HOMEGROWN TERROR

        My name is Elizabeth and I really don't remember much before my seventh birthday.  The only thing I really have to go on, is the diary and stories Grandma used to tell me and Evan; my older Brother.  Sometime in the fall of Twenty-Sixteen, right before the November elections, a small but vocal part of the citizenry began to take matters in their own hands. Angry because attempts to get their representatives on the ballots had failed miserably, they were not willing to concede that their beliefs were not those of the majority of Americans.  Already armed more heavily than 90% of the population, they broke into cells scattered throughout the states and embarked on a wave of DEATH and DESTRUCTION, never seen within our shores. 

       Grandma told us that at the time things started happening, it seemed as though the country was just experiencing some terrible and unfortunate events.  First the Oakland Raiders Football team perished in a plane crash just outside the fences of LAX airport.  Three days later, a fire brokeout in "The Stable Club", a popular D.C. restaurant and meeting place for high ranking Democrats in and out of office.  That fundraiser took the lives of 6 seated Senators, the Chairman of Party, and 3 house representatives, while 11 others where rushed to the hospital, seriously burned and near death.  Arson was ruled the cause after excelerants were found and the fact emergency doors were chained together from the outside.  The media kept incident reporting buried in the back pages of the paper, while broadcasters relegated it to the wee hours of the morning.  The following week 4 democratic Governors were shot dead in their offices, while 11 more received threats that they were next, prompting some elected Democrats to start resigning out of fear.  National Guard was dispatched in each state to protect those in office, but it was too little to late, according to Grandma, because the powers that be in our country had never really taken our homegrown terrorists seriously until now.  The nation was ill prepared for what lay ahead.
        October 17, celebrated in past years as "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty", took on a whole new meaning to the Teabag militia, and those of us on the receiving end of their wrath.  Starting at 5:00am EST, critical Infrastructure ranging from Interstates and crucial bridges, to electrical power stations and remote Satellite installations were blown to bits, along with anyone in the way.  Airport control towers were leveled, leaving planes circling until they dropped from the sky as their fuel ran out.  Within the hours, armies of bulldozers and commandeered tanks entered city after city that had voted for Democrats and began leveling their houses, schools, churches, day-cares, and shops.  Shooting to kill anyone that didn't flee the destruction.  Grandma told me that neighborhoods of color, mainly Hispanics and African American, were targeted first, followed by trailer parks full of poor whites, believing that making the poor and minorities homeless, living day to day hungry and fearful, would keep them from voting that November, thus ensuring a victory in the upcoming election for the Teabaggers candidates.

Her diary entry at 3:00 pm that day, of how word had spread like fire through Grandma's neighbors that the bulldozers had already flattened the east side and were within 45 minutes of their houses.  How she cried as she loaded blankets, clothes, food, and her dog and two cats in the back of her truck.  Hearing the machines approaching, she hurriedly filled jugs with water, loaded a trash bag with matches, soap, a frying pan, cups and a couple towels, plus a notebook full of addresses and her purse, and took one final glance as she ran from her house to the truck.  In the rear view mirror she watched as house after house behind her fell in a cloud of dust as she drove away.  She hoped her neighbors too were able to escape, she probably would never know for sure though.  Speeding through stop signs and lights, she asked the trucks built in phone to dial my Dad.  Finally, after 3 rings he answered.  "Leave work and head home now", she later wrote in her diary, as the words she uttered to my father. "Stay off the interstates, tell your employees, most of the city is gone. Bye, I'll see you soon, be careful". 

    Grandma wrote that she

spotted Harvey's 

grown children with granddaughter in tow, running with a crowd of people being chased by gun wielding men in cars and pick up trucks, who were slowly picking them off one by one.  As she came alongside them, she wrote that she yelled to them to get in, and they did.  The next entry told of bodies littering the street behind her speeding truck as men, women and children screamed in utter terror as she drove past them.  A few miles down the road she wrote that she pulled over into an old shopping center lot, abandoned long ago, to allow her passengers to get themselves more secured in the bed of the truck.  Moments later, she once again hit the road, her sights set on locating Harvey.  After spending 30 minutes detouring around the ribbons of gravel and concrete chunks once known as highway that encircled the city, Grandma wrote that she pulled into the parking lot of the printing firm were he worked as a designer.  The lot was empty save one car with a flat tire.  Just as she was about to drive off, she spotted him, jumping up out of the tall grass and running towards the truck.  Once he was inside the cab, she could see the relief on his face, and even more so as he turned to see his family safely in the back.  She wrote that she told him she was heading to my Dad's.  Hopefully, we all would be safe their, at least for a little while.  His only response was "Go".  She told him to try and phone him but by now all radio's, televisions, phones, and computers were eerily quiet as communications had ceased across the continental U.S.

        The next entry in the diary, written at 8:00pm tells of driving miles out of route, avoiding roadblocks were people were pulled from their vehicles if they were the wrong color, shackled, and loaded into police transport vans.  Resistors were shot or set on fire as onlookers laughed.  Finally arriving at my Father's, Dad rushed outside and helped carry the supplies into the his house.  He gathered everyone in Evan and I's toy room.  All the vehicles were parked around back, tails to the house, fueled and ready to go.  We pulled all the shades, locked all the doors, and boarded the up the lower windows.  Grandma penned that by midnight, with the house secured, everyone shared a small meal, taking turns talking about what they had been through during the day.  Later while the children and younger adults rested, Harvey and Grandma sat guard with the only rifle we had among us, cloaked in light from an oil lamp.  Dad, would go upstairs every hour or so and look out the curtains to see if anyone was approaching or roaming around outside. The next morning, a hard series of knocks landed on the front door or our home.  According to Grandma, Dad thought it best to have Harvey and his family, hide down in the basement.  Just as Dad locked the downstairs door, the knocks came again, only harder.  Grandma walked to the front door, unchained it and peered through the small opening.  The man at the door smiled into the door opening and said, it was safe to come out, turn your telly back on for further information, and then walked off the porch with his comrade and headed to the house next door.  Grandma wrote that she wasn't sure she believed the uniformed man, as she didn't recognize the outfit he was wearing.  

        Dad opened the door wider, and peered out at the men walking away, then shut the door.  They're British, Dad said to Grandma.  They both stepped out on the porch, and watched the men go to each house on the block.  Back inside, her diary said that Dad turned on the television and we all huddled around it as the Reporter showed pictures of the British forces arriving in America, and stopping the overthrow.  As the footage of leveled cities, and bodies strewn about the streets ran across the screen, Grandma brought Harvey and family up from the basement to share in the good news.  Slowly, we all filed outside, dropping to kiss the ground and thank God above for sparing us.