by Ira Tabankin
Franco’s last comment stopped me in my tracks. I thought about a shelter as a last resort, I hadn’t thought about living in one for any length of time. I hadn’t considered the effects of living in a small box underground with all of us almost on top of each other, without daylight, without being able to go for a walk or the space to be alone. He was right. Our plans are going to have to change in a very big way. I should have studied how the submarine service deals with people being cooped up in a sub for months at a time. I didn’t even consider some people may just go crazy being confined in the shelter. I also didn’t consider the issue of food fatigue if we only have the same or very similar food every day. Damn it, there are basic things I should have thought about. I feel like a fool. “Franco, I blew it. You’re correct, why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking?”
“Jay, don’t beat yourself up over it. Most people wouldn’t have thought about these issues. You were thinking shelter to protect your family and friends, not how they may respond to being in one for any length of time. I spent ten years in the Navy, eight of them in a submarine. I know something about how being in a small space for months effects people.”
“Thank God you showed up on our doorstep.”
Franco unrolls a hand drawn blueprint, “This isn’t finished, it’s not a full blueprint, but it should provide a good starting point. The foundation will be poured cement, the water and waste pipes and channels for wires buried in the floor. The walls will be preformed cement sections. The beams will be steel ‘I’ beams which will be load-bearing support for the roof. Fresh air will be drawn in from the tunnels and fans that open in the woods that surround the farms. The ceiling will be covered with soil that has crops planted so no one will know there’s something out of the ordinary hiding under the crops. I’m thinking a group of bedrooms for the kids, a private bedroom for each adult pair, kitchen, bathrooms and storage rooms.”
Paul says, “If you dig up our fields, we’ll lose a lot of crops, we’ll have food problems. We may lose most of our summer crop and since it’s our main crop, we can’t afford to lose it.”
Franco says, “From the time we start till you have access to the roof for your crops will be less than four weeks. Is that workable?”
Paul thinks over the timeline, responding, I think we can make it work, if you start now, we’re on a very tight timeline with the weather, crops need a certain amount of time to grow and mature before we can harvest them.”
Fred asks, “How large a shelter do you think we need?”
Franco smiles, “How many people does it need to hold?”
I start counting heads, adding mine to the count and Franco and his sons, “I’d say we should plan for a space large enough to hold 30 to 40 people. This counts all of us, plus my kids and hopefully a doctor or nurse we can convince to join us, plus a couple of extra people, just in case I forgot someone.”
“How long will everyone stay in the shelter?”
I nod smiling, “Franco, that’s the key question. We don’t know. It’s supposed to be a last resort if we get pushed out of our homes. I hope the attackers take what they want and leave allowing us to reclaim our homes.”
Randy adds, “Jay, what if they decide to stay, say for the winter or summer. We should plan to stay in the shelter for at least six months. Maybe they decide to stay and work our fields? We’ll be screwed living underground while they live in our homes.”
I nod responding, “Then we should move our stored food and other supplies into the shelter so if we’re overrun they won’t find anything useful. Maybe that will cause them to move along quicker. In the worse case, we can sneak out at night and take some of them down every night. We might be able to scare them into leaving.”
Franco says, “The shelter has to be doubled in size to hold all of the supplies, what about the farm animals?”
We look at each other trying to figure out the answer out when our front gate alarm sounds.
We sprint to the kitchen to look at the monitor, we see three black SUVs slowly drive by all of our driveways. They turn around and drive back stopping at Fred’s gate. A man dressed in all black gets out of one of the SUVs and walks over to inspect the gate. He pushes on it, he looks at the barbwire fence, he tries looking up Fred’s driveway. He slowly walks back to his SUV. They drive to each gate doing the same recon at each house. I say, “It looks like we’re going to have unwanted visitors soon. I don’t like this. I think we should prepare for an attack tonight. Franco, why don’t you park your equipment behind my house? Draw up some plans and show them to us tomorrow. We have some things to take care of.”
“My sons and I are ready to stand by you in the defense of our new home. We brought our rifles with us, we have five AK47s.”
I nod, saying, “We’re standardized on the AR platform, I have some AK47 ammo put away if you need some.”
“We brought 10,000 rounds for our rifles, we each have four seventy-five round drum mags. My sons and I can look at your defenses, we’ll see what we can quickly do to help improve them.”
We all nod our thanks. Everyone goes to their homes to grab their rifles, extra magazines, and their battle armor before we check our defenses. We can’t afford to move around without our weapons in case we’re attacked. Franco makes some suggestions to quickly improve our defenses, he suggests we add screens over our motion activated lights and move them further away from the barbed wire. He also suggests we dig more small pits while covering them with a thin sheet covered in leaves or sod that blends in with the ground around them. We agree with his ideas, tasks we will look at tomorrow, which assumes we survive our first attack tonight.
Franco’s son Sandy asks, “Do you have any of the exploding gun targets?”
I reply, “We have a few, but not many, why do you ask?”
Sandy says, “I know where to get a lot of them. We can cover them with nails, place them midway between the fence and the trench when the attackers rush us, we shoot the targets, they’ll explode like a land mine.”
We smile and nod in agreement. I say, “Sandy, do you need money to get them?”
“I need money to buy cases of beer to trade for the targets.”
Laughing, I nod my understanding, “How much is a case of beer going for today?”
“Between $100 and $150 a case. A couple of thousand will more than cover it.”
I walk into my house. Opening one of the safes where I withdraw $3,000. Returning, I hand it to Sandy. “Please go make the trade, I like this idea. Can you sneak out and back tonight without being seen?”
“When they drive towards the house on the other side of the farms, I’ll try to slip out of your driveway.”
“Be careful out there.”
“I will, I’ll call when I return, if I can’t call, I’ll text the number 12378 which means everything is OK. Any other number means I’m under duress.”
“Got it.”
Franco starts digging holes, his older son, Lou works on improving our trench and removing any ground cover in front of the trench. Thus giving us an open field of fire the attackers are going to have to cross to reach us. I have another idea, “Lou, can you weld up supports that can hold a rifle? If we can strap or tie a rifle to a steady support, the rifle won’t rise when we fire in the full auto mode.”
“You have full-auto assault rifles?”
“You never heard me say that.”
“How many do you need to be made?”
“I think six will do for now.”
“I have some metal pipe on the truck, let me see what I can put together.”
“Jay, when do you think they’ll attack?”
“If they’re smart, they’ll wait until early morning, if it were me, I’d hit us between 3 and 4:00 AM. That’ll give us some time to prepare.”
“What if they’re not smart?”
“Then they’ll hit us as soon as it gets dark.”
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While working with Franco my phone pings with an urge
nt news alert. I look at the headline feeling a cold chill running down my back. The headline says, “Insurance companies announce stores, homes and offices damaged or destroyed by rioting aren’t covered by existing insurance policies. The insurance industry says they consider the riots an act of war, domestic, but still an act of war, which insurance doesn’t cover.” This devastates most business owners. I think this is the straw that is going to break the camel's back with respect to our economy. Without insurance covering losses the stores aren’t going to be rebuilt, no shelves are going to be restocked. I look at Franco saying, “Franco, the economy just took a swift kick to the balls. The insurance industry just announced they’re not covering any losses due to rioting.”
Franco shakes his head saying, “I was afraid of this. It means the riots will grow when they realize the shelves aren’t going to be restocked. The rioting will expand as the mobs looks for food and water. That’s why I came here. Our home wasn’t defendable.”
“I’m happy you came. I’m afraid we’re going to need the shelter, plus we can always use more bodies for defense and work on the farms.”
“My boys are young and very strong. They will help as needed.”
“Thanks, Franco.”
Franco wipes the perspiration off of his forehead while digging small holes asking, “Jay, how bad do you think it’s going to get?”
“Do you remember the TV reports from Katrina?”
“Yes, why?”
“Katrina was one city, multiply that times thousands of cities and towns. At least in Katrina, FEMA, and the Coast Guard showed up, this time they’re not going to be showing up. They don’t have the resources to be everywhere at the same time. People will leave the cities looking for supplies. They may come in small groups or in groups numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Katrina showed us society fails very quickly, what’s under the surface is very ugly. We’re going to have to fight for our lives.”
“Jay, we’re ready. We came prepared to fight if need be. We saw the rioting only a couple of blocks from our house. We knew the rioting and destruction were moving in our direction. Your agreement for us to stay here is saving our lives.”
“Franco, I’m glad we’re able to help save your lives.”
“Jay, you are saving our lives. We are going to build the shelter as if our lives depend on it because they do. My sons and I will man your front line tonight when the attack comes.”
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Two hours after leaving, Sandy texts 12378 to my phone letting me know he’s close and not being followed. When I see the truck approaching our gate, we open it, hoping Sandy can sneak in without any uninvited guests sneaking in with him. He returned with five cases of exploding targets. Matt helps him spray paint them brown and green to blend in with the ground cover after Cheri and Lacy spray them with glue and cover them in nails and BBs. Two hours later the mines are finished. We hide them between the street and our trench, checking to make sure we can see them. Finding them difficult to see because of the paint, we spray a fluorescent orange spot facing our trench, hoping they aren’t very visible from anyone coming towards us from the street. Now we could easily target them from the trench. All five families share an early evening meal together while we do everything we can to prepare for our visitors. We take turns spending two hours in the trench, so everyone can get a little rest and try to relax while we wait for the attack we think is coming. Paul asks me, “Jay, when do you think they’ll attack?”
“The earlier they hit us, the less experienced they are.”
We’re as ready as we can be, everyone does their chores wearing body armor and carrying their rifles. At 10:00 PM our motion sensor alerts us that someone is pulling up to Fred’s front gate. We watch video from our hidden cameras as they push against the gate. They get into the truck and slowly drive away. My phone rings, “Jay, Fred, do you think they’re gone, did they give up?”
“Nope, they drove around the curve, we need to put some cameras there, we have a blind spot, somehow they figured it out. They’re going to walk back to us. Just wait and keep your eyes open and don’t make any sounds.” I smile thinking of the little trick we set up in our homes. We have a couple of sewing models mounted on wheels that are pulled back and forth in front of our living room window shades. Anyone looking towards our houses will think the shadows they see are us and they’ll think we’re all in our living rooms.
Thirty minutes later we see eight bodies walking in a single file along the barbed wire fence. They’re all carrying rifles. We can’t tell by the thermal images what type of rifles they are. Two of them are carrying sheets of plywood which they lay over the barb wire fence. The sheets of wood allow them to walk over our fence. We’ll have to find a way to make sure no one can use this trick on us again. Right after they cross our barbed wire, two of them step into one of our small punji pits, breaking their ankles and impaling their foot on the nails. Two are effectively out of the fight. The remaining six spread out slowly walking up Fred’s driveway, so far they haven’t seen us waiting in our trench. Their leader pauses, he kneels placing some type of device to his right eye. Damn it, he has a night vision device. We turn on our bright lamps which defeat his night vision and also momentarily blinds them, overloading their night vision.
Paul is our best shot, he looks at me, I nod. He aims and shoots a mine, it blows up in a bright flash, sending hundreds of nails out in all directions. We keep our heads down so any nails that come in our direction fly over our trench. The mini claymore surprises the hell out of our invaders while taking three of them out. Now there are only three people left. Paul aims, hitting the leader in his chest. Fred and I aim for the other two. I miss with one shot, hitting him with my second. Fred hits his target with his first shot. We wait to see if anyone else is coming. One of the wounded is crying out for mercy. We get up to see if any other invaders are alive. Of the eight who attacked us, three are wounded. They might make it, but it depends on if those who stepped in a punji pit get an infection and how serious the wounds of the others are. Fred asks, “Jay, should we call the police?”
“I think your friend Sheriff Grover sent them. Why don’t you and Matt find their trucks and bring them here? We’ll hide them at the far end of our property. I think the Sheriff will show up to see if his friends succeeded. We should act as if nothing happened. When dawn breaks, send the kids to police any brass they find. We need to remove the wood from the barb wire fence and remove any proof these guys were here. Strip the bodies, we’ll bury them in a mass grave near the back end of our land next to the small hill.”
Fred looks down at the three wounded invaders, “What about them?”
“Let’s see if they have any knowledge we can use.”
I bend down on one knee, “Any of you want to trade information?”
One of them men coughs up blood, asking, “What are you offering?”
“A quick, painless death, or we can cut your tongue out and drop you out in the back of our land, let the animals have you. You won’t even be able to scream.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who sent you, what did they tell you about us?”
Cough, cough. “Sheriff Groversent us. Told us you’d be real easy pickings, you have food, liquor, and women.”
“Anything else you want to say?”
“He told us, he’ll come by around nine in the morning.”
“Thank you.” Phuff. One silenced round to the center of his head sent him to hell.
Chapter 9
President Putin and Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu meet to discuss what else they can do to the Americans. “Mr. President, the American’s economy is in the toilet, rioting is out of control, most of their cities are burning. Anything else we do will be considered an act of war, they may counter attack us with nuclear weapons.”
President Putin laughs at his defense minister, “Sergey, the black Yankee President doesn’t have the balls to use nuclear weapons. He lacks the ba
lls to do anything except talk. He gives speeches how he wants the world to be, not how it actually is. How many lines in the sand has he drawn and moved in six years? He doesn’t have one iota of guts in him. He’s a pansy, we can do anything we want. As long as nothing can be traced directly to us, he won’t do a damn thing. We are free to act in any manner we wish. I want some options that will destroy their economy for good. I don’t want them to be able to quickly fix whatever we do to them. I want them to hurt. We are on the eve of the greatest moment in our history. We are about to capture Europe without firing a shot, if we manage the Americans right, we’ll be able to control them forever.”
