by J. F. Krause
The victims were kept in slavery and abused sexually. All of them were molested, including the boys. Both men were large and intimidating and seemed to like slapping and even beating all of the victims, especially the older women. The men kept the two women and the teenaged girl very controlled, but they weren’t as careful of the children. After the first weeks, the boys were attached to each other by a chain connecting to their steel and leather collars. The chain was about four feet long but could be shortened simply by looping it to itself and locking it in place. When they weren’t within easy sight and retrieval, they were connected to one of many locking hooks scattered around the barn where the boys were expected to take care of the animals. The chain system effectively kept them under control, that and the constant threats of physical abuse. Once, when the boys had been stubborn about something, the older of the two men slapped little Becca as a way to make his point that they would punish everyone if they boys disobeyed. The boys got the message and were obedient after that.
The ultimate reason the boys managed to escape was that Becca, who had more freedom to move about, began to deliver messages from the two women, Fran and Joanne. The women were convinced the men were preparing to relocate to a more isolated place where they could feel safer from detection, and where escape would become even more difficult. The women told the boys to find a way to detach their chain from the restraining hook in their sleeping area during the night, but to make it look like it was still attached. After all this time, their captives had gotten into the habit of tossing them the key to unlock their chain from the hook. The men always took the key back from them as soon as they presented themselves in the morning for breakfast duty.
The plan was that the boys would pretend to be locked up for the night and to fake being asleep. They were to wait until the men were asleep, and then, slip out of the farmhouse. The women were very precise in their directions. The boys were to wrap the chain around one of them and run side by side like they were in a four legged race until they could find a home supply store in town to cut the chain and free themselves from each other before attempting to escape on bikes which they would have to find somewhere in the town. The women were afraid the neck collars would cause them to seriously hurt themselves unless they were very careful.
The conversations and instructions via Becca went on for several days. Finally, on a cold, clear night, the boys were given the go ahead and disconnected themselves according to plan. By now the men had become a bit complacent and the victims had all convinced them that they had accepted their lot in life.
Most people were asleep soon after dark since they didn’t have electricity on the farm and nights were long and very cold. That gave the boys several hours to make their way into town and to find a pair of bolt cutters at the first hardware store they came across. It took awhile with both of them working together, but they finally got one of the links cut. That was all they needed. Matt only had a chain of about 15 inches on his neck, and Mark had almost three feet, but he tucked it into his belt and made do. Following the directions given to them by Fran and Joanne, they stayed hidden and slept through the day.
Again, after dark, they found bikes and began their trip north. Fortunately, as they were getting ready to stop to hide and sleep the next morning they came upon a salvage crew from Minneapolis-St. Paul that was just starting work. Initially surprised at seeing the boys, the five person team immediately knew what they had discovered and radioed back to Minneapolis-St. Paul that they were going to the farm with the boys in hopes of getting there before the kidnappers had a chance to escape. The M-St. P community dispatched a couple of helicopters and a group of armed militia, and soon they had a pretty formidable group ready to rescue the victims.
The kidnappers and their captives were already on the road when the rescuers arrived but they could see them not a quarter of a mile down the road heading south. Since the salvage team wasn’t encumbered by a horse trailer, they were able to catch up pretty easily. Now it was just a matter of who had the biggest gas tank and the best mileage. The little chase scene was made up of a van and a truck hauling a four-horse trailer followed closely by a big salvage truck and smaller truck. Soon, both of the community’s helicopters were overhead. On top of all this, the farm cooperative a few miles south of the kidnappers hideout was adding vehicles to the mix. The molesters pulled over and the relatively slow motion chase was over.
Matt and Mark are living with Joanne now in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Becca is living with Fran. Marissa is also staying with Fran for the time being. Both Fran and Joanne were, and continue to be, stalwart women who wonderfully demonstrate the ability of individuals to triumph over adversity. The two bad guys were tried, convicted, and sentenced to Tristan da Cunha. All of the victims are having to deal with their ordeals, of course, but with a lot of help and counseling, we hope they should be able to get beyond this nightmarish experience. The boys, while very traumatized by their experiences were also instrumental in bringing an end to their captivity, and that has been a big part of their healing process.
Just because we don’t have burglaries and shoplifting in our communities doesn’t mean there aren’t bad guys out there. While we don’t have property crimes anymore because ‘why bother?’, we do have public drunkenness and generally slovenly and uncouth behavior from time to time in almost all our communities of any size.
We also believe there are far more situations similar to the one in Apple Valley than we can know. One other consideration is that the two bad guys weren’t even from Apple Valley. They just happened upon someplace full of trusting people they could raid. That was when we were most vulnerable. Now, we’re in a much better place for defending ourselves from kidnappings and assaults.
For me, the biggest question of all is ‘How do the bad guys find each other?’ How does one evil person partner up with another evil person to kidnap women and children? Does one sinister type saunter up to a complete stranger one day and just start suggesting that they go out and kidnap someone? These guys didn’t know each other previously so something between them must have just clicked. I’m guessing that we’re probably lucky it didn’t happen more often.
I remember when I was still a teacher, one of the veteran teachers told me that when a new student arrived, in no time the well-behaved children found each other and, likewise, the disruptive kids could identify a fellow traveler. Somehow the worst behaving kids in the class could sort of instinctively recognize a kindred spirit.
And that brings us to Tristan da Cunha. It’s time for us to make a supply run to the island. I’ll always regret that we took such an innocent place and filled it with such evil. I’ll also always regret that I never got to see it in person, and I probably never will. The six Tristan survivors all ended up in Edinburgh, Scotland. That seems fitting since the name of their primary settlement on Tristan was Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. Brian Lavarello and Gabriel Swain have both agreed, once more, to accompany three ships that will make the delivery of the supplies and the 36 new inhabitants they will transport. The ships will get back just in time for Brian and Gabriel to join the last group of older Gap Year participants. Jovantha will be leaving us to join that Gap Year group as well. I will miss her when she’s no longer such an integral part of my day. But I think she thinks of SLO as her hometown now, and I’m hopeful I’ll get to see her once she returns.
There has been no contact with the current inhabitants other than the monthly report they are required to give if they want any additional supplies. According to that, everything is hunky-dory. But we don’t necessarily believe anything they say. They have ample reason to lie about their status and numbers if it will give them more supplies. We told them to expect up to 40 new arrivals. We will be doing a complete inspection of the existing inhabitants before our supply ships leave the new exiles in order to make sure they won’t be slaughtered on arrival. We’re actually going to send an escort of 80 Marines. Technically, they’re called Rapid Response Personnel, b
ut they look like Marines to me, and since I call them that, that’s what they are called by most people.
Every community has it’s own militia made up of volunteer men and women who trained for a couple of weeks early on, and now train one night a week for a few hours. At least they do in San Luis Obispo. In SLO, there are several units or cadres of volunteers, one or more for each evening of training. They’ve become quite popular, and most of the adult population participates, even some 60 and 70 year-olds. People are very proud of their units and you can see the arm bands associated with their cadre everywhere. Kevin is part of the First Tuesday cadre. There is also a permanent group of peace-keepers who are made up primarily of former military people from before The Sickness. They’re the ones who train the different cadres. They also serve as our police and fire departments, along with some of the cadre members.
None of the militia’s will participate in the Tristan da Cunha trip. This will be strictly a professional military operation. By now, we have been able to train quite a few ‘Marines’ in the new Coalition Army. We were able to pull together veterans from the French Foreign Legion as well as the special forces from around the world to start the training for our Rapid Response Personnel. Initially, their numbers were fewer than we wanted, of course, but at least we got organized early on and no one else, at least we believe no one else, has the organizational capacity to field anything like our current combined professional and militia forces. The training for our ‘Marines’ takes place in Corsica and is similar to the what the French Foreign Legion has been doing for generations. They have the most experience working with many different nationalities and ethnicities. Of course, the standards for all of the foundational groups such as the Legion, Rangers, etc. were much higher than we have now. But the plan is that as soon as we get a good number of basic Marines, there will be specialization training that should approach the pre-sickness standards. That being said, though, not every soldier can or wants to be an elite special forces type of soldier. In the end, that will be a determining factor on the actual growth of our special forces.
The plan for transferring the new exiles to Tristan is for the ships carrying the 80 Marines and most of the supplies to arrive at Calshot Harbor in Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, also known as The Village, one week before the ship carrying the exiles. The Marines will debark and begin the inspections. The inspection consists of a basic count of the inmates, the upkeep of the building and equipment, and an inventory of Village supplies. Should there be a discrepancy between the numbers of the exiles and the actual headcount, the surviving inmates will have to account for the missing individuals. Reported deaths will have to be proven, although we are not asking how a death occurred. After all, since we don’t have capital punishment in the Coalition there’s nothing we can do that is worse than permanent exile. But we must see the body. The original exiles were told explicitly to bury the bodies of anyone who died in a manner that allows for them to be exhumed for later proof that they were, in fact, dead. Once we have verified the numbers of dead and living, the exhumed bodies will be cremated. If the numbers don’t tally there will be retribution of some sort. I think the Marines are planning to give them several days of brutal basic training. That should be enough to ensure future compliance. At least I hope it will. The Marines will also supervise any repairs and upkeep needed to the buildings and equipment.
We know we can’t keep the exiles from lying and cheating in order to get more supplies, but we don’t intend to give them enough food, for instance, so that they don’t have to raise their own gardens and tend the livestock. We know there will be mistreatment of the weaker exiles by the stronger ones. We expect that some will do no work and others will be overworked. That isn’t a concern we can deal with. At this moment in time, we may have the prisons to handle these men, but we don’t have the trained personnel to run the prisons. We are working on that because we have shorter term prisoners who are not deemed as dangerous as these men are. We have a jail in Chicago that has a number of shorter-term prisoners and another one in Denmark. But these particular men sentenced to Tristan were deemed too deadly to risk the lives of our own inexperienced and relatively untrained prison guards. When we have a better solution, we’ll move on to that, whatever it is.
The new exiles are almost entirely non North American. The two men from Apple Valley, Minnesota were the two lone North Americans in the group. There are several Asians, a few Africans, a couple from the South Pacific, several from South and Central America, and the rest are from Europe and the Middle East. The CC reviewed all of their convictions and concurred with the local finding that these individuals constituted a real danger to innocent lives. Since property crimes are not offenses worthy of exile, all of these men have been convicted of rape, murder, attempted murder, child molestation, or kidnapping/slavery, and sometimes all of the above. They’re not leaving Tristan, dead or alive, if we can help it.
November 22
We had a really big earthquake in Los Angeles early this morning. As far as we can tell, and seismic analysis is not one our strengths anymore, it seems to have been centered in the Palmdale area, in the northeastern part of Los Angeles County. There are no reports of deaths, but the damage is horrific. We now have a couple of actual seismologists in Pasadena, as well as about a dozen trainees, so we’re trying to figure things out. Not that it matters just how big it was. We can’t do much about it. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and it looks like we have a lot to be thankful for.
Most of the Angelinos from before The Sickness now live in SLO, but about a thousand people live in scattered settlements in the old metro area of Los Angeles. There are a few dozen people at Edwards Air Force Base which is a few miles north of Palmdale, but none of them were in Palmdale itself where we think this earthquake was centered. The seismologists in Pasadena and people working at Cal Tech came through the earthquake pretty well even though they were among the closest population centers to Palmdale. Their guess, and that’s what it is at the moment, is that we just had a 7.8 earthquake. If any city is prepared to withstand an earthquake like that, it would Los Angeles, but even in LA, we’re seeing a lot of damage. I’m guessing this is the Big One we’ve been expecting anytime now. Had this happened before The Sickness, there would have been tens of thousands of casualties, and billions of dollars of damage, prepared or not.
November 23
There was one fairly serious injury. One young woman working in the entertainment industry sustained a concussion and a broken arm when an unsecured bookshelf in her bedroom fell on her as she slept. I’m told she should fully recover. It feels so strange to think how lucky we were not to have tens of thousands of casualties when the reason for our luck is that they were already dead.
There were many collapsed buildings in Palmdale, but that area had already been salvaged because it was in a fire zone so we didn’t lose any important equipment. The main damage was to the freeways we had previously determined would need to be kept in good repair. We should have enough people to repair the bridges and over/underpasses and it won’t take as long as it might have taken pre-sickness since we don’t have to work around the continued heavy traffic. We will also need to repair the light rail transportation system. We had already closed the subway lines in LA because it was impractical to keep them operational. But the light rail lines are easier to maintain and will definitely be repaired. Interestingly, while everyone pretty much everywhere has an automobile or two, most of us rely on public transportation, particularly in Los Angeles. LA, as before The Sickness, is made up of lots of communities that are loosely connected geographically and all of them are connected by light rail or by bus. LA is growing as people decide they want to work in the entertainment industry and move there. And as with everywhere in the Coalition, the Salvage Crews are ubiquitous. There are also university campuses in LA that are drawing some scientific types to the area. Somewhat different from before, Pasadena’s community is now thought of as just another LA neighborhood. The
same is true of the community around Chapman University in Orange County. All told, there are seven distinct LA neighborhoods, some named after their pre-sickness towns like Pasadena and some named after a landmark or university like Chapman or USC. While the universities are being salvaged by academics, they aren’t functioning as places of learning for students. There really isn’t a traditional university in the LA metro any more, other than in Pasadena. We do have a university, albeit very small, in SLO as well as a graduate school at Stanford. The other schools are vocational training or reengineering schools.
As for the Earthquake, it looks like we lost some older buildings up and down the southern part of the state. The really tall newer ones seemed to have weathered things pretty well, but we’ve not examined them closely, and we may not be able to do so for a long time. We had a major collapse of Royce Hall at UCLA. Royce Hall had damage in one of the last earthquakes and was retrofitted, but it didn’t protect it from damage this time. Too bad, since Royce Hall was a really beautiful building in the Romanesque style and was pretty much in the center of the UCLA campus. Another casualty was the Rose Bowl Stadium. Part of the entrance way collapsed, and it only takes part of a building to collapse for the building to become unusable. We just don’t have the personnel to rebuild them given our current population. We weren’t using them anyway, but I know the loss will be deeply felt among native and longtime Angelinos. It’s one more reminder that we are vulnerable and very weak.
In addition to the hundred or more people working at Edwards Air Force base, quite a number of people work not far away at the solar electricity array. Edwards is just north of the Los Angeles County line and only about 30-40 miles from Palmdale. For being that close to the epicenter, the base sustained remarkably little damage. The solar electricity generators seem to have come through this pretty much intact, although it’s still early.
