Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story

by Holden, J. J.

  Christine froze. That was it—her mom had said something actually useful. Who knew that was possible? She smiled at her mother.

  “What did I say?” Fran looked at her askance, one eyebrow raised. “What, am I a clown? Am I here to amuse you?” she asked in a truly terrible Italian accent.

  Christine felt a smile creeping into her expression. “Your Pacino needs work. But you gave me a great idea,” she said, her excitement growing as the idea gelled in her mind.

  “Celebrity endorsements? You might have trouble reaching Al Pacino’s agent, right now.”

  “No, not that. The paper money thing.”

  “Fiat scrip is the answer? I don’t have enough of that lying around the house, dear.”

  David said, “I think I have a twenty in my wallet. Will that help?”

  “Shut up,” Christine said, laughing. To Fran, she asked, “Was the bond to get rid of the school’s lithograph on the ballot again, last election year?”

  Fran cocked her head. “As it is every time, yes. That thing has to be fifty years old, now. I’m surprised you remember it. Why?”

  “Hot damn. So, the elementary school here has an honest-to-goodness lithograph.”

  Fran nodded. “It has to be the only one left in the county. Why they want to get rid of it, I’ll never know. Those old lithographs are amazing things. Cheap to run, and they never break down; and the ink is ridiculously cheap. Nothing like a modern printer. Always breaking, and ink costs more than the printer did… But again, why?”

  “Yeah, I know you’re proud your county still has one. But here’s the thing: anything printed on that lithograph would be impossible to forge, right now. Not just hard, but actually impossible, and that’s vital. Fran, I think you just solved all our problems.”

  Fran paused a couple of heartbeats before she said, “No forgeries. Fiat scrips. Christine, just what on Earth are you thinking?”

  Christine grinned. “I got this. I can fix it. I’ll have the whole thing under control, just watch.”

  Even Cobi would have a hard time throwing a monkey wrench into the works, this time. She felt a rising thrill at the thought of solving the problem, and there was nothing he could do to kill her idea, she was certain of it.

  “I’ll grab the car,” David said.

  “I’ll grab mine,” Fran replied, smiling. “Let’s get this train rolling.”

  Christine couldn’t wait to do just that.

  37

  Christine threw the double-doors open and strode into the town hall, David and Fran right behind her.

  Half the town, it seemed, sat within, but Cobi wasn’t at his beloved podium. Rather, they seemed to have split up into small groups of three or four, and sat around long, folding card tables, with felt-tip markers and small stacks of construction paper on each, like they were making signs.

  Heads turned as she came in, including Cobi’s. He groaned out loud. “Again? Seriously? What bee is up your bonnet now, Chrissy?”

  She couldn’t suppress a smile as she made her way to his corner of the room, ignoring his question.

  As she approached, he stood up straight from where he’d been leaning on one table, and crossed his arms. “Well? We’re a bit busy, as you can see.”

  She glanced at the table to get a closer look at the construction paper they’d been drawing on. It seemed they had been busy working on motivational posters—the one she saw had a line-drawn sun, a circle with wavy lines radiating from it, hanging over a square house atop a green line across the page with little green blades of grass drawn along its length. In black, block lettering, they’d written, “Working Together, We Survive.”

  How witty. Christine looked back to Cobi and forgot about the little posters almost at once. She said, “Enjoy that. But I’m here because I have an idea to solve our food problem, or rather, to prevent one, since we don’t actually have a problem, yet.”

  Cobi smiled. “Come with me. Let’s talk.”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  Cobi’s plastic smile faded only for a moment. “If it’s a bad idea, I don’t want you to be embarrassed. Are you coming?” He turned and walked toward the office, in the back behind and to her left of the podium.

  She followed him in, holding the door open for Fran and David, and then closed it only enough to leave a narrow, inch-wide gap.

  When she turned back around, Cobi was sitting in the office chair behind the desk, and motioned to her to take one of the two armchairs on the opposite side. She sat in one, while Fran sat in the other, and David stood behind them in the small office.

  “So,” Cobi said, leaning back and crossing his legs, ankle resting on the other knee. “What amazing idea have we come up with?”

  Christine ignored his use of the royal “We,” and replied, “The short version is that we can print up a money equivalent—”

  “Printers don’t work. Nor do the computers to run them.”

  She smiled, and Fran replied, “True. But the elementary school never got that industrial printer they wanted. They’re still using a lithograph. You know, the big machine with large metal rollers, with the handle you spin to make the copies?”

  He nodded. “I remember. They still have that ridiculous thing?”

  “Yes. And it doesn’t even need electricity, I don’t think.”

  Christine hastily added, “Even if it does, it’ll be to just warm up the ink, or something. A simple car battery would do, or a generator. But it’s the only machine like it in the whole county. No one could print forgeries, even if they had a working computer, somehow.”

  She forced her smile to calm down, but she couldn’t get her racing heartbeat to slow, and she only stayed in her seat with great effort. Her giddiness made her want to pace, stand, move around…

  Cobi’s eyebrows rose. “That’s…interesting. I guess my first question is whether it’s even legal to print our own money. You aren’t the only one who cares about legalities, you know.”

  “Of course not,” she lied. “But we don’t have to replace the almighty dollar. We could print out however many the treasurer’s ledger says we have in the bank and petty cash. Call them ‘promissory notes,’ instead of money.”

  “Like official I-O-Us?”

  She nodded. “Exactly, but backed by the town’s bank accounts and cash supply.”

  Cobi frowned. “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve heard all day. Who’s going to buy into this scheme? No one’s going to trade things with real value for bits of paper, just because we tell them it’s as good as real money.”

  David coughed into his hand. When Cobi motioned for him to continue, David said, “Actually, sir, there was a small town in Germany, back before World War Two, during the Great Depression. They did exactly this. Only, to prevent hoarding the new money, they made it lose a chunk of value every month, unless spent. No one saved up, they all spent it freely—which got their local economy roaring. Only, they tied the value to something like one loaf of bread, so the hyperinflation going on didn’t have any effect on its buying power whatsoever.”

  Cobi nodded, eyes losing focus as he considered David’s words. “And…this worked?”

  David nodded. “They were so successful, in fact, that the military went in and stopped the whole thing, because it was a threat to the rich folks and the banks.”

  Cobi’s lips flatlined, and he drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “So. If we tied it to the value of whatever one buck could buy before all this, something we produce around here, and print dollar for dollar, that could actually work. That’s fascinating. But would our government send in the military? I think we could do without that.”

  Coward. Christine resisted the frown fighting to show on her face. She said, “No. It’s an I-O-U, remember? And then, we can go right back to using dollars whenever the internet gets back online.”

  He stroked his chin. “Hm… Okay. And in the meantime, it gives us something to pay workers with, or to buy supplies.”

 
“Like, from farmers.” Christine smiled.

  At the word “farmers,” Cobi froze.

  She paused, waiting for the implications to sink in.

  After a moment, his eyes lit with understanding. “Oh, ho. Now that’s an idea. And since there’s only so many to go around, that way, we won’t have ridiculous inflation from price gouging.”

  “That’s hyperinflation,” David said, straight-faced.

  “Yes.” Christine smiled. “It’s a finite supply, in a closed system. It’ll stay level. Plus, people will use them even if they’ve lost all confidence in America’s paper money. They’ll think of it as money, even if it’s not. Not legally, at least.”

  Cobi’s lips flatlined. “It won’t work. We do a lot of bartering with neighboring little towns, you know? They won’t be thrilled with our Weldona Bucks, and we lose our money if they leave with them.”

  Fran sighed heavily, and far too obviously. “Those people could bring their cash, and we exchange new notes for their dollars. But by leaving with these Weldona Bucks, they’ll have to come back to spend them—or they can just use them to buy what they would have traded for. Meanwhile, they bring in dollars.”

  David added, “And if you put a date on them, like they did in Germany, you could have them expire in a month, or six months. When notes expire, reprint them and add them to your treasury.”

  Cobi shook his head slowly, though he’d stopped drumming his fingers. “Okay… Sure. Makes sense. But what about the notes we give our people? They’ll expire, leaving people with nothing.”

  Christine mirrored his shaking head. “Easy. Let them exchange old notes for new ones. You could even go so far as to make the recipient sign the note, and only exchange them if they have two signatures, like if they’ve been spent. Sure, people could get their buddy to do it, but that’s a hassle, and in the meantime, it encourages them to spend it so they do some good.”

  David said, “That’s basically what that German town did, more or less. But that would alleviate your concern about farmers draining the townies, down the road. Without the notes, townies will eventually run out of things to barter. With these notes, farmers have to spend them back into town eventually.”

  Cobi stood, clasping his hands behind his back, and paced the four feet between his chair and the office door. Back and forth, he went. It was on his third return trip that he stopped and looked up at Christine. “I think we can make that work. It’s a good idea. I’m very glad to see you coming up with solutions instead of more problems. I can finally say, welcome home. I’ll let people know about this, and get the infrastructure in place.”

  “Sounds good.” She felt a renewed energy, bubbling up inside.

  Cobi stood and stretched. He said, “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a lot to do and too few hours to do them in. And Chrissy? We’ll get this ball rolling right away.”

  “Come on,” David said, extending his hand, and Christine let him help her up.

  As they headed for the door, she felt a spring to her step she hadn’t had in a long, long time. It didn’t even matter to her that the weasel was likely to take credit for the whole idea. He’d welcomed her home.

  Home...

  Weldona was home again, it seemed, and she and her family could stay—without the threat of exile looming over her head. Her kids were safe. At long last, they were safe. She would make damn sure they stayed that way, even if it meant working with Cobi. He could keep his damn glory.

  What a difference from the angry, scared kid who ran away so long ago, she mused.

  Part Two

  38

  Saturday, July 4th (Four Weeks Later)

  In the parking lot, Christine and David stuffed bags and bags of food into the back of Fran’s car. The weekly allotment for townies was a success, largely because Cobi had implemented her idea for printing their own money—or “IOUs,” officially—and although she’d been right about Cobi taking credit for the idea, she’d also been right in thinking it would work. The farmers delivered food; the townies sold them goods. Little fabrication shops had sprung up in a dozen garages, in town, ranging from art to silverware. The trade that spurred had tightened up the connection between the townies and the outlying farmers, too, where Cobi’s original plan of stealing their land would have led to violence as farmers tried to protect what they’d worked so hard to build up.

  As David stuffed the last bag into the trunk, Orien offered Wiley a ride back to Fran’s, in the patrol car, leaving Christine and David with Fran’s car, and as they pulled away, David looked at Christine and smiled. “Mind if I drive?”

  It was a short ride, and Fran could hardly get upset at a cop driving her car, so Christine nodded and headed to the passenger door. Once he’d gotten in and unlocked the doors, she slid into the passenger seat and buckled up. He was a cop, after all, and she was in the habit of doing so in any case.

  But when he pulled up to the town hall’s exit onto the street, he turned right, instead of left.

  “Where are we going?” She rested her right arm on the window frame, and enjoyed the feel of a light breeze on her arm as they sped up a bit.

  “Just driving around for a minute. Taking a look at the neighborhood, keeping an eye on things. You know. Normally, I’m in a known car, so I don’t get the chance to drive around anonymously much.”

  He paused to turn onto a side street. Christine looked down the road onto which they were turning, but David was in the way. Actually, it was the first time she’d seen him in profile, especially from so close. Weird—she hadn’t noticed he had such a pronounced jawline before. Actually, he had a strong chin, too.

  She smiled when she noticed, for the first time, that he had a “butt face,” the term Darcy always used to describe people with a chin dimple. How had she missed that before? Well, she’d never just sat and looked at him before. She also noticed that his cheekbones, which were lower than most people’s, were rather pronounced, and the result was a fairly round face.

  He had a few tiny wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t old enough for age lines, really. Maybe he had a ready smile, when he wasn’t on duty? That was an interesting thought. He rarely smiled while on duty—as he had been every minute of every day since she’d met him—but maybe a real human being hid under all that L-E-O posturing he did, the “cop mask” that was no doubt a second skin for him after his years on the force.

  A real human being…and a handsome one, though not in a “classic beauty” kind of way.

  As they drove down the new street, a kid ran down the sidewalk, racing the car. The boy looked maybe nine or ten, and grinned wildly as he ran.

  David took his foot off the gas pedal, slowing without activating the brake lights. The boy pulled ahead, laughing. When Christine glanced back at David, she saw he too was grinning, and the smile reached the eye she could see. He was enjoying the moment…

  Again, the thought crossed her mind—he could be a real human being, under the uniform.

  He glanced over to her, and caught her looking at him. His smile relaxed a bit. “What? I wanted to be sure I didn’t hit him if he ran out into the street.”

  “Safety first,” she replied, smirking. Who knew he was good with kids? Well, if she were honest, he’d been pretty fantastic with her kids, as well.

  They passed an older couple, walking the other direction on the sidewalk. The man nudged the woman and pointed at Fran’s car, then waved at David, with a smile. David gave him a half-wave back with the arm he’d rested on the window frame. He was smiling.

  How did he know a farmer? Cobi had them mostly patrolling the town itself. She asked, “You know him?”

  “Yeah, sort of. He had a problem getting fresh water to his house on the farm, and I knew an old-timey solution that fixed it. I set up a group of refugee families to come work his farm and set the water up in return for room and board. Basically.”

  “Really? You did that for a bunch of refugees?” Christine raised
an eyebrow. Cobi would have preferred David shoot them, she had no doubt.

  “Yeah. Well, he needed labor, they needed food. It was better for everyone involved for them to get it from him than to raid the town or something, and it helped our farmer back there to solve his problem. ‘Kill two birds with one stone,’ right?” He smiled as he faced back to watch the road ahead.

  She cocked her head, watching him intently. Was that for real? It sounded so, but she’d been startled to find out that David, just a cop, knew how to fix a farm problem where a farmer didn’t. Especially an “old-timey” fix. She made a note to ask him what that solution was and where he’d learned it, sometime.

  What surprised her more, in the big picture, was that he could have easily turned his back on the refugees. Hell, he’d had no requirement to help the farmer get water, either.

  Come to think of it, he hadn’t had to stop everything to help Christine and her family get to Weldona in the first place, for that matter. He seemed to have a soft spot for kids, but also, he showed a drive to help people in general. Once again, she realized, her kids were lucky to have him around.

  A kind heart, in spite of his brunt exterior, and he was easy on the eyes. One didn’t often see a handsome authority figure, much less one who not only didn’t abuse his position, but used it to genuinely help people. Ha, there were worse people to have around. Maybe—

  As David drove up to Fran’s driveway, Christine glanced down the drive, and she froze. A familiar car sat in the driveway, up by the house. A red ’68 Ford Mustang convertible with whitewall tires.

  No, no, no… It couldn’t be him.

  She saw the personalized license plate when David pulled up to the house: “NOFTCHX” in big, bold letters. “Sonuvabitch,” she hissed.