The Future War

John Connor.

NORTHEASTERN IOWA

Tom Preston sat back in his chair, stunned, as he stared at the screen. The rough plastered-stone walls of the old farmhouse suddenly seemed insubstantial, unreal. He was distantly conscious of the hammer of his heart, and the smell of his own sweat; the coffee in the cup he held in one hand shook like a tide-lashed sea, until he set it down with a clatter.

Peggy, he thought. His estranged wife, and Jason and Lisa, his kids. He had to get them to safety.

And Peggy won't listen to me.

She'd put up with his survivalist doctrine for the first four years of their marriage. No, let's be honest: she ignored it for the first four years of our marriage. She just liked testing herself against the wilderness— she thought the rest of it was a crock.

Deep down, did I? I don't now, that's for sure.

You could lash yourself into a fit of terror over a menace, but you couldn't convince your lower intestine unless you really believed.

He remembered when he carried her over the threshold of the ancient farmhouse: she'd been thrilled. Not once in the first year had she complained about hauling her own water, or chopping wood or the kitchen garden that took up a couple of acres, or the canning that went with it. She'd gloried in it. He'd been so proud of his new bride.

When Jason came along she was a bit nervous about going with a midwife, but everything had gone smoothly and later she'd thanked him for insisting. She gave birth to little Lisa under the same circumstances without a qualm, though having two kids in diapers made her less easygoing about all the water she had to haul. Then, when Jason turned six…

'Home schooling,' he'd said. 'What else?'

'Not my kid.'

That had been the beginning of the end.

Actually, he'd really gotten into the survivalist movement very seriously about that time. Many a weekend he'd gone out, leading groups of like-minded men into the wilderness to train them how to survive. Leaving her alone with the kids. He'd forced her to learn to shoot, even though he could see she hated it. He took her hunting, but no matter what he said he couldn't get her to shoot anything.

'What are you going to do if something happens to me?' he'd asked. 'Let the kids go hungry?'

She'd just given him this look. He'd gotten her to teach a class in canning to some of his survivalist friends' wives, thinking it would be a clever way to get some help for the annual canning.

Unfortunately it turned out to be an incredible amount of work.

When everyone had gone home and the mess had been cleaned up, Peggy, with rings of exhaustion around her eyes, had sat him down for 'the talk.' Some of his buddies had warned him about

'the talk.'

'You're on your way out when the wife gets to that point,' one of them had said. 'I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to save the situation by then.'

There had been a world of bitterness in the man's eyes when he'd said it. But Tom was secure, or so he thought, until the night after the canning debacle.

'Tom,' Peggy had said, tears running down her cheeks, 'I still love you. But living like this is killing me. I can see myself getting older, I'm finding gray in my hair. Tom, I'm only twenty-seven.

Look at me! Look at my hands!'

She'd held them out—they looked like his mother's hands, work-roughened and knobby in the knuckles, stained with beet juice, the fingernails broken off short.

'And I want our children to have friends. I want them to go to school like we did.' She'd looked away from him, biting her lip.

'I'm not a trained teacher. I'm so afraid that I'm shortchanging them. And for God's sake, it's not 1862! I want running water and a bathroom and a washing machine! I deserve to live in the twenty-first century just like everybody else, instead of in my own personal third-world country!'

He'd remembered his friend's words and a cold chill ran down his spine. 'What do you want to do?' he'd asked her.

'I want us to move into town, get jobs, and live like normal people.'

He'd shaken his head. He remembered how numb he'd felt.

'Honey, that lifestyle you're talking about isn't going to last. It's only a matter of time.'

She'd jumped up and loomed over him, looking fierce. 'There is no collapse coming!' she'd shouted. 'There's no reason to think that one is! Now that everybody's dismantling their bombs, we should be safe. And while you're waiting for the worst to happen I'm working myself into an early grave! No more! Either you give this shit up right now and come to town with me or I'm going by myself! Now, which is it going to be?'

And I watched her drive away with the kids. I watched it, and it was like something died inside.

They'd moved into her parents' house in town and he saw them once a week, and she let him take the kids every other weekend. They hadn't gotten divorced yet, but he'd figured it was only a matter of time before some other guy came sniffing around.

Looked like that wasn't going to happen now. Well, it's nice there's one bright spot shining on the end of the world, Tom thought. He picked up a handgun; his rifle was already in the old Land Rover. He knew that getting her to go with him was going to be a hard sell and he hoped it wouldn't scare the kids too much. Her parents weren't going to like it either.

Oh, well. So she'll think I've gone postal for a while. At least she'll have a chance. And the kids would be safe. He knew Peggy would do anything for Jason and Lisa. So would he.

* * *

Tom kept off the roads, going cross-country toward Larton, where his family waited, a village so small most maps didn't have it. Well, that's her idea of 'moving into town,' he thought.

Fucking Larton, secret metropolitan thought-control center of Corn-landia.

Once, when he came in sight of a road, he stopped and studied it through his binoculars. Cars sped past, clearly not under the control of their occupants. One man was beating futilely on the side window with his fist.

Tom's mouth twisted. Must be panicked, he thought. All the man was going to do was break his hand. Even if he did smash the window, that car must have been going ninety; it wasn't like he could jump. Being proved right is a lot less fun than I thought it would be. Shit, I wish I'd been just as barking mad as everyone thought.

Some women he saw were crying and holding on to one another. He supposed they were being transported to the nearest major target. His stomach knotted at the thought. Tom put down the glasses and started the Land Rover; there was no point in watching this. He had work to do.

Early as it was, he expected to find them all at home.

There were no cars visible on the road, so he hauled the Rover out of the drainage ditch and crossed the narrow strip of pavement to the dirt track that led to her parents' old farmhouse. The farm itself was long gone, the fields left fallow; most of the land had returned to woods. This northeastern corner of Iowa was a long way from the popular stereotype of flat black earth—that was the way the rest of the state looked, legacy of the glaciers dumping ground-up rocks. Here the bones of the earth were visible, small winding valleys, forested uplands just showing the first faint mist of green along the branches, the odd patch of bottomland.

More like West Virginia than the Midwest, he thought.

To his relief, their cars were still in the yard in front of the old barn. He pulled up and walked onto the porch, the pistol a heavy weight in his pocket. The door opened before he could knock.

'We're in the living room,' Peggy said. Then she turned and walked away, obviously expecting him to follow.

They were all gathered around the TV, the kids on the floor, Peggy's mom and dad on the couch, looking concerned. Peggy's mom, Margaret, looked up at him.