“It’s not like I enjoy cooking,” Cally said, with a shrug. “Well, not much. But if you want to eat up here, you have to do it all yourself.”
Dinner had been a rousing success. Papa O’Neal had cut about ten pounds of moist, succulent pork off the pig, thinking that would be enough and intending to cut the rest up and freeze it for later meals. As it turned out, he had had to go back to the porker twice for more meat. In addition to the corn on the cob and cornbread, Cally had cooked wheat bread, a creamed green-bean casserole and new potatoes, all of which had been eaten. Dessert was pecan pie.
The children, stuffed to the gills, had finally been sent off to bed leaving only the “grownups” — Cally seemed to be included in that group — sitting at the table, picking over the remains of the meal while the CD player cycled in the background.
“I know what you mean,” Shari laughed. “There are cafeterias in the Urb, but the food is really lousy; there are days I could kill to just call Domino’s.”
“I sort of remember them,” Cally said with a shrug. “But the last time I ate fast food was the month that Fredericksburg was hit.” She shook her head and shrugged. “We went on vacation down to the Keys and there was still a McDonald’s open in Miami. We fix pizza sometimes, but it’s made from scratch.”
“None of the kids even remember fast food joints,” Wendy said, pulling a piece of pork off the haunch Papa O’Neal had brought in. “Well, Billy and Shannon do, a little bit. But not really. They sort of remember the playgrounds and the meal toys. But that’s about it.”
“It all just went away so fast,” Shari said quietly.
“It did that,” Mosovich replied. “Wars tend to cause that sort of thing. Ask Germans of a certain age about how things change in a real war, or read diaries of Southerners in the Civil War. Gone With the Wind is a good example; one day you wake up and your whole life is gone. Some people adjust to it, thrive even. Some people just curl up and die, either in reality or inside.”
“Lots of that in the Urbs,” Wendy said. “Lot of people that just gave up. They sit around all day, either doing nothing or talking about when the good times will come back.”
“Ain’t gonna come back like of old,” Mosovich said. “I’ll tell you that. Too much damage. Hell, even the ‘fortress cities’ that they made out in the boonies are basically toast. A city is more than a bunch of buildings filled with soldiers. Richmond, Newport, New York, San Francisco, they’re just hollow shells at this point. Making them cities again… I don’t know if it’s gonna happen.”
“The interior cities ain’t any great shakes either,” Mueller pointed out. “We were up in Louisville a few months ago at Eastern Theater Command. Most of the people there were trying to get into the Urbs. At least the Urbs were set up for foot traffic; with the shortage of gasoline, getting around in cities is really difficult. Just getting to the store is usually a long hike.”
“Especially with the weather being as bad as it’s been,” Shari said.
“What weather?” Papa O’Neal asked.
“Well, we get the reports down in the Urbs; there were record lows all winter. They’re already talking about a new ice age from all the nuclear weapons.”
“Huh,” O’Neal laughed. “Can’t tell it by me. If there was an ice age coming on, farmers would be the first to know. Now, the Canadian harvests were screwed up, and it probably was in part due to the China nukes, but even that has stabilized out.”
“I can’t really blame the Chinese, either,” Mueller said. “Except for thinking they could beat the Posleen on the plains. Once they lost most of their army, slagging the Yangtze was the only way to keep the Posleen off the stragglers.”
“Oh, hell,” Papa O’Neal grunted. “They were slagging the stragglers there at the end. That way the Posleen would slow down to eat. And it’s not like even that slowed ’em down, it only took ’em a month to reach Tibet. Hell, with all the antimatter and nukes we’ve built up, better hope we never get to that point; we’ll end up glazing the whole eastern U.S. And probably to about as much use.
“But as to the weather, we’re in a long-term aggressive weather cycle, but that’s affected by a pod of warm water in the Atlantic and it was predicted before the invasion. Other than that, the weather’s been fine. Great, this year. Rains just on time. Could have been a bit more, but then I’d be wishing they were a bit less.”
“We’re always hearing these terrible weather reports from the surface,” Wendy said. “Record cold, snow in April, stuff like that.”
“Well, I’ve been living here for… well, for a long time,” he said, looking sidelong at Shari. “And this has been as good a year as we’ve had. Yeah, it snowed in April. Happens. It was seventy-two two days after the nukes.”
“Did that person just say what I think they said?” Elgars asked.
“Who?” Papa O’Neal replied, looking around.
“On the CD player,” she said, pointing into the living room. “I think he just sang something about smearing the roast on his chest.”
“Ah,” said Papa O’Neal with a smile. “Yeah. That. Warren Zevon.”
“Warren who?” Wendy asked. Elgars had been picking up socialization fast and she had to wonder if the captain had just done a very deliberate topic change. If so, go with it.
“Zevon,” Mosovich said. “The Balladeer of the Mercenary. Great guy. Met him once. Briefly.”
“Where?” Shari asked. “I recognize the name, but I can’t come up with a song and…” She listened to a few lyrics and blanched. “Did he just say what I think he did?”
“Yep,” Papa O’Neal said with a grimace. “That’s ‘Excitable Boy.’ It’s… one of his rougher pieces.”
“I dunno,” Cally said with a malicious chuckle. “Why don’t you sing her a few bars of ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Shari said with a smile. “And, believe it or not, I can take a little black humor.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cally said with a sly grin. “Why’d the Posleen cross the road?”
“I’ll bite,” Mueller said. “Why did the Posleen cross the road?”
“To get to the fodder side,” Cally said.
“Okay,” Mosovich said. “That was pretty bad. Try this one: How do two Posleen resolve an argument?” He waited, but nobody jumped in. “Thresh it out between them, of course.”
“Ow!” Papa O’Neal said. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a Posleen?”
“I dunno,” Shari said. “One gets paid to eat you alive?”
“No, but that’s pretty good,” Papa O’Neal said. “No, one is a vicious, inhuman, cannibalistic monster; and the other is an alien.”
“You hear the new slogan for the Posleen that fight Marines?” Wendy asked.
“Hah!” Mosovich said with a grin. “I can imagine a few. Oh, that would be sailors.”
“The few, the proud: DESSERT!”
Cally looked around for a second then grinned. “How do you know that Posleen are bisexual? They eat both men and women!”
“I can’t believe you said that!” Papa O’Neal grumped as the others laughed.
“Christ, you have me listening to Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, Granpa!” Cally said. “And that little joke bothers you?”
“What’s wrong with Black Sabbath?” he protested. “It’s a good group. Great lyrics.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Cally said. “The name?”
“Christian!”
“Catholic, thank you very much.”
“Okay, okay, breaking the mood here before bullets fly,” Mueller said. “How many Posleen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”