Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

by Rawles James Wesley

  “I mean five dollars in silver coin.”

  Hollan Combs jerked his chin back and said, “Oh, well, that’s different.” After pondering for a moment, he said, “I’ll need you to pay two months in advance, but you can lease it from month to month after that. I’ll also need a signed statement from you that you’re getting it as is, with no guarantee that the power will ever come back on. If and when it does, the power bill will be separate.”

  Just a few minutes later Combs unlocked the store’s front door and ushered in Sheila, Tyree, and Emily.

  “My last tenants here were brothers. They had a unique combination gun, cigar, and liquor store. They called it ‘Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ and they even answered the phone that way. That was good for a laugh. But the recession just went on and on—double-dip and then triple-dip, you know. They folded a year ago. I heard they moved back to Tennessee.”

  Sheila examined the glass display cases as Combs went on, “The roof was redone just three years ago. The apartment ain’t much, but it’s been repainted since the ‘ATF’ guys moved out. I had a man clean the chimney, and he put a new elbow on the back of the wood stove, since the old one had rusted out. The place was clean, but I’m afraid the mice have made a mess up there.”

  Sheila was pleased to see that the store building had plenty of windows that provided light to conduct business in the absence of grid power. Traces of the building’s former use lingered. The back room was still cluttered with empty gun and whiskey boxes, and one of the glass display cabinets still had a distinct tobacco smell. There was an empty twenty-rifle rack on the north wall of the store, behind the counter. The only entrance to the apartment was via an inside staircase that led up from the store’s small windowless back room. The stairs creaked as they walked up. The apartment had two bedrooms, a gas cooking range, a small Jøtul wood/coal stove, an electric refrigerator (propped open with a stick of firewood), and a small bathroom with a toilet and a tub-shower.

  “Bring me the lease papers. I’ll take it,” Sheila said.

  Less than an hour later they had unpacked the car and moved in. Sheila’s packets of seeds filled two of the glass display cases, in neat rows. They put a few other items suitable for trading in another case.

  “Not a lot to start with,” Emily remarked.

  “Trust in the Lord, Gran, we trust in the Lord.”

  Emily warned, “And you know the ten dollars in silver that you gave Mr. Combs was almost all the coins we had. I gots just three silver quarters and one dime left.”

  “Trust in the Lord, Gran, trust in the Lord.”

  Sheila dug out her tempera paints and soon started painting signs on the inside of the front windows. The signs read: “The Seed Lady,” “Sundry Merchandise,” “Buy—Sell—Trade,” and “Open 8 to 8. Closed Sundays.” She had her first customer walk in even before the paint had dried. He traded a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells for three packets of seeds. In the next few days a steady stream of customers began to arrive, all eager to trade. Eventually, some came from as far as the towns of Lebanon and Campbellsville. Sheila soon developed a reputation as a savvy yet fair storekeeper.

  People brought Sheila all sort of things to trade for seeds, or at least to try to trade for them. Most of what they offered was junk, and Sheila got in the habit of saying politely yet forcefully, “Pass.” But she did trade for hard items, like tools, cans of WD-40, batteries, rolls of duct tape, ammunition, and hardware like nails and nuts and bolts. She made it her habit to reject any appliance that required electricity, since the grid power was down, and batteries were in short supply.

  Late on the afternoon of the sixth day after they arrived, a slightly drunk man brought in an old Pilot brand vacuum tube table radio that had a wooden case. It had both AM and shortwave bands, and according to the man it worked well, back when utility power was available. He also said that his grandfather put all new capacitors in it, to replace the older, paper-wrapped ones. Sheila was about to reject it when her mother asked: “Look in the back. Has it got a transformer? And how many tubes does it have?”

  Puzzled, Sheila did as she was told, which was easy, since the radio’s original back cover was missing: “It’s got no transformer, and it has five tubes.”

  “Go ahead and trade for that.”

  “But, Gran, it takes AC power. We don’t have a generator.”

  Emily insisted, “You go ahead and trade for that radio, and I’ll explain later.”

  Sheila drove a hard bargain, trading just one packet of squash seeds for the old radio. After the man had left, Emily gave an explanation: “Sheila girl, that radio is what your late Grandpère—rest his soul—he call an ‘All-American Five’ radio. He used to fix them. With five tubes and no transformer, it can run on AC or on the DC power. Out on the bayou in the old days, where there was no co-op power line, our kin would hook up ten or eleven car batteries in a row. That makes you about 115 volts of DC power. That will run one of them radios for days and days! And what do you see all over the place these days? I tell you what: abandoned cars with no gasoline. But they each got a 12-volt battery, now don’t they? You put out the word that you’ll trade for car batteries that still have a strong charge. We’re gonna listen to the shortwave, maybe even tonight!”

  11

  Provisional Beginnings

  “There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man���s needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.”

  —Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (1935)

  Radcliff, Kentucky

  Late October, the First Year

  The situation in Radcliff was out of control. The sound of gunfire punctuated every night. There were an average of eight home invasion robberies per day, and most cases went unsolved. Many were never even investigated. The mayor had left town with no notice, towing a Ryder rental trailer, with no indication of his destination. The chief of police had been shot and killed, and more than half of the police officers were not showing up for work.

  It was just after seven a.m. and Maynard Hutchings was sitting in his bathrobe in his den, drinking some of his last remaining jar of instant coffee, alternating between listening to his police scanner and his CB radio. The latest rumor was that Washington, D.C., had burned down—all of it. His wife came into the kitchen and asked expectantly, “Well?”

  “Well, what, darlin’?”

  “Well, what are you gonna do? Isn’t it time you called a meeting or somethin’? Ain’t you the chairman?”

  He nodded. He was chairman of the Hardin County Board of Supervisors. In a city without a mayor or even an acting mayor, and with just an acting police chief, he had more right than anyone to try to sort things out. The utility power was off, but the local phones were still working. Maynard started making calls.

  None of the other county board members would agree to meet. They thought that it would be unsafe and that their families would be in danger in their absence. Two of them gave Hutchings their resignations verbally.

  Then he started calling some of his golfing friends to serve as stand-ins. He set a meeting time for two o’clock that afternoon at the county courthouse. Almost as an afterthought, he called to invite General Uhlich. Under the Army’s new Streamlined Management system, Major General Clayton Uhlich wore two hats. He was both the post commander of Fort Knox and chief of Armor—the head of the U.S. Army’s tanker school and armor development programs. All that Hutchings knew about Clay Uhlich was that he was a two-star general who drank Scotch before five p.m. and that he cheated at golf.

  Rio Arriba Youth Center, Gallina, New Mexico

  Late October, the First Year

  The Phelps boys were on the trail leading west from the Rio Arriba Youth Center by
eight the next morning. The headmaster, obviously embarrassed by the situation, didn’t even come to the stable to say good-bye to the boys. Just as Aguilar had promised, he sent them out heavy with each saddle horse equipped with full-size saddlebags, and sleeping bags carried on the pillions, and smaller saddlebags at their fenders. The packhorses—all large, gentle, “bombproof” geldings—had full loads in bulging alforjas hanging from their packsaddle trees. Each packsaddle was equipped with a fairly new rubberized brown canvas cover secured by diamond hitches. Aguilar had thought through the packing lists very carefully. He even provided each boy separate bills of sale for each of their horses as proof that they were not stolen.

  Aguilar closely watched the boys as they packed their loads, adjusted the girth straps, and dogged-down the diamond hitches. Matthew asked him for help, but Aguilar wagged his finger, admonishing, “No, no, no. You won’t have my help out on the trail, so don’t go askin’ for it now. You gotta show me that you can tack this boy up, tu solito.” After a couple of more tries, Matthew finally got the diamond knot centered and the ropes cinched tightly. He gave a big smile when he did. Slapping him on the back, Aguilar exclaimed, “You can be prouda that!”

  After the three boys had mounted their horses and straightened out the leads for their packhorses, Diego Aguilar shook their hands. He advised Shadrach, “Ready or not, you’re going out into a man’s world, sink or swim, and I hate to say, it’s a world of hurt in some places right about now. We’re going to be praying for you. You take good care of yourselves and these horses. ¡Vaya con Dios!” The boys said thank-yous and then raised their hats and waved them at the headmaster, who was standing outside of his office two hundred yards away. He raised his hand and waved in reply. All three boys tried to hide the fact that they were crying.

  When the boys reached a level spot a mile up French Mesa Road, Shad called a halt. They looked back on the patchwork of fields in the valley below. Shad said, “Mr. Aguilar wanted me to wait until we were away from the center to get this out. He didn’t want the headmaster to make a big fuss, since all that he told him about us getting was the .22s.”

  Handing his horse’s reins to Reuben, Shad loosened his bedroll bag from behind his saddle and rolled it out, exposing the two halves of a well-worn Marlin Model 1893 takedown rifle. The front half was nestled in a scabbard. With a bit of fumbling, Shad assembled the rifle, just as Aguilar had showed him how to do, and loaded it with seven flat-tipped .30-30 cartridges. He emptied the remainder of the twenty-round box into his jacket pocket and snapped it shut. Then, after attaching the .30-30’s scabbard to his saddle, he stowed his .22 rifle under the hitch ropes on his packhorse. “Okay, now we got us a rifle that can knock down a deer or stop a predator.”

  “Yeah, the kind that come on two legs,” Matthew added.

  Luke Air Force Base, Arizona

  Late October, the First Year

  Ian Doyle’s last two days at Luke Field were surreal. As he drove through the Lightning Gate at the corner of Litchfield Road at 0635, he could see that it was completely unmanned. Incongruously, a “Threat Level Orange” warning sign was posted next to the gate. He spent the morning driving around the post, looking for anyone still on duty and doing a visual inventory of the base’s assets. At the NCO housing complex, he saw a group of gang members brazenly loading loot into the back of a pickup truck.

  Doyle found that there were no aircraft remaining on the ramp. All of the military vehicles had also disappeared—either “requisitioned” or stolen. This included all of the fuel trucks. The C-21 Learjet used by the general staff and several F-16s were gone.

  Ian then spent most of the afternoon searching for fuel containers. He couldn’t find any gas cans. He eventually found dozens of empty two-liter soda pop bottles in the recycling Dumpsters near the BX. He took these to the POL terminal and found that someone had left a small Honda generator there. They had rigged it to energize two of the fuel pumps. One of these pumps dispensed 100LL, a leaded high-octane aviation gasoline. That afternoon he returned to Buckeye with almost 140 gallons of 100LL in the cargo area of his Suburban with the rear seat folded down. A few of the containers had leaking caps, so he spent most of the drive with his head out the window, sucking fresh air. He prayed that he wouldn’t be ambushed, since the slightest spark would surely cause a huge explosion.

  Ian waited until after dark, then he and Blanca carried the fuel containers to the backyard and covered them with a tarp.

  The next morning he was back on base at 0615. He spent the morning wandering through the largely abandoned 56th Operations Group (OG) and 56th Maintenance Group hangars and buildings. By 0930 he found only a few young pilots and a couple of E-5 NCOs. The rest were lower-rank enlisted airmen. After finding such a pitiful contingent still on base, Doyle was dejected. He went back to the 56th Maintenance Group hangar and office buildings and came upon a lieutenant who was rummaging through closets and wall lockers, vainly looking for something edible. “Lieutentant, spread the word. I want you to announce that there will be an all-hands formation, for all groups, in the main 56th OG hangar at 1100 hours,” he ordered.

  By 1100, only twenty-one ground crew and seven pilots had gathered. There was just one other captain. They quizzed each other and found that Doyle’s date of rank was eighteen months earlier, giving Ian seniority. In the distance they could see smoke rising from fires all over Phoenix, and there was an almost constant crackle of gunfire. Some of it sounded nearby, in Glendale. Doyle ordered the assembled gaggle to fall in to a proper formation. He called: “Attention! Stand at . . . ease!”

  He took a deep breath and began, “Gentlemen, this is a sad day for me and a sad day for the Air Force. As a captain, I am the ranking officer on base, so that makes me the de facto commander of all of the Luke facilities. As you know, the rotation to Saudi had our numbers greatly depleted even before the Crunch. And now there’s no grid power, and the backup ATC generators have run out fuel. The water towers are now dry and of course there’s no electricity to refill them. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there were a lot of emergency requisitions of aircraft, some under dubious pretenses. More recently, there have been several aircraft that were without a doubt stolen, with no flight plans filed and without benefit of tower clearance. Those were our last flightworthy aircraft. The local gangs are starting to strip outlying buildings, and there are no more security personnel to maintain any kind of perimeter. We have no unit integrity or any functioning chain of command. I have determined that our position is untenable, and we are incapable of carrying out any useful mission. At this point, even our personal safety is at risk.”

  Doyle let that sink in and then continued, “The last straw was this morning, when I was informed that there isn’t so much as a can of beans left in the dining facilities. The bottom line is that we can’t keep you if we can’t feed you. Therefore, I’m hereby releasing all of the personnel on base. As of the end of this formation, your status will be on indefinite leave until either your ETS date or until you hear further orders from any commissioned Air Force officer from any command that is in a bona fide position of authority. Gentlemen, you are hereby released. You will be in my prayers. That is all. Dismissed!”

  After the formation, Ian drove to the Air Force Security arms room. He found that the front door’s latch mechanism was missing. It had been cut out with a cutting torch. Inside, he found that the building had been ransacked. The bodies of two dead men in civilian clothes but with short-cropped military haircuts were sprawled on the floor. Between them was an oxyacetylene torch cart. Both of the men had been shot. Their bodies were puffy and smelled putrid. The sight sickened Doyle, who had never seen a human corpse up close before. To Doyle, it was obvious that the men had used the cutting torch to get into the arms room. Nine rifle and pistol racks had been cut open and emptied. What had happened after that was anyone’s guess. Perhaps there had been a double cross. All of the arms racks were empty
, save one that was still locked. It held five M16A2 rifles. Doyle muttered to himself, “Well, I can’t leave these unsecured.”

  He lit the torch and cut the lock off the remaining rack. Carrying out the five M16s to his Suburban took just one trip with the rifles slung over both shoulders. His search of the building revealed a box of twenty-three loaded M16 magazines that was underneath a duty roster binder in a file cabinet. He also found just one M16 cleaning kit.

  Anahuac, Texas

  Late October, the First Year

  When the Texas power grid went down, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth were soon overcome by riots and looting. Once the local radio station reported simultaneous rioting in all of those cities, Garcia declared it was time for La Fuerza to roll.

  A total of fifty-three adults and twenty-three children wheeled out of the Anahuac warehouse in a parade of twenty-six vehicles, and they never came back. They poured out of the warehouse like hornets from a nest. Downtown Anahuac was first on their list.

  12

  Little Ricky

  “A nation is the more prosperous today the less it has tried to put obstacles in the way of the spirit of free enterprise and private initiative. The people of the United States are more prosperous than the inhabitants of all other countries because their government embarked later than the governments in other parts of the world upon the policy of obstructing business.”

  —Ludwig von Mises, The Anticapitalistic Mentality (1972)

  Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky

  Late October, the First Year

  “I hereby call this meeting to order. Sally is taking the minutes.” Hutchings scanned the faces around the table. Most of them looked nervous and uncertain. Uhlich just looked slightly bemused. There were three attorneys, two bank managers, an IRS special agent, and Uhlich. Aside from the general, Hutchings had known most of the men since high school. Seated by the wall were the county sheriff, the acting chief of police, and two men wearing OCPs who had arrived with Uhlich: a command sergeant major and a young lieutenant, Uhlich’s aide-de-camp. A court reporter sat to one side, silently tapping at a battery-powered stenotype machine. The County Office Building smelled musty with the power out.