Pox (2 page)
Early on, I made the decision to move from my walk-up
apartment in the center of the city to the now empty outskirts. I
told myself these areas had been abandoned. I knew differently.
Getting there involved dodging cars and trucks and
piles of empty pallets and tins. Some of the major routes had been
cleared by bulldozers that had pushed the abandoned vehicles off
the roads like so many children’s toys.
It was more difficult to avoid the stench of garbage
stacked on lawns or left piled in the streets.
In my travels I had acquired a battery-powered
motorcycle. I scrounged two solar panels to sling on either side of
the rear wheel, and a third to strap to my backpack. At the time,
my biggest problem was to keep the bike from being stolen when I
went to pick up my ration.
I solved that one by moving again into one the
hundreds of houses close-by that had been deserted and left empty.
By then, the owners had been run off, or, more likely, rounded up
and shipped to the camps. When the dwindling population dictated
that the ration centers close, I began a search for a new place. I
found one a lot farther out in the ‘burbs.
The isolation suited me. Surprised by that, I made my
fourth and final move even farther out into deserted suburbia.
So far, I’d been lucky. I managed to avoid being
spotted and picked up during the daily sweeps performed by National
Guard troops. The huge, noisy diesel patrol trucks were easy to
avoid when they made the only noise. The sound of their coming gave
me plenty of time to get the bike into the back yard, out of sight
of anyone but the most nosy neighbors.
The trouble with that was, nine months into the
purge, there appeared to be no neighbors. No one. Nobody to be
nosy. I had given up on ever coming across another human being. I
was beginning to feel like a rat abandoned in a maze of my own
choosing.
And I was still lonely.
I moved, move number five, one final time.
It seemed like it took forever to find my current
home, but it took only a week. I tramped through neighborhoods for
days on end, sunup to sundown. I dodged patrols; hid out in
dumpsters; climbed onto roofs to get my bearings. When I lost my
place on the maps, I used the sun to get me back to someplace
familiar and I started all over again.
I opened doors, inspected, followed stairs down to
basements. When at last I found a house with a built-in water
reservoir, I made my decision in an instant. The collectors and
piping directed rainwater into below-ground storage tanks. That the
tanks were indoors made it even more secure.
I knew it would take time to turn the place into
something I could use to survive. I scoured abandoned hardware
stores for electrical wiring, outlets, switches, tubing - anything
that could be used to hard-wire a gasoline generator. In two days,
I had the generator working, muffled and safely exhausted into the
back yard through a window in a spare bedroom.
The generator had enough output to run a fridge and a
stove and a microwave on a part-time basis. I even found a small
instant hot water heater that ran on 110. I loaded up with extras
for spares.
It took another day to run wiring from a small fuse
panel into the kitchen and the bathroom. I installed the heaters
into the house’s existing water lines under sinks. Each heater in
turn could be shut down since I didn’t need everything working at
the same time.
It took time to make my new home livable and secure.
To guarantee electricity, I had to stock up on gasoline. Forty-five
gallon drums and a hand pump would do for that. They were rolled
into the garage.
There was plenty of gasoline remaining in the
abandoned automobiles. To collect it, I used smaller containers
that I hauled in a wagon behind my motorcycle. A small electric
pump with an intake line that could be fed into gas tanks allowed
me to suck each of them dry.
I took simple pleasure in the task of setting the
clock on the microwave each time I powered it up.
Eventually, I got over that.
I never got over the loneliness. Or the silence.
The blackout curtains I hung pretty much guaranteed
that.
I was comfortable in my new surroundings. Comfortable
and safe. I knew from my daily patrols and excursions in search of
consumables to stockpile that there was no one left. I was on my
own, comfortable in the knowledge that no one would disturb my life
of quiet solitude.
Even so, there were still occasional patrols to
avoid.
Russell
In my excitement, the first time I spied the person
passing though the cul-de-sac - my cul-de-sac - I almost yelled and
rapped on the window. How dare that person invade what I now
considered to be my space, my property?
With shoulders hunched against an oversize hoodie,
the walker’s face and head were hidden from view. I couldn’t tell
if the person was male or female. A baseball cap pulled low guarded
the person’s face from the front. In the time it took to collect my
wits, whoever it was had passed by, ignorant of my presence.
This trespasser caused me to feel like a home-owner
who had spotted a dog crapping on his lawn while the dog’s owner
did nothing to prevent it.
I was scared.
I dropped the corner of the curtain like a pot handle
too hot to hang onto.
Now I knew. There were others.
Excited by the prospect, I couldn’t stop pacing.
Prior to this, I had no idea. I’d encountered no one on my travels
other than the roaming military patrols. That was obvious testament
to the thoroughness of the evacuation plan. Or the purge, if that
was in fact what it was.
A purge. I couldn’t comprehend. I’d given up
trying.
Eventually, my hidden observation post provided me
with a sense of how often the walker cruised through the
neighborhood. Whoever it was, they were obviously reconning for
their own purposes, just as I had been doing.
Twice a week, Monday and Thursday, early in the a.m.,
the person would pass by. Usually he would return by mid-afternoon.
The pack he carried, empty in the morning, would be full and heavy
on his back in the afternoon. Obviously he too was stocking up with
whatever he could find.
Being the resourceful type, I resorted to binoculars
and studied the walker up close and personal. That’s when I
recognized the walker for what she was. My curiosity piqued, I
began to pay even more attention. She was on a schedule that took
her through my neighborhood on a regular basis.
The double-barreled shotgun hanging across her chest
gave me pause.
With time to kill and not much else to do, I waited
her out. More often than not, and usually like clockwork on those
two days, I’d be rewarded. She would trudge past early in the day,
backpack empty. By day’s end, she would labor past on the return
trip with the backpack full and heavy, judging by her gait.
She appeared to be in her mid-twenties. Probably
long-haired, with her hair tied in a bun when she wasn’t wearing
the hoodie or the ball cap. Hippy-looking the way she dressed, but
like me, she would have been too young to know much about that
generation.
She always had on a long-sleeved shirt and long pants
and hiking boots. She wore a bandanna around her neck against the
sun when the hoodie got left behind.
She was doing exactly what I was doing, and doing it
quite well, judging by the way she carried herself with the full
pack. She had to be in good shape.
I wasn’t brave enough yet to follow her. I considered
it, then thought it best to leave her alone for the time being. I
didn’t want to make it look like I was some sort of stalker bent on
taking everything she had for my own.
Besides, she had that shotgun.
That alone was worrying. I hadn’t thought to collect
any weapons. Since spotting her, I became more nervous each day I
went without when I finally did consider a weapon. I guess I was
naive, to say the least, because there was probably more like her
around, even if I hadn’t yet spotted them.
Over time, the loneliness had become bearable. Since
catching sight of the woman, I realized how lonely I had been all
these months. I began to think again about finally having a partner
with which to share this new world in which I found myself
trapped.
I went back to my own search and acquire missions. I
had to. Winter would be on its way soon enough.
Caitrin
Caitrin considered herself lucky to have had a job.
Graduating as a communications major with a minor in psychology
hadn’t presented many opportunities.
The small, on-line company that sold doomsday prep
gear took a chance on her. She intended to prove them right about
providing the opportunity. Green as she was, when necessary, she
applied what she had learned as best she could. She worked hard,
learned the lingo as she went along, and ended up pleasing the
business owner with her enthusiasm.
Consequently, when the company did its monthly tests
of the gear it sold, she got invited to go along on the campouts in
the hill country to the north of the city. City girl that she was,
she quickly adapted to the rigors of the overnight routine, and
grew to enjoy the camaraderie of the small group of employees as
well as the experience.
What she learned amazed her each time the group did
an overnight or a long weekend. Getting comfortable using the gear.
Setting up camp and lighting fires and cooking. Learning survival
techniques. Bugging out when the campouts ended. It all eventually
became routine for her. She was always a little sorry to return
home.
As a result of the campouts, she had gotten to know
one of her workmates. Soon after returning to the city from one of
their excursions, she had begun dating Konnor.
Like her, Konnor had been raised in the city. He had
gone to a small community college and studied web design. In the
small company they worked for, he too had slowly worked his way to
finally becoming a trusted employee. He too stayed flexible and did
what was asked of him by his employer.
Shortly after the troubles began, for that’s what
Konnor called them, he had asked her to move in with him. She
agreed. It seemed like the thing to do. Safety in numbers, even
though their number was only two, appeared to be reasonable. After
all, at the time, no one knew how long the troubles would last.
And, as she had learned from working for the doomsday
prep company, after watching their videos, after spending time at
the campouts, she knew two people in an emergency could do twice as
much as one in the sense that the work could be split and parceled
out. The business owner had lectured all of them on the
benefits.
The interior of the city wasn’t an ideal place for
either of them, but when the store closed its doors, the owner had
tossed them the keys and told them to help themselves. They had
moved into the basement. It wasn’t an ideal setup, but the
concealed rooms served their purpose and prevented them from being
discovered when the roundups began.
Neither of them had anticipated that. Not even in
their worst nightmares, and they had never shared a bad nightmare,
so far.
When the city emptied itself of every last human
being, it was Caitrin’s idea to get them out of the dark basement
and moved into an empty house miles away in the suburbs. It took
both of them three days to transport every last thing they could
think of to the house. It was a job, even using two bicycles.
Occasionally, they had to avoid a diesel truck
huffing and puffing around the city, but the noise the huge
military vehicles created made it easy to stay out of their way. As
the months went on, the patrols occurred less and less. It was as
though every last vestige of humanity had been uprooted and sent
packing. To where, they didn’t know.
Nor did they care to.
Caitrin missed her family, such as it had been. In
truth, she missed her father. He had written off her mother when
she wouldn’t stop drinking. When she was twelve or thirteen, she
overheard the ultimatum he gave to her mother. As with all of them
before, it too went ignored. A few months after that, he had packed
up and left, leaving Caitrin alone with her alcoholic mother.
Her father maintained sporadic contact for a while,
until she had gotten a notice that he had passed away. When her
mother died shortly after, Caitrin was the only person at her
funeral.
That was probably a part of the reason she had so
quickly moved in with Konnor. She knew she didn’t want to be alone
any longer, especially given what was happening all around her.
So far, Caitrin had been happy with her partnership
with Konnor. Like any beginning relationship, there were bumps in
the road, but overall, it seemed to her as though it had been a
good arrangement for both of them. They had quickly moved into the
traditional male-female roles of provider and housekeeper. She
didn’t mind, given the circumstances, even though she knew she was
more than capable of also doing the providing.
When Konnor finally realized he needed help, he
asked, and she threw herself into the task to the best of her
abilities. She felt he had to know that as she depended on him,
Konnor could depend on her.
Many days they came home exhausted from their efforts
to obtain food, water and everything else they needed to survive.
They would fall into bed together, too tired to make love, and too
tired even for shared conversation about the day’s events.
The strict daily routines they forced upon themselves
sapped all of their energies. Often they’d end up in each other’s
arms, crying themselves to sleep.