The Lone Man On The Ridge - Episode Two: Five Weeks Of Silence

 Five weeks without a single clear signal can turn a quiet mountain cabin into a pressure cooker. Jack is used to solitude on his ridge, but the sky has gone empty, the distant glow of Asheville has vanished, and the radios that once anchored him to the outside world now spit nothing but static. 

 What’s missing is the one resource no prep list can replace: reliable information. 

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Transcript

Title And Immediate Aftermath

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The Lone Man on the Ridge Episode two Five Weeks of Silence Three days had passed since Jack sent those three strangers back down the mountain. The sun was just starting to break over the ridge as Jack stepped out onto the porch, coffee in hand. Mr. Rogers trotted along beside him. It was the silence that hit him first. It had been several weeks now since he heard even a single plane overhead. That used to be a fairly regular occurrence, not constant, but often enough that he barely noticed it. But now the sky was completely empty. Jack started his usual morning loop. He walked down to the chicken coop and saw that the three hens were already out, scratching and digging in the dirt. Hello, Blossom. Hello, Maud, and hello, Weezy Jefferson, he called out. How are you girls doing this morning? Sorry about all that excitement a few days ago. Jack lifted the small access door on the back of the coop and reached in, and collected the three fresh eggs the hens had just laid. From there he walked down to the garden. He first checked his tomato plants, then the leafy greens, and finally his green beans. He let out a small sigh and muttered to himself, The damn deer have been at my beans again. He then moved around to the side of the cabin to inspect the four solar panels mounted low against the A frame. As he cleaned the dust off of them, the same question kept circling in his mind. How far did this actually go? Does Asheville still have power? Or is the whole region dark? Next he checked on his rain catchment system. The gutters fed into a fifty five gallon blue barrel that was still about three quarters full. He lifted the lid, double checked the water level, and noticed there was no algae, and nodded with satisfaction. Between that barrel and the creek just sixty yards down the hill, he would never have to worry about water. Back inside, Jack opened up the twelve volt fridge and pulled out a small container of powdered milk. After five years living up here, the system was dialed in tight. The EcoFlow Delta Pro barely even noticed the fridge and the LED lights running inside the cabin. The total system barely drew power. While his eggs cooked, he reached over and flipped on the hand crank weather radio, just like he did every single morning. For the last five weeks it had been nothing but static. His eyes moved over to the ham radio sitting silently in the corner. He hadn't heard a single voice in over a month. He shook his head slightly and muttered, maybe after breakfast or later this afternoon I'll climb up and check those antenna connections for the radio. After breakfast Jack stayed busy. He split and stacked firewood, checked two of his rabbit snares, and cleaned his Glock. He then went down into the root cellar to take inventory and rotate some of the older canned goods. But his mind was not fully on his work. The silence was starting to wear on him. Late in the afternoon he finally grabbed his ladder and climbed up to inspect the ham radio antenna and its connections. While up there he looked over his seventy five acres, twelve on the ridge, and the rest backing up to Piska National Forest. This was the exact reason he bought this property. Nobody was ever going to build behind him. As he tightened the last connection, his mind drifted back five weeks. The last voice he had heard on the ham radio was a panicked man in Tennessee screaming that the grid had collapsed and the cities were emptying out. Jack stood on the ladder staring out over the ridge. Cyberattack? Biological weapon? An EMP? He looked down at Mr. Rogers sitting at the bottom of the ladder and asked, What do you think, boy? mister Rogers barked twice. Zombie apocalypse? I don't think so, mister Rogers. But you know at this point, that guess is as good as any. Jack climbed down the ladder and spent the next hour checking the perimeter. He walked past two of his trail cameras he had used for years to track deer, coyote, and bear. He stopped in front of one of them just staring at it. He really did not want to pull these off the game trails, but the situation had changed. Three people knew exactly where he lived. That fact set heavy in his gut. He continued down the ridge and checked his old trip wires. Just a couple soup cans he'd strung up years ago. But the fact that Dylan and the others had slipped through without triggering a single can bothered him. Jack stood there quietly looking down the mountain. Three people know where I am now, he muttered. This changes everything. He thought about his old pickup truck hidden under camouflage netting down near the old logging road at the bottom of the ridge. That was his only way in or out if he ever had to go into town for supplies, which was not very often. It had been what, six, seven weeks maybe since he'd been into town? Later that evening after the sun had gone down, Jack sat down at his small ham radio station. He powered up the unit and adjusted the frequency. Kilo Quebec four, Yankee India Tango, calling CQ. KQ four YIT calling CQ Is anybody out there? Anybody copying my transmission? He released the mic and waited. Nothing but static. He spent the next twenty minutes slowly scanning frequencies. Every once in a while he would catch a faint voice, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Sometimes the signal was so weak it was difficult to determine the language, let alone what they were saying. Jack finally leaned back at his chair shaking his head. He was kicking himself for never learning Morris code. But the not knowing, that was starting to eat at him worse than anything. Five weeks with no information, no idea if Asheville still had power, or how far the collapse had actually spread. Five weeks, five long weeks of nothing but wind whispering through the pines, the occasional bark from mister Rogers, and the soft clucking of his three hands. He remembered that first night, stepping out onto the porch like he did every evening, expecting to see the faint orange glow of Asheville to be visible against the southern sky. But there had been nothing. Just an endless black void where distant city lights used to be. The absence hit him harder than any sound ever could. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the memory settle. A thought he had been pushing away for days finally forced its way to the front of his mind. Sooner or later he was going to have to go down the mountain. The realization settled over him like cold mountain air. Going down meant leaving the safety of his seventy five acres that he knew better than his own heartbeat. It meant facing whatever was left of the world. Desperate people, broken systems, maybe even violence. But staying up here forever meant staying blind, and blind men didn't survive long when the rules changed. He let out a slow breath and looked over at Mr. Rogers who was watching him from the corner of the room with his steady, trusting eyes. Yeah, yeah, I know, boy. I don't like it either. Jack stood up from the radio desk, his old shoulder giving its familiar protest as he rose. Without thinking, his hand moved up and brushed against the raised scar just behind his left shoulder. The old wound still tightened up on cold nights, or after he'd been sitting too long. He caught himself lowering his hand quickly, almost embarrassed by the unconscious gesture. Some memory still had teeth. Jack walked over to the window and stared out into the pitch black night. Somewhere down there, Asheville was either burning or dying or both. And somewhere out there, Sarah, Mike, and Dylan were probably telling people about a man up on the ridge with food and water. The silence was no longer peaceful. It felt like the quiet before a storm that had already started miles away and now was rolling straight towards him. He placed his hand on the cool glass of the window. Five weeks of silence, he whispered. But it looks like that silence is about to break. This has been The Lone Man on the Ridge, Episode 2, Five Weeks of Silence.