Lamp Black: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 2) (41 page)

“That you did my friend . . . that you did. I think we kept each other sane over there, wouldn’t you say?”

“Ain’t that the truth,” exclaimed Pete, with a heavy sigh and a headshake.

“So . . . when are you going to fill me in on the drive up? I know it wasn’t as easy as you let on. I can read it all over your face,” said John.

Pete was quiet for a moment. He looked around the shop, and seeing two camp chairs in a corner, he walked over and opened both. “You might want to make yourself comfortable,” said Pete, “this will take a while.”

P
ete pulled into his driveway, glad to be home after a disappointing trip to Fort Hood. He was very troubled by what he learned about the sprawling military installation. The place where he had devoted many years of dedicated service to his country was turning into some kind of post-modern communist labor camp. He knew Fort Hood was just a place; that it was only people who ran it, but it didn’t make him feel any better about what was going on there. To Pete, the installation represented more than just a spot on a map, it represented the center of his entire military universe, and it really pissed him off that it was now diminished in his mind.

As soon as the truck stopped, Bonnie jumped out before Pete set the parking brake. She had repeatedly asked Pete to pull over so she could pee, but Pete denied her request given their location, the landscape, and their close proximity to home. But the real reason he didn’t want to stop was that he didn’t want to lose sight of her for even a second. The ash was deeper now, and they were too close to the fort for his comfort, so he kept telling her to wait, that they’d be home in a minute, and she could use her own toilet. She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t fight him on it. Apparently, she wasn’t thrilled about having to pee in the ash either.

When Bonnie disappeared inside the house, Pete took time to check the load in the back of his truck. He wondered if there was anything else he could pack up for their longer trip north. He already had everything of immediate value, at least from a survival standpoint, but he also didn’t want to load the truck above the top edge of the side
panels. For Pete, visibility was very important, especially since the air was filled with so much ash. It was challenging enough to drive in the ash without blocking his rear view. Checking his six was a habit of his, and the disaster conditions effectively heightened his many military instilled paranoia.

After turning around and abandoning their plans to enter Fort Hood, Pete and Bonnie talked seriously about what to do next. Bonnie wanted to stay home. She was worried about the boys, thinking they might try to contact them, or even attempt to make it home. Pete assured her that Pete Junior, who was currently assigned to duty on Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Tyler, who was stationed at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, were both safe, and that they couldn’t possibly make it home for several months. He assured her that they would be busy until things either returned to normal, or the military released them from their service commitment. He told her he didn’t know which of the two would happen first, but that he had confidence in their abilities. The last thing he needed her to know was that he was also worried about them, so he told her not to worry, that it wouldn’t help anything.

Bonnie was a strong woman, as most career military wives are, but she loved her boys very much and forever worried about their safety. She cried for a week when she learned that Pete Junior was deploying to Afghanistan with his unit. Pete managed to break her depression by taking her to Fort Campbell to say goodbye to him before he left, but she cried the entire drive home, which is saying something given the distance. But as soon as they got home, Bonnie recovered and quickly resumed her normal routine.

Pete watched her closely, looking for signs of trouble, but Bonnie persevered. Pete Junior had a lot to do with her recovery, he called her every day before deploying, and when deployed, he even managed to stay in touch with his mom regularly, through the internet, for the duration of his deployment. But Bonnie didn’t relax until he returned to the States. Now, the thought of leaving home, of abandoning their
sanctuary of twenty years, worried her greatly. She trusted Pete entirely, but she made him promise to leave a message about where they were going, so if the boys managed to somehow return home they would know where to find her.

After a lengthy discussion, Pete managed to convince Bonnie that John’s place was their best option for survival during the disaster. He didn’t have to remind her that John was more family than friend, and that he was well equipped. “If it wasn’t for him,” he told her, “they wouldn’t be as prepared as they are.”

Bonnie loved John and Jenna just as much as Pete did, but the attempt to gain access to Fort Hood had unsettled her again. She was very disappointed, and Pete wasn’t sure how much more she could handle. She peppered him with questions about how he planned to reach John’s place with the disaster, and even tried to convince him to go south, to Mark’s place in San Antonio, away from the ash, not further into it.

Pete agreed with her that going south was a smart plan, but he told her everyone would be thinking and doing the same thing. Everyone would be heading south to leave the ash, and that meant all the roads would be choked with people trying desperately to reach some sort of mythical safe zone, where food, water, and shelter would just be sitting there waiting for them. He spent a considerable amount of time defending John’s position on the disaster, but Pete finally sold Bonnie on the idea to travel north when he said John’s home was off the grid, that he had a well, solar panels, and enough property to garden and raise chickens and whatever else they needed to survive.

Pete continued to think about Bonnie’s wellbeing as he released a tie-down from the tarp’s corner and reached into the truck’s bed to reposition a box that had shifted during a turn. He looked up and saw Bonnie standing in the doorway. She waved to beckon Pete to the front door, and when he waved back in reply. “Pete, come here,” she yelled. “I want to show you something.”

Pete pulled the tarp down and joined his wife at the front door. “What is it Bon? I want to rearrange the load before we go,” he tenderly replied.

“I thought we should take one of the twin mattresses with us, you know, so we can sleep on it in the back of the truck at night. I don’t like those air mattresses you use,” she said, with a wrinkle of her nose.

“Bonnie, honey, we won’t need the mattress when we get to John’s. Besides, I’m thinking we can make the trip in a day, maybe two . . . tops. If and when we need to sleep, we won’t want to waste time setting up the tent, or dragging a mattress around with us. We’ll probably just sleep in the truck anyway.” Pete saw a down-turn in her demeanor and had an idea, “But why don’t you grab something from the house that’s special to you; something that will remind you of home while we’re away. Get anything you want as long as it’s not too big,” finished Pete.

Bonnie smiled and returned to the house, and Pete did another walk around the yard, but with a much different perspective now. He didn’t think they would be back anytime soon, but he knew better than to say anything to Bonnie. He entered the detached garage, and before locking it up for good, Pete grabbed a can of black spray-paint and wrote a short message on the inside of one of the garage doors. As an afterthought, he added the Lat-long of his destination.

Pete stepped outside. The ash was falling, light and soft, but denser than he would have thought possible given their distance from the eruption. It didn’t block out all the light, but it was trying to. He sneezed once and then blew his nose into a bandana from his front pocket. A disgusting wad of gray snot stared back at him from the folds of the blue and white cloth. He knew he should be wearing something for breathing protection, but he wanted something better than a bandana. The only one he had with him was no longer an option. He wished he had one of those disposable painter’s vapor and dust masks. They would be perfect for the ashy conditions.

Satisfied that everything around the yard was stowed away, Pete returned to the house and went to his bedroom. He searched his closet
until he found a bag of old army t-shirts from his many Middle East deployments. He had more than a dozen of the tan colored shirts, and couldn’t believe he almost left them behind. He removed a folding knife from his pants pocket and quickly sliced one of the t-shirts into a long bandana. He wrapped it around his head and looked in the mirror. Satisfied, he cut four more bandanas, and dropped the excess pieces to the floor.

Pete returned to the living room and saw Bonnie holding a box. She handed it to him without a word. Pete asked, “Is this what you want to take with you as a memory?”

“No,” said Bonnie, “they’re just some useful books. This is what I want to take . . . my favorite painting.” She pointed to an impressionistic landscape painting that hung above the fireplace mantel. It was a painting of modest size, about thirty-six by forty-eight inches, titled, “Texas Sunset.” Pete knew it was her favorite piece of art for many reasons, but she was most proud of how she came to possess it. On an invitation, they attended a Ronald McDonald House charity fundraising event in Austin. Among the many silent auction articles available for bid, like vacation and hunting trips, toys, and jewelry, there was a painting. The painting was the only thing that caught Bonnie’s eye, as well as her heart. Amazingly, she was the only one to bid on the painting, and she won it for a modest amount. It was, in a matter of speaking, her only trophy.

Pete nodded and said, “OK, I’ll wrap it up and stick it in the back of the truck.”

“Can you please put it in the cab? I really don’t want it banging around in the back.”

“Your wish is my command,” replied Pete, “but I can wrap it up so it won’t get harmed.”

“I hope so, it’s a memory that I want to keep,” replied Bonnie

He carried the box of books to the truck and immediately got to work on preparing the painting for its journey. Pete added a few items of his own, such as his favorite tactical gear and two containers of
water, but all in all, Bonnie was ready to leave again in less than an hour.

They left the house, but instead of turning south and crossing over the damn, Pete turned north. He hadn’t yet seen the traffic on the interstate, so he had no idea how busy it would be, but that was how he planned to start his journey. He was hoping to cover as much distance as possible on their first day of driving, but he knew that would depend on obstacles; traffic being the most likely. Despite his concerns about traffic, Pete felt the interstate was their best hope for making good time to John’s.

He patted the pile of folded maps lying next to him on the dually’s large bench seat and smiled at Bonnie. With the GPS not working, paper maps were his only hope of negotiating potential obstacles along the way. He wished he had a few military grade maps. The one-over-fifty scale maps offered valuable contour lines that he very much appreciated as a Soldier, but he figured he’d be able to bypass any troubled spots with the commercial maps he had. They might not show all the detail he liked, but they showed all the roads, and that was more than enough to get him to his destination.

Despite what he told Bonnie, Pete didn’t think they would reach John’s in two days. It was about a hundred and seventy-five miles to John’s place; a three and a half hour drive under normal conditions, but there was nothing normal about the road conditions. He was prepared to endure a week of driving, but not willing to share that news with Bonnie. She made it very clear that going north was crazy, and asked Pete several times if heading deeper into ash was such a wise decision. Pete assured her, as best he could, given the repetitive quality of their discussion, that a couple hundred miles wouldn’t put them deeper into the ash, at least not noticeably deeper.

Pete knew it was only a matter of time before the former weather patterns attempted to reestablish their dominance in the area. Warm air from the gulf consistently traveled across the state, bringing with it sustained winds and, for the most part, rain. The only exception was
when the Jetstream pushed cold air down into the state. That made for some freezing temperatures during the winter months, but it was the collision of warm wet air against cold, dry, air that generated such spectacular thunderstorms in Texas. Pete longed for the rain, knowing full well that it would help clear the atmosphere, and wash the roads of ash. At least that’s what he hoped would happen.

Hope seemed to be Pete’s new standard. Despite the challenge of reaching John’s place, his curiosity about John himself justified the risk of driving through the ash. In fact, Pete would have driven much further north just to talk to John face-to-face. Something about John had changed, and Pete was very curious to understand it. John had seen the disaster coming, knew it was going to happen even, and that got Pete’s full and undivided attention. He knew John was different, that he had an eye for detail, but precognition? That was something entirely different.

Pete approached I-35 with mild trepidation. Unsure about what to expect at first contact, he was nevertheless surprised to see traffic moving rather normally. Other than the ash, everything and everyone seemed to be treating the disaster as little more than a mild inconvenience. Cars and trucks moved on the interstate in both directions, kicking up ash as if it wasn’t there.