by Rick Tippins
This got Barry thinking about how vulnerable the US was against such an attack. His team came up with ways to harden the country against such an event and presented it to the stiffs in Washington. The federal government balked at the price of hardening all of the US and its infrastructure. The cost was simply too much, and the people would never agree to spend that kind of money to protect themselves against a threat that might or might not be a real danger. That was fine with Barry; he didn’t have time for folks who refused to help themselves.
He hardened almost everything he owned, put himself through more classes on shooting, stockpiled nonperishable foods and ammunition, but he never changed a thing about himself as far as any co-workers were concerned, and would often chuckle at the thought of his Silicon Valley friends finding out about his little secret.
Although Barry felt competent with every firearm he owned, he also knew he had absolutely zero experience actually using the weapons in a real-life situation with adrenaline pumping and bullets flying. He was smart enough to know when this time came, it would be nothing like standing on a square range with some retired cop yelling “threat” before he engaged stationary paper targets that, to date, had never fired back.
Barry knew his best chance for surviving in the new world was to run, hide and avoid conflict at all costs. He also knew he wasn’t climbing into bed with the government that had knowledge of the very threat that had recently unraveled almost a hundred and fifty years of technology and done nothing to prevent it. He would run, and he would survive on his own, and they could kiss his lily-white ass, as far as he was concerned.
Barry guided the bike east towards the foothills, tense and fearful at every turn. The last thing he wanted was to encounter some of the people he knew were roaming the streets. The bounty he had strapped to his bike would trigger an immediate conflict with anyone still alive and half starved. The moment he could, Barry pulled the bike off the street and rode cross-country, where the going was much slower.
Barry’s plan was quite simple: he was heading into the center of the country, where he would find folks like himself, who were good folks, knew how to survive, and where he would offer his expertise as long as they let him join their group or town or whatever they had. If the fucking federal government felt he could help get the country back on its feet, he had little doubt he could almost single-handedly get a small town on its feet and self-sufficient.
As the sun began to rise, Barry crested a hilltop, stopped the bike, and withdrew his binoculars, scanning the sprawling landscape. In the distance, he saw a small farmhouse with several cars parked on the surrounding grounds. He opened the gas cap and, using his legs, shook the bike back and forth, assessing the amount of fuel on board. The sloshing seemed to match what the gas gauge read.
Barry dismounted, securing the bike in a thicket along with his pack before finding a spot on the hilltop to watch the farmhouse. He watched the tiny homestead for three hours, seeing nothing more than a bird or squirrel moving on the property.
He moved off the hilltop to his bike, stripping the machine of all the gear. He squatted next to the pile of gear and opened a small saddlebag, pulling out a small hand pump, which he intended to use to siphon gas from the cars on the farm. He stuffed the pump in his cargo pocket and slung his short-barreled AR-15 across his shoulders. Barry turned and dug through another bag, pulling out a plate carrier, which he pulled on, tightening the straps.
During his time on the range, he was introduced to a whole different culture that, before he started shooting, he didn’t know existed. He heard guys talking about the plate carriers and how they housed ballistic plates that would defeat a rifle round. He listened to all the bravado talk by guys on the range who postured and bragged. It seemed many of them preferred to wear only the front plate and leave the rear plate at home in the spirit of reducing weight.
These gun-range commandos liked to do their training in comfort. Barry thought this sounded like a surefire way to get shot in the back. Murphy’s Law seemed to always rear its ugly head when he tried cutting corners. In the end, Barry kept both plates and dumped all his other gear so he would be lighter in case he had to make a quick exit from the farmhouse property.
He learned a valuable lesson when he left his house the night before. A fully loaded motorcycle was an absolute pain in the ass to ride at anything more than a snail’s pace. Lighter and faster now, Barry started down the hill towards the farmhouse, wearing the plate carrier and carrying only a rifle, pistol and his fuel pump.
Once he arrived outside the house, he slowly rode in a circle around the perimeter in order to see if anyone came out to see who had arrived. Barry was sure that after all these weeks with no vehicles, the sound of his motorcycle would bring any occupants out in a hurry. No one came outside, so he stopped next to an old Ford F-150.
Without dismounting or shutting the bike down, Barry fed the longer end of the pump’s hose into the Ford’s gas tank, then fed the shorter bit of hose into the bike’s open tank and began to slowly work the pump’s lever. Five pumps later, he was rewarded by the sound of gas splashing into his bike’s fuel tank. He pumped until his bike’s fuel tank was full, withdrew all his hoses, and emptied the excess fuel into the dirt before stowing the pump in his cargo pocket.
Barry gunned the bike, riding quickly back up into the hills. Barry knew he had about a six-hundred-mile range with what he had in the tank right now. He would top the fuel whenever he could, no matter how much or how little he had on board. The bike was a beauty and he had done some research before buying it. BMW made great overland-type bikes and, with very few changes, the bike was ready for just about anything.
The best thing he had done was add an aftermarket fuel tank that added more than four gallons, making the total fuel capacity twelve gallons. Depending on how he rode, the bike was rated at fifty-five miles per gallon. Barry rounded it to six hundred and felt pretty good about his chances of finding fuel before he ran out. He returned to the spot where he hid his gear and dismounted, shutting the bike off. He was starving and set to making something to eat.
As Barry sat eating his meager breakfast, a small tendril of smoke in the distance caught his eye. Smoke out in the hills made him wonder what was burning. He half wanted to go investigate, but knew it would not be a wise decision and could end in disaster for him. The bike made noise and would alert anyone in the area of his approach, so he figured he would stick to trying to skirt the smoke and get out into the central valley. Barry felt if he could reach the central valley, he would be able to make much better time since it was so flat. He might even use some of the roads.
When he finished slurping down the paste that was supposed to be some sort of egg breakfast, he loaded the bike and climbed back on, facing the direction he intended to go. Suddenly he felt the weight of last night’s events hit him hard, causing him to feel weak and nearly topple off the bike. He was exhausted beyond words and knew he had to rest soon before he made a mistake.
He shouldn’t be in a rush. After all, it wasn’t like he was on any sort of timetable. There were no deadlines, no meetings to keep, no appointments he had to attend. He could go at his own pace, a pace that was the safest for him and afforded him the greatest chance of survival.
Just making and eating breakfast had taught him a valuable lesson. He did a ton of research and felt fairly certain he purchased and brought most of the gear he needed to survive; however, he hadn’t really practiced with any of it, which was evidenced when he burned the shit out of himself while boiling water. He added too much water to the dehydrated breakfast and had to suffer through eating the runny paste. Not a huge deal and definitely a first-world problem, but a very telling experience in his opinion.
Barry found a nice deep draw covered in vegetation, not visible from any structures or roads. He made his way to the bottom and began riding up the draw, finding it was a dried creek bed. He rode a distance up the creek bed until it was blocked with a pile of tree branches and
other debris.
He covered the bike in branches, pulled out his sleeping mat along with his sleeping bag, crawled in, and almost immediately fell asleep. He dreamed bandits took his bike and all his gear, while still he slept a long, deep sleep.
Jared sat inside the house, a small candle providing a pitiful amount of light in comparison to nights gone by. Shannon sat on the couch, reading to Essie under another candle’s doleful light. Calvin was outside on watch, and Bart was asleep in one of the bedrooms. It was early evening, and the house was dead quiet except for the low murmur of Shannon’s voice.
It started faintly, causing everyone in the little house to stop what they were doing and listen intently. Jared leapt to his feet and raced outside just in time to hear what sounded like a fairly large helicopter pass overhead, heading towards the city. Jared raced around the side of the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of the helicopter, but the aircraft was operating without lights, leaving Jared staring up at what appeared to be a blackhole in his opinion.
Seconds after the aircraft thundered over the house, Bart staggered out, pulling on a jacket and dragging his rifle by the sling. Jared turned as the noise faded in the distance.
“Hey, we don’t know anything about that bird. I wouldn’t recommend running out in the open like that in the future,” Bart said as he came up to Jared. He looked back at the doorway to where Shannon and Essie stood, and nodded his head as if to make sure they knew his advice extended to them as well. Shannon pumped her head in the affirmative.
“It’s obviously the government,” Jared said.
“That’s what worries me,” Bart responded before turning on his heel and walking back into the house.
Jared walked out to where Calvin was and made sure he was good, before returning to the house. Bart had not gone back to bed, but instead sat in a chair sipping water, a look of concern on his weathered old face. He also had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, looking older than ever.
Jared pushed the thoughts of Bart’s health struggles in the current environment out of his head as he sat down next to the older man. “What’s wrong with the government knowing we’re out here?”
Bart looked up with bloodshot eyes, his shoulders drooped, his brow creased with furrows caused by concern. Bart breathed in deeply before replying, “The goddamn government either caused this or allowed this to happen. By caused it, I mean they either actually did something to cause this or their naive foreign and domestic policies caused some other government to bring this on us.”
Jared shifted in his seat. “Yeah, but FEMA, the National Guard, aren’t they all in place to get folks back on their feet after something like this?”
Bart looked at Jared like a father whose son had just made a poorly thought out and naïve statement about life. “The government is simply a tool for the people who run the world, enabling them to harvest money from the country’s population for their coffers.” Bart swept his hand across his front. “Everything the government does is controlled by plaintiff’s attorneys and people who run corporations. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars getting politicians elected and they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. People always blame corporations—as if it’s just corporate greed. It’s human greed.”
Jared cocked his head slightly and Bart continued, “Take all the humanitarian aid the US government sends to Israel, billions of taxpayers’ dollars going to help Israel, right?” Without waiting for a response, he forged on, “What do you think Israel spends those billions on? Weapons, and who sells them those weapons? Fucking corporations that are mostly based in the US of A, my friend. It’s how the rich launder our tax dollars right into their bank accounts.”
Bart drew a deep breath. “So, excuse me if I’m a little suspicious of the organization that a month ago had access to roughly forty percent of every American’s yearly income and suddenly has been cut off. I imagine that right about now they are doing everything in their power to regain the death grip they once had on the US population.”
The old man took a sip of water.
“Past practice tells me they are looking out for themselves and could give two fucks about you and me, unless, of course, we have something to offer them.” Bart shook his head in disgust. “They took what they wanted before, using social media along with the news media to blind everyone to what they were really doing. Now it’s my guess they’re just fucking taking what they want by force. They have no way to manipulate the masses and, quite frankly, no need to since they’re pretty much the only people with aircraft, and armored vehicles.”
Jared thought about the world before and how the old bastard was on the mark about taxation and how people had given nearly half their yearly earnings to the government without so much as blinking. Where had all that money gone? he wondered. The two men sat in silence as Jared mulled over this thought. A month ago, he would have dismissed this old man’s ramblings as those of a conspiracy theorist. Now after the electricity was shut off, he had to give this theory, opinion, or whatever it was, some serious thought.
“Think about it,” Bart said. “One helicopter heading into the city at night. Not a humanitarian-aid mission, you can bet on that. More like they’re going in to get someone out who is in their inner circle, and fuck the rest of the starving sons of bitches out there.” He finished and took another sip of water while Jared remained silent, listening to the soft murmurs of Shannon reading to Essie.
“Maybe we should cover the OP with a tarp during the night hours and figure out some sort of camo for daytime shifts,” Jared said.
Without looking over, Bart nodded.
“Can’t those guys see people in the dark with some sort of heat sensors?” asked Jared.
“Some can, but if they’re flying without lights, the pilots are wearing night-vision goggles.” Bart waved a boney hand. “We can come up with a plan tomorrow…set up a safer OP.” With that, Bart rose and ambled off to the back bedroom.
Shortly after Bart retired to bed, Jared and Shannon blew out the candles and put Essie to bed before lying down for some badly needed rest. Calvin came in around 2200 hours, woke Bart for his shift, and four hours later Bart woke Jared for his watch. Jared felt like his head had just hit the pillow when Bart shook his shoulder. The group was most vulnerable in between shifts.
They only had two mechanical watches and neither had an alarm function, so when it was time, the person at the OP would walk down to the house, wake the next person, then return to their post until the next person arrived. It wasn’t the best scenario for pulling security, but it was the best the little group could do with what they had at their disposal.
Jared got up, rubbed his eyes, pulled his shoes on, and grabbed his rifle before donning his gear and numbly stumbling out into the cold towards the OP. Once he arrived, Bart briefed him on what happened, which was nothing. After the quick briefing, Bart left Jared sitting alone in the cold. This was the worst part of this whole thing, Jared lamented to himself.
He missed sleeping through every night while cops and other first responders took care that nothing bad happened to all the sleeping people. My God, he thought, just one full night of uninterrupted sleep would do wonders for my head. He looked down at the watch Bart had passed on to him and saw it was a little past 0200 hours.
Forty-five minutes later, Jared was freezing, his legs were stiff, and he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He had never fallen asleep while on post simply because Bart had threatened to kill him if he did, and he was fairly sure Bart had not been bluffing. Before the event, he wouldn’t have seen the importance of staying awake while on a post. Post event, he saw what people were doing to each other and was in no way inclined to be subjected to the merciless violence humans were bestowing on one another.
He stood and stretched, which only served to make him colder. He folded his arms and did a series of squats in a futile effort to warm his chilled body. His knees screamed in protest and his lower back ached. On his fi
fteenth squat, he froze halfway up.
In the distance came the faint sound of beating rotors; the helicopter was returning. Suddenly, Jared wasn’t cold or stiff as the noise of the approaching aircraft grew louder. He strained his eyes to see into the darkness, scanning for the helicopter, but saw nothing. He shifted his position, feeling suddenly vulnerable. Jared moved to a large rock, where he crouched in an attempt to hide himself from the approaching machine.
As he settled into position, Jared heard a distinct change in the pitch of the helicopter’s engines. Jared was not a helicopter aficionado or even a helicopter enthusiast, but he knew something had changed, which most likely meant something was wrong, since the rhythmic roar of the bird had changed to something that sounded more distressed, even a little hysterical—if a helicopter could sound hysterical. Seconds later, he heard a loud crash, followed by a higher pitched whine from the engines, and then silence.
He crept forward, staring into the night, still unable to see a goddamn thing. His eyes were unable to penetrate the molasses-like darkness. The fucking thing crashed, Jared thought, standing as still as a statue while he digested this information. Holy fucking shit, the thing just crashed and I heard the whole thing. This was definitely something Bart would want to hear about pronto. Jared broke into a sprint for the farmhouse.
Jared hurried into the small house, blasting straight into the old man’s room. Bart sat straight up in bed, pistol in hand.
“Don’t shoot, it’s me,” Jared hissed.
“What the fuck time is it?” Bart asked as Jared fumbled around in the darkness before lighting a tiny candle on the dresser.
“The helicopter crashed out there somewhere,” Jared said.