The day after: An apocalyptic morning (104 page)

              "What were you thinking, Mick?" asked Jack, the designated lookout and student pilot.

              "Well, we're going around calling today January 1, right?"

              "Are you saying that it isn't January 1?" Paul asked him. "We've kept pretty good track of all the days since impact and I'm pretty sure that our date is correct."

              "Also," Skip said, "I've got the same watch I was wearing before the comet." He held up his hand to show it to them. "It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. I never did set it back an hour when we went back to standard time in October, but it says that it's the 1st of January too. We haven't forgot to count any days, I'm quite sure of it."

              "No," Mick said, "that's not exactly what I'm saying. I still have the same watch as well and I have been marking off days on the calendar in my house in addition to that. It is in fact January 1 under the old calendar."

              "The old calendar?" Jack asked.

              "Correct," Mick said. "It is my thought that we should not be using that calendar any longer. It is outdated, counting down days and years from the alleged birth of Jesus Christ more than two thousand years ago. A significant event for those who believe in Him, I will agree, but it does not have a lot of bearing on mankind's current situation."

              "I'm sure there are a lot of religious people out there who will disagree with you," Paul said.

              "I'm sure you're right," Mick said. "But fanatics not withstanding, I believe that the new significant event we should be concerned with is the impact of the comet that nearly destroyed us all. It is that event that marks the major change in mankind and it is that event that those in the future generations should be able to mark as the new beginning of society - whatever it turns out to be."

              "That does make a certain amount of sense," Skip said, banking slightly to the right as the Interstate two thousand feet below curved. "So what date would it be on your new calendar?"

              "Today would be March 21, year 0," Mick replied. "Exactly eighty days, or two and two-thirds months from the day of impact. On January 1, year 1, we'll be exactly one year from the day of impact."

              "March 21?" Jack asked. "But that's the first day of spring. Right now we're in the middle of winter, or at least we would be if these clouds weren't screwing everything up. You can't just go changing around the months and the seasons, can you?"

              "Why not?" Mick wanted to know. "It will probably be a long time before we go back to any sort of normal weather patterns anyway. I mean, once the rain stops and the clouds break up a little, we're still going to have vastly different weather than we're used to. All of the snow in the mountains will make new glaciers, which is going to affect winds and temperatures globally. According to Maggie - who's the closest thing to a scientist that we have - we're probably going to be starting a new ice age that will last for a few thousand years. What possible difference will it make to our descendants is the winter solstice is in February instead of December? What difference will it make if the summer solstice is in September instead of June?"

              "But what about Christmas and Easter and all of the religious holidays?" Paul asked. "What will you do about those?"

              Mick shrugged. "If Christianity somehow manages to survive all of this intact, its followers can just continue to worship on the previous dates if they want. December 25 can still represent the birth of Jesus under this new calendar. That date was pretty much picked at random at some point in history anyway. Nobody really knows what day or even what year Jesus was actually born. And as for Easter, which represents The Resurrection, they can still use the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, just like they always did. Only now, that will be in June or July instead of March or April."

              "Wow," Skip said after everyone had a moment to consider all of that. "And they call me a radical."

              The timekeeping discussion was put on hold for the moment when Jack spotted more trucks down on the highway below. There were two of them this time, sitting next to each other near the edge of a massive washout of the roadway. It appeared that the two drivers had stopped there and never moved since.

              Skip circled around over the top of them for several minutes, visually checking the area for any signs of humanity while Jack utilized the FLIR to check for the telltale signs of body heat glowing from beneath bushes or near trees. Neither method of search turned up any likely humans so Mick and Paul picked up their weapons, flipped off the safeties, and prepared to exit the aircraft. At least this time there was sufficient room to land on the freeway and they wouldn't have to rappel downward and then be carried along underneath to get back up.

              Skip touched down lightly about a hundred yards from the two trailers. Mick and Paul, in a well-practiced maneuver, went out either side and lay on the ground, weapons trained outward. Skip lifted back into the air and flew off to the south, where he circled around awaiting a radio call to pick them back up. The two outside team members then got up and carefully approached their targets.

              They spent about ten minutes checking the area just to be absolutely sure that they were all alone. They saw no signs of anyone or anything in the woods to the side of the freeway so they finally approached the cab of the first truck. While Mick covered him with the rifle, Paul tried the handle on passenger side door, finding it unlocked. The inside was empty so he climbed up and dug around inside, looking for the shipment papers that every big-rig was supposed to carry. He found them in the usual place and took a moment to look them over.

              "What do we got?" Mick asked from behind him, his weapon now pointed at the ground.

              "Laundry soap," Paul replied. "He's carrying six thousand boxes of Tide from Gary, Indiana to Oakland."

              "Christ," Mick said, somewhat dejected. "I guess we can haul some of it back later on. We are getting rather short on it."

              "Yeah," Paul agreed, tossing the papers back down. "It is a rather low-priority item though."

              Utilizing their breaking and entering gear - in this case a pair of bolt cutters - they opened up the trailer just to make sure that the manifest matched the cargo. You could never tell. Maybe the truck driver had been a smuggler of some sort and had been transporting automatic weapons and ammunition for some radical anti-government group. It was possible wasn't it?

              Perhaps, but it was not the case in this instance. In the back were the orange and white boxes so familiar to housewives the world over.

              "Okay, let's check the other one," Mick said.

              Again, they approached carefully and checked the cab first. This time the manifest papers were missing, as were most of the loose contents of the cab. Where had they gone? Had the driver taken them with him - wherever it was that he went - for some bizarre reason? They didn't know, nor did they waste time speculating about it. Instead they simply walked to the back of the rig and prepared to open the door.

              In this case they didn't have to force entry. Someone had already done it for them. The lock was lying opened on the bumper of the trailer and the latching handle was in the up position. They both looked at this for a moment, both having the thought that there must be something useful inside or the driver of the truck would not have bothered taking some of it out. Paul grabbed the handle and, with a grunt of effort, pulled open the door.

              "Well now," Mick said, seeing the contents.

              "Well, well," said Paul.

              Inside of the trailer were hundreds of boxes stacked on pallets. Each box, according to the labeling on the side, contained sixty jars of Gerber baby food.

              "It's food," Mick said, reading the sides of the boxes to see what kind it was. All of the boxes that he could see proclaimed they contained broccoli and cheese variety. "It should come in handy in another month or so when Stacy has her baby."

              "And it'll come in real handy in about seven months when everyone else starts to pop," Paul added, referring to the recent epidemic of pregnancy that had struck the women of Garden Hill. As of that morning, and not including Stacy and the other women who were carrying pre-comet children in their wombs, there were nineteen confirmed pregnancies, including Christine's, and more than twenty suspected ones. Janet, who had run out of birth control pills at impact+20 days, was among them, her period now more than a week late.

              "Amen to that," Mick agreed. His wife Maureen was one of the confirmed ones. He pulled the portable radio from his pocket and keyed it up. "Skip, Jack, you there?"

              "We're here, Mick," Jack's voice replied. "Got anything in that bunch?"

              "Laundry soap and a shitload of baby food," he replied. "We're gonna close it up now. We're ready for pickup."

              "Copy that, we're coming back in."

              Since the fuel in the chopper's tank had dwindled to less than three hundred pounds, Skip elected to call an end to that day's mission and head back to town. He pointed the chopper's nose to the west and brought them up to 2500 feet, accelerating to ninety knots. Jack, at the controls of the FLIR, watched the landscape in front of them hoping to spot a deer as he had on one of the return flights from the grain detail. Then, there had been no scoped rifle or time to pursue the animal. Now, Skip's own pre-comet rifle was stashed under the passenger seat, just waiting for the opportunity to take down some fresh meat. Alas, nothing was seen but trees and ground. In the back, Mick and Paul were leaning against the sides of the cabin on opposite sides, their headsets on their heads, their legs stretched out as far as was possible (which wasn't very far at all). They had both long-since gotten over the worst of their fears of flying, so often had then done it in the past two weeks. Especially since Skip had put the helicopter through a complete maintenance routine with the supplies taken from the airport and the thing still flew.

              "You given any more thought to the El Dorado Hills mission?" Mick asked Paul. Ever since the discovery of the neighboring town's occupied status, Mick and several others had been quietly pushing for an attempt to make contact with them. Paul, still the only remaining member of the ruling committee, was very much in favor of attempting contact but had so far been reluctant to bring the Micker to a community vote, mostly because of pressure by Skip and a few others who thought such a thing was a bad idea.

              "I've been giving it a lot of thought," he said with a sigh. "Like I told you before, I think it's something that should be done, but I have to listen to the other points of view about it. It's my responsibility as leader."

              "This isolationism school of thought," Mick said. "No offense Skip, I know how you feel about all of this, but I think that you're reasoning is flawed."

              "Yeah, yeah," Skip said, unoffended. "Call me paranoid if you will. It's just that we know nothing about the people there except for what we saw on a few blurry infrared pictures. Just because they allow women to carry guns there, doesn't mean that they are like us. So far, they have no idea we even exist. Why should we alert them to a potential target for attack?"

              "I'm not saying that we land there and reveal everything about ourselves to them," Mick said. "And I agree with your reasoning in regard to Auburn - those people give me the creeps as much as they do you. But we know there was a gun store in El Dorado Hills. Maybe they have ammunition that they'll be willing to trade for food."

              "The initiation of trade is the first step in rebuilding society," Paul felt compelled to point out.

              "And the initiation of war to take what you need is also one of the staples of the beginnings of society as well," Skip countered. "Why invite trouble?"

              "Sooner or later, we're going to have contact with them," Mick said. "If we survive here, which we certainly hope to do, it's inevitable that us, Auburn, El Dorado Hills, and any other groups of people are going to meet up, for better or for worse. I think it would be in our best interests to control the manner in which it is done. Right now, they are pretty much isolated there and we have an aircraft. Even if they did decide to attack us, we're talking about a fifteen to twenty day march even assuming that they can somehow get across one of the canyon bridges."

              "I think that that is the most compelling argument in favor of making contact," Paul added helpfully. "Right now it is we that are in the position of strength. We have food and we have control of the sky. Negotiating from the position of strength is always the best way to do it, isn't it?"

              "I suppose," Skip said reluctantly.

              "I've hesitated bringing the issue to a vote at a community meeting so far because of all the fervor," Paul said. "I thought I'd give it a chance to die down so that people would make their decisions rationally instead of emotionally."

              "I understand," Skip said, knowing what was coming next.