by Cooper, DJ
A few mumbles and discussions were beginning to surface before Matt continued, “There is a foreclosed house behind us. It is not locked and not in the best shape, but we feel like with some work it could be quite comfortable. I understand it does not belong to us, but we also feel like if we make some repairs and clean it up, the mortgage company would not complain as they would normally have to pay to have this done.”
There were a few murmurs and complaints again as people considered this. Herb spoke, saying, “I think this looks promising. You know Janice and I are not spring chickens and I worry we would be a burden to you all.”
Dez replied, “Don’t you worry about that I know lots of ways you two would be of help, and we would feel better knowing you were close enough to keep an eye on. We wouldn’t want you ‘not so spring chickens’ getting into any mischief out here.”
Herb laughed. “Count us in, but I think we would need some help getting over there with our stuff.”
Matt told him not to worry about that because they would get everyone from both groups to pitch in and help everyone. Frank said he and his family would go as did Jim and Rose, as well as Joe and his son, Cameron .
Amanda, who was in her mid-twenties, just looked at them like she thought they were kidding, saying, “I just bought this house and there is no way I am leaving it. You’re all crazy, do you know that? The government isn’t going to let things get out of hand. They will have this all fixed by next week, and when they do, you will all be in trouble for using that house.” She got up and stomped out the door, slamming it loudly as she left.
Randy and Sue arrived shortly before the outburst and struggled to get up to speed, but Sue knew she was not leaving her home for anything and dug in on the subject.
Sam suggested that those going over should get ready to go. Shaking hands, it was agreed that they could come for the first things the next morning . Randy came up to Sam and asked if they could have a few days to discuss it, wondering if they would still be welcome if they didn’t come at the same time as the other folks did.
Sam said, “Sure man, you know how to contact us if you need to.”
The trio excused themselves and told Frank they would see him tomorrow. Frank followed them out because he had something else to discuss with them. Frank said, “I know it may be nothing but I have to tell you about George.”
Matt looked at him quizzically and asked, “What about George?”
Frank looked uneasy as he was speaking about it. He was obviously very concerned. “George has been coming around with his guys saying he oversees the security of the town, although who appointed him I’ll never know. But he said he will have patrols out checking on people. This sounded good until he got to the part about the payment for his services.”
Steaming with anger, Dez said, “Payment? What kind of payment?”
Frank replied, “Various things… food, money, favors. But the thing that concerned me was when he said we had to give our guns to his militia people. The pretense was so they could better protect us. I think the sooner we get moved, the better. I’ll get everyone together by tomorrow, but George’s patrol is supposed to come back in two days. I’m afraid it will get ugly if they see us moving.” Looking more troubled with each sentence, he continued, “George is on some kind of power trip, and I fear he’s getting a little off if you know what I mean?”
They agreed it would be best to get everyone moved the next day no matter how many trips it would take.
Chapter 9
“Power is Out”
The law in an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.
-Peter Kropotkin
September 25
They moved all the residents that wished to go over to the foreclosed house. They were organizing the home to accommodate its guests when Matt heard shouting from his own house.
Motioning for Sam and Aaron to follow him, he shot a quick look and nod to Frank to keep an eye on the ladies there. They bolted from the door and headed across the yard in a trot to see what was going on.
When they entered the house, they saw George and a couple of new guys they’d never met before in the kitchen. Walking in they overheard Dez saying, “Well, I hope you’re not expecting any payment from us. We can take care of ourselves just fine, thank you.”
Matt walked up to George asking, “What’s going on here?”
George said, “You people need to understand that to be able to do patrols we need supplies.”
Dez sneered, “You people?”
Matt was now angry as well and almost yelling. “So you mean to extort them from your friends and neighbors? What are you? The next mafia?”
George was getting red in the face and snapped back at him, “We know you guys have ammunition and food, all we want is our fair share to pay for the protection.”
Matt was shaking his head in disbelief and looking at George like he had gone crazy. “George, we have a sheriff for that. I understand you may perform your little patrols in town and feel like a big shot. But, you and your crew have never been out this way on your patrols… not one time. You… don’t have a share of anything here.”
George was getting ready to yell, but Matt cut him off. “Now, I am only giving you this one-time courtesy because I once considered you a friend. “
George scowled at them while shaking his fist. He started to speak but Matt cut him off again. “Never come back here to take anything from my family again.” Stepping closer so only he could hear he whispered, “I shall not ask you so nicely next time to leave. I need you to understand this though… you come back and one way or another, I don’t care if it’s of your own free will or in a box … you will be leaving.”
George was beside himself and spitting as he yelled between gritted teeth. “We’ll just take it then. I knew you two would be a problem.” Looking toward the men he’d brought he motioned with his head. “Go find what we need.”
Turning back to Matt, he said with a sneer, “Once we get what we came for then we’ll leave.”
When one of the men turned to head for the bedrooms he was stopped by Jeremy. He’d stepped out of the bedroom door and was holding his shotgun with his finger on the trigger, mere inches from the man’s face. “I think you will leave now.”
Connor was on the other side and was also taking aim. He startled them when he said, “I agree, right now.”
Sam and Aaron stepped out from behind the counter revealing that the whole time they both had pistols in hand poised for action if he failed to comply.
George‘s speech stammered as he said to the guys he was with, “We’ll come collect from them later. We have others to visit today. Let’s go.”
Turning to leave, he looked back saying, “This ain’t over, Burns.”
To which Matt replied, “Yes it is. Take my advice and don’t come back, George.”
After George left Jeremy watched to make sure he and all his guys had indeed left. Once he was sure they’d gone they stood talking about it.
Congregating in the kitchen, Connor asked. “What the hell was that all about?”
Matt explained what Frank had told him after they went to see them at the cul-de-sac. Shaking his head side to side he said, “I’m actually shocked that he came here. I really didn’t think he’d have the balls.”
Dez interrupted his thoughts, almost shouting. “I don’t know what’s going on. I know that there are riots and stuff happening because of the banking situation, but honestly, the shit has not even begun to hit the fan and here he is acting like King Tut.”
Sam shook his head and waved his arm in the direction George had just gone. “This can’t be real; I thought we were the ones jumping the gun moving these folks over here as it was. Honestly, I just felt like we wanted to get a jump on things. I felt like we were ahead of the game and
not waiting for it to actually hit, and here it is up close and personal.”
Aaron just nodded and headed out the door to go over to the other house. He knew George and worried about the threats he’d made. He wanted to tell the others about what happened and have everyone be prepared just in case George made good on his word.
That evening they barbequed between the two houses. The kids played while the adults sat and talked about things moving forward. The evening felt relaxed and the group seemed to be somewhat organized.
Some years back the county had installed one of those bright lights that automatically came on in the evening. It was so bright it would light up the whole yard and made it nice to gather outside. The kids were playing tag under it while the parents sat around the fire. Without warning it suddenly went dark. The kids began screaming, “It’s dark, we’re scared.”
They collected their children to go to bed when Janice asked, “Does this light go out often?”
Dez shook her head. “No, it never has; it’s connected directly to the power lines.”
Jeremy came strolling out announcing, “Power’s out.”
At first, they thought it was the bulb, but when they realized it was all the electric in the area they started to talk about why. There had been no storms or anything to cause an outage. Matt checked his phone, and looked up at everyone, “Phone turns on so it wasn’t an EMP.”
Janice looked at him, wrinkling her forehead. “An EM what?”
Matt explained, “An EMP. It’s an Electro Magnetic Pulse. It can instantly fry all electronics. It is generally produced by either a solar flare or a nuclear device.”
Janice became nervous asking, “Did we get nuked?”
Matt assured her everything was fine, that it was just a power outage. “I’m going to go on up and check with Ole Arthur to see if he knows what’s going on.”
He then planted a big kiss on Dez and said, “Watch out for all our little ducklings here, dear.”
Dez laughed. “You’re so weird, git, go see what Arthur knows.”
Jeremy and Connor promptly copied what Matt had done and headed down the road with him.
Charleigh shook her head with a smirk. “Mom, that man is a bad influence” and laughed, as she went in to put Ariel to bed.
After some time passed almost everyone was already in bed. A few people still milled about, lingering in the house chatting and waiting for the news from Arthur. Matt and the others came back. They looked around saw and that Lynn and Tawny were still there chatting about the garden with Dez. Charleigh and Toni were playing cards with Sam; who was also talking to Aaron and Frank about security and losing the game horribly.
Everyone stopped and looked at Matt, who’d looked like he’d seen a ghost. One by one they each stopped talking until all were quiet waiting for the news from Arthur’s place.
Matt put his hand up to motion everyone to the kitchen as he walked to the counter, grabbed a beer from the fridge and downed half of it before speaking. Jeremy and Connor also grabbed a beer and asked everyone to sit down. They were telling them as they came about the table that they’d learned a lot from ole Arthur.
Arthur lived about half a mile up the road from them. He was retired army. During his retired days, he’d been bored looking for something to take up the free time. Out of that boredom, he’d started toying with ham radios a few years ago. Matt went up to see what could be so interesting on a few occasions. He knew from what Arthur told him that ham radios could reach many people in various parts of the world.
Matt sat down with his beer in hand and gathered his thoughts, processing exactly what this all meant. Glancing around the table, he sighed. “I don’t know if the power is going to come back on any time soon.”
They all started talking at once. “What? Why? What’s going on? Was it an EMP?”
Matt put his hands up for them to settle down and continued. “Apparently it’s the power grid. There were transfer stations hit by Isis all over the country. They think hundreds of them. Big ones. No one is really sure how many were hit and how many just fried from the overload.”
Momentarily pausing and thinking while he took a swig of his beer, he wiped his lip with his sleeve before continuing. “There is chatter on the ham stations that it was all planned. They say there was no computer virus. It was all a smoke screen. There is speculation that the bankers and government knew a financial collapse would happen after the end of the petrodollar. It caused the bankers to panic and suspend banking.”
He paused to polish off the rest of his beer, but before he could continue Charleigh said, “I don’t know who this Isis guy is but from what I hear he is very bad.”
Everyone laughed. Charleigh was quite smart but sometimes she would say the funniest things. Some things just eluded her and it was at these moments that she made comments like these. It was a good laugh because the situation was indeed bad and things would not be the same again for some time.
Matt explained, “Isis is everywhere; they’re terrorists and some are here in the US. Those on the chatter seem to think that they came across the Mexican border in Texas. They think they have been filtering into other parts of the country for the past few months, maybe even years. With the president letting so many illegals in, none of them were checked out. They slipped in with the massive influx of unregulated illegals and have set up cells. The different intel suggests that they planned this simultaneous attack.”
The murmuring began again, and Jeremy spoke up, “Cell coverage is mostly gone, no one is sure about land lines yet. Most of the cable and internet is not working but Arthur said some of the news stations are still broadcasting as most have generators. The one thing that they are all reporting is widespread outages.”
“Now for the bad part,” Conner interjected.
“And this isn’t bad?” Lynn said.
Connor stood shaking his head as Matt spoke. “The reports of Ebola? Grossly understated. It appears to be airborne. Either that or something else is spreading it. The chatter is that there are infected people in almost every major city. They say that the numbers seem to grow by the day and FEMA is relocating people, but we already knew this from talking to Danny.” Taking a moment to gather his thoughts again he continued. “There is also speculation that all of it is a multi-pronged attack by Isis. It has possibly been orchestrated and helped by persons inside our own government.”
The silence was deafening at this point as Matt continued, “LA, Vegas, Houston, as well as other border areas are all taken over by gangs and cartels; MS13 they think. Meanwhile cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and many other areas along the east coast are practically burning out of control from the riots.”
Although most in the group were what might be called “Preppers” of some sort, the looks remained concerned. As Matt continued to speak of what was going on and could potentially come to pass the reality of what this all meant was shown on their faces.
Matt continued, “Many people from these cities have been relocated to what FEMA is calling aide stations. But most reports state they are more like internment camps; once a person goes in they don’t come out. Do you remember what Danny said he saw? I think he was right about it.”
Sam stood up, seeing the others were visibly shaken, and wanted to calm everyone. “OK then, we all knew this could happen. I think we should all get some rest and we will fill the others in on it tomorrow. We need to have a meeting and get some organization. We don’t have time to sit in shock and we have to act fast. The first priority is that we work at getting this place fortified and set up for a longer term.”
Everyone knew there would be no sleep tonight but they agreed it was best to try and sleep on it. In the morning the others would be involved with plans and sorting out how to move forward.
While they were still saying their good nights’, there was a knock at the door. Hesitantly Dez opened the door and was surprised to find standing there Loel, his wife, and their kids.
; Matt leaped off the stool and went over to them. He shook his friend’s hand and said, “Loel, I wondered about you. Where have you been?”
Dez ushered them in as he spoke, “Rebecca was really sick. She had a lot of the symptoms they said were the signs of Ebola. We knew she went to Atlanta a few weeks ago, so I worried about what that might mean and quarantined myself and my family.”
Everyone gasped, and he continued, “She’s better now and as you can see it is not Ebola. It was a respiratory infection that began to clear almost immediately after she started to take the antibiotics, but I had to be sure. I couldn’t take any chances of infecting others.”
Dez and Lynn were fussing over Rebecca, making her comfortable when Loel again began to speak. “George came by with a couple of thugs today demanding something he called payment. He was yelling at me that I had not shown up for patrols and when I explained Rebecca was very ill, he cursed at me and called her Typhoid Mary.”
Loel hung his head and continued, “They took everything, Matt, all the food in the house, our gear, the two guns I kept there, and anything else they wanted, Rebecca’s jewelry, and even my damn TV.”
After a few moments pause, he continued again, “He said I wouldn’t need it because we were all going to die from the plague.”
Matt was furious. “He tried that here but was turned away empty-handed.”
Loel said, “Most of what he got was everyday stuff, all of my preps and supplies are down at my storage unit. Our house is small with very little storage, and I didn’t want people to know what I had. We need to get there before they get a brain between them and think to start checking those.”
Matt told them to rest and that they would go and get it tomorrow. Dez and Lynn got out some sheets and blankets. The sofa was a fold out bed, and they set it up for the family to share and said they would settle them in tomorrow more permanently.
Matt put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s not worry about it tonight. You and your family should stay with us for now. Your house in town is not safe, and if you had issues we could not be of much help to you in defending that location. I will explain all that has happened tomorrow.”