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AE Day 0
Trever Hinton was a 32-year-old Process Engineer for Motorola. He lived in a Phoenix suburb on the eastern side of a mountain, in a faux adobe home with his 26-year-old wife Lucy. She worked for a large Law Firm with offices in a nearby high-rise tower.
Trever was called in at 1:00 AM on Day 0 to solve a problem on a critical production line. He finally resolved it and was pulling into his driveway when the big quake hit. Part of his home collapsed, along with the development’s perimeter block wall and several area homes.
He thought of Lucy, working in the high-rise three miles away. Thirty minutes later, he arrived at the scene and found the seventeen story building a smoking pile of rubble. He spent six hours in a fruitless rescue attempt, before a ruptured gas main erupted, killing seven rescuers and incinerating anyone that may have survived the building collapse.
In a daze Trever drove home. Sitting in his living room, looking out where a wall used to be, and drinking Jack Daniels, he thought about ways to end it all.
It was dead dark when the roaring wind woke him. Within seconds, he was soaked from the torrential rain, and Trever retreated to his bedroom, which faced east.
He spent the next two days huddled in the bedroom, except for brief excursions into the kitchen for food and bottled water. He noticed that both his digital watch and smart phone were dead. During those desperate hours he decided that he wasn't ready to die and resolved to keep fighting as long as he could.
When the wind finally eased after 48 hours, he took stock. His nearly new BMW was now resting upside down against a neighbor's garage.
Lucy was not much of a cook. The cupboard was almost bare. He did have a mountain bike and some camping gear in the garage.
The rain continued unabated, and the arroyo across the highway was running bank full.
Trever checked the six homes on his cul-de-sac, and only two were occupied. Frank and Robert were a middle aged gay couple, and Robert had been on a respirator for two years. When the power went out, he switched to their portable oxygen bottles. They only had a day's supply left, and Frank said they would pass together when the oxygen ran out.
George and Sally Kirk were a retired couple, who had already moved into their old RV when the power went down. They had packed it full of everything they had in supplies and were ready to depart. They offered to give Trever a ride, but he declined, not wanting to be a burden.
In the empty homes Trever found stocks of additional food and water, which he moved to his bedroom. In one home he found a shotgun, a pistol and a stock of ammunition, which he left, thinking it was unlikely he would ever need them. A few days later, he heard shots back toward the city, and hastily retrieved both weapons.
In the weeks that followed, he came to the conclusion that help may not be arriving any time soon. He carefully went through the nearby houses, and brought back anything that might become useful. On another street, inside a garage, he found a VW based dune buggy that started.
None of the newer vehicles, even those with little damage would start, and he guessed that anything using electronics would not work. He loaded up the buggy with the two gas cans he found in the same garage, and drove it home. The shooting was getting closer, and he had been afraid that he would have to flee with only what he could carry on his back.
The rain torrents stopped in the night, and Trever started loading the buggy at first light. As he pulled up to the development entrance, a pair of old pickups came into view. Trever beat a hasty retreat when the occupants started firing at him. He heard a couple of shots hit the buggy, but kept running hard. At the rear of the development he drove over the downed block wall and into the desert.
He ran northeast, parallel to Highway 88 for 20 minutes before a flooded arroyo forced him to return to the road. An hour later, he reached the first bridge over Canyon Lake, and found it submerged.
Trever knew the area and backtracked to a trail. It took him up the mountain and cross-country. He then returned to the road past the bridge and reached the marina just before sundown. The rising water and wind had damaged the floating docks, and many boats were capsized or sunk. The Dolly Steamboat was a 100-foot excursion copy of a paddle wheel steamboat. It would provide a dry place to spend the night. It was wedged between a sunken floating dock and the bank.
Since the flooded bridge would block gang access to the area, Trever believed he would be safe for a while.
The next day he explored the marina, and discovered he wasn’t the only refugee at there. George and Sally Kirk had made it to the marina before the bridge was impassable, and they welcomed him. Another couple was at the campground in an Airstream trailer. They all spent the next few days exploring the buildings, boats, and vehicles for supplies and food items.
Trever had the least supplies initially, but he was the youngest and most fit, so he did most of the salvage and recovery work on the less accessible boats and docks.
The bridge to the main part of the Marina was also covered by several feet of water, but Trever was able to get an old Johnson outboard started. It propelled an equally old aluminum fishing boat around both sides of the marina.
They were able to salvage fishing gear, first aid kits, camping equipment, and a surprising amount of food, which was shared among the survivors. Trever moved his gear into a big cabin cruiser, which was more comfortable, closer to the campground, and had a working propane stove.
One morning, Trever took his mountain bike over to the other side and rode it over to the historic little town of Tortilla Flats. The wind destroyed the town, and there was no sign of life. He found some canned goods in the ruins of a restaurant, and completed his load with two bottles of wine.
The little group spent the fall and winter at the marina. They were able to supplement their store of food by fishing, which was usually productive.
The winter was not typical for Arizona. It snowed frequently, the lake froze over by late December, and did not thaw until late February. The rocket stoves he found in the camping gear helped conserve their fuel supplies by providing cooking and warming heat with limited quantities of wood.
By the end of April, Trever was getting restless. The other people were content to stay where they were and wait for relief to show up. Trever wasn’t confident that the government would ever show up, and his mother lived in an LA retirement home. He knew that if conditions were bad there, she would need help to survive. Somehow, he needed to make it out to California.
He packed up and rolled out, on May 15th, going cross-country, around the second bridge. It took him a week to pick his way through the rough country and make it back to Highway 88 at Tortilla Flats. He topped off fuel from two vehicles there, and continued out Highway 88.
Even though Highway 88 was a paved two-lane road, it was slow going because of slides and washouts. It took two days to reach the junction of Highway 188, where he turned north. This road was in much better shape and Trever reached the Highway 87 junction by noon, where he continued on toward Payson, Arizona.
Payson had suffered through a winter occupation by members of the Barrio Aztec gang. They departed in the spring, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Most of the buildings were burned. Only a handful of survivors were left. huddled in the ruins. They were not welcoming, and Trever was careful to tell them he was just passing through. They did tell him that the gang had gone north on 87 toward Winslow.
Trever left the next morning on Highway 260 toward Holbrook, Arizona. He was able to top off fuel from abandoned vehicles, and the buggy was running fine, until 25 miles out of Holbrook, Arizona. In the middle of nowhere, the transmission froze up from a small lubrication leak caused by a bullet fired as he drove out of his development.
After a quick check to verify the buggy was terminal, Trever loaded up his mountain bike and continued north. Two miles beyond the buggy, the rear tire blew out with a bang. He had no spare, so he continued on, pushing the disabled bike.
He camped for the night, three miles further down the road.
It took five days to reach the junction with highway 77. The next morning he abandoned the bike, took what he could carry ,and started north on Highway 77.
He was footsore, hungry and worn out completely.
