The Great Wreck

by Stewart, Jack

  The second floor was just as heavily secured and was actually a split level with two floors opening up onto a combined living area. The deck was huge and ran along the front half of the cabin and jutted twenty feet over the canyon rim. The two story tall windows allowed you to look out over the canyons that stretched away in all direction and had rollup metal covers that could be raised and lowered with a switch ensuring that anyone trying to scale the balcony and break in would find sheets of metal covering every window on the second and third floors. And lastly, of course, there was the alarm system. Tony’s uncle called it The Bunker.

  Tony unlocked the heavy metal gate, then the thick iron door and walked into the short hallway. He quickly entered the alarm code and disabled it, “Not that the cops would be here anytime soon,” he said, “But I don’t think we want to have to listen to the one hundred decibel alarm going off for the entire time we’re here,” as he flipped on the lights. He then moved over to an electrical panel and flipped the main breakers on, moved along the right hand wall to a utility closet and began opening gas vales and water lines, “There! We should be all set. I’ll try to call Uncle Bill when we’re all settled in and let him know we’re here.”

  “Good thinking,” I replied as I walked into the first floor storage area behind him. The place was jam packed with supplies: bottled water, canned good, toilet paper, you name it.

  “There’s maybe a year of supplies here,” Tony said making his way to a doorway at the other side of the basement, “And who knows how much dried stuff. Two years maybe? Three? Who knows? My uncle’s been stocking this place since it was built five years ago. He always said if the shit hit the fan, we’d all meet here,” he said quietly, “I guess were the first to make it.”

  I thought to myself that with interstate travel prohibited, we might be the only ones to make it, but kept that to myself. The door leading to the stairs also had a heavy, locked gate in place over it, “You’re uncle was paranoid.”

  “He believed in defense in depth. If anyone got in down here, they’d have a hell of a time getting upstairs with the alarm blaring and this big, fat honking gate to try to get through,” Tony said as he unlocked the gate, then the doorway unveiling a wide set of stairs that lead up to the second floor. The girls walked in behind us and even Dreysi was too in awe of the cabin to make any of her usual snarky remarks. They just took it all in silently and followed us upstairs.

  The second floor was even more impressive that the first. The stairway led up the back of a fully decked out, modern kitchen on the left and a dining area on the right, The kitchen and dining room both opened up to a vast, sunken living room that faced out towards the two story windows and wide deck.

  Tony set his pack down in the dining area and walked along the window flipping switches that brought on the lights and began rolling up the window’s metal covers until the fading, golden light reflecting off of the mountains across the canyon flooded into the living room.

  “Wow,” Nicky said as she set he pack down and walked into the living room, “This place is amazing.”

  “Yeah, Uncle Bill poured a lot of money into it,” Tony said and he began walking up stairs to the third floor, “Up here we have three bedrooms: the master suite and two guest bedroom. Each has its own bathroom so we don’t have to share unless you guys want to. Ha, ha.”

  I followed Tony upstairs and opened the door that was off the landing, “We’ll take this one if that’s OK?” Tony nodded and I set my pack down inside the bedroom.

  “Greer and I will take the master bedroom, if you all don’t mind and Frigadoris can take the bedroom in the back, last door on the left.

  “Hey Tony,” Dreysi said, “How did your uncle get all this stuff up the hill? Hike it?”

  “He had an old service road put in during construction,” Tony replied.

  “Why the fuck didn’t we take that up here instead of hiking our asses off from a thousand miles away?!” she spat as she walked up the stairs.

  “It’s all overgrown now and most likely washed out,” Tony said mildly.

  “So your, what, sixty year old uncle hikes up here every time he visits?” Dreysi said sarcastically.

  “Nope,” Tony replied, “When you’re as rich as he is, you have a helipad installed a few miles up a dirt road to fly you up here. He has a garage up there with an SUV dedicated to taking him from the helipad to the cabin and back. Another helicopter makes a monthly run with perishable supplies. That’s why the refrigerators are stocked full.”

  That seemed to shut Dreysi up for good. Even as rich as her and Nicky’s parents were, they were dirt farmers compared to Tony’s uncle.

  “Holy shit,” Greer said, “What do you have to be to make that kind of money, a drug lord?”

  “Never asked,” Tony said, “I don’t know about you guys but, I’m going to seal up the cabin and take a shower. Maybe get something to eat and then I’m going to bed. I’ll try to call Uncle Bill in the morning.”

  We all agreed that was a good plan as Tony locked everything up and rolled down the metal window coverings. I hopped into the shower and changed into a clean set of cloths and laid down on the soft bed. I tried not to think of what we’d seen coming from Albuquerque as Nicky curled up alongside of me. In the morning we’d see if we could reach our families on the cabin’s phone lines, watch the news on the television, and just plain old hunker down waiting for the storm to pass and hopefully go home in a few weeks. I don’t think I believed that, even in the early weeks of the outbreak. Something told me the storm was going to blow until everything around me was knocked down and taken away.

  * * *

  The next morning, I woke up, made coffee, and picked up the phone in the kitchen thinking it would probably be dead. I was surprise to hear a dial tone and felt a small surge of comfort at that. Such a simple thing, something we ignored or, for those of us raised on cell phones, had hardly heard. The sound momentarily took me back to my earliest childhood when my mom insisted on having a land line. I would pick up the old fashioned receiver, listen to that strange tone and wonder if somewhere on the other side of the planet, someone on the other end of that line was listening to me.

  I tried my folks first. It rang twice then clicked off. I dialed again and heard it ring. This time my folks answering machine picked up. I know, right? An actual answering machine.

  “Hi, this is Bob and June!” mom said in her cheery Leave it to Beaver tone, “Where out and about right now but leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” Beep!

  I hadn’t spoken to my parents in six months. Not since I had dropped out of school and started working with the ski patrol up on Sandia. They hated it and they hated Nicky even more calling here a “drag on my future.” All communications had come to a screeching halt when Nicky had moved in with me. I took a deep breath and spoke, “Hi Mom, Dad. It’s Casey. Are you there?” I said and waited to see if they would pick up. After a few seconds of silence, I said, “Well, I just wanted to let you know I’m OK and up at Tony’s Uncle’s cabin. You can call me here anytime,” I said and left them the number, “I’ll try to call you guys again. I’m OK and I love you. Stay safe. Bye,” I said and hung up the phone.

  I didn’t know then that I’d never see or talk to my parents again, that they probably never heard my last message to them. Santa Fe became a slaughterhouse soon after the military pulled up stakes and headed south. As far as I know, anyone left in Santa Fe a few weeks after we left for the cabin was quickly over ran by the infected as all semblance of order broke down and the city was overwhelmed.

  I tried to call back again hoping they might have heard me on the machine and would pick up. This time the phone rang and cut off after a few rings. The next time I tried I got a prerecorded message telling me the number I had dialed had been disconnected or was out of service. I tried one last time and only got silence. I hung up the phone and decided I’d try again later. I was lucky to have gotten through to their machine, I thou
ght as I poured myself a cup of coffee.

  Nicky came down stairs a few minutes later soon followed by the rest of the refugees. We all huddled around the kitchen table drinking coffee or tea, making toast, and trying to reach our folks on the phone while discussing what we were going to do.

  “Do?” Tony said with his usual bluntness as we all moved to the living room, “What are we going to do? I’ll tell you what: we’re going to stay right here until the food runs out, which in my estimate could be at least as long as a year. More if we don’t mind living off of the dried stuff. That’s what we’re going to do,” he said looking at each of us.

  “What, were you a quartermaster in the Royal Navy or something? How did you know how long to food will last?” Dreysi said with clear contempt.

  I wanted to tell here she’d be back in Albuquerque if it wasn’t for us but then I realized that’s probably were she wanted to be so I kept my mouth closed.

  Tony ran his eyes up and down over Dreysi plump figure and replied, “Yes, you’re right of course. With you here it might go a bit faster. Say two weeks instead of a couple of years.”

  “Fuck you, Anthony,” Dreysi sneered.

  “I already did,” Greer said rolling over the couch back and landing in Tony’s lap.

  Tony ignored Dreysi and continued, “Does someone have a better plan?” None of us did, “I need to call my uncle,” he said as he rolled Greer off his lap and went to the kitchen. He picked up the phone and dialed his uncle. It took him several tries but eventually he got through. We ate our toast quietly as I listened to Tony’s side of the conversation.

  “Hey, Uncle Bill! This is Tony! Yeah, we’re up at the cabin. Me, Casey, and a few of our friends. No, no one else. Can you get out of Los Angeles? That bad? Oh my god,” Tony whispered his face turning the color of ash, “But you’re all safe, right? Thank god,” he said, “No, I haven’t heard form Mom or Dad. I’ll try them later today. Yeah, I’ll let them know you’re OK. I love you too Uncle Bill. Yeah, I’ll try you in a few days. OK. OK, I will. Love you too. Bye.”

  Tony hung up the phone and wiped his sleeve across his face before turning towards us and saying, “Uncle Bill says we’re welcome to stay here as long as we need to.”

  “What else did he say?” I asked.

  “He say Los Angles in a mess. Complete chaos. No one is getting in or out. The airports are completely shut down except for the military flights, the highways are jammed full of people trying to get out of the city, riots and infected everywhere. He’s holed up with my aunt in the mountains north of Burbank. Said something about a safe haven,” he said and sat heavily on one of the couches in the living room, “A safe haven? What the fuck is that?” he asked no one as he looked out the huge windows.

  Greer tried her folks next and got the same thing I did. First a recording saying the line had been disconnected, then nothing. She sat next to Tony as he tried to comfort her, “They’re OK sweetie. We’ll keep trying until we get through.”

  I turned on the television surprised that we’d be getting a signal up here on the mountain until Tony reminded me of the satellite dish somewhere up above us on the mountainside. I watched as the haggard news people tried to make sense of what was happening all across the country. We all sat around the television like savages around a fire. We watched the light of the screen, listening to the voices or our tribal elders tell us what we needed to know, and prayed to our pagan gods that the storm would pass.

  “The first documented case of Caribbean Flu has been verified in London and Paris. CDC officials are now warning that the pandemic has most likely reached Europe and will spread across the continent unless European authorities take measures to control it. British authorities however are preaching clam stating that there is no need to panic. They do however recommend that residents stock up on food and water, stay home from work, and stay indoors if at all possible noting that this was an effective strategy during the cities many smog alerts and brief swine flu scare from previous flu seasons.”

  “Dumb assess,” Tony said, “Can’t they see that the whole western hemisphere is falling apart? You’d think they’d learn from what’s going on here, but then again we watched it happening in South America and said can’t happen here right? So I guess we’re all just a bunch of fucking deniers.”

  We watched the news off and on for that first day as riots in New York and New Jersey spread across New England. I got a good look at what the media was calling “rioters.” They didn’t look like rioters to me, they looked like people who had been through a meat grinder. I thought about what Greer had said when her and Tony had gotten to mine and Nicky’s apartment about them being dead.

  The riots were spreading across Los Angeles and Albuquerque as well. State authorities implemented a state of emergency and put a curfew in effect. I wondered if the infected cared and stopped running around tearing shit up at 9:00 PM and went home. I didn’t think so. Later, some burned out looking guy form the CDC actually said on camera that there may be a link between the Caribbean flu and the riots. Within the hour he was fired with the CDC and the federal government denying any connection. We ate, took showers, drank caffeine carrier of choice, then would return to the television until, late in the day it was clear nothing new was going to be said. One by one, we went up to our rooms until I was the only one watching the TV. Finally, I switched off the thing and joined Nicky in bed.

  It scared me witless to sit there alone and watch the…rioters…run around in great masses and vast hordes that filled the streets of Albuquerque or Los Angeles or Phoenix. I would imagine they were streaming up the mountainside towards the cabin, clambering over the fence and pounding on the door downstairs. After a while, I just had to turn it off and crawl into bed with Nicky like a frightened child.

  The next day we repeated our quickly forming ritual of breakfast, attempted phone calls, and then television. More riots, more cases of the infection spreading, more chaos. A horse named Stew was found at its owners front door after having been missing for nearly three months. A fucking uplifting story amidst the sheer horror of the pandemic. At noon I turned the damn thing off and tried to call home again and got nothing. I looked at the handset as though it had personally betrayed me and said, “Tony, you want to head down to the parking area and bring up some of our stuff?”

  “Sure,” he replied as he sat on the couch and tied on his boots, “But we won’t have to hike this time.”

  “Why is that Columbus? Your uncle got a helicopter stashed around here someplace too?”

  “Nope, but he does have a pair of ATVs. The trail is wide enough for us to drive them down, load up these little fancy wagons they pull, and get all our gear back up here before lunch.”

  I pulled on my boots and followed Tony down into the basement and out behind the cabin. Tony’s uncle had a huge three car garage built there and inside was every type of off road vehicle you could imagine; mountain bikes, snowmobiles, ATVs, go carts, motorcycles, you name it. I expected to see a fucking soap box derby car stashed in there somewhere.

  “We could take the motorcycles,” I said.

  “I think we should stick with the ATVs. Look,” Tony replied pointing at the thick electrical cables hooked to each set of matte black and green, four wheel drive ATVs, “Battery powered. They’ll get us there and back with plenty of charge to spare and we can save the gas for the motorcycles. The trail is wide enough for the ATVs and I won’t have to worry about you dumping yourself on your head on the two wheelers.”

  “Hey! I can ride a bike.”

  Tony looked at me silently for a second then said, “Do I really need to remind you of White Sands?”

  “I tell you a fucking dog ran in front of me,” I said. Tony just looked at me silently until I shook my head meekly then started unplugging the ATV.

  “Good then. Let’s get the trailers hooked up. We should be able to load everything into them and not have to make a trip back.”

  “I want to leave some stuff
for the old folks, just in case,” I said as I rolled the mammoth ATV out of the garage and hooked the small trailer up to it.

  Tony rolled his out and did the same then tossed me a helmet. He mounted his bike, put his helmet up and flipped his starter switch on. The machine sat their quietly and I said, “Is the battery dead?”

  Tony just smiled and let off the clutch and his machine rolled forward without so much as a whisper, “These things are very quiet,” he said as I strapped my helmet and turned my starter. I slowly let off the clutch and rolled smoothly forward.

  “Wow, you aren’t kidding,” I said as I rolled after him and out onto the dirt road. We quickly made the trail and headed towards the parking area. The trail was just wide enough for the ATV but it was still a rough ride. I marveled though at how quite the machine was. Without the noise if the engine, all I could hear was the sound of the wheels rolling over the rocks and dirt of the trail. Tony had taken the lead and set a nice leisurely pace. My speedometer told me we were going about ten miles an hour. That meant we’d be at the truck in just thirty minutes.

  We quickly passed from the canyon edge into the trees. The forest seemed completely devoid of life. Over the crunch of dirt and the gently hum of the ATV, I could not even hear birds chirping or crowing in the trees. It was like all the animals had moved on and Tony and I were completely alone.

  “Tony, shouldn’t there be some animal moving around? These things aren’t noisy enough to scare away everything are they?”

  “Too many people up here, I think. Every campground on the mountain is probably overflowing with folks fleeing Grants, Gallup, and Albuquerque.”

  I thought about the guy and his family with his bit little girl and the overturned trailer. I wondered how many people fled the cities and brought their infected loved ones with them hoping they’d beat the infection and ride out the storm up in the mountains. I shuddered at the thought of infected wandering around the forest here and was glad that the cabin was many miles not only off the paved road, but off the service road was well. I still kept looking between the trees of the forest that surrounded the trail ever expecting to see some blood stained figure lurking off in the distance.