Fifty yards down Pigott’s Crossing road a dirt driveway peeled off into the trees. A metal cattle gate with a hand-painted “NO TRESPAS” sign barred access to a run-down wood frame farm house surrounded by old cars and farm equipment. I banged the blunt end of Mr. Hatchet against the gate a few times to make some racket.

Old Man Pigott emerged from the house a minute later, rifle gripped in his dark, calloused hand. He squinted at us for a moment, then waved. “C’mon up, and close the gate behind ya!”

Reaching down from the saddle, I unlatched the gate and pushed it open, cheating a bit with my telekinetic hands.

“Help me off this blasted animal,” Mrs. Caldwell demanded as soon as we stopped in front of the house, awkwardly swinging a leg over the saddle. I eased her down with a bit of surreptitious telekinetic strength and helped her to a rocker on the porch where she gingerly sat.

“I was a damn fool for thinking I could ride into town,” she complained. “I should have stayed at home.”

“I’m not sure you would have been safe there,” I countered.

“I would have been just fine,” she grumped. “There’s a full tank of propane and I have enough preserves to last two years. The only thing I have to be scared of is running out of crossword puzzles. My backside is completely ruint.”

“I’m really sorry about that…”

“What’s done is done,” she said, waving her hand and addressing old man Pigott directly. “Jedediah, where’s your manners? You ain’t even offered me a glass of sweet tea.”

“I ain’t got no sweet tea, Lizzie,” Jedediah said, looking at his boots like a bashful schoolboy. “Everything done burnt up like demons were in it.”

“Well, you could get me a glass of water.”

“Yessum, I’ll be right back,” he vanished into the house, the screen door banging behind him and emerged a few minutes later with three plastic bottles of lukewarm water. I accepted mine graciously and got to business.

“Mr. Pigott, there’s some folk up in the village that are hurt and need to get into town to the doctor. I told them that you might be willing able to carry them there in your hay wagon.”

He scratched his head. “Now why would I want to do that? Why don’t they just drive up themselves?”

“Because everything has burnt up, you damned fool,” Lizzie snapped at him. “My house would have burnt down if Robbie… if Robbie,” She broke into quiet sobs, the scab over the memory peeled off and bleeding again.

I laid a hand on her plump shoulder, offering silent comfort.

“Is something wrong with Robert?” Jedediah asked, looking as Mrs. Caldwell with concern.

“I buried him at my place this morning,” I answered. “He was struck by lightning last night.”

“My God. Lizzie, I’m so sorry.”

“You got a hand pump for your well?” I asked, changing the subject.

“What?” he looked at me in confusion. “No, it’s all electrical.”

“You’re gonna be needing water and I don’t think the electricity is going to be restored any time soon,” I said. “Show me your pump.”

He looked at Lizzie who had stopped crying and was staring at her hands, then led me around the back of the house. The pump shed was open and the PVC pipes running from the pump were a melted mess from where it had burned. I noticed a few motes leaking from around the pipes and made a mental note to add that curiosity to the things I’d investigate later.

“It looks like you’ve got a standard well head and a hand pump should fit with no problems,” I said, looking over his setup. “I’ve got a spare up at my place, just disconnect your piping here and install the pump. It’ll take a few dozen pumps on the handle to get it primed, but you’ll have water. You can have it if you load up Mrs. Caldwell and anyone else in the village and bring them into town for medical treatment. I’m riding to Springfield to get my daughter and should be back in a week.”

He shook his head. “I’ll just ride into town when my boy Jake gets back here with my truck and buy one at the hardware store.”

“Mr. Pigott, I don’t believe people are going to be riding anything but horses and bicycles for a long time. Something bad’s happened and hard times are ahead. Real hard times.” I said, then pulled my .38 from its holster. “Let me show you something.”

I aimed at a nearby tree and squeezed the trigger. The gun popped like a sick firecracker and the bullet flopped out of the barrel to the ground. “Try yours.”

The old man looked at me hard. I could see suspicious orange swirls in his aura as he tried to figure out what sort of game I was playing. He went back to the porch to retrieve his rifle then returned and aimed at the same tree I had targeted. The gun popped and the bullet didn’t even exit the barrel. He shook the lead onto the ground and tried three more times with the same result.

“You think it’s got something to do with those lights?” he said, pointing overhead.

I wondered how many times I would hear that question in the coming days. “Almost positive,” I answered. “We’re going to be living like your grandparents for awhile. No lights, no phones, no motorcars.”

“Bring an axe or a club when you ride up to the Village,” I said as we headed back towards the porch. “You’ll need it for dogs and other, uh, critters, I’d think. And do a hard sell on Mrs. Caldwell about the benefits of travelling to Plainview in a wagon. No offence to her company, but I want to ride as fast and hard as I can.”

Jedediah tried three more guns before he was satisfied that there really was something wrong with the gunpowder. While I helped him hitch the horses to the hay wagon, I told him about Robert being hit by lightning, our encounter with the strange dog, and explained my ribbon system to him.

“One knot is safe, two is caution, three is danger. If you ever see four knots, turn around, because I ran from whatever is up ahead.”

“What if I ain’t got no ribbons?”

“Then tie a knot in whatever you got. One for safe, two, for caution, three for danger, four to avoid. Use rope or a vine if you don’t have any cloth. If you ever run into something that needs four knots, you put up as many as possible.”

I passed over the keys to my farm. “I’d appreciate it if you had your boy Jake ride up and keep an eye on my place. The hand pump is in the blue shed, still in the box. He can’t possibly miss it. When I get back, we’ll discuss that old smithy in your barn. I’ve a feeling that being a farrier is going to be a lucrative occupation in the future.”

Jedediah took the keys and shoved them in the pocket of his coveralls. “I knew your daddy,” he said, picking his words carefully. “Always thought he was touched in the head. Maybe he was just born too early.”

I laughed and stuck my hand out, clasping his dark, calloused hand in mine. ”Nah, he was a proper mug.”

“He always talked about you, after you went off overseas.” Jedediah said, processing my remark. “About those post cards and pictures you sent home to your mama. He was proud of you.”

I forced a smile. It was the first time I’d heard something like that. “I’m glad to hear it.” I loved my mother, but she was… well, she was dead now and that was that.

“You be careful out there, ya hear?”

“I will. Tell Jake not to use up all the water in my cistern and you better start cutting firewood for winter.”

“Ah hell,” Jedediah suddenly swore. “I’ll need to fix my chimney if we can’t get propane.”

“We’ll get some work parties organised when I get back and make sure things are taken care of,” I promised. “Maybe see if you can salvage any old wood stoves and cast iron cookware while you’re in town. Hand pumps, charcoal, bandages, stuff like that”

He nodded, brow wrinkling as he began to consider a winter without fuel. “Do you really think it’s that bad?”

“I believe it’s worse than we can possibly imagine.”

I waved goodbye to Mrs. Caldwell and Old Man Pigott when we parted ways on old Columbia road. It didn’t take much to convince Mrs. Caldwell that a padded seat in a wagon was better than a hard leather saddle. She even managed to swipe some aloe vera from the long neglected decorative garden planted by Jedediah’s late wife.

My psychic vision saw green motes appear around the aloe vera the moment she plucked it.[1]

The morning had slipped by and it was fast approaching noon. I kicked Sparky into a trot. I should have been past Plainview by now and it was getting harder to fight my monkey brain. The hairy bastard was screeching in the back of my skull, anxious about everything, panicking, flinging shit and making a fuss.

Worry is created when you focus on the past. Anxiety is created when you focus on the future. Focus on the present and those things that are within your ability to change.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

The monkey brain thinks I’m full of shit and decided to focus on old man Pigott’s unexpected revelations. I kept returning to them, rolling them over in my head. My father and I had never had a good relationship. If one was honest, he was a low-key racist, misogynistic, abusive asshole and our conflicts were the reason I had eagerly fled my rural home for university and never looked back. It wasn’t fair to blame everything on him, but I was just a kid and he was the main influence during my formative years. I can look back at my past and see that every major fuck-up I’d ever made had its roots in my childhood.

I have so many daddy issues that strippers give me an honorary membership discount.

As I passed other ruined homesteads that were visible from the road, I made a mental note of things that might be worth salvaging. There was a barn stuffed full of old lumber half hidden in the trees, probably half rotten but what couldn’t be used could be burned for heat. Glass window panes in a fire damaged house. If this truly was a global event then those would quickly become a luxury item. I spotted a couple of vegetable gardens that would needed to be raided, along with several steel frame buildings. I had no idea how to smelt and forge steel, but someone around here must have knowledge of the craft.

Books. I needed to raid a library, every library, and salvage whatever was available. I had two sets of encyclopaedias back at the farm house, one from the 60s and another from the 80s, [2] but they didn’t contain the specific knowledge we’d need to bootstrap civilisation. Einstein once said that intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it. Which held true in an age where every town had a library, but if we didn’t start storing information soon we’d have to learn it all over again.

Passing another field was full of hay grass, and I was suddenly reminded of the fodder I’d need for the animals come winter. I’d never considered the maths for how much they ate, I just bought it whenever I ran low. Ah, mental note: Raid the feed and seed as soon as possible. If those seeds go bad we’re going to be up shit creek in the spring.

I passed the time practising with my newly awakened super powers, my mind filled with apocalyptic thoughts as we trotted along the deserted road.

Footnotes:

1. Possibly a progenitor of heal root. This species was lost during the apocalypse.

2. A copy of the pre-apocalyptic Encyclopaedia Britannica (1986) and Collier’s Encyclopaedia (1968) can be referenced in the Carter Library. Copies are available at cost to anyone who requests. The Ascended believes that the spread of knowledge is more important than petty squabbles.

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Copyright © 2020, Conteur. All Rights Reserved.

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