Calamity in America (15 page)

Maybe it was a good thing that the government had removed most of the guns and ammunition from the population because even with most guns gone it was still very dangerous to be outside now.  Or even inside for that matter.  Jenny knew how to handle guns and we had gone shooting several times in the past.  I knew she was mechanically able to shoot the handgun I left her but I did have great concern whether she was emotionally capable of shooting another human. 

I had re-enforced many of the windows and both of the doors of our rental house.  I had done as much as I was able to do to make the place secure.  I made sure the revolver I left her was loaded and, rather pointlessly, went over its simple operation again with Jenny before I left to go hunting.  I knew very well that she was very familiar with the gun but just to make me feel better I went over it again with her.  She understood why I was doing this and she just let me tell her everything that she already knew.  She assured me she would use the gun if it became necessary.  I think she knew I would not leave without that assurance from her.  So she said just what I desired to hear.

I was walking from our house to hunt because the little community where our house was located was small and surrounded by “wild” public land.  We lived on the edge of this community and our back yard basically stretched for many miles.  There were plenty of deer around, or at least there used to be before things all went sour.  I left in the dark well before first light and hoped to be back home by noon with a deer so we would have plenty of light available to cut it up and process it all into jerky. 

Actually, it was not much of a hunt.  About three miles from home with the help of my binoculars I spotted a couple deer in the distance and successfully snuck up close enough to shoot the smaller of the two deer.  I did this on purpose because I had a long drag ahead of me.  I quickly gutted the animal and commenced dragging it back home.  The trip home was tiring but otherwise uneventful.

When I got home and had the dead deer safe in the back yard I dropped it and went in to get Jenny to show her my success.  When I walked eagerly up to the back door I could see that it had been smashed open.  I saw that just before I was about to call out to my Jenny to announce my arrival home.  So I kept silent instead and tried not to think about what I might find inside.  I did make sure that my rifle had a round in the chamber and was ready to go with the hammer back so I only needed to pull the trigger to fire.

I snuck in very quietly and, listening, I at first heard nothing inside.  When I heard a noise it sounded like it was from the main bathroom.  I was even more careful then and ready as I advanced.  I had no idea if anyone was really inside my home or, if so, how many, or if Jenny was there alone and had a story of scaring off intruders.  When I peaked around the door frame of the bathroom where I thought I had heard the noise, I saw a man with his back to me and his shirt off, cleaning up some blood on the front of him it looked like. 

Rather than risk shooting him, and by doing so alerting anyone else in the house, I made one step into the room and clubbed him very hard with the heavy barrel of my rifle.  He fell to the floor and did not move.  The only noise was him hitting the floor and he looked like he would be out for a bit so I continued the search of my own house. 

        The door to our bedroom had been smashed open also and that was where I found my Jenny.  She was a bloody mess and when I touched her neck there was no pulse and looking at her I had expected none.  She was fully clothed and my guess was that she had fought hard at the end and had hurt her assailant (hence the blood he was cleaning up) and he had gone into a rage and killed her brutally, likely with his bare hands as I saw no other weapon lying close at hand, just the revolver I had left for her on the nightstand next to our bed.

I don’t know how long I just stood there before I moved again.  At first I was in a blind rage and stomped back to the bathroom where I had left the unconscious man on the floor.  I had every intention to kill him as he lay there.  Then, just before I pulled the trigger on the rifle that I had pointed at his head, my rage cooled just slightly.  Well, maybe cooled is not the correct term.  I found that I wanted him to suffer just like I was now suffering and shooting him while he was lay unconscious would just not satisfy that rage. 

So I ripped the electric cords from a couple of the now-worthless electric appliances and tied him up very securely.  It mattered not to me if I tied the bindings so tight they cut off all his circulation.  Next, I got one of the buckets of water (we had to carry water due to no electric power and I always kept several ready at home for our use) and a clean wash cloth and towel and went back and cleaned my Jenny’s face as best as I could.  I then gently wrapped her in a clean bed sheet and carefully carried her outside.  I dug her grave in the back yard, laid her gently down in it, and covered her over.  Then I piled rocks from around the house over her grave.  This project took me a considerable amount of time. 

Once done, I again remembered the man I had left tied in the bathroom.  He was wide awake now and had done a bunch of damage as he had thrashed around and tried to get loose.  He glared at me when I found him there still on the floor.  His shirt that he had taken off was nearby and I used that to gag him before I grabbed him and roughly dragged him outside and onto the cement apron in front of our small garage.

I left him there and went into the garage and returned with a couple of simple hand tools.  His eyes got very big when he saw the tools and he started thrashing something fierce again, trying to break his bonds.  I knelt next to him so there was no chance he could mistake my words.

“She was my wife.  I loved her more than life itself.  You can never suffer as much as I am right now, but I will do everything I can to make you suffer as I am now.”

Even with the shirt as a gag he was able to make a fair amount of noise as I worked on him.  When he passed out I stopped immediately and cleaned up some and then worked on the deer I had brought home so it would not go to waste.  When I was done with the deer I resumed my work on the man whenever he was conscious.

The man was very strong and lived almost a whole two days.  When he finally passed from this world I tied him securely to the electric pole across the street from my house.  There were a few now-starving feral dogs running loose in the area that I had seen several times, and there were always a few coyotes that could feed off him.  It was what he deserved and I felt nothing as I tied him to that electric pole. 

He would remain there on that pole as a sign post for others like him.  When the critters were done with him then his bones would still do that same job of warning away others.  Or not, as it mattered little to me anymore.

Chapter 4

Shortly after the electric power had gone off and it looked like it would not be coming back on, leaving everyone in our small community without any water, a neighbor (we were all neighbors) made an ingenuous gadget to get water from the big community well. 

This guy had taken a piece of plastic pipe about four feet long that looked to be about four inches in diameter and glued a reducer coupling onto one end.  The reducer he installed tapered down to about two inches.  Next he dropped in a common plastic ball that moved freely in the bigger pipe but was too big to go through that reducer on the end.  Next he screwed in three long screws, trapping the ball just above the reducer but still allowing it to remain loose in the pipe.  On the other end of the pipe he glued on a regular pipe coupling, apparently just to re-enforce that end of the pipe.

Then he tied a four-feet length of rope (maybe a little less long) on the re-enforced end of that piece of pipe.  With the top of the community well removed, this pipe gadget he made could be lowered down into the well and into the clean water below.  The pipe was just heavy enough to mostly sink into the water most of its length.  The trapped ball inside allowed water to freely enter the bottom of the pipe, but when you raised it and the water trapped inside the pipe tried to escape again out the bottom, the ball dropped and sealed the bottom.  It was an incredibly simple, yet ingenious contraption. 

Each time you lowered this pipe gadget into the well and pulled it out again it contained maybe about two gallons of fresh clean water you could dump in a pail or whatever you had brought with you to carry the water.  That was how all the people of this community got their fresh water from then on.  The one end of the rope was very securely tied to a pipe on top of the well so it could not be lost down the well if someone lost their grip on the rope when they were raising it.  The thing was rather heavy for some of the elderly folks when it was full of water.  The special-made gadget saved all of us at the community from dying of thirst when the power went out.

I was like a lost soul the rest of that winter after the loss of my wife.  We did not share all that much time together but the loss of her was devastating to me.  I went through that winter as an automation, doing what needed to be done to live but having no interaction with any of my neighbors, and only just eating enough to stay alive and keep up my strength.  I remember very little of that time period.  I think at one point I might have shot and processed another deer but I am not sure of that or anything else really from that time period.

I do know most of my neighbors in the community died that winter.  Some drove away and never returned, their fate unknown.  The community where I lived, like most it seemed here in Arizona, was mostly composed of older retired people.  With no food available, no medications after theirs ran out, and no heat thanks to no electric power, it was just too much for many people and it was worse for older people.  Some had a little heat using the burners on top of their propane gas cook stoves like at my house, but many had all electric appliances and so they had zero heat sources.

Some tried burning different things inside their houses to stay warm and most of those died from asphyxiation, either from carbon monoxide or just from the smoke or from the fire burning up all the oxygen in the room.

Here it really did not get all that cold except occasionally at night.  During the day if you were in the sun it would warm you up nicely.  Often, in the mornings, I would often cook something for breakfast on the propane cook stove and that would help warm the room in the mornings when it was the coldest. 

The cold and loss of electric power were not the only things that killed many of my neighbors that winter.  A small group of bad guys or bandits or whatever you want to call them came to our small community that winter.  They came just to take whatever we had that they wanted. 

I heard the shooting several houses away from mine and it woke me from the funk that I had been in all winter.  Judging by the amount of shots I heard, I could tell it was bad, and I loaded every gun I owned and made ready to meet the threat when or if it came to me.

My house was made from slump block and, other than the windows and doors, it was basically bullet proof.  I had my guns laid on the floor next to me by one of the front windows.  I opened and removed the window so the broken and flying glass would not cut me.  Then I waited.

I saw several men come and enter the now-vacant house next to mine and in just a very few minutes they re-emerged and headed towards my house.  When they turned up my walk I yelled for them to stay away.  I waited just a single moment when they did not stop and I started firing.

I shot two of them before they reacted much at all.  I shot the two that I saw were carrying guns.  I swung on another with a gun but they were all diving for cover or running away at that point.  The one with a gun was diving for cover but he never got out of my sight fast enough and I made a solid body shot on him.  By that point the only other one that I had a shot at was running away, so I shot him in the back.  Back or front made no difference to me—I knew it would make no difference to them if it was me running away from them.

Then it was quiet as could be and I reloaded my favorite rifle by feel as I watched out the window for another target.  When one that had gotten out of sight behind a couple bushes made a run for it, I shot him in the back also.  Then again I just watched and waited.  I had shot five of them and all five appeared dead except for one who was thrashing on the ground and making wailing/moaning noises.  I just let him lie there making noise for awhile.  After it was very plain that none of his buddies were coming to his aid, I shot him again to shut him up.  I was not sure if all the bad guys were now dead or if some were still alive.  I thought it safer to assume some were still alive and were armed and desired revenge.

When I heard a noise at the back door which I could just see from my position, I swung around and put two bullets through the door about three feet off the ground.  I heard something fall and then some more moaning coming from on the other side of that back door.  Several minutes later the moaning was getting softer, then finally it stopped.  I still just laid there watching out the front window.

I could not see a clock from my position and I had quit wearing a watch when I had lost my job, but I must have watched out that front window for well over an hour, maybe even a couple of hours, before I finally got up as quietly as I could and opened the back door.  There was a man’s body lying in a pool of blood just off to one side of the door outside.  The blood was smeared all over, likely from him thrashing around after I had shot him.  I saw nothing else out of place in the back yard and so I closed and relocked that door.

Next I went to the front again and, slowly and quietly, opened the front door.  I stood to one side as I opened the door so I was safe behind the solid blocks.  There was no need as no shots rang out and after a couple minutes, and a couple of quick looks out the door, I stepped outside.