by Sean Little
JOURNAL ENTRY SEVEN
-The Long Road-
With my leg healing well and my hand sort of healing, I settled into a routine. Before the Flu, I used to watch a lot of those MSNBC documentaries about prisons. I found them fascinating, and they always seemed to be on after 10:00pm when there wasn’t much else on and I was still awake. The narrators of those shows always talked about how prison was a series of routines. Routines were comforting. People were less likely to rebel if they knew what was coming to them every second of the day. In a strange way, despite having an unparalleled sense of freedom where I could literally do whatever I wanted to do, I sought out the familiarity of routine to keep me from losing my mind.
I broke my routine into three-day segments. On the first day, I took the U-Haul, scavenging and siphoning gas when the tank got low, and drove around the area farms looking for wood and other supplies that I might need for the winter. I freed animals from pastures whenever possible. This was a familiar, busy task that kept my body occupied and kept me active enough to not dwell on horrible thoughts.
On the second day, I would stay around the library. I would do little chores such as completing the storage shed or rigging up a smoker I liberated from a guy’s garage, or working on more ways to collect and store water, such as my rain gutter troughs. I took grow lights from the garden section at Walmart and set up a small, indoor seed garden in the library where I could grow lettuce and potatoes and a few other things. I figured fresh veggies over the winter wouldn’t be too bad to have, if I could make them grow. When I could, I would spend part of the afternoon shooting baskets at the park across the street or riding my bike. Some days, I would just lounge in my Adirondack chairs and read, but I found it getting more and more difficult to read. I felt distracted and frustrated for no reason.
On the third day, I would hit the road again. I would fill the Cruze with gas, load up my guns, tools, and a lunch (sometimes a dinner or other snacks if I knew I might be out very late), and Rowdy and I would go looking for other survivors. I would pick a direction and start driving, tooling through every city, town, village, and unincorporated hamlet I could find on a map. I would drive country roads, figuring that if someone survived the Flu, it would be because they were able to avoid other people and be self-sufficient on a farm. I continued to free pastured animals whenever possible. I was starting to see small herds of cows and flocks of sheep grazing in fields all around Sun Prairie and walking through fields of corn that had been planted before the Flu got really bad, and I wanted to do that for as many pastured animals as I could.
I went to Cabela's and took, and then installed, a CB radio in the Cruze, and I would flip through the channels incessantly, using the mic to make desponding appeals for human contact. I listened to a lot of static. The radio stations were silent, nothing more than the hiss of the car speakers. When the silence became unbearable, I might slip a CD into the player for a while, but the music felt sacrilegious somehow, like I was profaning the silence by attempting to mimic joy. I used to be the sort of guy who played CDs constantly when driving. Now, I listened to the wind and occasionally spoke to Rowdy as though he might answer me. I thought a lot about the arbitrary nature of life. Why me? Why was I still alive? I never came to an answer about that.
That was my life for the summer and well into the fall. I was wholly a creature of habit. I did it automatically. I never wrote down the schedule, I never made a mental decision to follow it; I just did. It became an unconscious gesture.
I don’t know if I can explain the melancholy that settled on me in those early weeks and months. It was as if a black wool blanket was smothering me. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t smile. I didn’t feel joy. I just was. My heart hurt. I was existing, but not living.
When this state of mind became problematic and I started to shut down, retreating to my bed to do nothing for long sections of my day, I tried to medicate. At first, I took some Prozac from the pharmacy. I had no doctor to monitor me or guide my medication, so I tried to do a lot of research into what a 'normal' dosage for someone my size would be. I guessed. The only problem with antidepressants is that they just made me numb. Well, numb-er. I was already numb. I was numb to the world. I stopped taking the Prozac. It wasn’t for me.
One night after returning in the early afternoon with a load of wood that I took from a farm near Stoughton, I decided that I would try to do something that I’d seen adults do to deal with their pain: drinking!
I rode my bike to the nearest liquor store and found it was pretty well picked over. The shelves were bare. The coolers were empty and dark. I know this might seem like a shock to you, but apparently when people are faced with not only their own deaths, but the deaths of all their loved ones and everyone one they know, have ever known, or will ever know, people apparently will want to indulge in a few drinks to dull the pain. I went to Fuzzy’s Liquor and found its warehouse-like space to be nearly empty. Cans of beer, bottles of wine, and all the liquor were nearly gone. I managed to secure a few things from the back of the store: a dusty six-pack of Miller Lite, a liter bottle of Southern Comfort, and two bottles of a local vineyard’s wine.
I loaded all that stuff into my backpack and rode my bike back to the library. Then, that night, in front of my fire, I tried beer for the first time in my life. It was awful. Maybe if it had been cold, it would have been better, but it was room-temperature and tasted like battery acid. The wine was also not my cup of tea. I have no idea how people drink this stuff at parties. It was vinegary and gross. The Southern Comfort smelled all right, but burned like fire when I drank it. I had to mix it with Coke to make it serviceable. Once I did that, though--it wasn’t bad. I drank half the bottle. It made me feel light-headed and disconnected. I liked it. I felt something other than sadness or nothing for the first time in weeks.
My head flopped around on my neck, and I talked loudly to Rowdy. Words flowed out of me like a river. I told the dog about my life in high school. I told him about Emily. I told him about my parents. I talked about football, baseball, and chess. Why chess? I have no idea. It just tumbled out of me. Once I started talking to the dog, I couldn’t stop. In my head, the dog started asking questions, and I answered them. I told jokes and laughed. I talked about my mom and got teary-eyed. I kept drinking until the entire bottle of Southern Comfort was gone. Toward the end, I didn’t even bother to cut it with Coke. I didn’t even notice its burn any longer. The night evaporated into an alcohol haze and circular, empty talk.
I woke up late the next morning in the tall grass near the brazier and my chair. The sun was already high in the sky. I was dotted with mosquito bites. Apparently, I was a buffet for them. I was also woozy as hell.
I had never drank before, not one sip. I never really wanted to drink, either. I had attended a few parties where people were boozing and I thought they were stupid. I didn’t like how loud they were, or how immature they acted. I just stayed away from it. So, given that I had never drank before, I had also never experienced a hangover before. That was a punishment I did not care to duplicate. How and why did people do this? Was this supposed to be fun? My head pounded. I felt sick to my stomach. The light made my headache worse. I was groggy and confused. I saw a few dried pools of vomit near the brazier. Apparently, I’d tossed my cookies a few times. I limped inside to the blessed darkness of the library and drank a liter of water in two breaths. I swallowed three naproxen tablets. I drank some Coke--without liquor, this time. I tried to eat some granola bars, but the mere thought of chewing and swallowing made me feel ill. I had to spit out the crumbly mash. No food just then. Maybe no food ever again.
I slummed to my bed, but I didn’t feel any better lying down. I sat in a comfy chair and rested the back of my head flat against it, staring up at the ceiling and occasionally taking sips of Coke from a two-liter bottle. It took a good hour for me to get back to a place where I felt like moving again. I was lethargic and sick the rest of the day, alternating between feeling like I’d been hit by a
truck and napping. I accomplished nothing, not even reading.
Drinking and I do not get along. This was something I noted for future reference. Never again.
The day after my hangover, I got back on the road. I had been systematically exploring areas, trying to cover as many roads in those areas as I could before moving to the next section. I found a large map of Wisconsin roads at a gas station, and I used a red Sharpie to keep track of what roads I had driven. Slowly, the roads around Sun Prairie were beginning to become filled with red lines. I started in the west, and kept moving in a clockwork pattern, hitting every place I could find. I always sought evidence that someone survived by going through the grocery stores or Walgreens stores and trying to find telltale signs that someone was using them to loot goods, but more often than not, I found nothing, just a few dusty bottles of water and coolers filled with spoiled milk and rotted, dried meat.
I was heading southwest of Sun Prairie by this point. Thinking back, if I had to put a month to it, it must have been late August or early September. It was still hot, but I could tell the daylight was changing. It was moving from the full, lush light of summer to the more wan, washed-out light of autumn. I had been all over the greater Milwaukee area, gone down to Racine and Kenosha, over to Lake Geneva and Burlington, and through Whitewater and Janesville. I had freed countless cows and horses, a few flocks of sheep, goats, and pigs, and the odd handful of llamas and alpacas. Even a couple of ostrich and emu, and a trio of bison!. Most of the grazing herd animals didn’t seem to be worse for wear. I was starting to catch sight of small packs of dogs, too; I would see cadres of dogs at the edge of a field or skulking through a town; they were pack animals reverting to their natural selves.
I called these jaunts “the Long Road.” It was a never-ending journey, it seemed. I was desperate to find another survivor, but every time I went out, it seemed harder to maintain my optimism. All I saw was a stark, barren land of overgrown lawns and houses already beginning to show the early signs of their eventual entropy. When storms came through, high winds would knock down trees branches and no one removed them. A few times I had to reroute my course because of a fallen bough on a roadway. With each empty, dead town my heart would break a little more. I spent a lot of this time on the road alternately feeling detached and then devastated by my situation. Why me? Why did I live? These questions were becoming a mantra for me, a puzzle I couldn’t decipher. It was slowly driving me insane. I wanted answers. I wanted proof that I wasn’t alone.
I moved toward Monroe, Wisconsin. I’d been to Monroe a couple of times because they have this major cheese festival every other year. It’s a nice little town with an impressive courthouse and town square. Monroe was just as dead as anything else, but I found some cellar rooms with cheese wheels in them. The cheese was aging, and hadn’t spoiled. I took a few wheels and put them in the back of my car. It would be a nice treat. Even Rowdy seemed excited by the prospect of a nice cheddar wheel. On the way back to Sun Prairie from Monroe, I took some side roads and tooled around the farms in the area. I cut wires and loosed the cattle. If I saw something that might be useful, I investigated it.
I was somewhere a few miles outside of Monroe and Rowdy started to do his pee-pee dance. I saw a building at the top of a hill and decided to pull over there. Rowdy could do his business, and I could investigate the building.
The building turned out to be a bowling alley in the middle of nowhere. It was a strange steel-sided box with a bar in the front and lanes in the rear. It was situated on the conjunction of two minor highways and surrounded by rolling pasture land and cornfields. It looked out of place. It was literally miles from anything, yet there it was. The building was aged and weathered, as though it hadn’t been used for years, but judging by the new volleyball nets in the sandpit in front of it, I doubted that was the case. I pulled into the empty parking lot and got out of the car. The dog bounded out after me and began sniffing the ground, looking for the best spot to relieve himself.
I walked toward the door of the building and stopped. Something was different, wrong almost. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I looked around, trying to figure out what it was. I listened for a sound of something different, but only heard wind. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, even though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the remote location of the bowling alley, or the loneliness getting to me. Something wasn’t right. Whatever part of my brain whose job it was to keep me alive was telling me something. It noticed something I couldn’t or just didn’t. I can’t explain how or why.
I went back to the car and pulled out the revolver I’d brought along. The gun felt absurdly heavy in my hand. Keep in mind, I’m not a hunter. My father didn’t own a gun, remember. At that point, I had never even held a BB gun, let alone a .38 Smith & Wesson. I wasn’t from one of those sorts of hunting families where guns were commonplace. My parents were borderline vegetarian hippies. I was brought up to believe in nonviolence. I broke my mother’s heart when I went out for football and wrestling in seventh grade, and she lectured me about unchecked male aggression being the root of all evil. I felt stupid holding the gun, but at the same time it was reassuring, comforting.
I walked toward the door again and realized what had set my spider-sense to tingling: The large cement slab in front of the door had been covered by sand that had blown off the volleyball pits. This wasn’t unusual in and of itself. I’d seen that a lot--with no traffic, with no use, a lot of stuff was getting covered with sand and dirt. However, this was strange in that there was a curved track in the sand from the door, as if someone had opened the door somewhat recently.
My heart leapt into my throat and started hammering. I wasn’t alone. Someone else had survived the Flu! I knelt to inspect the track. The edges were worn by wind somewhat, but the track couldn’t have been more than three or four days old, or the wind would have swept it clean.
I pulled the door handle on the glass door of the alley and it opened without issue. The air inside the alley smelled musty, like stale beer and mold. It was dark; the only light came from a narrow window along the front of the building and the glass doors of the entry. There was a bar in the front of the alley, a pretty typical dark slab fronted with wood panels. The rest of the building was twelve long lanes, seating for players, and a small grill area. The bar was completely clean save for three things: an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, an empty shot glass, and an empty Miller Lite bottle. Someone had been here to drown their sorrows. They drank alone, and then left. I wasn’t alone!
I ran back out to the parking lot. Rowdy had finished his business and was sitting patiently by the car. I opened the door, and he leapt into the passenger side and stuck his head out the open window. I honked the horn of the car several times and listened. Only wind replied. I dug in the car for something to write with and came up empty. I didn’t even have scrap paper.
I ran back into the bar and found a few notebooks in a little office. I tore out a sheet of blank paper and used a Bic pen to scrawl a note to whomever was drinking at the Country Lanes.
I survived, too. Am living in Sun Prairie at the library. I will check back here every third day for your reply.
I taped that note to the inside of the door. If the person who drank at this bar came back, he would have to see it. I assumed the person had to live in the area, somewhere nearby. He likely bowled leagues at this alley and spent a lot of time here. Why else would he come to this place?
I drove all the roads around the alley slowly, honking the horn occasionally and looking for some sort of reaction. I saw none. It was well after dark when I turned back toward Sun Prairie and drove home.
I stuck to my routines, but I was hopeful. I kept an extra eye on the roads around Sun Prairie while I drove on my duties, constantly scanning for a car or a motorcycle, anything that might be someone who had gotten my note.
On the next patrolling day, I woke before dawn and drove back to Country Lanes. My note was still on the door, and the dust in front of it
looked undisturbed since my last visit. Whomever it was, he hadn’t seen my letter. I got out and spread a new, thin layer of pit sand over the door slab. If someone came, I would know.
I drove around more roads in that area, honking the horn frequently. I went to Hollandale and investigated homes. Hollandale was small enough that I was able to crack the doors in every home there and discover whether the homes were empty or held dessicated bodies. In a few homes, I found dead dogs, and signs that they had starved to death, trapped inside with their dead owners. I wondered why some of the dogs, like Rowdy, had actually taken bites of their owners when starvation got to them, and others chose simply to die. Was it their grieving process?
In each of the homes, I always started by calling out a hello. It always felt strange, like laughing in church. My voice, despite my occasional reading aloud to the dog, still sounded foreign to me. It didn’t feel right that I should speak and ruin the obstinate silence of the world. After I called out my greeting, I would wait in half-hope, half-fear, both wanting to hear someone return my greeting and being terrified to have them do so. I had no idea what to expect from someone else, someone who has been alone for months as I had.
I wore the revolver on my hip now in a holster on a gun belt. It was reassuring to have it there as a tool if I needed it, but I hoped I would never have to draw it on someone else. I didn’t even know if I would be physically and mentally able to draw it on someone else. As I drove the roads around the bowling alley, I played out possible scenarios in my head of what might happen if I found this person. I envisioned this stranger as a man, for some reason--the bowling alley, the Jack Daniels--it seemed to fit. Would he be kind? Would he run up and embrace me as a brother would, grateful to see another living person? Would he be wary? What if he carried a gun, too? Would he go for it? Would I have to draw mine immediately if he drew his? There were so many variables to an encounter. My mind relentlessly played out endless different scenarios.