EMP: Heading Home

by Harp, Wilson

  Anne and I straightened up the camp and dragged the dead dogs out into the darkness. We watched Ted as he bandaged Kenny’s arm and then set our watch for the night. Ted pulled out his book of mythology and read a story as we waited until the adrenaline faded from our systems. The fire grew dim, and our eyes grew heavy as the night wore on. I took first watch and lost myself in thoughts of Lexi and Emma.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, the snow had slowed and the sun peeked through the clouds. We decided we would travel since the conditions weren’t too bad. After a quick breakfast of leftover squirrel and some hardtack we hit the road. It was colder than it had been the previous several days, but it wasn’t so cold we had trouble staying warm as we walked. The snow on the highway was about two inches deep. Light enough that it wasn’t difficult to walk, deep enough so we had plenty of traction and didn’t slide around.

  In less than an hour, we came to the 151 exit and started north toward the town of Ava. None of us said it directly, but we all hoped to make it to the air base and see if they had doctors who could examine Kenny and confirm he wasn’t at risk for rabies.

  The woods were dense on both sides of 151 as we traveled. The sun didn’t hit us directly, except for short periods around noon, so it was a few degrees cooler, but still not a bad day. We walked through the pristine snow at a fast, steady pace. Kenny was chattier than normal, probably because of nerves and worry, but he seemed cheerful.

  He told us of his life in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. He was a petty criminal who stole from tourists, busted into cars, took whatever he could find. He dealt pot, crack, and cocaine at different times, arranged parties for different groups, and in general lived a crime and drug filled life.

  Some of the stories I had heard before, but quite a few bits were new. He told about when Katrina hit, how he made his way up to Memphis, and finally decided to come back to Kenton. He had intended to save some money and live off of Sophia for a while before he headed back to New Orleans. But then he found Church and his life changed. It changed his attitude and, over time, his behaviors.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “But why do you go to Lester’s place? I mean, if you’ve turned away from the fast and loose lifestyle, why do you go where all of that is?”

  Ted laughed. “I don’t know if you’d believe it, David. I didn’t, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m curious, too,” said Anne. “I had a taste of partying in college, but it wasn’t anything I really enjoyed. But as much as you’ve changed, I never got why you would head back.”

  Kenny smiled at us and laughed. “I go out there three times a week and hold Bible studies.”

  “You do not,” I said. “There’s no way Lester Collins lets you hold Bible studies up at his place.”

  “He does,” said Kenny. “I asked him early on if he’d mind if I came and offered to read the Bible with any of his people. He laughed and said he didn’t care. So I went. The first time, there were a couple of people who came. They laughed and joked about it, but when I was done, they asked me when I’d come back. Lester started coming the third time I went. He loves to argue and debate what I read, but he shows up no matter how many times he calls it stupid.”

  “You just read the Bible?” I asked.

  “Read and discuss some of the stories. The ones in the Old Testament are Lester’s favorites. He’s fascinated with the different histories and personalities. I think he just had a bare passing knowledge of what was in there.”

  “Do you think he might give up his lifestyle?” asked Anne.

  “I pray he will,” said Kenny. “But even if he never does, it won’t stop me from sharing my faith with him. I wouldn’t be where I am today unless people talked to me about what they believed.”

  “I feel bad for thinking of why you were going out there,” I said. “I was thinking you were talking all about the Bible and then heading out there to party.”

  “Pastor Williams did as well,” said Kenny. “Even when I told him, he said we should avoid the appearance of evil. I told him Jesus ate with sinners and then invited him to go with me one day. He hasn’t taken me up on the offer yet.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you to go out there?” asked Anne. “Those young girls selling themselves, people staying drunk and high all the time instead of being productive?”

  “People are just trying to find something to fill the emptiness. They’re scared, lonely and worried. So they escape,” Kenny said. “I remember being like that, and I need to tell them there is more to life than temporary pleasure. It doesn’t make me angry they don’t understand. Just makes me more determined to let them know the better way.”

  The day passed quickly as we talked. I considered a lot of what Kenny had said. There were things about him which confused and amazed me. He was both gentle and brutal, sophisticated and simple.

  “The road is awful,” Anne said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The road. It’s full of pot holes and deep cracks.”

  “Little roads like this usually don’t get repaired very often unless someone raises a big stink,” Ted said. “Folks here are probably just used to this being a bad road and the county and state don’t bother with fixing it.”

  “And they likely never will again,” said Kenny. “Within a few years, most roads will be in horrid condition.”

  “We go back to dirt roads?” Anne asked.

  “Gravel, first,” I said. “Dirt roads get muddy and messy. The gravel will let the water run off faster. Eventually, dirt roads will spring up, but they won’t be in straight lines, they’ll follow the contours of the land.”

  “Roads in worse condition that don’t even go straight. Great,” said Anne.

  “In a hundred years, most people won’t be able to imagine traveling across the country in a matter of days by car. I guess it will be technically possible, but only for the very wealthy and most powerful,” I said

  “Trains,” said Kenny. “Trains will be the main way to travel long distances. Probably be up and going in less than five or six years.”

  “Older engines,” said Ted. “Ones which can run on pure mechanical power. Coal powered steam engines.”

  “Some things will be quick to come back,” Kenny said. “Others not so much.”

  “Why will trains come back so quickly?” Anne asked. “Didn’t it take over a century for the train system to be developed?”

  “It did,” I said. “But that’s because we didn’t know how to build it effectively. Now we know the principles behind steam engines, how they work, and how to build them efficiently. Plus, the biggest problem was the lack of tracks. The rail system has plenty of laid tracks now.”

  “We understand cars, too,” she said. “Why won’t cars make a comeback?”

  “They will,” Ted said. “But not as quickly. We need rubber for tires and oil. And not just oil, but the ability to refine the oil into gasoline. Those are processes which’ll take time to develop even though we understand them. The fuel for a steam engine train is coal. You can burn it straight from the ground. Less steps make it easier to reproduce the technology.”

  “But the big issue is law and organization,” Kenny said. “Even if you got a train up and running, it could be stopped anywhere along the way by anyone who wanted to. The train would only run as long as everyone along the route wants it to run. Same with roads. Which is why there won’t be a lot of traffic over the bridge in Cape. No consensus that it should be a safe place to cross the river.”

  “So what happens?” I asked. “How do you establish that mentality?”

  “It’ll take time,” Ted said. “It’s the start of a new Dark Age. When Rome collapsed, law and order broke down. It wasn’t the loss of technology, but the lack of agreement on authority. The empire broke up into various factions, and the splintering of loyalty kept going until the authority of a noble only extended as far as the reach of the sword in his hand.”

  “You mean we’re going to live
inside walled settlements and have to constantly be worried about our neighbors?” Anne asked.

  “I think we’re already there,” I said. “We watch the roads in Kenton and the military camp at Cape has an actual wall. Their patrols only control the roads themselves, and they’re under constant threat.”

  “I hoped it wouldn’t be an issue as the military rebuilt communications,” said Anne. “I never thought there would be people who didn’t want to reconnect with others. Who didn’t want to go back to the way it was.”

  “Most do,” said Kenny. “There will always be people who feel like outsiders. Like Lester. But even if you want to go back and reconnect, some people will be too afraid. They have survived this long, and they are afraid of changing again. They might wonder if the things they have worked so hard for will just be taken away. That the methods they use to barely survive will be upset and they will tumble from the unstable position they find themselves.”

  “Fear will hold us back,” I said. “Fear of losing what little we have left.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” Anne said. “Who would have guessed something like this was even possible?”

  “Me, for one,” said Ted. “And thousands of others. And the military.”

  I laughed. “Point taken, Ted. But why didn’t the press or schools or anybody try to prepare us?”

  “They wouldn’t have,” Kenny said. “Not what they wanted. A country full of people who don’t need the government to survive? Who would look to the government for help, then? No. Keeping people dependent on what you can provide was a huge business before. It was the biggest business. There were large corporations which provided what people wanted, but only one corporation convinced people they couldn’t live without it, and that was the government. They gave us the choice between freedom and safety, and that was a sucker’s bet.”

  “But don’t we have to give up some freedoms to be safe?” asked Anne.

  “No,” said Ted. “It’s a false trade off. Giving up freedoms can lead to less fear, but it doesn’t make people safe. You can have freedom and safety, but society has to be geared for it. Right now, if we found a building to sleep in and we barred the door, it would feel safer than sleeping out in the woods. But, would we feel safer sleeping in a house with no locks in a neighborhood which had a very low crime rate?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “But you really wouldn’t be safer,” said Kenny. “You would just feel safer. You would have security in your mind because in a situation like that, the law would be a contract people had agreed to as a community. And the law is paramount.”

  “That seems strange coming from you,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. When I hanged Talley, I broke the law. But the law I broke was one the town didn’t want to deal with yet. The law at that point hadn’t been tested and enforced. My trial forced the issue. They could have executed me for Talley, and if they had, Kenton would have felt even safer than when they sentenced me to exile.”

  “Would you’ve let them kill you?” asked Ann. “Would you’ve let them go through with it, Ted?”

  “Yes,” said Ted. “We talked about it, and we agreed the trial had to happen without any conditions. We agreed to not even think of trying to get around any outcome we didn’t like.”

  “Why?” Anne asked. “You could have escaped and no one in the town would have blamed you.”

  “The law has to be supreme,” said Kenny. “Without the law, men would just do what they thought was right. And while it may seem like a good idea, it’s horrible. It leads to corruption and lack of trust. You think no one would have blamed me for escaping, and maybe that’s true. But many people would have thought I was allowed to escape by the Council. That would have sown distrust and raised questions whenever the Council was faced with a hard decision.”

  For the first time in a couple of weeks, I felt like I was at home. Luke and I would sit up at night and have conversations like this. Small groups would sit around and discuss topics like freedom or law or other big ideas. In some ways, I felt more connected with people when I knew what they thought and felt about deep topics rather than just their surface interests. Before the event, people would tell you their favorite television shows or maybe their favorite books if you were real close to them. Now, people talked about their views on human nature, their morality, and their foundational beliefs.

  These were dark times, for sure, and like the dark ages in ancient history, they would only be overcome after generations of men and women worked hard to re-establish civilization. Technology was well and good, but it was, we all agreed, a mental brokenness which we all had suffered. Fear and distrust had to be rebuilt by society and laws had to be established we all believed in.

  The thick canopy of trees had given us good conditions as we walked and talked. It was cold, but the bitter bite of the wind had been blocked by the woods. There was small game everywhere, but Kenny had not raised the air rifle once. We had been so caught up in talking, all needs and desires had been pushed aside and the sun was already well on its way to the west before I realized we had marched right past lunch.

  Then I smelled the smoke.

  “Is that smoke?” Anne asked just a few seconds later.

  The smell was pungent and slightly rotted.

  “Old char,” Ted said. “There was a fire nearby, but not in the last few days. Let’s keep our eyes open.”

  The smell increased as we headed north along the highway. Within a mile, we passed the first of many burned out structures. Some had been burned months before, but a few were only a couple of weeks old. The musty smell of char mixed with the dampness of melting snow hung in the air.

  “Too regular to have been accidents,” said Kenny.

  Ted shrugged. “Just not sure why someone would burn them all down.”

  After another mile, we saw a few buildings along the side of the road which looked to be in good condition. Ted led us into some heavy brush and we moved forward to observe. I saw a couple of men moving near the buildings and Ted and Kenny pulled their binoculars out to take a closer look.

  “Hold where you are,” a voice behind us ordered.

  I turned to see three men with rifles. They were dressed in heavy clothes and the barrels of their rifles were pointed directly at us.

  “Who are you? Why are you here?” one of the men asked.

  “We’re just travelers,” said Ted. “No harm from us.”

  “Turn around and keep your hands where I can see them,” the man said.

  We stood and faced them. Kenny had the air rifle in his hand, but he held it, barrel up, near the middle and had his arm held away from his body.

  “A lot of guns for simple travelers,” said the man.

  “Who travels without weapons today?” Ted asked. “A man has the right to protect himself.”

  “True enough, but I need to take you in so we can know who you are and what you’re doing here.”

  He motioned for us to head back to the road. Ted and Kenny moved when he waved his hand and me and Anne followed their example.

  “Where are you taking us?” asked Anne.

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to be asking questions,” the man replied. “But we’re the lawful authorities here if you must know.”

  “Good,” said Ted. “We’re heading up to the air base. Maybe you can tell us how far away we are.”

  “Stop here,” the man said as we stepped up on the highway.

  I felt worry swell up as I thought maybe mention of the air base was a bad idea.

  “We’ll take possession of your weapons at this point. One at a time, place any firearms you have on the ground. You first,” he said as he motioned to me.

  I unslung the rifle bag I carried and laid it on the ground. Then I removed my father’s pistol from the holster on my waist and set it on the bag.

  One by one, we laid out the weapons we had.

  “One shotgun. One air rifle. Three rifles. Two handguns,” the ma
n said as he looked them over. “Pick them back up and I’ll take you in. You’ll need to be questioned. You are under arrest.”

  “On what charge?” asked Kenny.

  “I don’t like you. Too many people down here take shots at us, and to find the four of you heavily armed sneaking around in the bush makes me nervous. The good news is you’ll be questioned at the base, and if you are telling the truth about where you’re headed, we’ll get you there safely.”

  We gathered up our weapons and walked at a steady pace in front of our captors. About ten minutes later we approached the building we had spotted before we were caught. There were about two dozen men encamped inside the building.

  “Sergeant, looks like you have some company,” a man said as he walked out of the building. “Didn’t hear any gunfire. I assume there was no problem.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Armed coming from the south on foot.”

  “Peaceable?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The officer looked us over.

  “Where’re you from,” he asked Anne.

  “South of Cape Girardeau,” she said.

  “That’s a good distance. What brings you this far north?”

  “We’re trying to get to the air base,” she answered.

  The officer cocked his head as if he expected more.

  “From there, we’re headed toward Chicago,” I said.

  “That sounds just stupid enough to be true,” he said. “If you are from down near Cape, then I assume you have some of the regional scrip.”

  Anne nodded and pulled out a sealed sandwich bag from her jacket. She opened it and handed the officer a small bundle of folded paper.

  The officer took it and looked carefully at the stamp on it and the pattern of hole punches.

  “This looks legit,” he said. “What kind of trouble have you had between Cape and here?”

  “We had some issues with a pack of dogs last night,” Ted said.