Amir looked outside and could see smoke still rising in the distance in the twilight.
“We should go while we can. The fire isn’t out yet.”
They picked up their bags and moved further away from the church. This would be their life from now on. She didn’t know when it would end. Her partnership with Amir was questionable. Her reality was now one day at a time. She needed to find a way out.
Chapter 14
Spring came with few losses to the Vandals over the winter. The word around the city was a flu had wiped out a large portion of the population. The Vandals had kept to themselves in fear of infiltration by the Islamic army. They didn’t want any sabotage before the battle they knew was coming. The city block they occupied was locked down and runners with information would arrive at a check points trading intelligence for food. The system worked out fine.
In the early weeks of spring word came from the north about an army approaching Detroit. It wasn’t the forty thousand troops they had head about. It was still enough to know they were completely out numbered.
They only had a few days before the traveling horde would be at their doorstep. Isaac and Dustin looked over maps to figure out what would be the best course of action.
“I know it’s spring but I’m thinking we do was the Russians did.” Dustin said looking at the map.
They are going to try to secure these food sources before anything. Its too far away to put up a fight. If we try to secure the city we are stretched too thin.”
“So what are you thinking?” Isaac asked.
“If you can’t hold the east, take the west.”
“Chicago?” Isaac asked.
“We have connections there. We regroup and come back once the Muslims think they are safe. The locals with put up a fight. Thin out their numbers. Starvation will help. If they try to cross the border the Canadians will take care of them.”
Orders were given for everyone to pack up and move out by the end of the day. Everything was loaded up. Pallets were set up in the buildings to help burn them down preventing them from being used. The fields of fruit trees were ordered to be burned. The outpost were abandoned and all men were called back to the base to start loading up. Food that couldn’t be taken due to lack of space was handed out to the locals. The men weren’t mad about missing the invading army, they were happy to be hitting the road. This was the life they desired most.
The convoy drove straight to the highway. It was a non-stop trip to Chicago. In the front of the convoy an old deuce and half diesel truck led the way with a plow on the front pushing abandoned cars out of the way. The truck left a smell of donuts and fried food behind it, being run on old cooking oil. When they reached Kalamazoo they had a long string of cars they pushed out of the way and found large funeral pyres on the breakdown lanes. Bones and skulls starred at the men at they drove by. They didn’t think anything of it. Some were glad they weren’t stopping in that town. Something big had happened there and whoever won wasn’t somebody they wanted to mess with.
Reaching Chicago was more difficult than they suspected. The highway was so congested the truck was unable to move the cars to the shoulder. They took the nearest exit ramp and went into town. They were still far from their destination and started pillaging early. They stopped in every suburban town searching for food, fuel, and women.
Isaac didn’t care for how Dustin was running things. Isaac started to look for the opportunity to take over the convoy. They met little resistance along the way. The men were finally starting to get their fill. The long months of isolation had taken their toll and they took it out on anything and everyone they came across.
Early in the morning they were driving into a town. The streets were empty. Isaac suspected that word was traveling fast about them. As they drove through a neighborhood a guy named Scratch opened fire with his fifty caliber gun on a house. Isaac stopped the convoy.
Parking his chopper he walked up to the Humvee asking what happened.
“Up in the window, I saw someone. Sniper maybe,” Scratch said. A meth addict he was wild and unpredictable. He hadn’t consumed his drug of choice in over a year and was still feeling the effects of it. “You know I haven’t shot at anything in a while.”
Isaac walked up to the house littered with holes. Inside he found a man and woman. The guy was older, grey hair, gold chain around his neck. Food was scattered around but the convoy was fully stocked.
Isaac looked at the women. Long brown hair, curvy body, just his type.
“What a waste,” Isaac said walking out of the house without checking the rest of it.
“You pull that shit again and I’m putting a bullet in you,” Isaac said to Scratch. He mounted his chopper and the convoy left down the road. In the next town Dustin would take a bullet from a sniper and Isaac was glad he didn’t have to do the deed. The closer they came to Chicago the more resistance they came across. With their boss gone Isaac pulled rank and turned the convoy around. He doubted their connections in Chicago had made it over the winter with the amount of resistance they were meeting. The local gangs had taken control and the city.
The convoy had remained fully stocked by raiding the suburbs of the city and it was what the men most enjoyed. He knew his ability to stay in control depended on the men being happy, otherwise someone would be looking to take him out like he was going to do with Dustin.
Isaac made special plans to raid military bases and restock the men’s ammo and fuel. Many of the places he found had already been looted but the locals weren’t able to take everything and the mechanics of the convoy stole spare parts when they came across vehicles left behind. Their life now was on the road. It was what they had always wanted. Isaac had become the unquestionable leader of the Vandals and they would follow him into the pits of hell.
Chapter 15
The rhythm of the snoring had finally put John to sleep. The summer months had been productive for him in many ways. While his life had turned into routine it was a comfortable situation that reminded him of being in the Army. He hated his boss and didn’t understand the mission but he thrived on the stress and the moment by moment reality of life.
Morning was spent at breakfast and planning their next search party for supplies. He learned not to put his two cents in, it had never made a difference to their plans. They traded the Impala with the broken windshield for the pickup truck John captured during the battle on the highway.
His nights depended on whether or not Isabel slipped him a note when and where to meet. He didn’t know how he felt about her. She was a beautiful girl but her father hated him and John felt like it was her way to rebel. There was no chance for a serious relationship, whatever that meant these days.
Collins was officially put in charge of the patrols. John felt like he was in the military all over again. People with no experience in anything but kissing ass were moving up in the ranks. Chris was still the designated driver, once in a while John would hear him mumbling to himself about “taking orders from stupid.”
The only satisfaction John had these days was his night time rendezvous with Isabel, knowing that Collins wanted her. It was his own form of revenge for being forced to follow Collins orders. The Reverend had left John alone after faking his salvation by the lord. Having learned how smart John was, the Reverend back off not wanting to risk losing his flock. Collins was easy to control, John was not.
John had rebuilt his library and some of the books had come into question with the Reverend. Works of fiction that had nothing to do with Christianity were seen as a threat. John ignored the Reverend and kept his library. John knew he was valuable to the group and that it was a form of harassment to show authority. When other members of the congregation came to John's defense having borrowed books from him the Reverend backed off and left the matter alone. For once being a nice guy had paid off for John. He only wished these same people would speak up against the other horrible decisions being made on a day to day basis.
The summer
was coming to an end. John estimated that more than half of the people that stayed in the city after the Day had died from starvation or the flu. There were rumors of small pockets of the Islamic army in the city. Personally he thought it was made up by the Reverend to focus the blame of bad events on someone else. It was an old trick that politicians had been doing forever. He was really surprised he never mentioned the Jews, the classic scapegoats, but there weren’t any around to blame.
The night had grown quiet. John stayed in his corner with his three layer sleeping bag away from the fire place most of the people huddled around. He didn’t go into a deep sleep. Always paranoid of what might happened he dozed in and out as he did on deployments.
The explosion had sent him into a flashback of the war. He pulled his Glock from under his pillow and looked around the room. Dust and brick flew into the church from the rectory and office. The roof started to collapse and John thought that a mortar had hit the building. He forgot he was in a church. He forgot he was home in the states. He ran outside to see the car and the building on fire. A gas canister fell from the sky a few feet away from him. When he saw the rag burning in the car’s gas tank he waved everyone back inside.
“Get back, get back,” he yelled before the car exploded lifting the steel beast a few feet in the air setting it back down on its’ tires.
John was thrown back on the ground and knocked out having hit his head on the pavement. Collins and the rest of the men worked at putting out the fire. First they started tossing buckets of water on the flames. Chris told them not to and ran to find fire extinguishers. The men didn’t listen and spread the fire even more as the gasoline sat on top of the water feeding itself with the fuel and oxygen. When the flames moved towards them in the puddles they created the men finally started to listen. Chris came out of the church with a extinguisher and Collins grabbed it from him. He used the entire can to put out the car but didn’t have any left for the building.
“I need another,” Collins hollered.
“That was the only one,” Chris replied.
People were already rushing into the church to grab their possessions. John was unconscious during all of this. He awoke in the daylight hours on the far corner of the yard. He looked over to see the church still smoldering. His bags and equipment were with him. Chris stood by watching the building slowly collapse under it’s own weight.
“What the hell happened?” John asked.
“The gasoline caught fire. Blew the wall out by the offices and set the rest of the building on fire,” Chris answered.
“My stuff,” John said looking at his bags.
“Everything but your books,” Chris said. “I tried to grab everything, but…”
“But they wouldn’t let you,” John finished.
Chris didn’t reply and didn’t have to.
This was the second time that he had been reading the Catcher in the Rye and wasn’t able to finish it. That irritated him more than anything.
“Any casualties?” John asked.
“Nope, smoke inhalation. Would have been if you didn’t tell everyone to get back inside. But you know, Collins saved the day.” Chris snickered with his sarcasm.
“What’s happening now?” John asked.
“Isabel is talking about a farm her grandfather owned just outside of town. Sounds like we might set up shop there.”
Leaving was on John's mind. He was tired of the abuse he was under. Again he saved the day and yet was the last to be thought of. He didn’t want praise, he simply wanted respect. That was something he would never have here.
The truck had a full tank of gas and was full of people that were selected to go out to the farm. Isabel was the navigator being one of two people who knew the location. Armed men were sent in case the farm had been taken over by squatters.
The farm was abandoned. The yard was over grown and the doors still locked. Isabel found the key under the empty flower pot and went inside to the smell of dust and mildew. It needed some work but the house would be salvageable.
The truck went back to the church and the congregation was moved to the farm in a day. The Reverend wanted to retrieve the contents of the safe but it was left under a pile of rubble. Bricks and charcoal sat between him and the wealth of the church. He had a feeling it would still be there later and reluctantly left to their new base of operations.
The barn was used as a storage facility for supplies and equipment. The main yard served as the sleep area with campfires spread around for warmth and light. John set up his tent on the outskirts by the tree line. It made his visits with Isabel easier and when he finally decided to leave he could slip out in the night and disappear without anybody knowing. He wanted to leave but had nowhere to go. The security and the food kept him here, but there had to be something better for him out there. This wasn’t what his life was supposed to be. He still had an image of the American dream in his mind. It wasn’t the materialistic nonsense that it had become over the years. His was of freedom and independence. A loving wife and kids that had a future outside of the fear these people had. He didn’t know where he was going to find it but one day soon he would look for it. The dream wasn’t here in the politics, or the religious emptiness of faith. Somewhere out there was a place he could be himself. Somewhere he would help create a place that fought for the future. Here there was no plan.
John had an idea, that was something nobody could take away.
Note from the author: to find out what happens next read After the Day.
Remnants of the Day- The Lost Years Page 17
