Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office Part 4

Just last Tuesday morning I was eating and had almost finished off can number one thousand and fifty three. I heard a coughing sound and ran around the cabin three times trying to find out who made it. I hadn't made it. I waited a while, then sat back down to eat the last ravioli and I saw something moving on the can. The man on the can was moving. He was motioning to me... me of all people. And then, once we got really face to face, he pointed at his name and then stroked his chin. He just stroked his chin twice and smiled and winked and then stopped moving and I knew he had given me an important clue.

Boyardee ] BoyRD ] BoERD ] BERD ] BEARD!

Thanks to the tip off I started grooming myself a bit more regularly. The day after I got the tip I took a good bath in the creek. It was so cold that I couldn't sleep for two nights straight I just s.h.i.+vered the whole time.

I thought I had caught one of them in my facial hair this morning. Chitinous exoskeleton. Red exoskelton. Bug. I dropped it in a gla.s.s of water, but didn't hear it squelch the way it's supposed to do. It has to make a staticky sound like shhh. So I think it was a decoy. The real bugs real surveillance bugs they're machines are harder to get rid of. Scatter in the light when I open the blinds or door. I hold my breath when I see them and then try to sneak up but they always seem to escape between the cracks in the floorboards. They seem to cl.u.s.ter around the corner with the empty cans, trying to sniff out asymmetries. They're either self-a.s.sembling or the ent.i.ties behind them know they're getting closer, because there are more and more of them patrolling the corner every day. It's clear to me why they've got my place staked out. I've got the high ground, overlooking all of the town and even further down to Denver. It's a unique spot and that's why they want it and that's why they have to get rid of me.

Denver, can't trust anyone in Denver. Denver's trying to contact them. Sent a huge message this summer, not even trying to be discrete. I saw it a" it lasted for several days. Several days it did last. If someone comes to you from Denver turn him turn IT away. Contaminated or converted or worse much worse I don't even have to imagine hard how much worse.

They got Denver, they did. Might be why they're getting more aggressive with me. Trying all different methods. Calling my name out at night, even in the middle of the day. I don't hear it hear it, but they can talk directly to my brain. It's some kind of wave form they send out that can go through logs and bone. I don't know how they learned my name. I didn't tell them. Sometimes they communicate to me using Amy's voice and have manage to even project her image into my brain. But I know it can't be Amy because she's in the underground now and I'm pretty sure is in Kansas now and besides we obviously can't be seen with one another so I just ignore the projected image until it stops yelling at me and goes away. It's possible that they subverted one of my compatriots in town and learned my name that way. People in town should be used to dealing with aliens, though. You know, there used to be a show about an alien and it took place here. I don't remember much about it because I was too young then but Amy watched it a lot. The woman in it a" she wasn't the alien a" looked kind of like Amy, but with brown hair and she was a bit skinnier. The alien looked like a man and he wore a vest. That was fiction, I know. But this is real I know this is real.

It's starting to stay cool during the day and getting cold at night again. The stream out back is running yellow now. I have had to stop drinking it because it's obviously been poisoned. You can see the poisons floating on the surface so obvious. They keep trying this. Trying to flush me out. It's natural, it's where you live, it's fine. That's what they're trying to say to me. I never fell for it yet and I'm not about to now. Not now. I can manage just like before I'll just eat snow.

I've actually got a counterattack planned. Going to knock out their surveillance. The smart way. I'm leaving the windows all open all the time now. I think the morning frosts will attach to them and melt on them and short out their nanocircuitry.

I'm going to take this to Doc Smythe to relay forward to you via the underground. I'll be in this guise but without the gla.s.ses. I know for A FACT that Doc Smythe has surgically and neuronically altered his own face and so it'll be a difficult task trying to locate him but I'm up to the challenge. And like I said he doesn't understand anything but he does know people. There are almost no people in town. They have mostly escaped east I think through the underground or maybe they're in Colorado Springs now. All the water in Colorado Springs tastes like metal. There's metal in it and the aliens can't locate the people there because their waste streams are masked by the iron metal in the water.

I'll find Doc Smythe OK. Everyone who rides a bike can be trusted everyone. Send some more food as soon as you can in cans. And tell Amy I said h.e.l.lo and not to worry.

I'm committed to winning here.

Theodore A. Alstott, Ph. D.

PS - Take the gla.s.ses off now, or they'll get suspicious. OK?

PPS - You have to destroy them not, too, in case you get caught.

PPPS - You shouldn't have been able to read that PPS without the gla.s.ses on. I'm not sure who you're working for, but you'd better get rid of those gla.s.ses. Wait, put them back on so you can read this. OK?

PPPPS - Now destroy this letter, then take the gla.s.ses off. Have you done this, yet? OK.

To: Barry Booker, St. Joseph, MO From: Ned Roundtree, Amarillo, TX July 7th, 20+3 Barry, Hey, pal. Ned from Amarillo here. Another year, another letter. Things have been getting steadily worse since the blackout happened, but we're stuck here for the long haul.

We still don't have the irrigation problem fixed. Some go-getter windmill experts a" those guys who used to work on the wind turbine generators, you know. They've been trying to convert one or two of those big turbines to pump water from Lake Meredith down to town. Don't see quite how they're going to do that. I figure it'd be a tall order, and even taller with no electrical equipment to work with. All the same, having a stable source of water down here would be a h.e.l.l of a good thing, particularly for the ranchers and farmers (not surprising). I got an idea to help, but more later on that. And it's just an idea, so until we get some way to pump water, we just have to cross our fingers, wait for rain and keep the gutters funneling into barrels. It's precious little when I think about how much we used to use around here, but it gets us by. The garden in the back yard isn't too much, and it seems like it took us forever to get any real produce out of it, but it keeps the kids halfway busy. Jenny and I have enough trouble keeping them in line, so anything that'll keep them occupied is a G.o.ddam blessing. Teddy's been running with a bad crowd lately, and it's like moving heaven and earth to get him to help out with anything at all. Just lazes about, smoking dope. G.o.ddam shame, he used to be a bright kid. Shouldn't write him off so quick, I suppose, but it's been hard. I used to bash *em blue at PTA and district meetings, but I guess the public schools were useful for something after all.

Bandits have been getting worse lately. The first year or so it was just street gang stuff, vandalism and looting. Bad enough, you know. But the last couple years they've been organizing, and a couple of the larger groups apparently have horses now. Rustling cattle, hijacking s.h.i.+pments of grain and other staples. Even killed a few folks earlier this spring, just west of town. Some indians coming in from New Mexico, killed for some dried chilies and parched corn. Bad business. Can't even seem to get any good whiskey in here without trouble, and there hasn't been any beer to be had for the last two years, at least. Most of the hold-ups and attacks have been between here and Lubbock, and a handful west of town, one as far out as Tuc.u.mari. The sheriffs haven't been much help, and even the rangers can't seem to pin down the more organized packs.

I told the folks in Was.h.i.+ngton, those chickens.h.i.+ts in Austin, everybody who'd listen, that building a stupid little fence in the middle of the desert wouldn't stop anyone determined enough to make it over here. Now I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. For the most part, the Mexicans that come over are hard-working folk trying to make a living. Can't very well begrudge them that. Putting up a fence just makes it harder on them. I hate regulations and big government as much as the next guy, but we could have put into place some kind of system to weed out the good folk from the drug runners and other sc.u.m criminals. And that's the majority of the banditos now. Well, there are of course a large number of no-good white and black knuckleheads mixed up in that business, but the plain fact of the matter is that most of these banditos are Mexican-American, and those that aren't speak good Spanish or, at the very least, Spanglish. And this is up in the G.o.ddam panhandle, not down in the belly of the beast.

So, our pumps still ain't pumping. Not a huge surprise to you, I'm sure. They've been sitting still for almost three years, now. I had to cut loose pretty much everybody on staff, and it hurt to do that. But, you know, when you try running them manual and all they do is pull up that G.o.ddam nasty sugar water stuff, there's no profit and no way we can keep folks on. Again, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know already, but small-time oil was always hard enough when what was being pumped was oil. Well, without the oil... Doesn't make any sense to them, either, when they can be off gardening best they can or fixing up bikes and running mail or just heading out of town for good. And a lot of them have.

Lately, though, I've been thinking a lot about those pumps. I'm so d.a.m.n dense that it hadn't occurred to me until I heard someone else talking about something really similar. But, you know how those wind wranglers are trying to convert their turbines to run water to Amarillo and elsewhere? Well, I been imagining that we could convert them pumps of mine to move water instead of petroleum. Just gotta get the oil residue out of them a" flush them out good, and that sugar water seems to have done a pretty good job of that a" and move them to good locations from which to move the water. The wind turbine boys seem to be pretty well-organized, so I don't believe I'll be able to compete with them directly. I've been thinking more along the lines of a partners.h.i.+p with them. Been trying to draft up a proposal for them to look at. Connecting the turbines to readily available pumps seems to me to make a lot more sense than getting new pumps made and moved all the way cross country. Risky business there. Simpler and safer to move my pumps out to their turbine(s), hook them right up and get the water pumped that way. I have a hunch it'll be a little more involved, of course, but it could make life a lot better around here, and keep us aright financially, too.

What have you been doing with your pumps? Reckon you've got plenty of water up in your neck of the woods, with the Missouri right in town, but it's probably still hard for you to get it moved around to the right places. I think this wind turbine-pump operation has a lot of promise. As a matter of principle, I never used to give free advice. Much less to a seasoned compet.i.tor such as yourself. But, I think that the situation over the last three years has changed most folks, me included. So I say you ought to seriously consider doing this. You've got windmills and turbines up there, right? You got enough wind, I know that, with all those loess hills. All that good earth, just piled up all around you. Heh.

I've still been wondering how in the h.e.l.l all of this came about. I know there's been tons of talk about the Chinese, and how they had some weapon that worked on us but backfired on them, too. Now I think that's just a bunch of bull, and let me tell you why. Here we have one of the G.o.ddam biggest economies on earth that's growing by leaps and bounds a year a" China's economy, that is. And they're doing it by selling everything they make to the United States AND bankrolling the debt that we're accruing in purchasing that stuff. They had us over a G.o.ddammed barrel and not even given us a reacharound, and took our cake and were eating it too. Preposterous situation for us to be in, and all to China's advantage. They knew it, we knew it, Europe knew it. h.e.l.l, I bet even half of Africa knew it. And then they make a weapon that can molecularly alter all our domestic energy mineral deposits and our bullets, and hose up magnetic interactions to mess up the grid... all of these things that even American weapons manufacturers couldn't do... well, that we know of. But they make it, don't tell anyone about it, don't test it (that we know of), then just up and decide to use it on the biggest cash cow of a nation that ever existed? Doesn't make a lick of sense.

Heard some crackpot up north is saying that mushrooms are to blame for the whole thing. Well, that doesn't even rank debunking. Just hogwash. I look around this range and don't ever see hardly a single mushroom blooming up out of the red earth. There's just no way it could have happened.

No, I have to tell you. It's aliens. Couldn't tell you how they did it, but sure as my name is Nedrick Roundtree, they did. The few real astronomy eggheads will tell you it might have been something else. Moving into an unmapped and magnetically unstable area in s.p.a.ce, weird chemical reactions from comets or whatnot. Simply doesn't add up. Couldn't tell you why they did it, either. All's I can say is, I sure hope it was an accident of some kind. Some intergalactic bureaucrat's cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k. Because I can't imagine all this that's happened being on purpose, and a friendly one at that. They still haven't showed their faces a" if they got them a" around here that we've been aware of. Hope they never do.

Used to be, Jenny and I would get the kids all piled into the Suburban with picnic blankets and telescopes and drive up near Lake Meredith, just to the southwest of it. There was, still is for that matter, nice wildlife refuge up there, and we'd camp and take turns looking at the stars and planets. Had to head out of town to see them well, because you couldn't see them very well from Amarillo a" too many lights in town. Now we can see them almost every evening from in town a" huge islands of diamonds on an ocean of oil a" but I don't want to look up, much less through a G.o.ddam telescope. I'm scared to death I might see something looking back.

All the best from out west.

Ned and family To: Andrew Mactarnahan, Olathe, KS From: Sylvia Mactarnahan, San Diego, CA April 20, 20+2 Andrew John didn't try to stop me from writing you, but merely asked that I not try to reason with you again. I conceded. This is no longer about us writing every other week, repeatedly asking for some acknowledgment of what we've been through these last 18 months or more. Knowing you're there and waiting for some sign that you understand what's happened here. You have moved on, apparently. So shall we.

We're departing tomorrow. The Scottish La.s.s is rigged up and decked out. We've got water to last us months, half a year at least, and a solar oven to cook the fish John catches.

Don't write. We're sailing.

Sylvia To: Natalie Vried, Lincoln, NE From: Bert Gunderson, Philadelphia, PA January 18, 20+2 Nat- This will be the last time I write you, from Philly at the very least. I'm not sure where I'm going to be a month or even a week from now. Things have become simply intolerable here, and I need to find someplace different.

It's been a while since we last talked. Lack of e-mail, phone and an even remotely reliable postal service is partly to blame, I think. Maybe I should have tried carrier pigeon, but I've heard they hunt those things out where you live. Or maybe it was doves. Regardless, it's probably not a good bet.

Just remembered you the other day. Not that I would really forget, it's just that recent events have brought thoughts of you to the fore. You were preternaturally cute at SFSU, checking out your Weldon Kees books when I worked in circulation. I had no real idea who he was then, no clue why you'd be interested in such a depressed but clever person. I'm glad you came back to check out more, so I could ask you about him. Once I finished my thesis, the chance to work near the APS library a" and maybe there, eventually a" was too good to pa.s.s up. We've been over this, and I hate to rehash it, so I will not. You had your priorities straight. Going back home to care for a loved one may be one of the few things I understand anymore. Wish I could put it into practice, but I don't even have a goldfish. Ha.

I don't know why you would have had this urging, but if you ever thought making a trip anywhere out here was a good idea, please reconsider that. I haven't got good, reliable news from anywhere on the east coast, but I've heard enough conflicting rumors to last me two lifetimes. Boston's gone up in flames, and then Boston's fine and they're still playing intrasquad Sox games. New York has had a month straight of rioting and anarchy, and two weeks later New York has had six months straight of rioting and anarchy. (OK, to be honest I don't hear much about that place that conflicts a" I'm willing to believe it's become a veritable h.e.l.lhole and far, far worse than the mere cesspool it used to be.) Hundreds, thousands of murders in DC this year alone, and the Pentagon has become a giant hotel for bigwigs and the lights are still on there and they've got a regular plantation farm going inside the building grounds, and there are still helicopters choppering to it and out to destinations unknown. Of course, I have no reason to believe things are horribly bad in most other cities, but the converse is also true.

It used to be that, when I worked at the Free Library, patrons would rarely ever come to me to find out about really current events or news, other than questions like, "Hey, where do you guys keep the New York Times?" I can count them on one hand. One was a little old Volga German lady who wanted to know what was happening in Berlin a" this was just after the Wall fell. Well, she sat down with me and by the time we'd found out the relevant newspaper articles and gone through them a" she was not a native speaker/reader, nor had the best eyesight, so it was plodding work a" she was in tears. It was the oddest thing a" I couldn't tell if she was happy that the Soviet Union was falling or saddened by the violence and turmoil, and you can't really ask that sort of thing or even offer any solace. "Professionalism" guidelines, best practices and all that rot. Of course, I can name this instance where those guidelines were an abomination, but the hundreds of times where they were the right way to go remain anonymous.

Now a" well, after everything went to s.h.i.+t and then up until a couple weeks ago a" at the Am. Phil., patrons would come in all the time saying, "I heard alien mushroom people were spotted in Yonkers. Are they just in Yonkers, or have they infiltrated the entire metropolitan area?" And I could say, "I have heard no reliable reports of alien mushroom people sightings in Yonkers or anywhere else, you f.u.c.king loon. Get out." But a lot of other folks would come in and ask, "My family lives in Yonkers, and I heard there's been almost a full year of rioting and anarchy in New York and I wonder if it's spread somehow to spread out there. Do you have a paper or any word from there?" And then all I could do is look at them and tear up because I just couldn't say, didn't know, and that we weren't really the kind of library that could help with questions like that. But I guess at least I could tell them that much and show them some empathy.

The entire seaboard a" h.e.l.l, the entire world a" outside this meagerly gray city has become completely unknowable to me and pretty much everyone else in every city, and I can't speak for others, but that fact makes me feel smaller than I can even fully relate. May as well be a hydrogen atom in the sun for all I can see going around me.

And now even Philly has fully masked itself, putting on its own death shroud. Or maybe the blinders have been ripped off my eyes. In any case, the clincher came two weeks and one day ago. I left the apartment a little early to get to work on time, as there's been a bit of snow lately. We haven't had much at all this year, but it has been bitter cold, one of the worst I can remember since moving here. Well, I was halfway over the Benjamin Franklin bridge when I started hearing a commotion. It's phenomenal how the sound carries without the noise of cars and other machinery, even inside the library. So I kept on and when I took a left on 5th street I could see that something really rotten was happening. By the time I got within a block of the library, the first few of the looters were walking off with their bounty. Cartloads, baskets full of books, papers, old loose leaf stuff. There was no point in even trying to stop them.

I just fail to comprehend what got into all of them, and why they targeted our library of all places. Was it just easier to break into? Does older paper burn better or something?... actually, I don't even want to think about that. Now, that stuff wasn't Proust, or Bulwer-Lytton (HA!) a" nah. Just Franklin's, Darwin's, Boas's personal papers, among thousands of other absolutely unique things that some of the best minds ever found special and wanted to keep safe. And now it's a couple cold nights' worth of hibachi fodder for a bunch of Philly chuckleheads. After watching the objects of my work a" oh, they didn't take all of it, but you can bet they'll be back as soon as the Charles Peirce is in ashes a" get trucked out the doors, I meandered around a bit. No reason to go inside that place, no real reason to go home. Took a walk through Independence park, right across the street. Sat on a bench and watched a drunk p.i.s.sing on another, who was pa.s.sed out in the overturned Liberty Bell. Yeah. I haven't been sleeping much since then.

So now that there's nowhere that I know, understand or have a real feel for, I find it's time to leave and maybe search out some place where that's possible. I've got a light tent, a warm sleeping bag, a sharp knife, a decent enough bike, a better bike lock and a will to leave this deathly place.

It might be nice to ride out to San Francisco. See the country on the way, pretend for a while that I can still grasp it. But be at peace; I won't trouble you on the way out west.

Yes, San Francisco sounds like a good bet to me. Ride up that hill overlooking the Golden Gate bridge from the north, leave the keys in the bike lock, take in the view, taste that clean rock salt air and leave this unknowable world behind.

-Bert G.

To: Gary Eldridge, Lawrence, KS From: Dave Thibodeaux, Camdenton, MO (Bagnell Dam) September 23, 20+1 Gary, Hey, it's Dave Thibodeaux. Hope you remember me: Pi Tau Sigma, yeah? Donut Dave? I've attached a photo to help jog your memory. Hah, well, it might be a bit different from my picture in the Rollamo a" if you still have a copy handy a" but twenty years or so of barbecuing at Lakeside, the attendant beer consumption, a fried pastry habit and a slow metabolism are gonna do that. Although, in the last year, I've come to resemble that Rollamo picture a bit more.

The other year someone mentioned that you were in Lawrence, Kansas. They didn't know exactly what you were up to, just that you'd moved over to Lawrence from KC and were maybe working on something related to a Lawrence hydroplant...? Just thought about you the other day, figured I'd shoot you a note, see how you're doing, what you've been up to, catch you up on happenings down here, etc.

How is Lawrence? I only remember heading there once, to catch a Tigers - Jayhawks game. We won, big. Seemed like a nice enough town. Maybe a little low, most of it, nestled right up against the Kansas. Have you found some lady lovin' there? They used to run screaming from us... well, me anyway. I bet now women are just throwing themselves at a guy who can make stuff work. (If you're not using this to your advantage, man, you better start.) I've been well, as has my family. My wife Ellen just turned 40 two months ago. Don't know if you ever met her. She wasn't in a Greek house at all. I met her just before graduating a" she was still a soph.o.m.ore at the time. It's pretty hard to believe we've been married almost fifteen years. (The last has been a bit of a bear, but that's the norm here and, I'm guessing, everywhere else.) Most of her family is in the area. This has turned out to be a real blessing the past year or so. Hard to believe I used to loath them being around (then again, they did used to mooch my beer). Our eldest, Jake, is twelve and a half. John, the second and youngest, is ten. Life was busy enough with two boys running around being boys and asking silly questions. It's even harder now that they ask questions I can't really answer. Like, why does dad have to ride my bike to work every day? When are the lights coming back on? Why do I have to chop wood again? Fish, again? d.a.m.n, man, it's impossible to respond.

Other things down here in Camdenton are so-so. I'm still working at the dam. We're maintaining our staff best we can, but money is tight and it doesn't seem to buy much, anyway, with all the d.a.m.ned price gouging going on. The Lake was really quiet this summer. Hard to believe, I mean just a year or so ago thousands upon thousands of people came down here. Just to drink and make a.s.ses of themselves and record other people making a.s.ses of themselves. (It was almost a part-time job for some of our staff, too, to tell the truth.) Anyway, slow times, but that's not all bad. We're still actively trying to figure out what knocked out the turbines here last year, and how. We had a couple engineering profs come up from UMR to take a look at it. Took them a full week to travel up here, and that was after the week or so it took to get our message to them. I think they were happy to have something to do. Anyway, they checked everything out from top to bottom. One of the professors even strapped on some SCUBA gear and checked out the intake a" not that it had been off, because we don't have any power with which to shut the d.a.m.ned thing off. They gave it a clean bill of health, but no reason why it's not pumping out juice. It's just as we found before. The entire mechanism is completely sound, the turbines turn smoothly, everything runs as it ought to a" it just doesn't put out any electricity. It's my understanding things are this way all over the country. h.e.l.l, all over the world, for that matter.

Heard what happened up in South Dakota. Don't know if you've gotten word or not. A buddy of mine who works at a" well, who used to be employed by the MO dept of transportation in Lee's Summit sent me the news just a couple days ago. Oahe Dam flooded, and the the whole thing failed. Washed out completely. No warning a" really, how could there be, nowadays? I guess they got a ton of rain, but you'd really expect a dam like that to hold. Then Gavins Point failed, too. Upshot was that Pierre and Sioux City got taken out, as did a whole lot of Omaha. I don't know who did the estimating, or how, but almost 12,000 Pierrans, 80,000 Omahans and 50,000 Sioux City folks got killed. With the food and medicine shortages after last year's tragedies, Sioux City's virtually wiped out. Omaha's now got to be way less than half its population as it was this time two years ago. I don't even think the people in the podunk towns all along the Missouri before Sioux City and between it and Omaha were even counted in the death toll, and to be honest, I don't even want an estimate regarding those. Apparently, things were a little hairy down towards St. Joe and Kansas City, too, but the river never crested over the banks.

I haven't heard about any other dams failing. Of course, my view, like everyone else's, is pretty limited right now. Maybe they weren't maintaining the dam as they should have, maybe it was just a poor design. Still, it's just not right for a dam to fail so completely and rapidly as that. I just... I'm terrified that the dam here is going to just up and blow. It keeps a h.e.l.l of a lot of the Lake of the Ozarks penned up. My family's place is up on a hill a" we'll be able to weather a failure. The towns downstream from the lake, though. Well, I've sent word as far as Freeburg to watch for a sign that the dam has failed. I've got in a heap of trouble for it, making people more antsy that they are already, but I'm not going to have thousands of peoples' deaths on my head. And we're halfway organized now a" far better off than before. Just for your information, we've got a couple big torches set up on top of one of the local mountains, right near Lakeland. Actually, they're on a ridge with a bald face to the east. The torches are big, and both covered from the weather, they're always loaded up with a mix of old phone books, pine and oak (it'll light fast and keep burning bright) and we've got mirrors set up behind them to beam what light they put off as far as possible. Everybody on staff a" h.e.l.l everybody in town, now a" knows that if the dam fails they're to high tail it up to the ridge and light both fires. We figured that folks downstream might see one a" or one nearby a" and think it was a mistake. But two should get the message across. I don't know, it's really the best we could come up with. I hope it'll save some folks, if it ever comes to that.

Also, I'm also nervous for everyone else I knew who works near a river. I wanted to mail you and let you know that I considered you a really good friend in Rolla, and that I'm sorry we, rather I never kept in regular contact with you and that I think you should move the h.e.l.l out of that floodplain. At least get up near the campus at the top of the hill there, whatever it's called. Or, barring that, at least figure out some kind of warning system. I'm sorry if I'm being a bit of a p.r.i.c.k about this a" I just want to maybe help save some lives.

Hope all is well for you and yours in Lawrence. If you ever get some mobility and want a vacation or something more permanent, look us up. We've got plenty of room in the guest house. Plenty of room. Plenty of food to go around. Another set of eyes on the dam would be more than welcome. You were always a h.e.l.l of a good student, if I remember correctly a" maybe you can pinpoint the problem. And hey, without the jacka.s.ses on the lake, the fis.h.i.+ng's been great here a" best year ever for it. Hard to believe.

Dave T.

P.S. - This is really the first time I've used one of these couriers. Hopefully it'll get up to you within a month or so...?

To: Richard Osgood, East Omaha, NE.

From: Regina Osgood, Elgin, TX.

August 3rd, 20+1.

h.e.l.lo from Austin. Haven't heard from you since your last e-mail last year. Praying you're still at this address and are well.

I've got bad news, and there's no use putting it off anymore. It's difficult for me to write this, but Carl and Billy are dead.

It happened about a month and a half ago. Carl went on a foray to pick up some water. All the local ponds and water holes dried up by mid-May and there's now no way to pump water over from the reservoir, and no wells to speak of. We were hoping they'd somehow get that fixed earlier this year, but... there's a small lake just south of Camp Swift, that old training grounds. There's also Long Lake over on the eastern outskirts of Austin, but we head that that was getting a bit low, and we figured the one to the south (Bistrop) would be less used. So, Carl went down that way one morning to see if he could retrieve us some water. We never saw him alive again.

After a week, Billy up and decided to go down and find him and also, we think, to also try to get some water. We'd all been nervous wrecks after Carl never came back, wondering what had happened to him. It was only 15 miles or so one-way to the lake, and Carl was never ever good on two wheels, but we still expected him back by dark that evening. Whether he'd gotten lost, had a crash or a heart attack a" he always took after your dad, you know a" or something worse, we had no idea. Anyway, Billy left in the wee hours of the morning, is all I can figure. Went off half-c.o.c.ked, d.a.m.ned hothead like all you Osgoods. Took that stupid little little bike, the dirt bike he always used to do tricks with, and his backpack, the shotgun and a plastic one-gallon water jug. So then Billy disappeared, and Carlene and Sera and myself were all alone in the house. And then we waited. I didn't let the girls out of my sight for the better part of a week.

Five days later we had the local sheriff show up on a sad-looking Appaloose. Fat lot of good he was. They found Billy by the side of the road about halfway between here and the lake, half covered in dust and gravel. It appeared he was making his way back, because the jug was full. There were signs of a scuffle, some ripped clothing strewn about. Shotgun was still there at the scene. Apparently Billy either tried to scare them away with it or was fool enough to think it'd go off, as there were pin marks in the priming caps of the shotgun sh.e.l.ls. That's what the sheriff said, anyhow. Said he thought there were most likely half a dozen or more of them. They took Billy's bike after murdering him, but nothing else. Used to be that getting killed over a bike was something you heard about in the city, not out here. How can a bike be so d.a.m.ned important to anyone that they're willing to just up and kill a fellow man for it?

I don't know what we're going to do. I can't imagine staying here after what happened to my husband and son. Can't even think about going out too far from the house yet, it's terrifying. My mother and father are still in Houston, but we haven't heard from her in almost half a year. Don't think we'd be able to swing a move down there regardless whether I get over my fear of venturing outside. Still haven't sent them a letter, will do that after this one. Thinking about asking your mama to move in with us. I could use another hand around here a" just can't seem to get much done, lately a" and she's always been lonely in that big house since your papa died. She and all her friends have been so kind to us. Always have been, it's true, but even moreso since word about Billy and Carl got around. At least a couple times a week they're over to our house, bringing ca.s.seroles and firewood and cans of food and even a taste of water for the girls and me.

The girls have both taken things very differently. Sera just shuts herself in her room all day long, only comes out once a day to eat a" if there is much of anything to eat. I listen from downstairs to hear whether she's crying or pacing or anything else, but I think she just sits or lays in bed. Don't know how she can stand it day after day up there with how hot it's been. Might be reading, but what and why?

Bad as Sera seems to be, though, Carlene is worse. She'll help out with the ch.o.r.es, help make food when we have it and clean up after herself and me. But... she disappears for hours on end. Talked with one of the gals down the block the other day. Jeanna Gilmore, you remember her? She asks about you. Said she was out foraging for firewood a week or so ago and saw Carlene saunter out of a thicket. Now this was halfway up to Taylor Rock, almost five miles out of town. I asked Carlene about it and she didn't say much, just that she was visiting with friends there. I asked her who and she clamped her mouth shut and I sent her to her room without dinner. Course, I took dinner up a couple hours later a" it's just too cruel to do that to a child. And child she is, but all the same, I think she's not mine anymore. She's only fourteen and I think I might have lost her already.

I'm not sure this is the case, but if there is any upside, it's that the sheriff's deputies are patrolling out here a bit more. There's even been talk about Austin sending a few rangers out. Rumor has it that some folks in high places are getting nervous about violence like this so close to the capital city, and that's why the new patrols. I don't know how much law enforcing they'll actually be able to do without firearms, though. Most of them, the sherriffs anyway, are still so d.a.m.ned fat a" despite the crop failures this year a" that they look like they'd have trouble walking more than a quarter mile at a stretch, much less subduing an angry mob or fending off or getting rid of a determined pack of bandits. People have been saying that there's a bunch of them hiding in some foothills just to the east southeast, and that there are some military deserters in the mix. Really hoping for some rangers, so that no one else around here has happen to them what happened to Carl and Billy. In any event, I'm still sleeping, but hardly, with all the doors a" inside and out a" locked, and a knife under my pillow.

Why did they have to die? What point was there in it? Why in G.o.d's name don't the guns work? Bad enough around here with no cars or lights or telephone or running water, but to have all the bullets turn into duds so law abiding folks can't protect themselves?

We've been hearing rumors down here that all this bad business is the fault of the Chinese. That they were working on some device or weapon and it went off accidentally, or even on purpose, maybe. I can't say how that could possibly be the case without it backfiring on them, too, but maybe they're cleverer than we expected. Haven't heard that they've invaded anywhere, though, so that's probably a good sign that they're in as bad a jam as we all are here. Not that I'd wish this on them, not on anybody.

The drought has been so horrible this year. Haven't had a lick of rain since late February. No cotton, no wheat or corn in the fields, just cracked earth. The farmers may not have even bothered planting anything this year, it was so obvious it was going to be just terrible. Hardly even any weeds growing to hold the dirt together. So hot and windy, some days it's just been an orange blur, just flames whipping by from dawn to dusk. I pa.s.sed out in the kitchen two days ago while making supper. Dreamed I was in a furnace down in h.e.l.l with a whole bunch of Chinamen, but they were all talking Spanish at me but I still couldn't understand it. Woke up with Sera staring down at me and screaming, sweating and with tears in her eyes. Probably afraid she'd lost another...

Had fifty people turn out for Billy's funeral, despite the heat and dust storms. So I heard, I couldn't even make it out the front door. The sheriff and deputies still haven't found Carl, but we can only a.s.sume the worst at this point.

I'm not sure it'll help a" hasn't for the past year, anyhow a" but please please pray for us down here, Richie. Pray to G.o.d for rain for us. And please pray for your departed brother and G.o.dson.

With love, Regina, Carlene and Sera.

To: Dr. Martin Braun, Leavenworth, KS.

From: Baird Showalter, Was.h.i.+ngton, DC.

March 21, 20+1.

Martin-.

h.e.l.lo from DC. It seems like I was e-mailing you just yesterday. A year pa.s.ses so quickly in this town. Hope you're not feeling frozen out by my lack of correspondence with you, but you understand. There have been some technical difficulties, as you likely well know. And, it was never my intent to exile you to such a bleak place as Kansas, and to teach officers at that, but I was overruled by higher. There are simply so many unforeseen exigencies, so many fires a" metaphorical and unfortunately, literal, now a" to be extinguished day to day with such precious little water (and less by the day), that personal communications with anyone are few and far between. "Baird, what's the latest on New York?" "Baird, who threw that brick through the window?" Ad infinitum. I've really lost focus on the big picture here, and am taking a day or two off to collect myself. This comes at no small price here, as I'm sure you well remember.

So, the big picture a" what I really should be seeing to appropriately and effectively advise those in the administration. Those still left, I should say. I'm writing to you today about that, but in a rather semi-professional capacity. All the same, quite a bit of this information could be considered... well, unsuitable for viewing by the general populace. So, I would prefer you to treat the content of this letter with your pre-exile discretion. I am hoping to clear the cobwebs with you so I can draft up something official for a meeting later this week. So, consider yourself my literate guinea pig. There will be no way to get a return from you in such a time frame as to be useful for this meeting, but please please do send a reply. Ultimately, you don't have a need to know a" especially considering the fallout from the scandal the other year a" but your clearance is high enough and your a.n.a.lysis and recommendations will be much appreciated by me and many others and almost certainly used in future meetings. (It may also get you out of the sticks.) Here is the executive summary, with input from the entire staff.

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Have to run this over to the infosec boys. They'll check it and get it to one of those messengers directly. I know, I know, but they need to feel useful, too (hi boys).

Best wishes.

Baird Showalter.

a.s.sistant Director, REDACTED REDACTED.

P.S. - Oh, and I almost forgot the biggest part of the big picture. The cherry blossoms are in bloom again. I guess that's something.