by E A Lake
Day 1,166 - continued
Tim’s travels took him to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he witnessed the ruins of the once great city. Not even one full year into the apocalypse, and already the Twin Cities were nothing of their former selves.
Food and fresh water were all but gone, he told us. All medical supplies and medicine had either been looted or used up. The great rivers flowed freely, though people were scared to drink the water for fear of contamination upstream. On one river, it was a destroyed nuclear power plant that worried them; the other had been poisoned with the dumping of thousands of dead bodies.
Most of the wild game in the area had been harvested the previous winter. Over-hunting made the woods and fields devoid of any usual critters after that. Anyone with a farm or planted garden found themselves robbed blind by passersby and thieves. Everyone everywhere, Tim said, was starving to death.
“Wife’s sister wasn’t there, I was told,” Tim continued in a hollow voice. “They told me to try the LaCrosse area. Even drew me a map. If she wasn’t there, she was most likely at a relative’s place in Sun Prairie, over in Wisconsin. And yeah, they had an address.”
But everywhere he went, Tim found the same two things: no sister and large cities in ruin, their populations decimated by disease, hunger and death.
LaCrosse pointed him to Sun Prairie, just outside of Madison. Sun Prairie pointed him towards Oconomowoc, just outside of Milwaukee. As difficult as his journey was, finding friends and family of his wife’s sister was not.
Oconomowoc was a bust, but they pointed him towards a place just south of Green Bay called Manitowoc. He spent the second winter of the apocalypse - now referred to as “The Darkness” by many - along the shores of Lake Michigan.
“By spring, I’d heard rumors of a man who might know something about all of this…” He swung his hands all around. “Two or three folks told me I needed to hear what he had to say about The Darkness. They weren’t sure he was telling the truth, but surely he couldn’t lie to a man of God.
“I wasn’t having any luck with my wife’s sister; figured she was dead anyway. So I took off for a remote Amish farm just north of a tiny little town called Greenwood, over in Wisconsin still. And that’s where I found him, almost two full years into this madness.”
Feeling my grin grow, I peeked down at Violet. She was fully entangled in this man’s tale. To me, it all sounded like something someone told others just to get a free meal or two.
“Let me guess,” I said, trying to hide my skepticism, “he was a self-professed prophet.”
Tim nodded for a while. “That was my thought, too. But he wasn’t. Claimed he didn’t know if there was a God or not. What he was was a scientist. An astronomer actually.”
“Maybe he called himself a scientist,” I countered. “It wasn’t like you could check up on him. Not anymore.”
Stroking his white beard, Tim’s eyes stared past me into the woods. “I had the same feeling about it all, until I spoke with him. Listened to what he had to say, even read some of the stuff he had with him.”
I sat up quickly, my eyes opening wide. “He had proof?”
Tim eased a bit. “Enough proof for me; maybe not enough for a man like you, though. He had reports that he’d worked on. Most of it was scientific mumbo-jumbo to me. But he also had some letters from other people supporting his theory.” His face went taut for a second. “Supporting someone’s theory, I should say.”
We let Tim take a break from his story to rest his tired voice. He took the opportunity to eat another fillet of smoked fish and a couple handfuls of carrots. Washing it all down with another swig from the canteen, he grinned at us.
“On the road, I’ve found good people like you two,” he said. “I’ve also found plenty of evil. Had all my possessions stolen, several times. The first was on the road towards Madison. They were nice enough, for thieves. But they still took everything. Then again, a few miles from Oconomowoc I was robbed. Those fools found it necessary to beat the living tar out of me, even though I never gave them a reason to. Even as they took turns striking and kicking me, I only raised a hand to protect myself.”
Studying his face closer, I noticed several scars running along his face and his nose pointed more to the right than mine. From what I could tell, Tim was an honest man. But I wondered if others, one in particular, was as honest as he.
“So, this fellow over in Wisconsin,” I asked. “What did he have to say about all of this?”
The story was long and meandered at times. Occasionally, Tim got dates or people mixed up. But for the most part, it went as follows:
In March, the year before The Darkness, a young man at the University of Wisconsin in Madison was asked to do some research. The problem: Why were satellite signals weakening over the course of the past few years? Why did they have to keep boosting the power to their devices floating in space some hundreds of miles above Earth’s surface?
This man, Doctor James Green, did a cursory study and found radiation to be the problem. It wasn’t until he was about to pen his report that the alarms went off in his mind. Sure, some of the higher satellites expected to find radiation playing with their signals. But ones only several hundred miles up — that was odd to him.
More studies followed. The man became obsessed with finding a logical explanation. In his experience, aside from minor solar flares, there was no reason for continued radiation in significant amounts to be pressing in on the outer limits of Earth’s stratosphere.
The following winter James Green made an alarming discovery. At most times, the inner Van Allen belt lay between 600 and 3,700 miles above Earth’s surface. Severe solar flares could push it within several hundred miles from time to time, but it usually receded. But part of the belt was polluting the stratosphere with powerful electrons: radiation. And it wasn’t receding, it was collapsing. On to Earth.
No one in his department agreed with his findings. They sent them off to NASA and the agency emailed them back within 10 days. It was agreed that part of the belt was descending but they gave multiple instances where this had happened in the past. And the belt always reverted, always. In the end, they gave the likelihood of the collapse continuing a one-and-a-half percent (or less) probability. They might as well have said, ‘Thanks for your concern, Doctor Green. Now go back to your star gazing.’
Day 1,166 - continued
“They laughed him off,” Tim concluded. “Politely, I suppose you could say. But he wouldn’t let it die. He felt the radiation was getting stronger, not weaker.”
Dr. Green consulted with a radiation specialist. Could a strong dose kill the planet? Unlikely, the man concluded. However, it could wipe out all of mankind’s advances over the past millennium or so. But the specialist concluded that there was no chance of that much radiation falling to Earth. Ever.
He asked one of his colleagues, a woman (not that it mattered) what would happen to built-up radiation if it were suddenly “pushed” towards Earth by a solar flare. Tim told us that James Green and the woman worked on the dilemma for several nights, after hours and away from prying eyes. If anyone else had found out what they were working on, their work would have been shut down.
Three nights later, they determined that if a certain amount of these protons were available, a medium C-class solar flare just might force them from their hibernation and cause the radiation to fall to Earth. But, again, the likelihood of this happening was remote.
With this new information, Doctor Green went to another friend of his in Madison, some Indian fellow with advanced degrees in mathematics. He gave his friend the parameters and all of the pertinent information needed. His friend’s report, five weeks later, was nothing short of sobering.
‘If,’ the man emphasized, ‘if this were to happen, the events would be catastrophic for mankind. We’d immediately be thrown back two centuries. And every 10 years that followed, mankind would lose more ground than could ever be made up. The radiation would render our world helpless. D
iscoveries would have to be made anew. Every single piece of equipment and natural resource within 20 feet of Earth’s surface would be completely irradiated and rendered useless. Forever.’
Mankind would be in a free-fall for years to come. Within five years of something like this happening, 90 percent of the world’s population would be wiped out. Three factors were the basis for that number.
One: Fresh drinking water would be hard to find for most people.
Two: Starvation would ensue food supplies ran out.
Three: Modern medicine would all but disappear from overuse.
It would take centuries, according to this expert, to stabilize the population. The dark ages would be looked upon as the “good old days” he claimed. Mankind wouldn’t see it coming, and may never recover.
In the end, the man called it a potential extinction event for our world. Thank your God, he concluded, that it never could happen.
We were silent for a few moments; the only sounds around us were that of nature. Through the woods, I could hear the waves crash against the shore, seagulls calling out, red squirrels barking at each other. Absent were any sounds of our former world, the one that still existed some four years ago.
“But it did happen,” Violet stated, pulling on her lower lip with her fingers. “Just like they all said it could.”
“Just like Doctor Green said it could,” Tim corrected. “He let the project lie around for several months. Then at the beginning of August, the year it all went down, he said he got a frantic phone call from the guy at NASA, the one who basically laughed him off.
“Seems they’d discovered an error in checking over his math. Some number got flipped. A plus became a minus, or they multiplied instead of divided. The man was winded, apologetic. Seems he was right, Doctor Green that is. There wasn’t a one-and-a-half percent chance of it happening. There was almost no chance of it not happening.”
Everything became silent as I tried to digest what Tim had just said. Someone, perhaps multiple someones, knew what was about to happen to all of mankind, yet we never heard a peep from them. It seemed odd, surreal even.
“The Feds showed up and locked him down. Said they were monitoring every one of his communications. He wasn’t to tell anyone about this. They threatened him, so he left for his grandparents’ old abandoned farm. And there he sits, contemplating the past and the future.”
“He should be shouting this from the mountaintops,” Violet shouted, leaping from her spot. “Everyone needs to know what he knows. We deserve to know this, right?”
I smiled and shrugged; Tim just shrugged.
“He has told some people,” Tim answered. “Most people think he’s crazy. They say he’s just a loon looking for attention. The sad bottom line is, no one cares. Whatever happened happened. The past doesn’t change the present. Most folks are simply trying to survive, if that.”
Violet glared at me as if I needed to say something. But for the most part, it was just a nice story, nothing more. True or not, we were hunting for Daisy, not trying to solve the world’s problems.
“What I saw in the larger cities,” Tim continued, “made me cringe. For the most part, they lay in ruin. Those still standing are inhabited and ruled by gangs. Food is scarce, living conditions deplorable.”
“But they’re still there?” I asked. “The cities?”
“Sort of,” he answered unenthusiastically. “There’s been a lot of burning. “Cleansing”, they call it.”
Violet looked confused, her face drawn tight. “Cleansing what?”
“The disease, the dead, whatever’s left that they don’t want to deal with.” Tim rose and leaned against a tree. “They say Chicago is all but gone now, at least of people.”
That one hurt; it cut me through the flesh and right to the bone. Violet must have noticed my grimace. Her hand lingered on my shoulder, caressing it gently.
Day 1,167
We slept around the fire, all three of us. Except only one of us slept — Tim. Violet and I stared at the flames, recalling the preacher’s words. By the first pink and orange glows in the eastern sky, I’m sure she was as exhausted as I was
After a quick breakfast, we parted ways. Violet and I turned north on the road we had been following, on our way to North Canal Fish Camp. Tim turned left, heading south toward points we’d already traveled.
We walked silently for quite a while, neither of us seeming to want to discuss Tim’s news any further. It wasn’t until our first break that Violet dared to break our solemn monotony.
“Did you believe him?” she asked, rubbing my forearm as she spoke. “Some of it, at least?”
I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t know how to answer. “I suppose he told a story he’d been thinking about for the past few years. Or maybe everything he reported was the gospel truth. I don’t know.”
She offered a smile but didn’t do very well. “You know what he heard about Chicago was just hearsay. He didn’t see it, so he’d just have to go on someone else’s word.”
I nodded, staring at the tranquil blue waters of Lake Superior, which were calm for a change. “I know.” Now it was my turn to fake a smile. “I just…” Yeah, I just what, Bob? I thought.
“Let’s keep moving,” Violet urged, pulling me from my spot by an arm. “How far to North Canal?”
I looked north and east, then south and west. If I recalled correctly, our next destination was only 10 miles from Beacon Hill. But I couldn’t recall how far we’d made it several days ago.
I glanced at Violet. “If you want to know the truth, Shelly and I were just so-so happy. We had good times and bad, just like most married people. I think sometimes I’ve idealized her and our marriage so that I’d never think poorly of her.” I felt myself choking up. “But never once, not in four years, Violet, have I ever thought of her as anything but alive. I may not have loved her like I should have, but I never wanted her dead. Never.”
Real tears came, followed by sobs. When I collapsed onto the dirt trail, Violet lowered herself and wrapped her arms around me, hugging as tightly as she could.
I awoke in the same spot a while later. Violet was still awake, her loving arms still wrapped around me.
“Feel better?” she asked.
My eyes felt crusted with dried tears. “Am I a bad person, Violet?”
“Absolutely not.”
“No,” I countered. “Stop and think about it, and be honest. I need to know.”
She kissed my forehead and squeezed me tightly again. “You’re not perfect; none of us are. But you’re damned near there. At least to me.”
“But I never went back for her,” I answered. “I should have tried harder. I’ve always felt that way. I didn’t do enough.”
Sighing first, she shook her head. “Daisy might be less than 100 miles away, and look at all the trouble we’re having. How far is it to Chicago? Four, maybe five hundred miles? Even you couldn’t have made it that far. Not against all the odds stacked against you.”
Though I’d heard similar words before, I believe my ears had finally decided to listen. I felt better. Not great, but better.
“She knew, you know,” Violet said softly, looking away from me now.
“Who knew?”
She turned back to face me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Daisy knew. She knew what had happened between us, what I did, how I felt.”
I sat up straighter. Holy crap, this was kind of big news for Violet to have withheld.
“She knew what we had done…what you did?” I asked, embarrassment coloring my words. “Like, everything?”
Violet paced, nodding slightly with each step. What seemed like an hour passed between my question and her eyes meeting mine.
“She saw the whole thing,” Violet admits. “She was by the back window, wondering what we were arguing about when it happened. She thought maybe she needed to come out and save me if you decided to shout at me again. But when she saw the kiss…”
She didn’t need to fi
nish. I could see the shame on her face.
“Was she bitter?”
Violet shook her head no, but only slightly. “She said she understood. That it was alright and normal for me to have feelings like that for you. You two weren’t married, she said.”
I felt an anger crawl through my body, beginning at my heart and working its way to my extremities. That explained why Daisy hadn’t said ‘I love you’ when I left to kill Barster. It had to be the only reasonable explanation. It was all Violet’s fault.
“She said you and I were better together than she could ever be with you,” Violet continued. “I would give you things she couldn’t.”
I glanced into her eyes, capturing and trapping them with my mind. “What could you possibly give me that she couldn’t, Violet? Besides a never-ending hard time and an early heart attack, what made you a better fit for me than Daisy?”
She looked away, hurt by my stinging words. “Just forget it,” she whispered. “Let’s keep moving.”
I caught her arm as she reached for her pack, squeezing her wrist a little tighter than I should have. But I was angry, so I didn’t really care.
“You owe me an answer,” I demanded with a low growl.
Tearing her arm away, she rubbed her reddened wrist. “I don’t owe you shit, asshole. I’ve told you everything you need to know. All of the missing pieces of your precious missing Daisy. So why don’t you do me a favor and just drop your neediness for a while. Because I’m pretty damned sick of it.”
She stomped ahead, blazing a path on the dirt trail. It might have been cute if she wasn’t such a spoiled little shit who always got her way.
“Better watch out wandering off on your own, little girl,” I shouted as she disappeared around a bend in the trail. “Some wild animal may get you. And I won’t be there to help you.”
I waited with a grin. Of course, she didn’t answer. And I knew why. At least, I thought I did.
