Joseph and Carol Sutton
Near Midland, Texas
Joseph and Carol Sutton meet me on a large field outside of Midland, Texas. Once overflowing in cotton, the area now sits fallow, its rows of crops replaced with wild sage, giving visitors a beautiful view of one of the largest refugee camps after Invasion Day. They agreed to talk about life in the camp.
Joseph: Somehow, I thought it would be more difficult being back here, but it’s hard to see it like this and remember the way it was back then.
Caroclass="underline" It’s still hot, but they did a fantastic job of cleaning it up. There must have been tons of garbage and other stuff left after it closed down.
Joseph: It has been a long time. (He points to a small creek in front of us and looks over at me.) That’s where we met, somewhere along that creek, but I remember it being bigger back then.
I didn’t get here until, man, I don’t even know… maybe six days after Invasion Day. I didn’t leave Llano right away, not until after the 1st battle of Houston. I thought the boys from Fort Hood would take care of the aliens. Everyone watched on the news as hundreds of tanks, helicopters, and thousands of soldiers attacked the aliens. You know how it went, the same as the 1st battle of D.C.
After that, all of Llano freaked and took off west like a swarm of locusts. The trip wasn’t as bad as the Great I-40 Traffic Jam, but it was no picnic. We walked. Tens of thousands of us. People from dozens of small cities, at least those who were willing to leave. The trip took us days. The roads were utterly congested, but being Texans, many country boys just drove their 4x4s over the plains. Some of my cousins and I got a ride for a little part of it. Anyway, we all made it here—the fields around Midland.
I don’t know who stopped or why they picked the area they did, but soon, other people began to stop at this place. Maybe it seemed far enough away, or maybe they were just too tired to go on, but by the time I got here, there were already hundreds of thousands camped in the fields that stretched miles wide.
I was just tired. I drove a courier truck for a living and wasn’t in great shape. Not bad shape. I was only 26 at the time, but walking three days straight will wear you out. My cousins and I made it to an area that was on the edge of the crowd. We didn’t want to be surrounded. We threw down what little we had and collapsed immediately. When we woke up, we were surrounded on every side like sardines, and all of our food was gone. (He laughs.)
Not great planning. We were exhausted, scared, and angry, but we had no idea what to do. Right next to us was a father and two young sons, 10 and 12, who made camp. His name was Randal, a skinny white guy who looked like a young Bill Gates, and by that, I mean a nerdy-looking professor type.
Caroclass="underline" He did not look that nerdy, Joseph!
Joseph: (He nods his head behind his wife, then gives me a wink.) Sure, honey. Anyway, the first time I tried to talk to him, he pushed his kids behind him and pulled out a bowie knife that was a foot long. I stopped in my tracks. The guy might have looked like a professor, but he had ice in his veins. After ten minutes of me trying to appear as gentle as a church mouse, the guy relaxed. We talked – I listened to his story, told him ours – and agreed to help each other out as much as we could. He didn’t have much food but offered us some.
The next day or so, we just sat and waited. People were still coming in from all over Texas. We had no idea what was happening with the war or the aliens, which had us all jumpy. Conditions in the camp were getting worse, and it had only been two days.
The army did help. Supplies were dropped in different spots around the camps by helicopters, but getting to them became a battle. People were hungry, and it started to get ugly. A first, we got enough to get by. It was rice and water, with a lot of MREs thrown in, but it was enough. My two cousins and I made a deal with Randal, who needed the supplies but didn’t want to leave his kids. One of us took turns staying with the boys, and we would, in turn, share everything we got. This worked for a day, but the crowds were getting restless. People were hungry, and there began to be gunfire all around us. Most of the people were from cities, but it was still Texas, after all. I heard later that the Army tried to organize the relief effort, but I never saw any of them.
Did you ever encounter the Veech?
No, the Army did a good job distracting them. From what I know, after the 1st battle of Houston, the Veech advanced to the Texas border with Oklahoma and then went east into Louisiana. Before retreating in front of the Veech, the Army sent enough troops to the camp to keep them away. I’m not sure that would have worked, but, as I said, the Veech were more concerned with the Army in front of them.
We did see and felt the dogfights above us, though. I was told later that no big air battle ever happened in Texas like other places, but it sure felt that way. Jets would scream over us at such low levels, and we had to clamp our ears down. We also saw dogfights in the air to the east, but it was too difficult to follow what was happening with them. Light, explosions, and noise. Lots of noise. It was terrifying but reassuring at the same time. Our boys still fought for us.
Where was I? Oh yeah. So, another day passed, and this one brought rain, which turned out to be a rose with thorns. It started in the morning, just a drizzle, but it soon got harder. People everywhere were screaming in joy, holding their hands up in the air like the Second Coming was upon us. We were no different. We were thirsty, and swallowing became difficult. We had tried to ration our water, but man… that’s hard. So yeah, we danced liked little kids in that rain. Randal was calmer about it, like he always was. He quickly gathered anything that would collect water and put it out. He also rigged his tent into a giant funnel, and we all took turns laying under it, drinking as much as we could. It’s hard to describe that feeling unless you’ve ever been without water, but it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
The rain lasted for about five hours, then stopped. We were wet but no longer thirsty, and the camp settled down in silence for a while. We were feeling up. A few hours later, people started moving around again, once again looking for food. By the time night fell, the camp had turned into a giant mud pool. That many people turned that field into a massive mud festival.
The next day, after talking it over with Randal, we decided to get out of there. All of us. People were thirsty again, many not having saved anything during the storm. The ground was wet and muddy, just adding to the misery. We had had enough. We were trapped in a sea of people, and the living conditions were getting worse every minute. The smell of sh… human waste was overpowering, and we reasoned there wasn’t a good reason to stay any longer.
Gangs were also forming, moving through the crowd, taking whatever they wanted, which led to fights all over the place. A girl from a family near us got shot in the leg. The bullet could have come from any of the idiots around us or could have come from far away. Bullets don’t just stop, and it was becoming all too common to get hit by the strays.
That night, my cousins, both a little younger than me, went out one last time to get some food from a recent drop. They were gone a few hours when only one came back, and he’d been stabbed. His shirt was covered in blood, and he stumbled, then fell into our camp. We laid him down and tried our best to close the wound, but it wasn’t happening. He told me what happened to our other cousin as tears ran down his gaunt face. He finally gave me a small smile and fell unconscious. He never woke back up.