Surviving by the Lake

Surviving by the Lake

Clifford and his ten year old granddaughter rested on a bed of pine needles under a big Southern pine tree up the slope leading down to Caney Lake. Cliff had opted to stay behind when his seventy year old body couldn’t keep up the pace of the six younger people in his group as they looked for food or tools overlooked by scavengers who had come through before them.

Food was scarcer than hen’s teeth in the aftermath of the devastation of the bombardment of the cities. As far as Cliff knew, the whole country, if not the whole of civilization, had been destroyed. He wasn’t sure who the enemy was. They just appeared out of nowhere, bombed the crap out of them, and flew silently away leaving only a suggestion that organized communities ever lived there.

Communications stopped mid-sentence, vehicles sputtered to a stop and electrics lost their charge. The old saw about being bombed back to the stone age was looking to be true. The only things that seemed to still be working were guns, and Cliff was as wary of strangers as he would be of the enemy if he knew who the enemy was. If they were hungry enough, people would kill for a can of beans.

Cliff wasn’t so much worried about himself as he was worried for his granddaughter, Lara. She had adamantly refused to leave with the others, even though her cousin was part of the group. “I will not leave my grandfather alone with no one to take care of him,” she had declared. And truth be told, Cliff was glad she had stayed. She was good company, helpful, and listened attentively as he told her stories about her parents, her great grandparents, and relatives from before the American War of Revolution that he had tracked back to England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Cliff had decided to stay in the Caney Lake area. “ Down the road isn’t likely to be any better than right here,” he told Lara, “and it probably would be worse.”

There were abandoned cabins in the area, but they had all been looted by scavengers like himself, except he was amazed at the wanton destruction left behind by other scavengers. “Seems they thought that if they couldn't use something, nobody else should either,” he said looking at broken dishes and destroyed furniture strewn outside the burned hulk of a cabin.

But Cliff wasn’t looking for dishes or furniture. He had something entirely different on his mind. As a child he remembered that many people dug and outfitted storm pits to shelter in during severe storms. Later during the cold war and fear of nuclear attack, many storm pits were enlarged, stocked with nonperishable food and supplies, and then pretty much abandoned again when the cold war ended. These underground shelters were camouflaged and hidden so unprepared people couldn't easily stumble upon the shelters and raid their supplies.

It was Lara, bless her hide, who found the tell tale ventilation air transfer vent inside a fake hollow log. Close scrutiny of a widening circle around the vent uncovered a locked trap door beneath a pile of leaves. The lock, after sweaty exertion, finally yielded to a wrench recovered from the ashes of the cabin. Both Lara and Cliff took turns striking at the lock, careful to not damage the trap door.

They carefully opened the trap door, careful because some critter may have taken up residence in the shelter. But it was clear.

Beyond their wildest expectations, the shelter was an Alladin’s cave to them. Obviously recently restocked (they could tell by the Costco brand labels), row after row of cases of food were stacked. “Canned beans,” Lara shouted. “Spinach over here.” “I’ve got crackers and Vienna Sausage.” “Grandpa, you want a Pepsi?” “You’ll like this Lara, toilet paper, and three army cots. No more sleeping on the ground.”

They moved in and made a solitary life for themselves. They found two more caches of supplies, but they stayed in what they now thought of as their home.

Ten years later Lara buried Cliff under the pine tree where they first slept.

Years after that, people started coming back to the area, but they stayed away from one area near the lake. Superstitious locals claimed that a witch lived in those woods. Maybe so!