Sweetness in the Dark (12 page)

But now Paul stood in the blowback of those government interruptions in the market. He sure didn’t condone what had happened here, but he definitely understood the rage.

He even carried a set of playing cards that spoke volumes of his understanding of his ex-wife’s murder. Following the example of the Iraq War Criminal Playing Cards, someone had manufactured a set labeled, ‘American Treason Playing Cards’.

But instead of Saddam Hussein and his fellow minions being on each playing card, the image of the people responsible for America’s financial collapse had been printed. Individuals like Hank Paulson, Bush’s Treasury Secretary, and Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman, were just two of the fifty-two people highlighted. Paul especially liked Barney Frank, Congressional Finance Chairman, as the Queen of Hearts.

While these two bodies were not part of the fifty-two listed culprits, they were the result of angry Americans seeking revenge. And from the looks of the wall safe sitting open and empty in the bedroom, Paul surmised that the perpetrators had sought retribution in many forms from their investor.

Paul turned to leave and ran into a very distraught woman in the hall.

“Amanda, I told you to stay in the car. What are you doing up here?”

“Who is that person? What happened?” Amanda asked, as tears were running down her cheeks. “Is there someone else in there?”

“Don’t go in there. We need to get out of here right now,” Paul said as he led her down the back stairs. They went out the back door and walked around the outside of the house to avoid the front foyer.

Paul led Amanda to the car and then turned to look around at the other houses on the dead-end street. All of them had their front and garage doors open with assorted debris strewn over the front lawns.

“Please wait here, Amanda. I just want to check a couple of the other houses,” Paul said.

He quickly ran to some of the other houses and looked inside. He sprinted back to the car and said to his brother, “Let’s go, John. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“Do the other houses look like this one?” Amanda asked.

“Worse,” was all Paul said. He didn’t elaborate with details. Some of the other homes had children that had been victims to the class warfare so evident in this neighborhood. The Democrats had used class envy to stir the public into class warfare when it came to taxes. Now the results of that rhetoric came home to roost in the deaths of the wealthy.

“Worse. How could it be worse than what I saw?” Amanda asked. Her voice trembled in fear as she said it.

“Trust me, it’s worse. Don’t ask me to explain. You’ve already seen more than you should have,” Paul said.

“I’m afraid we’re going to see a lot of this,” John said. There was a tone of resignation and determination in him as he said it.

Eugene, Oregon

At the same time, three hundred miles to the west, events were playing out very differently from those in Boise. Eugene, Oregon was a mid-sized university town at the head of the Willamette Valley. Pioneers had crossed the country in covered wagons to settle its broad valley in the 1800s.

Productive farms and industrious communities had grown along the length of this fertile region. With a moderate climate and good soils, western Oregon became the center of population for the large state. Combined with timber from the vast swaths of towering Douglas Fir trees, wealth had gathered in the three principal cities of Portland, Salem and Eugene.

But things began to change in the 1980s. The wealth that had grown a robust economy had been attacked by liberal elements in the state. First tree cutting was reduced and then almost eliminated. Then ocean commercial fishing was curtailed. Soon ranching was deemed to be destructive to the environment by the big city voters who now controlled the state.

A wave of industry leaving the state for locations less restrictive in environmental and labor regulations didn’t phase the liberals. The joke among many was that their goal was to turn the entire State of Oregon into one large National Park.

High unemployment had plagued the state since the 2008 recession. Many simply enjoyed staying home on the generous benefits handed out by the State and Federal government. Unfortunately, no one offered a policy change to stimulate investment in industry to create jobs.

When ‘the Pulse’ hit, like everywhere, Oregon’s society stopped. Lacking adequate planning or preparation, the state soon succumbed to basic individual survival for the majority of its citizens.

Only in the far eastern and southern counties had any preparation for an emergency been made. There, the local county governments had taken steps to harden the local electrical grid.

But the liberal cities to the west had been busy social engineering. Only the expense on improved bike paths could be considered helpful now, as people soon repaired their old bicycles for transportation.

The first month had seen life change forever for most people in Eugene. The food supplies were quickly stolen and the gun stores pillaged. When that food ran out, the guns went to work.

But unlike Idaho and other parts of the Intermountain West, Eugene was now in the hands of individuals conditioned by years of government handouts. When the handouts stopped, the same crowd took to the streets to make sure the ‘rich’ people paid their dues to the ‘poor’.

Eugene had been the site of a large ‘Occupy Eugene’ movement. Made up of retired old hippies and radical ex-students from the university, the ‘Occupy’ crowd had demonstrated for months before ‘the Pulse’, against the ‘1%’ who they felt owed the other ’99%’.

Now that societal collapse had arrived, they took their ideology to heart and began a systematic looting of the ‘wealth’ of Eugene. The banks and large companies were the first to burn. Then the shuttered fast food restaurants were found guilty of ‘turning America fat’ and burnt to the ground.

Local police were nowhere to be found, as they stayed home to protect their families. Soon, individual neighborhoods became war zones, as the ‘Occupy’ crowd headed up into the South Hills to extract tribute from the ‘rich’. This led to the few conservative neighborhoods building barricades and setting up defensive zones for self-protection.

John Ewing’s wife, Mary, was in one such neighborhood. After her three children had abandoned her, she sank into despair. She thought of leaving, but by the time she had decided to follow them to Idaho, ‘the Pulse’ had removed that option. Running battles throughout the city kept people hunkered down trying to protect their homes.

In the second week of the mayhem, early one morning, there was a knock at her door. It was one of the neighborhood guards, armed with a rifle.
How could this all be happening?
she thought as she carefully opened the door. Standing beside the guard was her brother-in-law, Dwight Barnes.

“Mary, pack your bags. We need to get you out of here. Rumor is that your neighborhood is next on the list,” Dwight said.

“But we aren’t rich. Everyone in this neighborhood works for a living,” Mary said.

“Doesn’t matter. The radicals have burnt out all the neighborhoods in the hills. Now they’re heading here. They’re just looting and raping anyone they can get ahold of, and there’s too many of them for your neighborhood guards to fight off,” Dwight said.

Mary went into her bedroom and grabbed the backpack that John had made up for her long ago. It had the basics for life in one easy pack, except for the gun John had tried to place in the bag, which Mary had refused.

But she had kept the pack handy. She slung it onto her back and headed to the front door. She turned to lock it.

“Don’t bother.”

Mary’s eyes began to tear up as her brother-in-law led her across the lawn and headed down the street. It would take them most of the day to walk to Dwight’s farm in Pleasant Hill. He had a friend waiting with a boat on the other side of the Willamette River to ferry them to safety.

Local farmers had used some explosives to drop the Highway 58 bridge into the river. This action cut off access from Eugene into their quiet farm community. Once on the other side, Mary would be safe from the ‘Occupy’ people laying waste to Eugene.

By late afternoon they had reached the river. Eugene had been quiet as they made their way out of town. The radicals all seemed to be sleeping off their actions from the night before. Mary had passed whole streets of smoldering house foundations, evidence of the looting taking place.

“How can this be happening?” Mary asked. “Where are the police? Doesn’t anyone care about their neighbor anymore?”

“It’s survival time, Mary. People are getting hungry and desperate. Just be glad that we’ve been getting things ready out on the farm for years. It will be safe there. Our neighbors are all reliable,” Dwight said.

After crossing the river, they helped the man carry his boat up behind some brush for concealment. Then thanking him, Mary and Dwight headed east toward the farm. Another two hour hike would take them up Lost Creek Road and the safety of the farm. Mary’s sister and her two children would welcome them there.

As Dwight crested the top of the last hill, he saw what he feared most. Smoke from several locations in the distance climbed into the sky. He judged one fire was near his farm and his pace quickened. Mary had to jog to keep up.

As they moved quickly down the hill and into the valley, Dwight suddenly stopped. Mary almost ran into him as she stopped behind him. Both stood still and listened. A lack of motor vehicles that could run due to ‘the Pulse’ made the noise very noticeable.

It was the sound of numerous engines coming their way. Dwight grabbed Mary and ran off the road and into some brush. He pulled her down and waited.

The roar grew as the approaching machines came closer. Mary trembled in fear as she awaited their arrival. Soon, motorcycles could be seen through the thick brush as they roared up the road. One by one they flashed by the hidden hikers.

Each motorcycle had bags tied to them on the rear.
Pillage
, Mary thought.
The world is ending
. She closed her eyes to keep it all from her.

“Come on. We need to hurry,” Dwight said.

Mary opened her eyes wide with the realization that her sister and family were at risk. She ran to catch up with Dwight as they hit the road, this time with trepidation.

Rounding the last turn before the farm, it became evident that the bikers had been there. Dwight’s neighbor’s house burned wildly. Dwight ran to his mailbox and turned up the long gravel driveway. Trees blocked a direct view, but Mary saw the smoke rising over the trees. She ran as fast as she could behind Dwight.

As Mary came out of the trees she saw her brother-in-law on his knees holding a body. She stopped. The house was consumed in flames and three lifeless bodies littered the front yard.

She slowly walked up to Dwight. He held her sister. Beside the dead body of his wife, his two sons were dead, lying face down.

“Oh no,” Mary burst. “How could anyone do this?” She fell down and screamed into the ground. Dwight slowly cried beside her as he held his dead wife. He mumbled as he rocked back and forth. The night settled over the two as the fire slowly faded. The flickering light from the consumed house spilled over the scene. When the sun rose, nothing would ever be the same for the two living souls.

Bruneau, Idaho

“Now hit this switch. OK. That’s good. Go ahead and depress the button on the mic,” Grandpa Paul said as he instructed his great-grandson, Matt, on the use of his 1942 vintage US Army surplus shortwave radio set. They had been at it for about an hour and Matt was finally ready to reach out.

“W7QF6. This is Matt calling. Over.”

“
Right W7QF6. We read you 5 by 6. This is Noel here in New Zealand. Over
,” Noel answered the radio call on his great-grandfather’s British Army issue war surplus shortwave radio set.

“Noel. It’s great to meet you. My grandfather has told me all about your family. How is it there? Are you all safe? Over,” Matt said.

The connection between the Leffingwells and the Kendalls went all the way back to 1942. Great-grandfather Leffingwell had been a radio operator with the New Zealand Royal Air Force when the United States Marines went into Guadalcanal to fight the Japanese.

New Zealand recognized that these Americans were defending New Zealand and Australia from the advancing Japanese tide and units of the New Zealand Royal Air Force were offered in support. The Marines, short on everything in the Solomon Islands, took all offers of help. The fighters sent to Guadalcanal included their own ground support team. So Connor Leffingwell found himself sitting next to a Marine radio operator, Paul Kendall Sr., Paul’s grandfather.

The two became lifelong friends through the experience. Their radios had kept them in touch over all the years. Now, with Connor’s wind power keeping him on the air and Paul Sr.’s micro-hydro generator in the Bruneau River for power, they carried on their friendship.

Even Paul’s father, Vern, had spent two trips in the 1970s in New Zealand, hiking and bicycling. Vern had stayed at the Aorere farm and knew the area well. He had even hiked the Heaphy Track with Desmond’s father, Leslie. Now Matt and Noel were extending this family connection.

In his excitement Matt forgot to wait for an answer. “We’re safe here. At least so far. Things are bad to the west of us near the big cities. How about you? Over,” Matt said.

“
We’re right here. But things are bad on the North Island. Big cities, like you said. But I’m just glad to get out of Oz. Over
,” Noel replied.

The two continued the exchange until Matt’s grandfather gave him the sign that the batteries were getting low. They signed off, but not before promising to stay in touch each week.

Paul walked into the room. He and Amanda were back in Bruneau after their meeting with the governor and the nightmare at the banker’s house. He still hadn’t found a good time to tell his children that their mother was dead.