AN: A repost to fix some mistakes that my internal editor couldn't stand any longer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Moving close to a quarter of a million former residents, now refugees, out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs and then countryside created an increased level of congestion in already overly populated areas. Few migrants had alternative living arrangements with family in rural areas. Fewer still, were the number of small cities, towns and villages, or even newly founded settlements left untouched by the physical ravages of J-Day, that were willing to take on the added burden of housing and feeding the massive numbers of refugees that flooded their territories…

-The Years Without Summer: A History by Unknown

1 year and 7 months after J-Day:

It had taken months to form a government-like entity to control the multitude of refugees that crowded the little mountain village of Camuy. Camuy being mostly private land and unincorporated didn't have a local government body, they technically fell under jurisdiction of Essex County. At first, the locals were surprised but welcoming to the homeless refugees who flooded the area. Food and shelter was shared. Nevertheless, as the refugees settled down and began to form their own community atop the old, there was backlash from the locals. Camuy's Sons, a radical anti-migrant group coalesced. Several tents were destroyed; Graffiti and anti-migrant propaganda began spreading across the mountain community. Soon fighting broke out.

Going on the offensive was an ill-advised strategy for Camuy's Sons. Many of the locals were not willing to fight a battle they knew they could not win. Even using guerrilla warfare tactics, the locals were outnumbered five to one. Camuy's Sons didn't care; they were fighting for their land and families. When the fighting was over months later, only a handful of locals remained. Some had capitulated to the outsiders and others had hidden themselves deeper between the foothills and the peaks of the backcountry.

Kerry Thompson was a former lieutenant colonel for the US Airforce, Thompson served as the mayor of Chicago before the end happened. She had been on a working vacation with her family and her retinue when Chicago was turned into a smoldering sinkhole. She'd fought fiercely during the Camuy Conflict and it was not surprising that she was readily nominated as de-facto leader from the refugees once the victors claimed triumph and began building Camuy into a stronghold.

Benjamin Hamilton was another soldier in the Camuy Conflict. He was a marine squad leader from Cross Fork, Pennsylvania; a little logging town nestled near Kettle Creek. He had been posted at the Naval Reserve Training Center in Erie when it had happened, and it was because Hamilton and other leaders stayed that the base held onto its troops for another week after. But eventually, they abandoned the post. Not having anywhere else to go as home was never an option, he joined the fleeing refugees east and then north as they flowed out of his home state. Half of his squadron followed him. He in turn was Thompson's right hand.

Although Jalila Bronsworth was not an outright member of Camuy's Sons, she did sympathize with the cause if not the methods used. If given a choice, she would have preferred that the refugees never trekked up into her mountain home. She had, in fact, been on the opposite side of the Conflict although she conceded the fight when it became more than obvious that Camuy's Sons would not win nor would anyone else if the engagement continued.

If Hamilton was Thompson's obedient right hand, then Jalila was her recalcitrant left. The forty-seven-year-old had been chosen by the residents of the area as their representative within the government. She knew the people and she knew the area.

Jalila had lived more than half her life in the mountains of Upper State New York. Preferring a life of solitude to the noise and congestion of a large city and its people, she was used to doing things her way. It made for a woman that was both independent and tough, but one that tolerated little stupidity or insolence.

Before J-Day, she earned her living as a park ranger. She married young and had been widowed young when her husband, who was also in the park service, had a heart attack one day when out on the trail. She raised their adopted daughter, Mei Fung, surrounded by the nature that she loved. If it had not been for Mei Fung, Jalila was sure that she would have happily become a hermit. Instead, Jalila tried to make sure that Mei Fung wanted for nothing and was properly socialized with other people her age. She felt blessed that Mei Fung was visiting from college when the world went to hell in a handbasket.

They did not know that the world had ended at first; Jalila lived a very rustic life. Her home was far into the mountains, well off the oft-travelled roads that weekend naturist used for their lifeline with civilization. The cost was too exorbitant to run power and water up to the most remote of the mountain homes, so they relied upon a solar power setup for their electricity and a nearby spring for water. She did have a satellite radio and telephone, for emergencies but she was not in the habit of using it every day. So, when the world ended, they had not known at all.

Jalila moved quickly through the busy camp, carrying a shovel in each hand. "Luckett!" Her voice carried easily over the noisy early morning camp, "Scholl! Get your lazy asses over here!" She canvased the large encampment's west sector searching for the two men or any of their acquaintances. Harlan Scholl and Ernest Luckett were two of her problem children. They, along with Jeffery "Joop" Richards, Harry Tolbert, and Gina Smith, actively disrupted the smooth functioning of the nascent city. The miscreants were involved in several illicit activities from gambling to drugs, and although there was never any proof, as the girl refused to testify, Jalila suspected that they were involved in rape and beatings.

The two men had come into the group relatively late; trailing after a smaller group of people from out of Pennsylvania. Jalila wanted to run them off the way they had come but, she had been out voted by Thompson and the council of idiots that appointed themselves 'in charge'. She often regretted letting the locals talk her into joining such a mixed bag group of people; all they did was argue constantly and, in the meantime, they let in trouble the likes of Luckett and Scholl.

"Where the hell are they," she muttered to herself, coming up towards the fenced edge of the camp. She spied the sentry; riffle resting steadily atop a thick branch. He was in his late teens with short dark hair and brown skin. Jalila thought his name might have been Leon. He was one of the many orphans created by the end of the world. Attending a summer camp near Camuy, while his parents worked for the French embassy in DC, Leon Gabriel Allier-Dupont was spared the inferno that was left.

"Hey Leon," Jalila called up to him. He glanced down curiosity in his dark eyes.

"Bonjour." He greeted smoothly, not yet inquiring why one of the camp leaders was walking around carrying not one but two shovels and looked like she was more than ready to use them.

"Have you seen Luckett or Scholl around anywhere?" she asked, as she jammed the shovel blades into the hard dirt in front of her.

"They went out about one, two hours maybe," he replied. "I told them that they should wait until it was morning, but I think they… umm, ils ont été bercés trop près du mur. They were rocked too close to the wall and it has made them stupid."

Jalila cursed quietly and Leon finally asked, "What did you need them for?"

"Latrine duty," she stated. Jalila looked out into the woods thinking she might spot the pale outline of their figures against the fog that had drifted in overnight. Finally, she gave up, "Whatever. I'll deal with them later." She glanced up at Leon again. He'd settled back easily into the rough tree bark; an arm draped over a nearby branch. "If Scholl or Luckett come through, point them towards the latrines. I'm not letting them squirm their way out of this. Hamilton isn't gonna save their asses either. They're gonna pull their own weight if they wanna stay."

"They'd probably be okay with sentry duty," Leon suggested.

"I don't trust them with a gun at my back," she confessed unapologetically, then continued, "They have a problem with what I said? They can speak with me about it." Leon nodded and Jalila waved bye returning to the cabin that became a "town hall" for the tent city that had cropped up around it.

In spite of the deepening gloom, it was nearly noon. That didn't mean very much nowadays, the sun hadn't been seen for more than a year now. Mei Fung had always thought that the Earth would get colder without sunlight as it did in winter. That a nuclear holocaust would produce a nuclear winter. But instead, there was an initial drop in temperature in the months following J-Day, and then a dry winter that was colder than she remembered it, but then the temperature steadily flattened out. It remained rather cold even though Mei Fung estimated that they were nearing the beginning of July. Maybe, she hoped, the bombing wasn't as bad as it seemed.

Al's grandfather disagreed. He used to be a geologist and tried to explain the hypothetical process to her once. He claimed that the 'sooty' black carbon dust and other aerosol particles produced from the multiple bomb impacts on J-Day could have reached the highest layer of the troposphere and possibly the lower stratospheric layers. If it had, it would have surrounded the Earth and reflecting sunlight away from the surface. The temperature might have leveled off at the moment but because there hadn't been any sunlight, he predicted that the next years would get worse. He mentioned that there was a chance of a nuclear summer. This could happen if temperatures fell below freezing due to lack of sunlight, the ozone would hypothetically absorb an excess amount of carbon dioxide and soot from fires created by the bombing. It could then possibly create an atmosphere similar to Venus's runaway greenhouse effect.

Grandfather Bauer didn't know for sure however, which why the coin would fall. He said that there were too many variables, and that not enough time had passed to determine how much damage had been done to the atmosphere, nor how high up the sooty dust had gotten. Mei didn't know whether his theory was true or not. She supposed that everyone would find out in some years whether or not they would get a Snowball Earth or Greenhouse Earth. All Mei Fung did know was that if there was ever a vote, then whichever possibility gave her the strongest chance to survive was the one she wanted.

Mei Fung lay belly down in the yellowed weeds. The tall, brittle grass brushed against her cheek, mixing with strands of silky black hair; she brushed the distraction aside. She was relieved to be far away from the camp with the likes of Veda and Luckett and his group. She shivered, forcibly pushing away her memories of that morning three months ago.

She noticed Al reach towards her, but a quick headshake let him know that she did not want to talk about it. Al was her best friend. She had known him since they were both in nappies. Both of their parents loved living close to nature and had hoped that their love would pass on to their children. It had not. Mei Fung could not count the hours that she and Al had conspired to run away from their little backwater wilderness town. She remembered that she could not wait to go college. Although she dearly loved her mother, she had not been looking forward to returning home. Now, she could only be thankful.

Her mother, Jalila, a member of the de-facto leadership sent Al ahead to scout. Mei Fung had demanded to go with him. Four days out and Al had wanted to sketch a picture of the surrounding area if he had waited another hour, the small settlement below them might have remained unnoticed. Instead, they had scrabbled up the nearest mount about a half hour ago only to find themselves atop a grassy bluff that overlooked a u-shaped bowl of the valley. The surrounding hilltops were several hundreds of feet above the valley bottom, leaving the picturesque lakeside cabin seemingly protected from the outside world.

The cabin itself was quite large, even from Mei Fung's vantage point. It was much larger than the single-family home that her parents used to live in. People moved, in and out of the building, and she could see light from the lower level windows and one on the upper level. There was also light, from several lanterns, surrounding an area that appeared to be under construction.

There were a lot of trees, mainly evergreens and scrub bush, covering surrounding the foothills, but a large swath of the area around the log cabin had been kept clear. A small river flowing off of distant snow-capped mountain tops, fed the vale, and a single dirt road snaked away from the cabin. Mei Fung was surprised to note, that even from a distance, she could see a vehicle kicking up road dust as it disappeared behind the bend of the sizable tarn lake.

Al lay next to her, hidden from view, in the grass. He easily sketched out images of the scene below on a partially full notepad. There had to be a least five or six people that she could see in the small settlement. The two, down near the lake, were likely children; Al drew them as slightly smaller, darkly shaded blobs and showed them near the outline of the water.

Mei stared at the construction area for a moment before pulling out a similar notebook to write out details of the settlement that she could see. Jalila would want to know anything that they could discover about the group. Her mom always wanted to know about anything unusual, including other people, that the two scouts crossed during their sweeps. The older woman did her best to protect everyone from danger; it was too bad Jalila could not protect her from everything.

"So, what is that?" Al asked, distracting her from absent-mindedly tracing a scar that edged from beneath the sleeve of the jacket. He pointed at the smaller building being risen away from the larger lodge. All that was completed was the basic framing, and she could see that the building would be large enough to segment into three rooms although there was no way to tell, if these people planned on doing that.

"I can't really tell" Mei Fung replied. She wrote another observation before closing her notebook and putting it into her jacket pocket. "There are a lot of them for one house," she considered, "Maybe they're spreading out?" She shrugged, "Don't want all your eggs in one basket."

"Why'd you have to talk about eggs," Al complained. She could almost hear his stomach grumbling from where he lay besides her. "Now I'll be hungry all morning."

"Should've eaten." She stated. She grabbed up his knapsack and the rest of his supplies, then stuffed the sketchbook haphazardly into the knapsack followed by the pencil.

"But I hate oatmeal."

Mei Fung shrugged again at his complaint and signaled that they should move back downhill. Once they were below the horizon, they stood up and followed the path created on the way up, which was still visible in the deepening gloom back down.

"Did you see the road?" She ducked under a branch, stopping once she could see the grey concrete of the road. Mei Fung and Al halted at the edge of the tree line. They glanced up and down the road for a moment, assuring themselves that there was no danger. Then the two dark clad figures slipped quickly onto the road and off again, ducking into the cover of the woods on the other side. Their group had learned the hard way, early on, that even though traffic was non-existent, roadways were not safe to travel on.

"Nothing inside other than dirt tracks," Al answered stepping atop and then carefully down from a fallen tree in their path to avoid possible snakes. He waited for Mei Fung to do the same. "They have to have a lot of fuel. There were a lot of those lanterns…and that truck!" He exclaimed, as if suddenly remembering, "They have a truck!"

Mei Fung agreed. "If it wasn't for the height of the surrounding mountains, they would be broadcasting their wealth for all to see."

"I don't think they considered that though," he countered. "That hill is practically a mountain. I doubt there are a lot of people who're trying to climb it just to see what's on the other side."

"Only you," she smiled. "And the other mountains might be as high," she continued. She stopped walking besides a stream that wound its way through the forest and took out a compass and a map. Al stopped as well and knelt down to refill his water bottle. He removed a small dark bottle and twisted off the dropper top before squeezing three drops of iodine into the water bottle.

Mei Fung saw him looked over as she marked the general location for the settlement. Once she was done, it only took a moment to determine which direction they needed to go before heading off again. The two would not make it back to camp before dark, the camp was days away. Ever since J-Day, it was always dark; night was just a matter of the degree of umbra. However, it always became darker earlier in the woods since the horizon was so close. In about an hour give or take, they would stop, make camp and bunk down for the night. Hopefully, at the pace they were travelling, in about three days, they would pass by the sentries posted around their camp.