When The Fault Breaks: Life Will Never Be The Same Read online

  Jonathan asked, "What about the people that hadn't left them?"

  "There were stories of them being exterminated, but there was no proof of it."

  Jonathan exclaimed, "Oh My God is that still going on now?"

  "No, but I will get to that. Many of the large militias were not going to allow China to take over what was left of this country. When the Chinese arrived in Chicago many were very much opposed to it. But food was almost gone, there were no medical supplies left and the Chinese had waited until we had little fuel left for our fighters so we could not stop them even if we had tried.

  The new ESA government was stuck, they had nothing left to help the people and no means to fight, so they allowed the Chinese to just move in. They took over most of the federal buildings and police stations and manned them with their army. They distributed huge amounts of rice and other staples and restocked some of the hospitals but only under guard."

  Doug asked, "Why did everyone allow the Chinese army to just move in?"

  "Because they said the only way they were going to bring in supplies was if their army was in charge of their security."

  Doug asked again, "So everyone just gave in?"

  "What else were they going to do, no one had planned for this. Our modern food distribution system failed after a few days because we set it up that way. The National Guard that manned the streets was able to maintain order for a while but that was starting to crumble. When the Chinese came in they brought tons of food.

  They flew over the city dropping leaflets about sending in supplies if no one resisted their occupation. After a few days the troops arrived saying they would be bringing in food and supplies. The catch was simple, if you wanted food you had to submit to their demands."

  Doug asked, "So everyone just submitted?"

  "Hell no, there were many out there that said no way. Many gangs turned gorilla and attacked the supply lines and stole the supplies for themselves. Some were successful and were able to steal large amounts of supplies and killed a lot of Chinese troops in the process. All that did was cause the Chinese to fly in even more men. Many that tried to fight back were blown to hell by the Chinese, blasted to bits by fighters.

  In time they declared that Chicago was no longer the new Capital of the ESA and took down the flag and replaced it with their own. It was then we all knew their intentions, after that things started to change VERY quickly. They began going from door to door searching for weapons and 'unauthorized contraband.' They raped anyone they desired and forced others into slave labor, anyone that resisted was executed.

  They instituted a curfew as soon as they had taken over, with kill on site orders for violators. If you wanted to eat you would show up in line with a bucket and get a week's supply of rice. Water was your own problem you had to find it yourself from whatever body of water you could locate. Concentration camps were built inside the old naval station and the carrier was taken over with no fight at all. After that they cut what little power there was and things started to degrade very fast.

  Militias in and around Chicago started to do more guerilla attacks on the Chinese. But when they did fight, that gave away their position which told the Chinese where the militias were located. The Chinese were then able to bomb them to hell, sometimes using our own jets and bombs. After that many started to operate in smaller units that were harder to find and attack.

  One day a group of fighters made their way to the carrier and were able to detonate a large explosive on board and render it useless, so the Chinese towed it out to deeper waters and sank it. But the messed up part was they did it close enough to shore and shallow enough water that it did not sink below the surface. They made sure we would see it there as a reminder of their superiority.

  As time went by the rice supplies stopped and things began to get very scary. That was when we decided to get out of dodge. We knew things in Chicago were bad and we had heard other parts of the country were not under Chinese rule. It turned out that it was easier for them to take over a large metropolis than is was rural areas because all the gun control laws prevented residents from being able to get weapons. Later they controlled the supply of ammo in order to control everyone.

  People living in rural areas had lots of guns. Many had farms so they did not bow down to the Chinese and their ploy to control everyone with food. Most had formed tight knit groups that blocked off roads and did not allow anyone near them. When the Chinese came knocking they acted like they were compliant but took them out when they slept. Even the Chinese could not bomb every square mile of the country so they could not get to them."

  "How did you get out?"

  "All the roads in and out of the city were guarded by the Chinese Army. No cars or trucks were allowed to either come or go so that was not an option. They posted guards at the bridges watching for people leaving in boats down the Chicago River. The direction of flow of the River was turned by engineers in the 1800's so that the river flowed from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River Valley.

  I lived in a house along its banks with my husband Bill and two kids, Billy and Samantha. As more and more people started to resist the Chinese, things started to get really nasty. We witnessed the destruction of one marina when resistance fighters used it as a rally point to attack the Chinese. The Chinese blew the hell out of the marina blowing million dollar yachts to smithereens.

  The destruction set many of the boats adrift and they floated down stream. Sometimes they would end up on shore and start fires on shore and burn down entire apartment complexes. We would watch them drift down stream and the Chinese guards on the bridges just watched them drift past them and laughed.

  One day there was a large air raid up river from us, we could hear them bombing one of those sites. A bit later a large boat drifted down stream and ran aground just off shore of our home. Most of the fire had already gone out and the boat was still in fair shape with the cabin area still intact. We found the inside was usable, and that the inside bridge was functional, so we came up with the idea that we could hide inside and set it adrift again and float it past the Chinese guards.

  The Chinese were beginning to lose control and said that the next time that they were attacked they were going to scorch the city, that nothing would remain of it. The freedom fighters decided to call their bluff and planned an all-out attack on the Chinese headquarters."

  As we sat there listening to Amanda my mind wandered, I could only imagine what it was like that night when the freedom fighters attacked the Chinese.

  It was just after dark when snipers opened fired. In seconds all twenty-four guards dropped, the searchlights were shot out and the outside of the building fell silent. For the next few minutes there was no movement outside the building except the attack team descending on the building from zip lines above.

  "Peterson you and Sampson are the lookouts, Wallewitz you and Head release the gas."

  "Head, grab the gas bottle and let's move."

  "You got it Wallewitz, the intake vent is over here."

  "Get your mask on and let's get this going before anyone notices that the guards have been taken out."

  "I'm almost there, one last connection."

  "Hurry man, I think I hear something."

  Just then a lone Chinese guard stepped out from behind an air conditioning unit rubbing his eyes and straightening his uniform. About the same time, he noticed the men, Peterson saw the guard and tossed a knife at him and took him out.

  "Now that is what I mean let's get this done."

  "It's done; I'm opening the gas now…okay it's working let's go."

  Head signaled the rest that it was a go and regrouped with the rest of his team by the entrance to the roof and dawned their gas masks. They jimmied open the door and looked in, it was safe. The five men had their P90's at the ready and descended the stairwell looking for any survivors. Everyone they found was dead, the gas did its job as advertised and no one lived. The other teams came in on the ground from all four sides and c
leared the rest of the building.

  "Funk, front and center."

  "Yes sir Captain, I'll be right there."

  "Take the flag and get the damn Chinese flag down and get ours up."

  "With pleasure sir."

  Funk turned to his friend Waldon and said, "Let's get to the roof and get this flag up."

  "I'm with you Funk."

  As they were leaving, the Captain called out the all clear and that they could all remove their gas masks. Waldon and Head had made it to the roof.

  "Waldon would you like the pleasure?"

  "I would love it but this one is yours Head, you have worked so hard for it for so long. You lost your family to the bastards and you deserve pay back."

  "Thanks bro, I never thought two kids from south Chicago would ever be bringing down a Chinese flag from The Federal Building and replacing it with a flag of the ESA."

  "Richard, I never would have even dreamed of an ESA flag, a U.S. one maybe but not this."

  "I told you I hate it when you call me that, its Dick."

  Laughing, Waldon replied, "I know' followed by even more laughing."

  "Take the rope asshole, let's do this together."

  "The two lifelong friends pulled the ESA flag to the top then lowered it to half-staff for the lives of those that had been lost getting there."

  While I imagined what had gone on that night Amanda had been continuing the description of her experience.

  "The attack by the freedom fighters pissed the Chinese off. The next day they started pulling out their troops. There was partying in the streets as the Chinese were withdrawing, but we were worried that was a prelude to something really bad. We figured the Chinese were pulling out so their people were not harmed in the attack. So for us it was time to go."

  Someone called out "How did you get out and end up tied up in a warehouse in Colorado."

  Chapter 38: The Escape

  Amanda continues, "It took about three days for the Chinese to get their army out of Chicago and then it started. As soon as we had found the boat we stocked up on any supplies we could get our hands on and hid them in the boat. When the bombing began we got on board and set her adrift.

  There were lots of burning boats drifting down the river that night so we knew it was our best time to go. We set a controlled fire on deck so it looked like the boat was on fire as it drifted past the Chinese guards posted on the bridges outside the city, so they just let it drift down stream. The Chicago River is not a very fast river in that area so it was slow going. At times we would wash ashore and had to look out to make sure no one saw us when we pushed the boat back into the flow.

  When it was dark, and we knew we were past the Chinese controlled area, we went on deck to look around. It was a horrendous site. From a distance we could see the Chinese J-31 stealth fighters patrolling. The formation of their JH-7 bombers was in route to the city with bombs hanging from the wings.

  We cheered when we saw a third generation MPAD Stinger B shoulder mounted surface to air missile slam into one of the boomers. But that cost the Illinois National Guards soldiers that fired it their lives. Having seen where the attack originated, one of the J-31's went back around and strafed the area killing everyone. But the pilot got careless and the bomber hit the ground and exploded. I was so close to where it impacted that the concussion almost knocked me on the ground. The remaining jets continued on to bomb the city blowing everything up. Chicago was in flames.

  The rest of the night as we drifted downstream we heard one explosion after another as the Windy City was being destroyed. I could only think that maybe this was kind of what it was like the night Chicago died when O'Leary's cow started The Great Chicago Fire so long ago."

  Tammy asked, "Did anyone ever see you on the boat?"

  "Yes many times, most of the time they just waved at us as we drifted past them. Sometimes they would call out to us to help them but we couldn't. We only had limited supplies and we knew some of them would just take what we had.

  I remember one time all too well. We were a bit more than a week out of the city when we decided to clean some of the rubble off the deck and try to run under power. While we were cleaning it off someone started to shoot at us. Bill and I each had Chinese AK 47's, and lots of rounds we had taken from Chinese soldiers that had been killed, so we returned fire and took both of them out.

  We finished clearing the deck and were able to fire up the engine. With the lightened load we made much better time. For the next month we slowly drifted down river to conserve fuel using the engines only when needed until we finally reached the Illinois River.

  There was not much difference between the two rivers except that the Illinois River was much faster so we were able to travel more without running the motor. In our travels down river we saw many farms, some burning or long since burnt, dead cows and other animals bloated and floating down stream or washed ashore. We passed through several cities that had been destroyed with their bridges gone and partially blocking the river. It was like a crazy obstacle course getting past it all.

  Because the boat had an in cabin helm we stayed inside to maneuver around debris while at the same trying to drift downstream unnoticed. We had a good map and were able to keep track of where we were by the bridges and the cities we passed. We traveled by night as much as possible to avoid the people that shot at us. Whenever we did come upon a town we would wait until dark and stay inside and look like we were just adrift.

  There was this one town we entered, we approached it by night and noticed that there was almost no light coming from it. We were getting low on supplies so we decided to take a chance and go ashore in one of the darker areas looking for anything we could use. We checked out a few abandoned farmhouses and collected some supplies but no food.

  We had been ashore for a few hours when we heard a large truck coming. We hauled ass back to the boat and took off even though we had not found the most important thing we went looking for.

  A few nights later we were on an isolated reach of the river when we saw a lone dock. It was still light enough that we could see a nice house on a hill that was not far from shore. We decided to check it out and were very happy we did. The house was completely intact, it was clear that no one had found this place and the owners had not made it back to it after the quake.

  We figured that if the house was still untouched after this long that we might as well stay. We had been living in that boat and needed a break from it, so we planned to stayed as long as we could and it was great. We had been there for almost a month when our ten-year-old Billy was out back playing and found something that turned out to be a hatch.

  We opened the hatch and looked inside and could not believe our eyes, it was loaded with food. It turned out the family that lived there were Preppers, they had a huge stash of food, water and other survival supplies.

  We loaded it all into the boat so if we had to flee fast we did not have to leave it. We were able to stay there for another month before we heard a large truck coming. We figured they must have seen the smoke from our fire and came to investigate. Our first thought was to hide out in the bunker but figured we would lose the boat if they found it so we just left the place as fast as we could."

  Sandy asked, "Did they see you leaving?"

  "I don't think so because no one ever fired at us, but we did get out of there with a boat load of supplies. Now that we were resupplied we continued downstream and eventually reached the Mississippi River."

  Sandy commented, "That must have been a big relief from being on the smaller river."

  "Not really it only made things worse, now we were on a super highway of boats. As we approached the confluence of the Mississippi we noticed that the river was flooded, the closer we got the deeper the water was.

  There hadn't been any heavy rains or anything like that so we were wondering why the flood. We knew were coming up on Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois and that the river chocks down pretty small through that reach and we
were worried it was the cause. We noticed that the floodwaters had covered a large sand bar between the two rivers and made a short cut. Let me tell you that was scary when the two swollen rivers met, the currents are nuts through it.

  As we rounded a bend approaching Alton Illinois, we could see the problem. Debris had collected at lock and damn 26 and blocked it. There were trees, boats, trash and even the remains of a couple houses all jammed against it. It blocked the flow of the river and caused it to back up as far back as the confluence we came in on.

  From a distance we could see lights on the Missouri sides of the bridge, but Alton was flooded so there were no lights. We could make out people along the shore so we didn't want to go that way. That was when Billy came up with a great idea. We fired up the engines and turned into the flooded city streets. We navigated the streets all the way around the downed bridge and were able to stay out of sight of everyone.