Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (23 page)

Aug 13              Omni

“Okay guys, you’ve all seen the priority list and the list of places we want to try.

“We’re going to split into several groups. If you find something worth taking, radio me. I’ll make a note of the coordinates and contents. We’ll prioritize what we locate and try to work out a schedule for retrieving contents over the next couple of weeks.”

The milling group organized into smaller teams and each team selected a target location. They had talked about doing the travelling on Outland then gating over when they reached their destination; however, that would require checking spots one at a time. This way, they could check multiple possibilities at once, then scavenge at leisure.

Bill opened the truck gate, and people started pouring through. There was still far too much ash, both fine particles in the air and loose ash on the ground, for them to risk taking vehicles across. This meant that this round of investigation would be done on foot, and everyone would be wearing masks.

***

The crew of three had been tasked with checking out the local Home Depot for fencing supplies and useful equipment. There had been a lot of concern that the building would have collapsed, given the huge flat roofs.

Now they stood in the warehouse and scanned around with their flashlights. “Well I’ll be damned,” Josh said. The roof had indeed buckled. However, it had only
collapsed as far as the tall, industrial-strength shelving units. Everything below the top of the shelves was still clear and accessible.

“They supplied their own columns,” Lea commented.

“Let’s go out to the yard and see what’s there,” Josh said.

They circled the building and came to the open-air part of the store. This area had also been roofed, and the roof had also collapsed to the shelving units. They wandered a bit until they found the fencing supplies. There were large stocks of fence posts and roll after roll of metal fencing and barbed wire.

“Cool,” Josh said. “One last thing— post-hole digger. Anyone know where the rental office is?”

“We passed it on the way around, O Blind One,” Lea answered. “It looked locked. We may have to borrow a ten-pound lock-pick.”

Josh chuckled. “Right, I’ll radio Joseph and let him know. Who’s got the GPS?” Alan held up the Tomtom.

***

Phil and Pete had volunteered to check out some nearby gas stations. Both had worked as gas jockeys while in school, so they knew their way around. As soon as the scavenging parties had crossed over, the pair headed for a nearby
Shell
station. It looked like the gas station had been abandoned in a hurry after the earthquake. Things hadn’t even been locked up.

Phil knew how to use the dipstick to check the contents of the tanks. This took perhaps ten minutes including the time to clean the area around the access port.

Having found a supply
of gasoline and diesel that would last the colony for months, the two decided that this called for a break. Pete patted his jacket pocket, smiled, and they found a good protected spot to sit and relax. Pete had several joints already rolled, so in no time they were enjoying better living through botany. There would be plenty of time to call in their find.

***

The crew looked at the front of the Walgreens.

“Wow, that does not look good,” Patrick said.

The building indeed looked like it was one stiff breeze away from total collapse. The entire front wall had pancaked. The front entrance existed only as a scattering of shattered glass and twisted metal. They walked slowly around the building, looking for a way in.

About halfway around, they found a service entrance. The wall at this end appeared to be in better condition. Overall, it looked like the roof had collapsed at the front of the building, which had been enough to dislodge most of the ash, preventing a total collapse. However, the service entrance was specifically designed to prevent break-ins, so try as they might, they couldn’t find a way in.

“I think we’ll have to come back with the pole-cam,” Hernando said.

“And one of the gates,” Linda added.

The three agreed this was a reasonable course of action, and prepared to radio in their report.

***

Gerry and Cathy looked up at the
Scheels
logo. “This looks like the place,” Gerry said.

They carefully examined the building. The big central section of the store had shed the ash off its sloped roof. However, the rest of the structure had not been so lucky. The roof had partially collapsed in several places, and ash had flowed down to bury the collapsed sections.

Gerry had a broom handle that he’d picked up along the way; he’d been amusing himself by trying to come up with a reason why it would be just leaning there against a wall. He poked at the pile of ash in front of a collapsed section, looking for cavities.

Finally he found what he was looking for when the stick went right through without meeting any resistance. Gerry made sure his mask was tight to his face and that he had his goggles on right. Then he leaned in and started scooping ash out of the way. Cathy stepped back quickly and waved her hands in front of her to keep the ash away.

It only
took a few seconds, and Gerry had found a gap in the collapsed wall. He motioned for the flashlight that Cathy held, and shone it into the dark interior. Sure enough, a lot of the inside was still accessible, and the inventory seemed to be in good shape. Gerry backed out, handed the flashlight back to Cathy, and patted himself down to get rid of excess ash.

“We are in business,” he said. “Camping Supplies R Us. Should be enough tents and sleeping bags in there for most of the population.”

“Good,” Cathy said. “I don’t want to have to squeeze into those two sheds with close to three hundred other people again, like last time it rained.”

Gerry pulled out the radio and prepared to deliver his report.

***

“Woo hoo! Would you look at all this stuff?” Charlie exclaimed.

They’d been given a general mandate to find any construction or lumberyards with significant stock. This business in the industrial area certainly fit the bill. The downside was that a lot of it was open-air, so the unprotected stacks of product were partly buried by ash.

“Wow, this’ll take forever to load across,” Ken said.

“Yeah, and it looks like a lot of it will have to be carried through the gate lengthwise. No way that I can think of to use a forklift for that.”

“Well, not our problem, unless we end up on the chain gangs.”

Charlie lifted his walkie-talkie to report.

Aug 14              Omni

Phil and Pete were walking back to the rendezvous. As they came around a corner, they almost ran head-on into a man and a boy who had been coming the other way. The man jumped back in surprise and fear. Pete and Phil were still somewhat medicated, so had a more laid-back reaction.

The man’s eyes widened as he examined the two and saw the shotguns slung over their shoulders. He fumbled for a pistol in his waistband. However, he was obviously nowhere near an expert, and it took several seconds before he had the weapon out and the safety off. At that point he seemed to realize that Pete and Phil hadn’t moved. He stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, with the pistol half raised, then sighed and lowered the pistol.

Pete and Phil smiled. Pete said, “Dude, not to worry, okay?”

The man half-smiled, still looking embarrassed. The boy with him looked apprehensive, but took his lead from the adult.

“I guess you’re looking for food, too,” the man said.

“Er, no,” Pete replied. “Food we’ve got. We were looking for fuel.”

The man’s eyes lit up. “Can you spare some? I haven’t been able to find enough to feed my family in days. Uh, I’m Nick by the way. This is my son, Enso.”

“Pete,” Pete said, pointing to himself, “and Phil. Listen, where’s your family? You don’t need to hang around here. We’ve got way better digs.”

Nick was instantly suspicious. “And where would that be?”

“You wouldn’t believe me. We’ll have to show you. Then you can decide.”

***

Pete and Phil grinned, watching Nick try to take it in. His eyes bugged out at the Pleistocene landscape and inhabitants. Enso hopped from foot to foot, pointing things out to his father with a running stream of excited commentary.

Joseph Leung walked up to stand beside Nick. “So Nick, what do you do for a living?”

Nick, with obvious effort, focused on the man speaking to him. “Um, construction. Residential, industrial, whatever. Foreman and subcontractor. Kind of a Jack of all trades, to be honest.”

Joseph smiled. “Excellent. I think you’ll find yourself very busy over here. Now, shall we see about the rest of your family?”

Still looking somewhat boggled, Nick nodded slowly. “Wife and two more kids. I hope you don’t have a limit or something.”

Joseph laughed. “Not likely. Food we have. Space we have. People, we’re kind of short on. Your kids will have to do chores…”

“Damn right they will,” Nick answered.

Aug 15              Richard

“Well, we’re not doing badly
at all,” Richard said. He looked around at the others. “We’ve got a Home Depot that we can plunder; Pete and Phil managed to keep it together long enough to find a huge cache of fuel—” Pete and Phil were rapidly attaining legendary status for their stoner ways. “—and they even brought back Nick, here, who has some construction experience.” At this last comment, Richard motioned to Nick McCormack, who had been invited to the meeting.

“And we’ve also located a local construction supply yard with ridiculous amounts of inventory.”

“We may have gotten a break with the Walgreens. Our guys think a lot of the contents are still intact, but we’ll have to gate in from this side. Same with the rental office at the Home Depot.” Even with the ten-pound sledgehammer, Josh had done nothing more than dent the door.

“We’ve got a number of buildings at the university that we’ll want to hit, but we need to clean out the local stuff first. Setting up safe enclosures for the livestock is first priority; getting our infrastructure together is next.”

Richard paused for a moment, and looked around. These people, only
days before, had been students— whose most pressing concern was passing the next exam or getting the assignments done. Now they were in effect the government of what could end up being the last bastion of civilization. Richard sighed.
Like Bill says, shit happens. Speaking of which…

“Bill, can we have your report?”

Bill looked up from his notes. “Right. Our main concerns right now are a potable water supply and a long-term plan for an electrical supply. For the first one, it would have been great to find a well-drilling rig, but no luck so far. Failing that, we’ll use an auger from the Home Depot. With that and some sections of steel pipe, I can rig up a system for ‘jet’ drilling. It’s not capable of drilling a really
deep well, but we don’t need a deep one. The water table is pretty close to the surface around here.

“For the electrical, I’m thinking of putting together a wind turbine using an Archimedes Screw. There’s a company in Europe that’s been selling something along those lines, and they claim it can generate power even in low wind speeds.”

Bill put down his notes and sat back.

Richard turned to the next person around the circle, which was Dick Thompson.

“Dick? Animals?”

Dick looked around the table. “I think everyone is getting pretty tired of the livestock wandering around in the same area where we sleep. Leaving aside the unexpected gifts they leave lying around, a couple of people have been stepped on. No broken bones, but it couldn’t have been fun.

“We’re bringing across enough equipment and supplies to start building a fence line. We’re going to get work crews starting on it today or tomorrow. Once it’s all done, we’ll look at putting up some simple shelters for the animals. After that, we’re going to go pig-hunting.”

Richard smiled and looked over to Nick McCormack. “Nick?”

Nick looked around the table. “Happily
you guys put the latrines downhill in the first place, so we’re going to expand that into a proper septic system. And once we can get the supplies across, we’re going to start building residences. Just big single-room communal lodges for the first cut. That’ll get us through the first winter. A lot of the fine detail design will have to wait until the water supply system is better defined, though.” Nick mimed throwing it back to Richard.

Richard turned to Joseph.

Joseph sighed. “Same as always. Ten times as many requests as I have people or gates or equipment for. I’ve adopted a fatalistic attitude; you tell me what the priority is, and we’ll do it. Anyone else starts yelling in my ear, I point them at you.

“I will however, take this opportunity to point out yet again that we could use more vehicles.”

Richard groaned. “I know, Joseph. But that’ll just change the bottleneck. We could probably
find
things a little faster, but we couldn’t retrieve them any faster, because we don’t have enough bodies or gates. If it isn’t one thing, it’s a dozen other, right?”

Richard waited for an argument from Joseph. Joseph shook his head.

Richard glanced over at Dick again, and said to the group, “Dick has brought up a potential problem. We’re a little light on agriculture expertise. Oh, we’ve got aggie students who can rattle off different breeds of wheat and stuff, but we don’t have much in the way of practical experience with running an agricultural operation. I’m going to talk to a couple of people about that later. We may have to go looking.”

Again, Richard looked around the table. No one showed an inclination to add anything, so after a moment Richard closed the meeting, saying, “Okay, people, thanks. As ever, if something concerns you, bring it up.”