In the end, I chose two tents. A big, cushy camouflaged outfitter tent that would stay in the car when it wasn’t set up, and a smaller survival tent to put on a backpack when necessary.
And that, of course, led to backpacks. Two adult packs and one for Cori.
“You’ll need a sturdy pair of waterproof boots,” said Will.
“And some tough winter undergarments,” said Lee.
I bought some of each for the whole family.
“After shelter comes water,” said Lee. “We sell five-gallon jugs.”
“The jugs will be gone in a few weeks,” said Will, who was warming up to the idea of my zombie scenario now that it appeared I was actually going to buy this stuff. “You’d need to set up camp near a fresh water source, and get a purifier.”
He showed me a nifty portable filtration system.
“A stream is better than a lake,” Will said. “Find a spot with a lot of current and fill up the jug. Then you’ll want to boil it.”
“We’ve got pots and pans,” I said.
“Those will be fine sometimes,” said Will. “But in a pinch you’ll want a cooking kettle.”
Will sold me a portable steam kettle named Vesuvius.
“Now it’s time to get the guns,” said Will.
“The guns,” Lee agreed, speaking almost reverently.
I let them guide me through a complete description of all they carried and what they could do. Hand guns, rifles, shot guns…I had never been into guns, but could see why so many people went nutty for the things. Just taking seriously the idea of buying one, or ten, made me feel more in control of my life. We decided the ideal arsenal for the apocalypse was a sidearm you could keep on your person at all times, a semi-automatic you could use to defend your encampment from zombies and other unwanteds, and a shotgun to pick out birds and small game in the forest. Will also took the time to show me a crossbow.
“No matter how much ammo you buy, some day you’ll run out,” he said. “But with one of these and a river knife, the sticks on the forest floor become lethal weapons. And there’s no waiting period.”
“Shit, I forgot about the waiting period,” said Lee. “If the apocalypse is next week you’re screwed. Unless you can do a private party exchange, like at a gun show.”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Maybe we’ll need to find a gun show.”
“So why are you really buying all this stuff?” Will asked. “Are you just getting yourself geared up for the hell of it?”
“Totally,” I said. “I’ll take the crossbow. What’s next?”
Next was more hunting equipment. A bowie knife, a river knife, a machete, and a selection of snares and small traps, which thankfully came with instructions.
“Do you want me to ring some of this up so you can look at a total so far?” asked Will.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said.
As Will started putting together a price quotation for this ever-growing sale, Lee took me back to the camping section to discuss heating.
“Basically, you can choose propane or commercial fuel,” he said. “But getting enough to last a whole winter….”
“Show him the Truman Wood Burner!” Will called out from the other end of the store.
“Good call,” said Lee. He led me to a portable wood-burning stove set up at the end of the aisle.
“You mount the chimney right through the top of your tent,” he said, “and then fill it with logs and twigs and leaves…whatever dry timber you can round up. You can use it for cooking, for drying wet clothes, and it’s a great heat source.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Lee picked up the stove and walked it to the front of the store, where they were assembling two piles for me on flatbed carts.
“Your total so far is thirty-eight-fifty,” said Will.
I did some quick math in my head. There were three credit cards in my wallet that, combined, gave me twenty-four thousand dollars to play with. Sabrina had another credit card with a five thousand dollar limit in her purse. I had just under a thousand dollars in the bank, and another two thousand in the savings account. I had six thousand in my 401K.
“Keep going, guys,” I said. “What else would you want to have if the zombies came next week?”
“Do you have sleeping bags?” asked Will.
“Nope.”
“Come with me.”
An hour later, in addition to top notch sleeping bags for all, I had assembled a waterproof lighter and ten butane refills, two fishing poles and a ton of fishing line, a mosquito net, hats and rain jackets, six hundred dollars’ worth of dehydrated survival food (which was everything they had in stock) and a couple first aid kits.
“You gonna have any money left over to get some gold and silver coins?” Lee asked.
Bartering! It was something I hadn’t considered. With such a limited amount of time to get ready, I’d only been thinking about keeping my family alive while we lived in the woods for who knows how long. But at some point, we’d want to rejoin whatever was left of civilization. Don’t all zombie apocalypse stories eventually end up at somebody’s ranch, or inside some compound surrounded by barbed wire?
Would anybody give a shit about gold and silver coins by then?
“Can one of you guys get me a shopping cart?” I asked.
Lee raced outside to get one and met me back at the counter in less than a minute. It was kind of fun to be a big fish customer for once in my life.
I took the shopping cart to the first aid section and wiped the shelves clean of everything they had. Bandages, antibiotic ointment, calamine lotion, wound closure kits, alcohol swabs—even a portable pair of crutches. This was stuff I could use to trade. This was stuff the other survivors would want but wouldn’t have. Small, easily stored, with no expiration date. I traded in more than a thousand dollars of my soon to be worthless money for items that could serve as my currency in the new world.
Will and Lee checked me out for a grand total of eight thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars, then they helped me load up my SUV. They were economical in their packing strategy—you could tell these guys were experienced campers—but even with their expertise, my Sequoia got stuffed to the ceiling.
I needed more room. I still needed guns, water, gasoline, and a lot more food.
I also needed more credit. Now was the time to run the tab to the moon. No one was going to care about my credit score after the apocalypse.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Sabrina.
“Hey Babe, where are you?” she said.
“I’m leaving the sporting goods store,” I said.
“Will I meet you at home?” Sabrina asked.
“Actually, I think we should meet at the Ford dealer on Robin Road.”
“The Ford dealer? You think we need a new car?”
“Not a car. A truck. A big, black, expensive, four-wheel drive pickup that we can load up with enough stuff to keep us alive for years.”
Timothy
What an interesting plot twist in the middle of my masterwork.
I wanted to end the world so I could act out my favorite scene in The Stand, where the hottie was eager for sex with just about anyone in the post-apocalyptic world.
Instead, I found myself playing a totally different scene from the same novel. I was the guy who would be trapped in a jail cell after everybody died, destined to survive on toilet water and whatever rats were unlucky enough to cross my path.
In the hours that passed since a state trooper put me in handcuffs and read me my rights, I learned a few things about my situation. Here are ten pertinent data clusters:
1) While I was driving across South Texas ending the world, a 4-person team from the FBI went to my compound to look for the missing IRS agents. When they questioned Erica about the armored truck they found in the garage, she grabbed a gun and started shooting. I’m told the firefight was a good twenty minutes long, and Erica killed three of them before help arrived.
2)
That help was the cadre of State Troopers who were waiting for me at the compound. Before I got there, they stormed the place and killed poor Erica. Assholes.
3) The CIA has taken an interest in my case, and instructed the state troopers to put me in a cell by myself.
4) The only single occupancy cell available in Socorro on short notice was the holding pen at the Sheriff’s Office. Hence, I’m sitting in an 8 x 8 steel cage on the top floor of a back country police station, like Otis the town drunk on The Andy Griffth Show.
5) The Socorro County Sheriff doesn’t take kindly to other cops telling him what to do. He has agreed to lend out his holding cell, but he won’t let the State Troopers or FBI agents up here to question me. Downstairs, all of them have been in an argument for twenty minutes now. I can hear every word of it. The Sheriff appears to be nervous about “ACLU Nazis and other vermin” who get involved in these “big federal cases.” His stance is that the FBI can question me when they’ve found a federal facility to hold me in. Until then, I stay upstairs alone, with the exception of the guard on duty.
6) The guard on duty is a woman with curly black hair, dark skin, a sharp nose, and bountiful boobies that want to bust out of her button down shirt. Her name is Yvette.
7) Yvette and I went to high school together. I remember her, but she doesn’t remember me.
8) I have an hour at most to work my magic (or rather, Team Bruce’s magic) on Yvette. From what I hear downstairs, they’re making room for me now at the Supermax in Colorado. If I allow them to get me into a cell at the Supermax, my little dream of a beautiful zombie apocalypse will become a nightmare.
9) Yvette is exactly the same as I remember her from high school. She wears dark red lip liner. She’s plucked away her natural eyebrows and penciled in sharp lines to replace them. I’ve only gotten her to say a few words since my lockup, and half of them have been, “Eeee…” and “Ala vay.” The last thing she said to me was that the Porsche they caught me in was a “bad ol’ car.”
10) I used to sit next to Yvette in biology class. I let her cheat off me all the time. She was very appreciative and was always nice to me. Consequently, she was a regular in my nighttime fantasies, my imagination turning my left hand into Yvette’s snatch. In my fantasies, Yvette cried out “Ala vagers!” when she came.
I couldn’t wait to see what she cried out in reality.
Caleb
The morning before Sabrina got the letter, I had to carefully consider if I wanted to eat an egg or some cereal for breakfast. Taste, nutritional content, cholesterol, ease of preparation... I stood in the kitchen for a minute thinking about my future health, my taste buds, my lunch plans, the number of dirty dishes I would create, even the comparative cost to replenish my breakfast items once eaten.
These are rich person problems. They arise in a world of plenty, a world that Timothy Frye made quite clear to us is going away.
Ultimately, I decided on the cereal because no cooking was required.
Seven hours after my great breakfast debate, I sat in a cubicle at the Smithson Ford Dealership with a salesman named Antonio. Now I had a new debate to work out.
Gasoline or diesel.
On the one hand, regular gasoline was sure to be more plentiful in the world to come. Every car left for dead in every driveway in America was a potential source with a siphon tube and a gas can.
On the other hand, diesel lasted longer. And, while harder to come by, diesel was the fuel of big rigs. Find a semi stranded on the freeway and you’ve found a gas tank of a hundred gallons or more. I could start the siphon hose just once and fill up every can I own.
On the other, other hand, it would be more efficient to only store one kind of gasoline. My plan was to hole up in the mountains somewhere with my new pickup and our SUV, me driving one vehicle and Sabrina the other. If one vehicle takes gas and the other takes diesel, I’ll have to divide my fuel supply accordingly. The total amount of fuel available to either vehicle gets cut in half that way.
Sitting there with Antonio, who was practically beaming with joy that I’d walked into his life that afternoon, I decided regular gasoline was the way to go.
“I want the V8,” I said, as in the V8 F-150 four-door with extended cab, extended bed and tinted windows in black.
“Yes, sir. I’ll work up the financing paperwork and be right back,” said Antonio.
I’ve always had really good credit, even when I was a broke guitar player going from one gig to the next. In my mind, having enough money to pay your bills is a decision, and it’s always been easy for me to decide not to spend more than I could afford.
Fortunately for me, good credit was a valuable commodity in these final days before the end. Antonio came back to me with a financing package that allowed me to drive off the lot that day, with our Toyota sedan trade-in as the down payment.
We left the dealership to reconvene at home, with Sabrina driving the fully-stocked SUV, and Cori and I cruising home in our brand new pickup.
“Why did you buy a truck?” she asked me.
“We’re going to go camping,” I said.
“Why do we need a truck to go camping?”
“Because I want to bring a lot of stuff on this camping trip,” I said. “And when it’s time to be done camping, I think it will be handy for us to have a truck.”
We met up at home and got to work packing up everything we might need from my house, including all but the most perishable foods (those we ate for dinner). Sabrina wanted to clean up and do dishes. I didn’t stop her. There’s nothing rational about cleaning up your house before the zombie apocalypse, but I could tell this notion of saying goodbye was wearing on her and she needed some space. I went upstairs and got on the computer. I created a Gmail account with the pseudonym “DistantEarlyWarning2012” and emailed a scanned copy of Frye’s letter to Planet Gulag, outlining the strange circumstances that made me certain it was Frye himself who gave Sabrina the note. Then I settled in for some serious Internet research. I sat in front of my soon to be useless data crunching machine and asked it where I should take my family to hide out for the zombie apocalypse.
Where do I go, Fair Computer? Where do I go?
Frye’s letter gave pretty clear instructions on this regard. “Travel north. Aim for a location with a low population density.”
Fair enough. But what kind of terrain is best? Should I get my family on the side of a mountain, where it’s hard to see us and even harder to reach us, or should I go for more flat terrain where we can farm?
I decided a mountain was best. We’d find a mountain with lots of tree cover, far removed from the nearest town. A mountain hideaway near a stream with plenty of fish where we could use trees for firewood, we could hunt, we could nurture a small garden to life….we could live unnoticed until it was time to get back to the world and see what was left of it.
Researching on the Internet, I wished I had some skilled people I could bring with me. It was clear there were plenty of people in the Rockies who thrived on this sort of shit. Building a cabin, snaring some game, trapping a crawfish….I pondered the idea of seeking out these people and exchanging my stash of goods for their knowledge and skills.
But “exchanging” goods for services is a civilized idea, and I knew I was headed into a post-civilization world. Mountain survivors would have no reason to be polite about my stash. If I came to them with a truck full of goods they might shoot me in the head then and there so they could keep the truck.
The only safe way to do this was alone. Me, Sabrina, and Cori. A year in the woods at least. A crash course in survival training, that, when over, would put our skills on equal footing with any other survivors we might meet.
As I worked on the computer, I got a bit wistful about all these modern tools that were about to go down the drain. It’s easy to condemn modernity as rotten and evil, but we’re all gonna miss it when it’s gone. Just fumbling around on the Internet, I was amazed at how useful, how magical even, all of it was. Google
Maps in particular was a godsend. I spent more than an hour using the satellite view to scan the entire country for the perfect place to hide.
What’s going to happen to satellites? What’s going to happen to all the fiber optic cable in the ground? All the monstrous computer servers lined up all over the world, plugged into copper wiring that’s connected to a giant, ready-made power grid, supplied by materials brought forth from the earth with giant machines that crush it and transport it on highways around the world. What’s going to become of all of it?
I decided on North Central Idaho, right smack in the middle of the Sawtooth National Forest. There are two state highways cutting through that terrain, and in between those highways are miles of protected forest, littered with mountain lakes and streams.
Force of habit pulled me away from my research when I saw the email icon pop up. I went to Gmail and found a response from Planet Gulag to my anonymous email.
Dear Distant Early Warning,
Thank you for sharing this horrifying letter with us. We will read it on the air tonight on Planet Gulag Coast to Coast. Be sure to tune in at 10 eastern, 7 pacific. If what is written in this letter is true, then we who are in the know will need to be the first line of defense. Tell everyone you know not to miss this important program tonight.
Poor saps. To Planet Gulag, this was just more content to grind up, spit out, and keep their audience happy. They probably got crazy emails like this every day, and had become desensitized to it all, with no way of knowing who had real info and who was crazy.
If they really thought the letter was genuine, they’d want to know more. They’d want me to call in on their program and describe how I came to possess such a strange document. They’d want my credentials. They’d want to find out if I was crazy or not.
Zombie Apocalypse Serial #2 Page 2