Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

Salmon Falls, Idaho

“Yet, it appears the death toll from this mystery flu-like illness will be highly unpredictable. When asked for an official statement, the White House has been silent.”

Denny paused in his work and watched the grainy picture on the television set. Since the cable went out yesterday, he'd been forced to rig up an old antenna he found in his basement in order to get any news from the outside world.

The internet, like his electricity, had been fluctuating randomly lately and it was increasingly frustrating to find out what was going on in the world outside Salmon Falls.

He shook his head as the picture on the screen shifted from a reporter in a surgical mask to the mess in front of a hospital in Chicago. There were bodies in the street, draped in what looked like checkered tablecloths. Men in hazmat suits slowly made their way down the street collecting corpses. They shoo-ed away the few bystanders who tried to take pictures on cell phones.

“Another National Guard patrol is approaching, so we’ll have to sign off and move to a new location. This is Mike Thomas, reporting live in Chicago.” The image switched back to a studio, where a man and a woman, both sporting surgical masks and haggard eyes, picked up where their colleague left off.

“Thanks, Mike. In other news—” The anchor paused and looked off camera for a moment. He chuckled ruefully. “That was a phrase from happier times.” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, the White House is still issuing no official comment on the recent violence and chaos on the West Coast, either.”

“We have confirmed with our sister stations in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, that in fact, North Korean land forces have invaded those areas along the Pacific Coast of the United States.” The female reporter shook her head. “Why the government will not acknowledge that we’re at war is beyond me.”

“The unexplained blackout on communications affecting much of the country west of the Rockies makes it difficult to know one way or another what is going on—let alone casualty figures,” said the male talking head. “The lists of missing people are starting to grow at an alarming rate. We here in Boise have been inundated with requests from family members, hoping for some news. As part of our continuing effort to support our community in this time of crisis, Channel 12 and all our sister stations will broadcast a list of missing persons, which is now scrolling across the top of your screen. Please, if you see your name, contact your families right away…”

Static turned the screen into a picture of snowy signal interference. Denny clicked the volume down, sighed, and returned to his task at hand.

Before him on the dining room table lay his hickory recurve bow and a dozen arrows he had set aside last hunting season. He had a large candle burning directly in front of him. Next to his right leg, he had a bundle of new arrow shafts that he’d been saving for winter work.

Last winter, he'd bought a chunk of Port Orford Cedar at a local lumber mill that had been drying for a year. Just a few weeks ago, he’d started to mill the lumber into half-inch square billets. Ever so slowly, as a kind of meditation after a long day at school, he would continue to turn the billets into round dowels.

He had clamped those rough billets to his workbench and ran his favorite hand plane along the corners. With every schnick of the plane, every curl of the aromatic wood that he sliced free, he was gradually turning those square billets into arrow shafts. It had, of course, taken much longer than it would have if he'd simply ordered a batch of arrows online, but these were handmade. These were his.

Since he'd used a well-sharpened smoothing plane, the shafts that lay on the table before him were perfectly smooth—smoother than any sandpaper could've achieved. Now, he mused, his task was to make sure the nascent arrow shafts were straight and true.

Carefully, he rolled one of the new shafts along the length of the table, peering down along the surface to see if there were any high spots. There was a small hump a few millimeters in height around the middle of this particular shaft.

He picked up the shaft while glancing at the static-filled television, and carefully lowered the shaft over the flame of the candle. Working carefully so as to not scorch the wood, he applied pressure with his thumbs and fingers and as the heat of the candle saturated the wood, he bent the shaft in the opposite direction of the crook.

After pulling it away from the flame and letting it cool a minute, he again rolled the shaft on the table. The gap was gone. He smiled. That shaft would be added to the pile by his left foot, ready for fletching and an arrowhead.

The television returned and the screen flickered as he picked up the next shaft. He listened absently while he checked again for a bend in the shaft by sighting along the length as he rolled it on the table.

“—state of affairs when the President of the United States refuses to admit that our country is under attack.”

“Well, I can tell you—” said a voice clearly coming through a phone system. Denny looked up from the candle and saw a picture of some official in the government on the screen with the caption, On the Phone, US Secretary of State, Alexandra Stonemyer.

“—I can tell you unequivocally that the support from the World Health Organization is not only most welcome, but most needed. New York, as you know, is being hit hard with this mystery flu. The vaccines that were available during The Great Pandemic just don’t seem to be working—”

“Madam Secretary, I thought most of the H5N1 vaccines were lost in the nuclear attack on Atlanta last week?” asked the female reporter. “Are you telling me that is not the case?”

“I’m telling you, Alice,” the Secretary continued, “that the French contingent is bringing their own vaccines,