Dark Days Rough Roads (11 page)

Staying
off the highways and sticking to smaller county roads he encountered very few
people. When he did, he simply flipped the light bar on and honked the horn to
clear them out of the way. He learned quickly that if he didn’t bother to slow
down they got out of the way much faster. He heard plenty of shouts as he
passed by but he didn’t listen. Most of them were yelling pig, useless feds and
some more colorful choices. He kept the windows up and paid no attention. No
distractions, he had had enough of them already and it wasn’t fun.

He had
skipped through some frequencies on the ham and stopped at one in particular.
This guy sounded like he was reading from a script. He was telling everyone in
the armed services, National Guard, reserves, all branches, to make their way
to their installations as soon as they could. He was telling all hams to pass
the message along the best they could. Post messages in communities, word of
mouth, any way they could. Was this guy crazy? How many of these guys were
going to leave their families? There was no telling.

The
distance he was covering now was great. He was pretty much in the middle of
nowhere and didn’t see any houses or people close by so he pulled over and
turned the lights off. He grabbed a small bag and one of the thermoses from the
truck and walked around to the hood so he could keep watch.

He opened
the thermos, opened a small bag of instant soup and dumped it in. He closed up
the thermos and shook it violently to mix the soup. Cheddar broccoli, not his
favorite but it would do. He opened the thermos and drank it down. It was just
barely warm, but he hadn’t really had anything and needed to eat.

He
grabbed a bottle of water and dumped a tube of powdered Tang in it. He drank
this down quickly too. He had bought some plastic tubes used for making candy
art at school carnivals and filled them with pre-measured amounts of Tang so it
would be easier to mix. He grabbed another bottle of water and swished a little
in the thermos and dumped it out. He stopped what he was doing. He looked toward
the direction he was heading and heard a noise.
Clop clop clop clop
.

He went
over to the passenger side door and opened it so he could grab his rifle. The
door was left open and he took cover behind it. He watched as the figure came
into view. It was a teen age girl riding along on a horse. She stopped and
looked toward him. “You ok mister?”

He said,
“Ya I’m fine, what are you doing out this late?”

“I’m
going home; I was visiting my friends down the road.” He slid the rifle into
the truck and walked around the front.

“Your
truck die mister?”

“Not at
all,” he said, “I stopped to grab a quick bite to eat and something to drink.”
She asked him how it was possible his truck was running when most of the cars
around here didn’t. Haliday was cursing himself under his breath and was
thinking dressing as Charles Manson actually might have been a better idea.
More risk of getting shot right away, but fewer stupid questions time after
time.

“The
government has a fleet of hardened vehicles in case of problems just like this.
The EMP that went off would not affect the fleet and the vehicles could be used
in the recovery of the nation,” he explained. “How far down the road do you
live?” he asked. She said about another mile or so. He remembered a smaller
farmhouse with a large barn.

“Well,
you better get going, and let me give you some advice,” he replied. “You never
want to get caught out here in the dark, and you never want to get caught out
here alone. Times are different young lady. You have no idea of what type of
people you’ll start to encounter out here.”

She said
thank you and that it was time for her to get going. She started riding off and
as she did so, he walked around to the road and watched her. Her right hand
holstered a pistol of some sorts, but he couldn’t tell what kind. She had drawn
it and kept it out of view before she got to him, but he could tell by her
one-handed control of the horse and by her keeping her right hand down that she
was hiding something. “Damn,” he said, “some of these people just might do ok.”

He looked
around and heard the horse getting quieter. He reached in the truck and grabbed
a roll of toilet paper and bottle of baby powder. He walked over to the ditch
and took a squat. Before he pulled his pants back up, he used a little baby
powder. The BDU’s were rubbing him raw and he needed a little comfort.
“Ahhhhhh, big difference,” he told himself. He walked back to the truck and
climbed in and took off.

He was
making up some of the lost time, but was still short of his goal. He turned a
flashlight on and looked down at his binder. He had made it through Warsaw ok and a few smaller towns as well. He was now about 150 miles out. His radio
checks hadn’t revealed any problems or any new info. Things were going good
right now. He looked down and noticed he needed gas soon. He would have to
start looking for some soon.

It was
close to midnight now. He had been driving for almost 18 hours total. Six and
half hours, that was his record back in the days when they used to travel here
to see Linda’s folks who lived there. They had since moved to Florida when they
retired, but after the divorce she had moved back here where family was. They
had no plans to move because Mike had just gotten settled in a new job.

Just past
a little town called Monticello, he stopped by a big old Ford dually. Haliday
figured it to be a diesel and so he went and checked the fender. He had turned
his headlights off and turned the Tahoe off, so he used a red lensed flashlight
to look at it. F350, no symbol other than that.

He walked
around to the other side where he saw the same thing. “Are you kidding me?” he
said. He checked to see if it was unlocked and no luck. He peered inside on the
dashboard. There it was “unleaded fuel only.” He grabbed his gas can and gear
and went to work to drain the tank. He hit a home run with this one; he was
able to fill the Tahoe completely from this one truck.

He had
about 20 miles until he hit his left-hand turn. From there it was south until
he headed west again to Decatur. He made another check on the radio and told
them he was about three hours out. He continued running through the small towns
with the light bar on.

Only a
couple times did he have a close encounter with hitting a stalled car or truck.
He was in the home stretch now. Thank goodness it was nighttime. Everyone
seemed to be hunkered down at home and asleep. It wasn’t until he was just a
few miles away from where he wanted to be that he would run into more trouble.

It was 2:30
in the morning and he was looking forward to a few hours sleep. It wasn’t such
a bad thing that he was rolling in at night. Haliday was in the home stretch,
he stopped just two miles from where he needed to be and killed the lights
immediately. He watched in disbelief.

He could
not believe what he saw. It appeared that the whole intersection was ablaze.
What in the hell is going on down there? He got out and tried to look with his
binoculars but couldn’t make out anything specific through the smoke or the
flames. He reached in and grabbed the ham.

“Kaybear
are you there? Kaybear are you there kiddo? Kaybear talk to me.”

“Hey
Roger, this is Mike, I’ve got them hiding in a closet. All hell is breaking
loose around here. It’s bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Roger heard an
occasional gunshot in the background.

“What the
hell is happening Mike?”

“You
ain’t gonna believe this,” he said.

“Damn it
Mike, I need a SITREP.” There came no answer. “Mike, you copy?” he said. “Mike
you copy?”

Mike
replied, “Ok, I had to ask Kayla what a SITREP was, situation report right?”

“Yes
Mike, now what the hell is going on?”

He was
straining to see what was going on through the binoculars and kept hearing the
occasional report of what sounded like an AR15 and a shotgun. “Mike, tell me
what you know.”

Mike came
back and said, “Damn, I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Bullshit,”
Roger told him. “You don’t know what the hell you are walking into; you better
sit put and try to figure this out. You put a gun in everybody’s hands right
now; I don’t care if it’s a damn flintlock.” He hated that damn FOID Illinois
residents had to have. You could barely look at ammo without a damn
congressional inquiry.

His
adrenaline was pumping strong and he was fighting the urge to storm down there.
“Mike, you have any idea what’s going on?”

“Roger,
this is all I know and I heard it from a neighbor. The jail unlocked when this
all happened and a lot of prisoners took off. The deputies were able to contain
some, but then one by one they started to leave. Pretty soon there were more
prisoners than guards and they rushed them.

“A few of
them that were waiting for transport to the state prison for murder convictions
rallied a couple more guys together and they took off toward the strip mall.
They ran across a police car stalled in the intersection and the gator that
they used to patrol the parks with was on a trailer behind it.

“They
managed to shoot the cop guarding it and take the shotgun and rifle and then
they torched the vehicles. Now they’re just shooting blindly at anything. Some
of the houses have been hit. They’ve been sitting around for a couple hours now
drinking, smoking, and eating everything out of the party store.”

“How do
you know this Mike,” he asked.

“My neighbor
is a sheriff’s deputy at the jail. He took off before it got too bad.” Haliday
looked at the side of the Tahoe, “Police”. Real good.

The ham
lit up, Mike was trying to talk, Roger’s mom and dad were trying to talk, and
Dawn was trying to talk. It was mass confusion. He managed to get a few words
in. “Stop the racket and listen. What’s going on is out of my control right
now. I can’t get the info I need if you’re all interrupting me. Now stop and
leave me alone to talk to Mike. Mike, go get me your neighbor. You have to do
this or it isn’t going to work.”

Mike
returned a few minutes later and Roger took notes as he asked questions. There
was only one way into this neighborhood and going through that intersection was
it. The alternative was crossing a damn river and trying to walk in and out.
This had to work, he kept telling himself.

He backed
the Tahoe up slowly onto a side street so he was out of sight. He had installed
a toggle switch so he could disrupt power to the brake lights for just such a
circumstance. He looked around to see if anything else was going to be a
problem. Seemed like a decent spot. He was looking at a nearby house that had a
for sale sign in the yard. No blinds or anything on the windows, so he took a
quick peek. It was empty. He backed into the driveway and started going over
his notes.

He’d have
to wait until dawn. If he did it now, there were far too many risks. He kept
going over the map of the area. No other route to get in and out easily. It was
the river and a walk, or the neighborhood and fences and houses to go over and
cut through. Kayla only had a small bit of luggage, but even scaling it as far
down as possible was still too risky. Taking her through the neighborhood here
was far too risky too.

This had
once been the premier housing for the area’s two biggest companies which
processed corn and soy into many products we use today. As the companies grew
bigger and the economy grew bigger as well, the execs moved into bigger homes.
They had done this a few times until now they were spread out in the suburbs on
large lots with mini-mansions. This area was now blue collar with the slums not
too far away.

It was
time to get ready. He keyed the mic on the ham and said “I’m going in now. You’ll
have time, and this is what I want you to do.” He gave some simple instructions
to Mike. He grabbed the gear he would need and locked up the Tahoe. He took the
side streets as far as he could go.

He cut
back out toward the street and looked around a bit. He spotted the perfect
place. It was a large group of mail boxes with a bunch of trash cans next to it
and the mouth of a cul-de-sac. He slid in behind the cans and placed a small
foam mat down. He opened up the cans and pulled out a piece of cardboard and
few other pieces of trash. Next he moved one of the cans aside slightly to
create a small gap.

He
unlatched his case and pulled out his rifle. He readied himself by covering
himself with as much of the trash as he could. The sun would be rising behind
him so there shouldn’t be any glare off his scope. He had made sure he kept
this rifle zeroed and checked it each month. He had taken out a loan against
his 401k to buy it from an older man who had bought too much gun for his
ability. He loved this thing and never thought he would own something like it.

Haliday
and a couple of other guys from his platoon had excelled in almost all of their
duties and rated near perfect on IG inspection and were rewarded with a trip to
Ft. Benning. They wanted the full-blown sniper school, but had to settle for
a one week designated marksmanship course which still taught them loads more
than they could have imagined. The skill set they learned was incredible and
Haliday never lost it. Haliday reflected on that time and the times to follow
during his active and reserve duty when he would rely on that skill set.