The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 3 | Anarchy Is Loosed by Harrison William Hale

Author:Harrison, William Hale [Harrison, William Hale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Zombie Apocalypse
Published: 2022-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Georgetown, South Carolina

April 21st

A few miles north of Georgetown, across the Inter-coastal Bridge spanning the Waccamaw and Pee Dee Rivers, lay the sprawling private resort called Richelieu Estates. Richelieu, built on the site of an old rice plantation by the same name, boasted a beautiful golf course, four miles of white sand beach, and hundreds of “second” homes that started at three-quarters of a million dollars. Beach front and channel access homes routinely sold in the five to ten million range, some of them tasteful but others simply a gaudy affirmation of the owner’s financial success. It was also very, very white.

Of course, soon after the first crews broke ground, the residents of Georgetown dubbed the community “Richville.”

Richelieu and Georgetown had a long and uneasy relationship. The resort, technically a part of Georgetown, received their sewage and water hookups from the town, but the mostly black population of the city felt about as welcome there as a skunk at a church social. A guardhouse manned twenty-four hours a day straddled the only entry road, permitting only residents and their pre-registered guests. Trade and delivery vehicles had to wait while a guard verified their purpose, although, to be fair, when large numbers of outside workers performed tasks like road-resurfacing, break-ins and thefts went up dramatically.

Georgetown possessed no beaches anywhere else in its vicinity. Several attempts by the city fathers to force the resort to open its lovely beaches to residents, including the threat of a cutoff of water and sewer, had met with a solid wall of NO, punctuated by court rulings.

Richelieu needed Georgetown for the services it provided. Georgetown needed Richelieu for the money it spent in their shops and stores. So Mercedes-Benzes, Lincolns, and Range Rovers mingled with Chevys and Fords in an unlikely dance.

When the Takeda-Soseki spores first initiated the great pandemic, many of the property owners of Richelieu fled there with families and friends, hoping to leave the terrible plague behind them in Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. But the spores already lined their upper sinuses and slipped, silent and invisible, into their brains, colonizing their nervous systems for eventual overthrow.

When food shortages arose, they attempted to use their wealth to ensure abundant supplies for themselves and their loved ones, but strict rationing forced them to stand in line for their meagre allotments, just like everyone else. When electrical service got wonky and inconsistent, stores quit taking plastic and cash became king. And nobody took checks.

On a balmy July evening, three carloads of rough men decided to see what of value they could find in the homes of the wealthy. A brief but fierce firefight at the gatehouse left two guards dead and one badly wounded. The invading cars raced down the main road and pulled off into the first enclave of homes, attracted by lights in some of the windows.

The wounded guard radioed for help from the two college students who manned the roving security SUV. After placing a call to 911, they had the presence of mind to bang on doors, looking for residents who had firearms.

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