After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  The new baby Cyndi was carrying, the promise of the future that might not have arrived if they’d stayed in Glens Falls in the deepening winter, and the collapse of all the safety nets that modern society could provide—all of it meant that Nathan could feel proud that he’d gotten them this far.

  Cyndi had moved the hand from her belly to her cheek, kissing his palm and looking into his eyes with something like total love. She’d offered, “I know this hasn’t been easy, baby. And it’s still not over, but thank you. Thank you for everything. For coming to rescue us, for putting your life on the line.”

  “I couldn’t have done anything else.”

  She had nodded, and then thumped him in the arm.

  “Owww! What was that for?”

  “If I tell you to take antibiotics, you take the damn antibiotics!”

  And then they’d collapsed in laughter on the bed.

  “Mr. Tolley?”

  Nathan spun out of the memory and looked up from the fire. Jacob was approaching him from across the family room.

  Jacob’s children were rolling around on the spotlessly clean wooden floors with Tony, wrestling and laughing. Nathan had never imagined there would be warmth and fun and vital life like this in an Amish house, but he guessed kids were kids the world over. It’s only when we impose our ideals on them that they change. He only hoped that Tony would never feel the need to take on his father’s baggage.

  “Yes, Jacob, we’re packing up now. We’ll wait until the morning if that’s fine with you, and set off at first light?”

  “That is, of course, fine, Mr. Tolley. I wonder if perhaps I might speak with you as the head of your household.”

  “Sure,” Nathan said, smiling at the title he’d been given which, in so many respects, belonged to Cyndi and not to him.

  In the three weeks he’d been there and awake, Nathan had grown to respect the calm, gentle demeanor of this Amish man and his people. Of course, they had some crazy throwback ideas about God, technology, and the role of women, but Jacob was a man at ease with himself, someone who didn’t need to impose his will on others. A natural leader who people wanted to follow. The community of families he was building here was testament to that.

  Nathan had wondered more than once whether, if the cities were failing, this kind of new village living would be a way of facing the future with a shot at survival. The Amish skills with animal husbandry were second to none. They had constructed barns for their goats and pigs, had a ton of feed stockpiled, and were going out on a daily basis to forage for glass panels to construct greenhouses. If the weather didn’t change, greenhouses would be places needed to supplement their food stocks in the future through grown produce. In many respects, the Amish were the best equipped people in the land to stay put and fight the winter.

  “I overheard Mrs. Tolley say that you have a stock of seeds?” Jacob asked now.

  Nathan nodded. “Yeah, it was one of the things the scavengers weren’t interested in. Left them in the Airstream. We’re taking them to Detroit. Hydroponics is the future.”

  “Greenhouses are as far into the future as we will be going, I think, by the grace of God.”

  “You’re going to do fine here, Jacob.”

  “I hope that we will. But I have been thinking about your predicament. You have no fuel for your vehicles, and we can’t spare any of our horses, but I might be able to propose a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “Yes, Mr. Tolley. Would you come with me, please?”

  There were three pulling mules, bred from donkey and dray. In better times, they’d been hefty enough to pull carriages and plows, but no one was going to be plowing the iron-cold earth around the Amish settlement this year. Their bony shoulders showed that perhaps they weren’t getting all the feed they needed, but they were young, strong, and still sturdy.

  “You can have them, in exchange for seed,” Jacob said simply, thumbing his suspenders and nodding sagely.

  “We’d ride them?”

  Jacob threw back his head and laughed. “No, not to ride! To pull your caravan. They are strong. It will be easy for them. It will give you a place to rest if the weather comes in. A vehicle to carry your supplies of water and grain. The land between here and Detroit, although covered in snow, will have hay enough deep down for you to thaw and feed them. It’s not enough, perhaps, but it will suffice.”

  Nathan looked at the beasts. Could it work?

  “We have harness and tack, and I’m sure someone of your skill and ingenuity could find a way to hitch them to your caravan.”

  And so they would stay a few more days until the logistics of hauling the Airstream could be worked out.

  Cyndi and the others took out everything from the Airstream that was surplus to requirements—keeping only the bare minimum of equipment, the stove and the propane canister to run it, and mattresses to sleep upon. Everything else, the cupboards and storage units, and anything except the bare minimum of crockery and cutlery, even the toilet, were taken out so that they could reduce the weight of the thing and make it possible for the animals to bear it.

  “We’re pulling a trailer, not trying to get a balloon over the Alps!” Lucy had complained as Freeson unbolted the toilet from the floor of the Airstream. “I’m not doing my business in the snow! I’m going to hold it all the way to Detroit!”

  Supplies were meager. Rice, some grains, and tins of ham they’d saved from the fire at Marty’s. Naomi offered up a generous package of pork jerky, wrapped in hessian and tied up with twine. Jacob gave them two gallons of his blackberry cider. Cyndi reckoned that, if they rationed well, and maybe picked up some things on the way—if they were lucky—they should have enough for the trip. Just.

  Nathan and Freeson got on with converting the shafts and hitching bars from one of the Amish’s retired buggies into a jury-rigged contraption that would allow them to attach the three mules abreast in a driving block to pull the Airstream.

  They worked in one of the barns, but it was still bitter cold, and they could only stay out for a couple of hours before needing to come in and warm up in the family room.

  When Nathan finally hitched the mules’ breast collars to the buggy shafts he’d cold-riveted to the Airstream’s aluminum sides two mornings later, and walked them forward, the obedient animals complied, and the Airstream rolled.

  Two members of the party would walk out, leading the mules, while the rest would stay inside the Airstream. Freeson’s feet were still in no real shape to trudge through snow, so the leading duties would be shared between the others. Nathan’s attempt to have Cyndi stay inside the Airstream as well was met with a curt reply. “It’s not an illness, Nate. For a million years, we’ve dropped sprogs in the field and gone back to work in the afternoon. I can lead the mules.”

  Jacob’s expression was a picture to behold as Nathan was put in his place by his wife. But Jacob’s supreme politeness didn’t allow him to comment—he just side-eyed Naomi, who Nathan was sure winked back with a tiny grin.

  Jacob coughed and put his thumbs in his suspenders, indicating to Nathan greenhouses really were as far into the future as he was willing to go… for now.

  The Amish gave them thick overcoats that would fit over their anoraks and wide-brimmed hats so that, as they got ready to move out, Nathan and Cyndi looked indistinguishable from the Amish they were leaving behind as they prepared to take the first stint at leading.

  “Good luck, Nathan. By the grace of God, you will be in Detroit within the month.” Jacob shook Nathan’s hand and Naomi hugged Cyndi.

  The sky was gray, the wind a cold scythe, and the road hard to follow through the deep covering of snow, but even with the daunting journey ahead, it felt good to be on the move again.

  As the Amish settlement diminished into the distance and Saber trotted alongside—seemingly happy to be on the move again herself—Nathan wondered how long this all too rare slice of optimism would last. It wasn’t hard to imagine that incredibly hard times still lay
ahead.

  Later, when they were starving, near dead from exhaustion and on the verge of just laying down in the snow and giving up, Nathan would look back on this moment and think it had been the worst decision he’d made in his life.

  22

  Nathan fell to his knees, the snow reaching up to his groin with cold snowmelt water seeping into the material of his jeans. When the mules pulling the Airstream had crested the rise in the flurrying flakes of the oncoming storm, and he’d seen what they faced now, Nathan had felt his heart collapse.

  The bridge was out.

  The far end of the rusty, iron lattice roadway had collapsed into the river, turned thirty degrees on its plane. Even if they might have used the slope of the felled bridge to get to the other side of the river, there was no way the mules would get up the other side.

  The sides of the river cut on this bank were too steep to get the Airstream down to the frozen river, and there were ten miles—two days of hard walking—behind them, all of which would have to be traversed again in order to get back to the road connecting this backroad to a tributary highway near Doland Creek, that would inch them nearer to Detroit.

  The river here was only fifty yards or so across, but the far bank might as well have been on Mars, so far was it from their ability to cross it.

  Nathan’s guts were hollow, and had been since the food had run out five days before, but this kick in the belly made the grinding pain of hunger even worse. The sores on his lips spoke of malnutrition and neglect, and his beard was straggly and crisp with ice, but this pain felt like a last straw.

  The mules were exhausted, hardy though they were, and fed better than the humans in the party since tree bark and dead vegetation were easy enough to harvest for them from beneath the wintry covering on the roadside.

  The last storm they’d been dealt had kept them battened down for three days and made it impossible to hunt, even when the food, rationed heroically by Cyndi, had run out at last. Their final meal of cold rice—the stove long since having run out of propane—hadn’t filled a single belly.

  Every city, town, or farm they’d passed along the way in the last six weeks had either been burned-out or desolate. They’d found nothing to eat. Where in early summer they might have expected to find fruit or tubers in the ground or on bushes, anything along those lines had been denied to them by this seemingly endless winter. And the hunting had not been good, either. Every day, Nathan, Freeson, Syd, and Lucy would go out in pairs to see what they could trap or shoot… and they had shot nothing. They set snares overnight, which were still empty loops in the morning. If jackrabbits and rodents were around, they were still hibernating, and they certainly weren’t breeding.

  Even Saber was eating whatever she found instead of bringing it home to share, and what she did retrieve wasn’t enough for even her, judging by her reduced heft and nightly whimpering.

  “What will we do?” Cyndi asked, squatting down next to Nathan as the mules moved their feet to stop them from freezing, her voice as strained as Nathan’s heartstrings. She was cradling her seven-month swelling with hands and arms that, when out of their coverings, were as thin as sticks. The baby inside her was still moving, but it was taking everything and anything Cyndi put into her body before such sustenance had a chance to pass any energy on to Cyndi. Her eyes were surrounded by black circles, and her lips and nostrils were a mess of red, crusty-topped sores.

  The others jumped down from the Airstream to see what was causing the holdup. They approached slowly, no ability to do anything else, like gray wraiths in the flurries.

  “I have no idea,” was all that Nathan could find to say.

  The intensity of the snowfall increased steadily, flakes settling on the brim of Nathan’s Amish hat and on his shoulders. Soon, he would be a snowman staring into a white abyss, and right now he didn’t care.

  Take me. I got nothing.

  Freeson limped up to stand beside Nathan, his knees still down in the powder. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

  Nathan just shook his head.

  Freeson put his hand underneath Nathan’s arm and pulled on him. “Come on, fella, and get out of the snow. Cyndi needs your balls to make more kids; you freeze them off and she’s gonna be asking me to deputize.”

  Under any other circumstance, Nathan would have found Freeson’s crudeness funny or shocking, but he felt so empty, so wasted, that there were no words in his throat to be spoken, and no energy to change his expression away from one of blank misery. Hunger wasn’t just a physical thing, he’d found in the last week or so. However much it crippled the body, its hollow agony also wrapped an iron band around Nathan’s mind and squeezed away any last drops of faith in his ability to get his family to Detroit, pushing them out to disappear into the murderous winter.

  Family First.

  Oh, kiss off, Dad.

  They were done. This was the end.

  Eventually, Cyndi and Freeson got Nathan back into the Airstream and out of his wet clothes. He hadn’t resisted as they’d pulled him to his feet and walked him gently back inside. The situation in the trailer did little to raise Nathan’s mood, though, such was the pall of resignation and defeat that hung there like a black cloud.

  Tony hadn’t moved from the bed for some hours, laying still, his eyes closed and his belly rumbling loud enough for everyone to hear. Lucy was sobbing, curled up on the mattress she shared with Freeson at night, her knees drawn up and her shoulders spasming with every sob.

  Donie and Dave sat silently together, occasionally fingering their battery-dead tech. They’d had to leave much of their gear back with the Amish on the promise that, when they could, they’d be able to go back and collect it. They’d kept the base station, the walkie-talkies, and some solar trickle chargers, but the last storm had ripped those from the roof of the Airstream and cast them away into the night.

  Only Syd was alert and ready to move around.

  “Saber, come on, girl!” she said, and with that she opened the door, letting in a flurry of snow. The dog leapt up from where she had been lying next to Tony, transmitting her warmth to the boy.

  “You can’t go out,” Cyndi said to the teenager. “The storm will hit soon.”

  “I’m not going far. Saber will get me back. I’m going to see what I can get us for dinner.” She picked up an AR-15 and a pistol from where they’d been stowed in a rack beside the door and jumped down into the snow.

  Nathan heard all this with his head between his knees, a blanket around his shoulders, the dark welling up from his belly and fogging his brain. He couldn’t clear the doom from his thinking. The collapsed bridge had finally forced him to give up trying.

  Six weeks of hard traveling, moving five miles a day when they could and weren’t pinned down by storms, had taken its toll on everyone. Nathan had kept spirits high when he could, motivating and cajoling the others. Aping Jacob Anderson’s calmness, bearing, and self-belief… trying to spread it among the others, driven by the optimism he’d felt as they’d left the settlement that first day. At first, it had worked, and Nathan had suddenly been the leader the group needed. Cyndi’s skillsets were overburdened by her being the ‘go-to’ persona of the group in terms of survival decisions. Nathan had felt he could take on that mantle fully after all they’d been through, leaving the cooking and the details to her, and for a couple of weeks it had gone well.

  But every dead house and empty town and burning city they’d passed had been another puncture in the skin of his resolve. The storms that lashed down on them, sometimes entirely without warning, meant that they couldn’t travel as far as they wanted. They just couldn’t pass up a house or farm to stable the mules if they felt a storm was imminent. This meant that, some days, they traveled only a pittance of miles before losing their nerve and camping for the duration of a storm.

  Donie and Dave did what they could with the maps and satellites, but without an engine running to charge their tech, navigation was soon lost to them when the trickle
chargers had been lost to the squall. The ash-filled sky made navigating by starlight impossible, and during the day, the sun was so weak in the sky you hardly knew it was there.

  Whatever had turned the Earth off its axis and caused the poles to shift had not stopped. It was as if the harshness of the east coast was following them cross-country, so that it wouldn’t be long before the whole of America was crushed beneath the white weight of the catastrophe.

  Dwindling food, too much time spent in the cold, and the exertion of walking the mules had chipped away at Nathan’s health. Although Naomi’s attentions at the settlement had helped him back to a semblance of normality, the shock to his system caused by the fever and coma had taken a heavy toll on his stamina. One hour out leading the mules and he felt near collapse. The fact that he often stayed out two hours was his undoing each time. He would almost have to crawl back into the Airstream on his hands and knees. And there he’d lay, chest heaving, trying to regain enough strength to go back out and walk with the animals to relieve Cyndi as quickly as he could, and well before he was fully recovered. This situation had soon made any progress towards Detroit a near miracle.

  When the propane had been exhausted, they’d had to chop wood to make fires, but days of hard walking, low food, bad hunting, and the withering effects of the cold made even the act of chopping wood for a fire a near impossible chore.

  Tempers were frayed at all ends, for all of the group. Conversations were short, and devoid of humor or care. Just the bare bones of conversations were had, no one having the energy for anything more. Navigation was blind because the necessity of staying off highways and expressways to keep away from marauding gangs meant exclusively traveling on backroads. And these backroads were poorly signposted and, sometimes, like today, paths to dead ends—with the emphasis on the dead…

  Some days, Nathan and the others had to choose between making a camp, chopping enough wood for a fire, and getting exhausted and staying there two nights, or just making camp, chopping no wood, getting no warmth, and then moving on the next day with enough energy to go even five miles.