I avoided large groups of people for more than ten months after leaving my parents’ house outside Seattle. There were plenty of homes to raid for food. I never took everything. Just enough to get me by. But in cities I’d pass through, staying hidden other than talking to groups of three or fewer people, there was organized looting.
Semitrailers, flatbeds, and pickup trucks were being loaded up with everything people could get their hands on. They went from house to house, store to store, leaving nothing behind.
That mindset—that essentials should be hoarded instead of shared—is part of the reason I’ve lived on my own in the woods for close to a year now.
I’ve seen a lot of evil in the past three years. My friend Ellery was shot and killed while on watch as I packed canned goods into my bag at a house in a small Wyoming town. The gunshot alerted me and I took out the man who murdered her.
But why? We were on a street where no houses had been ransacked. There was more than enough for all of us.
Anarchy brings out the worst in many people. They hurt others simply because they can. But I’ve seen remarkable kindness, too.
A man was having a seizure on a sidewalk overgrown with weeds and vines in Goldendale, Washington, and two men got to him to help before I did. They sat with him, gave him water, and put a small pillow under his head. One of them went to find the medication he needed while the other stayed with him, and I stayed, too.
It took three days for the man to return with the medication. He went from pharmacy to pharmacy until he finally found it.
There were two men in Idaho who died with their arms wrapped around each other because neither of them was willing to sacrifice the other to the band of raiders who held themat gunpoint. There were twenty-one of them, and while they laughed over the love those two men had for each other, I wept.
I encountered a woman in rural Idaho who had two young kids with her. They weren’t hers. When she found them hungry, alone, and scared a month after the virus, she started caring for them.
The best and worst of humanity are still out there surviving this hellscape. I just never know which one I’m going to meet, so I stay away.
Until now. The welt on my ass throbs with discomfort as I lie down in tall grass to view the city through my binoculars.
In the past year, I’ve killed and eaten snakes, which I used to be afraid of. I nestle my sleeping bag beneath pine trees and have learned to tolerate the cold that gets bone deep at night. I’ve survived on just berries and edible greens for weeks at a time when I had to.
But it’s a bite on my left ass cheek that’s taking me out. Mae would think it’s hilarious.
I think it’s a spider bite, but I can’t see it to know for sure. It’s warm and has swollen in the past two days, so I think it’s infected.
That’s a problem, and so is my lack of salt. The seasoning that used to be sold cheaply by the carton, that filled shakers on every table in every restaurant, has become my body’s greatest need.
People require a certain amount of salt. Knowing that, I stretched my canned goods out for a long time to make sure I was getting some. When I ran out, I found saltbush in the alkaline Idaho soil and got as much salt from the leaves as I could.
It’s not enough, though. My low-grade headache has intensified in the past week, and I’m tired all the time. I need to venture into Carson City for antibiotics and salt.
I dread having to trade one of my guns or knives for what I need, but I don’t have anything else of value. All the weapons in the world won’t help me if I’m dying from sepsis.
The city is speckled with bright lights. I increase the magnification on my binoculars to see what details I can make out.
Smoke pours from the stacks of a massive building. The streets seem to be maintained rather than overtaken by greenery like in most cities. Vehicles are moving, headlights lit.
There’s a silver dome. A flag mounted on a tall pole next to it has vertical stripes and a single star in the middle. That must be the former Capitol building. It’s probably also the current Capitol building, given what I’ve heard about Soren Whitman, the man who declared himself the president of what he calls New America.
Right. New America, same old bullshit—but magnified. I’ve heard mostly white men rule here, and they’re swallowing up people and land to grow their empire.
A couple I met a few months ago told me this place seems like it was before. There’s order. Stocked grocery stores and pharmacies. Neighborhoods with streets where people mow their grass and leave their porch lights on at night.
But being part of it requires subservience to authoritarian rule. It’s especially bad for women. Even men who don’t fit the mold are forced into working twelve hours a day just to have food, clean water, and a bed to sleep in.
I’m hoping to slip in and out of here quickly, with antibiotics, enough salt to last me a very long time, and some food. My weapons are valuable since they were manufactured before the virus. The new ones being made are of much lower quality.
Right before sunrise, I’ll find a safe point to hide and do surveillance for a few days. Two days, probably, because I’mconcerned about the infected bite and my headache has become so intense it’s hard to even think.
I don’t think my disguise worked. I traded the knife I use least often for clean clothes and shoes, hoping to pass as someone who lives here. My hair is tamed into a low ponytail and most of the people I’ve passed in Carson City haven’t given me a second glance.
This guy at the pharmacy, though, is looking too closely at my face.
“Five hundred credits,” he says dismissively.
