No Looking Back
None of us could speak. All we could do was stare, stunned, at the endless column of refugees filling the screen.
They shuffled past the camera coated in dust from the earthquake's wreckage, their eyes empty. Frank muttered under his breath.
"Damn... they look just like a zombie horde."
"No."
Mike cut him off.
"They're far more terrifying than zombies."
Sarah frowned, not quite following.
"They're not even biting anyone. How are they scarier than zombies?"
"With zombies, you just shoot them dead. No guilt. That's the end of it."
"..."
"But those people... when starving, desperate people come at you in numbers you can't handle — then what?"
Gunner added something of his own, as if a memory had surfaced.
"An overwhelming mass of civilians — especially people driven by the terror of dying — isn't something you stop with a few rifles. Pity and hesitation get you killed. And the finger that pulls the trigger destroys your mind."
I knew instinctively that this was the moment to decide. I drew every eye in the room and opened my mouth.
"Listen up!"
"..."
"Tomorrow we finish the last of our preparations. At dawn the day after, we move east."
Disappointment crossed the women's faces. Raven spoke up carefully.
"But Chan... those refugees aren't going to reach us in a day or two. Couldn't we stay just a few more days? The kids have only just started to settle..."
I met her eyes and spoke with complete seriousness.
"The reason we've made it this far without a single person getting hurt is that we've always moved even one day faster than everyone else. We left everything behind. No looking back."
"..."
"The moment we grow attached to the comfort we have now is the moment death starts closing in."
Dave backed me up.
"Chan's right. If we'd left Yellowknife even one day later, we might be stuck at the border right now with empty tanks, walking somewhere just like those people."
Dave's mother picked up from there. Eleanor looked around at everyone and spoke in a calm, even voice.
"This isn't the time to hold onto land. It's the time to protect ourselves and the children. If Chan hadn't warned us before he left Canada... we would have gone through something too terrible to imagine."
"..."
"And without Chan, we never would have driven off those raiders, or avenged my sister and her husband."
She looked at Raven and Sarah, then composed herself and went on.
"Well. When danger comes, we already agreed we'd follow Chan's lead and move on without looking back. Didn't we?"
An awkward silence settled over the room. Cody broke it with a remark that was oddly off-the-wall and completely practical.
"Then... I guess we should start with the chickens."
"Huh. He's right."
Dave slapped his knee.
"There's over a hundred of them. If we just leave them, they'll freeze or starve anyway. Yeah — we should. I'll help."
"No, hold on."
Mike stopped them.
"We should still take the laying hens. In a world like this, a steady supply of fresh eggs is an enormous stroke of luck."
"But how are we supposed to take all of them?"
Jake raised his hand.
"There's an unused small cargo trailer on the farm."
Jed picked it up from there.
"We could turn that into a chicken trailer."
"That's it!"
Mike stared into the air as if sketching something in his head, then continued.
"Line it with some insulation, put roosts inside, pull the automatic waterers and feeders off the existing coop and mount them in... with one or two extra hands, we could have it done in a day."
We were already packing up everything we could carry. One more trailer wouldn't hurt.
"Mike. How many birds can we fit in a small trailer?"
"If we build the roosts on two levels, about twenty should fit comfortably."
"That's all?"
"Come on, the chickens have to live too. We're not hauling them to a slaughterhouse."
Jake added,
"And we can't just take the hens. If we want them to keep breeding, we need to bring a couple of healthy roosters as well."
Watching everyone toss out ideas for the chicken trailer one after another, a strange feeling stirred in me.
It wasn't just a cargo box for hauling chickens. In a world reduced to ruin and plunder, this was the act of raising something. Of producing something.
It meant something different from counting the remaining cans every day and calculating how much life you had left. Somehow, it lifted my spirits. I turned to Dave.
"Dave, how much of our supplies are we not going to be able to take?"
"Well... about thirty tons of produce we never got around to selling, and the diesel's the big one. Even after filling the tanker, every vehicle, and all the jerry cans, there's still close to five thousand gallons left in the storage tank."
"Hell... nothing we can do about it."
I muttered it more to myself than anyone, then gave the order.
"Seal up everything we're leaving behind. Camouflage it so it isn't easy to find from the outside."
Jake answered, then added with a note of regret.
"Yes, sir. If we pile a bunch of old farm equipment in the garage with the fuel pump, it'll just look like an abandoned shed."
"..."
"Boss... isn't it a waste to just leave the helicopter behind?"
"I think so too, but it's too much of a burden to haul around. Maintenance would be a nightmare."
"Then... what if we use it for as long as we can, and dump it along the way?"
I looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
"We don't load the helicopter onto a trailer. It travels with the convoy. It flies out ahead, scouts the road, and warns us of anything coming. Then when the fuel runs out, we just leave it wherever we are."
"Hmm... how much fuel do we have?"
"Seven drums of Avgas left in the warehouse."
"How much flight time does that give us?"
"Well... 385 gallons total, burning about nine gallons an hour, so we could fly a good thirty-five hours."
"..."
"If we flew in a straight line the whole way... that's at least three thousand miles. Of course, that's theoretical — no aerial refueling. Haha."
It wasn't a bad idea. It was a light helicopter that could land on a trailer or even a bus, and we had no idea what dangers lay ahead on the road.
Being able to scout ahead by air was an enormous advantage. And after the earthquake, there was no telling where the roads might be out.
"Not bad."
Jake added, his voice rising with excitement, as if trying to lock the idea in.
"And think about it. If we put a gunner in the helicopter, we'd have an overwhelming high-ground advantage against any raiders."
At his bold claim, Mike started to object — "Heh, that's a bit..." — but I spoke first.
"Jake, that's a glass cannon. This isn't hunting wild boar."
"..."
"It's tactically useful, I'll give you that. But the risk is too high. The Robinson's thin aluminum fuselage will punch through from a pistol round, let alone a rifle. One hit to the engine or the rotor and you're going down."
"..."
"And if you keep a safe distance, you've got another problem. Pull far enough back that they can't hit you, and you can't hit them either. You just waste ammo outside effective range. All you end up with is meaningless suppressive fire."
I clapped Jake on the shoulder — he looked a little deflated — and went on.
"But we have to cross the Nevada desert, crawling with raiders, with no idea what's ahead. Being able to send the helicopter out to scout is a huge advantage. Load every last drop of Avgas we've got and we take it. Work out the cargo loading with Dave."
"Yes, Boss."
"Oh, and can we hitch the helicopter trailer to the bus?"
"We can."
"Hook that up too, for now. We've got more cargo. Grab all the helicopter parts and consumables as well."
"Yes, Boss."
"And remember — if it becomes dead weight, we dump it. Anytime."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
Then Mike asked Jake,
"So, Jake. Where's that small cargo trailer you mentioned? If we're building a chicken wagon in a day, we need to get moving now."
"Behind the farm equipment garage."
"Good. Let's go take a look."
When Mike stood, Jed followed.
"I'll come too. Might be something I can help with."
Mike's son Damon and Jed's boys trailed after them, apparently preferring to help with something rather than sit still.
Then, as if by some unspoken agreement, everyone else stood up one by one to see to their own preparations.
It was night, but no one even thought about rest. Everyone could feel it instinctively — we didn't have much time left.
"Sarah, Raven. Let's start packing the children's clothes and the medicines we'll need."
At Eleanor's direction, the women gathered the children and headed for their quarters.
The restless night wore on, and I returned to my fortress. Wolf came over with the old rope toy he loved clenched in his jaws, whining for a game.
I played tug-of-war with him as hard as I could, but in my head I kept turning over the decision I had just made.
Is leaving really the right call?
This farm was land too good to simply abandon. That much was certain.
But if the tide of refugees reached us here, or if another massive earthquake cut off every road, this place would not be a natural fortress. It would be a prison, plain and simple.
We could just... hold out here. Defend it.
I shook my head almost immediately. Even a few dozen refugees pushing onto the farm would be more than we could handle. We couldn't share our supplies, we couldn't take them in blindly, and we couldn't kill them.
And if the war intensified and the federal army started requisitioning supplies in earnest, a farm sitting on this much in the way of resources in the Central Park area would be a top-priority target. That was certain.
Raiders we could fight and drive off, one way or another. But holding this farm against an army was impossible.
And there was another danger: conscription. The soldiers wouldn't just take our supplies. They would drag people like Jake, Cody, and Damon off to some meaningless battlefield, and that was something I could not allow.
We had to leave.
Just as we had when we first left Yellowknife. Abandoning every last attachment.