Outpost 9: An Apocalyptic Memior

by Crane, J. J.

  Keeping an eye out on the tracks we were following became easier as the night began to give way to the new day’s light. The houses, once dark shapes, now revealed detail, paint color, aluminum siding or not, etc.., Checking the time, we were almost an hour into our mission. Soon, the sun would rise above the trees and eliminate the cover of shadows we were relying on to hide us. We had to pick up the pace, despite our leg muscles screaming for us to go slower.

  As we came to the fourth cross street, I looked back and saw Jason had stopped at the previous house. He looked slumped over as he stared in the home.

  “Jason!” I whispered as loud as I could. He looked at me. I threw my arms in the air along with a, what are you doing expression. He collected himself and caught up. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He tried to speak, his voice quivering. “There was a family sitting together on a couch. They’re all dead. They laid together and died.”

  I bit my bottom lip. “Okay,” I said with understanding. “We have to keep moving. We want to get out of here as soon as we can.” I didn’t want to make light of Jason’s observation, but we also didn’t have time to let our emotions cloud our mission.

  At the fifth cross street, we noticed the tracks turned down that road. At this point, we split in two. Ted and I took one side of the house, and Jason and Dave took the other. We hugged the sides of the home to see who would get the best sight line in determining where the tracks led.

  “Can you make out anything?” I asked Ted, who took the lead.

  “Not well. It looks like the tracks go a decent way down,” he answered.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I dropped my backpack, unzipped a pouch, and pulled out a pair of old binoculars. “Here you go,” I said handing them to him.

  “Godsend,” he said, taking them to survey the area. “Got it.” Then his tone changed. “Ah, Shit.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He handed me the binoculars. “Far down on the right… two police cars.”

  It took a moment for me to locate the automobiles. I turned the focus ring on the binoculars, and sure enough, I spotted the two police cars, partly snow covered in a driveway. “Shit is right,” I said, then motioned to retreat towards the back of the house.

  As we came to the backyard, Jason and Dave emerged from around their side.

  “Cops,” Jason said, breathing hard.

  “Yeah, how did you see it?” I said holding up the binoculars.

  Dave held up the rifle I gave him, insisting his house have a weapon besides the revolutionary war era ones. “Scope.”

  Ted and I nodded.

  It was then we heard a generator start up. Ted and Dave checked out the scene again. They said the sound came from the same house where they spotted the police cars.

  “Jason,” I said. “Do you know any cops in town?”

  “Not really. I know of a few, but I don’t know any,” he answered.

  “Do you know anyone who lives in this development?” I asked.

  “Jenny used to attend a garden club meeting down this street,” he answered.

  “Any mention of cops living in this neighborhood?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry no. I can’t recall if she ever made that observation.”

  “How about you Dave, anyone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Pops would know. He’s more familiar with the police than anyone in our neighborhood.”

  “Well… whether a cop lives there or not, they either know someone who did, or the house belongs to a friend of theirs and they are using it as some kind of base camp,” Ted said.

  “Or they got trapped in during the storm while clearing out a house,” Dave added.

  “Possible,” I said, taking in the information. “Alright. We found what we came out for. We have an idea of what we may be dealing with, so let’s head back. With that generator going, I doubt anyone over there will hear us stomping through the snow.”

  With a slow, steady pace, we made good time back to the entrance road. I noticed as Ted did that the hum of the generator we heard was barely audible. It puzzled me. Sound could travel funny and so by the time we got back to our street, we couldn’t hear it. It made me wonder if they heard our generators. One thing was sure - we had company. They knew about us, and now we knew about them.

  Chapter 17

  A week passed before temperatures began to rise and the snow began to melt. The night watches reported mostly silence. From time to time, someone heard a generator running off in the distance. We figured the cops at Circle Estates were running theirs. Occasionally deer made their way through, bounding about trying to get through the drifts of snow. With the nights quiet, Ted brought a pad and paper one night, and while sitting in the car, he sketched out a map of our block and the surrounding woods. He began expressing a desire to construct a defensive barrier.

  When it turned out that several other people had discussed similar ideas, it was time to organize and see what we could come up with. Pops, Max, Dave, Katie, Ted and I met to draw up several defensive plans for the neighborhood. We concentrated on the two most obvious weak points, the entrance of the street, and the trail coming up from the lake. We focused on the road because it had the highest probability for an attack to originate from. That discussion grew into an assortment of ‘what if’ scenarios including several cars coming into the neighborhood to attack. No one, outside of Pops stint as a mechanic in the army, had any armed forces experience. Katie and Dave became our military experts based on their extensive knowledge of how various battles unfolded during the Revolutionary War. Otherwise, we were shooting in the dark.

  When the snow melted down to less than a foot, Katie, Dave, Pops, and Max began to walk people through some simple drills. The first designs worked around if intruders came through the street entrance.

  The initial plan as to how we would respond to an attack

  was clumsy and fraught with errors. People weren’t sure which car to go to for shelter or exactly which window was to be used to set up a kind of sniper’s nest. There was also the question of if cars came down the street and we fired, wouldn’t we be cross-firing on each other? Who was giving the order to fire and by what means of communication were these orders coming from?

  Our self-assessment of the situation was nothing short of frightening. If an armed group came and attacked us, we had no chance. And why not? We primarily were a community of white-collar, middle-class people, who had no reason to ever worry about such thoughts.

  Now though, the game had changed. We all witnessed, before television broadcasts ceased, how barbaric people could turn. And that was when folks had supplies on hand. Now, six weeks hence, with law and order essentially non-existent, any survivors who weren’t prepared to handle a prolonged crisis, certainly weren’t going to care about consequences. What crept into the minds of the six of us when we discussed it was – what if we ran into a gang of survivors who were looking to hoard as much material for their own good? Could we defend ourselves properly? The more we let those thoughts sink in, the more we became terrified of our ineptitude.

  To make matters worse, Doc noticed that some people began to show signs of SAD (Seasonal Affect Disorder). Tempers became short. Arguments within households could sometimes reach volumes where others could hear. Even at meetings of The Body, choice words flew, seemingly out of the blue. Doc addressed it at a community meeting. We all understood. Nothing personal occurred. We just had to recognize that our anger and outbursts, whether fits of crying or depressive moods, directly came about due to the grim weather, the shorter days of daylight (though they had begun to grow longer), no electricity and the extreme conditions we had to cope with. Doc encouraged people to spend more time outside, even if it was hanging out on a porch.

  The Body understood that we also needed to devise and execute better defensive plans to protect the neighborhood. We began to draw up more drills and edit out the ones that appeared more confusing than constructive. This activity not
only better prepared ourselves to defend but also helped occupy people’s minds.

  Watch Patrol quickly became a twenty-four hour duty with the kids now involved. When we noticed that roads were passable, about ten days after the storm, we mandated that all members of The Body keep a walkie-talkie with them at all times. It was especially important to keep them on at night as a safety precaution if there was a need for a ‘call to arms.’ We felt with the roads now open, if there were desperate people about, we had to have the ability to assemble and act quickly.

  One night, while not on watch, I heard something happening outside just shy of 2 a.m. Going to the window, I saw two police cars. The vehicles came down the street quickly. As they turned around in the cul-de-sac, each put on their spotlights, panned a side of the street then slowly drove out. When they disappeared towards town, I woke Ted, grabbed my rifle, and ran outside. I gave the whistle call we devised to signal each other about a friendly presence. A moment later, Max, Linda, John (Doc’s son) who were on patrol, appeared. Jason came running out his front door to join us.

  “What the hell was that about?” I asked.

  They shook their heads with no answer. “It was fricking weird is what it was,” Jason said half-panting and pissed.

  “Weird? I nearly shit myself,” Max said with a worried laugh. “Sorry, Linda.”

  “No, no, I would have fought you for toilet paper,” she answered in return with the same kind of nervous laughter. “Thankfully we weren’t in the line of sight.”

  “Where were you guys?” I asked.

  “Walking the backyard perimeter,” Max said. “It’s something I started implementing the other day. It keeps you moving and hey… no one said an intrusion was exclusive to the road.”

  “True,” I responded. It made sense. “I’ll have to incorporate it on my shift tomorrow. Anyway, did they see you? Could you see anything going on?”

  They said no. In fact, they apparently saw less than Jason and me, because they ducked for cover and remained hidden until the lights disappeared. We tried to think why they would shine lights rather than do a quick visual.

  “They were assessing if you ask me,” Ted said. “I don’t think they are all cops. And, it appears the parameters of what law and order is has shifted.”

  “I agree,” Linda said.

  “We need to repay the visit,” Jason demanded, his childlike face stern, like a kid who had taken enough shit and was ready to strike back. “I mean it. If they can play this psychological game, so can we.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, intrigued by his bravado. Jason was a nice guy, reserved, carefree, a mix of yuppie and hippie. But, that laid-back attitude, over time, shifted to one that reared an intenseness I wasn’t accustomed to.

  “I say we go over with four or five cars. Show some strength, let them know we’re on to their shit, and if they want to fuck with us, well…we’re here,” he said with absolute passion.

  “Slow down Patton,” I said, trying to ease the tension. “I get your meaning but let’s think this through.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Ted said, supporting Jason’s notion. “We nip this in the bud now, we can turn this in our favor,” he said. “Let’s face it; we probably have more people in our group than they do. We don’t need them getting any kind of edge. Showing a little muscle… not a terrible idea.”

  “Here’s the thing,” I countered, trying to be pragmatic. “They may just want to show some piss and vinegar, thinking they have us psyched out. We go over there; we don’t know what kind of trigger-happy Neanderthals they are. Do you really want to bring on that kind of fight? After all, we don’t have to show our superior hand when we know we outnumber them.” I could see they heard my plea, but it didn’t seem to make a big dent. “Let me ask you this,” I continued. “Have any of you guys been shot at? I mean it’s good to talk some brave shit, but it’s a whole different kettle of fish when you start shitting yourself under gunfire, let alone, God forbid, you get hit. Besides, we’ve run a couple defensive drills and to be quite frank… we look like shit. So, to get all brave and go on the offensive, I think we need to take a breather here. Let’s get better at coordinating ourselves before we go off venturing into Rough Rider territory.” This seemed to resonate, but it didn’t dull their passion for retaliating with some kind of response.

  “I got it,” Linda snapped. “They’ve come twice. It stands to reason they are probably going to come again. How about if we put together five-person Watch crews at night? We take a truck… Ted’s truck seems the biggest, park it in the Jensen’s or Pam’s driveway; two people are near the truck at all times. If those guys pull in like they did tonight, the team by the truck pulls it out to block the road, then gets out of the truck and uses it as cover. The other three are in the rear part; we can get behind cover and essentially have them state their intentions. If they’re simply fucking with us, well…we end that. There’s no place for it. If they need supplies or something, we see what we can barter. If their intention is to become little emperors of the area, well, we’ll put an end to that too. At least now, we are proactive, and we have them on our home court. And, if they want to take a fight to us, they’ll have to fight on our turf.”

  We sat stunned - delighted but stunned. It was a doable plan. We didn’t have to leave our secure area. We most likely outnumbered them, and they’d have to explain their intentions. Outside of the fact that they might be the legitimate law keeping order, we didn’t see a lot of drawbacks.

  We informed The Body of the idea. All agreed to begin immediate implementation of the plan and to adjust its application as the Watches progressed along. Pops, Katie, Dave, and Linda ran through drills the next day. Different crews trained driving the truck into the road and positioning it as a blockade. The exercises soon became something the entire neighborhood came out to watch. The spirit of the drills caught and quickly folks were lining up to take their turn at participating in whatever role they had to perform.

  Chapter 18

  My zeal for anonymity again came under scrutiny. Many wanted to resume exploring our surrounding area. Ham radio and scanner broadcasts just weren’t cutting it as a source for information, as it mostly provided rumor or news from locations far away. Some felt we had to make contact with others in the region who were undoubtedly in our same position. People were increasingly becoming stir-crazy. There were only so many times you could look at the walls of your house or your neighbors. There was only so many times you could walk our street or the trail down to the lake – which was mostly snow covered.

  Our food supply was on course, but that meant a little more than a month’s worth. We also hit a drought in hunting kills. Suggestions arose that the hunting teams should explore other wooded areas. Others wanted to see what food stores might still have on the shelves. Still, others now wanted to break into homes and gather as much as possible. I considered all the suggestions as viable options. My biggest worry… the virus. Was it still out there?

  Through discussions that ensued over a couple of days, an agreement surfaced. 1. We needed a more thorough assessment of our region. 2. We needed to locate a food source or sources. 3. We needed medical supplies, pharmaceuticals. Though we had all lost weight, some people needed blood pressure medicine. Katie Burrell, who received a three-month supply of thyroid medicine shortly before the virus was now running low. Other topics discussed were whether we should find more weapons. Where was gasoline available? Where were other friendly groups of people gathered? In general, people needed to break the bounds of our constrictive existence.

  The Body voted and came to a unanimous decision: In two days, a two-car expedition team would venture to explore beyond our town’s limits. The automobiles required two people per vehicle. One car had the CB, and the other had the twenty-mile, long range walkie–talkie. All four participants would carry a weapon and an extra magazine of ammunition.

  Much to my consternation, June wanted to participate. I tried my best to discou
rage her. Curtis sided with me.

  “Mom, you have no idea what’s going on out there. Let someone with gun experience go instead, please,” he pleaded.

  June smiled, put a hand to his cheek with her light touch, just enough contact that it felt like angel wings brushing the skin. “My love,” she cooed. “Like everyone else, I want to get out and see something different. I need this. Don’t worry about me handling a gun. It’s not like I’ve never shot one before.”

  “But you’ve never had to shoot at anyone,” Curtis countered.

  June loved the concern. She looked into his deep blue eyes, smiled. “Dear, no one here has ever shot at anyone either. We have no idea how someone will handle a dire situation. Sometimes the least suspecting people turn out to be the bravest, and the most daring.”

  I could see whatever argument Curtis could muster, there was no deterring her from going. Maya even came to her side and encouraged her to go and show us all how it’s done.

  She thanked Maya for the support and said she hoped she wouldn’t have to face any kind of situation aside from taking notes and a few phone pictures on how the region looked.

  June and Dave operated what we dubbed, Vehicle One. Their portion of the plan included driving a large circuitous route through sections of both Tolland and Windham counties – an area that would stretch out nearly thirty miles of travel. It was a lot of distance, possibly dangerous. Also, they would drive out of communication range. It was a hotly debated issue, whether they should stay within range of communication.