Pushing On

14

Max had been resistant to the idea, but in the end, he couldn’t say no.

Mandy couldn’t believe their luck. Kara had driven ahead of them, leading the way for the Honda and the Bronco, taking them all the way into the heart of the compound.

Kara, a beautiful woman who had a sort of elegance about her, gave them a tour of the community.

Mandy almost cried for joy when she saw the showers. They were rigged up so that there was even hot water. Mandy didn’t listen to the explanation about how they’d gotten hot water without electricity. Probably it involved someone heating up the water over a fire. But she didn’t care. It was hot water, and she was already relishing the time she’d soon spend in the shower.

It had been weeks since any of them had bathed, and while they’d all gotten used to the smell, Mandy could tell that Kara wasn’t used to it. She was polite about it, but whenever she got close to Mandy, Max, Georgia, or whoever else, she couldn’t help wrinkling her nose a little.

Kara and the dozens of others had been living in relative comfort since the EMP. As they toured the compound, Kara gave them a rundown of the history of the place. Basically, some friends, years ago, had gotten together and planned this thing out. Word had gotten out, and people had joined up. Most everyone who lived there now had contributed something major to the facility.

Since the community had been started before the EMP, they’d had the luxury of trips to Home Depot, of ordering supplies online, and also just simply stocking up on food and provisions.

“There’s a fully functional medical facility,” said Kara, gesturing off to the right. “We even have a doctor. He was a surgeon before the EMP, and he’s highly qualified. Of course, he’s going to have to learn to get by without x-rays and other high-tech things from our now bygone era.”

Kara spoke as if the pre-EMP world would certainly never return. It shocked Mandy a little bit. Sure, that was the way Max had always talked, but secretly Mandy had held out some hope that things would eventually go back to normal. She’d hoped that the government would eventually get its shit together and basically come in and save everyone. She’d hoped that it was merely Max’s own pessimism talking, but to hear it from a stranger, that was something different.

“What about the defenses?” said Max, looking around the large compound.

“Well,” said Kara. “As you can see, we have concrete walls around the entire property. All our food is grown within the walls, and there’s a registry for people coming and going. That way we can cut down on people sneaking in, should they find us. But as you can see, it’s a pretty hard place to find. We chose it to be out of the way.”

“The guards are always there?” said Max, eyeing the rudimentary towers, manned by men with rifles.

“Of course,” said Kara. “We’re serious here about security, if that’s what you’re worried about, Max.”

Max didn’t say anything.

“Let me show you the new crops,” said Kara, pointing off to one of the fields.

“This is awesome, Mom,” said Sadie, as they all moved to follow Kara.

“It’s nice,” said Georgia, in a noncommittal way.

“You don’t like it, Georgia?” whispered Mandy, so that Kara couldn’t hear her.

“It’s nice,” repeated Georgia. “I just want to be cautious.”

“What’s there to be cautious about? This is what we’ve been looking for.”

Georgia didn’t answer. Instead, she looked behind them. “Where’s Chad?”

“I’ll go get him,” said Mandy, spotting him. “Looks like he’s wandered over to that guard tower.”

“Hurry back,” said Georgia. She sounded nervous, as if she didn’t want Mandy to get separated from the group.

Mandy didn’t see the cause for concern, but she was anxious not to miss more of Kara’s tour, so she hurried off towards Chad.

Mandy must have been in a good mood to go look for Chad herself, but that didn’t stop her from criticizing him when she found him.

“Hey, idiot,” she said, tugging on Chad’s sleeve. “What the hell’s gotten into you? You can’t just go wandering off all the time.”

“I’m fine,” said Chad.

But he didn’t look fine. His eyes had a dead look to them, and his pupils were small and contracted.

“Idiot,” muttered Mandy, pulling him towards the group on the other side of the compound. “I know you’re on something. You don’t fool me.”

Chad didn’t say anything, but followed along dutifully.

When they arrived to where the rest of the group was, Kara was patiently explaining the different plants they were growing.

“These are potatoes,” she was saying. “They’re not too hard to grow, and they provide a lot of calories for the work that you put in. That’s the thing we think about the most—does the reward meet the required work? That’s the big question around here, and you’ll hear us talking about it a lot. We have a lot of mouths to feed, and we don’t want to be reliant on hunting, in case things change on the outside and it becomes too dangerous.”

“Sounds like you’ve worked out a lot of the problems that we were facing,” said Mandy.

“Well, we’ve had a lot of time to figure things out. And before the EMP, we had the internet at our disposal. We looked everything up.”

“So you’ve been living here since before the EMP?”

“A few have,” said Kara. “But most of us would just make occasional trips here to help set things up. It wasn’t a full-time thing for us. I worked as a corporate lawyer, for instance. But I had a backup plan, and the minute the EMP hit, I hightailed it out of there.”

Mandy glanced over at Max, who had a frown on his black-and-blue face.

“Cheer up, Max,” whispered Mandy, nudging him in the ribs.

Max just nodded.

“I want to show you all something very special next. This took a lot of planning, but one of our guys, Jeff—you’ll meet him in a moment—is a big tech guy.”

Kara led them to a small shed in the center of the compound. It was rickety, but large enough for them all to get inside.

“Hey, Jeff.”

A balding, middle-aged guy with a paunch sat at a small table. There was a microphone in front of him.

He nodded at Kara, and went back to doing whatever it was he was doing. Writing down numbers in a small notebook with a stub of a pencil.

“Is that a radio?” said Max.

“Yup,” said Kara, smiling ear to ear proudly. “It’s a shortwave radio. So we can communicate with whoever’s out there. We haven’t found many people yet, but they’re out there.”

“Didn’t the EMP destroy it?”

“We had it in a Faraday cage, so it was protected,” said Jeff, looking up briefly from his notebook.

Mandy now noticed that he was adjusting the radio in front of him. It had seemed too crazy, at first, to see him using a working electronic device, let alone a radio, that she hadn’t even really seen it.

“That’s crazy,” said Mandy. “But how do you power it?”

“We have a hand-crank battery over there,” said Kara, pointing to the corner. “It’s rudimentary, but it works. We’re hoping to hook it up to a bicycle soon.”

“Pretty impressive,” muttered Max, sounding reluctant in his praise. “Who have you contacted?”

“There’s one other community in New York, similar to ours. We send out a daily bulletin with information, not advertising our location, of course. It’s supposed to be for strangers who arrived and we take in, so that they can broadcast information about their families and things like that, about where they’re headed, that they’re still alive.”

“Any luck so far?”

“You’re one of the first groups to show up,” said Kara vaguely. “Why don’t we send it out now? It’s about time, isn’t it, Jeff?”

“Yup.”

“You guys OK with that?” said Kara.

“I don’t know…” said Max.

“Come on, Max, what’s the harm?” said Mandy. “If there’s anyone out there we know who’s still alive, maybe they’ll get the message at some point.”

“I wouldn’t mind doing it,” said Georgia. “Although I’m sure my ex-husband is dead. That good-for-nothing couldn’t take out the trash, let alone survive an EMP.”

Kara and Mandy laughed.

“But I don’t get it,” said James, speaking for the first time in a while. “Nobody out there has a radio like this. Or at least not many people. So how would they get the message?”

“Basically it works like one of those old internet bulletin boards,” said Kara. “We send out a message each day, and the other community, the one we have contact with, they write it all down. Then if someone comes by their community, they can check the registry. Hopefully the project will grow. Once we find others with working radios, we hope to spread the network all over the country.”

“Basically it’d be like slow internet then?” said James.

“Really slow internet, yeah,” said Kara, laughing.

“All right, ready, Jeff?”

Jeff nodded. “Just about.”

Jeff fiddled with the dials on the radio.

“OK,” he said, his voice changing to what could almost be considered an excited radio announcer’s voice. It was strange to hear, coming from the man who had seemed, moments ago, to have almost no energy about him at all. “We’re coming to you live from the nameless compound in an unspecified location. We’ve got some visitors here with us today. Let’s get their names. Come on, don’t be shy. Come right up to the microphone. One by one. That’s it. Sorry, folks, bear with us.”

He spoke as if thousands or millions were listening. But in reality, there might have been a handful of listeners huddled around the radio in the far-away New York compound.

One by one, Max, Mandy, Georgia, James, and Sadie went up and spoke their names, saying that they were still alive, which was already obvious.

“Come on, Chad,” grunted Max, nudging Chad in the back.

“Oh, right,” said Chad, approaching the microphone and briefly stating his name.

“Now it’s getting close to dinner time, and I’d like to show you all your quarters before heading to the meal.”

She led them to another series of buildings. They were made of concrete and had a cold feel to them.

“They’re not pretty, but they work,” said Kara. “Now, this is the building for women, and those are for the men. Feel free to drop your stuff off before we head to dinner.”

“I’ll keep it with me,” said Max, glaring at the others in their group. He was telling them, in not so many words, to do the same.

“Whatever suits you,” said Kara. “Now let’s head over to the mess hall.”

“Mandy,” hissed Georgia, as Kara began leading the way again. Georgia took hold of Mandy’s sleeve, and held her back while the rest continued.

“What? Come on, I’m starving.”

“We’re all hungry. Step in here for a minute. I don’t want anyone to hear us.”

Mandy followed Georgia back into the women’s building. There were bunk beds lined up, a lot of them. The concrete construction gave the building a cold feel to it. The floor was concrete and seemed to suck the heat right from Mandy’s body. And there weren’t any windows. But nothing could be perfect. It was better to live, in Mandy’s mind, in a concrete building than in no building at all.

“All right, what is it?”

“Didn’t you notice anything strange?”

“Strange?”

Mandy’s stomach had rarely felt emptier, even since the EMP. She was dying for a huge plate of hot food: potatoes, beans, and greens, by the sound of it. Although at this point, she would have eaten just about anything.

“Yeah, strange. Didn’t you see the bunks in here?”

“What about them?”

“They’re almost all empty. Look.”

It was true. There was only one bunk that looked occupied. Probably Kara’s.

“So what?”

“Walking around, didn’t you notice how almost everyone here is a man? Kara might be the only woman.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Mandy thought back, and realized it was true.

“Did you see the way they were looking at you?”

“No.”

“Well, you should have noticed. And not just you. But me and Sadie, too. I’m worried.”

“Why?”

“They’re all about self-sufficiency here, and sustainability. They want their community to continue to grow. And the only way to do that? Have kids. And you know what you need to have kids?”

Mandy finally realized what Georgia was saying.

“Come on, Georgia, that’s crazy. They’re not like that. Let’s go have dinner.”