Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  All eyes turned to Sage’s backpack leaning against a rock.

  “I have a couple more Mountain Houses, but that’s about it.”

  Justin started pulling stuff out and tossing it on the ground.

  “Hey, bro, that’s my stuff. Take it easy.” Sage stood.

  “We agreed when you came in here—you’re sharing everything, remember? We’ve shared our stuff with you; now you’re going to share back.” Justin continued tearing the pack apart.

  “I have been sharing,” Sage argued.

  “Yeah? Then what’s this?” Justin pulled out a Mountain House berry cobbler. “You didn’t tell us you had this.”

  “Nobody asked,” Sage answered.

  “Right. You sound like a selfish capitalist asshole. When we invited you into this camp, everything you owned became ours. Why would you keep this for yourself?” Justin held up the cobbler like an indictment.

  “Whatever, bro. When I joined you, this was just a camping trip. Take whatever you want. It’s not going to matter. We need a long-term plan for food and water or we’re screwed.”

  “Don’t you worry, little man, I have a plan.” Justin took the berry cobbler and left the mess on the ground. Sage got up and repacked his gear.

  “You don’t have to be mean, Justin,” chubby Nora defended Sage. “At least he’s looking for options.” Her defense made Sage squirm. Maybe he hadn’t been fair with her, writing her off as someone too old to relate.

  When Sage had his backpack together, he turned to Penny. “I’m going to dig up some onions. I want to see what we can do with them. I’ll figure out the best way to do it and come get you guys, if you want.” He marched out of camp, churning through options in his mind. He wasn’t going to let Justin treat him like that. Not for long, anyway.

  It took Sage an hour to collect more onions than he could carry in his shirt. When he came back, things had settled down.

  “Sorry I got so intense with you,” Justin apologized. “I’m just worried. Maybe we should try some of those onions.” He pointed at Sage’s shirt and smiled.

  “Yeah, I was thinking we might try cooking them over the coals,” Sage said, accepting the apology.

  “Sounds good. I’ll help you collect firewood.” Sage and Justin did a quick circuit of the surrounding area and brought back a bunch of dry sagebrush. Everyone was hungry since they had skipped lunch, so the group gathered around as Sage and Justin stacked the sagebrush into their makeshift fire pit.

  “What are you doing?” Sage looked up from the fire to see Penny pouring water from one bottle to another bottle, passing the water through her shirt.

  “I’m screening the pond water. We can’t get water from the farmer because we’re out of gas, so we’re filtering this.”

  “Did anyone drink that?” Sage asked, concern in his voice.

  “Yeah. We made a bottle earlier for coffee when we ran out of bottled water.”

  “Who drank it?” Sage stopped working on the fire and focused on Penny.

  “Just me. I drank the last pot.” Penny shrugged. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Maybe. How hot did you get the coffee?”

  “Not quite boiling. We ran out of gas. Why?” She looked puzzled.

  Sage shook his head and exhaled loudly. “I don’t know for sure, but that water is likely to have bacteria and stuff. You can’t drink it unless it’s thoroughly filtered, then boiled.”

  “I feel fine,” Penny said. “It looks good. It comes out of that pipe. Justin said it was a spring.”

  “It might be a spring, all right, but that doesn’t mean it’s pure. Let us know if you start feeling sick. Nobody else drink that water unless it’s brought to a full boil for several minutes. Okay?” Sage looked around and everyone seemed to be listening except Tyson. He was hitting the bong.

  Justin squinted at Sage, his hands on his hips. “I said it was a spring. I didn’t say it was okay to drink from it.” The man covered his possible error.

  “Also, where’s everyone pooping?” Sage asked.

  Nobody ’fessed up. “Listen, we can’t relieve ourselves anywhere near the pond or we’ll get sick, no matter how carefully we boil the water. We need to set a specific crapping area.” Sage sensed his detente with Justin slipping.

  “Justin, where do you want us to take our dumps?” Sage turned to him, acting as though he was their leader.

  “Let’s crap over behind that big bush on the other side of the dirt road. Okay, guys?” Everyone nodded. “We’ll dig a pit there after we eat.”

  Sage turned back to the fire pit and got the sagebrush burning. After half an hour, they had burned the sagebrush down to coals. Sage put the onions directly on the hot coals.

  “Isn’t that going to burn them?” Condie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Sage said. “It should burn the outer layers and cook the inside. It’s almost like steaming them in their husks. Do we have any salt?” Nobody seemed to know, which meant they didn’t.

  They ate all the onions. With the smoky flavor, salt would have been nice. Everyone but Tyson thanked Sage. Tyson insisted he hated onions and refused to try any.

  After lunch, Nora suggested they bathe. “Would it hurt if we bathed in the pond, Sage? We’re starting to smell bad. The tent at night… it’s gross.”

  Sage had no idea if bathing in the pond would be a health risk, but he was suddenly seized by the prospect of seeing the girls naked, so he put on his most expert-sounding voice. “I think we should be okay. Just nobody crap or pee in there.”

  “Great,” Nora said. “Then I’m taking a bath. Who’s with me?”

  Sage looked sideways at Penny. “Yeah,” Penny said, “I’m in.”

  As the group queued up to go into the pond, the moment of truth came. Nobody wanted to seem prudish, so everyone slowly undressed until it came down to underwear. An unspoken hesitation passed through the group as they stood on the rocky edge of the pond in their underwear, their feet uncomfortable on the stones. Finally, Justin pulled off his underwear, his penis dangling, and jumped into the water. Everyone followed suit, with Sage running last in line as he furtively checked out naked Penny.

  She was just full-figured enough to look exotic—not the picture-perfect nudes he was used to seeing on internet porn. Her unshaved bush, and the fact that it had been a while since he had seen a naked girl, turned him on in a mad rush. He had to jump into the pond to hide his erection.

  Penny swam up to Sage as they played and splashed. “So, Mountain Man, what’re we going to do next?”

  Sage felt the warmth of her approval amplified by her nakedness. The question seemed incredibly intimate to him. Somewhere in the back of his head, he suspected the implied intimacy was intentional on her part, but he went with it, more or less helpless.

  He thought for a few seconds, then began. “We need to improve our shelter situation. That tent’s not going to cut it. One big rain will soak all the sleeping bags, and then we’ll have a hypothermia problem. So that’s a top priority. As far as food, we can live off onions for a while. There are tons of them in that field, plus there are other fields. Water’s going to be an issue. We need to come up with a better filtration system, and then we have to boil everything. I’ll start work on that tomorrow.”

  As she looked at him expectantly, he got the impression she wasn’t really listening. She just wanted to know someone was handling her survival. Apparently he had risen to the position of “Mountain Man” in her mind, just as he had hoped. With this latest development, things felt strangely okay.

  The group tired of swimming and climbed out of the pond, picking their way across the rocks and back to their clothes. Sage was the last out, getting a solid eyeful of the naked women. He needed a minute before he could climb out after them.

  An hour later, an onslaught of diarrhea hit Penny. The slurry of biota in her morning coffee triggered an all-out counter-offensive by her intestinal tract, and she blew liquid out the top and bottom ends of her s
ystem. Every ten minutes, she ran back to the crapper bush to expel another jet of liquefied coffee and onions. They could hear the pop and rush of her bowel explosions all the way from camp.

  Ross Home, Henderson, Nevada

  When Cameron and Julie pulled into the country club in Henderson, Nevada, the gate hung open, smashed and buckled. Papers billowed out of the gatehouse and spread across the once-impeccable entryway; hundreds of little slips of paper, like waterlogged lily pads, speckled the pond.

  Until the world went to hell, this home owners’ association prowled the grounds like a golf-tanned grandma gestapo, catching any infraction of the rules within hours, if not minutes. Cameron celebrated each piece of garbage alongside the otherwise pristine streets of the golfer’s paradise. The rich pricks were running scared, just like everyone else, and it gave his soul small respite. As fate would have it, all men were equal before Master Mayhem.

  The spinning wheel of fate chattered to a stop on “Winner,” and Cameron found everything he needed and more at the resort home his sister would never see again. The house hadn’t been touched. Several boxes of freeze-dried sat on the garage shelves. Alongside the food, he found chlorine-preserved water in big, square jugs. While everything in the fridge and freezer was warm and fetid, the cupboard gave up a bounty of canned food; weird stuff, like canned olives and refried beans, but it would be a welcome complement to the freeze-dried food they had been eating. Best of all, they found a dozen bottles of good wine. They wouldn’t be drinking much alcohol, but the wine might come in handy for trade.

  Out back, Cameron saw the first sign of theft. A hose snaked up and over the wall and into Jenna’s pool—some desperate neighbor siphoning their pool water away to stave off the inevitable refugee journey to Lake Mead. Cameron didn’t plan on staying long enough to use the pool water, so he let it be.

  The home owners’ association would have given spontaneous birth to kittens if they had discovered the gasoline his brother-in-law had secretly stored alongside his garage—a huge no-no in the Cult of Safety that had saturated America since around the year 2000. A fifty-five-gallon drum of unleaded had been concealed inside a pool toy locker, complete with a hand pump. Cameron assumed the gas had been preserved with STA-BIL. It wasn’t like his brother-in-law to leave something like gasoline storage to chance.

  Best of all, the gun safe was untouched, and Cameron knew the code. Inside, he found an AR-15 assault rifle, six mags and an entire case of .223 ammunition. Up top, his brother-in-law had stashed a handgun―a Kimber 1911 .45ACP, with five mags and four boxes of shells. Cameron would keep his Beretta, but the AR-15 made him feel a lot better about things in general. He bundled up the guns and loaded them in the 4Runner. He stuffed the AR-15 alongside the driver’s seat.

  “How long are we staying?” Julie came up beside him while he was loading the guns and ammo.

  “We should get out of here as soon as I fuel up. Every minute, things get dicier on the road.”

  “Are we going to head through Vegas again?” she asked, an edge of panic in her voice. There was probably nothing Julie wouldn’t do to avoid going through the Strip again.

  “No, we’re heading toward Hoover Dam,” Cameron told her. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll cut back and try to cross the Colorado River at Laughlin.”

  Julie seemed okay with any plan that headed away from the living hell on I-15.

  Cameron rolled the big gas barrel out to the driveway, noticing that it was only partially full. That suited him fine. His SUV only took about twenty-five gallons anyway. He would refill his gas cans if there was any left. Next time he went to buy an SUV, if there ever was a next time, he would pay more attention to the range of the fuel tank. The maximum range on the 4Runner was a joke.

  Thirty minutes later, the car was packed, the gas cans full and the additional food added to their cache. Cameron rolled the tank back around to the side yard, and out of respect for his brother-in-law and sister, locked up the house.

  The traffic heading out Highway 93 was bumper to bumper, but it moved along better than the I-15, ten miles per hour instead of two. In a couple of hours, they arrived at the Hoover Dam crossing. Cameron already knew it was open or the highway wouldn’t have been moving at all.

  Someone, presumably the government, had tried to block off the suspension bridge with concrete barricades. Why they would do that, Cameron had no idea. With so many people fleeing Vegas, it had only been a matter of time before someone came by with something big enough to shove the barricades out of the way. By then, nobody was still on duty. Cameron could see cars crossing the dam itself, like back in the eighties, unconcerned with terrorist bomb threats.

  Making the most of their good fortune, he pushed hard, driving late into the night. The traffic lightened, and he reached Kaibab National Park before he became too exhausted to drive.

  They pulled off where their road map showed a campground at Cataract Lake. Cameron thanked his dad over and over in his mind for badgering him about keeping maps in his car. It was one of the more useful “Dad-isms” as it turned out, since his Apple maps had stopped working somewhere in the California desert.

  Cataract Lake Campground overflowed with refugees from Vegas. Beneath the Ponderosa pines, cars parked willy-nilly, ignoring designated camp sites and parking spaces. Cameron pulled in beside a Ford F-250 truck with a California Angels bumper sticker. Even though the guy had Vegas plates, Cameron figured he would do okay next to another Angels’ fan. The guy was still awake by the fire, rolling a joint. It felt like providence.

  pulled in and the guy looked up, bothered by the intrusion. Cameron tucked his Beretta into his waistband around back and jumped out of the 4Runner with a winning smile. “Angels’ fan, huh?” he commented.

  “Yeah, sure am, dyed in the wool.” The guy licked the paper and finished off his joint.

  “I was born and raised in Anaheim.”

  “You got here from Anaheim? You musta seen some horrible shit.”

  “Yeah, more than I care to say. My name’s Cameron, by the way.”

  “I’m Sal. From Los Angeles, too, but right now from Vegas.” The men shook hands without Sal getting up.

  “No family?” Cameron looked around and didn’t see any tents or camping equipment near Sal’s truck.

  “Nope. My kid lives in Vacaville with her mom. I’m on my own.” Sal lit the joint and hit it.

  “It’s gotta be better in Vacaville than here,” Cameron mused.

  “Couldn’t be worse. You want a toke?” Sal reached out to Cameron with the joint.

  Cameron didn’t hesitate. “I sure do. I’m wound up tighter than a monkey’s nuts.” He took a hit and passed it back. “Where you headed?”

  “I’m going to Burley, Idaho. I got cousins who own a farm up there. I figure I can work for them until things get back to normal. I don’t think things will get cleaned up in Vegas for a while. I’m done there, anyway. You traveling with kids?” One of Cameron’s little ones had woken up and was squawking. Julie struggled to get them back to sleep in the cramped SUV, since Cameron didn’t feel like digging out the tent. They would be leaving as early in the morning as possible.

  Cameron and Sal chatted while they worked down the joint. On impulse, Cameron asked Sal to hold on a second. He dug around in the car and pulled out his brother-in-law’s Kimber, stored in its plastic case.

  “You have a gun?” Cameron asked, carrying the plastic case over to the campfire.

  “Nope. Never got around to buying one.”

  By the look of things, Cameron guessed his new friend was probably a felon from way back and couldn’t get a gun even if he did “get around to it.”

  “How about I loan you this one? It’s my brother-in-law’s gun, and I have my own Beretta. I don’t think he’d mind if you took care of her for a couple days. Maybe she’ll take care of you.”

  “Seriously?” Sal gawked at the gun case.

  “Yeah. Here you go.” Cameron handed him the case and a box of
shells. “That’s a .45, so hang on tight when you shoot.”

  “How do I get this back to you?” Sal popped open the case and stared at the gun, reluctant to touch it.

  “We’re heading in the same direction, so you can give it back in Salt Lake City. If we get separated… here, I’ll write my brother-in-law’s address on this box.” Cameron grabbed a pen from the 4Runner and wrote Jason and Jenna’s address on the carton of .45 ammunition.

  “Dude, thank you. I don’t know how I can repay you,” Sal said. “Tell you what, take anything you want out of the back of my truck. Anything you want.”

  Cameron cast a glance at Sal’s truck but reconsidered. “Naw, I’m good. I couldn’t fit any more in my rig than I got already. What time you planning on leaving in the morning?”

  “First light.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll catch you then.” Cameron slapped both knees and walked around to the driver’s side of the SUV for a few hours of uncomfortable shut-eye.

  6

  “There was thunder, there was lightning

  Then the stars went out and the moon fell from the sky

  It rained mackerel, it rained trout

  And the great day of wrath has come

  And here’s mud in your big red eye

  The poker’s in the fire and the locusts take the sky”

  Earth Died Screaming, Tom Waits, Bone Machine, 1992

  Wallula, Washington, “Starbucks Camp”

  Penny struggled all night and all the next day with uncontrollable diarrhea. Sage began to worry that it might be life-threatening. By mid-afternoon, she seemed to be running to the crapper less often.

  Thanks to the survival manual his grandpa had given him, Sage took the morning to build a better water filter for the camp. After wandering about the fields, he found a couple of metal drums—about fifteen gallons each. He took one of the drums and hammered the bottom with a rock, making a funnel-shaped depression. At the lowest point, he punched a small hole with his Leatherman multi-tool, ruining the edge on the leather punch in the process. He scooped the cold coals out of their fire pit and filled a third of the drum, tamping them down. He found fine sand and filled the drum the rest of the way to the top. He tested the filter with pond water and the water dribbled out of the funnel clear.