Downward Cycle

by JK Franks

  Jack knew there were only three reasons for a rich guy to associate with a man like Tyrell. He needed drugs, he needed muscle or he needed both. Jack had heard the rumors about the esteemed Mr. Hansbrough and his affinity for the narcotic OxyContin. Of course, Tyrell would have used that as an excuse to get close to the influential man. Now the two of them would likely be getting desperate. One craving power and drugs, the other craving money and respect. Neither would likely let the small group of friends trying to do good stand in their way. Jack resolved to keep an eye on them both.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Day 48

  The next several weeks were filled with non-stop work, decisions and difficult choices. Scott was already sick of dealing with people and really just wanted to look after his niece and be left alone. He missed Todd but also hated him for giving him this damnable task.

  He awoke from an unpleasant night’s rest and climbed out of bed. A very haggard looking Scott roamed the darkened house looking for the manual coffee grinder. He cursed under his breath but quickly reminded himself that if this was his biggest problem so far today, he had no reason to complain. He finally found where Kaylie had stashed the device and filled it with a morning's ration of beans. Kaylie had been up late the night before still trying to make contact with Bobby. Scott knew his brother would be worried sick about his daughter. There had to be a way to get word to him, but now that was just one mission among many.

  Scott took his morning cup of bitter brew to the back deck. The morning breeze had a slight chill which made him dread the coming months and all that needed to be done in preparation for winter. His normally logical mind was going in too many directions at once. The thoughts tumbled in on top of each other… he desperately needed clarity. The false dawn was giving way to daylight as he made the decision to take a few hours off to clear his head.

  Knowing the only real treatment that worked for him, he pulled the bike off the rack and checked the tire pressure. He geared up with the bag of essentials slung over his jersey, woke Kaylie to let her know he would be out for a bit and left her one of the radios. He knew from talking to Sheriff Warren’s guys what roads were the safest. He felt he would be okay, but he would also be prepared for the worst. More and more people had taken to using bikes. In fact, the grumpy old fart’s bicycle shop in town was booming. While it may be a slightly foolhardy and dangerous activity, for Scott Montgomery, it was still essential. He reasoned to himself that he would also be doing recon on the area beyond the patrol borders, but in reality, he knew that he just needed time on the bike. He had made one concession in replacing his now empty pepper spray canister with a tactical holster mount for the Sig-Sauer pistol.

  The crisp air felt good and carried with it the increasingly common scent of cooking fires in the area. After about twenty-five miles, his head began to clear, and his muscles felt like they were just starting to wake up. Scott pulled to the side of the empty road. He took the handheld radio and checked in with his niece.

  Kaylie reported back that she was fine, so he dropped it back in his bag and took a long drink of water. Looking over at a mobile home, the unkempt front yard littered with sad-looking old toys and garbage, Scott noticed a familiar tiny face looking at him from beside the concrete block steps. He had seen the child on previous rides down this road. He knew he should probably ride on, but he wanted to know that the girl was okay. Scott saw her looking at him intently. She was clutching a doll that looked more like a dirty rag. He smiled and gave a small wave. “Are you okay?" he asked.

  Someone else appeared in the dirty window of the trailer door. The face looking through the grimy window at him was a larger, more weathered version of the child’s. Taking his bike helmet off, Scott climbed off the bike but did not approach the girl or the house. The cheap door to the home swung open, and the woman stepped out onto the top step with a large gun pointed at Scott.

  “What d’ya want?” the mother yelled, cigarette dangling precariously from her mouth.

  Scott held his hands up in a placating motion, “I don’t want anything, just taking a small break from my ride.”

  The woman, looking suspicious, nodded slowly as she scowled at him. “Well… might wanna just get back on that fancy bicycle and get.”

  Looking up with a smile he said, “I’ll do that. Your little girl looks just like you.”

  The woman took a long drag of her cigarette. “Better that than if she looked like her damn daddy.”

  Scott went to remount the bike but looked back. “How ya’ll making it out here ma’am, any trouble?” he asked. She looked suspiciously at him but lowered the barrel of the gun.

  "We got nothin’, haven’t eaten nothin’ but dry cereal for days. Everything in the kitchen spoiled when the power din’t come back up.”

  Scott took a drink of water from his bottle.

  “Hell, we ain’t even got that,” she continued, pointing to the bottle. “Been gettin’ water from the stream back up in the woods,” she said. “We got our checks, though, soon as the banks open we can get what we need.”

  Scott shook his head, "What if they don’t open?”

  She looked puzzled, “They have to open, they're the fucking bank. We got government issued checks they have to take. By law… You know, they can’t stay closed. We got rights, too.” She took a long drag on the cigarette before continuing, “I can’t even get to the damn store to use our food stamp card, ain’t that some shit? Got money but can't buy nothin’.”

  Scott sighed. “Do you have anywhere you could go? Anyone else that you and your daughter could stay with until the power comes back and the banks open?” he asked.

  “Nah, we not from ‘round here… my people are from up north, in Hattiesburg. Don’t know anyone around here ‘ceptn her daddy, and he done run off. Haven't seen him since before all this shit started.”

  Scott knew Hattiesburg was not that far, but looking around he did not see a vehicle of any kind. “I have a few granola bars that you and your daughter are welcome to, that is if you promise not to shoot me.”

  She laughed, “Damn thing’s not loaded anyway. You got anythin’ else we can have?” she asked.

  Scott looked hard at the girl and then the mother and shook his head no. “I was out looking for food myself,” he lied.

  “Well, if you find anything, feel free to stop by and drop some off. I could probably make it worth your time,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to look enticing.

  Scott nodded, “I can try to do that.” The mother looked at Scott as if he was speaking another language.

  “Yeah, sure, go ride your fancy bike and get your exercise while we all starve to fucking death.”

  In his heart, Scott knew that relying on handouts was the likely reason she was in this position. Anything he did would just delay the inevitable; she would never change her mindset. Still, it wasn’t the kid’s fault, and if he was honest, the mom looked to be no more than a child herself—maybe seventeen or eighteen.

  He looked at her and said, “Ma’am, listen, you may not want to hear this, but if you want to live…if you want your little girl to live, then you have to do something about it. I know where some aid shelters are being set up, probably less than a day’s walk from here. If you have something real to trade or some skills, nearly any town around will give you a basic meal at the very least—maybe even take you both in. I mean, you could even get out and find one of these abandoned cars and some fuel and head back up north to your family.”

  She threw her cigarette butt on the ground. “Well, fuck you, too!” she called as she sulked back inside. The precious looking little girl kept looking at Scott. He dug the last of his protein bars from his jersey pocket and placed them on the path where he stood. The girl’s eyes lit up, and the beginnings of a small smile crept through the dirt on her face.

  He knew that sweet face along with the faded pink ribbon in her hair would haunt him forever if he didn’t try to help her, but her mom…she was a lost cause. Ano
ther suffering victim who seemed to blame everyone else for her problems and, worse, fully expected someone else to save her still. Scott shook his head as he remounted the Trek and rode on, refusing to look back. He knew that he was not the same person he had once been. He cared for people, and that number grew every day. He could never again focus only on himself or sit back and do nothing. But he was even more determined to help only those who would help themselves.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Day 64

  The Gulf of Mexico - Barrier Islands South of Louisiana

  The grizzled looking man wandered down the desolate stretch of sandy beach. Todd had never been on this stretch of land before; few people had. The Breton Wilderness was part of a twenty-mile crescent-shaped strip of land well out in the gulf off the coast of Louisiana. His recent wanderings had brought him to this isolated spot. The fishing pole lay unused at his feet. The Careless Lady bobbing just offshore. Growing weary, he dropped to his knees. He could not stop thinking about Liz. No matter what, his loss hung from him like a chain. He knew he had to move on from this point; she would not like him being like this. His eating had become erratic, he was losing weight and beginning to make bad decisions. He had gone ashore on the mainland only a few times, mainly to get fresh water. What he saw there each time made him never want to return. Just more death, cruelty and bodies. Everywhere he went he found corpses. The Gulf Coast had been a paradise, now it was just the opposite. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he would be better.

  Life in the community of Harris Springs became a routine of hard work and planning. The food that most had put up was gone at this point. What should have been the month of Thanksgiving was instead a time of misery. While many residents had taken to fishing and hunting as well as checking abandoned cars and houses, some foraged closer to home. Dogs in the county had started disappearing. Cattle and hogs had to be kept in hardened paddocks, under armed guards. Even the many squirrels that frolicked in the parks were becoming scarce. Few people retained any illusions of rescue, electricity or any semblance of life as they’d known it ever being restored.

  Hope was fading. The thin frames and gaunt faces reminded Scott of daguerreotypes, the old photos from the turn of the century. He remembered going through boxes of the pictures at his grandparents’ house as a child. Strangers whose hollow cheeks and empty eyes stared out of the leather and velvet frames. He remembered thinking that just having those pictures was wrong; the camera had intruded on a moment of misery that should not have been captured. It surely was misery, but it was also just life, a very hard life. While people in Harris Springs were faring better than most, those in the city were dying in vast numbers. Stories filtered their way back to the community. Stories of dirty water and rancid food taking more and more lives. Even here, Bartos’ crew had given up on digging individual graves and instead dug a series of trenches for the mass burials that took place every few days.

  Preacher Jack looked at the line of bodies in the trench. His heart ached for them all, especially the tiniest bodies and their families. They were wrapped in towels or sheets; no one could bare to see the dead face of a child any longer. “How have we come to this?” he wondered. “How can I offer anyone any comfort, much less hope?” He closed the worn Bible and began to walk back in the direction of town. The buzzards circled high overhead, and he knew they would descend as soon as he was out of sight.

  Bartos and his crew’s scavenging efforts had been impressive, but few people had helped them, and now that the remaining supplies were cached away everyone wanted a handout. The small council was deeply troubled. Turning away hungry families was heart wrenching. None of them were cold-hearted, but still, the policy had to be maintained. The one concession was that anyone who came to the aid shelter could get one basic meal in return for a day of work with one of the volunteer jobs. Fights in the food tents had been constant in the first few days but banishing the offending parties had stemmed most of that. People were hungry and miserable; it was hard to blame them for their behavior.

  Scott had done the calculations, and it looked grim. The food that had been recovered looked substantial, but not when you divided it up among 400 people. While the numbers of survivors in the town were actually far less than that, the group supporting the council’s effort was growing. This meant more help on recovery projects but more people that needed food and water. The farmers had already brought in the last of the late season crops, and other than some fall weather greens and another small culling of pork, there would be nothing until after the winter.

  Bartos looked over the table at him, “So, what’s the verdict?”

  “The verdict is we’re screwed. Even with strict rationing, we can only hope that about half will make it to next spring. There’s just no way to stretch it any further.” Scott responded. They knew this was the likely scenario. A human adult consumes an impressive amount of food in a month. Before the CME, the average adult ate almost six pounds of food a day: a ton of food a year. Since then, they had been getting by on less than two pounds a day, and even that was stretching it. Many parents, especially mothers, were giving all their food to their children, starving themselves.

  Scott looked at his friend. “For the next five months, to get through the winter, we will need about 250,000 pounds of food to feed everyone. What we have, and can realistically get, including fishing and hunting is closer to 90,000 pounds. Of course, pounds of food aren’t the only requirement. We also need the right kind of food. Our diet is going to be erratic—heavy carbs, a little dairy, fruit and protein. We need to think of anything possible to get some variety along with just calories to consume.”

  Scott had considered calling Todd. One idea he had was taking a boat down the coast of Florida to see if they could find any citrus crops to harvest. Unfortunately, none of the boat captains in the town had the fuel or knowledge to accomplish it. One more good idea tabled due to impracticality.

  One of the few bright spots had been learning about a group of rice farmers a few counties away. Mississippi was one of only a handful of states in the US that produced a rice crop. Scott had biked the ninety miles to make contact and eventually came up with a trade agreement. They traded fish, venison and fuel in exchange for bags of the long grain rice. Even better, some of the local farmers were converting their low-lying fields to grow their own next year. Few other attempts at reaching out to outside areas had gone so well, though.

  Bartos had lost two members of a recovery crew when venturing out into a neighboring county. The four-man crews had been on the highway going from freight truck to freight truck collecting any items or fuel that remained. The crew had reported by radio that most of the trailers they saw now had already been cleaned out. The next contact, about thirty minutes later, reported they had come under attack. Automatic rifle fire made the men’s voices nearly impossible to hear. The broadcast came to an abrupt silence seconds later. No one heard from the crew for several days afterward, until two of the men stumbled across one of the county sheriff’s deputies. They had barely escaped. They had lost the supplies and even their truck. They had walked miles through the woods to get back.

  The next week Scott accompanied one of the men back to the site. What he saw was a very organized group doing essentially what his crews were doing, only they were apparently willing to defend the cargo with deadly force. This would be something they would need to start considering as well. Up to this point, they had been mostly polite to others they met out scavenging. They had adopted an informal system of “finderskeepers” which, for the most part, everyone had respected. This appeared to no longer be sufficient. If they were pushing deeper into other areas, others would be coming this way too.

  At the next meeting of the council, they decided to change tactics and issued a shoot-to-kill order in defense of any property deemed essential for the town. The decision was also made for crews to go several miles farther out than they had previously, recovering from homes and trucks farther out, then workin
g their way back closer to home. The rationale was that these areas would be the first to be lost to other groups doing the same, and if they made the miles less productive to looters, many would choose to go in other directions—hopefully.

  There was no point in sugar coating it; they were another armed gang of looters. They were stealing before someone else could, from others who needed the resources just as much to survive. What made them worth saving? Why should they survive and not the town down the road? No one had the answer, but Jack continued the increasingly challenging task of keeping them honest. They did not take lives to recover food and tried to work with others fairly. In the end, they did what they had to survive. The fact that the efforts here benefited an entire group was of solace to Scott. But it was a slippery slope. In time—soon, he hoped—they would turn back toward a more ethical destination.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Ronald Hansbrough generally got his way; he was just one of those guys, disliked and envied at the same time. Thankfully, he had never had a problem with who he was. In fact, he was rather fond of himself: a good-looking kid who had become a distinguished professional, an important member of the community. His family lineage was well documented, and that heritage came with a certain air of respect and, of course, superiority. What was going on in his town right now had him in a blind rage. Ronald was hungry. For the first time in his life, he had no way of satisfying that need. His hunger was sadly not just for food.