The Walls Of The Universe Part 8

CHAPTER 9

The wind shoved at him, and, unprepared for it, John staggered into a snowdrift. He hurried to zip up his coat, then stuffed his hands into his pockets. Snow? It was only October.

He pulled himself up, leaning against the wind, and turned quickly to survey his locale. He was still on campus, but the place was desolate; the trees that had been holding leaves in the last universe were empty and black here. Dark clouds roiled above the roof of the physics building. The windows were broken out or boarded up, the doors chained shut. He smelled something burning, acrid. It was still the University of Toledo, but something was wrong here.

The snow was powdery and fine, and he guessed that it was near freezing and much colder with the windchill. John had no hat, and the wind pulled the heat from his forehead, giving him an instant headache. He turned away from the wind, but it still ripped through his coat. It was his fall coat, not his winter one. He walked with the wind, toward the center of campus.

He pa.s.sed between two buildings. Ahead of him was a large open area, empty. Again the trees were black and dead, not like hibernating trees but like dead and rotten ones, as if they had not been alive for years.

He walked across the open s.p.a.ce, staring up at the gnarled limbs. Ahead of him was a large building, the Student Union, he saw by the carved words above the door. Next to the door was a large sign, painted in red.

"The University of Toledo is closed during the current crisis until further notice." It was dated three years prior. The sign was weathered and beaten.

What crisis would close the school? John wondered. He walked around the Student Union and found himself looking down onto a river that ran toward the northeast. He knew this was the Ottawa River and that it would ultimately dump into Lake Erie on the north side of the city. The river was frozen over.

John was cold, but he was growing accustomed to the wind. He followed the river to the southwest. There were no other footprints in the snow. No one had pa.s.sed here since the snow had last fallen. He had no idea when that might have been. There was a bridge behind him, and it had not been plowed. But then university facilities would not bother plowing if the campus was closed.

Ahead of him he heard an engine running, evidence of someone alive in this universe. John ran through the snow, feeling it collect in his shoes at his ankles. He rounded a building and saw an army truck, surrounded by soldiers parked on one of the campus roads. They held weapons and watched a line of civilians standing at the back of the truck.

A sign was posted near the truck: "UT Food Drop-Off, Tuesday, Thursday, Sat.u.r.day."

As each person shambled forward, a soldier dropped two cans into their hands or their bag if they'd brought one. It was a food line.

John stood near the back of the line and watched.

Someone nudged him and said, "Line starts back there." John turned on the man, dressed in a bulky red coat and toboggan hat. Even under the coat, John could tell the man was thin.

"I'm not here for food," John said.

"No other reason to be out," the man replied. "Line's in back."

"What's happening here?" he asked.

"Food, maybe enough to last until I get up there. Probably not."

"Why won't you get any food?"

" 'Cause I didn't get up at four A.M. A.M. like the rest of these yahoos. I slept in and so I'm late. Which ain't so bad. The wife has a card for the Ottawa Hills High School drop. We're right by there, so we're always first in line." like the rest of these yahoos. I slept in and so I'm late. Which ain't so bad. The wife has a card for the Ottawa Hills High School drop. We're right by there, so we're always first in line."

John couldn't guess how this universe came to be. Food lines and ration cards were not something that happened in the United States.

"Don't you think it's early for winter?" John asked.

"Early?" The man laughed. "It ain't early for winter. It's late for summer. Three years late." He nudged the guy in front of him. "You hear that, Rudy? Boy thinks winter is here early."

Rudy turned and cast an eye on John, then grunted. "Boy looks well fed, Stan."

Stan looked at John then, his eyes suddenly appraising him. "You a h.o.a.rder, son? That why you don't need food?"

John didn't like the way things were going, so he walked forward, knowing the two couldn't follow him or else they'd lose their places in line.

He stood away from the line and watched as person after person took their two cans of food. John saw that the cans were soup. The truck held dozens of boxes of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

A soldier saw him, noticed that he was watching, and stepped up to him.

"Why you loitering?" he said, his weapon held against his chest.

"I'm waiting, sir. Not making any trouble," John said.

The soldier nodded, relaxing. "Don't wait too long, okay?"

John nodded. The soldier stood there watching the line, not moving back to where he'd been standing. John ventured a question. "Do you think you'll have enough food?"

The soldier glanced at the truck, then at the length of the line. "I hope so. It's no fun when there isn't. Last week we had oranges-I have no idea where they came from-and we ran out. We had to push the crowd back and run before they tipped over the truck."

"Don't oranges come from Florida?" John asked.

"Not anymore. They plowed the last of the fields under last year. Planting wheat and soybeans. Farms in Kansas didn't get one crop in this year."

"It's nuclear winter, isn't it?" John said, half to himself.

The soldier looked at him. "Course it is. What do you think?"

John shrugged, then said, "What do you think caused it, in your opinion? What did you hear through the army?"

John and the soldier watched as a young woman and her daughter, maybe three or four years old, took their two cans. John could have eaten two cans of soup in a single sitting. How could the two of them and whoever else was at home survive on that?

"Same as was in the papers. f.u.c.king Pakistanis. I can't blame the Indians, though their bombs did all the damage. If someone nuked Was.h.i.+ngton, I'd say nuke them right back. But the last count I heard was one hundred and seventeen bombs. Not a centimeter of Pakistan worth living on and the rest of the world cold."

John nodded. A nuclear winter was the result of the debris kicked up by nuclear explosions into the atmosphere. The dirt particles, so small by themselves, in bulk curtained the world from sunlight, causing a long winter. In this case, it had lasted three years already. A similar thing had wiped out the dinosaurs. A meteor had struck the Earth, cooling it enough that most of the dinosaurs died out.

"Any idea when it'll be over?" John asked. A nuclear winter would end slowly as the debris washed out of the sky.

"They're still saying a decade before it warms up again. I heard the scientists have some ideas on how to clean up the sky. Maybe it'll be less than that, but I ain't counting on it. We'll be driving through Texas into Mexico soon; I just know it."

"War?"

"h.e.l.l, yes. Mexico's gonna be a paradise. I have a cousin in Dallas who says the temperature never got above sixty this summer. Who'd have thought it? I spent a summer there when I was a kid. Hottest place I've ever been, just gullies and cactuses. Everything melting in the sun. If Texas is getting cold, then the only place to go is south, just like the Canadians did to us."

An officer waved at the soldier, told him to come back to the truck. They'd stopped handing soup out for the moment, and John saw why. The truck had been only half as full as he thought. The boxes filled only the back of the truck. The front was empty.

The soldier saw what was up as well. He motioned to John. "Step on back, friend. You might want to move along."

John backpedaled away as he felt the sound travel up the line like a force. "No food," he heard. "That's the last of it." And the line of waiting people transformed into a throng of voices. They surged at the truck, a hundred angry men and women.

"On the truck," the officer said. The soldiers stopped the advance with their weapons, lowering their rifles and aiming at the group. John didn't want to be in the mob, nor between them and the soldiers.

"Stop right there, people! More food is on the way," the officer said.

"Liar!"

"We've been waiting for hours."

The officer motioned all the soldiers into the truck, and the truck jumped away from the crowd. "More food will be here soon!" he shouted.

The crowd milled for a moment. John saw Rudy and Stan, their voices raised, shaking fists at the departing truck. Then Stan caught sight of the woman and the little girl, who had gotten the last of the soup. He jumped forward, running after the two who were walking slowly through the snow toward a bridge that crossed the Ottawa River.

John ran after Stan, knowing he meant to take their food.

There was a shot and the woman collapsed against the little girl, who slid over the side of the embankment toward the river. Stan shoved his gun back into his coat and grabbed the woman's bag. The army officer, hanging on to the tail of the truck, watched dispa.s.sionately. The truck didn't stop.

John slid in the snow next to the woman. Red welled from her wool coat, blackening the fabric, running onto the snow in bright rivulets.

"You shot her!" John cried.

Stan looked at him, shrugged, and walked away.

A small crowd of people gathered around them, peering down at the bleeding woman.

"Someone call an ambulance," John said. "She's been shot."

An old woman laughed. "No ambulances, don't you know?" She turned and walked off.

"Momma!"

John looked over the edge of the embankment. The little girl lay on the ice. He pointed at a young man standing in the circle and said, "You! Apply pressure here." He reluctantly complied, pus.h.i.+ng on the woman's abdomen, trying to staunch the blood.

John slipped and slid down the embankment to the girl. He placed his foot on the ice slowly, then all his weight. It held, and he carefully stepped to the girl. Her leg was twisted oddly, and he knew she had broken it.

He lifted her carefully, then looked for a way up. Next to the bridge was a rocky trail, not too snowy, that led up the slope. He fell once, hearing the child cry out as he did, then managed to get to the top of the riverbank. The crowd was gone.

Even the man who'd been holding back the blood was gone, b.l.o.o.d.y footprints marking his retreat.

John laid the girl down next to her mother's face.

"Momma?" she said pitifully.

The woman's breathing was shallow, but she was alive. No ambulances, the old woman had said. Authorities looked the other way over killings for food. John was sure he could get no help in this universe for the woman.

And if she died, so would the child.

"Do you have a family, child?" John asked softly. She stared at him blankly. "Do you have a father or brothers or sisters?"

The girl shook her head. "No, just Momma."

"What's your name?"

"Kylie. Kylie Saraft."

John tried to think back to the severed cat-dog carca.s.s. The thing had dove at him and been clinging to his back as he fell. The slice had looked perpendicular to the beast's torso, perhaps a meter behind John. That meant the device had a field of radius of one meter, at least.

"Hug your mother," John said. Kylie looked at him for a moment, her eyes hard. John wondered what atrocities she had seen in her short life. Then she took John's hand and slid against her mother's body, groaning when her leg flexed suddenly.

John toggled the universe counter forward to 7539, slipped in beside the two on the ground. He pulled them as tight as he could. They felt like skeletons. He could easily feel the ribs of both of them, the bones in their arms.

There was no one in this universe for them. They'd been left for dead. No family, no medical help. If he didn't help them, they would die. He had to do this.

Grasping them both, he pulled the lever.

"Jesus," someone said.

John stood. The snow was gone, except for the bits that clung to his legs and the woman's back. The daughter and the woman had come through with him. All of them, no b.l.o.o.d.y stumps. The field of the device seemed to have covered him, the woman and the girl, and a pile of snow.

"What happened to you, man?"

John turned to the students looking on. The woman was lying on a footpath that followed the Ottawa River; a half-dozen students stood around them.

"This woman's been shot. We need an ambulance."

"No way, man," the student said. He wore black denim pants, a black jeans jacket. An earring dangled from his left ear, and a stocking cap, also black, covered his head. He looked around, as if he could find an ambulance that way.

"Does anyone have a phone?" John said. "This woman is bleeding to death."

A female student, holding her books in front of her like a s.h.i.+eld, pointed to a lamppost ten meters away. "Security phone's over there."

John ran over and picked the phone up. It began to ring immediately. "Campus security."

"Yes. There's a woman shot at this location. And a little girl with a broken leg. Send an ambulance."

"Please state your name."

"Is the ambulance coming?"

"Yes."

John hung up the phone. The chill of the other universe had left him. It was a warm October day here. No food riots, no shootings over two cans of Campbell Chicken Noodle. He watched the crowd of well-fed students gather around the woman and her child.

The girl had sat up and was looking at all the strange faces, perhaps wondering where all the snow had gone. Within a minute, John heard the wail of sirens. He looked down at his blood-soaked jacket and realized he'd have to answer a lot of questions.