The Future War

The kids said nothing, glancing at one another to see if anyone else had any ideas.

'Nobody? You run, or you hide, whichever is better. Why is that?'

A little girl held up a skinny arm and John nodded at her. '

'Cause if you don't you'll get hurt.'

'That's right. You could get hurt, or worse, killed. Yes, killed.'

'But what if you can't get away?' a boy asked.

'I'm going to show you how to break away if someone grabs you. And I'm going to show you a few ways to hurt an attacker so that he, or she, will think twice about trying to get you. But everything I'm teaching you is so that you can run away. That's why we finish every lesson with a run. You want to be able to run a long, long time as fast as you can. Okay?'

There was a ragged chorus: Yessir, yes Mr. Connor…

'Okay, now who'd like to help me demonstrate? Sharon and Jamie?'

Everyone laughed and the two chosen came forward reluctantly, their faces red.

Grinning, Sarah turned away. She had a meeting with the parents; four couples, all of them close in age, and like most Alaskans pretty savvy about the basics of surviving in the wild.

Of course none of them had expected being in the wild to become a lifelong thing, and they were starting to panic as they began to suspect that rescue wasn't coming.

The children, bless them, were adapting just fine. It was the parents who were going to be a handful.

While the three of them had been in the fallout shelter they'd discussed how to approach people on the subject of Skynet and its intention to wipe out the human race. Dieter had argued that they'd have to take it slow. 'They'll never believe us,' he'd insisted. 'They'll think the blast unhinged our minds.'

Sarah had looked at him. 'My heart wants to say, 'Of course they'd believe me,' ' she'd said. 'But…'

'But as someone who spent a lot of time locked up in the booby hatch, you think he's right,' John had put in.

'Tactful.'

'No, just true. He's your boyfriend; he has to be tactful. I'm your son, the Great Military Leader, and I can tell it like it is.'

These four couples were the first group of people they'd brought together and led to one of their supply caches. They'd also built a large communal dwelling on the site; it was half-underground, with a turf roof. The group had been a bit dubious at first, but accepted the Connors' explanation that the building conserved resources. They seemed to be settling in all right.

And it was snug inside; outside the sky was overcast, with a gray chill that had been around since the bombs fell. Inside the poles and turf had a sort of archaic coziness, lit red by the flicker of the fire in the central hearth.

Sarah joined the circle around the blaze where the adults were nursing cups of coffee. The beverage was so irreplaceable that everyone treated it like a ceremonial occasion when it was brewed up. Cups were held with both hands and no one spoke for the first few mouthfuls. But everyone was beginning to notice that caffeine went further when you didn't get it very often.

Sarah accepted a cup and sipped contemplatively for a while.

'The kids all love your son,' one of the women said eventually.

'They live for these lessons.'

'I'm not sure it's a good idea, though,' one of the men said.

He had a long, sensitive face and glasses; his name was Paul.

'I'm afraid it will encourage them to be violent.'

Sarah blinked. Even before Judgment Day, she'd found the assumption that you could keep your children safe from violence by not telling them about it inexplicable. Now it seemed demented.

'After what's happened, things have changed,' she said patiently. 'Food supplies are going to be running out, and then people are going to go looking for more. Some of those people will be willing to do anything to feed their own children. And some will be criminals who have always felt entitled to take what they want by force. We may find ourselves in a position of having to choose our children over theirs.'

'That's horrible!' one of the other women said. Her eyes had a wild look that made Sarah think she was going to crack one of these days. 'It's uncivilized!' she went on. 'As long as we can share, we should.'

'What we have in storage here will get you about halfway through the summer,' Sarah explained. 'By then the seeds you've planted should be bearing fruit. And there are wild plants that you can harvest as well. But Alaska has always had a short growing season.'

She glanced up, and everyone followed suit, even though they were looking at the rough pine trunks of the rafters; it seemed to her that the weather was already colder than it had been.

'This year I expect it will be shorter than usual. So your crops will be smaller. Food is going to become a big issue from now on.

And yes, there will be people who'll steal it whenever they can, even if they have to kill you.'

'What makes you think like that?' asked Paul. There was an edge in his voice that indicated unspoken questions about her stability.

And I can't tell him the truth, yet, Sarah thought. Starting with, well, there was this killing machine from the future, which just happens to be nearly here now, and it looks just like my boyfriend…

'I lived in South America for a long time,' Sarah said. 'People were always coming out of the jungle there to raid small, isolated villages. They'd administer beatings or even kill to steal the little those people had.'

'But that's South America,' another man said. 'What makes you think that will happen here?'

Sarah had to force herself not to roll her eyes in exasperation.

They were new to this, these people; they didn't know what to expect. These hopelessly naive questions were going to be coming up again and again as they found groups of people to recruit, so she'd better get used to them.

'We're as human as they are,' Sarah explained to the man.

'Hunger is something that most of us have never experienced as a chronic condition. So we don't know what it might inspire us to do. We're not going to bounce back from this like it was a bad blizzard, folks. And we're lucky. Most of the states are devastated, their largest cities gone, dams destroyed, power stations taken out. Comparatively speaking, we're in good shape.'

'Well, how long do you think it's going to take to get over this?' a woman asked.

'Years, even decade's,' Sarah said.

Their tense faces grew more pinched. Everyone sipped, staring into the fire and not speaking for a while.

'In the meantime,' one of the men said, trying to sound cheerful, 'I guess we get to be pioneers.'

'Well, our great-grandparents were,' his wife said. 'I don't see why we can't be.'

The others smiled and nodded.

'Does anyone know how to hunt or fish?' Sarah asked.

Three of the four men and two of the women put up their hands. Predictably, Mr. I Don't Want My Kids Learning about Violence wasn't one of them.

'We're vegan,' he said, a stubborn set to his mouth.

'That's a luxury,' Sarah told him. 'It assumes you'll have fresh vegetables and fruits all winter. Those days are gone, maybe for our lifetime. Who knows? In the meantime you're exposing yourself and your children to the danger of contracting serious diseases caused by poor nutrition.'

'I do know something about nutrition,' he said condescendingly. 'And I don't want to compromise my principles.'

You don't want to see your kids with rickets, either, Sarah thought. When he got hungry enough he might bend those principles a bit. But I'd hate to see his kids suffer for it. 'It may be that in the winter, when the grains and beans run low, meat will be the best food available. I hope you wouldn't deny your children that resource.'

He merely looked superior, declining to answer. His wife looked concerned.