Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) by William Allen Page B

back extra for when times were bad. They paid their taxes, never asked for a handout, and didn’t cause any trouble. Still, under the right set of circumstances, the federal government could and would declare us domestic terrorists. Sound crazy? They’ve done it before.
    My mother taught school and gave freely of her time as a volunteer with a variety of charities. My father never hesitated to help our neighbors, many of whom quietly shared a similar mindset. Our part of the country was not blessed with a plentitude—a word I learned from Grandpa—of high paying jobs, but what money people earned was usually well spent. Sure, we had our welfare leeches and ‘disability’ abusers, and meth was a huge problem, but every community had their share of the worthless. You just had to be watchful and never turn your back on those folks.
    No, the state folks didn’t scare me; neither the ones from Arkansas nor these new folks from Oklahoma. These were by and large good people tasked with an impossible job but still doing the best they could under the circumstances. Sometimes, as Captain Vanderpool said, the best you could do was clean up the bodies. I felt a tinge of concern over being too relaxed around the colonel though. The man was just too sharp. And he had a curious nature.
    No, my biggest fear was that anything recorded or even written down here might find its way to Homeland Security. Or whatever that domestic law enforcement might morph into after the feds crawled out of their bunkers and started trying to call the shots once again like nothing happened. Boy, those guys were in for a rude wakening.
    But those were the kinds of over officious assholes who would go around to all the farms and ranches, seize the seed corn and the breeding stock, and distribute it in the name of serving the people. I know, sounded like tinfoil hat talk, but I have seen the Executive Orders authorizing just that—and worse. All we needed was a president short-sighted enough to activate those orders and my family—and the Kellers—could find themselves fighting a war against federal troops. The last thing I wanted to do was draw official attention to the Messner family.
    If I sounded more mature and maybe a little jaded that your average sixteen year old, then you just don’t know me very well. I’d already seen what could happen when the controlling norms were removed. I still have nightmares about the drawn, weary faces of those girls pressed into service as whores to please Colonel Abbott’s bullyboys. Before that, even the well-meaning efforts of the FEMA personnel at my first camp would result in mass starvation as their meager supplies ran out and with no hope of resupply. That actually made me feel sorry for the poor souls trying to do what they thought was the right thing, even as they imprisoned displaced persons for their own safety.
    And if those lessons didn’t do the job, all I had to do was close my eyes and see the bodies hanging from the makeshift meat hooks suspended from the metal support beams. Those blood slick coveralls and plastic goggles covering the faces of the butchers as they processed a mother and her daughter on adjoining hooks.
    Sometimes I thought too much. As I walked out of the colonel’s office and into the bright sunshine I felt a shiver run up my spine. I wonder at times like this, when things seemed to be going too well, if I ever really escaped the killing floor of the rest stop. Maybe everything that happened since—my meeting with Amy and the friendships I have forged afterwards—were all an elaborate hallucination. Were these unexpected feelings and everything else all the products of a blood starved brain? Was my subconscious trying to cast a fantasy world to cushion my last few moments of existence?
    Yeah. Sometimes I thought too much. I headed over to the barracks to get cleaned up for dinner. I tried to keep a tight rein on my thoughts and only focus on the future. Fantasy or