Chapter 1
Crawfordton, Ohio
November
It was like Angela and Ayanna were two completely different little girls.
Angela was taught by her adopted parents to be considerate of others, to always tell the truth, and to love Jesus, her Savior. Now she was surrounded by kind and selfless people. If Angela would not have had those caring folks, especially Amy and Phil, in her life, she could not have lasted a day on her own. Even though Angela had such good examples for caretakers, Angela was filled with latent anger and hostility. Her aggression was beyond mere moodiness. Her enmity with the world was not just some occasional irritability, but an abnormal opposition to everything and everyone.
Ayanna was dark, brooding, and silent. Ayanna had been exposed to the worst kinds of evil imaginable. Ayanna did not participate directly the murderous actions of her clan. She saw and did things that no child, or even an adult should ever have seen or done. Now with her new family, she was surrounded by people who she sometimes blamed for killing her parents. She was not completely sure if they would yet kill her because of her past.
Other children in the neighborhood called Ayanna the "Zombie Princess". The verbal torments were frequent reminders of the hostility others in the Community had for her. Ayanna had grown up confused by what was right and wrong. She wanted to be a good girl, but saw no examples of any good little girls to follow.
Angela and Ayanna were names given to the same confused little girl. She was born Ayanna. Everyone who knew her as Ayanna was dead, except for Phil. She told Phil that her real name was "Ayanna" in confidence. Ayanna felt a bond with Phil unlike anyone else. Phil was old enough to be her grandfather. Phil saw Ayanna as a top priority in his eyes. He was the only one who would give her the unvarnished truth. Ayanna was always trying to parse what the real meaning was behind what was being told to her by cryptic adults. After all, Angela had lived seven hard years with the last couple being horrific. Angela wasn't a baby anymore and sought after some straight talk.
Ayanna was dubbed "Angela" only because she refused to speak to her new caretakers, and they had no clue what her given name was. Ayanna was rescued by the man who they called "Angel" because of his spiritual nature. So Amy, Phil's wife, named her Angela. If it wasn't for Angel, she would be dead, but if it wasn't for his military involvement against her parents' clan, they would be alive.
Angel was the leader of the Crawfordton Guard Platoon who wiped out Angela-Ayanna's cannibalistic clan. But he refused to let anything happen to her, while his men wanted her left to fend for herself.
The residents of the house where she now lived were all seated at the dinner table in the darkened room. There had been no electric power for a couple of years and the windows were boarded up with scavenged constituent bits of shanties leftover from the Battle.
"Angela," Phil said at the dinner table. "You with us here?"
She nodded her head yes. She always sat next to Phil at the large dining room table, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Angela only recently started speaking to certain people. Then it was only in single words or sentence fragments. Phil was the exception. She would converse with Phil.
There was not much to eat after two years of total collapse of the US economy that included all out selfishness and violence. But Phil would praise God for anything they had to eat every single day. Today dinner was some soup made by Amy with some squirrel broth. The soup du jour had some sliced up turnips in it along with a couple of carrots. Some green onions and garlic were added for more taste.
Angela-Ayanna had lived at the Crawford house for about a year.
Phil and Amy Crawford had adult children of their own, but they were unable to have any contact with them since the United States fell apart, including all of the transportation and communication infrastructure. Now Amy and Phil lived in the town of Crawfordton, which had sprung up around Phil Crawford, because of his masterful leadership during the onset of the crisis. So the town was named "Crawfordton" after him.
Although Phil was not liked by many, he had the know-how and the drive to help everyone around him do their best to survive. A relatively stable micro-economy had sprung up around Phil and his friends who lived in the House. Soon their rural housing development, turned into a settlement for many displaced people, and many moved in and the result was the growing shanty town of Crawfordton.
Crawfordton was part of the Ohio Confederation. The Confederation was an irregular-shaped area about a third of the size of the original US State of Ohio. The Confederation was part of the large Continental Army Alliance. The Continental Army had been at war with the Homeland Security-UN Axis. The conflict had presently cooled off for a respite. But the unresolved festering tension behind the war had not been resolved in the least.
Crawfordtonians tried to normalize their lives as much as possible. They tried to seize every opportunity to improve all aspects of their lives.
With Phil's help, Amy ran the local public school. They tried to individualize the curriculum to each student. Angela was on a super fast-track of learning, with Phil as her mentor. If a subject was important to Phil, Angela thought, then it must be worthwhile to learn.
Angela knew a lot about politics and military science for a seven year-old. Much of her awareness of these topics were because the Crawford's House was the Constabulary of Crawfordton. There was plenty of interesting talk to be overheard on a nearly daily basis. Amy always tried to get Angela to play with boring dolls, instead of her plastic soldiers. Since Angela rarely spoke, she had been overlooked by military officers preoccupied with their sensitive discussions as a security risk.
Instead of being a kid, Phil would feed Angela stories about how the real world worked. She loved it because it was all secret between her and Phil. Amy would have had constant fits if she knew the diverse and distasteful adult-world topics Phil was telling Angela.
Angela returned to slurping on her soup. Phil gave her the "I know your real name is Ayanna" wink. She loved it every time, since it was a secret only Phil and her knew. And Angela was comforted knowing that her wishes of confidentiality were being observed by Phil.
Jayden Phipps, the Constable and leader of the local Guard and his wife also Ella lived at the House. They were okay people, Angela thought. Angela didn't say too much to them, and that was how they treated her.
Logan "Angel" Howard also lived in the house. He liked wearing his do-rag. After Amy committed to taking care of Angela, Angel no longer wanted the responsibility and became pretty much hands off with Angela's care.
Wesley Crawford also lived at the house. Wesley was Phil's nephew. He was in his late 30s, so like most all of the other men, had a full beard and long hair. Wesley was at the scene when Angela was brought back from the woods. Wesley was totally against Angel bringing her back, and particularly against her living in the house. There was no way Angela was going to forget that one. She despised Wesley and saw him as an enemy.
Angela sneered at Wesley, who was slurping his soup and stopped to munch on the root vegetables. Wesley had that gross hand on his spoon that had the finger shot off. Too bad it wasn't his whole head. Wesley didn't see Angela glaring at him with daggers coming out of her eyes.
"Angela," Amy said. Trying to disrupt her obviously hateful mood. "You get enough to eat?"
She shrugged her shoulders. There was not much point since they didn't have much food anyways.
Amy picked up the soup pan. There was a little bit left in it.
Amy said, "Here Phil, pour the rest into her bowl there."
Angela didn't refuse it, but never asked for it so she stubbornly thought she did not owe anyone a "thank you".
As Constable, Colonel Jayden Phipps was the de facto leader of the burg. He looked at Phil with a smile. "The Ohio Confederation is sending two more platoons to the fort."
"Nice," Phil said.
The Confederation had finally finished building the heavy fortress on the north side of Crawfordton. The wall of the Fort enclosed a huge area, about half the area of a football field.
Jayden added, "The Fort construction crew came over here to the House, they secured the garage so it didn't collapse when they pulled out the wrecked armored vehicles. Then they took those big steel boxes and incorporated them into the Fort design. That damn thing is one thick skinned son of a. . ."
"Jayden," Amy said. "I'm out of soup."
"Thank you," he said, reminding himself that Amy wanted to keep the vernacular clean.
Ella chuckled. They all got a chuckle.
Wesley said, "I'd like to see those Gofinns mess with us now!" "Gofinns" was the slang name given to the fascist Goldfinch Coalition, who were founded upon killing and stealing. "If they try anything, they'll be wiped out."
Angela sneered at Wesley again and said, "You're stupid!"
Wesley quickly looked at Angela in surprise.
"Angela!" Amy said. Amy hated to stop her from speaking because it was so rare of an occurrence. "Why did you say that? Say something nice."
Angela looked at Amy. Angela said, "Now the Axis bastards will just send a bigger army here."
"Phil!" Amy said, looking at him.
"What?!" Phil looked surprised, "I didn't tell her that."
Amy huffed. "Maybe not, but you are the cause of it! What little girl talks like that?"
No one chuckled this time.
Phil stopped slurping and stared as if he was looking into his soup for a sign. The others realized that Phil had taken the substance of Angela's words seriously.
Amy was still going on about the rough language. "This poor child will never have a chance to live like a normal little girl. What if she talks like that at school, or outside? Phil, you've got to stop it."
Phil said, "God help us if she is right."