After: The Shock

by Scott Nicholson

CHAPTER TWENTY

   

  “Turnips,” Franklin said.

  Jorge almost responded in Spanish, but remembered his promise. “What?”

  Franklin pulled a dark clump of leafy stalks from the ground, revealing the rounded golden root. “Turnips are the perfect survival food. They grow almost year round, the roots store through the winter, and they have just about every vitamin you need.”

  They were in the vegetable garden at one corner of the compound. From working on the Wilcox farm, Jorge had an understanding of the shorter growing seasons of the Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as the humid, wet climate. Therefore, he admired the garden’s placement, which allowed nearly a full day’s sunlight while much of Franklin’s camp remained concealed by trees.

  “You plan well,” Jorge said.

  “No, I’ve just been around so long I’ve figured out a thing or two.” He twisted the yellowing outer leaves from the stalk and tossed them into the goat pen, where the short-horned nanny sucked them between her jaws.

  Broad leaves of autumn squash and pumpkins covered one end of the garden, and bean vines twisted along a lattice of sticks. The corn was already making ears, and bees hovered around the golden tassels. A dense orchard of short but bountiful apple and pear trees stood on the other side of the small house, nearly shading a brown Ford van with the wheels removed. The top of the van was covered with solar panels, and Franklin had opened the rear door to show Jorge the rows of batteries that stored the collected energy.

  “Something like this takes…,” Jorge searched for the right word, dragging the hoe between the rows to pile fresh soil around the turnip roots. “Vision.”

  “Nah,” Franklin said. “Anybody could see it coming that didn’t have blinders on. I was part of the Preparation Network, teaching people how to get ready, but it didn’t do much good. Humans are a funny breed, Jorge. I reckon they’re as funny down in Mexico as they are up here.”

  Jorge had given little thought to his brothers and sisters in the Baja, or his mother in their little crowded house. He wasn’t sure whether he wished them a swift and merciful death or if they were even now on the run from the people that Franklin had called the “Zapheads.”

  “If this happened all over the world, like your man on the radio said, then I suppose it’s not so funny,” Jorge said, leaning on the hoe and looking out across the mountain ridges in the distance. The nearer peaks were flush with the deep green of summer’s end, but the horizon was draped with wraith-like, ragged clouds.

  “That’s the look of cities burning,” Franklin said. “Enjoy this fresh air while you can.”

  “Do these Zapheads burn things?”

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know if that’s the Zapheads or the government. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were ready for whatever opportunity came along. Giant asteroid hitting the earth, nuclear terrorist attack, shift of the earth’s geomagnetic fields. Every ill wind blows somebody some good.”

  Although Jorge had little interest in any kind of politics, he didn’t see what the U.S. government would gain by destroying its own territory. Not for the first time, he wondered if Franklin had spent too many years alone, with nothing but his mad dreams, paranoia, and obsessive vision.

  Rosa called to them from the doorway of the house. Marina stood beside her, wrapped in a blanket. She still looked pale and her hair was moist with sweat, but she managed a feeble wave before Rosa led her back into the shade.

  Jorge decided to ask the thing that had been bothering him. “Mr. Wheeler, you are clearly a man who likes to be alone and to depend on no one. If this is so, then why do you help us?”

  Franklin put the turnips into a wooden basket atop some tomatoes and small purple cabbages. “I lived out there once,” Franklin said, waving vaguely off the mountain. “Just about like anybody else. I had a job in industrial design making rich folks richer, found a sweet little woman and settled down. I never did trust the government, and I got in a little trouble because of things I was writing on the Internet. Whatever they say about ‘the land of the free,’ that’s complete bullshit. You’re only as free as they want you to be.”

  Then why isn’t your own family here? Why take in mine? But Jorge thought it best to only listen, so he turned his attention back to the weeds that skirted the bed of tufted carrot greens. Besides, it seemed like Franklin was warming up for a rant.

  “Government had me under surveillance,” Franklin said, no longer working now, just kneeling in the dark dirt and gazing off where the past remained just out of sight. “Just because I was warning people that the shit was about to hit the fan. After 9/11, Homeland Security became just about the most powerful force in Washington, because its slimy fingers reached into every pocket and every campaign fund and every Congressional bill. The last thing any government ever wants is for the truth to get out. At different times, I was considered a white supremacist, a radical Muslim, a neo-Nazi, a Communist, even a Swedish spy—if you can imagine any reason in hell that Sweden needs our secrets.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “They just wanted me to go dark. Even with all these new laws that let them throw anybody in jail forever without a trial, they knew that arresting me would draw publicity, and then more people would find my websites. So in a way, me going into hiding like this was the best thing for both of us. I’m fine with being a martyr, but I want it to be for the right reason, and the right reason hadn’t come along yet.” Franklin swept his gnarled, calloused fingers to the world beyond. “And now, the right cause came along, but there ain’t no Internet left.”

  Jorge remained cautious. “So you want us to help you spread the word about your survival camp? If you help us, we can help others?”

  “Hell, no,” Franklin said. “It’s too late for all that. I’m not even helping you. I just couldn’t let that little girl die.”

  Jorge realized the old man did have a compassionate streak beneath his wary, antisocial façade. “We are grateful and we promise to work hard while we are here, and to leave whenever you ask.”

  Franklin appeared not to hear. “My granddaughter, Chelsea, was Marina’s age when she drowned.”

  Jorge had a good idea of the man’s pain because of his own worries. “I am truly sorry to hear that.”

  “I was working on the camp even back then, using a network of dealers to get all these solar panels, wind turbines, water tanks, and such as that. I suspect the government had their eyes on me. Hell, I didn’t know which of those things flying overhead were hawks and crows and which were surveillance drones. They got ‘em the size of insects now…well, they did, I mean.”

  Jorge picked a lime-green caterpillar from a collard leaf and studied it a moment before squishing it between his fingers. “Why did they let you come here if they knew?”

  “Like I said, it got me out of the spotlight. I planned to bring my family up here, but by then my wife had left me and my kids and grandkids had pretty much written me off as a crazy old coot. The ones who didn’t were my granddaughters, Rachel and Chelsea. Rachel, she’s a real Christian, acting the way Christ taught instead of the way these idiot preacher politicians are telling people they ought to behave. You a religious man?”

  Jorge had learned in the United States to always say he was a Baptist, especially in the South, but he saw little reason to lie to Franklin. “I was raised Catholic, but we haven’t gone to church much lately.”

  “Never hurts to believe in something bigger than you. Just make sure it’s a thing of the sky and not a thing of mankind. Because mankind isn’t bigger than any of us. Mankind is not bigger than life. It’s exactly life-sized and hates to admit it.”

  Jorge was trying to figure out what that meant when Franklin went back to his story, apparently used to coming out with random musings but just as quickly, discarding them. “Rachel was the only one who didn’t think I was a survivalist wacko. She said God needed the world to end in order to renew itself as a better place, just like Jesus had to die
on the cross in order to save everybody’s soul. I guess there’s some comfort in that, since all the doomsday preachers use fear as a fundraising tool. She’d even been reviving some of my old websites, putting them under different names.”

  “Did she get in trouble, too?” The sun was lower in the sky now, pushing shadows across the compound.

  “She’d barely got started when Chelsea died.” Franklin swallowed with the bitterness of the memory. “They were out at the lake, the two of them, and Rachel turned away just for a second—had to go use the bushes. And she came back to find Chelsea face down in the water.”

  Jorge wanted to offer condolences but decided silence was more respectful and appropriate. Customs were different in the United States, but shutting up worked in any language.

  “In three feet of water. But she was a good swimmer. They did it to send a message.”

  “They”? Does this man really think the government would drown his granddaughter?

  Franklin spat in the dirt and stood, wiping his hands and picking up the basket. “Well, that’s when I came up here. Is your wife a good cook? I’m passable, but I keep it simple.”

  “She cooked for Mr. Wilcox on weekends.”

  “Well, this ain’t no fancy rich-people’s food, but it’s clean and free of poison and you can really taste it. So, let’s treat it like it’s The Last Supper.”

  Jorge followed Franklin back to the house, wondering if they should leave far sooner than their host might wish.