"And then a few days later they'll be up here with shotguns and a rope," he said out loud. Ludwig looked up at him.
"Let's go for a walk," he said.
Albert pulled his bibs on over his boots. Then he grabbed his jacket, checking the inside pocket for the small frame .45. From the hall stand, he took the Remington, checked the load and slung it.
It could take an two hours to walk the perimeter of his twenty eight acres and in the snow it would be longer. He checked the barn again and everyone looked at him, chewing, but not particularly interested. The generator was still warm and the tanks hardly showed any use. Diodes and blinking lights told him everything was functioning. The temperature in the shed was forty five degrees, about ten degrees warmer than the outside air. The space heater in the shed kept the fuel warm enough to pump.
Next he went to the fuel barn, a 20 X 40 building with his oil processing equipment and ten two hundred and fifty gallon totes of waste vegetable oil. The fluorescents flickered on and he saw a small gray mouse run under a bench. He kept the methanol stored outside.
Next he entered the large equipment shed. The farm tractor, a mid-size Kubota was parked in the work bay with its front wheels hanging. The grease boots had come off the ball joints and he was preparing to replace them. That was the FedEx delivery that would probably never arrive. This was where he spent most of his time, crouched over one of the work benches or trapped underneath a piece of equipment. It was a well appointed shop with every tool and gadget he wanted. He was not particularly orderly or neat and the tools were spread across various benches and scattered on the floor, but it suited him.
He left the shop and headed due north across three hundred yards or so of snowbound pasture to a stone barn foundation on the edge of the national forest. An ancient windmill creaked and hummed in the wind.
The barn had been part of the original farm owned by William Ellis, circa 1790 and had been used up until the 1960s when the property was split up for sale. Since then it had simply fallen apart, the limestone foundation that had been quarried locally sagged and collapsed and the timbers rotted out and disappeared back into the grass. The windmill, a 1930s Axtell had been used to generate electricity for the barn and house that was located another hundred feet to the north before the power lines had made it this far up the county road. The house was demolished and another had then been rebuilt closer to the electric grid. Indiana was a particularly poor place for a windmill, but an anomalous micro climate on the top of this hill had provided enough God's breath to light the Ellis homestead for several decades.
He carefully checked the ground all around the ruins, looking for any human sign at all. There were deer and dog tracks but nothing else.
Then he cut west through the National Forest and found his CCTV camera and brushed off the lens.
A long march north took him over Gunter Magneson's corn field, down through a long limestone divide and finally back to the barn where he was once again greeted by the chow.
Ludwig had disappeared on and off throughout the walk and he turned now, expecting to see him emerge from the woods. The little chow jumped up and he petted her absently, but his eyes were focused on the tree line. He waited perhaps five minutes longer and when Ludwig did not appear, he turned around and started back on his own path.
He finally picked up the dog's prints in the snow where he had left the ridge and started heading down to the wheat field. Ludwig had veered off as evidenced by the twisting skid in the snow where he'd turned and the growing space between his prints. He was running. He called for him, but his voice fell short in the wet air and thudded into the snow. He saw where Luddy had crossed paths with a deer, not a large one, but bigger than a fawn. The deer had gone one way and the dog another. He followed fresh tracks, grateful that the snow was undisturbed. He entered the tree line, still heading north and west into the National Forest. He called again and stopped and waited. He imagined he heard a yip on the wind but he wasn't sure. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to separate the various sounds carrying through the trees. He kept walking, following the tracks, but now there was plenty of pattern interference from deer and small animals.
He called again and this time he heard the answer. The dog was telling him where he was. The voice was high pitched and distressed. Then the dog let out a long howl followed by plaintive yipping.
Albert forced himself through the snow, trying to keep focused on the sound. The dog was barking continually now. The snow was about a foot deep and dragged on his boots and pants. Sweat was running down the inside of his shirt.
He finally spotted Ludwig running back and forth in front of a limestone outcrop, alternately barking ferociously and howling maniacally.
Albert stopped to catch his breath. He was panting heavily and he could feel his heart in his neck. Ludwig was fine. He had cornered something and it was driving him crazy.
"Luddy," he called sharply.
The big Shepherd looked in his direction for a moment and then sat down, continuing to stare at the rocks.
"The hell's going on?" Albert said as he walked up to him. He touched the cold hair and felt the dog's muscles moving under the blue skin.
"You sonofabitch," he said, pulling the dark head close and inhaling the smell. The dog licked his face and looked at him, his eyes almost pulsing with excitement.
"Fuckin asshole," Albert said, refusing to let him go. Ludwig began to struggle and wiggled loose and started barking at the rocks again.
Albert unslung the shotgun and stroked in a shell. He had a fruit salad load - shot, slug, slug, shot, slug, shot - a setup recommended to him by someone who had killed a lot of people. Your first pull will be by surprise so you want the spread of No. 1 shot, sixteen nice pellets the size of garden peas. The guy will head for cover. You blast his cover - twice - with heavy deer slugs. This tells him you are going to get him. He tries to run; you hit him with the No. 1 shot again. He goes down. You move in and hit centre body mass with a slug. You miss. The next shell is another No. 1. You splatter him. You are alive.
He approached the rocks slowly and eventually saw a shadowed crevice. A pair of coyote eyes glared back at him. Then another. Then another.
"Jesus Christ, Ludwig," he said. He threw a short lead on the dog's collar and jerked him away. The dog fought back briefly but training overcame him and he moved in beside Albert and trotted along as they made their way back home.
Albert listened absently to the radio as he shaped the cheese and set it in the press. It was a litany of truck explosions, electrical failures and communications interruptions. Train travel had been suspended after a second train had derailed coming across the plains. Track had erupted underneath a ninety car chemical train as it passed near the Missouri River, spilling a million pounds of caustic soda, commonly known as lye. While federal and state environmental agencies tried to deal with that, the engine of an Amtrak passenger train exploded in Nashville, TN. Greyhound provided dozens of buses to ferry stranded passengers home, but one of the buses exploded and caught fire, killing nineteen people.
About an hour later, a hundred miles of natural gas interstate pipeline running through the empty grazing lands and wheat fields of Nebraska was blown, every ten miles. It appears that someone with a utility truck and a telephone pole auger had drilled a series of twelve inch holes over top of the clearly marked gas line right-of-way and dropped in 200-pound ammonium-nitrate charges set with timers and acetone peroxide detonators. The explosions could be heard for twenty miles - except there was no one there to hear them, so maybe they in fact never took place. The safety stations all kicked in as programmed and shut down the flow of gas, but the destruction of so much pipeline over so great a distance in the midst of a traditional Nebraska Christmas Eve blizzard, shut fuel deliveries off to five million homes and businesses. It would take a couple of weeks under ideal circumstances to remove the breached pipe, determine the extent of collateral damage, deliver replacements to the site, install it,
check it, test it. And now precious manpower had to be diverted out to the prairies and into the farmlands across the country to protect the remaining lines and make sure there weren't more surprises to come.
By three o'clock Tuesday afternoon, the entire transportation grid in the United States was shut down. Gasoline, diesel, heating oil and food deliveries had been halted while the National Guard attempted to check every truck, rail car and bus for explosives. Power was out in one of every twenty homes in the east with no prospect of restoration in the immediate future. Millions had panicked and were flooding the highways, trying to escape to the hinterlands or maybe the south where they wouldn't have to fight the cold as well as everything else. The death toll across the country had officially reached eight thousand, though there was speculation the government was deliberately fudging the numbers and the actual toll was nearer 100,000. The nuclear arsenal was on alert. Communications were sporadic and starting to break down for longer and longer periods and the government had moved itself into a secure location, locked the doors and was waiting to see what Santa Clause was going to bring for Christmas while the public at large and the military were folded into the blender.
Albert turned the radio off. It was no longer important to hear what was happening. It didn't matter. It didn't matter if it was one group or twenty, whether one started the runaway train downhill and the others just got on board opportunistically, it didn't matter if they caught some of them or most of them. New Years had arrived ten days early, and it was now Year Zero.
Albert sat for a long time at his table, taking stock of his situation and trying to formulate some sort of plan.
"Plan for what?" he asked himself.
The lights flickered twice more and then the generator came on about 4 p.m. By 6 o'clock it was pitch dark and the power had not returned. He was hauling the evening milk back when headlights shot through the bare trees and a vehicle started scrambling up his driveway. Whoever it was had four-wheel drive or they'd already be stuck. He got the milk into the mudroom and went through the house turning off the few lights he had left burning. Only the glow of the security monitor cast any illumination. He watched the pick-up struggle through the snow and spin on the ice, newly formed as the temperature dropped. He wasn't sure if he recognized it. The camera's night vision wasn't good enough to distinguish small details much beyond twenty feet. He patted his pocket and felt the reassurance of the automatic and held the shotgun over his shoulder as he moved towards the driveway entrance.
He saw the lights sweep the grounds as the vehicle bounced over the top of the hill and lurched to a stop. The driver sat there for a while, engine rumbling, lights on. Albert heard the tell-tail clatter of a Ram diesel. He saw the driver door swing open and a figure stepped into view.
It was Harlan.
Albert turned the front lights on and Harlan went back, turned off the vehicle and slammed the door. Albert watched him approach, the AR15 slung over his back.
Albert opened the door.
Harlan leaned the rifle in a corner and took a seat at the small table while Albert stoked the fire up again with a few boards.
"Fuckin lights went out for about the tenth time, you know what I mean? I figured, what the hell, might as well come and camp out here for a while."
The water boiled and he pressed a pot of coffee. Harlan watched as if witnessing the secrets of Dr. Frankenstein.
"I'd be outta gasoline in another couple days and then...shit, who knows? I just figured...you know?" Albert nodded and watched Harlan fidget.
"You been following any of this?" Harlan asked finally.
"Bit."
"You really need a television set, buddy. I brung one with me. I got a bunch of shit in the truck, everything I thought was useful, you know what I mean?"
"Sure."
Albert brought out a bottle and two glasses and poured him a shot and Harlan gulped it and almost choked.
"You gotta see what is going on out there. You ain't gonna b'leev it. The fuckin country's being locked down!"
"I know."
"That fuckin Obama is ate up."
Harlan's face clearly showed his incomprehension. He poured himself another shot and sipped it more carefully.
"What is this?" he said, holding the glass up to the light.
"Just a little something I put together for special occasions, like the end of the world and such."
"My mother's in Arizona," Harlan said. "I got holt of her yesterday but not today. Guess she's alright. Not much I can do anyway. Shit. They blowing up shit everywhere and ain't none of it anything big by itself, you know what I mean? They blow a few transformers here or there, a pipeline...you should seen what they done to that gas pipeline. They dug down and planted bombs all over and blew the shit out of it. And then they blew a sewage plant near Chicago. A fuckin sewage plant! Nobody thought of that one, did they? But they shut the sewage system down and there ain't no place for all that shit to go, you know what I mean?"
"Ya, I know what you mean. Stop sayin that, will ya?"
"What?"
"You know what I mean."
"No I don't."
"Fuck off, Harlan."
They sat in silence for a while and then Albert turned the radio back on and they listened to the recitation of incidents from the major cities. They hit New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Philadelphia with a combined population of twenty million or so, but the effects spread rapidly from there and all the satellite communities were affected and the populations ready to riot.
"You see what they're doin, doncha?," Harlan said. "They are forcing the government to stomp down on the people. Those fucking soldier boys ain't gonna be shooting terroristas, buddy; they're gonna be after you and me because we're out there trying to find something to eat."
Albert nodded slowly in agreement.
"Fuckin bastards! Fuckin cocksuckin...I shoulda joined up with Dusty and them."
Albert sipped his whiskey and listened to the reports coming in now of street gangs running in the open and shooting it out with police and Guard units.
"You're lucky you didn't join," Albert said. "You think the FBI didn't have all those idiots marked? As soon as this shit started happening who do you think they grabbed first, huh? Here."
Albert stood up and led Harlan through the dark to the computer. He shook the mouse and the screen blinked. Albert typed a few strokes and they watched the engine try and link to a page. Cannot Display Webpage filled the screen.
"Been like that all day."
"You sure you-"
"-Of course. Shit. Try it yourself."
Harlan did with the same results.
Albert turned on a few lights and they went back to the kitchen.
"You want to eat something?" Albert offered.
"Sure," Harlan said. "I'll bring in my shit," he said, standing up. "Where d'you want it?"
"Leave it in the truck for now. It's covered, isn't it?"
Harlan colored at the rebuff. He had forgotten for a moment how reticent Albert really was.
"Ya, ya...I tarped it up good."
"You got a bag or something, you know, like your toothbrush or whatever?"
"Ya," Harlan said, awkwardly. "I'll get that."
The generator was running at minimum load but Albert knew it wouldn't last forever. And there was no point in burning fuel all night just to keep his CCTV operating. He wasn't worried about the two freezers; they were in an unheated shed and unless there was a rapid, massive thaw, the meat would stay frozen for most of the winter.
"What's the point anyway," Harlan asked. "You ain't going to sit up all night watching the monitors are you?"
"No."
"Well, then."
Heat from the stoves would keep the house warm and the pipes from freezing. The animals lived outside for the most part, anyway. If they had shelter from the wind they were usually all right and they had a barn that could comfortably house three Mexican families. The problem was keeping th
e fuel warm. When the grid was functioning, it warmed the fuel; when the generator was on, it warmed the fuel. He wasn't about to bring Harlan in on any of this. He'd only be here a short while, days...maybe a few weeks until they got control of the power systems again and then he wouldn't want him out there knowing too much."
"Jesus."
"What?"
"Nothin," Albert muttered. "I'll be back."
He left Harlan sitting in the living room with a new glass of whiskey and walked out to the shed. He realized his planning hadn't been as thorough as he'd believed. What did he need electricity for, anyway? The generator produced more than he could use...the cow produced too much milk...the stoves produced too much heat. He had produced several thousand gallons of diesel fuel to be used in an emergency but there was nowhere to go. He couldn't drive anywhere. He hadn't really considered the fact that his CCTV system was only useful if he was watching it which brought him back to the generator and Harlan's comment about staying up all night to stare at the monitors.
He sat down in the shed and watched the generator spin, the beautiful clatter of the engine hammering his thoughts.
He switched the generator off and a few battery powered emergency lights around the farm buildings blinked on. Then he manually disconnected the transfer switch so the generator would not respond to the grid returning.
He let the diesel run for several minutes before shutting it down as well.
The silence seemed to echo for a full minute.
When he returned to the house, Harlan was sitting at the computer, cruising various websites.
"That power supply is only good for twenty minutes," Albert said, trying to sound casual, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
"Shit, man...you have to see this."
He walked over and saw the long shots of fires burning in a Chicago neighborhood. The fire trucks were blocked by mobs of raging rainbow coalition members.
"They've gone nuts."
"They were already nuts," Albert replied. "Just looking for an excuse."
Similar scenes were playing out across the country. The camera followed a man in New York as he smashed the windows out of an electronics store and climbed inside, followed by hundreds of others. They were all colors, genders and ages.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 6
