by J. F. Krause
Gwen was turning out to be just the sounding board he needed right now. “We can get the trucks here, and we can even get some busses. It’ll beat riding in transport trucks. We can also get you some weapons, but I’d suggest you take a couple of days, maybe a week or so here while we gather up what we need for an extensive trip across the desert. We also need to do a little bit of weapons training. Couldn’t hurt. And Ari, one thing you have going for you that no one else around here is that you have a plan. It may not be very detailed, but even ‘one day at a time’ is a plan. Another thing you have is a goal. Going somewhere safe is a good idea, and once we all get to someplace a little less fractured, we can all start our own ‘one day at a time’ plan to get home. My plan is to get back home to Ghana.”
“Yeah, let me think about everything overnight, and we can talk again over breakfast in the morning. Do we have a plan for that, too.”
“Of course. I’ll see you in the morning, 8 AM right here?”
And Ari went off to have a shower and to join his mother and his daughter in one of the officers’ sleeping rooms. He would gratefully have had a bunk like most of the others, but his bags had already been laid out for him.
When he woke the next morning, it was as if the night hadn’t happened. He didn’t remember getting into bed. The relatively short journey from Beirut to Halba had been the most stressful in his life, at least that he could remember. Every curve, every bump, every wrinkle had given him cause for concern. But it was the day spent on the road that had clearly demonstrated how empty the world was. It also impressed on Ari that there was no such thing as a safe option. Every course of action they took was fraught with peril.
For a moment, Ari wondered if it was necessary to leave Lebanon after all, but then he remembered that the Christian community had long been a tiny island in a tumultuous sea. In Beirut, at this point in time or at least at a point just before the virus, the city was at peace, but only a few years ago, the city had been a battleground. Over the millennia, Lebanon and Israel had been a highway for conquering armies to move from Africa to Asia, and from Asia to Africa, and from Europe to both of them and back and forth. Over the next few generations, this part of the world was going to see more than its share of bloodshed and conquest and he didn’t want that for Helene. So, once again, he resolved to get his family to someplace safer and, hopefully, better prepared to meet the coming challenges.
His mother and Helene were going to spend the day in an area that had been set aside for the children. They would be taking their meals there and he would be able to join them as he needed. He also had a small medical area where he could look after a couple of minor injuries and pre-existing conditions. With no other medical people so far, he had to do double duty as the leader of this little group of survivors and as their physician. He’d have to be very efficient in getting both his jobs done. He’d already tried to hand off the leadership role, but no one stepped up, and too many people seemed to think they had given him their loyalty and that was all there was to it. For now, in the interest of amity, he would do what was needed to get them somewhere safer.
“Ready to do some planning?” Gwendolyn had already staked out a table in a corner as far away from the serving line as possible.
“As ready as I’ll ever be. How do you want to get started?”
“Well, let’s talk about getting to California first and work our way backward to Halba.”
“Ok. We’re going to need a ship that can carry over a hundred people across the ocean. It’s a long way to California, and I guess we’ll have to decide which ocean. Do we stick to our plan to leave from Europe or do we take the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean?”
“Well, Dr. Haddad, I’ve had a few thoughts on that. What do you think about making it to Australia and then use that as our jumping off point?”
“Australia? But that’s….”
“It’s a fairly straight shot southeast from the Persian Gulf to Western Australia. We know Australia has survivor groups, so we should be able to work our way to a safe haven from there. In other words, we don’t have to make it to California, we just have to make it somewhere that can get us to California. Let’s find a ship that will take us to Australia.”
“I don’t know. I was hoping we could get to Europe and then find a way across the Atlantic. Australia is a long way from California. Maybe we can get there via Istanbul.” Ari was having a little trouble thinking about going west by going east.
“Well, let’s keep it as an alternative for in case we need it. I’m not too sure that Latakia is going to be very helpful, and I also don’t feel really comfortable with crossing Turkey to get to Europe. Turkey has a lot of issues of their own.”
“What have you been hearing about Turkey?”
“Actually, we have a couple of refugees from there. Word is out that the UN, meaning us, is coming to the rescue and that can be both good and bad. In Turkey, they don’t have much organization going on, but everyone is listening to “Bobby” right now, even the Caliphate. And there are several settlements forming in Turkey that are slowly pulling themselves together, but they want to be settlements of Turks, Sunni Turks.
The Turks are unwilling to let a group of misfits like you, and now us, drive through their territory. We’re going to have almost two hundred people in a few days and that’s bigger than any single settlement yet formed in Turkey, and we’re still growing. You can see the problem.”
“But we don’t want to settle there. We just want to drive through there on our way to Europe.”
“They don’t want to take the chance. And besides, what about every place we go through in Europe when we get there? Do you think they’re going to want to take in a bunch of really different refugees? These people are all just trying to pull themselves together. If they’re lucky, they might be about as big as we are. How would you feel if you were them?”
“But we don’t want to settle there. We just want to drive through.”
“All they have is your word for it.”
“Alright. What are you suggesting then?”
“I think the only way you can succeed in getting these people out of danger is to head for Kuwait or maybe Qatar. They both had American military bases and large expat communities. The surviving American and NAT0 soldiers may have left like the Russians did, but I’m betting the large foreign communities in all the Arab Gulf states have changed the dynamic so that having a group of strangers and misfits like us will blend right in. We might not even have to find a ship. We might be able to stay, or we can sail away with their help.”
“Okay, Gwen, I see your logic. But it’s a long way to go through the desert. We may encounter a lot of hostiles along the way.”
“Ari, don’t you think that’s a given no matter where we go? And I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of anyone anymore. Hostile or friendly.”
After that, the group stayed in place for the next week getting themselves ready for their long trek across the desert. There were new arrivals every day. Joao and Emilio set about training everyone old enough, male or female, in how to handle the M-16s they had inherited from the Lebanese Army. Samir was eventually joined by three other surviving Lebanese soldiers. While training and preparations proceeded, Samir and his fellow soldiers patrolled their surroundings and scouted the first legs of their routes east to Kuwait or north to Istanbul.
As far as Ari was concerned, there were no good options for the growing convoy community. He’d simply hit a wall when it came to what to do next. On the one hand, he believed the group was safer traveling through Europe to get to any port where they could locate a ship that could take them to the American east coast. He also believed there were plenty of ships that would meet their needs just waiting in harbors all along the Lebanese coast. But with every new addition to the group he knew that loading the group’s now 200 plus members would be slow and very public. Perhaps a well-coordinated group of professionals could do it, but he and his fellow survivors certai
nly weren’t in that league. He could imagine the Caliphate fighters zeroing in on his people and picking them off one by one as they tried to board the ship. That left trying to go north along the Syrian coast and on into Turkey. He had no doubt that the 200 very different people in his group would be an unwelcome surprise everywhere they went. He suspected that his was the largest group to have formed in the area, and would be one of the larger groups anywhere. He also couldn’t guarantee how long they would hang together. While Christians made up the largest segment of his band of refugees, they weren’t a majority. A look at the religious make up of their four-man army revealed they had a Christian, a Sunni, a Druze, and a Shiite. Throw some Yazidi, some seculars, Alawi, Alevi, and several other variations of Sunnis, Christians, and Shiites and Ari saw nothing promising. On the other hand, they were united in their desire for peace and calm and a chance to start living again. Maybe that would be enough to hold them together.
Knowing that they were being talked about by every local with a HAM radio didn’t help him calm his thoughts, either. People were arriving in Halba because of it, and that was good, but during their third day there, Samir’s small group of soldier’s had actually caught an armed infiltrator. In this case, the Lebanese soldiers had had enough training to spot the rather amateur attempts of their hapless would be subverter. Ali had been brought in after the arrest and readily recognized him, sealing his fate. Ari hadn’t even been consulted, but he knew they had taken him out of the camp and permanently removed him as a threat. Not surprisingly, this episode had improved Ali’s position in the group, at least just a little.
The security situation was improving as several more former militia men were identified and integrated into their small but surprisingly cohesive defense team, even as more and more people felt capable of using a weapon if necessary. The defense team didn’t tell Ari what to do and he didn’t tell them what to do. Nevertheless, Ari couldn’t stop worrying since he had not made a decision about what direction to go next, and he had very little data regarding what was waiting for them whatever they decided to do.
After the talk with Gwen, Ari was considering trying to make a run for it to Kuwait. He’d heard nothing about the situation there, but knowing they were just as much a mixture of ethnicities and cultures as his own group made him feel better about them as the next destination. Ari was still firmly convinced that California offered their best hope for safety and acceptance. As a Christian, he felt that once he reached Australia he would be accepted, but he couldn’t just think of himself and his own family much as he wanted to. He had to consider that many members of his group would be leaving one state of minority existence for another and their needs had to be considered as well. He’d committed himself publicly to accepting nothing less than total religious freedom as his final goal.
The problem for Ari was that sooner or later he was going to have to make a decision on little more than his gut feeling, and gut feeling had never been something he relied on. It certainly wasn’t part of his medical training.
Finally, after eight days of preparing for either a journey up through Istanbul or to Kuwait, he found himself in yet another meeting and almost out of nowhere, he heard himself say they were heading to Kuwait. From there on, it was easy. They would take the road to Homs in order to avoid Damascus, then they would cut southeast and catch the highway to Baghdad where they would vere again to the southeast and Kuwait. Most of the trip would be empty with scant cover and pose little threat, but two areas would be potential danger spots. Homs had been completely destroyed by the Syrian civil war, and he had no idea what they would find there. It had once been a sizable city but was so pummeled by fighting that there was no telling what they would find.
Baghdad, on the other hand was in better shape, but was even more of a question mark. Before the sickness, the government had begun to pull itself together and he hoped there might even be some bit of organization still in place. He wasn’t hopeful since Baghdad had been much larger than Beirut and should be even harder to get organized, at least in Ari’s mind, especially since Beirut had been a fairly well functioning city with wide ranging experience of picking itself up and getting back on its feet. Nevertheless, the sickness had completely destroyed every last vestige of organization, except, of course, for Ari’s group.
Of course, their convoy would be expected everywhere they went. Ari now had radio communications that gave him some information, but there were wide areas of mystery, and these particularly included the very areas they had to go through. What he knew for certain was that no one wanted a convoy of over 250 unknown refugees settling in their midst. It was understandable, of course. Ari knew he would never be able to allay the distrust his group would generate as they passed through someone else’s homeland. But for good or ill, they were committed to leaving the next day.
The night before they left for Homs, the security team caught another amateurish attempt at infiltration. Again, Ali played a role in identifying the would be intruder who was again dealt with with no input from Ari. This couldn’t end soon enough for Ari. On the other hand, that made two down and who knows how many left to contend with. He suspected Caliphate fighters were reluctant to attack the convoy since, by this time it was no secret that they were leaving the area and they were no longer defenseless. Why risk a fight when there was nothing to gain?
One good thing that came from Ari’s not being able to make up his mind between Istanbul or Kuwait was that no one along either route knew which direction they were going either. The Turks, though few in number (as was the case everywhere) were better prepared and would be more able to enforce their no entry rule. That was not the case along the route they were taking.
As they pulled out of Halba, the convoy numbered thirty-four busses, trucks, and fuel tankers. In addition, there were over a dozen motorcycles, as well as jeeps, and vans of various sizes and types. Several busses were empty in anticipation of future additions to their numbers. They even had spare motorcycles loaded onto two of the trucks. All vehicles were identified as UN vehicles, even the ones that had originally been commandeered from the Lebanese Army. All the security personnel wore the blue UN beret. It was their hope that by identifying themselves as coming from the UN, they would be viewed as neutrals and attract less hostility. Ari was willing to try anything to avoid violence, but his security team had grown in size and cohesiveness and was willing to confront any challenges they might face.
The drive to Homs took most of the day because they had to stop now and then for simple leg stretching breaks. Children don’t always travel well, and they had numbers of children of all ages. Some of their elderly members needed frequent time outs as well. Their scouts had found a way to avoid the main part of Homs so they decided to spend the night at the highway cut off before they reached the city.
As Ari prepared to meet with the people who had been given various leadership roles on the team, he was introduced to their newest additions, most from the Homs area. For the first time, they included an American, a young man from an NGO who had been working with an organization in the area.
“Dr. Haddad, this is Russell Covey. He’s from Pasadena, California. Russell was working with ‘Step Forward’, an NGO working on infrastructure in Homs.” Gwen was doing the introductions in this case since she obviously wanted to put Russell to work in her equipment and supplies detachment.
“Dr. Haddad, it’s an honor and a relief to meet you.” Russell stood diffidently as he reached to shake hands with Ari.
Ari said something welcoming and pleasant and then looked at Gwen with lifted eyebrows.
“I would like to ask for Russell to help me out with the equipment we’re carrying and using. He’s an engineer. A mechanical engineer, and what we need should be a piece of cake for him.”
“Anything you like Gwen. Are you okay with all this, Russell?”
“Yes, sir. Sir, are you an American? Sorry to ask, but I thought you were from Beirut. I’m sorry to be so bold, but y
ou sound… I mean, your accent is American.”
“Well, you’re sort of right. I was mostly raised in the United States, but I’m from Beirut now. But tell me, how have things been in Homs, both before and after the sickness struck?”
“It was bad before the virus struck, but it was really awful after. I guess you know what I mean. Soon after everyone died, we lost power so I rigged up a generator and used the equipment at our office to start reaching out to people. I heard about the California people right away, but then I stumbled upon Falah who’s with your group. Then I lost contact with Falah when Beirut went dark. After that I found the internet was pretty useless. That’s when I switched to HAM. My Arabic is pretty basic so I didn’t get too much information except yesterday was sort of a bonanza when I figured out you were coming this way.
There are several of us in our group, a Swedish guy, some locals who never left, and several kids. We were actually thinking about heading off to Kuwait ourselves when we began hearing you were talking about doing the same thing. You guys leak like a sieve by the way. Maybe you don’t care, but there are still some bad guys around here. Actually, not so much in the couple of weeks or so. I think they must have gone where the pickings are better. As you can see, Homs was pretty much ruined by the war.” Russell continued pushing information out as it came to mind. Over the next moments, Ari got a fair idea of what had been going on around Russell since the virus.
Among the things he gleaned was that about half of the gathered survivors in Homs wanted to join the group, including all seven of the kids, three of whom had been orphaned before the virus during the battles in and around the city. Aside from the young people there were eleven adults, including a medic with the former Syrian army. Ari was torn about what to do with the medic since they needed him to assist with the health needs of the growing band of travelers, but he left the decision of where he would render his service to the young man who decided to offer his talents wherever Ari thought best.
