Chapter 4

We decided to put some distance between us and the fog device as a matter of prudence. We didn’t want to be around if and when the ETs showed up to find out what had happened to their machine. I was driving, and I have no idea why I headed south when we got back to the highway. We were talking about things in general when the subject came up of Buena Vista.

Emma said that she wanted to see what had happened to our town and, especially, our home. Nobody objected, so that was where we headed. We were watching carefully to make sure that we did not run into a wall of fog as we drove south. We did not find any, and we wondered just how far the fog had extended away from the source machine. In other words, we wondered just how many people had survived the initial attack by the ETs. You will notice that we had all now accepted Bob’s hypothesis that ETs had been behind the fog attack.

I commented, “There must have been thousands of people who survived the fog attack. Sure, people who lived in large cities, at military bases, and at space facilities probably all died, but consider how spread out people were in states like Montana or Idaho, or probably even in Nevada with its Area 51 and all of that other stuff.

“You know, we have not even turned on the radio in this RV since we picked it up. It could be that there are pockets of humans still around who are looking for other people. What better way is there to do that than by radio broadcasts?” With that comment, I reached over and turned on the radio and set it for the AM band. I punched the button for the search program so that it would scan the band for any signal that it could pick up. Dammit, it went up and down the band several times without picking up a signal. I flipped over to the FM band and got the same result.

Joan said, “You know, it may be that nobody is on the air because they are afraid of attracting attention from the ETs. The other possibility is that anybody who can get on the air does not have enough electricity to be on all of the time. If I had that problem and wanted to broadcast, I would do something like be on for 10 minutes each hour on the hour. Maybe, we should try listening on that kind of schedule.” We all agreed that was a good idea and agreed to give it a shot. The driver could scan the radio bands for 10 minutes on each hour. Maybe we would be lucky.

Our trip south was not very productive. All we saw was more of California with no people or any other animals. Now that we were looking for them, it was kind of depressing not to see any birds. It was not surprising that we did not see any dogs or cats, but the lack of birds struck an emotional chord. Strangely enough, we could forgive the ETs for killing the potentially dangerous humans, but killing all of the birds was just not something that we could overlook.

We didn’t make it all the way to Buena Vista before dark because we investigated every town we came to in hopes of finding people. We spent the night in the RV and ate our meals from the stores on board. This was the last night that we could do that because our stove and refrigerator were running short on propane. We needed to stock up if we were going to do much more traveling in the RV.

The next morning, Bob drove because we were going to be traveling on relatively narrow streets, and he was the one with the most experience with a big vehicle. The kids, Emma, and I were anxiously looking through the windows as we approached our house. Finally, there it was. Bob had to park on the street in front of the house because there was no way he could turn into the driveway.

When he stopped, I suddenly burst out laughing. The others looked at me kind of funny until I explained, “I was worried that we were blocking the street, and I was concerned about getting a ticket.” That produced a general round of laughter.

We exited the RV and Jack immediately began marking his territory while the rest of us headed for the front door. I had my key handy and unlocked the door. I opened the door and let the kids go in first, which they did at full speed. Emma and I followed at a more sedate pace, and Joan and Bob were right behind us. Fortunately, this was a large house, and we had a spare bedroom so that Joan and Bob could stay with us if they wanted to. Frankly, after being cooped up with them in the RV for so long, I was going to feel kind of lonely if they didn’t stay with us.

Emma went through the house with Joan acting as her wingman, and they inspected the entire building. Emma pronounced the place as being untouched and just like she left it, so she relaxed and wanted to go to the stores for supplies. We had to have another car; the RV was totally impractical as a shopping vehicle.

Uh-oh, there was a scratching at the door. Jack was ready to come in. Now we would get the official report on the condition of the neighborhood. Johnny let him in, and Jack came into the living room to be with the rest of us. He plopped down in his usual place, and I interpreted that as a sure sign that Jack considered this to be a livable neighborhood.

Johnny had his own radio that operated off of batteries, and there was a new one in it. He was assigned the job of checking every hour to see if there was any stations on the air. I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any, but he was happy to be assigned a “grown-up” job.

It seemed that Emma and Joan had come to an agreement, and Joan and Bob were going to live with us for the time being at least. That was great with Bob and me, and the kids took the announcement in stride, so the agreement became set in granite when Jack jumped into Joan’s lap.

Emma wanted a pickup for driving to the store since that was what she was used to. I hot-wired the second car previously owned by our next door neighbors and drove with her to the nearest large used car lot to find a suitable pickup. There was a Ford F150 extended cab truck in the lot that looked good to us, so I picked up the keys from the office, along with the keys for a 9-passenger van. We left the hot-wired car in the lot and drove the two vehicles home.

Emma and Joan took the pickup to the supermarket and I trove the van to the nearest electronics shop. Bob stayed home to watch the kids. I was looking for four radios for us to use because the cellphones had quit shortly after the power went out so that the cell tower batteries could not be recharged. It didn’t take me long to find the kind of radio I wanted, so I went to the warehouse in the back of the store and picked up a box of 10 of the radios. I also picked up rechargeable batteries for the transceivers and the chargers.

On my way home, I looped by the supermarket to check on the women, but they had already left. I had timed everything perfectly because I arrived home just as they were taking the last item from the truck to the kitchen. Good, the women could now babysit while Bob and I went hunting a large generator to power our house.

We took the pickup with the smaller of our two generators sitting in the hauling bed. The National Guard Armory in the next town to our east was the home of a headquarters service company, and I figured that they would have a large generator that we could “borrow.” As expected, it used a diesel engine, as did all of our current vehicles, so we were fixed there. They had six barrels of diesel fuel loaded on a small trailer, so we used one of their trucks to haul that home. Another truck pulled the generator home.

We disconnected the two trailers and drove back to the armory to pick up our pickup. Then we went home and started work on connecting the generator to our house wiring. The generator came with the necessary wire, so we had everything we needed. With two of us working on the job, Bob and I had the connections made before dark, so we had light when it got dark, but the cooked supper was a little bit late. Thank God we had an electric stove so that we did not have to worry about the gas utility which was not working.