The Survivor Journals Omnibus [Books 1-3]

by Little, Sean Patrick

  “What’s this?” I picked up one of the bottles.

  “Ghetto door alarm,” she said. “Sorry. It’s just…”

  “You were taking extra precautions in case I tried to attack you in the night?”

  “I put them in front of the side door, too, man. I was just trying to be cautious. I mean, I really like you and all, but we still don’t really know each other.”

  I couldn’t fault her for being cautious, I guess. She was five-three and maybe a hundred-ten pounds. I was six-feet and change, a buck-seventy, maybe buck-eighty. I was a big guy compared to her. I shrugged off the bottles. “No problem. Honest. It’s all good.” I smiled sheepishly. “I locked the door to the back bunk last night for the first time since I started sleeping in the RV.”

  Ren smiled. She shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes and rubbed. “Yeah, I guess it’s like getting a new roommate. You hope they’re nice, but you still need to know if they’re going to be psycho, you know?”

  “I get you.”

  Ren rolled out of the sleeping bag. “What’s the plan for the day, boss?”

  “Get some breakfast. Get on the road. First department store we see, we’ll stop and get you some sheets and stuff.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I stepped out to take a leak behind the flower shop. When I returned, Ren was dressed in shorts and halter-top. “Is there a bathroom in the flower shop?”

  “Probably.” I had spaced-off the fact that basic urination was pretty simple for a man, unzip and go. For a woman, there were a few more logistics involved.

  “If it’s gross, we’re going to have to find another one.” She started out the door to the RV.

  “You can just go outside, too.”

  Ren stopped and held up a finger. “I accept the fact that I will probably have to do that one day…but that day has not yet come. I will use a toilet for as long as I absolutely can.”

  When she returned, we drove to Richmond and, as promised, looted some high-thread count sheets, a comforter, and several pillows from a Target. We made up Ren’s bunk together, and then she climbed up to give it a test run. “This is doable. I like it.” Fester leapt up next to her and curled into a ball at her side. He approved, as well.

  “It’s only until we get to Madisonville, Louisiana,” I said. “Then we can live in a house.”

  Ren climbed down and dropped into the passenger seat. Fester ran over and climbed into her lap. “Not much between here and there, though. Is there?”

  I didn’t know for sure. I answered her honestly. “I don’t think so. Just long, empty roads.”

  Ren inhaled sharply through her nose and blew out a long, slow exhale. “I guess so. Onward, Jeeves. The world awaits.”

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and fired the engine. There was a whole lot of no one to see and nothing to do that day.

  Ennui is one of the biggest problems with the apocalypse. I say ennui because I’m not “bored.” I’m rarely bored. There is always something to do; survival is a full-time occupation. However, there exists a general blah feeling that settles over you on a daily basis. It’s hard to ignore. I didn’t fully appreciate how distracted I was before the Flu until I lost everything that distracted me. TV, laptop, tablet, phones, friends, family, job, school—so many things kept me from stopping and appreciating silence. At first, I didn’t mind it. Over the winter in Wisconsin, the silence almost drove me insane. Now, the static noise of wind in the windows of the RV drowned out the desire to converse for both of us, and the malaise of the road set in heavily. I had been dealing with it for weeks before Ren came along. It was a new experience for her. The first day, everything was still new and interesting. Early in the second day of being stuck in a twenty-five foot vehicle, the shine was quickly wearing.

  We continued south from Richmond. The sun rose and baked the day. The humidity felt like a velvet cloak. Speaking as a Wisconsin boy, I thought I knew humidity; Wisconsin got quite humid in the summers. However, Midwest humidity was nothing compared to the southern coastal states. Even Ren, with her Venezuelan heritage, cursed the humidity every time we stopped and got out of the RV. Even though it probably cost us some gas, we cranked that A/C hard on the main roads. When we slowed to creep through towns, though—the A/C had to be shut down. It was just too hard on the engine when we weren’t cruising at highway speeds. The humidity was so uncomfortable I ended up stripping off my t-shirt and going shirtless. Ren held out a little longer than I did, but eventually she took her hockey bag into the back bunk and emerged in a black sports bra.

  Highway 95 out of Richmond was the route we were following, but I continued to veer from the highway to smaller towns and side roads hoping to find signs of life. We only found continued evidence of the Earth reclaiming homes and roads. I saw herds of cattle wandering freely through towns. Herds of free-roaming Holsteins were a new sight. Cattle are not wild animals. They never were. When you look at the history of the domestic cows, they were created to be work animals, bred to be smaller and more docile. They were bred down selectively from the large and powerful Auroch. Now, this domestic species was starting to have to learn to be wild, again. One time, where we were passing a large group of them outside of a small town, I saw a large bull standing apart from the larger congregation of females. A couple of small, gangly calves milling about, playing amongst the cows. The herd was perpetuating. They were adapting. I pointed this out to Ren. “We can adapt, too.”

  “We’re going to have to,” she said. There was a silence. She added, “I worry about stuff, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like when we run out of stuff. Like, what happens if we run out of toilet paper?”

  “I think we’ll be able to scavenge enough paper to cover us for the rest of our lives.” I pointed at the homes we could see to the left. “All those homes there have paper in them right now, I guarantee it. If we ever can’t find any in stores, every house in this country has a supply, and a lot of them are still in plastic.”

  “Think long term, though.” Ren wiped sweat from her forehead. “A lot of these houses are going to go to hell in the next five years. A lot of these homes will be compromised over time. Who knows for certain what we’ll be able to scavenge in ten years, in twenty years? What about things like tampons and pads, even? I know you don’t need them, but back in the day women had to pin folded up cotton towels into their underthings and then wash that shit every day. I don’t want to have to do that.” She shuddered. “Gross. Civilization spoiled me.”

  I had a lot of those same worries, albeit not about tampons. I wondered how long canned food would hold out and not spoil, especially in warm, humid conditions. That stuff would start to rust and rot. I wondered how much longer I would be able to keep the RV running. I wondered if the ammunition for the guns would go bad. Could I make more? Could I make gun powder? Would I have to get really good at archery? Could I make my own arrows? The future held a lot more questions than answers, none of which could be answered at that moment. “I guess that’s part of adapting. We’ll have to figure it out as we go.”

  “I hope I don’t run out of feminine products until well after I hit menopause.”

  “I think there will be a lot of bridges we won’t have to cross until we get to them. It’s natural to worry, but I think for a lot of things Necessity will have to be the Mother of Invention. At least we have blueprints. Could you imagine being the pioneers or explorers? They had to figure stuff out on their own. We have a head start on all of them.”

  “When I was a kid, I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books,” said Ren. “As a city girl, they made the empty prairies sound almost romantic. I wanted to live there.”

  I whipped my head around to look at her so fast that I think I sprained my neck. “Those are my favorite books!” I told her about how my mom read them all to me when I was little, and how I spent an inordinate amount of time reading The Long Winter during my snowbound days in the library in Sun Prairie.

>   “Get out!” Ren’s eyes looked alive for the first time that day. “I used to sit in the library down the street from our apartment and read those things over and over again. I adore Laura so much, I even ignore all the racist B.S. about Indians.” She leaned toward me. “Did we just become best friends?”

  “If you just referenced Stepbrothers, we sure as hell did!”

  “We can make bunk beds so we’ll have more room for activities!” Ren held out her hand, and I slapped it. After that flurry of excitement, neither of us said anything more. It was like a firecracker had just gone off, and then we realized we didn’t have any more fireworks. Ren leaned her head against the passenger window. “Be nicer if we didn’t have to do any of that, though. I hate not knowing. I just want the future to be planned and laid out for me. Go here. Do that. Everything will work out.”

  We passed a sign pointing to the Petersburg National Civil War Battlefield, site of the longest battle of the Civil War. For nine months, Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant conducted a long and brutal trench warfare campaign against Confederate soldiers. Taking Petersburg would have been a deathblow to General Lee’s troops because it would have severed supply lines, but eventually Grant gave up the battle and retreated north to intercept Lee’s troops at Appomattox, leading to the end of the Civil War. I veered to the exit.

  Ren looked at me with narrowed eyes. “What is it with boys and war?”

  I shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. I do not care for war. I do enjoy history, though.”

  Ren protested. “Why? What’s the point? History is over. We’re writing our own history now. Isn’t that why you spent so much time writing in your little journals every night?”

  “What’s that line about people doomed to repeat history?” I retorted.

  “The Civil War doesn’t have to exist anymore. We are at the dawn of a new era of history. We decide what’s worth including. We can wipe out that era of history, start a new world where there is no inequality, no Confederacy, no more stupidity!”

  “Doesn’t sound logical to me,” I said. “We are human. There will always be stupidity. The Civil War was a volatile time in the history of this land. Even if America no longer exists, it seems folly to ignore the fact that it existed, it happened. Hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to it, right or wrong. We would dishonor their existences if we just tried to forget what happened.”

  “Maybe,” she acquiesced. “What will people remember about the Flu? Hypothetically, say we somehow recover from this as a species. Will people remember you and me? Will they remember how good we had it before everything went to hell?”

  I couldn’t answer her. I doubted it. “Maybe they will remember us. I started my journals for that purpose. There will be a written record of what we did, and how we survived, just in case someone cares someday. Maybe that’s good enough for now. Maybe someday we’ll build a monument to ourselves.”

  “I like the idea of a statue of me. Could I be doing some dramatic pose like a conquering Valkyrie, with wings and a spear?”

  “I don’t see why not. What kind of statue doesn’t have a spear?”

  The corner of Ren’s mouth turned up in a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. “Hell, yeah.”

  The battlefield was overgrown like everything else. The monuments stood above a sea of long grass and new tree and shrub growth. Cicadas droned everywhere. I parked the RV and we got out to walk around and see what we could see. Turns out, there wasn’t a ton to see. I’d been to other historical sites before. I remember seeing Indian/Cavalry battle sites on trips west with my parents. Usually, I got a spooky feeling from them, like I was looking at a holy place or something like that. It felt overwhelming. I still felt that at Petersburg, but it had lessened considerably. I don’t know if that’s because I was older, more jaded, or if it had something to do with the fact that almost every building I passed was basically a mausoleum now. If the dead needed to be venerated, I spent all day, every day in near-constant veneration.

  The heat and humidity of the day was like a choking fog. Walking became a miserable activity. We poured water over our heads and tried to ignore it, but it was sometime in the middle of August at this point. The temperature was easily over a hundred, and the humidity felt like 100 percent. Heat waves rose from pavement and made the distance hazy.

  “This is miserable.” Ren said. She slugged some water and grimaced. “Scratch what I said about Subway. I really miss ice. I miss refrigeration.”

  “Ever think about how ‘fridge’ has a D in it and refrigeration doesn’t?” I said.

  Ren squinted at me. “No. Never once. What’s your point?”

  I shrugged. I felt a flash of embarrassment and stupidity. “No point. Just pointing something out.” It was an awkward cover, and thankfully Ren let it slide.

  We stopped on a concrete sidewalk to read a plaque about the battlefield we were overlooking. The plaque informed us about what the Civil War-era cannons were pointed at during the battle, and how the charge on the field went down. It also mentioned that almost eight hundred men died on the field on which we stood.

  “Ever think about ghosts?” Ren said. She brought it up out of nowhere.

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yeah. Like, eight hundred people died here. Right. Here.” Ren pointed to the field. “They died in tragic circumstances. Do you think their spirits still wander this field looking to right wrongs or something?”

  “If ghosts are real, then we’re surrounded by them right now. Everyone who died in the Flu would be watching us at all times.”

  “What if they are?” said Ren. “What if your parents are watching over you right now.”

  “I’d feel bad that the afterlife is so dull that they feel a need to do that. But, I like the sentiment. I sort of feel like my parents have been around me. The only problem is that I can’t decide if they are really there, or if I’m just hallucinating because I want them to be around me.”

  Ren leaned on a walkway railing. “If my sister was a ghost, I’d know if she was near me; I’d feel her. I haven’t felt her presence, though.” She looked at the clear sky. “I kind of wish she was, though. It would make me feel better.”

  Ren pushed off the railing and turned back toward the RV. “This sucks. It’s hot. There’s no one here, and I’m not going to camp on a Civil War battlefield…just in case there are ghosts.”

  I followed her. I didn’t want to sleep around ghosts, either. Bigfoots were bad enough.

  We drove south another couple of hours. It was still hot and humid when we stopped for gas and set up camp. We were just past the Virginia/North Carolina border in a little town called Gaston. As we left the battlefield, I explained to Ren that I picked towns to investigate based on names that were corny or fun to pronounce. She immediately dove on the map book and started scanning. Upon finding Gaston, North Carolina, she immediately burst into song, going through an exaggerated version of Gaston from Disney’s Beauty & the Beast. A destination had been duly selected.

  We filled up with gas at a Citgo station. We explored the town. Before the Flu, it had only had a population around 1,150, and it appeared that none of them had survived. Gaston was a northern suburb to the much larger Roanoke Rapids, a town formerly of about 15,000. It was nice. Homey. Simple. We parked on the road next to a city park that had bathrooms. There was a lot of open area around us. In a way, that was comforting. I was glad that there were not any trees where escaped lions could hide from us.

  It took a couple of hours to scavenge enough wood for the night’s fire and to gather bottles of water and other supplies from the stores and restaurants in town. When we reconvened at the campsite, we were both sweaty and cranky. We tried to bathe by pouring water over our heads, emptying a couple of gallons of the lukewarm bottled water. It helped a little. Instead of sitting near the fire that night, we did our cooking on a small fire, a simple meal of canned soup and crackers, and then let the flames die out. It was too hot for a bonfire. We sat in chairs a
nd looked up at the night sky. We took turns pointing out the constellations we knew, and inventing fake stories for ones we didn’t. It was fun.

  “I can’t get over how many stars there are,” Ren said. “You never see this many stars in the city. The sky is so big out here.”

  “In Wisconsin, some nights we were lucky enough to see glimpses of the Northern Lights. Those are amazing.”

  “What are those like?”

  “Like…dancing ribbons of light in the sky, usually green. A vibrant green.”

  “That sounds cool. I heard people in New York talk about going upstate to see them, but I never did. Going upstate was for rich people.” Ren shifted in her seat. We were quiet for a long time. Ren squeaked. “What the hell is that?” She pointed into the sky. I tried to triangulate where she was pointing. High above us, she could see a small light that looked like it was moving. It was barely a pinpoint and it was hustling.

  “Satellite, probably,” I said. “You can see them sometimes.”

  “Satellites are still working?”

  “Most of them were solar-powered.” Then another thought hit me, and I blanched. “Oh, god…the astronauts on the ISS. What happened to them?”

  Ren sat up in her chair. “Are they still up there? Could they live that long without supplies?”

  I didn’t know. I remembered reading something about escape pods, Soyuz rocket capsules the crew could use in an emergency situation, but what if the situation on Earth was dangerous? Would they just sit up there until they died? Would they just depressurize the ISS and let space do them in quick and easy? Did they wait until the Flu was over and then try to return to Earth? If so, did they land in Russia, like normal? How did they land without help from Mission Control? This was something that would keep me up at night for a few days. I couldn’t not think about it, and at the same time, I had no answers for it. The only way I eventually put it out of my head was the realization that there were going to be a lot of things to which I’d never have solid answers. I closed my eyes and wished those astronauts well, no matter where they were and whether or not they were alive.