End of the World Times

The cracked asphalt pulses beneath me every time the tires roll over them. A crooked sign stands half uprooted along the side of the road, the words eaten away by the elements. I drive slowly, looking for any sign of life, any vestige of civilization that can be salvaged. I’ll spend hours doing this every day.

Across this plateau, the land is dead. Greenery reduced to small patches of weeds; even the hardiest of plants beginning to die from a world bathed in endless gloom. The trees stand lifeless, desiccated; their skeletal branches stretching towards the sky like some futile plea for salvation from above.

It’s difficult to tell whether the changes in the mirror are from my age, or the weathered effects of this blasted world. There is constant concern that I will succumb to scurvy, or rickets, or that the antibiotics in my kit are long past their use.

I stop briefly to eat, stepping out into the cold. It’s eerily quiet now; I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard the sound of birds. When the radiation swept across the world, they were the first to go. I remember seeing their rotten bodies littering the ground for miles.

There is only the sound of my chewing over the empty, blowing wind. I wonder if it’s like this everywhere, if places like the Amazon still exist or if the great kelp beds have been reduced to dead water. Perhaps somewhere, in some other part of the world, someone like me is asking these same questions.

The temperature begins to drop as midday passes. On the road again, I spot derelict cars, long stripped of anything of value, merely the frames left behind like giant steel skeletons. There’s an old gas station sticking out amidst the dreary landscape. I pull over a short distance away and step out of the car, and right away I catch the lingering scent of a recent fire. There are others here.

I reach in the back seat and pull out the rifle tucked under several blankets, carefully peel the protective tape from the breach and barrel, and wiggle the bolt back and forth to make sure dust hasn’t gotten into it. I load the weapon and approach the station slowly, creeping up to the employee’s entrance. The door is locked from the inside. It’s a typical five-pin deadbolt – easy enough to pick. A few minutes of work and I’m in.

It’s dark, but light shines faintly through the front portion of the station. To my left, a restroom; the toilet is dry, encrusted with old feces; the sink inoperable. A roll of toilet paper rests nearby, a gleaming white treasure amidst the refuse. I grab it and continue on to the front of the station, trying to remain silent. The floor crunches under my feet: dead leaves and broken glass. I can feel my heart begin to pound in my chest from the sound.

“Who’s there?!” The voice sends a jolt through my body, but I don’t panic. I stay silent, holding my breath, taking a step backwards with the rifle pointed out in front of me. A small, gaunt figure steps forward, leaning on some kind of stick. I catch a flash of him briefly in the light: sores on his face, patches of hair missing from his scalp and beard. He leans against the wall and waves the stick in the air. “Get out of my shop!”

I take another step back, my weapon steady in my hands. The figure lunges forward with the stick and smacks the wall with a clatter, and it rattles his frail arms. He tries to steady himself, but loses his footing under a piece of broken glass and stumbles backwards. Right then, I step forward and point my rifle at him and say, “Easy…”

The man looks up at me like a wild animal, fear and anger on his face in equal measure. He spits on the floor in contempt. “You people, you all the same!”

“I’m not here to hurt you.” I say.

He tries to get up, gripping at the wall but finding no means to steady himself. He slides back down, sobbing. “Oh god… just take it. Just end it here. Do it quick.”

I kneel down in front of him, setting my rifle aside, extending my hand to help him up, but he jerks his arm away and forces himself to his feet. Broken glass sticks in his hand but he appears not to notice. “They come… they come and take everything.”

”Who?” I ask.

“Men like you. They come and they take all my food.”

I try to reassure him that I’m not here to steal from him, but he ignores me. He grabs his stick and limps along, and I follow him to his makeshift living space behind the counter. A few bottles of stagnant water lay strewn about, their contents brown, obviously filled from puddles outside. The filthy pillow on the floor rust-colored from old blood. The sores on his face are like burns, his skin sloughing off in sheets. He is a man not long for the world and he knows it.

All I can do is leave him to his fate.

Tidewater Community College – Oleg woke me early today to get a look at some of the power generation efforts of the compound. We started with the sun, with the solar arrays. On the upper floors of the south end of the building, they had lined up just about any kind of solar panel they could find. When I asked where they had come from, they had a long list of places. The largest source had been traffic and construction lots, where solar panels powered road signs and came with large batteries. They had wheeled over two hundred of these here from a few different yards, and were still bringing some in as they found them. They dedicated almost half of their scavenging runs to getting these solar panels and batteries. The panels and batteries became an array, and it had supplied enough power for the compound before the computers came on line. In a unique use of recycling, they reused the lights in the compound and the chassis were modified in the shop into a pair of spikes which were positioned around the border fence to discourage trespass or vehicular breaches of the fence.

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.

The Tidewater Recovery Project, as Oleg calls it, is staffed full time by about 20 people, but there are many more in the community it serves who offer physical support, be it in the form of food and material contributions or physical labor.

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.

It stinks in here. It smells like sweat and coffee filters. I can’t remember when I last had coffee. A week ago? A month? Year? Time is relative. Locked away in this bunker time is an illusion. The lights are white and cold, like candles wrapped in ice. They always remind me of hospital lights. They’re meant to last as long as necessary but I always feel like I’m headed for surgery.

Before the world died I laughed at my wife for wanting to get some Feng Shui weirdo in to redecorate the apartment. Now I wonder what could have been done to improve this room. Maybe if my cot was moved closer to the door or faced a different direction I’d wake up refreshed for once.

The boxes of provisions certainly do nothing for the room. On top of the box I use as a dinner table is my little house made of protein bars. Before I was told to get my sorry ass to this bunker.

“Prep the generators and get everything running. You’ll be living in with a number of VIPs,” they had said. VIPs. Because that’s all I needed to know.

At least I have my job: military engineer. Assigned to this shit-hole town in the middle of a marsh in Illinois. I’ve been sitting in this steel and cement sanctuary for God knows how long.

The VIPs never made it. It’s just me and enough food to last the apocalypse. I haul myself off the cot and wander to my protein bar house. I lash out and knock it to pieces before grabbing one of those that fell and tearing it open. Breakfast of champions.

I start my rounds by checking the generator. The solar panels seem to be taking in enough, I don’t need to start using gas yet. Although, a quick run on the bike could provide a little supplemental energy. A few tweaks here or there, mostly to keep myself busy.

That could use a bit of tightening.

I’ve got plenty of spares for when that eventually wears out.

Well, next is the-

“Jackie?” a voice calls from the hall.

I stand up and wait. That was a familiar voice. I know there is no one here. I move from the machines and peer down the cold steel and cement hallway. I can see the three bedrooms, one of which I’ve taken for myself, but nothing else. The store rooms are farther down near the main hatch and the lab is the other way past the utilities room.

The rear hatch is in here, and I know there’s no one with me.

I sigh, “So I’m finally going crazy.”

The idea of talking to some imaginary person really wasn’t that bad an idea. At least I’d have company.

Next is the air pump. It’s manual, but easy to get working. I get the air circulating again in short order. Plumbing seems fine and I’ve got plenty of water for now. This place was built to house at least two families of four and myself. I’m not too concerned about running out of supplies.

My daily tasks taken care of I take a seat at what I assume was supposed to be the lab. The surface monitoring equipment is in here, though. Nothing at the front hatch. The rear hatch camera has been dead for a while now, a little disconcerting since it’s supposed to be hidden. I’ve thought about going out to see if I could fix it, but with the plague drifting around like a microscopic reaper I’m not risking it.

Nature cam one: Nothing but scraggly nasty trees.

Nature cam two: Some bushes and wet soggy earth.

Nature came three: More swamp.

I watch the cameras. Not sure what I’m hoping for. The rescue party? Big Papa Government showing up with a big smile and a magic fix? Maybe the VIPs I’m supposed to be looking after are still out there, looking for this promised haven.

I start drifting off to sleep. There is a soft hand on my shoulder and my wife’s voice whispers in my ear, “Look, Jackie. Look.”

I mumble her name and glance at the monitor. There’s a young woman staring straight at the camera.

Outside.

As I approached the compound, I found a chain link fence surrounding what once had been a parking lot, and which now was a field of concrete obstructions and defensive berms surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There was one obvious gate with extra reinforcements and since I was both friendly and expected, I approached without hesitation. A video screen in the wall next to me in the entrance started up, but then died. It tried to work a couple more times, but never did. Then a hand-held spotlight began to make its way out towards me, spilliting time between blinding me and shining on the ground. For the last twenty feet or so, it never left me, except when the guy carrying it almost tripped.

“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.

Tolstoy.  Descartes.  Boeing.  Names that used to have meaning, and here, in Santa Cruz, have been adopted with new meanings.  I have no doubt that the mountain folk have an idea what Boeing was, or who Tolstoy and Descartes were, but they have disconnected themselves from history to become this new breed of man.

One can see, with each passing moment, with each inevitable confrontation, the makings of a new human tribal culture.  I am attempting to be an outside observer, but strangely part of me has begun to adopt the figuration of the self that makes up the remaining factions of Santa Cruz.  The mountain folk, however, remain an enigma.  What has driven them to cannibalism and extremist insanity?  They seemed to have no purpose.  No note was given during the recent attacks, no indication that they had any demands.  What do they want, if anything?

I recall, here, a movie, one not too far removed from the world of today, but somehow relevant here.  It was called The Dark Knight—by no means a perfect film, nor, at the time, conceived as one of the most important films of recent decades.  Based on the Batman comic books, probably now burned to ashes or buried somewhere in some long-dead social introvert’s closet, this film introduced us to the ultimate of terrifying enemies:  the human who wishes only to create chaos, and for no other purpose.  If the people here remembered that film, and some of them must have seen it, then perhaps they have already made the connection I see now.  The Joker, that seminal, wicked version of man, has been multiplied by harsh circumstances.  They roam the mountains, streams, and what remains of the forests, with no logical direction except the most basic of impulses:  the drives to create havoc and sustenance.

Or maybe they are zombies.  Would that seem more fitting?  I am not an anthropologist and can only consider the mountain folk from an uneducated position.  In doing so, I think we come closer to an understanding of humanity in chaos.  We can see what we are already so close to becoming–nostalgia for a past we can hardly remember.

Only a few nights from the first incident and the people here, the ones who live off the land and refuse to resort to the unethical means of survival, are considering whether the lives they have fashioned for themselves in former-Santa Cruz are worth fighting for, worth saving.

“We can only save so much of our humanity,” one woman told me, “before whatever is left is not worth much at all.”  The mountain folk have lost that—their humanity.  The question seems to be:  how much of our humanity can we lose before we descend into chaos?  A philosophical question, for sure, but one we have to consider as we fight off this end of the world time.

I will see that loss of humanity face to face soon.  The mountain folk are coming again.  This time, the people here will be ready.

I’m in a large building in Virginia Beach. Used to be a community college, but now no one occupies it. There’s the remnants of an Atlantic Hurricane trailing off to the north of us. My phone became waterlogged and inoperable about a week ago in the rain, and I’ve been unable to communicate.

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.

Heading south. The weather is getting wetter, more humid as I do. I’m through Maryland, but I’m still unsure of my destination. I’m trusting Soren, though. He is giving me directions, but I don’t know where he’s leading specifically.

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.

The Santa Cruz area is no longer safe.  Something has upset the balance, set things moving in directions unexpected and unwanted.  The people here are leaving in droves, the good ones, anyway.  Those that have decided to stay behind, including me and what remains of my crew, are suffering the consequences of too many years without order.  Logic does not work with the mountain folk; they have no interest in such things.

The dominance of anarchic subcultures is remarkable.  How swift we have de-evolved culturally.  We’ve shed our comforts in exchange for brute force and emotionless survival.  By we, I mean them, the mountain folk, the regular citizens of the Santa Cruz area—never mind that I am already talking in the guise of nationalist ideals.  Citizens?  “Inhabitants” is more appropriate.

Unfortunate as all this has become, the work I am doing is necessary.  We must understand this to grasp the worldwide situation.  To say so much of the environment, but to ignore these people, is to warrant the continued collapse of what little remains of order in the last vestiges of Western civilization.  The dream is all but dead, clinging to the last thread of flesh; it has already died here.

Philosophy aside, there will be a burial tonight.  Thirty-seven are dead, more than I had reported the other night.  The numbers are dwindling and already the locals on what used to be beach front property are gearing for a civil war.  With half their stores gone, it is hardly unfair for them to take to the most violent of ways.  Some are suggesting a counterattack.

To think that I had intended to report these people as a different kind of social de-evolution, a quasi-violent mob of likeminded individuals quite literally operating on a stiff hierarchy.  That hierarchy is collapsing, because, of the thirty-seven, twelve were in the upper echelons.  You might call them lords, if such a title could ever exist.  Their voices commanded a respect that I was only beginning to understand.  Now they are gone.  I feel nothing, because I had no connection to them.  Arriving here felt so much like what Columbus must have experienced when he ad his crew first met the Native Americans.  They are curious, but disconnected from the world that I know—a privileged world that only knows the old ways and yet must move beyond the destitution of mere survival.

I expect when this civil war erupts, I will have much to say.  But, for now, it is a waiting game.  Above me lingers the future shrouded in darkness.  Poetics serve only to dampen the sensation created here.

Some years ago, a nameless man once said:  “In action we forget who we are, but in sleep we remember the old as if it were forever present; we remember ourselves when dreams know no bounds.”  Think of it what you will.  I know that in my waking days I see mankind remembering a past we had only recently forgotten.  It makes savages of honorable men.  This is the world we live in.

On the open road – Soren has come through with his assignment and I am en route. Looks like I’m heading south along the coast, but I only have coordinates to get to. He says he will have someone meet me.

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.