| |
There was a complete news blackout. That didn’t stop the speculation. More importantly, it didn’t stop the network of ham radio operators across the country. Most of these were members of one survivalist or Prepper organization or another. It took a couple of days with Mum frantically trying to reach Da by phone hour after hour, but we eventually heard the news. It was a rumor to start but was quickly confirmed by a person in the hotel that had a ham receiver with him. Several places in the U.S. had been hit with nuclear weapons. One of those places was Chicago. Harvey Illinois is about 20 miles from Chicago. We didn’t know if Da had survived, or if he would have wanted to by this point.
Mum was in shock. I don’t mean that figuratively. Mum was actually in shock. We had to call an ambulance and have her taken to the hospital. I hadn’t stopped crying since I had heard the news. Neither had Naomi nor her mother. Mr. Fine looked angry more than anything.
The music had been loud the entire time and had not reduced in volume very much. It wasn’t as loud as when I assumed was the initial blast went off, but it was still very loud. There had been a huge urge to sing My Song as well, but I had managed to resist it. This was the first time that I had been able to fight that urge, but I think that the grief was too overpowering for it.
To top it off, we all had no idea what to do next. Our homes were gone, and we knew we couldn’t live in the hotel forever. Naomi also pointed out something else. ‘They’ were gone. No one seemed to be watching me anymore. That thoroughly confused me.
Mum was released from the hospital after 48 hours of observation, and we all went back to the hotel to see if we could figure out our next moves. There was one thing that we had all agreed on; we were going to stay together. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be able to separate Naomi and me regardless.
We needn’t have worried about a place to stay. The Federal Government had immediately issued a ‘shelter-in-place’ order. That meant that hotels, motels and any other type of temporary residence had to provide shelter and food for free until the order was lifted. It also forgave mortgages and rent. No banks were open, and the Stock Exchange was shut down. The economy of the United States of America had ground to a complete stop.
The economic crisis as it existed would only last for a short time. Few people, including myself knew about Executive Order 13603, National Defense Resources Preparedness, that had been penned under President Obama in 2012. This EO gave the government the right to confiscate energy, food and manpower resources in advance of any emergency as well as during an emergency. The government had been stockpiling at the expense of its citizens for years.
It would take the government a while to get organized. The problem was, in the meantime the skies were darkening, and the air quality was becoming terrible. Radioactive clouds caused by the dust and dirt thrown into the atmosphere by what we could only assume were the multiple nuclear strikes were encircling the globe. Nuclear winter was beginning, and a lot of that dust was filtering back down to our level. People began to seek underground shelter wherever they could.
There aren’t a lot of places with basements in California. Earthquakes and poor soil kept builders from even considering such things. Berkeley was very close to San Francisco and had, arguably, one of the best Universities in the country at the time. Several of the residents of the hotel had children at Berkeley and had received word that we needed to stay indoors and seal all the windows and vents. Even the slowest of us knew that this would only delay the inevitable. The very air had become poison.
During that entire time, I could feel the music swelling in me. I had thought it was loud before but it was to a point where it had become distracting, often making me miss when one of the others would sign at me. What I noticed though was that there was something missing in the music. I don’t know what you hear, I never will. I can only make a guess, but I would compare what I hear to an orchestra.
Imagine a full orchestra playing and suddenly a section of instruments drops out. Not all the same instrument, different ones but a big enough group of them that the tune is affected. The music continues, the ‘melody’ is there, but it is subtly altered. That would be something akin to what I was experiencing. I had somehow ‘lost’ something in the music. I knew what was missing; I knew that it was my Da. He hadn’t survived. I couldn’t tell Mum, I couldn’t kill what tiny kernel of hope that she might have held out even though we both knew that we’d never get back to Chicago. Then another feeling overwhelmed me, one I couldn’t recognize.
It happened while we were still covering windows and sealing any openings we could find. The music got so loud, so quickly that it caught me by surprise, and I unconsciously opened my mouth. Notes to My Song came out that I had never Sung before. I had no idea at the time that I was helping someone who would later become very important to me. I was adding to his strength in some way that I couldn’t understand. I was looking out the window at the time.
The sky was filled with color. In Genesis 9: 12 and 13 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” What we saw was the entire sky a rainbow of blue and gold. It came all the way down to the ground and was blinding in its intensity.
It was strange, but people were laughing and crying at the same time. Everyone felt an anticipation and joy. I am not speaking from my own experience alone; I am relating what others told me as well. It was as though those colors, that rainbow had permeated to our very souls. And then something even stranger happened.
The colors/rainbow began to lift, and we could see that it went deep into the ground. It began to move very quickly, and it was carrying a great deal of dust with it, yet not one hair of our heads was disturbed. There was no ‘wind’ in its passage and yet it was carrying dust and very tiny debris with it and as the last of it passed us we could see it still moving further and faster into the sky. It looked like it was getting larger and fainter as though the effect, rather than being local, had happened to the entire world. Then something wonderful and beautiful occurred.
A very long distance away in the sky, it all came together into a single overwhelmingly bright blue dot. For a brief second the blue dot flared such an intense gold that we all had to shut our eyes, it was involuntary. I don’t think anything alive was capable of looking at the flash. I didn’t know it at the time, none of us did, but the Earth now had a very small new moon.
There were two things of importance that I noticed immediately. The first item was that the clouds were gone, the sun was shining and the air looked clean. The second thing was that the music was muted. Something important had gone out of the music, probably out of the world, just now. I was unbelievably sad and crying, and I didn’t know the reason. Others were rejoicing at the miracle.
Naomi hadn’t noticed me crying. She was dancing around, jubilant, with the others. I didn’t know that she had stopped and was looking at the doorway. Naomi came over to me and put her hand around my upper arm. I looked at her, and she nodded at the door. Then she signed, “It’s one of ‘Them’.”
‘They’ were back. I looked at this one and noticed that ‘His’ eyes seemed to be blazing. This was unusual since ‘Their’ eyes were normally flat, dead. This one was angry, no, furious, about something. ‘He’ roughly grabbed Mr. Fine and pulled him over to us. ‘He’ spoke rapidly to Mr. Fine who signed, “‘He’ wants to know if you had anything to do with this?”
I was confused, “Do with what?”
‘He’ lost control for a moment, reached over and slapped my face. You would think by now that ‘They’ would have figured out that physically attacking me in any way was about as stupid as you can get.
The music peaked sharply as ‘His’ hand touched my face, and my mouth fell open. My Song came out, just a few notes. ‘He’ froze where ‘He’ was and never moved of ‘His’ own volition again. I actually had turned this one to stone. Mr. Fine looked at me, looked back at ‘Him’, nodded and walked away.
I really liked Mr. Fine... so cool.
I think that we were fortunate that we were the only three that saw the entire exchange. I’m not sure how we would have explained what happened to a larger group. When I asked Naomi later about her dad’s reaction, she signed, “Oh, I told him that you were a ‘witch’ a long time ago.”
Great, just great, thanks.
When she saw the look on my face, she gave her wicked smile and signed, “No, I just told him that you could do things. He was good with it, he’s known about my little tricks for a long time.”
The air was clear, all traces of radioactive dust had been removed. That didn’t mean that the areas that had been hit with atom bombs were okay. Whatever had happened did not clean the radioactivity from the blast zones of slag and glass. Still, the planet would survive.
How were we to know that what we thought was the salvation of the world was just the start of a global hell?
YEAR ONE - San Francisco
The trucks began to roll through the streets of San Francisco two days later. Most of the trucks carried men in army fatigues and armed with rifles of some type. Men, boys mostly, that looked scared and oddly out of place. The trucks kept rolling by, dozens and then hundreds of them. I had no idea where they could all be coming from. One of the men in the hotel told us that there was an armory nearby but that he didn’t think that all of these men and trucks could have come from just there.
Three trucks stopped on the street with our hotel on it. Two of the trucks blocked the street at both ends while the third stopped and parked midway up the block. Four men jumped down from the back of the truck, and one came out of the cab. The one that came out of the front of the truck was one of ‘Them’.
Mum shooed Naomi and me back inside the hotel and told us to go up to the room, not to open that door to anyone except our little group. I had no idea what she was worried about. Weren’t these people here to help us? Mum had that tight little line of a mouth drawn, and I knew better than to argue anymore. Naomi and I left.
That didn’t mean we weren’t peeking out the window at what was going on. All five of the ‘men’ were going from building to building and talking to people there. Well, not all were talking. Three of the men held their rifles low like they were prepared to shoot while one of the men stood next to ‘Him’. ‘He’ was the one doing all the talking.
In some cases, the people in the building waved their arms around, as though they were arguing, and ‘He’ wrote something down on a clipboard that ‘He’ was carrying. The ones that didn’t argue went back inside and came back out with something, a piece of paper or a book and usually a cardboard box or large bag. The one that was with ‘Him’ would take the items and run back to the truck with them. From where we were, we couldn’t tell what was in the boxes or bags.
We couldn’t see what happened when they got to our hotel since the door was beneath us. We didn’t see anyone run from our building back to the truck with anything though. After a bit, we could see them further up the street.
Naomi’s parents and Mum finally came back to the room, just before Naomi and I died from curiosity. We were both signing so fast that none of the parents could catch what we were asking. Mum grabbed my hands and gently pulled them down. Naomi kept signing a mile a minute until her parents both turned their backs on her. That stopped her in her tracks, and she put her arms down.
Mum signed, “They wanted a list of everyone in the building and half a dozen canned goods. The hotel manager agreed that he would give them the canned goods but would not turn over any list without a valid reason or warrant. That wasn’t good enough for the one asking the questions, and he told us to keep the food, that it wouldn’t matter.”
The music had been getting louder ever since the trucks had parked, and I had a very uneasy feeling about what Mum was telling us.
I signed to our group, “I think we should leave. I think we need to get out of here, now.”
Naomi’s parents didn’t move and didn’t say anything to each other. Mum was looking at me like I had two heads. Naomi had her arm around me and was nodding. Mum turned and said something to Naomi’s parents and then turned back to me and signed, “That is exactly what we were discussing on our way back up here. We didn’t think that the two of you would want to leave. After all, you have food, shelter and nice warm beds. We don’t know what we are going to find when we go.”
Naomi signed back, “Oh boy, more adventure!”
I just dropped my head and shook it. I signed to Mum, “Mum, I have a seriously bad feeling about staying here. I think we need to get out, and I think we need to avoid the military guys.”
Nothing more was even said. We all just started packing. That was when Mr. Fine said something and then signed for us to stop. He was speaking to Mrs. Fine and Mum and signing to us at the same time, “We can’t do what we’re doing. If we are going to go, we can’t be dragging suitcases along.”
Naomi and I had both packed day-packs. We figured that if we were going to explore the city at all, we would need them. We each packed one set of clean clothing in the day-packs, splitting it up to keep the weights about equal. Mr. Fine raided the minibar and took everything that he could, also splitting it up between the two packs. When his wife eyed him putting the little bottles of Scotch in my pack, he said something to her. Naomi signed at me, “He said ‘trade goods’, right.”
We were all feeling pretty nervous as we made our way down the stairs. We had decided that using the elevator would expose us too much to the other occupants of the hotel. We wanted to keep our going as quiet as we could. We went out through the back doors near the loading dock. The front of the hotel was on one street while the back was on another. As we exited the hotel, we saw something that made our stomachs drop.
There were trucks blocking both ends of this street as well. We could also see a five-man team working their way along the other side of the street a ways ahead of us. They were currently questioning some people at what looked like another hotel, but smaller than ours. I couldn’t see any way that we could get past them and the trucks without being spotted. What if every street in downtown was like that?
Mr. Fine said something to the other two parents. He pulled us all back inside the building while a quiet argument ensued. I signed that I wanted to know what was going on?! Mrs. Fine signed back that her husband wanted to risk going on. He didn’t think that the military had any authority to stop us from ‘taking a tour’ of the city. I did not feel good about that at all.
He volunteered to go out by himself to see what would happen but was immediately overruled by both women and Naomi and myself. I know that the fem-libbers out there are not going to be happy with me, but we were terrified to think about being on our own without a man if something were to happen to him. The bare facts are, other men will hesitate to go after the women if there are men in the group. It won’t necessarily stop them, but they will at least hesitate, it seems to be built into their genes or something.
We knew it would have been lunacy for either me or Naomi to go out and see what would happen; we wouldn’t have been able to hear if someone shouted at us. It was decided that Mum couldn’t go, she was all I had, what with no one else being certain about Da. That only left Mrs. Fine, and both Mr. Fine and Naomi had a fit about that. Ultimately, it was all or nothing, and that was exactly what we did.
We didn’t even try to make it look like we were sneaking out. The five of us walked out and started walking up the sidewalk, away from the team that was going door-to-door, but not making it obvious. We stopped at a shop two doors down from our hotel and wanted to come inside, to make it look like we were shopping, but the people inside would not allow us in. Mr. Fine pulled out his wallet and showed them that he had both cash and credit cards, but they still wouldn’t let us in. We moved on to the store next to them.
The store sold bulk tea and coffee. This was a great place to shop. There were all kinds of small gift items on the shelves besides just the teas and coffees themselves. There was no problem with the people in this store allowing us in. But as we entered, I caught a glimpse of the military team heading in our direction.
We started to pull a few items off of the shelves, things that people would normally buy as souvenirs of their trip. I found some spoons that showed a little trolly car and the words San Francisco on them. Mum and Mrs. Fine were looking at a hand coffee grinder. Mr. Fine was talking to the clerk or shop owner behind the counter and Naomi was at his elbow. It all looked very normal.
The door was flung open, and another one of ‘Them’ came in, followed by another of the soldiers that had been assisting him. The store which was starting to get a little crowded at that point. ‘He’ must have yelled something because everyone except me and Naomi flinched. ‘He’ then walked up to Mr. Fine and was talking or yelling at him while poking a finger into his chest over and over.
Mr. Fine gestured at the rest of us and was speaking to the ‘Him’, the store clerk or owner had faded into the back. ‘He’ was shaking ‘His’ head and speaking again. Mr. Fine made the universal gesture for ‘just one second’ and spoke to his wife and Mum while signing to us, “He is saying that we’ve violated the shelter-in-place order and that we need to go with ‘Him’. ‘He’ wants to take us into custody. I am trying to explain to ‘Him’ that we didn’t know that we had to stay in the building 100% of the time and that we are just tourists here. ‘He’ said that it doesn’t matter, that ‘His’ orders are clear and that anyone violating military orders is to be taken in.”
That did not sound or look good.
‘He’ spoke into a handheld radio and two of the three men outside came in. Each had their rifles slung across their back and took one of Mr. Fine’s arms. The third was in the doorway with his rifle slowly moving back and forth pointing at the rest of us. We had no choice. Well, we had no choice that didn’t involve me having to do something unpredictable, something that I felt would most likely just land us in more hot water.
We saw Mum and Mrs. Fine put their hands on the back of their heads, so Naomi and I did the same thing. One of the soldiers said something to Mrs. Fine and motioned them to put their hands down. Mrs. Fine snarled something back at him, and the soldier looked like he had been slapped across the face. Mum dropped her hands for a moment and quickly signed, “She said that if they were going act like Nazi’s, then we’d act like prisoners of war.”
We walked down the street to one of the trucks. We thought that we would be getting into the back of the truck, but we were all stopped on the side of the truck opposite of the street. The music was rising and rising quickly. No one on the block where we had just come from could see what was happening when ‘He’ pulled his gun out of the holster at ‘His’ side.
The music was beginning to cause spots to appear in front of my eyes it was so loud.
‘He’ pointed the gun at Mum’s head. And I Sang. My Song came out involuntarily, not that I wouldn’t have Sung it anyway if I had control over it. All the guns, rifles and pistols, were gone, but that wasn’t all. There were too many notes.
The soldiers, including him, began to melt.
I know now that there is a part of me that will seek a cruel vengeance when the people that I love are threatened or harmed. When I am Singing, it is as though I am standing apart from my rational self. I can see what I am doing and be horrified by it, but at the same time know that I wouldn’t do anything to stop it.
They melted right in front of us. And they felt every inch of it. They were screaming as the skin and hair melted away from their bones and their blood evaporated into the air. Naomi had turned away from the sight and had buried her head in her father’s chest. Mrs. Fine and Mum both looked on with their eyes wide and jaws open. Mr. Fine was completely stoned face about it. The rational part of me that was watching all of this couldn’t understand how he could watch what was happening and, seemingly, not be affected by it. I knew, even then, that I was going to be having my own nightmares over this even though, or maybe especially, because I was the cause of it.
I must have Sung for a full ten seconds after they were gone.
We didn’t know it at the time, but there was not a single soldier that had been involved in the collection of citizen data left in San Francisco. At least My Singing had been selective this time and focused on those that were involved in what I now know was a completely unconstitutional action, even though the Constitution was in the process of being permanently suspended. Still, the vast majority of those that had been affected were innocent. While the excuse of ‘just following orders’ was not and never will be an acceptable defense, most of these young men had no idea what they were being deployed into the city to do.
At least a part of me was shocked by what I had done. I couldn’t help myself from asking if there were children that would be wondering why their daddy never came home or wives who would be left to wonder and grieve over a husband suddenly disappeared. There weren’t even any remains to be buried. I had murdered innocent people. How was I any different than those who were prepared to kill my mum or me? Was my survival or the survival of those I cared about any more important than the lives of those that I had destroyed? It didn’t matter if the conscious part of me had ‘meant’ to do it or not, I had done it, I had killed those people. In Exodus 20, the sixth commandment is not ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, it is ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ and I believed and still believe in God’s laws. I had murdered and, according to my religious beliefs, I would pay for that sin.
Mum grabbed me and hugged me. She pulled me back from her to arm’s length and signed, “You saved my life.”
I put my face in my hands so that I wouldn’t have to see anyone, no that’s not true, I put my face in my hands so that no one could see me, no one would have to look at the face of a murderer. The tears were running over the backs of my hands and down my arms. I felt someone pull me into a tight hug, skinny arms, Naomi. I pulled away long enough to sign, “Please, leave me alone, I am a murderer, and I can’t stand myself anymore.” I put my face back into my hands.
I felt one of my hands wrenched down and a stinging slap across my cheek. Naomi stood in front of me with eyes blazing and signed, “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare say that! You saved your Mum; you probably saved all of us!”
I don’t think that I have ever been so shocked in all my life. There were two reasons; one, that Naomi would do what she just did and two that the music didn’t do anything about it. I would wonder later if somehow the music could tell intent?
I signed, “But...”
She interrupted by immediately signing, “There are no buts! You think that you murdered a bunch of people? What were they going to do to us? Did you see anyone coming to your mother’s defense? Protecting your family, protecting the people you love is not murder, I don’t care how you define it, it’s not murder!”
How Naomi could emphasize the words the way, she did always amazed me. It had to be body language. She wasn’t done.
“Laya, the Nazis killed members of my family because no one would stand up to them, no one would come to their defense. The world would be a completely different place today if just one country at the time had said, ‘no, you won’t do that, we won’t allow it. If you try it, we will find you in your nice German homes and bomb the crap out of you!’ Instead, they waited and pretended that it wasn’t happening. The only reason that England and her allies went to war was because of Hitler invading countries that England had treaties with and because they were afraid of his ambition. It had absolutely nothing to do with what he was doing to the Jews. And, believe me, they knew, they knew about the concentration camps, the death camps, long before Germany was conquered. What you did for us, was what six million Jews needed done for them. You didn’t commit murder; you committed an act of rescue.”
Intellectually I understood what my best friend was saying. Emotionally it still hadn’t penetrated. One of ‘Them’ had threatened my mum, not the other soldiers. I was having a very hard time with any kind of justification for what had happened, what I had done. I liked to think that I was a ‘good girl’, but I was cursing the music and my Singing because that is how I was thinking of them right then, as a curse to be borne. I wanted to know how God could allow something so evil to be in me? I didn’t understand, I probably still don’t see the whole thing, but I was far more in the dark back then.
Mr. Fine spoke and signed, ”We need to move. We should get out of here before any more of them show up.”
As I said, we didn’t know that there were no more troops downtown. Even so, that would set off alarm bells somewhere and within a short while the place would be crawling with several times the number of soldiers that were originally there.
Mum signed and spoke, “Where do we go from here? Which direction should we head? I think it would be impossible to get back to Illinois on foot.”
Mr. Fine signed, “We aren’t even going to try. Have you seen any planes in the sky since we’ve been out? I’ve been trying to notice and haven’t seen, or heard, a single one. The only street traffic that we’ve seen lately has all been military. I think that we just need to get to someplace away from the city, someplace that has shelter, food and water.”
Naomi signed, “Why dad? Isn’t the city a safer bet if we want those things?”
He shook his head and signed back, “No honey it isn’t. These guys were taking lists of names for a reason, one I’m not sure we want to know about. But aside from that, if no planes or trucks are coming into the city except theirs, that means that they have total control of the food supply. California’s laws have made it impossible to own any type of firearm, so I don’t expect anyone to be able to resist whatever the government or military have in mind. I’m not sure anyone would anyway with the ‘sheep’ mentality that seems to dominate lately. I don’t want to be a part of whatever their plan is until I know exactly what it means.”
Naomi signed, “Why don’t we take one of their trucks instead of walking?”
Her dad shook his head, “I think we have enough problems without adding theft of government property to the list. Besides, I’ve ridden in the back of one of these before, a long time ago, but I’ve never driven one and have no idea how to.”
I had no idea that Mr. Fine had once been in the military.
He signed again, “There are three possible directions for us. South will take us closer to the seat of government for the state, I’m sure that there will be more troops down that way. East will take us to the mountains, which may be more than we can tackle right now. North will take us into farm and vineyard country, but it also gets colder and wetter up there. Whichever direction we choose, I want us to be careful and keep a sharp eye out for other travelers as well as soldiers. Any movement that catches your eye, you let the rest of us know. I don’t care if you think it’s foolish that it was ‘only a squirrel or a bird’, you let us all know.”
It wasn’t unanimous, but the majority decided that our best bet would be to head north. We could always cut east if we wanted or needed to. None of us wanted to go south even though it would have meant a better climate. The first thing was to get out of San Francisco.
While there are Sporting Goods stores in the bay city, there are only a couple that had the kind of equipment that we would need for an extended hike and camping trip. We decided that we would see if we could get some real backpacks, a tent and other assorted necessities before we got out of the city. Sadly, it took us two hours to find a store and then another half hour to argue our way in.
None of us was in the kind of shape that is needed for that kind of walking. Mr. Fine may have been in the military, but that didn’t mean that he knew everything about the shoes or clothing we should have or the type of tents that we would need. The store clerks and owners were interesting in selling us the highest end stuff that they had whether it was what we needed or not. Mum kept interpreting for us, and It was maddening and far more stress than I needed on top of everything else that had happened.
I walked out of the store. And saw dots rapidly approaching in the sky. I rushed back inside and instead of trying to sign, I grabbed Mum and pulled her along with me outside and pointed. Mum turned back into the store and must have yelled something because both of Naomi’s parents came running, followed by a confused Naomi. Mr. Fine said and signed, “Come on, we need to find someplace to hide, right now!”
The store clerks had locked the doors behind us. The five of us took off down the street checking doors until we found one that was unlocked. We all ran inside, and Mr. Fine flipped the bolt lock. There were no windows, so it was pitch black where we were in the building. Mr. Fine pulled each of us down and held us steady, indicating that we weren’t to move. It was the only way that he was able to communicate with us in the dark.
Okay, I want any girls reading or listening to this to tell me honestly that none of you would have had to pee as badly as I did at that moment. I know, tension killer sentence, but again, this was real life, not a movie or an adventure novel. And I have a wee bladder.
I couldn’t see or, naturally, hear anything going on outside, for that matter, I couldn’t see any of the others in that dark space so I just sat not moving. After what felt like hours but was probably only a few moments, I felt someone take my hand and being pressing their fingers into it. It was Naomi trying to talk sign to me in the dark. We had learned to do this years ago and remembering it wasn’t that difficult.
Naomi said, “I’m scared, what were those things?”
I replied, “I’m pretty sure that they were helicopters by the way they were flying. I got to see them a little longer than you did.”
Naomi, “Are they looking for us?”
Me, “I don’t see how they could be looking for us specifically. I think that they are trying to figure out what happened to their soldiers over here.”
Naomi, “Do you think that ‘He’ radioed something in about us?”
Me, “I have no idea. I doubt it. Things were moving pretty quickly out there, and I think that ‘He’ was acting on a standard set of orders or something.”
One of the others put their hand on my head, feeling down until they came to my shoulder and then along my arm until they came to my hand. Naomi was still pressing her fingers into that hand, and whoever it was gripped both of our hands in their one. It was a way of saying, “Stop moving!”
From that, I could guess that someone was right outside.
There are so many bad things about being deaf that to say ‘the worst thing about it’ is next to impossible. One of the things that I hated the most about it though was when I was in a dark place like that. That’s because I lost the only other sense I had that allowed me to communicate in any meaningful way. I knew that something bad was about to happen when I felt someone scrambling backwards and moving over me.
A booted foot came through the door sending small pieces of wood flying everywhere and letting in the light from an afternoon sun that blinded us all. The boot was followed by an arm and hand that reached through and unlocked the deadbolt. As soon as the door was unlocked it was violently thrown back. We were all shielding our eyes, so it was hard to make out the figure in the doorway, but it wasn’t difficult to see the glint of sunlight off of the metal of the gun in a hand.
The hearing others began to climb to their feet, so Naomi and I did the same. Everyone else was putting their hands over their heads. Naomi and I looked at each other for a moment. We were dirty and covered in dust. Naomi shrugged, and we both put our hands over our heads as well.
Once were out squinting in the full afternoon sun, four soldiers pointed their rifles at as while a fifth was looking at something on a table. ‘He’ was one of ‘Them’. ‘He’ said something to another soldier that had been standing slightly behind him and pointed at the tablet and then directly at me. Oh, joy.
I had come to love Mr. Fine almost as much as my own, and what he did next just made it even more so. ‘He’ said something to the soldier that he had been showing the tablet to, and the soldier started walking toward me. Mr. Fine moved to get between us. The only problem with being a hero is that unless the other guy is an outright villain, he usually thinks that he’s some kind of hero too. The soldier stopped and said something to Mr. Fine. There was a bit of a dialogue, and the soldier turned back to ‘Him’ and seemed to ask a question.
If you haven’t it figured out by now, ‘They’ don’t seem to have a lot of patience with those that ‘They’ don’t think can harm ‘Them’. ‘He’ drew his sidearm and pointed it at the other soldier.
I can tell you this, Mr. Fine was a real hero. He tackled the soldier just as ‘He’ fired. The four soldiers guarding us turned and were loosely pointing their rifles in ‘His’ direction now. Naomi and her mom were kneeling down by her dad. I didn’t want to look; I didn’t want to know. I grabbed Mum and just hung onto her in a hug.
It seemed to me that ‘He’ was yelling at the four soldiers with rifles when I looked up. The young men were looking at each other, one of them had an exaggerated frown on his face as though he had eaten something sour and was shaking his head. The young soldier spoke back to ‘Him’ and ‘He’ slowly put the handgun on the ground.
Mr. Fine was standing up and had the short sleeve of his shirt rolled up to his shoulder. The soldier that he had saved was looking at the crease leaking blood in the side of Mr. Fine’s upper arm. The soldier pulled something from his belt and poured a powder into the wound, then put a bandage on it. He smiled and something to Mr. Fine, which caused them both to laugh.
I don’t think Mum knew why they were laughing either, but she translated for me, “The soldier wants to know if he wants morphine too?”
While all of this was transpiring, one of the four soldiers had approached ‘Him’ while the other kept their rifles trained on ‘Him’. The soldier was putting what looked to me like zip-ties on ‘His’ wrists, speaking to ‘Him’ the whole time. Mum saw where I was looking and signed, “The soldier is telling him that he is in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and that he is under arrest pending formal charges.”
All I could think at the time was, “Those soldiers are in bigger trouble than they know.” I also knew that there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Mr. Fine and the soldier he had saved, I am going to call him Major Ira, to speed things up, were talking. Major Ira said something to one of the other soldiers, and he brought over a laminated map. The conversation between Major Ira and Mr. Fine went on for quite a while.
During that time, some of the soldiers came over and tried to talk to Naomi and me. They were cute. The language barrier was there, but that didn’t even seem to slow those boys down. Yes, we were both just fifteen, but we had no way to tell them that, now did we? There was one young man in particular that Naomi seemed to like. He was a Corporal which isn’t a very high rank from what I understand, but it’s higher than Private. I don’t think his rank had anything to do with the reason that Naomi liked him.
Mum and Mrs. Fine were keeping an eye on us the whole time. I am sure that if things started to go too far, one or the other would have intervened. As it was, Naomi and Corporal Seth exchanged some information, Naomi still had her cell phone, and that was about the limit of things. Corporal Seth did find out the direction we were heading and what our tentative destination was. His interest appeared to be more than casual if you were to ask me.
None of the young men was quite that interesting to me. I was still blaming myself for their compatriots’ deaths. They were a pleasant distraction for a little while, but not much more. I could tell that Mum was worried about me. I think that she would have been much happier if I had taken the kind of interest in the young soldiers that Naomi had.
Major Ira gave more than advice to Mr. Fine. At some point during the conversation, the Major had gotten on his radio, and a couple of soldiers later drove in what looked like a Jeep on steroids! I will never get the name right for that crazy vehicle but someone told Mr. Fine just to call it the Jeep J8, and he’d be okay. The Major pointed out that it had been stripped of its armament and radio. He recommended that if we could, we should try to get it painted a different color as soon as possible. How the Major would explain its absence was not to be our worry he had told us. The Major and the other soldiers then proceeded to load us up with food, water and the other necessities that we were lacking.
We all piled in and were ready to take to the road when the Major offered Mr. Fine a handgun and a rifle. I think he would have offered each of us a gun if he thought that he could have found a way to get away with it. I was surprised when Mr. Fine refused. I was even more surprised when Mum raised her hand and indicated that she would take them.
We pulled away from the street with the helicopter sitting in the middle of it and one of the trucks now cleared out of the way for us. Naomi was waving goodbye to her soldier; I had the feeling that we weren’t done with that one quite yet. Mum wasn’t smiling, but I could tell that she was at least relieved to be getting away from downtown San Francisco.
Major Ira had given each of us some papers that he told Mr. Fine we would need to get through any checkpoints that we encountered. Mrs. Fine was infuriated by the fact that we would need ‘papers’ to travel freely in America! Major Ira understood, but he was also a realist and made her take the papers. We were on our way, but we weren’t out of the city yet.
You will remember that I told you California had pretty much made it illegal for the average citizen to own a firearm of any kind? No doubt the government of California thought that they were helping to protect the people by taking the guns away. The problem was, they were taking the guns away from the people who were already honest about having them.
There were almost one million people living in San Francisco at the time. Approximately thirty thousand of those residents were criminals and should have been either in prison or on probation. Of that thirty thousand, roughly ten thousand, a third were violent and more than half of them were out on the streets thanks to some of the most liberal laws in the nation at the time. Five thousand violent criminals, all armed and a populace that was lucky if it had baseball bats to use to defend themselves.
With the concentration of the military and whatever law enforcement that they decided was useful to them focused on downtown, the outlying areas, the areas that we needed to get to and through was exactly where the criminals were raiding. We saw the smoke from several blocks away. Mum signed that she hadn’t heard any sirens and we certainly never saw any fire trucks or police cars. Whatever was burning was going to keep burning until it was gone. As we started to get closer to the area that had the fire, the Fines and Mum suddenly ducked down, pulling Naomi and me with them. Mr. Fine signed, “A gunshot!”
Mum already had the pistol that Major Ira had given out. She pushed something on the side of the gun, and a long rectangular object filled with bullets slid out of the gun into her hand, the magazine. She checked it and then snapped it back into the semiautomatic pistol and pulled the slide on top of the gun back. I was staring at Mum. How was it that she knew to do all of those things? I was beginning to think that Mum had a secret past that I needed to know more about.
A group of men came running towards our jeep; I took a quick look behind, and another group was approaching from the rear. All the men had some kind of weapon, mostly clubs. A few of them men were holding handguns, and one had a rifle that looked similar but somehow different than the one the Major had given us. Mum didn’t even hesitate, she aimed and fired at the one holding the rifle.
I saw the gun jerk back in her hand and the puff of smoke. When I looked back at the one that had been holding the rifle, he was faced down on the ground. Both groups had stopped. Mum hadn’t. She started shooting at anyone that she could see holding a gun. Every single one of her shots hit though not every one of the men dropped. Who was this woman that I called my mum? Even Naomi and the Fines were looking at her with dropped jaws.
After the fifth man had been hit, the groups lost their nerve and broke. They started running back the way that they had come. I think that they had lost their leader with Mum’s first shot, and that had a lot to do with it.
Mr. Fine hit the gas so hard that I almost flew out the back. He was racing through the streets now. Mrs. Fine was next to him talking to him and looking at the map that Major Ira had given to us. Mum was inspecting the pistol. Naomi had pulled me back and had her hands down low, she signed to me, “What the hell?”
I didn’t know what to tell her; I shrugged my own confusion.
Mum had stopped her check of the weapons and was looking at the two of us. She spoke while she signed because she wanted the Fines to hear what she had to say as well, “Do any ‘a you happ’n ta know of the IRA?”
Mr. Fine said something and Mum nodded and said something back. I knew a little bit about who they were; you couldn’t grow up in an Irish household and not know. Naomi was completely confused; she signed something about a retirement fund. Mum didn’t even crack a smile. Mum shook her head and signed while speaking, “No love, the IRA is the Irish Republican Army. There have been a number of different versions o’er the years. Some had even thought the fight’n was done. But there will always be an IRA as long as Northern Ireland isn’t free of the British and a part of the whole of Ireland. My own Da and his Da before him and goin’ on I do na’ know how far back ha’ always been soldiers in it. Bee’n me Da’s first born an’ no boys ta call his own, I ha’ to carry the tradition. I can tell you, it was hard prov’n m’self, so I had to become the best shot in all the north, and by damn, that’s what I did! I also grew sick o’ it. It’s a fight that will ne’r end because too many loves the fight’n itself. Yer Da felt the same Laya. Tis why we came to America in the first place.”
What do you say to that except, wow!? my mum was a bada** (I told you, I’m a GOOD girl!) Naomi, being Naomi, signed what I was thinking. Mum shook her head and signed back, “No, kids, I’m a housewife. I used ta take in laundry to help keep me and the husband fed. I only took the guns because I know that there is a darker side ta people than your parents want to admit Naomi. Your parents believe that people are basically good; I don’t.”
And my own experience has been somewhere in-between. There was a very, very, old movie that I saw once. It starred an old man that had once been in something called vaudeville he was so old. In the movie, the man was playing God, and a little girl asked him why he let bad things happen to little kids, sickness, death? The man in his role as God answered, “I never learned how to make anything with only one side to it. If you have joy, you have to have sadness, if you have pleasure, you have to have pain.” Now, maybe that’s the truth of it, and maybe it isn’t but I thought it was a pretty good answer. If you have good people, maybe you have to have bad ones?
You may also have noticed that I talk about God a lot. You might be thinking it was my Catholic upbringing and, early on, you would have been right. But many things have happened along the way that have shown me, us, that not only is there a God, but that He has a vested interested in mankind. You will eventually learn what these things were, if not from me, then from one of the others that were involved. I think that may be one of the reasons that Diane wants us all to tell our stories. They aren’t really separate stories, they are intertwined, you can’t fully understand them without knowing all of them.
Naomi began calling Mum, ”Amazon Mom” which entirely pissed her off. Her parents and Mum all got on her about it, but couldn’t make her stop. Besides, Mum knew that Naomi loved her almost as much as she loved her own mother.
We had one more encounter before we got to the bridge that would take us completely out of San Francisco. This encounter wouldn’t have the violence that we had just witnessed, on the contrary, I would gain a new friend out of this one. Over the strenuous objections of the others.
Mr. Fine was racing through the streets at what many would consider a breakneck speed. We were violently tossed up and down, thanks to the nature of the terrain of San Francisco. What idiot didn’t know how to use a bulldozer to flatten the land!? The beautiful hills of San Francisco my aching butt!
Suddenly the car was braking, and the jeep started to spin like a top. We were all holding on and even so, Naomi’s feet were hanging out the back, she was about to fly out! I was certain that the vehicle was going to flip and that we would all be killed. The music had risen, and I think that it was about to force me to Sing when the Jeep came to rest. We were right-side up, but facing sideways in the street. Both Mum and Mrs. Fine were yelling at Mr. Fine. I had grabbed Naomi and pulled her all the way back in. Mr. Fine was gesturing with his hands and yelling back. After a few moments of this, I tapped Mum on the shoulder and signed, “Could someone turn the volume up for those of us in the back?”
Mum sat there for a moment, a little surprised at my sarcasm and signed, “Mr. Fine saw a dog in the street and didn’t want to hit it. Instead, he almost killed us all!”
A dog? I jumped out of the back of the jeep. I’m sure that Mum and the others were yelling at me. See, there’s an advantage to being deaf at times too! Since my back was to them, I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I ran around the jeep looking for the dog; sure I was going to find the poor thing lying dead in the street. There he was, sitting in the gutter looking at me with his head cocked. I will never forget that moment. He was only a puppy, and there was a connection.
I ran over and scooped him up in my arms. He was dirty, but so was I. He started licking my face, and it was instant love. Mum and Mr. Fine had run over. Both of them were rapidly signing at me. I closed my eyes, which Mum knew, meant that I either couldn’t understand them or wasn’t going to listen to them. I opened my eyes again, and she had put her hand on Mr. Fine’s shoulder, he had stopped signing. Mum signed to me, “Sweetheart, ya canna’ run off like that!”
“Mum, look what I found! I’m keeping him!”
Mr. Fine jumped into the conversation, “Laya, we may not have enough for ourselves. We aren’t even sure where we are going; we can’t bring a dog along!”
I tried to be respectful, I believe that respecting our elders is an essential part of a civilized society, “Mr. Fine, a dog is security. Naomi and I may not be able to hear him, but you and the others will. He will bark if strangers approach us. He is going to be my dog, and I can tell you right now that once he knows that, he is going to protect me.”
Mr. Fine laughed a little, “Laya, I think we all know that protection is one of the last things you need. I just don’t see how we can bring a dog along.”
I respect my elders, but that doesn’t mean that they are always right. I sat down and crossed my legs, holding the pup tightly in my arms, “He is coming or we’ll both stay here.”
Mum looked at me and then said something to Mr. Fine who threw his hands up in the air and walked away. Mum didn’t smile, but she nodded at me and motioned with her head for me to get into the jeep. My new friend and I went.
Once we were in the vehicle Naomi went nuts over him. I slapped her hands down and told her that he was MY dog. After all, I signed, she had her pretty soldier-boy. She made a face at me and asked me what I was going to name him. I had to think for a couple of minutes, minutes which Mr. Fine used to cover another few miles. I finally signed, “I’m going to call him Chad.”
Naomi gave me a lifted eyebrow and asked, “Why Chad? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention a Chad before.”
I was smiling, I hoped I was smiling as wickedly as she did, “Chad, in honor of the way that you were just barely hanging on when we found him!”
She slapped me across the head and I saw Chad bark at her.
We arrived at the bridge. There were military vehicles everywhere. The bridge was blocked with concrete barricades. There was a lot of suspicion when we pulled up in what was obviously a military jeep. Mr. Fine said something to one of the soldiers and the soldier directed us to park in an area off to the side. The soldier then said something else to Mr. Fine and then walked off. Mr. Fine said/signed, “He says that we are to stay in the vehicle.”
We sat, and we sat, and we sat. After about an hour of sitting, Mr. Fine yelled out at another soldier who came over. Mr. Fine said something to the soldier who put his head through the window and looked at us. The soldier said something to Mr. Fine and then held up one finger and walked away while talking on a handheld radio. A few moments later the soldier was back and said something else to Mr. Fine. Mr. Fine said/signed, “Okay, he says that he is willing to escort us to the restrooms, which I’m sure everyone could use about now. He can only take us two at a time though and we bring nothing with us, no packs, no purses, nothing.”
I signed back, “I’m bringing my dog!”
Mr. Fine dropped his head then lifted it and said something to the soldier who smiled, laughed and said something back to Mr. Fine. Mr. Fine signed to me, “He says bring your dog. He’d like to meet the pup anyway.”
Mum and I were in the second group that got to go. Mr. Fine was last. We had decided to split it up that way so that we would have at least one hearing partner with one of the non-hearing ones. On the way, the soldier scratched Chad’s head and said things to him. Chad wagged his little tail, so I figured that the soldier was an okay guy. The soldier said something to Mum who stopped for a moment and looked at the dog and then said something to the soldier. I signed, “What’s going on?”
Mum signed back, “He says that you’ve got yourself a good one. I tho’ it was a mutt, but yer dog is a Blue Heeler. Very smart and very protective.”
To be honest, I didn’t care. He was my dog; that’s all that mattered to me. I had never had a dog. Oh, Mum and Da had talked about it many times, but for one reason or another it just never happened.
After the restrooms, we were all back in the jeep. Mr. Fine had asked the soldier what the hold-up was and was told that we were a low priority considering the chaos going on in the city at that moment. The soldier understood that all we wanted was to get across the bridge and yes we had what appeared to be the proper authorization, but the jeep was a problem. Even though the paperwork indicated that we had been given permission to ‘borrow’ it, it was government property, and that sort of thing simply wasn’t done. At least not by someone of the rank of Major.
We waited another hour. A soldier was kind enough to bring us some bottled water and some snacks that looked like they had been sitting in a vending machine for a couple of years. I was polishing off a bag of potato chips when a soldier with a lot of medals and ribbons on his uniform approached the jeep. He said something to Mr. Fine. Mr. Fine spoke and signed, “We’re to go with him.”
We followed the officer; it was obvious even to me that’s what he was, to a small air-conditioned building next to the bridge. There was a single desk and two chairs in the room. None of us sat down. Behind the desk was a man with even more decorations on his uniform than the officer that had led us in there.
For his sake, I will call him General Aaron.
General Aaron held up some papers and said something to Mr. Fine, who nodded. The General got a look an exasperated look on his face and said something else to Mr. Fine. Mr. Fine spoke back. I was getting pretty tired of being left out of all the conversations, so I shook Mum’s elbow and gestured at the two of them. Mum started signing, “The General is telling Mr. Fine that Major Ira had no authority to give us the Jeep. The papers are okay, but he wasn’t allowed to give away any military equipment.”
I wondered if Mr. Fine was going to tell the general about all the other things inside the jeep? The two kept talking.
Mum signed, “Mr. Fine is explaining about you and Naomi.” I saw the General looking in our direction, “Mr. Fine is telling the general that there is no way the two of you could walk the entire distance needed. But the General wants to know why we aren’t just driving a civilian car?”
That was a good question. Mr. Fine was speaking again, and Mum signed, “He says that when we were given the jeep, the thought was that it would deter people from trying to take it from us. Seeing a military vehicle instead of a civilian one would intimidate some people.”
The General was nodding but seemed unconvinced. The General said something to one of the other soldiers in the room who saluted and left. I had a question and signed it to Mum. She seemed very hesitant to ask but did. She spoke directly to the General who hadn’t been talking to anyone but Mr. Fine to that point.
General Aaron looked at me and said something which Mum interpreted, “He says that there are more than enough Generals to go around these days, that the military may have more Generals than any other type of officer. Most of them were promoted as political favors, he also says that he earned his the hard way which is why he got stuck in this particular posting.”
I signed that I didn’t understand. And the General nodded and spoke again, “‘General’ is not something that just happens. The President or Congress appoints a General. Since there has been a tendency to want to ‘demilitarize’ the military over the past couple of decades, many career officers have been cut from the military and ‘politically correct’ ones raised up. This includes the pool from which Generals are normally selected.”
I signed, and Mum spoke to the General, “So, most of the Generals out there have no experience? What if we were in a war?”
General Aaron said something back, and Mum signed, “We are in a war. Or rather we were in a war. General Aaron says that whoever nuked us has been bombed back to the stone age, but, he said that it was all automated. No General was involved, no strategy, it was all computer driven.”
The General was interrupted by the soldier that had left coming back into the room. The soldier spoke to the General and handed him something. General Aaron came around the desk and put his hand on Mr. Fine’s shoulder. The General started speaking to Mr. Fine and then stopped. He looked at Naomi and me and then said something to Mum. When he started talking to Mr. Fine again, Mum started signing, “General Aaron says that he can’t find any way to give us the jeep, it just can’t be done legally. If it was excess equipment or obsolete, he might get away with selling it to us, but it’s brand new. The General says that he has done the next best thing though. His men are all over the city, and he had one of them bring us something from one of the local car dealers. General Aaron says that the ownership dealer agreed to sell it for one dollar in exchange for the same kind of papers that we have for leaving the city. He had the dealer sell it to Mr. Fine with one of his soldiers signing for Mr. Fine.”
We were all curious as to what kind of vehicle the General had gotten for us. At this point, some of you may be thinking, Humvee, and you would be wrong. The civilian version of the Humvee was not that great a vehicle. Oh, it looked intimidating, but it wasn’t very durable and certainly didn’t do well off-road.
General Aaron led us outside, sitting there was a brand new Land Rover Sport. Mr. Fine pursed his lips, even though I’ve never heard it; I know what whistling is, and I’m sure that was what he was doing. He said something and Mrs. Fine hit him in the arm. Mum interpreted, “He said it was prettier than his wife.” I would have hit him too.
The General said something to one of the soldiers near the vehicle. The soldier saluted, took the keys from the General, got in, drove the new car and parked it next to the jeep.
Mr. Fine and General Aaron were shaking hands. Mrs. Fine and Mum hugged him, which I think surprised him. Naomi hugged him too. My arms were full of dog, but the General came over and scratched Chad under the chin and gave me a one armed hug. He waved at us with his back turned as he headed back into the air-conditioning. I think that was on purpose so that he wouldn’t see what we were transferring from the jeep to the Land Rover. It’s called plausible deniability.
It didn’t take us very long to make the switch. When Mum started to pull the rifle out, all the soldiers in the immediate area turned away and started talking to each other. Everything and everyone fit easily into the Land Rover, and it was air-conditioned!
Mr. and Mrs. Fine sat in the front, Mum had a window seat and so did I because of Chad. Naomi wasn’t thrilled about that, but the back was roomy enough that we weren’t on top of each other. The car was an automatic that could be manually shifted into four-wheel drive. I saw Naomi lean forward and sign something to her dad who just gave her a look and shook his head. Naomi sat back with her arms crossed and an angry expression on her face. I looked at her, the question on my face and she signed, “I wanted to know if I could drive. It’s not like we shouldn’t be practicing is it?”
I signed back to her, “Naomi, seriously? Look around you.”
She shrugged, “So what, can you think of a better time? We might never get another chance.”
That got me thinking that she could be right about driving and a lot of other things too.
The soldiers had hooked up chains to the concrete barricades and were dragging them out of the way with a backhoe. Mr. Fisher already had the car in Drive and was edging forward as enough space was made for him to clear. I wondered if the other side of the bridge would be similarly blocked and how many times we would have to go through the same sort of hours-long ordeal that we just had?
We drove over the bridge and out of San Francisco.
––––––––
YEAR ONE - U.S. Route 80
There was no checkpoint at the other end of the bridge which surprised all of us. There were barricades all along the bridge forcing any car coming either way to go in a slow zig-zag pattern. At the other end, we simply drove off and onto the road. The sign said we were on U.S. 80, which even I knew meant that we were heading east, not north. When I signed about it to Mum, she spoke to Mr. Fine. Mum signed back to me, “Mr. Fine said that he knows, but the Bay Bridge had to be easier to cross than the Golden Gate. He also said that we will stay on 80 for a while because it does go north and then east. We will find a road that heads north before we start heading too far east.”
I chewed on my lower lip and tried to envision the map in my head. If we had managed to cross the Golden Gate, we could have gone up into the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. One would think that there would be farms in that area. As it was, we had come off the bridge in an area that was a wildlife preserve. Nice, but still, far too close to San Francisco proper for any of us to feel comfortable.
While Mr. Fine didn’t drive nearly as fast as he had through San Francisco, he was still moving at a pretty good clip. I could tell that Chad was whining and he kept pawing at the window so I signed the question to Mum, “Can I roll it down and let him hang his head out, I think that’s what he wants?”
Mum spoke to Mr. Fine, and I saw him fiddling with some knobs on the dashboard. A second later we were being blasted much harder by the air-conditioning and Mum nodded at me. I rolled the window down and kept a tight hold on my pup while he stuck he head out the window. Do dogs smile? I would have sworn that puppy was grinning as the air rushed past his ears, and the tongue that hung out of his mouth.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Northern California wasn’t beautiful. Even with ‘urban sprawl’, it was as pretty a place as I had ever been. At least here, cars were still on the road, though not many. We could also see people out on the side roads. There was a heavy police presence, mostly California Highway Patrol, and military presence on the interstate. Most of the CHiPs were positioned in the median while the military vehicles were usually near the off-ramps or under the overpasses.
Mr. Fine had put one of the pieces of paper that he had been given, on the front dashboard so that it could be seen easily through the windshield. It had larger than normal writing on it and some official-looking symbols and stamps. A lot of the soldiers waved at us when they saw it as we went by. None of the police officers waved at us. None of them looked happy at all.
We had a full tank of gas, but we all knew that finding operating gas stations was going to be a concern at some point. I asked Mum about it. After she had gotten an answer from Mr. Fine, she signed that General Aaron had given them a list of towns with at least one station that the military made sure was still working. The papers that we had would entitle us to purchase the gas that we needed.
Everyone except Mr. Fine and I looked like they were trying to get some sleep. Since I was behind Mr. Fine, that meant that I would have no one to ‘talk to’, even if he could take his hands off the wheel to answer. I just held Chad and looked out the window and thought. Considering everything that had happened in the last few days, having time to think might not have been a good thing. I was still having major problems with some of the things that I had done, the reality of watching men get shot and killed by Mum was setting in and being the only one who was absolutely sure about Da may have been the hardest thing of all. The tears came on their own. At least, I knew, they were as silent as my voice usually was.
It was while I was wallowing in these thoughts, some might call it self-pity, that something went by low overhead. The shadow covered the car for a moment and then was past us and flying ahead of us just a few feet over the road. It was a helicopter! It stopped and hovered about two football field lengths ahead of us. The other light traffic was slowing to a stop. Mr. Fine pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. He shook his wife awake and said something to her. Mum and Naomi both had their eyes open by then, and I could tell Chad was whining again. The parents were talking. Naomi tugged on her mother and signed, “We need to be included in the conversation. We’re not little kids anymore.”
Mr. Fine said something and nodded. It was easier for us to see her, so Mum did the translations, “Mr. Fine thinks that may be the officer that was arrested by the soldiers back in San Francisco. He doesn’t know if we should wait it out or make a run for it.”
I was almost certain that ‘He’ knew who I was by now. If that were the case, then ‘He’ wouldn’t just let us go. I was a danger, specifically to ‘Them’, in some way. I was equally certain that if we ran, we’d get caught, and that would be worse for the others. I didn’t sign anything; I didn’t give any indication as to what I was going to do.
In what must have looked like a single move, I put Chad into Naomi’s arms, opened my door, jumped out and slammed the door shut again. I didn’t even look back. I just started running toward the helicopter. I knew that it would take a couple of seconds for what I did to register on everyone else in the car, and that was all I needed to make sure that I had enough of a sufficient lead that they couldn’t catch up to me.
Don’t get the idea that I wasn’t scared. It came down to, who was I most scared for? I stopped in front of the three people that had gotten out of the helicopter, and I put my hands behind my head. None of them was ‘Him’.
The three officers were looking at each other and then at me. One of them spoke to me. By now the ‘pointing to where my ears should have been and shaking my head routine’ was so normal that it was almost automatic. One of the officers had a clipboard with some papers on it. He read something on the clipboard and spoke to the other two again. He then flipped to some paper at the back of the clipboard, took a pen from his pocket and wrote something that he tore off and handed to me.
I read the note, “Are you one of the two deaf girls traveling with Adam Fine?”
They wanted to know if I was with Mr. Fine? What was going on?
By that time, the others had caught up to me. They had been more cautious in their approach. I was pretty sure that Mum had the handgun tucked away somewhere on her person. The officer looked up and saw Mr. Fine and said something.
Mr. Fine nodded and spoke back. A conversation ensued.
Naomi was holding a very squiggling puppy by that point and dumped Chad back into my arms where he settled down immediately.
Mr. Fine turned and spoke/signed to the rest of us, “It appears that we are wanted by some people for questioning back in San Francisco. These are friends who came to warn us that if we continue down 80, we are going to be stopped and detained by a roadblock about eighteen miles up the road. They had no other way to warn us. We don’t have one of their radios and even if we did, it’s likely that others would be listening in. The other problem is that every off-ramp is being guarded, and there are orders out that if we try to leave the Interstate, we are to be held.”
Mrs. Fine said something to her husband. They were having a small argument. Mum turned me around so that I wouldn’t be able to see what they were saying and indicated to Naomi that she should do the same. What was going on?
Apparently Mr. Fine said something because Mum turned around, so both Naomi and I did. Mr. Fine continued what he was saying/signing, “They wanted to know if I remembered how to fly a helicopter? They want us to abandon the jeep and take the chopper. The problem is that these three officers and General Aaron will most likely be Court Martialed if we do.”
Mr. Fine flew helicopters? Naomi had a funny look on her face like she didn’t know the people that had birthed her. She signed, “dad, when did you learn to fly helicopters?”
Mr. Fine simply signed back, “In the military.” and didn’t elaborate.
This was a dilemma. The officers were putting their necks out for us, which was something that I didn’t understand. The five of us and a dog were all supposed to fit into a helicopter that was meant to seat no more than four people. Where were we supposed to go with a helicopter? It wasn’t like we’d be able to stop and fill it up at a gas station when the tank got low.
The officer said something again to all the parents. Mum signed for us, “He said that this is their choice, not ours. Their job is to protect and defend the Constitution, first and foremost, then follow the orders of the President and those placed in authority over them. The Constitution is for, by and of the people, and that’s us.”
God, what do you say to something like that?
He wasn’t done though, “I had a family. They lived in Chicago. I had a little girl; she was sixteen. You need to get these kids out of here, to someplace safe. These people who want you back in the city for questioning, I’ve seen their type and I’ve seen how they ‘question’ people. That isn’t what I joined up for. This chopper has a range of almost five hundred miles with the fuel she has in her. Pick a direction, randomly, and go.”
Nobility isn’t just a word in the dictionary. There were people in the world, I believe that there still are, that just have an inbred nobility to them. All of us, including Mr. Fine, hugged each of the officers, who were embarrassed at the display of emotion.
We went back to the car and grabbed a few essentials. I think that all the officers were shocked when they saw Mum running back up with the rifle in her hand. I think that we were more jarred when we watched Mr. Fine climb into the pilot’s seat of the helicopter. The next question, who was going to take co-pilot as Mrs. Fine absolutely refused. The only option, as it turned out, was Mum. The co-pilot had to be able to communicate with the pilot, and that wasn’t going to happen with sign language.
Before I could get into the chopper though, Mum took me aside and shook me, hard. She signed at me, angrier than I had ever seen her, “Don’t you EVER do anything like that again. We all stick together, ALL of us. Ya got that?!”
I’m sure that my eyes were as wide as saucers. I could only nod and sign, “Yes, Mum.” You haven’t been yelled at until you’ve been yelled at in American Sign Language (ASL.) With that, Mum spun me around and swatted me on the behind as I climbed into the helicopter. She went around the other side and pulled herself up next to Mr. Fine.
I had never been in a helicopter before, but even I could tell that we hadn’t had a stellar takeoff. To my recollection, we bounced at least three times before we were completely airborne. We had to pick a direction, and it needed to be random, with SF and its environs the exception. Naomi suggested spinning the chopper with her dad’s eyes closed and then stopping and going in the direction he stopped. None of us thought that a particularly a good idea. Chad did not like the noisy, vibrating helicopter at all. He wouldn’t sit still and kept wiggling out of my arms. In one of his lunges, he managed to jump into the front and hit the ‘stick’ which guided the chopper. We went into a short spin, but Mr. Fine pulled us right out of it. And our direction was chosen.
Oddly, it would be close to our original direction but further east. In fact, we were all a little worried because going any distance in that direction would put us into some extremely rough terrain. Considering our limited supplies that could be a problem. We checked the map. If we could make it, we should be able to at least have an ample supply of food. We were headed Northeast, into the mountains and beyond them. Our goal now was the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge just this side of the Oregon border.
––––––––
YEAR ONE- Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, Nevada
Have you ever been to one those large theme parks that had thrill rides? I’m sure that you know the ones I mean; they had signs out in front of the ride, “Pregnant Women Should Not Ride!” The trip in the helicopter through the mountains to the Wildlife Refuge should have had a sign on it, “If You Ever Hope To Get Pregnant, Do Not Ride!” OH...MY...GOD! (sorry Lord) It was the WORST ride I had ever taken. Each of us got sick at least once, including Mr. Fine. At least he had the forethought to set down before he lost it. We went in directions that I don’t think they have names for! Every muscle in my body ached. Poor Chad, I’m surprised he didn’t have broken bones the way that poor puppy was being tossed around. Mr. Fine said that we girls were just being melodramatic. I distinctly remember being able to see the weird shaped pupils of a mountain goat as we came THAT close to the face of one of the mountains! It was a ride designed to bring me out of my funk and make me concentrate on what I was doing then and there and what was ahead of us.
To say that we landed in the National Wildlife Refuge would be a bit kind. It was more of a controlled crash as we were totally out of fuel at the time. Mr. Fine really is a great pilot though, and no one was seriously injured. Any sprains or bruises were chalked up to the ride itself and not the landing.
Let me try to describe my first impression of the refuge for you. I think the word bleak sums it up pretty well. Where we were, it was mostly rocks and scrub. It is a very mountainous area with the kind of scenery you would use in an old fashioned western movie. There is water there, but you have to look for it or know where to find it. The best thing is that there were a number of abandoned homesteads and not enough rangers left patrolling the refuge to care much about squatters.
There was an abundance of life in the refuge. The refuge was there to protect the American pronghorn antelope, but it also had mule deer, grouse, rabbit and some odd fish in the streams and few lakes that dotted it. There were also a very few horses, beautiful horses, left. Naomi was determined that she was going to catch and tame one. Remember, we were city girls and had no idea, okay?
It was also home to some predators that we were going to have to be careful of. Predators like the mountain lion and at least one type of rattlesnake called this place home. The closest town was a small one called Denio about 14 miles from the eastern boundary of the refuge. We weren’t too worried about that since the refuge was huge.
However long we were going to be there; it wasn’t going to be an easy life. Temperatures at night could easily dip below freezing even in the summer. The little food that we had wasn’t going to last long. We had seen water coming in and knew where we could get that though we weren’t sure if it were safe to drink. The helicopter, it turned out, had some emergency items in it though that would help tremendously. Wool blankets, a trauma-type first aid kit, some basic survival equipment, including both water purification tablets that were very old and a much newer portable Doulton gravity fed water filtration system.
From what we were able to tell, the homestead that we had spotted from the air should be less than a mile from where we landed. We knew the approximate direction, but the light was fading fast, so we needed to hurry if we were going to make it any kind of shelter before dark. Mum was for staying in the chopper that night, but she was outvoted. She had said before we started out that we didn’t know what we were heading into and warned that if the place had a bad roof and stone walls we were in for a frightfully cold night. There was a distinct lack of trees in the area; your typical firewood was going to be hard to find.
The homestead turned out to be a bunkhouse that had been built by the WPA during the Great Depression. For those of you who weren’t paying any attention in American History, the WPA or Work Progress Administration was a government program that employed millions of mostly unskilled workers during the Depression to build new roads, building, bridges and parks. That’s as much about it as I can remember, I’m sure that there was a lot more to it. The question most of us had was, “Why in the world build something out here in the middle of nowhere?” If we ever found a park ranger, we might get an answer some day.
The bunkhouse was made of local stone and cement. The roof was only partially intact, mostly on one end. There was no door and no glass in any of the windows. It looked as though some animals had used it as a home at some point. It was dark, but we had a couple of flashlights from the helicopter. The batteries wouldn’t last forever, so we kept one off at all times. Mr. Fine had gathered some of the dried brush and broken it up into small pieces. We had looked around on our way in for something larger and only found a few short branches from some bush or other, nothing bigger around than my thumb.
Mr. Fine dug a small hole in the dirt floor of the building and, with the use of lighter that we had found in the emergency supplies, started a fire that we constantly had feed pieces of brush to. It didn’t give off very much heat, but it was a little bit of light. We ate a cold meal of something out of small cans that Mum told us was SPAM. It smelled funny, but it was food. Chad ate his portion in a two bites and then went after mine. We drank bottled water, the dog lapping his out of my cupped hands, then tried to figure out how we would sleep as it was already getting colder.
Mum shrugged and said/signed that she had spent a lot of cold nights in Ireland. The best thing to do was to share each other’s warmth. So, it was a cuddle night. Mr. and Mrs. Fine and then me, Chad, Mum and Naomi. We had four blankets that we made stretch for the five of us.
I started thinking, “Wasn’t it just last night that we were all sleeping in a clean, warm hotel room, in separate beds? What had happened to our lives?” I slept, and the nightmares crept in.
In my dreams, I saw dead people and dead animals everywhere. I saw something big and dark moving across the planet and leaving nothing living in its wake. Not animal, not a bird, not an insect, not even a blade of grass. This wasn’t just death; this was the opposite of the breath of life itself. The planet was slowly becoming completely barren wherever this thing was, and IT was aware. IT knew what IT was doing, and IT was going about it in a purposeful manner. IT was creating terror and panic and ultimately, hopelessness ahead of IT. I saw people standing, seeing IT come and doing nothing, people who had resigned themselves to what they believed to be inevitable. I saw people pray to this ‘thing’ and offer up their children to IT. IT took everyone in its path regardless. I saw people trying to escape IT by plane; they were swatted out of the sky. I saw people trying to escape IT by going underground; IT penetrated hundreds or thousands of miles into the ground, and those people died in their tiny shelters. There was no escape, no hope, and that was what IT took the most satisfaction in killing, hope. In my nightmare, IT seemed to me as though IT knew I was watching, and IT turned toward me and began to move toward me.
I woke up at that point. I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. I remembered only parts of that nightmare and realized something that would become clear only much later. It wasn’t my dream. It wasn’t my nightmare. I was someone observing IT from the outside. When that ‘thing’ turned toward me, it had someone different in ITs sights. That’s as much as I can tell you about this. Besides, it isn’t really a big part of my story, it belongs to another of us, I will let that one tell you the rest.
It was still dark when I ‘woke up’, but the sun’s rays were starting to peek out on the horizon in the east. I needed to go to the bathroom, I felt dirty and itchy, I felt like something had run over me, twice, and I was still tired and I was in a foul mood. Let’s face it, all-in-all, not a good combination for someone who could do the things that I could do and usually did them without even thinking. Chad got up when I got up. He was quiet, but his stumpy little tail was wagging like crazy. How do dogs do that? How do they wake up happy like that every day? Maybe some day someone will be able to explain that one to me.
I quietly went out the doorway to see if I could find some bushes nearby to do what I needed to do. I immediately noticed two things. The first thing I noticed was that there were tire tracks all over the place. Most of them looked to be pretty old from what little I could tell. The second thing I noticed is that not all of them were old, one set crossed what had to be our footprints walking up to the building last night. We weren’t alone out here.
Chad was sniffing at the tire track and looked up at me. I was kind of expecting him to take off running to discover who the culprit was. Too many movies, huh? He lifted his leg and urinated. Wouldn't you have thought that the ‘mysterious red-headed mutant girl’ was supposed to live some kind of adventurous, charmed life? Instead, there she was, watching her puppy pee on a vital clue that someone else had been there last night.
Maybe I was too tired to think straight, but I decided that the revelation could wait long enough for me to do what my dog was doing. I went around the back of the bunkhouse and found some bushes that I could push my way through, and that would screen me all around. I wasted a little of our precious water supply rinsing my hands after.
I went back into the bunkhouse and decided to wake Mr. Fine. I was terribly sorry to do it, I knew that he had to be the most exhausted of all of us. He woke with a start, and it took him a few shakes of his head to focus on me, but when he did, I signed that he needed to come outside with me and see something.
He quietly left his wife sleeping and joined me outside the doorway. A frown plastered his face as he examined the tire track a little further up from where Chad had been. He nodded at me and made a couple of observations to me as he signed, “Whatever they were driving was completely silent or one of us parents would have heard them. I’m guessing it was electric. That means that they can’t be too far away, most small 4X4 electric vehicles don’t have a lot of distance built into them, usually less than 100 miles far less in terrain like this. They also most likely don’t mean us any harm or they already would have done so. My guess is that ‘they’ observed us through the windows and then left.”
I nodded my understanding. As we turned to go back inside I happened to catch something fluttering out of the corner of my eye. Near the door, was a small piece of paper on a rock with another rock on top of it. I was a little ashamed that I hadn’t seen it the first time I went back in. We went over and picked it up. Mr. Fine read it and then handed it to me to read, “I’ll be back with others.”
Okay, how much more cryptic and ominous can you make a note? Let’s see, who were you, what others were you bringing back and why? Mr. Fine signed that we needed to get everybody else up and ready to meet whoever was coming. We went back inside.
About forty-five minutes after sunrise we were all outside. Each of us was scanning in a different direction. Mrs. Fine saw them first. They were coming from the northwest. Three vehicles that were rolling over the rough terrain as though it were a paved highway. Two of the vehicles were diesel pickup trucks, smelly things that Mum said were loud enough to wake the dead. The other was a small two-seat electric vehicle with a cargo area in back. There were six men total in the vehicles; each was dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Each also had a holstered pistol. Three carried shotguns, and two had rifles that looked similar to what Mum had. The one without at rifle approached. Mum interpreted for us as he spoke.
“Good morning. Can I ask what the lady there is doing?”
Mr. Fine spoke for the group, “She is signing so her daughter and mine can understand what is being said. They’re both deaf.”
The man’s brow furrowed, and he said, “Oh, I see. Well, we saw your chopper come down yesterday, and one of our people went out to investigate. When he got to the crash site and didn’t find anybody, he followed your tracks and found out that you were here. We thought that it might be a good idea to come by and introduce ourselves.”
Mr. Fine said, “It’s always nice to know who the neighbors are.”
The other man looked a little uncomfortable, “Well, yeah, about that. Y’all can’t stay here.”
I could see Mr. Fine bristle, even though we were out-gunned five to one. The other man continued, “I don’t mean that the way it came out. I mean that you won’t survive here. This place won’t protect you from the elements, and you aren’t equipped for camping from what we’ve been able to tell.”
“We have what we need. We’ll make do.”
“Mister, I’m sure that you thought it was cold last night and this is summer. Imagine what the temperatures are going to be like in just a couple of months. You won’t survive, you can’t. I know that you don’t know us, but, believe me, we’re trying to save your lives.”
“I’m Adam Fine, what exactly did you have in mind, Mister...?”
“Seth, Seth Kurtz.”
Both men shifted slightly, held out their hands and shook. The tension eased.
Mr. Kurtz said, “We can get you people into town. It’s about fourteen miles as the crow flies, which means closer to twenty for us.”
Mr. Fine shook his head, “Town isn’t someplace that we want to be right now.”
“Are you folks running from something?”
“We just don’t think being in any town or city is particularly good for anybodies health at the moment.”
Mr. Kurtz raised and eyebrow and looked at the other men in his group. There was something going on here, some subtext that we weren’t getting yet.
“Mr. Fine, Adam, do you mind if my friends have a moment?”
Mr. Fine took the rest of us aside. He said/signed what the rest of us were already thinking, “There is something about these men. I don’t think that we are dealing with your average ranchers here.”
Mr. Kurtz had started to walk back toward Mr. Fine. The look on his face was a little strained when he started speaking to Mr. Fine, “This is going to sound odd but can I ask you and your group a few questions? Adam, I assume that it was you flying the helicopter? That’s a military chopper so you must have some military background, but what about the rest of your group? Mrs. Fine, do you have a profession? And you, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
Mrs. Fine spoke first, “I have a degree in political science.”
Mum spoke next; she had a crooked smile on her face, “Ah, I think I know what this is ‘bout. Don’t you be worryin’ now. I can shoot the eye out of a gnat at a 100 yards. If it’s useful talents that y’r seek’n.”
Mr. Kurtz was nodding. “To be honest, we’re trying to figure out if you would fit with our group. Anyone with military experience is an asset as is anyone who can shoot well. I’m not so sure that we need a poly-sci major and a couple of deaf kids. Sorry to be so blunt, but I think it’s best to be honest upfront.”
Mum jumped in before Mr. Fine could speak, “We’re a family Mr. Kurtz and we stick together as a family. If you want one, you want all.”
“We didn’t expect you to say anything less. I’m not even going to try to convince you otherwise. This isn’t a decision that the handful of us can make anyway; we need to put it before our entire group.”
Mr. Fine asked, “Just how many are in this ‘group’ Seth?”
Mr. Kurtz smiled, “A fair number Adam, a fair number. Why don’t we all take a ride back to our place and we can discuss this further in a little bit of comfort?”
Mr. Fine seemed to have figured out what was going on. He said, “Sure, I think that’s a good idea, as long as we can hang onto our hardware.”
Mr. Kurtz got a pained expression on his face, “That could be a problem.”
Mr. Fine wasn’t budging, “Sorry, Seth, we keep our weapons or we’ll just take our chances with the cold weather.”
Mr. Kurtz bit his lip a little and said, “Hang onto them until we get where we’re going. After that, we can discuss it again. I think you may change your mind on your own.”
Mr. Fine nodded, and we all grabbed our meager belongings. Mr. Fine, Mrs. Fine and Mum all got to ride in the cabs of the pickups while some of the men originally riding in the pickups got into the back with me and Naomi.
We drove over the rough terrain. I won’t tell you the direction. While it was empty the last time I saw it, the place we went could still be a refuge for someone some day, so I am not going to reveal its location.
We came over a small ridge and could see our destination. It looked to me like what I would have thought any ordinary ranch would look like. The movies and plenty of documentaries on the West had given us all the information that our brains needed to process what we were seeing. The trucks were sitting, idling, and I was wondering why we weren’t just driving in?
If I had been in the cab of the truck things would have looked even stranger to me. Mr. Kurtz, in the lead truck, was flipping some switches on and off in a specific pattern. He didn’t start to roll forward until a small red light on a fencepost that was part of a corral holding in a few horses went out. It was something that, unless you were specifically looking for, you would miss.
Afterward, the parents would explain to us that Mr. Kurtz gave no explanation for what he was doing, and they didn’t feel at the time that it was right to ask. Later, we would find out that it was an interesting security measure, one we had never heard of.
As we drove slowly into the open ranch area and up to a large main ranch house, we saw horses and a few scrawny cows. To one side was a large tract of land that had something growing on it. Giving a description of every building on the ranch would be tedious and not very worthwhile as we never saw the inside of most of them, it wasn’t necessary. Virtually everything we were seeing was an elaborate hoax, an act meant to fool the eyes of anyone casually looking.
Mr. Kurtz and the folks had exited the truck. He motioned to me and Naomi to follow. The six of us went up the steps and into the ranch house. We walked into a large living room with a huge fireplace. There were two enormous sofas and numerous overstuffed chairs. Everything had a rustic look to it but was done very tastefully as well.
Mr Kurtz kept walking and brought us into a dining area. The table had twelve chairs and most likely could have held another four. Mr. Kurtz said something and we were signed to sit down. We all sat, but a moment later three older gentlemen and a young woman all came into the room from the direction that Mr. Kurtz had just disappeared.
One of the men started speaking to Mr. Fine, and the young woman laid a hand on his arm and said something. The older man looked at her, pursed his lips, said something to Mr. Fine and then nodded to the young woman. The young woman said something to Mrs. Fine and Mum and then motioned for all of us to follow her.
We went back through that magnificent living room and down what I could only call a wing of the house. We went into a very large bedroom. The bed had five sets of clothes laid out on it. They were all blue jeans and flannel shirts, but there were bras and panties on top of these. The young woman said something to Mr. Fine and Mum and pointed at two doors. These rooms turned out to be twin bathrooms with floor to ceiling showers. We let the parents go first; we figured that they would be faster than we were going to be, hah!
I finally got my shower! I was sure that the dirt weighed as much as I did. Do you remember me telling you that this was real life? Guess what had started. I was fortunate that someone had the foresight to think of things like that even though they weren’t the type I normally used. We all met out in the large bedroom dressed almost identically. The young woman, Christine, Chris for short, was waiting for us and led us back to the dining table.
Mr. Fine was in deep discussion with one of the older men. I didn’t see the guns that Mum had handed to him and was starting to get alarmed. My getting alarmed, as you well know by now, is not a good thing. Mr. Kurtz came back into the room spoke to Chris, Mrs. Fine and Mum and left again. Mum signed that we were invited to brunch and that Chris would show us the way.
Before we could leave, Mr. Fine broke off from his conversation and said/signed that we needed to have a family conference when we were done eating. I was about to ask about the weapons when Mum, without speaking, signed the question. Mr. Fine signed back that he had the pistol in his lap under the table. He would tell us about the rifle during our family conference. Mum had a scowl on her face. Those guns had been given to her; he had refused them. She didn’t say anything though as we followed Chris out of the room and out the front door.
Chris explained that there was a separate dining hall and that the ranch house kitchen was never used except on special occasions. We walked less than 100 yards to a long building that had multiple doors. The windows of the building were set very high up on the walls and seemed to be only for letting in light and air. There were no windows low enough to see out of. The walls were made of stone and were very thick. I thought at first that the door was made out of stout wood, but it was actually a steel door with a wood veneer.
As we went through the door, the smell of fried bacon was the first thing that I noticed. There was a short line of mostly men at a long counter with several people on the other side dishing out food. There were trays and plates at the beginning of the line. The room itself was full of different sized tables. Some of the tables were large enough to seat ten while others would only seat two. Each table had an old coffee can on it that held an assortment of forks, spoons and knives. There was also a napkin dispenser and some condiments on each table.
We got into line and were offered our choice of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham slices, waffles, steak, hash brown potato, french fries, oatmeal, fruit, bread, salad and an assortment of vegetables. Drinks came from three different dispensers at the end of the line and included coffee, tea, water, juice and soft drinks. Chris grabbed a tray and a couple of plates and joined us in line.
We sat at a table big enough for six and talked/signed while we ate. Some the men were staring at us, and Chris apologized several times for their behavior. Frankly, Naomi and I didn’t know if we should feel flattered or creeped out. Most of the men were old enough to be our fathers. There were almost no other women around. I signed the questions, “Why so many men and so few women? What about kids?”
Chris smiled a little and spoke to Mum who signed, “The men and women are split almost evenly Chris says. She says that everyone else is busy elsewhere right now and that you are seeing only a small part of the ranch.”
At the time I thought, “Okay, I guess that made sense.”
We were just finishing up our meals when Mr. Fine and some of the older men came into the building. One of the older men spoke to him, and he gave a short response then headed over to our table. As Mr. Fine sat down, Chris excused herself and left the table to join the older men. One of the men brought a tray of food and some coffee over for Mr. Fine. Who nodded and then waited until the man left before speaking/signing to us.
“Let me start by telling you that this place is not what it seems. I suspected what it was even back at that old bunkhouse when I was talking to Seth, I just didn’t realize the job they’d done. I’m not going to play guessing games with you, if you’ve figured it out fine, but I know that at least a couple of you haven’t. This is a survivalist, I guess ‘compound’ would be the right word. These are not just your average Preppers; these are survivalists in the truest sense of the word. They are ready to survive just about anything that you can think of and right now, they believe that they are currently in survival mode. After the nuclear attack and some of the things that they have seen and heard are going on elsewhere, they have called all of their people in and are in full operation. What we have been allowed to see so far is what they want the world, especially the government to see, a ranch on the edge of the refuge barely eking out an existence. We have reluctantly been invited to join them.”
Naomi was the one to ask, “Why reluctantly?”
“They believe that we” pointing to the parental group “have talents they can use or can be trained to do something useful. They consider you,” pointing at Naomi and me “to be, and these are their words, ‘defectives’. It is their belief that your inability to hear will be a burden on the rest of the group. Naturally, I didn’t say anything about your other ‘little abilities’. They are willing to take us in, but there are a couple of conditions that I don’t think any of us is going to like or want to go along with. First, our weapons become part of the general stock of weapons. I think that this is just a way for one or two of the others to get their hands on a fully automatic weapon. When Seth saw that I was getting angry because a couple of the guys I was talking to wouldn’t stop going on about it, he led me outside and showed me a place in his truck where I could hide it. He said that nobody else knows about it and that he was the only one with a key to that truck. For some reason, I trust him. The second condition is even worse. They want the girls sterilized. They don’t want there to be any chance that they could, and again these are their words, ‘breed and pass their defect on to another generation’. The problem is that now that we know who and what they are, I’m not sure that they would just let us leave.”
I was full-on boiling mad. The music was loud, and I knew that if I opened my mouth, notes were going to come out. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I was sure that this ‘little community’ wouldn’t like the outcome! Mum put a hand on my arm then signed, “Not yet.” Everyone nodded.
That was weird. Our entire group knew that I angry and was about to do ‘something’.
Mr. Fine didn’t speak this time, he only signed, “I know that you are all mad about this. Laya, I know that you and Naomi are especially mad. I need for you to control your anger for now. Don’t let it die completely, we are going to need that anger, but I don’t think it’s time yet. I’m going to be callous here; these people have things that we are going to need to survive. From their perspective, what they are doing is the best for their community regardless of how we feel about it. I want to see what they have that we can use, how best to take it and when. Once we have that information, then you can get as angry as you want and do what you need to do.”
It made sense, but it was hard.
I signed, “But won’t they want to sterilize us right away?”
Mr. Fine signed back, “No, they are willing to let you do birth control for a couple of months. They want to make sure that we are going to integrate into their group first.”
I know, I know, we’re Catholic. Those birth control pills were going to be flushed down the toilet daily. It didn’t matter; I wasn’t about to give it up to one of these chauvinistic redneck neanderthals! Naomi still had delusions about her Corporal and wasn’t having any from these guys either. Her mother would make her take the birth control pills just to be on the safe side.
In the end, none of it mattered.
We were shown why we only saw a handful of people at the ranch. Only certain buildings had the access points. The mess hall we were in was one of them. The ranch house was not. We were taken back to the kitchen area, and a large section of the floor was hydraulically lifted out of the way with a piston from below. There were stairs leading down.
It looked to me like the same people that had designed the theme park tunnels had been at work here. The real community was all underground. Men, women and children were everywhere on their way to do all kinds of things. It looked like everyone had a job, and they were either doing it, going to go do it or on their way back from doing it. I saw what had to be a four-year-old running along with a message envelope.
Chris was our guide. She stopped us and took us aside and spoke in low tones to the group. Mr. Fine did the interpretation for us, “Look, I know what they said they want in order for you to join the group. You don’t have to give them your rifle, that’s pure bull. Just keep stalling them on it and eventually everyone in the place will hear about it, that’ll put an end to that. As for the girls, there isn’t a woman here that isn’t going to throw a fit when they learn what those guys are insisting on. We have kids here that are ADHD and even one that is autistic, no one ever insisted that they get sterilized. Just remember that you’ve got at least one friend in this place. I was an outsider that they took in too.”
Chris continued the tour. We found out what that whole business on the ridge with the truck was. There were certain points surrounding the ranch where magnetic plates were buried. Those plates were attached to cables that ran back to a security room in the underground complex. Only vehicles that belonged to members were outfitted with an electromagnet underneath the chassis. The electromagnet would be flipped on and off in a certain sequence that was changed every day, and the magnetic impulses would be carried back to the control room. The idea was that radio waves and even standard electrical signals could be easily tracked, but not a lot of people would think to look for short range magnetic pulses. Any vehicle passing over the magnetic plate that didn’t signal properly would activate alarms in the compound that would put men armed with everything from rifles to grenade launchers in several of the buildings.
There was enough food and supplies stocked to last the entire group at least ten years. Most of it was hidden in such a way that even the most sophisticated ground penetrating radar wouldn’t be able to find it. One place we weren’t allowed to look was in the armory. We were told that only active duty were permitted in there.
When Chris had finished taking us around, she led us back to an office area where one of the older men and two new ones that I hadn’t seen before were waiting. One was introduced as the compound doctor, his name isn’t important, you won’t hear about him again. The other was the compound security chief. His name was Becks, no mister, just Becks. He had the deadest eyes of any ‘real’ person that I had ever met. He said that it was his job to teach us about security and what we could and couldn’t do. He also told us that an infraction of security rules could mean anything from extra duties to exile. He never even finished telling us everything.
While Becks was talking, Naomi felt something vibrate in her rear pocket, and there must have been some kind of tone. Becks looked at her, his eyes wide. He said something to Naomi and her father interpreted, “What was that?”
Naomi pulled out her cell phone. I only got a glimpse of it, but could see that it was her Corporal calling her. As soon as I’d seen this, Becks had grabbed the phone out of Naomi’s hand and thrown it on the floor. His booted foot came crashing down on the cell phone, and it was just so much plastic, glass and solder. It was too late; the damage had been done though we didn’t know or understand it.
Becks was yelling at Naomi, who just stood there looking at her father. Her father was yelling back at Becks. Then all the parents and Chris were yelling at Becks while Becks picked up an internal phone and called someone. Two minutes later two of the older men that Mr. Fine had been speaking to showed up, as did about a half dozen men armed with rifles.
It looked like Becks was yelling again, and he was pointing at Naomi and then at the smashed cell phone on the floor. One of the men with a rifle got right up in Naomi’s face and was yelling at her, her father spun him around and hit him twice, once in the stomach and then with an uppercut to the jaw. The man went to the floor, out like a light. The others crowded in, their rifles all pointed at Mr. Fine, some with their barrels touching his head and chest. Becks yelled at them again, and they backed off slightly.
Becks walked up to Mr. Fine; his fists were clenched, and I thought that he was going to hit him. The music was so loud that my head was hurting. Becks wasn’t yelling at Mr. Fine but I could tell that he was emphatic about what he was saying. Mum started to sign, and one of the men turned his rifle toward her. Mum put her hand on my shoulder and shook her head, then she continued to sign, “No one knew that Naomi had a cell phone. Becks is concerned because they have chips in them that allow the government to track their location. He’s certain that the government now knows where we are, which means that they know where this place is.”
Naomi signed a simple question, “Am I the only one that thinks that stopping the signal was probably a bigger red flag than leaving it go?”
That stopped everyone. Mr. Fine said something else to Becks. One of the older men looked at Becks with a disgusted look on his face and said something. Becks said something back but was looking more scared than angry now.
Mum signed, “Becks admits it was stupid to smash the phone. He says that they should have found one of the wild horses and attached it. But he also says that we’ve compromised them.”
Chris was speaking, and I could tell that she was defending Naomi. I had a feeling that this could only end one of two ways, either we would be exiled which was tantamount to a death sentence, or we’d be expected to wait it out with the rest of the compound and then be exiled. I decided to give them another option that might, just might save the compound.
I signed, “We should offer to leave, now. They could say that we were here for a day, that they helped us on our way, and that was it. They could even point out the direction we went, show them our tracks.”
Chris came over and put her arms around me when Mum translated. She said something to me and Mum signed, “That’s sweet honey, but if someone comes here to investigate they aren’t going to just ask about you and leave. Whoever shows up is going to be suspicious enough to want to see everything and eventually they are going to find something that leads them to the conclusion that we are more than meets the eye.”
It was a little more than obvious that some of the men thought that we were spies. Enough of them realized though that we were all victims of plain stupidity that there was no more violence. I want you to understand that it wasn’t Naomi who was stupid. Up until a very short time before most of our group had no clue what this place was or what the rules were. The ones that were stupid were the ones that had let us come into the compound without even asking about cell phones or radios. Did I blame them? Not really, since the cost of those items was so high those days that it was rare that anyone would have one, let alone a teenager. The truth of the matter was that everyone was afraid, and fear leads to anger.
Someone finally asked, and Mum interpreted, “What do we do now then?”
Becks answered that question, “We wait. We wait to see if anyone comes and who it is.”
The five of us were escorted back to our rooms to wait. We wanted to all wait together, but no one in the compound was feeling that generous at that moment. Naomi and I were sharing a room so at least we had company. It was Mum that I was worried about because she was alone in her room. Mr. Fine had been stripped of the pistol while he and Mrs. Fine waited together in another room.
The minutes dragged on into hours. We were all collected and taken to dinner, then brought back to our rooms. We all had a restless sleep, expecting to be woken up at any moment. We got up the next morning and waited some more. About mid-morning there was some activity. A ranger had come up onto the ridge in his Department of Fish and Wildlife vehicle and was heading toward the ranch.
Lights in every room flashed. I was told that there were no alarm bells (not that it made any difference to me) unless there was a full-scale invasion in process.
We were allowed out of our rooms and joined several dozen people in a large cafeteria. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about this visit as we watched it on a monitor. We were told that this was the same ranger that came around a couple of times a year to check up on the ranch. The compound was on high alert, and there were heavily armed men and women stationed in several of the buildings topside. One of the older men was talking with the ranger and gestured toward the ranch house. The ranger seemed to be hesitant at first but stiffened for a moment and then nodded. I noticed something, and I wasn’t sure that anyone else had caught it, so I signed to Mum.
“Mum, he is wearing an earpiece. It doesn’t look like a hearing aid.”
I don’t know if it’s true that other senses become sharper to compensate for those you might lack, but Mum hadn’t noticed it for sure. When she spoke to some others, they hadn’t either. Someone left the room at high speed.
It wasn’t a minute later that Becks came running into the room. He grabbed me by both arms and was talking to me. All I could think at that moment was, “Is this guy a moron?” Mum was on him in a split second, apparently yelling. Becks, immediately let go of me with his hands up in a surrender position. It looked to me like he was apologizing. He said something to Mum who then signed to me, “This one wants to be know’n exactly what you saw.” I nodded and started signing.
“The man in the uniform had some kind of an earpiece. It didn’t look like a hearing aid to me. It looked like a flat white button, and there was a small wire sticking out of it an angle.”
Becks was looking at me. He said something else to Mum. “He wants to know how you could see all of that through the monitor?”
I just shrugged. It was what I saw. I don’t always notice the small details, but that type of situation was one where not noticing could get us killed. Becks left the room without saying another word.
After about a half an hour, the ranger and the older man came back out of the ranch house. They were laughing about something. As the ranger said goodbye and got back into his truck, I could see that it looked like he was talking to himself. I have never been very good at reading lips. Naomi was always the expert at it between the two of us. I could make out only one word, “something”, I let Mum know.
Naomi jumped in and signed, “I think that I got more than that. It looked to me like he was saying, ‘he is hiding something’. Mum repeated what Naomi said to some of the other people in the room and, again, one of them left.
Becks did not come back. People in the room stopped talking and looked as though they were listening to something. Mum signed that everyone had just been told over the speaker system to go to their ‘duty station’ and that everyone should be prepared to evacuate.
We were taken back to our rooms. I signed on the way back, “What happens to us if there is an evacuation?” and Mum translated.
The person acting as our guard said that he didn’t know, he hadn’t been told. As rushed as things had been, I believed that.
For a couple of hours more we waited. After what seemed like a very long time to us, the door opened, and Chris motioned us out. The rest of our group was already gathered. Chris explained through Mrs. Fine, “There is a battle going on outside, one that we can’t win. There are just too many attackers for us to defeat. We’re going to need to get out of here. Most of the facility is already on the move, and I’ve been told that I was to ‘collect’ you.”
I had to ask, “Who attacked you?” and Mrs. Fine translated.
“It looks like the military but if it is, they’ve made some odd changes to their uniforms. Here, I can show you.” Chris went to a monitor mounted into one of the walls and pulled up a scene from outside. Naomi started and then signed to me, “‘Them’, every single one.” What I saw was hundreds of men dressed in military uniforms that were predominantly black. Most were armed with rifles. There were no tanks or large machine guns that I could see.
Naomi and I had ‘talked’ about this a little. ‘They’ had to have had the ability to know where we were all along. Naomi’s cell phone would have been the perfect tracking device for ‘Them’. Yet, ‘They’ waited until the signal stopped before ‘They’ sent anyone to investigate. Also, why would ’They’ attack in such a way that ‘They’ would eventually win, but not send in any type of heavy artillery to finish the job quickly? It was as though this was a ‘show’ battle. Like something that ‘They’ knew was expected of ‘Them’ but didn't really matter.
Odder than anything was the fact that the music was loud but not ‘headache’ loud at the moment. I found that strange considering the circumstances. Then it all just seemed to click into place.
I signed, “Guys, I don’t think we should leave. At least not just yet.”
Mum signed back, “Why Laya, what’s goi’n on?”
“I think that ‘They’ve’ figured out that ‘They’ are in more danger from me if I feel like we’re threatened, or I am under a lot of stress. Look at the fight up there. Where are the helicopters? Where are the tanks or armored thingies with the machine guns? It’s like it’s a message, ‘Hey ‘We’ have to do this because these people are expecting it, but ‘We’ aren’t trying to hurt you’. If we leave, where do we go?”
None of this was being communicated to Chris, who was becoming impatient. “We need to leave. There are secret exits all over the place, and we need to get to one.”
Mr. Fine signed, “We probably should go. Laya, while I’m sure you’re right, staying here won’t work unless there are a lot of people to help run the place. You’ve seen how big it is. If we go with Chris at least, we’ll still have a larger group to join.”
I conceded his point, but I was curious to see what would have happened if we had stayed. What would ‘They’ have done? How would ‘They’ have handled us?
As we headed up the hallway and out one of the secret exits, Naomi signed in a sad way, “I really wanted a horse.” I have always marveled at her sense of priorities.
We found ourselves in an area screened completely by boulders and bushes. Unless you were looking right down at us, you couldn’t possibly have seen us. There were nineteen other people already there. One of them had taken charge and was distributing packs that had been hidden nearby. He saw us, hesitated, then shrugged and motioned for us each to grab a pack.
Our leader then explained that we were going to be hiking through some of the roughest terrain in the country. While the worst we might have to deal with in the way of animals could be a rattlesnake, the biggest issues were going to be sprains, broken bones and finding water. He stopped speaking, looked at each of us and said that the group wasn’t going to wait for anyone for any reason. If something happened to one of us, we were on our own. Mum, who had been signing for us, shook her head slightly knowing that our group wouldn’t break up just because the larger group elected to move on.
Let me say something to any woman out there that might find themselves in a survival situation similar to this. Do NOT let the men put your pack together. At least, not by themselves. Guess what they will always leave out. I don’t know if it’s a blind spot with them or just stupidity. If it hadn’t been for a couple of the other women in the group who had a little bit of foresight, one of them told me that she had been through this before with her husband, I would have been in a seriously embarrassing situation. Guys, quit cringing, this is a reality of life, man-up.
We had hiked, camped with a smokeless fire and slept with just blankets sharing body warmth on the ground for three days. So far, except for a few scrapes and bruises, everyone was intact and in good condition. All the time that we were traveling my suspicion that ‘They’ knew exactly where we were and what we were doing got deeper. We lived in an age where satellite and drone surveillance had reached a point that no place on earth was free from it. Our leader seemed to think that staying in the mountainous area with its deep shadows and large rocks would somehow shield us or confuse the watchers. I did not agree.
The music woke me up. It had jumped to a volume that took me out of a sound sleep to instant wakefulness, but it was too late. We had camped higher up into the mountains than before. There was a mist early in the morning at that elevation. I’m sure that’s how ‘They’ did it. Any chemical that they used would easily be hidden by the mist or low cloud that we were in. My being awake lasted only for a few seconds, long enough for me to realize that something was wrong and then, oblivion.
––––––––
YEAR THREE - Internment Camp 11, Zone 10
I decided to pick up this narrative at a much later point. When we had been ‘gassed’, I thought that I had been immediately knocked out with the rest. This turned out not to be the case. Apparently, My Song had come out just long enough to do some serious damage to ‘Them’. My thoughts about how we were being watched might have had something to do with it, but it seems that there are now no surveillance satellites left anywhere. ‘They’ are dependent solely upon drones now. I did succumb to the gas but ‘They’ were still terrified of me and weren’t sure what to do with me.
I’m pretty sure at this point that if they had attempted to kill me even while I was unconscious, that it would have ended disastrously for ‘Them’. In the long run that might have been the best thing, maybe none of ‘Them’ would have been left. As it was, we were treated with the utmost care. Not all of us, just the ones that had been identified as being a part of my original group, myself, Mum, Naomi and Mr. and Mrs. Fine. We were brought to that camp. Our group was treated better than most of ‘Them’ there, and that sickened me more than I can say.
The camp was located somewhere in the northwestern part of the United States. Whoever designed and built it had taken their time and learned from all the mistakes of the past. The camp was built in concentric circles with only low walls and a minimum of razor wire. The walls weren’t necessary. Everyone there, with a few notable exceptions, was fitted with two collars. Both contained a radio detonator and an explosive charge. There was no single central control for the collars. A sort of distributed network, several hundred different computers working both together and independently controlled the collars. Buried wires ran under each wall. If you crossed a wall that you shouldn’t, a collar would detonate. If you managed to somehow remove one collar, the other would detonate. If all the computers went down for more than sixty seconds, the collars would detonate.
Work details were computer assigned and seemed to be randomly generated. Males and females were segregated unless you were an avowed homosexual. There were and would be no children in the camp and certainly no pregnancies. The only exception to the couples rule was Mr. and Mrs. Fine. This distinction did not make them happy and only served to make us a focal point for some of the hatred that you could feel oozing throughout the camp.
While others were housed in rough barracks that had little to no heat in the winter and not even a window to open in the summer, we were in a regular house with both central heating and air-conditioning. We were fed normal food, full meals, on a regular basis; the other prisoners got less than 800 calories per day. We were prisoners, yet ‘They’ had managed to isolate us even more. We weren’t even prisoners with the rest. So why didn’t I just walk out? ‘They’ wouldn’t have tried to physically stop us would ‘They’? I tried that just once. Ten prisoners died when their collars exploded. It wasn’t a direct threat against me or mine, but the implication was enough. If I tried to leave, others would pay the price.
It was a dismal and dreary place. The camp was a place meant to wear down the soul. I saw prisoners purposely pull their collars until they exploded, just because they couldn’t take it anymore. I would say that ‘They’ were indifferent to it, but ‘They’ weren’t. ‘They’ actively encouraged others to take their own lives. ‘They’ also worked people literally to death. The entire place had one purpose, death. And this was happening all over the country.
If I spoke to one of ‘Them’ or asked a question, ‘They’ would not hesitate to answer me. Were ‘They’ telling me the truth? That wasn’t something that I was in a position to determine. I asked about the condition of the country and ‘They’ told me, most of which I have already related to you. What you might not have known was that there were more than 50 of these internment camps ready to open and start operation before the bombs even fell. By the time we were incarcerated there were over 500 of them. Every step of our destruction, our fall, had been planned. I was almost shocked at the openness of the response to my last question to this particular individual.
I signed to ‘Him’, “Why? What is the whole purpose of this?”
‘He’ was one of the few that knew American Sign Language and signed back, “The extermination of humanity.”
There it was, plain and simple. ‘They’ were out to kill each and every one of us. But ‘He’ wasn’t through.
“And then progressively to work through the entire ecosystem and destroy every vestige of life on the planet.”
I sat shocked and then it occurred to me, “You can’t. It’s impossible for even ‘You’ to accomplish that.”
“It would be if it were only ‘Us’, but ‘We’ will not be working alone.”
‘He’ wouldn’t elaborate beyond that for me, but I remembered my dream.
It was near the end of our third year in the camp. I was outside, wandering between the various walls. When I was out, I would surreptitiously leave extra food for as many prisoners as I could. It didn’t make them love me, but maybe they hated me a little less? I was watching as a new batch of prisoners was being brought in when I spotted someone that looked familiar. I walked up to the entrance gate, not crossing the line, to get a closer look. It was him, it really was. Greg!
I don’t think my feet touched the ground as I ran back to the house. My arms and hands were moving so fast signing to Naomi that she had to reach out to stop me and make me repeat what I’d said. Before I’d finished though, she was out the door running with me in tow.
We got to the gate as Greg was being processed through. There was some trouble because he was deaf, and none of the ones that could sign was around. I had been given a whistle just for this type of situation. I blew the whistle, not knowing what it sounded like or how loud it was. It must have been bad because ‘They’ were covering their ears. One of ‘Them’ came running though and it was one that could sign. Before the processing ‘Agent’ could start, I signed that Greg was one of my group. That started an interesting argument.
“No, he isn’t. You have your group with you.”
“He is one of my group. Don’t piss me off!”
“You can’t just grab any prisoner you want and claim that he is part of your group. That isn't going to work with ‘Us’.”
“You have someone go back in your records. I was being ‘watched’ at that time. Your records will show you that he is part of my group!”
‘He’ hesitated and then spoke to one of the ones sitting in front of a computer. When the other spoke back ‘He’ signed to me, “Wait here, please.”
At least ‘He’ was being polite again. I was sure that my wanting to bring Greg into the group was going to, at the very least, cause some consternation at the top of whatever hierarchy ‘Their’ organization had. It took almost an hour.
‘He’ came back and signed, “He can be part of your group, but there are conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“He has to be sterilized.”
“‘You’ touch him and I am going to lose my temper in a way that none of ‘You’ ever thought possible. I have no idea what will happen then, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every single one of ‘You’ vanished like a soap bubble.”
I am sure that you’ve heard the term, ‘white as a sheet’? ‘He’ lost all color in ‘His’ face and hands. Naomi, who had been signing with Greg the whole time, was looking at ‘Him’ and then touched me and signed, “I think you’ve re-killed him. He looks deader than before.”
All I could think was “What does that mean?”
‘He’ seemed to take a deep breath and walked away. ‘He’ came back a few minutes later and signed, “Take him. Please, just take him and go home.”
We went.
I wasn’t still ‘in love’ with Greg if that is what you might be thinking. I’m sure that if I had allowed myself, it could have happened, but I wasn’t going to do that to my best friend. Naomi belonged with Greg, and I knew that. If it hadn’t been for the horrible incident years earlier, who knows where their relationship might have gone? She had sacrificed that possible future to help me. While our future in that place looked to be pretty awful, sharing it with someone had to make it a little better.
We all tried to catch up that evening. When Naomi and he had broken up, Greg had concentrated on his studies and gone on to college. It wasn’t easy for a deaf student but he had gone to Cornell University to study agriculture since it had one of the highest rankings in the country. He was doing pretty well until the troubles started, but he had managed to finish and get his degree.
It was shortly after that when he got caught in a sweep of young people being picked up and sent to the camps. Unlike so many others, he had refused to give up. He tried to inspire others by his example and ‘They’ transferred him. At each camp, he tried to ‘cheer’ people up, give them courage. There were times that he was convinced that ‘They’ were just going to kill him outright, but instead ‘They’ kept transferring him. This was the fourth camp that he had been transferred to.
He had been steadily transferred across the entire country. Every camp was almost identical in design. There were a couple that seemed to be worse though where food was about half of what most camps got. The camps in the east were starting to build a large building in the center of each camp. He wasn’t there long enough to find out what it was for though. When Mr. and Mrs. Fine ‘heard’ this last part, they both fell to their knees weeping.
There were some idiots out there that were convinced that the concentration camps, the death camps of the Nazis was all propaganda and that they never really existed. These are the same stupid morons that believed that the moon landing was faked and done on a sound stage in Hollywood and that the Twin Towers in New York were really blown up from the inside. How people like that could walk and breathe at the same time always astounded me.
What the Fines had just heard was that the death camps were coming back. The gas chambers, the ovens, history, was repeating itself. They told us this. No such building was planned or had happened in our camp, most likely because of me and the fear of what I might do. There wasn’t anything that I could do about the other camps, at least not right now.
We started to settle into a new routine. There were plenty of rooms in the house, so Greg got his own room and his own bathroom on the first floor. The rest of us had our rooms on the second floor. What I’m about to tell you next many of you simply will not believe because it goes against all reason for you. Greg and Naomi did not ‘do’ anything. Naomi, for all of her ‘wicked’ ways, was a ‘good girl’ too and had always insisted on waiting until she was married. Of course, that was going to be a bit of a problem.
I went out to ‘Their’ administration building and told ‘Them’ that Greg and Naomi wanted to get married. I think that was the first and only time that I heard ‘Them’ roar with laughter. I was told that it wasn’t going to happen. I had expected that and had already made up my mind. I explained to them that in that case we were leaving, and I didn’t care how many other prisoners they killed. We were going to walk out of the camp that day, find ourselves a vehicle and go find someone with the authority to marry the two of them.
It got very quiet in that administration building after I signed that, and it was translated. One of ‘Them’ spoke, and it was signed to me, “If you leave, ‘We’ will kill every prisoner here.”
I shrugged and signed, “So what? If you hadn’t isolated us so thoroughly, maybe that would mean something to me. As it stands, I don’t know any of them and they all hate us.”
Okay, I know that I sounded heartless. The truth was, I wasn’t going to go anywhere. ‘They’ didn’t know that and I doubted that it was in ‘Their’ makeup to think that I wouldn’t. People, and I assumed ‘They’, tend to think that others think like them. I was counting on that.
“‘We have told you what ‘Our’ goal is.”
“Yeah and? Did you somehow think that I was going to help you reach it? I’m not here because I want to be here, and I’m certainly not here to help you. You either do what I want, or we are out of here.”
“It will take ‘Us’ some time to locate a priest. Why don’t they just mate and be done with it?”
“First, we don’t want a priest. We need a Justice of the Peace. Second, why don’t ‘You’ not worry about how humans conduct their affairs. I’m sure that the closest ‘You’ve’ ever come to love or procreation is splitting like an amoeba.”
It looked like ‘He’ was going to explain about how ‘They’ came to be, but I cut ‘Him’ off. “I’m not at all interested. I don’t care if you are spontaneously generated from rat dung. Find us a JP by tonight or tomorrow we are gone.” And with that I walked out.
Mum, the Fines, and Naomi all tell me that I’ve grown into a beautiful woman with the hottest temper of anyone they’ve ever met. I don’t see it. I don’t see the beautiful woman that they are talking about. When I look in a mirror, all I see is me, the earless wonder. And I don’t think my temper is that bad. It’s just that when people are wrong, they’re wrong, and when ‘They’ get crosswise with me, I am not going to put up with it.
It took them until 9:30 that night, but they finally brought us a Justice of the Peace. The man was not pleased that he had been taken prisoner and would become part of the camp population after he had performed the ceremony. ‘They’ said that was the price we paid for insisting on what we wanted. Naomi and Greg were married that night and for one brief moment a ray of love and hope burst full into bloom in that awful place.
Mum moved into a smaller room and gave the newlyweds her suite. I loved Naomi, but I knew that a chapter of our lives had just closed and that she was opening a new one of her own. I believed that we would always be best friends it was just that she had to have different priorities now. I wondered at the time if I would ever find someone?
If you were wondering about Chad, he was still with me at that time. He was only about four years old and ‘They’ didn’t think it wise to separate us. I haven’t spoken about him much because he was like a shadow to me, always going where I went. There wasn’t much for him to do, and he wasn’t wearing an explosive collar like the prisoners were. The other prisoners, while they hated us, loved Chad. He was a diversion from the misery of their lives. ‘They’ did not like Chad and ‘They’ did not like that the other prisoners liked Chad.
I caught one of ‘Them’ trying to feed Chad’s waste matter to one of the prisoners one morning. The music peaked, but instead of Singing I walked up and punched ‘Him’ in the throat. ‘He’ went down choking. When ‘He’ was on his knees I grabbed ‘Him’ by the head, looked into ‘His’ eyes and blew my whistle. When one of the translators came over I told ‘Him’ that if I ever caught ‘Him’ abusing a prisoner using anything of mine again and if I ever caught ‘Him’ abusing this particular prisoner in any way that I’d turn him and every one of ‘Them’ in this camp into dust. I then brought my knee into smashing into ‘His’ face and walked away. Maybe the group is right about my temper?
––––––––
YEAR SIX - Internment Camp 11, Zone 10
The first time I became Aunt Laya I was thrilled beyond reason. ‘They’ were understandably upset. I was very worried that at some point ‘They’ would try to cause an abortion or, that ‘They’ might try to do something to the baby at birth. I gave them a warning about it. One of ‘Them’ made the mistake of mouthing off to me about it and telling me that the baby would ‘never happen’. ‘He’ and four of ‘His’ friends exploded violently startling everyone in the camp. That wasn’t what I meant to do, but I still didn’t have any control over my abilities. Naomi and Greg’s baby boy was born without incident.
Michael was a happy baby. Best yet, Michael was a normal baby. He could hear even though his parents were both deaf. Chad thought that this new thing belonged to him. I’m serious, Chad became Michael’s full-time companion and protector. I was more than a little miffed that my dog had deserted me but was glad that Michael would have someone watching over him all the time. At two Michael was a real handful.
Michael was our joy in the midst of such ugliness. That was also the year of my greatest tragedy.
The winters in that place were always brutal. We had been well protected from them in our house in the middle of the frozen camp. That year some type of flu swept the camp. It was worse than any flu that I had ever seen, and I suspect that it wasn’t entirely natural. Prisoners were dying at an astonishing rate. From what I could tell, only one out of every twenty people who caught the flu survived it. Mum couldn’t stand idly by. She would go out each day and try to tend to the sick. ‘They’ knew better than to try to stop her, but then ‘They’ wouldn’t help her either. No medicine was ever provided, no extra food. It was inevitable.
Mum caught it after the second week. ‘They’ provided a doctor for her and medicines. Nothing would help. Mum knew that she wasn’t going to survive it and started ‘talking’ to me about the past and my future. She wanted me to know that I came from a long line of strong women, women who had always stood in the gap when the men weren’t there. She reminded me that we were women of God and that no matter what happened He would always be there for us. She told me that was my future too. That I was going to be needed, that I had to be ready to go when He called me and that He would call me. She told me that to mourn was okay but that it should not stop me from living my life. She was looking forward to seeing Da again; she missed him so.
Mum died quietly in the afternoon. She was the only one of us that caught the flu. When she died, I felt like a piece of me died with her. The agony in my heart was so great that I couldn’t contain it, and I Sang. It rained blood for over an hour that afternoon, real blood. Not just in the camp I was told, but hundreds of miles. The very skies wept for the passing of my mum. And ‘They’ were so terrified that ‘They’ hid from me. I believe that if I had seen one of ‘Them’ anytime that day I would have ended all of ‘Them’ and God knows what else. Naomi held me and rocked.
We buried Mum in the frozen ground the next day. ‘They’ had made the hole close behind the house. ‘They’ had even made a headstone with her name and the dates of her birth and death. One of ‘Them’ had approached me that morning and asked if I wished to have anything else on the stone. ‘They’ were very deferential toward me. I told them to put “Loving Wife and Mother. Never Defeated, Even In Death.” I wanted ‘Them’ to know that she had beaten them even in dying.
A number of the prisoners asked me to get permission for them to attend the burial. These were the ones whom she had helped to nurse or the families of those that she had attempted to. While I don’t think that they ever came to love her, they did come to respect her.
At the graveside, I was overwhelmed again. I told Naomi to get the family inside, and I told the prisoners to run back to their barracks as quickly as they could. I did not know what was going to happen.
I knelt down beside my mum and as the tears flowed, once again, I Sang. And the earth trembled. I let the pain wash over me and out. A prayer for my mother wafted into the ether, and the notes flowed from my open mouth. For the second time in history, the sun stood still in the sky. For as long as I knelt at the grave the sun did not move. I was there for four hours.
If I could have heard, I would have known that ‘They’ were making a sound of ‘Their’ own. A keening wail was being forced out of all of ‘Them’, everywhere on the planet. While the sun stood still, ‘They’ were screaming in fear, for the full four hours.
As the sun was released back into its course something else had changed. ‘Their’ attitude toward me had now gone beyond fear. Somewhere the decision had been made that it was time to kill me at any cost.
‘They’ sent bombers to destroy the entire camp and everyone in it including me. At the same time, an invasion of thousands of ‘Them’ was on the way armed with everything from small arms to field tactical nuclear weapons. ‘They’ had decided that I was now the battle.
I’m still here but so are millions of ‘Them’.
Not one bomb hit the ground. Not one plane made it back to ‘Their’ base. Not one of ‘Their’ weapons fired. Not one of ‘Their’ attacking soldiers was ever seen again. When ‘Their’ losses were in the hundreds of thousands, it stopped. One of ‘Them’ came forward on, of all things, a bicycle. ‘He’ wanted to show me that ‘He’ carried nothing threatening.
‘He’ could sign and said, “We are at an impasse.”
“Not really. ‘You’ keep making me angrier and angrier. Eventually ‘You’ will get to the point where I’m mad enough to wipe all of ‘You’ from the face of existence.”
“‘We’ believe that if you knew how, you would already have done so. ‘We’ have observed you since your youth and have come to the conclusion that your ability is reflexive.”
“Maybe and maybe not. ‘You’ seem to be the only ones on the receiving end.”
“‘We’ are also the only ones that have been attacking you. ‘We’ will now stop and withdraw. ‘We’ are dismantling this camp. None of the prisoners will be removed to anywhere else. ‘We’ will take all of our equipment. You will not be disturbed further.”
That took a moment to sink in. There were over 1000 prisoners there in that cold, barren place. There was virtually no food. Water was there, but not close unless wells could be dug. What ‘He’ was saying was that ‘They’ had passed a death sentence for the majority of people there. There were unofficial camp leaders. I doubted that they would listen to me or any of our group, but I had to make the attempt.
I asked Mr. Fine to interpret for me, “Your captors are leaving and will be releasing you.” From the hand and arm waving, I assumed that there was a cheer going up. I held up my hands and signed again, “The problem is that ‘They’ are not taking you anywhere. ‘They’ are releasing you right here. ‘They’ are taking all the equipment, and I would assume food and water with ‘Them’ when ‘They’ go. I am not sure how we will all survive.”
One of the leaders pointed at me and said something. Mr. Fine signed, “He says that you seem to have done just fine for yourself and that you should probably go with ‘Them’, you won’t be missed.”
“I am more ‘Their’ enemy than any of you have ever been even though I don’t expect you to believe that.”
Before I could sign anymore, more of them were speaking or shouting, Mr. Fine was backing up and signing, “They are calling you a witch and telling you to go, get out.”
Some of them had begun picking up rocks. That could go very, very badly for them.
Mrs. Fine had joined her husband and yelled/signed at the same time, “STOP! You idiots! Were any of you watching? How many of you would be alive today if Laya hadn’t been here? She snuck food to you when she could. Her mother tried to help your sick and dying. And then, when we were attacked, she stood out here, ALONE I MIGHT ADD and faced down the attackers! You are a bunch of cowards and ingrates. You know what, you’re right, we should leave. Leave you to starve and freeze to death!”
On young man had stepped forward. He had turned and faced the growing crowd. He spoke to them while Mr. Fine signed, “You know me, I’m one of you. I’ll tell you this, I’m on HER side on this one. You want them to go? I’m going with them too. I think that they will be alive in a week, and I think that most of you will be dead.”
He had turned back to us and said, “My name is Ray. I’d like to join you if I could?”
There was more angry fist shaking and from what I could tell shouting. People began to pick up more rocks. Then, their pants starting falling down, both on the men and the women. Naomi!
She quickly signed to me, “Pretty hard to throw a rock and hold your pants up at the same time. Time for a little more fun though I think.” With that, small pebbles began to pelt the crowd, and they ran for cover.
We turned back to the newcomer to our group. Ray was about six or seven years older than me. He told us that he had been almost done with college when things started going bad. As he was talking, I signed to Mr. Fine that I thought that we had heard something about his school being attacked by terrorists a few years ago. Ray said that that’s what everyone had been told, but it was a lie. He thought that the people who were running the camps set it all up. I asked him why he thought that. Ray said that his former roommate in college was one of the ones that was blamed as a terrorist, and he knew that it was a flat out lie. His buddy may have been strange in a lot of ways, but he was no terrorist.
Ray was thin from being malnourished, but not as thin as some of the other prisoners. He seemed muscular too. Yes, I was noticing the new boy in town. I think that he was checking me out too. My thoughts snapped back, we didn’t have time for that. I signed that we should probably gather whatever we felt we needed and could carry and get out before things fell completely apart. Besides, I had an idea that I wanted to try before ‘They’ were gone.
While the others went back to the house, I went over to the administration building where ‘They’ were in the process of boxing up equipment. Files were just left where they were. It was as though they didn’t care who read them. I went in where the keys were stored for the general motor pool and took a couple of sets for some of the heavy duty trucks. One of ‘Them’ got in my path as I started to walk out with the keys. I raised one eyebrow and signed, “Really?” ‘He’ had no idea what I had just said, but there were enough of ‘Them’ there that understood and ‘They’ yelled something to ‘Him.' ‘He’ moved but held out his hand as though I was going to drop the keys in them. I spit in his palm.
‘He’ acted like I had spilled acid on his hand. ‘He’ grabbed ‘His’ wrist and went running off. The ‘Others’ just looked at me and made no move to stop me. I went out and tried the keys in the various trucks until I found the two that they worked in. I drove one back to the house where I picked up Mr. Fine and took him back to the other truck. We pulled both vehicles up close to the door and began loading up the things that we thought we might need to get through the next several weeks.
There were a few cans of fruit and vegetables and a couple of small plastic bags of dried beans in the house. There were no seeds of any kind, no weapons aside from a couple of steak knives and certainly no sleeping bags or tents. We did have sheets, blankets, and matches. We broke some of the furniture and had firewood. We also kicked in some of the drywall and pulled on the wiring until some of it came loose so that we had wire. None of us knew how to make a snare or trap, but necessity is the delayer of starvation. We also grabbed every stitch of clothing that we had.
By the time we were done, the trucks were loaded down, and the people in the camp were starting to get their courage back. I didn’t know what I was feeling about them. I had never intended to be either their enemy or their savior. I just wanted to help when I could. They had not only turned their backs on that; they had begun to threaten me and my family. I shook my head at that.
We all piled into the trucks. Michael and Chad thought it was great fun, an adventure! I was looking at the people as they edged closer. Naomi had ‘lifted’ several pebbles off of the ground and was ready to start pelting people again, but I stopped her. I asked Mrs. Fine to translate for me as I stood in the back of one of the trucks barely able to fit with all the junk we had piled in.
I signed, “You could have come with us. I would have helped you. Now, I don’t care what happens to you. A little while ago you threatened not just me, but my entire family. Stay here, freeze and starve or walk out and freeze and starve. You are no longer my concern, and when we leave here, I am not going to look back or think about you again. When you die, and I have no doubt that is what is going to happen to you, I hope your last thoughts are, ‘she tried to help us, and we tried to kill her’.”
History just keeps repeating, and people never seem to learn from it.
We rolled out with ‘Them’ watching us. We noticed several large drones in the sky following us. I hoped that ‘They’ would be stupid enough to order an attack, but it never happened. The next question was, where do we go?
We ‘talked’ it over. I’m sure that Ray felt left out since all of us were using sign. Here’s the thing; Ray was new to the group, and I don’t think that anyone felt that he deserved to have a vote yet. I put a stop to that. I signed, “If we accept someone, shouldn’t we accept them completely. Either they are or they aren’t a part of the family.”
Naomi just signed, “Don’t piss her off in front of her new boyfriend.” Which comment earned her a slap on the head from me.
I signed asking Mr. Fine to please translate as we signed so that Ray could join in. Ray, for his part, asked that we sign a little more slowly as he would like to learn. He said that if he were going to be a part of the group, a part of our family, he should be able to ‘speak’ like the rest of us. I found that, well, interesting?
I was for going to the southeast. I wanted a warmer climate, but I thought that to go toward anything even remotely like a population center would be dangerous. Greg and Naomi wanted to go southwest where the weather was warmer and wetter. Mr. and Mrs. Fine wanted to be near their grandson and so were siding with Greg and Naomi. Ray was thoughtful and finally asked, “Greg, why warmer and wetter?”
Greg signed, “I think for the long term we are going to need to be able to grow our own food.”
Naomi jumped in, “We are farmers!”
All I could think was, “Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb! Going southwest meant going toward the cities!”
I signed as much.
Naomi sighed and then signed, “Sweetheart, I know that you are trying to be cautious and protective and all that other bull, but I’m also pregnant again and would like for there to be a hospital around.”
My jaw dropped. I was going to be an Aunt AGAIN!
I motioned that Mr. Fine should follow me with the other truck and that we were heading southwest immediately! Naomi was laughing and hugged me.
––––––––
YEAR NINE - Silent Springs Farm
We had named the farm Silent Springs because we are nothing if not ironic. There was a pretty little spring on the property that gave us both our drinking water and irrigation, but since half of our compliment could never hear its gently flowing waters, well, you get the picture. I’m getting a little ahead of myself though because a few things happened on the way to the farm.
Let’s start with the fact that going back through the mountains via truck was a lot different and lot harder than using a helicopter. First was the gasoline, or in this case diesel, problem. We were able to solve that mainly by taking it from the tanks of abandoned rigs. We just kept our fingers crossed the whole time that it was still good. The second problem was the roads. No one had done any road maintenance or even cleaned the roads in over eight years. I think that there were potholes that went all the way to China in some places! We were scared that we were going to lose an axle in one of them.
The third problem was our worry about wolves, both four and two legged. We had no weapons with us and, so far, hadn’t been able to find any. While the others didn’t seem concerned because they felt that somehow I would protect them, I wasn’t as confident. My abilities were not under my control. What if something or someone grabbed Michael before I could react? Or worse, I didn’t react at all because it wasn’t a direct threat to me? Why did it seem like since I was thirteen years old my life has been nothing but worrying about things, mostly things that I have absolutely no control over?!
The first indication that we had that something was wrong was Chad. While we couldn’t hear him growl, I could see the short hairs on his back standing up as he faced away from our campfire. Something was out there in the dark. The men each grabbed a burning stick out of the fire. If it were an animal, the fire would most likely scare it off, and if it wasn’t then a good stick, especially a burning one made a nice weapon. The music was rising.
Naomi had Michael in her arms; her baby bump was barely noticeable. Even holding Michael, she had that look on her face and I saw some pebbles lift slightly out of the dirt. I stood up and faced the way that Chad was facing. Two men stepped out of the darkness.
Both had rifles slung over their shoulders. One had a staff or walking stick in his right hand, and the other had a cleaned off limb, a heavy club in his left hand resting on his shoulder. Southpaw, if this became a fight, we would have to remember that. The one with the staff spoke and Mrs. Fine, standing a little back and behind her husband translated. Her arms and hands moving startled the men, but they didn’t reach for their rifles.
“Howdy folks. Saw the fire and wondered if you would mind a little company?”
I signed at Mrs. Fine, “Have you ever seen a single a single western or wilderness movie where someone asked that question, and it ended well?”
She couldn’t help herself I suppose, Mrs. Fined just started laughing. The man who originally spoke said something else and Mrs. Fine translated, “He said, ‘okay, that was a pretty stupid line. He says that he’s serious though, he and his friend are cold and just wanted to warm up. They’re willing to share some of their food.”
Those were the magic words. Mr. Fine held out his hand, and the tension immediately went out of the encounter. Chad sat down tongue lolling out of his doggy smiling mouth. We all sat at the fire and traded stories, Mr. Fine only telling as much of ours as he thought would be believable.
The two men were from what remained of Olympia, Washington. Almost the entire city had been burned to the ground. When the food supply had stopped the entire state seemed to split in two, they said. There were those who gravitated toward the city and expected the government to take care of them and those who ‘bugged out’. The men said that there had been a full-scale war going on in the state between the ‘citizens’ and the government. Cities were being burned; politicians were being hunted like animals, and the gangs owned most of what was left.
We asked about the military. Both men just shook their heads. What little military they saw was shooting people on sight or herding them into camps.
Before we could go on, Chad had stood up again, and I could see the fur bristling once more. Mr. Fine asked the two men a question, and both shook their heads. One said something else. Mrs. Fine signed, “He said that he heard wolves howling not long before he saw our fire.”
The music was rising. I told Naomi to take Michael and get inside the truck. Mr. Fine signed that all the girls should. I just stood there looking at him. He gave a lopsided kind of smile and signed an apology...just as the first wolf hit him in at chest level going for his throat. He had instinctively brought a burning branch up as he caught the motion in his peripheral vision.The wolf had clamped down on the branch and was wrestling it away from Mr. Fine.
Both of the other men had raised their rifles and were shooting at pairs of eyes reflecting light from the fire out of the darkness. Greg and Ray were laying about themselves with pieces of burning wood. Naomi, Michael and Mrs. Fine had locked themselves in one of the trucks. A very large wolf and Chad had squared off and looked like they were ready to spring at each other.
One wolf had decided that I looked tasty and sprang at me. The notes just came on their own as My Song slipped from my mouth. The wolves were all suddenly on fire, and the howls the others were hearing now were of agony. Mrs. Fine told me that the howls echoed throughout the entire wooded area around us. We didn’t know it, but the entire northern part of California, all of Oregon and most of Washington had been affected. Every wolf in those areas was on fire. Then the forest itself caught fire.
The last time a wildfire of this size raged no human was living in the northwest. And we were in it! Mr. Fine yelled something to the two men who didn’t even think twice; they just jumped into the back of one of the trucks while the rest of us piled into them. Chad was still sniffing at the cinder that was his opponent when we called him into the truck.
One of the men knew approximately where we were. He told us that we were less than twenty miles from the edge of the woods. He also told us that once we crossed the highway we would only be a few miles from the ocean. It was rocky and hilly, but if we could get there, at least we wouldn’t burn. Twenty miles of fire and smoke. I was scared, really scared, and that was exactly what we needed.
The music had risen even higher. All my life my ability had been some kind of weapon, terrifying and terrible. The power to destroy worldwide, the ability to stop the sun in its track, but now, in order to live through this, I was going to need something entirely different. Without any knowledge of how, I had once made it rain blood. Would it make it rain again?
Mr. Fine drove like a maniac, Ray following close behind. I was scared to death; we weren't going to live through this! I sat back and closed my eyes and let the music take me. The notes of My Song were different this time. Only I could ‘hear’ them, but they had a strange quality to them that I had not felt before. My fear wasn't lashing out to destroy; it was doing something else.
The trucks braked to a sudden stop. Mr. Fine wasn’t moving, he was sitting and staring. Ray had stopped only inches behind his bumper and had thrown his arm across me. Greg stopped himself by throwing his hands out and catching the dashboard. The two men in the back were tossed against the cab. I didn’t see or hear any of it. I was Singing.
Ray threw the door of the truck open and almost physically tossed the two men inside. We were jammed like sardines. I had no idea. I felt nothing; I was not even there. The Singing had taken me.
They have told me that it was as though the air and sea had become one. To this day, Ray swears that he saw a fish swim past the windshield. It was a single, thousands of miles long wave of slowly moving thick mist. It wasn't fog; it was visible water droplets. Where it touched branches became sodden, and the fire went out. People caught out in it didn’t drown as Ray had feared the two men in the back of the truck would, but breathing was difficult and they were soaked through to the skin no matter how many layers of clothing they were wearing.
For me, it seemed that only a few moments had passed. The reality is that it took well over an hour for the ‘wave’ to dissipate. When I opened my eyes, it looked to me like it had been raining hard for at least a week. Ray, still learning sign, asked me, “You do that?”
I was really fond of Ray, to be frank, I had fallen for Ray and didn’t want to scare him off. I wouldn’t lie to him though and answered him simply, “Yes.”
The two men in smashed in the cab of the truck with us were trying to get out. Both Greg and Ray opened their doors and tumbled out with the two men almost on top of them. I climbed out. I hoped that Ray couldn’t see that I was crying and would blame it on the moisture still in the air. Greg, Naomi, Michael and Mr. and Mrs. Fine all went into a group hug, Naomi motioning me over for it. I just stood there, looking at Ray. Ray came over and put both of his arms around me and pulled me into a hug that was not what you would call platonic and kissed me.
I will not paint any more of that picture for you except to say that while I may or may not have kissed boys in the past, I have never been kissed like that. We both knew what we were feeling. Ray also knew that my upbringing, my very real beliefs would let this go no further until we were properly married.
The two men were still dumbfounded by what they had just witnessed. Mr. Fine signed that one of them just kept repeating the word miracle over and over. Turns out he was an ordained minister. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a Catholic Priest, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less!
Naomi just rolled her eyes and signed, “You are a nutcase. What makes you think there are any priests left anywhere? Are you really going to have a 20-year engagement?”
“There has to be! Doesn’t there?”
“Laya, think it through, please. Now, what would your mother say to do?”
Mum was a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. But Mum was also the most practical woman I had ever met. I didn’t know what to do.
Ray took me aside for a time, and we stumbled through some explanations. He deserved to know everything. He deserved to know the extreme danger he was in now that he was someone so special to me. His response was sweet and simple. He signed, “I love you. I will be there for you always. And, if you want to wait for a priest, we wait.”
That decided me. I asked the man, the minister if he could perform the ceremony and if it would be legal? He told me that it would, that he had graduated from seminary, worked as a pastor of a church and been licensed by the state of Washington to perform marriage ceremonies. He also told me that the issuing of marriage licenses to heterosexual couples had been suspended by the Federal Government until such time as all judges and county clerks in the United States complied with the Supreme Court decision on homosexual marriage. He smiled at me and told me through Mrs. Fine, “Don’t worry young one, it will be as legal in the eyes of God as any marriage ever was.” That was good enough for me.
We drove to the edge of the woods, to a place where the trees were on a rocky cliff that overlooked the ocean. Ray and I were married that evening under a canopy of dew covered trees that sparkled as the sun set into a molten gold ocean. The orange and red sky shattered into a billion glittering diamonds all around us as we promised ourselves only to each other. We had made makeshift tents from the materials that we had and Ray and I spent our honeymoon night in one all to ourselves, well away from the others where the cool of the woods and the warm ocean breezes met. I was blessed to have this one fantasy come true in my life.
We parted from our two new friends and worked our way in slightly from the coast continuing in a southerly direction. I still wanted us to stay away from large cities or even medium sized towns, especially after what we had learned happened in Olympia. Before they had left, the Pastor had given Ray his rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition as a wedding present. Ray didn’t want to take it, but the Pastor was insistent. We now had one real weapon, besides me of course.
We had come into an area that looked to be agricultural in nature. We had no way of knowing that we were where we had originally wanted to be so long ago. We were at the very edge of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust! It would be perfect for what we needed. There was just one problem, the road we were on that went into the Trust was blocked. Cars had been spread across the road to form a tight roadblock. There was no one in sight. I had a bad feeling about this, and so did the music that was starting to get loud.
We were three couples now. No one was comfortable letting their spouse go out and check the roadblock alone. I told them that it made the most sense for me to do it. Ray pointed out that my abilities were, he was so diplomatic, a bit unpredictable. He wasn’t sure, none of us was, exactly what would happen if I were fired at by a sniper. I told them all it didn’t matter, I was still the most logical choice, my chances were better than anyone else’s in the group. Ray wasn’t about to let me go alone.
We approached the barrier slowly with our hands raised even though there was no one in sight. We were both anxious, the music was loud but not pounding. Ray had given the rifle to Mr. Fine. I told them that if anything happened not to try to shoot it out, just get out as quickly as possible. You don’t realize how long a minute can be until you are in a situation like this. It seemed to take forever for us to reach the first car in the barricade.
The car was a burned wreck. There were no seats left inside and it had a coppery-rust smell to it. We still hadn’t seen anyone. There was no sign of movement, no sign of life anywhere near the wall of metal husks. We moved to get around the first car when something sparked off of the side of it about two feet from us. Ray tackled me and rolled me under the car with him. He quickly signed, “Gunshot.”
It wasn’t unexpected. Someone doesn’t spend the time and effort to pull a bunch of cars across the road for no reason. That same someone doesn’t just depend on a simple row of defunct vehicles to stop whatever or whoever it was erected for in the first place. My hand was on the back of Ray’s neck so I could feel that he was yelling. I just didn’t know who he was yelling at or what he was saying.
In the tiny space under the car Ray signed, “Yelled to Mr. Fine to get everyone down. Yelled at shooter, ‘why?’”
I had no doubt that he was more eloquent than that in his speaking, he was new to signing and struggling a little with it. I gave him a thumbs up and raised my hands in inquiry. We couldn’t just stay where we were. I pulled on Ray’s shoulder and then rolled out from under the car with him.
We moved back the way we had come. No more shots. The message was pretty clear. Don’t cross the roadblock. We got to the halfway point back toward our trucks and stopped. Ray yelled something out and started signing to me when he immediately dropped his hands. I had no idea why he had stopped signing.
Four men came out of the ground on the left side of the road near us. I mean that exactly the way I said it. They came out of the ground, they had been in some kind of hiding spot camouflaged next to the road. I could see the mouth on one of them moving and Ray answering back. The man that Ray was talking to looked surprised and then motioned and said something. Ray nodded and started signing to me again.
“Told me to stand still and stop waving my hands around. Want to know who we are and what we want here.”
They had thought that Ray’s signing was some kind of signal to the group, that’s why he had stopped so suddenly. I signed, “Ask if it is okay to have one more of our group join us. Mr. Fine can sign better and is usually a better speaker for the group.”
Ray looked a little hurt at that, but my husband was going to have to get used to me being blunt about these things. He said something to the man who spoke with the others for a minute and then nodded at me. Ray turned and yelled something back to the trucks.
Mr. Fine came walking out. The gun was not in his hands.
Mr. Fine spoke and signed at the same time, “We are just trying to pass through. We are looking for a little bit of land that we can farm, maybe start up some trade with our neighbors.”
The man that had originally been speaking with Ray said, “There is plenty of land, why this way in particular?”
Mr. Fine explained about the Marin Agricultural Land Trust and how we hoped that it might be possible to find some of the family farms still operating and willing to part with a little seed for labor. I found it curious that he didn’t mention Greg and Greg’s degree in Agriculture.
The other man had lowered his rifle and had the others do the same. He spoke to Mr. Fine, “You know what you want and where you are. That’s good. We’ve been stopping a lot of folks who are refugees from the cities that have burned out. We’ve only been letting residents or relatives of residents through though. Do you know anyone in the Trust area?”
The rest of our group had wandered up by this time. Someone had had the foresight to stow the rifle before they came.
Mr. Fine answered, “No, we don’t have any relatives there. I don’t think we know anyone from their either.”
Naomi, pushed her way forward and signed, “I do! I know someone who is from there!”
Naomi went on to explain about her Corporal, someone that she had apparently neglected to tell Greg about by the look on his face. Naomi looked sideways at Greg for a moment and he signed, “We’ll talk. Later.”
For once we were lucky. One of the men knew Corporal Seth’s family. Their farm was only a few miles from where we were. I could tell that the leader of this group was still torn. We weren’t relatives, not even close friends, just an acquaintance of one of the boys of a family in the Trust. The man said, “Give us a minute.” and went to talk with the others.
He came back and said, “Here’s the problem, you have a name of one of the boys of a family that lives here. You admit that the family doesn’t know you. There is no shortage of labor with people coming from everywhere willing to work just to eat right now. You look like good people but I just don’t see how we can let you in. Do you have some special skills, some trade that we need?”
Mr. Fine said, “Well, Ray there is a mechanical engineer but I would bet you don’t have a shortage of those. Greg has a degree in agriculture, he had a research project going on how to isolate GMO strains from natural. He told me he was successful at it.”
For those of you who may be wondering at the acronym and why anyone would be excited about Greg’s research, GMO is Genetically Modified Food. By the early and mid twenty-first century there were more GMOs on the shelves and in the freezer departments of the grocery stores than unmodified foods. The government had gone so far as to tell companies that they could eliminate the GMO labeling on their products. There was a problem with this.
As GMOs increased so did the number of cases of autism in children and a myriad of other cognitive diseases. It was thought that no one made the connection until just before the worst of the troubles started, by then, of course, it was too late. The truth was that some few people had made the connection earlier and that was what Greg’s research project was based on. Greg had found a way to chemically differentiate and isolate GMO foods from natural. It would be possible to raise completely non-GMO crops with his techniques.
That turned out to be our ticket into the Trust.
We were more fortunate that the chemicals that Greg needed were commonly used on many of the farms. The farmers had banded together and formed a cooperative after the local government collapsed. They collectively decided that for every 10 acres worth of non-GMO seed that Greg was able to segregate out, they would grant us an acre up to 500 acres. After that we would be bartering for seed and animals. We all knew that we were getting the better end of this deal and that the farmers were being overly generous. They even let us have our pick of areas that had been abandoned. So, we found and settled on Silent Springs Farm.
For the first three months we had twenty acres. It took Greg some time to get his ‘production line’ for segregating the seed going. We all pitched in, except for Naomi. We didn’t want her and my new unborn nephew anywhere near the chemicals no matter how innocuous they seemed. Besides, she was getting as big as a house by then and watching her waddle around made me laugh too hard to get any work done.
It wasn’t until after Gabriel was born that production seemed to take off. We got our 500 acres within another two months and began trading for bags of wheat and corn seed. We had been ‘gifted’ with garden seeds already and had put in a late crop on an acre that was primarily beets, cabbage, lettuce and kale. We decided that we wouldn’t plant the wheat or corn until the next year. There were plenty of rabbits and groundhogs to be had for meat. We also traded for some staples to get us through the winter with the farmers, again, being overly generous.
We discovered that Mrs. Fine had a talent for knitting if she could get the yarn. Our trading turned serious for yarn and knitting needles. We all wanted warm hats and mittens come the winter. Since there were a number of other ladies in The Collective, as the farmers liked to call it, that knitted, it was tough competition for materials. Some of the men volunteered to brave going to San Francisco to see if they could find more. The women were against the idea no matter how much they wanted the yarn. The drones settled it for us.
Three of us were in the garden. Ray, Mrs. Fine and myself were checking for and pulling any weeds that we could find. Ray looked up toward the house. Mr. Fine was yelling at him. Ray, whose signing had improved to the point where it was almost natural for him looked at me and signed, “Mr. Fine says that there is something wrong over at the Kealey farm. He says that he sees smoke.”
There was no hesitation on any of our parts. We practically flew out of the garden and into the trucks. We took off for the Kealey farm as fast as the dirt road would allow us to without pitching us all out through the top of the cab. It was far too late by the time we got there.
A number of other farmers were already there looking at the remains of the farmhouse. Greg was there and came over to us. Naomi had stayed home with the two boys. Greg tapped me on the arm and motioned for me to come with him. As we walked along I wondered if the Kealeys had been home, if they were alright? Greg stopped a little way from the back of the farmhouse, well off of the road and pointed at something.
There, where I would suppose the Kealeys would have had their garden was a crater. Next to the crater was a tiny shoe. That was all I needed to see. I felt sick inside. I couldn’t imagine though why ‘They’ would have chosen now to attack this particular family. Greg, having gotten here while the house was still in flames, had put more thought into it than I had.
Greg signed, “Laya, how well did you know Theresa Kealey? Can you describe her physically to me?”
I’m sure that I looked a little puzzled at that, “She was about two inches taller than me. She had red hair like me, but it was more ‘brassy’ than mine is.”
“What about her little girl?”
“A miniature of her mother. Why, Greg, what do you think this is about?”
“A case of mistaken identity.”
Then the light bulb went on. Oh sweet Lord, no! Theresa and her little girl killed because they looked like me?! The ‘Bastards’ had thought that I had a little girl! ‘They’ thought that there was a chance that I might have passed on my abilities and decided to see if they could eliminate the threat! I was getting mad, ‘seeing red’ mad and the music was getting louder than ever.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around with my fists clenched, ready to strike out in more than one way. It was Ray. He looked at me and he had tears in his eyes. He didn’t say a word, he just pulled me into a hug. The anger started to fade. I didn’t know what would happen if I unleashed My Song in a fit of anger that hot, Ray was right to help me quell it.
A chilling thought went through me right then. ‘They’ were still watching. Not all the time it would seem, but enough to know approximately where we were. We were still in danger. Anyone around us was in danger. The family and I needed to have a conference and decide what to do next.
We all sat around the big table in our dining room. There was nothing left of the Kealeys to bury, so it was decided that there would be a memorial service for them the following Saturday. The elephant in the room was, this was because of me. What do we do now?
Greg signed, “I think we should stay and see what happens. Maybe ‘They’ will think it’s over, that ‘They’ got you.”
I sniffed at that and shook my head, signing, “‘They’ aren’t going to take the chance. ‘They’ will keep observing to see if it was really me. Although, if ‘They’ think it wasn’t, it must be driving ‘Them’ crazy wondering what I am going to do to ‘Them’.”
Naomi signed, “I don’t want to run any more. Can’t you just turn ‘Them’ all into toads so we can have some peace?”
Mr. Fine signed, “Laya, if you say we should go, I will go. But I want you to know that we are tired of running too.”
I couldn’t help but notice how everything that we had gone through had affected Mr. Fine. His hair had thinned and grayed considerably in the last few years and there was a weariness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Every wrinkle that had deepened on his once smooth face told the story of just how much we had been through together.
Ray held my hand for a moment before I could sign anything back, then he signed, “I will go where you go, stay if you stay, but I wasn’t brought up to run from a fight.”
The air seemed to thicken for a moment. I wasn’t sure if I was the only one that saw the sparkling little lights that flickered in the room and then vanished or not. I then heard his voice. It was like the music turned into words. I had never heard words before but I knew what they were and I understood him.
I can’t even imagine what the others thought when I stood up and walked out the kitchen door into our large backyard. There, between the house and the tractor barn stood a man. He was thin and tall and had the deepest blue eyes of anyone I had ever seen before. He was speaking to me, telling me impossible things but his mouth wasn’t moving and it was the music making the words real.
The others came out the back door and lined up on the rear porch as I stood at the bottom of the steps. Ray came down the steps and stood next to me, he had a rifle in his hands. Looked at the man and then looked at him again, harder. In the next instant, Ray had dropped the rifle and was running toward him!
Ray grabbed the man into a bear hug and began slapping him on the back. I could tell that he was laughing and yelling something. Ray stopped for a moment and looked back at me. He signed, “Remember that roommate I told you about?”
If you want to believe it was coincidence, go ahead. You will be in a small minority. The rest of the world can recognize God’s hand when they are forced to.
Mr. Fine was saying something to the man standing in our yard. The man slowly lifted his gaze and focused on the others standing by the house. The words/music continued as he spoke to the others, “Hi there. My name is Jacob. We’ve been looking for Laya for a little while now.”
Mr. Fine, spoke and signed, “Who is ‘we’ and why have you been looking for her?”
Ray had his arm around Jacob who still had a smile on his face when he spoke, “My friend, Diane and I have been looking for Laya and a few other special people.”
I knew that alarm bells should have been going off, but I felt unbelievably comfortable with this person. I had no fear of him at all. This was Ray’s old friend. Someone that he had told me about. Someone that Ray had said that ‘They’ had set up, had hated, just like ‘They’ hated me.
Jacob wasn’t done talking though, “Diane and I think though, that Laya has a bit of a problem. I had a similar problem when I was much younger and I believe that I can help her.”
Ray cut in and spoke/signed, “What problem, Jake?”
Jacob actually winced a little at the diminutive of his name. “You do know that you are the only one that ever called me that? I think that everyone here knows the problem that I’m talking about...Raymond.”
I thought, “Oh God, are these two going to start acting like sophomores?”
Mr. Fine cut in, “Supposing we do know what you mean. How can you help? More importantly, you aren’t signing, how in the world is it that Laya is understanding every word you say?”
Jacob got suddenly serious, “I bend the music for her with my own ability. I can’t explain it any better than that for you. As I said, I had a similar problem with my ability that Laya has with hers. A great man, Diane’s husband helped me.”
Ray said/signed, “So you are going to take her to this friend of yours?”
Jacob shook his head sadly, “He’s been gone for many years, but I learned a great deal from him. I am certain that I can help Laya.”
Ray looked at his old friend for a moment, “You want to take her away from us, don’t you?”
Jacob nodded slowly, “I cannot help her here, and I cannot take you all with me.”
I finally had to ‘say’ something. In my mind, I said, and externally I signed, “Can you take Ray and me? I want my husband to be with me.”
Naomi waved her arms to get our attention and signed, “HEY, what about me?! I’ve known you longer than that ape you’re married to!”
I smiled and signed back, “I don’t need unruly children along. I know that Michael and Gabriel would be fine, but you would be impossible.”
She just crossed her arms and got a cross expression on her face. It might have worked if she hadn’t winked at me. I turned back to Jacob and thought/signed, “Just the two of us, can you take the two of us?”
Jacob wasn’t smiling, but he nodded, “Yes, I can do that. Ray, you have to know that it will be far more dangerous for you in the beginning than for Laya. If Laya agrees though, things could be much more dangerous for her later. I am not going to explain that right now. I want to help her focus her abilities first and then the two of you can make your decision.”
It was the most heart-wrenching and tearful goodbye you could imagine. This was my family. The things that we had been through together could have broken us, instead they made our bond stronger. Mr. and Mrs. Fine were like my own parents to me by this time, just as Naomi was my sister and Greg my brother.
Mr. Fine, offered us one of the trucks. Jacob just shook his head and said that it wasn’t necessary. Mrs. Fine sternly reminded me that this was my home and we were her family. She expected us back!
Jacob, Ray and I moved further back away from the house. Jacob just said, “Stay as still as you can. Hold each other, that might make this better.”
Something happened. Something changed. It was as though the universe had shifted sideways in some way and we were elsewhere.
