Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

  “You have power!?” Hector cried, taking his cell phone from his jeans pocket. He cursed softly. “I didn’t bring my charger.”

  “There’s a charger rack downstairs,” Gwen told him. “It’s to encourage you not to leave chargers plugged in because they drain energy. Maybe you can find one that fits your phone. But come upstairs first. I want to show you guys something.”

  Gwen led them up a spiral staircase to the top floor. They stepped into a greenhouse brightly lit by natural sunlight pouring in. “I suppose you’d have to build a house like this in a clearing to get the sun in here like this,” she said, “but isn’t it cool?”

  “How come we couldn’t see this from the outside?” Tom asked, staring up.

  “It’s still below the outside walls, just the top is open. See?” Gwen explained. “The side walls use ultraviolet grow lights and those containers on the walls are hydroponics.”

  “Hydro what?” Hector asked.

  “They’re grown in the air without dirt,” Gwen told him. “See the way the roots dangle down out of those holes? Every day a nutrient spray gives them food.”

  “How come these plants didn’t die if the place was abandoned?” Tom asked.

  Gwen pointed to sprinklers set into the glass. “Every day they get sprinkled with storm water collected in that cistern. There,” she answered, pointing to a large blue bin on the outside corner of the glass roof. “There was a lot of rotten fruit and vegetables when I first got up here ’cause no one had collected it, which is why I don’t think anyone’s been here for at least a little while, but I just dumped the old fruit in the composting bin over there.”

  “This is awesome,” Hector said, snapping off a twig of green basil and popping it into his mouth. “It’s nice and warm in here, so I guess something is heating it.”

  Again, Gwen pointed up. “Those glass panels also work as solar heat, plus there are heating units in the walls that are powered by the same magnetic generator that’s running the whole house. The panels must’ve been pretty thick to withstand the storm—but obviously they did.” Gwen looked to Tom and Hector. “You guys look like you’re hungry. Are you?”

  “Real hungry,” Hector replied.

  “Dig in,” Gwen offered. “There are some apple and peach trees at the far end in those pots. Hector is standing by the herbs. Tom, up in that container are hydroponic tomatoes and next to that, cucumbers.”

  “Where’s the Twinkie plant?” Hector joked.

  “Sorry, none of those,” Gwen said, smiling. “Since I’ve been here I’ve been sort of forced to eat the good stuff. You get used to it, you know.”

  “Are these plants genetically modified to grow inside?” Tom asked.

  Gwen shook her head. “No. They’re totally natural. I’ve read a whole paper on what they’ve planted here. All these seeds come from a natural seed bank in Holland.”

  “A seed bank?” Hector questioned, snapping bright yellow cherry tomatoes from a plant.

  Gwen nodded. “The stuff I read was real interesting. About thirty years ago, big biochemical companies started making genetically modified foods, things like square tomatoes that would fit more neatly into shipping containers. At first everybody was suspicious of it, but then we all just got used to it.”

  “I did a report on something like this last year in social studies,” Hector added. “Didn’t the companies make it so the fruits and vegetables completely died out each year?”

  “That’s right,” Gwen said. “Farmers used to get their seeds from their crops. But now they had to buy them from the company every year.”

  “I read about that, too,” Hector recalled excitedly. “They were called terminator seeds because they didn’t renew themselves. Freaky.”

  “Yeah, way freaky,” Gwen agreed. “So, then a few years ago, these reports started coming out by private medical groups claiming that a lot of the sickness they were seeing was tracing back to malnutrition. It turns out that the GMOs don’t have the same nutritional value as the natural food had; only now there were no more seeds left. For a while, it looked like we had allowed the big biotech companies to destroy all the world’s food. Except, fortunately, there were some groups that had thought this might be a problem and had begun collecting seeds.”

  “At least somebody was thinking,” Tom remarked. “Is it hard to get the seeds?”

  “Real hard,” Gwen confirmed, “but the Whippersnapper Three comes with its own supply.”

  When they’d filled straw baskets with the food they’d picked, Gwen showed them to the basement kitchen. “You have to eat it plain because there’s no salad dressing or anything like that here,” she added apologetically.

  “Are you kidding?” Hector said. “Do you know how good this tastes after eating nothing but powdered cheese and macaroni for days?”

  “It’s great,” Tom agreed, popping a hydroponic strawberry into his mouth. “All I found was some stale cereal for breakfast. I had it dry and I haven’t had anything since. It didn’t seem like I was going to get anything else to eat, either, the way those people at the grocery store were acting.”

  Tom suddenly hit the table. “I can’t believe I did it again!”

  “What?” Gwen asked.

  “I was supposed to bring my mother some groceries and medicine. She’s sick. I was supposed to go right back, and I’ve been gone for at least three hours.”

  “I’ll go get her some veggies and fruit,” Gwen offered. “There’s a bottle of acetaminophen in the medicine cabinet. You can bring that to her.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know,” Gwen began thoughtfully, “there’s a lot of food up there that people could use. I wonder if you guys should tell them about this place.”

  “And have them duking it out in the forest?” Hector questioned. “You should have seen them, Gwen. They were clobbering each other for a bag of groceries. It was nuts.”

  “Way nuts,” Tom agreed, shoveling a forkful of lettuce into his mouth while he hand-fed Larry snap peas, which the dog eagerly gobbled. “But I guess people get sort of crazy when they’re hungry, especially people with kids.”

  “We have to find a way to get some of this food to them,” Gwen said.

  “Since when are you such a saint?” Hector asked lightly. “I thought you found people annoying.”

  “People are annoying,” Gwen agreed. “But little kids shouldn’t go hungry.”

  “True that,” Hector agreed. “If you could fill a bag, I’ll take it to the people in the shelter. I can say that I was abducted by a spaceship and the aliens returned me to earth with a bag of food as payment for the valuable internal body parts they stole from me.”

  “Okay,” Gwen agreed.

  “If you have extra, some of my neighbors are completely out of food,” Tom added. “I’ll say I got it in town somewhere.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Hector said.

  “That’s not the way your mind works,” Gwen suggested.

  “I have to ask you guys something,” Hector continued, looking bothered by what he was about to say. “Is it just me, or does it feel like it’s the end of the world?”

  “Why should it be the end of the world?” Tom asked.

  Gwen thought she understood what Hector was getting at. “It’s as though the world is falling apart, and no one is in charge or even knows what to do about it.”

  “Exactly,” Hector agreed.

  “But is it the end of the world, or only the end of the world as we’ve always known it?” Tom considered.

  Gwen looked at him as though suddenly seeing him in an entirely different way. Even though she had always liked him, she’d assumed he wasn’t a person who would ever ask a question like that. He was a football player, not a deep thinker.

  It struck her that she had made the same quick judgments about Tom that she so deeply resented others making about her.

  “It’s the end of the world,” Hector decided.

  “You could be right,
” Gwen said. “Or maybe it’s just that everything about the way we live is going to have to change.”

  “What? Are we going to have to walk everywhere and become farmers?” Hector asked. “I don’t know if I’m really into that.”

  “Me, neither,” Gwen agreed. “But we might have to do that. Or at least ride bikes. I keep asking myself—is this a good thing or a bad thing that’s happening?”

  The three of them stared at one another helplessly.

  “I have no idea about that,” Tom admitted. “No idea at all.”

  “There’s something else I want to show you in the back of this place,” Gwen said. “It’s a thing I’ve been building from some blueprints in a kit I found down here.”

  “A kit for what?” Tom asked.

  “A still,” Gwen replied.

  “Like back in the days of prohibition when alcohol was illegal and they made whiskey in stills?” Hector asked quizzically.

  “Sort of,” Gwen answered.

  “Gwen, don’t tell me you’ve been out here getting blitzed every day,” Hector said disapprovingly.

  Gwen laughed. “No, crazy. Don’t worry. I haven’t been making whiskey. I’ve learned how to make alcohol for fuel—ethanol. Come on. I’ll show you. It’s pretty cool.”

  NORTH COUNTRY NEWS

  Mysterious Donations of Fresh Produce Bewilder Local Residents

  Flood-stricken residents of Sage Valley have had at least a taste of good fortune to help ease the long, hard slog to recovery after Superhurricane OscPearl devastated much of their semirural town almost a week ago.

  Desperately in need of services but largely overlooked by agencies busy assisting even harder hit areas, the citizens of Sage Valley are currently suffering from homelessness, flood-related respiratory diseases, and other sicknesses, plus an almost complete breakdown in their deliveries by rail and truck routes, resulting in a severely depleted supply of food and goods. Badly needed pharmaceuticals are also in short supply. Sage Valley is a town that can be excused for feeling that their government and even their neighboring towns have completely abandoned them.

  But they have not been totally overlooked. Sage Valley residents have been pleasantly surprised to find gift baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables deposited at their front doors. Speculation is that the mysterious benefactor bestowing these much-needed foods must be a local resident with an insider’s knowledge of Sage Valley’s people, since the baskets have found their way to the elderly, sick, and families with children more quickly than to other townspeople who are more able to find food for themselves. Mayor Eleanor Crane tells us, “This must be someone with access to the food markets at Hunts Point in the Bronx. It’s late September, and therefore these products have to be imported since it would be impossible to grow them locally at this time of year.” Ms. Crane admits that her analysis does not take into consideration the fact that a person bringing food from Hunts Point would have to travel through areas that OscPearl has made impassable. “Perhaps this individual has a boat,” Ms. Crane speculated. “Folks have told me about a person seen traveling around Sage Valley in an orange canoe.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Niki heard the story about the “mysterious benefactor” in the orange canoe on her mother’s radio, and thought, Okay, so Tom is alive. She knew there was no way to know whether he’d called her—her phone was dead—but still…he knew where she lived.

  The last time she’d seen him, he’d seemed so crazy about her. Had all that meant nothing?

  If he didn’t come to see her soon, she might be gone. Most of her neighbors had left, though she wasn’t exactly sure where they were leaving to. They said they were too isolated out here by the lake. Maybe they’d gone to relatives closer to town. Or even into the city.

  Standing, Niki went down the steps to the wet dirt below. The lake had gone down a little, but everything was still so wet. Her glasses fogged and she wiped them on her shirt.

  Why didn’t all this water just evaporate?

  The dark clouds overhead probably had something to do with it. The glorious days right after the hurricane had turned gloomy once more. The weather people said there were two more hurricanes brewing in the Caribbean. If they merged, it would be another OscPearl situation. Everyone agreed: The East Coast couldn’t take another superhurricane, not when it hadn’t yet recovered from the first one.

  Her father appeared on the deck in his pajamas, and barefoot; his face was covered in stubble and his hair bent at odd angles. “Do we have an oar for this kayak?” Niki called up to him.

  “In that equipment chest over there,” he replied, pointing to a rectangular cedar box behind the boat. “Where are you going?”

  “We need fresh water and charcoal.” They’d drunk the last of their bottled water supply. She’d taken some from the lake and boiled it, but then the charcoal supply slowly dwindled down to a few chunks.

  “Wear a life vest. It’s also in the chest.”

  Niki nodded and stopped to gaze at him a moment. Was he back from his stupor? He seemed to care if she was safe all of a sudden. That was probably a good sign.

  “Okay. I will,” she agreed as she leaned into the highly polished, wooden kayak, dipping her elbow in an effort to flip it hull-side up. It wasn’t easy, but years of handsprings, cartwheels, and handstands had made her strong. In five minutes, she had dragged the kayak off its stand of twin sawhorses and pulled it to the shoreline, the back end afloat as the water lapped at its side, the front still in the dirt.

  Niki ran back to the chest to get the long oar with its paddles on either end, and an orange life vest. “Take a chain and padlock with you. That’s an expensive, handmade kayak,” her father shouted.

  “Okay.” That was an excellent sign that he was getting back to his old self, Niki decided.

  Returning to the kayak, Niki positioned herself low in the hull, stashed the life vest in front of her, and pushed off by digging the paddle into the ground. It was immediately exhilarating to be out on Lake Morrisey, though the water was choppier than she’d expected and the breeze stronger than she had guessed.

  Niki began rowing across the lake, knowing it would bring her to Shore Road. From there she could walk to town, even though it would be miles, and coming back she would be dragging charcoal and water.

  Despite the difficulty, she didn’t really mind going; she’d been stuck in the house with no electricity for longer than she could stand. If they hadn’t had the battery-powered radio, she’d have gone totally insane. And even that was getting more and more static. She made a note to herself to also buy some batteries while she was in town.

  This morning, the news report had said some towns not too far away had come back onto the electric grid and their power had been restored. Manhattan was the first to light up, though it was a mild amber version of its former illuminated glory, due to the necessity to conserve power. Towns in Westchester and the Bronx had power, too, especially the wealthier ones.

  In lower Westchester, the floodwaters were receding enough for trucks to get through and bring in supplies. Train tracks weren’t so flooded anymore, either.

  But Marietta, Sage Valley, and other nearby towns weren’t as lucky. What the reports had said seemed true to Niki: It was as if they had been forgotten.

  When Niki reached knee-high water on the other side, she got out, pulled the kayak up, and stowed the oar inside. After chaining and locking it to a tree, she headed up a dirt trail.

  Shore Road was eerily deserted—no cars at all. Listening hard, Niki couldn’t detect even a single distant engine. The gray wash of sky above lent a somber, almost ghostly gloom. And there was a pervasive dampness in the air. Everything had gone silent and wet.

  As Niki began walking toward town, her thoughts wandered and she remembered the day she’d been stuck there with Tom. Just a little more than a month and a half had passed, yet it seemed so long ago. It was as though it was a world away. Everything had been so different then.

  When she ev
en thought of herself, she felt she must have been a different person. In August, she was still the perfect girl she’d always been, the one with the swingy blunt haircut, the perfect skin—a girl who understood the world and knew exactly what she wanted from it.

  Now, Niki laughed darkly at how that image contrasted with the girl currently heading down the road. This girl had unwashed hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Her skin now showed blemishes on her cheeks from a diet of canned and boxed foods and quick washups done by candlelight with water taken from the lake. She still had some clean clothing left, but it wasn’t her first choice of what to wear. She’d just about gotten used to the sight of herself in eyeglasses when she’d dropped them one morning and the right side piece had snapped. Imagine, Niki Barton, captain of the cheer squad, in glasses taped together with a Band-Aid! It was almost funny—nearly hilarious, in fact.

  Niki was nearly to the gas station that had been closed on the day she was out of gas with Tom when she spotted a lone male figure walking down the road coming toward her. Wiping mist from her glasses, she put them back on and peered at him. She knew those broad shoulders and his lumbering walk.

  “Brock?” she asked.

  What is he doing out here?

  He started jogging toward her.

  Niki knew what she was seeing was real, but it didn’t seem possible. What were the chances of meeting Brock out here on the road like this? Her mind couldn’t make sense of it. Back in August, it would have been a dream come true, but now Brock was someone who seemed like he belonged in that old world she’d left behind.

  “Niki, why are you out here by yourself?” Brock asked breathlessly when he reached her.

  “Me? Why are you here?”