by Sweet, Dell
Now he had drifted back. But drifted was not exactly right. He had slammed back into himself where he lay on the cold subbasement floor where he had been murdered by a roving gang of thieves. And he knew those things were true because he remembered them. And he knew they were true because he was dead. He was still dead. His heart was not beating in his chest. His blood was cold and jelled in his veins. He could feel it. Some kind of new perception.
He lay and watched the shadows deepen in the corners of the basement ceiling for a short time longer, and then he tried to move.
His body did not want to move at first. It felt as though it weighed a ton, two tons, but with a little more effort it came away. He sat and then crawled to his knees.
In the corner a huge rat stopped on his way to somewhere to sniff at him, decided he was probably food and came to eat him. He had actually sat for a second while the rat first sniffed and then began to gnaw at one fingernail. Then he had quickly snatched the rat up with his other hand, snapped it's back in his fist and then shoved him warm and squirming into his mouth. A few minutes later he stood on shaky legs and walked off into the gloom of the basement, looking for the stairs and the way up to the streets.
CHAPTER TWO
Journals and Diaries
Mike ~ March 8th
I debated with myself about how to start this. Isn’t that stupid? Not whether I should start it. I guess that means that I have some hope that I am not the only one.
Actually, I know that I’m not the only one. I’ve heard gunshots more than once. I’ve heard a dog barking as well. And I’ve seen several dogs, cats, squirrels, etc... I’ve also heard what sounded like a car or a truck, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Everything is so quiet; it could be anywhere.
The sound of the river drowns things out. Even so, I haven’t seen any other people. None. And, I’m getting ahead of myself again.
I have no idea what has happened, even here in this town. It doesn’t really matter either, except to tell you, whoever you may end up being, what happened from my point of view, I guess. Maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe writing this out is a waste of time. But, it keeps my mind off shit, you know?
So, I wondered where to start? Today? Last week? Just start, I guess...
I have heat, food, fire. And I’ve finally gotten myself moved into this cave, so my mind is more at ease. But, again, I’m getting ahead of myself. It started for me last week on the 2nd of March. Only six days, but everything here has changed.
I was having a few beers, watching the coverage of the world countdown party; hey, it was supposed to be a joke, right? And, supposedly, we had a few months to go. It was supposed to be one long countdown party. One minute everything was fine, and the next the power was out.
Then the first quake hit...
I made it through that night and… two more quakes? Aftershocks? Who knows? I was just trying to get through to the morning. Phones were out; Sirens everywhere; No power. But, the closer it got to dawn the less noise there was. The sirens fell off. The rain started hard, and then the lightning came. A thunder and lightning storm in the middle of winter!
It was spooky, and when morning finally came, it didn’t make much sense at all. Almost everything I could see in every direction was flattened. The streets had cracked open and had become rivers. The temperature was higher than it should have been. But that didn’t last.
By noon the rain stopped, and I kept expecting to see someone. Emergency workers… Power Company… Somebody. Even a neighbor. But I saw no one at all that day.
I guess as serious as it was, I wasn’t taking it seriously. At least not the first day. I was still thinking rescue, help, it’s on the way. This is the most powerful country in the entire world. Help is coming. So I sat on my ass and drank beer and ate bologna sandwiches and chips, staring out at the street from my front porch, which was perched on the edge of a twenty foot rain gully.
Just before dark, the real quake hit. It had to have been stronger than the previous ones. It felt like it anyway.
I barely jumped off the porch before it fell into the gully. Scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t long after that when darkness settled in and I knew I was in trouble. Something in the whole structure of the house was damaged. Every aftershock made it dance, sway around me. It was also now a two foot drop down to the ground since my porch was gone. And I didn’t dare leave, because I had no idea what it was like outside. No Streetlights. No Moon. No starlight. No starlight, none! Then the storms came back, and the air turned back to cold.
Every time the lightning flashed I could see the street, or what had been the street. There was no more street, not really. It was a river; wide, and it looked pretty deep, all the opposite side of the street was gone now. No houses, cars, telephone poles, satellite dishes. Nothing. It seemed like the entire side of the street had washed away right down to the river. The water roared past me - just a few feet from where my porch had been - flattened out, and then turned into rapids breaking away to crash into the Black river further down the hill. That was when I realized it wasn’t just the other side of the street that was gone. The other two blocks that had been between me and the river were also gone.
Later on, the rain turned to snow, but the lightning kept up. Lightning in a snow storm. How crazy is that? By the morning of March 4th, the river running past my house was down to a trickle, but the snow was piling up. Down the hill the Black was over her banks. There was nothing else to see, a few solitary houses still standing as my own was. But there was no one around anywhere. That’s when I got into the hard stuff.
I drank myself to sleep, and when I woke up I’d lost several hours. My watch still worked at that point. When I walked to the front door, the first thing I noticed was footprints in the snow. Three sets, two small, maybe kids or women, one big, going just past my house, no more than three feet from my house, where once upon a time in some other world my porch had been, and I had slept through it. I yelled and screamed for a half hour hoping that someone would hear me, but no one came. No one yelled back and told me to shut up either. Just absolute silence. No birds, just the roar of the swollen Black. Nothing else.
I’ve thought about the day, the fourth, a couple of times. Was it the fourth? The fifth? Did I sleep more than a few hours? I don’t know. And that was the day my watch stopped working, so I don’t know. One minute it was working, the next it wasn’t. The face was blank.
There were a couple of more aftershocks that day, and I began to wonder if my house would be standing much longer. After all, nearly everything around me was destroyed already. And, I thought, what if that was an aftershock? Like I had thought the first quake was the real one and then the one the next day was so much stronger. It made me realize how stupid I was to still be in that house. And, I thought, no wonder no one is answering when I yell. They were all smart enough to get away from the buildings. Leave. And if I left also, I reasoned, I’d most likely catch up to them, whoever they were, wherever they had gone. That was when I had glanced at my watch and noticed that it had stopped working.
I had been in the habit of looking at my watch all day. Just nervous, I guess. I was positive that I had just looked at it and it had been working. But, when had that been? What time had it been? And when had it been that I had looked at it? How long ago? All I could remember for sure was that the last aftershock that had started me wondering had been at 2:57 P.M. I wasn’t sure of anything after that. Even when I thought back on it later, wondering what day it was, I wondered why I had never thought to push the little date button to see what the date had been. Or had I? Had I and then forgotten that I had? Had I only remembered subconsciously that it was the fourth? Anyway, the watch was dead. And what time was it? And where should I go? And how soon would it be dark? After wasting time wondering about things like that, things that were absolute bullshit in light of everything else, I just jumped down into the snow and headed off towards downtown.
There were a few buildin
gs standing in that direction. It was still snowing pretty hard, but I could see the outlines of the buildings through the snow.
There were planes overhead in the night. I know that sounds crazy, but I awoke to hearing them. There was a strange smell in the air, and I was thinking, in my dream? Maybe in my dream or maybe awake. Anyway, I was thinking crop dusters. Like they were crop-dusting. Spraying something. It was weird. Now I could see traces of blue... powder? Something on the snow, and it made me remember the dream. But I pushed it away and walked. Too much to see and comprehend as it was without worrying over bad dreams.
Normally it’s no more than a fifteen minute walk to the Square. Watertown has an old New England style Public Square that is the center of downtown. I figured that if anyone was still alive, that was where they would be.
In fact, I told myself, they probably would have some buildings open for shelter. Fire Department passing out blankets, bottled water, hot soup. I could see it so clearly in my head. I was wrong, of course, but that’s a story for tomorrow. My fingers are shot. Hey it would be easy to write this on my computer keyboard, but computers are a thing of the past now.
I’m warm. I’m dry. I’m pretty much okay. I survived the day the world ended, but my fingers are sore and I’m tired, so I’ll pick this up tomorrow.
Candace ~ March 8th
Fresh snow today. The whole world is covered in clean, white snow. It makes it look like nothing ever happened here.
I'm with a man named Tom. He's crazy about me. I just can't feel the same. I could fake it, but I told myself I'm not going to do that. But I can't keep on this way either. It is too hard on him, too hard on me.
Bob and Jan Dove are also with us. I don't know what I would do without Jan. She is level headed where I am impulsive, a thinker where I tend to just act. A good balance. Bob has an idea of rebuilding his peoples' lands. He's Native American, and so is Jan. It sounded crazy when he first said it, but after I thought about it, it began to make sense to me.
Lydia is the other member of our party. She hates me. That's because Tom wants me, and she wants Tom. Maybe that will fix itself before I have to fix it by leaving and going on my own.
Today we decided to see if the city was any better on the other side of the river. It isn't. We crossed the river, the Black river, on a railroad trestle. There is a traffic bridge, and it looks passable, but it's clogged with cars and some of those cars look purposely placed to block it off. That creeped me out.
We walked across the trestle, carefully, and went up State street. There's a store there, a supermarket, and we found tracks in the snow. One person. A man I would guess from the boot tread.
I cannot tell you what that was like. Seeing a footprint left by someone else. Someone else alive in this whole mess. I felt connected to him. I can't say it or explain it any better than that. Like a connection existed forever and I only had to find it. I tried to explain it to Lydia but she just shrugged. We have this thing with Tom between us though. She wants him; he wants me. I don't want him. It could be so Goddamn simple, but it isn't.
Except the footprints. Maybe the footprints are the answer. I think they are. I believe they are. We just need to find the person, the man, that goes with those footprints and... And I don't know. I really don't. But I think he'll know.
The only bad thing today, we came across a dead man laying crumpled by the side of the road. I could have sworn he moved, so I hurried to him. But as I got closer, I could see that he was dead. Long dead. We stood for a moment and then walked on. Later when we came back he was gone, and I thought, was he dead? Was he? But I know that he was. I suppose that wild dogs or something got him. We didn't talk about it, but it bothered all of us.
Mike ~ March 9th
Maybe it’s March ninth. I guess I really don’t know. But that’s what I think it is, so that’s what I’m going with.
It’s late. I spent today getting food, canned stuff mostly. It was rough. Almost everything is flattened, and what isn’t flattened is badly damaged. I spent about five hours a few days ago digging my way into a supermarket on State Street. The roof was down but held up by the tops of the aisle stacks, so I was able to make my way through. I just had to be really careful of broken glass. That was where I went back to today.
I had no flashlight at first, but I managed to get a small flashlight and batteries. I had to take so much stuff out of the front area of the store, that all the impulse stuff they sell was right there, candy, little radios, and of course flashlights and batteries. I tried a small portable radio. Nothing but static on the A.M. and F.M. bands both. I brought it back with me along with some extra batteries. I listened to it a short while ago; still nothing. Maybe tomorrow.
I spent the day at the supermarket digging out canned goods and bringing them back here.
Here is a cave. The cave is down in back of the square, downtown as it’s called. I knew about it from growing up here. It used to be bricked up. The quake took care of that though. I was worried about the cave itself collapsing, but it seems to be fine.
It’s only about a mile and a half from here to the supermarket, but with no vehicle it’s slow going. I’ve been piling stuff up on a large sled and making trips back and forth.
I found several cars and trucks, snowmobiles, but none of them will run. Most of them have no juice, but even the ones that do just turn over but won’t fire up. Maybe if I was a mechanic I could do something, but I’m not. So, it’s the sled and a lot of muscle work.
I did notice today, after not going there for two days, that no one else had been there either. No tracks in the fresh snow. It’s depressing. No way can I be the only freaking guy here, right? And that made me wonder, what the hell am I writing this for? I mean, if there’s no one left, who will read it? I guess those are questions for another day. Another day because, truly, I don’t want to deal with them today.
So I spent my day getting food. There are maybe two dozen buildings still standing downtown. But that’s where I was when I left off writing yesterday, heading for downtown, so I’ll pick it up from there.
When I got downtown there was no one there, only the handful of buildings standing as I mentioned, and two of those went down a short time later from an aftershock. The Police department... Gone. The Fire department out Washington Street… Gone. I know I walked out there. Ditto the high school. All the old houses, the newspaper, the museum. Really, it’s all gone.
There were some tracks, but how old were they? I couldn’t tell. And I couldn’t tell where they were headed either. I got pretty down about it and ended up walking back down to the square and then down towards the river in back of the square. There was a porn shop, still there. It seemed like the dirtiest place I’d ever seen. I mean, why would a place like that still be there, still be standing when almost nothing else was?
Is that a statement or what? Hey, maybe it is. But since I was down that far, I thought I’d take a look at the river, and that made me think about the cave.
This whole area is limestone, caves everywhere. This one just happened to be a big one.
It wasn’t hard to find it. It’s on an old abandoned road below the level of the square, but a good hundred feet or so above the level of the river. All the brick work that had once closed it off had fallen. The cave itself seemed okay. Some rock had come down, but not much. Most of the rock lying around looked pretty old, like it had been there for some time. Given the buildings, which were still falling, or the cave, I chose the cave. It just seemed to make more sense.
It’s quite deep. I have no idea how deep it goes and no inclination to follow it and see. The front area is huge, and dry, more room than I could ever use, so there’s no need for me to go into that darkness and find out how deep it goes. And that’s funny, isn’t it? What is it that I’ll need? Might need? Could need? I don’t know. I do know I won’t be spending the rest of my life living in a cave, that’s for sure. But it’s winter. I have to stay somewhere for the next few months. Then maybe I�
�ll head south if no one shows up to rescue me. I guess it would be me, there’s no one else here. It shouldn’t be that way though. There has to be more than me.
I spent the rest of the day looking around. I walked all the way out to Arsenal Street as well as Washington Street. The mall, or most of it, has collapsed. But I should be able to get some stuff out of it. The interstate is car wrecks and bodies everywhere. I could see it from the overpass. I didn’t feel a need to go down there to see it in person. I didn’t want to.
I hadn’t really seen many bodies. Some at the mall, some at the supermarket, a few others here and there, but there is so much ground, houses, things missing, that I think the other people just got swallowed up by the quake. There is a lot of raw earth. Most of the streets are messed up. The interstate is like that in places, what I can see any way, but close to Arsenal Street, it’s all wrecks and bodies, wrecked and burned vehicles; and it smells horrible. I could smell it long before I came up on the overpass. I’ve decided it will take a lot to get me to go back out Arsenal Street again.
The supermarket has that smell also, and I found two people up by the checkouts when I first dug it out, but none since then as I’ve dug out other parts of the store. Maybe it’s the meat department at the back of the store that smells like that.
I spent most of the next day wandering around, trying to start cars and trucks, calling out to the people I had hoped were there. Nothing. I heard something that sounded like an engine running, but it came and went on the wind and I couldn’t tell where it had come from. But I took that as a good sign. It has to be someone, right?
I can’t imagine being alone.
I tried to start new cars, old cars, new trucks, you name it. None of them do anything except turn over. But at least their batteries are working.
That was the day I realized that the daylight seemed to last way too long. My watch wasn’t working, so I can’t say for sure, but the sun just seemed to hang in the sky all day, then it seemed to sink in the wrong direction once it did set. And I was sick all day. My stomach. And I was light headed.
