A grumble from the gathering made me pause. Many of these people were relatively uneducated oilfield workers, fiercely conservative and religious. There was a general distrust of science in those days. I was worried that they would shut me out if I came across too technical.
“Look I’m no scientist. I went to school for geology, but I just have a bachelors. I’m not some academic, I’ve been out on a rig for the better part of the last ten years, just like many of you. But I did learn a few things in school. I’m just trying to make sense of this stuff. I could easily be wrong. All I am asking is that we prepare for the worst. If the government sorts it all out in a few days, great. If they don’t, and we’ve all been fending for ourselves, people are going to starve. Hell, if we still have something to eat in a few weeks people will probably be coming here to take it.”
“He’s right.” A middle-aged woman in the corner of the room spoke up. Janet Borger was a veterinary surgeon who worked at the large animal hospital at the university. “I took a geology class when I was an undergrad. I remember them talking about Yellowstone. It was supposed to wipe southwest Montana off the map. This seems worse. It won’t hurt to prepare a little.”
I was relieved at the support. Janet was respected in the small community. The group looked back to me, prompting me to continue.
“The most important thing we can do right now is cooperate. I know most of us have supplies stocked up. We need to pool our resources. We should inventory everything and plan out how long we can last without resupply. Deb and I made a good haul last night, we have more than enough to share with anyone who is lacking.”
“You want to turn this into some kinda hippy commune?” interrupted Werner, “what’s mine is mine. I ain’t sharin’.”
The rest of the group glanced at him in annoyance but turned back to me. This was normal behavior for the bitter man, no one was surprised. I decided I had better just ignore him.
“We should also consider blocking the roads,” I continued, “we have a surprisingly defensible little neighborhood here. We ran into some pretty serious looters last night, I’m sure there are more out there right now. We could block one entrance off entirely and put up a gate or a moveable barricade across the other. Once we get things organized we can rotate on guard duty.”
“I damn near lost my wife last night to a couple of thugs at the grocery store,” said a stocky man standing at the back of the room. Scott Matlidge was a retired auto mechanic who lived a few doors down from me. “I had to shoot one of them. I never killed a man before. Some people have lost their minds. Anyway, I got a mig-welder and a stack of pipe in my back yard. If someone will give me a hand I’ll rig up a gate we can use.”
“Good plan,” I said, “will anyone volunteer to help Scott?” A few people raised their hands.
“I’ve got that semi-trailer in my yard,” my left-hand neighbor, Clint Marrou offered, “if we can drag it over there I think it’ll block off one road pretty well…”
“Good idea, we should be able to get it up there with my tractor,” I replied.
Several others piped up and offered assistance or materials. We discussed the details of the barricades for a few minutes until we had a solid plan.
“Ok, next I think we should do a head count,” I continued, “I noticed several empty houses last night, please check on your immediate neighbors so we can figure out who is missing. Tonight, everyone should inventory what you have and we’ll meet here tomorrow morning to hammer out a plan for the supplies. If anyone can think of anything else don’t hesitate to bring it up. Clint, I’ll be over in a bit with the tractor. “
The meeting adjourned, people donned their protective gear and filtered out into the swirling grey morning. Deb and I straightened up a bit and then headed home ourselves. We were nearly through removing our makeshift ash suits when there was a hammering on the door. I reached for the knob as it exploded in toward me. Richard Werner’s ugly bulk stood framed in the doorway, lowering his leg from the kick that had sprung the door open. His son was a few feet behind, sneering sullenly.
He pushed into the room without a word. The two of us backed away quickly, unsure of his intentions. Moving surprisingly quickly, he thumped me heavily in the gut, folding me over. Deb screamed and went for the rifle on the table, forgetting the pistol on her hip. He reached behind him and produced his own pistol from his waistband, leveling it at her and growling, “Stop right there, bitch.”
“Ok college boy,” he turned back to me, “I’ve decided I ain’t participatin in yer little commune. Since everybody else is playin along, I guess I better find somewheres else to go. I’m thinkin I might need some supplies, and somethin to haul them in. You and yer bitch wife are gonna get out there and load all that shit back in that truck so I can get on my way. If yer not interested in helpin, I can just as easily shoot you both right here and take it myself.”
Still bent double, gasping, I stalled for time, “Why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk about this. Do you really want to kill two people in front of your son? Look, you don’t need to leave. If you’re short on supplies you don’t have to be embarrassed. We can help you, just be reasonable.”
“Didn’t you hear my Daddy?” snarled his son, “He said to pack up that fuckin truck or he’s gonna shoot you, faggot!”
Werner chuckled at the outburst and moved closer to Deb. Without warning he whipped her in the face with his pistol barrel, knocking her down and drawing blood.
“Maybe I’ll fuck your wife in front of you before I kill you,” he said, looking back at me, “that is unless you’ve decided to get to work?”
Without warning, Tracy, who had slept late that morning and skipped the meeting, wheeled around the corner and fired her twelve-gauge from the hip with a scream. The buck shot, fired at such close range, tore a ragged hole in the big man’s gut. His son, close behind him, flew backwards and slammed into the wall, covered in his father’s viscera. Something, either one of the lead pellets or a piece of bone, had torn off the top of his left ear and peeled back most of his scalp in the process. He lay there, stunned and bleeding, while the three of us watched his father crumple to the ground.
“I’m BLIND, I’m BLIND!” screamed the boy suddenly, blood pouring into his eyes.
Tracy squeaked in dismay and rushed over to him.
“I’m so sorry baby, I didn’t see you behind him,” she began to cry, tears welled up.
I handed her a towel from the kitchen and she pressed it to his torn scalp. I looked at Deb, we were both in a haze, unsure what to do. The little bastard had just finished urging his father to kill us, but now he was just a young boy bleeding and crying in our living room. Deb shook it off first.
“Tracy, pick him up carefully, we’ll take him to Mrs. Borger, maybe she can sew him up.” She turned to me and waved at the twitching pile of dead rapist in the center of the room. “Can you clean that up?”
****
Once Clint and Mike helped me drag Werner’s body into the driveway and cover it with a tarp, we hitched the tractor up to Clint’s semi-trailer and tugged it up the hill to the nearest highway entrance. It blocked most of the space between the stone perimeter walls on either side. We borrowed an SUV from one of the empty houses to plug the remaining gap.
We then headed to the second entrance to check on the construction of the new gate. Scott was there with his volunteers. They had made some impressive progress. Two more welders and a surprising quantity of scrap metal had been scrounged up and the team already had a fence stretching from the wall to the road on either side. They were just starting on the gate when we showed up. An hour later, we had a solid steel gate wide enough for a car to pass through. We arranged a temporary guard schedule and left them to head back to our corner of the neighborhood.
Robert Werner was asleep on the couch when I got back. Gesturing me into the kitchen, Deb told me how he had lashed out at Mrs. Borger when she had tried to clean his head wound. He was now sedated him with
a horse tranquilizer.
“There was nothing she could do for his ear, but she sewed his scalp back on and shot him full of antibiotics.” Deb told me, quietly.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked.
“He’s my responsibility” said Tracy. I looked up to see her standing in the doorway, tears on her face. “I shot him…”
I gave Deb a loaded look and headed back outside, leaving her to comfort the poor girl. The ash was still falling and I wanted to get the grave dug before it got any deeper on the ground.
****
The next morning we met with the neighbors again. I described our incident with Werner and everyone agreed that the killing was in self-defense. No one knew the man well enough to be his enemy, but at the same time no one was particularly surprised by what he had done.
Everyone had brought a detailed inventory with them. We decided that each household should keep three days of supplies at all times, and that the surplus should be stored at the meeting house. We elected a woman from the north side of the neighborhood, Maddie Cartwright, to manage the supply inventory and ration the food. We organized a team to build a small smokehouse to attempt to preserve some of the frozen meat people had stored away, in case the power failed.
The ash had been falling for nearly three days at that point. It had drifted deep enough in some places to completely cover the windows of our houses, and the road was completely impassable to cars. We arranged a roof sweeping team to prevent collapses – I don’t know how many thousands of people would still be alive if more of the country had thought about that in those early days.
We had tried clearing the road with my small tractor the night before but the loader bucket was the wrong shape for that kind of work. It would soon be extremely difficult to move around the neighborhood, so Scott, the retired mechanic, suggested we try to requisition the old bulldozer that had been sitting idle in a pole barn across the highway for the last several years.
The meeting went on for another hour or so. Water was going to be the next big issue to tackle. The power was still on so the county pump stations were still working, but that wouldn’t last forever, so we made plans to start digging a well. An older woman who always kept a large vegetable garden in the summer suggested a greenhouse using window panes from some of the houses. One of our neighbors, Andy, was a lineman for the local electric co-op. He offered to begin work on a wind generator using the bank of batteries I had bought the first night. By the time we quit for the day, everyone had something to work on.
We made a good start that second meeting. I remember being surprised at how resourceful everyone was, and how eager to cooperate. I became the leader of our small community without even realizing it. The initiative I took in organizing the first meeting left everyone looking to me when important decisions or disputes came up. It was not a role I felt comfortable with, but no one challenged me. They were scared, desperate for direction. They needed to be distracted from the fact that their world was crumbling around them. I kept them busy and gave them hope.
Over the next week, the various projects began to take shape. Our supply team went to each house and gathered up extra food and ammunition and stored it in the meeting house. There were a few protests, but the thought of being left to fend for themselves kept people from hoarding too much. Scott got the old dozer running without much trouble, and we set up a work rotation to keep the street clear.
The ash was still falling, but it had diminished to a light dusting. By the end of that first week, we had about four feet on the ground. Windblown drifts were up to the roofs on some of the houses. Our sweeper team, three neighborhood teenagers, went house to house with push-brooms and ladders, clearing roofs. The sky was still a dark grey; the clouds were low and boiling. It was noticeably colder, despite the fact that it was still the end of July. Fearing a bitter winter, we took stock of the warm clothing we had available and stored it with the rest of the supplies in the meeting house for later distribution.
None of the families who were missing that first night ever returned. That left us with eight empty homes. Our supply team went through each of them, collecting, cataloging, and storing everything. The houses themselves were locked up and the windows boarded.
Every able-bodied person in the neighborhood took a shift at the gate, two at a time. The construction crew threw up a small shack to keep the guards out of the weather, but it was a dull job. Even before the pillar there was little traffic on the old country highway. After, there was none. Not a single vehicle passed by that first week. We kept up the watch in the hope that at the very least a sheriff’s deputy or a county utility worker would come to check on us, but our civil infrastructure and institutions seem to have disintegrated, or at least forgotten about us.
Even though it had been a week since we had seen any sign of life from the outside world, the power was still on. Our lineman, Andy, pointed out that there had to be people at the local power plant. There was no way it was still online without someone being there to maintain it. Hoping we would find some portion of civil authority still in charge, we arranged an expedition to investigate.
Our corner of the county was served by a relatively small gas fired power plant only a few miles away. It stood on the bank of the small lake which had been constructed to provide water for the boilers. The plan was simple: we would head down the highway in the dozer, clearing the ash in the process. Two pickup trucks would follow in support, three men in each. We loaded up a few cases of canned food and bottled water in case the utility workers were running low.
Deb and I volunteered to drive one of the trucks, and Mike joined us as our third. Andy and two men from the other side of the neighborhood, Doug and Joe, both former roughnecks, would follow up in the second truck. Clint would drive the dozer. We all armed ourselves thoroughly; I hadn’t forgotten the madness we had run into that first night. We each had a semi-automatic rifle or a shotgun, a pistol, and a good supply of ammunition.
As we were preparing to leave, Tracy asked if we would take Robert along. He had been living with us since his father died. He hadn’t spoken a word the whole time. Most of his time was spent glowering on the couch. The evil looks I caught from him made me nervous. I was sure he hadn’t forgiven us for his father’s death and I had misgivings about keeping the little jackal so close by, but Tracy had insisted that she be allowed to care for him. We were so busy that first week that I hadn’t thought much about the kid. That would turn out to be a mistake.
Tracy was worried that he didn’t feel welcomed by our small community. She thought his sour attitude was a result of feeling shunned and unimportant. She wanted us to take him on the expedition so that he might feel useful. Deb and I had our misgivings, but we reluctantly agreed.
****
We set out early on the eighth day. The morning was the usual dark, ominous grey. Diffuse sunlight barely filtered through the bloated clouds. Ash was falling gently, white as fresh snow in our headlights. It had piled high on the road but the old dozer cut a path wide enough for our trucks to move in single file behind it. A mile out, we stopped at a run-down mobile home not far off the road. There was light coming from one of the windows. We stopped to offer the occupants refuge in our community.
There was no response to our knocking, so we circled the house to check the windows. As I passed under a high bathroom window, the putrid scent of decay wafted down to me. Already suspecting what we would find inside, we forced the door and warily stepped inside to investigate. A corpse sat on the couch, headless, a shotgun between its knees and a gruesome stain on the wall behind. Our sudden intrusion startled a swarm of flies, but they soon settled back down in the gore. I moved to the bathroom, gagging at the viscous stench that grew more aggressive as I neared the open door. The bloated bodies of two children, a boy and a girl no more than ten years old, floated in the tub, face down. We all rushed outside in shock. I left my breakfast in a steaming puddle next to the front steps.
‘They�
��ve probably only been dead for a couple days!’ Deb’s voice was wavering and tears were beginning to well up. ‘If we had found them sooner…They were only a mile away!’
We were all surprised at the despair that was evident in the ghastly scene. That a man would drown his children and take his own life after only a few days of hardship was difficult to believe. It would turn out to be a common sight over the next few years. Plenty of people thought the world was ending back then. Most were helped along by booze or drugs or religion. Whatever their particular poison was, it usually ended the same way, especially for the loners.
Our good spirits subdued, we set off again toward the power plant. We stopped at several more houses on the way, but all of them were abandoned and looted. Each time we stopped we found a splintered door, scattered belongings, and empty pantries. Several had blood stains and bullet holes. Each stop left us more anxious. We started holding our rifles a little closer to our shoulders, our fingers closer to the triggers.
As we neared the power plant, the signs of violence increased. Most of the houses we passed were just burned shells, a few were still smoking. Dozens of boot prints and shell casings could still be seen around the ransacked homes. It was starting to become clear that there was a large, violent group of looters operating nearby.
The plant itself was surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with razor wire. The entrance road was blocked by a large gate. A small concrete gatehouse stood on one side. A figure was visible looking out at us through the front window with binoculars. Someone had already cleared much of the ash from the road, so I edged ahead of the dozer and rolled forward to make contact. As we pulled up, a uniformed man stepped out, leveled a rifle at us, and motioned for us to stop.
He slipped out through the gate and moved warily over to my window, rifle still raised.
“I’ve got a sniper covering you, all I need to do is signal and you’re dead, so don’t make any sudden movements.” He was unshaven. His face was drawn with weariness, grime blackened his skin. “We don’t have anything here, we’re just trying to keep the power on. State your business or head back where you came from.”
Ash: Rise of the Republic Page 5