Desperate Measures Read online

  Desperate Measures

  A Changed World, Volume 5

  Alice Sabo

  Published by Alice Sabo, 2018.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  First edition. December 4, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Alice Sabo.

  ISBN: 978-1386271413

  Written by Alice Sabo.

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

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  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Spring had finally arrived. The trees were starting to leaf out and night time temperatures had stopped dipping below freezing. The air no longer had a bite to it. Tillie stared out the kitchen window as she waited for the water to boil for her morning tea. The land looked soft and gentle at this time of year. All the different greens of new growth were blurring the sharp edges of the winter-bare branches. Tender grass shoots were pushing up through the brown mats of dead lawns.

  They had managed to get through the winter without any great calamities. There had been some tense moments and a handful of spats, but, in general, the community had pulled together. People had settled in and hunkered down for the cold weather. But now it was getting on to spring, and that brought a special danger of its own.

  A creak on the stairs warned her of her husband’s imminent arrival. The toaster popped. She put the thin slices of bread on plates, setting them on the table with a half empty jar of pear jam. No butter today. They were still in discussions about whether they would need to start rationing until the spring crops came in. Even though there was plenty of food to go around, Tillie felt that she should start the rationing with herself. She assumed that Angus must be of a similar mind because he hadn’t said a word about the smaller portions that she’d given him.

  Fussing with the food didn’t distract her from the greater fear rattling around in the back of her brain. Tillie steeled herself before confronting Angus. “When will the flu hit us?”

  “Soon,” he said softly. “According to my notes, we had the first case last year on this date.” He put his folders and papers on the table before pulling her into a hug. “We’ll get through it.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder trying to take solace in his worn response. They didn’t know what would happen this year any more than they had any previous year. “I hate being so scared.” It wasn’t anything she’d ever admit to anyone else, but she and Angus were always truthful to each other. There wasn’t time to be otherwise. For some reason, this year she was a little more worried. Maybe it was because they had a lot more to lose.

  “There’s nothing we can do to stop it or hurry it up. So there’s no point in getting upset. It will happen in its own time.” Angus’s words sounded very logical, but his arms tightened around her comforting them both.

  She knew he was just as concerned as she was. Each year they lost a few more people to the flu. Each person they lost was one less human being on the planet. One less to breed. One less to share their knowledge with the community. At some point, there might be too few of them to continue on. And every year, she expected that it would finally be her turn.

  “I’ve got everyone working in teams,” Angus said. “Whenever someone gets sick, we’ll know right away.” He let go of her but cupped her face and kissed the tip of her nose.

  Tillie pulled away with an affectionate chuckle to grab the whistling kettle. Aromatic steam rose up from the teapot as she filled it. “I checked in with James yesterday. The clinic is ready.” She took teacups from the cabinet to put on the table.

  “We’ve got everything ready that we might possibly need.” Angus smeared a thin layer of jam on his toast before scribbling in his notebook.

  Tillie took even less than he did. She wasn’t very hungry this morning. Her own pile of papers beckoned, but she just didn’t have the energy to start her day yet. Those problems would still be there when she eventually got around to them.

  Angus reached over to squeeze her hand. “We’ll be okay.”

  It was a hollow assurance, but she appreciated it all the same. She poured the tea noticing a slight tremor in her hand. Last year’s flu had been a hard one. They had lost some dear friends. The community had grown leaps and bounds since then. There were going to be problems that she hadn’t foreseen. Every year the flu was different. This year the community was completely different. Would she be able to stay on top of things? Angus kept telling her that they would manage, but she had some niggling doubts. “I worry about what I might be missing.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “We need to train more people.”

  Angus nodded. “Agreed.”

  It was a discussion they’d had too many times. They both knew that the Survivor’s Alliance was too vulnerable. With the flu taking people every year, they never knew who they might lose. Every one of them was essential. Kyle had finally gotten a successful batch of penicillin. Eunice had taken on coordinating the supplies for the guards. Martin was the liaison for all their security. Mary produced bread goods for the whole community. Nick was still contacting new trading partners. Ted ran the Transition Center for new arrivals. She could go on naming people all day who felt irreplaceable. Despite training people to step in as needed, each person brought their own special solutions to their job. Each person was uniquely perfect for their position. If they lost any of those people, the whole community would change.

  Angus captured the last crumbs on his plate with a fingertip and licked them off. “I have a meeting.” He stood to gather his papers and notebooks.

  “Me, too,” Tillie said but didn’t move.

  Angus kissed the top of her head. “I’ll find you for lunch.”

  She forced a smile for him. “See you then.”

  He turned to leave, but paused at the door. “I love you.”

  Tears burned in her eyes. “I love you, too.” She memorized him, the way he stood, the way his long white hair stuck out and his blue eyes twinkled. He held her glance for a long moment, and she knew he was doing the same, remembering her in detail. He smiled, but she could see the tension in the lines in his face. Every day until the flu had run its course might be the last day that they saw each other.

  Chapter 2

  Nick scowled at the big board in his office at the warehouse. It listed all of the tradin
g partners, their products and expected delivery time slots. Early spring was turning out to be a tricky time. There was a gap in the food supply that he didn’t seem to be able to bridge no matter how he tried.

  They could bring in a small amount of fish from Seaview for cheese from Creamery, but they didn’t have much to spare. They’d used up a lot of the backlog at the dairy last year through greeting baskets, negotiations and emergencies. Now Creamery wanted to be paid for their products which had Nick scrambling to find something Creamery might accept that wouldn’t leave High Meadow with a deficit.

  The farms were putting seed in the ground now for summer produce. The quickest they might have anything to eat was about thirty days. And even then it wasn’t bulky food like carrots or potatoes. They took much longer to grow. Spinach, radishes and green onions were more likely what they’d have. All of which was tasty but not hearty.

  There was one bright note on the board. The winter wheat could be harvested in another week or so, but there was a possibility that they might run out of flour before then. If they ran out of flour, Mary couldn’t bake the bread, rolls, cookies, muffins and such that everyone had gotten very used to having. After ten years of train food, most people were very watchful of the food supply. A dip in amounts or a few items missing off the market shelves could cause a panic. Nick had to find some unconventional substitutes.

  Even the animals were being uncooperative. The hunters were being very careful with the deer population because the does were calving. The chickens had stopped laying for some unknown reason. A flock of turkeys had vanished into the woods, and the farmer was blaming feral dogs.

  And then there was human error. Five sacks of grain had gotten damp and had spoiled because of a leak in the warehouse roof. He made another note on the board. Every little loss combined together to make for big problems. The population kept swelling as word of High Meadow slowly spread across the country. For some reason, it was up to him to make sure there was enough food to feed them all.

  Most of the new people who had been settled in during the late summer had managed to put in a few quick crops before the first frost. After the Great Fire, Angus had encouraged everyone to plant something. Nick hoped that there were enough supplies squirreled away in various households so that they wouldn’t have a major shortage. There might still be a few hairy carrots and leathery kale that had made it through the winter in kitchen gardens. They just need to get through the next few weeks and things would ease up.

  Rationing had been discussed repeatedly and very publically. Angus had stressed that he didn’t want anyone to say that they hadn’t seen it coming. This first winter without train food had been scary. Stewgoo and Crunch had been around since the world changed. Now it was gone along with the factories that had manufactured it. That all by itself had made people uncomfortable. There was no safety net to fall back on anymore. But they had managed to get through the winter all right. Angus and Tillie had been able to calculate and store enough food to tide them over. It was the waiting for the first crops to come in that was nerve-wracking.

  Nick worried about how people were going to react. They had too many strangers, and the community was scattered across the entire territory. Back when it was barely a hundred of them up at the school, it was easier to keep an eye on things. Now if someone started trouble over a suspected food scarcity in the far corner of the Survivor’s Alliance, he might not know it was brewing until there was a riot over here at the train station. Martin had the Rovers out checking on people, but it was a lot of territory to patrol, and there were a few too many people who didn’t want to be found.

  Wisp was out training the Rovers to forage in the woods. That would ease the burden a little. This time of year did limit what was available. Wild strawberries might be delicious, but it made a poor meal for a soldier. Over the winter, they had managed to set up each Rover Station and Sentinel Post with a big garden, a few chickens and a goat or two. Martin planned to make each of them self-sufficient, but that was a ways down the road. Until that point, they needed to provide enough food for the men, so that they could do their rounds and respond to emergencies.

  Nick turned back to his lists and lacks. The soap makers in Barberry Downs had let Nick know that they had a few extra sacks of sunflower and flax seeds to spare. They pressed them for the oils and the leftover solids were being traded as chicken feed. Raw, the seeds were a good protein source. Eunice had told him that she might be able to use some of it in her baking, which brought him back to the reports on the dwindling flour supply.

  “Nick?” Jean leaned against the doorjamb looking worried. She kept her thick black hair short, and it massed in curls around her face.

  “News?” he asked eagerly.

  “Hydroponics is harvesting some greens tomorrow. Should I have them put that in the newspaper?”

  “How much is some?” Nick asked. They had been trying to let everyone know when there was something on the market. For the last week or so, every time they’d made an announcement, it had caused a rush on the store. He was concerned that people might be hoarding food. It was understandable. This was a new chapter in their history, and no one knew how it was going to play out.

  “I asked for an estimate,” Jean said. “They figure it might be about a bushel.”

  “That’s not enough to put on the market. People are getting a little hysterical. Send it on to Eunice.” Now that the school cafeteria was being used just for the students, the original staff had branched out. Eunice had taken charge of the food and supplies for the Watch, Rovers and Sentinels. Mary had opened a bakery which supplied Eunice, a restaurant and a couple of shops. All of his friends were spread out around town.

  “Okay.” Jean folded her arms, turning her frown on the board. “We’re going to have to start rationing aren’t we?”

  Nick groaned. “I’ve got a meeting with Angus about that this afternoon.”

  “People are already scared.”

  “I know.” Nick tried to conjure up a smile for her, but couldn’t. “We’ll get through this. If we keep adding a little bit here and a little bit there, it will be enough.”

  “That’s a fat lie, but thanks for trying,” she said with a faint smile that took the sting out of her words.

  “What have we got coming in?” Nick asked, hoping for some good news.

  “Golden Oaks said they can send us a shipment of baby beets and carrots early next week.”

  “Baby just means that they are picking them sooner than usual,” Nick grumbled “How much?”

  “I think it’ll be enough to put on the market.”

  “Okay. We can put that in the paper. Take a look at the numbers, and let people know there will be a limit to what they can buy.”

  “Say maybe a pound per person?”

  Nick glanced back at the big board. “I’ll let you know after I speak to Angus.”

  Chapter 3

  “Here,” Wisp pointed to a plant. “This is Lamb’s Quarters. It’s edible raw, but better if you cook it.” His students, three Rovers and a Sentinel, crowded around to look at the plant. Wisp supervised them while they harvested some for their dinner. Then they continued on their inspection of the woods. Green shoots were pushing up through the forest litter in clumps and clusters. A lot of them looked very similar, so Wisp quizzed them carefully.

  He had been living off the land long enough to be able to identify almost everything in the woods. He showed them a few more plants, a couple roots and some leathery fungus that was edible. His students asked the right kinds of questions. They knew that this knowledge could save them from a hungry night if they ever got stranded. Or more likely, it was a way to stretch their supplies when things got tough.

  “How am I going to finish my rounds if I’m going to have to forage for all my meals?” asked Slim Tim, one of the soldiers from the Seed Depository who had transferred into the Rovers. He sound more concerned than angry.

  “That’s why Martin is doubling up all the assi
gnments,” Wisp explained. “One person will be responsible for foraging while the other can go ahead on the rounds.”

  “So one of us gets to be the wife,” Lucky Larry joked. He had been part of the Watch under Martin and had moved into the Rovers as soon as it had been formed.

  Wisp didn’t understand the joke, so he ignored it. People forgot that he didn’t share the same upbringing that they had. He might look like an adult, but he’d only been alive for sixteen years. The first part had been spent in a lab and the rest of the time he’d been avoiding contact with people. A wife wasn’t a familiar concept. He supposed Bridget was like a wife to him, but he did the foraging and most of the cooking.

  A strange feeling curled around his belly and up into his chest when he thought of Bridget. They had started as friends, and their relationship had blossomed into so much more. She was pregnant with their child. That was another very unfamiliar concept that almost hurt to think about. All winter he had felt the baby growing. Now flu season was approaching and for the first time in his life, he was afraid of what it might bring.

  “Is this the same thing?” Slim Tim asked

  Wisp shook off his musing to identify the plant, which was edible. They added it to their collection. The men found a patch of wild strawberries and some young asparagus on the way back to the station. He let them argue over how it should be cooked. That wasn’t something he needed to teach them.

  To avoid the noisy kitchen, he inspected the chicken run. The birds strutted around their enclosure pecking at the dirt. Something had spooked all the chickens about a week ago, and they had stopped laying. Everyone’s chickens across the entire territory, as far as Wisp could ascertain, were no longer producing eggs. That seemed highly unlikely. He worried that they might be reacting to the latest variation of the flu. It almost always had manifested in animals before attacking humans. He hadn’t heard any complaints about birds dying which might be a good sign. But people were getting anxious and at this time of year, and anything out of the ordinary could start a panic.