Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon Read online

  So would the yellowed newspapers on the doorstep.

  After hanging the signs, he walked back down to the Honda to find the Jerry cans full and overflowing. He was spilling gasoline on the street, but it was unavoidable. And in the grand scheme of things, it was the last thing he needed to worry about. The tank only held twenty something gallons. He’d just taken twenty of it. There couldn’t be too much left.

  But he figured twenty gallons would fuel his generator for quite awhile.

  It took him two trips to get the Jerry cans back into his garage. Then he closed the garage door and locked it.

  There were still a thousand and one other things that needed to be done. But every one of them was infinitely more difficult to do in the dark. And he finally felt tired enough to grab a little sleep.

  He looked at his watch. It was 4:45 a.m.

  He blew out the candle, went upstairs to his bedroom, and laid down on his bed.

  -7-

  Dave awoke to voices. For a brief moment he imagined they were the voices of his daughters. But no. These were men’s voices, and they weren’t familiar.

  Then he remembered the dire situation he was in, and jumped out of bed.

  He made his way to the bedroom window and carefully lifted the edge of one blind. In the street, directly in front of his house, were three of his neighbors,

  Dave couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he did catch an occasional phrase.

  “Damn power company.”

  “Wife is afraid.”

  “Need to call a tow truck.”

  He was tempted for a moment to go out and join them, just for the comfort that other human beings could offer. Dave had always been a social kind of guy, had always enjoyed the company of others, and he didn’t like being alone.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He and Sarah knew the blackout was coming, eventually. But the plan was for them to have each other. He didn’t like that he was going into this adventure alone.

  In the end, he held firm. Sarah wasn’t with him, but he’d carry on with their game plan as though she were.

  And their game plan from the beginning was to keep a very low profile, and to try to convince looters and thieves that their house was vacant, so they’d bypass it and go elsewhere.

  They were so convinced that the EMP was coming that they purposely grew apart from their neighbors. They only knew a couple of them by name. And none of them were so close that they would be surprised to see that the Speer house was suddenly vacant.

  But he still had a long way to go to complete the charade.

  As he watched his neighbors disperse and go back into their houses, he thought through the long list of things he had to do. There was a lot for one man to handle alone. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He knew the busier he was, the less time he’d have to think about Sarah and the girls. And to wonder…

  Dave figured he had two things he had to do first. While he was at the window, he looked over the house across the street and could see the water tower to the north. He hadn’t tried the faucet yet, but he was certain the machinery at the water plant was out. Unless their pumps were protected from electrical surges like EMPs, they wouldn’t be able to pump fresh water to the city.

  Or to make more drinking water once their supply was exhausted.

  That meant the only water available would be gravity fed, for those residents who were lucky enough to live close enough to a water tower.

  Like he was.

  And he had to scramble quickly.

  He suspected that there were still a lot of people who hadn’t yet figured out that this wasn’t a typical blackout. And those same people were probably flushing their toilets and taking showers. Some fools were probably watering their lawns.

  He needed to get as much of the available water as he could. Before it was gone.

  He rushed to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. It wasn’t as strong as its usual flow, but at least it was flowing. He scrambled upstairs and pulled down the fold-up ladder that led to the attic.

  Up in the attic, he started throwing down black garbage bags. One by one, until he had a pile of about twenty bags.

  Each plastic bag contained empty two liter soda bottles. The family had been collecting them for over two years.

  It was Sarah’s idea.

  “We’ll need a method to capture rain water once we can’t get water from the city any more. Instead of drinking the soda and taking the bottles to the recycling center, let’s rinse them out, collapse them so they take up less space, and then put the caps back on them so they don’t expand again. Then we can put them in trash bags and store them in the attic until we need them.”

  Dave was a bit hesitant at first, until it dawned on him that the empty soda bottles would make an excellent second layer of insulation for their attic.

  After all, the empty bottle was everything good insulation should be. It trapped air, was light as a feather, and could easily be distributed on top of the existing attic installation. Over the course of the two years, he figured they’d collected at least four or five hundred. The plan was to fill as many as possible every time it rained, then purify it as needed to get through to the next rainfall.

  He got back to the kitchen and ripped open the first bag, then filled twenty bottles or so, before it dawned on him there was a better way. Since the water was running at a reduced rate, it took a full two or three minutes to fill each one.

  He could be doing other things instead of standing in front of the sink.

  He went to the upstairs bathroom, took a clean towel from the linen closet, and wiped the tub. The tub was sparkling clean anyway, because Sarah was a clean freak. But he’d feel better about drinking the water later on if he knew in his own mind that he’d wiped the tub.

  He plugged the drain and turned the water on, then left the tub to fill.

  Then he went downstairs to do the same thing to the other bathroom.

  He figured it would take the tubs at least an hour to fill at the reduced flow rate, so he’d keep an eye on them and get his other project done.

  Dave’s other pressing project was to clear out the front bedroom, so he could raise the blinds and complete the illusion that the house was vacant. Just in case anyone peeked in the window, he wanted them to see a vacant house and nothing more.

  For the next three hours, Dave moved every single thing from the front room to the garage, starting with the furniture. Then he took down the curtains, and removed everything from the walls.

  When everything was out of the room, he stood at the window and looked over his efforts. He saw three doors in a line on the interior wall. One led to the downstairs bathroom. He left that one open, and removed everything from the bathroom that might indicate someone lived there.

  The second door led to the hallway. He left that door completely closed, and hoped that looters would assume it was a closet.

  The real closet door, on the other hand, would be left just a little bit open. Any looters looking in the window would assume it led into the rest of the house, but wouldn’t be able to see far enough into it to realize it was only a closet.

  The illusion was complete.

  When he was finished he lifted a blind to make sure no one was in his yard, then raised the blinds all the way to the top.

  Just as they’d be if the house were really empty.

  -8-

  As the sun set low in the sky on the second day after the blackout, Dave was getting lonely and desperate to talk to someone.

  And he couldn’t get his mind off of Sarah and the girls. He had to do something to keep from going insane, so he took a green hardbound logbook from his desk drawer and started writing.

  I don’t even know why I’m writing this. To keep myself from going crazy, I suppose.

  No, that’s only partially true. I’m writing it partially to keep from going crazy, and partially because I’m hoping that talking to you will ease my pain.

  I love yo
u, Sarah, with all my heart. All I ever wanted to do was make you happy, from the first moment I ever laid eyes on you so many years ago. I don’t think I ever told you that I loved you from the beginning. I saw you from across the bar and I was struck like a bolt of lightning. I was hooked from that very first moment and there was no going back. You thought it was a pure accident that I dropped my keys as you walked by.

  But it was no accident. I dropped them on purpose. I was in love with you even then. And I saw you walking out the door with your friends. Walking out of my life. And I had to do something. So I dropped my keys to stop you, and then struck up a conversation. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in the weeks or months ahead. Hell, I don’t even know if you and my angels are still alive. But I never told you that story before. For some reason I thought you needed to know.

  It’s been two full days since the power went out. I’ve made the house appear vacant. I think it helped. Last night, the second night, the chaos started. I counted twelve gunshots through the night. Some of them sounded like they were on our street.

  I peeked out of an upstairs window, the one in Beth’s room, and saw a lot of shadowy figures out and about. I even saw two men with a torch. They came to our door, and read the foreclosure sign. Then they left again.

  I’m trying to stay upbeat. I’m trying to believe that most of the people I saw were merely out looking for food or water for their families.

  But then I wonder why they’re using the cover of darkness. And I think that if they weren’t up to no good, they’d be searching for food and water during the daytime.

  I suspect that there’s a lot of ugliness out there. And I think it’ll get a lot worse before it gets better.

  The only way I can survive this ordeal is by thinking that you landed safely, and are with Tommy and Susan, safe and sound. And that some day, somehow, we’ll be together again.

  I was able to fill almost three hundred bottles of water before the taps ran dry. I expected there to be much more water in the tower on Pine Street, but I guess others had the same idea and stocked up as well.

  I’m not worried. This will be plenty to last until the next rainfall, and I’ll have the catch systems up and running by then. Plus, we’ve got the twenty cases of drinking water, so I won’t even have to break into the tap water for awhile.

  Storing the empty soda bottles in the attic was the best idea you ever had. Well, maybe the second best idea, after marrying me. In any event, water shouldn’t be a problem for the foreseeable future. Thank you for that.

  I’m out of daylight. I’ve decided to save the candles for the wintertime, so I can use them for heat as well as light. That means working from dawn to dusk, then crashing during the nighttime hours. That’s okay, though, because I’m exhausted.

  Good night, Doll. Kiss the girls for me.

  -9-

  Dave awoke to the birds singing from the Sycamore tree outside his bedroom window. The sun was already up and well above the horizon. He’d lost at least an hour of daylight, but he didn’t see it as a major problem. He was exhausted from the day before, and needed the rest.

  He had two items on his agenda today. First, he’d finish up the project he’d started the day before, and when he was finished his perimeter fence would be fortified as an added measure against prowlers.

  After he was done with that, he’d break into his Faraday cage and take out his generator. Then he’d use some of the pre-drilled plywood and two by fours from the lumber pile in the garage and build a small soundproof enclosure for it.

  Once the enclosure was done, he’d be able to run his generator for short periods of time in his garage without his neighbors being able to hear it.

  If he happened to finish both of the projects today, he’d move onto a third: putting together his outhouse. But there was no real hurry on that. The hole he’d dug in the back corner of the yard would suffice for now.

  He debated with himself about the pace he wanted to set for himself. He knew that there were a hundred different things to do before he could live a reasonably comfortable existence.

  His initial impulse was to work his ass off and get everything done as quickly as he could.

  But the other side of the coin was, once everything was done his biggest enemy would be boredom. Once he finished all his projects, there would be little to do. And he wasn’t the type of person who could stand still for very long.

  In the end he wound up in something of a compromise with himself. Every day, he’d select a couple of projects to do, based on their order of importance. If he finished those projects, he’d take the rest of the day off and read, or listen to the music on the small boom box in the Faraday cage.

  If he didn’t finish, he’d work right up until sundown, and then crash for the night.

  The previous day, he’d been working his way around the perimeter of his privacy fence, installing screws into holes that he’d pre-drilled months before.

  His fence was typical of all the others in the neighborhood. Fence posts were planted on eight foot centers, and three two-by-four stringers were run horizontally between the posts. Pine pickets, six feet tall and six inches wide, were nailed to the stringers to complete the fence.

  Months before, Dave had spent the better part of a week with a rechargeable drill, going from one picket to the next, and drilling two holes into each picket, an inch from the top of the fence.

  Sarah thought he had lost his mind and went out to see what he was doing.

  She said, “Hey, honey, are you okay?”

  “Sure. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I’ve been watching you work your way down the fence for the last half hour. You’re drilling hundreds of holes, but not doing anything with them. It just seems kind of strange to me, that’s all. Should I call a shrink?”

  “No, smartass. I’m pre-drilling holes so when the world goes black we can fortify our fence.”

  “Oh, yes! That’s right, I forgot. And how, exactly, is a bunch of holes going to fortify our fence?”

  “Because in the garage is a forty pound box of two inch screws that we’ll screw into the holes, facing the outside, when the stuff hits the fan. Anybody who tries to climb over the fence will shred his hands to pieces, and I’m guessing he’ll go to another yard that’s easier to get into.”

  “But I thought we were going to hide in plain sight, by making the house appear to be vacant.”

  “We are. This is just an added precaution, in case somebody is too stupid to get the message.”

  “Smart. I guess you never can be too careful, huh?”

  “That’s my thinking. This will take a little time, but it’s a really cheap security system. Just some cheap screws and some time is all.”

  “So, you’re going all the way around the yard?”

  “Yep. And not only our yard, but the Hansen house as well.”

  The Hansen house was a large two story structure directly behind them. They shared a common back fence.

  The Hansens had moved out more than a year before, when their walls started developing severe cracks. An insurance inspector pulled up the carpet and padding, and discovered that the walls weren’t the only thing cracking. So was the foundation.

  The city condemned the structure as unsafe. The insurance company accused the builder of improperly packing the soil before the slab was poured.

  The builder, in turn, said there must have been an earthquake. He denied responsibility for what he called an “isolated act of nature.”

  The case had been tied up in the courts for months. Dave and Sarah were hoping it took years to resolve. The house was huge, and would provide enough lumber to provide their firewood needs for at least a couple of years. Also, the back yard was three times the size of their own, with an eight foot privacy fence. It would be perfect for growing crops.

  But possibly the best things were the apple and pecan trees in the front of the back yard, close to
the house. They were five years old now with established root systems. That meant they’d survive on their own, with only minimal watering needed during an occasional drought.

  “Aren’t you afraid that someone will see you over there, drilling holes in their fence?”

  “Who’s coming? The Hansens have already moved up to Waco. The bank never comes around anymore. They’ve turned it all over to the lawyers.”

  Sure enough, Dave was able to spend three days in the back yard of the Hansen house, drilling two small holes in each of the six hundred eighty four fence slats.

  And no one had a clue.

  He was finding now, though, that drilling hundreds of holes was a piece of cake, when compared with screwing in hundreds of screws without the aid of an electric drill.

  Oh, he did have a drill in his Faraday cage. And he had a generator to power it. Or, at least to charge the batteries which would power it.

  The problem was, he couldn’t try his hardest to convince the neighbors and passersby that the house was vacant, and then be working in the back yard with a noisy drill.

  So here he was, with an orange and white Home Depot pocket apron around his waist, right over the top of his military surplus web belt and holster. Both pockets on the apron were full of two-inch long black screws, and he was slowly moving from picket to picket screwing the screws into the holes.

  It was a slow process, and a painful one. His forearms were on fire and he frequently had to stop and rest, when his hands temporarily ceased to function. He was convinced that by the time he finished the task, his forearms would be as big as a bodybuilder’s, and would be so heavy he wouldn’t be able to lift them.

  At a little after three p.m., he was sick of screwing screws into fence pickets.

  He figured that what he needed more than anything was a change of scenery.

  So he took a break, just long enough to eat four barbacoa tacos. He’d retrieved the food from his Explorer the first night of the blackout, while his Jerry cans were filling underneath Sarah’s Honda. Initially, he’d kept it in the refrigerator, hoping it didn’t spoil before he finished eating it all.