Freedom TM

of Patterson, Kansas, felt the cavalry had arrived just in time. “It’s been a nightmare. With sky- high food and gas prices , armed gangs have ruled the streets for days. The government did nothing . Thank god for these guys.…”
    Henry Fossen looked up from cleaning a rifle barrel as the wail of tornado sirens pierced the night. He stood up and glanced at his watch:
3:42 A.M.
    He dropped the barrel onto a cloth on the kitchen table and vaulted up the back stairs, shouting. “Lynn! Jenna! We’ve got to go! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
    As he ran down the upstairs hall, Jenna was already exiting her bedroom, dressed and clutching a backpack. She looked rattled. “They’re moving in, Dad.”
    “Who says?”
    “I just read it on the town alert feed. There are soldiers headed this way right now.” She shook her head in incomprehension. “How could this be happening?”
    Fossen’s wife, Lynn, appeared in their doorway holding a caseas well. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “We’ve got to go, hon. I’ve got my things downstairs. Let’s move!”
    He brought them down through the kitchen, where he rolled up the cloth containing pieces of the Korean War–era, M1 Garand rifle he’d been cleaning—the one his father had given him. He also grabbed a sealed can of 30.06 ammunition dated from 1958.
    “C’mon, out the door!”
    As his wife and daughter headed out the mudroom door, he took one last look at the family house, then turned off the lights and joined them out in the drive near the garage. It was still dark out, but as Fossen and his family got into the crew-cab pickup, they could hear the rattling of distant machine-gun fire.
    Lynn covered her mouth. “God help us.…” She looked at her daughter.
    Jenna looked back at them both, slowly shaking her head. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.…” Tears started flowing. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to—”
    “Jenna, let’s not even talk like that.”
    Both of them got in and he rapidly had them moving down the long gravel driveway. “Jenna, I need you to give me some idea where these people are. Are there reports of them between us and downtown Greeley?”
    She wiped her tears and started clicking on D-Space as Fossen drove at high speed down to the road.
    “If we move quickly, we’ll be fine. They’re coming in from the east and south.…” She paused. “But there’s also another force reported coming in from north and west.”
    “Yes, all right, but we can make it to town?”
    “Yes.”
    Fossen glanced to them both. “We’re going to be all right. We’ll get to the storm cellars at the elementary school just like we planned. We’re going to be all right.”
    As he looked down the road, he could see the lights of Greeley just a few miles ahead. There was thunder in the distance and the lights suddenly went black.
    ______________
    At the sound of tornado sirens Ross sat up in the motel bed and reached for his HUD glasses on the nightstand. He tried to turn on the lights, but they didn’t work. A glance at the digital alarm clock confirmed that the power was out.
    So much for local power generation.
    He threw on his black Nomex flight suit and computer belt as the system logged him on. The sirens were winding down now, and he could see hundreds of darknet call-outs beyond the walls and hear the voice of Floyd_2, an ex-army officer that the darknet had automatically selected as civil defense commander, based on his reputation score and skill set. His voice came in over the public comm channel in mid-speech….
    “—need everybody to those storm shelters. Security drones show helicopters and a light armored force converging on Greeley from all four compass directions. Everyone, please get to the middle school storm cellars. Ex-military folks and hunters, you have your assignments. We’ve only got a few minutes. I’m going to project the location of the choppers onto layer six, and I want all tagged enemy objects placed on that layer, too.”
    Four bright red call-outs appeared some ways off to the east, identified as
Helo 1, 2
, and
3
.
    Floyd_2 paused.
“Everyone move quickly but calmly to the middle school storm shelters. You can see the video surveillance overlays on layer five. It looks like these people are heavily armed. We’ve got summons in for infrastructure defense and equipment, but it looks like there are a lot of darknet towns under attack tonight. So I think we’re on our own for the time being.