The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Page 17

  “In the short term, yes.” Carl agreed. “Earth's albedo will rise and surface temperatures will fall even faster than Harry's staff predicted. But there are three main mechanisms for cleansing the atmosphere.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

  “One: gravity will settle out the biggest particles of ash and dust in at most a few weeks. Two: wind, which is admittedly more an agent of dispersal than cleansing. And three--”

  “Precipitation!” Raoul and Ariel leapt in at the same time.

  “Exactly! The heat from all the magma initially dried the atmosphere and increased the air’s ability to hold moisture. I'd bet there hasn't been any rain anywhere in the world since the day after Havoc hit. I also think all that heat will be an engine for building storms much larger than we’re used to, hypercanes, think hurricanes on steroids, that top out well into what we’d normally consider the stratosphere. But with that dark cloud covering the earth temperatures will drop fast, and with an excess of both water vapor and nuclei to form droplets we're going to get a lot of rain.”

  Sara, staring at the flames, said, “It can't come fast enough for me.” The fires seemed closer now.

  But Raoul’s brow was deeply furrowed in thought and Ariel mirrored his expression.

  “It's a two-edged sword, Sara,” Raoul explained. “The rain will put out the fires, but...well, you've been running the numbers, Carl. What exactly do you mean by a lot of rain.”

  Carl, staring at the smoke billowing into the sky said, “Remember Noah?”

  Chapter 20: When it Rains it Pours

  The Freeholds

  He was cold and soaked, drenched so thoroughly his boots squelched with each slippery step. Michael Whitebear wiped the rain from his brow and rued again the loss of his hat.

  Mixed blessing this rain, extinguishing forest fires so numerous he’d thought the whole world was burning. And since the downpour started the air had cleared a bit and the sky had lightened some. But now it had been raining for two solid weeks. Cold, hard, relentless rains flooding the valley, causing mud slides.

  When would the nightmare end?

  First came the earthquakes and fires--weeks of jolting, never knowing when the earth would betray and rend; weeks of burnings, so numerous their dull orange glow flickering off the blackened sky gave light enough to see during midnight days. Then the temperature rose until it was actually hot in January, but it had been cooling back down for weeks. Now, he flinched at a nearby blast of thunder. Sheets of lightning, exploded across the sky like strings of firecrackers and this deluge...he was afraid to think what might come next.

  The sky was marginally lighter but the rain was so heavy it reduced visibility to nil. He stumbled over a downed aspen and slid downhill until his backpack caught on a spruce limb and stopped him. He pulled his pack loose then tore himself free of a wild rose bush that snagged him and checked the load. Some of the precious firewood he had gathered from inside thick spruce boughs where the rain hadn't penetrated was damp, but still burnable.

  He climbed wearily to his feet and trudged across the side hill toward home. This is what we're reduced too, he thought, cursing as his foot tangled in a spreading juniper. Burning wood to heat small, cramped spaces. Cooking canned food scavenged from the houses of the dead. Vultures! He shook his head and smiled, tightlipped. Self pity was wearing thin too. Others, less prepared, less self-reliant had to have it far worse. At least most Freeholders had been able to salvage some of their stored food.

  He heard the chugging of the generator and soon after could see a light bulb burning from the ruins of his home. It wouldn't be long before he and Ellen were forced to hunt up more gasoline for the generator, since their propane backup was crushed by the same fallen Ponderosa that damaged their home. And they had less than two days food left.

  He sighed. Most of their long term food supplies had been destroyed by the quakes and forest fires, so after dropping off the firewood and grabbing a cup of coffee, he'd round up Randy McKinley and some other neighbors and organize another scavenger hunt.

  Something cold stung his cheek and as he wiped it away more flakes caught his eye. Snow! Well, snow in January wasn’t unusual for the Rockies. Maybe things were getting back to normal. But something about this snow set his gut churning. He started toward his house with renewed urgency.

  *

  Kansas

  “I'm cold, Daddy.” Robby Garrison was seven years old now, having celebrated his birthday just days ago, too young to understand the changes taking place in his world, but old enough to learn to adapt.

  “You know what to do,” Harry responded.

  “I'll get it,” Sheila mumbled from beneath the quilts.

  “No,” Harry said. “Let Robby.”

  The boy slid from the covers, gasping as his feet contacted the chilly floor. He put on slippers and a robe, and crossed the room to the airtight wood stove, opening it and stirring the ashes with a poker. Dull orange greeted him along with feeble heat bringing a big grin to his face.

  “She held,” he reported with pride, for he had built the night fire the evening before and the goal was to have embers such as these still alive to start the morning fire.

  He crumpled old newspaper and blew on a coal until it caught, then added kindling and larger wood creating a merry blaze.

  As the crackling of the new fire reached Harry a proud smile creased his face. His son's first fire had held. With the world like it was, that was an important rite of passage.

  Things were bad on the farm, what with the darkness and growing cold and hellacious storms that terrified them all; but so far they were surviving. They'd had no contact with the outside world since The Dying Time began and he could only imagine how horrible life was elsewhere. Grim enough here.

  Day was almost as black as night. The difference was in daytime he could see his hand in front of his face. The air was thick with dust and acrid sulfurous smoke, telling him there was at least one volcano within sniffing distance of the farm.

  And on his last scavenging trip to town the old Ford pickup died, its air filter hopelessly clogged, its carburetor choked with the gunk that passed for air in this new world. That same trip he'd seen his first dog pack. They'd eyed him warily, slinking away with the furtiveness of dogs that know they've done something bad and don't want to be blamed; but they left him alone. He was certain they'd been feeding on corpses, and was relieved they weren't yet bold enough to attack.

  “Ugh!” Harry grunted as Robby jumped back into to bed to wait for the room to warm up. Sheila moved playfully against him, knowing he could do nothing with Robby in the room.

  Thirty minutes later Harry was dressed for the outside. Dressed in layers, that is, with a white tee shirt, now faded gray, long-sleeved, red and white flannel shirt, light tan cotton jacket, heavy denim jacket, hunter orange stocking cap and long muffler, wrapped around his head and over his nose to filter the air. Ski goggles, thick leather gloves, long underwear bottoms, loose green wool pants, two pairs of socks and L. L. Bean Caribou boots with rubber soles and leather uppers completed his outfit.

  Even though his wristwatch showed 8 a.m. he couldn't see as far as the chicken coop, much less the barn. Sheila's father, Wes had solved that problem by tying rope “leads” between the out buildings and the house, just like his parents had done during the dust bowl days of the Great Depression.

  Harry took a lead in hand and groped his way through the murk to the hen house. Since they were running out of chicken feed and couldn't let the flock free range, he carried a burlap bag to stuff a hen or two in. Harry and Wes had agreed to thin out the flock to stretch the feed supply so the family had been eating chicken almost every day for the past two weeks. If he didn't come up with more chicken feed, they'd have to eat all the chickens and that would mean the last of the eggs. He sighed. He'd really miss eggs for breakfast.

  One of the reasons he'd risked a trip to town was to visit the feed store and the granary, but the rats got there first, swarming eve
rywhere: a terrifying brown carpet with teeth. Fear of rabies had kept him and Wes from trying for the grain.

  Nearing the hen house he saw the dim glow of the battery powered drop light he and Wes had strung to mimic daylight to keep the birds laying. Once inside he ruffled feathers gathering eggs and grabbed two hens that hadn't laid for several days. Produce or else. Pioneer economics.

  His next stop was the barn where Wes had already finished milking the last two surviving Holsteins. The concrete floor of the milk barn was cold, which could be lived with, and filthy, which was unhealthy. Normally, the floor was sprayed down with hot water and disinfected after each milking. But the water pump that fed both the barn and the house ran off a gasoline-powered generator, and both gasoline and motors were too precious to waste. Harry couldn't begin to guess when civilization would recover enough to produce more of either.

  Wes was dumping milk into the feed trough for the hogs. The spry old man spied Harry and waved him over. “Looky here,” he said, pointing proudly.

  Harry leaned over and looked down into the stalls they had converted to indoor hog pens. Six piglets squirmed into their mother’s teats, wiggling like they were trying to burrow back into her.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Harry said, reaching down toward a little one.

  “Don’t!” Wes smacked Harry’s hand away just as the sow lunged at it, a fiery gleam in her eye.

  “Good way to lose a hand,” the old farmer warned. “Those teeth ain’t just for show. Sow with a litter is nothin’ to mess with.”

  “I’ll say,” Harry agreed. He studied the piglets envisioning bacon and pork chops. “We going to be able to keep them alive?”

  Wes studied on that for a while. “Depends on how long this cold lasts. Hay’ll keep the cows goin’. We got six or seven more months worth now that the herd’s down to two. So long as the cows give milk we can feed the hogs and ourselves.” He paused and shook his head. “Wish’t those damn rats hadn’t got the grain. Be good for the cows and the pigs.”

  He turned to Harry and looked him in the eye. “How long’ll the cold last?”

  Harry tugged at his growing beard. “No way to tell from here. If those volcanoes that blew quieted back down that’s one thing. If they’re still pouring ash into the upper atmosphere, well, we might have to hunt up some more hay.”

  Wes nodded. He grabbed a bucket of milk for the house and started for the door, but before he could get there it flew open and Robby bolted inside.

  “Dad! Grandpa! It’s snowing!” Harry put his arm around his son and stared at the blizzard whipping by outside. The scientist in him was fascinated by the changes he observed in the world around him, but the husband and father in him was appalled. For the first time in hundreds of years a father couldn't look forward to handing his son a better world than he, himself, lived in. Harry was honest enough to realize that even if Carl and General Mabry and the Garcia’s got it together in time to destroy the asteroid coming at them life would probably get harder for the next several generations. He wondered how others were dealing with the changes. He sighed, new days, new ways.

  *

  Utah

  “Bob?” The man peering in the door spoke from deep shadows.

  Bob Young, Mayor of Provo, held a candle up toward his visitor. “Ed? That you? When did you get back?”

  Edward Cummins stepped inside and closed the door. He pulled off his snow-covered coat and hat and laid them over a chair. “Just now.” He placed a sheaf of paper on Bob's desk and the Mayor noticed the man's hands trembled slightly.

  “Have a seat, Ed,” Bob Young waved toward a chair. “How bad is it?”

  Tears welled in Ed's eyes and for the first time Bob saw how hollow they looked. “It's worse than we ever imagined,” Ed choked out. “The Tabernacle is gone. It's just gone! That big fault tore Salt Lake City in two and drowned most of it.” His voice dropped to a whisper and he looked down at the floor. “It's all gone. And Bob? That fault slip is huge. I couldn’t see all the way to the bottom because of the snow but I could hear…” He stopped, embarrassed. It was hard to admit what he thought he’d heard.

  “Hear what?” Bob asked, staring at him expectantly.

  “Um…well, surf.”

  There! It was out.

  Bob Young was stunned. As a rule the Mormons around Provo had faired better than gentiles because their religion bade them keep a year's supply of food and necessities on hand. And the Dugway Tea Party had assured they kept what they’d saved. So a far larger percentage of the population was prepared to survive without the trappings of civilization than elsewhere. But if Utah was now the West coast he’d have to rethink his strategy of waiting for help from outside.

  The reality hit him hard. I should talk to that geologist from the University, he thought. What was her name? Hope, or Charity, or something like that. She had a theory the asteroid strike had caused tectonic plates to shift that suddenly seemed worth listening to. He reached for the phone before remembering it was dead and he hadn’t had a cell phone signal in months.

  He stood up and showed Ed Cummins out the door with a final request. “Would you please find Adam and tell him I need to see him?”

  Colonel Adam Young had tried to get Bob to organize a small militia last week but fighting fires, finding clean water and distributing civil defense rations seemed more important. Now Bob wasn't so sure.

  Most cities and towns had less than a week's supply of food on hand and with food running short men were turning desperate. Fear of the ever-darkening sky was on the rise, and it was getting colder and snowier every day. Winter was weird this year. And if that wasn’t enough, there were isolated reports of violence and looting. Bob had glimpsed a grim, dog-eat-dog future and he was determined it would not begin in Provo. He was hanging on to fragments of law and order by a thread.

  He leaned forward, running one hand absently over the dark mahogany surface of his desk. My God, he thought, we’re really on our own.

  *

  Denver

  “We don’t get out of here soon, we’ll be too weak!” Jim Cantrell hissed. He tugged the corner of the canvas tarp around his shoulder and tried to get comfortable. Slaves weren’t allowed much, minimal clothing, drafty, unheated shelters.

  “I know mon,” Jacques teeth chattered. Male slaves weren’t allowed warm clothing because then they could conceal weapons. They weren’t allowed fires to heat their shelters both because fire could be used as a weapon, and because their suffering amused their guards. All they could do was huddle together out of the worst of the snow and wind.

  “But I won’ go witout Denise.”

  Men and women were held separately. Freeing her meant getting themselves loose, evading the guards, and breaking her out of a guarded enclosure.

  “I think we have to get ourselves loose first, Jacques.”

  “Den you go alone,” Jacques snapped.

  “Listen, man,” Jim pleaded. “We need guns, not these.” He gestured with a shank he’d made from broken window glass. “We need warm clothes and someplace decent to hole up after we escape. Someplace warm where we can regain our strength and plan how to get to the Freeholds. Denise will need all that and more, man. She may need a doctor.”

  Jacques’ wild-eyed silence told Jim he wasn’t convinced.

  “You can’t get any help for her here and you know it.”

  “Mebbe so, mon, but she know we here.” Denise and Jacques contrived to get a glimpse of one another almost every day. “Wat she tink if we go?”

  “She’s your wife, Jacques,” Jim said. “And you know her better than I do. But I think she’ll know we won’t abandon her. I think she’ll know we’ll be back.”

  Jacques nodded unwillingly.

  “Tomorrow, when we’re out foraging I’ll slip away,” Jim paused and met Jacques’ gaze. Male slaves were always escaping from foraging parties. Most were recaptured and killed. It was very risky, but food for male slaves had been almost nonexistent for a week now. “
If you come with me we’ll get her out faster than if I go alone; but either way I’m going.”

  Jacques read the determination in Jim’s eyes and the set of his jaw. No arguing with that.

  “Okay, mon, tomorrow.”

  *

  Denise hadn’t seen her man or Jim Cantrell in three days now. Where were they? She hadn’t heard about any executions or escapes. God, she hoped they’d escaped from these vermin. The only other thing she could think of was maybe Shark had somehow recognized Jim Cantrell and turned him over to Viper.

  “Hey babe.” One of the dining hall guards fondled her breast as she slid past with a tray of meat. She shuddered inside but controlled any visible reaction. That was another mystery. After more than two weeks of virtual starvation all of a sudden there was fresh pork. The smell was delicious. Some foragers must have found a pig farm. She laid her tray on the table and left for another. One thing was certain. If Jacques had escaped she had to stay alert, for he’d come for her. More than that, she realized. She must try to get out on her own, for if he attempted to rescue her he’d probably be killed.

  Back in the dining hall, Viper finished the invocation with a final remark. “As did our forefathers in Africa, we too gain strength from our enemy dead.”

  Several of his newer followers looked uneasily at the “pork” in front of them. Did he mean? Viper’s army had won a battle just yesterday, defeating some families in Englewood who had banded together to defend their homes. Sensing their hesitation, Viper seized the initiative, slicing a bite-sized piece and holding it aloft on a fork.

  “Our Dark Lord has granted this blessing as part of his plan for returning us to our rightful heritage.” He sucked the meat off the fork and chewed as his eyes blazed over the crowd.

  Suddenly everyone was hungry.

  *

  Glendale, California