Free Breakout (Final Dawn) by Darrell Maloney Page A

of.
     
         “The government has the technology to zero in a transmission real time via their satellites. But they don’t share that capability with just anybody, because then others could use it against them.”
         “Interesting. So how do we protect ourselves?”
         “Oh, that’s easy. Stay off the microphone. Nobody can track us if all we’re doing is listening.”
         The radio suddenly came to life. The scan function was on, and it was picking up a survivor in Australia talking to someone in England.
         “ Sydney is decimated. Probably fifty thousand survivors at best. The city government is trying to get up and running again, but they have no money to hire employees. The central bank has collapsed, and our old Australian dollar is now worthless. The mayor is trying to develop a policy by which they commandeer the land and houses of people who didn’t survive the freeze, and then award a house and property to a city employee in exchange for a year’s work.”
         “Well, that sounds like it might work. Here in Birmingham our main problem is the bodies. We’ve got plenty of volunteers to help gather them and burn them. But there are just so many. A thousand bodies for every volunteer. And the doctors are warning of a plague if we don’t get them all gathered and burned. It’s dreadful. Simply dreadful.”
         As they listened, John took out a fresh new logbook. He entered the date and the radio frequency, and a few cryptic notes:
     
    Sydney, Australia: 50,000 left alive.
    Birmingham , England: Unknown number of survivors.
     
         “After a few weeks of listening in, I hope to have a pretty good idea how many survivors are out there. Of course, we’ll focus mostly on two things: who is still alive here in our area, and whether or not they’re friendlies. And little pieces of information that can help us. Like, for example, if a plague really does generate from all this, we can keep an eye on it, or at least an ear on it. We’ll be able to tell from radio broadcasts where it’s at and whether it’s made its way into our area.”
         Mark walked up and caught the last part of the conversation. But he wanted to talk about something else besides death and plagues.
         “John, can I ask you your opinion, as a lawman?”
         “Sure, Mark. About what?”
         “The other day, when Bryan and Brad and I went to pick up the seed planter… we passed a truck stop along the way, on Highway 83. There were dozens and dozens of trailers, parked along both shoulders of the highway. So many they couldn’t fit in the truck stop any more. We think the truck drivers just abandoned their loads there so they could go home to their families.”
         “Ye s. Just before CNN blacked out they did a story on that. Said it was happening all over the country.”
         “Bryan and I have been struggling with the idea of grabbing some of those trailers and bringing them into the yard. On the one hand, it would be stealing. I mean, the goods in those trailers obviously don’t belong to us. But the stuff in them… the food, the clothing, the supplies, could certainly help us to survive in the years ahead.
         “But beyond the morality of it all, whether it’s right or wrong, there’s the legal aspect. If we do bring some of them into the yard, does that make us criminals?”
         “And you want my opinion on the matter, as a former cop.”
         “Yes.”
         “Well, you can’t be a criminal until you’ve been formally tried and convicted of a crime. Whether or not it’s a crime to use something that once belonged to a company that’s surely no longer in business and likely never will be again? Technically, I doubt it.
         “You have to remember that our legal framework has been destroyed. It just doesn’t exist anymore. And if it did, or rather when it reforms again at some point in the future, I don’t