Dystopia Road, page 1
part #1 of Dystopia Road Series
Dystopia
Road
Dystopia Road
First Edition
Eric Gurr
Copyright 2021 by Eric Gurr
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN
Book Cover by Emily Gurr
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes
To Amy
Contents
Chapter 1
A Necessary Prologue to Explain What Went Wrong
Chapter 2
Some unexpected help from his criminal ex-brother-in-law and he helps his foul mouthed Aunt Helen
Chapter 3
A Rest Area
Chapter 4
Linda
Chapter 5
Back and Forth
Chapter 6
Sara
Chapter 7
The Road Home
Chapter 8
Home
Chapter 9
Twenty Years Later
Chapter 1
A Necessary Prologue to Explain What Went Wrong
The world had shown that it could handle a moderate pandemic. The world had proven that it could handle a world war, a solar flare, a drought, or any other number of natural disasters that came one at a time.
But over the last few months, it had become clear that the world could not handle two of these events. Now three unrelated events were leading to a breakdown of civilization.
The drought was a regional event. It affected the entire west coast of the United States and much of the mid-west breadbasket. Food prices had risen drastically, and millions of people in Southern California had been forced to leave.
Then came a new virus. Similar to rabies, yet it spread like the flu and had been simmering across the entire world. Those who were infected first would spread the disease rapidly. In the early months, it seemed no more than a common cold. It spread quickly. After a week or two, the symptoms went away. But the virus did not.
By the first week of January, people were dying at an alarming rate. Once the test was administered, a positive result meant the death sentence was certain. It was only a matter of time. There were reports that more than twenty percent of the population of China was already dead. The government maintained that it was closer to ten percent, and the death rate was following.
For a few weeks, everyone stayed home. Even the police, firefighters, and other necessary workers would not report. Those who ventured out for necessities wore at least two masks, eye shields, and stayed ten feet or more away from others. More often than not, the grocery stores were closed, or had little food.
There were no deniers. There were no skeptics. All knew that this was the most dangerous virus that had ever hit the planet. There was talk that this was a man-made virus. But by this time, it really didn't matter where it had come from.
Yet just a few weeks into February, it was clear that although the deaths in the United States were climbing rapidly, the spread of the virus was over. The misery was just beginning. The government, the health officials and the news media proclaimed loudly that everyone could get back to work, and should. No one tried to gloss over the obvious. If you survived, someone close to you would die. But at least the spread was over. New cases were non-existent.
Few believed the government. Not just in The United States, but anywhere.
By the middle of April, nearly every city in the world was experiencing electric power blackouts, internet outages, and sewer backups. The population of The USA had fallen from three hundred and thirty million, to less than two hundred and eighty million. Over fifty million were dead. Millions of immigrants from South America had left for home. The government acknowledged that there just weren't enough people left to maintain the infrastructure. Power, sewers, road and bridges would all degrade.
Then it was finally revealed that a series of three solar flares had hit the earth. Satellites had been knocked off line, and grids in Europe, the west coast of America, and the Midwest had all been knocked off line as well. These were not particularly intense solar flares. Just enough to cause problems. Problems that during normal times, would have been quickly addressed. These were not normal times.
Repairs became nearly impossible as hackers locked power systems with ransomware attacks.
So when the power did come back online, the internet was rapidly being shut down to prevent further hacking attempts. Without the internet, there were limited opportunities to get into these systems, and no way for the hackers to collect their crypto currencies.
People sat in the dark. Often for days before power was restored. By the middle of May, the traffic from those leaving for what they hoped were better places was already starting to thin. So when he finally decided to leave, his first order of business was figuring out where to go. Because his Mississippi home was not an option.
Chapter 2
Some unexpected help from his criminal ex-brother-in-law and he helps his foul mouthed Aunt Helen
"You goin' home?"
He looked up from the gas pump surprised to see Darrell, his ex-brother-in-law. He just shook his head no. He didn't even know Darrell was in town. He had moved to Washington Pennsylvania two years ago because his sister had found a welding job for him in the small Eastern Pennsylvania town.
Darrell and his sister were still married at the time, but had divorced just days after he had arrived. He hadn't even seen him in more than a year.
"Heard about Rachael, sorry about that man. She was a good girl." Darrell said.
He knew he had to make a bit of small talk, his Southern manners would only let him be so rude. So he topped off the tank of his Pickup truck and walked towards Darrell and his truck.
"Yeah, thanks Darrell. I'm doing fine. It's kind of strange. When Diane died (his sister and Darrell's ex-wife) and then a few friends at work, I guess I got numb to it all. What are you doing here?"
"Just picking up some pictures and shit your dad asked me to get. Then I'm going back home. You want to just follow us down?" Darrell asked.
"No. I'm going to Indiana to see Aunt Helen and Jimmy. I think I'll just stay with them for a while until I figure out what I'm going to do." He answered.
"You need to go home. I know you and your dad don't get on so well, but he ain't what you think. He's a good man. He just, once your momma died, he just wanted to make a better life for you and Diane. So he tried everything. He's doin' good now. He'd love to see ya."
"No, I think I'll just stay away. He and I are very different people."
"You still think he's a racist redneck? Cause, he ain't." Darrell said.
"Well, I know he didn't want me and Chanda Jackson to get married. And I know it's because she was black." He said. Then added. "Look, all that ended fine anyway. I found Rachael, and that was great."
"It ain't cause she was black. It's cause she was ten years older than you. Your daddy just thought it was too much too soon. You know he got married again don’t you?"
"I didn't." He said.
"He married Anita Jackson. So he wasn't all that racist was he?"
He was surprised, but just wanted to end the conversation. "Well, I guess that's good for him, but I'm not going back to Mississippi Darrell. I'll see you again sometime. But right now, I'm heading to Indiana. And if Jimmy has left with his wife for Idaho, I'll head up there."
"You ain't been out yet have ya?" Darrell asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You ain't been outside a Washington PA, its hell out there."
He had no idea what Darrell meant. He just wanted to get on the road. "I'll be fine." He said.
He started to walk away and Darrell stopped him. "Wait, let me give you some stuff.'
He walked towards the backup of Darrell's pickup truck. The truck had a cap on it, and you couldn't see what was in the bed. Darrell lifted the back door and lowered the tailgate. There were two other men sitting at the front of the bed.
"Hey, get me a roll of gold quarters, two silver dime rolls and one of them thirty-eights with a holster. And get me two boxes of the bullets. Grab me a stack of them hundred dollar bills too."
As the men in the back of the truck scurried to fill Darrell's order he tried to protest. "I don't need any of that stuff Darrell."
"You don't think you do, but you do." He turned back to the truck and snapped at the men in the back. "Get him one of them tent backpacks too.
Darrell turned back to him. "Well at least you still got your pickup truck. I expected you to be in a Honda Accord by now. You still welding?"
"No, they promoted me to engineering technician a few months before Rachael died. And, I was on my way to trade in the Truck for a Toyota Camry but they closed the dealership." He responded.
"You're not going to be happy until you're living in the suburbs and livin' that middle-class life are you? I think you're remembering things about your home that just ain't true Junior."
He didn't want to argue with Darrell. And he didn't want to explain to him that those folks living in the suburbs had it figured out a lot better than he did. So he just accepted the gifts, threw them in the backseat of his truck and got in the driver's seat. Darrell was still st
"Look, them quarters are worth about $500 each. There's forty of them in there. If you see someone who needs help on the side of the road, don't stop. It's an ambush. Just keep your ass moving 'till you get to your Aunt and Jimmy's. I don't know Jimmy that well, but I wouldn't follow him to Idaho, or anywhere else. You're too civilized. You ran like hell out of the south and left everything your old grandpa ever taught you behind. It's a fuckin' mess out there. Take this shit, use it only for yourself, and keep that gun in the front seat. You're gonna need it.
When you find out what I'm tellin' ya is true, turn your ass around and get back home to Mississippi."
He nodded and started to drive away, but stopped. "Darrell, where in the hell did you get all of that shit?
Darrell smiled at him. "I stole every damn bit of it. It was hell getting' up here and it's gonna be hell gettin' back. You'll see. If I'm right, and I know you're real smart, so I think I'm right, and if I am, you'll learn quick and be back home in Meridian in about three days."
Darrell slapped him on the back and turned away.
He didn't leave until he was out of site, then pulled into the front of the convenience store. He didn't think much of Darrell, or for that matter, many of the people he had left back in Mississippi. But he had to admit to himself, he was a bit worried. He took a hundred dollar bill from the stack and went inside to buy two five gallon gas cans. The store had only been opened back up for a couple of days, but surprisingly, there were very few people filling up their cars. He guessed that most were still in doors hiding, or maybe there was just that much gasoline available with so many dead. But it never hurts to be safe.
The solar flares had knocked out the GPS system, and his cell phone wasn't working anymore, so he had to find an old fashioned paper road map. That had turned out to be much more difficult than he thought it would.
He pulled his truck out of the store and then made a quick right turn and he was on the exit to I70 heading west towards Columbus.
He flipped on the radio, but the only station that was still broadcasting, at least the only one that he could pick up, was an AM station out of Cincinnati. It was all news, and all of it bad.
His truck was old enough that it still had a CD player, so he flipped the passenger seat visor down and grabbed one of his 1990s country music CDs. It was the one thing he could never shake from his Southern roots. Old country music, and most of the stuff his grandfather had taught him stuck with him. Everything else that happened he tried to forget.
For the first half hour, he was stressed. The things Darrell had said about being on the road were stuck in his mind. As the miles fell behind him, the stress washed away. His thoughts drifted back to Mississippi and his youth. At ten, his mother was killed in a car accident. They lived on a little farm, just short of one hundred acres outside the city of Meridian Mississippi. His father worked as a mechanic, and lent out the acreage for farmers to grow soybean and corn. They had a very good life.
When his mother died, and then a year later his sister Diane married Darrell, he was alone. In the summer, he stayed with his grandfather, his mother's father, and rarely saw his dad until school started back up. Even then, he would see his dad at most an hour or two a night. Then on the weekends he was back with his grandfather.
His dad opened up his own garage, but he turned out to be a better mechanic than he was a business man. So after two years, he closed the garage and tried another business customizing old muscle cars.
His father said he was bored with it. But he figured that his father had probably run it in to the ground. The muscle car business went marginally better, but without the few thousand dollars he got every year from the soybean crop, he guessed that his father would have failed at that as well. Though he was always busy.
His father would ask him questions about school and life from time to time, and try to engage. But there was no connection, and he never wanted to answer the questions.
He graduated from high school in just three years, and went to college for engineering. But when his dad threatened to stop paying for school if he didn't break off the engagement to Chanda Jackson, he quit school anyway. But jobs were hard to find, and eventually he and Chanda broke up. And he suspected that it was his grandfather who was paying for college anyway. But the damage was done, and he needed to get out of Mississippi.
Just four years later he was married to Rachael and living in Pennsylvania in the same neighborhood as his sister and Darrell.
Darrell had taken his wife Diane with him on some business venture that didn't pan out.
Yet life for Diane and him was going well. He made good money as a welder/technician and was even thinking about going back to college to finish his degree. But then Darrell and Diane split, so he helped out her and her two kids. When Diane died from the new rabies virus, he and Rachael took their kids in. But within two months, both the kids and Rachael were dead.
He was now driving through the south side of Wheeling West Virginia. There were a few more cars on the road now. He sat up straight in his seat to make sure he was alert around the new traffic. He reached into his glove compartment for a cigarette and lit it. He rolled down both windows to let the smoke out and the fresh air in, when he saw two cars stopped ahead to the right. There were two men standing outside arguing.
As he got closer, he could see one of the men had a gun pointed at the other. Just as the men were clearly visible a hundred feet or so in front of him, the man with the gun pulled the trigger. The victim's head exploded in a fine mist of red and he slumped to the ground.
Shaken, he stepped on the gas to speed up. The gunman looked him directly in the eyes as he drove past. He tried to look to the back seat to find the revolver Darrell had given him, but it was on the floor and could not be reached.
There were other cars pulled off to the side of the road, but he saw no people arguing or no more gunfire. Towards the center of the city he saw smoke rising and could just make out a burning building. He sped up even faster to get away from the city. He drove across the bridge into Ohio and more rural surroundings. The traffic again thinned.
He smiled to himself. 'It turns out Darrell is just as full of shit as he always was. The bad stuff is in the cities, and not on the roads.'
The hours and miles rolled by. Occasionally a car or semi-truck would pass him, but there was surprisingly little traffic. For a Friday at ten O'clock in the morning he expected it to be much busier.
When a thought of home entered his mind, he worked to change the thought. To focus on the future. To keep his mind as far from the south as his body was. He drove through the city of Zanesville. A smaller city, yet still he was sure there were thousands of people living there, and thousands of potential dangers.
His eyes scanned left to right looking for trouble, but all was calm. Columbus would be next. Perhaps he had over reacted. Instead of taking the long route around Columbus, he decided to stay on I70 and go through the city. As he approached the outskirts he noticed no rising columns of smoke. Just sky-scrapers standing solemnly as they always did.
As he got into the city he thought about stopping at the McDonald's to see if it was serving, but it appeared that the power was out. There were no lighted signs, and the traffic signals he could see off of the highway were dark.
When he entered downtown he had to slow down. There was a bus stopped on the right side of the highway and people were running back and forth across all six lanes. It took him a minute to realize that these people were looting the bus.
There were a few cars in front of him that also slowed. Then someone threw a rock at one of the cars in front of him, and the person sped off. He drove into the left lane to try to follow but when the car in front of him sped up, it hit someone knocking them down. The crowd then turned on that car, and it sped off.
