Times Up

by Josiah922



Angie Poist walked through the front door to the Richland Furniture Store. She smiled as she realized she had cut 10 minutes off of her 3 mile walk to work from when she first started 2 months ago. She walked better, she felt better.

She smiled across the room at Alex, the sales manager, as he noticed she was 20 minutes early to work and tapped his watch nodding and smiling. She returned a thumbs up back to him. Over the past 2 months she had lost 40 pounds and basically became a new person in more ways than one. She flipped her Khaki colored Maxpedition Vulture II backpack off of her shoulders and began to tote it to her cubical.

Angie sat at her desk still breathing a little faster and deeper than normal. She took off her 5.11 windbreaker, folded it and secured it inside her backpack. She retrieved her 3 inch black pumps from her backpack and kicked off her Original SWAT classic 6” boots in black. She had caught the boots on sale and was liking them more and more as she walked to the office each day. Angie slid on the pumps and stashed the boots in her backpack. After a few forced deep breaths her breathing returned to normal. She immediately finished off the “office” look by freshening up her makeup and placing the backpack in the bottom draw of the filing cabinet near her desk.

She hurried to the time clock and punched in 10 minutes early. Angie would take a little extra time off at lunch to make up for the time seeing that she had started to favorite a small park 3 blocks away for lunch. She immediately returned to her desk and started on the books. Alex would want the sales figures for the week, month and year to date. Angie already had figured out a query that could give the information to her within a minute and printed out to her printer in two. It could even give the figures per sales person and department.

As the report was printing out she went to the office “break room”. It really wasn’t much. A coke machine that she avoided like the plague, was on the side wall. Cokes used to be a staple of her diet, but the sugar and caffeine content is just too unhealthy. Cokes as well as most processed foods were not part of her diet anymore. To the side the Coke machine stood a water cooler at which she filled a canteen up after sprinkling some dehydrated strawberry pieces into it. This was a great way to get healthy flavored water and she loved the taste of strawberries. A refrigerator, sink, microwave and counter top was along the other wall.

A few moments later she had dropped off the canteen at the desk and was on her way to deliver the paperwork to Alex. He was impressed by her. Genuinely impressed, not the “I want to ask her out on a date” impressed, but the “this person does her job” impressed, which was more valuable to Angie. She handed the figures to him as she walked by, “Alex, here are your numbers.”

“Thank you Angie. What would I do without you?” Alex said.

“Be forced to learn the database program yourself,” she stabbed back.

“Yes, but I would mess up the numbers and then where would we be? Out on the street, that is where. Tell me, do you want that on your conscious?” he asked jokingly.

“I can survive. How about you city boy?” she said as she walked back to the office. Angie had come from a rural town about 45 miles away to the south. She was born and raised there, but moved near the medium sized town after college because of the job prospects. She had a cheaper apartment and was working for a few years to build up her savings again and, of course, contribute to the “group”. Angie lived in the city, but the country life was who she was, born and bred.

The morning wore on and the clock shown it was lunch time. After changing back into her boots, donning here windbreaker, grabbing her lunch bag and refilling her canteen she was out the door. Angie headed for the small park that she liked to frequent on her lunch break. She sat in the shade and enjoyed the sounds of the birds and wind as she finished off her chicken breast salad and the one pack of crackers. The salad was a normal tossed salad, but had radish tops and cucumbers from her own garden that was growing on her balcony at the apartments where she lived. She knew how to make things grow and loved to grow things for herself.

She had made it back to work, changed and started her daily expense payments. Terry and Trisha, two of the regular sales people, walked through the front door saying, “I am telling you that it has been all over the news. They just raised the level to severe.”

Angie’s ears perked up, “Terry what are you talking about?”

“Homeland security just moved the threat level to severe. They just came across the radio with it. There was an attack in Atlanta. Well go listen yourself.” Terry answered back.

Angie walked straight to her cubical and turned on her desktop FM radio. For several minutes everyone listened to various radio and TV stations throughout the office. It was the same information, the threat level had been raised to severe. Also there was a botched terrorist attack in Atlanta when 2 men were found with an unnamed air born chemical, some explosives and a few weapons. There were thoughts that it might be a dirty bomb of some type. The men somehow detonated the bomb prematurely before reaching the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium for some reason, which appeared to be their intended target.

“Of course,” Angie thought to herself. “The game was being televised just an hour later and it would have been a good high profile target with a LOT of people there.”

Trisha started, “Well that isn’t so bad. We are miles away from Atlanta. Surely we will be ok.”

Alex was anxious and looked around a bit. He wasn’t the owner of the store, but the owner was on vacation this week and she had left him in charge. You could tell he was in thought. Within seconds he was on the cell phone obviously trying to reach the owner.

The news continued with the local EMA office director starting to be interviewed. Basically the speech was one of trying to instill calm in the citizens of the city and county. The various state law enforcement departments were now on high alert. They were asking people to stay secured in their homes and not to travel until things got under control.

Half way through the speech, the station was interrupted when the Emergency Broadcast System kicked in. The announcement was from the Department of Homeland Security itself. It immediately announced of 12 more such bombs similar to the one found in Atlanta had been detonated all over the country. Angie expected to hear a list of the cities and they followed shortly. “Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Ft. Worth, TX; Denver, CO; Newark, NJ;….” A first glance she didn’t notice, then it hit her like a truck. While some of these cities could not all be considered the biggest cities in America, they all had one thing in common. They all had relatively busy airports.

The announcement on the EBS restated the need to stay home and not to travel. They also stated that the bombs were relatively small and no major damage was inflicted.

Alex snapped the cell phone shut and turned to everyone, “Look I can’t get the owner on the phone, but it sounds like to me that the authorities want everyone to be at home. I say we close up shop and get out of here. I will try to call everyone tonight and let you know about tomorrow. Clock out and I will lock up. Please be safe getting home.”

Everyone nodded and went to the time clock to await their turn to clock out except Angie. She went straight to her desk and started changing into her boots and windbreaker. As the others continued to wait their turn at the time clock Angie attempted to make a call, first on her Tracfone cell phone then on the office phone. During both attempts she received a recording stating that all circuits were busy and to try her call later. She was the last to clock out, but not the last out of the door.

Her apartment was three miles to the south. The furniture store was located on one of the main streets going through the town. It was a four lane street with a turn lane in the middle and was flanked on each side with side by side retail stores and fast food places of every type and size. The road itself was pretty busy during the day, but right now you could actually see the number of cars increase to the point of stalling any progress at all. Bumper to bumper traffic was an understatement. No one was going anywhere.

Angie turned and at a jog headed north, away from her apartment. It was the plan. THE MINI-PLAN that she had worked out when she wanted to start walking. She knew that she might get stuck at work one day and the mini-storage facility was only one block away behind the mini-mall to the north. It was an older facility built with cinder blocks that had just been renovated and was the perfect location.

Within a few minutes she was at her storage unit and was opening the door. Inside were wall to wall boxes.

“Why airports?” she thought as she slammed the door down behind her as entered the storage unit. She wedged the door shut with a length of rebar put there for that specific purpose. “And the explosives appeared to be small in comparison to most bombings,” she continued to think as she changed clothes into jeans, t-shirt and boots. Out of one of the boxes Angie lifted a kaki colored plate carrier vest and put it on. It had several pouches and one distinct pocket that held a Glock 19 compact handgun chambered in 9mm. The windbreaker went back on over the plate carrier to conceal it from prying eyes.

She tried her cell phone again. Once again the “all circuits are busy” message came back to her. Angie shook her head and placed the phone into the windbreaker pocket.

Then it hit her. “It was dirty bombs. Some kind of airborne chemicals. The bombs were NOT there to damage, they were just the delivery systems. Lucky the closest one was over 200 miles away.” She immediately reached for another box containing a Nato MKIII Chemical Suit, a CBRN Millennium mask and a large roll of duck tape – Just in case.

A few moments more and the storage unit door was being raised. Angie rolled out a "Montague" Paratrooper Bike with the chemical suit box strapped to the back and locked the unit door before she was off like a shot.

Walking 3 miles to work everyday took her about an hour, but the bike increased her speed dramatically. Cars and trucks were just stalled in the road going no where. Angie weaved her bike through them and around them. She even took advantage of an old rail road rail path and cut off half a block’s ride cutting over to the road she needed to be on. She should be at the apartment in under twenty minutes.


On the main stretch of road leading out of town the cars were moving again, but the traffic was still thick. Angie buckled down to the push of her legs on the peddles and the Paratrooper sailed down and over the small hills. Seventeen minutes and forty one seconds later she was pointing the bike into the apartment complex.

She road the bike down the sidewalk and right up to the downstairs apartment door. Angie unlocked the door and as she did she checked the top right of the door for the presents of a small wooden match stick. Ever since college she always wedged the match stick into the crack of the door as a way to tell if someone had entered while she was away. The stick hung there exactly where she had left it that morning.

Angie pushed the door open and entered pulling the bicycle in with her. The door was then quickly locked and latched. She needed time. Time to wait this thing out, and to get in touch with the other members of the group. “Lock em’ down,” she whispered to no one in particular.

Looking around the apartment a visitor would not see too much out of the ordinary, but there were a few clues that could be found if you knew what they were. The living room chair was big and bulky. It really didn’t match the rest of the décor in the living room, but it was the perfect height to wedge under the front door and it weighed a ton. It took her several minutes to move it into place.

One might think that it was odd to mount the small decorative weirdly shaped shelves right next to the main (and only) window of the living room. After a moment their purpose revealed itself when Angie brought out two large metal plates and two metal rods. The blacked out quarter inch plates were placed in the windows behind the closed window shades. Angie took the knick knacks off of the small shelves that were not only hung on the wall but bolted to the studs in the wall. The bars were attached to the little slots on the shelves. Wing nuts bolted the bars to the shelves securely. There was another set of such shelves around the only other window in the place which was in the main bedroom.

She then tried her cell phone again and once again got an “all circuits busy” message. She walked to the bedroom and turned on the Kaito KA009R radio. She tuned it to the local radio station she had been listening to at work and turned up the volume. They were repeating the messages issued earlier.

She then walked to the bathroom and took out a box from underneath the sink. She unwrapped the large plastic bag and threw it into the bathtub. Angie then looked for the “fill sock” adapter and plugged the WaterBob water container onto the faucet. The container was basically a large plastic food grade sack that could hold 100 gallons of tap water in the tub. Angie had over 25 gallons of stored water in the apartment, but this water could be used as well if needed. She turned the water on and returned to the bedroom.

She then walked back to the bedroom and her closet. She opened the Sentry Gun Safe’s combination lock and pulled out a Century International Arms AK-47 rifle with a 30 round magazine. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and grabbed two more magazines that fit in a plate carrier pouch that she still wore under her windbreaker. Angie had forgotten that she was still wearing the thin jacket and finally took it off. She placed the windbreaker on her bed as well as the rifle, but positioned so she could easily reach it. Angie then, from the closet, pulled out her BOB and laid it on the bed as well.

Now that she had the basics taken care of for now she turned her attention to contacting the group. The cellular phone had been no good, so she moved to plan B. She picked up her Netbook and signed into her wireless network that was tied into her cable modem. Her internet connection was still up. She would send out an email to her emergency email list for the group. The list consisted of highly used email addresses and cell phone numbers for every member of the group.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a USB Flash drive. The flash drive was connected to the netbook and after a password was entered in order to access the drive a list of codes and messages were listed. If you tried to access the flash drive without this code the files contained on it would remain encrypted and you could not view their contents. The drive was also flragile enough that it could be easily damaged to prevent unauthorized use. Using a master key to create a changing pattern in the codes, she started creating her message. Here are basically the phrases that were chosen for the message.

The master key was identified
Her unit was identified
Challenge and response was listed to authenticate the message

To All,
Location = home - apartment
Health of this unit = well – no sickness or injury
Security condition of this unit = secure - immediate environment controlled, armed
Logistics of this unit = stable – no needs
Logistics should last = 30 day length
Current Action = self recommend stay home, high security, 3 day length, request orders
Ability to move – positive
Method of movement – Truck (unsecured), bicycle (secured), feet
Job Status – employed, closed, unknown length
Future communication – 1800 hours today – phone, email, ham
Misc comments – need info on attacks, possible chemical/biological attack? What is condition of other units, what is condition of main base (farm).
End of Communication

These are the phrases that she selected. She looked through the long spread sheet of information using the key to translate the phrases into numbers and letters. She typed the letters and numbers carefully into a long stream of characters. Then Angie double and triple checked the numbers and codes. Finally she hit send.


Angie turned off the radio and turned on the TV to FOX News. She spent the next few minutes frequenting the various main stream news sites. Some had so many visitors it made them unreachable. Most just had big banners on their web sites reading “Terrorist Threat Level: Severe” and almost a word for word prerelease from the Department of Homeland Security. The TV was promising some video of some of the bombings soon, currently they were showing the post explosion damage and having “expert” after “expert” try to comment on the how’s and why’s.

Angie then started visiting several prepper websites and forums. All kind of speculations about what was happening was being posted. Everything from accusations of a false flag operation to actual terrorist using a different approach to attack were posted in the forums.

There were several people on the forums that Angie paid attention to. One of which was Ranger53. He was a retired Army Ranger that gave advice willingly and seemed to have a head on his shoulder. He posted a link to a YouTube video that someone had already leaked out. His comments said that it was a security camera that showed the police making a stop on a van, the police walking back to their car, then the van taking off and plowing into a bus parked at the area where buses drop off their riders. The van explodes and a thick smoke billows out of the van.

Just then the netbook dings and an email notification window appears in the lower left side of the screen. The email is from an email account that she had never seen before and most likely will never see again. The group often used free temporary email accounts opened with false information for a message then abandoned the account. Angie swapped to her email window and viewed the email received. It is nothing but a row of numbers and letters. She opened the spreadsheet she used before and deciphered the message. Here is the returning message.

The master key was identified
Home base unit was identified
Challenge and response was listed to authenticate the message

To Angel Unit,
Location = home base
Health of units at base = well – no sickness or injury
Security condition of this base = secure – perimeter secured, patrols and guards posted
Logistics of this base = stable – no needs
Misc comments – attacks appear to be chemical/biological attack, source at Grady Memorial Hospital: Georgia Poison Center confirmed, 3 dead – multiple people infected, No infected cases near, No Units reporting sickness, parents are secure
Current Action = endgame with pickup, recommend immediate biological protection, order pickup at 0623–d by armed escort x3 – grab and go – 20 minute window.
Method of movement – Unit’s vehicle with city van and 1 truck escort.
Future communication request – Confirm then silence, second attempt 0800 if no joy
End of Communication

She responded with another email that was simply to identify her and accept the message. Nothing else was added.

Several things were key about this communication. First everything was fine at home base. Her parents were there and ok. She was also right about the chemical attacks. It looks like either the news is not reporting the deaths or they don’t know yet. It might be airborne and it appears they are wanting her to use the biological protection devices to stay safe. Of course the source may be wrong, but the order was issued for endgame which meant a total recall of all group members.

Angie thought about the job and the good pay. It will certainly be missed. With any luck she will be able to get another job after this blows over. She would call in as soon as she could and request vacation and/or sick time. If they were unwilling or if the vacation/sick time were used up, then she would resign her position.

The plan of action was the focus. “Endgame with pickup” meant that she would be leaving for as long as the threat was there and someone was coming to escort her home. Also the time of the pick was noted “0623 –d”. The 0623 was 6:23AM. However, the –d stood for a code within the code. –a was 1 hour, -b was 2 hours, etc. With the –d code that put their pick time at 2:23AM. If anyone could decipher the code and wanted to hit the place at the pickup time, they would be too late.

Someone knocked on Angie’s door. Angie stopped for a second and reached for the rifle on the bed and chambered a round quietly. Another knock came. She ignored it. Then the she heard a knock from across the hall of the breezeway. She walked to the peep hole as the man who was knocking on her neighbor’s door walked quickly down the breezeway.

They had practiced this several times and it was an efficient and secure way to move. The armed escort x3 meant that it would be William (her cousin) and his wife on a city van. Along with Trey and his brother on his Ford F-250 4x4 diesel pick running escort. Her truck would make three vehicles in the party. In the practice drills before, she had brought up the rear with the city van in the center. Trey was the further away and he would pick up William and redistribute the load putting most on the city van. Then they would be here for her.

She was not to leave the apartment for any reason even to check on her truck. It was always easier to defend a position than to risk exposure. Angie turned on the shortwave radio down low so she could listen to the overseas news sources for new news.

She could bring anything she wished from the house as long as she could load it in twenty minutes. The first thing that she did was to prepare her Bug Out Bag and combat vest. She filled up her water containers from the water she had in storage. Angie would not use the tap water or the water in her bath tube if she could keep from it. She double checked ALL of the contents of he packs. Everything was ready to go. Of course it was. These items were always ready and had everything that she needed to survive.

The next thing was to prep her essentials boxes. These two boxes were larger 24 gallon Action Packers that contained her essential items. Some of these items were duplicates of here Bob items like an extra cooking setup, tarps, food, clothing and water filter. Other things in the boxes were “extras” that would make like easier like extra toilet paper, extra feminine products, and a tent just to name a few. She examined her chemical protection suits, gas masks, rubber gloves and n95 rated face masks that she had added to the boxes. Also a “Cabela's Super Mag Hauler” was added to the two boxes. If she had to, she was willing to pack out the essentials boxes on the game cart by foot if she had to.

She could easily throw those into her truck or the city van within twenty minutes so she continued to pack up clothing and other items. It was only when she made sure the high priority items were taken care of that she turned to these low priority items. Nothing at the apartment was worth much in the grand scheme. Honestly the room dedicated to her at the farm was her real home and she kept everything of REAL value there. That was where she sent her money and invested her time. This was just a place that she worked to save time getting to work everyday. It could burn down tomorrow and she would not loose a wink’s sleep over it.

Angie looked at the clock and it was already 7PM. She had worked so hard she forgot to eat or check her light discipline. The sun was just going down now as she looked out side the door through the peep hole. She turned off the lights through out the apartment and pulled out her headlamp from her plate carrier. Angie turned on the red filter and went to the kitchen.

Five hours to pickup and then possibly another hour for the drive home (if nothing bad happened). “Yep, definitely need something to eat,” Angie said to no one in particular. She decided to cook something filling but something that would not smell much. She fixed a salad with some fruit and ate it as she warmed up some left over chicken she had cooked the night before. Normally she stayed away from bread, but she was now actually trying to boost her caloric intake. She ate two slices of bread and gobbled down about of cup of peanuts. She also drunk most of the tea in the fridge. The rest was poured into a small canteen in her bug out bag. Water was great, but sometimes there was more to life than water.

All of her equipment had long since been ready loaded into the 5 boxes that sat in her living room floor. She sat in the dark watching the news on the internet. No one had anything on the infected people except for a few weird posts on some of the boards she frequented. Was the information wrong? Was the media blocking the news? It did not matter. The group had activated Endgame, she was going home until all could be verified.

She had managed to take about a two hour nap from 11PM till a little after 1AM looked at the time. She slept with her rifle in her lap, but better safe than sorry. She put up her netbook, used the bathroom and drunk a little more tea. She was ready and the time was 2:17AM.

Her cell phone rang and she picked up the phone, but said nothing. She listened for a bit and heard a tone generated by someone on the other end. She pressed a phone number back to them. Then 5 more tones. She pressed back one more tone, then hung up. She took the battery out of her phone and placed it in the low priority pile.

Angie pushed the chair out of the way and watched the time. The 5 tones meant that the pick up was 5 minutes out. They were right on time. She put on one of her N95 masks and wrapped her Wildland Firefighter mask around the mask. She then put on her rubber gloves. After 4 minutes Angie stood by the door with her chambered rifle in hand, she waited.

A soft “shave and a haircut” knock came on her door. She knocked back twice for the “two bits” and unlocked the door. Immediately two men came in each wearing similar gear. They said nothing else but asking a question, “Status?” Angie smiled, “Ready for pickup” and pointed to the boxes in the middle of the floor.

All three moved out the door carrying three of the needed boxes. William’s wife was out of the city van with her hand in her jacket on the hilt of her handgun doing sentry duty. Trey was in his truck just across the parking lot ready. She immediately walked to her Toyota Tacoma truck with a car cover wrapped around it and took off the cover. After a brief examination of the vehicle, it appeared everything was ok. She hopped in a cranked the truck.

She nodded to William and he began loading her boxes into her truck. She walked by the apartment complex office on the way back to the apartment and dropped off a check for 3 months rent into the payment slot. Angie then went back to the apartment and waited till the two men took the last of the boxes. One was a little heavy since it contained several rounds of ammunition. William grunted when he started to lift the box. Angie secretly smiled under her mask.

All was quite. Angie locked the door to the apartment and headed back to her truck. William stuck his hand into the air and waved his finger in a circle in a “fire ‘em up” motion. Trey started up his engine and eased out to the road followed closely behind by William in the city van. Angie brought up the rear and like three shadows faded from view down the road to her home.