The Solitary Man’s Refuge

by Ron Foster

  Anyway, we will still be getting ice for weeks to come, but it will be scarce. Cops are going to be on patrol, but no radios and no 911. The National Guard will be either notified in person or eventually by the sheriff’s department to report for duty or they will just report to the armories on their own. Infra Guard, whoever the hell they are in this city, will be getting notifications and orders. That’s a creepy bunch to think about. Their web site describes them as “InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector. InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States.” Those suckers got some odd powers over life and death in these type situations, so say the conspiracy theorists.

  So life goes on if they can keep the system going. Main thing is sewage and water. Can you imagine what would happen if a jail or prison had no sewage service? They probably let out a bunch of petty criminals to lighten the load but then what?

  What about the insane asylums and old folks homes? Special needs group homes? The school for the blind? There ain’t but 3 Emergency managers in this city. They usually rely on county and state to tell them what to do and send in help so they are going to be pretty worthless in this situation and sorely overworked. They are the direct disaster communication connection though to the school boards, fire department, chamber of commerce, port authority etc. etc. though, and will be called upon to help coordinate all the different agencies and institute the general approved emergency plan in their books.

  That reminds me. I hope the bastards don’t call me up for duty. You know I am in the Disaster Reserve as a GS 10 to help arrange loans to get people through disasters. I made sure that job description said “non essential personnel” security clearance only, before I took it though. A lot of them jobs say essential personnel which means they can force you to work and send you anywhere in the continental US if they want. I can turn down up to two assignments without penalty during my hitch before they can my ass normally. I don’t know if I care to be doing that job at the moment. If they want to send me somewhere, no way I quit. But my duty station is listed as here so I shouldn’t be assigned anywhere else. I could help with the recovery of this city and state. That could get real interesting, maybe. Kind of like having easy access to the lid on the cookie jar and getting to listen to various government types evaluate the situation and make plans.

  Hell, I might want to do that. Not if they putting us all up in a hotel or barracks for our “protection” though. He had been through enough of those drills in the National Guard where they say come down and sign some papers about your retirement and found himself locked in an armory with part of his unit and the MP`s putting barbed wire barricades at the entrances. You would sit there for a few hours as your Commander, Executive Officer and First Sergeant described a problem with some country you had not even heard of and that we are getting ready to go get deployed there. No phone calls out, no phone calls in. Do not leave the building you are in under the Uniform Code of Military justice and are subject to all the penalties we signed up for when we enlisted. There was always a big wooden easel set up with cloth-covered posters in the center of the room. Each officer in turn would use a long wooden pointer to point out an area on a global map or a relevant cultural fact about the people inhabiting the country or the way their soldiers think. Once in a while, they would crack the damn thing on the table to make a point. Then at the end of the day, they tell you this was all BS and go home or that it wasn’t a drill and you actually were heading out in 24 hours, God knows where. All us soldiers in that unit got to watching that damn easel closely to see if it had been moved even slightly or that the cloth they used to cover the placards for security was missing from where it was usually just thrown on a shelf.

  Then we would send one of the longer enlisted types to go try to find out if we had a drill coming up so we didn’t sit in suspense so long and he would whisper to us what was up. I think they started to intentionally leak “drill” to us after seeing we were getting a bit riotous after a few false scares.

  Damn! I don’t have any special place to report in except by phone. Well, I take that back. The agency I work for has a government office here but I don’t know anyone in there. I only work when they call from DC or Atlanta and say report in.

  Shit! Now I got to decide do I want to wait on them, report in or not do it. Maybe they don’t even have enough money to hire me? That is going to be a bitch. We had to have defaulted on all our government loans with other countries and they did the same back to us. Means the dollar is dead, well not dead yet but might as well be. They probably will issue that AMERO currency crap now > Hell, they had pictures of the coins out on the internet of it for years already. Probably got trillions of Amero`s stacked up in a damn warehouse somewhere ready for distribution since the news was first leaked to the public. This is not a drill! Ha, Ha, jokes on me!

  Ah, man! I got to take that job, I would be crazy not to, even if I don’t want it. Shit. That will make me the only one of us that has a real dependable job in this new economy being paid in something tradable to purchase what’s available to buy for a while. You will be depending on me as well as this community for me to get out some new money and try and keep commerce going. This wasn’t in my plans at all!” a shocked and bewildered Donald said, looking like some kind of old professor trying to work out a difficult equation and pacing the kitchen floor with his head down and rubbing his scalp for answers.

  “That won’t be so bad, Don! You done a lot harder things and that’s what you’re trained best in.” His mom said, brightly smiling and thinking now she didn’t have to leave her home if Donald got the job.

  “ Wait a minute now. How exactly does that federal agency hiring thing work? He already has the federal job because he was put on a list of employees for the Disaster Reserve, but they only called him up when needed to go to certain disasters. Wouldn’t they need him now as big of a disaster as this was?” Betty thought, not understanding how or when Donald was going to “work”.

  “Yea, Don, you like Emergency Management. You will be able to try and get rid of a lot of that bureaucracy and be able to personally help good people through the system like you said you wanted to. You were getting your doctorate so you could try and change or influence Homeland Security policies to a more holistic and academic socially and culturally aware approach versus the command and control military model they currently use.” Janice said, reminding him of his old academic passions that no longer mattered much to him.

  “Like I said, I will do it. But I just don’t see myself being stuck in an office somewhere, lord knows how many hours a day and then having to return to a compound or hotel somewhere for a few hours sleep and not being able to communicate or check on my farm or you all. Hell, I just as soon take my chances driving to work everyday even if folks were jealous. Crap, I hope that staff car, company car or whatever it is they are going to give me don’t have government license plates on it. Let’s paint a big old bull’s eye on my butt too, in case someone misses the tags and styling of the vehicle. We usually just get rental cars when deployed out in the field, though, so I won’t sweat it but it’s going to depend on where they are going to get the gas to keep this tiddly wink match going. I can see vans to work and drivers for appointments. I got some rank, though, I may get my own.

  Getting to those government buildings can be suicide though, maybe if you’re just a lone vehicle. People are going to see the lights on in the buildings and wonder why they can’t have the same and start protesting around them. Shit, the state capitol is just up the street. Nice place for a little riot concerning food stamps and welfare checks equal no food protest or riot depending on how the cops handled it. That is way too screwed up to think on. Even if they were locking down cities under martial law there will be many instances when he would be required to tra
vel in order to interview his clients. It was illegal for him to carry a concealed civilian weapon (CCW) while performing his federal duties. (Screw you, FEMA, for creating that one). So he was going to be putting his butt on the line everyday whether he chose to follow the guideline and law or not. If he did carry anyway and got caught, best-case scenario, they fire him. Worst case, he goes to Leavenworth Federal prison for 5 yrs for defying the order. Lord forbid if he used his own personal gun to defend himself as a Citizen working for the FED. He has no citizens’ rights; His state concealed carry pistol permit is only valid when he is off duty. How screwed up is that?” Donald ranted getting some fire in his eyes.

  “ These folks just don’t get it, (referring to his mother and Janice). I am going to be required to give up all my freedoms and my choice for personal safety and protection just for the sake of my friends and families to keep them living in a manner they are accustomed to. Well, that don’t sound right, people do that everyday regardless, as just being a responsible adult or family member. What I mean though, is that I already made places and stored food to do exactly that for them that will be unused by me mostly and I can’t be there to help them other than maybe send money. Damn, now I sound like a migrant worker. What am I trying to say here anyway?” Donald thought trying to put his conflicting emotions into words.

  “I hadn’t thought about the dangers or you having to stay somewhere other than my house while you were working in town.” Donald’s Mom said, thinking the country might be better for her and Donald to go instead of being in the same city but rarely seeing each other. She would be alone except for if Janice visited her upon occasion, if she stayed in town.

  “I think what I am trying to say here is that, at the

  moment, I see it as a 50/50 chance right now that if and I mean IF! the government gets the Amero thing going, manages to get the railroads going again and folks don’t get too crazy then we will get a reasonably rapid recovery of sorts and the big cities will still be hubs on industry and commerce. It will still take years to get the grid back working if this was a worldwide event, though. I can easily see that happening. Look at China, Russia, all of Europe

  or even some islands. SHTF worse with wars in the 20th century and they lost electricity over vast areas as well as had famine and government repression that killed countless millions and civilization came back. So historically speaking, we are like centuries of history have proven to us, recover in some manner and move on. If you are one of those that think Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest applies you are dead wrong. We wouldn’t have so many congenital diseases or near sightedness etc. being passed along for generations if this was true. Hell, there is an optical shop on every corner. People will reform civilization regardless of what’s going on and be whatever mix of people and genes or brains they have that makes them survivors. I am just not liking to be in hamster mode on the wheel again and not being able to share our life experiences. Does that sound petty or jealous? Doesn’t to me, I want to share some life and kind of retire from this emergency management as a prepper not an

  administrator. But you’re right, I got the calling for it and not to sound like my arrogant ass is trying to be humble, I know they will screw it up and need me to help try to fix it. It is a sacrifice that I feel I must do, but if I ask my self if I want to, the answer is no, I want to get on with my own life and dedicated enough time to this. Another part of me says serve and serve humanity and country always. My problem is I don’t think they can pull it off based on my experience and knowledge and don’t feel like spending the end of days in some thankless office some anarchist or terrorist with a misdirected grudge is possibly going to blow up for shits and giggles because they think I, as a representative of the government, have somehow not done my job for society sufficiently.

  It will be like everyone of the combatants looks the same and the only one that looks like I got a uniform and acts like a enemy is me and I also look like the only hope in the world for others to beg from and get the guilty conscience syndrome if I can’t produce a miracle of logistics to help them.

  Do you know that 5 million people just

  disappeared after the Great Depression? Poof! They were recorded on the census before it and were unaccounted for after it. They were gone with out a trace. Nobody knows what really happened to them other than that they were missing in the population on the next census. Researchers suspect they starved to death or met untimely acts of violence that caused them to become an unrecorded statistic. The actual count is suspected to be far higher than that as the comparison census is considered very inaccurate and that didn’t account for migrant workers or unregistered voters. Thing is we are going to have a vast underclass of people begin disappearing now. No one is keeping up with the homeless or borderline mentally insane on the streets now to see they get fed. Hell, they probably will live longer than established people because they are used to the survival tricks it takes to actually live on the streets for a long period of time.

  People in the country will actually be worse off in some ways. Most people don’t raise gardens much anymore regardless what city folks think and will be cut off from the amenities they can get from the city like existing stocks of seed, fertilizer and plants backyard city gardeners will buy up immediately.

  Gas will get rationed in the cities for a while. There are lots of generators in storage ready for a pandemic or a nuclear reactor meltdown. Oh fun, what is the nuclear power plant up the road going to do without spewing radiation everywhere because they can’t pump water to cool them now?” Don said. He would get into that threat later on how EMP affects them and risk for radiological crop contamination and made another face as he remembered one more job or prepper thing he had to plan for.

  “I know you will do what’s best for all of us, but I think you should just bug out to your home, Don.” Janice said trying to figure out what else Donald knew but was not sharing with them in regard to what a total technology breakdown eventually might mean.

  “That option might not be open, I got to think about if I would be a wanted man or not for several reasons. They might want me to come to work but cannot find me. I am not quite sure at the moment if I am “required” to report in for work under some announcement or emergency powers act that I don’t know about has been evoked yet and if I didn’t show, I would be considered AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and be subject to extreme loss of rights and extra punishment under the war powers act like the Vietnam draftees were once they “deserted.” Cops were allowed to beat the shit out of you back then if they caught you running to Canada to “Evade the draft.” Once you were sworn in and went to basic, if you tried to go “over the hill” in the middle of the night and escape off base you would be treated as a coward and a deserter, if allowed to return to your training unit at best and at your own volition if you returned on your own after being turned back or arrested at best and were assigned to a punishment platoon to complete basic, or at worst you spent time in county, state and federal prisons for an unspecified amount of time up to 20 yrs. as a military deserter. Sleeping on guard duty or cowardice or desertion in the face of the enemy was punishable by firing squad and it was executed more than he cared to think about in war and you learned that threat or fact first day of basic training. This was not a game; Donald knew all too well, this knowledge from serving many a year with honor and in some of the most prestigious and toughest units in the military. Times and attitudes change with age though, and he was not naïve as he was in his younger and less lucid days and yearned for easier duty in his silver haired years.

  “Donald, just quit the agency and say it’s to take care of me. They would understand if you said you had to take care of your sick, elderly mother. It doesn’t sound like you want to do that job anymore and I understand. Look, you just do the right thing as I know you will and think things all the way through. We will be alright either way.” Betty said, trying to advise her distraught son.

  “You think my broth
er is going to try to get back home from Texas? He has been helping financially with house preps he sends us for a disaster for years and knows I will take care of you. But do you think he is coming back?” Don asked his Mom.

  “I am not exactly sure where he is at the moment, he travels extensively as a corporate national sales manager, you know. Last week, he told me on the phone he was very sick with some kind of microbial flu but had to make a corporate meeting one state over if he could manage to walk in the door for the meeting. He is a hard worker and was stubbornly going to make it, it was that important to him to be there for the boss. I would love for him to be here at home now but we best not count on him. He has his own life and friends to worry about there and I am sure thinks we will be fine.” Betty concluded.

  “ I wished that big fool had listened to me more about contingency planning for a solar storm. Not enough was said and now we will be paying the price for not talking then more. He just threw money at the problem and said to me deal with it if I wanted to get mom ready on the home front. Well, that’s ok, I didn’t have funds to deal with it myself any other way, anyway, so it was a huge blessing he contributed his wealth towards him and his Moms’ benefit.

  “I think what I will do is wait a week while we stay in town and then go down to their office and find out if they have anything official planned at all or are just waiting around on orders that will come, lord knows when. It will probably be too early in this disaster to find out anything from them, though. I will think it over about leaving them a forwarding address for me but most likely I will go ahead and give it to them. If I can work, I guess I need to, we will all need the money. My decision is all going to depend on what I hear when I get to talk to someone in charge at the office.” Donald said, glad he still had a few options and putting it in a positive perspective.