Snow Ch. 01

Authors Note.

The description of the effects of an atomic explosion on a volcanic caldera is probably ridiculous but this is a story, a fantasy so I've allowed it to create the world I wanted to place the story in.

*****

Davin removed the last gas bottle from the methane collector and loaded it into the rack on his truck. Securing the heavy steel cylinder he made a last check of the vehicle and trailers before climbing into the cab.

Davin started up the engines and let them warm up for a couple of minutes before he hit the door switch. A small flurry of snow entered the garage on the wind as he eased the lumbering machine out through the doors. Once clear he hit the close button and waited until the steel shutters had fully closed before moving off again.

The vehicle Davin was driving was to say the least weird to look at, the chassis came from a 40' trailer with the wheels replaced by six huge spiked steel drums. At the front where the pin for the fifth wheel should have been there was a steering axle with a pair of smaller spiked steel wheels.

At the front of the trailer was a large comfortable cab with seating for four, between the rear seats a door led into the 20' living and sleeping area. Behind that was a 12' compartment containing the six 3 liter petrol engines that had been converted to run on methane, the rest of the compartment was used to store the steel cylinders for the gas, more gas bottles were slung in racks under the chassis.

The roof of the vehicle was covered in solar panels charging deep cycle batteries to supple power to the living accommodations and the emergency electric drive motors.

Behind Davin's "truck" were three 30' drag trailers carrying the produce he was taking to the Towns. The contraption wasn't fast, barely 10Mph on the flat, but it could haul at least six of the trailers without slowing noticeably.

Davin had about eight hours of driving ahead of him, he set the GPS, saying a silent prayer that the aging satellite was still working. As the huge wheels bit into the packed snow Davin settled back for a long ride.

-------

The world Davin lived in was very different from that of his great-great-great-grandfather. Back then Stuart Gordon had judged that the feeble efforts of the various governments of the world were doing little to slow down the rate of climate change and had taken action on behalf of his own family.

Spending most of the family's large fortune he had bought a large house that was actually built into the side of Mt. Averbury and then set about enlarging the series of caves that already peppered the mountain. In some of these caves Stuart piled the most eclectic mix of, well what most people would call junk but over the years had been an invaluable source of parts.

That had secured the families safety but what gave the family prosperity was when his son installed a thermopile, this relatively simple sounding device consisted of two bore holes driven down hundreds of feet into the rock. When the bore holes got down to rocks that reached about 800 degrees centigrade a small charge fractured the rocks at the end of the holes. When water was pumped down one of the bore holes it flashed into steam and was forced up the second shaft, at the surface the steam drove three generators and provided virtually unlimited power and hot water.

Old Stuart was right that disaster was looming but he got the cause wrong, as fuel supplies became scarce the superpowers hoarded the last oil reserves that they could control. These countries refused to share the dwindling resources with some of the smaller countries and charged those that they did allow a small allotment of fuel heavily for the privilege.

The result should have been what could be described as a "Limited nuclear conflict" a group of five African nations bought four missiles on the black market. Now you might have thought that they would have aimed these missiles at Moscow, Washington or some other major city but these terrorist nations had decided to target the richest of the remaining oil fields.

The campaign was well organised, at 07:15 on Easter Sunday 2022 EMP devices were detonated in twelve of the worlds capitals. Five more devices were planted but for one reason or another they failed to activate. Twenty minutes later the four missiles were launched from an unmanned ship in the Pacific, five minutes after that the ship sank as charges blew out prepared hatches in the hull of the vessel allowing it to settle into a deep trench on the ocean floor.

With the chaos caused by the EMP strikes the missiles weren't noticed until it was far too late to do anything about them. All four hit their designated targets destroying the surface machinery of the oil fields and leaving in three cases huge pillars of flame as the precious fuel reserves were burnt off.

The fourth target was pretty much in the center of the middle east, through some fluke the missile landed on a small outcrop of rock in the middle of a desert. Well known to the locals for centuries the rocks held a cave that should have been an ideal retreat from the fierce desert heat if it wasn't for the heavy sulphurous smell pervading the area.

Geologists working for the oil companies had been observing this area with some concern for the last ten years. Small tremors had been felt in the area several times over the last twenty years and they had been getting more frequent. Satellite scans were closely examined and the Geologists discovered evidence that the outcrop was the remains of an extinct volcano.

Underneath this rock, in fact under the entire oil field was a massive bubble of magma that was worryingly close to the surface. This discovery was hushed up by the western governments who had made the discovery. They couldn't see any benefit in sharing this information with the nations whose oil they desperately needed, after all there was little sense in putting additional pressure on an unstable region.

Of course this was unknown to the terrorist nations, had they known the potential effects of their strike they may have adjusted their plans. Their missile landed dead on target and the detonation burst open the magma chamber. In a matter of seconds the millions of tons of crude oil sitting on top of the magma chamber were dumped onto the white hot liquid rock.

Within a minute most of North Africa ceased to exist. The Atlantic ocean and the Mediterranean sea rushed in to fill the void. Billions of tons of water flashed to steam in an instant before expanding rapidly.

The shock waves were felt throughout the world as half a continent vanished. Earthquakes redesigned the landscape throughout the world as the tectonic plates shifted and settled into new positions.

An hour after the initial explosion one of the largest quakes dropped the rest of Africa below sea level as it thrust a new continent up out of the Atlantic ocean. The force of the new continent's birth tilted North America lifting the west coast by up to 60ft in places and plunged most of the east coast into the ocean.

Across the globe land disappeared and new lands rose from the seabed. In the space of a week 95% of the worlds population perished. The years of earthquakes, volcanoes and dust clouds reduced the population still further. Fifteen years after the initial explosion there were less than 0.1% of the worlds people struggling to survive.

The UK grew slightly as it was pushed north and lifted a large expanse of the north sea seabed up into the air.

The changes in land masses combined with the dust clouds precipitated drastic climate change for the UK, temperatures dropped, snow fell all year round

As the Uk became enveloped in permafrost Stuart's caves with their unlimited electricity and heat gradually became a series of huge greenhouse caves. Davin's father had opened up several new caves before his death when Davin was twenty.

Taking over the reins of the farm Davin had prospered for several years. He had met, fallen madly in love with and married Eiria from Cambell Town when he was twenty four, by twenty six Davin was a widower, Eiria died giving birth to their son who had outlived his mother by four hours. Now Davin felt that he was just marking time until his own death, the last of the Gordon clan.

Occasionally he thought sadly that there would be no one left to run the farm caves that supplied food vitally needed by the two nearby townships, but even that couldn't really penetrate his grief.

-------

Davin parked the truck beside of the town warehouse and waved at the foreman before heading for the office.

"Davin!" Storekeeper Brin stood to greet the younger man. "What have you brought in today?"

Davin grimaced and handed over a manifest.

"Not a lot this week I'm afraid Brin. I've finished harvesting the west caverns so they will have to lay fallow now, there's only so much I can do."

"I know Davin, but we really need to step up your production not trim it back. Are you sure you can't do something?" Brin sat down heavily, "You know the hunting parties haven't been able to bring in much lately, but they are still using just as much fuel!"

"Sorry Brin, but I can't feed here and Perchtown as well on my own you know."

Brin sighed and looked over the manifest again, his eyes widened as he reached the total at the bottom of the sheet.

"Gods that's cheap!" He exclaimed, "Are you sure that's right?"

Davin smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, I figure I don't really need to charge as much, so I dropped most of my prices. Well I'm going to drop off your two trailers then get a beer and some sleep before heading towards Perchtown."

"Okay Davin, we'll see you day after tomorrow." Brin stood and shook the young man's hand. "Take care of yourself Davin."

With a wave Davin was out of the office and headed towards his truck. It took him twenty minutes to shuffle around the trailers onto the loading dock before he could pull out of the warehouse and park his truck for the night.

After he had straightened everything out Davin headed for "The Ice" his favourite pub in the town.

"Margin, how are you keeping, can I have a pint of mild please?" Davin asked Margin the barmaid of The Ice.

"Hi Davin," Margin smiled at the young man as he sat on a bar stool. "have you got anything for me?" she asked as she pulled the pint.

Davin nodded grinning as he reached into a bag inside his coat. As Margin placed a full mug of beer on the counter Davin pulled out three paper wrapped packets.

"One pound of dark, one pound of golden and a half pound of pale."

Margin smiled widely, "Wow, I didn't expect as much as that. You must have had a better crop than you expected."

As Davin sipped his drink Margin opened the packages and examined the tobacco leaves carefully.

"I'ts a good batch," she said at last, "Nicely dried as well." Margin leant over to pick up her bag and took out some coins. "So it was gonna be 10 Florins for a pound of leaves so that would be 25 for the two and a half, is that still ok?"

"Can we call it twenty and I'll have four onces of your number two blend, that sound alright?"

"Are you sure Davin?" when Davin nodded Margin reached under the counter and brought out four wax paper wrapped packets.

Davin knew that it was silly him selling the tobacco to Margin and then buying some of it back but Davin had never been able to shred the leaves and blend them in a way that he was happy with.

Chuckling to himself Davin put three of the packets in his bag and opened the fourth one. Fishing a tin out of a pocket Davin started to roll himself a smoke, when Davin took out his rolling papers he heard Margin gasp.

"Gods, are those genuine?" For a moment Davin had forgotten that most people didn't have his cave full of ancient stock. The Gods only knew why old Stuart had bought cases upon case of rolling papers but having used what most people had to make do with Davin was certainly grateful.

"Yeah." Davin smiled at Margin. A quick squeeze of the packet let him know it was slightly under half full. With a grin Davin flipped the packet towards Margin. "There's only about twenty in there but enjoy them while they last."

"D, Davin are, are you sure, I mean this is real 21C paper isn't it?"

"Yeah, I've got a few more packets left." Davin said thinking that maybe 200 cases of 5000 packets was a bit more than a few. He chuckled as Margin brought a small wood box out from under the counter, in her haste to roll a cigarette her hands were shaking. Davin sipped his pint and smoked his roll up watching Margin work. In the box he could see several small pieces of the thick coarse localy made paper.

Eventually Margin was finished and lighting her smoke drew deeply on it, a look of contentment slowly spread across her face.

"Gods Davin, that's good, so much smoother than this crap." Margin gestured towards the paper in her box.

"I know. You can't beat a real paper can you?" Davin replied.

By the time they had both finished their smokes Davin had drunk most of his pint. Standing up he drained the last of his ale and set the empty glass down on the counter.

"Well I've got to hit the hay, I want to make an early start for Perchtown in the morning." Davin said and made his way towards the door.

"Goodnight Davin, see you in two weeks ok." Margin smiled at him.

"Night Margin. See you."