by Various
“Maybe we could capture the methane in the outhouse and use it to run the generator so we could try the radio?”
“Yeah, good idea, Darren. And then we could MacGyver the old log splitter into a submarine and go south to Mexico.”
“Hey, be nice to me. I’m pretty vulnerable right now.” He rubbed his forehead and snuffled a bit.
The fire was almost coals again. I got up and added some rather green fir, putting in a handful of paper just to give it a boost. I glanced at it before I crumpled it, some kind of confidentiality agreement from Darren’s file folders. He’d consented to burning his papers after I made him collect twigs for three hours steady last week. The rain spattered on the south window and a sudden huge gust of wind made smoke billow out just as I closed the woodstove door. The weather was growing more and more unpredictable. Maybe because of the quake, or the European bombings, or the slow ebb and flow of climate change. I’d given up trying to list all the events that had led up to the world going silent—a sort of “perfect storm” that Darren had named “The Wipe.”
“Mike, what were you going to do all day, living here, if things had worked out?” Darren bit his lip and leaned forward. “I really want to know.”
“It would have been peachy keen, buddy, peachy keen. No throngs of irritating whiners, no lowlifes, no waiting in line at the grocery store, no mowing a lawn. Civilization sucks. It would have been heaven.”
“Would have been?” Darren pounced on the words. “So it won’t be heaven, being here with me, after the world’s been Wiped? Which am I—an irritating whiner or a lowlife?” His sensitivity over his career choice was amazing. I almost smiled.
What did I want? Could I make it here, post-Wipe? I fiddled with the deck of cards. Eventually, there would be no white sugar, no flour, no milk powder. What would I do when the soda crackers ran out? Why hadn’t I worked a bit harder, earlier, faster, to make this place self-sufficient? A dozen things needed to be done, but without tools and basic supplies and, most importantly, without power, they would be almost impossible. I’d had twenty solar panels, an inverter, and AGM batteries all on order from a Vancouver supplier. I’d planned to pick them up five weeks ago, right when the quarantines were announced. A week or so before the huge storm that had ripped both of my boats off their moorings and had blown Darren’s seaplane off course.
“What you don’t realize, old man, is that what you do affects the people around you. Your actions ripple outwards, like throwing a stone in a pond.”
I’d had enough. The solitude of my bedroom would feel good. Darren’s cell phone chimed as I crossed the tiny living room. He grabbed it. “Oh, right, a reminder to sew up the holes in my pants.”
The phone beeped again, a different tone, more of a trill.
“Reminding you it’s time to clean your toenails?” I jeered, from the doorway.
“It’s an incoming text,” Darren said in a funny voice and he bit his lip again. He sat down, rocking his chair a bit.
“You’re shitting me.” I tried to peer at the tiny screen but couldn’t see a thing from across the room. The cell phone towers had lasted a couple of days after the commercial radio stations had died, during my final weekend visit here. My land line had died a week or so after that. I’d spent a full day phoning every number I knew and listening to silence or endless, unanswered ringing.
Darren’s sweat smelled raw and new. This was for real.
“I’ve got half a bar of signal. And a text message,” Darren said. He gently tapped the screen.
• • •
‘ANYONE OUT THERE? TEXT BACK AT DUSK EACH DAY. MARIE PROULX.’
Darren read it slowly out loud, again and again, until his voice was hoarse, long after the cell signal had disappeared. My bum knee had begun aching from the unaccustomed climb today, and I’d finally sat back down.
“Time for a beer,” I announced and got two from the stash under the sink. “After all, if we’re not the last two people on Earth, this might not be the only remaining six pack.” I popped the caps off the Big Rock bottles and set them down on the kitchen table.
“Marie Proulx.” Darren said, as if that was the most significant part of the message.
“The name rings a bell but I can’t place it.” I savored the bitter taste of the dark ale on my tongue.
“Yeah, you probably read about her in the news, the billionaire real estate woman who had her fingers in all sorts of Vancouver projects. A real venture capitalist. If anyone can save the world, she can.”
“But a cell phone message?” I tried to think it through. “It’s a big operation to run the things, isn’t it? Generators, power plants, towers…” This was one subject where Darren might actually know more than me.
“There’re these things called COWs, cell-on-wheels, like portable cell towers. I saw them at a concert once. Solar panels could be enough to power them. Maybe.” He picked at the label on his bottle.
“But could the signal reach all the way from Vancouver?”
“Let’s see. It’s, what, about sixty kilometers, as the seagull flies? I seem to recall the range of the COWs was about thirty-five kilometers.”
“And even if she got a tower up and running, why direct it this way? Vancouver and the rest of the lower mainland had millions of people. There’s no one on these islands, never has been.” Which is exactly why I’d chosen to retire here.
“Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense but it’s pretty awesome that she’s done it.” Darren put down his beer, still almost full. His eyes were shiny with emotion.
I drained my bottle and stood up. “Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow, we’re gonna work on those gutters. And we want to get the water barrels hooked up better before the late winter rains come. Carry us through the summer droughts.”
“What?” Darren looked up at me, his voice shaky. “No. No, we need to build a glider or something. There’s people out there. We need to—”
I cut him off. “You’re forgetting something, Darren. I chose to be here. I bought this place with the intention of becoming self-sufficient. Off-grid. Technology’s a trap. The world was a house of cards waiting to fall.”
“Don’t BS me, Mike.” Darren was breathing heavily. He picked up the bottle opener and pointed it at me. “You’re not self-sufficient when you need seeds, axes, water filters, a hundred things. You’re not self-sufficient when the crops rot in the fields due to all this rain. Tell me, what you going to do when your shoes wear out?”
I kept my mouth closed. I had lists. Lists of seeds, tools, clothing, redundancy upon redundancy. If I’d stocked up, like I’d planned, it would have been enough. Enough for my lifetime anyway.
And I didn’t care about anything beyond that.
Or anyone.
I put both hands on the table. “This doesn’t change anything. My two boats are gone. Even if we had them, we don’t have any fuel. We don’t have a sailboat. If we did, we don’t have any sailcloth. Since the quake, the tides are a meter higher than they used to be and the water in the strait is plain vicious.” I pounded it home. “Anyhow, that text could just be a hoax.”
“Bullshit! You just don’t want to admit that there may be people out there. You’d rather they all died.” Darren stabbed the bottle opener into the table so hard it gouged the surface.
I closed my bedroom door behind me and let the wind drown out his shouting. Stupid bugger. I should have told him to leave on his own, that the trip would be a piece of cake.
He wouldn’t make it but, that way, I could have some peace and quiet.
• • •
I heard the flapping before I entered the clearing. Like a hundred scoters taking off from the water or like a sailboat facing into the wind. I knew almost every inch of the island, from the new, higher shoreline to the marshy lake in the middle to the eagle’s nest at the top of Lovat’s Bluff. I was going as silently as I knew, down a well-used deer trail, rifle at the ready. Taking a buck would still leave a good sustainable population a
nd fresh venison would be a treat. First, though, this fluttering noise. I stepped over a pile of fresh deer scat and edged around a huge Douglas fir.
An enormous rotting log, as high as my waist, dominated the clearing. A few stubby branches jutted up past leathery-leaved salal. On the far side, a white sheet billowed and snapped like a boat sail, high up near the crown of a cedar. I leaned my rifle against the log, the butt in a brown sludge of disintegrating maple leaves. Over the log and through some blackberries that tore at my jacket. The sheet was made of long narrow wedges of a thin synthetic material.
Like a parachute.
“Hello?” I called out, picturing a helmeted person impaled in the canopy far above me. Surely I would’ve heard a plane?
Only a varied thrush answered me.
I jumped up and grabbed the parachute, if that’s what it was. Even if nothing was attached, I could always use another tarpaulin for the woodpile.
There was far more material than I could carry. And it wasn’t a circle, like a parachute would be shaped, but more like a bag, a symmetrical bag.
It was a balloon. A large, rubbery balloon.
A corner of a something metal poked out of the shrouds at the base of the cedar. I dropped the bundle of material and reached through a clump of late-season stinging nettles. The sealed metal box was about the size of a large suitcase but triangular and too heavy to carry far.
Darren needed to come see this. I was halfway back to the cabin before I realized I’d left the rifle behind.
• • •
“It’s just over the next rise, almost to Lovat’s Bluff. It’s probably an old weather balloon or something,” I said, shortcutting through a dense patch of salal. Darren jogged behind me, winded but managing to keep up. I used the crowbar like a machete, knocking honeysuckle vines and other irritants out of the way.
“Slow down, Mike, it’s not going anywhere.” Darren stopped, bending over and putting his hands on his knees.
I grunted. He was right. Why was I so fired up about this? In fact, if I thought about it, I felt invaded. You’d think, at the end of the world, the hordes would cease intruding.
“I want to get back before dark,” I said. It was late afternoon and we had no lights with us—the last triple-A batteries for our headlamps had died a few days ago. And the woodstove would need refilling soon.
The casing on the triangular box came off with the first wrench of the crowbar. Inside were a battery and a tangle of wires and some other things I didn’t recognize.
I moved aside so Darren could see. “What do you make of it?”
“Well, it’s not a weather balloon, there’re no instruments.”
Oh. Right. I really was rattled or I’d have seen that.
“You know what? Mike?” Darren paused and looked at me. I stared back until he caved.
“I think it’s a cell tower. Like, a portable one. Launched like a weather balloon. Hell, it may even be modified from one.” He started talking faster. “Think about it. The balloon would go up thousands of feet. That would extend the cell reception range for miles, it would pass on a signal better than a tower. It’d be awesome!”
“Until the battery ran out.” I kicked the metal box. The battery was a tiny little thing.
“Yeah. This must be a few days old. Marie must be launching one each day. Hey! That’s why she said to respond at dusk! That’s when there might be a signal!” He jerked his head up to look at the cloud-blurred sun. It was just touching the tips of the tallest firs. “We gotta head for Lovat’s Bluff! That’ll be the best reception! Quick!”
I didn’t want another jog through the brush, especially toward a cliff top in the dark. I didn’t want to go without dinner. And I didn’t want to get home to a cold house.
I looked at his retreating figure, kicked the box one more time, and turned the other way toward home.
• • •
The rain started right after I’d gotten back to the cabin. When Darren came in, I realized I’d been staring at the black rectangle of the living window for quite a while. He stripped off his wet clothes while I pretended to read a flower identification guide.
The firelight made his face seem more gaunt, older, but his eyes were bright. He sank into the far end of the sofa. My old sweatshirt hung off his thin shoulders and his hair was still plastered against his head.
He grinned at me.
“Mike, I texted back and forth with them! Like, five or six times! Here, read all the texts!” He thrust the phone at me.
“Just give me the Reader’s Digest version,” I said, tossing down my book, settling back and putting my feet up on the coffee table. Whatever he’d found out, it wouldn’t change anything.
“Marie is alive. She’s got a team of about ten people, all techy types. The balloon thing we found is a portable cell tower with a range of about a hundred klicks. She was trying to send them inland where more people might be but the wind, you know, it’s always from the southeast these days.”
“And she just happened to have your number?” The fire had some handsome flames, putting on a show, all orangey and golden.
“She was sequentially dialling and texting that new area code that my phone uses, two-three-six? And she started with my exchange, you know, the first three numbers? The ones that fresh accounts are currently assigned to? That way, it would reach the newer handsets.”
That almost made sense. It was how I might have done it. With automated equipment, it wouldn’t take too long. Anyhow, it made a good story for a rainy night.
“She’s asking every survivor she reaches to come to the university campus in Vancouver. She figures that if we all got through the flu this far, we’re immune or it’s mutated into a weaker form or something. One of her team is a professor, an epidemiologist.” He stumbled over the last word. I got up and poured him a cup of herbal tea from the pot on the stove, adding a scant teaspoon of sugar from my stockpile.
“Thanks, Mike.” He took a sip even though it was scalding. “She’s trying all the ways she can think of to contact people, ham radio, land lines, even flares and fireworks. And these floating cell towers, as she calls them. Of course, even if people out there have cells, very few of them are keeping them charged.” He looked up at me from under his eyebrows, waiting for a compliment.
“Huh.” I got out my knife and a baggie of hawthorns. I began scarifying them, readying them for planting tomorrow. In ten years or so, I’d have a small grove of them. Crataegus monogyna: not strictly native but naturalized enough that I figured it wouldn’t upset the wetland ecosystem down by the well. Alright for eating, plus a good source of ax handles.
“I told her we were coming.” Darren put down his cup. “I told her we’d find a route. Build a sailboat. Find a way.”
“Listen,” I said, scraping a jagged cross on the blossom end of the small apple-like fruit. “Even if you got across the strait, there’s the mountains on the coast. There’d be a long, long journey ahead.”
He snorted. “You’re not thinking outside your tiny little box. Why can’t we fix the balloon and fill it with, I don’t know, propane?”
“You kidding? Do you know anything about anything? The flammability…” I took a breath. I didn’t even have to get technical to make him understand. “The balloon is only three meters in diameter. It can’t lift more than a few kilos. And we only have the propane left in this lantern.” I threw down my knife and picked up the lantern by its wire handle, nearly burning my fingers, and waved it, sending wild shadows arcing over the shelves and their jumble of books and papers.
The rolled-up topo map was just where I remembered it. I spread it on the coffee table, using hawthorns as weights in the corners.
“You’d land here.” I jabbed with my knife at the green-colored British Columbia shoreline right where the contour lines crowded together.
“Big deal! We get there and then we can hike to Vancouver,” Darren said, too tired for his usual politeness.
“Okay, look at
these elevations. Some of the ruggedest terrain in the world. Never had a highway because it’s a jumble of mountains. About a hundred and fifty kilometers of steep, steep rainforest.” My knife creased a line down the map, almost cutting through. “It’s not gonna happen. We’re better off staying here.” I sat back and folded my knife.
“Here? So we can grow old and die?” He was practically sputtering.
“Drink your tea, Darren. What would you do in Vancouver anyway? For that matter, what would you be doing if the Wipe hadn’t happened?” I pointed the knife handle at him. “Grow old and die, that’s what. That’s what life is for.”
“Old man, you can rot here. I’m heading out in the morning.” He lurched to his feet.
“Get us some firewood, there’s a good lad.”
He banged the cabin door so hard books fell off the shelves.
• • •
Darren was still there the next morning, huddled on the sofa, my old quilt wrapped around him. He had big circles under his eyes and his hair stood up in awkward tufts. A square red patch covered the knee of his now-dry suit pants, one of my old handkerchiefs. The stitches were precise and stitched as evenly as a machine would do it. It had probably taken him all night.
I put down the tool belt I was carrying. “Want to give me a hand with the gutters? A rush job before the rains come. You know the expression ‘hurry up and wait’? That’s how most chores are out here.”
He crossed his arms and put his feet up on the coffee table with a thump. For once, he didn’t say anything.
“Hey, take it easy.” I said. “I don’t like you much but I don’t want you to throw your life away on something impossible. Maybe Marie Whoever can save the world. So let her. But don’t start off on a fool’s errand. You survived the superflu, the bombings, the quake, and the storms. Don’t push your luck.”
“Patience is a virtue, blah, blah, blah.” Darren picked up the hammer and waved it. “Don’t preach to me, old man. I taught retirement planning courses, remember? The stock market always rises. Eventually. Blah, blah, blah.”