Space. A great vast nothingness. Only, it's not. That gravity waves travel through it proves that it is anything but empty. The pressure of space has been forcing the universe to expand for a few billion years. But all good things come to an end. Even after the pressure was relieved the momentum of expansion continued. Then a short time later (cosmologically speaking) the structure of space reached its elastic limit and shattered into the finest of dust (from a cosmological perspective). Planetary bodies were shattered into minute odd shaped granules between ten to three hundred miles in cross-section. The natural laws governing the universe took a slight shift. A separate universe gravitationally locked to our own (the missing mass was there all along) already occupied this natural law set. So two universes separated at birth were reunited. It was however a very bumpy ride for those sentient beings fortunate enough to still be sentient beings after the reunion.
18 hours until the collapse Wednesday 4:45 PM PST
The phone call was from my little brother. He will be shipping out tomorrow and will not be able to call me again for quite a while. At least we were able to spend a few days at the cabin together before his deployment. The cabin has been in the family for a long time. This area has gone from a few widely scattered vacation homes to a loose rural community with a few areas looking more like a part of the suburbs. The cabin itself is not in a particularly desirable location being at the top of a hill in the middle of a heavily wooded area. There were lots within a few miles that had been logged off to create view lots with nice homes on them. While my father was alive he had tried to get permission to have the lot cleared to build a house up here but was told that it was a sloped area and the county denied the permit. In this county what you can do with your land depends on who you know.
In three days I may call into work to find out if I still have a job. The company I work for does embedded system design. I lead one of the hardware teams and Bill leads the software half of the team. The company president just sold the company. Instead of overtime for salaried employees, he offered comp time. The promise of paid time off for overtime hours worked. One hundred and sixty-seven hours of unpaid work gone, poof. The banked vacation hours gone, poof. All the promises for compensation given to the design team for working back to back on two major projects with no one being allowed to take vacation much less the mounting hours of comp time are gone, poof, with the bill of sales. When I hear that I walked out. I told the project manager that I was using my banked vacation hours. He said, "you can't". I flipped him the bird and kept walking. I have since been ignoring his calls.
At the bottom of the easement road on the way back from picking up the mail, I move to the side of the road to let the neighbors pass. As I walk by their house they are getting out of their car. Hmm, cat food, cat litter, a tray, and a cat carrier making faint mewing sounds. A pet, I like the idea. Once my life settles down again a pet would be nice.
As I continue up the easement road the canopy of fir trees closes over me. The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of getting a cat. By the time I reached the cabin I have decided that I will start searching the net for animal shelters in and near Seattle.
5 minutes until the collapse Thursday 10:40 AM PST
Once again heading down the easement road to go for a walk. Since I may need to start job hunting should I try to stay in the Seattle area? For mom's sake, I suppose I should. Dad passing hit her hard. Starting over somewhere else has a lot of appeal to me. New place, new job, maybe I could try to find a girlfriend. Maybe not, last try resulted in a broken heart and nearly flunked me out of college. Those who worship at the altar of political correctness are scary. Maybe there is a sweet girl out there who hasn't been indoctrinated into the religion of political correctness, who isn't married, who is over twenty, who would be interested in me. Who am I kidding.
Brrr ding do do ding do.
"Oh? Mr ex-company president is sending me text messages now? Eeh phone died?"
Next second I am floating in the air then kissing the gravel of the easement road. The roar is deafening. Bouncing and scraping around the road surface all I can do is try to protect my face with my arms as the world shakes in every direction. After an eternity of shaking the violence slowly subsides and the roar slowly starts to fade into the distance. Bruised, bloody, and weak I struggle to get to my feet. It's all I can do to keep balanced on my feet. My body feels like I have been changed to led. Through the ringing in my ears, the forest off to the right is filled with the sounds of cracking limbs with the occasional crash of a large tree falling. I turn around to head back up the hill to the cabin. The easement road is littered with fir branches and a few small alder trees. The ground is not still but the worst of the shaking seems to be over for now. I hear an explosion of glass off to my left. The vaulted roof of the neighbors' house has collapsed blasting the remains of the peaked roof to floor picture windows into tiny fragments.
As I look up the hill to the neighbors' house I notice the sky. The normal late winter overcast which had covered the sky just a few minutes ago has a crazy chopped-up pattern of clear sky mixed in with the grey. As I closed in on the house the colors all started shifting orange then back to yellow. Where was the big flash I would associate with a nuke? The things that are happening make no sense.
I think the neighbors are both at work but I will check to make sure they are OK or gone. My condition is not improving as I trudge toward my neighbors' house. I stop by their propane tank and close the valve. The back deck is a pile of kindling so I head to the front door. The front door is half torn from the hinges. But, there is a large enough gap for me to squeeze through. As beat up and weak as I am feeling I have no intention of working my way through that gap if I don't have to.
“You guys ok?” I try to yell but even my voice seems week.
My ears are still ringing but I can hear a faint "mew mew". Well crap, I had forgotten about the cat. Or, maybe cats, from what I am hearing. I lever myself up onto the door only to find myself and the door crashing to the floor. Wow, that hurt. I was unable to catch myself or control the fall. You cats better be grateful for the rescue. Inside looks like what I expected, broken glass everywhere, contents of shelves and cabinets scattered, and furniture rearranged and overturned. The cats are in a closed bedroom and the door is, of course, wedged shut. After considerable abuse, the door scrapes opens. The cats have vanished after all the banging at the door. Guess I'm in luck everything for the cats is here, intact.
I have two problems, first is corralling the cats. My second problem will be moving this stuff to the cabin. I am feeling week as a kitten. Why am I doing this? I don't believe that help will be coming any time soon. This is serious rural territory. Help will go to cities, then suburbs, and then to rural areas. Bridges are down. This means rivers are the end of the road and fallen overpasses are clogging the freeways. If you are not close to home, you are not getting home. Plus, it seems like we were first hit with an EMP. My phone went dead just as everything went to hell. The military may have EMP-resistant vehicles but you won't find them in any car dealership.
I somewhat closed the door to contain the cats and stagger to the end of the hall. This should lead to the garage. I'm in luck, the door opens. The garage, like the house, has everything that was in it moved to the floor including the support pillar from the center of the garage. The ceiling has a disturbing sag. A two-wheeled garden cart looks like just what I need.
The cats are as I thought, kittens. One with long silky black hair the second a short-haired tan and grey with small black spots. With a shake of the food bag, they staggered out to investigate. Looks like they are in little better shape than I. Moments later they were both scooped into a cardboard cat carrier that had been stashed in the closet. Now the real work begins. According to the labels on the bags, I have less than seventy pounds including the complaining cats in the garden cart. Why does it feel like so much more than that? A small eternity later and two hundred and fifty uphill yards over fir branches and fallen alders the cabin was in sight.
The cabin had weathered the violence remarkably well. The structure was a simple A-frame. The upstairs has a bunk bed and a standard-sized double bed with a curtain between them. In addition, there are two large gun safes. The main floor has a couch, two chairs, a wood stove, a simple kitchen, and a bathroom at the back. The block and beam foundation will require some shoring up in the near future. The three south-facing windows are shattered as is the window in the back door. The floor will never be flat and level again. Past that the cabin is structurally sound. The shed behind the cabin however has suffered catastrophic failure. Well, at least I can salvage sections of the shed to cover the windows.
It is late in the afternoon before the windows are boarded up and the glass is off the floor. The back door will not be working without being rehung. It is wedged tight. The chain saw still works. I don’t think I could have finished the job today if it had not. From what I heard outside I am not the only person who discovered that chainsaws still run. I have also been hearing what sounds like the roar of an aircraft engine far in the distance. Odd though, I can’t determine where it is coming from or even if it is moving.
The kittens are freed from the bathroom. They are still struggling to move around. So am I. I can't remember the last time I felt this tired. "Hey, you little couch destroyer, cat food for cats people food is for people." The black kitten has warmed up to me and is now trying to warm up to my dinner.
I am sure it is early but I am done for the day. I head up the stairs to sleep. Before I blow out the kerosene lamp I hear the sad cries of a lonely kitten. Ug, I grab a pillow and blanket and head downstairs to the couch. The grey settles in on the back of the couch. The black settles in under my chin purring like a chain saw. Not as good as a girlfriend but the love of a small cat still warms the heart.
Day 2
I should have thought of this last night. The cabin is now boarded up with no windows. It's pitch black in hear and the matches are over by the wood stove somewhere. I feel worse than yesterday. I am still all bruised up, feel week, and heavy. Now my mussels are also stiff and sore from working my ass off yesterday. I am groping around in the dark hoping the kittens have found and are using the litter box. Ah, the matches.
The lamp is lit and I head to the door. Time to go mark my territory. Considering how full my bladder is I must have had a long sleep. I open the front door but it is pitch black outside and snow? It may be the middle of March but it is much too warm for snow. Ash, but fine and heavy so not wood ash. Volcanic and cool to the touch so something far away. Maybe that was what sounded like a jet engine so far away yesterday. Visibility is about thirty feet. No problem, I know this area like the back of my hand. My social distancing mask will now serve a new function. While I'm out watering the blackberries I hear something very large crashing around a ways off in the woods. I finish my business and head back inside.
I wonder if we took an asteroid hit. If something big and highly magnetic hit the ionosphere maybe that could cause the emp. Knocks the fault line hard enough to set off the whole west coast with a level twelve earthquake which then allows the local volcanos to vent any pressure that has built up. I like this idea a whole lot better than world war three. It still means I will need to take care of myself for the foreseeable future. But, I won't need to worry about fallout or foreign soldiers.
Things to do today. Raid neighbors' food and water supplies. Sorry neighbors but, the milk in your frig will not be getting any fresher. Well, that is if still is in your frig. Your house has not yet fully collapsed but one more good shake and you might as well just toss a lit match on it. With that in mind, I will loot the place. I promise if you show up I will share my place with you. The black kitten however is now mine.
Before I head out the door I go up the stairs to the loft. There are two gun safes there. One was my father's. He loved target shooting. He had close to twenty pistols of varied caliber and manufacturers when he died. What I heard earlier was most likely a deer. Salted and dried, a deer would provide food for quite a while. The 45 has a laser spot, which no longer works. The 44 mag has a 3X scope but with visibility limited to thirty feet, no point. The 10 mm or the 357, I have fired off a lot more rounds out of the 357 so I load up the revolver and head out the door. My tail is dragging but, I want to harvest as much as I can before a big aftershock finished off that house.
An ax makes the path through the fallen trees a lot easier to navigate. With all this ash in the air, I don't want to run the chainsaw. Just a few minutes of running will clog the air filter and the grit that gets through will wreck the cylinder walls. I somehow doubt that I will be able to get a new one any time soon.
The pickings from the neighbor's house are better than I had hoped. Since the well water around here tastes a bit bad they had two unopened five-gallon water jugs. The water dispenser had met its demise on the floor with a now punctured third five-gallon jug. A little duct tape over the hole and out the front door with an additional two gallons. The salvageable food in and around the frig is moved with the dried and canned food to just inside the front door. Then I head off to the garage.
The near-constant rumbles and light shakes are not so bad in the cabin or walking around outside. Sure, you can still hear the crack of the occasional tree settling closer to the earth along with the snapping of branches that failed to support it but, in this house, I am not sure if the next shake will be all it takes to bring it all crashing down on top of me. The ceiling of the garage looks lower than yesterday. They have a chainsaw but I like mine better. The gas for it and the chain oil are coming with me. Rocksalt, nails, and a sheet of clear plastic, I can make a window from this if we ever see the sun again. I am eyeing the chest freezer when I hear scuffling noises outside the garage doors.
I call out, "Hello, someone there?" With a great roar and a crash, one of the garage doors I believed would be wedged in place until the house's eventual fall was torn to the floor.
"Oh crap!" I was through the door stumbling down the hall as fast as I could go lamp in hand. The giant ash-covered bear was trying to follow through the narrow hall tearing sheetrock and cracking two by fours as it came. What was a grizzle doing here? The 357 was in the garden cart. I had to get it out and aimed before the bear was through the hall. Desperation gives great strength and I arrived at the garden cart well ahead of the bear. By the time the bear was rounding the corner to the front door, the pistol was cocked the lamp was on the floor to my right and I was braced in a firing position.
Boom click-click Boom click-click Boom clicks click Boom click-click Boom click-click Boom click click click.
The first shot caught it in the side of the neck as it was rounding the corner. The second shot went in the left shoulder. The next two rounds were body shots. The final two were aimed at the head. One went wide into the right shoulder as it reared up. The one fired point-blank went true under the chin into the skull. the bear's strike losing power but still landing with the weight of the bear falling on me.
Great, I survived the attack only to be trapped under the weight of the beast. I am slowly worming my way out from under the bear. After the scrape through the hall and hits from the 357, the bear has his own personal ash cloud. I am covered in blood and some goo is dripping onto my head which is causing a burning feeling. The claw that hit me on the head must have cut me open. Seems the blood getting into my left eye is mine. After I escape from under the bear and look at the beast a clump of ice forms in my gut. This is not a grizzle bear. This is not an anything bear. Redish purple fur with black stripes? I hold the lamp close and brush the fir back. These colors go all the way to the root. To make matters worse the ash cloud that surrounded the bear has moved to me and has begun to settle on me like a living thing. While I furiously try to wipe the white stuff from my exposed skin it is all in vain as I seem to make contact with nothing.
This week just keeps getting crazier. I rush to load the cart and head up the hill. Next time two pistols, one a clip load, or maybe I will open my brother's gun safe. That one has both a combat shotgun, our hunting rifles, and an AR-10.
The kittens come out the door to help as I unload the cart. I quickly scoop them up so they don’t vanish in the ash. As I pack the two rascals back to the bathroom a faint white cloud has lifted off my clothing and descended onto the kittens. If we all super-size, and turn red with black stripes I am going to be pissed.
Front door closed and first aid kit in hand I open the bathroom door and assess the damage. I have three nasty-looking cuts in my scalp starting about an inch and a half above my left eye and heading a similar distance past my hairline. Water and soap to start with followed by some hand sanitizer. Burns like hell but since 911 is no longer an option simple infections aren't simple anymore.
For the remaining trips, I carry the 357 and a 45 with a pocket full of clips. It takes four trips to gather what I can from the house. On the upside, thanks to the chest freezer, I get to dine on steak, frozen fruit, and ice cream. Until it all melts.
I spend the rest of the day looking over my shoulder while building an outhouse over the septic tank. I throw a tarp over the remaining items of value the shed used to contain. I head inside to eat and play with the cats before I sleep.
That night I began having vivid dreams. I was both the teacher and the student back in college teaching basic logic and the fundamentals of state machines. As the teacher, I had a cat sitting on my head. As the student, I had a cat on my lap taking notes with me. A weird dream. Unlike most school dreams there was no getting lost looking for classes, no impossible schedules, no death by tedium, just teaching and learning.
Not sure how long I slept. The kittens are crying for food. I am dizzy, and my whole body aches. Now shivering so hard that my movements are clumsy, I pour the cats a pile of food, fill the water bowl, pop open a can of soda and bury myself under a pile of blankets on the couch. I wonder if I got some weird disease from that bear. I spent an indeterminate amount of time fading in and out of consciousness. Occasionally stumbling, miserable, half frozen in the dark shotgun in hand to the outhouse and back.
