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Dec. 25th, 2016 09:40 amIt was never a good idea to stay in one place for very long. The only way to survive was to keep moving. Don’t stockpile anything, sleep somewhere different every night, and don’t spend more than a few weeks in any one area.
Dodger’s few weeks in the hills were up, and it was time to find somewhere else to be. She thought she might try to make her way out to the beach for a while. It was going to be a long trek, but it had been a while since she made it out that far. The tricky part was going to be getting there. The easiest way would have been to find her way to Santa Monica boulevard and follow that west, but that would take her through what was once Hollywood and West LA. She had no idea what those areas looked like now, or how populated they still were. For as long as she’d been on her own, her strategy had been to avoid other people as much as possible. But that was starting to get harder and harder. Staying away from other people meant sticking to the more sparsely-populated towns and neighbourhoods. Even on her own, it was easy to pick these areas completely dry. It meant it forced her to stay on the move, but it also kept her options sometimes dangerously low.
Or maybe, instead of turning west, it would have been safer to keep heading north. Maybe what she needed to do was leave Los Angeles — leave California — altogether. Maybe things were better up in the Northwest. It would take months to get there, but if she kept walking, and didn’t stay anywhere longer than she needed to, she could probably make it.
Except she didn’t know how to hunt, and crossing not only the redwoods, but getting through the Cascades on whatever happened to be growing on the side of the road didn’t sound very promising.
No. It was probably best to stick with what she already knew. She knew LA, so staying there would be her safest bet. It was time to get out of the hills, and start heading west. And when the sun came up, that’s exactly what Dodger had started to do. She left the safety of her barricaded bedroom and carefully stepped outside, making sure nothing or nobody was waiting to ambush her outside. With the coast clear, she headed out toward the road to start making her way down to sea level.
As she walked, keeping her baseball bat ready to swing, Dodger thought about one of the other things that had changed. It was the only change that was actually a good one, and one which would have only happened with the complete annihilation of mankind. From up in the hills, Dodger could see everything. There was no more LA traffic pumping tons of smog into the air. For the first year after everything went to hell (quite literally), wild fires raged unchecked all around the city. Some outlying neighbourhoods and cities were completely destroyed, and for a while it felt like the whole of LA was about to be swallowed up in flames. But then enough rain came to put the fires out, or else they died out naturally, and suddenly huge wildfires were a thing of the past. Every now and then, Dodger could still spot a towering pillar of smoke somewhere in the distance, but it was nothing like the fires that used to happen. After that first year, there wasn’t enough dry under-brush left to sustain anything too big, and nobody was flinging lit cigarettes out their car windows as they sped down the highways.
Dodger didn’t leave the hills right away, but instead kept climbing higher. Every now and then, she’d leave the roads and walk into the overgrown bushes that lined some of the roads to collect old soda cans and beer bottles that had been left in inconspicuous locations. Some of the water collectors, Dodger had put together herself, but most were left over from other people who had been this way before her. The water collectors were the only thing Dodger had ever come across that were left alone. Except those that got messed up by wildlife, the water collectors were sacred. The rivers were all still too gross to drink out of, and destroying or sabotaging a water collector to keep someone else from using it was just going to keep you from getting to water as well. It was the one remaining rule: water collectors were sacred. Dodger kept a few old water bottles in her bag, and at each over-turned umbrella or stretched raincoat, she emptied whatever container that was underneath the fabric into her own bottles, and replaced them to fill up for the next person. By the time both of her bottles were filled, the sun was high overhead. Getting to shade was quickly becoming a necessity. Travelling in the middle of the day was just as dangerous as travelling at night, so it looked like she was going to be spending at least one more day in the hills before making her way west.
Dodger’s few weeks in the hills were up, and it was time to find somewhere else to be. She thought she might try to make her way out to the beach for a while. It was going to be a long trek, but it had been a while since she made it out that far. The tricky part was going to be getting there. The easiest way would have been to find her way to Santa Monica boulevard and follow that west, but that would take her through what was once Hollywood and West LA. She had no idea what those areas looked like now, or how populated they still were. For as long as she’d been on her own, her strategy had been to avoid other people as much as possible. But that was starting to get harder and harder. Staying away from other people meant sticking to the more sparsely-populated towns and neighbourhoods. Even on her own, it was easy to pick these areas completely dry. It meant it forced her to stay on the move, but it also kept her options sometimes dangerously low.
Or maybe, instead of turning west, it would have been safer to keep heading north. Maybe what she needed to do was leave Los Angeles — leave California — altogether. Maybe things were better up in the Northwest. It would take months to get there, but if she kept walking, and didn’t stay anywhere longer than she needed to, she could probably make it.
Except she didn’t know how to hunt, and crossing not only the redwoods, but getting through the Cascades on whatever happened to be growing on the side of the road didn’t sound very promising.
No. It was probably best to stick with what she already knew. She knew LA, so staying there would be her safest bet. It was time to get out of the hills, and start heading west. And when the sun came up, that’s exactly what Dodger had started to do. She left the safety of her barricaded bedroom and carefully stepped outside, making sure nothing or nobody was waiting to ambush her outside. With the coast clear, she headed out toward the road to start making her way down to sea level.
As she walked, keeping her baseball bat ready to swing, Dodger thought about one of the other things that had changed. It was the only change that was actually a good one, and one which would have only happened with the complete annihilation of mankind. From up in the hills, Dodger could see everything. There was no more LA traffic pumping tons of smog into the air. For the first year after everything went to hell (quite literally), wild fires raged unchecked all around the city. Some outlying neighbourhoods and cities were completely destroyed, and for a while it felt like the whole of LA was about to be swallowed up in flames. But then enough rain came to put the fires out, or else they died out naturally, and suddenly huge wildfires were a thing of the past. Every now and then, Dodger could still spot a towering pillar of smoke somewhere in the distance, but it was nothing like the fires that used to happen. After that first year, there wasn’t enough dry under-brush left to sustain anything too big, and nobody was flinging lit cigarettes out their car windows as they sped down the highways.
Dodger didn’t leave the hills right away, but instead kept climbing higher. Every now and then, she’d leave the roads and walk into the overgrown bushes that lined some of the roads to collect old soda cans and beer bottles that had been left in inconspicuous locations. Some of the water collectors, Dodger had put together herself, but most were left over from other people who had been this way before her. The water collectors were the only thing Dodger had ever come across that were left alone. Except those that got messed up by wildlife, the water collectors were sacred. The rivers were all still too gross to drink out of, and destroying or sabotaging a water collector to keep someone else from using it was just going to keep you from getting to water as well. It was the one remaining rule: water collectors were sacred. Dodger kept a few old water bottles in her bag, and at each over-turned umbrella or stretched raincoat, she emptied whatever container that was underneath the fabric into her own bottles, and replaced them to fill up for the next person. By the time both of her bottles were filled, the sun was high overhead. Getting to shade was quickly becoming a necessity. Travelling in the middle of the day was just as dangerous as travelling at night, so it looked like she was going to be spending at least one more day in the hills before making her way west.
