Revelations

by Mark Kelly

  Simmons placed his hand on the young man’s back and spoke. “There’s nothing we can do here. I found what I was looking for. Take Emma out to the truck. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  As he closed the bedroom door behind him, Simmons took one final look. All the more reason to make the trip and get the bioreactor built as quickly as possible.

  11

  It Works

  “Shit!”

  Simmons cursed as his hand slipped off the wrench and smashed against the motorcycle’s front fender. He ignored the torn piece of skin dangling from his knuckle and gave the lug nut one final angry twist.

  “Ouch. That must have hurt,” Brandon said from the other side of the bike.

  “Damn right it did,” Simmons replied, wiping his bloody knuckle on his pants. “How are you doing over there?”

  Brandon held up an aerosol spray can. “This is the same stuff we use on the tractors. Another five or ten minutes and the fuel injectors should be as good as new.”

  There was a hissing sound and then a sharp chemical smell in the air as the volatile cleaning solvent evaporated. When he finished with the injectors, Brandon stood up and admired the bike. “This is cool. I’ve never seen a diesel motorcycle before.”

  “They aren’t common,” Simmons said. “They’re louder, heavier, and have a lot less horsepower.”

  “Then why do they make them?” Emma asked from her position beside Brandon. A position she had held for the last three hours as she watched them work, handing them tools as they asked for them; all without a single complaint or stupid comment.

  “This motorcycle is unique,” Simmons replied. “I think it was built for the military. The markings on the side of the gas tank indicate different types of fuel. I’m pretty sure it was designed to use diesel, biodiesel, kerosene, even jet fuel.”

  “Jet fuel? Does that make it go faster?” she asked.

  He chuckled.

  “No, jet fuel is just fancy kerosene. It’s basically the same stuff you burn in a heater or a stove.” He pointed to the grimy plastic container of kerosene they had found on a shelf at the back of the garage. “It’s more or less the same as that.”

  “What about biodiesel?” Brandon asked. “How are you going to make that?”

  “By combining vegetable oil with a mixture of ethanol and sodium hydroxide,” Simmons said. “The oil becomes thinner and more combustible. It’s a chemical reaction called transesterification.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “The chemistry is complicated, but the process is straightforward. The hardest part is getting the ratio of ethanol and sodium hydroxide right. Since we don’t have the right tools or reference manuals, we’ll have to experiment. We’ll also need to find a source of vegetable oil, but to start with, we’ll use cooking oil that we scrounge from abandoned homes.”

  Brandon pointed to the pail of sodium hydroxide they had found at the candlemaker’s home. “Was she making biodiesel? Is that why she had the chemicals?”

  “No, she was using the sodium hydroxide to saponify her fat.”

  Emma laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Saponify her fat, Professor Simmons?”

  Simmons gave her an indignant look. “Saponification is alkaline hydrolysis of fatty acid esters. It’s the first step in making soap and—”

  He stopped at the sound of horse hooves on the gravel laneway. When he heard the rider whistling, he relaxed. Whoever it was, wasn’t trying to be quiet. Must be one of the neighbors.

  “Stay here. I’ll go see who it is.”

  He opened the garage door to find Ronnie Gourley awkwardly trying to dismount from his horse. Gourley had both arms wrapped around the animal’s neck and his right foot was caught on the back of the saddle. He shook his leg, trying to free it, and nearly fell headfirst to the ground.

  Simmons ran over and grabbed him.

  “Fuck off…can do it myself,” Gourley said, slurring the words.

  The smell of alcohol on his breath was overpowering. He looked even more disheveled than the last time Simmons had seen him two weeks earlier when they buried his brother.

  “What can I do for you, Ronnie?”

  Gourley puffed out his chest and poked him in the shoulder. “You can kiss my ass…thaz what you can do.” Then he put a drunken arm around Simmons and hugged him. “Juz joking…you’re a good man. Where’s that sexy Mexican of yours?”

  Thankfully not here, Simmons thought to himself, because if she were, she’d probably beat the crap out you for calling her Mexican—or sexy. Lucia was Salvadoran and God help anyone who said otherwise.

  Gourley staggered backwards. He tilted his head and glanced up at the roof of the garage where puffs of gray smoke billowed out of the top of a galvanized stove pipe.

  “It in there?”

  “Is what in there?”

  “The still…bet it is.”

  Gourley pushed Simmons out of the way and made a wobbly run for the door. He opened it and staggered into the garage.

  Brandon and Emma looked up, surprised to see him. He paused by the motorcycle and glowered at it.

  “Wasting your time—ain’t no fuel.” Then he noticed Brandon and muttered, “Unless you’re a McNee. They just take what they want.”

  Brandon had the good sense not to reply. Emma didn’t. “We don’t need Mr. McNee’s fuel, we’re going to—”

  Simmons coughed and shook his head. She stopped mid-sentence, and Gourley looked at her suspiciously.

  “Gonna what?”

  “Uh…maybe we’ll be lucky and find gas in the abandoned cars.”

  “Ha…good luck with that,” Gourley said with a snort.

  Simmons took him by the elbow. “Come on, Ronnie, let’s go get you sober.”

  Gourley pulled frree and grinned when he saw the black cast iron wood stove at the far end of the garage. The still on top of the stove looked like the tin man’s head from the Wizard of Oz. Coiled copper tubing ran from the top of it into an old metal washing tub filled with water. Every few seconds, a couple of drops of clear liquid dripped into a mason jar sitting on the floor. The still wasn’t pretty, but it did the job and had been producing moonshine for three days.

  Gourley stumbled towards it. He bent down and stuck his hand under the tube, catching a drop of the moonshine on his fingertip. His face scrunched up as he tasted the 160 proof clear liquid. He reached down for more, but stopped when he spotted the box of mason jars next to the stove.

  “Don’t, Ronnie that’s not for drinking.”

  “Course it is,” Gourley said, grabbing a full mason jar from the box. He twisted the lid off and took a swig.

  Simmons grimaced at the sight.

  The jar Gourley drank from contained the foreshots and heads, a poisonous mix of methanol and compounds like acetone and acetaldehyde. It was the first bit of moonshine produced and you were supposed to discard it, but Simmons had kept it to use as a disinfectant. Gourley wouldn’t die, but if he drank much more of it, he’d wake up with a wicked hang-over and wish he were dead.

  “This is good stuff,” Gourley said. “Doesn’t taste harsh like the batch me and Paul made.”

  Not harsh?

  Simmons couldn’t imagine what kind of poison Ronnie and his brother had been distilling.

  Gourley screwed the cap back on the jar and reached down to take another. The memory of his brother seemed to have sobered him up. He held the jars up in front of Simmons’s face and said, “This is a down payment for what happened at the crossroads. If you have an issue with that, talk to McNee. My brother is dead because of him.”

  Simmons didn’t argue. If Gourley wanted a jar or two as payment for his brother’s death, who was he to say no.

  Gourley took a long hard look at the still. He cocked his head and stared at Simmons.

  “Why are you making shine? You don’t look like the drinking type.”

  “Mei’s using it as an antiseptic,” Simmons lied.
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br />   Gourley shook his head at the sacrilege. “That’s a damn waste, but I guess it don’t matter as long as you save some for me.”

  He turned to leave, a jar of moonshine in each hand. Simmons followed him out of the garage to his horse and watched the drunken man ride away.

  “What did he want?”

  Mei was standing on the front porch holding a pitcher of bright red sumac tea in one hand and three cups in the other.

  “He came to check out the still.”

  “I thought Tom wanted to keep it a secret.”

  “Seems that nothing stays a secret around here for very long,” Simmons muttered.

  “Is Ronnie going to be a problem?”

  “I hope not, but he took two jars and said he’s coming back next week for more.”

  “What if you’re gone?”

  “We’ll still be here. The bike isn’t working and I’m nowhere near having fuel for it.”

  “When do you think it will be working?”

  “Fingers crossed…another week, maybe two.”

  “And then what? You and Emma leave?” Mei asked, a worried look on her face.

  “If we’re able to get the bike running, yes. But there’s something I should tell you,” Simmons said. “With everything else that’s happened the last couple of weeks, I didn’t want to mention it.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “The bike doesn’t have any markings on it,” he said, “but it looks like it was built for the military.”

  “Do you think it’s them?”

  “I don’t know. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Finding us would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Besides, it’s been months. Why would Raine even bother? With us gone, his secret is safe.”

  “Maybe you should have left it where you found it in case whoever it belongs to comes back for it.”

  “Too late now. Besides, we need it—that is, assuming I can get the damn thing to run.”

  As if on cue, the garage doors swung open and Emma poked her head out. She gave Mei and Simmons an excited wave as the sound of a motorcycle being started came from behind her. A second later, Brandon rode out of the garage, beaming from ear to ear. He brought the bike to a stop in front of Simmons and put the kickstand down.

  “It’s all yours,” he shouted over the engine noise, “and I think I know where we can get more kerosene.”

  Simmons gazed at Mei. The worried look was back on her face. He and Emma would be leaving a lot sooner than any of them expected.

  12

  The Long Road

  Simmons tensed as Emma slid in behind him and wrapped her arms around his mid-section, squeezing so tightly he could barely breathe, let alone steer.

  “Relax,” he yelled over the rattle of the motorcycle’s diesel engine.

  “What?”

  “Not so tight…Loosen up.”

  “Sorry, how’s this?”

  If there was a difference, he couldn’t tell.

  He glanced at the group who had gathered to see them off. Mei stood at the front, her mouth turned down in a slight frown. The worry lines on her forehead had aged her ten years.

  “We’ll be fine,” he mouthed.

  She nodded uncertainly.

  He took one last look over his shoulder at the trailer. The contraption—trailer was too kind a word—had taken a week to cobble together using parts they had found around town. It was attached to the sprocket of the bike’s rear wheel and handled reasonably well—provided he didn’t drive too fast or take a turn too quickly.

  Aside from the supplies they would need during the journey, the trailer was also loaded with barter goods. They had packed vegetable seeds, smoked hams, ammunition, and canned food. At the last minute, he had made room for twelve mason jars of moonshine. According to Tom McNee, there was always a market for booze.

  The motorcycle’s fuel tank was filled with kerosene from the container Simmons had found in the garage and another one Brandon had borrowed from his father.

  Their destination, Chalk River, was about sixty miles north, a straight shot up Highway 60 and then north on Highway 41. As far as McNee knew, they wouldn’t have any problems on the county roads, but he wasn’t sure about the last half of their route. No one from town had been that far north since the pandemic started.

  “Ready?” Simmons shouted to Emma.

  She nodded and squeezed tighter.

  “See you in a few days,” he yelled to Mei and the rest of the group. Then he forced a grin and said, “If we aren’t back in a week, send out a search party.”

  Mei pursed her lips and swallowed. “Don’t do anything stupid, Tony.”

  “You know me, careful is my middle name.”

  She scowled at him. “Every time you say that something happens. Just be safe, okay?”

  He nodded, letting his eyes linger on hers for a moment before giving the group one final wave.

  As they pulled away, Emma twisted to look back, suddenly unbalancing the bike’s weight distribution. The motorcycle wobbled and careened to the left. Simmons yanked the handlebars to the right, bringing the bike back under control just before they ended up on their side in the ditch.

  Not a great start, he thought, wondering if he would regret bringing her with him.

  It was nearly six hours later, and late in the afternoon when they reached the on-ramp to the Trans-Canada highway, the main route across the country. Aside from a few detours, the trip had been uneventful so far and that worried him. It was almost too good to be true.

  He brought the bike to a stop and placed his foot on the pavement.

  “Why are we stopping?” Emma asked.

  “I want to take a quick break and check things out. Hop off.”

  She placed her hands on his shoulders and slid off the bike. He pushed the kickstand down with the heel of his foot and joined her by the side of the road.

  Using a pair of binoculars, he scanned the road to the north and south. In both directions, as far as he could see, the road itself was clear, but broken-down vehicles littered the shoulder on both sides of the highway.

  “What happened there, Professor Simmons?” Emma asked, pointing to a burnt-out section of scrub-brush. The brush and surrounding ground was covered with soot. Charred trees were rooted in the earth like skeleton stick-men. Through the binoculars, Simmons saw a large pile of gray ash with burnt bone fragments and blackened human skulls.

  “Someone must have come through here and cleaned up the highway,” he said, putting two and two together. “It looks like when they moved the cars to the side of the road, they disposed of the bodies by burning them instead of burying them.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “No idea,” he answered, perplexed. They hadn’t seen any sign of life for miles, but whoever had done it must have had their reasons. And they must have been well-equipped and well-organized. Moving one or two cars out of the way was one thing, but whoever had done this had moved dozens, maybe hundreds.

  “Come on, let’s get going,” he said, his gut heavy with unease.

  They continued north on the highway and he tensed as they turned into every corner, unsure what they would find on the other side. But it was always the same, mile after mile of empty wilderness filled with cars pushed to the side of the road. Soon, the relentless dullness of the drive lulled him into complacency.

  He didn’t see the roadblock until the very last minute. It was perfectly positioned on a bridge over a river that raged through a chasm far below. Rocks jutted out of the frothy water and tall evergreens lined the shoreline. There was only one way across the river, and the bridge was it.

  The olive-green trucks and armored personnel carrier blocking the road were military. So were the soldiers manning the roadblock who were waiting with their weapons ready.

  Too close now to make a run for, Simmons’s heart raced as he squeezed the brakes and geared down. He pulled in the clutch and slowly coasted to a stop in front of the group of soldiers. A male sol
dier on top of the APC pointed his rifle at Simmons while a female grunt in her mid-twenties stepped forward. She cradled her assault rifle across her chest and eyed him and the motorcycle suspiciously. Like the others, she wore a surgical mask around her neck and pulled it up over her mouth and motioned at him not to move.

  A young pimply faced soldier, wearing a tired green uniform faded from too many washes, retrieved a small glass jar from the steps of the armored personnel carrier. He shuffled forward and offered the jar to Simmons.

  Unsure what he was supposed to do, Simmons took the jar and inspected it. It contained an old-fashioned thermometer fully submerged in fluorescent green liquid with small pieces of whitish-gray gunk floating in it.

  “What do I do with this?”

  The female soldier spoke. “Put the thermometer in your mouth, dimwit. We gotta know if you’re sick with the bug or not.”

  “I’m not sick,” Simmons said, glancing at the jar. But if he stuck that thing in his mouth, he definitely would be.

  “Everyone gets their temperature checked. Either that or you turn around and go back the way you came,” she said, shrugging. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Seriously, we’re not sick, and even if we were, you can’t detect the bacteria by taking someone’s temperature. You need to do a GDH test or use Polymerase chain reaction.”

  She looked like she didn’t care and signalled that he should turn the bike around. For a brief second, he considered doing just that, but they had come too far and their mission was too important. He gave the jar a wary second look.

  “Don’t you have one of those electronic thermometers?”

  “If I had one of them, do you think I’d be using this?” she said in a condescending voice. “Just be thankful I’m not asking you to stick it up your butt.”

  Now there’s something to be thankful about, Simmons thought, nearly throwing up as a piece of the floating goop bumped up against the thermometer.