Calamity in America

by Pete Thorsen

  Prologue

  He watched the man below him through the rifle scope. He guessed the man was hunting with the bow he carried in one hand. His guess was proved correct when the man below lifted the bow and, after pulling it back, released an arrow. Even with the rifle scope it was too far to see the arrow, but when the hunter below walked ahead and picked up something that the watcher guessed was a rabbit, he knew the hunter was apparently very capable with the bow. It was hard to tell but it looked like the hunter had some sort of a handgun in a holster at his hip. He guessed that if it was a handgun that it was just for show. Ammunition was very scarce and most of the very few guns that were around yet were now about worthless with the lack of ammunition. Just like the rifle he had in his hands. Though this one was still useful even without ammunition because of the telescopic sight on it that he was now looking through. And you could still usually intimidate most of the people with even an empty gun.

  The hunter below walked ahead and out of sight into an area with a couple of big cottonwood trees. The trees meant there must be a spring or creek down there and the hunter would likely stop and cook the rabbit near that water source. That should give him time to walk down there and sneak up on the hunter while he was cooking or eating the rabbit.

  Several minutes later the watcher snuck very carefully into the copse of trees. He moved very slowly and carefully, having done this several times in the past. Surprise was the key. He could smell the smoke from the cooking fire and he slowed his advance and was even more careful. He was not on any kind of path and tested each step carefully before putting his weight down on each foot. No noise could be heard. Then he saw the smoke rising from the tiny clearing ahead. Another two steps and he saw the hunter’s now unstrung bow leaning against the hunter’s pack along with a small quiver of arrows. The hunter was not in sight and the watcher decided to grab the bow and arrows to use against the man, instead of trusting the intimidation factor of the empty, scoped rifle.

  He was just reaching for the bow when the unseen hunter spoke.

  “You had best not touch another man’s stuff.”

  He spun around and saw the hunter now standing in plain sight a few yards from him. He did have what looked to be a revolver in a holster at his hip but did not even have it in his hand! As he had swung around, he slipped the rifle that was slung on his shoulder into both hands and was bringing it to bear on the man. When he snapped it to his shoulder it would very likely scare the man into thinking that the rifle was indeed loaded. But he never got the rifle all the way to his shoulder.

  The hunter did not seem to move all that fast but the gun that had been on his hip was now in his hand and a burst of white smoke and load crack was heard. He felt the bullet strike him in the chest and then another struck him just a short moment later. He surprisingly felt no pain but his legs seemed to be getting too weak to hold him up he noticed as he fell to the ground. Then there was just darkness.

  The hunter replaced the two now empty shells in the big revolver he always carried. He them walked over and looked down at the man he had just killed for a moment before reaching down and picking up that man’s rifle that now lay on the ground next to the dead man.

  The hunter opened the action on the dead man’s rifle and as he suspected found the gun to be empty of any ammunition. Shaking his head he again looked down on the man he had just killed.

  “Idiot. What a waste.”

  The hunter then turned back to his small campfire to attend to the rabbit that had been roasting and should be just about done by this time.

  Chapter 1

  It’s been seven, or more likely eight, years now since the collapse. Time does not mean much anymore. There is no job to go to, no appointments to rush to, no bills coming in the mail, no car payments due, no rent to pay on the first of each month. Not that the collapse happened all at once. It was spread out over two or three years, or more depending on how you looked at it. I guess really it started maybe with the market crash, and then the recession of 2008, and then another ten years to get where we still are now. That recession crippled the whole world and the United States, and no other country, ever really recovered from it. Everyone just limped along, getting by, hoping for better times that never materialized.

  The world stock markets went up in value but that was about the extent of the world economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008. Still, the politicians and the media claimed again and again that the country was recovering, or even that the nation had recovered from the recession. I wish I now had a can of vegetables for every time I heard that word “recovery.”

  Then there was the terror group that started the Islamic State caliphate. It grew to a very large size and was able to reach out into just about every country and cause terrorist acts at one point. The United States did a mediocre job at best of fighting this terror group. Our President did not want to hurt anybody I guess. Not wanting to hurt people is not a bad trait in a person, but the fact is that sometimes violence is the only answer. Everyone in the United States that is left alive now certainly knows the truth of that at this point.

  Several countries were fighting the Islamic State at one point, off and on. This fight lasted for two years, maybe three. Kinda odd when you think about several countries being led by the supposed strongest military might of the world and they could not stop this rag tag group of terrorists from building a large caliphate or country of their own carved out of parts of several other adjoining countries.

  Supposedly the United States was leading a large coalition of many other countries in this fight against the Islamic State. And that led to other, bigger problems. Not all of those countries were on the same page so-to-speak. There were a few “accidents.” Then a lot of talk, demands, and rhetoric. Then finally the war against the Islamic State became a much bigger war between many countries. This war never advanced quite to using nuclear weapons, thank God (well, maybe one nuclear weapon), but it still was bad enough. The United States did not overtly take part in this war between the many countries. I say “overtly” because the United States has had their hands in other countries’ business for well over 50 years, trying to manipulate them into something else. The extent of the United States’ manipulations was a much talked about and debated thing throughout those many years.

  The war really was not all that much as wars go I guess. I think that was because every country was broke at the beginning of the war and war costs a lot of money. The whole world was in dire financial shape when this war started and, six months or so later, the whole world was in economic shambles when the war mostly ground to a halt.

  I don’t believe any actual citizens of any country wanted any kind of war. It was all done by those in power of course, as is always the case. You know—the ones that start wars but do no actual fighting in the wars themselves and instead send their citizens’ sons off to fight and die.

  So the war petered out and the world was left fairly calm, but not quite. The fighting had sucked out all the loose money that every country had and left only more debt behind, along with a bunch of dead bodies of course. There was almost no international trade by the end of the war. During the war all commercial air travel and almost all ocean travel had ceased. And no country would accept any other country’s currency for any payments anymore. A small amount of trade was done using gold as a medium but this amounted to very little actual trade. So basically all trade stopped and certainly all tourism stopped. And so, without any trade, countries started to whither and die within their own borders.

  I can tell you that as countries die, it is not a pleasant or peaceful event. There are riots, looting, killings, starvation, and what some may call “discontent,” or maybe “unrest.” The good ole United States was not left out of this part either.

  Government services started to dry up at a time when those services were needed way more than ever. States, counties, and cities were forced into severe cut backs just to try and stay a step away from total bankruptc
y. Then, just before the “war” ended (it was never called “World War Three”), a single EMP device was used over the continental United States. It did not cover the whole country and did not do as much damage as some thought one of those might, but let me tell you, it was certainly bad enough. Especially for those poor citizens who bore the brunt of the EMP’s effects. Supposedly, our government never found out who set off that device (or never told us anyway), but by this time I don’t think anyone trusted absolutely anything our government said anymore about anything.

  The EMP did bring down the whole country’s electrical grid nation-wide, but only for a short time, and then the bulk of the nation got the power back up and running very quickly. Except for the relatively small area that absorbed the most impact from the EMP blast. There was quite a lot of speculation about that EMP blast. When it became evident that the damage it caused was relatively small, many looked to North Korea as the likely culprit. But no one knew for sure and if our government knew just who did it they were not saying.

  Speculation of course ran wild with countless theories of all kinds. I guess what people used to call “conspiracy theories.” But speculation is still just speculation and I don’t think anyone really knew anything.

  People in that EMP-stricken area stayed there for the most part thinking the power would come back on again quickly, like after a thunder storm or ice storm. But of course it didn’t come back on right away. By the time everyone in that area knew that the power was not coming back on any time soon, it was kinda too late for them to do much about it, including leaving for greener pastures.

  Like after any other disaster, aid from around the nation flowed into the stricken area, but truthfully not to the extent that it would have five or ten years before. The people, the states, and the federal government were all tapped out of cash. Yes, some small amount of aid and help did go to that area, but it was really way too little. Those people in that EMP blast-stricken area had a tough time ahead of them, and they were not the only ones as it turned out.

  When the EBT cards’ or food stamp cards’ monthly amounts were cut way back, that is when the riots really started up in force. Coincidentally, this happened at just about the same time that the EMP hit us. All the major cities’ police forces (already cut way back due to repeated budget cuts), could not handle the massive riots that resulted from the EBT card cut back. I don’t really have an opinion on food stamp use. People have to eat and it was a fact that jobs were about non-existent. So that is when our President declared Martial Law across the whole United States with the full backing of both Houses of Congress.

  The President said it was just to allow our armed forces to be used to help maintain order, which was direly needed. And at first I think that was totally true. There were no big changes of any kind just the military was being used in the big cities like a regular police force. But gradually, more and more of the American citizens’ rights went away and were replaced with more government control. Martial Law gave the government almost absolute power, and you know the old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

  I remember that there was no big uproar when the President declared Martial Law. Like I said, things in the big cities were a mess and a section of the nation was without electrical power thanks to that EMP. It was obviously an emergency situation and Martial Law seemed like maybe a good thing, at least the news stations made it seem that way. There were doomsayers of course, saying how bad Martial Law would be (and they were later proved to be correct), but those voices of dissent were drowned out by those people mostly in the big cities who just wanted law and order brought back to their cities. And of course the people in the EMP stricken area still wanted assistance of any kind, but we could not really hear their voices.

  So we now had Martial Law all across the United States for the first time in the nation’s long history. At this point we were still a free people, but some could see the writing on the wall well before everyone else.

  The big cement road barriers were probably the first visible things out of the ordinary that normal people saw the military do in their area that had nothing to do with keeping law and order. These cement barriers were used to block many roads to supposedly hamper the movement of political “agitators” and general bad guys the news stations promptly told us. Once the cement barriers were all in place the remaining “open” highways then had check points put on them and all citizens then were required to obtain permits to travel more than one hundred miles from their homes. This permit business was a little harder for the media to explain away as a safety measure being done by our government for the benefit of the American citizens. This was very reminiscent of how Nazi Germany was always portrayed in the movies, where common citizens would be stopped at check points and we heard the common words, “Papers please.” The please phrase was very out of place when all around your stopped car were heavily armed troops.

  Another thing that happened shortly after the beginning of Martial Law was the end of retail firearms and ammunition sales. Gun and ammunition dealers and distributors all had their entire inventories seized by our government. This happened all across the nation at basically the same time. There was no warning given and both the military and a host of different federal agencies took part in this as it required a large amount of manpower. This was done to keep the guns out of the hands of the rioters and agitators according to our government, and to make our nation a safer place for everyone.

  Most of this all happened during a Presidential election year but because of Martial Law the elections were put on hold, though not until almost the last minute. When this was announced it led to major discontent I can tell you! But by this time the military had a very tight hold on most of the country. Due to Martial Law, gatherings of any kind were forbidden. In the beginning this was used to stop the riots before they got started and seemed reasonable, but now it was used to stop any type of gathering of American citizens, even very small groups. So at this point there was almost no travel by common citizens and no public gatherings. These two points made any resistance to the government more difficult to organize and there was always the matter of just who could be trusted. With money so tight, the government immediately started a reward program for anyone who turned in these “agitators.” Pitting neighbor against neighbor was a tactical and age-old ploy.

  Of course, not all this was known by everyone and it was gradual process. The media had slowly faded away. Or maybe I should say the media was mostly closed down not too long after Martial Law was declared. So the only information we heard was what the government told us or allowed us to be told. There was still the evening news on channel five or whatever, just like always, but now it was basically run totally by our government. This was not a secret deal at all and it was explained to us that this way our government knew that everyone was getting only the honest news, along with all the vital information we needed. At first we all had the internet and phone service for added news, but then the internet went down, but not all at once which would have been seen as an obvious government takeover. Instead, the internet became spotty at first, like they were just having some kind of technical problems (and it was reported on the “news” that agitators were attacking internet providers), then the internet was just gone and it did not come back. This was immediately blamed on the so-called agitators.

  Next was phone service. Cell phone service suffered the same fate. First it was spotty service and then it was no service at all. Again, the “news” reported these outages were caused by the agitators. The land line phones worked through most of the whole time but there was no long distance service, only local. So you could call your neighbor and call your mother across town, but you could not call another town or city or another state to find out what was going on there. Whenever a long distance number was dialed you would get a canned message like, “All lines are currently busy. Please try your call again later.”

  Later on I heard that ham radio and all private radio co
mmunications were also blocked or jammed. I was never into that and know nothing about it but that is just what I heard through the rumor mill. Rumors were all any of us had to go on. No one had any real solid information about anything thanks to the loss of all communications. And like all rumors, I assumed most of what we heard was false, and much of the important stuff we did not hear about at all.

  We still had TV and radio stations through most of this. Though the stations became fewer and fewer until there was just one TV station and only one radio station. It was the GBS station. The Government Broadcasting Station. Or just Government BS for short. The Government BS was a running joke but at the same time it was a joke that you were very careful about.

  Sedition was a crime and I think everyone knew that most anything you said could be called sedition. Those taken away for any kind of crime were never heard from again. The rumors ran wild as to what exactly happened to anyone who was arrested. Again, all we had were rumors and guesses because no one knew for sure and most were wise enough to not ask too many questions.

  So through most of the demise of the once great and powerful United States of America we could still watch reruns of some of our favorite shows and hear the weather reports. And always get the daily government news broadcasts. These stations gave us their version of the news and also gave us our orders.

  These were dark days for the once great United States of America. The “land of the free” and all that stuff we used to brag to the world about. We had fallen about as low as we could fall. There were no freedoms at all anymore. We all now lived in fear of our all-powerful government, and we remained “free” only at the whim of our new master.