THE DAY: A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series)

by John Price

  Once the three men came within a hundred feet of the farmhouse, they began to crawl on their stomachs towards the residence. Beau used low bird-like sounds as his method to communicate. Now within twenty-five feet of the house, Beau gave a low two-twirp signal. As soon as he softly whistled, Beau heard a round being chambered and felt cold metal behind his left ear.

  The holder of the firearm pointing at Beau’s brain growled in a low voice, "Son, you better not move too fast, or you’ll never move again. Get my meanin? Your two fellow crawlers better not either."

  Beau slowly turned his head towards Mark and Quinn. He saw that they also were under the barrels of rifles. Beau swallowed hard, then said, "Sir, we’re not here to cause any harm….we have guns because we weren’t sure what we would run into."

  "No harm, hunh? So you’re in my front yard, with two other men with guns? And you’re not here to cause harm? What in the world kind of stupid pills do you think I take? You got just seconds to tell me anything you want to say before you meet your maker, get it?"

  "Sir, we came here to buy a cow? That’s all. Just to buy a cow."

  "What?....Come on, sonny, we’ve had lotsa people come by here to steal a cow, some of whom have done it, a few of whom are lyin’ out back. But, buy a cow? That’s a new one. Anything else before you’re no longer a burden to society?"

  "Wait," Beau pleaded, "Wait….Look in my back pack, we’ve brought the money. Silver coins. You know, real money….just look….I’m not lying to you. Don’t shoot us."

  "Just because you’ve got coins on you doesn’t mean that you brought the money to buy one of my animals. Maybe you stole the coins from the last farmer whose house you snuck up on?"

  "Mister, we’re Christians. There are over eighty of us. We’re almost out of food, just like probably everybody else. But, we knew about your dairy farm and we talked about taking a cow. Instead, since we don’t believe in stealing, we voted to bring these coins here and buy a cow, so our wives and kids can live. Please believe me."

  The farmer didn’t know what to say. Of all of the people he had accosted coming onto his property no one had said they were Christians. The farmer was himself a believer, so these words slowed him down in what he was about to do to protect his property and the lives of his family.

  Finally, the farmer said, "I’ll tell you what. Anybody can say anything they want, but how do I know what you’re telling me is true?"

  "Sir, you can open my pack back and…."

  "No, I mean about being a Christian. Give me your personal testimony. Either that or give me at least seven of the ten commandments. Your choice. Make it quick."

  Beau quickly counted up to four commandments. Stealing, adultery, idols, murder. Humh. Beau decided he’d better explain how he came to know Jesus. Otherwise, he would be with Jesus very soon. He started speaking with his voice shaking, "Mister, ten years ago I was like any other person, any other American, any other graduate of UAB."

  With a half-smile, the farmer said, "Myself, I’m an Auburn fan, but I won’t shoot you for being a roll tide boy."

  Beau also smiled, thinking for the first time since he felt the barrel of the rifle behind his ear that he might actually live. He went on, "But I was asked by my wife to attend a neighborhood Bible study. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t believe there was a God, or if there was one, that He couldn’t be approached by somebody with my background of rampant sin….big time sin."

  "OK, so you were a sinner. Big deal. Got anything else to say? Hurry it up now."

  "Yes, sir. Well, I went with my wife to that Bible study. The guy who was teaching that night answered my many questions, some of the questions being world class stupid. We stayed and talked till almost midnight. Hannah, that’s whose house where the study was held, actually went on to bed. But by the end of the night I was ready. I understood what Jesus did for me and how foolish I would be not to accept His free gift of salvation."

  "So, Jesus is your what? Your buddy? Your co-pilot?"

  "No. Jesus is my Lord and Savior. That’s it. Simple. If you put that bullet in my brain right now….well….then I’ll be in heaven….you would be doing me a favor. My favorite verse is from Philippians. It says, ‘for me to live is Christ, to die is gain."

  The farmer motioned to his two sons. They took their guns off of Mark and Quinn. Withdrawing his own weapon he reached down to help Beau to his feet. "Sonny, either you are really dumb to crawl up my front yard with weapons, or you’re incredibly hungry and desperate for food for your family. Either way, I believe your testimony of faith. As your brother, I can’t kill you. Just so you’ll know, we have killed some folks who came here to steal our cows and kill us. If you ever try anything like this again, anywhere else, don’t even think about doing it like this.

  "Now, about the cow. Before The Day I saw what was coming. As soon as I realized what America was going to do to Israel, I shipped our herd, all but one beef steer, to market. Converted the proceeds to gold, silver and ammo. The one steer is salted and dried and hidden. Sorry, but I can’t share that. Wouldn’t be enough for a crew as large as yours, anyway. Now, sonny, you take your buddies and get going. The sun’s coming up and you don’t want to be seen out in the open, especially with your weapons being so visible. We may not be able to give you any food, but I promise I’ll pray for you. All of you."

  57

  The Woods Behind the

  Colonel Jim Irwin Elementary School

  Chris and his little brother Bobby, aged 12 and 10, were bored. They were also hungry. They had been cooped up inside the Colonel Jim Irwin Elementary School near Birmingham, Alabama for over two months. They knew that the rules inside the school were strict. No one could leave the school, otherwise, they had been warned repeatedly, someone might see them and figure out that there were people, with food, hidden inside the school. But, they didn’t think that it was fair that the boys who were teenagers, 14 and up, were allowed to leave the school and go on hunting parties with the men, looking for animals for food. They reasoned that they were almost 14, so how much harm could it cause if they snuck out to play in the woods behind the school. They hoped to be able to catch a rabbit or maybe a squirrel for food to help feed the residents of the hideaway. The group was now down to just one meal a day, with a small, very small snack for the kids before bedtime.

  Chris and Bobby knew that there was only one outside entrance/exit door that wasn’t blocked with stacks of desks and chairs preventing access, a single metal door which accessed the utility room in the back of the school. The boys carefully watched the men who took turns guarding the door, to decide the best time to slip out of the school. They soon learned that two men watched the door during the night, which was assumed to be the time of greatest vulnerability to marauders. During the day only one man guarded the door. He had control of the air horn which would instantly alert everyone in the school of intruders. Chris and Bobby decided to play a board game down the hall from the door into the school from the utility room. That way they could watch and see when the assigned guard for the day took his rest room break, as the nearest facilities to the utility room were down the other hall.

  At just past 11 AM the boys saw their opportunity to escape to go play in the woods. They watched as the guard sauntered down the hall towards the rest room, his rifle slung on his shoulder. The minute the door to the rest room closed, the boys ran as quietly as possible to the interior utility room door, through the room and out the back of the school into the trees.

  The longer Chis and Bobby were in the woods, the more fun they had. Throwing rocks into the creek flowing through the several wooded acres, chasing small animals, unsuccessfully and having the best time they had enjoyed in months. They ran further away from the school.

  Snake Head was dozing. His duty as the back guard was to sit on the rear patio of a three story house on a cul-de-sac which backed up to a large wooded area. The twenty-seven men who lived in the house moved into the abandoned residence soon after The Day. They
were all inmates at Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison northwest of Birmingham. It hadn’t taken long for the guards of the 2,000 inmates to conclude after The Day that their services would no longer be required nor paid. The guards needed to get home to protect their families from what was coming. The prison emptied soon after. None of the men in the house were still married. All bore extensive tattoos. Each had a firearm and ammo. Each was in prison for committing a homicide.

  Chris chased Bobby across a ravine, up the far side and up to the edge of the woods. While running the boys kicked up layers of dry leaves in the ravine, causing a noisy ruckus, loud enough to wake up Snake Head. Snake Head snapped up his head, looking for the source of the noise. He hadn’t heard kids playing since The Day. What was this, he asked himself? He soon found what he was looking for, as two pre-teen boys ran to and then out of the edge of the woods behind the house he was guarding.

  Snake Head jumped up out of his plastic deck chair, jumped off the deck and quickly grabbed the two playful invaders of his space. Chris continued to chase his giggling little brother, unmindful of the large man now just feet away from him, closing in fast. Too late the two boys looked up at the same time just as Snake Head grabbed their arms. They saw a tall man with a snake tattooed on his forehead. The snake’s mouth was open, with dripping fangs and forked tongue, the snake’s body tattooed down the side of his head and then coiled onto his chest.

  Bobby immediately started crying, screaming to be let go, pleading for his older brother to help. Chris was so scared that he couldn’t scream or cry. Snake Head yanked both boys up by their arms into the air, their feet suspended from the ground. He growled, "Who are you kids? What are you doing here? Where are your parents?"

  Neither Chris or Bobby could say a word, not only from the pain of being held in the air, but also their increasing fear of their captor. Snake Head moved Bobby’s arm over to his hand holding Chris, grabbing their two arms in one beefy hand. With his free hand he keyed the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. Beep….Beep. "Hey….Snake here….We got some visitors back here…."

  "Beep….Repeat, Snake….Didn’t get that…."

  "I got two kids here….small….probably ten or eleven years old. Better come back here….now…."

  Snake Head dumped the boys on the deck, saying not to even think about moving. Chris wrapped his arms around Bobby, their chests heaving in paroxysms of tears.

  As frightening as was Snake Head’s tattooed face, the boys weren’t prepared for what they saw next. The slider on the deck flew open and out walked an even larger man than Snake Head. On his face was tattooed a human death skull, with darkened eye sockets, a gaping tattooed toothless mouth around his blackened lips and blackened teeth and tattooed jaw bone hinges. On the top of his bald head were tattooed the words YOU’RE DEAD.

  Death leaned over and stared into the eyes of the distraught boys on his back deck. He said nothing, just staring his blackened eyes into the wet eyes of Chris and Bobby. He continued to say nothing, knowing that the mere sight of his death skull face was enough to scare out of the young intruders what he desperately wanted to learn. Where had these boys been hiding since The Day?

  58

  Rancho McDonald

  North of Durango, Colorado

  It didn’t take Larry long after his uninvited visitors left before he realized that one of the four members of his family would have to be awake standing guard at all times. Larry took the ten PM to six AM shift, with Zach on guard from six AM to 2 PM and Mary on guard between 2 PM and 10 PM, when Larry took over. Each was armed with a rifle and a hand gun, along with extra ammunition. For the first three weeks the McDonald family members were on high alert, suspecting that their unwanted visitors would soon return. Eventually, though, with day after day and boring hour after hour shifts with no one seen approaching their mountain enclave, the adrenalin slowed and caution waned. Zach was the first to suggest that it was time to ‘stop being so hyper’. At first, Larry refused to change the guard schedule, but after hearing Melanie, Zach, and especially Mary, complain repeatedly, Larry finally agreed. The family stayed armed, but no longer posted a guard for eight hour shifts. Larry insisted, though, on sleeping on the farmhouse’s front porch during the night.

  Larry’s front porch sleeping vigil proved to be the family’s undoing. The unwanted visitors, now joined by a pack of three more similarly hungry and desperate men, kept their word. They came back to Rancho McDonald when the McDonald family least expected it. Using long-range binoculars the intruders watched the McDonald family for three days and nights to insure that they knew what to expect when they made their move.

  Larry kissed his wife goodnight, hugged his daughter and prayed briefly with his son. He made sure he had his Glock, his rifle and extra ammunition. He unfolded his well-worn sleeping bag and stretched out on the lawn chair on the front porch. Having worked hard during the day chopping wood he was soon sleeping soundly. The intruders let him sleep for two hours and then silently moved across the Rancho’s grounds. Grabbing Larry’s hands, including his hand near the Glock, proved to be easy, as they were outside his sleeping bag. His rifle and ammo were snatched at the same time that his hands, mouth and eyes were tightly duct-taped.

  The tallest of the invaders, who had been the outspoken one at the McDonald’s gate almost a month before, leaned over and spate his words into Larry’s ear, "I told you, pal, that we would be back. If you had shared your food with us then, maybe we wouldn’t have to do what we’re going to do to you now, you stupid, selfish jerk."

  Larry twisted his hands trying to free them from the tightly-bound tape, but to no avail. He tried to scream so that the family members inside the farmhouse would hear the ruckus and flee. Once he did so a crashing rifle butt to his temple shut him down. The invaders quietly moved into the simple farmhouse, easily finding the three small bedrooms. Zach was given a quick death as his throat was slashed, his blood soon filling his bed. Melanie was rousted rudely from her sleep, as her mouth was roughly covered by the hands of the invader assigned to find and silence her.

  Whatever it was that woke Mary, either Larry’s muffled screams, or the creaking floorboards of the old farmhouse, she awakened just before the door to her room opened. She reached over to the night table, grabbed her 38 revolver, with which she was now quite skilled, and started to get out of bed. Just then the door silently opened. She saw the dim outline of two men coming into her room, neither of whose shape or height matched that of Zach or Larry. She quickly stood, holding the revolver in front of her with both hands, while shouting, "Stop….Don’t come any further. I’m armed….I will shoot. I will do…."

  Both men pushed through the door going for her gun, but not quick enough to stop Mary from unloading six rounds, three into each man. They collapsed to the floor, dead on arrival. What followed was not as favorable, as the next man to come through the bedroom door, cast his flashlight on his dead comrades, saw the gun in Mary’s hands and fired two rounds into her chest. Mary was on her way to heaven, along with her son. The three remaining invaders grabbed Melanie, rushing her out onto the front porch.

  They ripped the duct tape off of Larry’s eyes, excitedly saying, "Pal, your stupid wife just killed two of my men, but she paid for it. She’s dead. Your idiot son is dead. It’s now just you and this cute little thing. You’ve got one choice, pal. When I pull that tape off your slobbering mouth I only want to hear where you’ve got the food hidden….and the ammo….and any gold or silver you’ve got stashed. If you don’t tell us….everything….this girlie here will be our new take along plaything. If you tell us….all of it….we might consider just killing her. We’d have to feed her if we took her along, anyway. So, your choice, pal. What will it be?"

  Larry’s eyes were raging at the invaders on his porch, looking wildly over at Melanie, as he realized that they were most likely both about to die. His next thought was why did he think he could hide food and ammo away in the Colorado mountains and no one woul
d bother them. His plan didn’t prove to be a feasible long-term solution in a deteriorating country he finally realized, only fleeing offshore made sense. But, he knew those thoughts were way too late. What to do when they ripped the tape off his mouth? If he refused to talk, to tell them where their stuff was stored, they would likely shoot Melanie. As bad as that would be, wouldn’t it be worse for her to be taken by these creeps and raped to death? Will Melanie talk if they kill me?

  The tall invader reached over ripping the tape off of Larry’s lips. "Talk, stupid. Where’s your stuff?"

  Larry studied the piercing eyes of the face now just inches from his. He said nothing for a few seconds, and then he spat the largest glob of spittle he could come up with straight into the glaring eyes, at the same time kicking his legs, which were not bound, straight into the invader’s groin, knocking him back across the porch and onto the ground. Larry jumped up from his lawn chair, but he fell forward on the porch as his legs were caught in his sleeping bag. Larry’s face was now just a few inches from the intruder whom he had just kicked off the porch to the ground. The tall invader, flat on his back, grabbed a pistol from his belt, looked in rage at Larry and fired a round into Larry’s forehead. Just as he fired, Melanie broke free from her captor, throwing herself onto her father, catching the intruder’s second bullet fired in anger, ending her young life.

  Standing up, the tall intruder motioned to the bodies on the porch, and said to his two remaining murderers, "Idiots….Let’s get rid of all these bodies….Then, we’ll find the food and ammo. It can’t be that hard….Boys, I think we’ve found ourselves a new home. A new fortress. Such a deal."

  59

  Colonel Jim Irwin Elementary School

  Beau immediately knew they had a problem….a major problem. With his military background, Beau had been selected to be responsible for security in their hideaway. Scott and Gary had taken to calling him ‘Bolthole Beau’, which Beau actually liked as a nickname. When Chris and Bobby didn’t show up in the interior cafeteria room for dinner, everyone recognized that the boys had to be located. After a quick, but thorough search, neither were to be found in the school building.