by Don Shift
As young, single men between 21 and 23, they often bought canned food, mostly chili and stew, but never ate it, preferring the easier route of frozen TV dinners and Taco Bell. When they did cook, it was usually on the grill or Jason was making some Italian dish. This meant a month’s worth of food, more if he rationed it. Twelve jars of Sunday gravy and countless boxes of pasta would go far, but not far enough. He had to find more of everything, fast.
David came home to find a few neighbors milling around the lawn and talking to his wife. David was in charge of the neighborhood community council. Every other day someone came to him with some sort of problem, from a petty annoyance to a serious criminal complaint. They expected the deputy sheriff to deal with the problems in his backyard that the Ventura Police didn’t have the manpower for.
Naturally, everyone was looking at his shiner and wondering just how bad things really were for a cop to get hit in the face. Characteristically nonchalant, David asked. “What’s up?”
“What’s the plan?” a Hispanic man in his early-60s asked. “Is the National Guard coming?”
“Yeah, what’s FEMA going to do? Are they going to bring in electrical trucks from around the country to fix the power? I heard them talking about it on the radio today. That’s what they do back east after hurricanes and ice storms,” someone added.
“We’ve been talking about making a neighborhood watch, guards, for crime. People are worried about looters and burglars.”
David held up his hand. “Please, everybody, one thing at a time. I can only give you what I know. As you can see, I had a rough day.” He explained about the riots at the market and the general chaos. “So yes, it would be helpful if everyone took turns standing guard and patrolling the neighborhood. As for what’s up, the bad news is we’re on our own for some time to come.” Everyone took a deep breath.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this. As you heard on the radio, yes, this was an electromagnetic pulse or EMP and yes, it was a deliberate attack, but we’re not sure by who yet. The National Guard is here, but they are having a hard time organizing because everyone is of course spread out and without phones there is no way to call up each soldier. They’re stretched thin, but you’ll see them around providing security and transportation. Outside resources, excluding additional military resources from California bases, are not coming.
“The power is likely not coming back on in any practical time frame. It’s out all over the country and it’s even worse the further east you go. The rumor mill says that they don’t even have cars on the East Coast. Without electricity, everything modern goes away. I suspect many of us found out the back rooms of the grocery stores don’t have much in them. Cash only, and who carries cash anymore?” A few heads nodded somberly as they understood the magnitude of the situation.
“In our modern world, everything is timed to arrive just as it is needed to avoid storage costs. It’s called ‘just in time’ logistics. That timing depends on trucks shipping food in from distribution centers, bakeries, or wherever. Trucks can’t move without fuel. Fuel can’t come in if trains can’t move and ports can’t take oil tankers. Refineries also need electricity to refine the raw oil. What’s in the tanks at the stations is it, so find a place that’s pumping it by hand and buy as much as you can. No trucks, no food. Unless it grows in the fields here, we’re not going to get it.
“There are no stockpiles of food coming in from the government. Buy what you can buy right now. Don’t fight, don’t steal. Save seeds, plant a garden, I guess. As for water, there is an alternative water delivery system being planned, but I’m a cop, not a water company guy, so don’t ask me the details. Save what you can in your bathtub or any other container just like an earthquake, otherwise you’re walking to a well or distribution point and water weighs about eight pounds a gallon, so plan accordingly.”
“As far as crime and emergencies, you’re on your own. If you are into ham radio or CBs, you can talk to the emergency operations center and they’ll get help, but it may not be quick. We have to try to suppress crime on our own and fight our own fires before they spread. Remember, you can’t shoot someone for stealing, they have to be actually threatening your life. No shooting people in the back either, no matter what they’ve done. Let them run. If you can arrest them, subdue them, tie them up, and then find a cop. That’s all I’ve got right now.”
The crowd asked a dozen more questions, some for themselves, some for others.
“Look, I can’t answer everything. You’re all going to have to put your heads together and figure this out. There are four more people on the council too.”
“Is the council going to have a meeting?”
“At some point, but these first few days are going to be too hectic to do much. Look, most of you older folks remember the Northridge earthquake. If you didn’t live in LA then, you at least remember how everyone came together. That’s what we’ve got to do.”
Their faces looked slightly panicked but restrained. Lacking much else to do, they had spent the day clustered around radios and gossiping, sharing their worries with one another. Many of the residents of the neighborhood held David in high esteem, both as a community leader and as a deputy sheriff, so they felt that it wouldn’t be right to trouble him with just venting their fears. The few that assembled here did so specifically because their own neighbors looked up to them. Ordinarily, community meetings turned into free-for-alls filled with paranoia, rumor, and ignorant rants about whatever came to mind.
“We think you should head up the neighborhood watch,” a woman suggested to David.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m exhausted. I got less than six hours’ sleep last night, I worked a twelve-hour shift and the same tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. Just like you, I’ve got my own preparations to make.” He gestured at the solar panels. “For one I have to see if I can make those work,” he lied to appease them.
His wife was quite handy on her own and had already managed to circumvent the shorted-out charge controller to directly wire the panels to a bank of batteries. David had no desire to let his neighbors in on the fact that he was well prepared for such an event or that they had a little electrical power. In a major disaster where no help was forthcoming, having more than your neighbors often turned into a nasty, real-life version of the ant and the grasshopper fable. It would be a loose-loose for everyone if they panic.
“Carl in that ugly yellow house has a generator, if you need to charge anything,” he heard someone say.
“Thank you,” David said. “We’ll keep that in mind. Let me know if something really bad happens.” He sighed deeply as the group walked away and something heavy settled on his mind, knowing that soon, many would not be around to hear any updates.
Ojai deputies had begun to notice a large increase in traffic going north on Highway 33 into the national forest. One deputy decided to drive up the highway to see where everyone was going. He got well into the mountains before he decided to turn around and traffic was still strong. Cars were stopped in many places. A few of the fire road gates appeared to have been tampered with and several were open. He doubted that the rangers had left them open as most of the roads were suitable only for four-wheel drive and restricted to official vehicles anyhow.
On his way back down, he swung through Rose Valley and found every campsite filled with cars, tents, RVs, and trailers. He got out of there before someone flagged him down. Bugging out to the mountains was every fool’s idea of survival, as if a cheap tent and car camping supplies could transform you into an instant wilderness survivalist. Taking refuge in the woods was hard-wired into human nature and would seem like a wonderful idea until the ice melted in the cooler and the hot dogs ran out. Then it would just be an uncomfortable existence with strangers far from the comforts of home hungry and out of options.
Surviving in the Ventura County mountains was a poor choice for anyone not experienced in backcountry camping. While the Los Padres National Forest was undeveloped back coun
try, very little of it was more than fifteen miles from the nearest paved road or developed area. Water was scarce. There were very few perennial springs and most of those had been dry during the prolonged drought. Even after the wet winter they had, this August had sapped all but a trickle from the mountain aquifers. It was also extremely hot and would be extremely cold in the fall and winter. The only benefit to the massive wildfires that had entirely denuded the mountains in the past decade was that any accidental fires would not spread very far.
In the survival fantasy, a man took his family deep into the woods, built a cabin, and hunted a deer while his wife and kids collected berries. What grew naturally here didn’t look like food and required someone with expert knowledge of the local flora to tell what was edible and what was just twigs and leaves, or worse poisonous. The deer that were too stupid to stay away from man would be dead in a few weeks while the smarter ones listened to the gun shots and hid in the deepest recesses of the national forest. In the entire country, the whitetail and mule deer populations might last six weeks of hunting by starving people armed with everything from pistols to sharpened sticks.
Some hunters would get so desperate the black bears would become extinct in these parts just like the grizzlies. The trout were doomed too, while the innumerable legions of quail and rabbits would certainly survive. Coyotes and mountain lions would more than likely begin moving into the farmland and urban areas creating a whole new set of problems as they reclaimed what was ancestrally theirs.
Two Trips
Jaime knocked on Miguel’s door and waited. On his far right, the blinds moved. Then the door came open a crack. It was Miguel’s girlfriend Maria.
“What you want?” she said sharply.
“Miguel. I got some stuff that he’s gonna want.”
“What kinda stuff?”
“Pills.”
“Hold on.”
She shut the door for a second. “How much? He ain’t gonna deal if you only got a bottle.”
“Nah, we got a whole carload.”
She nodded and shut the door again. The door opened after a moment.
“Yo Miguel! Strange stuff going on.”
“Damn right, esé. Come in.” Once Jaime was inside, Miguel asked “So what you got for me?”
“Andres and I got to thinking last night. Lots of people gonna be needing pills, but the pharmacies ain’t gonna be open. Gonna get cleaned out here in a few days if they aren’t already.”
“What’re you getting at?”
“Lots of people ain’t heard the news or don’t believe it. We were listening to the radio before they went off the air. Andres and I don’t expect things to ever go back to normal. He and I got a plan. But to make that plan work, we need guns. You got guns and we got the drugs to trade for them.”
“You got a gun.”
“We need more guns, bigger guns. And lots of ammo. Even if we had the cash to buy them, we can’t go down to the gun store and buy a rifle anymore. All those places are cleaned out and I really don’t think the gun stores, if they aren’t empty already, are gonna sell to a couple of Mexicans. We know you’re in the business so we thought we’d come to you. ‘Cept since we ain’t got nothing, we went out and got somethin’.”
“What’d you get?”
“So there’s lots of looting going on, right? But the radio said no help was coming and to stock up on what supplies you can, right? Shit’s gonna hit the fan man, like that TV show with the preppers. Nobody got no food stocked up. Stores can’t last forever. No trucks neither. We gotta look out for ourselves. Survival of the fittest. Last night was kinda quiet, so we figured we’d take advantage of it. We wanted stuff we could trade, stuff with value to you, so we hit some drug stores. Rolled three different pharmacies. Turns out, some of the safes weren’t even locked. Emptied them out of everything good.”
“Such as?” Miguel knew Jaime wasn’t the druggie type and would be surprised if he had collected anything beyond simple antibiotics and rash creams.
“Xanax, benzodiazepines—” he had trouble pronouncing that one— “Oxy, Luminal, those cold pills you make meth out of, uh...”
“That’s cool, I believe you. How much you got?”
“Seriously, a carload. Filled the trunk and back seat up each time. Gotta make two trips over here.”
Miguel was pleasantly surprised. “And the cops didn’t find out?”
“Esé, ain’t no cops out there. Have you heard any sirens today?” Miguel didn’t answer. “That’s right. Nobody was out last night. Everybody was trying to figure out what happened. We took advantage of the confusion. No trouble, except we ran into a couple of guys.”
“And?”
“And I shot them.” Jaime tried to sound cool about it. In the daylight, it bothered him less.
“Are they dead?”
“Yeah. Tried to jack us.”
Miguel thought for a moment. “Okay, after it gets dark, bring those pills over. We’ll talk then.”
Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 185th Infantry Regiment, sat idle all Saturday and Sunday. A few more men trickled in while the rest waited. With no telephones and only one commercial radio station in operation, it was difficult to get the mobilization orders out. Huerta was tempted to borrow a private’s personal motorcycle to make the hour’s ride out to see his wife but decided against it. The assignment to cover the San Fernando Valley, only a few miles east of where his wife was in Westlake, had already been given to Charlie Company. The major was sure he could find a way to visit her.
As the ranking officer, Huerta took command of Charlie Company. He had brought their vehicles from Fort Irwin, after all. Captain Garcia didn’t mind becoming executive officer. His own XO was nowhere to be found. Vague rumors of the missing lieutenant being on a plane didn’t sit well with the guardsmen who feared the worst. As a distraction and a show of goodwill to the neighbors, the company led small patrols around the immediate area of the armory Saturday night.
By noon Sunday, no one wanted to venture outside into the August heat. With a rumble, two large green diesel tankers pulled up into the armory. Two army reservists had driven up from Los Alamitos Army Airfield south of LA. Neither would say exactly where the fuel came from. No one was pleased to have to fuel the vehicles in the afternoon heat. The sunbaked vehicles were intolerable to be in, even if the air conditioning in the Strykers could catch up. More practically, the heat caused the fuel vapors to expand and less useable fuel could fill the tanks. Huerta tried to order the reservists to wait until nightfall to refuel, but they had a letter signed by a general that specifically countermanded such orders, so Charlie Company was out of luck.
Nevertheless, one tanker was to stay with the unit, while the other left with its Humvee escort. The tanker would be responsible for sustaining Charlie and the unit it was to be paired up with, the 143rd Military Police Battalion out of Lancaster. While the infantry ran around in the streets making arrests, the MPs would be building and manning temporary jails at police stations. What was to become of the arrestees after that no one seemed to know.
First Sergeant Tran approach Huerta.
“So now that we’ve got gas, Major, I guess we can deploy.”
“Nope. Not until we get ammo.”
“You gotta be joking.”
Huerta shook his head. “We’re regular Army. We’re used to having the Ammunition Supply Point being on-post. It’s all just an exercise in loading the stuff up. They’ve got maybe a can of rifle ammo here. Garcia told me that the stuff comes downstate from Fort Hunter-Liggett. That’s 300 miles away.”
“300 miles?” Tran swore and pointed east. “Sir, Fort Irwin is an hour that way. Why can’t we get ammo from them?”
“You know how the military works.”
“So what do we do then, sir? Just sit around and wait? Don’t answer that Major.” Huerta offered Tran some M&Ms from his breakfast MRE. “No thanks, sir. Your wife make it to your folks okay?”
“I don’t know.”
>
“Oh that’s right. Easy to forget no cell phones.”
“What about your family?”
“I’m divorced. My wife and my daughter live with her new husband. Pretty rural place. He’s Army too, her dad was a Vietnamese Ranger. Got out when Saigon fell.” Tran didn’t seem to mind the separation. Huerta knew a lot of guys in the Army that didn’t miss their families too much. Deployment or training was an escape. To some, this was a guilt-free way to walk away from any unwanted responsibilities. By the numbers of guardsmen mustering, some were also finding it a good time to desert.
Kevin wasn’t too worried about his wife. Every time he worried about Raylene, he said a prayer, and sense of peace came over him. Until he started entertaining his worries again and doubt crept back. There was no real reason, aside from things that could have happened even in a normal world, that Sam couldn’t have gotten her home. In Westlake, she would have water and his father was pretty handy with a shotgun. The elder Mr. Huerta also had plenty of food at home, thanks to Kevin’s sister-in-law who saw to it that the pantry was never empty.
Sergeant Major Burke walked over. “Major, the captain has asked you to come see him.”
Huerta and Tran followed Burke to the captain’s office. Garcia sat looking at an AM radio.
A live broadcast from somewhere in LA was giving a play-by-play of a riot. It had started when LAPD responded to a strip mall being looted and one of the looters was shot during a struggle. The crowd continued to loot. Some of the bolder rioters began to throw things at the police and even attack the officers. Gunfire was heard under the reporter’s voice. The soldiers wondered if the police were firing on the crowd. The reporter answered the question for them, explaining that several people with rifles were firing at the police. At least one officer appeared to have gone down. Huerta and Garcia leaned towards the radio, tense with a feeling of being unable to help. Finally, officers began leaving the area and the reporter did so as well.
“What in the heck is going on out there?” Burke asked no one in particular.