by Harley Tate
Madison swung around to face Walter, her eyes huge and shining. “Dad! That’s it! We can take the truck, load the back with all the plants and still have enough room for a couple goats and some chickens.”
Walter held up his hand. “Slow down. We don’t even—”
His daughter wasn’t listening. She’d already turned back to Steve with a grin a mile wide. “Come with us. We’re headed to Truckee to a place where we can all stay for a while.”
“Hey! I didn’t give you permission!”
Brianna crossed her arms and glared at Madison. Oh, no. The last thing Walter needed was to break up a fight.
Madison twisted around to face her roommate, cheeks turning red. “Do you mind?”
Brianna didn’t say a word. She just stood there, glowering.
“It’s okay.” Steve interrupted the standoff. “I can’t go. I’ve got to finish up this research so I can write my thesis.”
Everyone turned to stare at him, but Brianna broke the silence first. “You do know the University system is basically toast, right?”
He glanced around. “I’ve sort of put that together, yeah.”
“And that most of your classmates and professors are never coming back?”
“That’s probably true.”
Madison shook her head. “So why are you sticking around to finish a thesis no one will ever read?”
“Because I have to.” Steve leaned back on the counter and lifted his ball cap to wipe the sheen of sweat off his brow. “This degree is the only thing I’ve worked on for five years. Two years of classes, three years of research and it’s all leading up to this moment. I’m not quitting.”
“But there’s no one to award you a degree.”
Steve shrugged. “I consider finishing it to be close enough. I can’t leave here all but dissertation.” He glanced down at his hands and his voice dropped a few notches. “My father said I’d never get this far. He thought… plants were a silly waste of time. But he was wrong.”
At last, he lifted his head. “I’m going to prove it.”
Walter exhaled. He understood the need to follow through and finish something that had been the driving force for so long. It was partly why he’d stayed on the airplane that fateful day even when his gut told him to leave. And it was why they were all taking Brianna to her family’s compound in Truckee.
Madison had embraced staying there long-term, but Walter and Tracy weren’t sold on the idea. How could he invite himself to live at another family’s house? He would get Brianna and Tucker to the cabin because he’d promised his daughter to do just that.
He scratched his growing beard. Maybe he wasn’t all that different from the graduate student with the green thumb standing across from him. Walter spoke up. “You’re really okay with us taking the truck?”
“I am.”
“Then, thank you.” Walter reached out his hand and Steve shook it. “I owe you an apology. I didn’t trust you at first.”
Brianna snorted. “Try ever.”
Walter ignored her. “I’m sorry. When my daughter said you could be trusted, I should have listened to her.”
“Yes, you should have.” Madison crossed her arms, but the smile across her face lessened the comment’s sting.
Maybe not everyone in this new world was bad. Steve had proven himself to have no agenda whatsoever. He freely offered plants and seeds and even a truck and expected nothing in return. They should do something for him.
He earned it.
“Is there anything we can do for you?”
Steve squinted as he stared at Walter. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been so generous with your knowledge and time. We owe you. How can we pay you back?”
Steve smiled and his face brightened with youth and inexperience. “Do you think you could help me break into the vending machine in the staff kitchen? It’s got a whole row of Ho Hos I’ve been dying to eat.”
Walter laughed and a weight lifted from his shoulders. Out of all the things to ask for, Steve wanted a pack of Ho Hos. But Walter shouldn’t judge. The end of the world did strange things to people; he knew that firsthand.
Some adapted and some didn’t, but they all changed.
He glanced at his daughter and Brianna before turning back to Steve. “Yeah, I think we can manage that. Lead the way.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TRACY
863 Dewberry Lane, Chico, CA
7:00 p.m.
“I’d forgotten how good these iced lemon pies taste.” Peyton licked his fingers, drawing every last fleck of sugar into his mouth.
“I can’t believe you like those things. The ingredient list is a million miles long and every entry is a chemical.” Madison wrinkled her nose as she dumped a cup of flour into a bowl.
Peyton smoothed out the wrapper and jabbed his index finger at it. “Not true. The very first ingredient is water.” His finger moved along the list, pausing every time he found a retort to Madison’s complaint. “And it’s got corn syrup and vegetable oil and sugar. And hey! It’s even got lemon oil.” He leaned back, triumphant in the dining room chair. “It’s practically a delicacy.”
Madison stuck out her tongue and Tracy laughed out loud. Watching the two of them tease each other was a welcome respite from the stress of hoping her husband and daughter would make it back home alive.
“Give it a few more weeks and I bet you’ll be clamoring for your very own little fruit pie the second we come across one.” Peyton held up the wrapper. “Pretty soon these will be the new currency.”
“Peyton’s right. We should be hoarding snack cakes. They never go bad and in a few months people will be desperate for a sugar rush.” Brianna sat at the other end of the dining room table, two handguns disassembled in front of her.
She poured a bit of unused motor oil they found in the maintenance room of the agriculture department into a glass bowl and used it to clean and lubricate each part. “There’s so many things we took for granted before that we won’t be able to get going forward.”
Pointing at the bowl, she continued. “Like gun oil. It’s never something I thought about. Whenever I needed to clean a weapon, my dad just had a little bottle of quality stuff in with the gear. It was just there.”
“But motor oil works?”
Brianna nodded. “As long as it’s clean and synthetic, yeah. I’d prefer automatic transmission fluid, but we’d need to hit an automotive store to get it. You can use Vaseline for the side rails if you need some grease, too. But I couldn’t find any upstairs.”
Tracy shook her head. Watching a group of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds adapt to a world without power was incredible. Instead of moaning and whining and waiting for someone to come save them, they all pitched in and worked together to survive. Brianna with her knowledge of all things survival-related, Madison and Peyton with their plant and farming education, Tucker with his electronic and weather-related skills.
They each brought something different to the equation, but what mattered most was the contribution itself. No one sat around looking to someone else to save them. They were saving themselves.
Tracy opened a can of pumpkin and handed it to her daughter. Without eggs, the muffins needed something to bind them together. It might not be fall, but the smell of pumpkin in the oven would be a welcome change from the growing stink of unwashed bodies and outdoor pit toilets.
Every time Tracy fired up the gas oven, she marveled. She had to light it by hand, but that was easy. The fact the gas still ran surprised her. At some point it would stop and they would need to burn wood or propane if they could find it.
“What type of heat do your parents rely on up in Truckee, Brianna?”
The young woman smiled as she ran her motor oil covered fingers over a recoil spring. “We’ve got a wood-burning stove and a buried propane tank. There’s enough propane to last for one full winter, but after that we’d need to switch to wood.”
Tracy nodded. From everything Bri
anna said about her family’s cabin, it would be the perfect place to start over after the collapse of the power grid. Tracy glanced through the kitchen window to where her husband crouched with Brianna’s boyfriend.
The two were hunched over the radio Tucker made the day before. Every time Tracy brought up Brianna’s invite to stay, Walter shot it down.
He didn’t want to be someone else’s burden or responsibility. With Drew and Peyton, they had five mouths to feed and bodies to keep warm. She tried to explain that they came with assets as well. Between Madison’s agricultural knowledge and Walter’s ability to fly a plane and defend the group, they were net positive.
Walter didn’t agree.
Madison leaned closer as she stirred the batter. “They’ve been out there ever since we got back. Any idea what they’re listening to?”
Tracy shook her head. “I assume it’s the same types of broadcasts as before. Random people all over the country.” She squinted at the darkening sky. “With the sun down, they should start picking up broadcasts from farther away.”
Drew eased into a dining room chair next to Peyton, groaning as he sat down. “What’s this I hear about a radio?”
“Good to see you up and about.”
“Believe me, it feels good, too. If I spent one more minute on that sofa, I might have lost my mind.”
Tracy answered Drew’s question. “Tucker rigged a radio to a car battery and is picking up broadcasts from all over. There’s quite a few people out there with the ability to broadcast, whether it’s from battery or solar or even wind power.”
Drew glanced around the room. “From the looks on all of your faces I’d say the news isn’t that we’re going to Disneyland.”
Brianna snorted. “More like a haunted house starring the ghosts of America before it all fell apart.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s the truth.” She fit the slide back onto one of the handguns before racking it and setting it on the table. “You of all people should know that.”
“Brianna!” Madison chastised her roommate, but Drew held up a hand.
“It’s all right. She has a point. If losing Anne didn’t put it in perspective, getting shot a block from my condo did.”
Tracy spoke up. “I think we all are aware how much the country has changed in such a short span of time. What matters now is what we do going forward. After what you all heard on the radio, I don’t hold out much hope for aid to reach the majority of needy people.”
“Neither do I.” Walter stepped in from the outside with Tucker following just behind.
“Any new info?”
Tucker’s grim expression said yes.
Walter nodded. “It’s complete chaos in D.C. Half of the embassies are burning, the White House is under heavily armed protection, and the local national guard is patrolling the streets. There’s a dusk to dawn curfew, but that doesn’t do much.”
“All it did was give the bad guys a window of time to act.” Tucker shook his head. “They’ve tried to deliver aid a bunch of times, but a riot always breaks out so the aid workers leave. The man on the radio just now said his family is starving, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s helpless.”
Tracy closed her eyes. Everything was as bad as she feared. Worse. “What about the president?”
“No one really knows. If he is alive, he’s not talking. No government official is out there saying anything.”
“That’s because they’re too busy figuring out how to save their own skin. You better believe most of them are holed up somewhere in D.C. with hot rations and military guards and a bed to sleep in every night.” Brianna rolled her eyes. “All while the rest of the city burns.”
Madison exhaled. “We’re lucky that we got out while we did. Chico isn’t a small town, but with most of the campus empty, we aren’t seeing the same problems here.”
“It’s nothing like the D.C. Metro.” Brianna set down the reassembled gun. “There can’t be more than a hundred thousand people here. D.C. has what, six million?”
Tucker answered. “Something like that.”
“It’s chaos there because there’s millions of people who don’t have basic life-preservation skills.”
“You’re selling people short.”
Brianna raised an eyebrow at her boyfriend. “How many freshmen did you meet who couldn’t do their own laundry or even make spaghetti? Your roommate didn’t know how to boil water.”
Drew half-coughed and half-laughed. “Even I can do that.”
“Right?” Brianna shook her head as she spoke. “We’ve all gotten so used to living in our little self-sustaining bubbles that we’ve forgotten what it takes to make it on our own. Even if some of those people got out of the city and into the rural parts of Virginia, they wouldn’t know what to do.”
“She has a point.” Peyton sat up in his chair. “Before this all happened, I’d never fired a gun. If it weren’t for all of you, I wouldn’t be here. I know how to grow crops and farm, but even if I managed to shoot a wild turkey or a deer, I wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with it.”
“Neither would I.” Drew winced as he sat straighter in the chair. “Walter’s carried my weight ever since we left the airplane. I’m the one who got us trapped in the middle of a riot, got shot, and made Walter drag my sorry ass out of there.”
“I wouldn’t have left you behind.”
Drew smiled. “And for that I’ll be forever grateful. I think we underestimate the willingness for people to learn. I might not have skills now, but I can adapt.”
“The college probably has an excellent library.” Tracy poured the muffin batter into a pan as she talked. “If we could find it, I could pull some books on food preservation and off-the-grid living. Even some books on solar power and hydroelectrics.”
“Before we do any of that, we should go to the farm.” Madison opened the oven while Tracy placed the muffin pan inside. “If what Steve said is true, there could be goats and chickens and feed. If we could find an animal trailer, we could even take a cow.”
Tracy glanced at her husband. Her gut told her to stay away from the farm. If that many animals lived there, they wouldn’t be the first people to think about pilfering a few. “It’s too risky. There are probably people still working there and others who know about it. We could be walking into a battle we don’t want to fight.”
After a moment, Walter surprised her. “The agriculture department turned out to be a massive win for us. Maybe Madison is right. It doesn’t hurt to do some reconnaissance. If it looks like trouble, we can steer clear.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we might be eating a hell of a lot more eggs.”
DAY TWELVE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MADISON
University Farm, CSU Chico
10:00 a.m.
Madison sat on her hands to contain her excitement as they pulled the truck into a secluded spot a few hundred yards from the entrance to the farm. Her father had gone on his own earlier in the morning to scope it out and found no sign of anyone on patrol or standing guard.
“Like I said this morning, I have no idea if any animals are even here. It looked like some had escaped through a portion of fence by the road. There were caution signs warning the fence was electrified, but without the grid, it obviously wasn’t live.”
Brianna nodded. “Lots of goat and sheep farmers use electrified fence to keep coyotes out and their herd in. Without it, they might have just clambered on through.”
Madison chewed on her lower lip. There had to be at least a few stragglers who stayed behind. “I’m sure we can grab some chickens, if nothing else.”
“That’s assuming someone hasn’t beat us to it.” Her father put the binoculars up to his eyes and canvassed the area. “There’s four main buildings. One appears to be an open-air barn that’s more cover for the animals than anything. One might be for pigs, one is definitely chickens, and the other must be maintenance or farm equipment.”
“Any vehicles or trailers?”
“Not that I’ve been able to see. But they could be housed in one of the buildings. I can’t tell. We’ll need to clear every one and the surrounding grounds. It won’t be easy.”
Tucker leaned forward from the back seat. “That’s why there’s more of us on this trip.” He glanced at Peyton beside him. “Even the gimpy one can use a handgun.”
“You try getting a two by four to the head and tell me how you feel.”
Brianna twisted around. “Knock it off, the pair of you. We need to stay focused. This place is big and unwieldy. It’ll be easy to miss someone.”
Tucker turned serious. “If you’re that worried, maybe we shouldn’t go.”
Brianna shook her head. “No, Madison is right. If we could come out of there with even a couple chickens, it could be the difference between surviving long-term and not.”
Madison looked up at her father. “You still think it’s a good idea, right?”
His eyes warmed and his face softened as he made eye contact. “I do.” He shifted in his seat to face Brianna. “I know you’ve made the offer for us to come stay with you, but I can’t show up in good conscience empty-handed. The more we bring with us, the better.”
“I agree.” Peyton slid forward in the back seat until he could touch Brianna’s shoulder. “We can’t mooch off you or your family. We should be bringing as much as possible. The plants and seeds and vehicles are a good start, but livestock would be better.”
Brianna glanced down at her hands. “Don’t put yourselves at risk because you feel like you owe me something. My offer stands whether you show up with a trailer full of goats or only the clothes on your back. My parents won’t turn you away.”
Madison gave Brianna’s hand a squeeze. “Thanks, but my dad and Peyton are right. We’ll get you there no matter what, but we aren’t staying unless we have something to offer.”
With a glance up at her dad who nodded his approval, Madison took a deep breath. Whatever happened at the farm, they would be leaving Chico soon. Peyton was almost one hundred percent and Drew was stable enough to hit the road. They needed to finish up at the little college town and get out before their luck turned.