2024

by H. Berkeley Rourke

  Though my gas tank was mostly full at that point I calculated that if I ran all the way to Missoula that I would be short about five gallons to get into the mountains just east of there where my family was located. So I got into line and filled up. The Rangers walked up and down the line and gave each of us a couple of bottles of water and a couple of sacks of stuff like Cheetos.

  They told us that if we left the freeway at any point before Missoula they did not know if it was safe and we might not find food or water under any circumstance. They also said that by the time we got to Missoula they couldn't be sure of what we would find there. And the one thing that frightened me a lot which they told us as we were leaving was, as it was put to us by Ray, “Don't be on the road after dark in any area where there are no towns or where you do not see roadblocks like this one. If you are, find what appears to be a safe place to hide you and your car, go to sleep if you can and stay there until after dawn. Under any circumstance don't come back here after dark. We will not be here. This area is infested with militiamen or those who would take whatever you have that may be of value. They rule the night. We leave and go into a compound which is heavily fortified near here. So don't come back here.”

  It was only a couple of hours to Missoula though and it seemed to me there was still plenty of daylight left so I thought it should be all right. In a little while I was back on the freeway headed north. In less than an hour I made the turnoff to the mountains. There were patrol vehicles and military both blocking the road east to Butte. No one was allowed to go in that direction. There were not a lot of cars on the road for sure. In my first hour of driving I passed one car and had two others pass me.

  There were no trucks at all. But I guess that should be expected. Many of the trucks that used to be (used to be, oh my God what a thought) on the highway were gasoline trucks headed to fill the tanks of local fuel outlets. Many others were food trucks of one kind or another that were filled with packaged foods.

  Between Butte and Missoula there are a series of small mountain passes. I don't remember the heights you get up to, maybe as high as four or five thousand feet. But the road is good, freeway for the most part and four lane where it is not freeway. It's easy driving, but one has to pay attention or it would be easy to be going too fast and maybe slide off the road. I slowed a little for one car that had done just that. It was kind of teetering on the edge of the dirt berm next to the highway. I didn't see anyone in the car and there were no highway patrol cars around so I took the Rangers at their word and kept on going.

  As I passed by I saw a guy come out of the woods with a rifle in his hand and a woman being dragged by the hair behind him. I couldn't tell if she was dead or alive. And there was nothing I could do to help her. God! Apparently it had started already. What did the guy expect to get from that woman? What would he do with her afterward? Why? Had our legalistic society broken down that much in such a short period of time?

  I began to think then about how I could arm myself. In the trunk of the car, under the spare tire where the patrol officer that searched my car did not look, there was a K-Bar folding knife I used for carving things primarily. It had a four or five inch blade on it. I supposed that if push came to shove and I had to use a knife to defend myself it would be effective. But if someone came at me with a gun what would I do? There would be nothing I could do. And God knows with a quarter million guns or more floating around in our society there were plenty of people who had them.

  As the day began to wane I began to worry about getting to Frenchtown before dark. And what about Frenchtown itself? I had to go through there to get to the mountain where my folks had their place. It was a typical small town with its own city council, its own sanitation department, its own police department. It was also a highly patriotic and demonstrative town when it came to our country. Bunting was always hung, the year round. Flags flew the year round, and people were engaged in a constant debate over politics. It also seemed to be true that most of the people there espoused the conservative viewpoint. Would there be a militia group there?

  There was a small college campus there. That was why the town existed at all. That was how my dad got acquainted with the area. He visited there one year as a political science professor. After being there for about six months he bought a parcel of land in the forest, built a smallish home on the land and would go back during the months it was not covered by snow to do work on it. Or at least that was what my folks would tell me when I called them. I had only been there once before. It was not easy to find. It was not on a road or beaten track of any kind.

  That was what my dad wanted, a place that he could go to that was not easy to find and where he could be free from other people around him. Why he felt that way I could not get out of him. When I would ask my mother about the topic she would say “Oh, you know that's just your father.” There would have to be some additional commentary about that when I arrived at his place I thought.

  And then the second anomaly of the day happened when a pick-up truck pulled out of a side road and began to follow me. I could see that there were a couple of guys in the bed of the pick-up with rifles in their hands. The speed limit in the area was fifty-five because of the mountainous road, and some curvy up and down areas I guess. I saw an exit ahead. As I drew closer to the exit I could see some other pick-up trucks parked near the stop sign at the bottom of a hill.

  The exit didn't seem to go to any town. The truck pulled along side me and the guy in the right seat waved at me with a pistol and pointed toward the exit. It was getting close. As I came closer to the exit I began to slow as though I were going to go off the freeway. The truck stayed right with me for a time and then dropped behind me as we came abreast of the exit. I punched it and went as fast as the car would go to get the hell out of there.

  I started hearing shots behind me. The pick-up had stopped and the guys with rifles were shooting at me. I thought they had missed, must be poor shooters, until one of their bullets impacted the rear window and shattered it. I kept going as fast as I could and soon I was out of their sight. I kept driving way too fast for the conditions for a long way. As I neared Missoula and could actually see the town nestled down into a beautiful valley, there were two state patrol cars parked by the road on my side. I slowed down and waited until I could see four officers. I stopped next to them and told them what had happened. They said thanks and they would let the army know. Let the army know? What the hell? I didn't argue with them for sure. I asked them “Are there any more patrol cars on the other side of Missoula?”

  One of them who was wearing Sergeant's stripes said “Oh yeah, you must be that guy that's going to Frenchtown. Yes,” he said, “there are a couple of other cars along the way up there. But they may be too far away from Frenchtown exit to do you any good if you have trouble before you get there. So be aware just like you were back there. By the way if you had pulled over those boys would have shot you just for the gasoline that remains in your car, however much that might be.”

  The title of Recon Marine is my honor.

  I shall never quit. I will overcome, adapt,

  do what is necessary.

  From Force Recon Marine Credo

  Chapter 2

  Almost Home

  With a great deal of relief and thanks to the patrolmen I went on into Missoula. I had drawn a sizable amount of cash out of my bank account in D.C. before I left there so in various places in the car I had stashed some cash. I stopped at a Micky “D”s that appeared to be open just off the freeway. It was, and I was able to buy the most highly priced double cheeseburgers I had ever paid for, at twenty dollars apiece with a coke that cost me five dollars. I guess everyone has to make it while they can. It looked to me like they were closing up. But at least I got to eat something besides Cheetos. It was the first “real” food I had eaten since well before Omaha.

  I wolfed down the sandwiches and Coke as I drove further west toward Frenchtown. It was around ten miles out of town where I would turn
off to go to that little town. I made a road change that I had forgotten just outside Missoula and at that point I became worried. Right after the road change there was a sign that gave an exit number and said Frenchtown. I saw a small road going off the highway in front of me. There were no other cars traveling the road at all. I took the road. Where would it go? Not far, for sure, because it ended at a home in the forest.

  There were no signs of life at the home. No smoke was coming out of the fireplace chimney that was large along one side of the house. No cars were there. There was nothing to indicate life. It turned out there was a reason for that.

  I pulled around to the back of the house where my car could not be seen from the road. There were a lot of tire tracks back there. I couldn't make any sense of that. It looked like someone had done donuts in the dirt with a large vehicle, but again there were no signs of life there. I went to the back door of the house and knocked. The screen door on the back of the house had been torn off and thrown aside off the small deck area that led to the back door. When I knocked on the door no one answered, but the door moved. It was open. I pushed it further open.

  And I puked over the side of the deck immediately. The residents of the house, at least two of them, were seated at the dining room table in the kitchen area. They had been cut repeatedly across the face and neck and upper body. Their clothing on the upper body was gone. The woman's breasts were nearly gone. The man was slashed so badly across his chest that you could not tell whether he had nipples left or not. And apparently after all of that they had been shot between the eyes one at a time. They had been dead for quite a while. They smelled pretty badly. There was a small shed like structure behind the house. I took them out there one by one and covered them with some blankets I found in the shed then went back into the house. I didn't think there would be much I could gain by being there but I thought maybe I could find out who the old couple were and report their deaths when I got to my dad's house.

  There was very little left in the refrigerator at that point and the door had been standing open for some time so the food was all rotten. I threw it all into a trash bag and found a trash can outside into which I put that mess. I didn't know what the hell else I should do so I just sat down and cried for a while. And I made a decision. It was about two to three miles to Frenchtown from where I was I thought. It seemed pretty much a certainty to me that if I attempted to drive that distance someone was going to stop me and kill me. Obviously, based on where I was and what I had seen, all civil authority in Frenchtown had broken down. My next thought was I wondered how far out into the forest whoever had done this was ranging. I wondered if they had gotten to my dad's place yet.

  My father is a retired teacher. He retired after a relatively short career as a college prof teaching political science. He is also a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel. He was first a Marine Lieutenant, commanding a Platoon, then a First Lieutenant commanding a platoon, then a Captain, commanding a company of Marines.

  Then he became Recon. He made Major while commanding a company of Recon Marines and ended up as a Lt. Colonel in charge of a battalion of Recon Marines. He retired from teaching not because it was time he did but because he was tired of working. He and my mom were frugal all their lives. They had to be as a military couple. The result was they had a large savings and a fair amount of monthly income from his military days and were awaiting his arrival at the age of sixty-six to retire on both the teaching retirement system and Social Security.

  My dad's name is Eugene de Young. My mother is named Irene. My wife's name is Carolyn Ruth. We call her Ruthie. My two boy's names are Gene and Billy. They should all be together at the “cabin.” And if anyone tried to go there and mess with them as they had with this family a shit storm would have ensued. My father has guns, lots of them, some military weapons, and through the years he has gathered a lot of ammunition. He has always had a belief that there might come a time when it would be necessary for him to use those weapons for the benefit of his family.

  His “cabin” was built just for the reason that the world might go on a total cluster fuck as it has! He built it in mind of nuclear war. He incorporated a lot of natural rock formations into the construction. He did almost all the work himself. He alone knew all the nuances of the defenses he built into the property. I was not so worried about whether they might all be okay but I was worried about how many might have gone to his place, what they might have found, what might have happened there.

  But the mess that I had found at this place showed me that I could not get to my dad's place by car. So now I had to figure out how I could walk there, whether I could defend myself if I had to, how to do that and how to avoid detection above all. It was only about two or three miles into Frenchtown, probably a mile through the town to the roads into the mountains and then maybe ten miles back to my dad's place.

  It was maybe a total of fifteen miles distance from where I was located at the time. I had no doubt I could do that, could walk that, could even run part of it if I were put into the position of having to do so. But how to keep from being detected? Darkness would have to become my friend. It had been before and could be again.

  My car had to be put completely out of sight in case we would come back to it later on. There had been a gas station next to the Micky “D”s in Missoula. They sold me 10 gallons for two hundred dollars. I had to try and preserve that in case we had the opportunity to head for the west coast where I knew no explosions had occurred.

  I scouted around the property and found that there was a kind of natural area behind the shed where the car could be parked and it had a sort of recess in which the car could be concealed. I put the car into that area, took some branches and obscured the tire tracks, scattered some pieces of tree limbs around and on the car to help it look more natural and went out to see how it looked. I could not see the car.

  The hamburgers I ate in Missoula left me. I was hungry but didn't know if there was anything in the house that might be edible. I started searching around and found a package of pemmican in the master bedroom just under the side of the bed where the man must have slept. Apparently after the people who were there killed the occupants they didn't do much of a search. As I ate I decided to do a little more searching. Who knows what I might find, I thought.

  I found, in a shoe box in the top of the closet, a .45 pistol. It looked old, the handle was a little slick, the clip was in it and there were rounds in the clip. It laid in the box next to a badge from San Diego Police Department. There were some extra rounds in the box and another clip there as well. I took the time to load some of the shells into the clip and while I was doing that I found a kind of recess in the closet that the killers had missed as well.

  Inside the recess there was a safe. I left it alone. There was also some cash laying loose in the area. I took that. There was a shotgun that was not designed for hunting. It was loaded with a number of rounds and had a sleeve on the stock with more. There was also a box in the recess with more 12 gauge shells. I looked through the recess with the shotgun and found that there was one more thing in it. That was an AR-15 rifle with a full clip as well as several other full clips laying loose next to the rifle. There was a Sam Browne in the closet recess as well with a holster that fit the .45 pistol. I put that on and it fit well enough not to bounce around much.

  In the closet, boxed, there were some good hiking boots. I checked the size which happened to be exactly the same as mine. There was a good down coat that would come in handy for night walking. It was summer but the nights would still be cold. I went out to my car and got a thermal undershirt that I had packed along with some thermal shorts and socks. There was a backpack in the car that I took as well. I felt badly about the house and the stuff that I was taking but I supposed that if the guy was going to have someone take it that might as well be me. I loaded some fresh underwear and socks into the backpack along with a couple of extra shirts and went back into the house.

  I went through the kitch
en quickly and found very little there to eat. The killers had taken almost everything by way of canned goods. They missed a couple of cans of kipper snacks and a package of crackers. I figured that could be one day's food. I put it into the pack. I found a little cold cereal left in one of the cabinets. I ate that. I found a door to a cellar that didn't seem to have been disturbed. It was one of those arrangements where a recessed wall ironing board came down out of it. The board was down like the woman had been ironing when the men came. The door handle to the cellar was hidden. I went down into the cellar after trying the wall switch. I was amazed to see there was still power to the house and then I realized I had heard a generator running outside somewhere.

  I went downstairs and found a treasure trove of small canned goods that the killers had missed. I loaded as much of that as I could into my backpack and then loaded up a plastic bag set that I doubled up and tied it to my back pack. It was heavy and awkward and I had to adjust it to keep it from rubbing me in places as I walked. It was almost dark by that time and I had no clue what I would do about walking except which direction I had to go. The last thing I found that was a godsend was a hat that had ear protection on it. There were some binoculars on a bench in the basement. I took them though I knew they would be useless except in the daylight hours, but I thought I might have some use for them at some point.

  As I went upstairs I shut off the lights and started to walk into the kitchen just about the time another car pulled up in front of the house. It was a police car. I didn't dare let them find me. As I slipped out the back door and ran into the forest, I heard them knocking on the door and calling out the name Scotty. I grabbed the rifle and shotgun with all the other stuff on the way out. I made very little noise and they were making a lot. I don't think they heard me. It was already dark in the woods which I ran into. By the time I got there I saw a flashlight go on and head for the back of the house. Then I heard the other one in front say “You know if they are not here they must be in town. And if they are not in town then they are dead. You know what is going on out here. These damned militias are killing anyone they find alone now. And it's getting late and those bastards will be taking control of the roads soon. Let's get the hell out of here.” The one with the flashlight stopped, turned slightly toward the rear of the house, then turned around and muttering to himself went back and got into the car. They left in a hurry.