Avalon- The Construction

by L. Michael Rusin

  “We are living in terrible times, Shirley. You have a beautiful family. Anyone would be proud to have your son or daughter, Randy is a good man and a good husband I see him as a man much like my own.”

  She hesitated for a moment.

  “I’m speaking for all the women here when I say that most of us would rather die than have anything happen to anyone we love. We don’t want to think about it, but we have to realize that misfortune may well come to some of us. All we can do is enjoy what we have in this moment and be thankful that we are alive. We are here, and we have each other. It is nearly the end of the world for people on this earth. I can hardly believe it, but it has happened—it’s happened to us—and the best we can do is flow with it. Most important, we can never give up. I believe we will thrive in this place. I have to believe it. I have to have hope that there is a reason we have survived here. I’m not smart enough to understand the intricacies of it all but I believe we have been spared for something worthwhile.”

  Caroline looked up and saw Dana standing behind Shirley. Like Caroline, Dana was soon to deliver a child. Being a nurse, and one of the primary health care people of the retreat, Caroline had many times examined Dana and knew of her many discomforts of carrying a child. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, but even so, this was a new life she was about to bring forth into the world. A world such as it was, not great here at Avalon, but by far not the worst either. They had it a lot better than so many others.

  Like everybody else, Dana was worried about her man and her unborn child. Sam meant everything to her. Now another battle was looming, and they were helpless to do anything more than go along with it and hope for the best. Dana put her hands-on Shirley’s shoulders and squeezed before she spoke.

  “It sure would be helpful to us women if these damn men weren’t so eager to get this coming battle on. Look at them…they’re like little boys just itching for the fight to start.”

  Just then Sam and Mike came in and walked toward the women. Sam said,

  “It’s gearing up to be a humdinger of a fight out there.”

  The women all looked at each other and began to laugh. Sam looked at Mike, bewildered,

  “Women—you gotta love them!”

  This caused the women to laugh even harder. Mike and Sam considered it just another mystery pertaining to women, those things that men just didn’t understand and perhaps didn’t want to.

  They were making plans because the signs pointed to an attack leveled at them. Mike nodded to Sam,

  “We’re almost ready. Everything is coming together seamlessly, I’m hoping we can move out and get in place in a couple of days.”

  He paused and looked toward Caroline. She looks so beautiful. Pregnancy became her. She seemed to glow. There was never a time that he wasn’t grateful that she loved him. Sam poked him with his finger.

  “And…”

  Mike realized he’d been sidetracked by his beautiful wife.

  “Sorry about that, Sam. It’s just that when I look at her, I sort of lose it.”

  Sam smiled and then they all laughed.

  “I think we’ll need to draw back a bit and do what is necessary. Let’s have a meeting with everyone. Some of the married men will want to have some time with their wives and children before we shove off.”

  Mike looked at his friend and spoke quietly.

  “You’re right, Sam. We all need to do that. How about spreading the word? I want to get everyone together and tell them to go home for forty-eight hours, and then we’ll move out. I have a few people out scouting and setting some of our plans in motion.”

  “The field hospital, kitchen, and headquarters need to be finished up, and then we’ll plan to attack in another four days.”

  “Roger that, Mike.”

  “Advise anyone who lives farther than Fitch not to leave. They won’t have enough time to return.”

  Sam turned on his heels and headed for the door, throwing an arm around Dana on his way out.

  Mike came toward Caroline.

  “We need to talk.”

  Caroline turned to Shirley.

  “Go be with your family and remember that we’re all in this together.”

  She turned and left with her husband.

  ◆◆◆

  The activity at Fitch and Avalon increased and became more intense as they prepared for battle. Gyro-copters, motorized hang gliders, and motorcycles were seemingly in constant motion from sunup to sundown. Supplies of all kinds were loaded into motorcycles side cars. The horse-drawn ranch wagon, all the pickups, and anything else with wheels; all was readied for the coming battle.

  As the preparations were underway at Avalon and Fitch, reaching a fever pitch of intensity, outlying communities were also busy getting ready for the confrontation. Mike sent out a number of messengers to encourage groups and individuals who wanted to be involved in the coming fight to join forces and to alert people to the spies that had been sent out by the slavers to infiltrate their camps. He reminded them all it wasn’t just a fight for Fitch and Avalon, it was a fight for the protection of them all. Who among them wasn’t affected by these outlaws?

  ◆◆◆

  Two men, Roger and Harlan, traveled in a gyro-copter down an old state road and saw about ten or twelve people scamper toward a grove of trees, frantic to get out of sight. The two men in the gyro-copter saw them running and called out to them as they circled above.

  “Don’t be alarmed. We’re from the Avalon group! We’re going to land. Don’t run away. We want to talk.”

  The gyro-copters circled and landed in a poppy-covered field, turned and taxied toward the tree line. Roger shut down the engine. He and Harlan unbuckled themselves and climbed out. Two men hiding in the trees came out with hunting rifles pointed at the two men.

  Roger called out to them as they approached,

  “We don’t mean you any harm. We were sent out by Admiral Mike Reynolds and Sheriff Bob Waters to find as many people as we could and give them some important information. Are you willing to listen?”

  The two men stepped forward. One spoke.

  “Okay, what’s your story?”

  “Well, for starters, how about not pointing those rifles at us?”

  “We can do that, but don’t try any funny business. There are others back there in the trees, and they have you in their sights.”

  “Fair enough. We can deliver our message and be on our way.”

  The two groups talked for several minutes and then Gordon, the man who had originally initiated the conversation, cut them off,

  “Just a minute…”

  He waved his arms to those hiding in the trees and motioned for them to come forward. They emerged from behind several trees.

  “Any of you ever hear of a town called Fitch?”

  Two men said they had.

  “They’re getting ready to have a war with the slavers in a few days and I think we should hear what they have to say. Gather around.”

  Everyone gathered in a group to listen to Roger. He told them about Avalon and Fitch, about the previous battles they had with the slavers and how they liberated the townspeople of Fitch and drove off or killed a great many of the marauders.

  They explained the plan. The slavers were forming a large group to take over as many small towns as possible. Mike had sent them and others out to warn people and to encourage each group to join them in a unified front to defeat the slavers. They were also very interested in finding groups such as this one to offer better arms, ammo, and training to help them fight off the attackers.

  Gordon was very interested when he heard this. He was ex-military, Army infantry. There was plenty he wanted to know in terms of tactics and strategies. A couple of the others were also former military, but none had combat experience. They invited the Avalon people to visit their small community, share some food with them, and meet a few of the others in their group.

  Roger accepted the invitation from Gordon.

  “You folks head towa
rd home and we’ll wait a few minutes and then follow with our gyro-copter. We don’t want to leave it out here in the field alone. Is there an open area where we can land?”

  “Yes, there is. There’s an open field off to one side of our camp; just head that way.”

  Gordon pointed north.

  “About three miles; you’ll see it.”

  Gordon and his group headed to their camp and Roger started the engine on the gyro-copter. Roger and Harlan got back in, buckled up, and headed in the general direction of the camp. In about ten minutes he saw the field and made his approach after circling and yelling down to anyone who could hear that Gordon told them to land in this field and he was on his way.

  Nobody came out of the small shelters while Roger and Harlan set down in the field and waited for Gordon and his group to arrive. In another thirty minutes they came into view. Gordon was blowing a police whistle as he approached. Still, no one came out of their shelters. When Gordon approached Roger and Harlan, he suggested they taxi the gyro-copters to a building across the way. Once the gyro-copter was secured, the two Avalon men were invited inside. There were ten women and eight children inside the building. The women had pistols fastened to their sides at the hip and two had large knives on their belts. It was a community center of sorts. Roger looked around and saw oil lanterns on the walls, secured in place with a wire mesh holder that was nailed to the wall and had been molded in the form of a holder of sorts. The lanterns could be lifted up and out for maintenance.

  An old iron, wood-fired cook-stove, and two large homemade picnic tables with benches sat near one corner. Pots and pans hung on wall pegs near the stove. A four-inch by four-foot pipe stuck out of the ground with a canvas cover over it. A pulley and handle assembly with a quarter-inch wire rope wound around the pulley. The pipe was wrapped with sheet plastic. Several large plastic buckets that were probably once used in the dairy for milking, were loaded with dishes and silverware. Another small box was loaded with cooking ladles and large spoons.

  Roger and Harlan saw a gun rack on one wall that held three rifles and five shotguns. Gordon watched as the men surveyed the room and appeared to be very proud of the preparations his group had made.

  Gordon gestured about the room as he spoke to Roger and Harlan.

  “We set this place up about a year before the war began. You know, a survival retreat. We don’t have much, but we made a few improvements here and there. Although we don’t have the conveniences that we had before the war started, we have enough to make some jobs easier than if we had not done some type of planning.”

  “See that pipe sticking out of the ground?”

  He motioned over toward the corner.

  “That’s a well casing. We had a devil of a time trying to figure out how to get water out of it without electricity or a hand pump. Now we use that three-inch pipe wrapped with some plastic beside it to get the water out.”

  “How does it work?”

  Harlan was intrigued.

  “We take the cap off the well casing and insert that three-inch pipe into the well and lower it until we hear it hit the water. The pipe fills up with water and we crank it up with that pulley. As the water enters the pipe a ball in the bottom of the pipe settles on the bottom preventing the water from leaking out. We use it to fill these three-gallon plastic jugs. The ball stopper at the bottom of the pipe releases the water into the jug and we put the pipe, or what we call our well bucket, back into the casing for another trip. It’s possible to get a lot of water up and ready for use quickly, especially when it’s time for bathing, washing clothes, or cooking. We used this method just before the war started.”

  Harlan was very interested in their technology.

  “I’d like to know more about the construction and materials used to make that rig.”

  Gordon smiled. He enjoyed telling these people about their improvised innovations. Of late, there weren’t that many people he could tell, and he was enjoying this show and tell.

  “Alice was a commercial artist before the war. She can draw schematics for you and make a list of the materials you will need. It’s a very simple device and works flawlessly.”

  The tour continued. They had a ten-inch sharpening wheel on a bicycle rim. The operator sat behind the stone wheel, pedaling slowly. The stone wheel was connected to a pulley on one end and a belt connected to another pulley at the bottom of the wheel on an axle that, in turn, connected to the pedals. When the wheel began to revolve, the operator sat in a comfortable position facing the wheel and sharpened the knife or tool. The wheel revolved partially through a plastic container that had water in it, keeping the wheel wet.

  “We got the plans for this out of a Popular Mechanics magazine a few years back. It works like a charm if you know how to hold the proper angle of the blade’s edge on the wheel. It’s important to have the correct angle on both sides of the blade. We’ve had good luck finding the right angle by folding a piece of paper in half and setting it on a flat surface. Looking at the folded paper represents a 45-degree angle. Sitting on a flat surface it resembles a pup tent. That’s a perfect angle for large heavy tools such as the ax and hatchets. Half that fold again is roughly 23degrees, which is perfect for most kitchen knives. Less than 23 degrees, say for instance twenty or a little less, is perfect for skinning knives and ultra-sharp edges.

  “We built an adjustable device that sits in front of the stone and clamps the blade into place, holding the exact angle. It pivots forward, once the knife is in place and allows the blade to rest against the stone at the correct angle. Pressing a finger against the jig generates enough pressure and will create a good edge. When one side is completed, we turn it over to sharpen the opposite side. When we have two sides at the correct angle, we change stones to a finer grit and repeat the process.

  “We also have a wheel we made out of wood with leather on the face of it. That gets fastened into place, and the final polish is accomplished. We only do the final polish on the better kitchen knives. Axes and hatches don’t get that kind of extra treatment because their use is more severe, and it would be a waste of time, since they don’t need a razor-sharp edge.”

  The tour continued, and Gordon showed the Avalon men around, moving from one innovation to the next. They had an area where they could re-load several calibers of ammunition and shotgun shells using two different reloading machines.

  The group looked at a small slaughterhouse off and away from the communal kitchen and the living areas. Here was where they plucked the chickens of their feathers after killing them. The process was akin to an assembly-line operation. First, the chicken was placed headfirst in a funnel large enough to hold its whole body with the head sticking out of the hole in the bottom. The head was removed, and then the chickens were held by their feet and dipped in a large cauldron of boiling water. From there they were placed inside a spinning apparatus that was the size of a small cement mixer. Pieces of automobile tires were fastened in place inside the drum. The feathers were removed from the chicken almost entirely in a matter of a few seconds of turning.

  Then the bird was removed and placed on a table where the carcass was inspected. If there were any remaining feathers on the bird, they were removed by hand. The carcass was then placed in a large washtub and scrubbed by hand. The birds went from there to a cutting table where they were gutted and chopped into manageable pieces for the pot or rotisserie.

  The group had a nice garden and a canning room where they kept all their canning paraphernalia and supplies. They had several steam cookers, packs of wax, lids, and lid inserts, along with hundreds of Mason jars. This was where they canned most of the food they grew or prepared ahead of time for that “just-in-case” event or a lean harvest. In a small barn they stabled cows, goats, sheep, and several horses. The horses were of the massive draft variety, much like the “Budweiser Horses” and there were eight quarter horses for riding. They had a nice tack room behind the barn, and well away from everything else, was a hog pen. Not far f
rom the hog pen was a large compost pile.

  Roger and Harlan decided to stay the night and were entertained with a good meal and music before everyone turned in for the night. Roger was impressed when he saw the group had guards posted to protect them while they slept. It was a miniature Avalon, and they were doing all the right things.

  The two parties agreed their small community would send a few of their people to visit Avalon and Fitch. They would be given badly needed seeds to bring back, along with anything else that could be useful to help them survive. They were well prepared considering they hadn’t had the time or resources the Avalon and Fitch people had pulled together.

  The next morning, after a good breakfast of fresh-baked bread, a nice, tasty Denver omelet, with fresh vegetables and eggs, it was time for Roger and Harlan to leave. The men finished off their breakfast with a tall glass of fruit juice.

  As Roger and Harlan made their way back to their gyro-copter, the men promised there would be future dealings between them. Roger had a small cloth bag with detailed drawings of the water well bucket and the chicken preparation system. They were meticulous drawings on large paper grocery bags, neatly folded. For Harlan and Roger, it was time to head south.

  The gyro-copter rolled down the field and lifted off the ground, Roger piloted the copter, turning slightly to the left circling the group of survivalists so that he and Harlan could wave to them on the ground.

  Chapter 20

  The Roundup

  Within the two days prescribed, people began to arrive in groups of twos and fives. They drifted into Fitch first where they were interviewed. Some stayed at Fitch. Those who had the most experience in military tactics and combat went straight to Avalon to prepare for participation in the upcoming battle.

  Most were ordinary folk. Some had the foresight to prepare before the war began and others came together shortly thereafter for mutual protection. The majority of those rolling in had small retreats hidden away from the wandering masses.