Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale

by Michaels, Brian

  “Just keep your voices low,” I said. “Let me know when you need a rest.”

  “How far do we have to go before we can stand up again?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “We are just going to be careful and take our time. Hopefully it won’t be too long.”

  We started to crawl slowly down the pipe. I was grateful that the weather had been dry for the last few weeks, there were patches of dried mud every few feet but other than that the drain pipe was free of obstacles.

  As the screams of the survivors being butchered in the yard above us slowly faded, we made our way through the pipe. We were out of the reach of the dead, but where we were going and what would be waiting for us once we got there was anyone’s guess. All we could say for sure was that we were still alive, for now, that was enough.

  Chapter 2

  I shook the phone to wake it up and bring the screen back to life to see what was ahead of us. To save the battery, I only tried to use the light every five or ten minutes.

  By the time showing on the screen, we had been crawling through the drain for twenty minutes.

  I tried to visualize where that would place us on the surface above but being unfamiliar with the lay of the land around the base the best I could determine was that we were about fifty to a hundred feet outside the base.

  It had been ten minutes since the sounds of the dead swarming through the base had faded. Even though the sounds had faded, the images my imagination kept running through my mind was enough to motivate me to keep pressing on. I had seen more than enough of what the dead did to the living back at our house to know what was taking place back at the base.

  The survivors at the base were too weak to fight back or to even be able to run from the dead. In fact, the dead could probably run faster that most of those poor bastards.

  “We’ve been down here for twenty minutes,” I thought. “There probably isn’t anyone still left alive up there.”

  This made me think about Hank. Hank, like all the other soldiers we had seen, was much younger than I would usually associate with the image I had of what soldiers in our military were like. Maybe that was why he did the things he had done, he was inexperienced and immature. Maybe that was why he seemed so undisciplined and his actions in my opinion were so irresponsible. He was probably scared, like all of us were, and he just didn’t know what to do.

  But whatever the reason, I still felt some degree of gratitude for his help in getting this far. When I heard the helicopter start up, I was conflicted as to whether I was rooting for him to get away or hoping that the other soldiers would stop him from leaving them behind. I guess there were reasons to feel either way, but I was long past feeling that I was in any position to judge him.

  I would like to think that if I had been in his shoes that I would not have abandoned my men to save my own skin, but that didn’t put me in any position to judge him, that would be the job of a higher power. I just hoped that no one would judge me too harshly for the decisions I had made. I had no idea of what I was doing, I had just tried to do the best I could. The most important thing was to keep my family alive.

  As I looked back over the last few weeks, I was sure if I could do it all over again, I would do most of it differently.

  I probably would not have brought my family to this so-called safe zone, but again, if we would have stayed at the house, we might all be dead by now.

  The truth is, maybe it didn’t matter what we did or what anyone did, the end result was still going to be the same.

  If we did manage to get away from the base, then what?

  If the world had been overrun by the walking dead, where could we go? Was there anywhere we could go to be safe?

  Were we just avoiding the inevitable?

  If so, maybe it would have been better if we had stayed back at the house and died and got it over with.

  I said I would be willing to do almost anything so that my family would survive, but what choices would I have to make in the days ahead for that to happen?

  Would those choices be judged as unethical as I felt about the decisions made by Hank?

  Maybe that was why I found it difficult to pass judgement on Hank, because deep down I knew I could possibly do the same thing if I felt it would keep my family alive.

  I knew that before this was over, I could very well find myself facing those gut-wrenching decisions.

  Life had changed, it was now a free for all, maybe it was best if I didn’t try to apply our old norms and ideals that defined what we had known as civilization.

  That life was long gone, there were no longer any rules to live by except for one, the only rule we had to live by now was to survive by any means.

  But the question of “what would I do?” still bothered me, I just hoped I would never have to find out.

  If we didn’t have some laws and ideals to hang on to, were we really living?

  “Dad,” Katie called out.

  I was grateful for the interruption of my thoughts. Even though I felt that the question that I had asked myself was an important question, I also knew that I wasn’t able to answer that question yet. It was a question that would answer itself in time, however I wondered if I was going to like the answer.

  “Yes, Katie,” I replied.

  “When can we take a break?” she asked. “My knees are hurting.”

  I glanced down the drain pipe in front of me, I knew deep down that I was hoping to see light entering the pipe from a grate, but it was still dark outside. However, as I stared down the pipe, I felt a cool breeze blow against my face.

  “Can you keep going for a few more minutes?” I asked. “I just felt a breeze, I think we might be getting close to an opening.”

  “I’ll try,” Katie replied. “Will we be able to stand up when we get there? I’m starting to feel like I did that time when I was little and I got stuck under the bed.”

  “Just don’t start screaming,” Logan laughed. “I thought someone was trying to kill you.”

  “My pants got stuck on a nail,” Katie replied defensively.

  “Yeah, you got a tiny little scratch on your butt and you wanted Dad to kiss it and make it feel better,” Logan chuckled. “All I can say is you’re lucky you didn’t ask me to kiss it.”

  “Oh gross,” Katie said.

  “OK you two,” I said, with a grin on my face that no one could see in the dark, “Keep quiet for a while, the breeze is picking up. I think we are getting close. I don’t know what’s going to be up top when we get there, but if we are discovered we are not going to be able to take a break there or be able to get up and stretch.”

  Logan and Katie quickly became silent.

  In a way I was sorry I had to interrupt their banter, it had been a while since they had felt at ease enough to be their usual selves. I was also enjoying reliving a funny memory from the past when the kids were little. Things I haven’t been able to think about for the last several weeks. Like the time Logan fell off the roof when he was seven, breaking his arm. He tried to go up after his toy airplane after it had landed there. He had dragged my ladder over to the side of the house by himself and climbed up on the roof only to discover that he didn’t know how to get back down.

  I was in big trouble with Emma for not putting the ladder away after I had trimmed that big Oak tree in the back yard. We laughed about it later, but she was mad as a hornet at the time. The kids first Christmas and so many other good memories that had been pushed aside when the dead came and turned our life upside down, all came flooding back.

  As another blast of air struck my face, I shook the phone again, lighting the pipe ahead of me.

  “If you can hold on for twenty more feet, I can see it,” I whispered as I studied the area where the pipe ended. I could see the light reflecting off the wall of another collection box up ahead.

  Hank had said that he had seen the diagram of the drainage system and said that it connected into Ellsworth’s drainage system. If we didn�
�t run into any blockages, that it should get us to one of several collection ponds around the base. From there, he didn’t have any advice for us.

  But whatever awaited, once we came out of the system, we were at least alive now. I could worry about where we would go next, later.

  When I reached the end of the pipe, I laid in the darkness and listened. I could hear the distant moaning of the dead, we were out from under the base, but apparently not as far away as I had hoped after all the crawling we had done.

  I shook the phone again and used the light to examine the collection box in front of me, then I looked up at the grate.

  It felt good to see the stars twinkling up in the dark sky again, it felt even better that when I looked up at the grate that I didn’t see anyone or anything looking back.

  I crawled out into the box and stood, taking in a long breath of fresh air.

  “Emma,” I whispered, then reached down and took her hand and helped her get to her feet.

  Logan and Katie quickly crawled out of the pipe and stood beside us. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “Are we going to climb out of the drain here?” Logan asked.

  “No, I can still hear the dead back at the base,” I replied. “I think we need to go down at least one more grate before we can hope to get out without being seen.”

  I heard Katie and Emma groan.

  “But we aren’t going to do that tonight,” I continued. “I think we should try to get some sleep. We can try to find a way out tomorrow. We need some sleep and we also need light to see by before we attempt to climb out of this drain. Emma, Katie, why don’t you roll out your blankets here in the middle of the box. Logan, you and I can sleep half in the pipe with the top part of our bodies out in the box. That should give us all enough room to get comfortable. I’ll take this side, you take the side we just came out. How does that sound to everyone?”

  “It sounds wonderful,” Emma replied as she and Katie started to spread out their blankets.

  When I laid down after spreading out my blanket, I felt Emma snuggle up to my right shoulder. As I told Emma goodnight, Katie’s head leaned in to my left shoulder.

  I was about to ask Logan if he was comfortable, but that was the last thing I remembered until I woke up the next morning.

  Chapter 3

  I was awakened the next morning by the light shining down through the grate, the light and the drops of rain that were coming down through the openings in the grate and landing on my head.

  I look up at the grate and could see that the sky was dark as the black rain clouds moved across the sky.

  Katie and Emma both began wiping at their faces as the rain began to come through the grate harder, hitting them in the face and causing them to start mumbling under their breath as they woke up trying to figure out what was going on.

  It must have just started to rain, since we were only slightly damp and hadn’t noticed the rain before now.

  Katie and Emma, both looking miserable and like they were still half asleep, each scampered over to one of the corners of the concrete box to get out of the rain.

  After they got into the corner, they pulled their blankets up under their chins, Emma mumbled, “God, is it morning already? When did it start raining?”

  “Yeah, it’s morning already,” I replied as I crawled out of the pipe, rubbing my knees and back to work out the soreness from lying on the hard concrete. “I think the rain just started, I just woke up myself.”

  “Do we have to go back into that pipe already?” Katie asked. “I’m still tired.”

  “No, go back to sleep,” I replied.

  Katie wrapped her blanket around her body, then laid her head on Emma’s lap and covered her head.

  “Thanks,” Emma said looking over at me. “Every bone in my body hurts.”

  “Same here,” I smiled. “People our age aren’t mean to sleep on hard concrete.”

  “Neither are people my age,” Emma smiled.

  I returned her smile, then sat down in the corner across from her and leaned my head back against the wall.

  Logan was still sound asleep, having crawled further back into the pipe than I had, he had avoided getting wet from this morning’s storm.

  I sat and looked up at the grate, switching my attention between the dark looking sky and how much rain was now coming down through the grate.

  A loud clap of thunder drew my attention back to the sky.

  I told the girls it was OK to go back to sleep, not because I was trying to be nice, but because I wanted to see how much rain we would get before we crawled back into that pipe. Our drain pipe was part of the Ellsworth drainage system and I didn’t know what part of that system we were in. Hank told me that there were several collection ponds around the base that the drains emptied into.

  If we were located near the beginning of the system, we would be OK, however if we were near the end of the line near a collection pond, depending on how many other lines emptied into our pipe, we could end up with water up near the top of this pipe real fast.

  We hadn’t had any rain since about two weeks before the dead showed up. We usually didn’t get much rain this time of the year, but when we did, it was usually a long, heavy downpour.

  I didn’t know how far we would have to crawl before we came to the next grate, but I knew it would be longer than any of us could hold our breath. If we were lucky, the rain would only last for an hour and we would only have to deal with whatever water came down through our grate. But since we weren’t in any hurry and since we didn’t know where we were going, I decided it was best if we just waited here until the rain stopped. There were too many unknowns and I was too tired and sore to find out that I had gotten myself and my family into something we couldn’t get out of. I wasn’t sure we were prepared to deal what we would find when we crawled out of the drain as it was, but if went out exhausted and half dead, I knew we wouldn’t stand a chance.

  I just leaned my head back and listened to the thunder as flashes of lightening streaked across the sky above us. I listened to the rain pounding on the ground outside the grate while the box around me lit up from the light show going on in the sky above us. I just closed my eyes and let the hypnotic sound of the rain lull me back to sleep while we tried to wait out the storm.

  I didn’t know how long I had been asleep, but I woke when I felt a hand shaking my shoulder.

  I slowly opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that thunder and lightening was now worse than it had been when I fell asleep.

  “Dad, wake up!” Logan said, bringing me further out of the deep sleep I had fallen into.

  When I looked up at Logan, I also noticed that Emma and Katie were standing with their backs against the wall with their blankets wrapped around them.

  It was then I saw the water flowing in through the grate and running down the wall directly below the vent. The water ran out into the middle of the floor, then ran into the pipe to the left of where I was sitting.

  I quickly got to my feet.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I see we have water starting to pour down into the grate. I’m glad you woke me up before I got soaked.”

  “That’s not why I woke you up,” Logan replied.

  I looked at him curiously.

  “I was asleep in the pipe,” he continued, “I heard a noise that woke me up.”

  “What kind of noise?” I asked.

  “Come over to the pipe and listen,” he replied. “It’s getting louder.”

  I walked over to the pipe where Logan had been sleeping and got down on my hands and knees, stuck my head in the pipe and listened. I quickly jumped to my feet.

  “Emma, Katie, Logan, quick, get over here and put your back against this wall,” I shouted.

  “Why?” Emma asked.

  Before I could answer, a loud rumbling sound began to come out of the pipe and echo off the walls around us.

  The water started to flow from the pipe slowly at first, covering the floo
r before finally exiting the box through the pipe on the other side.

  Then the sound of splashing water echoed down the pipe moments before the water began gushing forcefully out of the pipe.

  The water surged across the floor, splashed against the wall on the other side of the box and began to swirl around the bottom of the box before flowing into the opening of the other pipe.

  “Where is all this water coming from?” Emma asked, her voice trembling. “I didn’t think it was raining that hard outside.”

  “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that half the water in the drains from Ellsworth is being directed out this way,” I replied. “Hank told me that the drains here are connected with the Ellsworth system. The drainage system funnels all the water from the base, air strips and surrounding area to a series of collection ponds. I have an idea we aren’t too far away from one of the collection ponds.”

  “Dad,” Katie shrieked. “The water is starting to turn red, is that what I think it is?”

  “What?” I asked as I turned to look down at the surging water coming out of the pipe.

  The water now coming out of the pipe was a reddish color.

  Katie shrieked again when a disembodied arm floated out of the pipe, bobbed across the swirling water and disappeared into the other pipe.

  Then other body parts began to shoot out of the pipe, bones, hands, large pieces of hairy flesh entered the box and began to swirl around in the red water in front of us.

  “Shit!” was what came out of my mouth.

  “Brian,” Emma said slowly, “I think the water is getting deeper. Shouldn’t it be going down that other pipe?”

  It was then I noticed that the water was now up to our knees. For some reason, instead of going into the other pipe the water appeared to be backing up into the box.

  “The pipe must be blocked somewhere down the line,” I replied.