I don’t know what I thought I was going to find there. Some piece of me was expecting or hoping to find Eddie lying in our bed, perfectly preserved in the state he was in when I left him, so I could finally say goodbye. He wasn’t there, of course. He had been bagged up and taken out to the mass grave where they burned the remains of the infected. Whatever was left of my husband—my best friend who had always been there for me, had always protected and provided for me, who had loved me without fail for as long as I knew him—all that was left were ashes in a pit that I didn’t even know how to find. I collapsed into my bed and had a complete breakdown. I sobbed for I don’t know how long, jamming my face into the one remaining pillow out of fear Elizabeth would hear. She heard me anyway, I guess, because she was there a few minutes later, climbing into the bed behind me and wrapping her arms around me. We fell asleep in the bed that way; her holding me, me holding the rifle.
We woke up with the sun the next morning. I began moving around our home mechanically, cleaning a little here, straightening some furniture there. I was mentally numb and trying to come up with some idea of what to do next. I think a part of my brain was operating under this assumption that if I could just clean the place up enough, we could hunker down and survive there until whoever was still in charge figured out how to fix everything. I’m sure I would have figured it out eventually once it was clear that the water was never coming back on, but Lizzy had two and two added way ahead of me.
“Can we go get Lelo and Lela?” Lizzy asked me. I didn’t have much hope that my or Eddie’s parents were still alive, but it was at least a plan. Things might be better down in Beaver. It was something to hold on to.
I went through the apartment and collected some things that I couldn’t live without: several pictures from before, our wedding rings, and Lizzy’s old stroller. I hadn’t been able to donate it to Goodwill yet, and I had always dreamed that Lizzy might have a brother one day, so it was easier to just store it under the stairs. It was one of the huge ones that you get when your baby is newborn; a mother’s rolling toolkit, complete with fully reclining bed, lower shelf space for diaper bag, toys, and doo-dads—even a cup holder. It wasn’t exactly a pack mule, but it helped me to get some of the weight off my back. I found some canned food that had been missed in our pantry, so I threw that into the stroller, plus some kitchen matches, extra sweaters, and blankets.
It was at this moment that I really started to realize what we had lost. The concept of certainty had not just been ended; it had been completely erased. Forget being certain about next year, we couldn’t be certain anymore that we’d have enough water to drink in a couple of days. We didn’t know if we’d have shelter over our heads tomorrow. We couldn’t be sure of our health or security—a simple toothache could become terminal now. My inner scavenger was born that day as we rolled out of the city. Anything that caught my eye as we left that looked useful was thrown into the pile including old batteries and books or loose paper (for starting fires). At one point I hit the jackpot and found a half-empty gallon of water. Anything that looked like it might be helpful was tossed into the stroller. That thing could haul some serious weight, too. God bless Eddie Bauer.
Since it was only a little bit out of our way, we went back by Cedar City on the way to Beaver. I knew for sure I could get more food and water there and I knew we would need to bring a lot with us to make a walk down to Beaver. I wasn’t looking for any cars at the time because the roads were completely jammed with abandoned cars. I had an idea about keeping my eyes open for bicycles, but I didn’t think I could find one much less two—especially one that would fit a seven-year-old. On top of that, Lizzy was not one hundred percent comfortable on a bike yet. There was no such thing as hospitals or ambulances or casts for broken bones anymore, as far as I knew. Because of that, a bike suddenly became a nerve-wracking proposition. The most popular method of transportation in the world had been downgraded to feet. I had no idea how long it was going to take us to walk all the way to Beaver, but it was a little over a two-hour drive. It wasn’t anything I was looking forward to.
We loaded up on more of everything at Cedar City. I grabbed more bottles of pills ending in the letters “l-i-n.” I got what I hoped would be enough water to last us a week and stuffed the baby compartment of the stroller full of MREs. Now that I had a chance to think about what I was doing, it also occurred to me to get more bullets for my new rifle (which I still hadn’t the first clue how to operate). I didn’t want to screw it up, so I found more rifles that looked like the one I was carrying and (after fiddling around with one of them for several minutes) found the button that dropped out the magazine. I pulled the magazine out of my rifle to compare the bullets against what I had found and saw that they looked identical. I put the one magazine back into my rifle and then threw three more that I was able to find into the ruck, which I hung off the stroller’s push handle. I had no idea how many rounds a magazine held at the time, but I couldn’t imagine needing more than whatever four magazines could carry. I didn’t know any better back then.
After topping off, we turned around and headed back up towards the 15. I hated taking the time to do it and wasn’t excited about looping around Utah Lake but sticking to the 15 seemed to be the best way to go. I was afraid of getting lost and losing time on all of the backroads, and the direct approach along the freeway just seemed to be the safest way to go. We didn’t know about marauders back then—hadn’t heard of any or seen any yet.
“Lizzy, honey? It’s close to dinner time. Go inside and wash up, okay?”
Lizzy flashes an angelic smile at her mother and hops up off her stump. She says, “Okay, mom,” while collecting what has become a sizable coil of twisted rope as well as a much-diminished pile of leaves. She heads into the cabin, still humming to herself as she passes us.
“I don’t want to talk about the next part while she’s around,” Amanda tells me in hushed tones. “She has Survival tomorrow with Gibs after her math and reading lessons. You can come back around then if you have the time and get the rest from me.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I agree. I do not know the details, but I have some inkling of how Jake and Billy found Amanda and her daughter—I know it was not pretty. I know there was killing involved, at least.
“Look, are you sure you want to cover that?” I ask. “I don’t want you to have to relive anything better left behind for this book. A lot of that doesn’t need to be anybody’s business, as far as I’m concerned.”
“No,” she says. “I want to. The things that happened to us—to me—happened because I was ignorant and unprepared. If this is going to be a part of the new history books, I want it to be perfectly clear what the unprepared can expect out of their fellow man. We all built up a lot of bad habits when everything was easy. We forgot how to survive when easy stops. I want to help prevent that.”
3
PRIMM
I ran into Billy somewhere between California and Nevada. Well, maybe “ran into” isn’t the right expression. “Slowly collided with over a period of days” would be a lot more accurate. We were going in the same direction, you see, so it took me some time to catch up with him.
When I first spotted him, I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. Between hauling my gear and maintaining awareness of my immediate area, “dead ahead” was not a direction I was spending much of my time with. As far as gear was concerned, essentials like food and water were piled up in one of those… wheeled tent/buggy things that you used to see people stuff their toddlers in and drag behind them when they went on bike rides.