The Final Chapter Read online

  “You actually wish there were more rats…”

  John smiled.

  “That’s something you seldom hear someone say.”

  “Well, actually no. I don’t wish there were more rats.

  “What I’d prefer is that the survivors who’ve become dependent on rats would get off their butts and get out of the projects.

  “The nuns at the Alamo say they have no plans to close up shop anytime soon.

  “They say they’ll continue to provide one meal per day to anyone who shows up until one day they open for business and nobody comes.”

  “So if you could just convince the residents in the projects to get out and go to the Alamo once a day they could survive without the rats?”

  “Exactly.

  “The rat population will soon be gone. Those who depend on them to survive will get emaciated. They’ll wither away until they’re too weak to move.

  “Then they’ll just lay more or less in one spot until they starve to death in their apartments.

  “They’ll do it because for most of their lives they’ve told themselves and one another that the government cannot be trusted.

  “There’s always been a pervasive belief, even before the blackout, that they were a pain in the side of the city government.

  “And that the government has always wanted a way to get rid of them in some form or fashion.

  “After the first blackout the rumors started and haven’t let up since.”

  “Rumors? What kind of rumors?”

  “Rumors the city was trying to cull the herd by getting rid of the poor people.

  “I don’t know who started the rumors or their motivation. Maybe it was anarchists intentionally trying to sow trouble.

  “Maybe it was just idle chatter which got out of hand.

  “Whatever its origins were, people starting spreading the word that anyone who left the projects would be rounded up and disposed of.”

  “Disposed of? What do you mean?”

  “Some rumors said they’d be captured and put in concentration camps where they’d be processed and gassed in the same way Hitler processed and gassed the Jews.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Of course it is. But people who are starving and desperate for any lifeline, yet at the same time told all their lives not to trust the government, are believing it.

  “Others were spreading different rumors.

  “That the police who were coming in here trying to convince the residents to come out were actually trying to lure them out of the projects so they could shoot them.

  “They said the cops had orders to get rid of the poor so there would be fewer mouths to share the limited amount of food with.

  “They said the poor were considered expendable in the eyes of the city. And that the so-called chosen people… the ones who were good enough to be fed, were the ones who lived in the better neighborhoods. The ones who’d done better for themselves in life.

  “The monied citizens of San Antonio, for lack of a better term.

  “And for those who lived a life of not trusting the police or the government, it was easy to convince them the rumors were true.

  “Especially when those who worked up the nerve to leave the projects seldom came back.

  “Now, they didn’t come back because they were shot or gassed.

  “They stayed away because they found it was easier to survive outside the projects. In other areas of the city there were parks where they could trap game or fish. They could pick fruit from city-owned trees. They could get a plot at one of the grow spaces and grow their own vegetables.

  “There was no reason for them to go back to the projects and eat rats again.

  “But when they didn’t come back they were presumed dead. That made the rumors even more believable.”

  -28-

  “I can’t imagine anyone believing something like that, no matter how fearful they were.”

  “Scared people believe anything, John. That’s how Hitler came to power in his early days, by convincing the impoverished German people that Jews were to blame for the hard times they were going through. Once the people were convinced the Jews were their enemies it was easy for him to convince his followers they should be exterminated.

  “People who are hungry and not thinking with their full mental capacities can be convinced of anything. Those who are fearful even more so.”

  “So what’s the solution?”

  “The solution isn’t so simple.

  “Oh, the concept is. Getting people out of the projects so they can see for themselves the government is trying to help them.

  “If we could get them to the grow spaces and convince them to utilize the programs the city has set up, and get them to the Alamo for a hot meal once a day, they’d survive.

  “And we’ve made some headway.

  “But unless we can get more of them out of the projects and convince them the city is on their side, we’ll be burying bodies.

  “Lots of them.”

  “Tell me about these grow spaces you keep talking about.

  “That’s something that happened after I left. I’m not familiar with them.”

  “I’ll do even better than that. I’ll take you to one of them and show you what they look like and how they work.

  “What about Marcus and Justin?”

  “They’ll be okay. Let them enjoy their meal.”

  “So… after they eat they’ll walk back to the projects?

  “And hopefully they’ll spread the word the rumors are untrue? That food is available? There’s your solution. That’s the way to get the word back to the projects it’s safe to come out.”

  As they walked back to John’s truck Salinas said, “Unfortunately, that’s not the way things typically work.

  “What typically happens is that I bring these guys out of the projects one or two at a time for a meal at the Alamo.

  “They go through the serving line and all of a sudden they’re looking at a tray with more food than they’ve had in the previous week.

  “They eat their meal like a starving animal.

  “And while they eat they sit at tables with others who come here every day.

  “They’re told this is just the beginning.

  “That if they walk to the nearest city park they can pick fruit from some of the fruit trees.

  “That if they show the same photo ID they showed at the Alamo to get their free meal they’ll be assigned a personal plot at the community garden.

  “They’ll ask, ‘What in heck is a personal plot?’ They always ask that. It sounds like something they’d get at a cemetery and it always gets their attention.

  “They’ll be told it’s their own personal garden space.

  “That it’s a fenced in area only they’ll be allowed to use. And that they can grow their own crops and eat all the food they grow.

  “That the city representatives and the representatives from the University of Texas at San Antonio will provide them with seeds.

  “And that if they don’t know anything about gardening they’ll be given free training as well.

  “They’ll be told the city has security guards who roam the area twenty-four seven to make sure nobody is in a personal plot which doesn’t belong to them.”

  “Sounds like an opportunity they won’t be able to pass up.”

  “Exactly right, John. And therein lies the problem.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “They’ll also be told by others at the Alamo that there’s no reason for them to ever go back to the projects. That there are plenty of vacant houses close to the park where they can live while they work their crops.

  “They’ll say, ‘What do you mean, vacant houses?’

  “And they’ll be reminded that the people who have died or left outnumber the living nine to one.

  “That on every block in the city there are more empty houses than occupied ones. Even in the nicer neighborhoods whole houses
or apartments are up for grabs because the owners killed themselves or were murdered, or left the city in search of relatives or greener pastures elsewhere.

  “And that’s when they weigh their options.”

  “What do you mean, weigh their options?”

  “If Marcus and Justin are like most of the others I’ve coaxed out of Victoria Courts, they’ll sit under a shade tree at the Alamo and wonder why they should even go back to the projects.

  “If they go back and tell their friends and neighbors there are free meals at the Alamo they’ll likely be scoffed.

  “If they say they can go to a park and get a plot of land to farm they’ll be ridiculed.

  “They’ll be told they ain’t no freakin’ farmers and they’ll be laughed at.

  “’No,’ they’ll say. ‘The city will give us seeds and train us on how to grow food. They’ll guard our plot so nobody steals what’s ours.’

  “And they’ll be laughed at again. They’ll be told plots are for corpses. And that’s what the people of VC will be if they leave the project: corpses.

  “They’ll worry it could be even worse. They could be branded as paid stoolies, given money by the city to go back into the projects and lure out the residents with promises of easy food.

  “They’ll worry they might be attacked; might even be shot.

  “And then they’ll ultimately decide they don’t need any of that. They’ll just stay on the outside, where they can go to the Alamo for a free meal every day while they’re waiting for their crops to grow.

  “And since they never go back to Victoria Courts they’ll feed the rumor mill. Their friends and neighbors will say they never came back because they were killed by the city.

  “And those remaining in the VC will become even more firmly entrenched.”

  -29-

  Salinas climbed into the passenger seat of John’s vehicle and asked, “Do you remember how to get to Brackenridge Park?”

  “Are you kidding? That was my hangout when I was a kid. I grew up in a house just a couple of blocks away. Every time I saved enough nickels and dimes to pay my way into the zoo I went over and marveled at the animals.”

  “Well, I’m afraid all the animals are gone now.

  “Eaten by the hungry survivors.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yep. Even the big cats. And the elephants and giraffes. They were hacked to death and then torn to pieces by people desperate for meat.”

  “I guess people who will eat rats will eat pretty much anything else.”

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.

  “There’s not a squirrel to be found within ten miles.

  “No pigeons, either. No dogs, no cats, nothing.”

  John was depressed.

  He’d always considered the zoo animals to be everybody’s friends, and everybody’s responsibility. He always felt the citizens had a duty to care for them properly and to treat them well.

  He felt a bit better when he pulled onto the grounds of Brackenridge Park.

  The park was established in 1899 on over three hundred acres of land.

  For well over a hundred years it was the go-to place for recreation for San Antonians.

  Before the blackout it sported a miniature railroad, a world class golf course and a zoo.

  And much more importantly since the blackout, acres and acres of rolling land.

  It looked nothing like John remembered.

  “Wow!”

  The one word wasn’t much, yet it summed up the scene perfectly.

  What was once rolling and plush green grass, suitable for flag football and picnics and Frisbees tossed to Labrador Retrievers was now section after section of garden plots, each in various stages of growth, each with their own types and varieties of crops.

  It was easy to tell the green thumbs from the wannabes, for some plots were plush with ripened vegetables and others were just barely clinging to life.

  Each plot was sectioned off by chicken wire. Miles and miles of the stuff.

  More chicken wire than John thought existed in the western hemisphere.

  Here and there gardeners worked their plots, picking weeds or pruning bushes or picking the fruits of their labor.

  Uniformed security guards roamed around, periodically asking someone to show a photo ID to make sure they were in their own plot and not somebody else’s.

  John had a million questions.

  “How big is each plot?”

  “Each plot is twenty five feet by twenty five feet. According to the UTSA Nutrition Department, such a plot when worked properly provides enough food to sustain one person for a year.

  “Of course, families can apply for and receive more than one plot. The bigger the family the more plots they have. They typically have more hands to work the plots and get a higher yield. Of course, they also have more mouths to feed.”

  “How do city dwellers learn to grow such plush gardens?”

  “Oh, they have plenty of help. The college kids at UTSA have been a godsend.”

  “How so?”

  “All their agricultural students pitched in to help train people how to prepare their soil, how to plant their seeds and to tend to them once the plants broke ground.

  “They gave them tips on how to maximize their harvest and how to collect and preserve seeds for their next crops.

  “They didn’t do all the work for them, but were very good about teaching.

  “Their motto is, ‘I’ll show you once. And I’ll show you a second time in case you weren’t paying attention. After that you have to sink or swim on your own.’

  “It turned out most of our residents are natural farmers. Of course, the urgency of the situation helped. They knew that if they didn’t do it right they’d go hungry. So they paid attention and learned, and then helped others learn as well.”

  “So they help each other?”

  “Oh, yes. They realized early on that if they helped their neighbors grow their own crops those neighbors would be less likely to steal from them.”

  “Where’d they get the seeds?”

  “That was one of the biggest problems. Many of them came from the UTSA Agricultural Department. But their supplies were limited and they didn’t have the biggest selection.

  “They had the basics. The types of seeds you’d have found in a hardware store. Tomatoes, squash, melons and some berries.

  “The Army helped a lot when they came in with seed potatoes and subsistence crops. Wheat, corn, sorghum, barley, hops and oats.

  “Now you see as many subsistence crops as you do tomatoes. Some are even trying to grow rice, with mixed results.

  “The Ag students taught us things we never would have thought of, like crop specialization and crop rotation. Things that’ll help protect the soil for the long term while at the same time giving us maximum harvests.”

  “How do they irrigate their crops?”

  “It depends on who you talk to.

  “The lucky ones… the ones who were the first to sign up for the program, got plots right on the river.”

  “The river?”

  “The San Antonio River. It runs all the way through the park.”

  “That’s right, I forgot. I lost a couple of golf balls in it.”

  “Well, you won’t anymore.

  “You’re standing on the seventeenth fairway now.”

  “Yeah, it’s changed a bit.”

  -30-

  “The people who got into the program early got plots on the riverbank. They typically water their plants the old fashioned way, by dipping buckets in the river and watering each plant individually.”

  “That’s a lot of work, isn’t it?”

  “Probably, but most don’t seem to mind. At least they don’t have to drag hoses every other day.”

  “Drag hoses?”

  “The Army brought in water pumps to pump river water to the plots, but each twelve plots have to share one pump.

  “The way it works is that each p
lot owner gets to use the pump for an hour each per day, from six a.m. until six p.m.

  “After six p.m. it’s first come, first serve.

  “They’re very protective of their hoses because they’re harder to come by than the pumps.

  “So everybody has their own hoses and they write their names all over them, decorate them with paint or duct tape, or however else they can make them distinctive.

  “If some miscreant comes in the night and steals their hose they can go looking for it and easily identify it when they find it.

  “The hoses are very valuable to those who don’t have one, so the plot owners are careful to roll them up every time they’re finished with them and to lock them up inside their plot, usually buried under a tarp or pile of mulch or something.

  “That means every day when it’s almost time for them to use the pump they have to get their hoses and roll them out and get them ready to attach to the water pump when their neighbor takes theirs off.

  “They spend their hour watering their crops, and then when their hour is done they disconnect their hoses, roll them back up and secure them again.”

  John was skeptical.

  “That doesn’t sound like a lot of work, in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Well, maybe it wouldn’t if the plot is only a hundred feet away from the pump.

  “But some of the plots are a thousand feet away. That means hooking together twenty fifty-foot hoses and then taking them apart and rolling them back up again.”

  “Ah… now I get the picture.”

  “The bright spot is, necessity really is the mother of invention. They’re starting to find ways around it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the people with adjacent plots, for example, are teaming up and forming partnerships.

  “Two plots which are side by side a thousand feet away are just as easy to water with the same hose, and they get back-to-back times on the pump because their numbers run in sequence.

  “Say, the owner of Plot 201 runs her hose, and waters her crops for her allotted hour.

  “Then she uses her hose to water her neighbor’s plants for another hour. The owner of Plot 202 gets to take the day off because he knows his neighbor is going to cover for him.