by Gene Skellig
JJ later learned that of the fifteen or so truckers who had been given the offer, only five had taken Hope and Casey up on it. All the others had fled to Port Alberni. Their loads were taken from them by armed gangs within a week. In most cases, this had been over their dead bodies. The truckers and their co-drivers, in many cases their wives or girlfriends, had lived just long enough to regret passing up on Casey's offer.
After seeing what Casey did with the vast majority of the trucker’s goods, however, JJ became convinced that he had fallen into good company. After the radiation had fallen to relatively safe levels, about two weeks after the war started, Casey had only kept about 20% of JJ’s load of canned goods for the HOTH. He then divvied half of the remainder to the Ring families around the HOTH. The remainder was dropped off at the Qualicum Community Center to be distributed to the community at large.
Casey applied the same logic to Trent’s load of lumber. However he kept all of Andy and Allison’s Home Depot truckload and Duncan’s truckload of Portland Cement bags. But Casey instructed Roger and his son, Samuel, to offload just 200 gallons of diesel fuel into the few empty 55 gallon drums and other improvised storage vessels around the HOTH, to give some to the Ring Families, and then to deliver the rest to the improvised hospital in town.
With no more food supplies coming, and with more than a third of the area’s 50,000 residents suffering from radiation sickness, the first few months after the war was a turbulent period of wanton violence, looting and lawlessness. The HOTH was one of the few safe places to be. And it was a place which JJ and the other truckers, and the rest of the Casey’s group, fought to protect.
The looting and pillaging seemed to fall along with the temperature. After the humid, monsoon-like rains of June and July gave way to cooler temperatures in August, more than half of the regions population had already died from the radiation in May. Survivors then turned to scavenging the abandoned houses, pilfering what they found in commercial buildings, and stealing from those unable to defend themselves.
After the temperature plummeted and snow began falling in August things calmed down considerably. When the temperature dropped enough to stop the rain-showers from washing away the snow, heavy snow accumulation made travel extremely difficult for the unprepared. This helped with security because there were basically only two choices: slow moving and silent forms of travel like snow-shoes or cross-country skis, or very noisy snow mobiles. In both cases, travel was so laborious or risky that most people stayed near their homes and only ventured out for urgent business. With sentries at the Guard House and Ops monitoring video feeds from the five OPs on the property, people on foot moved too slowly to surprise the HOTH and you could hear a skidoo coming for miles.
But skidoos were the best way to move heavy loads of lumber. And as far as JJ knew, nobody else in the region had a silent “Whisper” sled. Developed by McGill University in Montreal, the Whisper snowmobile had a very short range but was rechargeable in twelve hours and operated very quietly.
The Whisper was excellent for security patrols. Casey had purchased two Whispers and spare parts from the customized workshop in Lavalle, Quebec, at considerable expense. A short 50 km range was cut to about 15 km when towing a cargo sled with any load and, once the 28 volt battery expended itself, the Whisper died in its tracks. Thus, the routine was for the wood patrols to walk out, pulling their gear on man-portable sleds, to be retrieved later by the noisy gas sleds when the job was done. HOTH Operations always maintained a listening watch on the radios, and a two-man Security Team on a five minute recall with a Whisper and lots of fire power was in place whenever a team was out on a task.
JJ and this team would soon set out on foot to the South-West Rally Point, SWRP. Once there, they would spend ten minutes simply listening and observing, and then carry on to the wood harvest site. Once they left the property, JJ’s team of ten people would be on their own, however they had Danny Callaghan on five-minute alert in the garage of the HOTH.
Danny believed as strongly in the SOPs as Casey did. Being involved in HOTH security operations was a big responsibility for Casey’s thirty year-old nephew. He took this role very seriously because he had first-hand experience with the criminal element. After having served two years in prison for assault, Danny never let his guard down. He had no qualms about inflicting great pain. It did not weigh on his conscience one bit that he had killed over a dozen men in defense of the HOTH in just this first year after the Nuclear Extinction War.
To keep himself busy while on cargo sled duty, waiting around in the garage until the Wood Patrol called for extraction, Danny liked to have a good workout by cutting and sorting firewood. As he sized up a fresh log on the chopping stump, Danny focused his aim on the log and swung the splitting maul, the log cleaving exactly as intended. Danny felt strong and vigorous in his labor, but more importantly, he felt that he was contributing to the family that stood beside him through some troubled years.
Intensely loyal to his uncle, “cul-Casey” as Danny liked to call him, he felt that it was his job to lay his life on the line to protect the Callaghan family. He felt this way because of guilt over the many disruptions he had caused. His loyalty extended to all the residents of the HOTH, and he had become very close friends with JJ.
After leading his team on the hike up the well-established trail towards the back line of the HOTH property, JJ motioned for sound discipline as they left the safety of the HOTH property and ventured into the forest beyond.
They soon reached the SWRP. Amy set up the Auto-OP camera and then poured everybody some hot chocolate from a thermos. As she drank, she watched young Adam Vogel nervously radioing HOTH Ops on the XPR to confirm that Ops was receiving the video feed.
With some time on her hands, Amy began thinking about the Vogel family. She smiled when she thought about how close she had come to meeting the Vogel family back in Vancouver, two weeks after the War broke out, rather than after her day-long ordeal.
After meeting the Vogels and their three sons after arriving in the HOTH and comparing stories with each other in the evening of that same fateful day, Amy Arnott and Jillian Vogel figured out that they had actually made eye contact earlier in the day, back in Vancouver.
Amy remembered seeing the middle-aged blond woman and the young Asian girl she had been talking with when Amy’s bus had driven by, passing the small military detachment on Fourth Avenue.
Amy had felt a little envious of how easy the Vogels journey from Vancouver to the HOTH had been, but was no less happy for their good fortune. She had listened to Jillian Vogel recount the story.
As part of a quid-pro-quo deal between Casey and his friend Hank, the Vogels had to pay for their boat trip by finding and rescuing a member of Hank's family.
Jillian had finally found Hank’s daughter-in law, Gloria, in the line-up outside the medical building at the Jericho Garrison. As the Amy and Jillian had eventually pieced together by comparing stories, Amy had passed by on her old diesel bus just as Jillian had been explaining to Gloria that Hank was coming with his tug-boat to rescue Gloria and to transport the five members of the Vogel family to the HOTH for Casey.
To Amy, having made meaningful eye contact in that random way was more than coincidence - it was synchronicity.
It was also ironic to Amy that both her little group and the Vogel party had fled Vancouver from the same old pier at Jericho Beach on the very same day. Too bad for Amy that she had not had the luxury of traveling on Hank’s big tug boat. Her day had been an odyssey.
With the coffee break over, Amy was yanked back from her thoughts, when JJ go the team moving again. They soon resumed their travels, setting out for the two km hike from the SWRP to the designated harvest site up the hillside to the south west. There was a “no harvest” policy for the HOTH acreage, as much to preserve the beauty of the site as for security, as any human activity could draw attention. The harvest sites were always a fair distance up into the crown land forest, away from the HOTH.
/> Once they arrived at the harvest site they left Amy to set up a “Near Side OP”, and Francis Callaghan to set up the “Far Side OP” farther to the South. Each had the standard utility bag with a thermos of hot coffee, and some essential equipment, including an XPR radio, first aid kit, signal flares and night vision binoculars. They would spend the next two hours on watch, with a hunting rifle and a camouflage blanket, and their private thoughts to keep themselves busy.
At the Far Side OP, Francis was as well versed as all of the others in the “Actions on Contact” section of the SOPs, and knew the routine very well. He quickly settled into a relaxed vigilance that he considered a form of meditation. He really enjoyed the tranquility of OP duty. Conversely, Frank didn’t enjoy the physical labor of the actual wood harvest as much as the other men did. He was one of the more cerebral types, and not all that comfortable with the prospect of shooting anybody. But to protect his wife and three children along with the rest of his extended family and friends in the HOTH, Francis Callaghan was prepared to kill if necessary.
So far, none of the killing had been his to do, as Danny, Casey, Yuri, and the truck drivers had handled all of the lethal situations that had arisen to date. But Francis well understood that with starvation now so widespread in the area, people were becoming increasingly desperate. The HOTH was keeping a low profile and there had not been any unexpected visitors in quite some time, but these wood harvest patrols were considered to be high risk activities. The secluded location of this harvest site, in a low area surrounded by hills and ridges, should ensure that there would be nobody around to hear them.
After looking the harvest site over, JJ selected a Red Cedar and a Douglas Fir. His powerful Husqvarna was ideal for felling and bucking the large trees. With a gentle westerly wind blowing that day he didn’t even need to use wedges to ensure that the large trees would fall in the clearing he had selected. Once the trees were down, two of the Vogel boys attacked them with gusto. They walked along the top, de-limbing the trees with smaller Husqvarnas, while their father, Manfred, kept an eye on them as he worked with other members of the team.
Nora, Casey’s sister-in law, was busy pulling the largest branches away as the boys cut them off. She had been among the other members of the Callaghan family that were on a ferry from Tsawassen to Nanaimo, on their way to one of Casey’s big family dinners and a weekend visit, when the war started. If it had not been for the sheer dumb luck of a 30 minute delay, the ferry would have been destroyed at the terminal in Nanaimo. As it was, luck had spared the family group. Nora and Casey’s brother Miles, Francis and his family of five, Casey’s mother, Faith, and Casey’s three sisters had all been on the same ferry when the ship was repeatedly illuminated by a series of atomic blasts on both sides of the Strait of Georgia.
Heading away from the devastation, the Captain had diverted the ship up-island and offloaded it at the single-gantry terminal at French Creek, between Parksville and Qualicum Beach. With most of the ship’s systems taken out by repeated EMP bursts, the captain had to rely on the mechanical backup systems to maneuver the old ferry boat into the small, nose-on vehicle ramp. He kept the ship’s engines running while his crew rigged some heavy lines to hold the ship to the tiny ramp that normally served much smaller vessels. The passengers walked off the ship, dragging suitcases, as none of their vehicles would start. Once the Captain had the crew mechanically shut down the ship’s engines, the Queen of Nanaimo was dead. With her electrical systems fried, she would never again ply the waters of the Strait of Georgia.
The Callaghan family members traveling on the Queen of Nanaimo would have been overtaken by the radiation from Comox if Casey had not spotted the ferry from his roof-top, and sent Tanya and Danny down with the van and an SUV to collect the rest of the family. They arrived at the HOTH just minutes before the radioactive fallout began to register on Casey’s detectors.
Her last ferry ride from Vancouver to the Island now seemed a distant memory to Nora as she stacked the thirty-inch logs into a pile. Her thoughts moved on to how nicely the logs would burn once dried and cut into the fifteen inch size that fit so well in the wood-stoves in the HOTH.
While JJ sliced large rounds off the fat end of the log, Geoff Neumann supervised his fifteen year old son, Bartholomew, slicing smaller rounds off of opposite end. Geoff was proud of the way Bart confidently wielded his chain saw, but kept a close eye on him anyhow. Geoff and his family of four had come the farthest of any of the HOTH residents, having fled Winnipeg immediately after it was destroyed.
The crew worked efficiently, but not so fast as to take chances. The Vogel boys were younger than Bart, but were also showing that they had a solid understanding of the dangers associated with chain saws. They were also becoming very good with the snow-blowers, table saws and other power tools and equipment used around the HOTH. At first they had known nothing of small machines, but in the first few months after the Vogels arrived at the HOTH, the boys had shown real aptitude with machines. They never complained about being relegated to maintenance tasks and chain-sharpening duty. The work of de-limbing the giant trees was a real treat for the Vogel boys.
Taking a break now and then to drink some water flavored by a sugary fruit crystal mix, the work-party enjoyed their labor in the outdoors and had worked up some heat despite the cool air. During this break, one of the boys made an observation about how funny the trees would look one day when the snow melted. The stumps would end up being a dozen feet above the ground and would look like whiskers on the face of the earth, not like normal tree stumps cut closer to the ground. It made JJ reflect on how many trees they would have to cut down in the course of heating the HOTH for ten or more years. He loved to calculate such things, and worked it out in his mind. Typically harvesting two large trees every three days at five different wood harvest sites would mean each site would lose about four trees per month, or forty-eight trees per year. After ten years, each of the five main sites would have lost about two acres of trees. All these stumps a dozen feet high really would make the forest look like a scruffy unshaven man’s face.
Once the logs had been de-limbed and mostly bucked up, it was time to rotate Nora out to replace Amy and Decklan to replace his father, Francis, at the Observation Posts. OP duty was a job which young Decklan was just old enough to be given. He had already shown his calmness under fire.
He had been cut-off from the group on a scavenge patrol when it was attacked by a group of men from town. He had kept his head about him and snuck back to the Far Side OP during the scavenge recce of a pharmacy. He informed JJ at the OP that four men had somehow gotten inside the perimeter and got the drop on the three men and two women of the scavenge party. As Decklan transmitted the coded radio message back to the HOTH, JJ moved in to take up a covering position, and then Decklan had moved up to join him.
Following the SOPs, JJ and Decklan illuminated the two most prominent men in the hostile group with laser target designating beams. This enabled the scavenge-party leader, Manfred Vogel, to play out the SOPs. He informed the leader of the four hostiles that several snipers now had the drop on them and that they would be taken out in a few seconds if they did not immediately drop their weapons. Seeing a red light centered on his chest and that of another of his men, Peter Wayne decided not to risk it, and quickly complied. A tense situation was averted with no loss of life.
The fact that there had in fact been only one high-powered weapon trained on them, JJ’s AWSM, and that the other laser beam was in actually a simple pen-light laser illuminator held in the steady hands of young Decklan Callaghan, didn't matter.
That event had actually yielded the HOTH group a powerful ally in Peter Wayne, who was the leader of a group of families on the Parksville end of the Oceanside region.
The Wayne Group had been scavenging for medication for Mrs. Wayne, who was suffering badly from a very bad ear infection. She needed antibiotics. Manfred immediately offered to share the scavenge with the Wayne group, and helped them find the n
eeded medicine. He also gave Mr. Wayne one of the radio frequencies that the HOTH used to coordinate with other groups in a loose alliance in the region, and promised to follow up with a well-being visit at a later date. That mission was a success in many ways for the HOTH, but it had also demonstrated Decklan’s maturity and ability to follow the SOPs as well as any adult. His knowledge of the “Actions on Contact” would be put to the test on this day.
Just ten minutes after taking over from his father, Decklan heard something in the distance. As it grew louder, Decklan quickly recognized the unmistakable sound of a skidoo. He sprang into action. First, he radioed in a coded report to HOTH Ops. If the next report did not come within the allotted time, in this case five minutes, then help would be sent from the HOTH, otherwise they would remain on immediate standby.
In the HOTH, Casey used the PA system to inform everybody that there was a situation underway. Danny quickly went down to Ops from the garage. As Casey finished marking the details with a grease pencil on a laminated topographic map, Danny looked over Casey’s shoulder and immediately understood the situation.
“I’ll be ready to take a Whisper with Zlata and have Barry standing by on the gas-sled.” With a nod from Casey, Danny then explained to Zlata and Barry what the situation was and the three of them quickly donned their winter kit and held standby with the garage door open, ready to depart instantly if needed.
Decklan’s next task was to ensure that the work crew was alerted. He had heard the double-click over the XPR net indicating that Nora, at the Near Side OP, had heard his report.
SOPs called for the non-contact OP to make sure that there was no contact on that side, check the exit route, and then inform the work party of the situation and the exit strategy.
Nora swept the exit route and then walked the 100 meters to the work site, raising her arm high over her head to indicate “SILENCE, I have a message to pass.” It took a minute for anybody to notice, but once more and more people put down their tools and raised their arm in the air, the rest of the work party quickly caught on and downed tools.