The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse

The Borrowed World

Franklin Horton

The Borrowed World

by Franklin Horton

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design

Editing by Felicia Sullivan

Formatting by Kody Boye

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or living dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

The earliest seeds of this project began during a period of my life when I had to travel frequently for work.  During periods of elevated terror alerts and especially during Hurricane Katrina, I thought often about the vulnerability of a person traveling during a national disaster.  It would be difficult to be prepared for all of the possible impediments that a person might encounter.  As a way of passing the time during long drives, I developed “get home plans” for each trip.  Given what I had in my luggage, what avenues of travel would be available to me?  What would my route be?  What hazards might be encountered on the route?  An immediate side effect of asking myself these questions was that I began to pack better for my trips.  If I was going to have to walk home, I wanted the shoes to do it in.

This is a work of fiction, though.  It was not written with the intent of serving as an instructional manual on prepping or building the perfect bug-out bag.  There are plenty of excellent books and forums out there already that can guide you through that process.  Instead, this is a speculative novel about a person who reads “those” books and haunts “those” websites.  It is about how a moderately-prepared and well-informed person might respond under a particular set of circumstances.  It is intended to encourage thought and discussion.

Franklin Horton

April 27, 2015

Imran ul-Haq was eating a late dinner and watching The History Channel.  The veal he was eating was exquisitely tender and perfectly seasoned, practically melting in his mouth.  It was one of his favorite meals and The History Channel was one of his favorite channels.  The show he was watching was on the disintegration of America’s infrastructure.  Imran, a plastic surgeon of Syrian descent now residing in Arlington, Virginia, found the show to be both amusing and fascinating.  During the hour-long program he learned about America’s weakened bridges, failing dams, problems with the electrical grid, and the fragility of America’s water supply.  When the show ended he was struck with an idea that he felt had practically been thrust into his hands.  He smiled.

At the end of the program, there was an advertisement which told viewers how to order a DVD of the show.  Imran made a note of the website and planned on ordering five copies that very evening.  Four of the copies he would send overseas with no explanation necessary.  When the recipients viewed the DVDs they would see them through the same lens as Imran did.  A deadly flower would grow and blossom.

The surgeon recalled the attacks on America of September 11
th
.  He envisioned a broader attack -- more men, perhaps permanent devastation, yet somehow less dramatic.  Something more visceral and less flashy.  Something overall less complicated, because the Americans had done half the work already in allowing vital parts of their nation to weaken to the point that much devastation could be accomplished with very little work.  With a few skilled men and a few well-placed munitions, this country could be toppled like a child’s stack of building blocks.  Imran was certain of it.  The producers of the show had practically laid it out for him.

This was obviously not work for plastic surgeons, though.  Such complex orchestrations would have to be the work of a man with the right connections and significant funding.  Such a man could call upon cells of the faithful hiding in plain sight in North America and call them into action.  A man on the fringes of a movement such as ISIS would be perfect.  A man like his brother. 

Imran went to his expensive custom-made walnut bookcase, opened a glass door, and retrieved a mundane text on Islamic history.  In Iraq, the same text sat in his brother’s living room on a humbler and likely dustier shelf.  Imran sat down at his computer and went to a generic webmail account that he used to communicate with his brother.  He began to type a series of numbers.

“3-18, 28-98, 9-32 . . .”

It was a simple system.  The numbers instructed his brother as to what page number to go to in the book and which word to retrieve from that page.  When all of the words were retrieved from the book and written out in order they spelled out a message.  This was referred to as a “book code” and it was nearly impossible to break unless you happened to have the same copy, same edition, same printing of the book that the sender and receiver were using. 

When Imran completed his email, he clicked the send button.  Before rising from his desk, he ordered the copies of the show he had just seen on the History Channel.

His housekeeper had left him a nice chocolate cake for dessert.  He placed a modest slice on a china plate and sat back down in front of the television.  A show about lumberjacks was on now and he was particularly fond of it, although they certainly used a lot of profane, heathen language.  American television may one day be remembered as its finest achievement, he mused.

*

Almost six months had passed since Imran had mailed his brother the DVDs, and he only now was hearing back from him.  When he did, it was in the form of another encrypted book code email advising him of a special family celebration taking place in Syria that he should return home for.  Imran knew that this message meant that the seed he planted had grown into something significant -- something that he hoped was very special indeed.  As he had no family to be concerned about, he had his office manager clear his schedule for a month’s vacation and began to pack. He hired a service to box the contents of his home and pack them in a shipping container bound for Syria.  Due to trade imbalances, there was very little freight leaving U.S. ports these days.  Shipping all of his belongings home only cost him six hundred American dollars.  With his surgical skills he could start a new life, perhaps in Dubai, a place he’d long wanted to visit.  He had savings sufficient to make that happen.

On his last day in the United States, Imran made his financial arrangements and had his bank accounts transferred to offshore accounts that he could access from anywhere in the world.  He took several thousand dollars in cash, which he dispersed throughout his luggage and on his person.  He drove his Mercedes to the airport and left it in long-term parking where it would sit for a very long time.

Later, aboard the plane, the U.S. receded from his window.  He thanked the country for his medical education and hoped that it emerged from its hardships a better nation than the one he was leaving.  A more humble nation.  A more spiritual nation. 

Perhaps even a Muslim nation.

*

On that same day, a Muslim grocer in Detroit received an encoded set of instructions from a Muslim in Germany via an encrypted email.  He was instructed to contact four men across the United States, each the leader of a cell of men who had sworn their lives to Jihad.  The men were previously unknown to the grocer and he was given a specific greeting to use with each of the men.  When these men would hear his greeting, they would know that Allah was calling for them.  Each cell leader had a specific response he was to recite back to the man from Detroit.  When the grocer received the correct response, the men’s identities would be confirmed and they would be given a set of instructions.

The four cell leaders would then contact each of the members of their cell and pass along further instructions.  Some men were to purchase handheld GPS units commonly used for backpacking or hunting.  Several were to purchase ATVs and trailers for hauling them behind vehicles.  One was instructed to buy a pop-up camping trailer.  Two dozen men were told to purchase hunting licenses, camouflage clothing, and scoped hunting rifles in 30-06 caliber.  They were told to practice and become proficient with the weapons.  Other men had no specific instructions other than to wait for a call.  They were all given one week to prepare themselves and pray for their success.

On a Friday, two dozen ISIS-trained terrorists converged on the U.S. and crossed its borders illegally.  Six crossed remote border sections in the forests of Washington State on backpacking trails used by marijuana smugglers.  Several entered Texas, smuggled across the border by a drug cartel that was paid in cash and asked no questions.  Others crossed from Windsor, Canada, into Detroit in the trunks of cars.  The remainder arrived on the Florida and Georgia coasts transported by high-speed Cigarette cruisers.  Each of these groups was met by a cell member and issued a duffle bag with false identification, clothes, a handgun, extra clips and ammunition, a prepaid cell phone, and the phone number for a cell member they would be paired with for their segment of the operation.  Each man was given a key attached to a white tag.  Written on each man’s tag were a different set of GPS coordinates.

Bilal spoke not a word of English but he would not need it for his business here.  He used his prepaid phone to contact the cell member assigned to him, a Tampa waiter named Ali.  When Ali arrived to pick up him up, he asked Bilal’s name.  Bilal did not reply, nor did he ask for Ali’s name.  Ali had no training and had never been called into an operation before.  He was nervous and didn’t know how he was supposed to act.  He realized that with his attempts at camaraderie and friendly small talk he probably appeared amateurish, or worse, Westernized.

“Did you rent the house as instructed?” Bilal asked.

“I did,” Ali replied.

“Did you gather the things that you were asked to gather?”

“I purchased everything.  Everything was done exactly in the manner in which I was instructed.”

They spent that night at Ali’s apartment and left the next morning in Ali’s recently purchased minivan.  He bought it used with cash he received in the mail.  As instructed, he had removed the seats.  Using the handheld GPS, the pair sought the coordinates written on the key tag that Bilal had been given upon his arrival. The coordinates led them to a self-storage facility and to a particular block of units hidden in the dense maze of metal structures.  Bilal’s key fit Unit 437.  He opened the lock and raised the door.  Inside were several large plastic trunks about four feet long and two feet wide. 

“What are these things?” Ali asked.

Bilal did not answer, but gestured to the man to help him load them in the vehicle.

“The boxes are heavy,” Ali commented. 

When they had closed the unit back up and were back on the road, Bilal asked Ali if he had studied the route that he had been asked to study.  He replied that he had.

“Then take us to Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” Bilal said. “To the house you rented.  Do not exceed the speed limit.”

“What then?” Ali asked.  “What will we do there?”

“When there is something you need to know, you will be told.”

*

For a week, Ali and Bilal stayed in their rented house in Baton Rouge.  In the back bedroom was a chest freezer Ali had purchased at the Home Depot, around four feet long and three feet deep.  Beside it was a large plastic tub of water.  Each hour, Bilal reached into the freezer and removed what Ali now suspected were mortar shells.  There were two of them and Bilal would dip the nose end of each into the water and then replace it in the freezer.  Over the last couple of days, the nose end of each shell had grown about an inch thicker with ice.  When Bilal was satisfied with his work, he sent Ali to Walmart to purchase a large white marine cooler, which he was further instructed to fill with dry ice.

That night, as Bilal knelt in the living room floor and recited his prayers, he received a text message containing a set of numbers.  Referring to a small notebook in his pocket, Bilal was able to transpose the encoded numbers until he ascertained the intended message.  It was another set of GPS coordinates.

When he was done translating the message, Bilal went to Ali. 

“It is time.”

*

By 2 a.m., Bilal and Ali were concealed in a stand of trees approximately one mile from ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Refinery.  It was one of the largest oil refineries in America, capable of producing over a half million barrels of oil a day.  While the distance was nearly at the limits of the 81mm mortar’s range, Bilal had extensive experience with the weapon in Iraq and was more than capable of hitting such a large – and highly flammable – target as the refinery.

The weapon consisted of four manageable pieces: the cannon, the mount, the base plate, and the sighting unit.  He and Ali had hauled the plastic trunks into the woods beside the road and then carried each piece to this specific site, exactly where the coordinates Bilal received earlier had instructed him to set up his weapon.  When the weapon was assembled, Bilal had Ali return each plastic trunk to the vehicle while he sighted the weapon.

Bilal removed one of the ice-encrusted High Explosive mortar shells and placed it gently in the firing tube.  The base of the shell slid easily into the tube but when the ice encrusted section hit the tube it was too large from the encrustation of ice and would not slide further inside.  This was by design and exactly as planned.  The shell would hang partially exposed from the barrel, where it would stay until the ice melted.

“Genius,” Ali uttered.

“We have used this method in Iraq,” Bilal said.  “When the ice melts, the round slips down the tube and strikes the firing pin, firing the round.”

“How much time do we have?” Ali asked.

“In this heat, less than an hour, I expect,” Bilal replied.  “Let us go.  We have another to set up and not much time.”

After the second mortar installation was set up, they returned to the rented house to empty the trunks and cooler from their vehicles.  While Ali carried two of the trunks down the hallway, Bilal stepped up behind him with a suppressed Walther P22 and emptied two quick rounds into the back of Ali’s head.  As Ali slumped forward, Bilal unscrewed the suppressor and stowed it, along with the weapon, in his pocket.  Bilal watched without expression as Ali’s body stiffened and spasmed, the brain dead but the body not yet aware of that fact.  When the gyrations stopped, Bilal dragged Ali’s body to the back bedroom and wrestled him into the chest freezer.  Bilal then walked back through the house, locked the door behind him and departed in Ali’s van. 

In the back of the van there remained one large plastic trunk.  Inside were one dozen M72 Light Anti-tank Weapons, otherwise known as LAWs.  They were compact weapons, around two feet closed, and weighing only five pounds.  Their range was nearly 1000 meters.  In Bilal’s pocket were more GPS coordinates and a list of secondary targets.  With his primary objective completed, he could proceed with taking out those other targets.  He allowed himself a quick flush of pride.  The night would be glorious.

As Bilal drove into the night, the ice on his mortar shell had melted sufficiently that it was no longer able to resist the downward pull of gravity.  What ice remained slipped free and the shell dropped down the tube.  With a loud pop, the shell struck the firing pin, the primer ignited the propelling charge, and the missile arced toward the refinery.  Those working outside the refinery that night heard the noise and saw the arc of the shell coming toward them.  A few veterans even recognized the signature sound of a mortar round and ran for their lives.  It would have been impossible to run far enough, though.  At the end of the projectile’s path the detonating nose of the mortar shell struck a gasoline storage tank and exploded instantly.  What ensued was a massive series of explosions that would result in tremendous loss of human life as well as damage to the refinery that would render it inoperative for more than a year.