Outpost 9: An Apocalyptic Memior

by Crane, J. J.

  They were a young couple in their early thirties, no kids. Both had striking blonde hair looking more like an advertising campaign for vacationing in Sweden.

  It was amusing seeing them on their knees, hunched over, hands holding little shovels, gloves on, poking around the ground like archeologists.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked naively at first in what soon evolved into our little inside joke.

  They always smiled. “Mushrooms,” Jason or Jenny would reply.

  “What kind of mushrooms?” I would shoot back with a wink and a nod.

  “Nothing like that,” one of them would say.

  “Then where’s the fun?”

  “For cooking,” Jenny never hesitated to say.

  Jason always backed her up. “Nature’s own is the best stuff you can get. No fertilizers, preservatives… just the dirt.”

  “Ah yes, dirt. My favorite kind of seasoning… By the looks of it, I see you know what you’re doing. I mean, can’t those things kill you?”

  “Yes, some can,” Jenny would answer. “But we have a pretty good idea what we are looking for.”

  Jason would always follow with, “Anything questionable is left in the ground.”

  June and I liked them a lot. They always carried a relaxed smile. When we moved in, they were the first ones to bring

  over a welcoming meal of soups and salads from their

  foraging and gardening.

  In time, we found out they were lead computer programmers for a large bank in Hartford. With their good-natured dispositions, a penchant for sharing and their natural food lifestyle, I considered them modern preppy hippie types.

  Chapter 2

  A month after our one-year anniversary of moving to Chapel, a series of strong early autumn thunderstorms swept through the area. The rains caused creeks and rivers to overflow, flooding some homes in the region. Two lightning strikes caused farm fires not too far away, and gusty winds knocked over dozens of trees leading to a regional power outage.

  I remember the rain pouring down hard as if a million fingers were drumming chaotically against the roof of our house. I turned on the back-porch light to see sheets of rain slamming into the ground creating giant puddles.

  I paced our house with worry, making sure flashlights were ready, extension cords available at a moment’s notice. I even checked our generator’s fuel level several times, despite having filled it the day before in preparation of the storm.

  As much as I believed I was ‘over’ what happened when Super Storm Rebecca decimated my old town, many of those fears and visions came rushing over me like the rain that pounded against our house. I barked orders to my kids, handing them extension cords and telling them where I wanted them run to – appliances like the kitchen refrigerator and the downstairs freezer as well as a few lights. While they did that, I made sure that my converter line was ready so if I needed heat or air conditioning, I could switch to them in a moment’s notice. My set up wasn’t what you would call up-to-code, but with the help of my next-door neighbor, Pops, we jerry-rigged a set up that allowed me to tap into my electrical box and switch the heat and air conditioning load over to my 10,000 watt generator. One of the two I owned. The trick to this endeavor was, I had to move my generator outside or at least to the edge of the garage where I could open the door and point the exhaust outside.

  It was about three hours into the deluge that the power went out. Just like in the superstorm, there was no warning, no fanfare, only silent darkness consuming everything in an instant. With cool-headedness by everyone in the house, headlamps, and flashlights went on until I could start the generator. A few minutes later we were up and functioning with enough lights throughout the house to make it easily livable.

  I remember taking a deep relaxing breath and falling into the couch. No sooner did I close my eyes and feel my body meld into the material of the furniture than my eyes shot open with a thought – is everyone else okay?

  The first person I thought of was Pops and his wife, Jean, an older couple in their late sixties. His real name was Dan but told me to call him Pops because that’s what everyone else called him. He was the first person I met and shook hands with when we moved in. On that first day, he had a fishing pole and tackle box in hand ready to head on down to the lake along the trail our connecting yards shared.

  “You have a pole?” he asked as the deep lines on his forehead crumpled and crinkled with every word of his question. It was one of the first things I noticed about him, these overly big wrinkles that shaped his cheeks and forehead. When expressionless, his skin looked normal for a man his age. It all changed dramatically as soon as he spoke, the lines becoming alive with activity. It was an amusing sight. I later came to learn that Pops was a terrible card player because the slightest expression betrayed any chance of him having a poker face.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. It’s somewhere in this mess,” I said as I looked over a maze of boxes the movers had stacked in my garage.

  Pops smiled, tipped an invisible hat and said, “when you get settled, I’ll show you a couple of hot spots for catching some nice trout. The state stocks the lake.”

  “I look forward to it and thanks,” I recall saying.

  A crack of thunder rattled the house, followed by a bright magnesium like flash of lightning that briefly lit up our living room. I jumped up from my seat, went to the coat closet and pulled out my rain jacket.

  “Where are you going?” June questioned with a raised eyebrow, thinking me mad.

  “See how others are making out. Want to check and make sure Pops and Jean are okay,” I answered.

  June shook her head and gave me a half-cocked smile. “Please be careful out there,” she said before heading upstairs to see how the kids were doing.

  I exited through the garage, checking on the generator that was positioned facing out near the edge of the open door. Not five strides into being outside, a strong wind blew, sending sheets of pinpricked rain into my face. I squinted, trying to see through the torrent and dark. I couldn’t spot lights on at Pops’ but noticed a few other houses where a dim light flickered in the distance like a boat far out at sea trying to locate a lighthouse.

  When I arrived at Pops’ front door, I pounded on it. Through the door window, I watched a beam of light bounce around as it approached. The side curtain pulled away, and I waved. The light disappeared for a moment before the door opened.

  “Just checking to see if you guys are okay,” I said in a loud voice as the rain smacked against their portico as if someone was dropping hundreds of individual water balloons against it.

  “We’re fine,” Pops said with a puzzled look, his raised eyebrows creating several deep creases across his forehead. “Thanks for asking. Everything okay with you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, the generator’s running, the family is safe,” I responded, adrenaline still pumping through me. “I wanted to make sure you folks were okay. I didn’t see any lights on and wondered if I could run an extension cord or two over so you could have some power.”

  Pops squirreled a curious look at me. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course, why? I’m just checking in and seeing if anyone

  needed to tap into our generator,” I answered confused by his questioning and quizzical expression.

  Pops dipped the flashlight in his hand down towards my abdomen area. “Okay, but do you think it’s a good idea taking a gun out with you when you go to folk’s homes?”

  I stood stunned, doing my best impression of a statue. I didn’t remember grabbing it, yet there it was, my shotgun, secured in my left hand. I looked at Pops, shocked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize…”

  “It’s okay son,” he said. “It’s that incident back in Jersey. Your subconscious reacted and didn’t let you know… but you do now. Go home, put the gun away and come back. Then we’ll go see how everyone is doing.”

  Semi-rural living had its upside, but when the power goes out, it can s
ometimes take a couple of days for it to come back - something rarely experienced in more populated suburban or urban areas unless under extraordinary conditions. Our neighbors accepted that power could be out for a day or two and adapted. It also helped that the water table in the area was deep and that basements in the neighborhood rarely took on water. When you don’t have to worry about furniture floating in your basement, it helps you sleep a lot easier. The storm that took out our power left about three inches of water in our sump pump hole, not even enough to kick on the pump.

  But, for me, the blackout reinvigorated my interest in preparedness. I began to read survival blogs again and purchased new books on preparing for various types of disasters. I even recorded the prepper TV shows and what if scenario programs. This inevitably led me to buy more items I thought would come in handy in case of a prolonged power outage like canned goods, more MREs, and additional containers for gas and kerosene. I even bought an extra 12x16 shed for storage. June went ballistic over that expense and put her foot down on my spending. She didn’t mind that I was thinking ahead and looking to protect the family, but when it came to dropping a couple of thousand dollars on a shed to store supplies in the event of some farcical end of times event, well, that was a bit too much.

  As fall gave way to winter, now our second in Chapel, Connecticut, we had a much better sense of what to expect. The first winter surprised us with its much colder temperatures and greater snow accumulation than our generally milder New Jersey winters.

  Winter also brought the annual flu season. However, this particular winter a new flu bug took shape. Scientists discovered the virus originated from horses. News agencies quickly called it the Equine Flu. Equine flues weren’t unknown; they simply didn’t happen often and more importantly didn’t affect humans. Scientists couldn’t figure out why this strain made the jump. They intensely studied the pathogen, examining the microscopic structure for clues as to how it was able to morph into a virus that could infect humans.

  Studies determined the bug originated in western China a year earlier. Though the CDC and other pharmaceutical companies rushed resources to study the virus, initial coverage by the networks and cable news barely garnered it tertiary handling. Most audiences in North America didn’t know that over one hundred people in rural China perished because of it. The first headlines didn’t occur until a couple of hundred horses in Canada perished, followed quickly by three Canadian civilians who died from the virus. When several Americans contracted the strain in Montana, news of it exploded across every electronic device possible, causing a brief panic in states bordering the 49th parallel where the virus appeared.

  It came as no surprise to me that the media turned the Equine Flu into a horror story. As they did with the H1N1 (Swine Flu) and SARS before it, the media did a good job scaring people with its sensationalist promotional ads to generate interest in their coverage of the story. The kicker about this flu was the way it could attack a person’s lungs, causing severe inflammation and possible cardiac arrest. That attribute made this virus unique. When it came to television ratings, news agencies couldn’t go wrong selling heart failure via a virus with no vaccine to prevent it.

  I had to admit; the coverage spooked me. With an exponentially booming global population, I wondered if nature figured out a way to thin out the proverbial human herd.

  It wasn’t like people were immune to such events. The world experienced a major virus during World War I, the Spanish Flu. It killed over eighteen million people; more people than the actual war did. And, the Black Death that happened in the 14th century wiped out approximately fifty percent of Europe.

  A friend from New Jersey, Frank Hanson, a research and development executive for a major pharmaceutical firm, allayed my worries when he told me this wasn’t the virus to worry about. He, his wife Jen and their two kids came up to spend the weekend towards the end of that winter as the Equine Flu fervor began to die down. We took a walk down to the lake so I could show him where Curtis and I fished. I remember him saying, “This Equine is deadly. But it’s also difficult to transmit. We still don’t know exactly how this mutation occurred, but the clues are leading towards the strain being at a peak level of infectiousness for less than twenty-four hours and limited to the saliva. A farmer or ranch hand working closely with horses needed one to spit, slobber or sneeze on him or her and it goes right into the mouth, eye, or cut for them to contract the virus. The other way to contract it would be by not properly washing their hands before touching their face, bite a nail, pick a nose, or something like

  that. Tests show that the virus is even harder to spread from

  person to person.”

  Frank paused. “But, I digress. Our concern is because the equine strain jumped to infect humans, it’s the potential of what this virus or a similar one can morph into that has some of us worried.”

  I remembered him telling me that SARS could be frightening if it mutated. It had the potential to be a nasty bug, but many scientists didn’t think it had the legs to wreak long-term damage. The way he spoke of the Equine virus reminded me of that. Frank had a way of cautioning that always allowed for the unexpected. He always hedged his bets by saying that with viruses and bacteria, you could never rule out how they could adapt to their surroundings and evolve into some other strain.

  Towards the end of our conversation, he slapped me on the back. “You okay?” he asked knowing my predilection towards being prepared for the worst.

  I laughed half-heartedly and said I was fine.

  He smiled. “Rob… Relax. Breathe. You have a beautiful place up here. Enjoy it.” Then he turned more serious in tone. “But stay aware.”

  Chapter 3

  Thwap! went the sound of an arrow popping the canvas layer of a target strapped to a thick bale of hay.

  “Nicely done,” said Max with a surprised chuckle in his voice eyeing the near bullseye my daughter Maya hit with an arrow using her new compound bow from twenty yards. Maya had recently shown interest in archery and joined a local club where she quickly showed a knack for the sport.

  “Way to go,” Linda said as she nodded in a way that expressed girl pride. She turned to June, “she’s a natural.”

  Max and Linda were next door neighbors and lived across the street from us.

  “You want to try a few Mr. Hanson?” Maya asked.

  “Of course, I do,” Max said with wide-eyed readiness.

  “Watch yourself there Mr. Eager,” Linda chided. Not only had they lived next door to each other for over a decade, but they were also members of the same gun club. “I’ve seen some of your archery skills… I’m giving the word ‘skills’ a lot of leeway.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Max said, waving her off. “Just because you have gone bow hunting, doesn’t make you an expert.”

  Linda coughed jokingly. “I think it makes me an expert just a tad more than you. At least I’ve taken down an animal with one. I’ll bet you a six-pack and a package of your Elk steaks you don’t hit within that circle in three tries.”

  “You know I love a good bet. What do I get when I win?” Max asked as he took the bow from Maya.

  “What you love best… bragging rights,” Linda answered.

  Max smiled wide, his barrel-chested body inflating even more so at the opportunity to jovially rub it in Linda’s face. “I do love my bragging rights.”

  Not much taller than my five-and-a-half-foot daughter, Max took hold of the bow, aligned an arrow, and drew the string back. His hands shook a bit as he meekly tried to brace the bow by stiffening his forearm.

  “Ya got a little shake going there,” I said, poking fun.

  “Rifle is more my thing,” Max said as he loosened the string and pointed the bow towards the ground to reset. “It’s been ages since I’ve used one of these.”

  “And it’s a girl’s bow,” I said.

  Maya didn’t take too kindly to the remark. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I
t’s a slightly smaller bow than what someone… bigger, might use. Besides, you wanted one made for women.”

  Maya curled her lip in that, good save, kind of way.

  “So, Max, you going to hit that target or talk about it,” Linda chirped.

  Max quickly positioned the bow into a shooting position. He pulled back the string as if he’d done it a hundred times. Though his arm visibly shook, he took a second to aim then let the arrow fly.

  “Nice one,” June said, sarcastically.

  “That had to have sailed at least fifty yards into the woods,” Linda said, a hand on her brow looking into the woods behind our house.

  “Got two more,” Max said, lining up a new arrow.

  “Try not to lose this one,” I shouted.

  Max snorted, tilted his head a little more to better examine the sight line. A second later, he let the arrow fly.

  “Impressive… at least we can retrieve that one,” Linda said, looking at the arrow burrowed into the ground about five yards short of the target.

  “You have a comment for everything, don’t ya?” Max shot back.

  “Enough to know that a nice cold six-pack and a delicious cut of Elk is coming my way,” Linda retorted.

  “You think?” Max responded, his eye half-cocked.

  Linda laughed. “No thinking about it. Not a prayer you hit that target.”

  “We’ll see,” Max said then proceeded to align another arrow. Where his arm quivered the last two attempts, this time his body was more at ease. A moment later, he let the arrow fly.

  Linda laughed again as the arrow skidded off the top of the hay bale.

  “At least I touched the target area,” Max said as if winning some participation trophy.

  “I’ll send Steve over later. You can regale him with your tale of woe,” Linda said. She turned to June and pointed at her near empty wine glass signaling they needed another.