Free Renewal by Jf Perkins

 
     
    Renewal
     
    Terry pedaled slowly, weaving through the broken patches of tar-and-chip and deep mud holes of yellow clay. He had once heard his pappy talking about driving down these old Coffee County roads in a 1991 Trans Am, usually at incredibly high speeds, to hear him tell it. Terry tried to imagine it, but kids of his generation didn’t dream of cars. He felt lucky enough to have a bicycle. His bike was handed down twice before he got it as a graduation gift. He was the third generation to own it, but only the second to ride it.
     
    The idea of trying to wash all of the clay mud was forcing Terry to choose his path carefully, but he was beginning to feel the pressure of time. The sun was getting high and hot. He wasn’t too thrilled with the thought of camping out in the wilds of the county at night. Even though the population had been thinned out considerably during the Breakdown, there were still plenty of folks tucked out in the sticks who had not been seen in town for years and typically thought the crisis was still underway. Those people usually shot first, then stole anything they could find on a body.
     
    He finally wobbled over the crest of the rise, and with a long view of the curving descent, abandoned himself to the thrill of a ragged downhill run to the Duck River. About halfway down, through bump and speed blurred vision, Terry saw a problem. The center of the bridge was gone. Two seconds later, he was sure and pulled his fingers into the brake levers. That was when he discovered the second problem. Slippery clay mud makes for lousy braking. When he was sure he would disappear through the missing span of the bridge, his front tire grabbed an island of surviving pavement, the bike slowed drastically as the rear wheel came up and over. He splashed through the next puddle and slid to a stop on his back while his tools burst from his old Rubbermaid tote, scattering far and wide. He heard a faint grinding sound and tilted his head up to watch his brand new tape measure skittering down the concrete bridge, only to stop 3 inches short of the gap.
     
    His first thought was relief; his second, anything but. His brand new Reclamation Corps uniform was covered in a slimy, orange-tan mud that smelled vaguely of fish… and possibly goat. Terry got up, found his hat, also covered in mud, and began the process of gathering all his tools. The truth was, they weren’t even his yet. The tools, along with the uniform, came as part of his recent graduation from the reclamation engineering school at Manchester University. They called it a university, because frankly, no one had the energy or resources to care what they called it. Terry always thought it was a lofty name for a former storefront converted to a school with about three courses of study, all involving how to extract food from the ground.
     
    In his case, Terry and about three other guys in the county were tasked with finding all the old farm fields that had been built into subdivisions way back in the 1990’s and figuring out how to turn them back into farms. The county had a couple of civil engineers as well, but judging by the roads, and the average age of the engineers in question, they spent most of their time trying to get a cool breeze to come through the county office windows. Anyway, building roads was no longer a big deal. If you could walk it, bike it, or get a goat wagon down it, that was good enough. The real money, outside of farming a piece of land you owned, was in reclamation. The only people with money were willing to figure out ways to expand their farms, not to spend money on smooth roads.
     
    Terry was out on his first solo trip, and it would take at least a handful of successful returns before he could pay off his gear and the certification fee. He was thinking about how much crap he would take if he came home covered in mud, since he was pretty sure this trip had been hand-picked by the older guys to serve as his initiation. He