Building Utopia Ch. 02

Roger woke slowly. His whole body hurt. He was lying on the steering wheel of his truck and could tell the airbag had deployed. It was deathly quiet. No, that wasn't entirely correct. He could not hear normal traffic and airport noises. He did hear wind rustling leaves and birds chirping. He heard his dogs whining and felt them licking his face trying to awaken him. Roger raised his head and groaned then wondered what the HELL had happened, what had hit him. He was immediately assaulted once again by two wet tongues and some worried whining from his dogs. They both tried to climb into his lap to show him their relief at his awakening. Roger hugged his dogs as he thought about the immediate past. He was reasonably certain he was involved in a vehicle accident when he turned toward the airport. What confused him was the sunlight. When he turned toward the airport it was dark. Now it was light. Why hadn't someone gotten him from his truck and seen if he was ok by now? As light as it was it must be at least four or five hours since the accident. He also wondered about the tree his truck was pushing against and those he could see in the immediate vicinity. He was sure there was no park near where he thought the accident occurred.

Roger unfastened his seat belt and started to open the door when what he was looking at finally registered with him. His truck was not on the highway. In fact there was no highway in sight and no buildings either. Well, there were pieces of things that might have been buildings at one time and there were several chunks of concrete with reinforcing steel in it. There were even some other wrecked vehicles around him. He was on the edge of a forest and was looking out onto a meadow with a fairly large stream running through it. From the slanting of the sunlight it was almost mid day.

Roger slowly opened the door and stepped from the truck. Damn his whole body ached. Blue and Misty were on his heels. They immediately began running around and sniffing of everything in sight. Of course they did take time out to relieve themselves. Roger walked to the front of his truck. The front bumper was tight against a tree about twelve inches in diameter. Hitting it was probably what set off the airbags. He inspected the heavy bumper his father and he built for the truck and smiled. It was barely dented from the impact and he knew he had been driving about 25 miles per hour when he turned onto the road.

Roger staggered away from his truck in the direction of the nearest vehicle. He looked inside and almost threw up. There was a dead couple inside. They were not wearing seatbelts and were almost crushed when their sub compact car hit another tree. Roger moved toward the next vehicle, then the next. The first four vehicles Roger looked into had corpses inside. One was a small family. The rest were just single individuals. Roger trudged toward the last two vehicles. To his surprise one of the vehicles was totally empty. The other, a very large older model car had a young woman inside. She was lying on the seat and blood was seeping from a cut on her head. Her air bag had deployed also. Her car was almost in the meadow. Off to the side was a semi truck pulling a trailer with Tru Value on the side. He didn't take time to see what was in the trailer. He saw the driver was dead as were most of the other people around. He did not even have to go over to the truck to know the driver was dead. He could see the tree branch smashed through the front window of the truck and driven through the driver's chest from where he stood. No, there was no need to check on that driver right now.

Roger reached out toward the woman in the large auto. She groaned when Roger touched her. Like all soldiers Roger had some first aid training. He checked the unconscious woman as carefully as he could and found only superficial injuries. The lacerated scalp was the worst thing he could find. He carefully opened the driver's door and pulled the woman from the car. He carried her a few feet away and lay her down then took off for the stream to wet a cloth and clean the blood from her face.

When Roger returned to the woman she was writhing and moving more. Every movement she made caused her to groan. The wet rag on her face seemed to bring the woman back to consciousness. She looked up at Roger then tried to rise. He moved to hold her down and accidently pressed his hand on her breast. He immediately moved it and said, "Wait. You've been in an accident. Don't move until we see if we can find any injuries I didn't find when I pulled you out of your car."

The young woman looked around a moment and said, "Bullshit. You don't check for injuries by mauling my tit. Where have you taken me you asshole? I was on my way to work at the airport and now I wake up here in the woods with an asshole pawing at me. What do you want? I don't have any money..." Her eyes got large and she screamed then continued, 'Oh my GOD. You're going to rape me! You'd better kill me then asshole because when you get done I'll have the police on you like stink on shit."

"Whoa there missy. I told you I found you here in a car. I don't know any more about this than you do. I was on my way to the airport for a 0430 flight then I woke up here a few minutes ago in my truck. Look around you. Do you think I would set something like this up if I was a kidnapper and rapist? Hell, if you think I could set this up you're crazier than a loon."

The woman looked around again and broke down crying. Roger did what he could to calm her down. He finally left her sitting under the tree and went to check out the area to see if he could figure anything out from the debris scattered around. He was famished. He had not eaten breakfast when he got up that morning and by the looks of things it was mid afternoon now. He looked through some of the cars and found a couple of candy bars in one. He hit the jackpot when he looked in the small car with the dead family inside. There was a cooler filled with sandwich makings and soda pop. The ice in the cooler was mostly melted. He picked it and a grocery bag with bread and chips in it up and took them back to where he left the woman. At least they could eat something while they tried to figure out what to do next.

When Roger got to the tree the woman was gone. He set the food down and yelled for her thinking she had wandered off to take care of personal business. She did not answer and he could not see her anywhere nearby. Roger was not a great tracker but he could follow easy sign. It was a skill he picked up as a child and young adult while hunting. He followed the woman's tracks as she walked away from the area. After she got out of sight of the disaster area she began running. After several hundred feet when she was well out of sight of the rubbish and vehicles she dropped down to a walk again. It looked as if she was then trying to obscure her trail but she was worse at that than Roger was at tracking her. Roger followed along the trail slowly. Blue and Misty accompanied him ranging all around. It was as if they were protecting him while they surveyed their new surroundings.

Roger followed the woman's trail for a couple of miles yelling for her all the time. She never answered and he never caught up to her. Finally it was getting late and he gave up. He turned and returned to the accident scene. When he got there he found the bread and chips torn open. He scared squirrels from the area when he walked up.

With a sigh Roger picked up the mostly undamaged slices of bread and made himself a couple of sandwiches. He sat leaning on a rotting log drinking a Pepsi, eating his sandwiches and chips while watching the sun go down. He gave his dogs the spoiled food. What a mess. He had no idea what had happened or where he was. Finally he took what unspoiled food was left and returned to his truck. He slept that night in the cab with his two furry friends.

Roger woke the next morning with the sun streaming into the cab of the truck. He looked around once more and groaned. He ached all over and was still in the hell hole he found himself in yesterday. Well, hell hole really didn't cover it. The area he found himself in was really rather beautiful, just uninhabited. Before he ate the remainder of the food in the cooler Roger walked around the area once more hoping to find the young woman from the day before. She was still gone.

After eating Roger decided to see if he could find out where he was and to get some help if he could. The dead needed to be cared for immediately or they would begin decomposing in the summer heat. Roger took off the clothes he was going to fly in and put on some of his hunting clothes from the back of the truck. He started to walk off when he stopped. He stood thinking for a moment then turned back and opened his gun safe. He put on his holstered .44 pistol and picked up his .44 rifle and plenty of ammunition for both. He made sure his first aid kit and hunting knife were on his belt, relocked the safe and truck then took off.

Roger followed the woman's tracks out what he estimated was two miles then turned south by his compass. Using his compass and walking as rapidly as he could he made a circle of what he estimated was two miles radius around his truck. He crossed the large stream and two smaller ones but found no evidence of civilization. There was no sign of a human anywhere with the exception of a very large aircraft he found crashed in the trees near the edge of the circle he was walking. From the markings it was a USAF bomber. It was pretty mangled and had skidded for some distance in the woods after crashing. There had been a small fire from the crash but it apparently burned out before the woods caught. The fire retardant systems on the aircraft seemed to have extinguished the fire on it.

What amazed Roger was the fuel contained within the aircraft tanks. Some of it had leaked out but most of the fuel was still in the tanks. Most of them were completely full. How the plane had crashed and not burned was beyond him. There were three bodies within the cockpit. All were mangled badly.

The animals Roger came across on his exploration were not even scared of him. The deer watched him and moved slowly away but they did not run. By mid afternoon Roger was once again famished. He had eaten one of the candy bars he found for lunch but that just wasn't enough to keep him satisfied long. He decided he needed to kill something so he would at least have some meat while he thought about what he needed to do.

When he neared the end of his circle Roger came upon a herd of deer and killed a nice large doe. The other deer didn't even run far when he shot. He rapidly field dressed the deer and picked her up to carry back to his truck.

When Roger arrived at the truck he set about building a fire. As soon as the fire was burning well he set up two forked sticks to hold up the deer he had driven a steel rod through. He put it over the flames and began roasting it while he rushed to the stream to clean up. When Roger returned he spent the rest of the evening cooking his deer and eating while he thought about his predicament. From time to time he cut off a piece of meat and gave it to his dogs. Roger even cleaned the hide as well as he could and saved it in case of need. He couldn't have told you why he did so but he was already becoming scared he was here alone and might need the hide.

During his ruminations Roger decided he needed to prepare some kind of shelter. He also decided he needed to inventory the items in the other vehicles to see if there was anything he could use to make his life easier while he waited for rescue. He almost laughed at that thought. He was already pretty sure he would not be rescued. His GPS showed a message that it had lost satellite reception. None of the AM or FM radio channels worked. His cell phone showed no service. He was well and truly screwed and he knew it. Now he had to decide how he was going to live here or if he was going to try to walk out and find other people.

The first thing he did the next morning was to pull the bodies from the wrecks and bury them. He chose a nice place near the edge of the woods beside the stream but where floods would not wash out the graves. In all Roger buried a total of eight people. There was the young family of three, one older woman alone in her vehicle and one older couple in a vehicle and one man alone in a vehicle plus the driver of the semi truck. Roger made sure he saved all their ID's and personal possessions inside their vehicles so if he was rescued he could turn them over to the authorities. After he buried the people from the vehicles Roger hiked out to the aircraft and buried what he could find of the aircrew. He then trudged back to his camp, made a frame and stretched and cleaned his deer hide some more.

When he was taking the bodies from the vehicles Roger also made a rapid inventory of the vehicle contents. He then carefully locked the vehicles and kept the keys with a label on them. He listed the key code on the paper inventory list for the vehicles. He kept a written list of vehicles and items stored in them in the cab of his truck with the keys to the other vehicles. By the time he finished these chores it was almost dark again. Roger built his fire up to heat the venison still hanging over it. This meal finished the deer. Roger knew he would have to hunt again the next day if he wanted to eat. He was already getting tired of venison. He wanted steak and prime rib, lettuce salad and baked potatoes. That evening Roger went to bed very depressed. He lay awake a long time in spite of his exhaustion thinking about his mother and to a lesser extent Regina. Roger decided he really hadn't loved Regina very much because he wasn't pining away for her or too worried how she would take his disappearance.