Homefront: The Voice of Freedom

by John

  “Come on, Kelsie, you can make it.” She moaned in pain as he helped her along. “We have to keep moving.”

  Putting weight on her injured ankle, she nodded. “I’m okay.” Only then did she get a good look at him. “You’re covered in blood.”

  “So are you, sweetheart.” He kissed her. “Come on.”

  They maneuvered out of the golf course and ended up on Sunset Road. This led them to the intersection of Gilespie Street, from which there appeared to be a clear thoroughfare under I-215 going south. They moved toward it as quickly as possible, deathly afraid the bombers would return to finish them off. Once they got to Warm Springs Road, they turned west toward Las Vegas Boulevard to follow it out of town. After what seemed to be an eon of running, Wilcox had to stop at Pebble Road. She sat on a curb and nursed her leg.

  “You were lying about your ankle,” Walker said. “It is bothering you.”

  “Shut up. I can make it. Just give me a sec.”

  “We don’t have much farther to go. A couple of miles maybe.”

  “Great. Then we’ll be in the desert in the middle of the night. Oh, Ben, how could this happen? Why did they do this? Why leave us alone for a year and suddenly decide to kick the shit out of us? What good does it do them?”

  “It’s so they can show us who’s boss. They did it because they can.”

  After a couple of minutes, she let him help her up. She tried her ankle again and said, “It’s better. It really is. It’s probably just bruised, not sprained. Let’s go.”

  Exhausted and demoralized, they walked the rest of the way toward the southern end of the city where civilization faded into wilderness. There, they joined a group of a hundred people or more that stood in terrified silence, watching the once majestic, controversial, and historic city they loved burn to the ground. No more casinos, showgirls, circus acts, comedy teams, high-rollers, gangsters, or tourists. No more jackpots, royal flushes, or dreams of fortune.

  Game over.

  NINETEEN

  JANUARY 24, 2026

  The sun beat down on the ragtag group of Las Vegas survivors as they marched wearily and painfully northeast along Interstate-15.

  After the heartbreak of the firebombing, pockets of refugees surrounded the destroyed city and set off toward destinations unknown. At least Walker had a plan. He told Wilcox about the National Guard’s objective to reach a hardened complex near Bryce Canyon in Utah. Lacking a better place to go, they decided to try that. The group of perhaps a hundred, with which the couple found themselves aligned the night of the bombing, camped out on the city’s outskirts and set off after sunup on the twenty-fourth. Many of them didn’t make it after two hours. Nearly half the group turned back, unable to take the heat. They figured it was better to pick through the Vegas ruins and perhaps find shelter in one of the undamaged homes on the outer edges.

  Walker made no attempt to act as leader. When others asked him where he was headed, he simply said, “Utah,” and gave no explanation as to why. He was well aware he and Kelsie had just enough supplies for two to last a few days. Most of the survivors had nothing, not having planned or prepared for an emergency evacuation. Eventually, though, both Walker and Wilcox broke down and donated three of their precious water bottles for the group to share. It wouldn’t go far in the desert.

  By sundown on the first day, a group of approximately thirty had managed to travel fifteen miles. At one point, Walker and Wilcox wanted to keep walking while others insisted on stopping to rest. After repeated occurrences, Walker finally said, “We’re sorry, but Kelsie and I can’t be responsible for all of you. I’ve already had one bad experience trying to survive in the desert before coming to Las Vegas. I’m afraid it’s every man for himself out here. Either you came prepared or you didn’t. If you’re up for it, if you’ve got supplies of your own, you’re welcome to join us. But we’re moving at our own pace from here on.”

  One man tried to pick a fight. “But you’ve got water and food. How are we supposed to make it anywhere? You can’t just leave us here!”

  “I suggest you go back to Vegas. A lot of people did that last night. You’d probably have a better chance of finding food and water on the outskirts of town. There are still people there.”

  Wilcox spoke up. “Look, you have to understand if we broke out our food and water and shared it with everyone here, there would be none left in ten minutes. Ben and I have a plan and we’re moving forward. Some of you do have food and water with you. It’s up to you if you want to come with us. Like Ben said, you’re welcome, but you have to keep up with our pace. We don’t mean to be heartless, but we’re in the desert. It’s a harsh environment. It calls for harsh action.”

  The same man sneered as he indicated Walker’s M4. “Says you with the big gun. If we tried to take your backpacks, you gonna shoot us?”

  Wilcox answered, “No, we’re not gonna—”

  “Yes,” Walker interrupted. “I’ll shoot you.” Even Wilcox looked at him with surprise. “Kelsie’s right. The desert is no place for charity. There are too many of you. Now, Kelsie and I are moving on. If you’ve got your own water and food and you want to come, I’m not going to stop you. The rest of you, go back to Vegas. We wish you the best of luck.” He turned to Wilcox and said, “Come on, Kelsie.” He took her arm and they continued walking along the highway. Eight people with backpacks rushed to catch up with them. The nearly twenty that were left stood in shock and anger. The man who had challenged Walker attempted to garner support for a coup and attack the couple before they got out of sight. He wasn’t successful. In the end, they all turned around and walked back to the pile of rubble that was Las Vegas.

  Up ahead, no one but Wilcox could see that Walker had tears in his eyes.

  JANUARY 25, 2026

  After breaking away from the larger group, the ten individuals bonded pretty quickly. Besides Walker and Wilcox, there was a young Japanese couple named Makoto and Reiko; two middle-aged African-American ex-Army men, Prescott and Washington; a man in his fifties known only as Jim; and a single mother named Carla Janssen and her teenage twins, Will and Christine. The small band of refugees spent the night under the open sky, huddled together under a tarp belonging to Prescott. The next morning, each person contributed something from their packs for a communal breakfast. In most cases, it was fruit from the Vegas mess hall.

  Wilcox already knew everyone, as she’d been a Vegas resident for a while. Walker had met Prescott and Washington, and knew Jim from his dealings with Sheriff Mack. Jim was a male nurse at one of the Vegas hospitals that remained open after the EMP, so at least there was some medical experience in the group. When asked why he never became a doctor, Jim replied that the profession had become too corrupt in the years of the economic crisis. The black market had reached out and ensnared a vast number of physicians who took payoffs to prescribe illegally obtained drugs and accepted kickbacks from insurance companies. Walker knew it to be true—he had done an exposé on the health care industry back in 2018 for a whistle-blowing news website.

  Since it was blazingly hot during the day, they traveled only at night, and early morning. During the high temperatures of the day they fashioned a lean-to shelter with Prescott’s tarp and two long branches cut from mesquite trees, and slept.

  At one point during the next nocturnal hike, the two former soldiers got to talking to Walker.

  “Those were F-Thirty-Fives and B-Twos that hit us,” Washington said. “Our F-Thirty-Fives and B-Twos. The Air Force, I mean.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Walker agreed. “I couldn’t think of any other type of plane that did what they did.”

  “I’ll bet you anything the Norks got them from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri,” Prescott offered. “It was probably one of their military targets.”

  “When were you fellas in the army?”

  “Iraq, ’04 to ’07,” Washington answered. “That seems like a long time ago now.”

  “That’s when things started to
go wrong in this country,” Prescott said. “After September eleventh the whole world went screwy. Things just went downhill from there.”

  “I was ten years old when it happened,” Walker said. “I was at school and the teacher started crying. I’ll never forget that. I guess there’s an event like that for every generation. My grandmother once said she’d never forget the day John F. Kennedy was shot. My mother said she’d never forget the day John Lennon was assassinated. Why is it that we only remember events of violence? The Alamo, Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys … ?”

  Wilcox spoke up. “Come on, we remember lots of good things.”

  “Like what, Kelsie? Other than national holidays like Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving, what nonviolent major events do we as a people collectively remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard about them?”

  She thought for a minute and finally said, “Touché.”

  They marched on in silence.

  FEBRUARY 2, 2026

  After spending four days in the deserted community of Littlefield, Arizona, the “Ragtags,” as Walker jokingly referred to the group, continued northeast along I-15 toward St. George, Utah, on bicycles.

  Littlefield was a ghost town. Wilcox commented upon arrival that she expected to find corpses in every house, but it appeared that every single soul had just picked up and left. It was decided that the Ragtags split up in parties of two or three and search the place for food and supplies. An old Motel 6 was selected as a rendezvous. It was Makoto and Reiko who found the bicycle shop in the dilapidated downtown area. Walker hated to break in and loot the store, but it wasn’t as if there was a line of customers standing outside the door. Each member of the Ragtags picked out a bike that was suitable and kept it with them in their motel rooms—which they also broke into. Most of the convenience stores and grocery stores had been picked over long ago, but Prescott and Washington knocked down a door to a bar tucked away in an alley near the court house. Surprisingly, there was plenty of bottled water and canned sodas, as well as liquor. They also found bags of salted nuts, which became the steady diet for the next few days. On the second night in Littlefield, they threw a party and got wasted. The next day, each person used a bottle of water for a sponge bath to clean off the grime and sweat … and blood.

  They cycled out of Arizona and across the state line into Utah. Before reaching St. George, however, a small caravan of Korean Humvees and an Abrams tank—all decorated with the despicable Korean American flag—drove past the bicyclers in the same direction. The Ragtags stopped to watch them. The Korean soldiers stared expressionlessly at the Ragtags as they went by. They didn’t see Walker’s M4, which was safely stashed in a bag strapped to the back of his bike; otherwise there could have been trouble.

  “Why didn’t they stop and ask us for identity cards?” Wilcox asked.

  “They must be in a hurry to get somewhere,” Walker said. “You know, I don’t have an identity card.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The others didn’t either.

  “What’ll they do if you don’t have one?” Reiko asked.

  “I can’t imagine they expect every single person in America to have one,” Jim answered. “That’s probably only in the occupied cities. There are too many towns and cities and villages in this country. The Koreans can’t be everywhere.”

  It made sense. Walker felt better hearing that.

  They reached St. George the same day they left Littlefield. There was still something of a population there. No running water or electricity, as expected, but the inhabitants had organized and developed farming procedures to produce food and they brought in water from the Dixie National Forest, located a short distance north of the city. The citizens immediately knew the Ragtags were newcomers and welcomed them to their humble community. Like in other towns, motels were used for lodging the homeless, but families with extra rooms were happy to put up visitors for a night or two. It was another example of America at its best.

  As Walker and Wilcox sat down in an open diner for a dinner of mashed potatoes, broccoli, and beans, the appointed leader of St. George sat down and introduced himself.

  “I’m Terrence Marshall, the mayor here. I guess you could say I’m in charge, for what that’s worth. Welcome to our town.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Walker said. “I’m Ben Walker and this is Kelsie Wilcox. It’s very nice to have a warm meal. We’ve been on the road several days. A lot of that time we were on foot, walking through the desert.”

  “Jesus, where from?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  The mayor’s face turned grim.

  “You know about it, huh?”

  “We barely made it out alive,” Wilcox said.

  The mayor shook his head. “Terrible what those bastards did.”

  “We saw a tank and some Humvees headed your way earlier today.”

  Marshall nodded. “They drove right on through. I’m not sure where they were going. Just went straight on up I-15. We’ve seen quite a bit of that, to tell the truth. Every once in a while they stop and hand out propaganda. Back in November they paid a visit to me at city hall. Questioned me for several hours about resistance activity in the area.”

  Walker perked his ears. “And?”

  “I told them I didn’t know anything. Even after they did this.” He showed them his left hand. Marshall’s pinky finger was missing and in its place was a red, crusty stump. “Hasn’t totally healed yet.”

  “Oh, you poor man,” Wilcox said.

  Walker clinched his teeth. “Sons of bitches. And is there resistance activity in the area?”

  “Not here, but there is to the north and northeast. The Koreans occupy Salt Lake City and are intent on stealing shale oil and ores from our state. I hear Colorado has even more problems in that regard.” The mayor gestured outside. “We don’t have anything here they’d want.”

  Walker nodded. “I don’t know about the others in our little group, but Kelsie here and I are going to move on in a day or two. If we could take advantage of your generous hospitality, it would be much appreciated.”

  “Stay as long as you like. You’ve been through a lot, I can tell. In fact, my wife and I have a spare room in our house. You can stay with us.”

  “Thank you.”

  After they finished their meal and stepped outside the diner, a bill pasted on a lamp post caught Walker’s attention. He went closer to it and then turned away, repulsed.

  “What?” Wilcox asked.

  “Horace Danziger. They killed him.”

  She gasped and moved past him to see the leaflet for herself. It was a picture of the famous TV news pundit and Internet blogger, tied to a chair and hanged by the neck. Beneath the photo was printed: HORACE DANZIGER DIED FOR THESE WORDS: “FIGHT THE BASTARDS IN OUR STREETS AND NEIGHBORHOODS. PICK UP ANY WEAPON YOU CAN FIND AND KILL THE FIRST KOREAN YOU SEE. ORGANIZE INTO RESISTANCE GROUPS AND GIVE THEM HELL. I WISH YOU LUCK.”

  Mayor Marshall joined them. “You haven’t seen that?”

  “No.”

  “The Norks distributed that flyer all over the country. I’m pretty sure they did it thinking it was gonna scare people. If you ask me, it backfired. It just made everyone more determined to fight back. That handbill did a lot for recruitment to the Resistance.”

  “I can see why,” Walker said.

  FEBRUARY 5, 2026

  Walker, Wilcox, Prescott, Washington, and Jim moved on after a couple days of rest. The other Ragtags elected to stay in St. George, as it was relatively stable and safe. Both Prescott and Washington were as interested as Walker in finding the resistance cell near Bryce Canyon. They were, as they put it, “ready to get back into the fight.” What had happened in Las Vegas convinced them they had never emotionally retired from the army.

  The quintet bicycled north on I-15, passing Zion National Park, until they reached Cedar City, which took most of one day. Now armed with camping gear
picked up in St. George, sleeping outdoors was more comfortable. The weather was much cooler than it had been in the deserts of Nevada and Arizona. While the landscape was still arid and rocky, the altitude was higher. The roads were also surrounded by the Dixie National Forest, which cooled things down considerably. Thus, the team was forced to dress more warmly, especially at night.

  The cyclers turned east on Highway 14, which wound through a thicker section of the forest. By this time, a year after the EMP, less abandoned automobiles dotted the roads, allowing a clear, obstructionless passage. Walker considered this was possibly because they were in open country rather than near big cities. And it was beautiful country—Walker had never been in Utah before; it was stunning.

  After another night in the forest, the Ragtags turned north on Highway 89 toward Bryce Canyon National Park. Here in the rocky wilderness, Walker could imagine that America had never been invaded, that there was no such thing as electricity for the EMP to snuff out, and that all was well with the world. But his idyllic daydreams were interrupted when they passed through a small deserted town by the name of Hatch. On the road ahead, just outside the village, were a couple of military Humvees and several men carrying weapons. Prescott didn’t like the way the outfit was moving slowly in their direction, as if they were looking for someone or something.

  The Ragtags quietly moved their bicycles off the highway and hid in the trees.