2020 The Long Walk

By Bill de Garis

In book one of this series (2020 After the End) a meteor strike triggered a nuclear war and its parent meteorite passed so close to the earth and was so large it changed the earths tilt and precession. Now the year is two and a half times longer than before and the seasons are so long and so hot or cold they make life practically unlivable if you stay in one place.
Civilisation was destroyed.
A group of friends survived the first "ice age" winter in British Columbia in Canada by travelling on motorbikes to Baja, now they have to walk back to BC to escape the extreme heat of the northern summer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill de Garis
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993681738

Bill de Garis

Bill (Billy d) de Garis was born in England, grew up in New Zealand and spent several years travelling around the world. First on a 250cc Jawa motorbike from Sydney, Australia through India, Afghanistan and Iran to England; then an epic journey in an old Morris Isis shooting-brake (running mostly on bald tyres salvaged from rubbish dumps around London) together with two New Zealand friends on their honeymoon.The journey started in London, went across the Sahara desert and darkest Africa and ended up in Kenya. He now lives in Port Moody, a city-suburb of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. He has been writing short stories and poetry since the late 1960’s. He is better known as an off-road motorcycle competitor in East Africa (seven times Kenya motorcycle champion) but also raced on tarseal - in India and Sri Lanka he won several roadraces including the Air India Grand Prix in Bombay (now Mumbai). He is also the first person to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,340ft) on a motorbike (250cc CZ). He now competes on a Vertigo Trials motorbike in the US National Trials Championship.He has written the five novels in the 2020 series.

Book preview

2020

The Long Walk

Bill de Garis

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Bill de Garis.

All rights reserved.

This edition published 2020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1, The Long Walk Begins

Chapter 2, California High!

Chapter 3, The Girl with the Blue-Green Algae Tattoo

Chapter 4, The Cabin

Chapter 5, The War Machine

Chapter 6, Tillamook

Chapter 7, Angie

Chapter 8, In the shadow of the mountain

Chapter 9, Fire and Rain

Chapter 10, Waste Lands and Desert

Chapter 11, Enrico

Epilogue

British English vs US English

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Prologue.

Do not read this prologue if you have read book 1. Just go straight to chapter one. OK?

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In book 1 2020 After the End, PJ, Kacie, Mike, and Jeff travelled south to Baja, Mexico, as they tried to escape a coming ice-age winter in BC, Canada. A meteor had triggered not only giant waves and earthquakes all over the world but also a nuclear war. The combined effect was the collapse of civilisation and the lengthening of the year to two and a half times longer than it is now. It was a real mess. Death and destruction seemed absolute to those still alive. No one who survived could quite believe what had happened. But the greatest threat to survival was the lengthening of the seasons. The meteor’s size and gravitational tug on the earth changed the earth’s tilt and precession and even altered its orbit around the sun. So with the knowledge that the seasons were ten months instead of four the friends knew they had to go south if they wanted to live. They knew they wouldn’t survive the cold.

They had to fight their way past the dregs of humanity seeking to rob and pillage them. On the way they met up with several other people, old friends and new, who joined them. Amongst them was Dale the red-neck farmer from Walla Walla near the border with Oregon, and the Boneman from Mount Shasta in northern California.

They all eventually make it to safety in Baja where the pleasant temperatures enabled them to grow food in the long northern winter. They survived stuff they never thought possible: big things like violent attacks, and everyday things like having no heat or electricity. They learned to find water and purify it, to chop wood for heat or to make shelters, to hunt for food, and to grow food from seeds. They all came from a generation that had had life way too easy… tv’s, phones, computers, hot and cold water from the tap, food in the grocery store, delivery, take out, and of course entertainment anytime they wanted it. This group proved they were tough enough to live through what the majority of civilization, after generations of being civilized, could not.

The winter they survived was a frozen wasteland in North America, all the way from the Arctic through to northern California on the west and Mississippi and Georgia on the east. In the centre it was frozen all the way down to central and parts of southern Arizona and New Mexico, and well south of the Texas Panhandle. There was five feet of snow in Amarillo that didn’t go away until the start of summer this year. Like the wildebeest in the Serengeti of East Africa, the few humans left have to migrate every year to stay alive. And just like the wildebeest having to cross the Mara river and falling prey to giant crocodiles, so too do our friends have serious dangers to overcome.

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We join the group in Baja as spring arrives and it is time to return to British Columbia to escape the extreme heat of the ten month long northern summer..

Chapter 1, The Long Walk Begins.

Highway 1 in Baja

PJ stopped the little XT250 Yamaha and killed the engine. He looked everywhere to the left of the main tarseal highway that went all the way down through Baja, there was just the one dirt road heading off east towards the hills through the cactus. I wonder if this is it? he asked himself, The track to the ruins. He pushed the kickstand out with his foot, got off the bike and walked around to stretch his legs. He got the map out and looked at the lay of the hills. Yes, this looks like it. Back on the bike he rode off into the hills on the dirt track, his senses on full alert, especially his eyes. He stopped frequently and looked all around but took extra care looking behind him. Storing in his memory the way it would appear to him when he turned round and headed for home-the way the hills were formed, the direction of the valleys and dry washes, the special features of the ground where it had eroded down to bedrock. But most comforting to see behind him was the trail his tyres made where there was sand and soft dirt in the gullies. His trail was the only guaranteed sign of the way he had come. He had to be able to find his way back without question. It was just like all the other times in his life when he had ridden off into the bundu without knowing where he was heading. He was forging a bond between himself and the great unknown that would bring him back alive.

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In the wintering lands in Baja the day started early, before breakfast for PJ. Out in the fields amongst the crops he felt completely at ease and at one with the world in the crisp cool air before the arrival of the sun. Wendy brought him a cup of tea as the uppermost tips of the distant light sea clouds turned golden, and together they sat on an upturned crate and watched the sun come up over the hills to the east. It had been ten months since they had arrived at the wintering lands and the days were starting to get much warmer.

I’ve been thinking about the return journey to BC, PJ said. I figure perhaps we could find a short cut from where we are here on the west across the peninsula to the east coast.

I’m all in favour of short cuts! replied Wendy. Not that she was lazy but rather that she knew it wasn’t a holiday they were on. It was work and they had to make the most efficient use of their energy. She didn’t think of it quite as clinically as that but she had been a champion motorcycle rider back in the old days before civilisation collapsed, so she knew the effort and hard work that went into doing something at the highest level of competition. Now it was not a competition it was their lives, and there was no question in her mind that they were going to do it well.

If I can find the track I can see on the map it will save having to walk all the way south following the road and then east and north to Campo Grande. I’m going to fill up one of the Yamahas with what remains of our gas and scout it out.

Jeff had joined them. I should come with you, someone should go with you; it’s a pretty rough area you’re heading into. Jeff was a solid riding partner, he and PJ had been friends for many years, even travelling to national Trials events together on some occasions.

There isn’t enough gas for two bikes. Besides, I’ve got a pretty good idea of where I’m going, and I’m prepared to walk back if something goes wrong.

Well I guess if you can’t walk that far, you’re not going to make it back to BC with us! But still Jeff looked a little sad. Pity there isn’t enough gas, I could do with a ride.

Sorry mate, said PJ, just the way it is.

The girls had been busy drying food for the journey north, so they set PJ up with a week’s supply. They also packed some jerky from a deer the Boneman and Pete had stalked and killed.

Can’t we just go north up the west coast? Will asked. For a kid not yet ten of the old earth years, he was pretty smart. They had picked up Will and his sister Evie abandoned on their farm in the Pieute Mountains of California.

Well no, replied Susan, there will still be bad people with guns up around Tijuana. We need to keep out of their way. Susan shuddered remembering the trip down. How she and Alex had been shot at as they escaped the Harley gang that had been terrorising them in the small town of Kernville.

I’m going to head south about forty miles on the main highway then east on a small dirt road, explained PJ. When the road ends I’ll see how far I can get off-road and into the mountains. According to the map the dirt track leads to some ruins and then the east coast is only about twelve miles from there, give or take. But it’s going to be a rough climb over the mountains. Probably be a couple of days for us walking. Saves us eighty or a hundred miles though; that is if the map is correct. A good friend who used to winter at the south of Baja gave it to me a whole bunch of years ago together with a permanent invite to come down and wind surf with him. I never did get down there, but I’ve still got his map. PJ paused. I guess hills and ruins don’t change much with time though. What is different over the years is the vegetation, the trees and bushes. But down here in this arid country even that changes real slow. It takes half a lifetime for stuff to grow tall enough that you have to look twice and carefully to tell if it’s the same place, in these parts of the world.

Don’t you get scared just heading into nowhere? asked Marie.

No, you have to be smart about finding your way out that’s all. The main difficulty for me will be matching the map to the real world... what you see around you. Those one or two inches of contour lines showing hills and valleys and especially the distance are so hard to translate into the miles you can actually see on the ground. You’ve gone what you think is five miles and it’s either way too far like ten, or way too little like one, and nothing matches up. Worst is going too far because the temptation then is to cut across to where you think you want to be. That’s when you get really scared. Panic sets in but you just have to trust your judgement and keep going. It’s always further than you think. But while the uncertainty lasts it’s scary and a real bad scene.

Do we have to go south at all? asked Dale. Couldn’t we just head east from here?

Yes, but the east coast is a much greater distance off road from here, about sixty, maybe seventy miles. The main highway goes south and east from where we are and I know we’re going south and a bit out of our way but I figure the closer we can get to the east coast on the roads the better. I’d rather stick to the roads as much as possible until we get an idea of what we can do on a day’s hike.

Yeah I would too, said Kacie. Some day we will be experts in the bush, but right now we’re newbies; PJ’s right, we need to follow the roads as much as we can, she paused, It’s still going to be tough though. Kacie was thinking of her six-month old baby. Her life had changed so much since Andrew had been born. She was a lot more cautious now.

We have to go north for the summer if we want to live, said PJ. But none of us have ever walked that far before. It’s huge, like over 2000 miles, he shook his head. Damned if I’m giving up now, he paused. I’ll tell you what... it’ll be a real adventure!

That it will, Tim’s easy drawl had a note of excitement. This walk was going to be one big adventure for them all.

On the day before he was to leave, PJ went out to where he had parked the little Yamaha earlier in the morning. All of a sudden a profound feeling of sadness washed through him, like the tide rising for one last time over the mudflats before nightfall. This was his last adventure on the bike, the chances were it was the last adventure on a motorbike period; for anyone. For thirty five or forty years he had been doing fun things on motorbikes... sometimes crazy things, like getting lost in Africa on the slopes of Mount Kenya, in the deep jungle where the leopards were. That was not fun while it was happening. Later, it became a great adventure. But only after the panic and adrenalin had long gone and only a fading memory remained. Of course you didn’t have to go to exotic locations; even in the west in the middle of suburbia, just getting on the bike and riding anywhere was an adventure. The road, the trees, the walls were all closer. The air met you head-on together with the wind and rain and sun. The smells, good and bad were always in your face. In the wild places of East Africa you had to watch out for animals and some of the really nasty ones were hard to see when they didn’t want to be seen-leopards and lioness on the hunt. If you were their mark you wouldn’t know until it was too late. You’d hear the rush of something coming at you but before you could turn you would be bowled over and those powerful jaws would have pierced your neck as you choked or bled to death. In the west it was Mum, Dad and the kids you had to be careful of... cocooned inside steel walls draped with air bags, surrounded by music with mugs of coffee in their hands, immersed in their secure lives heading from one heated or cooled ‘safe place’ to another. Never knowing that life was passing them by until a motorbike appeared out of nowhere and zoomed right by. Yes, the killers from suburbia were the ones you had to watch out for. They didn’t see you, they weren’t programmed to see you, so you might as well never have been alive at all.

Most people never realise that motorbikes give you freedom, he said to himself. They give you wings, and more... they give you an escape. On a bike no comic superhero could equal you, no force could touch you or break your spell, as long as you kept moving that is. PJ understood absolutely that if you stood still, you went backwards so fast you were old and dead before you ever knew what had happened. He shrugged the sadness