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.
That’s actually funny. This is the first time I’ve given any thought to what you might call those things. A “bike trailer” I suppose.
Anyway, among some odds and ends like a flashlight, extra batteries, a spare change of clothes, and so on, was a good-sized pile of food (canned food, mostly, but also some freeze-dried rations that I found at an outpost) and several jugs of water. The water was the worst of it. You never think about this when water is plentiful, but it really is the limiting factor in everything you do. I can go for several days without food before I start getting into trouble (I’ve done it). Going just a few days without water is bad news.
Before this all happened, water was the least of anyone’s concerns. You could always get it from somewhere. In fact, all you had to do was lift a magic lever in your kitchen and water just fell out of a pipe and it wouldn’t stop until you pushed the lever down again. I mean… it wouldn’t stop. It would just continue—hundreds of gallons could pass by, unused, until you hit that magic lever. When I think about what we all lost in the fall, I don’t think about all the distractions. I don’t think about the televisions or the cell phones or the ludicrous social media or any of the little gadgets that we thought we needed but really didn’t. I think about a kitchen faucet. I remember water being so plentiful that it was literally the last thing on anyone’s mind.
As we all learned, water is actually the first thing you consider in a truly natural world. It doesn’t matter what task you’re about to embark on; water is always your first consideration. Where can it be found? How are you going to transport it? How will you protect it from evaporating? Does it need to be purified? How will you purify it? Do you have the equipment necessary to purify it? How much of it can you carry? I’ve since learned from reading one of Billy’s old survival books that a full-grown human needs to consume two quarts of water per day to stay healthy. If you’re in deep trouble, you can ration that down to maybe one quart per day but you need to be really careful about how you take it in and limit your level of physical activity, or you’ll run into severe issues.