Salinas/Solitary Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Do I stay or do I go? If I go, go where? And if I stay, how do I live? There is a ton of stuff in the hut, but so what? It’s just stuff. Just because I’m eating today doesn’t mean I can eat tomorrow. 

Could I hunt for food? Probably not. I have no idea how to hunt. Never been hunting. Fishing? I still haven’t checked out the lake. But I wasn’t exactly a fisherman either. I’d done it a couple of times when I was a kid, but I never owned a rod. Which leaves growing food, and the field broke me. It was working in that damned tomato field that broke me. 

I could feel the rubbery skin of the green tomatoes under my fingers, I could smell the chemicals and the cat-piss stink of the dirt. That was something I would never forget. The dirt didn’t smell like dirt. What the hell was that? What the hell were they doing in that field? Why did they send us in? Couldn’t they have waited? 

The thoughts came in like a forest fire off the mountains. I sat in the weeds outside my tent and hung on ‘till they burned out. 

My instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to run. These guys had technology. They made a tablet. They made those lights. They had plastic. So they definitely had cars and TV’s and airplanes and all that. The internet. But I wasn’t seeing chemtrails in the sky, and hadn’t seen a single gas station or old junker up on blocks since I got here. Hadn’t seen a single antenna, satellite dish or telephone pole either. 

Wherever this was, it wasn’t connected to the outside world. Not anymore. I should explore more, but this is where the food was, and the tent, and the tools. So far I haven't even found a backpack. How would I carry things if I didn’t have at least that? 

Maybe it was in another box. Time to go back to the tablet. Brown was ready for me. Bro had a map in his hands, and looked confused. Then a picture came up of a small hill near a stream, or a spot a bit uphill from a lake. Then an aerial picture turned up, and I locked in. 

This was the first actual picture I had seen on the tablet. Everything else had been cartoons. I found a lake at one end of the picture. The roads looked similar to what I had seen before. 

I tried to zoom in on the picture, but no luck. It was frustrating. I wanted a better look at everything. The buildings were all pretty close together, and there really weren't many big roads. There was a highway around the edge of the city, and… maybe a railroad? I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. 

None of the buildings looked really tall. Most of ‘em seemed to be between four and six stories. There were what looked like playing fields scattered around, and a bunch of parks. Like… way too many parks. There were little clumps of trees in the middle of the city too, like the park with the red-leaf trees I was in now. I hunted around on the map- yes! There it was.

I found the park with red-leaf trees. I was pretty much in the middle of the city, maybe cheating a little forward towards the lake. The city was bigger than I had thought. It seems like a lot of the buildings and fields had already turned back into wilderness. The tablet overlaid blue channels on the picture. No points for guessing what those were. There was a little button at the bottom of the screen that I didn’t recognize. I tapped it. The colors of the picture went weird, all wavy lines and junk. 

It took me a few minutes to realize it was changes in height. I had seen it playing with maps on my phone. You could have it show you mountains, valleys and whatever.

So… what did the tablet say again? Find a slightly elevated spot next to a water source. Okay, looks like I had some good options. But why not on flat ground? I had worked on farms and driven past farms, and they were mostly flat. Orchards were on hills. So were vineyards. But farms? Flat.

I played with the buttons again, and figured out a spot not too far from me. I dove back into the boxes, but still no backpack. Screw it. I loaded up a sling, remembered to grab a machete this time, and went out. 

The city streets looked wider in real life, compared to the old photographs. The buildings had fallen down, so they didn’t crowd out the light. The roads were still on a grid, so that was comfortingly familiar. They had holes in the ground that I reckon must be storm drains or something. There was a lake. There were rivers and streams. There would be rain. Las Vegas has storm drains, and they’re in the middle of the desert. I might not be finding much of any artifacts of anything here, but there were definitely sewers.

It had been a good sized city. People need the bathroom. There would be sewers. Maybe an outflow pipe on the lake or something. Or maybe they treated it and sprayed it on the fields. I remember one of the guys on the prison bus to the farm saying that- the fields were sprayed with literal human shit. They did something to it, then sprayed it on the fields.

I started noticing little animals as I was walking around. Some looked like mice or rats. Others… chipmunks, maybe? Nothing bigger than my thumb was running around. Somewhere, I just know, there are coyotes. I’m not seeing them, though. Soon enough they’ll turn up. They always do. For now, this was the playground of the little guys, digging through the dirt, nibbling on grass and bushes, and giving me a heaping dose of stink eye. 

Well, whatever. It was their city anyhow. The walk was still pretty easy, but my prison sneakers weren’t holding up great. They were made for walking on flat concrete. The little rocks and bits of rubble poked right up through the soles. Didn’t poke a hole, yet, but it’s gotta be just a matter of time. 

Were there work boots in the chests in the hut? On the one hand, what the hell are people gonna do without shoes? On the other hand, how many pairs of shoes can you really shove in a bunch of containers and still have room for anything else? Especially if you figure that they had planned for groups of a hundred or more to turn up. 

Nice day, though. A little hazy, a little cool, but it had that feel to it that said today was going to be a hot one. Something else I don’t have- a hat. Shoes are tough because of sizing, but you can’t shove a few Lakers caps in a box or something?

You tire out fast with no hat. It wasn’t really optional gear if I was going to be living outside. Could I weave a hat or something? Straw hats are a thing, so are hats out of palm leaves. 

I looked over the rubble, seeing zero straw or palm leaves. No idea how to find out if the tablet had ‘Palm Leaf Hat’ building instructions. Just going to have to be future-me’s problem. Worst case scenario, I’d cut some cloth and cover my head with a bandana.

It smelled good. My feet crunched through the dirt and grass, and the smell of it all just went poof- straight up and into my nose. It smelled good. It felt good. Hearing the birds calling, and not thinking “One day, I’ll be free like them.” 

The day had heated up; the morning cold evaporated quick. The first place I looked was a bust. There might have been a stream there once, but not anymore. Also, the amount of rubble on the site was still way too much. Everything might be breaking down, but not fast enough. At least, not here. It looked like… I don’t know what it looked like. A broken down office building on a hill or something. Who knows what they used to do there. 

A hill I lost my footing on, slid down, and nearly broke my ankle in the process. Again. Two for two on hills, so far. Part of it had to be the shoes, but the other part was that the hill was just way steeper than I thought it would be. It wasn’t even very tall. I dug out the tablet and took a hard look at it. The lines showing the change in height were closely stacked together for this site. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought that would be better. That is, less steep.

It was not. Closer together meant steeper. I quickly knocked off two more sites from my plan of places to check out. They were, if anything, steeper than this spot. Maybe that would change since the map was made, but… do hills change that much? I took a minute, sorted myself out, and aimed myself at the next hill. 

This one was pretty good. There was a little stream running near the base, and the slope wasn’t too steep. The rubble was mostly broken down too- if I didn’t know there had been a city here, I’d have thought it was just a little shrub-covered hill. The stream was about as wide as my hand. It was cute. Was the water safe to drink? Probably not, but on the other hand, why not? Not like there was any pollution around here to worry about. I scooped up a mouthful. It tasted weird, but not bad-weird. 

I’d seen actual irrigation canals. This little trickle wasn’t going to do it. The water in it was moving right along, but… just not enough. Which knocked two more sites off my list. That left the sites closest to the lake. Which was a damned long hike. I got to walking. 

It took… I’m going to guess four hours. By the time I got there, I was about dead. There were probably ticks and other nasties in the grass, and I didn’t care one bit. I fell over into the scrub and just lay there. I’d taken breaks along the way, but four hours walking? I’d never walked nearly that far. My feet hurt. My legs were sore, and hot, and the jumpsuit was rubbing on me in a way I did not enjoy one bit. 

I’d go take a swim in a minute. I couldn’t be more than two hundred yards from the lake. The far shore was just a smudge of trees on the horizon, and I could only see that when I was up on top of the hill. No shortage of fresh water here. I’d… probably have to learn how to fish, wouldn’t I? Or can you farm fish too? I feel like I’ve heard of people farming fish, but I don’t know how that works.

The hill was pretty round, and not very steep. There was a small river that ran past the base of it to the north. It was about six feet across. Not huge, but it looked at least four feet deep, so big enough for me not to worry about it running dry. Or at least I hoped it wouldn’t run dry. I looked over at the lake. Screw it. Good enough. 

I got on the tablet and opened the map screen. There was a little icon of a house. I dragged it onto the hill. The tablet made a little chime, and petals started flying across the screen in stop-motion jerky animation. I had picked a place to build a home. 

I didn’t feel much about it. There was nothing here. It was a lump of a hill. There were little shrubs growing on it, and lots of grass. A few little flowers. Clover, maybe, mixed in there. Some mushrooms, with their white stems and little brown hats. I… don’t know if it will be safe to grow food here. Not all mushrooms are poisonous, but the ones in the wild are, right? I thought it over and figured there wasn’t anything I could really do about it. I’d just do my best to keep the mushrooms out of my fields. When I had fields. 

Never broke earth for plowing before. Really not looking forward to it now. How was the water supposed to get up the hill? Did they have pumps in the hut? Did they expect me to drill a well? Or just go and fill a bucket for every last little thing? 

I rested up for a bit, sitting in the weeds and wild grass. Then I walked down to the lake. It smelled marshy, but the lake bottom looked okay. Not sandy, not yuck. Just… looked fine. I stuck my hand in. Cooler than I would have thought, but not cold. I dunno, I’m a pool guy, not a lake guy. 

I was a pool guy. I guess I’m a lake guy now. I stripped off, feeling exposed, then feeling like a moron because who cared if I was naked? There was, literally, nobody here to care. I kicked it all off and waded into the water. It was cool, and tasted fresh. I swam out a little bit, then swam closer to shore. I didn’t want to leave my clothes for some reason. Then I called myself an idiot again, because… what, exactly? A bird was going to steal my non-existent wallet?

The water was cool, but not cold. Lifting me up some, but I was mostly under the surface. Just my mouth, nose and eyes sticking out of the water. I tried to just… breathe. Look up at the white clouds and blue sky and that hint of haze like a lace curtain over the window. Just let it all go, and breathe. Funny- I should be relaxing, but I found it hard to breathe. Like I was choking. Like I was going to have a panic attack trying to relax.

I freaked out. I ran out of the water and pulled out the machete. I was dripping wet, but I refused to be caught without at least my drawers on, so wet or not, I pulled them up. It took five times longer than usual, because they stuck to my wet skin, and one hand was full of machete. Then I just stood there, big knife in hand, waiting. Listening to the birds and the wind rushing through the long grass.

Nothing happened. Which, if I had been thinking straight, was exactly what I should have expected. What could happen? Not like there were alligators in northern California. And… this might not be northern California, but it feels kind of similar, so close enough.

I tried to big myself up. Waved the machete around, made ‘HUAH!’ noises and ‘YAH!’ noises, “They call me… Machete!” Though I don’t have a bit of that Danny Trejo in me. It didn’t do much, but it did let me air dry. I suppose it helped me feel better eventually. 

My orange jumpsuit was lying in a little heap on the ground, covering my beat out prison sneakers. I’d been wearing it because I didn’t have anything else, but-

The prison uniform was lying on the ground and all I could think of was a shed snakeskin. Like I had rubbed and scratched and peeled it off and dropped it in the dirt, but now I had to put it back on again. It felt nasty. Not just dirty, nasty. But I wasn’t going to walk for hours through rubble and tall grass in my prison briefs. 

There were flies out here. I was already getting bit, and I didn’t see any bug spray in the bins. Nasty or not, it’s what I had. All I had been issued. I pulled it on, feeling like I was getting dirty again just after washing off in the lake.

I started hiking back, thinking about what I’d do. I couldn’t keep waiting for the tablet to spoon feed me things. There were… probably a hundred or more big crates in that underground storage. I’d have to start searching through them. 

Maybe the tablet could explain what the symbols on the boxes meant. Maybe it could teach me their language. It seemed in character for them. Anyone who would put Ikea instructions for building a house would for sure include instructions on learning their language. And I can’t believe there are no clothes at all in there. I just can’t. 

I gotta see how much food is in there. How many seeds are there for planting. How many plants do I need to live? I Hope the tablet knows, because I don’t. Nails. You need nails and screws and junk to make a house, right? Actually, you need wood first. Where’s the wood? Because I can’t see myself making a log cabin or anything. They built out of that weird concrete a lot. Actually, they seemed to build everything out of it. Maybe I’d find out why. 

The grass blew this way and that, knocked around by the breeze off the lake. It was a hot day, but not too bad. No smog. No forest fire orange reaching across the sky. Little flowers blossomed everywhere, with their clusters of white or blue or yellow popping up in the green and tan ruins. The murals falling apart, coming down on the little mice and moles below. 

The people who painted the pictures were long gone, but it didn’t feel sad, exactly. People had gone through this city with a fine-toothed comb. They had picked up… seemed like pretty literally everything they could carry. They had tidied up, and left only things designed to collapse and turn into dirt. That, and the hut.

There were birds singing and flying around. Up high, I could see buzzards circling. There were insects chirping, and half of ‘em were coming for my blood. There were little critters running everywhere, so many you couldn’t help but see them. I was standing in ruins and rubble, but this wasn’t a dead place. It was a place that I wanted to live in. Which made me think- How do I want to live?