Phoenix Rising pr-1 Read online

  “Wow, you went all out, didn’t you?” Willie said.

  “I’m reasonably sure there will be some, at least, shortwave radio out there. If there is, we will need to access it and, perhaps, to communicate with others like us.”

  “What about money?” Marcus asked.

  Jake shook his head. “Money is only as good as the government that backs it,” he said. “And as of now, we have no government.”

  “Gold coins?”

  “No. Gold might be good if there was a viable market. We not only don’t have a government, we don’t have a market. When you go ‘shopping’ tonight, just take what you find, but don’t take it from anyone else unless you barter something for it. I am all for our survival, but I’m not ready to put someone else at risk.”

  “When do we get started?” Clay asked.

  “We start now,” Jake replied. “We’ll go into every store and abandoned building in town. Also, the mall. Clay, you want to pass out the arms?”

  Clay nodded, then walked over to the corner to an olive-drab B-4 bag. “I don’t have as big an armory as Deon is talking about, but I’ve got enough for us to get by right now.” Opening the bag, he pulled out an M9 pistol and held it up. “I have one of these for each of us,” he said. All eight pistols have full, fifteen-round magazines, plus I have five hundred additional rounds of nine millimeter ammunition.”

  “Carry these pistols with you,” Jake said, “but use them only if it is absolutely necessary to defend yourself.”

  “I’ve never fired one of these,” Julie said as she was given the pistol.

  “It’s easy enough,” Deon said. “Here is the safety. When the safety is off, all you have to do is pull the trigger.”

  “I also have four flashlights and four small RadioShack special two-way radios. The small limited-range two-way radios will serve us well for keeping touch with each other. And four is all we will need, as we will deploy in two-man teams,” Jake said.

  “Good idea. And it is probably safer that we deploy in two-man teams,” Deon said.

  “Thanks for the endorsement,” Jake said. “Karin, you go with me, and Julie, I suggest you go with Deon. The rest of you team up however you want.” Jake looked at his watch. “It is nineteen thirty hours now, we will rendezvous back here at twenty-four hundred. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, I have one,” John said. “When we get to the checkout counter, do we ask for plastic or paper bags?”

  The others laughed.

  “Major, these radios are pretty standard,” Willie said. “That means that anyone who wants to can listen in. I suggest that we adopt call signs, rather than use names.”

  “Good idea, Willie. How about you assign them?”

  “Okay. You’ll be Vexation Six.”

  “Negative,” Clay spoke up quickly. “Six designates the commander. Anyone out there listening who has ever been in the Army will recognize that in a heartbeat. I think we should keep the call signs as innocuous as we can.”

  “Yeah,” Willie said. “You are right. Okay, how about Mickey Mouse one through four?”

  “Alright. Jake, you and Karin are Mickey Mouse One; John, you and Marcus are Mickey Mouse Two; Deon, you and Julie are Three; and Clay and I will be Mickey Mouse Four,” Willie said.

  “Let’s test them out,” Jake suggested.

  The four radios were checked; then radios, pistols, and flashlights were tucked into pockets.

  “Back here at twenty-four hundred,” Jake reminded them as they left on their appointed rounds.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By the time Jake and Karin arrived, there was very little left of the Wal-Mart Supercenter on South 231. The doors had been smashed in, and Karin started to step inside, but Jake held out his hand to stop her.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “Let’s make sure nobody else is in here.”

  The two stood quietly just inside the store for a long moment. The store was so dark that they couldn’t see two feet in front of them, which meant that if anyone was here they would have to be using a light, and the light could be seen.

  They saw no light, and they heard no sound. After waiting about a minute, Jake turned on the large flashlight he was carrying.

  “I think we’ve got it all to ourselves, such as it is,” Jake said.

  As the moved deeper inside they could see that what merchandise did remain was scattered around on the floor. There was a large yellow smiley face next to a sign that said SHOP WAL-MART.

  Jake moved the light back and forth on the floor so they could see to pick their way through without tripping over anything.

  Though the food products, clothing, and small utensils had been well cleaned out, the large-ticket items, TVs, etc., remained. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been strange, but because there were no television stations broadcasting anywhere in America, at least as far as Jake knew, seeing the TV sets still sitting on the shelves wasn’t at all surprising. However many of the TV sets had been smashed, not incidentally, but purposely, as an expression of anger and frustration.

  Over each empty aisle in the food store were signs that told what product had once been there. Now the signs were little more than a tantalizing tease.

  COOKIES, CRACKERS, CHIPS, AND SNACKS

  RICE, BEANS, SPAGHETTI, NOODLES

  SOUPS, CANNED MEAT

  COLD AND HOT CEREALS

  COFFEE, SOFT DRINKS

  “Soft drinks,” Karin said. “Do you think . . . ?”

  “I bought the last root beer they had when they were still doing business,” Jake said.

  There was not one food item remaining anywhere in the store. Not even bulk, uncooked items, such as rice, flour, or beans.

  In the book and magazine section, there were several soft-cover books scattered around on the floor.

  “Let’s grab as many of these as we can,” Jake suggested. “Without TV or radio, I expect reading will be about our only source of entertainment.”

  “Good idea,” Karin replied. “What do you like?”

  “Westerns, action stories, just about anything, I guess. I think we are far beyond the ability to be choosy.”

  “Look, tablets and pencils,” Karin said, scooping up several of them from the same aisle as the books. “This will please Julie.”

  As they moved on through the store, Jake saw a box underneath a turned-over stocking shelf. Pushing the shelf out of the way he saw that the box, though not completely full, had at least ten packages of “sandwich cookies, peanut-butter filling.”

  “Whoa, now this is going to be a treat,” he said, stuffing the cookies down into the large, canvas bag.

  “Where to now?” Karin asked.

  “Let’s go to the garden shop,” Jake suggested.

  Amazingly, the garden shop was virtually untouched. There, Jake found a wheelbarrow, which he loaded with a couple of watering cans, spades, rakes, and dozens of packets of seed from half a dozen vegetables. Here, too, he found insect repellent and he put as many cans as he could into the wheelbarrow.

  “Wait,” Jake said, stopping at one shelf. “These are the seeds we want.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong with what we have?

  “These are non-hybrid seeds. I can’t believe there are so many of them.”

  “What are non-hybrid seeds?”

  “Almost all the vegetables we see today are hybrids. Hybrid vegetables make the best vegetables, but they can’t be counted on to produce seed that will reproduce. For that you need seeds in their original form. That’s what this is.”

  Jake scooped up several packets, getting much more seed than he would need.

  “If we can stay alive until these seeds produce, we’ll be in good shape,” Jake said.

  Karin laughed. “Oh, great. All we have to do is stay alive? Yes, I’m for that.”

  Finally, with a completely stuffed B-4 bag on top of the filled wheelbarrow, Jake and Karin stepped back through the smashed doors and started across the nearly vacant par
king lot toward Jake’s Volvo.

  Jake saw a pickup truck parked next to his car, and he knew, at once, that the pickup truck driver was either siphoning, or about to siphon, gas from his car. He heard a loud, crunching sound, and realized that the driver had not started yet because he had been held back by the locked cover over the gas cap.

  Jake set the wheelbarrow down and ran quickly toward his car. The gas thief had a tire iron and was trying to pry up the cover. He was so intent on breaking into the gas tank that he had not seen Jake approach.

  “Mister, I paid an arm and a leg for that gasoline and I don’t intend to stand by and watch you steal it,” Jake said.

  Jake’s voice startled the would-be thief, and he glanced up at Jake with a wild look in his eyes. He raised the tire iron he was using over his head.

  “Stay back, Major,” he said, remembering Jake’s military rank. “Stay back or I’ll lay your head open.”

  “You recognized me,” Jake said. “Are you a soldier ?”

  “I was. But there ain’t nobody a soldier no more, not even you,” the wild-eyed young man said. “And you bein’ a major don’t mean jack shit to me no more. So you just stand over there—sir.” He slurred the word sir, setting it apart to show his disdain. “And soon as I drain your tank, I’ll be on my way.”

  Jake pulled his pistol and pointed it at the young man. “Son, you need to learn not to bring a tire iron to a gunfight. Now my recommendation to you is that you climb in your truck and you drive away. Otherwise I’ll just have to shoot you.”

  Seeing the gun in Jake’s hand, the young man’s demeanor changed. No longer belligerent, he lowered the tire iron he had been using to pry open the gas-cap cover.

  “All right, all right, I’m goin’,” the young man said, holding one hand out in front of him, palm facing Jake as if by so doing, he could hold Jake off. He glanced at the right rear quarter of Jake’s car. The paint was badly scratched and dented where he had been working to open the gas-cap cover. “I, uh, I’m sorry I messed up your car.”

  “Don’t talk anymore,” Jake said, coldly. “You piss me off every time you open your mouth. Just shut up, get in your truck, and drive away from here.”

  The young man threw the tire iron into the back of his truck, hurried around to the driver’s side, got in, and drove away.

  “Come on, Karin!” Jake shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”

  By midnight everyone had returned to Jake’s house and they put their acquisitions together to see how well they had done.

  Clay and Marcus scored two five-gallon cans of gasoline. Jake didn’t ask where, or how, they got it.

  Deon and Julie returned with fifty pounds of flour, ten pounds of sugar, twenty pounds of rice, twenty-five pounds of dried beans, and five gallons of cooking oil.

  “Where did you find this?” Jake asked. “I can’t imagine any grocery store or warehouse still having any of this left.”

  “We got it from a VFW kitchen,” Deon said.

  “Whoa, good thinking.”

  “It was Julie’s idea.”

  “My aunt used to work as a cook in the VFW back in Georgia,” Julie said. “I know her kitchen was always well stocked and I thought there was a chance that nobody would think to look there.”

  “We also got this,” Deon said, pulling something out of a sack. It was a bullhorn and he held it up to his mouth, then pulled the talk trigger.

  “Jumpers in the air, you have a sixty-knot wind coming from your right!”

  “Whoa!” Clay said, laughing. “That’s a hell of a wind to be jumping into.”

  “Maybe for a leg,” Deon teased. “Not for an airborne troop like me.”

  “I’m glad you came up with that thing,” Jake said.

  “Why, what are we going to use it for?” Karin asked.

  “You heard Deon. What if we see some paratroopers in the air? We might have to give them directions.”

  The others laughed.

  “Okay, you guys did well. You did very well in fact,” Jake said. “So now, I suggest we spend the rest of the night here, then go out to the post in the morning. Our first order of business will be to find a hangar we can secure; second will be to find a helicopter we can put into flying condition.”

  The next morning the eight gathered for breakfast in Jake’s dining room, again eating MREs though, as Jake explained, these were from a broken case and not part of the fifteen cases he had for their survival supplies.

  Karin looked around the dining room, gray walls set off by a large seascape painting, a dark blue carpet, and off-white upholstered chairs.

  Jake saw where she was looking and he reached out to put his hand on hers. “You are thinking about this room and how we decorated it together, aren’t you?”

  “Jake, will we ever come back here?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake replied. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I have to be honest with you. I truly don’t know if we will ever be able to come back or not. And if we do come back, what will we find?”

  Karin nodded. “I know,” she said. “And I’m okay with it.”

  Jake squeezed her hand, then looked over toward Willie.

  “Willie, what do you say we crank up one of these radios and see if we can pick up any news on the shortwave bands?” he suggested.

  “Good idea, yes, let’s see what’s out there,” Clay agreed.

  Willie cranked the radio for one minute; then he turned it on and started sweeping through the frequencies.

  “Getting carrier waves,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means there are some transmitting stations that are still up, just nobody talking on them right now.”

  Marcus continued to turn the dial until he picked up a woman’s voice. She was clearly on the edge of panic.

  “Someone, anyone,” she was saying. “Can anyone hear me? This is Yellowbird. Can anyone hear me?”

  Willie keyed the microphone.

  “Yellowbird, this is Mickey Mouse. Over.”

  “Mickey Mouse, oh, thank God! There is someone out there!” The woman practically shouted in her excitement.

  “Where are you, Yellowbird? What is your status? Over.”

  “I’m in Portsmouth, Virginia, real close to where the bomb went off.”

  “Are you safe?” Marcus asked.

  “Safe? What is safe? We weren’t hurt by the bomb, but I don’t know about the radiation. We are so close.”

  “You say we. Who is we?”

  “My husband, our two children, my brother and sister-in-law, and their three children.”

  “Are there others around?”

  “Nobody that we want to associate with. There are a lot of men wandering around outside, shouting and breaking into houses and cars. We’ve heard screams and shooting. I’ve been trying to contact the police, but haven’t been able to do so.”

  “What you need to do is get out of there,” Willie said. “There are no police.”

  “How do you know there are no police? Oh!” In the background, Marcus could hear loud voices and the sound of shooting. “Can you hear that? Why don’t the police come?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I can hear it. But you can’t count on the police. There has been a complete breakdown of all government agencies including the police. Do you have a car? And if so, do you have gasoline in your car?”

  “I . . .” There was a long pause before the woman came back on the air. “My husband says I shouldn’t answer that.”

  Now everyone was huddled around the radio listening to the woman’s terrified voice from the other end, hearing, also, the shouts and the shooting.

  “Your husband is correct, ma’am, you shouldn’t tell,” Willie said. “And I apologize for asking. But my advice to you is this. If you have a car with fuel, pack as much food, water, blankets, matches, and other such items as you might have, then get as far away from there as you can. The farther away from people you are, the safer
you will be. Over.”

  There was a long silence, and Willie keyed the mic to speak again. “Yellowbird, do you read me? Over.”

  Still no reply.

  “What happened?” Julie asked. “Why doesn’t she answer?”

  “I don’t know.” Willie keyed the mic again. “Yellowbird, if you can read me, pack as much food, water, blankets, matches, and other such items as you have, then get as far away from there as you can. Over.”

  “Good advice, dipshit,” a man’s gruff voice replied. “But the little lady and her family won’t be needing it now. Over,” he added with a malevolent laugh.

  Willie did not respond. Instead he pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Damn,” he said quietly.

  “See if you can find a broadcast somewhere,” Jake suggested. “I mean a real news broadcast.”

  “Yeah,” Willie said. “There’s nothing we can do for Yellowbird.”

  Willie continued turning the dial, picking up whistles, static, sidetones, and carrier waves.

  El gobierno Mexicano ha cerrado la frontera para impedir a Estadounidenses de inundar nuestro país.

  “What is he saying?” Jake asked Marcus.

  Marcus chuckled. “How is this for irony? He is saying that the Mexican government has closed its borders to keep Americans from flooding into their country.”

  “See if you can find something in English,” Clay said.

  Willie turned the dial again, finally picking up an English broadcast.

  . . . broadcasting over this shortwave frequency in the hope that there are some people out there with shortwave radios who can hear us.

  “Hey, that’s George Gregoire,” Jake said. “I recognized his voice.”

  “Damn, I used to watch him,” Clay said. “I thought they drug him off and killed him.”

  “Evidently not. Let’s see what he has to say,” Jake said.