My Brother; Who Is In The Army

Less than one percent of the United States population, in their life time, gives a part of their life to the armed services. When I was fifteen, my brother took up arms to defend his country. He was eight years my senior.
I would like to say that having a military man in our family changed me somehow, changed my family in some way. If I were to say that, I would be telling the truth.
My brother was not the golden child of our family. On the contrary, he was the problem child. We would blame it on his ADHD, or his learning disability, or his place as the middle child in our family. All of these things were true, yet none of them explained the true feelings he had. Simply, my brother was not happy. He was not athletic, nor academic. He had problems with initiative, as well as laziness. You can imagine why the army was a perfect fit.

It was a huge change for him. Up to his training in bootcamp he had  never lived beyond the safety of our home. He had never been to college. He had only held menial jobs that my parents or other siblings set up for him. He was not ready in the slightest. 

However, this is not a story of failure. After three of the hardest months of his life, along with another two of ASOT (Advanced Special Operations Training), he became a Specialist in the United States Army. During his time of training he learned not only the basics of becoming a soldier, but also everything a soldier needs to know about military generators. During an operation, such as the one in Afghanistan, it is his job to make sure front line generators are running at full capacity. It is also a two way street in that during an invasion, it is his job to disable or commandeer an enemy's generators. 

Needless to say, when I saw him in his formal military attire, I was very proud. I would wager to say it was the first time that I had ever felt like this man was my older brother. The role model, the cool guy, and the one every little brother looks up to. He is my brother, and he is in the Army. 

The King of Costco

The air in the Costco had grown visibly colder. We were not sure what month it was, or even what day. We often expressed the joy of a certain holiday whenever we felt like it. 
By my account, we had been inside for 13 months, 3 days, and 15 hours. It was a Thursday. For me, however, whenever I was having a bad day, I blamed it on the fact it was a Thursday. Unfortunately, I had experienced multiple Thursdays in a row. 

You would think that Costco would have enough food to last a lifetime, and at first, it sure looked that way. But between five hungry teenagers, it goes quickly. 
The perishable food was gone in a week. We tried to put it in the massive two-story freezer that was conveniently next to the majority of it, but a bunch of lazy teenagers would not get to it. There was simply too much. 
By the end of the first month, most of the soda, candy, and Cheetos were gone. Most of us spent our time like we were on some sort of sick vacation. We had shopping cart races, basketball tournaments, and Nerf wars. It did not occur to us that maybe nobody was coming. 
The end of the third month came around, and cabin fever set in. Usually this only occurs when the victim is in small, enclosed places, but when you spend ninety-odd days in a twenty thousand square foot warehouse, there is only some much to see. Tempers flared, a few fights broke out. 
Six months in, we started to get serious. Conditions by then had become so disgusting that it was hard not to. I rounded up the two others boys of the group and sent them to work cleaning "the dump" (the isle we had designated to be our trash can. At that point it was filled with everything. Everything.). The girls set about building a living quarters on the canopy of the massive orange shelves. Up to that point we had been sleeping wherever we wanted, depending on our mood with the others. I had become the king of Costco.

We could have left. We tried, multiple times. The thing is, Costco has a lot of expensive things. The type of things looters love to go after. This lead to some genius engineer with a degree from MIT to design a system that kept looters out in the case of a natural disaster. Sure, it kept them out, but it also kept us in.
The truth was we were scared to go outside. I those early weeks, we had so much fun that going back to school was firmly planted in the back of our minds. But no cell phone reception, no internet, and no power left us wondering what had happened. No one had tried to come in. No one has. Where was everyone?
The night everything stopped (the power, internet, etc.), the five of us had been playing around together after school. "Hanging out" it was called. One of the other boys thought it would be cool to spend a night at Costco. 
"How cool would that be! Dude! We could, like, sleep on top of the shelves! Man, that would be so awesome!". 
And so we did. We broke into a Costco. No exactly the type of thing most teenagers do, but it was easier than you think. All it took was a little rope, disabling the alarm system on one of the many skylights, and rappel down. My own genius. 
We had just gotten into the candy when the gates fell. The solid steel gates. The emergency exits locked. With bolts. Every door leading out was six inches thick. We were stuck.
By the ninth month, we were living like some sort of survivor colony you see in those drama TV shows. Everything was planned. Hour by hour, everyone had something to do. Food was still not a problem.
The food ran out last week. We are searching through the dump looking for food we may have thrown away. There are whispers of leaving. I do not know what will happen to my kingdom. But I will not lose my population. I am the king of Costco.