Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

  “What if it was blowing into us?” Gwen asked, settling into the hull.

  “Then we’d have to tack back and forth, but I’ll explain that later. Right now all I have to do is make small adjustments in direction to keep the sail full.”

  “How far do you think we’ll have to go to find supplies?”

  “We can stop at the first town where we see signs of electricity and check it out,” Tom suggested. “I hope we don’t have to go all the way to Manhattan.”

  “I don’t think we will,” Gwen said. “I heard Westchester is almost back.”

  Adjusting her position for a more comfortable one resting her back against the side, Gwen stretched her arms out and let the sun hit her cheeks and forehead. The sky above was clear with fat, white cloud mountains. Glancing outside the sailboat, she lost herself in watching the racing water splash against the boat’s side.

  This was what it once was like: boats pushed by wind. No hum of an engine. No fumes. The mercy of the river. The fate of the weather.

  Was this how it was going to be again? Sailing. Walking. Planting. Growing.

  The world was such a different place without oil. How would they survive without it? It seemed so impossible to go on.

  Maybe it was the end of the world—that world, the planet where people lived by oil and died for it. At that very minute in Venezuela, some soldier from one side or the other was probably dying in this fight over oil. And no matter how hard they fought, it didn’t stop the oil from running out.

  Sooner, or maybe later, all the oil would run out—like it or not. Then what? No more gasoline engines, no more concrete, no more plastic. Not having plastic was as huge as not having gasoline, maybe even more so. What wasn’t made of plastic these days?

  Looking back at Tom, she saw he was also lost in thought as he lay against the back of the sailboat, his eyes on the sail but with a faraway look. He seemed peaceful, not at all like he was worried about this journey.

  Gwen remembered seeing Tom in his yard the night his father died. Had that night seemed like the end of the world to him? It must have, in a way. It was his father who had taught him to sail. Was he thinking about his father now? Probably, she guessed.

  On an impulse, Gwen shifted to the back of the sailboat beside Tom. Stretching forward, she kissed him on the lips.

  Tom startled but then returned the kiss, pressing his lips into hers. “What was that for?” he asked when they pulled apart.

  Gwen thought a moment, not sure how to put it into words. “Because I have a feeling we’re going to the world that comes after the end of the world, and I’m happy we’re going there together. Does that sound crazy?”

  “A little, but I think I know what you mean. It’s good that we’re together, too. I’m glad you came with me.”

  “You are? Really?”

  Tom nodded and kissed her again.

  NORTH COUNTRY NEWS

  President Waters Calls Troops Home

  Intelligence Reports Reveal Oil Fields in Venezuela Depleted

  President Jeffrey Waters reported today that last week the White House received intelligence smuggled in by operatives from the nationalized oil fields of Venezuela. After a week spent verifying their veracity and analyzing the impact of the reports on U.S. policy, the White House has determined through sources that the reports are indeed accurate in their conclusion that Venezuela has grossly overreported its oil-producing capacity.

  Said President Waters: “Venezuela has cynically engaged us in warfare and dragged Bolivia into the fight rather than admit it has no oil left in its fields. Shame on them!”

  In response, Thomas Rambling, senator from Massachusetts, had this to say, “Like Texas, Alaska, Canada, and the Middle Eastern nations before it, Venezuela has gone from oil boom to bust. This fact should be no surprise to anyone, since that has been the pattern of all oil-producing areas for more than a hundred years. The fact that Venezuela felt it could not reveal its new vulnerability as it drops out as one of the last oil-producing nations on earth demonstrates how the world is still clinging to outmoded notions about the status of oil-rich nations.”

  Senator Rambling, who has been championing the antiwar movement, had this to add: “When are we going to get it through our heads that oil is a nonrenewable resource? The future is in wind, solar, hydrogen, and other renewable sources like corn oil, magnetism, and the like. None of these alone can replace oil and so we must throw ourselves wholeheartedly into developing every source of renewable energy—nothing less than our survival as a global community depends on it.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Tom pulled the tiller for a hard turn. “Coming about,” he warned. Gwen ducked low, as he’d instructed her to do whenever he gave that command.

  “Where are you going?” Gwen asked.

  “I want to see what’s happening. All these boats are going in there. Look.” They’d come around a turn in the river and were suddenly amid many different sorts of small craft: kayaks; canoes; sailboats of every kind, from large sloops to catamarans, sailfish, and small fetches like the one they were on. There were rowboats and even people paddling smaller motorboats. “They all seem to be heading for that marina,” he pointed out to Gwen. “Something must be going on.”

  “Where are we?” Gwen asked.

  Tom checked the map he’d spread out at his feet. “This must be Hastings.”

  “Finally!” Gwen said, and he knew how she felt. They’d been sailing for almost three hours and every marina and port they’d come upon had been flooded or abandoned. The low-lying river towns had been hit the hardest by OscPearl. Many of the towns had overturned and sunken boats in their marinas, and harbor buildings with torn-off roofs and broken windows. It was frightening to see.

  As Tom sailed in closer to the marina, he let out his main line and allowed his sail to flap, slowing the boat. It was necessary because so many other boats were crowding in around him. “What’s going on here?” he asked a white-haired woman who paddled a blue kayak next to him.

  “Farmer’s market,” the woman replied. “Some folks went down to Hunts Point Market early and brought up produce to sell. I heard it was all gone by five in the morning. But there are still soups, breads, ciders, and cheeses, too.”

  Tom’s stomach growled enthusiastically at the mention of those last foods. He’d changed his diet in the last week. Never before had he eaten so many fruits and vegetables and actually enjoyed them, but a slice of bread and hunk of cheese suddenly struck him as too good to be true. “Is the town open?” he called to the woman as she glided forward away from him.

  “Don’t know,” she called over her shoulder.

  Dropping sail altogether, Tom and Gwen were able to tie the boat to the end of a dock that already held several other boats crowded and scraping against one another.

  Tom disconnected the tiller and rudder as a safety precaution against anyone who might steal the boat. Throwing the tiller and rudder onto the dock, Tom swung himself up and extended his hand to help Gwen.

  “This must be the only place with food for miles,” Gwen said. “It’s so crowded.”

  With Gwen beside him, Tom hurried up the narrow, sloping streets leading from the river until they came onto a more level street. When he found a small pharmacy, they went in and got to the end of a line that reached all the way to the other end of the store. The first thing Tom noticed was that the shelves were only half filled with the supplies drugstores usually carried, such as shampoos, soaps, and the like. Gwen left his side and grabbed a basket, loading it with necessities.

  Tom fished his money from his front pocket and began counting out his bills. He had the two hundred from his savings. They desperately needed toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper, and so many other things he had once taken for granted. He just hoped he had enough money for it all. They still needed to load up on food supplies.

  Tom had other money besides the two hundred, but his neighbors had given it to him to pay for their medicines. In his ba
ck pocket, he had the stack of prescriptions to be filled.

  “Thank heavens this place is open,” said a man in his fifties who stood in front of them. “My wife could die if she suddenly stops taking her heart pills. I rowed all the way down from Monroe.” He swung his right arm in a wide circle to work out the muscles. “I just pray they don’t run out before we get to the counter.”

  “If they do, is any other town below here open?” Tom asked.

  “I’ve heard that the towns south of here until Manhattan are pretty good because freighters are still coming into New York Harbor, but only about half as many are coming in because of the oil prices. Once you get south and east of the city, things get even worse. The Jersey Shore is just about washed away and so is Long Island.”

  “Where have all those people who were living there gone to?” Tom asked.

  “Anywhere they can. The shelters in Manhattan are crammed full of them. Maybe now that this war is over, things will get a little better.”

  “Why is that?” Tom wanted to know as the line inched forward a little.

  “The government has been shifting all the available oil to the troops. Maybe they’ll release some of it now,” the man explained.

  “And then will people go back to driving all over the place?” Tom wondered.

  “I guess,” the man said. “People who can afford it will.”

  The man spoke about the return of inexpensive and abundant oil as if it were a good thing, but Tom wasn’t so sure. What would happen the next time there was a shortage if nothing changed now? Maybe next time the oil would run out for good.

  By the time Tom was nearly to the front of the line, Gwen was back at his side holding her basket of supplies. “You might have to put some of that back if I don’t have enough money,” he warned her.

  “Okay,” Gwen agreed as music began playing from the pocket of her sweatshirt. Pulling out her phone, her eyes lit excitedly. “It’s Luke!” She clicked into the call. “Where have you been? Are you okay? I’m in Hastings. Hastings! Tom and I sailed down. No, I’m not kidding you. We sailed…okay…he sailed.”

  Gwen listened a while more and her smile slowly faded into an expression of distress. “Okay. All right, text me from now on—it will use less battery. Bye.”

  “What did he say?” Tom asked as Gwen put her phone back in her pocket. He could see from her face that it wasn’t good news.

  “A group from Marietta attacked Sage Valley.”

  Tom gazed at her, unsure he’d heard correctly. It was too crazy. One town attacking another?

  “What kind of group?” he asked. “Who attacked Sage Valley? Why?”

  A sheepish expression came over Gwen’s face. “You caused it.”

  “What? Me? What? How could I cause it?” What was she talking about?

  “Indirectly, it’s you. People saw the news about you delivering food, so a bunch of them came over to find where the food was coming from. They wound up breaking some windows and they got into a big brawl with some people from Sage Valley.”

  “We’d better get back there,” Tom said. He was thinking of his mother laid up in bed, and even of Larry. The Whippersnapper 3 could come under attack if people learned about it.

  Tom had come to the front of the line and laid down his prescriptions. “I can’t fill every one of these,” the tall, dark-haired woman pharmacist told him. “Let me see what I can get you.”

  “Okay,” he told the pharmacist. Then he turned to Gwen and said, “Let’s get this stuff, grab some food, and get home. I have a really weird feeling something bad’s going to happen.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Niki sat beside Brock on the tan couch in the basement of the Whippersnapper 3. They were watching the informational DVD that Mary Curtin was showing to the twenty people who were attending one of her workshops. The video was called Renewable Energy: A Do-It-Yourself Guide.

  Niki looked the group over. She knew about a quarter of them. There were several teachers from school, some were parents of her friends on the cheer squad, others she’d simply seen around town through the years. She also recognized Tom’s friend, Carlos Hernandez. He was there with a man who looked like he must be his father.

  A lot of the group members were fiddling with their phones while the video was explaining how to construct a small-scale wind power turbine to supply energy to an individual home. Niki hoped they hadn’t just come to the workshop to charge their phones, as Mrs. Curtin allowed them to do before the workshop officially started. Sage Valley was still not back on the electric grid, and neither were most of the surrounding towns. It made Niki nervous that so many people now knew there was electricity to be had out here in the forest. They didn’t need a crowd of people here all desperate to recharge.

  “I want us to start small,” Mrs. Curtin said to the group. “We’re going to start by building small greenhouses from scrap glass and metal my husband and I have collected from the dump, or bought inexpensively from the car salvage and the recycle center.”

  Mr. Curtin, who had been standing in a corner listening, raised his palms, revealing red lines. “I have the sliced hands to show for it,” he said.

  “I told you to wear gloves,” Mrs. Curtin reminded him with a good-natured shrug.

  “That, you did,” Mr. Curtin agreed.

  “Let’s have some of the fruit smoothies Hector made from the plants in our upstairs garden and then get started,” Mrs. Curtin told the group.

  The ringtone on Niki’s phone sounded and she looked down to see who it was. It was a welcome sound, so good to feel connected to the world around her again. “Tom! Hi! How’s it going?”

  She felt a pang of jealousy as Tom revealed that Gwen was actually sailing the boat at the moment, but it passed quickly. Being here with Brock had been pleasant, and for long stretches of time distracted her from worrying about what was happening with Gwen and Tom.

  Tom told her about the fighting in Sage Valley and advised her not to tell anyone else about the Whippersnapper 3. “Too late,” Niki told him. “Hector contacted the Curtins about holding the workshops here. Mrs. Curtin was blown away by the place. And listen to this—she even went to grad school with Ricky Montbank, the guy who owns the Whippersnapper Corporation. But what are you saying about fighting? How can that be possible? Towns don’t attack each other.”

  Tom told her what Luke had told Gwen. He was even able to send her a photo taken from the Internet of brawling going on in downtown Sage Valley, not far from the post office. “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  He said he didn’t know and to ask the Curtins what they thought. “Okay. Where are you?”

  There was a pause, and Niki could picture Tom gazing around the river embankments trying to ascertain his location. He told her it was foggy and he couldn’t exactly tell, but that they were hugging the shoreline so they didn’t veer to the far side of the river. There wasn’t much wind, but luckily the little they had was blowing north in their direction. He was afraid, though, that the wind would die out altogether and they would be becalmed.

  “Be-what?” Niki questioned.

  It meant stuck, he told her.

  “Maybe you should sail the boat.”

  He said Gwen was doing a great job; she’d learned really fast. He had sailed all the way down and needed a break. It was a good thing Gwen had come with him since she’d been such a big help.

  Gwen learned to sail faster than anyone I’ve ever known. Tom’s exact words rang in Niki’s ears and caused a tingle of emotion below her eyes.

  “Okay, Tom. Good luck. See you soon.” Niki clicked off the call and blinked away the rising tears before they fell free. It was over between them before it really began; she knew it. It was in his voice and the way he said Gwen’s name.

  Getting off the couch, Niki found Mr. Curtin at the computer watching a YouTube video on installing solar panels. “Tom just called. People from Marietta are looking for the food they’ve heard we have here. It sounds like they�
�re looting and just going crazy. People in town are fighting back and it’s getting bad.” Niki showed him the picture from the Internet.

  Mr. Curtin picked his cell phone off the desk and punched in a number. “I’m calling the county sheriff’s department,” he told her. “Maybe I can find out what’s happening.”

  “What’s going on?” Mrs. Curtin asked, joining them.

  Niki told her what she knew.

  “I can’t get through to the sheriff,” Mr. Curtin reported. “I just get a busy tone.”

  From upstairs, glass shattered. Hector clambered down the stairs, his face full of alarm. “Someone hurled a rock through the front window!” he told them.

  “It’s those rich creeps from Marietta,” cried a man from the workshop. “I just heard about it on the web feed from my phone. They’re in Sage Valley to steal our supplies.”

  “We have to fight them,” a woman said.

  “Maybe we can talk to them calmly,” Mr. Curtin suggested.

  “You can’t talk to a mob,” another of the men disagreed as he found a large kitchen knife among the supplies.

  Hector scrambled down the stairway and hurried toward the side door that led to the mining tunnel Gwen had shown him. “We can get out this way. It can be locked behind us. We can climb up into the mine shaft. The way out is blocked, but you can be safe there until these Marietta guys leave.”

  “I’m not running like a coward,” a man from the workshop objected.

  “I’m going,” said a white-haired woman. “This isn’t my house. I don’t need to defend it.”

  Another sound of shattering glass made Niki jump.

  “Those solar panels are going to cost a lot to replace,” Mrs. Curtin worried. “We have to stop them.”