The day after: An apocalyptic morning (86 page)

              It was two hours after the mission had ended, an hour before dinnertime. The helicopter was sitting safely back in the parking lot outside and the tank containing 250 gallons of jet fuel - a tank that Skip had neatly landed atop a wheeled pallet that Paul had built - was resting safely in the maintenance shed. After dropping off the tank and refueling from it, Skip had flown back to Cameron Park alone to pick up the four troops he had been forced to leave behind due to weight concerns. Though absolutely nothing had happened to Jack, Karen, Cindy, and Ron while they had been alone and isolated down there, it had been a long hour and half for everyone concerned. No one liked to leave their people hanging in the wind in an isolated place, nor did anyone particularly like to be left there.

              As a reward for the successful mission Paul had opened up the intoxicant supply room for the benefit of the returning troops. Currently Ron, Cindy, and Karen were utilizing one of the empty storage rooms to play a game of quarters with tequila shots. Skip, though he longed to join them, was abstaining for now so he could give his debriefing and discuss some of the Mickers at hand. He, like everyone else in the room, including Jack, was sipping from a warm bottle of beer as the video played. In front of him was a small pile of marijuana that he had carefully crunched up with a small pair of scissors. He was trying to roll a joint but was not having a lot of luck since it had been more than sixteen years since he had last attempted such a thing.

              "Give me that shit," Paula said to him after the third paper ripped in half while he was twisting it. "Fucking cops don't know how to roll a decent hooter." She pulled the pile over to her and began expertly constructing a fat one.

              "I didn't know you knew how to do that," Skip told her, watching her fingers go through the motions.

              "I'm a writer," she said. "We all smoke dope. It's a law. Where do you think that some of this shit came from? I turned over at least an ounce when we gathered supplies."

              Paul, watching the exchange, laughed a little and then turned his attention back to the television set just as the view began to pan over the train cars. There was no sound since all they would have heard would have been the engine noise and the picture was a little jerky but the zoom worked admirably. "You were right, Skip, those are grain carriers and the lids are still on."

              "Will the grain still be good though?" Paula asked after sealing shut her creation with saliva. "That's the real question."

              "Those containers are relatively airtight," Skip said, "but they're not vacuum sealed or anything. There's probably going to be a little mold in there after all this time. Maybe even weevils or some other vermin."

              "But we should be able to salvage some of it, shouldn't we?" Paula said, holding out her hand to Paul and miming the act of operating a lighter.

              "We should," Paul said, fishing out his Bic disposable and handing it across. "And a little mold wouldn't hurt us anyway. If it comes down to starving or getting a few bugs in the food, I'll have to go with the bugs every time."

              While Paula lit up the joint and took a tremendous hit of it, Jack slowed the speed of the tape as the first of the cargo carriers came into view.

              "They're still locked shut," Skip said, taking the joint as it was passed to him. "There could be anything in there, anything at all from canned food to auto parts to boxes of condoms from the latex factory in Oakland. We need to fly some people out there to go down and take a look." He took a large hit and then passed the joint on to Jack. Jack looked at it for a moment, feeling decidedly strange to be offered such a thing by an adult, but finally, figuring it was an honor, he took it and sucked some up.

              "I agree," Paul said, holding out his hand as the joint came his way. "I could rig up some of the vertical rescue supplies from the fire engine so that people can be lowered down from the helicopter. A pair of bolt cutters and channel locks should be enough to get those doors open."

              "Do I hear you volunteering for the job?" Skip asked with a smile.

              Paul sucked up his hit and put an amused grin upon his face. He had been neatly trapped. He passed the joint back to Paula and then exhaled a plume of smoke. "I guess I walked right into that one, didn't I? Yeah, I guess I can do it. I'm terrified of heights, but I'm the only one who knows how to operate the ropes and pulleys."

              "You're scared of heights?" Jack asked. "But you're a fireman."

              Paul shrugged. "Most of the time we stay on the ground. Part of the academy is that we all have to climb to the top of the ladder-truck aerial. That's 110 feet up. They had to threaten to dismiss me before I finally did it. And even then I barfed halfway up."

              "A fireman who's afraid of heights and a cop who can't roll a joint," Paula said. "What a strange group we have here."

              They all had a laugh and Jack, after taking another hit, advanced the film to the part where the tanker cars came into view. Paul had a small orange book in front of him and he opened it as Jack paused on the first HAZMAT number: 1203. He flipped through and found the entry in less than a minute. "Gasoline," he announced. "Just like you thought, Skip. What else do we got?"

              "One-nine-nine-three," Skip read as the next group came into view.

              "Hang on," Paul said, flipping through a few pages.

              "I guess jet fuel would be a little too much to ask for, huh?" Skip said.

              "Apparently so," Paul said, putting his finger on the entry. "It's diesel fuel, probably from the same refinery. That could come in handy if we can find a way to get our hands on a generator of some sort. If nothing else it'll keep the fire engine running. What's next?"

              The last three cars were marked with the number 2373, which Paul identified as diethoxymethane.

              "What the hell is that?" Paula wanted to know.

              "Beats me," Paul said. "Let me look up what the book has on it." He flipped through the pages for a few minutes, referencing a different section. "It just says it's a flammable liquid with a low flash-point. It doesn't say what it's for. We'll have to do some more research on this one."

              By the time they looked at the last of the cargo carriers and speculated on just what might be inside of them, the joint was nothing more than a roach and they were all feeling quite pleasant. Jack then fast-forwarded the tape until the footage from Auburn began to come into view. Of course by that point every person in town knew that a large community of people had been found in the neighboring township, but it was quite different to hear about such a thing and to actually see photographic evidence of it. Paul and Paula watched with rapt attention as the first set of bunkers came into view.

              "You can see," Skip narrated, "that they are fairly well set up in the defense department. Those are sandbagged emplacements that are constructed considerably better than the ones we have. They could withstand a prolonged artillery barrage with those. You'll also note that they all have assault rifles. My guess is that there was a gun store in town that they raided after the impact."

              "There was a gun store," Paul said. "Auburn Bait and Guns. It was where a lot of the Garden Hill men used to get their shit."

              Skip nodded. "There was also a sheriff's station in town, was there not?"

              "Yes," Paul agreed. "Auburn is the county seat. The main office was there."

              "That means that there's a good chance they have some fully automatic weapons as well if they were able to get to that building before it got washed away or whatever."

              While everyone considered that, the tape rolled on, showing closer views of the emplacements and then shots from inside the town itself.

              "Look there," Paul said, peering at the tiny figures of people moving here and there through the streets. "Those are all women walking back and forth. At least it looks like they are. You can just make out the long hair and the uh..." He looked uncomfortably at Paula.

              "The tits?" she said, smiling.

              "Uh... yeah," he said, laughing a little at his own embarrassment. "The tits. And do you notice something about them?"

              "None of them are carrying guns," Jack said. "They're all carrying firewood or water buckets or other things, but none of them are armed."

              "Right," Paul said. "It looks like only the men have the firearms."

              They continued to watch the video, rewinding it and fast-forwarding it again and again as they approached and then skirted the town. They watched as the troops, reacting to an alarm raised probably by the emplacement crews, came rushing out into the street to take cover. All of the troops seemed to be male. There was a small margin for error of course, not every figure was in focus enough to tell, but it certainly appeared that what they suspected was true.

              "So what does that tell us about this place?" Skip asked as Jack halted the tape again. "It seems, based on what we see here, that they have a woman to man ratio that is similar ours. But there, they are not utilizing their women as soldiers. Why not?"

              "They don't trust them to do that," Paula said. "I don't want to draw any hard conclusions based on this few minutes of video taken from a mile away, but it seems to me that, at the very least, we are talking about a society that is vastly different then what we have. Are they doing this just because they have enough men to spare that they don't need to arm up the women, or are all of those women captives there? We have no way of knowing."

              "So the question we have to answer about this place," Paul said, "is whether or not we should attempt to make contact with them. By initiating contact we put ourselves at risk of being attacked or captured. We risk losing Skip and the helicopter if he should land there like they were inviting him to do. Offsetting this risk is the chance that they may have trade goods we can swap."

              "I don't think that I should land that chopper within reach of them under any circumstances," Skip said. "It's too valuable of a commodity to risk like that. Someone in that town has a military mind. Only someone with training would have been able to set up defenses like we saw. Someone with a military mind will realize the potential of a helicopter and will do anything to get his hands on it. If we do decide to make contact with them, and I'm inclined to suggest that we don't, then we should do it in some other manner besides just landing there."

              "I can see your point," Paul said, lighting a cigarette. "We don't risk Skip or the chopper no Micker what. But should we establish ties with Auburn? They are a relative rarity in these days - a functioning society that is managing to keep itself fed - so should we reveal our existence to them?"

              "I don't think we should," Paula said. "I see more danger signs by looking at this video than I do encouraging ones. They have more population than we do and they're better armed. We have some evidence that women are not treated the same as men. I think that for the time being we should just leave well enough alone."

              "My feelings exactly," Skip echoed. "That place gave me the creeps. I think we should avoid contact with them until such time as it becomes absolutely necessary. And in the meantime, we should do more recon of them to try and get a better feel for the threat they represent."

              "How would you do more recon?" Paul wanted to know. "If they keep seeing the chopper fly over them every day, they're going to start getting suspicious. If they are a threat and they start perceiving us as one, then it won't be long before they start trying to set a trap for you. How easy would it be to shoot you down?"

              "Quite easy with automatic weapons as long as I got into range," Skip said. "But I would suggest that Auburn never see that helicopter again if we can help it. I can do recon after dark."

              "After dark?" Paula said. "You can't fly that thing at night! How would you see where you're going?"

              "With the FLIR pod," he said. "It's not a very effective tool for navigation but if I know the direction to Auburn and keep the aircraft above the altitude of any hills or peaks between here and there, I can get close enough to get us some good shots in infrared. They won't be photographic quality of course, but if I can hover just outside of detection range, they'll be detailed enough to tell the difference between males and females, to tell what sorts of guns they have and to identify occupied buildings versus unoccupied ones. And if they don't know I'm there we'll get a much better picture of what their normal routines are."

              "That sounds awfully dangerous," Paul said. Paula nodded enthusiastically.

              "Well, it's not quite as safe as flying on a commercial airliner, I'll give you that, but I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't think I could pull it off. There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots. That's what I was taught when I learned this business and that's the motto I've always followed. This is a little bold but it's not stupid. It's necessary."