It was Jamie.
“Jamie!”
“You look like shit,” she said, a smile on her exhausted face. “But I’m glad to see you’ve managed to survive without my presence.”
Relief washed over him. He had to keep himself from laughing at her remarks. He was only partially successful, and as the slightest of chuckles came out of him, the pain in his abdomen grew to completely ridiculous proportions, spreading everywhere and making it feel as if his entire body were on fire.
“You don’t look too hot yourself,” he said.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” said Judy, her face appearing above him next to Jamie’s. “She gave me quite a scare coming at me in that weird little vehicle of hers, but I’ve never been more glad to see someone in my life.”
“What happened?” said Matt. “Where were you?”
“Well,” said Jamie. “Let’s just say that I took a little unplanned detour.”
“A detour? You were just supposed to wait for us.”
“Well, unexpected events happened. It’s a long story. I’ll have to tell you about it later.”
“I guess we could say the same,” said Matt. “But what’s the rush? Judy says I can’t leave this spot and I don’t have much say in the matter. I know I look like I’m doing great, but the truth is I can barely move.”
“Well, with two of us, we might be able to drag you back on some kind of improvised stretcher. Get you into some kind of structure. I imagine you’d prefer a bed to the ground.”
“A bed?” said Matt, the pain coming back over him. The idea of a bed sounded strange, as if after what he’d been through, he couldn’t even remember what a bed was.
25
Jamie
Several days had passed since they had dragged Matt back to the little shack that had served as a bedroom for Judy’s cousin before he’d been killed.
Matt hadn’t died. That alone seemed like a victory. They had done the best they could with his wound, keeping it clean, and making sure he was fed and hydrated. But that was about all they’d been able to do. The rest of it was really just leaving him alone, letting him sleep.
There’d been some hairy days and even hairier hours. But now it seemed as if the worst was over. It seemed that he’d get better. He’d even taken his first steps, even got out of the bed himself.
Of course, he hadn’t gotten far, had to quickly turn around, collapsing once again on the bed. It wasn’t like he was all better, but it seemed as if he’d get there eventually.
With Matt out of commission, there had been plenty of work for Judy and Jamie to do. They took turns sleeping in six-hour shifts. The rest of the time they were working, taking care of Matt, or sitting watch.
They worked themselves hard, making sure that the entrance to the property was disguised as best they could manage. They had eventually figured out that there was extra fencing that Judy’s cousin had stored away. What they’d done was simply extend the fence and remove the gate, making it look as if the fence had always been there.
They’d worked on disguising the driveway, but it wasn’t that hard, since there’d never really been that much of a driveway to begin with. It was really just a matter of kicking some dirt around.
It may not have seemed like much, but it seemed to have worked, because the last several days had been silent. There’d been no new visitors. No new enemies. There’d been nothing at all.
But that didn’t mean that they let their guard down. They kept good watches. They were careful. They were always armed and made sure that Matt always had a weapon within arm’s reach as well.
They made sure to patrol the property as best they could, making sure to check for tracks in the soft, dusty dirt, which would hopefully alert them to whether or not they were alone.
The property was large and they were still discussing how best to make it more secure. It was a somewhat confusing subject and the property wasn’t easy to manage. It wasn’t nearly as simple as a large, flat, rectangle of property. Instead, a deep, dry creek bed bisected the property, and there were all sorts of complications like cliffs, slight changes in elevation and a mass of juniper trees.
One strange thing was that the idea of ‘property’ was now almost meaningless. Jamie supposed that there might still be records in some basement in Santa Fe. Or, who knew, maybe those records had long since been converted to a digital format. And who knew whether the computers on whose hard drives those records were stored would ever turn on again.
So who really ‘owned’ anything? It seemed to be a matter of ‘possession is 100 percent of the law’ these days.
Whoever could take something would become the owner. Whoever could defend a piece of property retained its ownership.
Judy’s cousin had really, in a way, known what he was doing. It was almost as if he had expected something like this to happen, as if he had been, in a sense, a prepper for a very long time. He had stored plenty of food and the well would keep them from dying of thirst, or having to scavenge through the nearby area for water, exposing them to more risk than they needed.
There really was almost everything they needed. The small structures served as separate rooms. As they explored the structures and property further, the more Joe’s original setup seemed to make sense. It took a little getting used to, but he had applied a good deal of logic to everything.
There were too many bodies to bury individually, and burning them would have possibly brought unwanted attention with the smoke. So they buried them all together in a shallow grave.
Except for Joe’s body. Judy, understandably, wanted a proper burial for her cousin. She hadn’t been able to give one to her son, but this was the next best thing, in a sense. Some traditions were important to keep up even after the world had ended. Time permitting, of course.
In terms of gear and provisions, not only did they have access to what Joe had accumulated over the years, which on its own was quite substantial, but they had also quite accidentally added plenty to the stockpile.
There were, for instance, the vehicles, weapons, and other gear left over from the men and women who’d been here before, apparently fighting Joe for something.
There was also the homemade tank and everything it contained. They had initially thought that they might use the tank as a sort of lookout and defensive post on the property, but in the end, it hadn’t proved as practical as they might have liked, especially concerning its limited mobility.
It seemed that the tank would be better used as a sort of last resort should they be attacked. Overwhelmed and outgunned, they might retreat into the tank. It might become a defensive advantage, so long as they kept its significant weak points in mind. After all, Matt alone had managed to defeat it.
Jamie herself had brought quite a bit back from the laboratory. She had made her way up to the break room and taken everything she could find. She had raided the lab for anything that seemed remotely interesting and packed it into the strange electric vehicle that she’d driven back to Joe’s property.
They hadn’t yet returned to the laboratory. In a way, it was hidden enough from view that it seemed unlikely many more would stumble on it. They even briefly talked about potentially moving there, but in the end, it seemed as if it didn’t offer the same advantages that Joe’s property did. When Jamie had checked everything over, it seemed as if there wasn’t a well. Water was stored in giant cisterns, but there was no rain collection system, and the water must have been trucked in from Santa Fe, back when society was up and running.
It also seemed like it was a risk, returning to the lab. Who knew who might come by, and what they might want. Various factions of the government could still be running, albeit in isolation, and in some time, they might want to reclaim their laboratories. Jamie didn’t like the idea of being there if someone came looking for something. At least with Joe’s property, they had some type of legal claim to it, in a sense, and, perhaps more importantly, it wasn’t a secret, government-sponsored research fac
ility.
The days gradually become somewhat routine, and over time, Matt seemed to be getting better. He finally made it out of the little structure by himself, even managing to walk about 500 yards, before turning around. Soon enough, it seemed, he would be better. It was only a matter of time.
And in the meantime, they hadn’t been attacked. In fact, they hadn’t seen anyone, a fact that they were thankful for. The virus seemed to have done its dirty job and laid waste to huge swaths of the population.
But there were certainly survivors. There would be others immune to the virus. And, among them, there’d be those who had survived the violence of others. The survivors would be strong. They’d be hardened. They’d be ready, and they’d be violent themselves.
Others would come. There was no doubt in Jamie’s mind about that, no matter how quiet the days had been recently.
But she also knew that they’d be ready. She’d been through hell and now she was stronger than ever. She now knew what her mind and body were truly capable of. She knew that she could go for seemingly impossible lengths of time without sleep, and she knew that she could fight for far longer than she’d ever thought. She knew that, even in the worst of situations, no matter how grim reality appeared to be, there was always something to do, some action that she could take to at least improve her chances of survival. And sometimes, just the act of trying to do something banished the helplessness that so often reared its ugly head.
The days took on a certain rhythm. On days when Jamie’s sleep shift was during the night, she started the mornings early. She’d stop by Matt’s room to see how he was doing, and bring him some coffee and breakfast. He’d either be in a good mood and inclined to show off his newfound strength and mobility. Or if his wound was bothering him considerably, he might be grumpy, prone to short, snappy answers, in which case she headed right on out.
She’d spent time surveying the land, thinking to herself, coming up with plans for the future. One thing that weighed heavily on her mind was food. Judy’s cousin had stored plenty of food, enough for all three of them for several months, so long as they ate judiciously and were careful with their daily rations. But what would they do after that? Scavenging seemed like the most obvious solution, but it also didn’t seem like a good long-term solution. After all, eventually the food supplies in the surrounding areas would run out or spoil.
With such a huge swath of the population likely dead, there certainly would be many opportunities for scavenging. There’d be houses empty with supplies ready for the taking. But of course, each time they left their property, it seemed that they’d only be exposing themselves to more danger. And as far as Jamie could see, staying alive would become a matter of statistics, a matter of reducing known risk. There was no way to live without risk, there never had been, but there were ways to make it less likely to die. The principle way was to avoid doing the most dangerous things numerous times.
In the area where they were, it wasn’t like there were many opportunities for hunting. She’d seen no large animals and both Judy and Matt confirmed that if there were any deer at all to be seen in the area, then they were extremely rare. Certainly not enough to live off. Not enough to feed a single person for long.
The majority of the wildlife seemed to be birds, which, immune to the virus and ignorant of the plight of their human neighbors, chirped and flew happily around, cruising through the blue skies, headed from juniper tree to juniper tree, as family units formed, baby birds were born and fed, soon to begin their lives in the high desert.
At night, occasionally a coyote could be heard howling in the distance. Once or twice, it had sounded very close and had sent a chill up Jamie’s spine, as if she were hearing the ancient call of nature itself, as if the world was howling back at her, back at the humans who had somehow managed to destroy themselves and their civilization.
But it wasn’t the end for society or civilization. Humans were still alive. Judy, Jamie, and Matt among them. They’d rebuild somehow, at some time. Things couldn’t remain static for long. They’d also change. They’d always progress forward, no matter what.
Jamie was walking through the high desert, doing the round she did almost every day, following an imaginary path that traced a tight circle around the structures Joe had built.
Her mind was still on the subject of food and no matter how many times she ran ideas through her head, it seemed as if the only real solution was to have some type of domesticated animals.
But where would they get the animals? And what would they feed the animals with?
There might be cows somewhere nearby, but neither she, Judy, nor Matt knew where. And it wasn’t like there was the internet on which to look up the information.
If they ventured off the property in search of cows, and even if they did somehow manage to find cows that were still alive, what would they do with them? Maybe they could get a cow onto one of the larger pickup trucks. But what would they do with it once they got it back to the property? It wasn’t like there was grass where they were, and it wasn’t like they had bags of feed to give the cow.
Jamie remembered long ago reading the idea that in the future humans might get significant amounts of their protein from insects.
But how could they go about gathering and breeding insects? Merely collecting them and putting them in some box wasn’t going to be enough. Research was needed. Information was needed. Jamie was sure there were specific techniques and foods required for farming insects.
The fact that eating insects would have disgusted her in the past didn’t even cross her mind. Things like that didn’t matter so much when you always had the edge of hunger with you because of rationing, and when you knew you’d be desperate and starving in little more than half a year.
Suddenly, not that far away, Jamie spotted a rabbit. It looked like a fairly mature rabbit, judging by its size. She’d seen a few babies here and there.
The rabbit was cute and as a kid, she’d actually had a pet rabbit. So she felt a twang of guilt and regret when she noticed her thoughts turning to what method of cooking might make this wild rabbit the most delicious of all possible meals.
She settled on roasting. Roasted on a spit over a fire. Her mouth was already watering just thinking about it.
But so distracting were the thoughts of eating the rabbit, that when she finally did manage to get a shot off with the rifle she carried, she missed by what seemed like a mile. In reality, it was probably just a few feet. But still not close enough.
The rabbit dashed off, spooked by the noise.
She felt the disappointment welling up in her. But the rabbit’s escape sparked an idea.
What about farming rabbits?
She’d had a rabbit as a kid, and while she didn’t remember exactly what she’d done to take care of it, the idea at least seemed familiar.
She knew more or less what rabbits ate. Sure, she wouldn’t have access to the store-bought rabbit food she’d had as a kid, but she was sure that if a rabbit could manage to feed itself here in the high desert, then she could scavenge the same things and feed them to a rabbit in captivity.
Rabbits bred quickly and in not much time at all, they might have more rabbits than they knew what to do with. They’d be an excellent source of protein.
Sure, she’d read back in the day that there was such a thing as rabbit starvation. A hundred years ago or so, some explorers had tried subsisting on nothing but rabbit. Because rabbit meat was typically so high in protein and low in fat, the rabbit-only consumption would send the body into a state of protein poisoning. Protein was necessary for survival, but so was the addition of either fat or carbohydrates.
But those were wild rabbits, reasoned Jamie. Would rabbits raised in captivity and fed a lot have more fat than wild rabbits? Possibly. She seemed to remember her childhood rabbit being more than a little chunky.
And even if the captive rabbits turned out to be quite lean, there’d still be other food to eat. Jamie reasoned that they’d
only need to supplement their diet of rabbit with a little fat or carbohydrates to make it a reasonably sustaining diet. They could either ration the food they had now, or conduct the occasional raid to a neighboring housing development, hopefully now fully abandoned.
How long would it take to get the rabbit program up and running? She didn’t know, and wished once again that she had the internet at her disposal.
Well, either way, the first step was to catch a rabbit. That should be easy enough, she reasoned. A simple trap would do the trick.
Jamie had a smile on her face as she continued her walk around the property. It felt good to solve problems, to come up with solutions to things that were real. And she realized once again that her life before the virus had, in some ways, been an exercise in frustration. Sure, there had been problems to solve and obstacles to overcome, but they were always very abstract problems. For instance, paying a bill didn’t have the same satisfaction as figuring out how to feed yourself and your friends.
She was headed north at that moment, and the massive mountains in the distance climbed toward the sky, snow from the winter still covering their peaks. They were beautiful and she found herself smiling even more. It was shaping up to be a good day. Maybe they could do this after all. Matt would get better, eventually recovering, and things could only improve from there.
Then suddenly, she heard a sound.
It was the sound of a stick breaking.
Her head snapped around.
Then she saw him.
A young man. Couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Probably younger.
He was thin past the point of personal fastidiousness. Past the point of health.
If he wasn’t yet starving, he was getting dangerously close to it.
He was dirty and disheveled. There was dirt all over him. There was that dry New Mexican dirt in his hair, streaked onto his face
His hair wasn’t long, but it looked like a short haircut that had grown out strangely. It stuck up at all angles. His beard was patchy and growing at odd angles, the way a young man’s beard often does.
Last Pandemic (Book 3): Escape The Chaos Page 17