In the pantry was half of a fifty-pound bag of dog food and Milk Bone treats. That wasn’t much, but it was all that was there.
Canned goods. Microwave popcorn. Moose meat in the freezer. That was the biggest score – moose made for good, healthy eating. I expected that hunting laws went out the window with the demise of the government agents in Fairbanks. A moose could give us nine hundred pounds of meat. That would be enough for us, the dogs, and any neighbors we might find. I’d dust off my Marlin 45-70. With the snow machine, I would be able to haul the meat home, no matter how far away I shot the moose.
Using my trusty bolt cutters, I cut the lock from their shed. I was rewarded with three five-gallon cans of gasoline. They also had a quad with a blade. That could come in handy and would be faster than the tractor. Then again, how much snow would I really need to move? I didn’t bother with the quad.
I put everything in the plastic sled. I had to coax Husky from her former home. She was curled up on their couch. She knew. She mourned. I was happy to have her join our family. Maybe she realized that, as she reluctantly got up and left her home. Maybe we would visit the home on occasion so Husky could get a smell of her former humans and remember them. Remembering was important for us all to retain our humanity.
I pulled the sled back to our house and put everything away.
We had acquired almost one hundred gallons of gasoline. I didn’t like the stacked gas cans in the garage. I took the sled and pulled it back to the house on the corner. I had emptied the barrel of gas, making the barrel easy to move. I made sure the cap was tight and put it on the sled, along with the good hand pump. The barrel was the best place for gasoline.
The light was beginning to fade. Time to pack in from today’s shopping. Tomorrow, I’d take the snow machine to the gas station on Chena Hot Springs Road and see what there was to see. It was only a mile away. The snow machine would make short work of that. I needed to find a real snow machine sleigh, or fabricate one. The plastic sled needed to be attached with a stiff bar so that the sled didn’t slam into the back of the snow machine when I stopped. If something broke, I wouldn’t be able to fix it. I would try, but that wasn’t my thing.
The world was there to help us make it through the harsh winter. We only had to ask in the right way.
Class in Session
Madison was being a trooper. The twins weren’t used to getting this much time with their mother. And they enjoyed it.
They were such good babies, it was inevitable that they would become good toddlers. From a dad’s perspective, of course they were perfect. We understood that their attention span was ten to fifteen minutes. So we had to shape the classes for ten-minute blocks.
Madison accepted this new challenge as an academic would. She prepared lesson plans on topics with desired results. I thought the class schedule was humorous, but wouldn’t laugh in front of the twins. I didn’t want to jade their attitudes toward their new lives.
Topics were things like music appreciation, yoga, potty-training, drawing/coloring, dealing with the cold, Russian language, and so much more. Russian. I’d have to brush off my Cold War language skills if I was to participate or at least help reinforce the lessons. The classes were separated by play time, nap time, dog walks, and meals. She even worked in flexibility in case we needed to take the twins somewhere. (Another short road trip? But not to town.) She was a professional when it came to this.
I got to teach some of the classes. Cold weather was to be mine. I’d start with getting ready to go outside – what clothes were proper; how did you put them on; what if you don’t have your snowsuit? We had classes for weeks. My classes would always get to end with playing outside.
And at the end of each day, we’d review as a family where we were, what we had accomplished, what we were going to do tomorrow.
It was important to have a plan. Even a loose one was better than no plan.
The twins were now in class. The absolute worst class ever was the potty-training. Since it was a little cold inside, as soon as their bare bottoms were exposed, they tightened up. Sitting on a cold training seat wasn’t going to do it. So we would put the seats in front of the pellet stove and training would take place after everything was warm. It was miserable. Can’t we just get flogged instead?
We kept pressing forward. Music appreciation was my favorite. We used my phone with 10 GB of music and a Bluetooth speaker. Music was the great equalizer. No matter what else was going on, if we could listen to music, things would be better. That is what we wanted to teach the twins. Music, meditation, yoga, dance. Everything that goes with being grounded as a human being. We all needed more of that. I think preparing for these classes and teaching them helped Madison to turn the corner very quickly in embracing our new lives. It helped me immensely. I was pragmatic, but not well-grounded.
My wife seemed happy, even though there was sadness when she thought about the magnitude of loss. It was so much more than just our loss, but we were the ones left to feel it. We had to remember. We had to honor the memory of our friends.
The Gas Station on Chena Hot Springs Road
My next scavenge attempt was to the gas station. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been cleaned out. A few things were missing, but it looked mostly intact. Maybe people thought that others had ransacked it so they left it alone. The expensive liquor was gone – maybe the employees had taken that on their way out. I didn’t want or need the booze, but the high proof alcohol could be used in the engines as a last resort. I wondered what burned best – vodka or whiskey?
We had a great deal that was much higher on our list of priorities, like more diapers. And there they were!
I took all they had and checked the small storeroom in the back, where they had two full cases. It was the best find of all time. Especially since the potty-training with the twins was not progressing as we had hoped. Fine. It wasn’t progressing at all and it was upsetting everyone. Even the dogs were miserable during the so-called training.
All kinds of snacks were available. I think this would be a multi-trip excursion. I needed to take everything they had, including toiletries. If needs be, we could provide this to the neighbors, should we run across any. With that same logic, however, we could leave it here so people like me could help themselves.
Who elected me the master keeper? I asked myself. Who was I to be the honest broker? My ego was getting in the way of common decency. I would take all the diapers. I would take some food. I would leave everything else. It wasn’t mine to hoard.
The most significant find was behind the counter – the key to the underground gasoline storage tanks. Thousands of gallons of three different grades of fuel were at my fingerprints. My greed rushed back to the front. How much could I take back to the house?
First, how could I get it out of there? Hand pump. Garden hose. Duct tape. It would be time-consuming, but time was one thing we seemed to have plenty of. Daylight was at a premium, but this was worth running the generator for. With nearly unlimited gas, if I could find a big enough generator, I could power our whole house. We could do laundry! We could flush the toilets! We could have a great deal of our old lives back, if only for brief periods of time. How long would it be before the gasoline would go bad? I didn’t know, but knew it would last through the winter. I could figure a way to take as much as I possibly could – maybe draining a neighbor’s five-hundred-gallon fuel oil tank and filling it with gasoline. Only two of our neighbors had underground tanks.
That would work.
That was the plan. If everything turned out according to the plan, then our quality of life would vastly improve.
No One’s Coming
We went about our routine through the first week. Then the second and the third.
If we had radiation sickness, we would have seen signs of it by now. It looked like we weren’t going to die right away.
We didn’t see any more contrails. We didn’t hear any other airplanes. The last vehicle to drive by was in the convoy th
at passed weeks ago.
I dutifully kept the road in our neighborhood clear. We even shoveled a path into the forest so the dogs could have an expanded walk area.
Besides frequent trips to the gas station, I didn’t venture out very far. If the snow machine broke down, I’d have to walk back to the house. The snow was too deep for casual walking and I still had not been able to find a sled built to be towed behind a snow machine. But then again, I had only looked around our immediate neighborhood.
The dogs that weren’t far away hadn’t barked since just after the event. I made a quick trip to that house to find that no one was home. The dogs were all gone. I’m glad I didn’t find dead dogs. I should have checked earlier, but forgot about them when they hadn’t barked. Their owner must have packed them up and joined the convoy or drove himself out early after the crisis. We had a great deal of time to think, yet things like this were easily forgotten. The focus I had for my family was all-consuming. Every fiber of my being was focused on providing in an environment that I was unfamiliar with. Maybe that discomfort I felt was fear. Real fear. If I failed, we’d all die. I wondered when help would come. I needed help.
Even with the threat of radiation, it seemed odd that the government had not made some attempt to contact survivors. That’s what we were. That’s what we would be. We would survive, with or without government help. In my mind, I drafted a very sternly worded letter to the governor and the President expressing my dismay at being left for dead. As a Marine, it was galling to think of being left behind. As a pragmatist, I expected that there were limited resources and competing priorities.
Alaskans were probably best suited to help themselves and endure. If I was in charge, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to send assets to the interior if the big cities needed help. City people weren’t able to have their own heat sources and private utilities. They would perish in droves without help from the outside. We never liked the confines of the city, so we lived where it was best for us.
And that saved our lives, for the time being anyway, while casting us into an unknown, harsh world.
Since outsiders were nowhere to be seen, the Intelligence Officer in me locked onto the need for competing priorities. If Fairbanks was the only place that had an accident, then we would see safety-suited responders. Maybe this was an attack, one of many, and there were no responders available.
We thought our world had changed completely. What if we were right and the change was forever?
A Cow and Her Calf
As part of our daily routine, I took the dogs around our neighborhood, making sure they got plenty of exercise. It was cold and dark and I wanted to wear them out while they were outside, so there was less chaos in the house. I owed my wife that much and, selfishly, I wanted peace for my own sanity.
I wore a AAA-battery powered head lamp. Between our stock and what was available from the gas station, we probably had years’ worth of batteries. It was said that they had a ten-year shelf life. I hoped I never found out the truth of that claim. In the meantime, I was happy that I had a good headlamp to shine the light to keep the dogs out of trouble.
It started when both dogs started barking and ran ahead along the path around our neighborhood. I took a few steps after them, shining my flashlight to see why they were excited. The eyes of a small moose reflected in the distance.
A calf. That meant its mother was nearby. The golden rule is never get between a mother and her baby. That was doubly true in the wild. I started running and yelled for the dogs to come back. I ran out of air in about ten steps. I could either run or yell, but not both. I stopped, took a deep breath, and in my loudest Marine Corps voice, I called for Phyllis. She was trained to come on command, although sometimes it took the big voice.
She turned away from the calf and started coming. I yelled again. Husky had jumped into the snow and was now confused between chasing after the calf or following her Alpha back to her new family. While she stood there, deciding what to do, the cow appeared, none too pleased with the appearance of the dogs. I started running again, which was the wrong thing to do.
She wasn’t afraid of any of us, neither the dogs nor me, and once I started running, Phyllis turned and headed back toward the big creatures. She didn’t like moose, seeing them often from the comfort of our home. Her hackles go up and she gives the intruders her best growling bark. She started barking again as the cow ran toward them. Husky started barking. I tried to yell, but had no air left.
Finally, the dogs realized the predicament they’d put themselves in. As the cow barreled down on them, I shouted at it, but it wasn’t fazed. The dogs danced out of the way as the cow tried to run them down.
Phyllis had her tail tucked tightly between her legs as the cow continued past and into the deep snow.
She slowed as she jogged after her calf.
My head swam. I dropped to a knee to try and get my breath back. My glasses fogged as I breathed quick shallow breaths, my mouth inside my coat. Breathing cold air doesn’t help an asthmatic in distress.
Finally, my head cleared. The dogs barked at the trees into which the moose disappeared.
“Come on!” I yelled and the two happily jogged along our walking trail. “You two are going to be the death of me,” I said as I followed the dogs back toward our home.
The Dog Musher III
It was a clear day and I was doing what I always seemed to be doing, taking the dogs for a stroll around our neighborhood, when I heard a hearty “Ha” from up the road. I ran forward a few steps, then slowed to a fast walk. There was no running for me because I liked breathing.
My asthma would be a problem if I couldn’t find replacement medications. It already was a problem, but at least not a debilitating one.
A musher and his dog team were headed this way. They moved along at a healthy clip and would be here in just a couple minutes.
I took the dogs to the house on the corner and put them inside, wedging the door closed behind me. I didn’t want my dogs to be a distraction and maybe get into a fight with the sled dogs. Our pit bull would probably wreak havoc. Phyllis needed to be kept apart from the sled team. Husky would probably join them and run off.
I waited by the side of the road and waved as the Dog Musher approached. I thought of it as waving, but I was actually jumping up and down, doing things as if I was trying to call in a passing jetliner.
“Whoa. Whoa!” The dogs angled to a stop and the Dog Musher jammed his snow hook in. We both took off our right gloves as we approached.
“I’m Chuck. I have to say that you’re the first person I’ve seen since a convoy passed almost three weeks ago.” We put our gloves back on after shaking hands. Although it had warmed up, it was still a brisk fifteen degrees below zero.
“Yeah. They were from up by me. My neighbor was one of them. Do you know anything about them?”
“Radiation. I recommended that they bypass the city using Goldstream. Things are bad in there.” I watched him nod. “Don’t take your dogs any further down the road. You don’t want to expose them. I’m not sure how far the contamination goes, but it can’t be too far from here. There doesn’t seem to be anyone left between here and the city.”
“Radiation? What the hell is going on?” he asked.
“At one point in my life, I would have known,” I lamented. “Not now. All I know is what I can see. The city is gone, and since the second day, we haven’t seen any airplanes. Since the convoy, we haven’t seen any vehicles. My wife, me, and our twins are the only ones around here. What about you?”
The Dog Musher looked at the early morning sky. He was probably answering in his head. Dog mushers tended to be very private people. We had gone to a number of Yukon Quest events and the dog mushers looked unhappy standing in a crowd of people. They spent so much time alone with their dogs that I wouldn’t expect anything else. I knew the Dog Musher had been alone these past three weeks.
“There’s no one left in Two Rivers either. Those who didn’t work in the ci
ty left in that convoy. You wouldn’t have any beef jerky, would you?”
An odd question, but not surprising. There were certain universals for those who lived in the wilderness.
“As a matter of fact …” I always kept one or two in my pocket when I was away from home. The calories could be lifesaving. I also had a Coast Guard nutrition pack, twenty-two hundred calories. It tasted like sawdust, but like the jerky, the calories were a survival tool. I handed a sealed Jacks Links beef steak to him. I had taken the last of the jerky from the gas station a few days ago. He removed his glove again and opened it up. He closed his eyes as he took small bites, enjoying the jerky to the utmost.
It was almost embarrassing as the time dragged on. His dog team was yapping and getting restless. When he finished the jerky, he seemed a changed man.
“I ran out of jerky two and a half weeks ago. At least I have enough dog food.” The Dog Musher smiled. In the good tradition of Alaska, I didn’t even ask his name. If he volunteered it, that was one thing. To me, he’d be the Dog Musher. I invited him to the house, but he declined. He needed to keep the dogs running as they were just warmed up. I asked him to stop by in the future, pointing down the road to where our house was. He replied that he would try. Perfect noncommittal response from what I expected was the typical dog musher. He was the only one I had ever talked with.
Endure (End Times Alaska Book 1) Page 5