2nd Earth: Shortfall

by Edward Vought

  Dr. McEvoy tells me to call him Don first of all, and then makes us a proposal.

  “I guess I am more or less begging for our family now, as I said we have very little to offer your family except friendship and another opportunity to help your fellow man.”

  Just now Ryan and just about their whole family pulls into the driveway and comes over to meet our guests. We introduce them to everyone out here and tell them there is some food in side if they are hungry. Carol, Ryan’s wife says it’s about time I invited them to lunch, she says she has been here for almost five minutes and she was beginning to think she should have brought her own food. Everyone laughs and most of their family goes in to eat, Ryan and a couple of the others stay out to hear what we are talking about. Don continues.

  “I may as well just come out and ask.”

  I know what he wants to ask so I figure I will have some fun with him.

  “No you may not move in with me, we only have one empty bedroom and it won’t hold thirty people. Now if you are interested in starting your own farm, you are in luck. We just happen to know of a little place about two miles in that direction, I point to the east. It has five houses in a pretty tight group, about the same as these houses. We did a little cleanup in them just in case someone came along that would be interested. The windmills are in working order, Ken took care of that, and the wells have some pretty sweet water in them.”

  Don and the others are looking at me and they have tears in their eyes. They say that would be a dream come true. However, they have no money or anything to barter with to buy the farm. I look at them and ask when anyone even mentioned the word buy. I said there is a nice little farm two miles down this road and they are more than welcome to move in this afternoon if they would like. As for the work we have started doing, we have no idea why we did it, one day Dayna, Robin, and Melissa told me they have a feeling that someone is going to need that next farm over so we got started cleaning it up a little. It’s nothing fancy, but it is pretty comfortable. There are even a couple hundred jars of canned goods that look like they are still sealed, so they have some food to start with.

  They look at Ryan and his people, he tells them we may sound crazy, but we are good neighbors to have. He tells them that between the two families, which are more like one family on two farms, we will be more than willing and able to help them with whatever they need to get started. The only things that neither family will allow is a liar, someone who will not pull their own weight, or someone who disrespects the women, and tries to hurt or assault them. We have buried a few who tried. We explain that since there is no organized law we have to be judge, jury, and executioner if the situation warrants it. So far we have only had to deal with others in self defense and we hope it stays that way forever. We much prefer everyone getting along and respecting each other.

  They ask if they can go take a look at the farm we are talking about, naturally we tell them we will be happy to take them over right now. When we go back inside and tell everyone what we discussed, everyone from all the families is happy to hear the news. Naturally almost everyone wants to go with them to show them around. I tell them to go ahead and I will stay here to make sure no one attacks or catches us off guard. I go back to painting the barn I was working on while they go to the other farm to see what they may be getting into.

  18

  Our family comes back a couple hours later. I am still painting when they pull into the yard laughing. It’s obvious they had a good afternoon with our new friends. I clean up the brushes, put all my equipment away, and go over to the porch where the girls are talking about the afternoon. They tell me our new neighbors are about as happy as they can be. They say most of them cried when they saw the farm for the first time, and everyone said they feel like they have finally found a home instead of just another place to live. They say that’s how they all feel about living here. Everywhere else they have ever lived was just a place to stay for awhile. They never want to leave this home that we have made for ourselves here, well that we cleaned up for ourselves.

  They say they invited them over for supper, but they declined because they want to thank the Lord for blessing them so much by fasting and praying tonight.

  “They did say that if we really want to feed the children they would appreciate it though, so we are going to take supper over for the children anyway. They also said that they will be more than happy to join us tomorrow evening for a cookout though. We promised them steaks and baked potatoes for supper. Only a couple of them know what that is, but they said it sounds so good they are looking forward to it.”

  In the morning we go to visit and see what we might be able to do to help them get settled. They are still thanking us for doing all we have already done. We tell them that we feel that is what neighbors are for. Tim, Ken, and I help the men in the barns while the women help clean the houses. They cleaned them reasonably well before, but now that people are living in them they need total cleaning. Tim and Billy help get their tractors running and I help by taking Dr. Don and two of the other men into town with our big truck and pick up some canned goods at the super market, and new refrigerators and freezers for all the houses. They all work when we hook them up so we don’t need the charging kits we have, at least for now.

  Jenny, Samantha, Rachel, Emily, Ellie, and Jessica help two of the girls about their same age and their mother fix up the chicken coop and show them how they lured the chickens out of the woods into it. It doesn’t take long and they have a dozen or so chickens happily roosting in the fresh hay that they filled the box nests with. The day flies by and before we know it we are headed home with our guests to have the supper we promised them. I don’t know if they all enjoy it as much as I do, but I can honestly say no one is complaining about it. The ice cream afterward tops it off perfectly, especially the fresh strawberries that Andrew, Emily, Rachel, and Ellie found today when they were checking the bee hives. To clarify, they didn’t find them in the bee hives. They found the strawberries growing wild in the field near there.

  Our neighbors from the other group joined us as well. We know them well enough to joke with them now. Tim and I act upset when Ryan and Carol come over at supper time. I yell into the house to Dayna to turn the lights off and maybe they will think we all went out to dinner. Ryan tells me that won’t work, because they already called for reservations to every restaurant in town and they were booked solid tonight, so they know we are home. Our new neighbors keep saying how much they are going to enjoy living here. While we are all together we discuss the possibility of being attacked as we have been in the past. There were CB base stations in all the houses that we now know work very well. We also all have CB radios in the cars and trucks, so if someone needs help, we can call each other and can get to any of the three farms in a few minutes. Hopefully, that will not be too long.

  Dr. Don and I talk about working together so I can learn more about medicine. I tell him about my experience as a corpsman and he listens intently until I am through talking, then he asks which military I served in. Not really thinking about it I tell him I am a Navy SEAL, and was working with the Air Force Para-rescue units in a joint military operation. He mentions that as far as he knows there has not been a U.S. military since 1969 and I am not old enough to have served before that. Dayna who is sitting with me while we talk to Dr. Don and his wife signals Tim and Ken to come over for a few minutes.

  We ask if they would mind going outside to talk, they say they are very much interested in what we have to say, so they don’t mind going anywhere we wish to go to talk. I tell them we know this is going to sound very strange, but we assure them it is true. We recount the story of how Tim and I came to be here and then Ken tells them about himself. To prove we are telling the truth we show them our military ID and our driver’s licenses. They are smiling all the while we are telling them our stories. When they continue to smile after we have completed them I assume that they don’t believe us.

  “I understand if you don’t
believe us, it doesn’t really matter though because we can’t go back and speaking for myself, I wouldn’t if I could. Where I came from I was lonely and was just waiting for some enemy to get luckier than me and end my life. Now, I have a beautiful family that I love more than I ever thought possible.”

  Tammy and Tina the twins come out to the porch looking for me. They have their favorite puppy Zeus tagging along like usual and all three want me to hold them. They call me daddy and tell me mommy said it is okay for them to come out here to be with us. Dr. Don asks me how old I was when I got married. Dayna explains about our arrangement and tells them my only biological child is the one she is carrying. They are still smiling, so I ask them if they are smiling because they don’t believe us or what.

  They apologize for smiling. They say they don’t realize they are doing that sometimes. They also say they have no reason to doubt us, if we say that’s how we came to be here, then they will accept that. He says he has someone he wants us to meet though. His wife gets up and goes into the house. She comes back with an attractive young woman who looks strangely familiar to me. Dr. Don asks me if I would mind telling her what I told him. I don’t see why, but rather than argue about it I tell her everything I just told the doctor and his wife. She asks me if I was serving in the Middle East a few days before all this happened. I tell her I was and what I was doing there.

  She smiles and pulls her blouse up a few inches revealing a very flat tummy, but also a scar from a bullet wound in her side. She then pulls the neck of the blouse to the side and shows us a similar scar on her shoulder. Now I know where I saw her before, but how did she get here? She gives me a hug, and when Dayna gives her a questioning look she tells her she knows I am totally taken, but since I saved her life she should at least be able to give me a hug. She explains about the rescue, heck I was only one of seven on that mission. She also recounts her story of how she got here.

  “Well after my wounds healed well enough for me to travel, I decide it doesn’t matter how much people are paying you, if you die earning the money, it doesn’t do you any good. So like I told you the last time I saw you I decided to come back to the States and make a living doing something less dangerous. When I got to the States I was flying up to Erie, Pennsylvania when I was engulfed by the heaviest fog I have ever encountered and believe me I have flown in fog thick as pea soup before. I finally came out of the fog and was able to land, but there was not one sign of life anywhere on that airport.”

  I tell Tim the fog sounds familiar and Ken agrees, she continues her adventure.

  “I was going to take off and go somewhere else, but my plane wouldn’t start because it was totally out of fuel, and there was nowhere that I could see where I could get any fuel either. I started walking into the city and noticed that there were no cars moving on the roads and everything was run down terribly. There were cars on the roads that were just standing wherever they stopped. When I looked closely I could see skeletons in most of the cars which made it that much creepier. I met the doc here and his little group and stayed with them for a couple days thinking I would go back to the airport and get the heck out of the twilight zone. We all went back to the airport and you will never guess what we found.”

  I don’t want to ruin her story, but Ken answers her question.

  “When you got to the airport your plane had either aged to be as old as the others, or it was gone totally.”

  “Don’t you know when a woman is speaking you don’t interrupt, especially if you are going to ruin her punch line? But you’re right, the plane wasn’t even there anymore and what’s more there was no sign that it ever had been. The runway that I landed on was totally busted up like the others were when I landed, there’s no way I could have landed on that runway, but I did.”

  The McEvoys say that she has been a godsend to their family since joining them. She says that all she has done is help them get a couple of cars running and shot a couple of mangy dogs that tried to attack them before they left. Mrs. McEvoy says the mangy dogs were the two legged variety. The lady pilot whose name is Sara shows us her gun. It is a twin to the Sig 9mm that I carry all the time. I show her mine as well then she has to tease me. She tells me I got to see her naked back at the hospital, she thinks it should be her turn now. Naturally I turn red, which makes everyone happy, Sara says that’s what the nurse told her I did at the hospital. She thought it was refreshing to have a man, especially a military man, embarrassed by seeing a woman naked.

  Dayna tells her I’m not embarrassed anymore, she makes sure I see her naked often enough that I got used to it. I suggest we go back inside before people start missing us. The twins are laughing at me as much as the others even though they have no idea what we are talking about. When we get back inside Robin and Melissa ask us what we were talking about outside. Dayna says we will explain later so they are content to wait to find out all the juicy details. Dayna will definitely embellish the story about me and Sara in the hospital, but what has me confused is why so many people are winding up in this alternate dimension or whatever it is. We have even wondered if that is perhaps where Princess came from.

  Sara comes over before they leave and tells Tim and me that she had just about forgotten to tell us that we had a beautiful military funeral. She goes on to explain that the story she heard a couple days after I left on leave was that we were killed in a subway derailment in New York City. The story was that the train derailed and caught fire, we were the only ones on the train except for the driver or engineer. The driver got out okay, but the car we were riding in exploded and they never found the bodies. We were wondering if we were counted as deserters or what. Ken and Sara say they would love to know what people think happened to them. Sara says she always wanted to be a pioneer, but was born in the wrong century for that, however, now she is getting her chance.

  We talk for a while longer about her background. Her father was a military pilot, career man, so they were always traveling when she was growing up. She learned to fly when she was ten and can rebuild any engine almost blindfolded. We assure her that her talents will be greatly appreciated around here. She says she already feels more at home here than she has ever felt in the past. We all say the same thing and decide we need to sit down and make a list of the skills that each member of our families have so that we can use them the most efficiently. Naturally she tells me with all those children she can tell what I do best. Dayna doesn’t help, she pats her belly and says she can attest to that.

  When our new neighbors go home we tell the others about Sara. Robin and Melissa say they have been thinking about that a lot lately and think they have an idea that makes sense to them anyway. Robin explains their thinking to us.

  “We read in the Bible that God created the earth in six days right? Well doesn’t it make sense that if he could create an entire earth he could find a way for two civilizations or even more to live on that earth? As far as that goes who says that we are using the same earth, maybe this is a second earth? We have been thinking about where Jesus said that if the world becomes too wicked then God will destroy the people and start over. Remember, he did that with Noah, so why not now? We think that Jon, Tim, Ken, and now Sara have been sent to us to help us survive because maybe we weren’t able to make it on our own. We all have to admit that if Jon and Tim hadn’t come along we would have continued hiding and running hoping to find enough food to feed our children until it all ran out and we starved or were killed by the predators.”

  Dayna and Melissa agree fully with what Robin is saying. I have to admit it makes sense to me. I tell them that I agree totally with their theory. The other evening I was helping Teddy and Kathy with some history questions they had for homework and my answers didn’t make any sense to them because it was different than the book they were reading. I forgot to tell you that we have started home schooling the children. We found all the books we will need at a school in town for the different age groups and the women teach all the children four hours every day acc
ept Saturday and of course Sunday.

  Back to the history questions, they were asking me who became the President in 1960. I told them John F. Kennedy. They said that name isn’t even in their book. I checked it out and I couldn’t recognize any of the names even though most of the events were the same. It’s like the music we listen to. The names of the singers are all different than the ones who sang very similar songs during that time period. I was going on the assumption that this is a parallel world, but now I’m not so sure. There is no way to know for sure, but I would not be surprised by pretty much anything that happens now. The possibility that we have been sent here is not so far fetched that it is impossible. We decide that it doesn’t really matter, because all we can do is live our lives a day at a time anyway, and do our best to get along with each other and help whoever we can along the way.

  We haven’t solved anything, but it is fun and interesting to discuss things like this together. It shows us that we are not just taking our lives for granted, and that we are consciously aware that perhaps a higher force is working with us to make our lives better. The wives say that one point they want to make clear is that we were sent here to help them.

  “No matter how attractive Sara is, and no matter how much we have in common, she is going to have to find a husband of her own because Jon is already taken.”