Story Time Page 2

  Reporter notes: Mr. Engle shook his head and sat back down in his chair.

  “That was a terrible time for everyone, including God’s chosen few in the compound. My brother, Jack found a woman sneaking around one night after the eruption, within the compound’s fortified walls. To this day, no one knows how she got in. Jackson thought she tunneled in, but we could find no holes dug under the walls. Anyway, he shot her dead.

  “She had filled a canteen with water from our well. We know now it was a mistake, but after we dumped her body over the wall, someone poured the water from the canteen back into the well. She must have drunk from the container because, within a few days, the Tox-flu ran rampant within our ranks. My wife died, and so did three other women, and six out of the twenty-two children who lived within the compound walls.”

  Reporter notes: Mr. Engle called for a guard, stating that he needed a bathroom break. After Engle left, I took the opportunity to check an old earth map. The Church of the Second Coming was located just south of the Canadian border in Montana. Prevailing winds blew most of the ash cloud south and east…still, it was a miracle anyone so close to the Yellowstone caldera survived. Ten minutes later, Frank Engle shuffled back into the room.

  (Steve Cummings) “Mr. Engle, I wonder if you can tell me…how did the eruption in Yellowstone affect the people within the compound?”

  (Engle) “Oh…that was a mess to be sure. The only thing that saved us was the fact that most of the installation was underground. Our homes were pretty standard, and above ground, but when we realized the volcano was going to blow, Dwight herded us all down below. That was good, of course, but it was a squeeze. The bunker was really only four Sea-Land containers set one after the other, and there were over a hundred people crammed inside. We managed, but it was really scary when the ash and glassine soot poured in through the air filters with the oxygen. For a time, I thought we were all going to smother to death. After about a week, we scrambled outside. It was snowing black. The sky was the color of a rotten plum and sulfur filled our noses…it was bad.

  “It was cold, too. We were having a hard time feeding everyone within the compound, and it was getting harder to go outside to find wood for our fires. We ran into a lot of refugees outside of the walls, and almost every one of them begged and pleaded to be let in. If we ran into any niggers or spics, we shot them on sight, of course, but there were a lot of decent white folks who tried to get in, because they were sick or starving to death. Most of the time, a firm ‘no’ would suffice. By this time, we had a reputation for being tough customers. Sometimes though, those people would not take no for an answer.

  “It was a terrible thing, knowing that you were going to harvest as many dead bodies as wood for the fires. Also, we weren’t the only ones with guns. The first couple of weeks, after the super-volcano erupted, were a nightmare of gun battles and disease. What started out as a sanctuary quickly turned into a trap for the people inside the compound’s walls.

  “Pastor Engle preached that God’s wrath extended to all the unbelievers who wandered sick and shivering in the ravaged landscape. He reminded us that we were the righteous few who were meant to survive the calamity, and from now on, we needed to shoot anybody who came too close to the walls of our camp.

  “One day, the guards on the walls heard a shout sifting up through the clouds of black ash and snow flurries. ‘Who’s there?’ a young man named Garret, shouted.

  “‘My name is Bennet. Dr. Jeremy Bennet. I have medical supplies! Penicillin, ampicillin, painkillers…the works! My family and I need shelter! Let us in, please! We can help.’

  “So we got ourselves a doctor, which was a good thing. The flu had come and gone by now, but more people were starting to get sick, and we didn’t have the medicine to help them. When Doc Bennet came, he brought two SUV’s chock full of medical supplies from a de-commissioned hospital in Butte. Another thing he brought with him was horses. He figured out a way to hitch two teams of horses to the front chassis of the SUV’s, so gasoline was no longer an issue for us. Even before all the trouble started, gas was up over ten dollars a gallon. Most of the remaining pumps were government owned and subsidized. What few troops remained in the National Guard were sent to guard the country’s most precious commodity…oil and gas.

  “Once we saw how well the horses drew the cars, Dwight sent all of his boys to steal horses and whatever livestock we could find…remember, this was farm country, and at first, the raiding parties were optimistic. It didn’t take long, though, before we discovered most of the animals were dead. We found whole herds of cattle buried under funeral pyres of ash, and wild horses lying on the ground like cordwood.

  “Finally, we found a beautiful, high-end ranch. There was a gigantic barn filled with hay and oats. When the scouting party pulled up to the barn, five horses greeted us at the door like a bizarre welcome wagon. They nickered and followed us inside, where we found a half a dozen steers milling around the back of the building and walking up and down a ramp that led to the hayloft upstairs.

  “For some reason the worst of the ash cloud had skipped over the area, sparing these animals. I remember feeling kinda bad when we led them out of the barn and into the wastelands, but necessity dictates. One old mare balked, whinnied mournfully, and looked back toward the barn as we left. Jackson whipped her backside though, and got her moving again.

  “The problem with livestock is you need to feed them during the winter months, and winter in Montana lasts a long time. There were over a hundred people living in the compound. By the first week of November most of our still edible food-stocks had been eaten, and we were instructed to bring any people we found outside the walls, back to the compound.

  “Brother Dwight explained that these people were not only sinners, but barely human anymore. He reminded us that God meant for his true believers to survive the holocaust, so why not eat the meat he provided on a daily basis?”

  Reporter notes: At this point, Mr. Engle appeared quite agitated. The scar that bisected his face was purple with blood, and his mouth distorted grotesquely. There was a brief knock at the door, and a guard entered.

  “This interview is finished for the day, Mr. Cummings,” he stated emphatically.

  I started to protest, but even I could see that the subject was past talking coherently. I put my pen and paper away and watched as the guards led one of earth’s most notorious criminals out the door and into the darkened hallway.

  Chapter 3

  Blessings cover the head of a righteous person, but violence covers the mouths of wicked people. 10:6 God’s Word

  Naomi –

  The old woman, known as Nana Nay, stopped speaking and watched the glow-birds fly from east to west on their constant, but mysterious, nightly rendezvous. Sensing the warm mass of humanity below them in the amphitheater, the birds hovered in the air for a moment and then floated down to investigate. They resembled earth’s hummingbirds.

  Tiny, and in differing shades of brown and gray, each bird was encased in an iridescent bubble. The bubbles twinkled like diamonds in the daylight, but in the hours of dusk and dawn, they glowed with the colors of their surroundings, like the chameleons of old earth. When one came close, you could see your reflection, like a mirror, in their fragile shells.

  The glow-birds hummed in eerie harmony as they bobbed here and there and investigated the people gathered below. Then they flew up and away into the western sunset.

  “Harmony,” she murmured. “That’s what we called ourselves.” She smiled at the audience, and added, “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should go back and explain what happened after the big earthquakes hit the west coast, and Mt. Rainier erupted.”

  She gazed at Persephone, the smallest and closest of the moons in the night sky, and remembered an old folk tale from earth about the moon being made of cheese. In this case, on this world, Persephone would be made of blue cheese, or Roquefort. It swam in the heavens above like a small, round piece of jade.

  “
My father owned about 1200 acres of good grassland between Colville and Kettle Falls, in Washington State. He was a cattle rancher and ran anywhere from two to 300 cows and steers every year. He owned five horses, eight pigs, and about fifty chickens at the time of his death.

  “I can tell you, I never wanted to be a farmer…no siree. I wanted to teach for a while, pay back my school loans and maybe continue my education—this time in history, as a college professor.

  “That was my dream, but the natural disasters put an end to that. The only thing I could do was thank God for the fact my brothers and I had food, water and space to survive the aftermath of the earthquakes.

  “For a while things remained fairly normal…if you could call the destruction of the west coast normal. Businesses remained open, the cell phones were operational, and you could still catch the news on TV or the radio.

  “My brothers and I commenced to running the ranch by ourselves. Zack and Josh knew exactly what needed to be done. They took off every morning, with the bed of the old pick-up filled with hay. They made sure the water tanks were full and the fences were mended.

  “It was my job to feed the chickens, gather their eggs and feed the pigs. I swear our dogs knew more about how to deal with those critters than I did. My hands were bruised and bloody from getting pecked by the hens, and one old sow had sworn a death threat against me. The first time she charged me, I thought I was a goner, but our Blue Heeler, Wyatt, stood in front of me and snarled until that nasty old pig backed away.

  “Josh and I did a lot of gardening, and Zack cut down trees, chopped the wood, and stacked it in the old loafing shed. I called my aunt and uncle, and convinced them to come and stay with us. They lived in Spokane, and although things remained peaceful up in the high hills, the city was anything but.

  “There was a mass exodus from the west side of the state to the eastern interior. I-90 was crammed with cars, trucks and vans full of people trying to find safe shelter. Although a lot of these people had money, it was inaccessible. ATMs didn’t work and banks only opened sporadically. There were riots when harried bank clerks were unable to provide funds to people who had waited in line for hours due to glitchy computer readouts and sporadic power blackouts.

  “The supply routes from west to east were interrupted, so within about a month, the stores started to close their doors. Paper money became useless and barter was the newest form of currency. Firewood and trees became symbols of wealth. Owners of gasoline and oil became the new elite. If you owned a source of fresh, running water, you were wealthy beyond imagining.

  “My father’s farm had all of it. The land was rich with trees, grass, hay, livestock and two spring-fed wells. We had two 5,000 gallon tanks of diesel buried under the ground. My mother tended to a thirty-by-forty greenhouse. Now that she was gone and the greenhouse became my responsibility, I realized how well kept and extensive it was. It possessed two built-in compost bins and two adjacent bins of tilled earth, rich with manure from our own cattle.

  “Solar panels perched on the eaves and turned the exhaust fans that kept the building from overheating. Every vegetable you could imagine grew within, along with herbs and spices. A back door led into the back garden where my mom grew potatoes, corn, pumpkins and squash. There was an orchard, as well. There were fruit trees: apple, cherry, peach and plum, along with rows of blackberry and raspberry bushes.

  “Like I said, at first everyone thought things would get back to normal. One night though, my family (Zack, Josh, Uncle Allen and his wife, Wendy and their twins, eleven-year-old, Penny and Polly) and I turned on the TV to see what the latest developments were. We stared in shock at the scenes of violence that spewed out of the set and into our living room.

  “There was widespread rioting in the Seattle/Tacoma area, the city of Portland, Oregon, was under martial law, and the Washington State capitol in Olympia, was ringed with troops. We saw pictures of unbelievable violence that made the riots in Los Angeles in the early 1990’s seem like a playroom romp.

  “We watched as people were dragged out of their cars and beaten, and all their worldly possessions were stolen. We watched as shop front windows were shattered and people ran in and out of the buildings with their arms full of things like generators, batteries, food, blankets, and medical supplies.

  “We listened as a news crews reported that a motorcycle club had seized control of a local Wal-Mart. Apparently, the gang would let people in, but the prices they were asking for simple drugs like heart medicine, high blood pressure pills and asthma inhalers were so high nobody could afford to buy or trade for them. We watched in horror as one man stood in the entrance of the store. It was clear that he was yelling in anger, but when he shook his fist at the bikers inside the store, he was shot dead.

  “My uncle Allen said, ‘We need to set some perimeters around this ranch.’ He looked at me with sad eyes, and my blood ran cold.

  “‘What do you mean?’ I already knew, but for some reason, I needed to hear the words.

  “Allen shook his head. ‘Honey, I think you know what I mean. We need to bring in more people for support. We need to bring the cattle closer, or they’ll be stolen. We need to set up guard posts and protect what’s ours, or we’ll lose it all.’

  “Allen was my dad’s older brother. At fifty-two, he was almost as big as my dad, but in better physical condition. He owned his own construction company in Spokane, and when he brought his family to the ranch, he also brought two construction vans full of tools, like saws, hammers, levels, nails and screws. Then, he and the boys drove back into Spokane and brought back a semi-truck full of lumber, trusses, glass, flooring, paint…anything Allen could think of to make an adequate shelter.

  “Zack spoke up. ‘Yeah…I think it’s a good idea. Naomi, Josh and I have been seeing a lot more people than usual lately, and they don’t look real friendly. I get the feeling that they are checking out the stock. I’ve got my rifle, but if it came right down to it, I don’t know if I could keep them out, if they got serious about coming in.’

  “‘You’ve been taking a rifle, Zack?’ I blurted, knowing already that I was the naïve one, the trustful idealist, in a world gone mad.

  “Zack rolled his eyes, and I said, ‘No. You’re right…I’m sorry’

  “Allen continued. ‘This is what I think we should do, okay? First off, Naomi, this is your place, you and your brothers. I swear I’m not going to try and take over, okay? Unless we agree unanimously on any one issue, it will go up to a vote and majority will rule.’

  “He stared at my brothers and me. ‘For now though, this is what I think we should do. First…’ he held one large finger in the air. ‘We should call in as many relatives and close friends as we can. They’ll eat more, I know, but we need the support. We’ll ask them to bring in as many useful items as they can, like guns, ammo, first-aid supplies, medicines, gas, water…you get the picture. Second, we need to bring the livestock in to the holding pasture. There is no way we can guard the cattle on open range. When we bring them in, we set up guard posts around the perimeter.’

  “‘Where are they all going to live, Uncle Allen?’ Josh’s voice came from the back of the room, where he sat playing with the twins.

  “It was a good point. There were two houses on the ranch: the new house where my brothers and I lived and the old house where my grandparents had lived and raised their two sons. There was a bunkhouse too, but it was old, filthy, and close to falling down.

  “Allen smiled. ‘Why do you think I brought all that building material?’ He sighed, and scratched his gray beard. ‘We’ll ask anyone who owns a travel-trailer, an R.V. or a camper to bring it. Then, once people start arriving, we’ll build what outbuildings we need. Also, we should build some shelters for the guards. Winter will be here soon. The guards are going to need to stay warm.’

  “It was an idiotic thing to say, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ My voice warbled, and Josh got up and walked over to where I sat shi
vering on the couch.

  “‘It’s going to be okay, Nay,’ he whispered in my ear.

  “His words were like a soothing balm, but when I gathered my kid brother in my arms and met my uncle’s haunted eyes, I knew that nothing would ever be okay again.”

  Chapter 4

  August 2015

  Michael Anderson urged his little Toyota Prius to go faster. Bless its heart, and the solar cell batteries that ran it; he had been able to get this far without being robbed blind by unscrupulous gas station owners, but it was slow going, especially now that he was heading up hill.

  His brother Gary, who sat next to him in the passenger seat said, “Watch out for that wreck up ahead…I see people.” He reached down, picked up his pistol, checked to see how many rounds were in the clip and flipped the safety off. His dark skin was shiny with sweat, and he glared through the windshield with suspicious eyes.

  “They’re not all bad, Gary,” Michael murmured. His brother snorted in disgust.

  “Maybe not bro, but I haven’t been impressed so far, have you?” Gary growled.

  He reached into the backseat for the 30.06 rifle that sat loaded and ready to fire. Then he picked it up and stood, so his tall body poked up out of the moon roof. Gary’s left hand gestured, and Michael slapped the pistol into his brother’s hand. He watched it disappear out of the roof of the car.

  He slowed down, pulling into the far left lane. He held his breath as they passed the wrecked car and sighed with relief. He realized that what his brother had mistaken for a person was actually a coat hanging on the antenna of an older model pick-up. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about the lack of people on the roads.