Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  By the start of fall, fruit trees in the cities and urban areas had been stripped. All but the strongest thieves and best prepared had depleted their stores of food. Seagulls were now a prized food commodity as furniture and fences were burned to cook the birds and boil water. By night, men walked as much as a dozen miles down to the ocean to fish from shore. Only in the areas directly under the protection of police or friendly armed men did any commerce happen, in the form of swap meets.

  It was hazardous to venture out if one had any food, items valued for survival, or a running car. Cars were prime targets for gangs that often waited in ambush. Often, once a car was parked and the driver left, it would be stolen as an opportunistic crime. Those that had nowhere to go would park cars and run the engine just enough to keep the battery charged while using the outlets to run small electronics. Many just drained the fuel to keep their generators running.

  October brought starvation to many for the first time. Even the best-stocked homes seldom had more than a month and a half’s worth of food and many people were famished long before that. On average, pets began to be eaten on the third day after the dog and cat food ran out, if they weren’t filched by someone else first. The hungry who would not or could not take from others began to walk in search of food. First it was just a few miles a day to reach the nearest orchard or field.

  As more and more city dwellers picked clean the crops nearest to them, they journeyed further out, five and ten miles one way, becoming increasingly unsuccessful. Soon no matter of distance could bring anything to eat. The lack of irrigation had killed off the row crops. Trees with roots that went deeper lasted longer, but they too began to die without water being pumped to them. Southern California was dry farming territory almost completely dependent on either water imports or pumped ground water.

  All the local produce could do is slow down the process while leading to malnutrition from missing vital dietary needs. Half of the elderly without major health issues were already dead. Accidental deaths caused by fires, gun accidents, food poisoning, contaminated water, injuries from tools, and mishaps gone untreated by medical professionals accounted for the second major cause of death. Countless suicides, including murder suicides done by despondent spouses or parents, had claimed even more lives.

  Dead bodies piled up in homes. The final stages of starvation included listlessness and apathy. Too weak to move, too weak to care. Neighbors broke into the houses of the dead and stole whatever might help them survive, leaving the bodies to decompose where they lay. No rescuers would come and paint an ‘x’ on the garage door for someone else to retrieve and bury the dead. In the worst areas, only the dead who were too putrid avoided being eaten by scavengers who had turned to cannibalism.

  Routine helped keep everyone from going too far off the rails. In Sam’s case, it was up early for dawn patrol, chores in the morning, sleep, and do the evening patrol after dinner. Every other day he had “off” from night patrol now and instead took turns walking the perimeter during the day between work, rest, or manning the security desk. Mr. Sibley deliberately kept everyone as busy as humanly possible. The less down time they had, especially alone time, the less they thought about the dire straits of the outside world and felt trapped on the ranch.

  Sam was reading in a chair in the pool house on his regular day off when Mika sat down next to him. The small room opened up via double French doors to the pool and had become a sort of sanctuary away from everyone where couples or small groups could meet. Sam didn’t get up. He had resolved to stop keeping his distance from Mika. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her; he just didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. She wasn’t as bad as everyone in the jail had made her out to be; not cut out to be a deputy, but not unlike some of the crayon-eating Marines Sam had known who were nonetheless good guys.

  “New sweater?”

  “Yeah. Crystal got it trading at the swap meet for me.” Mika’s clothes and all of her possessions had burned with her apartment. The women had traded with neighbors or bartered food for the things Mika needed. “It was very generous of the Sibleys to take us in,” Mika said.

  “It wasn’t a selfless act.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Sam looked at her deadpan. “When food runs low, we plan on eating you strangers.”

  “You’re full of it.” She punched Sam in the arm.

  “Nah, you can’t keep watch over a place like this with just a family, you need a lot of bodies to run security, work the garden, and tend the orchard. We’re here basically for labor.”

  Few Americans had any land to sustain themselves or skills to offer to someone who did. In an instant, a nation of high-paid white collar and service industry professionals were reduced to teenagers just entering the job market, barely qualified to sweep the floor. In America, the old tricks to farming and ranching died out with that first generation of factory workers a hundred years ago. Even the men who called themselves “farmers” and “ranchers” usually owned the land, preferring to let their Mexican foremen and hired hands do the real work.

  “We’re not their servants. This isn’t some sort of Medieval farm.”

  “You mean feudalism and that’s kind of what it is, Mika. In thirty years, America will look more like Medieval Europe rather than America at any other point in its history. We’re a vanquished empire attracting vultures to feed on the carcass. We live here as a favor, on a promise made to my father and because we contribute to the land and defense. We’re here not by right, but because of honor and necessity. You think I like living in a hole in the wall? But I don’t have a choice and neither do you.”

  A report on the effects of nuclear war once concluded that “in several generations, the United States is going to resemble a late medieval society.” The new manor lords were the property owners. The men in the big houses had the guns, the equipment, and the moral authority. Sure, in many cases these men would be usurped—dead or alive, but the old measure of power, land ownership, would govern the future.

  The new lower class, once the middle class, would trade the only skill they had, raw labor, for shelter, protection, and food. Men like David and Sam would be the new knights, riding out to slay those who might try to deprive their lords of their means. A partnership between the three groups who held some of the power would work itself out. Inevitably, alliances would be made, broken, and conflicts would arise.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Mika said.

  “Does any of this seem right? It’s not about what we feel entitled to anymore. It’s about what we must do to survive. This is what our world has become. Band together or die. As undesirable as this arrangement is, it beats trying to scramble to survive in the city. They’ve got real slaves down in LA and the pretty women aren’t there for manual labor. Collective living is the only chance for a decent lifestyle.”

  “Well I’m grateful that Sean brought me here.” She looked at Sam, expecting him to agree.

  Her face was mostly healed now. With her hair down instead of pulled back into a severe bun, as was required in the jail, Mika was an attractive young woman. Recognition of that fact stirred inside Sam, but he stuffed that feeling away deep down. Changing the subject, he asked, “Do you know how much toilet paper a person needs? 48 rolls a year, minimum. Women need more. The attics and crawlspaces are loaded with that stuff here.”

  “Well that explains the toilet paper under my bed.”

  “Oh, I brought that.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Sam waved his hand. “Keep using it. I have plenty and it’s softer than the sandpaper that Mrs. Sibley bought.”

  She laughed. “My dad bought that cheap stuff. He’s why I became a cop. He moved away.”

  “And your mom?”

  “In Oceanside. Might as well be on Mars.” Mika felt guilty for not going to rescue her mother. Until she ended up at the Sibley ranch, she didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. In the last few weeks, a whole new understanding and appre
ciation of the world had opened up, nonetheless it did not allay her sense of guilt. “If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead because some jackass with a candle or something burned down my apartment.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t for your mom and dad, you wouldn’t exist.”

  She laughed again. “Thank you for that visual of my parents having sex.”

  “How do you like having to listen to Palmer and Brooke?”

  “Jealous.” Sam pretended not to hear that. Everyone expected he and Mika to hookup. “What comes after this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What kind of future do we have? When do we get to leave? I feel like every day when I wake up, I’m just biding my time until, I don’t know, something changes.”

  To Mika, who had trouble coming to terms with the end of the world as we know it, it was all unfathomable. Much of her early time on the ranch had been spent in a codeine haze and afterwards she accepted her residence as an indefinite, but temporary thing. One full-blown raid by a determined and competent force on the compound and heaven only knows what could come next.

  “What we’re waiting for, Mika, is the majority of people to starve. Gotta thin out the numbers and reach some sort of equilibrium before it’s safe again. The carrying capacity of what Ventura County can support just on its own resources is not 800,000. Once we’ve reached something sustainable and the desperate people are dead, then we can try returning to a normal, but old fashioned, way of life.”

  Life was no longer about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in good times rather, it was survival.

  David was happy to be away from his parents’ house. His father didn’t seem to mind either. He was less tired, less grumpy, and could putter around with Mr. Sibley in the shop all day. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer lived in the guest loft above the garage after Sean and Carlie gave it up to move into his childhood bedroom.

  As a couple, David and Brooke enjoyed not sleeping in the same house as their parents. The three other small apartments in the casita were occupied by Auggie, Marco and Erika, and Mika. Sam had given his up to Mika and moved into the shop. He preferred the solitude and working nights, the dark room suited him much better than trying to share Auggie’s converted office that only just fit a cot.

  David was waking up from a nap when someone knocked on the door. It was Sam holding a pair of BDU pants.

  “Morning Sam. Come in.”

  “How was your nap Sleeping Beauty?”

  “You’re an ugly prince, Sammy boy.”

  “Your mom doesn’t think so.”

  “Shut up. What do you want and why are you holding a pair of pants?”

  “It’s a suggestion to get dressed,” Sam said. Palmer was wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts.

  “Stop staring at my fly you pervert.” David reached for a pair of sweatpants.

  “So where’s your wife? I was hoping to beg some sewing out of her.”

  “Laundry day.” Laundry was now washed by hand using a hand-cranked pressure washer that was shaped like and egg or a plunger like device submerged in a bucket. Stubborn stains got the washboard. A set of rollers known as a mangle for what it could do to a hand or finger squeezed out the water before the clothes were clipped on a clothesline.

  “Ah, that’s right. Has Erika gotten over it yet?”

  “Brooke says so.” Erika, ever the modern feminist, had been upset about the traditional division of labor between the sexes until Mrs. Sibley said that she could take up patrol from Marco anytime she wished.

  “Well, now I know why Mika came into my room this morning.”

  “You’re sweet for Mika, aren’t you?”

  “Shut up Dave.” Sam started to blush.

  Sam avoided relationships like the plague. He wasn’t going to give up time from his life to chase women.

  “You like blondes, as I’m aware. Mika is a blonde.”

  “It’s more than just hair color, Dave.”

  “Maybe if you spent some time with her, you’d get to know that she’s not like that at all. She may not be cut out to be a cop, but she’s a sweetheart all the same.”

  Sam changed the subject. “How’s the arm?”

  “All healed up.” He lifted up his arm. “The scar looks bad, but it’ll fade over time.”

  “Still better than waking up every morning with a stiff back.” The torn muscles had been repaired, but the herniated disc that was “clinically insignificant,” to quote the orthopedist, had gotten significantly worse over the last year. “I miss my old life. Not before the EMP, but before I stopped being full-time.”

  “You can’t live in the past. I’d say you had it pretty good, all things considered.”

  “I’d trade with you in a heartbeat.”

  “I used to say the same thing about you, Sam.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t get to be supercop like you. I struggled to get through college and to get hired by the department. I spent way longer than you in the jail. I didn’t get to be a golden boy and get on SWAT. Nor did I cash in my Bitcoins.” David really wished he listened to Sam on that and put in a thousand dollars years back when the cryptocurrency was cheap.

  “Dave, it’s not so great being me, okay? My life is a mess. I spent the last several years not having a life.”

  After quitting as a full-time deputy, Sam taught a year-long Arabic course in Monterey, while teaching nights at a nearby university, driving four hours each way several times a month to meet his reserve deputy obligations. He quit because the commute to meet his commitments was overwhelming.

  “David, you married your high school sweetheart and my one serious girlfriend kicked me to the curb. So much of my life was trying to be somebody I forgot how to live. Now all I can think of is the time I squandered.”

  “The grass is always greener on the other side.” It was David’s turn to change the subject. “I really want some waffles.”

  “Sorry pal. It’s oatmeal and Spam until Sunday. It’s okay, I miss real breakfast burritos, and not just the eggs and beans in tortillas.” Scrambled eggs were always powdered eggs now. The real thing from the chickens were saved for baking and fried eggs. Post-apocalyptic cuisine was not part of the prepper fantasy. “You know what I really miss? The ocean. I want a big house on the beach so I can hear the waves crashing. The silence out here is just weird.”

  David had noticed it too. The absence of birds was most ominous. The crows, sparrows, jays, and dozens of other inconsequential birds that frequented the area fell silent and even began to disappear from memory. Seagulls that once wheeled and fed off the human carrion in the makeshift cemeteries occasionally flew inland from their rookeries rarely and only with the greatest caution. He shuddered at the thought of people eating the common birds. It was bad enough all the cats and dogs in his parents’ neighborhood had been butchered by the time they evacuated.

  “Kinda weird without traffic, planes, and birds, isn’t it? When I was a kid, I’d have night terrors. I’d be wandering around the house and couldn’t find my parents, or out on the street and there were no cars or people. Must have been sleepwalking. Anyway, I’d fall back asleep to all-night news on the radio, so I knew the world wasn’t empty.” He shook his head. “I wonder if I’m dreaming.”

  “Mika says you and Brooke don’t do much dreaming, if you know what I mean.” Sam arched his eyebrows suggestively several times.

  “Hey, at least I’ve got more than my hand.”

  Sam laughed and tossed his pants at David. “Just please ask your wife to fix my pants and I’ll work on sorting myself out.”

  Palmer hoped that meant his partner was finally going to get over himself.

  You Can Only Hide for So Long

  At Halloween, no one at the Sibley Ranch had much interest in horror films or costumes. Instead, they grilled frozen steak and ate candy vacuum sealed and frozen from a clearance sale. Had it been an ordinary year, it would have been an extraordinarily beautiful evening. They indulged themse
lves with alcohol under the full moon, easily recalling better times. Mika, Brooke, and Carlie started dancing to the strains of “Thriller,” goading Sam and their husbands to join. Brooke pulled her reluctant husband to the floor, who was forced to admit that after two shots of Jameson, that he enjoyed himself.

  By eight o’clock, the air had grown uncomfortably cold. Tyler swapped places with Sean at the security desk, sadly sober, while everyone else rummaged through the video collection for something to watch. Brooke cleared the table, carrying the glasses and dishes in through the dark kitchen. Despite the full moon, light could be seen for miles or easily by an intruder watching from the trees. Candles were one thing, but the interior lights were another. Light discipline, even in the carefully hidden Sibley house, was vitally important. There was a soft easterly breeze that gently moved the branches of the avocado trees, generating a rustle of the leaves that she hadn’t heard during dinner and the party.

  Far in the distance, the black outlines of the Camarillo hills rose up. Once the small corner visible through the gap in the rolling hills of the orchards gleamed with lights. Now nothing, though people were still there. Families huddled in their homes, waiting out the night where monsters prowled. She could feel them out there, specters gliding through trees, witches flitting to and fro in the air. Brooke shuddered at the thought at things more real, and far more terrible, than the nightmares of film. She shut the door, drew the blackout curtain shut, and flooded the kitchen with fluorescent light.

  Amy squealed in the living room. She had found a VHS copy of the campy Disney movie Hocus Pocus starring Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker. Amazingly, it was even rewound. Mr. Sibley, who breached protocol by getting a buzz on after dark, had a third drink and stayed to watch. David kept thinking how extraordinary it was to be living in a post-apocalyptic world, watching a comedy Halloween movie, and eating popcorn.