Cal’s Story

You are Cal Phoenix, a survivor, born on Thanksgiving in the year 2000 AD. When you cast your mind back to the time before ‘The Day’, you recall your two brothers and your sister, your parents’ house in California, and summer vacations spent cruising the blue Pacific off Catalina Island aboard your father’s boat. They are your fondest memories, yet your most vivid recollections are of winter vacations, when the family would drive to Dallas to spend Christmas with Uncle Jonas and Aunt Betty-Ann. Of all your Texan Christmases, the 2011 visit was the most memorable. It was also the last time you saw your family alive.

Your parents had decided to cancel the trip to Dallas that year. The oil shortage had pushed up the price of gasolene to $30 a gallon, and only the rich could afford to drive long distances, even in cars equipped with solar-pacs. You were so disappointed when you heard the news that you decided to walk the 1300 miles to Dallas, and would have done so had your father not caught up with you three miles from home. Then, when Uncle Jonas and Aunt Betty-Ann got to hear of it, they fixed it with your parents so that you at least could spend Christmas with them at their ranch near Denton.

From the moment they met your charter flight at Addison Airport you knew it was going to be a vacation to remember. Uncle Jonas was an oilman. He had been one ever since he graduated from the University of Texas in ’95 with a degree in geology. Earlier that summer he had been put in charge of construction at a shale-oil mine near Austin, the very first of its kind in Texas, and as a special Christmas treat he promised to take you on a guided tour of the whole underground complex.

On New Year’s Day 2012, the three of you started out early on the road to your uncle’s mine, located on the Austin Chalk, over 200 miles south of Dallas. The trip would take at least two days, with an overnight stop in Waco, for, in an effort to conserve energy, the Federal government had imposed a speed restriction of fifteen miles per hour on all state highways. It was a slow journey, and despite the sombre radio bulletins that gave news of HAVOC’s latest threats, you can still remember your excitement at the thought of exploring those tunnels deep below the earth.

Your arrival at the mine was met by a military patrol, posted there by the World Defence League. The job of the patrol was to prevent sabotage; oil installations all over the world had become one of HAVOC’s primary targets in their campaign of terror. The mine was officially closed for the New Year’s recess but Uncle Jonas had right of access at all times and, after checking his papers, the patrol allowed you in. It was a massive complex and, for security reasons, it was totally self-supporting. A central shaft serviced the many working levels to which there were attached laboratories, workshops, and even refineries for processing the precious crude oil after it had been extracted from the rock. Uncle Jonas was explaining the function of these refineries, 300 feet below the surface, when it happened.

The ground shuddered when the shock waves from the first distant explosions reached the mine, and you remember thinking that it must be the start of an earthquake, the like of which you had experienced many times at home in California. But as the levels nearest the surface began to collapse and the central shaft filled with falling rubble, you realized the awful truth. The unthinkable had happened.

At first there was no way of telling the extent of the surface devastation. Below ground, the safety generators had automatically switched into operation when the main power supply failed, and the tremors faded quickly, encouraging your aunt and uncle to believe that the damage above was superficial. Uncle Jonas was confident that the military would mount a rescue operation and that you would be brought out within a few days—a week at the most. Aunt Betty-Ann was also optimistic. After all, there were emergency supplies, enough to feed 200 men for a whole month. Little did she know that the three of you would end up consuming all of those supplies, or that the mine would become your home, your shelter, and your prison for the next eight years of your lives.

It was a month after ‘The Day’ when the three of you accepted that there would never be a rescue operation. Many days had been spent in silence, hoping and praying for the sounds of excavation or a voice on the radio link to the surface. But all that could be heard was the static crackle of the gamma radiation which was blanketing the earth. Uncle Jonas proposed that an attempt be made to reach the surface by tunnelling through the blocked central shaft. It was an awesomely dangerous feat, to dig vertically through 300 feet of compressed concrete rubble and twisted steel girders, but there was no other way you could ever hope to escape from the mine. Progress was painfully slow but the work gave you all a sense of purpose, a reason to go on, even though you feared what could be awaiting you on the surface.

Those years spent in the mine taught you invaluable lessons in survival. Uncle Jonas showed you how to refine gasolene from crude oil to keep the generators alive; to coax fresh water from porous rock; to manufacture spare parts in order to maintain vital machinery. Aunt Betty-Ann, who had at one time been a nurse and a high school teacher in Denton County, attended to your education and made sure that you stayed fit and healthy. Their love and support enabled you to grow during those dark days underground despite the enormous sense of loss you felt for your parents, brothers, and sister. You vowed then that one day you would repay their kindness by protecting and caring for them.

It was early September in the year 2019 when finally you broke through to the surface. Aunt Betty-Ann was convinced that radiation levels would still be dangerously high, and at first she was against leaving the mine. But, during the last few months of your incarceration, the static that had always jammed the radio wavelengths had gradually cleared, and Uncle Jonas was able to persuade her that this meant it was now safe to live above ground.

When you first emerged from the mine, you thought you were on the surface of another planet. Surely this could not be Earth? Few structures had survived the blizzards and intense cold that had swept around the world in the years following ‘The Day’, and now, after the dust had settled and the sun returned, the once-fertile plains of Austin resembled little more than a desert of parched and broken rock, littered with the artefacts of an absent civilization. During the first few days, when you set out to explore this wilderness, it was easy to believe that you were the only survivors. But on the morning of the fifth day, Uncle Jonas made a chance radio contact with a family called Ewell who were living near the ruins of McKinney, thirty miles north of Dallas. They told him that they had been in touch with a handful of other groups who had managed somehow to survive the holocaust. Most were isolated, unable to move due to lack of fuel, food, or water. They had urged those who could travel to join them in McKinney, to start a new community, and some were already on their way. Your uncle and aunt also accepted their invitation. McKinney was not very far from Denton, and they were curious to see if anything remained of their ranch. They planned to return home, salvage whatever they could that might be of use, and then move on to McKinney. The Ewells were enthusiastic, but they warned that not everyone who had survived wanted to establish a new community. The ruins of Dallas and Fort Worth were controlled by gangs of criminals who fought with each other and terrorized anyone seeking to reestablish law and order. They advised you to avoid them at all costs when travelling north.

Interstate Freeway 35 was the only highway still intact amid the devastation that surrounded the mine. It offered a direct route home to Denton, if only transportation could be found, for Uncle Jonas considered conditions far too dangerous to attempt such a long journey on foot. It took more than a week to discover a vehicle that was still serviceable. It was an old school bus, one that had been parked in an underground lot and had survived the years of sub-zero blizzards. With a few new parts, a tankful of gas, and a lot of hard work it was eventually brought back to life.

Provisions, including a small generator, were hoisted out of the mine and stowed aboard before you began the journey back to the ranch. The noisy old bus bumped along the rock-strewn freeway that stretched northward across an empty sea of dust. It was a harrowing sight. Hardly a trace remained of what were once thriving communities, and the once-populous cities of Temple and Waco had barely enough buildings still standing to qualify as small towns.

It was not until you reached the outskirts of Fort Worth that you encountered signs of human habitation. The road ahead was blocked by a line of wrecked autos, and at your approach a group of hard faced men and women, clad in composite costumes of leather and rivetted steel, suddenly popped up from behind this barricade. Uncle Jonas was suspicious and slowed the bus almost to a halt. Suddenly they produced handguns and rifles and began to take aim at the windshield, and he knew it was not the time to stop to ask for directions! He told you and Aunt Betty-Ann to brace yourselves; then he stamped his foot on the gas and drove the bus straight through the wall of cars, scattering the punks like ten-pins in a strike. The bus was shot at many times as it sped through Fort Worth, but the street gangs had been caught out and you managed to escape from the ruined city before they could give chase.

When you got to Denton you discovered that the ranch, like all the other nearby dwellings, had been reduced to a heap of broken bricks and shattered timbers. The sight greatly upset your aunt, and Uncle Jonas felt it better not to stop but to continue overland to McKinney. It was easy to find where the Ewells lived, for their ranch was the only place in town that was still standing. It looked more like an old frontier post than a ranch, with its fortified perimeter wall, lookout posts, and stake-filled moat. But, after your brush with the citizens of Fort Worth, it was easy to understand the need for these defences.

‘Pop’ Ewell, the seventy-year-old grandfather of the Ewell family, was the leader of this small colony of survivors; it was he who had urged Uncle Jonas to join them when they had first made radio contact. The colony numbered less than a dozen at the time of your arrival, yet as the airwaves became clearer, soon this number had more than doubled to twenty-five. It was decided that a name was needed to identify the settlement. The name ‘Dallas Colony One’ was adopted—‘DC1’ for short—and from that day on everyone worked hard to make DC1 a secure haven for those seeking refuge from the hostile wastelands and marauding city gangs.

‘Cutter’ Jacks was one such refugee. Before the holocaust he had been chief mechanic at the International Grand Prix Circuit near Lake Dallas, and his incredible skill and knowledge of engines was soon to prove invaluable to the colony. He taught you how to drive, and from a pile of old wrecks that you helped him salvage from the circuit he built you a powerful, customized car. You used it to patrol the highways north of the city, keeping a lookout for gangs of city punks who frequently mounted raids to steal or destroy DC1’s supplies. ‘Cutter’ also taught you to shoot, and it was your prowess with a gun and your skill behind the wheel that was to earn you the begrudging respect of your enemies who took to calling you ‘Freeway Warrior’.

Six months after you arrived at DC1, the colony was faced with a major crisis. A heat wave was causing a drought that threatened to destroy the food supply. Crops were failing and the colony’s artesian well—its only source of uncontaminated water—was beginning to dry up. The drought was also provoking more attacks from the city punks who were desperate for food and water. Their common need united them and they posed a very real threat to the security of DC1.

It was the last day of May 2020 when Pop Ewell made radio contact with another colony who were based in the city of Big Spring, 300 miles west of McKinney. It appeared that their situation was completely the reverse of DC1’s: they had plenty of food and water but they were desperately short of fuel. They told of their contact with survivors in Tucson, Arizona, who were also without fuel. The Tucson colony reported that the territories west of the mountains of the Sierra Nevada had been spared the worst effects of the radioactive blizzards that had devastated the rest of the country and, miraculously, much of southern California was still widely populated. It had survived the last eight years virtually intact. When you heard the news you could hardly believe your ears. Perhaps your family were alive. You might be reunited after all!

Pop Ewell called for a meeting to decide how best to deal with the crisis now facing DC1. Everyone agreed that to stay at McKinney would lead to eventual death, either slowly from starvation or suddenly at the hands of the murderous city gangs. The only option open to DC1 was to try to reach California; only there lay any real hope for the future of the colony. Your decision was relayed to the survivors at Big Spring and a deal was struck to rendezvous with them as soon as possible. DC1 would exchange fuel for food and water, and together they would join up with the Tucson colony for the final journey to California.

Preparations began almost immediately. Morale was so high that a heady sense of adventure and optimism enveloped everyone. Few guessed just how fraught with danger the journey would be.