“Blew the engine on another truck yesterday,” Horace said.
Energy was the biggest unsolvable. The huge stores of fuel in abandoned vehicles wouldn’t be usable much longer. Gasoline degraded. Tow-truck engines were getting gummed up; several engines had been ruined.
As had many generators. Soon, lights, washers, stoves, anything requiring electricity, would work no more. Thankfully, Laurel had had the foresight or luck to pick a neighborhood of older homes with fireplaces, so they would have heat in the winter. In preparation, a team was already delivering firewood and cutting new wood so it could season for future use.
Come next year, there would be no usable gasoline to power the log splitters and chain saws or pickup trucks. Wood would have to be chopped by hand and delivered by horse-drawn wagon.
We’re all Amish now.
Theoretically, solar or wind power could be converted to electricity—except nobody had the expertise to figure out how to do it. That was another reason for trying to expand the population—to find the experts.
Before the harvest began, small groups would trek to the nearest contiguous states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to post signs. In the spring, when the risk of snow had passed, they would venture to Nebraska, Illinois, and Iowa. Too late, they realized they should have ventured to the more distant states while the fuel was still usable, and they could have ridden motorcycles. But they hadn’t realized how quickly the gasoline would degrade. They were discovering how many things they’d taken for granted in their previous lives.
Another issue, albeit further in the future, would be replacement of tools and other needed items. Right now, there was a vast store of material goods free for the taking.
However, stuff wore out and broke. It might take decades, but most manufactured items would deteriorate. Cotton and other natural fabrics would rot. Rubber on bicycle tires, shoes, door and window seals would crumble. Tools would break. Glass would shatter. How would they replace canning jar lids, which could only be used once?
Manufacturing had been eliminated with the populace that operated the factories. No more shipments would arrive from China. As for U.S. factories—there was no electricity to power them or the knowledge or manpower to operate the equipment if they had the electricity. And where and how would they acquire the raw materials? All the miners were gone.
Medical care would be an issue. Drugs like insulin, epinephrine, and antibiotics expired and lost effectiveness. Anybody with diabetes was screwed. Severely allergic people would die of anaphylactic shock, and people suffering an infection would fight it off with their antibodies or they would die.
They did have youth going for them. Most everyone fell in the twenty- to forty-something range. Horace, in his mid-fifties, was the oldest, but he was wiry and fit as a fiddle. The Bontragers and Chloe intheir early twenties were among the youngest. LaTasha was only fifteen.
Physician Damon wasn’t waiting around for chronic illnesses to develop. He and Laurel spent hours researching naturopathic preventive measures and palliative remedies. But the harsh reality was that if someone fell seriously ill, Damon would not have the medical resources to cure them.
So, while the residents of New Springfield enjoyed a familiar comfortnow, future generations would not be as well off.
More people were arriving. Chloe waved at Damon and Guy who’d entered together. They took seats in the row behind her, Rok, and Horace.
“What do you think we’re voting on?” Guy asked.
“No clue.”
Even from a distance, Jacob and Sarah were instantly recognizable. Bearded Jacob wore dark pants with suspenders over a dark shirt. Sarah had on her usual plain, solid-blue dress with a white cap over her hair, tidily caught in a bun. Sarah had once mentioned that in accommodation to Amish orthodoxy, women never cut their hair. When unbound, her hair fell below her knees.
Sarah was five months pregnant. Hers would be the first baby born in New Springfield, followed soon after by Laurel and Grav’s baby, the first human-Progg child, although nobody but Chloe and Rok knew about her pregnancy yet.
When Laurel had shared her news, Chloe got a wake-up call. How could she have forgotten about birth control? She and Rok had become intimate. Very intimate.Frequentlyintimate.
After a belated talk, they decided to let nature take its course. They had a planet to populate, after all.It’sour civicduty,she thought with amusement, but that wasn’t why. She desired to have a family with Rok. She loved him, and she wanted to be a mom. Family represented normalcy. Oh, how she longed fornormal—a husband, a couple of kids, a house in the suburbs.
So what if her husband was an extraterrestrial, the kids were half-alien, and she had to cook in the fireplace like a pioneer? Close enough!
Rok craned his neck. “Looks like everyone is here.”
“Yep. Full house.” Technically, the theater, seating over a thousand, was mostly empty, but it did appear as though all the residents had arrived.
The five council members and Grav filed out from backstage. Laurel carried a battery-powered microphone; Grav had a banker’s box. They took their seats behind the large table, leaving one chair empty.
Laurel turned on the mike and tapped it. “Can everyone hear me?” Her voice boomed.
“Yes!” people chimed.
“You’re all wondering why we’re meeting again so soon. We have serious, life-altering business to discuss and vote on, affecting not only New Springfield but survivors everywhere.” She glanced at her fellow council members. “We don’t want to influence you by sharing our thoughts before you hear the information from the source, so I won’t say much more,” she added cryptically.
Were they going to get a visitor? Was the seventh chair for this mysterious guest?
“Because there will be a vote, we’re going to take roll call.” Laurel slid the mike to hairdresser Candi Maloney, council secretary.
