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Leaving Holbrook at 1:45 AM, we drove through Winslow with lights out and guns at the ready. With only three sets of night vision goggles, I had to sit in the passenger seat, staring into the dark.
After making it through Winslow with no problems, we kept running up the freeway for another 15 miles, before stopped at a burned out truck stop.
Danny wanted to top off all our fuel tanks before going over the mountains. After sunup, we checked the dozen abandoned trucks, and found their tanks were drained. By mid-afternoon, we were finished topping off from an underground tank.
We reached exit 204 on the outskirts of Flagstaff about sundown. As we approached, a bank of lights turned on. They showed that both the freeway and the exit were blocked.
We stopped a quarter mile before the exit and an old jeep pulled out to us. There were four heavily armed men inside it. An older man stepped down from the passenger seat and told us the freeway would be closed until an hour after sunrise. He also said Flagstaff was a closed, exclusive Mormon Community. He told us to camp for the night where we were and warned that trespassers would be shot on sight.
Danny thanked him for his warm hospitality.
With a sour look, he got back in the jeep. It then returned to the roadblock.
We kept a watch, but managed to get some sleep. The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we continued our journey. When we reached the timberline, it was shocking to see most of the big trees down and broken by the wind.
When we reached the junction with Highway 17, there was another manned roadblock, preventing access to Flagstaff. The junction was littered with shot up and burned out vehicles, and Trever surmised that a large gang had come up from Phoenix, and it looked like they had not made it into Flagstaff.
As we approached Exit 192 a young lady jumped up on the highway, waving her arms, and screaming for us to please stop. I was driving, and Trever grabbed an AR-15, opened the top hatch, and swept the area.
Danny jumped out as soon as I came to a stop, also holding an AR-15, and looking out for trouble.
Alice Rankin had run away from home the night before, instead of facing becoming the eighth bride of Elder Benton today. She had no idea what she would do, just that she would not marry him.
Tracy and I put our arms around the hysterical girl and comforted her. An hour later, she was hidden in the trailer, with Tracy and Trever for company. I was still driving and Danny was in back when we pulled up to the roadblocks on the north end of town.
The same old man was there. He demanded to know if we had seen a young girl on the road this morning. Danny told him we had not.
In reply, he ordered his men to search both vehicles.
Trevor popped the hatch and pointed the AR-15 at them and said, “I don’t believe you want to try that.”
Danny pulled his AR-15 from the seat and said, “We’ll be leaving you now. Follow us at your own risk. I don’t think you want to die trying to procure another bride for some old fart.”
Then he emptied a magazine into their jeep front tires and radiator.
The old man and his helpers hit the ground, and I hit the gas.
We ran down the mountain looking behind us for pursuit, all the way to Kingman, Arizona. We stopped on the outskirts of town to find some information about the area, and the roads west.
The Event and the after effects hit Kingman hard. Those people we talked to told us that the Highway 40 bridges over the Colorado River were washed away. When the gang came through town, they were decimated in another bloody fight. A few gang survivors had fled toward Las Vegas on Highway 93.
After two days trading a few seeds for some fresh vegetables, we took Highway 68 toward Bullhead City, where another bridge at Laughlin existed before the Event.
When we came over the hill, the valley was scoured. Not a single structure remained standing. Tracy remarked that Hoover Dam must have let go.
At the junction of Highway 163, we turned left toward the river, and came to a stop at the water’s edge.
Trever had visited Laughlin a couple of times, and was familiar with the area. He said that the bridge was a low structure, just a few feet above the water level. He walked down to the end of the road, and then started getting undressed.
Danny asked, “What in the hell are you doing?”
“I’m gonna check on the bridge. It looks like the river’s not too much higher than what used to be normal. I’m going to check the water level.”
He stripped naked, and walked into the water. The water level rose to his knees, and then to his thighs.
Tracy shouted, “You’re gonna freeze your pecker off, Trever.”
He kept going, but the water level did not increase. He continued across, and returned, on the other lane.
His return was greeted with praise and hope by all of us. It was a warm day. The water was not too cold. Soon we were all “sky clad”, and playing in the shallow water. That night, Alice joined Trever, in a friends with benefits relationship.
The next morning we worked on a plan to pull the van, and then the trailer, across the submerged bridge, using the winch on the front of the van.
The first problem was that the winch cable was 200 feet too short. We had enough rope to make up the distance, but it meant that it would be necessary to stop three quarters across the bridge, remove the rope, pull out 200 feet of cable, and secure it before resuming the transition.
The river current across the bridge was not too severe, but Danny was worried about the vehicle being swept off the bridge. We started moving the van across the next morning. Danny was driving and controlling the winch. The rest of us walked on the downstream side of the van, pushing it sideways, against the flow. When we reached the three-quarter point, Trever tied a rope from the van to the underwater upstream bridge railing.
The current started to tip the van, and we all pushed to keep it upright. Trever then took the end of the cable, untied the 200-foot rope, and took the cable to the west bank. As soon as it was secured, Danny took up the slack, Trever untied the rope to the bridge rail, and we slowly moved to the west bank.
The transition took most of the day. We were all cold and exhausted. After donning dry clothes and enjoying a hot meal, we went to sleep early. Rascal had made the trip perched on the console, and he kept a watch on the camp.
The next day, we repeated the process with the trailer. That transition was even more precarious since it relied solely on the winch for movement. I thought we were going to lose it a couple of times.
Danny had Alice running the winch controls, in response to his hand signals. I think that without his added weight and strength, it would have gone over the side.
The next two days were spent drying everything that had been soaked, re-packing, and resting.
The next morning, we lost Rascal. He was making a last sniff around camp when the rattler struck. I heard him growl and then scream. There was nothing we could do.
After a long cry, I buried him overlooking the river, and we moved on.
