TEOTWAWKI (An Original Novel - Part 2)

Chapter 2: Wilbur

Wilbur Liked to tinker. The problem was that Wilbur was of limited financial means. He was a day laborer when he could find work, unemployed when he couldn't. He lived in an old trailer house out side of town and tinkered in a small shop in the back. He built things. Wilbur was pretty smart when it came to “things.” Not so much when it came to people, especially gurls.

From time to time Wilbur got “bees in his bonnet” as his grandmother had used to say before she passed on. He became obsessed. He became fixated on one idea and followed it through to the bitter end. Unfortunately many of those ends WERE bitter, at least for his social life.

This last one had been particularly so. It had cost him a girlfriend. Odd that. Imagine a girl that didn’t like guns, motorcycles or boats. It was probably just as well for Wilbur. Still, he was feeling sad. He decided that he needed some “me” time. That meant total isolation. He’d go to the lake. He looked at the primary cause of his love-life’s failure, a hybrid two wheeler, and loaded it up with food and gear. Then he climbed aboard and rode away.

The lake he went to was difficult to reach in the extreme, really hard. No automobile could get near it. Not even a jeep. The trails were too narrow, too steep and too twisty. For many miles he was either in low gear crawling up a skinny goat track, or going down one...in low low gear. Speed would be fatal. At the bottom were arroyos. At the top were ridges. No, definitely no place for a four wheeler. In fact a person on foot would have a hard time. His little battery assisted, two wheeler was a great climber. That’s why he’d built it, to take him to places where no man had gone before. Going downhill stored energy so that it could be used going back uphill. So far it seemed to be working fairly well.

He was in no hurry and didn’t need to go fast. Attempting to go fast in this terrain was a recipe for disaster anyway. Eventually Wilbur got to where he was going, then he disassembled his two wheeler and reassembled it into a small boat.

His design was ingenious. Every piece, every part did double duty, or more. For example, the front wheel was made from sheet aluminum, rather than spokes. Consequently it and the fork could act as the rudder. The drive wheel become a center mounted paddle wheel, (it had turbine blades in place of spokes, so it scooped the water) the framework was reassembled to become that of a boat. The reconfigured frame slipped into a nylon fabric “boot” that, while folded up, had done duty as a seat cushion. The result was a skin-on-frame boat.

It didn’t take him long to complete the transformation. Very shortly he was ready to go. He made sure everything was strapped in appropriately and climbed in. It was time to do some serious fishing.

***
Much, much later.

He’d lost track of time and that was great! That had been the plan. As long as the lake had fish in it and he could find some dry firewood he was good. Every day was like the day before, cool, rainy and foggy. He wondered when the last time it was that he’d seen the sun. Surely it had been at least a year?

Regardless, he had been here a while. Perhaps he’d best check in with the world? In the past he could get an Internet connection at the top of the second to last ridge back. He pedaled to the shore, transformed the boat to a bike, pedaled uphill, and looked down the other side. That didn’t look good. The arroyo was full of water. He certainly wasn’t going down that way.

He attempted to access the Internet with his SmartPhone and succeeded.

Bad news.

The end of the world had happened while he’d been fishing. Noah had been lied to. It was by flood this time too.

***
(later)

Well hell. He’d been pedaling and Ridge running. He’d seen more game trail ends than he ever wanted to see again. Every trail he’d been down had ended in rushing water that would be dangerous to put his little boat into, except this one. The water at the end of this trail was calm and peaceful and stretched for as far as he could see. Which admittedly wasn’t very far in the fog but he didn’t recall a lake being here before. It hadn’t been there according to his GPS mapping program either.

He transformed his two wheeler into a boat, and set up camp. When in boat configuration it made a fine tent. He made a meal, spent a battery’s worth of time on the Internet and when the battery died, went to sleep.

Only to wake up a few hours later, adrift. Lucky for him that he’d stowed everything, cause the camp was just gone. The water had risen while he was asleep and he’d drifted awaaaaay.

Bummer.

The ratio was one for eight. If he pedaled an hour he charged his smart phone enough for eight hours of Internet. He was disappointed. The advertising had claimed ten.

Disconnecting his paddle wheel from the charger didn’t seem hardly worth the effort so while he charged his cell phone he, of necessity, moved around. Fine by him. He was getting hungry and really, really, tired of fish. He made sure that a retractable lanyard connected his shoulder holster to his pistol. If he dropped the gun for some reason he wouldn’t lose it. He drew the gun. He was hunting, bird.

If he saw any dry (enough) land with a wabbit on it that would work too, or snake, or coyote or deer, what EVER. Anything that wasn’t fish.

He saw a clump of brush sticking up out of the water and peddled that way. If he peddled slow enough the paddle wheel was fairly quiet. He saw something flutter. Was it a bird?

“What’s up?” the voice of a little kid asked him. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl at that age. It seemed to be behind him. Oh. Well. There went the chance of sneaking up on a bird. Hell he’d probably miss it anyway. He wasn’t the world’s best pistol shot. He carried the gun mostly for self defense.

“Well...” he said “I was planning on shooting a bird for breakfast. I guess that idea won’t work will it?”

“Nope” the voice of the youngster said. “ If you shoot that clump of driftwood you might annoy the ArchMage. You might not like that.”

“The ArchMage?” Wilbur decided that with all the talking anything nearby would have pulled up stakes and left. He safed his pistol and holstered it, making sure the flap was closed and the lanyard was in place. “Who might be the ArchMage?”

“Him” the child’s voice said

The clump of driftwood lifted out of the water and fell away. The eye pod that it had been concealing rose a few feet above the water, turned and looked closely at Wilbur.

Wilbur looked at the eyepod and the eyepod looked back. Up close and personal it looked more like the windshield of an airplane or a boat than it did an eye. Behind the glass Wilbur could see a figure waving at him.

“OH! “ Wilbur said. He waved back. “THAT ArchMage. Eye SEE!”

Laughter Wilbur could hear laughter from somewhere.

“Looks like we have a live one. Now that you’ve had your fun Carl, I suspect that I should speak with the gentleman. I hope you haven’t scared him half to death!” An older male voice was heard to say.

“I resurrect easily” Wilbur muttered. He was fascinated with the eye and the eyestalk. He was a consummate tinker-er and from where he sat he could NOT for the life of him see how it had been made.

Wilbur noticed that the voices had been coming from a small bird like creature that had landed on his boat. On closer inspection it appeared to be a dragon.

Why not?

“Would you like to come inside?” the little dragon asked.

“What’s inside?” Wilbur asked.

“Think of it as a floating village” the dragon said “ We have village stuff inside. A cafe for example”

“Give me a minute to think about it” Wilbur said “Yes.”

“chuckle That wasn’t a minute.” the voice said

“I think fast when I’m hungry” Wilbur replied, “and short on coffee.”

“ I just checked with Ernie and about all he has this morning are Omelettes, (several different types) with hash browns, biscuits and gravy. He’s a little short of pancakes. The morning crowd just cleaned him out.” the voice said.

“I guess I’d have to suffer” Wilbur said “You said coffee?”

“Yup. We haz Coffee” the voice of the little dragon replied.

The stalk was wide enough for a ladder Wilbur thought, or perhaps a spiral staircase. He was wondering how he’d manage his boat. He had no desire to discard his boat. A door irised open in the stalk just below the pod. A brawny, white bearded man with no legs was floating in the opening.

“If you’ll just paddle on over here we can lift you out of the water and into the drop-shaft” Shelby said.

Wilbur paddled closer. Tentacles appeared and picked him and his boat out of the water and deposited him inside the so called ‘drop-shaft’. There was plenty of room.

“You might just want to stay in your boat for the time being.” Shelby said. “let’s go eat. I’m hungry myself.”

That was just fine with Wilbur. It would give his heart time to slow down some. He hadn’t been expecting those tentacles. They had been quite a surprise. To tell the truth his legs felt like rubber. He doubted that he’d have been able to get out of his little boat anyway.

So they did.

The old man floated at conversational distance beside Wilbur. They descended down the ‘drop-shaft’, just floating in air. Very soon the descended into an open space, much like the inside of a dome. There was village stuff, building, streets, lots and fields, and flying children, like the ‘lost boys’ in that movie.

A flock of them veered and flew over next to them.

“Where ya’ goin UncaGranPa ?” a little girl no older than three asked him.

“I’ll be in Ernie's for the time being. If the end of the world happens again you know where to find me.” The white bearded man floating beside him said.

“OK UncaGranPa! Seeyabye.” the children shouted as they flew away. They had too much energy, apparently to be confined in one place.

“End of the World?” Wilbur asked.

“Yeah, we need to talk about that” Shelby said.

The sight of Ernie’s cafe almost brought tears to Wilbur’s eyes when he saw it. He was transported in time back to his childhood. If it had a bike rack in front it would have been perfect.

“Reckon anyone will mind if I leave my boat outside?” he asked Shelby as they settled in for a landing on the sidewalk in front.

“It’ll be just fine” Shelby said. He could relate to what Wilbur was experiencing. He’d had similar feelings the first time he saw Ernie's himself.

Ernie, somehow, had managed to dig up something more than just omelettes. His breakfast steak was to die for. Then again Wilbur was hungry enough that eating a truck tire might have been appealing.

That would have been no more surreal than the situation in which he found himself. He was sitting at a table with four, count em FOUR men with no legs who were totally unconcerned by that little detail. Two of them were the biggest men he had ever seen in his life. Even without legs he just knew they could snap his spine like a match stick with one hand if they got the urge. The two seemed to be chain-dogs for an older oriental woman, who spoke with a West Texas accent. Wilbur was from West Texas so he knew.

It was just so weird, so he concentrated on the breakfast steaks. They were familiar.

“These are really good” he said

“Just passing through are you or are you going to hang around for a while? I hope you stay. This could be my favorite best place to eat!” One of the men asked.

The Dragon Lady smiled. He was handling it well. There were several ways to deal with catastrophe. Humor was by far the best. Over the course of the next few hours they brought him up to speed.

“So that’s the way it is” Shelby finished. “You know just about all that we do now.”

“Except for the source of your alien technology” Wilbur teased.

Shelby got a surprised look on his face. “That’s right. I haven’t given you a Dragon Tear. How delinquent of me. Here”

Shelby handed Wilbur a gold necklace with diamonds on it that must have been worth a kings ransom. The look on Wilbur’s face was comical.

“Wait. I mean. I was only kidding. I was trying to be funny!” he stuttered.

“Nevertheless” Shelby said “It’s yours, as well as the drone of your choice. You can pick anyone that you want as soon as you Don the Dragon Tear. With the dragon tear you can use the technology. Some, like young Cody, have discovered new things. We like new things. We welcome your help.”

“You’re serious?” Wilbur said “ That thing must be worth thousands of dollars!”

“Oh I’m sure that it is worth far more than that, possibly millions or even billions.” Shelby assured him. “They can’t be made by any contemporary technology. It’ll sting some when you first put it on, when it keys to your DNA after that it’ll be fine. Soon you won’t even notice that you are wearing it.”

Chapter 3 : Henry Drake

..... sat in his truck with the windows down, motor off, smoking his last cigar. He made it last. After it was gone there wouldn’t be anything else until he got off this damn bridge. He was beginning to wonder if he ever would get off of it.

He was bored. Alive, but bored.

**To Be Continued...