Shelter: Book 2, A Long Days Night

by Ira Tabankin

  While the families walked towards their homes, Lacy and Jay went to investigate their home which was now a large pile of debris spread over a few acres. Jay and Lacy held hands as they walked the zig-zag path to what had been their dream house. They pass articles of clothing, pictures frames and small pieces of their mementos. Jay squeezed Lacy’s hand, “Honey, everything can be replaced. Much of our mementos will be found and restored. Don’t get depressed or upset. There’s an old saying a very wise and beautiful woman always told her husband…”

  Lacy smiles at Jay, “I think I know this saying, ‘things happen for a reason.’”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jay, what’s the reason our home was destroyed?”

  “We’re not supposed to understand why God does things. God never gives us more than we can handle, He has his own plan. We don’t have to understand it. All we need to do is have faith in his master plan and realize we didn’t lose anything of real value. We’re both still here, as are the girls and our granddaughters. What did we lose, some pictures? Most are still on my hard drive, furniture? It can be replaced. Dishes and appliances? Everything can be rebuilt and replaced. We’re going to be OK. I know it hurts, just trust me, we’re going to be fine. We’ll rebuild.”

  “How are we going to rebuild? Where are we going to get the supplies?”

  “We have a special, very secret source.”

  “Huh? Don’t bullshit me, I’m depressed enough by our loss.”

  “Let me say just one word.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Tony.”

  “Tony?”

  “Tony, our favorite local mob boss, he has sources for everything. He controlled the unions and has warehouses full of everything. He was stashing supplies as the economy was coming apart. He prepared for the rebuilding, he thinks he’s going to make a fortune.”

  “I’ll give you ten points for Tony, what about who’s going to rebuild our house? We don’t know how to build a house.”

  “Another single word.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Franco.”

  “Oh my God! You’re right. He and his son’s, plus Tony’s construction foreman is still with us.”

  “That’s right. This time, I want to build a different type of home.”

  “What do you want to change?”

  “No more wood structure. I want to build the walls and roof of reinforced concrete. It’ll hold up to a storm and also be bullet and fire proof.”

  “We won’t have to go into the shelter again?”

  “I didn’t say that. By changing the construction to concrete, we’ll get a lot of benefits. We have pallets of bags of cement. We have a few pallets of cinder blocks and reinforcing rods left over from the shelter, we can use them to start, Tony will get us whatever else we need. The biggest issue we’ll have to deal with is cleaning the mess that the storm left behind.”

  “Are the backhoes still in the garages?”

  “I don’t know, we’ll find out what’s left and what’s missing.”

  “Honey, we’re here, what a mess. It looks like a giant crushed our house and tossed the remains all over. How are we ever going to pick through what was our house?”

  “Very carefully.”

  Lacy and Jay stand at the back end of what used to be their home. Lacy’s looking at the mess in front of her, she has tears running down her cheeks, “Jay, should we even try to rebuild?”

  “If not where are we going to live?”

  “Could we update the shelter, now that we don’t need it anymore we can redo the inside giving us bigger rooms and more privacy, make it into our own home. It will be quicker than rebuilding here and it will be more secure.”

  “Honey, the only problem is, who said we won’t need it again? What happens if another mob or gang comes? What if there’s a war? Or what about another storm? Where would our friends and family go?”

  “We could make rooms for our family.”

  “And the other 34 who were in the shelter with us?”

  “OK, ok, we’ll rebuild. I hope we’ll be able to rebuild quickly.”

  “Honey, we will. The first thing I want to do is give the two that died a proper burial.”

  “Jay, I’d forgotten about them. That’s very kind of you.”

  “I could never forget. Let’s plan to hold the ceremony tomorrow. I’ll ask everyone to join us.”

  While we’re looking at the ruins, we hear the noise of a motor coming up behind us.

  Turning around, we smile seeing Franco and his sons driving three backhoes to our ruins. Franco says, “Our home in the back was fine, you can’t rebuild until you remove everything from the basement and foundation. We came to help.”

  Lacy runs to hug Franco, “You’re an angel.”

  “Don’t get carried away. We both know I’m not an angel.”

  @@@@@

  Captain Sarnoff moves his men south as quickly as they can move. Their target is a series of farms forty to fifty miles north of Nashville. Sarnoff plans on arriving at his destination in five days. He’s sure he can locate unoccupied farms his people can hide from the army and militias in. His worst nightmare is for the militias he sold the weapons to figure out who he really is. He knows if the militias find out he’s Russian on a mission to pit the people against the army they’ll both come after him.

  @@@@@

  The families went to their homes full of hope, full of joy. Their joy turned to sadness and despair when they saw what was left of their homes. The floors and walls are covered in trash, open cans, rotting food, moldy vegetables and meat, due to the lack of refrigeration. All of their furniture is broken, windows shattered, walls ripped open, even their floor titles have been ripped up. Their sheetrock is cut open, cabinet doors have been ripped off their hinges, even their sinks have been broken. Water pipes have been cut from the walls. The people who took over their homes tore up everything looking for anything of value that may have been hidden in the houses. All of their stored food, water and alcohol were consumed. Many of their homes have burn marks where the mobs set fire to different things in their homes. They find buckets of human waste in the bed and bathrooms. Their homes smell of rot, death, and human waste. Most of the families broke down crying, their homes, their memories, their dreams are destroyed. They don’t know where to start. The mess that greeted them is worse than anything they could ever have dreamed. Parents stop their children from entering their homes. Most decide they can’t deal with the mess in front of them, they turn around, leaving the disaster which was their home, they sadly walk back to the shelter. Their morale turned upside down, the joy and hope they felt in the morning has been replaced with depression and despair. They don’t know what to do, they’re facing a task too large for most of them to contemplate. They decide to return to the shelter and exchange stories. They hope they can come to agreements with the other families to work together on each home.

  Fred exited his home and sat on his front steps crying. He and his family have lived in their home for twenty years, he’s not sure his family is ever going to be able to return to the house which is more a standing wreck than a house. He wishes the storm has destroyed all of their homes so they could be totally rebuilt. If the storm had taken his home, his family wouldn’t have to have seen the remains of his house, he was almost envious of Jay. Fred’s trying to make a list of the items that need repairing, he figures the list would be easier to make if he wrote, new house. He considered suggesting to everyone that the group bulldoze their homes and start over.

  @@@@@

  Captain Black shared a pot of fresh coffee with three militia leaders who discussed with the captain where they got their weapons. “Captain, we discovered a number of posts on various prepper sites offering AKs and ARs. We paid in gold and silver coins. The rifles, as you saw, are brand new, they came with magazines and ammo. When we inspected the rifles, we realized the AKs are Russian manufacture, as are the AR magazines and the ammo. A couple
of our people remember a few of the people in the camp spoke English with an accent, an Eastern European or Russian accent. We think the group that sold us the weapons sold them to us so we would use them to attack you. We think the Russians are selling weapons across the country to stir up a hot civil war. If they succeed, we’ll never pull out of the mess we’re in. We’ll be making it easy for the Russians or Chinese to crush us if we’re busy fighting ourselves.”

  “That’s good thinking, what did you do your previous life?”

  “I was a Marine captain.”

  “You were a Marine captain? Why didn’t you say so right up front?”

  “Our previous lives means nothing anymore. If we don’t work together to save the country from our elected leaders, there won’t be an America. We’ll end up like a footnote in some history book.”

  “Please tell me everything you can about the group that sold you the weapons, if you’re right, I would like to meet them and have a discussion about their plans. If you’re right about who they are, I’m going to put an end to their gun sales. We might have to ship their sorry asses back to wherever they came from.”

  “Captain, do you have a map? How about a connected computer.”

  “Have both.”

  “Good, I’ll log on to the forums and show you posts. I’ll show you on the map where we met them.”

  “Sarge, please bring the Marine Captain our map and our tablet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Captain Black, I’ll sign on and show you their posts.”

  “Pest removal tools for sale?”

  “Yeah, keep reading.”

  “Professional pest removal AK and the permanent pest removal tool, the easy to use AR. Each comes with everything needed to kill terminates and other pests.”

  “Gotta give them credit for a good sense of humor. How much did they charge per rifle?”

  “50 Silver Eagles.”

  “Very cheap at today’s conversion rate, in fact, dirt cheap since the President is trying to confiscate all firearms.”

  “Which is why we contacted them. I had a feeling they didn’t know what to charge.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “We asked for a quantity discount, they didn’t know what it meant, which is a sure indicator they’re not from around here. Plus I overheard them debating if they should raise the prices since they were selling so well. One of them said they should call their contact to get another shipment.”

  “Very interesting. I think we’re going to have to pay these people a visit. Sarge, get a platoon ready to move out. I suggest you dress in civvies. No reason to let them get suspicious and take off without us figuring out who they really are.”

  The Marine Captain nods in agreement and leads the army platoon to the selling point. They discover the sellers have already left. The platoon spreads out looking for any indication where the sellers went to. The find some boxes in a shallow hole, digging them up, they smile when they see all the markings are in Russian. The Sergeant discovers two sheets of notes, stuffed inside one of the Russian boxes. He studies the note, smiling, he says, “We can return to our base camp, we know where they’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “Small farming town, north of Nashville, just south of the border with Kentucky.”

  “The Captain will be pleased, that’s on our regular route. He won’t even have to ask for permission.”

  Captain Black smiles at the news, he asks the militias if they want to join them.”

  “Thank you, yes we’d be happy to find them again.”

  Captain Black studies the map, “Sarge, I’ll ask the militia leaders for one of their squads to go with you as a scout team. I don’t want anyone we locate to see our uniforms.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  @@@@@

  The mess hall was almost totally silent. No one wanted to talk about what they’d found at their houses. Everyone was depressed, many didn’t take any food, only coffee. They sat in silence staring into nothingness. Jay looked around knowing he had to do something very quickly to break them out of their depression if they had any chance of surviving. He was very worried about suicides or some people just walking away from the shelter and not coming back.

  Chapter 25

  Tony and his key staff unlock his steel reinforced garage, they connect a solar powered battery charger to his armored ex-Marine MRAP. Tony smiles saying, “You assholes laughed at me when I bought this monster at the government auction. I told you it would come in handy. Let’s get it started and see if our warehouses are still standing.”

  His four men check the MRAP, they check their weapons, two are armed with fully automatic Uzis, one with a semi-automatic shotgun and Tony has his fully automatic Thompson submachine gun. They pull the MRAP out of the garage. Tony secures the door before they leave. They drive down a road which Tony paid extra to appear as an unused dirt road. In reality, the road was strengthened to support the weight of the MRAP. They traveled slowly on the winding road, one of his men used the MRAP’s thermal sensor to scan the woods that line his road. The thermal sights don’t show any people, a few deer, and stray dogs, but no people. They slowly drive twelve miles to a large industrial area surrounded by a twelve-foot high barbwire topped chain link fence. They slow to a stop in front of the gate. Tony and one of his bodyguards exit the MRAP. Tony says, “I surprised, in fact, I’m shocked, the place looks untouched.”

  “Boss, it does. Want me and the boys to walk the fence?”

  “No, let’s not waste the time, I’ll unlock the gate, after we pull in, relock the gate so we don’t have any surprise visitors.”

  “Will do.”

  Tony unlocks the gate while the MRAP is driven into the complex, Tony says, “Fourth warehouse to the left.”

  “Got it, want to ride, or walk?”

  “I’ll walk, I want to check out the facility.”

  Tony walks next to the MRAP as they slowly make their way to the fourth warehouse, Tony unlocks it. They slide open the large sliding door. Tony scans the inside of the warehouse with his flashlight. He smiles. “It’s all here. This is going to be worth a large fortune.”

  “Boss, want us to take any of this home?”

  “Not yet, I’ll take a copy of the inventory, let’s lock the place down and go home.”

  “Boss, what’s in the other warehouses?”

  “Other stuff I’ll sell over time. The longer I wait, the more valuable it’s going to be worth.”

  The group returns home. Tony parks the MRAP, he and his guards enters the shelter, he looks at everyone sitting in the mess hall. He frowns, thinking, They look defeated, one day checking their homes and their faces show they’ve already lost. They don’t know what they should do. This is dangerous. Everyone has to be on the top of their game if we’re going to survive. I may have to give away some of my supplies to give them hope. It’ll be interesting to see how Jay handles this.

  Jay walks to the front of the mess hall, “May I please have your attention?” Everyone’s heads rise and turn to look towards Jay. “I see you returned a little depressed,” Rich yells out, “A little? Christ, Jay, we’d have been better off if the storm destroyed our homes like it did yours. We’re going to have to rebuild and replace almost everything except for the four external walls. Where are we going to get the building supplies? Where are we going to get the appliances and new windows, roofs? Hell, we’re going to need truckloads of building materials. Last time I checked, Lowes and Home Depot aren’t open, there aren’t many trucks running. Money is worthless, we were better off in here. Yesterday morning we were so excited to be going home, what we saw weren’t our homes. We don’t know what to do now.”