Digger 1.0

by Michael Bunker

Calling Ellis “Dad” was a running joke. He was only a few years older than her, and four years older than Charles (Chuck) who’d just turned eighteen. Ellis had only been a few months younger than Chuck when the blindness had hit. He didn’t feel older at all. But they all looked to him like a father figure, and the leader of their family. To most everyone he was usually just Ellis, but a few of the children found it humorous to call him Dad.

  Delores, at sixteen on the verge of seventeen, was the oldest young lady in the family. She’d been discovered by the group hiding under a desk in the collapsed office of an old KOA campground after her family was cut off and trapped by a horde near the swamps southeast of the Stanton-Lowville Prison. Talk about emotional scars. But Delores was the resilient kind. Strong. Deep as a cool mountain lake. Ellis always smiled when he thought about her. She was the group’s philosopher and moral compass, and she questioned everything. She sipped at a cup of “coffee” made from roasted and steeped cereal grains. “Goats got out again this morning,” she said.

  Ellis took a deep breath and rolled his eyes. “How much damage did they do?”

  “They weren’t out long before the milking crew caught ‘em, but they’d eaten about ten percent of the greens before they were caught.” She looked at him over her cup. “We need to do something about this, Ellis.”

  Ellis nodded his head as he poured himself a mug of grain coffee. He knew that the we who needed to do something meant that he was going to be expected to come up with a solution, and then everyone else would implement it to the best of their abilities.

  Ellis looked around the kitchen and then sighed. “Here’s what we’re going to do… and I know no one is going to like it.” He watched as their eyes and then their heads dropped. They listened, but they didn’t look at him.

  “We’re going to have to take turns with someone staying up with them all night. Then we’ll tie them out in the morning and check them regularly throughout the day to make sure they have something to eat and plenty of water.”

  “Water—” Shooter said. “We need to do something about that too.”

  Ellis closed his eyes, opened them again and nodded. “I know, guys.”

  “Shooter and Chuck talked to a salvager yesterday out by Fontana’s Bridge,” Delores said. “Said he saw a horde a few days ago.” When she said “horde,” her eyes met Ellis’s and he nodded almost imperceptibly. He knew what visions—what memories—the word evoked in her. Her first family had been consumed by a horde. But she was strong now, and brave. She was turning seventeen soon and was mature for someone twice her age. There was a slight tilt of her head, but her eyes held Ellis’s gaze without interruption. “Said they skirted the Basin heading north. Said the dust cloud on the horizon nearly blocked out the sun.”

  Ellis broke eye contact with Delores and fixed his glare on Shooter. “What were ya’ll doing out by Fontana’s Bridge?” It wasn’t an accusation, a rebuke, or even a challenge, but the meaning was communicated clearly. If they were out at the bridge, they’d better have a good reason, and they better have followed the rules.

  “We followed a buck that far, but we didn’t cross the river,” Shooter said.

  “You both need to be careful. Getting seen out that far could lead someone back here.”

  “We checked all over, Ellis. I promise. Didn’t see any sign that anyone had been over the river.”

  Ellis sighed. He knew that one day, if something wasn’t done, that bridge would be the death of everyone on the Farm. Other than by crossing that bridge, access to the valley was nearly impossible in most places, and highly difficult everywhere else.

  He tapped his finger on the table, firm, but not angry. “If that salvager told you he saw a horde, then he told someone else he saw you.”

  Shooter’s head dropped a little and he shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “I am right.”

  “We’ll make sure we’re not seen next time,” Shooter added.

  Ellis smiled and took a sip of coffee. He waited a few beats for the import of the last conversation to sink in.

  “So, you saw a buck?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Couldn’t get a shot, but we know where to find him.”

  Neil and Patrick, the last two members of the family, shuffled in and found a seat on the long bench at the table. Both boys were fourteen, and they were usually inseparable. They looked like they’d had a hard night. The two had been captured by highway gangs when they were really young and were used as gophers and slaves and worse until, like many young people, they’d escaped together into the Scraps. Most lone children their age who never made it to the Scraps had long ago become either permanent slaves or protein for the hordes. One or the other. Getting out was rare.

  Ellis poured them each a cup of “coffee”. “Up late playing poker?”

  Neil almost grinned. “I wish.”

  “Coon got in the chicken coop last night,” Patrick said. “We were up all night after the ruckus. Lost three laying hens.”

  “Dammit!” Ellis said, before looking around at the faces at the table. “Sorry.”

  Neil put his hand out as if he were asking for something, and then slowly closed it. “We need more chicken wire, Ellis. And if we can’t get it we’re going to have to make it, which means we’ll need wire. The thinner the better.”

  Ellis looked up at the sky and sighed again. His answer was always the same. “I know.” He looked back at Neil and then at Patrick. “So what happened with the coon?”

  “We got ‘im,” Patrick said, smiling. “Delores is going to fix him for supper.”

  Coon wasn’t easy to cook. Ellis knew that from experience. Some scent glands had to be carefully removed in order for the meat not to be spoiled or at the least, unappetizing, but Delores had become a master at the craft. A few of the family members had even grown to like coon and they savored it as a delicacy. Everyone in the family was always glad to have meat, no matter the type, and coons were still plentiful.

  Patrick winked at Ellis, “The good news is that once we get the skin fleshed and stretched and cured we’ll only need five more skins to finish your blanket. You’ll be toasty and warm this winter!”

  “I’m looking forward to it guys, and I mean that,” Ellis said.

  Neil slapped Patrick in the arm, “Yeah, Chuck loves his coon blanket so much that he wouldn’t even trade it to Patrick for that .22 pistol he wants.”

  Patrick shook his head. “Burned myself giving him that blanket as a gift.”

  “Alright, then. Good work,” Ellis said. “You boys get some sleep and then meet me in the gardens after lunch. We’re going to build a new raised bed and then re-pot all the seedlings the goats destroyed yesterday.

  Both boys sighed together, but nodded their heads.

  Ellis sipped his coffee, his mind had already moved on.

  We’re going to have to blow that bridge before someone uses it to come here and kill us all.

  Chapter 4

  The boys had a good start on the new raised garden bed when Ellis excused himself for his regular walk around the valley. He didn’t walk it every day, but he tried to make it at least three or four times a week. Delores, Kay, and Amy were busy starting new seedlings, and as he walked away from the farm, he could hear Delores and Kay screaming “Rooster!” and then Amy cackling at the top of her lungs at whatever she’d done to irritate the others.

  Chuck and Shooter were occupied prepping traps for the coons and any other predators that would infiltrate the valley through the thicket and the woods. After they were done making and setting traps, the two young men would start hauling water up the cliffs in buckets—backbreaking work if ever there was such a thing—and then down into the bowl of the valley to be used to tide them over until the rains returned. If the rains returned. The longer the drought, the stronger the doubt.

  Chuck had proposed a system that would solve all of their water problems forever, but it had to be done in steps and none of it yet. The first stag
e would be to run pipe from the top of the cliffs where Chuck and Shooter usually hauled it up in buckets, down to the valley where it could be stored and used. A second, more ambitious stage of the plan was to devise a pumping system so water could be pumped up from the river to the peak of the cliffs, eliminating the most painful and labor intensive part of procuring water. Gravity would then feed the water down to the farm. But creating a working water plan necessitated more time engaged in the dangerous craft of obtaining salvage. When they went as a team on salvage runs, not only were they all in peril of their lives, but that meant the farm was being neglected, and the danger level throughout their balanced system skyrocketed.

  Stress relief. Curiosity. Security concerns. Those were the main motivations for the walk. But it also gave him a time to worry and maybe even freak out a little without spooking everyone else. He carried a heavy burden at only twenty-two years old, and everyone in the family needed him to remain stoic and solid regardless of the circumstances that threatened to overwhelm their little little lifeboat.

  All-in-all, considering what was happening in the rest of Texas, the valley was a little slice of heaven. A corner of God’s good earth that, due to its geography and constitution, remained hidden from the eyes of most of the rest of the Basin, and the world.

  In the days before the Beginning, anyone trying to hide out in the valley would have been discovered quickly by eyes in the sky. Satellites, low flying planes, helicopters, and even the dreaded drones of a mortally wounded power-mad government zipping around the Basin, would have seen the little occupied farm hiding in the bowl that was the valley. Thankfully, airborne threats now belonged to the past. At least Ellis hoped they did.

  The entirety of the valley was a rare geological and geographical phenomenon. A valley, hidden in a mesa, mostly surrounded by a river. For all intents and purposes it was a half-mile wide cleft in an outcropping—a mesa—that overlooked the oxbow of the Solekeep River near the southern edge of the Basin. This meant the valley was elevated above the surrounding countryside, and protected on nearly all four sides by natural impediments to foot travel and curiosity. The whole formation was like a castle built high within an imposing natural fortress. Think of a shallow bowl placed on a stool. Ellis liked to think of the place as a hidden paradise, held aloft from the world in the palm of God’s hand.

  To the east, and curling around the farm to the south, were limestone cliffs, nearly perpendicular walls that dropped over a hundred and fifty feet into the lowlands that eventually led to an area known by locals as The Nowheres. There was salvage out in the Nowheres, but not much. The sparse and unforgiving climate made it expensive and dangerous to find out.

  To the south and moving toward the west, the limestone cliffs terminated in a quarter mile stretch of almost impassible brush, growing thick along a steep grade that ran right up to the Solekeep, where the land dropped precipitously down to the river. The woods that were closest to the farm formed a traditional forest and woodlot, but the further south and west you moved through the forest, eventually you would enter into a thicket so dense that only rodents, small predators, and the rare deer, turkey, or pig might be able to traverse it.

  To the west and north one would find the deep waters of the Solekeep, a beautiful and dangerous expanse of fast moving water a hundred feet across and virtually unnavigable. The river rushed north and then bent into a huge oxbow before heading due east past the borders of the Basin before turning north again and forming the eastern boundary of The Scraps. Just before the northward turn of the Solekeep was the Pumping Station that used to pump water from the river to satiate the thirsts and lusts of the half-million residents of Central City before the Station shut down and almost everybody died.

  Just east of the oxbow, in the northwest corner of the mesa, Fontana’s Bridge lay rusting and mostly dormant as the only easy passage into and out of the raised valley. The bridge was grown over with brambles and vines, and unless a traveler knew it was there, he’d be hard-pressed to find it. It was the Achilles heel of the farm, which was fascinating because from the sky, the bridge bifurcating the river just east of the oxbow looked like a knife cutting the Achilles tendon of a giant.

  Passing back to the east, the high walls of the mesa’s edges restricted movement across the river and into their little bit of Promised Land.

  As Ellis walked, he thought about the bridge once again. The river served as a moat around half of their home, and the cliffs guarded most of the other half. Just like with an ancient castle, the bridge was always the first and most glaring weakness. And this one couldn’t be raised and lowered based on the threat condition. If Fontana’s Bridge wasn’t there, the valley would be like a medieval fortress, or a Biblical walled city. A large and motivated army could certainly breach their secret fortress, but short of that, ingress would be problematic for anyone short on will and manpower. The valley wasn’t perfect, but it was home.

  The threats were all out there.

  The completely unpredictable weather.

  Plague and other biological evils.

  Dangers from hordes, road gangs, the precious metal pirates, and even lone gunmen and psychopaths who were ever on the search for victims and plunder.

  It was the Middle-Ages again, and death lurked everywhere.

  Chapter 5

  Interludes in the Wasteland:

  Other Bad Things that Just Happen

  A town called Summner.

  Kate always liked the name of the town of Summner where she now lived. It sounded like summer. She remembered summers to be good, before the meltdown. Before the time everyone else called the blindness. As a kid and then barely a teenager, she’d been busy during those summers. Ballet camp one year. Violin camp the next. Swimming. Bonfires. The year her parents took her to a place called Italy and then on to Germany.

  That had happened, she’d had to remind herself often. She’d been on a plane and she’d gone to all the great music houses of Europe. Her parents had talked about Juilliard. They’d talked about it because her teachers had suggested it.

  Had said it was obvious.

  That had happened to her also when she was young and before the meltdown of the world.

  Along with other things.

  She thought about the day everything changed.

  That first day, first days really, had been sheer terror.

  You see, she’d always been blind. Blind Kate her friends had called her when they were feeling particularly mean.

  But on that day, she saw. She saw everything.

  She saw as if the pictures she’d made in her mind were now suddenly real. Different, but real. She saw with her eyes, rather than just hearing.

  She saw planes plummeting to the earth, and fires burning everything and everyone. She saw people screaming in horror and holding their hands to their faces, rubbing their eyes. And she saw them jumping from buildings too, unable to face the darkness she had lived in all her life.

  And she saw the sky.

  What she saw there she couldn’t really explain. Strings, like on her violin, wrapped up and tangled into a huge knot.

  And she could see a dragon, or what she thought might be a black dragon, coiled around the knot and crowing with glee.

  And she saw death. So much death. And faces locked in terror. Frozen in a fear that is beyond comprehension.

  Then there were the days after her world went dark again. The entire eastern seaboard collapsing into death and mayhem as the power grid went down (or so they said). She couldn’t get out of the city. Not for weeks.

  But she’d finally gone out on a homemade raft with others. Others like her that thought the word “home” offered something better than the conditions inside the city. A government Safe Haven. FEMA in charge.

  She remembered her violin teacher was with her on the raft, paddling across the waters of New York, the smell of smoke in the air, and the teacher describing the endless ash settling on the water like dark snow. “Honestly,” her teacher
, a grand dame if there ever was one, “those people are animals,” she’d said with contempt, the kind often reserved for a particularly flat note, cast back upon the dying city that was once something great. So full of promise. So...

  Now Kate felt the warm morning sun fall on her face. By touch alone she felt for the pile of unwashed sheets, and when she had one, she kept her face—upturned tiny nose and alabaster skin with freckles—toward the sun, without looking, and began to wash the next of her load in the cold river water.

  Those things had happened too.

  She thought of the things she’d seen during that day of sight. And she thought of the frightening stretches of the Pennsylvania woods she’d fled into once her sight was gone again. How she’d gone on alone after that Grand Dame had “pilled out” one night and died of an accidental overdose on purpose. The night after the day in which they’d found the Grand Dame’s promised safety burnt to the ground. By touch she’d discovered the matchstick frames and timber all burnt and dead, the ashes cold like the rain falling all around them in the evening on that lost, long ago day.

  Now as Kate worked at the waxy sheets, her fingers numb and no doubt red...

  ...fingers that had once held a bow and plucked, when needed, most deftly and full of promise, at some mischievous note in some arcane chamber piece traced out on a yellowed score she’d never see...

  ... she remembered those burnt frames and the ash and the ominous woods of Pennsylvania beyond. Those days alone were the most beautiful and the most frightening she’d ever known.

  Hauntingly empty to be blind and alone in them at the world’s end.

  Like Prokofiev.

  Thinking of that one day when she’d been able to see what the world really looked like.

  “What was the last thing you ever saw?” she asked herself over the burble of river stones where she did the wash, tracing all their tiny notes in her mind without trying.