A Tale of Two Preppers

by Susan Gregersen

Copyright 2010

All rights reserved

Dedicated to my 'family' at www.preparedsociety.com/forum

I appreciate your support and encouragement.

Chapter 1

Jeannie leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head.  Nope, that didn’t help, so she got up and paced around the apartment, bent over to touch her toes a few times, then ended up at the window.  Eight floors below it was a much noisier world than where she stood.  As she watched people walk both directions on the sidewalk, and occasionally duck across the street between cars, she could hear the faint sound of cars, horns, footsteps, and voices. 

Her eyes climbed up the building across the street and looked through the narrow slit between buildings at the rows of other buildings lined up clear out to the horizon.  She wondered how far she’d have to walk to get beyond the last building.  She wondered what it would be like to be out of the city, roaming around in the country; the kind of scenery she saw in the movies.

Sighing, she returned to her desk and faced her computer.  She worked for a publisher, editing books other people wrote.  Someday, she was going to write a book too.  She hadn’t had many adventures of her own yet, but read voraciously throughout her childhood and loved watching movies.  She longed to go see places, especially the mountains.  The ocean looked good, too!  Any place that wasn’t this city sounded good!

Time to do something else for a little while.  She brought up an internet screen, which went to her homepage of yahoo.  The news story at the top of the page usually had some non-essential nonsense story, such as who’s dress looked silly at an awards show, or which sports star made a bumbling move in a recent game, or other useless “news“.   This time it was different and it caught her eye.

“Well,” she muttered out loud to herself, “what’s this?  Something not gossipy, and something not telling us the economy is getting better?”  She leaned forward and read the headline again:  “The Top Foods You Should Keep In Case Of An Emergency.”  

With a click of the mouse the story appeared on her screen.  Her eyes skimmed over the story, slowing to read the list of food.  She wrinkled her face and said “ewwww” at some of the food suggestions, then sat back in her chair with a furrowed brow. 

There was a click in the lock and the door opened.  Her husband, Jeff, set a bag and a handful of mail on the lamp table next to the couch as he reached back and pushed the door shut.

“Why the serious look?” he asked as he shrugged out of his coat.  He carried the bag over to the kitchen counter and began setting out paper plates and cutlery.

“Oh, this news article I just read.  It talks about putting extra food in your pantry in case of an emergency.  It even has a list of suggestions, but I think I could come up with a better list than that!”  She stood up and went to see what was in the bag. He pushed the top shut with his hands.

“No, no, no! It’s a surprise!  Go sit down!” Jeff quickly dished up the food from small cardboard boxes that were in the bag, poured them each a glass of wine, and carried it all to the table.  With a flourish, he said “Ta Da!” 

Jeannie opened her eyes and gazed at one of her favorite Chinese meals, complete with side dishes and chopsticks.  He’d laid a fork by each plate, just in case, since he knew it tried her patience to eat some of these things with chopsticks. 

Jeff sat down and looked at her.  “You don’t look very happy!  I thought this was your favorite!”

“It is,” she said with a sigh.  “I was just thinking maybe we should learn how to cook some of this stuff ourselves.  I don’t even remember how to cook much of the food my Mom taught me how to cook!”

“Well, if you want to.  I suppose we could get pans and whatever it is you need for cooking.”  Jeff wanted, more than anything, for Jeannie to be happy.  She picked up her chopsticks and smiled.  The words ‘foods to keep for an emergency’ kept sounding in her head. 

The next day it was Jeannie’s turn to “cook”, which meant it was her turn to pick up something for dinner or arrange for delivery.  Each morning they rode the elevator to the street level and had bagels and coffee in the little shop in the foyer.  Some days they really mixed it up and had a donut or english muffin instead!  Once Jeannie even got hot chocolate instead of coffee!  She’d rather liked it, but, for some reason it had made Jeff uncomfortable, so she hadn’t ordered it again.

Until today.  And it wasn’t breakfast, it was lunch!  Most days she skipped lunch, but today she rode the elevator to the foyer and went into the coffee shop.  She ordered hot chocolate and a salad.  The waitress asked her twice if that was what she wanted. 

It was sweltering hot outside but Jeannie hadn’t been outside since…well, not for a few days.  She’d ordered delivery the last time it was her turn to get dinner.  There was a gym in the building, and she went there for exercise.  A small shop sold basic sundries and a few fashionable things such as scarves and purses. 

The last time she’d gone in there, it had been to buy a bottle of aspirin, and they didn’t have bottles any more, just packets containing two of the pain relievers.  She’d bought two packets, one for now and one in case she had a headache when they weren’t open. 

Until today she’d thought that was pretty good planning.  But now, that food-for-emergencies article was bringing back memories of her Mother buying things in big bottles and boxes.  They’d never had to run out on the spur of the moment to buy things.  And there had been food in the cupboard.

She racked her brains trying to picture WHAT food her mother had kept in the cupboard.  It was just a generic memory of boxes and cans at first, then slowly things started to materialize.  She remembered crackers, both saltines and grahams.  And this lovely hot apple cider mix that came in little packets in a box. 

Instead of returning to the apartment after eating she wandered out the door onto the sidewalk, lost in memories.  The sounds and motion around her were as though they were on a different channel.  People bumped into her and went on their way with hardly a glance.  She found herself staring at her reflection in the glass windows of a deli.  An idea grew in her mind and she opened the door and went in.

A large man wearing an apron was wrapping meat for a lady standing at the counter.  He laughed and said to her “well, that’s what people used to do with their refrigerators: keep FOOD in them, not just use them for wine coolers!”  The woman who was waiting laughed with him. 

“Well, I’m glad I finally got the sense to start cooking again.  It’s nice to open the fridge and see milk and eggs and even ketchup again!”  She paid for her purchase and left the store.  The man looked at Jeannie.

“What can I get you, little lady?” he asked with a friendly smile.

Jeannie hesitated.  She looked at the selection of meats and cheeses behind the glass, recognizing some, but surprised there were so many kinds.  “I thought we’d put together our own sandwiches instead of take-out, but I’m not sure how to go about it,” she said, deciding honesty was better than pretending she knew what she was doing.  She hated the look of sympathy in his eyes, but looked steadily back at him.

“A sandwich is a work of art!  A great creation!  It can be whatever you want it to be!” he said, getting into the spirit of it.  For some reason it made him feel good that he was helping someone discover the adventure that was called “sandwich”!  He asked more questions and guided her through picking out meat and cheese. 

Then he told her that a few stores over there was a shop that sold fresh veggies and fruit, and across the street was a bakery where she could get rolls.  He scratched his head when she asked about mayonnaise and other condiments. 

“Maybe one of those other shops sell them, or will know where you can get them.” 

She left the shop and went to the others he suggested.  No one knew where she could buy condiments within walking distance, but one of them had a bunch of mayo packets from a carry-out sandwich.  She gave them to Jeannie with a shrug.  Jeannie thanked her and headed back to the apartment.

When Jeff got home she presented him with the sandwich makings all spread out on the counter.  He was mildly upset.

“But Jeannie, I’m tired when I get home from work, I don’t want to have to put my food together.  That’s like cheating anyway.  Today is YOUR dinner day.” 

“I’m sorry, Jeff.  Here, sit down and sip your wine, it’ll only take me a few minutes to throw the sandwiches together.”  She sheepishly spread mayo on the buns and tossed the other ingredients on and carried the plates to the table.

“No chips?” he asked.  “At least when we order the sandwiches they put bags of chips in with them.” 

Then he felt bad about chiding her so.  “It’s all right, though, I’m really not in the mood for chips.  And these sandwiches are delicious.  Actually they are better than the ones we usually buy!”

They went down to the gym and worked out together, jogging side-by-side on treadmills, watching a TV with captions that endlessly scrolled news headlines.  Political disagreements and economic downturns and international turmoil, as well as a scattering of floods, mudslides, wildfires, drought, and yet another hurricane heading toward the gulf coast.

A commercial filled the screen.  A woman was cooking a meal while laughing and talking to children and a man Jeannie presumed was supposed to be her husband.  The food in one of the pans started smoking and the actress grabbed the pan with a look of dismay.  Then she was smiling while washing the pan with a special cleaner for “really burned on” food.  Jeannie couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed dishes.  They had dishes but usually ate on disposables.  Rinsing out wine glasses was about as close at it came. 

She squashed down the uneasy feeling in her stomach and smiled at Jeff.  He grinned back and they upped their pace in competition until they were breathless and laughing.  Jeannie forced the food thing from her mind.

CHAPTER TWO

The next morning after Jeff kissed her good-bye in the coffee shop Jeannie went back up to their apartment.  She sat down at the computer to work and immediately found her mind drifting back to yesterday’s news story. 

She looked over the news headlines and didn’t see anything other than the usual mess the world was always dealing with.  At least, that’s what she thought until she looked closer at the headlines.  Hmmm.  Same kind of gloomy stuff but she couldn’t remember seeing so much at one time. 

“No!” she told herself firmly and clicked off the news page and checked in with her boss.

Several blocks away, Jeff got off the bus, wound his way around a woman kneeling in front of a child in a stroller, dodged between two people pushing bicycles, and into the building he worked in. 

He rode the elevator to the 46 floor, nodded “hi” to a handful of people on the way to his office, and flung himself in his chair.  For the next few hours he tried to focus on the work before him, but it just wasn’t going well. 

He couldn’t find the answers he needed, and to make it worse, he kept thinking of Jeannie.  She’d been distracted this morning, and had again mentioned the food thing. 

He wondered if she was getting some kind of restlessness, like midlife crisis, but she was too young for that.  Maybe she was getting bored.  Maybe they should go on one of the many trips they always talked about taking but never could pull themselves away enough to actually go. 

“Oh, NO!” he said out loud as yet another thought came to him!  Maybe she was getting maternal feelings and was going to start pushing him again about starting a family!  He wanted kids but he was terrified about what that would mean for them. 

He grew up in the suburbs, with a big, grassy yard to play in, and a sandbox, and quiet streets to ride his bike on with his friends.  Jeannie had grown up an only child in a high-rise apartment with older, quiet parents.  She’d buried herself in the fantasy of books and movies as her lifeline in what she felt was a stifled childhood. 

They’d agreed that they should have more than one child, when they did have kids, and that they’d move to the suburbs. 

Jeff was finally getting established in the company and he wasn’t happy about the thought of moving and all the changes children would bring.  Maybe he could put her off again.

He ran his hands through his hair, rapped his knuckles on his desk, and got up to go get a cup of coffee. 

The coffee maker in the lounge was just finishing up making a pot of coffee.  Jeff stood, cup in hand, waiting and lost in thought.

“PRECIOUS METALS!”   Jeff jumped at the words and looked around.  Two of his co-workers had come in for coffee and stood behind him.

“Bosh!  I think barter goods are a better investment!” the other one said.

“No, first you should get gold and silver in small coins.  The small coins so you don’t have a situation where someone says they can’t make change, but you need what they have anyway.  THEN you get the barter stuff.  All of this is assuming you have your other supplies already,” the first man said.

The coffee was done now.  Jeff poured himself a cup and handed the pot to the men.  They said the usual “Hi, how’s it going” politenesses, then went back to their conversation.  Jeff drifted over by the couches and looked out the window, presenting a casual, non-interested appearance while he listened.

“Don’t you think smokes, booze, and  ammo will hold a high barter value?” asked the second man.

“Sure I do, but hold up a minute, you want to be careful parting with ammo.  It could end up used against you, and…” the voices faded as the men left the room and headed down the hall.

Jeff continued to look out the window for a while.  Now his mind was really reeling.  It stunned him to know that people who worked in his building were thinking about things like that.  Gold and silver?  Barter?  What did these people think they’d need that for? 

Did they really think something bad was going to happen?  These were business professionals!  People who hoard gold and silver and ammo were survivalist crazies, weren’t they?  They dressed in army clothes and lived in underground, fortified homes and practiced military drills, didn’t they? 

They didn’t wear Armani suits and Rolex watches and eat at restaurants that had a waiting list just for reservations!  They didn’t get on planes and travel to meetings and conventions and sit next to Jeff while making big presentations and know all the right etiquette!

It was hopeless to think about the work before him on his desk.  He told his secretary he was going for an early lunch and headed to the street.  He walked quickly, as though he had a destination, not knowing where he was going and not really hungry, either. 

A light turned red and the “don’t walk” sign lit up.  While he was waiting for the light to turn he realized he was staring at a sign that read “Gold! Silver! Jewelry! Collectibles!”  In a daze he walked over and opened the door.

Glass cases held coins, mostly.  Toward the back some of the cases contained jewelry.  A man with reading glasses parked on top of the visor on his head walked along behind the counter. 

“Are you a coin collector?” The man asked with a smile.  “We just got in some new pieces, really rare.”

Jeff wondered how to answer.  “Well…” he stalled, and pretended interest in a certain coin that caught his eye.  “I might be.  I mean, I might start.”

The man started talking about different suggestions for beginner coin collectors.  To Jeff it sounded like he was talking in another room or even in another language.  He let his eyes continue to roam over the coins while the man talked. 

“Are these what are called ‘precious metals’?” he asked, then grimaced inside when he realized he’d interrupted the man.

Now the man raised his eyebrows and studied Jeff. 

“Thinking about the future, eh?  Maybe getting a little security put away?  Prices are high right now, not the best time to do that, but…” he sighed. “Better now than never though.”

“Well, it’s just something I heard floating around.  To buy precious metals.  I’m not sure it’s necessary though.  I’ve heard of other investments that might be better,” Jeff stammered.

“Are you a prepper?” the man asked him.

“A what?” Jeff asked, startled.

“A prepper is someone who prepares for the future, especially for surviving disasters or wars or any bad thing that might come along.”  The man leaned back against the shelves behind him.

“You mean a survivalist?  NO!  I mean, the government isn’t all that great, in fact they’re a bunch of corrupt liars, but I don’t even own a gun and I’m not going to crawl in a hole and be paranoid and all that!”  Jeff was quick to defend himself.

The man chuckled.  “I know, I know.  That’s not was I’m talking about.  Preppers are all around us.  They’re people who want to be able to take care of themselves and their families, and maybe a few others, if something goes wrong. 

“It could be anything from losing their jobs, to earthquake or other disaster where it might take a while for help to arrive, if ever; to war or economic collapse.  Nothing wild or crazy about wanting to be prepared, to have supplies on hand to get through those things. 

“Even the government puts out recommendations of supplies people should keep on hand, such as 3-days’ worth of food and other necessities like medicine and flashlights.”

Jeff remembered the news article Jeannie had showed him, the one about foods to keep on hand for an emergency.  That had been main-stream news, not a wacko website.  Not that Jeannie would be on wacko-websites.

“Um, okay, maybe that’s what I’m thinking about.  I’m not really sure.  It’s new to me.  But it seems to keep coming up around me.”  Jeff sighed.  “Two of the guys at my office were having a debate on barter items vs. precious metals.”

“Yep, that’s a hot one.  Probably the most debated part of prepping.  Other than how much ammo to have on hand!” he chuckled.  “In my opinion, if you’re just getting started, get a few small gold coins, but spend most of your money getting the things YOU will need, first.  Worry about barter later.  But at least with a few gold coins, if the SHTF before you’re ready, you’ll have something to barter with.”

“What about guns and ammunition?” Jeff asked.

“Well…first I’d worry about food, although defense is an important area to prepare for.  Do some research, find other preppers to talk to, go to some gun ranges.  Don’t just go out and buy a gun.  Don’t just get your advice from gun shop owners!  They’re good people and some can be honestly helpful, but the bottom line is everyone has a different opinion, and they’re trying to sell a product.  Gun dealers, in general, can be trusted, more than a lot of other kinds of business owners.” 

“I appreciate your advice,” said Jeff, “and that you aren’t trying to talk me into spending a lot of money on YOUR product.  Says to me that you must be one of those trustworthy business people too.  I’ll take a few of whatever small coins you recommend.”

A short while later Jeff left the shop with a small envelope in his pocket.  In it were half a dozen 1/10 oz gold coins.  The last words of the shopkeeper rang in his head: ‘do some research before you start spending a lot of money!”

He walked back into his office with a lighter step.  His secretary looked at him suspiciously and said “good lunch?”.  He smiled at her and said, “very!”  She scowled and looked back at her work.  He wondered if she thought he was having an affair or something!  Somehow that amused him!

Back in the apartment Jeannie stopped for lunch.  She wished there was something in the cupboard because she suddenly felt tired of going down to the coffee shop for a bowl of soup or a salad.  When she reached the ground floor she went outside and walked to the next block where she’d noticed a small ethnic market.  The smell of curry and other spices greeted her as she entered, and she felt her spirits lift. 

The shopkeeper asked if he could help her, but she smiled and said no.  She wandered among the narrow aisles, looking at names and labels.   Knowing she had no way to cook those kind of things, she kept going until she reached the canned goods.  That, at least, she figured she could heat in the microwave.  They had paper plates and bowls at home.  She selected a few cans, then spotted canned fruit.  She remembered her Mom serving applesauce and peaches and fruit cocktail out of cans.  She picked up one of each. 

“Miss?  Would you like a basket?” came a voice near her.  She jumped and turned.  The man was holding out a basket with a handle.  She thanked him, placed her cans in it, and hung it over her arm. 

Near the back of the store she picked up a few bottles of juice and a carton of milk.  She walked back to the counter and set the basket down.

“Find everything you were looking for?” asked the clerk.

“Yes.  Um, no!  I mean, I was wondering if you have crackers?  The kind you eat with soup?” Jeannie said.

The man pointed and Jeannie walked over to look.  There were the square kind and the little round kind.  She picked up the square kind and returned to the counter, paid for her groceries, and left.

Humming a happy tune she returned to the apartment and hit her first stumbling block.  There was no can opener in the apartment.  She stood there, stunned.  Leaving the food on the counter she turned and left the apartment.  First she went to the sundry shop on the first floor and asked if they had a can opener.

“A what???” asked the girl as she tapped her long, painted nails on the counter and tilted her head, with it’s red and blue streaked hair. 

“Never mind” Jeannie murmured and headed for the coffee shop.  One of the regular waitresses came up to her with a smile and started to ask “soup or salad”, and stopped.

“You look troubled today, honey!  Everything okay?”  She led Jeannie to a table near the window and sat down across from her.

“Well, I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I went out and bought some cans of soup.  I was going to heat one in the microwave but I don’t have an opener to open the can!” Jeannie said glumly.

The waitress, Gloria, leaned over the table and whispered, “now, why did you go do that?  You’re not having trouble with money, are you?  Are you or Jeff worried about getting laid off?  Do you have savings to live on?”

“No! Oh no, nothing like that.  Everything is fine, as far as I know.  I mean, my editing jobs have dropped off some but I’m still getting enough.  Jeff doesn’t seem worried about his job.  I just feel like…oh, I don’t know.  Like something is missing.  Like…like…I guess like I should be thinking about things like food and cooking,”  Jeannie said.

Gloria sat back with a face about to burst.  “You’re pregnant!” she exclaimed.

Jeannie was stunned.  She stared at Gloria unable to move or think.

“No!  I’m not!  Really, I’m not!  And I haven’t even thought about it in a while!”  Jeannie could tell Gloria was still skeptical. 

She went on.  “Okay, it’s like this.  I read a news article that said people should keep food in their pantries in case of emergency.  I’m not turning into one of those crazy people who are paranoid and fearful about plots and such, I just thought it WOULD be nice to have some things on hand.  Sometimes I get tired of the same old take-out food. 

“And I remember when the power went out last winter and we all had to come down here and eat cold soup and salad-fixings while we waited.  The whole time, I kept thinking about all the things I COULDN’T have, and I craved the weirdest things, like candy bars and cinnamon graham crackers and canned ham!  It was so weird.”

“Tell you what, bring the can of soup down and I’ll slip it into the kitchen and open it for you!” Gloria whispered in a conspiratorial voice.  “I know what you mean, in a way.  Sometimes I just have to cook my own meal or I start feeling like I’m losing my roots.  And by the way, during that power outage?  I craved Nacho chips and canned sardines!  How weird is that?” She slid off the chair and headed off to take the order from another group of diners. 

Jeannie went back up for the soup, placing it in her handbag and returning to the coffee shop.  Gloria, as promised, slipped off to the kitchen and returned a minute later with the opened can.  The lid floated on top of the soup.  Jeannie took it and looked helplessly at her handbag.  Then she and Gloria both giggled. 

Jeannie shrugged and carried the open can in her hand.  A few people looked at her quizzically but she acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, just saying the usual hellos as she passed!

Back in the apartment she poured the soup in a cardboard bowl and placed it in the microwave.  Heating it was a breeze.  She’d often brought soup back up from the coffee shop to eat in front of the TV and had to reheat it. 

She opened the crackers and sat at the table for her first “home made” meal in years.  She poured juice into a wine glass, then put the rest of the bottle and the others in the refrigerator.  The cans of soup and fruit, and the crackers, went into one of the cupboards.  Then she got back to work.

That evening on his way home, Jeff was pondering what to pick up for dinner.  He was thinking pizza when he stepped off the bus, but then he spotted a market and thought about Jeannie’s sandwiches.  Well, turn about was fair play.  He headed inside and looked for the freezer case.  He picked out a pizza, then picked up two bowls of packaged salads and a bag of rolls.  His mouth watered as he pictured garlic rolls. 

He walked in the door of the apartment and cheerfully showed Jeannie what he had.  She looked at him in amazement but seemed pleased.  She helped him read the package to see how to bake the pizza, and they turned the oven to the right temperature.

“Uh, oh.  It says to ‘place pizza on baking sheet’.  We don’t have one.” Jeff said.

“I think it’s okay to lay it on the oven rack.  We used to do that in college in our toaster oven,” Jeannie said.  “At least it’ll all fit in the oven at once!  We used to have to break them in half and bake it one half at a time!” They slid the pizza onto the rack.  So far, so good. 

“We don’t have any salad dressings, and these little salads didn’t come with any!”  Jeannie turned the plastic-wrapped bowls over and back upright.  Jeff didn’t know it, but there was a basket of packets near the salad display where you were supposed to pick the kind of dressing you liked.

“I guess we’ll have to eat them plain.  I just realized that we don’t have any butter, either.  I was going to make garlic bread like my Mother used to make.  We have garlic salt but no butter.  I guess we’re just going to eat plain rolls!”  Jeff said.

They put paper plates on the table, used a knife to cut the pizza, and were ready to sit down to a meal they had worked together to prepare.  Jeff went to the fridge for the wine and stood staring into the open fridge.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the juice and milk.  “Are you getting all nuts because of that article you read?”  He’d been planning to show Jeannie the gold coins after they ate, but now he felt an unreasonable feeling of betrayal that she would buy all this stuff without talking about it with him.  He knew that was silly, because he never monitored her spending and had no idea what she spent on clothes or her hair or other things.

“I don’t always feel like stopping work to go out to get something to drink during the day.  I thought it would be nice to have some things on hand.  A few bottles of juice and a carton of milk is hardly ‘going nuts’!” she said defensively.  She hoped he didn’t open the cupboard and see the cans and crackers.

They ate in silence.  After cleaning up, they watched a TV show, then went down to the gym for their “run”.  Jeannie tried smiling at Jeff a few times but he seemed preoccupied.

CHAPTER THREE

After Jeff left for work the next day Jeannie got the food out of the cupboard.  She set it on the table and looked at it.  “Where to put it?” she wondered.  Her eyes roamed around the kitchen and living room.  A pen on the floor poked out from under the couch and she went over and picked it up and laid it on the coffee table.  A thoughtful look came over her face. 

She pulled the coffee table away from the couch and got down on the floor.  Running her hands under the couch she felt the space under there.  She pulled it out a couple times a year to vacuum behind it and remembered there was a lot of space under it. 

Bringing the cans and box of crackers over, she pushed them under the couch, all the way to the back.  Even if you got down on the floor to pick something up you couldn’t see them.  She walked to the far end of the apartment and looked across at it.  Nope, she still couldn’t see them. 

Happy, she went to work at her computer.  Taking a break a few hours later she typed in “How to store food” on a search engine.  She came up with several websites telling how to can or freeze food, but that wasn’t quite what she was looking for. 

One site had a “savvy shopper” list of ways to save money while buying lots of food.  She clicked on a link to a site that said “long-term food storage, how do I…” and started reading, and was lost for hours absorbing information. 

It was a forum with lots of different subjects.  Everywhere she turned, she felt like she was finding all the things she wanted to know, and she hadn’t even realized what the questions were!  Hours later she leaned back and drew a breath of air. 

In wonder, she realized she’d missed lunch.  She didn’t want to stop now.  She poured a glass of juice, returned to her computer and made a “username” and “password”, and became a member of a sight called “prepared society.com”. 

Jeff was in a meeting with his boss and some prospective clients when he slid his hand into his pocket and felt the envelope of gold coins.  He didn’t understand why he clammed up and felt funny last night when he’d seen the juice Jeannie bought.  He guessed he didn’t like her knowing things he didn’t.  He felt out of control with all this new “prepping” stuff floating around in his head, and he didn’t even know what he should be doing.  He didn’t know where to start.

His mind kept wandering and he had a hard time answering the questions directed to him.  His boss gave him a stern look, then seemed to avoid bringing Jeff into the conversation.  After the meeting he asked to speak to Jeff.  He asked Jeff what happened in there, and Jeff apologized.  He begged off by saying he didn’t feel well. 

“Well, take something for it and get back to work!” he said, dismissing Jeff. 

He stared at his computer, brought up google to search for an answer he needed for a client who would be coming the next morning, but as he started to type, he typed “preppers” instead.  He expected it to kick out a message saying “no results found”, and stared goggle-eyed at the list of thousands of results! 

“Holy cow!  Where do I start?” he asked in amazement. 

“Start on what?” a voice in the doorway asked.  Jeff dropped the screen but not before the man saw what he’d searched.  It was one of the guys who had been part of the conversation by the coffee pot the other day, the one who thought other barter items were better than precious metals.  Jeff almost patted the envelope or gold coins in his pocket, but stopped.

“Jeff, you’re searching prepping?  What do you want to know?  I didn’t even know you knew the word!” he said. 

Jeff was tongue-tied for a minute.  Then he cleared his throat and said, “Well…I’ve heard it floating around and I was curious.  Dave, I heard what you and Bill said in the lounge the other day, about precious metals and barter items.”

Dave closed the door and pulled a chair close to Jeff’s desk. 

“Bring the screen back up.  Maybe I can point you to some good places to start,” he said.  Jeff did so, and Dave reached over for the mouse and started scrolling.  “Here.  This is my favorite,” he said as he clicked on it.  He gave Jeff a quick tutorial on how the site worked and showed him the lists of categories.

“It’s the best site I know of, though there are several similar ones.  This one, though, feels like family, and it covers a lot of the real day-to-day needs of a prepper.”

“Thanks, Dave.  I’ve really been stumped about how to get started.  You know, like what should I buy, what should I be doing.”  He thought of the gold coins again.

“Well, I still believe getting the food and things you need for initial survival of ANY possible event is the place to start.  Do you have enough food at home to get through 2 or 3 days if we have a natural disaster or power outage?  What would you do for water?  How would you cook?  What about sanitation?  Medical needs?  Defense?  These all have their place in your preps, but start with what’s most important,” Dave said.

“Food?” Jeff laughed.  “We don’t have food in the apartment!  Usually just some wine.  And I got upset at my wife yesterday because she’d bought a few bottles of juice to keep in the apartment so she wouldn’t have to run out every time she wanted something besides water to drink!”  He felt sheepish now.

“Brother, you have a lot of work to do!  Get reading!” Dave said as he rose to go. “I’m around if you have any questions.  Be glad to help.  More people prepared is fewer people we need to worry about when the SHTF.”

“What does that mean? ‘SHTF’.  I heard someone else say it the other day,”  Jeff asked.

“It stands for when the ‘Shit Hits The Fan‘.” Dave said, then he was gone.

Jeff stared at the empty doorway for a minute, then turned back to the computer.  He browsed through the website Dave had brought up and was impressed with the neat and easy-to-navigate pages.  His heart was pounding as he read the very things he was asking inside. 

The information was in everyday language by real people who were really prepping and learning how to prep.  Everything he wanted to know seemed to be here, and the people had fun with it too.  In places, they were joking with each other, and they even had good debates about things they didn’t agree on. 

Wanting to be part of this world, Jeff made a Username and Password and became a member of Prepared Society.com. 

That night it was Jeannie’s turn for dinner.  Feeling rebuffed by Jeff, she had Italian food delivered just before Jeff got home.  He felt guilty while they ate, and apologized to her.

“If you want to start making more of our meals, I’ll help.  Do you want to go to the market together this weekend?” he asked.

At first she was hesitant, wondering if they’d agree at the market.  Finally she said “yes”.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next day was Friday.  Jeannie had done a lot of studying and reading on the prepared society site and she’d made a list from there and from the savvy shopper site.  She had a plan and wasn’t going to wait for Jeff.  She watched from the window while he boarded the bus, then she hurried down to the street. 

Back at the ethnic market she took a cart with wheels and started down the aisles.  She picked up bags of rice and beans and split peas and lentils.  She grabbed bottles of spices and cooking oil and flour and sugar and cornmeal.  She added more cans, and some boxes and bags of pasta and sauces. 

When the cart was full she still had things on the list.  The shopkeeper let her park it near the counter while she grabbed a last armload of dish soap and toilet paper, paper towels and bath soap.  Last but not least, she took an arm basket and filled it with candy bars and grabbed a bag of nacho chips. 

She almost fell over at the total, but pulled out her credit card and paid for it.  The man kept looking at her funny, so finally she said “I’m going to learn how to cook!”  

She hoped he didn’t say ‘yah? What are you going to make with the candy bars?’!

When it was all done and in bags, Jeannie and the shopkeeper stared at each other as it dawned on Jeannie: she had no way to get all of this home!  Thinking quick she said “I could carry several bags, and come back for the rest, if you can keep it safe.”

“No need to.  If you want, my grandson can help you.  He has a wagon and delivers for our regular customers, for spare change,” he offered.  She agreed, and he made a quick call. 

In a few minutes the back door opened and a boy in his late teens pulled a wagon with wooden sides through the aisle to the front.  They loaded as much as they could and Jeannie put her arms through the handles of the rest of the bags.  Before she picked them off the counter she said, “Oh, one more thing.  Do you have a can opener?”

He walked across the store and came back with a small metal contraption.  “Just take it, no need to unload the bags from your arms.  You bought more than I usually sell in a whole day!”

Jeannie thanked him, and she and the boy headed out onto the sidewalk.  No one paid attention to them on the street, but as they got onto the elevator a lady from her floor stepped out.  She looked at Jeannie and at the food, then back at Jeannie.  Thankfully the door of the elevator closed before the lady could speak. 

“It’s not like buying food is such an odd thing! No reason to feel like a freak show,” Jeannie thought, trying not to feel uncomfortable.

The boy unloaded her groceries onto the table.  Jeannie dropped the bags she’d been carrying onto the couch.  There were red marks where the weight of the bags had cut into her skin.  She thanked the boy, tipped him nicely, bringing a smile to his face, and closed the door behind him. 

She took all the food out of bags and sat in wonder for a while, just staring at it all.  Then she began the process of hiding it all.  More went under the couch, but there wasn’t enough room there for all of it. 

She put some under their bed, and in the closet she pulled down boxes that were full of scarves, gloves, sweaters, and other such that she’d just had to have and never wore more than once or twice.  She loaded them into the empty grocery bags, then packed food into the boxes and replaced them on the closet shelves.

The bags of unnecessary scarves, etc., she took out to the hallway.  She wondered what to do with them.  She carried them into the stairwell and set them down, hoping someone would find them and be happy to have them.  And she hoped she wouldn’t get caught and fined!

There was still a few things left to hide.  She opened the closet next to the bathroom door and pulled out folded sheets and towels.  She set food at the back of the closet, then neatly stacked the sheets and towels back on the shelves in front of it.  Now she just had to be sure she was the one who got out the fresh towels for the bathroom.  She already was the one who changed the bed sheets, so that wasn’t going to be a problem.

Job finished!  She decided to try and get some work done, and sat at her computer.

Jeff focused on the meeting with his clients and it went very well.  They were impressed and renewed their contract.  The boss praised him and headed off for a drink with the clients. 

Jeff whistled as he walked back to his office.  He told his secretary he had some real brain work to do and didn’t want to be disturbed.  With his office door closed he read more of prepared society threads.  He pulled out a post-it pad and started making a list.  He felt like his list was disconnected and covered too many subjects. 

He thought maybe he should talk to Jeannie and bring her on board.  Maybe together they could learn, and each work on an area of prep.  She already expressed an interest in the food area.  Well, they were going to the market tomorrow, maybe he could encourage her to buy some of the things he’d been reading about. 

He looked at his list again and sighed.  Too many categories.  Defense, how to cook, warmth, medical, etc., etc., etc., and that didn’t count food, clothes, and all the things that would probably be Jeannie’s department.  He didn’t know the first thing about camping equipment or guns or finding the way around in the country, or how to do more than put a band aid on an “owee”. 

His stomach rumbled and he decided it was time to eat.  He erased the site from his computer’s history and headed out for lunch.  Minutes later he was sitting in a diner with the newspaper, waiting for his lunch.  He started idly reading the story on the front page, then began to pay attention to what he was reading. 

Tensions were rising between the middle eastern countries and the US and Europe.  Terror alerts had been given and the situation was considered serious.  This stuff had been in the background of Jeff’s mind and he hadn’t really paid attention.  It had his attention now! 

The waitress set his breaded veal cutlet and mashed potatoes in front of him.  He buttered his roll and took a bite.  His eyes gazed out the window and a sign saying “Pawn Shop” came into focus.  The windows had metal bars over them, like many of the shops on the street, but through them he could see a couple of rifles, some power tools, a bicycle, and some skis.  As he chewed he kept looking over there. 

It was no surprise when he found himself crossing the street after he left the diner.  There was a familiar and comforting smell when he walked in the door.  It smelled like metal and oil and old leather, and he had to think hard to figure out why it was so familiar. 

Then he remembered.  It smelled like his Grandpa’s workshop!  A few times when he was a kid they had gone to visit him at his farm way out in the country.  He strained to remember where it was.  He couldn’t think of the name of the town it was near but he was pretty sure he remembered how to get there.  That might come in handy later.  His Grandpa had died years ago and he had no idea what had become of the place.

“Help ya?” a man asked, cutting into Jeff’s thoughts.

“I just came in to see what you have.  I’ve been thinking of getting a rifle.” Jeff said.

“Know what kind ya want?” he asked, waving behind him to several rifles and shotguns on the wall.

“Not really.  I don’t know much about them.  Just something…you know.  For defense.  In case,”  Jeff felt foolish saying it, wondering how the man would react.

“Wise idea.  Well, let’s see…” and the man pointed out several kinds of rifles and explained how they worked and what the advantages of each one were.  Jeff listened carefully but still didn’t know which one he should get.  He looked helplessly at the man, who seemed to roll his eyes slightly.

“Okay, here’s what I’d do, since you’ve never handled a firearm before.  I’d buy a 12-gauge shotgun, pump action, and get a box of shells.  Ya don’t have to worry about being accurate, just point it in the general direction and pull the trigger.  Hey, you ain’t gonna go shoot up your workplace or anything, are you?”  He looked nervously at Jeff.

“No, I don’t work for the post office,” (author’s note:  “ha ha, that’s a joke!”).  He paid for the shotgun, filled out the paperwork and handed over his driver’s license.  “What about shells?”

“Don’t carry them.  Figure it’s safer to have either the guns or the ammo, not both.  There’s a hardware around the corner, he’s got them.  If you want to run over there while I take care of the paperwork, you can.”

Jeff thanked him and headed out the door.  He found the hardware store and asked for the shells the pawn shop guy had told him to get. 

When he set them on the counter to pay for them he saw a display of a camp stoves that were on sale.  He asked about it and the clerk explained it was a one-burner propane stove and not very popular.  People didn’t camp much nowadays, and those who did wanted big, multi-burner fancy stoves.  So they were clearing these out.

“I’ll take one,” Jeff said on impulse.

“Want a bottle of propane, too?” the clerk asked.

“Yeah.  In fact, make it two bottles.  We might start doing a lot of camping,” Jeff said.

The clerk put the stove, two bottles of propane, and the box of shotgun shells in a box, closed the lid, and pushed it across the counter to Jeff. 

“Thanks!” Jeff said as he left.  The shotgun was ready when he got back to the pawn shop.  The shopkeeper had put it in a cardboard box and taped it shut. 

“It’ll be easier for you to carry it like this,” he explained.  “Won’t freak people out.”  Jeff hadn’t thought of that.  It would probably cause a panic if he walked through the streets waving it around!  They wouldn’t have let him on the bus, either! 

Now he wondered whether he should take all this back to work or just go home.  There was only another hour left anyway, before he would have been off for the weekend.  Since they worked late most of the other days of the week, they usually left at 3:00 on Fridays. 

He pulled out his cell phone and called his secretary and told her he wasn’t feeling well and was going to go home and let his wife baby him for the weekend, and he should be good as new by Monday morning.  The Jeff that strolled off down the street after the call certainly looked healthy enough!

Jeannie finished the editing project she was working on and emailed the document to the publisher.  She stretched and walked around the apartment.  A good soak in the bathtub would feel really good!  She started the water in their over-sized bathtub and went to get her bathrobe. 

She opened the fridge and got out the carton of milk, poured a glass, added some of the chocolate milk powder she’d bought that morning, stirred it and drank it.  Feeling good, she went back to the bathroom.  Taking the lid off a bottle of bath oil she held it over the tub and started to tip the bottle.

The phone rang, and she set the bottle on the sink and ran to see who it was.  It quit ringing at the same moment the lights went out.  Confused, Jeannie picked it up anyway.  The phone was dead.  She walked toward the windows and looked at the traffic jam below. 

The stop lights were out and none of the cars were moving.  Jeannie stared more intently.  Usually when the power went out, the drivers kept nudging into the intersections and trying to get through, and all kinds of yelling and horn-honking went on.

She could see that the yelling was going on, and probably the horn-honking too, but none of the cars were moving.  The people on the sidewalks had kept walking briskly to their destinations, but now they were stopping and staring at the cars and their drivers.  Jeannie realized something with a chill of goose bumps…it was awful quiet.

Jeff was on the bus with his two boxes clutched in his arms.  It was before rush hour, but the bus was crowded, and he was crammed in on a bench near the front.  The bus was in an intersection, turning onto the street where he lived, when the sound of the motor ceased and the bus rolled to a stop. 

Everyone stopped talking and stared at each other.  Brows furrowed.  The driver turned the key off and on repeatedly and banged his hand on the dashboard.  He reached for his radio mike.

Outside the bus window Jeff saw with growing horror that all the other cars had stopped too.  In fact, other than the growing swell of voices, some becoming angry or hysterical, it was pretty darn quiet.  He watched as a woman pulled her earphones off, shook her ipod, and groaned “battery’s dead AGAIN!”

Jeff stood up and headed for the door.  Others followed and the driver reluctantly opened the door.  He headed straight toward their building and raced up the stairs. 

Just before their landing he stumbled over several bags that looked like they’d been piled in the corner and fell over.  He gave a curious glance at all the scarves and sweaters that hung out of some of the bags.  Jeannie loved things like that, but he wasn’t going to grab stuff someone abandoned for who-knows-what reason.

Jeannie heard the click of Jeff’s key as it opened the lock.  In seconds she was in his arms.

“What’s going on, Jeff?  Why is this different from the other times the power went off?” she asked him, trying to stay calm. 

Before she could answer, the building shook with a tremendous crash.  Without going to the windows they could see fire across the street, and part of an airplane tail hung over the side of the wreckage of the building.  A huge airplane tail, such as a jumbo jet would have.

They hurried over and watched from the window as people below scattered and ran, screaming and knocking each other down, climbing over each other in panic.  Pieces of debris from the plane and the building fell to the street, crushing cars and people and anything under it.

“Let’s get away from the windows!” Jeff yelled as he pulled her arm and they ran back.  They stood there panting and wide-eyed. 

“Oh, my God!” Jeannie said in disbelief.  She’d barely said it when they felt and heard another crash, this one not so close.  “Another plane, do you think?” 

“I don’t know,” Jeff whispered.  They sunk to the floor, leaning against the door, holding each other’s hands.  “EMP, I think.  I’ve heard of them, and I know what they’re supposed to do and how they do it, but I guess I never thought of it as something that would really happen.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked him.  He’d just finished explaining and was about to tell her about the prepping stuff he’d learned this week, when the room brightened with what can only be described as a long, hard flash of light. 

“Oh crap.  I think that was a nuke,” Jeff said as they both closed their eyes and hunkered down away from the light. 

“No!  No! No way!  No!  It can’t be!” Jeannie screamed in terror.  “What do we do???”

“This is all new to me, too, but we’ll figure it out,” he said, pulling her tightly into his arms.  Inside he just kept thinking “oh crap, oh crap” over and over.  Finally he said, “do you know if this building has a basement, or even better yet, a shelter?”

“I don’t know.  I think so.  Maybe.  There’s a fire exit map on the back of the door,” she told him.  They stood up and looked at it.  Jeff traced his fingers from their apartment to the stairwell and was looking for a basement when someone pounded on their door. 

Keeping Jeannie behind him he cracked the door open.  People were running down the hallway, screaming in hysteria.  The person at the door yelled “Nuclear war!  Come on, we’re going to the basement!  Bring blankets, and food if you have it” and off he ran to the next door. 

Jeff eased the door shut and looked at Jeannie.  Within moments their floor was quiet as the last of the people who were going, had gone to the stairs. 

Jeff opened the box near him and said “look, I bought a camp stove.  I was going to tell you to buy lots of food, for emergencies, when we went to the market tomorrow.  Now it’s too late.  I should have told you, but the last few days I’ve been reading up on this ‘preparing for emergencies’ thing.  I never realized we were so close to something like this happening,”  Jeff said forlornly.

“It’s not too late.  I’ve been reading up on it too.  I didn’t think you’d like me buying as much as I was going to, so I went this morning and picked up some stuff.  Food, mostly,” Jeannie said.

“You did?  Oh Jeannie, I wish I’d talked to you about it last night.  I wanted to.  I bought a shotgun today too, and here are some shells for it, and I have some gold coins,” he said, pulling the envelope out of his pocket.

“But what are we going to do now?  I don’t know how to be safe from radiation and nuclear war,” Jeannie said.

“Well, I read a little bit about it on a website I found, but I didn’t study it much. I wasn’t expecting to need to know right now.  We need to find a place with a lot of dirt, cement, water, or something between us and the radiation.  And we need to be away from windows.  A room with no windows, if we can find one.”  Jeff turned back to the diagram of the building with the fire exits marked.

He looked at Jeannie seriously.  “I didn’t think to ask you.  Do you want to go to the basement with the others?”

Jeannie shook her head.  “No.  From what I read, and from what I know of the type of people in our building,  most probably don’t have food or supplies, and there will be panic and probably disease.  I’d rather take our chances on our own, for now.”

Jeff gave a sigh of relief and said, “me too.” 

“Look here!” Jeff said with triumph.  He pointed to a maintenance room in the center of their floor.  It was surrounded by the water and sewer pipes for the building, and around that was the stairwells and elevators.

The hallway made a square around that, and apartments lined the outer walls.  “These walls are probably 1-ft thick concrete, and then there’s the outer walls.  No windows.  It’s perfect.  If we can get in! 

He opened the door and looked both ways down the hall.  They walked quietly down the hall to the discreet door they’d never paid any attention to.  Jeff jiggled the handle.  It was locked.

Well, finally it pays off to have grown up the son of a locksmith!” he grinned.  He went back to their apartment, dug around in a box in his closet, and came back with what looked like a key ring with weird gadgets on it. 

In moments he had the door unlocked.  It had been years since he’d picked a lock, but it was a skill that had made him popular in college for helping with pranks!

They stepped into the gloom.  Only the security back-up lights were on in the hallway, but Jeff reached into his pocket for his key ring.  He had a small LED flashlight on it, and he shined it around the room. 

The first thing he noticed was several flashlights on a shelf, so he picked one up and turned it on.  The bright beam cut through the room, so he put away his small light. 

Shelves of tools were on two walls, and five-gallon buckets of paint were stacked hodge-podge around the room.  A deep wash sink was on one wall, with a shelf of cleaning supplies overhead.  Buckets and a mop wringer were underneath.  Brooms and mops leaned against it’s side. 

“This looks good.  Let’s start moving our stuff in here.  Prep stuff, the emergency things we’ll need,”  Jeff said.  Jeannie nodded and they closed the door and started back to their apartment.  Just then a door opened and two women came toward them.

“What are you two up to?  How come you didn’t go to the basement?” they asked Jeff and Jeannie suspiciously as they edged past.

“What are YOU doing up here?” Jeff countered.

“Well!  We’re headed to the basement now.  We came back for our purses and make-up bags.  Still have to look nice, you know!” They disappeared through the door to the stairs.  Jeannie noticed they were both wearing some of the scarves she’d left in the bags in the stairwell, but it didn’t bother her.  She’d disposed of them not caring who got them.

After they were gone Jeff said, “We need to listen carefully and make sure no one is coming on each trip we make to the maintenance room!” 

They had a quick discussion on where to start, and Jeannie started by pulling out the food she had stashed.  She had disposed of all the empty grocery bags and was wondering how to transport the food.  First she thought of laying it in the center of a sheet or blanket and carrying it by the corners. 

Then she thought of pillow cases.  She grabbed a handful from the hall closet and started shoving food into them.  Jeff grabbed armloads of clothes and blankets, gave a quick look and listen in the hallway, and ran over, dumped them in there, closed the door, leaving it unlocked, and went back for more stuff. 

He was surprised when he opened the utility closet in the kitchen and saw all the packages of paper towels and toilet paper, but he didn’t say anything, he just carried them over there. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jeannie shoving food into pillow cases, and he came over and picked up the ones that were full.  Grunting under the weight he got them to the maintenance room. 

Jeannie pulled all the juice and wine out of the fridge, and grabbed silverware, paper plates, and paper cups and handed them to Jeff. 

When he came back again she asked “What about water?” 

Jeff didn’t know.  The building’s water was off.  Then Jeannie remembered the bath she was about to take. 

“Jeff!  The bathtub is full!  I was going to have a bath to relax, right before all this happened!” 

They ran into the bathroom and looked at all the water, sparkling in the dim light.  “In fact,” Jeannie added, “I was just about to pour the bath oil in when the phone rang.  As I was going to answer it, the power went out.  I still don’t know who tried to call!  But this water is clean.  Maybe not clean enough to drink the way it is.”

“Yeah, we can haul what we can in some of the buckets from the maintenance room, but they might use pretty strong cleaners and chemicals in there.  Do we have anything in the kitchen that we can use too, something that might be safer for drinking from?” Jeff asked.

She went to look, and Jeff went to get some of the buckets from the maintenance room.  Jeannie found three empty wine bottles in the “glass” recycling bin, and one of the juice bottles that she’d emptied and set on the counter. 

She took the bottles to the bathroom and dipped them in the tub.  Jeff came in as she finished, and he dipped out three 5-gallon buckets of water.  He carried two of them and she brought the bottles.  He went back for the last one. 

While he was leaving the apartment for the last time, the building shook again and a bright light filled the hallway.  He pulled the door shut and hurried to the maintenance room.  Jeannie slammed the door after him and they stood there, trembling. 

“What if one hits our building?” she asked.

“We die,” he said matter-of-factly.  “If one hits that close, we probably want to have it over quick anyway.”

Jeannie began weeping, and Jeff set the bucket of water down and led her over to the pile of blankets.  He turned off the flashlight and they sat in the dark, holding each other and not speaking.

Several hours later Jeff woke up in the dark and stretched, being careful not to jostle Jeannie more than he had to.  He pushed the button on his watch to illuminate the time.  It was 2:37 AM.  They’d been asleep for hours. 

Jeannie lifted her head and asked, “what time is it.”  Jeff told her and she settled her head back against him.  He could tell she was still awake, but he didn’t know what to say. 

“I have to use the bathroom,” said Jeannie.  “What do we do about that?”

Jeff gave her shoulders a squeeze so she knew he heard her, and he thought about it for a minute.  “Well, let’s look at all the buckets in here and see what we have.”

He turned the flashlight on and looked at the buckets of paint sitting around them.  The only ones that had been empty were the three that now had water in them.  He wished he’d thought to plug the sink and fill it too, but then remembered the last blast had come just as he was bringing the last bucket. 

He looked at some of the buckets that were paint splattered and lifted one.  It was almost empty.  In the beam of the flashlight he could see it was the off-white paint they used in all the hallways.   He checked the other splattered buckets to see how much “storage” space they’d have.  Two other buckets were partially full, too.  That didn’t give them a lot of space for waste. 

“It’s gross, I know, but we could pee in the sink and it would run down the drain. We could cover the sink with one of these plastic drop clothes to keep the smell down in between.  And we can…you know, do the other stuff in these partly empty paint buckets and keep the lids on them.  We’ve got toilet paper, and it should be enough to last a while,” he said, pointing the beam of the flashlight on the four 24-roll packs of toilet paper. 

“I guess we gotta do what we gotta do when we gotta do what we gotta do!” Jeannnie said gamely.  She went over to the sink.  “I think that would be okay.”

She went first, then he took care of his own business.  He unfolded one of the plastic drop cloths and spread it over the sink and smoothed it down against the outer sides.

Jeannie dug around in one of the boxes she’d grabbed from her closet and pulled out a couple of candy bars.  She handed one to Jeff, who was pleasantly surprised. 

“Wow, you DID do some stocking up, didn’t you!  This is great!”  He ate with enthusiasm.  They each took a sip of water.  “We can make hot food, too.  I have the camp stove and the fuel.  I even have a lighter that I grabbed from the kitchen.  It’s the one I used to light the barbeque grill at our old place, where we had that little porch.  I noticed we still had the lighter and I grabbed it.”

“I’m glad you did!  But I thought about something else we don’t have.  Pans.  How will we cook the food?”  Jeannie said.  “We didn’t have a can opener, and I got one of those at the market.  Actually, I thought of it at the last minute, after I’d paid, and the shopkeeper just gave it to me because I’d spent so much money.”

Jeff worried for a minute about how much money she spent, then dismissed it.  Money was of no consequence now.  “Well, if it’s something we really have to cook, I guess we’ll try and cook it in the cans.  We’ll just be careful.”

Time passed in silence again.  Presently Jeannie said “I wish there was a way we could have had light, and some books or magazines to read.”

“We could play a game.  Let’s each think of the earliest memory we have.  I know mine!” Jeff said, and he related a memory so old it was brown and fuzzy in his mind.  She did the same, and before long they were laughing and telling childhood stories.  It had been years since they’d had time to talk like this. 

Jeff was telling a story about a time he was visiting his Grandpa in the country and his Dad was there and they were skinning a deer his Grandpa had shot.  He hadn’t thought about that in so long he’d forgotten about it. 

He stopped talking and stared into the darkness, but in his mind he could see clear as day, watching his Grandpa’s knife carefully working along between the hide and the meat.  They’d had a roast and home-grown mashed potatoes for dinner.  He must have eaten the roast but he really didn’t remember it. 

What stood out to him was the wonderful rich, buttery taste of the mashed potatoes!  All the vegetables were richer in flavor than any he ate nowadays, and he wondered why.  He shrugged and figured it was the rose-colored glasses people tend to use when looking at the past. 

“What?  Tell me what you’re thinking!” Jeannie prodded him, and he continued with the story, then spent time musing to Jeannie about the vegetables and how he thought food tasted better there.

“Maybe it was that fresh country air!  I’ve heard that it makes you hungry, and that everything is better, even sleep, when you’re in the country!” Jeannie said.

After a time they both admitted they were hungry for a “real” meal.  Jeannie dug through the cans and laid out a selection.  They decided to heat a can of Asian stew and eat crackers with it.  Jeannie used the can opener while Jeff set up the stove.  When she was ready he lit the burner and turned down the flame. 

“Just like the gas stove in the apartment, only smaller!”  he said.  They carefully balanced the can on the burner.  Jeannie used a plastic spoon to carefully pull food up from the bottom so it would heat all the way through.  The can got hot, and she reached for a rag from what looked like the ‘clean rag’ pile on a nearby shelf. 

“Let’s eat out of the can to save the paper bowls and plates,” Jeannie suggested.  She handed Jeff a plastic fork and they started eating.  Both were being generous to the other by taking only small bites. 

Jeannie scooped up a big bite and looked at Jeff, then reached over and poked it in his mouth!  It caught him by surprise but he opened his mouth.  Grinning, he did the same to Jeannie.  They fed the rest of the can to each other, laughing the whole time! 

When they were done Jeannie wiped out as much as she could from the can with a finger.  “Don’t want it to start smelling in here, and anyway, we might be able to use the can for something else.” 

They sat there restlessly for a while. 

“I’m going to go nuts.  I need to move around.  Get some exercise!”  Jeannie said.  She stood up and started doing jumping jacks in the dark.  Jeff got up too, but just stood there.

“Wait, Jeannie, stop.  You shouldn’t do that.  We need to conserve air, and you don’t want to get all sweaty and need more water.  I think we should do isometric exercises to keep our muscles toned,” he said.

“Oh, you mean those exercises you do on long air flights?  That’s a good idea.  How do you do them?” Jeannie asked eagerly.

“You tighten groups of muscles and hold it for a certain length of count.  I usually count to ten.  Then you release them to a completely relaxed state for a count slightly more than half of what you counted when they were tight. 

“So for me, that would be to the count of six.  Then you tighten them up for another count of ten, and so forth.  You can do just certain muscles, like lower leg muscles or arms and shoulders, or you can tense your whole body as tight as you can, then release it.  You need to really relax on the released time.  Wanna try it?” he asked.

She said, “Yeah, I want to start with my legs.  My calf muscles feel jumpy.”

“Okay, ready?  Tense!” he said and counted out loud to ten.  “Release”, and he counted.  She started counting with him. 

They did several sets, then she said she wanted to add in her arms, and then her back and whole body.  She didn’t really have to tell him which muscles she was doing, since he didn’t tell her, he just followed his own routine and kept up the counting sequence. 

After a while he asked if she was ready to stop.  She said she was, and they sat back down on the blankets. 

“We need to do that several times a day.  For one thing, it’ll keep us from getting too restless and going nuts, but it’ll also keep us from getting things like blood clots in our legs from inactivity,” Jeff explained. 

Then he added, “And if we have to walk to get to safety when this is over, we’ll still be in pretty good shape.  Not aerobically, but hopefully that’ll come back quickly.

She had been about to make jokes about cabin fever, but stopped when he mentioned walking to safety.  She hadn’t thought about what would happen when they “came out of the closet”, and she couldn’t stop a small laugh from escaping at the meaning of that phrase in the time before this. 

Jeff asked what was funny, and she told him, then asked, “what WILL we do now?  How long do we stay in here?  How do we know when it’s safe?  And what is safe now? “

Jeff sighed.  “I don’t know.  I’ve just started thinking about that.  Everything happened so fast, I was just glad we found a safe place to hole up.  I did some studying right before this happened, but there’s so much I don’t know.”

“Me too.  I was on a website that had a lot of topics, but I just glanced at a lot of them and spent most of my time on the ones about food and how to store it,” she said. 

Then she smiled.  “They even had a section with trivial stuff and a ‘joke of the day’ column!  It was nice to see people who were worried about things like survival and safety, who could still connect on a casual level!”

“They had that on the site I went to, too!  What site were you on?” he asked.

“It’s called ‘prepared society’.  It’s funny, it felt like family from the beginning.  The people seemed to really like each other, and they were so warm and welcome to me, too.” 

She worried for a minute about the people she had only known for a few days, and only online at that!  Then she realized, this is what it was all about for them!  She felt better knowing others were out there, surviving and prepared to go forward from whatever was going on where they were.

“You’re kidding!  That’s the site I was on!”  Jeff exclaimed and told her his user name. 

She was excited and said she’d seen the name and had read some of his posts!  She told him her user name and he hugged her.  “I saw some of your posts too!  I never guessed!  I remember feeling like that’s how you would feel if we’d been talking about this together.  Jeannie, I’m so sorry we didn’t.”

“We would have, if we’d had time!  I think it’s cool, and amazing, we found the same site!  But then, you always had an eye for quality!” she teased him.

CHAPTER FIVE

A week had passed and the canned goods were running out.  They’d limited themselves to splitting a can twice a day, eating a candy bar, and sharing a bottle of juice over the day.  The water was holding out, since they were limiting their activity pretty much to isometric exercises. 

They spent hours talking, covering every subject they could think of: their past, their present, their future, the dreams they’d had over the years, the things they wanted to try, movies they’d seen, politics, religion, recipes, you name it, they discussed it.  They laughed, they cried, they connected in a way they hadn’t in the 6 years they’d been married. 

They got tired of the dark, they got angry that this event had happened, and then they got angry at each other.  Jeff took half of the blankets and moved to the other side of the room.  He took a pop-top can of peaches with him, and that’s all he ate for a day.  Jeannie worked on a can of carrots all day and didn’t even taste them when she ate them. 

After several hours had passed, Jeff said in a plaintive voice, “I’m sorry.  Can I come home?”

It was so touching and mournful that it made Jeannie burst into peals of laughter.  Indignant, Jeff said “Hey, I was apologizing.  It’s not funny!”

She stopped laughing long enough to say, “I know, but I can’t help it, you sounded so pitiful and sad!” and she was off, laughing again. 

He dragged the blankets back and plopped down on them, turning on the flashlight so he could see her face.  It was red and blotched and he could tell she’d been quietly crying for quite some time.  He hadn’t known.  He forgave her for laughing and pulled her into his arms.  She looked up at him.

“I missed you.  Please don’t leave again.  We’re all each other has right now!” she said.  “How long do you think until we can go out of here?”

“From what little I read, two weeks seems to be the magic number,” Jeff said glumly.

“Two weeks?  That means another week of this?  I can’t do it!  I’ll go mad!  Wait, I’m already mad!” she said.  “Wouldn’t it be safe to go to our apartment as long as we don’t open the windows or go outside?  Or at least into the hallway so we can run back and forth and get some real exercise?”

“Radiation works in a different way than most things.  There was probably fall-out, which is like dust particles, only it’s radioactive.  It can permeate through walls and windows.  The thicker the mass in the wall or barrier, the safer you are.  A dirt wall or sand bags, things like that, are supposed to be good.  And having a turn in your entry.  I’m not sure how it works, but the radiation apparently can’t turn corners.  I don’t understand it, but I saw that in several posts on that forum.  I had time to read through a couple fiction stories, too, that mentioned it, but I don’t think the survival information was fictional, only the characters and events were fictional.”

“But what about these foot-thick cement walls you said the building was made of?” she asked.

“Yes, they offer some protection.  I don’t know how far away or which direction the blasts were, nor which way the wind was blowing at the time.  We don’t have a radiation meter.  So to play it safe, we should stay in here the whole two weeks if we can stand to do so,” he said.

Jeannie gave a big sigh but didn’t say anything for a while.  “What if we ran really fast and just grabbed a few things from the apartment?  Wouldn’t that be low enough exposure that we’d be okay?  That couldn’t be a lethal dose, could it?” she pleaded.

“Grab what sort of things?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Books, maybe.  We’ve got all those flashlights, what if we read together for just an hour a day, or even twice a day?  It would make it a bit more bearable,” she said.

He thought about it for a few minutes, then said, “Okay, but I’ll go.  You stay here.  Be ready to slam the door behind me.  Wait, I think I remember reading something about decontamination.  I’ll set out a change of clothes to put on when I get back.  I’m going to wear a sweatshirt and pants, and yank them off and leave them in the hallway.  Then I’ll wash off by the sink and put on clean clothes.”

When the preparations were ready he opened the door only long enough and wide enough to slip out.  The smell in the hall was awful and he peered through the gloom.  The only light came from a few doors that were open, allowing light from apartment windows to come into the hallway.  A mound was on the floor near the elevator, and as he leaned closer to look he gagged. 

It was a decomposing body, mostly bald and covered in sores.  The eyes stared ahead in a face contorted in agony.  Jeff ran to their apartment door and let himself in. 

The air was better in the apartment.  He knew he shouldn’t do so, but he ran to the windows for a quick look.  Most of the buildings within sight were destroyed and blackened by fire.  Debris filled the street, and bodies lay here and there. 

As he watched, a hunched-over person walked along the sidewalk slowly, and what also looked like painfully.  He drew back from the window.  Grabbing an armload of books from the shelves and a few magazines off the coffee table he hurried back to the maintenance room.  He set the books down, stripped off the clothes and tossed them toward the body on the floor, so they wouldn’t be by the door behind which he and Jeannie hid. 

Back in the room he headed for the sink.  Jeannie reached for the books but he held them away from her.

“Let me wash them off, too.  They might have radiation in the dust on them.  I have no idea how that works.”  He uncovered the sink, took one of the few clean rags left, and using one of the empty food cans, he scooped water out of one of the buckets of clean water.  He dipped the rag and washed off, then wiped down the books.  He scooped another can of water, leaned over the sink, and poured it over his hair.

“Hey!  No fair!  You get to wash your hair!” Jeannie said, half joking.  She knew they couldn’t spare the water, but her scalp felt oily and itchy.  Her body felt oily and itchy.  She knew it had to smell pretty rank in the room but they were used to it and didn’t notice it.  Jeff didn’t notice it because his nostrils were burning from the horrible odor of the decomposing body in the hallway. 

After he was dressed and they were sitting back down he told Jeannie about the body.  She, of course, had to spend time musing over who it might be.  How they died was obvious: radiation poisoning. 

Then he told her about what he saw out the window.  He thought she might scold him for going to the window, but she was so shocked at his description that she just sat in silence. 

“I wonder what is going to happen to us.  I don’t want to die.  But what kind of world do we live in now?  What do we do?  Where do we go?” Jeannie wondered.

“I don’t know.  You know, we used to laugh at the office about the ‘I’m from the government, I’m here to help you’ thing, and none of us ever expected to be the kind to sit helplessly and wait for the government to help, like after hurricanes and stuff down south, or floods or whatever.  But now I’m sitting here, drowning in my own ignorance and lack of preparing and learning, wishing there was--no, HOPING there IS a government out there,” Jeff said.  As an afterthought he added, “…and that it’s on our side.

CHAPTER SIX

At the end of two weeks Jeff said they could spend some time in the apartment each day, but had to go back to the maintenance room to eat and sleep.  They’d used up the batteries in two of the flashlights reading half an hour, twice a day. 

They had started reading out loud to each other instead of both trying to read at the same time.  During one of the times Jeannie was reading, Jeff’s eyes had been wandering over the shelves.  Suddenly he jumped up.

Jeannie asked what was wrong.  He had spotted a radio behind some tools on one of the shelves.  It must have been belonged to one of the workers.  They excitedly pulled it out and turned it on.  Nothing.  They thought to check the battery compartment and it was empty. 

Pulling batteries from one of the flashlights on the shelf they popped them in and turned the radio on.  It came to life, but all they heard was static on both AM and FM, all the way up and down both bands. 

They were discouraged.  Even when they resumed reading, neither could concentrate on what was being read; even Jeannie, who was reading and not comprehending what she was reading.

Before their first foray together out of “the closet”, as they called it now, they had breakfast.  The canned goods were gone and they had started cooking rice and pasta in the empty food cans.  They used as little water as they had to. 

That had been the advantage of the canned food, it had the water in it.  Now they were going through the water a lot faster.  It was almost gone now, and Jeff had been wondering whether the water in their bathtub was still potable.  He carried one of the five-gallon buckets with him when they headed to the apartment.

The smell in the hallway was bad.  They pulled their shirts up over their mouths and noses and skirted past it.  Jeff looked back in surprise.  His pants and sweatshirt were gone!  He didn’t even want to think about the condition of whoever had taken them, but it also alarmed him to think people had been in the hallway and they hadn’t heard them. 

Oh well, Jeff shrugged to himself.  That meant the people in the hallway couldn’t hear them, either, and that was good.  Very good.

They closed the door of the apartment behind them.  Jeannie wandered around, touching the furniture, touching the kitchen counter, doing the same in every room.  Just touching.  Looking.  Longing.  Not saying anything. 

She came back to the living room and sat in her desk chair.  She put her hands on the keyboard, touched the mouse, then got up and walked over to a big, soft chair and sank into it. 

Jeff knew what she was feeling, even though neither spoke.  The future probably wouldn’t hold such comforts.  They were letting go.  They couldn’t restore the world they had known.  They had to embrace and accept a new world.

“Do you suppose the clothes in our dressers and closets are safe?  I’d love to have something different to wear.”  Jeannie asked.

“I think so,” Jeff said.  She went to the bedroom and came back in fresh clothes.  She looked tired and pale, and her hair was stringy.  He felt tender toward her.  She hadn’t complained, yet he knew she had to feel crummy.  “How about if we wash your hair over the bathroom sink?  The water won’t be warm, and we’ll have to be careful not to use too much water.”

She lit up like he’d given her the best Christmas present ever.  “Oh, Jeff!  That would be wonderful!”

They went to the bathroom and by the dim light that came in the small window, her hair was washed. She leaned over the sink and Jeff scooped water from the tub and slowly poured it over her head. 

When they were done she gave him a hug and thanked him.  She felt some of her energy restored, partly from the hair-washing, and partly from the feeling of well-being because of Jeff’s caring act.

Each day they went to the apartment for several hours.  Mostly they read, dragging the chairs from the living room over closer to the window. 

One restless day Jeannie pulled the couch out to see if she missed anything, not really expecting to find anything, and lo and behold, two cans rolled out!  She’d missed them in the haste of packing up the food to go to the closet.  One was a can of blueberry pie filling and the other was a can of chicken noodle soup.  They celebrated by eating both for dinner that day! 

The next day Jeannie searched all through the apartment, tearing apart the rest of the hiding places where her food stash had been.  She was sure she’d find something else she missed, but dejectedly she had to accept that nothing else was there.

“Well, we could start seeing what’s in the other apartments on our floor,” Jeff said.  At Jeannie’s shocked look he said, “I mean the ones with doors open.  They’re probably abandoned.  The people won’t be back.  And even if they do come back, this is a matter of life and death.  Extenuating circumstances,” he argued his point. 

She reluctantly agreed, not wanting to think about the fact that they lived in a world where that was acceptable now.

The apartments with doors open had been pretty well searched by now.  Clothes and other belongings were scattered around, and furniture over-turned.  Jeannie picked up a pan off the floor in one kitchen and waved it at Jeff.  “SCORE!” she cried. 

She opened the utility closet and moved aside a mop and some rolls of paper towels and discovered part of a case of drinking water in bottles on a shelf.  “Jeff!  Water!”

He ran into the kitchen as she was pulling the case out.  He helped her set it on the table.  There were 19 bottles left in a case that had held 24!  They couldn’t believe their luck! 

Jeannie picked up a couple of serving spoons and a spatula and they headed for the door with Jeff carrying the water.  She looked longingly at the real plates in the dish drainer on the counter.  They didn’t have the water to wash plates, she knew, and they’d have to keep using paper plates or eating out of the cans.  They had a pan, now, though!  She felt rich!

They cooked penne pasta for their first meal in the new pan.  She put a little bit of the cooking oil in it and sprinkled it with garlic salt.  They had no pasta sauce or meat or vegetables to put in it, but it tasted wonderful.  They each used a plastic fork and ate out of the pan. 

The next day Jeff decided they could eat in the apartment now, and cook there as well.  But he still wanted them to spend part of the day in the closet, and continue to sleep there.  Two hour limit out of the closet, then back in for at least an hour.  He had no idea if that was helping or not, but at least he FELT like he was doing something to help.

Jeannie was thrilled.  She started to load up a bunch of food to take to the apartment and Jeff stopped her. 

“We don’t want to leave anything in the apartment that we hope to see again,” he said.

“Good point,” she said, as she set most of it back down.  She picked out what she needed for the next meal.  “What about the smell of food cooking?  Do you think it will bring anyone?”

“Hmmm.  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I guess maybe some people will still be searching and ransacking the buildings.  But I think by now most people have died or moved on.”  He hoped he was right.

They read for a while, then Jeannie cooked a meal, which they debated whether it would be lunch or dinner.  They tried to invent a word that meant lunch and dinner, like brunch for breakfast and lunch, but all they accomplished was some tongue-twisting and laughter.

It was great to be able to see what she was doing, and not work around the shadows of a flashlight.  She was grateful the flashlights were there, for otherwise they would have had no light during their two weeks in the closet.  But she was also grateful for the daylight now, too.

As they were about to head back to the closet they heard a voice.  The door to the stairwell opened and they heard footsteps in the hall.

“There’s been nothing on any of the floors we’ve been through!” a voice complained.  “Why are we doing this?”

“Be quiet, will you?  The higher up we go, the more likely we are to find things.  Other people probably gave up after a few floors,” another voice said.

“So why don’t we start on the top floor?” the first voice asked.

“Leroy, that’s the only smart thing I’ve ever heard you say,” said voice two.  They turned back to the stairwell door.

Jeff breathed a sigh of relief.  He’d been holding an umbrella, the only weapon at hand, after realizing he’d foolishly left the shotgun in the closet.  He mentally berated himself for putting them in a position of such danger. 

Jeannie was behind him, around the corner behind the lamp table.  She stood up now, her hands shaking. 

“Come on, let’s go back to the closet for a while,” he said, taking the pan from their meal out of her hands.  He held her hand with his other hand as they listened, then left the apartment and returned to the closet.  They laid on their blankets and quietly stared into the darkness until they fell asleep. 

Jeannie had tormented dreams.  She dreamt that she was running down a hallway that never ended, and shadowy “bad guys” were chasing her.  She kept falling over dead people and it was horrible.  Suddenly the hallway ended at an open staircase and she ran right off the end and was falling down the stairs. 

She woke with a scream, and Jeff pulled her close and put a hand over her mouth.  She realized he was tense from head to toe.

“Shhhh.  Someone is in the hall,” he whispered in her ear.  She froze and lay in his arms, frightened and still disoriented by the dream.  She strained her ears.  A couple times she heard a short word barked but couldn’t understand what was said. 

The doorknob jiggled.  It rattled.  Then a thud, followed by a louder thud.  Someone was kicking the door.  Jeff eased his arms away from Jeannie and picked up the shotgun.  He slid over in front of her and sat facing the door, feeling for the safety with his fingers. 

He wondered what it would be like.  He’d never fired a gun before.   The movies he’d watched over the years of his life was all the knowledge he had of guns.  He suddenly wished he’d joined the army or something when he was younger.

Minutes passed and there was no more rattling or thuds.  Jeff still sat tense.  He could feel his shoulders start to ache.  Then his wrists and fingers started to ache.  He began to imagine itches and twitches.  Still he sat, until he wanted to just yell and start shooting.  Finally he relaxed and lowered the shotgun.  He left it laying across his lap as he flexed his arms and fingers.

“I think they left,” he whispered.  He felt like she had nodded, and it struck him as odd that he thought he could feel her nod.  Maybe they were becoming one person in this close-quarters life. 

They didn’t leave the closet again until the next day, and the shotgun went with them when they did.  Jeff left the apartment door ajar so they could hear into the hallway and admonished Jeannie to be as quiet as possible.  She picked out a book and curled up to read.  Jeff moved a chair over closer to the door and paged through a magazine.  He was glad to be in the apartment and out of the closet, but he couldn’t focus on what was on the pages.  Still, he didn’t have anything else, to do, so he kept turning pages. 

Hours passed.  Jeannie got up and stretched a few times, quietly, then sat back down.  They went back to the closet to cook. 

“We have to make a plan,” Jeannie said.  “The food is going to run out after a while.  We can’t stay here forever.”

“I know,” Jeff said.  “I’ve been thinking of possibilities.  I know what would probably work, once we GET there, but it’s the getting there I can’t figure out.  It’s going to be dangerous getting out of the city.”

“What are you thinking?  I mean, for a destination.” asked Jeannie.

“Someplace like where my grandparent’s used to live.  In the country.  They had a farm with all kinds of animals and a big garden, and there were animals in the woods, like deer, that they shot for meat,” Jeff said.

“But we don’t know anything about animals or gardens!  And what would we do with a deer if you shot one!” Jeannie said in amazement.  “I mean, it’s a good idea.  A practical one.  But I don’t see how we could do it.  And I can’t think that people who already have that are going to want to let us move in with them!  We’re strangers!”

“Yeah, that’s the hard part.  I don’t know how we could convince any of them to give us a chance.  To let us work and learn these things.”  Jeff stood up and stretched.  He paced a few feet each direction in the small room.

“It’s just that, I can’t think of anything else.  We don’t know if there are any sort of camps or places for refugees, and those were always so horrible when we saw them on the news.  I guess I can’t even believe we’ll live long enough to get out of the city, so instead I try to imagine that somewhere, there’s a nice farm with a nice family who will give us a chance,” he said. “It gives me hope.”

Jeannie stood up and leaned against the shelves.  She thought about all the movies and TV shows she’d seen about life in the country.  Funny images of people falling in pigpens and getting all dirty, and people getting chased by mad bulls, filled her mind.  She pushed those aside in annoyance and pictured fields of…of what?  Wheat?  Corn?  She hardly knew what they looked like in a field.  She hardly knew what any of the food she ate looked like before she bought it.  That had been one of the things she was going to find out on the internet before this all happened.

“Okay.  We’ll go,” she finally said.  “so, what’s the plan?  When do we leave?”

He hadn’t realized it, but he’d been making lists in his head, and it poured out now.  “We need to make something to use for backpacks, and we need blankets, food, the camp stove, a couple of these flashlights, and I was thinking one of these plastic drop clothes would work for a ground cover to sleep on.  If one is big enough we could make a shelter, sort of like a tent.  I’m not really sure how to do that.  You don’t remember if anyone in the building went camping or backpacking, do you?  We could raid their stuff!” he laughed.

Jeannie shoved his arm.  “As a matter of fact, I DO know someone who went backpacking!  I rode in the elevator with her a couple times.  One time she had her backpack and was coming home from a trip she’d been on.  Some place in Colorado.  She flew there, rented a car, and went to some park and backpacked.  She met a group of friends there or something.  Anyway, she got off on the floor below ours, but I don’t know which apartment was hers.”

“That’s terrific, but I don’t know if we should go to other floors of the building.  We’d be taking a big chance,” Jeff said.  He finally decided it was worth the chance.  Jeff carried the shotgun, and Jeannie had unscrewed a mop head and was carrying the wooden handle.  It wasn’t going to be worth much if they ran into trouble, but she felt better having something in her hands. 

All went well going down the stairs.  They cracked the door to the 7 floor and listened.  Nothing.  In the hallway they could see that nearly all the doors were open.  They quietly entered the first one, looked around quickly, and worked their way down the hall, then back up the other side. 

In the second apartment on the way back, Jeannie triumphantly held up a large backpack that was in a closet!  Jeff gave her the thumbs up and grinned.  She leaned back into the closet and pulled out two stuff bags and peered into them.  They were rolled up and she wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be a tent and a sleeping bag.

They returned to their closet with their treasures and Jeff pulled the sleeping bag and tent from their bags.  There was only one of everything, but they could share the tent, and they could carry blankets in addition to the sleeping bag.  Having only one backpack was something of a problem. 

He’d been mulling around in his head how to make a backpack out of one of their duffel bags, but nothing had seemed possible.  Maybe one of them would have to just carry a duffel bag.  He figured he should carry the backpack because he was stronger.  Maybe they could put light stuff in the duffel bag.  His had a shoulder strap as well.  He told Jeannie his plan.

She thought it was as good as it was going to get, but that they should put the least important things in the duffel bag.  “Just in case we have to ditch it in a hurry,” she said.

He remembered something he’d read in one of the stories in the forum.  “We should put some trinkets in our pockets, maybe a couple of the candy bars.  If someone confronts us and demands something, we could throw the candy bars off to the side and get away while they scramble after them.  It’s kind of lame, but it’s one of the plans we could have in reserve.”

They started gathering the things they were going to take and packed them into the backpack and duffel bag.  Jeannie insisted on bringing another, smaller duffel bag that she could sling over her back like a pack, and he relented.  The more they could bring, without overloading themselves, the better. 

He attached everything he could to the outside straps  and pockets of the backpack, and she did the same with her bags.  When they were done, he hefted them both.  It was going to be a challenge, especially considering their lack of aerobic activity, but they’d have to do their best.  There really weren’t any other options.

Next they picked out what they were going to wear.  They planned on wearing layers of clothes that could be shed or put on as needed.  They didn’t know how cold it was outside, but the few people they saw on the streets were wearing coats.  So they each picked out a coat that seemed rugged enough and filled the pockets with odds and ends. 

They made more forays into other apartments and gathered lighters, matches, a couple of candles, and a small flashlight with a bright beam.  They found a package of new batteries in a drawer in their own apartment and packed those. 

Finally Jeff said they were ready and would leave the next morning.  Neither slept much, and Jeff checked his watch a dozen times.  Finally he told Jeannie it was time.  She was alert and got up right away.  They left the closet and walked quickly and quietly to the stairwell.  Down and down and around and around they went until they reached street level. 

The smell in the lobby wasn’t so much of death as it was of urine and vomit.  Three weeks had passed since the bombing, and the worst of the smell of decaying bodies was starting to fade.  The doors of the building were broken, and glass and litter of all kinds covered the floor. 

Jeannie glanced toward the coffee shop.  It, too, had been destroyed.  A body sat slumped in a booth, the hair gone and the mouth and nose covered in caked blood.  She could see the remnants of a waitress uniform and hoped it wasn’t Gloria.  Jeff pulled her toward the door to the street.

    Outside the air was chilly and damp.  A breeze rolled between the buildings, turned and rolled back the way it came.  The smell was unpleasant but not readily identifiable as anything specific. 

    “Which way do we go?” Jeannie asked.

    “We don’t have a map and I don’t know where to get one.  I thought we’d just pick a direction and stick with it.  Eventually we’ll get out of the city.  That’s one thing about this watch of mine with all these useless features…it has a compass!” Jeff showed it to her.  They were facing north at the moment. 

    “Okay.  So, which direction do you want to go?  Aren’t we kind of on the north end of downtown right here?” she asked.

    “Yeah, and there are less suburbs that direction because of the airport and farm fields,” he said.  They started walking.  At the corner they turned and looked back at their building.  With amazement they saw that the top two stories had collapsed and the far corner was buckled, with a twisted metal beam hanging down the side of the building.  They looked at each other with widened eyes!  Since their building had gas stoves and gas heat, it was a miracle it hadn’t burned.

    They turned so they could head north.  Block after block was covered in the debris of war and looting.  Jeannie kept turning her face away from the dozens of bodies they passed.  Some were charred and she wondered if they were people who had jumped from burning buildings. 

    “It’s possible,” Jeff said.  “Or a fireball might have rolled through the streets.  There would have been a wind from the blast wave.  Two of them, if I remember right.  One is just wind, one is hot.” 

    One street they came to was blocked with a mangle of twisted steel and bricks.  They went over a block and continued north.  A light rain began and it smelled vaguely of soot.  They stopped to rest and have a snack under the canvas awning of a book store.  The awning hung at a crazy angle, having been torn partly off the building. 

    “We should go in here and look for books that might help us,” Jeannie said, looking in the window.  Surprisingly, the glass wasn’t broken, although the door was partway open. 

    “Yeah, and maybe a map,” Jeff added. “We can’t carry much more weight, but let’s step inside and see what we find.”

    They pushed the door open and waited.  Hearing nothing, they stepped inside.  Nothing had been disturbed except the cash register.  It was open and there was no money in it.  Jeff wondered if the owner had left it open on purpose to show that it was empty, so no one would break into it. 

    Jeannie was over by a book section labeled “Sports and the outdoors”.  She pulled out a few books and handed them to Jeff.  There were books on camping, and another on hunting.  On another shelf she found a book that identified edible plants.  Near the front counter Jeff spotted maps and road atlases.  He looked at a map of the nation to refresh his memory of geography, but left the atlas when he was done and took a map of their state.  He folded it in half and put it in his coat pocket.  Jeannie had been paging through the book on camping and hunting, and set the camping one back on the shelf.

    “It’s too vague, and mostly talks about equipment we don’t have.  I don’t think it’ll help.  If we pass a sporting good store we might find some of the stuff that WOULD help, but for now, it’s not worth the weight to carry it,” she said.  “The hunting book is pretty good.  It has big animals like deer and elk, and small animals like rabbits and partridges, and it tells how to skin them and cut them up for eating.  It has diagrams, and instructions for different ways to make traps”

“What about the plant book?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, it’s a good book.  Good pictures, even pictures of the plants in different seasons, which will be helpful.  I don’t know how much of this stuff grows here, but it’s still worth bringing,” she said.  She handed the hunting book to Jeff and she shoved the plant book in the duffel bag.  She had to work to get the zipper closed again, but Jeff was having the same problem as he shoved the hunting book into the backpack.

“We better get walking again.  We need to get out of the city as fast as we can, and we’re going to need plenty of time to find a safe place to spend the night,” Jeff said as he headed for the door. 

They walked until Jeannie thought her body was numb and her mind was heading the same direction.  Every now and then they saw a flash of movement, and a few times they got glimpses of people darting into buildings or around corners.  Jeff had a creepy feeling that several people were watching them; maybe even following them.  He kept his mind sharp and his hand ready on the shotgun. 

When dusk started to fall he began looking for a place to stop for the night.  The freeway was overhead about half a block away, and they were out of the office building district into what looked like warehouses or factories.  He had no idea what would be safe.  His mind ran wild, thinking about the zombie movies he’d seen, wondering what might come out at night.  It had been pretty quiet over the day.

Finally he led Jeannie into an alley between two buildings.  There were several dumpsters and piles of pallets.  He found a break between the pallets and looked back in behind them.  Looking up, he saw that an overhang of the roof extended out about 4’, which would give them a bit of shelter if it started raining again. 

It wasn’t a good place to try and set up the tent.  He pulled the top pallet across until one edge rested on the other pile, then covered it with the large plastic drop cloth.  He spread the other one on the ground and covered it with their blankets.  Jeannie dropped to the ground in exhaustion and sat on the blankets.  Jeff sat next to her and they discussed dinner. 

Neither felt like cooking, and Jeff wasn’t sure it was a good idea anyway.  The aroma might attract unwanted attention.  They each ate a candy bar, which didn’t fill their stomachs or satisfy them, but they stretched out without complaint and went to sleep.  Jeff had intended to lay there and pretend to sleep until Jeannie drifted off, then stay awake and watch for danger, but he fell asleep too.

They were lucky.  When morning came they were alive and had not been bothered or discovered by anyone.  They packed the blankets back onto the pack, along with the sleeping bag they’d covered up with, and started walking again.  They knew they should eat, but neither mentioned it. 

A sickly sun was trying to shine through the clouds but not quite making it.  Now they were between the river and the freeway.  Cars and trucks were parked all over the streets and highway.  Most had the doors hanging open or windows broken.  They still passed bodies everywhere they went.  Both had gotten over the shock and just walked on without a word. 

The only time Jeannie caught her breath in sadness was when they passed what looked to be a woman sheltering 3 small children with her arms and body.  It looked like one of the children had peeked it’s head out under her arm and died there.  Jeannie looked away quickly and blinked back tears.  She hadn’t allowed herself to think about how unfair it all was, because that would unleash fury that she would be helpless to deal with.

“Let’s stop and eat,” Jeff said a while later.  They walked behind some bushes along the river and Jeff got out the camp stove.  Jeannie got out the pan and the bag of rice. 

“What about water?  Do you think the river is safe?  I mean, it wasn’t before, but maybe no one is polluting it now!” she said, half-joking.

“Go ahead, but we’ll boil it for a few minutes first.  We might as well get used to it.  If we’re going to get sick, we might as well get that over with, too,” Jeff said.

Jeannie walked carefully to the bank of the river and looked at the water.  The surface seemed pretty clear, despite the muddy bottom.  She watched the current for a minute, then squatted down and dipped the pan into the water, trying to get only the top few inches of cleaner water. 

As she stood up she saw a man on the opposite bank of the river.  He stared at her and she stared back.  She raised an arm in a half-hearted greeting, unsure what she should do.  The man didn’t move.  He just stared back at her.  She shivered and turned to go back to Jeff.

He had the camp stove ready to light.  She told him about the man as she set the pan on the stove.  He looked across the river and said, “Well, no one’s there now.  Maybe he was more afraid of us than we are of him.” 

When the rice was done they sprinkled it with oregano and ate it.  The garlic salt was gone, and they’d found a few spices and a set of salt and pepper shakers in one of the apartments.  Jeannie washed the pan in the river, looking nervously at the far bank every few seconds. 

They pushed back through the bushes and suddenly a shot rang out.  Both dropped to their knees and looked around wildly.  Jeff ran in a crouch, pulling Jeannie along, until they were behind the cement barricade by the freeway exit.  He still didn’t see where the shot came from, but a moment later another shot caused chips of cement to fly off the barrier a few feet from them.  Jeannie gave a short shriek and shrunk down as far as she could. 

Now Jeff had an idea of the direction.  He still had no target to shoot at, so he waited, and wondered what to do now.  He saw a movement and looked to his right.  Two people ran from behind freeway support columns and ducked behind a truck.  Jeff was pretty sure the shot had not come from that direction. 

He looked back toward the direction he guessed the shot came from and saw someone step back quickly from a window in a nearby building.  It was next to a loading dock and a door.  When he looked back toward the cars he saw a rifle barrel sticking out at the end of the truck, pointed toward the warehouse window. 

Another shot rang out from the building and whizzed harmlessly overhead.  Seconds later a shot came from behind the truck, followed by a long howl from inside the building.  The two behind the truck slipped from car to car, and behind the occasional post, until they were close to the building.  While one held their rifle on the window the other one crept to the window and crouched below it.  Then he slowly raised up until he was next to it and jumped over to look in the window, rifle pointing in. 

Seconds later he relaxed and let the rifle down.  He waved his arm at his friend, who joined him at the window. 

Not bothering to find out what was going on, Jeff decided to take the opportunity to make a getaway.  He put a finger to his lips to indicate to Jeannie to be silent, then made a running motion with his fingers and pointed.  She nodded.  He motioned “count of 3” and then used his fingers to give the count. 

On ‘3” they quickly rose and ran as quietly as they could, across the street, down a bank, and onto another street, around a corner, and farther and farther from the scene behind them.  After a few blocks they stopped to catch their breath and leaned on the wall of a building.

“Wang!” A bullet struck the wall next to them.  Not again, thought Jeff, as he pulled Jeannie and they ran up the street and into an open shop door.  Taking a quick look around to make sure they hadn’t walked into another bad situation, they ran to the back room and looked for a door into the alley.  That door was yanked open and a teenage boy leapt into the room and fired a handgun at them.  Jeff raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

When the dust settled, Jeannie was still shaking her head, trying to get the ringing sound out of her ears.  Jeff was rubbing his upper arm, where the shotgun had kicked back and bruised the muscle, and looking blankly straight ahead, at the still and bloody form of the boy.

Jeannie started sobbing and yelled at Jeff, “He was just a kid.  Just a boy. Someone’s son.  You killed him!”  She started hitting him on the arm.  That startled him to his senses.  He caught her hands and looked at her.

“Jeannie!  I know,” he said, as gently as he could.  “But he would have killed US.  Whatever he’s been through, or whoever he’s with, he’s not a boy any more, not in the sense of the world as we USED to know it.  He’d become an animal.  A killer.” 

He really wasn’t trying to justify what had just happened, but the horrible realization was setting in and he was having a hard time processing it.  Adrenalin and anxiety raced through his veins.

“Come on, let’s get out of here, quickly,” he said.  He picked up the shotgun from where he had dropped it.  Jeannie held on lightly to his coat as they ran out the back door and through the alley, angling farther from the scene behind them before turning north once again.  It was only then that Jeff ruefully realized they should have grabbed the boy’s handgun, but it was too late now.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hour after hour passed and they still walked, pushing forward in numb agony.  Relentlessly, they covered block after block, stepping over or walking around bodies and belongings of every kind.  A person, weakened and sick, lay half out of the door of a car, and raised it’s arm toward them.  Jeff pulled Jeannie on.  There was nothing they could do. 

The factories gave way to apartment buildings and then the houses of the suburbs.  More living people appeared, but all disappeared as though mirages.  They compared notes to see if they were imagining things. 

Suddenly the pavement ended and they both jumped as though startled.  Ahead of them, past the tall grass and brush in front of them, was the river.  Jeff checked his compass.  They were still going north.  The river must have made a bend.  Looking behind him he saw that they had walked straight to the end of a culd-de-sac.

He looked both ways to see where the closest bridge was.  “We need to go back to the last cross street and head over toward that bridge,”  Jeff said.  Jeannie nodded.  He looked carefully at her weary face, cheek bones more prominent, giving her a gaunt look.  She was exhausted.

“It’s almost evening,” he said tenderly.  “Let’s do down the bank into the trees near the river and rest.  We’ll make something to eat.”  He realized he was very hungry. 

He led the way through the tall grass and brush and down the slope.  Tall trees lined the river bank, and a muddy trail followed the bank.  He looked both ways at the trail, then shrugged out of the back pack and set it on the grass behind them.  They both worked at getting out food, pan, and stove.

“This is the last of the rice,” Jeannie said as she dumped it in the pan.  “We still have lentils and cornmeal, as well as some other stuff.”

She walked down to the edge of the river and scooped water into the pan.  Some of the rice swirled out of the pan and drifted off with the current.  She watched stupidly, realizing that she was beyond sense, having known better than to put the rice in the pan before getting the water.  She pulled the pan up quickly so as not to lose more rice. 

While the rice cooked she pulled the plant book out of the duffel bag.  She thought maybe she’d find something edible among the brushy plants on the hillsides.  Looking at the plants and back to the book, she flipped through, looking at the pictures.  She stopped at  one, compared it to a plant nearby, and turned to Jeff.

“This is a rose bush, and these red balls are rose hips!” she said, pointing at a bush about waist-high.  He came over and looked, then looked at the book.

“Yes, I think you’re right.  Are they like berries?  Do we pick them and eat them?” he asked.

“Let’s see…well, they’re edible but it says most people use them for tea or to make jelly.  They’re high in Vitamin C.  Do you want to try some?  We could boil some water after we eat the rice?”  She frowned then, looking at the book.  “It doesn’t say how many it takes to make tea!”

“How about what looks like the same amount in a tea bag?” Jeff said.

“Okay, that sounds logical.”  She set about picking a few, sizing them up in her palm, and stopped with 6 of them.  After they ate the rice she went back to the river and got more water.  When it was boiling, she flatted the rose hips with her hands and dropped them in the water.  Five minutes later she moved the pan off the stove and set it on the grass.  When it had cooled enough, she used a plastic spoon to fish out the pieces of the rose hips.  She raised the pan to her lips and took a sip, then handed it to Jeff.

He held the pan and looked at her.  “Well?  How is it?”

“No, no, try it yourself!” she said, laughing.

He took a sip and swished it around in his mouth, thinking, then swallowed it.  “Not bad.”

“Yeah.  It tastes faintly of perfume but also a bit fruity.  Too bad we don’t have any sugar or honey.  Well, it’s nutritious, anyway, and it’s here.  It’s something we have now.  I’m going to pick more and put them in my coat pockets for later.”  She picked from several bushes on the hillside, taking a few here and a few there, until her pockets held enough for several pots, or rather pans, of tea.

They sat side by side, looking across the river.  “How much farther do you think until we’re in the country?” Jeannie asked.

“What’s in the country?” A voice boomed above them.  Startled they jumped up and turned around.  The shotgun was on top of the backpack, which was on the ground nearby, and Jeff reached for it and pointed it in the direction of the newcomer.

The man raised his arms straight out to his side, then slowly turned in a circle.  “I’m not armed.  Not with a gun, anyway.  And you’re too far away for me to kick that silly stick out of your arms.”

He started down the bank toward them.  Jeff raised the barrel until it pointed right at the man.  “Put it down, I’m not going to hurt you.  Just want to talk.”

“We don’t have any food,” Jeff lied.  “And there isn’t anything to talk about.”

“Nothing to talk about?  Listen to you!  Well, tell you what, how about if I just sit right here and we can talk across all this grass and brush!”  The man lowered himself to the ground.  Jeff and Jeannie studied the man, wondering how to get him to go away, or whether it was possible for them to do so.  He was close to their age, maybe a little older, maybe just weathered.  He wore blue jeans but they were a quality brand, and his sweater also spoke of quality.  But they realized he could have gotten the clothes while vandalizing houses.  They remained wary.

“Where you headed?” the man asked.  Silence greeted him as Jeff and Jeannie just stared at him.  “Okay, let’s try something else.  Hi!  I’m Marty!”  

More silence.  He leaned back on one elbow, sighed, and looked out at the river.  “Man, looking at that water, peacefully flowing along, you’d think there was no reason to have any cares, huh?”

“I had a boat.  I was going to use it to get out.  Had it tied up right over there,” he pointed.  Jeff kept his face straight ahead toward Marty, but Jeannie turned her head.  She saw a dent in the dirt back, and the cut end of a rope hanging over it.  The rope laid on the ground, across the grass, and up to where the other end was tied to a tree. 

“Our gear was packed into it, and my wife and son were in the boat.  I went back to the house for one last load.  The coats and blankets.  They were by the door.  Our house is right over there, the second one.  The one with the yellow shutters and the big porch,” he waved over his shoulder.  They could see it in the background behind him.

“As I came out of the house and started back, I heard them scream.  I ran.  I dropped the blankets and coats.  When I got to the bank, the boat was a couple dozen yards from the bank.  Two men in black leather coats were in the boat.  One held my son over the side and pushed his head under the water.  He struggled and fought with his arms, but he was just a little boy.  He would have been five the day after Christmas.”  The man stopped, swallowed hard and blinked several times.

“My wife, Tracy, was fighting and screaming and trying to jump out of the boat, probably to save our son.  She almost tipped it.  That made them mad.  The man holding her pulled out a gun, shot her, and pushed her over the side.  The other one let go of my son, and they started the motor and took off.”  He stopped and sat there in silence, his eyes misted with pain, staring at the water.  It was a while before he continued. 

“I jumped in the water and swam out there, checked them both to see if either were still alive.  I pulled them to the shore.  The current had carried us downstream a ways.  I dragged them out.  My wife was clearly gone, but I did CPR and resuscitation on my son, hoping it wasn’t too late.  I kept it up for a long time.”  He shook his head. 

“I went and got a shovel and buried them above there, above the flood mark, on the hillside.  I should have carried them home, but we loved the river and it seemed like a good place for them.  Home isn’t home any more.  The house isn’t, any more.  I guess with them gone, I don’t have a home any more.”

With that, he got up and started to walk away.  Jeannie called after him, “we’re sorry for your loss.” 

Jeff called after him, “It’s not to late to get out in a boat!”  The man stopped and turned back. 

“What’s the point?  I have nothing to live for now!” he scowled. 

“I’m sorry for your pain, but you’re alive!  You’re healthy!  You’re young!  I know how you can do it.  How WE can do it.  We’ll help, but we don’t know anything about boats.”

“Then how can we do it?” he asked.  Jeff waved him down by them.

“Listen, I saw boats on trailers in lots of driveways as we came through the suburbs.  What little I know of motors, they should still work, despite the EMP.  We just have to find one light enough that the three of us can manage the trailer with our muscles, and get it to the water.  Where are the boat launches?” Jeff asked.

The man got excited then and pointed toward the bridge to their right.  Jeff could see where a road led down to the water’s edge.  They climbed up the hill and looked at the houses on the culd-de-sac.  At least half of them had a boat, either in the driveway or the back yard.  

“I’m going to grab our packs and we’ll walk around and check them out!”  Jeff said, as he started back through the grass.  Jeannie went too, and slung both duffel bags over her shoulder as Jeff swung the backpack onto his back.  They followed Marty out onto the street.

Marty glanced around, then said, “We should go over closer to the boat landing so we don’t have to man-handle a heavy boat and trailer any farther than we have to.

They walked to the corner and started east toward the main street that crossed the river.  Turning at that corner they headed back toward the river, and the second driveway had a boat at the back.  They walked around it and lifted the edge of the cover to look at it. 

“No good.  It would be better to find one that has an outboard motor with a pull cord to start it.  We could probably get this one going if we had to, but let’s keep looking,” Marty said.  The next driveway had a boat too, parked around the back of the house next to a concrete patio.  Marty walked around to check the motor, and the back door of the house flew open. 

“GET AWAY FROM THERE!” bellowed a voice.  All three jumped and looked at the big man pointing a rifle at them.  They ran back toward the street as the man continued to yell things at them.  They passed the next few driveways before they slowed down, not caring if there was a boat in any of them. 

“What say we knock on the door of the next place first, before we look over the boat!” Jeff said as they stopped to catch their breath.

Across the street they saw a boat that was a bit smaller than the ones they’d been looking at.  Marty motioned them to follow him and they jogged across the street.  They stayed on the sidewalk while looking at the boat next to a garage..

“It’s perfect.  A boat that small is sure to have a pull-start motor.”  He walked up to the front door and knocked.  They waited a few minutes, then he knocked again.  When no one came to the door they walked around to the back door.  It was open.  Marty cautiously stuck his head inside and looked around. 

“No one in sight,” he said quietly.  “But the place has been trashed.”  They carefully entered the house and crossed a kitchen.  Jeff looked over the kitchen counter into the dining room and saw a pair of legs on the floor.  He mouthed words to the others and pointed.  They looked and turned away.  A quick search of the house turned up another body, this one a woman, at the bottom of the basement stairs.  It appeared as though she’d fallen down the stairs.  They didn’t see wounds on her, but noticed that her hair was thinned out. 

“Isn’t this kind of far for them to have died of radiation poisoning?” Jeff asked.

“Well, maybe they were closer to one of the targets and managed to make it home afterward, probably on foot, before they got sick,” Marty said through the shirt he had pulled up over his mouth.  “Let’s go back outside.” 

They walked over to the boat.  It had the right kind of motor and Marty was pleased.  He jiggled the gas tank and said, “We’ll have to find some gas.  It would be a good idea to have some extra too.  Lots of these garages probably have gas cans in them, for lawnmowers, boats, whatever.  We’ll have to watch out for ones that are already mixed for 2-cycle motors.” 

He went to the front of the boat and took hold of the trailer tongue and lifted it up and down a couple times, then nodded his head and set it back on the block it rested on.

He walked to the garage and entered, returning with two gas cans.  He took off the lids and smelled the gas, then poured a few drops out to look at the color.  Satisfied, he set them in the boat. 

“Should we hole up somewhere for the night, or try to get on the river before dark?” Jeff asked.

“Well, if you’re up to it, let’s go ahead and try to get going.  It might be safer to travel at night, as far as danger from people.  The river itself has dangers, and we’ll have to be diligent, but I think our greater threat is being seen,” Marty said.

Jeff nodded.  “What can we do?”

“Go see if you can find more gas cans, and watch for little bottles of 2-cycle oil like this one.”  He pulled a small blue bottle out of his pocket. 

Jeff and Jeannie carefully walked through the alley to the nearby garages.  Most of them were unlocked, and they were soon back with 3 other gas cans.  They set them in the boat and watched Marty pour fuel into the red metal tank in the bottom of the boat. 

“Okay, you two stay with the boat and keep an eye on things.  You might want to wait inside the garage door, out of sight.  I’m going to run back to my house and grab a few things.”  Marty turned to leave as they headed for the garage door.  While he was gone, they talked.

“Do you trust him?” Jeannie asked.

“Yeah, I guess so.  Assuming the story about his wife and son is true.” Jeff pulled on the backpack straps to give his shoulders a rest.  It seemed heavier when they were just standing than when they were walking.  “I think this is a good chance to get away from the city in a safer way than walking.  We’ll just keep our eyes open and watch what he does.  Don’t leave anything unattended near him until we know we can trust him.”

Marty was back pretty quick.  He had on a backpack and was carrying several bags.  He pushed them over the side of the boat and waved Jeff and Jeannie over to the boat.  They added their load to the boat, then walked around by Marty.

“I’ll carry the tongue of the trailer, and you two get on each back corner and push.  Try to watch how hard the other one is pushing so you don’t knock me over and get us off course,” he said. 

When Jeff and Jeannie were each by a back corner, Marty lifted the tongue and used his foot to shove the blocks out of the way.  He nodded at them and they began to push.  Marty guided the tongue the direction they wanted to go, pulling at the same time. 

The boat rolled easily.  It bumped out onto the street and Marty swung the tongue to face the boat the direction they wanted to go.  It was slightly downhill and they had to hold back sometimes to keep from running Marty over.  A few times he walked back and forth, causing the boat to weave and slow down.  When they were above the boat landing he stopped.

“Now the hard part.  We have to get it down to the water without losing control of it and having it slide down too fast into the water.  Let’s try and zig-zag to keep it slow, and when we’re close enough, I’m going to swing it around so we can back it into the water.”  As an after thought he said, “We better undo the straps here in case we lose it and it lands in the river.  At least then the trailer will sink and not pull the boat down with it and we might be able to save the boat.”

He set the tongue on the pavement and ran around the sides, loosening the ratchet straps that held the boat to the trailer.  Then he returned to the front and lifted the tongue and they started again.  They held back hard and walked it down the ramp.  Halfway down Marty pulled the tongue hard around to the side and then pushed toward Jeff and Jeannie to start it moving backward to the water.  They leaned against the back, forcing the boat to slowly roll toward the water. 

Jeannie’s muscles started to quiver.  “I’m losing it!  I can’t hold it!” she yelled. 

“We’re close enough.  Jump out of the way now!” Marty called back.  They did, and Marty ran with the tongue, trying to control the direction.  As the wheels of the boat hit the water the tongue was yanked from Marty’s hand and made a loud scratching noise on the pavement as it slid into the water.  Jeff spotted a rope on the front of the boat and jumped out and grabbed it, landing in water up to his knees. 

“Good catch!” Marty praised him!  Jeff walked out of the water and held the rope that tethered the boat to them, while they watched the trailer recede and sink in the river.  He and Marty pulled the rope to bring the boat back closer to shore.

“You’ll have to get your feet wet, but go ahead and get in,” he said.  “I’ll go last, and give the boat a shove out into the water before I jump in.” 

Jeannie started walking toward the water, but Jeff stopped her.  “No sense getting your feet wet, too,” he said as he picked her up before she could stop him.  Caught off guard it took her a second to put her arms around him and hold on.  He walked through the water and set her over the side, then climbed in too, careful not to tip the boat.  It was the first time either had ever been in a boat.

Marty held the end of the rope coiled around his hand, walked into the water, pushed the boat and vaulted over the side, landing balanced.  Jeff said, “nice!”   Marty smiled at him and moved to the back and started messing with the motor.  In seconds he was pulling the cord, and on the third try, the motor chugged and started. 

Marty immediately swung the boat around and headed up the river.   “Anchor’s aweigh!” he said.  “Where to?”

Jeff and Jeannie looked at each other.  Jeff looked at the river and then at Marty.  “Wherever the river goes!  Or should I say, wherever it comes from, since we’re headed upstream!”

He and Jeannie were sitting on a bench across the mid section of the boat.  Fresh air moved over their faces as the boat motored it’s way against the current.  The sky darkened, stars came out, and the air became chilled.  They pulled out coats and put them on. 

“Here, have something to eat,” Marty called.  They turned and saw that he had pulled granola bars out of one of his bags.  He handed them each two.  They washed it down with water from their bottles. 

“How are you holding up?” Jeff called back to Marty after a while.

“I’m doing fine.  If you two are getting sleepy you could get on the floor and sleep for a while,” Marty said.  No sooner had they done just that when shots rang through the night.  Jeff held Jeannie’s head down while he peered back at Marty.  Marty had dropped to the floor of the boat, with only his hand reaching up to control the tiller and keep them on course.  He was looking from side to side, keeping his head as low as he could as he peeked over the sides. 

“I can’t see anything on the shore,” he said.  He squinted and kept looking.  Another shot made a ping-thunk against the bow.  It was low but above the water line.  Marty twisted the tiller handle to speed the boat up as fast as it would go against the current.  Jeff pulled the shotgun out of the straps of the backpack and held it.  A handgun had appeared in Marty’s free hand. 

The sound of a motor came across the water.  “I think they have a boat!” Jeff called to him.  Marty nodded his head and watched in the direction the sound was coming from.  Then he pointed with the handgun and Jeff eased his head up to look.  The boat wasn’t showing any lights, but he could see the disturbance on the water and a faint, white splashing.  The sound grew louder. 

“You’ll have a better chance with that shotgun than I will.  When you think it’s close enough, fire at them!” Marty said.

“How close is close enough?” Jeff asked.

“Don’t you know the range of that thing?” Marty asked, surprised.

“No.  I just got it.  Only fired it once, and that was in close quarters,” he replied.

Marty just stared at him for a minute and then said, “well, go for about 30 yards.  Let one go then, and maybe it’ll make them back off.  Be ready to fire again if they keep coming.  If you have to, just lay the barrel on the side of the boat pointing their direction and keep firing, and keep your head down.  Keep your extra shells handy.”

Jeannie covered her head and crunched herself as small as she could and out of Jeff’s way.  She braced for the noise but still jumped when it came.  The blast from the shotgun shook the boat slightly and Marty held the tiller tightly as he guided the boat, almost blindly, upriver. 

“They slowed down but they’re still coming!” Jeff yelled.

“Probably staying out of range while they figure out what to do.  Don’t shoot again.  They might decide to wait it out and let you use up your ammunition.” Marty yelled back. 

Jeannie thought she’d scream as minutes passed and the boat continued to buck the waves and current.  She opened her eyes and watched Jeff and Marty. 

Marty caught a glimpse of motion off the other side of the boat and turned his head in time to see a canoe coming toward them from upriver.  It was almost to them, coming in from the opposite side as the motorboat.  He had just enough time to see the glint of moonlight on the barrel of a gun being raised and pointed at them, and he reacted instantly.  His hand shot up and he fired the handgun. 

There was a yell and a splash as the person in the front lurched back and then tipped the canoe over.  Marty steered as close to the canoe as he could and angled to the left as he passed it.  As he hoped, the motorboat chasing them followed, heading in a straight line toward them.  It didn’t see the canoe in the water until it was too late.  They tried to turn but hit the canoe off balanced and bounced, turning sideways to the current.  The boat righted itself, but the motor clanked and then died.

“WOO-HOO!” yelled  Jeff, sliding back up onto the seat.  He reached over to help Jeannie up.  She winced at the bruised, stiff feeling in her body, but threw her arms around Jeff and hugged him.  Marty grinned at them, then went back to the serious work of guiding the boat through the dark night. 

    They traveled several more miles before the sky began to lighten.  Marty had eased off the throttle to save gas and because the motor would be quieter.  Now he guided the boat to a side channel and slowed the boat, eventually shutting off the motor and letting the boat glide quietly toward the bank.  He stretched his legs and then jumped out and pulled the side of the boat against the shore. 

Jeff reached forward and grabbed the rope and tossed the end to Marty, who unwound it and wrapped the end around a boulder, since there were no trees close enough to tie off to.    He and Jeff helped Jeannie jump to shore, then Jeff followed.  They walked around and stretched and did a few jumping jacks. 

“We’re almost to the point where two rivers come together to form this one.  I wish we had a map.  I know which river we follow, but I’m not sure how far to the get-out point,” Marty said.

Jeff looked puzzled.  “I have a map,” he said.  “But I didn’t know you had a destination in mind.”

Marty looked at the ground for a minute, then asked to see the map.  Jeff looked at Jeannie, who shrugged.  He unzipped the pocket of his coat and pulled the map out and handed it to Marty. 

Squatting, with the map spread on the ground, Marty studied it, tracing the river the fingers of one hand and planting a finger of his other hand on a place that looked like the middle of no where.   Jeff hunkered next to him and watched. 

“I think we could use a hot meal.  I’m going to cook something quick,” Jeannie said quietly.  Jeff watched her jump back into the boat and begin looking through their bags.  Shortly she was back on the shore and had something cooking on the little propane stove.  Finally, Marty stood up, folded the map, and handed it back to Jeff.

“So, what’s the plan,” Jeff asked.

Marty looked straight at him with eyes that were clear and open.  “Please, I’m going to have to ask you to trust me for now.  You’ll be safe where we’re going…as long as we make it there.”

Jeannie had cooked some of the corn meal into a porridge and poured it into paper bowls.  Marty surprised them with sugar packets from his own bag.  The hot food in their stomachs felt really good.  Jeff and Jeannie had gotten a few hours of restless sleep, but Marty had been awake all night.  When Jeff offered to drive the boat for a while, if Marty showed him how, so that he could get some sleep, Marty just shook his head. 

“We’re not that far.  Maybe 2 more hours.  I’ll be okay.”

Jeff wondered what awaited them.  As the boat headed back into the main channel a cool breeze picked up.  Jeff pulled a blanket from the straps on the pack and put it around his and Jeannie’s shoulders.  It was light now, and he and Jeannie looked in amazement at the scenery.  They saw a few small buildings in the distance from time to time, but otherwise it was all fields and grass, with trees in weaving lines following creeks that emptied into the river.  A large bird rose up from the tall weeds along the bank. 

“A Heron,” said Marty, as they watched it fly in a wide circle, then land near where it had started.  The trees had brilliant yellow and red leaves, and they fluttered down, some landing on the surface of the river.  One tree, almost bare of branches, had hundreds of small, dark birds all over it, and they rose as one and flew in a big cloud.  The sound of their chirping was almost deafening. 

Presently they came to the junction of the two rivers Marty had told them about.  He followed a bend and went up the river on the right.  The river was noticeably narrower now, and they could see rocks under the water sometimes, and there was debris and bushes in the water at the edge.  Sometimes they passed submerged trees, and the branches sticking out of the water gently brushed the side of the boat.  Marty steered around the things he could see, and Jeff started watching for obstacles ahead of them.

Marty reached forward and tapped Jeannie’s shoulder and pointed up at the sky above the other bank.  A large “V” shape of geese was flapping it’s way across the sky.  Moments later they could hear the loud “honks” of the birds.  Jeff and Jeannie felt like they were in a wonder land.  Just when they couldn’t imagine any more wonders, a beaver swam across the mouth of a creek with a stick in it’s mouth, and a minute later they rounded a bend to see 5 deer at the water’s edge, getting a morning drink of water. 

They had passed under several small bridges as they traveled, but now Marty slowed down each time they came to one.  He seemed to be looking down the roads that crossed over the river, looking for something.  Finally he pulled up under one bridge where a gravely bank made a space between the water and the concrete base of the bridge.  He cut the motor and hopped out, same as before.  This time they pulled the front end of the boat onto the gravel. 

“Stay here a minute.  Let me climb up to make sure this is the right place,” he said, and was gone before they could speak.  He was back in minutes and said, “Yep, this is it.  Now, let me have the map again.”

Jeff pulled it out and handed it to him.  This time he motioned them both over.  He took a pen out of his pocket and made a dot on the map.  Furrowing his brow, he studied it a few more minutes, then seemed satisfied.  He made a series of light dots in a line that ended at the blue map on the line that indicated the river, where he made a tiny “x”. 

“This is where we are,” Marty said and pointed to the “x”.  He moved his hand and said, “This is where you’re going.  That is, if you trust me and want to go there.”  He was pointing at the dot at the end of the line.

“Wait a minute!” Jeannie interrupted.  “What do you mean, aren’t you coming too?”

Marty sat back on his heels.  “No,” he said.  “I’m going back.  There might be more people, good people like you two, who need help.  Now, this place I’m sending you to, there are good people there.  They’ll look after you and teach you what you need to know.  Tell them I sent you.  That’s very important.  You must tell them that.”

“Who are they?  What is it?” Jeff asked.

“They’re friends.  It’s a farm, basically,” Marty answered.

“Is it where you and your family were going?” Jeannie asked softly.

Marty looked at her, bit his lip, then quietly said, “It is.”  He pulled the pen from his pocket and leaned down to the map.  Along the white border he wrote: “Hank, I am sending these people to you.  Jeff and Jeannie.  They are good people.  Please take care of them.  I hope to see you someday. Marty.” 

He put the pen away, then looked at the map again.  “You need to follow this road that goes over the bridge until you come to here, this dotted line, which is a dirt road.  Listen carefully for cars.  There probably won’t be any, but you should hide as quickly as you can if you hear one.  Be careful who you trust, but then you already know that.

“This map isn’t very detailed, but if you pay attention to the paved roads you cross, keep count of them, you should be able to get pretty close to the end point.  From wherever you decide to leave the dirt road to head toward it, get a good fix on the compass direction, and stick to that as you go through the bush.”

“The bush?” Jeff asked.

“Well, it’s not proper ‘bush’, like they have in Alaska, it’s just wilderness.”  He stood up and started to get their things out of the boat.

“There is a red windmill in the yard, a house with pine board siding, surrounded by several outbuildings.  They fly an American flag on a tall pole that is painted white.  Near it is a wishing well with flowers planted in it.  Ask for Hank or Annie.  After you tell them I sent you, tell them ‘hi’ for me.”

He walked over and started to push the boat toward the water.  “Best get going!  You won’t make it one day, but if you keep moving, you’ll only have to camp one night.  Good luck!”

Jeff hurried over and offered his hand.  They shook, and he said, “Thanks, Marty.  Good luck to you, too.  Be careful, but then you know that!”  They grinned at each other.

Jeannie walked over and held out her hand too.  She fought back tears and her hand was shaking as she shook his.  He smiled at her and said, “you’re a tough gal!  You’ll be fine.  Take care of each other!”

Then he jumped in the boat and took off.  All too soon it was quiet.  They picked up their packs and walked around to the side of the bridge.

“Well.” said Jeff.

“Yeah.  Well.”  said Jeannie.

They stood there for several minutes.  The sun felt warm, and there was mist rising in the shadows where the heat of the day was mixing with the cool damp left from the night.  The view was pretty much the same both directions.  Hills were spread across the land, up and down, and lines of trees that they knew followed creeks.  The road was a narrow strip of gray asphalt that looked like a line drawn on the ground and ended on the horizon on each end. 

“I guess we go this way,” Jeff pointed to the east.  “Ready?”

She nodded and they shouldered their bags.  Jeff helped Jeannie climb over the guard rail and they started walking.

CHAPTER EIGHT

They weren’t far from the river when the landscape began to change.  The wetland plants gave way to dry grasses and fading wildflowers, and huge fields of stubble left after the harvest.  Jeff walked over to the edge of one and picked up a few oval brown seeds, which he put in his pocket.  Maybe he would find someone who could tell him what they were. 

When the sun was high overhead they stopped for a snack.  They still had several candy bars left, so they split one.  They’d been holding back on them in case they would come in handy for bartering.  It was a long shot to think someone would trade real food for a candy bar, but they were hedging their bets that it had been long enough to be something of a delicacy.

Finally they reached the dirt road Marty had marked.  The tree with the black mark that Marty said was from lightening was just where he said it would be, and when they looked closer at the thicket of trees near it, they saw the outlines of a building so dilapidated it had small trees growing out through it.  Marty had told them it would be there.  They turned and started walking on this road. 

“Wow, this feels weird.  Nice, but weird,” Jeannie said, rolling her shoes on the unfamiliar surface of the dirt road. 

“Brings back memories for me, of my grandpa’s house,” said Jeff.

“How come you never mention your Grandma?” she asked.

“She died when I was little.  I don’t remember how old I was, but it must have been grade school.  I was excused from class to go to the funeral with my parents.  I don’t’ remember much about it but I remember there were other kids there that were my cousins.  They lived far away and as far as I remember, it’s the only time I ever saw them,” he said.

They walked on in silence.  Jeannie was still fascinated with the dirt road.  She scuffed her feet to stir up dust.  She picked up a handful of the loose dust and let it trickle through her fingers.  At the surface it felt warm from the sun, but the dirt underneath was cool. 

“I’m tired,” she said presently.  “My legs feel like they weigh 100 lbs.  EACH!”

“Mine too.  I think I’m getting dehydrated.  You probably are too.  I think we should boil more water and refill our bottles so we can drink more, next time we cross a creek.”  Jeff wiped the sweat off his brow and was surprised to see a brown film on his hand.  He wiped again and looked at it.  Then he looked at the dust swirling up into the air from the breeze and realized that’s where the grime came from.  That, and the fact that it had been a few weeks since he’d had a shower!

They plodded on along the road.  One foot fell in front of the other, and soon everything around them disappeared from their minds.  Just the feet. Right foot.  Left foot.  Again.  And again.

A shadow fell over them and they looked up in surprise.  Cottonwoods lined a small creek, which was so small it ran through a culvert instead of a bridge.  They dropped their packs at the edge of the road and ran down to the edge of the water.  Jeannie fell to her knees and put her hands in the water.  It was colder than the air and moving fast.  She splashed water onto her face and blinked through the droplets and saw Jeff doing the same thing. 

They scrubbed their arms and faces and necks, joyously splashing water just to see it fly.  Jeff got up to get the bottles, and Jeannie, not able to wait longer, cupped water in her hands and drank it.  She immediately felt guilty and didn’t tell Jeff when he reappeared next to her.  They opened the bottles and drank as much as they could hold.  Then Jeff got out the stove and they dipped water out of the creek and boiled it in the pan. 

It took a while to boil enough water to fill all of the five bottles that were empty.  While they were near a water source they went ahead and cooked the last of the cornmeal.  It was also the last of the propane in the first bottle, and Jeff changed to the other bottle to finish the cooking. 

He was in a quandary about the empty propane bottle.  He didn’t believe in littering, but he didn’t want to carry the useless, empty propane bottle.  Finally he dug a hole in the soft dirt with a stick and buried it.  Then he forgave himself and let it go.

When everything was packed up they resumed walking.  The shadows were getting long, but they figured they’d have a couple more hours of good light.  The sun slid behind the hills and a chill started creeping into the air.  They stopped to put on their coats, but after a while Jeannie started shivering.  They looked for a place to stop.

“Why don’t we just go over behind one of these hills, out of sight of the road?” Jeannie asked.

Jeff looked at the nearby hills and picked one that would hide them, but didn’t seem too far away.  It took a lot longer to get to it than they thought it would.  Distances were deceiving in this country. 

When they were out of sight of the road Jeff looked for a flat clearing.  The ground seemed really bumpy, but he used his foot and chunked out some rocks and sticks to make a big enough spot.  He pulled the tent free from where it was tied to the backpack and shook it out of the stuff bag.  He unrolled the tent and a bunch of poles fell out.  They seemed to be long, thin plastic poles with a rubber cord running through the inside of them, holding them together.  That part wasn’t hard to figure out.  He straightened them and they locked together almost on their own. 

He studied the tent, trying to figure out what to do next.  Rows of hooks ran along the seams of the top of the tent, and he laid the poles over them and hooked it all together.  Then he figured out that the ends of the poles went into the little pockets on the bottom of the tent below each row of hooks.  This was easy!

He stuck the first one in a pocket and walked around to the one opposite.  He couldn’t get it to stretch far enough to poke it in the other pocket!  He had to keep jiggling the little hooks to work their way along the tent pole.  Finally he got it in.  He let go and the arched stick promptly fell over, taking the tent with it.

“I think I should hold it upright while you do the others,” Jeannie said.  She walked over and took a hold.  In minutes Jeff had the rest of them in and they stood back to admire the round tent.

“Cool!  Our first house-building project!” Jeff said with a grin.  Jeannie smiled at him.  He bent down and unzipped the door of the tent and looked in.  “I think we can move in now!  But it‘s going to be hard to carry you over the thresh hold!”

They put their packs in the tent and climbed in with them.  Jeff zipped the door, then unzipped the smaller of the two windows.  They spread out the blankets and put the sleeping bag over them, then crawled in and laid there.  Darkness spread over the land and the stars came out.

“Can you believe all the stars!  It’s amazing!  I knew there were more than we could see in the city, but this is just incredible!” Jeannie raved.  Jeff agreed.  Soon they were both asleep, and it was a mercifully deep sleep.  Neither one heard the coyotes that yipped and howled in the distance several times in the night.  It would have been a frightening experience to ones not used to the country.

CHAPTER NINE

Jeff woke first in the morning and went out to watch the sun rise.  The air was cold and damp, and everything was soaked with dew.  His feet got soaked when he walked away to take care of business.  He went back to the tent, took off his shoes and socks, and crawled back in with Jeannie.  She woke up and said “I’m glad you came back.  I’m cold.” 

He pulled her up against him and they stayed there until the sun was high enough to warm things.  They hated to lose travel time, but just couldn’t stand the cold.   When they got up, Jeannie’s head spun and she felt dizzy.  She steadied herself and forced herself to be calm and the feeling passed. 

“You’re probably just hungry, and the chill didn’t help either,” Jeff said.  They packed everything up and ate the two granola bars Marty had given them the morning before.  They’d given him two candy bars as a gift and he’d wanted to give them something.  Jeannie felt better, but her stomach was upset and felt like she had a rock in it.  She felt sticky and sweaty, yet cold at the same time. 

“I think I’ll feel better after we start walking,” she said.  They shouldered the packs and hiked back to the road.  The grass was still wet in places and their feet were soaked when they got to the dirt road, but walking kept their toes from freezing.  The air warmed quickly as the sun climbed through the sky. 

Trees started appearing in places besides along creeks, and the type of tree started changing.  Pine trees of some kind, they knew that because of Christmas trees.  When they stopped for lunch they sat on a bed of pine needles under a tree.  Looking back the way they came they realized they were getting higher, because they could see a long way across the land.  The direction they were headed was rolling hills that blocked the view until they topped each one and saw the one beyond it. 

They used a pen to mark off each paved road they crossed and knew they were getting close to their turn off.  Both were anxious about that part of the trek, for there was no road.  They would be crossing the countryside.  They wondered about a place that had no road that went to it.

Clouds rolled in over the afternoon and blocked the sun.  It began to drizzle and they put their coats on.  It was too warm for coats, but at least it kept them dry, until they were so sweaty in the coats that it wouldn’t have mattered if the rain had gotten them wet instead. 

They realized their mistake, but it was too late.  They kept their misery to themselves and kept walking.  Jeannie started shivering and hid it from Jeff, who seemed lost in his own world.  She stumbled, then lost her balance and fell to the ground.

Jeff ran to her in concern and helped her up.  She smiled at him foolishly and mumbled something about her clumsy feet.  Jeff brushed a strand of hair back from her face and was surprised at how hot her skin felt.  He cupped his hand on her cheek and forehead. 

“You’re burning up!” he exclaimed.

“No, no,” she quickly assured him.  “I’m just too hot in this coat.  I think I’ll go ahead and take it off and carry it.”  She slid the shoulder straps off and dropped the duffel bags to the ground and removed her coat.  Jeff looked at her shoulders and saw how they poked against her shirt.  She was getting too thin, all angles and bones.  A wave of sorrow passed through him.

“Let’s stop and cook a meal.  We’re almost there, so let’s have a big meal.  We need the energy,” Jeff said in a rush.

“But we’re almost to the turn-off!  Shouldn’t we wait until then?  It would be good to be out of sight of the road,” she protested.

He pulled out the map and looked at the roads they’d marked off, and how long it had taken them to walk between the last two.  He frowned, then agreed with her.  He stayed closer to her as they walked, glancing at her often. 

“This is it,” Jeff said.  They stood at the bottom of a valley between two hills.  A narrow creek in a deep ravine sliced through, leaving exposed rocks tinted pink and red.  Trails criss-crossed the hillsides, and Marty had told them they were cattle and deer trails.  He said the first valley they came to that had those, and the creek with the steep rock walls, was where they were to turn off. 

They slipped between the wires of a fence and followed a path that wound along the top of the ravine.  Piles of old, dry animal dung were scattered on the grass.  Soon they’d left the dirt road behind and were among the trees, following the creek up toward it’s source.  They reached the ridge top and looked at the country beyond.  In the distance were tall hills, so tall that they knew it was the mountains, and they stood there in awe.  The rain had stopped and a break in the clouds let streams of sunlight through. 

“Let’s camp here, where we can wake up and see the mountains!” Jeannie said enthusiastically.  Jeff agreed, and they set about putting up the tent.  They got out the camp stove and cooked as many lentils as the pan would hold, and added some of the spices they had left.  It took longer to cook the lentils than it had the other things they’d cooked.  They kept tasting to see when the lentils were soft enough to eat.  It was dark by the time it was ready, and they ate by the light of the stars and a sliver of moon.

During the night Jeannie’s stomach was cramping and she went outside and was sick a few times.  In the morning she was feverish and soaked in sweat.  Jeff was scared.  He didn’t know what to do to make her better, and there was no way to take her any where.  He tried to get her to drink water, and she promptly ducked out of the tent and threw up.  Then she fell to the ground.  Jeff helped her back into the tent and tucked her into the sleeping bag.  He stroked her hair and sat looking at her. 

He wondered if he should run ahead and try to find the people Marty was sending them to, and maybe they could come back with him and help Jeannie.  Then he knew he couldn’t do that.  Jeannie would be so frightened here, sick and alone.  He got out the camp stove and the pan and he re-boiled all the water, in case that was what made Jeannie sick, although he was feeling fine.  Fine other than feeling so starved his bones felt hollow, and so tired his bones ached.  But he knew he wasn’t sick.

Jeannie finally confessed to drinking the water out of the creek.  Jeff was mad at first and he went out and walked a ways from the tent and sat on a rock glaring toward the tent.  The view of the mountains filled him with wonder, and soon his heart softened toward Jeannie.  He went back to her and hugged her. 

“What do we do to make you better?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said miserably.  “Maybe it just gets better, like when you get the flu or a cold.”  Neither of them were the kind that medicated themselves with all the cold remedies and pain killers everyone else seemed to live on. 

“My Mom used to feed me soup and tea when I was sick.  Do you still have those rose hips?  I can make you some tea.  Do we have anything to make soup out of?” he asked.

“There’s these little soup cubes wrapped in foil in the small duffel back, in one of the outer pockets.  They were on the savvy shopper list, so I bought them.  I took them out of the jar when I packed them, but the directions said to boil them in water and they dissolve and make broth,” she said, then laid back and closed her eyes as a wave of light-headedness came over her.

Jeff left the tent and set about making broth and tea for Jeannie.  When it was done he sat near her and spoon-fed the broth to her, and held a cup to her mouth so she could sip the tea.  It went very slowly, since she couldn’t swallow much at a time.  The tea was cool by the time she got to it, but she assured him it was good that way. 

The day passed in a blur.  During the times she slept, Jeff went and sat on his rock and looked at the mountains.  He’d flown over them many times but had never actually been in them.  Not this kind, anyway. 

His family had gone to the Grand Canyon when he was a kid, and to the red rock canyons of Southern Utah, but the mountains they’d seen weren’t the same.  His parents weren’t big on scenery.  They preferred going to cities, to museums and amusement parks.  He didn’t even know why they’d taken the Grand Canyon trip.

He heard Jeannie call to him.  She was climbing out of the tent when he got there.  She had one of the blankets with her and said she wanted to sit over there with him and look at the mountains.  She was feeling better but still weak.  They would stay here another night, then try to travel on in the morning.

CHAPTER TEN

The next morning Jeannie was awake before Jeff.  She laid quietly and watched him sleep.  He was getting thin and his cheek bones showed more.  She hoped they’d get where they were going soon and be able to rest and have more to eat.  She was worried about whether the people would let them stay, even with Marty’s note.  They were their last hope, and she didn’t know what they’d do if they were turned away.  Winter was coming fast on the heels of fall.

Jeff opened his eyes carefully so as not to disturb Jeannie and was surprised to be looking into her eyes.  He asked her how she felt, and she told him.  The morning was cold again, but they got up anyway, slipping into their coats.  They left the tent until the last minute, hoping the dew would dry while they made breakfast.  They made a glop out of cooked flour, like a sickly porridge with spices.  

“We should have put some of the broth cubes in it!” Jeannie exclaimed.  Jeff set about boiling water and making broth, which he made her drink to keep up her strength.  They made a pan full of rosehip tea and shared it, then put everything away.  The tent was still damp but they rolled it up and packed it too.

“Ready for the last leg?” Jeff asked.  From here they left the top of the ravine and used the compass on Jeff’s watch to keep going the right direction.  They walked down the hill and along a lower ridge, looking between the trees and watching for buildings or anything to indicate they were nearing any sort of civilization.  It was work walking where there was no trail.  Lunch time passed and they still weren’t there.  They stopped and shared a candy bar, then walked again.

In a few places they had to go around rocky walls and they tried to get back over to where they had been to keep a straight line and keep heading northeast.  They worried that if they got too far to one side or the other they would miss the place entirely. 

When they spotted the red windmill it was sudden and without warning.  There it was, between the trees!  A few steps closer and they saw the flagpole.  Their knees buckled and they held onto each other as they stepped out of the woods and looked across a lawn at a house surrounded by smaller buildings, a wishing well with yellow and orange flowers planted in it.  Small fields and gardens surrounded it. 

Best of all, there were people scattered around the place, and when one of them spotted them and called out, many curious faces turned toward them.  The people started walking toward them.  Jeannie and Jeff stopped and leaned against each other and waited.  A man who looked to be in authority stood ahead of the others when they stopped a few feet away.

Jeff looked at the man and tried to speak.  His voice croaked and he cleared his throat and stood straighter.

“Marty sent us,” he said.  He pulled the map from his pocket and held it out, with the message from Marty showing on the outside.

The man reached out and took it.  After looking at it his face came up and he said, “welcome.”

With that simple word they were surrounded by people who took their packs and helped them walk to the porch of the house.

EPILOGUE

Jeff pounded the last of the boards into place.  Whew!  That job was done.  It was about the dozenth time he’d fixed the hog pen fence.  He looked across the yard and saw Jeannie on the porch with several other women, chopping vegetables and shelling peas.  They had been canning food for days as the crews harvested it from the gardens.  Jeannie had been happy to learn not only where food came from, but how it looked right out of the ground.  It hadn’t even bothered her to see where meat came from!

As he watched, she shifted to ease the burden of her rounded belly.  Jeff was amazed to think that any day now he would be a father and they would be a family.  It had been almost a year since the bombs fell and they’d made their escape from the city.  They were grateful Marty’s friends had taken them in.  He still held on to hope that Marty would join them one day, and he hoped Marty was okay.

He carried the tools to the shed and went to see what needed to be done next.  A commotion started in the yard and Jeff glanced that way.  A child pointed to the woods at the edge of the yard.  Everyone’s heads turned.

A man and a woman with two small children stumbled onto the grass.  They stopped at the sight of all the people staring at them.  Their clothes were ragged and they seemed like they were in shock.  Jeff joined the people walking toward them.  The women on the porch let their hands go idle as they watched. 

When they stopped a few feet away from the small group, the man looked up at them and with a shaky voice said, “I’m supposed to tell you…Marty sent us.”

Jeff whooped and hollered and ran to tell Jeannie while the others helped the family across the yard.  Jeannie smiled and started to rise, then gasped.  She thought she had a stitch in her side, but it spread around her whole belly and she realized it was a contraction.  She laid both her hands on it and looked at Jeff. 

He whooped again, then said, “Whether it’s a boy or a girl, we’re naming it Marty!”

Jeannie laughed through her tears and nodded.

THE END

    Other books by Susan Gregersen:

    The Long Ride Home

    The Rally Point: Bugging Home

    Over the River and Through the Woods

    Back Across the Pond

    Poverty Prepping: How to Store Food For Tomorrow When You Can't Afford to Eat Today

Table of Contents

Copyright

DEDICATION

Chapter 1

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE