Survivor
I saw this sunburned shiny top of a bald head ringed by long dirty gray hair! I was shocked and didn't know what to do. But I opened the door anyway…
A grubby looking old fellow with a few teeth missing was grinning up at me like he'd found gold or something. He sure looked like the old prospectors that I'd seen in movies but had never encountered in all my travels. I couldn't figure out how he got here and why he was alive when everyone else was gone. All I could do was reach down and shake his gnarled hand.
I couldn't curb my enthusiasm. I declared, "Man, am I glad to see you! What's your name? What are you doing here? I haven't seen anyone else along this stretch of I-80."
"That's a long story, Sonny. Name's Charles Weaver. But my friends call me Charlie…ah… at least, they used to. I've been here about a month or so, holed up against the heat and lack of water and runnin’ short of supplies. Sure hope you got some. I'm about to starve!" The man looked it. Scrawny beyond words. His voice ragged and raspy. "Come on, I'll show you my digs here in this building." Charlie motioned, turned and started hobbling fast toward the buildings talking as he went. "About ate up all the food I could find. I'm down to eatin’ the cat and dog food that is left."
"Don't worry. I've still got some fresh sweet corn and a prairie chicken I hit along the road a few miles back that I can cook up for supper. Come on back to the cab and we will eat first." The old man's eyes misted over in gratitude and he shook his head.
"Well, that would be mighty kind of you."
While I fried the bird and boiled some fresh sweet corn and green beans, Charlie told me that he had a place up in the Grand Tetons that he'd been living in--homesteading for a few years--before all hell broke loose.
"I remember clearly when I started hearing a lot of shootin’ going on down in Jackson. Didn't have no TV and rarely turned the radio on to save electricity--wind turbine. Sounded like a war. Everybody had guns. I got my rifles loaded and shot at anybody that came anywhere near my place until it was all over and the fires started everywhere. I just barely saved my place and only did because directly above and behind it was a bald rockface where there was no dried out trees or other vegetation to burn and the winds were right, coming down off that mountain instead of up it toward my place.
"And then, the smoke gathered and it got hard to breathe. I had to breathe through a wet handkerchief for months. Why my throat is so sore and my voice is so raspy now. I had stores for the coming winter, but didn't know that it would have to last three years!" Charlie paused to cough and hack until he finally regained his composure to continue.
"The spring behind my place was a lifesaver. Had clean water the whole time. By this spring, I was rationing one day's food over three days and knew I wouldn't make it. I took all the food and water I had when the sun came out, packed and headed south. About wore myself out gettin’ this far." It showed.
"Grizzly stalked me for what little I had left. He was pathetic. Dirty, gaunt and weak. I shot him to put him out of his misery and save my food. But his heart and liver gave me energy I needed to get this far. Carved off too much of him and had to drop some of his meat off after a day or so. Just couldn't carry it no more.
"Then a pack of wolves got on that scent and stalked me. I had to kill three or four before they stopped following. Near ran out of ammunition. Probably would have; had they kept comin'.
"When I got here, I found this store that had been servin' the truck stop. Place was looted, but I was able to find fairly good food up until recently. Don't know if I was able to walk on. Man, I'm so glad you came along. Don't think I could've walked many miles more."
"Well, you don't have to worry now. My rig will take us to the West Coast in a few days and beyond. If there are any more survivors like us, I hope we'll find them and they'll be friendly."
"I wouldn't count on it. I shot at my friends to keep my stuff. I think I killed some." The confession weighed heavily on Charlie's face… Regret. Afraid to look me in the eye saying it.
"That's all over now. The natural world is coming back fast. There's plenty for anybody still alive. We need to find them."
By now, Charlie was chomping on corn making ragged rows with his missing teeth. He stopped for a moment to grab a grouse leg and eat it with flourish like it was the best meal he ever had. I couldn't be happier to have someone occupy the seat next to me in that cab. But first, I had to clean him up. He stunk. I probably did, too.
Fortunately, it rained heavily that night. Using two of the downspouts on the building to fill a couple of empty barrels with water, not only did we have drinking water, we both were able to take a bath in one of the barrels. Even found some soap to use. With what was left, I washed his clothes. His body got some much-needed sun. Not to worry. No one around to see his skin and bone hairy nakedness but me. The downpour had even washed off most of the caked on mud from the tractor.
With full bellies and refreshed with a good night's sleep, we drove on down through Salt Lake City, only to find it ravaged and burned--vacant--like all the cities before. There seemed to be a lot more water In Great Salt Lake. I had to drive through three feet of water in some places on the Interstate. Probably due to all the runoff from these heavy rains that came up every time a front came through. The climate had changed, that's for sure--hotter and wetter--colder and drier--extremes.
After the salt flats the desert bloomed green and cheered with a riot of wildflowers. Brimming with new life. We saw animals everywhere. At sundown we had climbed the Sierras to Donner Pass where we pulled off on a lookout to watch the sunset. With his old rifle, Charlie shot a deer so that we would have meat as we drove down into California. We had fresh venison steak that night roasted on a bonfire before turning in. Hung strips of venison in front of the radiator to dry in the heat the next morning before we drove off
California, with all the new growth, was greener than I remembered it, but the oppressive heat was beginning to dry that out around the edges. By the time we got to Sacramento, the temperature outside was hitting around 110°F. The foothills were very eroded from the heavy rains that followed the denuding caused by all the fires. The stately oaks that I remembered gracing the hillsides were all gone but charred stumps. But I was sure that acorns we couldn't see already had sprouted and taken hold. Oak covered hills would return in 30 years.
Charlie and I spent the time as the miles flew by dodging obstacles and sharing experiences we had during the long dark winters. Charlie got animated in telling. "That first year, I was still able to go out back and shoot an elk that by habit came to my spring for water. But by the second year, the only thing I found there were small animals in my traps like foxes, squirrels, and an occasional rabbit. Just enough to get by with my dwindling stock of flour and other necessities like sugar and salt. And it was cold, so cold… And lonely. Several times, I just wanted to walk out into that cold darkness and not come back to the cabin, it was so confining."
"I know how you felt. Even though I had a lot of comforts and distractions in that resort I was in, the long cold and darkness, with the confinement, got to me, too. I'm not a praying man, but sometimes I prayed for the sun to come out. Said, 'Hallelujah!' to myself when it finally did appear."
"Me too, never prayed so much in my life as I did for some sun."
"And those storms. Sometimes the snow would be piled up to the rafters from a single howling blizzard. And the snow was so black from soot it would melt fast if it warmed up any at all above freezing."
"Tell me about it. If it hadn't been for that mountain behind me, my little cabin would've been buried many a time. And here we are in this heat riding along without any traffic in this new truck with air conditioning! Lordy, Lordy for small blessings!" Charlie lit up like in song. Clapped his hands in utter disbelief as though he thought he would never be this free again. But he was not free from coughing. Had fits of it all the time.
But it was freeing …traveling along with a traveling companion knowing where you are going but not knowing how far or how long…Just the open road ahead taking you wherever it would.
But the open road up ahead no longer became open. As I wound my way down toward the San Francisco Bay Area, we encountered more and more stalled and ravished vehicles on the road making headway harder and harder. Something up ahead had caused the backup. Eventually, there was a total roadblock and the only thing to do was turn around and go back. Never saw San Francisco.
Fortunately, US 99 was open south and we took that, stopping for the night near what had been, Stockton. Like the Midwest, here and there we saw crops that had come up from seeds and gathered some melons, cabbage and other produce that had grown quickly and was rapidly burning up in the dry summertime rainless heat. We were grateful for the abundance and had plenty to eat for our trip. As we passed through the farming communities that had been the great Central Valley, we kept our eye out for buildings that had survived the fires and stopped at a few to see what we could find. Like dumpster diving. There wasn't much, but what there was was worth noting--some taking. Time would take it all.
Off in the distance in the west were two ominous black clouds. Two more nuclear reactors that had gone meltdown. It made me want to turn around, but I wanted to see what the Pacific shore looked like one more time in case I never came back this way again. At least there were no black clouds looming in the south where we were headed.
I really didn't want to go to Los Angeles but had no choice if we were going to go down to San Diego. We picked up I-5 near Bakersfield and drove on down into what had been a smog filled valley that was now drifting like a mirage in the sweltering sun. Charlie didn't care one way or the other, he was just glad to be riding with me.
On the 5 through the mountains, we saw many landslides, some that had ventured out onto the highway, making the going difficult. I surmised from that what may have happened up in the Bay Area… An earthquake or earthquakes. As we got closer, we encountered our own roadblock… An overpass that had fallen onto the highway. It had occurred after the societal meltdown because there were no vehicles backed up behind it. No traffic when it fell. Fortunately, I was able to take the offramp, go up past the overpass and down the other side on the on ramp. But once again, the road got congested with vehicles and we had to take another route east until we hooked up with I-15 through Pasadena and south. Once again, we pulled out on an overlook and watched the sunset. This time over the ruin of urbanity below with its jagged peaks of burned out building to the shimmering unchanged Pacific beyond and another timeless and glorious day's end.
With some difficulty, we drove on towards San Diego hoping to find a place where winter would be comfortable, knowing the storms would be unpredictable, and maybe, terrible. By now, only a week and a half after its revival, the new Peterbilt looked like a scarred old boxer with its many scrapes from pushing other vehicles out of the way. I knew I would have to beef up that front end to continue on. I was also concerned about the tires because of all the debris on the road. Some of them were pretty badly cut up and I wasn't looking forward to changing tires. I was thankful for Charlie and his skills. He said that he could weld. Perhaps he could teach me if we could find a welding shop we could make work. We had a lot to do that winter. I needed to learn from him.
On a hunch that the military might still stand and a real need to get down to the ocean we turned right at California 76 and headed for the beach and Camp Pendleton.
