My fears seemed to magnify as we grew closer and closer to shore. At first, land was but a blip of black on the western horizon, caught occasionally when the waves lifted us high enough to see. But slowly it grew into a continual black line, and then a more distinctive mass, and then we could see the outlines of buildings, and eventually even trees. And just about the time my body was beginning to give up after our arduous fight, Jeremy said he felt something. At first, my stomach knotted in fear, thinking he meant a shark, but then my foot touched it too – terra firma!
Neither one of us could walk as we hauled ourselves onto the shore’s rain-hardened sand. We crawled on our hands and knees and then sprawled onto our bellies once we were sure we were far enough from the sea’s wretched grasp that it wouldn’t reclaim us. We lay for what felt like hours, but was only probably minutes, gasping for breath and reveling in the safe comfort of “home”.
Finally, we managed to gather ourselves enough to drag ourselves off the beach. It was only then that we realized our true struggle to survive was just beginning.
It was during those first few days back in Florida that we started to understand that our being stranded at sea was a blessing in disguise. While we had encountered the devastation the Su flu’s effects had wrought on our ship’s passengers and crew, we had no comprehension of what the Su flu had done to the mainland populace.
While the Su flu had devastated the world’s population during its first few weeks, the human race had done a fine job in decimating what remained of itself in the aftermath. Looting, rioting, and general anarchy had provided those desiring to wreak havoc with the ability to do so carte blanche. And that, paired with a lack of food, utilities, sanitary services, and government assistance at all levels, meant that anyone who had remained alive through the first three weeks of the Su flu had to count themselves extremely lucky. While no official statistics were ever gathered on survivor rates (since pretty much all the statisticians were dead), it is estimated that somewhere in the range of 95 percent of the world’s population succumbed to the Su flu and its aftermath.
Even then, after all the death that had been reaped, the world wasn’t done beating up on itself.
As we found our way into town (Cocoa Beach, Florida being the town), we began trying to put together the puzzle pieces of what had happened and how. But that was easier said than done. Initially, the place looked like a ghost town. Streets were sprinkled with burned out or abandoned vehicles. Stores had been ransacked of any useful goods. Buildings had doors and windows smashed or were burnt out. It was a mess. And there was hardly a person to be found.
Thankfully, after a few hours of aimless wandering, we stumbled our way to a condo complex where several families had banded together to weather the flu and its ensuing chaos. Amazingly, after a few tense moments and a few minutes of listening to our incredible story, they made us an offer to join their group if we were willing to pull our weight by helping out around the place.
We immediately and graciously accepted their offer and found a home with them for the next several months until the worst of the flu and its aftershocks died down – or at least we THOUGHT they had died down.
We began the long learning process of how to not only survive but begin to thrive in the post-flu world, a world which was very much different from the one we left on our honeymoon.
Our small group felt very much alone at first as we struggled to learn how to survive independent from the society and services that had been offered pre-flu. It took us several months to figure things out, and just as we were beginning to experience some level of comfort again, things got even tougher.
Humanity – what was left of it at least – seemed unable to come together to battle as one against its new situation. Therefore, humanity did what it seems to do best, battle against itself. That’s when the war for the new world began. Various factions fought a battle for freedom to live independently, not just in Florida but in the southeast as a whole. It took time and many lives, but eventually, people who had a vision not just to fight, and steal, and live under tyrannical rule prevailed, and we were among them. A government in Florida was eventually formed to help the survivors live with some semblance of pre-flu societal rules.
While things are far different now from the pre-flu world, in some ways, they’re better. People seem to enjoy life and the art of living more now than they did pre-flu. While the advanced technology of the pre-flu age is gone (likely forever), its absence provides us with a new, somewhat refreshing perspective on life. We tend not to take our lives for granted as we once did. Post-flu life has impressed upon us a greater appreciation for what we have, who we have, and the little things that make our lives brighter.
As for Jeremy and me, well, I have to say that while we miss certain aspects of our pre-flu lives, all things considered, we’ve fared reasonably well since being washed back to shore. As I mentioned, we were helped back onto our feet by a group of flu survivors. From there, we worked to establish a small community of likeminded survivors in the area, building a network formed from people with different skills and abilities to make life livable in a world with very little assistance from others.
After the wars that ravaged the post-flu south, and the subsequent organization of some level of leadership and government in the region, we learned how to fish, hunt, farm, scavenge, and perform the duties that allowed our small band of survivors to eventually begin to thrive. And finally, after several years of such living, we had our first child, Jacob. Two years after that, we had our second, Jennifer. Now both children are in school – yes, school! We actually have schools again after going several years without them. There is also local government with police and fire services, health centers (the closest things to what we once knew as hospitals), and more recently, even some levels of sewer and electric services in certain areas.
I work in one of the health centers, having rekindled my skills as a physical therapist and honed other skills that allow me to provide nursing services to patients. Jeremy has worked in several roles since our honeymoon cruise. When things were tougher, and we were just struggling to survive, he learned how to fish, since it was the easiest way to harvest abundant food for our group. After several years however, and as our community grew larger and better organized, he utilized his former training as an electrical engineer to take a job with the local government developing and helping to build a solar energy grid for the community.
Like I said, it’s a far cry from the life we lived before, but it’s all we have, and in some ways, it’s all we want. We’ve now lived in our current environment for so long that we hardly miss what we no longer have.
Do I still think of Chicago and the former life it once offered? Sure, of course. Do I miss it? Sometimes. But it’s kind of like remembering your childhood years. You remember them with the haze of a gauzed lens formed from years of forgetfulness and suppressed memories. Initially, up wells the fondness and longing, paired with a touch of yearning to return to those carefree times. But if you really dig down and start to sort through the memories, you find that there was plenty of struggle there as well. And maybe those fond memories aren’t really all that fond after all. You’re just choosing to recall the positive circumstances while burying the negative. I think that back then, Jeremy and I were becoming lost in the culture of “keeping up”. We had the big wedding – just like our friends. We had the important, well paying jobs – just like our friends. We had the big honeymoon – just like our friends. We were living for others, not for ourselves.
The flu and the world it destroyed and then re-built, allows for a greater appreciation for simply being alive. Now there aren’t enough of us to try to live as though we’re “keeping up with the Joneses” as they used to say. Our greater sense of community knits us together so tightly because we must all work together for the greater good instead of our own personal gain. I’m not saying that we live in a utopia – anything but. Life is hard, much harder than it used to be. Is there
still greed, vice, crime, poverty? Of course. We didn’t land in Shangri-la. We landed back in the same United States we left, with the same people, just a lot fewer of them and in a post-apocalyptic environment. That environment forced upon us, though, a new way of thinking and living. It took from us the cushion that made us so comfortable, so complacent, so eager to ignore the true appreciation for life and living.
And thus, we forge ahead as best we can, measuring our life not in terms of possessions or our counterparts, but in how we’re living each day and what we’re contributing to the rebuilding of our nation. We’re doing our best to create a place that focuses more on who we are and what we can offer our community than what or how much we have, what job title is next to our name, or how many “likes” our latest social media post garnered.
So while our honeymoon cruise ten years ago was one of the hardest, and frankly, worst events of our lives, in another way, it saved us. It saved us not only from the effects of the flu raging on the mainland while we were stranded at sea, but it saved us, as well as many other survivors, from a life in which we weren’t actually living in a way that touched us intrinsically. And it honed within us a truer sense of what we should value and the ways in which we value it.
K.W. CALLAHAN
THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES
BOOK 4: BEACON OF SOLACE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.
Text and image copyright © 2018 K.W. Callahan
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Callahan, K.W.
The Dystopian Diaries – Book 4: Beacon of Solace / K.W. Callahan
ISBN: 9781694078827
BOOKS BY K.W. CALLAHAN
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DOWNFALL
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: QUEST
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DESCENT
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: FORSAKEN
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: ASCENSION
AFTERMATH: PARTS I-III
THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE GUEST WHO STAYED OVER
THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE LINEN PRESSED GUEST
PALOS HEIGHTS
PANDEMIC DIARY: SHELTER IN PLACE
PANDEMIC DIARY: FLEE ON FOOT
PANDEMIC DIARY: PANDEMIC PIONEERS
THE FIFTH PHASE: BOOKS 1-5
THE LAST BASTION: BOOKS 1-5
THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES: BOOKS 1-5
THE DYSTOPIAN DIARIES
BOOK 4: BEACON OF SOLACE
August 28th
3:29 p.m.
Woooo!!!! What a day it has been! Busy, busy, busy!!!
It’s only three-thirty and I’m pooped already! But it’s a good pooped, not a “day at work” pooped. I feel exhausted but invigorated all at the same time if that makes any sense. I’m exhausted because of all the things to do here. I’m invigorated for exactly the same reason.
Living here is so much different in so many ways from back home. I guess I shouldn’t say “back home” anymore. This IS home now.
I meant to start this journal several days ago, back when I first arrived, but I’ve been so slammed with things on my to-do list and with trying to get the cabin in order that I just haven’t had a chance. Night time is usually the best time to write, when things finally slow down a little, but then I’m just so beat that I can barely keep my eyes open. And if I even touch the bed, it’s all over – lights out!
Oh wait, I just thought of something else I need to do. I’d better jot it down before I forget.
3:41 p.m.
Sorry about that. I’m making a list of odds and ends that I still need to get. They’re items that didn’t make the cut on my list of stuff to bring with me or the initial list of stuff to pick up on my first foray into town. They’re those things that you only realize you need once you get out here and don’t have them – certain length nails or screws, hinges, sealant, that sort of stuff for home (or in this case, “cabin”) repairs. And then of course there are weird things like mouse traps (which I’ve never needed and never thought I’d need), bug repellant, and extra fishing line and hooks – stuff you really don’t use much when you’re living in the city.
So, I’m a 46-year-old retired (yes, I guess I can say “retired” now, at least for the foreseeable future) financial advisor and self-professed lover of nature. No, I’m not one of those eco-nuts going bananas on the rest of the world because they’re not as eco-friendly as me. I do my part, but I do it in a way that doesn’t infringe upon the beliefs and practices of others. What other people want to do or not do, that’s up to them. I’m just going to live my life doing what I feel is right and what feels right to me.
It’s kind of interesting in a way; my environmentally friendly practices mostly came into being as a result of my work. Finance, efficiency, and economy have been interests of mine since I was a kid. Maybe it was from spending so much time with my grandparents who had lived through The Great Depression. Maybe it was just something that came naturally, I don’t really know. What I DO know is that as a result of living an efficient and economical life, I found that not only could I save money, but I could help the environment at the same time.
When everyone else was getting flat-screen televisions, I was content to use my old box TV until it died. Then I went and bought a similar model at the local Goodwill store for two bucks. When people were out spending thousands of dollars on new clothes, I was willing to select mine from the resale rack. When people just HAD to have a new car every three or four years, I drove my 14-year-old used car until the tires fell off (not literally of course – the drive shaft exploded, but that’s a story for another day). When people were doing kitchen renovations in their mega-mansions, I was happy going without new cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and granite countertops in my efficiency apartment.
As Thoreau writes in “Walden”, “I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.”
My long story short, while everyone was buying into the “American dream” – a dream that seemed to me filled with eco-unfriendly and expensive practices – I was happy to live my own dream, saving a sizeable pile of cash AND the environment in the process. At the same time, I’m willing to recognize that it would be much harder for me to live that life without the hand-me-downs of the less efficient. So in my mind, it all balances. Can’t have the Yin without the Yang, right?
I’m just the Yin to their Yang. Hee-hee…that sounds kind of dirty, but whatever.
So when I say I’m a lover of nature, think of me more at a modern-day Thoreau (at least that’s how I see myself). I’m here for the beauty, the solitude, the serenity. Ha! Reminds me of that “Seinfeld” episode… “SERENITY NOWWWW!!!”
What a great show!
Okay, so enough about me. Sorry for all the blithering. But as Thoreau also wrote, “I should not talk so much about myself if there was any body else whom I knew as well.”
So where is “here?” Well, it’s about as far from my previous apartment back in downtown Chicago as I could get without completely leaving the Midwest (my home for as long as I’ve lived).
I’m in Mills Creek, Michigan. Actually, I shouldn’t say “in” Mills Creek. I’m about 10 miles outside town, which from what I hear could be a 15-minute drive, a 30-minute drive, or a 45-minute snowmobile ride depending on the weather. Speaking of which, that’s another item for my long-term to-do list – find a reliable snowmobile.
Mills Creek is way north. It’s not the Upper Peninsula, but close. And it’s on the Lake Michigan side.
And why exactly am I here? Well, that’s harder to answer. As my good friend Thoreau
put it in Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
Well, I got tired of living that life of “quiet desperation” and decided to do something about it. Taking a leap of faith, buying a plot of land with a small cabin on it in need of some TLC, quitting my job, and moving up here was what I did.
Okay, enough for now. I need to get back to work around the homestead. “So little to do, so much time. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.” – not Thoreau...maybe it was Willy Wonka. I can’t remember.
August 29th
7:12 a.m.
Ahhh…the mornings are just so damn beautiful here. I love waking up, making a pot of coffee on my quad-burner camp cook stove (there’s no oven in the cabin and it’s still too warm to fire up the cast-iron woodstove), and coming outside with my steaming hot cup of coffee to look out over the lake.
It’s mild out this morning and there’s dew on the ground that makes the wet grass glisten. There’s just something about the sun coming up over the treetops that makes me feel so fresh, alive, and ready for the day.
Thoreau –
“The morning, which is the most memorable season
of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is
least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least,
some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest
The Dystopian Diaries Page 43
