H1N1 Pandemic brings martial law and the end of civlization as we know it

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I knew it would come to this.

It wasn't mandatory - at first. Then, when people actually started dying and everyone starting getting paranoid, it was a government mandate. Of course, some folk are saying it started with the government's "takeover" of health care. But the ones saying that are the ones snitching on their neighbors now.  

Luckily I have good neighbors. Who knew living in the ghetto with a pot-smoking dad on disability on one side and a drug-dealing mother of four children by different fathers on the other side would be my salvation. The only snitch on our street is the retired gas company employee who's been trying to get the drug-dealing mother in trouble with Jobs and Family Services for years.

Even the evangelical older couple that lives down the street in the only other large house other than mine have proven to be friends of 'dissidents' like me. Living up to the legacy of their home that is on the historical registry, purported to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, they provide a safe haven for folks like me. I can't live in my own home because, like an idiot, I did my duty as a citizen and filled out that census form and mailed it five years ago. Now, every other day, a truck comes by and soldiers jump out and knock at my door.

My landlord put a padlock on it a couple of months after I stopped paying rent, but they still knock because their records say I live there. I watch them from my pothead neighbor's attic or the basement of the evangelicals who live next to him. I move from one house to the other in case they decide to search houses on the street that may be harboring fugitives from the government sanctioned quarantine of anyone not wearing a wrist band. Since my pothead neighbor was just paranoid enough not to fill out the census, there is no record of him, his wife, or his two kids living at home, so no one comes looking for him.  He even got some fake wrist bands so he and his wife can shop and his children can go to school.  Because if he was wearing a real wrist band, I'd steer clear of him.

The evangelicals are wearing authentic ones, but they're old and their immune systems may be compromised, so they have to be careful.  They know the wrist bands are the mark of the beast, though. They belong to an apocalyptic church that preaches end time theology. Their pastor was one of the first people quarantined for not succumbing to the government mandate. The mother of four who supports her children with a welfare check and the sale of the pot she grows in her basement also sells fake wrist bands, but since she didn't fill out a census form, she doesn't exist to the soldiers that come down our street every other day.

The only citizens on that street as far as the government is concerned are the retired gas employee, the evangelical couple, and the woman across the street who plays cello in the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. The crack dealers next to her and the family on the corner and the two families at the end of my side of the street didn't turn in census forms either. There are some abandoned houses across the street between the crack dealers' house and the house on the corner and I hear other fugitives sometimes stay in them at night. I've seen lights in them once in a while, but I've never seen anyone coming or going. 

I have friends all over town who would help me and two members of my family have begged me to leave Ohio and meet them on our land in Texas where my brothers, Joseph and John and their families are bunkered with an artillery that rivals the Pentagons, loaded with gold and silver, rations, generators, and crank radios. My brother James is still in Columbus.  My sister, Debbie, filled out the census and they picked her up and quarantined her a couple of months ago. We haven't heard from her since.

So, James is taking care of my mother, using her authentic wrist band to buy them food and get around. Mom just goes out to church, nowhere else. Her pastor, who denounced all of the members like her wearing the mark of the beast, was picked up during Bible study last Wednesday night because one of the deacons turned him in to get the $10,000 reward.

I'm starting to wonder if my pothead neighbor will do the same thing and turn me in because he's a hustler. He's helping the mother of four sell her writstbands in exchange for some pot. Or maybe it'll be the mother struggling to take care of four kids. I know it won't be the evangelicals because they don't need the money. Maybe I should go to Texas. Or I could just get the damn wrist band and be marked by the beast. So many people died during the winter and the deaths haven't slowed down since spring arrived.

If the government had an accurate account of the number of people that live on my little block, they'd be amazed that while only four people have been vaccinated, everyone on this block survived the worst epidemic of flu since 1919. I don't want that poison in my body, but I could probably counteract the H1N1 vaccination somehow. The onions I told all my neighbors to put in their homes to absorb the bacteria and viruses in the air are doing their job. There is so much infection, my neighbor's wife has to buy a bag of onions every week. A few days sitting in a glass bowl and an onion turns black from the infected air.

Onions are getting more and more expensive as the price of everything goes up, but she planted some in the yard, so we'll have a new crop. Everyone on my street who didn't get the vaccination is using the onions per my instructions to absorb the sickness that's in the air. When the soldiers come, they're wearing gas masks. I'd offer them some onions, but...

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I can't go back to the evangelicals house. My pothead neighbor saw them talking to the soldiers when they came by yesterday. The wife was crying and the husband pointed to my house and said something and the soldiers came and knocked on his door, demanding to search his house.  They started in the basement and went up to the attic.  They also searched the mother of four's house and every other house on the block. They searched every house but mine. What they didn't know and what I've never told the evangelicals is there is a tunnel that goes from  their house to mine where the slaves where sent when the slave hunters came to search the well-known spot on the Underground Railroad.

I was in the basement of my neighbor's house two nights ago when I had a dream about  slaves hiding in the tunnel and dying when it was discovered and the slave hunters used smoke to try to run them out. They ran down the tunnel to get to my house, but the door was blocked and they couldn't get in; so, rather than return to slavery, they stayed in the tunnel and were overcome by the smoke. When I first moved into that house, there was a huge presser blocking the door and I moved it because I thought I might need to escape some day and I didn't want the only safe passage blocked.  

After awaking from the nightmare about the slaves trapped in the smoke-filled tunnel, I crawled through the cobwebbed filled tunnel that my evangelical neighbors never discovered and when I got to my house, pushed open the door to  my basement stocked with canned goods, bottled water, a small generator, blankets, a crank radio and some gold and silver I was sure my landlord would have found. Well, he never cared much about the house, didn't make needed repairs or spend much money on it at all, and probably thought the old metal cabinet in the basement was empty.

There's enough here to last me three months which is about how long it will take me to backpack to Texas with one of my neighbor's fake wrist bands. He's bringing the wristband to me tomorrow and I'm leaving tomorrow night. I'll miss my house. It's an old Victorian and the only reason I put up with a lousy slumlord who molested his thirteen year-old stepdaughter. But even he's got some integrity. I heard he was quarantined for not getting a vaccination. He was turned in by his supervisor at work. Guess you can't work for the government, not even the city government, and refuse to give up the only freedom we thought we had left: the right to decide what goes in our bodies. I'll get to Texas.

There's an underground network for folks like me and many people who'll help. Funny, most of them are not Christians, but just good people trying to do the right thing. Unfortuantely, most Christians like the deacon at my mother's church, my landlord's supervisor at work, and my evangelical neighbors are the one's helping the government persecute us. But the Bible does say that even the elect would be fooled by the antichrist. All those who thought it was Obama don't even realize they've been fooled. No one ever suspected it would be Joe Biden.

Yet, even though he's the one issuing the orders, I don't think he's the brains behind this whole thing. Whoever the real beast is, he or she is keeping a low profile - for now. I don't care who it is. I'm just not wearing the mark of this or any other beast because it requires me to poison myself with a vaccine that I don't want or need. Better make sure I take plenty of onions with me on the trip and get more on the way.  My brothers have a whole field on our land in Texas full of onions. They have been selling them to people in the area .

Actually, they barter. No one sells anything any more because no one has any money.  The economy never got a chance to recover because the  banks just kept up their usual tactics and ran it right back into the ground. Gas prices are outrageous, so cars stand idle and those who do have jobs get paid so little, they can barely survive. The dollar's history. People use gold and silver to buy most things, if they have any. But having gold and silver is like having a target on your back. Anyone flashing either in a city is usually robbed on the spot or mobbed. It's madness. Everywhere except on my little block.

I'm going to miss it here. I tried to get my pothead neighbor to come with me. Even after I told him that my brother John has a back field on our property in Texas that's full of marjauna plants, he said "no." His mother is here and he wants to be nearby in case she needs him. But she's wearing an authentic wristband and one of his brothers told him he overheard her talking to the soldiers when they came down her street telling them she knows somebody who is selling fake wrist bands and asking how much is the reward for giving an anonymous tip. I'm afraid for him and his wife and kids. They're like family to me. I'll miss them.

I miss my sister and I'm going to miss James and Mom. I'm going to Columbus first to say "good-bye" to them and to try to get them to come with me.  I know they won't. Mom can't make the journey walking and James won't leave her behind. I don't know. Maybe I'll stay there and help him take care of her. But James won't let me. He'll tell me to keep writing. See, he and I have an underground newspaper that we've been sending out, along with a number of other people who contribute telling people not to get the vaccination and about the onions, as well as identifying those who they need to avoid and listing the names of the quarantined so they can't just "disappear.' James is a writer, as am I.

But I'm the also one of the editors and the chief distributor. I can't tell anyone how I do it. I've kept that secret since I wrote my first underground paper back in college and rallied students the week after I sent out the final copy the day I left school due to suspension for being a "militant." It's simple, almost too simple, but it's so simple no one would ever think of it. The internet was shut down as soon as the conspiracy theorists started warning people not to succumb to the pressure to get vaccinated and told them that the wrist bands would be required to identify those who did.

Now, without a wrist band you can't  travel on public transporation, cross borders, or even purchase ten dollar a gallon gas. Not that ten dollars is worth much any more. I had millions of dollars in my bank accounts when the last crash wiped out the banks yet again so they could get another bailout. I sold a lot of books and many of them are still selling on the black market. But I also have just as much as I lost in silver and gold - hidden where no one can find it. It's for after this madness is over. People will need money to start businesses, buy homes, educate their children. I want to be able to help.

In the meantime, I'm off to Texas tomorrow. Luckily, it's spring and I can walk a lot better now that I've had my arthritic knees replaced, along with those bad discs in my back. I might need hip surgery after the long walk, though. Can't wait to see Joseph and John and my sisters-in-law and the kids. I'll probably have to stay longer some places just to spread the word. This trip could take longer than three months. Better get some sleep.

Authors Website: www.gjchitchat.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:
Geneva comes from a political family. Her father, a Baptist preacher, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. to Selma and he and Geneva's mother fought hard for Civil Rights in the communities where he pastored for over 50 years. Politics were part of Geneva's life early on and discussions about political issues were always part of any dialog with her father, mother, and siblings. She still "talk politics" whenever she calls her mother (her father died in 2000, less than a month before his 78th birthday) or brothers, John, James, or Joseph. Geneva also loves "talking politics" with her more politically inclined and open-minded friends. So, it is natural that as a writer, she'd write about politics. Geneva first created the Chit-Chat column when she worked for The Toledo Journal as a staff writer and it was kind of a homespun look back at her childhood growing up on the family ranch in Texas.
Later, when Geneva wrote the column for a
politically focused newspaper, she changed the focus of the column to politics and used the original spelling of her last name to create a play on words between "Chatman" and "Chit-Chat." Thus a quasi-political column was born. Occasionally, Geneva writes about other things, but usually writes about political matters. The purpose of the column is to open dialog and have a discussion. So, please add your comments, whether you agree or disagree. All opinions are welcome!