Catastrophe in America

by Pete Thorsen

  The down side was it would be harder to spot any potential attackers when you are surrounded by people who at any point in time could turn on you. I would have to wait and see what developed to fine tune my escape plan from the City after seeing what was going on down on the streets. So it would be just me and the other 19 million residents of the City. Down the stairs and out onto the street and my journey began without me taking a single look back.

  Chapter Six

  I was on Long Island and my first decision was if I should go south and west to take the bridge over to Staten Island then on west towards Pennsylvania or go north and west to Manhattan and then on west towards New Jersey. It seemed closer to go south and west so I hoped I could get across the bridge to Staten Island. I knew the bridges would be the choke points leaving the City and I was anxious to get across them.

  There were other people around of course but there did not seem to be the mass exodus that I had expected. That was fine by me but there were still a lot of people on the streets and sidewalks. I kept a tight grip on my spear and cared not about any of the many stares I received from my home made packs to my home made spear.

  It was likely a long trek ahead of me but I was in good shape and had on a good pair of shoes. After some minor adjustments to my front and back packs they were riding fine and I think maybe it was even better than if I would have had a regular backpack with all the weight and bulk just on my back. At least that is what I told myself anyway as I walked along.

  Within three blocks I saw my first body lying in the street but I tried to not even look at it as I walked on past. Other people were avoiding it also. Several people tried to talk to me but I just waved them off. I wanted to keep moving and had no reason to talk to anyone. And I certainly had nothing I could share with others. I had three cans of food and maybe a total of a gallon or so of water with very poor chances of getting more of either one of those vital items.

  There was little chance of me getting to the bridge today that crossed onto Staten Island. I had gotten a late start and could not walk real fast because of all the other people everywhere who were mostly just standing around.

  I had no idea about what I was going to do tonight for a place to sleep. Security would be very hard to achieve tonight and I certainly did not want to wake up dead. I had almost nothing of value to anyone else but they would not know that until they had looked through my stuff for themselves; an event that would likely only take place after I was dead or severely beaten (neither of which appealed to me).

  When I got thirsty I went to a spot where I had some room away from the many others and drank some of my water from a wine bottle. My plan was to empty the heavy wine bottles first and just leave them rather than carry the heavy and bulky things. I was glad I had them but they were certainly not ideal to travel with when you were on foot.

  I saw some fights as I was walking with all of them involving some kind of weapons. Clubs and knives were the ones most often seen being carried by people and used in fights. Whenever a fight broke out you could tell even from a distance because everyone around backed away so they would not get involved.

  My cell phone battery was dead (I had left it in my apartment) but it looked like the cell signals were also dead now judging by those I saw around me that were trying to use their now worthless cell phones. It looked like both technology and society were both breaking down at about the same time but I don’t really think the two were related but instead both just happened to be occurring at about the same time.

  I had thought about it some and I had decided to eat another of my cans of food tonight. I would need the strength and it would be less to carry plus it would be less I had of value to others. The flatter my makeshift packs were the easier everyone could see that I had nothing of any value.

  Every store I passed had obviously been looted even those that now had no value. At this point why would anyone waste time and energy breaking into an electronics store? Did some really think that a big screen TV had any monetary value when there was no electricity? But that did give me a ghost of an idea.

  When the shadows started getting long I began to look for a place to stay for the night. Before it got too dark to see what I looking at I saw an office building and went inside. It had been broken into but again what could be in here of value?

  So that made it valuable to me. I thought it might make a relatively safe place to spend the night. If there was one thing the City was full of, it was now worthless offices. I hoped that the fact that there were so many offices and that now they were so worthless that I would be safe inside this particular one for the night.

  I went up a couple floors and found a multi-room office. I went to the inner office and saw that it had a couch and then I barricaded the only door with the desk and other office furniture. It was the best I could come up with. The lock on the door had been broken but I had enough junk stacked against it that at the very least anyone trying to get inside would certainly wake me up.

  I ate my can of food and drank more water and then settled down on the fairly comfortable couch for a hopefully quiet and restful night’s sleep. As I was waiting for sleep to over take me I thought about everything I had seen and heard since the power had gone out.

  People were turning into animals after only five days without power. What a week ago had been a thriving, bustling civilized society was turning in to more of a large number of closely packed barbarians instead. I could only imagine how bad it would get after another week or more of no electric power. Who could have thought this could happen here and so quickly in a great country like ours?

  Did we as a society have only that thin of a shell of civility about us? Five days without electric power and there were dead bodies on the street and in buildings and most everyone you saw had some kind of weapon for defense or in some cases for offense. I am living through this but I am having a very hard time believing what is going on around me. Things are so bad that I have to carry a spear like some kind of cave man?

  And where are the ‘authorities’? Where are the police or our whole government? I walked over half a day through a mass of people and I did not see a single person with any kind of an official uniform on today. Where were they? Why was no one from the government here to help us? The local government, the state government, or the federal government were no where to be seen.

  New York City has many thousands of police officers yet I never saw a single one today after walking for several miles. I am having a hard time coming up with an answer for why I never saw any. It just makes no sense to me. I would think in a situation like this that all leave would be canceled and all the reserve officers would also be called in. The streets should be full of cops everywhere you look. But instead I see not a single one.

  I suppose I may have passed a couple in the crowd without noticing them. And I suppose I could have passed many in the crowds if they were not in their uniforms but wouldn’t they be letting their presence be known and taking charge of the situation and trying to keep order? Instead I see many people openly carrying weapons and I am myself carrying a spear of all things. And seeing bloody fights many times throughout the day. Where are the people we pay to protect and serve?

  Chapter Seven

  I actually slept very well and woke up ready to face another day. I was also hungry but I decided to save my only two cans of food for later. I did a little bit of exploring in the offices before I left to see if there was anything of value there for me now that I had more light. There was a small attached bathroom in the office I slept in and the toilet had water inside the tank in back.

  The tank had some kind of automatically dispensing cleaning agent so I could not use the tank water for drinking but I did use some of it to wash up some. Then I used the remainder of the toilet water for its intended purpose. In a desk I found a plastic bottle of that clear hand sanitizer that is popular and I took that with me. There really was nothing else that I found that I thought would be of any use to me in
the new world in which I now found myself.

  My breakfast was some more of the partial bottle of sports drink that I had left. At least the flavoring made it seem like it had some food value. Then it was back out on the street and walking west again.

  I was not all that far from my first bridge and I soon saw it ahead of me. As I got closer I saw there were many people crossing the bridge and it was looking like all of them were heading in the same direction as me. That was OK and I had been expecting it to be that way.

  I got on the toll road and was soon on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. While there were a large number of pedestrians, there were also some vehicles here that were using the highway. I’m not sure how long there will be vehicles on the road because I assume the gas stations would need electric power to pump the gas so where would anyone get gas when there was no electricity?

  Walking across the wide span over the water was way different than being in a vehicle and going across it but it went fine and I was soon on the west side and standing on the solid ground of Staten Island. I thought it was around ten miles to get across Staten Island and I wanted to make it across the next bridge today so I would be on the mainland before dark. I stayed on highway 278 because I thought it would be the fastest and the safest way to get across the island.

  It was in the afternoon that I killed a man. He attacked me out of the blue and only my fast reflexes that I had honed on the racquetball court saved me. Well that and a large slice of blind luck too. When the man attacked I spun and made a quick jab with my spear and it actually stuck him in the chest. He died on the spot and only after the deed was done did I have a chance to think about my actions. I sat for a couple minutes when my legs did not feel like they would hold me up.

  There were other people around but they made a wide berth around me and the now dead man. Finally I got up and started to walk away before turning back and taking the gym bag that the attacker had been carrying. I also took the knife he had been about to use on me and the sheath that was on his belt for it. He also had a cigarette lighter in a pocket that I took and some cash money.

  I did not like carrying the gym bag but did not want to paw through it while standing next to someone I had just killed. I did wipe my spear blade off on his clothes though some of his blood had gotten on the wood handle and would not wipe off and I was not going to waste any of my water to wash it.

  I am still shaking every time I think about actually killing someone. After about an hour or so I moved well off to the side of the highway and went through the dead guy’s bag. There was a bunch of candy bars of which I ate one while looking over what else was in the bag. I was very careful to look up and all around me often so I could see it anyone was about to attack me.

  There were four standard sealed pint bottles of water, a small package of jerky, and three cans food. The cans were one of green beans, one of peaches, and a can of cream corn which I believe I have never heard of before. There was also a big wad of cash on top of what he had in his pockets and I took it all and distributed the stuff into my front and rear packs.

  It made my ‘packs’ really stick out with all the stuff inside but that could not be helped and I wanted to get rid of the gym bag so I had both my hands free. Plus I did not want the constant reminder from the gym bag that I had killed a man.

  I did not waste much time sitting and going through my ‘loot’ because I knew I had some distance I wanted to travel yet today. Walking along I had plenty of time to think and I again thought about the fact that I had not seen one police officer since that first day on my walk home from the gym. I tried to make sense of this fact. I knew there were a lot of police in the City so it would be logical to see at least a few on my walk.

  I had seen people with guns that certainly could have been police officers but they did not have badges visible or uniforms. All the police could be dead by now but I did not think that was the answer. My conclusion was that the police figured out that at best the people would flock around them wanting help and at worst the uniform would make them a target for every bad guy that saw them. So the logical thing for them to do was get rid of the uniform and hide their badge so they had a better chance of staying alive.

  Without their uniform they could still help people if that is what they wanted to do. Without their uniform they could still stop bad guys but what would they do with any that they caught? I could think of only three choices for a cop that caught a bad guy now if the cops were also forced to be on foot like the rest of us.

  They could let the bad guy go after taking any weapon from the bad guy (but what was the sense of even catching him then?). They could shoot and kill the bad guy but that seems like a rather un-American thing to do (especially if it was just a thief). Or they could give the bad guy a good beating for punishment but again that sure would be an un-American outcome.

  And what is being done with all the bad guys that are in the jails? They would have no water there either and no power for the lights. I would bet it gets very dark in a prison when the power goes out. I think at least in many jails or prisons the jail cells use electric power to open and close the cell doors. What happens when the power is out for an extended period?

  So if they could not give the prisoners food or water would they just leave them in those jail cells to die or at some point just let them go? I’m sure the jail guards would want to be home with their families to protect them. Would the guards just walk away and leave the prisoners in there to die?

  It was hard to even comprehend all the problems caused by this lack of electric power. We are sure totally dependent on that electric power for just about all aspects of our lives. Look at me with the power off for only a few days and here I am walking down a major highway carrying a spear with thousands of others also walking. Who could have seen that coming? A week ago no one in the world could have ever convinced me that just a few days without electric power would turn me into a man killing, spear carrying Neanderthal and yet here I am.

  Walking down a major highway with so few cars on it that I do not have to worry about being run over and having no idea where I am going. Having to constantly be on the look out for anyone who might try to kill me just to take what would have been a less than a one day’s supply of food just a couple days ago. And surrounded by people in the same shape as me or maybe even worse shape. Not knowing where I will be tonight and worried about whether I will even live through another night. Yes I would say that the loss of electric power has certainly changed things for the worse for me and tens of millions of other citizens of the United States.

  I have stopped a few times to get a drink of water and each time I have tried to get away from the mass of people that are usually all around me on this highway. I am now walking across the smaller Goethals Bridge and will be off the Island and on the mainland very soon. It really went fairly quickly crossing Staten Island and I had no trouble at either bridge which were the choke points that I was worried about. It makes me feel better just to be on the mainland now.

  I am going to keep heading west at least for awhile and go on into Pennsylvania I think. I have not a clue where to go but feel I should be safer if I get farther away from the other nineteen million people of the City. Others from the City must feel the same because almost everyone walking or in cars is heading in the same direction as me. I do already feel better just knowing I am now on the mainland and can walk for miles in any direction I choose. I do not feel as trapped as I did when I was on Long Island in my apartment.

  I am now on the west side of the New Jersey Turnpike and with each step I take I am going farther into unknown territory (at least for me). I will have to keep my eyes open and try to find a map so I can try to make a more educated guess about where I should go next. My only big plan so far was to get out of the City and onto the mainland and I have at least done that much and met that modest goal. But I would feel better if I had some master plan or at the very least that I know where I should go tomorrow.

  W
hen I got to Highway One I turned south for no real reason. There are some cars along the highway that are abandoned and many have obviously been broken into. I have started looking and have checked the glove boxes on a few of these cars and by about the sixth or seventh one I was rewarded with a highway map. I did not look at now but shoved it in my pack and kept moving.

  It is getting towards sundown and I want to find a spot for the night. There are some businesses along the highway here and I have moved over a street and found some more industrial type businesses. Here again most look like they have been broken into and I picked one that had both the front doors and all the windows smashed. The worse it looks the better for me (I hope).

  Inside in the fading light I first found an inner office and think I will spend the night here. There is no couch this time but it has carpet on the floor at least. While there is still a little light I will take a quick walk-trough to see if I can find anything useful. One of the toilet tanks is full of water and there are plenty of paper towels so I washed up well, even stripping down to my naked body so I can get as clean as possible. That was sure refreshing and I have found a flashlight in a drawer that still works. I am very careful not to shine the light around to any outside window so it might attract any unwanted attention to me.

  Back in what is some kind of workshop or something there is enough natural light so I opened my can of cream corn for supper. I was smart enough to bring a knife, fork, and spoon from my silverware drawer at home and chose the spoon to eat my corn. It is actually really good or maybe I am just very hungry but either way it did not take very long for me to finish that can of corn and wash it down with some of my water.

  It is amazing how rich I feel because I have a little water and a very meager supply of food. What a different world I now live in. I have barricaded the only door to this small inner office space and I have cleared a space on the carpeted floor for the night. My extra clothing that I have been carrying with will have to do for a pillow for tonight. Trying to go to sleep I keep seeing my spear jab into that man’s chest who attacked me and the scene keeps replaying in my mind.