Digger 1.0 (6 page)

Ford did not come and get her and take her
away.

The sounds of the raving horde overwhelmed
her and she seemed to disappear into it, forgetting herself as she
had learned to and thinking only of a found violin and the beauty
of music one might make. And the strings she’d seen in the sky of
heaven that one day when her eyes had seen.

This too, happened to her.

~~~

A day later, the horde had finished
devouring Summner. Every wall had been knocked down. Not to destroy
the defenders, but to beat the others of the horde who’d searched
for the place. To beat them to what lay beyond and within those
walls. Buildings were gutted like killed animals, their entrails
exploding from doors and windows. Hasty meals were made of those
who remained and anything useful that might keep the horde warm and
help them in finding more protein. Everything of value was carried
off as the horde chased itself to its next meal.

A man, who had first taken the miracle
supplement Slenderex five years ago, labored up from what was left
of Kate. Who knew why he began to lurch off toward the west. Eyes
dead, but searching. He didn’t even know anymore. He’d lost his
mind long ago. He’d lost his mind to an endless craving that
promised everything in a tiny bottle. He was heading toward the
Basin. Toward who knows what. But in doing so, everyone in the
horde who’d watched him go followed him, convinced he knew
something they didn’t. Convinced that he would get wherever first.
Convinced he had what they wanted and that he would not share it
with them.

Coveting the covetous.

And so they followed, leaving the remains of
Summner.

And that, happened too.

Ellis walked up just as the boys were
hoisting their yokes to carry two five gallon buckets of water
apiece down to the farm.

Ellis laughed as he approached. “I’d give
you a hand if you had two more buckets ready to go.”

Shooter flashed a conspiratorial grin and
pushed aside an old piece of carpet to expose two more full buckets
of precious water ready to be hauled. “We’re glad you offered,
Ellis! We don’t have another yoke, but we’ll take a few breaks
along the way so you don’t get too worn out.”

Ellis shook his head. “
You guys set me up.
”

It was Chuck’s turn to laugh now. “It’s not
like you’re predictable with your walks, Ellis. We use you as a
timepiece. Shooter even calls you “Timex” when your back is
turned.”

Ellis grabbed the two buckets and raised up
to stretch out his back and prepare for the long walk. “I’ll have
to remember to vary my schedule a little, so I don’t get roped into
water duty.”

“Water duty,” Chuck said, “that thankless
and endless task that will only ever be overcome by a working,
intelligently designed water delivery system.”

Ellis blinked and then cocked his head. “I’m
workin’ on it.”

“May not rain for a month, you know,”
Shooter said.

“What would you have me do about it?”

Shooter shrugged under the weight of the
yoke. “I’m just making conversation… but… since we’re on the topic.
The Pumping Station is only a mile up the river. It’ll have pipe,
pistons, leathers or rubber for making gaskets. Everything we need
to make a hand pump. It’s probably a gold mine.

“You know what else is out there if you
aren’t careful and if we don’t make our decisions based on what is
doable and not on what’ll limit the amount of work we have to
do?”

Neither Chuck nor Shooter ventured an
answer. They already knew what Ellis was going to say.

“That’s right, boys. Death. That’s what’s
out there for us if we aren’t smart.”

“Wise as serpents, harmless as doves,” Chuck
said. He knew the speech.

The three men walked in silence for another
five minutes, and then Chuck led the way to a fallen tree on the
edge of the forest. They let down their burdens and stretched their
backs before sitting down for a rest.

Chuck pointed at the water they had in the
buckets. “These six buckets will be dumped on the gardens and it’ll
be gone before we can catch our breath, Ellis. We’re wrecking
ourselves and we can’t ever make any headway.”

Ellis leaned back and felt the sinews and
muscles of his back scream in protest. “What’s your solution?”

Chuck bit his lip and stared at Ellis for a
minute before he talked again. “I’m saying that the risk is worth
it. We need to get to the Pumping Station no matter what it
takes.”

Ellis stood up and looked Chuck in the eye.
“When you say, ‘whatever it takes’, make sure you know what that
means.”

“I know what it means.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

Ellis pointed back at the farm. “Are you
ready to bury any of your family back there, Chuck? Because if we
just run off every time we have an idea, we’ll be burying those
people before long.”

Ellis knew his words had found their mark.
Found it too well. He remembered Chuck as a young boy when he’d
first come to them. Dirty. Covered in crusty, dried earth. He’d
already buried a family once in his life.

Ellis started to apologize. But that little
frightened and brave all at once boy that Chuck once was continued
on.

“I’m not saying we don’t do it smart, Ellis.
I’m saying we think it through and make a good plan. And then we do
it. I’m sure it can be done.” Chuck picked up a stone near the tip
of his old boot and threw it at a stump leftover from cutting last
year’
s firewood.
“But
I’ll tell you this. If we don’t do it, and the dry time goes on for
much longer, we’ll be burying someone.”

Ellis picked up a rock and threw it at the
stump, joining in the game to show Chuck he wasn’t angry or upset.
“I know what you’re saying, Chuck. Don’t think I don’t. But it
could rain tomorrow and in two days we’d all be praying for it to
stop.”

Chuck shrugged as his next stone bounced
successfully off the stump. “It could… but then again, it may not
rain until summer’
s
out.
”

~~~

After the three men left the water at the
gardens, Shooter and Chuck headed back up to the cliffs to make
another run. Ellis chose to continue his walk in the opposite
direction. He headed north and east, hoping to find some solitude
to clear his mind.

A large field of pasture grass opened up
before him, and sloped gradually from the low area that led north
and a little west toward Fontana’s Bridge, up to the northeast
corner of the mesa. It was an incredibly rich area of pasture.
Unhappily, the family had yet to make proper use of most of it.
They were afraid to turn the sheep loose in the pasture because of
the sheer limestone cliffs to the east, and the equally dramatic
drop-off to the north that terminated in the Solekeep.

We need a good sheep dog
, thought
Ellis and remembered other dogs he’d known.

Back before the Beginning, Ellis had read
Far From the Madding Crowd
and he knew what could happen to
sheep that were kept in pasture that abutted a cliff. And without
fencing, livestock could dash down through the lowland draw and
right across Fontana’s Bridge if they had a mind to.

Ellis stretched his neck to each side,
feeling the tendons pop and release.
Add fencing to the things
the family needs to make the best use of the valley
.

“I know,” he said aloud.

Up near the northeasternmost corner, just
short of the cliffs, there was a large rocky hill; an area of stone
and rubble encompassing a region almost an eighth of an acre
across. That hilltop was known to the family jokingly as Utah.
Besides the cliffs and the river, Utah was the most dangerous area
on the farm, and Ellis had long ago banned anyone from playing, or
exploring, amidst the precariously balanced rocks, boulders, and
rubble. Sometimes the older boys were sent there to gather large
stones for construction projects, but other than that, Utah was off
limits. And that made Utah the perfect place for Ellis to go, sit,
and think.

Ellis followed a sandy animal trail that
wound into the formation of massive rocks that made up Utah. Most
of the rocks were limestone or granite—some weighing ten to twenty
tons or more. Ellis didn’t know how they’d gotten there, or what
calamity might have piled them in such an odd array, but back in
the time before the Beginning, he’d seen such formations while
traveling through the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and even
here in Texas.

Perhaps the stones, once buried beneath
hundreds of feet of soil, became exposed after oceans of
floodwaters eroded away the layers of dirt, sand and clay, leaving
these rocks as a memorial; a reminder of a time before another
Beginning. Or perhaps during some remarkable period of catastrophic
geological instability—maybe when the limestone cliffs not two
hundred feet to the east were formed by the same deep tectonic
surges—the huge stones had been thrust up from the earth, maybe
even in a matter of hours or days, and then deposited on the
surface to befuddle future generations. And maybe the same glaciers
that had carved the hundred mile wide basin on their way to the sea
left behind the upraised castle that was the valley as a token of
catastrophism, with the stones of Utah as the keep where the
secrets of time and creation lay buried.

Ellis hadn’t spent much time among the
stones in the five years since the Beginning. He came up here once
a month or so to sit and think and even to pray. Sometimes, while
sitting among the boulders he’d hear his daddy’s voice telling him
what he should do or not do next—but he knew it wasn’t really his
father’s voice, only a mental manifestation of his own intense
desire to have someone to lead him… to not always be the one
shouldering all the responsibility. Occasionally, he’d been here
amongst the stones working with the boys, and together they’d stack
rocks in a stone boat they’d yoke themselves to and pull it down to
the farm to be used in fences or foundations. Those were the times
he’d thought it would be nice to have an ox or a horse, but then
he’d remember that those animals drink water too. Once or twice
he’d had to run up here with a sniper rifle when they thought
invaders might be heading toward Fontana’s Bridge. Those were the
scary times.

We need to do something with that
bridge.

The hilltop made a fine sniper’s nest, but
there weren’t many other reasons to value the huge area of mostly
unusable stones. In the past, Ellis had even cursed the rocky patch
because it would seem on first blush that more pasture would be
better than a bunch of heavy rocks that no one after the Beginning
would ever be able to move.

When he thought about the size of most of
the stones, that’s when he’d pray for a backhoe or bulldozer, but
even if the bridge would hold the weight of such a large machine,
the dream of finding heavy equipment this long after the Beginning
was probably more of a delusional fantasy than anything else.

Ellis found his sittin’ spot—a little, flat
clearing guarded by a low cliff face where he could put his back up
against the largest stone in Utah and think without being
disturbed.

Sitting there with his back against the cold
stone, his view was blocked in every direction by massive boulders
that gave this place an otherworldly sense to it. He could actually
feel like he was in another place, or even on another planet, alone
with his thoughts and with history and time without the omnipresent
weight of responsibility and the threats that badgered him day by
day.

He stretched his legs out flat and leaned
his weight against the cool resistance that pressed evenly against
his back, pushing his hands down against the ground as he felt the
pleasant sting of his muscles straining against the weight of earth
and rock. He felt like the pressures and worries, multiplied by
authority and unreal expectations, were hanging over him like the
massive rock pressing against his back, and he closed his eyes for
a moment and imagined the rock crushing him into dust.

Maybe that wouldn’t be all that bad.

He was ashamed as soon as he thought it.

Who would watch over the family? Who would
calm Rooster when she was in a rage, and who would help and support
Delores as she tried her best in her young womanhood to hold the
children together by the strength of her will? And who would mentor
Chuck and Shooter as they became men during one of the most
difficult times anyone could ever imagine?

He slid his hands back until the heel of his
palm and his pinkies touched the wall of stone behind him.

That’s when he noticed it.

Maybe not consciously, but the fact did
register.

A crack between the stone and the flat rock
that made up the ground where he sat. Most of his mind was still on
his troubles, and the mounting needs and evils that threatened to
destroy what little they’d managed to build.

If we’re going to be destroyed, Lord, then
let’s just get it over with. We can’t go on like this. Something
will have to change. We’re barely making it as it is, and the
threats grow every day. Something. Anything. If a horde is going to
flood through this valley, or a gang is going to come over that
bridge…

Again he flexed his legs and pushed against
the immovable weight that pressed back against him.

Only it wasn’t immovable.

The stone
shifted
.

It was only a microscopic slide at first,
but he felt it, and it shook him from his thoughts.

Raising himself to his knees, he crawled
around the rock, and that was the first time he realized that the
gargantuan stone he’d been using as a back rest was pressed flat up
against the rocky cliff face like it had been put there on purpose.
And now he was seeing that the stone didn’t sit flat against the
ground at all. Something underneath it lifted it—suspending it a
quarter of an inch above the stone on which it sat.