Dust and Kisses

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Well, this is interesting,” Matt said, voicing a massive understatement.

  There were a couple dozen regular people walking back and forth from the front of the Hilton to the buildings across the street, not paying any attention to her or Matt. It almost looked like a normal day in the old city, as if she and Matt had suddenly gone back in time, and the city was alive again, instead of being a vast graveyard.

  About fifteen people in all were in sight, doing various things. All of them had ditched their leather coats and were in tee-shirts and jeans, or light dresses. And unlike her, they all seemed comfortable in the heat.

  She had to admit one thing. Without the leathers, they looked perfectly normal.

  “No one is carrying a gun,” Matt said softly as they kept walking toward the front of the Hilton.

  He was right. Not even a pistol. In fact, most of the motorcycles still had the rifles sticking up from slings or saddlebags.

  A young woman in a light-blue print dress was the first to see them. She stopped, smiled and came toward them, no fear at all on her face.

  None.

  Carey felt like she might melt into a puddle of fear, but this woman looked as cool and calm as a receptionist greeting someone at an office door.

  Carey figured the woman was about her own age, with a nice body that wasn’t hidden at all by the summer dress and sandals. The woman had brown hair, cut short, and a dark suntan. She also had a large wedding ring on her finger, and diamond studs in her ears.

  Carey was stunned at that. It hadn’t occurred to her to put on either makeup or jewelry since the world ended.

  As the woman got closer she said, “Hi, I’m Betty Ferguson. Are you two from here?”

  “We are,” Matt said, shaking the woman’s extended hand. “I’m Matt Landel, this is Carey Noack.”

  Carey shook the woman’s strong hand, but said nothing. Carey instantly liked this woman, and her forward nature, even though it wasn’t the reaction she expected to have. She had come up here not wanting to like any of these people.

  Matt couldn’t seem to stop staring at Betty, acting like he had seen her before, or was stunned at her attitude, or something. Carey didn’t know what to think of that reaction either. Was she going to lose the first man she had met in three years after just a day?

  “Nice meeting you both,” Betty said, giving them a smile that could stop any thoughts of problems. “We were wondering if we were going to meet some of the people already living in this area. You have time to talk?”

  Matt glanced at Carey, then he laughed. “That’s what we were hoping to do.”

  “Great,” Betty said. “Come on. I think it’s a little cooler inside. Dan and some of the others are going to want to meet you.”

  “Dan?” Carey asked as they headed toward the big front doors of the Hilton Hotel.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Dan Houghton,” Betty said. “He’s sort of our reluctant leader at the moment, reluctant being the main word.”

  Betty held the door for them as they went inside.

  Again Carey was surprised at how this group had, in a very short time, cleaned up the lobby. There wasn’t a body to be seen, the floors had been swept, and the furniture dusted. If the large overhead lights had been on, the lobby would have looked like a normal day. Instead it was being lit by a series of lanterns set around the big space.

  There were two men behind the front desk working on something under the counter. Both wore tee shirts, and one had a baseball cap on backwards to keep the bill out of his way.

  “Hey, Steve, have you seen Dan?” Betty asked them as she got closer.

  Both men looked up and stared for a moment at Matt and Carey. Then they both smiled.

  “Local residents?” the man with the cap asked, then smiled again at Carey.

  Carey caught her breath as the man’s gaze held her. He was handsome in a rugged way, with a smile that showed perfect teeth, and green eyes that glowed, even in the lantern light. She was betting his name was Steve.

  “Someone looking for me,” a voice said from off to the left.

  Carey and Matt turned to see a man in his fifties, with striking gray hair, walking toward them. He had the look of military, even though he was dressed in jeans and a casual shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  “Some of the local population has come calling,” Betty said.

  Carey wanted to say the only local population, but she didn’t.

  Matt stepped forward and introduced himself, then Carey. Carey shook the man’s hand. She had hoped to meet new people coming into town, just not so many on the first day. After three years of being alone and talking only to her cats, this was getting overwhelming very quickly.

  The man Betty called Dan seemed more like a father figure, or English professor, than a leader. He had a quick laugh, a smile that disarmed, and a deep voice. The most striking thing about him was his chiseled jaw, almost stronger than Kirk Douglas’s jaw line.

  Dan showed them back toward one of the ballrooms, where the smell of cooking dinner filled the air. They had cleaned out this big room as well, and the tables were in rows, with chairs in position. Clearly this was where they intended to have the group meals.

  There was something about these people doing so much work to clean up this area that bothered Carey. If they were just traveling through, none of this would have needed to be done, or at least not to this extent. This group, as far as she could tell, was acting like they were planning on staying for a while.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  Dan took a chair across from Carey and Matt. Betty joined them, along with the two men from behind the front desk, and two others. Dan introduced them all, but Carey missed their names completely. She had never been that good with names back in college, and now she wasn’t even going to try.

  Matt seemed a little surprised by all this as well. He made sure he sat close to her, his leg touching hers under the table.

  “Well, sir,” Matt said, starting off the conversation as everyone was getting settled. “You folks sure gave us a start coming into town like that today.”

  Dan laughed. “I bet we did. We scared a group so bad in Boise that they almost opened fire on us before we could convince them we were friendly.”

  “It’s the motorcycles,” Betty said. “It would scare me seeing a group like us coming.”

  Carey thought she might like Betty, now she was certain.

  “So two big questions,” Matt said, clearly wanting to direct the conversation at the moment. “Where are you coming from, and where are you heading?”

  Dan glanced around. “Well, I’d say a large part of this group is from the Area 51 underground testing complex in Nevada, but Steve here, and a couple others, are from Colorado.”

  Then Dan faced Matt directly. “As for where we are headed, we’re there.”

  Carey took a moment to realize what Dan had said. “Your destination is Portland? Why?” The idea of all these people staying here not only scared her to death, but excited her at the same time.

  Dan sort of leaned back. “Let me tell you a story, if you don’t mind, that might answer a bunch of these questions before I confuse the issue any more.”

  “Fire away, sir,” Matt said.

  “No sir, please?” he asked. “Just Dan.”

  Matt nodded. “Tell us a story, Dan. After what you said, I think Carey and I are all ears, so to speak.”

  Dan laughed, and then with a nod to Carey, started into his story.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CAREY SAT AND LISTENED intently as Dan spoke, making herself breathe slowly and drink regularly. The last thing she needed to do was pass out from the heat or dehydration in the middle of his story. That would be rude, to say the least.

  “Three years ago today many of us here,” Dan said, “and about three hundred others still back in Nevada, were working the regular day shift in the underground testing areas in the base the press liked to call Area 51. Slowly, as t
he day went on, we came to realize something had gone very wrong on the surface. The few people that were up there had died, suddenly and without visible reason.”

  “How long did it take you to realize it was all caused by an electromagnetic pulse from space?” Carey asked, deciding to give the man something to think about right at the start of his story. She figured if that didn’t knock him for a loop, nothing would.

  Dan and the others stared at her like they were suddenly talking to an alien. You could have heard a pin drop across the large ballroom.

  Then Dan laughed and broke the tension. “Actually, about a week, and it was the people in Colorado who figured out what exactly had happened. And remind me later to ask you how you knew.”

  Carey smiled at Dan and nodded. She had figured it was a good idea to let him know that she and Matt might be of use, just in case he had other ideas for them. Even though there was no sign of any problems from these people, the lack of trust was still there on her side, and so far she had seen nothing that major to change that feeling.

  Matt touched her arm, a sort of signal that she had done just fine with her question. He let his touch linger for a moment, then pulled away. She wished he had left his hand there.

  Dan went on with his story. “The base went into a heightened state of alert, thinking that the deaths were some sort of attack from some enemy. It wasn’t until days later that we actually discovered it wasn’t an attack on the United States, as the scope of the entire disaster was coming in from underground bases around the world.”

  “And from subs and big battleships and aircraft carriers,” Steve added. “On the big carriers, everyone who was above the second deck or near an open port died. But the metal of the ships protected everyone down below. Those survivors had a real mess on their hands, because in one instance, everyone who knew how to navigate had died.”

  “That would mean that thousands and thousands have survived around the world,” Matt said, his voice full of shock at the idea.

  Carey was just as stunned. She had figured there might have been a lot, but after three years of seeing almost no one, that thought had faded to a distant dream.

  “That’s right,” Dan said. “The electromagnetic pulse of the cloud that passed over the planet was just strong enough to short circuit the brains of everyone exposed, but not strong enough to penetrate too far underground, or through a certain thickness of metal. There are some guesses that up to a half million people around the world survived. Maybe more, considering how many people could be in subway cars or subway stations at the same time around the world.”

  “A half million?” Carey asked, her voice a whisper.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Steve asked, stating the obvious.

  “The problem is,” Dan said, “the half million are scattered everywhere over the globe, sometimes only one or two people in a large area.”

  Carey could vouch for that, but neither she nor Matt said anything.

  “Everyone lost family, husbands, wives, parents,” Dan said. “The shock was almost too much to allow any kind of order in any group to be maintained. For some people the loss just drove them completely crazy.”

  “I hear a large ‘but’ coming next,” Carey said. “It’s the buts that will get you in any story.”

  Dan laughed, the sound echoing in the big banquet room. “You’re right. But after a while, people wanted to be with other people, and the groups started coming back together around the world, especially those in the military. Some of us had maintained a sort of order on the bases, not knowing what else to do. Slowly, survivors started coming back. We also had one big advantage. We had kept the power running which allowed the communication systems to function around the world.”

  “Makes sense,” Carey said. After three years she had gone in search of other people as well, which had brought her to today, a day she would have never dared dream might happen.

  “A lot of very good minds around the world survived the disaster,” Dan said. “And those minds started working together to figure out how to best keep humanity alive without dropping back completely into the dark ages.”

  “At a half million,” Carey said, “the human race will survive. No doubt there, but you’re saying you wanted to help civilization do the same thing.”

  “Exactly,” Dan said.

  So far she was following everything Dan was saying, and was liking what she was hearing. So far.

  Dan went on. “This group of scientists and planners figured that the best way to keep humanity alive and growing, and to hold somewhere close to the current level of technology, was to have as many people as possible gather in central places around the world, form towns and cities, salvage what could be salvaged, and focus on the future and education.”

  Matt laughed. “So let me guess, these people planning this went back to the basics on picking these central places, just as the pioneers did. The places had to have good natural resources like water and building materials, good growing seasons, mild climates, and so on. Everything Portland has.”

  “Exactly,” Dan said, smiling at him. “Five spots in this country were picked. One area outside of Washington, D.C., for all the people who survived in the eastern corridor, one in northern Florida, another on the Mississippi River in the center of the country, a small town north of San Diego in California, and Portland.”

  “How many places around the world?” Carey asked, stunned at the scope of the plan she was hearing.

  “Fifty-one at present count.”

  “Fifty-one,” she said, softly, shaking her head. She couldn’t even imagine that.

  “And each place will be in contact with the others?” Matt asked.

  “They will,” Dan said, smiling at them. “Gathering places for mankind to rebuild, save what we can, and move on into the future.”

  Carey could feel the weight of being alone the last three years lifting off her shoulders. The death of Paine, her parents, everyone, had forced her into a way of thinking that had no hope, nothing but sameness, survival, and finally death alone. She had come into the city today hoping that wasn’t the case, but knowing deep inside that it had to be.

  Now this man was sitting her, telling her there was hope, there was a possible future, and that she could be a part of it. The relief was almost too much.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, and stared at her hands, trying to gain some sort of control.

  Get it together, Carey.

  Such a brave little girl.

  Shut up, Mother.

  Betty, who had sat down beside her, leaned over and put a hand on Carey’s shoulder, patting it for a moment before letting go.

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen next here in Portland,” Dan said, ignoring the fact that she was having a moment of trouble. “Two more groups are coming in on bikes tomorrow. Those of us here already are going to spend the next day getting an area of the city ready for them, bringing in supplies, cleaning rooms, working on the water systems, setting up generators. We hope to have this two square block area livable in very short order.”

  “Then what?” Matt asked.

  “We clear a two-way road from here to the airport,” Dan said, “while continuing to clean up larger and larger areas of the city. Luckily, the bridges are still all in good shape, so no problem there. We just have to move all the wrecks.”

  “What are you doing with all the bodies you have to move?” Carey asked, looking up at Dan. She could just imagine these people taking a bulldozer and scraping the bodies into piles and burning them.

  “We’re giving every body the respect it deserves,” Dan said, holding her gaze. “We’re bagging each one and storing the bodies at the moment, including all the ones we took from this building, the street and sidewalks, and the buildings across the way. When we find the right area, and have the time, we will build a graveyard. We’re leaving all the identification with each body, and where each body was found, so each grave can be marked as much as possible.” />
  “That’s a massive undertaking,” Matt said. “I’m impressed.”

  “It was agreed by everyone in charge around the world that respect for the dead would be part of the system. The people that died deserve all the respect we can give them.”

  “I agree,” Matt said, “but why go to that much work?”

  Dan shrugged. “About all I can say is that it’s the right thing to do, and a hundred years from now, our descendants will be glad we did what we are doing. There is already a central database set up in Colorado that will track where each person is buried when that starts happening.”

  “Everything looking to the future,” Carey said, completely amazed that something like that would even be thought of, considering the magnitude of the task.

  “Everything,” Dan said. “At this point, the future is all we have.”

  “What happens at the airport?” Matt asked.

  “Once we get it secure and working again,” Steve said, taking over a moment from Dan, since it was clearly his area, “the rest of the people who choose Portland will start being flown in from Nevada, Colorado, and other areas. After that the airport will be used for what airports are used for now; transportation, shipping, and communications.”

  Carey nodded. Having contact among the major areas of settlement around the country and the world would be critical over the years.

  “How many do you think will pick this city to start with?” Matt asked.

  Dan shrugged. “We should have a population here, by the end of the year, of almost twenty thousand.”

  “Twenty thousand?” both Carey and Matt said at the same time.

  The number sort of echoed around the room.

  Carey couldn’t even imagine that many people. Her mind just sort of stopped as she tried to grasp it and failed.

  “And that should grow as more people who are on their own around the continent discover the five areas and move closer.”