The Survivalist

DAY 784

I was up before the sun. Chopped firewood. Hoping to get another ten cords stored up before the winter. Tended to the garden. Tomatoes are starting to ripen. Might make have enough to make mom’s sauce in a week or two. Haven’t seen a plane in a couple of days and it’s making me itch. I feel like I’m being watched, even up here on the mountain. Some days it feels like the trees are closing in. I might spend the night in the bunker again.

DAY 790

Still no planes. Nothing on radar or radio. Up on the surface, the cabin looked normal. Sometimes I worry another survivor might stumble on the property when I’m underground, but nothing changed. The tomatoes looked a little dry. Some had fallen off the vine. Reminds me I need to work on fixing the hydroponics. It’s been two weeks since I’ve been down at the river. I should check the traps and wash my clothes.

DAY 791

I left for the river early. I wanted to beat the heat. I travelled light, just taking my rifle and net. It was an hour hike downhill to the river. My traps were mostly full, but the game was worthless. Rotten. Some half-eaten by larger prey. I reset them as I went along. When I got to the river, I found a deer, long-dead and decomposing in the water. The whole river would be poisoned for a while. I moved the deer out onto the bank and into the trees before going back to the cabin. Still no planes. No signs of any other survivors.

DAY 802

A bear wandered into the camp last night. Tore through most of the garden and knocked over the barrels of potable water. I didn’t want to touch the emergency reserves in the bunker yet. I set out to try and find another river. Looking at the maps there should be one a couple miles east of the cabin. It would be hard to haul enough back to replenish the stores, but it would be a start.

DAY 803

I set off early with my rifle and map. I needed to cover a lot of ground in unexplored territory. I felt nervous, like an electric current ran over my skin. My ears pricked up at the smallest sound. I was seeing shadows move through the trees. When I was two hours outside of camp, I heard something. Noise. Life. I approached cautiously. It was an RV park, set up in the parking lot of the scenic overlook. I watched them for an hour through the scope on my rifle from the treeline. They seemed normal. They acted like they were on vacation. Like the world hadn’t ended. They drank canned beer out of coolers filled with ice. Ate hotdogs cooked over small fires. The excess sickened me. Scared me. Was life returning to normal? Would there be any way for me to know?

DAY 810

I’ve spent the last week watching the people on the overlook. Their behavior hadn’t changed at all. Some of them left in cars for hours, then returned with more supplies. I started to think they were a scouting party for a larger group, and this was their base. They looked American. Part of me wanted to go down and see what they were doing, but it would be two years wasted. I was off the grid and I needed to stay that way. Even if life started to go back to normal. The bombs stopped dropping. People stopped looting and pillaging and killing… how long would it last? The only way to stay safe is to stay hidden. Life is worth the cost. The loneliness.

DAY 835

It’s my birthday today. Forty five. I feel old. I’ve stayed away from the Overlook Group the last couple weeks. I started to think about what life would look like if I went down to join them. I hadn’t heard any planes for fifty three days. Maybe the war was over. Order got restored. In my gut I knew it wasn’t true. They were still out there. Waiting. Watching. Flying spy planes to scout out survivors. That’s why I just watch.

I left for the overlook by midday. The sun was blazing. Oppressive. Most of the hike there it felt like I was wading through the humidity. I was on my way down an embankment when I heard a scream. I pulled my rifle to my shoulder and moved quickly. Quietly. Another scream. When I got to the top of the next hill, I fell to a knee and looked through my scope. A young couple was playing in the river. They looked like they could be on spring break. The boy had thrown the girl into the stream, and she was yelling, or laughing, at him. I recognized them. They would sometimes go to the edge of the overlook camp to make out while the other families slept or drank around the fires. The girl pulled her boyfriend into the stream, and before long they started shedding their clothes. I pulled the rifle off my shoulder and started to head back to the cabin when I heard another yell.

An older man barreled through the trees towards the couple. The boyfriend jumped off the girl and started pulling clothes back on. The girl tried to get between them, but the man pushed her out of the way. When she fell, she hit her head on a fallen log and laid still. I shouldered my rifle for a closer look. The man checked her pulse, then turned his attention back to the boyfriend, who was on his back trying to scurry away from the man. From what he yelled, I gathered he was the girl’s father.

He jumped on top of the boy and started beating on him. He was vicious. Blinded by rage. The boy stopped fighting a couple of punches in, but the man kept swinging. He was going to kill him, if he hadn’t already. Something came over me. Unexplainable. Instinctual. I pulled the trigger.

The man’s eyes went wide as he choked on the blood and gripped the wound in his throat. I moved slowly down the hill. Across the stream. I checked the boy first. He breathed in ragged gasps – somewhere in the twilight between conscious and unconscious. I guessed his jaw and cheekbones were broken. He was battered, but alive. The girl looked like she was sleeping, alive as well. The fall must have knocked her out. At worst, she would have a concussion.

The man gagged softly, spilling blood onto the dry leaves around him. Just as I was about to leave, I heard it. A low hum in the sky. I looked up, the branches blocked my view of the clouds, but I knew it was there. I knew they could see me. I picked up the girl and started to run.

It felt as if the plane chased me all the way back to the cabin. Even after I stopped hearing the roar of the distant engine, it was like a phantom chasing me. I made it back to camp and carried the girl into the bunker. We’d be safe inside.

DAY 836

The girl slept for thirteen and a half hours. I watched over her to make sure she kept breathing. The ruddy heart-shaped locket she wore rose and fell, glinting in the dim light.

She awoke slowly, then all at once. She was confused. I told her she was safe, but she didn’t believe me. She asked about her father, her boyfriend. I told her the truth. She was scared. I told her that I had saved her. That the planes had come, and they would’ve hunted her down if I left her. She didn’t understand. Called me crazy. I think the fall may have clouded her mind. Damaged her memory. She asked to leave. She cried. I told her I couldn’t let her go. The planes would track her down. I told her she was safe. She curled back onto the cot and cried herself back to sleep.

DAY 850

There was too much activity on the radar to leave. The girl, Sam, and I have been in the bunker for fifteen days. I hadn’t packed the bunker for two mouths. Water and food stores would dwindle faster than I had anticipated. I hadn’t realized how preoccupied I’d been with the overlook camp. I hadn’t hunted for weeks. Stupid. No we were paying the price. I started rationing food.

Sam still didn’t believe me when I would tell her about what happened in the world. The bombs launching. The surveillance drones soaring overhead. She stopped fighting, though. She even stopped asking to be let go. Most hours of the day – or what seemed like the day (time moved differently in the bunker) – she would pace around the bunker. I forgot what my voice sounded like. It’s more hoarse than I remember.

DAY 900

I’m not sure why I haven’t left the bunker yet. The radar has been silent for weeks. Everything should be quiet. I think I started to grow fond of Sam. I knew when I opened the bunker it would be over. I would be alone again. We’ve started talking about more than the planes. More than her boyfriend and her father and everyone else she missed. She started smiling. It was beautiful.

DAY 901

I woke up with a knife to my throat. Sam told me to open the door. To let her go. I told her it still wasn’t safe, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She held the knife to my back as I entered the combination to the heavy steel door. As soon as I felt the steel leave my back, I twisted around and grabbed her wrist with one hand and threw her head into the wall with the other. She dropped the knife and cried out in pain. She started lashing out wildly. I blocked the blows easily, tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t. I hit her. She fell to the floor. I pulled out my pistol and held it out at her. I told her that she was safe here. She screamed and grabbed the knife, sank it into my calf. The pain shot through my entire body. I shot her. Whether by accident or on purpose, her brains shot against the concrete floor. The bang reverberated wildly through the bunker.

DAY 1005

I still dream about her. The fear in her eyes right before I pulled the trigger. I buried her on the outskirts of camp, piled stones in a simple memorial. I kept the necklace with me. A reminder of what happens when I forget why I’m out here. She is a ghost. Sometimes at night I hear her calling from the edge of camp. I couldn’t let her go in life, and now she haunts me in death.

Today I made the trek back to her camp. A morbid curiosity I hoped would put her memory to rest. At the stream, the bodies were gone. No sign that anyone had been hurt. At their camp, I found it empty, save for a single fire pit. All of the RVs were gone. Even the tire tracks faded from the grass. Looking out at the landscape, I could see why they decided to camp there for so long. The summer had given way to fall and the trees stretched out like an amber sea for miles. The world was peaceful here. I took one last look at the gold necklace. The heart was oxidized. Ugly, almost. Inside, a picture of Sam and her mother. They looked happy. I closed the locket and put it on a lone rock at the edge of the overlook, drank in the scenery one last time, then went back home.