A-Sides
Page 74
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She wasn't so foolish as to believe she had planned for every contingency that might crop up. She was only curious as to what they might be and if she could adapt.
The first few days had been bad as the carnage was localized. Even though she was fairly well insulated, she had still heard the poundings on her door on the first day. The shouts and pleas for aid, the breaking of her window glass and the metallic rapping against the obdurate, steel shutters; the screams and gunfire.
No-one had gotten in the first day. They had on the second. She didn't know how they had found ingress, but she could hear muffled voices and footfalls above her head. As soon as she had heard the footfalls she had shut down all her equipment, afraid the intruders might hear the telltale hum of the rectifiers, or the sound of a relay clicking on or off. She sat, trembling, her pistol in hand, hoping to stay hidden. She was sure the power was out by now and, unless the intruders had flashlights, they were as in the dark as she was.
She heard cabinets and closets being opened and closed. They would, she hoped, take whatever could be taken from the pantry and the fridge, be on their way, and not be squatters. Then there were new, slower footfalls on the floor. Then hoarse shouts, then gunfire, then screams. She could only imagine the unholy drama being played out as Zombie and human clashed.
Then the shouting and gunfire ceased. For the next few hours, even though she knew it couldn't be, she imagined she heard a multitude of footfalls, the ripping sounds of tearing flesh, slurping, and breaking bones. Then it was over. Until the sounds she heard (or thought she had heard) had been mute for several hours, she dared not power up her equipment.
Worse was the deafening silence that came several days later. That was something she had not planned for. As her little corner of the world was wiped clean of the living and the undead, the sound -or rather the not sound- of a bygone civilization settled like a closing curtain.
The everyday dissonance of engines, cars whishing by, the hum of appliances and power lines, the distant squawk of a radio, even the sounds of human voices had vanished. She could from time to time hear the wind blow, but mostly it was the hum of her own equipment. It was, she supposed, the only thing which kept her from going mad.
It was becoming harder to keep track of time and the days. There were no radio transmissions. Neither commercial, nor shortwave, nor CB. She had a day and date clock, but she didn't trust it, not being able to see with her own eyes the sun and the moon. Those were the times she wished she had installed a CCTV camera, but she had been afraid of the risk. Even if it had been wireless, it would have tipped off any bad guys that there was someone nearby who was scoping out the situation. She didn't want that.
Her refuse and septic systems were working as advertised, but faint, unpleasant odors of sewage and rot were gathering, and she was afraid that would be yet another telltale. She reflected, unhappily, that she was fast becoming one of the things she had most despised in her previous life: A mushroom. Those that were kept in the dark, buried in bullshit, and if they stuck their head above the bullshit, they got it chopped off and eaten.
The whole world was injun territory now, black as the pit from pole to pole. She was afraid to creep up the stairs, stick her head up, and peer out her door.
The irony was not wasted on her.
She had her books, and her videos, and her CD's, but was often afraid to utilize then for fear they would be heard, or her reading lights would be seen, or she would drain her batteries.
So she mostly sat and thought about the world she had left behind, and the world to come.
She still believed the world deserved to be swept away. She had only her experience in the good old U.S. of A to guide her, but she supposed it wasn't much different anywhere else.
She thought 535 shaved Bonobos could do a better job than the house and senate. They would be at least as intelligent and not nearly as corrupt.
She hated an intelligence apparatus haunted by more spooks than an English castle, ready and willing to drop the hammer on anyone unready to sing the official narrative.
She really despised a two party system that, when it had a choice of over three hundred million Americans, still managed to cough up a world class felon and a reality TV star as their champions. She couldn't countenance the kind of plonkers that would dish up such a sexless harridan or orange-haired billionaire, or the kind of voters that would pull the lever for either of them.
Americans had been Gruberized, apparently developing a taste for shit and asking for seconds, and America itself had become a five dollar whore that gave three dollars change.
But what came after? With all the SJW's firmly convinced of a Utopia of puppy kisses and happy pills being brought to them by a world government full of bloviating viziers, mandarins, and moguls, what they would really get was a New World Order of Peasant under glass. They'd already killed us off once. What made them think they wouldn't do it again?
There would be survivors, sure, there always were, but they would be no more than they had been before: Slaves to their betters who would be, after they got Continuance of Government up and running, farting through silk again soon enough. How could it be otherwise? Those peasants weren't going to oppress themselves.
She frowned. She could reasonably expect to live ten or twenty more years and she shouldn't be thinking about such things. Such thoughts could only lead down one path.
Still, for almost the first time in her life, she wished she could hear -even if it was Connie Prager's- another human voice.