I calmed down after a few minutes, and so I walked over and picked up the nearest receiver. Static. Scratchy static. Then it cleared for a second and, it was probably just my nerves, but I could swear I heard someone there. Maybe not heard, I don’t know if I heard anything at all. It was more like I knew someone was there: You know what I mean? Like when you get a crank call and the person doesn’t speak, but you know that they are there anyway? Like that. Exactly like that. But, then it went right back to scratchy static, and I felt stupid for even thinking it at all. Who could’ve been there? Who would know I was there? It was just nerves. I know it was.
After I got everything back to this cave, I organized it. I’ve brought back a lot of stuff. Meat, vegetables, bottled water. I have to work my way over to some of the other aisles. I need rice, pasta, maybe some instant potatoes. I started on that today. I got part way through the end cap, but the whole roof seems to be resting on that part of the aisle stands, and it’s the same way on the other end. That’s when I found the bodies. It was so bad I couldn’t tell what they had been.
I thought it might be better to go through the aisle dividers. They are solid steel though, and I can’t see any way through them, short of a set of torches. Maybe I could find a set, but it seems as though it would be easier to start from the checkouts and work my way through the piles of stuff until I hit another aisle. I have no idea what each aisle is though.
Yeah, I’ve been there about a thousand times, and I can tell you where the beer and chips would be, paper plates, disposable forks and spoons, but that’s about it. I’d hate to spend five hours or more of digging just to reach the toilet paper and sanitary napkins in aisle four. That would be my luck. But there’s nothing to do for it except to do it. Or go find a set of torches.
I know I need carbs. Canned meat and vegetables are good, but very low carbs. It's funny, but I need fat, things I’m burning heavy and need to replace. I have nearly constant exercise. My pants are hanging off me. Who knew it could be this easy to lose weight?
I’d also like to find supplements, a good selection of first aid stuff, vitamins, band aids, disinfectant, things like that. I guess that’s my next little bit of time mapped out for me.
Other things I’m looking for: A wind up watch (Should work right?).
An old car or truck without an electronic brain (My hope is that if it’s just a simple distributor/spark arrangement with a carburetor, I should be able to get it to work). I think electronics are shot. They don’t work, that’s for sure. But I could be wrong. Maybe they will in time.
A battery powered T.V. ; maybe there will be a station on. I know it’s a long shot. Everything is digital. Do they even make battery powered digital televisions?
A C.B. or Ham radio. That would let me listen to the state, maybe the world. I should be able to reach someone.
And last, I’m going to check every phone I come across… just in case.
It's early, but I’m tired. I wish I weren’t alone.
Kate ~ March 10th
It's late at night. What a difference a day makes. Mike is his name.
We went back today to see if he had been back to the store. I went there first. I hoped to catch him there early, but he wasn't there. Tom dragged his feet. Like he didn't want to go at all. He didn't say that but, it seemed that way to me. Maybe things were just getting to me. Tom's been putting more and more pressure on me to be with him. Lydia's turning up the I hate you attitude. Maybe it's just me, or just was me. Either way, by the time we did get there this morning, the snow was melting, and there was no real way to tell if he had been there at all. I thought about what I had decided yesterday, just going without Tom, but I waited.
We went back to the river and began looking along the banks on that side. I couldn't figure where he had gone.
I backtracked to the store, thinking I must have missed him, missed something anyway. On the way back, I saw him crossing the end of Public Square. I practically screamed out loud, but he didn't hear me. By the time we got there, he was gone.
The day just started to slide away. I began to think I wouldn't find him at all. It depressed me. It was Bob who smelled smoke. All we had to do was follow the smoke, and we found him. Bob found him. How do you follow smoke? Have you ever tried? I mean, if I could see it in the air, sure. But I couldn't. Bob knew how to follow it anyway.
I guess there's a lot more that I could say about today but I'm not going to say it now. I'll say this though, I want him. I want him, and Tom knows it. It's like Tom knew it would turn out this way. Jan knew how I felt, knew how it would be. She told me that today. She said she could see it in me last night. Like this is the way it's supposed to be.
Lydia knows as well. She's happy about it. I saw her face when she figured it out. She looked from me to Mike and back. Then she did it again, this puzzled look on her face, and then she smiled, looked at me and nodded. I think she's just biding her time now. I guess I am too.
Michael Collins. Mike. I think I already wrote his name. I don't know what happens next. How to make it happen. I'm no good at that sort of thing. I've never done it. And my little notebook here, my only friend through all of this, along with Jan, can't help me with that. I can write it here, look at it, but that doesn't realize it.
I still have my father's gun. That has also been my friend the last few days. But it can't help me either, unless I shoot Tom. I guess that's not funny. Tom never liked my gun. It bothered him. Not ladylike? Something like that I think. Mike wasn't shocked at all except to say he should have already gotten one and didn't. It didn't intimidate him in other words.
Tomorrow is March eleventh. I would have started a new life tomorrow. Maybe one I wasn't meant to start. I feel like... I don't know. To be honest, I feel like I'm just a dumb girl pretending to be a woman, a grown up. Does nineteen know everything? No. I don't want to pretend at this. I want to get things right. I don't know what's next. But, does anybody?
Mike ~ March 12th
Things have been really crazy the last few days. I’m not alone anymore. It’s funny because that’s the last thing I wrote, and two days later it’s like an answer to prayer. It happened later on the evening of the tenth. Oh, and it was the tenth. Tom has an old fashioned wind up watch. So does Kate. And, they’ve both kept track. Kept them wound up too. But, in another way it isn’t the twelfth today at all because the days and nights, or the rotation of the Earth that makes the days and nights, isn’t the same at all. It’s much slower. It’s taking about twenty eight hours to cycle through. But last week, it was up to almost thirty six hours. And none of us knows why, except it slowed up and it’s now starting to get back to a normal length of time to cycle through a night and day. So, it’s not really the twelfth, and they’ve just been keeping track of the days as they pass, same as I’ve been; except for the day I thought I’d lost.
Anyway, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the start; I was organizing stuff. There is a warehouse down closer to the river full of wooden pallets. I went down there a few days ago, box upon box upon box. I have no idea what’s in them. I figured sometime I’d just open a few up and see. Maybe it would be something useful, maybe not. What’s useful now is radically different from what used to be useful.
Anyway I noticed all of the pallets. Pallets everywhere. Some full, some piled high with stuff, but a lot of empty ones; so I went back down with the sled and made a few trips back and forth to the cave so I could stack the canned stuff on them, so they’re not sitting on the floor. I was putting them in the back of the cave. I was so wrapped up in stacking the canned goods that I never even heard them until Kate cleared her throat, I guess to get my attention.
It scared me bad. I thought about the gun I had never bothered to go and get, and a lot of other bad stuff. It went through my mind so fast. The first thing in my head was, the wolves got me! They sneaked up on me! Stupid, I know. I knew it was a person, but my head still insisted wolf. It didn’t last though, and my reac
tion scared them too. Lydia said I had a can of peas in my hand, and she was sure I was going to bean Kate in the head with them. For some reason she found it funny that I would bean someone in the head with a can of peas, and she giggled. I just felt embarrassed, and glad I didn’t throw the can. I set it down on the stack and took a few deep breaths instead. We all ended up laughing our asses off. Nervous energy. Release, I guess, or something like that. And then, we all began to talk at once.
They had known about me for two days. They had seen that someone was going in and out of the supermarket. They were going out to one on the north side, the other side of the river from where I was. For some reason I hadn’t thought to cross the river. They had already been on the other side to begin with, and even though the main bridges seemed too damaged to be trusted, the railroad trestle seemed solid and unharmed to them, so they crossed over on that to get to my side. I was impressed; that is an open trestle, a long way down to the water.
Because the snow on the asphalt was melting, they couldn’t figure out where I was going when I left the market. They were actually going back across the river when Kate happened to look over her shoulder toward the opposite bank and happened to catch me going into the cave. She had thought to yell, but over the sound of the rapids, she couldn’t get anyone around her to hear her, let alone me.
Once they were across, she talked to Tom; Tom pretty much was their leader (I don’t know if I like that. Do we need leaders?), and they decided to come back the next day, which was two days ago, and see if they could find me. They didn’t know about the cave. Kate had thought I was just climbing the rock above the river. They searched along the back of the Public Square, or what’s left of it, and down towards Coffeen Street. If they had come back down one more road towards the river, they would’ve found the cave then. Maybe they hadn’t realized there was a road there at all; so they just followed the path of the river, thinking I was living in one of the fallen down buildings along the banks.
They had seen me from quite a way off, crossing the square as they were heading back. It looked to them like I was heading for the north side, maybe crossing one of the bridges, but by the time they got there, I was gone. They even began to wonder if I had seen them and hidden on purpose, maybe out of fear. They had searched for awhile and then, just when they had been about to quit for the day, Bob realized that he could smell smoke. As soon as he said it, everyone else realized they had smelled it all along as well. After that, it didn’t take long to find the cave. They just followed the smell of smoke down to the lower road and found the cave.
So that was that, and now we are six. Tom, Thomas Evans, he was their leader as I said. He’s an older guy, in his late thirties. Used to be a truck driver.
Kate Loi (Don’t call her Honey. I don’t know why.). She’s nineteen and was visiting her grandparents. She was from Syracuse. I thought she was with Tom. I think Tom thought so also.
Bob and Jan Dove. Bob is a little older than Jan, in his fifties, and he said he is a mechanic. Jan does, did, data processing.
And Lydia. Her real name is Marcia George. Lydia is her middle name. She said she always liked Lydia better. She was still in school, local college. I guess she's the same age as Kate, nineteen.
And last but not least, me.
We spent all of yesterday getting their stuff from across the river and bringing it over to the cave. I thought that was weird. Why go get stuff anyway? You can have anything you want. It’s all free. But in another way I guess I understand. We’ve lost everything. We want to hang on to what little we still do have. We’re all going to stay here. And we talked about what’s next, and what we know about what happened.
I said I had been kind of planning to leave once spring came. Head south or west, somewhere where I wouldn’t have to worry about winter. Tom said it may be that where it would normally have been warmer, it won’t be any more. He said it depends on what happened. None of us really know. He thinks it might be smarter to stay here. We could stock up this cave. We could even hunt. He said he’s sure there are deer around. Bob agreed with him, at least on there being deer around.
I told them about the footprints by my house. They said they had seen footprints as well. They had gone out Coffeen Street and seen the tracks of three or four people going in and out of a small store there. They had called out, but no one had answered. They had had second thoughts about calling out too. They weren’t armed. What if someone shot at them?
That brought my original thoughts to mind about a weapon. I mentioned the sporting goods store, and we all agreed to make a trip out there soon.
We talked about cars and trucks and agreed it would be good to get an SUV or truck of some kind if we could find one that will run, as they might be the only vehicles that could drive around as bad as things are torn up. They have also tried starting a few vehicles with no success. I mentioned my electronic brain idea, and Tom said he had thought of the same thing. Turns out he’s also a mechanic. I guess I can see why they chose him to lead. I feel kind of useless around the guy though. We agreed to try finding an older vehicle. Tom thinks our chances of getting one running are good. We’ll see what we can find.
The first night together was good. The best I’ve slept since this thing started. Just not being alone, you know?
I guess I’ll end on that note...
CHAPTER THREE
To Live Again
~March 12th~
Mike closed his notebook and stuffed it down into his pack. Looking around the cave, he was surprised how different a few more warm bodies could make it. It didn’t seem as cold, so oppressively quiet, so echo filled with any kind of sharp noise, so… so different. But different in a good way.
Kate had been watching from across the cave where she had made a little area for herself. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt while Mike was writing, but now that he seemed finished, she walked over to him.
“This was really nice of you,” she said as she walked up. “We were staying in that old school building. None too stable. Last night was the best sleep I’ve had in awhile.”
“Funny,” Mike replied, “I was thinking the same thing. For me it was just having others around. People.”
Kate smiled. She’s beautiful, Mike thought. He wasn’t normally a fan of tattoos, but she had some sort of tribal stuff that snaked up under her shirt sleeve. Just a hint of ink where her shirt didn’t quite meet the top of her Levi's made him wonder just exactly where the ink ended. She caught his eyes and smiled again.
“Mind?” She asked, gesturing at the ground beside him.
“No, sit down,” Mike smiled. “I have no manners at all. How
long does it take to devolve? I guess a little over a week.” He smiled again.
She laughed as she sat down. The silence stretched out for a few seconds, each of them looking around the cave as the others talked or settled in for the night. They both spoke at once.
“Sorry,” Kate said and laughed.
“No, really. It’s that devolved thing again. Go ahead.”
She fixed her eyes on him. “I was just wondering what you were planning on doing. I mean, have you thought about leaving? I know you spoke a little bit about it yesterday when you were talking to Tom. But I could see you weren’t quite ready to fall in with the Tomites yet.” She lowered her voice for the last.
Mike looked at her levelly. “Yeah… I guess it does show. I don’t dislike him. I don’t even disagree with what he said. I just… I just don’t know. We don’t click, know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do.” Kate answered. “It’s the same with me. I can think. I don’t need someone to do it for me.”
“Exactly,” Mike agreed. “But it’s a little more too, like Alpha male shit. This is my tribe. Me chief.” Mike finished in a near whisper.
Kate giggled but quickly clamped a hand over her mouth while nodding her head in agreement.
Mike continued. “I’m not really an Alpha male type of guy,
but I’
m not a dumb sheep either.”
“Me either,” Kate agreed, her giggles under control. She fixed him with her serious eyes once more. “So what will you do?”
“Probably like I said, like everyone else said, leave. But I don’t see why the south or the west wouldn’t be a good direction to go in. We’ll all see, I guess, as spring comes on, or as…”
“What?” Kate asked.
“Well, as this goes on. It might not be over yet. There might be more changes ahead. The days have slowed down, almost seemed to stop for awhile last week when the sun just hung in the sky. Maybe what was supposed to happen happened? Now the sun’s rising in the wrong place in the sky. Did the Earth's spin reverse, that fast? Weren’t some people claiming we’d fall off the Earth? Something like that?” He took a deep breath.
“I guess I’m just waiting to see how this goes. What happens next? But in a few months, not far into spring, I’ll probably leave. Whatever has happened, is happening, should be over by then,” He smiled. “I guess that was a long drawn out answer.”
“No. Not really,” Kate answered. “I’m in the same place. I’m not sure what happened either, or if it’s all over. But, I don’t think I want to live in a cave forever either.” She looked around, “But who knows; maybe it’s come back to that?”
Mike shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyway,” she continued. “I… I just wanted you to know I’m seeing it the same way as you. I mean… I mean I want to be on your side of it.” She locked her eyes on his and gave a firm nod, then flipped her short, black hair out of her eyes. She firmed her mouth, set her jaw and spoke once more. “I'd like to go get my things, Move over here with you.” Her dark eyes settled on his own. “Be with you... I mean be together.”
“Quick,” Mike said.
She nodded and smiled, “Maybe it’s a quick world now. I’m taking you at face value, I guess. You don’t have a little harem locked away farther back in these caves, do you?” She smiled.
The Rising of the Dead Page 5