Protecting Our Home

by Colton Lively

  “More sleep? I wasn’t sleeping,” she objected, but then yawned with exhaustion. “Okay, maybe I was grabbing a nap. How long do you think it’ll be?”

  “Half an hour to our turn-off. After that, I’ll need everyone’s eyes on the prize. But for now, you can close them.”

  As his fatigued family lapsed into silence, Cody settled into his task. To drive, the truck resembled less a U-Haul and more an oil tanker; there was plenty of power, but every decision had to be made several seconds in advance. Got myself a steering column, he mused to himself, that’s about as responsive as the IRS every April when I ask for my rebate. But the truck glued itself to the road, even at these higher speeds, and the recently resurfaced asphalt gave them as smooth a night-time journey as could be hoped.

  He’d have preferred to show this area to Mary and the kids in daylight, of course. The road swept through unspoiled forest, interrupted only by tiny dirt roads that tunneled into the trees and immediately vanished. The road took them over picturesque rivers and by the shore of some pleasant lakes, but in the pitch dark, still infected with the blazing panic of this unique day, Cody knew that tourism would have to wait. Like a lot of other things will have to wait.

  There were very few vehicles around, mostly pulled over and all darkened. He’d thought the matter through during one of the few quiet parts of the day, and the biggest issue was going to be car ignitions; readily fried by the EMP, they’d all need to be replaced, and Cody couldn’t fathom how even five percent of all the necessary repairs might happen. Right now, there probably wasn’t a single working repair truck to be found, and any vehicle which miraculously came back to life would find itself requisitioned by the National Guard, local emergency services, or elected officials. He clung to his pride in having jealously guarded the truck against all threats, though an important part of him complained that, each time he drew his pistol, he was, in fact, conceding the battle. The group of kids back outside the Lewis place was a case in point, but this wasn’t a time for compassion or regret. The situations rewarded pre-emptive thinking, and Cody knew that he’d merely been getting out in front of the threat, and not making it worse.

  Besides, the pistol solved the problem, even when I didn’t fire it. Those kids all fled like frightened cats. Sometimes, a little over-reaction is just what’s needed.

  The road continued its peaceable meander through the forest, bracketed on either side by encroaching trees, and occasionally by darkened farmsteads. He found himself wondering how these people would cope with the coming dislocation, isolation, and dread. The worst element, perhaps, was the lack of news; as yet, there’d been no word on how the hell this disaster had happened, and although there were other priorities, the gap in their information nagged Cody. After all, it was impossible to respond to a truly invisible threat; there was a risk that the country’s leadership, out of contact with most of their forces and denied any reliable news, would thrash blindly, like a drowning child. He could only hope that communications could be repaired before someone…

  Oh, hell, I forgot about the submarines.

  He tried not to let the thought bother him, but it was entirely possible that full-scale nuclear war had, in fact, already broken out, but that they’d yet to see the signs. Those sub skippers, out in the Atlantic and Pacific, had orders to check in very regularly, and if for some reason they didn’t get an answer from HQ, they had special orders of their own. He remembered reading something about the Royal Navy and its plans for the minutes after nuclear hostilities began—when “the balloon went up,” as the author put it. If a skipper brought his ballistic missile submarine to the surface, only to find that BBC Radio had stopped broadcasting, that was his signal to assume that civilization had come to an end. He laughed to himself, imagining the same scenario today: I can’t get Fox News on the TV, so let’s go ahead and assume it’s all over. In such a situation, the skipper would open a specially written letter from the Prime Minister which would probably lead to a desperate choice: fire his missiles at pre-arranged targets, choose new targets of opportunity, return to his home port in Scotland, surrender to the enemy, or do nothing. How many would choose inaction, when the balance of the world’s military men had just overreacted so spectacularly?

  He kept a close watch on the odometer, tracking the miles as he reeled them off. Just short of the area where he’d be looking for their turn, Cody passed a cop car whose occupant had been in the act of ticketing someone when the disaster had struck. There was no sign of them now, which was just as well; leaving the main road, in a wild part of the state like this, was tantamount to permanently disappearing, and that’s exactly what Cody intended. Some people lived for decades up in these woods without seeing another soul, whether by accident or design. That was his dominant memory of his father’s land: remoteness of a kind so complete that it seemed nothing else in the world existed—neither other people nor nation-states nor professors nor politicians. In his mind, it was a haven that hovered between worlds, in perhaps the same way the Chinese traditionally thought about their homeland; neither part of heaven, nor the earth, but somewhere in between. A detached continent, risen above the others into tranquil safety, entirely remote from the pressures of change, war, disease and strife.

  Wait… There…

  He slowed the truck to a crawl. “Mary, honey, you with me?”

  “Yep, yep,” she said, struggling to waken quickly.

  “I’ve got something.”

  “The old signpost? It’s still there?”

  It was, and Cody could barely believe it. By the side of the road was a single vertical metal spar, once part of a brown sign which announced a local campsite. But the area had changed, Cody knew, and people no longer came up here for the classic Maine camping experience, preferring other spots farther on toward Canada or back south toward Eustis. The reason for this change was the same reason Cody harbored the hope that the road into the woods might be passable.

  “Never failed me yet,” he remarked of the lonely metal spar. “Okay, boys and girls,” he said, turning carefully onto the dirt road scattered with fallen branches, “it’s time to say goodbye to the world. Here’s where we leave everyone else behind.”

  18

  Unnamed Road, north-west of Spring Lake, Maine

  H-Hour + 16 (5:10 am, Day Two)

  After the smooth efficiency of the main road, their progress became tortuously slow. Down to fifteen miles per hour, sometimes less, Cody guided the truck through the gathering forest with the attentive concern of a novice who was trying not to hit his grandmother’s garden wall during his first try behind the wheel. “Can you tell if there’s gonna be an intersection soon?” Cody asked his map-reader.

  “All I can tell,” Mary said, despairing of both the map and the fading lighter, “is that we left the red road, and we’re now on a white road which just crossed a blue river.” The little bridge was five minutes behind them. “Beyond that, the road just heads into the green part…”

  “That’ll be the forest,” Jacob contributed from the back seat.

  “Thanks, GeekLord,” she said, not too tired to give her genius son a hard time. “Consider cartography if your other career plans don’t work out.”

  “I would,” he answered, “if I knew what it was.”

  “I got nothing else,” Mary admitted to Cody. “You think you’ll remember a bit more of the place once the sun comes up?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “It’s been twenty years.” Farther along, the road edged past a brackish, green pond and then continued burrowing through the woods. Ten minutes later, they started seeing artificial gaps between the trees, and within each gap, a very strange sight.

  “Woah…” said Jacob, who prided himself on being the first to puzzle things out. “Is that… a wind turbine?”

  “Think so,” said Mary, “but I’d say it’s in need of some minor repairs.”

  The old logging road had only been reestablished so that the power company could head into the f
orest and assemble a suite of tall, white turbines, each surrounded by their own patch of cleared woodland. They were perhaps a hundred yards apart but had all suffered the same fate: an electrical short caused a fire inside the turbine housing, and after that, gravity had taken charge. Two of the towers were reduced to nakedness, their blades having tumbled to the ground hours before; the wreckage of one was still smoking, though probably too far from the trees to be a danger.

  “Guess the wind power industry is a poor investment right now,” commented Mary. “But this is all new to you, right?”

  “Yeah, these changes are too recent,” Cody explained. “I don’t remember giving permission for anyone to build turbines up here, so I guess this can’t be our land yet.”

  “Will we know it when we see it?” asked Jacob.

  “Yeah, I hope so. For a few years, parts of this forest were used as ranch land, and I remember my dad used to find our way by counting the cattle guards on the road. Once we got to nine of them, we looked for a gate on the right.”

  Stretching out from under her jacket, Emma felt she’d be letting her family down if no one asked, “Are we there yet?”

  The truck’s tires rumbled over a stretch of something metallic. “Possibly,” said Cody. “Count them with me.”

  It became as close to a game as Cody could make it. “Two,” said Jacob gleefully as the truck bounced over another guard. “Are there still cows here?”

  “Not anymore,” answered Cody. “Ranching up here was a marginal business for Dad’s tenants, even to begin with. But then I think the state gave my dad a tax break, or something like that, if he closed down the ranch and returned the land to the forest.”

  “I didn’t know your dad was a closet hippy,” Mary quipped. “He kept that well under wraps.”

  “Believe me, ecological reasons definitely came second to whatever financial incentive he was offered. We never had any money, even when things were okay.”

  “So, what happened to the land?” Emma asked. “Did Grandad Russell come to live up here?”

  “He talked about it,” Cody said as they counted off the fifth cattle guard. “Thought he could build a proper place here and retire. But it was too complicated and way too expensive. I mean, you can see the conditions… it would have taken years to build an actual home, and then maintaining it would probably have been beyond him. Especially after he got sick.”

  Having never met their grandfather, both Jacob and Emma wanted to know more, but Cody promised to fill them in later, once they reached their objective. “He’d have loved seeing us here,” he smiled. “Me, with a wife and kids, driving some weird-ass army truck from the forties. He’d have laughed himself purple.”

  Just enough sunlight was coming through the trees to show Cody the seventh and eighth cattle guards before the truck rumbled over them. “Anyone else getting eight? ‘Cause I’m not sure I can count that high.”

  “Eight,” confirmed Jacob, who had kept count using one of the dials on the still-defunct radio.

  “Then… hopefully…” Cody said, slowing the truck and looking around at the forest.

  “A gate, you said?” Mary wanted to confirm.

  “I think so…” They turned a corner, and there, covered with vines and all but invisible from the road, was a gate crudely constructed from three horizontal metal bars. It was lopsided, dulled by time, and inexpertly welded together. “Sweet mother of God, I don’t believe it,” Cody smiled. “Kids, you’re looking at my very first ever welding job. This ol’ sucker has out here in the rain for twenty years, and all the welds are still good.”

  “Wow, honey,” said Mary, with a growing awareness that she was being inducted into something quite new: the life her husband had led before they’d even met. “How old were you when you welded the gate?”

  “Sixteen, maybe seventeen,” Cody said. “Dad showed me the first one, then just handed over the torch and left me to it,” he laughed. “All he said was, ‘Don’t set yourself on fire.’”

  “Solid advice,” Mary laughed. “So… do we open the gate and invite ourselves in?”

  They might have done exactly that, but for a growing sense of movement. Four men, all in camo gear and carrying rifles, were appearing from the woods. They spread out into a line, then advanced on the truck, their weapons raised.

  19

  The Russell Homestead H-Hour + 18 (6:40am, Day Two)

  Cody would have loved the chance to just rejoice for a moment. He’d found his dad’s old land; the only damper on the occasion was that several others had apparently found it first, and they looked more than ready for trouble.

  “Kill your engine!” one of them barked.

  “No problem, no problem at all,” said Cody as the big motor died away. Its sound echoed through the trees, a deeply incongruous sound amid such backwoods quiet.

  “Dad?” said a worried Emma. She’d been completely asleep in the back; waking up to see yet more men with yet more guns wasn’t sitting well with her.

  “It’s okay, honey,” he said. “These guys are just a little nervous, that’s all.”

  “Then they’re in good company,” said Jacob. He was hiding radio parts under his jacket, just in case this unscheduled halt turned into some kind of stick-up.

  “Get out of the truck and toss me the keys,” said the oldest of the four. He was clearly over seventy but very lean and alert.

  “I’m gonna step out,” said Cody, keeping his hands in view. “You can see that I have my family with me, right? Wife in the front, two children in the back.” He didn’t say the rest: So, make your goddamned weapons safe, dumbass Hillbillies.

  “You armed?” one of the younger men asked.

  “Nope,” Cody said, stepping down from the cab and extending his arms. “Got my nine in the glove compartment, loaded and safe, but there’s no danger here, guys.” The four men were similarly dressed, although their colors were a mish-mash of desert and camo. They wore ammo pouches around their hips, and each had a highly visible sidearm, and either a floppy jungle hat or a bandana. “I can see you’re professionals, and I respect that, so let me introduce myself.”

  “Just hold the phone, fella, and stay where you are,” the older man ordered. “We don’t get a lot of visitors here. I take it you ain’t lost?”

  “No, we’re here on purpose,” said Cody.

  “And what ‘purpose’ is that?” the man demanded.

  “Well, I don’t know if you heard, but everything’s been knocked out. All the power infrastructure and vehicles and shops and banks, everything.”

  “Yeah, we heard. Figured that’s why you’re here, to come to look at the turbines.”

  “The turbines?” asked Cody, relieved that none of them had remembered demanding his keys; they remained in his pocket, and it would take violence to change that.

  “All the wind turbines burned up and fell. We could hear some of them from here. Figured you’re from the power company.”

  “Oh, yeah, we saw all of that,” said Cody. “Gonna be a heck of a repair job. But no, we’re not from the power company.”

  “Then, I’ll ask it again,” said the apparent leader of the four. “What’s your business here?” All of their weapons remained raised, and each second that the situation endured was too long for Cody. They were armed with modified M-16s, or something very similar, and Cody knew the weapon’s three-round burst setting would spell disaster for his family if one of the men got jumpy.

  “Name’s Cody Russell. My old man was Grover T. Russell,” Cody said slowly so that no one missed it. “His name mean anything to you guys?”

  One of the weapons lowered, and the young man behind it said, “You mean ol’ Sharpshooter Russell?”

  “Sounds about right,” said Cody. “You guys knew him?”

  “I did,” said the older man, lowering his own rifle just slightly. “You say you’re his son?”

  “Swear it on a bible, if you like.”

  “No bible to hand,” he said. �
�But I gotta have some kinda proof.”

  “Sure, uh,” Cody said, hesitating slightly, “he used to show off by hitting Coke cans with a .22 while blindfolded. He loved the Celtics, but he obsessed about the Red Sox. I reckon his proudest day was being in Boston for their World Series win in ’07, just a few months before he died.”

  Cody’s tactic was working, but the leader still hadn’t completely lowered his weapon. “All right so far. Go on.”

  “Uh,” Cody said, struggling to bring to mind sufficient details while his family faced the prospect of an impromptu firing squad in a remote Maine forest, “he never drank and smoked about three cigars a year, on special occasions. And he told people to call him ‘Russell’ because he kinda hated his first name. Caused all kinds of confusion. After he died, we got mail for a ‘Mr. Russell Russell’ and never knew what to do with it.”

  Finally, the old man slung his weapon over his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be a son of a…” He extended his hand. “John Charles Cabot, at your service. People kinda call me Papa Cabot.” His name and hair color were equally convincing sources. “And this here’s my grandson, John Charles Cabot the Third…”

  “Charlie,” the youngest of them clarified.

  “… his buddy Max, and Max’s cousin, Bryce.”

  “Good to know all of you,” said Cody. “This is my wife, Mary, and the kids, Emma and Jacob.”

  “When you first mentioned his name, I had a little hope, but you were using the past tense. So I had to figure Ol’ Sharpshooter has gone on to the great big woods in the sky?”

  “Thirteen years ago, come August. Throat cancer and then other kinds. He fought like fury, but…” Cody trailed off.

  His father’s dignity had held until his final days when the racking pain and the impossibility of just taking a proper breath of air had brought incredible, frightening tantrums. The nurses came to hate and fear Ol’ Sharpshooter, but Cody could see it was just his father’s years of frustration, boiling over.