Spectre Island- Time Is Running Out!

by Ron Foster

  “Uh... Well… hummm. Let’s get us some strong rope and run some rat lines off the trees for folks to grab ahold of. No, I guess not that it would do much good if we get submerged.” Zack said.

  “What in the hell is a ratline?” Rod asked.

  “Safety line like you put around the edge of a boat deck when bad weather is coming so you got something to grab on to if a rogue wave tries to sweep you off the deck and knock you overboard during a storm. I guess that would be kind of stupid thing to do now on land but I seen plenty of folks get rescued from floods with ropes before. You’re a local guy, how high does the water actually get on this danged island when it floods around here anyway?” Zack asked remembering he was previously worried that the event they were having was being considered to be canceled because the causeway had been underwater from some late winter rains just a few weeks ago. The unprecedented heavy rainfall had created a deluge that had covered the whole state and het ad caused flash flooding in a lot of areas besides the island.

  “You know about as much as I do about that causeway going under water sort of regular. I told you already that there has been plenty of people stranded on this island before with rising water sneaking up in the night and sinking it but they all ended up just fine, That is except for them waiting an extended period for the waters to go down and were more or less dependent on the supplies they had with them.” Rod said.

  “Zack, I told you before that I was going to beat you good with a stick if you got me to get on a plane and come all the way down just to get me marooned on this island that you decided to have a party on!” Dee said not so playfully scolding him as she was walking up to their conversation.

  Dee had flown in from Boston to attend this apocalyptic author camping event and her not normally coming down south past the Mason Dixon line very often had given her some reservations about the trip. She was particularly concerned about this particular camping spots suitability when Zack had posted pictures of the causeway leading to the island underwater on his Facebook account previously.

  To make matters worse the durn airlines had lost her luggage and some kind of evil creature in the form of a hot seat giving southern biting bug had attacked her posterior after her not finding the light switch in a darkened latrine the evening before.

  Note to Northerners visiting the South or those unfamiliar with outhouse etiquette or otherwise protocol when you can’t see the toilet seat good. Kick the toilet judicially before having a seat and have a yourself look see first. Yellow jackets, bees and a few other stingy bitey things have an affinity for water and none of them need unexpectantly being sat on.

  When Zack first heard of the encounter with Ann he withheld any comment on the possible culprit because there was two dreaded things that lived down here, the well-known black widow spider and the worst of the worst brown recluse spider or fiddleback that is very rare but causes the bite spot to rot like you got gangrene. It wasn’t like he could tell his internet friend he just met to show him her hiney so he just shut up and listened to see if she had any worsening symptoms. No sense adding to her worry about the sign she saw coming into the campgrounds and him wanting her to go kayaking the next day.

  (Photo Courtesy Of Rod Oshell)

  “Well I can’t possibly hide all of the sticks and tree limbs on this island from you Dee, so you be awful careful about sneaking up in back of me when I don’t know your there!” Zack offered with a lame grin trying to add some levity and humor to the situation.

  “You ain’t got to worry about that, you already gave me a folding fishing knife when I got here remember? I might just filet your gizzard for you instead of whopping you on the noggin with a stick!” Dee said with a grin taking everything in stride like the good prepper she was but still feigning a bit of anger.

  “Oh No! Don’t be cutting on him none, I kind of like him the way he is!” Ann said joking back in mock shock before commiserating with her friend that she sure did indeed have some bad luck lately.

  “Rachel got me to put some Plantain weed on it and it seems to be a lot better but do you have anything else?” Dee asked.

  “That’s about best thing I can think of, I got some insect bite wipes but Zack swears by witch hazel which I got if you want to try.” Ann offered already having handed out a ton of this or that people needed but didn’t bring in her camping preps.

  “I will be ok, how high will this water get do you think?” Dee asked.

  “There is supposed to be an old woman that’s about 83 years old that lives here year-round in a RV and has been through several floods out here before, let’s go ask her.” Ann offered.

  “That sounds like a plan, you all go do that and I will attempt to get head count and make sure everyone is up here safe and not dinking around the shore playing sightseer or trying to break camp before we know it’s totally safe. I ain’t trusting those waters, that was an awful quick surge and we don’t know if we got any more surprises coming or not.

  “You got that right! My friggin jeep took a swim!” Earl said sternly looking like he was really pissed off.

  “Oh Man! Shit, no salvaging it brother?” Zack said alarmed.

  “Put it this way, it ain’t there no more! It might be underwater or it might have just floated away but I can’t see it in that muddy ass torrent.” Earl declared.

  “Ah hell, I got you covered though, I got an extra tent and some other crap you can have.” Zack offered.

  “You got a rocket sled hid somewhere to get me back home to my shit hit the fan preps? This sucks Zack!” earl said thinking that all the years of prepping and preparing he had done was for naught and all he had was the EDC (every Day Carry) he had in his pockets now to face this unknown disaster and was stuck on an island full of goats and older newbie bush crafters to survive with.

  “You got your gun?” Zack whispered asking about his concealed carry pistol.

  “If I got my pants on, I got my gun on but I lost all my sleep gear and fishing equipment etc. Hey I do still have that very cool Beeman multicaliber air rifle Ezra donated to the cause that I won at the raffle, along with two hundred and fifty .177 hunting pellets and the same in . 22 calibers” Earl said brightening up. If you were going to get stuck with only one gun besides your concealed carry in SHTF, he couldn’t ask for a better combo to depend on to try to survive an event like this with.

  “That’s the spirit! You’re a good man Earl! We will get ourselves through this ok somehow! Hey, do me a favor and grab Brent and try to help him herd the folks together for an important announcement. I don’t need a bunch of inexperienced dumbasses hanging around close to the river doing whatever it is they just feel like doing at this very moment. They need to be encouraged to stay inland for a bit before venturing back near the water again for a while. I think I got a pretty good general idea what just happened but I am as clueless as you are as to what really did just happen. Now don’t be pushing them folks too hard, but be firm about it that we need to be having us a group talk in ten minutes at the church ok? Hell, it was hard enough before getting them all gathered together so I could giveaway that beautiful Sea Eagle inflatable boat on this camp’s schedule. There is no telling how much foot dragging will go on now with that bunch to get them to assemble. If they don’t want to come and just drop whatever it is they are doing and come on, tell them I ain’t going to bother to wait to on anyone else that decides to wait until their own stupid time comes up to get around to doing something anymore.” Zack said disgustedly figuring it would be like herding cats as usual to get complete cooperation.

  “Shit I saw that late arrival to the raffle drawing crap, ungrateful fools. We are damn lucky now that you had that thing parked up here for the group photo and hadn’t given it away yet. Looks like that boat will be our only way off this island! What do you think just happened anyway Zack?” Earl asked.

  “Well some kind of grid down event just occurred that might have forced that hydroelectric damn upriver to release some water out of its g
ates all at once our way. What that event was in particular, I don’t really know yet. Now one fact to consider that you might not know because you ain’t from around here is, that the Great Alaskan quake back in the 1960’s affected us all the way down here in Alabama. Damndest thing you ever heard of! That small town on the mainland next to us used to have a nickname by the way, it was called “Fountain City” and the very day that big quake happened thousands of miles away from us, we found out it caused all the springs feeding the towns water features around here to stop. Boom! Just like that no more fountains, we felt a tremor and the water quit flowing. I am thinking it might be some kind of plate shift anomaly like that has occurred. Now since it appears that we got no radio airwaves flowing or emergency broadcasts that we can make any sense out of, I am thinking possibly a geomagnetic storm from the sun has triggered a fault line crack just like I have been preaching in my books for years. Solar geomagnetic storms have been known to set off volcanoes and earthquakes worldwide before by the way.” Zack said speculating on some of the research he had been doing over the years on solar storm effects on geomagnetism and earthquakes.

  “I think you are right! I have been following your writings for years and watched some of those YouTube channels you subscribe to and I was damn proud and happy for you when the majority of the scientists finally come out and vindicated yours and others so called factual based conspiracy theories last year.” Earl said contemplating.

  “If we got whacked all the way down here in Alabama, you can be sure the ground most likely did a seismic dance all over North America and maybe even affected the whole world.” Zack said.

  “What do you mean by that man?” Earl said as Dee and Ann crowded in to hear more of this weird disaster planner and amateur space scientist’s opinion on the fiasco they were facing.

  “Well you see the state of Alabama sits on what geologists call a granite behemoth, its supposedly dang near impossible for us to have any kind of major earthquakes here. We all felt that shimmy and shake so could be they were wrong about that possibility but I don’t think so. I think what we had was a major world event like a continental plate or pole shift or something but no way to know until we can get some emergency broadcast news on the radio.” Zack said to his breathlessly listening audience before carrying on.

  “The oceans could have soup bowled also and if that happened, we are in much deeper shit than I can imagine! The eastern seaboard could have had a tsunami or the New Madrid fault line could have let loose and affected us here. They say if the Madrid fault line goes off the Mississippi river could reverse flow direction like the Mississippi did way back when.” Zack said pondering the bits and pieces of historical disaster lore he half remembered.

  Author Note: The Great Midwest Earthquake of 1811

  1811-1812 Earthquakes

  In the winter of 1811 and 1812, the New Madrid seismic zone generated a sequence of earthquakes that lasted for several months and included three very large earthquakes estimated to be between magnitude 7 and 8. The three largest 1811-1812 earthquakes destroyed several settlements along the Mississippi River, caused minor structural damage as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, and were felt as far away as Hartford, Connecticut, Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In the New Madrid region, the earthquakes dramatically affected the landscape. They caused bank failures along the Mississippi River, landslides along Chickasaw Bluffs in Kentucky and Tennessee, and uplift and subsidence of large tracts of land in the Mississippi River floodplain. One such uplift related to faulting near New Madrid, Missouri, temporarily forced the Mississippi River to flow backwards. In addition, the earthquakes liquefied subsurface sediment over a large area and at great distances resulting in ground fissuring and violent venting of water and sediment. One account of this phenomena stated that the Pemiscot Bayou "blew up for a distance of nearly fifty miles."

  A 19th-century print of New Madrid earthquake chaos. (Granger Collection, NYC)

  “Well ain’t that just one hell of a way to end the world as we know it! That means I guess that Tennessee is basically all rubble now mostly and lots of other adjoining states are flooding with the ground cracking and rivers overflowing. I guess that I ain’t only lost my jeep with all my preparedness supplies gear, but now I hear that double whammy run of my bad luck maybe includes that my new bug out home I have been building on back in Kentucky is trashed!” Earl said shocked at such a cataclysmic and monumental loss might have just occurred. But what seemed to be even more tragic was that in the right here and now of things he was stuck down here on a sinking island with Zack.

  “Well we don’t know nothing solid about any other state receiving any damages yet for sure buddy. That would be a hell of thing if it did whack Kentucky though but don’t think about the worst until we know a whole lot more facts about what’s going on. I got your back; we will get you and me and Ann through this and I got gear and guns to lend to you. However, it can be an even worse scenario than that. If this is any kind of continental plate shift that’s going on and that bit of peninsula land off in the Canary Islands lets go from that rumbling volcano its attached to… that’s well then, that’s the start of a worldwide Armageddon. That undersea big cliff sliding down and falling into the deepest depths of the ocean is going to create a giant Tsunami sized two hundred and fifty foot high or better mega wave speeding around the world ------ put it this way, they will be doing good to be only treading water in the subways in New York and this country ain’t ever going to be recovering in our generation or lifetimes. Where the hells my audience for my emergency meeting? Hey you folks form up over here at the church for me please!” Zack hollered out aggravated.

  “I thought you all were going to help go around to all the camps getting the word out to everyone?” Zack said to those standing around him.

  “We tried Zack; they are moving like they got molasses for blood getting over there.” Brent said regarding getting the word out about an emergency assembly at the church.

  “Hey Sloan, Go start hollering about something like you’re a preacher up there on them church steps please. We ain’t got a moment to lose to get this rabble organized and quit worrying about themselves and get them thinking and looking out for the bigger picture of things.” Zack said to his old retired Special Forces Alabama author and veteran who would know exactly what was needed to get their attention and take charge of this group.

  “Where’s my helper muscle? Hey George you seen Frick and Frack? You know those two big MMA sized boys from Ohio who went down to the causeway to check on Ezra?” Zack asked looking for his new likely crowd controllers if things started looking like they needed calming down.

  “Ain’t that them over there peddling their bikes back this way? Looks like to me something is maybe wrong with Knobbs’s bike tire or his forks or something? Never mind, he quit peddling and is now running over here carrying it!” George said as two large men were noted carrying bicycles running up the hill in union towards them.

  “Damn Nick! you didn’t have to start running with your bike just because your buddy was carrying his broken one!” Zack said grinning only slightly amused that they had both decided to carry their bikes and run with them.

  “Causeway is going under water fast!” Nick said a bit out of breath.

  “Where is Ezra at?” Zack questioned while looking around behind them for his truck.

  “I don’t know, we were wondering that ourselves! I saw his truck parked up on the hill leading down here on the other side of the causeway, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of him wandering around anywhere!” Knobby said explaining that from their vantage point, all they could see was the truck parked over there on the highest ground part of the road.

  Zack didn’t know where Knobby had gotten his name at, he was the bigger of the two men and at the moment evidently, he had a problem with the front end of the suspension of that expensive ass trail bile he had. Zack had meant to ask Nick if he had got the moniker f
or using mud tires, His bald head, his big knuckles or his capability to put knots on heads, but he would save those questions for later.

  Thing was Nubbie, another friend of Zacks attending the same event, was also present and he had gotten his not so kind nickname or moniker which he didn’t seem to mind much, from getting half his hand stuck in a lawnmower when he was a kid. What made it even more confusing was that they sometimes both answered when someone or the other said their names.