Rockfall

by William Allen

  “Look, Marta and I were talking, and we think it might be best if we head back Sunday night. Like you and I have been talking, we think whatever’s going to happen will take place over weeks, if not months. No sense throwing away our careers if we don’t need to at this point. I’ve only got another week before school is out. Then we can start looking at options.”

  I’d expected this, and really, I was fine with them getting back to their jobs. I said as such and the two of them visibly relaxed at my simple words. I wondered about that, but decided it was a conversation for another day.

  “We got a couple of hours before heading over to Wade’s, Mike. I’m going to spend it looking up some things on my computer and I suggest you do the same. Marta, I surrender custody of the Terrible Twosome back to you.” I gave her a little salute to finish off the change of command ceremony, and Marta gave me a grin as she returned the salute.

  “Uh, Bryan, the internet is still down, last I heard,” Mike mumbled, and I gave him a pitying look.

  “Oh, Mike , you are so cute,” I retorted, raising my hand and gesturing with my thumb and forefinger like I was going to pinch his cheek. “You know, back in the dim, Dark Ages, they had these things called discs, and if you inserted one into a computer, you could actually get information off them without having to log onto the internet.”

  “And you happen to have such things in your collection of CDs and DVDs, I take it,” Mike retorted, coloring slightly with embarrassment.

  “You would be correct. Britannica and World Book, to start with. Plus, I’ve got several gigs of data stored on a bunch of thumb drives. You know, what all the kids are doing.”

  “Smartass. I’ll get my computer,” Mike mumbled as he headed out of the room to retrieve his laptop from their bedroom.

  Marta watched until Mike was out of hearing and then fixed me with her penetrating gaze as she delivered her demand.

  “Okay, now tell me what really happened in Jasper. Spit it out, before Mike comes back. And fair warning, I will get the story out of him at some point.”

  I thought fast, wondering how my bonehead brother always got me into such trouble.

  “What makes you think…”

  “Blood on his sleeve,” Marta fired back without hesitation. “He tried to wash everything off, but clearly he failed.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” I responded glibly. “Mike helped with the wounded lady before the paramedics got there. I guess he forgot to mention that part, but it was no big deal. I mean, she was bleeding a lot but Mike handled it, no problem.”

  “And where was she wounded?” Marta asked, probing for information. I figured she would be pissed at Mike if the truth came out right now.

  I gestured to my neck, not wanting to get into the details. Marta nodded, but I wasn’t sure she was buying my story.

  “Bryan, you’ve got to help me keep an eye on Mike. I’m afraid he will take risks, unnecessary risks. For someone with such a big brain, he can act so stupid sometimes.”

  I couldn’t help but agree with her assessment, and I agreed to do everything within my power to keep my little brother safe. There would be no repeat of the Tractor Supply shenanigans on my watch. I just hoped I could deliver the blow without fracturing his skull.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The dining room was packed with grim-faced, anxious people who regarded me with a silence only broken by the shuffle of feet on the tile or the creak of wood in the gathered chairs. I saw a few attempt nervous smiles, but those were few and far between. These people knew, or could sense, that something was wrong with their world. That sense made them anxious, and I decided to dive right in and lay the groundwork.

  “As Wade said, my name’s Bryan Hardin. Some of you guys I recognize from helping out over here. I’m Wade’s neighbor to the north, and I have a law practice here in New Albany. I’m not sure what else Wade may have told you about me, but neither of those facts have anything to do with why Wade asked me to speak to you all this evening.”

  The curious eyes boring into me brought back memories of those days when I had a jury in the box. Like jurors, this crowd expected to be entertained as well as enlightened. They might sit through a Power Point presentation, but in exchange, they wanted a magic show first. I blame the education system and television, but they were going to be disappointed. I’d left my David Copperfield disguise in my other suit.

  “You see, Wade found out I have an undergrad degree in history. Not a big deal. There’s plenty of history teachers around, but Wade discovered I have a passion for Early American history, especially relating to the formative years of our nation’s birth.”

  That might be stretching things, but better they think of me for now as a dedicated Constitutional scholar instead of disaster junkie and collector of otherwise useless facts. Or a prepper.

  “The reason for this will become clear in a moment. Before we get into the history, let me summarize what we now know about the events out west. First, we have a big earthquake reported in China, or more accurately, off the coast of China. Magnitude unknown, but it must have been a monster.”

  “How do you know that?” an older man sitting in one of the folding metal chairs asked. He was older than Wade, probably in his fifties, with a salt-and-pepper head full of hair and frown lines creasing his sun-darkened features.

  “Remember when they had that bad earthquake in Haiti a few years ago? Or the one in Peru about ten years back? How long did it take to start seeing video of the destruction, or the efforts at rescuing trapped survivors?”

  “That day, or the next,” he conceded, then he made the connection for me. “We haven’t seen anything coming out of China on any of the stations.”

  “That’s right. So, China is off the air for the moment. Then, not long after, we lost contact with Hawaii.”

  That hit the crowd like a bombshell, but I’d confirmed this supposition on my part as best I could before this meeting. Hard to prove a negative, but I’d tried.

  “What do you mean, we lost contact? That’s a whole state you’re talking about.” The question came from a man who had to be Wade’s younger brother. One of several, since Wade was the oldest of eight siblings. That didn’t even take into account the numerous older people in the crowd I assumed were Wade’s aunts and uncles who lived in the area.

  “I understand, and with the internet off, this is hard to pin down. However, I’ve been listening to Amateur band short wave radio broadcasts since early this morning, and the consensus is no one has heard a callsign from any of the islands since shortly after the original Chinese earthquake. Now, that may be down to atmospherics, but if you all recall, the islands are perched atop a series of volcanoes. The fact is, I don’t know anybody who has had contact with anybody in the State of Hawaii since this all started.”

  I let the silence build before I moved on to the less controversial topics. Personally, I didn’t think the islands had suddenly succumbed to a massive eruption, since my understanding of vulcanism, though small, indicated these were less the result of pressure than the actions of the continental plates expanding or splitting. Again, I was just making an educated guess, but my money was on the Hawaiian island chain being covered by a massive tsunami.

  “When we started receiving reports of the series of earthquakes along the West Coast, I was surprised by the lack of supporting information. Again, no report of the magnitudes involved or even the location of the epicenters. These quakes coincided with the internet going down, which I think will only be a temporary issue as other servers are brought online. Again, no video from the scenes, and no in-studio reporting from their Los Angeles affiliates, for example.”

  I paused again, taking a sip of water from my glass on the table. I scanned the room as I swallowed the cool well water, and I saw questions now in the eyes of many. I decided to add a little more fuel to the fire, reciting names from my list but doing so from memory.

  “Mt. Saint Helens. Mount Baker. Mount Rainier. Garda Ridge. Lassen P
eak. Mount Akutan. Mount Wrangell. What do all these have in common?”

  “They’re all volcanoes,” came a quick response from one of the women seated in one of the folding chairs situated along the side of the room. She had a fair complexion, hinting at some Irish or Northern European genes not far back in her makeup, with shoulder-length, honey blonde hair coupled with pale blue eyes. I guessed her age to be in the upper twenties or low thirties, and even in her loose plaid shirt I could tell she had a lean, toned form that came from working hard in a gym somewhere. She lacked the typical Husband family features that I could see stamped into Wade and his siblings, with their strong Roman noses being the most obvious physical marker in common. In-law, I immediately decided.

  “Correct, ma’am. More to the point, they are all volcanoes stretching from California to Alaska, and all have erupted at least once in the last two hundred years.”

  That revelation caused a stir, since other than Mt. Saint Helens, none of the others were commonly associated with volcanoes.

  “I’m not here to tell you that these volcanoes, or any others, triggered the earthquakes being reported. I’m not a vulcanologist, and don’t pretend to be. I am a student of history, though, and that’s where my interests come back into play. Also, that gets back to why Wade asked me to speak this evening. See, when we were talking about the sudden wind gust and the nature of these quakes, it reminded me of something I’ve read about in history books.”

  “Back during the early 1800s, the young Republic was suffering from a number of problems common to a developing nation. Lack of infrastructure, poor finances, and persistent clashes with various European powers, primarily the British. We also faced another problem back then, and this was a period of weather instability that periodically resulted in ruined crops never making it out of the fields.”

  “What does this have to do with these earthquakes, Mr. Hardin?”

  I couldn’t be sure of the speaker, but it sounded like Esther, Wade’s mom, and I decided to cut to the chase.

  “This is why Wade asked me to speak here, ma’am. The worst time was a period between 1814 and 1816, and historians now commonly refer to 1816 as the Year Without a Summer. That’s where the earthquakes and volcanoes come in, ma’am. That’s when this country’s farmers lost a solid one-third of their crops, and that’s the last time we had a true starving winter across this nation, and across the Northern Hemisphere.”

  “Mount Tambora.” The younger lady who’d spoken earlier again joined in the conversation, and I suppressed a smile. At least one other person in the audience knew what I was talking about.

  “Yes, ma’am. Mount Tambora suffered a series of eruptions beginning in April 1815, capping a period of notable volcanic activity throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Arguably, this started in 1809 with a mysterious earthquake without a measurable epicenter, now believed to have been a seaquake in the Pacific Ocean, followed in successive years by several other large magnitude eruptions in the Japanese Islands, the Caribbean, and the Philippines.

  “These quakes pushed tons of ash and other particulates into the air, resulting in a global average decrease in temperatures of approximately one degree Centigrade. That doesn’t sound like much, but the biggest problem was the effects on the weather patterns. The winter of 1815 just never seemed to end, and the constant rain and overcast skies persisted well past the normal levels. This caused the grounds to stay saturated, causing terrible flooding, and nights of frost as far south as Virginia were reported throughout the entire year, including in July and August. This pattern persisted through the rest of the year and led directly into the winter of 1816, which was nearly as catastrophic as the one before.”

  “So you think this rash of earthquakes are related to volcanic activity?” the older lady asked, and this time I saw it was indeed Wade’s mother Esther.

  “I don’t know what to think, ma’am. That windstorm we had this morning was unusual, and it got me to talking with your son. I was unable to confirm what caused the wind, but it did begin as far to the west as we have available weather stations.”

  Wade, after introducing me, had stayed silent up until this point. Now, he finally spoke up.

  “Mom, I saw the same thing on the Weather Channel, but they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain where it came from either. Which is mighty suspicious.”

  “Mr. Hardin, you think there’s some government conspiracy to keep us in the dark? Does this have anything to do with your suspicions regarding Hawaii?”

  This question was from the older man I’d taken as one of Wade’s uncles.

  “I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea of it being a conspiracy, Mr. Husband. You’re one of Wade’s uncles, I take it?”

  “That’s right. I’m Doyle Husband, and Wade’s daddy Donnie was my brother. So you don’t think the government is keeping secrets?”

  “Oh,” I puffed out my cheeks a bit before answering, “I know they are keeping some things secret. Just makes sense. But I don’t think it’s for any nefarious reasons. If the president decides to sit on information for the time being, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I didn’t vote for the man, but I gotta respect the office.”

  That last bit got a nod of grudging approval from the older man. The idea might be old-fashioned, but some apparently still felt the same way.

  “Getting his bunkers ready for his cronies first,” Mike stage-whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, then faked a cough to cover it. Pretty juvenile stuff, but it made everyone laugh and managed to break the tension. Looking at the crowd, I could tell most of them were at least somewhat engaged in the ongoing conversation.

  “Like I said, I am simply a student of history. In that time, slightly more than two hundred years ago, the nation, and the world, suffered with a period of reduced sunlight and slightly reduced temperatures. This resulted in a whole host of problems, from the unseasonably cold summer experienced in the Americas and Europe, to droughts in India that delayed the monsoon season, to massive flooding in China.

  “At the same time, hundreds of thousands died in the initial round of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and no one has ever accurately calculated the global death toll for the period. Just a sampling of the more reliable records, though, showed over one hundred thousand perished in Ireland from the resulting famine.”

  “That’s all well and good, but what has that got to do with us?” Esther asked, then I saw realization spread across her face as she answered her own question. “You think the same thing is happening now, don’t you?”

  “I suspect it might be,” I conceded, looking first at Esther, then letting my gaze spread across the faces in the room.

  “Mike and I aren’t here to cause a panic,” I said simply. “That would be like yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. I am merely pointing out what has happened in the past, and how it might affect us today. I said as much to Wade because he is my neighbor, and that’s what neighbors do. He wanted me to speak to you all this evening, so each one of you can decide whether or not you want to make preparations in case I am correct.”

  There. I’d used the dreaded ‘P’ word, preparation, and I didn’t think I’d overplayed my hand. Wade might have figured out we were preppers, despite my efforts to remain gray, but his extended family hadn’t blinked when I used the word.

  “What can we do? If this is going to happen, we can’t stop it,” someone said, and I recognized the speaker this time as David Husband, one of Wade’s younger brothers. I’d met him here at Wade’s before, when we were repairing a section of fencing between our properties that had succumbed to a combination of old age and rust.

  “No, David, you can’t stop it, but you can take some simple steps to protect your wife and kids. Like I said, my goal isn’t to start a panic, but instead, to share some information that might be of some use.”

  Pausing yet again, I decided to wrap this up and pass the baton, but first I wanted to leave these potential allies with somethi
ng to think about.

  “We might not be from here, folks, but my people were born and raised in the country, not more than twenty miles away in Jasper County. You can ask around if you want to find out about the Hardin family, but one thing I can promise-we take care of our neighbors and stand with them when times are rough. When we were barely into our teens, Mike and I spent two days out in the fields with nothing more than shovels and wet feed sacks, fighting a fire that threatened to burn out two of our neighbors. That’s just the way we were raised.

  “To give you some practical pointers, I’d like to turn the stage over to my brother Mike for the rest of tonight’s scheduled entertainment,” I concluded with a bow and a flourish worthy of some old-style circus act.

  Stepping away from the open area in front of the table, I headed for the only empty corner in the dining room and took up a spot on the wall while Mike finished his own introductions. I’d taken a two-hour nap at Marta’s insistence before making the short drive over to meet with Wade’s gathered family members, but the long day was threatening to overwhelm me.

  A couple of times I wanted to just drop the bullshit and tell them exactly what was going on, but Wade had cautioned us in private that a little bit of warning would go a long way. He flatly admitted his Uncle Doyle, who I now had a face to go with the name, was a survivalist who’d started getting his plans in order since the eighties. Doyle had a large chicken farm over on the other side of the county outside Fayette, and he was set up for anything short of a nuclear near-miss.

  While I’ll admit Wade’s admission regarding Uncle Doyle shocked me, the idea that he felt comfortable with that piece of information meant our own preparations must have been just as plain to Wade. So much for keeping a low profile and trying to stay gray.

  After Mike gave a little bit of background about himself, I listened to my brother’s words as he talked about the potential for weather instability and what that meant for everyone. Mike hit the highpoints, describing the need to food, water, shelter, and security. He didn’t use any obvious prepper terms, focusing on ways to protect oneself against threats stemming from the natural environment rather than Mutant Zombie Bikers.