The Event Series (Book 3): The Archive and Beyond Read online

  Sergeant Gilbert got a poker tournament going, and it was fun, got kind of intense for a while there. I really got lucky early and it got me to the final table, but really, Mark and Asuna were on their game it would seem with Mark pulling off the win.

  Fire Pit tonight, and it was just kind of a sedate, relaxing kind of night.

  August 27th

  It was a beautiful morning, the air seems so clean. The Earth has been washed, and cleansed.

  The plan is in place and Teckla and Asuna are going to ride out to the oxbow to find out who or what is out there. I have a little apprehension, but it seems like it will be okay, although in this day and the state of the world, we just don’t know.

  They will be able to truck the horses out most of the way, and then do a short ride from there. The Marines will head out a little earlier and walk into place and set up, Margo and Cody will do the same on the other side of the river.

  Now, I think while we wait, Tanya and I will deal with some gardening. Prayers and positive energy for the meeting.

  They, Teckla and Asuna did not come back until late in the afternoon, but it was okay, things went better than we expected. Vespers was filled with the story of the meeting.

  (Margo) Code and I set up on the other side of the river. We drove out and were there for about 9:30, and then just waited and watched. We were able to see the small white farmhouse and an old red barn. There were people moving around, I think there were 5, 2 men, a woman and a couple of kids. They seemed unaware that we were here. And I did not see that any carried guns, although I am sure that there were some close by. Mostly they were doing farm stuff; there were a couple of pigs, a cow, and a bunch of chickens.

  We waited and at about 10:30 Teckla and Asuna rode up. It created a stir, but nothing from our angle that seemed hostile. Teckla and Asuna just sat on the horses while the two men and the woman talked to them. Finally, after a few minutes, Teckla and Asuna dismounted. Hands were shaken, and it seemed that there was laughter. At one point the woman hugged them both. They went into the house, and that was it, we were out of contact. All we could do was wait and listen the best we could, and all we would be able to hear was maybe gunshots.

  We were supposed to get a call on the radio when they were about to enter the farm driveway, but didn’t. Teckla had turned off the radio that she had and put it into her saddle bag. Actually a good idea, it would not give the idea that there were others with them, or nearby.

  We sat. Then finally, at like 5 o’clock they came back out of the house. It looked like things went well. It was after all, Teckla who had negotiated with the Hinsdale people back in the beginning, so it must have worked out.

  We stayed for a little bit just to watch what happened after Teckla and Asuna left. The woman seemed very excited, kind of bouncing around. But we couldn’t hear so who knows.

  We walked back to our truck and were back to camp around dark.

  The group at the flagpole / fire pit was buzzing. We have new friends it would seem.

  (Tom) It was another slow start this morning, I am wondering if I am coming down with something, a cold, or flu.

  Big news for the day is the contact with the farm in the oxbow. There are 5 people living there, a pair of brothers, Lincoln and Larry, Larry’s wife, Belinda, and their two kids, Sally and Dennis. Teckla said that Larry was the kind of in-charge guy. They had been a couple of city farmers from just north of Springfield.

  I had to laugh at the idea of “City Farmers” but I guess they were actually AG teachers at one of the trade schools and were into the whole greenhouse and farming studies programs for the kids. So it did really make sense.

  They have turned the little oxbow into an effective working farm and were able to supply themselves with food for the winter last year, and were actually going to have extra this year.

  They had known we, our camp was in the area because of the recent helicopter runs to the mountain. And they had figured out that we were somewhere to the west because we would come from west to east in the morning, and east to west toward the end of the day.

  They are trusting, and maybe a little naive according to Teckla, but nice people. It would be good to have them as neighbors if we moved to the mountain, and for that matter, we could work together to unite in some form.

  This is a good feeling.

  (Lance) Okay, Teckla and Asuna are going to make contact with the people who have the crop fields in the Oxbow. I am not sure how that will turn out, but it is something that we all agreed needed to be done. They know we’re out here, and we need to know if they are cool with us, especially if we are going to move up to the Archive.

  I was able to hook up a transmitter, kind of a bug device on Asuna’s holster belt so that we could hear what was going on. Steven flew a few of us up to the Archive so that we could be in range to hear what was going on, and if necessary play cavalry. It was Washa, Del, and I with Steven.

  “I hope this goes well,” I recognized Asuna’s voice and I was guessing that they were close to camp.

  “We’ll find out very shortly,” answered Teckla.

  A couple of minutes lapsed.

  “Hi, we mean no harm, Hi,” said Teckla.

  I could not hear the other side of the conversation. The others were too far away.

  “Thank you, yes, we have been lucky to find some horses. It looks like you have had some luck with animals too.” It was Teckla.

  Mumbles, still can’t hear.

  “Sure, a cup of tea would be great.” This time it was Asuna.

  “I am Belinda, this is Larry, my husband, and his brother, twin brother Linc, Lincoln, and our children, Sally and Dennis.” They were close enough now.

  “Nice to meet you, I am Teckla and this is Asuna.”

  From there the group moved into the kitchen and I am not going to detail the dialogue, but will recap it.

  Larry and Lincoln Pelletier were school teachers in Chicopee, Larry taught Biology, Lincoln taught Vocational Agriculture. When the shit hit the fan they saw the potential and moved away from the Springfield hub before it was blown up. They had hidden out for a while out past Westfield. They had kept a low profile and hung on. There had originally been a few more with them. A couple of other teachers with families had also been with them, but they broke away and headed further west, toward Middlefield.

  In the end, it was only the six who stayed together and made their way back toward Springfield. Lincoln had remembered the oxbow and thought it would be a great place to hole up; they would be fairly well protected with water all around. Overall it was a good set up, but they had a couple of visits by small hordes of Zoms, which was when Sarah, Lincoln’s wife was bitten. Lincoln said it was a slow painful end for her.

  They had held on since then, since a year ago in July. They were able to get through the winter by scavenging food and had time to get some crops in. This year they were on to the program and were on their way to having more than enough.

  Teckla told them about some of our adventures, good and bad, starting out in Peru, rescuing us from Danahee, Hinsdale, the bikers and finally the whole Stanwix mess.

  “What is up on the mountain that you keep flying up to, and where did you get a helicopter?” asked Lincoln.

  “Yeah, that is a kind of long story on the helicopter, but short version, we have an army chopper pilot who found and fixed it up. And we were able to find fuel sources that let us keep it flying.” Teckla told them.

  “The mountain, well, we have just started exploring it, so only a few of us have been up to it. And we are not part of the “us”, so we don’t really know. But best we can tell you it is was an old air force base that was turned over to the local colleges as a library archive storage facility. It could be a good wintering ground,” explained Asuna.

  “Right! I remember hearing about it; it was an old SAC base, a backup command post if the Russians bombed us. When I was in school, in the late 70s it was closed, and kids used to sneak up there to …. Ah…�
� started Lincoln.

  “Park?” said Teckla with a laugh.

  Long pause and laughter, I can only guess that Lincoln might have been beet red. I will have to ask.

  The conversations continued on and they talked about maybe some food exchanges and even maybe some animal transfers, a pig for a lamb, maybe stabling a couple of the horses.

  The kids loved the idea of the horse.

  As the day neared an end and most things were talked out, Teckla got serious.

  “We have a cure for the virus, if you want it.”

  Belinda spoke up, “Really? How, science, medicine are gone, we are just farmers and hunters now.”

  “It is another long story, and we are more than just hunters and gatherers, we are rebuilding, trying to get humanity going again. You, we are not alone. We have seen other people, colonies like yours, only bigger, there is military, there are ships, there are people. And well, we had some help from some friends,” replied Asuna.

  Silence, this would have been a great visual moment, I think, all of them sitting around a table, just looking at each other.

  “What is the cure?” asked Larry, he had a skeptical tone.

  “It is a pill, a one-time pill, we have all taken it, it seems to have no side effect, but it does kill the virus, it makes you invisible to the Hunters, and it prevents you from coming back after you die,” Teckla told them.

  More silence, then “Hunters? What are Hunters?” asked Dennis, the 10 year old.

  “Ah, another story” began Asuna, “Hunters are, were robots that the government made to track down and kill those people who had the illness. The only problem with it was they did not figure that the virus was in all of us, so even those who were not ‘sick’, the robots, the Hunters saw us as infected and attacked.”

  “So these pills, makes us safe from these things, that we have never seen?” questioned skeptical Larry.

  “I know, it sounds weird, almost unbelievable, but we have seen 9 of our people killed by them. Oh, they are real.” hissed Teckla. “It was how I lost Frank.”

  “We are not going to tell you one way or the other what you should do, we only offer them to you because it is what we do. I just got back from driving cross country to deliver pills to one of the military installations in Colorado,” Asuna told them, and filled them in on the airport incident with the Hunter they had encountered.

  “Can we think about it, talk it over?” asked Belinda.

  “Of course, we are not trying to force this on anyone, we’re just telling you we have it and will share it with you,” replied Teckla.

  It was getting late and Teckla told them they needed to start back toward our camp. They never did tell them where it was, that was good.

  As they rode back to the horse trailer, I was about to shut down the transmitter, but I heard, “Teckla, the twins are kind of hunks, what do you think?”

  “They do have that kind of country boy, cowboy look to them for sure,” answered Teckla, and they both chuckled.

  August 28th

  (Margo) I caught up with Asuna this morning. I was curious about the farmers. Were they nice people and were we going to be able to get along with them, that was my question.

  She told me that she felt that they were good folks; the brothers kind of reminded her of Henry in their demeanor, nice down to earth people, only younger, they were in their 40s. The two of them looked like they were from a country western band, complete with the cowboy hats.

  Larry was clearly in love with this wife, Belinda, and the kids. Belinda was a little on the mousy side. She was very up-beat and excitable, kind of a cheerleader type. During the visit she was kind of bouncing the entire time. She was a little younger than Larry, but not that much. The kids, well, they were kids, young, yet there was a kind of maturity about them. They seemed to understand the world, and how it was now.

  Lincoln, well, he looked like Larry, duh, they were twins, but there was a sadness that kind of hung over him. Losing Sarah had messed him up, and he still hasn’t gotten over it.

  I thought about that, and wondered if Asuna hadn’t showed up when she did, where would Tom be now.

  That was really about it, Code, Gillie and I did another recon patrol. This time we looked to the southwest, again we found nothing new or out of the ordinary. Mac came along with us. He is quiet, I mean he doesn’t say much, just always looking, watching, and seeing things.

  I want to check with Steven, maybe Code and I can take the ride up to Bare Mountain tomorrow. I am curious.

  (Tom) I am glad that things went well with the people at the oxbow. It is called River View Farm, or it was before the meteor. That was what Teckla told us. She said the people were fine and that we shouldn’t have any issues with them. I was a little curious about the others that had separated from them, the other teachers. They could be the people who McManus saw the flashes from.

  Beyond that, it was quiet day here in the camp. It is just a nice summer day. Asuna and I tried our hand at fly fishing, today, the fish won.

  (Lance) It was up to the Mountain again today, we have decided that the direct route would be okay again, no need to try to hide after Teckla and Asuna had met with the farmers.

  I spent most of the day in the radar room; I am trying to get the Archives communications system working. They do have a Sat-Comm, although it is older than the one that we have. And the computers that they have were from the 1990’s, 386 chips, minimal memory, like 2 ram, this stuff is ancient. I think I may have to get a modern computer and some other equipment up here. A project for Del and me, Radio Shack, here we come.

  Washa spent much of the time working on just cleaning the guns in the armory, checking them out, making sure they were ready. We really haven’t needed them, but better to have them ready to go.

  Tonight after fire pit, Del and I talked, we are still not ready to take the cure, and have our promise, if one of us gets bit…. But we also talked about children, it was kind of a surprise how it started, talking about the farm kids. It was good that there were children, and that they seemed to be adapting to the situation, the world the way it now is. We talked about the hopes we all have with little Augustus. Maybe, in the spring we will start trying, but for now, no.

  (Matt) I talked to Mom when she and Asuna got back from the meet over on the oxbow. It is a farm, and seems from what she said to be a successful one. I had at first thought of an exchange program with them, for crops, although we pretty much have the same things growing. But still I would like to visit the place and see what they have.

  I did a little talk at Vespers tonight about hope, and it seemed to fit. We had been early on ‘alone’ just the Peru Crew, and then Hinsdale joined us, and some of the biker gang, and Stanwix, we have met people on the way to deliver the medicine, and there is the Pittsburgh, we have friends, and other people out there, there is still a world, and humanity, and as long as that is going on, there is hope.

  It was a warm night tonight, Tanya and I sat out until about 2am. The Northern Lights were at it again tonight.

  August 29th

  (Tom) I kind of missed the day; it was last year, on the 26th that I lost Anne. I went out and visited her today, the grave, I left some flowers.

  (Matt)It has really gotten back to the normal stuff around the camp, farming, canning, and smoking some meat for the winter. It is busy work, but it is good work.

  I had a dream last night. The raven was back, he was sitting on a tree limb looking toward the west.

  Tanya wants me to talk to Teckla and see if she and I can visit the River View Farm. Tan seems drawn to them, like they are fellow members of the earth clan. I also feel a connection.

  A bunch of us settled down to watch the Northern Lights; they put on a good show for us tonight.

  (Lance) It was another day of playing up at the Archive. I have just about figured out what I need to get for electronics. A computer and some laptops, a couple of big hard drives, some cables, a printer, a router, maybe even a s
erver if I can find one. I can do some things with this place. I mean a system is basically in place, unfortunately it is old and most of the hardware will need to be updated. If I knew when we were actually going to move up here, I could strip the stuff out of my cabin and just move it. Maybe I should talk with The Three and they set a time table.

  When we walked out to go for home, I realized how great the temperature stability of the Archive is. It is a nice comfortable and constant range in the mountain, the deeper you go, the cooler it gets. The radar room is about 65. But outside, it is in the 90s, and the humidity is killer.

  Nothing seemed disturbed in the cabin when we got back, the tapes showed nothing.

  Matt had told us that the Aurora has been really beautiful to watch the last few nights. After fire pit a bunch of us stayed out after dark and he was right. Mostly greens, but just beautiful.

  August 30th

  (Margo) I skipped writing yesterday, and could have skipped today. Gillie, Code and I headed out and checked around in the east side of camp. The horse farm is over there so while we were in the area we tested our ‘good ole boy’ on horseback. Turned out the country boy was from Birmingham, downtown and his knowledge of horses was basically that they were big, furry and not very easy to drive.

  I think that tomorrow Code and I will take Lemon Drop and Chuckles and try going further east. Maybe Del can come with us, if she doesn’t head up to the Mountain with Lance.

  There was a good thing that came out of Gillie’s horse fail; he got to talk to Tay a little. It went better than I would have thought. He was not a complete goober about it.

  (Lance) The Three has asked me to put together a way for the people out at the River View Farm can communicate with us. It is way too far for the radios that we have, police or CB, so I am kind of at a loss unless I can find something up at the Archive. I have not looked for that type of equipment. Right now I could work something from the Archive, but from Romanica, that is a challenge.

  While they were asking me about the radio I asked them about whether or when we were going to move. They said “yes”, but were kind of vague on the when. Part of it has to do with finishing up the crops; part of it is getting the Archive set up. There are rooms that we can all live in, but we need to settle on a kind of floor plan of who goes where.