Chapter 6

Jan Branham brushed her honey-blonde hair out of her eyes. She had been dodging those others for so long that it was hard to remember that somewhere in her past she had been a student. She had worked so hard during seven of her 26 years towards her goal; a PhD in Industrial Engineering. The end had been in her sights when she finished her preliminary examination, the final step before her dissertation. That had felt so good that she had allowed her friends, Judy and Karen, to talk her into taking a mini-vacation at a state park about fifty miles from the campus. They were there resting at the moment when civilization had ended.

Jan could still remember the small cabin the three of them had rented. They had driven down early on the Saturday morning before the collapse. That first day had been normal. The ground rules for the weekend were that there was to be no discussion of school or men. Each of them had brought their favorite books, music, swimsuits, hiking boots, spare clothes and not much else. They planned to laze about in the warm Florida fall sun, reading and unwinding from all the pressures on their lives.

It was amazing how the three women, so different in so many ways, had remained good friends for so long. They had first met in the dorm during that first year of college; a year that now seemed so long ago. Judy, who was Jan's roommate during that first semester at FSU, was the quiet and introspective one. It had been her idea that they take the weekend break.

Karen was exactly the opposite of Judy. She was a brash, take-no-prisoner, type of person. She had been Judy's best friend from high school. Jan remembered that it had taken her a while to get used to the Karen's constant chatter. It got to such a level that on several occasions she had almost felt like an outsider in her own dorm room. It had only taken about two weeks of that first semester for Karen and Judy to change to Karen and Judy and Jan and from that point on, for seven years, the three had been almost inseparable. Boyfriends came and went but their friendship endured.

Thinking back on those seven years of memories almost brought a smile to Jan's lips. Unfortunately those pleasant memories always brought her back to the stark condition of her existence. That circumstance that started when they left the park and found the world had somehow changed on that Sunday afternoon.

First they noticed the cars stalled or crashed along the roadway. Dodging those cars made the return trip much longer and much more hectic than expected. She vividly remembered her shock as they drove up to the gas pumps of a small Tom Thumb convenience store near their off campus apartment, the car almost out of gas, and found the pumps turned off. This particular store, always open 24 / 7, was their normal gas stop. On that Sunday not only were the pumps not working but there was no one inside of the store. Jan remembered how weird it seemed to find the door unlocked and no one around. Karen had panicked as she went through the entire store frantically searching for Cathy, the normally friendly clerk.

As they left Karen calmed down some but voiced all of their concerns, "This is beyond weird. Where is everyone?"

Luckily the car had enough gas to make it back to their apartment where they were again assaulted by the unusual pin-drop quiet. On any other Sunday afternoon there would be splashing and loud, raucous noise emanating from the large apartment pool, across the street from their front door. Jan remembered hoping for some familiar sound. The normally unflappable Judy became panicky at that point and decided to call her parents. That was when they noticed that none of their cell phones were working. Rushing inside they found the phones in the apartment didn't work either. Mrs. Johnston, their nosey next door neighbor who never went out, wasn't home and neither were any of their other neighbors.

Jan spent the evening trying to calm Judy and Karen's rising fears that they were all alone in the world. By the following morning Jan had stopped trying to defuse their panic as she fought to keep herself composed.

In the afternoon of that second day they managed to siphon gasoline from Mrs. Johnson's old Corolla and headed out on the road to try to find some answers. They first drove to both Judy and Karen's parent's homes in nearby Quincy, Florida. Her friends' panic rose to monumental proportions when no one was found at either of their homes.

Jan had managed to calm her own fears at that point as she began to accept that something fundamental had changed in her world. She managed to calm her two friends somehow enough to make plans about what to do next. The oppressive heat of that autumn day helped them realize that they needed to find a base of operations; someplace with electricity and air conditioning. They also reasoned that a place that had electricity would be a natural gathering place for any survivors.

Karen, a medical student, suggested the local teaching hospital; it had emergency generators that automatically kicked in when power is lost. The problem with that idea was that those emergency generators only operated necessary lighting and equipment, and air conditioning obviously wasn't thought to be a necessity. After several other attempts they found shelter from the heat in the basement of the main university library.

The basement of the library was the repository of the 'Special Collections'. Those were the books that needed special preservation and protection because of age or rarity. The air conditioning in those areas was considered a necessity. The emergency generators that provided the standby power were automatic and had special large capacity fuel supplies installed after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005.

The downside of living in the basement of the library was that there was no provision for cooking or sleeping. The three girls had almost immediately moved mattresses in from their apartment off campus. Cooking at first was accomplished using a small camp stove and a microwave lifted from the employee's lounge upstairs. A small refrigerator was found in a nearby dorm and provided storage for perishables.

Jan had been surprised how little time they had needed to spend scavenging for supplies at first. The hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 had left almost every garage in the city of Tallahassee provisioned with cases of MREs, canned goods, and other camp foods. Five gallon containers of gasoline had been filled and stored by most homeowners to fuel generators that would provide power during future hurricanes. Unknown to the three women most of the gasoline in these containers was treated with a chemical that preserved the shelf life of the gasoline. The women found gasoline to be in relative abundance. In fact, the amount of gasoline found in relationship to foodstuffs was so great that the excess fuel was stockpiled for future use.

Their routine had settled into a series of morning scavenging runs followed by afternoons and evenings spent in independent study. The main topic of that study was what had happened to the rest of the human race. Although that study was fruitless in the sense that they never discovered the actual cause of the collapse, the girls did manage to discard many possibilities. Gradually their studies turned away from the causes of the collapse and towards the individual studies that each of the young women found exciting. For Jan that was a continuation of her PhD. studies. Industrial Engineering may seem like a boring and irrelevant topic to most, but Jan knew that if there were others who had survived they would need to preserve as much of the current industrial base as possible to avoid a slide into the Stone Age.

Jan became consumed by her research and work. She came to the conclusion that the library materials, especially those books detailing engineering processes, needed to first be preserved. To accomplish this she began the prodigious task of converting to digital form all of those books and periodicals in the vast research library's collection. This was for the most part a manual process involving a digital copier and a networked computer. She stored all of the resulting files on a number of hard drives and also on more-permanent DVD media.

Life settled into a routine of scavenging, studying and preserving books for Jan. In the morning two of the three women would arm themselves and leave for the daily scavenging run. They didn't think of arming themselves at first but their first encounter with wild dog packs convinced them of the need for personal protection. Each young woman carried a Glock and a 12 gauge shotgun courtesy of an open downtown gun store. The scavenging run had become an almost mindless endeavor that two of the three would perform each day. At the end of the daily run they marked off the homes they had visited on detailed maps that they maintained. They also noted the locations of unusual items they discovered in case they were needed in the future.

In the evenings they would always eat together and then talk of what they had discovered in their afternoon studies. They knew that education is not a solitary process. Much of what is learned is learned through the active interchange of ideas with others. Normally those others are colleagues in the same field of study. Jan, Judy and Karen did not have that luxury so they talked things over with each other. Each knew little of the other's work at first but that soon changed. Jan was surprised at the amount of medical knowledge she gained from asking questions about Karen's studies. She was also intrigued by Judy's theories of the ecological consequences of the post-collapse environment.

All in all it was a lonely life. Even though the three friends joked about being on sabbatical, they each longed for that day when they would hear a fourth voice. Then that day came.

It started out as a day like any other. It was a Monday. The scavenging team for that particular Monday was Judy and Karen. Jan was doing her wash in the machine they had brought to the back of the library from one of the dorms. She had the walkie-talkie radio they used to communicate sitting on top of the basket of dirty laundry. They had found the walkie-talkies in the security room of the library. It was a simple job to move the charger downstairs and to charge the radios after each day's scavenging.

The first thing she heard was Karen exclaim, "Jan, listen to this."

The next thing she heard was the loud roar of what sounded like motorcycle engines being revved nearby. Karen's high pitched voice resounded with excitement as she said, "There must be twenty men and women on motorcycles. We're not alone!"

Jan was worried from the first moment she heard that sound. Her response was, "Karen, be careful. They may not be friendly. Stay out of sight."

Karen responded, "Too late, they've seen us. They seem to be friendly."

Those were the last words she had heard from her friends. She had tried later to call them on the radio to no avail. She knew where they were headed as she had scavenged the same subdivision the day before. As soon as it was dark she had taken the other truck and quietly retraced her friend's path. Jan had driven slowly without any lights, ready to pull over to the side of the road if she spotted anything unusual. She found the truck about three quarters of the way to the subdivision on the side of the road. The shoulder of the road around the truck was deeply rutted with motorcycle tracks. The door of the truck was open and the walkie-talkie was still on underneath the seat. There was no trace of either of her two friends.

Life after that event was lived under the constant threat of discovery. Jan realized that she would have no chance helping her two friends if she, herself was discovered. She reasoned that there was nothing to tie her friends to the library. During the eight months of their ordeal they had outfitted several other locations with necessities. Jan hoped her friends would think to convince their captors that they were based at one of the other places.

As the fear of discovery subsided, Jan's felt as if her life had been given a new purpose. She became determined to find her friends and, if possible, help them escape their captors. Jan knew that for her to do that she herself had to remain undiscovered. She began to forage at night rather than during the day for the things she needed. She holed up during the day, planning and resting. Instead of scavenging one house to the next as they had been doing, she moved from one area to another, always on the look for signs of her friend's captors.

It didn't take her very long to find them. A week later she was skirting the edge of a large subdivision when she heard the almost deafening sound of motorcycle engines. At first she thought she was caught. She was driving without her lights and so she slowly drifted over to the side of the road and cut the engine to the truck. As soon as the truck had stopped she scooted down on to the floorboard. Moments later they drove past. When she could hear no more sounds coming from behind her she inched up and peered out the glass.

They must have known they owned the night. As soon as Jan saw the end of their procession she knew that she had exactly zero chance of rescuing her friends. Each of the individual bikers looked to be a formidable opponent but as a group they were flat-out unstoppable. The next morning the thought of being possessed by those bikers came to Jan in her dreams; dreams that morphed into deeply disturbing nightmares. When she awakened she knew that her friends were lost, there was nothing she could do for them.

Despair and depression seemed to be Jan's constant companions after that. She couldn't eat, she couldn't sleep, and she couldn't work. Her eyes seemed to be sunk deeply into her thin face and took on a haunted look. She had no purpose, no reason to go on. She found herself talking aloud for no apparent reason. Anyone listening to what she said during these random outbursts would have been convinced that she had gone mad. Maybe she did slide a bit into the abyss before gradually her subconscious mind worked through her deepest fears and her depression eased.

She became aware of her condition in the midst of one of her almost constant, seemingly mad, rambling discourses. Her mind started listening to the fear-tinged voice that was emanating from her mouth as if she was a detached spectator of her own oratory. Sanity was only a dim spark somewhere within her subconscious. Sputtering to life, that spark began to glow and grow until it lent some light to her fear-darkened soul. When she finally managed to see through the maelstrom of her uncertainties and discern herself she was appalled at what she saw; one dirty, thin and totally ill-kept specimen of humanity.

That evening Jan began her trip back to sanity. It wasn't a straightforward trip. Depression is one unnerving and sneaky bastard. Being alone meant that she had no support group, no counseling, none of the things that are normally used to fight depression. All Jan had was her mind and heart. She fought for each hour of sanity knowing that the battlefield was somewhere deep in her soul. She sensed that victory was within her grasp and knew from her own visage the cost of defeat.

As addicts will tell you, each day is its own battle and each battle has its own price. Jan began to win those daily battles and slowly regained the strength the constant combat had leached from her.

One of the first things that Jan realized after she became fully cognizant of her surroundings was that the library's generators must be getting low on fuel. She had added none since her friend's capture and that, to her reckoning had been three weeks earlier. She waited until that evening and left the safety of the library to try and find fuel. She traveled quietly and she worked as quickly as possible to locate one of the sites where they had stockpiled containers of gasoline during their earlier scavenging trips.

It took several nights to refill the large tank on the generators but soon they were topped off. With that out of the way Jan took time to think about what she would do next. As she was thinking she went back to working on the conversion of the library to digital format. Her collection of hard drives was by now quite impressive. Scanning pages from various books and periodicals doesn't take much thinking; actually it creates time for thinking. Jan considered her problems from every angle and came to one inescapable conclusion. The one advantage she had over the bikers was that she knew where they were and they didn't know she existed.