Leo Frankowski

once brought fresh
supplies no longer existed.
     
    The food trees
sprouted quickly, and each grew six vines that spread out evenly for fifteen
feet and then generated new roots at these spots. The space between was quickly covered
with heart-shaped leaves, close to the ground. Each leaf had a red cross at its
center. Though
Guibedo had no love for the Red Cross (or any other organization, for that matter),
the red cross was the only symbol of help that he could think of that was universally known.
    In six weeks each food
plant would cover forty acres of
land. Trees and other plants that were in the way were absorbed with remarkable
rapidity. Animals found their leaves to be
bitter and spat them out; those that persisted, died. Farmers who tried to uproot the new weed found that it recovered in hours. Herbicides were
ineffective.
    In two months the
dense ground cover would start to rise as tree trunks grew in a triangular
pattern every fifteen feet. The trunks would grow to be eight feet tall. Only
then, three months from planting, once there was enough photosynthetic area, would they
start to produce food gourds on their trunks. But each tree could feed a thousand people.
     
    “The bridge is
out,” Senator Beinheimer said.
    A farmer had driven
the ten of them into town, at which point the truck’s engine failed due to a larva hole in the
oil gallery.
    Three days in
Bristol, Colorado, convinced von Bork that transportation was not available, and
would probably never be available.
    Striking out on foot,
they headed west.
    The two men and six
women who were subordinate to von Bork were all Rejuves. They all had more than
sixty years
of experience. They all had healthy twenty-year-old bodies. Among them, they had a
vast array of useful knowledge. How to pick mushrooms, how to dig roots, how to trap rabbits,
and how to build shelter. Traveling upstream along the Arkansas River, they
survived well. The senator was able to keep up, though his bones ached.
    It took them a month
to cross the Colorado Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Now, on the downhill
side, the road
came quite literally to an end.
    “I said the
bridge is out.”
    “Obviously,”
von Bork said. “But that is the Gunni son River, and the Gunnison empties into the
Colorado, and
the Colorado pours into Lake Mead, spitting distance from Life Valley.”
    “You crazy, boy?
You’re talking about maybe a thousand miles of white water.”
    “True. I’m also
talking about riding instead of walking. Personally, I’m sick of walking. Who’s
with me?”
    “We’re always
with you, Mr. von Bork.”
    Senator Beinheimer
was the last one down.
    Within a mile, they
found an abandoned twelve-man rubber raft.
     
    Antenna towers are
held stable by long steel cables, and when these were eaten through, the towers fell. Radio and TV stations went off the air.
    The orbiting
communications satellites still operated but their crews could give no useful
information to the people below because they themselves had no way of finding out what was
happening.
    These stations, and
those on the moon, were largely self-sufficient, and could survive several
years without help from Earth. But they could provide no help in return.
    The world’s
electrical power was cut off, as power towers crumpled and high-voltage wires
crashed to the Earth. There was no way for most people to listen to the satellite broadcasts.
     
    No insects had been
spread over the oceans, so ships at sea were generally not affected until they
came to land.
There they were promptly plagued by egg-laying mosquitoes. Most of them sank at the
docks, their hulls riddled with holes. Some left and tried to make it to their home ports,
and, of these, some made it back. But those that didn’t went down with all hands, as the lifeboats were in worse shape than the ships themselves.
    Small sailing craft,
with plastic hulls and brass fittings, were largely unaffected. Most of
these left port with jury-rigged wooden masts and manilla stays, their owners, or those who
had stolen them, planning to eke out some sort of survival by fishing.
     
    The old, the infirm,
the hospitalized were the worst affected. In some cases, the doctors resorted
to euthanasia. In most, the ill were simply abandoned when nothing more could be done
for them. In a few cases, dedicated medical staffs stayed with their patients.
    Several thousand
self-proclaimed messiahs, quoting the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or one of a
hundred similar
texts,