Grants Pass

by Cherie Priest

  “You, too,” Jim Adams replied, with a strange sort of dignity, and turned away from the window. Ida and Jess turned with him as smoothly as trained dancers or skaters — and they were gone.

  McTavish crouched down again, and darted forward to where he could watch them go. “Cans, remember?” he reminded Clint and Mary, over his shoulder.

  Mary let one crash noisily down into her blue box by way of reply.

  A few busy, hard-breathing moments later, Clint came up to McTavish’s elbow and said, “We’re all done. Here’s your box, full. They’re gone, right? Not watching from somewhere, so they can follow us?”

  “They’re gone. Down past the casino parking lots; too far to see where we go, unless they’ve got nightscopes and still-working batteries for ‘em.”

  “Let’s go,” Mary said softly. “There are more boats out now; see? I swear Detroit is still effing full of men with guns!”

  They went, seeing no lurking Americans in hardhats or anyone else that moved, except something that was probably a raccoon, and something else, farther off, that might have been a coyote.

  They made it to their chosen roof without incident and drew up the last bit of ladder, marooning themselves for the night where no one could get at them. The housing of a long-silent air conditioner sheltered them on three sides, leaving them only a view of Detroit’s flames.

  In silence they put down their boxes and got out the blankets they’d left there earlier, and in silence they lay down together — still fully clothed and booted, with Mary in the middle, as usual — and looked at the stars.

  Clouds like dirty smoke were racing across the sky tonight, not letting them gaze at any stellar twinklings for long. Clouds that were an angry, flickering orange on their undersides, courtesy of Detroit.

  “Grants Pass,” Mary murmured, head pillowed on the extra blanket. “I wonder...”

  McTavish groaned disgustedly. “Aww, for Chrissakes! They’ll be dead, those three, before they even get out of Detroit.”

  “You shut up,” Mary told him, cupping his crotch with firm fingers to back up her command. “I know you’re right, but have the effing decency to let me go on pretending you’re wrong. Hope, remember? That’s what Kayley, whoever she is — and those Adams idiots, just now — gave us. Don’t you pee on that, or it’ll be no more bed-and-tickle for you, hey?”

  “You play dirty,” Derek McTavish told her, his voice sounding even more disgusted.

  “Shut up and watch the city,” Clint told him. “It’s not like there’s anything else on any of the other channels.”

  “Haw haw,” came the reply, but it sounded amused.

  “Besides,” Mary added, from between them. “It’s not raining for once, or hurling down lightning. Nice and clear. In fact, it’s a perfect night to watch Detroit burn.”

  Biography

  Ed Greenwood

  Ed Greenwood is an award-winning Canadian writer and game designer, best known for creating The Forgotten Realms® fantasy world (featured in board, roleplaying, computer and card games, comic books, and a bestselling novel line). Once hailed as “the Canadian author of the great American novel” (bestselling fantasy author J. Robert King)) and “a true genius” (bestselling sf and fantasy author Elaine Cunningham), Ed has published over 170 books that have sold millions of copies worldwide in over a dozen languages. He has written three fantasy novels already this year, and by the time they are all published, this fall, he will have written at least the first drafts of three more.

  Ed was inducted into The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design’s Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2003, has been a Guest of Honor at more than four dozen conventions worldwide, and has judged both the World Fantasy Awards and the Sunburst (Canada’s sf awards).

  In real life, Ed Greenwood is a large, bearded, well-padded man who is all too often mistaken for Santa Claus. He has worked in public libraries for over thirty years, and lives in an old farmhouse with more than 80,000 books. Ed has been an editor of DRAGON® Magazine and a columnist for more than a dozen periodicals.

  Afterword

  Three things have always fascinated me about post-Big Doom stories set in North America. One of them is something I’ve had ever since I was a child: the imagined fun of foraging in deserted stores and homes and factories, being able to take and have, for free, just anything to carry off to have and use (the same fun I get when re-reading the chapters of Robinson Crusoe while the title character scavenges useful rope after useful board after vitally-important tool off the wrecked ship).

  The second thing is the juxtaposition of gleaming modern society with enforced back-to-the-land self-reliance (or at least fumbling attempts at same) of survivors, clawing amid the wreckage and abandoned belongings and homes of vanished people.

  The last and most important thing is hope. The hope that, whatever happens, we (the characters in the stories that a reader can identify with, no matter how different from us they may be) can survive and struggle on to some sort of success, even if it’s just managing to stay alive amid the ruins. Hope is what drives us all on, and hope is what a Grants Pass story must be all about, in the end.

  And I find I very much like creating hope.

  Final Edition

  Jeff Parish

  Dusk settled on Paris, Texas. The sun, hidden all day behind dark clouds, took advantage of its last few moments to create a nearly perfect sunset, painting the cloudbank in glowing blues, reds, oranges and yellows.

  It was, as Matt Godwin’s father liked to say, enough to knock your eyeballs out. It was also a wasted effort, as Matt’s own eyeballs remained firmly fixed on the ground spinning slowly beneath him. The sun slipped below the horizon, stealing its momentary beauty along the way. Sullen, leaden clouds hastened night’s approach.

  Matt stopped turning the merry-go-round. He lay there for a moment. His chin hung over the edge, his hand tracing random glyphs in the pine bark mulch some city official or other thought would make the playground safer for children. Scooting back, he rolled over and rested his head on the metal surface. His five-foot-six frame barely dangled off the other end. His girth just fit between hoops meant to hold children despite his weight loss in the last few months.

  He lifted his left hand and turned his wrist this way and that in an effort to determine the time. The hour and minute hands showed 4:27, and the minute hand hung motionless. Matt cursed the watch for a few moments, but stopped with a wry chuckle. What was the point? Time meant little anymore. It was morning, noon, dusk or night; what else did you need to know these days? He unfastened the band and slipped the watch off his wrist. He hefted it for a moment, and then tossed the offending timepiece into the night.

  “Hey, squirrels! Do you know what time it is?” he called, laughing once more.

  As usual, no one answered except a passing breeze laden with the scent of more rain. The wind ruffled his close-cropped black hair as it played across seesaws stuck somewhere between teeter and totter and pushed swings that might never again hear kids demanding to go higher, Daddy, higher.

  A soft crunching noise cut his laughter short. He raised his head, casting about for the source. Surely Bill wouldn’t have followed him here…

  The noise came again. Head swiveling like a radar array, Matt’s attention centered on a corner of the fence surrounding the playground. He sighed with relief, and his entire body sagged with departing tension as a bois d’arc dropped a third green, wrinkly apple on the ground.

  Thunder boomed across the yard, warning anyone outside to get indoors.

  Matt stood, wincing as tight muscles protested a new position. Had he been on that merry-go-round all day? His stomach rumbled, a small echo of the thunder overhead. He supposed he had been. Matt stumbled around the carousel, disoriented after hours of slow turning.

  “Where did I leave my backpack?” he muttered.

  His feet found it first, stumbling over the black fabric. Hoisting the bag onto one shoulder, Matt headed out the gate. He needed
to catch a City Council meeting.

  ****

  Mayor Gary Hamilton pounded his gavel on the table.

  “That is enough out of you, councilman! I will not tolerate such rudeness at my meetings! Do you understand me?” He glared at an alderman, who sat stiffly in his seat, hands poised a few inches off the tabletop.

  The mayor swept his glower around the horseshoe, pointing at each seated figure with the gavel. Flickering light from several oil lamps gave him the look of a stern medieval judge. Satisfied an outburst was not forthcoming, he turned to the audience.

  “I’m sorry you had to witness that, ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes the democratic process gets a little heated.” Gary ventured a small laugh. “I hope this won’t make top of the fold in tomorrow’s edition, Mr. Godwin.”

  Matt smiled, shook his head and kept writing in his reporter’s notebook. The last edition of The Paris News lay weeks in the past. But so long as anything happened here, it was his duty to record it. He was the city reporter, after all. Of all the changes seen here since the Crash — as people around here called it — three months ago, Gary offered one of the strangest.

  Voters elected this slender, balding black man to represent one of the city’s two minority districts last May. Timid and soft-spoken, he always made Matt think of a mouse. That changed once the councilman realized he was the only surviving member of Paris city government. As Gary saw it, that made him mayor — and that put him in charge. Power transformed this small, mousy man into a thunderous orator who held the reins of power tight. That the reins controlled nothing meant little to Gary. He just forged ahead, calling nightly City Council sessions to deal with what he saw as pressing problems.

  “Now on to our last order of business,” he said, reading from an agenda he painstakingly copied by hand each morning for the council and the dozens who attended the sessions. “Ducks in Lake Crook were staring at me again yesterday. This sort of impertinence simply cannot be allowed. I propose we form a subcommittee to enter into discussions with them. Perhaps we can find a mutually agreeable solution. If not, I’m afraid the police will simply have to arrest all of them.”

  The mayor adjourned the meeting with a quick rap of his gavel. He stood and walked over to the council member who had so recently been the target of his wrath.

  “No hard feelings, I hope, Frank. You raise some good points; I just wish you would learn to curb your enthusiasm a little. It’s unbecoming in a man of your position.” He leaned over to shake Frank’s hand, which came off in his grip.

  “Well now, that’s embarrassing,” Gary said with a chuckle as he pushed the mannequin’s hand back into place.

  Matt stood and walked out of the council chambers, leaving the only empty seat in the house. He still couldn’t believe Gary found enough mannequins in Paris to fill six City Council seats and dozens of chairs in the audience. He must have raided every department store in the city. It would explain why they all wore different clothes every time he came here.

  He turned back for a moment. Gary wandered among the rows of chairs, grinning and patting shoulders as he schmoozed with his ‘constituents’. Matt shuddered and walked down the stairs and out into the night, eager to be gone despite the rain. The sight of all those dummies no longer disturbed him as much as it once had, but it still creeped him out. And he could only take so much of the unhinged, small-town politician. At least Gary’s obsession gave him the illusion of productivity, even if it did centre on ducks and dress-store dummies.

  Bill was a different matter altogether.

  Matt supposed he should have seen it coming. “Big Bill” Vance of Clarksville was the most persistent letter writer The Paris News had seen in years. Even with the newspaper’s policy that nobody had a letter printed more than once a month, Bill’s name showed up more than any other on the opinion page. The policy didn’t stop him from sending his missives every week, either. The subject changed from rant to rant, but each contained the same two themes: The government did it, and the media couldn’t be trusted. Had the various local, state and federal agencies paid Matt all the money Bill claimed, he could have retired two years ago, before he even reached thirty.

  It probably shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Bill would focus all that mistrust on Matt. After all, he was likely the last member of the media left in Northeast Texas. But who would have thought he would turn violent?

  Looking back now, Matt could see the first warning signs. He could even pinpoint the time — 5:30 p.m. on June 24 — since he set the meeting. That was the benefit of hindsight. At the time, everyone worried too much about survival to think of anything else. Sure Big Bill had been edgy, but so was everyone gathered there. And why wouldn’t they be?

  Even now, three months later, Matt saw the small crowd with crystal clarity. It was a pitiful group of shell-shocked survivors from three counties. These three dozen or so men, women and children were all who responded to Matt’s message in the last edition of the paper. It was a single sheet, front and back, detailing what he knew about the happenings of the last few weeks. He closed with a request: Everyone still up and about should meet at newspaper office on Loop 286 to discuss what they should do.

  The meeting started with a rehash of what people knew, which wasn’t much.

  America was more or less gone, both in government and people. The dreaded Big One had finally hit California, followed by smaller ones that shook the entire West Coast. Hundreds of millions were dead or dying of some particularly nasty germs.

  Elsewhere, the world fared much the same. No matter where you looked, everything trembled on the point of unraveling. The same diseases had run rampant in every nation, decimating populations before medics had time to blink.

  That led to personal stories. Everyone knew several people — mostly loved ones — who were dead. Matt listened with as much patience as he could muster, but it was hard. They weren’t here to tell war stories. But he knew if he interrupted too soon, they would turn on him. As if he hadn’t suffered! A souped-up version of the Black Death that appeared to have originated in Austin took his fiancée. Matt had held her hand as she wheezed and rattled her last few breaths. His sister had died of the Super Flu, for crying out loud! A cousin succumbed to some bizarre strain of Ebola or something like it. And what about his parents? Dead in one of a pair of twisters that hit Paris in the last month — the first the town had seen in two decades. Did Matt whine about it? Of course not; he went to work so this bunch of babies would know what was going on.

  Eventually, his patience came to an end.

  “All right, people. That’s enough,” Matt said, standing on a desk. His voice rose over the inevitable protest. “Enough! We can talk about this later, but right now, we’ve got more important stuff to think about, like what do we do now? Where do we go?”

  The small crowd erupted. Where could they go? Why would they go anywhere? The cities were desolate wastelands, home to only the rotting dead. At least they knew the land here. So what if a couple of tornadoes had taken out a few buildings? Most of them still stood; even if the Love Civic Centre and Paris’ landmark Eiffel Tower had been obliterated, at least its giant red cowboy hat had survived to adorn a Cadillac in the parking lot. Others pointed out that this town was just as empty as any of the bigger metro areas. Were forty people going to keep a town alive that once had about twenty-six thousand? Besides, most of those here lived outside Paris. Did they plan to leave their homes and move here?

  Where — that was the question everyone shouted eventually. Matt wanted that question; he needed it to make this meeting work. He had an answer. He raised his hands and yelled, “Hey!” until the clamor quieted.

  “Actually, I have a suggestion,” he said. “I agree we can’t stay here. There just aren’t enough of us. I also understand your reluctance to leave this area. I share it. This has been my family’s home for generations. But if we are to survive, we’re going to have to find other people. I think I know where some are headed.”
<
br />   “And how would you know that?” Heads turned to identify the speaker. Matt could have told them who it was. He heard that voice at least once a week over the phone. Bill stood near the back, leaning against a door with arms folded across his barrel chest. He was an imposing figure, a foot taller than Matt and big enough to fill the doorway. Gray hair and beard did nothing to soften his look. “Big Bill” was tough, and he knew it.

  “It’s my job to know,” Matt shot back. He instantly regretted the quip. This had to be handled delicately, but the man grated on him. He forced himself to soften his tone. “Look, I shouldn’t have said it like that, but you know it’s true. I was researching an article about how people felt about the end of the world — it seemed to be coming up on us real quick — after I saw a preacher on TV talking about a blog post from a girl named Kayley. He spent a lot of time talking about it; it even made some of the national news casts.”

  “What’d they say?” a woman asked from the back.

  Matt paused. He hadn’t counted on questions. He was surprised they didn’t know already, even if most of them had been too wrapped up in their own affairs to pay much attention to the world outside Lamar County. He figured they’d have heard the televangelist, at any rate. But if they didn’t know, he wasn’t about to tell them that he’d seen the preacher holding up a crumpled sheet of paper and quivering with such righteous indignation that even his immaculately styled grey hair trembled in rage while he denounced those “attempting to flee God’s righteous judgment”. What was that passage he quoted? “Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’” Matt had laughed and started searching immediately for the posting. He printed out his own copy to reference, which proved fortuitous. Traffic to the blog grew so heavy in the following days he’d found it nearly impossible to access it.

  His mind racing, Matt shook his head. “That’s not important right now. What is important is that she was planning for this. She knew the importance of gathering people together in one place. She wanted them to join her so that maybe something could survive.”