Read Online Children of a New Earth by R. J. Eliason - Free Book Online Page B

new growth had erupted.
    This first valley was shallow and short. They were soon rising again. The next pass was much higher, well above the tree line. The altitude of the second pass was enough to make it difficult for the average person to breathe well. It was here that the Jeep would be its most useful.
    As they reached the peak, Amy’s head swam. The Jeep sputtered, and she remembered with a jolt that combustion engines took oxygen too. Then they crested into the pass, and the road level out. They came out the other side, and she stopped, looking down on a world she had never visited before.
    Hundreds of feet below them, she could see the tree line. It seemed the forest stretched out forever. A line of lower mountains blocked her view of the plains that she knew lay below. For that, she was glad. Already it was too much. A lifetime of having the steep walls of their little valley on either side made this view dizzying.
    “God, I hope the brakes work,” she muttered as she drove slowly over the edge and downward.
    The rest of the day passed in a tortuous haze. The Jeep lurched over huge potholes and rain-cut divots with bone-jolting force. She lay heavily on the ancient brakes, trusting neither them nor the pockmarked road. Once they made it down into the tree line, she had to stop frequently for the men to clear dead falls from the road. She wasn’t sure what worried her more—the way the temperature gauge rose or the way the fuel gauge dropped.
    It was mid-afternoon when Jacob called the first halt. Amy gratefully let the Jeep roll to a stop. She popped the hood and started to rummage through her tools.
    “Whatcha going to cook us, missy?” Shawn called out as he climbed wearily off the trailer.
    “I am not your cook!” Amy yelled, brandishing a wrench. Shawn took a step back.
    “Enough!” Jacob barked. “Put down that wrench,” he told Amy before turning on Shawn. “Another comment like that, and you will be doing to cooking for the rest of the mission, understand?”
    “Yes sir,” Shawn growled.
    “Besides,” Jacob continued as he pulled a bag from the back of the Jeep, “This one’s on me. MREs,” he declared. “We need to make time so I talked Amos out of most of our remaining emergency rations.”
    “MREs,” Horace said, “Meals Ready to Eat. Thirty years old and as good as the day they were packed.”
    “More than thirty years.” Larry grimaced. “They were almost ten years old when we got them. And they were awful the day they were packed.” Larry had served in the Marines and spoke from experience.
    “MREs kept many a soldier alive in the field,” Jacob told him. “Soldier’s best friend.”
    Larry’s dim view of MREs was not shared by many. For most of the younger men, MREs were the stuff of legend. They had grown up listening to the old men talk of their days fighting, complaining of the many hardships they had endured. Now was their chance. Come what may, they would have earned their right to tell their own grandiose stories of their days serving the cause.
    After passing out MREs to the men, Jacob approached Amy with two packages and a battered case. “Let’s talk a minute,” he said.
    Leading her away from the men, he handed her one of the meals. He sat down with a groan. “Damn, that was one bumpy ride,” he said. “Pardon the language, Miss.”
    “I’ve heard worse.”
    Jacob laughed. “Yeah, Marlin can cuss a blue streak. I forgot you weren’t brought up like most womenfolk.”
    “I was brought up just fine,” she retorted.
    “Sorry, I meant no insult,” he said, placating. He pulled a battered map from the tattered case. He laid it out on the ground. “Any idea where we are?”
    “None,” Amy shrugged, looking at the map.
    “Everything has changed so much, I can’t be sure,” Jacob replied and then chuckled. “Well, the mountains haven’t changed. We are somewhere between here and here.” He pointed.
    Amy measured the distance with her fingers, the