Living Gray

[RunAndGun]

Awesome!

Thanks for the fix!

[Ozarks Lady]

I really am enjoying this story and hope we get more and lots soon. Thanks

[miked2345]

Really great story! I can identify with it a little bit, since I was stationed at McChord AFB in the late 70's, fixin' those C141's.

[brokedownbiker]

Sorry about the delay in chapters, life has been rough lately.

CHAPTER 10



The following morning arrived, dark and sullen, after a long and restless night of high winds and driving rain as a storm front made its way into the Puget Sound region from its birthplace in the Gulf of Alaska. The howling of the wind through the trees and the sharp cracking sounds of branches snapping off in the gusts had caused him to sleep fitfully and awaken several times throughout the night and he was grumbling under his breath as he tiredly began the routine of fire starting. The deep growl of an engine across the water surprised him and he rushed down to the edge of the tree line and knelt in the underbrush to see what was passing his little home.

The sight of the Coast Guard cutter slowly moving up the coast of Whidbey almost made the man step out and try to attract their attention but something made him wait and watch. The seemingly normal sight made tears come to his eyes as he momentarily thought that maybe, just maybe, things were getting back to ’normal’ in the world. The actions of the men aboard, however, seemed somehow…. wrong. There were men on each railing with binoculars seeming to search the shorelines nearby as they motored slowly north and there were many men on deck, too many for the regular complement of Coastie’s on that size cutter. And every man in sight was armed to the teeth, many wearing body armor and helmets. The man retreated back deeper into the brush and went prone, not wanting to be seen by the man scanning his side of the boat. He was suddenly very happy that he hadn't already built his morning fire; the small wisp of smoke that filtered up through the trees might have given away his position.

The cutter continued its progress up to the northern tip of Whidbey but did not make the turn to pass through Deception Pass and on to the more open water of the entrance to the Straits of San De Fuca, instead it kept its northerly course for a few minutes and approached the area where the man had found his supplies, the line of beach houses on Fidalgo Island. The man watched as a Zodiac- style boat was launched, manned by a group of the armed and armored men, and beached in the middle of the line of houses. Unable to make out any details due to the distance, the man could not see what the men were doing but he saw some of them making repeated trips back to the boat. He assumed they were raiding the homes for foodstuffs and anything else of value. He was glad that he had taken the time to conceal as much sign of his visit as he could but was concerned that they would strip the homes of any useful items, making it that much harder for him to find things to aid in his survival.

An hour later the men were evidently finished with their searches. They boarded their inflatable and returned to the cutter, which hoisted the boat and its contents aboard as soon as the men were back on the deck. Within minutes the cutter was underway and headed west through Deception Pass, still moving slowly with searchers on either rail with their binoculars. The man held his position a few minutes after the cutter had slipped from view around the northern coast of Whidbey Island. He wondered at the actions of those aboard the cutter; it had appeared that there were two different groups- the Coast Guard crew and the armed men in the body armor and he wished that he had been able to gain more information. Where were they from, where were they going, and most importantly, what was their mission? From what he had seen, it could have been either a search for survivors in the midst of a rebuilding effort, or it could indicate that the cutter was part of a raider group. There was no way to know from his limited information, he would have to file it away until more intel came available, but his gut feeling was that their actions were not those of rescuers, they seemed more the raider type to him. Add to that the fleeing cabin cruiser he had seen the previous day and he got a bad feeling about them.

Moving back to his camp, he opted to pass on building a fire today, still feeling something wasn't right and not wanting to advertise his presence. The water traffic had him on edge, up to now there had been no signs of life anywhere on the water around his base camp.

The next day dawned with no further traffic on the waters surrounding the small islet but the feeling of …wrongness continued to nag at the man as he moved around his camp, doing those little chores that are part of any encampment. As he prepared and ate his breakfast, the man's thoughts returned again and again to the events of the last two days but he could not come to any useful conclusions. He just didn't have enough information as to what was going on around him, he needed more intel if he was going to make good decisions about his future and with no communications he was completely cut off from whatever was unfolding in the region. He cursed under his breath as thought of the small amateur 'ham' radio set-up, hand held radios, and emergency wind-up radio he had lost in the destruction of his cabin. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind- it was pointless to relive the past, he had to move forward and forget about what he had once had.

As noon approached, he came to a decision. He needed to leave the islet that had been his home for months now and relocate to an area where he could locate some commo equipment or at least make some contact with other survivors in order to gain some knowledge of what was transpiring around the Puget Sound area.

After mulling over his options, the man decided to risk a return, at least temporarily, to Whidbey Island. In the months since the Big Drop, the signs of human activity had dropped off to the point that he hadn’t seen any movement or people on the beaches in over a week, nor had he seen any smoke from fires from any of the homes visible from his vantage point or any plumes from camp fires. He had chosen to go back to Whidbey for a couple of reasons: First, he felt that, due to the lack of food stores and the rather high it was likely that very few would have been able to eke out any kind of existence after the inevitable die-off. Second, he thought that he might have a good chance of finding some working communications equipment there. There had been a fairly good sized ham radio club on the island and he had known several of the members as well as their locations, and the naval air station on the northern end of the island would be a prime area to find all sorts of radio equipment if it were abandoned or deserted of military personnel. There was also a small local civilian airfield as well as an auxiliary airfield for the Navy’s use on the central part of the island. With all these possibilities, he felt that he would be able to find something he could use to pick up news of the world around him.

His decision made, the man immediately began packing his gear and preparing to leave the little island that had been a peaceful refuge in his time of need. The day was half gone so he chose to wait and leave in the first light of the next day, hoping to make the transit over to Whidbey in the pre-dawn before his risk of detection was too high. Finished with his preparations, he settled in to wait out the day, planning a hearty dinner and a good long night’s sleep

[4Adam41]

Thank you for the update. I'll be waiting on the next one. Am enjoying this story...it's diffeerent from the usual.

[overbore]

Your addition is most welcome and is up to your high standards. Thank you.
overbore

[sabretech2001]

Thanks for the latest chapter...been missing this one

[Ozarks Lady]

Thanks for another fine chapter.

[brokedownbiker]

Thank you for the update. I'll be waiting on the next one. Am enjoying this story...it's diffeerent from the usual.

Thanks for all the kind words, everybody, this is my first time writing fiction. Chapters are slow coming right now as I am in the middle of moving and cleaning up property, etc.

I appreciate that you noticed, I started this story wanting to tell it from a different angle and to illustrate the difficulty of surviving alone. Hopefully I will be able to paint an accurate picture.

[Grand58742]

Thanks for all the kind words, everybody, this is my first time writing fiction. Chapters are slow coming right now as I am in the middle of moving and cleaning up property, etc.

Shoot, you just take your time. We can wait for the good things.

I appreciate that you noticed, I started this story wanting to tell it from a different angle and to illustrate the difficulty of surviving alone. Hopefully I will be able to paint an accurate picture.

Working on something similar myself. The latest "Tales" is more or less a test bed for that one.

[brokedownbiker]

Chapter 11

Waking before dawn, the man quickly loaded the last of his gear in the kayak and, without a backward glance, paddled strongly across the narrow channel and turned south, paralleling the beach until he arrived at a secluded beach and rapidly beached his nimble little craft. He pulled the boat up into the tree line and concealed it beneath brush and limbs alongside an old snag, a tree that had fallen in a past windstorm, ripping the root structure up out of the ground and incidentally providing a perfect spot for keeping things out of sight. He shouldered his pack, making sure that his Ruger .22 pistol was loaded with a round chambered, then safed and holstered it. He didn’t plan to use it unless he had no other option as the sound of the report would carry and would give away his position. Moving quietly into the forest, the man chose to return and survey his old neighborhood; he knew that there was no chance of recovering anything from his cabin site but he wanted to see it for himself. During his narrow escape, he had had no time to stop and see the results of the explosion that had allowed him to destroy his pursuers and get away from the area during the confusion that followed it. He also felt that returning to an area that he was intimately familiar with would give him an opportunity to hone his concealment skills with a minimum level of risk; he was sure that he could move through that neighborhood blindfolded if needed, though he really hoped to remain unseen and unnoticed while keeping his eyes open. Another benefit to the old neighborhood was that he knew many of the long-time residents; old-timers that, if they had managed to survive, might be treasure troves of information concerning conditions there on the island.

Moving slowly, slower than he was accustomed to due to his now seemingly permanent back injury, he made his way over the familiar territory of the state park forest where he had hiked for years, those many hours of peaceful solitude and enjoying the pristine little section of wilderness now just a bittersweet memory, and soon he found himself laying prone in the underbrush approximately a hundred yards away from, and overlooking, the wreckage of his former home. The propane explosion that had caused the damage had blown out all the doors and windows and caused a partial collapse of the roof along one end of the cabin. The structure had been gutted by the subsequent fire but it had either burned itself out or had been extinguished by the rain and the man was surprised at just how much of the basic structure was still intact. On closer inspection, he noticed what appeared to be bodies lying in and around the remains of the cabin but he couldn't see details well enough from his vantage point to determine if these were the remains of the men who had attacked him and paid with their lives or if they were victims of some more recent skirmish. Regardless, their presence didn’t bode well for there being enough survivors in the area to bury the dead in hopes of preventing the spread of disease. It also didn’t say much about the food supply, as he hadn’t seen or heard any of the numerous dogs that had once lived in the neighborhood. Whether killed to prevent warnings by robbers or ‘harvested’ to feed starving families, either way, it meant that there weren’t any animals around to scavenge at the rotting corpses. The absence of pets also meant that he would be able to move through the area with less risk of detection.

Scanning the surrounding neighborhood, the man was struck by the lack of movement in the area. None of the houses within sight showed signs of recent habitation, nor did he see any signs of smoke from the fires that would surely be in use providing a bit of heat in the cold blustery winter weather. Not trusting this seemingly peaceful scene, he lay there motionless for almost an hour scanning the area in case the inhabitants were simply away hunting or gathering wood or any number of other chores that make up the day to day life in any primitive encampment or home. Finally satisfied that the immediate area was clear, he began to move along the tree line, having decided to approach the home of an old 'Nam vet who lived at the end of the road, nestled back into the edge of the woods. If anyone had made it through, the man figured it would be old Bill.

Bill had spent a year in the jungle with an infantry unit and had earned three Purple Hearts; one due to shrapnel from a Viet Cong mortar attack and another due to a bayonet during hand to hand battle in the dense jungle when he had rounded a curve in a trail and found himself face to face with a soldier in black pajamas and sandals. The last one had been his ticket home, a bullet had ripped through his thigh, taking a huge chunk of muscle with it and breaking the bone beneath. It had been a close thing but the surgeons had saved the leg and, many long months of therapy and surgeries later, Bill walked out of the hospital, although he would have a serious limp for the rest of his days.
He had returned from the war (no matter what the politicians called it, everyone who had been there knew it was a war and a bloody one at that), went to college and worked at building a nursery business, eventually supplying all the landscaping businesses within 100 miles with the plants and shrubs for their projects. It had only been a couple of years ago that he had finally sold the business and settled in to enjoy his retirement puttering around his fifteen acres of woodland and ponds. The man had met Bill while building his cabin and the two of them had hit it off; both of them were quiet types that took pleasure from working with their hands and making the things they needed rather than running to Wal-Mart or Home Depot for everything. They spent many evenings sitting on the cabin’s porch, enjoying a cup of coffee and watching the sun set; talking in quiet tones while sharing tales about their pasts, or sometimes in silence, content to be with a friend and watch nature's beauty in quiet relaxation.

As he approached the fence that formed the border of Bill's land, the man stopped to scan the area and check his back-trail, not wanting to be surprised in case he had somehow been detected and followed. Seeing nothing, he edged up to the tall grass growing along the base of the 5 ft. cedar privacy fence and stretched out on his stomach, slowly easing the grass apart and peering under the fence slats into the backyard. The yard was overgrown, the grass knee-high and he couldn't see any trails in the grass from this low angle. He moved up to a kneeling position and put his eye up to the crack between slats; the grass was untouched, no crushed areas from footsteps like would be expected if someone walked through the tall grass. That wasn't a good sign, as Bill's woodpile was along the side of the fence to the right of the man's current position and it couldn't be accessed from the house without repeated trips across the yard which would have beaten down the grass and formed a recognizable path through the grass. His eyes moved across the patio to the back door, noting that the sliding glass door was slightly open and the bottom of the drapes hung out, moving slightly in the gentle breeze. The blinds were open at all the windows along the rear of the house and the man spent several minutes watching for signs of movement inside the house, seeing none and finally moving along the fence until he came to the back gate. The gate was latched but he slid his knife through the gap between the post and the gate and raised the latch, gently pushing the gate open a bit before lowering it again. He eased the gate open only enough to allow him to slip in, then pushed it closed but left it unlatched in case he needed to beat feet back out in a hurry.

Moving along the fence line in a crouch, he paused as he arrived at the corner of the house and listened for noise inside the house. A few steps along the house brought him to the first window and he cautiously rose up and edged over until he could see into the room with his right eye; he could only see a portion of the kitchen so he continued the movement until the view of the room was unobstructed. The kitchen was empty; no dishes in the sink and nothing that indicated that anyone had been in the room recently aside from the unusual sight of all the cupboards standing open. He crouched and moved toward the patio steps and up onto the deck. As he approached the door adrenaline started pumping into his system and the familiar build-up of tension that came along with it caused his breathing to increase and his muscles to feel almost like they were vibrating, ready to unleash into action.
"This is where it gets dicey," he thought and paused at the doorway.
Taking a deep breath, he drew the little Ruger pistol and checked to make sure that there was round in the chamber, removed the safety, and eased the sliding door open a bit more to allow him to enter. Then, in a fluid motion, the man entered the room where he immediately stepped away from the entrance, crouched against the wall and, with the pistol in a two-hand grip, he cleared the room, a small dining room adjoining the kitchen, for threats. Encountering nothing, he quickly moved through the rest of the small cottage, clearing each room. Finding no threats, he relaxed slightly and began to really inspect the house for clues about the missing owner.
The kitchen cabinets were all open and empty of food and the small pantry door was ajar, the small room also empty of its contents. Staying clear of the large picture window in the front room, he went through every room searching for anything that might give him any indication of where his friend had gone. There were some signs that someone had been here searching before him but, surprisingly, the place wasn’t trashed. Strangely, in every room he checked, he found that all the closet doors were wide open and all drawers were open, as if for inspection. The last room he checked was the small back bedroom where his eyes finally fell on something that was out of place; the dresser wasn't in the same place that the man remembered from his previous visits to Bill's. It had always been centered on the wall between the door and the closet but now it sat almost against the closet door frame. Knowing Bill as he did, and knowing his… resistance to change, shall we say, he knew it was unlikely that he would rearrange the furniture on a whim. It was a small detail, one that most would have missed, but the man felt that it indicated something and he stood in front of the dresser and carefully ran his eyes over the area from ceiling to floor, inspecting the wall and then the floor for any clues. Just as he was about to give up and write off the oddity as nothing, he noticed a minute crack adjacent to the trim around the closet door behind the dresser. Moving the dresser aside, he followed the crack down to the floor and along the base board to the joint of two sections of the wall paneling, where he found another almost unnoticeable seam running up along the seam in the wall paneling.
"What the…. a door?", the man thought to himself but he couldn't find any latch or method of opening the tight-fitting doorway. He felt around the edges of the door but found no handles or depressions. On a whim, he pushed firmly on the panel and was surprised when he heard a faint click, and the door popped open an inch. Grasping the edge, he pulled the door open. Inside the wall, which he noticed had been built with 2" x 12" studs and provided enough room for hidden storage, he found an empty rifle rack with four slots and two shelves below it. Lying on top of the rack was an envelope, one of the large mania type envelopes with a string tie that you used to see legal documents in. After another scan of the neighborhood through the windows, the man took the envelope and sat at the kitchen table. Removing the document, he began to read; the sheet was a letter, evidently written in the recent past:


If you are reading this then you are looking through my house and I hope that means that you are looking for me, though I don’t know who the blazes would be looking for my old butt. I doubt this will ever get read but I figure I better leave some kind of record.

Since the disaster that befell our great nation, things have sure gone to Hell around here. I never thought I would see the kind of savagery here that I have had the misfortune to witness these couple of months
.
There hasn’t been any word from off-island for weeks and the sheriff stopped coming around almost a month ago; a couple of the deputies were ambushed and killed down by Coupeville for the gas in their car and their weapons. Whoever did it butchered the corpses and torched the squad car. After that the Sheriff pulled all his men off the streets and sent them home to take care of their families. Can’t blame him too much.
The neighborhood has completely fallen apart and there has been no word from off island for weeks. Since the group from the next street over attacked that kid’s cabin (and got blown up for their stupidity, served the bastards right, too- I sure miss that lad) it seems like everybody has lost their minds. People that have lived side by side for years are stealing from each other and killing for the smallest things. By my count there have been thirty five men killed in the last week and 8 women and girls have gone missing just over the last weekend. The few folks left here on my street are staying inside and out of sight as much as possible. I saw one of the neighbors break in to the house across the street looking for food I imagine. The house had been sitting vacant since the Williams’ left a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know where they were going but they loaded up their big SUV and hauled outta here. I had to persuade a couple of guys from down the hill to leave me be last night (I gut-shot one of them with my 12 gauge when he lit a Molotov cocktail out on the sidewalk after I refused to let ‘em have my last bit of propane. The other one got a partial load in the rear as he ran but he kept going).
Being alone, I can’t protect this old place 24 hours a day so I figure I better get out of here before ol’ Buckshot Britches comes back with some buddies to finish what they started. I’m gonna try to make it to town on foot with what I can carry in that old backpack in the shed and hole up there with a couple of other geezers if they are still alive.
Good luck to whoever finds this,
Bill

P.S. I’m leaving everything open in hopes that the place won’t get all torn up if they can see what’s here and just take anything of value that is left. If you found this, you’ll notice the guns are gone. Damn right, and they ain’t hidden in the house either. I’m keeping my old M-1 carbine and giving the rest of them to the few people left here that I think need them and won’t misuse them so I’d advise you leave them the Hell alone, too.


The man chuckled to himself at the post script; just like Bill to twist a guy’s tail a bit. “Well, that explained the drawers and cabinets”, he thought, “looks like it worked, too”.
The scant information in the letter painted a grim picture of conditions on the Island in the day after the Big Drop. With little or no law enforcement, it was evident that some of the residents had decided to take advantage of the situation and further damaged the few shreds of decency that had remained after the disaster. The man wondered how much farther things had deteriorated since Bill had written his farewell letter and he didn’t think that he would like the answers he found if he continued on his fact-finding mission. There was no use in turning back, though, so he made his way back to the rear of the house. Another look around showed him that the area remained empty of any sign of other survivors; he retraced his way back out of the gate and into the undergrowth at the edge of the woods.

[brokedownbiker]

Sorry about the formatting errors, I think I have them all fixed now. I was working on, and posting from, a new netbook and I have.... issues with the touch pad versus a mouse.

Change is BAD!! I have to get a wireless mouse!

[RunAndGun]

Really enjoyed the update.

Thanks!

[4Adam41]

Thanks for the new chapter. As said before, this story is a refreshing change. Please keep up the good work.

[SCinPNW]

Nice job BD! The story is engaging and well written. I am looking forward to when you let us know what is in the locked cabinet in the basement where he found the home canned food on one of his off island trips.

Thanks for the new chapter,
SC