We set out a few hours after the sun rose. Pawel driving, Oleg with me in the back seat. Delacruz in the front passenger’s seat, but more  standing in the peak of the corrugated where he got the best visibility. Monica had made some small windows with flaps, about three inches high and with full 360 visibility. Of course, if anything got into one of those windows, a bullet would bounce around, anything more explosive, well, let’s hope they aren’t armed with grenade launchers. We each had a firearm, two rifles, three handguns between us.

Once out of the gate, we headed along our chosen path. We drove in silence until we were past the neighborhood. That’s when Delacruz looked down, despondent.

“I don’t like it. I didn’t see anyone.”

Oleg turned to me to explain.

“This is an active area, a community. There should have been people around, friendly people. They were always out, scavenging or tending crops. Now, you can see the weeds. Nobody has been around.”

“Not for a long time.”

“We’ll get answers.”

The drive turned out to be uneventful in itself, which was a good thing. That armor was a psychological thing, but impractical. I felt caged, knowing if death would come, I’d never see the attacker. It was also a little too Mad Max for my taste, but this was their choice, and I was along for the ride.

You could see signs of the Navy base from a mile away, not like you’d see guys in uniform out on leave, more like anchors placed at intersections, old deck top artillery used as statuary, a helicopter mounted outside what used to be a VFW hall. There were some people, they were out and looking like they were in good shape, clean and well-fed. A handful of people, not like a large community.

My chest was hurting. The roads weren’t exactly in great shape and I was already uncomfortable. No good position in this rattle-trap. I made do, breathed deep, meditated, squeezed my fist, but the pain was getting to me. Wasn’t this supposed to get better after a couple days?

The approach to the base was a different story. Building had been razed, the rubble cleared, an open field of vision. Nobody could get within a half mile of the place without being seen from the guard towers. The rubble had been pushed back at a consistent radius, a berm of concrete, brick and wood fifteen feet high and at least as much thick surrounded a scorched earth half circle, looking like a blast radius. They must have just driven bulldozers straight through every building in the area. There was one way through if you were a vehicle, one hole in the wall, a bottleneck.

As we passed through the gate, we slowed, and once we were 500 feet in, we stopped.

“Protocol,” Oleg said. “Far enough in that nobody’s going to ambush from behind, far enough away that we can’t make an effective attack. Let’s get out.”

Pawel opened the one functioning door to the vehicle, and got out, hands up. We all followed. Four Jeeps approached.

“Weapons,” Oleg said. He kept one arm up, and with the other pulled his gun out, laid it on the ground.

“Go on. Nobody’s going to attack us now.”

“Except them,” Pawel said.

They were already upon us when I drew mine. The Jeeps slammed on their breaks, grinding to a halt on the gravel road. A dozen Navy men were out of the vehicles and in firing position in a heartbeat, all guns aimed at me.

“Put the weapon down!” they yelled, but so many of them yelled other orders, information about us, how many, the vehicle, the other guns that had already been set down, telling all of us to get down, none of us understood a word of it, it was coming so fast.

“On the ground now!”

I didn’t know if they meant me, or the others or the gun, I should have, it’s obvious what I should have done, but I was still in shock, I was exhausted, I was dumb. One of them got around me, threw me to the ground. The wind went right out of me.

“She’s injured! Be careful!” Oleg said.

“Shut up!”

He put his knee on my back, two more had guns on my head. He stepped down hard.

“Take it easy! We’re from tidewater. She’s hurt.”

My vision went red, then black.

The next problem comes with the destination itself.

At this point I was confused. Weren’t we going there for a little intel, nothing more?

“Thing about navy boys,” Oleg said, “is they don’t really behave like they used to. This is an isolated base, but they have all the munitions and ships they need for a very long time. That kind of thing, it goes to your head. There is no such thing as command anymore. Their senior officer is all they have to lead them, and all that firepower. And he’s a real prick too. That base is one of the most powerful places in the world right now, with access to things we could only dream of for here.”

Pawel spoke up. “Just watch yourself. You’ll want to be conservative in everything there, every glance and gesture. Don’t provoke anyone, follow orders.”

“Monica isn’t allowed.” Ricardo chided.

She gave him the finger.  ”We had a couple of incidents,” she explained to me.

“Monica, are the vehicles ready?”

“They’ll run fine. Been working on the solar arrays, so they aren’t very fortified.”

“What can you do?” Oleg asked, in all seriousness.

“By tomorrow? Shit. You’re kidding me, right?”

“We need information and alliance immediately.”

“Alliance?” I asked.

“The Navy boys aren’t entirely friendly. They can afford not to be. But they aren’t unfriendly. They’re the playground bully. Every time we go there, it’s a matter of breaking down barriers of diplomacy. So Monica? What can you do?”

“Batteries are low enough, I won’t be able to get much going unless you want to get on the bike all night.”

Pawel jumped up. “I’ll take the first shift.”

“We leave at dawn.”

===

Can I say how much I miss painkillers? Sleeping with broken ribs means you don’t sleep, so much as work to find a comfortable position for a few minutes, doze off out of exhaustion, then wake up from the pain of breathing. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Judgment clouded by pain and sleep deprivation can get you killed.

Theories are abundant about the events of yesterday, and so are the issues. The guys were definitely violent, and according to Oleg and the rest of the crew, new to the area. This leads to the first question. There were a number of people living in that neighborhood. Were they still there, killed, or did they move on after being pushed out? Any of these are possible. If they stayed, they probably had to pay some form of protection, probably had to give up quite a bit of what they had built up in terms of food and energy resources. That’s not a good thing for anyone to do. If they had left, Oleg thinks they would have passed by to warn the project. They were friendly with the community, and had reached out to them time and again. Leaving without a warning seemed out of character for that relationship. That left them dead, an option Oleg didn’t want to consider. There were five families in that neighborhood. Nobody would come in and just kill that many people, how could they?

Next issue was how far did the territory of this new group reach? The roads we would take to the Naval yards skirted that neighborhood, what if they sat on that road waiting to ambush travelers? Should we go further south around, or would that waste too much gas?

They would also have to work towards fortifying more now than on other projects which could extend the life support efforts. Less focus on the power network, less focus on the computers. More need for metal. Metal is heavy, hard to bring back to the facility. Needs more power, which means more focus on the biodiesel production. More scavenging, more exposure.

So they began planning the trip. And this is where I insisted I come.

“No.” Their reply. “You can barely hold yourself upright.”

I was laying down, I had to admit. I tried to sit up, and it was a slow and laborious process, but I got there, dammit.

“I’m going.”

“No. You aren’t well enough, and its up to us to risk ourselves. You’re our guest.”

“I’m a reporter, and I need to get the full story. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“You could have cracked ribs.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“She’ll be hard to move in an attack. We can’t do it.”

“I’m the only one here with survival training. You guys are just reading it from a book you found in the library.”

“We can’t.”

I’m summarizing a bit. There was more to the discussions, but when I got that out of them, well, their reply didn’t start with a no, so I must have been wearing them down.

“I’ve broken ribs and been training again in three days. They taught me how to deal with the pain. This is nothing.”

They looked around the room at each other.

“We’re going to have to build up our defenses, both here and on the vehicles before we go.”

“Two days. We’ll see how you are, Lori.”

So I’m going. No way I’m not. Time to help them prepare.

There were gunshots in the streets last night. We had planned a scavenger run, but now it’s going to be incident investigation as well. Oleg is especially concerned. He has friends in the neighborhoods we heard the shots in. He offered to let me stay home, but I wasn’t afraid to take the trip. We suited up, bulletproof vests, shotguns and handguns. Guns were never exactly scarce in the States, but bullets were a precious resource. There may have been millions in stockpiles in various places, but those places were raided early on, and they aren’t making any more. It looked like Oleg’s gear was mostly police issued. I wondered how he got his hands on that, but it wasn’t time to ask. It was time to go out.

The vehicle we took was a diesel Mercedes Monica had modified to run biodiesel. The doors had been removed, as had the windshield and the roof. She’d plated the tires with some extra metal on the outside, and one bullet hole testified as to why. When I got here, Oleg said there were rough areas around here.

We headed south along a main road and then turned east into a residential area. It looked like a nice neighborhood once. Now, most of the homes showed significant damage and decay. Many windows were broken, some collapsed porches, and some were kept up. Our first stop was at one of these.

Monica stopped the car in the middle of the road, and we got out, keeping a close eye on all directions. Oleg alone went to the door. He knocked and waited. Then he called in, and nothing came back.

“Back in the car.”

We piled in, and Monica started moving again.

“Well, maybe they’re out.”

We wound our way further into the enclave, looks like the area was all one large development with about a dozen styles of homes. The winding streets felt like they must have been peaceful once.

“This area,” Oleg told me, “Used to support the college, the naval bases and industry further east, very professional.”

We came to another clean house. Again, the SWAT routine. Again, he knocked, and no one was home. Then a shot hit me. I flew forward a little bit, tripped on my feet and landed face forward in the street. Bastards shot me in the back. Where the fuck were they? Oleg picked me up fast and we rushed back to the car, but by the time we were seated, there were gunmen in front of and behind us. A leader stepped forward.

“We control this neighborhood now.”

“Who are you?” Oleg said. We all had guns drawn. Not a winnable situation.

“You’ll see. Now get the fuck out.”

The leader nodded and they opened up behind us.

We got to a safer spot, at least there was no place to hide, and they stopped and turned to me.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, a little freaked, but yeah.”

“Turn around, let’s see your back.”

I did. The bullet didn’t get through. It was a pretty small caliber. They had bigger weapons, it was a warning shot, but I thought those were usually fired into the air.

For now, they’re making me rest. I’ll be able to relate the discussions Oleg had with the rest of them later.

This wasn’t the only source of solar panels. They took some from houses, some from public sites, I think they even had a number of solar panels from calculators wired up. When I saw some of these small ones Oleg simply smiled.
“Every little bit helps.”

We then went into the bowels of the buildings. There I met Pawel Raczick, an Eastern European engineer who was in the States on a temporary visa when things happened and he was stuck. He was working on a diesel generator which had been on the property, had converted it to biodiesel production. The generator was not running during the day with the amount of power the solar panels were providing. They tried to run it only overnight, to keep their computer links active. I was actually talking to a significant percentage of the people in the world who had an email address right here.

Pawel took us up to a greenhouse of sorts he had created in the central atrium of one of the buildings. Here, he had constructed many frames which held curtains of sheet plastic tubes filled with water, an algae farm. From these, and several other sites he had on the location, he harvested algae and made biodiesel fuel from them.
Pawel was a small man, humble, with graying straggly hair and a bent pair of glasses. Everywhere he went, the smell of a workshop followed, the smell of lubricants and oil.

We met then for lunch, the biggest meal of the day for all of them, and over lunch they talked about progress and problems, a free exchange of knowledge all in the drive for a better and stronger community. They also spoke about capacity, something on everybody’s mind, and if they could bring in anybody else from the surrounding area and sustain their needs with food and power production. They talked about digging up one of the parking lots to make a field for planting, but they weren’t sure if there was enough fuel for the machines to do it, and how fertile the ground would be afterwards. Intelligent sustainability was the most common thread of the meal, and I began to understand, every meal.

Oleg first took me to the machine shop, a combination of the machine and automotive shops from when the facility was an active college. Technical education was a mainstay of the junior college system for years, and this place was equipped. Computer control, new quality machines are everywhere, with enough supplies to build just about anything from scratch.

The head of the machine shop is Monica Ruiz, a younger woman with a thick Spanish accent and a lot of attitude. She had the wheel off of a small car and the brakes completely disassembled on the ground in front of her. She wore the dirtiest shirt you could imagine, the grease from the work she does evidently doesn’t wash out if you don’t have serious detergent.

“Bug’s almost ready.”

“Bug?” I asked.

“Old VW. Love them. There were millions of them out there, almost all with the same parts, fricking go-carts with doors. A little suspension tweak and they can actually handle the streets like an SUV without the shitty gas mileage.”

She showed me around some. She had three vehicles in the shop, an SUV that she had crudely armored, a motorcycle, actually a big road bike leaned on a kickstand, and a couple more sedans which looked in fair, unmodified condition were parked inside the space. One was parked on the lift, ready to be worked on. She also had a number of odd metallic things, almost looked like modern sculptures.

“Wind turbines. This design doesn’t get as affected by strong winds, not like a big windmill. We’ll line the roof with them, and hand enough power to supply our operation,” Oleg explained. “How are we doing on that project?”

“Get me some more alternators, and metal, I’ll get them done.”

“Our computer operations are nearing our power generation, and we’re only about a quarter up and running,” Oleg explained.

A solar array, broken by some traumatic event, sat in one corner.

“What about the array?”

“Soon as I finish the car, boss.”

“Was it damaged by the hurricane?” I asked.

“No. Marauders. Any new weapons?”

“I’m not a miracle worker. I’ve got some ideas, though. ”

Oleg nodded, and lingered for a minute before leading me out without saying much else. When we got into the hall, I had to stop him.

“Marauders?”

“We were perfectly prepared for the storm, but they struck as we were pulling things back out. I told you there were some rough spots out here.”

“Who are they?”

“We don’t know. We have fought them off pretty well up to this point, and they don’t seem to be interested in anything specifically. They’re just out causing trouble.”

There’s quite a bit more here to see, and far more than I can report in a day. More tomorrow or so.

“Who are you?” he said. He was a little guy, a little older, with a long fine beard and a shock of curly hair lining the sides of his head. He wore a rubber apron and walked with a slight limp.

“I’m from the Times. Soren sent me. I’m supposed to talk to Oleg.”

He sniffed a little bit, seemed a little indignant about me. Then he took out a handheld walkie talkie. He tried to call to home base for a minute, but it wasn’t working either. He squeezed the hand pump for about a minute, then tried again. Nothing.

“Hang on.”

Then he turned and walked back just like he came out. After ten minutes, he came back with a fairly large guy with thick glasses and a big smile across his face.

“Ms. Kim! I’m delighted to have you here.”

They opened the gate and allowed me into the compound. I drove my bike behind him into the main compound at a slow walk’s pace. He led me along a path that seemed arbitrary until we got closer to the compaound and he mentioned the defense mechanisms they had in place prevented a more direct route.

He opened a garage door on the lower levels of the main building and asked me to park, and from there  we went up to the top floors into what had been classrooms and now were workshops.

“We’ve been trying to reach you.”

I pulled out my phone.

“It’s dead. Waterlogged.”

He frowned a little, took it and had it opened in seconds.

“We’re glad you made it. There’s some rough parts around here.”

I didn’t have any trouble. They must not be rough enough to brave the storm. I don’t know why I felt the need to act tough, but I did.

He wheeled his way across the room to a shelf and grabbed a part from one of the many bins and then wheeled back to his soldering gun. Then again. He repeated a few times, and at least once, cracked open an old cell phone.

“Still, you got here.”

“So what do you do here?”

“We’re rebuilding. I’ll give you the nickel tour tomorrow.”

Then he put the halves of my phone together and tossed it back to me.

“Should work now. I’ll show you to your room.”

I tried to push him to show me more, but he wasn’t having any of it.

With no national weather service, no disaster relief agencies, there’s no way to predict what the weather will do. I just rolls in over you, levels towns and moves back out to sea. I don’t know if there’s anybody to name storms anymore, so I named this one Professor Lanegan. He was my martial arts instructor, and this storm hit almost as hard as he did.

First time I saw Hurricane Lanegan, it was a gray mist on the horizon. Obviously a storm, but who knew how bad it would be? I tried to gauge my estimated time to my destination, and thought I could make it. I didn’t know it was just the leading front of something much larger. The sky turned darker and darker, and the wind kicked up tremendously. It was practically impossible to make forward progress, and I was in the middle of nowhere. I was 30 miles from any semblance of a town, and then I couldn’t tell how far because I had to dodge the signs as they ripped from the ground.

I found shelter in the grammar school in a small town. Grammar schools are almost always brick buildings with cinder block insides, and so they are safe as you can get. They were designed as community shelters for storms and nuclear attacks, and that kind of thinking definitely saved my life. Drove the bike right up the steps and into the main entry. There were two families in the building. They saw me pulling up, and opened the door, just as a large tree blew down over the steps.

Times like this, you don’t really think about some of the standard survival instincts. The strangers are never aggressive towards the outsider, you don’t worry about resources. You’re all just happy to be alive.

I moved the bike into a hallway, shut it down and took stock of my situation. I was soaked through, and likely so was everything in the bike. I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket, and it dripped. I opened it up, pulled out the battery and shook it out. Not much else I could do.

The two families stared at me in wonder. One was a mother, maybe 35, two kids, a boy and girl probably seven and nine, and a grandfather, I guessed. The other was a young couple, could have still been teenagers, and an infant.

“Thanks for opening the doors,” I said.  They looked almost as afraid of me as they were of the storm, at least until

I shared some of the canned goods I had, and we weathered the storm for two days. The roof of the gymnasium caved in, or partly tore off. Could have been a tornado. Some debris broke windows in several of the classrooms. We kept to the inner halls and the offices, the most protected areas.  Seemed like there was hardly any time for conversation as something was happening around us almost always. Windows breaking, trees being uprooted.

And then the storm lifted.

The outside was brown, all the trees had been stripped of their leaves, the streets and lawns were mud. My phone still didn’t work, and hasn’t since.

After the ordeal, We simply parted ways, having shared another disaster.

From that point, I chased the coattails of the storm, and I mean chased. I wanted to get to safety fast, especially with no phone to provide backup. In a disaster like this, with no communication, you could just disappear and I wasn’t going to let a little rain slow me down on that. Finally pulled into Tidewater Community College at dusk and in the rain. Headed straight for the only light in the place. Got my bike into the building, and finally got some rest.

I bypassed D.C. I got some stories of what is happening there. The land is slowly turning back to a swamp. It’s still a center for patriotism. People still go there as delegates, usually self-appointed, assuming their need for order will translate into a rebuilt America. D.C. still thinks it is America, that if it is operating, we’ll all get through this.

Then reality hits, as if all of this wasn’t reality enough. Remember Katrina? Red tape caused thousands of people to live on their own in what was basically a small version of the world now and it all went to hell. Same thing is still happening. I don’t know how many people, all with delusions of grandeur, trying to remake the world with no authority or ability to execute. I think they’re STILL arguing a health care bill there, unaware of what’s happened to the rest of the world. I’ll stop in on the way back. August was always the worst month there, a time of typhoid, west nile and flu. With the shift of the seasons, August is now two months long, of sweltering ugliness. Then it slams into hurricane season.

The kudzu around here is out of control. There have been three places where I had to pull out my machete to clear the road, and one where it took down a tree across the road. Had to backtrack across an overpass to get around that one. Kudzu will take over the south before long, hopelessly and forever.

I have a feeling that bad weather is on the way, the rise in humidity is cranking higher. Hope where I’m going is nearby.

I have packed up camp, and begun the journey with food for several days. I’ll be keeping my location secret on the journey for obvious reasons.

My first stop was a gas station. When you need some, it’s good to have several tanks worth on the bike. The pumps never work, no power, but I have the tools to open the underground tanks, and have fashioned a cup to dip in. Don’t know how long the gas will last in these final holdover places. It isn’t like there’s tankers bringing it in anymore. My cup is basically that, a metal dipper that I can attach to a pole to get at the bottom of the tank. Takes forever to get enough out from scraping the bottom of the tank to fill the gas cans, but you get it when you can, and as much as possible no matter how long it may take. I got lucky. Second gas station I stopped at had a tank with a reasonable stock left. Also found some motor oil, and a box of Skittles. Had one pack just for nostalgia, but I’m saving the rest for trading.

My assignment is simple, get to where I’m going, which Soren says is one of his internet restoration projects, and hang around to cover it for a week or two. I think this is more of a vanity assignment for him, but I’ll take it. If that means I don’t have to worry about explosions or Blankenship’s little private hitmen.

Given the time constraints, I’ll be sticking to the freeways. Can be more dangerous, but what isn’t dangerous these days? You just keep going and get the heck away from them when you want to pull off for a break.

-later-

Uneventful drive so far. Evening is coming and I pulled off for dinner. Found a small encampment near where I pulled off, actually and traded two cans of oil for some fresh food. The nice thing about being small and female is I’m not a threat. I thought my credentials would play off well for me in situations like this. Being a reporter means I’m not a threat. So far, most of the people I’ve encountered this way haven’t even heard of the times, and think I’m joking.

One of the campers was named Belinda Ackerman, nee Smith. She looked like if all this hadn’t happened, she’d have been a model, striking eyes, with a tall slender build, but she had a look of being worn and tired. She’d been married, but both her husband and a son had passed of the Flying Pig Flu epidemics of 2010 and 2011. We called it the Flying Pig Flu because it was a hybrid of the Swine Flu and the bird flu, and from the deaths it caused, it really did feel like the end of the world.

She worked in advertising before her son, had a comfortable life. When her son got the flu in the first round, it was days in the hospital before he died. It was uncontrollable, the symptoms overwhelmed his young immune system. The next year, the flu had us figured out, and even the healthy were in danger. When her husband began throwing up, they went straight to the hospital. The staff was overwhelmed with a virus as widespread and contagious. They turned him away, and so did two other emergency rooms. The ability of the health care system was never up to such an onslaught of patients. He died at home despite her best efforts. Why she never got it was a mystery to her, her immune system had never been what she would consider great. It just passed her by.

Eventually she took up with a group that seemed like compassionate people, and she’s been surviving with them ever since. She likens what they do to living like cavemen, hunting and gathering, but they’ll settle soon, start farming, make a community again. That’s their plan. I shared a pack of the Skittles with her.

There were many stories like this that are being lost now. I hope to keep a record of them as I go.

We ate by a campfire, sharing food and stories for the night. In morning I’ll continue on.