Book 24 - An Imperfect Utopia, page 25
“Over eight kilometres,” Heppy said. “That’s if there are only twenty-one sets of double fences.”
“That can’t be right,” Jay said. “How d’you work out the perimeter of a circle?”
“Don’t worry about the circle,” Heppy said. “The fences appeared square.”
“Squarish,” Jay said.
“Polygonal. So if each field is an acre,” Heppy said, “and if that can be expressed as a square with sides of sixty by seventy metres—”
“No, I wasn’t questioning your sums,” Jay cut in. “I mean eight kilometres of fencing is massive.”
“What was it you wanted Etienne to see?” Tom asked.
With a theatrical flourish, Etienne stood up and stepped back from the section of fence he’d been peering at. “Voilà.” He pointed at the fence, tracing his finger to the gate. “Et voici.”
“It’s a wire,” Minnie said. “Is the gate electrified?”
Etienne tapped the top of the gate with the back of his hand. “Non. If the wire breaks, an alarm sounds. There is a wire along the outer fence, another on the gate.” He crouched down. “They meet here at the gate post, and both head back up that track. But there isn’t enough tension. It would be easy to break the fence without damaging the wire.”
“Which tells me they never tested it under adverse conditions,” Tom said.
“You mean there were never any hordes here?” Jay asked, looking around. “Cool.”
“I assume we’re going in?” Minnie asked.
Sholto looked at his wrist. His watch was pink with a mermaid on the face. Daisy had given it to him just after her and Annette’s joint birthday because she didn’t think it was fair that only the two girls got presents. It was now his most treasured possession. “It’s getting hot out here, and none of us got a good night’s sleep,” he said. “Let’s take a look around and cool down for a bit. We’ve plenty of time to reach Olympia.”
The track ran west for about two hundred yards, ending in another gate, this one head-height and covered in metal sheeting. There was no lock, just a vertical spring-bar that had to be lifted in order to swing the gate outward.
“They were definitely more worried about zoms than people,” Jay said.
“And not that worried about people, either,” Sholto said. “Maybe that inexperience led to overconfidence, and to their ultimate demise.”
Beyond the gate was a square compound that encompassed the original farmhouse and barns and a portion of the fields that had previously stood on the site. The lawn had been replaced with raised vegetable beds, a solar panel array, and a neat patio area.
Etienne and John went to find the irrigation system. Minnie went to inspect the barns, while Tom, Heppy, and Jay began a search of the house. Sholto looked for a way into the fields.
Ten minutes later, a length of straw between his teeth, Sholto took a seat on the porch, mulling over what he’d seen.
“Good view?” Tom asked when he came outside.
“Not bad,” Sholto said. “You can see the fields and not much else. Not a bad view to greet the day with. If I weren’t tumbleweed in a good pair of boots, I might think about putting down some roots hereabouts. What’s it like inside?”
“I’ve heard of ghost ships, but not a ghost farm, and that’s what it is. It’s clean, as if the people just packed up, leaving everything behind. They turned their boot room into a pantry and packed it with food. A lot of food. There’s a gun cabinet right by the door. They left a twelve-gauge and two .308s, but there’s space for a dozen more long guns. No bullets, though. The kitchen’s clean. There isn’t even a dish on the rack.”
“How much food?” Sholto asked.
“Enough for months, depending on how many lived here,” Tom said. “It’s a small house, but the barn’s been converted into living space. Minnie’s checking it out, but I’d say around a dozen called this place home. Heppy’s doing a stocktake while Jay’s hovering nearby with a can opener. How about you?”
“Up close, the field wasn’t quite the find it seemed from afar. Weeds and stalks are intermingled with arcs of sprouting green grains. It’s definitely rye, but I’d bet on it being a winter cover crop due for harvest in March. When it wasn’t harvested, some of it self-seeded. The automatic irrigation system is solar powered and linked to a durable governance system that Etienne’s looking over. It clearly kept on running after they left, but a lot of the individual nozzles are clogged. I don’t know how much, if any, of the crop can be salvaged, but it would only be a matter of hours to fix the irrigation.”
“And the water?” Tom asked.
“Comes from a rainwater cistern. Looks like they dug it themselves.”
“The restaurant’s open!” Jay called. “Come take your seats.”
“Is he volunteering to cook?” Sholto asked.
“I hope not,” Tom said. “That kid has many talents, but the best I can say about his culinary skills is that they’re better than your brother’s.”
Sholto followed Tom into the house, noting where a wall had been removed to turn a porch into a boot room. A shelving shoe-rack occupied the far wall, with two pairs of work boots and a variety of sneakers and flip-flops. Hanging from pegs on the inner two walls were a smattering of raincoats and ponchos, scarves, and gloves.
Tom took him through a living room densely packed with sofas, armchairs, and a garden recliner, all positioned to face a fireplace. Fifteen seats in all, plus a couple of folding chairs propped next to a bank of shelves filled with boardgames. Two other bookshelves were filled with paperbacks. A third held DVDs, though there was no TV in the room.
The door at the end led into a kitchen-diner that must have originally been two separate rooms before the adjoining wall was removed, probably post-outbreak. They’d painted the walls, but half was carpeted, while the other half was tiled. The carpeted dining area held three tables placed next to each other with three chairs at each narrow end and six on each of the long sides.
Jay stood in the kitchen holding a five-pound tin like it was his first child. “Who likes blueberries?” he asked.
“How many are there?” Sholto asked.
“Dunno. Maybe a hundred. It doesn’t say,” Jay said, carefully turning the tin so they could see the sticker-label with the solitary word handwritten in thick blue ink.
“I meant to ask how many cans,” Sholto said.
“Almost everything in here is home-canned,” Heppy called out from inside the pantry-room. “Canned or jarred. There are some old-world spices. Mostly steak seasoning, all the same brand.”
“How much preserved food?” Tom asked, taking the can from Jay.
“Give me a minute. I haven’t finished counting,” Heppy said.
Sholto stepped forward so he could see inside the pantry. The room’s windows had been boarded, as had the window on the door, leaving it a narrow chamber dimly illuminated by what light came through the kitchen window, and from Heppy’s flashlight. He’d put the room at twelve feet by ten, but into which they’d crammed five rows of metal shelves with only a narrow passage between.
“They must have harvested this last fall,” Tom said, tapping the tin.
Drawers rattled as Jay opened one and then the next. “Are you looking for a can opener?” Sholto asked.
“Always carry two in case one breaks, that’s what Tuck taught me. No, back in Digby, there were some foragers who created a map of which back gardens had fruit trees or fruit bushes growing wild, that kind of thing. I bet they did the same here.”
“Double fences, an alarm, an irrigation system, planting a winter crop, that’s a lot of effort,” Sholto said. “It requires planning and organisation.”
Tom stepped into the pantry. “Heppy, the cans, are they all the same size?”
“So far. Yes, I think so.”
“What are you thinking?” Sholto asked.
“I’m guessing you weren’t one for growing your own produce,” Tom said. “People called it home canning, but they mostly meant home jarring. The jars can be bought anywhere. For actual canning in metal tins like this, you’d need a commercial set-up. From what I’ve seen, this place looks like it used to be a horse farm, so they’re unlikely to have had equipment like that here.”
“So they went to a cannery,” Sholto said.
“I bet one of them used to work there,” Jay said.
The back door opened, and Minnie came in with an arrow in her hands. “That is the neatest wood-working shop I’ve ever seen. There’s three sets of tools. One store bought. One made, like old carpenters had to do before they could call themselves a master, and one set’s that a work in progress. A master and an apprentice, and they made a lot of arrows. There’s about five thousand arrowheads in there, waiting for a shaft.”
“They have a forge?” Tom asked.
“Nope,” Minnie said. “They seemed to only work wood.”
“How many people lived here?” Sholto asked.
“Five in this house, two couples, one single,” Minnie said. “Two couples in the stables, six singles in the barn. No kids. They’re all adults, and no one’s been here in months.”
Tom tracked a finger along the dusty counter. “The people at Bangor Base can’t have known about it, or they’d have picked up some food. Maybe all the food. I guess that tells us that they didn’t take this road when they drove up there, or didn’t know what the fields and fences might mean.”
“Probably the latter,” Minnie said.
“Has anyone seen any cars?” Sholto asked.
“There’s one old tractor in the other barn and two small city cars with so much grime on the windscreens you’d need to burn it off,” Minnie said. “There’s no pickups, and if you’re running a farm, who wouldn’t have one?”
“Five hundred and twelve cans,” Heppy said as she stepped out of the pantry. “That’s not including the jars of herbs, mushrooms, and berries, or the preserves, though there aren’t many of those.”
“And it’s a five-pound can,” Tom said.
“More like twenty quid at least,” Jay said. “What’s five pounds in kilos?”
“About two and a half,” Sholto said. “So that’s about two days of food in each can.”
“They would be a very strange couple of days,” Jay said.
“It’s about a thousand days of food or sixty-six days for fifteen,” Tom said. “Factor in some hunting and fishing, and it should have lasted them three to four months. If the rye was planted last autumn as a winter cover crop, they expected to harvest it last April. It would have been tight, but it sounds about enough to last through winter.”
“Depending on when they left,” Jay said.
“And assuming they didn’t have other stores of food,” Sholto said. “Let’s have something to eat, and rest for a bit, but I want to be back on the road in an hour.”
Chapter 31 - Ten or Ten Million
Christmas Village
Sholto returned to the porch, loosened his laces, stretched out his legs, and mulled over the possibilities of salvaging some of the rye.
After ten minutes, Jay came outside with two bowls. “Want some blueberries?”
“Sure. Has anyone tested them?”
“I had two bowls and I’m still breathing, so I’d say that makes them safe to eat.” He handed Sholto a bowl and sat on the bench next to him. “Hurricane is great at testing food. We should get more of them.”
“More dogs?”
“Yeah, because the food we find is going to be old and unsafe. Better to test it on a dog than a person.”
“I guess so.”
“Cool, so can you tell Mum, because she’s dead set against me getting a dog. Neil says the farm could get a guard dog, but only if it’s a puppy, and how are we supposed to find one of those?”
“I thought Etienne’s cat had moved into the farm,” Sholto said.
“Oh, sure. But Boots is cool with dogs. So, will you talk with Mum?”
“If she won’t be swayed by you, she won’t be swayed by anyone. Not bad,” Sholto added, taking a mouthful. “They’d be nicer chilled, I suppose.”
“Or hot with some ice cream,” Jay said. “Or cold with some ice cream. Oh, what I’d give for some ice cream.”
They sat and ate, each contemplating desserts long past.
“Etienne said the irrigation system is all computerised,” Jay said. “It monitors how much rain has fallen so it knows when to switch the pumps on, and there’s a cutoff if their water tank gets below ten percent. It’s pretty cool, but the last time anyone mucked about with it was on 8th December.”
“So they left seven months ago? Why not take the food with them? Why not come back for it?”
“Because they’re dead,” Jay said around a mouthful of blueberries. “They didn’t make the arrowheads here, so maybe the smithy was surrounded by zoms. They went to help but were overwhelmed. Since they’d never faced a horde here, I bet they didn’t know what to do.”
“They took the guns, the ammo, the cars. Yep, that’s the most plausible explanation. Shame.”
“Yeah, but it means there’s another farm nearby we could salvage. The farmhouse is probably wrecked, but they’d have fields we could use. Two farms, and near the coast. That’s a pretty good find, if only it weren’t for Tippy.”
“Oh, we’ll still use the fields,” Sholto said. “It’s too late in the year to plant more than a few lettuces, if that. We can still prep the fields and put down a cover crop. That wheat variety of David Kercher’s should do very well in this climate. We’ll get a reasonable harvest in late spring.”
“But what about Tippy?” Jay asked.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about. If that group at Bangor Base were primarily creating a fuel-and-food dump, then the rest of Tippy’s people are on their way. We need scouts watching for them, ideally along the Columbia River and the mountain passes. We can’t spare Leon. We need to keep Thelonious and his Marine Corps to protect our home islands. We can ask Bran to raise a militia, but those people are farmers working fields on Vancouver Island that were planted months ago. Harvest is approaching. The more of them we bring down, the greater the risk to the harvest. That only leaves the Guinns’ people up in Charlie Lake. About a fifth are military, or ex-military, and they spent last year on alert, expecting an attack, and they survived a harsher winter than us. They’re the ideal group to bring down to a lawless frontier zone.”
“And the only group, it sounds like,” Jay said. “So you want them to farm here?”
“Other than it being dependent on rainwater rather than a well or spring, this place is close to perfect. We’ll have to power it with generators, of course, but that’s the case for anywhere not near a dam. We’re close enough to the coast to bring fish down without having to worry about a refrigerated van. There’s enough space for a hundred people to camp here while they locate other farms. It would take less than a week to get this operational, and then they would command one of the roads leading to Union, and so eventually to Bangor Base. Yep, I think, when we go back tomorrow, I’m going to have the next boat send word they should come on down.”
“Shouldn’t we make sure Tippy’s people aren’t already here?”
“As best we can, but there’s only seven of us. We’ll never search the entire state, not even with Bran’s militia. Better we hand off to the Guinns as quick as we can. The more people we have here, the more people are keeping watch. We might even get it organised in time for Scott to take the news back to Australia, and Mary can find some evacuees who lived around here to come back in the next group.”
“You mean we’ll start settling newcomers here in the next couple of weeks?”
Sholto put down his bowl. “It feels like we’re talking at cross purposes. You’ve only been out here a week or so. I’m guessing you’ve spent a fair bit of your time at the chicken farm?”
“Sure. I mean, I work for Tom now, and Heppy’s always asking me to help with something.”
“Of course.” He’d seen how she looked at him. He’d seen how he looked at her. He’d seen how neither of them had quite twigged how besotted the other was. Young love, it was as bright as a lit flare in a fireworks factory. “So you’ve not had much time to talk with your mom about the education, health, and social policies she’s been developing with Janet?”
“Nah, not really.”
“Well, Scott’s arrival was sooner than expected, but we always knew the evacuees were returning. As soon as those four planes are fuelled up, we’ll send them back. When they reach Australia, they’ll be packed with more evacuees and returned north. And it’ll repeat for as long as the planes fly and as often as we can refuel them. The bottleneck is going to be transporting the fuel to Nanaimo from Bellingham, so we’ll look for other airports here on the mainland. Olympia is on the list. It didn’t look great on the aerial photographs, but with the Guinns down here, we’ll have enough people to repair it. Of course, if we fly the evacuees here, then it’s simpler to house them here, assuming we can organise medical and education provision.”
“How many are we expecting?” Jay asked.
“The number being thrown around Australia is ten million over ten years, but that’s not counting the rest of the Pacific, nor whether any of those ten million might choose Thailand, say, or Burma.”
“A million a year? Here? That’s crazy,” Jay said.
“Didn’t you hear any of this when you were down in Oz with Bill and Kim?”
“Not really. I was with the girls, mostly. I listened in to some of the political stuff, but it sounded all theoretical and a long way off. I guess I knew people wanted to come home. I just thought we’d have time to organise it.”
“Which is what your mom’s been doing,” Sholto said. “Remember we didn’t know those planes were coming. We don’t know if there are more planes in the air even now. Once they’re above us, what choice do we have but to let them land?”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean we have to refuel them and send them back.”
