NINE: (Ryan) “On The Road Again”
We arrived in Grand Forks minutes after 2 a.m. Once the rain stopped the full moon emerged, which helped the travel, but driving through the dark with no headlights still wasn’t easy. The tension hadn’t subsided in the least, and we were all expecting to be pulled over at gunpoint any minute, so we spoke very little.
Passing through the small town of Fisher, a few miles outside Grand Forks, we came upon a larger replica of what we’d found in Ely. The smell seemed even stronger here, even with the air on and windows up. Exponentially more cars littered the highways and ditches, occupants still inside. Gaping holes showed in the center dividers and the guardrails on bridges, where some cars were still hanging and others had plunged through. Abundantly more dead animals again covered the roads. This toxin, whatever it was, had spared no creature. There didn’t appear to be any immune. Survival was lucky. Pure luck. I just couldn’t get over that.
Exiting off Highway 2 onto Demers Avenue, we saw even more bodies in parked cars, more on the sidewalks, and more on the lawns. We all wanted to look away, but to where? We sought out any visible signs of life, helplessly wishing we could help someone, somehow, in some way. But we couldn’t. It was the same sickening, horrific, scene wherever we looked.
Businesses had been rendered into the ultimate situational ironies. There was a State Farm agency, with no one there, a Motel 6 with no lights on, and a Batteries Plus store, completely dead. The movie theater across the street from Cabela’s was playing Terminator 6. Even Arnold wasn’t coming back from this. At any other point in time these truths would have been quite funny. Tonight they were sobering doses of reality. This is how it is. Everywhere. Life will never again be how it was before.
We still hadn’t encountered any signs of enemy presence. There were no other vehicles, no lights, no aircraft or motor sounds. Yet, to be certain no one was at Cabela’s, we looped all the way around the building before parking the three trucks across the street in an auto repair shop parking lot. Cameron and Danny pulled on their covert, black, Special Ops uniforms. The suits were high-tech, lined with a heat-absorbent, waterproof, Kevlar reinforced fabric and equipped with miniature battery-powered vents (under the arms, at the waist, at the ankles, and at the neck) to balance their body temperature inside the suit with the air outside. They called them “ghost suits,” and those two would be invisible on any THIRST system. The Navy SEALs used these uniforms in every stealth operation, allowing them to breach buildings and beaches almost invisibly—like ghosts. On the open market they would be $80,000 suits, but they weren’t available on the market, which meant two was all we had.
Hayley and I didn’t have that same stealth security, but we crossed the street with Cameron and Danny, and crept along the edge of the building to the front door. The others stayed with the trucks for now. Danny picked the lock in seconds, something I normally would have questioned, but decided to let go for the time being. Had to be something he picked up in the military. He raised the iron gates enough to access the doors and opened those enough so he could slide in and disarm the security system. Another useful trick that took him only seconds. He then came back and opened the glass doors so we could all slide in. Danny lowered and relocked the iron gate, and we made our way together through the darkened store. We found the section with the night vision gear, and Danny set each of us up with a functional set. He loaded up on batteries and other related accessories and grabbed an additional set for everyone waiting with the trucks. Then we headed to the back door to let them in.
Once we were all inside, Danny split our survival shopping spree list into eight sections, each with ten to twenty items. I stayed with him and Cameron. We collected equipment from high-tech infrared deflecting blankets and tents to similar stealth clothing, jackets, gloves, hats, boots, and sleeping bags. Danny knew what kinds of guns we needed, so he went to gather those. He and Cameron had their Special Ops Remington R11s slung over their shoulders and Springfield XDM12s holstered. They also had their high-powered, .50 caliber, Barrett M82 sniper rifles out in the truck.
Cabela’s didn’t stock those military grade weapons, but Danny’s search turned up four Remington 700s, four M40A8s, two Colt M4s, four Beretta handguns and four Springfield XDM8s. We gathered scopes, ammo, and silencers for the weapons, fishing gear, knives, propane grills and tanks, and pre-packaged military food packets. Hayley picked up four more bows, beyond the four she’d packed, and a hundred of the best arrows. The others loaded up on additional food, two-way radios, bottled water, hunting traps, motion cameras, emergency lights, rope, wire, first aid kits, Tasers, backpacks, face paint, and a couple of generators. We hauled the supplies out to the trucks, divided everything equally among the three vehicles in case we happened to lose one, and then moved them down the street a few more blocks. Danny and Dad wrapped the hoods with heat-trapping tarps, to mask the engine temperatures, and we were ready to get a little rest.
We walked back to the store, climbed the stairs behind the giant waterfall and fish tank, and crawled exhausted into our sleeping bags. It didn’t take long, despite our worries, for us to fall asleep, but the break was short-lived. I was jolted awake, with Danny’s hand over my mouth, two hours later. He held a finger to his lips, handed me night-vision goggles, and pointed towards the front door. Someone’s here. He and Cameron woke everyone else up quietly and I crawled forward with the two of them to the railing, expecting the worst.
Instead we watched in stunned curiosity as four large white men in overalls staggered through the front of the dark store with as much grace as a grizzly bear in a butcher shop. Through our night vision gear and scopes we could tell they were each armed with hunting rifles or shotguns and were headed directly for the gun section of the store. They began collecting more weapons and didn’t seem to have any idea we were here. We could hear them talking now. More Americans? They moved about with ease and seemed to know the layout of the store. Clearly they’d shopped here before. There were doomsday preppers throughout the country. Who knew how many of them had actually survived? Either these guys fit that bill, or they were simply as lucky as we were to have somehow been beyond the chemical impact radius during the attack. It didn’t matter. They weren’t doing anything to mask their activities or heat signatures, and if anyone else had followed them here we all could be in danger. As thrilled as we were to have run into more survivors, we decided we were safest staying hidden. Danny crept down the stairs to the back door and peeked out enough to see two trucks parked in back, motors running, and both with at least one passenger behind the wheel. He came back and reported to us. This was not good. They were being far too careless.