It Was 2035, Quake

CHAPTER ONE

Trails End

BREATHE IN—-IN, IN, in. Breathe out—-out, out, out. Lyn-Marie used the calming technique that she had used since she was a young girl. She pulled all the air into her lungs that she could and then as slow as she could, emptied the air from her chest. It was a good way to settle her breathing if she was panicked or physically taxed. Sitting, knees bent, her back pressed against the decayed and flat tire of the travel trailer, she checked her pistol and made sure she could easily access the extra ammo in her vest.

Her breath more even now, she looked down the slight incline she had moments ago hustled up. A long low building stood where the camp road appeared to end. The faded building housed the once very much utilized campground laundry, now the washers and dryers sat in forced silence.  The library and rec room occupied one end and that was where she learned the breathing discipline. Still in her memory was the soft voice of the woman who offered a modified yoga class on Saturday mornings. At the time, she thought the woman was an old lady.  Indeed, at fifteen, she was the youngest by far attending the class—-over fifty seemed old to a teenager. Even these twenty years later, she remembered those humming instructions and she believed the yoga practice had turned out to be a very beneficial tool of survival.

Back to business. A piece of the tall grass had snaked it's way beneath the back of her vest or maybe some creepy crawly thing—-damn, I hate bugs. She ran her hand beneath the vest and t-shirt, cleared away the annoyance. With practiced caution to be silent, she leaned over and flattened out, attempted to see through the thick undergrowth beneath the travel trailer.

The trailer was one of three long rolling recreational vehicles that years ago after the stuff hit the fan had been placed end to end across the entrance to the Trail's End RV Park. Even though very few autos were still running after the mysterious EMP had brought down the electrical grid, the campground owner had an old tractor the he managed to keep functional for several years. The abandoned trailers made a boundary across the entrance, right behind the heavy front gate. In normal days, the gate had stayed open all day, welcomed residents and visitors and closed before dark. Now, just like the trailers it was being devoured by grass and vines, snaking and twisting over and around and into every crevice. The entrance looked like one monstrous creeping hedge row and the sign that once brightly announced you were at trail's end was faded into near unreadable oblivion.

She only flinched slightly as the hard figure slid in beside her. Her eyes rolled and  Nick's eyebrows raised in question. She motioned with her pistol toward the front entrance. He lowered his head and peered through the grass, glimpses of booted feet were visible beyond the gate.

Four? she whispered. Her sidekick nodded yes.

What cha' think? the deep voice came from a few yards away at the roadside.

A sketchy figure squatted down and seemed to be trying to look beneath the trailers, she couldn't see a face.

I remember this place, said the voice, the school bus used to stop here. It was a big RV park.

School bus! there was loud male laughter.

Yeah, you asshole—-not all of us had a car as soon as we got our license. I don't see anything around here. It would be hell getting through all that jungle. Probably rotted and deserted. Get your butts on down the road, see what you can see.  I'll be right behind you.

He's the leader. She listened as three set of boots clomped away down the cracked road. The looker stood, feet wide apart and faced the entrance for a few minutes.

Lyn-Marie shrugged to Nick and he shrugged back. They stayed quiet and waited.

A voice echoed from far away, Aaron! Come on man—-get movin'.

The last set of boots jogged away from the front of the campground.

Aaron? She had some vague memory of knowing a guy named that. She rolled and sat up, Nick pulled her to her feet.

Think they'll be back? he said.

Who knows. We probably ought to go ahead and walk the perimeter, she said.

Just some scavengers, I guess.

She started walking toward the end of the trailer barrier, Don't see many these days, but people are out there, still trying to survive.

Couldn't see real well, they were obviously armed, he said.

Yeah, the one that squatted down, I saw his rifle and least two more guns on him.

Heavy woods bordered both sides of the campground. If you followed the interior road down to the old rec building, it didn't end, instead it took a sharp turn around the building and continued sloping down. It Y'd and tall hardwood trees made a canopy, shaded all year around. Eventually, the property dead ended into a secluded bay, a branch off of a large sprawling lake. That water source had everything to do with why the residents of the campground survived after the catastrophe and it was a food source.

The lean figure, several inches taller than her, walked a little ahead, stopped occasionally and scanned the dense trees.  His rifle strap held his weapon across his back,  his short cropped hair was covered with a faded ball cap. Nick was about eight years older than her and she felt lucky to have him as a friend. When things went all crazy, she was living at the campground with her parents and brother, she was only fifteen. He was twenty-three, single and worked on a highway construction crew a few miles away. He traveled where the work led him and always lived in his small travel trailer near his job.

They reached the end of the side boundary, moved across the shore near the water line toward the opposite boundary.

Hey, looks like the water's down a little, said Nick.

Spring had brought heavy rains and the water crept up toward the rows of rv's in wet seasons.

Yeah, maybe we won't have to start building the ark, huh? she laughed.

Just as the two reached the other side, they stopped and their hands went to their guns. A sound of rustling leaves and twigs crackling came from the deep shaded growth. A hard shelled armadillo waddled into sight, crawled over a rotted log and began to root around. They exchanged a smile and relaxed.

She said, Remember when the cows used to ramble through the trees and come up near the fence—-and those cute burros? I miss them.

I remember the winter that we rustled one of those cows. Boy, that was some good beef. Thank god, some of the older folks here knew how to butcher and keep that meat.

As she stepped over a rotted limb, she said, You know, I don't think we would've made it if the older people hadn't known about a lot of things. They had so much knowledge that we needed, they lived on farms, knew how to grow and repair and make things. Would we have survived without their experience?

Don't know about you, I damn sure would've—-some way, some how. Of course, I'm a man. He laughed and slapped her jean covered bottom.

It was a familiarity that she probably shouldn't tolerate. Hey, my life, my rules. She knew his rude gesture was just kidding, his way of affection. A few years earlier, she and the likeable man had tried the romance thing. It was a why not choice; after all, in a community of far less than one hundred, the largest majority of them being over sixty years old, the availability of loving partners was not high. Turned out, they were happier as just friends. Who can figure love?

Now she was thirty-five and he was over forty. He still liked to kid her, sometimes give her his tempting smile and say something like, "You know they used to say there was such a thing as friends with benefits—-sounds like an excellent idea to me."

She would punch him as hard as she could, somewhere on his tight body and give him her scalding eyes look. She didn't completely rule out his crude suggestion, he didn't need to know.

They had made the length of the boundary, not seen any threats. They now walked across in front of the rec building to a large grassy area that was surrounded with chain link fencing. Once, it was a place for the residents to bring their dogs, take them off their leashes and let them run.

They both leaned on the fence and looked out at the more than forty graves that  dotted the space, various handmade markers at the head of each one. A good number of the more or less permanent residents of the campground had been aging when the event happened, many passed away. And then, particularly through the first ten plus years, there had been frequent battles and skirmishes, the struggle to keep their little village safe from marauders and scavengers.

As the world quickly deteriorated, their lives had become a constant vigil. Only their unity and strength kept them from having more casualties in those days. The bodies of their enemies got no respectful burial, they were dragged deep into the forest for the animals to feed on or weighted down in the deeper water.

Lyn-Marie was only seventeen the first time she stretched out and peered underneath the trailer wall, prepared to defend. It wasn't as intense these days, she didn't like to think of the evil gangs or the desperate wandering, starving people. The community had rarely turned away a person with a child, never a child alone. Some folks worked out and some had to be exiled from the village. All in all, there was still a population at Trail's End of about seventy-five. Some were older than her and some younger, only half a dozen children. They were understandably quite cherished.

She scanned the names on the markers, her eyes lingered on the simple one that she and her brother had made for her father. He had unfortunately been one of the few casualties of the efforts to protect their home. He received a mortal wound and died right there on the nearby cold asphalt. She still missed him. Life at Trail's End wasn't easy, those first few years were much worse.  She and her friend knew personally every single person resting beneath every marker.

Hey, you ever remember someone named Aaron in the village? her cupped hand roofed her eyes as she looked up at him.

Aaron? Don't think so, not that I remember. I don't think I ever knew someone with that name. Nick wasn't originally from the area and had been named after a great-grandfather. Her name was a combination of two grandmothers.  Sometimes a name really pegs you for a certain time when it was a popular name for a baby. Mother's name is Betty-—certainly no Bettys among my old classmates back in school.

Not important. I just heard one of those strangers on the road call the name. Thought it sounded a bit familiar, she said.  Well, think I'm going in for a while, see what I have for lunch. I'll see you at the dinner meeting.

As she walked away, he said, Probably ought to report the walkers at the meeting.

She raised her hand, Yeah and moved on down the hill to her small trailer.

About forty recreational vehicles and two mobile homes housed the residents of the campground. The original owner and his wife lived in a brick house next to the rec building. Most of the people inhabited the shelters at the back of the campground, closer to the water. The front area behind the fortified entrance was dilapidated and deserted. Lyn-Marie lived next to a mobile home where her younger brother, his wife and their baby lived with her mother.

The mild weather allowed her trailer door to be open with only the screen exposed. She checked the patch on the screen. The owner of the campground had a couple of large garages filled with tools and equipment, parts and pieces. When she noticed the tear in her mesh, she dug around in one of the storage sheds, found a piece of screen, carefully secured a square over the hole. Mosquitos were a common aggravation, with the bay and forest being so close. Not only was there the ever present worry of a bug bite becoming infected, those tiny blood suckers sometimes carried viruses. Her repair looked pretty good. 

Inside, she sat at her small table and watched the big white heron doing it's skinny legged dance on the edge of the water, it poked at the surface for small fish. She had cooked some rice and made a pan of cornbread, a couple of days before. Unless forced inside by bad weather, she cooked outside on a small firepit. She opened a jar of tomato relish. There would be meat at the dinner meeting, she looked forward to that.

Some of the community residents had been growing herb gardens for years, the teas they made were a big treat for her. It wasn't the old iced tea that she used to drink as a girl, yet she learned to enjoy these brews. Stepping outside where a large jar of purified water with tea leaves steeped in the sun, she poured herself a cup, um-m sniffed the orange aroma.

Setting her cup down, she took off the vest with heavy ammo, opened a drawer by the door and laid the pistol in. She pushed up her faded t-shirt sleeves and lifted the bench cushion she had been sitting on. Rummaging around in the storage underneath, her hands found the book. The old high school yearbook looked pretty rough, had been wet at some point. The pages were all swollen and water stained, it smelled musty. She wiped off a few dots of mildew from the hard cover and took a sip of tea, started going through the book, page by page.

Many of the pages were stuck together, even with care she wasn't going to see much of those pictures. An Aaron sat in the middle of a page, she looked close. Not anyone I remember, she was very accustomed to talking aloud to herself. A few familiar faces of friends smiled out at her, the tear that slid down her cheek surprised her. There had been little time to think about anything but surviving for a long time. Those young times had been lost forever and there had been no sense in fretting over it. At this moment, the images of long