The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart

by Harrison, William Hale

  “Yeah, hangin’ in the kitchen cabinet. What you need?”

  “I’ve got about two hundred pounds of meat in the freezer in the garage. There’s a quarter beef, plus a lot of elk and venison. I’d like you to distribute it for me. Take whatever you can use yourself and find some people who need it to give the rest to. Can’t stand the idea of it rotting while people go hungry.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that. But what if you change your mind and come back here?”

  “Woods are full of game, my friend. And when you’re in my house, take a good look around. Take anything you can use; food, gear, whatever. On the mantel in the living room there’s a little Pueblo acoma pot. The key to the gun safe is in there. Grab whatever you want. In fact, take them all. Might be able to use them for trade later.”

  “Man, that’s pretty nice of you. I appreciate it.”

  “Hell, they’re not doing me any good back here. And I went to a gun shop here before the shit hit the fan and loaded up, so I’m good.”

  “It’s so nice of you to share those steaks,” Terry said, enjoying the aroma of the grilling beef. “It’s so hard to get really fresh food now. I’m glad we put in the garden. Everything in the salad came from our there, plus the zucchini and summer squash. Even the tomatoes and peppers in the salsa.” She shook her head. “I had no idea how much work a garden takes. It seems as soon as I turn my back, a hundred more weeds sprout up. The girls have been a big help.” They had about a quarter acre planted with vegetables. Terry had bought herself a pressure cooker and was learning how to can.

  Darius and his wife Jamaica held hands. Jamaica had taken the death of two-year-old Darnell very hard. A few hours after he complained of not feeling well, telltale blue blotches began appearing on his tiny fingertips. Jamaica wept and held him through the night. About two o’clock the following afternoon, he had his first convulsion as his little body fought the parasite trying to colonize his nervous system. Two hours later he regained consciousness for the last time, exhausted from the fight and the tremors which wracked him. At twenty minutes after 6:00, his breathing stopped. Jamaica wailed in horror and disbelief.

  They’d called the coroner’s office and were put on hold for almost 45 minutes before their call was taken, and they were told it would be two days before anyone could be there to pick up the body. The coroner’s office suggested they call a funeral home instead, but the funeral homes they called were all booked solid.

  The following afternoon, while Darius desperately worked the phone, there was a knock on their door. It was Evan, Dan and Terry and their kids, and Uncle Owen. Owen walked them out to his car and showed them a small, toddler-sized pine coffin he had made. The pine was sanded smooth and oiled, and there were decorative brass hinges. The words “Darnell Whitehall” were elegantly wood-burned into the lid, surrounded by clusters of flowers.

  They buried Darnell under a huge lilac bush in their backyard. Jamaica wept and swayed and Darius had to hold her up as each adult in turn spoke about Darnell and their favorite story about him, and then Evan said a prayer. Dan and Owen used straps to lower the tiny box into the grave, and Terry helped the three girls cut flowers from the garden and throw them onto his coffin. When it came time to fill in the grave, they half carried a sobbing Jamaica back into the house. Darius wouldn’t let anyone help him fill in the hole, and soon his shirt was wringing wet in the July heat.

  “So, Darius, you guys are determined to head for Texas?” asked Evan.

  Darius nodded. “We’ve thought about it, and we think it’s best. My Moms is down there, and she needs us, and Jamaica’s family is there too.” Darius and Jamaica had met at Texas A&M, where he played right field for the Aggies and majored in poli-sci. Jamaica was majoring in computer science. She was a shy, lovely girl whom Darius had set out to win from the first moment he saw her. She thought he was too loud and too full of himself, but slowly he wore down her resistance. She finally agreed to go out on a date with him, a dinner that ended up lasting until the restaurant closed. Instead of the shallow jock she had assumed him to be, she found a complicated, intelligent young man with a strong sense of right and wrong. They got married before their senior year. Some people figured she must have been pregnant, but it was really just that they loved each other so much.

  After graduation, he got accepted into John Marshall Law School in Chicago, his father’s alma mater, and she found work as a data analyst for the Allstate Corporation, at their sprawling headquarters in the Northfield suburb of Chicago. When he graduated, he spent four years in the Public Defender’s Office in Chicago and then struck out on his own. Jamaica formed her own data company, and now had a partner and ten employees.

  Jamaica sighed. “My company has pretty much had it. All my clients are insurance companies, and they’re going under, one after the other. Data analysis isn’t really a skill many people need at this point.”

  Terry leaned forward and poured some iced tea. “I’m in pretty much the same boat. My company is laying off people right and left. Online sales right now have shifted enormously. People want tents and camp stoves, and pre-packaged food. Honestly, I think if you put the word ‘survival’ in the title, people would buy just about anything. Survival boots. Survival sweaters.”

  “Survival chewing gum,” Dan added.

  “Almost! It’s nuts. And my company isn’t geared to that kind of thing. I’ve moved everything that has any survival value, like Blackhawks backpacks and Chicago Bears winter coats, to the front of the website and they’re moving like crazy, but nobody is in the market for a scale model Star Wars TIE Fighter right now. And we’re having more and more trouble getting any inventory. Asia has almost completely shut down as a manufacturing center, at least for export, and that’s where 90 percent of our goods come from. We’ve been scouring the warehouses and importers and buying up smaller companies’ inventories. But that can’t last much longer.”

  Dan stepped over to the cooler and grabbed a beer. “Anybody…?” he asked, looking around. “I know my side of the court system is going nuts. Crime is way up. Police forces are getting short on personnel, and the bad guys are coming out like cockroaches. Home invasions, rape, murder… There always seems to be that small part of the population who sees chaos as opportunity. We have no idea how to handle all this. The jails are packed. Almost everyone who isn’t under arrest for a crime of violence is getting released on his own recognizance.”

  Darius sighed and nodded. “I think part of the reason I want to get out is, I’m having real mixed emotions about the turn my job has taken. You’re right about property crimes. I’m getting exactly that on my end. Those guys call me and I tell ‘em to just wait a few days until they get in front of the judge and they’ll be out.

  “It’s the other ones that are keeping me awake. You know, the whole system is based on an adversarial relationship between the prosecution and the defense. So even if I get a really bad guy as a client, I can tell myself it’s my job to see he gets a good defense and it’s Dan’s job to see that he’s properly prosecuted, and that’s what passes for justice. I’m okay with that. But now...” he shook his head. “Now I’m looking at putting some animal out on the street when, the way things are going, this may be the justice system’s last chance at this guy. In a few months, who knows? Things fall apart bad enough and maybe there’s no courts and no cops, and all of a sudden he’s the wolf and the rest of us are the sheep.”

  Jamaica leaned forward. “We feel like we need to get my family somewhere safe, and I don’t feel like this whole area is going to be safe a few months from now. My Uncle Cyrus is retired Navy and he has a small ranch about an hour west of Wichita Falls down in Texas where he and Aunt Hattie raise horses and have a few head of cattle. My mom is already staying there, and they’re real happy to hear we’re coming.”

  Uncle Owen nodded. “Yeah I like your Uncle Cyrus. He’s a good guy.” Cyrus, it turned out, was a fan of his
artwork and when he found out Owen wanted to hunt hogs, he immediately extended an invitation. When they first met, they sized each other up as old veterans will do, and both liked what they saw. Cyrus had been a brand new seaman aboard the aircraft carrier Midway during the final evacuation of South Vietnam in 1975, and helped dump multi-million dollar helicopters over the side to make room for incoming choppers full of desperate refugees. He retired as Master Chief thirty years later.

  The hogs were wary but plentiful and the locals hated them for all the destruction they caused. They made for great barbecue, too, if you brined them for a few days to get rid of the “gamey” taste.

  “So how will you get there?” Evan asked. “You going to fly or drive?”

  “We’re driving. Even without any furniture we have too much stuff to fly, and we don’t trust a moving company the way things are,” Jamaica answered. “We’re renting a trailer. Darius is going to be pulling the trailer with the Forerunner and I’m going to follow in the Beemer.”

  Uncle Owen stretched and said, “Hey Darius, Jamaica, come with me a minute.” They walked together around the front of the house to the driveway. “So what route are you taking?” he asked.

  “Oh, I guess I-55 down to Saint Louis and pick up I-44 to Oklahoma City. Why?”

  “I wouldn’t. St Louis is turning into a shooting gallery, and Oklahoma City’s been having a lot of trouble lately. I’d stay away from the cities. Take I-57 down to Cairo and then pick up 55. Use the blacktop roads to avoid Memphis, whatever you do. Little Rock should be okay. I’d stay out of Dallas Fort Worth, too.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Darius had deposed enough witnesses to know that Owen was going somewhere with all this, but he wasn’t sure where.

  “Listen, I’m not sure about you two taking separate vehicles. If you get split up , it could be trouble.”

  “We’ll be careful, Owen.” Jamaica smiled at him and put her hand on his arm. “It’s nice of you to worry about us, though.”

  They got to Owen’s car. “Are you going to be armed?”

  Darius was surprised. “Uh. No, Jamaica doesn’t want guns in the house.”

  “Guns have no place around children,” Jamaica said.

  “The world has changed, sweetheart, and you better be able to protect your family.” He opened the door of his car and produced two boxes, and handed them to Darius. “These are two brand new 9mm Sig Sauers. I took them out and test fired them, and reduced the trigger pull on both a little bit. You’ve shot Jack’s at the range a couple times, right?”

  “Yeah, but I—”

  “No ‘buts.’ The world is headed to an ugly place. And if you’re still alive when it gets there, you’re going to need to be able to defend yourself.” He set another box on top. “There’s 500 rounds of hollow point in there, plus some brushes, cloths and oil so you can keep them clean. Your Uncle Cyrus can show you how.”

  “Look, we can’t—”

  He grabbed Darius by the arm and glared at him. “Listen to me! I’ve seen a whole lot more of this world than you have. About seventy percent of the people out there are good people, who will reach out and help a stranger. About five percent are plain bad people, and I know you’ve met plenty of those in your line of work. But the rest are people who live by the rules and obey the law not because they have any kind of moral code, but simply to stay out of trouble. Once the cops and the courts are gone, it won’t take those people much time to realize they can get away with pretty much anything they want. And when that happens, you damn well better be able to defend you and yours, or you’re gonna come to grief real fast.”

  Darius tried hard not to roll his eyes, knowing that Owen meant well. He knew as well as anyone about the thin veneer of civilization, and how easily it’s stripped away. He looked down at the boxes in his hand and hesitated. There was a lot of road between here and Wichita Falls, and Owen wasn’t wrong about all the bad guys that might be lying in wait between here and there. Still… he started to press the boxes back toward Owen.

  “No, he’s right.” Jamaica set her jaw. “We weren’t able to protect Darnell, and now all we’ve got is Keisha and each other. And I’m not going to lose either one of you.” She leaned over and kissed Owen on the cheek. “Thank you. Owen. We’re very grateful to you for thinking of us. And for what you did for Darnell. I never did thank you properly for that, that… coffin.” It was hard for her to speak the word. “You must have been up all night making it. It was incredibly thoughtful, and I’ll never forget it.”

  She hugged him, and hot pink bloomed in both his cheeks. He pulled away, and said, brusquely. “Come on. The steaks should be about ready.”

  Chicago, Illinois

  July 15th

  Jack and Anita clung to the straps in the station’s news van as it rocketed around the corner of 51st and Damen Avenue, on Chicago’s South Side. In the past few weeks they had been together almost constantly, running from story to story during the day, and collapsing into each other’s arms every night. There’s something about physical danger that heightens the drive for sex; it’s why soldiers rape, and why birth rates soar in the aftermath of earthquakes and hurricanes. For Jack and Anita, it meant hungry, almost insatiable sex that left them sweaty and exhausted and led Jack to wonder what marriage might be like with this lovely, vivacious woman.

  The van pulled to a sudden stop at a police barricade. Already, there were news vans from a couple other local outlets. Minutes before, their police scanner had picked up reports of another apparent ambush of police officers in the gang-ridden Englewood neighborhood, generally considered Chicago’s worst. Generations of mutual hostility between the gangbangers and the cops had degenerated into open warfare, as the gangs tried to eliminate the power of the cops and set up their own fiefdoms in the increasing anarchy.

  This time, according to reports they were hearing, a woman had called in about several Infected roaming the neighborhood. When four police officers had shown up in two squad cars, half a dozen bangers with semi-automatic weapons had opened up on them, killing three. The last officer, a Hispanic woman with fifteen years in the service, managed to get to cover and call it in.

  The police dispatcher called for All Available Units, and within minutes there were half a dozen more officers, better armed and prepared than the first ones, shooting it out with the gang. Apparently the gang had made a similar call-out, because more armed men, most of them high school aged, could be seen slipping between houses and jumping fences to join the fight. Twenty minutes later it was an all-out battle, with dozens of combatants on each side.

  The news vans were halted about three blocks short of the scene, along with several ambulances and a couple fire trucks. From down the street they could hear almost a constant rattle of shots being exchanged, and see officers crouched behind a cluster of vehicles. At least two pillars of smoke rose into the air from near the battleground. He swung the big camera onto his shoulder and zoomed to the action down the street. Off to one side he could see Anita and Rudy, their producer, in a hurried conversation with a police lieutenant.

  Anita ran over to Jack and stepped in front of him so the squad cars down the street could be seen over her shoulder, and raised her microphone. She glanced behind him, and Jack knew that Rudy was giving her a countdown. A stiff breeze blew a strand of her hair across her face, and she quickly tucked it behind her ear. Jack had a moment to think about how gorgeous she looked, and then she started to speak.

  “I’m here on the South Side near Damen and 53rd, where a few minutes ago several police officers were seriously injured in what has been called a planned ambush. The number of assailants, whom police have described as members of a street gang, has steadily—”

  Behind her a flash of fire was followed by a ball of smoke, and a police car seemed to leap into the air. Several cops went flying, and someone behind them yelled, “That’s a grenade!” Half a second later a huge th
ump tore the air, and someone else said, “Shit! Where did they get that?” The shooting paused momentarily, and then it redoubled.

  Someone started shouting, “Out of the way! Out of the way!” and a couple cops dragged barricades aside as a huge armored truck rolled through the crowd of journalists and onlookers and headed for the fight. Most of the onlookers, Jack noted, were area residents, all black and mostly women, who shook their heads in anger and disgust, or stared fearfully down the street at the gunfight. The crowd grew by the minute. Jack glanced around and saw a large group of young men stepping out from between two houses.

  It took him an instant too long to register that they were all carrying guns.

  A sudden staccato roar split the air as they opened fire at the crowd. Jack slung his camera to the pavement and lunged for Anita. He grabbed her and started twisting her to the ground as something stung his shoulder. She collapsed underneath him, and he landed on top of her, shielding her body with his own. More bullets hissed through the air above him.

  Jack saw Rudy run toward the nearby van and disappear inside. A second later he reappeared with an AR15 and returned fire. Rudy had served in Afghanistan, and since the plague hit Chicago in earnest, he’d insisted on traveling armed. A gun barrel poked out of the driver’s window, and joined in. Tom, their driver, was also a vet. He glanced around; a couple other newsies and several cops were returning fire. The crowd was screaming and running. At least a half dozen people had been hit. More, probably, he though. These were just the ones on the ground.

  The shooters dispersed and took cover where they could find it, behind cars at the curb and the corners of houses. Jack remembered with a start that he, too, was armed, and drew his Sig Sauer. Twenty feet from where he lay, one of them crept around the front of a car, apparently unaware of Jack lying on the ground. Jack shot him three times with his Sig and he went down hard. Another banger who looked no more than fifteen popped up from behind the same car and threw a couple shots at Jack, and then turned and ran back toward the gangway they had come out of. Still on the ground, Jack shot at him twice and staggered him, but the kid kept on running.