It’s been a struggle to find the time or energy for anything other than grading over the last few days. But I managed to work a bit more on what suddenly started to look like a Cormac McCarthy rip off (I’ll try to fix that).
I woke this morning to a shuttering, banging sound against the big metal walls of the warehouse. It rattled me awake as its sound reverberated mostly unencumbered through the vast room.
As I’m the only one left in our little community, I sleep on a makeshift bed mattress, piles of towels stuffed in 3 big canvas mailbags lashed together with rope. You’ve probably already seen it. It’s that mess snuggled up against this desk.
Just after we arrived and chose our new home, Jeremy located a stack of cots in a back room, but they are just short enough to annoy me into sleeplessness. So, I prefer my jerry-rigged bed. I’ve gotten used to it. I usually sleep pretty well now.
I was sleeping pretty well last night, just not long enough. The banging woke me up before dawn, judging from the lack of light entering through the skylights high above my head. Or maybe the sun went out during the night.
At any rate, I wasn’t well rested, so the sound not only woke me but set my heart into a wild rhythm and my brain into frenetic overdrive. It must have been a storm, but a violent one. It lasted a while, and my racing heart rate lasted even longer.
So, I want to keep writing my history, but you should know I’m unsettled as I do it. I was writing about Haley when I stopped last. I’ll get back on track.
I wanted to make good time down the highway, both because I knew the Big City would be a better place to establish a home in our new reality and because I was finding it difficult to hold a conversation with Haley and Evelyn. They were both very nice people, and I’m grateful to have had them in my new, convoluted reality. But until we were secure and had a longer-term plan, I didn’t want to chat.
I didn’t get my wish for silence, though, as after what I assume was a mile or so, we saw Jeremy and Fred’s little lean-to shelter, just a few 2X4s and a dirty tarp. I saw their truck first, though. Along the highway, we had seen a few cars that had run off the road or had simply been abandoned, but even in the sun and heat I could see that the Jeremy’s red Ford was strangely clean. Most vehicles we had seen were dented and beaten, by what force I don’t know. But Jeremy’s truck was in pristine condition, parked on the shoulder. In a different time, I would have just thought it was having mechanical problems and the driver had pulled over. In this time, however, the driver was living next to it, just on the other side, down the road, in a rickety structure he shared with his little boy.
Jeremy spotted us while I was still looking at his truck. The first I was aware of the human next to it was with his yelling voice:
“Hey! Hey! So glad to see you!”
This seemed foolish to me, even though I was glad to see him, as well. Given the circumstances, it struck me as a bad idea to shout out to a group of complete strangers who outnumbered him. Haley ran forward, “Hello!” she called to him, but then she saw the child emerging from behind the tarp, “Oh, hi there! I’m Haley.”
I thought the boy looked elementary-school age, but he later confirmed to me that he was a middle schooler. That wasn’t better.
I wasn’t happy to see the child. I admit it. I didn’t want more complications. His able-bodied father was a welcome addition, but the kid was going to require attention. The adults had enough to deal with, what with the world ending and all.
But Haley found him amusing, so we added another source of interest for her. A font of new, more irritating conversation. I thought Jeremy would be useful, and we weren’t going to just leave them to rot, so they gathered their things, leaving their terrible shelter in hopes of a more solid one.
The truck was dead, despite its pristine appearance. It had seemed so promising, but it wouldn’t start.
“We were trying to get out of town, and it just stopped. It’s got gas. It just won’t go,” Jeremy explained.
“Why is it so clean? Every abandoned vehicle I’ve seen looks like a shitshow,” I asked him.
“Beats me. I noticed that too. We holed up in the house when everything went down. We were prepared with food and stuff. When it seemed like we should go, we hopped in the truck and went.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “There wasn’t any traffic.”
“Just cars on the side of the road,” I finished his thought.
“Yeah. Weird.”
Evelyn joined Haley and Fred, while I helped Jeremy pack up his backpack. He had little. I don’t know how he thought they were going to survive here. He probably hadn’t come up with a plan. I avoided that topic.
The lumber in the back of the truck would have been useful, but it would also have been too difficult to carry. So, we left it with the big truck and the little shelter. I made a mental note of the highway exits it was between. Maybe we’d find a working vehicle and come back for it.