It’s funny, the first person i encountered on the road was someone who looked a lot like an insane Matt Frewer, he kept mumbling “my life for you” and “bumpty bump”, i didn’t like the way he was looking at my spare fuel cans, so i passed him by, should i feel bad about that, i hate pre-judging people, but something about him just felt “wrong”?
Are you implying that there might be such a thing as a sane Matt Frewer?
OH my God! OH my God! OH my God!
I can’t believe there’s anyone else here!! Christ, I’m shaking like a leaf, it’s only been a couple of weeks but it seesm so long. It’s jsut been so hard. How can all this have happened so quickly?
It was bad in Montgomery – really bad. Sure people were sick, but people always get sick. Then our dog died. She was fine one day, dead the next. When the flu really started hitting people, it got scary fast. My across-the-hall office mate died at his desk, while on speakerphone. Quite gross, but then it got worse. The Guard actually cut off the Air Force Base – claiming the sickness started on the base. They started shooting anyone that tried to sneek out. That was it - my husband and I got out of town.
Loaded up the cats, Zah’s guns and ammo, and the contents of the pantry in the 4-runner and headed north to my parent’s place. Took his “anarchist” books and something called the Foxfire series. We were thinking that it was going to be like Y2K was supposed to be. Ya know, head to the hills and defend yourself until government can be reestablished… Yeah well you have to have living people to have a government. By the time we got to Mom and Dad’s, they were dead. I left Zah to bury them, and headed to my sister’s. The next few days were pretty rough. I lost my sister and her entire extended family in 4 days, all except my niece Alex.
It’s weird how this thing hits – wipes out entire families so fast. I think part of my immunity comes from these damn hives – I have an autoimmune system that’s works overtime normally. I haven’t used my antihistamines in several days. Like my body had something else to fight. Hives are worse today, so maybe I’ll need to stock up. He has a theory that only 1 person from each family gets to survive, if they’re lucky. Since my sister was adopted, Alex is not “technically” a blood relative. Zah is from New Mexico and had wanted to get there to check on his mom. Now he just feels there’s no use. If he’s alive, then she can’t be or something like that. Has anyone found more than one person alive from the same family? What kind of disease remembers DNA and alleles?
Got back with Zah a couple of days ago. He left the cats at my mom’s. It breaks my heart, but there’s lots of food and water there. Her cat’s a hunter and so are ours – if we ever get back here, they should have done fine. He’s right – it’s not fair to try to take 6 cats with us.
Boy, has his paranoia really paid off. We’re loaded to the gills and are making good time, considering. We’re in Longview TX about to turn north - had to stop for gas. Strangest thing - had a really bad scare in Louisiana. Found a couple of guys (the first we’d seen!) who kept trying to get us to go to Vegas with them. They got really hostile and started threatening us when we said the three of us were going to Boulder. We got away from them, but it just doesn’t feel right. We’ve been going back roads as much as possible - thank God of old gas stations! But please understand if we don’t update anymore. It’s like those guys were on a mission to stop people from getting to Boulder. Has anyone heard from Ivylass?? Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
I don’t understand all this talk about shooting people. Aren’t we all brothers and sisters?
I’m in Taos now. Oh, I left Mr. Rilch on the farm, near that apple tree. I buried him in his Starfleet shirt; I know he’s happy about that. Anyway, the people here are really cool. We don’t want to live in any Electric Eden, TYVM. Don’t y’all remember that TOS episode “Way to Eden”, where everything turned out to be poisonous? “Say, brothah, do you play?” That always cracked me up. Anyway, I don’t see how Vegas could be Eden. SOmeone told me, if they catch you with anything stronger than beer, they f’in crucify you. I think he was exaggerating, but to me, paradise = all the ganja I can smoke.
Look guys, let’s face it. Trying to get society up and running again is hopeless. I think somebody was sending us a message. We’ve got maybe a year to wrap things up, and then leave it to the insects.
Now who was it who said “I was here before the beginning, and I am here after the end”? I asked that on the board once, and the best someone could come up with is that it was from the Narnia series. Fact, I think I’m gonna reread that.
Man, this stuff is reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally good. Stops me from being sad all the time. And there’s plenty of canned food. That stuff lasts forever, right?
It’s funny, before the superflu hit, i was quite antisocial, i worked as a Mac repair tech, and of course, being in the tech support field, i had to deal with more than my fair share of “intellectually challenged” users, dealing with idiots for 8 hours a day made me even more cynical and antisocial than i already was, oftentimes i’d go home after a hard days work and just veg, alone with my thoughts, i dealt with people all day, and i just wanted time alone in the evening…
now, i have all the time alone i could want, and i’m actually craving human companionship, Logan’s a smart kid, no doubt, but there’s some things i just need adult companionship for, i can’t really discuss the finer points of philosophy, or the subtler jokes in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, Monty Python is well over his head (not even including the “naughty” sketches, and i’m sure Logan would like someone closer to his age that he can relate to, somehow there’s just a little age gap between a 2 year old and a 33 year old…
hopefully we can find some more people and start our own little “Convoy” to Boulder
“Breaker 1-9, this here’s MacTech, you got your ears on”
if you see a big black Dodge Ram with a bright yellow Fisher plow on it, 2 motorcycles in the back, towing a Steel Blue Dodge Neon on a trailer, give me 4 quick blasts of your horn, then 2 long blasts, we’ll start up a convoy to Boulder
hmm, i’ve always wanted to drive an 18 wheeler, maybe if i can find a car-carrier rig, i can load the Ram and Neon onto it, aint’ too much that can argue with a big rig…
all right Russ, stop being weird, keep your mind on the road…
Sorry for the multiple posts, but i consider myself a pretty decent hardware tinkerer, i found a way to set up an AirPort base station in a weatherproof box, mounted to the roof of the Ram, i jury-rigged an external antenna from the ABS to the truck, and connected the whole lot to a cell phone, so i now have a mobile AirPort bubble, decent range, anyone within 1000 feet of the truck can pick up an 802.11b bubble, so posting from the road is possible
(just in case anyone wondered how i was posting to the SDMB)
geez, the world ends, and i’m still wasting time hacking, how pathetic can i get?
Just as we were leaving this afternoon, I noticed a series of trucks coming down the road. My first instinct was to hide. I noticed they all said “Las Vegas Sanitation”. They were clearing the roads and throwing the bodies in big dumpsters. Why is the Las Vegas Sanitation department as far north as Wendover?! Are they clearing all of Las Vegas? How far are they pushing out?
Well, I didn’t want to be noticed, so we stayed in the room and laid low. After a little while, the boy I found started talking. He’s 11, his name is Tony. He doesn’t talk much, and he hasn’t been any trouble at all.
I decided to go down to the casino to see what was going on. I’m amazed at how many people died playing the slot machines. One person hit the jackpot. Funny. Near as I can tell, the flu hit them and hit them hard. I don’t think they would ahve had time to even get to their rooms, though some tried. The elevators all had corpses in them, and the halls around the lobby were also full of bodies.
I don’t want to stay here another night. The trucks are gone now. I don’t know what direction they went, but I’m going to be very, very careful in case they went East. I don’t want them to catch me. I don’t know what they’d do to me–maybe nothing–but I’m not going to risk it. Especially since now I have Tony as well as the cats depending on me.
I expect I’ll be in SLC before the morning.
We’re making OK time, finally. Well, relatively good anyway. We picked up three women and a kid in Lawrence, KS, where we stopped to see what resources the university had. They look like they’ve had a rough time of it, and I’m a little worried about one of the women. She’s apparently ultra religious and keeps going on about the anti-christ and the final battle of armageddon. Mixed up with that are comments about crows, wolves and coldness. I think she might be insane - perhaps medicated before the flu, but off her meds now.
One of the other women is pregnant - she looks to be 8-9 months along. Actually she looks like she could pop any day now, at least to my untrained eye. Since we were here, we decided to check the university library for books on childbirth - and hopefully at least one of us will manage to read some before she goes into labor! I don’t know that I expect the baby to survive, since everyone in our group who already had kids lost them to the flu, and Bex lost her parents. I think that we all expect a bad ending, but no one wants to mention it to Sarah.
I almost lost it when we got into the library and people were worried that we wouldn’t find any books because the catalogs were down. That science reference course I took my last semester of grad school did come in useful - I was able to go almost straight to the nursing books and from there to the childbirth books. It may be the last useful thing I do with that degree though.
We also picked up another SUV. With the cats still in the one I picked up in Knoxville and a total of seven people + supplies, we need the space. Tomorrow’s plan is to go ahead and pick up some additional supplies at a Wal-mart somewhere, just in case we have to stop for a day or more. Even if we end up with extra when we get to Boulder, it’s ok.
Good luck all.
[off]You’re right. I was just trying to mix things up a bit and see if anyone noticed. :o But, I’ll just go with the flow from now on. [/off]
It’s pretty quiet here in the Pacific Northwest. I’m pretty much on my own. In fact, the way the cities and towns are all deserted, I feel like Harry Belafonte in the first part of The World, the Flesh, and the Devil or Charlton Heston in The Omega Man (without, of course, the latter’s pesky mutant albino religious fanatics).
I’ve been spending a lot of time watching, oddly enough, a lot of end-of-the-world flicks on tape and DVD. For some perverse reason, I feel compelled to devour everything to do with this subject matter even though the real thing is going on all around me. I’ve watched so many that the movies seem to be bleeding into my real life. In fact, just the other day, I swore I saw a soldier that looked suspiciously like Keenan Wynn vandalize an old-style Coke machine for change while a British officer who looked Peter Sellers stood by. I also thought I saw Bruce Willis wondering around the streets of downtown Seattle in a biohazard suit. I don’t what to believe any more. Maybe the loneliness is finally getting to me.
I’m going to drive to the Washington and Oregon coast and see if I can find anyone there. The towns along the coast are kind of cut off from all the metropolitan areas hit by the flu so maybe there are some pockets of survivors. I’m sure as hell not going to Vegas, though. It’s too hot, too dry, and too tacky. (For me, ironic appreciation of kitsch gets old after 20 minutes).
That’s funny, 'cause there’s a new guy here who has really unkempt long white hair, and for some reason, he reminds me of Data on NextGen. He wouldn’t say where he was from, but I think it was somewhere here in New Mexico. Oh, and also, just so you know: not all the Army guys are maniacs. One of them dropped him off here and hung out for a little while. He was cool, and he looked kinda like the guy who was in “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. We asked if he wanted to stay, but he had to get back to his wife and stepson in LA.
This is K again, from Vegas. I can’t type long. They’re monitoring computer usage now, and I don’t know how long this laptop battery will last. I managed to log on under a pseudonym, so hopefully they won’t figure out it’s me before I’m gone.
There’s a group of us that is definitely leaving tonight. Today, He Who Shall Not Be Named crucified someone for using drugs. When I mean crucify, I’m talking Jim Cavezeil in The Passion. Nailed him to a cross and everything. He made everyone stay and watch. I stayed as long as I dared, then ran behind the Excalibur Hotel and threw up.
Pray for us.
I’m back, thanks for worrying! Charles and Donna and Marcus and I had a bit of a rough time, major car wrecks, but we’re heading toward Boulder, slowly but surely. We picked up a big ass CB (you should have seen the boys at Best Buy, like kids in a candy store) and we’re on Channel 15, if anyone wants to monitor the channel.
It’s amazing how the human body can adjust. I don’t even smell the rotting bodies anymore, and the sight of corpses causes me to wince, instead of sending me to the nearest corner to curl up in the fetal position, crying my eyes out. Hope is doing well, we’ve picked up some dog food for her, and she’s having fun chasing after rabbits, although she’s still to young to catch them.
K from Vegas really scares me, and I’m so glad I escaped David. Anyone in Boulder yet?
[time out]Can I just tell everyone how much fun this thread has turned out to be? Thanks to everyone who is contributing. One will never be disappointed in the intelligence and creativity of the Dopers. [/time out]
Holy Cow! I found some people! Or rather, they found me!
I was going towards a shopping center, looking for a grocery store, and I saw a bunch of trucks outside of a TGIFridays. I heard a lot of noise and realized it was PEOPLE, TALKING AND LAUGHING! I walked up, and we all sort of saw each other at the same time, and apparently I fainted.
They brought me inside, and when I came around, I heard their stories. They had all met on the road, and ended up here, heading to Boulder. They all had the same experiances as we did, families and friends dead, and they all just took off. The electricity is out here, but they have a couple of generators. They had some steaks and burgers cooking on the restaurant grill, and some cold beer. It was so good. They have some animals, too, that they found along the way, a couple of dogs that survived, and some cats.
There are 15 people; I make 16. The guy who’s sort of the leader is that guy Larry Something who sings that “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” song that was on the radio all the time right before all this shit happened. He’s coupled up with a girl named Lucy, and they have a kid with them who’s pretty traumatized and doesn’t talk much. He sticks with Lucy pretty much. He’s latched onto to her like a replacement mother.
There’s another girl named Nadine who’s kind of creepy. I think she wants to go on to Vegas. The rest of the people are really nice. It’s so nice to have people around.
Reading over my last post, and seeing rambling it was, and so full of spelling errors (which annoy me to no end), it’s a good thing I met some real live people.
I didn’t even realize how desparete for human company I was getting.
We shoull be pulling into Boulder tomorrow. Yay!
Toby did something like this. It’s all Greek to me, but he knew how badly I needed to stay in contact with other people, so he rigged something up. I think I kinda love the guy.
Izzy (that’s Mrs. Kresky to you ) is great fun to have around. She’s like my old Jewish grandmother. What a great cook! Anyway, we plan to hit Boulder in about two days.
Bibliocat, where are you and Larry and all those folks? Maybe we can find you and join up with your group.
I DO have evidence. There’s an article in the NY Times about this. Here’s the link [imagine a link here]. See that mugshot? That’s your guy; he sent us a picture of himself, remember? Didn’t count on the NYT archives still being up, did you? So what do you have to say to that? Rationally, of course.
How informed can I be if he’s a mass murderer and rapist but neglected to mention those little facts? I’d call that misinformation.
Yes, I’m sure the little old lady wants to force her oppressive government on the mass murderer. :rolleyes: As soon as I get to Boulder, I’ll report back. Meantime, fill me in on how great it is to have a convicted murderer as your President.
Also, who is He Who Cannot Be Named? Is he The Walkin’ Dude? Might his name be Flagg, which is in all your URLs? I’ve been dreaming of him, and so has my friend Toby, now that I took away his sleeping pills. He likes to crucify people, doesn’t he?
How do you know so much about what goes on in Boulder?
[quoteI hope you’ll apply this rationalism by visiting Las Vegas. Then perhaps we can talk.[/QUOTE]
Hell would have to freeze over before I’d go to Las Vegas, Doc. Get yourself a pair of ice skates, just in case.
Hi, I’m Jeff Byers, from Dalhart, Texas. Some of you helped me with ideas to escape from the Army hospital where I was stuck, so the first thing is I want to say thank you to everybody who sent in an idea. Thanks!!!
I got one of those Army trucks from outside of the hospital entrance (it was just a little building sitting against the side of a hill, but all the stuff inside was underground just like I thought) and just drove in a straight line across the plains until I hit a road. Those things are HARD to drive, especially when you have a shoulder that you just got back in the socket by slamming it against a truck fender. That hurts, too!
Anyway, I swapped that truck for a Ford the first time I came to a town, and that was a lot easier to drive, even though I still haven’t grown enough to reach the pedals very well. I guess I ran over a nail or something in the road because I got a flat tire… that was SCARY because I never even saw my Dad try to drive when a tire blows out, and I basically just totally lost it and ended up in the ditch.
I was out in the middle of nowhere and I decided that I might as well just sleep in the truck before trying to figure out what to do next, so I went to sleep and when I woke up there were PEOPLE outside!!!
There are four of us now. There’s a guy named Mark who’s sort of the leader and a woman named Jessica and a little girl about 3 years old who hasn’t talked to anybody yet so we don’t know her name. Jessica found her first, so she named her Nicole, at least until she decides to tell us her real name. They’re all pretty cool and its nice to have people to talk to again.
Mark is kind of weird, but hes really smart. He has us all reading these books on how to grow crops and build cabins and be your own doctor and all kinds of stuff like that. He has a whole notebook full of ideas for things we need to do to make sure we’ll be able to get along forever without stores and factories and things. Jessica says he’s over compinsating (is that spelled right?), but Mark says Jessica and Nicole wouldn’t have lived a week if he hadn’t found them.
I see lots of people are having weird dreams. I never remember my dreams, so I don’t know if I’m having any, but I know Mark and Jessica have them. She wants to go to Boulder like most of the people here, but Mark says he isnt going anywhere NEAR Boulder or Vegas.
Mark wants to say something to you guys, so goodbye for now from me, and this is him:
“Folks, I know this is all very strange, but I’d recommend that you look past that and see if you spot the same pattern I do. People are being ‘drawn’ to two, and ONLY two, distinct locations, each associated with a charismatic individual. I’ll tell you what it reminds me of: choosing teams. I’m not inclined to be on anyone’s team until I know what the game is… and what happens to the losers. I’m going to the East Coast. Just think about it, that’s all I ask.”
Oh jesus…
Made it SLC today. Downtown was crowded, but something compelled me to go to Temple Square. I left Tony and the cats in the car and told him to wait for me. I didn’t know what I’d find, but I had a sense that I didn’t want them to see it. The City was so silent. I kept looking at the mountains thinking I’m finally home, but it felt like I was walking in an alternate dimension. I know what home is, and this place aint it.
So I made it to Temple Square–I only had to park a few blocks away. The grounds are covered with corpses. They’re strewn from one corner to the next. They’re in the visitor centers. It looks like every Mormon in town came to find God and make themselves right with Jesus before they died. Curiosity got the best of me, and I went into the Temple.
I’ve never been in the Temple before. I thought maybe God would understand if I went in now.
You would not believe the number of bodies…men, women, children. Nearly all of them were in their Sunday best. Some were still in kneeling positions. Families were clutching each other desperately. I couldn’t walk into the building though. There were too many bodies. There wasn’t anywhere to walk.
I wonder if they found Him in time.
I made a bee-line for the car then. I didn’t loiter or look around. Once I got to the car, Tony asked me what was wrong. I looked in the mirror and I was white as a ghost, and shaking like a leaf. I told him nothing was wrong…that we were going someplace nice now.
It was slow going from SLC to Park City. There were wrecks on the road, but nothing I couldn’t get around. From Park City to Kamas was pretty easy. Everybody was trying to escape the mountains, not go to them. I don’t understand that. If I were them, I’d be going as high and deep into those mountains as I could.
My family didn’t survive. I found my mom, my sisters, my grandparents, in their homes.
I guess I’m not surprised…but…it hit me pretty hard. I’m going to scour the area this afternoon and see if I can find anybody. I might not start to Boulder until tomorrow. I’m staying at my mom’s now. I…I buried her and my sister…with Tony’s help. I told him he didn’t have to. But he said he wanted to, and you know, he actually, for a while there, looked like a grown man.
He’s a remarkable boy. An exhausted boy. I have him sleeping again in my mom’s room…
A part of me really just wants to stay here forever.
Great!, so not only do we have to deal with some entity named Flagg, but Voldemort is getting in on the action too?, how long before we have to deal with Freddy Krueger and Cthulu?
sure glad i have the Ram stocked to the gills with weapons…
I thought I’d pop in and post since we’re stopped for a while - Sarah’s in labor. Good think we picked up those books back in Lawrence!
It doesn’t seem to be going badly, just slow, and since she’s uncomfortable sitting in the car for long periods and wants to walk around, we’re stopped for the time being. Pete and Claire headed off to find a store with some baby stuff. She had two kids before Captain Tripps, so she at least has some idea of what will be needed. Of course, that leaves people who don’t know here with the woman in labor…but I suppose it’s going to go how it will whether she’s here or not (it’s not as if any of us have medical training).
I think we’ll make it to Boulder within the next 2-3 days - we’re not terribly far off, at the western border of Kansas, but I don’t know how long we’ll be stopped for Sarah.
Anyone in Boulder yet? What’s it like there?
…break…
Pete and Claire are back, thank goodness. Claire claims that she knows nothing about helping someone give birth, but I had to remiind her that at least she had given birth - this is Sarah’s first, and we don’t know about the other lady (I still haven’t learned her name).
Things look like they’re speeding up…well, relatively anyway. Hopefully I’ll be back later with good news.
I spent the day wondering around my hometown. And I found somebody!!! I remember him from high school. He was about a year older than me…we weren’t friends or anything then, but now we’re as thick as thieves. Apparently he had just been hanging out in town, at a loss for what to do.
He didn’t say as much, but I know he doesn’t want to leave the town at all. Yeah, it’s dead and empty. And yeah, it’s starting to stink. He’s been taking on the slow, tedious job of burying the bodies. He started with his family and worked out from his home. He has a sort of wild look in his eyes, and he hasn’t showered since…God knows when. I told him he will not be getting in the car with me until he cleans himself.
He understood.
He has been dreaming about the Walking Man and the old black lady. He doesn’t have any real preference, thought. He’s willing enough to come with me to Boulder. I told him to pack up a few belongings…we’re going to have to find a new car. I don’t want to–I really like my car–but it’s too small for three people, all my supplies, and my cats. He said he’ll get us an SUV. I don’t like the idea…SUVs are gas hogs and I don’t think that’s something we can afford right now. But this town is so small it doesn’t have a car dealership of any kind, so we’ll have to take what we can get.
I found dead bodies in the churches here. Apparently not all the Mormons made it to the Temple.
Most of the bodies in the town have decayed to the point I can’t recognize them, but there are a few I came across…family…friends…distant cousins…people I used to see at the store…
We have to get out of here. Soon.