MANSIONS. LOOTING IS WIDESPREAD. GOVERNOR FLEES TO MEXICO WITH STATE FUNDS.
INFLUENZA STRIKES AGAIN. PANDEMIC LEVELS IN CALGARY AND VANCOUVER. THOUSANDS DEAD. SARS NIGHTMARE CONTINUES IN ONTARIO.
RELIGIOUS PACIFISTS CHOOSE THE NORTH. OLD BELIEVERS ASK FOR ASYLUM IN CANADA, POINT TO VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION IN U.S.A. GANGS THREATEN TO WAYLAY THEM AT THE BORDER.
CANADA CLOSES BORDER WITH U.S. SHUTS DOWN ALL IMMIGRATION FROM SOUTH. POINTS TO LAWLESSNESS, CRIMES OF FUGITIVES.
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SEEKS NEW ALLIANCES WITH EUROPE AND CHINA. CHINESE DEMAND “TRADING ENCLAVES” ON CANADIAN WEST COAST.
PM KILLED IN “SUSPICIOUS” CRASH. GOVERNMENT CRISIS DEEPENS. BIKER GANGS CLOSE IN ON CAPITAL. RESIDENTS FLEE TO QUEBEC WILDERNESS. PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS UNDER NEW STRESS TO “GO IT ALONE.”
Page after page Toby read, overcome by a frenzy of curiosity .“How are you doing?” Talby asked from time to time. “Tell me what you’re reading.” But the boy asked his father for patience, desperately trying to piece together the chaotic and violent past.
Some of what he read he understood. There had been much talk about such catastrophic events among his older schoolmates, and many references to the dire events of those days by his teacher. But Mr. Koenich had obviously left out much. Either he didn’t know the whole story, or he was withholding it from the students, perhaps fearful that a true and complete knowledge of the violent past would depress or corrupt them.
After reading the newspaper accounts, it was clear to Toby that this country he lived in, once called Canada, had long ago collapsed under the pressure of violence, terror, plague, and unwanted immigration from a ruined and decimated United States. He knew that there was a great union of nations far away in Europe, and that China ruled all the East and part of the west coast of America. Even though — as rumour had it — Old Europe and China themselves had suffered revolutions, plagues, and pandemics, they scorned this land, which was known to those civilized places as the “lost world” — a region of violence and anarchy that few outsiders wished to penetrate. The two great world states, east and west, were busy trading with one another, attempting to deal with their food and health crises, trying to gain economic advantages. They had chosen to ignore — at least for the time being — the “lost world.”
It was rumoured, however, that some companies from overseas were prospecting in certain areas, that secret mines had been opened in the east and north, and that deals involving guards and “protection” were being made with some of the biker gangs. Yet neither Toby nor a single one of his friends had ever seen anyone from “the outside world.”
Now, as he put together what he had garnered from the fragmentary narratives with the information he had picked up in Mr. Koenich’s classroom, Toby began to understand what had happened decades before, in the middle of the 21st century. In those days, it was clear, the greed of the rich had triumphed and the poor had been cast aside. Governments had become short-sighted and cruel, religions preached violence, and terror seemed the only answer to the hopelessness that lay heavy on large portions of mankind. North America had become the enemy, the chief target of the impoverished and exploited, and soon, out of fear, treasured freedoms eroded on the home front, and the whole continent turned into a place of secrecy and weapons. The population, intimidated by their own suspicions, and worn out by many false alarms and rumours of war, no longer saw the enemy as alien, but denounced their own countrymen, their neighbours, and their friends. No one was to be trusted; everyone spied on everyone else. But despite the government’s ruthlessness, some great national shrines were desecrated, famous buildings were destroyed, and people feared more and more for their lives. And so, at last, the army took possession of the state.
The stories told how guerrilla bands had formed a resistance, how unthinkable weapons were unleashed, and how the environment was poisoned. Communications broke down; the government ceased to have power. The Four Horsemen — war, conquest, pestilence, and famine — seemed to ride across the land. There was no law but the law of violence and reprisal. Thousands died, and thousands more fled to the north, to old Canada. But the newcomers engulfed that country with their own miseries, until it, too, collapsed under the pressure of violence, plague, refugees, and subversion.
Soon after that the mutations began. No one was sure how they started. Perhaps the massive pollution had caused them, or dangerous chemicals that had been foisted upon the public, or stolen and misused by the desperate. Whatever the cause, children were born, seemingly human but very different in body shape and in mental processes from ordinary folk, and after many of them had been murdered, the mutants banded together. They hid themselves from the majority and began to plot against the others, for they began to think of themselves as superior. They called themselves the special ones, the Elect — and indeed, they had rare gifts. They formed a secret commonwealth within the crumbling state. They practised their own form of worship, but outsiders charged them with evil practices and told tales of black magic, of human sacrifice and satanic rites.
Toby’s eyes widened as he read this, for he had heard many rumours about the mutants, of whom he had seen but a few, and those harmless. Now he learned, too, about the origin of the bikers. They had started as mere outlaws in the long-ago world, but after the troubles, they were supplemented by ex-soldiers and by many from the disbanded militias, and so the gangs became very powerful, and broke free from all restraints. Theirs was the law of the strong, and sometimes they hunted down the mutants, and sometimes they made alliance with them against the righteous, the Old Believers.
On and on Toby read, but his mind swelled with images of horror, he felt sickened at the failures of the past, and at last he threw the papers aside in sheer despair.
“What is it, Son?” his father asked. “The truth is very bitter, I know, but you must preserve it for those to come — for your own children.”
“Yes, Father.”
Toby sat silent at the table, his head bowed and cradled in his hands. A terrible weight had descended on him. He knew what kind of land he inhabited, what kind of people he might expect to find in the world beyond his father’s homestead.
“What’s the use, Father?” he spoke out at last. “What’s the good of resisting? You and I, the Old Believers, we’re just powerless. The bikers and the mutants have the weapons. We’re finished before we even start, and that’s the truth of it.”
His father groaned in seeming despair, then, with an effort pushed himself upright on his bunk and cried out.
“No! No! There’s always hope. We have to trust in God’s providence. Too many of the others did not believe. They fell away; they lapsed into shamefulness. But we returned to the old laws, we embraced the Book. We swore the oath of Christian brotherhood; we refused all violence. We buried the dead and prayed for the guidance of the Lord. We waited, we prayed for deliverance, we kept our commission.”
“But, Father —”
“I know, I know. It all seems hopeless.” The old man fell back on the bunk, his words became reflective. “Now I can’t see, I can’t do my duty to the dead. I have to lie here, crippled by my affliction, and wait until the bikers come and kill me. Like Job, I’m cast down. I cry out to the Lord, but despair has a grip on my heart.”
Toby listened helpless, close to tears. He knew that the Old Believers were fast disappearing from the land. Who would fulfil the law and bury the bodies of their kinfolk? Who would solace the poor and the abandoned? Who would condemn the
