by Jf Perkins
“That’s the way we like it. We always keep watch, and if we see anyone, the whole place shuts down.”
Terry mulled it over as Aggie came out with a wooden tray, three cups, and a pitcher of tea. She leaned over and poured for them. Terry found her distracting. For one thing, she smelled clean. For another, her lean torso was less than a foot in front of his eyes. Not much else to look at for the moment. He realized in startled surprise that he had never thought of a woman his mother’s age as attractive before. As soon as the thought entered his mind, he looked down at his hands again and waited for her to finish.
Aggie sat in the chair opposite him, with Bill in the middle. She asked, “So, Terry, where are you from?”
“Well, ma’am, we have a few acres out in the scrubland near the old high school. It’s not much for farming, but it’s not bad for goats and chickens.”
“Why did you become a reclamation engineer?”
“My daddy is always talking about rebuilding. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. I figured this was a good way to help it along.”
Aggie paused for moment. “Yes, I guess you’re right. Rebuilding is important.”
“Yes, ma’am… My pappy was always talking about what it was like before the Breakdown, and it seems like they had it pretty good. He died when I was little, something about blood sugar. Granny was around until a few years back. She just got pneumonia and coughed herself to death one night.”
Aggie leaned across and put her hand on his knee. “I’m sorry, Terry. It’s always hard to lose family.”
Terry gathered his thoughts and said, “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”
“We don’t hear much out here. How is the rebuilding going?” Aggie asked casually, seemingly polite conversation with no substance.
“Well, it definitely better than it was. We can almost always find food now, and people seem to be getting along for the most part. In town, it’s mostly quiet. The sheriff and his boys do a pretty good job of keeping the troublemakers out.”
Bill chimed in. “How about fuel?”
“There is some for farm equipment, but it’s strictly rationed by the county. The trains get theirs from the state, but it’s still pretty rare to see one come through. The interstate is still too dangerous outside of town. We’re mostly on our own.”
“I see. Same old… Well, if you’re ready let me give you that tour I promised you.” Bill got up and walked to the door. “I’m going to make a big mistake by starting with the punchline.” He reached his hand inside and flipped his hand upwards. The entire kitchen filled with light - electric light.
“Holy sh… crap, sir! You have power!” Terry found his cup swinging on one finger and set it down quickly.
Bill laughed loudly. “That’s always good for a laugh, don’t you think, Aggie?”
Aggie snorted and said, “Drama queen.”
“What can I say? I like to be the center of attention.”
Aggie was still chuckling as she gathered up the cups on the tray and went back inside. “Have fun, boys.”
“Let’s go, Terry.” Bill walked to the fence line that was once the back of the sub-division. Terry hopped down the steps and followed him. They stopped at a big wooden gate and looked across another grass field behind the fence.
Bill started his tour by talking. “My folks were from Nashville. They were taking us to visit our family down in South Georgia when it hit the fan. They said that when it became clear that things were getting bad, they wanted us to go for a visit while we still could. My dad had an old station wagon from the 1970’s with a brand new GPS on the dashboard. He was an engineer and loved gadgets of all kinds, which didn’t make sense with the station wagon, an antique even then. That was 2012. When we asked him why we couldn’t have one of the cool SUVs that our friends had, he always said, ‘First rule of engineering, boys… If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We always rolled our eyes at that. He probably said it ten times a day. Turns out, he was right.”
Terry didn’t know what to say, but he knew this was important to Bill.
Bill kept going. “My dad had been selling my mom on how great that GPS was, all the way from Nashville. She probably just thought of it as another one of Dad’s useless toys. My brother, Tom, and I were in the rumble seat way in the back, so we couldn’t see what was going on. We were too busy trying to get truckers to honk their air horns anyway. We were coming up the long hill from the Beech Grove exit when Dad started grumbling. The thing wasn’t working right. He pushed a bunch of buttons on the screen and gave it the old engineer slap. All it did was read, ‘Seeking satellites.’ Dad pulled off at the next exit, up here at Busy Corner, to do some trouble shooting and fill up the tank with twelve dollar gas while he was at it. Busy Corner was actually busy that day, and we weren’t the only ones with GPS troubles. By the time he finished putting gas in the car, it was clear that everyone with a GPS was trying to get it to work and everyone with a fancy cell phone was just as puzzled.
No one knew what was going on at that point, but I think Dad was getting the idea. He did something he hadn’t done in 10 years. He turned on the old CB radio under the dash, and listened to the chatter. It was full of truckers who had lost their GPS as well. Dad was torn, he told me later, about whether to keep going, but I guess he decided to go on since we piled back in the car and headed east. We made it all the way to the Tullahoma AEDC exit before we hit a road block of Air Force vehicles from the base. I remember thinking how cool it was to see all those camo Humvees with the big guns mounted on top. The traffic was light so we waited to see what they would say. The Air Force guys told us that there was a major blockage on the road ahead, and that we should go back to Manchester to wait until the highway was cleared. Dad took him at face value and headed back to the fast food and motel strip near the Wal-Mart. We pulled into the McDonald’s right off the exit, my dad handed her some cash and asked her to bring him something to the car. The rest of us went inside while dad stayed outside, trying to listen to the two radios at once.
We were waiting in line, except for my older brother, Kirk. He was in the restroom. Apparently, McDonald’s was the stop of choice for blockaded motorists since we were hearing a lot of chatter about roadblocks and GPS from the people in line with us. We were still behind some lady who seemed to be ordering for an entire office building when my dad rushed in and told us to forget it and to get back in the car. He had a wild look about him we had never seen before. As much as we loved McDonald’s, it never even occurred to us to argue. We left with a bunch of people watching us. Dad grabbed Kirk out of the restroom and practically dragged him to the car. He was probably just playing with the hot air hand dryer anyway.
Dad gave a quick look over his shoulder, maybe looking for traffic, maybe counting us kids… I was never sure, and he made a squealing turn out of the parking lot. Back in the rumble seat I remember people coming out of the McDonald’s as we left. Maybe they thought we knew what was going on. Dad floored it for the quarter mile trip to the Wal-Mart just across the overpass. He hung a hard right into the parking lot, found the first decent parking space, and jolted us to a stop.
Dad turned to mom and ordered, “Beth, you’re with me.” He looked back at us with a hard glare and said, “Nobody even think about getting out of this car. Lucy, you’re in charge until we get back.” Lucy is the oldest.
It seemed like they were in there for only about twenty minutes, but they came back with four full carts of stuff. We had no idea what was going on. We were pretty sure Dad had lost his mind. He threw a bunch of squishy cloth and bags in the back with Tom and me. He filled the backseat floorboard with cans of food and bottles of water, and more cloth stuff between - and on - Kirk and Lucy. He threw a few boxes at us in back and told us to hold on to them. Then we could hear him thumping around on the roof. He cracked open a blue plastic tarp and tied it to the roof too. Mom was saying something, but mostly it looked like she was upset and trying to stay out of the way.
They
got back in the car and buckled up. My dad started the car and quickly got back on the interstate, heading west towards home. We made it back to Busy Corner before we shuddered to a squealing stop behind a line of cars and trucks. They were being held by another blockade of military vehicles, and as we sat there, it looked like everyone ahead wanted to have their own personal argument with the soldiers. All of the vehicles were being forced to exit the highway. We finally got to the front, and a young Hispanic soldier leaned towards my dad’s half-rolled-down window.
“Sir, please exit here.”
“Why?” Dad asked tightly.
“Sir, there has been a major accident ahead, and we are diverting traffic until the emergency crews can get it cleared.” The soldier’s eyes scanned our car while Tommy and I were peeking over the back seat. He seemed to make some kind of connection about the time my dad snapped.
“Bullshit!” My dad practically sprayed the word on the soldier.
To his credit, the soldier was smarter than average. He looked back at us kids and gestured for my dad to listen closer. The soldier was talking quietly in dad’s ear for a few seconds. My dad nodded, thanked the soldier and quietly drove up the ramp. We found ourselves back at the same gas station where we had filled up less than 90 minutes earlier.
Dad told us to wait, and slid out of the car. He talked to a couple by the pumps for a minute, and then marched across the parking lot to a group of people sitting on the hoods of their cars in the shade. They were all shrugging and waving arms in the direction of the highway. Dad nodded a few times and then walked into the store. He talked to the clerk, more shrugging, watched the TV up in the corner for a couple of minutes, and then disappeared behind a rack up against the front window.
Kirk was the first one of us to say anything. “Mom, what is going on? What’s all this stuff? What is Dad doing? Why can’t we get through?”
Mom was in lockdown mode. “Kirk, I can’t tell you much of anything. I’m hoping your father knows what’s happening. We’ll just have to wait and see.” The phrase “wait and see” was always code for “forget it.”
You could hear the exasperated breath from all of us. Those were the words of a parent keeping us in the dark. Lucy said, “Mom,” in that long, whiny, three syllable way that only teenage girls from the South can pronounce. Lucy looked about to continue, but realized that it was hopeless for the moment, and snapped her open mouth shut.
Dad came out of the store with three bags. One was full of convenience store hot dogs and probably 300 packets of ketchup and mustard, another full of little bags of chips, and a third full of cold drinks. We saw dad pull some disposable lighters, some batteries, and a map out of the chip bag before he announced, “Time for a picnic.” He pulled the wagon over to the shady area with the other groups, and got out. He dropped the tailgate on the back of the car, dug Tommy and me out of the pile, and told Kirk and Lucy to sit there. Tommy and I were jealous since they were taking our seat with the cup holders, until Dad lifted us up onto the roof, and we realized that cup holders were not everything. He handed us all a hotdog, chips, and a drink, and then he and mom got back in the front seat. We could hear them murmuring to each other but we were completely distracted by the food, the long line of cars on the interstate, and the weird combination of fear and excitement in the air.
Eventually, Dad got out and brought the rest of the food with him. Kirk and I happily took a second hot dog. We munched while Dad grimly watched the highway. Nobody had the courage to ask any questions. We could hear Mom talking on her cell phone, but could only make out a few words.
I remember looking up when a siren chirped, and I saw a red pickup truck with huge tires drive past the roadblock in the grass median between the two strips of asphalt. I got excited, thinking I was going to see a TV-style police chase. All that happened was a soldier leaned in a Humvee window for a second. The truck was out of sight down the hill in seconds, but soon we heard a loud burst from a machine gun, and a couple of minutes later, the red pickup was back with a gun mounted Humvee following him up the eastbound exit ramp. The truck pulled into our parking lot – it’s great to be a kid; we were there for all of twenty minutes and we already thought of it as ours – and the crowd around us began to cheer. A skinny guy with a wispy beard and no shirt got out and started yelling and flipping the bird at the Humvee. A soldier in full battle gear jumped out and made the guy get on the ground. Two more soldiers joined in and pointed their rifles at the man on the ground.
They checked his ID, and the first soldier told him loudly, “Mr. Jenkins. If you try anything like that again, I have about 80 soldiers who would be happy to fill that pretty truck with 50-caliber bullet holes.” The soldiers got back in the Humvee and they drove back down the ramp in the wrong direction. At eleven, I can tell you, the fact that they drove onto the interstate using the off ramp made a big impression. I think that’s when I knew something big was happening. As I watched the truck guy picking little bits of gravel out of his chest, I began to wonder what it might be.”
Terry had to shake his head back to reality when he realized that Bill had stopped talking. He had never heard a firsthand account of the beginning of the Breakdown, and he was fully absorbed in the tale. “Wow. That’s amazing, sir.”
“Call me Bill, ok? I’m not sure why I’m telling you this story. I don’t think I’ve even thought about it for years.”
“Well, sir… uh, Bill. I’d appreciate it if you would keep going.”
Bill took a deep breath, and said, “Ok, it’s not much of a tour, but if you really want to hear it…”
“Definitely.”
“Two hours later, every parking lot at busy Corner was crammed full of cars, trucks, RVs, and motorcycles. We had seen a few try to use the secondary roads to get around the road block, but they always came back with a sheriff’s deputy following them. Our car was buried in the lot behind at least six or seven cars, so we weren’t leaving any time soon. Tommy was napping in the back seat. He was only seven at the time. Mom always called him her happy little accident. I never knew what that meant until much later. My parents came around back and walked us over to the narrow strip of grass by the trees. By that time, we were totally familiar with the territory and the people around us. Everyone had grown tired of socializing and swapping stories and lots of folks were following Tommy’s lead, taking naps in their cars, or wherever they could find a quiet patch of shade. The end result was that we had enough space to talk without being overheard.
Dad pulled us in close and said, “Listen, Tommy doesn’t need to know this yet. Agreed?” We all nodded, knowing we were finally about to get some answers.
“Here’s what I know. You guys know about satellites?” We nodded again.
“Ok, well the Chinese launched a bunch of missiles to shoot down our satellites. They got a lot of them, ones that we use for military communications, phone and TV, taking pictures of the planet, and the ones that make my brand new dang GPS work. All of these satellites are very important to us. They make it possible to do a lot of the stuff we have to do every day. You guys with me so far?”
More nodding.
“Our leaders seem to have taken the Chinese attack very seriously, and we have shot back. We shot down their satellites first, and then launched a full-scale nuclear attack on China itself. We are sure that we got all their satellites, but we are not sure if they have nuclear missiles they can fire back at us. If they do, they will attack as many cities and military bases as they can. Any place they hit with a nuclear missile is gone, ok? Even if anything is left, people will get sick and die if they are too close, and nobody will be able to move back into those areas for a very long time.”
Lucy spoke up. “So, Daddy, does that mean we killed a lot of Chinese?”
“I’m sorry, honey, but yes. Millions probably.”
Lucy was quiet for a minute, and then said, “But Daddy, I thought you and Mom said that people are way more important than stuff, like satellites.”
“That’s true. I still say that, but the reason is that we didn’t know why they shot our satellites. They could have just been trying to take over the satellite business, or they could have been doing it to blind us so we wouldn’t see their missiles coming until too late. I’m sure our leaders thought that it was safer for America if they made sure that couldn’t happen. Either way, terrible things are happening right now.”
“Why can’t we just go home?” Mom asked.
“Well, the soldier I talked to told me that they were blocking the freeways off in case they needed to move the Army around. He also said that no city is safe until we know what’s really happening, and that was a good point. If Nashville is a target for nuclear missile, we don’t want to be anywhere close. I kinda doubt that, but there’s another reason. If people get too upset about what might happen, they will do all kinds of crazy stuff. People might panic. If that happens, it’s much safer out here in the country, just because there are less people. You can’t tell that right now though.” Dad looked around at the crowd.
Lucy was chewing her lower lip, which she always does when she’s worried. Kirk looked like he was ready to go fight the Chinese himself if he could join the Army at age 13. I wasn’t really too concerned myself. I understood from everyone else that this was bad, but for me, it was just an adventure on the side of the highway.
