Part 1
The Start of the End
§
“In us
all is the desire to be either remembered
or
forgotten for what we’ve done.” – Kim Ishida
Chapter 1
Day
127 of the fourth year A.E. (After Event)
Wind
came from the west the day Kim chose to leave. Hot, thick and foul, it was a
hard-to-breathe stench pushed by a listless breeze over the coastal hills and
downslope into the valley. It was a day the same as any other, a day like all
the rest.
From
the terrace of the empty house in the hills, the house that stood above the
sprawling waste of urban and suburban leftovers, Kim scanned the valley.
Noticing the muted gray-brown haze of the poisoned sky had lifted, she stood a
moment, regarding its gradual drift. Change in the sky, when it happened, was
subtle, yet the sun remained constant with its relentless heat. The acrid
humidity that came with the breeze left the taste of rusted steel in her mouth.
Each breath held the mephitic sting of a dying ocean littered with the rotting
carcasses of dead ships. The west wind was good.
The
day Kim would move on from the valley where she had been hiding since The
Before had come. She knew if she forced herself onward, she might find peace
with her demons. It could be the start of the end, the closing of a chapter in
what was left of her life.
“Let’s
do this,” she said, as if making audible noises meant something irrevocable.
She had started talking to herself aloud some time ago. She needed to remind
herself she was real.
Across
the distance below, through the dingy haze, she could see the columns of smoke
that so often streaked the expanse. They were the Social Sites. They dotted the
valley out there, down around the edges where the land rose from the salty,
festering waters of the encroaching bay. They were the places where people
gathered, those who were left. They were the ones who would try to connect with
likeminded survivors. They were the ones who tried to recruit or abduct, or
worse.
The
sites could be identified from miles away by the signature column of toxic
black smoke that rose from fires fed with the skeletal remains of The Before.
Old tires and the pervasive plastics were the dye that blackened the caustic
plume, the petroleum-based remnants of a failed society. The products of a
world once powered from deep within the planet’s crust gave the ominous columns
of smoke their strength.
These
sites and the billowing black shafts that announced their presence would one
day appear off by themselves, separate from the rest. They were brought online by one or two who felt they had
something new and different to offer in the way of thought or perspective. Those
who were sure their version, their view, was the right view, the superior view.
Whether or not they lasted depended upon how many hits they received, how many would like them, friend them, follow them. Each site was different and
each could be treacherous or trustworthy. It was always difficult to tell at
first contact.
Friends.
Kim was not interested in the sites, or their friends. That was the last thing
she needed. Her thoughts were of another place and of other people, people
about whom she had heard mentioned over the years, people spoken of in the
voice of innuendo. It was a voice in the air moralizing truths that did not
exist. Her thoughts were about the people of a place, and the place was the
Assemblage.
These
people held the influence. They had directed the current and channeled course
of society’s impulsive actions, its so-called social causes and beliefs. They
had dammed and controlled the river, the tide of social flow, what was left of
it, and that was wrong. That was not how it should be. Kim knew that now, but
then, before this time in which she now survived, she did not see it. Even if
she had, she had lacked courage and resolve. The river had to be free to find
its natural course. It had to be free to flow wherever the landscape of
individual human thought took it. She needed to free the river. Maybe then, she
could be free.
She
would go alone. She had been alone and preferred to stay that way. Kim was not
a follower, and she sure as hell did not want to lead. The cost of being a
leader had left deep, painful scars, wounds that had not yet healed. She wanted
no more of that. She led only
herself, by knowledge and instincts. She followed the whispers and the low
words, those unsaid but known things that haunted her. She would go to the
Assemblage. Maybe she would find, finally, an opportunity for achieving
something positive. It was not happening there in the valley. What she had done
there was far from positive. It was time to begin ending that part of her life.
It was time to leave.
Leaving
the abandoned mansion meant leaving the safety of the known for the uncertainty
of whatever might lie beyond. The nearest house to her mansion-camp stood just
over a mile away. The surrounding grounds were clear, except for the wild and
overgrown vineyard that fed the meager deer population. The open terrain
afforded a good view of all approaches and the valley in the distance. Those
features had made it a safe place to stay.
Before
the mansion, Kim lived in the server room of the place called Obyavit. What
started as a hiding place had been, for almost three years, her secret shelter
in the midst of the winnowing chaos of a dying population center. It was
convenient from a sustenance perspective, for a while. She could move easily
among the campuses of the other empty and abandoned corporate headquarters. In
the various restaurants, cafes and food stores nearby, she foraged food and
supplies while the usable scavenge lasted. The water from the bay eventually
came, however, and reclaimed the ground it once owned a few hundred years ago.
When it reached the parkway that was less than a mile from where she had been
hiding, she scouted and then moved to the mansion.
As
she stood there alone above that valley whose vibrancy had faded and crumbled
so long ago, she began to think that she was fading, crumbling, a relic of
something that had once lived long ago. Anxiety filled her, pressing out
against her chest hard and tight. She turned and walked back into the mansion.
I
am not old. Not by the standards of The Before, she thought. But life was
harder now and the world was different.
A
fit woman by any standard, Kim was of average height, slightly underfed, but
strong. She could cover many miles in a day and had explored all of the
peninsula, South Bay and most of the East Bay. She had learned to hunt and
survive. But the elements had left their marks, and her once soft brown skin
had become weathered, sunbaked, and harsh, the skin of a wanderer. Her once
long dark hair was now short, gray and angry, the hair of a cast-off.
She
prepared to leave. Her thoughts, her actions, what she wore and how she wore
it, they all served a specific purpose: to hide herself from the elements, to
hide the things that could keep her alive and to hide the fact she was a woman.
Protection, from mankind and environment, and the ability to carry a lot
without looking as if that was the case was what she needed. Anyone who wanted
to stay cool in the new and changed world dressed light and loose, as did she.
A wide-brimmed hat, which she wore whenever she ventured out, also helped to
protect her some. But the raw heat and UV from the depleted ozone ravaged
everything it touched, even her. These and other habits of character became her
rigid life.
The
trip she was planning would be a few days and she needed supplies with which to
make the trip. Dried deer meat and scavenged energy bars made up the bulk of
the food she carried. She stashed these in a beaten pack along with a few
remaining antibiotics she was able to salvage from an abandoned pharmacy in a
dead strip mall. She also brought clean water, two quarts; one went in the pack
and one hooked into a loop on her belt near the small of her back. Then a
hunting knife. Easy to reach, it hung off her left hip. There was a place for
everything and everything had to be in its place.
Always thinking, planning and organizing, she
included nothing that had not felt the pressure of her obsessive vetting
process. The process she used for every project. The fact that each shoe had a
small, unnoticeable, hidden pocket just over the outside ankle was not by
accident. Nor was the fact that in the left shoe pocket there was an inch-long,
razor-sharp folding knife. The right held two rock-hard pieces of Bazooka Joe
bubblegum.
Then
there were the guns. There was a time when she could never have imagined
carrying such an instrument. But the world was full of dangers, and now one
went with her everywhere. On this trip, she would have two. One was a Kahr PM9.
It was not much larger than a pack of cigarettes. She carried it in a flexible
nylon holster strapped tight to her ribcage, just under her left breast. The
way her clothing hung, no one would see it there. The other was an old friend,
a Smith & Wesson M&P .357, which she wore on her right hip, out where
all could see. The .357 was the deterrent; the red lettered sign that declared don’t mess with me. The 9MM was a safety
net, a plan B. She carried seven additional clips that were also a part of plan
B.; five in various pockets for the .357 and one strapped to each calf for the
9MM. She knew well how to use those weapons; she knew what it felt like to end
a life.
Scanning
across the room, she spotted the only thing that served no practical purpose in
her survival, the smartphone. It was one of the most advanced in The Before,
the flagship model of its time. She had been able to live her entire waking,
working and social life through it, when it worked. Few phones worked now.
Often there was no signal to receive, no bars to show connectivity or no power
with which to keep it charged. She kept hers. She had drilled a small hole in
it and had strung a thin leather lace through the five-ounce beaten piece of
glass and metal. In its smooth, blank screen she could see herself, her thin,
weather-worn face with its short scraggly hair. And, just as the screen, her
face held a blank emptiness. She saw what she felt. The device that was once so
innocuous was her millstone. It stayed with her, around her neck, so she would
remember the purpose of her journey and her part in The Before; the past that
gave humanity the present.
Chapter 2
Kim
stayed out on the edge and skirted the dead suburbs. There were few, if any,
people to worry about along the wild overgrown periphery. When she had been
scouting and roaming the East Bay and the Peninsula, she had estimated there
were just a few thousand people left. Early on, everyone evacuated in a hurry
because that was what they needed to do, what they were supposed to do. It was
what was trending at the time. The viral reaction of one emulating the other
soon left the homes, towns and cities empty. There were the Social Sites, from
where the smoke columns came. Those had people, but they were spaced far apart,
on the higher ground of the urban areas, near where the bay was now
encroaching. She stayed wide of those places. One person at a time was fine,
but experience had taught her, no more groups.
She
was keeping a brisk but steady pace as she moved south past the abandoned and
burnt city of Morgan Hill. By hugging the eastern side of the wet grassy tidal
estuary that extended down beyond what was once the epicenter of technology,
she was able to make it safely out of the valley. The jungle was thick and
shaggy along the two-lane road she had chosen. It was quiet, subtropical, hot
and damp, no people or cars, no sounds. There were no birds either. This made
her sad.
The birds had died first. It was much as in
the early years of mining. They were the proverbial canary in the coal mine. A
sad anachronism, their death was a signal that something was terribly wrong,
but very few people noticed. People were too busy focusing on their collective
social consciousness, as delivered to them by their various social information
sources. So long as they were connected, they knew their purpose. It was only
when the voice of the virtual society went quiet did they look up. Something
had gone wrong. And with the blank screens came a realization, which quickly
became panic. No one listened for the birds in The Before and no one could hear
them in The After.
The
old state highway that ran over to the San Joaquin valley stretched out ahead
of her on the morning of the second day. She was familiar with the road, both
from The Before and The After. Being on this connector of two valleys increased
the potential for contact with another person. The plan did not call for that,
not yet. Contact probably would not be dangerous. Most just wanted to connect
and chat with others in order to get news and share information. Still, there
were the Mechs and others like them, the ones who socialized only to harass and
intimidate, or worse. Her plan was to head east, staying head-up and aware
while trying to make it to the San Luis reservoir by dark.
Just
as in The Before, people wanted and needed information in order to make their
decisions. In The After, information no longer moved across the web of
technology that physically connected friends via their electronic presence. It
now moved through human-to-human contact, through people talking to people.
Most information was local, seen and shared by people within a day’s walk of
each other. Then there was the news of the wider world, news about far-off
places such as St. Louis or Chicago. This was the news brought by the Carriers.
About
a year after she had found the mansion, Kim was scavenging in a dead big-box
home improvement store near the swampy Willow Glen area. That was when she met
a Carrier for the first time. He was passing through on his way to the dry
Klamath wasteland in the north. She was either not paying attention, or was
just too engrossed in trying to pry open a locked cage of specialty tools, when
the Carrier walked up behind her unnoticed. He stepped out of an aisle just a
few feet away and simply said, “Hi.”
Kim
jumped, letting loose with a high-pitched yelp as she turned and drew the .357
strapped to her right hip. Almost as quickly she yelled, “What do you want?
Stay back, I will shoot you if you
move any closer.”
He
took two very large steps back. Holding his palms up above his head so they
were visible he said, “I’m not armed, don’t shoot. Please. I’m a Carrier.”
“A
what?” Kim said. Pointing her weapon at the stranger’s chest and determined to
sound strong, she was not processing whatever it was he was trying to tell her.
“Are you diseased, infected? Stay back. Just stay the fuck back away from me,
or you’ll not have to worry about your affliction, whatever the hell variant it
may be.”
Puzzled,
the man who called himself a Carrier
tried to hide his bemusement with Kim’s take on his title. Distracted, he began
to lower his hands. He had been in this position before.
“Not
so fast, up with the hands.”
“Please.
Don’t,” he said, lowering his eyes and cringing a little, as if preparing for
the pain that was about to come. “You’ve been out of circ for a while, haven’t
you? Not much contact since The Event, I’m guessing. I’m a carrier of news, of
news and information. I, and others like me, others with strong memories and
recall abilities, roam about gathering and sharing news and other information
from the places we’ve been. We have markings, see?” And he slowly turned around,
hands still raised, to reveal the back of his jacket where there was a crudely
drawn and painted rainbow peacock with the word “NEWS” written in large black
letters underneath.
Kim
looked at the Carrier and was at once confused and suspicious. She recognized
the emblem. She knew the association. He was right, however. She had been out
of circulation for a while. She had been making a concerted effort to avoid
people. Now there was this apparent messenger, this human email so he claims,
standing about twelve feet beyond the barrel of her .357. Well, she thought, if
he was all about sharing information, then she should start by finding out more
about him.
“So,
news man, since I’m a little out of the loop, why don’t you catch me up. What’s
your name?”
“I’m,
I’m Allen,” he said with a nervous hint. “Can I put my hands down?”
Kim
nodded, and with a short jerking motion she pointed with the .357 down and to
Allen’s left, where there sat a large unopened box of orange buckets. “Sure,
have a seat.” She sensed this might take a while.
Allen
appeared to be part Anglo and part Asian, maybe Japanese or Korean. It was hard
to tell. He was probably in his early to mid-thirties, tall and a little on the
thick side, too. He obviously had no trouble scavenging food. His black hair
was cropped short on top, even shorter on the sides and stood straight up,
almost as if it were a crew cut, but not quite. He smiled a lot, but not a
subservient or shy smile, more as if he was enjoying a private joke. At this
particular moment, Kim decided he was not to be trusted.
“Tell
me, Allen. Why are you here, in this store, in front of my gun?”
“I
was looking for an adhesive to fix my shoe when I heard a noise. What about
you?” Allen asked.
“You
see me and I have a gun, pointed at you,” Kim said in a matter-of-fact voice,
trying hard to sound serious and not afraid to blow his head off. “That’s all
you need to know. Now tell me your story.”
“Well,”
Allen started, looking down and toeing at a loose bolt that lay abandoned on
the floor, “I’m from St. Petersburg, Florida. I lived and worked there, in The
Before. I was two years out of college and working for an ad company, in sales.
I was doing well, but then all hell broke loose. There was this group. They
called themselves The Lamplight. They had branches all through the southeast
and Atlantic seaboard. Have you heard of them?”
“Yeah,
I heard of them,” Kim said, trying to keep a tough demeanor. “There’s a man on
the radio here. He’s like a blogger, like an audio blogger. He’s spoken of
them, and others. Have you heard him, the man on the radio?”
“Yeah,”
Allen replied. “He rants.”
“Yeah.
That’s him.”
“Anyway,”
Allen continued. “This Lamplight group, they were big in The Before. They were
on the net and hooked into all the major social network sites. Nobody knew
where they were based or even if anyone was in charge. If you heard of them,
then you know that they claimed to be ‘fair and equitable.’ They said that the
government was tracking and using data from people’s internet activities to
influence societal movements, you know, fads, trends and so on, so people would
be easier to control. So that the government could manipulate their behaviors
and actions.”
Kim
knew of these theories. The attempts to control people by using predictive
analytics and big data. Some blamed it all on government spy agencies. Others
said it was corporate interests trying to direct consumer trends. She had even
heard groups say it was major media outlets trying to drive ratings by
sensationalizing the trivial.
“I
don’t know how much, if any, of that was true," Allen continued, “but this
Lamplight group eventually got people pretty worked up. All that angst, anger
and fear they roused was starting to boil over at the same time all the other
crap in the rest of the world started happening. It was as if the entire planet
became dissatisfied and scared all at once. What did one blogger call it, the
Earthling Spring? Just like the Arab Spring a bunch of years earlier, only all
the little people all over the planet were fed up with the people in charge.
“Anyway,
when the paranoid countries in Asia and the Middle East had their little b.y.o.
nuke party, that’s when I hid. People were scared. Hell, I was scared. Those
who didn’t die in the riots when order went away began dying from weird new
diseases that popped up as the air turned dark orange.”
Kim
knew about the death. She knew it well. “How is it you’re still alive?”
“I
spent the first year hiding in a theme park in Tampa. I wasn’t necessarily
avoiding people, I was just trying to stay safe. I think that’s what saved me.”
Allen then observed as he smiled his secret smile to himself, “It surprised me,
though I don’t know why in retrospect, but when the world goes to hell no one
goes to the theme parks.”
“That’s
it? You just avoided people. You’ll excuse me if I find that a little hard to
believe given you just walked up behind a stranger who happened to be carrying
a gun. In plain sight.”
“It’s
different now. It’s my job to seek out people now. Besides, I won’t carry a
gun. I just don’t believe in it.”
“That’s
either really brave or really stupid, but I admire the principle.”
“Honestly,
I think that’s what caused all this, if you want my opinion.”
“What’s
that?”
Allen
looked thoughtful for a moment, “Principles, everyone lost their principles.
Everyone started following everyone else and stopped thinking for themselves.”
Kim
knew what he meant, but she wasn’t ready to hash that out with another person.
Not yet. “So what was going on in the places you passed through? What’s the
news?”
“Well,
let’s just say that most people in most places have not been very kind to each
another, and still aren’t. Many people became sick too, and there was no
significant or organized medical help, so most died. When I went through Atlanta,
it was just a smoldering husk. The smell of death was overwhelming. But there
were a few small groups scattered throughout the city. Social Sites. That’s
when I found the News group, on the fourth floor of some cable news network
building near the heart of the city. There were eleven there at the site but
there were sixty-two in the group, most roaming the country, when I joined.”
Kim
became incredulous, “You joined a Social Site? After all that happened you went
back into that mindless herd of sheep?”
“Hey,
hey, they’re not all like that. There are
some good ones. Sure, I was wary. I had some bad experiences with Social Sites,
especially the small town ones, the ones with four or five people, and the
others, the bigger ones that recruit.” The word recruit was tinged with
sarcasm. “I kept my distance.”
“But
you joined.”
“Well,
yes, eventually. They sent people. Different ones at first but, then previous
people started coming back. I was able to get a pretty good count of how many
there were. They told me they weren’t armed and that they were all about news
and information. They and their members are based there, but they go on these
tours of duty. The goal, my goal too, I guess, is to cover a great distance
while gathering and sharing information along the way. We set out on a route
that is planned to intersect with other members, and along the way we try to
meet and talk to anyone who wants to talk, and won’t try to kill us. We tell
people what we know about the state of things where we have been, and we ask
people to tell us about the state of things where they are, if they can.
Sometimes they can’t, they’re not allowed to talk on behalf of the group.
They’re just a piece, a segment, I guess, of the group they’re with. All they
do is listen. Only the leader talks and tells, and then only what he or she
wants you to know, nothing more. Along the way though, when our path crosses
with a fellow Carrier, we download our learnings to one another, and then we go
back on our way. It’s a way to let people know what’s left, what’s working,
where’s safe and what to watch out for. It’s the internet without the wires.
It’s a news network.”
Eventually,
Kim began to relax and came to trust Allen enough to share her camp at the
mansion with him for a few days. It was during those days that she learned
things beyond the valley and the Bay Area were no better. There were many sites
out there, some with as many as a hundred people. There were islands of
functioning infrastructure too, parts of the grid that took power from
hydroelectric, solar and wind sources. It was from Allen that she learned the
location of the Assemblage. He described them as a group of strong minds trying
to improve life for those that remained. He thought they were somewhere in the
Mojave and were able to pull power from a wind farm spread across the desert
floor.
She
enjoyed his company. She shared with him what she knew of the current state and
health of the places she had been, but no more. He was easy to talk to, like an
old friend almost. They shared a few interests, and she felt a sense of hope
finding someone with whom it was so easy to connect. It reassured her,
somewhat, that not all of the humanity that once existed was lost.
Kim
could not talk about everything with Allen. It seemed for all they shared, the
reluctance to reveal their entire story was an act of omission practiced by
them both. Their shattered pasts were held desperately close in flimsy
containers, sealed boxes wet and dripping with their broken contents of pain
and loss. They each had them, and they silently acknowledged them, but those
boxes remained sealed, stored away. With time, they would dry and the wet
freshness of broken memories would cake over with a tough crust. Then the boxes
could be opened, their contents handled. Not yet, though. Not yet.
