Anthony Newman - American Survivor

“… stay in your houses for at least three days until the debris, and radioactive particles have settled to the ground. Do not eat anything that has been exposed to the fallout. The president has called out the military and National Guard to…”

The radio went silent, so they changed the channel until they heard a man talking on an AM channel.

“… no atomic bombs in this area. An EMP blast above Central California has fried all electronics. I’m a prepper, so all of my equipment was in a Faraday cage. I’ll broadcast every evening at about 7 pm starting today. I will pass on any news and give you some survival tips. This is VWPACKRAT signing off. Have a Happy Apocalypse.”

“Mom WTF was that?”

“Apocalypse or not I will tan your butt for cursing,” said Cobie.

“Mom, I’m sorry, but I spelled W…T…F and didn’t say… well, you know.”

“I’ll give you a pass today since that was a WTH moment.”

“WTH?”

“What the heck. I still have to be a mom even in an apocalypse. I need you to fix supper while I check our other survival gear out.”

She placed the batteries in the walkie-talkies and turned both on after reading the instructions. Their range was only 5-10 miles depending on the line of sight. She sent Cloe outside with one, and they said hi to each other to make sure the radios worked. While Cloe finished preparing soup and sandwiches, Cobie tried all of the channels and heard a man crying as he asked someone for help to get his wife to the hospital. A different channel had a truck driver who was pinned in his truck after it crashed down a mountainside.

His sleep was interrupted several times by nightmares about him catching Gwen and Darren in the Explorer and then shooting them. The other dreams centered on bears and mountain lions eating him as he struggled to survive. He woke up between nightmares to go to the bathroom several times because the beer was working overtime on his bladder. Lack of sleep and the nightmares caused him to be half-asleep and scared as he sat down at the kitchen table to eat breakfast, which consisted of cereal, milk made from powder and water, Coke, and a Rogue River IPA.

He played with the last floating fruity chunks of cereal in his bowl while thinking about what the hell he had to do today. He didn’t think about the horrible events that occurred the previous day and was still working on his original plan to live alone in the woods. He was one lucky man that the plan he should have been working on had many of the same items as his original plan. Joe was in denial and would be in a fog for several weeks. He only thought about staying away from people and living his life on his own terms on his piece of land in the woods of Oregon.

He looked over at the table and saw the book of letters from his Grandma and remembered to read the remaining three messages that she had told him to read first. The note read:

Dear Joe:

You need to take an inventory of all of the supplies and food and see what needs to be replaced. You need to keep three to six months worth of food stored at all times in case you get snowed in, or TEOTWAWKI happens. Those damn Russians, Iranians, and Koreans will eventually attack the USA. Be prepared for anything.

Joe spent the next day opening all of the boxes in the basement and carefully recording the contents on a list. He found several cases of seeds and other supplies to help him start a large garden. He also found several cases of bleach with notes on how much to add to water to purify it to kill all germs. Many of the boxes contained board games and fiction and nonfiction books. His favorite finds were boxes containing all the supplies one needed to make ale and distill whiskey. He still avoided thinking about the disaster that was unfolding around him and tried to focus on the cabin and its contents.

The next morning Joe started his work by putting away the supplies he had purchased in town the other day. After a dozen trips up and down the basement stairs, he had moved everything from the trailer to the basement. He now had a two-week supply of food and another week or two of the survival food that was still fit to eat. On one of his trips to the basement, he brought up a stack of books on trapping, survival, and living off the grid.

He opened a large metal locker and found several walkie-talkies, a CB radio, and a Ham radio set up. There were batteries and a fold-up solar cell power generator. The cabinet also contained several manuals and books on the devices. He took them upstairs, placed them on the kitchen counter, and went on about his business.

On several occasions, he thought he heard something in the woods and felt someone was watching him as he worked to carry the supplies into the house. He even saw a dog chasing a rabbit and wondered about the millions of dogs that wouldn’t be fed by their owners as they struggled to feed themselves. This reminded him to strap his .44 Magnum on his hip and always be prepared to defend himself.

The next chore was to fill the cistern with water from the well out back of the cabin. The house initially had solar-powered lights and a water pump that sent water from the well into the large cistern on the back of the cabin. Joe couldn’t get it working and thought the batteries were shot. He had purchased a voltmeter and had placed fixing the solar powered system on his To Do list. Until then he had to power the pump at the well from his Bronco’s battery. An hour and a half later, the cistern was filled. Joe learned quickly to turn the motor off and on to keep the battery charged while still conserving gasoline.

The sun was no longer directly overhead, and Joe was hungry, so he went into his new home and prepared a peanut butter sandwich and the milk left over from this morning. He hadn’t built a fire yet, so the cabin was about the same temperature as the outside, which was 34 degrees according to the thermometer on the back patio. He added an apple to his meal and reminded himself that he could cook a real dinner that night. He saw the books in front of him and thumbed through several before deciding to go on a hike and blow off work the rest of the day.

He slung his backpack over his shoulders and hooked the clasps before picking up his .308 Savage and his map. He made up his mind to explore a small section of his land every day until he had covered every square foot of the area. Joe looked at his map and knew the lines gave him an idea of the elevation and quickly figured out that his land was almost square, had a valley running through the center and rose 200 feet on the north end and only 50 on the south side. He thought about it for a few minutes and decided it was like an inverted saddle with the cabin on a flat spot about halfway up the northern hills. He headed north directly behind the cabin and found the going very tough. The land was primarily on the top of a mountain range and was rocky with a lot of scrub brush and trees.

Joe had to climb steep hills several times until he was at the top of the ridge behind the cabin and the map indicated he was now on Forest Service property. There was an old service road on top of the hill, and he found more fresh tire tracks in the snow heading east. From this height, Joe could look a hundred feet over the cabin back toward Ashland. The cabin wasn’t visible, but he knew he would have to make sure he only burned firewood at night, or someone on top of the hill could see the smoke. This was the minute that Joe realized that he was alone and the world had changed forever.

Joe walked for over an hour on top of the ridge to make sure no one lived in the area and found nothing. He then walked on top of the ridge heading west until he thought he was on the corner of his property and headed down the snow-covered and very slippery hill to see what was in that area. He found the going very tough and had to make his way sideways several times before he could head down the rocky hill again. Joe found himself hugging a large rock outcropping with his feet slipping on the snow to make it down the hill. He saw something to his left when the ledge he was on widened out enough to turn around. It was a cave.