Chapter 4

Me and Tuesday headed northeast on US 24 to Limon, where we picked up I-70 heading east to Kansas. Long before hitting the Kansas line, the Rockies were behind us and the countryside was flat and plain. This was "The West" no longer. It was Midwest, now. Kansas might have had its share of cowboys and assorted roughnecks 150 years ago, but today, it was strictly farm country. OK, so, strictly speaking, I wasn't in Kansas yet.

But it already looked like Kansas.

Tuesday and I had gotten a late start, and I accepted arrival at the Kansas state line as an excuse to call it a day. I drove the RV up into one of those state-operated welcome centers. There were only two cars parked there, and no people inside them that I could see. These places generally didn't allow nighttime visitors, and when The Incident had happened, it had, evidently, been deep in the night.

I did find a dead guy -- an old man -- in the restroom. That wasn't much of a shock, anymore. After several days of this, I was getting accustomed to finding dead people lying around.

The problem was getting worse, though, because the bodies were deteriorating fast.

I tried the ladies room instead, and found it free of bodies. I figured nobody would care much if I took my whiz in the wrong restroom. I didn't even have to worry about leaving the seat down.

Despite being eager to find fellow human beings, I was a little chary about running into anybody by surprise. So I drove the RV around to the back of the park area, drove it up off the curb and onto the grassy strip behind the main building, and more or less hid away there, invisible from the highway or even from most of the parking areas around me.

Wondering whether Tuesday had any value as a watchdog, I staked him out on a leash outside the RV. He could get shelter from rain under the vehicle, if necessary, and he could do his thing out there without my having to take him out walking.

And -- maybe -- he'd raise a little hell if he saw someone coming. I wanted to know when someone was coming.

I desperately wanted company. But I wasn't eager to get company when I was trying to sleep at night. No surprises, please.

After dark, and after two hours of studying the manual that came with my Air Force Ground Radio Unit, I tried transmitting voice messages. I tried a number of different frequencies. I wasn't certain that my transmissions were actually going out, but I'd done everything I knew how to do to assure that the radio was in working condition, so all I could do was try.

I tried being very patient, and calm. I'd worked up a little spiel for the radio broadcast, changing only the identification of the radio frequency, as I switched, regularly, to different channels.

"THIS IS CARTER JOHNSON ON FREQUENCY SW14, TRANSMITTING FROM KANORADO, KANSAS, JUST

OVER THE COLORADO STATE LINE ON INTERSTATE-70.

I'M HEADING EAST ON I-70 AND WILL BE TRANSMITTING ON THIS FREQUENCY, SW14, EVERY EVENING AT THIS

TIME, AND THEN LATER EACH EVENING ON SW16, SW18, AND SW20, IN THAT SAME SEQUENCE, WITH THE SAME

TRANSMISSION.

IF YOU ARE HEARING THIS MESSAGE, CALL ME BACK IMMEDIATELY. I WILL SWITCH OFF NOW AND WAIT

THREE MINUTES ON SW14, BEFORE SHIFTING TO SW16. CALL ME. GIVE ME YOUR LOCATION. I AM MOBILE

AND CAN COME TO WHERE YOU ARE. THIS IS CARTER JOHNSON, OVER..."

After waiting for the three-minutes and hearing nothing, I would then say:

"THIS IS CARTER JOHNSON, NOW SWITCHING FROM FREQUENCY SW14 TO SW16. IF YOU ARE HEARING ME,

SWITCH FREQUENCIES TO SW16. CARTER JOHNSON, OUT."

It was a boring and unrewarding routine, and it required at least thirty minutes to go through all of it: the channel-switching, and twice-around before giving up for the night.

But it felt like maybe it would produce something, eventually. I was pretty sure the radio was, indeed, transmitting, and that a person with a shortwave receiver could hear it -- possibly at great distances. Of course, many people who could hear my transmission might not have the capability of responding to it.

For that reason, I decided to start broadcasting my route, so that someone who heard the broadcast might be able to intercept me, farther down the highway.

This occurred to me, right there in Kanorado, Kansas, so I forced myself to go back on the air again. I had consulted a city map of Kansas City, Missouri before going back on the air.