“Do you think the Chinese have taken over?” Patrick whispered.
“No, dummy,” Amy hissed back. “There were lots of Asian people already living in the US before the blast.”
“Excuse me,” Luke said, stepping forward.
The lady turned, showing no surprise, and approached, still carrying the long paddle. “My name is Ruth Akira. May I be of service?”
“My name is Luke Zachary,” Luke responded. “We come in peace.”
“That’s very nice,” she responded. A chicken clucked as it strolled by.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Patrick demanded. Amy groaned. Luke should have never brought him. She could tell by his look that Luke was thinking the same thing.
“Should I be?” Ruth asked.
“No, of course not,” Luke replied, shooting a warning look at Patrick. Patrick ignored it.
“You don’t need to be afraid.” Patrick said, “as long as you do as you are told.”
“And if I don’t?” Ruth asked.
“We have guns.”
“Patrick!” Luke hissed, “That’s enough!”
“I told you I would not stand for wishy-washiness,” Patrick hissed back.
“Not when it comes to interrogations, eh?” Ruth asked.
Patrick spun around and stared at her.
“Sound really travels out here,” she said. “Your friend wanted to come in peace. I too practice peace and harmony. Please put your guns down so we can talk.”
“You’ll learn some respect or— “Patrick slung the rifle off his shoulder.
It was over in a matter of seconds. One instant Ruth was standing stock-still and the next she was gone. Patrick hit the ground with a yowl of pain. The long wooden paddle swept in a graceful circle as Ruth spun back in front of him. It stopped inches from his throat, pinning him to the ground. Her eyes, however, were on Luke.
Luke slowly un-slung his rifle and laid it on the ground. “I regret my friend’s behavior very much, and I am sure he does too. I apologize.”
With a graceful flick of her wrist, Ruth knocked Patrick’s rifle several feet away and stepped back two paces so he could rise shakily to his feet. “We had bandits out here in the early days. We can defend ourselves at need. I trust you will not want a second demonstration?”
“Of course not,” Luke said. “Again, I apologize for my friend’s behavior.”
“He’s lucky,” Ruth told them. “My husband has a gun trained on you as well. Leave your guns where they are. Tell your friends to do the same and they can come down. We have little to ‘seize,’ but we will gladly share a meal or two, and perhaps some news.”
Ruth turned and walked away. She used her paddle to scoop up two loaves of bread and went off toward the house. Patrick eyed his gun, but Luke’s angry motion stopped him from trying for it. “Get the others,” Luke growled. “And so help me if I see one gun down here, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Patrick turned and walked off. Amy followed the woman into the house.
It was cool inside. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she looked around her. It was small, but neat and clean. Couches and shelves grew out of the walls and were made of the same stuff. There was a crude wooden table and a few chairs, but not many furnishings. Amy felt at home, as if the house itself calmed her nerves.
Ruth’s husband was there, looking out one of the windows. He had a single-shot .22 in his hands that looked as if it hadn’t been shot in years. He was a thin man with a pockmarked face. He was, to all appearances, white, or at least once had been. Years in the sun had turned him only a shade or two lighter than his wife. His hair was shoulder length and gray, pulled back into a ponytail. His hairline had receded most of the way back to expose a freckled and mole-covered scalp. His wrinkled hands were covered in liver spots, but were rock steady as he held the gun. Ruth introduced him as Roger.
Luke quickly explained who they were and what their mission was. The couple listened intently. Afterward, Roger seemed to come to a decision. He set the gun down and took Luke’s hand.
“Never heard of anyone living up in the mountains anymore, but Ruth and I have never turned down someone in need. We don’t have much, but we can spare a meal or two for you and your men. Maybe we can give you some good advice too. Sounds like you have been out of the loop for a long time.”
By this time, Patrick was back with the others. “Let’s take this out on the porch,” Ruth said. “This little cabin isn’t big enough for all of us.”
They gathered outside the cottage and began to talk. Luke, Roger, and Patrick sat on wooden chairs that Ruth brought out of the kitchen. Amy and Ruth sat together on a small bench that grew out of the house itself, and the rest laid their packs down and ranged out on the ground.
“Tell me more about this disease you ran into,” Roger said. “We’ll need to warn the neighbors if there is something new going around.”
“Well, we don’t know much about it actually,” Luke said. “We have no medic with us. It seemed like something from the food we ate, but we don’t know for sure.”
“What was it you ate?”
“Well, we shot a deer that day.”
“Did it appear ill in any way?” Roger asked.
“No. It seemed fine.”
“There is a wasting disease they get sometimes, but that usually shows. Besides it wouldn’t have affected you that quickly. I used to hunt a fair bit and never had any trouble with the deer around here. That’s been a few years ago, mind.”
“We’ve eaten deer since with no trouble,” Amy said.
“Well, what else was there?”
“Nothing odd,” Luke replied. “Some corn. That was all.”
“Corn?” Roger’s eyes went wide in surprise. “You ate corn?”
“Yeah, what wrong with that?” Patrick asked. “We eat corn all the time at home.”
Roger whistled. “Man, you have been out of touch a long time. You really eat corn?”
“Yeah.”
Ruth nodded. “They’ve been up there at least thirty years, I’d say. Imagine, clean seeds. No plague.”
“Plague? What plague?” Luke asked.
“The transgenetic plague,” Roger answered.
“Trans what?” Shawn asked.
“The transgenetic plague,” Roger repeated. “No one has eaten corn down here in over thirty years. It can be deadly, as you unfortunately found out.” He watched their puzzled looks. “You really don’t know anything about it? Okay, we need to start from the beginning, and that could easily take some time.
“You kids give me a few minutes here; it’s been a long time since I talked about this, and I need to get things right in my head.” He sat thinking for a long while.
“It was one year before the blast in Chicago . . .” he began.
“The blast,” Luke said. “That was when we broke contact completely. The ranch had already been self-sufficient for three years.”
Roger nodded. “I was a commodities broker back then, so I was aware of what was going on almost from the start. We were so arrogant in those days. Thought we could do anything we wanted. Our scientists discovered they could put genes from one plant into another. At first, it was simple things, corn that grew its own pesticide or was resistant to certain herbicides.
“Then we found we could use the same plants to grow chemicals, thing we found hard to synthesize in other ways: drugs for drug companies and even industrial chemicals. That was the big mistake. They thought they could control it. They added genes that made the plants infertile, limited their growth. They grew them in restricted places.
“Life always finds a way. A few got out. That’s all it took, a few ears of volunteer corn by the roadside. Then, it just took one windy day and cross-pollination took care of the rest.
“We had early warnings; genetic material from modified crops showing up miles from where they had been planted. We ignored it. That is, until Bc-144.
“Bc-144 should have made someone a lot of money. It grew
just like regular corn. But its oil contained an industrial solvent, one that was expensive to produce. Now, they didn’t have to produce the solvent. They could just grow it.
“The first few deaths were a mystery. Once the autopsies started coming back, the mystery widened. They found the solvent and knew how the people had died, but nobody could figure out how it got into their bodies. Most people didn’t even know about Bc-144. The company who made it was silent. They were busy burning records, trying to hide their involvement. They could have saved hundreds of lives, but they didn’t.” He shook his head.
“The connection was eventually made anyway. Enough people knew that experiments had been taking place, knew what the potential was. It was still a catastrophe. Any product with corn in it had to be recalled and destroyed. Thousands of food items had to be tested or destroyed. Whole fields were burnt.
“It was a disaster the likes of which we had never seen. Most of the population had no idea how dependent we were on our corn crop. Still, we could probably have recovered, probably have controlled it in a few years. But then there was Chicago, New York, the Chinese civil war, everything. It all just started to unravel. So much was going on before and after that, but I really believe the plague was it. It was the one thing that brought everything else to its knees.”
“How so?” Luke asked.
Ruth returned with a tray laden with tea and fresh bread. Roger continued. “It all hinged on that corn crop. Nobody realized how interdependent everything had become. Take China. The dust bowl in Mongolia was bad; their crops were failing and had been for three years. That should not have led to civil war, but when America’s crop failed as well, there was no relief. Millions starved. Same for Africa, they were highly dependent on our grain. It must have been awful.”
“What about the blast?” Luke asked. “There was a blast, right? A nuclear bomb in Chicago?”
“Oh yeah,” Roger agreed. “I was there, or as close to there as one could be and still live to tell about it. I lived in Chicago in those days.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Everything was so different back then. It’s hard to believe that world was real.”
“Tell us about it,” Luke prompted needlessly.
“As I think I said, I was a commodity broker in those days. That probably means nothing to you now, but in those days we were . . . we were the rugged mercenaries of corporate America. We traded in thousands of dollars a day. It was a heady business.
“I was something of a big shot too, I don’t mind telling you. I was one arrogant son of a bitch. I thought I loved the fast life, fast cars, and women. It ruined my first marriage, though I didn’t care about that—not until too late, anyway.
“The transgenetic plague had struck the year before the blast. It had been playing havoc on my life. Commodities were always a risky business. Grain could be bought and sold a hundred times between the field and processing plants. Prices went up and down constantly. Big money could be made, and fast, but it could be lost just as fast. On my best day, I made half a million; on my worst, I lost twice that.
“Then came the plague. There was no telling which crops had been affected and which hadn’t. One bad finding at a testing station, and crops for miles in any direction had to be destroyed.
“That didn’t deter me or anyone in the business. The more the supply dropped, the more money we could make with what was left. And we were making lots. Untested corn could be had for pennies a bushel; tested and cleared, its value soared as high as fifteen to twenty dollars. If you were one of the few with the resources you could make a bundle.
“I was at a corporate retreat in Wisconsin when it happened. We had been studying and planning new ways to make even more off the plague. We knew by then that other contaminants were showing up, and things were about to get even more unstable.”
He sighed. “Did anyone at the retreat ask about the farmers? No. We were paying them a fraction of what it had cost them to plant the crops. A frightening half went bankrupt that year alone. That was not our concern, however. I learned about that later. Did anyone ask about Africa? Or the millions of other places where people were starving? Or even the starving here at home? Food rationing wouldn’t begin until the next year, but already there were plenty of people without enough. That didn’t matter to us, because we weren’t them. We had plenty and planned to go on getting more. Like I said, I was one arrogant son of a bitch.
“Anyway, I was heading back toward Chicago. There was this strange cloud on the horizon. Mushroom-shaped, but I didn’t connect that up right away. At first, I thought it was a house fire or something. The longer I drove, the more I realized it was much bigger and farther away than I had imagined.
“I thought about the World Trade Center in New York years before. I still couldn’t quite grasp the enormity of what I was seeing, though. I turned on the radio, hoping for news. There was nothing but static. I hit the scan button and waited as it ran through the channels.”
“Nuclear weapons disrupt radios and other electronics,” Luke said.
Roger nodded. “There was only one station on the air. It was outside of Chicago proper. Its undersized transmitter barely reached me. In a scratchy hiss, the first reports of what had happened came to me.
“Downtown Chicago had been rocked by an explosion so big no one doubted for a second that it had been anything other than a nuclear blast. The shock wave had engulfed the city. There were no reports from downtown at all. The few people making it out of the city told of widespread damage and fires everywhere. They spoke in dull monotones with no trace of emotions. The blast left many like that for years.”
He paused and drank his tea.
“Damn Islamics,” Patrick muttered. “How many did they kill that day?”
“Islamics?” Roger asked. “Like Muslims?”
“Yeah,” Daniel put in. “You know, the terrorists that placed the bomb.”
“What makes you think they were Muslims?” Roger asked, shocked.
“Well, they were, weren’t they?” Mark asked. “That’s what we were taught anyway.”
“No one knew, and I am not sure anyone ever found out, but I have never heard that theory. The Middle East had actually started settling down after years of unrest,” Roger said. “At the time, the government blamed the Chinese. I think we even declared war on them, but I don’t think we ever made good on it.”
“America started a war and didn’t finish it?” Shawn sneered. “Ridiculous.”
Roger gave him a hard look but didn’t answer.
“But China? Why?” Luke asked.
“We had refused them aid. They were on the brink of civil war about that time because America had pulled all of its foreign aid to help feed our own.”
“How could they blame us?” Daniel asked. “We had to feed our own. Besides communism is bound to collapse; my dad always said so.”
“Many did blame us, and not just in China. We kept the Cold War alive for so long. Others blamed us for blocking international efforts to help the environment, and for massive resource depletion.”
“Resource depletion?” Patrick asked. “Who gets upset because you use stuff?”
“When the stuff is in short supply, a lot of people do,” Roger replied. “When the environmental catastrophe was something that leftist doomsayers talked about, a lot people grumbled that those who used the most natural resources and produced the most pollution should shoulder most of the responsibility. That was us, and we did no such thing.
“When it all started becoming a reality, it went past grumbling. There were UN sanctions calling on the US to help the countries hardest hit by the disaster, and we did no such thing. We had lots of enemies. Who knows who finally acted?”
“What about Chicago?” Amy asked, bringing him back to his narrative.
“Oh yes, Chicago,” he mused. “Where was I? Oh yeah, at the outskirts. Oddly, when I heard the news, the only thing I could think about was my wife, Charlene. We had been estranged for over a year.
She was filing for divorce. Suddenly that didn’t matter . . .”
He broke off, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping his eyes. Ruth leaned forward and patted his shoulder affectionately. “That was another world, dear,” she told him.
“I loved her,” he went on, “or I thought I did. She had certainly loved me. I was so full of myself that I just treated her like crap. I was so above everything except my own greed. She lived just off of downtown, and when I thought I’d never see her again . . . something just broke inside of me. For the first time, I saw my life as one long selfish scam.
“So, instead of doing the smart thing and turning around, getting away, I sped up. I was going after her. I had some naive image of crashing her apartment door and hauling her to safety, hero style. All the way telling her how much I loved her, how sorry I was.” He laughed bitterly. “It was temporary insanity. I knew she was dead, had to be dead. Nobody that close to downtown could have survived. But I drove on anyway.
“I’ll never forget that night. It was unreal. I was roaring down an empty interstate with the twilight falling around me. On the other side, the road was jammed with cars, all hell bent on being anywhere else. I was the only one foolish enough to be going toward Chicago.
“Overhead, helicopters thrummed past. It was the National Guard, trying to seal off the city and coordinate the relief effort. They were too few and too late. I drove under their lines before they were even set.
“Just outside the city, I saw the biggest crash I had ever witnessed. It seemed to have just happened or maybe it was still happening when I got there. It was like a mountain of metal. There must have been a hundred cars, or so it seemed. For one second, I was enthralled, distracted.
“Desperate to get out, people didn’t even stop. They flung their cars ruthlessly through the ditch and over to my side of the road. Suddenly there were hundreds of headlights coming right for me. I swerved and crashed into the ditch. It was a bone-jarring halt, but the seatbelt and airbag held.
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