Jernigan's War (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

DESPERATION

T
he electricity had been intermittent for the last few days and finally quit for good. The cable TV was out and the local station was down. The only news they could get was on the shortwave. It was bad everywhere. A week ago they’d heard reports of Chinese troops being deployed to the West Coast. That particular short wave station had stopped coming through soon after that report.

Most of the homes in the area had been abandoned as people left to look for food in the country. The food storage that Dix had insisted on, was keeping them alive. His mother was a product of the Great Depression, getting ready for bad times and survival had been ingrained in the Jernigan family for generations. The garden was starting to produce reliably, mostly greens since it was winter and too early to plant peas, corn and potatoes. The goats and chickens were providing meat and eggs.

They were on guard 24 hours a day. Starving people were everywhere. It was hard turning people away, but it was now dog eat dog. Fewer and fewer were showing up or stopping. Those that showed up now were getting meaner and leaner.

The government had declared martial law when the economy collapsed two months earlier. It was obvious to most people who studied such matters, that the governments of North America and the European Union had planned this. They continued to spend, print and borrow money until the economies collapsed. They then declared martial law and suspended elections. They and their backers in the banking world used this as an opportunity to seize property and assets. The one problem they didn’t anticipate was the fact that the U.S. military refused to fire on its citizens. It was one thing to pass out food and provide humanitarian aid. It was yet another to round up citizens and put them in former FEMA camps that were now being used as concentration camps. A door to door attempt to confiscate guns, ammo and precious metals turned into a blood bath. It created a backlash against law enforcement and government employees. This led to a complete breakdown of all civil authority.

Riots started about three days after the food stamps could no longer buy food. There was no food to buy, credit cards quit working and cash was worthless. The cities burned as people began to starve. There was a mass exodus into the countryside, populations of farm animals and game disappeared. Groups of people banded together, roads were blocked and every traveler was robbed, most were killed. Other people were banding together in tribal fashion where they could defend themselves and their scant food supplies. Those without guns and ammo quickly fell victim to roaming hoards.

Although Dix and his family lived in a densely populated area, they were able to fend off the mobs. The dogs were aggressive in barking, alerting the family who soon became skilled at waving people off by shooting around their feet. Two young couples who were friends with Jake had moved in with the family. Dix now had three young men under thirty to help guard the property and work. One had combat military experience which came in handy. Unfortunately, all were out scavenging and trading when this incursion occurred.

CHAPTER 3

PORTER’S JOURNEY

P
orter Jones sat on the hillside looking down upon the city. He had two gallons of water in milk jugs slung across his shoulders. They were tied together with an old belt through the jug handles. He had three cans of beans, 4 cans of Vienna sausage, and a sack of Hershey silver bells that were starting to melt. He had an old Remington semi automatic .22 rifle, 250 bullets, a hunting knife, and a dirty Boy Scout back pack filled with everything else he owned. He was thirteen years old and his life was turned upside down. The tears streaming from his eyes cut trails though the dirt on his face as he looked down on the city below. His parents lay dead along with his little brother. Four strangers had come to the house pretending to beg; when his father tried to turn them away they shot him. Porter ran to his room and got the .22 rifle his grandfather had given him. It was an old rifle that originally belonged to his great grandfather. He only knew his great grandfather from some old videos that were taken at Christmas when his dad was a small child.

His dad refused to let him keep the gun loaded. He hid in the closet and loaded the rifle with shaking hands. He could hear
gun shots and his mother screaming. His little brother cried out but he was powerless to help so he kept loading. The gun held 11 bullets in a tubular magazine in the stock. He spilled bullets on the floor of the closet as he accidentally overloaded the magazine and had to stop and take a couple of bullets out. When the short Hispanic man kicked open the door the last thing he expected was a boy with a small rifle to shoot him in the chest. The man stumbled backward and discharged the pistol he was holding. The bullet missed Porter and went into the wall behind him just over his head. The Hispanic man collapsed on the floor with a small .22 bullet resting in his heart and two more in his lungs. Porter went into adrenaline overload and ran into the front of the house where the other men were busy ransacking the house. He emptied his rifle on the remaining three men. The three men ran from the house trailing blood and cursing. One collapsed in the front yard, another in the road.

Porter fished around in his pocket and reloaded his rifle. He stood shaking when he found his parents and little brother dead in the living room. His little brother lay across his mother’s body. Dropping to the floor, he sat for hours with his gun across his lap. Overcome with grief he sat in disbelief. The sun went down and he sat in the dark. Sometime in the night he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until morning. When he woke, he dragged his family out into the back yard where he dug a large shallow grave. He covered them with a blanket before filling the grave with the sandy soil and capping it with the biggest rocks he could find so that animals would have trouble getting to them. He could hear gunfire and see smoke above the houses across the street. Their home backed up to the mountains to the east of Los Angeles. He realized that his only escape was up into the mountains behind his home.

Porter gathered up the remaining food and the last two gallons of water in the house. The water and electricity had been out
for weeks. He checked the bodies of the dead men; the one in his bedroom had a .38 pistol that was empty. He put it in his back pack with his other belongings. There was some jewelry in his pockets and a pocket knife. Porter took those too. Sometime during the night someone had gone through the pockets of the dead man in the front yard and the one in the road.

Porter took the blanket off his bunk bed and slit a hole in the middle so he could pull it over his head. He needed the blanket because his heaviest jacket would not keep him warm in the mountains. He put the food in a big canvas bag that his mother used for shopping; she tried to do her part in saving the environment. In his back pack he put his parents’ rings and on his arm he had his father’s watch. He took the latest family picture and put it in a plastic bag in a zipper pouch on the inside of the pack. His parents weren’t big on camping, fishing or hunting. His mother tried her best to make them vegetarians, so he had to retrieve the Vienna sausage hidden in his dad’s golf bag. He put on his newest tennis shoes and packed a couple of pants, shirts, and all the socks and underwear he could stuff in. The final space he used for his toothbrush and tooth paste, his sleeping bag he tied to the top.

The only reason he had been allowed to keep the little .22 was because his grandfather practically coerced his mother into letting him have it. His grandfather had made a lot of money in a couple of business deals before he retired. He made Porter’s parents an offer they couldn’t refuse. He told them that he would pay off their home mortgage and in exchange they would have to let Porter have the .22, be a member of the NRA, be a member of the boy scouts, and join a shooting club. After all it was just an antique .22 and being small his mother thought it looked almost harmless.

His grandparents had divorced while his dad was just a boy. Porter’s grandmother had forbid his dad hunting with his
grandfather and pushed him into more urban interests. As a result, his dad knew a great deal about golf and tennis and next to nothing about hunting, fishing and camping. His Grandmother had been dead for several years and couldn’t object now to him learning to camp and shoot.

Porter had spent two weeks at his Grandfather’s home in the country when his folks went on a second honeymoon the previous summer. His Grandfather paid for the honeymoon under the condition that Porter and his little brother come to visit for those two weeks. Other than speaking with his grandfather on the telephone every month or so, he had never had any contact with him. He spent those two weeks, fishing and camping. As far as Porter was concerned that was the best two weeks of his life. The home was located in the heart of Louisiana out in the middle of nowhere. Porter figured that was the place he needed to go. He couldn’t stay in Los Angeles as there was no water, no food and millions of starving people. Porter looked in his Geography book and studied the route he would have to take to get to Louisiana. He found a road atlas in the glove box of his Dad’s truck. He tore out the maps of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, folded them up and put them in his pack. For now all he had to concentrate on was going east.

CHAPTER 4

DECISION TIME

P
orter looked out the front door and saw a gang walking down the sidewalk. He hung back from the window and decided to head up into the hills behind the house. He went out the back door and up the mountain. It was not so steep as to prevent him from making his way up through the brush. From this vantage point he could look across the neighborhood and city.

So there he sat with his water and his rifle resting across his lap thinking about his situation. He could see buildings on fire and hear sporadic gunfire as the world he had known came unwound. He was dusty from taking a tumble and rolling down the hill earlier. Luckily he and his rifle were ok. He wiped the tears and dirt off his face onto his shirt sleeve. He had no idea how he was going to make it across the desert and into Texas and then Louisiana. Porter thought to himself, “I’ve got to eat, drink, sleep and evade thieves and killers. I can do this!”

He climbed the mountain until he came to a road. He stopped when he heard voices coming and retreated to the safety of the scrub brush on the side. He felt a sense of relief when a police cruiser pulled up beside a family that had walked into view. This
feeling of relief was short lived when the policemen stopped, killed the family and started rooting through their pockets and their belongings. After relieving the family of their meager belongings, they got back into the cruiser and proceeded down the mountain and out of sight. Porter was so shaken that he had forgotten that he was armed and could have done something. Porter walked up to the dead family as they lay in the road. Flies were already buzzing the bloody bullet holes. He could hear another car coming and rather than wait he moved on across the road and down into the valley on the other side of the road. The sight of the vacant, open eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life. But what could he have done? He didn’t know.