Bug: First 4k words

The first 4k words of Bug. This is also a rough draft, so I am less focused on grammar and spelling at this point.

…

As she rode down towards the town she could help but wonder where he was. Her husband Nathan loved their two kids. Nothing would keep him from returning to them. If he was able to return. He has been labeled as MIA, missing in action. Most days she is convinced that he has to be dead. It’s been over 3 years now since he went on his last scouting mission, and surely he would have found a way back. She had requested the council change his status to KIA, killed in action, so she and their daughters could move on. Some days she wakes up expecting he might walk through the door and regale her with stories of his trip, like he had done so many times before.

She was entering the town. Broken down cars littered the streets, and shattered glass covered the sidewalks. The riots devastated this town, and if it were not for Janine surely none of them would have made it. Janine was not the easiest to get along with, but even she had to admit that Janine saved them all. The savior of Sanctuary. That was the title initially given to her, later to be upgraded to councilwoman. Once the grid went down, it wasn’t long four the food and water in the local’s pantries were gone. This led to the riots around town. It happens much faster than some thought. The breakdown of civilized behavior. Once it is your children who are starving, all your thoughts of right and wrong start to shift.

Janine figured it out. She knew before us all, or at least suspected, that things would not be returning to normal. She stocked up the shelves, and overstocked her store with supplies even though inflation was destroying their profits. When the truck shipments stopped coming her store had overstocked supplies secured in the back out of sight and off of the shelves. When the riots started, she was able to secure the extra supplies and protect them from the rioters. After the riots then began the scavenge wars. Neighbors looting neighbors, killing each other and wiping out most of the local population. In the aftermath when sanctuary was formed she informed the council that in fact the store was not entirely empty. It was determined that she had secured roughly 3 years’ worth of food and water for the survivors of Sanctuary.

Years later and even Janine’s supplies are gone. The town was bare, a hollow shell of what it once was. She slowly rode through the streets weaving around debris in the road. Janine’s store was up ahead and she could see through the front of the store. A mark on the walls indicated that the building was already scouted. The last few scouting trips were to remove what little supplies remained in the store, and they wiped it out entirely. There only options were to find a new hidden cache of supplies somewhere in the town, or to expand their reach.

The tower was not likely to have large amounts of supplies like the store, but anything would help. The Sanctuary had a small garden where they were able to grow potatoes, kale, and strawberries. It required a lot of water to produce enough to keep up rations. They used to just supplement their diets with the garden but now with the supplies almost gone they are relying more and more on the garden. There was hope of a small chicken farm, but they all died because of the lack of food. They could not count on water either, ever since the bugs came and ate up all of the vegetation, the weather has been sporadic.

It used to rain monthly in this region, but now it rains two or three times a year. The scientist started to explain the shift in weather patterns being due to the earth’s inability to regulate temperature as it once had, but they never did get to the bottom of it. Let alone find a solution to the problem. No the bugs had drastically altered the course of things, and we just had to learn to adapt.

She could see the tower in the distance, slowly increasing in size as she approached. It was massive. At least 200 feet tall. There was a security fence surrounding the perimeter, but it was only chain link. She brought her husband’s bolt cutters before she embarked on this scouting mission. She figured she may need to open a few locks. It would make fast work of the chain link fence. The prize was a small building at the base of the tower. She didn’t know what to expect inside, apart from cell phone tower equipment. She hoped she would find something useful. Her husband would spend hours at in the garage working in his radios. He actually installed a deep freezer and a small refrigerator so he could have some snack close by. She thought maybe there was something like that in there. It wouldn’t be a feast but perhaps they could get a meal or two. Eventually they would be forced to start scavenging further out, and there is no guarantee that whoever goes out will ever return. It was all very grim, and everyone at the Sanctuary knew it.

The tower was in front of her now. The fence had a green mesh attached to it, providing partial privacy to the area inside. You couldn’t see through it but you could make out shapes. She stopped her bike and waited a moment, looking for a fence gate. The gate was on an electric track and had some sort of motor looking device at the far side of it. A thick chain wrapped around the post of the gate along with a hefty looking padlock. Both the chain and the lock looked a bit too much for her bolt cutters, but she planned of just cutting though the fence itself. She took it as a good sign that the lock was still intact. It is likely no one thought to loot this place until now. She dismounted the bike and approached the fence along the side of the gate.

The fence was about 6 feet tall, a few inches shy of a foot taller than her. She could climb the fence, but then any supplies she found would also have to make it over the fence as she left. She liked to think about leaving an area before she entered it. It would do them no good to find supplies only to lose them in some poorly thought out retreat. No, it was quicker and safer to go through the fence. She removed her pack, and reached inside for the bolt cutters. They were heavy. A man’s tool. Not the sort of thing she was used to holding. Her hands were more accustomed to her violin made from lacquered rosewood. A much lighter tool, but her fingers had spent years on its fingerboard, leaving calluses.

She reached for her shoulder mic, “I am at the tower now, and it looks like we are the first.”

“Copy that,” Jim’s voice rang in the air.

Her arms strained against the lever action of the bolt cutters, unable to squeeze with enough force. She had to use her body as counter pressure on one of the handles and pull with both hands on the other to cut through the fencing. Slowly she cut her way up the fence. Her chest was sore from snipping all those fence links. She realized there was no chance she was going to be able to cut through something as thick as the chain wrapping around the fence gate. She took a moment to gather herself. She wondered what she would find inside as she began peeling back the chain link fence. A time capsule, this shack stood undisturbed through the past few years. A large rock lay near the outer perimeter of the fence. She used it to prop open the fence opening and then rolled her bike into some shrubs to keep it out of view.

She slowly entered through the fence, dropping to her knee and searching the immediate area for anything dangerous. There were a few buildings, they discovered, that had guard dogs watching over them. Most of the dogs have since died of dehydration and starvation like the most of the animals. However, coming across a survivor animal was never a good thing. They were almost always desperately vicious. Then again, most survivors had become killers. One of her last performances was the circle of life from the lion king at the HAVASI Symphonic Concert Show in Budapest. One of her family’s all-time favorite moves. The surviving wildlife became feral like the hyenas from the film. It was like they were all now living in the elephant grave yard. She remembered that performance in Budapest, she was able to take the whole family. Nathan had worn a tuxedo. He always did support her music, even if it meant wearing what he considered to be a ridiculous outfit. The area inside the fence seemed clear.

The small building had steps leading up to a door. She walked up to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. While she didn’t expect it to be open, it was standard operating procedure to attempt to open doors before breaking into a building. It helps to preserve the structure, and the supplies it has inside. The council had come up with many SOPs, of which Rebecca was not a fan. While they supposedly offered a benefit, to Rebecca it was just a bunch of wasted time. If they could they would regulate how to put your pants on, left foot then the right from a seated position. Even Nathan would have thought the council was going overboard, drunk with regulatory power. The next thing she was to do was to search the perimeter of the building for an open window or other entry point. She began to walk around the building. The walls were cinderblock, and there was little hope of breaking through them. A small window was near the back raised about 5 feet in the air. The window was shut, and it was just small enough for her to fit, but she would have to take her back off. She continued around the building. That was the only window.

She unslung her pack, and keyed the mic, “I am about to enter the shack through a raised window, but I am have to remove my pack.”

There was a pause about the space of 20 seconds and then Jim came over the radio, “OK, but take your knife and flashlight with you.”

She unclipped her Swiss army knife from the pack and grabbed the flashlight. Her husband was a fan of the SAK over the multi-tool. While it didn’t have the pliers a typical multi-tool would have, he said it had a better grip. Not to mention the pliers on the multi-tools were usually good for very littler. Better to just carry a heavy duty set of pliers if you expect to be using them. She had been carrying her husband’s SAK ever since he left for his last mission. It was a part of him, and she was not going to leave it behind. She placed the knife in her pocket and held on to the flashlight. The light had a crenulated bezel for self-defense. Nathan had bought it for her when she started going to nighttime performance alone. She placed rim of the flashlight on the window and used her fist to ram the back of the flashlight. The window’s safety glass cracked, a spider web of cracks expanding out from the point of impact. A second pop on the back of the flashlight sent the small window collapsing on the floor inside the shack.

She couldn’t see much as the window was just above eye level. She was able to see the ceiling of the structure through the dark opening. She used the flashlight to brush away any loose shards of glass, then slowly ran her fingers along the outside windowsill.

Discussion

In this section I have done the following:

• Expand upon the lack of food and water.

  • The weather has changed ever since the bugs devastated the world’s vegetation.

  • It barely rains.

  • I covered the riots in greater detail

• I expanded on our characters

  • Janine is the savior of Sanctuary

    • she secured the supplies that lasted them about 3 years

    • she became councilwoman

  • Nathan is a supportive husband

    • he was the type of husband who supported his wife

    • nothing would keep him from his family, so he must be dead

  • Rebecca was a professional violinist

    • she traveled the world performing in places like Budapest.

• The people of Sanctuary are becoming more and more desperate and soon will have to expand the scavenging territory.

Things I would like to include moving forward:

• The group uses GMRS radios to communicate with each other inside the community. For scouting missions they use VHF/UHF HAM radios that give them a little bit further range.

• The local repeaters are not functioning. HF and VHF\UHF simplex are the only forms of regular communication. Cellphone towers are dead, and the electrical grid is down as well.

• Expand upon the lack of food and water

  • when it does rain the ground drinks it up leaving very little for consumption. Groundwater is also hard to find and often tainted. Possibly with a virus or contaminant.