by Ike Hamill
Chapter 11: Lisa
They were all ants, leaving a trail of pheromones for the next to follow. That’s what it felt like to Lisa as she drove down the highway. The last people down the road had painted the speed limit signs with arrows to assure her that she was on the right path. If she found a road that was blocked by a tree or a washout, it was her responsibility to back up until she found a sign and then she would annotate it with an X. Once she found a way around the obstruction, she would mark the new route with spray-painted arrows.
So far, she was lucky. She hadn’t needed to backtrack once. That was good. If she was going to catch up with Ashley before the jungle, she would need all the speed she could get. The sign overhead announced that she was approaching the Susquehanna River. On the right, the arrow drawn over the speed limit assured her that the bridge ahead was still passable. Lisa tried to remember what Robby had said about the river.
It was something about a flood. A flood had taken out most of the bridges—that was it. Slowing down, she proceeded carefully. Even if the bridge looked intact, it might be unstable. She knew firsthand that supports undercut by the water could give way at any time.
Another one of Robby’s markings told her that there was a post office at the next exit. Acting on impulse, she angled the wheel to the right. It wouldn’t hurt to check in at the post office and see if there was any documentation about the bridge. A few extra added minutes might save her a lot of trouble.
There were shapes on top of the post office. Lisa smiled. That was always the way with Robby—she didn’t realize that she was being manipulated until the very last moment.
Lisa parked next to the side-by-side four wheeler and opened her door. When she looked up, she saw smiling faces looking down from the roof.
“I hope you have something to eat in there,” Lisa said. “I’m starving.”
“What are you even doing here?” Ashley asked. The young woman pushed her hair back as she peered down.
“I came to bring you a present,” Lisa said.
“Well? What is it?”
Lisa spread her arms. “It’s me.”
“You guys seriously have to settle down,” Ashley said.
Lisa shifted on her seat as she shook her head. The little room in the back of the post office was beginning to heat up. She adjusted the blinds to keep the sun out. From the supplies stashed in the post office, they had a nice meal in front of them. Lisa wished she could enjoy it. All she could think about was the upcoming journey.
“I’m not going that far, and it will be a lot quicker if I travel alone,” Ashley continued.
“Not that far? You don’t think Arizona is far?” Lisa asked.
Robby’s eyebrows went up and he looked at his daughter. Aside from a slight hitch in her chewing, Ashley managed to look pretty innocent. After she swallowed, she asked, “Who says I’m going that far?”
“Brad saw the same satellite images that you did,” Lisa said. “And quit acting surprised, Robby, I can guess that you didn’t leave them lying around by accident.”
“They were not lying around,” Robby said.
“Uh-huh,” Lisa said, frowning. “Listen, Ashley, even in the old days, a road trip to Arizona was a major undertaking. You’re going to have to walk there. Do you have any sense how long that will take?”
“I’m not going to walk the whole way,” Ashley said.
“You’re going to swing from the vines? Use a hot air balloon? What’s your grand plan?”
“I have a plan,” Ashley said.
“She thinks there’s a river,” Robby said.
“Dad!” Ashley said, rolling her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“You know I hate it when you do that.”
“I wasn’t trying to belittle you. I simply disagree with your assessment.”
Lisa watched the conversation carefully. They were both so good at guessing what the other one was thinking that they could have entire arguments without anyone else at the table knowing what the hell they were talking about.
“It’s not an assessment. You think I’m too stupid to figure out what a chromatic aberration looks like?”
“No, I simply think there may be other impediments that you’re failing to take into account. Even the best raft will have…”
“Guys?” Lisa asked, interrupting. “You care to fill me in on what we’re debating?”
Ashley reached across the table and put a hand on top of Lisa’s.
“The details aren’t important. I swear that I will be safe and that I have a plan.”
“Bullshit!” Lisa said, jerking her hand out from under Ashley’s. “Don’t patronize me. I may be an old lady, but I am perfectly able to keep up with whatever amazing plan you cooked up. I have survived things that would straighten your hair.”
Ashley smiled and covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a laugh.
“Don’t tease Aunt Lisa,” Robby said, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “It might not be quick, but she does have a temper buried under all that pleasantness.”
“You’re damn right,” Lisa said. “Now give me the details. I’m tagging along whether you want me to or not, and I have a right to know the scheme.”
Ashley took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Just understand that this is my plan. This is not a debate, okay? I didn’t ask you to join me, so I’m not asking for your approval.”
“Fair enough,” Lisa said.
Robby nodded too.
Chapter 12: Ashley
“Once I found the satellite image on the server, I decided to delete it,” Ashley said. She briefly considered leaving this part out, but decided against it. Her father would guess her motivation. It would be better if he knew that she wasn’t trying to hide anything.
“I guessed that Dad left it there for Brad to find. As you know, people are allowed to consider and process information before they share it with the group, but they’re not allowed to share information selectively. Anything published has to be available to everyone. Bending the rules, Dad tucked the image away in a publicly accessible place that only Brad would stumble upon. He must not have figured that I might find it too.”
“But you didn’t delete it,” Lisa said.
“Nope. I kept it secret, but left the whole drive intact. I couldn’t risk the rest of the data.”
“There wasn’t any other data,” Robby said, narrowing his eyes.
Ashley shrugged. “Not as far as you knew. That server was replicated to another location. You wiped the original well enough, but the backup server still had every other file from the cluster. The only thing erased from the backup was the index to the other files.”
Robby shook his head. “Sneaky.”
“So I locked it down to recover the other files. While I did, I saw that Brad discovered and accessed the original image—the one you wanted him to find. I barely got the other files offline before he could track them down. As far as I know, I’m the only person aside from you who has seen the rest of the picture.”
“Huh,” Robby said, nodding with appreciation.
“And you can quit that act,” Ashley said. “I know you guessed that I already found the other files.”
He leaned back and smiled. It was difficult to surprise her father, but she had the sense that she had just pulled it off. After thinking about it for a few seconds, he realized his mistake.
“The comment about the raft?” he asked.
“Yup,” she said. “Only the deleted files show the rapids. If you really thought I hadn’t seen those, you would have thought I was planning on a small boat. Since you mentioned a raft…”
“Can you guys cut out the ‘dueling geniuses’ part and just continue with the explanation in plain English?” Lisa asked.
Ashley nodded. “Beyond the Outpost, the terrain was reshaped. Over the decades, what used to be the Gulf of Mexico has risen up and a crease has formed just above where Florida used to be.”
“More accurately,”
Robby said, “it appears that the Caribbean Plate and the Cocos Plate have pushed north and deformed the North American Plate enough to…”
Lisa put up her hand to stop him. “What do you mean, ‘Where Florida used to be?’ Are you suggesting that Florida is gone?”
“Not really,” Ashley said. “If anything, it’s even bigger. Because the Gulf has dried up, Florida must be two or three times the size it used to be.”
“And it has mountains,” Robby said.
“Just barely,” Ashley said. “Most of the mountains are in what used to be Georgia.”
“Arguably, the way they align up the coast, it would be…”
Lisa stopped him again with another hand gesture. She motioned for Ashley to continue.
“The short explanation is that there’s a river that runs from east to west now. It looks like it follows some of the path of the Mississippi River in places, but it’s hard to guess because we don’t have a way to really register the images against the old maps. Whatever is affecting electronics down in the jungle may be affecting the satellites as well.”
“It mostly certainly has an effect,” Robby said.
“Regardless, using the imagery, I have estimated the depth and width of the river for the course I will need. I can use a mechanical clock, the sun, and stars to navigate. I can’t easily carry enough rations, but I’m sure that I can forage along the way.”
“Two things,” Lisa said.
“Oh?”
“What’s the point?”
“The observatory. You knew I was going to Arizona, so I figured you must know that I was going to the observatory. With a telescope like that at my disposal, I should be able to figure out what’s happening on the moon. It’s imperative that we discover the nature of that threat and what it means. Advance warning could mean the difference between life and death.”
“And you won’t need electricity to run that thing?”
“It wouldn’t hurt, sure, but I did my research. There is a purely manual, optical way of using one of the big telescopes. It should give me enough information, I hope. At the very least, it will be much more useful than the images I can get around here. They just didn’t build big telescopes in this area. I guess it was because of the weather and light pollution.”
Robby nodded.
“What was the second thing?” Ashley asked Lisa.
“Once you’ve collected this valuable information, how do you plan to get back?”
Ashley blushed.
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Tell me you’ve thought about how you’re getting back.”
She had, but she didn’t want to admit what she had come up with. In her wildest dreams, she would be able to figure out why electricity didn’t work out in the jungle. If she could figure that out, then maybe she could find a way to get back upriver quickly. After all, if the observatory had survived, then there had to be other remnants of civilization lying around. In a pinch, she figured she could rig up some kind of motor and distill some working fuel.
These were all long shot ideas though. That kind of speculation wasn’t the basis of a plan. Ashley knew that she couldn’t rely on the best case scenario. The worst case always had to be assumed.
“To get back, I’m going to have to walk. Fortunately, the climate appears to be pretty consistent on that part of the continent. We don’t have any reports of predators from beyond the Outpost. It will take a while, but my chances are good.”
Lisa shook her head.
Her father studied Ashley. He looked more concerned than disappointed. Still, she sensed both emotions.
“What?” she asked. “I have a plan.”
“You have half a plan,” her father said.
“It’s better than we had, dragging all those corpses up into Maine,” Lisa said.
“That was life and death,” Robby said. “And, we lost a lot of good people.”
His statement had a weight to it that Ashley couldn’t rebut. She kept her mouth shut. In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not her father believed that her mission was crucial to their survival. It was her mission. The trip was a risk, but she still believed that it was necessary.
Ashley noticed that Lisa was studying her.
“She’s still going,” Lisa said.
Robby only nodded.
They all piled into Lisa’s vehicle for the remainder of the trip. In short shifts, they traded places driving, navigating, and resting. Lisa was able to nap during her downtime. Ashley could only look through the window at the overgrown scenery. With all the thoughts buzzing through her head, sleep was impossible.
The vehicle passed through a tunnel of foliage. Tall trees grew close to the pavement, reaching their arms across. Some of the lower limbs slapped at the top of the vehicle. It was a lot more comfortable riding in Lisa’s SUV, but it limited which roads they could travel on.
Ashley stared into the dark forest to their east. It reminded her of a community near her house growing up. Everyone had called it Greenbriar, and it was off limits to children. Romie, on one of her door-closing expeditions, had discovered a sinkhole created by a collapsed sewer. Of course, because they were forbidden, it was the only the place that the kids wanted to play. It was an old neighborhood. The trees there were tall and thick, shadowing the homes. All the houses there had two numbers. The street number was next to the front door, or on the mailbox, but there was always another number above the door. That was the year that the house was built. It was like a status symbol—the older the house, the better. And all of the buildings were crowded with towering trees.
Ashley’s favorite house in Greenbriar was a huge, gray place with white columns on the front. When she had snuck up the front stairs, she found the little door that led to the second-floor balcony on top of the front porch. Up there, she would sit in a sea of thick maple leaves in the summer. In the fall, the red and orange leaves were so bright that they almost hurt her eyes. It was the perfect place to take a book and spend a stolen afternoon. It was important to get out of there before sunset though. Ashley had learned that the hard way. The rotten stairs were a nightmare to navigate after dark, and the house made noises that she had never been able to explain.
Lisa steered around a fallen tree.
“You want to move that?” Lisa asked Robby.
“No. There’s still plenty of room to get around it. I’ll mark it and get it next time I have a chainsaw with me.”
Cresting a hill, the road broke into a clearing. A plain of tall grass swept off toward the setting sun. In the distance, deer raised their heads and then flashed their white tails as they bounded away from the sound of the vehicle.
“It’s getting late,” Lisa said. “Keep going or pull over?”
“How are we doing on gas?” Robby asked.
“Low.”
“Let’s take a break,” Robby said. “Ashley and I will forage.”
Lisa nodded and slowed down. “Brad strapped enough gas to the back of this thing to make it there and back twice. I’ll put some in the tank.”
Ashley put on her shoes and emptied her pack.
On their first expedition, they collected wood and water. With a small fire going and the water set to boil, they went back out again into the fading light to look for food. Her father was only really good at finding a few things. He liked walnuts, acorns, apples, and greens. Ashley was more of an opportunist. She didn’t seek out particular plants, but saw what was around her and knew which ones could contribute to their meal.
When they got back to the fire, Lisa already had something in a pan over the flames.
“What is that?” Ashley asked. She set down her pack and dumped an armload of mushrooms on top of it.
“I brought cold pizza from home,” Lisa said.
“You could have mentioned before we went out and collected,” Robby said.
“I thought you guys were enjoying spending time together,” Lisa said with a shrug. She shook the handle of the pan and the pizza sizzled. Lisa would som
etimes trade a whole patch of watermelon for enough cheese to make a pizza. It was easily her favorite food.
Ashley laughed.
Her father chuckled as he lowered himself to the asphalt. Their campfire was on the shoulder of the road, about ten paces from Lisa’s vehicle. Ashley sat down too. She sorted out the food that would be just as good tomorrow and separated it from what needed to be eaten right away.
Lisa pulled the pan from the fire. She touched the crust and then jerked her finger back, putting it in her mouth.
“Hot,” she said. With a sigh, Lisa leaned back and looked up at the stars. “I miss light pollution.”
“Huh?” Ashley asked.
“When I was your age, I barely had to contend with the stars at all. The planets were visible, and the moon, but most of the stars were blocked out by the city lights. It was rare that I had to worry about the vast heavens above, you know? You remember, Robby?”
“No,” he said. “I grew up on an island. It pretty much looked like this all the time.”
“Well, back then we all knew that we were the center of the universe. People dominated everything. It was comforting.”
“False comfort,” Ashley said.
“Sure,” Lisa said. “It’s obvious, now. But, think about it. As far as we knew, people were on a never-ending ascension. There were problems to overcome, sure. We had to contend with the possibility of climate change. But we knew that the world could survive big threats. The Cold War had been a threat and we survived that. The ozone layer was threatened at one point, but people banned aerosols and that came back. People used to make a big deal about the problems, but deep down I think we all assumed that everything was fixable. Part of that was because we were insulated from the stars, you know. We created a blanket with our light pollution and we could ignore the infinite void around us and assume that we were in charge.”
“You really think it was all fixable?” Robby asked.
