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    Thirty Years Gone
    Thirty Years Gone
    Thirty Years Gone
    Ebook57 pages54 minutes

    Thirty Years Gone

    By Louis Shalako

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What would your town look like if the lights went out and never came back on again? Trevor Ratigan has lived long enough to find out. Seventy year-old Trevor is the closest thing to a general on hand when an invasion fleet arrives to seize the strategic twin span of the Bluewater Bridges. In a world where cattle and corn equates with money and power, the rivaly between Detroit and Chicago for control of the upper lakes is heating up. This post-apocalyptic science fiction story looks into the very near future and draws an ugly picture indeed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLouis Shalako
    Release dateJul 29, 2011
    ISBN9780986687167
    Thirty Years Gone
    Author

    Louis Shalako

    Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of twenty-two novels, numerous novellas and other short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over thirty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.

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      Book preview

      Thirty Years Gone - Louis Shalako

      Thirty Years Gone

      Louis Shalako

      This Smashwords Edition Copyright 2014 Long Cool One Books

      ISBN 978-0-9866871-6-7

      Design: J. Thornton

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased; or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

      This story also appears in the collection ‘The Paranoid Cat and other tales,’ copyright 2011 Louis B. Shalako. Available from Smashwords and Amazon.

      Table of Contents

      Scene One

      Scene Two

      Scene Three

      About Louis Shalako

      Thirty Years Gone

      Louis Shalako

      Scene One

      In order to build anew, something must first be destroyed. In the meantime, the Brethren kept a low profile rather than be torn limb from limb. But the world had clearly been headed towards barbarism for a very long time. When the gap between obscene wealth and obscene poverty became too great, something had to give. They had chosen to act in order to save something from the flames. What the world made of it was up to the individuals concerned.

      That is to say, those individuals who were left.

      ***

      It was thirty-something years since the grid went down; the gas shut off and the last fuel truck arrived in town. Trevor Ratigan was the oldest living man in his clan. Trevor was seventy-seven and still going strong. With all of his faculties still about him, he could see that the pace of life had slowed down to the pace of a post-rider, a ship becalmed, or at the fastest, a carrier pigeon bearing top-secret dispatches.

      Some things never changed, like human nature.

      ‘Strong as an ox,’ people said of old Trevor. ‘But he’s a whole lot smarter.’

      He was one of the few that could read and write; or who had living memories of that time before. Every night, before he went to bed, in summer before the light truly faded, and in winter, before the coals in the fire grew too dim and the lamps had to be snuffed to conserve fuel, Trevor composed his thoughts on paper.

      ‘When I was growing up, there were about seventy-two thousand people in town, and who knows, maybe a quarter or a third as many cars and trucks. Over the last ten or fifteen years before the crash, people were drifting off to the big cities, where strong, centralized municipal governments meant subsistence was easier. Maybe the big cities simply offered the hope of some sort of protection from savagery. At the time of the crash, our town had a population of perhaps twenty-eight thousand, and now, thirty years later, we are down to maybe four or five thousand people, within a radius of about ten kilometres.’

      Contemplating these words, he patiently dipped the quill in the inkpot and waited for the excess to drip off again. Trevor tended to think a lot and write little, always choosing his words with the utmost care.

      No one really knew the true numbers locally, although a few well-meaning committees still pretended to govern, delivering services of a sort to various small enclaves in the former city.

      People pretended to run schools and things, but they were always going broke and going into some other line of business. There were plenty of children, but no one could afford to pay to send them to school. There was always a lot of work to be done. There were one or two doctors in town, barely trained in Trevor’s estimation. There was one barber, who also claimed to pull teeth. The number of healthy adults was limited. Kids of a certain age were perpetually engaged in foraging for firewood, drawing water for home or fields, gathering with their mothers, or hunting small game. Boys of a certain age would be taking turns on guard duty all night long.

      Kids had no leisure time, not the way they used to. When not doing something

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