Chapter 3

In the time before the terrible destruction of the earthquake and the Tsunami that had devastated the entire region, Alice was not one to get involved in world affairs, politics or anything of that nature that required her to make anything like a decision or a state an opinion about which side she favored. In fact, she was the most shrouded in animosity girl one could find for hundreds of miles in any direction.

Now it appeared the entire world was going to Hell in a breadbasket and ordinary people were faced with doing everything for themselves and figuring out the best way to survive in the bargain.

Alice had plenty of things going for her that were not immediately apparent on the surface. She had plenty of survival training with her father and her uncle out in the woods near her home. Her skill with both a long gun and a handgun were good enough to make her consider actually trying to get on the National shooting team that was due to go to Russia in next year’s competitions. All of that was on the back burner now that lifestyles and personal desires were called to the halt by the dreadful catastrophe that had decimated so many lives.

Her readings on the probable scenarios after a disaster of this magnitude convinced her that her solitude was the best route to take to avoid some of the nasty treatment young females would be subjected to in the event of a complete breakdown of society and lack of governmental enforcement to monitor civilian conduct. She knew the military were already stretched thin in “hot spots” around the world and the military bases at home were reduced to a shadow of their former glory. If she understood the statistics of law enforcement, the criminal hardcore far outnumbered the thin blue ranks of sworn crime-fighters already working overtime to protect the general public.

The lack of aircraft in the sky, the empty highways and the absence of any electronic communications led her to believe that the earthquake, the Tsunami and the floods were only part of the picture with other unknown elements involved that she was totally unaware of mainly because she choose not to get involved in current events for most of her adult life.

Alice gathered up her lightest necessities and waited until darkness fell to make the thirty click trip to her uncle’s cabin in the woods. She wanted to get into his hidden cache of weapons and ammo buried behind the outhouse inside the military grade metal storage crates and see if his powdered survival food supplies were still safe under the floorboards in the kitchen. She had no doubt the place had been ransacked several times over by looters looking for anything useable and not nailed down.

Fortunately, there was a good chunk of the moon out this night and she made good time on the back trail staying well away from the highway. It was almost a certainty that the highway was replete with numerous ambush sites to steal anything useful from travelers looking for a safer place to ride out the storm of total change.

Her spear gun was close to her hand at all times but she knew it would not be much use against a band of thieves that might stoop to rape or murder just to make their new lifestyle more exciting. She had come to the conclusion that the world was truly topsy-turvy in a dangerous way for her and the multitudes of normally non-aggressive civilians that depended on an unseen government to keep them protected from the realities of the modern world.

About halfway to her destination, she stumbled across a pack of wild dogs and her fishing spear was put to good use to deter them from tearing her to pieces. She was relieved it was not a pack of wolves or worse because they were a lot more intelligent and random travelers would likely be their main source of food with the animal population drastically reduced from the flooding and the later forest fires that swept through the woodlands with the intensity of a wall of flame that left nothing but ashes in its wake.

In fact, a large swath of the forest that she passed through had been consumed by the later fire and she could still smell the rancid stench of burning that clogged her nostrils with a sickening sweet scent of destruction and despair that depressed her and slowed her step.

Once she passed out of the burn zone, she started going uphill because she was now in the foothills.

Alice has happy that the cabin was not up high in the slopes of the dividing mountains because she didn’t think that she was in good enough shape to handle the reduced oxygen and the stress on her knees and ankles.

Suddenly, it was only a couple of hours before dawn and she was in the dense woods right next to the location of the isolated cabin. She could see that the front door was battered down and was actually outside on the front porch. It didn’t look like there were any squatters in or around the cabin, but she did a few circles around it checking any hiding places just to make certain it was not a trap to catch unwary searchers like her and make her a female slave for their nefarious purposes.

The inside of the cabin was all a shambles and she could tell from the stench that invaders had relieved themselves inside the place instead of using the perfectly fine outhouse in the back of the property. Her uncle’s land went all the way down the hill to the running stream of fresh cold water that was still carrying the meltdown of snow from the nearby mountains. She saw that vandals had broken the pipes of the storage water tank and they had even broken all the glass windows with destructive viciousness.

It didn’t look like anybody had been there recently but she still carefully checked each room and closet before heading to the tiny kitchen and checking under the floorboards for the food supplies. The hidden stock was still intact and she filled her backpack with the jerked beef and the powdered grains and other long-lasting trail mixes. All she needed was a bit of clean water and a fire to heat up the stuff and she would be eating like a queen for some time to come.

She could see the hint of dawn over the peaks to the east and she made a beeline to the outhouse to check out the gun situation.

The weapons and the stash of ammo were right where she had helped her uncle hide them years before. He had intended to dig them up and put them with the rest of his collection back at the main farm and told her that they would be “hers” when it came time for him head for the pearly gates or the fires of hell. She had never seen him do anything remotely deserving of the place down below so she was certain he was looking down on her in the cold hours before dawn digging up the cache of weapons and selecting the ammo to take with her on the trek back to the low country. She considered staying in the remote foothill region, but her instinct told her that it would ultimately be her grave because the wild animals were in ascendency and it was not safe for a single female to attempt to survive all by her lonesome out in the woods.