The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse

by Franklin Horton

  Even though Jim had more powerful rifles, she had shot this rifle many times and knew exactly what to expect from it. The recoil was tolerable for her. She understood the operation. She would have the children fill those empty magazines from the basement tonight. That would be a good late night activity that they could do by lamplight.

  Ellen handed the full magazines from the gun safe to Ariel. “Carry these, sweetie.”

  To Ellen’s surprise, Ariel did not complain about not getting to carry the weapon. They went to the front door and Ellen propped up the weapon in the corner, where it would be within reach behind the front door.

  “Put those magazines on the floor beside it,” Ellen said.

  Ariel stacked them carefully on the floor and they went back to the bedroom where Pete was waiting on them.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “The Mini-14, I think” Ellen said, looking though the contents of the safe.

  Ellen withdrew the Ruger. It was a 1970s police model with Detroit Police Department stamped into the barrel. It was a mostly stock weapon with a leather sling and an extended 30-round magazine. There was also a stack of polymer Tapco magazines to go with the weapon. Only the magazine in the weapon was loaded. The rest would have to be filled tonight.

  The safety on this weapon always confused Ellen, as it was not marked. She finally remembered how it worked and was able to confirm that the weapon was safe. She checked the chamber and found it empty. She curled a finger over the metal hook beside the chamber, drew the action back, and allowed a live .223 round to cycle into the chamber. She confirmed the weapon was safe again and handed it to Pete.

  “Put this on the kitchen counter. Make sure the barrel is pointed in a safe direction.” She handed Ariel the spare magazines. “Put these on the bed. We’ll need to fill them tonight.

  Ariel carried out her duties and she and Pete returned about the same time.

  “Can we get out my gun, too?” Pete said. “We may need it.”

  Ellen considered for a second. “I’ll get it out,” she said, “but you have to leave it wherever we put it unless it’s needed. You can’t carry it around or play with it.”

  “Geez,” he said. “I know all that, Mom. I’m not a baby.”

  Ellen smiled at him. “I know you’re not,” she said. “You both are very big and are a lot of help.”

  They beamed. She couldn’t help but reach out and hug them both tight to her. When they broke the embrace, she turned back to the gun safe and looked for Pete’s gun. It was a Ruger 10/22, shorter than most of the long guns in there and took a second to spot. When she found it, she drew it out and checked the safety. There was no magazine in the gun. She drew back the action and found no round in the chamber. She handed the gun to Pete.

  Digging back in the gun safe, she found a trio of the black rotary magazines that the weapon used. She handed those to Pete and then removed three large clear banana clips for the same rifle. They were Butler Creek magazines and held a lot more rounds than the smaller rotary clips that came with the rifle. All of those magazines were empty and she knew they’d need to fill those tonight, also. Fortunately, she knew that Jim kept tens of thousands of rounds of .22 ammo because they used it so frequently target shooting. With the four of them shooting, and with Jim owning nearly a dozen rifles and pistols of that caliber, they could easily shoot a thousand rounds in a few hours of target practice.

  “Put your rifle in the kitchen,” she told Pete. “We’ll fill up some magazines tonight.”

  When she started to close the safe, Ellen saw the rack of handguns on the top shelf and decided it might be a good idea to have a few of those scattered around the house. After retrieving her own Ruger LCP from the vehicle earlier, she’d tucked it in her back pocket but she wanted to make sure that guns were where she needed them. She removed a 9 mm S&W Shield, another gun that she felt familiar with. She ejected the magazine and made sure it was full. She racked the slide and chambered a round, then set the pistol aside.

  She picked up a Taurus PT92, a Beretta clone, and took it through the same process – checking the magazine and chambering a round, then a Ruger MKIII .22 caliber target pistol and Springfield XD in .45 caliber. She made sure each pistol was ready to fire and placed the pistols where she thought she may need them. She put the Springfield XD with its laser sight under her mattress, the S&W Shield in the kitchen cabinet, and the Taurus in the bathroom under the sink. Finally, she took the Ruger .22 to the Daddy Shack and placed it on a shelf just inside the door.

  “What can I do now, Mommy?” Ariel asked.

  Ellen checked her watch and saw it was dinnertime already. She didn’t know where the day had gone. Though they had been constantly busy, she was still surprised to find it was already so late. She had ground beef in the refrigerator that needed to be eaten before it went bad.

  “Would you prefer cheeseburgers or spaghetti?” she asked.

  Ariel and Pete looked at each other. “Spaghetti,” Pete said, and Ariel nodded in agreement.

  “Let’s make some dinner,” Ellen said. “Then we’ll need to get some bullets and start filling these empty magazines.”

  Since they needed to run the generator for a few hours to keep the basement freezers cold, Ellen went ahead and started it before dinner. She ended up having difficulty with it even though Jim had written out instructions on a piece of wood and zip tied it to the generator. She was able to find the on switch easily enough, but it was pulling on the starter rope that gave her a hard time. Jim had talked about upgrading to a generator with electric starting but he’d not done it yet. She finally had Pete come out and give it a shot. He got it running on the first pull.

  “You must have warmed it up for me,” he told her, patting his mother on the back.

  With the generator humming away, Ellen went inside and flipped the ten breakers in the transfer switch. Those breakers routed ten prioritized electrical circuits from grid electricity to generator power. It didn’t allow everything in the house to run, but it could get them by. As soon as she started flipping breakers, Ellen heard the hum that indicated the water pump was filling the pressure tank. She flipped another and heard the hum of the refrigerator compressor over her head in the kitchen.

  Even though the generator would power the refrigerator as long as she ran it, she knew that those foods needed to go first. While the well pump ran, she couldn’t run any other high wattage items or she would risk tripping the overload breaker on the generator. When she heard the click of the pressure switch turning off the pump, she knew it was safe to start running the microwave.

  In the interest of emptying the refrigerator, their dinner consisted of leftovers heated in the microwave and served on paper plates. They had spaghetti, leftover macaroni and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes, leftover pizza, and a few other odds and ends. Not the most well-balanced meal, but if tomorrow was anything like today they would easily burn through all the calories they consumed today. Depending on how long this crisis lasted, they may not always be able to eat so extravagantly. The food would go bad in the next day or so if not eaten so there was little choice.

  When they finished dinner, they threw their paper plates in the garbage and stacked the emptied pots, pans, and Tupperware in the sink. Ellen made a mental note to remember to wash them while she could use the well water. The generator was not powerful enough to run the hot water heater along with everything else so she’d have to fill a pot and heat it on the burner attached to their barbecue grill.

  “Pete?” Ellen called back through the house.

  “Yes?” Pete said cautiously, sensing that he was going to be called into labor.

  “Fill the big pasta pot with water and start heating it on the grill burner.”

  “Ahhh, why can’t Ariel do it?” he griped, walking into the kitchen.

  “First, she can’t lift it,” Ellen said. “Second, she’s going to wash the dishes when there’s hot water. Would you prefer to do the dishes?”


  “No,” he said quickly. “I’ll fill the water.”

  She patted him on the back. “Just as I suspected.”

  While Pete set about finding the pot, Ellen got a flashlight and headed into the basement. In one corner of the basement was a large yellow Jobbox, a massive steel locker that contractors bolted to the floor on jobsites to prevent tools from being stolen at night. It had a shielded hasp that allowed you to padlock it. Without a cutting torch, these boxes were tough to get into. Jim kept it bolted to the basement floor and stored ammunition and a few other items in it.

  Ellen retrieved a hidden key and opened the padlock. The heavy lid had gas shocks that assisted with opening it. Shining her flashlight into the box, she was amazed at the amount of ammunition Jim kept. She’d been in the box before, helping him load ammunition for shooting, but she’d never looked fully in there or paid attention. It was not hundreds of rounds. It was not thousands of rounds. It was tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of rounds. There were also more magazines for the various weapons. She picked up a plastic shoebox and found it to be full of knives of different sizes and blade configurations.

  “Oh, Jim,” she whispered, half out of admiration, half because she didn’t know what else to say. Being in the basement, in his domain, made her miss him deeply.

  She turned her light around the room and saw an empty five gallon bucket. She brought it closer and turned her attention to the stacks of ammunition. Remembering the M-4 and Mini-14, she knew that they needed more 5.56 caliber than anything else. There were large boxes and small boxes. She scanned them, then took out several 20 and 50 round boxes of 5.56 from brands like Wolf, Tulammo, American Eagle, and Federal. When she had about five hundred rounds in the bucket, she switched calibers. She took a five hundred round brick of .22 for Pete’s gun and stuck it in the bucket. For the pistols, she took a 250 round box of Remington UMC in 9mm and .45. For good measure, she grabbed another 50 round box of Speer .380.

  She hadn’t even made a dent in the supply. There were additional calibers in there that she didn’t even realize they had weapons for. She had to assume Jim had a few tricks up his sleeve. At this very moment, she was very comforted by that thought. Though she had women friends who were scared of guns, she’d always found them comforting. The contents of this box and the weapons upstairs would go a long way toward assuring that she and her children were not victims of the desperate and immoral.

  She took the bucket upstairs, surprised at the weight of the ammunition. With the bucket bouncing off her leg, she made her way down the hall and into the bedroom where she sat the bucket down with a thud. With the generator running, Ariel had wasted no time in putting in a DVD and was lying on Ellen’s bed watching a movie. Ellen had forgotten that the bedroom was wired into the transfer switch, but recalled Jim doing it when the kids were younger so they could watch TV during a blackout. That distraction would make the whole event easier for both the parents and the children.

  “I’ll need you to wash out those pots and pans when the water heats up,” Ellen reminded her.

  “Okay,” Ariel replied weakly, as if exhausted by the burdens already placed upon her today.

  “Good girl,” Ellen said. “Now I need you two to help me fill up all these empty rifle and pistol magazines.”

  Ariel perked up at that. She found anything to do with guns much more entertaining than dishes.

  “Go get Pete,” Ellen said. “You two can watch the movie while we do this.”

  Chapter 11

  Back in our gloomy hotel room, Gary and I sat on the floor by the glass balcony door and dug into the cooler. We offered to share but the women all said that they’d eaten their fill at the tents before we got back. That being the case, we ate as much as could, not knowing where our next meal would come from. Even cold, the burgers were delicious. Maybe not worth dying for, but pretty damn close.

  Ever the facilitator, Gary cleared his throat and leaned back against the patio door, speaking between bites. “Maybe we should talk about our plans for tomorrow to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

  I kept eating. Group discussions never went well for me. They always turned into a fight when I was involved. People said it was because I was oppositional. I said it was because they were assholes.

  Alice, also used to being a facilitator, jumped right in with him. “That’s probably a good idea, Gary. I don’t see that there is much to discuss, though. Sounds like we really only have one option here, going by what that officer told us today.”

  “There’s never just one option,” I commented, knowing that I should probably keep my mouth shut. I had moved on to a hot dog with chili and coleslaw now. It was good, too.

  “Of course,” Rebecca said. “Mr. Difficult over there can’t just agree with anything. You tell him the sky is blue and he has to offer an exception.”

  I ignored her and concentrated on my hot dog. I thought of responding to her with my middle finger but I could occasionally show some restraint.

  “Before you’re so quick to label Jim,” Gary said, “I wanted to bring this up because I’m pretty sure we all will not be in agreement with how to proceed from here.”

  “Really?” Alice asked. She was looking at Gary curiously, as if he’d announced a move to the dark side. In her eyes, that meant that he agreed with me on something.

  Gary looked at me as if waiting on me to jump in and take over with the explanation. They were less likely to argue with him since they felt he was less antagonistic. They already thought I was disagreeable and contrary, and I agreed with that, so I left Gary to it. I was both enjoying the food and enjoying someone else taking the contrarian position for a change. Let him lay out his arguments and see how they dealt with it. I would enjoy the show and try to keep my mouth shut unless I was shoving food into it.

  “I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m not comfortable with placing my trust in FEMA,” Gary said. “I want to get home. I’m very worried about my family. You all know I have a houseful of daughters and granddaughters that I’m very concerned about. I think I can get myself home faster without entangling myself in FEMA’s bureaucracy.”

  “Amen!” I said between bites of baked beans. The beans were good, too. I had the thought that churches probably actively recruited good cooks, using them to lure heathens like myself into the fold. It was practically a conspiracy.

  “So what exactly are you planning on doing?” Rebecca asked. “Walking home?” From the look on her face, the pure astonishment, Gary might just have easily announced that he’d be taking a goat as his next wife.

  Gary looked at me and shrugged, still looking for some backup. “Well, yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “I’m not sure that’s safe,” Alice commented, always acting as the risk manager. Her tone was both maternal and condescending, as if she would start patting him on the back of the hand while she was making the comment.

  I put down my plastic fork and took a swig of my warm bottled water. “I’m pretty sure it’s not safe,” I said. “There’s no guarantee that those camps will be safe, either. There’s probably not much of anything that can absolutely be guaranteed to be safe anymore. But it’s not about safety, it’s about having control of your own future. I am not about to relinquish that control to the government. Hell, we work for the government, we’re as aware of the inefficiencies as anyone could be.”

  “The government is not the enemy,” Rebecca hissed, exasperated. “You conspiracy theorists wear me out with your crazy bullshit.”

  “In some cases the government is most definitely the enemy,” I shot back. “That’s not exactly what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about capability. I am pretty sure I am capable of getting myself home in a couple of weeks on my own by walking. I’ve backpacked extensively. I am not sure FEMA is capable of getting us home efficiently. We may sit in those FEMA camps for months while they attempt to work out the logistics of getting people home. Remember that once you’r
e there and safe you become less of a priority for them. Getting you safely to the camp is more important to them than getting you home.”

  “You don’t know that,” Alice said.

  “No, we don’t know that for sure” Gary interjected, “however, experience and history suggest it. I’m not trusting my life – and my family’s safety – to them, either. How would this work if our own agency was in charge of these camps? You know with fuel limited, we would conduct a survey in order to figure out a route where we could drop the most people off using the least fuel. That process of surveying and determining a route could take a week or two, especially if the situation is constantly changing with new people showing up. You know this is just going to turn into some kind of mess. The task will be so daunting, and resources so limited, that nothing will get done.”

  “You could always go and see what it’s about,” Rebecca said. “Then you could leave later if you wanted to. You’d at least be about twenty-five miles further down the road. That’s twenty-five miles you wouldn’t have to walk.”

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not turning my weapons over to them, which they would probably require prior to getting on their buses. Also, I bet residents of the camps will not be free to come and go as they please. That would make the camp too difficult to secure. My guess is that the camps will be fenced and guarded and they will limit traffic in and out.”

  “That’s pretty paranoid,” Rebecca said.

  Gary shook his head. “In this case, I don’t think so. I’ve read those government reports on disaster response. I know how they will respond. Jim and I are of a like mind on this. I think we’ll try our luck on foot.”