Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(92)

In the autocar, I ask James, "How bad is it? The food situation?"

"Bad."

"Are we going to starve to death before we freeze to death?"

He shakes his head absently. "I don't know. The two are linked. Without sunlight we can't grow crops or collect energy to power grow lights--"

"What about geothermal--that well you drilled for the Citadel?"

"We never reached the depth we had hoped. It's providing enough to power the bunker, but not on the scale we need for the greenhouses. If we drilled more of them, maybe. Or had windmills or even water power, but that would take time and effort. We don't have either. No one thought it would get this bad so quickly."

"And how has it, James? Honestly, think about the scale of the sun--the sheer number of those solar cells it would take to blot it out this much."

"You're assuming they're all in close proximity to the sun. We don't know that.”

“The images from the Helios fleet—”

“Showed the solar cells around the sun, I know. But what if they’ve moved closer to us? We don’t know that they’re still at the sun. We only know that the cells are between us and the sun. The closer they get to us, the fewer they’d need to blot out the sun. After all, even the moon can blot out a large portion of the sun, and it's only two thousand miles across."

"Like an eclipse."

"Right."

We ride in silence for a long moment, watching the car’s white headlamps carve beams into the darkness, snow drifts passing by.

"But James, what if you're right, and the mission is a success, and we stop the production of solar cells? The others will still be out there. The Long Winter won’t end."

"We might have a solution to that too. That's the other thing I want to show you."

The factory where James first showed me the Citadel and Sparta One is teeming with military vehicles, even at this hour. There's an extra security checkpoint now, and beyond, the large warehouse is closed to the elements. Inside, the overhead lights are off, the workers toiling under task lights. Even in the dim light, I recognize what they're working on: nuclear missiles.

"I thought all the nukes were going out with the Sparta fleet."

"Not all of them. We have a finite amount of helicopter fuel left--and no way to refine more--but we're using it, going out to try to salvage food from stockpiles and extract the nukes from the US and Russia."

"What's the plan? Use the nukes for heat or energy?"

"They're being retrofitted to operate long-range in space."

It dawns on me then. "You're going to fire them at the solar cells."

"Right after we launch, probes will go out and try to locate the solar cells. They have to be somewhere between Earth and the sun. Once we locate them, the nukes will go up."

I shake my head. "There's still too many solar cells."

"True. But if our theory about how the array operates is right, we might scare them into moving off or leaving us alone for a while."

"That still just buys us time."

"But it's better than nothing."

James marches deeper into the factory, to the mouth of the tunnel, where we board a small electric car and silently snake our way toward the bunker, the air growing colder by the second.

The rocky cavern I saw before has been closed off by a towering metal wall with a set of double doors bearing large block letters that spell CITADEL.

The airlock beyond the double doors floods us with warm air, and we're ushered into a small foyer with marked doors leading to a small mess hall, bathrooms, and the common room. James nods to a Marine sitting behind a desk and breaks for the common room. The sounds, smell, and sight of the people in the barracks shocked me this morning. What I see in the Citadel guts me. I'd estimate that there are a hundred narrow hospital beds in the large room, each separated by a white sheet hanging from a string. On the bed nearest me lays a young boy about Owen's age. He's skinnier than Madison, eyes closed, legs barely making a ridge in the white sheet over him. An IV line connects to his tiny arm. I don't know his diagnosis, but I would guess malnutrition.

A man lays in the next cubicle, moaning, a bandage covering his face, blood seeping through. He's still wearing his work coveralls. I recognize him--he's one of the people that used to collect our trash--when they picked up trash. I bet they moved him to one of the factories or a warehouse, where he was injured. A nurse or doctor stops and leans over and peels one of his eyes open.

There's a woman in the next bed, sitting up, reading a paperback under the glow of a table light. She doesn't look sick. But her belly is swollen and her free hand rests gently upon it, perhaps hoping to feel a kick. When she looks up at me, she looks scared, even when she forces a smile.

James turns and whispers, "I can probably get Madison and her family moved here... but these beds, they're going to fill up pretty fast--"

"No. These people need to be here more."





Chapter 48





James





Two days before we launch, Emma and I host a family dinner at our habitat. It’s the first one in a long time, months at least. Everyone is here. Fowler and his family, Madison and hers, and Alex and his. By the numbers, it’s just like the gatherings we hosted in warmer, brighter times. By appearances, it’s anything but normal.