by Jf Perkins
Terry woke in the cool gray of predawn. The house was silent, other than an occasional slide and shuffle from the other room. He assumed it came from whoever was on guard duty this morning. His binder full of official forms was still out on his bike, but he had a little notebook that he normally carried in his back pocket. He picked it off of a chair, and slid the charcoal pencil out of the spine, and began to take notes.
May 21, 2049. Found my assigned plot 13-403 without trouble. Discovered it to be inhabited. Everything they taught us was to report this situation and let the county handle it, but I have met them and they have me effectively caught here for now. I guess I’ll learn as much as possible and hope they let me leave.
Terry intended to write more, but he heard a door close downstairs and heavy footsteps across the kitchen floor. He tucked his notebook into the pocket of his borrowed pants and waited to see what might happen. Bill knocked twice on the bedroom door and said, “You up, Terry?”
“Yes, Bill.”
“Ok. Grab your boots and let’s get going.”
“Yes, sir.”
Terry gathered up his boots and other gear and walked down the stairs to the kitchen. Bill was sitting at the table with a hot cup of some kind of tea. He waved Terry to a chair, and got up to pour another cup.
“This is the time of day that my folks would always say, ‘What I wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee right now’.” Bill snorted an aborted attempt at a laugh.
Terry smiled and replied, “Pappy always said that too. Every once in a while, Granny would bite his head clean off for saying it, too.”
Bill set the cup in front of Terry, and took his seat again. Terry took a sip and couldn’t quite identify all the flavors, but it was good, much better than the stuff they made at home. They sat in silence, apparently both gathering their thoughts.
Finally Bill broke the spell. “You know, when we first settled on this piece of land, everything was still wild, bullets flying, and folks killing each other to keep from starving.”
“I know you said eleven years…” Terry answered.
“Well, we’ve actually lived here for that long, but we’ve been in the area since the Breakdown. We were working on parts of it long before that. We found ways to survive early on, but eventually we wanted something that felt like a real place, a way to make contact with others. We were so tired of starting every conversation with gunshots, and ending most of them with a shovel in the woods.”
“Yeah. When I was ten we had a war with Tullahoma over corn. It was crazy. They had us kids collecting rocks to throw, since only about 100 people had any guns left.”
“Tullahoma is pretty much gone now. It was always lousy for farming. There were a couple of rich maniacs over there who got the idea that they should become the lords of the manner, since it was working for them before the Breakdown. They blew up Normandy Dam to try to flood Shelbyville and conquer the remains. They managed the flood, but Shelbyville had good, well-fed farmers all around, not to mention all those horses. The Tullahoma group was pretty well eaten up before they made it halfway. Who would have thought cavalry would make the difference in the 21st century?”
Bill set his cup down with a solid thump. “Well… I’ve been talking about a tour for too long. How about we go have a look?
Terry took a last long swig from his own cup and carefully placed it on the table. It was an antique, and his family only had a few made from actual ceramic. Most of the dishes at home were made from baked clay, with no real finish. This particular mug had “Breast Cancer Walk-a-thon 2009” written in pink, swoopy letters on it.
Bill got to his feet, set the mugs on the counter, and headed out the door. Outside, it was still cool, with that steamy mist that promised to burn off into another hot day in the South. Terry followed Bill down the steps and turned to check on his bike. It was gone!
“Don’t worry. We just put it in the garage for safe keeping.” Bill watched him closely. At the look of open suspicion on Terry’s face, he added, “We can go check on it if it’ll make you feel better.”
Terry thought about it, and said, “No, that’s ok. I believe you.” He did think that he was being controlled just a little more than was comfortable, but he was in it now. It would either work out, or it wouldn’t.
Bill opened the big gate, and waited for Terry to step through before he closed it again. Bill raised his right hand for a few seconds, and then took it down and started walking. Terry looked around for whoever Bill was signaling, but saw no one.
“This is a just a pasture field. Its main purpose is to create a buffer between our working land and the guard houses, but a few times a year, we let in the livestock to graze here. The land on both sides, we let grow into scrub. It’s hard to see through, much less cross with any kind of force, but if someone tried it, they would find it’s full of little surprises.”
“Surprises?” Terry asked.
“I could tell you, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?” Bill answered with an evil grin.
They came to a place where the land began to drop off, and in a few more steps, Terry could see the flat expanse of land below. What he saw almost made him drop to his knees. Every slope above the shelf was scattered with cattle, and goats, and sheep, and even some horses. The fences were built of split rails and recovered barb wire, and in every case, extended only far enough up the slope to guarantee that they couldn’t be seen from a distance. The flat land below was a ring of gardens and small patches of crop field, punctuated by barns and sheds, and inside the ‘crop circle’ was a small, clean, fully functional town. He could see houses, and stores, and even a small church from here. Beyond the town, crop fields extended until the land dropped again, into what looked like a river channel, judging by the heavy trees. Most importantly, there were people, and Terry could tell, even from up on the rim, that they were healthy, and clean, and busy making a community work.
“What do you think?” Bill asked.
On closer inspection, Terry saw two more aspects that pushed the sense of awe he was feeling. The first was that there were wires strung on poles around the entire valley, and the second was that there were extensive and subtle defenses woven in everywhere. Most of the work looked like it had two purposes, as if someone really smart had figured out a way to make defenses that worked when needed, but got out of the way when the fighting was over.
“Amazing.” Terry finally said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good nowadays. It took a long time to build. Let’s go say hello.”
The men angled to the right to pick up a gravel path that led down into town, and followed it until they passed two large barns on either side of the lane. The barn was littered with small subtle doors that could only be weapon ports, and one barn supported a massive gate that could be closed against the other to wall off the town. The gate and barns were clad in metal up to about 15 feet, but it was all painted to look like the wood. Terry was beginning to appreciate the thought that had gone into it. As they passed the gate, Terry could see that the fences were much taller than they had appeared and contained enough extra layers of wire and barbs at the bottom to make it very hard to penetrate. From the inside, he could see that the barns also had fighting platforms on the inside slopes of the roofs that provided a clear shot out to the borders of the community land while giving cover with the metal of the barn roofs themselves. Clever… He looked around and saw that there were four more pairs of similar barns all the way around the town.
“Welcome to Teeny Town! You already see how it works, huh?”
“Well, sir… Bill. I see some of it, but from what I do see, I bet I’m missing a lot more.”
“Smart man. Let’s go get a drink.”
Bill and Terry walked through town where men, women, and small children were out and about. They waved sent cheerful greetings to Bill, and waved and said hello to Terry. It was far friendlier and more relaxed than Manchester had ever been in Terry’s lifetime. By now the sun high enough
to cast long shadows from the east, and people were gathering into the shady areas under the constant covered porches of the various shops. The buildings seemed to follow a common pattern of stone first stories, made from the dirt-common iron chert rock of the region, and wooden upper stories made from surprisingly well finished lumber. The roofs were mostly corrugated metal, with and occasional asphalt shingle and wood shake roof. The roadway was covered with limestone gravel, river stone, and crushed iron chert of the same kind in the building walls.
Bill was talking the entire time, but it faded in and out for Terry, who was trying to see everything all at once. “…and we salvaged or traded for tools and materials from all over the region. We even set up some pretty good partnerships, which is why I want you to meet someone.”
They stepped up to the broad porch of what could only be a restaurant or bar. They passed the neatly arranged tables and walked through open glass double doors into the deep shadow of the interior. Terry blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust. When he could see again, he saw that the place was mostly empty. Bill held up two fingers to the portly man behind the bar and led Terry to an enclosed booth in the back corner. For the second time this morning, Terry felt his knees wobble.
Sitting at the booth was his boss at the Reclamation Office, Dusty Bearden.
“Well, Mr. Shelton. I see you have managed to find all kinds of trouble since yesterday.” Dusty had a harsh look of anger on his face.
“Sir, uh… well, you see…” Terry stammered, trying to get the Earth to settle under him.
Dusty and Bill both broke up into raucous laughter. It took long seconds for Terry to understand that he was not actually in trouble, and full minutes before the other men stopped laughing and snorting.
Finally, Bill said, “Relax, Terry. This is one of the surprises I was talking about.”
“It’s a surprise, all right.” Terry was angry now. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on here?”
Dusty took his turn. “Terry, calm down. I’ve known Bill here for… well, since before you were born, and I’ve been a part of his group since before there were houses here. I sent you out here for a reason.”
“What reason?” Terry took a deep breath to calm himself. “What reason?”
Bill said, “Dusty here keeps the county out of our hair.”
Dusty added, “And I do it because, despite all they teach you about honor and duty in the county school, rebuilding works better this way. By the end of the day, you’ll know that too.”
“What do you mean?” Terry looked back and forth at the two men, who were sliding back into the booth opposite him.
Dusty replied, “I could answer that for you, but you’re here because the other thing I do is find smart young people in town, and send them to learn for themselves. I bet you could sit here right now and tell me what’s wrong with what’s going on in town.”
Terry thought for a minute and said, “I know already that these people live much better than we do in town, except for a very few people…”
“Exactly,” Dusty said, “There are a few rich landowners who were smart enough to see how to grab as much for themselves as they could. For everyone else, it’s the minimum it takes to get by, just enough to work for those landowners, so about five families can keep getting richer.”
Bill added, “I know they don’t teach history anymore, but the basic idea is that before the Breakdown, this was a country of opportunity. People could come from all over the world to work hard and make a life for themselves here. Without boring you to tears, the reason the Breakdown happened in the first place was that we lost that idea. We were living to make a few people really rich, and they were working to make it so that all we could do any more was make them rich. They took away our ability to do for ourselves, and when the breakdown happened, we were not prepared.”
Dusty picked up the thread. “I know my family was not prepared for anything. Bill’s brother, Kirk, found me in the woods west of here, eating bark and leaves to survive. Kirk was a scary man at that point, but even he couldn’t stand the pathetic situation I was living in. I knew nothing. My parents knew nothing, and because of it, they and my sister were dead.”
“Dusty came here when we were camping down at the creek, and we could barely feed ourselves, so we sent him to some contacts in town. They raised him, made sure he went to school, and we had him during the summer so that he could get our kind of education too. In exchange, we made sure they had fresh meat from time to time. Now he’s family. He’s my nephew, in fact, married to Lucy’s oldest daughter.”
“So, Bill,” Terry said. “Your entire family survived the Breakdown?”
“Yes. I think you know from my story that I have my dad’s smarts to thank for it. He spent the rest of his years teaching us, and anyone else who would listen, everything he knew about how things worked, and how they were supposed to work. He was serious about the idea of America, how it was meant to be, and because of him, we all grew up to think that way. We believe that anyone who works hard should share in the rewards, and be able to make the best life he can.”
“So, if I agree with what you are telling me, I have to file a false report to keep the county away from here, which means that everything I thought when I left the office is a lie.” Terry said, keeping his eyes cast down towards the table.
The bartender finally showed up with two beers in clay mugs, and slid them onto the old Formica table to join Dusty’s half-empty stein.
Dusty said, “Well, you really have a lot of choices, but none of them are simple. You could decide to protect this place, and file that false report. You could file a complete and honest report and let us deal with the fallout. It will probably happen eventually anyway. You could just fail to go home, and the fact that you disappeared will keep the county looking to safer territory, but that means abandoning your parents. We could pick them up for you, but if we do it any time soon, someone will get curious and come out here to check on you. It was easier for me to cover it up. These people saved my life.”
“But,” Bill said, “It’s your choice. We don’t want to fight if the county decides to take this place, but we are pretty well prepared to do so. The problem is that the county is official, and we are not, so if they want this place and can’t take it themselves, they can always call in the state to help, and that’s more than we can handle. On the other hand, we can’t really ask you to do something you don’t want to do. Dusty told us you were a good man before you came out, and I’ve seen the same thing. This county is short on good people these days, so we’ll live with your decision either way.”
This was a bizarre revelation to Terry. His whole life had been an endless series of people taking from other people, throwing principles out the window for hunger, and having someone tell him that they would do something that was right, even if it cost them, was almost beyond belief. But then, he realized that he was one of those people too, a young man who tried to do what was right even if it made him hungrier the next day. But this… This was the first time that it really became difficult to tell right from wrong. It wasn’t right and wrong. It was both, no matter what he decided.
“Anyway, I keep interrupting the tour. How about we look around a bit more?” Bill looked hard at Terry, trying to see what he was thinking.
“Ok, Bill. I’d like to see it.”
“All right… Dusty, we’re heading down to the creek. We’ll see you at dinner.”
Dusty said, “Ok, gentlemen, see you later. Terry, relax. These are good people.”
Bill and Terry slipped back out into the bright sunshine. Terry had time to wonder how it was so cool inside, when it was getting downright hot out here. They started walking north. People waved but didn’t come over to talk, and soon enough, they had left the town proper, were following the lane past a nice collection of draft horses, and into the corn fields beyond.
“Corn’s easy here, as long as we get enough rain,” Bill was saying. “Wheat doesn’t rea
lly like Coffee County, but we manage to get enough for bread, year round. Lucy is still in charge of farming, but her daughter, Sherry, is set to take over any time.”
They finally reached the end of the shelf, and Terry was prepared to look over the edge for the creek Bill had mentioned, but what he saw was a series of dams. Three little lakes stepped down the slope heading east, until the creek disappeared around a bend, about a quarter mile away. Each dam was made from concrete, some exposed steel, and a few heavy timbers, and each one had a race of water flowing out from the base. Terry could hear a low humming sound under the rush of water, and tried to figure out where it was originating.
