The Veil of Crimson Dust. Part 2.

  The Veil of Crimson Dust: Part 2/4

A Solarpunk Story.

By Dylan “Clockwork” Thomas

Link to Part 1/4

The next year was more difficult than either Wayland or Erik could have expected. Nobody had gas to go anywhere so nearly everyone from the project emerged at a small town called Story Wyoming. The place was picturesque or at least it was before the dust had smothered nearly all plant life around the settlement. Still it was a small peaceful town that didn’t even have any large chain stores. The main problem was that the town suddenly had a gain in population of 30% from everyone working on the shelter nearby. There was a general sense of mistrust at first, and it didn’t help that many of the people coming to town felt bitter and cheated out of their place in Prospero Springs. The sheriff did their best to handle things and many town residents wound up opening their homes. But it’s quite easy to be charitable when living in relative comfort. After about two weeks of living in Story, an announcement was made.

“The food trucks have stopped coming.”

There was a myth that everyone seemed to have rolling around in the backs of their minds, that the countryside was full of food. Maybe it was, but not in the way people seemed to think. Many of the workers from the cities had almost seemed to think that all the food in the world came from neat little farms, with happy farm animals, rows of vegetables and grains, little patches of fruit trees, with finished products made in people’s neat little barns. And while there were still some farms like that, most farms in the county had become industrialized. The average farmer in the area bought GMO seeds that were shipped in, burnt diesel that was shipped in. Then they exported the raw corn/soybeans/wheat/alfalfa and never could be entirely sure where it would wind up. There were a few cattle around from ranchers, but not enough to feed several hundred people for long. The food crunch happened hard and fast. Wayland and Erik responded the only way they knew how.

“What can we do to help?”

With no gas other than a local moonshiner, and no parts for tractors. Every single thing had to be done by hand. They were lucky it was summer and there was still some time to plant food. The local area was hunted, foraged, fished, and farmed until people began to drop from exhaustion. Quite a few people did drop too, older people who should have been enjoying retirement, people falling from dehydration, people with health issues either from their hearts or lungs filled with dust, many more who relied on medicine like insulin or antidepressants. During the heights of these die offs, tensions rose even higher between the town residents and workers. The tipping point happened as a group of concrete pourers were found in a field dead from exposure. Justice was demanded and the migrants began to get angry wanting answers from the local sheriff. They knew he wasn’t responsible, but something needed to change. He decided to give them that change.

“You can all leave if you want.”

Many people did. The sheriff decided to fill up an old school bus with enough gas to get a few towns over. He made the offer if anyone wanted to leave, to do it now. And to his surprise many people did, even many of the town’s residents who had family in other places they were worried about. When the bus finally left, it was so packed full of people and luggage that the door couldn’t close. 

“Everyone who decided to stay, It’s not going to be easy, but we can do it.” The Sheriff gave the announcement in an overcrowded bar to light clapping. 

Nobody on the bus was ever seen again. It didn’t help that a few days after the bus left, power and communications started to fail. The town had blackouts, several days at a time. It was estimated that nearly one hundred people, maybe fifteen percent of the town’s population, died when an August heat wave struck the same day as the power was out. The local creek and nearby reservoir nearly dried up completely, the local fish hatchery that had fed much of the town till then, had nearly every last fish die. If it wasn’t for a few town’s people knowing how to prepare acorns and pine nuts for eating, that would have been it for the town.

“Should we go?” Erik asked Wayland on a day they were cleaning dead fish from the hatchery.

“Go where?” Wayland asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

They both silently tossed shoveled scum out of the hatchery for a while.

“I’d feel bad too, I want to be there for Arya if she needs us.”

“Maybe we should talk to her?”

“Maybe.”

They waited til the heat wave was nearly over. Then after talking to a few town residents they had the idea to go in and trade with Prospero Springs. Most of the town's residents wanted nothing to do with the shelter, so Erik and Wayland went alone.

"Tell them to burn in hell for me."

It took nearly three hours of hiking to get to the edge of the mountains where the shelter entrance was. Both of them nearly dropped from dehydration by the time they made it there. Most of the once scenic trees that had provided shade had begun to shrivel and die in the drought. They were nearly out of water by the time they arrived.

When they got to the entrance they found an issue, it could only be opened from one side. Erik wound up grabbing some rocks and banging out noise on the door, his years of drum lessons were about to pay off. Wayland was watching this when his phone buzzed, something that hadn't happened in weeks. 

"Hey Erik, remember the wifi password?"

He did, they sent Arya messages on every app they could think of and eventually they got a response back.

“You guys are OK?”

“Sort of,” Erik messaged back.

“Does your phone’s camera work? Let me try to video call you.”

There was a good deal of fumbling around and waiting for Arya to set something up on her end. Eventually they were able to get a video going on Arya waving at them behind a small metal desk. There was a good deal of background noise and every once in a while they could see someone walking behind her. Arya herself looked tired to say the least, she definitely didn’t look like she was sleeping well and was noticeably thinner. Erik pointed that out and she asked when the last time they’d looked in a mirror. Neither of them wanted to think of that.

“So is everything holding up in there?” Wayland asked.

“Sort of,” Arya said. “We’re not doing great.”

“What’s wrong,” Wayland asked, wondering about the dozens or hundred of things he worked on that could have failed.

“Well…” Arya sighed. “I don’t think anyone here has really used hydroponics systems before so we’re having to learn as we go. There’s not alot of food to go around. Saw a fight break out over a can of beans that was being rationed earlier.”

“Ahh,” Erik replied with gears turning in his head. “Do you have anything growing?”

“A few things, we didn’t get a lot of the seeds in.”

“At least the potatoes are growing and some tomatoes,” Arya said. “I’ll probably have to get off kinda soon to get in line for rations today. Thanks god we at least have rice and water.”

“Err,” Wayland and Erik looked at each other. They had the feeling trade wasn’t going to happen much.

“What are you eating?”

“Err rice mostly, we have a lot of stockpiles down here.” Arya replied.“Honestly I’d kill for some protein.”

Erik and Arya talked while Wayland looked through their bags. Erik had managed to bag some dried fish and rabbit earlier. He was getting lucky hunting. Wayland also managed to grab some spinach seeds for fixing some rain barrels the other day. Food, bullets, medicine, canning jars and seeds were quickly turning into the trade goods of choice. After Erik got done finishing a story about someone in town who went off their meds, Wayland made an offer.

“Hey if you can talk to whoever’s in charge of supplies down there, I can trade you guys some seeds and dried meat,”

“Err, they really don’t like us opening the door,” Arya hesitated. “I’ll talk them into it.”

Arya disapped for a while before another person appeared at her desk with her. This was one of the project developers, and she looked like she had aged ten years in the past few months. The project director almost refused to open the door for a paltry amount, and doubted whether the spinach seeds were even good. Wayland told them it was better than nothing and managed to get them to open up for a trade. Then they had to decide what to get in return. The project manager had denied nearly everything Wayland or Erik suggested as a trade. They refused seeds, potatoes, batteries, bullets, tools, or even an MRE. Quite a few times the project manager insisted on giving Wayland or Erik money, checks, stock or cryptocurrency. Erik considered it for all of thirty seconds before realizing nobody had used actual money in weeks. Even jewelry was becoming worthless compared to something like a bottle of aspirin. The project manager kept reassuring them the legal tender was fine because the US government was still around. 

“Well we haven’t seen them.”

Wayland was about to end the call before he noticed Arya telling them they had to go into the ration line soon. 

“Water.” 

“What?” the project manager said.

“Let us fill up our canteens and will give you the meat ration and the spinach seeds.” Erik stated.

“...”

“The underground river gives you an unlimited supply.” Erik stressed. “Just as long as Arya gets some of the meat and grown spinach I don’t care.”

The project manager looked confused at this and stated, “One moment.”

Within a few minutes they had it ironed out. They would leave their canteens meat and seeds at the door. They would walk away for five minutes, then the security team would make the exchange. It was settled.

Wayland and Erik left their supplies at the door and walked off to the shipping yard for a few minutes. Sure enough the door opened and an armed team came out to grab everything. They brought a bucket of water and refilled their canteens there. Both of them sent Arya messages but she was in the ration line for the moment. 

“Could have gone better,” Wayland stated.

“Could have gone worse,” Erik countered.

“Yea…”

“I’m just glad she’s doing ok.”

“Me too.”

***

The next few months followed a similar routine. Everything planted when the food trucks stopped had started to mature and there was a massive rush to harvest and preserve as much as possible. Erik worked himself to the bone reaping corn and wheat. It was backbreaking work and he would often go by moonlight to keep harvesting as much as possible out of the dust caked fields. The old farmers said this year's harvest was the worst they'd ever seen. They also admitted that it was the first in their lifetime where they couldn't use combine harvesters. Most people in town were just happy something could grow between the dust and droughts. Erik woke up one day to quail eating a field he had planted months before. After a weekend of Wayland and himself trying to figure out how to make a decent bow, they built one by shaving down a leaf spring out of an ancient truck in a cornfield. Erik’s new job was to harvest, and shoot anything that got remotely close. Erik learned quickly out of hunger and anger, and with a few lessons from bowhunters in town. He learned to shoot rabbits and deer with a single shot from a hundred feet out. He learned to shoot accurately due to him and Wayland needing to make new arrows every time he missed and couldn’t find the arrow. Pretty soon meat and grain were rolling in, and people started to stop dropping from hunger.

Wayland threw himself into the only thing he was ever good at. A thousand things needed to be rebuilt, and he had a decent toolbox. After a solid week without power, Wayland announced he was going to start bringing power back online to a crowded bar. The response was an overwhelming "I'll believe it when I see it." Over the next week, with an electrician’s help and loads of books from the library, Wayland managed to strip down parts of his truck like the battery, alternator, and much of the paneling into an adhoc wind turbine. It didn't provide much power, but after hooking up an inverter and turning his headlights into streetlamps. He was never short of work. Wayland cobbled together dozens of small wind turbines and waterwheels out of old cars. Gradually old propane tanks and oil barrels turned into wood stoves and makeshift forges. He learned by trial and error, but soon welding knowledge gave way to forging and brazing. Lawnmowers became scythes, water heaters became purifiers, and mirrors had become solar ovens. Within a week, he had a business out of mainstreet. The people of Story adapted quickly. But the world always seemed to change right around the corner.

With the drought in full swing, the dust almost seemed to choke the town. Water had to be dragged in manually to fields and homes. Both Wayland and Erik quickly learned that a gallon of water in a container nearly weighed nine pounds. There was talk of building pipelines but every place needed water at once and there wasn’t enough piping in town to even think about solving it. Then the fires began. 

The once forested town of Story Wyoming became a wasteland in a day. While much of the town managed to be preserved, through the efforts of the volunteer fire department and bucket lines. Most of the surrounding countryside burnt. They were lucky that much of the harvest was collected as soon as it had been. Few people died, but most of the power lines fell as well as half the trees in the area. Firewood and pine nuts went from something many people tripped over in autumn, to being worth more than dried meat in an afternoon.

Despite everything, Erik and Wayland still went to the bunker every once in a while to make sure Arya was doing ok.

“Hey hey are things today?” Erik asked. “Ration lines still long?”

“Yea, they managed to get some spinach and peppers out of them though,” Arya said. They didn’t tell anyone that you did it, but I told some guys.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“So what’d you find this time?”

“Rabbits and a good chunk of acorn bread,” Wayland replied. “It’s nothing to die for, but it’s food.”

“I really appreciate it you know,” 

“You are getting the stuff we send you right?”

“Yea, but a lot of it gets carved up before it gets to me,” Arya said. “I always get at least a nib.”

Erik cracked his knuckles a bit. Wayland was pretty sure it was more than he had eaten the past week, and he found the entirety of it. 

“Might be a bit less in the future,” Erik admitted. Winter’s started rolling in.”

“Ohh.”

There was a moment of silence as Wayland thought of another subject. “So everything holding up down there?”

“Well… pretty decent,” Arya hesitated. "I think there's a leak in the bottom floor somewhere."

"What?" Wayland shouted louder than he expected. His mind rushed through everything he worked on in the basements wondering if he welded anything together incorrectly. 

Someone talked to Arya offscreen, “We don’t need to worry too much, just wish we had more concrete and sealant.”

“Oh alright,” Wayland said. “By the way, do you mind if I grab your car and bring it into town?”

“What?” Arya asked. “I gave it to Erik, also why?”

“Well you know just wondering if there was anything you forgot out of it,” Wayland replied. 

“Strip it down, turn it into another windmill,” Erik replied.

“Actually, since the internet’s been going out, could you grab me some of the old CDs at the bottom,” Arya said. “Heck most people aren't using their cars, you can probably grab all of them in the parking lot if you want.” 

“Great,” Wayland replied as if he hadn’t already broken into several, thinking there was food in them. “Where can we start?”

Arya vanished off screen for a while before coming back with a list of names and car descriptions. All three of them were surprised by some of the locations mentioned. Some people had a whole librarie’s worth of CDs and tapes hidden in their cars. A few people had clothing stashed away, some people had books lying in back seats, some people wanted books returned to the library in town, and other books to be checked out. Apparently despite there being copies of every bit of media known to man, a lot of people just wanted something other than a screen or hydroponics bay to look at for twelve hours. The surprising part was the food and drugs. Bottles of wine, candy bars, pills, weed and prescription meds. Most of the cars had been looted before, there was still a load of treasure if you knew where to look.

“Holy shit,” Erik ripped open a seat cushion and pulled out about nine bottles of fentanyl. “Should we send this in?”

“It’s part of the deal,” Wayland replied. “Who the hell listens to Homemade CD’s nowadays?”

“No, think about this!” Erik shouted. “Half the guys in town are starving or dying, let’s take some of this off the top.”

“Like the food you send Arya?”

Erik looks at the bag of stuff they’ve found. He picked up a chocolate bar that had melted and reformed in the car so many times that it molded perfectly to the glovebox. Someone was nearly stabbed in town last week over a candy bar in worse condition than that. 

“Besides they’re letting me use all their cars.”

“We can get the sheriff to impound them or something,” Erik responded. “What are they going to do, go to court?”

“Some of this will make its way to Arya,” Wayland stated.

“You don’t know that.”

“...”

In the end they handed back the bag 90% full. Said they did the best they could, and nearly every person in the shelter promised to let the people in town borrow what was left of their cars. By the time they were done distributing everything it was pitch black and the two brothers had to walk back by moonlight and a phone flashlight.

“Think she’ll be ok?” Wayland asked.

“I don’t know,” Erik sighed with mist forming in the cold.

After a minute of silence he rummaged around in his pack and pulled out a tiny bottle of whisky, Wayland could smell it was cinnamon when Erik opened it. Erik took a gulp or two before handing over the dregs. Wayland savored the last drops.

“So why do you want all those cars anyway, more windmills?”

“That, and a few more bad ideas.”

                    Link to Part 3/4