Beyond The Burning Shore: Searching For Survival

by Ron Foster

  “So are you going over there and trying to convince her your’ Billy Badass that can save the day and protect her from the mutant ninja biker hordes that already have her name on a list to visit or are you going to be civil about it? Maybe I should come with you.” Annie began advising before Hogan cut her off saying he wasn’t going to fear monger much, just show the woman the error in her ways of thinking should she disagree with his proposition.

  “ Now Annie I think as a someone that alleges to be a so called professional licensed professional in adverting disasters and “experienced in emergency management” I can maybe sway her into helping us out a little bit if we have offered to help her out some and increase her chances of getting through this calamity without extra drama. I want to feel her out good first though. I don’t know that woman at all except to say hi and from when I signed the lease months ago though. I doubt she even owns a gun for personal protection and I don’t think she has even considered yet how many people might be coming to her apartment or office real soon wanting those keys for any other reason but a lockout. Either way, it is time for me to do a better more informed meet and greet. I am just going to go have a friendly visit and make nice for now and see about that ladder and plyboard, I think. I will start with innocent normal resident inquiries like preparing my house for winter so the pipes don’t bust in a freeze if I was going somewhere and If maintenance is around I will advise them I want to know about any cutoff valves or access holes for sewage lines maybe to get ready for the backed up puking toilet sewage crisis that may happen.” Hogan said looking forward to this bit of psychological warfare and influence gathering he was going to attempt before adding he would see her back here or at her apartment shortly while she saw to collecting more water and containers from her apartment.

  Hogan walked down to the office but nobody was there. “Dang it, I hate when a plan doesn’t come together!” He fumed while looking around for any kind of activity.

  There used to be a little note card in a frame on the door listing the maintenance and managers phone numbers as well as the resident managers apartment number but it was gone. No cars were located in the reserved parking places so he walked across the complex to the maintenance shed and it was locked up and nobody was around there either.

  “Seems that I can’t win for losing today!” Hogan muttered to himself considering visiting a few places with “Moe” one dark night referring to his multi tool axe from Schrade that he considered his can opener for prying open things that needed to be seen or explored more.

  Lighter than a giant crowbar and concealable on your person or a shoulder bag if you stopped to figure it out, it was his go to “master key” in times of trouble like this to gain access or rescue someone. Resistance and security was not a word that would trouble gaining entry one way or another with that tool to most everything he might need if the coast was clear...

  He scanned the area to see if people were observing his interest in the possibly now abandoned vacant steel building. The few people he observed from his vantage point looked like they were busy loading up cars to go somewhere soon which made Hogan smile, but other thoughts soon put a frown on his face as he immediately started pondering their fates.

  Hogan guessed many tenants would be attempting to journey towards relatives and families to ride this thing out in the countryside or somewhere else safer while still others might have a different agenda unbeknownst to him and were hurrying also to get to parts unknown. He wondered if the apartment manager might have gone on such a mysterious mission and how long it would be before the offsite living maintenance crew decided to think about coming here to salvage things they thought they might need.

  He didn’t want to be accused of thievery or taking advantage of a situation before the breakdown had even started good and his proposed actions wouldn’t look like blatant looting and advantage taking that could cause him some problems now or later.

  A lot of people could be observed still idly sitting on their balconies apparently in shock in reaction to what was transpiring as the modern world started to end. It was spooky; the whole area seemed strangely quiet somehow. The recognition of the final radio messages that had aired must have begun to sink in that everyone was on their own now and would remain that way for a long time to come.

  It was unnatural, it was more than unnerving for anyone to attempt to wrap their head around that the lights wouldn’t be coming back on tomorrow or the next day for a long time to come. The people were flat out told that they would be on their own for a month or more until the government could regroup and try to send its citizens some aid. Most people in this privileged society we live in could not even begin to conceive that they were officially on their own from now on with no state or federal safety nets to save their soon to be sorry scrawny butts from starvation.

  This just couldn’t happen in this politically correct and entitlement world they were used to living in. Oh some already were wasting their time organizing riots so they could flash rob stores and do a bit of looting because the “man” wasn’t going to take care of them any more under their self assumed rights regarding color or gender or whatever.

  Yes the cops and the National Guard would try to prevent such actions for a day or so before their families became more important to them than serving undesirable elements needs to have to get hit on the head to cease being a fool before their own families protection became more important and they just didn’t show up for work one day.

  “But how long will that take?” Not too long Hogan figured.

  You will have enough no shows and not reporting for roll call or drill because the communications systems were down but you would also have an increasingly aware first responder group that said screw it under these conditions and let the idiots go ahead and burn their own neighborhoods down in protest for things they couldn’t or wouldn’t comprehend as society without media to fan the flames would be obviously not present to scapegoat them and their actions to restore order.

  Bad folks would end up having bad endings and Hogan didn’t care too much about them at the moment other than they were the ones that wouldn’t let sane society cope. Well not in America, anyway. He had often marveled at the Japanese who were well known for their patience and community spirit in standing in long lines for hours patiently waiting their turn to get into a store after a tsunami or earthquake devastated a township.

  Those people could do all the self righteous BS posturing and burning establishments they wanted to instead of helping each other survive as a community. Most wouldn’t get it anyway that they no longer had a camera to scream obscenities at that another race or religion wasn’t helping them or gifting them for being different anyway and that it was in some way their whiteness maybe fault they had burned their own houses and stores down as they usually did. He didn’t care about these fringe elements usually found in the disturbed mental ghettos of America and he didn’t blame not a one of the people or soldiers and policemen of every race and religious denomination that wasn’t going to show up in a couple days to say their food stamps and welfare checks didn’t work anymore when nothing else in more affluent areas did either.

  Disasters segregate people because like wants to be with like and people that share the same values get along fine no matter what their race or religion are as long as they have a moral compass. Yes later on in a disaster the old prejudices arrive but mostly folks in general should be beyond that. Don’t start picking an old worn out scab and saying you are special in some way or another needing special treatment when it is only the basic character of a person that equates wrong or right and socially morally principled to not create havoc.

  The few conversations Hogan had managed to overhear seemed to be more hushed than conversational and people stared at him watchful and apprehensive.

  “It isn’t me you need to worry about unless you mess with me.” Hogan thought with a scowl.

  All these people who didn’t have a clue what to do next would
soon be burdening others instead of coming together as a community to try to survive.

  Hogan wasn’t going to get himself killed trying to help them, he was going to be as self centered as they were and if push came to shove he would either survive or try to go down in style.

  .

  3

  Perceptions And Foreboding

  Day two of the disaster had nature and her dazzling lights putting on a bit of a show by weaving warped pallets of colors into the smoke and the haze hanging over the city and countryside. In the early morning hours hues of green and yellow spread their tendrils ever skyward mixing with the fiery red.

  Cars still worked and operated as normal as of 9 am this morning. Well that was the time when Hogan and Annie saw one pull out of the parking lot and leave the apartment building next to them. That was before the blood red glow started up again rising from the horizon like some big blood red moon ready to engulf the world. One odd thing that occurred really startled them and this was when a street light suddenly glowed momentarily and then went out after a few seconds. Hogan had seen a couple of the post mounted lights do that spluttering thing afterwards and he could still be heard asking strangers as he was wandering up to the main road to see if any car traffic or breakdowns were occurring, if they had seen any kind of phenomenon like that going on this morning.

  One person had said tthat he smoke alarms in his building went off for a second or two but they figured that it was the smoke in the air that had caused it. One said the car alarms in the parking lot got crazy for a minute. Hogan was very tempted to ask them to go try to start their cars but didn’t. That knowledge he speculated was an awful rusty double edged sword to be possessing right about now.

  Ignorance is bliss they say. Hogan kind of felt like that saying “Wow I saw a street light flicker on this morning! Isn’t that weird they can do that with no electricity supposedly in the lines?” to a stranger that acknowledged his hello. Hogan thought this was a pretty good opening line to gather info with but it didn’t work too well. People were scared right now and seemed pretty stand offish enough as it was without him saying he saw lights when there weren’t any supposedly possible. People just didn’t want to be bothered about stopping and talking about anything at all. There loss Hogan figured.

  He didn’t quite feel like saying anything to them either by this time. Particularly telling them things like “Hey by the way there is a huge chance your cars won’t start pretty soon! Have you tried starting yours lately? Yea right, folks would be looking at him wondering if he were crazy or be asking him what they could do about it maybe if they didn’t start. That’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t proposition all the way around to consider.

  If he said ” Hey I disconnected my battery cables in hopes my car computer doesn’t fry some folks would be like “Well the radio didn’t say anything about doing that” to the inevitable question of how did he know that bit of info and did he think that trick would help any, to which that answer right or wrong could get him into lots of trouble.

  No, he decided right now his best course of action was to keep his head down and his mouth shut. Generally speaking if someone spoke to him he said little of his own personal knowledge of solar storms and chose to go with the flow concerning conversations with the unknowing and unprepared neighbors.

  If they didn’t know anything, then he didn’t know anything either. He told Annie for them it was best to just play “Gray Man.” It was watch, wait and see time for them to just blend in with the crowd and not stand out in anyway.

  Hogan knew an odd thing that most folks didn’t know or failed to take into account about a disaster like a hurricane. The day after one occurs; people in the stricken area generally are at their best in terms of being kind and helping each other out.

  They want to help their neighbors, they like greeting a stranger warmly and they tend to get along with the community at large by sharing the experience of surviving the same hardships. This is because they understand or could anticipate a common core of problems they themselves would have to bear with everyone else trying to get through a calamity.

  Now this particular disaster was different to consider just how people were going to act in the coming days. People knew help wasn’t going to be coming anytime soon. The radio gave a laughable estimate of hope that people might have to wait up to five weeks in cities to receive coordinated Federal aid, but it would be limited in scope because this was a nationwide event that over taxed resources.

  After the President declared a National Emergency and Martial Law both dang near in the same sentence on the radio, he said he was convening the Congress of Governors in one week in Washington D.C. This meeting was to be held after the effects of the Solar Storm on air travel was suspected to cease and he explained that all National Guard Units were Federalized and for all enlisted personnel and reserves to find their way to their respective home units and armories.

  Travel restrictions would be announced, the federalization of the national electrical grid, oil refineries, all trains and commerce transportation facilities as well as the appointment of two agricultural czars for increasing the national stockpile of grains and dairy products and the presidents list went on.

  Hogan told Annie that March 23rd should be remembered as “Evoke” day because he had heard the word used so much today on the radio. Evoke this and evoke that. Some speaker with a title he had never heard of would say that of according to this article or that section or paragraph of the emergency powers acts, that they were evoking their special governmental control for the duration of this declared state of emergency and poof! No more private ownership, no more Constitutional rights, no habeas corpus!

  Now Mr. Pres and all the state and local governments have all got these but “If” or “when” rules that say that they alone know what is best for everyone in a emergency. They dictate that normal rules of governance get superseded by their executive will and the emergency declaration laws that they continue to expand and write for themselves.

  Under extraneous conditions they have the power not only to tax but confiscate wealth and goods. They can even regulate the rationing of toilet paper. That is why America has been in a legal perpetual state of emergency for so long, that’s how they qualify their right to tax your income, toy with implementing the draft etc.

  What the National Emergencies Act does is act like a little bright glowing toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. Prang! Now I have super powers to do what I want, look at me! Like he doesn’t have enough authority already! Hogan sighed.

  It's like a magic wand and he is the only one that can wave it and there are very few constraints about how he turns the magic on…

  Those emergencies at the federal level, the ones declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will. That’s right, he is commander and chief.

  Since 1976, when Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, presidents have declared at least 53 states of emergency — not counting disaster declarations for events such as tornadoes and floods, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents. Most of those emergencies remain in effect to this day.

  Even as Congress has delegated emergency powers to the president, it has provided almost no oversight. The 1976 law requires each house of Congress to meet within six months of an emergency to vote it up or down. That's never happened. I wonder how everyone managed to overlook this fact so many times?

  Hogan in his mind knew about this power grab and he knew once people or politicians got a taste of it they didn’t like to give it back. Now Hogan had never written a plan on surviving government usurpation of powers or insurrection or anything close to that. It was probably written somewhere it was illegal to do that.

  He was however publically out spoken in his patriotic constitutionalist views, he had put his time in the milit
ary and he had helped more people plan for and survive disasters than most, in other words he had served his country well.

  However his governmental dealings were based on avoidance of bureaucratic BS not engagement. He wanted to be far away from the closely regulated life he saw coming. The current curfews and travel restrictions that were being imposed now under martial law would look like the good old times to what he foresaw as the old school guard tried to impose its militaristic will on the citizens as this disaster developed.

  About the only plausible plan the government could use to reconstruct would come from its military arm, not FEMA and its minions. The U.S. military has practice at this destroyed city rebuilding, lots of very “RECENT” practice gained from the declared/undeclared wars in the Middle East and playing with Russia in the Crimea and beyond.

  The Russians were talented in imposing their will by shutting off fuel oil, gas, food, electricity you name it if they wanted to reel in one of their more belligerent outlying states or NATO countries. They were practiced at enforcing their will on citizens and enemies under war conditions also.

  “The world has been at war many times and rebuilding society always happens in one way or another so why not now?” Hogan had mused previously regarding the event that he was experiencing now. He in tried to contemplate a fictional future for his preparedness clients to get back on their feet after a major disastrous event . Cities had been firebombed to hell and back, nuclear bombs dropped you name it and business and population centers came back. So why would it be so hard to conceive that the military already had a reconstruction plan for what was going on now?