by Ron Foster
2
Life Goes On At The Lake Resort Camp
His lake tribe, as Farley referred to his fellow survivors of this grid down apocalypse living at what he called the base (referring to the Air force vacation resort); assembled at the fire pit to have their morning coffee and a meeting of sorts that Farley had called for the day. The two young boys of this clan, Jeremy and Fong, had been sent off earlier to fetch water from the lake and had just returned from the task. Miss Feng and Becky were discussing whether or not a second trip for more water was needed for them to go on when Charlie announced that everybody should gather around and listen to what Farley had been telling him while waiting for everyone to gather.
“I don’t know quite how to put this bit of bad news to you guys, so I guess I’ll just lay it out on the line. I’ve been hearing much more than just the regular circulating rumors of marauding bands of foragers or desperate thieves looting if you want to call them that. From what I hear more folks are moving out of the cities and attacking outlying homes and in some cases, banding together as a force and directly confronting some of the bigger farms. The churches have their own militias of sorts organized and they have been having occasional skirmishes with people or various groups regularly, that’s not to say they don’t occasionally do food forays and a bit of robbing themselves amongst other groups. The thing is, is that I’ve also noticed many hunters ranging further over our way, but so far they’ve only been limited to small groups of individuals and not armed parties with blood in their eyes. We got living up the road in several cabins up I guess about six or eight miles from here a group of what I call the Zombie Boys. These are a bunch of eighteen to twenty five year olds that were mostly raised off of video games and paintball matches and I guess were focusing previously more on ammo and not food supplies. They are pretty dangerous to surprise or sometimes get around but they are not malicious. There is what from what I hear a very malicious group or gang somewhere in our area that must have come out of a ghetto somewhere of about a hundred or so mixed ages and sexes playing locust and laying waste to the land from the town on. A larger group, as near as we can tell, has taken over part of the town as a base of operations. Car riders from Birmingham some folks say, anyway word is that they have taken over Mr. Jones’ chicken house property now as an armed occupier at the turnoff to the lake entrance. Now whether or not they decide to head for the lake or carry on to the next city or town is the point of contention at the moment amongst all the residents around here. Reverend Marshall the other day asked me pretty strongly if I wouldn’t talk to some of the residents around me about banding up together and possibly forming an attack on those vicious sons of bitches before they make it to the lake. As you know, pretty much everybody around the bait store in this little offshoot of the lake believes we have a lot more manpower back here to rely on for a fight than we do so I felt kind of hard pressed to answer him directly as to our participation in any kind of ambush or defensive move.” Farley said breaking the news of what some said was the horror approaching from the dregs of the now mostly chaotic burning big cities.
“Are they actually heading this way, Farley? Are you sure of that?” Becky asked with a shudder while Miss Feng looked wide eyed at him.
“No, like I said they took over the chicken houses and I guess we don’t know yet whether or not Mr. Jones and his family survived the attack but I would be more likely to say that they did not because of that gang’s reputation. I’m calling them a gang, but I don’t know if they have any affiliations like with the Crips or the Bloods or anything like that, but they all do have that thug mentality in manners and unreasonable violence if you want to call it that. They call themselves the Johnson B Gang, what the hell any of that means I have no idea. They got plenty of weapons plus plenty of ammo it appears and evidently they are finding enough gas here and there or they wouldn’t have made it this far. You see a lot of cities like Birmingham and Mobile in this state as well as most of the major cities elsewhere got sort of taken over by various neighborhood groups and gangs shortly after everything collapsed. They clashed with the regular army, they clashed with the National Guard, they fought with neighborhood watch groups and the police and once the military pulled back and just let the cities burn as the army tried to defend our borders and a few of the more controlled major cities around things just got worse. Those gangster mentality evil people started coming out of the wood work and creeping around and reforming. Evidently there’s not anything left to scavenge in the cities or some other gang or warlord has started to run off the competition because more and more is being reported of seeing not just ten or twenty people banded together, but literally small armies of scavengers roaming about either on foot or in vehicles.” Farley said regarding everybody’s reactions to the ominous news.
“In other words, we might not be able to stay here in peace much longer is what I think Farley is getting at.” Charlie said dejectedly as everyone started to complain and Miss Feng wailed about all kinds of things. Farley hushed them all and restated that he was just telling them the threat analysis and as far as he was concerned, it was not something imminent but something they had to plan for. That was not his first or primary concern. His main concern was that A.) He had to soon respond to the Reverend to tell him if they would give him mutual support and aid which they all knew was the end of their ruse and B.) That it seemed everyone in the county was now centralizing and moving close to each other for mutual defense. It was kind of like when all the settlers ran to the fort for safety in numbers when all the Indian wars were going on back in the day. Right now, those that lived closer to towns or the churches were assembling their defenses pretty much as faith based groups or agricultural resource protection societies. There was far fewer people ready willing and able to respond to this call to arms than Farley could even imagine. The Reverend had stressed to him how the weak had gotten weaker and the strong had got stronger at others expense and that as far as his congregation went, he had less than thirty five able armed men to assign as a protective force and many of them were needed for more mundane tasks that the women would now be forced to undertake. Not that he didn’t have almost an equal number of women that were good shots and able to defend both themselves and the group, but their attentions were required on the home front defending the older parishioners and younger children as well as tending crops and livestock. Just twenty weeks ago he had over one hundred seventy five members to call upon and now including new converts, he could only point at about ninety people that had allegiance to his church and each other.
The church across the river bridge the congregation used to ally with more closely was now like always resentful and wary of the motives of his area because of the normal rivalries you have between people that live on opposite sides of a river. That was not so much of a problem as Pastor Thomas who was leader of that group over there, had now politicized the thought in his sermons about restarting the Confederacy. Now the Confederacy itself, those that are not scholars of Civil War, was called the fight for independence. And this notion had many farmers in particular supporting a movement to throw off the reins of government that had come down hard under the emergency powers acts and tried to confiscate or control their goods and their lands.
That this thing could turn into a race war of sorts had others wanting to besmirch the Stars and Bars flying again for other reasons. The apocalypse that happened to everyone after the grid was taken down by the solar storm had seemed to ignite old prejudices and hard feelings about many things.
It wasn’t a unique occurrence to Farley to think that people would usually side together by race and culture at times of long term disaster. These things have always occurred throughout history as they say ‘like seeks like.’ Prejudice in the South will always occur, same as it does up in the North and you have your groups of haters, whereas mostly everyone gets along just fine especially out in the rural areas in normal times.
This chaotic event was exasperated with racial
tensions when what little aid was available had finally been diminished. All the genera rations of the long term entitlement crowd, Black, White, Hispanic, whatever, had found themselves left to their own devices in an overnight situation that generations of loud mouthed hatred and demands on society to treat them in some kind of special way were no longer listened to but instead were answered with a hail of bullets when they tried to overcome the system and got out of line.
Farley himself thought it was funnier than hell but truly tragic that the protests for lack of or unavailability of food for lack of money had started days after the “event” happened because EBT cards didn’t work and these were not peaceful demonstrations for a solution or begging assistance but instead a long anticipated chance to loot and burn and that that class of particular people who ruined their own neighborhoods in good times, in times of dire calamity their antics of fiery protest had signed their own death warrants by over celebrating their chance to create wanton mayhem in these apocalyptic times.
The idiots banded together and attacked many a so called rich neighborhood wanting spoils and being organized under some form of leadership such as gangs and thugs usually are, at first had many successes with the unarmed and ignorant liberal minded unorganized communities, but this being the South, there were many a street full of people shaking sticks and throwing fire bombs that ended up dead in the streets for the front end loaders to pick up when they accosted well armed and well organized so called elite rich citizens that had no thoughts of backing down.
Farley reminded everyone not to get him wrong by what he was saying, it wasn’t just the black ghettos that had spewed their evil ones and packs of juvenile delinquents out, it was groups of every color and ethnic and religious description that had somehow survived this long and now were forced to branch out of the cities and attempt to seek sustenance in the countryside. Groups of what you would formerly call good people were out on that road now trying to survive any way they could.
He didn’t really have a handle on it, but war was certain and war with who in particular or their reasoning to accost them was not something that mattered to him. It was a war over what others wanted and thought you might have. Not that you can’t answer what for in one sentence: it was food. But if you add ideal logical arguments of race, faith, prejudices or just downright meanness to it then the fires of hell were fueled and it didn’t matter who it was you were up against, just how badly you might would die if you lost the fight to protect what was yours.
History seems to have a way of sorting out evil and letting the good survive but it takes a long horrible time. The good folks shall prevail; Farley thought this concept was a fact, his concern however was how long could they all survive until good could somehow eventually prevail?
“Where would we go, Farley, I mean if we had to leave?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know. I have been looking around to see if there was any remote house or place that offered us the same amount of wild game and fish that we have access here, as well as any amenities, but I haven’t found one yet. As ya’ll know I’ve gotten pretty tired and just can’t keep up anymore. I’m in kind of a mind just to get on some boats and head down the river to the Gulf and just keep on going as long as we can on some kind of crazy big adventure, but if we got raiders on the roads then there are most likely pirates on the river, so we best pick us a fall back place somewhere close to here and get ready to die in place if need be if we ever get discovered. Rather than tell the Reverend and everybody else I got convinced around here that I got this strange mythical tribe of strong folks with lots of guns around me that we don’t, I’m saying we need to prepare to disappear or and ya’ll ain`t going to like this, we need to take in as many like minded people as we can and prepare to defend what we got. That’s the crux of the matter.” Farley said leaving the heavy momentous decision to be considered.
“Who you want to bring down here, Farley? You got Dump Truck, and them redneck boyfriends of his, but they have their own houses. They no figure out we don’t have lots of people here or know we live here. You tell them already Farley they can come?” Miss Feng asked looking daggers at him.
“No, I ain`t told nobody anything yet. But you keep in mind those rednecks as you call them are our only people that we can even get close to calling friends at the moment. I know where about half of them live and they are all spread out and I’m pretty sure they really don’t know we got a storm cloud of marauders moving in this way. Hell, I heard they had their own problems with somebody coming by and trying to take a hog or something and had themselves a few little skirmishes. But food raiding between them isn’t anything more than something like the old Hatfield and McCoy clans feuding and not anything like what’s coming this way. I don’t particularly like the idea of having them boys and Dump for next-door neighbors but there isn’t one of them boys or girls I wouldn’t like to have by my side in a fight, so you have got to consider that. If we do decide to take them in and I do make an offer, I need to do it under the auspices of all of us living in one lifeboat. That concept I think they can understand best and they might kind of band together with us. However like I said, they got their own family feuds and we’re going to end up with a situation of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. The way I plan on overcoming that is twofold. One is, as long as I can keep the veneer of civilization in front of them that is and they are in the mood to take orders of a sort, is that Charlie is the head of this area or operation and what he says is the final word and that’s it or whoever don’t like it has to leave. I am his second and it’s my say about the traded goods that will come from this place. Main reason for that is we basically have the biggest stores of everything meaning mainly the gas tank and what’s left in the concierge store. So that is commerce and shelter we control. That leaves defense and as you all know every good army needs a general and every general needs a political speaker to inspire the common defense and who that might be I have no idea but I’m volunteering Dump Truck’s sorry ass for that position. Ha! I ought to go ahead and shoot myself! General Dump Truck! Now that don’t even sound right to my ears but that’s what we got and that’s the only person I can recommend for the job. He’s big enough to knock heads when necessary, he’s got that dang bunch of pulpwooders for his bodyguards and he’s smarter than the rest of them as well. You got to give him credit for him having the respect and being able to boss all those heathens around when he was bouncer at the bar. That kind of diplomacy is the closest thing we have got for keeping order around here should we invite anybody in. Otherwise, somebody is going to object to me or Charlie telling them what to do and one or both of us will eventually get an ass whipping or worse if it gets out of hand.” Farley declared.
“I say we take the boats down the river and make it to the Gulf and do that dream sailing trip thing you’ve been talking about Farley and try to make it all the way to the Florida Keys!” Jeremy said and gave Fong a high five.
“What have you been filling them boy’s heads with, Farley? And what in the hell would we do in Key West if we could make it down that far? You think they ain`t having problems? How long would that take for us to do anyway?” It’s about a good twelve hours drive by car if you could do sixty miles an hour. I have no idea how long it would take if we did make it that far by sailboat, but back to my question, what are we going to do when we get there?”: Becky asked both fuming at the notion of leaving everything behind on a jaunt to nowhere although willing to follow her benefactor Farley anywhere.
“Now that’s just an idea I told them boys I wanted to do some day when the grid was up, kinda like on my bucket list of things to do before I die. I thought it would be fun. The West coast of Florida has vast expanses of unpopulated areas and the occasional fish camp etc. and I would much rather have fresh crabs and oysters in my diet than all the fish I am forced to eat around here. I’ll admit it’s probably a stupid romantic notion to even consider such a fool thing but I can pull or sneak into hidden coves in the back
end of state parks a hell of a lot easier than I can walk these woods or start considering getting out on the highway to go God knows where. It’s an adventure, it’s a dream. Might be survival, might be pretty dang stupid but it’s something I would consider. I already told you that option wasn’t on the table at the moment for a number of reasons. First off, we got to consider if we do haul ass from here, we got to do it at a moment’s notice. We got us three short term rally points already should we be separated by an immediate attack on this camp let’s start there. We need to go back over that we need to reinforce that protocol and plan accordingly. Then we need to expound upon it and expand upon ideas about exactly what it is that we should do as a group to make a more planned and relaxed evacuation of this area should we decide that it is our best choice. We have been damn lucky so far that nobody has threatened our borders. Some of that is due to my how shall we say, stealing or looting everything that hasn’t been nailed down in my little circle of operations. I won’t go back into re-explaining to you all that it was necessary to remove anything salvageable from houses around us so that scavengers would not come this way. But from what nasty things I hear about this group is that they are like that crazy bunch in the Middle East, ISIS that executes and burns people just because they have to feed the hate in their black hearts. That’s not surviving, that’s not war, that’s not even living. That is pure evil and those that want to perform such evil are having their heyday now. We got to make a decision whether we are going to stand or run and we have got to decide that’s what we are going to do for the rest of our lives. There is no easy answer here and whatever we decide then that will be the direction for our lives for the near future and beyond, maybe forever.” Farley said fooling with his pistol in a nervous manner that meant guns, guts and glory couldn’t serve him or save this day and only wisdom and compassion for each other would chart their course.