“I ain’t given’ you any books, Mac. I got a story that needs tellin’.” He gave me the evil eye, and I returned to my seat. “Now makin’ ethanol is very similar to makin’ moonshine. It’s just pure grain alcohol. You can use corn, soybeans, hell any dead plant will do. Can’t use wood, though. Then you’d end up with methyl alcohol and that’s poison for humans and engines. So I made me a batch. Several batches. Took months and months. Got to set up a still and fire it slow, watching the temperature real close. While it was cookin’, I searched out car manuals and found out how to convert engines. Didn’t tell me about little engines, like the one on the generator. But I just fiddled with the spark plug and carburetor a bit until I got it right.”
“You make it sound so easy, Weasel,” Sarah said. “This is so important. It changes our lives. Nothing will be the same now. It’s unbelievable. The things we can do with electricity are mind boggling.”
“It’s got its limits, Sarah,” he replied. “Can’t run it all the time. Can’t brew enough ethanol to keep up.”
“Fuck the ethanol,” I said. “Let’s watch one of those video discs. I’ve been reading about 3D. You got any of that on disc?”
“Mac, we’re gonna set up this whole system back home. No sense in cranking it up now. Besides, I got some other stuff to show you. Let’s go next door.”
It was in the next basement over that he showed us the computers. “I got Mac, Gateway, Lenovo, HP, LG…you name it,” he said when we entered the room. Tables had been set up along all four walls. Each table held several computers and laptops and various types of printers and monitors and numerous magazines and tech manuals. Many of the machines were in various stages of disassembly. Tools were scattered about, and the disarray of his work room was a stark contrast to his entertainment area.
“Some of these machines work perfect,” he told us. “But to tell you the truth, I haven’t made much progress in fixin’ the broke ones.” He grinned sheepishly. “Been watchin’ too much on that video disc player. But I don’t think it will be a major problem gettin’ them all runnin’.”
He was right. They ran real good. They opened up the opportunity for us to learn what really caused the collapse.
FROM SARAH’S COLLAPSE JOURNAL
JANUARY 2053
Mac sees me writing and wants to get in. I told him write about his own stuff. I think I hurt his feelings. I don’t want that. We have only each other—and Duke, that damn Duke, like a quiet person. But good and kind and loyal. Not like the people we see in the world.
Jesus Christ. Weasel arrived. Talk about changes. Suddenly I care about two people. When I started what I now call “The Collapse Journal” last year, it was a diary. Now with Weasel here, and his stories and the obvious signs of trauma on his body (what about his psyche?), I’m pissed at the world and want to find out how it got so fucked.
No more diary. Collapse Journal. I’m going to figure it out. I owe it to us.
When Weasel brought us limited access to electricity, a commodity Mac and I only dreamed about as we longingly looked at pictures of reading lamps, heaters, fans, and refrigerators in wrinkled, sun faded, water damaged magazines, a door that was rusted shut creaked a bit and opened a crack. I could see refrigeration, and fresh food, and eggs that lasted for weeks. I relished reading at night without the smell of candle wicks or kerosene. I could feel heat in our January bedroom and a breeze in our July kitchen.
But more than anything I viewed a window to the past. A time machine. Those little computers Weasel shared went to sleep in 2023. But Weasel woke them. The boxes and flat, square plates could talk to us. The machines were people and I wanted their knowledge. Not just their daily lives and the wonders of pre-Collapse, but the truth about how humanity became an endangered species.
I burned with curiosity. I knew we were alone. After 30 years, someone should have come to help us—or conquer us. We could read. No stupid people in this compound. In ’23 the United States was huge and powerful. In the top three of most powerful countries. Someone was alive and organized and could fix us.
But no one came. Wrong. Weasel showed up. A solitary wanderer seeking a higher state of poverty. He was an emigrant, not an emissary. No one was coming to save us.
How, I wondered, could so many people be dead? In the whole world, how many humans were there in ’23? The answers were in computers and electricity.
But life intruded and ten months later we sometimes played games on computers and read documents. We worked to survive from dawn to dusk. Dig, lift, carry, move, plant, stack, dismantle, burn. Then talked. Then read until the books fell from our hands. Discovering the how and why of The Collapse got pushed lower and lower on the to-do list.
CHAPTER SIX
REMEMBRANCES OF STEVIE B.
2044 AGE THREE
THE BABE’S CAMP
The blow came out of nowhere, an unexpected backhand, casually delivered by the woman who was his mother, a dirty, pathetic clan woman pissed at being disturbed while she gnawed on a stringy piece of venison. Thirsty, he tugged at her dress, seeking a sip from her cup. The blow would have been laughed off by a teenager, maybe would have stung a little to a child of nine or ten; but to three-year-old Stevie B., it was the hand of a giant crashing down upon his head. He left his feet, and, propelled backward, landed on his butt, his momentum snapping his head back until it impacted on a dirty, worn carpet of what was once the recreation room of a luxury apartment complex.
Blood flowed from his lip at the spot where the meaty flesh had come between the bones of her hand and his teeth. But he was familiar with the taste of his own blood. He was also well acquainted with broken bones and concussions, which he had received at various times from the other clan adults.
His was a mean, slimy world, as different from Sarah’s and mine as vultures are from kittens. In his first three years of life, Stevie B. saw up close what Sarah and I had observed from afar—starvation, abuse, cruelty, insanity, rape, murder and torture. In the 20th and early 21st Stevie B., his life, his culture, his social interactions would have been called deviant.
Not anymore. Stevie B.’s brief life story made him a normal guy in our world.
When his head snapped to the floor, everything went black, then white, then lights twirled as the pain kicked in. He was too stunned and dizzy to cry. He was spared further abuse. Somewhere in his mind he knew it was wrong. It didn’t feel right that mothers would hurt children, despite daily evidence to the contrary. He knew he shouldn’t fear his mother, view her as just another adult—someone with power, someone to be feared. But even by age three, some instinct told Stevie that the world was askew. He crawled to the corner where he kept his blanket and wrapped himself in it, sucking his thumb and fantasizing about a woman who would hold him to her soft bosom and gently rock him. Sleep erased his pain.
• • • •
A month later Stevie came down with the case of influenza that forever changed his life. The disease generally killed kids — wearing them down, starving and dehydrating them. Sometimes it was the secondary cause of death. Stevie had seen sick children who demanded too much attention or nursing thrown outside by adult clan members and left to die—frequently helped along by dogs and various other scavengers. Children were not revered by the clans. Life was dangerous and demanding. Children were a hassle. If they made it to adulthood, the men mostly became scouts and soldiers, protectors of turf. Women were cooks, porters and providers of sex.
The bug hit Stevie hard. The intense fever caused him to sleep most of the time. When he was awake, he was too weak to cry. Sometimes he moaned, but that wasn’t enough to get him expelled. His feeble cries weren’t loud enough to warrant a beating.
His sick bed was in a corner close to the dog’s territory. All clans have dogs. They are an essential early warning system. When times are good and food is plentiful, dogs are no problem. When times are lean, the clan can eat the dog. It’s easy to steal a replacement pup from one of the packs.
> Stevie slept curled up on pile of rags, his dirty blanket clutched between his arms and legs. Once he was awakened by a compelling thirst. Dehydrated and weakened by the intense fever, he crawled over and drank from the dog’s bowl. The dog snarled, lunged forward and nipped Stevie twice, drawing blood, but the pain was a mere annoyance compared to what he had endured in his three short years of clan life.
After forty-eight hours Stevie’s fever broke. He felt hunger pangs in his shrunken belly. While the dog slept, he stole her bones and eventually broke his way through to the marrow. That gave him enough strength to later skulk to the adults’ table to partake in their scraps while they slept. He didn’t have to compete with the dog. The mutt knew the price for excursions to the human’s table was death.
Little Stevie B. survived the ravages of the flu. And the day he felt well enough to sit up and look around, he noticed a wondrous thing—no one was paying any attention to him! His brain provided him with the earth shaking realization that not one person had hit, yelled at, kicked, slapped or spat upon him in three days. Sure he was weak, but the only pain messages his body sent were from a couple of minor dog bites.
Stevie kept his silence. Two days later he asked one of the adult women for some food. A little experiment. He wasn’t quick enough to dodge the slap that whipped into the side of his head. He crawled away, stifling his tears.
No one came after him to inflict more pain.
That was his last request of any adult. And that was how he learned to survive. He was lucky the teachers let him live. A decade later, when Stevie B. stumbled upon Sarah and me in the woods, much of his humanity had been leached away.
• • • •
Stevie B. spent his first nine years as a clan kid. He hadn’t the vaguest clue as to what a family was.
To the clans turf is life. Their territory is their food and materiel source. Instead of pissing on corners like their animal counterparts, they mark their boundaries with elaborate and often strangely beautiful painted signs, much like the urban gangs of the 20th and 21st. Paint is easy to come by. The dried out cans of latex base in hardware stores and building centers can be salvaged by adding water.
Clan sign is everywhere. Crowns, stars, Playboy bunnies, tridents, swastikas, crosses, jokers, flying hearts, top hats and more—all painted with loving care and admirable craftsmanship, all demarcating territory, welcoming friends, warning enemies.
From the city on out to the suburbs, spreading north, south and west, most of the area that thirty-five years ago was called Chicago is now divided into little fiefdoms by the clans. Their territories stretch as far as the big shopping complexes. Where the malls stop, so do they.
Beyond this invisible wall is where we live. They haven’t found us yet.
Large population centers give the clans bountiful resources for scavenging and salvage and ample opportunity for shelter. They squabble constantly, killing and maiming each other on a daily basis, but paradoxically often trade drugs—some clans have better chems than others—weapons and other items of hard currency. Jewelry, the real stuff, is highly valued and sought after.
When several million people suddenly died, they left behind their coffee, and cigarettes, and paper towels. And all those guns and ammo, machetes and knives. The survivors were ill tempered and intolerant.
Coffee is now worth as much per ounce as gold. With a Rolex and a pound of coffee, I can acquire a half dozen quality pistols or three assault rifles—or, were I so inclined, a reasonably healthy human being. Not a quality whore, mind you. They are high ticket items. But certainly a decent laborer.
Occasionally large scale battles occur among the clans. Sometimes ambitious leaders form coalitions and expand into other territories. These bonds are usually short lived. The leaders always seem to forget that when they expand, they have more turf to defend.
There are no clothing stores. Shoes and apparel are free for the finding. If someone craves another’s clothes, there is a price. Grocery stores and supermarkets don’t exist anymore either—except as empty buildings advertising a product that no longer endures. But there is enough food for our meager population. Game is plentiful. Huge herds of deer abound. Geese strut around like they’re invincible. Ducks and chickens are easy prey for hunters. Raccoons, squirrel, turkey, and rabbits are prolific beyond our needs.
Many of us indies are farmers of sorts, raising chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep, harvesting crops of fruit and vegetables. In the spring and fall, the skies fill with flocks of geese and ducks beyond our ability to count. The lakes and rivers teem with fish—bass, bluegill, crappie, walleye, catfish, coho. More than enough to feed everyone. Humanity’s passing has left the earth a sanctuary for their propagation. We are the only endangered species.
There are even some trading posts and bars that serve home cooked meals and aged whisky and newly distilled beer, wine and shine. In these smoky holes you can sometimes obtain weapons and jewelry. Frequently they have fresh meat and vegetables and fruit. Occasionally they have human beings for sale—whores, slaves, children.
Cars and trucks are abundant, but they don’t run because there is no gas or oil.
Except inside the fortresses of the blue bloods on the lakeshore, doctors don’t heal.
Telephones are silent. They have been replaced with long talkers or raised voices.
Police don’t patrol.
Judges don’t rule.
Juries don’t listen.
There is no crime—for no one has established the norms to define crime. There are no transgressions because there is no law.
Nor is there any pollution.
Or dirty water.
Or smog filled skies.
Or fish floating belly up.
Or game squashed by cars.
There is no money. All exchanges are done on the barter system. The value of what you have is completely dependent upon the desire of the other person to possess it. If their desire exceeds their ability to pay, you could die.
There are no congregations of church goers, even though most churches still stand, gutted of their valuables and antiquities. Some say there is no God. Arguing to the contrary is difficult.
The most abundant of the legacies left from The Collapse are the skeletons. They are as driftwood on the lakeshore, fallen branches in the forest. We step over them, walk around them, see them but barely notice. Once there were millions. But after three decades of serving as toys for children and sources of marrow for the dog packs and other scavengers, they’re no longer so prominent.
Outside of our walls, no one speaks of The Collapse, wonders how it happened that we were left this way—like we’re living inside this huge, once beautiful engine, but are denied the knowledge and resources to engage the gears. I’m not sure if the culling left us with people who mostly don’t care or if the rigors of survival are too demanding for them to have time to consider the causes. I’m leaning toward the former. The clans seem content in their savagery; most indies accept living with subservience and fear.
Inside, we know what caused The Collapse. Sarah figured it out. Took her over a year of research. Amazing what you can do with a little electricity and the guts of aged computers. When she told us, took us through the process of the collapse, we were stunned. Angry at first, although Sarah and I each received clues in our childhoods—stories from the elders, admonitions against technology and demagoguery.
Our anger dissipated into shock. Like seeing a slammer freak kill an enemy clan soldier just to see him die. Or someone shoot a deer, then leave its carcass for the scavengers. Not bother dressing it out or using all of it to feed your family.
Pity was what we finally felt. Seasoned with disgust. Poor dumb bastards. They saw it coming and were too fucking greedy to intervene. Took them nearly two years to kill most everybody off, shut off the power, silence the machines.
Except for us, no one that I know of has electricity. We are probably the first to use it since the collapse, over three decades ago. I
f the clans were to learn of our discovery, we’d be dead.
Weasel brought us electricity.
If someone were to ever figure out how to get the printing presses running and a book were to be written cataloging the clans, Stevie’s clan would be found under the “S” listing as “Satan’s Messengers.” They are one of ten clans we’ve identified as working within the area five miles east of our compound. West of us there is nothing but woods and prairie and a few indies hoeing their subsistence out of the fertile soil.
The other clans that are close enough to us that we have to keep an eye on their movements have equally inventive and descriptive monikers: The Insane Cobra Nation, The Glory Brigade, the Butt Rangers, the Gaylords, the Cannibal Crusaders, and Abortion Chunky Style are among the most barbaric.
But when it comes down to cold, calculating cruelty, depravity and viciousness, Stevie’s clan, Satan’s Messengers, is king of the hill.
In a world of beasts, Satan’s Messengers is the Harvard of survival schools.
REMEMBRANCES OF STEVIE B.
2046 AGE FIVE
The back of his head stung from the sharp slap that came from behind, interrupting his meal of coarse bread and raccoon stew. The carrots were his favorite part and Stevie was carefully separating them from the chewy, stringy raccoon meat when the blow landed. A group of the younger children were eating their noon meal in the center area of their new home, a U shaped grouping of twenty rooms that had once been called The County Farm Motel. It usually took Satan’s Messengers about six months to trash a new set of living quarters. Then they moved on to another apartment complex or motel, sometimes even a hotel. There were hundreds to choose from in their territory. Their new quarters were not elegant, but all the rooms and furnishings were intact.
“Give me your grub, you little butt licker,” the voice behind him said. Stevie didn’t need to look to know it was Paulie the Porker, a fat eight-year-old bully who terrorized the younger kids into giving him their food. Stevie was rail thin; Paulie was big-belly fat. That was the way of things. The bigger kids strong-armed the younger and smaller kids. The adults bullied and intimidated all the kids.
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