Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  “Carlie, Erika, and Mika: I want you in the backyard hosing down the back of the house and the garden in particular. Don’t let our food burn. Auggie, Marco: you two will man a fire hose and pump in the back drawing from the pool. Buck, you and I will get the tanker truck and cover the shop. David and Brooke can hook up to the standpipe out front and take that area.” Mrs. Sibley and Mrs. Palmer were posted inside the house with buckets of water and fire extinguishers, in case the fire got into the house.

  The next hour was a flurry of activity. A diesel pump and siphon were setup on the back patio to suck water from the pool. Sam deployed two ladders, one front and back for a quick escape, and put the ¾-inch garden hose on the roof, ready to soak any embers. Mr. Palmer topped off the thousand-gallon water truck, a decrepit green Ford, and parked it in front of the house. Fire hoses snaked across the driveways and patio.

  The security shutters were closed on the open doors and windows with the blinds and drapes behind them. There wasn’t enough fire retardant to cover everything, so Sam hooked up the container to his hose and focused on the corners and crevices of the buildings that were most likely to catch and harbor flame. The wealthy owner had made sure everything was up to the latest fire code recommendations. In several fires, modern construction and brush clearances were the only things that saved entire neighborhoods.

  David and Brooke were rehearsing movements with the fire hose. Mr. Sibley saw them and walked over.

  “You’re doing it all wrong.” David was holding the nozzle too close to his body and Brooke was right behind him. “David, hold the nozzle at arm’s length. You’ll get better control over it. Brooke, stand further back and keep a tight grip on it in case he loses it.” He knelt down and showed them the proper way to crouch and move with the hose tucked under a leg. “Remember, never between your legs or I guarantee it’ll smack you in the nuts.”

  “Where’d you learn this stuff?” Brooke asked.

  “In the Navy. I wasn’t always a SEAL.”

  As the smoke intensified, visibility began to drop. The hills were no longer visible and only the faint outlines of trees sixty yards away could be seen. Having been through two massive brushfires, for the first time in his life Sean Sibley could hear the roar that the fire itself made. Post-EMP, there was not a single siren drowning out the roar, no harried radio calls, no buzz of the yellow and blue Hueys making low water drops. No one was coming to save them.

  Darkness closed in like when a fog arrives with dusk, except this was an acrid, brown smoke. Even though it was high noon, it was as if the only illumination came from the red glow of the fire itself.

  “Dad, it’s in the barranca,” Sean radioed.

  The fire would burn along the east of the property using the oil-rich eucalyptus trees as fuel, racing towards the highway. Embers would blow into the lemon and avocado orchards that surrounded the buildings. Back at the house, Mr. Sibley rounded everyone up quickly. “Remember, don’t try and fight the fire off the inner perimeter. Let it burn around us. Spray anything inside that catches on fire, just brief squirts to put it out. Pay close attention to under the eaves of the roof.”

  “Shouldn’t we pack up some cars in case we need to escape in a hurry? We don’t have any personal fire shelters.” Mika asked.

  “Yeah, what’s Plan B?” David asked.

  “Look, there is no Plan B. There is nowhere for us to go if the house burns. Failure is not an option.”

  It was a jarring thing to hear.

  The next hour was one of excitement in the worst way. The fire burned southwest along the barranca, blinding everyone with smoke. Flames began to spread through the avocado orchard, little tongues of flame peeking up here and there, until fronts of flame appeared near the house. It was not long before the entire house complex was surrounded by fire.

  Sam found himself buffeted by high winds, struggling for footing on the often-slick Spanish tiles as the hose caught on something time and time again. All the while he was unable to see much further than the ground just beneath him. Down at the back of the house, the girls sprayed embers that landed in the garden. From his aerial vantage point, Sam was able to direct them to sudden spot fires that touched off the landscaping. Together, he and Mika with her bucket put out the wicker pool furniture that blazed away merrily.

  David and Brooke were able to keep the front of the house from burning down by continually wetting the eaves and the vents. Auggie and Marco did the same out back. Mr. Sibley and Mr. Palmer had the worst of it, trying to keep the shop from burning down and covering the back of the campesino house. There was a blind spot that the hose just wouldn’t reach, so they had to spray around the corner and hope the wind carried the water to where it was needed.

  The sprinklers wetting down the solar panel field were on full blast, filling that bit of land with a quickly evaporating mist. As the fire raged around it, Sibley and Palmer sprayed the panels indirectly to keep the heat down. The panels were mounted on steel brackets above a crushed gravel base with a wide clearance from the trees, but the heat was intense enough to damage the outer row of panels if they were not careful.

  Much more abruptly than it had all started, the fire began to pass. Patches of blue sky were visible. The roar was much quieter, and the walls of flame had passed by, crossing the road to ravage the next property. Everyone remained on alert and extinguished hot spots, but Mr. Sibley felt optimistic enough to direct everyone to hose down a little further out. Soon only smoldering trees and glowing patches of coals remained in the orchards. Sean and Tyler came back to join their father in putting out the worst hot spots in the trees.

  Standing on the entrance road, Tyler could feel the hot asphalt through his boots. It was tacky underfoot too. All around him, small fires crackled loudly as they burned themselves out. About three-quarters of the trees were toast, but the angle the fire came through spared a portion of the trees. Some were partially burned. It must have been 200 degrees in the slight depression on the side of the road.

  A damage survey found that several of the solar panels on top of the shop had gotten embers lodged underneath, and while the roof didn’t burn, the streams of water only suppressed the fire without extinguishing the burning and melting plastic. Much of the drip irrigation for the orchards burned even where trees survived lightly scathed. None of the perimeter cameras or motion sensors survived.

  The packing house and storage building on the far end of the property had been razed too. The neighboring houses and ranches had been demolished as well. Mr. Palmer launched his drone again and found that the fire had cut a swath over a mile-wide right through the middle of the valley before fanning out along the hillside behind Camarillo where houses in the hills smoldered.

  Everyone remained on fire watch until dark. From what they could tell from the smoke, the fire passed just to the northwest of Camarillo, the spread stopping as the fire front ran into row crop fields instead of orchards. In the darkness, a few red glowing spots illuminated the skeletal looking trees. Spent, Mr. Sibley took a seat on a retaining wall considering his favorite yard chair was now ash.

  “Well Buck, I think we made it.”

  Mr. Palmer surveyed the disaster scene. “By the skin of our teeth.” The real saving grace was that the fire was not moving on even faster winds, like the last two major fires to devastate the county. I’m surprised what fire can do to a chain-link fence.”

  “That’ll be a problem to deal with.” There were rolls of barbed wire, but a five-strand fence was not as effective as chain-link.

  “With the trees burnt out, that’ll make this place a lot less attractive to fruit scavengers. Call it hiding in plain sight now.”

  “True. I’d prefer a proper fence line though. We’ll have to get serious about patrols when the ground cools off. Also need to be very careful about light discipline. You can catch a glimpse of the house from the road now.”

  Mr. Palmer looked at the black coated water of the pool. “Guess we aren’t swimming any more.
”

  Mr. Sibley sighed. “To be fair, I never planned for an EMP situation. I never even heard of it until that book came out.” He tossed a chunk of something in the water. “I thought it would be chaos in general; economic collapse, hackers take down the grid, a civil war. Not this. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

  As darkness fell, the smoldering hillside two miles distant was dotted with thousands of red spots glowing like rubies. The beauty of a passed fire at night was undeniable. The two fathers hoped that something good would rise from the ashes.

  December

  Worse Than a Horse Thief

  As the winter solstice approached, the days had grown shorter as they always did, bringing a soft, low light when the days weren’t cloudy. November had been a wet month and the Santa Ana winds had not returned. With a chill in the air, feeding the horses once again felt more like a favor to the animals than a chore in the heat. Bilbo, the buckskin male, stuck his head over the rail. Mr. Sibley reached up and gently scratched the white snip at the tip of his nose. “I know buddy. I wish I had some carrots left to give you.” If only you could eat avocados, he thought.

  Sean dropped the last of the hay in Willow’s manger and closed the door to the hay room. “Not much hay in there, Dad.”

  “Couple of days, at least?” Sean nodded. The hay barn, which held several months of hay, stood right next to the barranca and burned completely.

  As virtually every other coastal Californian who owned horses, Mr. Sibley had his hay trucked in from a hay dealer; his was outside of Bakersfield. Very few hayfields existed in the area south of the Central Valley. Every single one in Ventura County lay in the rugged backcountry a two-hour drive away where avocados and citrus crops could not grow.

  “We could double what we have,” Sean ventured, thinking of the 25 pounds each horse ate a day.

  “No.” Mr. Sibley shook his head. “I know what you’re getting at and the horses are too valuable. We’ll have to make do unless you want to be traveling around on bicycles when the diesel starts to dry up. Besides, there is lots of leftover hay around.” Many people around here owned horses as a hobby. A small home stable could keep a few months worth of hay. It was likely that the people would go hungry before the horses.

  “We can forage them.”

  “Wrong time of the year. Grass is all dry on the hills. Have to wait until we get some more rain in February.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “Find out which neighbors have hay and no horses.”

  “Who would have hay, but no horses? That makes no sense.” He thought for a second. “Disregard.”

  His father meant the neighbors that ate their horses.

  “Definitely the Holcombs. Only a bale or two though. Cheap bastard never had any hay.”

  “Who else?”

  “Check with everyone who had horses. Grab your brother and we’ll make a day of it.”

  The trio set out dressed in civilian clothes, trying to look as normal as possible as one could while slinging a rifle across one’s back, in order to avoid spooking the neighbors. No one had toted a gun in the Las Posas Valley for decades, but with the rustling of what few cattle there were, horse stealing, and the general mayhem of the times it became a prudent precaution. For most people in the area, the owners and resident farm hands knew each other by sight. The Sibley men in jeans and ball caps, even with a rifle and pistol belt on, wouldn’t appear like anything other than a friendly house call.

  About a mile away lived the Andersons on a two-hundred-acre piece of property tucked into a draw in the hills. Like most land around here, it was divided into lemon and avocado groves. The house and barn fronted the road behind a fringe of prickly pear cactus.

  “Well, I don’t see or hear the horses.”

  “Could be in the barn,” Tyler suggested.

  “It’s a beautiful day. Why would Glen put them in the barn?”

  Mr. Sibley stopped. “Doesn’t feel right.” He studied the house from the shade of the trees that bordered the road. The lawn was dead, and the shrubbery overgrown, nothing unusual now. All houses looked abandoned. What was out of place was the broken window that hadn’t been boarded up or sealed. “Why isn’t the dog barking? Both times we were over here the dog was out front and knew we were coming a hundred yards away.”

  They spread out and crossed the road and approached the house using the detached garage for cover. From his vantage point, Mr. Sibley could see bullet holes near the front door. He motioned for Sean and Tyler to cover him, then ran across the yard and posted up next to the door.

  “Glenn, Shannon. It’s Kyle. Hello?” He turned and motioned for Tyler to join him. Mr. Sibley kicked the door and the two-button hooked into the living room. Husband and wife lay in the center of the room, face up on the carpet, slowly decomposing through their nightclothes. The stench was overpowering, and their bodies crawled so thickly with maggots that it made a sound like kneading ground beef. “Quickly son, clear it and let’s get out before we puke.”

  After the search revealed an empty house, both men ran out the front door and started to dry heave in the yard. Sean understood without a word.

  “Okay, let’s do a sweep of the property,” Mr. Sibley said, once he recovered. “Make sure no one is here and see what else we can see.” He turned on his radio and called in to the ranch with what he found. “And have Sam get up here straight away in a pickup with a camera.”

  Like many places in the area the trees were bare of any fruit, having been stripped. It could have been the killers or simply starving people walking up from Camarillo and Oxnard. Most growers didn’t even bother to stop the wretched urbanites who would walk miles just to eat green lemons. Upon noticing the phenomenon, David had remarked to Mr. Sibley one: “Mm, I’m gonna go pick me a nice, juicy lemon to eat.”

  “They’re starving, not suffering from Vitamin C deficiency. This is the land of salad fixings and vegan appetizers. People aren’t going to be able to survive on artichokes, bell peppers, and cilantro. We don’t grow corn, we don’t grow wheat, and we don’t grow potatoes. A hundred years ago people could have eaten sugar beets. Whatever crops out there that haven’t died of thirst are going to seed.”

  The trees had been stripped by amateurs who left a lot of fruits that could not be reached by hand or easy climbing. The horses had not been cruelly butchered on the spot. Rather, they had been taken alive and for meat, driven back to a makeshift butchery. The hay remained in the barn while the trailer was gone.

  Just then, Sam tore up the driveway and stopped in a flash, sending a wave of dust and diesel soot rolling towards the Sibleys. Rifle in hand, he jumped out of the truck dressed in full battle-rattle from his camouflage to his plate carrier.

  “What’s up?” he said, jogging over.

  The Sibleys started laughing at him. “Whoa Sam, hold your horses. You’re going a little heavy, don’t you think?”

  “Your wife said there was trouble.”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t say come loaded for bear.”

  Sam shrugged. He had been fast asleep when he was woken up and asked to report to the Anderson’s ranch.

  Tyler explained the situation. “And that’s why we asked for a camera, the respirators, and the other stuff.”

  Sam was the only detective among them, but an inexperienced and out of practice gang detective at that. Though he had never directly investigated a homicide, he was going to have to make do. “What the heck, we’re cops after all. Ain’t gonna let the end of the world stop us from taking paper.”

  The first task was photographing everything in detail. Mr. Anderson was clearly killed where he fell, shooting at whoever breeched the front door. Half a dozen empty cases from his carbine lay on the ground, except the carbine was absent. A bloody drag mark showed where Mrs. Anderson’s body was moved from the kitchen to the living room. The shot-out microwave dispelled any doubts where she died.

  The next task would be to take fingerprints, but they de
cided to deal with the bodies first, partly for the Andersons’ decency and partly to help the smell. Using some plastic greenhouse sheathing and shovels, they managed to roll the mushy bodies into the plastic and drag them into the yard. Mr. Sibley cut out the soiled portion of the carpet and padding as well.

  The house had been ransacked. Glen’s carbine, pistol, and his shotgun were gone. One unspent shotgun shell in the kitchen sink told Sam that the wife must have gotten nervous and tried pumping a round in while another was already in the chamber. No food was left in the house and several of the cabinets stood open.

  Using his patrol latent print kit, Sam lifted a few fingerprints off a jewelry box, the cabinet pulls, and the pantry doorknob. He had no idea how to fingerprint a decomposing body where the skin on the fingertips was already beginning to slough off. He was going through the motions.

  “So what do you think?” Sean asked Sam.

  “Well, they obviously came at night.” The Andersons had been dead for over a week based on the rate of decomposition and there had been gunfire nearby in this direction around then.

  “Maybe a horse sale gone bad? He knew that they wanted to eat the horses instead of use them and so he refused them. Then they came back.”

  Sam shook his head. “Meat, for sure. The hay is there and so is the tack gear, or whatever you call it. That wasn’t plain horse stealing. The pantry is big here and so is the chest freezer. The Andersons were Mormons, so it would be natural for them to have a deep larder for emergencies.”

  “How do you know they were Mormon?” Mr. Sibley asked.

  “That picture of the Temple on the wall. Mormons are supposed, or at least they were, to keep three years of food on hand. Plenty of fat still on their bodies. They weren’t at the horse eating stage yet themselves.”

  “It’s gotta be opportunistic,” Sean suggested. “It’s an isolated house, out of sight and half a mile from the next house. Easily accessible from the road and the horses can be seen by anyone driving by.”