After the Fall (Book 2): Catherine's Tale (Part 1)

by David E. Nees

  “Joe.” Frank leaned forward with his most persuasive voice. “Not everyone is against you. This may be only a small group. A group we can root out and shut down. Let’s not attack the whole population and get everyone upset. Remember, most of the people are happy to be kept safe and fed. They’ll go along with us…with you. And if we…you, don’t alienate them, they’ll stay happy.”

  “So you want me to keep being nice and stay in the background, that what you’re suggesting?”

  “For now, don’t change things. Let Charlie and me get to the bottom of this.”

  Frank watched Joe digest what he had said. His comments were self-serving, but he knew Joe would see he had a point. He understood his role was to sell stability to the citizens, and that ability gave him a certain amount of power and leverage.

  “And another thing,” Joe said. “Everyone’s now talking about this group of farmers in the valley that wiped out the Big Jacks gang. They’re building them up like they’re some kind of heroes. That guy, Jason…and the girl. People are making them into celebrities. Calling her a warrior princess, crap like that. That don’t help. I’m telling you, it makes these people in town think they don’t have to follow the rules.”

  “Just give us some time to check the problem out,” Frank said again.

  “I’ll be nice for now, but we’re going to let the public know that I’m in charge. Let’s not argue about it. That’s my decision. You’re both here because I made my decision. I’m going to be the Director of Resources.”

  Charlie shook his head, looking down at the floor. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t care what you think. You just need to do your job…and that means following my orders. I want you two to get this publicized.”

  Frank sighed. He knew this was the new card he was going to have to play. But Charlie didn’t get it. There was a time to protest and a time to just play the cards the way they fell. That was what he was going to do.

  He sighed and held up his glass. “How about a refill?”

  The next morning Charlie and his wife, Mary, were sitting at the kitchen table enjoying some coffee with breakfast. There was a limited supply, which made the brew all the more to be savored.

  “I didn’t hear you come in last night. What kept you out so late?” Mary said.

  “A meeting downtown, with Frank and some others. The planning work never stops. Sometimes it seems we talk more than we do things.”

  “Well, you and I need to talk as well. I haven’t had a word with you for two days,” she said.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Do you remember Donna Bishop?”

  Charlie looked blankly at her.

  “She works at the same food center where I volunteer. She’s married to Jim, the engineer who worked on the wiring for your headquarters, you know, to get the electricity going.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Well, I talked with Donna yesterday, and she said Jim hadn’t come home the night before from a meeting he went to. She wanted to know if your men had picked him up, you know, maybe he’d been out after curfew?”

  Charlie stared back at his wife. A knot was slowly forming in his stomach.

  “I told her I didn’t know but I would check with you. She asked if you could help find him. She’s worried. They have a five-year-old son.” She paused, then added, “It’s not like anyone gets lost nowadays.”

  Charlie just kept looking at Mary.

  “Charlie? Is something wrong?” Mary looked at her husband. “Answer me.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I haven’t heard anything and we didn’t pick anyone up that night.”

  He could feel her eyes on him. They had been married for thirty-five years and she could read him like a book. “Well, let me know if you find anything out,” she said. “You know, when a family loses one of the adults, it’s especially hard on them in these times.”

  “I’ll do that,” Charlie said, getting up. He went back into the bedroom and got his hat. At the front door, he kissed Mary. “Maybe you can let Donna know I’ll do what I can. But you know I can’t work magic.”

  “I will, but I know you, Charlie Cook. Something’s not right. I can see it in your face. I hope you’ll tell me about it.”

  “Things are fine. It’s just that the job has stress and some of that stress doesn’t go away, even when things begin to get better. I gotta go.” He kissed her again and headed quickly out of the door.

  Chapter 3

  Catherine stepped out of the farmhouse, careful to not wake the others sleeping upstairs. It was before dawn, in early May. The sky was beginning to lighten from the dark of the night into a blue that hinted of the coming sun. She breathed in the cool, moist air, rich with the fragrances of spring, the damp earth from freshly plowed fields, the grass, the sharp smell of pines drifting down from the ridge above her.

  She was nineteen years old, and the tallest in her family at five feet ten inches. She had dark brown hair and dark, penetrating eyes. At first glance she would seem slim, even delicate, but her build disguised a strong, athletic physique. Life had become much more physical since the EMP attack, and Catherine, like the rest of her family, had developed a strong body from all the activity. She was dressed in long cotton work pants, cut down from a larger size, and a cotton shirt with a deerskin tunic over it to ward off the chill of the morning. She had on sturdy moccasins that laced up firmly around her ankles, stitched with three layers of hide for soles. The family had boots, but the boots were irreplaceable, and so they were worn only when absolutely necessary.

  She shouldered her Bushmaster .223 carbine and set off through the damp grass. Entering the woods that bordered the farm, she began to climb the slope, heading for a private spot she had found halfway up to the ridgeline; a place where she could sit hidden and look out over the valley. The view from the small rocky copse wasn’t as dramatic as from some of the outcroppings on the ridge higher up, but those spots were another hour’s hike away. Her eyes scanned the predawn dark out of habit as she moved effortlessly through the forest; silent and graceful, like a shadow drifting through the trees.

  She came to this spot whenever she could get away. It was her place of retreat, where she could dream of a life without conflict. She had needed it after the battle her family and the other valley farmers had fought a year and a half ago. At the narrow entrance to their valley they had defeated a large, brutal gang led by Big Jacks. The defenders had killed many of the attackers and lost two of their own in the fight. The trauma of that violent day still haunted all the valley residents.

  Her family consisted of her mother, Anne; her sixteen-year-old sister, Sarah; and Jason, a man she thought of as her stepfather. He had come to them almost two years ago and helped them survive. Anne and Jason had become a couple, and Catherine now had a baby brother, Adam.

  Last spring when, Adam, her baby brother was born, a squad from the army contingent stationed in Hillsboro had shown up at the farm. Their presence had created a tense situation. Catherine had played a part in helping to resolve the tension and in the process had caught the attention of the squad’s leader, Lieutenant Kevin Cameron. He was older than her, twenty-nine, but he still retained a boyish manner. She had found herself attracted to him and he had been smitten by her. Love had blossomed and they were now engaged to be married. Anne and Jason approved of the match but didn’t want them to rush forward too fast. Still, Catherine had decided that she wanted to marry Kevin before the coming summer was over.

  She smiled as she gazed out at the valley still shrouded in the predawn gloom. There was a mist rising from the lower creek that would burn off quickly when the sun hit it. She loved this time, waiting for the sun to explode over the ridge, like turning on the floodlights for the day. This was the soft, quiet time; the birds were just starting to wake. Soon enough the day would seem to switch on as the sun broke over the eastern hills and washed the valley in its light. The birds would start their calli
ng, which would be a sign to begin the day’s routines. For now, Catherine was free to dwell on the idea of being married. She breathed in the morning air, savoring the fragrance along with her thoughts. The rich odors would fade with the heat of the day, but her satisfaction would remain.

  She was an accomplished fighter, a markswoman second only to Jason, who had trained her. She took pride in her abilities, but she hoped that the time of fighting was past, that she and Kevin could build a new life together and society could recover from the EMP attack that had destroyed it. Life might never be quite like it had been, but Catherine didn’t mind. She was ready to go forward with her beau and build a future together however the country redeveloped. But the threat of violence lurked in the back of her mind as she entertained thoughts of the future.

  Jason Richards had left Hillsboro about six months after the power went out. Not wanting to stay and tangle further with the increasingly corrupt authorities, he had set out to live in the mountains, to survive alone until the crisis passed.

  Loneliness had proven to be his biggest adversary, and it wasn’t until he’d found Anne and her family that his life began to turn around. He had gotten himself adopted into the struggling family and had helped them to thrive in the post-attack world. Along the way, he an Anne had fallen in love.

  Life was now a rich delight for him. He had a new son, now a year old; his step daughters had grown into strong, confident young women; the oldest, Catherine, had a suitor, Lieutenant Cameron who was with the army platoon stationed in Hillsboro. Lieutenant Cameron had played a part in helping Jason get the farming in the valley restarted. With their supply of non-hybrid seeds, they could not only feed themselves but supply food to the city and still be able to set aside seed for the next year’s planting. If they could establish a barter economy, life could begin to get back to some level of normalcy, even if it was more like the eighteenth or nineteenth century than the twenty-first.

  Jason’s thoughts drifted over the past year’s events and how much had changed in his life. He almost felt guilty for the rich life he had found for himself out of this catastrophe. Sometimes it didn’t seem right to be so happy.

  “Jason,” Tom Walsh said, interrupting his reverie. “Don’t drift off on me.”

  Jason smiled. “I’m not, but sometimes I catch myself wondering how blessed we are in this valley and how well things have worked out for us.”

  “Yeah, well, it came with a price, never forget that,” Tom replied. Neither of them were likely to forget. The battle they had fought had cost the lives of two of their friends.

  The two men were searching through the learning center of a mill in the town of Clifton Furnace. It was located about ten miles from the valley’s entrance along the Pickering River. The town had developed in the eighteenth century around an iron smelting furnace started by a man named George Clifton. The furnace had processed the iron ore mined in the surrounding hills. Shortly after the town’s founding, a grist mill had been constructed, powered by the river. More merchants came over time as more people settled there, and a diverse economy had grown, providing goods and services to the surrounding farms.

  As transportation improved, the town had begun to change, and the practical collection of businesses had gradually morphed into quaint country establishments. The town had become one of those hidden country gems that city people flocked to. They had a general store with a wooden floor, reminiscent of an earlier century. The remains of the smelting furnace had been preserved and put on display for tourists, and the grist mill had been rebuilt and turned into a museum and learning center.

  Now, the town was empty. Most of the people had left after the EMP attack. The few who remained had either fled or been killed when Big Jacks’ gang had shown up. Clifton Furnace was a ghost town, but it had the mill. And the mill could be made to work. If the mill were working, the grain the valley grew could be turned into meal and flour.

  They had just finished studying the learning center’s diagrams, pictures and drawings giving an elementary tutoring on the operations of the mill. They also had brought over all the books they could find in the local high school that might have anything on the subject. The two boxes of books were piled on the admission desk, half unpacked, as the men thumbed through them.

  “It says here the Greeks invented the two main components of the water mill, the wheel and toothed gearing,” Tom said. He was thumbing through an old encyclopedia that the school library had fortunately thought worth retaining, perhaps to let students see how one learned about things before the internet.

  “That’s nice, but we need the practice, not the history,” Jason said. His reverie now broken, he was anxious to complete the project. Even though he and Tom were well armed, being out of the valley made him nervous.

  “But it was the Romans who actually developed working mills, using the undershot and overshot techniques,” Tom continued, ignoring Jason’s comment. “The key to all of this is maintaining the mill stones. If they’re turned without grain, they’ll literally grind themselves down and become useless. Even with the grain they have to be re-cut over time.”

  “So this isn’t as easy as it looks,” Jason replied. “How the hell do we get to the grinding face?”

  They left the books and continued to examine the mill, trying to see how the miller would lift the moving wheel off the static one to re-cut the channels when they wore down. The axle from the water wheel would need inspection and greasing since it hadn’t moved for some time. The wooden gearing consisted of toothed pegs on a wheel connected to the horizontal main shaft that meshed with a caged wheel made up of an upper and lower plate joined with pegs. The caged wheel was attached to a vertical shaft which turned the mill stone. Some of the pegs needed replacing, but they had been able to find spares in the exhibit.

  “We’ll have to cut and dry some hardwood pegs for the future. I’m sure these wear out or break regularly,” Jason said.

  “It says here in the display that they used not only oak but hickory and ironwood.”

  “Local woods, we’ve got those trees.”

  Changing the subject, Tom asked, “Has Lieutenant Cameron finalized the terms of our trading?”

  “I think that’s going to be up to us. We’ll need to negotiate with city officials. I don’t think we’ll be bartering with private individuals at all. Everything in Hillsboro is centralized.”

  “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

  “If we don’t like the terms, we don’t do business,” Jason said. “We have a good hand to play.”

  “What’s to keep them from just coming in and taking over?”

  Jason shrugged. “I don’t know. We have a strong reputation. Remember, we defeated Big Jacks—”

  “We don’t want to go through that again.”

  “Agreed, but it should make those in charge hesitate. Plus they don’t know farming the way we do. I think Cameron has convinced the acting mayor, Frank Mason, that this is the most efficient arrangement.”

  Chapter 4

  Billy Turner hiked up the driveway of Jason and Anne’s farm, the gravel crunching under his feet. He saw Jason sitting on the porch watching him. Jason smiled and motioned for him to come up and join him. “What brings you down here?” Jason asked as Billy sat down.

  “This co-op thing you’re doing, getting all the produce together to sell in town…I’d like to take some of what I’ve grown…what you’ve grown in the fields I loaned you, to make some moonshine and take it to town to sell.”

  “Billy, we talked about this before. I leased your fields for a cut of what we get for selling the produce and grains. I wouldn’t do it to supply you for making moonshine. I told you that up front.”

  “I know, but it looks like a good harvest from the winter planting. I figure we could get two crops this year. Seems to me I can use some of that to make liquor.”

  “Last year, when your dad passed away, you told me you didn’t like moonshine.”

  “Don’t like
drinkin’ it, but I don’t mind makin’ it, especially now if I got somewhere to sell it. It’s what I know best. Reminds me of doing it with my pa.”

  “I know it’s been lonely for you since your dad died after the battle.” He gave Billy a gentle look. “But you’d rather moonshine than farm?”

  Billy stared at the porch floor, uncomfortable. “That, or hunting,” he said. “I like being in the woods either way.”

  “But you also know farming. Your family’s farmed this valley for generations. Isn’t that what your daddy would want you to do?”

  “My family made moonshine in this valley for generations too. And my daddy was a moonshiner.” Billy’s voice took on a note of pride.

  “You know my answer. Making moonshine in this valley will only bring trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Billy asked, now looking back at Jason.

  “Gangs, outlaws. It could be seen as something valuable that people know is here and can bring us the wrong kind of attention. Remember, if we’re trading it, we’re telling everyone about it.”

  Billy wasn’t so sure and a doubtful expression crept over his face.

  Jason continued. “Look at what we went through to get where we are. I don’t want anything to endanger what we’ve achieved, no matter how slight the risk.”

  “Trading anything with Hillsboro’s a risk,” Billy replied.

  “Yeah, but that’s one worth taking. We need things the town provides and they need what we provide. It’s a natural connection.”

  “So’s selling moonshine to city folk.”

  “Maybe, but moonshine’s like waving gold bars in front of desperate people. Our grain and flour supplies are a lot less like gold bars. Food’s a longer process. You have to grow it. And moonshine is easy to steal.” Jason sighed. “No making moonshine. Not from this valley, and certainly not from the fields I work.”