Story What the Hell Happened? Story Slice- Monica and Tanya's tale

Great story (again!).

This whole AI thing is ridiculous. I read where one implementation taught itself how to hack every computer OS out there and isn't that just scary as hell. The wife and I joke about Terminator all the time like "You remember that movie with that whole Skynet thing with the robots trying to kill humans?". Another good movie about 'super computers' running amok is 'Colossus: The Forbin Project' from 1970. It's a little more cerebral instead of being an action movie but is still a good flick.
 
Monica


Monica was sitting in one of the spots in the conversation pit. She had a drink next to her and a book in front of her, but she didn’t bother turning the pages. She wasn’t reading anyway. The house was dark except for the small light in the kitchen and one low overhead can light above the pit. There were several up there, all on dimmers so she could turn on as much or as little. Mood lighting circa nineteen-seventy-three.

She thought about the fireplace in the middle. She remembered all the times she had to clean it out when they used real wood in it, and how she always preferred when they used the gas jets instead.

She looked around the house. It was dark, but in her mind’s eye, she could see it all clear as day. She could even travel into the rooms she couldn’t see from here. She saw her own bedroom, now with Greta asleep in her bed. Monica had insisted.

Greta was lost and didn’t know what to do in this new place, but that was to be expected. Hell, Monica could draw a damn builder’s diagram of this place in her sleep with a chunk of wrapping paper, a crayon and her eyes closed and she felt lost.

She didn’t know what to do next. Right now the town, the state, hell the country , maybe even the world has gone nuts and fallen apart. She shot and probably killed several people just trying to get out of town. She still didn’t know how she felt about that, other than grateful to still be alive.

A lot of people weren’t so lucky. She helped Greta bury one of the unfortunates who got swept up in the crazy. She still didn’t understand how people had deluded themselves so far down the psycho trail they were ready to literally sacrifice a virgin in hopes of making their cell phone work!

Monica had no idea how Greta was able to survive, hiding in an abandoned well while they sacrificed her baby brother to the almighty silicone chip! Knowing that he was being sacrificed in her place, all because a friend thought he was saving her and instead just shifted the knife to someone else.

She took another drink and tried to force her mind elsewhere.

They had plenty of fuel to ride out the initial wave of this whatever the hell it was. She could see the gauges on the various tanks they checked today in her mind. If they were careful, and used solar for a lot of things, they could stay here and be fine for a long time.

She thought of the walk in pantry with it’s buckets of long term food stocks. On the shelf in front of each bucket or monstrous can was a couple large glass jars, complete with bail style lid and rubber seal. She remembered the rule of ‘if you opened a bucket or can, you moved it into the jars to use, and don’t open a new one until the jars are empty.’

It was one of their mother’s fixations. She hated wasting even a bite or a crumb of food, either in preparing or due to spoilage from sloppy handling. This was from the way her mother grew up, she learned later. As a kid, it was just the way things were, until she compared notes with the other kids and determined it was her mom, not everyone.

As she looked at the pantry in her mind’s eye from earlier today, she saw what was on the shelves, then her memories from months and years ago showed her what she would see if she went in and pressed a piece of molding just right, then pushed another spot and pulled outward on a particular shelf.

The whole shelf would roll forward on a rail system to expose another larger space filled with more shelves holding even more buckets. When she asked her mother about this whole setup, her only reply was ‘if they come for the food, they won’t find everything.’

She knew that was her mother’s driving force in most things. Back-ups squirreled all over the place, some hard to find, some damn near impossible.

Food, water, shelter. She and Greta had plenty, but still didn’t know what they were going to do. It was like the whole marooned on a desert island thing, they had enough, but…

She told herself she should go to bed. That brought her brain around to the topic she had steered clear of as much as she could. She was sleeping in Tanya’s bed so Greta could have hers. Maybe later, she still had some of her drink left. Wasting food and drink is bad.
 
Later

The sound was jarring in the silence. That was one of those things about the house. It was quiet. Between all the density in the walls, the added air space of the hallways and such along the outside, and the insulation and sound deadening built in, you could drop a bomb outside and never hear it inside. But that meant anything inside could be heard in the silence.

Minica sat up. She had fallen asleep on the cushions in the conversation pit instead of making it up to bed. Just as well. Stumbling down the stairs wouldn’t have been good.

She sat up and went over to the old-fashion telephone wall niche which conveniently held, of all things, a phone. This phone was now ringing in the strange growling jangle of someone hand-cranking a late-sixties military field phone. The fact it was ringing was a good sign. Only two other people currently alive even knew of it’s existence. Ok, three, counting Greta.

She picked it up, answering it the same way she was taught.

“Station 304, Secure?”

“317 Secure, Open the gate.”

“Copy.”

The answer was a click from the other end. It was Tanya! She sounded tired but said she was ok and would be here soon. She was glad she remembered the code, too.

Monica answered ‘station’ and a number. If there was a problem at the house, she would have just said ‘house’, or ‘such and such residence’, and that would have signaled trouble or under duress. Monica said a number. This time an even number. If Tanya would have replied back with an even number, or an odd one if Monica would have used an odd one, then that meant Tanya had trouble or was under duress. Simple stuff but stuff taught to them as kids, and reinforced later in life.

Monica shoved her feet into her shoes and headed for the outer courtyard to the gate.
 
The House


Monica was standing there at the gate, garage door already open behind her when she first heard, then saw Tanya approaching on the motorcycle. She went right past her, on into the garage, leaving Monica to close the outer gate. She got things buttoned up and walked over to the garage. As soon as she was inside, she closed that too. Then, and only then, did she turn the lights on.

In the dim nighttime lighting of the garage, she was able to confirm what she had noticed as Tanya drove by. She had someone on the back of the motorcycle with her. It had to be Randal.

Randal was standing there, looking around the garage. Monica remembered that he had never been here. It was one of those weird little quirks while Tanya was married. She never brough them out here to the house. She had always avoided it. Monica never understood why, but there had to be a reason. After the divorce, all of them were happy she didn’t bring him here. The land and house were buried in a blizzard of shells and trusts and a whole bunch of legal gibberish keeping that jackass from finding it, much less trying to do anything about it.

Monica walked up to where Tanya was still sitting on the motorcycle, her helmeted head down on the bars. She slid her arm around her big sister as she used her foot to lower the kickstand.

“Come on, lets get you inside. I got a visitor stashed in my room and I figure you stash Randal in yours. We can use mom and dads.”

“Visitor?” Tanya asked as her head came up and she turned towards Monica.

“Long story. Better with coffee and breakfast. You need any of the bags inside tonight?”

“No,” Tanya swung her leg around as she stepped off of the motorcycle. She looked over at where Randal was just standing.

“Come on, Randal. Let’s get into the house. We will show you around in the morning.”

Tanya dropped a protective arm across Randal’s shoulders and guided him to the door into the house proper, leaving Monica standing there to shut things down.

Monica looked at the motorcycle and all the gear strapped and bolted to it. It was one-hundred-percent an embodiment of their father, just as this house was of their mother. They were taking care of them the best they could even though they were gone.

She followed them into the house.
 
Inside


It was with minimal instructions Tanya told Randal where he was going, where the shower was, where the bed was. She was much too tired for much else. All of the past week had her beyond exhausted and now she was here.

She had stayed away from her a lot after the divorce. She didn’t want him finding here or coming here. Now, that was no longer a concern. Now there were other issues. There was also the emotional baggage of being here.

She was always happy here, even when she wasn’t/ The events of high school forcing them to be here all the time were a major stressor, but being out here meant she was in the safe bubble. She always wanted to keep it separate. That’s what her parents wanted, that’s what they taught her, and that’s they way she tried to keep it even once they had passed.

As she walked across the courtyard behind her sister, she thought of the last time she had been in her parent’s room. It had been years. It’s not that it wasn’t a warm, inviting space, like the rest of the house. It was that it was her parent’s. She looked over and saw the curtains still closed on the full length glass from the courtyard to their bedroom. Whenever her father was home, they were open about halfway to let in the light and let him see the rest of the house. While her mother was still alive, she would open them all the way each morning. She said sunlight was the best cleanser for the soul. God! She missed her.

Monica opened one of the massive doors made from cypress beams at least eight or ten inches thick. Not for the first time, Tanya marveled at the grain and the age of the wood. They were over a hundred years old and swung silently on massive hinges. Tanya walked in first, Monica right behind her. She closed her eyes and just stood there for a moment, feeling the space, feeling the echos of her mom and dad. This was their space, she was just borrowing it.

She opened her eyes and looked over at Monica. They both knew what the other was thinking. The space was broad and shallow. Each side of the room had a huge walk-in closet behind floor to ceiling bookshelves. In front of the bookshelves on each side of the room was a space to sit and read, along with a small table. On the side nearer the door was her father’s side of the room. There, a large overstuffed leather Victorian daybed with a small marble-topped end table and lamp. On the other side was her mother’s was a Victorian day bed or fainting couch, and a small wicker writing desk and Tiffany style lamp.

It was there they both could be found many an evening after the house had been put to bed. They were both of the opinion that reading was a serious endeavor , as was bed, and they shouldn’t be mixed. That’s why they each had somewhere to lounge and read. Their bed was for other things.

The bed sat in the middle of the wall opposite from the glass wall facing the courtyard. It was a massive antique thing right out of the Middle Ages. The box bed was big enough for a king sized mattress so Tanya knew it wasn’t original, but it was made like it was. It had always been here, it’s wooden panels thick enough to require effort to move and solid enough to make inside the bed an isolation chamber when they were closed.

Tanya could see the bed was made, just like it always was. She knew neither her nor Monica were sleeping in it tonight. They would figure things out in the morning. Right now, she had her sights set on her dad’s leather daybed. After a shower. Monica would use the fainting bed tonight. It was a choice requiring no thought. Each had spent hours in them growing up.

She walked on to the back of the room near the boxbed. There was the doorway to the master bath that resided behind the wall. Each side of the bed had an arched doorway to the master bath, and in there was a pair of showers, a slipper soaking tub, and a small Japanese style wooden soaking tub. She always thought it a little odd to have two of everything back here growing up, but it made more sense once she was an adult.

The shower was hot and finally drove some of the lingering chill from her bones. The soap got some of the grime out of her hair. She knew she would need a few more cycles of it to feel human again, but this was a start.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she looked to the leather daybed. A pillow and two blankets were waiting for her. She glanced over in the soft glow of the desk lamp and saw Monica sacked out on the fainting couch across the room.

There were still an encyclopedia worth of problems, but those could be tomorrow’s problems. She was here, Monica was here, and Randal was here and safe. That was a good start.
 
Morning, at the House


The four of them sat and ate breakfast together, with brief intros all around. There was a bit of nervous tension mainly from the fact Tanya and Randal didn’t know Greta, and Monica barely knew her, but didn’t want to go into Greta’s backstory and told them so.

With that proclamation, Tanya just plowed on like it was nothing unusual, just like any one of a hundred different people she and Monica met around the dinner table growing up. They were taught at a young age to not ask too many questions of guests deemed safe enough to share the dinner table unless invited.

Randal was a different story. This took the unknown of Greta’s background and threw a mysterious cast on it. He was polite enough to follow Tanya’s instructions and guidance, but that didn’t stop his brain from concocting more and more outlandish backstories in his head about her.

The talk around the table was a brief recap of their adventures, with most of the ‘adventures’ left out. As Tanya got to the last part of her and Randal’s parts, the topic of Mr. Fitzgerald came up.

“We buried him out back next to his wife. One of the things we should do today or tomorrow is go over to their house and put it to bed. The stuff we can use, we bring here and the other stuff we should secure. Then we can make it look like a vacation home locked up for the fall.” Tanya said.

“It’ll take more than one trip, that’s for sure. We can box up the extra stuff we want to safeguard and stack it in the green outbuilding up here for later.” Monica said, already starting to work on the puzzle.

“You want to dig out boxes to pack in, or start with the first sweep for ‘sensitive items’?”

“Gretchen and I just went through the outbuildings yesterday, so we can track down boxes and bags if you and Randal want to go start the snoop and stack.”

“Sounds like a good plan. When you were poking around, did you notice if the trickle chargers were still running? I was thinking of taking the Scout and parking it on Mom’s side when we get back.” Tanya asked.

“Yeah, the stuff in the building is still energized. I’ll check the air in the trailer tires and we’ll load the boxes and bags into it so tomorrow we can go over and knock most of it out.”

Tanya looked over at Randal.

“Better eat up. We got some work to do.”
 
At Mr. Fitzgerald’s


The old International Scout fired right up. It was sitting there waiting for them just like Tanya expected. Her father was like that, taking care of them again even after he was gone. They drove over to Mr. Fitzgerald’s house and pulled into the barn. They were just here the other day, so there were no major surprises. Tanya started taking mental measurements of all the stuff they wanted to take back over to the house and when.

Out here in the barn, they would eventually strip almost everything out of here. It was the order of things that mattered. This was more workshop than barn anymore. Out here were several large toolboxes, workbenches, cabinets and shelves. The general tools weren’t a big priority since her dad had huge amounts of general tools at the house. It was all the specialty stuff.

Mr. Fitzgerald was the one who tried to teach her how to blacksmith. Out herein one corner was his forge, complete with anvils, tools, and all manner of supplies for it. These needed to come to the house. She knew Mr. Fitzgerald wouldn’t begrudge her taking them. Her dad came down here all the time to do metalwork like this. That’s why he never put on in up at the house, even though he had an outbuilding all picked out for it.

The other space to prioritize the stripping of out here was the old tack room. It was in here Mr. Fitzgerald did all his leatherwork and kept his tools and supplies for it here. Martha always made him keep his projects out of the house, so here is where he did all of it. He had more than just a bucket of tools and scraps. There were a couple leather rated sewing machines for harnesses and saddle repair, bins of sewing supplies for leather, leather anvil for stamping and decorating on, and anything else you could think of for leatherworking.

She just shook her head at the thought of all the craftsmanship knowledge lost when she buried him.
 
In the House


Tanya and Randal started in the kitchen.

“OK, here’s the plan. We are going to strip most of the bits and pieces from the pantry and kitchen. Spices, food, cooking supplies, cleaning supplies, all of that’s coming up to the house in the next couple days. For today, I’m not sure.”

“Gotcha. What else, Mom?”

“You start working in here, I’m heading to the bathroom and the study. Give a shout if you need or find something.”

“Ok, Mom.”

Tanya left him starting his sweep and she went to the bathroom.

In there, she started raiding all the medicine and hygiene supplies. All the drugs from the medicine cabinet went into the small knapsack she brought for just this purpose. She pulled open each drawer. Toothpaste, unopened toothbrushes, band-aids, burn cream, she scooped all of them. Pain meds, heart meds, blood pressure meds, these went too.

Today would be food and drugs. The others would be tomorrow. She had one last room to do. The master bedroom itself.

In here, she took the small cigar-style jewelry box and his pistol and lever gun. The clothes would come to the house later. For now, she just wanted to finish and get to the house. Too much sadness for one day.
 
Back at the House


Dinner was hot and nourishing. Butter noodles with some sort of meatballs and a cream sauce from some of the long-term storage supplies along with some added spices to boost the flavor and everyone was comfortably full. With all the added stress and work, no one felt like much socializing. They weren’t to that point among the four of them yet anyway. Randel and Greta retreated to the bedrooms for some alone time, each still struggling with their thoughts about recent events.

This left Monica and Tanya. Tanya enlisted Monica to help her sort through all the extra crap she picked up on the trip here. There was the stuff from the guy with the horse, the stuff from the dumbasses at the tank, and the stuff she had brought over from Mr. Fitzgerald’s.

All of this she spread out on the hot tub cover in the atrium. She didn’t want to do it in either of the garages, and didn’t want to trek over to one of the workshop buildings. They would be spending enough time there once they drag all of Mr. Fitzgerald’s tools and blacksmithing stuff up here.

Monica helped her carry the stuff in and spread it out, then went back to fetch a couple buckets to sort things into while Tanya went to work.

Tanya briefly thought of the hot tub below her under the cover. The turquoise sparkle color scheme of the fiberglass was a serious throwback, but her mom had searched for it for years. It matched one from a picture she saw as a little girl and had to have one. Tanya remembered many an evening playing in the pool with Monica while Mom and Dad lounged in the hot tub, sipping a cool drink and relaxing.

Tanya knew it would be extravagant to fill the hot tub up now. No, it would be extravagant to fill the pool up right now, she corrected herself the hot tub wasn’t that big. As long as the solar panels along the inner edge of the roof kept doing their job, the extra juice for the hot tub wouldn’t be bad.

She turned her attention back to the stuff on the hot tub cover. She had pocket stuff pushed to one side. This included things like multi-tools, lighters, pocket knives, and anything else people tended to cram in their pockets.

Another stack was for things larger than pocket stuff. There were at least two camp stoves, one white gas along with a bottle and pressure pump, the other one just a folding bracket for triox tabs, head lamps, flashlights, some pouches with God knows what, some fixed blade knives and other larger tools like a caving hammer.

The third stack was weapons. There were things like two lever action rifles, an AK-type, an AR-type, and at least a dozen pistols. Of those, there didn’t seem to be a predominant type either. There was Mr. Fitzgerald’s revolvers, a couple Glocks, at least one or two 1911’s and another revolver she got off the horse guy.

Tanya knew they would have to sort caliber and magazines out among all this stuff. Right now, of what was here, the revolvers were the best provisioned since they came from Mr. Fitzgerald and he had plenty of ammo for his. All of the others were light on ammo and magazines, and their reliability was suspect as well. Right now, Mr. Fitzgerald’s were the only ones she might trust other than the ones from her father.

When they were finished, Tanya and Monica put things away and went into their parent’s bedroom. A quick shower was next followed by bed. There was still a lot to be done tomorrow. They were using the reading couches again. Neiter were willing to lay claim to the master bed, especially after what Monica found and showed Tanya.

“So, yeah, there were the switches for the lights in the main room, and inside the box bed, but did you notice these?” She asked Tanya as she pointed to the four corners in the roof of the box frame.

Tanya leaned in and looked up, then shook her head as she leaned back.

“Tiedown rings? I didn’t know Mom and Dad were that kinky.”

“And along the four corners by the mattress as well.” Monica pointed out additional rings, only these still had snap links and leather cuffs attached at all four.

“Well, thank you, Monica, for a mental picture I didn’t need this evening.”

Monica grinned at her now. “Makes you wonder who wore the ball gag in the family.”

Tanya replied without thinking.

“Ball gags are all for show. They get in the way of useful work.”

“Excuse me?” Monica said.

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” Tanya said quickly.

“Oh, I’m not forgetting that. We will talk about it later, though.” Monica grinned again.

“Time for sleep. We got a lot of shit to move tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.”

“What do you think about maybe filling the hot tub tomorrow morning? We could fill it while we do breakfast, then let it warm up while we work, then it would be ready for us to unwind our aching backs after dinner tomorrow night?” Tanya proposed as she walked over to the leather lounger.

“When I checked the water tanks, they were full, so it shouldn’t be an issue there. But we probably shouldn’t do the pool. I don’t want to use up that much water or chemicals.” Monica said.

“Agreed.”

The quiet of the bedroom lulled both of them off to sleep.
 
Days Later


The days were filled with moving stuff and sorting of what they now had. With several outbuildings and barns and sheds, there was a lot. They weren’t digging through everything, but there were enough they had to look at as they moved stuff around. One of the buildings was already set up for a forge and blacksmith work, it just didn’t have any of the supplies and such. Tanya and Monica knew it intrigued their father. He had the building modified to add a forge, just never got around to doing so. That’s where they installed all of the stuff from Mr. Fitzgerald’s.

The leatherworking stuff went into another shop space. The canning and other kitchen stuff got stored away since their mother already had a fully stocked kitchen. These would become the operational spares to fill in any blanks they found.

As they worked, they began to gel into a more cohesive group. Greta was still quiet, but a hard worker with plenty of farm-born knowledge. Randal was trying hard to include her in things without being pushy. Or at least that was his plan. In reality, he was the one behind the curve on a lot of the skills, but his enthusiastic attitude at learning from her even elicited a brief smile or two.

One of the evening chores was going through the wepons, both the few Tanya and Monica brought and the ones Tanya scooped up along the way. They had enough to arm all four of them, but they were still wary of some of the ‘battlefield pickups’. This was why they were counting on the revolvers from Mr. Fitzgerald, along with the lever guns from both him and the ones still here at the house.

Those lever actions were tucked in the back of each walk-in closet in the master bedroom. They were inside drop-down sections of some shelves piled high with junk watches and jewelry boxes. The kind with plenty of bling to distract and no real value.

The lever from their mother’s side of the house was set aside for Greta. It was the right length and she was already kinda familiar with lever guns from her upbringing. Between this and one of Mr. Fitzgerald’s revolvers, Greta was well armed.

Randal still had the carbine from the ride in, along with the pistol. Tanya and Monica had both carbine and pistol as well. This rounded things out well enough they didn’t have to be in a hurry to test the other guns. One thing still bugging Tanya and Monica though was they knew their father had more firearms. They just weren’t sure where they were.

One thing they did find in snooping around was where a storage space in his closet was. Inside they found not firearms, but instead, it was filled with old school archery stuff.

Growing up, they were taught the basics of archery, both in high school gym class, and by their parents. This was all the standard twenty-pound fiberglass stick bow type of haybale shooting. That wasn’t what was in this little nook.

Old school wood recurve and Mongolian style horse bows, cedar shafted arrows, serious bladed broadheads, supplies for fletching, and more. This was something they just didn’t know their father was into, and evidently their mother too, judging from the pictures on the wall. It appeared their mother was once a seriously competitive target shooter.

Knowing their parent’s penchant for mirror images as far as architecture, they immediately went to the other closet and searched for a matching nook. It didn’t take long, now that they knew what they were looking for. It was in this space they found their father’s small stash of firearms extras.

Two more pistols like the ones Monica and Tanya were carrying now were on a shelf inside there, along with a literal milkcrate of loaded spare magazines. Several boxes of batteries for the weapons lights sat next to about the same amount for the spare sets of night vision goggles. A crate of mags for Monica’s carbine and two for the ones Tanya and Randal were there as well.

It looked like thi was where their father was working out of after their mother died. He would load up his pockets for the day from here. The small shelf held a couple pocket knives, some small flashlights and other daily wear stuff.

Along the back wall of the space were several pictures. In the middle was one of him and their mother from years ago. They were just sitting at a campfire laughing. There was another one, this was a copy of their wedding picture. High school pictures of Tanya and Monica were there too, along with official ones in their uniforms.

Tanya and Monica were both a little teary-eyed seeing this side of their parents, especially when they saw at the base of the wedding picture was a gold chain. Looped on that chain they had seen around their father’s neck countless times, was their parent’s wedding rings.
 
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