by A. American
“Well, that’s good. I couldn’t just stand there and let him bleed to death,” I replied, feeling a little awkward. “Think anyone will remember that?”
“Good luck,” Danny said.
“I don’t know,” Mark added. “Can’t hurt, I guess.”
We stood there for a minute talking over some of the news, which consisted of food, water and the weather. As well as firewood, which was talked about almost as often as the others. “Where you guys headed?” Mark asked.
“Down to Miss Janice’s place. We have some food for her, and I want to take a look around her fence,” I said.
“Let me know what you find. I’m curious if she really saw something or if she’s having hallucinations,” Mark said.
• • •
Anita carried clean clothes out to Thad while he washed in a bucket set under the old pitcher pump outside. The water was cold as hell, but his wife had made it plainly clear he wasn’t coming back into her house till he took a bath. He actually needed a bath, so it wasn’t a bad thing. He thought of what she had said: my house. He smiled to himself and shook his head thinking about how fast a woman takes possession of something, be it a house or man.
After dressing, he went back inside where it was warm. Anita had lunch ready, beans and rice today. He couldn’t complain: every day his family got fed was a good day. He didn’t know what she did to make it taste so good, but he enjoyed it. Little Tony, however, was not a fan. But he had been raised not to question what was put on his plate, and he ate it. When they were done, the little boy cleared the table and Anita started on the dishes. She had to carry water in from the pump in a bucket and pour it in the sink. All the washing was done with cold water. That was the one thing that Anita complained about.
Thad went out and drove the truck around to the barn. He was going to take the radio out to make it more portable in the event they had to bug out and didn’t get the truck. This way he could put it in the Scout if he needed to. Thad was sitting on the ground cutting wires under the dash when the little man came outside.
“Daddy, Momma wants you.”
“What she need, little man?” Thad asked
“Somebody’s here.”
Thad jumped to his feet and headed for the back door. He came into the kitchen and didn’t see Anita and headed for the living room. Anita was at the front door, standing behind it with it only partially open. She heard him coming and looked back. Thad stepped past her and pulled the door open. Standing there was the mailman again, with that same shitty-ass grin on his face.
“Thadius Jones?” The mailman said as the door flew open.
“What do you want?” Thad demanded.
“Well, I told you that I’d be back with instructions for you, and here I am.”
Thad started to tell the guy to go to hell, but thought better of it. Instead he reached out and took the envelope that the man was holding out. Opening the envelope, Thad pulled out a folded-over form typical of all government forms, full of all kinds of information except what you want to see. After scanning it for a minute, he finally saw what he was looking for. In a box labeled UNIT ASSIGNMENT, he saw the name “Avon 4.”
From his travels across Florida, he assumed this meant Avon Park. Looking the document over further, he saw another box labeled ASSIGNED DISCIPLINE. Inside this box were three words: “Driver/Manual Laborer.” He knew exactly what that meant: he might be driving a truck, but more likely he’d be digging ditches somewhere. Folding the paper back up, he unfolded the second piece, the one with Anita’s name on it. Thad took a quick look and saw that her unit assignment was Avon 2.
“Why does she have a different unit assignment than me?” Thad asked.
“I cannot answer any questions. I am just here to drop off the information. As you can see, you have a departure date here.” The mailman reached over the top of the paper and tapped a section of the form. It was two days away.
“And what are we supposed to do?”
Raising his clipboard again and, going through the sheaf of papers, the mailman said, “It says here you are to depart from Lutz.”
Thad looked at the man. “And how in the hell are we supposed to get to Lutz? You know how far that is?”
“You have two days. It’s just down 41. Should be an easy walk.”
“Anything else?” Thad asked.
“Yes. Don’t miss your bus. You will be bussed to your final destination, and you do not want them to come looking for you.” As the mailman spoke, he pointed to the security man he had with him. He was the same as the last time, black uniform with a big DHS patch on the sleeve.
“Oh, you won’t have to come get us, I promise,” Thad replied and shut the door.
Thad stood and looked through the little fan-shaped window at the top of the door as the mailman walked back to his Jeep. Leaning on the hood, he looked back at the house while he spoke to the security man. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pack of smokes, pulled one out with his teeth then produced a lighter and lit it. He tossed the pack and lighter on the hood and the security man picked them up and lit himself one.
They stood there leaning on the white Jeep smoking their cigarettes. Thad watched them through the little window, wondering if this was something they did to get a rise out of people who had been through forced withdrawal from nicotine.
I don’t smoke, assholes, Thad thought as they stood there. It didn’t take them long to finish their smokes. They flipped the butts into the yard: not the edge of the yard, but out into it. Eventually they climbed into the Jeep and drove off.
Thad stood there for a while looking at the road. The Jeep was gone and he didn’t see anything that worried him. After a moment he heard Anita behind him and turned to her. “We gotta go.”
“Where?” She asked, and again that look of fear was on her face. It hurt worse than anything he had ever felt in his life. Just knowing she was afraid made Thad mad. He was supposed to take care of her, protect her; that was a man’s job, after all. “I don’t know, but we have to leave from here.”
Anita sat down on the old sofa in the living room. “When?”
Thad stood there for a minute and thought about it, then looked at her. She looked so small to him and her went over and sat beside her. “Tomorrow night. We’ll wait till it gets dark, then we’ll leave.” Thad reached out and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned into him and almost disappeared into his huge shoulders.
Little Tony came in the room and looked at his mother, he could tell she was scared, and that scared him. He walked over and sat on one of her knees and looked up at his dad. Thad looked down at the boy and smiled. It was a forced smile, but he wanted to make him feel a little better.
“What’s wrong, Momma?” Tony asked.
Anita reached out and put a hand on his head. “Nuthin’, baby, I’m okay.”
“You look sad.”
Anita stood up and looked at Thad. “Well, I guess we got work to do if we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Where we goin’?” Little Tony asked.
She looked back to the boy with a smile on her face, one that didn’t look as forced as Thad’s. “On a trip. You wanna go for a ride in the truck?”
“Yeah!”
Thad had already prepositioned most of what they thought they would need, but they made another pass through the house, looking for things they could use. Thad piled the few items they came up with on the back porch along with some assorted tools that he grabbed out of the shop. Now he just had to get everything loaded into the Scout.
The Scout was in the woods about a mile away, the cache was buried in the woods out behind the house and they had things there they needed to take with them as well. Thad sat on the swing on the back porch thinking about it. The most logical thing to do was to go get the Scout and drive it around and load everything up. But he was nervous to do it,
afraid that someone would be watching and the moment he tried to move anything they would swoop in.
More important than when and how to go and get his supplies was where he was going to go. Thad sat there rocking in the swing going over the options in his head. He wished he could get back to Sarge, but he hadn’t talked to him in some time. Then he thought about Morgan, but the thought of just dropping in on someone unannounced was a bad idea. He needed to get on the radio and see if he could reach anyone, maybe get some ideas from the guys.
Thad went back in the house and told Anita he needed to go for a walk to use the radio and try and get ahold of someone to see what they should do.
The radio was still lying in the front seat of the old truck where he had left it when he was interrupted while removing it. Picking it and the antenna up, Thad started out through the back of the property toward where the cache was buried. He didn’t want to walk down the road and he had put the trail in from there to the Scout, so he figured it would be the safest route to get to it. Crossing the fence, he picked the trail and headed for the old truck.
After stringing the antenna in the tallest tree he could find, he opened the hood and connected the power cable directly to the battery using his Leatherman tool. Taking out his notebook from Sarge, he started going through the frequencies, listening for any transmissions. He heard a lot of talk, just not from the people he wanted to talk to. Some of the chatter caught his attention and he stopped on a frequently to listen.
A man from Jacksonville was on the radio, an old man from the sound of his voice. He was going on and on about what he called the Hessians. He told of how groups of armed men were going around the city killing, robbing, raping, basically doing whatever they wanted. He claimed they had working vehicles, motorcycles and ATVs, and were running rampant. When he paused, another voice came over the station talking of the same thing. He was in Atlanta and said that groups like that were also there. They ran through parts of town where there was no federal presence, which had been growing by the day.
The two men talked and Thad listened as they exchanged stories of how these groups would show up when the people of the area refused to cooperate with the FEMA plan and how they thought it was the government doing it. When the groups showed up, they stayed to a fairly defined area, raising general hell. After several days of this, the FEMA/DHS troops would move in and the thugs would move out. The man in Atlanta claimed that he witnessed what he called a mock firefight, the two groups confronting each other in the open streets. He said there was lots of gunfire but no casualties on either side.
As the federal troops moved in, the thugs would gradually pull back and out of the area and were not pursued. The two of them were in agreement that these were government-sanctioned thugs sent in to intimidate the local populace into submitting to the federal authority. Thad listened to this for a while, then moved on to other frequencies. As he scanned the bands, that name stuck in his head: Hessians. He thought about that, trying to remember where he had heard it. Then it came to him: German mercenaries used by the British during the Revolutionary War.
He was rolling that thought around in his head when he heard a pop, or thought he did. Looking up from the radio, he surveyed the area around him. Nothing was moving, no sound. Then he heard it again, one pop. This time he knew what it was and took off at a run toward the house.
Chapter 15
“He’s going into arrest, I’m going to start CPR,” Doc said.
Sarge stepped over and put a hand on Doc’s shoulder. “No, you’re not. Don’t waste your energy on him.”
Doc looked up at Sarge, and the look on his face told the old man he was pissed. “Look, son, he’s gone, and even if you bring him back, then what?”
Doc looked back down at the rotund man on the floor and dropped his hands onto his BDU-clad thighs. He sat there shaking his head. “I guess you’re right, it’s probably what he was trying to do.”
Sarge made Mike go lie back down while he, Ted and Doc dragged Don’s body out of the shack. Out on the deck, Doc asked Sarge what he was going to do with the body. Sarge told him that tonight they would take him downriver in the boat and drop him in. When Doc tried to protest, saying that was where people, including them, were getting their drinking water, Sarge reminded him of how many gator and fish carcasses had probably been thrown into that river in the last several weeks.
The three of them got the body into one of the boats and covered with a tarp. Sarge wanted to wait until it was pretty late to go out on the river, so there was time to kill. Going back inside, he sat down at the radios again and played around with the bands. With his headset on, he looked over to one of the other radios that was tuned to a preset band and connected to a laptop. A program was running on it and there was a map of the southeast. He looked at the screen for a minute, then turned back to the big box in front of him.
Ted stayed outside to keep watch while Doc tended to Mike. His wound looked good. Doc changed the dressing every day, but that was putting a dent in his supply of bandages. While applying a Telfa pad to Mike’s jaw, he thought they would need to find a source for more. The typical places ran through his head: pharmacies, hospitals and the like. Pharmacies would surely be looted out and hospitals would be too damn dangerous to even think about, but it didn’t change the fact that they were going to need more.
Mike was conscious and getting a little restless. Doc told him he needed to take it easy, but Mike told him he needed to get up for a bit or he was going to lose his mind. Doc finally relented and Mike got up and went to the kitchen. He was hungry and wanted something to eat. The bullet had passed along his jaw, but the wound was only in the soft tissue. He knew it would be painful to eat, but he was damn hungry. He started some soup and sat at the table with Sarge.
Sarge was going through the bands and stopped on one. He unplugged the headset and the speaker squawked to life. Mike and Doc both looked up at the same time as the sound of a man’s voice filled the room. Even Ted opened the door and stuck his head in at the sudden sound. They all stood there listening as a voice filled with panic came out of the speaker. The man was screaming into the radio about gangs rampaging through town, how the feds were just outside of town and weren’t doing anything about it. He had tried to leave, to get away from the chaos, but was turned back by armed men in black uniforms with DHS patches on their shoulders.
He said he had begged them to let him and his family out, told them what was going on in town, but they wouldn’t let them leave. There were many people there trying to get out, but none of them were let through. Women were begging DHS to at least let the children through, but all were turned away. Now he was back in his house trying to hide from the terror in the streets. They could hear gunfire. It was not very loud or frequent at first, but the tempo and volume increased along with the panic in the man’s voice.
It wasn’t long before they heard screams intermixed with the gunfire. Ted had opened the door and all four of them were standing there listening as the scene unfolded in their minds. By then the man was shrieking into the radio. A crash came out of the speaker, then screams, closer screams and other voices. These voices were angry, hate-filled and loud. A woman screeched in the background, then another female did, too, and that one sounded much, much younger.
The man was still yelling when the station cleared and silence filled the shack. The four of them stood there not wanting to look at one another. Mike stood up and walked over to the little stove and turned off the burner, then went back to the table and sat down, suddenly no longer hungry.
Later, Ted was on the radios listening for anything that might be out there. The military radios were all silent, but the ham had plenty of traffic on it. As Ted listened he heard people from all over the country talking, and then he caught a transmission that grabbed him. A ham in England was talking with another in Maine. According to the English ham operator, while there had been some damage in th
e UK associated to the solar flare—power lines down, substations burned out and many structures burned as a result of the power lines overloading and setting them on fire—there was no damage to cars, and most electronics still worked in the areas that had power. Power was out in most of the country, but there were small pockets that had it and the other areas were being restored.
The citizens of England had been told that restoring power to the entire country would be a slow process, as the large transformers used at power plants and substations would take time to manufacture. There were even cases of transformers sitting in storage yards catching fire and burning. It had been determined that the stored units had not been properly grounded and had absorbed the load from the flare, causing the damage.
Ted listened for a few more minutes then went out to let Sarge know what he had heard. He sat on an old wire reel and relayed the information to the old man. Sarge sat there listening, taking it all in, not saying anything. Ted finished with, “What’cha think?”
Sarge sat there for a minute and then said, “I guess that proves my theory.”
“What theory is that?”
“Remember when I said that an EMP could have been set off, either as an act of terrorism or deliberately by our own government?”
Ted thought about it for a minute. “Vaguely. You think that could be it?”
“What the hell else would do all this? Sure some of it may have been from the flare, but the rest of this had to be something else.”
“Who do you think did it?”
Sarge rocked his chair back on its rear legs. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“Go tell Doc that we’re going to go drop Don off.”
When they had found a likely place on the river and lifted Don to drop him over the side, Ted said, “Kinda messed up just dropping him in the river.”