The Grim Reaper Comes Calling Read online

  By the end of the first week the first mass distribution of food and water was more or less finished. It had all been moved from the supermarket shelves to the closets and pantries of thieves.

  The restaurants and schools came next.

  The desperate among the survivors realized they had to make modifications to the way they lived their lives if they planned to keep on living.

  Those who never stole anything before in their lives became looters.

  Those who never cooked for anyone other than themselves resolved to learn new things.

  Like how to turn a fifty pound sack of corn meal and a forty pound sack of dried beans they took from the back of a nearby Mexican restaurant into a month’s worth of burritos for their family.

  Restaurants, restaurant supply businesses, wholesale food warehouses, school cafeterias… all dealt in bulk quantities of food.

  And they all fell victim to the second wave of looting.

  All the abandoned tractor trailers within the city were emptied of anything edible, anything valuable, anything pharmaceutical, by the end of the first week.

  Also by then, most of the weak had already taken the easy way out.

  By some estimates, more than a third of the population was dead now, either by their own hand or because they had something someone else wanted bad enough to kill them for.

  Whole families were dead by murder-suicide, left to rot and to spread disease.

  The deceased largely didn’t care; they were no longer affected.

  Among the living, many saw the writing on the wall.

  Only the strong would survive long term. And those who weren’t strong by themselves would have to find strength in numbers.

  Many survivors decided it was time to leave their homes and to seek out friends and relatives in other towns and cities. And that perhaps by teaming up with others they’d increase their chances to survive.

  Others reasoned if they could get away from the turmoil of the cities, perhaps they could find a plot of isolated land somewhere and try their hand at farming.

  Word was spreading that the key to survival whatever one’s final goal was to get away from the cities.

  And that abandoned tractor trailers were all over the highways. Several per mile, supposedly. And that they had the food, the water, the essentials one would need to survive as they traveled to a less chaotic and perhaps safer place.

  For the truly desperate it seemed the logical way to go.

  These were largely people who’d never been on a fully loaded box trailer before.

  They didn’t know how tightly cargo is packed into such vehicles.

  Companies which ship their goods by truck pack as much cargo into trailers as possible to keep their shipping costs to a minimum.

  Sometimes they’re charged by the pound; other times they pay by the mile.

  Either way, maximizing their loads reduces their shipping costs or shipping times or both.

  So it makes sense to make the most of the space available.

  At the same time, modern trucking is a science which relies on freedom of movement.

  Nothing is loaded by hand anymore.

  At one time a line of men might extend from the bowels of a trailer and stretch to the end of an assembly line, where products like sacks of grain or boxes of widgets were passed hand to hand and stacked within the vehicle.

  Such “load lines” were time consuming and inefficient.

  Modern methods call for product to be loaded onto wooden pallets, which fit nicely two abreast inside a trailer, with just a few inches between them.

  Such pallets are almost always loaded by machines, then shrink wrapped with strong plastic to keep the product in place.

  A forty foot long trailer in the 1950s might have taken six hours to load by hand using the load line method.

  A modern fifty-three foot long trailer can be loaded in about twenty minutes using palletized cargo and a small forklift.

  With one man instead of thirty.

  The problem, at least for the looters breaking into such trailers on the highway, was that there was no easy way to climb into the tightly-packed trailers to see what was on them.

  Chapter 4

  Imagine the first person to break into an abandoned tractor trailer rig in the days immediately following the blackout.

  Breaking the padlock was easy.

  Every trucker had a long crowbar packed away in his gear box, located just behind the driver’s door.

  Once the padlock was broken and pried off, the serial numbered steel strip (the “seal” in trucker speak) came off next.

  Then it was just a matter of rolling up the overhead door.

  All that took our first looter five minutes, max.

  Remember, even though what he was doing was clearly illegal, he had no fear of being caught.

  He was out on the open highway, where he could see anyone coming for half a mile or more.

  And any lawman would be coming on foot, since vehicles were no longer running.

  Our thief could therefore take his time and work at his own leisure.

  Still, it must have been daunting, the day that first looter rolled up the door and found himself face to face with a wall of disposable diapers higher than his head.

  If one took a survey of looters they’d find that very few of them carry forklifts around in their back pockets.

  If there was a forklift conveniently parked behind the trailer with the key in it, engine running, it wouldn’t do the looter much good either.

  Most looters don’t know how to drive one, and it’s not as easy as it looks.

  There’s only one way for the looter to get past the diapers to get to whatever else is on the truck, and that’s to cut the plastic shrink wrap on the two pallets of diapers and to throw them, one case at a time, down to the highway.

  A lot of folks believe that karma pays us all back for the evil deeds we do in life.

  That’s not the case. If it were, that first looter would empty that first row of diapers, only to find out that directly behind it was a second row of itching powder, or monkey food or size thirteen fuzzy pink bedroom slippers.

  But absolutely nothing he could possible use.

  Typically, though, beyond the disposable diapers were twenty more pallets of goods. Some the looter could use, some he couldn’t.

  On today’s super highways at any given time of day, a tractor trailer rig will pass by every forty five seconds to a minute.

  All long distance travelers know there are a lot of trucks out there on the highway.

  Many of them carry things looters could never find a use for. Huge pieces of industrial equipment. Steel pipe. Petroleum products.

  But a large number of them… thirty five percent, according to the American Trucking Association… are carrying food and merchandize to grocery stores or big box stores… the stores that sell a little bit of everything.

  Most are marked with the chain’s name or logo, but many aren’t.

  Many of those plain white trailers which roll down every interstate every minute or so are full of food, beverages, and a thousand other things a looter or survivalist… or just a hungry American looking for something to eat… can use.

  Those were the things the looters were looking for.

  Things like disposable diapers, fuzzy pink slippers and anything else of little value were tossed unceremoniously onto the highway behind the trailer.

  By the time Dave Spear and his family happened by on their way back to San Antonio the pile was tremendous.

  Not only that, but it was spread all over the place, picked through a hundred times by late comers who tried to find something of value in it.

  Some people, it turned out, actually needed those disposable diapers, as they were traveling with babies who tended to expel green baby poop from time to time.

  The mountain behind each trailer had been climbed on so many times much of it was now broken.

  It had been rained on so ma
ny times much of it was ruined.

  Much of it which was burnable had been pulled out and used as fuel for campfires and cooking fires.

  Most of what was left wasn’t worth using.

  And all the food, and anything worth drinking, was long gone.

  Most looters who came along now didn’t even bother looking anymore.

  Unless they were looking for something special which few people would want or need, they thought climbing onto the trailers or looking through the piles were a waste of their time.

  As it happened, Dave was looking for something special which few people would want or need.

  Something which was sturdy enough to withstand an endless stream of people walking across the top of it as it lay beneath a pile of other discarded items.

  Something few people would think to take with them, so that every time it was found in the pile it would be left behind time and time again.

  Something which wasn’t prone to burning and would therefore make lousy fuel for campfires or cooking fires.

  He’d stopped long enough to dig through every single pile they came across for three straight days. He’d climbed aboard every single trailer, just in case what he was looking for was in the very front of the trailer and was spared the humiliation of being tossed out onto the discard pile.

  Dave wasn’t one who gave up easily, but after three straight days of swinging and missing he was about ready to take that long walk of shame back to the dugout.

  Then as he was walking past the end of a debris pile he’d just rummaged through, something caught his eye.

  A rubber wheel, or rather a small piece of one, peeking out from beneath a crushed cardboard box of ladies’ socks.

  He dove in with both hands and yelled triumphantly, “Finally!”

  After three long days of searching, his carrying Sarah had come to an end. He finally sent one over the fence.

  He finally found the wheelchair he’d been looking for.

  Chapter 5

  By Dave’s reckoning they were a month away from San Antonio, at the pathetic pace they were moving.

  And the nights were already dropping into the thirties.

  Even if they were able to press on they wouldn’t make it home before winter set in.

  And pressing on was something they simply could not do. Not in the shape Sarah was in.

  They were three, maybe four days out from Blanco.

  There, Dave knew, he’d be able to find help.

  They were camping just off Highway 281, at a place called Miller Creek.

  Sarah had been getting progressively weaker for days and Dave couldn’t figure out why.

  He wasn’t a man with a medical background.

  Sure, he’d had some rudimentary medical training.

  The Marines gave it to everybody. It was called “self-aid and buddy care.” It was essentially enhanced first-aid training which focused mostly on battlefield injuries.

  The logic behind it was simple and made sense: these were United States Marines. The fiercest fighters in the history of warfare. Odds were most of the injuries they suffered would be combat-related. Bullet or shrapnel wounds, bayonet wounds, poisoned gases or liquids. Perhaps broken bones or other blast injuries.

  Dave was a good student.

  He could stop arterial bleeding and apply battlefield dressings with the best of them. He could splint an open fracture using nothing but a newspaper and a pair of shoelaces.

  He could fashion a stretcher with two tree limbs and a blanket.

  But something as simple as a parasite in a bottle of tainted water was beyond his capabilities.

  He remembered Sarah being extra thirsty that day.

  If she hadn’t been she might have just sipped at the water instead of guzzling half the bottle. She might have noticed the water tasted differently than it usually did.

  But she certainly couldn’t be blamed for that. Everyone tends to drink faster when they’re extra thirsty.

  What happened was no one’s fault.

  And they’d deal with it the best way they could, just like they’d dealt with everything else since the blackout started.

  Dave checked his watch.

  It had been just over half an hour since he’d last stopped so Sarah could drink a bottle of water.

  He hoped he was doing the right thing.

  He’d been encouraged earlier in the day when she was finally able to keep the water down for nineteen minutes before it came rushing out again.

  So was she.

  Way more than he was, actually.

  The day before she’d begged him to back off.

  “Honey, it hurts so badly. I’ve never felt such pain in my life. And you’re making me go through this cycle of… torture every hour. I honestly can’t take it anymore.”

  She had tears in her eyes.

  “But honey,” he said in response. “You know I’d take on the pain myself if I could.”

  “Then take it. It’s yours. I won’t miss it a bit.”

  “I wish I could, honey. I really do. But you’re making progress.”

  “It doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like water goes down my throat every hour and Godzilla comes shooting back out.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. But when we started you weren’t able to keep the water down for even thirty seconds without vomiting. Now it’s several minutes. That means you’re ridding yourself of the parasites that were in the tainted water.

  “Once you’re rid of them your body will start holding water again. You’ll finally start to rehydrate. You’ll turn the corner and start to get stronger. We’re almost there, I can feel it.”

  “Who’s this we you’re talking about? You got a mouse in your pocket?”

  “Honey, I…”

  “You what? You’re in this with me? You feel my pain? You know what I’m going through?

  “If that’s what you’re going to say, I’d like to argue the point a bit. You most certainly do not know the pain I’m going through.”

  “No, honey. I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Then what were you going to say, Dave? Were you going to say you’re sorry that I’m hurting so badly? That you know you’re asking a lot of me? That if you could you’d take all my pain away and take it all on yourself?

  “For Christ’s sake, Dave, don’t you think I know all that?

  “Do you think it makes the pain any easier, saying all that stuff? Because I have to tell you, honey, it most certainly doesn’t.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t going to say that at all.

  “I was going to say I hope that I’m doing the right thing, by pushing you so hard.”

  That caught her off guard.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yesterday, when you spit up some blood, I freaked out. I thought I pushed you too hard. Made you drink too much water and vomit too many times. I thought that the constant retching had damaged your intestinal tract, or your stomach. I thought I had pushed you so hard you were starting to bleed internally.”

  “But it wasn’t that…”

  “I know. When you told me you bit your tongue the last time you vomited, I felt a huge relief.

  “But it still made me think.

  “You know I’m usually very self-confident. You told me once I was the most self-confident person you ever knew. And it’s true. Right or wrong, I almost never doubt myself.

  “But last night, while you were sleeping, I had my arm around you. I don’t know if you knew that.”

  “I did. It felt nice.”

  “I could actually feel your stomach tighten and relax while you slept. Tighten and relax, tighten and relax. I knew it was wanting to throw up, but it couldn’t because there was nothing there to eject. And I wondered if by making you throw up all the time I’m doing you more harm than good.

  “I’m doubting myself. My medical training is limited at best. My first reaction was to make you drink and throw up as much water as it took to wash out your system.


  “Now I wonder if I’m killing you instead.”

  Chapter 6

  Sarah forced herself to smile. It wasn’t easy, since every muscle in her body was wracked with horrible pain.

  “It’s funny, how great minds think alike. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”

  “Sarah, I’m sorry for what I’ve been forcing you to do. I promise, with God as my witness, I mean well. And I promise I honestly believe you’re making progress.

  “I mean, the first time we purged your system you threw the clean water back up immediately. Now you’re retaining it for ten to fifteen minutes. That tells me you’re winning the battle.

  “Then I realize that maybe, just maybe, I’m looking at the wrong thing. That I shouldn’t put any stock in how long it takes for you to keep the water down. Maybe I should put more stock in how you’re doing overall.

  “Then it hits me that you’re getting weaker by the day. You can barely lift the bottle to your lips now. You can’t walk, you can’t even stand.

  “And I’m so confused.

  “Part of me wants to say we’re succeeding. We need to keep doing the same thing, no matter how much it hurts you to do it. That if we back-step now and give the parasites a chance to take hold again we could lose all the progress we’ve made so far.

  “That’s the cocky side of me. The self confident side. The side that says my limited medical training tells me to do whatever we can to purge your system of whatever nasty stuff was in that tainted glass of water.

  “Now there’s another little voice, coming from a little guy who looks just like me sitting on my shoulder, who’s telling me to stop my nonsense before I kill you. That I’m doing your insides more harm than good by abusing them so badly. That if I just left you alone your body would likely fight off the invasion and defeat the parasites by itself. But that by making you constantly throw up I’m harming you unnecessarily.”

  He looked at her with tears in his eyes.

  He was no longer the supremely confident man protecting his wife and family at all costs.

  He was no longer a man minimally trained in medicine and first aid, determined to use that limited knowledge to perform miracles.