Chapter 01

BURT

I recognized it as the home I'd left a little over a month before yet it was different.

There was an open structure, similar to a carport where the garage had been. Back wall, side walls and a roof; pretty much a wide garage without the big doors. A couple of wagons were parked inside, backed in for easy hitching and unhitching of the horses. There was room for at least two more wagons. Tack, miscellaneous wagon parts and wheels were hanging on or leaning against the back wall.

The barn looked about double the size of the old one. I guess horses were taking over for pretty much anything that had an engine in it in this new world. We'd had a tractor, mainly for harvesting close to 30 acres of hay each year plus digging fence holes with an attachment that fit on the back. A cutter, rakes, a baler and a flatbed trailer made harvesting the hay a matter of just putting in the hours. That would all need to be done with horses and strong backs from a lot more men now. Fence holes would just take good old muscle combined with sweat.

Behind the barn was a long building with four doors on the closest side that I somehow knew was a bunkhouse for some of the help. It looked like it could house at least 30.

The house had grown, both out and up. A couple of rooms had been added on the back where the propane tank had been and there was a completely new second story. I noticed that the number of chimneys was triple the two we'd had before. A porch that hadn't been there before covered the front and one side of the place.

All the buildings had a rustic look, primarily constructed of local timber and rock.

What used to be an asphalt driveway was now dirt. There was something else different about it. It took a few minutes to spot that the three utility poles from the main street to our house, bringing in electricity, phone and cable, were no more. As if to take their place, the number of trees on and close to our property had increased at least fivefold.

"It's all gone, isn't it?" my wife said, taking my hand.

"Yeah, I guess it is. We didn't get hit too bad, considering."

"They didn't even ask us how we felt. One day we go to the cave and a couple of weeks later they say, 'Oh, by the way, we've wiped out most of the people on the planet along with anything more modern than a pot bellied stove'."

I squeezed her hand. "Well, it's obvious it was going to happen no matter what we said or thought about it. Would you rather have been wiped out with the rest of them?"

"No, that's not it. I don't know. I guess I'm in shock."

Grace said, "We're going over to my place to see what they've done to it."

"Do you want me or Val to go with you?"

"No, Kyle can take care of anything. We're just going to our home. Vicky, do you want to come?"

"Yes."

"We'll be fine," Grace said. "I guess we need to get together after we settle in and figure out what we're going to do."

"That sounds good. We can't call each other so why don't you plan on coming back around 6:30 or 7 and we'll see what we can come up with for dinner."

"I don't know. It's going to be dark and we don't have any lights. It could be pretty dangerous riding back home after we eat."

Maria said, "It looks like we've got plenty of room if you want to spend the night."

"No," Grace answered, "I think I'd like to spend the time getting used to my new place. We'll come over in the morning."

They swung their horses around and headed across our ranch towards theirs. The wolves looked at each other as if communicating and then Betty got up to go with them.

Val and Bev decided they wanted to check out the place and see what changes had been made in this new era. They headed out toward the back of the ranch. Knowing them, they'd be looking for places they could be alone as much as changes to the property. Alfie got up and followed them before they'd gone a dozen yards.

Maria had started toward the back of the house when the kids took off. She was just past the far corner now, sitting on her horse, looking at whatever was back there. That's where her garden had been before.

I nudged my horse forward and pulled up next to her.

Our garden had grown every year since Maria started it and had been about half the size of a football field when I left for the cave. Now we had one that you could easily fit six or eight stadiums in. At the far edge were a couple of dozen fruit trees. I saw a couple of different apples, cherry and several varieties of plum, all trees that belonged here in eastern Montana. There were also orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, pear, peach, nectarine and several others that had no right growing here in the cold. All were filled with fruit that any magazine would be proud to have on their cover.

Between the trees and the garden were berries. I picked out huckleberry, raspberries, blackberries, bluberries and strawberries. Again, lots and lots of fruit. The strawberries were almost as big as my fist and I could almost feel the juice running down my chin just looking at them.

The most surprising thing to me was the windmills. There were two of them, at the close end of the trees, near the house. Someone had figured out how to to irrigate the garden. I wondered if we had running water in the house, as well. I'd eventually find out why we needed two of them.

Maria got off her horse and walked over to the edge of the garden, bending over to pick up a handful of dirt and inspect it as it ran through her fingers. She looked up and called to Margarita, who was about twenty feet away, bent over with her back to us. Margarita came running over to her, apologizing for not noticing that we'd returned. Maria shushed her and pointed to the section she'd gotten the dirt from. The two of them knelt down and began to run their fingers through various areas of the dirt and to feel the leaves of the sprouting plants between their thumbs and fingers.

Maria stood up and wiped her hands on her thighs as Margarita called out to five other women who were working further away in the field. They ran over to her and Margarita duplicated what my wife had just done with her, showing the women what had been discovered and discussing what needed to be fixed. Three of them ran off to the barn and came back shortly, loaded down with shovels, hoes, rakes and a couple of buckets.

Manuel came over for Maria's horse and I got down from mine and handed him over. As he led them away, I asked Maria if there was a problem.

"Not really. I just saw a way to get the plants more water. They're doing OK but we could feed a lot more people if they got more to drink." I looked back at the garden area. There were now about ten women digging out the dirt between the rows of vegetables. Where there had been troughs an inch or two deep, there were now five or six inch deep channels.

Maria turned away from the garden and took my hand. "Let's take a look at what they've done to our home."

The first room we entered was a big mud room. There were hooks on the wall for coats and three four foot long shelves, one above the other, for boots and shoes. There was probably room for twenty or more people to keep their stuff and approximately a quarter of the shelves and hooks were in use.

There were sturdy doors both from the outside and into the kitchen. Solid doors that would cost hundreds of dollars at Home Depot that I knew had been cut whole out of trees on or near our land.

It wasn't until I wiped my boots on the mat and hung up my coat that I realized we'd been clothed when we transferred from the cave to our driveway.

The kitchen was a throwback as far as we were concerned but would probably be a dream to someone who hadn't seen what we used to call the modern world. The whole outside wall was covered in brick that narrowed down into a single chimney about ten feet up. There were three open fireplaces, two of them large enough for a steer, pig or deer, set up with spits that had handles coming out of the brick so someone could rotate the meat without getting too close to the fire. The third had a couple of big cauldrons on hooks. There were a couple of pot bellied stoves with four round metal plates of varying size for cooking, similar to the burners on a stove. There were also ovens built into the brick above the three fireplaces. So, you could roast a pig and bake several pies in the same fireplace if you wished. I know that because Rosa, one of Manuel's relatives was doing just that. I was going to have to teach her to make pizza.