CAVES OF ICE

  PART 1

  By Todd McLeod & Eric Meyer

  Copyright © 2018 Swordworks Books

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  CHAPTER 1

  They said it was going to be the heat to do us in. What did they know?

  Army Ranger training prepared you for quite a lot of things, but no one could have predicted just how fast everything went to hell. Ice was our nemesis, as if God himself was punishing us with a massive warming that raised sea levels to unprecedented levels. They flooded the lands, followed by a deep freeze to make sure the water didn’t go anywhere. The result was a frozen tundra like I used to watch with my son Robert in those Ice Age movies. The coasts of East Virginia were hit the hardest. Although it was impossible to gauge how badly the rest of the country, or the world for that matter, was affected by any of this. We saw nothing, for we were forced underground to survive in the tunnels we’d cut by hand. Even if we made it back up through one hundred feet of ice, the minus 50-degree and lower temperatures would kill us in a matter of minutes. Our old life had gone forever. The caves of ice were our new home.

  “Anything, Jensen?” Roy Grant, former miner and now part-time cave patroller shouted down the cavern he and I were checking out.

  “Yeah, a lot of ice.”

  I began kicking a collection of protruding ice spikes to flatten them. Each time I kicked it made a satisfying noise.

  Smash.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Hey, I have to keep myself entertained somehow, huh? Come on, Roy, what’s not fun about having to spend your days down here…”

  Smash.

  “…covered head to toe,”

  Smash.

  “in wet snow gear,”

  Smash.

  “with hardly any food to eat,”

  Smash.

  “or medicine for my wife to use in her clinic,”

  Smash.

  “and the ever-present stink of kerosene in the air while we patrol these tunnels.”

  He put on a serious expression. “We have to patrol. We don’t know who could attempt to rob us.”

  “Sure, as if there’s an abundance of people so interested in the little we have they’ll try to take it off us.”

  “That’s the way life is down here.”

  “Are you telling me you’re having a good time?”

  Roy was a good enough sport to humor me. “Oh, yeah, I’m having a blast. Brad, whenever you’re done with your little midlife crisis, we can head back to Scarlett now. We’re clear.”

  We made it back to our community, and I sought out Scarlett in the clinic. She was with our son Robert, trying to reassure him, although he looked very sick. “It’s not as bad as it looks, I promise.” She gave him a gentle smile as she plunged the needle into his arm. He winced at the pain a little bit; otherwise he took it like a man.

  That’s my boy.

  Every time I walked back into the small hospital my wife had put together, it was a stark reminder of how much we’d lost. Over time a group of survivors had whittled down to a handful of families, about sixty of us in total, a quarter of them children or teenagers.

  That left the rest of the forty-five taking up duties of growing crops with what little useable land there was down here, using the seeds we brought with us from the surface world. We sent out scouts to explore and chart the land, and patrols to safeguard our community from potential attacks. Most of our time we spent caring for the sick and injured, mining new tunnels so we could keep searching for more food, medicine, supplies, and maybe even a chance for a new life.

  Scarlett and her old colleague Helen Cody were the leaders in handling all our medical needs, the one thing we have an overabundance of. Scarlett was never the most extroverted person before, but I could tell how much the pressure weighed on her as time went on. Everyone able-bodied had a job to do, and if they didn’t succeed at it, then they were dooming us all to a slow death. No excuses. Like them, I couldn’t fail. The fate of my son’s future was on me.

  I kept telling her that responsibility for this icy world didn’t have to all fall on her shoulders, but it was a lot more difficult than convincing Robert to take his shot.

  She wrapped our son under a bundle of blankets. I walked over to them and gently put my palm on my son Robert’s head. “Feeling any better, champ?”

  “A lit bit.” He coughed, “Mom’s been taking good care of me.”

  “Well of course she has, because your mom is the best.” I kissed Scarlett on the cheek. She attempted a smile.

  “That’s what she keeps telling me, too,” he joked.

  “Oh, really now?” I pretended to cup my mouth away from my wife, “Between you and me, she never was the humble type, always bragging about her doctor’s degree back when we were dating.”

  Scarlett didn’t seem to appreciate my joke, and she grimaced.

  “But, hey, if anyone’s got the right to be proud, it’s you for being such a little trooper.”

  “More like a Ranger!”

  “Ha, ha, yeah, you’re right, the next Jensen Army Ranger! Two Rangers and a doctor, that’d be a hit TV show if we still had TV, don’t ya think?”

  Scarlett whispered in my ear that we needed to talk. Most likely she was going to tell me the reason she was particularly down today.

  “All right, get some rest now. Your mom and I have some grown up things to talk about.”

  “Okay.” He reached up to hug me, “But can me and my friend Kenny hang out later?” he asked, pulling back.

  I quickly stole a glance at Scarlett, who looked less than enthused by the request.

  “I’ll ask Roy if that’s fine. But right now you stay in bed and rest for a while, okay?”

  “Okay. Love you, Dad. Love you, Mom.”

  I waved Scarlett over for a group hug and wrapped my arms around the two people who kept me going. We must have all subconsciously thought the same thing, for we held each other for what felt like a lifetime.

  Roy accompanied Scarlett and me to the hospital’s supply room, a short walk. The light reflecting inside the ice tunnels was particularly beautiful at certain times of the day. If we weren’t forced to live down here, we might be able to appreciate how the cerulean blue icescape became that much lusher and more fantastical when the sunlight protruded through a clear patch of ice. The walls seemed to shine like diamonds when the sun entered the cavern. Before we made this location our hospital, before we became burdened with so many new responsibilities, Scarlett and I would spend time admiring the visual poetry in motion. The outside world’s purple and orange glow bouncing off the crystal walls of our cave, creating a gorgeous miniature aurora that danced across the walls. They were almost as beautiful as Scarlett herself.

  “I remember when I was back in Connecticut,” she reminisced, “Nowhere else would you find nature at its most beautiful.”

  She pulled my arms around her as she cuddled back into my chest. I clasped my arms around her stomach. We could both feel each other breathing.

  “Remind me to take you up there once things get better.” I smiled and softly kissed her cheek, promising myself I would fulfill that promise to her.

  She responded with a serious expression. “We’re almost out of vaccine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This is all we have left, Brad.”

  Scarlett pulled away and opened the chest where she kept the medicine. It was never full, but now we could see the bottom of the chest. The severity of the situation matched Scarlett’s face and tone. She reached in to grab a small bottle and held it up between her finger and thumb.

  “Ten cases of pneumonia between Robert, Kenny, and other kids. One vaccination bottle to treat them all.”

  “Just our luck,” Roy remarked, “At least it’s consistent with everything else going wrong around here.”

  I leaned against the wall, struggling to figure out the solution to this latest crisis.

  “How did everyone get sick so quickly?” Roy asked when no one commented.

  Scarlett replied, “I didn’t know we had a case of it, and clearly they didn’t either because they started spreading it among the other kids as they hung out with each other. All I know is now that over half of our kids are coughing their lungs out, and unless we figure something out…”

  Her voice trailed off in pain and defeat. Roy sensed this and waited a moment before asking another question.

  “So, what do you think we should do?”

  Scarlett pondered for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh. “We have to decide who gets the treatment.”

  The silence that followed seemed to go on for an eternity.

  This time, I broke through it. “We’re not choosing.”

  “Brad…”

  “No one deserves having somethi ng like that weighing on them, Scarlett.”

  I’m not sure if she agreed with me or not, but she didn’t protest. I glanced at Roy.

  “Haven’t you and the Coopers been making more progress digging up north over the past couple of months?”

  “You mean when Dan and me were showing Mike how to carve a tunnel through the ice? Yeah, sure, why?”

  I knew what I was about to suggest was a pipedream, but considering the circumstances, betting on a miracle was the only choice we had left.

  “Alexandria.”

  “Brad,” Roy began to object, “We have no idea how close we are to Alexandria, and we don’t even know if it exists anymore. What if we get there and Alexandria doesn’t have what we need?”

  “We’re limited in our options, Roy, so unless you’re fine with sacrificing nine children, that’s our best bet.”

  Roy sighed and hung his head, then glanced at Scarlett. She returned a neutral gaze, and Roy looked back at me.

  “Okay, when do we leave?”

  “Whenever Mike and Dan are ready.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I couldn’t imagine how I would have reacted when I was twenty-three-years-old, if they asked me to help save an entire group of people from extinction. Unfortunately, that was the kind of pressure I had to put on young Mike Cooper. A spitting image of his father Dan back in the day, a little short for a male, but dark-haired, fit and well-toned. He was a good-looking kid, and he should have been hanging out in the sun with friends at Virginia Beach, sharing beers and making memories for a lifetime. Meeting a girl of his own, someone to share his life.

  Instead, all he had left was his father. The man from whom he’d learned everything about mining, an experienced veteran who’d been at the top of his game since a decade before Mike was born. After a mining accident put him out of commission for months, he retained a lingering limp in his left leg. Which meant it was even more of a risky proposition to ask him to join us to go searching for a city that may have ceased to exist. To find vaccines that may not even be there. And all of it a race against the clock while children are dying.

  “Well now, it seems like we don’t have much of a choice,” Dan opined as he lifted himself off the ground, wincing and holding his left leg as he rose.

  “Dad, Dad, don’t strain yourself, come on,” Mike voiced in concern.

  “Ah, this is nothing. I’ve had much worse injuries when I was your age. Your old man will be all right, don’t worry.”

  Dan walked over to a basket and pulled out a map of Virginia, which he’d added to, representing the area our scouts had been able to chart, thanks to the mining prowess of the Coopers. He opened it on a table and the four of us huddled around to take a look.

  “We’ve made it to what should be Lake Ridge, about twenty miles from here. But it’s still another twenty to Alexandria, and it took weeks just to get this far.”

  “That was because you were training, Mike,” I responded, looking up at him, “You know what you’re doing now, isn’t that right?”

  “Well, I mean, yeah I guess, but...”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes. Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Good.” I turned to Dan. “Do you think you could cover that much ground in a couple of days?”

  He grimaced. “I’ll be honest, I don’t see how we could work that fast.” He creased his brow in thought, “But, hey, I guess now’s as good a time as any to break my personal record, huh?”

  I nodded in thanks, and then turned to Roy, who was still looked skeptical.

  “We can do this, Roy. We must. Your son Kenny, my son Robert, Scarlett, they’re all counting on us. And we’re not going to fail. We never have.”

  Roy absorbed my words for a bit before his head rose to meet my glance. I knew that look in his eyes was confirmation he was in. I looked around the room one more time to make sure they were listening. “Start packing now. We leave in the morning.”

  I went back to the ice cave that Scarlett and me called home.

  It’s been nine years since you changed my life forever.

  I watched my son sleep. I hoped he was dreaming of a world where he could be an Army Ranger like his old man, or whatever career he became fixated on. Children always had such active imaginations, even down here. Robert hadn’t given up on the future, and there was no reason any of us should either. I softly ran my fingers through his short brown hair as Scarlett returned from the supply room. She opened my palm, placed the vaccine in it, and then closed it with both of her hands.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but her lips touched mine before I could get a word out. I used my free hand to caress my wife’s cheek as we spent the next few moments embracing for what I was determined to make sure wasn’t the last time. We held each other for a long time before we finally let go and began preparing for another bitterly cold night. The kind of night we grown used to over the past months.

  The following morning we met outside our cave to go over everything. Dan took us through the vital part, the stuff that could kill us in an instant.

  “Though this trip shouldn’t completely wipe us out, we still should be conservative with how much we use.”

  Dan opened his and Mike’s backpacks to show us the amount of explosive we had to work with. Mike glanced at his father, worried about the amount of equipment they’d be carrying, but he sensed Dan had got it all worked out, and it was pointless saying anything. Roy and I carried the pickaxes and shovels we’d use to clear the debris once Dan blasted a passage for us. These tunnels wouldn’t be as polished as those we made when we weren’t racing against the clock, but what the hell. We didn’t plan on using those tunnels again, not after we had what we needed. Leaving tunnels open meant other people could use them, and the risk of attack from rival groups of survivors was always high.

  We each packed our own rations of food, every man for himself. We thanked our community botanist Angelina for remembering that vegetables can still be cropped in cold weather, so we had a decent supply of carrots, beets, and potatoes to make it for what might turn out to be a two or three-day trip there and back.

  We worked out we’d reach Lake Ridge before the end of the day, but from there on would have to mine the rest of the way. Cutting endless tunnels, and that was going to take a lot of time and energy. This would be the biggest challenge we’d faced since coming to live in these caves, and we determined to make it a successful one. Provided Alexandria was still standing.

  “Forget Virginia Beach,” Roy grinned almost a mile into the tunnel to Lake Ridge, “I’m going as close to the Equator as I can when we get out of here!”

  Mike smiled and nodded in agreement. “I’ve always wanted to travel outside the States, maybe somewhere like Panama City or Rio de Janeiro.”

  “Oh, man, Rio, baby,” I reminisced, “Although I’m not sure you’re ready for that yet, Mikey boy.”

  “Why not?”

  “One of the benefits of working for the government was you could afford to visit the most beautiful places in the world and meet the most beautiful women.”

  “From what I’ve seen on the Travel Channel, I’d second that,” Roy joked.

  I chimed back in, “How about we’ll start you off with Miami first, then we’ll get down to Rio. You got to build yourself up to what goes down there.”

  Dan smirked. “I don’t know what you two are talking about, those days are so far behind me that I can’t even remember.”

  “Oh, don’t try to pull the humility card now! We learned everything we know from you, Dirty Dan!”

  Dan let off a hearty laugh. We were all laughing and loosening up, enjoying a brief time where we could finally release the tension of worrying about survival and simply enjoy each other’s company. All we needed was a few beers and some folding chairs in the front yard as we watched Kenny and Robert and a few other neighborhood kids play a makeshift game of baseball, and it would have felt like the good old days. Maybe if we figured out if we could reverse the effects of the climate change on the surface, we’d look forward to a future instead of reminiscing about what had once been. Anything to hold out hope to so you wouldn’t give into the dark cynicism of living inside these underground caves that didn’t leave much room for light-hearted optimism.

 

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