One Man's Island

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “I had bad dreams last night,” Robyn said after a while.

  Welcome to the club, Tim thought, perhaps a little callously, but held his tongue. The kid was scared enough as it was, and he could sense the subtle change in her from yesterday. She’d never be the same he knew. She’d never be the same laughing kid. She’d hardened a little last night, and that made him really sad.

  “Yeah, baby. I had some too,” he finally said, sipping his coffee.

  “Do they go away?”

  “Not really,” he told her honestly.

  Robyn took a bite of her toast and a sip of coffee. “Where are we going today?”

  Tim pulled out the road atlas. He looked at the map for a minute, and then said, “Looks like we’ll drive a little further west and pick up I-35 at Decatur City.”

  “And go north or south?” she asked, looking at the map from across the table.

  “North towards Des Moines, then we’ll take I-80 and head west. That’ll take us all the way to San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean, if we want to go that far.”

  “Anywhere is fine with me, Daddy. I really don’t like Iowa all that much.”

  “Yeah, I don’t like it all that much either,” he said. “Let’s finish up here and get ready to hit the road.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said, a big smile crossing her face, and a little bit of the old Robyn showing through.

  They quickly cleaned up their breakfast mess and stowed everything for travel. Tim went out and checked the truck out, and took a look at the driver’s side door. There was a tight pattern of OO buckshot holes near the top edge of the door, and thankfully the window had been rolled down or he’d have gotten a face full of glass on top of the pellets. But the window rolled down inside the door was still shattered and he could hear the bits of glass rattling around inside of it.

  “Well, this door is fucked,” he said. “It’ll be okay until the next time it rains. We’re going to have to look for another vehicle soon,” he told her, getting in and starting up the truck. He’d placed his M4 on the dashboard, and Robyn did the same with her carbine. She shut her door, buckled her seatbelt, and put her bare feet up on the dash.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Tim put the truck into gear. They drove west, picked up I-35, and turned north on the empty highway, making good time to Des Moines. He saw a sign for the National Guard Armory and took the exit. Following the street signs, he easily located the Armory, pulling up in front. The parking lot was filled with cars, and it looked like this unit was preparing to either go overseas, or have a weekend drill. They got out of the truck and walked around to the rear of the building, and found a row of military vehicles loaded up and ready to set out in a convoy. He did notice several uniforms strewn about, and saw bones and a few rusted M16A2s lying around. He then found his first skull, and a shudder came over him involuntarily. It looked like the scavengers had had their fill of these troops.

  He spied a Hum-Vee, the vehicle most readily identified by the general public, sitting near the front of the formation. It wasn’t the kind with the slant-back; this one had sort of a pickup truck bed with a canvas cover over it. In addition to that, under a rubberized canvas cover in a ring mount on the roof between the driver and passenger seats, was what looked like an M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun. Tim hopped up and unzipped the cover that had protected it from the weather, and it looked to be in perfect condition. Hopping back down, he looked at Robyn and smiled.

  “It looks like we found our new ride!”

  “Cool!” she squealed. “Does that big gun work?”

  “It probably does if there’s any ammo for it. I doubt it though.”

  “Aw! Looks like fun!”

  “That it is,” he said. He tried to start the Hum-Vee, but the battery was dead. He checked the fuel tank, and that too was bone dry. Probably sat and idled here after The Event until it ran out of fuel, then the battery got drained. He could easily remedy that. Going back to the truck, he unhitched it and drove it around to where he was side by side with the Hum-Vee, then popped the hood. He took a jerry can of diesel and filled the Hum-Vee’s fuel tank with a few gallons of fuel, attaching jumper cables to the battery, letting it charge for a few minutes. When he was satisfied that it would turn over, he switched the ignition on, satisfied when the glow plug light went out, and turned the engine over. It took a minute for the fuel pump to get the fuel up from the tank and finally he had it running. Unhooking the cables, he shut both hoods and filled the Hum-Vee’s fuel tank completely. He then transferred everything from the M880 over to it. Robyn was deeply impressed by his mechanical abilities and told him so, but he just shrugged. That finished, he looked over at Robyn, who was looking down the line of vehicles.

  “What is it, honey?” he asked.

  “Down there. Looks like a pickup just like ours,” she said. He looked to where she was pointing and saw an older M880, only this one had a green canvas tarp over the bed, just like the Hum-Vee. Then he saw the orange diamond shaped placards, and smiled. It was an ammo carrier.

  “Come on, let’s go have a look-see,” he said, grabbing his rifle and walking towards the truck. When they got close enough, he saw the placards read what he thought they might.

  “It looks like we’re in luck, baby!” He flipped open the canvas flap. Case after case of small arms ammunition was there. He dropped the tailgate, and started to look through it all. He already had plenty of ammo for the M4 and M16, but was looking for ammo for the M2, and in the very back he found it. Several hundred rounds in cases, all his for the taking. He grabbed one and heaved it out to the tailgate. He thought better of carrying it all to the Hum-Vee, so he went and drove the Hum-Vee down to it. After breaking open the wooden cases, he started to transfer each one hundred round can to their Hum-Vee, with Robyn’s help. When he figured they had about two thousand rounds, he stopped.

  “I think that’s enough,” he said, grabbing one more box and tossing it up on the roof of the Hum-Vee. He climbed through the ring mount from inside the vehicle, and with Robyn watching him from the hood, he cracked open the can and placed it in the holder on the left side of the machine gun. Opening up the cover, he inspected it for any defect, and didn’t see any.

  “Robyn, go find me some motor oil. Look in the trucks.”

  She gave thumbs up and taking her carbine, disappeared. He lit a cigarette while he was waiting. He saw a likely target across the parking lot and on the other side of a vacant lot sat a garbage truck. He smiled at the thought, and soon Robyn reappeared with a plastic quart bottle of motor oil.

  “Is this ok?”

  “Perfect!” he said, taking the bottle and pouring it liberally over the weapon and into its works. He closed the feed cover and cycled the action several times to get the oil through the weapon, then reopened the cover.

  “Watch carefully, Robyn. This is how you load this,” he said. He took the first round of the big .50 caliber ammo on the feed tray and closed the cover with a snap. He double racked the charging handle with his right hand, thankful he didn’t need to use his left arm, which was very stiff and sore and probably would be for a while. “This mound can turn 360 degrees. You move it by pulling out this pin here, like this,” he said, pulling out a small detent pin under the gun. He spun it around until it was pointed at the garbage truck about four hundred yards away. “Now hold your ears, this fucker is loud!” he said with a huge grin. He adjusted the traverse and elevation mechanism slightly, looked down the sights, and with both thumbs, pressed the butterfly trigger. The big gun barked out a loud ‘chug chug chug chug’ in a four round burst, and immediately big holes appeared and sparks and chunks of metal flew off the cab of the garbage truck.

  “Can I try?” Robyn asked enthusiastically.

  “But of course!” He climbed out of the mount onto the roof, giving her the room to climb down into it. Once there, he showed her how to hold the spade handles and where t
o press the trigger, and how to look down the sights.

  “Let her rip!” he said, and she didn’t need any encouragement. She pressed the triggers and let loose another volley, and after about fifteen more rounds, the cab of the truck was a smoking mass of twisted metal.

  “I wish we would have had this yesterday,” she said.

  “Yeah, so do I,” he said, clearing the weapon and covering it with the canvas gun cover. “Okay, let’s get this dog and pony show on the road.”

  They climbed into the cab and he showed her how to get from the front passenger’s seat into the ring mount fast, in case they needed it. She gave another thumbs up and settled into her seat, finding a rack made for a M16 was just as good for her carbine. Tim placed his M4 in the rack on the driver’s side and drove around to where they’d left the camper. He quickly hitched it up and went into the camper to retrieve his IVIS tablet and placed it in the mount built for it on the wide dashboard that not only held it securely, but also charged it through the vehicle’s alternator. He pulled up the GPS feature and set their waypoints, then minimized that and pulled up his music.

  “We can’t have a road trip without tunes!”

  They took I-80, and about ninety miles west, they crossed over the Missouri River into Omaha, Nebraska. Tim saw the signs for Offutt Air Force Base and thought about The Football again.

  “At least we’re out of Iowa,” Robyn said, and Tim agreed with her.

  The sooner they put that ordeal behind them, the better. He spotted a stalled train on the railroad tracks running alongside of I-80 and was saddened. He’d always loved trains, and he thought it was a shame that they’d never run again. Every once in a while they’d pass what looked like a normal house, but with a big ten-foot chain link fence around it, and a huge flat concrete slab in front. It was wide open here, and they could see for miles. Robyn asked him about the weird houses.

  “Remember when I was telling you about the missile silos?”

  “Yeah, all the nuclear missiles are in them.”

  “Those weird houses with the big fences and the concrete slabs are those silos. That’s where all the nukes are.”

  “Oh, wow. Right there in the open?”

  “Yeppers, you can’t hide a giant missile too well.”

  Robyn looked out the window and fell silent. They drove until sundown, stopping several miles west of Lincoln, Nebraska at another truck stop. They set up camp for the night and after a small dinner, they sat in chairs outside. Tim drank a beer, and Robyn a Coke. Right after sundown the moon had set, giving them a wonderful view of the night sky. They made it a game to spot as many satellites as they could, then he stood her up and looked north to show her the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, the North Star, and told her how to use them to find her way.

  “If you just draw a line in your head with the two stars in the bottom of the Big Dipper, it’ll draw a line right to the North Star.”

  “Wow! So the North Star never moves?”

  “Nope, it always stays exactly where it is in the sky, true north. If you know where the North Star is, you’ll always be able to find your way in the dark.”

  “What if it’s cloudy?”

  “Then you’re fucked,” he said with a big laugh, making her giggle. They went back to their chairs and sat for a while longer.

  “I’m always amazed at how many stars there are, Daddy.”

  “Back a few years ago when the lights still worked and all the people were still alive, you could hardly see any because of the light pollution.”

  “Light pollution?”

  “Yeah, all the lights from cities and towns blotted the stars out for so long, people actually forgot what they looked like. Back, oh I can’t remember exactly when, back in the early 90s, there was a big earthquake in Southern California. They called it the Northridge Earthquake. Anyway, all the power went out all over the city of Los Angeles, and hundreds of people started calling the Palomar Observatory to report these strange lights in the sky.”

  “They were the stars?”

  “Yep, no one knew what they were.”

  “We’re lucky to get to see them like this.”

  “Yes we are, baby. Yes we are,” he said, and leaned back on his chair, looking up at the sky.

  “How’s your head?”

  “It’s still a little sore, but I’ve got a hard Irish melon. It’s hard to break this noggin,” he said, tapping his head. “Arm is still sore too, and probably will be for a while, but it seems to be fine, no sign of infection yet.”

  “Well, that’s good. Do you want another beer?”

  “No, I think I’ll turn in.”

  “I call dibs on the shower!” she said, and ran into the camper giggling, leaving him there in the starlight alone. At least she was getting somewhat back to normal. Kids had a way of compartmentalizing things like what had happened to her, and could deal with them better than adults. He looked up and wondered where all this would lead, and couldn’t even get an inkling of an idea. He finished his last smoke for the night, and flicked it out onto the weed-covered parking lot then went inside. Robyn had just finished her shower and was climbing up into bed when he closed and locked the door. He tucked her in as usual, kissed her good night, and went and took a shower himself, happy that they had the bigger water tank and water heater. He put on a ragged old pair of shorts, and taking his carbine with him, crawled under the sheets and drifted off to sleep.

  He woke the next morning to the smells of toast and coffee, which had become the normal routine, Robyn waking before him and getting everything ready. The sun was just peering over the eastern horizon. He looked out the window next to his bed, and wondered how anyone could deal with all this nothingness. Dropping the ratty shorts, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and walked out the rear area where he found Robyn doing her usual thing. After coffee and breakfast, they went around and got as much diesel fuel as they could find, filling up their tanks and jerry cans. Tim then went to the area he’d seen the night before when they had pulled in, and drained their gray water tank properly. That done, they circled around to the front and filled the freshwater tank back up with bottled water.

  They set out on the road about 10:45 AM. There was still no sign of a cloud in the sky, and it promised to be another hot day. I-80 was flat and straight, and they could see for miles and miles ahead of them. Far ahead, it looked like something black was covering the road, but at this distance they couldn’t tell what it was.

  “What is it?” Robyn asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get a little closer and find out. We might have to turn around and find an alternate route.”

  “I hope not. It’s getting hot already, and the going is slow on the smaller roads.”

  As they got closer, Tim couldn’t believe his eyes. He began slowing, and when he was close enough, came to a complete stop in the middle of the highway.

  “Well I’ll be dipped in dogshit!”

  “What are they, Dad?”

  “That, my dear, are what’s called buffalo, or more correctly, the North American Bison.”

  “There’s got to be thousands of them!”

  “It’s probably only a few hundred. They must have knocked down that barbed wire fence over there.” He shut off the Hum-Vee and they got out. They were only a few yards away from them, and the buffalo seemed not to notice the vehicle, the camper or the two humans now sitting on the hood of the Hum-Vee watching their slow progress across the highway. They continued munching on the fresh tall grass growing out of the cracks in the asphalt before heading over to the juicier stuff in the overgrown median.

  “I guess with no people around anymore, the herds are quickly coming back,” he remarked.

  “Coming back?”

  “Once, a long time ago, before the white people came west, there were millions of them. Then after the Civil War, people moved west and hunted them almost to extinction. It seems like The Event didn’t affect these guys at all.”

  “So now they’r
e coming back, and the herds will be that big again?”

  “I hope so. They are a beautiful animal, and tasty too. Too bad we don’t have a freezer big enough. These guys taste way better than any T-Bone steak you’ve ever had!”

  “You’ve eaten buffalo?”

  “Robyn, you have no idea what I’ve eaten,” he said.

  They sat there and watched the large, clumsy yet graceful animals slowly graze their way south, finally clearing the road, and Tim thought it was a pleasant diversion. They went to hop down off the hood, and he heard Robyn gasp. Looking to where she was looking, his jaw dropped.

  “Dad, what is that?”

  He just stood there looking and didn’t say a thing. About two hundred yards north, in a large field of tall grass, stood a teepee. A teepee just like he’d seen in countless western movies in his youth.

  “That, baby, is a teepee.”

  “Like the Indians?”

  “They prefer ‘Native Americans’.”

  “What’s it doing there?” “I don’t know…” He was unable to move, just stood staring at it. More amazing than the teepee, was what was tied up outside of it. There was not one, but two horses. A chestnut colored one, and what looked to Tim like an Appaloosa. He’d thought they’d all died along with all the other domesticated animals. He hadn’t seen a live horse in almost two years and here were two of them, staring him right in the face. He was dumbfounded.

  There was smoke drifting lazily up from a fire outside, and then a flap opened and a tall, bare-chested man with long black hair and dark skin emerged and looked at them. They stared at one another for a while, when suddenly the man waved and began walking towards them with an easy, purposeful gait.

  Chapter 15: Retaliation

  The smoke was just clearing from the ship as it sat twenty miles off Guadalcanal on a glass-calm sea. Lt. Cmd. Wright opened the hatch to the wing bridge and stepped out into the sun, looking west to where the missile flew. It was too far to see, but he knew in a few minutes the cruise missile they’d just fired would spread its bomblets over the area where the last radio transmitter in the South Pacific was located. He raised his binoculars and scanned the horizon. Petty Officer Stevens came out to the wing bridge and coughed, getting the attention of the captain. Turning, he said, “Yes, Stevens?”