27
Repairs had been underway for an entire month. Benchley paid attention to every detail, and ensured that Jeremy Andrews and his team of engineers had enough manpower available, not to just fix what had been broken in the earthquake, but to reinforce and strengthen the outpost’s power array. No one wanted to go through another event like the one they had just barely survived, and Benchley made it a priority for the engineers to move quickly and expeditiously. For weeks, everyone labored to put the base back together, and everyone had a hand in its restoration. Even Benchley had pulled on coveralls and spliced wire, welded piping, and serviced heavy equipment. No one was allowed any slack. Bit by bit, the station was patched up and made fully operational again.
But while Harmony Base was healing, it would bear scars for the rest of its life.
At night, in his quarters, he avoided sleep. Not because he feared his dreams—he had long since grown inured against them—but because Mike Andrews had finally delivered his mission log. And the things Benchley found in the report were shocking. Frightening. At times, even outrageous.
And most surprising of all, the report contained hope.
Unconfirmed reports of other survivors from the Northwest. Benchley found himself circling around that again and again. That there were survivors eking out a bare existence beneath the desolate rot that had once been San Jose had been surprising enough. But the mention—the mere rumor—of other survivors in the Northwest, where all the models and simulations had suggested that nuclear fallout would be less than anywhere else in the nation, set his mind roaming. San Jose was their first target, of course. But after that, Benchley knew the Pacific Northwest was their next destination.
There could be a society there. So why wait?
The notion took him by surprise. He had been planning on concentrating all the base’s energies on contacting the survivors in San Jose, making peace with them, and even outright providing for them, if they would allow it. Harmony had tons of bounty in its stores, all manner of items that the remaining residents of San Jose would need. But they were likely a small group, smaller than Harmony’s population. They wouldn’t need much, comparatively speaking. It wouldn’t take long to get them squared away, living like human beings again, as opposed to cannibalistic savages.
We can do both.
Benchley thought about that for a long time. Life after the Sixty Minute War had served only to refine his normally conservative approach to issues like this. Determine the mission. Plan the mission. Launch the mission. Support the mission. Sustain the mission. Exit the mission. Repeat.
But Benchley knew time was running short. Even though Harmony would survive, the next catastrophe that befell the post might be substantially worse. Mother Nature had already done what Mankind had not: wound the base, hurt it, send it a signal. There may not always be another tomorrow. And if the worst were to occur, the people of Harmony would need to find a place where they might be able to have a second chance.
The Pacific Northwest.
He nodded as he sat hunched over the log book and his tablet computer, his Spartan quarters illuminated only by the lamp on his desk. The Pacific Northwest. It was a veritable beacon flashing in the murky darkness as the sun slowly set across the decimated United States of America. He decided to make it the first order of business at tomorrow’s command staff meeting. While he had to let the command staff weigh in on it, he saw another mission departing from Harmony, one commanded by Mike Andrews. The kid was a star performer, and there was no one better suited to carry the torch.
The world had ended.
And Harmony’s mission had finally begun.
AFTERWORD
Earthfall had an odd conception. Originally, I’d written a bare-bones novella in very late 1982, which I used as a kind of outline for a screenplay in the summer of 1983. It didn’t take me long to write, as the adventure in the piece was so compelling that it kept me up at all hours, banging away on my shiny, new electric typewriter—personal computers were things of fancy back then—in between classes and dates and bottle after bottle of Pepsi. (It was sold in glass bottles back then, real glass bottles, not this tacky plastic we have today.) Back then, I was focused on writing a story that would combine the best of The Road Warrior with what little good there was to be found in the movie Damnation Alley…which basically amounted to some cool looking vehicles, and maybe a score by Jerry Goldsmith. I worked on that screenplay, off and on, for years.
Hollywood remained uninterested.
I put it away for at least twenty-plus years and forgot all about it, as one should when holding onto an unsalable property. Every now and then, I’d think back and reconsider it, but I always pushed it aside in favor of more contemporary projects, meatier projects that I could sink my teeth into. There are always new stories to be spun, and I try my best to look forward. After all, at my age, the road ahead is much shorter than the one in the rearview mirror, so I’d best keep my eyes up front. No telling what a guy might hit when blasting down the highway of life at 85 miles an hour.
Curiously, it was one of these “meatier projects” that led me back to Earthfall. I was working feverishly on a novel called Tribes, a Chricton-esque adventure novel with a sprinkling of science fiction dusted over it. At the halfway mark, I began to lose steam, and the project started to wander. The story wasn’t as lifelike as I’d hoped, and the characters were approaching insipid. No, that’s not right. They were insipid. When a writer can recognize that in his own work, and can’t write his way of the box he’s written himself into, then it’s time to step back and reevaluate.
Serendipitously, Earthfall came to mind again.
I pulled out the script—the novella has long since disappeared, and is nowhere to be found—and reread. Parts of it made me grimace in embarrassment. To think I’d actually shown this around! No wonder I was never the next hot thing in Hollywood. My skills sucked! The dialog was horrible, some of the sequences absolutely juvenile. I mean, twenty years after the bombs dropped, and people are turning into pumpkin-headed mutants? (Though in my own defense, I didn’t have 50 foot scorpions leaping out the wasteland sand.)
But still…there was a story there. A very rough one, but a story, nevertheless.
So I put Tribes aside and resurrected Earthfall. And while it was trying at times, it was also fairly easy—I knew where I’d wanted it to go back in 1983, but I hadn’t the chops to steer a story back then. I’m still unsure if I do three decades later, but I decided to make a go of it. It’s not survivalist fare, and it still retains a patina of 1950s pulp science fiction about it, but I did try and toss in as much weight as the story could handle and still move like a cheetah with a Saturn V rocket shoved up its butt. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you agree. Or, at the very least, didn’t find it too overwhelmingly odious!
Thanks are in order…
From 1983: Big shouts out to Rick Sylander, Kevin Slater, Marc Schliesman, Tim MacNary, Jill Ferrari, Caryl Dailey, Doug Aho, Leah Creatura, Todd Webster, Carolyn Payne, Gordon Dailey, Ann Juliano, Leonard Scott, Jackie Soma, Hank Netherton, and Bill Mellott. You all read the scripts, and for some reason, neglected to tell me every draft sucked. I’ve lost contact with many of you, but I love you all, and your friendship, love, and support will never be forgotten.
And now, in 2013: Joe LeBert, Fred Anderson, and the long-suffering Derek Paterson, for your reviews and views. Will Allen for your beta—your comments were significant. Bobby Cooper and Scott Campos, for the sanity checks. Craig DiLouie for the blurbs and kind words of encouragement. Jeroen ten Berge for some awesome cover stuff, and Nathan Carlisle for his depiction of the SCEVs. Editors Sean Fox and Lynn MacNamee at Red Adept for your editorial efforts, as well as Diana Cox at novelproofreading.com for the final burnishing. And a salute to former Navy officer Paul Salvette and his lovely wife for formatting the ebook release.
Author disclaimer: despite the efforts of those above, the final result is all my doing. Mistakes and assorted grief are all mine. Accolades, if any are coming, are shared with all.
And the biggest thanks to you, the reader. It’s been a ball corresponding with you all, via email, via Facebook and Twitter, and on my modest blog. You make a guy feel all right about himself, even when he steps in it.
Which is often.