Mark started to explain that the troops would be going out to find the cells of Homeland terrorists and eliminate them. Tom chuckled and said, "You make it sound like they are going to be like the Orkin guy, killing off the vermin!"
"Tom, that is exactly what they will be doing. At the same time, we will have other troops who will be doing what they can to support citizens out there. One of the first things we want to do is get parts of Riverdale fixed up so that people can live there safely. We suspect there are a number of people living there in basements and in hiding, and we want to make a safe place where people can develop a healthy community. We will not be bringing anyone here unless you tell us to."
I shoook my head. "Unless a person is related to someone here, I think we are getting close to capacity, other than the barracks. Even then, I think even one more barracks building might be too much. Why don't you think about creating a safe place in Riverdale and have the troops working with the townspeople stay there? Maybe if there is a neighborhood that is relatively unscathed, they can build a berm like here and slowly let people move in and begin to work with them to get gardens, animals, and all that stuff. We can support them from here, maybe help teach some classes to interested townspeople on gardening and such and provide medical support."
Carter was smiling broadly. "That is an excellent idea, and a great place to start. Mark, when we are done, why don't you take a squad into town to see about identifying an area that would work." Mark nodded his agreement and made a note on his pad.
"I've put together some duty rosters for my troops. In addition to the squads that will be tackling the terrorist cells, I have men assigned to twenty-four hour security of the area between the inner and outer berm. We have several teams that will be helping some of your people scavange for needed items. We have three mess cooks, and I will be sending them over to work with your cooking team. I believe Janet is in charge of that?" I nodded yes, very impressed that he remembered that from last night. "They will work with her on whatever schedule she sets for them. I suspect with so many more mouths to feed that we will have to eat in shifts. Let us know how you want to do that."
"Three of my dependent wives were handling laundry. If you have someone in charge of laundry, we can put them with your person. The other dependent wives mostly just kept the kids under control. Mark tells me you have a school system set up here." I explained to Carter how our home-schooling program works, and that we would be happy to welcome any of his people who wanted to help with classes. I also explained our philosophy that everyone living here is able to defend themselves and that we have been training everyone, even the kids, to use firearms. Carter thought that was terrific, and volunteered some of his men to help with the training. He also wanted his armorer to meet with our armorer, to see if Chuck needed anything or if there was anything they could do to help us. He also mentioned that a number of his troops were originally farm boys, and that several had expressed an interest in helping with the animals when they had time. I told him about Clark and his girls and suggested he direct those people interested in the animals to talk to Clark.
Mark interjected that right before he came over to the RV, he was on the radio with the crew he sent out earlier this morning to find well digging equiptment and we were in luck. The crew reported they not only found the well company, but found two truckloads of all the supplies needed to put in a few wells around the farm. That was really good news, as we were beginning to worry about folks trying to live in both the barracks and the apartments without running water. Mark reported the crew should be arriving back any minute with the supplies, drill, and other equipment.
We continued talking for a while about other issues we needed to address with so many new people in place. I explained out process for sorting trash to keep us from having a huge garbage pile, and Carter agreed that we needed to recycle whatever we could and cut down on things that actually had to be burned. He agreed to institute this among his troops as soon as they were settled enough to be able to find a few bins and set it up. I also explained that I was concerned about trying to do so much laundry in my small laundry room, and suggested we salvage several industrial washing machines and put them in the barracks. That way, at least the men in the barracks would be able to do their own laundry, taking the pressure off of Stacy's group and the dependent wives who had been doing laundry. I added that while we were salvaging large washers, maybe we could consider setting up a larger laundry facility somewhere over near the garden apartments. We didn't have the power for dryers, but several large washers would certainly be appreciated by all of the folks living in the dorm and the apartments. Mark made a note on his pad and said he would get a team on it as soon as we had running water.
For the next hour, we discussed other logistical concerns involved with setting up the military portion of our community. Carter said he did not have a chaplain, and he was glad to know we had Father Dan and his church. He also had medical concerns as they had only combat medics with them. He was ecstatic to discover we had two doctors, and eight nurses. I thought he would about fall over when I told him we also had a four bed infirmary, and that we hoped to be able to expand that and possibly add an operating room. One of his major concerns was how to provide medical care to his men if they should become injured in battle.
Mark also told us his men had found a lot of chain link fencing in town, and he thought they would be able to get fencing around the top of the entire outer berm. That would be a huge improvement in our security, especially if they could find enough razor wire to top it off.
We were just starting to talk about other security concerns when all of a sudden, we heard a tremendous explosion. We ran out of the RV to see what was happening, and could see smoke off in the distance towards Riverdale. Our radios came alive with people wanting to know what was going on. In the distance I could hear our battle stations alarm going off. Carter told us to head back to our battle stations, and as soon as he knew something, he would let us know. Tom and I hopped onto our ATVs and headed back to the house. By the time we got there, eveyone was in position, the kids were all safe in the basement, and we were just in a holding pattern waiting to find out what was going on.
Jeremiah and Gabby were on the security camera monitor and came over the radio to say there was nothing on any of the cameras. Frank and Bill were also both on the radio, keeping people calm while we waited to find out what was happening. Jeremiah let us know he saw one of the MRAPs leaving the outer berm and headed towards town. We waited about an hour in our battle stations until Mark came onto the radio telling everyone all clear and asking Tom, Frank, Bill, and me to meet him over at the common area in Barracks 1. The four of us assured everyone that as soon as we knew anything, we'd let them know. Meanwhile, Frank asked the kids to stay in the basement for now and asked Marcie, Kiara, and Patty to round up the new dependent wives and their kids so if we went to battle stations again, they and the new kids would all be safe.
As we entered the first barracks, we saw Carter, Mark, and two other men looking at a map of the area. Carter looked up and saw us and waved us over. "My men just arrived in town – that was the MRAP you saw leaving. They found that someone tried to blow up the railroad yard in town. The station is demolished, but it looks like the tracks themselves survived. Right now, the squad in town is tracking the perpetrators. We believe this is one of those terrorist cells I mentioned. We will be posting guards on the railyard, since being able to move products from one area to another is critical to getting this country up and running again. I wanted to talk to you, though, because we need to increase security here. I don't know if they know exactly where we are, but I'm sure they know we are in the Riverdale area since our convoy was kind of hard to hide. I am also concerned with drones. Are any of you using drones for surveillance of the area?"
We shook our heads no. It would have been a good idea, but we did not have the equipment needed. Carter continued, "We are going to put up an antenna to try to track anyt
hing in the air. We do have some limited ground-to air-capacity – mostly Stingers and Javelins, although it would have to be a pretty darn big drone for us to use a Stinger on it. We also have some limited ability to jam any drone signals we pick up. It is going to be really important if you or any of your people see anything in the air to let us know right away and shoot it down. We don't have any drones, so anything you see belongs to the enemy."
Tom asked, "Can we just use a rifle to shoot them down?" Mark answered and told Tom the best bet would be to use a shotgun with number eight or ten birdshot.
"Just remember that when you shoot into the air, the pellets will come down, so be sure they don't come down on people or animals! We do have some jammers that can jam their camera feed, navigation, and control systems. They will often cause the drone to just fall out of the sky. We also need to come up with some protocols to follow if you see a helicopter or light aircraft. If it is ours, we can let you know, but if it is theirs, you need to take cover immediately. I am hopeful that in a few days Patriot forces will control the airports in Charlotte and Asheville, and if that happens, we will have much better air defense capability." I thought to myself, that's all we need. As if it wasn't bad enough to have to worry about people storming our home and shooting at us, we needed to worry about air attacks, too.
"Mark, how are the Homeland forces situated for air support? And if they have air capability, why can't they just fly out of whatever area they are being held in?"
"Denise, you always ask such good questions! Homeland has air capability, but we control a number of air defense stations outside their perimeter, and so when they try to fly out, so far, we've been able to shoot them down. To the best of our knowledge, though, they don't have air assets in this area. We still control Fort Bragg and Pope Air Base, and have a lot of our planes there that we use to chase the Homeland troops. But just because they don't have easy access to military air support in this area, there is nothing to stop them from using civilian aircraft to do surveillance. That is what we really have to be careful with, becuse we don't want to shoot down innocent people, but we are not going to let Homeland do air surveillance. At this point, I doubt there are many civilians who will be out flying around, though, so that is probably not that big of a worry."
Tom and I spent another hour or so with Carter and Mark, identifying different locations on Carter's map of the Riverdale area. I noticed a lot of crosshatching on the map and asked what that indicated. Mark said, sadly, that those are areas where the buildings have been burned completely to the ground and are not salvageable. I looked at the map and saw that most of downtown Riverdale was marked. This included Gabby's bakery, Patty and Bill's home, Clark and Maureen's home and the vet offices, the hospital and everything around it – so much devastation, and for what? It's not like we had an EMP or something that damaged the grid and caused fires – these were all set by people. I'm sure some were from knocked over candles or lanterns, but not to the extent of the cross hatching on the map. That was from maliciousness – gangs or people out to just do damage. It made me sick to my stomach to think of how much we would have to do to recover from all of this. Could we rebuild Riverdale? Was it even worth it? Did we have any idea of how many people were left there, and were they good people, or were they the kind of people who would burn down a food store because they could?
Om a bright note, the crew that went out to get the well-digging equipment arrived back inside the outer berm safely with a lot of supplies. They reported hearing the explosion, but did not see anyone who might have been involved. Mark told them to go ahead and park the quipment out of the way for now, and they could start on the wells in the morning.
After we identified as many places on the map as we could, Tom and I made plans to meet with Carter later when his squad returned from their recon mission, and we headed back over to the house. I had a terrible headache, and told Tom I was going to go lie down for a while to try to get rid of it. He promised to come check on me in an hour or so, and I went upstairs to rest
◆◆◆
I fell asleep pretty quickly, and it did not seem like I was asleep long before I woke up and felt myself being held down. In the darkened room, I couldn’t tell who was holding me, but I knew I needed to get free.
“Shhh, Denise, it’s okay, calm down.” I slowly realized it was Tom who was holding me and trying to get me to stop struggling. “You were having a nightmare, and you were screaming, but it’s okay now. Settle down, you’re safe”. Finally, I came fully awake and stopped trying to break free.
“Oh, Tom, I had a terrible dream. We need to disconnect all of our solar and turn off anything electronic. Get all the radios into the metal cabinets. Disconnect the batteries in all of the motorcycles out back. Hurry!”
“Denise, you were dreaming. Wake up and tell me what’s going on.”
“I know I was dreaming, but I saw it clearly, Homeland is going to launch an EMP to try to slow us down even more. We’ve got to tell Carter. There’s no time; I KNOW this is going to happen, as clearly as I knew the economy was going to collapse. Can’t you feel it too?”
Tom shook his head, and said, “The only thing on my mind right now is worry about you, and that blocks out anything else I might be worried about. Are you sure? I mean really sure?”
I told Tom I was very sure about this. I still don’t believe in ESP or any of that psychic stuff, but the dream I just had was so clear and so detailed. I felt foolish, thinking that a dream could predict something happening, but as a nurse, I always said to trust my gut about things. Right now, my gut was screaming at me to get busy.
“Tom, please trust me. Get everyone to help. Call Carter and tell him, too. We don’t want to lose our solar, or our radios, or anything else if it really happens.” Tom agreed, and hurried out of the room. I got up quickly and headed downstairs to find Tom giving instructions to Tim and Marty about the solar. He had already talked to Carter and Mark on the radio, and they were taking precautions on their side of the compound. Just then, I heard Frank ringing the battle station bell to get everyone’s attention. It took us several hours, but we were able to disconnect and gather all of the batteries our of the motorcycles and cars we had parked out back. With nowhere else to put them, they were stashed into one of the almost empty conexes on the inner berm. We locked up all but a couple of radios in the metal cabinets in the basement. Father Dan disconnected his HAM radio and put it into the cabinet, too. Solar was disconnected, and we were in the dark. Tom and I walked over to Carter’s RV to find him just finishing unhooking his solar. He looked at me and shook his head. “Denise, I hope your nightmare turns out to be just that, and doesn’t really happen. If it really does happen, though, we’ll be ready. I called my recon squad back, and they just arrived a few minutes ago. The MRAPs are hardened and are supposed to be EMP proof, so we just sealed them up. The Hummer should also be hardened, but we took the batteries out of all of the vehicles and put them all inside one of the MRAPs, which we hope will protect them. I’ve also had the guys put anything that could be damaged by an EMP – things like watches, DVD players, all of that stuff – inside the MRAP as well. Now, I guess all we can do is wait. Oh yeah, I’ve also tripled the security on the outer berm since we may not have the advantage of the cameras.”
I looked at Tom in horror. “I forgot about the security cameras and all of the wires attached to them. They will fry for sure!”
Tom laughed and said, “You are underestimating Frank and Bill. They’ve already sent out teams to take down the cameras and put them in a safe place. The wiring is disconnected from the house, and so if an EMP happens, the cameras will be fine. We might lose some of the wire, but that is replaceable. And, before you ask, all of the equipment in the basement for monitoring the cameras has been disconnected and put into the metal cabinets. Jon even remembered your laptop in the storage room.”
I looked at Tom and Carter, and suddenly felt incredibly grateful that they did not think I was crazy or hyste
rical. I suggested we eat an early dinner tonight and that we keep all of the kids in the basement for a sleepover party. Now that nobody was living in the basement, there was room to do this and to have a lot of the adults in there, too.
After dinner, we got all the kids and a lot of the adults settled in the basement playing various games. Tom and I were playing along, but I began to feel that old familiar foreboding in the back of my head. It was getting so strong I could feel my hands starting to tremble. I told Tom I needed to go outside for a few minutes to get a breath of air. He came along with me, and we ran into Carter as we came out the front door. He looked like he just ran a marathon, so I pulled a chair out for him to sit. “I can’t sit. I came to let you know that I just heard from command at Fort Bragg that they have a large number of planes inbound to Fort Bragg from the east over the ocean. They are scrambling everything they have and getting the planes out of there. We have a lot of equipment there, but not enough to fight what is coming, so they are trying to salvage what they can in case these inbound planes plan to strafe or bomb our equipment. I wanted to let you know, just in case you see planes landing near here. They may be ours.”
I felt a chill, and Tom put his arm around me. “Carter, you don’t think these inbound planes are going to set off an EMP, do you?” I could tell by his stricken face that he thought that was exactly what was going to happen. “How many people are still at Bragg?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know. I think they started evacuating civilians a couple of weeks ago. I know they evacuated a lot of the support troops over the last few days, as well as some of the bigger slow-moving vehicles like tanks. According to General McPherson, he is hiding a lot of the heavy equipment not far from here at some large caves close to Linville Caverns. When I spoke to him, they were putting as many troops on planes and helicopters as they could to get them away, and a lot of troops left last night in MRAPs, trucks towing missile systems, and all other kinds of military vehicles. There was talk in the upper echelons that Homeland might try to invade Bragg, which is another reason why my guys and I are here.” Carter began to pace back and forth in front of the porch. Tom and I stepped down to just walk with him and try to help him be calm and stop pacing. Although I had not known him very long, Carter did not seem to be the kind of person who fell apart easily. Suddenly, he stopped walking and looked at us. “Denise, Tom, I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it in front of you. I’ve had the same feeling as you have for the last two weeks or so. I reported it up the chain, and they listened to me, but I wasn’t sure they were taking it seriously until just now when I got word about the evacuations. At least the majority of folks must have escaped from Bragg, and any left are hopefully in bomb shelters before the Homeland planes arrive. I suspect Homeland plans to bomb the daylights out of Bragg and make it useless for us.”
Premonitions (Book 1): The Farm Page 28