Good Times in Rockland (Part 1)
Posted on Fri Jun 27th, 2025 @ 1:39am by Survior Hale MacLeod & Survior Alonzo Blazevic & Survivor Cody Mercer & Survivor Graham Lockridge & Survivor Jacob de Vill
1,907 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Please Sir...
Location: Rockland, Maine
Timeline: November 12, 2010 - 5:30 p.m.
The sky hung low over Rockland like a lead blanket, smothering the coastal town in a quiet that felt older than the sea. A misty drizzle slicked the cracked pavement and ran in thin, grimy rivulets down the sides of abandoned cars. Fog rolled inland off the bay in thick, rolling sheets and moved like something alive.
Mid-November in midcoast Maine always felt a little haunted, but now it felt cursed. The gulls were long gone. Squirrels, too. Even the scavenger raccoons seemed to know better than to linger in this hollowed-out place. What sounds remained were the kind that made a body hold still and listen twice—a branch tapping glass, a metal sign squealing on one rusted bolt, the rhythmic drip… drip… drip from somewhere you couldn't quite see.
[Norland Nanny Entering Rockland: Jacob de Vill]
3 months since September. 3 months since the end of the world... Years of Jason's life had been noisy, filled with the laughter of children and the hustle and bustle of London. Now? Now he was stuck in a foreign land, and the silence was killing him. The kiss of winter reminded him of how cold winters in Liverpool were, and the memories brought tears. Since the wildfire virus turned the Gosset triplets and other grandparents, Jason still kept his oath and protected the triplets. It took him a while to realize the children were gone.
He wore the formal Norland uniform, white shirt, tan suit jacket with the letter N on the left breast pocket with tan suit trousers, and the Gosset grandfather's light green fishing coat, which stopped the wind, but he still felt the cold. He didn't know any of the roads here, but there was a cemetery on his right and gridlocked traffic ahead. He was so tired, so hungry. The only plan he had was to head to Canada, find the Gosset triplets' parents who'd gone there on business and got stuck when Canada declared lockdown... But Jason was so under-prepared. He needed a fairy godmother.
[Lockridge Garage]
But there were no people in Rockland. At least not out in the open. Not anymore.
Those who hadn't fled in the early days, back when the CDC still issued statements and Journey's End Marina had quarantine fences manned by Coast Guard reservists, had either burned with the looter fires or bled out behind locked doors. Those who stayed behind now kept low and out of sight… if they still had enough humanity left to understand what that meant.
Graham Lockridge did. He hadn't lit a single lamp in weeks.
The overcast gloom suited him just fine. Night brought clarity. In his rust-streaked auto garage just off Route 1, Graham watched the road through a narrow break in the barricaded bay doors. His shop was shadowed, silent, fortified with razor wire, broken pallets, and whatever the old sailor could weld together. No light escaped its seams. No welcome mat outside.
His prosthetic leg made running a gamble, and he'd learned young never to play the odds unless he could tilt the table. So he hunkered down, not out of cowardice, but because fortresses were made by people who didn't plan on dying.
He didn’t build this place to save himself. He built it to save someone else. A space for the innocent. For women. For children. For Jayna. And now, weeks and months later, the world had ended, and he was still waiting in hopes of any other soul.
[Intern Entering Rockland - Cody Mercer]
Cody Mercer stepped carefully through the misty streets of Rockland, his breath clouding in the cold air as he took in the eerie silence that surrounded the town. The city felt like a graveyard. It was a place of memories, yes, but those memories were fading, swallowed by the fog and decay that had replaced what was once bustling life. A small part of him felt like a ghost, one among many, drifting through a forgotten world.
His boots tapped lightly on the cracked pavement as he made his way through the desolate landscape. Each step felt heavy. The abandoned cars and the neglected buildings were like monuments to what had been lost. The drizzle didn’t help—nothing about this place offered any comfort, and the sky pressed down with a weight that almost seemed to echo his thoughts.
Three months since everything had changed. His life, his world, his very identity had been turned upside down, and yet, here he was—alone, in a town he’d never known, with no one left to rely on. The ghosts of what once was seemed to linger, too, making the emptiness that much worse. Cody missed the sound of music, the way it could fill a room, make him forget the pain, the fear, even if just for a moment.
His gaze shifted toward the cemetery to his right, its iron gates rusted and crooked. How many graves were there now? How many people had slipped into the cold earth in the last few months? He couldn’t know. He didn't want to know. He had his own demons to contend with. His own survival to ensure.
The wind tugged at his coat, and he pulled it tighter around his frame, the worn fabric of his mother's ring still resting against his chest. It was the one thing he had left that anchored him to who he was before all this.
He had no map, no clear destination beyond the vague thought of heading south—somewhere, anywhere, where there might be other survivors. But something in his gut told him that even that plan was fragile, just like everything else. He didn’t know the roads here, didn't know who would be friendly and who would be a threat. For all he knew, Rockland might be the last place left on Earth that still had anything resembling life—and he might be the last one to see it.
[Hale and Alonzo Near the Lockridge Garage]
The gas had run out sometime yesterday and so, they were walking. It had been nice, Hale reflected, seeing the teen reunited with his fisherman-uncle, watching them sail away though he'd miss the impromptu soccer games they'd had in the lighthouse parking lot before Alonzo called them in for whatever meal he had managed to make from their meager supplies. Nicer still to get a tiny cache of food from Ethan's aunt as a thank you for saving her nephew.
And so, they walked. The dead tended to walk in straight lines until something drew their attention. Flares were good for that, Hale had discovered. Sneak off to the side, light a couple, and they'd change direction. Just had to be quiet, go unnoticed. He was getting good at sneaking around.
"There's a garage," Hale said quietly. Things were quiet, no signs of life or dead people either, but he'd gotten in the habit of speaking softly. They were walking together, nearly shoulder to shoulder, and his clean tenor, stripped of its New England accent by years in the military, carried that far at least. "Lockridge's. My Dad went there a few times, said the mechanic was good. Honest. Maybe we'll get lucky on gas."
Alonzo seeing a garage was a bit of knife to the chest. It reminded him of his childhood, of his family. "My father," whispered Alonzo shaking his head. "He was a mechanic. We might get lucky, but with how long its been this gasoline when we do find it will be more problematic to put in a vehicle than anything."
He looked at Hale. "Which does not mean entirely useless though. Gasoline would still be good for burning. It should light without issue."
"True," Hale said, nodding slightly, "though I'd rather get my hands on a good flint and steel kit. Lasts longer and lighter to carry." As they approached the garage, he had a moment of uncertainty. In the real world, the one they'd all lost, he would call out a greeting and walk in. He knew the man after all but in this reality, he wasn't sure what to do. "Let's have a look around. Quiet-like. Hopefully, the only thing will find is my Dad's friend, alive and talking."
Graham had just clicked the mic for another go when movement cut across the foggy sliver of road in his field of view. What he saw made him freeze.
There were two figures, faint in silhouette, not shambling or lurching but walking. Their gait was fluid and controlled. Armed, maybe. And they had been talking low, too low to make out, but the cadence was too steady for rotters.
While his heart clung to hope, his hands reached for the shotgun under the bench. Cold fingers wrapped around the worn wooden grip. He didn't rack a shell. Not yet. The sound would carry.
He shifted behind the stacked workbench, careful to keep his profile low. If they were looters, they'd fan out. If they were any other kind, he'd know soon enough.
“Come on, then,” he muttered. “Let's see what sort you are.”
His knee twinged, the real one, and he grimaced as he crouched. Sitting too long had taken its toll. The movement knocked loose a rusted socket wrench which clinked to the floor behind him. He didn't breathe.
Nothing. No shouts. No gunfire. No moans. Good signs, all.
Graham glanced to the radio. The loop was still playing, soft and steady: "Lockridge. Route 1..."
If they were decent folk, they'd hear it and maybe try their luck. Graham leaned forward and clicked off the broadcast loop so he could switch the mic to his callbox outside the front door.
"If you're out there and not dead," he said into the mic, voice low, accent cut with years of New England erosion but still unmistakably British, "stop where you are. You're within range of a live perimeter. You look human. Best you stay that way, innit?"
He took his finger off the mic button and watched through the window.
Hale spread his hands and stepped clearly into view, walking slowly, and when he got within calling distance said, "Mr. Lockridge? That you? I'm Fergus' son, Hale? Not sure if you remember me, but my Dad used to come in here whenever his car was having problems and considering he tended to drive beaters was quite often."
Alonzo whispered to Hale. "I take it we're not shooting him," noting Hale's tone and docile posture. Alonzo tried to match it as best he could albeit reluctantly.
"My Dad knows ... knew ... him," Hale said quietly. "And I recognize the voice. Otherwise, I'm all for precaution."
The radio crackled back to life, and after a long pause, the kind that let silence stretch just a little too far, Graham's voice came through again. His tone was edged with suspicion and fatigue.
"Fergus' boy, eh..." Another pause. A long breath. A clink of metal in the background.
“Aye, I remember him. Used to drive that piss-colored Cadillac that rattled worse than a bottle of screws."
Graham shifted behind the workbench, squinting out through the hazy dark, catching the shape of Hale stepping into better view. Something about the kid's posture said not a threat. That was a green flag in itself these days.
Hale MacLeod
Alonzo Blazevic
Graham Lockridge
Cody Mercer
Jacob de Vile
Survivors One and All
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