by Sandy Nathan
And entertainment freaks! They’d watch anything that moved. They loved to cluster outside their space when he and Ellie were making love.
That popped him out of his giggles. The goldies weren’t funny. They weren’t kind or good, either. Except to their own kind.
He felt something running down his cheek. He lifted his bony hand and wiped it. His hand came away wet. Don’t worry, Jer, he said to himself. Ellie is coming. They’ll send her and the others and the stuff.
He was standing in the middle of pasture so rough that Sam Baahuhd, the estate’s headman in the old days, would have had a fit if he’d seen it. Jeremy looked around the weedy plot behind him, wondering where the back door of the shelter was. He’d built a huge bomb shelter under this field. The shelter was as big as a small town and as far below the surface as the sea was from the cliff top, hundreds of feet. It was equipped to last a couple thousand years, if its inhabitants were clever.
They should have been very clever. The shelter was built with the intention of housing an international community of scientists, scholars, and philosophers. One hundred of Earth’s best and brightest were supposed to go down there, preparing to build a perfect society when the radiation cleared. But the disaster came so fast that the scientists and scholars couldn’t get to the estate.
Jeremy had ended up giving the place to the people who lived and worked in the mansion’s stables and fields. Ninety-three villagers plus Arthur, his driver and an undercover commando, locked themselves in after he and the others left for Ellie’s home.
He could see no sign of the shelter or the estate. The stone mansion was gone. He looked for some evidence of a foundation. Nothing but grass. He couldn’t find the rear exit of the bomb shelter, a concrete pipe that had stuck out of the ground a couple of feet.
Had the people down there survived? They could have died of hunger or disease. They could have left ages ago.
Massive trees spotted around wide grasslands had replaced the mansion’s cultivated gardens. The huge trees were exactly like California’s valley oaks. Some of the old giants he’d seen at his mom’s Santa Barbara estate had trunks four feet across. Their leafy heads spanned a hundred feet. These trees were at least as large.
They were strange, too. The oaks that lived around there in the old days were skinny-trunked. They grew very close to each other. Bright green and leafy, the Hamptons’ native oak forests were nothing like the wide-open savannahs surrounding him.
Jeremy poked around where he thought the back entrance to the shelter had been. A lump in the ground might be it, but he was shivering too much to explore. He’d have to look for the village tomorrow. The light was fading. He needed to find a place to spend the night. And then he heard a sound he recognized, even though he’d never heard it before. The drawn out wailing of many canine voices came from the forest to the west. Intertwining howls. Those were wolves, not dogs.
The wolves howled again, coming closer.
That’s when the nerve block wore off. They weren’t sending Ellie or anything else. He’d been a pain in the ass on Ellie’s planet, so they spit him back.
They’d sentenced him to death.
3
Making his way across the meadow, Jeremy scanned the forest for a tree that forked low enough for him to climb. OK. There was one. Something was standing in the grass at its base. He stopped, staring.
It was a dog, a definite dog, not a wolf. A modified dog, heading in the direction of wolf, but not yet there. As he got closer, she wagged her tail. She was a bitch; her swollen teats said she had puppies. She raised one paw and dropped her head the way Sam’s hound dogs had when he approached.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said. She rolled over onto her back. She had the mottled coat of one of Sam Baahuhd’s hunting dogs. Her ears were neither up nor down, not floppy hound dog ears, but not pointed jackal or wolf ears, either.
“Are you Flossie? Flossie’s granddaughter?” That would have been many hundreds of generations in the past, he knew.
The bitch stood up and yipped, motioning him to follow with her head. She had a rabbit stashed by the oak’s trunk and grabbed it as she trotted into the forest. He could barely keep up with her. Only the howling behind him kept him going. She led him deep into the forest, to a hill he’d never seen with a small clearing in front of it.
Flossie took him to a hole in the hillside and disappeared inside. He looked at it, not knowing if he could fit. A howl from the forest behind him had him clawing at the hole’s dirt sides. He made his way in, leaving some of his skin on the walls. Inside, Flossie fed her babies while having her own dinner. She ripped the rabbit’s guts open and devoured the contents. She made a handy job of it, also consuming one of the rabbit’s hind legs. The rest, she prodded to him with her nose.
“Thankee, Flossie,” he said, attempting to speak the brogue of the old village.
Jeremy’s stomach growled. He didn’t eat the rabbit for a long time. He kept thinking of parasites in raw flesh. He hadn’t eaten meat in Ellie’s world. They were too kind and nonviolent to consume flesh. Some of it had rubbed off. The real part, he hoped. What was she doing now, his beautiful wife? Crying. He could feel Ellie crying. They didn’t tell her what they were going to do to him.
A bark of a laugh escaped him. The goldies didn’t know how to lie before he and the others had come. Having five humans in their midst had corrupted them.
He devoured the meat and chewed the ends of the bones. He scraped the inside of the skin with his teeth, both for whatever flesh clung to it and to clean the skin for later use. Shoes?
Finally he slept, the worst sleep of his life. He was so traumatized that his body was stiff. When shock let go of him so that he might sleep, the fleas attacked. Flossie scratched and whined as she slept, never having known a life without fleas. Jeremy scratched and hoped they didn’t carry diseases and that he’d live through the night.
“Well, Flossie, we’re alive.” The sun flooded into the den’s opening. Flossie was reserved now, keeping her pups behind her. She still dropped her head when he moved. “Thankee, ma princess. Ah hope we never sleep together again.” She tilted her head when he spoke and whined.
“Remember Sam, lass? Ah do.” Jeremy said as he dragged himself out of the opening of her den and into the day.
“Whoa!” He found himself blinking in the sunlight, facing a snarling male dog. Around him were twenty or so of his mates. The pack leader and his lieutenants.
The snarls were low and deep, signaling that they meant business. What would Sam have done? Jeremy thought furiously. He had about three seconds to establish dominance before they tore him apart.
He stood to his full height. The dogs were ringed around him, with the big male closer than the rest. Jeremy didn’t make eye contact, just looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. The animal had matted hair and was covered with scars. His ears were tattered. This guy had been around.
Jeremy took in a breath and let it out slowly and audibly. He relaxed his shoulders and settled into the earth and himself. He’d seen Sam do that working with rough horses and dogs. If they went for him, Sam knew what to do. Jeremy had seen him throw an attacking stallion on the ground with a flick of the wrist. Sam would have huge hounds groveling at his feet. All of it effortlessly and apparently without violence. But what did he do?
The leader looked at him, ears erect. The growl turned over in his throat. The other dogs’ eyes darted between Jeremy and the leader. They would spring if their chief did. Jeremy took another breath and stood, doing nothing. The dogs seemed to settle down, still looking at the alpha male.
“Hey, lads. Ah got bit o’ business this morning. So whadya say, ah’ll scoot.” He aped Sam’s accent and whistled the way Sam did. The dogs looked startled. He balled up the rabbit skin and threw it as hard as he could out of the circle.
The big male charged after it, catching it. The others took corners and tore it to bits.
Maintaining his calm, Jeremy walked away
silently. The leader looked up. His eyes followed Jeremy as he walked slowly out of the forest, but he didn’t follow.
“Holy shit!” Jeremy whispered when he was a sufficient distance away. He had no intention of going near the dogs again until he had a better idea of how to control them. He scratched his arm. And he wasn’t going to sleep with Flossie either.
He put his hands on each side of his head, thinking. Something had to be left of the estate. A huge mansion and sprawling outbuildings, barns, and equipment sheds could not be totally swallowed up. He was crossing what he thought was the field behind the main barn.
He turned around. The barn had to have been around here. Where? The oaks had infringed into the field, with denser trees in the distance. He wanted to scream. He was hungry and thirsty and his feet hurt.
He curtailed his search as a basic need asserted itself. He had to admit that one of the nicest things about planet Earth was that he could piss wherever he wanted. On Ellie’s planet, the humans had to go through a whole rigmarole so the goldies didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t have a process of elimination. That said a lot about them: They were so uptight they didn’t even shit.
He did, though. His stomach roiled from his rabbit dinner. Jeremy walked to a likely tree. “Do bears shit in the woods?” he asked the tree as he squatted. “Not to be offensive, old boy.”
Squatting was a bit of providence: Ten feet from him, a pipe stuck a couple of inches out of the earth. It was an exhaust pipe. From what? The machine barn? The machine barn had housed farm equipment and a small mechanics’ shop. Plus everything that would be needed to set up a sawmill. Did that pipe lead to the barn? All he had to do was dig to find out.
Hours went by. No food, no water. No shovel. He dug with his lily-soft hands and a branch he found that was straight enough to pulverize the soil. After breaking up the dirt, he scooped it out with his hands. His atrophied muscles trembled with the exertion. He wasn’t fit for this. He wasn’t fit for anything.
Why couldn’t they have given him a shovel? If they didn’t want him to have his potentially-used-for-violence knife, how about at least a shovel?
He would have wept when he finally reached a roof, but he was too dehydrated. Was it the roof of the equipment storage? He had no idea. He had to find a place to sleep and something to eat. It was early afternoon by now. If whatever was below him was empty, and if he could get through the old tin roof without cutting himself up, it might make him a good place to hole up. He giggled at the possibility, and then couldn’t stop laughing. Why did that seem funny?
Much later, he’d dug out around the vent far enough to stand on the roof. He pulled up a corner of the metal by the exhaust flue and it peeled back the way he’d hoped it would. He made a big enough hole to slip through. First he stuck his branch into the opening and felt around, then threw pebbles in at various angles to try to determine what was down there. It was a room with plenty of space for him. One of the pebbles bounced off something that resounded with a metallic ping! Tools? Something really useful like an ancient truck with no fuel? His laughter had a hysterical edge.
Jeremy shook with exhaustion. His lips were swollen and parched. But he had to get down there and back out. He had to get food or he’d die. He slipped through the opening and dropped to a dirt floor.
It was the machine room. He could see some of the inside with the light from the hole in the ceiling. The metal walls didn’t look melted, just decayed. The walls on the northern and eastern sides were stone. That was the side that faced toward the nearby town of Jamayuh where the atomics would have originated. The framing was metal. Metal and stone didn’t burn. It had survived. This was the barn he remembered!
Earth had covered it completely. It had to be three feet under the ground at its highest point. The peak would be about eighteen feet high. Fortunately, he’d dropped near the side wall or he could have broken a leg.
Tractors, a backhoe, a truck. Other farm vehicles. All sorts of equipment that he had no idea how to use. And tools. The walls held banks of tools, and shelves full of screws and hardware. It was a bonanza, except that it was deep underground and probably thousands of years old. He was sure that none of the engines worked. He had no way of getting them out, even if they did.
Jeremy found a shovel and a pickax. He picked up a steel canteen. There was more, but food and water came first. Jeremy moved some empty steel barrels so he could climb out of his new home. The full barrels he couldn’t move at all.
Well, after he went out to dinner at the local bistro and had a latté, he’d find out what was in the barrels. Or maybe he’d just come back and crash in his new pad.
As he was heading toward the meadow, something came to him. Why were the wolves to the west and the dogs to the east of the estate? The wolves had to be dominant. They would have the best side. Water would be on the best side.
Jeremy put his tools and canteen’s chain over his shoulder and marched into the forest, heading straight for the place he’d heard the wolves the night before. He stumbled up a small hill, struck by the moisture in the air and the greenery tracing along the bottom of the knoll. He heard running water and almost ran toward it.
It was a brook from a fairy tale. A babbling stream surrounded by ferns. A logjam had created a wonderful pond just downstream. He drank until he thought he’d burst. He filled his canteen and was going to plunge in for a swim, when he saw something move at the edge of the water. A rattler. Snakes drank at dusk. Jeremy shot backwards, bent on going back to the “lawn” where he had arrived. Maybe he’d catch a rabbit. Maybe his in-laws had sent his stuff. Maybe they’d sent Ellie.
He felt buoyant as he headed toward the sound of the surf.
The rabbit almost ran into him. A big jackrabbit. He swung out in reflex, breaking the rabbit’s back with the shovel. He finished it off with a chop on the neck. Jeremy smiled widely. It was not an elegant kill, but it was his first.
He remembered reading that you should gut animals immediately. He did it with the shovel, practically tearing the creature in half. He pulled the hindquarters from the skin and ate them. He wanted to take the rest back to his hole and eat it quietly. He might find a camp stove in there.
But first Jeremy had to check to see if the goldies had sent anything. He walked behind what had been the mansion. He’d wrapped the rest of the rabbit in its skin and held its innards in his other hand. Flossie was over there somewhere. She was a working mother. He’d give her the guts.
He found her hunting on the dogs’ side of the mansion. “Here, Flossie. Thankee for dinner last ni’. Much obliged.” She devoured the intestines and licked his fingers. He smiled at her. His first friend in his new home.
“Ye’re a good girl, Flossie. When ah get my place fixed up, ah’ll come for ye and yer pups. We can go on huntin’.” He gave up the pretense of speaking the village dialect. “Well, girl, time for bed.” He was crossing the pasture, when he almost stepped into a big round hole. It was three feet across and about three feet deep. He dropped a pebble on the top. It was metal.
This was the tube for sending the canaries out! He’d told Sam and the others that if the instrumentation failed, they could test the level of radiation by putting a canary in a cage and passing it up through the seven levels of the shelter to see if it lived or died. He’d designed the system so that any dirt that accumulated on the top would be blown away by bellows inside, or would be cut away by a steel sheath that surrounded the vent. He bent down and touched the sides of the hole. Metal.
He’d stumbled upon one of three ways anyone could access the shelter. This and the front and rear exits were it. He assumed that debris had rendered the “front door,” through the ballroom under the house, impassible. He looked around. He had been looking in the wrong place. The mansion wasn’t where he thought it was; it had been farther east. The sea had shifted, carving out a new cliff.
Jeremy put down his rabbit and tools. He wondered who was in the underground shelter, if anyone.
Sam Baahuhd had been a shrewd, intelligent, and very skilled man who had the best for his people in mind. He was a decent man. He had four wives, all of whom were his first cousins. His first wife, Mollie, had the hereditary disease the villagers carried. The disease caused the afflicted person to go berserk and attack. Mollie had killed people. She was protected by Sam’s status, but the woman was a killer. All of the people in the village were at least as inbred as Sam’s family.
No matter how bad Ellie’s world had turned out to be, what was below his feet was likely to be far worse. What was down there? A hundred clones of Sam’s wife? Genetic mutants? People with no brains at all?
As he wavered by the hole’s edge, the cover began to move. It was unscrewing itself. Jeremy grabbed his stuff and stood up, ready to run. Then he almost laughed. A canary in a cage would be coming up. Nothing to worry about.
“Get the fuck up, ye …” A stream of profanity blasted out of the opening. The man speaking was a monster. The sadism and cruelty in his voice spoke louder than his curses.
He could see someone struggling in the cylinder.
“Ah need more rope. Ah cannot get all the way out,” a cowed male voice replied.
“Ye stinking,” and more curses. The voice made Jeremy cringe. It sounded like the voice of a giant, or the devil.
A head poked over the rim, followed by two arms. A man pulled himself out so that he sat on the edge of the hole with his feet in the opening. He was naked.
“Well, whadya see? C’n ye breathe?” The guy below snarled like an animal.
The man sitting on the edge saw Jeremy and started to duck back in the hole.
Jeremy had a clear look at this face. He could have been Sam Baahuhd, leader of the village, but he was older than Sam had been. Jeremy grabbed the man’s shoulder and put his hand over his mouth, shh-ing him. He could see that he was tied around the waist with a rope.
