by Don Shift
“Funny how when there is nowhere to go, people stay home,” Raylene said.
She was right. All the parking lots were empty. “They must have closed the stores when it became too dark to see. Wonder if they stripped the shelves bare here. Not the nicest part of California. Low cost of living brings out all kinds of people.”
On the outskirts of town, Church waited his turn to go at a dark stoplight. Two cars in front of him went, leaving the intersection clear. A white van was a hundred feet or so from the intersection and slowing down. Church pulled up, stopped, and then went. It was too late for him to realize that the van was pulling out too and accelerating heavily. He stepped hard on the brakes, bringing the Jeep to a halt, but it wasn’t enough to keep the front bumper and winch from sideswiping the van.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked once the vehicles had stopped.
“Yeah. What was he thinking?” Raylene said.
“I don’t know. Stay here.”
Sam got out and met the other driver who was looking at the scrape that extended from his fender back.
“Look at what you did to my van!” the driver yelled. He was a middle-aged man, mid-40s, thick around the waist and unkempt. He had thick stubble, messy hair underneath what looked like an old-fashioned train engineer’s seersucker hat, and a stained tie-dyed t-shirt. Church couldn’t be sure in the glare of his headlights, but it looked like he had tanned skin from working in the sun. The man stood up from a kneeling position with some difficulty. He was panting from the excitement, clearly out of shape. “I hope you got good insurance.”
“I think we have bigger problems than insurance.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” The man adopted an aggressive stance. “You pulled out in front of me. I had the right of way. I was on the right.”
“You think so? I was already in the intersection, more than halfway through. The damage to your car confirms that. You weren’t even at the intersection when you rolled through.” Stop talking like a cop. That’s not going to help the situation, he chastised himself.
“What are you, a lawyer? That sounds like lawyer talk to me. Guys like you are scum. I bust my butt working outside all day to build stuff for guys like you and now you think it’s okay to trash my car? I’m sorry that I can’t afford a nice, brand new tricked-out Jeep like you and I gotta work for a living.”
“What do you do for a living?” Church asked, trying to defuse the situation.
“I’m an equipment operator.”
Bingo. So he drove a backhoe, or more likely a Bobcat. Nothing physical. It hurt this guy to kneel.
“If my phone worked, I’d call the police. Go get your insurance.” The man stormed off to the passenger side of his van.
Church went back to the Jeep and pulled his own paperwork. There was no point in exchanging insurance information but refusing to exchange it might cause more problems. This guy obviously expected everything to be normal in the morning and would chase Sam down if he left the scene. The last thing he needed was a crazy piece of white trash chasing him in a beater through the extra-dark Antelope Valley on the first night of the end of the world.
The man walked back with his paperwork and both laid them on Sam’s hood.
“If your phone’s camera works, we can just take a picture and call it a day,” Sam suggested. Each took a picture of the other’s information. “That it?”
“No way, my wife’s neck hurts. We need to make a report. You’re coming with me to the Highway Patrol.”
Sam shook his head. “Nope, I’m leaving. We exchanged information and your wife is fine. There is no way anyone could have been hurt in an accident like that.”
The man flashed into a rage and shoved Sam, cursing at him. Sam hit the man in the face with an open palm, something the other driver wasn’t expecting. The slobby Bobcat driver stumbled and fell to the pavement awkwardly. It looked painful and humiliating.
“Marshal!” his wife yelled, frightened.
Sam backed up and pocketed his information. “We’re done here!” As he reached the door to the Jeep, he saw the fat man begin running towards him from about twenty feet. The door was halfway open. There wasn’t enough time to draw his gun or jump in the vehicle. Sam partially closed the Jeep door and leaned close against the bodywork. The fat driver was running full-tilt with his head down, recalling long-bygone days as a football player lining up for a tackle. Just as the other man reached the fender of the Jeep, Sam swung open the door, placing all his weight behind it.
The man, being bent double, crashed directly into the edge of the door along the rear window frame. This time the man stayed down. Church examined the door, and, much to his surprise, it was only dented, not warped and the glass had not broken. He took a knee and felt the man’s pulse. Once he was satisfied that the man was merely unconscious, he shut the door and rummaged around in the cargo area for something.
Sam walked back over to the van with a Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife in his hand. The man’s wife, who was already screaming, started to scream more. “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you and your husband is fine. He’s just going to have a bad headache.” Sam knelt by the left rear tire and plunged the knife into the side of the tire where there were no steel belts. He was surprised how loud and high-pitched the blast of air pouring out of the punctured tire was. He put the knife away and stepped over the just-now stirring fat man, driving off without a second glance.
Raylene was aghast at what had just happened. “I’m glad you have the opportunity to explore your inner psychopath. Did you have to slash his tire like that?”
“Do you really feel like being chased at high speed through the dark by an unstable man with a head injury?”
“He’s unstable? What about you? You just hit him in the face and slashed the guy’s tire.”
“Like I said, I am not going to have that guy waking up and trying to come after me. He was scared, irrational, and therefore dangerous. I slashed one tire. He can change that in about ten minutes if he knows what he’s doing. I think I showed remarkable restraint.” He didn’t say how tempted he was to draw, shoot the fat bastard, pocket the brass, and drive off.
She thought for a moment. “Is this really what it’s come down to? Slashing a guy’s tires so he doesn’t come after you?”
“Sadly yes.” Sam went on to explain how the man was weak. “He’s scared and that manifests itself as anger.” He was an unattractive, middle aged man who placed no emphasis on his appearance or physique driving a dumpy twenty-year old vehicle and married to a dumpy woman. He resented those who had, by either virtue or luck, done better than he had. Ultimately a coward, the only way he knew to demonstrate masculine dominance was through anger, such as trying to intimidate Sam. This demonstration served to reinforce his own self-image by appearing “tough” enough to start a fight.
His anger masked his own self-doubts by portraying himself as the victim of the world or whatever antagonist was at hand instead of dealing with the fact he underachieved in life. The man would bully his wife around but didn’t beat her. His aggression tonight was a way of showing his wife that he was “in control” of the decidedly out-of-control circumstances they found themselves in. Where the man had erred was not realizing that fear was clouding his judgement.
At some point, Raylene put her seat back and drifted off. That was until Sam yelled after they passed through the hamlet of Pearblossom.
“Look at that!” The high beams were illuminating the aqueduct. The water level was ten feet down. Normally, the massive concrete canal was thirty feet deep. The Edmonston pumping station to get the water over the Tehachapi Mountains from the San Joaquin Valley had certainly failed. Without pumping stations, water would not flow to LA and beyond. It was at that moment that the realization of what had just happened hit Church hard. 25 million people in the state depended on pumped water simply to survive.
God Told Me to Skin You Alive
At seven o’clock in the evening, all day-shift cars returned to the st
ation. The briefing room was full of most of the regular dawn-shift deputies, some of the other squad, and several guys who only lived in the Ojai area. Once everyone had arrived and the room calmed down, the commander began reading Chief Villareal’s orders.
“Today, all day shift patrol deputies will be held over until 11 PM, then released at the 16-hour mark. Sorry guys. If your family is in town, you can stop by to check on them. Patrol will be emphasized since there is no way to summon help. You know what patrol means; patrol your beat. Two-man cars from here on out. Two shifts per day, working twelve hours every day for at least the first few days. Then we’ll go to each squad rotating one day on, one day off.
“Deputies will report to the station in the city they live in starting tomorrow. As the need arises, we will even out the assignments and the station commander will set the shifts, squads, and beat/duty assignments as necessary. That means tonight, you will be given a list of deputies in town you will need to contact. Day-shifters see me after briefing. That’s your job then you can go home.
“Patrol deputies will not idle their vehicles but turn them off to save gas. Foot patrols will be preferred and recommended where possible. Our priority will be to show the flag and suppress crime. We’ll need to jump on looting and burglaries. Make it look like we’re everywhere. Patrol the residential neighborhoods and serve as a point of contact for emergencies as well as to gather information.
“Keep a close eye on the grocery stores and any gas station selling gas. Same goes for places like Home Depot. Sit on a place if things get out of hand, don’t be afraid to intervene. As for reports, we’re back to no blood, no paper. If it’s not an emergency, don’t deal with it. We have a list of places to pay particular attention to, most of them are common sense. Someone at headquarters wanted us to detail a man, but we can only extra patrol it. They think this stuff is important, so do it. It’s underlined in red ink, so I guess they mean it.
“We will be distributing a list of things we will need for the department, like batteries, gas, lanterns, and things like that. We’ve got some old receipts that we will pass out. You will go to stores in your beat that are open and obtain the items on the list and give the owner or manager the receipt.”
A dawn shift deputy raised his hand. “Sarge, how is that not stealing?”
“It isn’t. We’re leaving receipts or invoices or whatever and the governor issued an order to commandeer necessary equipment for the emergency.”
“So how is that not stealing?”
The sergeant rolled his eyes. “It’s a legal technicality. If you have a problem with it, don’t do it.”
“I’m just concerned that one day we’re going to get orders to go around confiscating people’s extra oatmeal and double-A batteries they’ve got hidden away in the garage. I’m not down for that.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about Tony. We’re not sitting in front of grocery stores with our shotguns out claiming the store for ourselves.” The sergeant had not heard about the headquarters units who currently were occupying a distribution center. “I’m positive that we’d be racking up charges on the county cards if the card readers worked. We can either do this and survive or not. Word is people will start to riot once they fully understand what happened and that it’s not getting better so be glad that there is nothing on the radio yet.
“We all know the story by now. We have no details other than it was an EMP and not a nuclear war. This is long-term, so get in that mindset now. Things are different, but it will take a while for the public to figure that out. Don’t hook anyone up unless you have to. Book ‘em here. Communications with Dispatch is via a relay system. Sergeant Alvarez will be the Ojai watch commander. I’m going down to Ventura in a bit for a meeting. You’ll all know more tomorrow.
“And look, I know you’re all worried about your families. I don’t know or care about what several of you did today.” The sergeant looked at Palmer and Deputy Sibley. “Just please, stick with us. We need you guys. The people of this county need you guys. If we fall apart, it all goes to seed. Right now, we are the thin blue line and that’s all that Ventura County has. Good luck and be safe out there. And be resourceful.”
Palmer and Sibley decided to partner up for their notification duties, swapping their marked unit for a detective’s car. Sean Sibley had been Palmer’s first trainee in the jail and Palmer had been the first trainee of Sibley’s older brother, Tyler. The Sibleys’ father was a reserve deputy in addition to his explosives business and the most demanding member of the range cadre. The three men had a bond more deep than usual between cops.
The moment they were alone in the car, Sibley exclaimed: “Dude! It finally happened! The world ended!”
“Why are you excited?” Palmer asked, slightly disgusted.
“No, it’s not that. It’s more like we’re not some sort of nutjobs for prepping for all this stuff. It’s like a vindication. My dad is probably still telling my mom, ‘See Virginia, I was right.’ I’m pissed off. We were going to have In-n-Out for dinner and then I was going to sleep with my wife.”
“Dude, Carlie’s my sister! TMI.”
“Well your little sister shouldn’t have been a hot nurse,” he teased.
Palmer grunted in frustration and leaned back in his seat. The Sibley Family, to their credit, was a very relaxed bunch that took everything in stride. Even when their boat sank in Lake Mohave, leaving them stranded on a beach until a ranger noticed, didn’t ruin their vacation. The Sibleys were proud preppers, but quiet ones, keeping the details of exactly how they had prepared their 400-acre Somis ranch secret. They were a family that meticulously planned everything. Vacations ran like clockwork and Mrs. Sibley seemed to have an uncanny knack for knowing when everyone would want to sit by the pool and how long it would take each wife to shower and change for dinner. It was this obsession with organization and preparation that allowed them to be such carefree people. There was never a worry about forgetting to make dinner reservations or filling the cooler with ice and beer.
Palmer changed the topic. “So, where did you go?”
“Home. Had to make sure Carlie made it back from Oxnard. I was about to go look for her, but she drove up as I was walking outside. Got some chili for lunch too. How about you?”
“East end of Simi Valley, would you believe it?”
“Get out! You went down the hill twice? You were gone what, an hour?”
“I went AWOL for about an hour and a half. Had to get up on top of Sulphur Mountain to call my dad on the radio. We had a plan to have him reach me on a search and rescue frequency if a disaster happened.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure. He’s a ham operator, so it’s just a matter of programming the radio with the right frequency and stuff. It’s the same basic radio band. Got really lucky though. I could barely hear him, although he could hear me okay.”
“So he’s okay?”
“Yeah.” Palmer explained his father’s story and the rescue mission, adding how he dropped his dad off at home in Ventura, then rolled Code 3 back to Ojai.
“You hear the sheriff is MIA?” Sibley asked. “Apparently, he went to Santa Barbara or something with his wife. Hasn’t made it back yet.”
“And nothing of value was lost.” The deputies snickered.
By the time they reached the third deputy on their list, both realized that it was going to take a lot longer to inform everyone of what was going on. Every deputy or their spouse asked the same questions and the answers all seemed generate a shrug in response. Disbelief was more palpable than fear. Everyone wanted information, including the neighbors, who rushed outside at the sight of uniforms. All afternoon, they had been stopped constantly to be asked the most inane questions repeatedly.
“When will the power be back on?”
“What happened?”
“Was it aliens?”
“Do you know if the Dodgers won tonight?”
“Can I come to the station and charge my phon
e? You have a generator, right?”
“My car’s dead. Can you give me a ride to Carpinteria?”
“Can you do something? They won’t take my debit card and the ATM isn’t working.”
By dark, word of mouth had filtered out most of the stupid questions, but nightfall brought its own interesting sights. Several of Ojai’s more notorious environmentalist citizens—hippes as the deputies called them—were busy celebrating the death of technology. A dozen naked people danced around a bonfire burning in someone’s front yard.
“If YouTube still worked, that would be a viral video for sure.”
“They’re going to be the first to start eating people,” Sean said, causing Palmer to burst out laughing. “Hey, look on the bright side. We’re done with Ojai. No more of the wooden street signs that are invisible at night. No more vegans asking if your pants are wool and calling you a murderer when you say yes. I’m going to Camarillo, you’re going to headquarters patrol.”
Both men had only chosen Ojai because it was the least popular assignment and the quickest way out of Custody Division. Sibley tried to think of a benefit to working in Ojai but couldn’t come up with any. Weather, it was either hot or threatening snow. Traffic was a nightmare since it was two-lane roads everywhere. No bikini babes at the lake you couldn’t swim in, just the occasional naked hippy at the hot springs.
It was odd seeing the streets so empty and the houses so dark. Without many streetlights, Ojai was a dark city to begin with, but there had always been the comforting glow of lighted windows and porch lights. The only lights, aside from the odd car, were tiki torches repurposed for serious use and solar landscape lights. “Wow, would you look at that. Pull over,” Palmer said.
“What is it?”
Palmer was pointing up. Sibley got out of the car and looked at the sky, which was simply majestic. With no light pollution whatsoever, the stars were fully visible for the first time over Southern California in seventy years. So bright was the starlight that it cast the faintest of shadows. Palmer hoped that instead of mayhem, that everyone would be just as transfixed by the night sky as he was, even just for one night.