Survivialist Fiction. Shake, Rattle, and Roll! Prologue-Chapter 11

[ClanWolf]

Well, here’s the start of a story that I hope that you will like. I’ll be slow to post chapters. Its my first story, so bear with me.

Please note; this is not a racist story! It isn’t a turner dairies or something for Stormfront. It is a tale of how things fall apart and how the bad decisions people are making right now, will come back on them. If you think Patriots was too religious, then I would suggest skipping this story.

Please enjoy.
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Book 1: Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Prologue: The Telling

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Sunday. Sept. 19th
In the Year of Our Lord, 2060
Fort Detroit, Michigan
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He sat in the wheelchair, scratching at his old uniform, looking out the window at the squads of soldiers moving around the parade grounds getting ready for him and the others. He was to be the main speaker at this rally. Being one of the few that were still alive that actually remembered, what it was like before, in the Insane Years. And with having so few years left too.

“Dang uniform itches, I hate wool!” He said to Thor and Asgard, his black and tan Dobermans, which went with him almost everywhere. Dang good bodyguards too!

Yes, today was the day he remembered. 50 years ago the world and America changed for ever. Madrid had happened. And he had been 45 at the time, now at a 95, he was still amazed that he had lived through it intact. Though his knees had finally given out. 50 years of disasters, wars, the Gansu Plague, and near extinction of his kind. And now, we are going to celebrate it, he thought sadly. So many dead and gone, family and friends, for decades now.


But really, they where right. DVDs, old videos, music CDs and videos, and books, and the few remaining from that time, had shown them an America that was inconceivable to them. A country full of people that only cared about what was in it for them. A people with no honor, no morals or ethics, and with no dignity. People reducing themselves to such levels of immorality and filth that it had made the Devil dance with glee. A culture obsessed with sex and personal pleasure. A nation that killed its own children for the sake of convince. All of it done in the name of “personnel freedom”. And they had the gull to call themselves a Christian nation!

No wonder they called it the Insane Years. And where glad they had been spared living in it.

The door to the room open and Field Nurse 1st Lt. Rachel Jackson ( 25, five foot five, 125 pounds, blue eyes and red hair), one of his grandchildren, came in.

“Are you OK, Max? I knocked twice, but I guess you didn’t hear me?”

“I’m OK Rachel; I was just lost in thought like I get sometimes.”

“Good, we don’t want to be losing you yet, Max”

“I’ll go when God decides its time, Rachel; I don’t have any say in the matter.”

“Amen to that, Max. Well, I’m here to wheel you over to the review stand. With an honor guard of the best warriors of our Clan, of course. Wouldn’t be right for a retired Confederate Lt. General, Founder of Clan Wolf, General of the Forces of the Northern American Catholic Republic, Hero of Detroit, so on and so forth, not to have one. She said, giving him a wink.

Max groaned. “They not really going to mentioned all that and the rest, are they?”

“I’m sure that they will, given that it’s the 50th anniversary of Madrid. And all that has happened in that time. Some of which, you helped make happened. Your one of the few that was alive during the Insane Years; lived through Madrid and all the rest that happened. Your living history to everyone in the Confederated Republics of America, Max. I can’t even believe what I have learned from you! To have seen it all, must have been like; seeing Rome fall. But because of you and the others, you brought America back. A new and totally improved one.” She said with all seriousness.

“But, what I did, what we did, did it really make it better or different? Max asked. “We have, just last year, finally stopped being at war, almost 50 years of war, in one form or another. 100s of millions dead, 10s of millions more made refugees in strange lands. Genocide on a grand scale that hasn’t ever been seen since Stalin, Mao or Hitler. And I’m a hero?”

Rachel sighed. She hated it when Max doubted himself like this. He would barely talk for weeks now. Well, not this time! She was his blood and of his line, and seemed to have some of his temper. She wasn’t going to let him get away with this now, not today and not with the Telling in a few days!

“General of the Republic Maxmilian Joseph De La Salle! That will be quite enough of that! (She knew how much he hated the titles he earned.) She saw some of the fire come back in his eyes at that! That’s right Max, get fired up!

“You and the others are not some new Hilters! You didn’t start the Race War of the Americas! Those damned Communists did, so did the Black Muslims and gangs, the Islamic Fascists, and those Atazan nut jobs. So did the race baiters. They were the ones, along with the old Federal government and the lackey state governors that took advantage of Madrid! So did Mexico and the rest of Latin America. They attack you, us, you didn’t start it. So stop acting like you just started killing those poor innocents, as if! They decided that wiping out every last man, women, and child of their enemies was the way to achieve victory. I’ve read the books and seen the movies and heard the music that was being made. What did those Blacks and Latinos think was going to happen? That the Whites in America would just roll over and die like those Euro trash did?”

“Yes, they did. And so did I. There wasn’t any doubt that whites in America would even have a prayer of making it. It just seemed like we gave up.”

“Well, that shows how wrong you all were! The flag of the Confederacy now fly’s from the North Pole to Iceland to the Cape of Good Hope to Western Valhalla. We are the ones renaming whole countries! Well, us and China. And soon our entire Clan will be leaving North America for our new home in South America. The New Vatican is now here and the Church and the Holy Father are safe, since Europe died and the Muslims won. We are a country of 75 million strong and the only country that is a rival to China. And they’ll be busy with the empty lands of Asia and Russia for decades to come. You did what had to be done. And you did it with a heavy heart and were never glad with what you had to do. You made sure that we didn’t become a bunch of Nazis or Kluckers. You and the others made sure there were no death camps, death squads, or mass graves!”

“You and the others brought the greatest country on the face of the Earth back from the grave it so richly deserved. You gave it and us a chance to be great once again and I thank the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Mother, for all you did for us, Grandfather. Now, let the rest of the Clan and the Republics of the Confederacy honor you and the others for what you did. And be proud of what you have done!” She said, slightly choked up about it. Boy, had she got her engine going!

She saw Max looking at her with his mouth hanging open and a slight shocked look on his face.

“You surely are one of mine, Rachel! But you’re right. What’s done is done. Can’t change it even if I wanted to. It’s probably just “Catholic Guilt”. He said laughing a little at the old joke. “I just wish Hanse was here, but I know he's busy getting the area secure for our move to old Argentina.”

“We’ll I’m glad to see your mood improve, we don’t want an old sour puss on the review stand now do we?” Rachel asked.

Before he could answer her, there was three knocks on the door. Thor and Asgard turned toward the door and were ready. Rachel gave them a wink and went to the door and opened it. With her hand on her sidearm. There stood a Clan Warrior in his battle gear with a MK1 (AK47) assault rifle with a grenade launcher. Class uniforms were a thing that his Clan Warriors never wore, nor was one even to be had.

“Lt. Jackson, the Generals honor guard is ready.” He said.

“Alright, Captain Carter, I bring the General along in a moment.”

“Thank you, Lt. Jackson. We’ll be ready”

“Oh, Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Did the Colonel O’Neal of the Second Great Republic of Texas Defense Force make it? I heard that the DC-10 that was bringing the representatives from Texas was having some trouble.”

“As a matter of fact, I did see those Texans, rowdy bunch like always, just about a half an hour ago, along with some of the Free Desert State members and some of those Idaho Free Republicans. Why?”

“The General and Colonel O’Neal are old friends; I just wanted to be sure that he was here, safe and sound. I’ll get the General.” She said saluting.

Turning from the door, “Well, Max, I guess it time.”

“Looks like it, wheel me out Granddaughter, my public awaits! He saw the look of confusion on her face. “Sorry, an old saying.”

“OK, you two, STAY!” Rachel commanded. Thor and Asgard both had unhappy faces. They wanted to be with their master. Besides, there was food out there!
******

It had been a long day of events, parades, meals, and speeches. People he had never met before asking to shake his hand, get his autograph, or have their picture taken with him.

Confederate Soldiers, Clan Warriors, representatives of various Republics and the Confederacy, plain citizens, and reporters. All asking him questions. He sat on the stage watching both Clan and Confederate troop’s parade by. Infantry, artillery, cavalry units along with his own Wolf Dragoons, and a company of M1 tanks (T34’s). The appearance of the newly built P-38 Mustangs and B-29s flying overhead had been a blast. He just regretted that he would never be able to fly one.

At 6:09 p.m. there was a moment of silence to thank God for starting the world anew and for all those that had died.

When it started to get around 10 p.m., Rachel signaled Captain Carter that Max had had enough. Captain Carter informed Confederate Major General Harry Maybourne that the General was tired and would be returning home now. General Maybourne made the announcement that the Max would now be leaving and would be heading home to the Thumb.

Captain Carter along with the rest of the honor guard formed up around the General and with Rachel pushing his wheelchair, headed for the runway and the awaiting DC-10 to take him home. Fuel was still in very short supply, it was still reserved for military and farm production use. As he was being wheeled away he could hear them cheering him.

******
Sept 24, 2060
Keep of Clan Wolf
North of Sandusky, Michigan

Max was sitting in his chair next to the wood stove in one of the kitchens, dozing off, when he felt someone tugged at his sleeve. Thor and Asgard were at the feet of their master, as always.

“Grandpa Max?” He heard. “Grandpa Max!”

“What!?!” He looked around and saw who was pulling on his sleeve. Little Paul, blue eyed and blond hair, 10 years old and five foot tall already, was standing there looking wide eyed at his “Grandpa” Max. “Well what do you want, little warrior?” That kid is going to be a big man someday, he thought.

“Its time, Grandpa Max! You’re going to do the Telling of the Story! Of Madrid, the wars, the Clan! Of her! You promised! ” Paul said in that tone that children get when reminding older people about something they promised. That sure hadn’t changed!

“Did I? What day is this? Who are you again?”

Paul just crossed his arms and looked at him. Oh, yes. He surely was Rachel’s boy! Asgard regarded him with one eye too.

“Is everyone here?”

“Yes, Grandpa Max, in the great hall. Mother told me to get you over there now!”

“Well than help me wheel myself in there.” He said. It was just down the hall. Paul just stepped behind Max’s chair and started pushing him done the hall with no complaints or moans of displeasure. Thor and Asgard followed at a slow pace, here was safe, nothing smelled wrong. When he got to the end of the hall, two of the older boys, he just couldn’t remember their names; open the massive steel doors with the massive Wolf head symbol in the center, going to the great hall.

The great hall looked like something out of a Viking or one of the Lords of the Ring movie. Lots of wood and stone, huge fire place, and large long wood tables and stone walls 4 feet thick! And 20 ft. underground.

Hell of a bomb shelter, he thought to himself. Shame we are going to leave it. But the welfare of the Clan came first.

War trophies, weapons, flags, crucifixes, pictures and paintings hanged from the walls. But since today was the Telling of the Story, the tables had been moved to the walls, and skins and wool blankets cover the floor. Children and young adults, which were of his blood line, adopted, or married into it, along with their dogs, sat on the floor. Waiting to hear how it all happened, from him.

Against the walls, on the other side of the great hall sat the parents of the children and the members of his Clan honor guard from the a couple days ago. Must be Rachel’s doing, he thought. Captain Carter must have impressed her. Good enough for me.

He could see Captain Carter and his men were excited to be able to hear the Telling from him, few outside the family and some Clan history scholars, had ever heard him speak about it.

Paul wheeled him over by the fireplace and went back to sit with his brothers and sisters, who were already munching on a big bowl of popcorn and drinking homemade root beer, with a smile from his mother. Thor and Asgard took their place at his feet. The warmth of the fire making them fall asleep.

“Well, I guess I know why you’re all gathered here. So I shall begin the Telling. Better get comfy, this will take a few days to tell.”

“And so it begins, with Madrid, Sept.19th, 6:09 p.m., In the Year of Our Lord 2010…..”

[ClanWolf]

Dear Readers, We seemed to have made a slight miscalculation and the Time/Space vortex has let us arrive a couple weeks early and on the other side of the world. Please stand by, while our Techs make corrections. Thank You!


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Book 1: Shake, Rattle, and Roll!


Chapter 1
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Friday, August 27
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
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Beijing, Peoples Republic of China
Old industrial district
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Colonel Xie, (62 years old, five foot five, slight of build, bald) Director of the Scientific Investigation Committee, slowly got up from his desk and grabbed his cane and left his office.

“I’m going to the archives.” he told his assistant, Captain Zhao. As he did everyday around this time.

Captain Zhao felt sorry for the old Colonel, one of the relics left over from the old days like this Committee. The SIC was formed back in 1970 by personal order of Mao himself. Tasked officially with the mission of finding out everything the West knew of aliens and UFOs.

SICs true and secret task was investigating any new or strange scientific theories. And what had been achieved was beyond their wildest dreams. Captain Xie had gain great favor in 1992 when he found a Russian scientist, living in the Czech Republic, which had some strange ideas about earthquake predications.

The Russians had already decided that Mikhail Dermiskvoa, the scientist, was mad as could be and no longer had any interest in the man. Xie, along with a few men, had kidnapped Dermiskvoa and destroyed the entire block where his apartment had been with a natural gas explosion. Just to be sure that the Russians wouldn’t miss the man.

Mikhail Dermiskvoa was more than willing to share his ideas with his captors. Everyone had treated him like he was crazy, in Russia and the Czech Republic, even the Americans. The PRC was giving him a chance to actually test his theories and he was grateful. Progress was slow till 1994 when through contacts in the White House, SIC had got its hands on a supercomputer. An older model, but better than anything they had. Without the supercomputer nothing would have been accomplished. By the year 1996, Dermiskvoa was able to predict earthquakes and their magnitude with a 50% accuracy rate within a ten year lead time. And a 100% rate with a three years or less.

There had a celebration at the lab one night after a year of successful predictions. Now, Dermiskvoa thought, the world would be safe from earthquakes and my name will live on. Forever!

KABOOM!

Actually, they had received two supercomputers.


What a tragedy, Xinhua New China News Agency, Cankao Ziliao had written. The night before, the Peoples Earthquake Research Center #3 had a fatal gas leak that caused an explosion and killed everyone inside. China’s research into earthquakes would be set back years. A generous West sent computers, equipment, and money to help the poor Chinese to get back on track.

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Captain Zhao watched the old Colonel headed down the stairs to the archives. He would just sit down there, reading old reports for hours, reliving his glory days in SIC. Well, saying “glory days” was being generous. They never, officially, did find out if the West had UFOs. Now SIC had twenty people that basically read books and watched Sci-Fi movies. They wrote reports on what aliens might be like and how to talk to them.

Zhao thought of this as such a waste of time and one of the older hands had once told him that every government on earth had such a group like theirs.

“What a waste.” Zhao muttered as he return to writing his report.
******

“What a waste.” Xie heard the Captain mutter as he headed down the stairs. The Captain was right, normally it would be. But not for keeping prying eyes busy looking somewhere else and not giving SIC a second thought. To any other government, SIC looked like one of a million other departments that governments around the world had that just never died.

As Xie hobbled his way down the stairs to the archive room, he thought that Captain Zhao was exactly where he was the most use. Under torture, he would never be able to tell anyone, anything about SIC. For in his mind nothing ever happen here.

As he finally hobbled to the end of the stairs, he headed straight to his private office in the back. There, he would sit for hours reading reports and do nothing else for the Peoples Republic.

Or so anyone thought when they walked by.

As he entered his office he went straight to the back file cabinets that held his old reports. He wanted the second file cabinet. He had to slide the file cabinets aside, (They are the kind that roll together.) difficult as it was for a man in his condition. As he stepped in the middle of the cabinets, he stood still, looking at a picture of Stalin. With no warning, the wall slide down into the floor and Xie walk out from the opening. Xie said nothing to Xie as he stepped through the opening and started down the steps. The wall rose back up into place and Xie took a file and went to his desk and started reading about the old days. Same as every other day.

As Xie walked down the steps, he slowly stood up straighter and no longer used his cane. He descended down the stairs till he came to an old section of civil defense tunnels that crisscross under all Chinese cities. Turning left at the first intersection he then turned right, then left, and on and on he went for an hour. Making sure that he wasn’t be followed through the labyrinth of tunnels. He finally came to a steel door that looked like it had been there for a hundred years. He stood still once more and the door unlocked itself. He opened the door and stepped into a freight elevator that serviced a department store above. As he waited the elevator descended down another three hundred feet to an old civil defense headquarters that had officially been destroyed by flooding.

As he stepped through the new steel door he was greeted by the sight of two soldiers of the Central Security Regiment; also known as the 8341 Unit, pointing P90s at him. They had been officially disbanded after arresting the “Gang of Four.” Now they served as the military arm of SIC.

“Stand still.” He was commanded by one of the men.

A women than came through a side door with a scanning device and pressed the scanner against the area of his lower left lumbar area. The scanner chirped and the women nodded “yes” to the guards and left without saying a word.

The guards snapped to attention and saluted.

Xie just nodded to them as he stepped through the door behind them. An elevator that went down another 100ft waited for him. His staff and personnel bodyguards awaited him too.

“So Colonel Ma, how goes Plan M?”

“Everything is going according to the time schedule for Plan M, Comrade General. The Sword of Allah has received the barrels of the genetically engineered Black Plague, from the Russian; General Kotov. We have allowed them to travel in country with only the usual problems. Our people have been guiding them ever step of the way and they have no clue. When they reach their hideout in the western province of Gansu, around September 1st, a company of our best soldiers will be waiting for them. Then, as planned, the bio weapon will be loaded into tanker trucks that contain a nutrient solution that will allow the bacteria to grow. Then the tanker trucks will be driven to the four corners of China. Releasing the bio weapon as they go.”


“Excellent work, Comrade! Everything is coming together perfectly. And President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is he still on board?” Ask Xie.

“Yes, Comrade General. He received his goods from Cuba two days ago. He still thinks the Russians are behind this.”

“The hackers?”

“Paid off and the viruses have been planted.”

“And nothing can be traced to us?”

“Not with the time that is left. And after? I suppose if they had a few years, but that will never happen. The chaos will see to that. China will look the part of the victim of terrorism, suffering like everyone else.”


As he exited the elevator, Xie entered into the main command bunker. From here he would watch the bio weapon as it spread through China and the rest of Asia. China had no other choice. There were just too many people in China. And every computer model had shown that without more land and resources, China would fall apart in just a few more years and the Revolution would die. Just like it had in Russia. That could not be allowed! Not when they were just starting to finally be in a position to become the leading power in the world.

And war wasn’t the answer either. The bulk of the People’s Army & Navy were still stuck in the 1950’s. They only had a few hundred nukes and a handful of ICBM’s. A nuclear war with Russia or the U.S. would just end in their destruction. And they would have no chance to defeat the Americans if they went the route of conventional warfare. They knew for a fact their forces would be smashed. The Iraq War had driven home that point! Soviet era weapons were no match for the modern American military. So, Plan M had come to pass. Of course, without the help of a group of former KGB and other loyal Soviets, Plan M would have never been possible.
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In 1999 at a party at the Russian Embassy, Xie had been approached by General Kotov (Who looked the typical Russian General; Fat, graying black hair, and wearing glasses). He had taken Xie to a special vault room in the basement so they could talk without being overheard. Every embassy had such a room. There Kotov had explained to Xie that they knew of SIC and what Dermiskvoa had finally been able to achieve. That is why they let Xie have him.

Kotov explained that he belonged to a group of Soviets that were still loyal to the Revolution. They had hoped that the Russian people would turn back to them after the chaos that Russia was going through. Instead they had turn to the worst vices the West had to offer. They leaders were corrupt criminals that cared nothing for Mother Russia. Their women were turning into whores and the workers were being left to starve. The Revolution was dead in Russia. Only a couple hundred thousand still truly believed.

“So what do you want from me?” Xie asked.

“Nothing. There is nothing you can do. It is what we can do for you, Colonel Xie. There will be two ships leaving Vladivostok in three days. Everything that you will need will be on these two ships. Plans and blueprints for everything the Soviet Union ever built, stole, or was thinking of building. Our entire worldwide network of contacts in all governments and terrorist groups. All of our research on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. And with a small sample of each, so that you can reproduce more of anything you need.

And everything that we know of the worlds military and intelligence agencies and their agents.”

“And you wish nothing in return for all this?” Xie asked, somewhat unbelieving.

“Only that you bring back the Revolution to the world. And leave us our small corner of it, of course. See for yourself what are on the ships, then if you are convinced, leave an e-mail at this address. Ask for a date with Marie and I get back to you. If you need anything, just ask.”
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[ClanWolf]

The genetically modified bio weapon, a new form of the Black Plague would kill anywhere from 65-70% of the population. With another 10-15% loss due to the chaos and other diseases. Of course, nothing was being left to chance. The antidote for the Plague would be administered to people that would be needed to rebuild. The Avian Flu vaccine for H5N1 was the perfect cover for making sure that selected parts of the population would survive. In other Asian countries, the Plague would get a helping hand from the 8341 Unit.

With a population around 300-350 million, the Peoples Republic of China could start anew once again. China then would, in the guise of helping their neighbors, invade them and enslave the remaining populations till they were of no longer of any use. Then, they would be destroyed when Chinese colonists were ready to replace them. Their land, resources, and factories would belong to China. And the Peoples Republic of China would be on the path to bring Communism back to the world.


And the Islamic terrorists would be the ones blamed for it, and the Russians. Allowing their entire supply of engineered plague to fall into the hands of terrorists; how stupid of them. Xie thought. History would judge the greedy Russian capitalists harshly. And it would show that capitalism was a deadly failure. Xie knew that it would since China would be writing it.

But the best part of the plan, in Xie’s mind, was what they had planned for Japan. Through contacts in the world wide terrorist network, they were able to sell to the Japanese Red Army, several canisters of the bio weapon. They thought it was Sarin gas, those fools. They wanted the gas to use it to disrupt the coming elections for Prime Minister and his cabinet. Japs killing Japs. Xie dreamed for a moment. Revenge would be sweet. We will occupy Japan and kill any that remain, he thought. There would be no Japanese slaves, only death. Their filthy race would be gone forever. His family had barely survived the invasion by Japan, back in WW2. His grandmother had been taken away to a “Joy Battalion” and was never seen again.

And the biggest part of the plan wasn’t the release of the bio weapon. It was an earthquake that would change the world forever. It was finally going to happen in the U.S. The Big One that they dreaded for so long was coming. Except, they were expecting it to happen in the wrong place. The New Madrid Fault Line was going to blow, all of it, and all the other fault lines in the area also. The calculations predicted a super quake, somewhere above 9 on the Richter scale. The entire eastern part of the United States would feel its effect. With that massive destruction of the quake, the U.S. would be too busy to care about Asia. And if the quake wasn’t bad enough, there would already be the economic chaos of losing all the goods that came from Asia. Of course, there would also be economic and disease problems from the quake itself. That should be enough to bring the Americans to their knees! If all that didn’t do it, the plague would somehow find its ways there.

Eventually.


“I will kill most of Asia starting Sept. 1st, and America will start to die on the 19th. Communism will be reborn and a true workers paradise will reign. Forever!” Thought Xie.

******
FACT NUGGET

8341 Unit - Central Security Regiment
The Beijing-based Central Security Regiment, also known as the 8341 Unit, was an important PLA law enforcement element. It was responsible over the years for the personal security of Mao Zedong and other party and state leaders. More than a bodyguard force, it also operated a nationwide intelligence network to uncover plots against Mao or any incipient threat to the leadership. The unit reportedly was deeply involved in undercover activities, discovering electronic listening devices in Mao's office and performing surveillance of his rivals. The 8341 Unit participated in the late 1976 arrest of the Gang of Four, but it reportedly was deactivated soon after that event.

FROM: http://www.fas.org/index.html
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FACT NUGGET

plague

(plag) [ME. calamity] 1. Any widespread contagious disease associated with a high death rate.

2. A highly fatal disease caused by Yersinia pestis ( previously classed as Pasteurella pestis) infection. This disease is characterized by high fever, restlessness, confusion, prostration, delirium, shock, and coma. Streptomycin, gentamicin, tertracyclines, fluroquinolones, and chloramphenicol are effective in treating the plague. In the U.S., about 15 cases of plague are reported annually.

Pneumonic p. A highly virulent form of plague spread from person to person by respiratory secretions. It occurs as a sequela (condition) of bubonic plague or as a primary infection.

FROM: Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Edition 19

[ClanWolf]

Chapter 2
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“It’s just, the life you know, all this stuff you take for granted? Its not going to last.” John Connor, Terminator 3; Rise of the Machines

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Sunday, Sept.19th; 5:49 p.m.
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
United States of America
Thumb Area of the State of Michigan
Survivalist Homestead of Max De La Salle
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“Is everything OK, Max?” Asked his mother(65 years old, five foot two, 175 pounds, graying blond haired and blue eyes, with a chubby build), Rachel. Max was busy at his computer in his office slash den. She looked around and always thought it was such a mans room. Dark wood paneling on the walls. Leather chairs. Real swords and spears, rifles and pistols, were on one of the walls. Called it his “Wall of Steel”. Pictures of Burt Gummer and John Wayne abound. Books lined another wall from floor to ceiling. And at his work space, a computer from emachines, a high speed printer, a Freeplay short-wave radio, a flat screen TV, PS2 and an Xbox 360. Also a monitor for the security cameras that he had around the property. There were those custom flags that he had made from one of his games, Battle- something was all she could recall. All had a wolf head symbol on them.


“Yeah, Mom. The shelter is ready if we have to use it, in case the Gansu Plague hits here in the States. It might not, you know, the CDC seems to have caught any carriers before they could spread it here. But I do take that with a large grain of salt. Wouldn’t be the first time the Feds lied about something major. It would be nice if they would close the borders with Mexico, but don’t hold your breath. I’ve checked all the filters and we can generate positive pressure in the shelter. I have all the sprayers filled so that we can make a burn area around the house and the animal’s pens. The sprayers on the ATV are filled with insecticide that I mixed at full strength. If the plague pops up anywhere in Michigan, we’ll be ready. So, everything should be fine. For now. ” Replied Maxmilian Joseph De La Salle. (45, six foot one, 280 pounds, stocky build, brown hair and blue eyes.)

“Did you get anymore emails from people wanting to come here?”

“No, nothing lately.” He had a few people he knew from the different survivalist forums asked if he had any room for them. Mostly new guys that didn’t have anything. Just what he needed!

“What about your work? Did anything come in the mail today?”

Max was a Medical Transcriptionist and he worked from home. (Thanks to a certain lady at Frugals that turned him on to it.) He had once owned a lawn & landscaping service, done fairly well, but gave it up to be able to move to a more rural location.

“No, not since the CDC shut down all the postal and delivery services in the country. I don’t think anything will come for a while, if ever. Not with the way the economy is going.”

“Do you think the Stock market will do badly again tomorrow?”

“I can’t see how it can’t. It lost another 33%, on Friday, before the computers shut down all trading. It has been doing that every day since September 1st, when China closed their borders. The President keeps ordering those one or two day ‘holiday’s’ for the market every time it does that. He’s trying to give the Feds some time to react. Lot of good that’s done.”

“It always seems to be losing something like that all the time now. Is it ever going to stop, Max?”

“I can’t see how. With no goods coming from China, Japan, and the rest of Asia. Oil is only trickling in with all the containment measures in place. Hell, we can’t keep the few factories running in the States and there’s almost nothing left to buy in the stores. No one realized just many goods and raw materials came from outside the country. Wal-mart is out of business and so are a lot of others, not just the big box stores. Heck, just last week we saw the Navy dumping cargo containers from Asia into the ocean, as part of the containment plan that the CDC had. Everything that was in those tens of thousands of containers is lost. It also seems that a lot of companies were selling parts that said ‘Made in the USA’ that really weren’t. And now it’s biting us hard in the butt! And on top of that, we almost don’t have anyone to sell our goods to, if we had any left to sell.”

“What will we do? What will you do with no work? Will we lose the farm to the government?”

“No, the farm’s safe. We still have plenty of cash, from selling the old house in the suburbs, enough for the next 10 years at the current rate. As long as they don’t declare the current dollar invalid. We have enough food stocks for over ten years, the gardens, the animals, and all of our other supplies. And the couple tons of junk I’ve collected over the years, thanks to being a packrat and a dumpster diver. As for me, I guess I’ll be a full-time farmer if this still is going on next spring. There’s nothing else much we can do at this point. Thank God, I didn’t have to fight the crowds buying stuff at the last minute like so many others! Don’t worry Mom; we have been getting ready for something for the last 25 years. We have a very good set up here. I just wish there was more than the two of us.”

“What about gas? It’s up to $9.35!”

“Mom, it will be all right. We don’t have anywhere to go for now. We’re going to sit tight and wait this out for as long as we have to. No use going anywhere and catching this plague. Besides we have plenty of gas and diesel for our needs.”

“What about church? You said we couldn’t go today, because of the cost of gas and the plague. When are we going back to St. Josephs?

“We’re not going to be able to go there for a while, Mom. Maybe never, I don’t know. We have the Mass on DVD and the Masses we recorded from EWTN. We have to just watch those and try to get to St. Josephs when or if things settle down again and we’re sure the plague isn’t in the country. We have to be careful and not do something that gets us killed. We’ll just pray that God forgives us for not going and make sure that we get to Confession as soon as we can. And don’t even suggest going to the Church in Bad Axe. I sure as hell not going to step one foot into any of those ‘modern’ Catholic Churches.” Max said with some heat.

Max knew that his mother already knew all this and the plans that he had laid out. She just needed some reassurance and he was more than happy to do it for her. Even though they’d both had been preparing for something to happen for a long time, it was still a major shock to her. Heck, it was to him too! He just made sure to keep her as busy as he could, though that wasn’t hard with the last of the garden and orchard produce needing to be canned and dried.


She had never had been in the greatest of health and having surgery after he was born, keeping him an only child. So he had always kept an eye on her and if she pushed herself too hard, he would remind her to take a break and rest. And when she push herself, like she had been since this started, she would (to be honest) get a bit on the * * * * * y side. Usually because her joints would start hurting badly and the pain would get her going. Max didn’t care when she got like this, he loved his Mother dearly. She was his best friend, after all.

******

The good thing for both of them was that they were both loners. They just found more enjoyment in the immediate family than in others. They both enjoyed staying at home, working, reading, and tending to their homestead. But after all these years it was just the two of them now. His father had died in an auto accident 12 years ago and good riddance. He had been a nasty man; he treated his family like they were strangers trying to steal his money, while he spent it like water on any little whim that hit him. It might not have been so bad, but once he bought something he ignored it and went on to the next buying spree. Trucks and tracker trailers, forklifts and backhoes, and machines of all types. All things that he knew nothing about and left it all to rust away, while his house felled apart around him. And he would accuse them of not helping him and that being the reason way he never made any money. It was always someone else’s fault, not his, that he hadn’t made his millions. And when he died, he left them a stack of bills and a mess that took two years to clean up. Max had learned some valuable lessons from his Father.

Basically, not to do what he had done!

His Grandfather had died back in the 1984. Max’s Grandfather had been his real Father. He taught Max all sort of things. Nothing related to survival. Just everyday living and with running a business. His Grandparents had both held jobs during the Depression in Detroit, and while things were tough, they always had what they need. They had extended family in the area and they all pulled together. Something Max had wished he had, but his cousins were a bunch of thieves and he wanted nothing to do with them.

His Grandfather and him did have one weakness they shared; gadgets. Grandpa loved anything new. Over the years he had run a gas station and garage, a radio and tv repair business, and lastly, a camera shop. And his biggest thrill had been when he bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer back in 1978. They had both worked on that TRS-80 computer together and tried to learn everything about it. They spent hours pouring over manuals together and writing programs for it. Some of the best times he ever had, he had learning with his Grandfather. And thanks to his Grandfather he never felt that he had been “cheated” of not having a father, like so many others did.

Max had started on the road to being a survivalist back in the late 1978 when he attended a conference on survivalism by the CSA(The Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord) in Detroit. He had no idea back then that they were some whacked out racist group. He learned a few things and started reading Shooter’s Survival Guide, Modern Warfare, Soldier of Fortune, and all the others. He started to prepare and hadn’t stopped since then. Tappan, Ragnor, Saxon, and Clayton were his teachers in the craft of being a survivalist. He joined Live Free in 1983 and had attended their training sessions for several years. Even today, he still was proud to call himself a survivalist.

He also got involved with the Militia movement in the 1992, but too many nutcases and turncoats had ruined it. Later after 9/11, the militia had made a small comeback. But it seemed as too many treated it more as a game than being really serious about it. Most of the people he had met would die or surrender once their one case of MRE’s ran out. He still trained with them though, even going to some training camps across the country. And he even stayed in touch with a few of the ones that showed some potential.

******

6:05 p.m.

“Max, I’m going upstairs to get a few things. I let Buddy and JR outside.” Referring to their two Jack Russell’s.

“All right, I’ll just be watching the news for anything new. And take it easy.” Max replied. He knew that she didn’t want to hear the news, it just made her feel depressed.

******

Rachel chuckled a little. Max was always worried about her. She always was a little amused by it. It wasn’t like she had cancer or some such thing. She just would get weak and her joints would really hurt. Nothing to really worry about, she thought, as she slowly climbed the stairs, gripping the rail Max had installed. Max really needed the one thing he would never have; his own family to care for. It was just too bad; he was such a good man. Not prefect, he had his father’s stubborn streak. He also had his grandfather’s laidback attitude too. And he had a fierceness in him that he kept check, most of the time. Till some fool just pushed him too far or offended his sense of right and wrong.

She couldn’t remember how many times she had to come to Max’s schools over the years because of him getting into fights. Most of the time some boy or a group of them thought Max was a push over, because they thought big meant dumb and slow, and would have a go at him. Or worst, some bullies would pick on another kid and Max would beat the snot out of them. He hated that kind of thing.

******

Max sat in his den, half listening to the Channel 5 News out of Flint. He was recording it anyhow and he really wanted to do was download some more files from the net.Who knew how much longer he would be able to afford it. Max could hear the infobabe talking about more bad news from Asia, it seemed like the Plague had spread to some of the islands in Indonesia. Outbreaks were happening in Thailand, the Philippines, and as far as south as New Guinea. Nothing was coming out of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or Vietnam. In Russia, the plague was as far east as the city of Omsk, heading towards the Ural Mountains. And north as far as the port city of Magadan.

It still had not shown up yet in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa.

He started to download another file on steam tractors when he heard the barking. He picked up the remote and hit the mute. Wondering what Buddy and JR must have found, he looked over at the monitor for the security cameras. Boy, were they ever going at it. Couldn’t be a car, the driveway alarm hadn’t gone off and the gate was locked. Neither had the seismic alarms he had on the road. And he couldn’t see them on the remote cameras either. Where were those two knuckleheads? Wait a second, what was that on camera three? There they are, racing to the back of the barn. Man, were they burning rubber! He grabbed up a FRS radio. And head for the great room.

“Mom, I’m going to go see what those two mutts have found. Grab that radio up there so I can let you know what’s up.” He yelled up the stairs as he ran to the great room.

“OK! I can’t see them from up here.” The window of the room she was in faced south, on the front of the house.

[ClanWolf]

He stopped at the gun cabinet in the great room, and grabbed his Mossberg Bullpup and a bandoleer of “000” shells, and head out the back door. The look of the Bullpup shotgun always made people stop dead in their tracks. And he always had his Glock 21 (.45) on his hip along with two spare mags. His farm sat ½ a mile at the end of a dead end dirt road. And the nearest police were in Bad Axe, 25 miles away. As he headed out the door, he saw the clock say 5:07 p.m.

Running out the back door, Max yelled for his two mutts to come. But all he heard was them barking like he never had before. “Man, this better be good.” He muttered as he broke into a dead run for the back of the barn. It only took him a minute to get to the corner. He took a knee and looked quickly around the corner. There was Buddy and JR, running in a circle, barking their heads off.

Well what the hell, he thought. He got up and started to walk over to them and when they saw him and started to howl in fear.

That’s a new one, he thought.

“Hey, you two mutants, what’s the problem?”

Max went to a knee and held out his arms; usually those two would fight to get to him. Now they just howled and shook like they were scared to death of him.

“Come on, come here.” He said. “What’s wrong with yo….”

Suddenly, Max felt strange, he could feel his body starting to shake and his vision was blurry.

“Oh, God! I’m having a heart attack!”

He let himself go to the ground and tried to get the radio off his belt, but he was grabbing at the wrong place on his riggers belt. It felt like an eternity as he laid there trying to get the radio, he tried to make himself say an Act of Contrition. He thought he heard glass breaking.

“Oh, God. Please protect my mother when I’m gone!” He cried out.

Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. And Max notice Buddy and JR where both huddled next to him, whining. He could feel his heart racing, but that was it. No pain or tremors. The strangeness he felt was also gone. He had never felt anything like that before!

“Thank you Holy Trinity and Blessed Mother.” he prayed quickly, so thankful that what ever had happened to him was over.

He looked at his watch; it was 5:12 p.m.

He slowly sat up and hugged the two lunkheads.

“You two all right now?” He asked, still a bit shaky.

Suddenly he was attack by two very eager doggie tongues! “Eck! Stop that you lazy, no good, worthless bums! I don’t need another coating of doggie drool!” He said happily, hugging the both of them.

“Alright that’s enough; let’s tell your mother that you’re OK, hmm?”

They just stayed right next to him, still shaking. He reached for his radio when he noticed that all of the windows in the back of the barn were broken. That must have been the glass I heard breaking, but how? Gunshots? He felt around himself, just to be on the safe side, and didn’t find any blood. Well, he’d figure it out later. He also noticed that every chicken seemed to be outside of their house, running around like crazy. The goats were all huddled in a corner of their pen, their eyes rolling in terror.

Strange happenings, indeed, he thought as he pushed the ‘send’ button on the radio.

“Mom, come in.” He waited. “Mom come in, are you there?” He checked the radio to make sure the settings were right, they were.

“Mom, do you here me?”

Nothing but silence.

Probably nothing, he thought. His mom had the bad habit of pressing the wrong buttons on the radio and screwing up the settings.

“Well, come on you two welfare bums. You can tell her yourselves.” He said as he started back for the house. Both Buddy and JR stayed right next to his feet as walked back to the house. Usually, they would leave him in their dust. What was wrong with these two?

As he came around the front of the barn and could see the back of the house, he saw that all of the windows were busted on the back. Now, what the hell was going on, he thought. Dogs going crazy, I think I’m having a heart attack and busted windows on every building. Tremors too?

A nuke?

He scanned the sky looking for a mushroom cloud and didn’t see anything. He looked east; towards the Tri-city area and then south; towards Port Huron. Nothing. So what the hell was going on here if it’s not a nuke? Asteroid impact?

Something in the back of his mind was nagging him. This sounded somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “I’d better get online and see if anyone knows what is going on.” He thought as he reached the back door and opened it. Buddy and JR bolted inside.

“Stop!” He yelled at them as he saw his gun cabinet laying on the floor and glass everywhere from the door and windows. They both stopped in their tracks. “Come!” Buddy and JR both came to him and sat next to him. He got them in their cages that were next to the back door. As he looked around the great room, he saw a lot of stuff on the floor.

“What in Gods name is going on here?” He said out loud this time.

“Mom! MOM! Can you hear me? MOM!” He yelled.

“MOM!” He said as he head to the kitchen, ignoring the glass.

“MOM!”

As he stepped into the kitchen, he looked at the stairs that went to the second story of the house. And there she was.

“Oh, God. NO!” He yelled.

He ran to her, but didn’t try to move her. She was collapsed across the bottom of the stairs and her head was at an unnatural angle. He took a knee and checked for a pulse, but he knew it was already too late. She had fallen down the stairs and must have broken her neck when she hit the bottom of the stairs.

He could feel she was all ready turning cold.

He couldn’t stay up, he suddenly found himself feeling like all his energy was gone. He fell back on his butt and sat there looking at her. Then he started crying, something he hadn’t done in 26 years since his Grandfather died.

And if someone had been standing there, they would have heard Max saying over and over: Jesus, I Trust In You!

And Someone did hear his prayers.

The clock said 5:15 p.m.


******

FACT NUGGET

Does Animal Behavior Change Before Earthquakes?

Changes in animal behavior before earthquakes have been observed and documented in different parts of the world, most recently in the northern California earthquake of October 17, 1989. It has been recorded that a fish in a high school biology lab in California would flip on its side before some earthquakes. Dogs, cats, snakes, and horses has also been known to behave strangely before earthquakes.

Since behavior is not earthquake specific, change in animal behavior can therefore result from other events, and it is impossible to determine beforehand what factor has caused the change. Also, the behavior is not consistent. Sometimes earthquakes occur with no previous behavior change.

FROM: Center for Earthquake Research and Information- The University of Memphis

http://www.ceri.memphis.edu/public/facts.shtml

[ClanWolf]

Book 1: Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

Chapter 3
******
Monday, Sept.20th
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
The Day after Madrid
Thumb Area of the State of Michigan
Farm of Jacob Fetter
******

Deputy Sharon Wagner, (31, redhead, five foot six, 140 pounds, and decent build) pulled into her cousin’s driveway, just down from a dead-end road that she needed to go down.

There had been a report of a death of an elderly woman and she need to check it out. One of several hundred such accidents reported in the County after yesterday. Seemed that there were a lot of falls due to all that shaking that went on. The ones resulting from death were being investigated and almost all the dead were the elderly. A couple hundred dead, if the stations rumor mill was right. It was taxing the Sheriffs Department to investigate them all. There were only 20 full-time deputies and 10 State Police. And the bodies had to be recovered quickly for burial.

“Just our luck that we’re in the 80s this week.” She muttered.

Someone might have taken advantage of the situation and murder someone, and with the rush to get the bodies recovered somebody might just get away with it. She, like the rest of the Deputies, was to take photos and do a sketch of the accident scene. Unless there was a bullet hole or knife wound, or the ambulance crew noticed something that wasn’t right, they were to let it go. Sharon could just imagine what was happening in the big cities, if it was this bad out here in the sticks.

It had to be an earthquake, but who had ever heard of such a thing in Michigan before? Windows were busted everywhere she went. Antenna’s had either come loose and was down, or they were out of alignment. In Bad Axe itself, all of windows in town had been destroyed and the city police had foot patrols to make sure no one took advantage of the situation. The State Police post’s radio tower had twisted and then felled across the post’s roof. The Sheriff Department was handling the communications need of the State Police for now.

But first, she was going to check up on her cousin and his family, and maybe find out something about the people that lived back there. She knew that her cousin, Jacob Fetter, kept an eye on those people. They had come out of the blue one day and bought the old Stevens farm back in 1998. Jacob had wanted that farm and he was waiting for the owners, the Leonards that lived in Florida, to drop the price further than they already had. No one wanted that house on a dead-end road, even after the additions had been built. Then “those” people came and bought it out from under him and Jacob had never forgiven them for it. And he let the other farmers in the area know it too. The new owners were left to their own devices.

As Sharon step out of her patrol car, her cousin Jacob was waving her over to where he was working on a front-end loader. Jacob (52, six foot, medium build, balding gray-brown hair) owned about 1500 acres that he farmed but he made his real money on renting out heavy construction equipment. Sometimes he even worked the machines himself for extra money during the off season. Since the economic downturn, business had almost completely died off.

“Hey, Sharon. Long time no see. Did your mother want you to come by and check up on me?” He asked.

“Hello, Jacob. Yes, Mother asked me to if I would drop by since you’re the only family that still lives around here. She wanted to make sure you were all right after what happened yesterday. Are Susan and the boys okay?”

“Yes, their fine, just a little shook up about it. Lost all the windows and the TV antenna, but that seems to be all. Thankfully we still have the phones and power. Do you know what’s happened? They‘re saying on 660 that some kind of earthquake had happened.”

“No more than you. I get my information from the radio just like you, so I know what you know. Sheriff hasn’t gotten any word from Lansing yet. I’m glad to hear that Susan and the boys are safe. But there’s another reason I’m here. I have to go over to the old Stevens farm, it seems that that an elderly woman died falling down the stairs there yesterday, named Rachel Elizabeth De La Salle. And I have to check it out and I stopped here first because the ambulance is still at least another ten minutes away. What can you tell me about them? Anything might be helpful.”

Jacob leaned against the front tire of the loader and thought for a moment trying to collect his thoughts.

“When they moved in, they did a lot of work on the house. They had the chimneys fixed; Bernie did the work, so they could burn wood and even had a couple semi-loads of wood brought in. They moved in stuff constantly over the next two years.

Sometimes with their truck and a trailer, sometimes with the really large trucks U-Haul rents. Also had a few fuel deliveries and had two propane tanks put in. I don’t know what they needed two for? They planted a big garden right away. Put in an orchard and vines. Then sometime in January of 2000, they just up and left. Didn’t come back for a whole year. I thought they were getting ready for that Y2K thing that didn’t happen.”

“You think they are survivalists or some such?”

“Don’t know, they might be or they could be one of those homesteader’s types you read about. In 2002 they started showing up regular like again. They were always bringing up loads of stuff, like before. And about four years ago, they moved back in and have been there ever since. Repaired all the buildings, did some more work on the house and an addition, built another pole barn, greenhouse, and a root cellar. They got Rick Miller to do most of the cement work for that. Then they fenced in the area around the house and out buildings. Got some bigger fuel tanks, from Sal in Bad Axe, some solar and those wind turbines. Been repairing the fence around their 40 acres, too. Had Bill Dixon stop working their land two years ago, they told him that they no longer needed him to be renting the fields. About half the fields are now pasture. They also have chickens and some other animals too. Couple of Jack Russell’s for dogs.”

“What? No VIN numbers or DNA samples?”

“Haha. Let’s see, what else? Since you brought up VIN numbers, they have an old F- 250 and a newer Toyota Tacoma. Also a Polaris ATV, dirt bike, snowmobile, trailers, and an 8N.The UPS and Fed-Ex guys are making deliveries every other week, it seems. Even a semi stops by once in a while. Pete, our mailman, says the guy gets a lot of hunting catalogs and a couple of those back to the land type of magazines. Lots of gunfire too. Sometimes, it sounds like a war is going on over there, lots of different guns by the sound of it. Built that big cross at their edge of their property two years ago, you can see it from here. Tried to get the township to do something about that, but they wouldn’t.

They take off almost every Sunday around 5 a.m. and don’t get back till two or three in the afternoon. Also, around the first of the month, on a Tuesday or Wednesday, they take off with their truck and trailer. I think they go shopping in Port Huron, saw them at the Costco once with that rig and they were loading up the enclosed trailer. That’s about the only time I ever see them leave. Sometimes, that Max goes somewhere for a couple days and comes back. Mostly on the weekends, about once a month. I’ve never seen anyone come over in the whole time they’ve been there. It’s strange. Like they have no friends or some such.”

“Do you know anything about this Rachel or her son, let’s see here, Max?”

“All I can tell you is that the son is a big man, around six or six-one or so, and wide. Dresses like he’s one of us. His mother must be a little over five foot and fat. That’s about all I know about them.”

“Thanks a lot, Jacob. This should be helpful. I think I see the ambulance coming down the road. I’ll stop by on the way back if I can. I have another dozen more like this I have to get to today.”

“OK, then Sharon. Say “Hi” to your mother for me and try and stop by later if you can. We can talk about you and your mother moving out here, we have the room, you know. And it would be nice to have a Deputy around.” He waved to her and went back to work on his loader.

Dang, she thought, Jacob should work for Homeland Security with how he’s been keeping tabs on those people, as she got back in her patrol car. I guess that’s what spite can do to a person. She really liked her cousin Jacob. His only real interest in the world, other than his family, was money and what could make him more of it. Not that was a bad thing, she liked money too, but he did get a bit of tunnel vision about it. She recalled him saying that he was going to really get a good deal on the old Stevens’ place and those people had screwed him out of it. And Jacob would never let it go; he’d bear this grudge till he was six feet under.

And it would probably be a good idea to get Mother out here, especially if things got worst. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to come, but she knew she would be better off at Jacobs than the apartment she had in Bad Axe. She just wondered what the Sheriff would say about it.

She connected her MDT (Mobile Data Terminals) to the station to get some more info on this De La Salle. The NCIC wasn’t working so there wasn’t any Federal or State information on this guy. The county’s warrant data base had nothing either. All they had was what they got when he applied for transferring his CCW from Macomb County and did the background check. Maxmilian Joseph De La Salle. Sure was a mouthful. Born in 1965, in Roseville, MI. Brown hair and blue eyes. 6’1”and 280 pounds! What a lard butt, she thought. Had a C&R, and had purchased 63 handgun permits over the last 20 years! Other than that, just his current address and drivers license number. No criminal record of any kind.

She drove down to Oak Road, the dead end street the De La Salles lived on, where the ambulance was waiting. Waving at them to follow her as she head towards the Stevens, better make that De La Salles’ farm, she thought. It was about half a mile down to it. Pretty nice that they had it all to themselves, she thought, gives them lots of privacy. Surrounded by farm fields for a couple miles, it was easy to see from a distance. As she got closer, she could see that the cross was a 15 foot high crucifix with a statue of the Virgin Mary at the base of it. There was one like just like that east of Ubly, she remembered. She found herself starting to make the Sign of the Cross before she stopped herself. She had given up on God a long time ago, when Ronald had died. If only God hadn’t taken Ronald from her, but He had. And she hated Him for that. She had vowed never to step into one of His churches again,

“Great, these people are some kind of religious nut cases. That’s all I need.”

She drove through the open gate and stepped out of the car and looked around. Everything looked normal to her, even with the boarded up windows. Everyone’s house looked like that now. The house was bigger than the last time she had seen it. Wondering what the inside looked like, she walked towards the front porch. As she got closer, she could see that the screen door looked a lot studier that most she had ever seen. It looked like it was made from welded stainless steel. There was a metal crucifix mounted to the right of the door and some religious medallions on the left side.

“Just great; Jesus freaks.”

The paramedics arrived and were getting their gear and the gurney out of the ambulance, as she tried to figure out the door bell. It didn’t have a button on it; in fact it looked like a brass plate with a key in the middle. She grabbed the key and turned it slowly. She could barely hear a bell ringing. Giving it a more forceful turn, it rang out; loud and clear.

Hearing movement inside, she called out. “Sheriffs Department. You called about an accident! Hello? Someone there?”

Hearing nothing more she turned and looked over at the paramedics and shrugged. Then she noticed Wash’s eyes, the driver, get wide. “Oh, no. Now what?” She thought, turning quickly with her hand on her Glock 22. Visions of a guy with a hockey mask and a chainsaw running at her.

[ClanWolf]

Instead she just saw Max. He was a big man, not the lard butt as she had supposed early. Okay looking for an old guy and with a full head of hair too, she thought. He was wearing blue jeans and a Carhartt work shirt. But what really caught her attention was that he was armed, with some kind of Glock in a Fobus holster on his right side. At least it wasn’t pointed at anyone! Probably that’s what freaked out the driver.

“Mr. De La Salle? I’m Deputy Wagner; we’re here about your mother. She died in an accident yesterday during the quake?”

Max just stared at her for a moment, then looked over to the paramedics. Turning back to the deputy, he said; “Yeah, I called yesterday. She’s right in here. Come on in.” He reached down and unlocked the screen security door and walked back inside, through the sliding glass doors which somehow had survived, into what looked like the kitchen.

As Sharon and the paramedics followed, she noticed a security camera and a strange looking light pointing at her from over the sliding doors. Max was standing in front of the fridge, looking down at a figure covered with a sheet.

Must be his mom, she thought, as she motioned the paramedics forward to the body. The paramedics removed the sheet and started to examine Rachel. Sharon could see Max’s body tense up as the paramedics made their examination. Better to get him out of here till their done, she thought, we don’t need a scene or fight. That had happened a couple times already to her. And she wasn’t sure she could stop Max without shooting him.

“Mr. De La Salle, could you please come with me for a few moments, I need your statement for my report. Is there somewhere we could talk?”

“Sure. Let’s go in here.” He pointed to the great room. He walk in and over to a huge dinning table and pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit as he pulled another out for himself at the head of the table.

As she walked in the great room she looked around for a moment. About 25 X 25, large bay window (now boarded up), china cabinet in the one corner, which still looked intact. Couple of couches and a buffet. She could see another crucifix and a picture of Christ, just like in the kitchen, in the center above the window. The other wall had a picture mural, a big one that took up the whole wall of a lake.

That sure looked nice she thought. A few pictures of John Wayne and some tins that had old advertisements for hunting equipment on them. Paintings of wolves too. A soapstone woodstove was against the other wall.

Boy, was this a nice room. I sure like the layout, she thought to herself. Then she remembered that she was here on business and looked over at Max. He was still standing next to his chair, watching her and waiting.

“Sorry.” She mumbled feeling a little embarrassed for getting caught checking out the guys place while his mother was dead on the floor, a few feet away in the next room. He waited till she was seated before sitting down himself.

Hmm. A bit old fashion, Sharon thought.

“Mr. De…”

“Just call me Max, Deputy. I know “Mr. De La Salle” can be a bit of a mouthful all the time.”

“Oh, right then. Can you tell me what happened?” She asked.

Max closed his eyes and recalled to the Deputy all that had happened yesterday.

******

Sharon was taking the last accident scene photos of Rachel. When she was done, she motioned the paramedics to another room that looked like a small living room with yet more Catholic nit-knacks. Another crucifix, a couple statues of Saints, and paintings of the Holy Family. And this time a huge poster size painting of Christ with the words; Jesus, I Trust In You!

She was feeling that her emotions where in a bit of turmoil. It was this place and all the things she had turned her back on. She really felt the need to get out of this house!

“Well, what do guys think? Anything to suggest this isn’t an accident?” She asked in a bit of a rush.

“No, it looks like what we have been seeing lately. No wounds or bruises that suggest she was killed before and placed there. Everything looks right to me for a fall.” Wash, the driver said. The other paramedic, Mal, looked over and nodded too.

“Alright then, just signed the bottom of my report and you guys can take her away. Just don’t throw her in the back like the last one. I think the family was going to shoot you guys for that. And I came pretty close myself.”

“Yeah, whatever. We’ve been humping bodies for two days now, give me a break.” Whined Mal.

“Fine, why don’t you go tell Max that’s what you’re going to do. I’m sure he’ll have something to say about it.”

“Mal, damn it. I don’t need to get my a## smoked over this. And this guy looks like he could do it with his bare hands!” Said Wash.

“OK! OK! Geez! Let’s get this done and get gone. We still got a bunch more to do.” As Mal unzipped the body bag and went back in the kitchen.

Wash shrugged at Sharon as he went by to go help Mal.

Dang, she thought, I better back off a little, but Mal’s been acting like a butthead today. Something might be going on that I don’t know about. But I can’t afford having him toss another body in the ambulance like that again. Bob Miller had wanted to kill him for throwing his father in like he did. Good thing I got them calmed down and that Wash got out of there in a hurry.

She decided to get Max to come out to her patrol car and finish her report there. So she headed back for the great room. He was still sitting there, drinking a Diet Coke, looking like so many others she had seen in these last two days. Lost and wondering what’s next.

“Mr., I mean Max, I need you to come out to my patrol car and sign my report and I give you copy for your own records.”

“Fine, but where are they taking my Mother?”

“They’ll be taking her over to Zinger-Smigielski Funeral home. It’s on Main Street in Ubly. Here’s one of their cards. The phones are still working, so I would suggest calling first before going over there. There have been a lot of accidents like your mothers and they’re really busy.”

“Fine. Let’s get to it then.”

******
“Alright then, thank you for the help, Deputy.” Max said after getting a copy of the report. He then turned and walked back into the house, locking the doors behind him.

Sharon sat there for a few moments, finishing her report and calling in to find out where she was to go next. As she waited for dispatch to get back to her. She went over everything she saw while in Max’s house. The wood cooking stove, the cabinets in the kitchen were fully stocked, she had peaked when no one was looking. Couple of wood stoves. And what looked like a pantry upstairs. She had found that one door unlocked when she was taking some photos. The room was small but packed solid with food. It looked like all brand-name stuff from the grocery store. Wonder what the other two rooms might have held in them? She could have had Max open them all, hell, she could have searched the whole house, but she didn’t want to tip her hand. Beside she had wanted out of that creepy house anyhow.

Now sitting there in her patrol car, she felt better and took a good look around at what she could see. Solar security lights were on all the buildings. Taking out a small pair of binoculars, she looked towards the pole barns. No security cameras, which she could see. Turning towards the big three-story barn in the back, she could see a hand pump just behind the house, part of the garden with a stupid looking scarecrow, and one of those wind turbines. Looked old-fashion, like the kind people bought for looks, probably not real.

The house itself had very high landscaping around it. Glazed blocks and stones that formed big semi-circles were all around the house. They came out around five feet from the house and close to being that tall. They came up to the bottom of the window sills and then up the sides to the top of the windows. Almost looked like a wall was being built around the house. From the looks of it he was still working on it. There were also shutters covering every window, heavy looking ones. She also noticed the metal roof and siding on the house. Solar panels on the roof too. Also that there were three chimneys. Damn place looked like a fort when you took the time to look closely at it. And being as far back as it was she doubted that anyone had.

She remembered seeing the original house a few years back, it was an old brick farm house, about half the size it is now. She would bet that the additions were just stick construction. The Leonard’s, who had own the house before Max, were known for their cheapness.

Then there was the fence that went around the place. The fencing was at least four foot high and the posts went at least another two feet higher than that and big. The posts looked like they were made from cut up telephone poles.

If Max wasn’t a survivalist, she wonder, what was he then? Militia? No, he didn’t seem the type. She hadn’t felt the instant hostility that she saw in militia members when they saw police. The classes she had taken from the FBI on terrorists had included what to look for in a survivalist compound. And this farm sure looked like what they had described, but she also knew that Max could just be a homesteader. She had only seen the Glock but there had to be more weapons somewhere in the house. He did have a C&R license and all those handgun permits, those being some of the indicators the FBI had taught when on the lookout for survivalists or militia. She wished she could do a proper check on this guy. The FBI would know what he really was. The ATFE would know for sure what weapons he had.

With the way things were going it might be nice to keep an eye on this survivalist, she thought. He and his supplies might come in handy. But I need more intell on Max and what he really has.

Dispatch called her then and gave her the next address to go to. Well back to work for now, I give Max some more thought later. The address was only a mile away. Another ambulance crew would meet her there. Wash and Mal were heading in.

“Yes, I think I’ll keep a close eye on you Max. You might make a good insurance policy once things start getting worst. Might even talk to dear cousin Jacob again. Some more intell on you couldn’t hurt.” She said aloud, with a smile, as she headed for the main road again


After all, a girl has to look out for herself, didn’t she?

[ClanWolf]

Book 1: Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

Chapter 4
******
Monday, Sept.20th
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
The Day after Madrid
Thumb Area of the State of Michigan
Survivalist Homestead of Max De La Salle
******

Max was in his den, watching Deputy Wagner as she sat in her patrol car, on the security camera monitor. The camera he was using to watch her was hidden in a scarecrow that was at the edge of the garden. He actually got the idea from watching an old A-Team episode! She seemed very interested in the place, looking all around. She even pulled out a pair of binoculars and was looking towards the back. Suddenly, she picked up her mic, talked for a moment, and then took off for Bates; the main dirt road. Better keep an eye out for her. He didn’t like the way she keep looking the place over.

He had always dreaded that he might need to call the cops or even worst, the fire department in case something happened, and that was during “normal” times. He’d hate to explain everything he had stored away here. Max had just never planned on his Mom dieing at the beginning of something and having to comprise the security of the retreat with the police!

He just sat there and let his mind and body unwind for a while. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he fell asleep dreaming of his Mother and the end of the world.

******
Sept.21, Tuesday
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
Day Two after Madrid.
******
“Max, wake up!”

“Mom!?!” Max woke with a start. Darn. He had fallen asleep and it was almost five o’clock in the morning. Oh man, he felt stiff! That chair was not meant to be slept in. Standing up and groaning, Max stretched, he heard and felt a couple of joints pop.

Crap! He forgot about Buddy and JR. They were out in their pens. He picked up his Glock and put the holster on his belt and headed out for the back door. Once he opened it and stepped out he heard the whining.

“OK! I hear you, I’m sorry. But you guys just have to wait till I feed the chickens, goats, and the rabbits. Then breakfast for us.” As he walked to the chicken coop, he could feel those two watching him. Feeling a bit guilty, Max hurried with the feedings, getting the eggs, and milking the goats.

As he finished with the rabbits, he went and let the two mutts out of the kennels on the inside of the barn. Buddy and JR took off for the backdoor, without waiting for him, as was their standard practice. And he got there they were giving him the look that said; “Why are you so slow?” He set down the two baskets of eggs he got from the chicken coop and opened the door, and like a flash, they were in. He carried the eggs into the kitchen and got them both some raw chicken and eggs to eat. He feed his dogs nothing except raw foods and, boy, oh boy, did they ever thrive on it. Jack Russell’s on maximum setting!

Max just grabbed a pack of Mountain House’s stroganoff (His favorite) out of the cabinet and nuked some water. At least the power was still going. He poured the water and stroganoff into a bowl, add some soy sauce, and put a lid on. He headed back for the den. Buddy and JR would join him when they were done. He wanted to get on-line and see what the hell had happened two days ago.

But just then he remembered about the front gate.

Damn it! I have to get that closed and I had better start getting on the ball, or I’m going to wind up dead like Mom.

Ugh, he pushed that thought firmly to the back of his mind.

He needed to focus on the here and now and start acting like the situation demanded. So, to the front door he went, stopping first at the coat rack near the door. He pressed a button at the top of the coat rack and a panel popped opened it next to it. He reached in and grabbed the Norinco Chinese Paratrooper AK. It was the kind that the stock folded sideways, instead of under. He reached back in and grabbed the Chinese 75 rd drum for it and rammed it home. He pulled back on the bolt and chambered a round.

Closing the panel, he stepped over to the front door and looked through the peephole. It was the Russian one that had a large field of vision. He saw nothing on the porch, so he unlocked the front door, and stepped through with his Glock in his right hand and the AK slung across his back, then relocked the front door. He stood still, watching and listening. He couldn’t hear nor see nothing out of place. Unlocking the screen door and he walked slowly to the gate, trying to watch for anything as he went. Getting to the gate and he took a knee and waited. Still sensing nothing wrong, he stood up and shut the gate and locks the chains around it. He took a knee again and waited once more. Starting to feel a bit silly because he really doubted that anyone was waiting to get him. Still, better safe than sorry and in just a short while he knew it wouldn’t be safe. After another moment, he got up and slowly walked back to the house. Watching and listening the whole time.

He relocked the screen door and unlocked the front and got back inside. Locking the front door, he holstered the Glock and barred the door. Max was glad that he had taken the advice from that guy in Argentina seriously. It would probably keep him alive.

He put the AK back and he headed back to his den. Picking up his bowl of stroganoff, he took a mouthful, Eck! Gone cold! So he headed back to the kitchen to renuke his stroganoff. Then he headed for back for his den.

He plopped himself back down at his work station and turn on his computer. While he waited for it to get up and running. He grabbed the remote for the TV and turns it on to Channel 5 News. Nothing but snow. He got a connection on his satellite for the Internet and went to Timebomb 2000.

“Oh, now what!?!” He attempted to get TB2K on-line but nothing would connect. Just a 404 kept popping up. He still had a connection with his Internet satellite provider, just that the website wasn’t there. Damn server must have gone down. Again, he thought. He tried Frugals, but just got a 404. Same with AssualtWeb, AR15, American Minuteman, GlockTalk, Texas Minutemen, and The High Road. He tried everything in his favorite’s folders. Nothing.

“Damn net must be down.”

He was going to restart the computer and just decided to shut it off. He instead grabbed his Freeplay SW radio and see what he could find there. As he was winding the handle to power it up, he looked over at his two protectors, snoozing away.

“Big he-man types, I swear.” Max said.

After finishing his cranking, Max tuned to WMIC 660AM in Sandusky hoping they were still on the air. He could hear something, but it was weak. He clipped on his external antenna and a voice popped out.

“As Sheriff Toland said early, the Sheriffs Department has no news on what happened yesterday and that residents should stop calling except in case of a real emergency. The phone lines at the Sheriffs office are still being tied up and so are ours. Please, we are trying to get out any information as soon as we receive it. Stay tune to 660 AM Sandusky for the latest information on the earthquake that rocked our state.

Once again; a state of emergency has been declared by Governor Gramnome for the entire State of Michigan. A dawn till dusk curfew has been ordered for the entire state, except for emergency personnel. The Governor has also ordered the suspension of all sales of firearms, ammunition, alcohol, and fuels of any type. Also all National Guard personnel have been mobilized and are to report in, if they cannot get to their posts they are to report to the nearest Sheriff or State Police post for reassignment.

The Governor has called for calm in the face of the earthquake that has hit Michigan. And for all citizens to cooperate with local and State authorities. In a short time all shall be return to normal.

We shall return to the airways at the top of the hour again with the latest news. This is 660AM in Sandusky.”

“Yeah, right.” Said Max. Everything will return to normal. More like trying to buy some time before the sheep started stampeding, and that will only work in the short term. A week at the most, if not just a few days. Man, oh man. Plague wiping out Asia, economy is in the tank and a quake here in Michigan. This was going to get bad, really bad. He tried to get some other station but nothing else was on the air. And it was too early for the SW stations.

But what to do? I’m stocked with all I need for years, doubled now that I’m alone. How am I going to be able to keep up with everything by myself? Maybe I should have invited a couple people up here. No, that wouldn’t have worked either. It never worked. He always used a year’s supply of food as the minimum standard for even considering someone. If they had at least that much, he would have been happy to have them join him. The problem seemed to be that anyone that was already that prepared, had a place to bug-out to.

What to do? Better suck it up for one thing, he thought. God would provide him as He always had.

Next thing was to get the all the rest of the windows boarded up on the outbuildings. Amazingly, the windows in the metal pole barns hadn’t shattered. Perhaps the metal was more flexible then the normal walls?

And I’d better start saying my morning prayers again for one thing, he thought. And then find out about getting Mom buried.

Max got out his Rosary, got down on his knees and started praying.

[ClanWolf]

******
NORAD Command Center
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Tuesday, Sept. 21st
In the Year of Our Lord, 2010
Day Two after Madrid.
******
Air Force General John Richards, Commanding General of NORAD, now was the temporary Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and acting Air Force Service Chief. There was no contact with anyone at the Pentagon since the quake in the East. So the highest ranking Generals of the different services in the West had assumed temporary command. They still hadn’t picked a vice-chairman. Now he was readying himself for a video conference with the other temporary JCS’s.

Commandant Muller of the Marine Corps, was out of Palms 99; Admiral Shepard, out of San Diego; and U.S. Army General Davis, Fort Hood Texas. There were no U.S. Federal Congressmen or Senators, as far as they could tell; all of them were in Washington D.C. at the time the Madrid quake happened. The Federal budget this year was, had, turned into a giant political battle between the Democrats and Republicans. So everyone was at the Capital making sure that they got their piece of the budget pie. And since President Robert Gulino had been elected, things had been going down hill for the military. Fast. It was the Carter Years all over again. And Gulino was a Republican! The JCS were fighting for every dime they could get.

And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let that moron, Mendoza, at the Denver Federal Building take charge. Mendoza had threatened to come with Federal agents and take over. Richards had informed Mendoza that if stepped one foot on His base, he have Mendoza shot on the spot. And he gave the SP’s the order too.

“About 15 more minutes, General, and we’ll be ready.” Said the airman working on the camera.

“That’s fine, son. I’d rather have it working at 100% than going in and out like it has.”

Turning to the Air Force Major General sitting next to him, Richards asked softly; “Just how bad is it, Julian?”

“Our internet connections still seem to be down, some of it’s from quake damage, but it seems that someone launched a virus that scrambled the servers. My people have been working on it. They think that they should be able to have an answer in just a couple days. What ever the virus is, its purpose seems to be just to scramble the code, not to do any permanent damage.”

“Has it spread beyond the servers? And do we have an idea who did this; is it an enemy country or some hacker in his garage? What do you make of the timing?”

“We really don’t know, I haven’t heard of any other systems being infected. The dang thing is a sleeper that waits for a command to activate. We think. As for who, your guess is as good as mine. I can’t see how it could be anything other than a coincidence; it would mean that someone knew of the quake. And that’s not a possibility.”

“Alright then, what have the satellites shown?” Ask Richards.

“We’ve had to retask some of our satellites that don’t normally go over the U.S. to cover everywhere we want. And its worst then we could have imagined.”

Turning to a computer flat screen, he brought up a map of the U.S. A giant red blob covers a vast portion of the eastern and southern U.S. and the Great Lakes.

“Every major city in a line west of New York City to Chicago to Omaha is burning. Then every major city south of that line to Houston, then going east to Jacksonville. As are all military bases in that area. Some states are totally gone; Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Seems that North Carolina had a unknown fault line running through it. Also it looks like the whole TVA system is toast. New Orleans is flooded and the levees are gone. There are three giant sinkholes appearing in Florida, each a few miles across. All three are appearing in swamp areas. One seems to have started to swallow Disney World. Bunches of smaller ones all over Florida, even in the cities. New York City seems to have caved in on itself. D.C. looks like a burning pile of rubble in an ever growing swamp. It looks like the entire area is flooding. The Appalachian mountain range looks like someone picked it up and drop it hard. It’s all a jumble now, maps are useless. And only six bridges still are intact that cross the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. Any old buildings and bridges have collapsed. Plenty new ones too.

And if I understand my scientists at the Academy correctly, this quake was as bad as it was due to the soil in that area of America. A quake like this in California would have basically only affected California. The Madrid quake will also have produced a giant tsunami wave across the entire Atlantic and the Caribbean. I doubt that we’ll be getting any help from Europe. Iceland may be gone for all we know. Western Africa will be hit hard too. Cuba might be gone, that would be the one bright spot in this mess.” Said Major General Julian Smith, Commanding General of the Air Force’s Academy.

“The green portion is the area where the quake was felt. Damage can range from major to nothing, mattering how close to the fault lines an area is. We will not know exact damages till we get reports from all the state governments. And that may take a few months to a few years.”

Richards look at the screen. The green covered the entire U.S. He remembered feeling a slight tremor even this far away.

“We are detecting high nuclear radiation levels at several plants and facilities in the effected areas. Surviving NEST teams are already on their way, with our help. It doesn’t look like any meltdowns have happened. We can only hope that it can be contained. Also word is in that the Panama Canal was nuked last night.”

“What? Who the hell did it?”

“We don’t have any idea. It seems that someone destroy the Pacific side of the Canal. The Navy should have more details on it.”

Richards cursed under his breath. And news from the EU was as Julian said; he had received a report about an hour ago. The EU representative said with the Gansu Plague threat and other reasons (most likely being hit by a tsunami!), that no help would be coming from them. In fact, they had told Army Brigadier General Matlock, that they were leaving the U.S. and would not be returning until the U.S. paid for its outstanding debts that was owed to all European nations. In gold.

If we wanted to have any talks with them, to contact their mission in Canada. The EU no longer had any wish in having any diplomatic missions to the US anymore, till this matter was resolved. The Brigadier had said that the EU representative, who was a German, seemed quit smug over the whole thing. No doubt! Richard thought, Germany was probably sitting pretty after a tsunami hit England and France. Though he wonder what the Islamic’s were up to in Europe.

The Canadians also had closed their trade missions and ordered all personnel in the U.S. home. He wished that a Canadian General was still here at NORAD, but they had pulled their personnel out when we wouldn’t hand over our early warning stations to them last year.

And all I get is more bad news. A couple units of ParaRecuse had jumped in at Andrew’s and had reported in just an hour ago. The runways were in ruins and Air Force One and Two were just two burned out hulks in their hangers. The ParaRecuse teams were checking for the President or anyone else at Andrews. The words that the Colonel had used to describe the destruction in the area still haunted him: “General, the best way I can describe the way it looks is this: it looks like God got mad and slapped D.C. then set it on fire just for spite. It looks like hell on earth.”

The Navy was to send in Seal Team Six, they were to head for the White House, looking for the President. The Army was dropping a Delta Team near the Pentagon. And the Marines were sending in a Force Recon unit to Camp David.

The only thing that was going in their favor was that due to the Gansu Plague ravaging Asia, all of the troops had been brought home. And almost all of them were here in the West, and with all the budget cuts, most were getting ready to be demobilized. The ones in Hawaii were all dead. As was Hawaii. The Plague had managed to get that close to America.

“John, it could be worst.”

“In Gods name, how?”

“It could have been nationwide.”

“I don’t think that’s funny, Julian, not one bit.”

“John, I’m not trying to be. At least you still have half of the country to work with and half of the military too. And no politicians judging every move you make.”

“And my cons?’

“Some of the biggest military bases we have are gone. The past two years has seen the military taking huge budget cuts. We had very low stocks of munitions and fuel before the quake. I doubt that a third is even left of that. And we can’t rebuild up our stocks of high tech weapons either. Most of the computer parts were made in Asia. We have been cannibalizing half our planes to keep the other half in the air since the pull-out of the Middle East. West Point and Annapolis are gone. The CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies are gone. Internet’s gone, temporarily, we hope. The stock market and the dollar are dead. That means we can’t pay our troops. We still have part of the Federal Reserve and emergency money, but with no government to back it, its just Monopoly money. Probably tens of millions of citizens are dead, if not over a 100 million. Expect massive disease outbreaks due to all the dead. Every ship we had in the Atlantic is probably sunk. And no politicians judging our every move.”

“How can that be a pro and con? Aren’t we better off without them? We don’t have to worry about the politics involved with a problem.”

“John, we’ve known each other for a long time now and I’ll be frank. In the short term, yes, it can be a good thing not having some politician second guessing our every move. We can get done what has to be done in a hurry, that’s what the military is good at.

And no, in the long term, it’s not a good thing. No country has ever stayed free with the military in charge. Freedom doesn’t come from the point of a bayonet. The military mindset is too use to being obeyed. Civilians don’t work that way. They work for themselves or their families. Civilians might be a bunch of lazy sheep, but you’ll wake up the wolves hidden among them. And when they start to fight back, the military will start using its power and once you cross the Rubicon that’s the end of freedom.”


“I don’t want to be Caesar, Julian. I want this country to stay free.”

“Then we need to find someone in the civilian chain of command and get ourselves a new President, or find President Gulino. Especially before one of the Governors decides they should be President. And starts to push it. Can you imagined that Democrat Governor of California in charge? You might as well surrender to Mexico now.”

“God forbid!”

“And as you know, there are a few Generals and Admirals that think the military should be running the show.”

“Don’t remind me.”

[ClanWolf]

General Richards saw the airman waiting to get his attention.

“Yes, airman?”

“We’re ready now, Sir.”

‘Alright then, let’s do it.”

The General watched the monitors turn on and the faces of the other JCS came on.

Richards spoke first, being the Chairman.

“Gentlemen, I guess I’ll start. My teams of ParaRecuse are on the ground at Andrews. Both Air Force One and Two are destroyed, as are all the Presidential helicopters. They are searching the area to make sure the President isn’t on the base somewhere. But that isn’t likely. They will also check at National Naval Medical Center. The Colonel leading the teams has described the destruction in the area as extremely horrible. Andrews and the surrounding area are completely destroyed.

And JFCOM (U.S. Joint Forces Command) and TRANSCOM (U.S. Transport Command) are both gone.”

Navy spoke next.

“Seal Team Six has made its way to the White House. It seems to have collapsed in on itself and burned, they have tried to enter through both the secret exits from the White House. Those are collapsed and are starting to flood. They used heat sensors and those prototype rescue robots to search the rubble; they still haven’t found anyone still alive. On their way to the White House, they saw that the Capital Building had collapsed too. As seems has almost all the buildings in D.C. Heavy equipment would be needed to even start looking for survivors. I have ordered them to rendezvous with a sub, that we have manage to established communications with, if they cannot find any survivors in the next five hours. We’ll have video as soon as the sub reaches the coast and the Seals get aboard. A handful of subs are reporting in. We have been told that all the naval bases, and the cities around them, on the eastern seaboard are destroyed. I am in contact with all my remaining bases in the Gulf of Mexico. All have been heavily damaged, but should be back up and running again within a couple weeks. If I can get supplies to them.

As you know, the Panama Canal was attacked last night. The USS George Washington arrived there, three hours ago. The captain of the Washington has reported that it looks like a nuclear torpedo was used to destroy the Pacific side of the locks. No subs have been found in the area, so I doubt that we’ll ever know who did it. We are now cut off from east coast. There still is the long way around the southern tip of South America, but that will take time going that way.

I have lost a number of ships that were off the east coast due to what we believe was a tsunami caused by the quake. I have been unable to establish any contact with any of the Fleet on the eastern seaboard. In fact, we have made no contact with any ship in the Atlantic Sea at all.”

The Commandant of the Marine Corp was next.

“My Marines landed at Camp David three hours ago; they found some Secret Service, FBI, Marines and other military personnel camped out there. Most of the buildings are completely destroyed. Mt. Weather was destroyed also; we got that from a few Marines that survived it. We’ll have to use helicopters to get anyone out, the roads are trashed. No sign of the President or Vice-President, nor any of the Cabinet or any of the Secretaries. None of the JCS either. They are four Congressmen though. Charles Wallis from South Carolina, Tom Rush from Idaho, Richard Myers from Texas and Harry Summer from New York. We’ll try and get them back out here as soon as we can. Hopefully there are more of them around than just this four. My Marines and the other military personnel will set up a base camp there and start to search the area.”

Army was next.

“The Delta Team can’t get near the Pentagon. It seems to have sunk partially into the ground at an angle. The whole area looks like a nuke smash everything. Fires everywhere, of course. There’s water flooding into the area too. They have come under fire from unknowns. Probably looters. I will order them to head for Camp David and hook up with the Marines there.

I also had a team of Pathfinders that were going to jump into Fort Bragg. Their commander cancelled the jump. The runways are destroyed and fires are still burning all over Bragg. He could see no way for them to be retrieved from the area. I have ordered them to try to jump at Fort Benning if they can. SOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command) is a wreck.

On top of this, I’m having major problems here in Texas. The quake has cause major damage in the eastern part of the state. But that’s not the worst problem we have. We have Mexicans pouring over the border here in Texas and Arizona, and most likely, California too. It seems that the Government of Mexico is using their Army to push massive amounts of their peasant population across the border. I guess they figure it would be better if we took care of them. Also, there have been reports of what looks like units of the Army of Mexico raiding into Texas and Arizona, it’s not known if it’s happening in California though. They’re killing and looting all along the border.

Texas Governor Williams can’t figure out what to do. He’s afraid that if he tries to stop the illegals, he’ll have major problems with the Mexicans already here. And the Texas Department of Safety can’t handle armed troops. So he’s unable to come to a decision.

Arizona Governor Nolan wants military help in dealing with the Mexicans.

I haven’t heard from the Governor of California.

If I don’t take action soon, the border area will be in total chaos. I have my hands full now with refugees from the South already. My estimates are that at least 100,000 American refugees have crossed the border into Texas. And more a coming every day. I need help; I need more troops and supplies! And I need food for the refugees. I’ll be out in another day or so.

And on top of it, I seem to be having problems with my computers today. I can’t find out where my supplies are. The computers have somehow scrambled themselves. I have to have everything recounted by hand. The FEMA folks seem to be having the same problem too! Just what we need, some damn virus screwing up everything. You all better check your systems too.”

General Richards turned to ask Julian a question, but he was already on a phone, talking to someone. He saw John looking at him.

“I need a moment, Sir. I’m talking to my computer expert at the Academy.”

Thank God the Air Force was full of scientists, thought Richards. And that the bulk of the Air Force was in the West. I’d hate to rely on civilians. Or the Navy. He grinned at the old rivalry.

“General! We’re also experiencing problems with our computers at the Academy. I… Hello? Daniel? Are you there? Damn. The line went dead.”

“What’s happening, Julian?”

“I don’t know, General. Colonel Jackson was starting to tell me about something he had found out about the virus, when the phone went dead. I’d like to head to the Communications Center and try to find out what’s happening at the Academy.”

“Go.”

Julian headed for the elevator and stepped through. It was General Richards’s private elevator. As the elevator started to rise, the lights began to flicker.

“Oh, no. Why is this happening to us now?” He asked aloud.

General Richards watched Julian till the elevator doors closed. As he turned back to the monitors, he noticed the lights flickering.

“Gentlemen, I think we may be experiencing some problems here in Colorado. I don’t know just how bad…”

“Excuse me, General.” Said Admiral Shepard, as a naval officer lean over and whispered in his ear. The officer spoke quickly and then left. “Sorry about that General Richards. It seems I’m also having problems, and I would assume too that the Marines are having the same problems. This virus seems to be hitting our computers and civilian communications also. I would like to suggest that we……………..”

General Richards sat and watched the monitors but they showed nothing but snow. Then the main power in NORAD went off-line. Emergency lights flashed on and airmen were running everywhere trying figure out what was happening.

“Well, isn’t that special.” He said sitting there in the dark.

******

FACT NUGGET

About The New Madrid Fault

THE NEW MADRID FAULT SYSTEM EXTENDS 120 MILES SOUTHWARD from the area of Charleston, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois, through New Madrid and Caruthersville, following Interstate 55 to Blytheville and on down to Marked Tree, Arkansas. It crosses five state lines and cuts across the Mississippi River in three places and the Ohio River in two places.

THE FAULT IS ACTIVE, AVERAGING MORE THAN 200 MEASURED EVENTS per YEAR (1.0 or more on the Richter scale), about 20 per month. Tremors large enough to be felt (2.5 - 3.0 on the Richter scale) are noted annually. Every 18 months the fault releases a shock of 4.0 or more, capable of local minor damage. The most recent registering 4.3 along the New Madrid Fault on Thanksgiving evening, 1996, which was felt by citizens in the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, Illinois and Mississippi. Magnitudes of 5.0 or greater occurring about once per decade, can do significant damage, and be felt in several states.

THE HIGHEST EARTHQUAKE RISK in the UNITED STATES outside the West Coast is along the New Madrid Fault. Damaging tremors are not as frequent as in California, but when they occur, the destruction covers over more than 20 times the area because of underlying geology.

A DAMAGING EARTHQUAKE in this AREA, 6.0 or greater, occur about every 80 years (the last one in 1895). The results would cause serious damage to schools and masonry buildings from Memphis to St Louis.

A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE in this AREA, 7.5 or greater, happens every 200- 300 years (the last one in 1812). There is a 25% chance by 2040. A New Madrid Fault rupture this size would be felt throughout half the United States and damage 20 states or more. Missouri alone could anticipate losses of at least $6 billion from such an event.

THE GREAT NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE OF 1811-1812 was actually a series of over 2000 shocks in five months, five of which were 8.0 or more in magnitude. Eighteen of these rang church bells on the Eastern seaboard. The very land itself was destroyed in the Missouri Bootheel, making it unfit even for farmers for many years. It was the largest burst of seismic energy east of the Rocky Mountains in the history of the United States and was several times larger than the San Francisco quake of 1905.

WHEN WILL ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE HAPPEN THE SIZE OF THOSE IN 1811-1812? Several lines of research suggest that the catastrophic upheavals like those in 1811-12 visit the New Madrid region every 500-600 years. Hence, emergency planners, engineers, and seismologists do not expect a repeat of the intensity of the 1811-12 series for at least 100 years or more. However, even though the chance is remote, experts assign a 3% probability of a major earthquake by the year 2040. Earthquake probabilities for known active faults always increase with time, because stresses within the earth slowly and inexorably mount, year by year, until the rocks can take no more, and sudden rupture becomes inevitable.

OUR GREATEST CONCERNS ARE THE 6.0-7.6 SIZED EVENTS, which do have significant probabilities in the near future. A 6.0 shock has a 90% chance by the year 2040. Damaging earthquakes of this magnitude are a virtual certainly within the lifetimes of our children.

WHAT is the RICHTER SCALE? The Richter Scale of earthquake magnitude is a measure of the energy released at the source of an earthquake deep within the earth. It is determined by measuring the amplitudes of ground motion on seismograms. An earthquake has a fixed amount of energy and only one Richter magnitude.

HOW MUCH INCREASE in ENERGY DOES EACH UNIT of the RICHTER SCALE REPRESENT? It is incorrect to say that each unit of the Richter scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in energy. Each unit, say from 5.2 to 6.2, actually represents 31.6 times difference in energy release. Every two units represent 1,000 times more energy, and every two-tenths of a unit represents double the energy.

IF a FAULT HAS LOTS of LITTLE EARTHQUAKES, WILL LARGER ONES BE PREVENTED? The answer is, "NO". A magnitude 6.0 (which is damaging) is 1,000 times more energy than a 4.0 (which is not damaging). An 8.0 (which is devastating) is 1,000 times larger than a 6.0. In other words, a fault would have to have 1,000 4.0 events to prevent the occurrence of a single 6.0, or a million 4.0 events (1,000 times 1,000) to prevent a single 8.0.
Before an Earthquake strikes there are a few simple and inexpensive precautions you can take to lessen the potential damage but more importantly to lessen injuries. Know your environment, understand what has the potential for falling, rolling or swinging when an earthquake strikes.

FROM: St.Charles County, Division of Emergency Management

http://www.scchealth.org/docs/ems/docs/prepare/earthq.html

[ClanWolf]

Book 1: Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

Chapter 5
******
Wednesday, Sept.22
In the year of Our Lord, 2010
Day Three after Madrid
Thumb Area of the State of Michigan
Survivalist Homestead of Max De La Salle
******

“God, what a day.” He thought. He had just come back from the mass funeral that they had for the victims of Madrid.

Sixty-five people had been buried in just one day at Holy Cross Cemetery. Other mass funerals were happening in the area too. The Mass for the Dead had been everything Max expected from the Modern Church. All the hand wringing and the priest had almost killed him with the way he went on and on. He never seemed to have a point to his sermon. Just basically a long winded why of asking; “Why us?”

Good thing Mom couldn’t hear him; she would have given the priest her response to such whining: “Why not?”

At least she’s buried in Holy Ground, he thought.

The cemetery was an old one, started back in the late 1940’s, so he didn’t have to worry about it being not blessed correctly. The Modern Church didn’t seem to care if anything was done right, anymore.

But now what?

The internet and TV were still dead and his cell phone stopped working yesterday. But the short-wave radio receiver had a lot on it, in fact, too much. It was almost overkill. Same with the CB radio. There were so many people on it, that finding some real information was getting harder all the time. And with there being no way to verify what was being broadcast, you couldn’t truly trust any of it. Like the one guy saying that D.C. was flooding and burning at the same time. Why would it be flooding?

Then there had also been one guy yelling that the Mexicans were invading. But he also said that Chinese divisions were crossing the border too.

So far from what he had pieced together from the short-wave and local radio; it sounded like the South had basically been destroyed by the New Madrid Fault. All that people talked about was fire, rock and mud slides, and fallen buildings and bridges. How there was no military or police anywhere and looters were running wild. Whole towns in the mountains were trapped due to the enormous rock slides that had occurred. What surprised Max was that he actually worried about the fate of people he had meet on the net over the years, especially those that lived in the South. He was praying for their safety, there wasn’t anything else he could do. The southern Great Lakes area seemed to be hit pretty badly too. He heard that Chicago had experienced some major damage. Ohio and Indiana were hit hard as well. Seemed there was a fault line that ran into Ohio. Almost all the bridges that crossed the Mississippi and Ohio rivers were down also. And the few that weren’t down were jammed with people trying to flee to the West. Especially since it seem that most western parts of the U.S. had suffered no damage.

But the strangest thing was nothing was coming from the Feds. Nothing from President or anyone else. Not even the military or FEMA. Usually the politicians would run over their own mother to get on the air to make themselves look good. And that in itself showed that something must have gone really wrong.


Well, winter was coming in a couple months. The Dollar was dead as the Yuan. Wall Street wasn’t just dead, but it was gone! Food would start running out anytime now in the cities and rioting would follow for sure. And harvest season was basically over here, nothing left but sugar beets in the fields. And the first food wouldn’t be ready till June, eight months from now. There wasn’t any food when he had been in Bad Axe, every store was closed.

What still amazed him was that things hadn’t all fallen apart after the quake. So far, people in the unaffected areas were trying to act like everything was still normal. But you could feel it in the air, like something was gaining on you. Or perhaps it was as Gandalf had put it in The Return of the King: “It’s the deep breath before the plunge.” But that wouldn’t last, he knew. Once the food ran out, people weren’t going to just sit in their homes and die. They’d start looking to get more any way they could. And cold weather would be here soon. Almost every year, the first taste of cold weather hit Michigan sometime around the second and third week of October. Rain and highs in the 40s. It would cool a house down in no time. Then it would warm up to the 60s again and dry out. But while the cold was here, many would be looking for warmth. He knew where the vast majority would go. Even the ones around here.

Up North.

Everyone that lived in Michigan knew that phrase. Up North (North of Bay City and Grand Rapids) is where people in Michigan went hunting, camping, canoeing, RVing, took their ATVs, snowmobiles, boats, and wave runners. All the major state and federal parks were there. It’s where they had a cabin or a trailer that had a woodstove, or the family had one, or friends would have one.

Or they knew of one.

That’s why he had picked the Thumb area. No federal parks, just two very small state parks. No real forests, trails, or vacation spots. So, very few hunters came here. Not much in the way of work here either. A lot of the small manufactures that had been here had closed their doors, it had been especially hard when Vandelay Industries closed, and moved away to some other country. Basically it was all farms and lakefront homes that were here. And the few business that catered to them. Bad Axe was the only town that had really grown, mostly due to the Super Wal-Mart and fast-food chains that had moved in. Cairo was the biggest town, being closet to Saginaw and once being home to some big state mental hospitals.

And because there was not much in the way of forests in the Thumb area (Due to a fire in the late 1800s that burn all the forests in the Thumb, making the area idea for farming) only about 3% of homes had any kind of wood heat. Half of those were the outside boiler types that required power to run. And many of the older homes had their chimneys removed over the years and almost none of the new ones had anything but propane to heat with. Max wasn’t worried about heat. He had two wood stoves and the one wood cook stove, and several propane ventless heaters just in the main house alone. One woodstove in each of the pole barns and the work shop. There was enough wood, cut and split, stacked inside the barn for the next ten years.

He knew that the exodus from the Thumb was only a trickle for now, mostly people that had lost their jobs when the chain stores and the few small plants starting closing and had been living paycheck to paycheck. He knew there would be a lot more once anyone that couldn’t heat their homes left or the power went. That includes most of the farmers in the area too. How many would be left by this time next year? And how many would die, freezing in their homes or get killed when their neighbors saw they had heat?

******

Max had planned for everything that basically could happen, though he knew the chances were small that anyone of them could really happen. He had his plans and preps for a nuclear war, terrorist bio or chemical attack, disease outbreak, peak oil, and civil war. Or the next Depression, which he had felt was the most likely of all of them. He’d even prepared for a Lucifer’s Hammer scenario.

What he just hadn’t prepared for was a major earthquake east of the Mississippi. He had heard of New Madrid before, but the stats showed that a major event was very unlikely, so he basically ignored it.

He hadn’t planned for Asia getting wiped out before the U.S. Plunging the U.S. into a depression in a couple weeks.

And he had never even imagined both would happen one after the other!

Thank God for Lights Out and Deep Winter/Shatter. Those two stories, and others at Frugals, had given him so many ideas that he had totally revamped his survival plans and even some of his preps. Max had decided that the best thing he could do in preparing for a grid down situation, was to go back to the technology at the beginning of the 20th century. With a few late 20th & 21st century improvements added to the mix. He had actually gone to Lehman’s in Ohio and went on a small shopping spree. The Pioneer Maid wood stove, a Servel chest freezer (LP), James Hand washer, propane lights, tools, books, kitchen items and more.

He had dropped a little over 12K there in one day! Max could still remember the few Amish who had been in the store that day. They just stood and watched in utter fascination and shock as he bought things left and right. He had already bought some used items at a similar, but much smaller, store that was like Lehman’s, just north of Mio, MI. Like a fully restored ice box, a sausage stuffer (Cost $200 used compared to Lehman’s $600 new!), and other odds and ends. He only spent 3K there. He got the same response there, just that the Amish ran the store. The girl at the cash registered hadn’t handled that much cash in her life and was fascinated that I (English) would have a need for such things. Probably would have blown her mind if she knew why I was doing it! (Note: True story)

******

As Max sat there, trying to think of what he should do next, Buddy and JR jumped up and ran barking for the front room. Hmmm, seems that their spidey sense is tingling, Max thought. Just then, the military seismic senor that was on the road heading east, starting to go off. He turned to see on the monitor what the security cameras was picking up. There coming down the road was an old blue Ford F-150.

Wonder what Bill Dixon could want? He had seen Bill ever now and then. The fields west of his place were Bill’s, but he usually went across Jacobs to get to them or took Kingsley Road to his property. He was the only farmer that would be civil to Max. Bill and Jacob didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but did stay friendly. Max waited as Bill finally came to a stop at the front gate and jumped out of his truck. Bill, 48, was about five foot ten, 170 pounds; brown haired graying at the temples, glasses, and had a lean build. He walked to the gate and pressed the button on the intercom.

“Max? Rachel? I’d like to talk to you. It’s important.” He said looking at the camera lens that was built into the intercom.

“What do you want, Bill?”

“Max? I need to talk to you about something. Face to face, if you don’t mind.”

“OK. Give me a minute.” Max said. He took a good look at the other cameras, making sure that there wasn’t anyone else around. Deciding it look safe enough, Max grabbed up his radio, grimaced, and put it back.

“Not much use now, is it?”

Looking at his ready rack, Max decided to take his Smith Enterprise rebuilt M1 Garand. Picking up the rifle and a WW2 ammo belt, he headed for the back door.

******

[ClanWolf]

Bill stood at the gate to Max’s place waiting. He let his mind drift back to the fight he just had with his wife a little bit ago. Bill and his wife, Glenda, had gone a few rounds about asking Max and his mother about using their fields. Glenda didn’t think much of the De La Salles’. They weren’t locals. That was ‘Strike One’ against them. She didn’t trust them and told Bill he was a fool for going over there.

“What happens if they shoot you, what am I going to do if that happens?” That always was her first complaint when Bill was still renting their land.

She didn’t really like guns, and barely tolerated his hunting rifles that were locked up in the basement. Max was always shooting over at his place and had invite Bill to come over. He had a great time; Max had a very cool collection of firearms: Cowboy guns, bolt action military, and even a few semi-autos. The Tannerites had been a blast! Literally. But Bill made the mistake of telling his wife everything. That was ‘Strike Two’ against Max in her book. And Bill had never gone back again.

“You’ll go stay with our son and his wife that live right across the road, Glenda. Though I really doubt that he just going to shoot me for going over there. Now if Jacob went over.” He had laughed a little at that. All he got from her was ‘The Look’. God! She sure was a real pain today, even more than usual, he thought. I better check and make sure she’s taking her pills when I get home. It’s nice to get out of the house for a while, even for the ten minutes it will take to talk to Max. Good thing he decided to stop along the way at Tony’s and Jacob’s places. It gave him a good excuse for not heading home right away.

He glanced over at the front porch of Max’s house, waiting for him to come out. Those two dogs of Max’s were on the front porch, watching him.

“OK, Bill. What do you want?”

“Jesus! Don’t do that!” Bill almost yelled. God, he hated when Max did that to him. Who would have thought a guy that big could move so quietly? Should have been paying attention to what’s going on around me. What if it hadn’t been Max?

Max just stood there, looking at him.

“OK. Sorry about that, Max. What I’d like to talk to you about is that I would like to plant some winter wheat in your fields.” Max didn’t go for the small talk most farmers did. And besides, today wasn’t really the day for bsing anyhow.

“Why?”

“Ah, well you see Max, I have a bunch of winter wheat seed sitting in my barn and with the way the economy and fuel situation is, I’d like to plant as much of it as I can. It would be nice if I could plant it as close to home as I can. My other fields are up around Grindstone City. You’re done with your planting and I would give you a share when I harvest it.”

“And what’s my percentage of the crop? Unless your thinking of paying me in dollars. You not, are you?”

“No. Not dollars. I have no idea what the spring is going to bring. How about 10%?”

“Later, Bill.” Max turned and started to walk away.

“Wait. Wait. Wait a second!” Max stopped and turned around.

“Well?”

“How does 25% sound?”

“Make