by Ron Foster
“It’s more like I wanted to hear your thoughts on that subject. You know help ain’t coming to this town let alone way out here ever. This is one of those special kinds of disasters where the gloves come off, this is a National Disaster officially declared event by the President! Now I know They don’t have the Federal resources or a plan to deal with this size of an event and ten to one that New Madrid fault zone up around Tennessee has caused enough earthquakes and flooding to change this continents land shape by now. No fuel trucks or freight trains are going to be running and that means no food or banking is going to be going on for a very longtime to come!” Zack said matter of factley.
“Well this state has some of its own resources. I might could get one of my buddies in the National Guard to send us a truck for them people on the island.” Bobby began before Zack cut him off.
“And if you found a military truck not in use where would it take them? Oh, the Red Cross, the State Emergency Management or the National Guard might get up a couple quick evacuation route shelters manned but they are going to be over run and out of food in days and then what? These ain’t your average clueless sheeple citizens that would welcome a ride to a FEMA camp even if one did exist around here. They haven’t been sitting around with horse blinders on when it comes to thinking the government is going to save them from a disaster. No, a lot of them have been preparing best they can along the way but the thing is most of their crap is far from here. Those that can get home once the causeway is clear will be trying to make it home most likely but that still leaves a lot of people with no car, or no gas etc.” Zack said eying the man.
“Well they can’t just stay here! Let me try to get in touch with some people and find them a place they can get some help. I seen that group you were with and a lot of them ain’t no spring chickens any more you might say. They going to be running out of their medications soon enough and we ain’t set up for funerals either you might say. How long you sticking around when the causeway water goes down anyway? Don’t you only live an hour away?” Bobby said pointedly.
“I will try to hang out here with the folks that came to the event and help them as long as I can. Bobby don’t forget you got a bunch of your own regular day visitors and fishermen to contend with over there also. I don’t know how many of them that there are but I can tell you that those people are a lot less prepared than any of us at the moment to be stranded on the island. Those folks are entirely your responsibility, I got my hands full.” Zack said firmly.
“Well if they my responsibility then I am back to seeing about getting the National Guard to evacuate them if they are not from around here and plan on staying. I am guessing mostly they are all locals that will be just needing a ride home or enough food to eat until the water goes down so they can get their cars off.” Bobby said.
“Well you help pitch in for food on that. I don’t know how many outsiders contributed to Sloan’s and mine fund-raising appeal but I don’t think many. We both got some group sharing and short rationing to consider now. We need to stretch out what little food we got for staying the course in the long run.” Zack replied.
“Well that’s what I mean about me trying to find some outside help. We both know the grocery stores won’t be getting any more food deliveries anytime in the near future so let’s not kid ourselves trying to be heroic or give away any of our personal supplies away so freely. Let them people be the governments problem and they can sit around somewhere else besides here eating military rations as long as they can.” Bobby said trying to get Zack to come around to his way of thinking.
“When it comes to my people’s best interests, I say they should stay here. If they can sit around in a camp somewhere and sweat all day in the sun while waiting to be fed or die, then they can damn sure do it over here and have a chance at life by doing the same thing here and holding on patiently to a fishpole. That’s about all I know to do with them folks at the moment that makes sense to me and gives them some kind of chance at living long term.” Zack declared saying he had ten fish poles to lend and enough bait to run a fishing rodeo for a month back on the island. He didn’t mention anything about he already knew that no one in their right minds would be willing to give up their concealed carry rights or pocket knives just for a few meals and some dubious help getting home.
“Well this conversation ain’t near done yet and I bet we will have other differences of opinion in the future but I think you are right this time! When the ox is in the ditch it doesn’t do nobody no good to sit around fussing about how it got there. No, it’s time to hitch up the mules and call the neighbors to help get him out!” Bobby said extending his hand which Zack accepted and happily shook whole heartedly!
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8
Meanwhile Back On Spectre Island
“Everybody let’s get ourselves over to the meeting at the church steps now. Come on people! Please get it together and get yourselves ready to assemble down there as quick as you can so we can have us a quick talk about what we need to be concentrating on and doing next.” Sloan said taking charge and assuming a leadership role while walking by the milling disoriented and confused campers talking in cliques here and there, trying to get them moving towards the central structure in some kind of order.
“What do you have in mind?” George asked willing to go help spread the message to the dawdlers still messing with moving their gear away from the shoreline.
“We got to organize this emergency better and that spot seems to be the highest point of land we got. Don’t alarm no one now, but Nick and Neil said the water has started rising again.” Sloan advised before stopping to talk shop to the pair of big men who evidently had gone back to their RV to grab some more of their personal gear.
“Now what the hell are you two gung ho types outfitted for? We are on a sinking island, not outfitting for the zombie apocalypse or to repel pirate boarders.” Sloan said noticing the two had all their field gear on plus ballistic vests and battle rifles in hand.
“We were just making sure we had the gear we wanted to keep up with safe and close at hand.” Nick said thinking the others ought to do the same in the kick off of this apparent full-blown grid down emergency.
“Well that’s all fine and good buddy, but this event has turned into something that needs to be more thought of like an abandon ship maneuver than a tactical deployment. How long do you think you can swim in that river helping folks get to the other side with all that heavy battle rattle? Don’t say a word Knobby, I bet you practice treading water daily in that shit but you would be better served finding out who can’t swim and distributing those extra boat life jackets Zack left over here from the kayaks and such. I tell you what guys, we know you are the biggest baddest things on the island right now and we all love you are willing to die defending us but you can’t fight rising waters with bullets, got it? Use some of that great gorilla strength and brilliant minds you got to start building life rafts or something out of what you find if you got too much energy that needs burning up. Now look here, in my days as a SF soldier I have been on and done dozens of waterborne and amphibious assaults that I ain’t got time to tell you about, but one thing is certain for sure… the civilian population will panic and drown each other trying to rescue one other or panic and flee a situation like this if we get another wave of tsunami sized water hitting the beaches like we had earlier. Your big weight lifting asses ain’t going to make it most likely either if your all weighted down wearing the wrong gear for the wrong situation. Now I am calling a situational meeting at the church, I want you to help me round up folks and tell them some practical advice first before you start advising them about saving all their guns and ammo. I want to talk about learning the basic water safety skill of the buddy system and drown proofing is going to be my message and the camp order to follow for the day, you ain’t got to bother explain what that is to them, it’s self-explanatory. We are all going to learn a bit of lifesaving. If another wave hits, I want them to grab their ankles, cu
rl in tight body position and jelly fish float their way off of this hazardous island and not drown themselves trying to save gear. “Sloan said.
“Don’t be encouraging them to be loading themselves down with extra gear in their pockets neither. That’s a load of crap to be thinking it’s going to save their ass once they get too shore because I doubt most can make it that far even if they weren’t weighted down with extraneous bull shit... We ain’t running and gunning on a range today, we are going to be talking about water safety lifesaving 101 for our first survival talk of the day. I will teach them if necessary other ways to survival float, to tie their pants off at the ankles, sling it over your head towards the water and scoop some air in their britches and make a life vest. I want them to know this survival trick and maybe a few others before we worry about who got their concealed carry rig on, or sticking ammunition in baggies OK? Don’t get everyone all freaked out that the raving horde of grid down cannibals are going to eat them as they come up on shore from the river cause that ain’t happening. I would much rather have you tell them to stay out of snaky looking brush when they beach themselves rather than figure out if a pistol shoots under water ok?” Sloan said advising that 40 years military Special Forces duty making sure nobody had to help throw dirt on him to bury him for a misstep made him qualified to know what was best at the moment.
“Makes good sense to me!” Nick said grounding his gear next to Knob’s AKA Neil, AKA Knobby AKA K-nobs etc. according to who was referring to him, that was already doing the same with his gear and securing it in a neat pile.
“Hey I heard that a poisonous water moccasin snake can’t bite you while its underwater, is that true?” Knobby said unslinging his level four ballistic plate vest.
“Think about it this way, that kind of damn snake eats fish for a living even though the only time you see one it’s usually on the surface of the water or on land close to shore. Reminds me of the some of the questions we used to get at Ft. Polk Louisiana. That was an Army training base stateside back in the day we called little Vietnam. The drill instructor used to say “who wants a machete or entrenching tool to carry across this swamp?” and knowing you never volunteer for anything in the military they didn’t have no takers until we took a column right in marching formation and started wading in the swamp. Me, I wanted something to whomp a snake swimming on top of water near me with but I hesitated too and didn’t get a tool that I wished I had later before he just picked out a “couple of volunteers to tote one.” Sloan said with a wicked grin that swamp living was a different concept for Yankees and he wasn’t going to enlighten them on anything more just yet and save his Jungle Expert school stories from the wilds of the South American Panama Canal zone for later.
Knobby was looking like he wanted to empty an AR magazine into the river before finally wading in to grab someone’s gear that came floating by. Nick helped him but was also cursing himself that his RV full of every prep imaginable didn’t have a carpenter’s claw hammer in it to build a makeshift raft out of all the movie set houses boards and bent nails.
Sloan laughed at their hesitation to get wet. Then he not so gently reminded them of the number of kids and parents that they had seen swimming in that red dirt looking river for days now recreationally since they had been there, all with no poisonous snakes or alligator issues so far and he went back to his organizing people business.
“I wish he hadn’t told us that story about snakes.” The big herculean man named Neil also known as Knobby for his knuckles said.
“Didn’t you say that the river looked shallow enough for your tall ass to wade through? Tell you what K-nob…I will give you that jug of booze you weren’t sure about giving to Zack as a camping present if you ride me across on your shoulders.” Nick said grinning at his big buddy.
“Shit that was before I had met him and got used to his cheap tastes in sipping whiskey. That stuff ain’t half bad mixed with Coke by the way! But boy I tell you what! I would bet good money if a snake managed to bite that old reprobate heathen it would die first or at least get drunk itself from a sip of his blood!” Knobby said with a chuckle before proceeding to go help his friend comfort, console and herd everybody up to Sloan’s meeting at the church.
Everybody was milling around talking anxiously until the late comers finally were finally assembled to hear Sloan’s speech from the church step. He waited for the crowd to settle down and motioned with his hands for them to quit talking before beginning to tell them why they were assembled.
“You know I have done more than my share of advising men going to combat to be brave and honor their commitments to be an American fighting man in the face of unknown as well as known threats but todays talk on how we should handle this situation has given me a lot of pause. It ain’t how trained you are, it’s not how brave I know you are; it is that we don’t know exactly what has occurred and how cooperative I need you to be facing these new dangers together. Now I know most of you haven’t ever been in the military before and you may have your own reservations or avoidances to this type of military advice, but it’s all I know to tell you to do in these troubled times that it seems like it or not we are facing together. The very first and foremost thing for all of us to remember is to avoid the known dangers we are aware of. Be careful and be level headed. However, in our case we have other worries. We have an unknown threat to deal with and that is we don’t know if this island is entirely stable or not when it comes to flooding. Now I ain’t your daddy, your platoon sergeant, and elected leader or even your close friend but you’re going to be on your own to die if you so choose not to listen to me. This ain’t an election or a democracy, I got this position because the other veterans on the island asked me to step up and I have. You don’t like it, feel free to go do your own thing under the leadership of whoever you choose but don’t get in my group’s way! Us old crows of apocalypses served or disaster responder knowledgeable have decided we needed a main group leader an I am what you got. My orders are, all hands-on deck prepare to evacuate this stinking sinking island!” Sloan said with a thousand-yard stare of a tried and true veteran that had seen many battles he didn’t know if he would come out of before but he was going to win regardless.
Silence momentarily took the whole assembly before certain factions complained that further planning and discussion was needed as the old vets and civilian followers banded together to study bodily taking a front porch off a mock studio building if necessary, as a life raft for all. The goats had already chosen it as their own resting spot as rough human hands shooed them away saying “Mine! Mine! Get away! It might be grilling and barbecue time for you bleating beasties soon enough!” Tools were found in the form of axes and entrenching tools and they soon set about a logical dismantling of it from the building should it be immediately needed to hang on to if a catastrophic unpredicted wave of water might be heading their way.
Hand axes, sheath knives, rocks and sticks broke the deck away from another old fake log cabin they thought more suitable for their safety and salvation. Then with a gargantuan effort they all gathered together and hoisted it high and carried it to the center of the road where the grand prize of an inflatable dingy and a way off this island once stood.
The nay sawyers bitched it wasn’t worth the effort, the non-follower men lamented they had no experience with such things tr had some kind of medical issues. Too much work and sweat for naught to get involved with was mostly heard but the first raft was freed should it be needed in a Noah like emergency. Rope and cordage were added to its balustrades as lifelines to hang on to as everyone without a plan but not taking part in one bitched and belittled the efforts of those trying to figure one out.
CHAPTER The Professors Unite
When Zack finally shoved off and got back over to the island after whirling like a dervish in the current once trying to keep the lightweight trolling motor of his dingy on course, there was nothing but an empty field and a few tents still staked on a rise with no occupants to greet him
.
“I guess everyone has headed to higher ground.” He surmised as a good thing as he headed inland to locate who was left on this spit of land. The river had already inched its way towards the restrooms and pavilion by then and that definitely wasn’t a good thing if Bobby’s presumption of just a casual normal seasonal flood rise level was correct.
“What are you doing?” Zack said seeing George sitting on a concrete picnic table as he topped a rise heading for the town of Spectre thinking everyone had moved inland for safety from the river.
“Waiting on you to get back. I want off of here as soon as I can.” His old-time friend confided.
“What’s up? What is going on?” Zack asked concerned at his friend’s evident dismay.