“Ahhh!” I twitched awake, then twitched again as pain flared out from a dozen small wounds and one or two more substantial ones. That set off even more thrashing until I could focus on settling into the pain, letting it wash over me. I forced myself to breathe and turned to the side. Oh I wish I hadn’t been laying on my shoulder this entire time.

“Would you shut the fuck up you stupid dogs!” I tuned their yelp-barks out then heard a ‘glug glug glug’ that took a second to place before I scrambled up, through the pain, to right the water jug I had just knocked over. I searched for the cap before giving up and settling back in, except now I was hurting. Well, hurting more. I felt a bit of warmth starting to pick up in the air, but the air still carried some chill with it.

I couldn’t see anything, even the blue screen from before was gone. I wasn’t sure which I preferred, though it would have been easier to move around without the annoying blue box in my sight. I looked around and found a pair of boxers that weren’t cold and wet and put them on. It wasn’t easy. After that I just waited until the lights came back on.

What would I do at that point? Before I fell into the familiar comfort of my order of operations I needed to figure out what I would slot into an ‘order.’ I reviewed what I remembered from going over the blue screen and then to what would come next. Rain next, a full day of it. Then… something else, cold? Heat maybe? A bunch of insects? Anything could be possible and I had plenty of time to think about it. Right now? I needed an order of operations or I was going to lose my mind. I didn’t realize how dependent I had been on seeing that timer tick down. Without it, waiting was worse than chinese water torture.

If I knew the end-point, then I could handle it. I could handle anything as long as I knew that it had an end-point. Deal with a shitty situation for 9 months? A year? That was okay. Indefinitely? Absolutely untenable. 30 lashes? 40? Totally fine. An indefinite number? Just cut my head off already.

That was a long way of saying that my anxiety was spiking and I was kind of freaking out. Maybe I undersold that a bit. It’s also possible that I ground my shoulder back into the seat to distract myself. I didn’t say I was normal, but I thought of myself as pretty average. Duck floated to the top of my mind and I pulled away from that thought just as quickly. Right now, the brief touch of it scalded me, I couldn’t handle it with a 10-foot pole. Not right now.

Order of operations. I didn’t normally do it this often but It brought some sense of control and right now that was desperately needed. I wasn’t sure what about it felt so comfortable to me; whether it was having the concept of having a plan, however short term or however much it inevitably deviated, or if it was just the few seconds of s p a c e to settle my thoughts. I didn’t want to dig into it too deeply and overthink the one thing that seemed to keep me working at least somewhat efficiently.

Okay, focus. Order of operations. When the lights turn back on. First, I need to find, and check, my watch. I need to know what time the darkness ended and when the rain started so I would know how much time I’ll have before the next, whatever, happens. Next, see what the hell is up with those wolves outside, visually at least. Then, clean up and inventory what I have. Reload the .38. My shoulder twitched, clean and change my bandages.

I only realized that the ‘lights came back on’ because of the boom of thunder that set my ears ringing, even inside my car and the flood that started testing my truck's suspension. Surprise. It was night. How wonderfully inconvenient.

This wasn’t a day of rain. This was an ocean being continuously dumped overhead. Once I was sure it wasn’t going to break through the roof of my car, I looked at my watch, 23:34. So, giving it a few extra minutes, it happened at 11:30-ish.

I realized that I didn’t have a flashlight around me so I started rummaging around in the back of my truck. I found one possibility and started cranking. No way in hell I was using this flashlight a moment longer than I had to. After a minute, and another minute because I was sure this flashlight was old as hell, I flicked it on. A weak beam flicked on and lit the interior of my car. I couldn’t see anything outside of it due to the fact that the rain ceased to have individual droplets. I stared at it in shock for a good while. Not quite able to comprehend what I was looking at. There was no way this wouldn’t flood. Absolutely impossible. It was a flood, just falling down. My car might as well have been in the middle of a river. On a lark, I opened the door for a second and was nearly swept out. I barely managed to close the door through the current. The inside of my car was drenched, at least on this side.

There was no way I was going to be checking on the wolves, if they were smart they would have fucked off to some high-shady corner. God it was such a relief to be able to see again.

I cranked the flashlight a bit more and looked around. Where there wasn’t water, there was blood and scrapped clothes. I unlooped my belt and the .38 from the shredded pair I had been wearing. They looked more like those shredded rave pants than anything anyone would wear while camping. I reached into the bag and dug around, slowly with my shoulder still hurting quite a bit, and got out a box of 50 rounds. I also saw a full and half-full box of .45, but I had dropped that gun somewhere on the hillside, so I set those aside. I should probably try and see if I can recover it at some point.

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Of .38 special, there were… 35 rounds left. I opened and checked the chamber of the pistol, all but one of the rounds were spent. It hit me that I could have easily done that while blind the other day, but I was all sorts of messed up so I forgave myself for being an idiot. If it didn’t kill me, it was forgivable.

I needed some other weapons, just in case I couldn’t find my other pistol. I expected that my problems might come a bit larger or more often than 5 solutions could solve. Reloading the midnight special wasn’t quick. I was looking for my axe and remembered that it would have been outside. I didn’t have any desire to grope in the dark, barely able to see while getting completely soaked. Mostly though, it was the wolves. I didn't think that these were behaving like normal wolves and didn’t want to push how far that deviancy went. Instead, I found a weird blade/machete/kukuri mad science amalgamation. It was about a hand and a half long if you measured from wrist to fingertip and widened as you got to the edge. It both curved forwards and back, but what was a smooth blade on the front, it possessed a vicious-bladed hook on the back. I had never been so thankful for a seemingly useless purchase until that particular moment. It’d do.

I started cleaning up my surroundings and ran across the pill bottles. I took two more fish-mox and popped two tylenol because why the hell not? I found another blanket at the bottom of my car-emergency kit, along with a space blanket. That will help if it gets cold as shit. Enough delay. I found some medical gloves that I put on and started to peel the bandage from my shoulder but it didn’t want to come loose. I poured some water over it and tried again. It felt like I was peeling a slice of skin from my shoulder. I debated leaving it alone for a while, but future-Thomas already had enough on his plate and present-Thomas was reasonably willing to do it and was already wearing clean gloves, and so, I did.

Thankfully, no sound carried past the prologue of Water World that was happening outside, which I didn’t even think about until after. I rubbed more antibiotic ointment around the wound and put another piece of gauze on it, this time sealing the edges down with medical tape. I touched around the edges, but I didn’t feel any of that gritty, slimy, infected feeling of pain, just tenderness.

My legs were a different story, stained rust-red in povidone-iodine. I splashed some more on more serious-looking leg wounds and rubbed it around. I inspected each of them and squeezed in antibiotic ointment and decided to let them breathe instead of bandaging them.

I still needed to plan for the next day. I realized that I should see if my car would start. It didn’t even begin to turn over. Battery dead? But also dead enough not to give any indication?

I thought as I resumed cranking the light. Cell phone! I fished it from where it had fallen to the floor. It was a bit wet but that shouldn't be a problem. I pressed the power button. It didn’t turn on. I tried a few more times before pitching it somewhere around my car. Then I remembered the line about the “Divine Snap.” But my phone hadn’t recorded it, it had been off?

“Fucking government.”

Emergency radio! I sent a stab of pain through my shoulder as I dived through my backpacking bag. There it was, you beautiful blue bastard. I checked the batteries and then flipped the power on. Static. I spent more than a little bit of time trying to fiddle with the frequencies only to pick up nothing. There was one point I thought I had been getting something, but whatever it was probably was designed to broadcast through air, not water like what was happening outside.

In a brief instant, I imagined what condition I would have been in if I had waited for the rain to start. A day spent on that tree or leaving it untreated as I sat on that hill. Visibility was essentially the same as being blind. That was… if the wolves hadn’t already jumped me before the lights came back on.

I sighed. Focus. I hopped into my oversized trunk area, now more than twice as large thanks to having put the third row flat and looked through my ‘always in my car’ tacticool, bugout bag and a larger backpacking bag.

First the bugout: multitool/pliers; 4 cans of canned shit; a box of those ‘high-energy MAXX+’ type of ration bars; iodine tablets; a 2 liter water bladder that had its own nylon-canvas shoulder straps, a bunch of smaller assorted stuff, paracord, batteries of a couple different types, duct-tape, and more fire-starting stuff that was seeming less and less crucial the more the deluge beat against his window. There was also a camping cooking pot and utensils, along with some Bio-Salt, which was essentially salt that also had potassium, zing, magnesium, and a bunch more minerals alongside it.

So, at some point I’d need to get out of here. Ideally, by car. If not, by foot. I found my portable car charger. The wolves seemed like the biggest problem, but I’d burn that bridge when I crossed it. I decided to pack my bags like I would be carrying them out rather than moving in my car. If I could drive out then all my stuff would be in my car with me, and thus accessible. I didn’t know if I would be forced to leave soon or if I would be in here for a while.

After arranging it from most essential, which went in the smaller bugout bag, to least, but still kind of, essential went in my backpacking pack.

I took the water bladder and opened the door again. It filled in moments before I braced myself and pulled the door shut again. I heard a few howls. Even with the rain, I didn’t know how many more opportunities I’d get to open my door. There was a momentary debate on whether to refill the water jugs but, realistically, I had barely held onto the bladder and I wasn’t at all confident of doing the same with a wet, plastic gallon jug. I had two that were half full and one that was still unopened. Along with the bladder, it should be fine for whatever came next.

I spent the rest of the time organizing things and making my sleeping position more cold-proof in case it turned out that way. Day-time didn’t end up looking much different to night time, and now I was hungry, so considering I couldn’t open up my door without flooding my car or start cooking for the same reason. I set an alarm on my casio and went to sleep.