. Her back stung with the heat as the locomotive exploded in a raging fireball. She curled into a ball and made herself small as debris fell around her, and she screamed as a shower of half-burned coal embers rained down on her, searing her skin wherever they landed. The noise seemed to go on forever. Hours. Days. It was as if time had slowed and trapped her in this hell, her skin burning beneath the embers and her ears tortured by the endless rending of steel, so loud that she couldn’t even hear her own screams.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the cacophony subsided. Abi remained still for several moments after everything stopped, frozen with fear and shock. Finally she pulled herself to her feet in a daze, imagining that she’d just dreamed the whole thing, and turned back towards the smoking wreckage to try to make sense of it all.
A carriage had come to rest just twenty yards behind her, miraculously upright where its twins were all upended. It had carved a deep furrow through the ground exactly where she’d been standing just a minute ago. Painted in rich burgundy, the carriage looked completely out of place in 2019. It looked like something that belonged to the golden age of steam rather than the twenty first century, and she couldn’t figure out what the hell it had been doing on the track until a breeze caught the carriage behind it.
A white fabric banner attached to the side of the carriage fluttered in the breeze, burning along with the rest of the carriage, but Abi could still make out the words printed on it: Norfolk and Western 611 – July 4th Memorial Excursion – Lynchburg to Roanoke. Must be some old steam train restored as a novelty.
Another explosion suddenly shook the ground without warning, and Abi flinched as a shard of steel was blasted from the wreckage and buried itself in the ground just a few yards from her bare feet.
Without another thought she turned and ran. Where to didn’t matter, just where from. Her thoughts were still coming through foggy and confused, but she understood enough to know that staying by the train wasn’t safe.
She cursed herself as she ran. She wished she had the courage to stay and search through the wreckage for survivors, but something told her that if she climbed into that mangled mess she’d never see daylight again.
Better to survive.
΅
:::7:::
SHEPHERD FELT HIS heart sink as he passed through Willow Falls one final time. People were milling around out on Main Street, some obviously concerned and others still oblivious to the new reality they faced. A couple of people tried to flag him down, their expressions confused and questioning, but he pretended not to notice. He knew what they wanted to ask: why does your car still work while ours don’t?
Shepherd would have liked to at least let them know that most of the cars could be easily repaired. The later models packed full of sensitive electronics were more than likely fried beyond easy repair, and Ron’s Prius was now almost certainly little more than an expensive paperweight, but anything more than a few years old would probably be salvageable.
The worst case scenario was that the batteries of those that had been driving at the time had been fried by the sudden power surge, but those that weren’t actively charging when the pulse hit would probably be fine. Most would probably run like new as soon as the ignition coil and any vital wiring was replaced, a job that could be done by any half competent mechanic, or even a complete amateur with a manual and the right spare parts. Maybe the dashboard warning lights would flicker like a disco ball, but at least the cars would move.
It would only have taken Shepherd a moment to pull over and explain it to someone, to tell them to spread the word, but it was just too risky. Who knows how the mob might act when they realized exactly what had happened. A lot of these people were acquaintances, but as Shep Senior had always warned him when it comes to survival that means nothing. The moment people realized their lives were in danger little things like friendship would quickly fall by the wayside. When it comes to life and death only your own survival and the survival of your family matters. Friends quickly become little more than strangers with familiar faces.
Shepherd could imagine all too well the questions that would come if he pulled over. What’s happening, Shep? Why do you have so much stuff in your car? Can we have some? I said, can we have some? Give it to us!
Safer to just drive on. He felt like a heel, but that’s just the way it was.
The problem was that the vast majority of Americans these days never thought to plan for disaster, either due to complacency – a firm belief that society would keep going forever without a single blip – or the simple fact that most people lived paycheck to paycheck, and they couldn’t afford to think about tomorrow when they already had more than enough to worry about today. Most people these days existed in a constant state of debt, living far beyond their means in a system that encouraged them – invited them, begged them – to do so.
Shepherd had known for years that the modern American economy was inherently unstable. It was an unsustainable engine driven by a constant supply of debt, only kept alive by the fact that our capacity for denial has always been immeasurably greater than our capacity for common sense, and it had made the American people more vulnerable to disaster than ever before.
Not just nationwide disasters, either, but personal disasters. Unemployment. Ill health. A busted boiler. Hell, even a minor fender bender could push someone over the edge into bankruptcy and hunger if they were already butting up against their credit limit.
It hadn’t always been like this. Once, not really all that long ago, the American Dream had been something pure and beautiful; a deeply held belief baked into the very heart of the American way of life that with enough hard work and determination anyone could prosper, no matter their background. It had never been strictly true, of course – a completely level playing field had always been more of an ambition than a reality – but this exciting, refreshing brand of egalitarianism had set America apart from the stale civilizations of Europe, petrified by a rigid and unyielding class system that with few exceptions determined the upper limits of success from birth.
For generations this powerful belief that anyone could achieve greatness drove the United States to ever loftier heights. It transformed it into the most powerful and successful nation in the world, the home of its greatest artists, it
s greatest innovators and its greatest economy. The American Dream had been, quite possibly, the most successful economic and social doctrine in the history of the planet.
But somewhere along the way the American Dream had become poisoned and perverted for many Americans. It lost its meaning and took on a new one. No longer did people dream of a simple life of hard work eventually rewarded with comfort and prosperity. No longer were they willing to defer happiness, and no longer was there pride to be found in frugality, in living simply within your means.
These days people wanted everything now, not later. They wanted the prosperity to come before – or even better without – the hard work. They demanded the lifestyle of the wealthy without the sacrifice necessary to attain it. That became the new American Dream. The new house. The big screen TV. The latest smartphone – God forbid they should be caught using a three year old device, imagine the humiliation – and the newest car off the production line, and they soon discovered that the banks were more than happy to take advantage of their impatience and greed. The banks cheerfully fronted the cash to pay for these shiny toys and status symbols, and in return all they asked was a lifetime of compound interest and grinding, painful servitude to a machine that existed only to create unhappiness.
And so, somehow, America had become a nation not of workers and strivers but of debtors. Their hard work enriched not themselves and their communities but the banks and those who funded them, and while almost everybody seemed to understand that something had gone terribly wrong few truly understood the problem. The average household was weighed down – crushed – beneath $130,000 of debt, and everyone walked around trying to convince themselves that this was normal and healthy even as they turned against one another. Even as they became less charitable. Even as they stopped caring about their communities and began to worry only about themselves.
It was no surprise that so few people prepared for disaster. How could anyone plan for the collapse of society when the collapse of their own personal world was only ever a missed car payment away? How could anyone invest in the tools and supplies necessary to survive the unexpected when they were working all the hours God sent just to survive the expected?
No, they thought. Best not to worry about the future. Best to self medicate with reality TV, Prozac and another new damned phone. This one has an even sharper screen! Put it on the AmEx. What, it’s maxed out? OK, try the Visa.
Shepherd knew that for years the American people had been balanced precariously on a tightrope, only vaguely aware that there was no net waiting to catch them should they fall. Nobody wanted to think too hard about the yawning gulf below, and Shepherd was now watching the tumble. The people he passed in the street were in midair, falling fast, but they just didn’t know it yet.
When they finally hit the ground all hell would break loose.
He drove on, relieved to leave Main Street behind and reluctant to imagine what would happen to the people there when they finally began to understand what was going on. He drove through the square, passing Ron’s dead Prius and the unlit sign above the diner, and out into the suburbs and beyond.
He felt a twinge of pity as he passed the park on the way out of town. The station wagon was still alone in the parking lot, and around it the ladies of the committee chatted amongst themselves as they cheerfully unfolded tables and sorted through boxes of bunting. One of them waved cheerfully as he drove by. They still had no idea the power was even out.
It was strange. Shepherd knew the women would all most likely die within the month. Almost all of them lived alone, dependent on social security, meals on wheels and Medicare just to keep their hearts beating. The pain that was coming their way would be horrific, but somehow the saddest thing was that their day would be ruined. They lived for the Fourth. They waited all year long for the festivities, and it just felt indescribably tragic to think about them waiting around all day, confused as to why the townspeople never arrived.
Shepherd found himself wishing that this could have happened tomorrow. He wished people had just had one more Fourth of July, one more blissful celebration before everything went to hell. It wouldn’t make a difference in the long run, but it seemed unspeakably cruel to steal this day away from them.
He drove on, pushing the thoughts from his head. Abandoning Ron and Kath had already torn his heart in two, and driving through town without so much as lending a hand to the people he saw every day had only rubbed salt in the wound.
His dad had warned him about this. He’d warned him that friends would only pull him back and weigh him down, like an anchor keeping him from reaching safety. He had to toughen up. If he was going to survive what was coming he’d need to stop fixating on others. Everyone he saw out the window of his car had little to look forward to but pain and starvation, and if Shepherd was going to survive he’d need to make his peace with that.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and pressed his foot a little harder on the gas. The park was the last vestige of civilization for miles. Beyond that it was just a patchwork of farmland and forest until he reached the road that skirted Lynchburg, and from there it should be a straight shot on the back roads all the way to his final destination: a secluded cabin about a hundred miles to the west, nestled on a hillside close to the West Virginia state line, and just a little to the north of an almost impenetrable section of the Appalachian Trail. That was where he could ride out the coming storm.
The cabin was Shep Senior’s legacy, one of the few items of value he’d left his son when he passed. After a lifetime of trying and failing to instill a fear of the end of the world in Jim this had been his insurance policy, the one place he knew his son would be safe from whatever calamities might befall the country.
Howard Shepherd may have been something of an irascible crank, but there was no denying that beyond his paranoia and overactive imagination he was also a more than capable survivalist, a skill he’d done his level best to pass on to young Jim. As Shepherd drove on out of town he whispered a quiet prayer of thanks to his old man for preparing him as best he could.
Howard had been one of the early modern day peppers; one of the last generation of folk for whom honing their survival skills was a simple necessity rather than a conscious choice. His parents had been children of the Great War. They’d come of age just in time to get steamrolled by the horrors of the Great Depression. In the early Thirties Howard’s father had been let go from a good teaching position in Richmond when the school closed its doors, and with what little he had saved he’d taken his young wife west to Giles County, about as far from the effects of the depression as they could afford to move.
Giles was a rural county, self sufficient and sparsely populated, and the ups and downs of the wider world were barely noticed within its borders. There Howard’s father had bought a plot of land on a gently sloping, thickly forested hillside above the New River for pennies, and on that land he’d built a modest cabin, small and ramshackle but solid enough to live year round. He’d tilled the soil on the hillside until he had a garden fit to feed his wife and any children they might be lucky enough to bear.
In the spring of 1941 Howard was born on the wooden floor of the cabin, and before his first birthday his father would leave for the Pacific theater. Less than a year later word arrived that he’d been killed, just one of hundreds of casualties of a Japanese assault in the middle of the jungle on Guadalcanal, an island Howard’s mother couldn’t even find on a map. From there on in it was just the two of them.
Unlike his parents Howard was raised during an era of unprecedented prosperity for most of the United States. In the aftermath of the war a new middle class emerged, healthy, wealthy and happy, but like almost everything else that prosperity passed by their little corner of Giles County. Howard and his mother lived in near poverty, scratching a meager existence from the soil without any kind of expertise or experience.
In the summers they seared and in the winters they froze, both of them ill equipped for survival away from
modern civilization, but both of them fiercely independent and unwilling to return to the city to beg for charity. The hunger that gnawed at their bellies was almost a source of pride, but it was hunger nonetheless. They survived on the edge, harvest to paltry harvest, and even as a boy Howard knew they couldn’t go on like that forever.
And so Howard, lacking any kind of formal education, took it upon himself as a boy to learn how to survive in the wilderness. Several times each week he hitchhiked the thirty miles to the nearest town, spending his days in the local library reading about agricultural methods and bushcraft. He loitered outside the local auto shop, ingratiating himself with the mechanics and watching them work on the engines until he understood the basics of how they worked. He even found a few odd jobs, and by his fifteenth birthday he’d saved enough to buy his first rifle from the local pawn shop, a lever-action Savage 99 with a crooked sight.
Howard and his mother never went hungry again.
That was the man Shep Senior had been. Awkward and cranky around people, perhaps, and certainly not suited to a rapidly changing world that no longer seemed to value his skills, but he sure as shit knew how to survive when the going got tough. From the day young Jim was born Howard had only two goals: to teach his son everything he’d learned about surviving away from the comfortable bubble wrap of modern society, and to leave the cabin to him after he passed.
Shepherd wished he’d paid more attention to his father’s lessons as he drove, and especially those lessons concerned with auto repair. The Jeep bounced through the potholes on the road beyond the town with a sound that suggested it was shaking itself to pieces. Even a modern car would rattle and shake on these rough, poorly maintained rural roads, but Shepherd’s thirty-some year old wreck – loaded down even more than usual with the heavy supplies in the back – seemed to send every jolt directly through his spine. It was far too late to worry about it now, but he wished he’d taken the time to fix up the truck before today. He’d been putting it off for months, and now his procrastination was coming back to bite him on the ass and kick him in the spine.