F13th crimewave scale

The small convoy moved steadily downstate in the morning light. Comprised of military jeeps and police cars with motorcycle cops in accompaniment, every so often a helicopter would pass over to radio details of the roads ahead. For the most part, they weren't talking about highway maintenance or repairs.

If, in their quasi-military methods, the authorities had made it clear that extreme measures were needed to counter extreme developments, then it also spoke nervously of who they believed was currently winning the battle. For the federal agents and advisers who were quitting the area had insisted on the armed accompaniment to Sheriff Casey. He in turn had to call in National Guard reservists, to administrate the conditions of civil emergency to be imposed on Craven County.

Forest Green was the tiny nucleus of a cancer that was spreading throughout the state, and beyond. The epidemic of murder, sexual violence and gratuitous assault had spread all along the East Coast. Now it seemed the plague of murder was spreading further, with reports of sudden escalations of violence in towns near the state lines of New York, Delaware and Maryland. The Wild West had returned again, but had made a coastal switch with a perverse, bloody vengeance.

Suddenly, it seemed America had more violent criminals than her borders could possibly encompass.

Statistically, big cities had seen their violent crime rate rise overnight by as much as one quarter. Smaller counties and rural towns were transformed into little hamlets of fear, paranoia and bloodshed. A town relatively free of violent crime might find its rate rising by as much as two hundred percent, in as quick a time as it took for one random, senseless massacre to occur. The scale of the social chaos was not yet so great as to have the federal government declare a state of national emergency, but for many of the more religiously inclined in the provincial region of Craven County, it was as if the end of days had arrived.

When it came to self-preservation, Paul Christos was little different from the mass of the humanity he so disdained. Riding silently, awkwardly, alongside members of the National Guard, he took advantage of the free ride Ed North had wrangled for him with Sheriff Casey. Incapable of conversing freely with those rougher types, he just huddled up to the hurriedly packed contents of his overnight bag and small suitcase.

The convoy was moving in the exact opposite direction to his family home in Manhattan. But Christos had made a big decision. Only time would tell if he had the conviction to stay with it, but for now he was taking his very first step. Equipped with a hidden handgun and more defensive chemical sprays than he could possibly use, he was hoping to break through the fear barrier somewhere along the way.

As law enforcement displaced itself from the epicenter of the crime epidemic, so the priorities of protecting and serving the most vulnerable were reversed. Those without the official approval to travel with the convoy were left to either fend for themselves or quit the county. Most chose the option of flight over fight, but were impeded as soon as they hit the road. All around the edges of the different county lines, impromptu checkpoints and roadblocks were set up to check the movement of local citizens. Under the slimmest pretext, one small family or group of friends might be held up for hours, denied the right of free movement. Only the murderers and psychos who had brought chaos to their region were, it seemed, able to travel freely at will.

Martial law had not been declared, but in all other senses it had arrived. As the convoy met with the first series of roadblocks at the county line, it lifted Christos's anxious heart a little to see that the authorities were doing their best to contain society's undesirable elements.

"Were you granted permission to travel state highways as a collective group on this scale?” The officious little guardsman, eyes barely visible below his buzzcut hair and military cap, was enjoying the power newly assigned to him. He shouted his question like a bald challenge.

   Friday the 13th: Hell Lake, chapter 13