Gray
Watching Frank grow the salmon operation into a proper business, I found myself thinking that our little community was like a small island sitting in the very eye of a storm.
Ruin and chaos were stories that belonged to the world outside. What we had was a peculiar peace, a complete bond that only those who had lost everything could share. In some ways, it felt like a smaller world — more peaceful, more whole — than the one we had known before.
The thought didn't last. I turned to Mike and Jed.
"How's the boiler coming along?"
Jed answered with the confidence of a man who already knew the result.
"Finished her today. Figure we'll fire her up for a test run tomorrow morning."
Mike picked up where he left off, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
"We went back and forth on it a while. Ended up putting feed doors on both sides of the trailer — inside and out. Like we talked about, you load the big, thick logs from the outside, and the cleaner stuff like pellets or coal from the inside."
"That's ingenious. Haha. You two really outdid yourselves. I'll be looking forward to tomorrow morning."
The next morning, as if by prior arrangement, a handful of people gathered around the new dry van. Every eye was fixed on the heavy steel boiler mounted to the trailer wall.
"Luke, Owen! Fetch us some firewood!"
At Jed's call, his sons came over with armloads of dry logs. Jed opened the boiler's exterior feed door, loaded in a few pieces of firewood, a handful of pellets, and a splash of gasoline, then lit a wad of paper and tossed it in.
A moment later the flames caught with a whoosh, and white smoke began to rise from the chimney that jutted above the trailer roof. People crowded in around the boiler, holding out their frozen hands to the heat pouring off it.
"Reminds me of the fireplace back at the farm."
Someone said it, and they were right — the burning fire seemed to warm more than just the body. It reached the heart as well.
"Heh. Just standing around this thing and you're already this warm."
Dave said it, and Mike looked over the trailer as he answered.
"Before long we can pull the chicken trailer and the other caravans in tight around this boiler, throw tarps over the top to cut the wind, and we'll have ourselves a fine outdoor shelter."
Mike pointed to the cluster of valves protruding from the outside of the trailer and started walking them through it.
"This valve here is the supply line — that's the hot water going out. That one down below is the return line, where it comes back cooled."
They connected the flexible PEX tubing they had prepared in advance to Raven's camper and the other caravans in turn, running it through to the small radiators installed inside each one.
"Hot water from the boiler runs through those pipes, loops through each vehicle's radiator, and comes back cooled. Simple as that."
Right on cue, Tank shoved open the dry van door and stepped out, muttering.
"It's too hot in here."
A moment later, Raven threw open her camper door and called out with a wide, bright smile.
"Wow, it's already starting to warm up inside!"
"Hey, this is way better than I expected!"
Frank stuck his head out of his own caravan and shouted it. He had a hand in building the boiler, and the pride on his face made no attempt to hide.
We were evolving past day-to-day survival now, reaching for something closer to comfort.
While everyone was still riding the high of the new heating system, Mike turned to Dave.
"Dave — so what was firewood going for at the market?"
"Dirt cheap compared to diesel or coal. A truckload of well-seasoned oak for three salmon. A lot cheaper than the pellets we've been stockpiling."
Adam, who had been holding his hands out to the wood boiler's warmth, looked up, puzzled.
"Uncle Dave, it's this cold — shouldn't firewood be the scarce thing? How do you buy a whole truckload of it for three salmon?"
"Listen close, Adam. This town was a winter getaway for rich folks long before the Great Winter ever hit. Every fireplace, every woodshed, stacked to the rafters with enough wood for next winter — hell, the winter after that. And the whole country around here is trees. Nobody had any reason to hoard the stuff. A pickup load of firewood — that's a half cord — ran under a hundred dollars in the cheap places, two-fifty at the high end."
Adam went quiet. Dave kept going.
"Meaning firewood is still just fuel lying around everywhere. Salmon's a different story. You burn fuel driving out to the lake, drill a hole in ice frozen solid, sit there all day — and you're lucky to pull two or three fish."
"Ah — but our camp is right on the lake, so…"
"That's exactly it. No expedition required. Shelter and beds right there, and plenty of people to rotate through. You can fish for as long as you want."
"Aha! That's why Uncle Frank bought up all the fishing gear beforehand — so nobody else could set up on the shore."
"Now you're using your head. That's right. Until now, nobody figured salmon would be worth this much. And now, even if they wanted to follow our lead and go big, it won't be easy. Hahaha."
At that, Frank's eyes lit up all over again.
"That's all thanks to the great Frank's foresight, I'll have you know. Hahaha. Alright, that settles it. While we're at it, I'm punching a few more holes in the ice tomorrow and hiring more hands."
"Hey, Frank. We're already pulling in more than we can handle. Don't you think that's overdoing it?"
Bill shook his head as he said it, but Frank waved him off.
"Come on, Bill. You strike while the iron's hot. We've come this far — shouldn't we be hauling in a hundred fish a day?"
Something sitting this well made me uneasy.
"Frank. We're already conspicuous enough. You sure you want that much attention?"
"Don't worry, Chan."
Frank clapped me on the shoulder, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
"You think this Frank is just in it to make a buck? I've already greased every palm that matters — the county deputies, the sheriff himself, even those TSP boys, the Tahoe Security Patrol. Fresh salmon and a sack of almonds in every hand."
"Frank, you can call it greasing palms all you want, but isn't that just paying tribute?"
Someone grumbled it, and Frank's voice jumped a register.
"Ha — this guy doesn't get it. In normal times, it wouldn't be strange at all for the IRS to show up and audit us tomorrow. And we're running a shop on top of it. Even the Middle Ages had taxes."
He looked genuinely exasperated now, and his voice climbed higher.
"And think about it. Sheriff, TSP, whoever — somebody's got to be making real money before any crumbs fall their way, right? How are they supposed to squeeze taxes out of some regular civilian who sat there shivering for half a day and caught one or two salmon? But us? We grow this operation ourselves and deliver it right to their door. How great is that for them? Am I wrong?"
Nobody had an argument for that. Heads nodded around the circle.
"Now the sheriff's the one coming to us — says this is a great help to Tahoe's food supply, asks if there's anything he can do. And the TSP boys told me to let them know in advance if anybody starts giving us trouble."
Mike put a hand on a somewhat overheated Frank and eased him down.
"Haha. We know full well we're living this well thanks to you, Frank. Thank you. Truly."
That evening, Frank went straight to Reddit and posted a notice seeking salmon processing and fishing assistants.
He didn't stop at hiring. Right beside the fishing holes, on the lakeshore, he put up a big base-camp tent where the hands could rotate through and rest. Inside, a small wood stove glowed red at all hours, and on top of it a huge pot of hot salmon soup was always at a simmer. On the other side of the tent he set up a work station where freshly caught salmon could be cleaned and dressed before they froze.
The terms were generous enough to turn heads: a daily wage of at least one large salmon, or five pounds by weight, doubled when the catch was good. By the next morning, applicants were lining up.
A fair number of them had never fished in their lives, and had never dressed a salmon either. Frank didn't turn them away. Anyone with no talent for fishing got put on packing the processed fish or hauling it to market.
Before long, our little fishing spot had taken on the shape of a real business with a system behind it, and within days the daily catch had sailed well past a hundred fish.
While everyone was busy with their own piece of the work, the salmon operation kept getting bigger. In the span of a few days it had moved past simply catching and selling fish and into value-added processing.
Mike and Jed took an old steel cabinet they had pulled out of the dry van and converted it into a makeshift smoker, and the smoker put up smoke without rest. Inside it, salmon cured in salt and herbs was being reborn as something you actually wanted to eat. On the other side of camp, the women took the lead, packing diced salmon and oil into jars and sterilizing them in boiling water, turning out jarred salmon that would keep for the long haul.
Then one day, out of nowhere, the air of this peaceful, utterly ordinary passage of time began to sit wrong with me.
The fact that nothing was happening arrived as a greater anxiety than any crisis would have. We were watching everything — the news, Reddit, every rumor picked up coming and going from the market — but the world was quiet to a degree that made no sense.
That evening I called the key people together again and had each of them report on the situation as they understood it.
"Market's the same as it's been."
Frank spoke first.
"Everybody's too busy making a living to care much about the outside world. They act like this place is all there is."
Dave added his piece.
"We get the occasional trucker coming over from Nevada, but they all keep their mouths shut. Nobody wants to talk."
Cody tapped his laptop.
"I went through the neighboring counties' subreddits too. It comes down to one of two things. The places that have gone completely to hell either never had a subreddit or it's a ghost board. The places still posting regularly are holding onto some kind of order."
He paused.
"That said… there are a few where the whole community seems to have turned into a raiding party. They go after outsiders."
Jake went last, walking us through what he had put together from the television news.
"According to the reports, a large number of American states have effectively gone independent. The states still under federal control are a handful in the Northeast. The ones that joined the Southern Confederacy are a handful in the South. The rest of us — most of the map — are officially neutral and, in practice, on our own."
He pointed at the map and kept going.
"Nevada in particular. Except for the capital, Carson City, and a few military outposts, the rest of that huge state is straight lawless territory now."
In the middle of the reports, Frank brought up something he had heard from the sheriff.
"Sheriff says Tahoe's been getting along a lot better with the Nevada state government next door than with California."
"Some kind of alliance?"
I asked, and Frank pointed west on the map.
"Nothing on paper. But think about it. California means crossing the Sierra Nevada all the way to Sacramento. You take Highway 50 along the lake and Carson City — Nevada's capital — is right there. Not even thirty miles."
Mike nodded.
"Makes sense. From Nevada's side, those mountains and the whole of Lake Tahoe are a massive natural wall against whatever chaos comes over from California."
He let that sit a moment.
"And from Tahoe's side, as long as Carson City holds the east, they're clear of the raiders out of the Nevada desert and the Southern Confederacy farther south. No reason in the world not to cooperate."
Listening to the two of them, I realized once again that we had settled — without meaning to — in a remarkably well-chosen gray zone.
This wasn't just an oasis. It was a buffer between spheres of power.
Cody, who had been watching his laptop, came over with an urgent look on his face.
"Boss, you need to see this."
It was the home page of a subreddit called r/Wasteland_Jackals. The page was dark and crudely designed, packed with violent images and rough language.
"Looks like the Reddit the Road Warriors use."
Cody pointed to a post on one side of the screen that read like a recruitment notice.
"Looks like they're recruiting… but there's something off. This part here."
Those who desire courage and warmth are always welcome. We share everything.
"Courage? Warmth?"
Cody shook his head.
"I scrolled through the other posts. I think it's slang. Something like 'the stuff that makes you forget fear,' 'the stuff that beats the cold.'"
"Hmm."
"These guys… I think they're luring people in with drugs. And using them to keep them in line."
The moment Cody said it, an image flashed through my mind — the Road Warriors we had first run into in the Nevada desert. The madness of men who charged straight at us with no fear at all, even as their own people died in front of them.
"Cody."
"Yes."
"Keep monitoring. See if you can find anything that points to their movements or a base of operations, and flag me whenever there's a major change."
"Yes, Boss."