[2013]Freaking Mayans...

Freaking Mayans....

You wanna know the truth? I was laughing just as hard as anyone else was on that Friday back in December of 2012. In fact I was laughing even louder the next day, Saturday the twenty-second. Man oh man was I rubbing in the face of all of those doom and gloomers about their Niburu, their Mayan Doomsday, their fears of some sort of zombie apocalypse. I mean what sort of a fool believes in such nonsense? After decades of hearing it all hashed out, over and over again - ad naseaum, I finally had MY moment! It was finally time for the voice of reason to take a slight time out and be utterly and totally unreasonable in his gloating and general "I told you so-ery"!

What a great weekend that started out to be. Watching the whole batch of 'em... The new agers, the doomfiends, the religious zealots, the gulliable, and the easily led... tuck tail, turn, and run.

Sure. Some instantly - as if already prepared - posted excuses. Changes from the Gregorian to the Julian Calender, Earths solar orbit having changed since the beginning of the long count, experts not understanding lunar versus solar years.... the list could fill a page. And how I laughed at each and every lame excuse. How I reveled in the sheer and egoistic joy of finally being right. On websites such as the one I spent my time on, AboveTopSecret.com, being right is such an elusive prize. Esoteric subject matter and overly open minds dictated the environment and the terms of battle there. No matter how conclusive of a proof one offered, there was always someone who would sneak up and snake an out...

I bet your proof is faked. You know the NSA would spend billions of dollars to keep the truth secret. If we can use Photoshop to create images that experts have to analyze... imagine what they can do!".

Always an out. Never a clean win...

But with a date. A solid, set in stone ( literally ) date? This was a "nothing but net" swoosh! And oh how good it felt to be freaking right!

It was quite the party until Sunday morning came along.

That's when things began getting weird.

At first it was just annoying. My Internet connection started going woogy. Everything would just stop loading and I'd have to close and refresh my buns off just to get pages to load. It was like being back in the days of dial-up, with a noisy phone line or a family member who would constantly lift the receiver. New threads appeared about the subject. At first asking if it was a localized phenomenon. Then, once we all began to realize it was global - the threads started to speculate about what was happening.

Not many of them got posted, and I doubt many were even accessed or read. Not that we had time to care about such things because that was about the time the lights started to blink and phone service started getting spotty.

Then it all went dark.

That was seven and a half months ago.

As I write these words I am part of a small group of people who are all hold-up together in a cabin that backs against a cliff in the Blue Ridge mountains. I was one of those who had a "bug-out plan" - as many on the Internet did. Turns out, plans look great on paper - but don't seem to translate well in practice. My plan was to come to these mountains, in my Jeep, with my family and all of my guns... and an insane amount of prepackaged and prepped food. I had invested a small fortune to ensure that I would stay alive. I was a legit "Doomsday Prepper". Not that I thought the 2012's were right. I was more of a "Government crackdown / marshall law" nut. Still, I was as prepared as anyone in a city could have been. And for all that preparation it was only dumb luck that got me to this cabin.

My plan failed for the simple reason that I had not accounted for the sheer numbers of people I would encounter, upon my journey north - and that I failed to realize just how quicky civilized men become savages once the lights go out.

My prized Jeep, filled with food, water, and guns enough so that I could go across town and save my relatives? It made it exactly four and a half blocks before it was overturned by rioters.

Of the eight various guns I had accumulated and loaded, and the mountains of ammunition... I made it away from that mob with only one handgun and fourteen rounds remaining. That escape was at the expense of seventy-six rounds fired, and at least fifty injured or lost souls on my spiritual ledger.

After that? Instinct was really all I had. The rules were simple and not romantic at all:

1) Travel at night.
2) Sleep during the day - in places NOBODY would want to go... sewers. burned out cars, the edges of ravines... anywhere humans naturally would avoid.
3) Scavenge for food opportunistically. Eat everything, no matter how unpalatable it may be. Dog food, cat food, carcass. If it was protein, it was eaten.
4) Avoid people!
5) Kill anyone who approached. Preferably with a knife or blunt object. But with the pistol if necessary.

That is how I lived for two solid months, as I worked my way towards the safety of the mountains. The truth is that I only landed in this place because I'd been too liberal, on my travels, with rules three and five. A dead squirrel had given me a bad case of food poisoning and I was out of bullets when I saw the group of people approaching me, as I lay wretching. Too sick to run or fight. I collapsed. It was only luck that they weren't "zombies" - as I'd taken to calling the gone-feral city masses. These were good people. When I awoke, I awoke among a new family. New friends.

I had been so very lucky to collapse where I did.

These people, too, had been prepared - but as it happens, their "bug out" plan was to start out in the cabin, on the hill, near the running water... They prepared better and it paid off for them and for me.

There are five of us here. Micheal, Sarra, Kathleen, Vikki, and me, John - though my friends call me Heff. Five, we tell ourselves, is a predestined number. It is a number of power. There are five fingers in both a hand and a fist. That is our reality. We are a hand when we work together - and a fist when we need to be.

In the months since, our little group has worked hard to create a sustainable situation here. There are many towns in the mountains - and in the months since it all went dark, they are now largely abandoned. Cities without power are little more than tombs. Houses and apartments without heat? Freezers. Without air conditioning? Ovens. All lessons the world learned with a vengeance late this past December. So we've been picking clean one town at a time, trying to hoarde as much of the usuable materials as we could find.

Society in meltdown is a very telling thing to have witnessed. Scavenging has taught us this. Pharmacies still contained many life saving medications, but were stripped clean of narcotics and all forms of cough syrup. Even the condoms, which would have come in handy for reasons other than intended? Totally looted. Retail chains picked clean of computers, smart phones and televisions, but with racks of jackets untouched. Only the gun shops and sporting good stores seemed properly and rationally stripped bare. I guess killing is a universal language that even the incipid and short sighted can speak well enough.

Aside from stores, there were so many things just laying about for the taking. Different sizes and shapes of sheep metal everyone one looked... from road signs and such. Hand and woodworking tools - never can we have enough of those. We wear them out quite quickly trying to replicate the modern world here... the little comforts.

In summer we also began building a store of firewood. It is hard to explain, but once one watches it all fall apart, the need to overachieve suddenly becomes very important. By July I'd say that we had enough firewood to last us four winters. And yet we kept chopping. We kept hunting. We kept foraging. And we kept going on our scavenging missions.

It was those scavenging missions that provided us with the best stuff, the most excitement, the most hope, and, ultimately, our demise.

You see we apparently are not the only group of survivors banded together in this region. On our last scavenging mission, to a gorgeous little town called Sylva, North Carolina, about an hour north of here, we must have gotten sloppy. We were apparently followed back by somebody. And now there is the Devil to pay.

According to the voice on the loudspeaker we have been surrounded by the "New Confederation of American Patriots" and are being ordered, in the name of "Acting President Bodeen" to "send out our women and lay down our arms.

Not a chance. Not a bloody chance in Hell.

As the sun was setting we tried to count how many of them are out there... Our best estimate is about thirty. All that we could see in detail were armed with large caliber rifles. We, too, have guns. But nowhere near as many. Besides... five on thirty? Well just ask George Armstrong Custer how those numbers work out. Still... we will not submit. We will not "turn over our women". Even if it means that we end our own lives, or choose to go out in the proverbial blaze of glory. We're not going out like that.

Good God those freaking Mayans.

I've jotted as much down as time will allot - and it is my wish, my belief, that one day somebody will come along and read these pencil marks, in this tattered ring binder and know... know that Micheal, Sarra, Kathleen, Vikki, and me, Heff.... The clan of the Hand - left this world curled into a proud and unfearing fist of defiance...

God bless you, God save us, and God resurrect the United States of America.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______

NATIONAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ALERT:

December, 21, 2012
11:11 PM - Greenwich Mean Time

A very suspicious string of code has been detected emanating from a North Korean server. Potential for EXTREME DANGER TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE!!!

Malicious code attacks all critical systems. No countermeasure adequate. Breakdown of critical systems imminent.

Activate CyberCommand defense protocols TRACTOR BLADE and GORDIAN KNOT immediately.
Threat level: RED

Repeat

THREAT LEVEL RED

Fusion center has identified following message included in suspicious code...

Goodbye cruel world,
I can't believe all of those folks on ATS laughed at me. I tried to warn them. I spent years trying to warn them...Now they'll pay.

[email protected]

(By Heff)

Loved it, one of the directions my mind works in a post apocalyptic world.

S@F

This is good stuff man, truly reaches out and grabs you, I like your philosphy of 5, it makes sense and makes me think its time to add a fifth to my group. Im an amatuer writer, mostly sword and sorcery, but stuff like this is compelling, keep it up, i hope to put some of my short stories up here soon.

reply to post by Hefficide


You should repost this in the new SSC (2013) Good stuff I will S@F your entry if you decide to.

This was an incredible read, Heff! You have an amazing talent with words.

If you aren't already a professional writer...you should be.

S&F

I was bored with the whole forum concept but stories like this make me read again ah hell I even post my own story soon

reply to post by Hefficide




You are VERY talented!! Great read, thank you!

Brilliant work once again Hef. Just started reading a few of this months stories and I'm beginning to get the feeling that I'm not the only who's spent many hours day dreaming of what I'd do in a post-apocalyptic world...

Fantastic writing Heff! I rarely venture into the stories section, but if any more are as good as this I might need to have a proper look around!