End of the World?

Anna trudged up the hill. Placing each foot carefully. Mentally reminding herself that she really needed to build steps into the hill so she could get there quicker and easier. It will be a time-consuming project and one of the reasons it keeps getting pushed down the very long list of things needing done. “Just do one”, she told herself as she stepped nimbly over a fallen tree trunk. One at a time and before she would realize it, she would have a stair case to the top.

It wasn’t like she had to make this climb every day or even every week. Actually, about every other month she needed to check the water filters and add a chlorine tab to them, but water was a necessity she reminded herself. Just like the cabin, garden, animals and a dozen other things she had to attend to daily.

As she looked down to clear yet another fallen tree trunk, she spotted wild garlic. She stopped and pulled out her pocket knife, this will be good for dinner, she thought as she cut a few green sprouts and placed them in her bag that hung from her shoulder. She placed rocks in an arrow form so she could come back later in the year and gather the bulbs. As she rose, she spotted a few ripe dew berries growing just on the other side of the log she had just stepped over. She retraced her steps and sat down on the log, reaching out to pluck the few ripe berries from their thorny stem. Bringing them to her mouth she gave a soft puff at them to clear off debris and giving them a quick look, popped them into her mouth. The sweetness exploded, that made her smile.

She looked out across the bottom land about one hundred and fifty feet below her, just as a tree fell on the farthest side. The flat was being cleared slowly. It was needed for pasture and the wood for winter fires, cooking and lumber. The leaves and branches became compost for the gardens and the saw dust insulation for the buildings. Nothing went to waste these days. Not since the end of the world. She reached up absent mindedly and fingered the gold heart shaped locket around her neck as her thoughts wonder on.

It started quiet. Sort of creeped up on people.

Oh, there were those that had been saying it for decades. The preppers, the renewable energy types. The climate change, carbon over load types. The massive pollution/recycle everything types. Even the global pandemic types were wrong.

A minor fall in population in the first world countries of the world. Only noticeable because they were the only ones that worried about such things, which many seen as a good thing. The world is over populated any way they said. Then the first world countries started noticing the lack of laborers. They blamed it on immigration policy, on social programs such as unemployment and financial assistance to the poor. So, all those things were changed and everyone was happy at least for a couple of more decades. Life actually became better in the first world countries. Foster children were being adopted as soon as they became available. Everyone said it was better to adopt than to birth so it was applauded. Homelessness was virtually wiped out because housing was plentiful. Hunger became unknown because there was more than enough food to go around and often just given away. The economy was okay, though sales were down. So, manufactures cut prices and the masses were happy.

Then large corporations started going under financially and the governments noticed that their tax base was getting smaller and smaller and the population was dropping faster. Not a problem really. They just needed more citizens. So, immigration was opened up and a flood of people came in to save the first world nations, again the public was happy for a couple of more decades.

Then open immigration wasn’t enough so the government started paying people to immigrate to their country and eventually even that wasn’t enough.

More corporations failed for lack of laborers. Food items began becoming scarcest because there were less farmers. Then food shortages started to happen. Then the riots over food and lack of goods no matter the amount of money you had begun.

Apparently, Scientist had been studying the drop in population for decades. They even understood it to some extent. They just didn’t know how to stop it. The biggest question was how could perfectly healthy humans not have children. Also, how could a couple be unable to conceive, but when they partnered with someone else, they could?

The population health was improving, but was that because people were becoming healthier or was it because there was less population and the numbers were better because of less population.

Was it DNA? Was DNA somehow “deciding” who conceive and with whom? A form of natural selection?

That is when the government stepped in and the experiments started on the population. First it was covertly done and then they started rounding up women and men that had produced children and did experiments on them. Removing eggs from the women and sperm from the men and implanting them in Vitro. Hoping to repopulate the world or so rumors said. She had never heard if they were successful or not. The riots got worse and she and her husband had decided to go to the cabin in the woods. They heard rumors of war between government and the people. Also, rumors that the government simply just dwindled away from people that wondered by their wooded valley on their way to somewhere else. It had been years since she had seen a plane fly in the sky, longer still since she had heard a train or seen a car.

Very few of the human lab rats ever returned. She fingered the heart shaped locket again and sighed.

Her sister was one of them that never returned. She didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t or simply didn’t want to. A smile came to her face as she remembered her mother's words, “Your sister falls in love at the drop of a hat, I swear. She is a bit on the wild side,” her mother had said each time she came home and announced she was pregnant and drop off her present children to prepare for the new one. Her sister had four children; she, herself was never able to have any with her wonderful husband and no desire to change husbands so had accepted the fact, but now she had four to raise. To love and care for as if they were her very own and not just her nieces and nephews. All healthy and strong. Mom and the children had come with them. They had left notes at their homes so if her sister did come, she would know where they were.

Her mom had been with them for five summers and was mostly the reason the others were here in the wooded valley with them. Mom never met a stranger Anna believed and when a family happened by just hoping to find some place safe, she always asked if they wanted to stay. Some did, some didn’t. Those that did, built homes and a life here just as her family had.

There were five families now with a strong possibility of a couple more. The work was shared. It was a pretty well-rounded group actually. Her husband was an engineer, she was a school teacher. The first people to come to stay was Maggie and Jared with their two children. Maggie was a Nurse Practitioner and Herbalist, Jared a mechanic by trade. Then came Sara, Mark and their two children. Sara was an avid gardener and Mark had grown up on a cattle farm where his father had worked and him also in his teen years.

Jared, Mark and her husband had gone out looking for supplies and came across a small hobby farm burned out. There were bodies in the house. They found a few chickens and a few cows. They were able to bring back most of the chickens and three of the cows and some hand tools.

Mary and Joe had showed up with seven grandchildren, a wagon pulled by two draft horses and four goats and two baby pigs. Joe was a jack of all trades and a master of none type. Mary was a jolly hard-working woman who knew a lot of the old ways of doing things as she was raised Amish until she met Joe and married him some forty years ago. The grandchildren had come to stay the summer the phones had quit. They had been raided by city folks Mary had said and they packed up after the fuss was over and headed out to go deeper into the woods to keep the kids safe and found the men from their cook fire smoke and her husband invited them to come to the wooded valley.

Mary had taught all of us a lot about preserving food, making soap, how to spin cloth and a dozen other things.

One of Mary’s grandchildren had found Charlotte and her husband and two sisters when they had gone exploring the hills around the wooded valley. Charlotte’s husband had been shot and died the day after they arrived. They were victims of carjacking by a gang of people as they were trying for the west coast where they were from. They had run into the woods to get away after their tire was shot out and became lost for several days before we found them.

Charlette finally let go of the idea of going on to California when Jake and Jerry the twins and their Uncle Deke came across us a little over a year later. Traveling the woods to stay away from the roads and told us the latest news of war and that L.A was one of the first to burn. That is where Charlotte’s family was. Deke was a carpenter by trade and had his nephews because the rest of his family had been killed. He didn’t speak of it much to them. Just to Charlotte. She and Deke were in the middle of building their own house with a baby on the way and it looked like the twins and Charlotte’s sisters were going to be the next to start their own homes.

Yes, it had become quite the community these last seven years. There was room for more in the wooded valley if need be. Maybe the world didn’t end, maybe it was just starting over she thought.

Well, enough musing. The filters needed tended to and it was a hard climb seeing she hadn’t built steps up to the springs yet, she thought to herself. Anna stood and took one more look at the valley that was busy with people going about life and then she turned and started up the other hundred feet to the water holding tanks and the filters. So, she could mark off at least that chore from her long list of chores and add building steps up this damn hill to that list. She chuckled to herself and started carefully walking up the hill with the gold heart shaped locket with her sister's picture safely inside it hanging from her neck, swinging with the rhythm of her steps.