by AJ Newman
I took some time to get the concept through to all of them but finally got it across that they could build much larger and better water purification systems.
I slept on a mat in their kitchen and woke up the next morning to see Maria walking around me fixing breakfast. I scampered out of the way and went to the outhouse that was between Manuel’s house and the next one. Holy shit it stank. I didn’t know much about outhouses, but I had heard GIs used lime to keep the stink down and to help the crap dissolve.
I came back to their house, washed my hands in a bucket outside, and a thought hit me between the eyes. These people are living like peasants from the early 1800’s and probably didn’t even know about modern conveniences. Hell, they probably didn’t even know about The Flare or the devastation that resulted from it. Damn, more memories came back to me.
I had remembered The Flare. I now knew why I was so far south and why I left Wyoming. I wondered how The Flare had affected Cuba. How many survived and how dangerous was this place. Were the Communists still running the country?
I ate breakfast and enjoyed the small talk as we both learned more about each other and our languages. Not knowing that I needed to learn Spanish I kept pushing them to learn English.
I wondered what was out there in the suburbs and cities. If The Flare was as devastating to Cuba as it was in the USA, we all might need to head further south.
“Manuel, are there cars that I can use.”
“Mi have truck. I take you.”
Manuel took me up the road a piece, and sure enough, there was an old 1958 GMC pickup that had seen better days. Manuel was very proud of the truck and showed it to me as though it was just off the showroom floor. It had been painted sky blue with a brush and had the most colorful interior I had ever seen.
He raised the hood, and there was a four cylinder diesel engine peeking up at us.
“Matt, mi put tractor engine in mi truck. Runs good.”
“Very good…mucho bueno! Can we go to town?”
“Si, manana…tomorrow.”
“Bueno…good.”
During breakfast, I explained to Manuel and Maria that we needed to see what had happened in the nearby cities. I was secretly hoping that we would find them deserted and a warehouse of treasures that we could use for our survival.
After breakfast, I gathered my Bugout Bag, Keltek Sub 2000, and my Glock. Manuel brought two jugs of water, a bag with our lunch and a double barreled shotgun that had seen better days. We loaded up, Manuel drove around the bay, then south to a road that crossed the river, and we headed east to a village called Silvio Caro. Silvio Caro was a disappointment for it was practically a ghost town and had been thoroughly looted.
Silvio Caro was a small city that was much more modern than the villages, but still pitiful by American standards. We drove in on the main road and were stopped by two men at a roadblock.
Manuel yelled, “Ola,” and walked up to them while I stayed in the truck.
They talked for a few minutes, and Manuel came back and got in the truck. He told me that over half of the people had loaded up on boats and headed south. They had been told that it was going to get much colder and they needed to head to South America while they could.
Most of the remaining people fished for a living and got by day to day on their catch and their gardens. They planted their crops as usual; however, the plants either never sprouted or wilted due to the freezing nights. I told Manuel to encourage them to head south as soon as possible.
We left and headed on east towards Mariel, which was a much larger city on the coast.
On the drive to Mariel, Manuel asked, “Why we must go south?”
“The weather gets colder. Mucho colder. No gardens. You know cabbage and carrots.”
“Si, mi know gardens. Why.”
Well, that took about a half hour to explain without getting into solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections. The bottom line was that he understood that staying here would be a death sentence.
The light came on, and he asked, “What we do?”
“We gather food, guns, and bullets and get a big boat. Then we go south.”
Okay, my Spanish sucked back then, and his English was bad, but we understood each other. After another month, we were talking like magpies.
Manuel gave me an overview of the city and the docks across the bay. That gave me the idea to check the docks to see if there were any abandoned warehouses, ships or containers with supplies that we could use. We cautiously drove into the complex and found the gates smashed open and the place deserted.
The southwest end of the complex had warehouses, light manufacturing facilities, cargo trailers and scattered about the dock area were overseas shipping containers. Most had been broken into and looted. We only found a few items that we could use, so we drove on deeper into the complex where we found signs of a battle. There were spent ammo casings everywhere and several dead bodies being picked over by vultures.
There were bullet holes in every building and vehicle. Manuel pointed out where a large propane tank had exploded, and he made gestures making the point that a bullet had struck the tank. We both had our weapons ready as we drove on to the far end where the docks and railhead were located.
I made Manuel stop his pickup behind some shipping containers when I saw the dead men and their weapons. We found four bodies that had several gunshot wounds. Two had shots to their heads.
There were three AK47s, more than a dozen full magazines and several pistols that I didn’t recognize but assumed were Russian. I looked closer and found the pistols were marked Tokarev Model 70A 9x19 parabellum. Damn, I was happy that they used the same ammo as my Glock 17 and Keltek carbine.
I demonstrated to Manuel how to load and fire the AK and pistols before placing the extras in the bed of the truck. Manuel was smiling from ear to ear as he laid his old shotgun in the back of the truck and shouldered the AK47. I poked one of the Tokarevs into my waistband and felt better about my firepower. My Glock held 17 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, my carbine had 31 plus one in the chamber, and my new toy held nine plus one. I could shoot a long time before reloading.
I pointed at the shipping containers, and Manuel went to his truck and retrieved a pair of bolt cutters. He quickly started cutting the locks off the six containers in front of us. I watched for intruders and then we took turns searching the containers while the other stood guard.
None of the containers had anything we couldn’t live without today. There was a mixture of tractors, tractor parts, and hardware supplies. We would take some of the tools, but there were no guns or food.
Manuel and I headed back to the village and only took back the guns and ammo that we found on the dead men on the dock.
✼
Chapter 3
Danger Matt Jones
Caralem, Cuba
The massacre at the dock served to remind me that the world was full of good people like the ones in Caralem, but it also had its share of brutal, sadistic killers who would kill you for a scrap of bread or your gun. I couldn’t sleep well that night and continued to try to remember who I was and what the fuck I was doing here. I continued to have flashes of memories that didn’t make sense. It was as if someone cut a movie into two-second pieces, threw them in a bucket, and played the whole thing backward.
My head actually began to hurt from trying to remember, so I tried to concentrate on what our next steps should be. I knew we had to head south and this drove me in most of what I planned. I knew that some superior force had slaughtered those men on the dock and they could be coming for us. We drove straight back to the village and didn’t even think to see if someone followed us back.
Those thoughts made me go over our inventory of weapons. We had the three AKs, three Tokarevs, my two ARs, and three pistols from my boat besides my own personal weapons. We could arm 11 more men if I kept my three guns. The thought that I would start training the men in the morning was on my mind the rest of the night. I w
oke up the next morning thinking where the hell did I learn enough about weapons and killing to train people.
Maria had prepared a modest but filling breakfast and then Manuel, and I completed all of his daily chores in time for lunch.
“Manuel, I’m afraid the men who killed those men on the dock will try to come to your village.”
“Si, me to think they may try to rob us.”
“I can train your people how to use the guns and how to fight.”
“Now. They very bad men. I think.”
I gathered our weapons and ammo while Manuel selected the men he trusted the most who were best suited for the training.
I started by finding out if they already had used firearms before and was happy to learn that all of them had hunted and a few had been in the military including Manuel. I spent most of the time showing them how to disassemble, clean, and load their weapons. We only dry fired them because we were afraid that the wrong people might hear the gunfire and come to the village to investigate.
I then taught them the difference between cover and concealment along with tactics and finally guard duty. The men soaked up the lessons like sponges. I put them through role-playing and exercises as close to reality as possible without shooting or getting shot at that afternoon. The last item on our list was to set up a guard duty schedule for the week.
***
“George, I followed those two back to a village a few miles from here. You were right the white guy is from the USA, and the other is a local peasant. They have food and women there. It’s just one American and a bunch of stinking Mexicans.”
“Ralph, they are Cubans, and they aren’t stupid. Never underestimate your enemy. Did they have any weapons besides what they were carrying and found on the docks?”
“Mexicans, Cubans, and Africans they’re all the same to me. We don’t need any of them. No, that’s the only guns I saw.”
“But you like their women.”
“That’s different; I don’t want to marry them I just want to….”
“I get the picture. Well, I don’t want to kill them all like you did on the dock. We need some workers here at our new home. I didn’t survive the trip from New York to Cuba to work my ass off as a farmer. We may not be able to make a living selling drugs, prostitution, and gambling, but I’ll be damned if I’m working for a living. So don’t kill any more than you have to, to get them to obey and work for us.”
“Alright, I’ll only kill a few. The white guy and the one Cuban could be trouble, but the rest will fold like a lawn chair when we start shooting.”
“Now round up the boys and get ready to take that village tonight. I want to go in after midnight and overwhelm them. They should be scared shitless and surrender quickly.”
***
Manuel walked up to me and said, “One of the ninos told her father that a white man like you followed us back to the village and watched for a few minutes before leaving.”
“Damn, those bastards will be attacking your village soon. We must speed up our preparation. Do you have some light but strong fishing line and some empty food cans?”
“Yes, we have much of both of them. What you do with them?”
“We will string trip wires around the village and extra ones on all of the paths and roads. We will also double the guards at night until the danger is over.”
“I make some surprises for them also.”
“You do that, and I’ll start showing our friends how to string the trip wires. Hey, Manuel, please send some scouts out to watch the main road that headed east to Mariel. The enemy would come from that direction.”
“Si, I do now.”
I gave demonstrations on how to string the line and get the most noise from the cans by tying nuts and bolts in them like clappers in a bell. When the string was jarred, the cans rattled rather loudly. I then showed them how to hide the wires so that intruders wouldn’t see them and step over them. After setting the trip wires, I asked several of the women to see if they could sneak into the village without tripping our early detection devices. Only one woman was able to find and get into the village with making the cans rattle, and she walked very slowly and stepped over them.
We strung several hundred feet of the trip wire and then went to supper an hour before the sun went down. Maria and her friends had prepared roasted fish for supper, and the food was delicious. I could get used to Cuban food.
Several of the villagers asked me about my home in the USA, and I had to explain about my loss of memory for the tenth time. I did tell them about several places in the USA that I loved to visit, and they were amazed at how normal people in the states were wealthier than what passed for rich people in Cuba.
I was telling them about the Grand Canyon when a man rushed in and whispered in Manuel’s ear. Manuel waved his hands and said, “The bad guys are coming. They stopped about a kilometer east of the town and were lying on the ground by their two trucks.”
“They are waiting for dark before they attack. My guess is that they will come after we are all asleep. We need to have all of our guards posted now and have everyone else act normal until dark. Then the rest of us will slip out into the night and ambush the bastards.”
Manuel translated my instructions and added that the women and children should wait until after dark and go hide down by the ocean until after the fight was over.
“Manuel, if the women leave the huts, we must be able to turn the lamps off at your normal bedtime, or the enemy will get suspicious.”
Manuel gave instructions to the men in the village, and we began the waiting game for the enemy to make the first move. The first minute after the Sun went down and it was dark was the worst, as the village grew darker. A short while later I noticed that the lamps were going out and I heard a man yell for his kids to come in the house. About an hour later, I noticed that all of the lights were out except one and it went out in a few minutes.
I was more nervous as time passed until the first trip wire rattled east of the village about 100 yards from my location. Then I heard another rattle just 50 feet from me. Before I could move two things happened, gunfire erupted to my left, and I saw the silhouettes of several men in front of me. I raised my rifle, took careful aim, and squeezed off a shot before moving to another target. I saw both men fall and heard screaming from their direction.
I lay behind a tree searching for more targets and saw several, but each time a shot rang out before I could draw a bead on the shadowy figure. This went on for another ten minutes, and then I didn’t see any more of the attackers but continued to hear gunfire from several locations to my left and right. The fighting and gunfire stopped as suddenly as it started, and then there was silence except for the moans and groans of the wounded men.
We walked around the village poking the fallen to see if any were alive and more importantly dangerous. All of the intruders were either wounded or dead, and two of our men suffered serious but not life-threatening wounds. The entire fight was over in less than 30 minutes. It was only 9:50 pm.
“Manuel, have your men bring the wounded to your house and bring me a count of the dead. We need to interrogate the living and find out who we are fighting.”
“Si Mister Matt. They will be here in a minute.”
Two of the assholes survived their attack on our village and seven were dead. The two survivors were brought to Manuel’s house and were seated at the kitchen table when I arrived. They both had their hands and feet bound with rope and their mouths taped with duct tape.
I looked the men over, yanked the tape off the largest man, and asked, “Are you from Canada or the USA?”
“Fuck that hurt. That’s none of your fucking business assholes.”
I backhanded the man across the face knocking him to the ground. He was wounded in the thigh and screamed in pain.
“Manuel, please send the women and children out of the house. This will be messy and very noisy.”
Maria wanted to stay and finish bandaging the man�
�s wounds, but he made her leave with the kids.
“Now asshats, this is how it works. I’m going to ask, and you are going to answer. Where are you from?”
“Fuck you.”
I pulled my bayonet out of its sheath and pushed the tip into the wound on the man’s leg. He let out an ungodly scream and passed out.
“Sorry about your friend, but he didn’t play by the rules,” I said as I brought the knife close to the man’s wound in his shoulder.
“Most of us are from New York, and the others we picked up along the way to Cuba.”
“Why did you attack us?”
“Our boss wants your food, weapons, and women. He wants the men to work for him on the farms as slaves.”
“Now that was easy. Were you criminals before the shit hit the fan?”
“Yes, we were part of the New York mob.”
“Is your buddy a leader in this group of thugs?”
“Yes, he is second in charge.”
“How many more men do you have in this gang?”
“Twelve plus the boss.”
“Are there any innocent people at the hideout?”
“Our women and some of our kids. The slaves are kept locked up at night in a building at the north end of the compound. It’s the only blue metal building.”
“Can you take us to where your boss is located?”
“No, he would kill me if he finds out that I ratted him out.”
“Look asshole. Only one of you gets out of here alive. I’m going to ask him the same question and the one who takes us to your boss lives. I will kill the other one before we leave.”
“Wait, I’ll do it. Will you let me loose then?”
“Of course, we won’t have any need for you after we kill the rest of your gang.”
“Okay, I’ll take you to him.”
“Good answer,” I replied as I cut the other thug’s throat, “Manuel, please get Maria to finish fixing his leg. We have to go kill the rest of them, or we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”
