One Year After

He looked at the woman and grinned.

"If we're going to be together, you should call me Randy. I'm Randy Needham."

The woman grinned back.

"I'm Marilyn Jackson. Can I fix dinner for you?"

Over a dinner of the last of her venison along with potatoes and carrots from her prior year's garden, Randy learned how Marilyn ended up in an illegal cabin in the wilderness.

"Joe didn't trust many people, and he didn't trust banks or government at all. I think that started after he came back from Iraq. He was OK before that, but once he came back, he kept talking about how the politicians and bankers were dragging out the war there in order to make more money.

"He drove away all our friends because he kept turning their conversations to banks and politicians. They'd go along with him the first time, but after that they'd always be too busy to come over or their wife was sick, or something like that. The year before we moved up here, we never saw anybody except family, and usually that was a little tense. His dad agreed with him because he said the same thing happened in Vietnam. My dad didn't and wasn't backward about arguing with Joe.

"When the housing bubble hit and it looked like the economy was going to start declining, Joe said the US wouldn't survive and that we had to become self-sufficient. He tried to buy some property in Montana, but we didn't have enough money. That's when he figured out that the wilderness areas don't have many people walking through them and it would be easy to build a cabin and live there. Even if it was illegal, it would be free and we probably wouldn't get caught.

"He spent six months getting everything ready -- tools, food, clothes, all the stuff he said we'd need -- and then we rented a truck and drove to Challis. It took us a week to get everything up here because it was so heavy. Joe's pack weighed about a hundred pounds and mine about seventy, so we had to rest a lot.

"We found this little valley at the start of that week, and Joe said it was just what he was looking for. We lived in a tent for a month while we built the cabin. By then, it was starting to get cold at night, so Joe started hunting. We lived that first winter on rabbit and deer meat and dried fruit and vegetables.

"That was six years ago. You probably think he was crazy, but after what's happened, I guess he was right in some ways."

"No, not crazy. Maybe a little paranoid, but not crazy. Why did you agree to do it with him?"

Marilyn shrugged.

"He was my husband. I thought he knew best."

"Did you like it here?"

Marilyn took a deep breath.

"The first winter, I about went crazy. I couldn't talk to anybody about anything except Joe, and he didn't understand much about women. We had our radio -- it's one you have to crank to charge the batteries -- so we heard what was going on, but that didn't help much. Hearing about what the government was doing just made Joe even more sure of what we'd done.

"Christmas was the worst time. I kept thinking about my mom and dad and that I wouldn't be there for Christmas dinner. I did make a Christmas dinner for me and Joe, and that helped some. He cut down a tiny little tree for me and we decorated it with popcorn. That helped too.

"The second year, I had a garden to take care of and that was pretty good for me. I grew up in the city, so I'd never done anything like that before. It was interesting and fun to watch the plants come up and then to put up the vegetables so we'd have some food for the winter, and it gave me something to do.

"After that summer, life was just what life was. I cooked and cleaned and raised my garden while Joe fished and hunted and built things. Once we'd spent a winter here, Joe calmed down a lot. It was nice being just the two of us without a bunch of other people and the noise of the city. I guess I do like it here now. It would be nice to have a few more people to talk with, but I've learned how to like living like this."

Randy stayed in Marilyn's cabin for a week while they listened to the radio for any news and planned what they were going to do. The radio was only a small AM-FM set, and there were no stations broadcasting on either band of frequencies, so Randy figured at least eastern Idaho was shut down.

He favored staying put over the winter. In a month or so, the people who were going to die would probably already have done so and moving around would be safer, but staying over the winter would just be good insurance against another outbreak. Most survivors who could pose any danger of infection would probably die of hunger or exposure. It seemed cold and cruel to stay in the cabin and safe while others were dying, but it was the only logical course of action. Only by staying isolated could they hope to survive.

The main issue with that plan was Marilyn's husband had walked down to Challis for a reason. There were only a dozen rounds left for the 30-30 Marilyn had pointed at him that first day. Ammunition for the pump shotgun was almost as bad. There was a box of fifteen slug rounds Marilyn said Joe kept for bears, but only half a dozen with shot that would be useable for grouse and other fowl. There were still a hundred or so rounds for the.22 pump rifle, but that wouldn't last long if they went hunting for rabbits and squirrels. Rabbits and squirrels would be their main meat supply until fall when the deer and elk had fattened up for the winter.

Without more ammunition, they wouldn't have a chance of surviving the winter, but there were more things they'd need as well. Marilyn could plant her garden as soon as the nights stayed warm, but Randy didn't relish the idea of living over the winter on just meat if her crops failed. Some dried food would be a good backup, and especially so since it would be increasingly difficult to find more as time went on. MRE's would be ideal, but any dried food like beans and rice would keep longer than the expiration date on the package if kept cool and dry. They also needed salt and other spices to keep the same fare appetizing instead of monotonous.

Fire was another problem. Marilyn had few matches left and had resorted to keeping her fire burning night and day. That not only used a lot of wood, but if the fire did go out for some reason, it would be safer and faster to have matches than to rely on his ferrocerium rod and striker to rekindle a fire

Randy's flashlight had lasted on the batteries he'd carried with him, but those would never last through the winter. Light was important for both morale and safety, and Marilyn had only a few candles left and no oil for the three oil lamps on the mantle above the cabin fireplace.

The only solution Randy could come up with was to walk down to Challis and get what they needed. If he couldn't find it in Challis, he could go to Stanley. It might take several trips, but the important thing right now was to get enough ammunition and other supplies to make it through the winter.

The other reason Randy decided he should walk down to Challis was his parents. Like Marilyn was certain her husband was dead, Randy was certain his parents were too, but he needed to confirm that. He didn't want to see them, but he had to know.

He broached the subject with Marilyn.

"I think I should make the walk down to Challis and maybe Stanley if I can't find what we need in Challis. It's the only way I can think of to make sure we make it through the winter?"

"Won't you risk meeting other people?"

"I might, but I'll handle that if i do. We have to get the things your husband went after or we won't make it through the winter. Once we have them, we'll spend the winter here. Things should be calmed down by spring, and if something like a government still exists, they'll be looking for survivors. We'll see then, but I don't think it's a good idea to stay anywhere else. Anybody who survived will be looking for shelter and food, and they'll gravitate to the towns. We'll be safer here once we have what we need."

Marilyn frowned as she thought about Randy's plan. It would mean he'd leave her alone. It was possible he wouldn't come back and she'd be left to fend for herself again. Almost anything would be better than that.

"I don't like it, but if you say that's what has to be done, we'll do it together."

Randy was a little surprised by her wanting to go with him, and also a little worried. If things were as bad as he thought, it might be dangerous.

"Marilyn, I think you should stay here. I don't know what I'm going to find there. I don't want to be responsible for getting you hurt...or worse."

Marilyn smiled and put her hand on his.

"I'll be afraid, but not as afraid as if I stayed here hoping you were going to come back. Besides, you can't carry what you'll need for the trip and then carry more back. I can carry a pack so you won't have to carry it all. As for the danger, Joe taught me how to shoot. I can hit what I aim at with a rifle. I'm going with you."

That touch had made Randy tingle. He'd been too busy for women through college, and there weren't any single women he liked that way in Challis. He hadn't felt a woman's touch except for his mother's in years and he'd forgotten how even a slight touch could make him feel.

That couldn't be, he thought. She probably hasn't gotten over losing her husband, and she doesn't know me at all. She'd think I was forcing her or making it a condition for me staying with her, and I could never do that. He slowly pulled his hand back, then cleared his throat.

"Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?"

"No. I'm going even if I have to follow you."

Like the other nights during that week, Randy spent the night in his sleeping bag on the floor of the cabin while Marilyn slept in the bed against the back wall and opposite the fire. He had difficulty falling asleep. The thoughts of what had apparently happened kept running through his head. He tried to figure out how fast the disease would progress.

If one infected person could result in a million subsequent infections, that million would result in over a hundred million infected people inside of a week. If that happened in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, San Francisco and the other largest cities like Marilyn had said and those people traveled, it was very possible the entire continent had been infected. People did travel, over a hundred thousand through each major airport each and every day. Truck drivers and train crews traveled thousands of miles in only a week and made frequent stops along the way. Almost the entire population of the US would have been exposed within a week unless they were a long way from civilization. How many could that be and where were they?

Had the infection spread to other countries as well? That was likely even if they hadn't been directly infected. Air travel made going from anywhere in the world to anywhere else a matter of two days at most and usually only several hours. An infected person wouldn't start to feel really sick for a couple of days, but would be infecting others the entire time.

How many survived the disease and where were they? As he thought about this last question, Randy realized this was the zombie apocalypse from the movies, except the zombies weren't dead and they didn't eat people. They were just as lethal as the movie zombies though, and maybe more so because they would appear to be just normal people.

He finally fell asleep trying to remember if glanders left any marks that would identify a person as having been infected. He thought he remembered an infected person would develop skin abscesses that would probably leave scars.

The next morning, Marilyn pulled a large pack from the cabin wall and partly filled it with potatoes and carrots from her storage bin under the cabin. After going to the storage bin again, she came back with two aluminum canisters with lids. "Bear grease", she said as she put them in her pack. She picked up the 30-30 rifle, made sure the magazine was full and stuffed the remaining cartridges in the front pocket of the pack. She did the same with the.22 and the remaining.22 rounds, then turned to Randy and said, "I'll carry the rifles, if that's OK. The shotgun kicks pretty hard for me."

Randy said that was fine with him and picked up the shotgun. After loading it with five of the slug rounds, jacking one into the chamber and loading another in the magazine, he put the rest along with the shot rounds in a small sack that had held some of his dried food and tied it to his pack. Marilyn pulled the blankets from her bed, tied them into a roll, and tied the roll to the top of her pack. After looking around for anything she'd missed, Marilyn latched the cabin door and they started walking down the valley toward Challis.

Randy let Marilyn set the pace and was surprised at how fast she was. While she was slender and didn't look very strong, she apparently was stronger than he thought. He'd guessed at the weight of her pack as she filled it and his guess was about forty pounds. When he combined that with the weight of the two rifles she carried by the slings over her shoulders, she was hauling around about sixty pounds give or take, and she didn't seem to be struggling all that much with the weight. He'd known men in the Army who would have been having trouble with less.

As they walked, Randy was thankful he'd come to the wilderness. There was nothing here to indicate anything had changed in the world, and that fact alone made him feel a little more comfortable. He was staring at an eagle soaring above them when Marilyn chuckled.

"You're gonna break your neck if you keep looking up like that. Haven't you ever seen an eagle before?"

She was grinning when he looked at her.

"Yeah, lots of them, but I still look. They're what the wilderness is all about, well, part of it anyway. Here, they're free to do whatever they want without any people bothering them with cars or trains or factory whistles or anything else. They just live in their spot in nature like they've done for thousands of years."

Marilyn chuckled again.

"You sound like those nature programs I used to watch on TV."

Randy smiled.

"I should. I'm a wildlife biologist, and that's how we think."

"So, you think the world should go back to what it was before people?"

"No, that's not really possible, but there need to be places where people are the visitors instead of wildlife. That's what the wilderness areas are for -- to give animals a place where they can live the life they evolved to live."

Randy paused and Marilyn saw a wry smile on his face when he spoke again.

"I guess it might end up that way now, though. Maybe that's for the best."

Marilyn frowned.

"Joe didn't think that way. To him, some animals were just food. He shot deer, elk, rabbits, squirrels and grouse whenever he saw them. He thought bears were dangerous scavengers. He killed one every fall, but he wouldn't eat the meat. He said any animal that ate rotten meat would taste the same way. He just had me render the fat so we'd have some oil for cooking. The rest of the animals were just there. He couldn't see what you see."

Randy smiled.

"A lot of people can't until they spend some time here. Most people don't know how to live in a wilderness, so they don't stay long enough to really see it."

Marilyn frowned again.

"Joe knew how to live here, but he didn't try to understand. He just shot the animals he wanted to and didn't care about the rest. I did start to understand though. I liked watching the eagles and seeing the fawns with their mothers every spring. Sometimes when I didn't have anything to do, I'd walk out into the trees and just sit and watch. After I'd been there for a while and not moving, the animals would come out and I'd watch them. It was fascinating just to watch a squirrel in a tree or a fish in the stream.

"When I told Joe about the fawns or the eagles, he said I was being crazy and sentimental and should concentrate on picking and drying berries for the winter. At first, I used to worry that maybe he was right, but after a couple of years, I started worrying that maybe Joe was the crazy one. I stopped that a year later. Joe was just Joe, and worrying about him didn't do any good."

"You're worried about him now, aren't you?"

Marilyn frowned again.

"I thought about that after he'd been gone over a week. I did miss him, but then I realized it wasn't really him that I missed. I missed someone to talk with, and I missed knowing he'd keep me safe. You probably think I'm a terrible person now, don't you?"

"No. You must have loved him or you wouldn't have married him."

Marilyn sighed.

"I thought I loved him before we were married. After he started in with his speeches about banks and the government, that started to change. Once we got up here, it changed a lot. It isn't that I didn't like Joe, because I did. I just don't think I loved him like before we were married.

"I don't think he really loved me either. He was always good to me and looked out for me, but I don't think he really loved me. What we became was more like friends than a married couple. I'm sad that he's dead, but it's not the same as if I loved him. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes, I can understand that. I lost a friend because of a car accident once. It shook me up and I missed him, but it wasn't the end of my world."

Marilyn grinned.

"So I'm not a terrible person?"

"Nope. You're just a woman who changed her mind. Uh...we need to keep moving if you're ready."

The sun was starting to drop into the trees when they stopped beside a rock overhang near the stream they'd been following. Randy slipped off his pack and leaned the shotgun against the rock, then turned to Marilyn.

"This look like a good camping spot to you?"

"Yes, but I can walk farther if you want."

Randy shook his head.

"I want to take this slow because I don't know what we're going to find in Challis or along the way. It'll be better if we don't wear ourselves out. If you don't mind, we'll camp here tonight. It's still cool at night, and the rock face will reflect some heat from a fire. I think you could use a rest even if you don't."

Marilyn smiled.

"I'm tired, but I could keep going."

Randy grinned.

"Well, we'll just say I'm the one that's tired then. Why don't you put our stuff under the overhang. I'll see if there are any fish in the stream."

An hour later, Randy walked back to the overhang with four small rainbow trout and found Marilyn adding sticks to the fire she'd built.

She'd done everything right. The fire was small and contained inside a circle of broken rocks from the base of the overhang. The pile of grass and dirt beside the circle told him she'd scraped anything that would burn from inside the circle. Beside the fire was an assortment of wood from small twigs to birch logs about three inches in diameter. There were enough logs to last the night and to provide coals to light another for breakfast the next morning. His axe was stuck upright in the largest log, and that log showed the signs of being used to support other logs when they were split.

"Marilyn, how did you learn to do this?"

She shrugged.

"I watched Joe. This is how he always did it. Your axe is a little smaller than I'm used to, but I found a dead birch tree a little ways away and used your axe to cut the trunk into logs and then to split some. Joe always built what he called a fire ring with rocks, so I did that too. Is it OK?"

"I couldn't have done any better myself. I'll go back to the stream and get some water so we'll have coffee. Your fire should be ready to cook on by then."

Marilyn smiled when he walked away with his cooking pot. Randy had told her she'd done something right and it made her feel good about herself. Joe had seldom done that. He just expected her to do her share of the work and only said anything about that when she didn't get something done.