Book 24 - An Imperfect Utopia, page 26
“The Canadian expedition has been a success,” Sholto said. “Everyone in Australia knows it. If we say the airport is closed, what do you think people like Lee Plusset will do?”
“Stay in Australia,” Jay said. “It’s not like they have a choice.”
“But at least some of the Australians, their prime minister included, want to see a reduction in population. The Canadians initially returned here with just a few ships. Why not loan an American expedition those same ships. Send a thousand of them to California. Within a month, they could have cleared a runway and be ready to accept newcomers.”
“No they wouldn’t because they’d have no fuel. No food, either.”
“Food could be a problem, yes, but we’re living mostly on fish,” Sholto said. “Why couldn’t they? And there’s bound to be good foraging in the Central Valley. As for oil, California is sitting on a lake of the stuff. They’d just have to build a refinery. Within six months, we’d have two states in North America, us and them, and they’d hate us because we wouldn’t let them in. Meanwhile, they’re getting the bulk of the migrants. They’d outnumber us within a year. How is that not going to lead to war in a few decades, if not sooner?”
“Oh. So we basically have no choice but to accept whoever is sent and however many?”
“And from wherever in the world they’re really from. Not that you or I can really argue with that. What we can do is manage the return. We can send a message south with Scott saying that we’d rather they fly here, but it’ll take a couple of weeks to repair a runway. We can set a date for the first flight. We can ask for one flight at first, but if it’s a success, it’ll quickly scale up.”
“To how many? How soon?”
Sholto shrugged. “It’s hard to say because there are so many variables. Fuel, pilots, weather. There could be other demands for the planes. The evacuees all have jobs, the government might not want some of them leaving immediately. Equally, anyone sent to the airport to wait for a plane has to be fed, but if there’s a sudden influx, more than they can cope with, they might pack them onto every available flight to avoid a disaster.”
“And push that disaster onto us,” Jay said.
“Yep. In politics, that’s what we call an S.E.P., someone else’s problem. In this case, our problem, not theirs. If we look it purely from a point of fuel transport, one plane an hour, for ten hours a day with three mainland airports seems manageable.”
“That’s nine thousand people a day!”
“Yep. But not during the worst winter months. We’ll probably only operate the airports for eight months a year. And we’d need time to scale up before we’re getting flights every day.”
“Every day?” Jay asked, incensed. “Now I know you’re kidding. “That’s like… like… sixty thousand a week.”
“Thereabouts.”
“Hang on.” Jay began counting on his fingers. “And that’s every week for eight months?”
“Could be.”
Jay abandoned his attempt at mental arithmetic, took out his phone, and opened the calculator. Sholto leaned back, watching the rye gently move in the breeze while Jay worked it out.
“That’s two million in a year,” Jay said. “That’s just mad.”
“Among the letters that came with the mail from Australia was a letter for Joseph from the Canadian embassy in Humpty Doo. There are now two million, four hundred thousand people on the list to return to Canada. And that’s just the Canadians in Australia. Or people who claim to be Canadian. The 777 is a marvel, the real peak of human technology. We can’t make spares. We can only swap parts from one plane to fix another. The more they’re used, the sooner they’ll fail. We can only estimate how long it will be before there are too few to use for repatriation flights, but the figure everyone assumes is five years.”
“Oh. And five times two is ten million.”
“Nope, because the five started last year. We’ve got three and a bit years left. These are only estimates. They assume three airports. They assume we expand into Idaho and Oregon, and find airports and farms there. We can’t house everyone here, after all. They assume Tippy doesn’t drop mortars on the runway, shutting down traffic. They assume that people in Australia still want to come here. They assume everyone is leaving from Darwin and no one comes from the Philippines, say. Now, we could use ships, like that old cruise ship that’s got to have arrived by now, but it takes about thirty days to sail from Australia. Eventually, they’ll build new ships and new planes, but whoever comes here in the next few years becomes the backbone for the new nation. We’re about fifty thousand now, but even with twice that, we’ll struggle to do more than farm. With six million, we’ll have a respectable population with industry, scholarship, and even some innovation.”
“But how are we going to feed them?” Jay asked.
“Yep, it’s a puzzle, isn’t it?”
Chapter 32 - Benton Aerospace
Olympia
Watered, rested, and fed, they left the farm behind and cycled on towards Olympia. The roads grew worse. The roads improved. The roads grew worse again. They saw fields filled with bones and others dotted with wildflowers, but only paused once when John’s bicycle chain became dislodged.
As they were nearing the outskirts of Olympia, they came to another field with a set of inner and outer fences nearly identical to the farm where they’d taken a breather. There was no central-pivot irrigation here, but there were rows of garden sprinklers lined up just inside the inner fence. There’d have been no need of them at least until April, but it did look as if a winter cover crop had been planted, grown, and then withered.
Next to the field was a gated track down which Etienne, John, and Jay cycled in search of the farmhouse. On the other side was another small field, barely half an acre and mostly dusty dirt except for two parallel streaks of leathery blue-green leaves.
“It’s kale,” Minnie called out, having climbed over the fence to inspect the plants. “Kale with a lot of extra protein. Jeez, there are a ton of bugs. The soil’s damp, so I think… hang on. Yep. There’s a drainage pipe coming from the road. They must have cracked it when they ploughed this up. With a drainage pipe that close to the surface, it can’t have been a field beforehand.”
Heppy pulled out her copy of the old map. They each had one. The maps were from the era before sat-nav and smartphones, designed for register-adjacent sales to out-of-state drivers, riddled with ancient advertisements and light on geographical features. Thelonious Toussaint had found over a hundred of the maps, boxed and sealed, during a search of Bellingham’s long-term storage facilities. At the back of that particular unit was a large sign for Mitch’s Bar & Grill, and enough framed photographs to tell a tale of an owner-operated business that had closed when Mitch had retired.
“We’re very near Mud Bay and Puget Sound’s Lower Channel, right on the edge of Olympia,” Heppy said, adding another note to her map. “I bet this was floodplains and scrub a couple of years ago.”
“They must have had a good reason to plough and plant here rather than take over an old farm,” Minnie said as she climbed back over the fence.
Sholto took out his notebook. “We’re making good time. Let’s check out these factories for the Australians and then rendezvous at the airport. We might still reach Vader before dark.” He ran his finger down the addresses he’d copied from Scott’s list. “I’ll take Benton Aerospace. That’s the place the Australians were most interested in. Walden Optical Instruments is right next door. There are five other places in a business park in the northeast of the city.” He tore out the page and handed it to Tom. “I’ll send Jay with you and take Etienne and John with me.”
“We should be looking for more farms,” Minnie said.
“I know. So let’s finish this bit of our duty for the Australians, and then we can get on with the real work.”
He changed his mind about remounting the bike and walked it instead but was only halfway down the track when Jay came speeding towards him, braking hard.
“Trouble?” Sholto asked as he tried to brush away the cloud of dust.
“Nah, it’s all good,” Jay said. “I just wanted to get the orders. There’s canned food in the cupboards, just like the other one.”
“We’re not stopping here. Report to Tom, and I’ll see you later.”
“Why? Where are you heading?”
“Tom’ll fill you in. Go on. Don’t keep them waiting.”
The track led to a small house with two caravans parked outside a rickety barn. Like at the first farm, a stout fence ringed the inner compound. Solar panels were laid out to the south of the house, with raised vegetable beds filling most of the remaining space. The front door to the main house was closed but unlocked.
The living room had become a craft factory for Christmas decorations. Strings of curling cardboard stars, painted in red and green, hung around the kitchen while a stack of jagged paper trees awaited assembly. They’d left in early December, which tallied with the other farm. There weren’t as many cans in the kitchen’s pantry as at the other farm, though he grabbed a can of tomatoes, eggplant, and a jar of pumpkin seeds for their dinner. If it had been Tippy’s people who’d lured the farmers away to battle, they would have emptied the pantry. If Tippy wasn’t behind the farmer’s disappearance, why had they vanished?
John waited at the door to the barn with a sly grin on his face. On closer examination Sholto downgraded the barn to a metal tent. Even that was a generous way of describing thin metal sheets held up with aluminium scaffolding. Inside, though, was the real prize, a sleek blue and red racing yacht, with sponsorship logos from aft to stern.
“Nine and a half metres,” John said. “The mast is folded down but looks in good condition. Lots of nets, hooks, and other nautical hoosits. If they used it as a fishing skiff, so can we.”
“Any sign of dried fish?” Sholto asked.
“Not a one. The freezer’s contents are unrecognisable, and mostly liquid, except them as turned to gas.”
“Maybe they traded their surplus with some other farms. Any sign of a smithy here?”
“For the arrowheads? No, but I did find a few arrows.”
“Interesting. Can you find your cousin and drag him away from whatever fusebox he’s found. I want to check out the airport, but we’ll come back this way in a couple of days and search more thoroughly.”
His gaze lingered on the boat. Heather would be overjoyed. He’d like to know why the boat was kept here rather than at a pier, and why they’d ploughed scrubland rather than taken over a working farm elsewhere. The apocalypse had kicked the dust from a lot of mysteries, but he’d like this one solved before they brought any soldiers or farmers here.
“The wiring was a work of art,” Etienne explained as they cycled slowly into the ruins of Olympia.
“You’d hang it on your wall, would you?” John asked.
“I’d prefer it to those moose skulls you hung on yours,” Etienne said. “But don’t they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder? And like all works of art, the wiring carries a signature that betrays the artist’s identity.”
“You mean like with brush strokes?” Sholto asked, slowing again, this time to peer down a side road. Like with most of the smaller streets they’d seen since entering suburbia, this one was blocked with a line of cars. There were no guard posts or shooting platforms, not even a watchtower on either side of the wall. He put it down to one of those grand schemes cooked up by a local leader but abandoned soon after the first of the zoms appeared on the streets.
“There’s an art to hunting,” John muttered.
Sholto raised a hand. He thought he’d caught movement in his peripheral vision some fifty yards ahead of them. It wasn’t a zombie, because they didn’t sneak. Dog, probably.
“And I hope you practice your art before dinner tonight,” Etienne said. “But the direction the wire coils, the degree of the turn, the angle of the cut, the amount and shape of the solder, it is a better identifier than DNA.”
“That’s a long-winded way to say that the wiring in the two farms is the same.” John said.
“Not just the same,” Etienne said. “This was done by the same person using the same supplies. They were an expert. They did one farm, and then they did the next. They weren’t needed in the fields, n’est-ce pas? It is the same with the fencing. It is identical with each farm. That tells me they had a dedicated fence-building team, and that tells me there must have been more than two farms.”
“That’s a leap,” John said.
“I think he’s right,” Sholto said, turning to scan the way they’d come. He’d not heard anything pursue them, nor could he hear anything scampering around the undergrowth. “No, if it was just two farms, they’d be right next to each other. Plus, why keep your boat there rather than at a dock unless you were worried about theft? I think there might have been a lot of people around here before Christmas.” He looked again at the row of cars, seeing them in a slightly different light. Had the roadblocks gone up after the outbreak, or were they more recent? He shook his head. “Not enough data. Let’s get off the main road. We won’t find the answers here.”
Benton Aerospace was a single-storey, high-roofed building one block from the eastern edge of the airport’s perimeter. Covered in shiny grey cladding, it was a noticeable contrast to its twelve neighbours, all a quarter the size with small signage and large loading bays. Benton’s stylised B-shaped logo took up the entire road-facing wall. The company had clearly been doing well. Why it was here rather than in Everett was as big a mystery as what it actually made. The brochures in the reception area offered few clues. The factory floor offered even less. The interior was split into six large clean rooms, a reception and office area, and a loading and shipping bay. Inside the clean rooms were machines. Sholto wasn’t sure he could give any greater description than that.
“I recognise the mechanical arms,” Sholto said as the three of them stood by the broad window, looking into Clean Room One.
“And the computers,” John said, pointing at a three-screen workstation.
“And the sink,” Etienne said, pointing to an emergency eye-wash station just outside the clean room.
“I got some work in a machine shop when I was nineteen,” John said. “Operated a press until I saw a buddy pancake his hand. This… this is all that went wrong with the world. We rushed headlong into the future before we understood what we were creating, eh?”
They walked from one room to the next, taking note of the radiation sign in Clean Room Two, the warning of lasers in Clean Room Three, and the enclosed conveyor linking the pair, but gaining little insight into what the company did.
“Whatever they made, everything is intact and untouched,” Sholto said as they made their way back to the entrance. “The Australians want it. The only question is how to transport it.”
“We’ll need a lot of bubble wrap,” John said.
“Can we remove the seats from the planes?” Etienne asked.
“Not if they want to fly them back here with more passengers,” Sholto said. “I wondered about using the cruise ship, assuming it’s in good condition, and most of the crew want to return.”
“Don’t reinvent the wheel,” John said. “Put them in shipping containers, take them to the docks, and tell the Australians to organise delivery.”
“And then they’d need a container ship,” Sholto said. “I think Australia has a couple, but not one they could spare to send us supplies, so I doubt they could spare one for this. We’ve got that cruise ship, assuming it’s in good condition. Then again, we’ll have planes arriving every week. Yep, we’ll just have to remove the seats and store them in the hold so they can be put back in place down in Oz. Let’s take a look next door.”
Walden Optical Instruments was between Grey and Sons, and Game, Set, Match LLC. Grey and Sons made hard candy. The sweets and their ingredients had all been taken, but the machinery was still there. Game, Set, Match made tennis rackets. Unless they could find somewhere that also sold balls, there was little point sending those down to Australia.
Walden Optical Instruments’s main door hadn’t been broken, but it had been left unlocked, presumably in the hope looters would see there was nothing there and go elsewhere. If that was the case, it had been mostly successful. Someone had built a barricade around the door with document cabinets and created a bed out of the padded chairs. Otherwise, the factory was untouched. The small factory had two clean rooms. Thanks to a very shiny stack of brochures on the reception desk, they knew why. The company made lenses for satellite camera systems, and looked to have been on the rise until the entire world came crashing down.
“Are they building satellites in Australia?” Etienne asked.
“They have a domestic satellite industry,” Sholto said, “but launch vehicles were in short supply. They’re sending up a few soon but estimated ten years before they’d be able to launch more. Then again, ten years seems to be their go-to number for any construction project that’ll take longer than six months. Still, they’re more likely to make use of this than we are.”
“Then I’d say we’re already at twenty-five planes,” John said.
“Well, let’s take a look at the airport, then,” Etienne said.
Chapter 33 - A Letter from Yesterday
Olympia
While living in Australia, a prevalent theory among the evacuees and their hosts was that survivors would cluster around airports, which had generators, fuel stores, food, and grassland ready to be converted into vegetable plots. Thanks to the anti-terrorism measures of recent decades, airports also had strong fences. Most crucially, those left behind would surely expect, one day, for the evacuees to return. Even Scott Higson’s arrival, with his first-hand account of Europe and the Persian Gulf, hadn’t entirely dispelled the myth.
Only thirty-seven seconds of post-outbreak aerial footage included Olympia Airport. As soon as the pilot had identified the wreckage scattered across the runway, it had been crossed off as both a potential landing site and an extant survivor-hub. Sholto had seen the footage and knew to expect a lack of cars on the roads around the airport, and in its own lots. What he’d missed was that the cars had been turned into a wall three vehicles high except in the southern corner, where the post-crash explosion had ripped a hole through them.
