Uncertain Times: A Story of Survival

by Travis Wright

  Jim led the convoy of six vehicles down the road. People from around the subdivision and on the main road were frantic and countless looked confused.

  “I’m sure glad we have a plan,” Jim relayed over the radio.

  The drivers of their group were in contact through hand-held radios. Cellphones were not working at this point. Their emergency plan relied on radios for just that reason.

  They could see dozens of big transport planes flying overhead with parachutes in the sky beneath them. Gunshots sounded like they were getting closer.

  “This doesn’t look good…” Matt cautioned the group over the radio.

  As they approached the first main intersection on the highway a few miles away they saw the red-and-blue flashing lights and military trucks.

  “Everyone get ready, but stay calm,” Jim said.

  Jim rolled down his window and came to a stop right in front of the roadblock. Hal, a retired local police officer in jungle camouflage clothing approached his truck.

  “What’s going on, Hal?” Jim asked the man, with sarcasm in his voice.

  “We need to have you turn around and go home, Jim. We don’t want any trouble.”

  Hal’s shaky hand hovered over the holstered Glock on his hip as he saw Jim’s attire and knew his guns were loaded. The two men had a little history —still jealous after all these years that Mary chose Jim. Hal would give him grief over the smallest things. He would pull Jim over and make stuff up just to throw his weight around.

  Hal knew Jim carried a gun or two with him at any given time and would demand to see them when he pulled Jim over. Jim knew the law as well, if not better, than any cop in the area and would remind Hal of the fact each time.

  “There won’t be any trouble as long as you move aside and let us through, bud. We’re ready to fight, but would rather not.”

  Hal could sense the tension. He relented, dropping his hand away from his gun. Jim nodded, acknowledging the decision being the best he could make.

  “Let them through,” Hal told the other men at the checkpoint. “Jim, the next check point won’t be this easy.”

  “I figured as much,” Jim said as trucks were moved out of the way. Keying the mic on his radio, Jim said, “Everyone listen up. We may have to fight our way through the next road block, so get ready.”

  “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

  —James Madison

  Chapter Five

  “Did you hear that?” Mary shouted at the same time Carl started barking loudly.

  “Quiet him down back there!” Jim commanded. “Those were only sonic booms from low-flying, fixed-wing aircraft.”

  “Are they going to shoot us?” Cody asked, looking out the window.

  “I’m sure they were just flying by,” Mary said, trying to comfort the already frightened kids.

  “If they were going to shoot us son, they would have already done it,” Jim said.

  As they continued down the road, everyone scanned the area for anything out of the ordinary. They saw less traffic the farther south they moved, which was a concern in itself.

  At the end of a straight, six-mile stretch, Jim could see vehicles barricading the road. He stopped the truck and picked up his binoculars to get a better view. He handed them to Mary before getting on the radio.

  “Yep,” Jim announced. “We have blue hats in the distance with automatic, vehicle-mounted weapons. Rick, I want you to take your rifle into the treeline on the right flank and set up across from them.”

  The vehicles slowed just enough for Rick to slip out as they got closer. Years before, Rick had been on the Army’s long-distance shooting team and spent the end of his 10 years of active duty as a sniper for Delta Force.

  After he moved out of the truck with his sniper rifle, a POF semi-auto chambered in .308 caliber with a large scope on top, the convoy slowly made its way to the road block, giving Rick ample time to get into position.

  Once they came to a stop, Jim stepped out of his truck, unhooked his rifle, leaving it in the driver’s seat and asked Alexis, “Can you hand me a water bottle please?”

  He walked over and placed the bottle on the hood of an Army issue, green-camouflaged Hummer. He turned to talk to the soldiers at the check point while putting his hands up.

  “I’m gonna need you boys to surrender your weapons and walk back to town,” Jim said.

  The soldiers chuckled.

  “At this very moment, I have sniper rifles pointed directly at several of you. With a signal like this,” Jim pointed only his right index finger in the air and the water bottle on the Hummer instantly exploded. “We can take each one of you out before you have time to react.”

  The soldiers pointed their weapons at Jim and both sides of the highway.

  “The choice is yours, boys,” Jim continued. “But you need to ask yourselves one question — ‘Do I want to die today?’”

  They looked at each other momentarily, then one man spoke up, “Let’s do as the man says.”

  “Good choice,” Jim said, before keying his mic. “Matt, grab a few of the guys and come help me.”

  The soldiers were disarmed and told to walk back toward town. Danny and Naythan escorted them passed the convoy and watched them walk away until they were dots in the distance. Jim and the other men collected the weapons, removed each machine-gun from the vehicles, gathered the ammo and punctured the tires so the soldiers wouldn’t be able to follow them for a while.

  “What about the radios?” Matthew asked while holding one up.

  “Grab them,” Jim said. “They could come in handy later on.”

  Once everyone loaded back up, they drove down the road a few hundred yards and picked up Rick. He was sweating and out of breath as he jogged up to the vehicles.

  The group continued down the road toward the snow-capped mountains without any more problems. Cook Inlet could be seen glimmering off to the right and they could smell the salty sea air.

  “Jim, do you see those dark clouds?” Rick asked over the radio.

  “Looks like a storm coming and it should work in our favor.”

  The convoy reached the central peninsula town of Ninilchik, where they met up with Bill at the corner gas station, a few miles from his home. Bill and another man were fueling Bill’s truck. The convoy topped off their tanks, as well.

  The small town was even more deserted than usual. The neon open sign at the general store was shut off and the building looked empty. There was no one at any of the fishing charter businesses along the highway, either.

  “What took you so long, Jim?” Bill asked, while pulling on his rough, gray beard.

  “We ran into a few road blocks, but nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  “Well, we’d better head up to the homestead before it gets any worse. I’ve already seen my share of crazy today.”

  “Lead the way,” Jim replied. He knew they would have plenty of time to visit once they made it to the cabin.

  “Who’s the guy with the long hair and ponytail with Bill?” Matt asked over the radio once they started down the road.

  “It’s his son, Terry. He recently made it off a fishing boat,” Jim responded.

  “Sorry, it didn’t look like him. What’s on his hands?”

  Jim chuckled, “he had the tops of his hands tattooed like a skeleton for some reason.”

  “What the hell was he thinking?”

  The banter on the radio continued. Several members of the group had known Bill for years, and Jim had done a lot of business with him. Because of their friendship there had been numerous opportunities to go hunting with Bill and Terry behind the gated area just below the mountains. Bill and Terry were Alaska Natives and had knowledge of the hunting grounds that “round eyes,” as they called the non-Natives, didn’t.

  Once they got off the pavement, the dirt road winding up the hills to the Timber Wolf Mountains was long and bumpy.

  The smell of the
distant rain filled the cab of Jim’s truck and he knew it would only be a matter of time before the storm reached them.

  “Another moose,” Cody called out.

  “How many is that?” Mary asked him.

  “Eleven so far, I think.”

  “I counted 12,” said Kyle, Cody’s older brother.

  “What’s with the brake lights?” Rick called over the two-way.

  “It’s a brown bear sow and three cubs,” Jim responded. “They ran right out in front of Bill. You should be able to see them moving into the clearing to the left.”

  The vehicles moved slowly once the animals cleared the road. Some of them stopped to take pictures as the curious cubs stopped, stood up and started wrestling one another.

  The vehicles moved slowly once the animals cleared the road. The curious cubs stopped, stood up and started wrestling one another.

  Lifeless black trunks and charred standing poles with a few scraggly branches were all that remained of a once-lush forest after several wildfires had burned through over the years. Wildlife was easier to see through the sparse cover. Luckily, the fires had only come within a few miles of the Odman family homestead.

  It took another hour and a half to reach the cabin Bill owned at the base of the majestic snow-capped peaks protruding through the clouds like a stairway to heaven.

  The cabin was off the beaten path and well secluded on a ridge covered with alder, spruce and birch. The cabin had a rustic Alaska look to it. It was a two-story structure with a green tin roof and a full basement. Hunting trophies lined the walls and floor — wolf and coyote pelts, moose racks and black and brown bear rugs. This had been the base camp for numerous hunting trips over the years.

  The adults and older kids began to unload the trucks. The children and dogs got out of the vehicles and ran around the area.

  Lightning streaked brilliantly in the sky above. The sonic shockwave of thunder cracked closer after each flash.

  They parked the vehicles under a cluster of spruce trees and threw camo netting thrown over them for concealment.

  “Time to go inside kids,” Jim ordered.

  The request was met with groans, even though they were starting to get wet. As the clouds opened up, large drops pounded through the trees and onto the tin roof of the cabin, soon turning into hail. The sound filled their ears until they couldn’t hear one another over the din.

  Inside the cabin, Carl, Jim’s Labrador and Sassy, Bill’s German shepherd, were trying to play with Matt’s Golden Retriever, Monty, but Monty wasn’t having it. Low growls emanated from the old canine.

  “They’ll get to know each other,” Bill said

  “This place is amazing,” Naythan said as he set his last load down in the entryway. “You own this whole place?”

  “I do,” Bill told him. “But, if you like the cabin, wait till you see the cave system.”

  “Cave system?”

  “Right,” Jim said. “He hasn’t been here before. The cabin sits in front of an elaborate maze of tunnels of an old gold mine.”

  “Really?”

  “Come on, we’ll show you,” Bill told Naythan. “This is our base camp, and many in the group use it for family gatherings or just a getaway. The hunting camp was a nice way to conceal the claim from thieves when it was still producing gold. The claim hasn’t been active since my grandfather ran it 50 years ago, but small amounts of the gold are still around.”

  “We’ve spent many years coming up here, making livable rooms in the tunnels, not only for hunting, but for emergencies like this. The elevation also provides safety from tsunamis and other natural disasters,” Jim said.

  “How far underground are we now?” Naythan asked as they walked back into the tunnels.

  “We’re about 40 feet behind the cabin and a couple hundred feet under the peak of the mountain, I would guess,” Bill said.

  “How did you get these tunnels and rooms to look like this?”

  “The rooms were carved out with picks and shovels. Miners who worked the claim for gold started the rooms as more tunnels, so most of the digging was simply finish work with jackhammers. The dirt and rock pulled out of the passages was taken outside and sifted. There’s still gold in the mine, but not a whole lot of it. What flake we did find helped finance what we did here. The tunnels and rooms were reinforced with concrete once they were fully dug out. They were coated with waterproofing, then finished with wood on the inside.”

  “This is incredible!”

  “The work’s exhausting, but the reward makes it worthwhile,” Jim added as the three men walked back toward the cabin. “Quite a bit of time, energy and money has gone into putting everything together.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Terry,” Bill interrupted a story he’d been telling once they were back inside the cabin.

  “Yeah dad?”

  “I need you to go flip the switch on the rest of the battery banks and check on the gas and propane tanks.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Todd told him, as he looked to Jim for confirmation. Jim nodded his approval and the two young men walked outside.

  “Who’s hungry?” Mary asked.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” said Susan, Rick’s, while she put her long blonde hair up in a bun. “Sally, you want to come help?”

  The food was mainly Mountain House dehydrated cans and bags with very long shelf lives, supplemented with rice, beans, salt and other canned foods picked for extended storage. There were, of course, stacks of military MREs that Jim insisted were a necessity.

  Water was abundant in the mountains any time of the year and just had to be filtered before drinking or cooking. The cabin had a well drilled beside it, but just in case that failed there were plenty of hand-filtration systems.

  A few out buildings built into the mountain housed extra four wheelers and snowmobiles, as well as construction supplies. Bill being well known in the area knew nobody ever trespassed on his land or attempted to steal anything Bill or the group left up there.

  The men and older kids in the group took the ammo and weapons which had been brought inside and added them to the arsenal in the armory which they located in the basement. The stockpile had been built up over the years with a large amount of weapons. Each had their use, but the men had their favorites of course.

  The weapons in the armory varied anywhere from handguns to rifles and shotguns for hunting and self-defense. Full combat gear with body armor lined one wall. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition in boxes and ammo cans were stacked up in order of caliber on another. Most of the guns and ammo had been purchased at a discount through Jim’s store over the years

  “The machine-guns we took from the U.N. troops on the way down look real nice in the rack next to the other rifles!” Matthew said as he helped put them away.

  Once they were done storing everything, they went to be with their families.

  As each family settled into a room, the realization of what was going began to set in. Jim stopped by each room and said that everyone would get together in the morning to figure out the next step.

  “We may not have to stay here long, but until we know exactly what’s going on, this is the safest place for us,” he told them.

  “You don’t suppose we overreacted by coming here do you?” Mary asked Jim when he made it back to their room later. She’d already unpacked their belongings and family pictures adorned the walls.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind we made the right decision,” he reassured her, then kissed her forehead. “Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

  “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  Chapter Six

  The sound of explosions in the distance woke everyone early the next morning. Bill ran down the reinforced tunnels to make sure no one had been hurt. Dust began falling from the ceiling of the tunnels and rooms. It felt like an earthquake. A couple of the dogs were barking, waking the rest of the occ
upants who were heavier sleepers.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Jim asked as Bill walked briskly by his room.

  “I’m not sure. Terry’s turning on the radio to see if we can get any news,” Bill responded.

  The adults made their way through the passages and into the cabin. The explosions stopped as suddenly as they started.

  Terry was tuning through the stations until he got to one with less static, then turned up the volume.

  “I’m…I’m told Anchorage has been bombed by an unknown enemy, as well as several places here on the peninsula,” said a shaky voice on the radio. “We’re still getting conflicting reports, but as far as we know, Anchorage is gone. If the phones were working, we might be able to tell you more. I’m going to stay on the air as long as possible, but we have limited fuel for the generator. We still don’t really know what’s going on with the troops who suddenly arrived yesterday, but I will let you know as more information becomes available… Wait, there’s someone coming into the studio now. Stan, can you see who’s there?”

  “Turn the radio off now,” said a new voice with an accent.

  “There are men here with guns and they’re telling me to shut this down,” said the shaky voice.

  Sounds of gunfire erupted over the radio, then static filled the air.

  “Oh my God,” Mary gulped.

  “There’s roughly 400,000 people up there,” Rick blurted out. Everyone else sat silent.

  “Well,” Bill started, “Since nobody will get any more sleep, maybe we should have the meeting and figure out what to do, ‘cause it sure looks like coming up here turned out to be the right decision.”

  “Tristan, can you put some more wood on the coals, please?” Jim asked, motioning to the big stone fireplace on the west wall of the cabin.

  Alexis walked up to the fireplace from the back of the room and asked what was going on.

  “Come help me with the coffee and I’ll fill you in,” Mary told her.

  Some of them started wondering about the situation up the road, but Bill interrupted. “Until we find out more information, it’s all just speculation.”