“Everything was going ok until about three days ago when we started getting about half the shipments that we normally got. Desertion had gotten pretty bad by that time. We had lost about a quarter of our folks who said they had to take care of their own families or were just getting burned out working twenty hours a day. Anyway, we tried to stretch the dwindling supplies of food and took on extra shifts to cover the ones who had left, basically working twenty-four hours a day. You just can’t keep that up for long. The brass recorded the deserters but no one was doing anything about it. Hell, some of them had left. The next day we only got one shipment of food. It just wasn’t enough, so we decided to skip the shipment to one of the outlying shelters.
“When the refugees learned they weren’t going to get any food that day, they got restless. One of the guys that made it back to Midway said the whole place had turned medieval right before they left. They just couldn’t keep control of the crowd. They began to riot. People beating other people to death for an MRE or a real prize like SPAM. I don’t want to believe that, but who fucking knows? Most of those folks hadn’t eaten in several days when they got to the shelter. The best we could do was give them half an MRE a day. Then they got less than that. Then they got nothing. I guess I can’t blame them for being pissed. But, Jesus Christ! It’s only been a little over a week since the fires.”
Hall picked up the story. “After the center collapsed, we didn’t get any more shipments. We began to run out of food at the Midway shelter. I don’t know if what Smitty said about the other camp was true, but we could see what was about to happen at the Midway shelter. We had thousands upon thousands of folks sleeping in the terminals, in tents on the fields, even some on the runway. That many folks can go through a lot of food in a day. The place reeked of shit. It just simply wasn’t meant for that many people. Port-a-johns filled up and people were shitting in the corners and on the floor. Some folks had died, but we didn’t have anywhere to put them or the people to put them there. We organized some of the refugees and got them to pile the bodies outside as they died. Shit was going downhill fast.”
Flores took it from there. “Our LT came to us yesterday evening. He said he was bugging out. He saw the writing on the wall. The higher ups in DC were trying to redirect some food to us but were having trouble since all the other big cities were having similar issues. He said that FEMA only kept a certain stock of food and supplies on hand at any given time, positioned around the country in distribution centers. They would respond to a disaster and give out the aid, then order some more and restock. Pretty standard logistics shit. He guessed that all of the need had overwhelmed their supplies. Can you believe it? FEMA out of food in less than ten days? With the power outages and the economy FUBARed, they weren’t going to be able to get any more supplies. It was turning into a big, goddamned pissing contest to see who would get the remaining supplies. Who would live or die. We just gathered up what we could and took off.”
“So, where is your LT?” Tom asked. Neither Scott, JJ, nor Clay had heard him and his two minions walk up behind them.
Flores looked at Tom. “You must be Mr. Dabrowski. I wanted to thank you for letting Sargent Easterling know that my aunt was ok. I’m glad he was able to swing by the other day. It means a lot to me that you’ve been looking after her, and everyone else here, it seems. Where is Aunt Cristina?”
“She’s back at her house tending to one of our children. The little guy had climbed up on the wall here and fell off. She thinks he may have broken his arm. I’ll take you to her in a minute. So, what happened to your LT?”
“He lived over in Evergreen Park with his wife and two kids.” Flores continued the story. “He had told his wife that everything was going to be ok and that she and the girls should stay inside and lock the place down. He was Mormon and was always talking about how their religion taught everyone to be prepared for some shit like this. He said they always kept a few months’ worth of food and water around, so they should have been ok. He had spoken to her a few times on her cell, but hadn’t heard from her since two days after the fire. He wasn’t too worried. He was a good man and kept to his duty. He just shrugged it off that maybe her battery had died.
“When we left, we figured we’d swing by his place, pick up his wife and kids, and whatever supplies we could get into the Humvee. His neighborhood was pretty beat up by the time we got there. The fires had gotten to a lot of it. His house was ok. It was brick and only had a little scorched section of the roof. We pulled up and noticed that the door was open. We all got out and readied our guns. We searched the house and found two dead men with gunshot wounds in the kitchen, but we couldn’t find his wife or kids. He said she had a small thirty-eight revolver she kept in the house and maybe she had killed these guys and gotten the girls into the basement with the supplies. That was their fallback plan, he said.
“We called out as we went into basement. We didn’t want her to accidentally shoot us if she was down there. We didn’t hear anything so we went on down. From what we found, it looked like someone had found out about the stash of food and supplies and decided to take it. The place had been ransacked. We found another dead guy at the foot of the stairs. We scanned around with the flashlights on our M-16’s and found the LT’s family in the corner. They were all dead. We hung back and let the LT grieve over his family. It was fucked up. It looked like someone had hit them in the head with a hammer over and over again, but we weren’t close enough to really tell. The LT stood up and turned toward us. He wasn’t freaking out or anything. He was just kinda… cold. He smiled at us, but we could see the tears rolling down his face. I started to go to him, but he just snapped to attention, thanked us for our service, saluted us, and shot himself in the head.”
“Fuck.” JJ whispered.
Flores nodded. “We didn’t really know what to do. There wasn’t anything we really could do. The LT hadn’t slept in almost a week. Hell, none of us had. I guess the exhaustion and the pressure of the FEMA camps weakened him somehow. Seeing his family must have just pushed him over the edge. It took us a little while to gather up the nerve to do it, but we finally went over and got all of his weapons and supplies. We searched the house, but there was nothing left. Whoever had gotten in there cleaned the place out.” Flores wiped his eyes dry and looked back at Tom. “So, Mr. Dabowski, you’ve heard our story. Neither one of us really has any place left to go. My folks are back east and Hall’s folks here died when he was a child. Can we join your community?”
“Of course you can, soldier.” Tom said. He turned back to his guys and said, “Get the gate open and that Humvee in here. JJ, Clay, and Scott, can I see you over here a moment?” He said as he walked off to the side. “Look, fellas, folks around here are already scared enough as it is. We don’t need to go spreading anything about the FEMA camps for now. That’d just scare the shit out off some already frightened people. Understood?”
JJ and Clay agreed. Scott shocked JJ he nodded in agreement. He was sure Scott would freak out over this. Something was up. “Thank you, men. I really appreciate you letting me be the one who breaks it to the community.” Tom said as he walked back over to his men and led the Humvee back to the community house.
“What gives?” Clay asked Scott when they were alone.
“You don’t see it do you?” Scott asked the two. “One of the reasons that slimy piece of shit has gotten away with as much as he has, is because people think they can just ride this thing out. He’s trying to hold this info close so he can manage it and not lose his grip on the neighborhood.”
“You really think he’d do that?” JJ asked.
“Abso-fuckin-lutely.” Scott said.
“Then why don’t you just tell everyone tonight at the neighborhood meeting? That way he’d have to tell everyone what happened.” JJ said.
“Because he’s partially right. I don’t know that it would do any good except to upset folks. Once they realize that this isn’t going to end anytime soon, who knows what they’l
l do? No, we’ll let him have his game and the compound. You too have work to do. You get home and get everything ready to go tomorrow.”
“You still on that?” JJ asked. “What the hell, Scott? Didn’t you hear what the army guys said? There’s another riot going on. Shit’s getting real bad out there. We can’t go out there in that. Besides we still only have one car and eight people.”
“First of all, where do you think all of those starving folks are going to go? I think we’ve been lucky that we haven’t seen that kind of shit here because the FEMA centers directed the flow of folks away from us. Without them, those folks are going to spread out again. We’re going to see a lot more refugees as those folks go searching for food. You heard the story about their LT. That will be at our doorstep within days. These shitty walls aren’t going to deter people like that, especially when softer targets like women and children become less and less available. The folks we’ve seen have been the wandering dead. In here,” Scott gestured to the walls, “we’re the sitting dead. No, we need to get the fuck out of here, yesterday.
“As for our second problem, I don’t have an answer. We may have to just cram in there together until we can get out of here and figure something else out. Now you two get going. I’ll help out when my shift is over.” Scott walked back over to the gate as JJ and Clay made their way back to JJ’s house.
Scott stood in the midmorning sun, trying to get his head around their plan. The whole family had tried to come up with a solution to their dilemma. Tom hadn’t said anything about the FEMA shelters at the meeting last night. Scott wasn’t surprised.
They needed more information from the outside, and Scott knew but one place to get it. Sherry volunteered to go see Mrs. Gray, complaining about “female troubles” as an excuse to talk to the newcomers, who were staying with Mrs. Gray. Sherry impressed Scott when her stupid-sounding plan worked. After a little chitchat with Mrs. Gray about heavy flows or some shit Scott didn’t care to think about concerning his daughter, Sherry met Flores. She, Flores, and Mrs. Gray ended up having tea and discussing the world events for over an hour. What she found out was even worse news for the group.
When pressed on events outside of Chicago, Flores talked despairingly about the state of the roads. From what he had heard, the interstates and major roadways were a mess. The people who had left at the first sign of trouble were probably ok. If they had a particular destination that wasn’t too far away, they might have made it. The ones who waited a little bit, were boned. The first ones out bought all the gas and supplies they came across before the money had gone to shit. With little or no replacements being shipped in, many places along the major roadways ended up swamped with outsiders as their cars ran out of gas and they became stranded. Once the power went out, the situation had gotten worse. Flores overheard some of the pilots talking about the massive traffic jams they had seen flying into Chicago. They said it looked like hurricane evacuations, except all the traffic had died. Cars ran out of gas and were pushed off the road where they could be. Places like bridges and overpasses became choke points as several layers of vehicles built up with nowhere to ditch them. No one really knew what had happened to all of the travelers since no ground convoys gone that far out. They were too occupied trying to keep the peace in the big cities. Many of the towns along the interstate had burned. The military leadership thought fighting between the travelers and the locals over dwindling supplies might have been the reason. Either way, it didn’t matter to Scott. He learned all he needed. Stay the hell off the major roads. They were a deathtrap now.
Scott had sold the family on the dire need to get out of the compound before they were trapped by the coming swarms of people he thought would come. The family stayed up all night preparing their getaway plans in light of the new information from Flores. The first problem they identified was their meager supply of food and water. They lived on the community rations like everyone else. No person in his right mind would go out into the shitstorm outside the walls without these things. They struggled trying to figure a way around this. Even if they could steal the food from the community house, those stocks were running dry. Tom kept the stock numbers close hold, never allowing the community to know how much was left; but JJ and Clay had seen the truck the night they stole it. They knew the ninety or so compound residents would eat through the food quickly. Even without the security concerns, no one wanted to steal from their neighbors. They decided that they might just have to leave without any food or water. Maybe if they stuck to the back roads, they could find some on the way.
The second problem they encountered was transportation. They only had Sherry’s SUV. It was supposed to seat eight, but that was without any of the stuff they would need to carry. They needed the ice chest for Tara’s insulin, sleeping bags, blankets, and other small odds and ends. Those alone would cut the seating in the SUV down to six. They could tie everything to the top of the SUV, but that would attract too much unwanted attention from Tom and his lackeys. They wondered how far they could get since Sherry’s SUV held just under half a tank of gas. Scott figured that on the interstates, that would get them a third of the way to his brother’s farm just north of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Driving on the back roads and avoiding towns would reduce that by God-only-knew how much. Then there was another problem with just getting around Tom’s watchdogs and out of compound. They found problems with everything they thought of. It was overwhelming.
They decided that they would load the SUV that night in order to avoid detection. They would all pile in and head for the western gate of the neighborhood at three the next afternoon. That would be just before JJ and Clay got off their shift. The two men would move the gate car and hop in as the SUV drove by. With any luck, they would be gone and on their way before Tom or anyone else knew what was going on. Scott’s greatest fear was that Tom would try to stop them. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he did.
The next day proved to be beautiful spring day. The wind out of the west kept the drifting smoke and scent of decay from Chicago away from the compound. Scott stood on the front steps of the house and looked up at the clouds as they floated by. “Hey Scott, get your butt over here!” The old man yelled at him. Scott looked around and found the source. His grandson Jimmy accompanied the old man in the walker as he walked toward the house.
“Mr. Perkins, how are you?” Scott said to the man as he walked two houses down to meet them. Scott had talked to the old man a few times when Sherry and the kids still lived in the neighborhood. The old timer had been like a great grandfather to James and Lucy since Jan and Sherry moved into the neighborhood some ten years ago. Mr. Perkins was a real-deal war hero. That Jimmy had begun escorting the man on daily walks to the end of the block and back pleased Scott. He hoped some of the old timer’s determination and sense of duty would rub off on Jimmy.
“I’m as good as can be.” Mr. Perkins said. Scott wondered at how ancient Mr. Perkins looked. His skin was like wrinkled, wet rice paper stretched loosely over his skull. He still had one good eye, but his left was so clouded with cataracts that Scott couldn’t imagine that Perkins could see out of it. “Your boy and me was talking on our walk this morning.” Scott’s pulse quickened.
“And what did you talk about, Mr. Perkins?” Scott asked.
“I think it’s better discussed inside.”
Scott and Jimmy helped Mr. Perkins and his walker into the old man’s house. “Relax, Scott. You look like you’re about to piss yourself. Jimmy let slip that you and yours are thinking about getting out of here. Now before you get all pissy with him, he did good. I agree with you about getting out of here before that pompous little shit Dabrowski gets everyone killed.” Mr. Perkins said as he took a seat in his recliner.
“So, you think it’s getting bad too?” Scott asked.
“I may only have one good eye, but I ain’t blind yet. This place is goin to be in a world of hurt. Now Jimmy told me all bout your plan; and I gotta say Scott, you’re out of your damned mind if you t
hink it’s gonna work.” Scott’s anger flared, but he realized the old man was right. “You planning to go out with eight people crammed into one car with no food or water… Madness! But I understand how you feel. Now, I think I can help.”
“What do you mean?” Scott asked.
“Better show ya. Now help me get out into the garage.”
As the men stepped into the dark garage, Scott could make out boxes and an old car. “Turn the light on, boy, before I trip and break a skull!” Mr. Perkins snapped. Jimmy rushed to the switch and turned on the lights. The old florescent bulbs flashed into life, revealing an old, blue Pontiac Bonneville and boxes and boxes of freeze dried food.
“Mr. Perkins, where did you get all of this stuff?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, bout two years ago, one of my grandsons sent me all this shit for Christmas. I thought he was out of his damned mind, but I’ve been thankin God for that boy every night since the riots.”
“This is incredible, Mr. Perkins. What’s in the backpack?” Scott asked.
“I ain’t real sure. It’s all part of some emergency kit that they delivered. I ain’t never opened it.”
“How have you kept all of this here? I thought Mr. Dabrowski took everyone’s food and cars and stuff.” Jimmy said.
“That little bastard tried. He came over here askin’ for this and that and tryin’ to explain how the community really needed it. I woulda probably gone for it if I hadn’t been watchin that snake for years. I’ve seen his type a hunnerd times in my life. They do whatever they can to boss other folk around. I told him where he could go. Guess he figured takin stuff from an old man was beneath even him. Anyhoo, all of this stuff should make your trip down to Alabamy a bit easier.” He fished the Bonneville’s keys out of his pocket and pressed them into Scott’s hands. “It should still run. Clarence, down the street, used to come by every so often and keep it up for me. He’d mess with the car and I’d tell him stories bout the war. He was fascinated by the war. Anyway, he kept in full of gas. Should be able to get a few hunnerd miles outta it.”
Fifty Falling Stars Page 16