A Story: Part One

Day 1192. The zombie apocalypse has come and passed (along with the end of the so-called world) and I'm still out here in the woods doing just fine. Food was scarce for a while until I hiked over the mountain and found a derailed train that to my great surprise (and relief) was loaded with several box cars of assorted food items that (I'm guessing) were heading south after the first Great Pandemic. Mostly it's non-nutritional junk food loaded with preservatives, MSGs and the dreaded gluten but hey it'll definitely fill my belly. I've been hauling it over the mountain one wagon load at a time for the last two hundred and sixty five days and it is starting to wear me out but damn my leg muscles are getting strong from it. It's been quiet around here and I'm enjoying the solitude but I ran out of coffee five hundred and twelve days ago (not that I'm counting) and once I got over the headaches caused by abruptly stopping my caffeine consumption things weren't that bad. I sure do miss it though. Anyway I don't want to whine too much because at least I'm 'alive and kicking' and things could always be worse than they are. Thanks for reading my post from the future.

Day 1212. It has now been five hundred and thirty-two days without coffee (not that I'm counting) and I just have to say that I really do miss it. I miss it so much in fact that as I was surveying a landfill and trying to figure out how to setup a mining operation (because there just has to be some useful stuff in that well compacted refuse) and perhaps do some large scale methane harvesting along the way...when my eyes fell upon an unopened single serve instant coffee packet. I was absolutely in awe of it glittering there in the sun with all it's label faded away except for the word 'coffee'. I think since this entire journey of mine began I haven't had such a reverent nor awe inspiring moment as the moment my eyes singled out of all the trash and debris that single word. It was a powerful moment for me as I delicately lifted that faded single serve packet up to the light of the sun for closer inspection and saw (although faded) that the packaging was actually intact. I cried just a little in that moment and resisted a very strong impulse to tear into the packet and pour it's contents down my throat. Instead I pulled a piece of string from my pocket and gently tied it to the packet and hung it around my neck. I even took care to make sure the word 'coffee' faced forward so that I can glance down and see that I do in fact have a little bit of coffee. I think I'll hold onto it for a while just to see how long I can go without actually consuming it. Anyway things are rather quiet with all the humans gone and even the dreaded zombie stench has begun to fade. Every once in a while I still get a whiff of it when the wind blows hard out of the north but other than that there is still the heavy scent of things burnt or burning. That particular scent might take a bit longer to fade but I'm sure it will eventually. I've still been hauling food over the mountain from that derailed train and I've also spent a good bit of time re-purposing one of the derailed cars into a 'storage unit' for food from the other cars. I had noticed the animals getting into the food so I decided to take some steps to secure as much of it as possible and since hauling it over the mountain one wagon load at a time could realistically take years I settled on a simpler solution 'on site storage'. It has also become my satellite camp. Well anyway I'm still hanging in there and both me and the dogs are doing well. I'm glad you read my future post.

Day 1349. My satellite camp at the derailed train is coming along rather nicely. I found a bulldozer near it a few miles away left beside a highway where some construction was being done before the 'world' collapsed. It amazingly had some good fuel in it so I drove it beside the tracks to where the derailed train is and used it to push twelve of the box cars into a somewhat circular formation with all their doors facing inward. While I was doing it I kept chuckling to myself that I was making a wagon circle. A few of the box cars didn't deal with such rough treatment that well and their doors no longer slide open and closed that great but I think that I can fix them if I level the box cars with a jack and apply a liberal amount of grease to the door tracks. I had just enough fuel in the dozer to get the last one in place before it coughed and sputtered out a huge column of black smoke from the exhaust which I thankfully held my breath during and didn't breathe that crap in. As for the dozer I'm going to just leave it where it sits and use it to climb over so that I can actually get into the 'wagon circle' that I created with it. Anyway it has now been six hundred and sixty nine days without coffee (not that I'm counting) and although I have yet to drink the single serve instant coffee that I found at the landfill I'm definitely tempted to do so almost every morning. Somehow though I've resisted the urge to consume it thus far. Aside from the coffee the biggest thing that I miss is the robot voice that tells the weather on my little weather radio. I've tried everything I know to predict the weather but alas I'm no great 'cloud watcher' and a few times now I've been caught out in some rather foul weather. One of my dogs is pretty good at sensing when a really bad storm is approaching though so I just keep a close eye on her behavior and take some precautions when she starts acting oddly. She can usually sense them about three days out which gives me plenty of time to get ready. I'm still enjoying the end of the 'world' and the quiet that has ensued. It's really nice just hearing the sounds of nature and that quiet being only occasionally broken by me working on my various projects. I've still yet to see any other humans (which is fine by me) but I have been seeing and hearing some really large dog packs roaming around. I've had a few close calls with them while out scouting and scavenging but I built a little device that emits a high pitched noise that anytime I see them I whip it out of my backpack and turn it on. It is a rather comical looking device that I call my 'ray gun' but it sure is quite effective at keeping them at bay. I also always carry a large can of bear mace but thankfully the wild dogs (or bears) haven't gotten close enough to me that I felt the need to use it...yet. Anyway thanks for reading my future post.

Day 1402. I must say that all things considered it has been a rather mellow apocalypse. Really the biggest hardship has been going without coffee. It has now been seven hundred and twenty two days (not that I'm counting) since I've tasted the delicious flavor of my most beloved beverage. I've been considering hauling the wagon into the closest town just to try to scavenge up some coffee. I'm estimating that it will take three days total to get there, have a look around and then make it back to the homestead. I'm hoping that the town doesn't smell horrendous but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part. Either way I'm going prepared with a respirator and some essential oil to squirt in the respirator's cartridges just in case I find the odor in the town to be overpowering. Let's face it though towns tended to smell bad long before the 'world' ended and the probability that they will smell worse now is rather high so I'm thinking it will be prudent to go prepared. Anyway I've been doing my best to chronicle the days and what I do with my time. I don't have much hope that anyone will ever read them but you never know because in the long history of the planet human civilization has rebounded from some pretty large setbacks and there is no real way for me to know what (if anything) is happening in other parts of the planet but my instincts tell me there is not much left of the 'world' as it was before things fell apart. At least I've survived somehow which was probably just dumb luck on my part and not from any special skills or effort on my part so perhaps there is a chance that others did as well. On a different note I've been seeing a lot of birds of various types lately all flying north. I don't know quite what it means but after climbing a nearby mountain that has a fire tower on it and climbing up the tower itself I could see a thick haze of smoke covering all the southern horizon so perhaps the birds are just fleeing the fires or perhaps it is something more ominous and I just can't figure out what it is. The times being as strange as they are it is difficult to make heads or tails of what is going on but no matter what I hope that I can continue to persevere and live a long, happy and comfortable life in the woods. Thanks for reading my 'future post'.

Day 1410. Well the journey to the nearby town went rather well. It wound up only taking me two and a half days to get there and back again which could be partially because I was right about the stench of the place and I didn't stay a moment longer than necessary and partially because...well the place really creeped me out. There was the usual signs of panic and 'end of the world' mumbo jumbo painted on pretty much every available surface but there was also an incredibly eerie sense that I was being watched the entire time I was there. Fires had burned through much of the downtown sector so I avoided it altogether because the last thing I wanted was to die (or worse be wounded) from some burned out shell of a building collapsing on me. So I stuck to the outskirts and was stoked to find a little cafe whose storeroom was absolutely full of not just coffee but fucking espresso beans! So I loaded down the wagon and stuffed what I could in my backpack and promptly headed back the way I'd came. When I was about halfway back and resting in a small park that had a rather quaint little picnic table and pavilion I found out why I had felt like I was being watched in the town. A rather hungry looking and what appeared to be half starved hyena appeared from the way I had just come and obviously following me. I'm assuming that when the 'world fell apart' some compassionate soul released it from a nearby zoo. Other than that I can't figure out how the hell a hyena came to be in these mountains. It was a pitiful looking thing and I left it some canned meat that I'd brought along for a snack. I'm thinking it was born and raised in captivity and only knows that humans give it food which is probably why it was following me. I made good time heading away from the little park but not long afterwards it showed up behind me again and not wanting to lead it back to my homestead where my dogs might not be all that friendly towards it I pulled out my high pitch 'ray gun' and scared it off. I'm not sure that it won't one day show up around the homestead but I didn't see it again the rest of my trip home. Anyway I'm glad that I now not only have coffee but a huge supply of it. The first thing I did when I got home though was yank the little packet of instant coffee from around my neck, boil some water and after emptying the contents of it into a cup, adding water and stirring it thoroughly I drank it down in one huge gulp. Thanks for reading my future post.

Day 1437. All things considered not a whole lot has changed for me since the quote unquote world ended. I still wake up every day, let the dogs out, have a morning smoke and (now that I have coffee again) have some coffee as my half awake brain takes in the world around me and contemplates whatever remnants of dreams are lingering in my mind. It is a fine way to start the day and as stated quite unperturbed or disrupted by the so called 'end of the world' which is fine by me because in those fleeting moments between awake and asleep I often find solutions to problems, new perspectives, neat inventions and some rather potent moments of self realization. Which all adds up to lending me a little inspiration to start my day off in a productive fashion. Anyway things have been rather quiet around here lately. The smoke from the fires down south have been making their way into this little cove more and more each day but at least the fires appear to be burning towards the east (and coastal areas) so hopefully they continue moving in that direction. I've been climbing that nearby fire tower every three days just to keep an eye on them and while the view is spectacular the hike up there has been wearing me out so much that I've been contemplating establishing another satellite camp at the base of the tower. The only drawback to having a camp there is hauling everything I need up to the place itself. I like my little wagon and all but dragging it up a nearly forty five degree gravel road for three hours loaded with gear doesn't seem all that appealing but I'm tempted to do it anyway just so that I can wake up and fall asleep to the amazing view from atop the mountain the fire tower stands on. On a different note I've spotted that hyena a few more times. Always at a distance but it has been lingering around the outskirts of the homestead and just out of range of my dogs. Which is good. It being around has actually decreased the wild dog activity around here so that's a pleasant bonus. Yesterday I decided to try to track down exactly where that hyena was staying at night and found (after hours of searching and following it's many foot prints) I found an old barn where it had made itself a pretty cozy den amidst a huge pile of hay. Just outside the barn I left it a big pile of canned meat and inside the barn in it's hay bed I left it an old tattered blanket that smelled like me, the dogs and too much sweat. While I was there I also drug a huge cattle trough into the barn and filled it with buckets of water from a nearby creek. If hyenas drink about the same amount of water as dogs then it should have enough water in that trough for several months. So as you can see I've grown a soft spot for the animal that (if it had a different disposition) could have eaten me alive back in that little town where I first encountered it but it didn't. Anyway the homestead is coming along nicely, the dogs are happy and thanks for reading my future post.

Day 1452. Well I got really lucky and stumbled across a mule that was all hung up in a briar patch and after a lot of soothing and slowly cutting away at the thorny branches entangling the poor beast I got it set free of the mess to which it's response was to loudly bray with pleasure and prance around. I've seen a lot of things but something about that braying and prancing mule caused me to erupt in fits of laughter and alternatively wheezing to catch my breath between fits of laughter. All of this the mule took as whole hearted encouragement and began to leap into the air and kick with it's hind legs when it wasn't braying and prancing. I hadn't laughed that hard since well before the 'world' ended but I found myself laying there amongst all the briars I had just cleared away from the mule holding my sides and tears running down my face for what seemed like hours but was probably just minutes. When I finally gained some control over myself and not only got off the ground but also pulled the clinging briars off of my clothes I felt incredibly light hearted and for lack of a more fitting word...I felt mirthful. The day this happened was a day that I was bringing some supplies up to the fire tower because in the end I decided that any arduous journey of hauling stuff up to it would be well worth the view and it is strategically an awesome spot for a satellite camp. Well the little mule was insistent upon following me so I used my backpack, a blanket and some straps I had (to secure stuff in the wagon with) and fastened a small load of stuff onto the animals back. During the entire rigging process the mule stood very still and seemed to understand what was going on and even had an air of 'eagerness' about it as if to say 'Hurry up daylight is wasting'! Anyway the mule is now part of my little post apocalyptic family and as long as I can keep the hyena living on the outskirts away from it we will all hopefully have a long life together hauling stuff hither and yon, checking out the scenery and scavenging from what is left of the 'world' that used to be. Lately I've been out hunting for batteries and solar panels along the highways and although it is slow going (even with the mule) because batteries are heavy, solar panels are a bit fragile and then there is the weight of the various tools that I have to lug around so I can take things apart, which all adds up to a rather heavy load. So I take it slow and gather what I can but so far I have enough batteries to store roughly six months worth of my power needs which is pretty awesome as long as the solar can keep the batteries topped off but there have been some rather dark days and often the sky just somehow doesn't look 'right' to me. In the back of my mind I worry that it is the beginning of an ice age or something similar where the sun is partially or mostly blocked from reaching the surface of the planet. With this in mind I've also been trying to work out a 'plan b' for my electrical needs and also if the planet is about to gradually get really damn cold I need to find somewhere deep down in the ground where it will stay consistently warm and get it setup to hunker the fuck down. Well I've rambled on here a good bit. I hope you have a great day and thanks for reading my 'future' post.

Day 1471. Recently I've spent a few days and nights up at the fire tower. Mostly I've been watching the smoke filled horizon with a sort of hollow dread by day and by night scanning the countryside to see if I could spot any nearby fires or moving lights that might indicate whether there were other people in my general vicinity. I'm not quite sure just how many miles I can see from atop the tower but it is pretty damn far. I wasn't just up there on some weird fluke or strange paranoid idea that there might be other people around...I was up there because there were definitely people (or at least a person) in the area. I knew this because recently when I went to the camp at the derailed train I found that someone(s) had been there and although they took great pains to cover their presence, they could not hide the fact that an entire box of canned mixed vegetables was missing. After going over my inventory list twice and recounting everything in the box cars twice I decided it was definitely more than my imagination and that something was actually missing. Right then and there in that moment of realization that there had been someone else there I wished that I had brought at least one of the dogs along with me. Before the 'world' ended finding that someone had been snooping around (and stealing) wouldn't have been all that shocking to me. Especially since before the 'world' ended it seemed like more people than not were enduring hard times, trying to 'stay afloat' and were by and large strung out on something whether it was drugs, drinking, bad ideas, low grade entertainment, or a combination of the four. So back then it wouldn't have surprised me at all but now after nearly three years of not seeing 'hide nor hair' of other people...It gave me not just goosebumps but gooseflesh all over my upper body. What really frightened me was that I had not bothered to cover my trail between the derailed train camp and the homestead. I had in fact created quite a clear and direct path leading straight from one place to the other with all my hauling of food in the wagon. I don't have much in the way of defenses around the homestead other than some brush walls that I'd constructed rapidly in the early days when the zombies were around. I actually abandoned the entire 'defenses' project when I figured out that the zombies were incredibly slow moving, prone to stay where they had once been human and ultimately died off rather quickly. Who'd have thunk that zombies would half such a short 'life' span and be complete homebodies. Even during the thick of things I don't think that one came within more than a mile of the homestead. So finding my defenses woefully lacking I decided it'd probably be best to not change my routines because the one advantage that I might have is that the person(s) have no clue that I knew of their existence. So the rest of that day and night I stayed on rather high alert but did all the stuff I usually do and kept secretly hoping that somehow my inventory at the derailed train camp was wrong and that I'd let my imagination get the best of me. I found this to be a very comforting thought and it actually helped me fall asleep that first night. The next morning I went out to the spring to fill my kettle with water. This has become my morning habit of late mainly because I enjoy standing in the dewy grass while I'm half awake watching the water swirl into the kettle as the song birds sing their morning song. Anyway upon reaching the spring I find a torn piece of brown paper bag sitting atop the spring's enclosure with a fair size piece of quartz resting upon it. Upon first seeing it I froze and after slowly looking around for anyone watching I cautiously walk the last few steps to the spring and looking down upon the note (for surely I was meant to find it here) I see that there are two words written upon it with red crayon in bold all capitals...'GOT COFFEE?' Upon reading those words something sort of snapped inside me and I broke into hysterical laughter for several minutes. The laughter actually came and went in fits for the rest of the day and all the strange things that had occurred were nowhere near as peculiar as finding that note that morning. That night I left a large can of pre-ground coffee at the spring along with a note of my own (oddly also written in red crayon) which said...'Meet me at the fire tower five days from now at dawn.' I debated a lot over whether to make my note a statement or a question but in the end I figured a statement would be best. The next morning both the note and the coffee were gone and left in their place was a very small piece of paper from what I suspect to be the same brown bag that the first note was written upon and it bore a single word in that same bold all capital red crayon script..'YES'. So here it is just before dawn on the fifth day and I'm at the top of the tower with a thermos of hot coffee, an immense amount of curiosity and a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that everything is going to be okay.

Day 1472. There was a hardness to her eyes as she regarded me over the steaming cup of coffee that she was raising to her lips to take a sip from. She arched a single eyebrow at me, cocked her head slightly and after several moments of our eyes being locked she shrugged and sipped at her coffee. When she was finished sipping she gently set her cup down on the table between us and looked away out over the landscape stretching off for miles around us from the top of the fire tower. We had been talking for most of the morning and well aside from being around another human being again (how many years had it really been) and the comfort in that...things had been 'tense'. Apparently (according to her) there were other people in the world, not a lot of them and nowhere near as many as there was before the 'world' ended but there were absolutely a good many of them and they were rebuilding. Apparently my new 'friend' was on what she called a 'scouting mission' meaning that she was out looking for not just other people but people that (in her words) 'knew stuff' and 'knows how stuff works and how to make stuff work' which had lead her to keenly observing me and my little homestead for nearly an entire month. Learning this I had blurted 'So you stole from me and you stalked me...great start that is' I had meant it as humor but I guess in the last few years humor had been ground out of the person before me. She had given me a one pound bag of tobacco as payment for the canned goods she had pilfered from the box car at the derailed train camp. She also said she had been following the train tracks and found my 'wagon circle' of box cars, and ultimately assumed it was abandoned. She had found it at night and didn't find the trail leading from it to my homestead until the following morning. At first she had been extremely cautious but after watching me with the dogs and with rescuing the mule she had decided I was probably okay to approach. She said that after watching me rescue the mule she had smiled and something about the way she said it leads me to think that not many things have made her smile in quite a long time maybe even before the 'world' went to shit. Looking back at me over the table she asked me if I had already been living as I do now since before everything changed. So I told her some of my story and how I'd come to be where I was and doing what I was long before 'everything changed'. To which she had nodded again and again to herself as if my admission of things were merely confirming what she had already deduced. When I was finished she gave me a level and nearly unnerving look and asked if I would consider coming east with her and teach the things that I know at an academy that had been recently founded and comically named 'Reboot The World' or as she said 'RTW' for short. At this I laughed heartily and nearly spilled both of our coffee cups as I bumped the little table with my knee while slapping my thigh. The look on her face could have chilled an iceberg and it stifled my laugh so abruptly that it died in a minor coughing fit that subsided into me emphatically shaking my head no. The silence between us stretched until she pulled out her tobacco and papers and began rolling a smoke and following her example I did the same. We sat in further silence just smoking and staring at each other then finally in a rather level tone she said 'Well if you won't leave how about accepting an apprentice or apprentices that will take what they learn back to RTW?' This twist of things caught me by surprise and I found myself saying 'I'll consider it' before realizing that I was going to say anything at all. We spent the rest of the day swapping stories (mostly from the world before things changed) and decided to camp together for the night. Now that the sun is setting we have built a fire on the ground near the tower and are cooking a modest dinner, drinking some vodka she had stashed away on her person and simply enjoying each others companionship. A single thought keeps repeating itself in my mind...'The world might have broke but not everyone broke with it.' I tell her this and all her stoney exterior melts away and she laughs and I laugh with her.

Day 1484. As odd as it is I've been contemplating having some extra helping hands around here ever since being asked to consider it by the scout from the Reboot The World academy. Although I have quite enjoyed my many years of relative solitude, the time that I spent at the fire tower with Cara (that is the only name she gave) reminded me just how pleasant and downright comforting that interacting with other people can be. Of course there was the curious awkwardness 'girl and guy at the end of the world thing' but I think that we both dealt with that well enough and spent much of our time discussing how to not just rebuild the 'world' but also help build it in such a way that things like equality, sustainability, compassion and consideration for other people (and the planet) are at the forefront of things. Such easy things to pontificate about while sitting around the fire passing Cara's vodka around and much more of a difficult thing to actually implement those ideas. All in all it was nice to meet someone else that still harbors some hope for not just the planet's but humanity's future. I had long ago buried such notions but never let them actually die and I was pleasantly surprised that they were coaxed to the surface again and albeit had some new life breathed into them. So now I find myself not completely disappointed that there are actually other humans in the world and the notion that those left are actually working together harmoniously towards creating a better future absolutely astounds me. In all my considerations of how people would behave in a post apocalyptic world I had never considered that they would actually work together for not just the common good but also to leave a better future for those that come after. Sure in my heart of hearts I had secretly hoped for such but I never ever considered it an actual possibility and now here it is not just a possibility but an actuality and I'm sort of stunned by it. Anyway things around the homestead are coming along nicely and I've been scouting for a place to build a bunk house (and eventual homestead) for my potential visitors from RTW. There's a nice spot in an adjacent cove that might work really well for a second homestead and it would guarantee that I still have my solitude. I think that my best approach to teaching folks is going to be immersion. So having them setup their own place, gather their own materials and do everything it takes to simply 'live' would (in my perspective) be a great way for folks to begin learning. Thanks for reading my 'future post'.