The Power Struggle Series (Book 2): The Downward Spiral

by Douglas, Brian

  "Yeah, soup is definitely not exciting, but I’ll take boring over nothing," Alex said.

  The men got a large cooking pot from one of the cabinets and began to prepare the meal.

  "We still have enough firewood out there?" Alex asked Jack.

  "Yeah, your brother in law stacked a bunch of wood out there yesterday."

  "Good. You want to finish up here? I'll go get a fire going," said Alex.

  "Sound good."

  "By the way, where are Naomi and Lilliana?"

  "They’re at our house looking through your medicinal plants and survival medicine books," Olivia said.

  "I'm glad we've got our own personal medical team with the two of them," Alex said as he exited through the kitchen door, which led to the back yard.

  Alex gathered some wood from the large pile beside the outdoor fire pit. When the group decided that the Anderson home would be a common use area, they built the fire pit with paving stones and set a grill across the top to be able to cook over the fire.

  Next to the wood was a jar of petroleum jelly with cotton balls. Alex took two greasy cotton balls out and laid them in the fireplace with some small twigs. He used a lighter to light the cotton balls, which ignited the twigs. A minute later he had a mini inferno burning, just as Jack came out of the house with the pot, which he placed on the grill.

  "We're going to have to start being more active with gathering wild edible plants and try to save some of the canned vegetables for the winter months, when there will be less to gather around here," Alex said.

  "I agree," Jack said. "We've been relying too much on the canned stuff. Now that we are hunting more there's no reason we can't gather plants along the way. Hell I've got plenty of dandelions popping up in my yard that would probably feed us all for a week."

  "Let's try to at least get some cattails from Stony Brook tomorrow when we check the squirrel traps. They will be a good source of starchy carbs."

  "It's kind of sad that a couple Irish guys like us can't get a friggin potato to eat," Jack said.

  "Man, I miss potatoes," Alex agreed. "I bet there's someone in Ireland doing an infomercial right now to raise money to send potatoes to the poor starving Americans."

  "Now that would be something, huh?"

  "For the price of a cup of coffee each day, you can sponsor an entire family of four."

  The men enjoyed a hearty laugh poking fun at their predicament as they sat by the fire, patiently waiting for the soup to boil.

  CHAPTER 2

  When the goose soup was finished, Jack and Alex brought the large pot back inside the house where the children were still playing. Naomi and Lilliana had joined them and their entire group was now present, with the exception of David and Tony, who were still on security watch. Martina served two portions into containers with lids, one for each of the missing men.

  Alex pulled out his two-way radio from his small sling bag that he carried with him anytime he ventured outside the house. Olivia always jokingly called it his “murse” or “man-purse.” Alex keyed the mic on the radio calling David and Tony. "Hey guys, we're all set with dinner over here. We're bringing food over, so be sure to let us in."

  "Great, I'm starving," said David in response.

  "Can't wait!" Tony chimed in.

  Prior to the EMP attack, Alex had stored some essential electronics, along with a small solar power setup, in a large Faraday cage style box, which protected them from the effects of the EMP. The robust set of Baofeng brand two-way ham radios, as well as a set of less powerful Motorola Talkabouts that he saved, were now important elements in the neighborhood survival plan. It gave them instant communication between each of the homes and they were especially important for those on security watch. Whenever there was a potential threat to the neighborhood, backup was able to respond quicker and could usually get valuable information about what they would be confronting before they arrived on scene.

  "I’ll bring Tony his food, make sure you bring this over for Leo," Jack said handing another container to Alex. Jack had boiled some of the organs from the geese separately in a coffee can for the dog to enjoy.

  "I'm sure that ferocious beast will send you his love," Alex said, taking the special treat.

  He carried the two containers across the street to the Kim's residence, where David was keeping watch of the parkway and the main entrance to their neighborhood. Alex scanned the area and listened, but didn't hear or see anything out of the ordinary.

  When he arrived at the front door, David opened it to let him in. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and pistol in a holster on his belt. The Ruger Mini-14 and Beretta 9mm were taken from a gang after their failed attack on the neighborhood and David gladly adopted them, even though he hadn’t had much experience with firearms in the past.

  When Alex stepped inside, Leo ran over to greet him as well, sniffing excitedly at the fragrant feast. "How's it been over here today?" Alex asked, opening Leo's bowl of food and placing it on the floor in the living room, which had been the scene of a heinous attack on Mr. and Mrs. Kim. There were still signs of blood stains in the living room from the Kim's as well as in the kitchen and foyer from other bad guys that had attacked in two separate home invasions. The neighbors did their best to clean the house, but blood stains were hard to remove, once they set in. The visual reminders were always unsettling to Alex.

  "It's been quiet," David said, reaching down to scratch Leo’s head as he ate his food. "I only saw one person on the parkway earlier this morning and he didn't stop or pay much attention to the neighborhood."

  "It's been a couple of days since we have had any trouble makers come by," Alex said. "I hope that's a good sign, but we can't get lazy. That night I got snuck up on, I wasn't paying attention until they were already in the house."

  The night that David and his family used the nearby waterways to travel to the neighborhood from their home in Dedham, Alex was on security watch in that very house. A local gang leader, Frantz Jean-Pierre, and eight of his henchmen broke into the house looking for the food that the Kim's had. After a difficult battle, the neighbors of Oak Tree Lane prevailed with help from Alex's close friend, Erik Walker, who lived nearby.

  Alex ran a finger across the scar on his shoulder where he had been grazed by a bullet in the firefight inside the house that night. Naomi was able to stitch the wound shut and, after a few weeks, it was almost completely healed, with only some minor scabbing that remained. The wound was not serious, but it gave him a strange sense of pride because it represented his role in helping to defend his neighborhood.

  “How are the kids doing over there?” David asked.

  “They are having a blast. I’m glad they have each other to play with,” Alex replied.

  “Yeah, when everything went to hell in a handbasket, it was hard keeping Eli in the house for those first few days. He didn’t have anyone to play with. Even though he still seems to be wondering why we can’t watch TV, he’s at least happy playing with his cousins and the Marino kids.”

  “I feel bad for Erik’s daughter, Samantha,” Alex said, thinking about his friend’s 7 year old little girl who was the same age as Isabella. “It’s been a whole month now and she hasn’t had anyone to play with up there, besides their Pit Bull.” The Walker family only lived a couple of miles away on a hilltop in nearby Dedham, but given the dangerous times, the distance felt greater.

  “She would have a great time with the kids here and Bella would probably be glad to have another girl around,” David said.

  “I’ve talked to him about moving down here with us, but he’s got a lot of supplies to move and it’s probably too risky to try it. Anyway, I’m going to head home to get some sleep before I switch off with you later,” Alex said. “I have a hard time on these overnights, when I don’t get enough sleep.”

  “Yeah, well don’t go getting too much sleep. I’d like to see my wife and son before they go to bed themselves.”

  “Don’t worry, Olivia will be sure t
o wake me in time. I think she sleeps better now when Leonidas is guarding the place at night,” Alex said, giving Leo a quick pat on the back before turning to leave.

  Alex crossed the street to his house and went around the side to the kitchen door, which was left unbarricaded during the day, when the family was next door at the Anderson’s house. The family had gotten into the habit of leaving the house locked down, for the most part. Since they spent most of their days next door, they did not see the need to remove the panels of plywood from the windows and always left the front door barricaded as a precaution. The security measures were not meant make the house an impenetrable fortress, but it gave them a measure of protection that could delay any potential home invaders, giving the family sufficient time to respond to the threat. With the added benefit of having the large and well trained Doberman in the house, the family was confident that he would alert them to any prowlers long before they set foot on the porch.

  Alex climbed the stairs to his bedroom, which was nearly pitch black, with the dark curtains closed. The weather was still too hot out for it to be comfortable and he found himself looking forward to the cool down that would come in another month with the arrival of fall. Of course that would also bring them closer to the brutal winter months, which was a concern for the group. Each of the homes had a fireplace, but none of the neighbors had relied on them before, as the homes also had oil based furnaces to heat them in the past.

  There was plenty of available wood in the nearby Stony Brook reservation, but all of it had to be processed by hand, using a few saws and axes that the neighbors collectively owned, since no one had a chainsaw. Alex regularly chastised himself for not buying one beforehand. With all of the cars lying dormant from the effects of the EMP, there was still plenty of gasoline to be scavenged in the neighborhood as well as the parkway, which had a number of abandoned cars on it. Nevertheless, the group did not want to be caught unprepared for winter, so they tried to work on collecting wood a couple of times a week to begin stockpiling it for when they would need it. This spread out the labor intensive work for the most part to make it somewhat more manageable.

  Alex removed his pistol belt and placed it inside the nightstand drawer. The thing resembled a ‘bat utility belt’ carrying his 9MM Smith and Wesson M&P, a couple of extra magazines, a small Mora fixed blade knife and an empty pouch that normally carried extra 00 buckshot shells for the Mossberg, which he had locked in the safe in the basement, since he didn’t take it out on his morning hunt.

  Alex then laid his sling bag in the corner of the room on the floor and quickly changed into his jogging shorts and collapsed upon the king sized bed. Within minutes, he was asleep and dreaming of a time in the past when the basic survival needs were readily available with the push of a button, turn of a knob or flip of a switch.

  A few hours later, as the sun had begun to make its descent, a shot rang out, startling Alex out of his slumber. In his groggy state, he wasn’t immediately able to process what happened.

  “Alex there’s trouble!” Olivia shouted from downstairs as more shots followed.

  Hearing his wife’s frantic voice, Alex jumped up from the bed and grabbed the pistol belt from the drawer. He did not have time to get dressed, so he ran downstairs shirtless and barefoot wearing only his shorts.

  “What’s going on?” He asked as he saw Lilliana and the kids all huddled together in the corner of the living room. Olivia had her gun drawn and had taken up a defensive position in front of the others near the couch as she aimed in the direction of the front door.

  “David called on the radio to say that some men had stopped on the parkway,” Olivia explained. “Jack responded to say that he was on his way over to help and then there was shooting.”

  Alex ran to the kitchen door to exit the house on a side where he would have some cover. He drew the pistol and quickly approached the corner to try and figure out where the fighting was taking place. Tony ran by in the middle of the street carrying his AR15 and waved Alex out into the open.

  “I think Gunny’s hit!” He shouted.

  Alex ran to catch up to Tony and he could see three men lying in the street near the corner. Leonidas was standing guard nearby, while David was kneeling beside one of the men, who Alex realized was Jack. David was putting pressure with his bare hand on a wound, just above Jack’s right knee. Tony quickly pulled out a bandana from his pocket and took over, pressing the cloth onto the wound.

  “What happened?” Alex asked, worried about the amount of blood that had already begun to pool around Jack’s leg.

  “That damn peckerhead got the drop on me,” Jack said. He sounded like he was more annoyed by what happened than he was hurting from the injury.

  “No time for chit chat, we need to get him off the street,” Tony directed.

  David pulled out his radio and called for support. “Naomi, Lilliana, Jack was hit in the leg, meet us at his house with the trauma kit!”

  “Gunny, you need to keep pressure on this, while we get you out of here,” Tony said as the three men prepared to lift their friend. Jack grimaced briefly as he took over pressing the soaked bandana into his own leg.

  David and Tony slung their long guns over their shoulders and Alex holstered his M&P and put on the pistol belt, which he had been carrying.

  Jack let out a quick chuckle. "Shit Stone, you're all dressed up with nowhere to go."

  Alex suddenly realized how funny he must have appeared, standing there in running shorts and a gun belt.

  "At least they missed his funny bone," Tony quipped. "Let's go!"

  The three men lifted Jack and carried him the short distance to his house and were greeted by a worried looking Andrea and a determined looking Naomi. The ER nurse had seen plenty of trauma victims in her day and she knew that time was of the essence, so she was eager to begin working on Jack. Lilliana joined them as the men instinctively carried the patient through the living room into the kitchen. Their recent experiences taught them that blood on tile floors was a lot easier to clean up than on the wood floors.

  Naomi and Lilliana took over as soon as the men laid him on the floor. Their makeshift trauma kit was simply a large tool box with the meager medical supplies that were scavenged from the neighborhood homes.

  Lilliana grabbed a feminine pad, which she pressed into the wound after tossing aside the blood soaked bandana. When Alex was grazed in his shoulder during the gunfight with Frantz's gang a month earlier, Tony used the same method to patch him up. Feminine pads were readily available in most of the empty homes and the Kim’s had a good amount with the supplies for their convenience store in their basement. This made them a natural choice for the makeshift trauma kit, given their innate ability to soak up fluid.

  Alex remembered how Tony made fun of him for having the feminine pad duct taped to his shoulder after patching him up. He quietly hoped that Jack would recover and that Tony would have an opportunity to tease his old friend in the same manner. He looked over and saw the look of concern on Tony's face.

  Tony glanced back at Alex and soberly said, "Hey Stone, you should get some clothes on."

  "Yeah, right," Alex said. "I'll head over to the Kim's after to guard the front of the neighborhood."

  “Good plan,” Tony said. “Martina is up in our attic with the .308 for now covering the front.”

  "Bring Leo back to our house to stay with Olivia and the kids," David said. “I think those two guys were by themselves, but I still don’t like leaving our family alone over there.”

  “Got it,” Alex said “Come on Leo.”

  Alex hurried back across the street towards his house with Leo following alongside him. He looked over at the two bodies lying in the street. On the corner, a few feet away from the bodies, he could see a full shopping carriage, although he could not see what was in the carriage from that distance. Alex decided that he would take a look, once he got some clothes on. He looked up at the attic window of the Marino house and gave a wave to Martina, who had her
rifle trained on the entrance to the neighborhood.

  When Alex reached the small side porch outside his kitchen door, Olivia was waiting for him. “Is Jack ok?" She asked, as Leo entered the home and immediately sought out Elias.

  "I don't know," Alex said. "Naomi and Lilliana are working on him. It looked like he lost some blood, but what do I know? He was cracking jokes, so hopefully that's a good sign. Either way, all we can do is pray for him, while they work on patching him up. Anyway, I need to get dressed and head over to the Kim’s to take over guard duty."

  “Ok, go,” Olivia said, understanding that the urgency of the situation didn't leave much time for conversation.

  Alex ran up the stairs and got dressed in a hurry. It was starting to get dark outside and he knew that Martina’s ability to cover the front of the neighborhood was limited in the darkness. He grabbed his sling bag and replaced the battery in the radio with a freshly charged one from the charging cradle next to the solar gear. The master bedroom had large windows on three sides of the house, so the solar panels, charge controller, inverter and 12 volt battery were all mounted onto a cart that could be moved around the room depending on the position of the sun.

  Once he was dressed and ready to go, Alex put on his pistol belt and went to retrieve his shotgun from the basement. Before leaving, he kissed his wife and said goodnight to his nephew and children. He stooped down to hug Isabella and kissed her on the forehead, “I love you, princess.”

  “Papi, I’m scared,” She said. “Why do the bad people keep coming?”

  “I don’t know, big girl,” Alex said calmly as he cupped her face with his hand. “But you are safe right now and we just need to keep trusting God to take care of us. Besides he sent us Saint Leo to scare away any bad guys that come near our house. If he doesn’t scare them, he can just knock them out with his stinky breath. Go ahead and give it a smell. PEE-YEW, STINKY!” Alex tried to use humor, whenever possible to lighten the mood and ease the stress for the kids. Isabella tried to suppress a smile and hid her face in her father’s shoulder, not ready to completely give up her fears.