An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (11 page)

     And it was at that moment that he admitted to himself what everyone else apparently already knew.

     He was, finally, a man.

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     Rhett and Scarlett had lived in an apartment in the central part of San Antonio when the blackout happened. They were luckier than most, in that a Sam’s Club truck broke down in the street directly in front of them.

     When it became apparent that the lights weren’t coming back on again for awhile, most of their neighbors went looting the supermarkets.

     Rhett and Scarlett, on the other hand, spent the second, third and fourth nights of darkness carrying shelf-stable foods from the truck to their upstairs apartment.

     And two pallets of Dasani drinking water.

     They were also lucky in that they were great friends with their neighbors in the apartments on each side of them. And that the apartment behind them was completely empty.

     They enlisted the help of the neighbors, and between the six of them were able to empty the truck out completely.

     Of the stuff they could use, at least. They left the Pampers and television sets behind.

     Over the
months that followed they’d modified their apartments somewhat to make them more secure from looters and prowlers. They knocked holes in the walls between the apartments and turned the three apartments into one. That enabled them to pass freely between the three without ever going outside.

     They also knocked a hole in the wall between Rhett and Scarlett’s place and the apartment
behind them. Since it was vacant, they removed the blinds in the living room so that looters could see it was empty and have no reason to break in.

     The two bedrooms in the empty apartment, though, were blacked out, their blinds completely closed. They became the storage rooms for all the pasta, beans, soups and Ramen noodles they’d taken from the truck.

     The men had taken turns in the weeks following the EMP, standing guard on the walkway outside the three apartments. The looters never came close. There were plenty of other places to rob, after all. Ones that weren’t guarded.

     The looters might have tried harder if they’d known the treasure trove of food that was behind those walls. If they’d known there was enough to keep them and their friends alive for a year or more, they might have decided it was worth a shootout.

     But the thieves didn’t know that, and Rhett’s group was mostly left alone.

     Their supply of drinking water had lasted for six months, but by
the time it ran out they had a Plan B. They’d set up a series of plastic tubs and barrels along the roofline every time it rained. They drained the rainwater through socks to catch any tiny particles of asphalt shingles the water might have caught while rolling down the roof. Then they used a propane gas grill to boil the water before refilling their empty Dasani bottles.

     Their actions in the first days of the crisis
enabled them all to survive unscathed, even as people all around them were giving up and killing themselves in mass numbers.

     They’d heard the shots. They could smell the decomposing bodies.

     They knew they were lucky.

     It was eight months before they’d begun to venture out. By that time, the six of them had become more than just friends. They were more like
a family.

     It was at that time they took inventory of the food they had left and realized they’d be running out soon.

     So the men began to scavenge for more of it.

     It was rough at first. All of the supermarkets had been picked clean. Most of the abandoned trucks had been too.

     But more often than not, the matching backpacks that Rhett, Mike and Andy took from a Walmart truck were partially or mostly full each time they returned from their scavenging missions.

     It was on one of those missions that a police cruiser pulled up, just as they were climbing out of the back of an elementary school window.

     They’d raided the cafeteria pantry, and filled their backpacks with several bags of flour and several cans of Crisco.

     The looters who’d come before them hadn’t seen any value in the items, and had left them behind.

     But Mike’s last name was Garza. His grandparents came to the United States from Mexico. His grandmother cooked up the best flour tortillas north of Mexico City, and he’d watched her do it many times as a boy.

     He knew the value of flour and Crisco.

     They were crestfallen to see the police cruiser, though. They almost bolted and ran, but Mike and Andy regarded Rhett as their unofficial leader.

     Rhett kept a cool head and went to talk to the officer instead of making a bad situation worse and trying to get away. Mike and Andy were uneasy. It was the first cop they’d seen in almost a year, and they didn’t know how the blackout had affected the police department.

     They were afraid that all the cops had gone rogue, and were just watching out for themselves now.

     But they needn’t have worried.

     The man in the police car had been John Castro. And he was really there to help.

     John knew the city had shifted into survival mode. Looters were no longer really considered looters, he explained to the men. They were now considered nothing more than citizens, trying to provide food for their families, and to survive to see another day.

     “Just as long as you don’t hurt others while you gather food, or steal from another citizen, then we look the other way,” John told them.

     “It’s been that way for a very long time now.”

     John spent half an hour with the men that day, and filled them in on a lot of things. He told them about the plague that had overtaken the city, and to stay indoors as much as possible.

     “It’s important that you keep to your own kind as much as
you can. Try to stay away from others as much as possible. And don’t come into physical contact with anyone outside your circle.”

     It was then that Rhett realized why John was staying ten feet away from him, and why he’d held up a hand when Rhett started to come closer.

     Rhett had asked, “How are the others surviving?”

     “Some, like you. Most of the ones who are left, and there aren’t many, are taking over whole city blocks and turning them into farm
s. They’re knocking down fences and clearing the trees and shrubs out of the yards. They’re banding together to plant crops, and to care for them. Most of the blocks only have a handful of people, and they’re able to grow enough food to sustain them.”

     “Where are they getting the seeds?”

     “They’re sharing. Those that already have them are growing crops and then taking a portion of their new seeds to neighboring blocks.”

     “Wow. For the first time I wish we’d rented a house instead of an apartment.”

     “Go out to some of the residential areas. Walk in unarmed, and hold out your arms to your sides. That way they’ll know you’re not a threat. Ask to speak to the block leader, and then ask if they’re looking for anyone else to join their group.”

     “Would they let people they don’t know just walk in and join them?”

    “Not if they get the sense you’re scumbags, no. But if you convince them you’re good people, and are willing to work hard and carry your share of the load, they might.

     “You see, many of the blocks are barely getting by. Some of them have mostly old folks, or are too few in numbers to grow enough crops to get by. They’re realizing that farming is hard work. Especially without modern irrigation equipment and fertilizers and such.

     “So some of the block leaders will turn you away. But they’ll just as likely refer you to another block that needs strong men, or security.”

     That had been four months before.

     Since then, Rhett and the others took John’s advice and moved into a block a mile away. There was only Bill and Mary Bennett, a set of grandparents, trying to raise five grandchildren after the parents were killed by marauders. They were in pitiful shape.

     But Rhett, Mike and Andy were hard workers. So was Rhett’s girlfriend Scarlett, Mike’s wife Anne, and Andy’s wife Gloria.

     And now the block had promise. Planting season was coming up, and soon the front yards would be full of corn, wheat and a dozen other vegetables. In the meantime, the band of three was able to scavenge enough food to sustain all of them.

     And the grandkids loved Mike’s homemade flour tortillas.

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     In the process of moving from the apartment building into three abandoned houses, side by side on Baker Street, the group became good friends with John. Baker Street was in John’s district, and he’d been making a habit of taking food to the grandparents every couple of days and checking on their well being.

     After a month, Rhett and Scarlett finally felt comfortable enough with John to a
sk him about his prosthetic leg.

     “Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just a chapter of my past that’s closed now. Like a lot of other young men, I was sent to
Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps. And like a lot of other young men, I left some pieces of my body over there. But the Marines took good care of me, and so did the VA hospital until the world went dark.

     “It’s slowed me down just a little bit. But not much.”

     John was modest. He never talked about winning the Congressional Medal of Honor for dragging his wounded buddies to safety even though he was gravely wounded himself.

     He never mentioned that he had to fight to get a job with the San Antonio Police Department, and that he was their first offi
cer ever to have an artificial leg.

     And he never mentioned that to prove himself at the police academy, he worked twice as hard as everyone else, and was able to smoke the rest of the field on the academy’s obstacle course.

     But he did share a lot of stories about what life was like as a cop, both before and after the disaster struck.

     Enough stories to pique Rhett’s interest.

     One day a couple of months after Rhett’s group moved onto Baker Street, John came by to check on them.

     He asked Rhett, “How do you like the house?”

     “Oh, we love it. It’s four times the size of the apartment. We never bought a house because we couldn’t afford one on our income. If we’d have bought one, though, I think it would have looked a lot like this. Scarlett says it’s her dream home. It’s just too bad it’s only temporary.”

     “Do you know anything about the history of it? What became of the owners?”

     “Bill and Mary said it was a family of four. A couple and their two teenaged children. They said when things went really bad, they had a family meeting and decided to commit suicide together.

     “Bill said he didn’t agree with their decision, but that at least they went about it the right way. Before they did it, the father dug a big hole in the back yard. He had his wife and girls take a lot of sleeping pills, and they all sat together in the living room, held hands and prayed for forgiveness.

     “He said one by one, the wife and daughters died, and the father carried them to the mass grave and laid them inside it. Then he laid down beside them and shot himself.

     “Bill said they made a deal beforehand. If Bill agreed to cover the bodies with a blanket and then fill in the grave, he could have anything in the house he and Mary needed. He said he did what they requested, but that there was nothing in the house he wanted. All the food and water was exhausted by that time.”

     “Does it bother you at all that four people died in this house, and are buried in the back yard?”

     Scarlett said, “It did at first. But not anymore. Maybe because of the way they died. They didn’t leave any blood behind for us to look at, and they were at peace with themselves when they died. In fact, I know it sounds crazy, but we’ve come to consider them friends, of sorts. I made a marker for the grave, and I go out there sometimes to pray for their souls. And to thank them for letting us stay here for awhile.”

     “Why just for awhile? If you like the place, why not stay here permanently?”

     “Well, because it’s not our house. And since the economy pretty much doesn’t exist anymore, there are no jobs and no money. We can’t buy it. And who would we buy it from, anyway? The owners are dead and the bank who holds the deed no longer exists.”

     John said, “Actually, it belongs to the city now. But if you like it, it can be yours.”