He found some old photos and personal papers he added to his own collection and some minor items he considered of value. There was a spoon and a couple of sharp knives stuck in the back of a kitchen drawer. He also found some hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol and a few other additions to his first aid supplies.
But with the exception of those few items, and the sentimental ones, he found nothing worth taking at all. He decided to search the entire heap again and started on the ground floor in the master bedroom. As he sifted through the scattered wreckage once more, he heard a noise at the missing front window.
“PSSSS!”
He wasn’t sure if he heard it or only imagined it.
The curious sound came to break the silence again. “PSSSS!”
The man grabbed his rifle and crossed the room as swiftly and quietly as he could considering all the rubbish on the floor. He looked out the window, apprehensive but still ready for trouble. He saw standing there a familiar yet nameless face staring at him through thick glasses.
“Hey, you in there.”
At the window was an older gentleman, must have been close to eighty. The man recognized him but couldn’t say from where. The old man seemed harmless and appeared unarmed. In his starvation, the man’s mind was working, but slowly, and after thinking about it another moment and considering his current surroundings, it reluctantly came back. It was his one-time neighbor from across the street, Mr. Ackermann.
The tired and odd looking fellow beckoned him again in a still whispered voice, “You’re their son, aren’t you? I recognized you, haven’t seen you in years but I still recognized you.”
“Yes, what happened here?” The man noticed his words also came out in a softened tone. He had no idea why.
“Come outside, we have to talk. Hurry up.” Mr. Ackermann was fearfully looking all around him and tried not to raise his voice. “Before they come.”
He stood there staring down at the fearful older man looking all around him. Almost like it was contagious, the man then took a look himself, from one end of the street to the other. It was completely quiet. He couldn’t see anyone but the two of them and was now wondering if Mr. Ackermann had possibly gone insane from the horror of it all.
“Come on, hurry up. We’ve got to get out of the open.”
The man made his way through the scattered remains to the front room of the house. He then picked up the rest of his gear and exited through the broken down front door and stepped out on the porch of his childhood home.
A thin, jumpy looking fellow was waiting and nervously greeted him there. “My name is Ackermann if you don’t remember. I guess it’s been at least ten years since we’ve talked.”
“Yes, I recognize you. What do you want? What happened here?”
The worried little man continued to glance all around, but as he spoke his low voice finally grew into a normal tone. “We shouldn’t talk out here in the open. Let’s go back to my place … then we can talk.”
The man couldn’t wait that long for his answers, “Who killed my parents? What happened here? Is everyone dead?”
His old neighbor was becoming more anxious by the moment. “I know you’ve got a lot of questions and I’ll answer them all. But right now we have to get off the street. They might have seen your fire last night … they might come to check it out.”
He didn’t know who “they” were and at that moment didn’t care, and now the man’s whisper had turned into a shout. “Who killed my parents … and all of those other people?! Who killed them?!”
“The government, okay! Now let’s get off the street!”
“The government?!”
Mr. Ackermann was now nearly frantic as he constantly shifted his gaze from the man and then from one end of the street back to the other. “Yes, the collection squads came around and your parents and those others resisted. Come inside with …”
But the man wasn’t moving an inch until he had his answer. “I’m not following you. What are you talking about? Why would the government want to kill my parents?!”
“They were hoarders! That’s why they were killed! That’s why they were all killed!”
It suddenly came rushing back to the man and he remembered how it was there at the end, nearly two months ago, a thousand years it seemed when it all fell apart. As the economy continued to plummet, the crime rate predictably jumped and all but the worst offenses became daily routine.
The rule of law was quickly evaporating before our eyes and most of these lesser “no victim” crimes were not even being prosecuted. Then the government in its wisdom decided it couldn’t afford to house “non-violent” prisoners anymore and within two weeks every last one of them was paroled and roaming the streets again.
Now if you were a criminal plying your chosen profession you had no chance of going to jail. As long as your work didn’t involve murder the authorities essentially left you alone. Our justice system was coming to a complete stop under the weight of it all and didn’t have time for crimes that didn’t involve blood. Now they only had time for the most violent in society, or if you had managed to get your name and face on TV and somehow earned the ire of average Joe Citizen. But even that was becoming increasingly difficult as nothing seemed shocking anymore.
There came in those last desperate weeks, as the food shortages became worse and the prices soared, another kind of crime, and according to our leaders the worst kind. Listening to our betters, these new criminals were the worst of humankind and not to be tolerated in any way.
The man remembered the public service announcements that flooded the airwaves and were televised night and day. They told the people about the most serious enemy they were facing, not murderers, not looters, but hoarders.
One particular commercial came to his mind and he must have seen it a hundred times in those last few weeks before it all came apart. The ad showed a cruel faced old woman, her shelves topped off with row after row of cans, bottles and bags of delicious foods. Then through the wall the camera would go to the neighbor, her cupboards bare, her children sunken eyed and crying from the hunger pains. Then back to the evil old woman gorging herself, laughing, as there was a final fade to the wretched cherub faces of the starving children next door. Finally at the end a narrator would tell us in an authoritative voice “Hoarders cannot be tolerated. They will destroy us all through their selfishness. Caring Americans help each other. They don’t withhold precious necessities from their friends, neighbors or fellow citizens. They don’t hoard. Do your patriotic duty. Report all hoarders. If you suspect someone you know of hoarding, please dial your local operator, they will instruct you what to do next. Hoarding is un-American … hoarding is inhuman … don’t hoard and report all hoarders!”
A bill rapidly made its way through Congress where the president eagerly waited to sign it into law. Similar laws at the state levels were already in the works. In both the state and federal versions you would no longer be allowed to purchase large quantities of food, bottled water or certain medicines. If you were suspected of hoarding, an emergency “public welfare” warrant could easily be arranged to search your home. The federal law defined hoarding as having more than fourteen days supply of food or water for each occupant of the home, a “day” of food being 2000 calories per person. Any more would be confiscated and distributed for the “public good.” First time offenders got off with a warning, after that you were subject to a minimum of a year or up to five years in prison, depending on the severity of your offense. With this new law it became a perverse kind of irony that one of the few crimes you could now do jail time for was simply trying to survive.
Mr. Ackermann took the man by his shoulders as he stood there in a stupor thinking of it all. “We’ve got to get inside, let’s go over to my house.”
As the man was shaken back to reality, he took a good look at his neighbor’s home. It appeared burned and trashed like every other up and down the street, except one. “You still live there?” the man asked in amaze
ment as it didn’t seem possible, his mind was slow from lack of eating and from the nightmare he was just told.
He glanced over at his home, “I sure do. You notice anything different about my house … I mean compared to the others?” Mr. Ackermann now had a taint of pride in his still frightened voice.
Studying it for a second no answer came to the man. “No. I don’t see any difference.”
His former neighbor replied in a helpful tone, “Look there at the foundation of my house. You don’t see any difference?”
Doing as asked, he looked at the house and then to the one next door, then to the opposite side and ending again with Mr. Ackermann’s. Despite his hunger, his mind was now starting to work once more. Finally he noticed it there and the old man could see it in his face. “Windows … your house doesn’t have any basement windows.”
“That’s right.” He smiled with the man’s answer.
“But I know your house has a basement. I’ve been in it before.”
“That’s right!” Mr. Ackermann now laughed as the man’s mind was working once again. “Come on over. We’ll talk, but inside. I promise I’ll answer all your questions there.”
With a quickened pace, the withered fellow walked back to his home and the man followed. As the man crossed the street he took another good look around at all the houses, the ones still standing. Everyone was the same, the same cookie cutter 1950s suburb homes. They were all the same age and were all exactly the same, except for Mr. Ackermann’s without his windows.
The old man approached his own burned home and his own kicked in front door. “I got rid of those windows after my wife died. I wanted to do it years before that but she wouldn’t let me.” He then stepped up on his porch. “I got the idea to burn my house after the Clawsons’ home was burned by the police.” His bony finger pointed to the end of the cul-de-sac where a lonely and hollow shell of someone’s once lovely home now stood. “The police got a warrant to search their home for hoarding. They held them off for a day and then the SWAT guys went in. The house burned down in less than an hour, the fire department didn’t even show up till it was nearly gone. The police said they had no idea how the fire got started. They said Mister Clawson probably set it himself.”
The man just stood there dumbfounded listening to it all.
The former neighbor went on indifferently, as if he was speaking of someone he didn’t know. “I seen this coming for years and one day I got an idea, to get rid of the basement of my home. Come inside.”
As the two crossed through the broken doorway the man was still confused. “What do you mean ‘get rid of’ your basement? I don’t understand.”
Mr. Ackermann led him inside to the ground floor and at first it looked just like his parents, but then not exactly the same. With a passing glance it appeared looted like all the others. But with a closer examination the damage seemed contrived in some way. There were several clues, the front door had been taken off the hinges and not torn off. All the glass was broken but from the inside. Most strange of all were the scorch marks that just didn’t look right.
His long ex-neighbor could see him studying the singed walls. “Yeah, the burn marks … they’re not very good. They’ll fool you in the dark, or if you don’t look too hard. Problem was I wanted to make this floor looked burned out but I didn’t really want to do it.”
It was slowly making sense to the man.
“I set a fire here in the family room but I didn’t let it go very long, I was afraid I would burn the whole house down. Then I kind of touched it up with a few cans of flat black spray paint … to make it look like there was more damage. I did the same in the kitchen and hall, the back bedroom too.” The old man ended his explanation with a strange little laugh that made the both of them wonder if he might not be deranged.
The man just silently stared at him trying to take it all in, the entire time his hand on a Colt .32 in his front pocket. “What were you saying about the basement?”
“Oh, the basement, forgot what I was talking about.” Now Mr. Ackermann seemed confused himself for a moment. “What I was saying before, I knew this was coming a long time. Years ago I got the idea to make my basement ‘disappear’ …” he said quoting with his fingers, “but like I said my wife wouldn’t hear of it. Once she had gone I decided to do it myself.”
He led the man through the littered hallway with its fake charred walls to the other end. The man could see the basement door identical to the one in his parents’ home. Mr. Ackermann opened the door and instead of the staircase he expected in its place he saw closet shelves and a carpeted floor that perfectly matched the hallway outside.
The ex-neighbor then got on his knees and with his fingers began searching at the edge of the floor. With just a brief hunt he found a short length of heavy string concealed under the carpet. Using one hand he pulled on the string and when the carpeted panel lifted up got the other hand underneath it. To the man’s surprise he lifted the entire floor of the closet up until it was touching the bottom of the lowest shelf. Then with a stick he took off the shelf he propped open the panel at its widest point.
The man still just stood there stunned and tongue-tied. At last the frail looking gentleman spoke again. “Let’s go down, then we can talk more.”
Looking down, all the man could see there was a handmade ladder constructed of 2x4s fixed to the wall; it led down into the darkness below. The man was becoming nervous. Did he now know this person he was trusting and did he ever really know him?
Mr. Ackermann ended the silence. “It’s okay … go on down.”
Gazing down into the dark hole the man felt uneasy but with his rifle on his shoulder and the Colt in his pocket felt he could take a chance. The man needed his answers, but still he wasn’t stupid, “After you.”
The old man thought no more of it and down the ladder he went into the darkness. “Toss down your pack and rifle.”
The man dropped his pack into the abyss but held on to his rifle and with a few clumsy steps his feet were standing on hard concrete.
Mr. Ackermann’s ghostly face was lit in the dim light that filtered down from above. “Hold on a second.” His ex-next door neighbor took a disposable cigarette lighter from his pocket and set alight a few short candles on a shelf there by the ladder. “Let me get this.” He then scurried back up the ladder and took both the stick and string in his hand. With that the “floor” of the “closet” fell back into place, sealing them up in the basement. “We’re safe now. Try not to raise your voice though.” Then he went around the large room lighting a few more candles and an oil lamp, finally giving the man a look at it all.
It appeared the exact same size as his parents’ basement, although unlike theirs this one had never been finished. There was one large wall that ran the whole length right down the middle. On one side was a furnace and water heater just like his parents’ but that’s where the similarities would end. Behind them in the far corner was a portable commode like the kind you might see in hospitals. Every inch of space seemed to have a purpose and was so tightly packed it couldn’t have held more. There was small metal-framed bed with shelves above it. Next to the bed a metal desk and chair, on top of it a portable stove and a box of cooking supplies. There was also a handmade wooden gun rack that held six long guns and four pistols. Above it loose boxes of ammo, manuals and accessories for them all.
The rest of the basement consisted of shelving units constructed of the same 2x4s and were spilling over with supplies. Anything you could think of was probably there. Next to the guns were columns of olive green metal ammunition cans just like the army uses, stacked high and wide. The shelves were straining under the weight of it all. Like everything else in the basement, each ammo can was clearly marked with a white label stating what was inside. Which as far as the man could see was mostly ammunition. On the opposite wall was a large collection of books and one entire column dedicated to “miscellaneous” survival supplies. There were plenty of “medical” supplies
and “hygiene” items too, there had to be at least a hundred boxes of soap and toothpaste filling a single shelf.
Among the other items he could see in the dim light, salt, baking soda and even cigarettes, although he seemed sure his neighbor never smoked. The entire other room was filled with food and water, huge buckets of it stacked to the ceiling. Anything you could possibly want for dinner was probably there on a shelf somewhere. On the ground and stacked two high were more than a dozen huge plastic drums of nothing but clean water. The man was spinning around in wonder, speechless at the sight of it all.
Mr. Ackermann resumed his story sitting from the comfort of his bed. “I had the windows sealed. I paid professionals to do it, you can’t even tell from the outside and boy did it cost me. Everything else I did myself,” he told the man with no small portion of pride in his voice. “Like I was saying … after the Clawsons’ I knew it wouldn’t be long before the police or somebody else came back again. I didn’t want to be here when they did. That same night I messed up the upstairs. I did all the damage you see up there. I’ve been down here ever since. You probably can’t see over there against that back wall, there’s …”
“Can you please just tell me about my parents … and those others?” Even though it was impressive the man was becoming impatient, the answers to his questions his most immediate concern. While the odd fellow seemed harmless enough, the man kept his hand in his front pocket just the same.
His former neighbor was noticeably disappointed and wanted to finish the tour, but instead casually went on from the comfort of his bed. “Well, I guess you know about the riots. The first bad ones I heard of was in Los Angeles, they started in July … the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth. Then, not even a week later Detroit, Chicago and New York all went off one after the other. Then …”
He was becoming annoyed at the old man’s rambling again, “I know all that, what about Lexington?”
Mr. Ackermann had to think about it a moment. “We had a few incidents, but the really bad stuff didn’t start here until, I think, yes … it was the ninth of September. I remember because it was exactly one week after the Clawsons’ house burned. The riots and looting started … seemed like overnight. The police had it under control for a day or so and then it really got out of hand. That next day is when they started shooting at the cops, most of that was on the northeast side of the city. Down off North Broadway somewhere. I know at least three policemen were killed. They even started shooting at firefighters trying to put the fires out. I’ve been living here my whole life, didn’t think I’d ever seen something like that. I’ve been telling people for years this was coming …” The old man’s conversation was wandering again.
Joshua (Book 1) Page 12