Desolated

  Desolated

  Oil Apocalypse 5

  Lou Cadle

  Copyright © 2017 by Cadle-Sparks Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

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  Chapter 1

  “C.J., don’t just play with it,” Sierra said in exasperation.

  He was opening and closing the rat trap on his finger, easing down the spring-loaded bar until it must have hurt. Her son, Curt Junior, was twelve and “going through a phase,” according to her father. He’d been a good kid until puberty, but since then, he’d been more unfocused and quietly rebellious. Sierra wasn’t sure how to deal with it. She loved her son, but as he grew up she understood him less and less.

  It didn’t help her much when Joan or Pilar told her that he was normal.

  “I need more traps over here, Dad,” Zoe called from across the field.

  They were all working in the amaranth fields across the crumbling state highway from the houses that comprised their neighborhood, their home and refuge since the trouble that had come twenty-five years earlier.

  Misha, who was working nearest to Sierra and her son, said, “I can’t believe how hot it is already. It can’t be three hours past sunrise, and I’m dying out here.”

  Yasmin said, “Feels fine to me.” She was one of the Payson orphans who had moved up here six years ago. Yasmin was not a complainer. Ever. About anything. Hot weather, hard work, hunger, a badly sprained ankle last year—she managed all of it without a whine or complaint.

  Too bad Sierra couldn’t infuse her son with a bit of that. C.J. was in a bad mood today because she hadn’t let him run the trap line with his father. There were things to do here. He was still dawdling.

  “C.J., would you rather help with laundry? It’s fine if you would.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do this.”

  “Other people are making sure your clothes are clean. Now you need to make sure they can eat. We can’t lose any more grain this year!” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. He’d already given in. No reason to keep lecturing.

  And everybody knew how the grain loss to rodents had cut into their food supply.

  C.J. sighed, but he bent down and set the mouse trap.

  Yasmin said, “This patch of grain is starting to pink up.”

  Misha said, “Let me see.” She moved over to stand next to Yasmin.

  Dev appeared at Sierra’s side. “I’m going to get more water. You need some?”

  “I’ll go!” C.J. said.

  Dev looked at Sierra, eyebrows raised, letting her decide.

  She said to her son, “If you promise to come right back. Don’t make me come look for you.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  Sierra raised her voice. “Everybody drink up. C.J. is going on a water run.”

  Her son gathered the canteens and waterskins made of animal bladders, more of his father’s handiwork, like the mousetraps. They’d had plastic bottles once, but eventually those grew brittle if they sat in the sun every day.

  Dev said, watching C.J. leave, “He grows every day, I swear.”

  “Yeah. And he looks more and more like his father. Before the disease, I mean.”

  “His voice sounds like yours though.”

  “When he talks,” she said.

  “He’s self-contained, that one,” Dev said. He and Sierra got along well these days.

  “Your supply of bait holding up?”

  “Yeah. Still impressed Zoe came up with it.”

  Zoe had figured out that making a seed butter with coyote melon seeds provided a more enticing snack for the rodents than the underripe amaranth seeds themselves.

  “She’s a smart kid,” Sierra said.

  “In a lot of ways, smarter than us about the world we live in.”

  “That would make sense.”

  “How’s your dad?” he asked.

  “Good. Yours?”

  “About the same.”

  “Bad mood still?”

  “Pretty much every day anymore.”

  “Is he in pain, do you think?”

  “Hard to say,” Dev said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping sweat off his face and neck. “But I suspect it’s mostly frustration that he can’t grip a tool right or hold his hand steady.”

  Misha was back to setting traps among the amaranth plants. She heard the conversation and spoke up. “He’s better right after he wakes up.” She had inherited the job of medic when Dev’s mom had died.

  “Dad, you going to stand there and yap all day?” Zoe called.

  “No, Commander,” Dev called. To Sierra and Misha he said, “Sorry, ladies. Duty calls.” He walked back around the field to the side where Zoe was working.

  Misha said, “I can barely remember air conditioning, what that felt like, to be outside playing or working and come in to a cool house, but I would like some today.”

  “We never had it,” Sierra said. “Too much drain on the turbines, and a swamp cooler was good enough anyway up here. But of course I remember it from town, or from going down to Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix,” Misha said in disgust. “People living places like that and running their air conditioning twenty-four hours a day is part of why it’s so hot now.”

  “Probably,” Sierra said. “That plus driving, flying all over the world on vacations, manufacturing, cutting down trees.”

  “Speaking of which, do you need help cutting more trees? There’s one that’s leaning toward your barn. Rod and I could come over and help.”

  “Yeah, we need to take that one down. But the guys will do it.” The male orphans had all moved into her and her father’s barn, in a sort of dormitory arrangement, two of them bedding down on the ground level, and two up in the loft. Now, with Joan’s family and the Payson orphans, Sierra’s two children, and the core group, they were an extended family of twenty.

  “I can barely remember what color the houses were,” Sierra said.

  “What?” Misha said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, sorry, I was flashing back to the start of all this. Trying to bring to mind what color our house and barn were. And the Quinn place.”

  “Mostly cream or off-white. Our log house was darker, a deep natural brown. But for a while there, the barns were multi-colored. Remember that?”

  “Right. When we were using up all the paint we had.”

  “It was kind of pretty.”

  “All brown and gray now. And falling apart.”

  Misha said, “We do what we can. Do you think we’re going to have to re-dig the wells again this year?”

  “God, I hope not,” Sierra said. “Talk about hard work.”

  “Not to mention Rod.” That
time about nine or ten years ago that they’d re-dug their wells, taking them deeper to find clearer water, Misha’s adopted brother had been down in the well working, and a board had snapped, taking down the supports. Then dirt had begun to rain down on him and they’d barely gotten him out before the whole thing collapsed. “I still have nightmares about that.”

  “Does Rod?” Sierra had suffered her own nightmares for many, many years, from what she’d seen—and done—in battle. No longer though. She no longer woke trembling or gasping for breath. Good thing, as Georgia, one of the orphan girls, shared her bedroom now.

  “No, no nightmares. Not that he’s ever mentioned.”

  “I vote if we have to re-dig the wells again this year, we can leave Rod out of it.”

  “Doubt he’d go for that.”

  “No,” Sierra said. “Probably not. Too responsible. He’s at the other field this morning, right?”

  “Right.” When they’d agreed to take the orphans, they’d expanded the amaranth to a second field across the highway. If they couldn’t beat the rodent problem, they should probably expand yet again to make up for the losses.

  “It’s amazing how hot it is,” Misha said again fifteen minutes later.

  “Why don’t you take a break? Or stop. We’re nearly done.”

  “I’m just whining. I’ll be fine. I hope Brandie is staying out of the sun.” Another one of the orphans.

  “Why? Is there something wrong with her?”

  Misha said nothing. When Sierra looked over, her head was bent to her work and her neck was flushed.

  Sierra knew that Brandie and Troy were romantically involved, so it didn’t take her long to guess what might be wrong. “She’s pregnant?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Troy?” she said.

  “I can’t say.”

  Sierra had to laugh. “Their relationship is not a big secret. I walked into the barn once and they were going at it in the loft. They were so embarrassed.” But then she sobered up. Another mouth to feed. And a person needs more calories while pregnant and breast-feeding, not that she had any room to judge. She was the only one who had given birth here since the end of oil. Sierra jerked her hand back as a trap snapped shut. “We’d better hope these traps work.”

  “I miss having pets. Jasper and Lily. A cat could help us with the mice.”

  “Lily wasn’t much of a pet.”

  “No, I guess not. Too much wolf in her. I like animals though. Except for these damned rats and mice and voles and whatever.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they taste like crap.”

  Sometimes when they could trap nothing better, which was the case more and more often, they cooked the rodents with water and amaranth leaves. The resulting soup was rather bitter and greasy. But it was food. They needed the protein. “But back to Brandie,” Sierra said.

  “I really can’t talk about it. I’m sorry I let anything slip.”

  “Is she happy about it?”

  “Sierra!” Misha said in exasperation.

  “Look, you may as well tell me. How’s she feeling about it?”

  Misha shook her head, but she gave in. “Nervous.”

  “You told her you have some experience as a midwife? You did great with C.J.”

  “I nearly puked on you, I was so nervous.”

  “I’m not an easy patient.” Her second labor, she promised herself she wouldn’t scream as much. She had broken that promise.

  “It was easy. He popped right out.”

  “Gross,” said Yasmin.

  “Not at all,” Misha said. “And fast. Six hours, was it?”

  Sierra didn’t point out that six hours of pain without any drug to relieve it had not been particularly easy for her. Instead she said, “You were there for Nina’s birth too.”

  “Sidelines only. That sure wasn’t an easy one. More than a day of labor.”

  “Poor woman.” Sierra set her final trap. “Oh my God, I’m forgetting her name.”

  “Janine. That’s why Emily named Nina what she did—part of her mom’s name.”

  “Right. Nina is just Nina to me now, Emily’s girl. I almost forget where she came from.” She stood and stretched her back. “I forget more and more stuff. Getting old.” Or chronically hungry. That wasn’t any help to keeping focused.

  “You’re not fifty yet,” Misha said. “Too early to lose your memory.”

  “Barely over forty,” Sierra said. But the memories of the time before were fading, and one year slipped into the next with little to distinguish them from one another. There had been the year of digging the wells. The year when the last turbine quit turning and nothing she or Curt could do would repair it. The year of Nina’s birth. Of C.J.’s. The year the hens caught some disease and they all lost over half their flocks and been terrified they’d lose them all. The year the last apple tree died. Otherwise, it was day after grinding day, working hard to stay alive.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” Misha said.

  “You didn’t,” Sierra said. “There’s nothing wrong with getting older as long as you get wiser.”

  “More health problems can come with age. How’s your dad’s back?”

  “Good days and bad.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t do more for it,” she said.

  “He doesn’t blame you for that. No one does.”

  “I wish Kelly had stored opium poppy seeds.”

  “Probably it’d take too much water to keep poppies alive anyway.”

  “It might be worth it,” Misha said.

  “Guys, I’m done,” Yasmin said. “What’s next?”

  “Your regular routine, I suppose. Back to the Quinn house,” Sierra said. “Unless Emily and them need more help with hanging laundry.”

  “I’m sure they have plenty of hands to do that, but I’ll check with them first.”

  Just then C.J. came up hauling the canteens in a burlap sack. Sierra had forgotten about him. He had taken his sweet time coming back, but it was too hot to argue. She said nothing as he gave everyone their water bottles back.

  “We’ll go home and work on the garden next,” she said to him. She called over to Dev and Zoe, “You guys almost done?”

  “Almost,” called Zoe.

  “Okay, see you later.”

  “Don’t forget to come over tonight,” Zoe called back. “You promised to help me with the upholstery.”

  “I won’t forget,” Sierra said. “Let’s go, C.J. See you, Misha, Yasmin.”

  C.J. mumbled a goodbye, and he and Sierra made for their house.

  Chapter 2

  “I want to move into the barn,” C.J. said.

  Sierra bit her lip to keep from moaning. He exhausted her some days. Apparently, this was going to be one of those. She worked to keep the impatience from her voice. “Why is that?”

  “I’m not a baby now. I don’t have to sleep with you and Pilar.”

  “You don’t sleep with me or Pilar. You sleep in the living room alone. Pilar sleeps in his room, and I sleep in my room with Georgia.” The oldest of the orphan girls. “Is that not private enough for you? Because the barn will be less private. I mean, if this is about wanting to masturbate or something—”

  “It’s not about that!” he said.

  “Is it—?”

  “Never mind,” he said, exasperated. He sped up and crossed the road.

  “Don’t run off,” she called. “There are weeds to pull and water to carry and all sorts of chores!”

  He disappeared around the house without indicating he’d heard.

  She walked up to the front door and inside, then back into the kitchen. “Hey, Pilar,” she said, coming through the kitchen door. Her father was cutting up vegetables. “Making C.J. lunch?”

  “No, making tomato sauce for tonight. Tomato and whatnot sauce, rather.” Small sweet peppers turned half-red, a summer squash, onions, and garlic lay on the table, along with either chard or some other brittle leaves of greens that they’d dr
ied in the sun on screens a month ago.

  “Looks good. What’s on the menu?”

  “That. Over amaranth. And baked eggplant slices.”

  “Spaghetti, more or less,” she said.

  “Less more than more. I still miss noodles. They seemed such a dull and typical food back then,” he said, “but now I’d trade a lot for a lousy pound of pasta.”

  “Let’s not start.” It always made her hungry whenever any of the older people started in on the foods they missed. It made her crave food she’d never taste again. And she was already hungry. The distance between breakfast and supper was far too long, and she had six or seven hours more to wait. She longed to snatch a bit of pepper from the cutting board, but she didn’t. “How’s your back?”

  “Same as ever. Never terrible.”

  Then why did he limp some days? That’s not the question she asked. Instead, she asked, “What still needs to be done around here?”

  “Hens are taken care of. No need to check for more eggs until noon. It’s a hot one today, so I’d planned on checking three times.”

  “And it’s only a little over halfway through spring.”

  “Maybe summer will be cooler this time. We might get a good monsoon year.”

  “I doubt it.” The summer rains, once an annual event, had come every fourth or fifth year since her teen years, and only once since C.J.’s birth had it rained hard for a month. That one month had been a blessing, but they couldn’t count on those.

  The only good news aspect of the ongoing warming trend was that they had two big growing seasons, from February through April, and again from September through December. In January it wasn’t hot enough to ripen tomatoes or peppers, but they could still grow lettuce, spinach, leeks, and peas. She remembered snow and ice from her childhood. C.J. had never seen either.

  She said, “Remember that time you and I went sledding down the stream bed? I must have been seven or eight?”

  Her father smiled. “Of course I remember. That was one gorgeous snowstorm. A foot and a half, at least.”

  “I loved having the snow days.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek, so changed from when he was young, the skin thinning with age, the beard sparser and grayer. And he was mostly bald now. “You were a great father.”