1
They slept the night of September 23, 2123, huddled in their hiking tents just below the snowline on a grassy patch of level ground. As he was a natural early-riser, Jonesy was first to poke his head into the new morning. Because they were on the west side of the mountain, they wouldn’t see the sun for another hour or so. He instinctively glanced around the sky. ‘You never know,’ he thought.
They brewed some coffee on a gas cooker and ate energy bars for breakfast.
Everyone was keen to get going.
‘Five miles, you reckon, down to Pinecrest, Jonesy?’
‘That’d be about it, Snake.’
‘What a cracking morning,’ said Ludwig energetically.
‘I would prefer to defrost in a spa, daahling,’ said Ivana in her snooty voice.
‘I wonder if the shipping container will be there?’ said DeRongo.
‘Did you pack ski poles, Snake?’ Dirk’s girlfriend, Inga, asked.
‘Hiking poles, Inga.’
‘Ooh, very good. Let us hope that we can find our container.’
‘How’s the country look to you, Cowboy?’
‘I think I got a handle on it, Snake.’
Cowboy led the way down the mountain.
After an hour of traversing rough ground, they spotted a small lake glistening through the ponderosas.
‘I got doubts that it’s Pinecrest,’ said Cowboy, ‘we ain’t come far enough.’
They had reached Leland Reservoir, a small body of water set up as a water supply for the timber towns below. Jonesy had the map memorized.
‘I reckon it’s Leland Reservoir,’ he said. ‘If that be the case, it oughta be aroundabout three miles to Pinecrest.’
‘Through some pretty rough country, I reckon,’ added Melvin.
Jonesy’s girls giggled. Melvin blushed.
They descended down a steep slope, over rough ground, through a thick forest of young pines. They carried their packs on their backs as they walked, climbed and slid
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through the wild terrain. They paused every half mile or so and took a break. Carla, Jonesy’s eldest daughter, had been walking with Melvin. They sat together as they rested.
‘How did you get the tattoo on the side of your neck, Melvin?’
He smiled, ‘It’s probably better that I don’t remember.’
He looked very handsome to her and not at all old looking for his 31 years. He seemed like the loner type … and she loved his bike.
Her younger sisters, sitting next to her, giggled and sang,
‘Carla loves Melvin, Carla loves Melvin …’
Carla turned to her sisters and with a sardonic scowl whispered,
‘I’m going to suffocate you in your sleep tonight. You’ll think you are drowning.
You’ll wake up gasping for air.’
The sisters hushed.
‘I finished high school this year,’ she said to Melvin.
‘Been a while for me. Got into Hollywood … ended up in cinematography.’
‘I love your bike,’ she said flapping her eyelashes.
‘Oooooo …’ giggled the sisters.
‘Shut up!’ she snarled.
‘Desert Ghost,’ he replied laconically.
Ace, who sat on the other side of Melvin, muttered,
‘No cameras, Melv. Even the phone batteries are runnin down.’
‘Yeah, I’ll be needin new work.’
‘No choppers either. I’ll have to get into somethin different meself.’
‘I was thinkin about huntin,’ said Melvin. ‘I once shot camera for a sport-huntin documentary an picked up the inside dope on the tactics and strategy, an the kill shot.
Crossbows are pretty good. They’re silent, an they even the odds up a bit in favour of the prey.’
They penetrated through the dense forest. Every now and then, one of their boots broke through the surface sediment and exposed black charcoal beneath.
‘I think that charcoal is the old forest,’ said Ludwig. ‘I see nothing alive here that’s older than about 30 or 40 years.’
‘Are you a tree expert, Ludwig?’
‘Not so much an expert as an amateur, Dirk. I find it’s more about the whole ecosystem than just about the trees.’
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They averaged one mile every two hours. There were no trails to follow through the wild terrain, no tracks. The pine forest engulfed them. After six hours of tough, cross-country slogging, Cowboy complained,
‘Hard to make anything out up ahead through all the trees.’
‘It’s getting late into the afternoon, Rodg,’ said Lauren, his girlfriend. ‘Rodg’ was an abbreviation for Rodgers, which was Cowboy’s surname. Only Lauren Cole, the famous movie star, ever called him Rodg. Everybody else called the equally-famous TV actor either Cowboy or Clint, or sometimes Jonesy after the character he portrayed in the series of successful UFO documentaries.
They were now walking towards the western sun, although they did not see much of it. Suddenly Cowboy stopped in his tracks and pulled a branch out of the way. The sun shone on his face. He gasped at the vision that had materialized before him. Glistening through the pines, in entrancing tranquility, was a lake of shimmering diamonds. As the group gathered around Cowboy and became spellbound by the beauty of the scene, he whispered,
‘I swear an oath we’ve found paradise.’
That night they made camp on a grassy knoll by the bank of the northern shore of Pinecrest Lake. In their minds, the town, the marina and their house were still standing there about a mile due to the south. Looking for the town through his binoculars, across the moonlit lake, Ludwig said,
‘You’d think that if there was anyone over there there’d be lights, or at least a fire …
but it’s pitch black.’
‘Looks like the town’s dead,’ said Melvin looking through his own binoculars.
‘Does it?’ crooned Carla.
‘We’ll hike round there in the mornin,’ said Cowboy. ‘Shouldn’t take more than a coupla hours.’
2
After another simple breakfast of energy bars and coffee, they set off around the western shore of Pinecrest Lake. It was Saturday, September 25, 2123. When they arrived where the town and marina should have been, they were astonished to find nothing there.
‘It must have all got blasted down the mountain,’ said Snake. ‘This is all freshly-grown forest.’
The crystal-clear water of the lake lapped up against a virgin shore.
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‘Let’s go look up where the house was,’ suggested Snake.
They walked in single file through the trees up a gentle slope along the side of a hill.
After a couple of hundred yards, Snake stopped and looked around the area.
‘This looks about it, what do you reckon, Jonesy?’
‘Pretty close, Snake.’
‘The house used to be over here,’ Snake gestured with his hands, ‘and the container ought to be over there,’ he pointed into the side of the hill. ‘What’s that?’
Jonesy walked over toward a small rock that looked ‘a bit too geometric’. He reached up to feel it and reported in a raised voice,
‘This ain’t no rock, Snake, It’s smooth metal. It’s the container.’
Just at that moment, a rush of euphoria swept all seventeen of them. The joy they felt was almost hallucinogenic, ‘like trippin on acid,’ Jonesy thought. Finding the container was a huge boost in their prospects. It represented one year’s worth of supplies, compared to two weeks ‘lugged’ on their backs.
They carried eight, light-weight, military-style, folding shovels and two handpicks.
The tiny, projecting corner of the container was on top of a steep bank. They began digging into the side of the hill.
Melvin and Cowboy, who were the youngest men, dug into the piled-up dirt. Carla helped with the shoveling. The boys ripped off their shirts as they warmed up. Carla swooned as she glanced at Melvin’s sweaty muscles.
Shovelful by shovelful, the great steel doors of the container emerged from the side of the hill.
‘It looks like we packed it away two weeks ago,’ said Snake.
Jonesy cleaned the dirt off the stainless lock and said,
‘We did pack it away two weeks ago, Snake. You still got the key?’
Snake looked under his shirt and pulled out a key hanging on a gold chain around his neck. He pulled it over his head and handed it over. Jonesy blew into the lock’s keyhole, to clear any dirt still lodged in it, and inserted the key. To his amazement, the key turned easily and the lock sprang open with a click. Everyone went, ‘ooooooh.’
‘Ya get what ya pays for,’ said Snake smugly.
Jonesy slipped the lock out and gave it to Snake. He pulled on two levers and unlocked the doors.
‘I’m gonna need a hand with these doors,’ he said.
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The doors were still partially obstructed by dirt. They cleared it away with the shovels. The men pulled on the heavy, steel doors.
‘There’s some WD-40 inside,’ said Snake. ‘It couldn’t hurt on them hinges.’
‘We gotta get in there first,’ grumbled Jonesy struggling with a door.
After opening the doors an agonizing couple of inches, Cowboy cut a branch with his hand-axe and cleaned it.
‘We can pry it open a bit more with this stick,’ he said.
Eventually they had the doors open enough for two people to get inside and push.
That accelerated the process. They finally had those doors wide open after about an hour.
It was Snake’s honor to be the first to enter the container. After all, it was all his idea and he cleverly utilized the services of an excellent, survivalist supply company for the job. The company had ventured deep into advanced, freeze-dried, survival-food research.
They also specialized in lightweight, and efficient, primary survival equipment.
‘Survival food and equipment for seventeen people for one year,’ was what he ordered. He backed it up with a 50-percent, cash deposit into the company bank account.
The order was delivered in a truck, which Snake also bought.
Everyone gave Snake a round of applause as he stepped into the open container. His first act was to retrieve his Stetson and place it on his head. He lit a cigar as he explored the undisturbed interior of the container. After a brief survey, he came back outside and scanned around the lake. Everyone stood and looked at him, in a hushed silence, waiting for him to speak.
‘We got water, the lake … an we got fire, the trees. We got a year’s worth of food, an there’s a nice clearin over by the stream there,’ he pointed at a clearing. ‘I’m thinkin that maybe we ought’a set up camp here an stay a while. The way I see it is that, just at the moment, we don’t wanna be too far from this container.’
‘I reckon Snake’s right,’ Jonesy agreed. ‘This’ll make a great base camp, with all the luxuriates for the womenfolk,’ he smiled at his wife Lori.
‘We could undertake exploratory ventures from here,’ suggested Ludwig.
‘I can’t wait to have a bath,’ said Ivana in an exasperated voice. ‘I feel like I’m beginning to grow fungus.’
‘The lake will make a perfect bath, darling,’ suggested Ludwig.
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3
The tents were unpacked from the container. There was a tent for every subgroup.
Snake and Trixie got a comfortable one. Jonesy, his wife and their four daughters got ‘the palace’. Dirk and his girlfriend, Inga, Clint Rodgers and his girlfriend, Lauren, Ace and his Italian beauty, Johanna, and Ludwig and his wife, Ivana, all set up their own tents.
Melvin got a tent all to himself because he was a ‘sad, beautiful loner who was craving for the flaming love of a passionate young woman.’ Those were her thoughts as she lay awake on her side of the bed, while her pesky, three little sisters slept peacefully beside her. ‘I could do it now,’ she thought and chuckled. ‘Get rid of the little pests once and for all.’
She looked lovingly at their beautiful faces. ‘Drat, even devils look cute when they’re asleep.’
After they set up the tents, the men gathered stones into a circle for a fire. With axes retrieved from the container, they cut a pile of timber that would last them for days. Some of the ladies went swimming. Snake disappeared deep into the container and, after rummaging around for a while, reappeared holding a square, wooden box. They all gathered around him as he informed them that he, ‘procured six of these at an auction.’
He opened the box and revealed a huge, eight-inch-diameter, magnifying glass.
‘For your stamp collection?’ said Ludwig in a humorous voice.
‘Much more important than that, compadre.’
Snake stepped down to the fireplace, looked up at the sun and held out the magnifying glass so it focused the sunlight on some dried kindling. The kindling almost immediately caught fire.
‘It’ll melt lead,’ he said smugly.
They placed tiny branches on the burning kindling and brought the fire to life. Snake put the lens back in its box and took it to his tent.
Later, down by the lake, Carla was chastising Melvin for setting up his tent so far from hers.
‘Don’t like a lot of folks around,’ he said.
‘Well, you should be pretty happy then, because everybody’s dead! ’
He looked across the lake and replied,
‘I ain’t missin nobody.’
‘Didn’t you have any family?’
‘Nah.’
Her heart went out to him.
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‘Sorry.’
‘Think nothin of it.’
They lay there for a while, staring at the blue sky.
‘It’s 2123,’ she muttered.
‘Yeah, I know. And there’s aliens from other planets poppin up.’
‘And we are the survivors,’ she continued, ‘the last hope of the human race.’ She turned towards him and added, ‘And it’s our duty to our species, Melvin, to make children.’
Melvin looked at her and chuckled,
‘You’ve been drinkin too much of your daddy’s coffee.’
‘I’m allowed to drink coffee if I want.’
The elevation of Pinecrest Lake was a shade over 5500 feet above sea level. They spent the afternoon settling in and organizing their things. They had everything they wanted; the clear, fresh water from the lake, abundant firewood, good shelter and twelve-months’ supply of food. They dug a deep hole in the ground behind some bushes, away from the camp, and placed a camping-style toilet seat over it. Over that they erected a small tent, which was incorporated in the survival inventory just for that purpose.
4
Carla skipped over to Melvin’s tent early in the morning of Sunday, September 26, 2123. She found him shirtless, down by the lake, washing himself in the water.
‘Come over and have a cup of coffee with my daddy, Melvin. He invited you.’
Melvin’s wet, muscular torso glistened in the morning light. Carla’s heart skipped a beat. She swooned a moment. He smiled and replied,
‘Well, seein as he invited me …’
‘We’re having porridge.’
He perked up somewhat, ‘You don’t say?’
First thing that morning, all the men decided to prepare smaller fireplaces in front of their own tents. Melvin already had his own fireplace. After that task was complete, and they were all sitting around their fireplaces having breakfast, Melvin shyly joined the Jones family.
They had known each other, off and on, for ten years, but the relationship had suddenly developed a whole new dimension. Jonesy welcomed him warmly. Lori made
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him coffee and porridge. After a while, when they were all settled and Jonesy and Melvin got a moment of privacy, Jonesy said,
‘Carla’s been talkin about you.’ He paused and took his time. ‘She’s only seventeen.’
He thought some more. ‘We live in strange times, Melv.’
‘I kind o got a hankerin to go crossbow huntin,’ said Melvin.
‘Crossbow huntin?’ replied Jonesy all interested.
‘More coffee, Melvin?’ said Lori as she topped up his cup.
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Hi Melvin,’ said Connie, the youngest daughter, who was thirteen.
Melvin lightly patted her on the head and smiled,
‘Which one are you?’
‘Connie,’ she giggled.
‘I got six mouths to feed,’ said Jonesy. ‘Some fresh meat every now and then would sure hit the spot. I might do some huntin meself.’
‘I got a real keenness for it, Jonesy, to do it like sport.’ He looked around and said,
‘The woods must be crawlin with game.’
‘It’s like life, Melv, one thing chasin another. … How old are you?’
‘Thirty-one.’
Jonesy ruminated on the answer then grumbled,
‘Thirty-one, eh? Well … you be kind to my daughter, y’hear?’
‘Yessir,’ Melvin replied cool as James Dean, like he was reading Jonesy’s mind.
Jonesy pulled a small, red tin from his pocket and opened it.
‘Smoke?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, Jonesy.’
5
It was decided that they would stay in their Pinecrest Lake camp until the alien returned in his space ship. They were relatively comfortable there and not in any particular hurry to go anywhere.
They estimated that a person could venture out for a two-week period carrying all his supplies, except water, on his back. Figuring a conservative ten miles a day, allowing for delays, they estimated that a scout should be able to explore for 50 miles down the mountain, and out into the valley, and then have enough supplies to get back. Jonesy noted,
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‘After you do the fifty, there’s another ninety to the coast. Fifty’ll only get you to the valley.’
…….
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