Post by Floyd Looney on Jul 8, 2009 15:32:44 GMT -5
One New Page Added - 9/30/2011
All I felt was a blinding pain. I didn't care about anything else at that moment. Somewhere in the back of my head I noted that my knees were on the ground, probably concrete.
I tried to open my eyes through the pain, but I only saw a bright light and nothing was in focus. I must be outside. I closed my eyes again, straining through the pain.
What happened?
If I could ask that, maybe the pain was starting to die down a bit.
Finally I felt my own self again. I was lying down on my back, my legs up to my rump were on concrete and I think the rest was on grass. I was starting to be able to think again, to feel again and to wonder where I was.
And why.
My sense of smell hit me all at once. I smelled burned wood, burning tar and rubber. I started hearing distant shouts and screams and sirens.
Something had happened, something awful.
The vague ideas were wearing off. I might not know who I was but I did know that I wanted to survive. Survive whatever this was.
I opened my eyes again, I blinked a few times to fend off the blurry images that returned to me. For a second I regretted it.
I was atop some kind of hill looking down, in the distance was a large city. Down both sides of the road I could see house after house were in ruins, piles of rubble, many of them on fire. Families were in tears, some were helping others, others were in a state of shock.
The city. The city was clouded in black smoke from hundreds of major fires. Buildings looked incomplete, some had partially collapsed. I turned my head, nearest me was a pile of rubble that had once been a house. Possibly mine, I told myself.
Survive. I must somehow survive.
I was still lying on the ground. It occured to me that I needed to get up and do something. I didn't yet know what I needed to do, but I felt it urgently. Then someone was above me looking into my eyes.
"You okay buddy?" a voice asked "You look like hell, join the crowd"
I opened my mouth to respond but merely stammered and choked. The man patted me on the back and then grabbed my arm and pulled me into a standing position. Then he guided me next to something, when my eyes focused I saw it was a brick-encased mail box.
"What happened?" I whispered as the man pulled a bottle of water from a gym bag.
"I don't know. I was listening to the radio and there weren't no news bulletins or anything before everything went out. None of the electronics I can find works, nobody else has any either. Power lines are all dead, even the solar panels on my house are useless right now, I think the electrical cords are shot." He told me as he put the bottle to my dry lips and made me drink.
"Nuke?" I asked between gulps.
He nodded "I would say that has to be it"
"Who?" I asked "Who could have done this?"
He was solemn. He had a better question to ask, "There might be other cities gone too, for all we know".
I couldn't fathom it. If that were the case, how would any of us survive? The whole continent may very well be a lifeless radioactive wasteland for generations.
"We have to do something. We have to know. We have to be prepared." I said. Prepared? I asked myself, the man just stared at me. Probably wondering the same thing, prepared for what, if not this? Something worse?
"My name is Paul" He told me "I live... lived... a block over, on Waldrop Lane".
I was silent. I couldn't even exchange pleasantries.
I didn't know my own name.
His name was Paul Stafford. He was an engineer working in the drilling business. He said he was forty years old. He had a bit of a gut on him and a growing bald spot at the top of his head, oh and he was shorter than I was.
I was barely able to walk but he encouraged me by pushing a little on my back and whispering to me that there was something he wanted me to see. We were walking in the middle of the street, avoiding fires and panicking or enraged families.
A woman was screaming at those around her and to those walking on the street.
"Why aren't they helping us? Where are they? Where is the Army? The Red Cross?" she shouted. She sat on the sidewalk and put her face in her hands and loudly cried.
Not far away a man and a woman were arguing about what they should do. The woman screamed that he should know what to do and he screamed back that its the government job not his to fix stuff.
"This is sad" Paul said "These people aren't going to make it. They don't know how to take care of themselves, probably learned its someone else's job to take care of them".
There was a collapsed apartment complex with dozens of people milling about, some were sifting through the wreckage. Looking for useful items? There were piles of 'rescued' electronics and small appliances, video game systems and the like.
"Not a clue. Not one friggin clue on how to survive" Paul mumbled.
Finally we came to Paul's home. It was similarly collapsed and partially burned. Nothing remarkable or significant about it to a passers-by. Paul led me around the wreckage that had once been the center of his life.
Then he grabbed something in the grass and pulled up a hidden door. It had been camoflauged with grass, blending in seamlessly. You would not find it if you did not know it was there already.
Down we went into the underground bunker. A large, heavy door was pulled open and we entered a chamber that measured around fifteen feet across and twenty-two deep. I spied two other doorways leading elsewhere. It was quite a storm shelter.
At the center of the chamber was a large dining table with seating for eight. Several seats were already filled with men and a woman was pouring them coffee. She looked up when we entered and smiled at the sight of Paul.
"You're back early this time" she said, putting down the decanter and giving him a hug. "I expect the whole gang will be here within the hour. Gregory has a ways to go, especially if he's on foot"
Paul nodded but said "He has a bicycle. I'm sure he will be riding it here". Then he looked at me and gestured for me to sit at the table as he sat at its head. The other four men at the table looked at us and nodded, I tried to look comfortable.
"This is going to be a complication, I know. We knew there would be a bunch of those, but this scenario was never dreamt up." Paul announced to those present. "Our friend here apparently can't remember anything, not even his name".
The other men looked stunned, sickened.
"Good God, Paul. What are we going to do without a Minister of Defense?"
An hour later they had all arrived at the underground bunker of Paul Stafford, of Waldrop Lane. They called themselves 'The Council' and considered themselves to be in a position to lead the survivors of the Armageddon.
I had been a leading member among them and had been made the Minister of Defense out of respect for my military experience and weapons proficiency. With my memory gone, possibly wiped out like an electrical device from an EMP, I was as useless as a Play Station.
A few minutes after sitting at the table I noticed that Paul's appliances and electronics seemed to work just fine. This underground bunker had been fortified in some way, maybe he designed that himself?
President Paul Stafford retold the story to his full 'Cabinet' about my problem. He told them we could overcome this obstacle, although most of the others didn't seem to agree, judging by body language.
"We have always felt that something like this might happen to our country during our lifetime. We have always hoped we were wrong and often we even forgot about this fear for years at a time. Well, today it finally happened. It is the largest tragedy to befall human kind since records were kept." he said, his audience paid him rapt attention. "Today I propose we put Operation Reboot into effect".
A thin and gaunt older man spoke up. "Paul, if we don't have a Minister of Defense, this just cannot work. I say we stay together, our families too, until we can get a firm grip on the scale and scope of the tragedy".
He was Minister of Interior, his name as told me by Paul was Richard Harley Henderson. He was around sixty and the oldest member of the organization. I didn't think that sounded like such a bad idea myself.
"Time for recuperation and time to gain information" Richard put it succinctly.
Paul took the floor and answered "Any time we wait is time for someone else to take over. Do we really think that any other organization has the people of this country in their interest? I bet not. We should do as we planned and practiced, we should start today".
"I have no doubt that Hansen will get his memory back and I think moving forward is the right thing to do. After all, thats why we formed the organization".
Thomas Jay Hansen was my name, according to Paul, and I had been in the Marines and special forces. I had also been part of the core group who created the organization, much of it had been my idea. My role in Operation Reboot was integral, even if I had no clue as to what it was.
The information we had was coming in bits and peices from various sources, often from rumors running rampant amongst the walking dead up top. The walking dead were those people who had no clue how to take care of themselves, were unprepared or who might have gotten a bigger dose of radiation than was healthy.
There was nobody coming around to put out fires, pass out bottled water, offer first aid or do anything else. Nobody was going to put the power lines back up, those people were either dead or in the same situation as everyone else. What incentive was going to get a man to go up a pole when he knew it would do no good? Cash?
The federal reserve notes in your pocket are worthless when it all hits the fan. A cheap pup tent is more valuable than a roll of hundreds, its just paper now. There are no banks, there is no longer even a federal reserve if the reports we have heard are true. There is no federal government at all, apparently.
There were some who took advantage of others but for what point? To steal thier food and water? There had been reports of angry mobs beating theives to a pulp and one report of a rapist being beaten to death by irate family and friends. The bunker shortwave and all other communications were still useless, the radiation was squelching any signal we might have been able to get.
We knew next to nothing. Hundreds of thousands, possibly hundreds of millions, were dead or just as good as dead. No power, no water, little food, no healthcare and almost no shelter.
A few days after the attack it rained, the water was mixed with ash from burned buildings, trees, animals and people. Those vaporized instantly by the blast were now free atoms, they might turn out to be the lucky ones.
I got a short tour of the bunker from President Paul Stafford. He had built it over a period of twenty years, his grand hobby. When we formed the organization it had been a natural fit, an underground headquarters after a major disaster had made a lot of sense. The bunker was quite large, it served as the Stafford home as well as HQ, and the Mrs enforced the partition.
Paul sat down at the table and I immediately knew something was on his mind. He wanted to carry out the first missions of Operation Reboot and wanted it done as soon as possible. He said he was concerned the others just wanted to talk and not act.
"What do you need me to do, Mr President?"
He smiled wryly and put his mug on the table. "Nobody can get near the city, its still too hot in more ways than one. There is, however, something that we can do. I hope we beat the looters because this place is out there and unmarked."
A supply mission he called it. Take a few volunteers and a truck, he knew one that would run, and drive to a non-descript warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Break in, load the supplies of generators, tents, water purifiers, MRE's and canned food and get back. We'd take guns of course and Paul would handle finding a place to erect the tents. "The hard part" he said. Funny guy.
The old truck had been buried in an underground garage and apparently had none of the modern electrical components. I was told that vital parts of the engine had been stored in a "hardened" safe.
They also pulled out some guns, an assortment that ranged from pistols to shotguns and rifles. One in particular caught my attention and I examined it, my name was etched on it.
"Thats your AR-15. Your 'baby', as you told us" Another man told me as he packed ammunition into small blue and white plastic coolers. He calls himself Sarge and the four other men more or less followed his orders. Sarge followed mine, although mine came from the President.
Before we climbed into the truck we raised the garage door with a hand crank. A man who went by the name LT drove the vehicle, Sarge then told me that we'd meet the others at the destination.
Paul had told me that there would be other trucks from other locations converging on the location. In all there were to be six trucks and thirty 'guns', or soldiers.
The truck exited its cave-like garage slowly and picked up speed when we hit the road, but we often had to drive around hulks of ruined and sometimes burned vehicles or groups of people trying to find food or something.
Here and there were groups of people milling about, fires started in trash cans and people trying to make it through a crisis they were totally unprepared for. Many of these people still thought the government would come through for them. Isn't that what government was for, to give them things?
Now there probably wasn't any more government and people would have to fend for themselves for the first time in some of their lives. Backyard gardens had been trashed and noone would bother to replant anything or cultivate a new crop. None of these people would give a thought to preparing for the future, it was all about them and all about now.
The sullen people watched as their truck passed in amazement, some of them tried to chase for a short distance, shouting something that couldn't be heard. President Paul now had people out spreading the story of a new government being formed and looking for citizens.
They saw grocery stores and gas stations looted and often burned. Groups of gangs or mobs had claimed grocery stores around the area as their turf. Gang shootings and battles over foods had become common, almost expected. The regular people stayed away or tried to find things to trade with the gangs, some gangs had tried to claim themselves as pseudo-governments.
President Paul had a plan and it would hopefully work to bring about some kind of civilization back to this atomic wasteland. I notice another truck take up a position behind us and I knew we must be getting close to this destination warehouse. It was far from any industrial area and far from population centers, surrounded by wooded areas and cut off on the other side by a river.
I saw two trucks stopped up ahead and thought they must be waiting for us, so as to go in with force. Then I looked ahead and saw a fifth truck near the target, it had crashed through the gates and was on fire. There were at least two bodies lying prone next to it. I saw movement atop the building and saw a muzzle flash here and there.
A battle was looming.
We now had five trucks lined up on the road about five hundred meters from the busted gate. I counted around twenty-six guys on my side carrying various kinds of rifles and other weapons.
Sarge had taken charge of the whole group but looked to me for inspiration or orders. At this point I thought it might be a bad idea to just attempt a head long rush into the warehouse compound.
"We need to know how many guys are in that warehouse!" I told Sarge and he nodded. He turned and went back to one of the other trucks, opening a big metal box. Three other men helped him pull out two objects which he brought back to where I was.
It was a small helicopter-type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, apparently we had planned ahead. So I watched as a monitor was put on the flat bed of one of the trucks and the UAV was readied for launch.
Every once in a while we heard a shot or two from the warehouse but our guys rarely returned fire. They did however keep a close watch all around our position for enemy activity. It seemed as if all of the enemies were inside the warehouse, but we had to be prepared for anything.
One of the men had a rifle with a large scope and I went up to where he was standing. "Do you have any experience with that thing?" I asked. The man smiled and answered "Oh yes, I spent a few years as a sniper in the Army".
I nodded. "I want you to find a spot to get some of those guys on that rooftop. Wait until I'm ready though". He took off, seeming very enthusiastic about the idea. The UAV was just lifting off the ground, it was soon flying at an altitude of a thousand feet and was hovering somewhere over the warehouse.
I looked at the monitor, it was all blue with red spots. Sarge told me this was a thermal image of the warehouse, the red spots were most likely people. The operator of the UAV told me it looked like there were maybe fifteen to twenty inside and on top of the building.
We could do this. It would definitely not be a suicidal frontal assault but a more complex strategy. First thing, though, was we had to announce our presence officially. This idea came straight from the top, and a bull horn would come in handy.
"Attention hostile force!" Sarge yelled into the bullhorn, I supposed he didn't really need it with those pipes. "This is the First Expedition Unit under orders from the President of the United Citizens Council. We are ordering you to stand down and to comply with orders or we will be forced to attack".
When he started I could see three heads stand a bit taller on the roof, they became closer together. Talking something over? Then one of them disappeared altogether. I watched the monitor and saw a red dot moving, perhaps from the roof to the inside? Was this soldier trying to inform their leader of our orders?
I decided to give them ten minutes, Sarge barked this through the bullhorn. At that point I would free the sniper, his name was Charlie "Jolly" Rodgers, to take out whatever enemies he could see through his scope.
President Stafford needed those large tents and supplies, he was going to use them for the relief work that our no longer exisiting government would do. Hopefully this would build support and loyalty for the United Citizens Council government.
Without these supplies we weren't anything but an uppity group of survivors. Why would anyone follow us? We needed to establish a base of operations and a base of support, we would expand that as much as possible.
Paul had as plan, I'd carry it out because as far as I could tell it would work and no one else had a plan.
We divided the group into 3 teams who would attack the buildings occupants from different directions. The sniper, his name happened to be Charlie "Jolly" Rodgers, had been lying in a field next to a tree for half an hour, he might not have moved at all as far as I can tell.
I heard a noise and a yell, I looked up to see several men exit the warehouse and duck behind a short brick wall. One of them was carrying what looked like an RPG launcher. Rodgers looked at me and I waved the "go for it" signal.
The rest of the guys were trying to find better hiding spots behind the trucks. Sarge led his squad back to the ditch where they laid flat and covered their heads.
The enemy with the rocket propelled grenade launcher stood up and took aim. As soon as his finger moved on the trigger a hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. The RPG went off course and flew high, far to the right of us.
The other enemies scrambled to race back to the building but one of them was also taken out by the handy work of "Jolly" Rodgers.
"Alright, that was our answer. Sarge take you men to the left side of the building, there aren't any windows over there. I want you to be ready to blast your way into that side door by the garbage container. Robinson! I want you to follow this road to the riverside and see if you can't draw their attention." I told the two squad leaders.
The third and fourth squads would be combined for the main assault, which hopefully they'd never see coming. I would be with the main group but I would let George Riley take the lead.
Paul Stafford had thought to put walkie-talkies into the hardened bunker but the radiation levels were still scrambling communications. Although we are assured that levels were low enough to keep from causing us major health problems any time soon. Whatever that means.
Another nice shot from Charlie put down another of the roof dwelling sentries and all 3 groups of soldiers moved faster towards the warehouse.
I was running with the main group and then there was a flash of light and I was standing in the desert. There was an M1A2 tank nearby and an oil well pumping away in the distance. I look behind me and see a small adobe home and other soldiers, one on the ground being treated for wounds. There was a body near the house wearing robes, white with bright red blood stains.
A man, an officer, was yelling at my face saying "Is that clear soldier?"
"No sir! I will not obey that order sir!"
I grab my head and I am back near the warehouse, the others are closer but a few had turned to look at me. A shot rings out from the building and a I see some dirt rise up and a spark on the concrete just a few feet away.
I run to the wall as a couple of soldiers fired into the small second story above the main doors. So much for surprise, but this particular action did not require stealth.
What was that? A memory? Was I getting my memory back, was that one jogged loose because of the combat? I knew this was untrue, there had been no combat in that memory. The conflict had been between me and a superior officer.
I run to the side of the front wall and wave to Sarge, both his group and my main force tied grenades to the doors. Then retreated far enough away to pull a thin string tied to the pin.
I put up all five fingers on both hands as I stood in the corner, then I counted down. Four! Three! Two!
We enter the warehouse and find no one in the smallish administration office. There are two doors to the main warehouse and both of them are wide open. We hear shouts from inside and a few pot shots are taken at us.
Then we hear more shooting, Sarge and his group had already opened fired. Several of our guys went to the doors and began shooting into the cavernous room of the warehouse. The echo inside must have been deafening I told myself.
I could hear Mac Robinson barking orders from the back side of the warehouse and some explosions. The enemy was now engaged from three sides and they seemed very surprised by this. We could see their soldiers peeling off from one area and moving to another. Their movements were confused and gave us opportunities to pick them off.
The warehouse was full of pallets stacked atop each other, four stacks together making hut-sized blocks. I reckoned there were fifty of these blocks, probably two hundred pallets.
Several of my group moved left and scrambled up the metal stairs to the roof, they found four dead enemy. They came right back down firing as they came, signalling it as clear. Halfway up the stairs had been the door to the area above the office, with the window that had been used by their own version of a sniper- who missed me at twenty yards.
We moved forward between the first row of blocks, the enemy had backed themselves against one wall of the warehouse. The three groups were closing in on them, I could sense they were frightened. These were not trained soldiers, not veterans, they were scared survivors who had banded together.
I found Jorge Avila beside me, he just smiled. "There's no door where they are, is there?" I asked, not trusting my faulty memory.
"No, sir, just a cinderblock wall" he answered.
Several enemy troops then rose up away from behind a few pallets, away from their main huddled comrades. They managed to get off some shots before our guys forced them down. A couple of grenades were thrown over the pallets, the explosion left a mess of their bravest soldiers.
Then Sarge picked up his bullhorn and told the remaining enemy soldiers "Surrender now. This is the last chance if you want to live through this mess!".
Now that we were close enough to get a better view of them, we could see that they were a ragtag force. A couple of acne-faced teenagers, an old man with a white beard a fatter man heading into middle-age who might have ran a bait shop before the attack.
Compared to the fools were saw sitting on lawns, picking their way through rubble for worthless trinkets these people were at least trying to survive. These were more likely to become good citizens for the United Citizens Council.
Thankfully they decided to surrender, they were scared and had no idea who we were. Sarge took their guns away and put them to work loading supplies onto the trucks. The five remaining trucks were soon parked at the loading docks being filled with tents, MRE's, generators and other items.
The nine survivors we had faced would be brought back for Paul to question and push his idea of citizenship upon. Some of them were likely to join, they obviously desired some social structure or they wouldn't have joined their little militia.
Before we climbed back into the trucks Sarge called me over and told me he had been talking to one of the militia guys. "He told me they were going to trade the warehouse contents to the New League. That this New League is trying to form a government led by a guy named Jonah. Its apparently based north of the main city, maybe 14 miles from here".
President Paul Stafford would not like this one bit, the idea of a competitive government being formed would upset him.
...............
Soon the large tents were being erected in a large field that used to be a public park. Generators were used to pump water from a tributary of the river and to operate the purification machines to produce clean water.
President Paul Stafford gave several speeches to different groups that day. Very few refused to support the new government, but Paul knew real loyalty built slowly. Meals were distributed, first aid administered and plans for "rebuilding" discussed with the new citizens.
After the first speech I couldn't bear to watch another, I returned to where the trucks were parked. Sarge was examining and cleaning some of the weapons with a couple of others. He pointed at a new prize. "Russian built-RPG-7. Simple to operate, little training required. I don't know where they got it, but I'm glad to have it".
A massive number of fires were still burning all over the metropolitan area, but our suburban area seemed relatively safe from any developing firestorm. The river was a big part of that, I would guess, but also the berms that been built to protect the major city from floods.
Soon I found myself standing next to Gregory Logan, our Minister of Infrastructure who rides a bicycle. The park had been his choice months ago, during the final stages of planning. Gregory was a fiery red-head in his late thirties and he had been very worried about this New League.
President Paul had sent a few operatives to find and learn about this New League and their 'government'. He said for them to have been formed so quickly, they must have also planned it before the attack, like we did.
I closed my eyes, I had one of those quick passing headaches that were just a minor annoyance. I saw that loud-mouthed officer yelling at me, Pike... his name had been Pike. We had been in Iraq I think, he wanted me to do something illegal, immoral? I couldn't recall anything important, but it seemed somehow important.
Soon I was sitting at a picnic table along with Paul and Gregory, they were discussing a second relief station in another area. Keep spreading the United Citizens territory, re-establish civilization, check the growth of lawlessness and any possible tyrannies.
"Thomas? Whats on your mind?" Paul asked looking in my direction with a concerned look on his face. I probably looked far away and in reality I had been dwelling on that officer and Iraq and what it had been all about. I just smiled and shrugged, "Not much, setting up relief tents isn't really a military matter is it?"
"Since you're the department thats got some staff, we'll need you guys to haul the supplies and help set up the tents and keep law and order when the mobs descend upon the camps for food and water." He said, he had everything planned out and nearly every angle thought out. Murphy's law was still gonna bite us in the butt though, it always did.
There were literally hundreds of people milling around the tents, getting clean water for drinking and bathing. President Paul told us it would take time for the situation to really sink in. The United States was gone, it was history and they now had to do what was necessary to survive.
It had already been a few days since the devastation struck but the United Citizens Council had not wasted any time. The Minister for Agriculture had already taken a truck and some of our volunteer soldiers and established a small poultry operation from the remains of a larger one.
The remains of backyard gardens, most of them ravaged by panicked and hungry survivors had yielded replantings and seed and other good things. They were working to feed as many people as possible, but armed guards were needed to keep them from being destroyed.
Replanting peach, plum, apple and other tree's from where they had been found took hours at a time. They planned to make an 18 acre park into a real farm, they would have use of pumps and generators as long as the gasoline lasted.
Some SUV's joined our fleet of trucks, they had somehow gotten them start reliably without most of the electronics. However few of the guages on the dashboard worked and the lights would have to be connected right to the battery.
Finding the fuel was a bigger pain than was thought before hand, the underground tanks invariably had exploded. The source of many of the blazes that were still burning closer to the city. Teams were out searching for possible fuel sources but the known supply was dwindling quickly.
All of this was quite impressive to me but Paul was a hard man to please, he thought we were woefully behind where we should be. He was also mentally competing with the New League, of which we knew next to nothing. He mentally had them being set up by government as a large well-resourced operation, his big opponent.
I thought he was overdoing this idea but it would be worse if we underestimated the New League, whatever it turned out to be.
Vision
by Floyd Geron Looney
All I felt was a blinding pain. I didn't care about anything else at that moment. Somewhere in the back of my head I noted that my knees were on the ground, probably concrete.
I tried to open my eyes through the pain, but I only saw a bright light and nothing was in focus. I must be outside. I closed my eyes again, straining through the pain.
What happened?
If I could ask that, maybe the pain was starting to die down a bit.
Finally I felt my own self again. I was lying down on my back, my legs up to my rump were on concrete and I think the rest was on grass. I was starting to be able to think again, to feel again and to wonder where I was.
And why.
My sense of smell hit me all at once. I smelled burned wood, burning tar and rubber. I started hearing distant shouts and screams and sirens.
Something had happened, something awful.
The vague ideas were wearing off. I might not know who I was but I did know that I wanted to survive. Survive whatever this was.
I opened my eyes again, I blinked a few times to fend off the blurry images that returned to me. For a second I regretted it.
I was atop some kind of hill looking down, in the distance was a large city. Down both sides of the road I could see house after house were in ruins, piles of rubble, many of them on fire. Families were in tears, some were helping others, others were in a state of shock.
The city. The city was clouded in black smoke from hundreds of major fires. Buildings looked incomplete, some had partially collapsed. I turned my head, nearest me was a pile of rubble that had once been a house. Possibly mine, I told myself.
Survive. I must somehow survive.
I was still lying on the ground. It occured to me that I needed to get up and do something. I didn't yet know what I needed to do, but I felt it urgently. Then someone was above me looking into my eyes.
"You okay buddy?" a voice asked "You look like hell, join the crowd"
I opened my mouth to respond but merely stammered and choked. The man patted me on the back and then grabbed my arm and pulled me into a standing position. Then he guided me next to something, when my eyes focused I saw it was a brick-encased mail box.
"What happened?" I whispered as the man pulled a bottle of water from a gym bag.
"I don't know. I was listening to the radio and there weren't no news bulletins or anything before everything went out. None of the electronics I can find works, nobody else has any either. Power lines are all dead, even the solar panels on my house are useless right now, I think the electrical cords are shot." He told me as he put the bottle to my dry lips and made me drink.
"Nuke?" I asked between gulps.
He nodded "I would say that has to be it"
"Who?" I asked "Who could have done this?"
He was solemn. He had a better question to ask, "There might be other cities gone too, for all we know".
I couldn't fathom it. If that were the case, how would any of us survive? The whole continent may very well be a lifeless radioactive wasteland for generations.
"We have to do something. We have to know. We have to be prepared." I said. Prepared? I asked myself, the man just stared at me. Probably wondering the same thing, prepared for what, if not this? Something worse?
"My name is Paul" He told me "I live... lived... a block over, on Waldrop Lane".
I was silent. I couldn't even exchange pleasantries.
I didn't know my own name.
His name was Paul Stafford. He was an engineer working in the drilling business. He said he was forty years old. He had a bit of a gut on him and a growing bald spot at the top of his head, oh and he was shorter than I was.
I was barely able to walk but he encouraged me by pushing a little on my back and whispering to me that there was something he wanted me to see. We were walking in the middle of the street, avoiding fires and panicking or enraged families.
A woman was screaming at those around her and to those walking on the street.
"Why aren't they helping us? Where are they? Where is the Army? The Red Cross?" she shouted. She sat on the sidewalk and put her face in her hands and loudly cried.
Not far away a man and a woman were arguing about what they should do. The woman screamed that he should know what to do and he screamed back that its the government job not his to fix stuff.
"This is sad" Paul said "These people aren't going to make it. They don't know how to take care of themselves, probably learned its someone else's job to take care of them".
There was a collapsed apartment complex with dozens of people milling about, some were sifting through the wreckage. Looking for useful items? There were piles of 'rescued' electronics and small appliances, video game systems and the like.
"Not a clue. Not one friggin clue on how to survive" Paul mumbled.
Finally we came to Paul's home. It was similarly collapsed and partially burned. Nothing remarkable or significant about it to a passers-by. Paul led me around the wreckage that had once been the center of his life.
Then he grabbed something in the grass and pulled up a hidden door. It had been camoflauged with grass, blending in seamlessly. You would not find it if you did not know it was there already.
Down we went into the underground bunker. A large, heavy door was pulled open and we entered a chamber that measured around fifteen feet across and twenty-two deep. I spied two other doorways leading elsewhere. It was quite a storm shelter.
At the center of the chamber was a large dining table with seating for eight. Several seats were already filled with men and a woman was pouring them coffee. She looked up when we entered and smiled at the sight of Paul.
"You're back early this time" she said, putting down the decanter and giving him a hug. "I expect the whole gang will be here within the hour. Gregory has a ways to go, especially if he's on foot"
Paul nodded but said "He has a bicycle. I'm sure he will be riding it here". Then he looked at me and gestured for me to sit at the table as he sat at its head. The other four men at the table looked at us and nodded, I tried to look comfortable.
"This is going to be a complication, I know. We knew there would be a bunch of those, but this scenario was never dreamt up." Paul announced to those present. "Our friend here apparently can't remember anything, not even his name".
The other men looked stunned, sickened.
"Good God, Paul. What are we going to do without a Minister of Defense?"
An hour later they had all arrived at the underground bunker of Paul Stafford, of Waldrop Lane. They called themselves 'The Council' and considered themselves to be in a position to lead the survivors of the Armageddon.
I had been a leading member among them and had been made the Minister of Defense out of respect for my military experience and weapons proficiency. With my memory gone, possibly wiped out like an electrical device from an EMP, I was as useless as a Play Station.
A few minutes after sitting at the table I noticed that Paul's appliances and electronics seemed to work just fine. This underground bunker had been fortified in some way, maybe he designed that himself?
President Paul Stafford retold the story to his full 'Cabinet' about my problem. He told them we could overcome this obstacle, although most of the others didn't seem to agree, judging by body language.
"We have always felt that something like this might happen to our country during our lifetime. We have always hoped we were wrong and often we even forgot about this fear for years at a time. Well, today it finally happened. It is the largest tragedy to befall human kind since records were kept." he said, his audience paid him rapt attention. "Today I propose we put Operation Reboot into effect".
A thin and gaunt older man spoke up. "Paul, if we don't have a Minister of Defense, this just cannot work. I say we stay together, our families too, until we can get a firm grip on the scale and scope of the tragedy".
He was Minister of Interior, his name as told me by Paul was Richard Harley Henderson. He was around sixty and the oldest member of the organization. I didn't think that sounded like such a bad idea myself.
"Time for recuperation and time to gain information" Richard put it succinctly.
Paul took the floor and answered "Any time we wait is time for someone else to take over. Do we really think that any other organization has the people of this country in their interest? I bet not. We should do as we planned and practiced, we should start today".
"I have no doubt that Hansen will get his memory back and I think moving forward is the right thing to do. After all, thats why we formed the organization".
Thomas Jay Hansen was my name, according to Paul, and I had been in the Marines and special forces. I had also been part of the core group who created the organization, much of it had been my idea. My role in Operation Reboot was integral, even if I had no clue as to what it was.
The information we had was coming in bits and peices from various sources, often from rumors running rampant amongst the walking dead up top. The walking dead were those people who had no clue how to take care of themselves, were unprepared or who might have gotten a bigger dose of radiation than was healthy.
There was nobody coming around to put out fires, pass out bottled water, offer first aid or do anything else. Nobody was going to put the power lines back up, those people were either dead or in the same situation as everyone else. What incentive was going to get a man to go up a pole when he knew it would do no good? Cash?
The federal reserve notes in your pocket are worthless when it all hits the fan. A cheap pup tent is more valuable than a roll of hundreds, its just paper now. There are no banks, there is no longer even a federal reserve if the reports we have heard are true. There is no federal government at all, apparently.
There were some who took advantage of others but for what point? To steal thier food and water? There had been reports of angry mobs beating theives to a pulp and one report of a rapist being beaten to death by irate family and friends. The bunker shortwave and all other communications were still useless, the radiation was squelching any signal we might have been able to get.
We knew next to nothing. Hundreds of thousands, possibly hundreds of millions, were dead or just as good as dead. No power, no water, little food, no healthcare and almost no shelter.
A few days after the attack it rained, the water was mixed with ash from burned buildings, trees, animals and people. Those vaporized instantly by the blast were now free atoms, they might turn out to be the lucky ones.
I got a short tour of the bunker from President Paul Stafford. He had built it over a period of twenty years, his grand hobby. When we formed the organization it had been a natural fit, an underground headquarters after a major disaster had made a lot of sense. The bunker was quite large, it served as the Stafford home as well as HQ, and the Mrs enforced the partition.
Paul sat down at the table and I immediately knew something was on his mind. He wanted to carry out the first missions of Operation Reboot and wanted it done as soon as possible. He said he was concerned the others just wanted to talk and not act.
"What do you need me to do, Mr President?"
He smiled wryly and put his mug on the table. "Nobody can get near the city, its still too hot in more ways than one. There is, however, something that we can do. I hope we beat the looters because this place is out there and unmarked."
A supply mission he called it. Take a few volunteers and a truck, he knew one that would run, and drive to a non-descript warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Break in, load the supplies of generators, tents, water purifiers, MRE's and canned food and get back. We'd take guns of course and Paul would handle finding a place to erect the tents. "The hard part" he said. Funny guy.
The old truck had been buried in an underground garage and apparently had none of the modern electrical components. I was told that vital parts of the engine had been stored in a "hardened" safe.
They also pulled out some guns, an assortment that ranged from pistols to shotguns and rifles. One in particular caught my attention and I examined it, my name was etched on it.
"Thats your AR-15. Your 'baby', as you told us" Another man told me as he packed ammunition into small blue and white plastic coolers. He calls himself Sarge and the four other men more or less followed his orders. Sarge followed mine, although mine came from the President.
Before we climbed into the truck we raised the garage door with a hand crank. A man who went by the name LT drove the vehicle, Sarge then told me that we'd meet the others at the destination.
Paul had told me that there would be other trucks from other locations converging on the location. In all there were to be six trucks and thirty 'guns', or soldiers.
The truck exited its cave-like garage slowly and picked up speed when we hit the road, but we often had to drive around hulks of ruined and sometimes burned vehicles or groups of people trying to find food or something.
Here and there were groups of people milling about, fires started in trash cans and people trying to make it through a crisis they were totally unprepared for. Many of these people still thought the government would come through for them. Isn't that what government was for, to give them things?
Now there probably wasn't any more government and people would have to fend for themselves for the first time in some of their lives. Backyard gardens had been trashed and noone would bother to replant anything or cultivate a new crop. None of these people would give a thought to preparing for the future, it was all about them and all about now.
The sullen people watched as their truck passed in amazement, some of them tried to chase for a short distance, shouting something that couldn't be heard. President Paul now had people out spreading the story of a new government being formed and looking for citizens.
They saw grocery stores and gas stations looted and often burned. Groups of gangs or mobs had claimed grocery stores around the area as their turf. Gang shootings and battles over foods had become common, almost expected. The regular people stayed away or tried to find things to trade with the gangs, some gangs had tried to claim themselves as pseudo-governments.
President Paul had a plan and it would hopefully work to bring about some kind of civilization back to this atomic wasteland. I notice another truck take up a position behind us and I knew we must be getting close to this destination warehouse. It was far from any industrial area and far from population centers, surrounded by wooded areas and cut off on the other side by a river.
I saw two trucks stopped up ahead and thought they must be waiting for us, so as to go in with force. Then I looked ahead and saw a fifth truck near the target, it had crashed through the gates and was on fire. There were at least two bodies lying prone next to it. I saw movement atop the building and saw a muzzle flash here and there.
A battle was looming.
We now had five trucks lined up on the road about five hundred meters from the busted gate. I counted around twenty-six guys on my side carrying various kinds of rifles and other weapons.
Sarge had taken charge of the whole group but looked to me for inspiration or orders. At this point I thought it might be a bad idea to just attempt a head long rush into the warehouse compound.
"We need to know how many guys are in that warehouse!" I told Sarge and he nodded. He turned and went back to one of the other trucks, opening a big metal box. Three other men helped him pull out two objects which he brought back to where I was.
It was a small helicopter-type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, apparently we had planned ahead. So I watched as a monitor was put on the flat bed of one of the trucks and the UAV was readied for launch.
Every once in a while we heard a shot or two from the warehouse but our guys rarely returned fire. They did however keep a close watch all around our position for enemy activity. It seemed as if all of the enemies were inside the warehouse, but we had to be prepared for anything.
One of the men had a rifle with a large scope and I went up to where he was standing. "Do you have any experience with that thing?" I asked. The man smiled and answered "Oh yes, I spent a few years as a sniper in the Army".
I nodded. "I want you to find a spot to get some of those guys on that rooftop. Wait until I'm ready though". He took off, seeming very enthusiastic about the idea. The UAV was just lifting off the ground, it was soon flying at an altitude of a thousand feet and was hovering somewhere over the warehouse.
I looked at the monitor, it was all blue with red spots. Sarge told me this was a thermal image of the warehouse, the red spots were most likely people. The operator of the UAV told me it looked like there were maybe fifteen to twenty inside and on top of the building.
We could do this. It would definitely not be a suicidal frontal assault but a more complex strategy. First thing, though, was we had to announce our presence officially. This idea came straight from the top, and a bull horn would come in handy.
"Attention hostile force!" Sarge yelled into the bullhorn, I supposed he didn't really need it with those pipes. "This is the First Expedition Unit under orders from the President of the United Citizens Council. We are ordering you to stand down and to comply with orders or we will be forced to attack".
When he started I could see three heads stand a bit taller on the roof, they became closer together. Talking something over? Then one of them disappeared altogether. I watched the monitor and saw a red dot moving, perhaps from the roof to the inside? Was this soldier trying to inform their leader of our orders?
I decided to give them ten minutes, Sarge barked this through the bullhorn. At that point I would free the sniper, his name was Charlie "Jolly" Rodgers, to take out whatever enemies he could see through his scope.
President Stafford needed those large tents and supplies, he was going to use them for the relief work that our no longer exisiting government would do. Hopefully this would build support and loyalty for the United Citizens Council government.
Without these supplies we weren't anything but an uppity group of survivors. Why would anyone follow us? We needed to establish a base of operations and a base of support, we would expand that as much as possible.
Paul had as plan, I'd carry it out because as far as I could tell it would work and no one else had a plan.
We divided the group into 3 teams who would attack the buildings occupants from different directions. The sniper, his name happened to be Charlie "Jolly" Rodgers, had been lying in a field next to a tree for half an hour, he might not have moved at all as far as I can tell.
I heard a noise and a yell, I looked up to see several men exit the warehouse and duck behind a short brick wall. One of them was carrying what looked like an RPG launcher. Rodgers looked at me and I waved the "go for it" signal.
The rest of the guys were trying to find better hiding spots behind the trucks. Sarge led his squad back to the ditch where they laid flat and covered their heads.
The enemy with the rocket propelled grenade launcher stood up and took aim. As soon as his finger moved on the trigger a hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. The RPG went off course and flew high, far to the right of us.
The other enemies scrambled to race back to the building but one of them was also taken out by the handy work of "Jolly" Rodgers.
"Alright, that was our answer. Sarge take you men to the left side of the building, there aren't any windows over there. I want you to be ready to blast your way into that side door by the garbage container. Robinson! I want you to follow this road to the riverside and see if you can't draw their attention." I told the two squad leaders.
The third and fourth squads would be combined for the main assault, which hopefully they'd never see coming. I would be with the main group but I would let George Riley take the lead.
Paul Stafford had thought to put walkie-talkies into the hardened bunker but the radiation levels were still scrambling communications. Although we are assured that levels were low enough to keep from causing us major health problems any time soon. Whatever that means.
Another nice shot from Charlie put down another of the roof dwelling sentries and all 3 groups of soldiers moved faster towards the warehouse.
I was running with the main group and then there was a flash of light and I was standing in the desert. There was an M1A2 tank nearby and an oil well pumping away in the distance. I look behind me and see a small adobe home and other soldiers, one on the ground being treated for wounds. There was a body near the house wearing robes, white with bright red blood stains.
A man, an officer, was yelling at my face saying "Is that clear soldier?"
"No sir! I will not obey that order sir!"
I grab my head and I am back near the warehouse, the others are closer but a few had turned to look at me. A shot rings out from the building and a I see some dirt rise up and a spark on the concrete just a few feet away.
I run to the wall as a couple of soldiers fired into the small second story above the main doors. So much for surprise, but this particular action did not require stealth.
What was that? A memory? Was I getting my memory back, was that one jogged loose because of the combat? I knew this was untrue, there had been no combat in that memory. The conflict had been between me and a superior officer.
I run to the side of the front wall and wave to Sarge, both his group and my main force tied grenades to the doors. Then retreated far enough away to pull a thin string tied to the pin.
I put up all five fingers on both hands as I stood in the corner, then I counted down. Four! Three! Two!
We enter the warehouse and find no one in the smallish administration office. There are two doors to the main warehouse and both of them are wide open. We hear shouts from inside and a few pot shots are taken at us.
Then we hear more shooting, Sarge and his group had already opened fired. Several of our guys went to the doors and began shooting into the cavernous room of the warehouse. The echo inside must have been deafening I told myself.
I could hear Mac Robinson barking orders from the back side of the warehouse and some explosions. The enemy was now engaged from three sides and they seemed very surprised by this. We could see their soldiers peeling off from one area and moving to another. Their movements were confused and gave us opportunities to pick them off.
The warehouse was full of pallets stacked atop each other, four stacks together making hut-sized blocks. I reckoned there were fifty of these blocks, probably two hundred pallets.
Several of my group moved left and scrambled up the metal stairs to the roof, they found four dead enemy. They came right back down firing as they came, signalling it as clear. Halfway up the stairs had been the door to the area above the office, with the window that had been used by their own version of a sniper- who missed me at twenty yards.
We moved forward between the first row of blocks, the enemy had backed themselves against one wall of the warehouse. The three groups were closing in on them, I could sense they were frightened. These were not trained soldiers, not veterans, they were scared survivors who had banded together.
I found Jorge Avila beside me, he just smiled. "There's no door where they are, is there?" I asked, not trusting my faulty memory.
"No, sir, just a cinderblock wall" he answered.
Several enemy troops then rose up away from behind a few pallets, away from their main huddled comrades. They managed to get off some shots before our guys forced them down. A couple of grenades were thrown over the pallets, the explosion left a mess of their bravest soldiers.
Then Sarge picked up his bullhorn and told the remaining enemy soldiers "Surrender now. This is the last chance if you want to live through this mess!".
Now that we were close enough to get a better view of them, we could see that they were a ragtag force. A couple of acne-faced teenagers, an old man with a white beard a fatter man heading into middle-age who might have ran a bait shop before the attack.
Compared to the fools were saw sitting on lawns, picking their way through rubble for worthless trinkets these people were at least trying to survive. These were more likely to become good citizens for the United Citizens Council.
Thankfully they decided to surrender, they were scared and had no idea who we were. Sarge took their guns away and put them to work loading supplies onto the trucks. The five remaining trucks were soon parked at the loading docks being filled with tents, MRE's, generators and other items.
The nine survivors we had faced would be brought back for Paul to question and push his idea of citizenship upon. Some of them were likely to join, they obviously desired some social structure or they wouldn't have joined their little militia.
Before we climbed back into the trucks Sarge called me over and told me he had been talking to one of the militia guys. "He told me they were going to trade the warehouse contents to the New League. That this New League is trying to form a government led by a guy named Jonah. Its apparently based north of the main city, maybe 14 miles from here".
President Paul Stafford would not like this one bit, the idea of a competitive government being formed would upset him.
...............
Soon the large tents were being erected in a large field that used to be a public park. Generators were used to pump water from a tributary of the river and to operate the purification machines to produce clean water.
President Paul Stafford gave several speeches to different groups that day. Very few refused to support the new government, but Paul knew real loyalty built slowly. Meals were distributed, first aid administered and plans for "rebuilding" discussed with the new citizens.
After the first speech I couldn't bear to watch another, I returned to where the trucks were parked. Sarge was examining and cleaning some of the weapons with a couple of others. He pointed at a new prize. "Russian built-RPG-7. Simple to operate, little training required. I don't know where they got it, but I'm glad to have it".
A massive number of fires were still burning all over the metropolitan area, but our suburban area seemed relatively safe from any developing firestorm. The river was a big part of that, I would guess, but also the berms that been built to protect the major city from floods.
Soon I found myself standing next to Gregory Logan, our Minister of Infrastructure who rides a bicycle. The park had been his choice months ago, during the final stages of planning. Gregory was a fiery red-head in his late thirties and he had been very worried about this New League.
President Paul had sent a few operatives to find and learn about this New League and their 'government'. He said for them to have been formed so quickly, they must have also planned it before the attack, like we did.
I closed my eyes, I had one of those quick passing headaches that were just a minor annoyance. I saw that loud-mouthed officer yelling at me, Pike... his name had been Pike. We had been in Iraq I think, he wanted me to do something illegal, immoral? I couldn't recall anything important, but it seemed somehow important.
Soon I was sitting at a picnic table along with Paul and Gregory, they were discussing a second relief station in another area. Keep spreading the United Citizens territory, re-establish civilization, check the growth of lawlessness and any possible tyrannies.
"Thomas? Whats on your mind?" Paul asked looking in my direction with a concerned look on his face. I probably looked far away and in reality I had been dwelling on that officer and Iraq and what it had been all about. I just smiled and shrugged, "Not much, setting up relief tents isn't really a military matter is it?"
"Since you're the department thats got some staff, we'll need you guys to haul the supplies and help set up the tents and keep law and order when the mobs descend upon the camps for food and water." He said, he had everything planned out and nearly every angle thought out. Murphy's law was still gonna bite us in the butt though, it always did.
There were literally hundreds of people milling around the tents, getting clean water for drinking and bathing. President Paul told us it would take time for the situation to really sink in. The United States was gone, it was history and they now had to do what was necessary to survive.
It had already been a few days since the devastation struck but the United Citizens Council had not wasted any time. The Minister for Agriculture had already taken a truck and some of our volunteer soldiers and established a small poultry operation from the remains of a larger one.
The remains of backyard gardens, most of them ravaged by panicked and hungry survivors had yielded replantings and seed and other good things. They were working to feed as many people as possible, but armed guards were needed to keep them from being destroyed.
Replanting peach, plum, apple and other tree's from where they had been found took hours at a time. They planned to make an 18 acre park into a real farm, they would have use of pumps and generators as long as the gasoline lasted.
Some SUV's joined our fleet of trucks, they had somehow gotten them start reliably without most of the electronics. However few of the guages on the dashboard worked and the lights would have to be connected right to the battery.
Finding the fuel was a bigger pain than was thought before hand, the underground tanks invariably had exploded. The source of many of the blazes that were still burning closer to the city. Teams were out searching for possible fuel sources but the known supply was dwindling quickly.
All of this was quite impressive to me but Paul was a hard man to please, he thought we were woefully behind where we should be. He was also mentally competing with the New League, of which we knew next to nothing. He mentally had them being set up by government as a large well-resourced operation, his big opponent.
I thought he was overdoing this idea but it would be worse if we underestimated the New League, whatever it turned out to be.