Alone

by Jason Thornton

shopping, but had really given up hope of finding anyone. I was searching the North End of town and had stopped to post a sign. As always, Java was with me and got out of the car to explore when I stopped.

  After I posted the sign I was walking back to the car when Java growled and the hair on his back stood up. It was his low deep growl and a very rare occurrence, indicating that something was truly bothering him. He was looking at something behind me, and I turned to see four large dogs advancing menacingly from about a half block away. Their heads were down and their ears were flat.

  I pulled the pistol from my side and fired towards the dogs, high over their heads. At the sound of the blast they stopped advancing. I fired another round and they turned and fled.

  Month 2

  I had explored nearly all of the area and hadn’t found anyone. It seemed like every where I went, I found my signs and that was it.

  The lawns were browning and overgrown with weeds. The animals seemed to be more numerous without the intervention traffic. Badgers, foxes and coyotes were also venturing into the outskirt of the city.

  I decided to take advantage of my “World is Mine” attitude. I didn’t know what had happened to all of the people in the world or if they would one day return. If they did, I decided that I should be in a better position in life, than when they disappeared.

  The first thing I did was return to Wal-Mart and pick up a newspaper and several real estate magazines. I wanted to remain in the same area of town, but in a larger home. Unfortunately, the magazines didn’t provide address, so I simply began driving the neighborhood and stopping at each of the home for sale signs.

  Eventually I found a moderately sized home, with 2 car garage and large fenced yard, in a desirable neighborhood. It was unoccupied, meaning that I wouldn’t have to displace a family, if they ever returned, or have to leave myself. It was also near a flowing canal, which was convenient since I no longer had the luxury of running water.

  After finding the home, I spent the next week making trips to the realtor office, title companies, city clerk office and other real estate functions. I eventually grasped the convoluted real estate process and transferred ownership of the home to myself.

  Unfortunately, the previous owners of the home had requested a price and I felt somewhat guilty that if they ever returned, the would have nothing for their home. This led me to take another action in the “World is Mine” concept. First I would have to acquire the selling price of the home, and then I would have to figure out how to deposit it.

  I began earning money by returning to the stores and simply taking money from the tills. I broke many of them, as they weren’t designed to be opened easily. To prevent complications, if people ever returned, I wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints.

  I was surprised that the amount collected compiled very quickly. In no time at all, I had the purchase price of the home. I didn’t stop, however, until I had collected an amount many time over what was needed. This was my world, and everything in it was mine after all. Of course, it was very possible I would die a very lonely millionaire.

  My next process was visiting banks. I filled out many deposit slips, limiting the amount I dropped at each branch of my bank to nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine dollars. I don’t know for sure if the amounts were small enough to avoid reporting them to the Federal Government, but I had to try. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison if the world’s population did return.

  I deposited as much money as I could in the bank and then packed the rest away in boxes.

  Month 3

  After completing the home buyers process, I took ownership of my new home. Not knowing the code to remove the realtor lock box, I simply changed the door lock. Again, I furnished the home as I saw fit.

  I brought in a large generator to power the appliances and outfitted it with a large fuel tank, enough to run for several days.

  I brought in a water pump, four hundred gallon tank and filters to provide water from the canal. After turning off the valve to the city water source, I had water running in the home.

  I outfitted the home with the latest electronics, a television, computer and stereo system in each room. The televisions each connected to a cable outlet, and the computers each networked through wireless router.

  I even went so far as to bring in towels, linens, silverware, small appliances, and every other item needed to make a home comfortable. If I had computed the cost of everything, I am sure I would have shocked myself. It was my world and I could afford to whatever I wanted.

  The pantry and a good portion of the garage were stocked with an immense amount of canned food and water.

  Finally, I return to my old home and retrieved my families clothes that they had been wearing when the disappeared. I also grabbed all of the mementos, photographs, and keepsakes we had acquired. In the new home, I neatly laid out my families articles on their beds and set the other items where I would be able to see them.

  I settled into a quiet life of watching movies, playing computer games and reading. I went out to get fuel for the generator and to find different things to eat that I hadn’t already stock piled.

  Winter

  Winter is a hard time for me, and I was more than happy to immerse myself into week long sessions of movies, books and video games. I really hate cold gray weather and was looking forward to an end of winter to chase away winter’s chill.

  April

  Spring arrived, but I really didn’t change my habits much. It’s still cold and muddy around here, and this year there happened to be more rain than normal.

  I was enjoying a very long and hot shower, part of my daily routine, when the shower head sputtered and the water quit flowing.

  I suspected that the pump may have gone out, as the lights were still on in the home, indicating that the generators were still working. Over the course of the winter I’d stockpiled several generators and pumps so that I could quickly replace them when they failed. In several minutes I could change the connections from the old pump, to the new one.

  I took my time getting dressed, grabbed my tool bag and headed outside. I could hear the generator running, but the pump was silent. It took me several minute to navigate to the canal where the pumps were kept.

  When I climbed the canal bank, I had a great shock. The canal was empty. No one had been around to change the complex setup of dams and gates that had allowed the canals to bring irrigation water throughout the valley and I hadn’t seen the need to mess with my only source of fresh running water.

  I would probably have to change the pump because it had run dry, but first I would have to find the source of my lost water.

  I loaded Java into the car, threw in a shovel for good measure, and we began driving up stream. Staying on the main roads, I tracked the canal lateral for several miles until I came to it’s source. Several times larger the lateral ditch I‘d been following, it served as the main canal for this region, bringing water many miles from the river. It was also empty. There was still a sluggish foot deep flow, but it was well below the gate stock that lead into my canal.

  With the main canal so low, I began to have a bad feeling about what it would take to fix the water supply to the canals. If the canal banks had failed or if major debris had clogged up the canal, it would require a major effort to fix. I would probably have to learn how to operate heavy machinery and figure out how to close off the main gate at the canal’s entrance to breach the flow for repairs. It was obvious that the shovel I loaded up would be totally useless.

  The canal companies maintained access roads along the banks and I began driving it. It was a long and slow drive along the overgrown dirt road. I drove for many miles and not once did I find the banks to have failed or debris to have piled up on bridge pilings. I continued to follow the access road and canal as they entered the city and made a winding course towards it’s source, a thirty to forty foot high diversion dam on the main river. As I followed the canal, it’s constructio
n changed from earthen berm to a cement walled watercourse. Knowing that it remained like this the rest of the way to the dams, it couldn’t picture a failure of the canal’s berm.

  I was making decent speed on my way to the canal’s source, having entered and nearly passed through the southern edge of the city. As I passed underneath the Broadway Avenue bridge, an impossible spectacle filled my vision. I stopped in absolute awe.

  I saw a great miles wide wash-out of what had once been the eastern section of town. Many of the nearby homes along the city’s flat second bench were undamaged, but the damaged quickly escalated the nearer they were to the river. As far as I could see, there were mounds of high water flotsam, bogs of mud and huge expanses of sheer stripped earth.

  I marveled for a long time. The only cue that what I saw was once the city, was the muddy strip of river running threw the center of the swath of destruction. The river that bore the same name as the city was all that remained. Looking west, one could see the destruction carried on for a long distance. Looking east, where the river flowed out of the mountains, there was stripped earth and bare basalt rock outcropping running into the flanks of the hill sides. Huge round boulders formed immense gravel bars around river bends, gigantic formations of smaller sand bars. Not one of the many bridges that spanned the rivers and connected the city