Part 13
We Have Arrived
Summary: Sutter's population grows with more survivors.
Jim and Jennifer… That's what I consider the real beginning of Sutter. Jade argued that we were the beginning, which is true, more or less. Whatever… Regardless, within a little over two years, we grew quickly to a population of just over three hundred people with cabins altered or built for their use.
Given the population of California at the time of the Fever, nearly four million, the worst case estimate, based on what Dad had told me, is that California had about eight thousand survivors, give or take.
We also found, at least at Sutter, the ratio of women to men is something like three to one. Although this seems to hold true through the Central Valley as well.
If that's true world-wide, it may be nature's way of helping us back from the brink.
As Sutter grew over the years, we were able to set up educational programs for the next generation. Books have been salvaged by the truckload, well cart-load as trucks became just rusting hulks after a few years. Anyway, we saved them from abandoned book stores, libraries, schools and anywhere else we found them. We started with the Marine library and the PX, or whatever a Marine installation store is called. MX? Or Naval Exchange? Whatever… But our children will not be barbarians in skins with clubs like so many post-apocalyptic SF stories depicted. As long as we have enough people to do the work and give enough of us some free time to work with the kids. And we did. The kids also had to do their fair share too. Based on their abilities and skills.
As we grew, of course, there were just as many stories of survival as there were of the survivors of the Fever. Some were quite similar to Jade's and my experience and some had it easier but many much harder. Still, I feel there is a need to share some here. All are stories are part of our historical record.
One boy, a couple of years younger than Jade and I, left Elko, Nevada. Stevie Jensen was fifteen when he hit the road after he lost his parents and then realized no one else was left in the city. It was a small city under 20,000 in population. Elko was not quite halfway between Salt Lake City and Reno. Stevie drove his parents' Nissan west, hoping to find someone or somewhere nearer the coast. Unfortunately, Steve underestimated the distance and especially traffic hang-ups. He headed south when dead traffic (he said stalled but they were undoubtedly dead) past Humboldt State Park. He headed south on a state highway until the car ran out of gas.
He came up on Fallon, a small town which had been looted. Fortunately, he found about a half dozen bottles of water but no food until he listened to his stomach and went into the pet store. He loaded two backpacks with canned pet food and pouches of pet snacks. The poor kid lived on that for a few weeks as he wandered, lost, in the northern Nevada wilderness. His sixteenth birthday was celebrated with a can of dog food.
The wet pet food helped stretch his water supply but, naturally, that ran out as did his water. Fortunately, as he was near the end of the water (he managed to find another supply in an abandoned car), he saw a sign the led him to Bishop and met us on a scavenging trip. He was so thin, he reminded me of Nazi death camp survivors after the Second World War. He's now a big, husky man and the proud father of nearly a dozen kids.
A young lady named LaTonya Jefferson came from L.A. soon after Jade and I left but spent months in the Central Valley. She was part of one of the street gangs that had still been fighting over turf in East L.A. even as they were dropping like flies from the Fever. And she wasn't just someone's bitch but a fighter who knew her way around knives and guns. The new chiefs of her gang, originally street thugs, started to talk. She knew they were planning to move north in the Valley but she wasn't sure if it was the San Fernando Valley or the San Joaquin. The former would've been easy pickings especially as the latter is so vast. Eventually that led to the initial conflict with the urban survivors and the newly united Valley survivors. She ran away before any of that came to a head.
Still, she was happy to have left that life behind. Her story wasn't much on the troubles of travel but the horrors of L.A. With Jim and Jade, LaTonya became a major part of our defense structure. She also assisted in the mutual aid defense of the Valley communities a few years later.
I mentioned the funeral pyres earlier. Well, one of the men who made it to us was a former soldier. Vince Salter is a few years older than Jade and I. He made corporal in the Army before the Fever. After the plague broke out, he was detailed to work the pyre at Dodger Stadium. They all had to wear hazmat suits (hazardous materials suits which covered everything but the face which was covered by goggles and a breathing mask). Their masks were tied to oxygen tanks they wore on their belts. A typical shift was four hours on and eight hours off - at least at the beginning before more and more G.I.s started to succumb. The shifts at the pyre remained four hours - the limit of the oxygen tanks. But they only got six then four hours off before having to return.
Bodies were brought in by truck and off loaded by hand - a hole big enough for trucks was busted through between the left field grandstand and the left field bleachers. The trucks drove in to the edge of the pyre and the remains were carried in and piled ten high as they were left for the fire. If they didn't catch fire immediately, gasoline was thrown on the remains. The fire was started behind home plate then expanded in arcs out past the infield. By the time Vince went AWOL (Absent Without Leave), the burning zone was already in the outfield and growing nearer to the bleacher seats.
I'm sure the Coliseum, which its larger playing field, must've been even worse.
From Chavez Ravine, Vince headed up towards the Hollywood Hills and on into central California. He was found by one of our scavenging teams almost two years after the outbreak. Like LaTonya, he became integral to our defense system, and the Valley later.
His story is much more harrowing, gruesome and shocking. The horrors he experienced were incredible. Unimaginable. But he made it and, with help from LaTonya especially, is coming to grips with that.
He and LaTonya hit it off, after a tense period. Perfect yin and yang, even more than Jade and I - he is the stereotype blond surfer dude and she's the street-smart black chick. Their arguments are almost as intense as the ones Jade and I still occasionally find ourselves in. Not to mention, they are so cute together. Especially, when they're not doing an imitation of the battling Bickersons (an old radio show of a married couple who loved each other but, seemingly, argued every chance they got), their lovey-dovey attitude can be sickeningly sweet (to quote Jade - but so were we). And, fortunately, those times far out-numbered the Bickersonian flare ups.
A typical tale was a missive from a survivor who didn't survive. His body was found off a highway coming from Lake Tahoe. The girls, Jenna Simpson and Katie Stewart, who had met in an abandoned casino in Reno, buried the corpse and continued on until they ran into one of the camp's patrols.
Their story first.
Jenna was a British girl who was stuck in the States by the outbreak, the bridal party she was part of sadly dead. Katie was from Nebraska and had been travelling west. They almost shot each other when, both looking for supplies, they met in the Silver Legacy Casino in downtown Reno. They were both fortunate that they were in the city when it started to get cold in September, 2014. The extreme cold kept the smell of the unburied dead from becoming overwhelming or, even more important, dangerous.
Somehow, burning furniture, craps and roulette tables and the like, they survived the first post-Fever winter, which Jade and I can attest was particularly brutal. They left as spring was setting in. They knew better than to be stuck in that necropolis as the bodies thawed before continuing to decompose. That was when they found Charlie.
Jenna and Kate gave me a cassette tape that was the source of the following manuscript. The tape was saved by the author in a couple of zip-lock plastic bags, which I will include here for any history they might contain. If, by some chance, someone wants to publish this journal, please include this story. It is already a core part of our archive of survivors.
Even now, after the past years, listening to this old tape... Well, it's heart-wrenching. He sounds like he was a great guy...
"My name is Charlie Ruggles. My dad thought it was funny to name me after an old-time character actor. Fortunately, most of my friends didn't know that name. Well, not until I was in college and some assholes started googling my name.
"An hour or so ago, I was in an accident and managed to pull myself away from the wreck before it might ignite. I have a compound fracture of my right leg – the tibia and fibula, if I remember my high school science. I tried to set my leg but I don't think I did it right as I can't stand on it at all. So while I wait and sit here, optimistic that someone will come along to reset my leg and help me, I'm narrating this record of my life after the end of the world.
"Well, like any of us who made it past the Deaths, I saw the beginning of the outbreak but didn't pay it much attention. Not at first. Well, to be honest, maybe I was a little more focused on washing my hands. And I used Purell Hand Cleaner a little more often. But, until my suddenly extremely sweaty boss collapsed in the middle of a meeting, I didn't really think there was any real danger. It all happened so fast.
"Oh, I'm twenty-seven years old and a life-long resident of Woodstock, Illinois. I graduated from U of I almost six years ago. That's the University of Illinois, if that institution didn't survive.
"Part of my slow realization was probably because it seemed to start over the weekend. And I spent most of that at home. When I was travelling, I usually just said I was from Chicago but I was actually from Woodstock. It's a small town...I guess I should say it was a small town about sixty miles northwest of Chicago. Chester Gould was born there - he created the comic strip 'Dick Tracy'. And 'Groundhog Day' was filmed there. We even have a festival every Groundhog's Day since then. Harold Ramis, the director, often attended until he passed away a few months ago.
"Anyway, I worked from home on Friday, spent Saturday playing golf then poker, with beer of course, with my buds. I was between girlfriends at the time, unfortunately. Maybe fortunately, in hindsight. Sunday was spent with the family. My mom made... Sorry. I'm... Anyway, Mom made a roast. It's, was, one of my favorites. My parents, Bill and Marge, my big sister Karla, her husband Stephen, and my 12-year old niece, Madison, were there too. Of course Mom's dinner was delicious and we had a great time getting caught up.
"I never saw them again after that night.
"Anyway, the next morning, as usual, I took the Metra Suburban Train downtown to the Ogilvy Transit Center. The inbound train seemed as crowded as always by the time we reached Ogilvy. At the Ogilvy food court, there was the usual long line at Dunkin' Donuts and MacDonald's. I grabbed a spicy breakfast burrito from Burrito Beach. God! I'd love to have one of those now... Then an extra-large black coffee from Dunkin before I become part of the sporadic mass exodus. Always on work days, as trains came in from the suburbs, the masses surged out of the building like ants from a broken hill into the West Loop. I'm sure it was the same at Union Station and the LaSalle Street Station.
"It was a beautiful day, as I recall, so, as I often did when the weather was good, I walked south along the Riverwalk then crossed the Chicago River at Adams Street, into the Loop. I worked at an ad firm near the Chicago Board of Trade. I wrote copy. We were a pretty successful company. Might've become one of the big ones too.
"The first two days that week, I noticed more people who were sick, more than usual for late spring. Still, there wasn't much on the news. No special reports cutting into the Cubs game I had on my desk radio for background. I had a radio at my desk, usually tuned to WXRT, or WGN if the Cubs, or the Sox were playing.
"I know, sacrilege liking both teams but I figure we were lucky to have two pro baseball teams when many cities only had one and most had no pro teams.
"Later, when I got home, the nightly news had short reports of a new sickness but nothing more than an on-site reporter's appearance at UIC's Medical Center. The local news was dominated by weekend damage due to a storm cell downstate with tornados that touched down from Champaign-Urbana, where I went to school, downstate to Effingham. The worst were in Decatur and southeast to Mattoon and Charleston. The national news was the usual reports of partisan politics, international problems and other weather problems beyond those downstate storms.
"Wednesday, there were fewer people on the inbound train. And Steve, my boss, collapsed - like I said. They rushed him to Northwestern Memorial but, as far as I know, he never left there.
"Incidentally, one of the EMTs who came for him mentioned how stretched their work force was.
"Mom called and told me she was taking Dad to the Mercy Woodstock Medical Center. I promised I'd be there as soon as my train came in. By the time I got there, he had been transferred to Centegra Hospital further along Route 14. I got there but I wasn't allowed in. He was in the ICU with Mom. But they... They wouldn't let me see them...
"Sorry, I'm still... Even with all the death, they were my parents. I just... Give me a minute, okay?
~a long pause followed by a deep breath~
"Alright, so I went back to my apartment, waiting to hear from Karla, Steve or the hospital. I had tried calling Karla, Steve or Madison but their phones all went to voice mail, like Mom's. I drove over to their house in Crystal Lake but no one was home.
"Still, the next day, I went into work. We were deep into a big project for Goose Island Brewery - their Fall ad campaign. For what it's worth, Goose Island was like Samuel Adams for the Chicago area - a very successful independent craft brewery. And I hoped it would take my mind off my family for a while.
"Ogilvy was as dead as a Sunday when I'd take the train into the city for a Cubs home game. Most of the food court was shuttered except Dunkin Donuts. And instead of the usual bustle of people racing to their jobs with the usual crowded sidewalks and traffic-jammed streets, the West Loop and the Riverwalk area were quiet, like the occasional Saturday I'd put in. It was weird for a Wednesday. Scary even.
"Our office was down to a handful of people. And now the news was being more proactive. I suppose I don't have to tell you since I'm sure it was the same everywhere else.
"I had my little radio on XRT - Chicago's Finest Rock when I was growing up - but went to WBBM, the CBS all-news affiliate. Felt I needed the news more than rock music. Reports of school closings, like the ones you hear after a winter storm, sounded surreal on a sunny spring day. Then there were reports of which hospitals were still able to handle the influx of patients and the ones that were overwhelmed. Strangely, in retrospect, martial law hadn't been declared yet. Details of delayed L and subway trains as well as CTA and Pace bus delays were more and more prominent. No mention of Metra, yet.
"What really struck me was going downstairs to lunch. There were several fast food places nearby but the only one I found open was the Burger King several blocks east on Jackson, past of the Federal Plaza. Even the MacDonald's near the CBOT was closed. BK was practically deserted though. Extremely unusual for noon time but not so unusual as so many other places were closed.
"Back at the office, I learned martial law was being imposed at seven that night. The CTA trains and buses would stop their runs at that time, resuming at dawn – including the 24-hour lines like the O'Hare Blue Line or the Red Line between 95th Street north to Evanston and back. While Metra hadn't made any announcement, the reporter, who was a third string weatherman, speculated that Metra would follow suit.
"There were reports of congestion, even traffic stops, on the Eisenhower, the Kennedy, the Dan Ryan and the Bishop Ford. The main highway arteries in and out of the city. The Tri-State was moving but reports indicated traffic was slowing there too,
"Those of us who came into work that morning got together in the break room after lunch and decided to leave. No one wanted to be stranded downtown, especially with martial law. I headed towards the train station. Now it was truly like walking through the Loop on a Sunday – virtually no one was on the streets.
"Of course, traffic was usually busy through the Loop and pretty much anywhere in the city or the collar suburbs. That day, I think I saw about one car for each block I had to walk. There were no cabs, Ubers or Lyfts to be found. The usual crowds were nowhere to be seen. The few who were out seemed to go out of their way to avoid other people. Such a drastic change from only a few hours before.
"Ogilvy's shops were closed, except one Hudson's News but I saw no one in the store. Maybe the workers just up and left without locking up? The food court shops were all shuttered. The platform was eerie. Each track has a regularly repeating recording of a woman's deadpan, monotone voice announcing the track number. The announcements were staggered, like cars in a turn lane with their indicators on – if you ever noticed, the flashing lights were so random. The track announcements were the same. So you would hear "Track 3." "Track 6." "Track 5." "Track 8." "Track 12." "Track 1." And so on.
"On normal days, with the crowds of commuters and the trains constantly running, you might hear the two tracks on either side of yours.
"That Thursday, there were two trains in the station. One wasn't running. And there were no more than a couple of dozen people moving around quietly. Those recorded track announcements practically echoed in the station. I could hear all fifteen track announcements - all staggered and all unending. And all unnerving. "Track 6", "Track 9", "Track 2", "Track 7"… As the tracks counted down, the higher numbers started up randomly again. "Track 15", "Track 12", "Track 14" and so on.
"How long would that voice echo through the empty terminal? Until ComEd's power grid shut down, I suppose. With the older ComEd nuke power plants around Chicago, part of me wonders if those announcements are still echoing in the empty, dead station even now.
"Anyway, a train came in to the track showing my destination on the board. I found the sole conductor and confirmed it was going northwest to Woodstock. I got on what turned out to be the last UP-Northwest Line train. The conductor, Ben Floyd, an older guy I got to know over the past few years, told me the train was going on to Harvard, the end of the line. After that, he didn't think there would be any more trains for a long time.
"I stayed in the car's vestibule, talking to him. It was better than sitting in an empty car. At one point, I asked him what his plans were and Jim said he'd head up to Madison. His daughter was a professor at the University of Wisconsin. I wished him luck as we pulled into Woodstock.
"Getting off, I started for my car when I decided to take a walk a few blocks to go through the old town square. It's where a lot of the exteriors of 'Groundhog Day' were filmed. The village even put a plaque in the small park in the middle of the square near the gazebo. It was supposedly the location that 'Punxsutawney Phil' was pulled out to see his shadow.
"The square, with the opera house, the old hotel, the theater and the shops, hadn't changed since I was a kid, actually since my grandparents were kids. Most were Victorian or Edwardian landmarks and couldn't be changed. Maybe some different shops here and there like the Starbucks but the buildings were the same.
"Anyway, I wanted to see the old square one more time before I left. I did but there was no one around. All the shops closed or, at least, deserted - like the Hudson News downtown. It already felt dead.
"It was unnerving so I walked back to the pay lot near the Metra station for my car. I found I was in no real hurry. I was numb. And not just for everything going on around me.
"See, I had already found out, during the last of one of my many calls that day, that Mom and Dad were both gone. And the hospital... Damn them! I couldn't even claim the bodies for a proper burial. So I decided then to leave town. I had some idea of heading south to the Shawnee National Forest. But first, I wandered, then drove, through my old home town to see what I was losing.
"It didn't help. Like I said, it was unnervingly empty. And very sad.
"I went to my place, packed up my camping gear and any non-perishable food I had. I also filled as many containers with water as I could find – the water was still running at least. I had three eight-gallon collapsible containers, several canteens, pitchers, even a couple of Oberweis Dairy gallon bottles with stoppers.
"It was a good thing I stayed in shape. I'm not one of those fitness freaks but I went to the local gym a few times a week. That was a good thing when I was packing up my car. See, a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. So those eight gallon containers were sixty-four pounds a piece. Add the other gallon jugs and what not, it was tiring.
"Then I went to my old house. Mom and Dad hadn't gone camping in years but they kept most of the family's supplies, including some more containers. There were even some old school thermos bottles that I filled. I knew it wouldn't last too long but I hoped to get to my destination. Wherever that would eventually be.
"I slept in my old room that night – still had my Cubs and Bears pennants, Q-101, XRT, Erica Durance, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Charisma Carpenter and "Batman Begins" posters on the wall. Mom made sure of that... She wanted it for her 'little boy' if he ever came home. And, in Mom's defense, I didn't argue with her.
"It took a long time to fall asleep. I listened to the sporadic reports on WGN and WBBM. WMAQ had gone off the air. Around midnight, WBBM went off the air, playing a make-shift Emergency Broadcast announcement directing listeners to the real EBN frequencies, not the test broadcast I've heard so often before. I switched back to WGN and, soon, they signed off as well. EBN broadcasts were all taped and told me far less than the live reports on the other stations before they shut down.
"WXRT and WKQX were already off the air as were all the other FM stations.
"At that point, I felt like the last man on Earth. The loneliness was almost suffocating. When I finally fell asleep after two o'clock, all my dreams were of me walking through deserted streets of a generic city. I kept yelling for someone, anyone. All I got back were echoes. The only thing missing was a Rod Serling voice-over.
"I woke up Friday morning around eight, not really refreshed but I knew I had to get going. I had a plan. A summer camp I went to in the Shawnee National Forest all the way downstate. I headed south to the Jane Addams Tollway – no one was collecting tolls and I blew through the I-Pass lanes. Near the Busse Woods Forest Preserve, I got on the Tri-State Freeway which was wide open southbound. Going over 80 mph, I finally got to I-57 near Midlothian and headed down towards the southernmost part of the state. There must've been some mess to keep traffic from clogging these interstates.
"It takes several hours to drive the length of the state. Towards the end of the day, I got to Ozark in the Shawnee National Forest and followed a wooded road to Pakentuck, the summer camp, only to find someone had already staked their claim. They made certain I knew I was not welcome.
"I went back to Ozark, a very small town in the heart of the forest. No motel or inn but no one willing to shoot me. I slept in my car. The next morning, I headed up towards Chester to cross the Mississippi on one of the few bridges between St Louis and Memphis. One of the places we used to visit on family camping trips was an isolated area in the St. Francois Mountains in central Missouri - the Silver Mines Shut-ins near the Taum Sauk Reservoir and Elephant Rock State Park.
"I pulled into Fredericktown in the early afternoon. There was a small campsite on the grounds of the local courthouse. The courthouse was the scene of a small battle during the Civil War and there were still two cannonballs imbedded in the walls. Don't know why that matters, any more than why I brought up 'Groundhog Day'.
"Anyway, a brown-haired girl came out of the tent and waved at me. I pulled over and found out she was a refugee from the Death in St. Louis. With her okay, I set up camp with her. She seemed pretty normal, given the situation, and was a pretty woman too.
"She had tried the Shut-ins but found the same thing I found at Pakentuck. We decided, even with the high death rate, there were too many people in the East and too few places away from the future charnel houses the cities and larger towns would become.
"Leslie didn't want to talk about what happened but, from few clues she did mention, I guessed she lost her husband and a young child. I didn't press her, and the conversation stayed simple and innocuous.
"But as we talked and shared some food, Leslie told me about a hopefully untouched food warehouse in Flat River. Her plan was to hit it then head west to a place near Lake Tahoe. The West, away from the Coast, was undoubtedly less crowded and we might have a chance there.
"Also she had a cousin who had an isolated cabin in the mountains outside Virginia City, made famous in the TV series 'Bonanza', but north of the touristy area. She asked me to join her, at least for the trip, and I agreed.
"Reluctantly, the next morning, Sunday, I gave up on my car. She had a large SUV and could haul more supplies. I transferred my gear & supplies before we headed off to Flat River.
"The warehouse was no longer untouched. Someone had been there but couldn't take it all. Neither could we but we were determined to grab as much as we could. We loaded up her truck and a panel truck sitting by a loading dock - after I confirmed it would run. The keys were in an open lock-box near the loading dock doors, fortunately as neither of us could hotwire a car.
"Naturally we passed on frozen or refrigerated foods. Just dry goods and freeze-dried foods – 'just add water, makes its own sauce'.
"Before we left, Leslie gave me the directions to her friend's place near Tahoe in case we got separated.
"We headed out and had a surprisingly peaceful, fast drive, stopping late in the day in Independence where we found an abandoned motel. Seemed fitting to head west from one of the towns that were the eastern terminus of the hundreds of wagon trains headed out in their westward migration in the 19th century.
"By this time, the power was out - at least in western Missouri. Neither of us wanted to be alone so we shared a room. Turned out to be a solo, king-sized bed. With everything we'd been through the past few days, we...did it. For me, it was marvelous. Leslie seemed satisfied but distracted…
"That first time was just sex. But, as we traveled, we spoke over two walkie-talkies she grabbed back in Fredericktown from the local police station. The next night, we made it to Grand Junction where there saw still power and we were able to gas up at a large gas station off I-70.
"That night, as the sole occupants of a Holiday Inn, we made love, not just sex. I liked to think Leslie enjoyed it as much as I did. May not be love but mutual dependence…
"Except I heard her quietly crying later in the night. I felt like a complete bastard at that point.
"Okay, too much TMI. And I don't have a lot of tape left. Got to leave out a lot of details. But I'm naturally verbose and…well, we'll see.
"The next morning, we hit the road again. Leaving I-70 behind, we took I-15 north towards Salt Lake City and passed the city. Large, black plumes rose from several areas around the city.
"Very late in the day, we drove through Virginia City, which looked nothing like the town in the old western 'Bonanza', and finally, near dusk, we got to the cabin. Or what was left of it. The place was a burned-out ruin, the ashes long gone cold.
"Leslie was in a bad way but I tried to help. We fell asleep in our tent. The next day, I woke up and her SUV was gone. I found a note under the panel truck's windshield wiper. She was going to try for someplace in Arizona but left me most of the supplies. Nothing about why she left without me. I suspected guilt over 'betraying' her family with me but… I keep trying to figure out if it was something I did.
"I headed out again. I had no idea where I was going so I went on to Tahoe. I found a deserted lakeside resort and stayed there. Several trips to through Tahoe resorts, Carson City and up to Reno, got me more supplies.
"After a couple of weeks of total solitude, I decided to go into California. On the way to Placerville, just past Picketts Junction, thanks to a blow-out, I crashed on a curve – a roll-over, actually just a fall-on-the-side, that threw me from the truck but I managed to crawl further away.
"Somehow, the truck, which was totaled, of course, stayed on the road, more or less. Most of the load of foodstuffs is scattered across Route 89 and a large part of the landscape.
"My leg is fractured but I'm going to make it. Somehow. Meantime, I'm taping this in case anyone cares. I don't have sealskin, my uncle who had been in the Navy, swore by that stuff to keep things dry, no matter what. I have some Ziploc bags, which hopefully, won't puncture if worse comes to worse. Especially if I use 3 bags.
"Oops! Running out of tape. So I'm closing this. But right now, I need to sleep and, hopefully, get some temporary relief from the pain in my leg."
That is his manuscript. That narrative, even now, gets to me. The hopeless optimist up to the end…
I wish I could've met you, Charlie.
Notes: Thanks for Loganx5 for the earlier assistance with this.
The chapter title is from Rae's song.