A second beginning, p.1
A Second Beginning, page 1
A Second Beginning: Desolation #6
Copyright © 2023 David Lucin
Highway 3 Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be sold, transmitted, reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Covers by Christian
Cover typography by Deranged Doctor Design
www.authordavidlucin.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Newsletter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Afterword
About the Author
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1
“What’re you trying to do, Gary?” Jenn asked. “Kill yourself?”
“Kill myself?” He stood in front of the living room mirror. His powder-blue dress shirt hung from his thinning frame, and a tightly cinched belt kept his black slacks from falling off his waist. She shouldn’t judge or poke fun: her clothes didn’t fit anymore, either. No one’s did. “I think you’re being a touch dramatic.”
She waved the piece of paper with today’s itinerary. “There’s like a hundred things on here, and I don’t mean to sound rude, but you’re not exactly a young guy. You should be taking it easy.”
He didn’t laugh, but his mustache twitched with a smile. “I’m the mayor of a budding city-state. I can’t afford to take it easy.”
With a groan, she tucked the itinerary into her jacket pocket. “My first day off in weeks, and I volunteer to be your bodyguard. I could’ve slept in, had a nice breakfast with Sam, lazed around on the couch. It would’ve been like the olden days.”
“It’s not too late. I really don’t need a bodyguard.”
Maria’s sharp reply came from the hallway. “You absolutely need a bodyguard.” She shuffled up to the mirror, dressed in her trademark purple housecoat. Her silver-white hair reached past her shoulders, and her skin had taken on an unhealthy grayish hue. At least her battery-powered oxygen concentrator—the one Jenn, Gary, and Sam bargained for on the first day after the bombs—kept humming away. Kept her breathing and alive. “I realize it’s been a long time since that mess with Vincent Grierson, but I’ll never forget what he did to Mayor Andrews. And who better to watch your back than Jenn?”
“You have a point there.” Gary popped his collar and wrapped a plain black tie around his neck. “Besides, Jenn, we all know why you volunteered today.”
She batted her eyelashes. “Because I’m an awesome sort-of daughter who loves to spend time with her awesome sort-of dad?”
He shoved the tie’s fat end through a loop and tightened up the knot. “Because if you took the day off, you’d miss the Army’s envoy.”
Busted. But who wouldn’t want to be there when the Army’s envoy showed up? First, the Army said it’d be here this month. Now an envoy had rushed ahead to meet with Flagstaff and Prescott ASAP. Jenn had to know why. The real U.S. Army, coming to the rescue—it sounded too good to be true. Because it probably was. Somewhere, there’d be a catch, a price to pay. Sam called her jaded. Pessimistic. She called herself a realist. The past year hadn’t done much to make her confident about the future, and she saw everything with skeptical eyes.
“It’d be nice if they gave you some info in advance,” she said. “You know, so we weren’t left completely in the dark about what’s going on.”
He exhaled so hard his mustache fluttered. Jenn got the sense he had his own doubts, even if he tried to act positive. “Yes, that would be nice, although I understand why they don’t want to share details over shortwave radio.” He checked his knot in the mirror, grunted, then undid it and started over. “Anyone could be listening in.”
Maria moved his hands and tied the knot herself. “You look wonderful. Very professional. I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a tie.” She patted his chest when she was done. “There. Perfect.”
“Thank you, dear.” He kissed his wife, put on his jacket, and touched a framed photograph of his real daughter, Camila, in uniform. Then he asked Jenn, “Ready?”
She gave him a mock salute. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Outside, the crisp spring air smelled like campfires. Patches of snow clung to Gary’s front yard. Jenn and Sam’s yard, too, and all the other yards on the street. Some trees had sprouted leaves, but most remained bare. If Jenn didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought it was early March, not the middle of May.
She sat behind the wheel of the solar Dodge, put on her Diamondbacks hat, and jabbed the start button with her finger. “City hall first, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gary said from the passenger seat.
They drove downtown, past the Go Market. Already, at 8:00 a.m., the lineup filled the stanchioned queue in the parking lot and stretched down the block. A troop of cops and Militia armed with semiautomatics guarded the front door. Everywhere, trails of smoke rose from homes and winter shelters. Trash littered the sidewalks and the road, and the world seemed grayer somehow, less alive, than it should have for this time of year. As if Jenn needed another reminder that her home was on the brink. This nightmare was her new normal.
Gary’s day began with two hours of paperwork at his office. Then he and Jenn were off to the water treatment plant for talks with an engineer about restoring running water to some parts of the city. Next, Gary shook hands with a team of lumberjacks and thanked them for all their hard work in the fall and winter. After that, he met a pair of city councilors, several family members of dead Militia troops, and an artist who could make something out of stone. For an hour, they discussed the monument that would commemorate those who died defending Flagstaff from the Great Khan and the White Horde.
As they climbed back into the Dodge, Jenn checked the itinerary and winced. “You don’t have to go to all the funerals,” she said softly. “I get why you do it, but there’s four or five a week now. It’s okay to give yourself a break.”
He did up his seat belt and looked straight forward, jaw set. “Every death that happens in this town is my responsibility, so I’ll keep going until people stop dying.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this, Gary. It’s not your fault. It’s China’s fault. Russia’s fault. If anything, you’re saving lives, and everyone knows it. I’m not sure if you noticed how those lumberjacks were fawning over you, but I did. It was like you were a celebrity. It’s the same in the Militia. You should give yourself some credit instead of being so hard on yourself all the time.”
“Jenn, you—” He stopped himself with a sigh and pointed through the windshield. “Let’s go, please. I don’t want to be late.”
How many times had they had this conversation? More than she could count. She wished he could see what the rest of Flagstaff saw: a tireless leader, a compassionate man who’d do anything for his neighbors and his town. If only he’d stop being so stubborn.
In silence, they drove to Foxglenn Park. A year ago, ponderosa pines surrounded this field. Now they’d been reduced to stumps, cut for firewood. In the center of the park stood a wooden pyre the size of a small garage. On it lay bodies wrapped in white sheets. There could be thirty, forty. Dozens of mourners in spring jackets cried and hugged each other. The sight would always shatter Jenn’s heart, no matter how many funerals she attended.
Gary climbed out of the truck. Jenn followed him, an M4 slung over her shoulder and a Glock 9mm in a drop holster on her thigh. He shook hands and said his condolences until a pastor gave a short, solemn sermon. At the end, he set the pyre alight, and as the bodies burned, she saw herself burning with them. This morning, the scale in her bathroom read eighty-nine pounds. Before the bombs, she weighed 135. The hunger pains were so constant that she’d gotten used to how they twisted her belly. Worse, she missed her period last month, and she hadn’t accidentally got pregnant. A box of tests had proved it.
She’d known for a while that she was starving, but only recently had she begun to accept that she could die. It terrified her, the realization that she had maybe months left to live, not years.
Gradually, the crowd dispersed until Jenn and Gary were alone in the field.
“When’s it gonna get better?” she asked on their way back to the truck. “This feels worse than it did in the middle of winter.”
“It is worse,” he said, taking long, slow steps. “The flu’s mostly gone, but people have to eat. Some fresh vegetables from a few gardens won’t help us much, even if we could build a hundred greenhouses.”
“Can we make it until the harvest? That’s in, what, July? August?”
“I don’t know, precisely, but our next appointment will.”
Ninety minutes later, they walked through the Beaumont farm with Sophie. Everywhere, workers tended to the fields: digging trenches, laying seed, watering patches of soil. Jenn looked for Allison or Charlie as Sophie kicked a patch of hard-packed dirt with the toe of her boot.
“The ground’s still frozen in places, and we’re seeing frosts every two or three mornings. You don’t need to be a climatologist to know how unseasonably cold it is for May.” She aimed a bony finger at the sky. “We have the smoke to thank for that. Last year, my yields on potatoes were down twenty percent. The little bit of corn I grew was down forty or fifty percent. To put it simply, the plants aren’t getting enough energy.”
Gary loosened his tie. “In 1815, a volcano erupted in Indonesia, filling the atmosphere with ash. The following year, temperatures dropped and crops failed all around the world. It’s been called the Year Without a Summer. Nuclear winter is, essentially, the same phenomenon, although I’m not sure when it will end. The smoke doesn’t seem to be thinning any.”
“Not in the slightest. We’re doing what we can to ramp up food production, but we’ll be planting every seed I have in inventory, which is less than we planted last spring. The consequences should be self-explanatory.” Sophie took off her ratty old ball cap and ran a hand over her graying hair. Her deep eye sockets and sunken cheeks made Jenn think of a Halloween skeleton. “How many at the funeral today?”
“Forty.” Gary said the word like it bit his mouth on the way out. “Yesterday was thirty-eight.”
Sophie whistled but shook her head sadly. “Expect that number to continue rising until we drop to a population we can sustain with what we can reliably grow and store for the winter.”
“And how many is that?” Jenn asked.
“Excellent question, Jansen.” Sophie slapped her leg with her hat and kept walking. “Keep in mind, I am not a demographer, nor am I an expert in the carrying capacities of northern Arizonan alpine biomes, but if I had to hazard an estimate, I’d say between ten and fifteen thousand.”
“Ten thousand?” Jenn coughed out, and again, she saw that pyre. This time, Maria lay on it with Gary, Sam, Nicole, Allison, Quinn, Dylan, Freddie. Everyone she cared about. Everyone she loved. She’d fought so hard for them, and it might not be enough. They could all die anyway.
Gary asked, “If we had the seed, could you grow more crops to compensate for the reduction in yield?”
“We could try.” Sophie spat to the side. “My husband is aware of a facility outside Phoenix that may have seed for corn, as well as fertilizer, but for all we know, it’s at the bottom of a radioactive crater.”
“A Militia team could check it out.”
“I won’t object to that, but I should warn you: finding seed doesn’t solve the root of the problem. Frankly, Flagstaff isn’t a good place for intensive agriculture.” She crouched to move a football-shaped rock from the path. “For argument’s sake, let’s consider a scenario. Say we did find a virtually limitless supply of corn seed and managed to get it all in the ground so it was ready for harvest before the next snowfall. We’d still be in trouble. Flagstaff is about seven thousand feet above sea level, and the wind can devastate an entire crop of corn. Same with wheat or anything else that’s exposed to the elements. The natives grew potatoes in this part of the state for a reason.”
God, the wind. This time of year, it blew hard enough to rattle whole buildings and tear branches off trees. Cornstalks didn’t stand a chance.
Jenn held up her hand. “This might be a stupid question, but if potatoes are so great, why don’t we grow them instead? You even said your potato yields were better than corn. There’s gotta be more seed somewhere, right?”
Sophie stood up and wiped her hands on her thighs. “This isn’t Idaho, Jansen. Arizona’s biggest crop was lettuce. We could each eat a head a day and starve to death. The next biggest crop was cotton, and I regret to inform you that we are not moths. If you happen to know where we can find sufficient quantities of potato seed to feed a population of some thirty thousand people while saving up a surplus for winter, please, tell me now.”
“So potatoes are out,” Gary said. “What about growing wheat or corn in a more favorable climate, like in Phoenix, and then transporting it here?”
“That would be doable, assuming you can charge enough vehicles to make regular trips to a farming site 150 miles away. You’d also need to protect the fields and a whole lot of workers, all while guarding the route between Flagstaff and Phoenix and protecting us at home from another wacko like His Majesty the Great Khan. I know the Militia’s grown in the past few months, but I’m doubtful you have the manpower or electricity-generation capacity for such an ambitious enterprise.”
He put a hand over his mouth and dragged it down, stretching the skin on his cheeks. Jenn felt his frustration like it was her own. There had to be an answer.
“What do you propose, then?” he asked. “I refuse to admit that our only way forward is to let people die.”
“Aside from packing up the entire town and migrating south? I don’t have a clue.” Sophie pulled a toothpick from her breast pocket and pointed it at Gary. “Maybe your pals in the U.S. Army will have a miracle solution or, at the very least, can favorably alter some of the variables contributing to our little dilemma.”
Jenn snorted at her. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
“Not at all.” Sophie stuck her toothpick in her mouth. “However, at this point—and I am loath to admit this because I truly detest relying on a government entity for anything, let alone survival—they are quite possibly our last best hope.”
Fear curdled in the pit of Jenn’s stomach. She’d bet every page in her ration booklet that the Army didn’t have enough food to save Flagstaff. To save Sam. To save her family and friends. To save her.
“I’m scheduled to meet with their envoy in a couple of hours,” Gary said. “So we’ll find out soon if you’re right, Mrs. Beaumont.”
2
Jenn had never seen the roadblock on I-17 so busy.
A full platoon of Militia guarded the vehicles blocking the north- and southbound lanes, while a legged combat drone watched the median. Behind the front line, among a cluster of pop-up tents, stood a crowd of twenty or thirty civilians: city councilors, community leaders, men and women Jenn had met at city hall. She spotted Chief Morrison with a few other black-clad PD officers, as well as Commander Liam Kipling and his new executive officer, Major Felicia Townsend.
“Half the town is here,” she said as she parked the solar Dodge behind a line of vehicles on the shoulder.
“We want to give the Army a warm welcome.” Gary pulled down his sun visor, flipped open the little mirror, and adjusted his tie.
“Gary, you look fine.” She pushed the visor back up. “You’re nervous. I can tell. Are you having doubts about this?”
“Doubts about this meeting? No, of course not.”
She squinted at him. “I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
He fidgeted with his hands. “I have doubts about what this all means, especially after our conversation with Sophie. I’m sure the Army can help us, but I don’t know if it will be the kind of help we need right now.”
“That kind of help being food?”
“Exactly.” He caught himself fidgeting, stopped, and looked across the cab at her. “Thank you for coming with me today. It means a lot.”
“It’s all good, Gary,” she said and opened her door. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And you’ll do great with the envoy. I know it.”
