The Event Trilogy (Book 1): Life After the Meteor

by Larson, Thomas

  There was a lot going on in the preparation and trying to collect the survival goods we would need but we, Anne and I were also in contact with other of our family members and close friends to make certain they were okay and that they also had an escape plan. I shared my plans to head north with Teckla, and Nick, I’m sorry, my sister and brother.

  Teckla, Frank, her man, and my nephews, Matt and Mark were already on board and well into the planning and implementation stages. Frank had been able to secure a box truck from his workplace, the Aqua Turf Banquet Club. They had laid in a supply of food, water and fuel. Like Anne and I, they had determined the idea of trying to get over the Hudson was going to be a problem, particularly the further south on the river you were. After talking with them we decided that we would meet in the area of Lee, Massachusetts, near the outlet stores. It was a reasonably un-populated area so we felt it would probably be a safe zone for a little while. Our target day was noon on the 2nd. We had little CB based hand held radios and the idea was to use channel 23 as our “home” frequency.

  Nick, Lauren and Jan, my brother, his wife and their daughter were a little more lax and fuzzy in their efforts. Nick, who was a year younger than me had a tendency to put things off. Lauren was the motivator in getting things done. Jan, a college sophomore was more like her dad, but when the time came, she was quite effective in getting what needed to be done taken care of. They did take an aggressive approach for the escape. However, they thought they would be able to forage along the way. They had a Honda Rav4, which Lauren would drive. Nick was relegated to the Miss Daisy seat, but that had been his place for years. They are also going to meet us in Lee.

  I reached out to some of my friends and found that my cop buddies had their plans set and in place. I told them about our plans and they shared theirs. We were all pretty much of the same mindset of getting out of the area. Some were opting to try to go north and then east to the Canadian Maritimes or upstate Maine. Others hoped for a quiet zone near Lake Champlain. In whichever case we had set some minimal contact plans in place that would work even after the cell phones and texting were no longer available to us.

  Anne shared our plans with her brother Daniel in Texas. We shared our initial plans. We knew that it was difficult and unlikely that we would be successful in meeting up with them. Daniel and his wife Leslie had a good situation even though they were in the most populated area. They were scientists hooked up with NASA down in Houston. They believed that they would be well protected. But should it all start to unravel around them they had good escape opportunities due to its openness and opportunity to get off road.

  On the remote chance of getting together with them we set a couple of target dates and locations to try to meet up. The first was to try to get to Dodge City in Kansas for the beginning of September. If one of us made it, and did not find the other, we devised a plan to leave information (Graffiti?) pointing to the next location. That would be in southern New Mexico near Roswell a month later. We were all of the opinion that finding warm dry climate might be advantageous in that it would quicken the pace of deterioration of the infected. We would have probably headed that way immediately except for the Hudson. It was not that big a river, but it was a barrier.

  In the course of those early days after The Event there were moments and demonstrations of great love, humanity and sacrifice but there was also the darker side of human nature that also came out. There were those who just floundered, wringing their hands, praying to God and expecting some miracle. And then there were those who could not or would not wait for the infection to bring them down. They chose to surrender themselves to death. The tragedy is not that they did so but that they did it wrong, slashed wrists, poison, or hanging to take their own lives only created small pockets of undead to bite and slash at everyone in their path.

  The houses around Anne’s were for the most part empty, either everyone had left already or the residents had crawled into the shelters or basements to wait for the inevitable. It seemed foolish to give up so quickly and just wait for a horde to come and overwhelm you in your hidey hole. As I looked around the neighborhood, I could see a few cars being loaded for their run.

  As I looked around, after putting the finishing touches on our repacking the car due to Cyril and Arcelia deciding that they would not make the trip with us, Brandon, Margo’s dad showed up. He and Anne got together in their 40s and had a late child. The divorce was ugly and in the end he lost all control over Margo. He had since remarried and shared a house with his new wife and her parents.

  I was standing at the back of my Kia when he drove up. He partially blocked the driveway with his car and got out. He was beet red, disheveled and smudged with soot and blood. He never looked at me but started walking toward the front door. He was calling out to Margo, telling her to come out. I stepped into his line of vision and said, “Brandon, stop, you don’t belong here.”

  He stared at me for a moment and than said “Yes, I should be here, I have to save her from the hordes, from all of this.”

  “What is your escape plan? Why aren’t you taking care of your wife, your parents, getting ready to go?” I asked but looking into his eyes I knew this was not going to end well.

  “I have already taken care of them. They are safe, now I am here to get Margo and save her too, and then I can be safe.”

  I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. I knew what he had done, and what he was planning to do with Margo. I was not going to let that happen. “Brandon, get back in your car and go home” I told him.

  By now Anne and Margo were standing in the open garage. I was between Brandon and them and he kept trying to look around me. I had not noticed until then that he had a long kitchen knife. He had kept it close to his side and tucked away. He called to Margo to come to him. She looked at him, then Anne and simply asked “Why?”.

  “I am your father, and I don’t want you to be one of them”, He said.

  “What do you mean? She asked.

  He said “I am going to take you back to our home and you will stay there with me, forever.”

  All she said very matter of fact was “No, I’m not going”.

  Brandon got louder and louder as he ranted and demanded that she must obey. He was her father and he had the right to do this, to make sure she did not turn.

  “Brandon it is time for you to go, get into your car and just leave.” I said.

  He looked at me briefly and ranted at me that I could not, should not be involved in this because I was a simple minded drunk who had no right to interfere. He was getting increasingly agitated, slobbering and yelling. The knife was now in the open and he began to flail it around. Then he started to walk toward the garage.

  I had never shot anyone before; I had seen death by gunshot but never had to be the one pulling the trigger. It was a brief surreal moment that I know would stay with me for the rest of my life. I could see the bullet leaving the gun……

  As his body hit the ground, I knew that we could, would survive this ordeal. Not the Brandon part, that was already over, but the enormity of this situation, The Event.

  I knew that there could come a time when I might have to kill another human being but I had not expected it to be this soon, or that it would be someone I actually knew. Anne and Margo looked from him, to me, to him in shocked silence. We stood for what seemed hours but really were minutes.

  While we stood the acrid smell of smoke blew toward us from the north and I could see the smoke from the direction of his condo. I was sure that he had killed his parents and wife then set the home on fire. He had come to take Margo to join them. Sadly I had a feeling that a similar scenario in which family members, children were killed in quiet desperation had played out over and over again throughout the country and the world. In a way it was like those jumping from the Towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11. So hopeless, so desperate and yet wanting to control their own end.

  Anne finally broke the silence and said. “It was time to go.”


  It was a tearful goodbye with her parents. We had talked out the idea and impact of their going, not going and what the eventualities might be. They were still adamant that they should stay.

  I had a 2004 Sorrento with 200,000+ miles on it, I would have preferred something with a little less mileage but it was a good tough vehicle and it had a lot of room. Anne had the Honda SUV with less mileage. Our plan was to initially take the two vehicles to start. Then to discard one when we reached a point when one broke or was no longer drivable.

  I had the Kia set up with one back seat set for a passenger and room in the front for another, although I put small, loose and disposable items in those seat areas to save room for important survival items but made sure those items could be quickly or easily removed if a rapid consolidation was necessary.

  In the back part of the car I had placed my cans of spam, and other food stuffs, water, a little generator, some clothing for cold or foul weather, fishing gear, a tent, sleeping bag, and weapons. We had the guns, but the ammunition was the limiting resource and needed to be conserved. Melee weapons could be needed quickly so a baseball bat, and machete were in the front seat where they could be easily reached. Spare oil, and vehicle fluids, a tow strap, a battery jumper and first aid equipment were all packed in or on top of the car.

  As I strapped the five gallon cans of gas to the top of the car I chuckled thinking back to trips out west with Anne where we would often run well below what she felt was a reasonable quantity of fuel.

  “I wished that I was back there again,” I said aloud.

  Margo heard me and asked, “What?”

  “Nothing, just thinking.”

  Anne’s car carried much of the same things. The idea was that if we had to abandon one of the vehicles we would still have a half of everything rather than lose all of some items. It was the smart thing.

  When we finally hit the road, the ability to text and cell phone still worked and satellite radio was still on the air. In those early days the radio that was a great help. Satellite radio has had channels for large urban areas that advised on traffic to which they added escape information. It helped to guide people out of places like Boston, or New York. I am not sure how they did it, if it was using the traffic cams or if they actually had spotters on the ground. But it prevented a lot of people trying to escape from driving into a traffic traps or bottle necks. Of course, it probably added to the spread of the disease by those already infected but asymptomatic.

  Cell phones and texting were the only way to communicate while you were on the road, unless you had taken the little CB Walkie Talkies to talk car to car. We had one and were able to monitor channel 9 or 19 and receive road updates and traffic information.

  As time when on, I knew that the satellite radio channels and the cell phone towers would blink out. Power plants would be overrun and then the backup generators would eventually begin to run out of fuel, so eventually we would be reduced to just the CB radios and the GPS. The GPS system is not land based.

  We left the house and the folks and moved out onto Route 5 north. The information was that the Interstate (84 & 91) out of and around Hartford and Springfield was slow, but still moving in both directions. It was the outbound traffic that was the bigger problem. I also remembered the checkpoints and wanted to avoid them.

  As it turned out it was not the Hudson River, as I first thought, but the Connecticut River that was the barrier. We avoided 91 completely and were able to get across the river on the Route 149 Bridge into Windsor Locks and then headed west toward my parent’s farm in Canton. It had been abandoned since they had both passed away years ago. We had put it on the market but due to the economic bubble issues of 2008 and the economy tanking it had not sold. We still used the place for storage and had not cleaned out some of the out buildings that held tools, and equipment. I felt that there might be some items at the farm that would be of value to us on the road.

  On our way to Canton I had Margo call Teckla and told her what we were doing. I prompted Margo to ask her if she could think of any items that we should take while we were there. She and I were pretty much on the same page although she suggested a couple of small tools and items I had not considered.

  We arrived safely and were able to load up with some additional items. We loaded up a few tools like a come-a-longs and a power winch, also a little fire wood. The gem that we found was the hand operated gasoline pump off of the old fuel storage tank that my dad had keep behind the barn. That would be huge when the power grid finally went down.

  By the time we had finished looking around and packing up we had only a little daylight left and decided that spending the night in the old farmhouse was the safest thing to do. There were hayfields that surrounded the house on three sides making it difficult for someone to sneak up on us. Even though we had not seen anyone and the houses in the immediate area all seemed to be empty. We hid the cars in the garage and spent the night inside the old farmhouse. We were careful about using the lights so we didn’t advertise that we were there. It could be the last night in a house for a while, and the last time I would ever sleep in any property that was owned by my family.

  I found that sleep eluded me much of the night as I dozed only to be awakened by a noise, or a nightmare. Had one of the infected gotten in the house? It was like it had been back in the day after my Mom had passed and Dad was living there alone. He had health issues and needed to be watched. We kids took turns staying there to keep an eye on him. I could not sleep back then either, every creak or noise and I would be awake and listening to make sure Dad was okay. I was exhausted as it finally got light.

  March 2nd

  It was a sunny morning. Over handfuls of cold Cheerios, Anne and I discussed the idea of dumping one of our vehicles. We decided that it was better to hang onto both for the time being. We were on the road by 9:00 and pretty much still on schedule. Margo who had been monitoring the CB gave us a little bad news. It seemed that there was a crash on Route 44 in the area of New Hartford. As a result traffic was not moving for a couple of miles. God bless GPS because we were able to circumvent the problem by using back roads and continue on our way to Lee.

  Margo was in periodic text contact with Teckla, my sister, as we made our way out toward the northwest corner of the state. Teckla messaged earlier to let us know that Uncle Elgin was up in Otis at his lake house and that the infected were not an issue there, so far. He had invited us to make our way up there. We agreed that it seemed a good place to join up rather than in Lee. Anne, Margo and I arrived at about 4 PM, Teckla and crew rolled in about 45 minutes later And much to my surprise Nick, Lauren and Jan arrived about 15 minutes after that. We staked out a little area in Elgin’s lawn for our vehicles and ourselves.

  The area was a fair sized lake with housing ranging from simple little cottages to larger elaborate homes as well as a marina area with a couple of Mom and Pop stores. There was a campground on a little peninsula, and for this time of year surprisingly full, but then it was a refugee area.

  There was a state of turmoil that existed in the area. Apparently, there were two mind sets at play. There were those who were truly prepared to fight through this mess and survive. Those folks had already begun to fortify and work toward making the area a safe one. But there was also a faction that seemed bent on going out in style, or at least having the time of their life, short though it might be.

  My first thought was that we might be able to fit into the part of the Otis community that was prepared and this could be as good a place to settle as any. Some of us wandered around checking the place out. Be it the retired cop in me, or just being smart, but I made certain that we kept some of our people at our campsite, just in case, and it was just as well that we had. While Teckla and I were out checking the surrounding area there were a few visitors who were asking about our plans and our supplies and weapons. No information was given out but it was clear that plans for our inventory were in the works.

  While Frank and Nick took
a turn to look around Teckla and I watched our gear. We talked softly but we both had the same feeling, there was something that seemed wrong. It was clear that this was not going to be a democracy and that there were already a few people who had taken to the idea of being the king, or prince of this little fiefdom. It might be safe enough to start, but it was evident that some would merely be cannon fodder for a few of the more established people on the other side of the reservoir. This was not a good place to stay.

  While we talked we were visited by a couple of men from the other side of the lake, Barry Johnson and Nate Harrington. A box truck and a SUV with a trailer were just too attractive a curiosity. In talking with them it became clear that they were a couple of the movers and shakers of this community. They were curious about our intentions, questioned of our plans, and what equipment we had.

  They were willing to share certain rumors and travel information that they had heard hoping in the exchange for information from us. I was not sure if it was by design but their information was outdated, and generally slanted to make us want to stay at the lake. They said that they had heard that the bridge to Albany had been destroyed and that the Mass Pike was closed and littered with broken down cars and trucks. They said that a walking horde of infected was coming west from Springfield but the horde was sticking to the Interstate.