Chapter Twenty-Two #3
The house was cold when they went in, but of course he hadn’t been here in about thirty-six hours so the fire had gone out.
He stopped just inside the door and looked around; intuitively she knew he was thinking about the dog, missing its presence.
He’d done a good thing for the Livingstons, giving the dog to them, but at a cost to himself. He didn’t say anything about
it, though, just efficiently got a fire going in the woodstove. His house wasn’t as cold as hers would have been after that
length of time without a fire, making her think he’d added to the insulation.
There was a small fireplace in his bedroom, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the other bedrooms also had fireplaces. If she
remembered correctly, Carol had once mentioned that this house had been a small bed-and-breakfast, which meant bedroom fireplaces
were likely. He lit the fire in his bedroom, and also lit a kerosene heater to help warm the house faster.
He didn’t wait until the house was warm, though, to start stripping off his clothes. “I need a shower.” He looked at her and
one of those slow smiles curved his mouth. “Want to help?”
She did, and half an hour later he had just three condoms left.
Of course the bandage on his shoulder got wet so she rebandaged that, this time with more of the butterfly bandages though
the wound was closing nicely. She brushed her hair dry, bent over in front of the fireplace, and had just finished when the
ham radio set in the bedroom crackled to life and a man’s voice recited a series of letters and numbers.
Ben was at the radio almost before she had isolated the direction of the sound, sitting down and grabbing a microphone, reciting
his own series of letters and numbers. Then he said, “Good to hear from you, bro.”
“You too. How are things there in the wilderness?”
“Stable. People are coping. We’ve had some trouble, but it’s being handled. How about you?”
“We’re safe. We settled near a military base. Gen had to stop and go to ground, wait for me to catch up to her, but I managed
to get to her before the grid went down. Travel was a clusterfuck. Some bad actors were already doing shit.”
Sela moved closer, fascinated by news from the outside. Since the last radio station in Knoxville had stopped transmitting,
she had felt isolated here in the valley. Ben reached out an arm and pulled her down onto his knee, and she leaned against
him.
“Any good news, or is it all bad?”
“The military is good. They had hardened security, and SMRs. The government is functioning on a very limited basis, and only
because the Pentagon was smarter than the bureaucracy assholes. Nothing is online, but the military bases are starting points
and work is being done.”
“How about Europe? The Far East?”
“Europe is a shit can. Their politicians were worse than ours. Japan, Korea, China—they’re getting it together, but it’s a
long, slow haul. Russia is back in medieval times, and may stay there for a hundred years. There are a few very small electrical
companies here in the States that had good foresight and they’re functioning, but the people who live in those areas are having
to fight for their lives because of all the fuckers moving in and trying to take what they have.”
“Are any cities livable?”
“None of the big ones above the Mason-Dixon, that’s for sure. Forget all the big cities in California, except San Diego fared
better than most. Atlanta, no. Nashville, Memphis, St. Louis, no. I’m not sure anyone in New Orleans noticed the power went
off, so I can’t say about it. Omaha is better than you’d expect. Denver is trash, Colorado Springs isn’t. Makes sense, doesn’t
it?”
Not to Sela, but she didn’t ask.
“What about the weather?”
“Nasty, even this early in the year. It looks bad, especially in the Midwest. I expect a lot of that cold air will come our
way, so be ready.”
“Casualties?”
“Early estimates . . . most of Europe. Maybe two hundred million are still alive, a fourth of the population. Asia has lost
at least a billion, some analysts think more. Africa and South America are doing okay, because of their warm weather, but
the big cities were hard hit. Australia, New Zealand are in their warm season now, from what I hear they’re growing all the
food they can. Here . . . North America has lost between a fourth and a third of the population. That’s just since September,
a little over two months. It remains to be seen how many people survive the winter, and not just because of the weather.”
Sela leaned her head against Ben’s shoulder, stricken by what this man was saying. Here in the valley they’d worked hard,
they’d done without, but in comparison to what she was hearing they were among the very luckiest.
“You and Gen and the ankle-biters are welcome here, you know.”
“We’ll come visit when things are better. I’m guessing a year, but it’s just a guess based on what I see happening on the
military side. Even then, it’ll take years for manufacturing to recover, for jobs to come back, fuel pipelines to be functional.
Save the seeds from your garden, bro, you’re going to be growing your own food for quite a while.”