Selection Event (33 page)

At 135 mph, Diaz wept with fear.

Chapter 61

Late in the balmy near-coastal summer, Winch returned on horseback from Monterey, twenty miles down the coast. He had the two horses in tow and he looked like he'd stepped out of the Old West: he wore denim pants and jacket, leather gloves, and a black flat-brim hat. But instead of a rifle holster on the back of his saddle, he had hung his saxophone, which he played at his campfire at night.

“Two good ones!” he shouted to Martin as he slid out of the saddle and thumped to earth. “There were a couple others, ponies, but they got away. No people anywhere. How've things been since I've been gone?”

“In the last week, I'd say we did about two good days' work, got the root vegetables planted, so no one's suffered.” Martin held the horse by the bridle while Winch pulled off his gloves and used them to knock the dust out of his clothes. “Xeng and I got the solar panels set up and now we have music everyday after lunch. Solomon found a couple hundred CDs of classical music in a duplex up the hill. And the big news — I think Land said 'dada' yesterday.”

Winch untied the two horses he'd brought back and slapped them into the pasture. “Congratulations: He thinks you're an art movement. We're getting along, aren't we, Martin. Life at the end of the world isn't half bad.”

“I just hope to god nothing happens to Xeng or someone has to have an operation. I guess it will eventually.”

Winch wiped the sweat off his face. “Got any ideas to keep us covered?”

“We need more people. I guess that's the short of it. More people, more skills.”

 Winch nodded. “They're in short supply. I saw a few signs of life, but I didn't follow them up because I had the horses. Truth of the matter is, I was lonely and in a hurry to get back.”

“We could go up the coast to San Francisco, see who's there.”

“You'd go back there?” Winch scratched his chin. “Sure. We could do that. How's Jan? How's everybody?”

“Jan's making bread from dawn till dusk. She found more flour.”

Winch shook his head. “God, I love that woman.” Then he looked at Martin. “Something's on your mind. I can read you well enough to know that.”

“Nothing's wrong,” Martin said. “Everybody's fine. We've been doing all right. Everybody's happy. But sometime we need to think about where we're going. Besides getting by, do we want to do something else?” 

As they walked back to the houses, Winch said, “It's crossed my mind too. What do we want Solomon and Missa and Land to do when we're gone? Devote themselves to making cars run again? Rebuilding some kind of generating plant so they can watch movies? Be farmers? Fishermen? Keep records of what they do?”

“Exactly. How about the three of you coming over to a welcome-back dinner after you get cleaned up?”

“I don't know. I may have to say hello to Jan-Louise for a couple hours or so.”

“You may be a gentleman, Winch, but I'm glad you moderate it.”

“Part of my antique charm.”

....

After dinner, Martin told them what had been on his mind. “We need to think about what kind of lives our kids will have when we're gone — and what they won't have — and what direction we want to send them... if we want to send them any direction at all.”

Solomon sat at the table with the adults. He stacked his fists on the edge of the table and rested his chin on them, his big eyes moving from person to person as they spoke.

“Food and water and survival skills,” Xeng said. “That first of all. I know how to fish in the ocean. I should teach Solomon.”

Solomon nodded seriously.

“I guess we have to get past subsistence before we decide on what the extras will be.”

“If we only scavenged,” Jan-Louise asked, “how long could we eat? How long will canned goods last?”

No one knew for sure, but they agreed on a best guess of five years. “Past that,” Martin said, “just for safety, we should probably consider all canned food taboo.”

“So,” Catrin said, “we have five years to become self-supporting. That doesn't sound unreasonable. I'm already getting better making food come out of the ground.”

“We need to plant fruit trees,” Martin said, “learn how to garden during all seasons, how to can our own food, how to dry it, and any other way there is to preserve it.”

Catrin patted his hand. “I've already looked into that.”

Martin stuttered and then had to laugh at his surprise. “Of course you have.”

“What about electricity?” Winch asked. “How important do we make that on our priorities?”

“Not as important as I thought it was,” Jan-Louise said. “Speaking only for myself.”

“I like our music in the afternoon,” Catrin said. “Music is something we shouldn't let fall by the wayside. We should collect what we find.”

They agreed with her.

After twenty minutes, they decided electricity was a luxury, not a necessity, but that it would be a luxury they would afford themselves, if only in small amounts and for the sake of the music.

“Winch,” Martin said, “can you get a stationary bicycle, like an exercise bike, hook up an automobile alternator to it, and then put some kind of converter on that, so we don't have to rely on the panels?”

Winch's face lit up. “Nothing to it. I'd forgotten about that trick.”

“We could use it for lighting in the evenings or for emergencies—”

“And for movies,” Xeng said, “to show medical practices to Solomon.”

“Absolutely.”

Solomon grinned.

“We need a library,” Martin said. “We need to start collecting books that will tell us how to do things, build things, and fix what's broken. We need a library more for those who come after us than for us. Books to cover the sciences, to tell them what the world was like, what the problems were, what we did wrong and what we did right, how to keep themselves healthy, how to keep the world healthy.”

“I forget the responsibility we have,” Jan-Louise said. “Women of my former occupation usually don't consider their benefit to future generations.”

“Books need to go in a safe dry place, good-sized, that animals can't get into.”

“How about the bank in Mariquitas?” Catrin said. “In the vault.”

“Is it open?”

Catrin shrugged.

“Uh-huh,” Solomon said. “The little vault is open. I opened it.”

“You did?” Martin asked. “How?”

“With the combination.”

The adults all looked at each other. “Where did you get the combination?” Martin asked.

“Somebody wrote it on the bottom of that flat thing on the top of the desk.”

“On the blotter,” Catrin said.

After a moment of silence Winch said, “
This
is my son.” He rubbed his hand across the boy's wooly head. “Damn straight you are. We'll check it out with book storage in mind.”

“And the last thing,” Martin said, “is the issue of looking for more people.”

Catrin twisted the stem of her glass in her fingers. “I guess we have to do it.”

“I know how you feel,” Jan-Louise said. “Undecided.”

“We have a stable group here,” Martin said, “but in ten years, think what we'll have — five grayheads, Solomon will be twenty-one, Missa sixteen, and Land will be eleven. If anything happened to Missa, that would be the end of our branch of the family.”

“I guess we have to do it,” Catrin said, “but let's do it slowly. If we brought in three or four neurotics, there wouldn't be any more sitting around the dinner table like this, saying what we think and knowing everyone will understand.”

“We'll go slow,” Martin said. “Winch, when do you think you'll be rested up enough to ride up to San Francisco?”

He sighed heavily. “Two days, three. Tell you what. Let me get the pedal-powered generator put together, and when that's done, we'll go.”

“Don't bring back any snivelers,” Catrin said. “We have to protect our gene pool."

“We'll ask for credentials,” Winch said.

“No handsome men,” Xeng said, waving his hands in front of his face and shaking his head. “Only ugly guys.”

“And homely women,” Jan-Louise said. “I couldn't take any competition.”

“Okay,” Martin said. “We'll only bring back well-balanced ugly people. I'll make a note of that, Winch. We'll probably find dozens of them.”

They finished the bottle of wine and said their good nights.

In their bed, Catrin slept against him, holding him tight even in her sleep. He had spoken of the trip to San Francisco as though it were nothing unusual, but they all knew that away from their settlement, anything could happen, most of it bad.

And Martin, remembering Curtiz and Ryan and Stewart, decided that this time, even though it could cause more problems than it prevented, he would go armed. Whatever else happened, he wanted to come home.  

Chapter 62

The trip to San Francisco was uneventful. On the way, Martin and Winch stopped several hours in every cluster of houses or businesses they came to, slid off their horses to stretch their legs, and looked for signs of recent habitation. Winch had the louder voice, so he was the designated caller and every few minutes shouted, “Hello! Anyone around?!”

On the second day, as they ambled along between towns, they heard a voice behind them, turned and saw a boy on a bicycle with one flapping flat tire, furiously pedaling after them. When he saw them looking back, he waved and leaned over the handlebars and pedaled even harder.

“Wait!” he shouted, skidding to a stop beside them. His grimy face was wet with sweat. “Are you guys—” and then his face contorted and he broke in to terrible sobs. Blindly, he stepped off his bike and reached up and grabbed fistfuls of Martin's pant leg and cried. “Don't go away! Please don't go away! Everybody's gone!”

As it turned out, his name was Ross, he was fourteen, and he had been alone nearly the whole time. He had heard them calling out in the last town but he'd been several blocks away, searching through a house for food and hadn't been able to see which way they had gone when they left. So he had ridden a mile or two in the opposite direction before doubling back.

Martin stepped down off the horse and tossed back the flap of the saddlebag. “Hungry?” he asked.

“I don't care about that. Take me with you,” the boy pleaded. He stared into Martin's eyes as though he'd never seen a human face before. “Everybody died and then the phones didn't work, or the television—” He started sobbing again and then controlled himself. “I tried to be grown-up. I tried to drive—”

Martin held the boy against his chest. He would have preferred to have Ross wait until they came through town on their way back, but he couldn't ask him to be alone again. He still remembered too well what that was like, how he himself had volunteered to let life pass him by.

“Ross, you don't have to worry about being alone. You're with us now. In a week or so we'll take you where there are other people too, kids, other adults.”

“You have a family now,” Winch said, “as long as you want us.”

He clung to Martin. “Don't leave me here,” he begged.

“You won't be alone again,” Martin said. “I promise.”

For the rest of the trip, Ross never left their sides.

Chapter 63

Isha lifted her head as she roused from her afternoon sleep. There was a smell... the smell of dried blood in their clothes and of meat on their breath. Now fully alert, she stood, gave herself a quick shake, and from the front porch stared down the road that led past her house. Nothing.

But again, there was the smell. Beside Isha, Mona lifted her nose and breathed the air, her ears turning separately one direction and then another, searching for a sound to go with the smell.

Then, a voice. Two voices.

Isha barked once, twice, and stalked stiff-legged back and forth in front of the house. Mona got out of the way.

Catrin came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel and said Isha's name, but Isha ignored her and stood in front of the door, barking in the direction she had heard the noise. The woman stood unmoving and silent, also looking down the road.

Isha ran halfway toward the voices, still barking furiously, the smell of old blood in her nose. Ahead, around the corner, coming at her, she could see the two of them now — a man and a woman. They spoke soothingly to her, lowering their hands and cooing at her.

They stank.

Within their other smells was the smell out of Jojo's house where there was a dead human.

Isha bolted when a hand from behind seized her scruff. She whirled and snapped, biting only air.

“Isha!”
 

It was Catrin — Isha cowered and slunk away, almost having bitten her. A horror swept over her far worse than her reaction to the strangers. She withdrew to corner of the house, where Mona had impassively watched it all. Isha felt fear and shame.

Catrin spoke to the man and the woman, who used only quiet voices, and then together the three of them came back to the house and went inside.