Post by ecocks on Mar 20, 2014 11:52:20 GMT -6
Iryna huddled on the floor of the pantry.
She whispered softly, “Bear, we must be quiet now, they’re back again.”
Outside there was the noise of several people moving around in the house. The refrigerator door opened, someone cursed that there was no food and slammed the door closed. Across the kitchen someone was going through the cupboards...again.
The footsteps moved from the refrigerator to the door of her room. The handle moved very slightly to test that the lock was engaged, then rattled violently and there was a loud thud against the door.
More curses. Someone had injured their shoulder. Voices were discussing the strength of the door and the frame it was set into.
Her Edward had re-built this room himself after they had bought the house.
He had told her that with his work he might be away if something happened and if she ever had to hide then the over-sized pantry would be the best place.
First, he had rebuilt the interior walls, replacing the dry wall with cinder blocks, poured cement and corrugated plate steel in the bottom four feet of the wall. The room was already the size of a small bedroom and he had enlarged it still more by taking space from the walk-in closet on the other side of the common wall.
The second part was installing a case-hardened steel plate as a door with the kitchen side showing a wood veneer. A locking door handle and keyed deadbolt left the impression that the door was not locked from the inside but from external keys. In reality, the door unlocked with a button on her keychain and or manually from the inside with a locking system similar to that used on ship hatches and small bank vaults. Engaging the inside locks disengaged the key fob.
Still, even the best lock and door can be defeated by a determined individual and enough applied force. There was a trapdoor exit into the crawlspace and a large metal cabinet locked to the floor which gave access into a between-the-walls dead space with still another trap door to the crawlspace as a last resort. Next to last resort actually, she still had a 20 gauge shotgun and her pistol.
She had personally selected her pistol after she had declared that she wanted one just like Edward’s.
He had told her that his was no longer manufactured but a newer model still had interchangeable magazines. She had practiced twice a month for two years now and even joined a group of women shooters who had a league for scoring their range events.
Other than a couple who resented that a foreign woman was beating them, she had enjoyed the evening outings at the range followed by tea and a small treat at a nearby pro-gun coffeehouse which had a great apple strudel.
After taking two weekend-long tactical classes locally, the two of them had taken a trip to a sprawling range complex in Arizona for still more training. Edward had told her to treat it like a game and afterward they would go to the Grand Canyon for a long weekend before returning home.
It had been intense, but fun. The Grand Canyon had been interesting too.
The pantry was very well-stocked. She had food, water and supplies to last at least four months, maybe more. Two sleeping bags were kept on a shelf and she had carried her pillow and much of her clothing to the room before locking it up. A chemical toilet was in the dead space along with a 30 gallon container of the chemical. Edward had tapped the house water supply from a second water heater upstairs and she kept several five gallon canisters filled in the second room. She took a careful bath very other day with wet wipes and a half-gallon of water.
When the troubles had started, Edward had been gone for three weeks of a planned three-month expedition to Russia. His company had sent him and a crew of specialists to a newly-developed oilfield off Sakhalin Island to determine the next three deep-water drilling site locations for their clients’ rigs.
They had not suffered all that much in the ongoing recession/recovery/depression or whatever this period was, due to Edward’s work being international in nature. As more and more of the country’s industries had been put out of business by the growing depression and rapidly escalating protests he had simply sought out more contracts with foreign firms eager to obtain his expertise in petroleum drilling.
The US government continued to print more and more money to pay for entitlements, international bills, provide friends and foes with foreign aid and (ironically for Edward) energy purchases, this resulted in sky-rocketing inflation rates rivaling Argentina and post-war Europe.
The economy had grown so bad that McDonalds had been forced to resort to 80% soy patties served open-faced and a paltry 12 fries to keep a meal priced at under $10. This was still meeting the new calorie consumption limits on their menu. Since Coke had hit $5 for a 300ml bottle, that meal came with a paper cup to get water from a tap. The soft drinks had been moved back behind the counter again. Despite these efforts to cope with the economic realities, over 30% of their domestic franchises had folded or shut down pending a recovery.
Walmart had closed 40% of their stores (mostly in the larger cities) and their distribution centers now operated large parking lot markets where people would camp for days to buy a case or two of beans or ramen noodles. Over 470,000 workers had been left unemployed as a result. Walmart had merged with Academi (formerly Blackwater PMC) to provide security for their remaining facilities and truck convoys moving in caravans from rail-heads and ports. Despite all this they remained the largest retailer in the United States.
Police, fire and emergency responders had been cut 50% or more in most cities. After New York, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco went bankrupt they had been forced to transfer their few remaining first-responders to DHS echelons which now handled municipal law enforcement, fire and emergency response in those metropolitan areas. Large sections of cities, even a few rural areas, had fallen dark as anarchy and rioting made it unsafe to maintain or even operate the utility grids.
The country had erupted in widespread protests which had immediately been declared terrorist activities and labeled as seditious and subversive. She had received two phone calls from Edward before international phone service was restricted by requiring advanced appointments at selected Post Office locations. In the last call he had reminded her to follow their plan and told her he would be coming home as quickly as he could arrange a quick trip back.
That had been eighteen days ago.
The mobs, more accurately described as massed groups of looters, had gotten to their Seattle subdivision five days earlier. The first group had swept over the houses like locusts with brute force home invasions.
One of Edward’s modifications had been a new ventilation pipe run to the roof with a battery-driven fan for air circulation. With the fan turned off, she could hear the screams of her neighbors being dragged out of their homes. After the second hour she had capped the pipe to block out the sounds.
Groups, the same people or different ones, she had no way of knowing, had been in the house at least five times since then.
At least three people, she thought they were all men this time, were outside the door discussing what might be inside. Reaching over to a row of buttons on the wall she depressed #3.
Out in the back yard a gun fired off two quick rounds.
The talking instantly stopped and there was the sound of scrambling feet heading for the front door.
Edward had rigged a remotely-controlled digital recorder and amped speaker in a tree. Other buttons on the panel rang the doorbell or made noises in the garage, upstairs and the first floor master suite.
After another hour of quiet she lit the small sterno and boiled a cupful of water for her favorite survival meal, a shrimp ramen packet. Then she read for a while from the small lamp Edward had rigged to run and charge from a discreet roof solar panel. Before bed she treated herself to a chocolate chip cookie. Eating chocolate chip cookies made her think of her husband and she held the stuffed bear he had given her on their first Valentine’s Day together more tightly in her arms as she lay down to sleep.
She had been a member of the interpreting staff for the Field Operations Group when they had met.
He was medium height, brown-haired and blue-eyed, accustomed to field work and harsh conditions, an American petroleum engineer with a small, high-tech company known for their analytical expertise in determining drill-site locations in developing fields. She had been attracted by his smile and humor and had fallen in love with his tender, yet no-nonsense, approach to life.
Everything was a problem, every problem had a solution, and he engineered solutions.
They had married while bringing in two exploratory wells off remote Sakhalin Island and returned to America where he had been promoted to lead a field team of geologists and petroleum engineering specialists like himself. She had fallen in love with this beautiful, green-painted home among the trees as soon as she had seen it. This had been their dream house for their future together.
She whispered, “You and me Bear, we will wait for our Edward. He will come for us.”
She woke and checked the clock they had picked to leave in the pantry. A large, blue-lit face read 5:07 and the date. She had slept for seven hours. Without the 24 hour setting she would not have known if it was morning or afternoon since there were no windows in the room.
She did 20 sit-ups and 20 pushups before preparing a small cup of her favorite green tea with ginger and a bowl of oatmeal with a spoonful of canola oil. A little cinnamon was sprinkled on top for additional flavor. Later in the day she would jog in place for an hour while listening to her music and work out with the small hand-weights.
The days passed.
In the early morning of Day 26, another group of people came to the house.
“Hello!!! Can somebody please come help me? Hello?!?”
It was a young woman’s voice.
This was repeated a half-dozen times in the next five minutes with a variation pleading being sick and injured.
Finally, “S---, nobody’s in here.”
She could hear people moving around the house as they slammed doors, yelled at each other and became more and more frustrated. Eventually they discovered the locked pantry door.
From the conversations she could occasionally pick up the words “food”, “jewelry”, “ammunition” and “guns”.
She could hear them working at the door. With the flanged jamb in place when the locks were engaged they couldn’t decide exactly how to do whatever they were trying.
They took something heavy (the dining room table maybe?) and tried to use it as a battering ram to no avail.
She picked up her keychain and pushed the button on her car’s security alarm. The alarm sounded and alternated with the blaring horn for 15 seconds.
Again there was a mad scramble out of the house. This time though they were back within an hour.
“They’ll try to break the door in several times and then either quit or look for some other way to break it down. I’d bet most will quit, but someone might find explosives or some sort of machinery to break through.”
“Screw this! I’m going to go see Luis, he might have something that will get it open.”
She went into the second room and replaced her earplugs, then picked up the small backpack with water, ammunition and compressed food packs plus a few more basic items.
She waited nearly two hours before they returned.
They came in with no attempt at being quiet this time.
On the other side of the door they fumbled around, discussing wires and where to position “this stuff”.
She listened for a moment before deciding no one was waiting under the house so she opened the large trapdoor in the pantry room and then retreated into the hidden room. She quickly opened it and dropped the backpack down into the darkness, then climbed down into the crawlspace behind the lower reinforced wall below. She closed the hatchway and slipped the latch to the locked position.
A few minutes later there was a sharp explosion up above. She quickly opened the trapdoor and climbed up to look out into her pantry room through the small peephole in the cabinet. Through the smoke she could see the partially-opened door panel, now sprung and sporting an 8 inch hole where the lock assembly had been.
A woman’s voice was cursing out in the kitchen. She apparently was stunned and deafened by the blast and was talking loudly in the manner of those who are hard of hearing.
A man’s voice told her to shut the f--- up and help him open the d----- door.
A face appeared, looking inside and two voices could be clearly heard.
“It’s full of food but I don’t see anybody in there. Hot DAMN we are going to eat well tonight!”
The face disappeared and two sets of hands grabbed the doorway and began straining to pull the door open wide enough to enter.
She looked at Bear who silently watched her, “Now Bear, we must to fight.”
She quickly opened one of the cabinet doors and pointed the shotgun through the opening.
As the door panel gave way and finally bent open, she saw the two figures step into the room with beaming smiles on their faces.
She fired twice in quick succession, knocking the nearest, the woman, completely off her feet and into the man. As he fought to get his balance he raised a pistol of some sort in her direction and she fired three more times catching him in the side and in the upper left leg with two of the blasts. The hit to the leg spun him around and he fell back through the doorway out into the kitchen. Blood was everywhere and pooling out from under his side as he began twitching.
“Oh please help me…please God…..don’t let me die like this…..ple...”
She stepped out of the cabinet.
“Maybe you should thought about your God before decide steal others things.”
She fired again.
Sometimes her English suffered a bit when she was agitated.
Day 27 was drawing to a close.
The eight men had been sitting for over seven hours watching the neighborhood for signs of movement.
As the sun went down one leaned over to the man intently watching a large green house through a set of small binoculars.
“Anyting?” he whispered.
“Nothing. No movement, no light. Just…nothing.”
“We do this soon as dark. No lights will be dark most faster.”
An hour and a half later, they moved towards the house on the corner.
Glass softly crunched under an otherwise stealthy foot. There was someone coming into the kitchen.
She touched the hammer to be sure she had cocked her pistol after putting in a fresh magazine.
Edward had told her, “Whenever you have a safe moment, change to a fresh magazine.”
There was a soft knocking on the wall.
“Irychka, are you in there honey?”
Was it Edward or some sort of trick?
“Irychka?”
She heard some low conversation. If it was Edward who would he be talking to?
“No, I KNOW how to say it! I’ve always called her that, mispronounced it from the beginning.”
Louder slaps on the metal cabinet.
More insistently now, “IRYCHKA! ANSWER ME!”
She heard a voice, maybe it was Edward’s. “She should be in there but maybe she’s hurt or exhausted. She still has her handgun, so we have to be careful opening the door.”
She had left the shotgun, unloaded, on the floor where someone would have their back to the cabinet if they went to pick it up.
But how would anyone out there know that she still had a handgun?
“Bear, is it Edward?”
“Shh! Hear that? Irychka? Do you hear me honey?”
There was the click of the cabinet floor lock being removed.
“Oh Bear, they are coming again.”
The sound of the cabinet door opening seemed very loud to her.
She raised the CZ towards the noise…
Outside she heard a voice asking for help pulling the cabinet doors open. Was it familiar?
“Bear, I can’t tell if it’s our Edward. What we will do?”
She whispered softly, “Bear, we must be quiet now, they’re back again.”
Outside there was the noise of several people moving around in the house. The refrigerator door opened, someone cursed that there was no food and slammed the door closed. Across the kitchen someone was going through the cupboards...again.
The footsteps moved from the refrigerator to the door of her room. The handle moved very slightly to test that the lock was engaged, then rattled violently and there was a loud thud against the door.
More curses. Someone had injured their shoulder. Voices were discussing the strength of the door and the frame it was set into.
Her Edward had re-built this room himself after they had bought the house.
He had told her that with his work he might be away if something happened and if she ever had to hide then the over-sized pantry would be the best place.
First, he had rebuilt the interior walls, replacing the dry wall with cinder blocks, poured cement and corrugated plate steel in the bottom four feet of the wall. The room was already the size of a small bedroom and he had enlarged it still more by taking space from the walk-in closet on the other side of the common wall.
The second part was installing a case-hardened steel plate as a door with the kitchen side showing a wood veneer. A locking door handle and keyed deadbolt left the impression that the door was not locked from the inside but from external keys. In reality, the door unlocked with a button on her keychain and or manually from the inside with a locking system similar to that used on ship hatches and small bank vaults. Engaging the inside locks disengaged the key fob.
Still, even the best lock and door can be defeated by a determined individual and enough applied force. There was a trapdoor exit into the crawlspace and a large metal cabinet locked to the floor which gave access into a between-the-walls dead space with still another trap door to the crawlspace as a last resort. Next to last resort actually, she still had a 20 gauge shotgun and her pistol.
She had personally selected her pistol after she had declared that she wanted one just like Edward’s.
He had told her that his was no longer manufactured but a newer model still had interchangeable magazines. She had practiced twice a month for two years now and even joined a group of women shooters who had a league for scoring their range events.
Other than a couple who resented that a foreign woman was beating them, she had enjoyed the evening outings at the range followed by tea and a small treat at a nearby pro-gun coffeehouse which had a great apple strudel.
After taking two weekend-long tactical classes locally, the two of them had taken a trip to a sprawling range complex in Arizona for still more training. Edward had told her to treat it like a game and afterward they would go to the Grand Canyon for a long weekend before returning home.
It had been intense, but fun. The Grand Canyon had been interesting too.
The pantry was very well-stocked. She had food, water and supplies to last at least four months, maybe more. Two sleeping bags were kept on a shelf and she had carried her pillow and much of her clothing to the room before locking it up. A chemical toilet was in the dead space along with a 30 gallon container of the chemical. Edward had tapped the house water supply from a second water heater upstairs and she kept several five gallon canisters filled in the second room. She took a careful bath very other day with wet wipes and a half-gallon of water.
When the troubles had started, Edward had been gone for three weeks of a planned three-month expedition to Russia. His company had sent him and a crew of specialists to a newly-developed oilfield off Sakhalin Island to determine the next three deep-water drilling site locations for their clients’ rigs.
They had not suffered all that much in the ongoing recession/recovery/depression or whatever this period was, due to Edward’s work being international in nature. As more and more of the country’s industries had been put out of business by the growing depression and rapidly escalating protests he had simply sought out more contracts with foreign firms eager to obtain his expertise in petroleum drilling.
The US government continued to print more and more money to pay for entitlements, international bills, provide friends and foes with foreign aid and (ironically for Edward) energy purchases, this resulted in sky-rocketing inflation rates rivaling Argentina and post-war Europe.
The economy had grown so bad that McDonalds had been forced to resort to 80% soy patties served open-faced and a paltry 12 fries to keep a meal priced at under $10. This was still meeting the new calorie consumption limits on their menu. Since Coke had hit $5 for a 300ml bottle, that meal came with a paper cup to get water from a tap. The soft drinks had been moved back behind the counter again. Despite these efforts to cope with the economic realities, over 30% of their domestic franchises had folded or shut down pending a recovery.
Walmart had closed 40% of their stores (mostly in the larger cities) and their distribution centers now operated large parking lot markets where people would camp for days to buy a case or two of beans or ramen noodles. Over 470,000 workers had been left unemployed as a result. Walmart had merged with Academi (formerly Blackwater PMC) to provide security for their remaining facilities and truck convoys moving in caravans from rail-heads and ports. Despite all this they remained the largest retailer in the United States.
Police, fire and emergency responders had been cut 50% or more in most cities. After New York, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco went bankrupt they had been forced to transfer their few remaining first-responders to DHS echelons which now handled municipal law enforcement, fire and emergency response in those metropolitan areas. Large sections of cities, even a few rural areas, had fallen dark as anarchy and rioting made it unsafe to maintain or even operate the utility grids.
The country had erupted in widespread protests which had immediately been declared terrorist activities and labeled as seditious and subversive. She had received two phone calls from Edward before international phone service was restricted by requiring advanced appointments at selected Post Office locations. In the last call he had reminded her to follow their plan and told her he would be coming home as quickly as he could arrange a quick trip back.
That had been eighteen days ago.
The mobs, more accurately described as massed groups of looters, had gotten to their Seattle subdivision five days earlier. The first group had swept over the houses like locusts with brute force home invasions.
One of Edward’s modifications had been a new ventilation pipe run to the roof with a battery-driven fan for air circulation. With the fan turned off, she could hear the screams of her neighbors being dragged out of their homes. After the second hour she had capped the pipe to block out the sounds.
Groups, the same people or different ones, she had no way of knowing, had been in the house at least five times since then.
At least three people, she thought they were all men this time, were outside the door discussing what might be inside. Reaching over to a row of buttons on the wall she depressed #3.
Out in the back yard a gun fired off two quick rounds.
The talking instantly stopped and there was the sound of scrambling feet heading for the front door.
Edward had rigged a remotely-controlled digital recorder and amped speaker in a tree. Other buttons on the panel rang the doorbell or made noises in the garage, upstairs and the first floor master suite.
After another hour of quiet she lit the small sterno and boiled a cupful of water for her favorite survival meal, a shrimp ramen packet. Then she read for a while from the small lamp Edward had rigged to run and charge from a discreet roof solar panel. Before bed she treated herself to a chocolate chip cookie. Eating chocolate chip cookies made her think of her husband and she held the stuffed bear he had given her on their first Valentine’s Day together more tightly in her arms as she lay down to sleep.
She had been a member of the interpreting staff for the Field Operations Group when they had met.
He was medium height, brown-haired and blue-eyed, accustomed to field work and harsh conditions, an American petroleum engineer with a small, high-tech company known for their analytical expertise in determining drill-site locations in developing fields. She had been attracted by his smile and humor and had fallen in love with his tender, yet no-nonsense, approach to life.
Everything was a problem, every problem had a solution, and he engineered solutions.
They had married while bringing in two exploratory wells off remote Sakhalin Island and returned to America where he had been promoted to lead a field team of geologists and petroleum engineering specialists like himself. She had fallen in love with this beautiful, green-painted home among the trees as soon as she had seen it. This had been their dream house for their future together.
She whispered, “You and me Bear, we will wait for our Edward. He will come for us.”
She woke and checked the clock they had picked to leave in the pantry. A large, blue-lit face read 5:07 and the date. She had slept for seven hours. Without the 24 hour setting she would not have known if it was morning or afternoon since there were no windows in the room.
She did 20 sit-ups and 20 pushups before preparing a small cup of her favorite green tea with ginger and a bowl of oatmeal with a spoonful of canola oil. A little cinnamon was sprinkled on top for additional flavor. Later in the day she would jog in place for an hour while listening to her music and work out with the small hand-weights.
The days passed.
In the early morning of Day 26, another group of people came to the house.
“Hello!!! Can somebody please come help me? Hello?!?”
It was a young woman’s voice.
This was repeated a half-dozen times in the next five minutes with a variation pleading being sick and injured.
Finally, “S---, nobody’s in here.”
She could hear people moving around the house as they slammed doors, yelled at each other and became more and more frustrated. Eventually they discovered the locked pantry door.
From the conversations she could occasionally pick up the words “food”, “jewelry”, “ammunition” and “guns”.
She could hear them working at the door. With the flanged jamb in place when the locks were engaged they couldn’t decide exactly how to do whatever they were trying.
They took something heavy (the dining room table maybe?) and tried to use it as a battering ram to no avail.
She picked up her keychain and pushed the button on her car’s security alarm. The alarm sounded and alternated with the blaring horn for 15 seconds.
Again there was a mad scramble out of the house. This time though they were back within an hour.
“They’ll try to break the door in several times and then either quit or look for some other way to break it down. I’d bet most will quit, but someone might find explosives or some sort of machinery to break through.”
“Screw this! I’m going to go see Luis, he might have something that will get it open.”
She went into the second room and replaced her earplugs, then picked up the small backpack with water, ammunition and compressed food packs plus a few more basic items.
She waited nearly two hours before they returned.
They came in with no attempt at being quiet this time.
On the other side of the door they fumbled around, discussing wires and where to position “this stuff”.
She listened for a moment before deciding no one was waiting under the house so she opened the large trapdoor in the pantry room and then retreated into the hidden room. She quickly opened it and dropped the backpack down into the darkness, then climbed down into the crawlspace behind the lower reinforced wall below. She closed the hatchway and slipped the latch to the locked position.
A few minutes later there was a sharp explosion up above. She quickly opened the trapdoor and climbed up to look out into her pantry room through the small peephole in the cabinet. Through the smoke she could see the partially-opened door panel, now sprung and sporting an 8 inch hole where the lock assembly had been.
A woman’s voice was cursing out in the kitchen. She apparently was stunned and deafened by the blast and was talking loudly in the manner of those who are hard of hearing.
A man’s voice told her to shut the f--- up and help him open the d----- door.
A face appeared, looking inside and two voices could be clearly heard.
“It’s full of food but I don’t see anybody in there. Hot DAMN we are going to eat well tonight!”
The face disappeared and two sets of hands grabbed the doorway and began straining to pull the door open wide enough to enter.
She looked at Bear who silently watched her, “Now Bear, we must to fight.”
She quickly opened one of the cabinet doors and pointed the shotgun through the opening.
As the door panel gave way and finally bent open, she saw the two figures step into the room with beaming smiles on their faces.
She fired twice in quick succession, knocking the nearest, the woman, completely off her feet and into the man. As he fought to get his balance he raised a pistol of some sort in her direction and she fired three more times catching him in the side and in the upper left leg with two of the blasts. The hit to the leg spun him around and he fell back through the doorway out into the kitchen. Blood was everywhere and pooling out from under his side as he began twitching.
“Oh please help me…please God…..don’t let me die like this…..ple...”
She stepped out of the cabinet.
“Maybe you should thought about your God before decide steal others things.”
She fired again.
Sometimes her English suffered a bit when she was agitated.
Day 27 was drawing to a close.
The eight men had been sitting for over seven hours watching the neighborhood for signs of movement.
As the sun went down one leaned over to the man intently watching a large green house through a set of small binoculars.
“Anyting?” he whispered.
“Nothing. No movement, no light. Just…nothing.”
“We do this soon as dark. No lights will be dark most faster.”
An hour and a half later, they moved towards the house on the corner.
Glass softly crunched under an otherwise stealthy foot. There was someone coming into the kitchen.
She touched the hammer to be sure she had cocked her pistol after putting in a fresh magazine.
Edward had told her, “Whenever you have a safe moment, change to a fresh magazine.”
There was a soft knocking on the wall.
“Irychka, are you in there honey?”
Was it Edward or some sort of trick?
“Irychka?”
She heard some low conversation. If it was Edward who would he be talking to?
“No, I KNOW how to say it! I’ve always called her that, mispronounced it from the beginning.”
Louder slaps on the metal cabinet.
More insistently now, “IRYCHKA! ANSWER ME!”
She heard a voice, maybe it was Edward’s. “She should be in there but maybe she’s hurt or exhausted. She still has her handgun, so we have to be careful opening the door.”
She had left the shotgun, unloaded, on the floor where someone would have their back to the cabinet if they went to pick it up.
But how would anyone out there know that she still had a handgun?
“Bear, is it Edward?”
“Shh! Hear that? Irychka? Do you hear me honey?”
There was the click of the cabinet floor lock being removed.
“Oh Bear, they are coming again.”
The sound of the cabinet door opening seemed very loud to her.
She raised the CZ towards the noise…
Outside she heard a voice asking for help pulling the cabinet doors open. Was it familiar?
“Bear, I can’t tell if it’s our Edward. What we will do?”