Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) (7 page)

8

“Oh, hello, dear! Where have you been all this time?” the lady’s voice said. Sam heard Jeremy walking up. He continued to pretend to be asleep.

“I jumped in the pond and then reconnoitered.” Jeremy sounded disturbed. “We’re sitting ducks here. This area is totally indefensible. The land just rolls on, almost flat, with no underbrush, not even a creek for cover. Arthur would have a fit if he saw it. We’ve got to get out of here. If any of those monsters from the underground get out, we’re dead meat.”

Sam almost opened his eyes at the mention of Arthur. He was one of Sam’s ancestors, a commando who went into the shelter instead of up into the angel Eliana’s world. He was the only one who could run the computerized life-support systems of the underground, so he made the sacrifice of staying.

“Getting out of here will be a good trick,” the lady said. “I don’t know how we’ll move this container. But I’m going to take a bath. Who knows how many years it’s been. Where was that pond?”

“Over there.” He shrugged in its direction. “I’m going to see if I can find any functional satellites. I want to get a look inside the shelter.”

“If anyone can do it, you can. Sam’s been sleeping all morning. I gave him some pain pills and they knocked him out. There’s a uniform for him when he wakes up. He hasn’t eaten, either.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m on it.”

The lady left. Sam heard Jeremy moving things. He dragged something to the front of the container and sat down noisily.

“OK, you motherfuckers, I’m back.” Sam opened his eyes to see Jeremy seated before a computer. The screen shone brightly. He cracked his knuckles, and then shook out his hands. “We’ll see how bad the goldies fucked me up.” He began typing and talking to himself. “Most of the satellites are probably dead, but there should be some that work.” Sam heard a whirring noise from the computer. “I’ll run a search algorithm. If I can get a hot bird, I
know
the hardware in the underground will work. I designed it to take
anything
. I’ll bounce a signal off one of the tin cans, restart the surveillance systems inside, and it will be show-and-tell time down below.”

Sam couldn’t resist studying the Great Tek. Jeremy had his back to him, absorbed in the computer. The screen’s light shone on his hair, making it glow. He looked like Jer the Tek that Sam Baahuhd and all the headmen since him had described in the meetings.

Jeremy’s hair hung in a tangled mass down to his waist. He was tall, not a little shrimp, as Sam Baahuhd had portrayed him. Sam had never seen anyone with Jeremy’s skin color. “Café au lait” it was called, which he also knew from the legends. His mother was the lady and his father had been a famous Afroman. Chaz Edgarton was a musician beloved by the village. Whenever he had visited the estate, he came out to the barn to play for the villagers, though sometimes he was so loaded he fell off the bench.

Sam worked himself up to a semi-sitting position so he could watch the Great Tek. Awe filled him. The Great Tek was God. He had given them the Commands and the Book, which ruled their lives.

“I live by the Commands,” Sam whispered.

“What?” Jeremy turned to face him, eyes piercing. Sam could see his cocoa skin. His lips were wide and his nose broader than those of the villagers. Sam recoiled from his intensity.

“I live by the Commands, O Great Tek,” Sam stammered.

“You mean the Commandments?”

“No, the Commands.”

“What are those?”

“On the night before the end of the world, the Great Tek stood before Sam Baahuhd and gave us the Commands. He gave us the Commands so that we might survive and live to take over the world,” Sam spoke with the dramatic cadence of the Book Readers, who were the only ones allowed to read the book.

“You sound like a snake man,” Jeremy said, wrinkling his face.

“No snake men!” Sam invoked one of the Commands.

“You’re damned right. Those guys were poison, going around scaring everyone to death. But what are the Commands?”

“They’re from you, O Great Tek.” Sam touched his heart with his hand and bowed. “Your gift to us. They are the law in the underground.”

“What? My name is Jeremy. Who’s this Great Tek?”

“Sam Baahuhd told us you were the Great Tek. You could do anything with your powers.” Sam looked at Jeremy, disbelief on his face. Didn’t the Tek know this? “He told us how you gave us the Commands on the last night of the Earth.”

“What are you talking about? I’m a pretty good tech, but I’m not magic.”

Sam was shaken. “The Commands are written in The Book, a magic book of light that the angel Eliana gave you. The Commands were written in it when you spoke.”

“Oh, I remember that now. The notebook’s no big deal. That’s how they write in Ellie’s world. With light. There’s light everywhere—walls, billboards, across the sky. After a while, you start praying for an eclipse. El’s no angel. She’s my wife.”

“Did you give us the Commands?”

Jeremy wiped his face with his hand. “Jeez. What happened that night? It’s been so long. I remember being really upset. I tossed out some ideas that I thought would make the underground work. What are the Commands?”

“The first Command is to take over the world when we get out of the shelter.”

“Why?”

“Because the general is out there waiting for us and will kill us and take over the world if we don’t.”

“I’m not so sure about that. What were the other commands?”

“The headman has total power. He can kill all of us if he wants. Sam Baahuhd was the first headman. His oldest son would be the next headman, and his oldest, forever.”

“Well, Sam would do a good job. I don’t know about Rupert and those who came later. What about individual rights? The Constitution, checks and balances?”

“You took all Constitutional rights away. I don’t know what the other things are.”

“Oh, boy. What else?”

“We had to learn to read in six months,” Sam ducked his head. “O Tek, I tried to learn to read, but the Bigs closed the library. They took the Book from us so that only the Readers can see it. I tried …”

“They closed the library! They had no right to do that. I set that up for the people. What were the rest of the commands?”

“We were to exercise and come out warriors ready to fight the general. But they closed the gym.”

“The gym! I used to work out there with Arthur every day. You have to stay in shape or you end up like this.” He indicated his emaciated form. “What are the rest of the Commands?”

“Only one husband and one wife, fidelity. No boingy boingy with your cousins. No weed, mushrooms, or hooch. We had to speak regular English.”

“Those are pretty good. Do people follow them?”

Sam blinked and lowered his head. “I do, Great …”

“I’m Jeremy! Stop that Great business.”

“Jeremy. I follow them. Some others do.” He was silent.

“The leaders don’t.”

Sam shook his head. “No. They make hooch. Mushrooms and weed grow in the fields. The headmen have had many wives for a long time. When the Bigs came, it was different. The Bigs don’t have wives.”

“What do they do?”

“They have the Pit. The women go into the Pit.”

“What! What are you saying?”

“The headman can do anything he wants. That’s what he wanted.”

“What a disaster. OK, I’ll give you a COMMAND right now. Follow the Commands all you want, but if they’re bullshit or make life worse, don’t follow them. Do something that works.”

“Yes, Great …”

“Jeremy. That’s my name. I want to get a 360-degree view inside that shelter. I want to know what’s happening down there.” He looked at Sam as though remembering something. “Oh, yeah. You want anything to eat? We’ve got Russian army rations. It’s slop, but edible. My mom put some clothes out for you. She’ll be mad at me if I don’t take care of you. Now
she’s
someone whose commands you should pay attention to.”

Sam was sitting up eating the most delicious food he’d ever tasted when the lady came back. Jeremy had helped him put on the uniform’s shirt and pants. He’d seen that Sam had no idea of how to put them on.

Sam looked up when the lady came.

“Jeremy, did you notice anything about this area when you were walking?” the lady said. She was dressed in a black uniform with her hair wrapped in a white fuzzy cloth. The uniform showed her body’s form. She was small around her waist and swelled at her chest. He could have wrapped his hands around her waist easily. Not around the top of her. Her hips were curved, but not big.

“I noticed lots of things, Mom.”

“This place looks like the West Coast. Remember our ranch near Santa Barbara? The oaks grew far apart like these. I saw magpies with the yellow trim on their beaks—those only live in Central California. And those trees in the distance look like redwoods. Do you have any idea where we are? Or how long it’s been since everything blew up?”

“No. But with one of the computers, I’ll be able to take some measurements off the stars and figure it out.”

“This doesn’t feel like Connecticut. Could the skin of the planet slip over time?”

“So the West Coast ended up the East Coast? And the East Coast became …”

“Europe? But where would Europe and Asia go? To the West Coast? That’s impossible … How much time would have to pass for the upper layers of earth to move thousands of miles? And for the polar ice caps to reform? I was under glaciers in the bunker. That area was forest when we were sealed in.”

“It would take ages for that much change, if it happened at all.”

“You know what else? I don’t know what year it was when I woke up. The chronometers in the bunker were broken. I don’t know if it was the same time there as it is here. Could the goldies have lifted me from one time and place into another time and place to be with you?”

“Probably. They could do pretty near anything.”

“And what’s the date here? Sam, do you know how long your people have been in the shelter?”

He jumped when she spoke to him. “The singers of songs say 105 generations.”

“So at nineteen years a generation, that’s five years short of 2,000 years.” Sam was amazed at how fast Jeremy made the calculation.

“We do not have nineteen years a generation.”

“How many then?”

“Fourteen.”

Jeremy’s jaw dropped. “OK. That’s 1,470 years. That’s still a long time. I built the underground to last that long. Do you think it really could be that long?”

“Sam, tell us about the underground. What’s its history?”

Sam hesitated before speaking. He was not supposed to talk about this. He knew the history as remembered by the line of Emily—the true history. What the Speakers would say about their history would be different. He knew the Tek wanted the truth. “For a time after Jer the Tek made the shelter, things were good. Everyone followed the Commands and the Book. Everyone learned to read. There was enough food. The babies were all good and not too many were born.

“But then things changed. Sam’s descendants from Mollie, his first wife, were the rightful rulers, according to the Commands. They took the Book away. They had the disease and hurt people, killing them, sometimes. Their babies were often sick or missing arms or legs.

“They killed those that weren’t of Sam from Mollie, except for the Arthurs and Emilies and those with their blood. They needed us. We ran the computers and the shelter’s systems. We were smarter than the others. The Sams by the line from Mollie divided the shelter. They locked the others up and stopped following the Commands. The air became bad. We didn’t have enough food or water.

“The Bigs came. The Bigs are very bad.” Sam hadn’t talked so much in his life. But he needed to tell them. “If they catch you, kill yourself. Especially you, lady.” She had to understand the danger. “They know you. You canna go down there.” The brogue of the village crept into his speech.

“I don’t want to, Sam, believe me.”

That’s all he could say. He wanted to tell them about the rest of it, but it was forbidden and too horrible to talk about. Sam sat leaning forward, eyes down, head bowed.

“Jeremy, does that sound like 2,000 years of history to you?” The lady’s voice was soft.

“It could be anything from fifty years up. What about the furniture they took from mom’s house, Sam? Does it look old?”

“There is no furniture. Only pieces of wood and bits of fur. And some metal things. Spoons and candle holders and dishes.”

“Everything else has disintegrated?”

“In the old days, they say the underground was like the big house. Beautiful. All that is gone.”

“How long would it take for furniture to fall apart like that?” Jeremy mused.

“A long time. Sam, where did they get that thing they put in you? Do they have more of them?” the lady asked.

“I don’t know where they got it. They knew how to put it in me, but I don’t think they have more. They would have used them before. They didn’t make it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. They don’t make anything. They just fight.”

“Where did they get it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, sooner or later, they’re going to figure out that they can live outside the shelter and come out. We need to be ready,” Jeremy said.