by Pete Thorsen
“My name is Lee Rosen.”
“And I am Amy Wilson.”
“You’re not married?”
“No we met on the road and decided it would be safer if we traveled together. A good choice for both of us I think.”
“So are there many people driving on the roads?”
“No we have hardly seen anyone driving today at all. Except for the Army trucks.”
“What Army trucks?”
“The Army has big trucks and they are picking people up that are walking and taking them to some ‘camp’ back towards the City. Amy talked our way out of going but everyone else on the highway was picked up and put in the trucks.”
“Were they forcing people to go?”
“I don’t think they would shoot anyone for refusing but they were rather insistent and they made it sound like we would be taken to the land of milk and honey if we went with them. Or at least be provided food, water, and shelter anyway.”
“And you did not believe them? Why not go with them?”
“In the last week we have learned to be responsible for our own well being and now only trust each other. I can not by any stretch of my imagination figure out how the government could supply for the needs of the millions and millions of people in the City, let alone the whole country.”
“You think this problem is the same over the whole country?”
“If it was just local or even just the whole northeast there would be ships, planes, helicopters, and lines of trucks and buses bringing in aid of all kinds by this time. But instead we have seen nothing except those few Army trucks that were only full of the people that they had picked up.”
“Yeah I think you are right. By this time the Red Cross and others would be set up all over the place and the news helicopters would darken the skies there would be so many of them. So what are your plans?”
“Neither one of us know. We only knew if we stayed in the City we would likely die there. So our decision to leave was pretty obvious to both of us. We have been just traveling west for now trying to get away from the City and all those people.”
“So have you had to use that spear you are carrying?”
“Yes I have used it twice. Once to protect myself and once to protect Amy.”
“Well apparently it worked because you are both here and look healthy. Where did you get the wagon?”
“We looted it from a store.”
“Well you certainly are honest about it.”
“I have never stolen anything and I would have gladly paid for the wagon but there are no stores open for business since the power went out. The very first day the looting started. Every store and even every office has been broken into and looted. It is impossible to describe the total chaos we have witnessed.
There are dead bodies lying in the streets in many places and I can only imagine how many dead bodies are in buildings or lying out of sight. The screams and gun shots could be heard on the first night and every day and night since. I was very serious when I stated that even normal people were turning into animals.”
“Hard to believe that people would change like that so fast just because the power went out. But I do not doubt that what you said is true. I know that many people just have a thin layer of civility that is covering up the evil that is underneath. I have heard a saying that ‘civilization is only nine meals away from anarchy’.”
The man turned toward Amy.
“How is it that you trusted this man so much that you decided to travel with him?”
“I met him on the road and I admit I was rather rude to him and we parted company quickly. And I don’t really know why but I followed him a long ways and when I was about to be attacked by another man I screamed and he stepped in to save me at great risk to his own life and then just turned and walked away asking for nothing in return. I again followed him and when we met for the third time he said if I was going to follow him anyway we might as well just travel together.
We have been together ever since and he has been nothing but a gentleman toward me. At this point I trust him completely and I believe he also trusts me.”
“You guys certainly have quite a tale to tell. Did the Army guys tell you what was going on and what caused all this? Or how wide spread the problem was and if any other countries were also affected?”
“They told us nothing about what happened or why and never once said that the power would back on soon or anything. They did say that at some point they would be stopping at all the houses and farms and offering transport to the camps for those that needed it.”
“That sounds rather ominous doesn’t it?”
“I was surprised they did not have a standard speech about ‘the government is doing everything they can and the situation is well in hand’ or something like that anyway. The fact that he said they would be coming back at a later date to offer transport to homeowners in the area can only mean that he expects the situation to not get better any time soon.
I have been thinking about it ever since we met them today and I agree that this does sound kinda ominous. I think we should all assume that the power will remain off for an extended period of time yet.”
“I guess I could let you both spend the night here if you promise not to use that spear on me or that crazy thing the pretty gal is carrying.”
“I think we can both readily agree to those terms. And I agree about that thing Amy carries because it even scares me after all this time seeing it.”
Chapter Thirteen
So that is how we found a place to stay for the night. Ed was a widower and lived alone (I think he was lonely). He had a hand pump on the well in his garden and so he had plenty of clean fresh water just no running water in the house. He had a gas kitchen range that worked perfectly fine and volunteered to heat some water for a bath for each of us (if we carried the heavy water inside). We each took a bath and Amy and I also washed our clothes in our bath water (at least they were cleaner than before!).
Ed said he had plenty of food and fed us all a nice cooked supper (that was something new for us). We then talked well into the evening before all going to bed. In the morning he made us breakfast and convinced us we should stay another day to rest up some. We had no where to go anyway so we accepted the generous offer.
We talked about what was going on and what we thought the future might bring and what was cause of the failure of the electric grid. Amy surprised us when she said maybe our own government was the one who shut down all the power across the United States.
Both Ed and I asked her where she got that idea from and she said she was just putting out possibilities and had no facts. We all did admit that we were all literally in the dark and had only guesses about what caused the power to fail and how long it would be down along with who had made it happen or even if it could have been something natural that caused it. With no communications at all we could do was only make guesses.
None of us missed technology more than at that moment when we realized that we were totally uninformed about anything and we had no way to get any news at all. Anything could be happening in the United States or the world and we would know nothing about it unless we saw it for ourselves. One thing we did agree on was that in any area where the power was down (if it wasn’t over the whole nation) many people were dying.
We talked about people starving and all the violence that was wide spread and the lack of clean drinking water and the lack of sewage faculties. We thought that if the situation did not improve soon then diseases would start running rampant across the nation at least in the more urban areas. The situation sure did look grim and even if the power came back on soon it would not fix the situation over night.
Ed showed us his garden out back and when I thought it looked like a lot for one person Ed admitted that he grew way more than he could use so he had an excuse to go to see some of his neighbors to give them the ‘extra’ produce and have a chance to visit with them.
His wife and him had always grown
a large garden and then canned their own vegetables. Ed continued growing a garden mainly so he had something to take up his time. He also had several apple trees and he picked them for his own use and for his neighbors too. It was obvious that he still missed his wife tremendously.
I had noticed when Ed made us a meal the ‘canned’ food he used was not in cans at all but in jars. Neither Amy nor I knew that you could can your own food and Ed showed us the items needed and went into great detail telling us how to can your own vegetables, something that people had been doing for many, many years.
We watched him working in his garden and he explained everything as he was doing it. He spent time telling us many things about gardening and saving seeds from this year so you had them to plant the following spring. We learned how to tell when each kind of produce was ready to harvest and what to do with it at that time.
All of our education did not happen in just one day because Ed convinced us to stay at his place with him and we did just that. It was plain to see that he enjoyed the company and that we were actually interested in learning about the things he knew was just an added bonus. He never seemed to tire of explaining and teaching both Amy and I all the things about ‘homesteading’ that he knew and we never tired of listening to him. Both Amy and I thought that the information he was giving us could be very valuable in our future to keep us alive if the nation’s situation did not improve and Ed did agree that was likely true.
We were both surprised to learn that his wife had passed away over five years ago. We had assumed that it had been much more recent than that due to the pain we saw on his face whenever he mentioned her passing. It was plainly obvious that they had a very special relationship and he missed her every single day. I think having us here helped him not forget her being gone but at least ease the pain some.
In the evening we would sometimes read using oil lamps that Ed had. The power would sometimes go out during storms and they had the oil lamps for those times and I think also for the nostalgia. Apparently both Ed and his wife had enjoyed reading and the house was full of books of all kinds. At least one of them had maybe been something of a hoarder because there were stacks of mostly gardening magazines going back several years.
Though we spent some time reading we mostly just listened to the endless stories from Ed. He told us a wide variety of stories from his youth on up to recent events in his life. They had never been blessed with children and while his wife had worked as school teacher for many years, Ed had worked at several different occupations in his lifetime.
Ed had been in the Army and went to Vietnam to fight. He told us many stories from boot camp and about the different training he had received in the Army but never talked about any time he spent in Vietnam other than to just say he had been sent there for awhile.
One day he showed us the guns he had and when he saw our interest (and total lack of knowledge) in the guns, he spent some time teaching us both how to shoot, how to load, and how to do both safely. We even went out behind his place and all of us shot the guns a little. I had never realized just how loud guns were when you were shooting them or standing close when someone else was doing the shooting.
One day Ed admitted he took a couple medications and when they ran out he would be in big trouble. He said he enough for about a week left and did not seem worried about them running out. With the power situation still down he guessed that large numbers of people were in the same boat as he was regarding medications and many were certainly dying everyday and he would likely be just be another causality.
I told him he should write down what the names of the meds were he needed and I would go to the local towns and search though the pharmacies had likely been long since looted there was still a fair chance I could find something.
He would not send me off and risk my life on a ‘fool’s errand’ he said. The odds of finding the correct medication was very, very small he thought and the risk to me would be great. Plus even if a little was found it would only put off the inevitable and he was both ready and anxious to see his wife again anyway.
Both Amy and I tried and tried to get him to change his mind to no avail. He told us he had given us what knowledge he could in the short time we had been together and he knew we were both honest, kind hearted people that his wife would have liked to have met. He asked us to stay at place because he was giving it to us and he hoped we could make a go of it here.
In return he only asked to be buried in the spot out back he had picked out. He also asked for us not to be sad about his passing because he was not. He looked forward to being with his wife again after being without her for this long. He was very thankful that God had seen fit to send Amy and me to stay with him now at the end and that he had the chance to help us a little before his time came to go.
In the days that followed he chided us every time we were sad because he said we should be happy so during his last days he could be around cheerful people and then he would tell us jokes and funny stories until he got us to smile. We could see that he was getting frailer every day and when one morning he did not get up we were not surprised to find that he had passed during the night in his sleep.
We buried him in the spot he had picked out that day and both us wanted to say some words at his ‘funeral’ but neither of us were religious so we just said how we would miss him and how he selflessly gave us everything he could before he passed.
That evening after a very modest supper (neither of us were hungry) we were sitting in the living room. I was somewhat surprised when Amy started crying because she had been so strong ever since I had known her. She was sitting on the couch and I hesitatingly sat down next to her and gathered her in my arms for the first time. She buried her head in my shoulder and cried for some time. Neither of us talked; we just sat and held each other and the only sound was her sobs.
I think something subtly changed between us that evening when we held each other. We had always been polite and respectful of each other but from that evening on there was something else added. The death of our new friend had drawn the two of us much closer together.
Chapter Fourteen
It was less than a week later that the two Army rigs pulled into the yard. There was a Humvee and a good sized truck. Our house like all the houses now looked totally deserted. The grass was very high in the yard from not being mowed and there was plenty of grass growing up in the driveway also.
The well tended garden was in the back and the Army guys never went back there, they only came to the front door (which we kept locked) and knocked very loudly (like those vehicles would not have alerted everyone at the house anyway). We never answered the door and the Army guys wasted no time before leaving. I’m quite sure they had found very few people at home anymore, at least people that were still alive.
I don’t know if we did the right thing by not talking to them because it would have been nice to get news of what was happening but neither of us trusted the government anymore (after all we had to blame someone) and we thought there was very little that they could offer us that we did not already possess.
We had food and water and shelter here. We were totally free to come and go if we chose to do so and there was no one to tell us what we could or could not do. We had each other for company and were not crowded into a ‘camp’ with crowds of people we did not know. We had no idea if we would have been offered a ride to a ‘camp’ or if we would have been ordered to go with them.
We had talked it over before the Army showed up and we had agreed to do it this way. We would not run away and hide but we would not volunteer to talk to them either. If they had searched the house we would not have tried to evade them but we hoped and assumed that they would spend very little time looking for people.
We had been working in the garden and had heard the vehicles long before they were very close. It is amazing how at this point the vehicles sounded so foreign and loud to us after living with just the quiet natural sounds for this long.
The
garden was really producing at this point and it kept us busy picking, cleaning, and canning the bounty. We had found a couple books that told us how to can and Ed had drilled it into us before he passed away. While the first canning experience was done with much apprehension it actually went pretty smooth and each time after that we gained more confidence.
I occasionally ate one of the green apples from the trees even though Amy told me they would give me a belly ache (she doesn’t know everything). But after the first few I did decide to wait for them to get ripe.
We had both been reading a lot in some of the books and the stacks of magazines. In one magazine it had plans on how to make a sun powered dehydrator so you could dehydrate garden produce and fruits so they could be kept without spoiling and without canning them.
I had never built anything in my life but I decided this would be something we could really use and searched the garage and sheds for supplies and tools to build one.
I used the magazine’s design but had to change the size to match what materials I had found. When I had it finished I cut up one of the now almost ripe apples and put in there to see if it would work. I continued to try it until I liked the results and by that time some of the apples were fully ripe. The dehydrator worked well and Amy complimented me on my building skills. The dried apples made excellent snacks and we dried most of them and only canned some.
Amy made an apple pie and either it turned out great or we were both so hungry for pie that we overlooked any flaws that it might have had. She did admit it was her first ever attempt at baking and now that she made the pie she would try other things from the many cookbooks we found in the house. We had no eggs but in one cookbook it was mentioned that you could substitute clear gelatin for when a recipe called for using an egg (and we found some clear gelatin in the pantry).