Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon (17 page)

     My only concern is whether or not planting them so close together will affect their yield. If the yield is poor, I’ll know better next time.

     Thumper is looking at me as I’m writing this. I’m not sure what he wants. I talk to him sometimes when I’m out back working. Maybe he wants to ask my advice about something.

     I hope he doesn’t want any advice about sex. He’s been doing much better than me in that department lately. In fact, both of the females are very big now. I don’t know how long it takes to make rabbit babies, but I’m guessing we’ll have a lot of little rabbits very soon.

     Tell the girls not to worry. I haven’t forgotten my promise not to kill their pets. I’ll let them live to be a ripe old age and die on their own. I’ll settle for eating their offspring instead. When Thumper and the other old timers die on their own, I’ll bury them in the back yard with a proper funeral.

    
I hope you’re back by then. I have a huge hole in my heart that only the three of you can fill.

     Kiss the girls for me. I love you, sweetheart. I wish I knew if you were ever going to read my words…

-37
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     Once again, Dave found himself out in the open in the cover of darkness. This time he was on a ladder, in front of the Castro house, carefully taking down their gutter system.

     It was a slow process. The night vision goggles allowed him to see each of the screws holding the gutter in place. But the green glow they provided didn’t make out the fine details he needed to see the screw head. He had to hold the screwdriver tip against the screw with one hand while he turned it with the other. All while balancing on an uneven ladder.

     At one point he had to take a break and scramble down the ladder when he heard voices coming from the end of the block. He folded the ladder and laid it in the tall grass of the front yard, then scampered into the bushes.

     He drew his sidearm, hoping he wouldn’t be outgunned. And he computed his chances of making it back into his garage unseen.

     He looked in the direction of the voices and could make out three shadowy figures, walking down the center of the street. Two of them carried rifles, although the green haze of the goggles prevented him from telling what type.

     They were now only three houses away. He had no chance of making it back into his garage.

     It struck him that this was the most vulnerable he’d been since the crisis began.

     It also struck him that he was not afraid.

     He wondered why. Any man with any sense would be afraid, or at least nervous, at the prospect of dying. But he felt nothing other than curiosity. Curiosity about the men walking up the street. Who they were, what they were up to. And where they were going.

     He held his position, zeroing in on one of the two men with rifles. At the first sign of trouble, he’d be the first to go. Then the one with the other rifle. The man with the hand gun would be the least threat, and would therefore be the last to die.

     But the men never noticed him kneeling behind the bushes. They passed him by and continued on their way, up the street, their voices getting harder to hear with each step they took.

     Dave took up a new position behind
Jack Castro’s car, which was parked in the driveway when the EMP hit. He watched the three as they completely disappeared from view.

     And he reflected on what happened.

     He could easily have died, yet he felt no fear. Did that mean he no longer cared whether he lived or died?

     Did that mean he’d given up?

     Then he realized he was more interested in hearing the men’s words, to hear what they were talking about, than he was about the prospect of getting shot.

     Was he so starved for human contact that he would ignore obvious danger to expose himself to others, at his own peril?

     And if that’s what had happened, if he was so starved for human interaction that he’d risk his own life to see it, how far was he from total madness?

     He finally decided he was not going mad. That he was stuck in the bushes through circumstance and for no other reason. That he
did indeed have no other option, and didn’t have enough time to return to the safety of his garage.

     Further, he decided that he wasn’t desperate to hear their words. He was merely curious, after having no other contact with any human being for many weeks.

     Lastly, he decided that he had no fear because he knew he had the upper hand in the situation. He could see without being seen. The flash from his first shot would give away his position, sure. But it wouldn’t have given his adversaries time to react.

     Dave was an excellent shot. He could fire off three shots in as many seconds, and was fairly confident of three hits. Maybe not kill shots, but all three of his targets would go down. The next few shots would finish them off.

     He finally decided that he was no more afraid now than he was on patrol, with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah. Just like in Iraq, he was on the good side. They had the firepower, and the weapons, and the training and tactics to get the job done. The only thing the enemy had was the element of surprise. And surprise was way overrated when matched against vastly superior firepower.

     Even though he’d been outnumbered three to one, Dave was confident he would have been the victor. That’s why he wasn’t afraid.

     Fear is for suckers.

-38-

     It took Dave another hour to get the gutter pieces off the front of the house. He carried them over to his own yard and slid them one at a time over his fence, careful to avoid the painful screws on top of the fence slats.

     He checked his watch. It was a little after three a.m.

     He figured he was out in the open anyway. He might as well do some more work while he was here.

     Much as he’d done a few nights be
fore, he stealthily made his way down the street, quietly turning over trash cans. He was careful to lay them down gently, instead of just pushing them over.

     After he’d toppled ten cans there were no more to topple. The piles of trash he could see down the rest of the block told him that someone else had the same idea he did.

     He wished them well. Ten additional cans was all he needed to line the entire back side of the house next door.

     He crouched behind a car and waited a few minutes to see if his activity had brought anyone outside of their homes.

     While he waited Dave pondered how difficult it must be for a looter to determine which houses were still occupied. Since the crisis began, the Castros weren’t the only family he saw walk away from their homes in search of help or a better situation. He’d seen a dozen other families do the same. Sometimes in the night, and sometimes in broad daylight.

     He suspected that many, if not most, of these houses were now vacant. And since the almost overwhelming
stench of decaying flesh had returned not long after the rainfall, he also suspected that many of them contained the bodies of suicide victims. He suspected that many held entire families, who’d chosen the easy way out instead of fighting for survival.

     The looters must be having a dreadful time, he reasoned, in determining which houses to break into. It wasn’t just a matter of seeing which houses had no lights or activity. None of them did. Peeking in the windows at night did no good, since they couldn’t see anything
.

     For the looters, it was a deadly game of chance. They were breaking into houses hoping they were empty. But if they weren’t, they might be confronted by angry homeowners and end up like the hapless thief lying in front of Dave’s house.

     Dave wondered how many of the gunshots he heard at night were homeowners protecting their property.

     Or maybe armed looters blowing away unarmed and innocent people to make it easier to steal whatever they had.

     Dave was glad of two things. He was glad that he’d taken the time and effort to make his home appear to be vacant. Thus far, it had apparently worked. Besides the two occasions when he’d actually seen strangers trying to make out his signs in the dark, no one had ever tried to break in, or even to knock on the door.

     The other thing he was glad for was that he was well armed. Even before the EMP hit, he was a big supporter of the second amendment. Sarah was too, but only in a practical sense. She didn’t like firing
guns. She said they were heavy and she lacked the arm strength to control the kick of the larger handguns. But she realized they would be an essential tool to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. So she tried to like them, bless her heart. She went to the range occasionally, and fired often enough to stay proficient.

     She always said she would only fire a weapon to protect her family, but that was good enough for Dave. He said that was the only time he planned to use his as well.

     “We’re not robbers or thieves,” he told her. “We’re the good guys. But if the good guys aren’t armed and willing to defend themselves, the bad guys will take over the world. Because you can damn sure bet the bad guys will have guns.”

     After several minutes he decided it was quiet enough to proceed. He gathered the cans, two at a time, and ferried them to the fence at the side of his house. Then, as he’d done before, he formed them into a stack and carefully flipped
the stack over the fence.

     Then he retrieved his ladder, slowly slid it beneath his overhead garage door, and followed it into the garage.

     The last two things he did on this night was move the pieces of rain gutter and trash cans into the center of his back yard, and then go to bed exhausted.

-39-

     As he’d done the previous time he’d worked long into the night, Dave slept well past noon.

     He struggled to remember a dream he’d had, but he could only recall bits and pieces. Two men, who had somehow discovered that Dave was living there. They’d broken in while Dave was sleeping and surprised him. There was a brief skirmish. Dave shot one of the men dead, and found himself in his back yard, out of ammunition for his handgun and unable to get to either of his AR-15s.

     Although he couldn’t remember the whole dream, it troubled him greatly.

     It reminded him that he still hadn’t prepared his
bug out location.

     In the months leading up to the solar storm that sent the EMP, or multiple EMPs, raining down on the earth, Dave and Sarah had prepared the arsenal they’d need to survive an assault.

     They’d purchased two AR-15 rifles, two 9 millimeter pistols, and several hundred rounds of ammo for each.

     Now Dave was on his own, and suddenly had two extra weapons on his hands.

     He’d known for quite some time that he needed a backup plan in case he was overrun. He just hadn’t acted on it. There was always something else that needed to be done.

     His dream reminded him that putting it off any longer was dangerous. And, in fact, he was damn lucky it hadn’t already happened.

     He always had his handgun on his hip. He always had his AR-15 close by. Even on the occasions he had gone outside his sanctuary and onto the street, it was laying on his garage floor, just inside the overhead door, where he could have reached it if he’d needed it.

     But he could only shoot one rifle at a time. The second one would be better left at his
bug out location, in the event he had to evacuate his home and leave his primary weapon behind.

     It was an ugly thought. But in a survival situation, the people most likely to go on living are the ones who plan for the worst case scenarios.