by Andrew Karre
Text copyright © 2012 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
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Carr, Elias.
Fight the wind / by Elias Carr.
p. cm. — (After the dust settled)
Summary: Seventeen–year–olds Fix, a natural mechanic, and Cleo, a gifted tactician, must find a way to cooperate in a near–future Iowa or they and the group they lead may die at the hands of armed bands rumored to be making their way down from the north.
ISBN: 978–0–7613–8331–4 (lib.bdg. : alk. paper)
[1. Survival—Fiction. 2. Cooperativeness—Fiction. 3. Leadership—Fiction. 4. Iowa—Fiction. 5. Science fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.C229323Fig 2012
[Fic]—dc23 2012007425
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 – BP – 7/15/12
eISBN: 978-1-4677-0029-0 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3076-1 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3075-4 (mobi)
For Brother Francis
CHAPTER ONE
T
he sun would be up in a few hours, so really Fix was only stealing a few hours of battery. Candles were no good. He needed light in the right places. He needed the headlamp. And if he was right, and this setup worked, a couple hours of battery would be meaningless. He and the others would have power. They’d be set. Maybe for good.
Mom and Dad would have understood. This was exactly what they died for.
Anyway, that is what Fix told himself when he finally gave up on sleep after thrashing in bed for hours. He couldn’t shake the image of the gearbox that connected the windmill to the mill’s generator. He could see the way they should go together so the huge main shaft would link up with the generator again. So that it would make electricity. So he and the rest could stop running.
He couldn’t shake the image. He couldn’t tune out the sound of the wind and those beautiful blades spinning a hundred feet above them. The others were already sleeping, but it was a perfect night to work. And there was no way was he going to fall asleep.
When Fix got to the windmill, things immediately started to click. He was at least half right about how to get the connection back between the generator and the main shaft. There was just that one part where he wasn’t so sure he remembered the words from the book. He stared at the part for the longest time, trying to recall what Cleo had said when she read the words to him earlier in the day.
Stupid words.
So Fix tightened everything down. The last thing to do was to engage the clutch that made the shaft engage the gearbox. Then the wind would turn the generator. Then they’d have power.
For a moment before he pulled the three-foot iron lever to start up the clutch, he worried that he’d wake everybody up. The lights in the bunker could easily have been switched on already. It’s not like the previous owners of this farm had turned off the lights on their way out.
He decided not to worry about it. Who’d want to sleep when they had power? So he pulled the lever and felt the clutch plates grab.
Fix knew instantly that something was wrong, and he tried to push the lever to disengage the clutch. But it was too late. An ungodly screech filled the turbine walls, then the sound of snapping metal. The lever swung toward him, and a terrible pain coursed through his shoulder.
• • •
It was only a couple hours before sunrise, and Fix wasn’t bothering with the flashlight. Might as well save the battery, he thought. Besides, in the dark he wouldn’t have to know how badly he had mangled the link between the gearbox and the generator, not to mention his shoulder. How many months of work had he wrecked because he’d been impatient? Because of those stupid words.
CHAPTER TWO
N
o one was going to miss the two minutes of battery that Cleo would use. No one even knew she had the clippers. Of course, Fix and Todd and Rob would guess when they saw, but what were they going to say? That they had to save battery so Fix could get the stupid windmill working again?
“I ought to take my time and use the rest of this set,” Cleo mumbled to herself. Fix was out of his mind. When they were out of batteries, they’d have no choice but to keep moving south. They’d all be better off.
She clicked on the smallest guard and turned on the clippers. The sooner her stupid hair was out of her way, the sooner she’d be able to think straight. And somebody in this group has to think straight, she thought. Think like a soldier. Or they’d all die. Simple as that.
It didn’t even take two minutes to buzz it all off.
Clean. Uncomplicated. It felt good, like the way her head was meant to feel. Prickly under her palm.
When she finished, she left the last couple inches of candle burning while she got out her dad’s book. Or what was left of his book. The cover was gone, and the first page just started in the middle of something. But that didn’t matter. Lately she was pretty sure there was a message on page one just for her.
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers . . .
She could read well enough, but some of the lines were completely meaningless to her. And yet she got the point: in war there’s no place for girly girls. It was time to do something.
She dug through the bag where she’d kept the clippers hidden since she’d made the trip south from Minnesota. The tight bundle was still there at the bottom. It was still heavy. She unwrapped the cloth for the first time in days. The gun was clean.
Cleo flipped out the cylinder and spun it. The whirr was satisfying, and decisive somehow. Fix wasn’t the only one who knew how to take care of a machine.
The four shells were still rubber-banded tight together. The only four shells she had—the only four anyone had for miles, as far as she knew. Anyone human, she thought.
It would be six if it weren’t for what they’d found when they first got to the farm. If she hadn’t let Fix talk her into checking out the windmill in the first place.
CHAPTER THREE
W
hen sleep came and the pain in his shoulder eased, Fix dreamed of the windmill, as he always had these past few months. There were good dreams about the windmill, dreams where lights in the old house blazed and everyone inside was happy, warm, and well
fed.
This wasn’t the good dream. This was the memory of the first time they saw the windmill. The dream was as vivid as the moment itself.
He and the others had seen the blades rotating as they crested the off-ramp. The working windmill was the first they’d seen in days. All the rest had been mowed down like dandelions. Fix immediately wanted to check it out. Cleo had agreed, but only because she hoped they could find gas. She’d insisted that they leave the vehicle and that only she and Fix go down. Rob and Todd would stay with the kids.
Cleo pulled a bundle out of her bag in the vehicle. “If you hear me signal, head for cover.”
“How are you going to signal?” Todd had asked.
Cleo unrolled the package and revealed the gun.
“Where’d you get that?” asked Rob.
“Doesn’t matter. You hear me fire, you take cover in those woods. Don’t come out until you get word from me or Fix. Got it?”
So Fix and Cleo walked down the valley toward the house. In his dream, they came straight up the driveway—the quick way from the highway. In reality, Cleo had made them take a wide loop around the property so they could come from the back side of the house, from near the river.
It hadn’t mattered. No one had been there to greet them. The back door of the house was off, and it was clear that there’d been a fight. Recently. Cleo kept the gun out and ready.
The noise of the empty house stuck in Fix’s dream. Wind blew at the curtains through the glassless window frames, and shattered plates crunched under his feet. Cleo and Fix made their way through the kitchen toward the front of the house. Everything was broken and torn open.
Cleo gestured to a wall with a hole blown through it. “Bullet hole.”
Maybe it had been the wind and the noise of broken stuff underfoot, or maybe the old couple had just been quiet in their suffering.
They were near the front door. A man and a woman, barely older than Fix’s parents had been. They sat propped up against each other, backs to the wall. Their dry lips mouthed the word please. There was blood everywhere around them, and both had clearly been shot several times.
It made no sense in this world that the couple would ever answer a knock at the front door, but that’s what it looked like. As though they’d opened the doors to greet visitors together, only to be shot.
Fix froze when he saw the two, and the next few moments were like a movie he could only watch.
Cleo sprung into action. She brought the water bottle to the lips of the man—he looked the most aware. Then to the woman. The “please” got louder. Cleo whirled around and headed into the kitchen. She was back a moment later with a single filthy towel.
“Look for some rags, Fix. Anything to get this bleeding under control. Move it!” But Fix was still only a spectator.
Cleo kneeled in front of the man, trying to decide where to start. Then the woman hacked a bloody cough and pointed at the gun Cleo had shoved in her belt. “Mercy.” She reached for the gun.
Cleo stumbled back, gun instantly in her hand. The man coughed too and struggled for words. “Please. You can’t save us. But don’t. Don’t let them. Come back for us. Don’t leave us for them.” He pointed at the gun and then tapped the woman’s forehead and his own. “Please. They’ll be back. More of—” The rest was lost in coughing.
The woman seemed farther gone than the man, but his spasm of coughing seemed to snap her back to life for a moment. Her moaning stopped, and she managed to lock eyes with Cleo. Then one word: “Shelter.” Her eyes rolled toward the door, and she slid farther down the wall. Then the moaning again.
Fix stayed frozen until Cleo slapped him hard across the mouth.
“Snap out of it. We’ve got to get back to the others. You heard what he said. This place is a deathtrap. We’ve got to move.”
Mind working at half speed, Fix gazed through the shattered windows. He could see the windmill turning peacefully in the strong wind. The property held not just the main house, but also a large barn and several smaller buildings near the turbine. It was everything he’d hoped for.
“Fix, come on!”
Then, from the man: “Finish us. Before they come back. Please.”
Fix shuddered. He looked to the man and woman and then back at Cleo. “We’ve got to. We can’t leave them.”
“We’ve got six bullets, and god knows how many armed monsters could be coming back any minute. You want me to waste two bullets?”
“Who’s a monster if we leave these people, Clee?”
She walked away, and Fix reached for her, stumbling to catch up.
Cleo paused. He could tell she knew he was right. That had always made her madder than anything else.
“Give me the gun, Clee. I’ll do it.” Fix put his hand out, and Cleo stood still, the muscles of her back rippling under her T-shirt.
Without a warning or a wasted motion, Cleo spun around, knocked Fix to the ground with her left hand, fired twice, and stormed out the door. The moaning stopped.
After Fix confirmed the couple was dead, he found Cleo standing on the porch, staring into the hills. “Now can we get out of here?” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
C
leo walked the hills around the farm most mornings when she couldn’t fall back to sleep—if it wasn’t ridiculously cold. If Rob or Todd or Fix ever asked, she would have said she was patrolling. But what was there to patrol? And what would she do if she saw anything?
Really, she liked to linger by the highway exit, the place where the truck had rolled to a stop all those months ago.
It had been hard for her to leave Minneapolis. She’d hated the cold, but she could tell something was happening in the city. The scattered collections of survivors, the little neighborhoods of the living, were beginning to organize. People were banding together. They were watching out for themselves in most cases, pooling resources and all that good stuff. But there was aggression just beneath the surface. Some groups weren’t content with what they had. Some groups were looking for an advantage.
Cleo had lived with Fix and his siblings in a small house in a neighborhood with a few other inhabited houses. It was nice, and all the regular residents got along well. The neighbors weren’t too friendly, although they watched out for the younger kids. It was the nicest neighborhood Cleo could imagine in this world.
But it was maybe a little too nice. Part of that was Fix’s fault. Improving stuff was in his nature, and some of his projects were attracting attention. Things like a small wind turbine generator (it only worked a little, but still) and the jungle gym that Gus, Fix’s little brother, loved were hard to miss among so much broken stuff.
At first it was just unfamiliar faces roaming the street. People passed through often enough, but these guys were lingering. Taking notice. Coveting.
Cleo noticed, of course. At first she thought it might be to their advantage. If they could show a few of these wanderers that they had good stuff and they weren’t afraid to protect it, they might gain some allies. Cleo wasn’t against sharing some of Fix’s handiwork if it would expand their circle of friends a bit.
Fix, on the other hand, was completely spooked. He didn’t like the fact that they had to live so close to neighbors of any kind. Unfamiliar faces set him on edge. Cleo knew this, but for a while, she thought she could manage it.
And then someone stole the new rain collector Fix had built. It wasn’t just theft. It was a message. The gang that did it didn’t even try to be sneaky. They just rolled up with a push truck and twenty guys Cleo and Fix’s age. They lit up the street with torches and calmly loaded up the collector. A few stood leaning against the cart, watching Cleo and Fix’s front door the whole time. With the lights out, they couldn’t see Cleo and Fix watching back. But the meaning was clear enough, Cleo thought. We’re taking your stuff, and you can’t stop us.
The message was so clear that Cleo was shocked when one of the guys went further. Someone threw a torch, followed by a dead squirrel, through
the front window as they rolled away. The torch burned out harmlessly, and the squirrel was fresh enough that they still ate it the next day, but the damage was done. In the morning, Fix set to work on the truck. Cleo didn’t try to talk him out of it. She knew they were badly outnumbered. They had only one weapon between them—and only she knew about it. And she’d noticed that none of their neighbors had shown their faces that night or the next morning. She knew her dream of an alliance was a fantasy.
A week later, they pushed off, all four of them crowded into a small pickup truck running on a sail and half a tank of diluted diesel.
And as they rolled out of the neighborhood, Fix’s little sister, Nic, cried out “Look!” from her perch in the pickup’s bed. Cleo and Fix twisted to see Nic’s pointing hand through the broken-out rear window. Five boys—probably from the night before—were kicking in the front door.
“Vultures,” Cleo spat and turned toward the road ahead. No sense in looking back any more, she thought.
“The door wasn’t even locked,” whispered Nic. Cleo could hear the two younger kids whispering to each other in the back, trying to be brave for each other.
“It’ll be warm wherever we end up.”
“Yeah, and lots of food.”
“And other kids.”
If they could be optimistic, she decided she could be too.
The wind was good the first few days, and they made excellent progress down Interstate 35. Cleo was beginning to enjoy the idea of putting the cold behind her. Her hope of a bigger, stronger group even got a boost when they met Todd and Rob, camping just north of the old Iowa border.
The two were shivering together in a ratty one-person tent. They’d been exiled for something Cleo and Fix couldn’t quite understand from one of the communities to the east in old Wisconsin. They were quiet, but Cleo could see that they were strong. They had some of their own food, and Cleo was quick to admit that she and Fix could use the help.
So the cozy four become a cramped six, but everyone was optimistic. The wind was even good for a couple more days as they crossed out of Minnesota.
