“Out of all of us! But that’s not all. Look around, man.”
Stan glanced around the complex and noticed for the first time that of the 60% occupancy before the power went out, only about half of those remained. The ones who had stayed behind had noticed a fairly steady stream of people abandoning their apartments and heading for parts unknown. Some told of moving in with relatives in other states or cities. Others said they were heading out to live with friends or loved ones. The result was the same. The apartment complex population was shrinking, by the day. There were a score of people who had simply not come back after the power out. They had gone to work that morning and never returned. No one quite knew what to make of that.
“I see what you mean,” Stan said quietly.
“If that ‘doom and gloom’ had kept up much longer, there might not be anyone left! It was scaring the shit out of millions of people who were already scared to begin with, just adding fuel to the fires that got started in the big cities.”
“Do you think shutting down the radios will help though?” asked Stan, watching a gull soar through the orange-tinted sky.
“Well, they’re not really shut down—just broadcasting approved news bulletins now. Which sounds to me like propaganda, but,” Erik shrugged. “At least we know the President’s still in charge and trying to get things under control.”
“Yeah, barely in charge! I wonder what it’s like in those big cities right now.”
“I sure as hell don’t wanna know,” replied Erik. “I’m more afraid of what it’s gonna be like around here in a few days. Did you see that smoke over to the southwest this morning?”
Stan shook his head. “No. I was…uh…” Stan looked nervous and stared at his hands.
“Only a matter of time before the looting starts,” Erik said, watching his companion’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. Stan flinched but covered it well.
Erik thought about his neighbor’s odd behavior. Something was going on but the man didn’t want to talk. Erik shrugged mentally. He could respect that, but he’d keep an eye on Stan until he figured out what he was up to. “Well, whatever was burning was pretty big. It looked like a long way off though. ‘Member how we heard all the police and ambulance sirens the past few days?”
“Yeah. We get a lot more people going past the main gate now too.”
“Well, I haven’t heard but maybe three or four sirens all day today. That’s not even much more than a normal day before the power went out…But there’s people at the gate every ten minutes, begging for food.” Erik fingered the strap on his K-Bar unconsciously. He had been wearing it constantly since the day after the power went out.
Stan smacked at a mosquito. “I see Ted hasn’t been around today. Know anything?” he asked.
“Nope. Last I heard he was called in late last night for a ‘briefing’. That’s last I saw him.” Erik could see that across the pond, Alfonse was starting to light the tiki-torches that enclosed the pool deck. Brin was already over there chatting it up with Charone.
Erik had noticed a subtle shift in Brin over the past three days. Previously before the crisis, neither one of them had made much of an effort to seek out friendships among the other apartment complex dwellers. Since there was no TV, power or anything else other than books, Brin had spent most of her time talking. She’d started out chatting with the other women of the complex, just introducing herself and seeing what was up—gossip. Brin had brushed off the observation by saying that she had been trained as a sales rep—her job, when the power had been on, was to talk people up and get them to buy more of her company’s products.
“Guess we better head over, huh?” asked Stan with a sigh.
Erik thought for a second, She’s making all kinds of contacts now. She keeps this up, she’ll know everyone in the complex soon. Erik didn’t share this with Stan, as the two men packed up their chairs. He wasn’t sure what to think about Brin’s new pastime. It seemed harmless enough for the present though. At least he had gotten her to stop calling him a ‘survivalist’ in front of people. Baby steps…
“This is becoming quite the ritual, huh?” asked Stan, picking up his collapsed chair and breaking off Erik’s train of thought.
Erik laughed. “Yeah, but what else we got to do?” Erik grabbed his radio and the two men started over towards the pool deck. They noticed the number of people present tonight was larger than before.
“Looks like most of the complex, or what’s left,” observed Stan.
“Brin said that she, Charone and Susan were going door to door to spread the word of our ‘nightly meetings’. I think she called it a ‘soiree’.”
Stan laughed, noticing that across the pond to the North, there were a couple of people strolling towards the pool deck. “Looks like the ladies did a good job.”
Erik felt an itch in the back of his mind that told him it was time to start setting up a community. He had read enough disaster novels and studied all kinds of documents on the internet about how to establish self-government after the shit hit the fan and the world ended. He considered it a good idea, but decided to wait until at least after tonight, when most of the people in the complex were present, to determine which way the wind blew, so to speak. He thanked God that the massive wrought iron gate to their community with the big brass plaque that read “Colonial Gardens” was electrically powered—when the lights went out, they were locked in. It took two or three men to physically move the damn thing and open it for a car to get out—which was a pain in the ass, but, it assured everyone that the average street thug wouldn’t get in easily.
Of course with more people leaving the complex every day, it seemed prudent to wait awhile before trying to establish a self-governing body, at least until they knew who was planning on staying and who might be leaving to seek other possible safe havens.
Wonder if anyone else is thinking along that line…? he thought idly. The constant honking and sounds of traffic heading towards the interstate created a mind numbing background noise on this steamy summer night. Overhead, bright, towering sunlit thunderheads gathered to reflect light down on a darkened world.
FIST OF THE JIHAD
The Fist Strikes
HAKIM AND SALDID sat in their car outside the ransacked Seven-Eleven. They both loaded their weapons: Saldid, a semi-auto 9mm pistol, Hakim, a sawed off double barreled shotgun he had liberated from the last Yankee slain.
Once they had run out of flares and other incendiaries, they left their fires to grow or die as Allah willed. Now, the two terrorists had taken to a crime spree. It was perfect timing. The power had gone out, throwing most of the country into paralysis. Then the riots had started. Then the so-called “wild” fires had started. The Arizona government was being pulled in all directions at once, played like a puppet. That meant it was open season on Yankees.
To be honest, Hakim and Saldid had planned on slaying large groups of Americans—people in churches, for example, praying for guidance in troubled times. The two had decided they might still go that route, but had changed their minds when they were witnesses to an armed robbery.
They had pulled in to a run-down gas station in north of Phoenix after receiving word from their handler to head south and observe. A very cryptic order, but they were the Fist, so they obeyed.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t have some fun on the way, however. At the gas station, they were about to rob the proprietor, who was still trying to figure out why the power went out when three thugs kicked in the door and shot the place up, killing the cashier before Hakim and Saldid could get out of their stolen car.
Beaten to the punch, Hakim and Saldid were furious. The two hardened terrorists, trained in the best of the Holy Osama’s camps in Iraq and Iran, quickly slew the street thugs and took their weapons. Still in the opening stages of the power crisis, they were wary of authorities stumbling on the scene and helped themselves to food and drink, throwing it in the back of the souped up low-rider Honda Civic the thugs had driven
.
For the next two days, the Arab terrorists worked their way towards Tucson, staying in contact with their handler via a satellite phone used only for tight security messages. For some reason unknown to them, he wanted them to get closer to the Mexican border. This was confusing, because there were many more fat Yankees to kill in Tucson and Phoenix than near the border. With their unshakable belief in fate, they shrugged and accepted their new assignment, spreading death and mayhem along the way. They cut a bloody swath south, killing whomever they pleased, whether they needed food, drink, gas or women.
It brought a smile to Hakim’s face to know that at that very moment, there were many other teams, doing the same thing all across the American west. Their activities would probably be chalked up to post power-loss chaos, and never be fully appreciated by the American pigs, but it still filled his heart with pride.
“Are you ready, Saldid?” Hakim asked in a low voice.
Saldid continued smiling like a madman, staring at the windows of the ransacked convenience store. He appeared to not have heard his friend.
“Saldid!”
The other terrorist jumped. “What?”
“I asked if you were ready?” said Hakim, growing impatient.
“I didn’t hear you. Oh…could that be because you fired that monster next to my head this morning?” said Saldid acidly, gesturing towards the shotgun in Hakim’s hands.
“I am sorry…again.” Hakim apologized, remembering the look of horror on Saldid’s face after the cop had been killed. They had been pulled over just south of Flagstaff by a State Trooper who was a little too gung-ho about racial profiling. Hakim remembered how the infidel confidently strolled up to the stolen Honda and rapped on the tinted window. When Saldid rolled down the glass, Hakim quickly thrust his double barreled shot gun out it and blew the cop into the middle of the highway. Saldid heard nothing but ringing and buzzing in his ears for hours after that. They had considered taking the police cruiser but decided against it—it was still too early to be trying something like that.
“Never the less…I am ready,” said Saldid a little too loud. “Let us roll the rock!”
Hakim paused, half out his door. “You mean, let us ‘rock and roll’.”
“Yes! That is what I say!” Saldid grinned as he shut his driver’s side door. “I am hungry, let’s see what we shall eat…it will be evening soon and we will need food for the road, yes?” he said, racking back the slide on his new pistol. He couldn’t recognize the make or model, but then again, he didn’t particularly care—it was a gun and he could kill Yankees with it; that was good enough for him.
IRAN
Delivery Overnight, Guaranteed
THE MEDIUM SIZED delivery truck, white and filthy with age—typical for it’s particular region of the world—pulled out of Al Qatranah, Jordan, in the middle of the night on the last leg of its journey.
The driver, an Al Qaeda operative, had taken over control of the truck at Al Qatranah from the previous driver and navigator who had delivered the truck and its cargo from the port city of Al Aqabah four hours earlier, on the southern tip of Jordan. Al Aqabah lay nestled in the armpit of the Gulf of Aqabah, the right ‘finger’ of the Red Sea.
The driver scratched his thick black beard and yawned as he and his navigator bounced over the dusty road on their way to Amman. He squinted, watching the weak headlights dance on the road before them as they traveled. It was nearly 3am and he had been roused from a deep sleep to take this mission.
From there, if he understood his orders correctly, he’d hand over the ubiquitous little truck to another team that would take it further north and eventually into Israel through some hidden pass up near the Golan Heights. But that was some other operative’s responsibility. He need only make it to Amman without causing trouble, meet his handler and turn over his truck. He didn’t even know what the cargo was and frankly, didn’t care. His navigator though, worried him.
The navigator kept his head down buried in his maps, though the driver knew this road like the back of his hand. There was no town or village of consequence between here and Amman. All they had to do was stay on the road and they’d get there. Yet the navigator didn’t say much. The driver took another sideways glance at his new partner. He thought it strange that his old partner was suddenly reassigned.
This new fellow doesn’t look Jordanian…perhaps he’s from Iraq? Maybe Iranian? I cannot place his accent.
The navigator looked at the map for the seventeenth time that hour, sweat beginning to break out on his head. He had been the ‘new’ navigator for the last driver as well. He alone knew the deadly secret contained in the thin steel walls of the delivery truck. He had been with the cargo as it bypassed the oafish U.N. inspection teams while winding its way through Iran.
He was there when the cargo left Chabahar, Iran, on the south-eastern coast, well away from the foolish American Navy occupying the Persian Gulf. The ‘navigator’ had sailed on the obsolete and leaking oil tanker as it rounded Saudi Arabia and had spent nearly the entire trip painfully seasick. Then he had been forced to wait on that stinking hellhole called a ship for more than two weeks while events in America played out and he received word from Tehran that he was finally clear to land.
He had overseen the delicate process of unloading the fragile cargo at the rickety docks of Al Aqabah. Now his journey was nearing its completion. All they had to do was make it to Amman by tonight to keep up with the schedule. He took a quick glance across the desert-like wasteland to their left, past his ignorant filthy, flee-ridden fool of a driver. In the pre-dawn darkness he couldn’t really see anything. But he knew what was there.
That way, to the west, is Israel.
SARASOTA
Greetings and Salutations
SO, HOW’S EVERYONE doing, food-wise?” asked one of the newcomers to the assembled Colonial Gardens inhabitants.
There were around fifty people gathered on the pool deck. Of those, Erik estimated twenty were children. They were happily playing in the pool with a few of the moms. The rest were adults. Erik took a glance around and figured the ages ran from 20 to 65.
Heads shook, people muttered and talked with those around them. Erik could see they were still getting nowhere. For the most part, the meeting had gone okay. Introductions were made and everyone shared where they were when the power went out. People who were outside Sarasota and made it home told tales of the horrors they witnessed on the journey back home. Word spread of the people who had left and never returned.
The general consensus was, no one knew very much, other than what they were told over the radio. The major cities had erupted into lawlessness. Looting, fires, riots. Anyone caught in the middle, according to the President, was cut off. The government was trying to send in supplies and troops but…
Erik frowned and thought of the infamous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina years ago. It was the same story of incompetence and “too little too late”, all over again.
With power out, no one could get gas. After a brief panic, everyone had resigned themselves to the fact that you had what you had, and you weren’t getting any more. Stores were without means of taking money unless it was cash. The grocery stores couldn’t get re-supplied beyond the trucks that were already inbound when the power went out and still had enough fuel to reach their destinations. Erik suspected that in a few days, people wouldn’t care and would break into any and every store looking for loot or food or both. Maybe they already had? It only took a few days in New Orleans, why should it be any different in Sarasota?
Erik pulled himself back to reality and noticed that Ted was still absent. He decided to seek out Susan after the meeting to see what was up with their resident police officer. Rumors were coming in every hour or so from the people in the surrounding neighborhoods. People were out walking and riding bicycles to visit with friends and see if anything was going on outside their little enclaves. Those who like Erik, had radios—especially shortwave radios—were learning of the
deepening crisis in America.
The English were trying desperately to get word out of America and then report it back to anyone who still had shortwave capability. The Federal Government was being tight-lipped. The frosty relationship endured by England and her former colonies touched off by President Obama years ago had not fully thawed when the crisis hit. America could not rely on England to help like it might have in the 19th Century.
“Anyone know if Murphy’s still has food?” asked a woman in the back of the group. Murphy’s was the high-priced grocery store at the corner of the block. In fact, the masonry wall that shielded the complex was right behind the grocery store ‘shopping center’. More murmurs from the group and head shaking.
“Most stores within a few miles are pretty much stripped clean of the usual stuff: milk, water, bread, fruits and vegetables. What they do have left, you can only get with cash,” Erik said. The group quieted down quickly. “I heard that from a cop that drove by this morning checking on the neighborhoods around here. He said he was trying to get a list of who was still here to give to FEMA when they—well, if they show up.”
“What about people who don’t have any food right now?” someone else called from the other side of the group. “Like all those people who come by the gate?”
“The hell with them, some of us don’t have food!” a gruff voice from the gathering darkness called out.
People all began talking at once, trying to be heard over each other. Erik was trying to figure out what the man ten feet away was saying when he gave up. It was getting out of hand. People were talking all at the same time with the one result being no one could hear any one thing, so no one could offer help or advice. The more people talked, the louder it got, the more nervous some became—their fears were compounded by the ‘worried crowd’ feeling. Erik could feel things begin to spiral out of control.
Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) Page 17
