Fireside

by Brian Parker

  They rode slowly as the aging machines squeaked and rattled down the pitted asphalt roads. The city’s infrastructure was completely failing at this point. They spent most of their available manpower guarding the walls, reinforcing the walls according to Ted Winston’s designs or tending to the vegetables and livestock, leaving little time for maintenance. The roads had massive potholes that were filled with gravel from the early years of freezing and thawing. Aeric was thankful that they were in what used to be Texas instead of somewhere farther north where the ash cloud-induced climate change had surely hit hard.

  Besides the roads, the buildings were falling apart as well. The dust storms and acid rain early on had wreaked havoc on the non-brick houses that didn’t have siding, making those uninhabitable. The homes that remained were in need of repair beyond the paint that was available from the old hardware store. The ones that needed major structural repair were abandoned and marked for demolition, either to be used as additional material for the walls or chopped up and used in the cooking fires.

  The trip to the southern edge of the city’s wall took ten minutes at their leisurely pace. Over the years, the perimeter had decreased steadily; utilizing Ted’s engineering expertise to build stable and defendable walls that had withstood countless attacks from scavengers and raiders in the wastes. Aeric’s own stepson, Kendrick, had helped to build the current set before he was lost to the evils outside the walls. The boy’s death had been hard on the Traxx family, threatening to tear them apart as Aeric repeatedly exposed himself to the dangers of the wasteland beyond the walls looking for him. It never sat well with him that he didn’t find a trace of what happened to Kendrick. There should have been something.

  “Alright, which way, west or east?”

  Aeric focused on Mason and replied, “West. We’ll leave our bikes here so we can look closely. All of the other inspections have been done by mounted patrols, so if there’s something that they missed, we should see it. If we don’t find anything, we’ll be done by dinner.”

  His son dismounted and pulled the old chain lock from the basket behind his seat. He knelt and ran it through the tires and frame of both bicycles. Aeric was impressed, he’d half-expected him to complain about the walk. Maybe the last demonbroc kill only a few blocks from his home had changed his attitude about the duty.

  They walked the perimeter of San Angelo—now only about seven miles around—in a few hours. Aeric remembered when the massive city walls stretched for miles and miles, encircling most of the old city. The huge decline in population meant that they could collapse their perimeter. They could still make it many times smaller if they wanted to move some of the infrastructure and force more people to move towards the old university buildings. It would mean that they’d need to rebuild the walls again, though; the population’s appetite wasn’t there to move them once more.

  The walls were intact. They didn’t find any holes or evidence of meddling on the inside. “Tomorrow, we’ll have to check outside to see if there’s a way they’re getting in from that side,” Aeric stated while Mason unlocked the bikes.

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There’s got to be a way that they’re getting in. It must be over the top since we didn’t find any holes.”

  “Maybe there’s been some kind of damage to the walls and there are some jagged edges that they’re able to use as handholds to climb up,” Aeric suggested hopefully. They had to stop the damn things.

  Their uneventful day ended with Mason promising to bring the boys over to Aeric and Veronica’s house later that night. Aeric walked in to a house full of wonderful aromas. His wife sat in the kitchen reading a book. A large pot rested over a low fire.

  “Mmm,” Aeric said as he gave her a kiss. “That smells wonderful, what is it?”

  “We got our meat ration today, so I made stew with vegetables from our garden along with some oats from the community fields.”

  “Sounds good. Is it ready?”

  “Yes. I’ll fix you a bowl after you wash your hands.”

  Aeric chuckled at his wife’s statement. He’d been outside of their house, touching the fence, testing the wall that kept them safe, of course he’d wash his hands because of the radiation dust. But, raising three boys had instilled in her a lifelong need to ensure that everyone stayed clean—even Aeric.

  When he returned, she had a steaming bowl of the stew sitting on the table and a glass of water. Aeric noticed a few things floating inside the glass. She saw his stare and said, “The filter is just about shot. We need a new one.”

  “I can clean it and get us a few more months out of it,” he answered.

  “Why not get a new one? Christy gets a new filter when hers goes bad.”

  He sighed. It was a debate that they’d had hundreds of times. “Veronica, we don’t have an unlimited supply of water filters. I’ll have to talk to Nicole about the rationing of non-replaceable items; Christy shouldn’t be getting a new one all the time.”

  “Aeric, you bust your ass for this town and nobody else except for our family seems to suffer from the programs that you’ve put into place to keep us going. Don’t you think that’s bullshit?”

  “I know, babe. The truth is, even without adhering strictly to the rationing program, by following even half of it, the community can sustain itself for a long time. Hopefully long enough for all the particulate matter to settle out of the water.”

  “Can’t Ted design a filtering system?” she asked.

  “He’s a mechanical engineer. He’s great with metal and steam powered things, not building water filters.” It was true. They’d been able to design all sorts of steam powered equipment, converting the old rusting hulks of tractor equipment into useable, self-powered backhoes and bulldozers. It had helped them clear the parts of the old city tremendously and aided in the rapid construction of the walls each time they’d collapsed the perimeter.

  “Well, there has to be something better than using blankets to filter out the filth. I just don’t know what it is.”

  Aeric ate his stew in silence for a moment while he thought about the requirement. Then, he said, “What if we use old screens?”

  “Huh?”

  “All those houses that we’ve torn down had window screens. What if we overlay a bunch of them together to help filter out the crap from the water over at the spigots? We could use that as an initial filter and then continue using the blankets and sheets to further filter it. Then, the water filters here at the house wouldn’t have to work as hard, so we could extend their life.”

  “That would help a little bit,” she admitted. “Right now, the blankets don’t last long before they’re gummed up and all that crap from the lake needs to be scraped away.”

  “Good, I’ll pass that on to the water folks. Maybe we can pick up some screens from the dumps when we go outside tomorrow.”

  “You’re going outside?”

  “Yeah. We didn’t find any breaches on the inside of the fence, so there must be some areas outside where the demonbrocs are able to climb up and over the wall.”

  Veronica grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. “Be careful, Aeric. I’ve had terrible dreams lately.”

  “What kind of dreams?” he asked apprehensively.

  “About death and destruction…and fire.”

  “How long have you been having them?” It was an important question. Some of the younger people had begun to show signs of clairvoyance. Aeric was taken aback by his wife’s admission, though, because it was always in those who’d been born after the heavy radioactive fallout of the war, not in people who’d been an adult when the old world ended. There was one little girl named Maria who had shown up alone at the Western gate several months ago. They’d accepted her into the walls; there was no doubt that she had the Gift. It was scary.

  “About two weeks,” Veronica replied to his question.

  “Hmpf…that’s how long the demonbrocs have been getting inside the perimeter. Do you think that maybe you’re just worr
ied about them—or is it something else?”

  “You mean like predicting the future?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Aeric replied in an attempt to ease his wife’s fears. “We’re facing extremely dangerous creatures that are getting inside our walls and have appeared all over the city. Maybe that’s causing you to have these nightmares. I’d hate to think of what else it could mean.”

  She thought about it for a moment before answering, pondering the implications behind her dreams. “You’re probably right about me having an overactive imagination,” she admitted. After a moment, Veronica continued, “I’m scared, Aeric. Scared of what it means if I do have a touch of the Gift and that these things have a chance of coming true. The things that I’ve been dreaming about are absolutely terrible. Life-altering things. Attacks by humans and creatures from the wastes. Total destruction of the city. Our people—the ones who survive at least—are spread to the corners of the earth.”

  Aeric thought about his wife’s statements, wondering what he could do. He didn’t know Maria, the girl with the Gift, well enough to know much about the aspects of her clairvoyance. Was Veronica experiencing the same thing or was it simply an overactive imagination after having lived through some terrible times? He’d heard that the little girl went into trances in the middle of conversations, which was supposedly how she ended up out on her own. The group that she’d been born into had freaked out and banished her with no supplies. It was a miracle that they hadn’t killed her outright.

  “I… Honestly, I don’t know what to say,” Aeric stammered “We’ve dedicated our lives to this place. We made it past those violent early years when we lived almost like hunter-gatherers from Neolithic times, killing each other for resources. Then the fallout cleared from the skies and the sickness helped to balance out the population in the city. I thought we were past the worst days now that we can grow crops again and produce enough food to sustain ourselves.”

  “We can produce enough food,” Veronica countered. “We have no idea what others can or can’t do. I mean, when was the last excursion beyond the city’s defensive perimeter?”

  Aeric thought back. It had to have been more than five years since the Gathering Squad went outside of the ten-mile San Angelo defense zone that they’d established around the city. The need to go beyond that had ceased once they’d developed arable land inside the city perimeter and procured enough goats through trading to have a viable breeding program. Veronica was right. They had no clue what was happening outside their little microcosm environment that they’d carved out for themselves in the west Texas wastes.

  He dragged his hand across his face and brought the spoon up to his mouth. The stew had gone cold, like the feeling of dread that had settled in his stomach. Finally, he answered his wife’s question, which felt more like an accusation than anything else. “It’s been years. The last big push we made outside of the area was to acquire the goats.”

  “God, it’s been that long? I thought maybe a year. Can you imagine what others have done if they had a smart engineer like Ted or an aggressive war leader like Tyler? Hell, what if they had a smart, caring and shrewdly calculating civil administrator like you? There could be other functioning societies like ours out there. Considering your experiences outside the walls, it’s not likely, but what if there are more like us? Or ones that have all those things, but are willing to do whatever it takes to keep it that way?”

  Again, she was right. He’d allowed himself to become so self-absorbed and secure behind the massive perimeter walls that Ted had designed that they didn’t know anything about the outside world anymore. It was a dangerous situation that they’d become complacent and he needed to change it. “I’ll speak to Lorelei tomorrow about preparing an exploratory excursion beyond the defense zone.”

  “Good—”

  Before she could say anything further, Aeric raced ahead and continued, “I need you to come with me tomorrow morning to speak to Maria. Maybe she’s seen something and hasn’t told anyone or they’ve ignored her because she’s a child.”

  His wife blanched. “Why do you need me to go with you?”

  “Because I need you to describe exactly what you’ve seen in your dreams. Maybe that will trigger her visions to start or something. I don’t know how it works.”

  “She scares me, Aeric.”

  “She’s a little girl, Veronica, how scary can she be?” His wife had interacted with Maria often at the soup kitchen, whereas he’d only seen her a few times during his incursions into the Barrio. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sure that he could pick her out of a crowd of children.

  Veronica Traxx sighed and placed her hands on the table, splaying her fingers wide. She examined them intently, replying without looking up, “You’ll see. All of the kids with the Gift are a little off because of their visions, but she’s…different. Sometimes the things that come out of her mouth are downright frightening. I don’t want people to look at me like they do her. I don’t want people to call me a freak and hide their children like they do with her.”

  *****

  The city of San Angelo had fallen into disrepair, leaving the residents to fight a constant battle to keep their homes from collapsing. The parts of the city where few people lived were understandably worse off than other areas. The neighborhood that Veronica, Aeric and a young Shooter named Joseph found themselves entering the morning after Traxx decided to talk to the little girl with the Gift of future sight was known as the Barrio. The multiple contractions of the perimeter had inevitably left people homeless as the city shrunk inwards towards the larger concrete structures downtown. The homeless had successfully found homes in the first move after the big flu epidemic had killed off all those people, then when the walls were moved inward once more, less of them found homes, deciding to live in old commercial buildings. Finally, the third move had created the Barrio, a slum within the deteriorating city of San Angelo where the town’s less than desirable population chose to live.

  Veronica hadn’t ever been to the Barrio before. She was scared. She dealt with everyone in the city on a daily basis in the relative safety of the soup kitchen, not in their own neighborhoods. Parts of San Angelo—like the Barrio—were unofficially off-limits to non-residents except for the police force and the specialized troops like Captain Lorelei Griffith’s Shooters. Even Aeric confessed to her that he only went into the Barrio once every couple of months when he took the census to ensure that everyone had a job and worked towards the city’s common good.

  An old grocery store supposedly boasted a population of three hundred people, living in carefully portioned off pieces of real estate inside the building. Allegedly the large shelves helped to further subdivide the place. Murders and rapes were common in the Barrio. If it didn’t happen to you or your family, though, nobody would talk to the police. It was a depressing way of life, brought on partially by the conditions after the war, but mostly because those types of people chose to live together in such a small area.

  Veronica relied on her husband’s limited knowledge of the neighborhood to find Maria. It had been a few days since she’d last seen her at the soup kitchen. The girl was probably nine or ten years old and skinny as a rail. Most people these days were thin anyways, but she was excessively so, almost like her body was eating itself.

  The road they followed through the filth and wreckage was more of a path cleared of debris than an actual road. They traveled several blocks until it terminated at a large pile of rubble that might have been a house at one time. “This is the boundary for the Barrio,” Aeric stated.

  “Wait, I thought we were in the Barrio already,” Veronica said, holding up her hand and gesturing to the detritus around them.

  Aeric glanced at Joseph, who shook his head. “Not really. Joe spent the last few years of his childhood here before joining the Shooters. We were on the outskirts, the Barrio is a three-block square that’s been claimed by the residents. The main structure is the grocery store and then there are
lots of little cinder block structures that used to be gas stations, fast food restaurants and hair salons. Now that’s where the people live.”

  Veronica stared at the young man who’d been with them from the start of their journey to find Maria. She hadn’t known anything about him other than the fact that Aeric vouched for him. “What’s it like growing up in there?” she asked.

  He cleared his throat before answering. “You don’t really know any different when you live there. We moved in about eight years ago when our old home fell outside the new city walls. It was either go to a place where you could have shelter from the elements inside the walls or take our chances out in the wastes. My dad chose to keep us inside. It’s not all that bad, just like living in the barracks, except it’s really dirty.”

  “Hmm,” she muttered. “That’s a good way of thinking about it. Why don’t the residents clean it up?”

  “The Barrio is different than any other part of the city. We have our own rules and ways of doing things. It suits most of the residents, so we’re good.”

  Veronica wondered what he meant. With the help of the city council, Aeric—and her father before him—set the laws for the city. She thought those were established and followed by everyone, not that some community made its own rules. Her husband always acted strangely when the topic of the Barrio was brought up and had been pretty vague so far today about the neighborhood. She’d chalked it up to one of those things that you had to see to believe and had gone with the flow, so far. Now, her patience was nearing its end. “Why couldn’t we have just told Maria to come meet with us somewhere else?”

  “It’s not that big of a place,” Joseph answered. “But if someone doesn’t want to be found, you’ll never find them inside the Barrio.”

  “Huh?”

  “What he means is that if Maria isn’t interested in talking to us, then she’d disappear,” Aeric answered. “If I’d led the life that she has, I wouldn’t go with strangers either. You’re our way of meeting with her. She knows you from the soup kitchen so hopefully she’ll decide to talk to us.”