Saturday, August 27, 10:30 AM. Brewer.

I got rid of all the alcohol in the house this morning. It’s for the best.

It’s been three weeks since what we’ve come to call “The Vanishing,” when we came down from the mountains and found nobody here.

We’ve left signs.

We’ve searched the airwaves.

We’ve looked. We’ve driven all over Dallas and Fort Worth.

Yesterday I went down to Austin, just to make sure. I made sure. The roads there are littered with cars, same as here. The capitol building was empty and the grounds scattered with leaves and trash. There was no sign of life except for packs of stray dogs roaming the streets.

I went on to Houston. “What have I got to lose?” I thought. Maybe my sanity.

Same story there. Oil refineries silent. I went to Baytown and there was this huge ship leaning against the docks, adrift, scraping out an awful sound like wailing, abandoned.

There’s nobody in Texas.

We saw nobody in Colorado and most likely nobody between there and here. We’ve seen no planes. Even the fire turned out to be nothing. It could be that we are the last people left on the planet. I don’t believe that’s true. There have to be people out there, families like ours. But I don’t know how to find them.

We could go out on the road. And we might find somebody, somewhere in America. But the silence on the ham makes me think that too could turn up nothing. And let’s say they’re in Chicago: will we see them on I-90? Not if they’re off the beaten path in a remote suburb, we won’t. Each city we pass through will need to be scoured, searched, or the whole trip could be for nothing.

A road trip is risky. The freeways aren’t safe. On the Houston trip alone I had two or three near-misses. There are cars and trucks everywhere, and now I’m finding tree branches fallen and trash blown onto the highways, and animals getting bold and straying in the path. Over the course of an eight-thousand mile trip it would be easy to have an accident.

Meanwhile at home we need to get settled. We’re fine for now but I’ll feel a lot better when we have a permanent source of water. We got a herd of cattle. If we left, who knows if they’d still be here, and who knows if we could find another to replace them? Claire loves those horses. They may come in handy, if not now then in future years when gas is scarcer and cars are rusting.

So we’ve made the decision. We’re staying.

I have terrible misgivings. What if there’s a big cluster of people in New York or Toronto or California or Mexico and we’re missing out? But I’m reminding myself, and Amy, that we can keep scanning with the ham and we can take a road trip next summer when we’ve gotten more settled.

We’ve had to accept that things are not going back to normal, that if there are people out there they are few and far between, that we are on our own, and that we had better be ready to survive like this for many years to come.

God is looking out for us, I know it. He’s preserved us for some reason, I don’t know why. I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in months, and that’s got to mean something. If he’s helped us this far he’ll help us as far as we need to go. Amy’s struggling, I know that. But he’ll prove himself to be there, and to be there for us.

The only question we need to answer now is: what do we need to do to make sure we’re safe and fed as the coming years unfold?