Freefall: A Violent Anthology, #1

By Bearded Heathan

Our way of life didn't end with a bang. There was no pandemic, no foreign invasion, no EMP, and no natural disaster. Our way of life was rotting away in front of our eyes for decades before the violent collapse, but it was an inconvenient truth that no one wanted to address and only a few dared to speak of in private with close friends. It wasn't discussed in the news, nor was it debated in the capital. It was ignored for as long as it could be until it couldn't be ignored anymore.

The Parker's were a normal family, well, normal for the 1940's and 1950's living in the 2020's. Sam traveled a lot for work as a risk management consultant and Andi decided to put her career on hold to raise their two girls and homeschool them. They lived on a small homestead in central Missouri and tried to preserve some of the good that came from the nuclear family example all those years ago. They raised their own food as much as they could, preserved what they could, and tried to pass some of this forgotten knowledge on to their girls for future generations. They did this because they felt it was the right path and because they saw the writing on the wall. The nation and society were circling the drain. Society was one spark away from igniting the powder keg to send it over the edge into a free fall.

They thought they were prepared as well as they could be for just about anything. Pandemics, financial collapse, and even the fabled EMP. What they weren't prepared for was for Sam to be at the epicenter of the event that lit the fuse, while he was half a country away in Colorado. He had to get home. That was his promise to his girls, Daddy would always come home, no matter how long it took or what he had to do. But they've got their own fight at home, too. How far would you go to get home? How hard would you fight to make the 800-mile journey home? For Sam, he had to go pretty far to make it. But getting home is when the real trouble begins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bearded Heathan
• Release date: Apr 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224694563

Bearded Heathan

Bearded Heathan lives on his small homestead in central Missouri with his wife and daughters. When not writing about the end of society, he spends his time tending to their homestead, working on various projects, and tinkering to make their place a little more self sufficient each day when not working at his day job as a corporate risk management consultant. He enjoys shooting, hunting, and fishing with his girls, as well as completing any of the tasks that Mrs. Heathan tells him "would be nice to have". He believes in preparation and self sufficiency as the events he writes about are entirely plausible and believes that rather than waiting on someone to save you, you should be prepared and able to self rescue. After all, no one is coming. It is up to you.

Book preview

Prologue

"O ur Founding Fathers here in this country brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers. But only here did that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has ever seen their like since, evolve the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and ability to determine our own destiny. But freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States of America where men were free" Ronald Regan in an address to the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Phoenix, AZ. 1961

Our way of life was not killed with a bang. There was no bomb, no EMP, no pandemic that killed it. Instead, our societal collapse was akin to a building falling into disrepair much like the Roman Coliseum. Once the rot started, not many noticed, but some did and when they pointed it out, they were ridiculed or called Chicken Little. Then as it crumbled, even more turned a blind eye because it was an inconvenient truth that could be ignored given enough distractions. A new coat of paint was thrown on it from time to time but no work to shore up the foundations and structure of our building was ever done. No, our society was killed by good men who stood by and did nothing because, what were they supposed to do? How were they supposed to fight, protect, and defend our freedoms in a manner that President Reagan spoke about all those years ago? All while the evil and greedy ran amuck with no consequences for their actions. The problem with a civil society such as ours had become was that it is frowned upon to split the head open of an evil man even though he is an evil man and because I never want to be called a sexist or bigot, evil woman. Instead, you had to let the lawyers and the justice system take care of them. Sadly, our system had become so inept that evil men had wormed their way into the pockets of our elected representatives and when held accountable in the public eye, behind the scenes they were lining the pockets of those who would decide their fate and allow them to get away with it on a technicality or require them to pay a small penance of their substantial wealth to continue contributing to the rot of our society.

The first constitution clearly stated equal justice for all as defined by our brilliant founders but sadly, there were two tiers of justice for quite a while in our society. We, the people, had a thin veil of civility that we believed was the bedrock of our nation. We viewed our own personal safety and liberty as God given rights and that all should respect the law of the land. If they didn’t, that was what we had courts and a penal system for. We treated our security and safety the same as we did tap water or electricity in our modern society. It was always there when we needed it. Unfortunately, this was a façade. It was the thin coat of paint thrown on the front of that deteriorating coliseum that made us believe everything was ok. It didn’t start in the early 2000’s as some believed, it didn’t even start in the late 1900’s. It started when men realized there was wealth to be made in politics. The pinpoint from my estimation was the 1913 meeting on Jekyll Island in secret when the wealthiest men in the world met to discuss and form the Federal Reserve. Over 100 years later, they were still the wealthiest families in the world and were part of the folks pulling the strings of our elected officials. Even though there were many who knew this to be true, nothing was done to rectify it. There were calls for reform but the people who stood to profit from the corrupt system were the same ones who would have to craft and pass the reform. Instead, it was accepted as the way the world worked but it was a key indicator in the rot that had set in on our beloved building and in hindsight, should have been stopped after that 1913 meeting.

My plan was never to be the guy that pulled the pebble that caused our coliseum to come crashing down. Looking back on it now, I still have no idea how the effects of my actions on that fateful March Day caused the whole thing to spiral down to the ground but apparently, all it takes to create a tsunami is the flap of a butterfly wing on the other side of the world. Our enemies had been watching this rot occur for a while and while we were a younger country in the scheme of things, many of these adversaries played the long game and knew it was a matter of time before we fell to our own devices. These enemies were not state enemies such as China, Russia, Iran, or any other country that happened to hate our way of life. These enemies were the men and women who pulled the strings of those countries as well as the strings of our own country and those of our allies. These men and women were far more diabolical than than the leaders of our sworn enemies. No, these were the folks who believed that there were too many useless eaters in the world and needed to reduce that number to the compliant few to live as their servants. They believed they were our rightful masters and were ready to take their place as such, but they knew that as the US goes, so goes the rest of the world. So, our country and way of life had to topple to drag the rest of the world with it to complete the reset needed.

When our uncontrollable spiral began, they waited until it was too late for us to recover to our normal way of life before they swooped in to attempt to claim the spoils. What they didn’t count on was the people of this country who survived those first trying years to be so hardened and resolved to keep what they had fought, bled, and died for to provide so much resistance.

Chapter 1 – Mr. Franklin, what kind of government do we have? A republic or a monarchy? A republic, if we can keep it. – Benjamin Franklin 1787.

Isuppose I am getting ahead of myself; I should probably have started around March 5 th more than 25 years ago. I know it sounds rather specific to remember the exact date but if this had all happened to you, you would remember the exact date it all started too. It had been 3 years since I had seen my mom in person. I know, I know, it’s probably wrong of me but my mom and I had a somewhat strained relationship before she had her strokes.  So, when she had them, I was concerned because it was my mom, but I wasn’t distraught as some thought I should be.  Instead, I thought to myself I really need to take better care of myself, so I don’t wind up like that.  I hadn’t seen her in 3 years because the last time I had it didn’t end well.  So rather than relive that and have to explain why she was like that to my kids, I tried to avoid going to see her. After continuous bombardment from my children, I finally acquiesced and agreed to go get her on her birthday from the nursing home and bring her out to see our new house in person.  The kids were excited they were getting to see their gramma again, but I had to be Johnny Raincloud and explain to my girls that gramma wasn’t going to be the same as they remembered her and that her dementia had gotten much more advanced, so they needed to be ok with how she was.  They both said they understood and dove under the covers as me and mama tucked them in. I told them I would wake them up before I left to get her so they would be awake. 

March 6, - I woke up at 6 as my usual daily internal clock started screaming at me because my bladder had apparently hit the snooze button as it generally did, and it was one of those shuffle runs to the toilet to relieve the pressure and quiet the internal bells that were going off.  I walked out, made a cup of coffee, and let the beasts out to do their morning business. I thought, they’re tall enough, why didn’t we just train them to use the damn toilet.  My Great Pyrenees, English Mastiff, and German Shepherd were all 3 capable of reaching the seat to do their duty.  Something I am doing with my next dog, I told myself. After letting the beasts back in, I went for my morning walk around the property to check our various critters and to wake up. I was also sneaking out to have my morning cigarette since I was supposed to have quit for almost a year, but I couldn’t kick that morning smoke.  It jump started my system in a way coffee just couldn’t.  So, every day, rain, or shine, I would do my morning rounds and then go get in the shower (I would find out years later, my wife knew what I was doing, she just let me do it).  As I walked down to the chicken coop, I heard Moose, our mastiff come thundering up behind me. He usually joined me on my morning rounds and inspected the critters with me. Well, that and he would always get an egg as a treat.

After my morning round (and smoke), I hit the shower and got dressed. I lightly smacked my wife’s butt and told her it was time to get up. She rolled over and mumbled something unintelligible and I knew she wasn’t getting up any time soon.  I went upstairs to wake the girls up and my oldest, Hailey, was already awake and dressed. I went in to wake my youngest up and she wasn’t in bed.  I panicked just for a second and then heard their toilet flush. She came stumbling out and told me she was going back to bed. I ruffled her blonde curls and sent her back to bed. My oldest said she was going to get in the shower, and I told them both I was headed to get grandma. I left and made the 35-mile drive to the nursing home mom was a resident in. I started to get out and realized that it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet.  I decided to go drive around my old neighborhood which was right down the road. I drove around for a good half an hour and stopped to get some coffee before going back home. Once there, I got out and was hesitant to go in. Something about seeing her and being around her in person again didn’t sit well with me. I don’t know why.  My dad had died many years before and she was my only biological parent left. I shouldn’t have felt this way and I struggled internally why I did.  I was always the kind of person who either dealt with their issues or compartmentalized them and stowed them away to deal with later. I just never got around to getting this one back out to figure it out.

Ever since the Wuhan Wheezer hit our shores, nursing homes have been completely over the top on Protocols.  I had to check in with the front desk for contact tracing so I lied, told the lady I forgot my wallet but provided her with my brother’s name, phone number, and address that’s lived closest to me in Foristell.  So, if there was a close contact he would get pestered by it and not me. I know, I am the best little brother there is. After I checked in, I went to mom’s room. She was in 214 which was down the first hall to the right. I made the turn and saw there was a flurry of activity in front of her room. I walked up and asked what was going on and one of the nurses asked who I was. I told her and she got a kind smile. You know, the kind of smile when you’re about to break someone’s heart? She looked at me and smiled and said, Sorry honey, she’s gone.  What? I replied. Who picked her up.  The nurse put her hand on my arm and said, No sweetie, she’s passed away. Well, shit. I guess I am not going to show her the house then and I started to walk out.  The nurse caught up to me Sweetie, do you want me to call anyone for you? Is there anything we can do? I told her I would have to call my sisters as they were the ones who were supposed to oversee all this. Then I walked out, got in my car, and drove home just kind of numb. It was a shock but not the kind of shock one usually suffers when losing a parent. As I got off the highway to head to the house, I thought I should probably call my sisters before I got home and break the news to my girls and my wife.  I called my oldest sister and informed her. She was a little more upset than I was, but she said she would notify everyone that needed to be notified. Then I called my other sister who lived in southeast Missouri to tell her. She didn’t answer and I thought it best not to give her the news over voicemail or text, so I told her to call me ASAP and I hung up and called my brother-in-law.  He answered and I told him to tell her. He said he would, and we got off the phone. I put the car in drive and started heading home from the truck stop at our exit.  When I got home, I just sat there in the car. My wife walked out seeing me alone and made more of a statement than a question, She’s passed I grunted the affirmative and she reached in and gave me a hug. What can I do? She asked. I shook my head and said, nothing, I’m good.  She caught me before walking inside and said, you need to be gentler with the girls than you are right now I told her I would be.

Three hours of small females crying and tons of explanations later, I finally peeled away from my girls and walked outside. I broke my rule and got a cigarette out of my hidey hole and walked into the woods. I always struggled with this emotion. I really struggled with it because my reactions weren’t the same as everyone else’s and they weren’t what I thought they should be or what was expected of me.  I could fake it most of the time to remain socially acceptable but behind closed doors, I struggled not with the emotions but what was wrong with me that I felt nothing?

I notified my work that I would need a day off for my mom’s funeral to which they informed me I was to take a week’s bereavement leave and not come back till the following week. I took the week and did what I always do when I need to work through something like this, I worked. I had been meaning to finish milling some of the trees I had cut down and since I had the extra time now, this seemed like as good of time as any. I spent the next week deep inside my head working through why I was so screwed up and never got anywhere but I at least spent time dwelling on it. Once my week was over, my birthday was right around the corner. I spent my birthday at home and the rest of the week with my girls. That following Monday, I had to leave for a scheduled work trip to Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. My wife scolded me for returning to work and traveling so soon but then told me she understood why I was doing it. I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while longer. I hugged my wife as the girls were still in bed since I was leaving at 5:00 am, loaded my bag, double checked my long range get home bag was in the car, and loaded my case with my AR-10 chambered in .308 Winchester. The AR-10 is the big brother to the AR-15, that is designed for a little longer range and packs a bit more of a punch with a bullet that is about 3x heavier than the 5.56x45 round used in the AR-15 platform. I was headed to my brother’s place just outside of Ft. Collins for the first 2 nights of my trip and usually when we got some free time in the evenings, we’d head to his buddy’s long rifle range.  There weren’t too many places in Missouri where I could stretch the legs of my AR-10, and it was fun to try to put it through the paces on a 1,000-yard range.  I also threw my newest addition to my hunting collection, a Marlin 45-70 Government rifle. This was more so just for fun, but I wanted to shoot it as well while I was out there. The Marlin 45-70 chunks a 400-grain ball of lead out the end of a 16" barrel. When it strikes its target at 100 yards, it hits with almost 3,000 ft/lbs. of force. This rifle can also be used in long range shooting but with a much longer barrel and different sights as it flies with the trajectory of a rainbow due to its massive projectile. 

March 20 - I headed west on the long ride to Colorado and had downloaded a few books to listen to on the way. I had never really considered myself a doomsday prepper like the tv portrayed those loons but I had always tried to put something back for a rainy day. Working construction as a young man made me learn what feast and famine was quick. So, you put back what you could when you could for the leaner times. When I got out of construction and started my current profession, I had a LOT of windshield time. Driving from account to account and all of them being at least 3 hours away made for boring drives until I found audio books. I immediately immersed myself in listening my drives away with anything I found interesting.  I found the prepper fiction genre and really fell in love with it. The books helped me assess my own supplies and before I knew it, I was borderline crazy doomsday prepper too. I had bought body armor, trauma kits, long term food storage, and even started creating my own MAG (Mutual Assistance Group) of friends and family in case things went sideways. Our country was on a downhill slide, and I knew no empire lasted forever. So, we prepared, discussed, planned, trained, for the worst and hoped for the best. For this drive, I was listening to the newest addition to 2 of my favorite series and knew that would get me out to my brother’s with ease.  I listened to the velvety pipes of the narrators tell the stories and lost myself in the scenes as they painted them in my mind. The drive went quicker than I felt it should have but 12 and a half hours later, I was pulling into my brother's house.  He wasn’t home but I walked right in and ran into my sister-in-law working in their office.  She told me You know where to put your stuff. How was the drive? We made small talk for a few minutes, and she said she had some work to get finished up, but Stan should be home in a few.  I told her that was fine, and I went to pour myself a drink of his favorite rum and Vanilla Coke. I knew it drove him nuts as much as it did when he came to my house and drank all my coffee. He didn’t even like coffee, but you know, brotherly love dictates that we must annoy each other at all costs.  20 minutes later, he comes sauntering through the door and asks, How’s my rum jackass? Probably as tasty as my coffee was I told him.

That evening, we hung out, ate some steaks on his easy bake grill as I referred to his pellet fired convection oven that could be set from an app on his phone.  As we sat there, we were discussing the goings on in the world, and he knew I was of the preparedness mindset. He asked me what I thought about all the bizarre things in the news and going on around the world. He knew how to push my buttons and wind me up. I went into a 5-minute diatribe on current events and what I really thought was going on. In my mind, nothing was coincidence. The war in Eastern Europe, the rampant inflation, the oil prices, food shortages, and the list goes on, all didn’t make sense unless you looked at it with a bit more of a conspiratorial lens.  Nothing seemed to add up if you really looked at it. Then, he had to add the icing on the cake and ask me about the newest gun legislation. That sent me over the edge, and I spent another 10 minutes arguing with his wife and their friends on the validity of the legislation let alone how unconstitutional it was. He of course, sat back and chuckled knowing that the friends they had over were in the opposite camp than I was and knew it was going to cause a spirited debate for his entertainment. I knew what he was doing but I didn’t care.  It was his wife’s friend that surprised me the most when she told me that she never looked at these things in that way and thought I made more sense than she had heard anyone else explain it to her. Her husband on the other hand told me that if I wanted to be a barbarian in the Midwest with my weapons of war and isolationist mindset, he was fine with that but was glad there weren’t too many people in his state with that same mindset.  I informed him that there were far more people in his neck of the woods than mine with my same mindset.  They just weren’t going to talk about it as openly as I do since I don’t live here and can speak openly without having to worry about them showing up at my door with their hand out if the country did ever go tits up.  He scoffed and told me that there weren’t near as many people like me here and he would know because he was a native.  I chuckled and responded with the disarming well, you might be right. I am just saying it’s possible.  We spent the rest of the night trying to work through the world's problems and through my brother's rum collection. We were successful in neither, Jesus he had a lot of rum.

March 21 - I woke up at 5:30 with my alarm screaming at me and my head screaming back. I rolled out of bed, stumbled to the coffee pot in the kitchen, and made 2 cups of the lifesaving elixir. As I turned around to grab the creamer from the fridge, my brother scared the hell out of me. He looked right as rain and asked, rough night?  No, I responded, great night. Rough morning. Give me five minutes to purge some of this poison and drink some of this magic bean juice and I’ll be right with you. I headed to the bathroom and took care of my morning constitutionals while downing one cup of coffee then jumped in and out of the shower which seemed to help. As I waltzed out of the bathroom, he tells me I’ve been thinking about what you had to say last night.  You know I don’t think you’re crazy, but I also didn’t see the need for what you were doing. I held a hand up and said, You think you can give me a few before we get too heavy into this topic? Let me get dressed and get another cup from the carafe of life. He relented and let me get my head right and my clothes on. I came back to the table, and he started in, I always get a kick out of you when I get you worked up around our friends like that. But after listening to you with them last night, it made more sense than it has before. Especially with the current events going on. You predicted something like this just worse, right? I told him I knew something was coming but couldn’t say this was it or that it was all of it. What I mean, I told him, Is that I don’t think the current issues we are facing are the end of the troubles our country will see.  I believe it is just the beginning. We are too far past the tipping point to come off the ledge.  We sat there in silence for a few minutes contemplating our own version of what was going on in the world and I tried to get my mind in full swing with the caffeinated ambrosia left in my cup. I finished my cup and told him, I’ve got to get heading out of here, but we can talk more tonight.  I’ve got one more night here till I head to Wyoming and then home.  I got dressed in my work attire and left the house by 6:30 to head to downtown Denver for my meetings.

As I was driving south on I-25, it