“Uncle Michael says we’re in a war now.”
“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Forrest said, opening his book and sitting back in the chair.
Melissa sat back too, and watched him for a long moment before returning to the receiver and beginning once again to slowly turn the dial…
“Constantine, go ahead with your traffic… over.”
“Jawbreaker, we cannot make the rendezvous at this time. The entire mountain is on fire and we are cut off. Is there an alternative route that we can try?.… Over.”
“Negative, negative, Constantine. The mountain pass is your best bet. If you try going around to the north or south, you’ll be cut to pieces… over.”
“What about the tunnel?… Over.”
“Ambush central, Constantine. I’m afraid it’s up and over or not at all… over.”
A simple glance over her shoulder told Melissa that Forrest was no more shaken by this transmission than by the first. “Have you heard these guys already too?”
“We’ll try again after dark, Jawbreaker… over and out.”
Forrest glanced up from the book just long enough to reply, “We’ve heard Jawbreaker before, not the other guy.”
“So who’s Jawbreaker?”
“No one who can help us. Scan on, my child. Get it out of your system.”
So she turned the dial some more, picking up another, weaker transmission…
“… but my batteries won’t last long after my fuel runs out, eh. Plus I won’t be able to run my chain saw, and this cabin’s gonna get pretty damn cold.”
“Yeah, well, join the club, eh. We’ve only got enough firewood left out here for maybe a few weeks. The whole damn forest is burnt down…”
Melissa continued to turn the dial, eventually coming upon another conversation in progress…
“… so what I need to know is how to convert this old diesel motor over to vegetable oil. I’ve got a few thousand gallons of old fryer oil out back.”
“Well, first you have to install an auxiliary fuel tank with a heat exchanger in it. And it don’t sound much like you’ve got the necessary—”
Melissa didn’t care even a little bit about veggie oil cars so she moved on…
“… which is bullshit! You tell your friends over there I don’t care how much food you’ve got left. I’ve got twenty-five scarecrows on this bus and I’m coming across that goddamn bridge whether they like it not!”
“They’ll shoot you, Don! I’m not kidding, goddamnit!”
“Well, I’m comin’!”
Melissa waited almost five minutes to hear what happened next.
“You can forget them,” Forrest muttered. “They’re gone.”
She reluctantly turned the dial, realizing she had just heard someone’s last words, but another signal caught her attention before she had the chance to dwell…
“We have repelled repeated attacks. Our perimeter is holding. That’s not the problem. Our problem is food. We can’t survive much longer without you, and you can’t survive long-term without our power. We’re wasting time even debating this.”
The voice was female.
“Jack!”
“I’m listening,” he said, appearing interested for the first time.
“It’s not that simple,” a male voice replied. “You’re talking about us traveling three hundred miles through extremely dangerous territory. We need to wait. Let the lunatics starve off.”
Forrest set the book aside and moved toward the receiver for a closer look at the radio frequency.
“If I didn’t know better, Patrick, I’d say you were waiting for us to starve so you could take over the facility when you get here.”
“Valerie, shut up. We could do that anyway.”
“How long until your heating oil runs out?”
“Nine weeks. Maybe less.”
“Well, we won’t last nine weeks without your assistance. We’ve barely got a month before we start looking at our dogs in a whole new way.”
Patrick did not immediately respond.
“They’re gonna eat their dogs?” Melissa mumbled.
Forrest nodded as he marked the frequency on a pad. “It happens.”
“Val… I’m not the sole decider over here… I’ll talk to the council and see what they say. That’s all I can promise.”
“A friggin council,” Forrest muttered, tossing the pad onto the shelf.
“Well, you be sure to tell your stupid council this… you tell them that before the last of us shoots herself… we’ll disable every one of these goddamn mills! You hear me? There won’t be enough juice left out here to run a goddamn lightbulb!”
“Val, you could hardly disable all those mills. Just try to be patient. Please.”
“We can sure as hell destroy this facility… and don’t think we won’t! If you’re waiting for us to die off, there won’t be shit left when you get here!”
“Jesus Christ, Val! Will you please try to understand our situation? Nobody’s waiting for you to die off! We’ve got old people and children to consider here.”
“And we don’t?”
“You’re not the only ones who have been attacked, Val. How can we move two hundred people all that way and protect them?”
“I’m not suggesting you make the trip in a goddamn wagon train, Patrick. Groups of ten or twelve at time would do the job. Two trucks, moving fast, and you could—”
“I gotta go, Val. I’ll call you tomorrow at noon.”
“Don’t leave us hanging, Patrick. Please.”
“I’ll do what I can. I promise. Over and out.”
“Maybe we can join them!” Melissa said excitedly.
“Settle down there, young communicator,” Forrest said, shoving his chair back toward the console. “Grab me the en reel index from the top shelf over there.”
“What index?” she said, getting up and walking around the console to the far side of the round room.
“N.R.E.L.,” he said, pronouncing each letter separately. “National Renewable Energy Laboratories. It’s a map index.”
She found the index beneath some manuals and brought it over. It was about the size of a common road atlas, full of colorful maps denoting wind corridors along with the locations of transmission lines that carried power from the nation’s many wind farms to population centers.
“You guys thought of everything,” she said, setting the index down.
“Hardly,” he chuckled. “But we were thinking we might hook into a wind turbine someday. This index is as far as the plan ever got.”
“But if these people already know how to make them work and want our help… I wonder where they are.”
“They could be damn near anywhere,” he muttered, flipping through the index. “But it’s good to know somebody else is thinking long-term. They took a serious risk staying aboveground, though.”
“Maybe we should offer to go and help them,” she suggested again. “We could tell her to forget that Patrick guy.”
“Their main problem seems to be food,” he said. “We can’t solve that.”
“Shouldn’t we at least talk to her?”
“Way too soon,” he said, tracing his finger along a power route through Colorado.