The day after: An apocalyptic morning (23 page)

              "So what is your suggestion?"

              "I'd have to see the capabilities of your camera system before I came up with a firm plan," Skip said after a moment's thought. "But the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you move the two SUVs on this side of the bridge backwards so that they are between the ladder from the catwalk and the bridge entrance. You can't let people come up behind your position like I did."

              "We don't have any more coaxial cable connectors," Paul said. "We made the chain as long as we could."

              "Then either splice on some more or move the camera positions back. It's better to do that than to leave yourself exposed from the rear. Also, those ladders should be removed on both ends to keep people from moving up and down on them. Hell, if you can cut holes in the catwalk itself or even drop the whole damn thing into the canyon, that would be even better. The important thing is that somehow, some way, you deny the use of that catwalk to an enemy. Without that catwalk, I wouldn't have been able to get in here from that direction. With that catwalk, I could have led as many people as I wanted to across to this side and you wouldn't have known about it, even if your guards had been doing their jobs at the time."

              They discussed other aspects of the bridge defense for more than twenty minutes, Paul and Skip holding up most of the conversation but Jessica and Dale gradually starting to throw in a few contributions and ask a few questions as well. Skip began to sense a thawing of the malevolent feelings that Jessica had for him as the talk went on, a very small thawing but a thawing none-the-less. The look of disgust in her face whenever she looked at him was replaced by a look of something that was almost like interest. He sensed no such warming from Dale, who seemed to perceive him as some sort of threat, but he had also figured out that Dale's position among the town leadership was more symbolic than anything else.

              Finally the discussion wound down and the time came to take a vote on the Micker of Skip's leaving or staying. The vote did not go well.

              "I still think we should put him back out of town," Dale said when the table was opened for discussion. "I don't like him and I don't trust him. He snuck in here in the middle of the night and God only knows what his intentions are. We have too much to protect in this town to be taking in strangers."

              "I have to agree with Dale," Jessica said when he was finished. "While he has proved himself to be knowledgeable in the Micker of defending our bridge, I think that the cost of feeding him and his companions is too high to pay for a few good ideas. As I said earlier, we don't even have enough food to feed the people that we have here already for more than a few months. We don't have the luxury of taking in outsiders."

              "I think we should take him," Paul said. "Neither I nor anyone else in this town knows the least bit about defending us from attack. We can put up basic defenses, sure, we can keep out the stragglers, true, but if there were ever any sort of organized attack upon us, we would probably be defeated."

              "You're being paranoid, Paul," Jessica said. "The stragglers are all we have to worry about. There is no organization out there."

              "I beg to differ," Skip put in at this point. He told them about the bikers that had attacked Christine and Jack's family, killing the parents. He then told them about the interrogation that he had conducted on the survivor of that firefight. "He said there were thirty of them and that they had automatic weapons. That is organization. Those people are probably still out there somewhere and they will probably head for towns where there are survivors to try and secure more supplies. They may eventually find there way to your front door, either by coming to your bridge or by working their way up the other side of the canyon from the west. If they don't get here, other groups like them will. You cannot just assume that you will not be attacked. If that group comes here with your defenses as they are, they will defeat you. I've told you what they were trying to do to Christine and Jack when I interrupted them."

              "You're just trying to scare us," Dale accused. "How do we know that you didn't make all of that up?"

              "And how do you know that he did?" Paul put in. "Wouldn't the smarter course be to prepare for the worst instead of to hope for the best?"

              "Not to the point of paranoia," Jessica said. "I'm sorry, Paul and I'm sorry, Mr. Adams, but we've voted on the Micker. Dale and I voted not to take any more people. That means that you will have to be put back out of town. I'll have the guards lead you back across the bridge."

              "No," Paul said firmly.

              "Paul," Jessica said. "We've voted! It was two to one against you."

              "You're not going to do this to me on this issue," Paul said. "This is not about whether or not to allow three baths per week or only two, this is not about whether or not to increase rations or keep them where they are. This issue is for our very survival and I will not allow an impulsive decision from the two of you that is probably based more on snobbery than it is any practical Micker to stand."

              "What the hell are you talking about?" Dale said, leaping to his feet so fast that his chair clattered to the floor behind him.

              "How dare you!" Jessica said, just as angrily.

              "You'd better watch how the fuck you're talking to us or you're going to be walking out with him!"

              Skip watched this exchange carefully, with the eye of a man who had seen a thousand angry people arguing with each other. Never before had the argument been so directly connected to his own survival but, interestingly, the tones and the posturing were the same. Jessica, and particularly Dale, were both exaggerating their anger, yelling louder than was necessary. This was usually a sign that people displayed when they were doubtful about their stated position but were afraid to show it for fear of losing face. Paul, on the other hand, showed the kind of determination that came with knowing you were right. He held his ground, his face remaining calm.

              "This is too important of a decision to allow you two to piss away with your little voting alliance," Paul said. "This is something that needs to be decided by the entire town, and only after they have listened to the facts. I want Mr. Adams to stay here tonight..."

              "No!" shouted Dale. "He is not staying here another minute."

              "He will stay here," Paul said, taking a step closer to the larger man. Incredibly, Dale backed up. "That is my decision. I will keep him under guard in this building for the night. I will feed him and allow him to bathe and I will even give him fresh clothing."

              "You will do no such thing," Jessica spat. "How dare you..."

              "And tomorrow," Paul went on, his voice overriding her, "we will tell our fellow townspeople what Mr. Adams has offered us and what the cost would be. We will then have a town-wide vote on the Micker of whether we should sacrifice a little bit of our food supply for increased security."

              "That is not how things work in this town," Jessica said, pointing her finger at him with short jabs. "We are the committee and we make the rules. You are not free to change them just because you were outvoted on something. If you have a problem with that, you would do well to remember that you were not even a resident of this town and that you can be put out of it just as easily as your friend here."

              "And you can keep in mind," said Paul, unfazed by her speech, "that you two are not really liked by the other residents of this town. They accept your leadership, Jessica because you have assumed it and none of them wish to take it. They accept yours, Dale because you used to be the friendly grocery store manager that they all had wet dreams about and because you're fucking Jessica now."

              "You don't need to be so crude," Jessica said, paling.

              Paul ignored her. "They accept my leadership however, because I get things done around here. It was me that organized the defenses. It was me that set up the hot baths and the laundry area. Now I don't know what the result might be if you try to throw out the one member of this committee who actually does anything and who is actually worth a damn, but it could be that you might find that you are not as well-supported as you think you are. It could be that you two will be the ones walking across the bridge."

              Jessica crumbled under this onslaught. Skip saw it happen in the way that her eyes suddenly became full of doubt, in the way that her shoulders suddenly slumped in defeat. Paul had pushed exactly the buttons that needed to be pushed in order to change her mind. He had played upon the natural insecurities that bullying people all had.

              "Well," she said slowly and carefully, "since you feel that strongly about this, I suppose we can make an exception to the rules just this once. He can stay until the morning and then I'll talk to everyone and tell them..."

              "We will talk to everyone," Paul broke in. "I'm not about to let you go out there and tell your version of the story. We'll do it together and we'll do it objectively."

              Her face angered but she controlled the outburst that she so desperately wanted to unleash. "Fine," she said. "We will go out and talk to everyone. But make sure you keep him guarded all night! He is not to be left alone."

              "I think I can handle that," Paul said, allowing the slightest smile to touch his face.

              "Smoke?" Paul offered to Skip, holding out a red and white box of Marlboros.

              "I haven't smoked since I was in the army," he told him. They were still in the conference room although Jessica and Dale had both departed for parts unknown. He had just swallowed down a meal of baked beans, cornbread, and applesauce, easily the best he had consumed since leaving his home in Stockton before the hunting trip. The beans had actually been hot!

              "Yeah," Paul agreed, taking one out of the pack and putting it in his mouth. "They're bad for you. Give you cancer and heart disease and emphysema and all that." He struck a light with a pack of matches. "Somehow that just doesn't scare me as much as it used to." He put the end of the match to his smoke and took a deep drag.

              "Good point," Skip agreed. "But all the same, I'll pass."

              "Suit yourself," Paul told him, leaning back in his chair a little. He had long since reholstered his gun and dropped his guard.

              "So, you were a fireman you said?"

              "I was with the CDF," Paul confirmed. "I was the captain at the station just outside of town, near the interstate. I lived in Penryn, just down the hill in the valley. My crew abandoned me once the shit really hit the fan and tried to make it home. They both lived in Sacramento. I don't know what ever became of them but they've never shown back up here. Some of the people in town tried to make it down to Auburn about a week after the impact. They say the interstate is washed out near the gulch down there."

              "Family?" Skip asked.

              "Wife and two kids down in Penryn," he said a little sadly. "I would've gone with my crew if I'd thought there was the slightest chance of them being still alive, but... I knew better. I imagine my house is under about sixty feet of water or so. There's no way they could've made it."

              "I'm sorry," Skip said. "Mine were back in Stockton. I saw the water come in from Castle Point. There's no way that mine made it either."

              They both contemplated their losses for a few minutes, Paul smoking, Skip just staring at the wall.

              "So how many people are in this town?" Skip finally asked to change the subject.

              "One hundred and eighty-three," Paul told him. "Of which, one hundred and sixty-two are either women or children under the age of seven."

              "What?" Skip asked. "There are only..." he tried to do the addition in his head.

              "Twenty-one men," Paul said, providing the answer. "Not including you, although I'm pretty sure we'll let you in once the decision is taken out of those idiot's hands. And not a single one of us men are from this town. We all just happened to be here because of our jobs."

              "How is that possible?" Skip asked.

              "It's simple," Paul told him. "This is an upscale, higher income town. Or at least it was before the comet. There was not much diversity here like you might find in other places. This was a very structured, closed-minded, we-must-conform-to-the-elite-standard-of-living kind of place. It was the home of the lawyers, the dentists, the investment bankers, the accountants, the doctors. For the most part these people were all men and they were all married. This was not a place where there were a bunch of unemployed men hanging around, drinking beer and watching NASCAR on the tube. When the impact occurred we were smack in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, remember? Every last one of these men was down in the valley doing whatever it was they did to bring home the bacon. Now there were a lot of women who worked in this town as well and all of them were down in the valley as well. There were not any jobs in town that anyone who actually lived here would have been doing. So what we had left after the earthquake and the flaming rocks and the mudslides swept through, were a bunch of high-class housewives, a few female employees from the school or the grocery store or the library and twenty-one men whose jobs just happened to bring them here at the particular moment that the impact happened.