As though she ever really was.
He picked up the tiny woman and threw her over his shoulder, then carried her out into her yard.
In the corner of her yard was a burn pit.
He placed her lantern at the edge of the pit while be dug through ashes for something he could use to elevate her body off the ground.
He found the metal springs left behind when Anne burned an old mattress a few months before.
It was rusty and twisted but would meet his needs perfectly.
He slowly, almost tenderly, placed her face down upon the springs.
He retrieved a five gallon gasoline can from an adjacent tool shed and used it to soak the back of Anne’s clothing, then rolled her over and soaked the front as well.
The very last thing, before he set her ablaze, was to pin a small metal badge to her lapel.
-15-
For several minutes Jeff walked slowly around the funeral pyre, mesmerized by it.
He’d learned long before he actually enjoyed the putrid smell of flesh burning. And he was mesmerized by the crackling and popping sounds a body made as it burned.
If anyone were to point out his sick obsession with burning a human corpse he’d have laughed it off as folly saying, “Hey, to each his own.”
The sad fact was Jeff not only had no sense of decency, he lacked compassion and empathy and every other trait which makes each of us human.
He was, quite literally, a monster.
He’d been called that several times by his victims, and he didn’t mind the term.
He actually preferred that term to psychopath or sociopath, or any of the vulgar terms his victims also called him before they died.
He was okay with being called a monster. Monsters were cool. They were mean and ruthless.
And they always won in the end.
After a few minutes it occurred to Jeff the fire might attract some attention. The prevailing winds were blowing toward the house of one of the neighbors, and while he didn’t expect anyone to get out after dark to investigate such a smell it wasn’t impossible.
For a full hour he huddled just inside the tree line at the back of Anne’s property, watching the flames as they very slowly drew down.
The gasoline had long before burned away, then the clothing did as well.
Now it continued to burn as what little fat Anne had on her body continued to fuel it.
It was not unlike a steak caught fire on a grill, which if left unattended would burn until it was charred and unrecognizable.
When the flames finally went out Jeff once again walked out of the woods, this time completely naked, for he despised clothing and cast it aside whenever possible.
Using the lantern he examined Anne’s corpse.
It was no longer identifiable as a female, or even a human being for that matter.
He smiled at what he’d done, satisfied he’d done a good job of it.
But he hadn’t insulted Anne quite enough yet.
He covered her with gasoline a second time, and then used a lighter from his pocket to set her afire again.
Once again he danced around the old woman as she burned.
When he grew bored he returned to the woods, put his clothes back on and stole away.
He’d promised Sara some fun when he returned.
He hoped she was looking forward to it as much as he was.
-16-
They drove in tandem down Rigsby Avenue, the five of them did; two desert brown first-generation Humvees and three desert brown deuce-and-a-half cargo vehicles.
They turned south onto the 4200 block of Hein Road North and encountered two Cadillacs blocking the road.
Three armed guards walked out from behind the Caddies to greet them.
One of them, all muscle and tattoos without a hair on his head, let out a wolf’s whistle in perfect pitch.
It was a gesture of appreciation he usually reserved for mamacitas.
“Damn! What have we here?”
Many of the men they’d encountered in previous days shied away from fear.
They wondered whether the Army had come to declare war on them.
Not these guys. The big guy in particular, “Big Juan” to his friends, had been a soldier for several years before he decided the Army wasn’t a good fit for him.
Back in those days he was a diesel engine mechanic. And he was in Desert Storm.
It was possible he worked on these very same vehicles once upon a time, in a long-gone world.
The driver of the first Hummer and the NCO in charge of the detail was a Staff Sergeant named Buckley.
He stepped out of the driver’s side and Julio was right behind him.
Just in case he needed to translate.
Buckley held out his hand to show he was friendly. He’d already conveyed he was no threat because he wore no sidearm.
It was something Big Juan had already noted and appreciated.
“I’m Sergeant Bill Buckley. I’ve brought some experts to help you with various things if you’ll let us. Are you the man in charge?”
“Yes. I’m Juan Saldana. They call me Amigo or Big Juan. Take your pick.”
“I have two names too. My men call me Butthead behind my back. But I much prefer the name my mama gave me. Bill.”
“Bill it is. We heard you were coming. Your scout team came through a couple of days ago and told us you’d be coming to help and to please not shoot you.”
“Thank you for that much, anyway. I much prefer not being shot. Especially first thing in the morning. It ruins my whole day.”
“What kind of help did you bring?”
“Well, in the back of the deuces I’ve got twenty men who specialize in different things.
“For example, two are security experts that can help you string concertina wire around your block if you want. It’ll mean fewer security posts you’ll have to monitor. They’ll also talk to you about various other ways to secure your area and keep intruders out. They won’t try to shove anything down your throat. Their job is just to tell you about some great ideas they’ve seen in other cities you might be able to incorporate yourself.
“I’ve got two agronomists too.”
“Agro… what?”
“Agronomists. Plant and growing specialists. If you’ve been having trouble with your crops they can help you by giving you pointers.
“I also brought vehicle mechanics. If you have any Saturns they might be able to get them running for you.
And I have men who will retrofit all of your roofs with rain collection systems.”
“Hold on, I must be imagining things. Did you say if we have any Saturns you might be able to get them started for us?”
“Don’t get too excited, my new friend. Only certain models. Some of them survived the onslaught of the EMPs because of the way they were designed.”
Juan turned his head and asked one of his friends, “Castillo, don’t you have a Saturn?”
“Yeah. A 2006 Ion. Are you for real, man?”
Sergeant Buckley smiled.
“Oh, yeah. I’m for real. What I’m not, though, is a mechanic. I’ll have to have Smith or Willoughby explain how and why they can get some Saturns started. And I won’t make any guarantees because it doesn’t always work. But they’ll work with you to try.”
Half an hour later Dave Willoughby and Daniel Castillo were in Castillo’s driveway peering into the trunk of a silver 2006 Saturn Ion.
Willoughby explained the procedure as they went.
“When General Motors designed the car they never gave any consideration to electromagnetic pulses.
“In all likelihood, their designers probably didn’t even know what electromagnetic pulses were.
“But by accident, the design features they put into the car protected most of them from serious damage.
“The best thing they did was place the battery inside the trunk compartment. Beneath the battery was a thick rubber cushion that protected it from the electrical c
harge which ran around the underside of the car during the EMP storm.
“The battery was protected from above by twenty-one inches of space between it and the metal of the trunk’s lid. If it was closer to the trunk’s lid during the EMP storm the electrical current would have arced from the lid to the battery and destroyed it.”
Castillo was beginning to catch on.
“Just like what happened to every other model of car with a battery in the engine compartment, just inches away from the metal hood.”
“Exactly. Only with a lot of Saturns with batteries in the trunk, the battery was spared.”
“But what about the rest of the electrical components? The starters and electronic ignitions and fuel injection systems?”
“What we’ve determined from examining hundreds of cars is that what caused most of the damage was a power surge from the battery. On a typical car that doesn’t have the Saturn emblem on it the EMPs struck the battery and pretty much blew it up.
“That sent a surge of electrical power through the entire electrical system which pretty much fried everything else.
“Only with the Saturns that didn’t happen because the battery was spared.”
“But I tried to start it. It was deader than a doornail.”
“That’s more than likely because the fuses were all fried. On most Saturns that’s the only thing that has to be replaced. The fusible links in the middle of the fuses were broken, and once they’re replaced nearly all Saturns will start with no problem.”
“But where do I get brand new fuses?”
Willoughby smiled.
“We brought some with us. Way more than you’ll ever need.”
-17-
While Willoughby and Castillo were swapping fuses and crossing their fingers, an old codger named Walter Doolittle stood in his front yard four houses down.
He was watching two soldiers digging up his front yard with a pull-start gasoline-powered tiller.
And he was all kinds of excited.
He was explaining to his wife Martha, who’d just come out of the house, the same thing the soldiers had explained to Walter a few minutes before.
“They said this will double our grow space.”
“What’s grow space?”
“Dog gone it, Martha. Our garden. It’ll make our garden twice as big. Instead of just growing things in the back yard we can grow them in the front yard too.”
“Well, if we grow them in the front yard won’t people steal them?”
“That’s what I asked them.”
“And what did they tell you, you crazy old man?”
“They said some of the other soldiers are putting concertina wire around the entire block to keep people out. And they’re gonna take a bunch of the abandoned cars from Rigsby Avenue and put them all the way across the yards on the ends of the block to keep people from cutting through.”
“What in heck is concertina wire?”
“I asked them that too.”
“Well…?”
“Well what?”
“Well, what did they say?”
“They said it’s like barbed wire, only sharper. It has something akin to razor blades instead of barbs. Said if somebody tries to climb through it it’ll cut ‘em to pieces.”
“Oh, my.”
“Oh my what, dang it?”
“What if it cuts us?”
“Oh geez. It’s not gonna cut us, Martha.”
“Well how do you know?”
“Because we’re not gonna try to crawl through it, that’s how I know.”
It was a rather lively and spirited conversation, but nothing new to Hein Road residents.
Walter and Martha went at like this all the time.
At the house next door another soldier was pulling grass from a yard he’d just finished tilling before handing the tiller over to someone else.
“It’s important to get as much grass out of here as we can,” he told the resident as he dug through the freshly-tilled dirt and pulled out clumps of grass roots.
He tossed the roots into a big pile.
“Once it dries out real good and becomes brittle you can use it for fertilizer. But for now we need to get all medieval on the roots. We want to kill them as dead as dead can be.
“We expect to be here for about a week. Just before we leave we’ll till up the yards a second time. That’ll loosen up the soil even more and will expose whatever grass roots we missed.
“Once we’re gone you can go through and get the remaining roots and your new garden will be ready for planting.
“Have you decided what you’re going to grow here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A little bit of everything, I guess. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Are you particularly good at growing any one type of plant?”
“Well, yes. In my other garden, in my back yard, I always get a great crop of cucumbers. And peppers, too. I can grow them like crazy. I wish I could grow corn and squash as easily as I grow cucumbers and peppers.”
“Well there’s your answer, Mrs. Suarez.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“From now on grow just cucumbers and peppers. Nothing else. You can specialize in them.”
“I don’t understand. We can’t eat just cucumbers and peppers. We’d get awfully sick of them awfully quickly.”
“No, ma’am. You don’t have to.
“You see, there are other people, probably on this block, who are exceptionally good at growing tomatoes and onions. And others who are exceptionally good at growing corn and squash. And others who can grow melons and berries.”
“I guess I don’t understand.”
“There’s a city park, on Rigsby Avenue. About six blocks south of here. Are you familiar with it?”
“Why yes. It’s called Carlisle Park. I used to take my children to the playground there.”
“Good. We’ve already put signs up all over the park and up and down Rigsby Avenue. The signs say that every Saturday, at an hour after daybreak, everyone should carry their excess fruits and vegetables over to the park.
“You should take your extra cucumbers and peppers. Of course, you’ll trade some of them to your neighbors on your block. But if that’s all you’re growing in both your gardens, you’ll likely have a lot of extras.
“Load them into a wheelbarrow. Or a shopping cart. Or your children’s old wagon. Take them to Carlisle Park an hour after daybreak on Saturday morning and barter them for things you need.
“What should happen is that you’ll go over there with a shopping cart full of cucumbers and peppers. But you’ll come back with a shopping cart of corn and tomatoes and potatoes and squash.”
“Wait a minute. Did you say potatoes? I haven’t seen a potato in ages.”
“We’re going to change that. Do you know Mr. Benson four houses down?”
“Yes. He’s a good friend. Why?”
“When we till up his yard we’re going to treat it with mulch and peat moss to soften it. And we’re bringing in some seed potatoes to get him started.
“It’ll likely take him awhile to get good at growing potatoes, but once he gets the hang of it he’ll be growing enough potatoes for everyone on your block. And he’ll likely have enough extras to take to the park on Saturdays to barter.”
“Oh, my. You guys are going to spoil us rotten.”
“No ma’am. But if we do our jobs right, we’ll make it a lot easier for you to survive.”
-18-
As the soldier and the woman chatted she occasionally had to cover her ears.
Two houses down half a dozen soldiers were tearing down an abandoned house.
The house on the other side of it wasn’t really a house at all.
Rather, it was a concrete slab.
The slab was all that remained of a house which burned down a year before.
The noise came from two men with jack hammers which were making quick work of the concrete.
“What on earth are those
men doing down there?” the woman asked as she pulled out a large clump of grass roots.
“Materials from the abandoned house they’re tearing down will be separated. The burnables… the carpet, the wood, the insulation… will be stacked in the street where it’ll be available to heat your homes come winter.
The stuff which won’t burn… the sheetrock, the rebar, the pipes… will be carted away to the dump when we finish our work here. It’ll be one of the last things we do.
“The two foundations will be taken down to bare earth. Since those two properties don’t belong to anyone it’ll be up to your block leaders to determine who gets to farm it. But it’ll increase your grow space tremendously.
“If you can get someone to farm it, it’ll provide a lot of extra vegetables you can jar or dehydrate for eating during the winter months.”
“What about all the broken concrete? Are your men going to haul all that away too?”
“No ma’am. We’re going to use that to make you a temporary lake.”
The woman stopped digging through the soil and just looked at him.
“Okay, now I know you must be pulling my leg.”
“No ma’am, not at all.
“You see, Hein Road is equipped with a seven inch curb on each side of the street and four storm drains.
“Normally all the rain that falls in the street gets washed down the storm drains, where it runs through huge pipes beneath the city to lakes outside of town.”
“Right. I already knew that.”
“Okay. We’re going to use some of the crushed concrete to fill in those storm drains. We’ll save enough to make a little seven inch wall on each end of the block. The tiny wall will start at one curb and cross the street to the other curb.
“We’ll build tiny walls across the driveways where they intersect with the curbs as well. That’ll help keep water from coming up the driveways into the yards and flooding out your crops.”
“Sooo… all the rainwater that falls will collect in the street instead of running down the drains and somewhere else.”
“Exactly.
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