Arks of America

by D A Carey

  “Despite a formal pledge made by the Chinese leader in September, ‘Cyber operations from China are still targeting and exploiting U.S. government, defense industry, academic, and private computer networks,’ the Cybercom chief said in prepared testimony to a House Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday.”

  Dave made a mental note to talk with his CIO and determine how safe they were from hackers. They needed to make sure their servers were locked down like Fort Knox. He directed a test on the company’s firewalls against cyber-attacks. While this current venture did not provide a service that would be a primary target like an electrical plant, water facility, or military base, all U.S. companies should be put on notice to be wary. It hadn’t been that long since a major movie studio was hacked.

  He wondered how many other companies had been hacked and didn’t know it. Perhaps the hackers or rogue nations were only waiting for the right time to use the data they’d stolen.

  << Vince >>

  The meeting at the firehouse in the neighborhood was stressful. It wasn’t something Vince wanted or need at this time. Yet he couldn’t back down once he saw the need and was called on. For now, he needed some time to work out the thoughts in his mind, and a drive the Carrollton was the perfect medicine.

  It was during one of the neighborhood’s many meetings prior to Vince blocking the roads that a home was robbed, the man of the house killed, and his daughter abused. Several neighbors called 911, only to be met with a recording that said all emergency services were overwhelmed, they could either leave a message or go online and fill out a form, and someone would respond when conditions and resources allowed.

  One of the women in the neighborhood, a physician’s assistant at the hospital not far away, called a private line at work. She was told that the hospital was operating on a skeleton staff and overwhelmed. Ambulance runs were only being done on a priority basis when the National Guard could spare military escorts to accompany it. The neighbors decided to form their own convoy and took the girl and her mother to the hospital. Fortunately, that run had gone without incident.

  When his mind started churning too hard, he turned on the radio, which was already tuned to his favorite AM station:

  “…breaking news. Simultaneously at three locations around the city today, officers were ambushed in execution-style shootings. This comes on the heels of two weeks of protests in Louisville related to the two police shootings that garnered national attention, the first being the shooting of Edwin Watson, who was pulled over for drunk driving and was shot while lunging for the officer’s service revolver. The second shooting occurred during a week of protest when two officers were cut off from support during a march and pelted with bottles. Officer Tanya Johansson fired when she thought she saw a protestor aim a gun at her. No gun was found after the crowd cleared.

  “Since those events, there has been a nightly curfew, and police have stopped responding to non-emergency calls in some of the city’s precincts. Louisville is the twelfth major U.S. city to implement a plan for limited emergency services and partial martial law in light of the current national civil unrest. More cities are expected to follow suit.

  “Local civil rights leaders have protested that the city is discriminating against low income and predominately black neighborhoods by withholding protection. The mayor and chief of police have scheduled a news conference for later today. We will break in live when that happens.”

  Vince turned off the radio and switched on his iPod for some music. The news was too depressing. Halfway into the first song, an old one, “Silent Running” by Mike and the Mechanics, he turned it off and rolled down the windows so he could feel the cool evening air and try to relax on his way to Carrollton, deciding he wasn’t in the mood for those lyrics.

  Change

  “A society gets the criminals it deserves.”

  - Val McDermid

  Baltimore, MD

  Emily Loffler was scared. She was afraid to go to work and afraid to let her kids go to school. Thankfully, school was cancelled for the rest of this week. School officials promised they would reopen next week with extra security and metal detectors. That didn’t help Emily. The kids still needed to get to school and home safely.

  This new round of Baltimore riots was now in its second week. She had already used her sick days and nearly all of her vacation time. Her boss had threatened to fire her if she didn’t come in to work Monday. Yet all over Facebook were stories of beatings, carjackings, and personal assaults when people ventured out. It was insane that the city hadn’t declared martial law. The only thing public officials would admit was that crime was running higher than normal and some peaceful demonstrations had turned violent.

  As a single mom of two, she couldn’t share her burden with her ex-husband who’d left years ago. His parents were dead, and her mother lived in Pennsylvania, several hours away. Even though life was a struggle before the chaos, she was proud of her home purchase and the life she was carving out for her children. Now the fear was unbearable, and she didn’t know what to do. The desperation of possibly not being able to provide a home, food, and protection for her children was an agony she couldn’t describe.

  Emily had saved and scrimped for three years for the down payment on the small townhome in the Dundalk neighborhood. It was much better than downtown, and she was proud of her accomplishment. Now she feared she was putting her safety and that of her children at risk to go to work or risk losing her job by staying at home.

  She was out of ideas and still nursing a bruise on her face from when groups of demonstrators clashed around her near the subway station on her way home from work two days ago. When she dialed 911, she got a recording. Later she attempted to go to the grocery and the shelves were bare of all the things she was needed. People were fighting over the scraps that she would have bypassed a few days earlier. She came home with only a few cans of pinto beans and several cans of pie filling.

  At night, it was all she could do to hold the tears in until the kids fell asleep so they wouldn’t see and hear her sobs.

  << Vince >>

  Vince pulled up to Carrollton Farm, where he’d hunted rabbits with Greg a few months earlier. It wasn’t as serene at the moment as it had been that morning. Even though he felt bad leaving the neighborhood right now with how things were going, he needed this time away. The further away from a big city he got, the more normal things got. The grocery store shelves were empty in the city. In the country, they still had a few things in stock although they wouldn’t last long with many over the road truckers staying home or avoiding dangerous areas. The main difference was the lawlessness that pervaded most of the larger cities’ population centers was much less in the rural areas. The more concerning aspect was the fact that cascading effects were spreading from city to city. Events or catastrophes in one city would cause people to riot in another.

  The Kentucky Chartertown location was perfect, bordering the Ohio River near Carrollton, Kentucky. Cavanaugh Corp. purchased a huge family-owned orchard and hobby farm. It was surrounded by orchards, fields for crops, and woodlands. The location was about a mile or so west of Carrollton on Highway 42. The site was on the high ground overlooking the Ohio River to the north, with the Little Kentucky River to its east, and it had a deep creek to the west. Included was an existing diner near the blue bridge leading into the actual city of Carrollton. There was a planned marina next to the bridge, just inside the smaller river away from the Ohio in order to avoid the worst of weather and flooding. There were other buildings that could be put to good use on that edge of the property as well.

  The plan was to keep much in place operating as it had for years, though they would be adding the gated community on the hill in the middle. It was planned so that it would blend in well to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  Surveying the changes since he was last there, Vince saw that some of the ground on the hill where the gated community was being built was already being moved. The bare earth reminded Vince of
a skinned knee after a kid falls when bicycling, like a wound on the land. A cluster of people was surrounding Jeff Granger, the construction supervisor and architect from Cavanaugh Corporation. Jeff was busy giving directions, so Vince strolled over to a part of the field that was still untouched and gazed down at the Ohio River. It was a beautiful early spring morning. The mist was rising up from the river so thick the water was obscured below. Soon the sun would burn away the morning mist, and it would be beautiful in a whole other way. Vince liked this time of day. He liked seeing a barge chug its way downriver with only the top half emerging from the mist. He enjoyed the sound of the barge horn as much as he liked the smell of the fresh grass and earth beneath his feet.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Jeff had walked up while Vince was deep in thought.

  “Yes. I thought you were from Colorado, though. I would think some Kentucky farmland and a river couldn’t hold a candle to your Rockies,” Vince chuckled.

  “I am, and I do dearly love the Rockies, but how can any man who loves nature not look down on that,” Jeff pointed to the river cradled between two wooded banks with the mist hanging thick over it, “without experiencing a bit of awe at the skills of our maker?”

  Vince grinned. “Well said. And here I thought you were some roughneck construction worker. You have a bit of poet in you.”

  “I’m no poet, but I do have an appreciation for beauty and a special affinity for nature. I don’t have the way with words to explain it like your uncle can. When I was heading out here, Dave told me that the fields, creeks, and rivers of Kentucky have their own kind of working man’s beauty. While the Rockies might be the black dress a woman wears out on Saturday night, the Kentucky landscape is the flannel PJs she changes into when she gets home and has her Sunday coffee.”

  “He does have a way with words, doesn’t he?” Vince said with a smile and shake of the head.

  “I’ve spent over twenty years working close to him, and he still amazes me. Speaking of Dave, he wanted to make sure I said hello from him. He also asked me to spend some time and get to know you.”

  “I’m sure we’ll get to know each other well. There’s a lot of work to do here.”

  “There sure is, but it goes faster than you know.”

  The two men stood in companionable silence, sipping their coffee as the mist burned off and the water became visible. For some men, it was a sign of respect, equality, and companionship to be able to spend time together without the need to speak.

  Three more trucks rolled in behind them with more crews, surveyors, and supervisors. As the men unloaded and began their tasks, Jeff and Vince walked away from the river to get to work.

  Watching Jeff work, Vince studied him for a moment. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be friendly to him in order to curry favor with his uncle. In Jeff’s case, he’d probably spent more time with and knew Uncle Dave better than Vince did himself. Vince wasn’t so good at the social niceties and was happy that with Jeff he didn’t feel he needed to be. Vince wasn’t the type to be rude and could turn on the charm when he needed to; he also had a knack for seeing through people. All the fake, pretend stuff grated on him. Jeff was one of the few people who had made it into Uncle Dave’s inner circle of trust. That was no small feat. Although Vince and Uncle Dave didn’t spend a great deal of time together, his uncle was a great judge of character. While he was gregarious and outgoing in the press and on TV, he was a private person by nature and enjoyed his solitude. If his uncle kept Jeff around as part of his inner circle for over twenty years and spent time with him as a friend as well, then Jeff had to have a wealth of skills and integrity about him.

  Uncle Dave had told Vince that he’d selected Jeff as the construction project manager at a national level. Jeff would head up work for several of the community sites in various stages of land acquisition, zoning, legal work, and construction. Dave wanted the Kentucky and Colorado sites up and running first, without delay. They would be the proof of concept both internally to his team and to his early investors as a tangible example of how it all would look and work. After the Colorado South Park location, the Kentucky site was planned to be the most advanced and probably the litmus test for things they would try at other locations.

  Dave wanted to begin eliminating the South Park location from discussion. He wanted the general public to focus on other sites and hopefully forget about South Park. It was his preference that they use the Kentucky location as the showpiece. He hoped that if he could make the South Park location fade from memory, it would safeguard the location of some of the more high-profile residents. Colorado and its expanded mines would serve as a major cache location for things that other locations might need in an emergency. It was critical that they start planning for enhanced operational security for that location. The idea was to talk so much about other locations that people didn’t even think to ask about the one in Colorado after a while.

  “Your uncle wanted me to try and talk you into taking a position with the company again,” Jeff said after he rejoined Vince.

  “He’s made the offer a few times. I respect my uncle as a man and not just because we’re family. I’d hate to ruin that by taking his money.”

  “Think of it this way,” Jeff reasoned. “You’d be earning your pay, not taking a handout. If the time comes when these communities are needed, you’ll be glad you helped make them happen. This is where you and your friends and family will want to be.”

  “Right now, my immediate family is less of a concern for this place. They’re in Chicago,” Vince said, turning his head away.

  “You have more friends and family than you realize,” Jeff argued earnestly. “Besides, life has a way of looping back around and providing unexpected plot twists. Don’t give up so easily.”

  Vince smiled, realizing Jeff had just given him some of the same advice he had given so many others through the years.

  “We all know you can fend for yourself,” Jeff said. “You’re the type of man who is built from the soul out to defend other people and do good. Taking this job is how you do that best. If the shit hits the fan, you’ll be glad you have this as a home base for your family and friends.”

  “You sound like my uncle, Jeff.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time with him, he’s my mentor.”

  The money would be a good deal more than Vince currently made. His duties would keep him outside an office and near this property a lot. Both things were appealing. He was a proud man. He was proud of the fact that he never leaned on his well-known uncle, did a job that was difficult and stressful, and did it well. More importantly, it was his own accomplishment without any help or patronage.

  “Jeff, can you buy me some time?” Vince asked. “What you say makes sense. I’m not ready to leave my current job. I have an emotional investment in what I’m doing. I have people who depend on me there too. I don’t want to let my uncle down, and I’d love to spend more time out here.” It was hard to hide a tinge of wistful regret in his voice, which didn’t go unnoticed by Jeff.

  “Okay. Let’s change topics, then. I hear things are getting bad in Louisville. You mentioned something about a neighborhood watch group. What’s going on with all that?”

  “It’s crazy.” Vince let out a deep breath. “I don’t get the why of it and where all the violence is coming from. I mean, I know there was the police shooting and citizens have been manipulated by corrupt leaders into a pseudo race war for years, but this is crazy.”

  Jeff nodded.

  “You know what it reminds me of?” Vince asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you ever see those celebrations when a sports team wins a championship after a long drought?”

  “Yes?”

  “When that happens, we see all these stories of people burning their own couches, wrecking their own cars, and ending up in the hospital or jail for no reason at all. It’s like some large group psychosis where they get bent on self-destruction and tearing up their own property. And why?”r />
  “I have no idea,” Jeff said.

  “Me either,” Vince admitted. “Still, that’s sure what the entire nation feels like to me the last few years. Like different pauses between self-destruction and antagonism against anyone who doesn’t think like you. It feels like mass hysteria bubbling below the surface.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “The neighborhood I live in approached me about helping them with a neighborhood watch. Some of them knew about my Special Forces background and thought I could help.”

  “Smart thinking on their part. I can’t think of anyone better,” Jeff responded.

  “I’m just as replaceable as any other of a million men. Lots of men have done some of the things I’ve done or been trained the way I have,” Vince said in a self-deprecating way, although his training and experience were more than the normal solider experienced. “Anyway, I was glad to help at first.”

  “At first?” Jeff raised an eyebrow.

  “It all turned in to a microcosm of what’s going on in the news and Congress and all over the country. Some people wanted to seize power for themselves or be in charge. Mostly it was this one lawyer and a couple of corporate leader types. Some people wanted to set up aid stations and advertise to people to come there for food and other assistance. A different group wanted to pool all the food and supplies in a single location.” Vince shook his head. “Those were the people who were least prepared and were running out of things.”

  Jeff nodded. “That’s always the way of it.”

  “The problem is that all the while, people from the city were sneaking into the neighborhood. They were stealing and hurting people. We had one death early on from a man defending his family. The mother and teenage daughter were brutalized right in front of the father, who was beaten severely and ultimately died. We should have been able to stop it because there were only two ways in and out of an area of four large subdivisions and several hundred homes. I told them I was confident that for the most part the punks wouldn’t take the effort to walk in over land and through the woods. We were too disorganized and couldn’t tell who was coming and going and who should be there or not.”