by Rod Carstens
Peter was slowing down now as he reached the halfway point on the bridge. He turned the SUV to the left, placing it at an angle to the other end of the bridge; the pickup turned to the right and pulled to a stop. The gun trucks formed a roadblock and a strong point in case they had any more company. The three buses slowly pulled to a stop. Vin saw the rear gun trucks do the same as the first two. The occupants of his SUV got out and stood with their weapons facing forward. Tanner jumped out and ran back to the first bus.
As he passed the second SUV, he yelled at Cat, “You’ve got the command! I’m going to check on the bus.”
“Got it,” she said as she moved to the first SUV to scout ahead.
Vin ran toward the first bus in time to see one of the young men assigned as a scout pull his dirt bike off its rack on the side of the bus.
“Be careful, those ambushers may still be around.”
“Check.”
The scout was Johnny Johnson, one of the young fighters. He was fearless. He had volunteered for the job and turned himself into the best scout they had. The biodiesel bike coughed into life, and Johnny swung his leg over the seat and roared off. He had a rifle slung across his back, but that was more for show. If he came under fire, the best thing he could do was just haul ass. If he had to unsling that rifle, he was in real trouble.
It was a big risk to send someone out alone, but they had to know what was ahead of them when they had the chance. The interstate itself was in such poor condition that they could pull up on a collapsed section and have to backtrack until they found a way around the obstacle, and more ambushes were always a threat.
Ideally, Tanner would have scouts out any time they moved, but it was just too risky. He entered the door to the first bus and saw that Rule and Morgan the brains of the settlement and two of the finest computer coders around were staring at the laptop. They had gotten it off a Resource team, so it had two long-life batteries, satellite comm, and a solar recharger. It was their one link to the city-states, and it allowed them to monitor communications traffic for signs of the pandemic or any other intel that might be useful. While Rule and Morgan had been in the City working on Rule’s program to help the government predict the coming pandemic, Morgan had created a back door for them into the computers of Resource Control and the other major organizations that ran the City. Now those back doors were proving invaluable in understanding the situation in the City.
Rule turned toward Vin, his face serious, and said, “It’s started.”
“What?” For a second Tanner had no idea what he was talking about. He had been expecting someone to be wounded. Instead they were on the computer. Why would they use the emergency signal for something they heard on the computer that could wait until tonight for their command meeting?
“The pandemic has started. The comm is full of reports, emergency responses, and even death tolls,” Morgan said.
They had left their settlement because Rule’s famous Global Resource Program had predicted a pandemic that would decimate the human population all over the world. The only way to avoid it was to move as far from the City as they could and isolate themselves from the outside world until it burned itself out. It now looked like they had gotten out just in time.
“Shit, so soon,” Tanner said.
“Yes, and it appears that not only has it been detected in New York, but Chicago, London, Berlin. You name it. With the way they travel from one city-state to another it was bound to spread this quickly,” Rule said.
Just then Johnny came roaring up on his dirt bike. “Hey, boss. There is another bridge about two miles farther down this road. It’s bigger and would make an excellent harbor site for the night.”
“Any more trouble?”
“Negative. It looks like these guys’ territory stops at this bridge. There are no signs of them across it.”
Tanner turned back to the others. “We need to move on before those ambushers get brave and take some pot shots at us from the rear of the bridge. We’ll have to discuss as soon as we harbor up.”
As Tanner ran back to his SUV, all he could think about was the thousands of sick back in the City and how soon they would start to leave. They needed to keep moving as fast as they could. He jumped back into the SUV and told Peter what Johnny had found ahead. Once everyone was back on board their vehicles, Tanner gave the signal, and the convoy roared off down the interstate.
CHAPTER THREE
Tanner was sitting on the first bus with Rule, Morgan, Rule’s daughter Julia, and Danielle, their doctor, in what had become known as the command group. The group had begun to have a nightly meeting as food was being fixed to discuss the day’s progress and plan for the next day. The frightening news that the pandemic had started already meant they had to reexamine their plans for the escape. The last days had been filled with enough trouble to make Tanner realize it was going to take a lot longer than they had anticipated. He needed to talk this out with the others. They all had unique skill sets that made decisions reached as a group well rounded and better than any single person’s decision, but he held the ultimate say.
“Does this news change our plans in any way?” Tanner asked.
The group turned toward Danielle, their only doctor and best source of medical knowledge.
“No, I don’t think it does. At least not in terms of how to hide from the pandemic. But it does change the dynamics of how people will respond. It moves everything up. Most people, after initially hearing about the epidemic, will try and quarantine themselves inside their apartments. Those who have resources like private tilt-rotors will flee the City. Eventually, those still alive will realize that the City is their biggest threat and begin self-evacuating simply by walking out into the Zones. So the thing that worries me the most is that the timetable for us to start worrying about encountering an exposed patient is much shorter that we thought it would be.”
“Yeah, I was hoping for us to be at our new location and set up before it started,” Tanner said.
“Should we consider stopping sooner if we can find the right place?” Julia asked.
Tanner stood and began to pace. He always did when it came to the problems that would affect everyone.
Before he came up with an answer Rule said, “If we did stop sooner we could have the settlement up and going sooner instead of being on this damned interstate, moving all the time.”
“If we stop sooner it means we’re closer to the City, and we might encounter the people who are trying to flee the City. Most will have to flee on foot, but the sheer numbers mean people will find other ways to run. There’s a good chance that stopping sooner puts us in more danger of being found by those who are infected. No, I don’t think to stop sooner is a good idea,” Tanner said.
Rule stood up and pointed to their map. It was a decades-old interstate map with few details. They had scrounged it from an apartment before they left. He pointed to where they were now. “In two weeks we’ve only gotten less than half way there. Between ambushes, breakdowns, and a hundred other things, it’s going to take us forever to get to the new mall at this rate.”
Tanner knew he was right. Their progress had been worrying him more every day.
“We’ve passed at least a dozen small communities just off the interstate. Couldn’t one of them work?” Morgan asked.
“Morgan, each of those communities was at some level still populated. We would have to muscle our way into them. They’ve lasted this long this far away from the City with no outside help. I imagine they are not going to be very welcoming to people from the outside. They would have to share the few resources they have.
“No, we need an abandoned mall like the one we left. It’s an ideal place to set up just like we did back in the Zone. It has enough room for all of us and a large parking lot around it. That makes it an easily defended place. Malls this far away from the City used to be regional, pulling from several small communities, so it’s not located in a highly urbanized area. We should be able to set up there
without stepping on anybody’s toes.”
“What’s to say that the mall we picked isn’t already occupied just like the small townships and communities we’ve seen?”
“Nothing, but I’ve never seen anyone set up anything close to the way we set up our settlement. You have to have the infrastructure we’ve built to grow food, clean rainwater, and all of the rest of the hacks we’ve put together. No, I think we came up with a unique-enough solution we should be good,” Tanner said.
“Morgan has a point. These communities could see us as a positive addition. They might want us,” Julia said.
“I’m old enough to remember the Bad Times when the city-states began to secede from the United States. They took with them the vast revenues that they generated. Not only did they take money, but they also were able to outbid the rest of the states for the dwindling resources. With a significant drop in revenue and resources, the states slowly collapsed into failed third-world disorder. The population was left to fend for themselves. Without proper food, clean water, and medical supplies, illness and starvation and anarchy replaced a civilized society. It doesn’t take much for a modern society to fall back hundreds of years once the infrastructure is no longer there to support the population. Millions migrated to the cities to live off the scraps they could scrounge from the garbage heaps. That was how the Zones emerged around each city-state. The cities’ ever-increasing appetite for natural resources forced them to take control of the Zones and to use the dwindling resources as an excuse. None of this happened overnight, but over decades. What is left of the United States is out here in the wilds. We are entering territory where strangers are not welcome or trusted,” Rule said.
“It has been decades since someone has come down the road who is friendly and willing to share technology. Besides, if I had to make a guess, the local sheriff runs most of the small surviving communities. Sheriffs are elected officials, and they have guns and men. Many are the real strongmen in their community,” Tanner said. “Strongmen leaders are not going to want people like us around. They will see us as a threat to their little kingdoms. And I don’t think we have the firepower to go up against a law-enforcement chief with essentially a small army of armed men at his command.”
“How do you know all that about sheriffs?” Morgan asked.
“Remember the armored trains that would bring food into the City each week?”
“Yeah. They were bringing food from the factory farms that were left,” Morgan said.
“Why were there so few factory farms?”
“Change in the climate. Less time to grow each year and lack of water. Everybody knows that,” Morgan said.
“That’s true. But what you don’t know is those trains also carried Resource Control teams. Their job was to find and confiscate any and all food they could locate. I talked to guys on those teams, and they told me about how things are out here. They had drones that would look for small farms or communities away from the railroad. When they found one, the teams would raid them. I heard the Council had declared all areas outside the Zones around the City Free Fire Zones. So the teams could kill the occupants and take all the food if they had to. They were the most classified of all the teams, but you heard things through the grapevine. The food these teams brought back from these farms and communities was earmarked for the Council and those around them. It was said to be the best—much better than the factory-grown stuff. So the City has been scrounging farther and farther out and taking any and everything they can to make sure they do not suffer,” Tanner explained.
“That’s hard to believe,” Morgan said.
“Oh, it’s true,” Rule said. “It was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back for me. The Council had invited me for a congratulatory dinner after one of my predictions worked out well for them. The dinner was unbelievable. They had real steaks, mashed potatoes that tasted like potatoes instead of that factory stuff. They served a fresh garden salad that tasted like it had been picked the day before. I looked at the chairman and asked where in the world had he gotten something so fresh. He smiled and looked around the table before he explained that it had been picked the day before by one of the armored trains. They had found a community that had a huge fresh garden and even livestock. When I asked what about the people in the settlement, the chairman gave me a look like how naive can you be. Then he said ‘Remember, it’s a Free Fire Zone past the City’s boundaries. They simply took it, and if anybody objected they were eliminated.’ I’ll never forget that night. It changed my life. I was helping these people who were stealing food so they could continue to live in a style they thought they deserved. That was when I knew I had to walk away from everything. I couldn’t work for or be a part of what they were doing.”
Morgan looked at Rule for a long moment before she said, “What’s happened to us? How could we do this?”
“Morgan, human civilizations have been collapsing for as long as recorded history. They have been destroyed not just by wars but by disease, a climate change, or a combination of those factors. I think the best way to explain what we have done to the planet is to use an example from history. Ever heard of the Easter Islands?”
Morgan shook her head.
“Well, they were a string of islands in the Pacific Ocean. When they were discovered, they were deserted, with huge stone figures dotting the islands from a long-lost civilization. The reason it was abandoned and the meaning of those stone figures remained a mystery for decades. How did these people live with no vegetation on the island? How were these huge stone figures moved miles from where they were quarried? It wasn’t until an interdisciplinary team tackled the problem that they solved it. It turns out that the islands at one time had been covered with a lush forest that allowed them to prosper. As the society there grew, they used the trees as any civilization back then would, but then something changed.
“It turns out those stone figures were part of their religion, and the more influential a person was in their society, the larger the stone figure he or she needed to represent their wealth. The only way to move the figures from the quarry was to use logs to roll them to their final resting place. Well, it didn’t take long for the people to use the entire forest up moving those stone figures until there was none left. The islands remain barren of trees to this day. The most dominant people on the island had their stone figures, but they had no way to survive. They used up what had allowed them to live so well. We have been cutting down the last trees on Earth, figuratively, for almost a century, so now the resources have reached their breaking point. With climate change and population growth, not to mention the massive increase in the resource footprint a single City-State dweller ‘needs’ for their comforts, we reached a tipping point. This all has happened before. Even if the pandemic had not happened, the whole thing was headed for a collapse anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘resource footprint’?” Vin asked.
“It’s one of the essential data points of the Global Resource Program. Each and every person living in a city-state uses close to fifty tons of natural resources a year to live in the style they are used to enjoying. Someone out here only needs about three tons. So people in the city are divorced from the realities of what it takes to get what they need to their table. There is another parallel in history. The Vikings colonized Greenland hundreds of years ago. They called it Greenland because it was covered in forest, but the climate changed after the Vikings had colonized it. Yet the Vikings did not change their way of life to cope with the changes in the climate. So gradually the colony starved to death. The last one to die was the king because he made sure he was the first taken care of until there was nobody to grow food to feed him.
“It’s very much like what we have going on now. The city-states have not felt the Earth changing under them, and it is finally catching up with them. With the ocean populations dying, the lack of water, and the shorter growing seasons combined with the rising city-state populations, the Earth’s resources are coming to
an end. When Morgan and I were in the City working on the program, we took the pandemic out of the equation. Then we ran the numbers with the current resources data and population, and it showed a collapse of civilization within ten years. We’re talking food riots, wars over what water is left, food, you name it. All between the city-states trying to survive in an increasingly hostile physical environment. The pandemic may be a blessing in disguise because it will kill most of the population off quickly. Otherwise there could have been a long, slow slide into wars and anarchy that would inevitably reach far out from the city-states. The pandemic is keeping the population trapped in the cities, giving us a chance to survive.”
Tanner stopped pacing and looked at the group. “I think Dr. Rule made a convincing argument for continuing to move as far as we can away from the City, not only to avoid the pandemic but to allow us to establish a sustainable community that could outlast all of us.”
Blondie stuck her head into the bus and said, “Five-minute warning. If you’re not there in five minutes there won’t be anything left,” she said with a smile.
“What’s for dinner?” Tanner asked.
“One of the boys got a couple of squirrels with the pellet gun. So we got squirrel and rabbit stew.”
“Sounds good.” Vin turned back to the group. “Sounds like we’ve got a plan. Let’s eat. We got another day ahead of us.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Someone had told Tanner a long time ago when he was in the teams that a good leader was first in line to do something hard and last in line to do something easy. Tanner always made sure he was the last in line to eat.