by John Price
Beau convened a meeting of the men, asking the women to calm the children who were upset about their missing friends and get them to bed. Beau started the meeting by asking Gary to pray.
"Father, we are in trouble, we know it….We’re asking you to help us find Bobby and Chris….soon….before they are found by someone who may have evil plans in mind. Help us, we earnestly pray. In Christ’s name. Amen."
Beau commenced the meeting, "Men, Gary just said it. We’re in real trouble. The boys must have snuck out when John was in the ‘john’, so to speak. You’ve heard by now that two hours ago I sent out Gary and Charlie to comb the woods, which is undoubtedly where kids their age would go to play. No success. They saw some evidence of scuffed up leaves at the edge of the parking lot leading into the woods, but, they combed the woods and saw no boys. They stayed well back from the sub-division that borders the woods on the north end, about a mile or so from here."
Charlie, a member of the search party, asked, "Don’t we need to go back out and keep looking? Those kids are too young to know how to survive outdoors very long, right?"
Beau hesitated, knowing what he was about to say would not likely be taken well. After examining the palms of his hands, he looked up and said, "Men. This is how it is. We know there are marauding gangs of men who are looking for food, ammo and women. If our two little guys are seen out by themselves it won’t take the bad guys long to figure out that they’re living in a safe house somewhere. It’s been so long since The Day that they couldn’t be out and alive on their own."
"So, Beau," Charlie replied, "What are you saying? Do we all go out tonight and try to find them or not?"
"OK, Charlie, you’re the boys’ dad, so you’re not going to like what I say, but we have to face the facts. The facts are that it’s been about five hours now since the boys left. That’s fact one. Fact two is that even though the wooded area is good sized, it’s not that large. The boys should be back here by now. Fact three is the tough one….more than likely the boys have been grabbed by somebody. Otherwise, they would be here by now."
Charlie, a catch in his throat, asked, "So, Beau, what are we going to do?"
Beau stood and walked over to Charlie, putting his arm around him, saying gently, "My brother, we can’t go out tonight and search. We’ve tried that. The boys aren’t in the woods, but they are almost surely in somebody’s custody. Whoever’s got them, they’re interested in only one thing. They will do what they have to do to get Chris or Bobby to give up our location."
"But, the boys heard you explain why no one can reveal to anyone on the outside where we are, or we could all die. They heard you pound on that, Beau, they heard it."
"Charlie, they also heard me warn the kids, all of them, not to go outside the school, but they did it anyway. Everybody in the intelligence field knows that a prisoner will ultimately break. Everyone breaks, is the reality of life. How long do you think it will take a twelve year old, and how old is Bobby…?
"He’s ten."
"Alright, he’s just ten years old. How long will it take to get the boys to talk? They’re scared. They know they messed up. Whoever grabbed them knows by now that they have been living in this school. We’ve been made. If we all go out tonight looking, again, for them, then that would leave our safe house with little to no security. The women and children would then be by themselves. We can’t do that, guys. We have to assume the worst and get ready for an assault any time….any time. In fact, we need to get the women and kids into the secure room, without any further delay. If we get hit tonight it will most likely be in the early morning hours, but, like I said, it could happen any time….Are we in agreement?....Any dissenters?....Charlie, I know this is hard, but do you understand why we need to hunker down and get ready?"
Charlie, his head bowed, a large tear running down his right cheek, murmured, "I guess….I don’t like it….but….we don’t have a choice….do we?"
"No, Charlie, we don’t…..Okay, men, let’s get the women and children safe, get all of your guns and ammo and we’ll meet at the entry door. The boys will have told the bad guys that the utility room door is our entry point The bad guys will do their best to breach it. Let’s get ready."
60
Colonel Jim Irwin Elementary School
Shortly after moving into the Colonel Irwin School as their safe house the 87 occupants jointly decided that they would secure one interior room, with no windows, as the ‘panic room’ for the women and children to hide should they be discovered at the school. Though it was small, the best room in the school turned out to be the windowless sports equipment storage room off of the gym, used by the school to store basketballs and other sporting equipment. Once the room was chosen, the contents were stacked along the walls of the gym. The second part of the plan was to open a second entry to the room through lockers out in the hall on a wall adjoining the storage room. Two adjoining lockers were chosen. The concrete blocks in the wall behind the lockers were carefully removed, allowing the women and children seeking security to enter the room through the chosen lockers.
The removed blocks were then mortared into the space occupied by the original entry door off of the gym, using the closest substance that the men could devise to look like concrete. They located some old paint cans in the utility room, matched the paint in the gym and painted the wall, effectively covering the only previously visible entry door to the storage room, now re-named as the panic room.
Hannah’s prime responsibility in the hideaway was to gather all of the women and all of the children younger than fourteen. Whenever Beau decided that the women and children were to go to safety in the panic room, Hannah was to corral everyone through the locker door entrance to the secure room. She counted off each person as they squeezed through the lockers and into the room, "Twenty women, eight female teens and twenty-eight boys and girls. Though I really wish it were thirty. Chris and Bobby, where are you, my dear boys?"
Beau positioned his small citizens army in the hall outside the utility room, which was the only un-barricaded entry to the school, and half a school away from the panic room. His defense force consisted of the twenty married men and nine male teens. Strategically Beau concluded that they should not be inside the utility room, as any invading force would likely blow the door with explosives, killing or injuring the defenders in the room. Instead, they had pre-positioned teachers’ heavy desks in the hallway, behind which they would be able to pick off anyone coming through the door into the hall from the utility room.
The men had three large flashlights which were only to be used during the armed defense of the school, carefully preserving their precious batteries. Beau’s plan was to temporarily blind anyone coming through the utility room door and into the hall, lighting up the invaders to facilitate their shooting. They placed their sleeping bags and bedrolls behind the desks, planning to sleep in their defensive positions for the night.
Two men stood guard closest to the door, staying awake so they could sound the air horn should an attack commence on the school. The night wore on with nothing untoward happening. Two o’clock came and went. At three AM Beau awakened and walked the hall, checking on his men, many sleeping fitfully. Just as Beau went back to his position, hoping to catch some sleep, he heard a noise, not a very loud noise, coming from the other side of the school building, the front entrance area.
Since Beau was fully awake now, he decided to walk down his hall, turn at the cross hall, then walk the long hall to the main entrance to the school to see if he could determine the source of the noise. He used a small penlight to illuminate his path. Just as Beau turned to go down the long hall a deafening crashing sound came roaring down the hall. Beau fell to the floor, his rifle at the ready. What he saw turned his stomach to acid. A large, heavy truck, what appeared to be a dump truck, crashed through the locked front doors, smashing glass and metal in all directions, then shoving to the side the school desks stacked in front of the doors. The truck shifted gears and accelerated down
the hall, heading straight for Beau, who was caught in the truck’s headlights. As Beau jumped up to run back towards his men he thought he saw several tattooed men in the back of the truck now careening down the hall, all armed.
61
Colonel Jim Irwin Elementary School
Beau didn’t even think about it. It was instinctive. Too late he realized that he should have run down a hall to a different location than where his men were located. By running toward his defense forces he led the careening truck and its armed men directly to his forces. The firefight that ensued was brief. Once the truck negotiated the corners, it crashed headlong into the desks outside the utility room door, running over and instantly killing most of the defense forces. Those who survived the crashing dump truck were shot dead by the tattooed invaders. Snake Head jumped off the truck and walked the hall shooting any survivors in the head.
Death walked the other way in the hall in the direction they had just driven, along with his armed men. He shouted, "OK, guys. We know what we have to do. Find the gym, that won’t be too hard, then we locate lockers numbered 127 and 128. They’ll be on a wall outside and just down from the gym. Those kids didn’t make up those numbers. That’s our entry to the women, and from them we’ll find whatever food they have left. Both should be yummy."
Inside the interior storage room Hannah was awakened by the sound of the truck, then its crashing into the desks in the nearby hall. It was followed by rapid gun fire. The gun fire went from rapid to sporadic. Then it stopped. Hannah concluded that either their men had taken out the invaders, or alternatively, they were taken out by them. She silently prayed as she woke up the women, leaving the children to sleep.
"Ladies," Hannah whispered, "Our safe house has been invaded. I heard a lot of shooting, but it’s stopped. More than likely, someone will be coming through those locker doors….soon….so….it will either be one of our guys who will come to tell us that we’re safe and the invaders are dead….or….well….somebody else."
A distraught Audrey whispered back, not wanting to wake the children, "Hannah, if our men are dead….then….we all know what will happen next….right?"
"Audrey, dear Audrey. Yes, we do know what would happen. We’ve discussed this and we’ve planned for this. We know what we have to do. It’s not about the food, of course, they can take all that….If our men are with the Lord….then….then….we can’t defend ourselves. We never thought we could. They won’t want the younger children, they’d just be more mouths to feed. They will want us….twenty eight women and teen-aged girls. But, Beau told us that his experience overseas confirms that they won’t take all of us. Some they’ll just shoot, some they’ll take along with them if they leave here. Gary’s opinion was that if marauders overwhelmed us they may use this as their new location, if it’s a better location than where they came from. Beau told us, if you recall, that the survivors of The Day will kill and destroy, growing in size and power as they take over remaining safe houses."
Shots rang out, but only a short burst, then silence. Then the sound of men shouting. At first, all the women could hear was mens’ voices, but they couldn’t make out either the identity of the men nor their words. Then they heard, "Down this way….Here’s the gym….It’s along the hall this way….the wall against….here….just follow the numbers….a hundred and fifty….the numbers go this way….a hundred forty two….Ah….here we are….one hundred and twenty seven and twenty eight. The kids better have been right."
The locker doors were jerked open and Snake Head pushed through into the storage room first, followed by Death, then their tattooed men. The two candles and one dimming flashlight in the room revealed the horrific tattooed faces of the intruders and the frightened, sobbing faces of the women. The noise of their abrupt entry awakened some of the younger children.
Death said "Well….well….well….what do we have here?" Turning to Snake Head, Death said, "Just like I said Snake, yummy….yummy. Even some young yummies." Death walked over to a teen girl shaking in fear as she stared in horror at his death skull tattooed face. He licked the side of her face with his blackened tongue. "Yup, yummy."
Death nodded to the seven tattooed men who were with him in the room, giving them permission to do whatever they wanted with the frightened, sobbing women and children. They began to sort through the women, making their choices. Death turned and motioned to Snake Head to come with him as he went back out through the locker entrance to what was constructed to be a safe room.
Hannah stood in the shadows along the far wall of the storage room. She offered up her final prayer, reached behind her back and then pulled hard on a small steel cable which was tied to the ignition pins on six hand grenades.
III
A YEAR
AFTER
THE
DAY
"As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah along with their neighboring towns," declares the Lord, "so no one will live there (in the Daughter of Babylon); no man will dwell in it." (Jeremiah 50:40)
"It got to the point where the only thing we really thought about was food. How to find it. How we were going to survive if we didn’t find food. It was terrible, not knowing if we would survive, whether we would starve." (The World at War, PBS Series on life in the Warsaw Ghetto in WWII)
62
BBC Studios – Broadcasting House
Central London, England
The studio floor director for WORLD IN REVIEW counted down for the evening newscast. "Five….four….three….two…." He then pointed to the male talking head seated at the long curved silver broadcast desk, behind which was the show’s global logo and the network’s three large letters. The studio’s numerous overhead lights brightly lit the two newscasters.
Looking directly into the lens of studio camera one, the carefully coiffed newscaster, his full beard precisely trimmed, read the news from the scrolling teleprompter reflected in the one way mirror suspended over the lens.
"Good evening from BBC’s London studios. Tonight we look at the subject of America – One Year After The Day. As virtually everyone on the planet knows, America was destroyed one year ago today by the detonation of several nuclear devices in ten American cities. At the outset, a disclaimer on what we are about to report. Though we believe that the contents of tonight’s program are accurate, viewers will appreciate that obtaining news from what used to be America is a difficult task. There are no existing news services still reporting news in the U.S. Consequently, most of the news that we can report has come to us from the few short wave radio operators who are still alive in the devastated nation. Only those who had an independent electric power source, of course, are able to transmit their reports and updates out to the world. There are no known American electric utilities still generating to customers.
"For our first special report on this important topic we’ll go to Major General Archibald Raleigh, who joins us from the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, here in London. Major General, thank you for joining us this evening. Let me just throw up the first question, a question which many here have asked in the last year….Where is America’s military? What happened to the armed forces of what some called the hammer of the whole earth? Can you enlighten us, Major General?"
The screen was then split between the newscaster and a mustachioed military officer, in full dress uniform, battle and service metals covering his left chest. Somewhat scowling into the camera, he said, "Why yes, Robert, excuse me, that is….yes….Rab, I think I can help your viewers in this regard. Not only was the American federal government decapitated with the nuclear explosions a year ago, but the US military command and control structure was almost totally destroyed. Once it became obvious to individual American forces in the field, those, that is, who survived the detonations, that there was no one, literally no one, in charge, the inevitable took place."
"The inevitable, Major General, and that was?"
"They scattered, they left their posts. Compare what happened with what took place in New
Orleans in the U.S. a few years back after Hurricane Katrina struck. Virtually all of the city’s police and law enforcement officials bolted from their assigned and routine duties in order to help their individual families. What the Yanks call the ‘thin blue line’ totally dissolved. Within twenty-four hours no policeman could be found anywhere in New Orleans. It appears that each law enforcement officer made the conscious decision to leave and protect his own family as his highest priority. Personally, I can’t say as I blame them….actually. But, I should hasten to add, that’s not our official position, obviously."
"Is that what happened, Major General, did the American military abandon their stations in order to help their own families? And what about America’s police officers, did they replicate what the New Orleans police did?"
"Essentially, Rab, that’s exactly what happened. Most of what we learned in this regard we obtained before communications with the U.S. military went down, which I should say took at least a week to ten days for reasons that we can discuss, now or later, if you wish."
"Sure. Go ahead."
"Well, there was some limited flow of information from the underground Cheyenne headquarters in Colorado, at first, as I said, but over time it came to a halt. Initially, some of the ranked officers who were not killed in the nuking of America were still in place, but they had a problem. There was no command and control from Washington, DC, or anywhere else. Plus, with the troops very quickly drifting away to help their families, taking their firearms I should add, they had no one to command. So, with control gone from the top and troops gone from the bottom, these ranked officers, we understand, eventually saw the handwriting on the bunker wall, and themselves left to go help their own."
