“All right, Mom. I’ll try to get some candles and flashlights for us.”
His mom’s tone turned surprisingly stern. “Oh we’re all right with that for a few weeks. You just worry about coming home, honey. I’ll finally be able to get a decent night’s sleep not having to worry about you up there where a riot might start any minute. Between fretting over you and April and the boys it’s a wonder I’m not bald from stress.”
They said their goodbyes and Matt hung up, not liking the reminder about riots. He sort of wished he’d thought to bring the Glock Trev had given him. It had stayed in his room since he’d gotten it because it was prohibited on campus and Matt spent all his time there, but he had a feeling it might’ve been a good idea to bring it along.
Or was it? He didn’t have a concealed carry permit like Trev or Lewis, and even if it was legal in Utah the sight of a gun being openly carried might spook people and end up causing more trouble than it prevented.
Besides, it was just a twenty minute walk to the store.
Chapter Five
Day Seven: Afternoon
Lewis had picked a small lot a mile or so northwest of town to build his shelter on.
Trev hadn’t cared too much about the location when he’d agreed to help his cousin with the project, partly out of boredom and partly because he really had taken Lewis’s warnings about preparedness to heart and the opportunity to earn himself a place to sleep in the apocalypse seemed like a good deal. Now, though, footsore and shoulders aching from lugging a cripplingly heavy pack for 50 miles, he blessed that one mile less he had to walk with every step down the dirt road leading to the pair of low hills the shelter was nestled between.
A hundred steps. That was it, after the hundred thousand or so he’d just walked getting here. He was almost home.
He saw a sudden movement on the nearer hill, which turned out to be Lewis rising from the concealed post they’d constructed up there to watch the approaches to the shelter. Trev had helped dig it when it all seemed like a game, imagining hordes of zombies converging on the position while he blew them away with his newly purchased Mini-14 and his trusty 1911.
Now, in the middle of a pretty grim situation, it didn’t seem quite so lighthearted. Especially when he saw his cousin sling his prized HK G3 across his back as he started down the hill at a trot, waving excitedly.
Trev waved back just as excitedly, taking the opportunity to unbuckle his pack’s belts and let it slip off his shoulders even though he wasn’t quite to the finish line. With his phone dead and occupied with making it home he’d been pretty much cut off from everything for the last week, and as eager as he was to finally rest he was equally eager for news about what was going on out in the wider world. After all the planning and speculation he’d done with Lewis it seemed almost unfair that when it all finally went down he was trapped on the road missing everything.
His cousin threw his arms around him, not seeming to mind his sweaty back, although he did back up after a moment and wrinkle his nose. “Well, even if I hadn’t seen you coming I would’ve smelled you before you got too much closer. You’ve definitely been on the road exercising hard for a week.”
“Nah, just a bit of light backpacking,” Trev replied as Lewis helpfully picked up his pack to carry the rest of the way.
His cousin grunted slightly. “Light? I can’t believe you came 50 miles carrying this much weight! Are you crazy?”
Trev grimaced. So he had overpacked after all. “I even left 20 pounds or so of stuff wedged between a couple rocks after I’d gone a mile. I didn’t want to leave anything important behind.”
“Like your brain?” Lewis hefted the pack. “No wonder you injured yourself and it’s taken you this long!”
“Yeah, it’s good to see you too.” Trev clapped his cousin on the shoulder, nearly overbalancing him. “Have you talked to my folks recently?”
“Yeah, they’ve been calling at least once a day asking if you’d made it yet, every single time making me promise I’d call as soon as you arrived. Checking in with them is probably one of the first things you should do.”
“Definitely. How about your family? You heard from them?”
His cousin nodded, smile fading to seriousness. “They’re doing pretty good, all things considered, although more worried than they’ll admit about being out of the country during all this. My dad tells me Russia has been demanding more concessions for the oil Norway exports in from them. It looks like the Gold Bloc is trying to grow their influence now that the U.S. is collapsing on both the fuel and economic fronts and they’re the only game in town. The Scandinavian countries will suffer along with the rest of Europe during this mess, but all things considered my folks might actually be better of there than in Aspen Hill.”
“Except here you’d be able to help them with all your preparations,” Trev pointed out.
Lewis hesitated. “Well yeah, there is that. I was just trying to look on the bright side.” That sort of dampened the mood, and his cousin quickened his pace. “Let’s get you settled in and you can wash up and change into clean clothes, then sleep if you want. I’ve installed a shower to go with the sink and toilet in the bathroom since you were here last.”
“All on solar power?” Trev asked incredulously.
His cousin shook his head. “The water’s gravity fed from a tank I buried on the hillside above the shelter to keep it from freezing. It’s not heated and we’ll have to refill it by hand now that vehicles aren’t working, but we may as well enjoy it while we have it. Luckily we’ve got the stream running out of Aspen Hill Canyon not too far away, and there’s always the spring in town so drinking water won’t be an issue. One of the reasons I’m glad I built the shelter here.”
“If you’ve got a water tank and functioning bathroom I guess that means you haven’t stopped working on this thing the entire time?” Trev asked as they came around the hill. In a small depression between it and the second hill was a shed butted up against the nearer hillside to provide slight insulation, not far from the aforementioned buried water tank. But that smaller shed was just for storing tools and Lewis’s gas tank and other outdoor things: most importantly, a stone’s throw from it rose a rounded hump of earth that stretched 20 feet wide and 40 feet long.
That was their shelter, a corrugated steel half-pipe shed planted in a six foot deep hole, then reinforced and covered over with three feet of dirt for insulation. On the top of the mound an array of solar panels pointed towards the sun overhead, while on the sides of the mound it looked as if his cousin had made a garden with terraced rows of the sorts of hardy plants that could survive with little water.
At the front of the mound, pointed southward facing the smaller aboveground shed, a gently sloping ramp led down to the front doors, which were recessed behind a wooden entryway with a heavy metal-sheathed door to provide added insulation as well as security. By all appearances that was the only entrance, but Lewis had also created a bolt-hole in the back to a hatch covered over with a foot or so of dirt.
His cousin led the way inside, flipping on a switch to a string of low-power LEDs that did a pretty good job of lighting the wide open interior, which was partitioned with screens around the bathroom area on the side closest to the tank on the hill above and a sleeping area across from it. Farther back the shelter was mostly filled with storage, Trev’s modest stacks of buckets, boxes, and cans alongside Lewis’s far more impressive pile that rose over his head.
The ceiling was ten feet tall in the center, sloping down to about 5 feet before it steepened to form the walls. From the outside the space looked impressively large, but inside it was cavernous, even with all the storage it was filled with and the living and bathroom spaces partitioned off.