Last Stand: Surviving America's Collapse (4 page)

A
few minutes after they left West High, John pulled into the parking lot at the Publix grocery store.

“I thought we w
ere heading home?” Diane asked him.

John turned on the radio and flipped the knob.
They didn’t hear a thing. It looked like not everything in the Blazer had survived the EMP.

“There’s no telling how long this may last. I think we should get some extra supplies just in case.”

“But we have that bunker thing in the basement with lots of food,” Emma said. “And the cabin in the mountains.”

“You’re right,” John told her. “The pod at the house has enough supplies for a mo
nth and the cabin for a year, but what if this lasts for longer than that? Besides, if you haven’t noticed already, the folks around here are stunned and confused. They’ll only really start to get dangerous when the food in their houses runs out.”

“You still
haven’t told us what’s going on,” Gregory said. “Are we at war or something?”

John and Diane exchanged
a glance. “I don’t know. I’ll explain more when we’re back at home safe and sound.”

Just as he said that, a large group of people stream
ed into the grocery store. Others were leaving, pushing carts out into the parking lot. Many kept on going, probably intent on pushing those carts all the way home.

“You three stay here and keep the doors locked
,” John told them. “If anything bad happens, head straight home. I’ll meet you there.”

He hopped out of the truck and headed for the Publix. As a matter of habit, John always kept
two hundred dollars in cash in his wallet, so he’d have enough to cover what he was about to buy. Water was high on his list, as well as canned goods. They needed things that would last, especially now that the fridges weren’t working. In fact, when they got home, the first thing they would need to do was empty the meat from the freezer and begin bottling it in sealed jars.

In the past, John had always dreaded heading to places like Walmart on the weekends becaus
e of the hordes of annoying shoppers. Entering the Publix, he felt that same feeling as masses of shapes hurried about the dark store. There were only three carts left and John had to rush to grab one.

Moving from aisle to aisle was slow. It hadn’t been more than a few hours since the electricity had stopped and already most of the shelves were picked clean. He knew why too. A regular power outage wasn’t unheard of and rarely sent anyone rushing to clear out the store shelves, but when you added the stalled cars and lack of communication, the first signs of panic had already begun to settle in.

The lack of power was also slowing things down since it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of you, let alone what was on the shelves. Angry voices nearby filled the air as fights broke out over the few remaining items.

John headed straight for the drink
aisle and scooped up as many two-gallon water jugs as he could find. The human body could go weeks with minimal food, but only days without water, which made that a priority. Once home, he would empty what was in the pipes to fill the bathtub and as many buckets as possible before the water pressure finally gave out. Afterward, he could always use a clean garden hose to drain the water heater in the basement if push came to shove.

Now that he had a good
number of two-gallon jugs, John headed for the canned food section. Beans, pasta, corn, spam, vegetable soup. He needed to make sure his family got the widest array of vitamins and minerals. Many preppers concentrated on foods that were easy to store without thinking of a balanced diet. In the old days, sailors crossing the Atlantic had often succumbed to scurvy until they realized it was caused by a lack of vitamin C. It would only be a question of time before illnesses like scurvy that had been far behind them began to rear their ugly heads once again.

He then stocked up on salt, sugar and cooking oil. These were other common items often overlooked in emergencies.

It took an excruciating thirty minutes before John’s cart was filled to capacity. Next he would have to wait in a twisting line for the cash. And cash was the right word, since credit and debit cards were completely useless. He was amazed at how many people were forced to leave empty-handed because credit was all they’d brought. The other thing that amazed him was how the tenuous threads of law and order still hung in the air. Those angered shoppers without cash left shooting off little more than their mouths. They threatened lawsuits and all manner of nonsense, but not one of them tried to steal the food. How long that veneer of civility would last, John could only guess. It would end when grumbling bellies began to take charge of people’s behavior.

A woman in front of him
with two small boys and a girl was visibly shaken. Either her husband was stranded at work or she was a single mom, trying to weather this crisis alone. John’s heart went out to her. She turned to him and smiled weakly.

“Crazy
, isn’t it?”

He nodded.
“Yeah, I hoped something like this would never happen.”

“There are so many rumors flying around I just don’t know what to believe.”

He glanced in her cart and saw fruits, vegetables and three heads of lettuce. His heart sank even further. She’d fumbled an opportunity to stock up on some useful supplies by grabbing perishables. Course he couldn’t blame her. Most people didn’t have a clue what they needed in such situations.

“I hate to say it, but I think
it’s as bad as they’re saying, maybe even worse.”

Her face darkened with fear.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I know that isn’t the kind of thing you wanted to hear, but it won’t do you much good if I sugarcoat things.”

“I just ho
pe Craig’s okay.”

“Your husband?”

“Yeah, he’s in Phoenix on business. The phones aren’t working. I have no idea if he’s lost power as well.”

It was a good point. There was no telling how localized the problem was, but the further John had travelled
—even just this morning—the more convinced he’d become that it was probably affecting the entire country.

“I’m su
re he’s fine,” John offered, the words feeling hollow.

She smiled before advancing to the checkout girl.

His conversation with the woman had distracted him, but the closer John drew to the cash, the more outcries he became aware of. Even from people waving money around. And it didn’t seem to be coming from frustrated customers trying to use credit cards. He wondered what was going on. After she was done, the woman with the perishables gave him one final look and all John could do was smile and mouth a silent prayer.

The checkout girl was sweeping each of
John’s items from right to left, rattling off prices as she went. Beside her, another girl recorded the numbers in a notepad. But something was odd about the numbers she was reading off. One can of corn, normally ninety-nine cents, was now five dollars. The water, once six dollars ninety-nine cents, was now fifteen dollars. Prices had doubled or in some cases quintupled. She hadn’t even processed half of the items in John’s cart before he was over the two-hundred-dollar mark.

“Wait a minute,” he told the girl. “The price on two gallons of water is
six ninety-nine, not fifteen dollars.”

“I don’t make t
he prices,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, but you’re gouging people right when they need these things the most.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but this may be the last order we get this week. It’s not me, it’s my manager.” She pointed to a mirror on the wall and the manager’s office John knew was behind it.

What a weasel
move. Hiking up prices during an emergency and making these young checkout girls take all the heat.

John had a difficult decision to make and he’d have to make it quickly. Given the state of things, there wasn’t much chance of withdrawing any more money from the
ATM. In fact, any money he had in the bank, as well as his 401k, had just gone up in smoke. He had ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold pieces stashed at his house for just such a moment, except none of it would do him much good right now. It would still be a few days before people were ready to barter for goods and services. Cash and credit were so ingrained in the average mind that showing up with gold pieces would only add to the confusion. What would a teenage cashier know about the value of gold bullion?

A man behind John told him to hurry up.

“Sir?” the cashier asked. “Do you want the stuff or not? I’ve got other people in line.”

He handed her his last
two hundred dollars, gritting his teeth. Yes, he could take his chances at another grocery store or maybe even a mom-and-pop shop, but who was to say he’d have any more luck there?

Fuming, John left the store, pushing the cart filled mostly with
the jugs of water and a few cans of food. He made it back to the Blazer to find Diane behind the wheel, looking nervous. Even though it was still early in the morning, the windows were opened a crack to let in some air.

John scanned the surrounding area to make sure it was safe to open the rear cargo hatch. Diane opened the window further and tossed him the keys. After loading everything onboard, John went to the driver’s side and climbed in. Diane had already slid over to the passenger seat.

“The expression on your face tells me it wasn’t pretty in there,” she said. Emma and Gregory were asleep in the back seat.

“I didn’t need this,” he said, removing the S&W and handing it to her. “Things were about as orderly as one could expect under the circumstances.” He then told her about his run
-in with the cashier and the price gouging he’d experienced.

He started the engine and drove away.

“I can’t say I’m all that surprised,” she said.

John didn’t agree. “A small convenience store I can understand, but a big chain?”

“When times are tough, people get greedy. In the end, no one was shooting the place up.”

“Not yet,”
John said as he headed for home. “But it’s only a question of time.”

O
nce home, John got out and manually opened the garage door while Diane drove Betsy in. The kids were awake by now, expressing how strange it felt to be missing class. Emma was staring off into the distance, likely also missing Brandon.

All of them helped bring the water and food inside. After that, John called a family meeting.

“Your mother and I need to make a decision,” he told them.

The mood grew somber. He took the next several minutes to explain to all of them as best he could
that the country and possibly a chunk of the planet had either been hit by a solar flare or an electromagnetic pulse. John had begun prepping three and a half years ago, so those terms were very familiar to each of them. John’s preps had been geared toward a wide array of natural and man-made disasters, an EMP being only one of them. There were plenty of ways the country could implode, or explode, depending how one viewed it. A total collapse of the financial system, civil wars over gun control, meteor strikes, earthquakes, even alien invasion had been discussed. Either way, being ready for a complete breakdown of law and order had been his focus.

In
some ways, the cause was merely academic. The EMP, however, had represented the worst of the worst since in one fell swoop the country would be sent back to the mid-1800s. Even the simple loss of electricity could be devastating, let alone the loss of ninety-nine point nine percent of all transportation and perhaps a hundred percent of communication. These were networks which bound modern society together, helped to preserve order. Now that they were gone, the thought of what might come next was frightening.

Every so often
as he spoke, the kids checked their phones to see if somehow they would miraculously switch back on. It was a normal impulse and John knew how addicted to technology the younger generation was. For these reasons he didn’t say anything. Sooner or later they’d figure out their precious gadgets weren’t coming back.

After he explained what he thought was happening,
Gregory raised his hand.

“Say what’s on your mind
, son.”

“What does it matter if we were hit by an EMP or a solar flar
e? The result is the same.”

“That’s a good point, but there is an important difference. One is a random act of nature that occurs roughly once every
five hundred years. The other involves the detonation of a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere, say three to four hundred miles up. If that’s the case, we’re probably at war and it could mean that foreign troops are headed our way.”

“Unless they’re already here,” Diane said, under her breath. She’d been sitting quietly until then, scratching the red polish off her nails.

“That is a distinct possibility.”

Emma
shifted in her seat. “Dad, you’re starting to scare me.”

“
Good,” John said. “’Cause these are things we need to be prepared to face.”

His wife was trying hard to bite her lip.

“So we need to make a decision but I’m open to hearing input from each of you. We have the reinforced bunker downstairs that can keep us protected and fed for about a month. We also have the cabin about ten miles east of Oneida where we could survive for a year or longer. The bunker, however, was really designed for short-term emergencies. The problem we’re facing is the longer we remain in Knoxville, the more dangerous the situation may become. Most of the government agencies that have wargamed a possible EMP attack suggest that within ninety-six hours the shock will begin wearing off as folks begin to get hungry. As we’ve talked about before, the average household only has enough provisions for a couple of days.”

Emma
shrugged. “I don’t like the idea of abandoning all our things. What if they get things working again, but we’re not here to protect the house? Someone could just come in and take all our stuff. Besides, what was the point of that submarine thingy you built in the basement if we’re not going to use it?”

“She may have a point,” Diane echoed.

The cabin wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the house. John knew that as well as any of them, but he hoped it wasn’t secretly factoring into their decision. He turned to Gregory who looked like he had something on his mind.

“What happens after those
ninety-six hours you talked about?” Gregory asked. “Will it be too dangerous to leave?”

“
It shouldn’t be. We have Betsy.”

“I’ll go with whatever you say,” his son said.

“Doesn’t it make more sense to stay a few days,” Diane said, “and keep an eye on the situation outside? Besides, maybe the community could use our help.”

That did make sense.
“Okay, for now we’ll stay a day or two and see how things progress. I’ll keep Betsy fueled up and ready for an immediate evac in case things get hairy. That means there’s an incredible amount of work to do. Gregory, run upstairs and begin filling the bathtubs in the master bedroom and the one next to your bedroom with water. Make sure the tub itself is scrubbed before you do so.” He turned to Emma. “I need you and your mom to bring the water and canned food I bought down to the pod and place it in the pantry.”

“Shouldn’t we board up
all the windows?” Diane asked.

“Not all of them.
That’ll be a dead giveaway that we’re in here and have stuff worth taking. For now we want to blend in and look like any other house on the block. We’ll also need to create a stash with some food and weapons and bury it in the backyard in case we’re overrun.”

“Overrun?”
Emma was giving him a strange look, like he was being too paranoid.

“You wanted to stay in
Knoxville, well, this is the price. There’s a chance roving bands might form to loot and plunder. We have to be ready in case that happens.”

“Your father’s right
.” Diane turned to Emma. “Let me get out of this skirt and throw some jeans on before we get started.”

John headed into his basement office for the gun safe he kept in the corner. From there he took out
one of his two Ruger SR22 pistols and a box of Winchester .22 bullets.

He was heading back upstairs when Diane intercepted him.

“I thought you were getting changed?”

“I will,” she said. “But first I’d like to know where you’re going with that gun.”

“Next door to have a friendly conversation with Al.”