He emptied the leader's pockets and took his good boots. This time the pickings were better. He gained matches, two fine knives, and a few silver coins. The dead man wore an old-time windup wrist watch and with no more batteries coming in that kind of watch was desirable.
He grinned at himself worrying about keeping time. What did it matter when he wasn't sure of the day of the month and hadn't anyone to answer to anyway?
He gathered the valuables into a bundle and left the bodies in the road as warning to others. The first man's sightless eyes staring unflinchingly at the sun were about as scary as the other lying there with most of his head blown away. Perhaps they would turn strangers aside. Probably wouldn't though. He'd left enough other bodies scattered around and still the scavengers came. So be it! If he had to he would pile them up until even the dullest learned it wasn't the way to come.
He shouldered the load and moved off the road into tree shadow. He would put this new stuff in the cave and then take a scout along Turkey Ridge. No one came in from the north but up there he could see most of Pfoutz Valley, and he could watch for smoke. After dark he could see if any strange fires burned around.
He surely wasn't a woodsman the way the early Shattos had been, but he was learning as fast as he could. It paid to keep in mind that those he was fighting weren't any better, and so far, they hadn't been as good. Still, one serious mistake and it could be him lying out there staring at the sky.
The thought didn't particularly stir him. There seemed little to be living for anyway. He supposed it was just that a man naturally held off dying as long as he could and made the best of what he had.
Memories of all that had been rose up and thickened his throat, turning his eyes watery and threatening to further sicken both thought and spirit. As he had countless times before, he forced himself to think of the now and of how much progress he had made.
His effort was only partly successful but at least he didn't lie down, curl into a ball, and just die—as so many countless others had.
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Chapter 3
Civilization staggered, convulsed, and collapsed in almost less time than it took for realization. Even the chronic doomsday forecasters were stunned into ridiculous exclamations of possible recovery that vied with pointless but inevitable "I told you so" condemnations.
Yet the good life dissolved not within the cataclysmic thunder of planet-destructive nuclear mushrooms (although there were some of those), and the atmosphere was not perpetually poisoned by radioactivity as many expected. Rather, the systems choked on their own greedy venom and short circuited the finely tuned coordination that moved peas and beans from fields to supermarkets, and ore from mines to mills to manufacturing plants at just the right times and in just the right amounts. The industrial world collapsed in upon itself and expired amid terminal whimpers, failing even to rally most of the expected violence or ferocious international vengeances.
A curious pattern of union-supported strikes in the United States was one of the triggers that destroyed civilization. It became impossible to deliver or receive, and nationwide, businesses staggered and contracted.
Already anemic and faltering confidence in the system collapsed into a panicked flight to survival goods and precious metals. In a desperate scramble to salvage what they could, foreign investors flung their dollars at any exchange rate offered and the currency lost its value too swiftly to calculate. Banks showed brave faces, suffered their runs, and closed, pending arrival of new funds. Within days no one cared, for the dollar was not worth the effort of collecting.
It was not a matter of printing more money. There was no time. A dollar backed only by trust that it would be accepted became not worth its paper, and people wandered about clutching their bills but unable to buy.
Many had written that, "As the United States goes, so goes the world." The words were prophetic as national currencies backed by dollars folded and the mills of Europe and the Orient closed with them.
Within the cities only suffering and panic prospered. Within a day food shelves were bared and nothing arrived from equally barren distribution depots where instant entrepreneurs reaped quick fortunes emptying their warehouses to highest bidders. Within days those paper fortunes were also worth nothing and the profiteers began starving along with the other unprepared millions.
Even then most institutions might have been saved if there had been an American leader strong enough to out shout a panicked media's pulings, or courageous enough to confront self-serving unions, and charismatic enough to rally the confused and fearful populace.
Instead, bureaucratic fumblers underestimated and jawboned until the final threads of public trust parted and the only cries heard were "Grab what you can while there's any left!"
Few Indeed saw the crash coming and even fewer believed what they beheld and acted on it.
+++
Toby Shatto saw it coming while thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic and forever after wondered if some amiable god had not placed enlightenment full blown and undeniable inside his head. A more reasonable explanation was that Toby Shatto knew something about many things and from them gained certain undeniable insights.
Isolation might have been a significant factor in Shatto's realization that the rich and easy life was about to end. For months he had wrestled without respite some confounding glitches in IBM's latest Saudi computer installation. Buried in his work he had paused only to gulp hasty snacks or collapse in fitful and circuit-ridden sleep on a handy cot. The job still wasn't complete but he finally had a handle on the device's idiosyncrasies, and given another week of tracing and replacing, the Saudi's vast, automated programs should function trouble-free.
The cable announcing his father's death was not entirely unexpected. George Shatto had been failing for some years, but an only son could not ignore the death or the involvements and duties dying created. Toby dragged his mind from the intricacies of a million circuits, dumped a few essentials into a single bag, and within hours he was in Egypt calling an old friend and waiting his stateside plane connection.
Not until he was safely air-borne and settled into first-class seating with a solicitous stewardess at hand did he have time to open his thoughts to the world that had spun on while he studied circuit boards and readouts.
A current news magazine grumbled excitedly about an imminent Teamsters' strike in support of longshoremen, railroad workers, and some local transportation unions that were already on the picket lines. There were even rumblings of aircraft mechanics joining in to further tighten the screws. Labor rebellion seemed always present and always about to escalate into some sort of total stoppage. Toby sighed and turned pages.
There was other foul news. Pathetic harvests had followed unusual weather patterns across the northern hemisphere and a savage blight had already stunted the usually abundant Argentine wheat crop. Bread prices were at all time highs with shortages expected, and without American and Canadian grain, Europe would be hungry. Conditions within the Soviet Union promised to be hideous. Toby Shatto again sighed and turned the page.
It might have been the Soviet encroachment into Iran or the violent revolution that had shut off Venezuelan oil exports that germinated a lurking awareness in Shatto's mind that this time the unthinkable was actually going to happen and the "powers that be" would be too little and too late to stop it. This time it all really was coming down.
He threw the magazine aside in disgust with himself. The great collapse had hung over the world since long before his time and still things moved on and the wheels kept turning.
He stirred restlessly looking across a cloud speckled sky and a cold blue water so far below that it appeared glass smooth. He supposed his father was in large part responsible for his half-baked expectation of world collapse with its concomitant chaos and human misery. George Shatto had warned of its imminence, and had prepared for it most of his days.
Well, his father had not lived to see the big one and probably he wouldn't eith
er. He tried to think of other things.
Of course there was America's more than a trillion dollar national debt and the fact that most of the national currencies of the world were backed by dollars. It had to be true that if the dollar failed, most, perhaps all, paper money would become worthless and all business transactions, big or small, would instantly cease. Whew, what a thought! No insurances or reassurances could hold the line in such a situation. He thought about how terrible that would be and discovered he was sitting tensed with his fists clutching the chair arms.
Somewhere over Newfoundland the certainty that a final countdown was well underway blossomed and burst from his subconscious jerking him wide awake. He vigorously sought to discard the acceptance and explain it away as due to some sort of sociological shock at being reintroduced to the bludgeoning insensitivities of everyday living.
His mind could accept the absurdity of man's frantic paced civilization and its possible impact on someone long sheltered from its bizarre ramifications, but he still knew with unshakable positiveness that the oft foretold collapse was really here. This time it would occur and it would be as terminal to humanity's hopes as even the most pessimistic doomsdayers predicted.
The reasoning behind a hunch is usually obscure and despite diligent searching and rationalizing it generally remains unproven until after the fact, but the successful learn to trust their hunches as they often prove correct.
Toby Shatto had acted on hunches and found them right.
On other occasions he had ignored them and been right again, but he could not recall any that appeared with the crystalline certainty of this one. Yet all of his evidence was old hat. The same super powers rattled their missiles, itchy little terrorist bands perpetrated their nasty violences in their many causes, and material shortages appeared and were absorbed with about the usual frequency. Somehow the vast human mass blundered on, its immeasurable momentum simply swallowing up and adjusting to every obstacle.
By any logic the systems should have imploded from their own massive inefficiency at least a generation past. Instead, planes flew, men reported for work, and farmers harvested. Perhaps they continued because for most there were no other choices.
Despite the worst that befell them, their community, or their nation, the people clambered from the devastation and life resumed in much the same pattern it always had.
He signaled a stewardess for a cool drink and accepted both her brightly professional smile and a small plastic cup with ice and three adequate swallows of an unidentifiable soft drink. He supposed it was Coke but who could tell without a label?
He sipped the cool wetness, allowing himself to wonder at the strength of this particular hunch and playing at what methods he could use to prove or disprove his suddenly inspired awareness. He had to grin at that. Any worthwhile programming would easily convince a computer that everything was overdue to collapse. Half the people he might talk to would agree that things couldn't go on the way they were, and none of them would expect any improvement.
There were always the Pollyannas who just knew that God or fate or something would see them through. Well, the evidence was on the optimists' side as to date at least, something always had seen them through.
Still, existence was proving to be a losing campaign. Humanity promiscuously reproduced and found ways to keep the breathing alive ever longer. In so doing it savaged all around it. The soil grew weak and the air soured from overuse. Pure water was a rare treasure and the sea creatures were turning belly up as mankind increasingly fouled even their vast environment.
Something had to give, it would seem, but men had been saying so since they had learned to write.
Of course a million and one fools before him had sensed an approaching end and had marched to the center of a desert or to the summit of a convenient peak to welcome their apocalypse.
Would he too act the fool and wait expectantly for an ultimate upheaval while life marched blithely along, unaware of its duty to disintegrate on schedule? The thought made him grin but failed to shake his certainty.
Acutely disturbed, he could feel his heart pump as though he had been running, and he needed to talk about it with someone rational and knowing. He looked around the sparsely occupied first class section of the big Boeing but saw no prospects. Most were typical, moneyed lightweights as stereotyped by their designer clothing as a Texan was by his big hat.
It probably wasn't the time or place to sound demented anyway, and he sat back to stew within his own thoughts and try to come to terms with the possibility that he was right.
And if he couldn't shake his new found belief in civilization's fast approaching doom, what then? The thoughts that rose shook his soul and lent anxiety to his reasoning.
++
Chapter 4
Crossing the Clark's Ferry Bridge brought a swell of nostalgia and the early fall air smelled crisper with more than a hint of forest in it. The old bridge took some concentrating with the guardrail running too close to the fender and oncoming traffic hugging the center line. Despite a dozen studies and a thousand promises, the crumbly old structure had not been replaced and rush hour traffic bottlenecked at the river as it had for all of his days.
He turned the rental north along Routes 11 and 15, sniffing at the good Perry County smells and recalling younger years when carloads of Liverpool and Greenwood youths had barreled down the highway heading for big doings in Harrisburg that rarely met expectations before racing back with appropriate stops at McDonald's or the Trail Diner.
New Buffalo fell behind and he made a quick loop through Liverpool before heading west on 17. If anything important had changed in Liverpool since his last visit a few years before he did not detect it. The empty ghost of the old brick school stared silently and he thought it a shame that local schools had folded in the name of efficiency.
They'd all lost special bonds of community closeness when the schools closed, but on the other hand, he hadn't gone to school in Liverpool anyway. It did seem somehow significant that the ground floor windows were carefully boarded while many of the upper windows were broken, probably by thrown rocks. Nobody cared, he supposed.
A saw sharpening service had opened in Stailey Brothers old tin shop and the passing of that many-generationed landmark did constitute change. He always had to fight annoyance that things changed while he was away, Somehow he expected the same people to be doing the same tasks while only he progressed, it was dumb, but the feeling persisted,
He cruised slowly west on the valley road, dodging the worst of the potholes and remembering when the blacktop had been regularly renewed so that a good driver could go his limit without worrying about a chuck hole breaking an axle or tossing him into a ditch. Astronomical oil prices had ended that. Maintaining the roads was almost prohibitively expensive and future costs of oil-based road surfacing appeared even more impossible. Then he remembered what he believed was coming and speculated that very shortly it wasn't going to matter much.
He bumped up the long lane that wound its poorly graded course to the old house. Trees closed in tightly on each side and stout branches wove above to form a shaded tunnel. George Shatto had cherished his lane and enjoyed every jolting bump and lurch as much as he had its shadowed privacy. As long as he could struggle through without losing muffler or tail pipe he considered his lane just right. No one casually drove into George Shatto's place—which was just the way he had wanted It.
The farm itself backed up against Turkey Ridge and included one hundred and eighty acres. About ninety acres lay in open fields, the rest was thickly wooded with mixed pines and hardwoods. Game lived on the Shatto place because old George ran off most hunters and took little for himself.
Deer would have been thicker if more corn had been planted but George Shatto had funny ideas; the deer browsed on other farms and safely bedded on the Shatto place.
The wooden farmhouse appeared unchanged. Paint had long peeled and the building was anything but plumb. Wide porches, sagging comfor
tably on three sides were cluttered with outdated farming implements in various stages of disrepair. "Survival tools" his father called them and rarely missed a farm sale where hand or horse drawn equipment might appear.
Toby crossed a porch gingerly and pushed open the heavy front door. If his father had owned a house key he had never used it. Although most farmers locked their homes as though marauding savages regularly roamed the valley, George Shatto figured that a locked door only announced his absence and that a kick or two would let anyone in anyway. As he had never been robbed he might have been right. More likely the criminal element looked for riper pickings where prosperity showed and a good shot with a handy rifle was not as likely to be around.
The house smelled old. Most farm homes mustered the same mix of aged wood and musty plaster. Cooked meat odors permeated kitchens, and without central heating, homes were strong of kerosene and wood smoke. Unlike the plastic impersonality of modern housing, they spoke of generations of families living closely with hard physical labors on the land that supported them. Toby felt at home with it.
He dropped his bag in his old room finding even a shirt he had left hanging across a chair still in place. George Shatto hadn't given a hoot about housekeeping and it showed. He walked through, glancing into each room, finding them cluttered about as should be. Only the gun room had been emptied and he supposed Jesse Holman, who saw to things, had taken the weapons for safekeeping.
Even his father's bedroom blended with the general disorder of the house. Expecting the world about to collapse for the last thirty years or so, George Shatto had bigger things to worry about than tidying up. Toby almost wished his father could have lived to see the start of it. His patient preparations deserved at least a few "I told you so's."
Shatto's Way Page 2