Stupid journal. My therapist told me writing stuff down is a good way to deal with my depression and PTSD; I told him he could stuff it up his ass. He didn’t appreciate that, tried to give me some absurd dose of lithium. I don’t know, maybe he’s right; talking about the lithium, not the journal. It’d be nice for a while to just sit and drool in a corner without being judged, by myself, or anyone else. I think I should have done something after the Corps, but, you know, or maybe you don’t. You’re trained to become a killer of men, a lethal machine capable of tearing through the enemy. You’re not supposed to be all soft and spongey in the head. And sure, as a society, we’ve made great strides in terms of mental health and what we think about it, but if you believe all the stigma that’s associated with it has gone away, well then, you’re a bigger fool than I thought. (Just so we’re clear, I don’t expect anyone other than Dr. Pinhead – Pinchot – to be reading this, so he’s the fool I’m alluding to.) Fuck. I really do carry a lot of barely muted anger.
Stick to what the doc said, Talbot. And now I’m referring to myself in the third person. What comes next? Tin foil hats and conspiracy theories? I suppose I’ll just get to it, the thing that finally forced my ass into a shrink’s office. Eventually, maybe I’ll get to my time overseas, but, for now, I think I’ll just stick with Alaska. Fucking Alaska. Didn’t want to go in the first place. COPOUT! Mother fucker. Can’t even write my thoughts down on paper without berating myself. Well, it’s a partial truth. Initially, I didn’t want to go; that’s a safe reveal.
As much as I bitched about it, I did enjoy our time in the car, and WOW, when we got to Alaska, I’d never seen anything quite like the majesty of it all. Colorado has some incredibly beautiful vistas, but Alaska.... It was like they pumped their views up with steroids. Would have been nice to keep enjoying it, but the world decided to do a somersault and came up short on the landing, sending chunks of California, Oregon, Washington (unfortunately not the swampie Washington) and Alaska into the ocean. The resulting tsunamis killed millions in dozens of countries around the world. The instability in the US from the disaster has given other countries the idea that we may be ripe for the picking. We’re not quite dead yet, but as a nation, we are limping. California had the highest Gross National Production in the US; if it had been a sovereign nation, it would have been fifth in the entire fucking world. But now it has ground to a virtual halt, and where the economy goes, so does confidence in the ability of a nation to provide for its citizens.
So yeah, now I carry the lingering terror of all that's happened in my life along with dread for what the future holds for my country, my family, and my friends. Can I possibly keep them safe? My track record is checkered at best. I wrote a book about what happened in Alaska, I fictionalized it, changed some things.... In that version, Linda lived, and she didn’t reveal her feelings or even have them to keep hidden. Of all the shit that happened, that sting of betrayal seems to be the part that sticks the most; I couldn't write about it. How can you love someone and believe that someone loves you back, only to be so incredibly wrong about it? Just doesn’t make any sense. How do you not pick up on that? The only thing that makes it somewhat easier to swallow was she'd duped Tracy as well. Sort of a fucked up thing to say, but I don’t mean it in a negative way. I mean, perhaps it’s not that my ability to gauge a person is inherently screwed, but rather Linda was just that good. Like a professional, good.
The book didn’t do as well as my first attempt at writing, but my publisher was convinced that had more to do with the state of the world than any decline in my ability. Honestly, I don’t give a shit. They paid me handsomely for the rights, and I’ve been busy buying all sorts of disaster supplies. Even bought a parcel of land up in the Rocky Mountains, and next week, a company I found that specializes in personal bunkers breaks ground on that very piece of land. Tracy didn’t agree initially; thought we should be using the money for a variety of other pressing needs, but it's been hard to dismiss all the news that talks about how we were circling the drain.
Damn, talk about veering off course. Okay, back to Alaska. When we came upon Tracy, she looked like a stand-in for Carrie of Stephen King fame. The joy I felt at seeing her alive was in direct contrast to the anguish that hit BT square in the face. He let out a gasped wail before turning back and heading outside. For a fraction of a second, I thought about going to comfort him, but in the kitchen was my wife, who could have been dead. I can’t bring myself to say, or I guess write, that she might’ve been dead; that word distinction seems to be all that allowed me to keep it together, albeit barely. I wanted to hug her so tight she would have been in more danger of getting hurt from me crushing her than from the yeti I had to step past. She sobbed on my shoulder—nope, I’m fucking lying—I sobbed on her shoulder. Maybe she cried, I honestly couldn’t tell. I was ugly crying, my entire body hitching around spasmodically. I think the last time I had cried with such unbridled force was when one of our dogs was lost unexpectedly and far too soon. By the time I disengaged from my wife, I thought we were going to need a pry bar, as the gore had congealed and set like a bloody mortar.
“Go and check on BT. Then you need to get me to a hospital.”
I nodded my head to her in understanding.
BT was a fucking mess. He was lying on the garage floor face down, the concrete wet with his tears. If it’s possible for a heart to truly break, that was exactly what his had done, and mine tore some, watching him suffer. This was going to change the man; profound suffering does that to a person. I’m not saying animals don’t grieve, but they seem better able to cope with it, like they understand the nature of loss better than we do, that it is a fundamentally necessary thing. After an hour, we were able to relocate to a nearby house. I helped BT to a bed and got Tracy as comfortable as I could. Her arm looked like shit, and I knew something had to be done before it got infected.
Two houses away, I found a snowmobile that worked. I was just starting it up when the barrel of a gun was held to my head. The owner of the snowmobile initially pegged me for a mass murderer; hard to blame him. I gave him the condensed version of the story, none of which he believed. I convinced him to follow me back to the house where the alpha was. He was behind me with a gun to my back the entire time. I could only hope he was aware of trigger discipline. After a dozen or so "fuck me's," he came around. I brought him to the house we had relocated to. He spent a few minutes looking over Tracy’s injuries.
“I’m going to go back to my house and get some supplies.”
“Can we get her to a hospital?” I asked.
“The closest hospital is twenty miles away, and last I heard, it was closed. I’m an EMT. Her breaks look clean enough, shouldn’t be any problem for me to set them.”
“Without an x-ray?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t without risk, but I’m her best chance right now.”
“Thank you.” I stuck out my hand. "Mike Talbot.”
“Matt Hammer.”
True to his word, he was back a few minutes later with two medical kits. The first thing he did was put Tracy on an IV with some included painkillers. He got her arm cleaned up and set before encasing the entire thing in plastic. “When you’re ready, you can come to my house. I have a generator; you can get the rest of this slop off of you.”
When Tracy and I got back later that night, we could hear BT’s wracking sobs as they echoed throughout the home. None of us were going to be able to sleep that night. We stayed for close to a week. Matt came over every day with food and to check on his patient. BT did the minimum necessary for survival, drinking some water and taking small bites of food offered. I was genuinely fearful that he was letting go of the will to live. He had no kids to anchor to, not even a pet; he’d been an only child, and his parents had passed a few years back. He had cousins and an abundance of friends, but I wondered if that would be enough to keep him going. On the morning of the sixth day, he spoke more than a mumbled "thank you" for food.
“I’m ready to go home.” He didn’t meet my gaze when he said it, like he was ashamed. If the roles had been reversed, I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have stole out in the middle of the night, retrieved my lost weapon, and, well, I guess I’m not going to write what would have happened next, down. It took Matt and myself a couple of days to find three snowmobiles. I kept expecting the yetis to come back, especially to retrieve the body of their Alpha female, and to seek revenge on those who had killed her. They very much seemed like a species to hold a grudge tightly in their enormous fists.
Anchorage had returned to a somewhat normal state; the riots had been quelled with the activation of the National Guard. It was weird to see armed soldiers at nearly every corner. As disconcerting as it was, it also felt somewhat comforting. Yeah, I know that’s weird.
We were able to get in touch with the kids; they were fine, as were my pups, which I can’t even begin to convey through words how relieved that made me feel, like this enormous unseen darkness within my mind had been chased away with a spotlight. Getting a flight out was a process, to the point I didn’t think it was going to happen. I wanted to rent a car and drive back, but that wasn’t an option as it seemed the entire state was somehow out of those. I contemplated stealing one; couldn’t imagine the cops would give two shits about a missing vehicle. Problem being I had no idea how to hotwire one, and I wasn’t much into carjacking, especially since one yell from the victim would bring machinegun toting soldiers. Yeah I’ve had better ideas.
Five days and twelve quelled tirades later, we got aboard a flight. I wasn’t even pissed it was a middle seat or that there were four screaming babies aboard and somehow all strategically placed around me. The flight brought us to Nebraska, which was fast becoming an airline hub, because the Western Seaboard was a shambles. What the earthquakes, tsunamis, floodwaters, even volcanoes, and rioting hadn’t wrecked, the sweeping fires they caused were taking care of. Getting a flight to Denver was somehow more problematic; everything was sold out for close to a week. We would have had to wait in the airport, as all the hotels were booked. And even if we waited, there was no guarantee we’d be able to board, as we were on standby. Unlike Alaska, Nebraska still had rental cars, but oh, the gouging bastards realized they had us weary travelers by the short hairs. The biggest car I could get was a KIA sedan; BT looked like a Bull Mastiff in a cat carrier inside that thing. I smiled as I told the customer service rep that I most assuredly wanted the damage waiver insurance, as much as they could put on, in fact. My smile should have been enough for them to realize that the car they got back was going to be an amalgamation of parts. What was normally an eight-hour drive we did in six and a half; must have passed three Staties unmolested. Not sure if they saw the grim determination upon my face or the anguish on BT’s, but none pulled us over.
I drove the first hour, until my hands started to shake so fiercely Tracy made me pull over. BT didn’t even offer, but to be fair, mentally, he was not there with us, and having him drive would have not been a wise move. Tracy, even on painkillers, did surprisingly well, and managed to break all manner of land speed records. I had no idea what to do with BT when we pulled up onto our street. He’d suddenly come awake, and like he’d ripped the fresh scab off, he started crying again. Our kids were in the driveway, and I felt fucking guilty as hell celebrating with them that we were alive. I wanted to keep it as subdued as possible out of respect for my friend, but there was a shit ton of crying and clutching, hugging, more crying, and that was just me. We tried to get BT to stay with us for a while, but he politely declined. He said he wanted to be where he’d been the happiest with his wife, to hold on to her memory for a while longer. I couldn’t fault him that, but I still worried about him.
I’d not been expecting the For Sale sign a week later. I’d gone outside to check on him, like I did every day, and there it was; Jandilyn Hollow from Indian Hill Realty had the listing. Her smiling face graced the metal placard. She looked vaguely familiar.
“What are you doing?” I asked when he answered the door.
“I can’t stay here anymore.”
I went to open the screen door to talk some sense into him, but it was locked, and he didn’t move to unlock it.
“But…but we’re brothers.”
“I’ll always love you and Tracy, Mike, but this is too hard. Everything here is a reminder of what I no longer have.”
“Where are you going to go?” I hoped it was maybe the next street over.
“I’ve decided to go back to Alaska.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“It was the last place she was alive. Trip and Stephanie are graciously allowing me to stay in one of their homes.”
“Is this a permanent thing?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get over her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I’m not saying you can’t visit Alaska, but I’ll never be back here.”
Two days later, I watched as an Uber came and picked up my best friend. We waved to each other. I went inside and cried until my head pounded, took a couple of aspirins to alleviate the pain, then started anew. That was two years ago. We talked a handful of times on the phone. True to his word, he never came back to Colorado, and I couldn’t bring myself to go back to Alaska.
The country is in the midst of a full-scale collapse. Tomorrow the family and I are heading up to our place in the mountains. The shelter is built and stocked. I’m not sure if I’m prepared for this new life, but it’s coming whether I'm ready or not.