Chapter One
Gone Crazy
Would nothing ever be the same again? The answer was no!
Grimly, I glanced away from the mile-long line of people waiting for a handout of food from the FEMA wagons. Once again I made myself the promise that I would not be one of those people.
I hurried on, but as usual, my appearance in town attracted notice, because I always brought food with me. Fresh food and not the prepackaged salt bricks that FE-MA passed out.
What the long-term effects of consuming such pre-packaged food would be I did not want to speculate as to. The desire for something better than it already had people clamoring about me offering anything and every-thing by means of payment for what I carried in the sack on my back, but shouldering past them, I stepped up the stairs of the town's surviving church that had been turned into an orphanage and made my way inside leaving them behind.
Once again, I was surrounded by a clamoring mob, but this time I didn't mind. Pastor Joseph Orndorff glanced up from where he sat at a desk and gave me a broad smile and said by way of greeting, "Bless you Ad-am! This is your second trip to town this week! Things going better with the plantings than you anticipated?"
"They are believe it or not. Must be your prayers doing it though." I responded back with as I passed off the heavy sack of food to him.
He took it and with his other hand, he squeezed my arm as saying in a softer tone of voice not meant for the kids to hear, "Thank you Adam. You know how I hate to feed them that garbage from the wagons."
I ducked my head down and shrugged as I turned to view the room full of excited kids of varying ages ranging from toddler to preteen now filled with joy at the prospect of eating something good for dinner.
"Don't mention it." I said softly.
Pastor Joseph patted my back hard, "I will most definitely mention it before God tonight! You're a living an-gel Adam!" He said before moving off with the bag into the inner reaches of the church that nobody for the most part wished to attend anymore.
To a large degree within the minds of the community God had failed them and so they had moved on to make the best of what was the toughest of situations. A poor choice in my opinion, as life without God, in my opinion really wasn't worth the living.
A few others felt that way, but that was it, just a few. The rest of the town of Transverse Oklahoma were out to survive the apocalypse of our time by any means at their disposal.
The fireballs that had destroyed life as we knew it had come just two years ago. The countryside had been decimated, with the cities a sheer disaster of unimaginable horror the likes of which kept one up at night and spurred the need to carry a gun. That is if guns were al-lowed.
Any gun seen was confiscated on the spot and its owner denied food rations for two weeks. Needless to say every gun within the county had disappeared a long time ago into one of the white vans that made continuing circuits about the land doling out there prepackaged food meant to survive a millennia if need be.
No, life would never be the same. All there was to do now was to make the best of it and seeing that these children had something good to eat for the moment was my best attempt at doing so.
I cared far less for the adults, who roamed the town, as they had the ability to help out their situation, but none cared to try and so I'd given up on them. Growing your own food was by no means easy in the current climate let alone dealing with what the fat cat billionaires had done to the world in their gift of GMO products and population control chemtrail dusting.
What plants that had managed to survive through the dry conditions and fluctuating cooler temperatures didn't really stand a chance when it came down to trying to survive the soil itself. The soil had been destroyed, at least the upper fertile layers of it had been.
In a combination of GMO enzymes released into the ground by GMO plants and ingredients within the heavy metal laden chemtrails doled out heavily just before the disaster two years ago the result achieved had been the rendering of the upper soil levels becoming inert of any nutritional or biological value. The soil literally wouldn't grow anything or anything half decent anyway.
The only solution that I had found was to dig down and harvest soil not affected by the sprays and use it for vegetable propagation. It was hard work and few wished to do it, especially as there was no gas to fuel the ma-chines that could easily accomplish it.
The majority of people preferred to just rely on the white vans to feed them, as if they had become addicted somehow to the concept of not doing anything that would be too hard on themselves. The reality of it though was that they had seemed less and less human to me the longer time went on.
Even now they stared at me beadily from wherever they hung about the town, as if they were rats concocting a master plan of domination. I didn't care about being popular and I could take care of myself with or without a gun and yet the downward spiral I was witnessing in the majority of the populace left me wondering just where it would all end.
I struck out of town not bothering to take any of the wide open roads presented to me. I knew my way and without a qualm I stepped into the dry brush of the fertile land that had become a wilderness of sparsely located weeds.
Weeds seemed to be the only thing flourishing these days as at least they had some tolerances to the chemicals used to render the soil's nutrients unavailable for normal plant growth.
My pace was quick as it was always a concern to me when I left my place unattended for any length of time. I doubted anyone in town despite the allure of food would ever care to make the five-mile hike, seven miles by road, journey to my place, but still there was the off chance that they would. That was why I always varied up when I came to town so they could never build a routine of my movements by which to anticipate my actions.
Two years in the Marines had taught me to be cautious about ever establishing a pattern. As a former sniper, I well knew the benefit of keeping an erratic schedule.
Being a Marine was one thing in my life though that I'd like to escape from and I had tried. I'd come to this remote area and bought my farm and for five years things had been blissful and I had found a peace of sorts, but now... now my new found dream had been taken from me by circumstance and a global conspiracy of epic proportions.
Now more than ever my particular skill set of once being a warrior seemed to come to the forefront. I hated it, but at least it served me some good. Like right now!
I ducked and the arrow shot from a makeshift looking crossbow skipped on by me to slam into some brush. I rolled away athletically and sprang up to my feet to run a short distance before diving into more cover.
I kept moving and within seconds I was in a hidden, undisclosed position out of the direct gaze of where my hunters had been located. Patiently I waited.
