by Mike Mullin
At breakfast I announced that Reverend Evans would be in charge while I was gone. Darla gave me a sharp look, but I knew what I was doing. By putting him in charge and doing it publicly, I reinforced the idea that he was subordinate to me. And I managed to look magnanimous at the same time.
The trip to Sterling went smoothly. The Bikezillas were nearly empty and superfast. We made almost forty miles on the first day, passing through Pearl City, Georgetown, and Lanark. They were all half-burned and eerily silent. Not for the first time, I wondered where all the people had gone. I supposed they must mostly be dead, frozen in the tombs they used to call home.
We reached Sterling before noon the next day. From the routing slip, I knew the distribution center should be on Matthew’s Road, but we couldn’t find it. Street signs were hard to find anywhere—often buried in the snow berms at the sides of the roads, but usually we could locate a few of them. In Sterling they were all gone. I couldn’t even find the posts that had held them up.
Finally, I reasoned that the distribution center had to be on a major highway and would probably be outside of town where the land for a giant warehouse was available. So we started following each highway out of Sterling a few miles, looking for a gigantic building. It had to be the biggest structure in the area; Sterling wasn’t exactly a huge city.
Finally, on the eighth road we tried, we found it: an unmistakably massive, flat-roofed structure. Huge mounds of snow surrounded it on all sides, reaching almost to the roofline; someone had shoveled snow off the twenty-plus acre roof. Was it still occupied?
I left half my force along the highway, where they could watch the front door. The rest of us began a slow circumnavigation of the building at a distance, looking for opposition, for any sign of life.
The building was so massive, it took more than two hours to work our way around it, riding our Bikezillas out in the deep snow blanketing the fields around the warehouse. The distribution center’s parking lot hosted hundreds of semitrailers. Mostly they were huge blobs of snow, but here and there the wind had blown the side of a few of them clear enough that I could tell what they were. More semitrailers were backed against docks on all sides of the distribution center, like carbuncles clinging to the body of the building. Nothing moved. It was possible that the roof had been cleared off soon after the eruption and the building abandoned later. I hoped there were some supplies left inside, that we wouldn’t have to limp back to Speranta defeated and prepare for dozens of funerals instead of one wedding.
When we got back to the front of the building, I moved everyone closer to its walls, within rifle range of the glass pedestrian door. I called out, “Ed, Trig, and Francine—you’re with me.” I turned to Darla. “Keep everyone else out here covering the door. We’ll have a quick look around and be out in fifteen minutes. If—”
“If you’re not out in fifteen minutes,” Darla said, “I’m going to storm in there and rescue your ass.”
“I’m counting on it.” I leaned in, gave her a kiss, and left. We pedaled a Bikezilla to within fifty feet of the door, laboriously turning it to be ready for a fast getaway
The door was unlocked. I stepped inside—the daylight coming through the doorway illuminated a small outer office and reception area, as if the light were afraid to venture farther into the warehouse.
I stood there, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Then Ed stepped up beside me, carrying a lit lantern. I opened the door at the other side of the room and saw a bullpen filled with rows of desks. Papers were scattered here and there. The walls were decorated with posters listing rules:
Name badges must be worn at all times, No UNESCORTED VENDORS IN THE BULLPEN, and the like. Ed’s lantern cast crazy shadows around the room. He had brought Trig and Francine inside with him.
The back wall of the bullpen was made of painted cinderblock, not drywall like the rest. An aisle between the desks led directly to a metal door set in the back wall. I tried the handle—it was unlocked. I stepped through with Ed close on my heels.
Beyond the door was a massive, open room filled with huge metal racks. The racks were stuffed with pallet upon pallet of food, thousands of pounds of it just in the tiny bit of the warehouse I could see: canned corn, boiled potatoes, beef stock, and more. Directly in front of me, there was a row of pallets—dozens of them—that held industrial-sized cans of tomato sauce—enough tomato sauce, it seemed, to feed the country of Italy for a decade. Our food problems were solved!
A row of people rose from behind the pallets as one, as if some invisible signal had been passed. Every one of them had a pistol, and every pistol was aimed at us.
Chapter 55
“Hands up!” A woman commanded.
I raised my hand and hook. There was nothing else I could do. They were under good cover, behind the chest-high wall of tomato sauce, about twenty feet in front of me. There were at least a dozen of them, all armed. Of our group only Ed and I had guns, and they were on our backs.
“Down! On the floor! Now!” the woman yelled.
I lowered myself to the floor.
“Keep your hands up!”
I was facedown. I didn’t see how it was possible to raise my hands—maybe if I were seriously doublejointed? I stretched my arms over my head, laying my one good hand against the cold concrete floor.
I heard boots against the concrete and then felt something small and metal press against the back of my neck. A gun barrel, I feared.
“This guy’s got a hook,” a man’s voice said from directly behind me.
“We caught Captain Hook?” the woman said.
“He’s not much older than Peter Pan.”
“I’m Alex,” I said.
“Shut up,” they said together.
“What do we do with them?” the man asked.
“We’ve gotta kill them,” the first woman said.
“I can’t just shoot him!” the man behind me said.
“We can’t let them go,” the woman said.
“Um, why not?” I asked.
“Shut up,” they repeated.
“If you do shoot us,” Ed said calmly, despite the fact that his head was mashed against the concrete floor like mine, “the rest of Speranta will come looking for us. They know where we are.”
“We know exactly how many of you there are,” the woman said. “Twenty-six more outside. We can deal with them.”
“And if you’ve seen everyone on our patrol,” Ed said, “then you know they aren’t carrying much in the way of supplies. Just some trade goods. If we don’t come back soon, the whole town will be out poking around here.”
“Spranta?” the man said. “There’s no Spranta around here.”
“Speranta,” I said. “It’s new. Look, we don’t mean you any harm. We were just out looking for food—”
“Told you they were here to take our food!” the woman said. “We need to shoot ’em, Dean.”
“We’re not here to take anyone’s food. We didn’t even know you were here. You mind if I get up, so we can talk this over? Take my gun—you can always shoot me after we talk.” “All right, let’s hear what he has to say, Thelma,” Dean said, and I felt my rifle being lifted from my back. The strap was wrapped around my shoulder. I rolled very slowly and sat up so Dean could lift it off me. He was young, maybe mid-twenties, and black. I stayed sitting on the floor, figuring I was less threatening that way
The woman was young too—they seemed too young to be in charge. On the other hand, I was a teenager leading a village, so who was I to say they were too young?
“I’d like to not get shot, of course,” I said, “but I’d also like to trade. You’ve obviously got a lot of food, and while we’ re growing what we can—”
“What are you growing, snow carrots?” Thelma asked. “Kale and wheat, mostly In greenhouses.”
“And you’re heating these greenhouses how?”
I told her about our old greenhouses, heated by wood-burning hypocausts, and the new model, heated by electricity fr
om the wind turbines. Thelma seemed skeptical, but Dean was clearly interested. I was very careful not to tell her how many people lived in Speranta or let on that so many of them were newcomers and wounded. I didn’t want to say anything to dispel the impression of strength Ed had given them.
“So here’s the deal,” I said. “You’re going to run out of food eventually.”
Dean and Thelma spoke over each other:
“Got enough for fifty-seven months,” she said.
“We’ve got thirty-four months of supplies,” he said. They glared at each other, and I spoke up quickly before the glaring match could turn into an argument. “This winter might last ten years. You help us get through the next six months, and we’ll pay you back double by weight what you lend us now.”
“Riiight,” Thelma said, “we send you off with a bunch of our food, and we never see you again.”
I thought about it for a moment. Something Ben had said flitted around the edges of my mind. That we would inevitably become a feudal society. Nobles had sealed bargains with an exchange of hostages, right? Royal children or whatever. “We know where you are. We’ll show you where Speranta is. And then we trade hostages. We’ll send five people here to live and work with you. You send five to us, and we’ll teach them everything we know about growing food in a volcanic winter.”
“That could work . . .” Dean rubbed his chin.
“We send you the food, you dump five slackers on us, and then you slaughter our people,” Thelma said.
“You wouldn’t have to send all the food we need at once,” I said. “We’ve got enough grown and stored for fifty days or so. You could send a week’s worth at a time, and if you don’t like what your people are learning from us, pull out of the deal.”
“How far is this Speranta place anyway?” Dean asked. About sixty miles north of here,” I said.
“Well, that bird won’t fly,” Dean said. “You’re talking about food for hundreds and hundreds of people, right?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t risky. If I told him we had hundreds of people, I would be starting this deal off with a lie. If I told him our true numbers, we’d look weak. So I kept my mouth shut.
“We can’t haul all that food sixty miles,” Dean said. “Sure, we got trucks coming out our asses—”
“Must be painful,” Ed said. Dean groaned, but Thelma cackled.
“But there’s no stabilized, nonstale gas to be had anywhere in Sterling.”
“I’ve got that covered,” I said. “In fact, I’d like to seal this bargain with a gift. If you guys would come outside?”
“You gave away what!?” Darla yelled when I tried to explain the bargain to her about fifteen minutes later. “I’ve built ten Bikezillas, and you’ve lost three of them? Thirty percent! You’d be uninsurable if there were still insurance companies.”
“Technically I don’t think I was responsible—”
Ed leaned toward me and said, “You should take some advice my dad used to give me: Don’t dig a hole deeper than your shovel. You might not be able to climb out.” “This is a great deal,” I said. “We get the food we need to tide us over until we can build more greenhouses, and they get the technical know-how to build their own greenhouses. They’ve got almost five hundred people in that warehouse, sitting on their butts, eating from a three-year food supply. If we get all that labor mobilized building something . . . ?”
“How’re we all going to get home?”
“Four of us will need to ride in the load beds.” I didn’t think this was the best time to bring up the exchange of hostages. Not all of us would be going back to Speranta. “It’ll mean we can’t load as much food.”
“The gift was perfect—I don’t think they really believed what I was telling them about wind turbines and greenhouses until I demonstrated the Bikezilla for them. Well, and the fresh kale helped. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone salivate that much over kale before. And anyway, you can build more Bikezillas. They told me there’s a snowmobile dealer in town.”
“Yeah. They are impressive, aren’t they?”
“Of course!” After her fury over losing another Bikezilla, I figured I was really in for it when I explained that we had promised to leave five people behind. But strangely, that didn’t bother Darla nearly so much as my gift had.
Thelma decided to come back to Speranta with us. She still didn’t trust me—I got the feeling she expected us to butcher and eat her as soon as we got back to the homestead, but that only made her more determined to be one of the hostages who would seal our deal. I asked Ed to stay behind in charge of four volunteers from the newcomers. He agreed reluctantly, only after I promised we’d bring him back to Speranta at the first possible moment.
I understood Ed’s reluctance. The Wallers, as they called themselves, lived crammed into the back of the warehouse. They hid whenever anyone approached, dousing their fires and sitting silently in the dark warehouse. It was a good strategy—they’d kept nearly five hundred people alive for more than two and a half years, but it wasn’t a way I would have wanted to live.
We loaded up the Bikezillas with food from the warehouse. Dean gave us hundreds and hundreds of pounds of it, stuff none of us had eaten in more than a year: pasta and canned tomatoes, boxed stuffing, frozen steaks, canned yams, frozen peas, and more. The backup power at the warehouse had lasted until the weather had turned cold, so very little of the warehouse’s stock had spoiled.
Dean was willing enough to trade some of his medical supplies for fresh kale. I wound up getting small stocks of about half the drugs and supplies on Belinda’s list. I also convinced him to part with a few candles.
Those supplies didn’t nearly fill our seven remaining Bikezillas’ load beds. Dean invited us to take all the clothing we wanted—there was more of it in the warehouse than the Wallers could wear in a decade or more. I also looked for tuxes and wedding dresses, but of course WalMart didn’t stock those. When I asked Dean about it, he told me to check Sterling Formal Wear downtown. He also gave me a large supply of plastic roses and other decorations.
On our way out of Sterling, we stopped at the formal wear shop, grabbing huge armloads of wedding dresses and tuxes. We didn’t bother to look at sizes or styles—just grabbed everything we could in fifteen minutes or so. I was uncomfortable delaying our return to Speranta even that little bit more.
The fully loaded Bikezillas were slower, but we still made it home in two days. Belinda ran out to meet us—she had obviously been told we were coming by one of our lookouts in the sniper’s nests. “Lost three more while you were gone,” Belinda said.
“Uncle Paul? Dr. McCarthy?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“They’re doing better,” she said.
We reached the Bikezilla that held the medical supplies, and Belinda got too busy unloading everything to answer more questions. I assigned four guys to help her carry the supplies, then I gathered up Thelma and the other four Wallers—they needed to be interviewed and given job assignments by Charlotte.
I held the longhouse door for Thelma. She took one step inside and stopped dead.
“Move on in,” I said. “You’re letting out the warm air.”
She turned back toward me. “You’ve got generators running?”
“No. The electric lights all run off the wind turbine.”
“But the wind’s not blowing.”
“There’s a battery bank scavenged from a Prius in a shack behind the wind turbine. We put them out there so nobody’ll get hurt if they explode. The lights are running off battery power right now.” I put my good hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her inside so I could shut the door behind us.
“It’s warm in here,” Thelma said softly, as if she were in a place of worship rather than our living quarters.
It wasn’t, really. We didn’t heat the longhouse directly. But residual heat from the connected greenhouses was usually enough to keep the temperature in the longhouse in the fifties, whi
ch felt amazing after the subzero weather outside. I led Thelma through two sets of plastic drapes that separated the longhouse from one of the attached greenhouses. Thelma stared, jaw unhinged, at the neat, closely spaced rows of kale and wheat. In the greenhouse near the heating tank, it was so warm that I quickly started to sweat and had to strip off my coat, hat, and scarves.
“You’ll teach us . . . teach me . . . how to build all this?” Thelma asked.
“Well, I won’t—I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to do all this in a thousand years with a hundred monkeys helping me. But Darla and my uncle Paul will teach you. That’s part of the deal, right?”
“I want to learn everything.”
We found Charlotte in the kitchen area making some kind of soup for dinner.
“Heard we’re down to eighty-three,” I said.
“Three more died,” she said, giving me their names. They were all newcomers, nobody I knew well. “But we’re up to ninety-eight total residents, not down.”
“Wait, what?”
“Three families showed up together two days ago, not long after you left for Sterling. Evans gave them jobs and told me to add them to the census. Was that okay?”
“Yeah, fine. But how’d they find us?”
“I don’t know.”
I introduced Charlotte to Thelma and the four other Wallers. Charlotte had Thelma take over soup-making duties, so Charlotte could interview the others. They seemed to be doing fine, and I left them to check on the greenhouse we were building.
At dinner that night, I introduced myself to the newcomers and sat with them. They had heard a rumor that there was a new settlement east of Warren amid the windmills and that we had food. Then they had just wandered around the wind farm until they found us. I wondered how many more people would be showing up on our doorstep. We needed to get more greenhouses built ASAP.
For the next month, I spent my days working on the greenhouses. I couldn’t do the electrical work or welding, but after building the first four greenhouses, I knew enough to manage the structural part of them. We finished the fifth greenhouse and started building three more plus another longhouse. We planned to build four greenhouses around every longhouse. Those would require two windmills and a battery bank to power. Every windmill we powered up would include a sniper platform; that way, we would have interlocking fields of fire covering our whole settlement. All the longhouses would be built as defensive structures with walls thick enough to resist most small-arms fire.
