Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

The only drawback to the place was that it had neither of the two things we needed most—Weapons and transport—a car or truck in which we could travel.

I searched the place from dock to driveway. There was not even a canoe in the boathouse. There was, in the pole barn, a 1931 all-black Model A Ford roadster somebody had been restoring; but it was not in driveable condition, nor were there parts lying around that could be put in to make it driveable. It held only the block of a motor, with the head off and the cylinders, crankshaft and oil pan missing. There were a couple of bicycles in the garage, a battered girl’s single-speed, and a man-size three-speed Raleigh, which had been kept in only slightly better condition.

In one end of the pole barn, however, was a gasoline-driven electric generator, in beautiful condition under its protective coat of grease, and a good deal of wood and metal-working tools-power and otherwise—also in fine condition. I got the generator cleaned up and going; although after about fifteen minutes I shut it off again. The three of us were used to doing without the luxury of electric lights and appliances; and there was, I judged after measuring it with a stick, only ten or fifteen gallons of gas left in a drum by the generator. I did not yet know exactly what I would use the gas for, but it was too useful a material to be wasted. Later, I found some empty pop bottles with screwtops and filled them with the gas, then tied rags around their necks, so that they could be turned into Molotov cocktails in a hurry. That gave us one kind of weapon.

Meanwhile, the girl and Sunday were settling in. There were two bedrooms with closets holding women’s clothes, and the girl, for the first time, began to show some interest in what she wore. She still stuck to shirt and jeans, generally, but I caught her a couple of times trying on things when I came into the house unexpectedly from outside.

Sunday liked the carpets. He slept and ate. We all ate—and gained back some of the weight we had lost on the raft.

I was determined that we would not stir from where we were without some means of protecting ourselves. I had two ideas about weapons I might be able to make. I had rejected the thought of a bow and arrows. I was a mediocre-to-poor archer; and no bowyer at all. Making a really effective bow was beyond me. Other alternatives were, first a homemade, muzzle loading gun using a length of metal water pipe wrapped with wire, if I could find any, and using match heads for the explosive element. In short—a zip gun. Second, a crossbow using a leaf from one of the springs of the Model A. There was enough gas to let me run the generator and get the wood and metal-working power tools operating in the pole barn.

In the end, I chose the crossbow, not because it was simpler, but because I couldn’t find any wire; and I had a vision of the water pipe blowing up in my face. I found a dry chunk of firewood that looked to me to be maple or oak, sawed it roughly to shape and then worked it on the lathe to an approximation of a stock and frame for the crossbow. I cut a slot across the frame, sank the leaf spring (the smallest of the leaf springs) into it crosswise and did as good a job of gluing it there as I could. Modern glues were miracle-workers, given half a chance. I glued a separate, notched bar of hard wood along the top of the frame for the cord of the crossbow, and set up a lever-crank to allow me to tighten the bow cord, notch by notch.

I had more trouble making the short, heavy arrows—quarrels— for the thing than I did putting together the crossbow itself. It was not easy to make a straight shaft from a raw chunk of wood, I discovered.

But the day came when I had both crossbow and quarrels. Both had been tested. There was no lack of power in the crossbow. The problem was with my quarrels. Their shafts broke too easily when they hit something hard. But, they would do on any flesh and blood target. The morning came when we mounted the two bikes, the girl and I—happily she had evidently ridden a bicycle before, and the skill came back to her quickly—and wearing backpacks, we started off down the empty road, away from the lake, with Sunday footing it alongside us.

The weather was pleasant, with the temperature in the high sixties, Fahrenheit, and the sky was lightly spotted with occasional clouds. As we got away from the water the humidity began to fall off sharply, until the day was almost like one in early autumn up near the Canadian border. We made good time, considering—considering Sunday, that was. Dogs are generally content to trot steadily alongside the bikers they belong to; but Sunday had a cat’s dislike of regimentation. Sunday preferred that the girl and I travel at the equivalent of a slow walk, so that he could make short side excursions, or even take a quick nap and still catch up with us. When we did stop finally, to give him a break, he lay down heavily on top of the girl’s bike and would not be moved until I hauled him clear by sheer muscle-strength and a good grip on the scruff of his neck.

In the end we compromised with him, riding along at hardly more than a walking speed. As a result, it was not surprising that I got more and more involved in my own thoughts.

The road we were on had yet to lead past any sign of civilization. But, of course, we were not covering ground at any great speed. Eventually our route must bring us to someplace where we could get the weapons and wheels I wanted. Then, once more mobile and protected, as it were, I meant to do a little investigating along the thought I had come to, lying on the lizard raft, nights. If the world was going to be as full of potential threats, as we had just seen it, it was high time we set actively about the business of learning the best ways to survive in it....

We hit no signs of civilization that day, but late afternoon, we crossed a creek hardly larger than a trickle, running through a culvert under the road. In this open territory it looked as though it probably contained clean water; but I boiled it to make sure, and we set up camp for the night by it.

Midway through the next morning on the road, we rode past a chunk of a suburb. I mean exactly that—a chunk. It was some two hundred yards off our asphalt highway, a roughly triangular piece of real estate with lawns, garages, streets and tract houses looking as if it had been sliced off at random and dropped down here in the middle of nowhere.

There were no people about it any more than there had been people about the lakeshore home. But these buildings were not in the untouched condition of the house by the lake. The area looked, in fact, as if a tornado had passed through it, a tornado, or else something with the size of a dinosaur and a destructive urge to match. There was not one building that was whole and weather-tight, and some were all but flattened.

Nonetheless, they represented a treasure trove for us. I went through all the houses and turned up a sixteen gauge shotgun and a carbine-type .22 rifle. There were no shells for the shotgun and only one box of shorts for the .22. But the odds on picking up ammunition for these two common caliber firearms were good enough to count on. The suburb-chunk also contained eight cars. Five of these had been made useless by whatever had smashed the buildings. Of the remaining three, all were more than a few years old, and one would not start at all. That left me with a choice between a two-door Pontiac hardtop in relatively good shape and a Volvo four-door sedan that was pretty well beaten up.

I chose the Volvo, however. Not only for its extra carrying capacity, but because the gas mileage should be better. There was no filling station among the homes in the suburb, but I drained the gas tanks of all the other cars that proved to have anything in them; and when we started out in the Volvo, we had a full tank plus another fifteen gallons in cans tied on to a makeshift rack on top of the trunk. Also, I had found two three-speed bikes in good shape. They were tied to the top of the car.