by Nathan Jones
But after being spoiled by having the gelding to pull the cart the thought of weeks of this filled her with the familiar weary despair from before Simon had given them the horse. Which of course made her think of Simon and how much she missed him.
Which then made her think of how they'd parted, and whether she still should miss him. Which just made her feel guilty for thinking that when the poor man was facing who knew what horrors.
Up ahead the mountain man and her son quickly outpaced her, keeping in sight as she'd requested but just barely. Kristy was left feeling depressed and alone, with only the smell of the drying meat and the endless furnace wind to accompany her.
* * * * *
Try to stay in sight.
That was a more than slightly unreasonable request for scouting, but at the same time Tom couldn't really expect the young mother to be happy about her son wandering too far away for her to help him if needed, or at least see if he needed help.
His rational side told him it wasn't a sign of distrust, just motherly concern. Hopefully as Skyler became more knowledgable about the dangers of the badlands his mom would become more comfortable with her son's independence, give him more leeway.
Although that would probably be a matter of years, not the three weeks or so it would take them to reach Texas.
Still, Tom would do what he could for the boy under those constraints. He glanced back at the flaxen-haired woman, who was grimly pushing the cart after them, then at Skyler. The boy was trailing a few feet behind him, curiously looking at their desolate surroundings.
Tom motioned, and Skyler eagerly sped up to walk beside him. “First things first, you should know what to look out for when you're scanning the horizon,” he told the boy, handing him his binoculars. As Skyler reached to take them, expression excited at the prospect of using something he probably hadn't seen much of before, Tom held them just out of reach for a moment, lowering his voice to a growl. “These are irreplaceable, be careful with them.”
“I will,” the boy promised solemnly. Even so Tom made sure to put the old, brittle plastic strap of the binoculars around Skyler's neck before handing them over, so if he accidentally dropped them they wouldn't fall to the ground.
The sandy-haired boy eagerly lifted them to his eyes and began looking around, nearly stumbling as he followed Tom at the same time. Then he frowned and began fiddling with the knob to focus the lenses before looking through them again. “Why is everything so blurry?” he asked.
Tom took back the field glasses for a moment and peered through them. Ah. “Those are heat waves,” he said as he handed them back. “The sun on the ground makes the air move so it looks like it's shimmering, or sometimes even like it's a body of water.”
“A mirage, I know that,” the boy said impatiently. “I thought the binoculars would make them go away.”
He smiled slightly. “Afraid not. It's something you're going to have to learn to see things through while scouting or you won't be much use.” He squinted ahead, finding a landmark nearly obscured by heat waves. He pointed. “What's that?”
Skyler frowned and focused through the binoculars, fiddling with the knob. “A rock?” he asked.
“Good guess for this terrain,” Tom said. “Describe it in detail.”
“But I can barely see it and it looks all shimmery!” the boy protested.
“So will an armed man who might be a threat to us. Describe it.”
With a bit of hesitation Skyler gave a rough description of the landmark. It wasn't exactly accurate but close enough, so Tom nodded and gave him another. Then another. Then he took back the binoculars and did a sweep of the area, speaking as he did to describe what the boy should look out for when scanning the horizon.
That included movement, obviously, odd shapes and colors that didn't seem to fit in, and any signs that the ground or infrequent plants had been disturbed. He also mentioned paying attention to anything that struck him as wrong, since the subconscious mind often picked up details the conscious mind missed, and those sorts of feelings could hint at something he needed to pay attention to.
Although he also warned that the mind had a tendency to make up things, especially if strong emotions were involved. Spending too long chasing phantoms was a waste of time and would make him a nervous wreck if he kept it up for long.
“So you want me to pay attention to my feelings, but also ignore them?” Skyler asked, frowning in confusion.
“Only if they're distracting you from the job you have to do,” Tom replied. He abruptly changed the subject. “Okay, let's move on to possible dangers you might encounter.”
Over the next half hour or so Tom deliberately set out to pass close to areas he would normally avoid so he could point out various badlands threats to Skyler, such as spots where poisonous snakes and other dangerous creatures liked to wait. He also showed the boy how to pick out a path through rough terrain for the wagon.
Skyler remained attentive through it all, but from his ever increasing fidgeting Tom had a feeling he might've been giving the boy an overload of information. He changed tactics, assigning his young scout the task of pointing out anything out of the ordinary as they continued to range just ahead of the cart, which Kristy continued to push after them determinedly in spite of the fact that her pace was beginning to flag.
For a while Skyler remained attentive to their surroundings, frequently pausing with the binoculars to look at things in all directions and occasionally pointing something out to Tom. But after a while he seemed to tire of the task, rubbing sun-blind eyes and letting the field glasses drop to hang around his neck.
“So what was it like before the Ultimatum?” the boy asked abruptly after a few minutes of walking in silence.
Tom glanced down to find the kid staring up at him from beneath the brim of his straw hat. “Save your breath,” he said. “It's going to be a long day of walking.”
“I'm okay,” Skyler insisted. “You and Mom were talking about it last night, and she and Dad told me stories about it.” His face abruptly crumpled. “When he was still alive. I-I just want to hear what you went through.”
Tom bit back a sigh. Hard to say no to that expression. “It was a free for all as everyone scrambled to get and hold onto food and other necessities as the shortages got worse, all with the threat of invasion by the BRICKS countries looming over us.”
The boy forgot his moment of grief, looking impatient. “I mean before the shortages, too. When the world was completely different.”
Ah. “It was completely different.” Tom said. He smiled slightly and waggled his fingers in a spooky way. “We had the power to talk to people a thousand miles away face to face. We could get the answer to almost any question in a matter of seconds. We could talk to a group of people living all over the world as if they were in a single room. We-”
“Had the internet,” Skyler cut in, giving him a disgusted look. “I've never seen technology work but I have heard about it.” He hesitated. “Although a lot of it seems pretty hard to believe. Not much different from the magic in some of the stories Mom tells me.”
Tom nodded soberly. “I'm just sorry you didn't get a chance to see how things were. And maybe never will.”
“There was the four wheeler, though,” Skyler said. “That was amazing.”
Tom couldn't argue with that. “It was. I only had one chance to ride one of those before the world went crazy.”
The boy looked excited. “Did you ever fly in an airplane?”
He held back a smile. “Of course.”
“And you probably had your own car?” the boy pressed. Tom nodded. “And TV, and a tablet you could watch movies or read books on, and a phone you could take pictures and make videos on, and-”
“And a VR setup, and a high powered gaming computer, and all the consoles and most of the games for them, and a projector to play them on.” Tom rubbed his sunburned chin ruefully. “I was kind of a tech nut.”
“I wish I could see that stuff when i
t worked,” Skyler said, kicking at a rock. “Mom and Dad have told me all about it, but I would've thought they were making up if I hadn't seen the cars and phones and all that stuff disabled by EMP.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It sounds almost like another world.”
“It was,” Tom said solemnly. “You can describe it all you like, but unless you've experienced it it's hard to appreciate just how easy and comfortable things were. Most people never had to worry about being hungry, getting bored, or suffering any serious hardship. For example, the main thing I had to complain about before the shortages was the fact that the sink in my bathroom was so poorly designed that you either had to run the water at a trickle or it sprayed everywhere.” He snorted. “Meanwhile I haven't even seen a sink in operation for years, and that one was gravity fed from a tank on the roof.”
Skyler stared up at him attentively. “What did you do back then? Mom told me she was still in her teens going to high school when things started getting really crazy with the shortages. You were grown up then, weren't you?”
Technically, Tom thought with wry amusement. “In some ways you're more mature than I was back then. The way the world is now you have to grow up fast, take responsibility for yourself as soon as you're ready for it. But back then a lot of adults still acted a lot like kids, sometimes even after they'd had kids of their own.”
“But what did you do?” the boy persisted. “You told Mom you were fat and played video games, but what sort of job did you have?”
Tom shrugged. “I didn't. I'd just graduated from college and was back living with my folks, enjoying my last summer of “freedom” before plunging into a career so I could pay off my student loans.”
Skyler's nose crinkled in confusion. “Student loans?”
“Something you'll probably never have to worry about.”
“Oh.” The boy mulled that over for a few seconds, then abruptly changed the subject. “What's EMP?”
Tom smiled slightly. That sounded more like a question a nine year old boy would be asking. “It's short for electromagnetic pulse.”
Skyler gave him an impatient look. “I know that. And I know it destroys electronics. But what is it?”
Practically speaking the boy had just said what it was. But Tom supposed he could try to explain it in more technical terms, although ones a young child could understand. “It's an expanding pulse of electromagnetic radiation that comes from either a solar flare or a nuclear explosion. When it hits anything with electronics it causes an overload, basically fries them from the inside. The EMPs during the Ultimatum were from nuclear bombs detonated hundreds of miles above the earth, which destroyed all electronics in a huge area beneath them. Pretty much the entire earth was hit by EMP attacks from one side or the other, which is why very few electronics survived.”
“Oh.” Skyler thought about that for a few seconds. “My dad used to say that the EMP attacks were worse than the nuclear bombs that hit population centers. But how can just destroying electronics be worse than killing billions of people with explosions and radiation?”
Tom shrugged. “It's a close tossup. A nuclear bomb will kill thousands or even millions of people, but an EMP attack will affect tens or even hundreds of millions of people. If cars don't work and people can't talk to each other then it's really hard to send help to those who need it, so they'll end up dying of hunger or medical issues.”
“But the fallout zones are huge!” Skyler insisted. “And there's so many of them. And we also had nuclear winter because of all the dust blown into the air.”
He could only shrug again. “Like I said, a tossup. It's hard to guess what exactly happened to everyone the world over, since the EMP made talking to people farther than a hundred miles away close to impossible. But most people agree that the nuclear explosions killed about two billion people when you count radiation sickness from fallout.
“The EMPs affected everyone else, about five and a half billion people, tossing them into a world without technology that most weren't ready for. Just from what I witnessed after the Ultimatum it's easy to believe that at least two billion people died to hunger, violence in the chaos, and medical issues that could no longer be treated. And not only did EMPs kill just as many people as the nukes but they made the lives of all the survivors a lot more difficult.”
“That makes sense,” the boy admitted. “I guess between the nukes and the EMP things got really bad, because not only do we have no electronics but we've also got the fallout zones so we have to live in places like swamps and deserts and mountains.”
Tom shook his head grimly. “That's kind of the idea behind global thermonuclear war. It was supposed to be such a horrible thing for everyone involved that governments would be willing to solve issues peacefully to avoid mutually assured destruction. Instead we got the shortages and BRICKS moved in on Canada's oil, thinking NATO was too weakened to try to stop them. NATO delivered the Ultimatum that if BRICKS set foot on Canadian soil it would provoke a full nuclear assault on all BRICKS nations. Then BRICKS insisted that Canada had invited them in to provide emergency relief efforts and to begin the mutually beneficial trade of crude oil for refined fuel, and if it came to nuclear war they would strike back just as hard. They moved troops onto Canadian soil and NATO made good on their Ultimatum. The rest is history.”
Skyler stared at him for a few seconds. “I didn't really understand much of that.”
Tom noticed the boy was looking winded and slowed his pace a bit, pointing back at Kristy slogging along almost out of sight behind them. She was now laboring hard with the wagon, even though she'd been pushing it for less than an hour, and with irritation he realized she probably wouldn't be able to keep it up for anywhere near half the day. Or at least not without swapping off shifts frequently.
He supposed he couldn't be too hard on her, though; she was actually doing amazingly well all things considered, to the point that he found himself grudgingly admiring her unflagging determination. Handling the wagon alone had to be pushing her to her limits, but she showed no signs of complaining or asking for help.
At the same time it meant he'd probably spend most of this trip behind the push bar, muling possessions that were mostly hers and the boy's. Oh well; he hoped she could be trusted to scout reliably, because it looked like that was what she'd be spending most of her time doing. Hopefully Skyler would be able to pass on the tips Tom had been giving him.
Speaking of which . . . “Go back and help your mother,” he told the boy.
He got an annoyed look in answer. “I thought you still had a lot to teach me about scouting.”
“Plenty of time for that. For now go help her.” To punctuate his point Tom held out his hand for his binoculars.
Grumbling, Skyler handed them over and trudged back to the wagon. Kristy gave the boy a grateful look as he moved around behind it and started pushing, awkwardly searching for a place where he could plant his shoulder without knocking the racks free.
Tom nodded to them, then increased his pace to range out farther ahead. Now that Skyler was back with his mom Tom no longer needed to stay in view, and he was itching to get a better feel for the terrain they'd be traveling through. He'd probably circle around to check to the sides and behind the young mother and son pushing the wagon to make sure no threats were sneaking up on them, too.
At that point he'd probably have to spell them and take his own turn pushing the wagon, probably for twice the time. He supposed he should look at it as anything to get them to Newpost faster so this would all be over.
Then he could go home and get back to his life.
Chapter Thirteen
And Onward
Kristy was embarrassed to find that even with Skyler's help she was barely able to pull the wagon for a third of the time, give or take.
Thankfully Tom seemed as tireless as the gelding Simon had given them to pull the handcart, never seeming tired or winded each time Kristy reluctantly decided she'd rested enough and returned to take another tur
n. To be honest it made it a lot harder to return from scouting to pick up the wagon's push bar, knowing how little he seemed to be suffering something that soon became an exhausting torment for her.
To be fair, she'd never had to push the Hendricksons' handcart on her own, or even with Skyler's help. It was just too heavy, and the few times Bob had needed to rest it had usually been everyone else pushing to compensate, and even then it hadn't been easy.
The wagon seemed light by comparison, but still too much for her to handle on her own for any length of time.
On the other hand scouting presented its own concerns. Skyler had done his best to teach her what Tom had shown him that morning, but even so she felt like she was just walking along squinting at nothing on the horizon, and if a real threat presented itself she'd be next to useless in giving advance warning. Not to mention that the effort of staying alert in the intense heat and concentrating on far away objects through blinding glare and heat waves soon gave her a splitting headache.
As it turned out, all that time Tom had spent scouting hadn't been the relaxing jaunt she'd envisaged. Easier than hauling the wagon, certainly, but definitely its own work.
Another concern was that Kristy felt very vulnerable ranging away from Tom and the wagon, especially with Skyler staying close to her side considering how ill prepared she felt when it came to protecting him. She'd been so tired after her first turn on the push bar that she hadn't even bothered to bring one of the AK-47s, figuring she barely knew how to use it anyway.
But then she got thinking of cougars, and wolves, and coyotes, and who knew what else might be lurking out there. She kept having awful visions of turning her back just long enough for a large predator to pounce on her little boy and drag him away. It got to the point where Skyler began giving her odd looks when she suddenly spun around to reassure herself that he was still there.
The situation was clearly unacceptable. If her only options were pushing a wagon and scouting for dangers, and she didn't feel safe doing the latter, then she needed to change that. She resolved to do so the moment they set up camp that evening.