Notes from the edge 02-14 2024

Happy Valentine day!

It is cold here and we got hit with snow overnight; my first clue was the rumble of plows passing on the highway.  Not horrible, just a few inches instead of a few feet this time.

I am working on nothing in particular, just updates and cleaning stuff up. I thought I would give a few chapters read of the first boo in the Earth’s Survivors series; Apocalypse…

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2022 Geo Dell all rights reserved.

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Art © Copyright 2022 A L Sweet

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ZERO

High summer: Plague year one

Base Ostega

Northern Canada

1:00 am

The first quake had been minor, the last few had not. The big one was coming. The
satellite links were down, but Doctor Alan Weber didn’t need to have a
satellite link up to know that. He touched one hand to his head, the fingertips
came away bloody. In any other circumstances he would be hurrying to get his
head wound taken care of, but these were not just any circumstances. The entire
world was ending and it was a miracle to him that he had made it through the
complex above and down into the control room of the facility before it had been
supposed to automatically lock down. His office was a shamble, but his
secretary had met him in the hallway having ridden out the quakes in the supply
room, between the tall rows of steel cabinets: Together they had made their way
to the office.

All main-line Comm links were down, probably because of the loss of the satellite
systems. Underground back-up cable Comm: Down. The facility was in bad shape,
and he was not kidding himself, there was no help on the way: No hope of
reaching the surface and the worst was not yet here. He was probably lucky to
have made it down the six floors to his office from where he had been. There
was an automatic lock-down program that would shut down the entire facility
within seconds of an attack or catastrophic event, it had failed somehow.

He laughed to himself, he had, had to lock it down manually once he had made his
way in or else it would still be open to the world. He had blown up the two
main entrances to the facility, sealing his own fate as he sealed it off from
the world above.

He had spent the last several years here in the Canadian wilderness running the
chemical countermeasure unit at the base. He had worked on a top secret virus
designed to prolong human life in cases of extreme deprivation: Nuclear attack,
war and other unlikely scenarios. He had spent the last two weeks working up to
this event from his subterranean office complex: All wreckage now. Still, he
had sent operatives out from here three days ago to do what they could to seed
the virus: Following his final orders sent down through some now probably non-existent
chain of command. He had heard absolutely nothing since, and believed that was
because there was no one left in command any longer.

The virus was so secretive that no one beyond the base knew the true nature of it.
Even the politicians that passed bills for funding while looking the other way
had not truly known what they were funding. A couple of well-placed dollars in
the pocket could buy a great deal of silence.

Several Army bases had secretly been infected and studied. The commanders of the armed
forces had, had no idea that anything was being tested on their men. The troops
had done well, surviving their training with little food and water much better
than they usually did, but over the next week nearly every bird in the area had
died. Some side effect they had not been able to ferret out.

That virus build had also been crippled. It had a built in self-destruct mechanism
to kill the virus after a short amount of time. In fact that same version had
been kept as an antidote for the newest version which had no such mechanism and
would go on reinfecting indefinitely.

The entire virus design and its capabilities were top secret. Top secret, and
usually Top Secret meant dozens of people knew, but this time it had meant that
it really had been Top Secret. Withheld from the public, and even those in
charge for years had known nothing of the true nature of the virus.

Last week had changed it all. Last week the news had come down from the finest
scientific minds that an extinction event was about to take place. Up to ninety
percent of the world population would likely be killed off as events unfolded.
It was not a maybe, it was an absolute.

The public knew that there was a meteor on a near collision course with the Earth.
They had paid off the best scientists to assure the public it would miss by
several thousand miles. A lie, but they had found that even scientists were
willing to look past facts if their own personal spin put a better story in the
mix. A survivable story, and so some had spun their own stories without
prodding. From there the internet had picked it up and run with it. From there
the conspiracy theorists, and by the end of the week the meteor was survivable.
The story that the meteor would destroy the planet was now a lie made up by commanders
of the rebel alliance in the Middle East to take the focus off their actions,
the public believed what it wanted to believe.

The truth was that the meteor might miss, barely, a near miss, but it wouldn’t
matter because it would contribute to a natural chain of events that would make
a meteor impact look like small change.

The big deal, the bigger than a meteor deal,
was the earthquakes that had already started and would probably continue until
most of the civilized world was dead or dying: Crumbled into ruin from super
earthquakes and volcanic activity that had never been seen by modern
civilization. And it had been predicted several times over by more than one
group and hushed up quickly when it was uncovered. The governments had known.
The conspiracy theorists had known. The public should have known, but they were
too caught up in world events that seemed to be dragging them ever closer to a
third world war to pay attention to a few voices crying in the wilderness. The
public was happier watching television series about conspiracies rather than
looking at the day to day truths about real conspiracies. The fact was that
this was a natural course of events. It had happened before and it would happen
again in some distant future.

In the end it hadn’t mattered. In the end the factual side of the event had begun
to happen. The reality, Alan Weber liked to think of it. And fact was fact. You
couldn’t dispute fact. You could spin it, and that was the way of the old
world, spinning it, but the bare facts were just that: The bare facts.

The bare facts were that the Yellowstone Caldera had erupted just a few hours
before. The bare facts were that the earth quakes had begun all around the
world, and although they were not so bad here at the northern tip of Canada, in
other areas of the world, in the lower states, in foreign countries, third
world countries, the bare facts of what was occurring were devastating:
Millions dead, millions more would die before it was over, and this was nothing
new. The government had evidence that this same event had happened many times
in Earth’s history. This was nothing new at all, not even new to the human
race. A similar event had killed off most of the human race some seventy-five
thousand years before. The space race had been all about this knowledge: A rush
to get off the planet and settle elsewhere on an older, more sedate planet
before something that had already happened time and again happened once more.

The virus was an answer, help, solution, but Alan Weber was unsure how
well the solution would work. It was, like everything else, a stop gap measure,
and probably too little too late. And it was definitely flawed, but he had
temporarily pushed that knowledge away in his mind. Even now as he sat and
waited for the end, which would surely come, out in the world operatives were
disbursing the virus that could save humanity.

He thought for a moment, “Or destroy humanity,” he added aloud.

There were no guarantees, and there was strong evidence to suggest the designer virus
did its job a little too well. Designed to help prolong life, there were rumors
that it could raise the dead. Some scientists who had worked with the virus in
the now destroyed facility had nicknamed it Lazarus.

Alan had seen evidence to support the rumors that it could raise the dead, or the
near dead for that matter. He had been present when a test subject that had
been pronounced dead had come back: Weak, half crazy, but alive again.

As the hours and then days passed the subject had become stronger, seemed to be
learning from the situation it was in. The decision had been made to kill it:
Even that had been difficult to do. Even so, he knew that it was the only hope
for society. There was nothing else. The military machine was dead. The
American government was dead. The president, from reports he had read,
assassinated by her own guards.

While most of America had tracked the meteorite that was supposed to miss earth from
their living rooms, and had been side tracked by all the trouble in the Middle
East, he had kept track of the real events that had even then been building
beneath the Yellowstone caldera and many other places worldwide.

Yesterday the end had begun, and the end had come quickly: Satellites off line. Phone
networks down. Power grids failed: Governments incommunicado or just gone. The
Internet down; the Meteorite had not missed Earth by much after all, and the
gravitational pull from its mass had simply accelerated an already bad
situation.

Dams burst. River flows reversed: Waters rising or dropping suddenly in many places.
Huge tidal waves. Fires out of control. Whole cities suddenly gone. A river of
lava flowing from Yellowstone: Civilization was not dead; not yet wiped out,
but her back was broken.

In the small military base of Ostega that had rested above the defense facility
near the shore of a former lake, the river waters that fed it had begun to
rise: The chemical countermeasure unit, several levels below the base in the
limestone cave structures that honeycombed the entire area, had begun to
succumb to the rising river waters. By the time the surviving soldiers from
above had splashed through the tunnels and into the underground facility, they
had been walking through better than two feet of cold and muddy water. Shortly
after that the pressure from the water had begun to collapse small sections of
caves and tunnels below the base that fed the unit: That damage had been helped
along by small after-shocks.

Alan Weber watched his monitor as a wall gave way and the main tunnel began to
flood. It was only a matter of an hour at the most before the water found its
way to him. He sighed and then relaxed back into his chair, reached down and
pulled the lower file drawer open, and lifted out a partial bottle of scotch.
He leaned forward and Amber Trevers cleared her throat in the silent
observation room. Weber smiled and turned toward her.

“I suppose you have been watching, Amber?”

She only nodded.

He nodded back. “Share a drink with me?” He turned away, not waiting for her words
of agreement. He heard her settle into a chair next to him as he pulled two
plastic cups from the sleeve in the bottom drawer, left over from the Christmas
party last year, and began to pour.

“I don’t usually agree to drink on the job, but this is a different set of
circumstances, isn’t it?” His eyes met her own as she nodded weakly.

“It’s almost over, isn’t it Doctor Weber?”

“I’m afraid so… Call me Alan, Amber… Is it okay that I call you Amber?” He
finished pouring the scotch into the plastic cup. He had stopped at just an
inch in the bottom, wondered why and then filled the cup half way instead.

North America

Far above the Earth, satellites continued to orbit importantly.

The North American continent lay sleeping far below. A wide inland sea had formed in
the middle, fed by a huge river that stretched from the former Hudson Bay to
the middle of the continent. Small in places and easily crossed, no more than a
river: Wide in other places as if it truly were a sea.

The state of Alabama had been divided in two along with most of the lower half of
the former state of Florida. What resulted was the loss of the lower, southern
half of the state. What remained now sat nearly forty miles out in a shallow
bay that was quickly turning to sea: An island, the water surrounding it
growing deeper as time moved on and the gulf reclaimed the land.

The upper north eastern section of the continent had already pulled apart and begun
to drift. Although it was imperceptible, the two land masses were inching away
from one another, and ultimately would be separated by a new ocean. And become
separate, smaller continents.

The eastern end of the former United States was also drifting away from the
northern section of Canada. The massive earthquakes had also severed the state
of Michigan, turning it into a virtual island.

Toward what had been the north, the St. Lawrence river basin had widened, pushing the
land masses further apart. The Thousand Islands bridge spans had toppled, and
slipped into the cold waters. The other bridges that had once spanned the
mighty river had also succumbed as the river basin had split and pulled apart.

The new continent had severed her ties from Nova Scotia, as she had been pulled
south and slightly east, to begin her journey. Only the province of New
Brunswick and a small portion of Quebec remained with the continent. The rest
of Canada was severed from them by the wide and deep river, more like a huge
lake in places that surged from ocean to ocean.

Most of the North American continent was now in a sub-tropical climate as well. The
poles had been displaced by the huge force of the multiple earthquakes and
volcanic blasts which were still ongoing. The old polar caps were melting, and
it would be thousands of years before they would once again re-form in their
new locations.

The run-off from the melting ice would eventually reach the oceans and even more
land mass would be sacrificed to the waves before the polar caps would be
re-formed.

There were only thirteen full states left on the small continent: The two former
provinces of Canada, one of which was only a small fragment; and parts of five
former states, the largest being Florida.

Before the dawn, fires could be seen burning unchecked in many major cities, pushed
with the help of freak winds the flames continued in all directions,
occasionally fueled by chemical, and oil facilities, as well as numerous other
flammable sources they encountered. The world began its fall.

ONE

New York

Johnny: October 29th

I am here in this farm house that Lana and I found a few weeks back. By myself.
Lana is gone. I sat down here to write this story out before I am gone too.
Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but it isn’t. I know exactly what my situation
is.

We have been to Manhattan, outside of it, you can’t go in any longer, and we came
from Los Angeles, so we know: It’s all gone, destroyed, there’s nothing left:
Time to hold on to what is left for you. I had Lana… That was my something
that was still left to me, but she’s gone now…

Lana… I knew they’d find out, Hell, they probably knew immediately in that slow
purposeful way that things come to them. I can hear them out there ripping and
tearing… They know. Yeah, they know, I know it as well as I know my name,
John, Johnny Mother used to say. I…
I get so goddamned distracted…. It’s working at me…

Bastards! If, only I could have… But it’s no good crying about it or wishing I had done
this thing or that thing. I didn’t. I didn’t and I can’t go back and undo any
of this, let alone the parts I did.

In August when the sun was so hot and the birds suddenly disappeared, and Lana
came around for what was nearly the last time I hadn’t known a thing about
this. Nothing. It’s late fall now and I know too much. Enough to wish it were
August once again and I was living in ignorant bliss once more.

Lana: I didn’t want to do it. I told myself I would not do it and then I did it. Not
bury her, which had to be done; I mean kill her. I told myself I wouldn’t kill
her, and that’s a joke really. Really it is, because how do you kill something
that is already dead?  No, I told myself that I wouldn’t cut her head off,
put her in the ground upside down, and drive a stake through her dead heart.
Those are the things I told myself I wouldn’t do, couldn’t do, but I did them
as best I could. I pushed the other things I thought; felt compelled to do, aside and did what I could for her.

The trouble is, did I do it right? It’s not like I have a goddamn manual to tell me
how to do it. Does anybody? I doubt it, but I would say that it’s a safe bet
that there are dozens of people in the world right now, people who have managed
to stay alive, that could write that manual. I just don’t know them… I wish I
did. And it won’t matter to me anyway. It’s a little too late, but I’ll write
this anyway and maybe it can be a manual for someone else… You…

So the books say take their heads off. The books also say, for Vampires, put a
stake in their heart, and older legends say turn them around, upside down in
the grave. Isn’t a vampire a kind of Zombie? Isn’t it? Probably not exactly, precisely, but could it hurt to have done the stake thing just in case? To be sure? To put her at rest? I don’t
think so.

They can come out during the daylight, you know. I thought they wouldn’t be able to.
Every goddamn movie I ever saw, starting with the Night of the Living Dead said they couldn’t. You could get some relief. You could get some shit done. And you could if it were true, but it’s
not. They rarely come out in the daylight, that’s the truth. It’s hard for them, tough somehow, but they can. It won’t kill them. They aren’t weaker than they are at night. They just don’t
like the daylight. They don’t like it. And don’t you think writing that made me a little paranoid? Thinking it over once more? It did. I got up and checked the windows. Nothing I can see,
but they’re out there. They’re right out there in the barn: Sleeping in the
sweet hay up in the haymow. I know it, so it doesn’t matter whether I can see
them. I can hear them and I know where the rest of them are. And I know they
know what I did and they’ll come tonight. They’ll come tonight because I’m
afraid of the night. Not them, me.
And they goddamn well know it! They know it! They think. They see. Did you
think they were stupid? Blind? Running on empty? Well you’re the fool then.
Listen to me, they’re not. They’re not and thinking they are will get you dead
quick. And what about me? How will I feel tonight? What will I think about it
then?

Zombies: I thought Haiti, horror flicks…? What else is there? Dead people come back to
life, or raised from the dead to be made into slaves. Those are the two things
I knew and nothing else. Well, it’s wrong, completely wrong. No, I can’t tell
you how they come to be Zombies initially, but I can tell you that the bite of
a Zombie will make you a Zombie. The movies got that much right.

I can’t tell you why they haunt the fields across from this house. Why they have
taken up residence in the old barn, but I can tell you that it might be you
they come for next and if they do you goddamn well better realize that
everything you thought you knew is bullshit. See, Lana didn’t believe it and
look what happened to her! Lana…
Lana: I know, I know I didn’t tell you about her, but I will. That’s the whole
point of writing this down before they get me too.

See, in a little while I’m thinking I might just walk out the kitchen door and right
out to the barn. I’ll leave this here on the kitchen table. For you, whoever
you are, who happened along into this kitchen.

Goddamn Zombies. Ever lovin’ Bastards! …

I am losing control; I know I am, but…

Anyway, it was August. Hot. Hotter they said than it had been in recorded time. I was
not here in this kitchen in rural New York someplace; I was in L.A., outside
the city up in the hills, a little farm. There was no wind. No rain. Seemed
like no air to breath. Global Warming they said. Maybe… Changes coming, they
said. Oh yeah, changes were coming. Changes right there on that wind,
probably…

It was on a Tuesday. I went to get the mail and there were six or seven dead crows
by the box. I thought, those goddamn Clark boys have been shooting their B.B guns again! So I resolved to call old man Clark and give him a piece of my mind, except I forgot. That happens to
all of us: It’s not unusual. I remembered about four o’clock the next morning when I got up. Well, I told myself, Mail comes at ten, I’ll get that and then I’ll call up and have that talk.

I make deals like that with myself all the time. Sometimes it works out fine sometimes
it doesn’t. It didn’t.

Ten came and I forgot to get the mail. I remembered at eleven thirty, cursed myself
and went for my walk to the box.

I live alone. I have since Jane died. That was another hot summer when she went.
I used to farm back then. I retired early a few years back. I rent out the
fields. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I walked to the mail box cursing myself as I went. When I got there I realized
the Clark boys had either turned to eating crows or they had nothing to do with
the dead crows in the first place. There were dozens of dead crows, barn
swallows, gulls. The dirt road leading up to my place was scattered with dead
birds, dark sand where the blood had seeped in. Feathers everywhere, caught in
the trees, bushes and the ditches at the side of the road. There were three
fat, black crows sticking out of my mailbox: Feet first; half eaten.

Some noise in the woods had made me turn, but I didn’t turn fast enough. Whatever
had made the noise was gone once I got turned in that direction, but there were
bare footprints in the dry roadbed next to the box. They were not clear,
draggy, as though the person had, had a bad leg. He had of course, but I had
yet to meet the owner.

Hold on…

The day’s getting away from me. My ears are playing tricks on me too. I thought I
heard something upstairs, but there’s nothing. I have the bottom floor boarded
up. Those Zombies may be far from stupid, but it’s goddamn hard to get dead
limbs to help you climb up the side of a house and we took everything down they
could hold onto…

Where was I? The mailbox. The mail never came that day. In fact the mail never came
again. Already Emma Watson, our local Mail carrier, was a Zombie. I just didn’t
know it.

I tried Clark, but I got no answer. Later that day I heard a few shots, but we’re
rural folks. There’s Deer wandering all over the place: Coy dogs too. Wouldn’t
be the first time one got shot without a tag or a proper season. Lana came
later, upset, her boyfriend had run off somewhere she thought. It’ll be okay I
told her. She did the cleaning, ran some groceries from town and left. She
seemed in better spirits to me.

I seen him almost a week later.

Lana usually came at the end of the week to help me with shopping, bills, she’s a…
She was a good girl. A good one. A good Zombie fearing girl. She was… She hadn’t come as July had turned to August and I was sitting by the stove that night and heard a scrape on the
porch.

His leg was bad. Somebody had shot him, but her fella had worse things going on than
that. He was dead. What was a bum leg when you were dead? Small problem. But it
made him drag that leg. I’m getting ahead of myself again though.

I picked up my old shot gun where it sat next to the door, eased the door open
and flicked on the porch light. He jumped back into the shadows.

“Step out into the light,” I tried not to sound as afraid as I was.

“No,” he rasped

“Step out here or I’ll shoot,” I tried again.

“Lana,” he whispered. His voice was gravelly.

That stopped me cold. I squinted, but it was too dark to make out much: Still I had
the idea it might be her boyfriend. Maybe he’d got himself into something bad.
I couldn’t get the name to come to me. “You Lana’s boyfriend that went
missing…?”

Nothing but silence, and in that silence I got a bad feeling. Something was wrong. It
came to me about the same time that he stepped into the light. There was no
sound of breathing. It was dead quiet, that was what my panicked mind was
trying to tell me. My own panicked breathing was the only sound until he
stepped into the light dragging his leg.

My heart staggered and nearly stopped.

“Lana,” he rasped once more. He cocked his head sideways, the way a dog will when it’s
not sure of something. One eye was bright, but milky white, the other was a gooey
mess hanging from the socket on the left side of his face.

I found my old shot gun rising in my hands. I saw the alarm jump into his eyes
and he was gone just that fast.

I stood blinking, convinced that I had somehow dreamed the whole encounter, but I
knew I hadn’t. The smell of rotting flesh still hung heavy in the air. In the
distance I heard the rustle of bushes and then silence. Zombies are not stupid,
and they are not slow.

The next day it seemed ridiculous. What an old fool, I thought. What had I
imagined? But the next few days told me a different story.

I drove into a nearby town around the middle of the week. I passed maybe two cars
on the way, but neither driver would meet my eyes. That was wrong. Trash blew
through the streets as I drove. The traffic lights were out on the four corners
and no one was on the streets. I didn’t see a state patrol car.

The ShopMart strip mall was closed. The road into it barricaded. I found a little
Mom-and-Pop place open on the way back, but there was next to nothing on the
shelves. I got a jar of peanut butter that I didn’t want, a package of
crackers, there was no bread, and paid with the last of my cash.

The store owner wore deep socketed eyes in a lined face. His attitude said, I will
not speak to you, and he would not: After a brief attempt I gave up and went
home. I never went back. By that next night I knew what the deal was when Lana
showed up.

She came around noon. I heard the sound of her engine revving long before she came
into sight. She took out the mailbox and crashed into the porch and that was
that. We were up most of the night talking about how much the world had
changed. She knew more than I did. She knew there were no more police. She knew
there were roving gangs of zombies on the streets of Los Angeles. She had met a
man who had come from there. L.A. was a ruin. And she had spoken to another,
this time a young woman from up toward Seattle; the same story there. The
zombies, it seemed, owned the world.

We stayed until eight weeks ago. I wouldn’t have been able to get out my own. That
was early, before we knew they would come out into the sunlight. Andy, that was
her fella’s name, came for her in the daylight when we were leaving the house.
If not for the bad leg he would have got her. If not for the fact that we were
close to the living room door he might have got her. He might even have got her
because we both froze. And when I realized I had to move she was still frozen,
just looking at his ruined, rotted face.

I got the shot gun up and blew his head off. I thought she was going to kill me,
then I thought he was going to manage to get back to his feet even without his
head and kill me. He finally stopped and I managed to drag her inside the house
and shut the door.

I had gone back out a short time later, after I got her laid down and sleeping
off the shock in the back bedroom, to take a closer look at the body. There
were five of them eating him where he lay up beside her car, and two watching
the door: When I got out the two guarding the door were on me nearly that fast.
I shot them both as fast as I could pull the trigger. My shot gun only holds
four shells. Those two were gone and that had slowed them, but they were not
deterred. I made it back inside, locked the door and began to wonder if my
heart was going to explode.

Later, before dusk, I went back outside. Andy’s body was gone along with the other
zombies. I decided that we had to try to get out, drive out and find help. She
was carrying a child after all, the zombie fella’s baby, I suppose. Maybe there
was a place outside of California where things were normal, okay, a zombie free
zone. The problem was that I was on the wrong side of L.A., we would have to
cut straight through the city to head east. There was no other way to do it.

We planned it. I got my truck, drained the gas from her car and my old tractor.
That gave us a full tank in the truck and almost ten gallons in cans strapped
into the back of the cab. There wasn’t much in the way of food, but we took
what we had. We left early morning.

L.A.: August 13th

The trek east out of the city was harder than we had thought it would be. We had
become mired down in traffic long before we had ever hit the city itself, and
had been forced to give up the truck.

It
was close to noon before we reached Alameda, and decided to try to find some
kind of four wheel drive vehicles, at one of the many car lots that dotted it.

Once we had liberated a truck, it had still been slow going until we reached El
Segundo Boulevard. The stalled traffic had been much lighter there, and we had
been able to drive part of the way by cutting into the parking lots of fast
food restaurants, that dotted almost the entire length of the highway. We had
followed that to Wilmington, and picked up another truck that had seen better
days. Getting that truck had not been a problem; there were several used car
lots along the road. We had used the parking lots to swing around the worst of
the traffic, and that had worked well until we had intersected Compton
Boulevard. It was hopelessly packed with stalled traffic. We had left the
truck, which had sounded as if it was close to dying anyway, and struck out on
foot again. Lana led the way as we cut cross lots through Compton Woodley
Airport.

Crossing the dead airfield had been unnerving for both of us. The runways had cracked,
and either lifted skyward, or tilted down into the ground. Blackened skeletons
of large aircraft dotted the airfield. Most of them were so badly burned that
we had been unable to tell what they had been before. I thought a couple of
them may have been military aircraft, but as badly twisted as they were it was
impossible to be sure.

Luggage, some burned, some untouched, was scattered across the airfield in every
direction, and many of the suitcases were burst, with papers and clothing
scattered everywhere along with other personal effects. There were bodies there
too.

On our way through the city we had seen very few bodies. It had been unsettling
for both of us. Fewer bodies meant more un-dead. We had both wondered aloud if
the changing was happening that fast. Raising the dead faster as time slipped
by. The bodies we had seen had not been killed by the Earthquakes. They bore
head wounds, and appeared to have been dead for only a short period. Possibly
only the last two or three days, we decided.

The bodies at the airport were concentrated around the terminal building. The huge
glass windows were peppered with holes as if a battle had taken place for the
terminal. Most of the bodies inside were concentrated behind the long rows of
seats in the main lobby where they had been trying to use the seats for cover.
It had apparently done no good. We had paused only briefly, wondering what had
occurred before we had moved on. The overwhelming stench in the shattered
terminal building drove us out. The wrecked planes, where we had expected to
see bodies scattered all around, were empty.

Occasionally we had heard gunfire around us, and twice explosions from further north, behind
us had startled us. We had hurried along fearing the sounds, but fearing more
the possibility that the owners of the guns might find us. We walked in silence
across the remainder of the shattered airfield, and we were both glad when we
left it behind us and eventually came to 91. 91 was traffic packed and we had
abandoned the truck, making our way across the steel roof tops once more,
crossing under 91 on South Central and making our way along the sides of the
road to E Del Amo Boulevard.

There, like the Martin Luther King Highway, black topped parking areas fronted all
manner of fast food restaurants, store chains and shops, which bordered both
sides of the strip. It wouldn’t necessarily assure a way around the stalled
traffic, I had realized, but it appeared as though it would give us a much better
chance of getting to 405.

~

I set the pencil aside and listened to the noises outside the old frame house:
Some other farmer’s house, three thousand miles from my own home. Dark sounds,
rustling, had to be the dead, but there was nothing for it. I picked the pencil
up, flexed my fingers and began to write again…

Yesterday I found an old bottle of whiskey in a locked cabinet in the living room and
resolved to leave it be. Now I have changed my mind. I have been sipping at it
while I sit here and write. Maybe it will help my resolve with the part I still
have to play after I write this out. Maybe it won’t, I don’t know. But I do
know it is helping my head right now, and that is enough for me.

So, we had been trying to get to 405…

 

TWO

Leaving Los Angeles…

Johnny led them towards the rear garage area of the dealership, where they found a
full size four wheel drive Chevy pickup. Johnny had worked at a dealership
before, and recognized the garage area as the prep shop.

“When someone buys a new car,” Johnny said, “or truck, or whatever, they have to prep
it. Take the plastic off the seats, fill the tank, wax it, sort of get it ready
for the customer, you know?”

“I thought they came from the factory all ready to go?” Lana said.

“Well… they do, sort of,” Johnny agreed, “but they have plastic over the seats to
protect them, and oil drips from the cars overhead on the transport trucks;
dirt gets tracked into them when the guys move them around the lot. Sometimes
they may have a scratch, or small dent that the body shop guys have to fix, and
they get paint over-spray all over the car; dust in it, you name it. I used to
have to prep cars, and it’s not much fun. Minimum wage type of job and the
salesman who sold the car is usually breathing down your neck all the time
you’re getting it ready. I hated it, but you do what you have to do to pay the
bills. I figured if we’re going to find a truck all ready to go, this would be
the first place to look. Gassed up and the whole nine yards. They even waxed it
for us.” Johnny finished, trying to break the somber mood that had set in as
they crossed the airfield.

His effort worked partially, Lana offered him a small smile as she spoke. “You know
a lot of things don’t you?”

“Not really,” Johnny said. “I just worked at a lot of different jobs. Mainly just to
keep the farm afloat, but also, I guess, because I believe you should learn as
much as you possibly can. It worked for me. I grew up with a lot of guys who
were constantly unemployed. Maybe they were carpenters, or roofers, or auto
mechanics, farmers like me, whatever. When things would get bad, they’d get
laid off, or the prices would drop for produce, it’s always something. Not that
things never got slow for me, they did, but I could go to work somewhere else
fairly quickly. I can practically build a house from the ground up, and do all
the rough and finish, electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. The same with cars.
I just learn well, I guess and it paid off. Someday I’d like to build my own
house.”

“I’ve always wanted to own a house,” Lana said, the tentative smile had grown wider
as she listened to Johnny talk. “I never thought I would live anywhere except
that crummy apartment,” she laughed. “Manor la cucaracha,” She smiled at
Johnny’s puzzled look. “Cockroach manor… My nickname for the place. If I
never own a house I guess that would be fine with me, as long as I never have
to live in that dump again.”

Johnny was nodding his head as she finished speaking. “I know what you mean. I had a
crummy little place up in Seattle out of college. I used to take all the
overtime I could get, so I wouldn’t have to go back to it too soon. I really
hated it, I mean completely. I had this dream of buying some land and building
my own house, when this is over that’s what I would like to do. Just find a
nice place and build a house. Maybe have some cows again. I guess that sounds
kind of stupid, but it really is what I want to do, and if I make it through
this in one piece, I’m going to.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid to me at all,” Lana said, “in fact it sounds like a good
plan, a good dream to hold on to. I’ve never really dared to dream. I guess now
it’s okay to dream. You think?”

“I think so,” Johnny agreed. “I mean if you can’t dream, what’s the use, right?”
she nodded her head as if to say yes before Johnny continued. “Like, I live my
life, and you live your life. You believe what you want, and I’ll believe what
I want. You see?”

“I do,” Lana said. “I guess I’m sort of the same way. I always tried to live
without hurting people. I was getting pretty bitter though, I have to admit. I
just saw too much that didn’t make any sense to me, and I could never
understand why, if there was a God, he would let so much bad exist. I guess
though, if people want it, it’s going to be there. People thought I was bad,
but I never really dared to look at myself. I guess I was bad, to a certain
extent, but what was I supposed to do?” she seemed pensive.

“I had family, but… Well, you know…. I guess I don’t want to get into that:
Suffice to say I couldn’t be with them. There isn’t much for a poor Mexican
girl to do to make a living here.“ She had lost her smile as she spoke,
replacing it with a wistful pursing of her lips and a sadness that sat deeply
within her eyes.

Johnny nodded his head and they both fell silent for a few seconds.

“Lana,” Johnny said. “It really doesn’t matter anymore. I mean that sincerely.”

Now it was her turn to nod her head. She hadn’t realized it, but his opinion
mattered to her, and what he said allowed the small smile to re-surface on her
face. She had told herself that she didn’t care what he thought about her, but
she knew even as she told herself that, that she was wrong. It did matter. It
mattered a great deal.

They walked together to the back of the garage, and pushed up the steel overhead
door. It took a few minutes to move a couple of the cars out of the way, so
that they could drive the pickup out of the garage and into the lot behind the
dealership.

Johnny drove the truck across the grassy back lot, and stopped at the rear of a gas
station convenience store to look for a state map. Lana followed him into the
deserted station.

She filled a paper bag with some groceries, mostly canned goods, while Johnny
opened the map and studied it on the counter at the front of the station.

“Looks like the best way out,” Johnny said, “Is still going to be 91. We passed it,
we’ll have to back track to catch it. We should be able to skirt around most of
the traffic, shouldn’t we?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t really know,” Lana answered. “I mean I live here, or did,
but I didn’t get out of the city at all, or hardly ever, so I don’t know what
its’ like.”

She paused and looked at Johnny as he bent over the map. He smiled as he spoke.

“I actually understand that,” he said. “I didn’t really know a lot about getting
around L.A. either. I guess you learn how to get to the places you need to get
to, and that’s about it. No real big deal though. According to the map there
are a lot of loops, sort of side roads that go around, and run parallel to 91,
and hey, we’ve got four wheel drive, we can cut through the fields if we have
to, right? That will get us to 10 and ten is our ticket east.”

Lana shrugged her shoulders, “I guess?”

“You know,” Johnny said as they climbed into the cab of the truck. “We should stop
and pick up a couple of sleeping bags, and maybe tents too. We still need to
pick up a couple more rifles.” He didn’t want to alarm her, or make her start
to worry, by bringing the subject up once more, but the truth was that he was
fairly worried himself. If there were armed people running around killing
whoever they chose too, it would be kind of stupid, he thought, not to have
better weapons. Lana had the pistol, and her rifle. Johnny had his own pistol
and a rifle, but he wasn’t sure it would do a lot of good. He wasn’t a good
shot. She surprised him when she not only agreed, but didn’t seem to lose her
smile when she did.

“I think it would be stupid not to stock up on whatever we can, guns included,”
she said, echoing Johnny’s thoughts. “You know much about them?”

“Not really,” Johnny confessed, “I’ve shot a rifle, you know, hunting,” he frowned.
“It’s been years to be honest, but I think I could learn again. You know
anything about them?”

“Well, now that you mention it, I do. At least a little. Not from shooting one, but
more from seeing them. There are a lot of pawn shops in my neighborhood, sort
of goes with the territory, I guess. That’s where I got this,” she said,
holding up her small pistol, “I got the rifle from a smashed in pawn shop…
There has to be a pawn shop or sporting goods shop out here somewhere.” Almost
as she spoke Johnny spotted one across the crowded interstate.

“There’s one,” Johnny said as he pointed.

They left the truck beside the stalled traffic, and walked through and around the
cars to the large shop. The shop was picked over, but they spent the better
part of the afternoon outfitting themselves from the racks in the shop and
carrying what they needed across the road to the truck. The pickup had a black
vinyl bed cover. They opened it, stored the tent and the sleeping bags along
with the other camping gear inside it, and then snapped the cover back into
place.

“It probably won’t keep everything totally dry,” Johnny said, “if it rains, I mean.
This is more for show than protection,” he said indicating the cover. “But it
should still do all right.”

They had both picked up weapons in the shop. Johnny had picked out a deer rifle, a
fairly impressive looking Remington. He had also picked up several boxes of the
ammunition the rifle took. Lana had settled on an entirely different sort of
weapon. It looked more like a machine gun of some sort to Johnny, and she also
picked up several boxes of ammunition and spare clips for it. She explained to
him that it really wasn’t a rifle, but a machine pistol, and that it could fire
better than seventy rounds a second if it were converted to full automatic.
This one wasn’t, she said, but she had seen some that were. To Johnny it still
looked like a machine gun, and he joked that the sight of it alone would
probably scare anyone.

By the time they had loaded the truck and gotten under way it was late afternoon.
Even with the late start, and the slow going due to the stalled traffic, they
managed to make it to the Colorado River in Ehrenberg Arizona just before
nightfall. …

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