Burn District 1

by Jenkins, Suzanne

  “Where will we go?” Sharon asked.

  “If you have anything you want, pull it together,” he said, ignoring her. He was finally going to think for himself. Moving toward the storage area where a complete arsenal of weapons lived, she followed him along the corridor.

  “I’ll get food,” she said, going for the kitchen. As she was loading boxes and bags with edibles, Private Smith found her, confused.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Where leaving,” Sharon said. “You can help me gather food and bottled water. I’m not sure what vehicle we’re taking or how big it will be but we need to take as much of this stuff as possible.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “How’d you like to go to Arizona?” Sharon asked, stopping for a moment. “We’ll try to get to your family.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Private Smith cried out, grabbing a bag to load. Albert passed by the doorway, pushing a wheeled cart piled with guns and boxes of ammunition.

  “I’ll find a car,” he shouted moving toward the exit. The next hour was chaotic; Albert found the keys to a standard issue, black SUV with government plates and neatly organized supplies the trio might need on a journey across country.

  “Where are we going?” he finally thought to ask.

  “Do you want to tell him?” Sharon asked, buckling Private Smith into her seat.

  “Arizona,” Private Smith replied.

  Chapter 1

  In a junkyard neighborhood in Yuma, Arizona, former senator Victor Garrison sat on his bed in his trailer bedroom, back up against the headboard, two month growth of beard and shaggy neckline in contrast to his former, flawless grooming. A laptop on his lap, he was frowning as he typed fast, the ideas hitting the keys as they entered his brain.

  Sporadic internet from satellite was available for those lucky enough to get hold of a receiver, satellite internet hardware desired and coveted on the black market. The newcomers were careful to take their box along when they left the trailer together. On the rare occasion that happened, they paid Tobacco a hefty sum so he wouldn’t break in or rent it to someone else. The internet provided unlimited news; the team had to sort through it and try to determine what was truth. In this way, Miranda Garrison’s Rumor forum started broadcasting again to a small group of listeners spread over the country.

  Everything they put out online was included in the Rumor newsletter. Ed Baker had found a decent printer on a scavenger hunt. Boxes of ink cartridges and reams of paper stacked up in the corner. Back-up computers with Word installed piled in the opposite corner.

  It was really Miranda’s baby, this paper. She’d invited her father to contribute and Victor pushed the limit with his current article. Editing his essays with a heavy hand, Miranda reminded her father when he sounded too much like the former politician he was. People didn’t want that any longer, she said. They wanted resolutions, not promises. Truth, not fantasy. Life was never going to be what it once was, not for a long, long time. Ed, Miranda and Alex, each armed with one hundred copies of the maiden edition, walked around the first burn district in Yuma, distributing the paper to whoever was interested. Since then communication by printed-paper was a growing trend as people in Yuma, starved for information, lined up outside of the junkyard gate for the next installment of the news. Soon, the need for the newsletter spread outside of the immediate area, and distributors came forward. Usually a weekly publication, if Miranda had anything urgent to say, they’d get out an extra edition and distributors would hand them out all over the city.

  The Podcast audience was growing along with the expansion of the internet. Initially, Miranda invited her father to sit in with her, but quickly learned listeners didn’t want to hear from him. Ed and Alex on the other hand, were a hot commodity.

  “If Paypal ever comes back, we’ve hit the jackpot,” Ed said. But for now, when town life was still new and bartering was just beginning as a way to acquire what was needed, they found a way to make some money, starting a classified ads section of the newsletter where ads were placed in exchange for goods.

  To citizens numbed by the awfulness of their daily life, finding missing pets became a priority. Grey male cat, lost near Randolph and Central. Contact Henry at the Prudential Building, suite 125. Or Older male German Shepherd, red collar, missing since bombing of Cleardon neighborhood. Leave information at 6th precinct police station.

  The brokenhearted trying to replace beloved memorabilia of murdered loved ones, whether lost in the bombing, or looted before the family returned to the home took advantage of the classified. World War II medals belonging to my great grandfather are missing from our partially damaged home on Wabash. Reward offered.

  Flea markets popped up all over the city as looters tried to make a living, and it was an unspoken decree that if an owner found an item he sought, he would buy his own belongings back without making an issue of it. It wasn’t unheard of for the looter to hand over the item without taking payment, but it was rare.

  ***

  In two months, changes on Steve Hayward’s camp outside of Tulip, Arizona kept life interesting. A routine built around daily chores and the gathering of supplies helped normalize life for everyone, in spite of the hardships.

  Steve and Randy Davis set up a trailer they’d buried underground to be used as the nursing school classroom. Each morning from eight until ten, Grace Baker, Ed’s mother, taught basic anatomy and physiology to Randy’s wife Carol, her granddaughters Elise and Carin, and Senator Garrison’s daughter, Lexie. They had an enormous library of books to use that survived the burn of a nearby hospital. Steve and Junior, his grandson, discovered an untouched nursing lab at the local community college, and truckloads of hospital equipment including everything they needed to learn how to care for a patient transformed the bedrooms of the literally underground trailer into a state of the art classroom.

  After a short break in the morning, the students entered the lab where they performed procedures on an unfortunate dummy. “In my day, we did this stuff to each other,” Grace said, distastefully. “It was pretty humiliating.”

  After lunch, the class traveled to the figuratively underground clinic with Randy as their bodyguard, his gun ready at all times. Marybeth Crouse, the registered nurse in charge, was not only thrilled to have the students; she was humbled that Grace was taking the time to teach them. Clinic patients loved the extra attention the students gave them.

  It was Randy’s idea to expand the clinic. With Grace and the students there everyday, they could see twice as many patients as before. Concerns against moving the clinic back to the former hospital arose when raiders, looking for drugs and syringes, ransacked the pharmacy. Fortunately, with Steve and Randy’s help, the contents had already been transferred to the underground clinic before the raid, locked in gun safes drilled to a concrete slab. The safes weren’t going anywhere.

  When Randy wasn’t guarding the nurses, he dug gigantic holes, big enough to bury a trailer. Soon, they’d be living underground. He’d gone through two backhoes, getting through rocky soil.

  The garden at the farm across the street from the camp was in place, tiny leaves emerging from the soil. Kelly spent every waking minute there, her former garden helpers now immersed in nursing school curriculum. When Laura was done with chores in the trailer, she and son, Ned would come over with their hoes and help Kelly weed.

  An exciting development; the camp had taken on small flocks of sheep and goats for wool and milk respectively, and horses, the animals saved from starvation by Steve and Junior, who found them near death when they visited a farm on the outskirts of Gila, looking for equipment.

  And Katherine Garrison, unable to tolerate more than one night in the Crash Test Junkyard, begged Ed to bring her back to camp. Within days, she took over the kitchen, to the delight of Carol and Laura. Three meals a day, served with panache, Katherine said she’d found her calling. In the morning, she’d make a list of items, handing it over to the scav
engers, and they would try to locate what she needed.

  And then the coup de grace; Steve pulled up with a new trailer, to be used as a canteen. Katherine had her own kitchen now. The dining room, created from the former living room, was as nice as any restaurant.

  The scavengers; Mike, Steve, Chris and Junior spent their time searching for items needed to expand life on the camp, including pumps and solar panels, air conditioners, gasoline. Each morning, the camp dwellers would gather in the canteen dining room with lists of desired items. Randy was always asking for more ammunition and guns, and finding it was Junior’s jurisdiction.

  They’d gone to Tucson to get a semi load of alfalfa bales when Junior saw it; a burned out state police headquarters across the road from the stockyard.

  “That’s a new burn,” Steve said, frowning.

  “I wonder if they have any guns inside,” Junior said, looking longingly out the truck window.

  “Let’s go in and see,” Steve said. “Check around, boys. See any danger lurking?” But the coast looked clear, so he turned the big rig into the driveway. It was a brick building, the front wall caved in, the interior well ransacked. But when they got inside, the noticed that, in spite of its beaten up exterior, the gun safe was intact.

  “They didn’t have much success getting this open,” Mike said looking it over.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Steve replied. “It looks like they tried to blow the door off. Do you think the four of us can wrestle this thing in the truck?” It had to weight over a thousand pounds empty.

  “I want to try,” Junior said. “We can’t leave it behind.” So with lots of grunting and complaining, they got it out of the office and through the burned out part of the building to the outside.

  “We need a forklift,” Steve said, looking across the street.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, grandpa?” Junior asked. They used the forklift at the stockyard to load the huge bales of hay into the semi truck in the past.

  “I am, son. Do you want to get it?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.

  “Well, go ahead then, we ain’t got all day here.”

  “Ah, I’m not sure….” Mike said, watching Junior running toward the road, looking both ways even though they hadn’t seen a car in three hours, and crossing the parking lot to the stockyard.

  “He’ll be fine,” Steve said, watching carefully. The last time they’d come for hay, they left the forklift at the entrance to the yard and it was still there. The men watched as Junior got up onto the seat of the lift and heard the engine start. Mike saw his son maneuver the big equipment as if it was his Big Wheel, the act brought on an audible sob. Looking over at his son-in-law, Steve put his hand on Mike’s shoulder as they watched Junior navigate the lift carefully through the gate and across the parking lot, stopping at the road again, and driving it across to the parking lot where his family waited with a safe full of guns.

  Look for more Burn District, coming soon!

  Also by Suzanne Jenkins

  Burn District: The Series Science Fiction, Political Thriller and Women’s Fiction,

  Burn District Is the story of survivors of the destruction of the United States as they build new lives and attempt to reconstruct the country.

  Pam of Babylon Series

  Subscribe to my email list at SuzanneJenkins.net and download FREE First Sight, the prequel to Pam of Babylon.

  #1 Pam of Babylon Long Island housewife Pam Smith is called to the hospital after her husband, Jack, suffers a heart attack on the train from Manhattan. It is the beginning of a journey of self-discovery and sadness, growth and regrets, as she realizes a wife and mother’s worst nightmare.

  #2 Don’t You Forget About Me The family begins to sift through the evidence of a life of deceit, putting together the pieces left behind by Jack.

  #3 Dream Lover A gritty, realistic portrait of the aftermath of deceit, more pieces of the puzzle come together as the women each attempt to go on living in the wake of despair. More characters are introduced, including Ashton.

  #4 Prayers for the Dying Jack Smith’s victims attempt to move forward while grappling with the pain and horror that he left behind. Pam makes startling revelations about herself, while Sandra hopes for a future with exciting expectations. Marie is in a most unlikely place, with the happiest news in the bleakest circumstances. Ashton’s story of a lifetime love affair with Jack is finally told, with his heartache revealed.

  #5 Family Dynamics Heartbreak and devastation move toward triumph in the fifth and final installation of the Pam of Babylon series. Pam is at last able to overcome the pain of Jack’s rejection, and her own role in perpetuating his deviance, when she meets Dan and falls in love. Her children move on with their lives in ways Pam would have never believed. Sandra fulfills her dreams with Tom, and a gift from Marie helps to complete their life together. Ashton and Ted build a beautiful life, and new discoveries make it richer than they thought possible, but with a twist. But don’t be deceived; what you hope for is not what you may get.

  #6 The Tao of Pam A beautiful life at the beach is marred by secrets and lies as the legacy of Jack Smith’s debauchery continues to haunt his widow, Pam. The Tao of Pam finds Pam at a crossroad which will take her to the next phase of her life, offering her choices she didn’t want to make. Her children, Brent and Lisa, move on, dealing with their own life choices, as one by one, they all come down off their pedestals.

  #7 In Memoriam In Memoriam begins with the birth of a baby boy to Pam’s former boyfriend, Dan and daughter, Lisa. Still reeling from the death of her beloved son Brent, Pam endures life at the beach with remarkable strength, while meeting a new man. Could this be her next husband? Sandra tries to balance several versions of her life while striving to be part of the Smith legacy. Lisa rises above circumstances that would destroy most, with determination.

  But don’t be too relieved; history does have a way of repeating itself.

  #8 Soulmates Pam faces new challenges with glamour and poise, while Sandra doesn’t disappoint, and Lisa discovers new strengths. “Women’s fiction with a touch of noir.”

  We’re Just Friends Short Story Prequel to Soulmates Book #8 A short story to fill in details after Book #7 In Memoriam and before Book #8 Soulmates. Events occur that the reader may want to know about, but Jason and Sandra do their best to keep hidden.

  #9 Save the Date Pam and John set their wedding date while Sandra and Dan Chua move in together, Grandmothers Bernice and Nelda fall in love, not with each other, Lisa and Cara meet new men, and Jack becomes a distant memory. Hopefully, he'll stay that way.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Greektown Stories

  The Greeks of Beaubien Street

  Nestled below the skyline of Detroit you’ll find Greektown, a few short blocks of colorful bliss, warm people and Greek food. In spite of growing up immersed in the safety of her family and their rich culture, Jill Zannos doesn’t fit in. A Detroit homicide detective, she manages to keep one foot planted firmly in the traditions started by her grandparents, while the other navigates the most devastated neighborhoods in the city she can’t help but love. She is a no-nonsense workaholic with no girlfriends, an odd boyfriend who refuses to grow up, and an uncanny intuition, inherited from her mystic grandmother that acts as her secret weapon to crime-solving success. Her story winds around tales of her family and their secret-laden history, while she investigates the most despicable murder of her career.

  The Greeks of Beaubien Street is a modern tale of a family grounded in old world, sometimes archaic, tradition as they seek acceptance in American society. They could be any nationality, but they are Greek.

  The Princess of Greektown

  Thirty years ago, Terry Smith was Detroit’s top news anchor. She set the standard for excellence in investigative journalism, staying at the news desk long after her time should have been over. Just as Terry’s son-in-law is murdered in the city, Detective Jill Zannos faces upheaval in her own life. A new man, family intri
gue and the dregs of the last case she investigated becomes the lowest priority as she and her partner Albert untangle the mess of Terry Smith and her family.

  Christmas in Greektown

  As Christmastime approaches, the family prepares for another get-together in Greektown. Relationships blossom and some end during the hardest time of the year. But as Jill and others discover, when one door closes, another opens, often with more wonderful opportunities.

  A Greektown Wedding

  Four possibilities coming up, but only one wedding. Whose is it? Jill faces a challenging murder investigation in which she questions her career choice for the first time. Love, family, murder…Detroit’s finest at her best.

  ~ ~ ~

  Alice’s Summertime Adventure

  We meet Alice Bradshaw when she is at a crossroad. She’s just beaten cancer and is suddenly unsure of what her next move should be. Looking back on where she’s been and what the future may hold, she knows she needs to make a big change in her life. Then her car dies on the highway after an argument with her daughter. Dave, a stranger on a motorcycle, pulls alongside her and saves the day. He offers Alice a chance at adventure. She jumps on it, much to the dismay of her children. The adventure starts a chain of events that will have Alice and her children, as well as Dave, questioning every aspect of their lives. There will be a few casualties along the way, a lot of anger, life changes and a few shocking surprises. Alice’s Summertime Adventure is the story of an average American family as they struggle with dilemmas we all have, and making choices that aren’t for everyone.

  Someone Like You

  Life gets in the way as upstate NY sisters, Marley and Abigail cling to each other and their young children. But a babysitter introduces them both to Jay Malik, a medical student from India who becomes their lifeline to happiness, forgiveness and healing. “Another tear-jerker from Jenkins. Have the tissue ready.”