Systemic Shock

Though anything downwind of a ground-pounder would be heavily hit by fallout, the firestorm effects were enormously less. There was nothing much to burn in Nevada, and Dakota corn was largely spared. Thanks to a cunning variation on the MX theme, the submerged portable MX modules were also intact. Apparently it had never occurred to SinoInd strategists that a Trident launch system might work handily in Lake Sakakawea.

At the bottom line, as Israelis on Cyprus knew, lay the survival of the population. In our intermountain region, folks near Twin Falls, Winnemucca, Green River, and Holbrook wept and prayed for their urban relatives; and while they prayed, they worked. Prayer and honest labor characterized these people more than most, particularly among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints — Mormons.

It should have surprised no one that paralysis of the body politic might leave one limb functioning if it were insulated against systemic shock. If you put aside the arguable features of Mormon theocracy — the fact of theocracy, women's rights, resurgent polygamy, the identification of Amerinds as lost tribes of Israel, — you could focus on the more secular facts of Mormonism. They scorned drugs, including nicotine and alcohol; they swelled their ranks with as much missionary zeal as any Moslem, and they strengthened their church with tithes. They were studious. They voted as a bloc.

Each of these factors was a survival factor, though not obviously so. The most obvious survival factor was the one which Mormons had taken for a century as an article of faith without demanding an explicit reason: stored provisions.

Every good Mormon knew from the cradle that he was expected to maintain a year's supply of necessities for every family member against some unspecified calamity. Mormon temples maintained stocks of provisions. A year's supply of raw wheat was not expensive, and its consumption meant that one must be able to grind flour and bake bread. The drying of fruit, vegetables, and meat allowed storage at room temperature with no chemical additives more injurious than a bit of salt and sulfur.

Mormons had such a long Darwinian leg up on their gentile neighbors (to a Mormon, all unbelievers including Jews were gentiles) that, by the 1980's, the church found it wise to downplay the stored provisions. Faced with a general disaster, a Mormon might choose to share his stored wealth with an improvident gentile — but no longer advertised his foresight because he did not want that sharing at gunpoint. Devout, self-sufficient, indecently healthy, many of the more liberal Mormons had moved to cities by 1990. Most of those perished. The more conservative Mormons, and the excommunicated zealots of splinter groups, tended to remain in the sprawling intermountain American west; and most of those were alive on Monday, 12 August 1996, the day that would become known as Dead Day.

Chapter Twenty-Four

At first, Quantrill thought the pickup would ghost past him to disappear down the mountain as two others had done, on Tuesday morning. It was a green '95 Chevy hybrid with the inflatable popup camper deck that melded, when stowed, into an efficient kammback. Then he saw it ease onto the shoulder and ran to open the right-hand door. “Got room for my pack?' He was already shucking it.

'What if I said 'no'?' She saw him hesitate, then chuckled. 'I'm kidding. Room between us, or push it through the hole,' the woman said, aiming a gloved thumb at the orifice behind her.

Quantrill tried to smile as the Chevy coasted downhill, glanced again at the driver. His first impression had been of a tanned little old lady, sun-crinkles at the corners of her eyes, wrinkles running down her throat into the open-necked work shut. But the lines on the throat were sinew, and the chuckle hummed with vitality. He revised her age at under forty, saw that her own gaze mixed shrewdness and curiosity.

'Where'd you spend the night? You look hungry,' she said.

'A cave in the bluffs back there. I have some sausage and granola. Afraid to drink the water.'

'Smart boy. Got a canteen? Fill it from mine there,' she pointed at an insulated jug. 'Actually a Halazone tab is all you'd need. With this fiendish high-pressure area, not much fallout is moving our way. My name's Abby Drummond. Headed for Gatlinburg?'

'I guess,' he shrugged, topping off his canteen. 'Anywhere there's shelter, ma'am.'

She drove in silence, the tire-whine loud because the diesel was not running and she was recharging her batteries on steep downslopes. At length she said, 'I'll let you off at the Gatlinburg turnoff. I 'm going to detour south of Knoxville.'

Quantrill nodded, wondering if the woman regretted giving him the lift. Well, she wasn't very big. A woman alone…

Abby Drummond slowed at the tumoff, then drove a hundred meters past an abandoned sedan and stopped. Quantrill shouldered his pack, waved, walked fifty paces before he heard the voices. He turned, then removed his pack again with hurried stealth.

Two men, heavily dressed as city folk will for an outing, had materialized from the roadside. One stood on the Chevy's front bumper, a prospector's pick waving before the woman's eyes. The other was opening the passenger door. Quantrill could hear them talking, did not need to know what was said. His decision seemed the most natural thing in the world, and changed him forever.

He took the canteen, scanning the brush for a handy weapon, slipped as near as he dared. If he rushed the men, the last fifteen meters would be in the open. Since they stood at right angles, he felt sure that one of them would spot him. He found a stone the size of his fist, let himself breathe deeply, then tossed the stone high in the air.

Quantrill was moving before the stone hit the ground on the driver's side. The pick-wielder jerked around, but the man with one foot in the cab did not move. Quantrill ran as quietly as he could but saw Mr. Pick, hearing quick footfalls, whirl back on uncertain footing. The sodden thunkk of the full canteen against the man's temple carried all of Quantrill's speed plus the length of his arm and canteen strap, and Quantrill's inertia carried him behind the man on an oblique course before he could stop.

The little pick glanced off the Chevy's plastic hood, the man spinning half around before collapsing. He groveled to hands and knees, vented a long moan, then fell face-first in the dirt.

Quantrill backed away, swinging the canteen like a bolo to threaten the second man until he saw that the man's attention was riveted on Abby Drummond, and his hands were now in the air. 'Okay, okay,' he was chattering, 'people make mistakes. What about my buddy, sounds like the boy bashed his head in.' But he was stepping backward now, staring at the short ugly revolver in Abby's hand.

Quantrill snatched up the pick, saw that the felled man was breathing heavily, and resisted a vicious impulse as he moved to the open door. Then, as though he had always known such things, he stopped. He was nearing the talker, whose flickering gaze seemed to suggest some quick judgment. It was very simple: Quantrill had been about to obstruct the woman's field of fire. The man was preparing to act.

Quantrill backed off, said 'Wait,' in a more peremptory way than he intended, retrieved his pack, trotted far down the road ahead of the Chevy. Then he waved it toward him.

Abby Drummond accelerated quickly away and did not entirely stop as Quantrill tumbled into the passenger seat again. A hundred meters back, one man stood helplessly watching them while the second was reeling up to a sitting position.

'Could've been worse,' she said. “You'd best drop your canteen out the window. Could be contaminated now. In fact, you and I are taking chances with each other as it is. I've come from Spartanburg.'

Quantrill did not understand and said so, discarding his canteen with reluctance. 'I've been camping up here since Friday,' he said. 'If it has fallout on it, so do I.'

'Not fallout; microbes. Those men were out of fuel, and were running from the same thing we are — whether you know it or not, ah, what's your name?'

'Ted Quantrill, ma'am.'

'I called you a boy, and so did that poor devil back there. We were wrong, Ted. You maybe only sixteen or so, but—'

'Fifteen, almost.'

'Man enough for me back there, Ted. Call me 'Abby'; looks like we'll be together awhile, if you're up to it. Frankly, I'm glad to have a man along. I gather you weren't headed home.'