Desperate Times 2 Gun Control Read online

  Desperate Times Two

  By

  Nicholas Antinozzi

  Published By: Nicholas Antinozzi

  Copyright © 2011 by Nicholas Antinozzi

  Cover Design by Steve Peterson

  Edited by Sue McInnis MS

  AMAZON EDITION

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase another copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and you did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Forward

  The last of the free Americans lived on canned food, bottled water, and fear. They lived on the edge, waiting to be killed or captured by the very soldiers sworn to protect them. Desperate to survive, they lived as criminals because their own government had made it illegal for them to exist as free men and women. Centuries of precious knowledge, wasted.

  The reservations had simply been renamed and were now called relocation camps.

  Those who remained lived on their wits and whatever foresight they may have had. Despite all of these hardships, most agreed it was the dearth of outside information that bothered them the most. Gone were the days of cell phones and internet connections, television and radio, newspapers and mailboxes. Information had become a privilege, tightly controlled by those who remained in power.

  They lived as castaways with only blind faith and a sliver of hope that they would ever make it back to their former lives.

  Chapter 1

  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” – The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

  The economic cataclysm had shattered their fragile system in mere hours. Most of the population had been caught unprepared and had subsequently been herded like cattle into relocation camps. Jimmy Logan had been lucky, for he had friends who had seen this coming and had wisely planned ahead. He followed them north, and they left a trail of tears behind them. Death seemed to be waiting behind every corner as desperate souls, trying to evade capture by the National Guard, fought to save themselves and their families from starvation. Jimmy had buried more friends than he cared to remember.

  The nine who remained had become as close as any family. Jimmy certainly thought so, but he had been orphaned during his senior year of high school. Theirs was a diverse group, and like many families, they had their fair share of differences.

  Ken and Patty Dahlgren, the host couple, were in their early sixties and were childless. Before the crash the Dahlgrens had owned a small fabricating shop that had fallen on hard times. The Dahlgrens had invited many of their employees and neighbors to their lake home in Ely, Minnesota. They had seen the looming crisis and had prepared for its arrival. Ken made the hard choices, while Patty acted as his physical conscience. Ken stood six feet four and still possessed the build of an athlete. He wore his silver hair clipped short, and his square jaw demanded respect. Patty ran the house and was a mother to all. She could usually be found smiling or offering encouraging words. They had spent their lives working side by side and were inseparable.

  Ken immediately put the group to work, and they painstakingly constructed a log wall around the perimeter of the yard. This gave the lake home the appearance of an old-fashioned military fort. That wall had saved their lives when they were attacked by their party-animal neighbors. Many had died.

  Julie Hartman, Jimmy’s girl, was in her early thirties and had tagged along to Ely with a friend. She saw the world as being black and white with very few exceptions. Julie had the girl-next-door good looks, and she prided herself on her fitness. She had learned to use a gun and had killed when she had to. Before Black Friday she had been engaged to a man who had also foreseen the crisis. He had unceremoniously dumped her and had quickly moved away. In Julie’s mind, Jimmy still had a lot to prove to her. She wasn’t about to give her heart away to be broken. The two had been high school sweethearts, but Jimmy had drifted away after the car accident that had claimed his family.

  Bill Huggins was Jimmy’s former neighbor in the manufactured home community just outside of Crown. Bill’s ex-wife had dropped Cindy, their seventeen year old daughter, on his doorstep at the first sign of trouble. Jimmy knew Bill was incapable of providing for his daughter, and he had invited both along to join him on the trek north—without permission. That decision had almost cost Jimmy his place with the group. Bill was a very gifted mechanic, but hadn’t worked in years because of a phantom back injury. Overweight and out of shape, Bill spent his hours seeking food while avoiding work. Conversations with Bill seemed to revolve around his physical condition and complaints about whatever was on his mind at that particular time. People avoided Bill, who had a knack for putting his worst foot forward.

  Bill had redeemed himself by saving them all from a certain death.

  Cindy, lost in the middle of two self-centered parents, had turned to Goth. She had shown up on the Dahlgrens’ doorstep wearing black lipstick, silver chains, and black clothing. Over the course of their stay, Cindy had grown out of her Gothic stage and had settled in with the rest of the group. Inspired by Rita, Patty’s loner friend, Cindy had come out of her shell and had finally been accepted as an adult.

  Dr. Ted Benson, who insisted everyone call him Doc, had known the Dahlgrens for decades. Doc was often mistaken for a logger. He preferred flannel and his frazzled, salt and pepper beard didn’t fit his profession. He was also nearly seven feet tall, broad in the shoulders, with hands large enough to palm beach balls. Doc was liberal in his politics and was outspoken when it came to his beliefs. He had arrived after being rescued from his hospital by Jimmy and his friend, Jon. Jon had been wounded in a later rescue attempt and had died at Doc’s hands.

  Burt Sharpen, a retired Minneapolis homicide detective, had arrived at the Dahlgren compound with a group of Christian Fundamentalists. Lost, he had followed them because he had no other options. He had been stranded after renegade bikers had killed his friend and had disabled their vehicle. The only African American of their group, Burt, carried himself with a cop’s swagger and confidence. People were drawn to him because of his quick wit and dark sense of humor. He was also a big man, but whereas Doc was tall, Burt was closer to average height and built like a cement block.

  Jimmy had worked for Ken and had been instrumental in their survival. He was a former boxer, clean cut, and addicted to his cigarettes. Alone in the world, he had been taken under the Dahlgrens’ wing and had been working his way up the ladder when the crisis struck. He had been engaged to Paula Peterson, the spoiled daughter of wealthy parents in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Paula had abandoned Jimmy on Black Friday, but she and her family had somehow managed to find Jimmy when their fortune had suddenly disappeared. Paula’s parents had been killed, and she now resided in a relocation camp. Jimmy, unaware Paula was trying to find him, had fallen in love with Julie in the interim. Paula’s sudden arrival on the scene had caused many problems, and some of them still lingered.

  They had nearly been fooled into thinking the crisis had passed. A police cruiser had arrived, and two uniformed men had told them all just that. There had been a mass exodus to Ely, where once again the National Guard had set a trap to capture the unwitting. Jimmy and the others had only escaped by the barest of margins.

  During the days and weeks that followed their re
turn to Ken’s lake house, Jimmy could see something in his friends he had failed to notice in the economy—they were slipping into a Great Depression of their own. The big house became as quiet as a mausoleum as everyone became lost in their own thoughts. They had been promised the worst was behind them and that they could return to their homes. They had been promised law and order had been restored, which had been nothing but calculated lies. They had fallen for the lies, and the bitter truth had hit them hard. The National Guard was still rounding up people like stray cattle, penning them up in relocation camps and shooting those who resisted. To Jimmy, it seemed everyone had resigned themselves into thinking they would be the next to go. He certainly felt that way.

  The daily grind had ground to a halt. Ken had suddenly quit giving orders and spent his days tinkering on small projects. The other men shuffled around the property without purpose, and each day became as the one before. The meals were all variations of the same canned theme; conversations became short and strained. Smiles, once vibrant and plentiful, had become increasingly rare as the days turned to weeks.

  At first Jimmy had fought against the current of apathy sweeping their camp. He had seen it coming, and he had even warned the others against it. Like all forms of apathy, it was highly contagious and impossible to shake. After a short but spirited battle, Jimmy gave up and floated downstream into his own pool of depression. Bill and Rita drifted apart while Ken and Patty clung to each other for support. Doc and Burt distanced themselves from everyone, including each other, and rode their own waves of despair. Julie could usually be found with her nose buried in one of Patty’s collection of paperback novels. Jimmy began to feel as if she had traded him in for a fantasy world of words. He could wander off for hours, and it was rare for her to even comment on it.

  They had become prisoners in their own home. Time seemed to stand still as one summer day slowly elapsed into the next. Some days it rained, while others it did not. That was what they talked about at the breakfast table. Someone was sure to mention the temperature while they had their lunch. Dinner had become a time to speculate on tomorrow’s weather.

  Jimmy began taking long walks outside their compound to stay in shape and to see if anyone else was out there. Nearly three weeks would pass before he practically bumped into the stranger. There had been no gun-pulling or warnings, and the two men walked up to each other like old friends. Jimmy was starved for information from the outside world, and the man was able to satisfy some of his hunger.

  He introduced himself as Tony Clerk, and he had carried the mail in his previous life. He was a large man, roughly Jimmy’s age, with cherub cheeks and long black hair that hung to his shoulders. He had an easygoing manner which he explained away as having nothing left to lose. Tony wore a backpack and a shotgun slung over one shoulder, carrying a scoped rifle in a pair of meaty hands. A revolver hung at his hip. Jimmy took the weapons in stride as times had changed. Jimmy carried one of the M-16s and a small backpack containing a sandwich, a bottle of water, and two extra clips of ammo.

  The two men sat down on the side of the road under the shade of a tall pine. A midafternoon breeze had picked up, but it was warm and sunny. Squirrels chirped and birds called from inside the woods as if everything was right in the world. Jimmy traded his sandwich for some beef jerky which he ate slowly. Tony Clerk did the same with Jimmy’s sandwich.

  “So,” Jimmy asked, lighting up a cigarette. “Where are you headed?”

  Tony smiled before answering. “I’m going to a place called Bailey’s Lodge,” he said, unable to contain the excitement in his voice. “Have you ever heard of it?”

  Jimmy nodded. The Lodge had been around forever, and although he had never been there himself, he had heard quite a bit about it. Bailey’s had a reputation of being a first-class operation that catered to the well-to-do who were looking for wilderness with amenities.

  “I heard they have a pretty good thing going on up there,” Tony continued. “They don’t turn you away, and they don’t ask any questions. Supposedly there are a few hundred people living there, and the owner has enough chow to feed thousands. At least that’s what I heard. You don’t know what to believe these days. The old guy who told me sure seemed like he was telling the truth, said he was going to go find his kids and bring them back there.”

  “Really?” asked Jimmy, somewhat shocked that there was another camp within ten miles of his own. “What else did he say?”

  “He said that it’s share and share alike. He said everyone was treated as an equal. I know it sounds like he was full of crap and too good to be true, but you had to meet this guy. He didn’t look like a liar and he really had no reason to. I met him on the road. It was getting late and we made camp. This was over a week ago, just north of Duluth.”

  Jimmy had stretched out in the tall grass, smoking with his hands on his chest, looking up at the blue sky and slowly absorbing what Tony was telling him. This would be big news in his camp. He listened as Tony relayed what the old, nameless man had told him about how things were run at Bailey’s. What struck him most was when Tony went on to say Bailey’s existed with some sort of official permission. The old man didn’t say how, but he had insisted they were safe from the Guard there.

  Jimmy would smoke three cigarettes during their visit at the side of the deserted highway. He gave his new friend the abbreviated version of their experiences since leaving their homes at the beginning of the crisis. Tony listened, said all the right things, and asked all of the right questions, but he never said a word about what he’d gone through himself or how he’d survived these past months. Jimmy thought about that, waiting for the information to be offered, curious about why it wasn’t. The longer he thought about it, the more he decided it was better to leave it alone. Tony seemed like a good man, and he certainly had his own reasons for not sharing.

  Jimmy invited Tony to eat dinner and spend the night with them. He wasn’t sure how much Ken would like it, but he found he really didn’t care. Tony gratefully accepted Jimmy’s offer, and the two men hiked the few short miles back to Ken’s. Tony went on to talk about some other things that the old man had told him about Bailey’s. He said the camp was run by an old hippie and that the people acted as if it were 1969. He also said with a wide grin that there were supposed to be ten times as many women there as men. “I’m a lonely man,” Tony had said. “And I like those odds.”

  Jimmy nodded, thinking Tony had just spoiled his own chances of ever going to Bailey’s. Julie would never say it, but she would hate that type of competition; Jimmy was sure of it. She had always had a jealous streak; this had been an issue during their past relationship, and Jimmy doubted it was something people could change about themselves.

  The sun was still high in the sky when they arrived at Ken’s at just after four in the afternoon. Whitecaps rolled across Ken’s lake, and the wind whistled in the trees. Tony seemed impressed by their wall as he looked at it with an appreciating eye.

  “Open up!” hollered Jimmy. “I’ve brought a friend home for dinner!”

  Tony smiled at Jimmy as they waited for the gate to be opened. “You guys aren’t cannibals, are you?” he asked.

  “Nah,” Jimmy said. “Still, you might not want to get too close to Bill while he’s eating. You might lose a finger.”

  Tony nodded. He had heard quite a bit about Bill Huggins during the last few hours. Jimmy wondered if he’d given him an adequate amount of warning.

  Ken embarrassed Jimmy by grilling Tony for twenty minutes before allowing him inside the gate. Burt joined him, but he simply stood in front of Tony like a human polygraph. It wasn’t until Burt gave Ken the nod that Tony was allowed inside the compound.

  They were met on the other side of the gate by the rest of their number. They were led to the picnic table in the back yard. Tony, red-faced and flustered by the attention, retold the others much of what he had told Jimmy as they sipped powdered lemonade from plastic glasses. Ken listened for only a short while but disappe
ared back inside the house. Jimmy suspected why, but he didn’t follow him inside. Ken was going to have to get used to the fact that if what Tony was saying were true, they would likely lose some of their number. Life here had grown stale, and their wall would offer no protection from the National Guard.

  They suddenly had an option.

  Patty and Rita made a cake they devoured after yet another dinner of beef stew. Tony seemed to soak up the attention. For that one night everyone came out of their shells and things returned to normal. Bill boasted to Tony about how he had saved the day. Rita sat next to Bill, and once again she seemed to hang on his every word. Ken and Patty cheerfully bickered over small details about what had made them decide to prepare for such a calamity. Doc asked Tony if Bailey’s had a clinic, while Cindy openly dreamed of some type of school and kids her own age. Julie sat next to Jimmy, clutching his hand with unabashed excitement. Jimmy waited for Tony to say something about how the women outnumbered the men, but he never did.

  Tony left the following morning after breakfast with a big smile and a wave.

  Chapter 2