Chapter 1 - The Farthest Man from Home (Pilot)

Chapter 1 - The Farthest Man from Home (Pilot)

(Audioslave - Shadow on the Sun)

15 Miles south of Naselle, WA (Route 4)

All i have heard in the last 10 hours is the loud rumbling engine of my old truck and the crackle of the frozen pavement. Its cold even inside the cab, the heater is not very good in this old truck. Its been awhile since I had stopped I am not even sure what time it is. It is ironic how we all got so used to telling time from our cell phones. My phone stopped working about a month ago. It feels like early morning, I think it is about 7 am and the light occasionally breaks through the clouds. It is going to snow soon. Snow plows have not been around for months and I worry I am going to have to take shelter. Too much time has already passed and the more I think about the more I question how I got to this point.

I climb into the canopy of my pickup and find a spot between the dozens of luggage and duffel bags loaded into the back. I push them aside and make a little space to put my propane stove. I reach into one of the duffel bags pull out a little packet of cream of wheat. I pour some water from my canteen into the pot as it begins to heat up. It is about 7 degrees Fahrenheit  outside and even with my thick black winter pants and heavy red coat I am still cold. I pour the small brown packet of cream of wheat into the water and shut off my propane stove. Getting something warm in my stomach after not eating for nearly a day brings a level of comfort I am not prepared for. It does not take long for me to lay back on the bags and relax. I roll over and pull a blanket over myself as i look out the canopy window and watch snow begin to fall. How did I get here?

7 months ago the world was normal. We all were consumed with tweeting our breakfast and suing people over politically incorrect statements. When the sickness hit it was not like the movies had shown us. There was no zombies and we did not get nuked. Slowly people got sick, this was ignored as much as every other “pandemic” flu. How much did you really worry about swine flu? With the already half ass health care system in the united states hospitals where slowly overwhelmed by walk ins who had extreme flu like symptoms. Like any other day of the week of course they were sent home or forced to wait in emergency rooms to a point many just gave up. The news and other important agencies with the word department in them made announcements which fell on the same deaf ears as any previous so called pandemic.

3 months in people started to die, here and there cases of deaths from what they now called the black flu. Nobody really knows where the word black came from but some think it reminded people of the black plague and that spawned the name. Because of the United States being in such high political tension due to an unpopular election the media quickly directed the cause of so much death on our poor health system. This caused outrage but it could not have been farther from the truth. Because of this distraction the flu spread like wildfire across the United States and into Canada. By the time anyone began to pay attention there were over 2 million infected and more than a third of those infected died in the first 2 weeks.

Like many events in US history there is a critical event that lights the fuse. This happened in the 4th month in. There was already increased police roaming the streets and a curfew was in effect in many major cities. At the time i was in Los Angeles. It was clear that control was lost when an entire Los Angeles Police station died in less than a week. This caused a chain of events where many police officers went into hiding to fend for themselves. Not long after that the fire department stopped answering calls.

The US Army National Guard was called in but it was too late. In the 3 days it took to get the Army into the city police stations were looted and neighborhoods began to isolate themselves shooting anyone who tried to enter using the equipment looted from police stations and gun shops. I am not sure who cut off the phones and TV, it may have been the military or others who had control of those systems but phones no longer have service and there are no longer any tv channels broadcasting. You occasionally can get some internet services if you type in the direct IP’s to some servers but without knowing them it's like dialing random numbers hoping to get a hit.

So how do I fit into this? Well I don't, I am just some guy. I am nobody special i just fix computers and things. I was just a low end computer repair guy who got his certification at a community college. About a year ago my wife left me, there is a lot of reasons for this but lets just leave it at we all made mistakes and I was too stupid to pickup the phone. So the world is falling around me, what am I supposed to be doing? Well even though we parted ways all I could think about is if she is still alive and safe. So that's exactly what I am doing. I have an old 1989 Chevy Silverado, its white with a canopy and its beat up. It's just an old truck and there really is nothing special about it. I loaded my truck with as much as i could find i thought would help me on this trip. Scavenged as many gas stations as I could and put as much fuel as i could into those big sparkles bottles we used to use for water.

It was a challenge but I finally made it out of Los Angeles with a little luck and help from the National Guard. Major interstates are mostly blocked by abandoned cars, some still contaminated by dead bodies not yet claimed by the Army. I have been driving for days on back roads using an old Thomas Map Guide I found under my seat. My last stop was Bend, OR and I am sorry to report nobody survived in Bend, even the Army died in their tents. Some of us are immune, I have been exposed quite a few times and besides being cold I feel fine.

I should have looted the army tents in bend but every time i walked inside it felt wrong and i began to gag and panic. All i have to defend myself is a Remington 870 pump action shotgun and a Glock 22 .40 I kept for home defense. I am a little disappointed in myself, i should have sucked it up and went into the tents but what's done is done.

I am not sure if I want to know the outcome of my home or how I will react if the worst has happened to my family but a big part of me has to know even if it kills me to get there.