Then the city was struck by an earthquake which was said to equal or exceed the Northridge quake of 1994. We interviewed a seismologist who said it might have been the strongest quake in two hundred years. The destruction was beyond horrific. We will devote an entire column to reporting on this quake and its aftermath. Little remains of this once-great city.
The West Coast
The entire coastal area is a wilderness of abandoned homes. The California Aqueduct ceased pumping when the machine sickness began, and the earthquake finished it. The steep coastal cliffs that make the coast so scenic became impediments to travel once the roads began to liquefy. The hardy people who remain along the coast make their living by fishing and foraging in the abandoned areas above.
Southern California
We stopped in Santa Barbara and turned north. Los Angeles itself is, like Las Vegas and Reno, almost completely abandoned, and the populations that survive are reputed to be savage and dangerous.
The Santa Barbara coastline, however, is quite different. The people there have limited but sufficient water to live. They were the best-fed and healthiest people we have seen, because they harvest a mysterious, greasy substance that they call o-fu (a combination of “ocean” and “tofu”) which washes up on the shore in huge quantities.
The Central Valley
After the machine sickness made life in the deserts and on the coast difficult or impossible, populations migrated to the Central Valley region. The area became crowded. The failure of pumps and plastic piping that controlled water flow resulted in serious drought over the first winter, and then severe flooding killed millions in the spring. Epidemics followed and killed millions more. The Central Valley was treacherous to cross because of all the underground flooding.
Sacramento
Like most cities, Sacramento suffered terribly when the machine sickness struck. Population was reduced to a tenth of what it was Before. Within a year, the area was inundated with refugees from the coastal cities. These refugees now live in camps, receiving a bare minimum of aid from the remaining entrenched population. Most of the established households in Sacramento are heavily-guarded compounds or homesteads along the American River.
California is reportedly attempting to re-form its state legislature. They hope to hold elections this fall, and convene the first session sometime in the spring. The government of the City of Sacramento attempted to commandeer our caravan, animals, and supplies, but once they were convinced of the importance of our documenting and communication mission, they were eager to help us in any way they could.
Oregon
Western Oregon suffered many problems of water supply and road collapse along the coast, similar to California, and their coast is less populated because the mysterious o-fu has not appeared there. Portland suffered the fate of so many US cities once trucks stopped bringing in food and supplies, but the looting and gang violence was apparently less severe than in many other places. The city was gradually evacuated in relative safety. The abundance of rain and firewood has enabled the population to spread out fairly evenly, and local sheriffs and militias keep the peace—even though there are problems with providing for a growing and diverse refugee population from further south.
Washington State and British Columbia
With no roads to channel car traffic, no computer databases, and no federal law enforcement, the national border is almost meaningless. The communities of Seattle and Vancouver have become even more unified than Before. Of all the larger cities we visited, Seattle-Vancouver is the only one that survived the machine sickness—albeit with about a third of the pre-sickness population. Due to the abundant water sources close by and the fisheries of Puget Sound and its bays, along with the area’s intact forests and timberland, many people in this area were able to shelter in place through the disaster and survive fairly well.
The largest markets we have seen since Before thrive in the city centers, with a hustle and bustle of humanity which was once commonplace but now is a rarity. We were cautioned to avoid going out at night, because this abundance attracts desperate refugees by land and pirates by sea. Indeed, we heard gunfire at night quite often during our stay.
Crossing the Great Plains
After wintering in the milder climate of the Pacific Northwest, we traveled to Alberta and then down into the great plains of the US. These areas were sparsely populated Before the machine sickness began, and the loss of air travel has made them even more desolate.
The First Nations/Native American populations in these areas have taken advantage of the situation. We heard first-hand accounts of massacres of entire small towns and rumors of captives kept as slaves in some remote tribal regions. However, the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfeet) and Sutaio (Cheyenne) people we met were hospitable and kind. It was from these people that we learned that the o-fu (which they call “man chow” in English, or native names from their indigenous languages) appears to be produced by the machine sickness itself, when the bacteria degrades petroleum in cold, air-free conditions. Many of them report that they survived the first winter after the disaster by drilling for o-fu from the pipelines that crisscross the region.
After skirting the horrific urban wastelands of Chicago and Ohio, we were happy to return to central Pennsylvania. Please follow our story in upcoming issues of the Register.
Mano a Mano
DD clawed at the ground with her free hand, but the last man standing had a firm grip on her ankles. She couldn’t see him, but he was plainly a big guy. He dragged her on her belly, the gravel scraping her front, the gun in her left hand bumping along after her. She frantically kicked and twisted, freeing an ankle—which was quickly recaptured.
The brute wrenched her legs to flip her over face-up. She gripped the empty gun like a set of brass knuckles and kept kicking as hard as she could. His face was twisted in rage. He let go of her abruptly and stepped back, swinging his rifle up in its sling. DD had a moment in which she knew, with wordless and dire precision, that she was about to die.
But then her attacker seemed to change his mind. The shock of the near-death moment had thrown life into slow motion. She watched him shift his grip with both hands to the rifle barrel as dreamily as if she were watching a dancer spinning with filmy scarves.
He lifted the rifle overhead and swung it down with all his strength. “You bitch!” he yelled. “You fucking bitch! You killed him!”
She had just killed several men, so she didn’t know who “him” was, but this guy had plainly cared about one of them. She got her knee and arm up. The rifle stock hit her knee hard, making a cracking sound which she was sure was bone breaking, but the adrenaline kept her from feeling the pain.
The man pulled the gun away again. She noticed, oddly, that he had a week’s growth of blonde beard on a mesomorphic jaw. She rolled as he swung, and the gun bounced off her shoulder blade—relatively harmless this time.
She staggered a little as she sprang up; the knee did hurt, damn it. But the enraged primate was shifting his tactic, reversing his grip on the gun to ram it downwards instead of swinging it.
She barely flinched in time to avoid taking it right in the face. It hit her collarbone, and this time, she didn’t have to guess. The sick crack of the slender bone breaking was accompanied by iridescent pain. Her entire right arm went numb. She used the pain as a jet engine and flew at him, shrieking, swinging the revolver in her left hand and connecting with his temple with a satisfyingly loud thump that turned his head.
The dog chose that moment to interpose itself, barking loudly. The man retreated a step, stunned. DD dropped her pistol, grabbed the top of the rifle barrel between his two slackened hands, and used her knee to drive the stock right into his groin.
She danced back. If I missed the crucial bits, he’s gonna be one pissed-off redneck! But she hadn’t missed. His legs buckled as he grasped his crotch with one hand, keeping himself from falling using the rifle with the other. The dog closed in to nip at his face and neck.
> I don’t have long. She was getting some feeling in her right hand, but she felt every single step to the ATV as explosions in her collarbone. She leapt onto the little vehicle, surprised but grateful to find she’d left it running.
Seeing her last foe still struggling to stand upright, she revved the vehicle at him instead of trying to escape. He looked up at her at the last possible moment, an expression of panic, and then went under her bumper.
The abrupt stop threw her weight onto her hands, elbows locked. DAMN, THAT HURTS! The vehicle lurched crazily as its tires ran over him, and the pain was so overwhelming that she had no idea how she managed to keep control. As she pulled away and sped off, she heard no shots from his direction.
About five hundred yards away, she realized except for the knife in its sheath at her waist, she was now weaponless. A quick decision, and she braked again—unable to turn her head from the pain in her shoulder, DD pivoted in the seat to look behind her.
Stopping was a rash choice, because if he’d been able to get the rifle up and was a decent shot, she’d be dead. But he lay still, the dog sniffing at him in puzzlement.
She made an easy U-turn, approaching slowly and keeping a razor-sharp eye on each of the seven downed opponents. She saw movement out in the grassy field, but from the disorganized thrashing, it was not a foe taking careful aim. Still, keep an eye out.
She stopped next to the two who’d approached her at the water tower. Looking down at them, she saw that her shot had excised a good chunk of the older man’s head. The son, if that’s what he was, looked like he had tried to crawl a few feet, but the trail of thick, congealing blood left behind him explained his death. Flies had already found it, and that little detail turned her stomach more than all the gore and killing.
She reached for the key, vacillated, and stopped the engine. More important to hear anyone sneaking up than to make a slightly-speedier escape. The adrenaline was wearing off for real now, the pain was breaking through. Just turning the key with her right hand took an act of determination.
She unclenched her teeth and realized that the man flailing in the grass was also whimpering and moaning incomprehensibly; she hadn’t heard him over the engine. An irrational urge to help him surged within her and was stifled by another wave of nausea.
She swung her leg over and dismounted, walked up to the stowage compartment of the men’s ATV, and popped it open. Her eyebrows went up: a whole box of brass-cased shotgun shells, as precious as if they’d been cased in pure gold. Also, two boxes of .45 pistol ammo which went with the dad’s handgun. She took the shotgun, the handgun, and all three boxes of ammo, and stashed them away.
Then she hobbled over to the electrical box, now pockmarked with bullet holes, and retrieved her own rifle and her beloved S & W revolver. It was not fun running out of ammo in that firefight. I guess I’d better give in and upgrade to a more serious gun, see if I can handle the .45. She hobbled back and laboriously secured the weaponry to her set of wheels.
She looked down at the dog, now sitting on its haunches and watching her. Her breath was coming in gasps, and the pain was making her dizzy. Her hands quivered as she pulled out her metal water bottle and struggled to get the wooden cork out of it with her left hand. She tilted it into her mouth and felt the cool water wash down her throat like a benediction. She made a kissing sound and poured a few drops into the depression of the ATV’s running board. The dog jinked up and lapped it, brown eyes liquid with gratitude.
It looks like I might have a dog. She sat for a moment, reluctant to move on now that the pain and fatigue were washing over her, but knowing she needed to.
Setting fruit
October, Year One.
Senator Nathan Bedford Tyrell had been taking a well-earned break during the Congressional recess in the lobbyist Fred Murney’s rustic Ozark mountain retreat near Branson, Missouri, when all hell broke loose. The cabin was built to look like Granny Clampitt’s cottage—false log siding over modern insulation, knotty pine paneling everywhere, rocking chairs on the front porch, and a trail out back leading not to an outhouse, but to an oversized Jacuzzi on a separate concrete pad. The little shed, also built with fake logs, had a generator and two full tanks of gas along with emergency rations for months.
Even though it was in the mountains, the radio got pretty good reception because of the lake, which also gave the cabin a glorious view. When the news started reporting the strange adversities, electricity shorting out everywhere, floors dissolving into goo, he resolved to hunker down until it passed. To his mild disappointment, Sarah, the blond girl that Fred had sent up to keep him company, had stayed glued to the radio. She decided to leave when she heard about medical equipment failing— mom on a kidney machine or something, he didn’t know. She’d brought her own car, so he waved her off and settled in with another cold one.
He’d watched sports on the big flatscreen until the power and cable went out, then started the generator and watched DVDs. His cell phone was right next to him, all charged up, and they’d call him if the president called them back into session, or the party needed him to make a statement or anything.
He’d been up in the cabin for two weeks and was down to the last can of gas for the generator. He was also running out of beer, a more serious problem, and was starting to wonder why no one had tried to get in touch with him about anything. The cabin was isolated on a spit of land sticking out into the lake, the only house out here. One morning, he jumped in his Satin Cashmere Metallic Lexus 450H SUV and headed in to civilization to see what was up.
He reached the end of the mile-and-a-half-long driveway and saw that there was a deep, wide groove on either side of the two-lane blacktop road. A deep groove. He’d never seen anything quite like it. He got out of the SUV and walked out onto the roadway, noting that the asphalt was soft, like it had been sitting in the noonday sun in July, instead of early on a cool October morning.
He reached the groove, and found it was more like a shallow trench with irregular edges. The bottom of the trench was black and shiny. He walked over to the roadside, noticing that the asphalt closer to the trench had stuck to his soles, and got a stick. The black goo in the trench had a quarter-inch layer of water on top. It was several inches deep, and as he poked it with the stick, the stick broke through the soft bottom, and the water started to drain into the roadbed underneath. He tilted his head to the side.
He smelled the stick; a mix of the normal rich, macadam odor of the paving and another more earthy and yeasty aroma. He gingerly touched a fingertip to the black substance, which was like a thin tar or a thick paint, rubbed his fingers together to feel the oily texture, and shrugged. It didn’t seem dangerous to drive on.
He got back in the SUV, bumped quickly over the rut in the lane, and turned right. About a mile down the road, he came upon an abandoned vehicle—a burgundy Honda sedan. It was half-off the road, almost in the ditch, and all four tires were flat. The bumper was warped in an odd way, like it was sagging in the middle. Must have been a strange accident. He was able to ease around it without running his own tires into the trench.
Another five miles, and he’d passed two more abandoned cars, both with flat tires, and had to run his own left tires into the trench to get around one of them. He reached the main highway into town and put his turn signal to enter the four-lane road.
It was then that he noticed the gas station on the corner, the one where he’d filled up on his way to the cabin. Its sign was gone, the aluminum lightbox and pole caked in goo. There were two abandoned cars, one on each side of the pumps. The store was dark, its doors pried open, the glass shattered.
He glanced down at his own gas gauge: almost full. He decided it would be best to get to his office in Rogers, a little more than an hour away, where he could get the feel of the political scene, get his team to formulate a response statement to the disaster, and for Chrissake find out why the Hell they didn’t call me sooner?
The sound of his tires on the road was wrong,
and the car had no pick-up. There were abandoned cars with four flat tires everywhere he looked. Some were on the shoulder, but others were just parked in the middle of the lane. Most had their hoods propped up, universal semaphore for “need help,” and a few even had left their doors hanging open.
A rising tide of queasiness began to lap right under his ribs, so he turned on the radio. It was set to his favorite talk-radio station, but it was static. Usually he picked up a couple of Christian broadcast stations on this stretch of road, but they were off-air as well. He pressed the scan button, and it went all the way from 89.0 to 107.9 without stopping once. No success with the AM band, either.
He passed some people walking on the shoulder: mostly solo individuals, but some couples and families. Most of them carried backpacks or duffel bags, children in slings or strapped into packs, but there were no strollers, he noticed; no wheeled devices at all. He finally saw one skinny college-aged boy pedaling a bicycle, but the tires of the bike were gone and replaced with some greyish substance. He couldn’t tell what without stopping.
Sure as shooting, after half an hour or so, he heard the sound he dreaded: the car lurched and wobbled as the first tire failed all at once, then settled into a rattling jitter as the other three followed suit. He steered straight and decided to get as far as he could; the SUV’s undercarriage didn’t sound like it was dragging, so he shifted into the “2” gear and rode the gas pedal. Crawling along at half normal speed, he made it most of the way to Rogers before the engine itself ground to a halt.
He made use of the remaining battery juice to turn on the radio once more. This time, the scanner found a station. It was broadcasting an endless loop of directions to area FEMA shelters, where people could go for help and protection. Tyrell frowned again, wondering why his staff hadn’t called him. He assumed there would be an emergency session if things were this bad.
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 32