Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale

by Michaels, Brian

“You can wear Logan’s other shoes,” Katie said then she smirked at Logan, “Logan has feet like a horse. I guess they will be better than wearing pink tennis shoes as long as you don’t mind wearing clown shoes.”

  “Will you two knock it off,” Emma said nervously. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Logan would you let me try on a pair of your shoes?” You did bring up another pair of shoes?” I asked.

  “Sure Dad,” Logan smiled and began to crawl towards his blanket and duffel bag.

  I then moved over next to Emma and gave her a hug and I could feel her body trembling.

  “Relax, I’m OK,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “You gave me a heart attack is what you did,” Emma whispered. “What if something would have happened to you?”

  “I know,” was all I could say.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said as she pulled back and looked at me. “I guess I’m starting to sound like I’m crazy or something, but when I heard the rifle going off and turned to see Logan shooting down into the garage, I thought that the world was coming to an end.

  All the things we have seen over the last week is horrible, but until now it has all just seemed like a dream or that I was watching a horror movie. All of this hasn’t seemed as if it was real until now. Today it was as if what all of this means finally sank into my brain and it hit me like a hammer.

  I apologize for acting like a wimp, I guess I’m just not as strong as you are. I wish I could handle all of this like you do.”

  “So, you want to wake up in the middle of the night having nightmares,” I replied. “You want to feel terror stricken at every little noise that you hear in the middle of the night. You want to feel helpless to protect your family and to constantly be worried about what is going to happen to your family.”

  Emma looked at me.

  “You’re doing fine,” I added. “I put up a good front, but just like you, down inside I’m scared to death. In front of you guys I try to pretend that this is all a game and that when we are done playing, we will all go home and life will be like it was before, but we both know life will never be the same again.”

  “You wake up having nightmares?” Emma asked.

  “Day and night,” I smiled softly. “But things are what they are and I don’t know what else to do but try to find a way to keep us alive and give us a chance. I’m worried every minute of the day and night, but as I see it, we only have two choices. We try to find a way to survive or we lay down and die, and as long as I have you and the kids, I intend to do everything I can to protect us.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Emma said.

  “Good, I didn’t want you guys to know how worried I am about what all is happening,” I replied. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  Emma smiled.

  “I’ll try to do a better job hiding how afraid I am,” she whispered.

  “Just in front of the kids,” I smiled. “We both need someone we can tell how we really feel so we don’t’ explode. I’ll be your psychiatrist if you’ll be mine?”

  “Deal,” Emma smiled. “As long as we don’t have to look at ink splotches and tell what we see. I’d prefer not to say what black splotches remind me of right now.”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “I think we should skip looking at black splotches for now too.”

  Emma hugged me.

  “Good, now let’s go turn on that CB and see if we can find out what that helicopter is doing out there,” I said.

  “I hope this works,” Emma said. “I would feel a lot better if I knew there was someone out there that might be able to help us.”

  “It depends on who it is,” I replied. “Remember, that was a government helicopter we saw.”

  “I know,” Emma smiled slightly. “But I’m starting to feel desperate………..”

  I didn’t hear Emma finish her sentence.

  The last thing I remembered was Katie calling out Dad, followed by a loud crack, then everything went black.

  Chapter 19

  The next thing I remembered was that everything seemed quiet and calm, then out of the quiet and calm a pain shot through my head. The pain felt so bad that I thought my head was going to explode.

  As the pain shot through my head, even though I knew my eyes were closed, a blinding white light made me struggle to keep my eyelids closed tight to protect my eyes. I struggled to raise my hands so I could grab my head and stop it from spinning as a wave of nausea hit me, making my painful confused situation even worse.

  I felt someone roll me onto my side as the contents of my stomach exploded up through my throat.

  “Thank God,” I heard Emma’s voice saying, sounding like she was speaking from somewhere far off in the distance.

  “Emma,” I tried calling out when my mouth was clear and I could breathe again.

  “I’m here,” Emma said, and I could feel her hands touching the side of my face.

  I struggled to open my eyes, but the light hurt so bad that it took me a few minutes to finally get my eyes open and adjusted to the light so that I could see where I was.

  When I finally managed to open my eyes, I saw three very concerned faces staring down at me.

  “What happened?” I asked as I tried to raise my hands again to touch the side of my head where something felt wrong.

  “Don’t touch that,” Emma said as she grabbed my hands and gently placed them back at my side.

  “What happened?” I asked again, now realizing that I was on my back staring up at the roof in the attic surrounded by my family, but I had no memory of how I ended up in this position or why I felt like someone was hitting me over the head with a hammer.

  “You’ve been shot,” Emma replied.

  “I’ve been shot?” I asked. “Who shot me?”

  “It wasn’t me Dad,” Logan exclaimed defensively, “It was that helicopter.”

  “That helicopter came back,” Katie said. “I was trying to tell you I saw it coming our way when it started shooting at something as it flew over our house. Two shots came through the roof and into the attic.”

  “You mean I’ve been shot in the head?” I asked as I again raised my hands slowly to my head.

  “You have a hard head, the bullet just bounced off,” Katie replied as she smiled down at me.

  “You have a hard head, but it didn’t just bounce off,” Emma chuckled. “We were lucky that it just grazed the side of your head. I cleaned the wound and put a bandage on it. Just keep your hands off the bandage so you don’t make it start to bleed again.”

  “How long?” I asked, meaning to say more but stopping when the pain flared up as I tried to talk.

  “About two hours ago,” Emma replied then looked at Katie. “Katie get my bag and a bottle of water.”

  “OK, Mom,” Katie replied and crawled out of my sight.

  “You’ve been unconscious for about two hours,” Emma continued. “I’m sure your head hurts like a son of a gun, but I’m just happy that bullet didn’t hit you another half inch to the left.”

  “What were they shooting at?” I asked.

  “I can’t say for sure, but they really riled up the dead,” Emma replied. “If you thought we stirred up a hornet’s nest by shooting the rifles, you should see how many of the dead are out there now. I don’t know where they are all coming from?”

  I tried to sit up but Emma pushed me back down.

  “Just stay put,” Emma said. “There isn’t anything you can do right now anyhow.”

  Katie came back and handed her mother her bag and the bottle of water she had asked for.

  “I’m going to give you some Aleve and I want you to just stay put for a few minutes,” Emma said. “It might make your head feel a little better, then you can try to get up. You’re not going to miss anything.”

  Emma slipped two pills into my mouth, gently held up my head and then held the water bottle up to my mouth.

  “Now keep you eyes closed and just relax for a few minutes,” Emma said.r />
  “OK, but what happened after the helicopter started shooting?” I asked.

  “Well, you were knocked unconscious and almost fell through the hole you had cut in the floor over the garage. It took all three of us to get you over to your blanket,” Emma replied. “I was scared to death and didn’t know what happened until Katie pointed at the two holes the bullets had been blown in roof. I was relieved when I saw you only had been grazed.”

  “Where did the other bullet hit?” I asked.

  “It hit Logan’s bucket,” Katie exclaimed. “I don’t know where he is going to go to the bathroom now, but he’s not using my bucket.”

  “Did you see where they were shooting outside?” I asked, still lying on my back with my eyes closed.

  “I think they were shooting at something a few blocks over,” Katie replied. “At least that seemed to be where they spent most of their time, hovering over the houses and firing their gun, but I couldn’t see what they were shooting at.”

  “How long where they hovering and shooting?” I asked,

  “and were the shots one at a time or a lot at once?

  “It was a machine gun,” Logan joined in, “they were blasting the crap out of something.”

  “What happened after they left?” I asked, trying to form a picture of what had happened while I was unconscious.

  “They turned and flew back over the house and left the way they came,” Logan replied.

  “It was about ten minutes after they left that the dead started coming down our street from the direction of downtown,” Emma added.

  “There were so many of the dead crowded together that they were knocking over people’s sheds,” Logan added. “I even saw them roll over that minivan where the little girl had come out of. They just kept plowing into each other, there were so many of them that anything not bolted down got pushed around.”

  “There were so many of the dead out there, I don’t understand why they were shooting at them?” Katie asked. “Sure, they had a machine gun, but even with a machine gun, I don’t understand what they were trying to accomplish? The more you shoot at them the more that shows up. Surely they didn’t think that they could kill them all with only one helicopter?”

  “When we shot at them, we were just trying to slow them down so they wouldn’t all be able to break into our house,” Logan said.

  “If that’s what they were trying to do, why would they want to slow them down?” Katie asked.

  “Maybe there is something east of town that they want to keep the dead away from,” I replied.

  “If that was their goal, they got the exact opposite of what they wanted,” Katie added. “The dead have been going east for the last two hours.”

  “The government causing the exact opposite of what they intended,” I grinned painfully, “where have I heard that before?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to wish the pain in my head would go away so I could think and set up. I wanted to look outside and see what I could make out of what was out there.

  But when I heard a series of loud explosions going off a few blocks from the house, my eyes shot open and I struggled to sit up.

  Katie and Logan had already got up and where at the vent door looking outside.

  “Help me up.” I said to Emma. “I need to see what’s going on.”

  Emma didn’t try to make me lie back down, instead she grabbed my arm and pulled me into a sitting position.

  I crawled over to the vent and leaned my head against the side of the frame.

  I scanned the sky trying to locate the helicopter or the source of the explosions, but my eyes were instead drawn to the insane size of the mob flowing through the neighborhood.

  It reminded me of a mob trying to get into Walmart on Black Friday, willing to crawl over, knockdown, or do whatever it would take to get inside first in order to get the best deal on whatever they intended to buy.

  I thought I had seen a lot of the dead in our yard and out on the street in front of our house before, and I had, but this was everywhere. The scary thing about what I saw now was that they weren’t just standing around, this looked like a river of the dead raging past my house.

  Wave after wave crashed into everything in their way.

  I watched as the minivan that had been pushed to the end of my driveway, was rolled over, all four wheels were now sticking up in the air.

  I saw the posts on Bill’s car port across the street being knocked over, then the roof of the car port came crashing down on top of the dead. The following wave of the dead flowed overtop of the fallen car port so I could no longer tell that it had even been there.

  Katie had been right, I saw sheds collapse, street signs bend and disappear from sight, small trees break, and the doors and windows that had held before in other houses in the neighbor, were now gone as the dead freely flowed in and out of the houses.

  It was like a Tsunami of the dead was washing over Rapid City, destroying everything in its path.

  A frightening thought ran through my mind as I turned and looked at Logan.

  “Logan,” I said. “Take a look down into the garage and tell me what you see.”

  Logan quickly turned and moved over to the hole we had cut to go down into the garage and looked down.

  Even before he answered, I knew what had happened when I saw the light coming up through the opening and reflecting off his face.

  “They’re in the garage,” Logan said as he looked at me.

  I again heard the sound of explosions coming from outside and I turned to see what was being blown up.

  About ten blocks from our house in towards the center of town, I saw black smoke rising up into the sky.

  The rising smoke created a wall of smoke that rose up, blacking out my view of the main part of the city to the west.

  As I studied the location of the smoke, the green helicopter appeared out of the wall of smoke and flew over my house as it headed east.

  “Logan,” I called out again. “are the jumper cables still connected to the CB?”

  Logan looked back down into the garage, “They are still connected, but I don’t know how much longer they will stay connected the way the dead are knocking them around.”

  I stared to crawl over to the CB, trying to ignore the pain in my head.

  “Where are you going?” Emma asked.

  “I want to try the CB while we can,” I replied. “The military looks like they are trying to seal off this end of town from the rest of the city and I want to know why.”

  Emma just nodded.

  I reached the CB and quickly powered up the unit and turned the volume up to the max.

  I then started to turn the channel selector from left to right as I listened for the sound of voices.

  After going through all the channels twice, I sat back and thought for a second as I watched the jumper cables pulling against the sides of the hole.

  “I didn’t think we could intercept the military’s communications,” I said, “but maybe they can intercept ours.”

  I turned the dial until I found channel nine, the emergency channel, picked up the mic, pushed the button and began to speak.

  “U.S. military helicopter, if you can hear me please come in,” I said and repeated my call two more times then sat back and listened.

  “I thought you didn’t want them to know we we’re here until you figured out what they were up to?” Emma asked.

  “We are going to lose use of the CB very soon,” I replied. “I don’t think we have a choice, besides, if we are able to contact them, I don’t have to tell them where we are if I don’t like what I hear.”

  “This is Ranger One, come in,” a voice sounded over the CB’s speaker.

  “Ranger One,” I replied into the mic, “We just saw you blowing up some things on the edge of Rapid City and one of your bullets nearly blew off my head. What is going on?”

  “Sorry about the stray shot,” The voice said. “We thought we had rescued all of the survivors, wh
at is your location?”

  I looked at Emma.

  “We are hold up in a house on the end of town,” I replied. “Why are you blowing up the houses near us and what are the conditions outside of the city? Hell, what’s things like in the rest of the state?”

  “Long story short, the city and the state, as well as the rest of the country are gone,” the voice replied. “We have managed to establish a safe zone for the time being at Ellsworth Air Force Base northeast of the city. The explosions you witnessed were our attempt to keep the infected from coming out of the city and overrunning our base.”

  “How is that working out?” I asked.

  “Not as well as we had hoped, but our facility is secure for now and we should be fine,” the voice replied. “Are you somewhere secure that will hold out until tomorrow. We will be returning to your area again tomorrow and we can pick you up and take you to our facility.”

  “How many people are at the facility?” I asked.

  “A few hundred survivors have been rescued so far, we’re not sure if anyone else has survived the outbreak, but we are doing our best to find anyone that is still alive. We can offer you food and protection until this infection problem is under control. Can you hold out until we return tomorrow?” the voice asked.

  “We can hold out until tomorrow,” I replied. “What if we decide we don’t want to go with you?”

  “I would say you would be crazy,” the voice replied. “You surely know what is going on around you, if you stay where you are you are going to die. We can offer you a safe place to stay and food to eat until this situation is resolved. If you don’t want to come with us, well that’s your decision.”

  “It’s just that everything has been happening so fast,” I replied. “Do you know what caused this?”

  “We probably can’t tell you much more than you already know,” the voice said. “A screw up by one of the drug companies that was hired to manufacture the flu vaccine is the source of the infection from what I’ve been told.”