by Wade Ebeling
They found it easiest to break into the doors and exterior compartments by using a 2” wide chisel and a 5 pound maul to pound open the gaps near the locks. After the gap had been widened, a long pry bar could then easily fit in to finish levering open the doors and panels. Allen, Jason, and Derek worked as a team, clearing out one camper at a time. This way, Allen could at least keep an eye on them, and keep them working at a steady pace.
Using a scoped rifle very similar to his brothers, John was charged with watching out for hostiles, which might include former workers and camper owners, and pulling the two trucks up after three or four RVs on each side of the row had been cleared. John’s leg injury prevented him from doing much else; despite Derek’s constant chiding.
Jason had grown a little despondent after twenty or so of the campers had yielded nothing in the way of liquor and only a few skunky beers had been found. Once they got to a section of large buses his luck changed dramatically. Nearly every one of the larger vehicles contained a nicely stocked cabinet bar, though some contained nothing but wine.
Lunch was called at 2 p.m., and only after Allen was satisfied with the haul. Dozens of full or nearly-full 30 pound, 20 pound, 11 pound, and little 1 pound liquid propane cylinders sat swaddled together under Allen’s truck cap. These were packed in alongside of three large generators, which had been pulled out of the newer style campers. An abundance of food, lights, tools, and bottles and cans of soda, water, beer, and liquor all haphazardly brimmed Derek’s truck bed.
The four men made a mess of one particularly nice bus’s kitchen while they made rice dishes and pork and beans for lunch, all while they passed around a bottle of spiced rum. The mood was of tipsy giddiness as they finished their robberies by emptying the large gas tanks of the “toy hauler” type campers into their trucks and any gas cans that they had procured.
All of a sudden, loud mechanical shrieks, followed by chest-thumping explosions came emanating from the south. This quickly had the four men scurrying around to finish loading up the trucks. A long series of increasingly close detonations forced a scared type of sobriety back into Allen. What sounded like a cloud head bursting preceded a deluge of raining bomblettes. The sounds came from a massive cluster bomb spreading its steely death, just a quarter mile away. Allen finally figured out what had destroyed the Police station.
There was no mistaking what was happening. Unmanned drones were pounding a large group of people with missile and bomb strikes. And that large cluster of doomed people was heading this way, and fast.
What Allen heard next was hundreds, possibly thousands, of horrified and scared voices screaming out in unison. He unslung the rifle and jumped into the driver’s seat, the slamming of the two truck doors behind him assured that the Brown brothers were also ready to go. Flashes of people darting across the pathways and dashing between the campers made Allen flinch, frightened at their sudden appearance. A great dust cloud rose into the still air as hundreds of feet pounded against the ash.
He started the truck with trembling fingers. Three, tall black men skidded to a halt on the gravel pathway thirty yards ahead, all looking longingly at the now-running truck. Allen was fumbling to put the truck into reverse when he noticed that Jason was still standing outside the open passenger door, stunned into inaction.
“Jason! Get in the fucking…” Allen yelled, but was cut short as gunshots started to ring out.
Jason grabbed his stomach and dropped to the ground.
Just as Allen’s mind yelled, “Leave him!” his feet hit the ground, already out of the truck. His hands were aiming the unproven rifle at the approaching trio without having to tell them to do so. From between the door and body of the truck, he fired aimlessly at first, just trying to get the men to choose a different course of action. Allen was actually surprised to see the one on the left drop his pistol to clutch at his neck, trying to staunch the flow of blood starting to pour out.
The three assailants sprinted for cover behind the large brown bus that Allen’s group had just made lunch in. As they struggled to gain a foothold on the loose gravel, Allen took careful aim. He centered the red dot aperture of the rifle’s ACOG on the man in the lead, furthest to the right, and put two well-placed shots into his chest. Not waiting to watch the first man drop, Allen shifted his aim to the man in the middle, firing three more rapid shots, striking him in the right arm and side. The third man, still holding his neck, dove over the two kicking bodies of his friends, landing just out of sight behind the rear of the bus.
As Allen’s tunnel vision fell away, he saw that the gunshots had drawn the attention of several more people, who were now heading down the clouded gravel lane in his direction. As he stared down the row, watching more and more people join the crowd from between the RVs, he fired two warning shots over their heads, which made most of them dive away, scrambling to find cover.
Allen turned to move around the back of the truck, hoping he could still help Jason. The Brown brother’s truck was seventy-five yards away now and still rolling. Derek’s hand was stuck out the driver’s side window, firing a pistol at some unseen threat further down and to the right. As Allen rounded the truck to the passenger side, Jason had already tossed his rifle onto the floorboards and was struggling to join it inside the idling truck.
Jason saw him coming around, screeching out, “What the fuck are you doing? Get in the damn truck!”
Allen reversed course immediately, slipping and sliding to get back around the truck and into his seat, shooting blindly over the door as he went. Bullets plinked and dinged into the body panels. One smashed a spider web into the windshield and completely blew out the rear window of the truck.
Jason had managed to get in, and he was now kneeling on the floorboards with his torso tipped over the passenger seat, the door beside him still hung open.
A large rock thudded onto the truck’s hood. Allen shifted into reverse and gunned the engine.
“PHOOM!” an AGM-114R “Romeo” Hellfire II missile rocked the ground just thirty yards in front of Allen’s truck. Where it had landed and detonated was almost exactly where Allen’s truck had been parked just moments before. Evidently, the missile, fired from a MQ-9 Reaper UAV, had locked onto the warm outline of the lunchtime bus, and not the cooled truck.
Most of the pursuers were obliterated in the initial detonation, mainly by the integrated blast fragmentation sleeve of the warhead. Those who didn’t die immediately were hurled forcibly to the ground as the shock wave blasted blazing hot wreckage off in every direction. Rocks, torn traces of soft tissue, and flaming chunks of RVs rained down on Allen’s truck as he raced backward. Caused by one of the larger shards of flying shrapnel, a large gash had opened up across the top of the aluminum cap.
As the dinged and scraped truck exited the cloud of swirling dust and debris, the Brown’s truck was nowhere to be found within the mirrors. Allen stood on the brakes when he came to the end of the row, reflexively jumping at the sound of Jason’s door slamming shut from the violent stop. Ahead of him, people ran in all directions, none of them certain about where to go next, or which way would lead to safety.
Allen turned to the right to make his way back out the open gate and onto the surface streets. Time seemed to slow as Daniel drove past another long aisle on his way out of the lot. His eye caught the spiraling movement of a missile in the hazy, smoke-streaked sky. The mere seconds that he had a clear line of sight down the row of RV’s was more than enough to see the carnage the explosive-tipped rocket inflicted.
The missile’s spiraling flight straightened as it zipped to the ground, landing directly in the center of a group of scampering men, women, and children. A blinding flash of blue-ringed, white light preceded the deafening clap of the speeding blast wave. Back lit by the blooming orange fireball that followed, small figures disintegrated along with a whole row of vehicles. Bits of shredded bodies and indefinable rubble got tossed into the air in a great plume. Mercifully, the blur of a camper blocked further viewin
g of the horrors taking place.
Northside RV storage was at the very south of a dead-end, industrial road. A half mile north of the storage lot’s entrance was Fourteen Mile Road, one of the east/west running series of mile roads that helped form the grid pattern of the traffic system. Taking this road to the east for just over two miles meant that Allen could turn south for another four miles to get back to the apartments, which were located on northeast corner of Ten Mile Road and Hooper Road.
The Brown brother’s silver truck sat waiting, halfway into the intersection at Fourteen Mile. Allen raced up to the left of their truck, as he rolled down his passenger window to talk to them.
“What, man? Go! I’ll follow you. Just go!” Derek implored. His eyes were wide and dilated from the shock to his system that the past few minutes had inflicted on him.
“Shhhhhaa Phoomp!” Another massive explosion shook the ground. This clanked together the propane bottles sitting in the back of the truck, clearly audible though the smashed back window. The RV lot was still a place of death for those people who had banded together to escape to the north.
“Go,” Jason said feebly.
People clamored over the fence behind the trucks, a speeding dust cloud at their backs. The truck tires squeaked in protest as Allen pulled in front of the Browns, turning hard to the right. Both trucks had just pushed their way through the stalled cars clogging the intersection at Klondike Avenue when a convoy of Stryker APC’s, and newer MRAP’s, roared into sight, trying to find a path down from the north. Half of the convoy continued to weave in and around stalled cars, heading further south on Klondike, the other half turned to the west on Fourteen Mile Road.
The desert tan military vehicles were attempting to seal off the entire area that Allen’s crew had just come from. The sounds of heavy machine gun fire cracking and smaller explosions thumping came soon after the convoy’s passage. Allen immediately recognized the familiar sounds as a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun and Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher. It was unbelievable to know that these weapons of destruction were being used on fellow Americans.
There would be no quarter given to those who surrendered.
The radio broadcasted nonstop when the news first broke of the terrorist attacks. Every station gratefully announcing that FEMA camps were taking in all refugees. These messages all stopped immediately following President Marshall’s declaration of martial law. Within a day, those broadcasts were replaced by a loop of a woman with a British accent proclaiming, “Due to the overwhelming popularity of the FEMA run Dislocated Persons Program, further assistance is not being provided at locations already at overflow capacity. Arrangements are being made, using all available measures, to secure the still dislocated people of this great country with additional locations to better service them. It is our hope that numerous camps will be up and running soon. We do ask that you please stay inside during these difficult times. This is to allow the transition teams a safe work environment. As always, stay tuned to your local emergency stations for further updates…”
Nothing was ever heard about the camps again, or what had become of the people they had taken in. The Department of Continuance offered nothing but threats on the radio now; and those were anything but idle.
“Uhhh! Damn this burns,” Jason groaned, trying to twist away from his rifle and into a less painful position.
“What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t get into the fucking truck?” Allen asked coarsely.
“Oh, man. I’m hurting…Ow!” Jason cried out, slumping further down onto the floorboards.
“Okay, enough of this bullshit. We need to check that wound out right now,” Allen said, softening his tone as he pulled into some kind of veteran lodge’s parking lot.
Allen shut off the truck and climbed out, then retrieved his day pack from the bench seat. As he started walking around to get to Jason’s door, he became distracted by the amount of damage inflicted to his truck. The cab, which looked like it had taken the brunt of it, had several tears in the aluminum, all lined up in a staggered row, and one giant rip along the top.
Miraculously, nothing had struck the propane tanks. Although one of the generators had been sacrificed, catching the same bullet that had busted out the windows. Raw metal dents showed where small-caliber bullets had struck the body of the truck without penetrating. Long gouges in the paint work showed where rocks had hit; either hurled by hand or 110 lb. air-to-surface missile.
The Brown brother’s truck slid to a stop, far too close to Allen’s knees to be considered unintentional. “What the hell are you doing?” John asked rudely. “We shouldn’t stop here. Didn’t you see all those giant ass Army trucks? What if they come this way?” he spewed, meaning to imply how dumb he thought Allen was.
“Listen, fuckhead, Jason has been shot. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking. Just let me patch him up quick, and then we can go,” Allen spat back, glowering at John. “Just shut up, and watch out for anybody coming down the street.” The whole exchange only served to reinforce Allen’s belief that including the brothers had been a bad idea from the start. You could almost smell that this group was destined to unravel and fail.
The look in Allen’s eyes convinced John not to reply. Derek punched him in the arm, whispering, “Quit being an asshole, John.”
John just turned his head to look back down the street; more to avert Allen’s stare than to actually look for danger. After Allen turned and walked away, John whined to his brother, “I told you we should try to get to Mom and Dad’s place!”
“Will you please just…shut the fuck up?” Derek implored. He then kicked his way out of the truck and raced around to see if he could be of help in any way.
Allen opened the passenger door, and got Jason sitting upright on the seat without causing him too much additional pain. “Alright, Jason, pull up your shirt for me,” he said warmly, while rummaging through his pack for supplies, pulling out a large plastic bag that held a home-made first aid kit. Allen removed from the bag some sterile gauze pads, cloth tape, a tampon, still in its plastic applicator, and a tube of anti-bacterial ointment.
“Man, this sucks,” Jason groaned, trying to work his sleeve-less red flannel up and over his beer belly.
Allen tore open one of the gauze packs and wiped away most of the blood from around the small entrance wound on Jason’s right abdomen, six inches from his navel. Then, he wiped the slightly larger exit wound above his hip, four inches away from the bullet’s entry point.
“Could you grab me a bottle of that water, Derek?” Allen issued, without taking his eyes off Jason’s wounds.
“Sure thing, Allen. Not a problem. I’ll be right back…What the hell happened to your truck, man?” Derek asked, while running back to his truck to get the water. “Is he going to be alright?” And there it was; he had asked the question that everyone, except for Allen, was thinking. Before getting an answer, he ran back with two bottles of the pilfered water.
Allen waited until Derek had come back and handed him one of the warm bottles before answering, “He should be fine. There really isn’t that much blood. And what little is coming out is not bright red. Might need a couple stitches where it came out. Tore up the skin pretty good…”
Allen poured some of the water onto the wounds, as Jason hissed, “Still hurts like a son-of-a-bitch.”
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky. I’m sure it hurts like hell, but you should be happy you have that beer belly,” Allen laughed. “Looks to me like all that bullet managed to hit was some fat!”
“I don’t feel all that lucky,” Jason moaned.
“Lucky? That’s funny, Allen. If he didn’t have that big gut, he wouldn’t have been shot,” Derek chimed in.
“Screw you, you skinny bastard!” Jason yelled, before starting to laugh. “You are probably right though…”
“Hey, um, Derek? Can you please stop making him bleed more, and get me a couple of pain pills out from that plastic bag?” Allen asked, joining in the
laughter.
“I was just saying…” Derek said timidly, and then added, “Can I give John a couple? He keeps bitching up a storm about his stupid leg.”
“Go ahead. I’ve got a ton back at my place,” Allen replied. Derek handed Jason two of the pills then left to go give John the same amount.
Allen washed and dried Jason’s now barely leaking wounds. He applied ointment to two clean gauze pads and taped them into place. He got Jason laughing again by saying that he would have stuffed the tampon into the holes if they had been bleeding badly enough.
“Stop laughing. You are going to get those holes oozing again. Just sit as still as you can for me. The good news is, you just got out of helping us unload all this crap,” Allen informed Jason.
“Thanks, Allen. I appreciate it, man. It already feels better,” Jason sighed. The gratitude in his voice was quite evident.
“No worries,” Allen said, giving Jason a comforting pat on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Then we will get you back home. We’ll put you up on that nice new pink couch of yours with a beer in each hand.”
Jason started laughing again. “Yeah, good thing she had that diaper on, am I right?”
Allen walked over to John’s window, shouldering his pack. He wanted to try and make amends with the brash man, even though he did not feel at fault. Getting everyone on the same team was going to be the only way they would have a chance to make it through this alive.
“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to blow up on you like that,” Allen said remorsefully.
“No, I’m sorry. I had no idea Jason was hurt. Is he going to be okay?” John asked, equally remorseful.
“He’ll be fine in a few days. How about you? Want me to look at your leg?” Allen asked, as he turned to expose the pack, showing him that it would not be a problem.
