Just after midday, they left the interchange behind them and continued on their way. The heavens continued to leak rain and the fields became harder to travel through, so they stuck to the pavement, traveling slowly on the broken surface, skirting the occasional abandoned vehicle, tilted piece of pavement or washed out section of roadway. About twenty minutes later, they consulted their map under the portico of a sagging motel office and angled west, off the main highway, away from Syracuse and its suburbs.
The C.B. was useless, bursts of static and people blocking each others transmissions. Thick black smoke billowed up into the air several miles ahead, about where Syracuse would be, and a plastic electrical smell hung in the air even with the rain. But they saw no one at all, not even animals. They were all happy once the black smudge in the sky had disappeared behind them.
A few minutes after that, a large herd of horses grazing in a field popped their heads up when they saw the trucks and then galloped after them for about half mile before turning and pounding off towards a wooded area in the distance. That kept everybody talking back and forth on the VHF radios for a while. Arlene thought possibly they were part of some range stock, and they were used to associating vehicles with feed. Lilly worried that they might be hungry, but Arlene assured her they had plenty to eat.
Conner had watched one large gray horse spotted with black on its nose which had kept pace with his truck. Steam had risen from his coat as he had stopped and then turned away into the rain. Beautiful, Conner had thought.
“Beautiful,” Katie said from beside him.
He laughed. “I was thinking exactly that when you said it,” Conner told her. “How big do you think he was?” Conner asked.
“Probably about 6 feet at the shoulder,” Katie said. “Big.”
“Got to be,” Amy said from the back seat. “Because we're way off the ground, and it was pretty much even with us.”
“Anybody ever ride a horse?” Aaron asked.
“Nope,” Conner said.
“Not me,” Amy said.
“Me either,” Katie added.
“It looks easy,” Aaron continued. “But of course I'd bet he'd buck you off pretty quick if he didn't want you on him.”
“She,” Amy said. “It was a she. And females are supposed to be better tempered.”
“Aim, I didn't realize a girl horse could get that big,” Aaron said.
“How'd you learn that, about female horses being better tempered?” Katie asked.
“It was a novel I read, Lonesome Dove. The horses, female horses, mares, had the best temperament. But you could get a male horse that was gelded, a Gelding, and they would be pretty even tempered too,” she said.
“I never read that book,” Conner said. “Wanted to though.”
“You can learn a lot from a book, I guess,” Aaron said. “I wonder what a Gelding is. Like a... like a specific type of horse I imagine? I've heard of a Paint. A Paint is a kind of horse.”
Amy giggled.
Katie nodded. “I always wanted to ride a horse. I went to Rochester once. The cops there ride them downtown. There were several horse farms that I saw along the way as well.”
“All the cops are on horses?” Amy asked.
“No, just around downtown. I was there with someone for a concert at the War Memorial. I was just a kid, so they looked even bigger than they probably were, but it made an impression on me.” She finished.
“Well, I'm pretty sure you'll get to ride horses,” Amy said, “We both will. Even Geldings,” she said and laughed.
“Okay,” Aaron said. “How have I got it wrong?”
“No testicles,” Amy said. “A Gelding has had their testicles removed.”
“Jesus,” Aaron said. His eyes looked hurt.
“Guess that would make you pretty docile,” Conner said.
“Yeah,” Aaron agreed.
“We'll learn how to ride,” Amy said.
Katie turned and smiled, and they touched closed fists and laughed. “It's going to be so good,” she said. They both looked over at Aaron who was still cringing. His lips compressed into a thin line. They both laughed.
~
Eventually they had to cut out channel nine on the C.B. For some reason the static, skip and occasional talk from Syracuse was louder on that channel than any of the others, and it would not allow the C.B. to scan.
It was better as far as everybody was concerned, not to have to listen to it. A steady flicking through the channels and the occasional bursts of static the skip offered was much easier to deal with.
~
Late afternoon found them on the edge of a large lake. The rain was still a low drizzle as they stopped.
Conner was driving the lead vehicle, so it was clear to everyone in that vehicle why they had stopped. The road was gone. The asphalt tilted down and then disappeared into the lake. Everyone behind them had to come up to take a look.
A nearby stand of trees provided enough protection from the rain to consult the map, but the map told them what they already knew; the lake wasn't supposed to be there. They were in the finger lakes region, and there were several small lakes scattered across the map, but none that corresponded to where they were.
“There was a road, cut to the right about a mile back,” James said.
“That's back toward Syracuse,” Conner said.
“That is where we don't want to go,” Dustin said.
“Can't go off road. The ground's too saturated. So we are probably going to have no choice,” Aaron said.
“Maybe the road will curve around after a bit, bring us back in this direction. If so we'll be okay, and we've driven quite a way, so it should have more than a few roads cutting across it going in the direction we want to go,” Conner said.
“Either way, we got to go back or swim,” Arlene said.
Lilly laughed.
“That's the truth,” Jake said looking at the road where it ran into the water. “Wonder what happened?”
The lake stretched away to the horizon. There didn't appear to be an opposite shore, at least not one close, Conner thought. “More damage from all those earthquakes I would imagine,” he said. “Limestone caves, maybe, that have collapsed. Lot of that around here. I'd bet it's something like that, something along those lines,” he said.
“Might see a lot of changes like this though, if you think of it. There were places in Old Towne that completely disappeared,” Amy said.
“Whole neighborhoods,” Katie agreed.
They backtracked to the next road, then took the next one going in the direction they wanted to go. That road, although broken and in some places missing short sections of pavement, skirted the lake at a comfortable distance. And even where the road itself was missing, the gravel base made for better traveling than the fields which were quickly becoming waterlogged, little ponds and lakes of their own. Conner had no doubt he would bury the Suburban even with the four wheel drive and the wider tires if he tried driving through the fields.
By late afternoon the sun was creeping from the sky, changing everything around them to a darker shade of gray than they had been seeing all day long. The back roads became wider, though still broken up, and soon they found themselves on the outskirts of what must have been a small village. It was hard to tell for sure. It was really just the presence of more buildings still standing and a few stretches of nearly intact residential neighborhoods.
They stopped at a large truck stop at the convergence of two major roads to top off the trucks' gas tanks once more. By the time they had located the underground tanks and then found a way into them, it was late afternoon, and what little light there had been was quickly fading from the sky. They decided to stop for the night and fill the trucks in the morning.
Within a short time, several fires were going under the long metal roof that covered the gas pumps. They parked the trucks in a large circle and posted lookouts. They had seen no one, and even the C B's were quiet, but they were taking no chances.
> Janna Adams, Lilly, Dustin and Nell began to work on getting dinner ready, while a few others checked through what was left of the small diner and a little convenience store that was part of the truck stop. They were both stripped bare. Not so much as a moldy loaf of bread rested on the shelves.
“Must be people around somewhere close by, probably down in the village,” Aaron said to Conner.
They were all back under the steel roof sitting on overturned crates and a few leaning chairs they had found.
“Had to be, but where are they now? They had to see us,” Conner said. He was carrying a portable V.H.F. radio which continued to flip serenely from channel to channel, picking up nothing at all.
“Might maybe left,” Arlene said. She seemed to gravitate towards Conner's group, even though she had come with Jeff's group, and she grew on you quickly, Conner thought. She had an open, honest face and seemed to be genuinely concerned about other people. Conner could understand. It didn't take long seeing people who didn't care to know where your own heart lay. Conner and several others had liked her immediately.
“That could be,” Katie said. “After all, we did.”
Conner nodded. The little town, village, or whatever it had been, had been destroyed. What was left of it had looked deserted. Maybe they had left, he decided. Dustin came around with a large aluminum container of coffee. Nearly everyone had acquired a sturdy plastic or Aluminum cup or mug during their stay at the large truck stop, strip mall complex and had kept it. It wasn't always easy to find a cup, even disposable foam or paper cups were hard to find.
The coffee was hot, steam rising up into the rain chilled air. The children were quiet and kept to themselves looking out at the falling rain. Even The Dog and Angel, we're subdued by the weather, lying on the asphalt, heads on paws, looking out at the rain and the darkness.
If there was anything or anyone out there that shouldn't be, they would let them know, Conner told himself, and so far they seemed as bored by the rain as everyone else was. But it wasn't really bored, Conner thought.
“What are you thinking about?” Katie asked.
“I was thinking this rain makes you feel kind of lethargic, dragged out. Even the dogs.”
“Kind of,” she agreed, snuggling closer to him, “But I like the way it sounds on the tin roof. And we should all sleep like babies tonight,” she said.
Conner listened for a second to the light drumming on the steel roof panels, then nodded. “Lethargy,” he said smiling.
In no time at all, a small pile of cans magically appeared, and one of Janna's large steel pots was heating up dinner.
The children were playing with a small pile of toys, overlooked by Lilly and Jessica.
“So, where are we?” James asked.
They dug out the map and began to go over it, but they had seen no signs, and even the small village had no sign that they had seen. The cars and trucks scattered around the truck stop still, predominantly, bore New York State license plates.
They had been angling across the state, so most likely they would pass through part of Pennsylvania or Ohio within the next day or so, unless they had dropped lower into the state. It would take more than a map to tell them that though, a roadside sign, something like that.
“Put over... Just over, three hundred and fifty miles on the odometer today,” Conner said. “Of course some of that was doubling back, the long way around, stuff like that, but we have to be close to out of the state by now.”
“We should have hit the thruway,” James said.
“I'll agree with that,” Jeff said, “Unless it's gone. Seems to be a lot that is gone.”
“We should have,” Conner agreed. “The problem is, there's so much destruction it's hard to tell where we really are. That lake for instance, that threw me for a loop. I just wasn't expecting it. That means there could be other changes. Well, actually that's a major change, so more major changes like that, or even more so.”
“Like?” Amy asked.
“I don't know. But have you noticed we haven't seen a lot of torn up, jumbled mounds of earth?” he asked.
Several heads nodded.
“At first there was, in Old Towne. Then all that rain flattened things out. Then before we left, we were seeing grass sprout up. Might be like that here. If so, it won't be long before we can't tell what's new and what isn't. This rain just keeps leveling things out. The warmth has the grass seed sprouting,” Conner said.
“You can still tell where the new earth is, or you could before the rain. The grass was thin, but you're right, as we go it'll get harder and harder to tell anything old from new,” James said.
“So how will we know when we get to where we're going?” Katie asked.
“Good question,” Amy said.
“Well, yeah, there is that,” James agreed. “But we'll know when we get to the mountains that we're close. Really it's all enclosed by ranges if you think about it. The first one has a few wide open gaps in it. We'll pass right through one of those gaps and we'll be in. There's another range that cuts across to the east, and then the tail end of the other range picks up there and closes off what amounts to several million acres. I guess it's like one very big valley nestled between those mountain ranges,” James elaborated.
“It would be kind of hard to miss the mountains,” Conner agreed.
“Other roads, anything like that going in?” Aaron asked.
“Old logging trails, and I mean very old. There's been no logging there in well over a century. But those roads were sometimes still used and maintained by the park service. They don't go in all the way though,” James said. “There are no roads that go all the way in. There have been no people in there. Some of that area has never even been explored, at least not since this has been America,” James said.
“Roosevelt, right?” Arlene asked.
“Yes, ma'am,” James said, “He set it up. Some land reclaimed and reforested, some never touched. Since then the Federal government has been quietly buying land and adding to it. We have the same thing here in New York, a pretty large area that cuts across more than two thirds of the state. People just don't know about it. But this, this cuts into portions of six states. Taking all that land from six states doesn't make it seem like that much land: a corner of Alabama here, a tract of Tennessee, part of Kentucky there, a short run up into Ohio and down into Georgia. But it all adds up; it's huge, big enough to have been a state in its own right when you look at it,” James said.
The area was clearly marked with James's black grease pencil on the map, and the area it covered was enormous.
“I never even knew about it,” Amy said.
“Me either,” Lilly agreed.
“I heard about it in school,” Katie said. “They teach about the Forever Wild lands. Some of it was given to the government to use for that, some of it was set aside for just that reason,” she said. “There are several other areas in the United States, some small, some big that you do know about and you just didn't realize that you knew... like Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon. Those are well known; others aren't.”
Nell and Lilly began calling people to come and eat. That at least seemed to perk up The Dog and Angel.
Conner got a bowl of stew and then went over to relieve David who was on watch so he could go eat. “Take your time,” he told him.
James wandered over with a bowl himself. They both sat on the back step bumper of one of the Suburbans, eating quietly, staring out at the rainy night.
“Think you'll have any trouble finding it?” Conner asked.
“No. It's so big it would be hard to miss it. If, or I should say when, we hit the next mountain chain, that will be the back door. The Appalachians. We'll follow them to the west, to Kentucky, Tennessee, and that will let us in. Somewhere in there we'll find a break in those mountains. There are two breaks really, the Smokies and the Blue Ridge chain. I can't see how we could miss it. We should be able to stand on those foothills and look at empty for as far as we can
see in any direction. No man made anything. There are just so many places in this world that you can do that,” James said thoughtfully.
“A long time to get there, you think?” Conner asked.
“That's a good question. Did you say three hundred and fifty miles? I'd say about twelve hundred total miles to get us there, so if we made this kind of distance each day, then somewhere around four days from now, give or take, we should be there,” James said.
Conner nodded, “For some reason I was thinking it would be this long trip.”
“It would be without these trucks. We would've already torn up a couple of regular trucks. A regular truck couldn't get over a foot drop in the road level, or sand instead of pavement, with the mud we've had to deal with either for that matter,” James said.
“Even so, I'm not so sure we'll be able to make that much mileage every day. We've been running roads, highway road, torn up, sure, but still good enough for us. This whole area is sparsely populated, and the closer we get, the sparser the population gets. Farm country, walking country, and that means bad roads, poorly maintained to start with, and now probably torn up so bad that they have become impassable.” He paused, took a bite of his stew, chewed, and thought.
“I think our quick time is going to slow down. Even so, once we get there, once we find it, we'll have a great deal of work to do, a lot of trucks to find. We've got, what? Eighteen drivers? Can Jessica drive? Probably not, so eighteen drivers, and we need trucks for all of them and supplies also, and I'm thinking some trailers on the back of a few of those trucks, and, well, we'll just run those logging roads as deep in as we can, get as close as we can, and we'll have to walk the rest of the way in,” James finished.
“It's gonna be a big deal, but it will be worth it,” Lilly said as she walked up and listened for a second or two. “You guys want more? Janna sent me, and she sent these.” She held some biscuits with what looked like blueberries baked into them on a large platter. She took their bowls and left them with the platter.
They both thanked her, declined the offer of more stew, and she went on her way. They stared after her. “Everybody has changed so much,” James said.
Earth's Survivors Box Set [Books 1-7] Page 59