by Jeff Kirkham
“Hey, Jackie.” Amanda stopped. She didn’t know Jacquelyn well enough to realize she hated being called “Jackie.”
“Hey, sister. We were about to throw the last of the potatoes from the cold storage into today’s stew, and it dawned on me that we might need them for potato starts. I wanted to make sure before we boiled them.”
“Oh, crap.” Amanda covered her mouth with one free hand. “I was supposed to pull some seed potatoes out a couple of days back and it slipped my mind.” She giggled. “That would’ve been some kind of screw-up, right?”
“No harm, no foul. I grabbed these,” Jacquelyn told her. “Do you need more?”
Amanda looked over the spuds in Jacquelyn’s shirt. “Yeah. We need three times that many for seed potatoes. Are they already in the stew pot?” Amanda gritted her teeth.
“They’re chopped up, but I asked the girls to hold off putting them in the stew.”
“Oh, good. It doesn’t matter that they’re cut up, but we’ll have to put them in water right away for them to sprout. I’ll meet you over at the kitchen.”
“Disaster averted,” Jacquelyn laughed. “See you at the kitchen in a minute.”
In truth, cooking the seed potatoes would’ve been a catastrophe. At this point in the collapse, potatoes would be rare, bordering on non-existent. Every potato in or around cities would have been gobbled up by now. The potatoes in her shirt might be the last raw potatoes for a hundred miles. If they ever did find anyone with potatoes, they would cost a fortune in trade.
Jacquelyn and Amanda would have to drop everything right away to get these potatoes cut into “eyes” and sprouting in water. Each whole potato would make six to ten sprouts. Then, each sprout would grow six to ten whole potatoes when planted. Luckily, Jacquelyn had been the one to get the potatoes out of cold storage. Otherwise, the Homestead would have eaten the last of their potatoes without a second thought.
Damn close call. How many of these close calls are we screwing up? she wondered.
She laughed out loud as she remembered her and her husband’s fantasies about When the Shit Hits the Fan. Admittedly, she had romanticized the Apocalypse. She and Tom had read at least a dozen books about the post-Apocalyptic world, and she had woven together an idea that it would be like Swiss Family Robinson meets Little House on the Prairie, but with guns. She had imagined the joys of “rough living”—the pace of life slowing down and enjoying little things like playing with the kids, the dew on the grass and long sunsets.
In reality, she had never been so busy in all her life. There was nowhere near enough time for making the rough-hewn improvements to daily life, like learning to whittle, then carving a butter churn out of old wood. What a joke! There wasn’t even time to plant the greenhouses. Just cooking, cleaning, sanitation, and getting living arrangements set up consumed every minute of every day. They all worked by lantern into the night.
She had daydreamed about just spending time with good people after modern society collapsed. The people around her were certainly good people, but half the time they wanted to strangle one another. Almost every person in the Homestead was in some stage of losing his or her mind, and culture shock took a devastating toll. Under this level of stress, even moderate personality disorders, largely dormant before the collapse, were going ballistic. She was the only therapist in the group, a major oversight by Jason Ross. She fielded the entire responsibility of helping three dozen destabilized people pull their minds back together, as though talk therapy was some one-stop solution.
Before the collapse, she and Tom had, admittedly, glamorized the guns. Back when the world was sane, owning guns felt like some stand for individuality and self-sufficiency. Now, with the shit actually hitting the proverbial fan, the guns felt dangerous to her. Sooner or later, someone would die from a bullet wound, either by accident or from a gunfight.
At what point was a person a murderer when killing people stealing their supplies? Was it okay to kill someone for plucking a wild plant from your land? And, even when justified, how hard was it to sleep at night after killing someone?
Every time she holstered her gun in the morning, she wondered if today would be the day she killed someone. The romance and cool factor of firearms had entirely evaporated. Her gun had become a battered tool and she resented what the gun implied.
Once Tom had given her a funny, over-sized tee shirt for Christmas that said, “Prepared, not Scared” with a picture of a bullet between “Prepared” and “not Scared.” It had become one of her sexy, funny nighties. Every time she thought of that tee shirt—she’d left it at the house—she shook her head and smiled at how asinine she had been.
She and Tom had been fairly well prepared. Even so, like the potato fiasco, they now spent every minute painfully aware of all the things they had forgotten. This whole Homestead group had been maybe fifty percent prepared. That put them ahead of the curve of ninety-nine percent of humanity. But it did not mean they would survive. They weren’t competing against that ninety-nine percent of humanity. They were competing against Mother Nature plus the rest of humanity. Just one mistake like eating the last of their potatoes could mean starvation.
A hundred terrifying deaths awaited them and their children—marauders, rogue government forces, disease, crop failure, animal sickness. Every day, new threats emerged, and those threats weren’t like the threats from the old, modern world. They no longer faced fears of tax audits or rumors getting back to their boss about spending a sick day on the lake. The new fears carried the ultimate consequence―death. For the first time in her life, Jacquelyn felt like it was very possible she would die at a young age. Worse yet, her children might never see adulthood.
Prepared or not, the odds of a life free from crippling grief were not good.
• • •
Peña Residence
Rose Park, Salt Lake City, Utah
The smell of wood smoke. What could be better? For Gabriel Peña, wood smoke evoked memories of sitting around a campfire with his father, enjoying tacos de carne asada. If only life could have remained that elemental, that simple.
Laced with the smell of plastic and oil, the wood smoke today foretold menace. It hung over Rose Park like the coming of death. This smoke scared the hell out of Gabriel.
The last thing his brother Francisco told him before the court sentenced him to prison was, “Take care of Mama and Abuelita. You’re the man of the house now.”
Nothing mattered more to Gabriel than the respect of his brother, and he would do anything to carry his brother’s burden. But the smoke troubled him to the point of distraction. Drifting into every corner of every room of the house, every piece of clothing, every bite of food, the smoke threatened terrors that Gabriel could not fight with fist or gun. The smoke brought death―dark, silent, and ephemeral as a curse.
Gabriel could fight; his brother had taught him. Gabe kept a fully-loaded Cuerno de Chivo, or AK-47, behind his bed, unbeknown to his mama. He owned two knives and several handguns as well. Still, Francisco forbade him from joining the gang and, as captain of Los Norteños del Utah, Francisco’s word was law.
Gabriel put on a good show of resenting his brother’s mandate, just to protect his scrim of machismo. But, secretly, he knew the life of a gang soldier wasn’t for him. He liked his brother’s vision of laboring beside the common man, sacrificing privilege in the name of equality, but Gabriel and Francisco both knew they were fundamentally different people from the gang soldiers who followed Francisco’s every word. The Peña brothers were more intelligent and capable of greater things than the other gangbangers.
Francisco used his intelligence as a leader in the Mexican underworld, planning operations and calling shots. The path of a criminal revolutionary required total commitment to brutality, and Francisco built his street reputation with the flair of a Hollywood image consultant. Behind his back, the soldiers called him “El Barbero”―“The Barber”―because Francisco employed an old-fashioned straight razor in moments requi
ring a dash of vicious showmanship. He lashed out at anyone using the nickname “El Barbero,” but it was a calculated response meant to inspire trepidation.
“Just Francisco,” he would insist, “like Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa.” Even so, Francisco had intentionally inspired the nickname “El Barbero” and he wanted his men to think of him as a vicious killer. He certainly was a vicious killer, and a criminal genius.
Gabriel was just as smart, but he lacked the darkness of his brother. Francisco understood the difference and he permitted Gabe no opportunity to join the criminal world of Salt Lake City. Like a good mother’s son, Gabriel worked at a small Latino grocery around the corner from his home.
“Gabriel, no vas afuera.” Don’t go outside, his grandma insisted, her eyes darting around the living room, glancing out the front window. A group of teens howled as they passed by on the sidewalk dragging a shopping cart full of electronics. Gabe’s grandma seemed to shrink with the racket.
He led his abuelita back to her room, helping her into her favorite chair. Gabriel dashed into his room and came right back with his iPod and Beats headphones. He scrolled through his music list and found Pedro Vargas, his grandmother’s favorite crooner. Gabe gently popped the headphones over her ears.
She quieted and he took it as his cue to check on his mama and sister. The ladies had been going through the pantry, getting ready to boil beans for tomorrow’s meals. As a single Hispanic mother who knew food was never guaranteed, his mama was a bit of a hoarder. Ever since Francisco had risen in the world of crime, showering the family with gifts and money, their mama kept a massive amount of food in the cupboard, perhaps a silent nod to the impermanent nature of their good fortune. Beans, rice, cooking oil, flour and sugar were stacked in bags and huge gallon jugs. His sister sometimes criticized her mother’s obsession with stockpiling. Nobody criticized her now. The store had been closed for a week and the Peña family still had enough food for a month or more.
Despite the revelry and violence outside, no one so much as stepped a toe on their front yard. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the home was protected by Los Latigos, and Gabriel had noticed Latigos soldiers passing by, checking in on the family.
While he watched his mama and sister work in the kitchen, Gabriel heard something thud to the floor in his abuelita’s room.
He jogged down the hall and peeked inside. His abuelita dozed in her chair, still enjoying The Songs of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Half inside the room through the window, a white man stared back at Gabriel. The man was filthy, with matted hair, and flecks of food caught up in the tangle of his wild beard. The two men paused for a millisecond staring at one another, then both men sprang into action. The intruder, clearly a homeless man looking for drugs or food, scrambled inside the room, struggling to climb across a bookshelf while holding a kitchen knife.
Gabriel bolted for his bedroom. He dove across his bed and grabbed the AK-47, working the bolt as he launched himself back toward the intruder. As he burst back into the room, the homeless man stood behind his abuelita. Seeing the gun, the man shielded himself behind her small body in the chair and put the kitchen knife to her throat.
His abuelita awoke to find her grandson pointing a rifle at her and somebody behind her, grabbing her around the shoulders. She flew into a frenzy, bucking and shrieking like a dog caught in a net. The homeless man tried to restrain her, but she flopped so violently that she flew up and out of the chair and dropped to the floor, holding her throat.
While the men stood facing each other, dazed, blood began to pulse between his abuelita’s fingers in a great flood. Her shrieking tightened into a high-pitched gurgle.
Gabriel snapped back into the horrible reality, took three steps forward and thrust the muzzle of the assault rifle against the homeless man’s chest. The small room roared with gunfire, temporarily deafening everyone. The homeless man absorbed six rounds in and around his heart. He slumped to his knees behind the chair, wavered for a moment, then collapsed sideways.
Gabriel’s abuelita tried to stand, turning toward the chair, still holding her gushing throat with one hand. Gabriel dropped the rifle and held her. He grabbed the crocheted doily on her chair and worked it under her hand onto her neck, adding pressure to the gushing wound.
His mother and sister came running through the door and began screaming.
“Get me a towel,” Gabriel shouted over them. “Now!”
His sister disappeared from the doorway and ran back with a bath towel.
By then, his abuelita was fading fast, having poured much of her blood onto the carpet. Gabriel clamped the towel around her neck and pulled her onto his lap, cradling her head, tearlessly weeping. His mama and sister joined him on the floor and they held the old woman as she slipped silently from this world to the next.
• • •
Around eleven p.m., Francisco returned home to Rose Park from prison, along with a hundred and twenty of his men. They set up camp in the neighbors’ homes, the neighbors allowing the gang members to stay, like a quartering army of old. It wasn’t as though they had much choice. Without police anywhere to be found, any law was good law.
Abuelita lay out on the couch in her favorite dress, bloodless and dead. Their sister had placed a dusty bouquet of artificial flowers in her hands over her chest. Francisco’s mama and sister had cleaned the blood away and Gabriel had dragged the homeless man’s body outside and laid it carefully on the picnic bench in their backyard.
Francisco stood in the backyard, staring at the dead homeless man. Part of him was angry with Gabriel. His brother had promised to protect the family while Francisco was away. Another part of him knew that expecting an eighteen-year-old boy to stop a chance encounter with the Fates was absurd. He promised himself that he would not let Gabriel see his disappointment or anger.
“Hermano, I failed you. I’m sorry.” Gabriel stepped quietly out of the dark and stood beside Francisco. Francisco pretended not to hear the tears just beneath Gabriel’s words. Francisco looked back at the body, noticing how Gabriel had cared for this homeless dirt bag, laying him out with respect. The thought almost brought tears to Francisco’s eyes. His little brother had a beautiful heart. If it had been Francisco, he would have tossed the body of the man over by the garbage cans.
“Gabriel, sometimes things just happen and they cannot be stopped.”
“But I should have been watching the house more carefully, hermano,” Gabriel said with conviction, his self-judgment ramping. “I should have caught him before he came in. The window wasn’t even locked.” Gabriel cried openly now.
“No, hermanito. You’re wrong. You couldn’t have stopped him. Not in a million years and not with a million tries.”
You have no idea how cruel this world is, hermanito, Francisco thought to himself. I have protected you from the truth. Now you are starting to see. You and everyone else. I’ve lost my abuelita and worse, my brother has lost the untainted life I wanted for him. That can’t be changed now.
But now, no man is better suited to rule this place than I am. In this season, cruelty will reign and it will erase the fucking whites. Nobody is ready for this new world—a world of violence. Nobody but me.
• • •
Wyoming Road 713G
Outside Laramie, Wyoming
As Chad Wade approached the mountains of central Wyoming in the dark of autumn night, the back roads had gone from an orderly grid to spaghetti. For a terrible navigator like Chad, it was hell on earth.
But I’m badass at everything else, Chad assured himself.
He juggled back and forth between watching the road through his NVGs and reading the map. The goggles could only focus on one thing at a time—close or far—and they had to be manually re-focused to switch back and forth, a maddening process.
Chad, Audrey and their little girl occasionally drove by camps alongside the dirt roads. People were moving from one point to another during the day and flopping their stuff down at night. Some people
headed east, others headed west, and still others headed south. Chad had no clue where they were going nor what they hoped to find.
While he drove, Chad periodically flipped through the radio bands—FM, then AM. He rarely found anyone broadcasting, which wasn’t surprising since they were in the middle of nowhere. Once in a while, he found a channel broadcasting from a great distance, always on the AM band.
The U.S. government ran a series of informational broadcasts on the public stations, but the information seemed contrived and contradictory. The federal government encouraged everyone to sit tight, that the power would come back on shortly. He caught a speech by the president, urging calm and condemning the rioters and looters in the major cities.
Some few radio shows told the truth: there had been a mass exodus out of the cities into the mountains and countryside with untold numbers of people starving alongside the roads. Police, fire and military had almost disappeared, presumably returning home to their families. So far, there were no reports of the federal government showing up with FEMA feeding stations. Those organizations, while certainly real, seemed to have vanished with the corporations and other governmental agencies. At this point in time, almost anything requiring organization any bigger than a local church or small town had ceased to exist.
Chad laughed at this last part. His prepper buddies were totally convinced the Feds would come racing in after the Apocalypse, eager to gobble up everyone’s constitutional rights. But Chad had experienced the government firsthand. In fact, as a SEAL, he had his PhD in how effective the government really was. In short, they could barely keep their shit squared away on a good day, with power humming, air conditioners running, and supply chains working. Like a hooker without hands, the United States government had trouble just getting undressed, not to mention the finer arts of seduction. In the midst of chaos, Chad guessed, just about everyone drawing a paycheck from “the Gov” would steal their staplers and head home.