Arnie in Seattle

Arnie Rowland's Journal

April 8th: Six days after crossing the border.

Canada is a lot meaner than you’d expect.

The day started the same way the last few days have been. A knock on the front door right at 8:00 A.M. sharp. Two knocks and they came in, three Canadian soldiers with a cart with nothing but two glasses and two plates, juice and bagels for breakfast again, five days in a row. They gave us the usual fifteen minutes to eat before they would take us and question us for hours on end about nothing in particular. We figured out that no matter how much we ate we had fifteen minutes. I ate, went to the bathroom and got ready to be taken away. I stood in front of the soldiers waiting for their timer to go off and have them escort me away. As soon as the timer went off one of the soldiers lunged forward and punched me in the face, the shock and the force knocked me to the ground, Beka immediately started screaming

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? WHERE ARE YOU TAKING HIM?!?” One of the soldiers body slammed Beka before they pulled a bag over my head and dragged me by my feet into the hallway. I could hear Beka kicking and screaming being taken the other way. They dragged me into what felt like the hotel room next door and picked me up and threw me on a table. They pulled the bag down so I could see out the top and it still covered my nose and mouth, the soldiers put on helmet/gas masks. The room was filled with men who hand and foot cuffed me to the table. The soldier standing over me responded in a muffled Darth Vader type voice.

“We know you are hiding something. There is no way you could survive that attack!” He dumped water down my throat. I had seen and heard of water boarding but I had no idea that it felt like you were drowning each and every second, only to keep you alive just enough to live to see the next hit of water. I couldn’t think about what he said, the only thing my body and mind could focus on was getting the next breath in. He hit me again with another hit of water. Starting the survival process all over again. I tried to swallow some of the water to get it out of my mouth so I could breathe. My fight to breathe sent the water right to my lungs instead of swallowing it. I coughed until my throat burned and I could breathe again. Then I realized what he said.

“Did you say attack? Does that imply that it wasn’t an accident?” The room dropped into silence and the soldiers looked around the longer the pause the more upset I got.

“Did you Canadian Bitches ATTACK US? YOU MURDERED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. HOW DO YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELFS?” I had a feeling that they didn’t want to respond so the soldier just threw another bucket down my throat. I tried to get the water out as much as possible but the damned cloth was on my mouth keeping it in. As I struggled to breathe I could hear the soldiers talking to each other until they eventually stopped when I was able to breathe. The soldiers started again.

“How did you SURVIVE?” No water this time.

“Did you think I was lying before? I told you we had a serum injected into us BEFORE the Fog came and only us two survived, the adults didn’t make it!” When I said the last thing about the adults, the weight of my parents and siblings being Emptie hit me. I was truly the last one of my family, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to change them back. The soldier screamed at me.

“How did you two dunderheads survive the fallout!?! You got caught AS you made land on Canadian Soil.” More water down my throat. I thought I might pass out from not having enough oxygen this time. As I collected myself I realized he hasn’t said anything like ‘answer me and I’ll stop’ He is just doing this for fun.

“We took from people's houses, our food, water, everything.” There was a long pause before anything happened, complete silence. The soldier got down close to my face before finally deciding to speak.

“We already know that, What did you take to survive the fallout?” There was no getting it through this guys head, after days of nice interrogation and now torture I told them all I know and they still believed that there was some kind of missing link or formula we used to survived. There was but I didn’t know it. He rolled his eyes, stood up, and waved to another soldier who was holding another bucket of water. As they got ready to pour it again I closed my mouth and eyes. I heard the door open and the water slosh around the bucket as they put it on the ground. I opened my eyes and the lead soldier was talking to someone in the doorway. I could make out just enough to get that they were talking in french to make sure I didn’t hear it. They continued to talk and then closed the door. The head soldier walked up and smiled,

“Looks like we are going on a little trip.” They slipped the bag over my head and closed the top. Dragging me back outside the room and outside the building, into what I assumed was a military truck. As soon as the door opened I could hear Beka screaming.

“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO US?” The soldiers didn’t say anything, she kept screaming. The truck started and we drove off, Beka constantly screaming. Until I snapped at her after a few minutes.

“BEKA! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” She sighed, pouted and stopped screaming. A few seconds later, the driver responded.

“You guys are going back to the States, or whatever it is now.” Beka did not like that.

“WHAT? WHY? WE GAVE YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANTED!” She did not know how to contain herself so she devolved to screaming as loud as she could without worrying about words. I kicked her as hard as I could and she immediately stopped screaming. I think that there was a part of my mind that knew that we would be taken back to the US once the Canadian government apprehended us the first night after we crossed the border. Beka had hope that I didn’t have. Each day in that room after the soldiers would question us she would go on about our new life in Canada or any other countries that weren’t affected. I wanted to tell her that they were probably going to take us back but with her excitement, hope and Joy, I couldn’t do that to her. Now as I started to hear her cry I wished I did. I decided my best option was to try again.

“Where are you going to take us?” I'm sure it was because I did not scream at him but the soldier responded.

“Airdrop into Seattle.” I paused for a second.

“Airdrop?”

“We can’t risk our soldiers' lives taking you to the destination. So, yes Airdrop.”

“Do we get parachutes?” I thought I would ask since they clearly don’t care about our safety.

“Yes you will get parachutes and a quick lesson on how to use them.” I breathed easy. At least we would live through that. The doors to the car opened and we were walked out and thrown into a plane, the engine started and we were in the air before we knew it. After a few minutes they ripped the hoods off us and they tossed us parachutes.

“Strap in.” They showed us how to clip into the chute, as well as what to do when we jump. Beka continued to cry as we did it. She would throw in comments like ‘you’re a monster for this’ and ‘how can you live with yourself’ as we strapped in. I could see the space needle with a few fields and what looked like a grass stadium. I was planning out where to drop right when the plane shuttered and went very silent. I could see the pilots look at each other and begin clicking buttons and turning back to the soldiers.

“We have a problem up here.” The soldier walked to the cockpit and started to raise his voice and the only thing I could hear over the wind.

“So there isn’t ANY way we can get back in time?” They pointed around the city and the soldier walked back to the body of the plane.

“Change of plans, the plane cut out and we are all gonna land in the city of seattle. WE,” He pointed at the soldiers and them himself.

"Are Canadian Nationals and WE alone accepted back into Canada if we cross the border.” He said as they all put on gas masks.

“You two will NOT be joining us. You will continue to live in the states ALONE. Got it?” We looked at each other and nodded.

“Now that, that is settled, Prepare for landing.” He pointed out the window and we had been spiraling around the city and had dropped significantly where we were below the tops of some of the buildings. We circled around a few more times until there was a long stretch of street that we touched down on. We came to a long, slow stop and we jumped out after the soldiers. They had their guns and jogged off to the nearest dock where they could steal a boat and go home. I turned around and looked at the Space needle behind us.

“Wanna see Seattle's one tourist spot? We started in and looked up the needle, no electricity means we had to take the stairs. We started our way up. I knew we needed a plan.

“There's a lot of things in here. It's a big city where we could stay the night and leave tomorrow morning. We know where the others are and we’ll meet up with them. ” Beka stopped me before my next sentence.

“Wait, are you saying that you don’t want to try again to get into Canada.”

“I mean, No? We saw how that went. I didn’t think going back would be in the realm of possibilities.” she looked confused and turned towards me

“You’d rather live in this wasteland than try to make a different plan that we can actually succeed at? Our plan was to just find a boat and make land, we can pick a spot away from people and figure out the Canadian immigration system and pretend we are from Australia or something and make a new life in a civilised society, we can make new friends, get jobs and live like we used to.” As she talked I got a little hopeful that her plan could work, on the words ‘like we used to’ I was reminded that there was no way to really get back to what life was like just a few weeks ago. We kept walking up the stairs, she was in front of me by a few steps and we walked in silence after her tirade. My legs burned as we got to the top. Once we got to the top she went into the bathroom and slammed the door. I knew she was too headstrong to admit that my plan had any validity. I decided to go into the kitchen looking for any cans. Given the high class nature of the restaurant most of the food was fresh, and now rotting. Once I went through the doors I got blind sided by the smell of dozens of fresh ingredients rotting and being eaten by hundreds of insects. I tried to hold my breath as much as possible to avoid vomiting. There were only a handful of canned ingredients. Not enough to live off for months, but enough for a few days. I found gloves and a mask and started to move the worst smelling ingredients out into the trash chute when I noticed Beka in the restaurant itself. She was simply staring out the window at the city. I cleaned up and walked up behind her. Then I saw thousands, possibly millions of Empties walking the streets, and sidewalks north in a moving carpet of death. They were clearly headed towards something on the horizon. We continued to keep a watch on the situation and see if we could figure out what was going on. We laid down on different bench seats facing the window, laying down and getting some rest. Finally taking off our jumpsuits and parachutes. After a while the Empties were gone from our area of the town. She woke me up.

“Do you want to try and find some weapons to defend ourselves just in case?” I was still groggy from passing out on the seat.

“Hmm? Oh, Ah. Where would we go? This isn't a small town Utah, gun stores, and people keeping guns in their houses is gonna be hard to come by. I doubt even Walmart has hunting guns in their locations. God I wish we had electricity to look it up.” I sat up and she just nodded with a grim face.

“So what's the plan now?”

“Well, this is a super high class restaurant so everything is fresh, so everything is rotten. There’s little to no guns in the city and there’s hundreds of thousands of Empties.” I paused for a second making eye contact with her making sure she understands the gravity of what I am saying.

“Still want to stay here?” She looked at me angrily, but knew I was right so she couldn’t get back at me. She stood back up and started walking around the restaurant, clearly panicking, and thinking about what to do. I kept moving around the slowly spinning restaurant to keep looking at the north horizon to see what on earth all of the Empties were going towards. A few hours had passed and I noticed a light in the distance.

“Hey Beka, come look at this.” She walked over and looked out the window.

“Are those Cars?” I squinted to try and see what it was, after focusing I realized she was right. A row of military Humvees driving into the city still miles and miles out. I didn’t know what to do but sit and watch. The Humvees weren’t American but Canadian, with a red band and Maple leaves on them. Once they got closer I noticed a few miles behind the Humvees was the hundreds of thousands of Empties we saw earlier. Beka just smiled and ran off to the kitchen. I ran after her.

“What are you doing?” She turned to me.

“I have a plan. We can lure the Empties into the space needle and we can blow up the needle killing thousands of them.”

“Excuse me? You want to blow up the space needle? How are we gonna do that without killing us?” She looked around frantically.

“All of these appliances run on gas, we don’t need electricity to use it. We lure them up here, turn up the gas and put a lighter or something on the bottom of the staircase.”

“Okay, well how do we lure them up here? How do we do that without us being in the needle?”

“We can just leave before the Empties get here and they can come after, hopefully they don’t put out the lighter.”

“Okay, why don’t we just leave and not worry about blowing up the needle?”

“Cause then they won’t chase us.” I sighed realizing she was set on blowing up the needle, at least she wanted to leave and we can go back to the main group.

“Okay, let's do it. BUT at the first sign of danger or anything of the sort we are leaving immediately.” She paused with an angry look on her face.

“Okay.”

“Now, we know that the Empties love to eat, they eat people and basically anything else. There's food everywhere in this city so food isn’t enough to lure them in. They are attracted to loud noises so if we had a gun or something we could make a loud enough noise to have them come and think it’s people or something else.” I paused looking around for anything that could make that kind of noise consistently. I looked out the window, now facing a different part of the city. I looked at her excited

“The motor that rotates the restaurant. I can get in a maintenance closet and mess with the motor and make it screech loud enough to lure them.” I started looking for a closet to get to the motor. Beka yelled back at me.

“Found it!” As I ran I caught a glimpse of the hoard and the Humvees. They were zig zagging through the blocks and streets slowly weaving their way over to the needle. Bringing the Empties with them. I stopped and watched, when they weren’t behind the buildings I could see that they were just slowly mowing down the hoard with machine guns, explosives and flamethrowers.

“While I’m in there watch the convoy and make sure that they don’t bring any of the Empties here before we are ready.” she nodded and I went in the door. There was a small staircase that led down below the restaurant. A giant motor with a massive metal rod in the middle of the circular room slowly turned. There was a tool box in the entrance to the room. After looking at the engine I knew I just needed to get to the belt. To get that kind of torque somewhere there has to be a very fast moving belt. I got the engine open enough to see dozens of spinning gears and belts. I could see one massive fast moving belt that was moving everything else, being geared down to a slow pace and a high torque spin. I needed to mess with the belt tensioner to make that god awful squeaking noise. Once I could get to it I walked back to the restaurant. Beka was still standing in the window.

“I know how to make the belt squeal, given the size and speed it's moving at I bet it’ll make a noise louder than anything we have ever heard. We want to attract as much as possible so let's break the windows to make it even louder for them.” We went into the kitchen, grabbed knives and tenderizing mallets. A simple smack from a mallet wouldn’t break the glass or even one hit from the mallet on the knife. We slowly hit the knives into the glass until each of them broke, each pane taking a couple of minutes. I decided to give up after we broke about ten or so around the restaurant. With the panes broken we were almost ready.

“Let's get a way out of here.” Beka looked at me confused.

“Huh?” I thought she was smart enough to know we needed an escape plan.

“Well, um. Those Humvees and Empties are only a few miles away, if they want to, the empties can be here in five minutes or less. I don’t know about you but I can’t climb down that many steps that fast.” She turned around and pointed at the jumpsuits and parachutes, I felt like an idiot. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to use the parachute today. We strapped in to the suits.

“Let's find something to protect our ears and start on the gas lines.” In the kitchen the fog must have been during a shift because there was plenty of stuff for our ears. Earbuds, and headphones were in basically every locker. Beka turned the gas on and started messing with the appliances to get them to shoot out as much gas as possible. I ran back to the engine room, got my hand on the lever to loosen the tension ever so slightly and almost immediately the belt started squeaking, as I turned it became louder and louder. Once I got to the point I could no longer stand being so close to it for fear of losing my hearing. I could feel the noise in my entire body, the soundwaves vibrating my body as much as the air around me. I ran upstairs to see beka standing over the staircase lighting pieces of wood and paper and dropping them down the long staircase. Once the gas falls down that far, the whole building should be ready to blow. There was already a good fire at the bottom.

"Are you ready?" She said as we ran over to the broken windows. My brain hurt from the sound and the smell of propane filled the room. We stood at the window.

"I guess." I took a deep breath and we started to take the jump together. Almost as soon as we left the window we needed to pull the chute. In the air we had the best view of the city, the Humvee's and the Empties. The Humvee seemingly noticed that there were parachuters in the air, and started heading towards us. They drove past the needle, losing the majority of their tailing Empties. Hundreds of empties went into the doors, the rest of them started climbing the sides of the needle. We started circling above the humvees who were able to take out the remaining Empties. We landed right next to them, stripped off the jumpsuits, and jumped into the lead Humvee. The driver was the pilot from earlier.

“DRIVE!” I screamed at them. We got a half a mile away when the whole needle exploded. The metal top shot in the air, the explosion destroyed the buildings and put a hole in the ground. The soldiers were caught off guard by the explosion after the dust settled they realized what we did.

“Damn, you guys are insane!” The driver said a minute or so after the explosion.

“What happened to you guys?” Beka asked.

“The Canadian government wouldn’t let us back home.” The driver responded, clearly feeling betrayed and trying to figure out what he is going to do now.

“Well, surprise surprise. We were lying there, there are more of us, six more of us, we know where they are. You aren’t welcome in your home country, but you are invited to our home town.” The gunner dropped down and grabbed stuff out of the back of the Humvee, and showed us that they had our stuff. Per Will’s orders I needed to Journal the day's events in case they didn’t believe us when we got back. As I’m writing this Beka is showing the soldier in the passenger seat on a map how to get home. I’ve never been so excited to go back to High School.