by Don Shift
The six men switched off solo patrols around the perimeter. It was dangerous, but necessary. Sam felt comfortable in the dark, especially while wearing night vision. Walking the ranch was mostly just an exercise to learn what the ranch was like at night for the inevitable day when there was an assault.
Protocol was a little different with the Palmers. One of the radios was set to a dedicated frequency for emergency communication within the group. During Sam’s after-midnight watch, the only radio traffic had been brief snippets, sometimes in code. The call broke the pattern of silence.
“Mayday, mayday. Frog Base this is Papa. We’re under attack.”
Mr. Palmer’s voice was calm, but high pitched. For most people, it took a long time to compensate for that particular effect of adrenaline. Sam spun in his chair and grabbed the microphone.
“Papa, this is Frog Base. Advise.”
“We’ve got a gang of some type hitting the neighborhood. Shots have been fired. They’ve blocked both ends of the street and are going house by house, working their way to the middle, over.”
“Papa, do you have a count?”
“Negative. Estimate three to four vehicles. Two groups on each end of the street and one patrolling up and down as security. The north end is guarded by two people.”
“Copy. Do you need extraction?”
“Affirmative.”
“Copy, I’ll ring the alarm. Standby.”
Sam flipped a toggle switch that was wired to a repurposed security alarm system. Electronic tones went off in each of the bedrooms. While everyone was being roused, Sam stood up and put on his tactical vest and helmet, then his rifle, both which went everywhere with him at night. Mr. Sibley was the first out, followed by Tyler and Sean. Sam explained the situation.
“Okay, Tyler and Sean, go pull the trucks out of the garage. Lights off. Sam, meet me in my shop, but first grab four cans of belted 7.62 ammo and take them to Tyler’s truck. I’ll be right there.” Everyone gave their acknowledgement and ran off. Mr. Sibley took the radio and gave the gist of his plan to Mr. Palmer.
While the boys moved the trucks into the driveway, Sam found the four clearly marked ammo cans sitting next to one of the gun safes. He popped the lid on one and saw that it was indeed a one-hundred round linked belt of mixed tracers and ball ammo. Interesting. After throwing them in the truck, Sam ran back inside the shop. Mr. Sibley was already in one of the safes and turned around holding an upgraded M60 machine gun.
“Sam, you know how to run one of these?”
“Yes sir.” he said. Full auto?”
“Damn straight.”
“Where on Earth did you get that?”
“It’s supposed to be a blank firing prop gun,” Mr. Sibley said as he extended it. “Take this and mount it on the pedestal of Tyler’s truck. You’re going to be the gunner for us. Light up any threats and hold on tight.”
“Oohrah, sir.” Sam ran outside and mounted the gun. He had no sooner finished than the truck started moving towards the gate. Sam slapped down his goggles and held on. Tyler raced the truck through the dark, navigating with his own goggles and with the help of infrared illuminators on the brush guard. Both featured full wraparound bull-bar style steel bumpers and were slightly lifted. At the second gate, Mr. Sibley jumped out to open and close it. Then they were off.
At the Palmer residence, Mr. Palmer was downstairs guarding the front door with his shotgun. Mrs. Palmer was in the laundry room with Brooke standing guard with her own rifle. David took the master bedroom and covered the street as he had an AR-15 and his father just a shotgun. They had been woken up a few minutes earlier by gunfire. It sounded like two shotgun blasts and then a short fusillade, followed by women screaming and men yelling. Mr. Palmer crept out the back gate and crawled low behind the landscaping to see what was going on. What could only be a gang of raiders had used vehicles to block both ends of the street and were breaking into houses.
“Frogman, Papa. We’ve got three vehicles blocking both ends of the street. South, a dark pickup and a dark colored SUV. North end, two white cargo vans. Two guys guard the north end. South end by two to four hostiles. Two groups of approximately four each are going house to house, one at each end.” The Palmers’ house was in the middle of the block. “Sounds like they’re forcing entrance then shooting or beating anyone who resists. Taking things out to the street. Four to six bad guys are on the street keeping heads down and guarding whatever they’re stacking on the sidewalks. Be advised, two other vehicles, unknown description, have been driving around the area possibly providing security.”
“Frogman copies. How long do you think you can hold out for?”
They were flying down the dark road, all visible lights off.
“Ten, twenty minutes max. Unknown how long they’ll be. I don’t know if they’re pacifying and looting or what exactly. Behaving pretty confidently that no cops will show up.”
“Can you hold if they hit the house?” Sibley asked.
“For a few minutes.”
The convoy came to the intersection of Highway 118 and the truck braked hard, pushing Sam against the front of the bed, then flung him to the left side as Tyler made a high-speed turn and accelerated. It wasn’t long before the diesel engine was screaming, and the windblast made it impossible to stand up. Sam guessed that they were going over 90 miles per hour in the pure dark. He put his goggles on again and was practically blinded by the infrared lights from Sean’s truck a hundred feet behind him. Looking forward, the road was astonishingly well illuminated from the spread of the bumper mounted lights. The whole Las Posas Valley might hear the trucks racing through, but they wouldn’t see a thing.
“Frogman ETA ten minutes. Tyler keep up. Hang on guys,” Mr. Sibley added for Sam and Sean’s benefit. “Papa, they got NODs?” or night observation devices.
“Negative. Using flashlights and headlights.”
“Copy. When you hear us, advise.”
“Copy Frogman.”
Taking the winding Mesa curves at twice their recommended speed limit was unnerving. Sam felt excited, but in an anticipatory sense, like a little kid waiting for Santa, not the Chinese proverb “may you live in interesting times” being-ambushed-in-Iraq exciting. No, he was on a rescue mission, racing into the heart of battle, knowing exactly what to expect.
It took a little over ten minutes to cover the eleven-mile distance. Sam was breathless by the time Tyler slowed the truck down in the Palmers’ neighborhood. Trying to breathe in the windblast of freeway speeds had been like trying to suck in extra-thick air. In the absence of the sensation of the wind, Sam’s face tingled.
“Sam, hang on tight,” Mr. Sibley said. “We’re going to charge down the street and you open up on the gomers manning the barricade. We’ll punch through, then open fire on the cars at the other end. Tyler, I want you to back up in the driveway. Sam, cover the street while we’re inside. We’ll help move the essentials first. If we get into a firefight instead, well, you know what to do.” Mr. Sibley yelled over the radio “Sam, waste ‘em,” as the two white panel vans parked in the street came into view.
Sam saw two bandits standing outside a cargo van with their rifles hanging from slings at low ready. Both of them were lighting cigarettes and standing less than a foot apart. Sam depressed the trigger, screaming “Die, motherfucker, die!” to time his bursts as a Marine infantryman taught him to do. One in four rounds was a tracer, so it looked a little like a one-sided Star Wars gunfight as the bullets tore into the vans and the two sentries. Neither man stood a chance to even raise their weapons or drop the cigarettes from their mouths. Next, he fired two short bursts into the engine compartments.
“Shift fire!”
Sam let go of the trigger, but there were no other visible targets. Sean accelerated his truck past Tyler’s as the latter slowed down. Sean’s massive front bumper hit the rear of one of the parked vans, sending it skidding around and colliding with the other van. A spray of looted items flew out over the str
eet and into a front yard. Tyler’s truck surged forward again and rounded the corner.
Sam fired long bursts into the two groups he saw clustered in the middle of the block. The men down there had started to react but were so complacent that they didn’t know how to react to a Ford Super Duty with a machine gun shooting tracers at them like a laser beam. He took careful aim and opened up at the vehicles at the far end of the street, earning a few shots in return. The tracers looked bright in the green light of his night vision goggles.
Both trucks stopped a house short of the Palmer residence. Mr. Sibley and his sons jumped out of the trucks and took cover to exchange fire with a group of looters that had run out of a house to see what the hubbub was about. A second group came out of another house further down and Sam shot them with the last rounds in the belt.
The street fell quiet, except for screams and cries in the houses and moans from the wounded. “Everybody okay?” Mr. Sibley yelled. Everyone was. “Okay, Sam and Tyler, sit tight out here. Sam stay on that gun but dismount and both of you find cover.”
“Yes, sir.” Both Sam and Sean found good spots in a neighbor’s yard.
Inside, the Palmers grabbed their bug-out-bags and I’m-never-coming-home-again kits and threw them into the bed of Tyler’s truck. Suddenly, a sedan came around the corner. Someone with what Sam and Mr. Sibley guessed was a submachine gun was firing wildly from a window. Mr. Palmer shoved his wife to the ground and jumped on top of her while Tyler hustled Brooke back around the house. David, Mr. Sibley, and Sam lit the sedan up. Now that the enemy was distracted, shots came from down the street, the hits ricocheting around them.
Everyone turned to engage the threat but didn’t see who fired. Sam felt incredibly naked. The Marine inside him wished that he had a platoon to lock down the street and a squad to send to flank the enemy. He and Mr. Sibley fully understood just how inadequate their little fighting force was; six men, a woman, and a machine gun.
Two more shots were fired. This time, Sam saw the muzzle flashes come from behind one of the cars at the other end of the street. “I see them,” he yelled. “Using my rifle.” Sam set the M60 down and unslung his AR. The car fire provided the perfect lighting for his goggles to pick up the pair of feet under a car belonging to a crouching shooter. Just then, a second shooter popped up and fired, but was instantly shot by Mr. Sibley. The feet didn’t move and for good reason. Sam took his time and aimed carefully, then squeezed the trigger once to put a round into the ankles of the crouching target. The man dropped to the pavement and tried to grab for his wounded legs, but his rifle was in the way. Too bad, so sad. Sam fired twice into the supine shooter who quickly fell still.
“Everybody hold tight,” Mr. Sibley said. Though everyone’s ears were ringing, a car was speeding off into the night, tires squealing. After two minutes or so of silence, the neighbors, frightened and violated, started coming out into the street. Mr. Sibley turned to the Palmers. “I think we’ve got some breathing room. Let’s load up the toy hauler and hitch it to your truck, Buck.”
Mr. Palmer shook his head. “No can do, my truck won’t make it. Out of gas.”
“Okay, Tyler hook it up to your truck. Now let’s get moving quickly, I want to be rolling in ten minutes before reinforcements decide to show up. Worse comes to worst, we leave the trailer. Sam, Sean; provide cover.”
The Palmers and Mr. Sibley started tearing the house apart. All of the survival food buckets went in first. Mrs. Palmer and Brooke began emptying the cupboards by sweeping the contents into cardboard boxes and running them out the back door. Mr. Palmer hauled his toolboxes and radio equipment into the trailer while David grabbed the ammo. Photos came off the wall, books, knickknacks, and photo albums were dumped randomly inside. Clothing was grabbed by the armful and tossed inside. Anything of value left in the morning would be stolen by neighbors.
Sam used the extra time to his benefit. He was an intelligence analyst after all. When it was clear no one was going to be shooting back right away, he got up and examined the weapons some of the neighbors had collected. Nearly every one of them had an AR-15 of some variation; California’s dreaded “assault weapons.” Each was dressed in dark clothing and wore either load bearing equipment or a chest rig.
None of the dead men carried identification. All were tattooed Hispanics, in their late teens or early twenties. Sam examined the cargo van that wasn’t smoking. The van had a local dealership license plate frame and the ignition was intact. It hadn’t been obviously stolen. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything in it of intelligence value.
Sam wanted intel. He wanted to know who this scum was and if anyone else was with them. “Hey Sean, watch the gun. I’m going down to the end of the street to see what else I can get off these guys.”
“Dude, that’s way too far.”
“It’s like 200 yards, just cover me. I’ll be fine.”
Sean shrugged. “Okay but hurry back.”
Sam started jogging down the street. Neighbors, now armed with some of the dead men’s guns, eyed him suspiciously. “It’s okay, I’m a good guy. I’m a good guy. I’m the guy with the machine gun.” None raised a weapon, but they still tracked him as he passed.
At the other end of the street, behind the car where the two shooters had been crouching, Sam found what he thought to be the leader, again, a tattooed Hispanic in dark clothing wearing military gear, except around his wrists were a Rolex and a gold bracelet. He had a portable commercial two-way radio with a large antenna and second radio, a small retail walkie-talkie. Sam shook the body down and found a military map case filled with roadmaps and papers. Jackpot.
“Cuarento, cinco. ¿Estás ahí?” the radio crackled in Spanish. Sam hadn’t realized it was on. Number Five was looking for Number 40. “¿Cuarento, estas recibiendo? ¿Cual es tu situacion?” What is your situation?
Sam grabbed the walkie-talkie, thanking God he spoke Spanish well.
“Ya casi terminamos, no te preocupes, tenemos el control,” Sam said, putting on his best Mexican accent. Tell whoever not to worry, things were under control and wrapping up. “Hablar luego. tengo mucha chamba.” Talk to you later, I have a lot of work to do. That ought to keep them away for a bit. Sam turned off the radio and tugged at it to free it from the dead man’s vest. They could analyze the programming later.
Sam caught someone standing up from behind the brick wall holding a rifle. The first thought that popped into his head was Stupid, stupid, stupid. You’re all alone down here and you forgot to check behind the wall. The lone surviving raider didn’t quite realize that Sam wasn’t one of his own yet. Knowing it would take too long to grab his rifle from its position slung across his back, raise it, aim, and fire, Sam’s hand dropped to the Sig on his hip. He drew his pistol and fired six times into the center of mass, dropping the survivor.
Mr. Sibley was coming outside when he heard the six gunshots. He saw Sean with the machine gun and Sam nowhere in sight. It wasn’t long before Sam came sprinting up. “Got some good intel,” he panted.
“I don’t give a crap. Get back on your gun.”
Sam nodded and shouldered the M60.
The Palmers said their final good-byes to the house and then it was time to leave. Brooke and Mrs. Palmer were to ride with Mr. Sibley.
“What are we going to do with the dirt bikes?” David asked.
“Ride them,” Mr. Palmer said. He looked to Mr. Sibley who just shrugged.
“Keep up. We’ll go slower this time.”
The convoy departed, leaving behind a shattered neighborhood, an empty house, a burning car, and dead bodies in the street.
Medieval Europe
By the turn of September into October, nothing was the same. The world had truly gone through the looking glass. Reports of fighting in the Middle East and in Asia trickled in over the shortwave. Panic was palpable on the streets. One could look around and see that the world looked much like it did half a month ago, only a shaggier version of normal. Yards all looked like they
needed emergency landscaping. Cars sat idle collecting cobwebs and debris against their tires. Even though neighborhoods were as full as they were on a weekend, few people ventured out of their houses.
What little police remained, had pulled back to their stations. If any existed in any organized capacity at all, they weren’t patrolling. Collectives of police families had popped up at several stations in the area, most notably Camarillo, near both the hospital and water well, Thousand Oaks, and the Todd Road Jail. In Simi Valley, things fell apart because of the city’s proximity to the overpopulated San Fernando Valley. Out on the Oxnard plain, the California Youth Authority corrections facility was cleared of juvenile offenders and became a compound of correction officers’ friends and families.
Citizens were on their own. No help came via police car, ambulance, or fire truck. All emergencies had to be dealt with individually or with the help of neighbors. Emboldened by the total collapse of government, criminals began to have a field day, the strong preying on the weak. California’s abhorrence of a gun culture meant that illegal immigrants to wealthy liberals were at the mercy of the burglars and robbers. In September, it became unsafe even to try and search for things from whatever store might still be trying to work on a trade basis.
Anyone who could stay inside and out of sight did. Trips to the park or even a walk around the neighborhood out of sight of your home might leave one’s house a prime target for hungry neighbors to break in. Goods and food flowed from those without the means or the will to defend themselves to those that had the inclination and ability to take what they wanted. The more time that went on, the more “good” people who became depraved in their distress turned into victimizers.
The only situation in history that had ever come close to what was happening all over the United States was the siege of a city in wartime. America was not cutoff by an army, but cutoff by the noose that total dependence on technology had created. At least in famines, wars, and depressions, there was always a source for food, as meager as it was. In urban areas, for many, stealing was the only way to survive. In Ventura County, most people were within walking distance of agricultural land and could forage for something to fill their bellies.