2 DAYS LATER. WAPAKONETA , OHIO. AROUND NOON EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025.
Larry handed Jason a
GPO brochure-map from the 1990s, Scenic
Waterways of Ohio and Indiana. “Look up
Wapakoneta.”
“I know that town
name for some reason.”
“Yeah, you do, but
it’s not the reason I’m interested in.”
“Just look
up,” Chris said, pointing to the
landmark sign forty yards down the road. It was like ten thousand
other historic-landmark signs that appeared outside almost every
small town in the Midwest, except that this one said:
WAPAKONETA, OHIO.
BIRTHPLACE OF NEIL ARMSTRONG,
FIRST MAN ON THE MOON.
“I’d forgotten that,
Larry. Probably hadn’t thought about it since fifth-grade American
history. Crap,” Chris said, an odd, desperate strain in his voice.
“I remember when the moon was a good
thing. My dad watched the landing on TV when he was a little kid, I
guess along with everybody, and . . . I don’t know, I guess you had
to be in that generation, but to a lot of people, it meant a lot.
Now . . . we look up at the moon, and we’re scared.”
Larry sighed. “Yeah,
but what I wanted Jason to read was this.” He pointed at the old
map-guide.
Jason read aloud.
“The Auglaize River is canoeable from
Wapakoneta, a small town pronounced Wop Ock Kuh Net Uh. (Many
Ohioans shorten it to Wapak, pronounced Woppock.) The Wapakoneta
Canoe Trek Company, just downstream of the Hamilton Street Dam, has
canoes and kayaks for rent from mid-June to mid-October. May not be
accessible in low-water years. Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s
rained like a real booger for an hour or two almost every day since
we landed. And, okay, Larry, I see where you’re going with your
idea. It says, The Auglaize River flows north
to the Maumee at Defiance, down which canoes can continue nearly to
Toledo.”
“Unh-hunh, and
Toledo’s a port on Lake Erie, and there are Provi garrisons on the
western side of Lake Erie—Put-in-Bay, Kelleys Island, Port Clinton,
and Sandusky.”
“You’re figuring that
if we can get canoes—”
“Never walk when you can ride, son, stay in gummint
service and you’ll learn that’s a rule.” Larry grinned. “Along with
always patronize anybody with less
time-in-grade than you have. Anyway, that’s my thought. And
looking up ahead, at least it looks like the town hasn’t been
burned.”
In the warm midday
sun, intact roofs peeked through the bright red and orange leaves.
Larry said, “This road’s as good as any for going into the town, I
guess. That little thumbnail map seems to show Hamilton Street, and
the Auglaize River, right in the middle of town.”
A mile farther on, a
sign pointed off to Auglaize Street. “You don’t suppose they put
Auglaize Street anywhere near the Auglaize River?” Larry said. “It
leads into town, anyway.”
Half an hour later,
after passing a number of intact but empty houses, Jason said,
“Weird. The tribals usually burn towns on general principles. But I
haven’t seen a burned house, or any sign of fighting, or even any
human remains.”
“But if this place
were well-defended,” Chris said, “you’d think we’d have met a
patrol or run into a sentry by now.”
Beyond an overgrown
cemetery, a wide, placid stream, perhaps a hundred feet across,
appeared below them.
“All right, found the
river,” Larry said.
In town, most of the
big old twentieth-century frame houses and little nondescript brick
storefronts still had all their glass; where they did not, they
were boarded up. No doors were broken down. Larry said, “This feels
like we walked into a Ray Bradbury story.”
“Who are you?” a
voice asked.
They formed up into a
triangle with their backs together.
“I’m waiting,” the
voice said.
Larry shrugged
slightly. “We are Federal agents reconnoitering this area for the
Reconstruction Research Center.”
“Please wait here and
be comfortable. You are among friends. I must alert other people.
It may be fifteen minutes before anyone else contacts
you.”
“We can wait that
long,” Larry said, slipping his pack off and sitting on
it.
There was no answer;
apparently the mysterious voice’s owner had gone off on his
errand—her errand?
“What do you think?”
Chris asked, his voice barely a murmur, pointing his face down into
the ground between his feet to hide his lips.
Jason muttered, “I
think that was a kid’s voice, reading from a card.”
“I’m trying not to
think,” Larry said. “Whatever’s here, it’s not like anything else
we’ve found. Did you both notice, no cars? Not even the muck from
the rotted tires?”
“Yeah, and the
boarded windows that must have gotten broke,” Chris said, “they’ve
swept up the glass around them.”
Jason looked around.
“They’re not tribals. No downed wires, no wrecked refugee carts, so
many things that just aren’t here.”
Larry nodded. “So
often what’s not there is what police
work depends on.”
“News reporting too,”
Chris said. “Congratulations, Padwan Jason, you have achieved the
level of consciousness in which old poops pat you on the
head.”
Jason grinned. “My
head lives to be patted, oh master. So who is here? The tribe of the Extremely Tidy
People?”
“Close, but not
quite,” a deeper voice said, seemingly from nowhere.
Larry said, “You’re
not as invisible as the first person was. Part of your shadow is
visible just beyond the corner of the laundromat. Does that mean we
get six more weeks of winter?”
High-pitched laughter
broke out all around them.
The deeper voice
joined it. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s much point in keeping
this up. Are you guys from Pueblo?”
“That’s where we
started from but it was a while ago,” Larry said. “I’m Federal
Agent Larry Mensche, mission commander; we’ll be reporting back to
RRC eventually. My younger teammate here is Jason Nemarec, and the
big bear of a guy is Chris Manckiewicz, who you might remember from
when there was net and television—”
“And radio,” the
voice said. “We heard you on KP-1 and WTRC, Mister Manckiewicz. And
if I’m not mistaken you’re also the narrator on Orphans Preferred and on A
Hundred Circling Camps. You’re a celeb here.” A tall, rangy
man walked out from the corner of the laundromat. “Although the
biggest news this month, if not this year, is going to be that you
caught me with my shadow showing, Mister Mensche.”
He might have been
sixty, or eighty. His face was grooved, more eroded than sagging.
His full head of hair was iron-gray flecked with white, he stood
straight as any ex-soldier, and his muscles bulged and knotted over
thick bones; he looked like the barely covered skeleton of a giant.
His khaki pants and faded plaid shirt were neatly pressed. “My name
is Scott Niskala. I’m the scoutmaster of Troop 17. Everyone, you
can step out of cover.”
About twenty kids
seemed to appear in a single motion. An instant later one tiny old
lady in thick glasses stood beside Niskala. He said, “This, as you
can probably guess, is Mrs. Niskala, who is—”
“—quite capable of
introducing herself, thank you. Ruth Niskala. Scoutmaster of Troop
541. The outfit that shows the boys how to do things. We were
thinking you might like to have a good meal and a good rest, and
then maybe we can talk about what we might do for
you.”