Solace & Taproots

1.6 - Revised

Slamming the door wasn't mature or productive and she knew it. But, it made her feel better. The storage cabinet door that had been hanging open when she passed it probably didn't deserve getting punched, and now her hand hurt, so that was a tradeoff.

It also meant that when she chose the punching bag under the bridge instead of the moonshine still, she was limited to throwing left jabs, elbow strikes, and knee blows. By the time she'd worn herself down to a smolder, she'd settled on kicking it as hard as she could, pacing in a small circle, and then repeating the process with the other foot.

**

Their months of self-imposed hermitage in the unfinished buildings started out, well, surprisingly not so bad.

Initial explorations grew less tentative after the first two weeks, once everyone decided they'd all dodged infection. Their first priority was chaining most of the entrances closed from the inside. Some of the retail spaces were challenging with their glass fronts, but they figured out which service corridors to isolate by knocking off door handles, or barricading them with construction detritus.

Leonard and Jaime used the pickup's hitch to tow one of those trailer mounted "lane closed merge right" signs back to "their" building, which they stripped for solar panels and 12-volt batteries. Those were donated to a charging / inverter station, with the panels on one of the lower rooftops protruding beyond the second floor corners, and everything else inside an adjacent window.

Each couple selected a semi-finished apartment on the third floor, far enough apart for privacy, but close enough to pool resources or socialize. By first snow, they both had fire barrels fed by segments of 2x4 or gathered firewood. They didn't trust the municipal water's potability, but it fed their filters and boiling efforts. When Jaime contrived a siphon system from a crude cauldron over the fire drum and ran the hose to their apartment's bathtub, she practically ripped his clothing off — with a stop in the bath before the sleeping bags on their pallet-and-plywood sleeping platform. (One of a few reasons she was grateful for her IUD.)

In mid December, an employee of the construction company showed up, but once again he was simply looking for somewhere to stay. He disappeared two weeks later, taking some of his possessions but leaving his company truck. They searched all of the buildings on the site, and even topped her hybrid off with the solar panels to risk a tense sweep of the surrounding area. Rebecca wasn't a devout follower of any particular faith, but still held Allie's hands when the other woman wanted to say a prayer for his safety.

Other than that, their only guests were a few scares with unfamiliar door rattlers. Both couples had sent messages to local friends before phone service stopped working, but nobody they knew ever came.

Rebecca couldn't bring herself to keep listening to the progressively sparser radio broadcasts, but Leonard did on his hand-crank flashlight/radio, and would share anything major. Apparently the federal government, as a whole, was crippled. But, some agencies in more isolated areas were managing to function regionally.

The cold temperatures in Alaska and parts of Canada had limited social interactions, and thus slowed the spread of the apparently bioengineered smallpox virus. Scattered rural emergency services were expanding their efforts to neighboring towns, and even trying to push into footholds at major cities. Along with Alaska, at least three more state governments had managed a reasonable amount of continuity and were starting to offer assistance to counties across state lines. In a heartbreaking twist of irony, several of the most remote Native American reservations were now the most functional governments in their region.

Cuba's lingering travel restrictions, and willingness to take a heavy hand towards its citizens, meant it was relatively intact. North Korea claimed their glorious science programs were triumphant, but inactivity across the DMZ didn't seem to support that. Allie turned out to have a minor in International Relations, and got them all wondering what borders might be redrawn in a decade or two, if there were still people around to do it.