Earthbound

by Joe Haldeman

  Back at the snack bar alcove, we let Katie and Wilbur stuff their pockets and two bags, then arranged the rest into piles according to shelf life, so we could put the relatively perishable things on top. Fruit and sandwiches that had been refrigerated. A drink machine yielded ten liter bottles of water and a couple dozen less useful soft drinks and near beer.

  My rolling cart would hold about a quarter of the bounty. Nobody turned up anything like knapsacks, but a storage room had a drawer full of random sizes of cloth bags. Together we could carry all of the water and most of the food. We could leave behind most of the soft drinks and near beer.

  Snowbird insisted on carrying two light bags of snacks, though she couldn’t eat any of it. She refused water. “I can live a week or more without it. I come from a dry planet.” And she wasn’t going to last a week unless they turned the power back on.

  Katie and Wilbur wished us luck and headed home, facing hours of walking. Neither had family to worry about, but Katie had cats and fish to feed.

  “Might as well feed the fish to the cats,” Meryl said after they left. “Or fry them up.”

  Namir was watching them go. “Seem to be nice people. But you never know. They might be back, with others.”

  “Maybe we should start moving,” Dustin said.

  “We don’t want to travel in daylight. Especially not loaded down with food and water. There will be plenty of people out there with neither, but with guns.”

  “So let’s get some rest while we can,” Elza said. “Those of us with weapons stand guard, what, two hours at a time?” We made sure all the doors were locked. The windows were silvered for insulation, so nobody could see us if it was dark inside.

  I found a cot in a back room but couldn’t sleep, my mind spinning. What if we made the two-week-long trek without incident, and Dustin’s family welcomed us into the fold? What about the other seven billion people in the equation?

  There wouldn’t be seven billion after two weeks. Maybe not half that. I could hardly imagine what the crowded cities would be like. Even if the governments tried to provide food, water, and shelter for everyone, how could they do it without communication and transportation?

  When I was in school, we were told that the world had only three or four months’ worth of food in reserve. I suppose that in America most of that was in grain silos, thousands of miles from the population centers on the coasts.

  In an abstract sense, I supposed the very poor had the best chance of survival, used to living close to the bottom of the food chain. As if the rich would politely stay away, when the shelves were bare.

  I wondered whether Dustin’s family had guns. If they were pacifist vegetarians, we might only find their bones.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Meryl was shaking my shoulder, whispering, “We’ve got company.”

  Namir and Elza and Dustin had their guns at the ready. Through the window you could see a ragtag crowd, maybe twenty, and someone was pounding on the door with something heavy and metallic.

  None of the people in the crowd had guns visible, but we couldn’t see the ones who were pounding on the door.

  No police or military uniforms. Most of them wore white name-tags.

  “I think they’re newsies,” Card whispered. “And VIPs, from those bleachers where they put me first.”

  After a minute, most of them moved on, by ones and twos. The one guy kept pounding on the door, rattling the lock. Then he left, too, carrying a metal pipe.

  Paul returned from watching out the back windows. “Couple of guys tried to start vehicles. They’re gone now.”

  “How could they start them without keys?”

  “Like metal keys?” Card said. “They just have a code you punch into the dash. Those are all N-A-S-A, Wilbur told me.”

  “What’s the firearms law like now, Card?” Namir asked. “Do people have guns at home?”

  “California, you can have guns but you can’t carry one without a permit, and permits aren’t easy to get. That’s academic now, I guess.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see how it shakes down. I wonder whether cops will report for duty, and try to enforce the law.”

  “Where we’re headed,” Dustin said, “I don’t think there’ll be much law. Maybe in small towns and some big cities, where cops can work on foot.”

  “Some people have really big gun collections,” Card said. “Dozens of working weapons. Most of them are electric pellet guns, though. Gunpowder and smokeless weapons are expensive, and ammunition is taxed like a hundred bucks a round. Plenty of military and police ammo around now, I guess.”

  Namir looked at his clip. “I’ve got a double magazine, forty rounds, and Dustin, you’ve got a single one?” He nodded.

  Elza held up the pistol. “Nine here.”

  “So we’re not getting into any gunfights. We have to assume that any group we encounter with weapons will have more ammunition.”

  “It’s not a war,” I said. “We shouldn’t even be thinking in those terms. It’s more like a natural disaster.”

  “Unnatural,” Dustin said. “I wouldn’t wait around for the Red Cross to show up.”

  “I have a radical thought,” Meryl said. “Instead of heading for the hills with guns, why don’t we try to find something like the Red Cross, and volunteer. Try to do something constructive.” That was so like Meryl, social worker to the core.

  “It’s a good thought,” Paul said. “But where would you go; what would you do?”

  “It would have to be a city of some size,” I said. “Where they might already have charitable organizations in place, with a substantial number of volunteers. With resources for emergency work.”

  “Like a computer network and ambulances. Helicopters.” Namir shook his head. “More useful, they might have first-aid kits. I wouldn’t like to be the guy in charge of guarding them, though.”

  “You think too much like a soldier.” Meryl sat down at the table across from him. “That may save our lives some day. But it’s not everything. If there’s going to be an alternative to chaos, to anarchy, we have to pursue it right away.”

  “You do that. I’ll keep you covered, from behind something solid.”

  “It’s not always about guns!”

  “May I say something.” Snowbird had all four arms folded, a posture communicating thoughtfulness. “I do not have a dog in this fight, as I once heard a person say. My destiny will not be affected by your decision.

  “Namir, your supply of ammunition is small. You have four seconds’ worth, and Dustin has two. When it’s gone, your weapons are dead weight.”

  “You can shoot single-shot. And we can find ammunition.”

  “But there will be people guarding it, who will kill to keep you from it. And how much can you carry? They won’t be making any more of it.”

  “There’s probably a lot of it around. But I concede your point.”

  “If you plan to survive more than weeks or months, violence is the wrong direction. When you run out of ammunition, what will you do?”

  Elza did not surprise me: “My husband unarmed is more dangerous than any two men with guns.”

  “A nice sentiment,” he said, “but I want to choose the two men.

  “But Snowbird is right, in the long run. Card, walking north, what would be the nearest city?”

  “Depends on what you would call a city. Custer City, technically. But don’t try to get a good meal there.”

  “How far?”

  “Twenty-five miles, I guess.”

  “That’s about as far as we’re going to get on this amount of water.”

  Card smiled. “Have you tried a tap?”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a spaceship. You turn on a faucet anywhere, and water comes out.”

  That caught me, too. Live on recycled pee for years, and you start to feel real personal about water.

  A shed outside had armloads of empty plastic gallon jugs. We didn’t take the ones that sm
elled of solvent, and rinsed the others well—just by turning a tap and letting gravity do the work. How long that would last, of course, we had no way of telling. You could see the water tank a couple of blocks away. One stray bullet could empty it. Or an aimed one.

  The sun would be up for a few more hours. Paul and Namir took binoculars up on the roof and didn’t see any gatherings of people: just a few individuals and pairs. Paul came down with a suggestion.

  “We ought to go find out whether our celebrity is worth anything. Go back to that headquarters building and find out what’s happening, anyhow.” A reasonable suggestion that made my knees weak.

  “I’ll come along as a guard,” Namir said.

  “No; no guns. We’ll probably be safer without.” He looked at Meryl, who smiled and nodded.

  I wasn’t so sure. We didn’t have a magic wand that would make other people’s guns disappear.

  Elza held out her pistol, handle first. “Paul, at least take this. You must have had some training in the Space Force.”

  He took it and stared at it. “One afternoon, back in ’62. This is the safety?” She nodded, and he put the pistol in his waistband, out of sight under his shirt. “Thanks. Pray we don’t need it.”

  I put two bottles of water and some snacks in a bag, and slung it over my shoulder. I’d lost my sun hat down on the beach, so pulled a faded NASA cap off a peg. Paul straightened it. “Now we’re official.”

  “If you’re not back in two hours, we’ll come after you,” Namir said. I checked my wrist tat and it was still 10:23, for the rest of my life.

  “Make it three,” Paul said, without suggesting how either of them could tell time—some secret military thing, no doubt. “Take us half an hour just to walk there.”

  “Careful by the bleachers,” Card said, unnecessarily. Paul nodded and went out the door.

  It was a relief to be alone with him, the first time since we’d left the billet at dawn. He took my hand and squeezed it. “You and me.”

  “Me and you,” I said automatically. A song refrain from when I was eighteen. Paul an ancient man of twenty-nine.

  We walked in silence for a minute. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “I’m still trying to sort it out.”

  “Guess we’re all still in shock.” He laughed. “Except Snowbird. The only one who knows for sure she’s going to die.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Poor us. Poor whole fucking human race. How many will be alive a year from now? A month from now?”

  “In a month, they’ll still be eating groceries,” I said.

  He nodded. “In a year, each other.”

  “Save you for last.” I pinched his butt. “You always were a tough old bastard.”

  We both laughed. Keeping that one monster at bay.

  There was a lot of trash on the road, with no wind to blow it around. Press releases and promotion packets, as well as cups and food trash. And this wasn’t the main avenue out; people who lived in California would be going the other way. Assuming they were headed home.

  A couple of hundred yards before we got to the bleachers, there were the first signs of violence. Dark spatters of blood, dried in the dust.

  No bodies at first, but then Paul followed a trail of drops to a place behind a portable toilet. A woman in sexy silver shorts, who had been wounded in the abdomen. She’d held it in with her hands for a couple of dozen steps, and then collapsed. Her guts were a pile of glistening gray and blue, awash in blood. Paul checked her pulse while I usefully leaned the other way and vomited. He held my shoulders while I gagged and coughed the last of it, and handed me a water bottle.

  “We don’t have to go any farther,” he said.

  “We do,” I said, my voice a hoarse croak.

  “It will probably get worse.” He started to pull out the pistol, and I leaned against him.

  “Leave it hidden. Someone might be watching.”

  “Of course.” He put his arm around me, and we continued up the road toward the HQ building.

  “Look at the brass. Someone stood here and fired toward the bleachers.” A scatter of brass shell casings to our left.

  “Or up in the air,” I said. “No more bodies.”

  “That’s something.” He stopped. “This isn’t smart. Let’s go back to—”

  We were maybe twenty yards from the entrance to the temporary building. A tall fat man stepped out onto the wooden deck, brandishing a weapon, and fired a burst into the air. “Y’all put up your hands?”

  We did. He clumped down the three steps to the ground. “Look what we got, Jemmie. Y’all from that spaceship. The starship. Saw you on the cube last night.”

  “We are,” Paul said.

  Another person, presumably Jemmie, stepped out of the darkness. He was also holding a weapon, and binoculars with a strap dangling. “Been watchin’ you. You come up from the motor pool.”

  They were both wearing NASA coveralls, spotless, with the fold lines still visible. Jemmie’s were a couple of sizes too large, the sleeves rolled up.

  “You work for NASA?” I said.

  “Guess we do now,” the fat one said. “You wanta help me launch my rocket?”

  Paul tensed. Don’t! “We don’t mean you any harm,” I said.

  “I bet you don’t.” The fat one stepped forward, his weapon on Paul, looking at me.

  “You keep it in your pants, Howard. Bet they got that god-damn Martian back there.” He stepped down to join us. “Don’t you.”

  “I don’t know who’s down there now,” Paul improvised. “You saw a Martian in the binoculars?”

  “He was with you all on the cube this morning, before it got shut off.”

  “And the other aliens did that,” Howard said.

  “Time we did something back,” Jemmie said, pointing his weapon down the road. “Let’s us go have a talk with Mr. Martian.” He started walking. “Then we figure out what to do with you all.”

  Howard came alongside me and put his big arm on my shoulder. “They say you was with all those men fifty years.” He grabbed my breast, hard. “Don’t seem possible—”

  I was going to give him an elbow to the ribs, hesitated, and heard a tiny metallic click. Then there was a huge explosion and a shower of blood and gore in front of me.

  Then some voices I could hardly hear, my ears ringing. At first I thought all the blood was mine; I was dead. But then Howard fell in front of me, hard, the top of his skull shattered, an artery still pulsing.

  I turned around and saw the other man, Jemmie, trying to run backwards, both his hands out to protect himself from Paul’s pistol. Paul had the pistol gripped in both hands, but they were shaking so violently he probably couldn’t have hit the man if they were in a small room together.

  I saw all this in a strange state of floating calm, realizing that the little sound I’d heard before I went deaf had been the safety on his pistol.

  The man was running like a sprinter now. Paul fired once over the man’s head, and stooped to pick up the weapon he’d dropped or thrown down.

  I looked back at the big man dying, his arms and legs moving feebly as the blood spurt slowed to a drizzle. He’d shit his new blue trousers. I leaned over and burped a little acid, and opening my mouth wide made my ears crackle, and some hearing came back.

  Paul came up from behind and gathered me to him, still shaking hard, sharp sweat smell and gunsmoke. “Killed him. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  I was still floating, stunned. “That’s the most religious thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  From Rear View Mirror: an Immediate History, by Lanny del Piche (Eugene, 2140):

  . . . there is no way to calculate how many people died in the first second, minute, or hour. A week later, when there was still food, perhaps one billion of the globe’s seven billion had perished. Failure of transportation systems and medical life support—which almost claimed this writer’s life—accounted for a large fraction of those deaths immediately. Most died in violen
ce, though, after the total collapse of civil and military authority. As far as I know, no truly large city, more than ten million people, survived the initial crisis well, except perhaps for the religious police states in the Middle East and America’s new Confederacy. (But I don’t think either would last very long without supporting technology to keep the desert at bay; without wealth to trade for water.)

  Civilization, in the broad social sense of the word, obviously has survived in smaller towns and cities around the world. This writer met a couple who had sailed from Australia to California, who said that life was reasonably comfortable and secure in a string of hundreds of fishing villages spread along Australia’s eastern and southeastern coasts, and in the Great Barrier Reef. Here in Oregon, we have had sailing visitors from as far south as Costa Rica, and as far north as the Aleutian Islands. No sailors have come from Europe, Africa, or the American east coast, which leads us to believe that the Panama Canal is not open.

  A few individuals and small parties have made it here from the East Coast and Midwest by horseback or bicycle. I’ve heard of people who walked all the way, but haven’t met any, and would not be inclined to believe them. That would be a long walk in less than two years.

  The tales these travelers bring are not usually happy. Most of the heavily populated parts of the East are burial grounds, or just boneyards. There are towns like this one, able to guard enough land to grow subsistence crops, and keep a moderately large population safe from marauders.

  Of course these towns tend to be on rivers or lakes, in temperate or warmer climes. The surviving population of Florida is probably ten times that of New England.

  (The people who originally settled this country from Europe did live in the north, and had to deal with killing winters. They wouldn’t have done so well, though, surrounded by millions of starving people with guns. Hard to get a farm going when people will kill for one ear of corn.)