Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (19 page)

Officials have confirmed earlier reports of several terrorist bombings in Washington DC. They also acknowledge a number of bombings of government buildings in other states, which they characterize as domestic terrorists attempting to take advantage of the situation.

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The president has announced that he is recalling all military personnel and equipment back to the U.S. “Right now we need to protect our home soil and our citizenry.”

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Air travel has been suspended indefinitely
worldwide, citing the danger of damage to aircraft engines from volcanic ash. Some countries have also suspended rail service, fearing damage to locomotive engines, moving parts of rolling stock, and even the actual rails.

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Dr. Andrew Kensington of the USGS has issued a statement concerning the Yellowstone eruption. “This is far more powerful than our models predicted,” he said. “We are estimating well over 3000 cubic kilometers of ejecta in total. This would make it the largest eruption from the Yellowstone hotspot in its existence.”

When asked how this would affect the country, Dr. Kensington replied, “This is going to affect the
planet!
There has already been plenty of coverage in the news of the possible effects of a supervolcano eruption… Just triple that.”

Aug 1

Erin

They were finally done at the university. Everyone who had shown up had been moved through to Outland. When the ash started to fall, and they hadn’t had a new refugee in a half hour, Erin decided to call it. They moved through the last of the supplies and kindling, then shut down the portal.

There had been much discussion of strategies and plans while preparing and waiting for the final move. Erin was impressed at how quickly people had accepted and adjusted to the reality of an alternate universe. But she admitted to herself that having it right in front of them helped a lot.

Everyone agreed loudly that they should continue to re-open the gate and try to find more survivors, but the words were said with haunted eyes. People were beginning to realize that once the ash started to fall, the death sentence had been pronounced. No one was willing to volunteer to trudge through ash-covered streets looking for survivors, and they had no other way to locate refugees. They had to hope that most people had done the smart thing and hit the road as soon as possible. And that the roads had been passable, because they wouldn’t be by morning.

In all, they’d managed to bring across a little over two hundred and fifty people, mostly students, and a smattering of faculty and two security guards who’d been on campus.

The two security guards, Fred Mack and Anson Rutherford, were both retired cops who, according to them, had taken the security jobs to stave off terminal boredom. “You spend your entire career in the thick of things, then you retire and bam! Eight hours a day in front of the TV,” Anson explained. “Couldn’t take it. The security job is an easy gig, good for extra pocket money, and generally
the most critical issue we face is timing our breaks so we get the fresh pot of coffee.”

Fred smiled in agreement.

Getting organized had taken a lot longer than expected, and it was getting dark before they were anywhere near ready to move. The idea of trying to shepherd this many people through the wilderness in pitch-black night was ludicrous. And those who might have suggested it would change their mind once darkness fell. Modern urban humans don’t have a real appreciation of how
dark
night is without artificial illumination and skyglow.

The situation was made worse by the simple fact that it was summer, and people had been wearing summer clothes. These were grossly inadequate for the cooler Outland night air.

Erin suggested to Fred Mack that perhaps he and Anson should be in charge, but Fred shook his head. “No way, darlin’. You’re doing fine. The kids listen to you. They’d just tune out a couple of old farts. But we’ll help anywhere you need it.”

Erin immediately deputized the two to organize security for the night. Fred and Anson discussed it for perhaps thirty seconds, then set to work. They organized eight fires into a ring and split up the scavenged fuel between them. A few people were assigned to each fire to make sure the wood didn’t get burned too quickly, as a larger fire would burn through their supply much faster without providing any extra benefit.

“The fires are more for protection than for heat,” Erin said to people in general. “We want to keep the night life away from us. So don’t get the bright idea of going around to the outside of the fire ring to get close to one of the fires, unless you want to be a midnight snack. Take a page from emperor penguins— form a nice tight group and keep each other warm. This is no time for bashfulness.

“We’ll also need to organize guard duty,” Erin continued. “Anyone who has ever handled a weapon should speak up. We’ll need eight people for each two-hour shift. Fred and Anson will take care of the details.” She gestured to the two, who gave her a couple of sloppy salutes and got to work.

It took another hour before they had everything set up to everyone’s satisfaction. By this time, full night was settling in. The first guard shift stepped up, weapons in hand, and the rest settled onto the hard ground, on blankets and tarps wherever possible, and tried to get some sleep.

***

Omni

The night-life of Outland was in its own way as loud as the day shift. The biomass of an untouched
wild planet
is orders of magnitude greater than what humans had left standing on Earthside. On one occasion during the night some tortured soul stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, “
Will you shut the fuck up!
” That produced a lot of laughs from the other campers, but no more than a few seconds relief.

There were shots fired a number of times, but there were no major incidents and no loss of human life. There was one close call when a large cat almost managed to sneak past a dozing guard. A scream from an insomniac camper brought the guard back to full wakefulness. And a near miss from a full load of buckshot sent the cat scrambling for the darkness, lighter by about two lives and one dump.

After a few more encounters, the local predators decided that easier meals could be had elsewhere, and the attempted incursions trailed off. The noise level however didn’t abate all night. As some of the less rested would later report, the night calls segued smoothly into the morning cacophony of birdcalls without a break.

Aug 1                            Suzie

Suzie was getting very frightened. First the eruption on TV, then the earthquake, the sound of the eruption, and now this! These people, who claimed to be other UNL students, were telling the crowd that staying in Lincoln could be fatal. To be fair, their explanation made a lot of sense. And most people seemed to be taking them seriously. She looked at Joy and Maddie, and she could see that they were just as scared. There had been a lot of activity over the last couple of hours: people looked for other students and brought injured people here to the University Health Center. Students ransacked buildings looking for burnable furniture. Students even made plans to move the animals out of the livestock buildings!

Now the ash had started to fall. Suzie knew enough about this stuff to realize that the people with the gate were right. She discussed it with her friends, and they decided that they would take the offer.

Suzie took a few minutes to look through the crowd. She spotted Frankie and Stephanie a short distance away and waved frantically at them. After a few seconds, Stephanie saw her and waved back. The two pushed their way through the crowd towards Suzie.

“Frankie and Steph are coming. As soon as they get here, we should go through,” Suzie said to Maddie and Joy.

By the time Frankie and Steph got to them, the ash was falling in earnest. They got into the line that had formed and stepped through the gate when their turn came.

By now, the light was fading. Students had been bringing burnable items for the last little while and carrying them through the gate. Now that they were on the other side, she could see several large piles of wood, mostly furniture but also some less recognizable objects. A couple of security guards were organizing people and directing the creation of eight different fires in a ring.

Suzie watched all this and was amazed at how organized they seemed to be. One of the people who owned the gate—she’d learned his name was Richard, and he was
très
hot—was handing out weapons from a crate. Suzie had no experience with firearms and had no desire to change that, but she still found herself hanging out in the immediate area.

With only backpacks for pillows, the five friends settled down to try to get some sleep inside the ring of fires. They were surprised at how cold it was getting for summer, so they huddled together for warmth.

“Are we going to be all right?” Stephanie asked.

“We’ll live,” Suzie answered. “They’ve got lots of weapons. They seem to have been prepared for this, though. I don’t understand how they could have done that.”

“Maybe they have a time machine too. Or maybe the gate actually
is
a time machine, and they’re shitting us about the parallel Earth story,” Frankie mused. “Or maybe they were just more realistic about Yellowstone.”

He thought for a moment, then continued, “I’ve been watching the news, and for weeks we’ve been hearing reassurance after reassurance from government. I’m wondering if maybe they were just trying to keep everyone calm. Maybe they knew more than they were letting on.”

“Another government conspiracy? Give me a break,” Maddie responded. “You’re always saying those morons couldn’t find their own assholes with both hands and a flashlight, and now you’re suggesting they’ve engineered a whole conspiracy thing.”

Frankie got up on one elbow. “It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, Maddie. Corporations everywhere work to keep corporate taxes low. They don’t have to get together and plan it— each corporation is just doing what it can to that end. But they’re all pulling in the same direction, so it ends up looking like a conspiracy.”

He continued, “Each government department, the cops, FBI, Department of Sanitation, whatever, just wants to minimize trouble in their area. And the way to do that is the same for them all—keep the public calm at all costs.”

Suzie looked at him with one raised eyebrow. “Say, are you sure you’re not secretly
enrolled in pol-sci?”

Frankie laughed. “No, but my boyfriend Darren is. Even a picture of an argument will set him off! Sometimes despite myself I actually
listen to him.”

The discussion continued for some time. No one was sleepy nor was the environment conducive to relaxing. It was a long time before Suzie was able to get to sleep, and she woke up surprised that she had done so.

The ash had been falling for hours now. Within about five hundred miles of the eruption, it was more than two feet deep and was showing no signs of abating. Buildings with flat or gently sloped roofs had almost all collapsed, usually killing any occupants. Anyone who by chance survived the collapse would have died within minutes of suffocation since the collapse would saturate the air with both coarse and fine ash. Cloth would not be at all adequate to filter it out.

Buildings with more sloped roofs fared somewhat better. However the ash sliding off to the sides built up quickly. Unlike snow, it didn’t compress at all. Many people escaped a crushing death only to find themselves buried alive.

For many people, the accumulation of significant ash-fall had been a major wake-up call. The number of vehicles heading out of town jumped by a factor of ten. An influx of cars several times higher than the worst rush-hour crush that city planners had ever conceived brought the roads to complete gridlock. Attempts by drivers to go around the mess by unconventional driving were stymied by other drivers trying to go around them. Soon the sidewalks, parks, roads, and even lanes heading the opposite way were as gridlocked as the rest. Those with vehicles modified for off-road driving fared somewhat better by going cross-country.

At this point, many people abandoned their vehicles. Some intended to try to catch a ride with those who were still moving; others intended to trade places at the point of a gun. Yet others tried to take shelter in the closest standing structures. In all cases, the current occupants resisted strenuously.             

Aug 2                            Omni

The next morning dawned with no casualties, but the campers had gotten very little sleep. Between the shots fired early
in the night, and the sound of scavengers loudly arguing over the fallen, or just the general sound level, many people had been unable to close their eyes. Very few had gotten anything near to their desired eight hours. So it was a cold, tired, sore, and damp group of people who slowly stood up on the first morning in Outland to discover the first of many new realities: no coffee.

At this revelation, there was a near-mutiny. Add a cold, scary, sleepless night and no breakfast, and many people expressed regret for having come across.

On hearing the complaints, Erin ordered Richard and Kevin to turn on the gate.

As the gate opened, a cloud of dust puffed through the opening and what looked like cigarette ash fell through. Looking through the gate, people could see a blanket of ash over two feet deep. Buildings were covered in it. At least one building within sight had collapsed. Everything had a uniform gray-brown color.

Erin took a deep breath. “I’ve explained about ash-induced diseases. I won’t bore you with that again. I’ve explained about ash-induced building collapses, power-grid collapses, equipment failures, and shortened growing seasons. This isn’t theory. It’s happening now. Anyone can go back if they want, but they’d be a total fool.

“And this rescue isn’t being run by some far-off government body. It’s us, all of us. Anyone who has any ideas to improve things in any way, we would love to hear it. We’re all working this out as we go along.

“Now, you want to go back? Here’s your chance.” And she motioned at the gate. There was a lot of motion as people took the opportunity to get a look, but no one accepted the offer.

After that, people seemed far less inclined to complain. Her statements about not having any special knowledge or experience in this situation had given people a lift.

Someone yelled out, “So where are we going?”

Erin replied, “We have a stockpile that we moved from a warehouse downtown to this side. It’s about a forty-five minute walk from the university. It’ll be the same distance here, but with no sidewalks it’ll take a little longer.”

“Can we go back once the ash stops?”

“Sure, as long as you don’t need to eat. Or drink water. The other side is toast, people. There will be no clean water. There will be no electricity. There will be no food deliveries. Of course I could be wrong, and anyone is welcome at any time to go across and check it out. In fact, we’ll probably
develop a system of popping across and scavenging. But understand this please: this side is paradise, compared to what used to be home.”

“I’m not a cat person anymore!” someone yelled from the back. That got general laughs.

“Is there coffee at the other camp?” from someone else.

Erin replied, “There’d better goddam be, or I’m going to lose it.”

That drew more laughter from the crowd, and someone else yelled, “Which way?”

Erin signaled Kevin and Richard to turn off the gate. Crisis averted. She consulted the map, her compass, and pointed. Fred and Anson chivvied everyone into groups and organized outriders to guard the procession.

“So what about the cattle drive?” Richard asked Erin, while things were getting organized.

“It’s about a mile from us, and they’ll be a while getting over here,” Erin replied. “When they do, they’ll just follow the mess we’re making as we travel.”

Richard looked around and grinned. “Yeah, couple hundred people sure leave a trail.
”

Erin smiled. “They’ll likely be a half-day behind us by the time we get to the warehouse camp. For all that the aggie students know about horses and cattle, I doubt if any of them has ever done an
actual
cattle drive. Pretty sure if Bill were here, he could come up with a lot of material…”

“Then let’s consider ourselves lucky he’s not here.” Richard rolled his eyes.

Erin grinned back, and they joined the march.