Ash: Rise of the Republic (2 page)

We made our way towards sporting goods and
found that it had been mostly picked over. I wasn’t terribly
concerned; I used to be an avid camper so I had quality survival
gear at home. For some reason, the fishing aisle was largely
untouched so I grabbed all the line and hooks I could get my hands
on. At that point I was still considering heading out to my
family’s lake house to ride this out. I wasn’t thinking about pH
balances, I thought fish might be an easy source of immediate
protein.

Moving on, I rounded the aisle toward the
ammo section only to find shattered glass and empty display cases.
There were a few boxes of the less popular calibers so I grabbed
them, thinking that the powder and primers might come in handy at
the very least. Since we were near the toy section, I steered us
over to a rack of board games and started piling the more
interesting ones in the cart. I had a feeling we would appreciate
them once the power went and we were stuck inside.

Next, we headed to automotive and I grabbed
several five gallon gas cans. I had hopes of filling them on the
way home, but if the state of this store was any indication of the
hell we could expect at the gas stations then I thought we could
still use them for water storage. We passed a big rack of car
batteries and I filled the bottom racks of the carts with them. I
had seen plans at some point for a wind generator that involved the
alternator from a car and a bank of 12V batteries in parallel. I
hoped with my limited electrical expertise I could throw something
together.

We swung over to hardware and I grabbed a
generous supply of nails, screws, nuts, and bolts. I also picked up
a few hand tools that I had been putting off buying. I had my
fingers crossed for a small gas generator, but the shelves were
empty in that section. I remember when Hurricane Ike came through
the region was sold out of generators for months afterwards. I
didn’t think my chances were good for getting my hands on one. I
kicked myself for putting off buying one for all those years.

Deb pointed out that it might be useful to
have some sewing supplies so we headed to over to crafts. We
grabbed a dozen packages of needles and a few spools of thread. I
considered a sewing machine but a glance at our quickly filling
carts kept me from pulling the trigger.

While we were debating whether to move on to
the market section, the shooting started. Looking back, I think it
was probably the twitchy, well-armed group we had seen pillaging
the produce that started things, but whether they ran into another
gang or the cops finally decided to sort things out, I’ll never
know. What I do know is that gunshots are loud. Multiple gunshots
in an enclosed space with a horde of already terrified people will
cause a stampede. That was the first one I saw, but it wasn’t the
last.

We were at the back of the store, so we were
spared the trampling, but the screams were enough to send us
looking for a place to hunker down. We started moving further back
when we ran into a trembling store associate, Tracy Goodwin, one of
Deb’s former coworkers. She was thin and tall, her long brown hair
was in disarray. Her eyes were wide and brimming with tears, her
mascara was beginning to run. She seemed rooted to the spot. I
asked her if we could head to the warehouse and possibly leave
through the back before I noticed the spatter of blood on her blue
smock. The small pocket knife in her hand was dark red and
glistening, making a mess on the floor. I started to raise the
pistol to ward her off, expecting an attack, but Deb jabbed me in
the side before I could bring it to bear. She nudged me again and
nodded to the body on the floor behind the shivering girl. He was
lying on his back, arms wide, blood oozing from the side of his
neck. She had nicked his jugular with a lucky jab. His fly was
unzipped, belt still on, his penis was still mostly erect. Deb
hugged the girl as she burst into tears. As we moved toward the
warehouse I noticed his nametag had a yellow section that said
‘Store Manager’.

Once we made it through the double doors
marked ‘Employees Only’, Deb sat the girl down in a chair in the
hallway to comfort her. I hoped she had made her lucky jab before
he had made too much progress. That wouldn’t be the last time Deb
would have that conversation with a poor hysterical girl. The
rapists came out of the woodwork in those first few months.

While Deb calmed the girl down, I started
scouting around for anything useful. We had piled a good load of
gear in our carts, but we still hadn’t found any food. Shockingly,
the warehouse was deserted. I saw the evidence of some light
looting here and there, probably the work of the more forward
thinking store associates. I thought back and realized that the
poor girl in my wife’s arms and the disgusting sack of shit
bleeding out back in electronics were the only employees I had seen
since we entered the store. The rest must have bugged out once the
horde had descended. I didn’t blame them one bit. What that meant
for me was a warehouse full of everything I needed and no one to
stop me from taking it. Not being a thief, and knowing that credit
cards would probably be useless soon, I gently asked the still
shaky girl to log in to the register in the site-to-store bay just
outside the double doors. I had her run my card for five grand. It
was probably a uselessly noble gesture, but it kept me from feeling
like a scumbag for everything I took. Sometimes I wonder if that
charge ended up on my account. The records are probably still
sitting in some independently powered backup server farm somewhere
out in the desert.

Once I had signed the receipt we headed back
into the warehouse and I dragged a bank of employee lockers in
front of the double doors to keep out the still screaming and
shooting horde. We split up and started searching for supplies. I
found a cluster of pallets of assorted canned food and I dragged
them one by one over to the loading dock with a pallet jack. Deb
showed up with Tracy in tow. They each had a large flatbed cart
filled with cardboard boxes. My wife’s were labeled Winchester,
Remington, and Federal. I whooped and kissed her on the spot. The
girl’s boxes had lovely words like Miller, Coors, and Budweiser. I
almost kissed her too, but she still had that little knife, I
didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

Now that we had a real stockpile, we needed
transport more formidable than my little Toyota. We pulled open the
closest bay door and found a half empty trailer. The receiving crew
had apparently given up in the middle of unloading it. The trailer
was big enough for our purpose but it was effectively useless
because there was no big rig to pull it, and we didn’t have the
skills to drive it even if there was. I peeked outside and found
our biggest piece of luck yet: a twenty foot box truck was backed
up to the next loading bay. I crossed my fingers and ran through
the gritty rain over to the cab, hoping for keys. The engine was
still warm, but my luck ran out there. I even checked the sun visor
like you used to see in the movies. I went back inside, soggy,
grimy, and cussing like a sailor. Once I calmed down, I asked the
girl if she knew why the box truck was there since it wasn’t the
standard issue Walmart hauler. She shuddered and started crying
again, looking back towards the double doors that led to the store.
We couldn’t get much out of her, but since the question upset her
so much I decided I might have a look through her attacker’s
pockets. Maybe the scumbag had borrowed a truck to stock up on some
things from his store and just decided to start raping his
employees.

I asked the ladies to start loading the
pallets into the truck and headed back toward the doors that led
into store. I carefully pulled the set of lockers back far enough
to get one of the doors open, trying my hardest not to make too
much noise. The gunshots and pandemonium from the market section
had died off and I was worried the armed gang was moving closer. I
peeked out, no one was nearby. I crept back towards electronics
where we had left that fat piece of shit, keeping my head down and
hiding behind fixtures. He was still there, slowly leaking, and I
gingerly stepped around the spreading pool of blood. Swallowing my
disgust at the act, I closed my eyes and reached into his pocket,
hoping to find keys on my first try. I lucked out, but before I
could withdraw them I heard a choking gurgle and a clammy hand
grabbed my wrist. I looked over and found him staring at me and
mouthing a plea for help. I withdrew the keys and wrenched out of
his weakening grip in one motion. He filled his lungs with a
sickening rattle and screamed. Out of pure terror I squeezed the
trigger on the pistol I had forgotten I was carrying. The point
blank shot made a mess of his face and scattered his rapist brains
across the bloody linoleum. I’ve killed more than a few people
since then, but that was one of the only times I really felt
satisfied pulling the trigger, even if it was an accident.

The sudden shot set off a new round of
screaming, much nearer than I expected. I started to stand but
quickly dropped back to a crouch when a shotgun roared from the
next aisle and the row of flatscreens behind me shattered. I
scrambled back to the double doors, followed by shouts and more
shots. It was unaimed panic shooting, so nothing came close to
hitting me, but I wasn’t about to start a firefight with that
group. I slammed the lockers back into place and tossed the keys to
Deb, hoping I had found the right set. I helped Tracy load the last
couple of pallets and slam the door down just as the truck roared
to life. As we made our way outside to join my wife in the cab, I
heard the double doors splinter from another shotgun blast. We
piled in as she hit the gas, I remember a satisfying squeal of
tires as we left the loading dock, but that might just be my old
mind embellishing things.

We circled around to where we had left the
pickup and I hopped out. Deb had driven a bus for the university
for several years, so she could handle a big vehicle better than I
could at the time. Traffic was much lighter on the way back, I
guess the worst drivers had already wrecked. We passed a gas
station that seemed deserted and I pulled in to try to fill up the
cans, but the pumps were shut off. I decided to let it go.

Halfway back the rain quit. My momentary
sense of relief was shattered when the first fluffy flakes of dry
ash started hitting the windshield. The fall quickly intensified to
blizzard proportions. I started to worry that the engines would
choke up before we made it back. I tried to call the wife but cell
reception had dropped to nothing, so I stopped and waved her
alongside. I threw them a towel from the backseat and told them to
rip it down the middle and wrap it around their faces before we had
to leave the safety of the vehicles. I made sure they turned off
the air conditioning to keep from sucking ash into the cab, and
then we set off for the final leg of the drive home.

It might surprise you to know, but no one
really knew how to handle an ash storm. I guess I knew more than
most, I was a geologist after all. It had come up in college in a
class or two, maybe during a drunken conversation around a campfire
on a field project. I had mapped ignimbrites in Big Bend and Death
Valley; I had hiked Tuff Canyon; I knew what could happen when a
lot of it fell in one place. I also knew that once the rains
stopped and the ashfall began in earnest, we would have to be
careful about what we breathed in. Back then most people hadn’t
even heard of silicosis unless they happened to work in a mine. It
didn’t take long for most people to find out exactly what it was. I
met an old traveler a few years back who told me that you can still
find lung shaped rocks on the sides of some of the big highways
coming south out of Wyoming and Nebraska. Thousands of northern
refugees dropped in their tracks during the Panic. It gets hard to
walk south when your lungs fossilize in your body. A simple paper
mask will do wonders, but those poor bastards closer to the pillar
didn’t have time to run to the hardware store. In some places the
roads were impassible within hours, and vehicles choked out within
minutes of exposure to the ashfall. Plenty of people had to just
start walking south with whatever possessions they could carry. We
were luckier down here: the distance gave us black rain and black
rain got us scared.

We made it without further trouble and I had
her back the box truck up to the garage. Luckily it had a hydraulic
lift at the back, so we unloaded quickly and got the garage closed
before too much ash had piled up. I took a look out at the front
yard before I locked the house up: there were already a few inches
of the grey stuff and it showed no sign of slowing down. The light
was fading, I couldn’t see the sun but I knew it was just about to
dip below the horizon.

We set Tracy up in the spare room. Once we
had the bed ready my wife gave me a loaded glance and pushed me out
of the room. I left her to her consoling and I set about securing
the house. The big rage in home design back then was natural light,
and the result was far too many windows. Even if I had been able to
pick up a pallet of plywood I would have had trouble boarding them
all up. What that left me was an indefensible house. A determined
group of attackers could surround us and break through in any of a
dozen places. I trusted my neighbors, so I wasn’t too worried yet,
but the scene at the store made me realize what we might be in for
in the coming weeks.

I decided to take stock of my small arsenal.
I opened my safe and started laying guns on the kitchen table. We
had two rifles chambered in .223: my AR-15 and Deb’s small folding
carbine. We had the two 9mm automatic pistols, a twelve gauge, and
a scoped 30-06 I used to hunt deer with. Not much compared to the
collections of some of my friends at the time, but enough for us. I
usually kept about two hundred rounds for each weapon on hand, but
we were low on .223 and 30-06 after our last trip to the range. I
started gathering up the crates of ammo my wife had found in the
warehouse, hoping that she had found the right calibers. After
sorting through it all, we had over a thousand rounds for each gun.
One whole crate was filled with various 12 gauge shells, from bird
shot to slugs. In addition, we had about five thousand rounds of
various calibers that we couldn’t use. They would likely be
valuable trade goods later on so I set them aside.