Surviving in America: Under Siege 2nd Edition

by Paul Andrulis

  “What happens if someone sees the smoke while we are in the basement?” Sue asked, startling Dave out of his revelry.

  “Wont that be a problem?”

  “We torch the house. We get everyone out of the basement and torch the house,” Zeb replied after some consideration.

  “With a six or eight inch slab, the basement hidey should be ok. Whoever came calling will think we burned alive. We come back later after it cools off.”

  “Sounds like a plan Stan. Let’s go Joe,” Dave said humorously.

  They loaded up to get supplies. It was decided the best suited people for the job were Joe and the other military men in case they encountered heavy resistance. Zeb checked the barrels on the two machine guns, and rejected one. Only one good machine gun with a hundred rounds of ammunition, plus their assorted small arms was all of the firearms they had. Missing his well-worn trusty lock-back, Joe strapped on a military survival knife. He wasn't fond of the knife, but it would have to do.

  “Maybe Wal-Mart is open,” Joe snickered to himself.

  He actually hoped that it was.

  …..................................

  Tenth street in Great Bend was oddly still. Usually bustling with cars, the big five lane was empty as far as they could see. Except for feral dogs and wild cats, they had seen little life of any kind, and none of it human.

  Great Bend, a city of over fifteen thousand people seemed to be empty. Just another Kansas ghost town.

  After an uncomfortable ride, they pulled into the Farm Supply to look for a wood burning stove, some stovepipe, and a trailer to haul everything back home. Ominously, the building was completely quiet yet the door was unlocked. Strange since the hours were posted as nine o’clock to nine o’clock, and it was ten at night long was after closing time.

  Lawnmowers, fencing, and other farm materials with faded sale signs still hanging from them were still sitting in the parking lot. There were also no lights in the building.

  For that matter, only the stoplights seemed to be working. Every stoplight they could see was red in both directions, working but not changing. The street lights lining both sides of Tenth Street were off, which was more than unusual. Tenth Street was dark as a cave and silent as the night, with only unblinking red eyes breaking the monotonous jumble of dark half seen shapes.

  The whole city felt alien, somehow inimical to human life.

  “Something is wrong in Dodge,” Hewitt said, stating the obvious.

  Several cars were still parked in the parking lot patiently awaiting the return of their owners as if the store were still open.

  “They probably belongs to the employees,” Zeb estimated, indicating the vehicles with his hand.

  The wind shifted and a wisp of scent entered into Joe's nose making him desire to wretch. Something, somewhere was very dead. Nasty, bloated dead. The smell reminded him of a neighbor's cow he had once found by accident.

  As a kid, Joe had gone fishing. Laying in the field next to his favorite fishing pond he found the cow, but in all fairness it was hard to miss. It was bloated, half eaten by coyotes, and had maggots crawling everywhere. Flies had been hard at work. The stench from the rotting meat had been terrible, and this odor smelled the same.

  The wind had come from somewhere to the east, down tenth street. He thought of the big grocery store, as it was off over in that direction. The thought of all the rotting meat there if the power was out in all the stores made him cringe. The Wal-Mart sold groceries as well, so it could be either of them.

  Using their dim and half-dead flashlights, the men entered the store. There was no obvious signs of anything untoward, in fact everything seemed to be normal except the lack of store personnel. Something on the shelf next to a checkout counter caught Joe's eye.

  “Guys, batteries!” he said softly but excitedly.

  One by one, the men changed out the batteries of their half dead flashlights, glad to see the strong sure white beams in the inky darkness instead of the weak yellow circles of light. Something about the situation made them all uncomfortable, though not one could state exactly what was wrong.

  With more light, they could see that some stuff had been taken. It was obvious to Joe that the lack of employees, the lack of power, and the newly discovered evidence of looting indicated that Great Bend had not escaped the war.

  “Looks like Great Bend got hit.”

  The snack foods were all gone, and it looked like all the baby farm animals, such as ducks and chicks had been taken as well. The pens were all standing open and empty, with even the heat lamps missing from their respective hangars. Shining his light back into the area designated for feed, Joe noted that someone, somewhere, had taken up actually raising birds.

  Dog food abounded, but the area reserved for bagged chicken feed was empty, completely cleaned out.

  “Someone is alive here, somewhere. They are trying to farm chickens,” He told Zeb.

  “Get frosty boys. Hitch, Cross, Nicolson, cover the front of the store. Daniels, you and Hewitt find the back door and lock it down if you can,” Zeb ordered.

  Hewitt and Daniels ran for the back of the store. When they reached the back it was not difficult to find the door as the smell led them to it.

  “Lieutenant!” Hewitt said just loudly enough to be heard at the front of the store.

  “I think we found the owners of the cars out front, and it’s not pretty.”

  Zeb and Joe ran to the back of the store.

  When they were close, the smell was almost strong enough to knock them over. Hewitt and Daniels were standing by a door which Hewitt was blocking wide open with his foot. Daniels meanwhile was covering the open door with his M-16.

  Zeb looked inside, reached down, and then picked up something just within the room. After he grabbed the object he backed quickly out and kicked the door shut. Before the door shut, Joe flashed his light inside the room and saw bloated and bullet ridden bodies laying in front of a wall. The sheetrock wall was stitched with the pockmarks from small arms.

  “Lake City five-five-six,” Zeb stated while reading the head stamp on the empty case he had picked up.

  He clenched it in his fist.

  “Military rounds.”

  Inside the buildings loading dock the floor was littered with dead bodies, and at least one hundred empty casings, all of them bearing the Lake City arsenal stamp. Not one of the people in the room had been armed. They had not been able to even try and defend themselves.

  “The smell outside. Groceries, rotting meat, Oh heck no,” Joe said in a whisper, not wanting now to go anywhere in town.

  He was scared by the thought of what he might find.

  23. (It's OUUURR Town)

  They found a five foot by seven trailer and hooked it up to the Humvee after changing the ball hitch. The trailer needed an inch and seven-eighths ball instead of their two inch ball that was on the Humvee.

  The men were loading a heavy woodstove onto the trailer, after having first loading box after box of double wall stove pipe. Everyone was grunting at the heavy cast iron beast, when they heard a lonely and despondent wail. It was followed quickly by similar responses from various locations throughout the city.

  “OOUUUURRRR.... OU... OU... OUUUUUUUUUURRRR”

  The deep keening voices wailed through the empty streets, sometimes blending as multiple throats broke loose at once.

  “Dogs?” Zeb asked, perplexed.

  “No. Much worse. Those are wolves,” Joe replied, knowing the differing howl of a dog playing coyote.

  “By the way, did I mention Great Bend is the only city close to the farm with a zoo?”

  Zeb just stared glumly for a moment at Joe, considering that valuable and need to know information.

  Remembering all the animals that had gotten loose which they already knew about, Great Bend had just turned from an empty dead city in their minds to a literal concrete jungle filled with ephemeral beasts bristling with teeth and claws. They could feel unseen eyes watc
hing their every move, just waiting for one member to walk off alone for just a minute, to separate from the herd for a second.

  They all agreed it might be best to spend the rest of the night in the store with guards posted. Heavily armed guards.

  Joe was tired. It is very hard to sleep on a cold hard concrete floor with nothing but a small pile of farm clothing serving as a cushion and pillow and then using a thin coat for a blanket. In the morning Zeb woke seemingly chipper as ever, which made Joe want to kick him.

  Joe hurt everywhere, and he was ready to leave.

  Between the cloying smells of decay now pervading through everything since they had opened the doors to the back room and the racket made by those stupid wolves, sleep had been a precious but little found commodity. Every once in a while, precisely when he was about to sleep, the wolves would break loose again into howls that opened his eyes and made him check the front door.

  The howls were impossible to pinpoint as to the position and distance. The wolves seemed to be howling at the front door at times, and mere seconds later a half-mile away. With the sound echoing off of concrete and brick buildings, they could well be anywhere.

  To put the icing on the proverbial cake, Joe hurt everywhere. He was cold, and cranky. He actually wanted a lion to show up just so he could shoot something. He was not in a good mood at all.

  “Hey old man,” Daniels waved as Joe stood up.

  “You had better have some hot coffee if you are going to call me old right now, or I might show a young dog some new tricks,” Joe snapped, pushing his fists into the center of his back.

  He shoved hard with his fists while arching his back into them in a oftentimes vain attempt to pop his back. Satisfyingly his spine popped like popcorn, making him feel a little better.

  “Boy, didn't you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Zeb said rhetorically with a twinkle in his eye.

  “What bed? I don't see any stinking bed! I also haven't been a boy when I look in the mirror for a long time,” Joe grumbled.

  “Then quit acting like one. We have a lot of work to do today, and complaining won't get it done. Sir,” Zeb replied.

  “Sorry Zeb. I just didn't get much sleep last night,” Joe replied humbly.

  Cranking his head sideways with his arms to popping his neck, Joe finally popped in a vertebra next to his skull.

  “Ouch! Man, one of these days I am going to twist too hard and break my own fool neck.”

  “Haven't seen that yet. Can I sell tickets? Cut you in for a share!” Hitch asked and then chuckled.

  “Funny aren't we today,” Joe quipped back sarcastically, though with a small grin he tried to hide.

  “Aren't you supposed to be doing something productive, like feeding the little puppies outside? Can I suggest a nice morning stroll?”

  Hitch just laughed and walked on.

  “Hey, this coat is better than the one I had,” Joe said while shoving the pile out of the aisle and next to the racks of clothing to the side.

  Joe grabbed the coat and looked at the tag, and then put it back. Zeb looked at him funny but went on.

  Daniels however was stumped.

  “You just said that it was better than yours. Why did you put the coat back?”

  “I want the coat Daniels, I don't actually need it. My coat is not as expensive, but it keeps me warm and is good shape. My conscious told me that to just take the other coat is stealing, so I put it back,” Joe replied.

  “I am not a thief, and if I just took it for no reason I would be. If I truly needed it, I would be wearing it.”

  Daniels looked completely confused and started to ask another question, but Joe beat him to the punch.

  “I am thinking about it as if I owned this store. I would not have any problem with giving what is needed to whoever needed it, but I would expect recompense for stuff people merely wanted. I want that coat, but I don't need that coat. Since I can't afford that coat I put it back,” Joe said gravely, looking Daniels in the eyes.

  “The coat belongs to the owner of this store who paid for it, and no-one can prove to me he is dead. We need to have the stove and other stuff to survive this ordeal and if I get the money I will pay for it later. If you see something you desire, leave the cash on the counter or I won't have anything to do with you. I take that back as it’s not advice, it's an order.”

  Daniels felt bad about a pocket knife he had grabbed from the counter display in the night and chucked a twenty on the counter. Joe looked on with approval.

  “Daniels, you are a good man, and I am proud to have you on my six.”

  “Understand this everyone, and I am speaking as a Colonel. We represent the military and we are not going to steal. Looting is stealing. We could not even hold our head in pride if we are the thieves stealing from the people we are claiming to protect.”

  “Anyone caught taking something they don't absolutely need without paying, will find himself at a general court on base for looting,” Joe commanded.

  “Make no mistake about it gentlemen, in an emergency or even a catastrophe the act of taking what you want is defined as looting.”

  Zeb actually looked proud. His estimation of Joe went up another notch.

  Joe was the kind of man with whom you could leave a hundred dollar bill on his table. You could then leave and not come back for days, and the bill would either be still on the table or clipped to his fridge with a magnet in plain sight so that the person who left it would find it.

  What other people did, made no difference and was excuse to him. What Joe Anderson did mattered to him, and he made no excuses for his own actions nor generally needed any. That was just how Joe was; it was his moral core.

  A man who does not follow his moral code when things are difficult does not have any morals to begin with, and is not really a man.

  Everyone went outside and finished loading the trailer. They all dreaded the coming trip through town to get the concrete and the concrete truck. Hints from the night before promised the realistic possibility of a trip through a macabre hell.

  24. (Hidden Secrets and Evident Truth)

  To Joe's relief, the scene at the big grocery store was much as he had earlier envisioned. The power had been out for an indeterminate amount of time and the meat, milk, and other spoilable products had left quite a stench. Only a personal sampling of the smell could be believable. Any verbal description could not capture the putrid essence of the horrid aroma.

  It was evident that not everything was as it should be, as number of mute empty cars in the lot hinted at an ominous scene somewhere in the building. The mute hunks of steel attested to a scene as previously witnessed at the farm store.

  “At least there aren’t many cars in the lot. Hopefully the store didn’t have many people in it when everything went down,” Zeb stated grimly.

  “Daniels, Hitch, go inside and scout the store,” he ordered.

  The rest waited nervously on guard next to the building, using the solid brick wall behind them as cover to protect their backs. Time dragged on for seemingly hours until the pair returned, but Joe’s watch said it had only been thirty minutes.

  “The storeroom was trashed. It is filled with the bodies of employees and a few customers. We identified the employees by their company uniforms,” Daniels reported.

  Hitch handed Zeb a shell casing.

  “Found this on the floor, and thought you would want to know.”

  The casing was a military issue two-two-three as used by an M-16. It was another government issue round with a Lake City head stamp, just like the ones found previously. Zeb gritted his teeth and snarled.

  “I would hate to see what happened in this town. Must have been some fierce resistance here to cause an open slaughter like this,” Zeb said.

  The intelligence information provided to him by the base Captain had shown that empty towns were just that, completely empty. No struggle, and no signs of resistance. People had been cajoled and 'encouraged for their own
safety' to get on the trains.

  Resistors had been labeled either as 'terrorists' or 'terrorist sympathizers' and were blamed by the government for the actions it was taking. Townsfolk usually bought the story, at the time having no reason to doubt the authorities. Why should they?

  The resistors were generally charged with treason and quietly arrested when possible, and shot as criminals otherwise. All of the townspeople, willing or not alike, were then shipped to safe facilities so that the government could assure their safety and wellbeing. The promised safe facilities turned out to be the concentration camps.