Iceage (a novel): Chapter 3. Deep Freeze

A work in progress.
Chapters will be posted
as they are written.

The first year of the freeze wasn’t that bad. The wild game were still close enough that we had plenty of meat, and the crops were doing very well. The Balkars were a gift from God. They had hunted animals on the mountain for years. They knew every trail and hiding place. We came across a wide, grass-covered area in the middle of the ice field where the magnum from the volcano was close to the surface. It was like a green oasis. It gave us hope that some of the game would stay close to that food. But for that to happen, the other predators would have to go.
    I’m not much on killing predators. I seem to associate more with the killers than the victims. I have always believed they had a great role to play in the chain of life, but the times during the big freeze were different – we were competing for the same food source as these other predators and there wasn’t going to be much left in a few months. Only one predator could survive.
    Jerome had surprised me. He loved to hunt – who would have guessed? It was as if a wild outdoorsman had been trapped inside a nerd. He put together a tight-knit, deadly team. They would go out for two or three days, sleeping and eating on the ice field and always coming back with meat. Jerome had learned to speak Russian and was teaching his new friends English.
    During the following year, he spent less and less time at the complex. You might say he had gone native. One day he came to me and asked, “Do you see any reason why I can’t move in with one of the Balkars?”
    I thought about it for a minute, then said, “It’s not like you’re working in the lab anymore. I see no harm in it. Let me know how to contact you just in case.”
    He looked a little sheepish, so I asked, “What has made you want to move in with one of the local families anyway?”
    “It seems that in this village, if there is a man without a woman, a friend can ask him to become the second husband of his own wife. I will marry and become a part of a friend’s family.”
    The hunting had surprised me, but this was out of the ballpark. “What will you do if everything goes back to normal and you have to leave?”
    “Hap, who says I have to leave?”
    He had me there. “I’ll tell you what, if I had the chance to leave now, I would load Mary and our child on a plane and we would get as far away from this place as we could.”
    “That is you, Hap. But me, for the first time in my life, I feel as though I’ve come home. This is where I will spend the rest of my days.”
    “Jerome, it’s not for me to talk you out of this; as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters. If you are looking for my blessing – you have it.”

That conversation happened three years before we heard more news about the Earth’s new tilt. Upwight called a meeting in the hall. There were just the five of us and Anna. We saw very little of Jerome anymore. He had a son by his new wife and no longer thought of himself as one of us. I was happy for him. I picked Anna up and placed her on my lap as Upwight walked to the front.
    The Professor cleared his throat and began. “It has been months since I have made contact with the outside world, and I want to share some news. Most sites had gone dark and I was about to give up hope that anyone was out there. I’m happy to say, the human race has made it through this terrible event. Millions did not, but millions did. The Earth’s tilt has stopped at two degrees. That means that what we are dealing with now is the new normal, and it should not get any worse.”
    Jake asked, “How did all those people survive? If not for the geothermal, we would be dead.”
    “They are living in a warm area around the former equator of Earth. The Northern and Southern hemispheres are covered in ice. The Northern ice sheet is down to Longitude 30 degrees North. The Southern ice sheet is up to 15 degrees South. Southern Texas and Florida are the only places left in the U.S.A. that aren’t under ice. On this side of the pond, ice covers everything north of, and including, Turkey and Spain.”
    Mary asked the obvious question, “Can we get to one of those warm zones?”
    Upwight was shaking his head, “I’m not sure anybody could make that trip, even with some kind of transportation – not on foot. Then, if you could make it, there’s no guarantee you would be allowed into a belt, as they are calling it.”
    I handed Anna to Mary and stood up. “If they’re not coming here to help us and we can’t go there…why even tell us?”
    Upwight looked lost. He threw up his hands and in a high-pitched voice said, “Knowing others had made it gave me hope. I thought it would do the same for you.”
    I was already headed for the door. Over my shoulder, I answered, “I’ll tell you one thing: me knowing some asshole is lying on the beach drinking rum and Coke while we are freezing to death does not inspire me or give me hope.”
    At the exit, I stopped and put on my cold-weather gear. As I came out into the freezing air, Jerome walked up. It had been a couple of months since he had been by to visit.
    “Glad I caught you by yourself, Hap. I need you to come to a Council meeting with me.”
    I was shocked. “Why now?” We’d been here going on five years and I had never before been asked to attend a Council meeting.
    Jerome took my arm and began to guide me toward the village. “We have a big problem and it will affect you as well as the locals.”
    I pulled my arm from his grasp but continued on with him. “Look, Jerome, tell me what I’m about to walk in on.”
    Jerome shook his head. “It is not my place to tell you. You’ll see and hear everything in a few minutes.”

The Council hut was large, big enough for the entire village of 50 or so adults and their bunch of kids. The hut was dimly lit, but even with the low sun there was a bright reflection off the ice. It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust.
    Once I could make out the figures in the hut, it looked like the entire village was there. Only women sat in the first four rows, with the men and kids farther back.
    Looking towards the front, my first surprise was the make-up of the Council – nine women seated around a table, facing their audience. My second surprise was the body of a dead man lying on the table.
    I turned to Jerome. “What in the hell is going on?”
    He took my arm once more and said, “Come to the front and they will explain everything.”
    We stopped at the table, where I could see that the dead man had no clothing above the waist, and he had plainly been shot.
    The woman second from the left stood up and, in Russian, said, “This is my husband. Some scum from the other side of the mountain were hunting on our land. My husband here told them they would have to leave, and they shot him dead and wounded my other husband. Now I have no one to feed my house. I demand justice!”
    I looked at Jerome. “What do they want me to do; start a war?”
    “No, not you. But if you do nothing, they’ll start one for you. I asked them to let you try to get justice for them.”
    “And what would justice look like?”
    “The man who killed her husband and wounded her other husband must now become her husband and care for the house.”
    That scenario was hard for me to believe. “Let me try and understand this. She doesn’t want the man dead for killing her husband. Instead, she will take him home and to her bed, and cook for him?”
    “That is their way. To kill the man that has killed her husband would leave her in the same bad position she is in now. To replace the husband would make her whole once more.”
    I turned to address the widow. “If your wounded husband needs medical aid, you can bring him to the complex, where you can stay with him if you wish.”
    The woman in the middle banged a war club on the table and in a loud voice declared, “We can take care of our people. Can you get us justice?”
    I turned to Jerome. “What will they do if I say I can’t get them justice?”
    “They will go hunting and they’ll kill every Russian they can find.”
    “Damn, it would take me a week just to get over there and back. We lost all radio contact with them once Moscow went down. I would have to walk around the damn mountain.”
    Jerome raised his shoulders. “Your choice, Hap. Walk or fight, but something will have to be done.”
    I faced the woman in the middle and nodded my head up and down. In Russian I told her, “Okay, okay. It will take me at least a week to get to the Russian camp and back. Do not kill anybody until I return.”

Copyright © 2021 by Ed Rogers