Calamity in America

by Pete Thorsen

  There were grumblings about the state of the nation, but these grumblings were spoken very quietly, and everyone was very careful to speak softly and quickly when they met one of their neighbors or friends or relatives at the grocery store or anywhere else that was a public place. No one wanted to attract any attention or make it look like a gathering of any kind. The government was not everywhere but an awful lot of people were anxious to get the cash rewards for turning in those dreaded “agitators.”

  Chapter 2

  Not to toot my own horn but I am not stupid and neither was my wife. When crap started happening we thought this might just turn out bad and last for a very long time. So we tried to prepare for the worst of what we feared was coming. I cashed out my small retirement account and we sold both of our newer cars and bought an older pickup (only because it was cheap). Then, using what cash we now had, we bought useful stuff. Food was first on our short list and we bought a lot of that. We also bought garden seeds, a lot of them in the hopes that we could start and grow our own garden for food. Plus garden seeds were very cheap so that was something we could afford. But most of what money we scraped together went towards food for storage that we would use to keep us alive.

  I would like to say that we had a mountain of cash and filled our rented house with supplies, but that was just not the case. I was 24 years old and my wife was 22 at that time. My retirement account was slightly less than three years old and had very little money in it. Our two cars were pretty new but only one was paid for and after selling them both and paying off the loan on the one we only netted a few hundred dollars over the price of the well-used pickup we bought. There were plenty of used vehicles for sale. But still, it was extra money that we generated, and it did allow us to stock up some.

  We did not need two vehicles anymore because my wife Jennifer had lost her job. And with the dismal job market we both accepted the fact that she likely would not find another job. There were no jobs to be had though she did try hard for any job at all. There were no jobs flipping burgers or as a waitress or as a maid in a motel. No jobs of any kind. And she really tried hard to find something.

  We would have sold more stuff but we had really nothing worth anything to sell. And everyone else was selling everything they had at the same time as us, just trying to make ends meet. We did cut our cell phone service. I mean we cut it off completely. No cell phones and later we cut off the land line phone also. We had a small satellite TV service but we stopped that and we bought a used TV antenna at a yard sale and watched free broadcast TV, while it was still being broadcast that is.

  We stopped our internet service and Jenny walked to the nearby library and used a computer there to surf the internet, at least until the entire internet service went down. That was one way she looked for jobs—with the internet. It was a free way to look for a job, too.

  We couldn’t do anything about our rent, at least at first anyway. When things kept getting worse we negotiated the rent lower. Then, later yet, we just stopped paying the rent like everyone else. Everyone stopped paying for rent, stopped paying their mortgages, stopped making car payments and credit card payments. Everyone stopped paying all of their monthly bills. Almost no one had a job or any money. The credit cards stopped working early on and everyone had to use cash. Even checks were not taken by any retailers though you could send in checks to pay monthly bills. Of course, by that time just about everything a person needed was rationed by our totalitarian government anyway.

  Soon even real paper money was not even used and instead you just used your monthly government-supplied ration stamps. That was just done near the very end though.

  Way back when the government closed all the gun shops it set off alarm bells for many people, including me. We all (at least the ones awake) thought that the next logical step was total gun confiscation. I had several guns that I had inherited from my dad and my granddad. The government did not know about them. I kept a single shot shotgun and a box of ammo for it in the house for defense but hid very well everything else gun-wise that I owned. Good thing too.

  Without any communications and with the very restricted travel and no public gatherings no one knew what was going on, and if something bad was happening somewhere from the government’s hand, then there was no way for citizens to effectively mount a resistance to the government. At least not very easily anyway.

  When the government finally came to our house we had no idea why. They came and said they were searching for several escaped murderers and were searching every house in the whole area. We were escorted outside and we could see our neighbors were all outside also while all our houses were being searched “for our safety.” None of us really knew what was going on or what these government men were searching for except for what they told us. And the excuse they gave us was not all that far-fetched. Plus, when you have automatic rifles pointed at you and your wife, the best thing is just to do exactly as you are told and try to stay alive to fight when the odds are maybe not stacked so heavily against you.

  When they finally exited our house they had that old single shot shotgun and the box of ammunition for it. They took it with them. They carried several guns from our neighbor’s house we noticed. Our neighbors were also taken away, though surprisingly they returned a couple days later. They said they were questioned about having so many guns. They did not look very happy and were very subdued while we were talking to them when they got back.

  I had to guess that this searching and gun confiscation was going on all across the country. And it likely had been for quite some time and we just never heard about it of course because of the no-communications situation. Just the enormity of this task of searching every house or apartment in the nation would require a very long time to complete.

  But in rural areas and small cities it would have likely went fairly smooth just like it did here in our small community. Who knows where in the nation they started the searching and gun confiscation but it was most likely that the out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere that we called home would not be first on their list of places to search. In our community I heard no gun shots, and even later I did not hear of any resistance during these searches. I assume this was likely a normal result. After all, none of us knew what the government had planned until they showed up at our door and the excuse they had was not that far out of line. Plus, there was the fact of their overwhelming show of force when they did show up. The ones that came and did the searches looked like they had done them many, many times before.

  Apparently our government maybe never fully completed this task of total gun confiscation. I don’t know what all happened but I did hear rumors later that there was quite a resistance group in our nation trying to stop our government from all these illegal and un-American actions. Rumor also has it that a big part of our military rebelled and joined up with this resistance faction. Rumor also says that the President, Vice President, most of the Cabinet members and a big chunk of our Congressmen and Senators were all put to death for their traitorous actions. This could be true and it could be all just stupid rumors. I have no way to determine the truth.

  I do know that all the government radio and TV stations went off the air. We also did not receive any ration stamps and when we went to the stores where we used those ration stamps they were mostly all closed down. About two or three weeks later the electricity went off and never came back on again.

  Then it was total anarchy.

  Chapter 3

  As soon as the power went off things got pretty ugly pretty quickly. Thanks to our foresight my wife and I had a fair amount of food stored away for our use but we were certainly the exception on this food issue, most people by this time had very little or no food stored. Those that had stored some food had been using it to supplement the rations that we were allowed each month. The rations were not very much and there was no way anyone could get fat off them. By the time the power went off I had gone out and “found” a couple of the guns I had previously hidden. It was very
early winter or late fall and I decided to go hunting and hopefully return with a deer for us. The fresh meat would really allow us to stretch out our stored food and we had made plans to make jerky out of all the meat so it would keep without being frozen and could even be stored in the now-useless refrigerator. Plus it was something that could be eaten without further cooking. Cooking was now a problem. The act itself was the same for us because we had a propane gas cook stove in the kitchen. But the cooking produced odors that could be smelled by any hungry person in the area. That made for many knocks on the door and then the begging for food.

  Maybe it was a good thing that the government had removed most of the guns and ammunition from the population because even with most guns gone it was still very dangerous to be outside now. Or even inside for that matter. Jenny knew how to handle guns and we had gone shooting several times in the past. I knew she was mechanically able to shoot the handgun I left her but I did have great concern whether she was emotionally capable of shooting another human.

  I had re-enforced many of the windows and both of the doors of our rental house. I had done as much as I was able to do to make the place secure. I made sure the revolver I left her was loaded and, rather pointlessly, went over its simple operation again with Jenny before I left to go hunting. I knew very well that she was very familiar with the gun but just to make me feel better I went over it again with her. She understood why I was doing this and she just let me tell her everything that she already knew. She assured me she would use the gun if it became necessary. I think she knew I would not leave without that assurance from her. So she said just what I desired to hear.

  I was walking from our house to hunt because the little community where our house was located was small and surrounded by “wild” public land. We lived on the edge of this community and our back yard basically stretched for many miles. There were plenty of deer around, or at least there used to be before things all went sour. I left in the dark well before first light and hoped to be back home by noon with a deer so we would have plenty of light available to cut it up and process it all into jerky.

  Actually, it was not much of a hunt. About three miles from home with the help of my binoculars I spotted a couple deer in the distance and successfully snuck up close enough to shoot the smaller of the two deer. I did this on purpose because I had a long drag ahead of me. I quickly gutted the animal and commenced dragging it back home. The trip home was tiring but otherwise uneventful.

  When I got home and had the dead deer safe in the back yard I dropped it and went in to get Jenny to show her my success. When I walked eagerly up to the back door I could see that it had been smashed open. I saw that just before I was about to call out to my Jenny to announce my arrival home. So I kept silent instead and tried not to think about what I might find inside. I did make sure that my rifle had a round in the chamber and was ready to go with the hammer back so I only needed to pull the trigger to fire.

  I snuck in very quietly and, listening, I at first heard nothing inside. When I heard a noise it sounded like it was from the main bathroom. I was even more careful then and ready as I advanced. I had no idea if anyone was really inside my home or, if so, how many, or if Jenny was there alone and had a story of scaring off intruders. When I peaked around the door frame of the bathroom where I thought I had heard the noise, I saw a man with his back to me and his shirt off, cleaning up some blood on the front of him it looked like.

  Rather than risk shooting him, and by doing so alerting anyone else in the house, I made one step into the room and clubbed him very hard with the heavy barrel of my rifle. He fell to the floor and did not move. The only noise was him hitting the floor and he looked like he would be out for a bit so I continued the search of my own house.

  The door to our bedroom had been smashed open also and that was where I found my Jenny. She was a bloody mess and when I touched her neck there was no pulse and looking at her I had expected none. She was fully clothed and my guess was that she had fought hard at the end and had hurt her assailant (hence the blood he was cleaning up) and he had gone into a rage and killed her brutally, likely with his bare hands as I saw no other weapon lying close at hand, just the revolver I had left for her on the nightstand next to our bed.

  I don’t know how long I just stood there before I moved again. At first I was in a blind rage and stomped back to the bathroom where I had left the unconscious man on the floor. I had every intention to kill him as he lay there. Then, just before I pulled the trigger on the rifle that I had pointed at his head, my rage cooled just slightly. Well, maybe cooled is not the correct term. I found that I wanted him to suffer just like I was now suffering and shooting him while he was lay unconscious would just not satisfy that rage.

  So I ripped the electric cords from a couple of the now-worthless electric appliances and tied him up very securely. It mattered not to me if I tied the bindings so tight they cut off all his circulation. Next, I got one of the buckets of water (we had to carry water due to no electric power and I always kept several ready at home for our use) and a clean wash cloth and towel and went back and cleaned my Jenny’s face as best as I could. I then gently wrapped her in a clean bed sheet and carefully carried her outside. I dug her grave in the back yard, laid her gently down in it, and covered her over. Then I piled rocks from around the house over her grave. This project took me a considerable amount of time.

  Once done, I again remembered the man I had left tied in the bathroom. He was wide awake now and had done a bunch of damage as he had thrashed around and tried to get loose. He glared at me when I found him there still on the floor. His shirt that he had taken off was nearby and I used that to gag him before I grabbed him and roughly dragged him outside and onto the cement apron in front of our small garage.

  I left him there and went into the garage and returned with a couple of simple hand tools. His eyes got very big when he saw the tools and he started thrashing something fierce again, trying to break his bonds. I knelt next to him so there was no chance he could mistake my words.

  “She was my wife. I loved her more than life itself. You can never suffer as much as I am right now, but I will do everything I can to make you suffer as I am now.”

  Even with the shirt as a gag he was able to make a fair amount of noise as I worked on him. When he passed out I stopped immediately and cleaned up some and then worked on the deer I had brought home so it would not go to waste. When I was done with the deer I resumed my work on the man whenever he was conscious.

  The man was very strong and lived almost a whole two days. When he finally passed from this world I tied him securely to the electric pole across the street from my house. There were a few now-starving feral dogs running loose in the area that I had seen several times, and there were always a few coyotes that could feed off him. It was what he deserved and I felt nothing as I tied him to that electric pole.

  He would remain there on that pole as a sign post for others like him. When the critters were done with him then his bones would still do that same job of warning away others. Or not, as it mattered little to me anymore.

  Chapter 4

  Shortly after the electric power had gone off and it looked like it would not be coming back on, leaving everyone in our small community without any water, a neighbor (we were all neighbors) made an ingenuous gadget to get water from the big community well.

  This guy had taken a piece of plastic pipe about four feet long that looked to be about four inches in diameter and glued a reducer coupling onto one end. The reducer he installed tapered down to about two inches. Next he dropped in a common plastic ball that moved freely in the bigger pipe but was too big to go through that reducer on the end. Next he screwed in three long screws, trapping the ball just above the reducer but still allowing it to remain loose in the pipe. On the other end of the pipe he glued on a regular pipe coupling, apparently just to re-enforce that end of the pipe.

  Then he tied a four-feet length of rope (maybe a little less long
) on the re-enforced end of that piece of pipe. With the top of the community well removed, this pipe gadget he made could be lowered down into the well and into the clean water below. The pipe was just heavy enough to mostly sink into the water most of its length. The trapped ball inside allowed water to freely enter the bottom of the pipe, but when you raised it and the water trapped inside the pipe tried to escape again out the bottom, the ball dropped and sealed the bottom. It was an incredibly simple, yet ingenious contraption.

  Each time you lowered this pipe gadget into the well and pulled it out again it contained maybe about two gallons of fresh clean water you could dump in a pail or whatever you had brought with you to carry the water. That was how all the people of this community got their fresh water from then on. The one end of the rope was very securely tied to a pipe on top of the well so it could not be lost down the well if someone lost their grip on the rope when they were raising it. The thing was rather heavy for some of the elderly folks when it was full of water. The special-made gadget saved all of us at the community from dying of thirst when the power went out.

  I was like a lost soul the rest of that winter after the loss of my wife. We did not share all that much time together but the loss of her was devastating to me. I went through that winter as an automation, doing what needed to be done to live but having no interaction with any of my neighbors, and only just eating enough to stay alive and keep up my strength. I remember very little of that time period. I think at one point I might have shot and processed another deer but I am not sure of that or anything else really from that time period.

  I do know most of my neighbors in the community died that winter. Some drove away and never returned, their fate unknown. The community where I lived, like most it seemed here in Arizona, was mostly composed of older retired people. With no food available, no medications after theirs ran out, and no heat thanks to no electric power, it was just too much for many people and it was worse for older people. Some had a little heat using the burners on top of their propane gas cook stoves like at my house, but many had all electric appliances and so they had zero heat sources.