“I’d never leave you, Father. I’ll take care of you. I’m strong and I can do chores — anything. And I’ll get the Reardons, too, for what they’ve done to you.”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” warned old Talby, quoting the ancient scripture. “Now open the box and read the papers.”
Toby laid the box on the table and carefully lifted the lid. Inside was a bundle of papers, tied with a frayed red ribbon. There might have been a hundred sheets altogether. Some few, he noticed, had been written by hand in a fine old cursive; others were covered with elaborate drawings. The rest of the sheets were pasted over with clippings from newspapers and magazines.
Toby turned to the handwritten pages first. He laid the document flat on the table and began reading.
THE PACT OF THE TRUE BELIEVERS
These are the writings of the true believers, set down in the year of our Lord 2050, when the great troubles caused by evil men finally set the world in flames.
We are gathered together today to make this pact among ourselves, and between our people and the Lord, so as to preserve the teachings of God into the future, and to protect the world from the lawless, the unholy, and the demons that walk the earth in many disguises. In order to do these things, to keep our ancient commission, we agree to act as follows:
First, to obey the old commandments, not to kill or steal, or to practice abominations.
Second, to preserve the teachings of the Book and to pass them on to our children, especially our first-born sons, whom we shall cherish and instruct in the ways of God.
Third, to pray and conduct services, so as to beg the mercy of the Lord on humankind, and to further the day when all shall return to the path of righteousness.
Fourth, to avoid violence and machinery, to cultivate the land, and to bury the dead.
Fifth, to keep counsel together toward that day when we can re-inhabit the promised land given to our fathers, and make it bloom and flourish.
Sixth, never to lose hope.
Seventh, never to give up the faith.
Eighth, never to compromise with evil.
Ninth, never to consort with the demonic ones, the witches, the wizards, the magicians, the mutant souls, and the murderers who use hell’s machinery against God’s people.
Tenth, never to be corrupted by the foreign strangers, the Old Europeans, or the new men from the East. To rest solely in the hope of a new America.
God Save Our Promised Land of the North!
Toby read these words a few times over. Some of the statements he understood, but other things remained obscure. He turned to the other pages, which were scrawled over with minute instructions for services and ceremonies, for rituals and prayers. The drawings and diagrams seemed to relate to these. The actual printed pages, however, were quite different. These were in fact a collection of newspaper and magazine clippings, carefully pasted on the blank sheets, and they offered a much more vivid, though still very fragmentary, picture of past events. Most of the dates were missing, as if whoever had compiled the file had stopped thinking of events taking place in time, and the latest date — 2073 C.E. — indicated that most newspapers had ceased publication after that. The striking headlines, however, compelled the boy to read what remained of the stories at once.
RADIOACTIVE NIGHTMARE. NUCLEAR REACTORS GO OFF. THOUSANDS FLEE NORTHWARD. TERRORIST SABOTAGE SUSPECTED. ARRESTS WIDESPREAD.
PRESIDENT JONES ASSASSINATED IN MILITARY COUP. VICE PRESIDENT FLEES TO EUROPE. CANADA REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE NEW U.S. GOVERNMENT. CHINESE MOVE INTO HAWAII.
STARVING MOBS STORM CALIFORNIA MANSIONS. LOOTING IS WIDESPREAD. GOVERNOR FLEES TO MEXICO WITH STATE FUNDS.
INFLUENZA STRIKES AGAIN. PANDEMIC LEVELS IN CALGARY AND VANCOUVER. THOUSANDS DEAD. SARS NIGHTMARE CONTINUES IN ONTARIO.
RELIGIOUS PACIFISTS CHOOSE THE NORTH. OLD BELIEVERS ASK FOR ASYLUM IN CANADA, POINT TO VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION IN U.S.A. GANGS THREATEN TO WAYLAY THEM AT THE BORDER.
CANADA CLOSES BORDER WITH U.S. SHUTS DOWN ALL IMMIGRATION FROM SOUTH. POINTS TO LAWLESSNESS, CRIMES OF FUGITIVES.
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SEEKS NEW ALLIANCES WITH EUROPE AND CHINA. CHINESE DEMAND “TRADING ENCLAVES” ON CANADIAN WEST COAST.
PM KILLED IN “SUSPICIOUS” CRASH. GOVERNMENT CRISIS DEEPENS. BIKER GANGS CLOSE IN ON CAPITAL. RESIDENTS FLEE TO QUEBEC WILDERNESS. PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS UNDER NEW STRESS TO “GO IT ALONE.”
Page after page Toby read, overcome by a frenzy of curiosity .“How are you doing?” Talby asked from time to time. “Tell me what you’re reading.” But the boy asked his father for patience, desperately trying to piece together the chaotic and violent past.
Some of what he read he understood. There had been much talk about such catastrophic events among his older schoolmates, and many references to the dire events of those days by his teacher. But Mr. Koenich had obviously left out much. Either he didn’t know the whole story, or he was withholding it from the students, perhaps fearful that a true and complete knowledge of the violent past would depress or corrupt them.
After reading the newspaper accounts, it was clear to Toby that this country he lived in, once called Canada, had long ago collapsed under the pressure of violence, terror, plague, and unwanted immigration from a ruined and decimated United States. He knew that there was a great union of nations far away in Europe, and that China ruled all the East and part of the west coast of America. Even though — as rumour had it — Old Europe and China themselves had suffered revolutions, plagues, and pandemics, they scorned this land, which was known to those civilized places as the “lost world” — a region of violence and anarchy that few outsiders wished to penetrate. The two great world states, east and west, were busy trading with one another, attempting to deal with their food and health crises, trying to gain economic advantages. They had chosen to ignore — at least for the time being — the “lost world.”
It was rumoured, however, that some companies from overseas were prospecting in certain areas, that secret mines had been opened in the east and north, and that deals involving guards and “protection” were being made with some of the biker gangs. Yet neither Toby nor a single one of his friends had ever seen anyone from “the outside world.”
Now, as he put together what he had garnered from the fragmentary narratives with the information he had picked up in Mr. Koenich’s classroom, Toby began to understand what had happened decades before, in the middle of the 21st century. In those days, it was clear, the greed of the rich had triumphed and the poor had been cast aside. Governments had become short-sighted and cruel, religions preached violence, and terror seemed the only answer to the hopelessness that lay heavy on large portions of mankind. North America had become the enemy, the chief target of the impoverished and exploited, and soon, out of fear, treasured freedoms eroded on the home front, and the whole continent turned into a place of secrecy and weapons. The population, intimidated by their own suspicions, and worn out by many false alarms and rumours of war, no longer saw the enemy as alien, but denounced their own countrymen, their neighbours, and their friends. No one was to be trusted; everyone spied on everyone else. But despite the government’s ruthlessness, some great national shrines were desecrated,