was now thirty-eight years old, but he looked like some old, wild hermit, streaks of gray in his black hair and beard.
Many of the books Mortimer had stashed in the cavern were novels. He’d anticipated having a lot of time on his hands. In
He fetched water up from the stream and heated it with a Coleman propane stove. He didn’t have much propane left, but he didn’t build fires in the cave because there wasn’t any way for the smoke to vent. He rummaged the storage boxes until he found a disposable razor and a can of shaving gel. Rust ringed the bottom of the can.
He splashed warm water on his face and lathered up, but the razor balked at his thick and tangled beard. He went back into the cabinet and found scissors. He cut away the beard in big patches. The hair collected around his ankles. He tried the razor again and shaved close, nicking himself around the chin. He wiped the blood with the bottom of his shirt. He cut his hair with the scissors. He surprised himself by doing a good job. Nine years had taught him patience with tedious tasks.
He went into the cabinet one more time and found the brush. He looked at it a moment like it was some alien artifact. In relearning these simple acts-shaving, brushing his hair-he was really learning to be human again. He planned to go down the mountain, and he was getting himself ready.
Mortimer brushed his hair and looked at his new sleek reflection and considered what he’d take. He would take the police special and the lever-action rifle. He wanted to protect himself but didn’t want to appear hostile and thought the Uzi might be a bit much. He’d need food and a medical kit, but he’d also need to travel light. When first outfitting his refuge, he’d flirted with the idea of a horse, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep it alive. He’d sold insurance in a previous life and knew little of animal husbandry.
So he’d start down the mountain on foot. He’d go in the morning at first light with all his gear. He also decided to take three bottles of booze from the stock he’d kept unopened. Trade goods, if there was still such a thing as trade.
Trade goods. Weapons. He would not be able to get quickly back up the mountain if he needed something. He decided to pack the sled, extra weapons and the two cases of Johnnie Walker Blue, a third case of Maker’s Mark. He could hide the sled at the bottom of the mountain, retrieve whatever he needed.
He realized there would be no McDonald’s, no Holiday Inn, no Exxon station. Traveling would not be a lark. He did not know what it would be like except that it wouldn’t be the same. He could not guess what awaited him down the mountain, but it was time to find out.
He dabbed at the blood on his chin.
IV
Among Mortimer’s books were science fiction novels, some of which supposed the details of the apocalypse. Mortimer had selected these with wry irony. Popular methods whereby the world would snuff it: aliens, collisions with comets or meteors, plague, nuclear holocaust, robots rising against their masters, various natural disasters and so on and so on. Mortimer’s favorite: space bureaucrats demolishing Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
No single thing had doomed Mortimer’s planet. Rather, it had been a confluence of disasters. Some dramatic and sudden, others a slow, silent decay.
The worldwide flu epidemic had come and gone with fewer deaths than predicted. Humanity emerged from that long winter and smiled nervously at one another. A sigh of relief, a bullet dodged.
That April the big one hit.
So long feared, it finally happened. The earth awoke, humped up its spine along the San Andreas. The destruction from L.A. to San Francisco defied comprehension. The earthquake sent rumbles across the Pacific, tsunamis pounding Asia. F.E.M.A. immediately declared its inadequacy and turned over operations to the military. The death toll numbered in the millions, and nothing-not food nor fuel-made it through West Coast seaports. The shortages were rapidly felt across the Midwest. Supermarkets emptied, and no trucks arrived to resupply them.
Wall Street panicked.
Nine days later a Saudi terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in a large tote bag on the steps of the Capitol building. Both houses of Congress were in session. The president and vice president and most of the cabinet were obliterated.
The secretary of the interior was found and sworn in. This didn’t sit well with a four-star general who had other ideas. Civil war.
Economic spasms reached the European and Asian markets.
Israel dropped nukes on Cairo, Tehran and targets in Syria.
Pakistan and India went at it.
China and Russia went at it.
The world went at it.
It was pretty much all downhill from there.
V
