Realization

I was on the phone to a pharmacist named Tin Tran in Macon, assuring me that the antibiotics I sought, he had.

"But I passed through there yesterday and didn't see any signs of life? I'd have to backtrack…"

"I can assure you, Mr., that we have antibiotics on hand… Penicillin, cephalexin, ciprofolxacin… You name it… Tetracycline. But I must warn you that they will only last a year at most. So if you don't use them you have to come back and get more."

"But all the pharmaceutical companies are closed down. I've been seeing it myself."

"Don't worry, Mr. We have ways of making new antibiotics all the time… We are your provider in any weather…." The weather seemed awfully hot.

I woke up to realize that it was too hot in the sleeper, the cooler had run out of cooling capability and my bed was drenched in sweat. It was about 4 am according to the clock on my smart pad, and I had just had a nightmare. One of those that were becoming ever more common as I realized how alone I really was and how impossible it was to get something as common as an antibiotic. If I so much as stepped on a rusty nail, I would have to rely on my immune system to head off tetanus or worse, gangrene.

If I could find a pharmacy that was not burned or otherwise destroyed by looters, the antibiotics there may have lost their strength after four years on the shelf. I would just have to be very careful not to have an accident or cut myself deeply. I couldn't count on antibiotics to help heal me. I had downloaded a list of herbal medicines for North America and that was all I had. Like edible plants, it was sometimes difficult to tell from the illustrations. I was thrown back into the 18th century without much knowledge of how they did things back then. I had an uphill learning curve that I wasn't sure I could climb.

I stepped outside the cab for a moment and felt the warm humid air against my naked sweating body. It felt good, if a bit warm for that time of the morning. I was going to take I-20 across the country, but even in May, it was already too warm. I decided instead to take I-30 or I-40. It would be cooler, but the storms might be stronger. The weather was so erratic. I really couldn't predict what I would run into up ahead. I started the truck up, turned on the engine and let it idle. The air conditioning soon had the truck at a comfortable 75°. I went back to sleep.

Going was good with few derelict vehicles on the road to Birmingham. About 10 am against the yellow, white and blue flowers that filled the back-lit landscape ahead, the skyline turned black with ominous clouds throwing lightning shards out of the outer cutting-edge moving rapidly toward me at perhaps, a 180 mile an hour collision between my truck moving west and the storm front moving east. I braced for the impact thinking… My truck does need a good washing.

The front hit with a lashing that made even my heavy rig shudder. I was glad that I was driving into it rather than alongside, or that gale might have rolled me over. It slowed my progress and the rain whipping my windshield quickly overcame the wipers. I had to slow down because I couldn't see. And then, the pinging of hail started, growing in size until it was a thumping of baseball-sized projectiles trying to crack my windshield and denting the hood of my relatively new truck.

And then, even with all the noise, I heard an even more ominous roar that I recognized, like a freight train, and slammed on the brakes. A tornado was coming out of the rain ahead of me and I didn't want to drive into it. The behemoth passed from southwest to northeast in front of me throwing many pine saplings ripped from the ground and smashed against my windshield, fortunately still too supple to cause any real damage--acting like brushes in a carwash--more of the buffeting than a beating. It was all over in about three minutes, but I had aged a year. All I could think about was what if… What if it had rolled my rig? Was I prepared to walk? Eventually, I might have to. Must prepare for that.

The road ahead was littered with dying flowers and saplings that seemed to actually soften the pavement like snow rather than create an obstacle as they crunched under my wheels. At least there were no trees across the freeway that required the use of the chainsaw that I had in the trailer. I thought about my luck. I thought about my provisions, mostly in the trailer behind me. I thought about holing up in the summer in a place where I could grow crops and in the winter in a place where I would be warm like Palm Springs. Perhaps I would be back there next winter with the ghost of Charlie still hanging around. Perhaps not. I had to think on it further.

Before long, Birmingham came into view. It was the same old story. Burned out and devastated. No sign of life anywhere. I didn't need anything from any standing buildings, so I took I-22 to Memphis in a light rain that cooled things off.

It was about noon when the sun came out and the flowers seemed even more brilliant after the refreshing drink, so I stopped for a lunch of dry jerky and greens that I had gathered at my last stop. I was getting fairly good at finding wild plants that were very fresh and tasty at the same time with dew still on them. As long as I could keep my vitamin intake up, I thought that I'd do all right when it came to getting sick from anything. But there weren’t any other people to give me a sickness, just insects and animals. Plenty of insects. Animals with radiation poisoning and diseases. I was glad that I had mosquito netting. And the sleeper was godsend when it came to those little critters at night. They were really starting to come out in the ultra-warm spring. Not looking forward to chiggers and ticks either. Fortunately, I had been inoculated for Lyme's disease, West Nile, malaria and several other diseases before my trip to Canada and an earlier trip to Central America.

I pushed on to Memphis with little in my way and found that the Mississippi River was flooding here as well, like all the other streams and rivers in the whole area. I told myself not to park my truck or camp in any river bottom because there may be an upstream dam that eventually will fail or there could be a flash flood from storms like the one that just passed that morning. Would have to read the weather like the Native Americans to stay out of trouble. It wouldn't be easy and I had no one to confer with about it. At least no one to blame if the weather caught me wrong.

At least the interstates were built very high and dry, but even there, if a dam broke, I would be in trouble. Best not to park on bridges or even on hillsides. Best to park at the top of the hill and stay in the cab during storms to avoid a lightning strike. A lot to remember, but more common sense than a disaster drill.

I was in Arkansas on I-30 approaching flooded Little Rock when I started to see two ominous black clouds up river from the Arkansas and I knew that the river was contaminated with radioactive overflow. But up ahead, I began to see the faded and broken signs: "Visit Historic Hot Springs," and began to wonder… It was just the beginning of May and suddenly, I had thoughts of winter. Instead of Palm Springs, why not hot Springs? Radiation? I wasn't going anywhere in particular, and not in any hurry, so I thought I would give it a try and check out Hot Springs as another possible wintering location. I had nothing to lose and possibly something to gain. As long as that nuclear meltdown was far enough away. At least the prevailing westerlies kept most of the fallout to the east and not the south.

I took US 270 in, racing darkness. That time of the evening animals were coming out in the coolness to graze and to hunt. Nature was at its highest activity after lazing through a hot afternoon. I saw raccoon, possum, turkey, armadillo, rabbit and deer. I had to slam on my brakes once for a mother fox followed by three kits, and twice for deer in the road. I saw a mountain lion cross in front of me and wild pigs running alongside the headlights. Hunting for food in this country looked like it would be quite easy with the abundance I was seeing.

I turned north on Arkansas 7 right into the heart of Hot Springs. At first it was a typical boulevard lined with stores, fast food places, gas stops, the typical strip commercialism. But as I pushed cars out of the way and moved in closer to the older part of town the road got narrower until I decided to park in a convenient place to spend the night and explore in the morning. I didn't want to get somewhere where I couldn't turn around and head back out. Backing that trailer up wasn't fun. I would check the road up further by walking.

The night was warm and there didn't seem to be many mosquitoes out. After I finished my meal, I still felt that it wasn't time to go to sleep yet. So I took a little walk along buildings that were hit and miss burned and/or vandalized. As I walked further up the road, there were hot spring spas on the right and businesses and hotels catering to tourists on the left. The bricks and mortar had a decadent pre-Great Depression look to it, in spite of the devastation.

I heard some strange chattering up ahead and came to a little grotto that was part of the Hot Springs National Park. I shined my light on the water and found three Capuchin monkeys playing there like it was their hot tub. When the light hit them, they scattered and climbed up the rocks behind the grotto, disappearing. If those monkeys survived, maybe someone else survived? I thought.

It was getting late and I heard owls hooting as well as coyotes yipping in the distance. Closer in, nighthawks were calling along with doves, and I could hear bats swishing overhead. As I walked hurriedly back to the truck, I passed a laundromat with my eyes on a large, mostly intact, hotel, next door. I thought I saw a faint light through the dirty window of the laundromat. I took a mental note of it and thought that I would come back and investigate in the morning.