by D A Carey
When Mary raised an eyebrow, Christy said, “I know that look. I stand by what I said earlier, though. We need to make this work as long as we can and keep an eye out for the right opportunity. Bad people are killing each other by the thousands out in the world right now. Every day we wait is good for us.”
“Good for our bodies but not for our souls.”
Christy sighed. “If we did leave, where would we go? What would we do?”
“I don’t know. We might be able to go to my parents’ place in East Texas.”
“How would we get there? And how do we know it’s safe?”
“Big Jim has some working trucks. Perhaps he’d give us one. We know he doesn’t want us here,” Mary said in desperation.
“I doubt it he’d let us have a truck. If we came to his attention, he’d probably just have us escorted out the front gate with whatever belongings we could carry.”
Mary cried silently. Not from weakness but frustration. She was a strong woman and hated the feeling of helplessness that clutched her chest.
“We need to fly below the radar. It’s possible that later we could take one of their trucks if they trusted us to run errands or something.”
“Okay,” Mary said without much conviction.
“Besides, time buys us all kinds of options.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never know, the government could get the power back on.” That elicited the laugh from Mary that Christy was going for. “Or Dave Cavanaugh could send a team down here.”
Mary sniggered. “How can you be sure he doesn’t know what’s going on here and is okay with it? I heard some people say this was all part of his plan to create feudal kingdoms.”
“If that’s true, then we have much larger problems. I met Mr. Cavanaugh once and I didn’t see him that way. He came across as sincere and open minded.”
“Three of the security men here came from Dave’s training place in Colorado. What do you say to that?”
“I don’t know what to say. That’s why I need more time. I did notice that one of the men doesn’t appear to mesh with the others. His name is Gary. They always send him off somewhere else on guard duty when they have their secret meetings. Perhaps I should get to know him better.”
“If you do, be careful. If he’s on their side, then we’ve blown our whole plan of flying below the radar.”
“I will. We need to be trying to put back more food and supplies in case we do have to walk. When we work outside the walls, we can go fishing and cache more things outside the walls in case what we have in this room is lost.”
“Okay.”
“Remember how important these extra days are for us.”
“You keep saying that. I don’t understand why.”
“Everything I’ve read says that the first few weeks after an event like this are the worst. In the big cities, they will be killing each other over a can of beans. After that, there will be gangs of hunter gatherers enslaving and killing for food and choice locations around water. It didn’t go on long enough last year for things to truly get bad. I fear this time it will be worse.”
“Why will waiting make it better?”
“The more of them that kill each other off, the better for us. A thinned population means we have a better chance of sneaking through.”
“Won’t it also mean we’ll stick out more?”
“We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
<< Luke >>
A few days later, Luke was working from home when he could get connected. Working for a large insurance company, he wasn’t sure the good they were doing. Hospitals were forced to stay open by the government and paid in supplies, but for the common man, it was nearly impossible to get healthcare services, and when they could, doctors were paid by a simple barter system. Both tried to keep ledgers of who they served and what they were owed for when everything came back online. Luke sporadically got members enrolled for healthcare, moved the prerequisite electronic data around to pay a claim or make sure someone was eligible for all the good it did. They were merely moving bits and bytes in cyber space that may never be worth anything. To make matters even more bizarre, the reason Luke was doing all this was so that he could earn a few of his owns bits and bytes of electronic money in cyber space, corresponding to a bank account that may or may not ever be worth anything. It was fruitless, because it sure wasn’t worth anything today. He would have been better off out back planting tomatoes, corn, or green beans. At least that had a tangible return that could feed his family.
There was barely enough gas left to take his family downtown one more time for food from the FEMA and DHS folks before the city was locked down. The stores didn’t even try to open anymore. Luke made plans with his neighbors to guard his house while he made the food run. They would eat for one more day. Some people in the neighborhood planned a block kitchen where they pooled food to make common meals. Others shouted that idea down, and there was yelling and some fights. After that, many people stayed indoors.
When they made it downtown, Luke, his wife, and their children got in a long line. Where previously there had been hundreds in line, now there were thousands. The line stretched back to the 4th Street live location five city blocks from the food handout location on the river near the YUM Center coliseum. Luke had plenty of time to talk to people in the line and learned that hundreds of people had begun camping downtown in the Galt House area garages. One man reasoned that while he was sleeping in a tent in a parking garage, at least there was order and his family was fed.
It was two in the afternoon when they got to the front of the line and received two MREs for each of them from a tired-looking private in desert camo fatigues. That food would last a day, possibly two if stretched. Luke’s wife Cindy was a master of using the MRE ingredients to make family meals that didn’t resemble the food from which they began. The family trudged back to their car to make the drive back to the neighborhood off Shelbyville Road outside the beltway expressway.
They passed burned-out buildings, most shops had been looted, and many homes had the windows boarded up like a fort. Occasionally, people tried to stop the car, and Luke had to swerve to avoid them. Twice they heard shots, and he sped away, not taking time to discern if they were the target or not.
After the kids were asleep, Luke and Cindy discussed moving downtown. They were both scared but trusted the government. They were good at camping and wanted the safety of the military and food every day.
Civilization Shudders
Civilization Shudders
“In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos.”
- Gabriel Chevalllier
<< Liz >>
Despite making the decision to go, it hurt Liz to leave. Things weren’t getting better. A few times they had seen an ancient police squad car roll through that had probably been a museum piece or in a personal collection a week ago. When it did, it was overwhelmed by people begging for help. There couldn’t have been more than a handful of police in the entire city with working vehicles that had been scrounged or commandeered. Liz was fortunate to live in such a prestigious neighborhood and to get some level of police protection. She shuddered, imagining what it was like in less fortunate neighborhoods. Even in her neighborhood, the police were only focusing on violent crimes going on in plain view at the moment they drove through. When night came and the ancient police cruiser wasn’t there, Liz, Vince, and the others saw people in the neighborhood that clearly didn’t belong. Whether it was being too poor to own there, too shiftless to work there, or too gang related to belong, it was clear they shouldn’t be here.
That was merely what they could see from the windows and over the hedges. The homes were so opulent and far from each other, it was impossible to tell which inhabitants had left or were hiding in their homes or who had been taken hostage and abused.
Vince took Liz aside. “We’re doing the right thing. We need to get out of here.”
“No, they won’t get this fixed anytime soon. This was an EMP strike, and we have no idea if the whole nation is dark or if we’re at war. What we do know is there is some semblance of order left and we have food. Now is the time to get going.”
“I trust you. I suppose we could always come back if things get better.”
“Yes, we could,” Vince said without much conviction. “The L.A. area has ten to fifteen million people who aren’t prepared. There are a lot of people here who aren’t the most morally upstanding people to begin with. Those people are getting hungry and recognizing the police are only a token presence by now.”
“That’s scary and not the nicest thing you could say about my neighbors.”
“Really? How many do you think will give you food or water if you need it? How many would have an ulterior motive if they did help you? Then ask yourself those same questions if you were home on your grandmother’s farm in Kentucky. That should settle it all for you.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“You were in Chicago last year, and they have around ten million people. The difference was then you had security and a three-man trained team with vehicles coming in to get you and safe places to hole up along the way. Back then, we had only about forty miles to cover to get out of the worst of Chicago.”
“Do you think this will get that bad?”
“That was nothing compared to this. Last time, the infrastructure was in place. It was a bunch of angry, spoiled brats doing the rioting, people raised by soccer moms in a scenario where no one can lose and everyone gets an award. The politicians learned to placate not educate these people, and you had what happened last year.”
“And this is worse?”
“You have no idea how much worse. Angry people are easy to control and negotiate with. They don’t have an ideal they’re fighting for. They don’t want the discomfort of hard work or giving up something personally for change. So they let them have their tantrums then give them some token response, flowery speeches, and they go back to their comforts of air-conditioned homes, full pantries, and internet and they’re mollified.”
“So what’s different here?”
“These people are scared and getting hungry. They’re like fifteen million drowning people. Some good ones will try to create blocks of resistance like Ellie and Malcolm did in Chicago, but how long can they last? This is not a community with gardens or crops. The good people don’t have a lot of guns to protect themselves. The cops have a few guns. The National Guard can help if they show up. The gangs have tons of guns, as do some of your rich neighbors who pretend they abhor them.”
“I’ve heard shooting at night.”
“Well, you want to hope it’s your neighbors shooting and not the bad guys.”
“I trust you. I’m in. What’s next?”
“I’ve been working on the gardener’s truck. It’s running, but it has a miss because of a bad spark plug, and I can’t get a replacement. Even though the tires are bald, they’re holding air. I say we plan to get out around four in the morning.”
“Why not two or three a.m. like in Chicago?”
“We could if you want. I need to get the extra sleep, to be honest. Things should be dead at four in the morning, and there is still some token police presence that we can use to our advantage.”
“Okay.”
“Remember how I said we had forty miles to get out of the worst of it in Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“We have a hundred miles to get out of the worst of it here. That’s not a gauntlet I want to risk a few days from now.”
“Where will we go?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Uncle Dave was building another chartertown in Texas. I have the address in my pack. It’s somewhere near San Antonio. It’s a long way, but if we can get there, we should be well received, safe, and able to plan next steps.”
“This all makes me want to scream. Here we are, right back in it.”
Vince gave her a brotherly side shoulder hug. The vibe was totally different than the emotion-charged almost-kiss in the nightclub only a couple of days ago.
“It’s the way of the world now in a big picture way that most people don’t see,” he said. “There are just too many people living too close together in the world with too little respect for each other and almost no moral compass.”
Liz grimaced. “Uggh.”
“Well, think of the upside,” Vince said cheerfully.
“What upside?”
“One of the population corrections I mentioned before was based around the Black Plague in Europe. I can’t fight something like that. A plague is so indiscriminate. Now I can fight and we have a chance, rather than a roll of the dice like back then.”
“Okay, let’s look at the map, then we’ll pull the others together before we make our final plans.”
<< Vince >>
The part Vince was most worried about after getting out of the L.A. area was avoiding big cities like Phoenix, Tucson, and El Paso. This part of the country had fewer back roads and rural routes than Vince was used to back east. Although he was dead set against going through the high population areas, he had to admit after checking the map that there were portions of the trip where they would be forced to get on either I-10 or I-8 if they went further south.
As much as he hated to root for destruction, he hoped that the EMP devastation had been so strong even the scumbags were rocked on their heels for a few weeks. That, combined with the scarcity of water and supplies in the desert, meant that the thugs would probably head to high population centers—all the more reason to avoid those places. Hopefully, they would be able to use the expressways in between; however, if they broke down and didn’t have enough water, it was a huge risk.
* * *It was dark when they left Hollywood, driving the old gardener’s truck. Liz was riding shotgun, and Junior and Carol had made a cozy place to rest in the back among the supplies. Vince planned to drive slow enough to avoid obstacles and listen for danger, which would also keep the wind down for Junior and Carol if they stayed near the cab. It was an old two-tone Chevy truck from the early 80’s. Even though the tires were balding and the engine had a miss, Vince had hopes it would get them to safety.
As they were loading up, Vince lightened the mood by saying they needed to keep an eye out for replacements for the “maypop” tires.
“What’s a maypop tire?” Liz asked.
“It may pop anytime.” Vince’s smile was infectious; he was back in his element.
They drove out of Liz’s neighborhood and through L.A. under the cover of darkness. The unattended fires, sounds of looting, and the occasional scream were unnervingly reminiscent of Chicago last year. In retrospect, Chicago had looked like a war-torn Middle East with all the different factions fighting each other and looting. The difference now was the sheer volume of fires. It looked like half the horizon was burning. Liz shuddered. The destruction after unchecked fires occurring in a huge urban area like Los Angeles would be complete devastation.
“One good thing about all this smoke is it gives us some cover and keeps some of the thugs off the street,” Vince opined.
“I’m having a hard time seeing any silver lining to any of this,” Liz said.
“Staying alive is always a silver lining.” Vince turned back to the sliding rear window in the truck and called, “Are you guys okay back there?”
“Yeah, we soaked a couple of handkerchiefs with water and covered our faces,” Junior answered. “As long as we’re moving, it keeps a clean air space behind the cab.”
“I can’t go that fast. The suspension is shot, the tires are bald, and we don’t know what’s in the road. We can’t lose this truck.” Turning back to Liz, Vince said, “Keep your eyes pee
led for a couple more bikes. We’re two short.”
“I will. I don’t want to steal them from someone, though.”
“We won’t if it looks like someone is using them. If the people are long gone, our needs supersede leaving the bikes there for someone else to take.”
Liz nodded and changed the subject. “It’s spooky. I thought we’d see more people on the streets.”
“You’re right, even though what we are seeing is more than I want. I suspect a lot are staying inside because the smoke is hard on their lungs. I hear more shots and violence than I’m happy with.”
“Why don’t we get on Highway 101 headed to I-10 or 134 to I-210?” Carol asked, leaning her head in the sliding glass of the back window of the truck cab.
“You know how bad the L.A. expressways are during normal times. Imagine how many cars stopped where they were when the EMP hit. Consider all the people trying to escape the crime and fires. The expressway is all they know.”
Carol nodded. “Yeah.”
“Bill and I talked, and I’ve studied the maps. I plan to skirt us around Griffith Park, take surface streets through Glendale, and then south of Pasadena. I’d love to get into the mountains where there are fewer people. The roads don’t appear to lead where we need to go, though.”
“Surface roads it is then,” Liz said confidently in a way that ended the discussion.
While Vince had a plan, this wasn’t his part of the country. There were too many people, and that presented too many variables for him to plan for. He had to admit to himself that as weak as he was, he wouldn’t be good in a long fight, or a short one, even if it was hand to hand. They needed to be smart.
They took surface streets all the way through Riverside and the Moreno Valley. It wasn’t easy, and they were lucky. Despite some shouts and being shot at twice, they weren’t hit or forced to stop and fight. Vince was all the more convinced they’d left in the nick of time.