Switched On

by Franklin Horton

  Buddy’s loss hung over the room like an oppressive cloud but no one dared broach the subject until Ariel asked the question everyone who had not been there wanted to know.

  "What happened to Mr. Buddy?"

  The innocence of her voice, the sincerity, broke Jim’s heart. He didn't want to go into too much detail with his daughter but at the same time felt it was important she understood the danger of the world so she would listen to his warnings and not wander off. One of his greatest fears was that someone might abduct her and try to use her to extort supplies from the family. While they had shielded her from the danger as best they could in order to try to preserve some remnant of her childhood, it was a delicate balance. He didn’t want her to fear the world but she had to respect its dangers.

  "Somebody who didn't know Mr. Buddy, somebody who didn't know how special he was to us, killed him," Jim said with a sigh.

  Ariel's brow furrowed, her face still blotchy and tear-streaked. "Where is he now? You didn't leave him there did you? In the snow?" It was the practical question of a child, an indication of her concern for her friend.

  Jim shook his head and opened his arms to his daughter. She came and sat in his lap. "No, sweetie. We didn't leave him. We had to bury him and we did it right there beside his daughter, just where he wanted to be. That's what took us so long. Don’t you think that’s where he’d want to be?"

  Ariel nodded.

  "So that's already taken care of?" Pops asked. “I wasn’t sure.”

  Jim nodded. "There was no doubt it was where he wanted to be. We were able to find some digging tools there at the cemetery and the ground wasn’t really frozen under the snow. It took a while but we managed to get it done."

  "But why?" Ellen asked. "Why was he killed?"

  Jim cut his eyes to Ariel. "That story is better left for later."

  With the plug pulled on that line of inquiry, silence fell over the room.

  "Well, did you find anything out about Mrs. Fairlane?" Nana asked.

  With everything that had happened, Jim had nearly forgotten that his original intention of going into town was to try to find more out about his friend’s widow. It seemed hard to believe that that he’d even spoken to her today. It felt like weeks ago.

  "She's actually doing okay. She was warm and well fed. She reminded us that she was a country woman and grew up this way. She has a little trouble getting around but is more than capable.”

  "She's a firecracker," Randi added.

  "She speaks her mind," Nana said. “She can have a vicious tongue.”

  "She tell you it was about time you came to check on her?" Pops asked with a grin.

  Randi nodded and smiled back at Pops.

  "Pretty much," Jim acknowledged. “She basically said I was forgiven, because my entire generation is uncouth and uncivilized.”

  “Nailed you, didn’t she?” Ellen said.

  Jim ignored the remark.

  "She's right there in town," Nana said. "So many people around. Did she have any trouble?"

  "Apparently, but I think she dealt with it. Some of the snowdrifts in her yard were not entirely made of snow. They were more like snowmen, if you know what I mean."

  When Nana deciphered that her eyes got wide. "Oh my!"

  "I offered to try and help her out but she got a bit huffy about it. She said she didn't want to be taken in as someone’s charity case. What she would prefer, and what she thought everyone else in her demographic would probably prefer, was someplace they could live together and help each other out. It makes sense that dividing the responsibilities would help them out, same as it has for us. People could act on their strengths and get assistance where they needed support."

  "So what they need is a place where they could live communally that would be suited for this type of situation?" Pops said, looking off in thought. He knew the county well and this was his type of problem.

  "Exactly," Jim agreed. "But I told her that the power might be coming back on soon anyway. We’ll need to wait and see what happens. She may be fine once things are back to normal."

  Pops shook his head. "Not sure if they’ll ever be normal again.”

  There was a radio chirp and a distorted voice began coming from several of the family band radios, all of which were monitoring the same frequency.

  “What the hell?” Jim said, picking Ellen’s radio up from kitchen table and adjusting the volume. When there was no repeat of the message, Jim keyed the mic. “Can you repeat that last transmission?”

  “You guys back?” It was Lloyd’s voice blaring from the tiny speaker.

  Jim hesitated, looking for words. “I was going to head up your way in a few minutes. We need to talk.”

  “Save the bullshit. I heard what you said earlier. About Buddy.”

  Jim let out a slow breath and looked at the floor. “I was going to come up there and tell you personally.”

  “No use,” Lloyd said. “Nothing to say. He’s fucking dead. One more dead person. Everybody is either killing or getting killed or some shit...”

  Jim started to retreat to the back of the house then realized this wasn’t like a telephone. There were at least a half-dozen more radios in the room all turned to the same frequency and listening in on this conversation. Regardless of where he went, it was not going to be any more private.

  “I’ll be up that way in a few,” Jim said.

  “No need,” Lloyd slurred.

  “I’ll be up anyway,” Jim said.

  Lloyd didn’t respond.

  “I’m going up there,” Jim said to the group.

  Deputy Ford got to his feet. “I’m heading home. I need to check in on the sheriff and do a few things around the house.”

  Randi was already pulling on her cold weather gear. “I’m going with you, Jim.”

  “I don’t know what kind of shape Lloyd is in,” Jim cautioned. “This could be ugly.”

  Randi gave him a look that indicated this was not open for discussion.

  Jim shrugged. “Fine.” He turned to his family. “I’ll be back at some point this evening. Don’t hold dinner for me. Call on the radio if you need anything.”

  Ellen nodded. “I hope he’s okay.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Jim said. “He’s…resilient.”

  “Everybody has their breaking point,” Pops said.

  “Pete, can you and Charlie deal with the horses?” Jim asked.

  “We’re on it,” Charlie replied.

  “Thanks,” Jim replied. He pulled on his gear and followed his companions into the deep slush of the yard. It was already getting dark and Jim checked his pocket for his headlamp, finding it just where he expected. This could be a long evening.

  The evening at Buddy’s house went pretty much as Jim expected. Lloyd was already shit-faced drunk when they got there. He was crying both because of the loss of his friend and the fact that, in the rage of his grief, he’d broken an entire jar of moonshine his own late grandfather had crafted personally. Randi sat Lloyd down in a chair and cleaned up the mess.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Lloyd said.

  “Fuck you,” Randi said. “I know I don’t but if I don’t get it out of the way, you’ll step in it tonight when you’re stumbling outside to puke.”

  “Puking is a waste of good liquor,” Lloyd mumbled.

  “Then you better slow down,” Randi warned.

  “I don’t need any woman telling me—”

  That was as far as Lloyd got before the broom hit him upside the head. It was not a playful blow.

  “Consider yourself warned,” Randi said. “Finish that sentence and I’ll kick your ass like no one’s ever kicked it. Are we clear?”

  Lloyd snapped out of his shock and saluted Randi, eyes wide. She belted him with the broom again.

  “Yes, ma’am!” Lloyd cried, cringing and covering his head.

  “That’s better,” Randi said.

  They talked late into the night, toasting Buddy. Jim and Randi shared the de
tails of his death and Lloyd could only shake his head in disgust at what the world had become. He absently fumbled for his banjo, seeking solace, seeking distance from this place and this time. He played a crooked tune, one that Buddy had remarked on often. Crooked tunes were traditional songs that didn’t follow conventional musical structure. They often had extra notes or dropped notes that threw off the rhythm. They were difficult to learn, challenging the musician’s ability to let go of the way he expected things to be.

  That was where Lloyd and perhaps all the folks in the valley were now. Things were not what they were expected to be. They were a conventional people in a crooked world with life throwing odd notes at one moment and stripping notes from them the next.

  Jim stood and motioned at Randi. She joined him by the door. He pulled on his boots. “I’m leaving. You need me to walk you back to your house?”

  Randi shook her head. “I radioed my kids. They’re fine. I think I’m going to stay here and make sure Lloyd is okay.”

  Jim straightened up from his boots and raised a questioning eyebrow at Randi. She frowned at him and smacked him on the arm. “I’m a grown-ass grandmother. I can do what I want.”

  Jim raised his palms and backed off. “I wasn’t saying a thing. Don’t get your broom.”

  Randi picked Jim’s coat up and shoved him out the door. “See you tomorrow. Be careful.”

  Jim stood on the porch for a moment, letting the cold air sober him before slipping on his gear. He checked that his sidearm was accessible and slung his M-4 around his neck. He fished his headlamp out of his pocket and fought to get it on his head. He stared at the pale snow-covered fields. He probably wouldn’t need the light at all. The moon was high above the ridge and bold enough to create shadows. There was not a single sound in the world. Smoke floated through the valley from the remaining families–the Weathermans, the Birds, the Wimmers, and a few others.

  Jim thought again of the man they’d lost today. He had been a moral compass for Jim. He was the one with the perspective and the wisdom that Jim could trust to tell him when he was on course or if he was being too “Jim,” which was sometimes synonymous with being too final and too violent in his decision-making. On his way home from Richmond, it had been his grandfather’s voice in his ear that helped get him home. He hoped that Buddy could find some similar way to offer guidance to him from beyond the grave. He surely needed it.

  Only Ellen and his children remained to ground him. In his desire to protect them, he knew no boundaries. He would spill the blood of any man–of any thousand men–to protect them. If he killed everyone outside of this valley, he could still find a way to close his eyes at night. The state of the world made things so much simpler in some ways. The day job no longer mattered, school no longer mattered, politics no longer mattered. All that mattered was the preservation of his family and their little sphere of friends at any and all costs.

  Jim started walking, following the driveway to the road, and then the beaten path down the road to his own house. He thought of Ellen, of her frequent hints that she felt like he’d always wanted this collapse to happen. He adamantly denied it. In fact, he became downright defensive when she made those accusations, gentle as they were.

  That raised the question of what he would become if the power came back on. He’d wondered for years who he would become if society collapsed. When it did, he quickly found out. He had adjusted. He had risen to the occasion.

  But what about going backward? Could he even go back to what he had been? Criminals were used to taking what they wanted and Jim was using to shooting back when they did. He wasn’t sure he could cram what he was now back into what he had been. The genie couldn’t be put back in the bottle. How the hell did the government think they were going to do this?

  Here in the night, in the cold and dispassionate winter, maybe he was ready to admit something to himself for the first time. Maybe he had longed for this simplicity. Maybe he had longed for the ability to solve problems in a simpler way. Perhaps he was okay with what happened with the world. Slogging through the snow, he was aware that he had never felt so alive in his entire life.

  12

  Jim's internal alarm went off early, and he groaned with self-inflicted misery. His head hurt and he felt about two quarts low on essential fluids. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd been out late, come home drunk, and awakened to a fierce hangover. His post-apocalyptic world was full of problems, though this wasn't typically one of them.

  It was a tribute to a friend, he reminded himself.

  As flimsy an excuse as he felt that was, there was a degree of truth in it. A good drunk was what he’d needed to close out the kind of day he’d had yesterday. That little bit of self-assurance, of justification, made him feel better, but only by a small degree.

  He could have laid back down and tried to sleep it off but he had a masochistic streak. He’d done this to himself so he could damn well suffer the consequences. Jim staggered to the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the gravity-fed line at the sink. It didn't have the pressure of the old well system, but it flowed without regard for the presence of electricity and it beat the hell out of hauling water in buckets. He drank two cold glasses of spring water and then filled a kettle for coffee. Normally he would be fine with heating the water on the stove but he needed some caffeine in his body ASAP to fight this hangover. He got his tiny canister stove from the cabinet and took it to the back screen porch. He opened the wire valve, struck a lighter to it, and it took off like a jet engine. In a matter of minutes, it had the aluminum pot of water churning at a boil.

  Jim poured the boiling water over the grounds in his H2JO contraption and let it steep. While it was doing its magic, he plodded to the living room and stoked up the fire. He’d heated his home with wood for so long that this was a matter of routine and he could do it with his eyes closed. He shook the night’s ashes down into the ash pan, opened the draft, and added kindling to the pile of coals that remained from the previous fire. In less than a minute, he had a roaring blaze and returned to his coffee-making.

  He twirled the Nalgene bottle and watched the mixture darken. When it was just the right color, he opened the bottle, removed the filter insert, and poured the dark coffee into a mug. He was inches away from settling into an overstuffed leather chair by the fire when there was a knock at the door.

  He paused at first, uncertain if it might have been one of the several other occupants of the house moving around or closing a bathroom door. Either way, Jim grabbed the nearest weapon, which happened to be a Ruger Mini-14 with a red dot sight. The knock came again and there was no doubt it came from the front door. Jim did not want to use the peephole on the door, aware that someone might be ready to shoot through it the minute he stuck his eye to it. He moved to the front window and peered around the edge of the closed curtains. He found Hugh fully kitted out and sipping coffee from a plastic convenience store mug.

  Jim frowned and went to the door. He opened the various latches and swung it open. Hugh smiled and raised a finger in greeting.

  “Top of the morning to you,” Hugh said. “Mind if I come in?”

  Jim stepped out of the way. “Come on in.”

  Hugh took a whiff as he passed. “You smell like you’ve been brewing liquor.”

  Jim shook his head. “No. The liquor brewed me this time.”

  Hugh removed his boots and began shedding gear by the door.

  “That’s a lot of gear,” Jim remarked. “You going on some kind of operation?”

  Hugh shook his head. “No, but I can’t just run back to the house if I need something. It’s like I live in some remote mountaintop village.”

  Jim went to his fireside chair and Hugh joined him, slouching on the couch.

  “Those boys tell you about going hunting yesterday?” Hugh asked.

  Jim shook his head. “Never came up. They got home about the time everybody was getting upset about Buddy.”

  “That’s understandable. So
I guess they didn’t say anything about their trip?”

  Jim shook his head again. The motion made him slightly nauseous and he held his head.

  “They spotted a camp a few ridges away. Matching orange tents and a campfire. I went up there last night to do a little snooping but they were so far away I decided it wasn’t worth the trip at this point. If they get closer, you can be sure I’ll pay them a visit. I’ll probably go up there tonight to see what they’re up to.”

  Jim glared at Hugh with heavy eyelids and a sour expression. “You came all this way to tell me that?”

  “You’re not concerned about strangers approaching from the most inaccessible route into the valley?”

  “I am,” Jim shrugged. “I guess I’m not at optimal processing power at the moment. Is that the whole story?”

  “No, but it’s relevant. Otherwise you’d probably wonder why the hell I was up on top of the mountain at night.”

  “I have long since given up questioning what you do, Hugh.”

  “That’s good to know. We may return to that point again in the future. But to the topic at hand, do you have a map?”

  “Of where?”

  “Here.”

  “Here as in this valley or this region?”

  “Region,” Hugh replied. “Southwest Virginia.”

  Jim got up and went to the bookcase. He removed a folded map stuck into a row of books dedicated to outdoor activities in Virginia–kayaking, fishing, backpacking, and biking. He took a seat on the couch by Hugh and unfolded the map on an ottoman.

  “Show me where we are,” Hugh said.

  Jim pointed to a road, then to his own driveway. “We’re here.”

  “So I’m here,” Hugh said, tracing a finger up the slope of the mountain, along a farm road. “And here’s where the high voltage line crosses the mountain near my trailer.”

  Jim nodded. “That’s it.”

  “So I was standing there last night like some kind of fucking hippie, having a moment of reverie and just taking in how cool the world looked up there. Turns out I saw something way cooler than expected.”