by Jake Bible
“No, I want you to convince him that this is it,” Mike said. “When he fully fries it all, which this attempt will do, I want you to convince him that we live by torches and firewood from here on out. It’s Little Base on the Prairie time, permanently.”
“You’re giving up?” Tressa asked. “Mike, we need to get power restored so we can be sure that…”
She trailed off, not daring to mention Brain’s name out loud.
“He’s got a plan, dude,” Mike said. “He would know what we’re going through because we told him.”
“I’m still not sure how that’s true,” Tressa said. “When we are sitting right here.”
“I’m standing,” Mike said with a smirk.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do, but it’s Flipside. None of this is supposed to be possible, yet it is. If our AI friend says something happens, then I’m going to trust that it happens.”
“Because that’s what is getting us all through each and every day,” Tressa said.
“Yep.”
“I get it.”
“Good.”
“But I’m not going to tell Petrov to stop messing with the base’s infrastructure,” Tressa said.
“Why the fuck not, dude?” Mike exclaimed then lowered his voice after a glance over his shoulder out at the rest of the base. “There is no point. Nothing electrical has worked in months. Not even his precious rollers are staying together. Two more died yesterday. Even the biodiesel engines need an alternator to run. Those alternators are giving up the ghost left and right. We’re going to be hand carts from here on out soon.”
“The point, Mike, is that the idea of getting the electrical grid up and going keeps Petrov occupied,” Tressa said. “And an occupied Petrov is a happy Petrov. Happy Petrov kills fewer people than not happy Petrov.”
“Even happy Petrov still kills people,” Mike said and shrugged. “But I get what you’re saying, dude.”
“Good. Let’s keep the man happy and occupied and if the grid goes permanently dead, then you act like there is still a shot. Keep him believing.”
“That man can spot smoke being blow up his ass a mile away, dude,” Mike said. “If he thinks I’m playing him, I’ll be dead before I see the hammer blow coming.”
Tressa winced at the mention of the hammer.
Petrov had stopped wasting ammunition on dissenters almost from the beginning. His kill weapon of choice became a small sledgehammer that he liked to carry around on his belt, so everyone was reminded of what could happen if they stepped out of line. The memories of cracking skulls sometimes woke Tressa up in the night.
“Don’t play him,” Tressa said. “Be legit. If there is even a chance of getting the power up and running, then explain that chance. Let his people think it over. They can be the ones to tell him whether or not it’s viable anymore. You’re not cheerleading, you’re simply giving your opinion because you’re a tech and techs want power restored more than anyone here on base.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true,” Mike said and shrugged again.
“I’m glad we agree,” Tressa said. She stood up and stretched. “Anything else?”
“One last thing,” Mike said. “The beer.”
“What? Again?” Tressa grumbled and grabbed her boots. “I warned him.”
“I know and you need to warn him again,” Mike said. “People will take a lot of shit, but as soon as the Russians start hogging the beer, then all bets are off. There’s going to be a riot tonight at dinner if those assholes don’t share evenly. I’m not kidding. I caught Stipple trying to hide a wrench under his mattress. He wasn’t the only one.”
“I hope you took the wrench,” Tressa said, tying her laces.
“I did. That’s how I heard about the Russians hoarding beer and only giving our folks a quarter of the agreed-upon rations,” Mike said. “And once they start hoarding beer rations, then everyone suspects them of hoarding food rations. The deal was Petrov’s people are in charge, but all supplies are split evenly.”
“I know the deal, Mike,” Tressa said. “I’ll go talk to him now.”
“Thanks,” Mike said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Tressa said and waited for Mike to move so she could leave her hut. “He could tell me to fuck off and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do about it.”
“That’s true, dude.”
“Where are we with everything else?” she asked as they walked away from her hut. A few people greeted them, but most walked on by as if they weren’t there. “Still good?”
“As good as can be,” Mike said, looking about to make sure they weren’t overheard. “If what he said was true, then we still have a little under four years to go. We’ll be ready.”
“It’s too bad there is no way to test it,” Tressa said.
“Tell me about it,” Mike said, a little too pointedly.
“We just have to trust that what was said is true and in four years, someone will come walking through those gates to take us home,” Tressa said.
They walked on in silence until they reached Petrov’s door. It was an impressive door. The former command hut was now the colonel’s private quarters. Mike had nearly shit a brick when that transition happened, same with Tressa, both worried that his dismantling and removal of the consoles inside would end Brain’s chances of getting them all out of their current situation.
“I’ll handle this,” Tressa said. “Go check on the others and make sure tempers aren’t about to simmer over into a bloody boil.”
“Nice imagery, dude,” Mike said and let Tressa climb the steps and knock on Petrov’s door alone.
“Come in,” a voice called out from inside.
Tressa opened the door and walked into the hut, her nose instantly assaulted by the stink of sex.
“Ms. Thompson,” Petrov greeted her from his bed. The sheets were only covering his legs and there was another shape sleeping beside him. “What a pleasure. How may I help you today?”
“Beer,” Tressa said.
Petrov frowned. “Could you add some additional words to that statement?”
“Your people are hoarding beer,” Tressa said. “Again. Remember what happened last time they tried that?”
“I was forced to kill seventeen of your people,” Petrov said. “A dark day. But they should not have tried to revolt. Especially over a beverage.”
“It’s not the beverage and you know it,” Tressa said. “Once your people feel like they can get away with hoarding beer, then they start hoarding food. And other supplies. Medical supplies. How did that work out when we had the winger attack last year?”
“Five of my people and three of your people died because we could not treat them fast enough,” Petrov said, frowning. “And I did the right thing and hammered two of my people for the infraction. Would you like me to get the hammer out again?”
“No,” Tressa said. “You keep your hammer to yourself.”
She glared at the stained sheets he was laying in. She glared harder at the silhouette under the sheets. She knew whose outlined ass that was and it infuriated her. Fucking traitor…
“I want you to reign in your people and stop them from starting another incident,” Tressa said.
“Revolt,” Petrov corrected.
“Avoidable,” Tressa countered.
Petrov opened his mouth then closed it and nodded. He gave the sheet-covered ass a hard smack.
“Get out,” he ordered.
Maggie roused herself and slid from the bed without giving Tressa even a glance. She got dressed and slipped out a back entrance to the hut.
Petrov laughed.
“You should see the rage on your face,” he said as he got up and searched for his pants.
Tressa crossed to a chair, grabbed the pants off the back, and threw them at him.
“She only does what she feels she needs to to survive, Ms. Thompson,” Petrov said. “Just like a billion women and men have throughout history. And she isn’t wrong.
If she were to commit an infraction, I wouldn’t think twice before hammering her. Only because I do enjoy hammering her in this bed instead so much more.”
“You couldn’t get one of your Russian girls to fuck you?” Tressa asked as she waited impatiently for Petrov to finish dressing.
“I could, but then they wouldn’t respect me and I can’t have that,” Petrov said. “That silly Irish girl? I could care less if she respects me. In fact, Ms. Thompson, I am fairly certain she absolutely despises me. She hides it well, and is very good at what she does, but I’ve caught her staring at me with nothing but murder in her eyes when she thinks I’m sleeping.”
“She’ll never kill you,” Tressa said. “She knows what happens if you die.”
“Everyone dies,” Petrov said like he was Oprah and was handing out new cars.
“The beer?” Tressa asked.
“Let us sort that out now,” Petrov said.
***
The huge fish slid easily through the pool, its elongated jaws slightly open as it bore down on its prey.
Then the prey was yanked up out of the water and in its place a sharpened spear came down hard and fast, piercing the fish’s skull.
Olivia lifted the speared fish up out of the water, her biceps bulging and straining at the weight of a creature that was over ten feet long and had to weigh as much as she did, if not more. She braced her legs, her thighs rippling with strength, and swung the spear to the side, dropping the dead fish onto the shore of the pool before she took up her hunting stance again, making sure her shadow didn’t fall down into the water.
Asleep and completely lying on his back in the shade of some massive palm trees, Elvis snored loudly.
“You’re lucky you don’t scare the fish off,” Olivia said as she struck a second time.
Once again, her aim was true and she speared a second, even larger fish. She put her full weight into the transfer from water to land then let the spear drop from her hand and stretched.
There was still soreness and pain from the long-healed wounds in her back, but she ignored the slight discomfort of that and continued to stretch, making sure her muscles didn’t tighten up after her day’s exertion.
On the shore of the pool were the bodies of five massive fish. Olivia set to work gutting and cleaning them, the smell of which woke Elvis and forced him to retreat further into the forest of palms and ferns.
“Wuss!” Olivia called after him.
She tossed the fish guts into a large basket then took a sharpened rock and began the long, torturous task of descaling each fish. She scraped for hours until the fish skin glistened and shined in the afternoon sun and the removed fish scales covered the ground and most of her body. Then she cut the fish into steaks and strips and loaded the fresh meat into other baskets she’d made from weaving palm fronds.
“E!” she yelled and Elvis appeared back on the shore after a couple of minutes.
He snorted and started to back up, but Olivia pointed a finger at him and he stopped.
“Turn around,” she ordered.
He obeyed and let her load the baskets onto his back. Then she secured the baskets with straps made from the sinew of a few predators that thought she would be easy prey, climbed up onto Elvis’s back in front of the baskets, and gave him a hard slap on the neck.
“Take us home, boy,” she said.
Elvis grunted and walked into the jungle. A well-worn trail led away from the shore of the pool and wove around the palms and ferns. They traveled for a good hour before Elvis finally came to a stop outside a large cave set into a good-sized hill in the middle of the jungle.
Olivia had had to fight for her life to take that cave. The former occupants were not willing to give it up too easily. But she won, as she always did, and got a really nice pair of dino hide pants and several vests out of the fight. Not to mention a scar that stretched from her right hip up to just below her right breast.
Olivia whistled and a pack of meter-high raptors came zooming out of the underbrush on each side of the cave.
“How’s my babies?” she asked as she got down off Elvis’s back. “Mama brought you dinner.”
She retrieved the basket of fish guts and set it on the ground. The pack of raptors snapped and shrieked at each other as they jockeyed for position around the basket. It looked like violent chaos, but Olivia knew it was just how they were. Snappy and constantly irritated was simply their personalities. But being only a meter tall in a world where behemoths roamed the landscape, it was no surprise. The Napoleon complex existed in dinos just like it did in human beings.
Olivia unloaded the baskets with the fish meat in them and carried each just inside the cave.
“Do not let the babies get the fish, E,” she ordered Elvis before continuing farther into the cave.
Elvis turned around, faced the feeding raptors, and sat down, his bulk blocking most of the cave’s entrance.
Olivia walked a few meters then crouched and grabbed up two rocks. She struck them together and a spark blinked to life. She placed the rocks close to a stone bowl filled with grease and struck them again. The spark lit a palm wick in the middle of the grease and Olivia dropped the two rocks in order to carefully pick up the bowl.
She kept moving deeper into the cave, passing branches that veered off to her right and left. She ignored the branches and kept going deeper and deeper. After several minutes of walking, she stopped, pulled a torch down from where it was wedged into the cave wall, rolled the end in a larger bowl of grease on the cave floor, then lit the torch and put it back in the wall. She repeated this until it was light enough to work by.
Olivia returned with the small bowl of grease to the front of the cave, extinguished the flame in the bowl, and began the hard work of carrying each basket of fish to the back of the cave. Forty minutes later, she had all the baskets back there and was laying fish strips and steaks out on palm mats which she rolled up and set to the side.
Then she dug into the soft earth of the cave floor with a stone spade until she struck something. She knelt and cleared the remaining earth, revealing a thick palm mat secured to a frame of bamboo-like poles. Olivia lifted the mat and smiled down at the open pit.
“Gonna have some smoked fish for weeks now,” she said as she gathered wood from a pile off to the side of the space, arranged the wood in the pit, and lit it ablaze. “Yum, fucking yum.”
It took an hour for the wood to burn down to coals. Olivia arranged the coals in a way that had taken a lot of trial and error to figure out then placed the wrapped fish down into the pit, careful that each bundle wasn’t too close to a pile of coals. She put the mat back over it all then replaced the dirt over the mat.
“Now we nap,” she said.
She returned to the front of the cave, stepped out past a sleeping Elvis, and watched the raptors bicker over who got to lick the guts basket clean. She whistled and they all perked up, instantly forgetting about the basket.
“Sleep time,” she said and angled her body to the side.
The raptors scrambled inside the cave and were lost in the shadows in seconds.
“E? You coming?” Olivia asked.
Elvis opened his eyes, lifted his head, snorted, then lowered his head again and closed his eyes.
“Yeah, well, when you’re as big as you are, I guess sleeping outside is always an option,” Olivia said. “I’m going to nap for a couple hours then check on the fish.”
Elvis was already snoring.
Olivia laughed and walked back into the cave. This time, she took the first branch she came to. She didn’t light a grease bowl, letting her hand trail along the branch’s wall until she felt a small depression. There she crouched, reached out into the almost pitch darkness, felt the softness of her mattress that she’d made out of dried ferns and dino feathers, curled herself into a ball, and let well-earned sleep take her.
Almost exactly two hours on the dot, a wet nose pressed against her cheek, one of the raptors telling her that the fish sme
lled done. She loved how smart the little killers were.
Olivia roused herself. Her dino leathers were stiff from sweat and she wished she could strip off, but she had a long night of carefully smoking the fish ahead of her, so she stayed dressed. Nothing was worse than a coal popping when some fish fat hit it and that coal ending up in a place on her body where she did not want a hot coal to be. So the dino pants and dino vest stayed put.
She was only half awake and muscle memory took her to the back of the cave. A couple of the torches had sputtered out, so she replaced those, lit them, then dug the dirt off the mat, opened the pit, and checked her day’s catch.
Half the bundles were done enough to last a few days before turning, so she pulled those out and set them aside to cool. They needed to fully cool before she stacked them in what she called her “fridge” which was really an alcove that stayed cooler than the rest of the cave. If she didn’t let the bundles fully cool, then they’d condensate and the fish would be ruined by day two instead of lasting most of the week.
Olivia double-checked the remaining bundles, rearranged the coals, and covered it all over once again.
She made her way back to her sleeping branch and passed out almost as soon as her head hit the mattress.
Seventeen
Two more sleep cycles and the fish was done.
Olivia had some cooked fish that she’d need to eat right away, some that would last a little longer, and some that was so dried out that it was really only good for making a broth with. But Olivia had learned the hard way not to plan for every contingency. Sometimes fish broth was all that nature provided for her and her babies, other than whatever roughage she could gather from the jungle. But even after six years of eating the berries and tubers, the leaves and nuts, her body preferred the fish and the dino meat. The plant life was meant for digestive systems like Elvis’s, not for long-term human consumption.
Flipside was not a place for vegetarians.
Six years…
Olivia mumbled something about how that was insane, it couldn’t have been that long, then turned into a branch she hadn’t been in since the previous morning. She lit a bowl and stared at the hash marks on the walls. Six years’ worth of hash marks. It was impossible to believe.
