The No Where Apocalypse (Book 1): Stranded No Where (3 page)

I turned and glanced at the old man. “I’m sorry.” It seemed like the decent thing to say.

He looked at me with a strange face. “Why should you be sorry? You didn’t kill her, did you?”

For a moment I froze, not sure how to respond. Soon the smile returned to his face and he laughed until he coughed. It was then he looked at me seriously.

“We need to talk,” he said, all humor gone from moments before.

“You got a woman?” he asked in a direct tone.

“I’ve got a wife back in Chicago.”

He shook the news away with the toss of his head. “How much you weigh?” he asked, changing directions.

“About 200, maybe 210.”

“Muscle or fat?”

I had no idea where he was headed with this, or what his point was, but I played along. “I’d say half and half. I still hit the gym two or three times a week. But I drink a lot of beer on the weekends.”

His face turned sour. “You’re gonna want to give that up.”

Okay, I had played along long enough. “What’s your point, Mr. Morgan?”

Finally, he grinned. “Call me Fred.”

“Okay, Fred; what are you getting at?”

“Sit down.” He motioned for the couch. “This could take me a bit to get out.”

 
Fred had me fetch him and myself a fresh glass of water — so much for sitting. Then with a thoughtful, almost nostalgic, gaze he began.

“A man came by yesterday, on his way from Covington, south to Amasa. You know where Covington is, right?” I nodded.

“So he claims he was up there when the power went out. Says no one has electricity, no cell phones, no landlines, and,” he peeked over his glasses at me, “practically no running cars.”

You know the feeling when your body freezes over? Where the hair on the back of your neck stands up straight? Yeah, that times two.

“A few older things run. Tractors, riding lawn mowers, some old motorcycles. But anything from the 80s ’til now is all dead.”

To say I was skeptical made it sound like I found everything Fred told me as gospel truth.

“How’d he get here?” I asked.

“Bicycle. Must have ridden right past your spot; surprised you didn’t see him pass.”

Well, that would have been impossible. Mostly because I was drunk. And passed out on the couch, probably in the middle of blowing chunks in my dreams.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” the old man mused.

My God, it got worse?

“Some lady up there has a short wave radio that still works,” he continued. “According to her, the whole country is in the same shape.”

Stroking an almost week’s worth of beard, I wondered how much of this was true and what portion might be slightly exaggerated.

He coughed again and spit his phlegm into a near wad of paper towel. “When I was a kid, we used to worry about nuclear war breaking out. The Russians would blow us to kingdom come, and we’d do the same to them. End of the world we said.”

“This sounds more like an EMP attack,” I interrupted. Looking up at him, his face was more stock than mine. “That’s Electromagnetic —”

“I know what it means, son. And it ain’t good.” He emphasized his point with a curt nod.

“No, it’s not,” I stammered, wondering if what he said was true.

“But it wasn’t that,” he whispered, pulling at his chin. “It wasn’t no EMP attack on the US of A.”

That confused me. Electricity, cars and phones not working…nationwide? It had all the earmarks of just that kind of attack. But now he claimed it wasn’t. My stare begged for more from him.

“It’s worldwide,” he added quietly. “That gal told my friend it’s the same in Canada, and Mexico, and South America, and Europe. Even Russia claims to be suffering the same ill-effects of whatever this is.”

An idea sprang to mind. “Massive solar flares?”

He shrugged one last time. “Whatever it is, it ain’t good.”

Day 3 - continued - WOP

I made it back from Fred’s quicker than the journey down had taken. Besides causing me great anxiety, he had a few nuggets of decent information for me. He had known my grandfather for years; even my dad was a casual acquaintance of his. And that meant he knew about the property surrounding my cabin.

Though I hadn’t remembered it, there was a hand pump, delivering water from the well, on the north side of the house…just into the woods. Fred told me that my father, and most likely my brother, used the thing each year. Once in the spring and again in the fall when having the water on the inside might lead to frozen pipes. And just so he was clear — frozen pipes meant burst pipes eventually.

Also, if I did some searching, I’d find a weapon or two that my dad liked to keep stored at the cabin. He told me some places to look, but I didn’t pay that close of attention. I wasn’t a gun guy, and could never picture myself using one against another human. While I might poke around in search of said weapons, I wasn’t going to waste a lot of time doing so.

He also told me about the pit my grandfather had dug years back. It was lined with cement with a treated board, covered by a tarp. I’d find it somewhere adjacent to the southwest corner of the place, just into the woods.

In the hole, the pit, I’d find all types of hand tools. Tools that would come in handy if we were in this mess for a while. He claimed my grandfather had built a shed once upon a time, but it got broken into at least once a year. And being a frugal man, he was sick and tired of buying new implements for the cabin.

The most important tools I would find in the pit, Fred said, were two axes and a splitting maul. And if the power wasn’t back on soon, and he added it wouldn’t be, I needed to get at woodcutting, and soon.

The moment I saw the roofline of the old place I sprinted to find the pump. If memory served me correct, I had two gallons of extra water I’d brought along. And I had already polished off one. Further consideration told me I needed a liter of water a day to survive. At least that’s what I thought I’d heard once on one of those prepper shows.

I stared at the old wood stove that took up the center part of the living/dining/kitchen area. Aside from the bedroom next to this area, it was the only room in the cabin.

My grandfather was a short man; five foot four if I recall what my dad once told me. Even by age ten, I towered over the man. He seemed shorter. Days followed by years followed decades of manual labor (I never did know what he did for work) caused him to be slightly hump-backed. Add the hump to little natural height and you have yourself a mini-grandpa.

Because of his lack of size, the ceilings in the cabin were unnaturally low. At six-foot even, I cleared most spots by a mere six inches. The doorways were hell; I can’t tell you how many times either Bud or myself damn near knocked ourselves unconscious heading outside when we were teens. Fortunately, there were only two of those to dodge — the bedroom and the main door.

The low ceiling, so my dad claimed, gave a homey impression of the place. To me, and Shelly the one time she visited the place, it looked like a Gnome house stuck in the middle of the woods. Because my grandfather built most of this place himself, the roof never reached its skyward potential. If the pitch of a normal home’s roof is, say, 30 or 40 degrees, the cabins is a third of that. And it probably needed new shingles to boot.

The location of the cast-iron stove was central to the main room. Easier to heat everything that way. Well, once upon a time that was true. When LP was added to the cabin back in the late 70s, the wood stove became a relic of a day long gone by.

Day 4 WOP

I got right at the water issue the morning after my trip to Fred’s. I had an opened bottle that required my attention that evening. And if the lack of power kept up, I had plenty of time coming up to work on further issues.

The rusty pump stood about four foot high, just into the woods where I remembered it from my youth. Though it didn’t seem like something that would still be working, Fred told me that these devices never gave out. As long as you had water in the well, the pump would do its job.

Just be sure to prime it first, he warned shoving a crooked finger at me. Prime is good and I should have water flowing within five minutes.

Acting like I knew what he meant, I nodded at his advice. If only I had asked what all was involved with priming such a device.

Thirty minutes of pumping only made my headache worse. Like it or not, I was going to have to slow down on the booze. That was okay; I only had four full bottles remaining. If this situation lasted longer than a week, and if I didn’t slow down, I’d be out of booze quick.

Out of breath, I stepped back from the pump, sweat stinging my eyes. Wasn’t priming just nice slow even strokes? Had I stroked the monster enough? Should something be coming out of the brown stained throat by now?

A little more pumping and I felt my anger rise. Not only was water absent from the scene, it didn’t even sound like I was close to having it spit out anytime soon. I was missing something. But another humble walk back and forth to Fred’s wasn’t the answer.

Back inside the cabin, I contemplated the issue. No water from the pump yet, though Fred claimed it worked just fine. Dad and Bud used it three to four times a year, again without issue, as reported by Fred.

The problem had two sides.

First, and this was a possibility, Fred was full of shit. Let’s face it, he was an old man, sitting around all day with nothing to do but wait for death. Maybe he didn’t know any of my family. Maybe he’d never been to the cabin, except to sneak around and pilfer tools when no one was here.

But that didn’t make sense. Fred knew right where the pump and well were. And he called my grandfather, father, and brother by name. If he was full of shit, I decided, it was only half-full.

The opposing side of the issue was me. Maybe I was doing something wrong. Either pumping too fast or perhaps, too slow. My knowledge of a hand pump was limited. As in pump the handle and water should come out.

My ignorance to this device, as well as the rest of the cabin, was far too great to write off as innocence. A strange world surrounded me. One that lacked the necessities and niceties that I was used to. If I ever wanted coffee and was too lazy to make it myself, I ran to the local coffee shop. Shelly was gone for the night? No problem. Dozens of restaurants sat within a few miles of my house. My car made a funny sound or wouldn’t start, then call the auto shop.

My life was easy, almost cushy. My before, that is. In the cool quiet cabin, I slowly came to the realization that I was unprepared for all of this…whatever
this
was.

Day 4 - continued - WOP

Standing in the doorway, I noticed something strange on the highway. Some 20 yards from my front door stood a woman. A middle-aged woman in a red sundress highlighted with large yellow flowers.

Stepping outside, she noticed me and smiled. Waving, she came closer. Like a long lost friend. Her blond hair hung past her tanned shoulders and as she came closer, I saw her red sneakers. Though it was hot and the world was without power, she was dressed for success.

“Hello,” she shouted. “I’m so glad to find another human in this Godforsaken place.”

I noticed the sheen of sweat on her face, pooling slightly on her upper lip. Yeah, she was not immune to the humidity either, regardless of how nicely she was dressed.

“I don’t suppose,” she continued, grasping my arms and squeezing. “I don’t suppose I could bother you for a sip of water and maybe a small bite of food, could I?”
 

“You see I took off from our cottage back down that road,” she pointed to the south where many dirt roads intersected the main highway, “and I didn’t realize how far it was to civilization. I guess I never paid that close of attention.”

She waved a sweaty hand at me. “I’m Barb, by the way.” Her smile was the best thing I’d seen in days.

“Bob Reiniger,” I answered, shaking her petite hand. I pointed to the door. “Why don’t you come inside and get out of the heat for a moment.”

Her smile was white and quite something to behold. She even took my arm to follow along.

And that’s when the lights went out…for me.

I came to just outside the cabin’s front door. Peering up from the sandy dust, I noticed the door sitting ajar. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The back of my head ached terribly. Getting up on my hands and knees, I tried to shake off the grogginess. It was like waking up in the morning with a bad hangover, only I hadn’t been drinking.

Flopping onto my butt, I spied a chunk of cut and quartered wood next to me. About a foot long and just the right size for someone to hold in their hand…and whack me across the back of my skull.

The last thing I remembered was a pair of boots next to my face. Brown dirty men’s boots. Not the dainty pair of red sneakers that were on Barb’s feet. Nope, some male friend of hers had other plans, and it dawned on me that perhaps Barb did as well.

After crawling inside, things made a whole lot more sense to me. Gone was my attaché case, along with my laptop, cell phone, and several hundred dollars in cash. The door of my refrigerator sat open, the dark insides picked clean. That meant several blocks of cheese, some smoked sausage, and the rest of my water had left with the visitors, as well.

For some reason, they left the bourbon. Perhaps it was because it was hidden in plain sight on a cardboard box next to the front door. Still it surprised me they hadn’t bothered to look. Maybe they were teetotaler thieves. Go figure.

I checked the cupboard next to the sink and found a sealed tin with graham crackers inside. They were pretty soft and mealy, but they might have been my only solid food left. Grabbing a fresh bottle of liquor, I cracked the lid and took a healthy swig.

Still getting my bearings, I sat on the couch until the bourbon kicked in. Every other swig I’d take a bite of cracker.

“Well, this sucks,” I said aloud, though no one was there to enjoy my misery.

The cracker and booze came up so quickly that I didn’t have time to make it to the sink. Catching my breath, I wiped my chin and stared at the new pile of puke that would need to be cleaned up.