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.

None of my men were killed, but one was shot and the other kidnapped.  I suspect he won’t live long, not if the raiders were cannibals.  They’ve become bold as of late, apparently.  A short food supply might have forced them into entering the city, or maybe they aren’t satisfied scrounging along the edges and want to test the strength of the locals here.  The city folk failed that test and some of them believe the raiders will be back again soon.  I’m not waiting for them.  We’re building up some defensive structures and sending armed men on patrol.  When I say we, I mean the people in charge.  I have nothing to do with their decisions.  I’m an outsider, destined to observe like a weird museum creature.

I’ll have more to say soon.  Right now communications are limited and this is the first time I’ve been able to access the networks.  I suspect there will be much more to say soon.

To all those out there struggling to survive in this God forsaken world:  stay safe.

The incidents in Fresh Kills New York are frightening, and I am grateful to the survivors of the incidents there for the safety of our reporter, Lori Kim, while at the same time, I express my sincerest condolences to the survivors for their fallen. I am going to send Lori to a safer expedition while I attempt to negotiate a resolution with Conrad Blankenship. I’m certain something can be arranged. There is no need for these kinds of actions in our world. We all need to rebuild. Lori, I’ll send you someplace as safe as I can make it for your next assignments.

We are able to receive word from AJ Green of what had been the Coast Guard, but unfortunately, I have no network in that part of the world. The Caribbean and Haiti did not have enough of a market to justify an entry to cover it. At the time of the trouble, Nordlander Telecommunications had only a small foothold in New England. We are receiving his broadcasts via satellite, but have no boats or resources in place for rescue. We will monitor the situation and look to provide resources as we can.

Ithius Sinclair continues to find stories in the Bay area in California. This area in particular has fallen on desperate times. Food and resources are scarce, and the competition for survival has divided the survivors into clans. The area is one of the most anarchic, violent and dangerous I have current reports on, and there are many rumors of cannibalism. Large wildfires still burn unchecked in the hills, while other places are flooded with glacial melt. Still, there are patches of survivors clinging on and rebuilding, and order has some hope of returning to the area.

In the Phoenix area, Michaela Blackhorse is just coming on-line. The area struggles for water, and the populations from Central America and Mexico heading to more hospitable climates to the north can lead to significant clashes. At the same time, there is a new strain of West Nile Virus that is finding a foothold in the area that appears to be exceptionally strong and has new dangerous symptoms. There is little ability to develop medicines or vaccines anywhere, and so this could spread to the rest of the continent if it isn’t contained there soon.

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We were flying in an HC-144A from Clearwater, FL to the old Coast Guard Station in Borinquen, Puerto Rico. This was during the brief period of time when the governments were still trying to gain control over the situation. Vaccines were being shipped to combat a virus that was mutating out of control, supplies were being shipped away like candy. We were to transport aid, vaccines, and supplies that were needed to continue the treatment of influenza victims in the Caribbean for the next month.

Lt. Jack Solomon and I were assigned two additional crewmen to manage the handling of  medical personnel and supplies.

Ensigns Amanda Briggs and Robert Calloway joined us in the cockpit after strapping in the fourteen relief personnel into the cargo hold with the hummer, the vaccines, all of the electrical equipment that needed replacing on base, and enough emergency rations for a small village to live happily for a few months.

About 30 minutes from our destination, we heard a very unique call for help. Someone on one of the islands we were passing had locked himself in the control room of a military outpost in Haiti. He was screaming (in broken English throughout broken static). The strangest thing I recall hearing was that his father was trying to kill him. Somewhere in there he mentioned his father’s funeral being several weeks ago.

We radioed back and decided that this could have been some new strain of disease in the outbreak that the doctors needed to attend to before it got out of control. We changed course and decided we were going to try to land at the old Cibao Airport in Santiago.

We landed at what was the start of the first of at least three hurricanes that plowed over the airbase. We taxied into the only roofed service hangar and did the only thing we could do in a hurricane. We waited.

A week went by of solid storms. We did our best to keep the hangar doors closed at all times, but mostly we stayed in the plane. The occasional bashing on the outside of the hangar was easier to ignore in the cockpit. The hangar had a bathroom, and the eighteen of us waited out the storms. Apparently the rest of the island wasn’t so lucky.

When we emerged from the hangar, piles of debris were everywhere. Over the course of the next two weeks, half of the island came down with some strange strain of the disease. One of the doctors on board tried to explain it to me, but all I got from the conversation was that it wasn’t swine flu, and it was blown here from another island thanks to the hurricane. Mosquitoes, maybe?

Five of our medical personnel died that week from it. Another eight (including Lt. Soloman and Ensign Calloway) were on death’s doorstep for about a week before a few of them died. Calloway, Jack, and another one of the doctors eventually pulled through, but the other five didn’t make it.  Ensign Briggs and I, with the help of Dr. Gerald Samuel (the only other person in good health), buried the dead outside the airport limits behind the hangar. We really wanted to get out of there, but Calloway and Jack weren’t exactly making a speedy recovery and the doctor didn’t want them to be moved at all. During his copious amounts of free time, Samuel was able to determine that all of the victims had mosquito bites. Very peculiar.

I took one of the luggage go-carts out of the hangar with Amanda, and we drove through the airport looking for a fuel pump or a tanker truck. I didn’t know where we were going next, but I sure as hell wanted a full tank of gas when we left.

That’s when I first saw them. Coming in from the other side of the airport, a small mob of about a dozen locals was shuffling their way towards us. Briggs wanted to speak with them, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was off about them. There was nothing wrong with how they looked, aside from being locals. It’s just that they didn’t move like they were supposed to. It seemed…inhuman…the way they swayed and staggered about while they approached us. It was almost as if they’d forgotten how to walk. I saw a tanker truck and decided we’d make for that instead. Briggs and I ditched the cart and hopped into the truck. There was some debris in the passenger seat (someone left their windows open), but we took off across the tarmac anyways.

We ran into another problem outside the hangar. Those doctors we buried the week before…they were limping around the corner to greet us. Covered in mud, staggering the same way our pursuers were giving chase they were all converging in on us at the hangar.

That was probably not the best time for Robert to come out to investigate the strange knocking noises he was hearing on the hangar walls.  They were on him and dragged him behind the hangar before we had a chance to do anything. I couldn’t see what they were doing to Robert, but no one came out from behind the hangar for quite some time. We capitalized on this window of opportunity to open up the hangar, get the tanker in, and lock it back up before any of them had a chance to come back.

We started fueling and were trying to figure out a destination to get the hell out of there. Briggs suggested Puerto Rico, our original destination. Samuel suggested warning Haiti that there was some sort of epidemic on the island and to close the border. I really should stop listening to doctors.

We managed to get out of there without a scratch.  Apparently they aren’t too bright….didn’t think to use the door in the back of the hangar…they just kept banging on the walls until they saw we were leaving.

As I was setting the plane up for departure, that’s when I saw the rest of them. A giant mob of hundreds…possibly even a thousand or more…feebly approaching from the terminal. The odd thing was, as we were leaving the ground, I swear I saw the shape of a man on top of the control tower, beckoning them in our general direction. I had absolutely no idea what was going on at the time.  Now I know I should have shot the bastard where he stood. Or at least knocked him off the tower.

Damn it…the clouds are rolling in, and I have to get this equipment under some cover before it gets rained on.  I’ll explain more when I can, but I don’t have an awful amount of free time while we’re dealing with these border attacks. There always seem to be more of them after a storm…

Semper Paratus.

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Graduation day. It isn’t what it used to be. Remember when you’d have a big thing in an auditorium that had no air conditioning? The bleachers would be pulled out and our parents would sit sweating in their finest clothes. Now we stand in a line and wait for a downloaded digital copy of the credentials, paper copies may be bought, but most of us can’t afford it. Not like I dreamed it would be. My parents aren’t alive anymore to see it. This is supposed to be one of those days, one of those all time most important days in your life, but for me, it’s a formality, a period at the end of the last sentence in a book, probably the most trivial event of my college experience.

Of course, the journalism degree course of study isn’t what it used to be either. Three years of survival training, and a little English. I can build a fire in a monsoon, find my way out of the deepest jungles or forests, survive a blizzard alone, and get out of a hard scuffle, but the actual journalism part of the degree was handled in a few classes in one term. I suppose I’ll get the rest of the education on the job. I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a job lined up. It isn’t a job like my parents had, I’m not paid, per se, I’m supported and backed by somebody I’ve never met, but who went to the Profs for a recommendation. I made sure he would pay for the paper diploma before I accepted.

After the ceremony, I went to get my things from my room. A pack had been left for me, as expected. I don’t know who dropped it off, the Resident Advisor, maybe? Inside was my communicator, basically a satellite phone with data capability, a computer in decent shape, some cash of several currencies (not as much as promised. Whoever delivered it had lined his pockets a bit) and some bargaining chips. I powered up the computer and communicator, just to see that they in fact were working, then put them back.

This and a couple other packs of my personal things were all I had as I went out in the world. I loaded them into the sidecar on my Puch and headed off. I’d like to say that I was chosen based on my winning personality or my grades, but no. Mostly it was the bike. Having transport in this job is important, and the rest of my class was setting out on foot.

Once out of the university’s grounds, I powered up the communicator again, and sent a message to retrieve my assignment. Boston. I could handle Boston, a few days of traveling, I hoped, but I had a stop to make that was only a little out of the way. I hoped the editor wouldn’t mind a little personal business. Is the GPS system still up? Does my communicator have a GPS?

I started out on 95. It’s decent still near the city, and you don’t have to worry about traffic, but once you get out of town you run into issues. You have to pick your way around potholes, then sections where the road is nearly gone. A lot of places, I only got 5 mph. When I left the highway, going got even harder.

When I made Lake Galliard, the moon was full and the sky clear, and I couldn’t have felt more miserable. The house was mostly packed up, and would stay that way as far as I could see. I didn’t want to stay there now. The memory of having a family was too close. I wanted to know the house was still standing, drop something off, and come back, I don’t know. Years from now. When it’s better.

When you grow up by the lake, Yale is a religion. My family wanted me to get into the school more than anyone ever, but we were nouveau riche. We didn’t fit in. We didn’t belong. My father designed computer chips, high end architecture stuff, made enough money to give to the school heavily. I had the grades, and I was accepted, but the early stages of the catastrophes were already underway. Both my parents died in my first year.

They were buried in a Catholic cemetery about a mile from the house. I walked there by moonlight with my diploma, a tin, and a small folding shovel. I buried it with them. They wanted it more than me.

I couldn’t deal with sleeping in that house. It didn’t feel like mine. I made a bonfire in the backyard, and slept under the stars.

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Photo credit: M Blackhorse

People took refuge in the ruins, damaging them I’m certain, but how does one tell in such an ancient place? My small group set up camp in the nearby trees. Shelter was shelter in this new era and there’s a river close by offering clean water and fresh fish to those who were willing to work for it and help out in this small community.

Photo credit: M Blackhorse

It pained me to see the ruins being damaged, but reminded me of a time long before the modern world. It’s so strange to watch the world revert back to that time . . . with exception to the few cell phones and laptops around here. They weren’t really being used much to conserve battery life, but a few of us had them in case of an emergency, and this was how I’d get news out. I was honestly surprised the internet still worked, but I supposed as long as there’s power on somewhere to run a server or two, and satellites still hung in the sky, cyberspace still existed.

The people around here were living off whatever they’d brought with them, which consisted of a lot of junk food, and not one in the group was any good at hunting aside from catching a rabbit or squirrel. That didn’t feed too many people and this group wasn’t small. A large man named Zeke was the leader. He’s kind of scary-looking, but he’s a big teddy bear. Once Zeke learned that Daniel and I knew how to hunt, that became our job. If it kept me from scrubbing laundry and dishes, I was game. We hunted in the early mornings after our run toward the sunrise—me with my rifle and Daniel with his bow.

We’d hunt at night as well. Coyote was best to hunt at night. We headed out together then because there were other things lurking in the darkness. During last night’s hunt, we’d tracked a coyote down into a wash. They were extremely quiet and cautious animals, so tracking one wasn’t easy, but Daniel and I figured tracking a coyote would lead to a whole pack, and coyotes were scavengers. Not that I wanted to eat whatever they’d found or killed. They made different sounds for each, though. When they killed, the yips and howls sounded like an angry pack of hyenas, not like the coyotes near the Phoenix area. Those were more like desert wolves and howled more than anything. We were able to kill a few of them. Their pelts would help keep us warm come winter, since we’ll be heading north.

This morning while Daniel and I were out on a hunt, we stumbled upon a small doe. Daniel damn near scared it away with his excitement. We hadn’t seen game like that in some time, long before the world dipped into chaos and cataclysm.

I stood on his left and leaned in to whisper. “Make sure you actually hit it.” I was only teasing him, of course. Daniel’s an amazing hunter.

“Shh.” He was a perfect statue, keeping his aim steady, watching the doe for a good long time before letting the arrow fly. It pierced her eye and she dropped.

“Holy hell, that was a good shot!” I almost dropped my rifle.

Daniel turned to me. “Yeah, even though someone doesn’t know how to stay quiet during a hunt. No wonder you need the damn gun. You couldn’t stand the torture of silence for long.”

“Oh, shut up and go get her.”

He smiled and wandered toward his prey that lay about thirty yards from us. “You’re lucky she didn’t hear you or I’d be putting that arrow in your ass.”

I heard gunshot in the distance, to the east. “You hear that?” I shouted to him.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement. He’d heard it, but wasn’t concerned at this time. Maybe it was just another group out hunting. If that was the case, Daniel and I would need to be more careful on future hunts, or find another spot.

I walked over to him and the doe as he pulled the arrow from her and cleaned it.

He turned to me. “She’s gonna be heavy. See if you can find a log or something we can tie her to and carry her back to camp.”

I nodded and turned away. Scanning the area, I decided it was best to head down near the river. Trees grow along a water source, so that would be the best place to find what I needed.

Not sure how long I’d wandered around, I finally found a piece long and sturdy enough to carry the doe. As I picked it up and started to drag it back, I heard voices on the other side of the river beyond the trees and ducked down.

Three men appeared out of the brush and headed for the river as I watched from my canopy of tree branches and bushes. Daniel and I were pretty far from our camp, which was why we needed the log to carry the doe back. At least it wasn’t an elk. Those things were huge.

I couldn’t understand their words as they cleaned up in the river, but I could see what they washed from their hands—blood. I could only hope it was from an animal. Before leaving the Phoenix area, Daniel and I had to fight off a small group trying to steal our supplies, so I didn’t trust anyone easily . . . especially if they were armed and covered in blood.

We’d run into some real nice people too, such as those in this community, but I’d heard stories of the unsavory kind of folk you only saw in movies. The kind like those we fought off several weeks ago. Not looking forward to that again. I guess an end of the world type of situation would test what kind of person you truly were, wouldn’t it?

So far, I was pretty damn proud of who I was and who my family was.

I looked back along the path to see if I could escape without being noticed. The possibility existed, so I secured my rifle on my back and picked up one end of the log that was about three inches in diameter. Very quietly, I made my way up the path, looking back now and then to see if they noticed me. They hadn’t.

When I made it back to Daniel, I huffed and caught my breath before speaking. I’d moved quickly through the woods.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, and told him about the men.

Daniel worked fast securing the doe to the log. Once she was ready, he pointed me to one end.

“Grab it and let’s go.”

I lifted the log at the same time he did, and we marched back toward our camp.

“Jesus, could this thing be any heavier?”

“Wuss,” he replied from the front and continued walking. “Keep up.”

“I’m trying.” I had my end resting on my right shoulder. “Boy, they’ll be happy when they see this. It’ll feed the whole camp.”

“I know, right?” He looked up through the trees. “C’mon, there’s a storm coming in.”

My eyes peered through the tree canopy above us. “How do you do that? All I see is blue.”

“It’s a gift,” he said. “Besides, I can smell the moisture in the air.”

In my nervousness about the men I’d seen at the river’s edge, I kept looking behind us to make sure no one followed. The feeling just wouldn’t go away.

Once my mother could travel again, we were heading up to Montezuma’s Well. That’s the source of the river from an underground spring several miles up the mountain and I’d be able to find specific medicinal plants around there that mom needed. While she didn’t have the WNV strain that afflicted most of the Valley of the Sun, she definitely wasn’t doing well and I needed to figure out how to treat her.

Eventually, we’d make it home, to our Navajo Nation. Then maybe on to Canada, which was where everyone else was heading. I just didn’t want to sit in this place too much longer.