‘Stupid, Stupid, Stupid’ by Ray Cates (Adolphus)

The house, if you could call it a house was locked. I looked at all the doors and windows carefully before picking a way to get in.  I was aware there could be traps.  The two very old trailers built into one structure, was out in the boonies.  The front lawn had never seen a lawnmower.

There was an outside padlock on the front door so I imagined that no one would be inside.  Also because of the world wide poisoning I didn’t expect to see anyone else.  I had traveled from an island in Lake George to Scrambletown looking into cars and trucks and I had found no one alive.

I did find more dead people than you would expect in the woods.  Poison had not affected the bugs, millions of flies were feasting and it was amazing how many flesh eating birds were working on faces or arms.

Many of the rural roads were blocked so I drove a car for a while and then had to wade a creek or walk around a pile up of cars and find another vehicle.  Usually the keys were still in the cars, and it was unpleasant to move drivers outside their cars, but I had taken anatomy classes and moving a body is far easier than cutting one up.

I began collecting guns and ammo after I saw several Florida Panthers tasting what may have been a car load of tourists.  They had a Canadian license tag and they must have been trying to find something in their bags, which were scattered with them across the road.  I hated to see dead children.  I started to shoot the panthers, but then had 2nd thoughts, not as emotional, ‘Do I want to save the dead kids for bugs, wolves and vultures?’

We had always made it almost a human obligation to bury the dead.  That was often described as ‘Christian Duty’.  Well we always wanted to know where our grandpa’s remains were.  The real valid reason for burial was the way nature takes us back to dust.  We are eaten by other creatures — worms, flies, and all manner of slithering and walking animals get mouthfuls of us.  It is a hard thing to watch, better it happen underground in a steel, waterproof coffin.

I read that at the Mars Colonies there is mandatory cremation.  My hope is that the colony is really self sustaining, because those may be the only humans around anywhere for quite a while.

Before I entered the dwelling I walked around the structure and the garage.  I found no bodies in the yard or the garage.  The garage had lots of interesting items, but not a car. 

I had signs on the road that said, “YOU’VE ARRIVED”.  Then near the front door I had another sort of ironic sign, much smaller, that said, “This is the new center of all civilization.  Knock on the door, or yell, or honk your horn and LET’S BEGIN AGAIN.” 

During my first month in Scrambletown I fixed up my place, repaired and replaced my road signs to attract people to Scrambletown.

I found a dandy hardware store in Eureka and went home with a car load of handy tools.  I figured survival would be all about what devices we had and used.

As a sophomore at U.F. you either had to do a summer of basic army training crawling around and digging foxholes or you could take Advanced Officer Training in North Carolina.  That required passing a test, which I did.  I thought I would sit in a classroom and learn about how high ranking officers send out their troops to get shot and die, basically take notes in an air conditioned lecture hall.

What I got in N.C. was realistic survival training.

We went to outdoor lectures about being behind the lines in enemy territory and not only not being killed, but capturing and using your enemies.  How to improvise and stay hidden until it was possible to get back to our lines.

After out training we were divided into Red and Blue armies and given base camps to protect and defend.  Then we thought up ways to organize and capture the enemy team.  They needed to be neutralized and we needed to capture their base camp.

That was my favorite summer in college.  My team was Blue and we first had to organize our team.  We were from almost every college and of my 250, only 20 were men.

Our leaders wanted our training ‘brutal, ‘realistic’ and ‘primitive’.

One girl asked the question of leadership, “What about capture?  Lots of armies in the world rape captured women.  Will we get raped if we’re captured?

This male survival officer, who looked like a grizzled bear with his pepper white beard said, “Yes, that’s quite possible.  You can use all your training to fight back and escape.  Women often escape because they use their bodies to mislead their captors.

If any of you don’t want realistic training then go home now.”

I don’t know how many men and women went home but I would guess 50.

Our first Blue organizing meeting was at our base camp,  It was a big tepee type structure with nothing inside.

The officer with the white and black beard said, “Now I’m going to leave and let you organize this military unit as best you can.  It is being recorded for training purposes but your on your own for the next 6 weeks.”

As soon as he was out of sight this one cheerleading type girl jumped up and said, “I’m Sadie Brown from Michigan State and I propose that we make the boys officers, and all the girls  privates, and we set up a line around the camp and defend it against the enemy with rocks”.

In other words Sadie wanted to be general.

I stood up then and said, “I’m Lem from the University of Florida and I will fight and gouge the eyes of anyone who says I’m  not General Lem.”

I looked around and everyone was sitting on the ground except Sadie.

“Do you want to fight me Sadie”"  I said in my loud voice.  I was talking to 249 people.

“No sir.” She said in a lower voice, not the assertive voice that would make her student council president. 

“I can’t hear you over there Sadie, come over here.”

“No sir!”  she said in a much louder voice.

“Your orders are to come over here right now Sadie.”

“Yes sir” she said and stepped around and over others.  When she was standing in front of me she saluted.

“Why don’t you want to fight me Sadie?  I said, and she was up close, a short girl, and weighed at least a hundred pounds less in weight than me.  She was pretty as a picture.  I had scared her to death.

“I don’t want my eyes gouged out Sir.”

“Here’s the situation Sadie.  You stood up here and wanted to organize this group into a military unit and I think to make yourself head of it.  Now your shaking like a leaf.  Your not much of a soldier are you Sadie?”

“No sir.”

“You would rather be my female slave than fight me?

“Yes sir.”

“So thats settled Sadie is my belonging bow at my feet Sadie.”  She did.

I forced military organization that way and picked leaders quickly by determining who would fight and who would not.”

The exercise went on for 6 weeks and it would have been boring except my team beat the other team in one day and we built pens to keep the other team in, or tied some to do necessary work.  We punished escape attempts, and had lots of sex all around.

It was nice being General Len, but if I had gone to a military career I wouldn’t have been alive in Scrambletown Florida.

One thing I learned in the military was setting traps for humans.  I was afraid that someone with a high powered rifle would hide some distance from where I was and shoot me.

At first I directed people to my house, but that scared me into not sleeping very well.  Not everyone was a nice guy or girl.  I was not very nice as General Lem.  I won the game.  Sadie even wrote me letters for a while.  I think I was the only boy she ever had sex with, and then we really did it in hyper velocity for 6 weeks.  The letters turned into Christmas cards.

I made more signs and pointed them all at the best house in Scrambletown.  It was a new triple wide.  I put traps all around and inside that mobile home.  The way I figured, better to cage them before they cage me.

In the army I drew up designs for cages and traps, but I didn’t have to build them.  In the army I had captured slaves to build cages.  The main thing was to make a trap almost invisible so that the prey would be caught before they realized what they were in.  I used saws and nails and shovels to dig holes.  I made the triple wide look inviting.  Looking in the windows it looked like home.

One trap, my favorite lured the person who looks in to stick their hand in a wall hole, and then the arm wouldn’t come out.  They could keep pushing their arm in, but couldn’t get it out.  I had a leg grabber on about the same principle.

I began taking walking trips away from home.  At first building the traps I walked to places that had tools in Citra, Eureka and Fort McCoy.  Since I made traps I looked carefully at objects in stores or the ways dead people were laying in places, to see if anyone else had been there.  Some hardware stores I visited over and over and things were the same unless some possums got in and ate some old potato chips.

The first things I caught in my traps were critters, not people.  I also caught several dogs.  Dogs that have been on their own in the woods for 6 or 7 weeks are no longer man’s best friend.  When I let them out of my cages they scampered away from me.  None stayed even as casual friends.

One wild turkey I caught made super fine eating.

In Jacksonville (where I came from) you can tell which season is which but in the Ocala area of Central Florida the seasons are often a blur unless it gets really cold.  the only problem with fires was that they pinpointed where you were.  I didn’t want that.  So I dressed warm and used Coleman heaters and stoves.  There was enough fuel for at least my lifetime in local stores.

Some nights I would leave a flashlight burning in the trap triple wide to lure in any wild people.

I walked to Ocala maybe 8 months after the poison.  I spent 3 days on the trip of maybe 20 miles going west and then I got back quick with a car. 

For most of Ocala either no one had plundered it after the poisoning , or the looters were smart, and left no sign that they had been there.

I explored the city prepared for traps.  I knew the advantage was the hidden enemy, not mine.  But if I had to die, I would die curious.

Only out by Interstate I-75 did I see looted gas stations.  At one Diamond Fuel Cell Station there was a staged scene that was beyond the pale.  It was right at the bottom of a North ramp that was packed with cars.

All around the parking lot of that station were women, dead women, who had been pulled from their cars or walking around.  Most of them were completely nude and the arranger artist had put lipstick and cake makeup on their faces.

If there was a police department left in the world, they would do tests for sperm to see if the women had been assaulted after death.

There were about 40 women and girls in his scene and my idea was that the sicko who had set up the show was still around to watch any survivors reaction.  It made me hyper alert.

That day I drove out of Ocala slow so that I could be followed easily, only when I got to my signs did I get speedy.  I turned off route 40 to Scrambletown on 314A , and hurried to my triple wide, parking right up next to the residence.  I turned a flashlight on in my trailer and then went under and  out to a tunnel so I could watch for a while from a tree stand.

I nibbled from canned vienna sausages and watched as I saw lights coming down the road slowly toward the triple wide.  They followed the signs and used pen lights to signal each other.  They saw my flashlight in the window and walked around the house.

I wondered how many times they had tracked down people from their scene.  Hunters like night goggles, as does the army, and they are pricey in stores, but after the poisoning everything was suddenly free and I had first rate equipment.  They were fooling with my locks.  I wanted it all realistic so they could get in.  Three was a bit more than I wanted to deal with so I picked the biggest man for a head shot and hoped he didn’t  get trapped first.

The smallest boy or man went into the trailer first after the door was broken.  Then I heard his scream.  I knew he had discovered my handgun in the wall safe.  The 2nd largest guy rushed in with his rifle, and that’s when I put a round in the big man’s head.

Inside they heard the gunshot and either the 2nd fellow would try to run outside, and opening the door, would activate a cage he would step in, or he would go to a window and try and raise it causing a cage to cover him.  That was a cage that was heavy and could break arms or heads coming down.

He picked the door, and went in my pit trap.

I looked at the car first and it had chains in it.  I guess to chain up people they found.  I took 2 pairs of handcuffs into the house and some leg chains and locks.

At the triple wide I didn’t talk to either boy but with handcuffs and leg chains on each I led them to a tree where I gagged them and chained them.  Then I went back to the triple wide and reset my traps.  I moved the body and drove the car away and then walked back to my captives.

It was sunrise before I had both boys chained to the floor in different rooms  I just said to each of them, “Think about the total truth and after we all sleep you will tell it.”

I started with the smallest boy and took him to my Florida room in the built together 1950′s trailers.  It was at the back of the contraption and was enclosed but had an open top where sunshine could come in.  Half the floor was concrete and brick and half dirt.  I sat in a recliner and attached his chain to my chair.

I had a note pad like in graduate school and pen and said, “What’s your name boy?”

“I’m Harry sir.”

“What’s the other guy’s name?”

“Lester”

“Where are you from?”

“Here sir.  I mean we lived in Lowell Florida.”

“There are jails there, state prisons, are you escaped prisoners?”

“No sir, but the guy who bossed us around was an escaped inmate at Marion Correctional.”

“What was his name?”

“Danny, but he made us call him ‘master’.”

“Why were you his slaves?

“Yes sir, since the bomb we belonged to him or his partner.”

“Where is his partner?”

“Dead, he was killed.  They fought over girls and us, the slaves.”

“Where are the girls.”

“Somewhere in Ocala at a farm.  We usually went there every night.  Yesterday you came and he followed you.  He said your signs were, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“You came in my trailer to kill me didn’t you?”

“Yes sir the man owned me and I had to do what he said or be punished.”

“How did he punish you?”

“Food or whippings.  He often whipped us.”

“Did you kill anyone else?”

“Yes sir, just men that Danny didn’t want.”

“What about women?”

“The ones Danny didn’t want he killed himself.  He used the old and ugly women to terrorize the girls he kept.”

“How were you supposed to kill me?”

“Wire, I was supposed to strangle you while you slept.”

“Why did you reach for the gun in the wall?”

“Maybe to shoot my master Danny.”

Written by Ray Cates write him at: rcates2@cox.net  or snail mail to 121 NE 13th Ave. Ocala, Florida 34470

Other stories to read are: http://inthenewdeadworld.wordpress.com

http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com          http://aseriousoffer.wordpress.com

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