Earth's Survivors Box Set [Books 1-7]

by Wendell G. Sweet

  The sight of the churning water seemed to break the spell that had held them, and the crowd looked to Jeremiah for guidance. Without hesitation Jeremiah began to move in the direction of a small hill a few hundred yards away. The hill had not been visible in the darkness, but with the false dawn, it could be seen easily. Jeremiah led them quickly, as the river became more and more violent, and they did not look back until they were standing in an open field on top of the hill.

  From the higher vantage point, they could more easily see the distant horizon, as well as a great deal of the river they had traversed.

  As they watched huge muddy waves began to roll down the river and overflow the banks, inundating the small town below them. Within minutes, as the silent crowd watched, the small town was completely covered by water. The waves slammed against the buildings, leveling most of them instantly, and all within a short space of time. The crowd was several hundred feet above the water as they watched, but even from that distance the spray from the water reached them. No one spoke, no one needed to, their situation was self-evident, and there was little they could do except watch.

  The water continued to rise for the next several minutes, and then suddenly began to recede, the river growing less violent as it did.

  "What do you think happened to the others, on the boats?" Jeremiah asked Jacob.

  "No way to tell, but it can't be good. We did try to stop them though, Jeremiah," he shrugged his shoulders helplessly, "they wouldn't listen."

  "I know that, Jake...it just seems such a waste to me."

  Jeremiah turned his eyes back to the western horizon. The fiery red sky had dimmed somewhat, a very small amount, but it was still perceptible.

  "Volcanic eruption then?" Jeremiah asked and looked around, finally stopping at Gary.

  Gary shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, Jeremiah. I'd guess the missiles didn't go off though, if they had we would have at least been hurt, probably killed. Do volcanoes have fallout" he shrugged his shoulders again, "we'll have to wait and see. Maybe only a small amount, maybe none, maybe a lot. Ash... Rains... I... I don't know."

  "You think it's safe to stay here though?"

  "Safe as anywhere right now," Gary answered. “The river churned up and then calmed down. Probably from the earthquake that came with the eruption. I can't say there won't be more, but we should be safe here now.”

  Jeremiah made up his mind quickly, and then turned to the crowd. There was no need to raise his voice to be heard, the crowd was subdued, and tired, and what little conversation there was, was halfhearted at best.

  "Okay folks, we're staying here for a while," he started, "see what you can do to help your neighbors. Lets’ get some food going, and some tents up," he turned to Gary. "Kin you take charge of the tents... make sure the Doc has a place to put the wounded?"

  "I'm on it," Gary replied.

  Joe walked forward, along with Becky and Jessie, and another couple whose names Jeremiah could not recall. "Joe can you take charge of the food, see that everyone has a hot meal to eat?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay folks, these are the people to see," Jeremiah continued, once again speaking to the crowd, "they'll tell you what's needed."

  Jeremiah turned his attention to Jacob, as the crowd began to organize. "Jake, do you know where we are?"

  "Not exactly, but I do know we have to be close to a couple of small towns."

  "What about cities?"

  "Not big ones, I don't think, but a couple of good sized towns, maybe a smaller city or two, within five miles or so."

  "Feel like doing a little walking? You, me, maybe a couple of others?"

  "Sure, Jeremiah, what do you have in mind?"

  "Moving all of us, somehow, getting a better idea of exactly where we are to boot."

  "I'm with you," Jacob replied, "but what are you thinking about to move us?"

  "Some sort of buses maybe. Whatever we can find that'll still run."

  "Maybe," Jacob agreed.

  "We kin only try," Jeremiah said softly, "if not we're in for an awful long walk, Jake."

  "To where?"

  "Oklahoma, Jake, at least for starters." Jacob nodded his head as Jeremiah finished. An hour later, with a small group of twenty men, they began walking, following a traffic packed state route out of the small town. Jeremiah led the way, walking slowly, favoring his injured leg.

  THIRTEEN

  Willie fought hard, but in the end Luther simply slipped away. There was nothing Willie could do. He possessed no hands with which to hold him. He could only wish him held, and although that had worked at first, Luther had eventually overcome it and... gone, he supposed. But gone where, and how had he gone? Had he thought himself away? If so, where had he thought himself to? Willie had been able to sense his confusion. Luther had known no more about where they were than he had, how could you find your way out of a place, if you had no idea where that place was? At the end, just before he had suddenly pulled himself away, he had been afraid, or at least Willie had sensed something like fear from Luther.

  He tried to feel the surrounding space with his mind, but came up with the same set of answers he had already gotten. He was no place, no one place anyway. No known place. He possessed no sight, no sensation of feeling, no sense of smell, or hearing, it was as though he were floating in pool of water in a soundproof, and light-less void. Well, he reasoned, not water precisely, but it was like water, like floating in water.

  The only thing he possessed, the only thing that connected him to this place, was his mind. He could think, and what he thought seemed to alter his surroundings somewhat. He could think about movement, for instance, and sense that he actually did move faster through the void, but to where? This place seemed to be endless, and without time.

  If he concentrated he could still feel Luther, but he was far away, still in the dark void, but far, far away. It required a great deal of effort just to sense him, and he was pushed away each time he found him, until he no longer could feel him at all. He stopped searching, and drifted as he thought. He had passed by other... Things? People? Some sort of beings in the void while he searched for Luther, but he had no idea what they were, or even if they were. He was still drifting, thinking, wondering what to do, when something touched him, touched his mind, and he knew immediately what it was.

  You said you would come back, the something said. You promised to come back.

  I can't. I don't know where you are, or even where I am, Willie thought.

  You are here, this is a place.

  But what place, and how do I leave here?

  It has no name, and you must leave the way you came. Think of the place you wish to be, and you will be there. You must leave soon though this is not a good place. You will cease to be if you stay here.

  Almost as soon as it came, it left and began to slip away, but not so fast that Willie could not follow, could not sense where it had gone to, and he held on with his mind as the sense of speed increased.

  Soon he was flying through the darkness, hurtling through it, and just ahead... just ahead was...

  ~

  Willie seemed to glide back into his body, not his old body, but the silvery body the machine had given him.

  He looked around the control room of Utopia. He had expected it to be empty, but it wasn't. Several hundred people were gathered in the large room, and all were staring at the wall of screens.

  00:00:01

  Willie saw, and then...

  00:00:00

  The zeros flashed on the screen, and then in a split second the screen changed.

  MISSILES LAUNCHED.

  00:00:10 TO IMPACT.

  Willie sagged into a nearby chair, as several in the group, men and women alike began to weep. He counted silently to himself, unconsciously bracing himself for the end he expected. It had all been for nothing, he thought, he had come back too late, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  00:00:00

  He saw. Several screens had
shifted to the outside cameras that still remained, and Willie waited for what he was sure would happen. Explosions, fireballs, destruction. He wondered if that final destruction would finally release him from this body. From this pain, but as he watched the scene remained the same. Nothing changed. Nothing happened, and after a few moments it became clear to Willie that nothing would happen. All of Luther's attempts to destroy had been for naught. The software had never been intended to allow a launch like that and in the end the machine had not allowed it.

  Maggie Edison

  Maggie bounced the young girl on one knee, to quiet her crying. When the horizon had lit up, it seemed as though all the children had awakened at once, and as she watched the horizon, another group of the frightened children, ran out into the door yard where she stood. Most of them had come from the huge log home behind her, but several had come from the smaller log houses that ringed the larger one. All of them were upset, and crying, and Maggie looked around frantically for the older woman, but she was nowhere to be found, and even as she looked, she knew in her heart that she would not find her.

  She knew what the glow on the horizon signified, but the Yellowstone caldera would be erupting for years to come. Some as explosive as this one, some far less. She began to gather the children together as she wondered if Jeremiah had been safe from the eruption. She didn't even know where he was. She sighed deeply, Jeremiah would come, or he would not. No amount of worry would help it. She said a silent prayer as she moved among the children, for all of them. The children, the others who were not here, and selfishly, she thought, for Jeremiah.

  Frank and Jessie

  Jessie sat beside Frank, Becky to one side.

  The two women had not spoken at all, other than to murmur their concerns about Frank. Jessie had noticed Joe, and sensed the closeness that existed between them. Whatever this woman had once had with Frank, she reasoned, must be gone now, or at least subdued. She was obviously in love with Joe, not Frank, but it was something she could not bring herself to ask about.

  Becky had no idea what thoughts were running through Jessie’s mind. The woman seemed cold, and aloof, and had not spoken directly to her since they she had boarded the boat with Frank. Becky decided to approach the subject head on herself.

  "You asked me how I knew Frank," she ventured.

  Jessie looked across at Becky. She did want to know, but she also didn't want to know, even so she couldn't stop the words as they tumbled from her mouth. "I don't feel I have a right to know," she said seriously. “I think we came together,” she shrugged and covered her mouth with one hand... “This situation brought us together... That's all there is. Whatever the two of you have,” she looked at Joe briefly, “Or had...”

  Becky was taken aback at first, until she managed to make sense of the statement.

  "I didn't realize you thought that, I thought... well, I don't know exactly what I thought. I guess I thought you just didn't like me, I guess, but... But we were just friends believe me."

  The relief on Jessie's face was evident.

  "Hey?" a weak voice beside them said, "I'm okay." Frank groaned as he tried to sit, and Becky and Jessie both gently pushed him back down.

  "What makes you think we were worried over you, Franklin Morgan?" Becky said.

  "Well?" Jessie asked, as she hugged Frank tightly. “Feeling better?”

  "I'm feeling like I've been shot," Frank groaned.

  Jessie brushed his thick locks of black hair away from his eyes and smiled through her tears, as she said a mental prayer of thanks. "Big jerk," she said.

  "He always was," Becky chipped in, "and a softy too."

  "Arlene," Frank asked, "how did you get here?"

  "It's a long story, Frank," Becky replied, as she sniffled.

  Frank ran his hand over the mass of bandage that covered his chest. "Looks as though I have plenty of time to hear it," he said, with a smile.

  Jeremiah Edison

  Jeremiah and Jacob moved slowly through the deserted Streets. Sunrise was slowly coloring the sky.

  They had followed the Greyhound bus terminal signs, since they had entered the small city, and less than a hundred yards away the plastic sign loomed out of the early morning light ahead of them. They quickened their pace, and Jeremiah was relieved to see several buses in the parking lot as they entered the station. The Greyhound terminal also served as an Amtrak station, and a plan began to form in Jeremiah's tired mind.

  "Jake... I don't suppose you ever learned to drive a train, did you?"

  Before them, at the rear of the terminal, two coupled engines could be seen poking from the rear of the building. A long line of passenger cars wound away from the opposite end of the building.

  "Well, now that you mention it," Jacob said with a grin, "I did. Nothing as nice as those babies, but I think I could get 'em moving. Are we thinking along the same lines, Jeremiah?"

  "I believe we are," Jeremiah said, as they moved into the terminal building.

  The keys to the buses were easily located, and they started with no trouble at all. After Jeremiah had the first bus started, Jacob managed to locate a wrecker, at a small garage a short distance away. Jacob lead the buses down the highway, pushing what cars he could off the shoulder, and towing the remainder into the ditches on either side of the road, as they went.

  Willie Lefray

  Willie stood in the middle of the control room, staring at the wall of screens; he was still able to monitor the surface conditions with the help of POP-11's sensor units.

  He had managed to make the machine understand that human beings were not a virus, and Art, as Willie called him, had closed the air filtration system down, secured the facility, and powered up the air scrubber system. The facility had been secure once again.

  Utopia, and Bluechip above them, were designed to be completely self-sufficient, and along with the cities miles of underground roads and buildings, there were also several underground acres of vegetables, wheat, corn, and other essentials, already planted, and several acres ready for planting.

  The planted fields would yield more than enough for the slightly over one hundred remaining people. Meat would be a problem for a while however. A small farm had been set up, but had not fared well at all. The chickens seemed to have been largely ignored, but the swine, and cattle, which had numbered well over three hundred initially, had mostly been slaughtered. Six cows, one bull, three sows, and two boars were all that remained, and, Willie knew, if they intended to breed them, which they were already considering, they would have to be off limits for a while.

  Willie had assumed command with ease. Not with the iron hand that most of the survivors had expected, but with firm determination. It was not a job he had asked for, or even wanted, it had simply fallen to him. He suspected a great deal of it was because of how he looked.

  Although now clothed, it was impossible to hide what he had become. He seemed to require no sustenance of any kind whatsoever, yet he breathed, and the strange heart continued to click within his chest. It was a mystery he desperately wanted to have answers to, but one which he had not yet approached with Art. In fact, he told himself, I may never approach it at all. For him it was enough to be alive, no matter how it had been achieved, and although there was a part of him that wanted to know, there was an equally vocal part that didn't want to know.

  All around him people worked together to clean up the mess the control room had become, and it was rapidly approaching the neat and orderly state it had once been.

  For Willie it was amazing to see the transformations that were taking place. Not only in the facility, but in himself, the way he thought, and what he thought about. Beside the fact that he was still, Willie, still himself, he felt no connection at all to what he had once been. The memories were there, but they neither influenced him, nor caused him pain. To Willie what he had been was unimportant. It only mattered that he was no longer that person, did not think like that person, and would not be cast forever in the shell of that
person.

  He turned from the screen, retrieved a thick printout from a nearby desk top, and settled into an office chair as he began to read. The printout contained over two thousand pages that dealt with farming, a very small portion of the subject matter in Art's data banks, but he had to start somewhere, he reasoned.

  Me, he thought, a poor kid from the slums of Seattle, reading about farming of all things? He smiled at the irony as he began to read through the thick printout.

  Luther

  The speed increased dramatically as Luther sped through the void. Something seemed to be pulling him along, guiding him, needing him. Colors swirled around him, pulled at him. The void slipped quickly away, and he found himself falling for a brief instant.

  He slammed down, a solid surface beneath his feet once more, the impact driving him to his knees, his face very nearly meeting with the broken asphalt that lay below him. He lifted his eyes slowly, warily, and looked around.

  The colors that had accompanied him had quickly faded, giving way to an oddly diffused yellowish light. Evening, or almost so, he thought. In the far distance lava spewed into the air. An acrid odor of sulfur hung on the air, the wind gusted hot against his face. Luther rose slowly from the floor, smiling as he did, and began to walk, breathing deeply of the hot and acrid air, laughing as he went.

  Goodbye my friends

  Becky had talked for nearly three hours before she paused, she had done her best to explain the circumstances and events that had brought her from Washington. Jessie and Frank had listened intently, interrupting not at all.

  When Jeremiah had returned, and they had boarded the buses, Frank and Jessie began to explain what they themselves had been through, and by the time they had reached the train station, Jessie and Becky felt as if they had known each other forever.

  When Frank had explained what he suspected had happened in the house in Fort Drum, Joe had listened intently, but had said nothing. His story had been hard enough for Becky to believe, let alone anyone else. Becky had made the connection though, he had seen it in her eyes, but she too had remained silent.

  For Becky, hearing it had made her understand the reality of it, and just how much Joe had gone through, and she had squeezed Joe's hand reassuringly as they listened.