Will to Survive (13 page)

After we reached around two thousand feet, my planned cruising height, I turned to Herb. “So where are we going?”

“Could you do a circuit over our new neighbors?” Herb said. “I want to see it all from above.”

I did a tight bank and brought us back around so that Herb was on the inside of the circle, looking down at the expanded neighborhood.

“I'm amazed at how fast that fence has gone up,” Lori said.

“I think we can thank Todd's father for that,” Herb said.

“Hey, I had more than a little hand in it myself!” Todd exclaimed.

“No argument from me,” Herb said.

Todd had become an accomplished carpenter and clearly cared a lot more about his building assignments than he had about his old school assignments.

“There's Dad!” Lori said, pointing down.

I saw the results of Mr. Peterson's work before I saw him and his tractor. The open areas were being plowed over, black soil replacing scrub and grass. Alongside the new fields some greenhouses were being fashioned out of windowpanes to extend the season.

“This is like a little walk down memory lane,” Herb said.

“Like when you were a kid?” Todd asked.

Herb laughed. “More like when
you
were a kid. Four and a half months ago we were doing what they're doing right now.”

“I hadn't thought of that, but you're right,” I said.

“But there's one big difference. They have somebody to help them.”

That made me feel pretty happy. We were doing something good here, and not just for the condo residents and the other members of that new community. Helping them was helping ourselves in ways that had nothing to do with protection or food or survival. This was about making the pocket of civilization just a little bit bigger.

I thought the others might be thinking the same thing as we circled in silence, watching a new world being created below before our eyes.

Finally Herb spoke. “Let's keep going.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Fly to the place on Dundas Street where the bridge crosses the river. I want to come in low and slow. Matter of fact, I want this whole trip to be that way, so we can see how things are evolving around us.”

I banked slightly to the left and reduced throttle at the same time. It wasn't far, and even at this speed we'd be over it in less than two minutes.

Herb turned around to Lori and Todd. “I'm glad both of you could join us.”

“Thanks for the invite,” Lori replied.

“Yeah, always good to be up in the air,” Todd added.

“Hah! When did you start to like flying?” I asked.

“It's a relative thing, Adam. As bad a pilot as you are, I still feel safer in the air than on the ground.” Todd leaned over the seat. “I'm hoping you brought along lunch in there,” he said, gesturing to the big white bag at Herb's feet.

“I'm afraid food wasn't on my mind when I packed.”

“Food is always on my mind,” Todd said.

“I think that's true of almost everyone these days,” I said.

“You know, for me this obsession with food has been happening my whole life,” Todd said. “So if it isn't food in there, then what did you bring?”

Herb patted the bag. “Just some things that I thought we might need.”

Herb was like the world's oldest Boy Scout—he was always prepared. I assumed that there were a couple grenades, and lots of spare ammunition for the two rifles he had brought on board. Of course Herb also had at least two pistols—as did I. Todd and Lori were probably packing as well.

Todd's comment about food had made me hungry. Or maybe it was the view out the window. Below us were people who had basically nothing. Many of the houses we flew over were abandoned; some showed signs of fire or other damage. I could see some people moving about in the suburban yards and walking or biking on the roads, going about their daily struggle to survive. Some of them were probably starving. Even in our neighborhood some things were in short supply or had already run out. The last of the sugar was almost gone, although we had some people who had been cultivating a special type of beet and then, after using the greens for regular meals, processing the roots to extract sugar. Anything in the way of exotic fruits and vegetables had long since been eaten or had spoiled, and there was no way we'd see any more of them. Bananas—my favorite—were a thing of the past.

Funny, I'd probably had more fantasy dreams about food than any teenage boy—other than Todd—should ever have.

Herb reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a chocolate bar, and held it up. “Actually, I did bring along a little something.”

“Wow!” Todd exclaimed.

“Where did you get that?” Lori chimed in.

You'd think he'd just performed a magic trick, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Although producing a rabbit for a hearty stew would have been a pretty good trick all by itself.

“I still have a little stash of chocolate,” Herb said. “How about if we split it three ways?”

“Why not four?” I asked.

“Yeah, it's your bar, so you should get a share,” Todd said.

“Oh, I was going to get one of those thirds,” Herb shot back. “I just wasn't planning on giving you any.”

I could feel Todd's shock before Herb started laughing.

“You kids share it … It means more to you. Me—I just want to make sure I still have enough of my secret supply of instant coffee.”

“Let me do the dividing,” Todd suggested.

“You can do that right after we land.”

“Why not now?” Todd asked.

“I don't want you distracted. Consider the chocolate as a reward once the job is completed.” Herb slipped the bar back into his jacket pocket and from another pocket he pulled out a notepad and pen, which he balanced on his knee so he could take notes about what we observed.

I wanted the taste of chocolate but it could wait. Instead I couldn't help but wonder how much coffee he still had. I had seen Herb's gigantic stockpile of food in his basement. His storage room shelves had been piled high with cans and bags. They weren't completely filled anymore, but there was still a tremendous amount left.

Right beside the storage room was Herb's safe room, which was hidden behind a wall panel, then a metal door. That's where he'd been sleeping the night Brett's assassins had attacked. He'd shown it to me a few weeks ago, as promised. In the beginning, the room had also been filled with his personal cache of weapons. Most of those—including high-powered rifles, sniper scopes, and night-vision goggles—were now being used by the guards. I knew there were a few more he kept just for himself, and I suspected there were still other things that I didn't even know about. Like any good magician, he probably still had a few more tricks up his sleeve.

“I'm glad to have three pairs of young eyes to go along with one old set here in the plane today,” Herb said.

“What are we looking for?” Lori asked before I could.

“We're trying to see nothing in particular and everything in general. I want you to observe and share what you're seeing. Young eyes go with young minds. Maybe you can see something I can't see or think of something I can't think of when you see it.”

“I can do the looking part, but I don't know about the thinking part,” Todd said.

Instead of laughing, Herb said something surprising while scanning out his window. “Don't do that, son,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Put down your abilities. You're a very bright young man.”

Todd looked out his window. “I think lots of my teachers would disagree with that.”

“
Being
smart and
acting
stupid are two different things,” Herb replied. “Change the habit—ultimately we're going to need young people to lead us.”

“That's what we have Adam for,” Todd said. “He's the brains and I'm the—”

“Stop. I don't want to hear that from you,” Herb said.

I looked over at Herb, who was glaring at Todd. He had that laser-eyed look—the one where it seemed like he could see right through you—and it was aimed right at my friend.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Todd mumbled.

There was a heavy silence for a moment. Then Herb pulled out two pairs of binoculars from the bag and handed them over the seat to Lori and Todd.

Down below there was fairly steady movement on the streets, with a few vehicles scattered among the bikes and people on foot. In fact, there seemed to be more and more vehicles all the time. Anything old that didn't have silicone chips and processors for brains was now being made new, or at least functional. Beaters that had been off the road for years had been taken from junkyards, backyards, and farmers' fields and been repaired enough to run.

All of the abandoned computer-equipped cars on the road were being scavenged for parts, their tanks drained of gas. It was getting harder for us to find usable vehicles to scavenge ourselves. Not that we didn't have a lot that had already been dragged into the neighborhood. Once again, Herb's foresight, directing us to do that before others saw the need, meant we had a big stockpile. But would it be enough?

We'd also been seeing more and more go-cart-type vehicles zipping by our walls—obviously, we weren't the only transportation-starved people who'd thought of using the simple and reliable little engines harvested from the yard-work machines stored in nearly everyone's garage or tool shed. This was good and bad. It was a way for people to get around, but it also provided transportation for those people taking advantage of others, and it was more competition for fuel.

Along with the vehicles I could also now see more patches of ground that had been cultivated, converted from lawns and parks and meadows into productive land. Surrounding them were little fiefdoms that had sprung up where people were trying to protect their crops. Almost without exception they were small and would be easily overrun by any group larger than a dozen armed men.

Over the past few weeks my father had been flying a grid pattern over the entire area, mapping these little pockets of settlement. They didn't even know how lucky they were that we were a friendly neighbor, as we could have overrun them easily ourselves and taken whatever they had.

Of course, that's what we now realized Brett and his squad had been doing when they were going out each night. They said they were heading out to “protect us,” and when they returned with supplies they said they'd “found” them. We should have suspected what they were doing, but I think we all turned a blind eye; we just saw the supplies we needed materializing each morning and didn't question how they'd been acquired. If we'd asked more questions sooner, maybe we could have controlled Brett better and he might still be helping to protect us instead of us needing protection from him.

Our away teams still spent their time searching for supplies, but they weren't taking them from people who were just as needy but not as able to defend themselves. We tried not to harm others in an attempt to help ourselves. Instead they'd often look for abandoned buildings and homes to search for anything that might be of value. It was amazing how a burned-out house could still hold a treasure of canned goods or a medicine cabinet full of drugs underneath the wreckage.

I banked around our old school and flew in a path that paralleled Dundas. It was a major street, one of only two roads left that had bridges crossing the Credit River. There had been a third—Burnham Bridge—but we'd been forced to destroy it to protect ourselves in our first large-scale encounter with the Division.

It still sent a chill up my spine whenever I passed near where that bridge had stood. All that remained were two gigantic cement posts sticking high into the sky. It looked like some sort of ancient ruins—like Stonehenge or those statues on Easter Island. Below, still partially blocking the river, were the concrete and asphalt remains of the bridge and the metal skeletons of the vehicles that had fallen when we blew it up. If I lived to be a thousand I'd never forget the images of the bridge being blown, the collapse, the dozens of vehicles and hundreds of men falling to their deaths.

As we neared the Dundas bridge there was much more movement on the road. The bridge was like a funnel where everyone had to merge to cross the river.

Weeks ago, in the beginning, almost all the movement had been to the west, away from the city. Now the traffic seemed to be moving in both directions. As we flew low over them, the people on the bridge all looked up. Some just stared and others waved. We remained a novelty. Maybe representing hope or possibly fear.

I cut the bank more sharply so that we turned around and were coming at the bridge from the river valley. With the valley dropping down I dipped as well so that we weren't that much higher than the bridge itself. It was ahead of us—four lanes wide, long and soaring over top of the river below. Five solid cement-and-steel towers were the legs on which the road rested. As we closed in I had the strangest thought—I could dip down and we could fly between the supports, under the bridge.

No, that was crazy. I pulled up on the yoke and we passed right over the bridge, still so low that the people crossing ducked involuntarily as we buzzed them.

The valley seemed undisturbed below—a thin line of blue water cutting between hills of green with a few worn brown paths leading across the grass and through the trees. Those paths were dotted by people, brightly colored plastic water containers in hand, moving to and from the river. The water was being used, as evidenced by the people carrying the containers, but the land was being left fallow. No plowing or planting. People were hungry—already starving or going to starve this winter—and here was land that could make a difference. Of course maybe no one around here had seeds or fertilizer or tools, or had ever planted crops before. It wasn't like the people in our neighborhood could have planted and grown crops without the help of Mr. Peterson. But still there should have been a way, I thought. Could we extend our influence down here? Of course we couldn't. This was too far away from our neighborhood. I had to understand where the line of kindness and caring intersected with stupidity. This was well into the negative side of the equation.