Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story

by Holden, J. J.

  The kind of guy for whom “the rules” were a religion, as long as other people followed them. He probably thought he was above those rules—and he was probably right. The stereotypical big fish in a small pond.

  She’d have to be wary of him, when dealing with him. She made a decision not to speak at all, that night, and just listen. His first impression of her had to be a good one, if she wanted to get into the towners’ good graces. If things kept getting worse out there, that could become a matter of life and death.

  She shuddered at her morbid, jaded thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Maybe she had him pegged wrong. She could hope, anyway.

  The man waited until almost everyone was seated, and shot a glare at the few who were taking their time getting there. Then, his face lit up into a warm, welcoming smile as he scanned the seats, making eye contact with as many people as possible while he said, “Hello, thank you all for coming to this emergency meeting of the HOA, tonight opened up to every citizen of Weldona. As you all know, I’m Jacob Jones, President of the Weldona Homeowners Association and Chairman of the Weldona Improvement Society and Fund. Everyone calls me Cobi, and you can, too. I’m so happy to see so many of you, tonight. Weldona has always come together to solve problems, and together, we’ll make our town the shining star in a sea of darkness that lurks outside, threatening us and our way of life. But shining in the dark won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. It’ll be work, and it’ll take time. But I’ll stay at my post, the one you all elected me to, for as long as this crisis continues—until the dark is gone, and all that’s left is Weldona.”

  Someone in the audience called out, “You tell ’em, Cobi.”

  “Thanks, Mac.” Cobi made a pistol-finger and mock shot the man who had made the comment, a few rows ahead of Christine and Fran sitting near the back. “First up, water. A lot of you have asked about it. What’s the C-M-E mean for our water supply?”

  A woman asked him what he was going to do about water.

  He smiled at her easily. “There’s no cause for concern. Our aquifers are plentiful, and even if County’s supply drops off, we have pumps to get it when the time comes.”

  Just then, the double-doors at the exit opened up. Christine turned her head, like most people did. In the doorway, she saw the two police officers who had escorted her into town.

  The older one, David, said, “Sorry for the interruption, folks. We have a question for you all, but it can wait. We certainly didn’t mean to disturb the proceedings.”

  Cobi said, “That’s perfectly all right, officers. Weldona is a friend to our blue shield, and we’re happy to have you in town for as long as you stay. Aren’t we, folks?”

  A general murmur of agreement rose from the audience.

  David removed his uniform hat and stepped into the room, as did his sidekick, Orien. “We’re much obliged. I’ll take a seat now, so you can do what you came to do. But I’d like to have a moment of your time, at some point, if that’s okay.”

  Cobi held his hand out, indicating the chairs. “Sit where you like, friends. We’ll be happy to give you a minute, just as soon as we can.”

  He waited until the officers sat, and then he continued, “Next problem. Most of us here are farmers”—though Christine doubted he’d ever held a pitchfork or hoe in his life—“but unfortunately, Ray’s Market hasn’t received the fertilizer, salt, and other, um, amendments that you need. This is the time of year we get soil ready for the autumn plantings, is that right, Ray?”

  Christine felt growing irritation at this “Cobi” guy, using the oldest audience rapport-building technique in the book, but using it like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel by using the imperial “We” every chance he got. Yeah, she realized, she’d been right about the man.

  A different voice answered in the affirmative, then added, “And it don’t seem like we’re gonna get the rest of it any time soon, neither.”

  Cobi bit his lip and nodded, his expression worried. “Okay, Ray, we all know that’s not your fault. You couldn’t have planned on the C-M-E, and plus, you’ve been spending as much time as you could in Denver to see your daughter in the hospital. How is Amanda, anyway?”

  “Grumpier’n me, Cobi,” the man replied, and the audience chuckled, probably just to be polite.

  Cobi nodded, eyes wide and worried. Then it was gone in an instant as his smile returned. “So, folks, don’t go harassing our friend Ray, here. But that still leaves the problem of how to get everyone’s land fertilized. Any suggestions? I open the floor to ideas. Okay, how about you,” he said, pointing at someone in the audience. “Yes, you. You raised your hand?”

  The person to whom he pointed stood, and Christine saw it was the man who’d almost denied her entry into Weldona. “Thanks, Cobi. I say we divvy up what Ray does have, maybe by land size, so everyone gets a share. It won’t help with all our land, but without the trucks rolling, we only need to feed ourselves, I figure. Denver sure never did us any favors, and it’s not like we could deliver enough food to make even a drop in that bucket.”

  Cobi nodded, stroking his chin, and looked up at the ceiling as he said, “Well, you’re right. And the truth is, simply put, we can’t rely on FEMA to put food in our bellies. We’ve got to prepare, and we have to do it now, while we still can. Anyone got a counterargument?”

  Fran stood, and when Cobi waved her to continue, she said, “I’m of the opinion that things aren’t going to get any better, not anytime soon. But if it does, and all our farms can only harvest a few acres of crops, then what? Banks sure will want their money, but without food to sell outside, there won’t be a lot of income to go with it.”

  The audience murmured, and Christine saw near-unanimity in agreeing with Fran. She also caught a glimpse of the HOA president’s eyes narrowing, just for a moment, before his smile returned in full force.

  He said, “It seems the farmers believe we should try to be prepared for the possibility of the world’s infrastructure being repaired sooner, rather than later. That’s great; hope is great. It’s fantastic, in fact. But it leaves us with the big, big problem of getting enough fertilizer to do some farming.”

  The room settled into silence.

  Christine looked around, hoping someone would have an idea… Now that she faced the idea of living there, she had an interest in what they did, she discovered. And Cobi was right—they couldn’t rely on FEMA, not with the entire nation’s transportation network down. Hell, the whole world’s. It was no tiny problem, and it was made worse by the idea that all the satellites up there might have been fried. GPS, communications, weather—all of it was outside the atmosphere’s protective bubble.

  Cobi stood to his full height—all five feet eight inches of it, give or take—and walked out in front of the podium. He paced on the little stage it stood on, hands behind his back, head down. Just before his third turn to pace back and forth, he stopped, looked around the crowd, and raised his head. “You know, I think I’ve got just the idea that might work.”

  He paused—it looked rather dramatic, Christine thought—and then grinned. “One thing we have plenty of…is cattle. You know what cows produce? Manure. In fact, I think there’s enough cattle in the area for us to try a different kind of fertilizer. Oh, it might not smell the best, but it’s an idea that just might work.”

  The man who’d let Christine into town called out, “You’re the man, Cobi. We love you.”

  “And I love you all, too. It’s why I’m here, you know.”

  But Christine saw an issue with that, almost immediately. Not only were the local cattlemen not there at the meeting, they weren’t a part of Weldona. She nudged her mother and leaned in to whisper, “How will we pay them for all that manure without banks working?”

  Fran stared at her a moment, then nodded once before standing up. “Cobi, that’s a great idea. But you know they sell that stuff.”

  “And?”

  “And, they’ll want something for it—even if it’s not at full price, just to
be neighborly. Maybe we could gather up all the cash in town, and whatever cars we have that work, and head to Greeley, instead.”

  Cobi cocked his head to one side. “Greeley? Why?”

  Fran shrugged. “Because they’ve got warehouses full of fertilizer, the kind you all use. It’s a transit center for farming goods, of course. You can poison your dirt to your heart’s content.”

  Cobi paused and looked around the room.

  Christine could well imagine he was reading the room’s reaction, but it seemed more people agreed than not.

  After a moment, though, Cobi stood straight and faced Fran directly. “While I appreciate that you’re thinking of the town’s well-being, especially since everyone is always talking about how you don’t use fertilizer, I see a few problems with it.”

  “Do tell.”

  Cobi smiled wanly. “The biggest issue is just that all the running cars in town wouldn’t carry enough to put a dent in all our farmers’ needs. Not to mention, FEMA will be here soon, and they surely have some kind of plan in place to ensure our bigger farms, at least, have the supplies they need to produce food for our community and our country.”

  Fran frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Certainly. Plus, your idea relies on them taking cash. That’s a long, dangerous trip to take on a supposition like that.”

  Christine pursed her lips. Leave it to someone like this guy to shoot holes in decent plans without offering alternatives of his own…

  Cobi continued, “Fortunately, we still have my other idea. There have to be enough cattle in the area for us to try a different sort of fertilizer. As I said before, we can acquire their manure, and apply it to our fields.”

  Christine rolled her eyes. Our fields? He was no farmer. The way he ingratiated himself with first one demographic in town, then another, was slimy.

  No, she decided, she did not like this de facto mayor, whom she’d heard had risen to be the mayor not by any vote, but just by saying he was, with no one saying otherwise.

  Fran shrugged, smiled awkwardly, and nodded.

  Then, Cobi smiled and paced again, wearing a smug smile. “Besides,” he continued, “Fran isn’t a real farmer, anymore. She sold her real farm to move back to town. Oh, she has her glorified garden, but she’s a townie, not a farmer.”

  Fran stood bolt upright like a piston firing, her chair scooting back as her legs bumped it. “Youngster, don’t you get to talking about me like that. My roots are Weldona, and roots run deep.”

  “You pulled them up when you—”

  “Mine run deeper than yours, here, son, and don’t you forget that. I’m as much a farmer as I ever was. Just because I’m a different kind of farmer, that doesn’t cancel out the time, energy, and hard work it takes to run my ‘glorified garden,’ as you put it.”

  “And?” Cobi openly smirked at her. “You’re still not any kind of farmer. You just retired, and now you’re trying to tell real farmers how to run their businesses.”

  Fran grinned, reminding Christine of a shark about to bite a seal, and said, “Maybe you don’t know this, because you are no farmer of any kind, but what land I do have out-produces any farm around here, per acre at least.”

  There was some new grumbling, and the room’s attitude toward Fran shifted upward at the reminder.

  She continued, “Half the folks here have asked me how I do it. The biggest draw might be my food-forest land. It just copies nature’s edge habitat, but every step in the chain is designed, planned ahead. Every plan has a purpose, and—”

  Cobi laughed, startling her into silence and drawing curious looks. “I don’t know if you know this, but farmers don’t make decisions by reading tea leaves, and they don’t make things grow by giving them hugs. Farmers do science, and that means fertilizer. They don’t do your hippie ideas.”

  “But if everyone just looked at this differently—”

  Cobi cut Fran off, saying, “Listen, in the end, no one is going to tell me nor anyone else here how to run their farms, thank you very much. They chose me for this role, so I’m in charge. Too many cooks spoil the soup, and all that. Understand?”

  Fran huffed, and Christine watched her shaking hands form fists, which she held hidden behind the chair in front of her. “The problem with that is, like you said before, we can’t depend on FEMA to get food into our bellies. There’s nothing wrong with cow manure, exactly, but it isn’t great. It’s best composted for a year or two, and we don’t have the time.”

  Cobi shrugged. “As you say, we don’t have time for that. What we do have is cow manure. Probably not enough for every acre, but plenty to grow enough to feed ourselves and trade to our neighbors, if they stop taking dollars.”

  Fran replied, “We can’t transport it efficiently, anymore.”

  The one Cobi had called Mac said, “A little goes a long way, though.”

  Fran glanced at him, then back to Cobi. “The way manure works, you might get big crops this year, but the harvest will shrink the year after, more the year after that. Unless you don’t plan on living for another year…”

  Christine thought she caught a hint of joy at the idea, in her mother’s voice.

  A new voice rose, a familiar one. David’s. Christine turned and saw him standing to say, “I don’t know much about farming, but I do know that you must have elected this man to be your mayor for good reason.”

  A woman said, “He’s the H-O-A President, first.”

  David inclined his head to her. “And his plan seems solid enough, from what little I do know about farming. Discussion is good, discussion is healthy, and he opened the doors here so everyone could get on the same page. Well, he’s the civil authority, and that makes it everyone’s duty to give him a chance to pull you through in this mess. I’m sorry for intruding, but I had to say that. Thank you for allowing me to speak.”

  With that, he sat down again.

  Christine couldn’t seem to catch her breath. David had eaten Fran’s food, stayed under Fran’s roof, but he’d supported Cobi? No one had asked him to slap her mother in the face, like that…

  The room grew hot, and an image flashed to mind of her leaping across the chair rows to throttle him. She turned her back on him, letting out a quick, sharp breath. She crossed her arms without thinking about it, and shifted in her seat.

  Cobi didn’t look happy, though, she realized with a start. But why?

  Cobi said, “No offense, Officer Kelley—or should I say, “Captain Obvious”—but you’re an outsider. You don’t have a dog in this fight, and it’s not your kids’ lives we’re trying to save.”

  “It’s sergeant, not captain. Please don’t speak to me that way. I’m only doing my duty, trying to protect and serve.”

  Cobi shook his head slowly, and made a tsk, tsk sound. “No, you’re a kiss-ass and a suck-up. I hope for Denver’s sake that isn’t how you made the sergeant rank.”

  “But, sir—”

  “You just worry about you, okay? Leave the farming talk to the real farmers. This is Weldona, not Denver, in case you forgot.”

  Christine heard a couple of gasps in the audience, but far more chuckling.

  David sat stiffly, his face an impenetrable mask of stone. Only his clenched jaw revealed any emotion at all.

  She found herself feeling bad for him, despite siding against her mother to support Cobi. She was angry about that, but Cobi had been brutal. It was a new experience, feeling bad for someone while still wanting to slap him.

  She leaned in toward Fran and whispered, “Can you head back and take over watching the kids for me? I need to walk around town to get the lay of the land.”

  Fran’s gaze didn’t leave the HOA President-slash-Mayor, but she nodded. “Sure, Chrissy. Go. You look as upset as I feel. I can’t blame you for wanting to take a walk and get your head on right, again.”

  “Thanks.” Christine rose and headed for the exit.

  Behind her, a man said, “There goes Chrissy, running away from her problems. Again.”


  She almost stumbled, missing a step, but forced herself to keep going with her head held high. Small-town life was definitely turning out precisely the way she’d envisioned it as a teenager, when she left town half a lifetime ago. She couldn’t wait until things went back to normal, so she could go back to her real life, instead of wasting it in a dink town with its dinky people and its even dinkier leaders.

  Assuming, of course, that it ever did normalize. There were those who said it would never go back, or not for years to come, and that things would grind ever downward, ever worse, for the simple reason that the global economy relied on the global network. The whole planet had to have been affected, so there was nowhere to begin the rebuilding.

  She shuddered, and her steps quickened as though she could outpace the world’s problems. Or even her own.

  22

  David sat in the waiting area to Cobi’s “office,” cooling his heels in a room behind the office itself, while the mayor finished his three-ring circus act out there. It wasn’t much of an office, David mused as he looked around. Then again, this wasn’t much of a town, whatever that blow-hard seemed to think of it.

  Orien sat two chairs away, as elbow room was important when wearing a bulky duty belt, and gazed at him with an odd expression.

  David was in no mood for shenanigans from a rookie. “What?”

  “You seem high-strung. That civilian got under your skin?”

  “If he thinks he can bully me into being quiet, he has a surprise coming.” David sneered. “Little piss-ant.”

  “It’s not my place to say, but…I think calling the mayor a ‘piss-ant’ isn’t going to get you what you want out of him.” Orien leaned forward in his chair, elbows on knees, and spun his duty cap on one finger.

  David fought the urge to smack his partner’s hat away. He’d supported that S-O-B, but all Cobi saw was a chance to neuter an outsider for his audience. “Let me tell you, Orien. We’re getting that gas, and then we’re putting this no-horse town in our rearview mirror for good.”