by Jeff Kirkham
Mark and Jason had grown close amidst the homeless of Salt Lake City’s “Rio Grande” ghetto. They had spent countless hours sitting on the filthy concrete, listening to heroin addicts and schizophrenics mutter about their lives and their rocky relationships with God. He and Mark had seen God’s apparent hand at work, over and over, as they listened to homeless men and women. Now, they stood on new ground, outside the black metal gates of the Homestead.
“We didn’t know where to go,” Mark launched into the inevitable explanation. “We’re freaked out by the trouble we’re seeing in the city. We just had a van full of gang people drive down the street shooting at houses. We knew you had lots of guns, and we thought we could ride this out for a couple of days at your place until the authorities get things back to normal.”
Mark looked across the drive at the multitude setting up tents and preparing to “ride this out” at the Homestead. “I guess we’re not the only ones with that idea, right?” Mark said hopefully.
Jason had played this conversation in his mind a dozen times since first hearing about the nukes and the stock market. He knew it would come to this. As he had done many times before in business and in life, Jason reached down inside, envisioned a knob on his heart and turned the knob way down.
Jason had worked hard to grow his heart over the last few decades, expanding his humanity far beyond the sum of the traits that had been given him at birth. He suspected his personality resided somewhere along the slope of the Asperger’s spectrum. He hated crowds. He liked being alone. He enjoyed project work more than being around people. Despite that, like a monk wearing a hair shirt, Jason forced himself into heavy human contact every day. However, when it was necessary, he could put steel in his back.
Jason knew he played a dangerous game when he turned that knob on his heart down; it was a game of chicken between the ties of humanness and the Devil himself. He also knew God stared directly into that tension, that He somehow occupied it. Under the eyes of God, Jason sensed that it was neither selfish nor inhuman to face suffering and refuse to blink.
“Mark, first of all, this almost certainly isn’t a passing thing. This situation will get far worse and it’ll stay bad for a long time. I want you to know this, and I beg you to believe me because the chance that your family will survive depends on you taking this seriously.”
“What?” Mark looked confused. “Are you saying all these people can stay here and we can’t?”
“Please, Mark, hear me out before you speak, okay?”
“Fine. But that’s pretty hard to swallow.” Mark physically choked back his desperation while anger played across his face. Then a primal urge to ingratiate himself—to somehow finagle a way past the black gate – took over and Mark’s eyes shifted back and forth, searching for an argument.
Jason held out his hands, palms up. “All these people behind me have spent the last five years preparing for this day, and they built up this place for their families.”
“You never asked us to join in all this. We would’ve helped!” Mark blurted out.
“True, but it wasn’t my decision to make alone. For whatever reason, I never put you forward to be a part of this group. I have to live with that. But, Mark, you’re fighting me when you should be listening to me. You need to get out of Salt Lake City and get someplace rural. Maybe somewhere you have family. You need to do it right now.”
Mark’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s it. That’s where your fellowship ends?”
“I suppose that’s one way to say it. I’m sure you won’t understand, but I’m praying for you and your family.” Jason could feel his grip on that knob to his heart weaken.
“Let’s go, guys.” Mark gathered his family and walked back down the street to their car. His wife looked back, angry and bewildered.
Jason turned to Ron. “One down. Two hundred to go.”
“Fuck me,” Ron replied, “I don’t know how you can do that.”
“Me neither.” They both laughed, trying to shake the tension. Jason suddenly wrapped his arms around Ron, hugging the massive, hairy man like he was hanging onto a barrel in the ocean.
The knob trembled but Jason held. He let Ron go and turned away. As he walked back up the drive, he took a deep breath.
“Motherfucker,” Jason whispered to himself, speaking his tension into the fall afternoon.
Two hours later, Jason pulled out of the Homestead gates in his Ford F-350. Driving around town in a Tesla or a Range Rover would draw attention and could get him robbed or killed. He hadn’t been off the property in a few days and this might be the last time he would take a drive around town.
He glanced up at the sky, exceptionally grateful for the chance to take this drive. He had four children still “out there” and one of those four, hopefully, would be landing at the Salt Lake airport any minute.
One of Jason’s daughters was married to an Air Force medic stationed in northern California. His oldest boy served in the United States Marine Corps, deployed in Iraq. His seventeen-year-old son had been visiting Jenna’s grandparents on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and, hopefully, was on his way home by car. His daughter Emily had caught, quite possibly, the last flight departing Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended medical school at Johns Hopkins.
He had begged her to get on a plane for a couple of days, but the flights had been booked solid. Jason used every bit of pull he had with his American Express Black Card and a huge block of SkyMiles to finagle her ticket. He had no idea how the plane would be landing without electricity at the airport. He decided they must have back-up generators.
Four hours earlier, Emily called him from the plane. She had boarded and the doors were closing. Jason had literally done everything he could to avoid having a daughter stuck in the midst of twelve million confused, hungry East coasters.
When Jason and Emily visited Johns Hopkins years ago, he had huge misgivings. While it might have been the preeminent med school in the country, there was nothing posh about the neighborhood surrounding Johns Hopkins. Tucked up against Baltimore, the level of obvious crime scared him, even though he had grown up near the gangs of southern California himself.
When Emily had been accepted at Johns Hopkins, Jason put together a multi-tiered escape plan in case the world ever went through a collapse. It had been the weirdest thing Jason had ever done with his money, so he kept the plan secret from everyone he could.
Option Number One, thankfully the option that had ultimately panned out, had been for Emily to board a plane immediately when things got funky. This option led to a couple of instances where Emily had missed class due to “false alarm” trips back to Utah: once, when there had been a bad flu virus and another when the stock market took a big, but recoverable, downturn. Jason felt sheepish, like a tinfoil-hatted survivalist, when things returned to normal both times. Emily wisely lied to her friends about the true reason for her unscheduled trips home.
Option Number Two had been the “Escape Pod,” as Emily called it. Over the course of two trips to Maryland, and countless hours of research, Jason engineered a plan for Emily to drive from the East Coast to Utah. This prepper escapade cost him about twenty-five-thousand dollars, a price he had been happy to pay to buy his daughter some hope of making it out of the East if society’s bubble burst. All the equipment he bought now sat moldering in a “Storage Suite” in the Hampden EZ Storage close to the Johns Hopkins campus.
He thought about the Escape Pod as he drove toward the airport. Somebody was going to be a happy camper when they looted that place. The plan was for Emily to back her SUV into the storage unit, connect the trailer to the hitch, toss everything into the cargo compartment and drive like hell westward. The trailer carried a pair of ultra-light motorcycles that had been purchased based on two qualifications: could they go a long way on little gas, and could they support large panniers?
By Jason’s calculations, the gas in the SUV, the gas on the trailer and the gas in the motorcycles would get Emily and a co
mpanion from Maryland to Utah. Accomplishing that feat would be harder than one might think, and it required bending the Hampden EZ Storage rules a fair bit when it came to the storage of fuels and ammunition.
Among other violations of the rules, the Escape Pod contained a hundred fifty gallons of unleaded gas and two thousand rounds of ammunition, along with two handguns, two AK-47 assault rifles, sixteen high capacity magazines, four cases of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat,) a half-dozen maps, a ham radio base station, two ham handsets, twenty-five-hundred dollars in gold and silver, and two thousand dollars in cold, hard cash. Costing as much as everything else combined, Jason bit the bullet and included two pairs of white phosphor night vision goggles (NVGs).
All of that premium survival gear… all gone to waste.
It had taken a few tries, but eventually Jason had enlisted a Baltimore-area Army Ranger on Craigslist to go shooting with Emily and teach her to ride the motorcycles. It hadn’t hurt his proposition to the Army Ranger that Emily was exceedingly easy on the eyes.
Option One had prevailed and his daughter Emily had made her plane ride home. Jason would never get to meet the Ranger kid in person. While he wove his way through stalled cars and broken traffic patterns heading toward the airport, he texted a message to the Ranger kid, hoping the text would go through on his end.
I left a bunch of gear you’re going to want in storage unit A5 at the Hampden EZ Storage. Bring a pair of bolt cutters. Thank you for taking care of Emily. Merry Christmas. Enjoy the NVGs.
Jason pulled into Salt Lake International Airport. People flooded the terminal with strange baggage—heirloom furniture, old-fashioned trunks and family picture albums; everyone was trying to get somewhere, anywhere else.
When he saw Emily at the curb, Jason’s heart leapt, intensely grateful to have her home. She jumped into his arms as soon as he pulled in and stepped out the driver’s side door.
“Oh, my God, Daddy, that was the weirdest flight ever. People were freaking out.”
“I’m so glad you made it,” he said as he smelled her hair, feeling like he could breathe a little better.
• • •
Fisker Residence
Omaha, Nebraska
Chad knew that the longer he sat outside in his Jeep, the more likely it would be that Audrey’s dad would see him and come hassle him.
Audrey’s parents had never been fans of Chad Wade. From Chad’s point of view, her mom was a huge bitch, and her dad had surrendered his balls a long time back. When Audrey left Chad and headed home to her parents with their daughter Samantha, there must have been a mighty rag-fest in the Fisker home that day.
Since then, it had only gotten worse. Visiting Samantha was an exercise in intense humiliation, orchestrated by Chad’s ex-wife and her mother. Every minute, they would hover over Chad, like self-appointed social workers for his “supervised visits.”
There wasn’t a damned thing in their divorce decree about supervised visits—Chad had full rights to visitation—but Audrey and her mom enjoyed making him squirm.
On the drive into Omaha, Chad got a front row seat to the collapse of America. Jason had been right; this was indeed the Apocalypse. At one point that morning, Chad had been forced to gun the Jeep and go rip-tearing through the grass around a roadblock that was being set up on a small town highway. There was no way he was going to stop and leave himself and his gear at the mercy of small town law enforcement.
As he made the sweeping turn into Omaha, onto the high-bridged belt route, Chad could see fires burning in the dense parts of town. On the opposite side of the freeway, the one leading out of town, cars were stacked bumper to bumper, barely moving.
Now he sat in his Jeep in front of Audrey’s childhood home, not looking forward to the coming confrontation. And, yep, as predicted, Audrey’s dad trudged out the front door with a rifle in his hands. He walked around to the driver’s side window.
“G’morning, Chad.” Robert mumbled. “I guess it’s afternoon.” He chuckled uncomfortably.
“Good morning, Robert.” Chad stayed in his Jeep, talking through the open window.
“I’m not an idiot,” Robert began unsteadily. “I know what I am, I know what my daughter is, and I sure as hell know what my wife is.”
Chad wasn’t following. He had serious doubts Robert actually did know who all those people were. When in doubt, say nothing. That was another one of Chad’s life mottoes.
Robert shuffled. “I need you to take Audrey and the baby and go. Leave here. Go back to your Navy SEAL buddies or wherever you need to go to protect them. That okay with you?”
Flummoxed, Chad didn’t know what to say. He nodded.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” Robert continued. “I’m going to grab you a bunch of supplies from the house and the garage. I want you to load it all up in your rig. How about you just stay outside the house for now? That okay?”
“All right, Robert. Then what?”
“Then,” Robert thought for a second, “I’m going to go inside and bring Audrey and Samantha out and I want you to leave with them.”
“Um, are you sure you can pull that off?” Chad had serious doubts about Robert getting anyone or anything past his wife.
“Chad, this isn’t going to end well.” Robert waved the rifle barrel around, gesturing at the city. “I’m pretty sure you love our granddaughter, and that you stand a fair chance of keeping them both alive. Will you promise me to keep them both alive?”
“Robert, I will.”
“Okay, then. Come get the stuff.” Chad jumped down from the Jeep and followed Robert into his messy garage. They picked through piles of gear looking for useful supplies. Gas cans. Water jugs. A pair of binoculars. A compound bow with a quiver of arrows. Sleeping bags and a bunch of camping gear. Robert poked around until he found things that might be useful and handed them to his former son-in-law. Chad carried it all to the Jeep.
The front screen door banged open and Chad’s ex-mother-in-law stormed onto the front lawn.
“What in the name of Jesus are you doing, Robert?”
“Reyna, go back in the house. I’m doing what I can for our daughter and our granddaughter.”
Reyna stood with her hands on her hips. “You’re not doing any such thing, especially not with this person.” She spat the last two words.
Robert handed his rifle to Chad, sighed, and walked over to his wife. He took her by the arm and Chad could see his aging muscles tighten as he steered her toward the front stoop.
“Now is not the time for your… nonsense, Reyna. Please get back in the house, and I will come talk to you shortly.”
Reyna huffed and sputtered, not accustomed to Robert talking to her like that. Muttering, she went back inside.
Robert returned to the garage and to Chad. “That gear’s about all I’ve got. I’ll have Audrey bring out some food, too. Why don’t you wait out here for a bit?”
“Okay, Robert.” Chad’s confidence in Robert had gone up six hundred percent in the last two minutes. In any case, what else could Chad do? Robert was his huckleberry, either way.
As soon as the screen door clacked shut, Chad heard shouting erupt from the house―Robert’s booming bass, which Chad had never heard before, and Reyna’s shrill soprano, which Chad had heard plenty of times. Then Audrey’s pleading tenor joined the fray. Back and forth, inaudible except for tone, until a long and hardy stretch of bass ended the debate.
“That sounded promising,” Chad said out loud to nobody.
About twenty minutes later, an angry, weeping Audrey blew through the front door, her mother close behind carrying little Samantha, dragging a car seat. Audrey carried a huge box of canned food, and she refused to look at Chad.
Chad stepped back, saying nothing, while the women loaded the cargo into the Jeep.
“I’ll get that.” Chad took the car seat from Reyna and went to work securing it in the backseat.
While the ladies buckled Samantha into her car seat, with tearful kisses a
nd hugs from her grandma, Robert stepped up to Chad.
“I want you to take this.” Robert placed the scoped bolt-action rifle in Chad’s hands. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. “Here’s 30-06 ammo for it.” Robert slowly placed the box of shells in Chad’s other hand.
“Son,” he looked Chad in the eyes, “we’ve had our differences. But, man to man, I’m trusting you with my two most precious things.”
“I understand, Robert. I’ll protect them. Are you sure you’ll be okay without the rifle?”
“Well,” Robert drawled, “whatever happens to us, it’ll be okay so long as you keep those two safe.”
“You have my word.” Chad climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Reyna, say your goodbyes, please. They need to leave now,” Robert ordered his wife.
As the divorced couple and their daughter drove down the street away from Audrey’s home, Chad felt certain he should say something to his ex-wife. She was coming undone before his very eyes.
The moment he made the slightest exhale, as if to say something, she pounced. “Don’t say a single word, Chad Wade! Not a single damn word.”
Well, Chad thought, I guess I should count my blessings.
6
[Collapse Plus Five - Sunday, Sept. 24th]
Shortwave Radio 7150kHz 11:45pm
“THIS IS JT TAYLOR, COMING to you from an undisclosed location, thoroughly pickled in fine liquor, bringing you the news that makes the FCC, NSA, FBI and CIA piss themselves.
“First of all, nice try, Army Electronic Warfare team. I enjoyed the fireball when you hit my $129 repeater with your $1.5 million missile. Better luck next time. I’m still here, drunk dialing the world with your dirty secrets.
“Word on the street has it that the commander of Fort Bliss has seized control of the town of El Paso. I always knew that guy was a tyrant. Enjoy martial law, boys and girls. It’s coming to a town near you.
