by Kraus, Mike
As the truck started hitting the bumpy portion of the road, Dianne lowered the paper towels and held them out to Mark. “Hold this against my head there, would you?” He accepted the wad of paper towels with a slight grimace, then pressed them up against her forehead as he leaned across the seat.
“Do you think dad’s okay?” Mark whispered to his mother as Jacob and Josie sat quietly in the back, staring out their windows at the passing trees.
“I’m sure he’s fine, hon. Your dad’s a smart guy.”
“Yeah, but what if he was on the plane?”
“He wasn’t. I got a message from him that he landed just a little while before all of this started.”
“But what if his car exploded like ours, or like all the ones in town?”
“Mark, there’s no sense in speculating about things like that right now. We need to focus on the task at hand.”
Mark sat quietly for a few seconds before responding. “So what are we going to do, anyway?”
Dianne sighed and pursed her lips in thought. “Well, we know that something big is going on. With the power out, we’ll need to hook up the extra solar panels in the barn to make sure there’s enough juice in the batteries to keep the fridge running. We may need to fire up the generator for a while, too. First, though, we’ll see if we can tune in to any of the local TV or radio stations; maybe they’ll have some updated news on what’s going on. Tomorrow we’re going to see if any of the neighbors are home, make sure they’re okay and see what they’re up to and if they heard any news. Let’s make sure we’re set at home before we start going out any more, though, okay?”
“What about—”
“Hey. Kiddo.” Dianne took the paper towels from Mark’s hand and smiled at him. “We’re going to be okay, all right? Let’s just get home, get all of the supplies inside, and then we’ll devise a plan from there. Sound good?” Mark nodded slowly, not completely convinced by his mother’s enthusiasm, but satisfied enough to stop asking any further questions.
By the time Dianne started pulling up the winding dirt driveway to their home, the sun was starting to hang low in the sky. She left the children in the truck to unlock the gate herself, casting a wary eye into the woods around them, then secured it again once they were on the other side. After backing the truck up to the front porch of the house, Dianne had Josie and Jacob go inside and play in the living room while she and Mark started carrying the supplies from the back of the truck into the house. The lights in the house didn’t work when she tried to turn them on, confirming that the power outage wasn’t just confined to the town.
“Mark,” she said, “Finish getting everything inside and into the kitchen; I’m going to get the generator started up. We’ll use that tonight and see how things look in the morning.” Dianne’s son dutifully obeyed while Dianne trotted out to the backup generator behind the house. It was an older generator, designed to run off of a tank of propane that was stored nearby since the house was too far out to be connected to the town’s natural gas lines. Rick and Dianne had it installed during the first year they moved to their homestead and had used it several times over the years.
Requiring a manual intervention to start, the generator was capable of powering the whole house and then some, and Dianne hated the idea of using it when they had no idea of how long it would be until the power returned. Still, she thought, better to have one night of regular comforts after the day’s events before potentially having to transfer to a lifestyle that depended less on electricity. No, that’s foolish. Of course the power will come back on tomorrow. She tried to shake the feelings of doom and gloom, but the image of the burning wreck of a plane in a field and the terrified look on the newscaster’s face still haunted her.
The generator roared to life without hesitation, and Dianne poked her head out of the small outbuilding in which it was housed to see lights blinking on inside the house. She checked the vents on the top and sides of the building before closing the door and then headed back to the house. Inside, Mark and Jacob were busy arranging the supplies they had retrieved from the grocery store on the floor while Josie still played in the living room. Dianne smiled, glad to see that her children seemed to be coping well with what had happened.
“Hang tight here, kids. I’m going to clean up, then we’ll get everything put away and make some dinner, okay?”
“You want us to wash up?”
“That’d be great, thanks, Mark.” Dianne headed upstairs to the master bathroom and turned on the lights. She stared at her face in the mirror, turning it as she studied the wound above her eye. The blood had dried and crusted over, so she took a wet washcloth and began to gently scrub around the wound, cringing at the pain. It wasn’t as bad as she had originally thought—head wounds tend to look worse than they are due to how much they bleed—and after a quick cleaning, some antiseptic and a couple of butterfly bandages, she turned and went back downstairs.
Mark was finishing helping Josie dry her hands off when Dianne walked into the kitchen and put her hands on her hips as she looked at the piles of food on the floor. “Well, then. Let’s get all of this put away, shall we?” She quickly divvied up assignments to the children and they got to work, starting with the bags of flour, rice, beans and other staples before moving on to the canned goods. While her kids worked on putting things away, Dianne got out a notebook and pencil and took down notes on the supplies they had just retrieved, along with what was currently on hand in their pantry and in the basement.
There was a solid week’s worth of fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, bread and other perishables on hand, and three weeks’ worth of pasta, rice, canned and frozen food in the pantry, refrigerator and freezer. The deep freeze—connected to the solar panels and battery backups—held six months’ worth of meat, though she figured they could stretch it to eight months with some careful rationing.
The food they had picked up at the store would last for those six to eight months and provide good fillers and nonperishable nutrition along with the meat. She knew the kids (and herself) would get cranky after a while without things like milk, pastries and other comforts, though she could make bread and other baked goods herself in limited batches. The basement, however, held a whole other level of supplies. Collected over the last year and stored in the dark, cool environment were several shelves stuffed with homemade jams and canned vegetables as well as several dozen MREs. She had scoffed at Rick’s collection of the military-style all-in-one packaged meals as going a bit too far with the prepper ideology, but as she counted the meals she said a quiet thank you that they were available.
The thought of her husband made Dianne pause for a moment and she sat down on the floor next to the shelves and put her head back against the wall. The last she had heard from Rick was that he landed safely, but it was impossible to know how he was doing since the phones weren’t working. That thought prompted another and she leapt up and began rummaging around in some boxes behind the basement stairs.
“Ha!” Dianne shouted with excitement as she pulled out a small travel television, an external TV antenna and a wind-up radio from one of the boxes. She ran upstairs with them and dashed into the living room. The antenna was quickly suspended from the curtain rod over the back door and connected to the big TV hanging on the wall. She tucked the smaller TV away for later use, in case the power didn’t come back on and she needed to use as little energy as possible. After turning the big TV on and adjusting the input to the tuner, she sat down on the edge of the couch and bit her lip nervously as she flipped through station after station filled with nothing but static. Finally, though, she hit the jackpot as a fuzzy signal from a station in Blacksburg came filtering through. It took a few tries but Dianne finally found the right angle and positioning for the antenna to boost the signal enough to be watchable.
“…we go live to Dale Weatherspoon, in Washington. Dale?”
“Thanks, Tom. As you heard in the President’s statement a few minutes ago, we’re seeing an unprecedented
level of turmoil and chaos across the country. There are an estimated fifty thousand dead from failures associated with aircraft, trains and other mass transportation systems. The White House believes that estimate is just the tip of the iceberg, though, as there are undoubtedly many tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands killed or injured as a result of the personal vehicular detonations. That’s a term that the White House is using, and like all of the other problems we’re seeing, we have no idea what’s causing them. Tom?”
“Dale, what are federal and state authorities doing to try and respond to this national crisis?”
“FEMA, the National Guard and some sections of the US military are responding, but federal and state agencies are crippled by this disaster.”
“And there’s still no word on what the source is?”
“The White House did say that they do not believe that it’s a terrorist attack, but beyond that, there’s no explanation for this national—and indeed international—level of destruction and chaos.”
“Thanks, Dale. We’re going now to a briefing from the director of—”
The image on the television started to shake and the audio became a garbled mess before the signal cut out completely. Dianne picked up the remote and tried changing the channel, but all of them were filled with the same digital static. She turned off the television and threw herself back into a slouch on the couch, sighing in frustration.
“You okay, mom?” Mark wandered into the living room and glanced at the TV before looking at her.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“Nothing useful.” Dianne sighed again and shook her head in frustration. “I did find out that this is happening all over the country, or maybe the world. We should probably get settled in if that’s the case, and figure out what to do around here to survive long-term.”
“Survive?” Mark scrunched up his eyebrows. “You mean living off the land, that kind of thing?”
Dianne smiled as she stood up and embraced her eldest son. “I don’t know, kiddo. If things are as bad as they sound, though, then maybe. But we don’t need to worry about that tonight. Come on; let’s find something for dinner and dig up a movie somewhere.”
As Dianne walked back into the kitchen after Mark, she paused at the back door and looked out at the property behind the house. The sun was setting behind the lake and the animals were all grazing in their pens while a gentle breeze rustled the trees, making them shake in a dazzling gold, orange and red display of natural fireworks. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as she said a silent prayer.
Rick. Wherever you are out there… come home. Please. Just make it back home.
Chapter 11
Los Angeles, CA
Between Rick and his wife, Dianne had always been the one more prone to gravitate toward self-defense. She always carried a small revolver on her person—legally of course—and remembering that fact made Rick extremely grateful. He was no stranger to firearms, having dispatched more than a few injured animals over the years with a bullet to the head and been on several hunting excursions over the years where his prowess had been proved by bringing home three large bucks. He didn’t carry a gun normally, though, and being on a business trip meant that he was carrying nothing at all when he landed in Los Angeles.
That’s why, as he approached the fringes of the city proper and began to encounter the residential areas, Rick paused at the corner of an intersection, staring at a large warehouse-like store across the street with twin pictures of a hunting rifle and a deer’s head sitting on top. The store’s windows and doors were smashed open, and the interior was dark. The image of Jack and Samantha laying lifeless on the ground flashed through his mind, and he thought about what—if anything—he might have been able to do if he had been armed and close enough to help.
A show of force? A distraction? Taking one or two of them down with me? As much as Rick wanted to imagine he could have dispatched six armed thieves intent on committing grievous bodily harm, he had to admit that it wasn’t very likely he could have changed much about the situation. In spite of that, though, a thought still lingered in his mind.
What if?
Rick approached the store cautiously, peering in through the broken windows and door as he tried to see if anyone was still inside. Glass littered the ground outside the shop and the floor directly inside, and it crunched and crackled with each footstep, making a stealthy approach impossible. He glanced around at the empty streets before calling out softly through the hole where the front window used to be. “Anyone in there?”
Silence was the only response, so Rick took a deep breath and stepped through. He went a few paces to the side, hugging the wall, before stopping so that his eyes could adjust to the darkness. The store, once filled with shooting and hunting gear and accessories of all shapes, types and colors was a disaster zone. Shelves were overturned on the floor and goods were scattered, torn and trampled on, leaving a distinct and obvious pattern of destruction from when the building had been looted. The back and left walls were filled with rows of black pegs that had once held rifles, before every single weapon was removed and absconded with. Most of the glass display cases carrying the few types of pistols still legal in the state of California were shattered, as were the demo cases for the hunting, fishing and camping gear.
The store looked as though a miniature tornado had blown through, leaving very few portions of the building untouched. Rick decided to look for anything that appeared useful anyway, though, since he had no idea what the conditions were outside the city and no clue as to how long it would take for him to find a way back home.
A backpack that had been tossed into a corner was the first item he selected, followed by a shirt, pair of pants and a couple of jackets. He changed out of his suit in a hurry before lashing the jackets to the back of the backpack with some paracord. The food aisle of the building had been mostly cleaned out, but Rick dutifully searched through all of the debris, eventually finding several boxes of energy bars which he dumped into his backpack. A few pairs of socks and underwear followed, then three pairs of shoes—one for his feet and two for spares—that happened to be the last three in his size.
With his immediate food and clothing needs met, Rick turned his attention to the main reason why he had come into the store—a weapon. He went around the glass display cases lining the walls and began searching inside the cases, on the floor, under the counters and in the racks on the walls for any weapons and ammunition he could get his hands on. After a good twenty minutes of searching, Rick had found virtually nothing. There were several boxes of 9mm ammunition, a stack of 5.56 NATO boxes and a few boxes of 12-gauge ammo, but he had seen absolutely nothing in the way of guns.
Rick tucked the ammunition into his backpack and pockets regardless, on the off chance that he might find a gun later down the road. As he picked his way through the back area once again, he paused in front of a door marked “Employees Only” before pushing it open and heading through.
His penlight hadn’t been needed in the main section of the store, but as he headed into the back, he pulled it out and switched it on. Much of the back area of the store was taken up by boxes, empty pallets and shelves stocked with supplies meant to be put out on the floor, but there was a small section enclosed in cubical walls that had two large wooden tables with a variety of tools and oils along with a large assortment of firearms.
Rick moved immediately toward the repair benches and firearms, and quickly discovered the small tags hanging off of the guns that marked when they had been brought in along with whether they had been repaired. He grabbed a small 9mm pistol, a hunting rifle chambered in 5.56 NATO with a moderate-sized scope on the top and a pump-action shotgun. He piled the two rifles into a soft gun case, zipped it up and then slung it on his back before ejecting the empty magazine from the pistol, filling it with ammo and then slapping it back into the gun and chambering a round. A pair of knives went next—one into his pack
and the other in a sheath hanging from his belt—and then Rick turned his attention to the stacks of pallets behind him.
“How did they miss all of this?” Rick was astonished that the back room of the store had been completely left alone in the mad dash to loot the front area. As he searched through the boxes and pallets of goods, he cut open boxes with his knife, pulling out stacks of batteries, two flashlights, a small one-man tent, more packaged food and—to his relief—a larger backpack to store it all in.
As Rick carefully stuffed the larger of the two backpacks full of supplies, he suddenly felt a twinge of guilt and paused to sit down on the floor and look around at darkened room. “So this is what I’m reduced to? Less than a day after a few cars blow up and some planes fall from the sky, I’m sitting in the back room of a store, stealing from them?” Rick sighed and put his head in his hands as the memory of Jack and Samantha being shot in the heads played through again. “Bastards.” Rick whispered softly and continued his packing, pushing the memory aside. He wasn’t sure why it was still affecting him so much, but he was determined to make sure he didn’t end up dead on the street along with them.
He stood up slowly and put the pack on his back and adjusted the straps before taking the gun case up in his left hand. With his right he tucked the 9mm pistol into a small holster on the inside of his pants, concealing it from view. He felt like a pack mule as he slowly lumbered out of the store, trying to avoid catching himself or anything he was carrying on the overturned shelves as he went.
Standing in front of the store, Rick turned to the east, shielding his eyes from the sun with his right hand. Ahead of him, with any luck, he would discover that his paranoia was unjustified, and he would be able to ditch all of the supplies he had just looted and be on his way back home to his family before dark. As much as Rick tried to tell himself that it was a possibility this could be true, he had the distinct feeling that nothing could be further from the truth and that his journey home would be anything but easy.