Catastrophe in America Read online

After some questions and answers I said I would take it and he had me fill out some paperwork and then said he had to call in for the background check. That would take a few minutes and he suggested I go check out my camping gear and load it in my vehicle and by that time I should be able to pick up my new pistol.

  I did as he suggested and as promised he was done and the gun was ready to be picked up. He showed me the two main types of ammunition my new revolver could shoot and suggested I start with several boxes of .38 special ammunition because he said it was way milder to shoot and very accurate. He then suggested I buy a couple boxes of full power .357 magnum ammunition so I had something more powerful.

  I bought everything he suggested including a holster and as an after thought he grabbed a pistol cleaning kit and said it contained directions as did the handgun itself in the box.

  I made my purchases and was now the owner of a Ruger SP101 revolver, my first ever gun of any kind.

  When I had went in the store I had no thought of purchasing a gun and in the past had never even considered owning one. I had nothing against guns or people owning them and had always agreed that it was their right to own them but never thought I would want one myself.

  When checking out I asked the girl cashier about where I could go shoot and she gave me directions to an indoor range that was not very far away. I drove there and leaving the gun in the truck I went in to see what was what.

  I found an employee and told him I was new gun owner and wished to shoot it. He asked what I had purchased and when I told him he said it was an excellent first choice. They were not very busy in the range and I paid the fee and retrieved my gun from my truck.

  He retrieved a pair of shooting glasses and two ear protection muffs and we went to the range. The kindly gentleman I had first talked to went with me and walked me through the range rules and some basic firearm safety. When it was time for me to shoot I loaded the gun (under his watchful eyes) and proceeded to shoot.

  It was actually quite enjoyable. I could now see some of the appeal to owning and shooting guns. The gentleman watched me and several times stopped me and gave me more tips. I made substantial improvement with every cylinder full of ammunition I shot. After I shot two whole boxes of shells I had enough for the first experience and thanked the man and left the range. I was way more confident now in my ability to safely handle, load, and shoot my gun. It was quite expensive but the man who had sold it to me and the man at the range both said that gun would last almost forever.

  I felt good about my purchase even though it was a lot of money.

  When I got home I read the gun owner’s manual and then cleaned the gun using the new cleaning kit.

  I went through all my new camping purchases and read all the information that came with everything I had bought so I would have some idea how to use everything. I made sure I understood how the camp stove worked and how to use it. I checked out the small water filter I had bought and read everything that was packed inside with it. Then I washed up and had some lunch. When done I again turned on the news to see what had been happening while I had been out shopping and shooting. Apparently quite a lot more stuff had been happening and none of it was good.

  Chapter Four

  There had been several attacks by shooters in crowded places in widely separated spots across the United States. The terrorists were keeping up the pressure and were apparently going all out in this series of attacks. The shooters when confronted by police never gave up and in every case would die while shooting with many yelling the phrase “Allahu Akbar”, meaning God is great or God is the greatest.

  The shootings took place in crowded restaurants, shopping malls, grocery stores, schools, colleges, any place it seemed where there were many people in a confined place. And it was happening in many states and all across the country. I was glad now that I had purchased the gun today when I did because I assumed that many people would now be doing that same thing and gun stores would be crowded and short of stock in just a short time.

  There were reports of many foiled attacks on some electrical sub stations that police and county sheriff’s departments had taken upon themselves to protect and defend. The list of attacks was constantly being added to and the list was already quite long with no end in sight. The terrorists must be in the United States in fairly large numbers though most of the attacks were only involving two to four terrorists at a time.

  These attacks had likely been planned to provide the most attacks in the smallest amount of time and causing the greatest amount of fear throughout the whole United States.

  So far none of the terrorists had been captured alive though that would likely have made little difference. It was unlikely that any one of them was aware of the assignments of any of the others or even if there were others and if so how many there were.

  That was the logical way it would have been done, with few knowing anything about any others. Even those passing out the instructions to others were likely broken up into just commanding small groups of these terrorists. Once set in motion the terrorists could likely only be stopped by death. And when your enemy has no fear of death and often actually relishes the thought of giving his life in battle that makes law enforcement’s job much harder and way more dangerous indeed.

  Tired of watching the news I took the fully charged laptop down the street and again used the free internet service there. Things on the ‘net were much the same as on the TV. The shooting attacks seemed to have stopped with no new reports of any new ones for a couple hours now.

  I wondered what the next wave of attacks would be. I doubted that we were done with them yet. To me this seemed to be a very well run and wide spread terrorist organization. They certainly had to be well funded and well respected in the terror business if they had obtained those two nuclear devices.

  Even the worst of the bad guys did not just sell nukes to just any yahoo that happened to walk through their door. At least I would think they wouldn’t anyway. Plus it was very obvious that a lot of planning had gone into this whole series of attacks.

  The terrorists had to find all the manpower and train all those people and then transport all those people into the United States to fulfill their assignments of terror.

  Then they had to supply everyone with enough money to buy what they needed and to live here until the time was right and everything was in place for this major series of attacks. And everything had to be done in absolute secrecy with the CIA or FBI or NSA not getting any hint of what was about to happen.

  On top of everything else this looked really bad for the intelligence agencies of the United States, that all this could have been planned and executed right under their noses. The death toll in the US was certainly mounting. The shootings in reality did not add that many deaths but did cause a lot of fear. And destroying those three oil refineries would really hurt us financially and cut our refining capabilities back for quite some time.

  The attack on the port in Washington was more symbolic rather than devastating though it had done a lot of damage. The sub station attacks causing the blackouts would bring the effects of all the attacks right into many thousands of American’s homes and seriously disrupt their lives and instill the fear of even more attacks happening that could directly impact them. Hearing about people getting killed in a distant city was not the same as trying to live with no electricity at your own home while the power supply was slowly being repaired.

  No, I was sure the end of the shooting today was really just a lull in the attacks. Likely police had spread themselves all over as many places as possible to be ready to stop more of these kinds of attacks. The terrorists would know that would happen and not want throw away their troops so quickly. The shootings stopped and the terrorists were just getting in position for the next salvo of attacks I thought.

  Just like the sub station attacks that had abruptly ended when the police started guarding them, as soon as that happened the terrorists stopped those attacks and moved to the mass shootings.
Now when police were expecting more mass shootings some new kind of attacks would happen instead. I was sure of it.

  That evening I again watched some news on the TV but there was nothing really new on there. I went to bed wondering what new attacks would happen over night or if it would wait until during the following day. Or maybe I was way off base in my thinking there would be any additional attacks.

  Chapter Five

  At first there was nothing new on the news that morning when I got up. I called my boss and asked about work but he said the business would just stay closed until Monday morning and we would see what happened then. He said even though he knew nothing would be happening in our smaller city he did not think it was right to just go on as if nothing was happening while so many Americans were being killed right here on US soil. Today was Friday anyway and so it would only be a loss of one day.

  It was about noon when the first reports of the poisonings started to be reported. Details of course were very sketchy at first but as the day went on and reports came from more and more people in many different cities that were poisoned it was discovered that the water supplies in many cities that used big water reservoirs had been poisoned and it had already caused several deaths.

  The number of deaths continued to rise throughout the rest of the day. Again though many people died it was just not that big of a number but the terror effect and the fear it instilled was great. And of course the disruption of water services affected many, many thousands of people. Plus all our resources put into finding what the poison was and how to get rid of it and testing every water reservoir in the United States to see if any more had been poisoned took a big toll of money and manpower.

  And then we had to allot more man power to now guard all those water reservoirs from being poisoned in the future. Again the terrorists were a step ahead and had caused great harm and none of these had been caught while instilling more fear in the nation’s population which was one of the terrorist’s goals.

  Tomorrow was Saturday and I wondered what new kind of terror attack it would bring. This time I knew I was not alone in this thinking. Most people here in the USA were thinking the same thing with many worrying whether they would live through the next attack, whatever form it might take.

  Like I guess many people I again turned the TV on as soon as I had got up in the morning. It was with some relief that there were no new attacks during the night. I was sure more were coming and it looked like they would maybe happen during daylight hours this time.

  I had a leisurely breakfast and then went back to the TV. About ten or so the first reports started to come in of the shootings. This time they were all on roadways. Some of the shooting attacks were on busy Interstate highways and some on just small country roads. They were like hit and run accidents with one or two cars being shot and then the shooter would leave the area only to reappear in another location to do the same thing again. This went on for almost all day. Even a couple state patrol cars were targeted and the policemen killed or wounded.

  This again had the desired results of keeping a lot of the population in their home cowering in fear. Which was exactly what the terrorists wanted of course. In the afternoon I went to the grocery store and stocked up on some easy to fix, long shelf life, non refrigerated food. I was not the only one in there getting food either. The place was packed with people obviously stocking up.

  I figured buying up a bunch of food would cost me nothing in the long run because I had to eat anyway so why not have it on hand at home. Plus the way things were going who knows what the situation would look like a few days from now or a few weeks from now.

  On the way home I stopped and got out my laptop which I had brought with for this purpose and surfed the internet for more news. I stayed on until the battery died and then went on home. Many people on the ‘net expected prices on just about everything to rise but I did not know about that happening at least in the near future.

  I didn’t know what I could do about that anyway. The only thing I really normally bought was groceries and I was way stocked up on those now. I bought gas like everyone else but there was no way for me to store any of that anyway because I certainly could not store any gas inside my apartment.

  Like the other attacks the roadway shootings eased up and stopped by evening. Of course that again left us wondering what new attacks would be happening the next day. Tomorrow was Sunday which of course was a holy day for Christens but not for the Muslim terrorists and everyone now expected fresh attacks on Sunday only we would again have to wait to see just what those attacks would be.

  Sunday morning came with no news of any additional attacks over night. I think many people watched the TV all day long waiting for the next round of attacks but when evening came there had still been nothing. Everything was quiet. There were even very few car accidents but that was likely because there were way less people on the highways. The news channels showed video of many normally crowded highways and while there was some traffic it was seriously reduced. Most people it seemed were staying home where they assumed they would be the safest.

  This was the direct result of all those terror attacks of course and again it showed the world that the terrorists in the United States were winning their war. In just five days they had cowed the American people and changed their lifestyle from a fun loving free and happy life to a life of hiding in their homes and apartments in fear of going outside those homes.

  The whole economy of the United States depended on all the citizens living that free lifestyle. Just a few days of people in the United States changing and staying home rather than traveling or going to movies, or going out to eat, or even going out to the bars would cut seriously into our economy.

  It was a service based economy and for that to work American lifestyles could not change. We had to go out and spend our money on something. Whether we spent it at the amusement park or the movie theatre, we had to keep spending that money. Everyday we missed doing those actions hurt our already fragile economy even more. And again that was what the terrorists wanted and what they achieved; they were destroying our nation’s already fragile economy from within with just these few terror attacks.

  Chapter Six

  Monday it was back to work and that actually felt good. It meant normal and normal was good. I had watched the news for just a few minutes that morning but there had been nothing really about any more terror attacks. Of course that meant nothing but we would have to wait and see what happened during the day.

  Back at home that evening there was plenty of news. There had been home invasions in many cities and in most cases the home had been started on fire. In a few cases the gas lines had been cut inside the homes and in some of those the results were large explosions. In all cases the home owners had all been killed and decapitated. It was obviously the work of the terrorists again.

  The home invasions continued with more and more being reported. In every case those in the homes had all been killed and decapitated. Every man, woman, and child in the homes got the same treatment.

  Tuesday morning before leaving for work on the news I saw there were a host of home invasions reported from all over the United States from overnight. I worked all day and that night at home more of the home invasions were again found throughout the day. Now Americans were not even safe in their own homes.

  By Wednesday there were many accidental shootings by people that thought they were being attacked by the terrorists. Sometimes it was family members who were shot or a neighbor coming over to see how they were doing or a delivery man. People were now doing the jobs for the terrorists.

  Thursday several more electric sub stations were hit again. It seems that police and county deputies were running pretty thin. Many were answering calls of suspected prowlers and guarding water supplies or patrolling roadways looking for shooters so the sub stations that had not been hit for a few days were again targeted. The damage to the electric grid was now effecting more and more of the population with the
electric companies having a harder time finding ways to bypass all the destroyed sub stations.

  Then the fires started everywhere. Any area of the country where it was dry wildfires were popping up. And it was not just in one or two spots. It looked like there were people driving around throwing articles on fire out of car windows to get the grass and trees in the area to start on fire. Sometimes they would use lit road flares but more often it would be just plain trash that was lit on fire and tossed into dry areas.

  In the parts of the country where wildfires could not easily be started homes and commercial building were started on fire and often these spread to adjacent buildings. Fire departments would have to split up there were so many fires burning at the same time and often these firemen could only try to keep the fires from spreading because they lacked enough manpower and equipment to actively fight and control all these fires.

  In rural areas some of the wildfires were really taking off and many homes had already been destroyed. With hundreds more homes in jeopardy of being burned down. There were just not enough firemen to fight all these fires at the same time. It was plain that in many areas where homes were not in the line of the fire that the fires were just allowed to burn themselves out while fire fighters tried to save homes that were threatened by other fires.

  To make things even worse in many places both in rural areas and in cities fire fighters were being shot and killed while trying to fight the fires. Again the terrorists were suspected in all these cases. Watching the TV news they made it seem like the whole country was on fire.

  That weekend the skies in many places the USA were thick with smoke. And the home invasions did not stop with many more people being found dead in the burning homes and decapitated. Occasional highway shootings were reported and a couple more electrical sub stations were destroyed over the weekend.