The Rule of Three (24 page)

“Could I have your attention, please!”

My mother’s metallic, amplified voice bounced off the walls. The crowd, except for a baby crying, quieted immediately. Most of the eyes focused up front on my mother while others looked at the woman standing at the back, holding the crying baby. The baby continued wailing, and, looking embarrassed, the woman quickly walked out, and the sounds of the infant silenced as the door closed behind her.

“I want to thank you all for coming,” my mother continued. “This shouldn’t take long, and I want to reassure you that while you’re here all your homes are safe. Patrols and sentries are in place, securing the neighborhood.”

There was a spontaneous round of applause and cheering.

“In fact,” she continued, “I wish to report that we have increased security. As of one hour ago my police station and its contents have been relocated and four additional police officers have been reassigned to this neighborhood. This neighborhood is now our only priority.”

The applause came again, louder and more enthusiastically. I could see relief and joy in the faces of people as they cheered. My mother raised her hands to silence the crowd.

“It’s been fifteen days since our lives have been turned upside down—since some kind of catastrophic virus has destroyed computers and rendered all forms of technology that rely on them totally obsolete,” my mother began. “While originally we had hoped that this was localized, we are now fairly certain that this is not simply a national phenomenon but one that has probably affected the entire planet. As far as we can tell from the information we have gathered, the world has been plunged from the twenty-first to the nineteenth century.”

Even though none of this was news to anybody in the room, there was a collective wave of despairing sighs and groans that washed through the whole gym and flooded over the stage in front. Mom raised her hands again.

“While we all had hoped that this situation would be fixed quickly, it is clear that all the technology that has been rendered useless is the very technology that would have been used to solve the problem. There will be no short-term solution. In fact, it is more likely that the present situation will continue for many months.”

The noise in the audience rose louder than ever before. I was grateful she didn’t say what Herb was really thinking—that it could be years.

A man stood up. “You can’t know that it will be months!” he said. “You can’t know that it’s everywhere around the world!”

Some stood up and yelled out similar sentiments while others disagreed, and the whole thing just got louder and louder. I expected my mother to use the power of the podium and microphone to get everybody to quiet down, or for Herb to step forward, but neither happened. She let them argue back and forth until finally they ran out of steam.

“At this time I’d like to introduce somebody most of you already know, Mr. Herb Campbell. He’s going to update you on the situation and ask for your input about what we are proposing will happen next.”

My mother sat down, and Herb walked to the podium and microphone. I was struck by how relaxed he seemed. Herb could be the principal welcoming us to parent/teacher night or a student play.

“Good evening,” he began. “I know a lot of you, and a lot of you know me. I’ve certainly gotten to know many more of you over the past two weeks. I personally want to thank those who have made a contribution to keep our neighbors fed and our neighborhood safe. Let’s give all of those people who have contributed so much a big round of applause.”

Again, people clapped and cheered. I did the same but kept watching and thinking. I knew what Herb was doing. He wasn’t just thanking them, but connecting with them, making them a part of the plan.

“Thank you,” Herb said. “I understand how horribly difficult and emotional all of this is. Could I please have that first gentleman stand up again, the one who asked how we knew it could be months and that it was international?”

Reluctantly, slowly, the man took to his feet again. He looked uncomfortable.

“First off, I want to thank you for voicing your concerns and raising questions that many of us have, I’m sure.”

“You’re, um, welcome,” the man stammered.

“I know that we’re all dealing with an information vacuum here, so I was wondering if perhaps you personally have some knowledge of where the situation has been fixed or some gains that have been made in restoring services that would suggest that it’s going to be over sooner.”

Now the man looked even more uncomfortable. “Um, no, I guess I was just hoping.”

“As we all are hoping!” Herb said. “Again, thanks for raising your question.”

The man looked relieved and then slumped back into his seat.

“As to the second part of the question, through some limited shortwave radio contact I know for certain that the situation is nationwide. The entire country is paralyzed, so we can expect no help from our government. As for this being international, well, the fact that we’re even here tonight is evidence of that,” Herb said.

What exactly did that mean?

“Let me explain. Our country has many allies and enemies around the world. If this hadn’t struck our allies they would have provided assistance, and none has come. If this hadn’t struck our enemies, then I assume that they would have used our weakness to pounce on our country and we all would have been incinerated in a nuclear attack prior to this date.”

I hadn’t thought of that, and judging from the shocked expressions, neither had anyone else. Herb’s words were logical. We were safe because everybody had been thrown back in time. There was no friendly country to rescue us but no enemy nation to destroy us either. I felt more reassured and more scared at the same time.

“We can count on nobody else to help us,” Herb continued. “But we ourselves are not helpless. We have represented here your local councilor, the police captain, the fire chief, a judge, and medical authorities. And of course, I am a long-standing employee of the federal government. None of us has any information concerning what is being done to try to remedy the situation—although we all live with quiet hope. We know nothing but what we see with our own eyes.”

The room was now so still that I didn’t think Herb even needed the microphone to be heard in the back corner.

“Out there, beyond the borders of our neighborhood, is chaos. There is arson, looting, robbery, and murder. There are people going without food, water, medicine, or medical treatment. Those who have traveled beyond our neighborhood know that is not
rumor
but
fact
. Here, within our neighborhood, our people, you and your families, your children, have been eating, have fresh drinking water, and have been safe.”

Another round of very loud applause thundered toward the stage. Herb let them cheer for a while and then silenced them with his hands.

“They have been fed and kept safe,
so far
,” he said. “And I emphasize,
so far
. We have less than two months’ supply of food. With the present level of security, that food, your possessions, and the lives of your families will be threatened or even taken by those who have nothing.”

The crowd reacted once again—not with raised voices as before, but with shocked and scared expressions.

“However,” Herb said, raising his voice, “we are prepared tonight to present to you a plan that will protect your families and homes, allow your children to eat and have fresh water. It is a plan that will allow us to survive.”

“What if we don’t want to be part of your plan?” a woman asked, rising to her feet.

“This is all voluntary. Anybody who doesn’t wish to be part of it is free to walk away. This is your choice. Do you want to hear the plan?”

“Well, yes, I was just … okay.” She slumped back into her seat.

“We have, in this room, a microcosm of our society. We have doctors and nurses to care for the sick, a pharmacist to prescribe the medications that we have stockpiled already. We have a dentist and even a veterinarian for your pets. We have people with the knowledge to convert our school yards and parks into cropland that can feed us. There are engineers and mechanics and tradespeople who can maintain, create, reinvent, and retrofit what we need for survival. There are teachers who can educate your children, businesspeople who can help organize, and police and fire and military folks who can defend and protect this neighborhood.”

There was complete silence, but almost in unison people were nodding, sitting forward in their seats to hear every syllable of what he was saying, and there was a look on their faces—hope.

“Adam, could you please come up here?” Herb said.

I looked over at him, startled. This wasn’t part of the plan. He was staring directly at me and was motioning for me to come forward. I stumbled, trying hard not to trip on my own feet as I climbed onto the stage, realizing that every eye was on me. I joined Herb at the podium.

“The plan was first proposed by this young man. I think we need to acknowledge him before he speaks.”

The entire gym burst into applause and cheers— Wait, did he say “speak”?

“I can’t speak. I don’t know what to say,” I whispered to Herb.

“Just speak from the heart.” Herb turned back to the crowd and raised his hands for silence.

I took a deep breath and the sound echoed out through the microphone and into the audience.

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “I’m sorry, really sorry that you had to come out here to hear this—that any of this had to happen to begin with. But it did. We can pretend or wish things were different, deny or ignore what’s happening, but that won’t change any of it. Even if the electricity was turned back on today, if all the cars started working tomorrow, and if the water began running from our pipes again, it doesn’t matter, because our world will forever be different due to what has happened.”

I read the faces of the people in the front few rows. That hope I’d seen in their expressions was gone. I wasn’t supposed to take that away. I had to think of what to say next to bring it back.

“I know that someday things will be fixed, but until then, we have to take care of ourselves. We have to take care of one another. Out there, beyond our neighborhood, things are getting worse, more desperate—more dangerous and more ruthless. We have to protect ourselves from those forces, but we don’t have to become like them. We can construct our own world guided by justice and fairness, marked by caring and compassion. We can stand against what’s happening all around us, persevere in what we believe. We have a chance. We can stand and succeed as a group or fall and fail as individuals.

“We can’t do it alone. My family can’t do it alone. Neither can my friends or the people on my street. But all of us, this neighborhood, together we can. I want to know, right now, today, who’s going to stand with us. Who wants to survive? Who wants their family to be safe, to be fed, to live in a place where they’ll be cared for and treated fairly?”

Herb stepped forward. “Stand up. If you’re with us, I want you to get to your feet,
right
now.”

I held my breath as the crowd seemed to be looking at one another, each of them afraid to be the first. Then a man and woman close to the front got up, then a family at the back, then others throughout the audience and then, almost all at once, like a wave the entire audience seemed to jump to their feet. Some were cheering and some climbed onto their chairs, followed by more people doing the same. They held their hands above their heads like they were reaching for the ceiling.

Herb shook my hand and then raised it above our heads. “And you were worried about what to say?”

“We did it,” I said.

He kept smiling but shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re wrong.”

“But … but…”

“Words have been spoken; now we need action. The hard part is about to begin.”

“I know it’s going to be hard,” I agreed. “But we can do it, right?”

He shrugged.

“You do believe we can do it, right?” I asked again, this time more emphatically so I could be heard over the cheering crowd.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Herb said as he moved close and put his mouth against my ear. “It’s what
they
believe that matters. And that’s why I wanted you to speak. You have no doubts and that’s what they needed. Certainty. You gave all of us what we need to have a chance at succeeding. Now we’re going to see how big a chance it really is.”

I looked around the room. Soon the crowd would quiet down again and they would want to hear about the details. We were ready for that; we knew what we were going to say. But for the moment it was nice just to see the effect we were having. People had smiles on their faces, and they were patting one another on the back. They were people filled with hope. I just had to believe it wasn’t false hope that I’d offered them.

26

Mr. Peterson made another pass with the tractor, changing the grassy field underneath the high-voltage electrical towers into a real field for crops. He was turning the soil on land that hadn’t been planted or worked for fifty years or longer, since they first put the towers from a far-off power plant through this corridor to bring electricity to the people in this new community. Now, with no power in the lines strung above, it was once again being turned to what it had been before the first suburban tracts were built here—a working farm. The earth looked dark and black and rich. Mr. Peterson had said it would be productive soil.

Throughout the neighborhood, smaller patches—front yards and backyards and fringes of paved areas—were being turned over. There were nine rototillers and they were all in operation, but still a lot of the work was being done by hand—people with shovels and picks getting the land ready for planting. Every available space was being put into production to grow food. Because it was late spring, there was still time to plant for a fall harvest.

It hadn’t taken long to get it all started. It had only been three days since that meeting. People kept coming up to me, offering thanks, telling me how much they believed in what we were doing. I tried to remain positive and confident.