mnn fiction:Get Busy Living Book 2 - Completed
Jun 23, 2012 12:45:01 GMT -6
texican, harrya217, and 2 more like this
Post by mnn2300 on Jun 23, 2012 12:45:01 GMT -6
This one just came to me this morning as I sat down to work on Vanished, so I hurried up and wrote it down, its a side story to my "Get Busy Living" story line also printed in this section. If you haven't read 'Get Busy Living' I invite you too or you can just know that E2 is a flu like plague that wiped out much of mankind. This is one mans story.
Its a short story and here it is in its entirety:
Get Busy Living Book 2
He sat in his fully equipped shelter, he had 10 years of freeze dried food, 10 years of liquor, had hundreds of movies and thousands of hours of music recorded. He had a deep well that was drilled down into an aquifer so water would never be a problem, and he a large enough septic system to last him at least 10 years. He had a room full of guns and ammo. A couple thousand electronic books and a couple hundred real books. Solar cells on the surface provided enough power for all his needs. But what he didn't have was companionship. He was alone. It had been 6 months now since he first read about the flu that eventually came to be known as E2, and 4 months since it hit North America. He had listened to the President's speech from the TV in his shelter in the Rocky Mountains, that was back when his satellite TV was still broadcasting, he had locked himself in two weeks previously, just as a precaution he told himself.
He had a phone in the shelter, a landline. He had tried calling his ex wife, to get her and the kids to come to the shelter, before the President's speech she just laughed at him and after the speech there was no answer on her phone. He left enough voicemails for her that he filled her voicemail box. It was futile, she had stayed on the east coast after their divorce and he was 3/4 of the way across the country in Colorado.
He was a working class stiff, that’s what he called himself. He had worked for the state of New Jersey, for the department of transportation. He worked a road crew; filling potholes, changing bulbs in street lights, clearing debris out of ditches, picking up dead animals from the roads: in his words - a working stiff. His wife was a bartender at a local joint, 2 kids; a boy and a girl, ages 8 and 6. They weren't rich, but they were comfortable in their rented bungalow. They were even happy, why'd he have to buy that lottery ticket and ruin everything? He had heard on the radio that the lottery was up to $300 million and he figured, what the heck, he took a buck out of his wallet at the gas station and got $1 in quick picks, the clerk handed him the ticket and he glanced at it: 3, 7, 14, 15, 22, 41. He put the ticket in his wallet and forgot about it until the next day when he heard on the radio that someone had won and they had bought the ticket at the same gas station he had. They had read the numbers over the radio but by then he had forgotten his numbers and by the time he got the ticket out of course the radio had moved on to another story. There was a convenience store a couple blocks ahead, he pulled in and asked the clerk for a printout of last night's winning numbers. He took them out to his truck and compared them: 3, 7, 14, 15, 22, 41. His heart started pounding and his vision went in and out of focus. "I won, Holy Shit, I F'n won!" he yelled. Then looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He didn't want anyone taking the ticket until he cashed it. It was almost 10 AM, his wife didn't start work until noon. He quickly drove home.
His wife didn't know what to think when she saw the State truck pull up in from of their house, but when he got out and ran in the house to the computer she followed him wanting to know what was going on. He got to the New Jersey lottery website and pulled up the numbers with his lottery ticket in hand, she looked over his shoulder and screamed when she saw the winning numbers, unfortunately her mouth was right next to his ear at the time. His ears rang all the way to Trenton to pick up the prize.
Taking the cash option and after paying the taxes dropped the winnings down to $118 million. They had it direct deposited into their checking account and were advised by the lottery board to get a lawyer and a financial advisor and to take a couple weeks vacation before they made any major financial decisions.
They were not sure about the lawyer or financial advisor but the vacation sounded good. They got her mother to watch the kids and they took off for Vegas. They had been to Atlantic City before but had never been out to Vegas. They had always wanted to see the shows and do some gambling, now they could do it in style and they did. Looking back that one trip cost them a quarter of a million dollars before it was ended. They were people who got rich quick and money was no object. Of course, if it had just been a quarter of a million they could have absorbed it easily and maybe learned a lesson. He had learned a lesson, the hard way: Easy money, Vegas, and free flowing booze equals trouble. His wife had gone up to the room but he was on a streak and decided to keep going, he would be up to the room in a bit. Of course the blond with the large breasts and the low cut dress added to his desire to stay and gamble. Big mistake, he knew that now - heck he knew it then too, but after a while he was thinking with the wrong head.
How he could have been so stupid he didn't know, but as he and the blond were standing by the elevators about to head up to her room, they were kissing and pawing at each other when elevator doors opened and his wife was there, she had been coming down to get him. She had her cell phone in her hand, she had been trying to call him but the signal inside the building wasn't going through. Her phone had a camera though and she snapped a picture of him and the blond in what used to be called 'a compromising position'. A short while later a judge cut his winnings in half and his wife had gotten a restraining order against him.
His good fortune had lasted less than a week, heck he hadn't even gotten the blond that night. Anyway, with no home but a hotel but with $59 million in the bank he explored his options. 'Explored his Options' he laughed, now there was a cliché'. After the restraining order he decided he would do some traveling. He thought of buying a big motor home, but then figured, what the heck, $59 million bought a lot of mid-priced hotel rooms so he traded in his old Dodge on a Cadillac Escalade SUV fully loaded, bought some new clothes, a couple of nice suitcases and a laptop computer with all the bells and whistles for a traveler. He could have just upgraded his phone but he hated surfing the web or trying to text on a small screen.
He drove slowly across the country, sometimes stopping for a night, sometimes for a week or more anywhere he felt like it. Eight months later he was pulling into a resort outside of Colorado Springs. Three months later he was looking for a house in the mountains near there.
Who would have thought that an ex New Jersey working stiff like him would fall in love with the mountains of Colorado. When he found the perfect house on 10 acres his realtor warned him he would have to stock up on food for the winter as sometimes the mountain passes were closed for weeks. He only half heard her and that winter he was very sorry he hadn't listened closer. He got by, but barely, and was mighty hungry when the mountain pass finally opened and he could get into town. He stopped at the grocery store and literally filled his Escalade with food, he drove home and unloaded it and then made another trip and filled it again. Finally comfortable that he could make it through the winter he started surfing the web. He was determined never to go through that again so he started studying up on prepping. This brought him into a whole new world and gave him a very different view of the world than he had before. He started reading about prepping and that led him to survivalist sites, this led him to study up on the worlds political and social systems and he didn't like what he saw.
He went down to the local gun store and started learning about and eventually purchasing many different guns, he slowly converted some of his money to gold and eventually looked up a shelter company. He saw one that advertised complete systems and they used out of state crews to build them so no one local would know what was going on. He called them and that summer they installed his shelter. He spared no expense, solar powered, deep well, everything top of the line.
He then, after reading up on about op sec, or operational security, basically keeping your mouth shut about what you were doing and making sure no one could piece together that you were buying enough food and ammo to keep a small country going, he rented a small house in Colorado Springs where few people knew him and started ordering supplies to be delivered there, everything from freeze dried foods to Geiger counters to ABC suits and hundreds of miscellaneous items, then at night he would load the supplies into his Escalade inside the garage at the rental and drive them out to his house to also be unloaded inside his garage there. He had spent over a quarter of a million dollars on supplies and shipping alone and that didn't even count the shelter itself or his guns and ammo or his gold. By the time winter came he knew could survive anything.
Now 4 months after the President addressed the nation about the E2 plague he was bored out of his mind. The shelter was nice and it had every creature comfort money could buy except companionship. It was 20' x 40' not counting the battery room or the supply closets on the sides. His entire world had dwindled to 800 square feet. His original plan had been to stay here a year breathing his filtered air and hopefully the virus would burn itself out, but then his Satellite TV stopped broadcasts and eventually the internet went down. He felt like he was in solitary confinement, some days he never even got out of bed he was so bored and depressed. .
Let's see, it was September now, that means it'll start snowing soon in the mountains. If he was going to see what was happening it would have to be now or he'd be stuck for the winter and there was no way he could stand that, he'd go out of his mind. He decided that he would put on his ABC (Atomic/Biological/Chemical) suit and drive around and try to see what was going on, try to find someone, get some news of the outside world. With the suit on he didn't really fit into the Escalade, well no one was around to spread any flu germs, so he took off the helmet and put on an N95 breathing mask, he'd replace the helmet when he got into town.
Dead rotting corpses were everywhere, that’s all he found, even when he drove into Colorado Springs, not a living soul in sight. For a while he ran from store to store then even from house to house, trying to find anyone or even a sign that someone was still alive, but there was no one. Sometime in his running from shop to shop in a daze trying to find someone, anyone, he lost the mask and his suit got ripped, he didn't even realize it, somehow he got back to his house in a daze, he didn't even really remember the drive back. He couldn't grasp everyone on the planet being dead, but if Colorado Springs was any sign he could very well be the last man left alive on planet Earth.
He went down into his shelter and sat staring off into space for how long? an hour? a day? longer? he couldn't remember. He felt like he had a fever coming on, oh well, without some kind of companionship he wasn't going to make it anyway. A life not shared is not a life worth living, only one thing left for him to do.
The last thing that went though his mind, besides the bullet that is, was "F'n lottery, I wish I'd never played, I would have died with my wife and children instead of all alone."
A shot rang out as the last man in Colorado took his own life.
Its a short story and here it is in its entirety:
Get Busy Living Book 2
He sat in his fully equipped shelter, he had 10 years of freeze dried food, 10 years of liquor, had hundreds of movies and thousands of hours of music recorded. He had a deep well that was drilled down into an aquifer so water would never be a problem, and he a large enough septic system to last him at least 10 years. He had a room full of guns and ammo. A couple thousand electronic books and a couple hundred real books. Solar cells on the surface provided enough power for all his needs. But what he didn't have was companionship. He was alone. It had been 6 months now since he first read about the flu that eventually came to be known as E2, and 4 months since it hit North America. He had listened to the President's speech from the TV in his shelter in the Rocky Mountains, that was back when his satellite TV was still broadcasting, he had locked himself in two weeks previously, just as a precaution he told himself.
He had a phone in the shelter, a landline. He had tried calling his ex wife, to get her and the kids to come to the shelter, before the President's speech she just laughed at him and after the speech there was no answer on her phone. He left enough voicemails for her that he filled her voicemail box. It was futile, she had stayed on the east coast after their divorce and he was 3/4 of the way across the country in Colorado.
He was a working class stiff, that’s what he called himself. He had worked for the state of New Jersey, for the department of transportation. He worked a road crew; filling potholes, changing bulbs in street lights, clearing debris out of ditches, picking up dead animals from the roads: in his words - a working stiff. His wife was a bartender at a local joint, 2 kids; a boy and a girl, ages 8 and 6. They weren't rich, but they were comfortable in their rented bungalow. They were even happy, why'd he have to buy that lottery ticket and ruin everything? He had heard on the radio that the lottery was up to $300 million and he figured, what the heck, he took a buck out of his wallet at the gas station and got $1 in quick picks, the clerk handed him the ticket and he glanced at it: 3, 7, 14, 15, 22, 41. He put the ticket in his wallet and forgot about it until the next day when he heard on the radio that someone had won and they had bought the ticket at the same gas station he had. They had read the numbers over the radio but by then he had forgotten his numbers and by the time he got the ticket out of course the radio had moved on to another story. There was a convenience store a couple blocks ahead, he pulled in and asked the clerk for a printout of last night's winning numbers. He took them out to his truck and compared them: 3, 7, 14, 15, 22, 41. His heart started pounding and his vision went in and out of focus. "I won, Holy Shit, I F'n won!" he yelled. Then looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He didn't want anyone taking the ticket until he cashed it. It was almost 10 AM, his wife didn't start work until noon. He quickly drove home.
His wife didn't know what to think when she saw the State truck pull up in from of their house, but when he got out and ran in the house to the computer she followed him wanting to know what was going on. He got to the New Jersey lottery website and pulled up the numbers with his lottery ticket in hand, she looked over his shoulder and screamed when she saw the winning numbers, unfortunately her mouth was right next to his ear at the time. His ears rang all the way to Trenton to pick up the prize.
Taking the cash option and after paying the taxes dropped the winnings down to $118 million. They had it direct deposited into their checking account and were advised by the lottery board to get a lawyer and a financial advisor and to take a couple weeks vacation before they made any major financial decisions.
They were not sure about the lawyer or financial advisor but the vacation sounded good. They got her mother to watch the kids and they took off for Vegas. They had been to Atlantic City before but had never been out to Vegas. They had always wanted to see the shows and do some gambling, now they could do it in style and they did. Looking back that one trip cost them a quarter of a million dollars before it was ended. They were people who got rich quick and money was no object. Of course, if it had just been a quarter of a million they could have absorbed it easily and maybe learned a lesson. He had learned a lesson, the hard way: Easy money, Vegas, and free flowing booze equals trouble. His wife had gone up to the room but he was on a streak and decided to keep going, he would be up to the room in a bit. Of course the blond with the large breasts and the low cut dress added to his desire to stay and gamble. Big mistake, he knew that now - heck he knew it then too, but after a while he was thinking with the wrong head.
How he could have been so stupid he didn't know, but as he and the blond were standing by the elevators about to head up to her room, they were kissing and pawing at each other when elevator doors opened and his wife was there, she had been coming down to get him. She had her cell phone in her hand, she had been trying to call him but the signal inside the building wasn't going through. Her phone had a camera though and she snapped a picture of him and the blond in what used to be called 'a compromising position'. A short while later a judge cut his winnings in half and his wife had gotten a restraining order against him.
His good fortune had lasted less than a week, heck he hadn't even gotten the blond that night. Anyway, with no home but a hotel but with $59 million in the bank he explored his options. 'Explored his Options' he laughed, now there was a cliché'. After the restraining order he decided he would do some traveling. He thought of buying a big motor home, but then figured, what the heck, $59 million bought a lot of mid-priced hotel rooms so he traded in his old Dodge on a Cadillac Escalade SUV fully loaded, bought some new clothes, a couple of nice suitcases and a laptop computer with all the bells and whistles for a traveler. He could have just upgraded his phone but he hated surfing the web or trying to text on a small screen.
He drove slowly across the country, sometimes stopping for a night, sometimes for a week or more anywhere he felt like it. Eight months later he was pulling into a resort outside of Colorado Springs. Three months later he was looking for a house in the mountains near there.
Who would have thought that an ex New Jersey working stiff like him would fall in love with the mountains of Colorado. When he found the perfect house on 10 acres his realtor warned him he would have to stock up on food for the winter as sometimes the mountain passes were closed for weeks. He only half heard her and that winter he was very sorry he hadn't listened closer. He got by, but barely, and was mighty hungry when the mountain pass finally opened and he could get into town. He stopped at the grocery store and literally filled his Escalade with food, he drove home and unloaded it and then made another trip and filled it again. Finally comfortable that he could make it through the winter he started surfing the web. He was determined never to go through that again so he started studying up on prepping. This brought him into a whole new world and gave him a very different view of the world than he had before. He started reading about prepping and that led him to survivalist sites, this led him to study up on the worlds political and social systems and he didn't like what he saw.
He went down to the local gun store and started learning about and eventually purchasing many different guns, he slowly converted some of his money to gold and eventually looked up a shelter company. He saw one that advertised complete systems and they used out of state crews to build them so no one local would know what was going on. He called them and that summer they installed his shelter. He spared no expense, solar powered, deep well, everything top of the line.
He then, after reading up on about op sec, or operational security, basically keeping your mouth shut about what you were doing and making sure no one could piece together that you were buying enough food and ammo to keep a small country going, he rented a small house in Colorado Springs where few people knew him and started ordering supplies to be delivered there, everything from freeze dried foods to Geiger counters to ABC suits and hundreds of miscellaneous items, then at night he would load the supplies into his Escalade inside the garage at the rental and drive them out to his house to also be unloaded inside his garage there. He had spent over a quarter of a million dollars on supplies and shipping alone and that didn't even count the shelter itself or his guns and ammo or his gold. By the time winter came he knew could survive anything.
Now 4 months after the President addressed the nation about the E2 plague he was bored out of his mind. The shelter was nice and it had every creature comfort money could buy except companionship. It was 20' x 40' not counting the battery room or the supply closets on the sides. His entire world had dwindled to 800 square feet. His original plan had been to stay here a year breathing his filtered air and hopefully the virus would burn itself out, but then his Satellite TV stopped broadcasts and eventually the internet went down. He felt like he was in solitary confinement, some days he never even got out of bed he was so bored and depressed. .
Let's see, it was September now, that means it'll start snowing soon in the mountains. If he was going to see what was happening it would have to be now or he'd be stuck for the winter and there was no way he could stand that, he'd go out of his mind. He decided that he would put on his ABC (Atomic/Biological/Chemical) suit and drive around and try to see what was going on, try to find someone, get some news of the outside world. With the suit on he didn't really fit into the Escalade, well no one was around to spread any flu germs, so he took off the helmet and put on an N95 breathing mask, he'd replace the helmet when he got into town.
Dead rotting corpses were everywhere, that’s all he found, even when he drove into Colorado Springs, not a living soul in sight. For a while he ran from store to store then even from house to house, trying to find anyone or even a sign that someone was still alive, but there was no one. Sometime in his running from shop to shop in a daze trying to find someone, anyone, he lost the mask and his suit got ripped, he didn't even realize it, somehow he got back to his house in a daze, he didn't even really remember the drive back. He couldn't grasp everyone on the planet being dead, but if Colorado Springs was any sign he could very well be the last man left alive on planet Earth.
He went down into his shelter and sat staring off into space for how long? an hour? a day? longer? he couldn't remember. He felt like he had a fever coming on, oh well, without some kind of companionship he wasn't going to make it anyway. A life not shared is not a life worth living, only one thing left for him to do.
The last thing that went though his mind, besides the bullet that is, was "F'n lottery, I wish I'd never played, I would have died with my wife and children instead of all alone."
A shot rang out as the last man in Colorado took his own life.
