May 21

I don't know why I hadn't thought about before, but I should have realized that in a state like Montana any college town was going to have collection center. I mean, there aren't that many towns out here to choose from.

The thought never occurred to me until I was seeking a new radio station. As soon as the radio found a station, it began playing the DMA message announcing Missoula as a collection point. I actually stopped in the middle of the highway and thought about turning around. But where would I go? I'd seen what was behind me and it wasn't pretty.

After a few minutes, I decided to keep going. I made a mental note of the distance to Missoula and how far I could go and still leave myself a comfortable distance from the town. My friend told me once that his bug out shelter was south of town, up in the mountains with a view of the town below. That at least gave me a place to start looking.

I stopped about a few miles outside of town, parking on what looked like some sort of access road. There wasn't any real way to conceal the car, but I did the best I could to make it as unnoticeable as possible from the main road. There were quite a few abandoned cars out on the interstate, so I hoped mine would just blend in.

I put as much of my stuff as would fit into my backpack and headed off. I stayed near the highway for a while and then started moving overland. The terrain was beautiful, but very slow going with my pack and the shotgun. I'd been walking for several hours when I got my first view of the city in the valley below.

I could see that where the highway entered the city was through a narrow pass. Vehicles were bottlenecked there and some sort of wall looked like it had been built across. I could also see a group of people milling about on the outside of the wall. They seemed drunk; stumbling around and running into things.

Inside the city there was only limited activity. I could see some people moving around, but not many. As I continued to make my way through the mountains south of the city, I kept noticing black SUVs making their way through the streets, almost as if they were on patrol. But patrolling for what? I'd seen less than 100 people down below.

As the sun began to set behind the mountains, an eerie darkness crept across the valley. There were only a few lights across the city. Alone in the mountains, I had no desire to sleep on the ground. I looked around for a sturdy tree and climbed up til I was about 20 feet off the ground. It wasn't the most comfortable place to sleep, but at least I felt a bit safer.