Cities on Fire Read online

  “If it’s like the Army, they’ll keep us busy even if it’s stacking and restacking the same bricks. We need to watch every move the guards make and figure out their schedules, commit to memory the layout of the camp so we can make a map to help us later,” Bob said as he changed topics as other people sat down beside them.

  They got wet walking back to their bunks since it started raining while they finished their supper. The rain brought in a cold front, and their tent was chilly.

  They quickly found out where the bathrooms were and another announcement said, “Be in your bunks five minutes after we announce lights out and stay there until lights on at 5:00 am. Now since there are only a few lights that the guards use we don’t actually turn any lights off and on. Just do what you’re told and you won’t get shot trying to go outside.

  Now I know you’ve been asking why there are two 5-gallon buckets with a roll of TP in each one by your bunks. Now you know what to do if you need to go in the middle of the night.”

  Maddie said, “Oh shit.”

  “Please no shit. There aren’t any tops on those buckets,” replied Jane.

  Maddie replied, “I don’t want to squat on a bucket in front of 200 people either.”

  “I guess we can take turns holding up our blankets if someone has to go in the night.”

  The speaker came back on, and the announcer added, “I know many of you are new to our little luxury hotel here in Cherokee. Yes, there are two people to a bunk. I don’t care what you do, but if you fight or start a fight, you will be moved to a bunk outside in the rain. Sleep tight.”

  Will stripped down to his underwear; however, Maddie kept her t-shirt and pants on as they went to bed. They crawled into the narrow bed and lay face to face so they could talk in a low whisper. The people above them went to bed earlier.

  They lay on their sides and tried to talk in a low whisper.

  “Will I’m so scared. We don’t know what these men will do to us.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Maddie, I will die before one of them hurts you.”

  Maddie snuggled up to Will and said, Will, wrap your legs around mine. I’m scared and freezing, and you are so warm.”

  Will took his t-shirt off and helped Maddie put it on over top of hers and then wrapped his arms around her and placed his leg on top of hers to share their body warmth.

  “Maddie, I’m sorry that you have to go through this. I’ll do my best to get you back home as soon as possible.”

  She said, “You are my hero.”

  Will held her tight and replied, “Maddie, I’ll always be there for you.”

  They stopped talking and listened to the sounds around them. Two bunks to the left a woman was crying. The bunk above Bob and Jane was moving too much but stopped moving after a while. Will had to cover Maddie’s mouth with his hand to keep her from laughing aloud.

  “Shush, go to sleep girl, or I’m going to pinch you.”

  “I’ll pinch back, and we’ll be thrown out in the rain.”

  Maddie rolled over and pulled Will’s arm over the top of her. They lay there spooned together all night.

  Will fell asleep more in love with Maddie than ever before and knew he must win her over.

  The trip across the river didn’t yield much. They found the carts in the consignment shop and no signs of their family. Jo saw a woman on a porch across from the consignment shop and went over to question her.

  “Hello, did you see any vehicles here this morning?”

  “Why yes, there were some military people come through in a convoy. They arrested some looters and drove off.”

  That night had a terrible turn of events for the people at the Horseshoe. A large group of the near do wells from the Dixon Springs area decided to take their fair share of what the people in the Horseshoe had gathered. They were poorly armed but had shotguns and deer rifles.

  Since the fence and wall had been completed, their only means to make an attack and take what they thought belonged to them was to take boats across the river, kill anyone who resisted and to take the food and weapons back by boat. The idiots thought that drinking their last bottles of booze was a good idea before attacking the Horseshoe, so many of them were drunk as they manned their boats.

  The alcohol wasn’t conducive to keeping silent as they fumbled their way across the river. Jack’s son Tony was the first to hear them, and he radioed Jack and Greg to spread the alarm. Thanks to the noise, Jack had all of his fighters waiting on the gang who couldn’t row straight or be silent.

  Jack waited until they were pulling the boats onto shore and began shooting. The drunks began firing their guns randomly at anything that moved until they ran out of bullets. The clowns were caught in a crossfire and massacred before most of them stepped onto the shore. Jack kept his people shooting as long as there was movement. Every one of the attackers was killed that night.

  Unfortunately several of the team were hit by stray bullets and lucky shots made by the attackers. Bill received a load of number 7 shot from a 12 Gauge in the back. Lucky for him the shot came from a hundred feet away, and only seven pellets hit him, and his coat slowed them down. Tony was hit by a .30 .30 in the calf and Betty Lou caught a ricochet in the left upper arm.

  Jo helped pick out the buckshot from Bill after he took care of Tony and Betty Lou. He hurt like hell, but the wounds weren’t serious. Jo used fine point tweezers to pluck out the pellets and poured alcohol on the wounds to keep them from becoming infected. She then applied an antiseptic salve and placed Band-Aids on his back.

  “Jo, we’re still tending to Missy’s wound, and now my back will keep me close to home for a while. I don’t see how we can go looking for our family.”

  “Bill, you are right. We can’t go, but I can and will go get my mom, son, and Bob. I’m a cop. That’s what cops do. We chase down bad guys and find lost people. I’ll try to get some volunteers, but I’m going to Cherokee and getting my family back.”

  “Jo, take Max, he will help protect you.

  THE END

  Don’t stop now! Continue to the next page for a sneak peek at:

  BOOK II Family Survival - A Family’s Apocalypse

  And

  Vigilante: “Into the Fray” by Cliff Deane

  If you like my novel, please post a review on Amazon.

  To contact the Author, please leave comments @:

  www.facebook.com/newmananthonyj Facebook page.

  To view other books by AJ Newman, go to Amazon to my Author’s page:

  http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HT84V6U

  ✼

  Family Survival: A Family’s Apocalypse

  Chapter 1

  Day Eight – And We’re Here to Help You!

  Jane woke up before the others and looked at Bob lying in her arms. She wondered what he would think if he knew, she was the person dressed in black killing the assholes around the Horseshoe. She looked over to Will and Maddie’s bunk and made eye contact with Maddie. She was awake and Will was snuggled up against her back.

  Will was awake with his arm around Maddie and Maddie’s head was on his other arm. He placed his leg over hers and hugged her. He wondered what was going through her mind.

  They lay there for a few minutes before they were blasted out of their bunks at 5:00 am sharp by bugles, and the announcer told them to shit, shower and shave by 5:30 when breakfast would be served.

  After breakfast, they found out what recreation the Army had in store for them. They were forced to line up outside by a group of parked semi-trailers and handed shovels, rakes and hoes as they passed by the end of the trailers. They were led out to a massive garden that must have covered 50 acres and were given assignments.

  The men were given the task of digging a shallow drainage ditch around the whole garden while the women were told to hoe the weeds between the neat rows of the garden. The work started at 6:30 and the guards gave some direction; however, a few trusted prisoners were actually leading the effort. They reminded eve
ryone that they were growing the food that they needed to survive this winter.

  Bob had given instructions to them to cozy up to their fellow workers and get as much information as possible about the camp and the surrounding area. A young lady started talking to Will, and he pumped her for information. She was from the Florence area and had been through Cherokee many times before the lights went out. Will was talking with her while he assembled a map of the area in his mind.

  “Will, do you have a girl?”

  “No,” he said, then caught himself and replied, “Well yes, but it’s a weird story.”

  “So maybe you have a girl, or maybe you don’t have a girl.”

  Maddie had been working toward Will and the girl since she spotted him talking to the girl. She overheard the conversation and walked between the two of them and said, “Will has a girl, and it’s me. Will I’m so sorry about being mean to you. You are mine, and I’ll be better to you.”

  Maddie led him away from the girl holding Will’s hand. Will pulled her to a stop away from the young woman and said, “Maddie, what was that about. I still care for you, but I know I must move on. She was a nice girl….”

  “Will, I know that I’ve been driving you crazy, but seeing you with her made me very jealous, and I finally realized how much I care for you. I want to be your girlfriend and see where we go from there.”

  Will snuck a kiss and then walked off to get back to work.

  They worked without a break until 11:30 when they were marched past a series of tubs of water that had soap and towels beside them. There was a bit of shuffling of people as the men and women tried to find their mates.

  Bob found Jane first and they helped Will find Maddie and then got back in line for chow. The meal was a scoop of beans, two hot dogs, a slice of bread and water. They were very hungry and didn’t talk much as they stuffed the food in their mouths. They finished early and went outside to mill around with the others as they waited to go back to their jobs.

  Will saw a young guard and said, “Aren’t you from Lexington?”

  “Yes, do I know you?”

  “Yes, you pitched against Louisville Male during the regionals. I hit a home run in the eight, but y’all beat us 5-1.”

  “Yes, I remember that. You spoiled my no-hitter.”

  “When did you join the Army?”

  “Earlier this year, I tore my arm up, dropped out of college, and joined the Army. Why are you here?”

  “My family was searching for some clothing, and the Blackman Troops thought we were looters.”

  “They say everyone is a looter. The truth is that FEMA needs people to grow these crops or the nation will starve.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. We are farmers and were growing crops on over 150 acres. Those idiots are hurting the farming effort. We were growing a hundred times the food we needed to survive. We planned to trade food for gas, oil, and labor once the crops came in. There were less than 30 people actually farming. There are thousands here. How many of these gardens are there?”

  “There are 10 of them planned for here, and there are only ten FEMA camps like this one around the country. Most of them were burned to the ground by the swarms of people who left the cities to find food. Blackman Troops killed hundreds of thousands of them but there were just too many, and they overwhelmed FEMA and the Military. The government is holed up under a mountain, and the cities have burned to the ground. There are millions of people still on the road. The Major is afraid they will over run this camp.”

  “Wow, what does he plan to do?”

  “There will be too many to fight. We’ll probably retreat to a safer place and start over. The river protects us from the north, and we’re off the beaten path, so perhaps we’ll survive here.”

  The Sergeant of the Guards was making his rounds, so they cut the conversation short. Will gave the others the highlights and said, “We need to escape before this camp is overrun by walkers from the north.”

  Bob replied, “I have a plan, and if it works we’ll be on the road in two to three days. Now here are my plans.

  There were no volunteers, so Jo packed her Bugout Bag, extra ammunition, and food for her trip; she only took one bag of dog food since Max would find his food on the way. Cherokee was only 160 miles from Dixon Springs, and she was taking Bob’s old pickup with an extra 20 gallons of gas. She also brought several boxes of trade goods to help buy anything else she needed along the way.

  She planned to drive straight through, hide the truck close to the camp and figure out how to free her family from FEMA. She told her husband to watch over Jake and Missy and left at sundown.

  It was the end of the day, and the prisoners were walking back to their tents when Will saw Maddie up ahead. She was talking with a guard and was looking very mad.

  “Keep your hands to your damn self,” Maddie said to the guard.

  The guard grabbed her butt and said, “You’ll do what I say when I say.”

  Will flew through the air, tackled the guard, knocked him down, and said, “If you touch my wife again I’ll kill you.

  The guard raised his rifle, but Will was faster and grabbed the barrel, yanked it from the man’s hands and threw it across the courtyard. The guard pulled his pistol and tried to point it at Will when Will’s right foot whipped out and kicked it from his hands.

  Will was hit on the head from behind by two more guards, and he fell to the floor.

  The Sergeant of the guards yelled, “Don’t hurt him.”

  A young lady yelled, “He was only defending his wife. The guard assaulted her, and I’m going to tell my Dad.”

  She was the young lady that had been flirting with Will earlier that morning. By now, Maddie was in tears and fell to the ground beside Will. She had Will’s head on her lap and inspected the gash on the back of his head. He was awake but groggy. Maddie looked up at the woman and thanked her for speaking up.

  The guards pulled her away and took Will to the medics, but allowed Maddie to follow them to the waiting room. Will was lightheaded, but the medic told Maddie that he should be okay in a day or two.

  Sergeant Hines, “What happened and why did that young man attack an armed guard?”

  “Captain, Private Wells was making advances toward the boy’s wife, and the boy jumped Wells.”

  “You are telling me that a young unarmed man took away the Privates weapons and beat the hell out of him single-handedly.”

  “Sir, I was there. The Private grabbed the girl’s ass. Her husband leaped through the air and tackled the Private. The Private tried to shoot the boy with his rifle. The boy took the rifle from him and threw it across the courtyard, and the Private then drew his pistol. The boy turned and kicked the gun away. That’s when Privates Malloy and Martin knocked the boy down with a butt stroke to the head.”

  “That’s exactly what my daughter saw. What do we do?”

  “Court-martial Wells and give a medal to the boy. His name is Will Karr.”

  “I agree on the court-martial, but we can’t give the boy a medal even if he did us a favor. That asshole was a ticking time bomb. Do whatever it takes to get rid of him. Send him on a one man mission to California to ask for more troops.”

  “Will do.”

  “Make sure the boy is getting the best medical aid we have to offer. My daughter has taken an interest in the couple. Oh, if you see her out mingling with the prisoners, please send her butt back to my tent.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now another topic. Have there been any significant findings from your scouting squads or our internal spy network?”

  “Sir, nothing promising from the scouts, but there are two different prisoners in the camp that were taken away from thriving communities. Jake Simpson and Bob Karr both are the doomsday prepper types. Simpson led a band down from Indianapolis and started farming in mid-Alabama close to Birmingham. Bob Karr lives in a small farming community and has fields planted and developed a good security force.”

  “Ho
w did you get the detail?

  “We identified several targets and bugged their bunks. Oh, the young man who beat up Wells is Karr’s son or grandson. He knew one of our guards before the shit hit the fan and opened up to him. That’s why I was close by when Wells got out of line.”

  “What a small world.”

  “How many men and woman do we have in our band?”

  “Four men counting us and three women counting your daughter. There are two children.”

  “Have everyone ready to march in two days. We’ll roll out by 2300. Have a Humvee and a deuce and a half stocked with food, weapons, and ammo. It’s time to put our operation into phase one.

  To be continued

  I hope you enjoyed this sample from Book II – Family Survival – A Family’s Apocalypse

  If you like my novel, please post a review on Amazon.

  To contact the Author, please leave comments @:

  www.facebook.com/newmananthonyj Facebook page.

  To view other books by AJ Newman, go to Amazon to my Author’s page:

  http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HT84V6U

  STOP again! I have added a sample of my friend Cliff Dean’s latest book –

  Vigilante:

  “Into the Fray”

  ***

  Vigilante:

  “Into the Fray”

  Book two of

  An EMP Apocalypse in America

  By Cliff Deane

  *

  A vigilante is a civilian or organization acting in a law enforcement capacity

  without legal authority.