by Eric Walters
“I’m willing. I’ll do it.”
“Good. We want to build on the successful missions we’ve been having, so there will be many more in the coming weeks.”
I knew about those successes—everybody did. They had been going through the deserted grain elevators along the lake and had discovered literally tons of flour still trapped in chutes. They had found medicines locked in storage areas in local hospitals—my mother had been instrumental in leading a team through her old hospital. They’d uncovered thousands of cans of food—corn, peas, SpaghettiOs, beans, tuna, peaches, and oranges—in a transport truck that had been buried under the collapsed wall of a burned-out supermarket. Thinking about those canned peaches made me want them.
“If this mission works the way it’s planned, we’ll have more than enough gas and diesel to run the trucks, planes, and generators,” he said.
“Sam doesn’t trust our partners very much.”
“Sam is a smart young man. I don’t trust Johnny and Jimmie much either.”
“But you sent our team out with them to get gas just now?”
He shrugged. “We have to be prepared to take reasonable chances and use precautions to balance our concerns. Not trusting them doesn’t mean we don’t try. It just means we build in enough strength and safety to compensate for our lack of trust.”
“And if they don’t come back with fuel?”
“Then we’ll try through one of our new friends.”
It gave me a good feeling to think that we did have more friends. The colonel had established contact with other settlements. And through them we’d connected with even more settlements—the colonel called them “colonies.” One of them was a former military base, and another had evolved around an embassy with its high walls, security, and security detachment. They weren’t close, but with our planes the distance could be covered. There was talk about how to start trading and even offering support to each other. So far it was only talk, but with that talk came some hope. The real problem was transporting things—like fuel—over those distances.
“We’ll always make sure we have enough fuel to keep our planes in the air,” Colonel Wayne said.
“Those planes saved our lives.”
“And they keep our lives safe now. Those are the only two war birds up there.”
“I guess they’re the only planes of any kind.”
“We’ve heard reports that there are some older small planes that are still flying. Flight gives you eyes in the sky and the ability to cover long distances. Any plane is a good plane.”
“Are there plans to put the other planes in our collection into the air?” I asked. The airport museum had over a dozen planes that sat at the edge of the runway. We were now living in the hangars that they used to call home.
“In time. Some need to be repaired or made flight-worthy. And of course we need more pilots. There are only three of us who can fly, and nobody who can handle the big bird.”
The big bird was an old passenger plane.
“We’re using a lot less fuel in the generators since we added those solar panels.”
“I’m glad they got them up and running.”
All the solar panels from our community had been successfully installed and met a lot of our needs for electricity.
“We’re in better shape than we’ve ever been,” Colonel Wayne said. “You were right—the first one to see it—the two groups have different skills and abilities, and together we’re stronger.”
The whole compound was being transformed with fields being plowed and planted. There was hardly an inch of land that wasn’t under cultivation or ready for planting in the spring. A big irrigation ditch had been built at the edge of the main fields and had made watering so much easier. The Ward’s people didn’t know much about defending or fighting, but they did know about planting, baking, weaving, building, and living off the land.
“And we have you to thank for all of this,” he said.
“I’m sure lots of people were thinking about it. Sooner or later somebody else would have suggested it.”
“Any later and it would have been too late.” He paused. “It almost was too late.”
Colonel Wayne’s radio came to life. The away team had come back.
—
The three big trucks rumbled across the narrow isthmus toward the gate of the compound. This was the only spot where the compound connected to Main Island, and it was where our defenses were strongest. I was happy to see the trucks but I would be happiest when I saw my mother.
The gate opened and the first truck rumbled through. In the growing dark, with headlights leading the way, I couldn’t see into the cab. Colonel Wayne waved it over and it came to a stop just inside the gate. The other two trucks pulled in behind and the gate was sealed up again.
My mother climbed out of the cab of the first truck and all my worry was washed away. She and the colonel exchanged salutes. I wanted to give her a hug but knew that wasn’t military. She gave me a little nod of the head and I responded the same way.
“Captain?”
“All members of the team have returned, sir.”
“Any difficulties?” Colonel Wayne asked.
“We encountered no opposition but we were unable to complete our mission successfully, sir.”
“They had no fuel?”
“They had no usable fuel. We tested it on site and it was diluted and contaminated.”
“Do you think that was intentional?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, sir. We just knew that it had no value.”
“That must have left our trading partners unhappy.”
“I don’t think any of us were happy, but it was resolved,” she said.
I wondered what “resolved” meant. I guess I’d find out later.
“Get yourself and your party fed and then come to my office. I’d like a full report.”
“Yes, sir.”
They exchanged salutes again, and she turned and headed back to the truck. I’d see her back at our room in the hangar.
—
It was getting late but I didn’t want to go to sleep before my mother arrived. I sat up in the little common area that twenty of us shared. All the bedrooms led off a corridor from this area.
Chris sat under the one light and read a book. Her bedroom was two down from our room, where Ethan had already turned in for the night. Julian, Sam, and Garth all had their own little rooms in our hangar. Our room was bigger because there were three of us. The biggest one in the building belonged to Ian, Jess, and Olivia, plus Paula, who now lived with them. Since Jim’s death she had become the “aunt” and was staying with them. It was nice to have our “family” here with us.
“What are you reading?” I asked Chris.
She turned the book around to show me the cover.
“On the Beach…I don’t know that book,” I said.
“It’s post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world stuff.”
I laughed. Louder than I’d thought I would.
“I know. Here we are living it and I’m spending my free time reading about it.”
“Is it good?”
“Rather gripping. Interestingly, a number of the characters choose to give up rather than fight on,” she said.
“Cowards quit.”
“I’ve thought about quitting,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you a coward.”
“I just think, at my age, maybe it would be better if the limited food we have, the little resources we have, medicine and shelter, went to younger people.”
At that moment, on cue, we heard Olivia start to cry, her voice coming through the thin plywood walls.
“I think Olivia disagrees,” I said.
“Or agrees.”
“Look, I know you’re not young.”
Chris laughed. “I haven’t been young for a long time.”
“It’s because of you that my mother and I were able to come to the Ward’s community. It’s because
of you that we came here. You’re important to everybody. You’re important to Sam. You’re important to me.”
She smiled. “That is sweet. You and your brother and mother are important to me, too. And don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to read about it.” She got to her feet. “I think it’s time for me to go to sleep. Perhaps you should do the same.”
“I’m just waiting up for my mother.”
She came over and gave me a hug and I hugged her back.
“Don’t wait up too long,” she said.
Chris walked down the corridor and into her room. Olivia stopped crying. I was alone.
I wondered why my mother was taking so long. Was there more to report than she’d let on? That thought made me a little uneasy, and that made me want to wander a little. When my head got too busy it was better for my feet to get into motion.
I got up and went outside. It was still warm but there was a cool wind blowing in off the lake. The only sound was from the waves hitting against the breakwater, and except for a few points of light in the terminal leaking around the blackout curtains and the stars in the sky, there was complete darkness.
Out of the darkness I saw some movement. There was somebody walking along the edge of the runway coming toward the hangars. I hoped it was my mother. Instead of staring harder into the gloom, I closed my eyes and sort of willed her to appear. I kept my eyes tightly closed.
“What are you doing out here?”
I recognized her voice and opened my eyes.
“I was waiting up for you.”
“You must be wondering what went wrong out there.”
“I heard you say that the fuel was tainted.”
“Yeah, but I think there was more to it.”
I waited for her to go on.
“Something strange happened. When we discovered it, when we told them that we weren’t going to trade, the people argued that it was good gas,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you expect that?”
“I did. I also expected it might lead to a firefight, but I was able to talk everybody down. I suggested it was an honest mistake and we’d do business together in the future.”
“Will we?”
“We do need fuel, and they are in a prime location. They have tanks just off the water. Who knows? But what was more troubling was the way Johnny and Jimmie acted,” she said.
“What did they do?”
“They did nothing and they said nothing.”
“But…I don’t understand.”
“You can often tell more from what people don’t say and don’t do than what they do say and do. They didn’t react at all. They didn’t argue. They didn’t look surprised. They kept poker faces, as if they’d known what was happening before it happened.”
“So you think they knew that the fuel was bad?”
“I’m fairly positive of that. The question is why would they want us to have bad fuel?”
“Wouldn’t they just be trying to make the deal so they could get their cut of things?” I asked.
“That’s one possibility, but what if it’s more?”
“What more could there be?”
“Do you know what would happen if that bad fuel went into our planes?” she asked.
“It would harm the engines, right?”
“It might cause the planes to stall out mid-flight and crash.”
“But why would they want that?” I questioned.
“Those two Mustangs are the most powerful weapons we have. Possibly the most powerful weapons anybody has. With them we’re strong. Without them we’re much more vulnerable to attack.”
“From Johnny and Jimmie and the guys at the marina?”
“They’re nothing to worry about. At least not directly. But what if they’re working with somebody else? I’ve been thinking about the invasion on Ward’s. When we were attacked, they came straight toward where there were dozens of Marines posted with automatic weapons,” my mother said.
“But they weren’t real Marines or real guns.”
“But how did the attackers know that?” she asked. “If those had been real Marines with real automatic weapons we would have mowed them down.”
“Well, you were afraid that somebody would find out it was all fake.”
“Johnny and Jimmie knew. We both heard them say something about it. I started wondering why they weren’t attacked by the group that attacked us.”
“I just figured they weren’t big enough to bother with.” As I said those words I remembered that’s what they had told Sam and me. “You think they were behind all of what happened?”
“I think they played a role. They’re still playing a role. At least that’s what the colonel and I are starting to think.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“At this point we’re going to do nothing. We need proof.”
“And until you get the proof?” I asked.
“We have an advantage because we think we know what they’re doing but they don’t know it. There’s an old saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ I need you to keep this information to yourself. It’s the colonel and the two of us who know what we suspect.”
“I won’t tell anybody.”
“I know you won’t. Now, let’s go get some sleep.”
34
“I thought our shift would never end,” Willow said.
“It was only six hours,” I pointed out.
“Six hours under a hot sun, wearing way too much clothing, and with a very heavy gun on my shoulder.”
“It could have been worse,” I said. “It could have been twelve hours with no gun on your shoulder.”
“Okay, true. How did I ever let you talk me into being a mini-soldier, though?”
“As I recall, you volunteered. Would you rather be working the fields?”
“No, I have to admit that I’d rather have a rifle on my shoulder than a hoe in my hands.”
Everybody in the entire compound had work they were assigned or had volunteered to do. There were fall crops still being planted and others harvested, meals being cooked, clothes being washed, repaired, or sewn. Candles were being made, bread was being baked, trees were being cut to clear more land for crops, and the wood was being chopped to be dried and ready to feed the wood stoves over the winter. Fences were being reinforced, guard stations built, and more living quarters were being constructed. Scavenger parties were going to the city to get what they could find or trade for, while others were in the woods gathering apples, digging edible tubers, finding mushrooms, collecting leaves for tea or herbs and spices for food, and collecting acorns and other nuts that could be eaten. The goats were being milked daily and some of the milk was made into cheese and yogurt. There were always hooks and nets in the water and fish to be cleaned and dried.
A school had been set up for the younger kids—kids as old as Ethan. After all, it was time for the school year to begin. It was only a few hours a day but it was a way to try to make things “normal.” As well, there was now a barber shop and hairdresser. There was a woman who did nails. The yoga instructors had started classes again, and pots, cups, and plates were being made in the pottery studio that had been set up in a shed behind one of the hangars. While we hadn’t had any plays performed, the artists had still been at work. They’d painted a gigantic mural on the back of one of the hangars. It was a picture of Ward’s Island, or at least how Ward’s Island used to be. It was painted as if somebody was standing on the baseball diamond looking out at the houses. There, clearly visible, perfectly painted, was Chris’s house, the cottage we’d been staying at, two dozen more homes. It swept out in the other direction past the playground all the way to the white bridge that connected Ward’s to Main Island—before it was blown up.
People would stand in front of it and gaze at it and talk about things that they used to do, people they knew, memories they shared. It was beautiful and peaceful and wonderful and sad and terrible all at once. All they h
ad was this mural and their memories. I remembered something I’d once read: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I wasn’t sure if it was Einstein or Dr. Seuss who said it, but either way I tried to smile.
There were so many people doing so much to make the place run. And it was all working so well. Nobody seemed to object to anything they were asked to do. I think seeing death up close the way the Ward’s Island people had seen it made them work harder to never see it that close again. And beyond it all, making sure that it never happened again, was the security.
There were, of course, guards on the walls and along the fences and in the guard towers. Twenty-three of us—the teenage guards—had been trained to offer support. We worked day and evening shifts along with the regular guards. Our role became even more important when there were away teams because guards were pulled off the perimeter to go along. Today was one of those days. It was good to have so many real automatic weapons rather than so many pretend guns.
Above everything were the planes, those two beautiful Mustangs. They made regular patrols, going up at least twice a day. From up there they could see anything coming our way. Almost as important was the fact that they could also be seen. They were more than our eyes in the sky—they were our aces in the hole. They had saved our lives at Ward’s Island and kept us alive here.
Mechanics were also working on the more “flyable” of the other planes in the collection. I’d been told that the big passenger plane was now almost airworthy, but they didn’t have anybody with experience flying something that big. The colonel thought he could possibly fly it but he was too important to risk.
We now had a Navy to go along with our Marines and Air Force. Seven boats of different sizes—all with old pre-computer engines—had become part of our colony. There were always at least two boats and security teams stationed just off shore. Three other boats were used by the away teams when they made trips to the mainland. Jimmie and Johnny and their boats were still being used sometimes, but there was a definite effort made to, as my mother explained it, “marginalize, minimize, and isolate” their involvement.