Chapter 1 The Virus
Atlanta, Georgia is a beautiful place to visit. It is truly the south and exhibits all of the southern charms we associate with the south. Great barbeque pork, beautiful women and Cheetah III, one of this countries best nude gentlemen's clubs. I was there on business visiting Atlanta for a couple of weeks when the holocaust hit the entire nation. It happened so fast and was so devastating that no one had a chance to determine how it happened or do anything about it.
Apparently some radical terrorist group had figured out how to deliver a fatal virus to the entire country. Within twenty-four hours 95% of the population came down with a very severe flu like virus that proved fatal within the next 48 to 72 hours. How it was delivered or spread they didn't have time to find out. It swept the country very fast. Overnight the hospitals were overwhelmed. People were dying in the streets; it was as though the end of the world had come. Anarchy erupted almost immediately. Looting, shootings, utter chaos prevailed. Virtually all infrastructures ceased to operate. With no one to operate the power, phones, water, you name it, they quite working. People were looting stores, stealing cars, robbing everything, all to no avail, as they couldn't take it with them when they got sick and died.
When I came down with this flu, I had no idea what was happening. I stayed in my hotel room in bed, watching TV the first day and then it quit. The phones went dead and the radio stations went down also. The Cell phone system also went down the second day. Unfortunately, before I had decided that I should call someone. All communications systems were dead. Late the second day the power went off. Sick as I was I now began to get worried. I was running a fever, throwing up and had diarrhea real bad. The only thing that I had with me was a bottle of extra strength Tylenol that seemed to ease my aching joints.
My hotel was near downtown Atlanta and my view out my third floor windows was shocking. Fires, looting, people running, sick people everywhere that I could see. This was very bad. How bad I had yet to understand. For the next three days I spent my time between the bed and the bathroom, mostly in the bathroom. It's a bitch when you need to sit on the stool and also hold a waste can to puke in at the same time. I had never had the flu so bad. My fifty-eight year old body was being hammered pretty hard. I must have lost at least 15 lbs. in those three days. That put me just under 200 lbs. I had intended to loose some weight, but not this way. After three days of being racked by this flu I started to feel better, not much, but a little. I was weak as hell and had no energy.
On the morning of the fourth day I got up and decided that I needed to go out and get something to eat. I was hungry, and needed a shower badly. I showered. The water was still running and evidently the gas was still working, as there was hot water. I took a long hot shower and felt much better. I dried, shaved and dressed and left my room. The elevators weren't working so I walked down three flights of stairs to the hotel lobby. There was no one there. I decided to have a look outside. Once outside it felt good to be out in the warm spring sun. I noticed a very distinct odor in the air. It was the smell of death and the dead. I had smelled it before in Viet Nam, so I knew what it was. There was also an eerie silence; there were no sounds of the city or people. I noticed a couple of bodies, but no other people. No movement, just silence. I walked down the street a couple of blocks. Store windows were broken out as they had been looted. I was getting hungrier by the minute. I needed to find something to eat. I decided to go back to the hotel and see if there was anything in the hotel kitchen. Back at the hotel I walked through the lobby into the coffee shop, again there was no one there. I went behind the counter to the grill and turned it on. The gas flame on the burner fired. I went into the prep kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was not running, but having been closed and not opened the foodstuff inside was still cool. I gathered up some eggs, butter, ham, shredded potatoes and orange juice. I took these back out to the grill. I went back and found some bread and strawberry jam. I took these to the grill. I heated up a couple of frying pans and cooked the ham, hash brown and eggs. I toasted the bread over one of the burners and sat down to breakfast. I ate what I had cooked and got up and cooked a second helping. I was hungry and it tasted wonderful.
Once sated I decided to go back up to my room and take a nap. I was tired and my full belly was making me drowsy. When I got to the door of my room my magnetic key failed to open the door. Now wasn't this a hell of a deal. All my belongings were in my room and I couldn't get in. I went back down to the lobby and then toward the rear of the hotel. I found the janitors/maintenance room and got a crowbar and a hammer. I went back up to my room and pried and beat the door open. Those steel doors are tough. I finally got in by knocking off the door handle and then tripping the door latch with my finger. Once inside I lay down and dozed off immediately.
I awoke later hungry again. I went back down to the coffee shop kitchen area found some things to eat and prepared my dinner. I had found a steak, corn on the cob, potatoes and some asparagus that were all good. As I sat eating my dinner I contemplated my situation. I wasn't sure what had happened, but I was sure that it was catastrophic. Here I was in Atlanta, Georgia, 3500 miles from my home in Southern California.
I decided that I needed to get back to the west coast. Driving seemed to be the only way. I was sure that there were no airlines flying. I ruled out a motorcycle, a car or pickup seemed a logical choice. The pickup offered more capacity to haul what I would need to make the trip. I was weighing my options carefully. I didn't know what was out there and would need to prepare for any eventually. A thousand thoughts raced through my head as I tried to figure out what had happened and how extensive the virus had affected the whole country. Little did I realize that the effects of the virus were massive.
Chapter 2 Preparing For The Trip
I retired early as the next day was going to be busy. I rose early and went down to the coffee shop kitchen and made some breakfast. After breakfast I packed my belongings and left the hotel and started walking down the street. Looted stores were everywhere. There were a few bodies of the dead. The whole downtown landscape was devastated. Within a few blocks I found a car that still had the keys in it and loaded my baggage into the back seat of the Toyota and a headed out. As I drove around the city it became clear to me that the flu virus had wiped out virtually all of the population. I saw no living people. This was bad, very bad!
After thinking it over as I drove around I decided that a pickup wasn't going to work to get me home. I was not going to be able to haul enough to make the trip; especially if I was going to take enough with me to make the whole trip. There seemed to be only two viable choices. One was a tractor-trailer; this would allow me to take as much as I needed in the trailer. The other would be to get a large motor home and a trailer. This seemed to be the best choice. A motor home would proved me with self-contained living accommodations and the trailer enough space to haul extra fuel, and what tools I might need. I stopped at a convenience store and picked up a newspaper and looked up ads for motor home dealers. I also grabbed some maps of Atlanta, Georgia and the rest of the states that I thought I would be traveling through.
I picked out the RV dealer with the biggest ad and drove over to their location. There must have been over 200 motor homes in this place. I spent a couple of hours walking around the place looking. There was a lot to choose from. Eventually I selected a 40' 0' diesel pusher bus sized motor home with caterpillar power. The price tag on this window said $425,000 and it showed it. I thought I might as well steal the best if I was going to take one. The interior had a rear bedroom that was more luxurious than most hotel rooms. There were also two bunk beds just forward of the rear bedroom, with the bathroom across from the bunks. It also featured a full kitchen galley, and all leather furniture. This was real luxury. I also picked out a thirty foot three axle enclosed trailer. I found the keys to the units I wanted in the back room of the office. I hooked up the trailer, loaded my meger belongings into the motor home and pulled out.
The first problem that needed to be solved was fuel. As electrical power was out everywhere I would need to find a way to get fuel out of the in ground tanks at fuel stations and into the motor home. I located a fuel supply store and loaded a 750-gallon heating oil storage tank into the trailer and secured it. There was also an electric pump and hose that I could use to transfer the fuel. The motor home had a high output diesel generator that would supply power for the electric pump. I stopped at the first station that had diesel fuel and filled the 150-gallon tank in the motor home and the storage tank that was in the trailer. If my calculations were correct, at 7 MPG the 900 gallons of fuel that I had would be more than adequate to get me to California.
I found a Camping World store a short way from where I fueled up. Here I shopped for everything I could think of to supply and support the motor home including folding chairs and table for outside use. I also picked up a propane-fired barbeque along with several bottles of propane, which I loaded into the trailer.
Next stop was stop was at a grocery store. I turned on the refrigerator so it would be cool incase that I found any perishables that were still good. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the grocery store supplying the motor home with as much food stocks, cleaning supplies and personal hygiene goods as I could load into it. I also stocked up on what first aid supplies I could find. What supplies that wouldn't fit in the motor home cabinets I stored in the trailer. I spent that night in the grocery store parking lot.
I felt it would take me a couple more days to completely supply for the trip across country. I spent a little time listing the things that I would need and laid out a plan to obtain the things that I wanted to get.
