The Event, Life after the Meteor
By
Thomas W. Larson
Copyrighted © July 2014 by Thomas Larson
All rights reserved
Cover Illustration
By
Ariana Patterson
Acknowledgement
I would like to take this opportunity to thank some friends and family who have helped in the creation of this work. First of all to Marianne and Ariana for being involved in the project. Also to Heidi and Matt Theriault for their help with ideas and editing. And finally my outside the family “editors” Keith Hollinger and Beth Burke. You all were so much help.
This is the disclaimer:
Although a number of events and locations in this story are real however the people involved in the story are all fictitious and do not really exists except in my mind, and now maybe yours. Any similarity to a person living or dead is strictly coincidences.
The Event, yes, I think that I can call it The Event, occurred while I was taking a nap. It is funny; a number of the big occurrences such as the Challenger Disaster, or the Reagan assassination attempt took place while I was napping. They really did not impact me at the exact time, although in the days, weeks and years to follow they would.
I call it The Event because I am still not entirely sure what exactly it was. So let me go back a little and start to chronicle it. On February 19th (2013), there was a near miss of the Earth by a large meteor. Shortly before it passed by there was a smaller meteor that entered the atmosphere and exploded over Russia. When it exploded, the blast broke out one million square feet of window glass. I recall the incident, and saw the video on the Internet. Most of us did not think much of it at the time other than it was something that had to elevate the pucker factor for a lot of folks in the Ural Mountains. Can you imagine what it must have been like for those people who knew the big meteor was coming and then to see and hear that blast?
I’m sorry, I’m kind of rambling on but it has been a while since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, a hot shower or a good cup of coffee. I’ve come to the realization that I probably won’t survive in the long term, but then, none of us expect to. What I mean is that after The Event, survival as we know it changed. I am writing this as a means to help me understand what happened, what is happening and finally give a record or some insights of what we (my group) may have done well, or wrong, should someone find this and do better at survival than we have.
I will apologize for my poor grammar, I am sure that over time I will bounce from first person to third person as well as past to present tenses. I am a retired cop, not a novelist and it has been 40 plus years since I had English Comp classes.
Feb 24th
I guess to start let me run through the point where I, we, society….. Hell…. humanity realized that something had hit the fan, and we were in trouble. It appears that when that meteor hit the atmosphere it did something. There have been many theories that I have heard. Initially it was thought to have released a gas, or dust or a burst of some form of energy like gamma rays, only different.
There are those who suggested that it was actually a weapon of some sort that was aimed at the Earth by the larger meteor passing by. The “What” does not really matter much at this point, although the idea of an attack, with no attempt at conquest seems unlikely. It opened a series of questions as to the possible motive, if it was an attack but that is a discussion for another day.
Anyway, CNN, Fox News and all the rest dropped reporting about the problems of Republican versus Democrats or the issues of Obamacare and all eyes and talking heads were watching Europe, and then Asia. Every channel showed surveillance camera footage of people just dropping dead. They would be walking along and then boom, they were on the ground, a little seizure and it was over. Cameras zoomed in on bodies’ that littered streets first in parts of Russia, and then Asia. The TV was filled with reports of the growing areas of the deaths. There was something about wind direction and at the onset that it was the wind that was moving the death along.
News networks dragged out with their “health experts” who droned on and on about what was happening but really gave little insight as to what the cause was, it was all conjecture. One of the earliest theories was that it was some form of airborne virus. Some suggested it was a breach at a Russian Bio-weapons lab. The Russian government claimed innocence.
It was on about the third day after the start of die offs that things turned ugly, I guess weird is a better term. How can you think of a massive die-off of millions of people not being ugly? It was on about that third day that the re-animations began. All of those puffy, bloated rotting bodies began to twitch, move and start walking again. It was in those early days that the military and the research teams were still trying to clear the streets as well as determine the cause of the die off. Those units suffered the onslaught as they were surrounded by the re-animated. They were over-run and torn to shreds by the gnawing, slow moving unstoppable hordes that appeared impervious to gunfire. There was no escape for them.
The Russians and the Chinese were a little slow to act on the re-animation at first, but within about 12 hours they had nuked entire cities, there was very little left. Actually, I am guessing that there was little left because there was no longer video feed to the networks, only satellite photos of that part of the world with large plumes of what looked like smoke or clouds during the day and blackness at night. We had always been told that cockroaches could and would survive a nuclear attack, I wonder.
And so that was the end of it, the epidemic was stopped and the danger was over. Or so they said, but there was a small detail that arose. It was the travelers, all those people who flew out, or took the trains, or drove to areas outside of the initial death zones. It was impossible to trace them and too late by the time they were found. The Middle East was where the next big die off took place. That was followed by London, Paris and then, on to North and South America. The reports by the CDC or WHO said that an airliner or a passenger train were nothing more than a sort of Petri Dish for the virus. I am assuming a virus, the CDC never really said before it went silent.
With all the connecting flights and travel contacts, the virus was pretty much around the globe by the 25th of February. By that point all we could do is watch CNN, Fox or MSNBC as humanity was slowly blinking out.
Feb 26th
One of the things that was repeatedly hammered home to all of us in the family was my Dad’s famous quote, “Be Smart”. Unfortunately that quote left a lot of open space and ‘smart’ was never really fleshed out, so often my idea of ‘smart’ and his were quite different. But at this point in time ‘smart’ was to realize the potential of the situation and begin to collect what things would be important to have for when it was time to get out of the area. I wanted to survive, perhaps for silly reasons like, just to see if I could do it.
I began to think about what I would need to make it through. I created a list of survival needs and began to collect them. And I no longer left the house without a firearm. I was not sure what I was more concerned about running into, the re-animated….shit…they are what we have all come to know as Zombies, may as well call a spade a spade, or was I more concerned with the still living, in their state of panic, and acting irrationally.
I was not the only person thinking about surviving this. The grocery stores were empty of bread, cereal and milk. I chuckled as I thought about people preparing for a winter storm or hurricane. This was no winter storm. I opted for Spam, and beans, and canned goods. And yes, I even took the canned dog food. I stockpiled items into my self-store unit to allow room in my car for
more collecting.
Although we had not reached critical mass, and I had hoped that we never would, but I knew better. I knew that using the credit cards would only last so long and then it would be cash or barter system and eventually, maybe only a bullet system to eat and survive.
Feb 27th
“Anne, we need to talk, this is important”
Anne, my girlfriend, her 14 year old daughter Margo and Anne’s parents, Cyril and Arcelia lived in a little Cape Cod house on Eagle Circle in South Windsor. Eagle Circle was part of a PUD which stands for private unit dwelling, sort of a condo complex but with individual units on a series of little streets.
“I think that we are faced with the end of the world and we have to get out of here, if we do, we might survive” I said, intense and hurried.
I was pretty sure that they would freak out or in the tradition of the family dilly dally and put things off to the last minute. But I was surprised.
“I know.” was all she said.
We talked about what we were going to need and save from our current life. We focused on things that would keep us warm, safe, dry, and most of all, alive. I had decided that it would be wise to head up to Webster to Anne’s folks house to pick up what guns and ammunition were stored there. I would make the run alone early the next day. The outbreaks had still been restricted to the Boston area in that direction, although hotspots were starting to pop up out toward Brockton, and as far west as Framingham. There were hordes of re-animated bodies moving away from the cities and toward us with their teeth they were gnawing and tearing the life and limb of those unable to escape. The victims in turn would join the horde when they re-animated. We had to get those weapons, we would need them, and we had to do it quickly.
Initially the government had put out statements directing people to head to the larger cities in their area. That was for the first couple of days. They claimed that they would be able to protect those who made it and keep them supplied with food and water. But anyone who has ever done even a little research or read a zombie story knew that it was not true. If anything it would result in the worst case scenario of infection. I for one was very skeptical about heading to a city after seeing what had occurred in Russia and China. And although no one had officially called it a zombie outbreak, it was.
Our area around Hartford was still quiet; I was not super worried about Anne and crew for a four hour trip to Webster. I think that TV and movies have “bred” into us the idea to aim for the head when dealing with Zombies but Russians and Chinese had not thought of that when their units were overrun.
I gave Anne and Margo a quick run-down on how to shoot, and where to aim. I taught them on the 9mm which I left with them along with 4 or 5 extra magazines. Before I left I did take Anne aside and talked to her alone. She was scared, but holding up well, she had to, for the family. I told her, “If it came down to it, maybe a single shot to the head for all is better than the other option.”
She looked at me blankly for a moment, and then understood. Tears welled up, and finally she just said, “Hurry back”.
Feb 28th
Be smart, the best way to make it to Webster was to take I-84 part way, and then go on Route 190 through the Hollow, that was Bigelow Hollow, an old state park. I would run into the least amount of traffic that way. I found that the part of 84 that I travelled was pretty quiet. It was a main route between Boston and New York. Both of those areas were infested so there was little reason to travel between them. What I did not know was that there were periodic road blocks that had been set up by the military in major junctions of the highway to check on the people moving through. To pass through the road block all you had to do was prove that you had not been infected or were carriers. Infected and carriers were “quarantined”.
The problem was there was no way to prove you were not infected. It was later discovered that the quarantines were just holes in the ground that the bodies were dumped after a single head shot. It was not humanity’s finest hour and yet believed at least by some local commanders necessary for the survival of the humanity.
Fortunately, I was able to pass easily into Webster avoiding the blockades and get to the folk’s house. I quickly loaded up the car and was on my way back home in about 45 minutes. I still had been fortunate in that I was ahead of the real panic in its full scale. But as I drove and listened to the radio reports which were now calling it a plague and it had reached Waterbury and Worchester. The noose was tightening around us and we needed to be on the road very soon.
When I had returned I found that the girls had packed both Cyril’s van and Anne’s Honda CRV with whatever survival gear and food they had available. Both vehicles had been gassed up, which to their credit was a trait that was a standard with them. Never get below a half a tank, in the winter time; keep topped off was the mantra. I was also able to top off, although the lines were getting longer and longer and some stations had run out of gas already. After gassing up I made the stop at my storage place picking up the items I previously tucked away.
I guess that those who know me, or knew me, were aware of my pets. I had a couple of cats, Little Moo and Basement Cat. One of the more difficult things for me to do was to decide what should be done with them. In trying to weigh it out, it seemed that the best idea was to turn them loose into the wild. Both were quite capable of outdoor survival and would hopefully be more comfortable in that environment than cooped up in a car driving to who knows were. Realistically if we took them with, well, I did not relish the idea that should the food situation become such that……you know…….
So far there had been no reports of the infected eating animals. Or for that matter animals being infected. This was one of the issues that the conspiracy and alien theorists based some of their argument on.
The various news outlets had talking heads that felt that if this was a universal disease that the animals would be infected, or perhaps subject to consumption by the “Changed”. The fact that this was not happening seemed to indicate that the cause was specifically targeted at humans. It went go back and forth between an alien introduced cause and that of an earthly cause such as a mutated microbe or virus. And of course the question of whether it was natural occurring or was it something that the bio-weapons people created.
March 1st
We were going to finally hit the road. Initially the thought was that it would be best to try to make an attempt to get across the Hudson River. That would open up a lot of territory for us to travel and avoid areas I guess you would call Dead or Death Zones. But the more I thought of it, and based upon the news reports that were still coming out it was clear that the bridges, the George, the Tap and the one up by Albany, were not going to work. The first two were blocked by traffic and over run by the infected. The military in its efforts to stop the spread blew up the one running off of I-90 into Albany. I am still wondering what they were thinking on that one.
It also was going to be a mess with the Mass Pike Traffic in the Springfield area which according to the radio was at a standstill. Clearly the avoidance of interstates out of urban areas was a necessity. Traffic or should I say abandoned cars and trucks were blocking most of the major arteries. The best option was to take the lesser travelled roads. We decided that we would try to head toward the western part of Connecticut and then travel up Route 8 to get to Massachusetts and then on toward Vermont. Once we got up there ….well, we would just have to see.
About an hour before our departure time the shit hit the fan, not in the appearance of the infected, but in the decision by Anne’s parents that it made no sense for them to come with us. They had a lot of good reasons for not wanting to go. They were old, in their 80s, and not well, they needed the comforts of home, for as long as they lasted. They realized that they would be a drain on the limited resources that we would be carrying. It was a terrible situation. Anne argued, demanded and cried that they should come. The van did carry enough survival gear and food to initially cover their travel. But as Arce
lia pointed out, only she could drive and that the rigors of the road would be too much for her.
It was Cyril who said it best. “We have in our lifetimes been through a lot of stuff. It has been a good life for us.” He went on to say that “We don’t want to die, but we know that the road will be hard and even without the crisis, our time is short.”
Arcelia piped in; “We don’t want to struggle and scrape. Your father is nearly blind, and I can’t walk long distances. We would slow you down, and be a burden that could and probably would reduce your chances of escape.”
They had spent time talking about it the night before and decided they would stay put, and face the end on their terms. We all knew it was the right thing, and yet it was a difficult reality to face. I think I will skip going into the long good-by that took place and leave to the reader’s imagination can fill these unwritten paragraphs.
I will say that before we drove off I got Cyril into the garage for a brief talk, and while there I slipped a 38 revolver into his pocket, for when the time came.
“I promise that I will do the best I can to take care of Anne and Margo.” I said.
Quietly he said, “Thank you, I know you will.”
The Event Trilogy (Book 1): Life After the Meteor Page 1