The No Where Apocalypse (Book 1): Stranded No Where

by Lake, E. A.

  She smiled as she began to clean the dusty clear jars. “Covington. And we’re gonna need a big bag of salt too. Fifty pounds I suppose.”

  I stared at her from a chair on the opposite side of the stove. “And you have money for this? Cause I sure don’t.”

  “You and Tom will have to get busy killing deer,” she replied, more interested in her canning than the conversation.

  “Who’s Tom?”

  “Dizzy,” she answered, sounding like I was a fool for not knowing that.

  I had always wondered what his actual name was. It just hadn’t come up in conversation yet. And I really wasn’t much of a conversationalist when it came down to it.

  “Tom Dizzienski,” she answered as if I had asked for his full name. “We just always called him Dizzy. Like his dad was called.”

  “What’d you do for a living, Lettie? Before you retired?” As long as new info was abounding, this seemed like a good time for more questions.

  “I worked at one of those nudie clubs up in Iron River,” she answered, a sly grin rising on her lips.

  “What’d you do there?”

  I saw her roll her eyes at me. “I was a dancer,” she answered with a slight giggle in her words. “That was years ago. But I made a lot of money in the 12 years I worked up there.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “I would have never guessed.”

  She glanced at me, still working on her jars. “I’m surprised Frank hadn’t told you already. He was one of my regulars. When he wasn’t out on Superior on a ship.”

  “You ever marry?”

  She shook her head, pausing for a moment. “Never had much of a need for a regular man,” she answered, scratching at some dirt on one of the containers. “Been so long now that I’m not sure what I’d do with someone else here, stepping all over my feet, getting in the way.”

  Outside I noticed the snow picking up. “I should head back.” I had a number of items in my cart and it was going to be slow going. Besides, daylight was dwindling and I didn’t want to be out after dark. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  “With the snow there’ll be more trouble,” Lettie warned. “People will be getting desperate. You need to watch the road and around your place well.”

  Stories were beginning to abound of weary travelers, desperate for food and shelter, breaking into occupied cabins and trying to roust the current owners. Sometimes they were fought off; other times things didn’t end so well. But the increase of people on the highway brought tales of these escapades and the vermin themselves.

  “You keep safe too,” I called back to Lettie, pulling my coat back on.

  Her head tipped towards the corner of the kitchen. “My 30-30 is in fine working order,” she replied, packing white potatoes into jars. “I just touch a shot or two off anytime someone approaches, and trouble avoids me.” She shot me a peek. “You do the same now. Don’t trust no one.”

  Those words and the thought of someone kicking me out of my warm cabin into the cold winter surrounding gave me food for thought on the five-mile journey home.

  Day 65 - continued - WOP

  Hauling my goodies back from Lettie’s, I passed the lake. I had yet to try my hand at fishing, though I had discovered rods and tackle in a cramped corner of the bedroom back home. Maybe next spring I’d have a hankering for fish.

  I paused at the road leading west along the north shore of the narrow lake. Down this road, I’d discover the man who had tried to steal my deer, along with his family. Or so legend had it. In the two weeks that had passed since our encounter, I had wondered about his story many times.

  Most likely, he was a single man, making his way from one town to another. There’d been a number of men like that in the past few weeks. All seemingly trying to get somewhere before winter came.

  He’d been lucky and stumbled across my fresh kill. He probably watched me in action and swooped in for the taking when the time was right.

  Hunger causes a man, or women or child, to do things they wouldn’t normally think of. I got it, I understood it, but I sure as hell didn’t like it.

  The snow had let up; just a few spits of white balls now and then. I was going to take that road to the west, go back a half-mile or so, and find this camp. Maybe I’d even discover his family just as promised.

  Leaving my cart behind, I felt the gravel crunch beneath my pink boots. Something told me I wasn’t going to find anything at the end of this road. Perhaps a deserted pace or two, maybe even an old used up camp spot where the man had squatted, enjoying my kill.

  But I needed to find out if I was as big as sucker as I believed.

  As far as I could tell the smoke wafting into the heavy air came from a small fishing shack about 100 yards to my west. A set of three similar low-roofed dwellings sat in a row: one red, one yellow and one light blue. The blue shack had smoke coming from the chimney.

  I supposed that some family owned all three. And just to make their cheery lives a little brighter, one of them came up with the idea of painting each similar hut a different color.

  ‘Bradley and Mel’s is yellow, Kim and Chuck’s is red, and mine and Trevor’s is blue. Isn’t that just darling?’ The voice of a thirty-something housewife rocked my mind as I inched closer to the drive leading to them.

  There was someone here, but that didn’t mean it was the man I’d met. And even if it was him, there was no guarantee of a family. I wondered how his face would show the shame when I realized I had busted his lie in half?

  I noticed movement nearer the lake so I circled wide, not wanting to spook anyone. As I stepped closer, the man looked up. I knew it was the same fellow; there was still blood on his jacket, though a little darker and obviously dried by now.

  The moment he saw me I noticed his smile. He waved. “Welcome,” he called out, lowering his wheelbarrow full of sticks and twigs to the ground. He came right to me and shook my hand.

  “I wondered if you’d poke your head in on us,” he continued, already dragging me towards the shack. “Nice to see a familiar and generous face again. You gotta meet the wife; she’ll be dying to thank you.”

  It felt funny letting my guard down so quickly. One minute I was approaching, crouched in the brush, hand on my weapon. Now I was being brought inside for cookies and coffee.

  “Marge,” he shouted as I felt the warmth rush out the opened door. “We have a visitor. Come meet mister…” He paused, looking funny at me. “You know, I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves. I’m Warren Luke.”

  “Bob,” I answered, staring at the small but homey interior. The insides were as blue as the outside, if not a little brighter. Two children appeared from another room. A girl I’d guess in her young teens, and boy no older than eight.

  From the same room entered his wife, Marge. She did not possess the same look of amusement as her children. They may have been happy to meet some stranger Dad drug in off the road, but not her.

  “Warren,” she said in a low tone. “Are you sure this is safe?” Her eyes studied me as if I were Charles Manson himself. I noticed her nervous hands clutching at her apron.

  He pulled me forward further into the warm room. “This is the man who gave us the deer two weeks ago,” he stated in a boastful tone.

  Her eyes opened wide flooded by an honest smile. “Oh!” she exclaimed, rushing to hug me. “Thank you so much, sir. We were so hungry and down to nothing. You saved us.” The children moved closer.

  I wasn’t comfortable being deemed their savior. For the most part, I gave up the hindquarter grudgingly. But they made it seem as if the messiah himself had just stepped into the room. I half expected someone to offer to wash my feet.

  “You have on pink boots,” the young daughter said, eyeing them with a grin.

  “I’m not from here,” I admitted finally escaping their embrace. “I’m from Chicago. I just got stuck here when things went down.” I peeked at her smiling face. “And you got purple hair.” Her smile broadened.

  “Do gu
ys wear pink boots in Chicago,” the boy asked. I couldn’t tell if he was sincere or making fun of my unique winter footwear. I went with the former.

  “I was unprepared,” I stated, being led to a chair by the man I now knew as Warren. Little did I know that I was unprepared for the news they had for me.

  Day 65 - continued - WOP

  They were from Covington, just up the road some 10 miles. Warren, Marge, Violet, and Nathan — who preferred to be called Nate. Warren and his wife never offered their ages, but I took them to be in their 40s. Violet announced her 13th birthday would arrive with the first day of spring. I joked that might be a while off, maybe even June. The whole family laughed.

  Nate would be eight any day now. But that was the problem. None of us knew what day it was anymore. I knew we were just over 60 days into this mess, whatever it was. Back at the cabin, I’d been keeping a daily journal of weather and game observations.

  It struck me and my new friends as funny how in 60 days we’d lost touch and given up with most of the trappings of our former world. Cell phones — dead; internet — gone; running vehicles — almost nonexistent. Not only did it not matter what day of the week it was, it no longer matter the date on the calendar. Or the time on the wall (they still had a working wind-up clock, though it may have been off by an hour or two).

  Their story went, as mostly told by Warren with a few tidbits added by his wife, that they were sound asleep all safe in their home when things went quiet. The first few days passed without incident. But as with any panic, times worsened quickly.

  By day four, or five if Marge was to be believed, most of the food for sale in Covington was snatched up. Hoarding kicked in quickly. That left the haves and have-nots. The sheriff and the mayor worked diligently to provide for all, but storm clouds hovered on the horizon.

  “Somewhere after three weeks in, a group showed up on foot,” Warren continued, his face pained as his sad story progressed. “They were armed pretty well, handguns and shotguns mostly. They damn near drank the place dry. When things started getting out of hand — like looting and robbing — the sheriff tried to step in. They shot him dead in the one bar on Main Street.”

  The air in the cabin cooled as Marge wrung her thin hands, pacing behind her husband. She picked up the tale. “The mayor went to ask them to leave. They strung him up just outside of town, on a pole that goes across the road stating, ‘Welcome to Covington.’ They said if anyone cut him down, they would kill the person.”

  I contemplated the ugly unruly scene. “Didn’t anyone take up arms against them?” I asked. “Fight force with force?”

  “People were pretty scared at that point,” Warren admitted. “No one really wanted to die. I guess we weren’t that desperate yet. But when they kicked people out of their own homes and tossed them out in the street, the whole thing seemed hopeless. The consensus was to just let them take what they wanted and hope they moved on.”

  “Then about a month ago,” Marge continued, “they started going house to house, taking whatever food and guns they could. We never had any weapons. Wish we had now.” She took a spot next to her husband, neither looking into the others’ eyes.

  “We left in the middle of the night shortly after that,” Warren stated. “Packed up as much as we could in four backpacks, two suitcases, and a rolling cart Marge used for gardening. We knew these places were down here. Figured no one would have taken them yet.”

  The children hung near their respective parents, Violet on her mother’s shoulders, young Nate on his father’s lap. They had the faces of lost people; scenes I had only ever witnessed in pictures from wars. But they weren’t some far off foreign speaking family. They were my neighbors, and this was our country…what was left of it.

  Day 100 WOP

  Three feet of snow covered the landscape outside my drafty, but warm, home. I’d used Dizzy’s roof rake nine times already since the snow started in earnest. I wondered if there were nine or 90 more rankings needed for the season.

  As best I could tell it was Christmas time. My adventure began in mid-August when the power went out of everything. My tally said it was three months and ten days later — or thereabouts.

  For dinner, I allowed myself an extra ration of stew. Venison boiled in water, a touch of flour added, with carrots, beets, and potatoes for extra nutrients. It wasn’t my idea. Dizzy was the one who handed over his recipe happily.

  Along with his cooking secrets, he allowed me to steal 50 bottles of the sacred brew he hoarded. Dizzy was a lot more resourceful than he appeared. His sheds held stockpiles of canned foods, bags of dried fruits and vegetables, and a fair amount of candy. In his back bedroom, never used for sleeping, he stored beer and water…mostly beer.

  If I said he had a pallet of the brown liquor, I might be underestimating. Fifty bottles didn’t put a dent in his stash. And he invited me back whenever the weather allowed for 50 more, but that wasn’t happening anytime soon. Not in this weather.

  Allowing myself to think of Shelly back in Joliet, tears came. Three Christmas’ together and now one apart. I always thought that when the lights went out she headed for her parents, some five miles across town. I hoped she hadn’t waited too long. No doubt, the Chicago area got dicier than here, and much faster.

  If she were lucky, and at home with Mom and Dad, she was most likely safe. But that was something I’d have to wait another five to six months to find out for myself. Fall’s attempt to get home had ended in disaster. Any type of effort in the winter was strictly out of the question.

  My beautiful pink boots, while warm, were two sizes too small when I donned enough socks to keep my feet warm. If I only wore one pair the bitter cold nipped at my toes within minutes outdoors. The downside of that was my feet sweat faster and two pairs of socks were too tight and allowed for no circulation. End results: cold feet, again.

  One warm jacket was all I took from Dizzy before the snows came. As long as I kept it dry, that was fine. And since I spent the majority of my time inside, tending the fire and the stew, I was okay with just one outer garment.

  I had enough food, water — as promised — lie everywhere just outside my door. Two things I was short on and either could kill me: Company and wood.

  To say a man goes stir-crazy without companionship after 30 days is like claiming a person needs air every few seconds. It’s just a given.

  I’d spent years either in school, at work, or hanging out with my buddies watching some game. My solitude mostly consisted of three partial deer seasons. At most that meant six hours of silence for two days per year.

  Even here in No Where (yes, that’s the official name I’d given this place, I had a lot of free time to come up with it) I hadn’t gone a week without speaking to another human being. Then the snow began. And like any good gift it just kept on coming.

  When it wasn’t snowing it was blowing. A 10-inch dusting, as Dizzy calls a snowfall that minor, pretty much shut you in. Twenty inches? Get the roof rake out. You can practically hear the roof trusses bending. Snows stops and you’re fine? Hardly.

  The snow abating meant the wind was ready to increase. And not some minor 10 to 15 mile an hour breeze. We’re talking winds that shook every window in my ever-diminishing abode. Each day inside brought the walls a little closer I noticed. And when the wind gusted up over 40 miles an hour, the walls hardy slowed it down.

  Usually late in the night, I’d hear the wind abate. And that’s not good. That meant cool crisp Canadian air had settled in.

  One morning, I arose and found the actual air temperature minus 35. That’s 35 below zero. Even a roaring fire would hardly warm my hovel at that point. But there was good news about the cold, it didn’t usually last too long. Just a day or two.

  And then the snows returned.

  Day 100 WOP

  Wood was quickly becoming an issue. Most of the cut wood still lay at the back of the cabin. For some reason, I thought it was convenient enough back there. Oh sure, I hauled a couple dozen arml
oads to the front side, and another two or three inside when the first heavy snow hit. But the bulk of my supply was out the front door and 50 feet around in back.

  Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been an issue. I could just slip on my coat and a pair of boots and fetch wood as I needed it. Winter made it a problem, though.

  Aside from the 10-foot drift that blocked my front door one morning, I discovered something even more disturbing. The south and north ends of the cabin liked to buffer the winds just enough to allow snow to pile up on the corners. And not small piles.

  The southern route had a drift that reached past the top of the roof — a good 20 feet — and extended another 50 feet out into the formerly open yard. The northern drift was twice as bad and made me depressed just thinking of it.

  As such, hauling wood became an all day ordeal. That was after two days of unburying it from another massive, well-packed drift of winter fun.

  Another problem came to me just before Christmas. My woodpile was dwindling faster than I had anticipated. As much as I wanted to wade through the snow to go tell Dizzy he had been correct, I decided to use my waning energy and gumption to split more wood. At least while it wasn’t snowing, or blowing, or 40 below zero.

  That had been one day in the past month.

  Given the amount of snow resting on top of my ready to use wood, it was hard to judge exactly how much I have left. But I knew there wasn’t a whole lot left buried under the remaining snow. That left me with two possibilities.

  First, I could cut more wood. I had been bright enough before the snow began to pile up to bring the ax and maul in the cabin. That would save me a whole lot of digging out back if I could even find the pit my grandpa had made.

  On the other hand, I could just burn less wood. Up to that point, I had kept the fire in the small wood-burner going at a fairly decent clip. I figured if I was going to be alone in the woods all winter I needed to at least be comfortable. But now I saw the error of my ways and began cutting back.