TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story

by David Craig

  Beacon guided her into talking about the latest attack as he threw the partly refilled bota of vodka back over the stockade wall yet again.

  "We were heading east when we ran into this castle," she said, "it was just too much for us. I mean they had stone walls and towers and an iron gate with a sign -- DDL…something and moats and everything."

  "Blue Head said we'd wait in the forest and see if we could sneak in that night, but they had horse patrols out that spotted us and raised the alarm. Then a bunch of the castle people showed up on the walls and covered the horsemen while they herded all their horses and cows and goats and pigs and stuff inside and closed the gate," indignantly she added, "they didn't leave nothin' outside for us."

  "Even Blue Head said we'd never get in there but we were running out of food and he had to do something or people would start deserting so we headed back here. That's when we ran into Colonel Darkin's army," she slurred.

  "Army, what army?"

  "More," she slurred trying to fling the bota bag back over the wall and failing miserably.

  "Tell me about the army or it's no more vodka for you."

  "OK, OK! There was a bunch of army guys at the bottom of the valley headin' up towards the castle an they had uniforms an a cannon and everything!"

  "What kind of cannon?"

  "A great big one! They couldn't move it much 'cause it was heavy an they didn't have any trucks or horses or nothin' to pull it with. More!"

  "Tell me more about the army and the cannon."

  "They're all the way down at the bottom of the valley an they'll never get up to the castle 'cause the bridge is out an there's cliffs an stuff an they don't have any food either."

  "How do you know they don't have any food?"

  "We tried to trade'em some girls for food but Colonel Darkin said no 'cause he's a mean man. An then they caught some of our guys tryin' to rob some food an started shootin' at us. If they'd a'had food they'd a'traded 'cause them girls was pretty."

  "How many horses do they have?"

  "Horses? We eat horses, but they didn't have none and they needed'em

  'cause horses would'a helped'em 'cause somebody cut down all the trees across the road for miles and there's landslides too."

  "How many men?"

  "I don't know, a hundred, maybe two hundred. You promised."

  Beacon lowered the quarter full bota bag down to her. "And then you came here?"

  "Yeah, we were supposed to wait in the trees until midnight like always, but somebody saw some of our advance people and started shooting. That's when Blue Head and Blue Balls got into it. Blue Balls said we'd never get inside since the shooting meant everybody inside would know we were coming and he wanted to bypass this place, but Blue Head said we were out of food and we'd still had the element of surprise if we hurried before the people in here could get organized."

  Gail leaned over and whispered to Beacon "She may have been a peon during that first attack, but clearly she's worked her way up in the world since then. She was present when the bikers were planning these last few raids, she's telling us what the leaders said to each other."

  Beacon nodded, "In the long run we're all where we want to be doing what we want to do. She's had plenty of chances to leave the Blue Heads if she really wanted to."

  "Maggie, I don't think you and the Counsel of Cro… I don't think y'all need to take a vote to reject this one, am I right?"

  Maggie and the Counsel of Crones nodded as one.

  Beacon's supply of vodka had come from two cases he'd found in the village down by the lake and given to Granny" Reece to hold. Keeping the bota this time he tied a full bottle to the rope and dangled it over the stockade.

  "Where's the castle?"

  "G'me more!"

  "No castle no vodka!" It was a gamble, she might not know north from south or she might lie to him for some reason, but he had to try.

  "Over there," she pointed to the northeast, "on the other side of that mountain with the snow on top. Blue Head said we had to come southwest an we had'ta cross a river to get here. More!"

  Beacon lowered the bottle just a bit. "This is the last of our vodka. You'll find more vodka in a cabin on the other side of the lake across from that village" he pointed in the direction of the lake as he lied, "You can swim to the vodka if you hurry. Now go and never come back. If you ever come back here again we'll shoot you."

  She grabbed the bottle almost tugging Beacon from his feet as she hugged it to her chest and half ran half staggered towards the lake. Beacon fully expected her to try to swim the width of the lake and fully expected her to drown before discovering he'd lied to her.

  Road Trip

  Beacon, Old Bill and Gail met Maggie and the Counsel of Crones in Maggie's headquarters.

  Beacon knew it would be a hard sell but he had some aces up his sleeve.

  "You all heard her and she was too drunk to lie much or well so I believe the core of what she said. That "army" of Colonel Darkin's that she ran into is probably a rogue military unit he held together after The Blowup and now he's either scouring the countryside like a plague of locusts to feed his troops or setting up his own kingdom. Either way it's just a matter of time until he gets around to us."

  "You don't even know if he knows about us much less where we are."

  "Maggie, how many people have you turned away in the last year? A hundred? Three hundred? Do you really believe all of them starved?"

  Beacon had hit on a sore spot. Although necessary for the survival of the Settlement, Maggie and the Council of Crones realized their refusal to admit newcomers to the Settlement amounted to a death sentence for many of the people who'd been caught unprepared when civilization came to an abrupt end.

  Beacon hurried on so he wouldn't have to listen to the litany of reasons why it had to be that way. "Do you think any of those survivors has any reason to be loyal to the Settlement? They'd trade our location for an apple, a fig or a grape!"

  "So what, we've fought off two major attacks we could take them too."

  "Maggie, the Blue Heads were an undisciplined, untrained mob with few guns and lousy leadership. If Colonel Darkin comes for us his unit will be a well armed, disciplined attack force with a cannon that'll blow our wooden walls apart and our homes with them."

  If they're who I think they are we can propose an alliance for trade and mutual defense."

  "Listen, I think I know the people in the castle, I met them on my way up into the mountains and they're good people with their own resources. If we warn them they'll owe us a favor and they'll be able to at least weaken Darkin's army."

  "And then they'll know we exist and come after us!" Maggie said sarcastically.

  "They've no reason to come after us the convoy was better prepared on the way up to their redoubt than the Settlement is now."

  Maggie wasn't convinced. "They can't defend us from that far away and besides, we don't need them, we've got four machine guns now."

  "Submachine guns," Beacon corrected, "and they each fire about a thousand rounds per minute."

  "So what." Maggie didn't want to admit her ignorance.

  "So the ammo in their magazines is all the ammo we have left for them," Beacon said conveniently forgetting to mention the thousands of forty-five caliber rounds he and Old Bill had stashed in the mountains for his own pistols and to trade, "but the castle has a real M60 machine gun and a Barrett."

  Maggie had no idea what a Barrett was but wasn't going to admit that either.

  Seeing the stubborn look on her face Beacon continued, "If we're attacked again we could fire all of our sub gun ammo up in a few minutes. What I'm proposing is a two purposed two part expedition."

  "Like what?" Maggie seemed resigned.

  "Old Bill and I have some guns and ammo cached up in the mountains; I'll take Gale, Randy, Jackie and a couple of extra horses with me. Once the ammo is loaded on the horses they'll all head back here and I'll go on to the castle."

  Maggie wasn't willing
to risk all her best shooters and started to object. Beacon cut her off.

  "The Settlement needs its next generation of mountain men and Buck is one of the best candidates I've seen, but he's going to be off his feet for a few weeks. He and the other teens can listen to Old Bill's stories; that's the way I learned in the beginning. Old Bill is the best teacher we've got; besides I wouldn't take Gail out with me if I didn't think it was safe."

  Both Maggie and Gail seemed startled by that admission but Beacon pressed on.

  "The people at the castle know me, they'll be thankful for the warning and I'll see what things we can trade with them."

  They traveled light and fast with Beacon ranging ahead setting snares to be collected each afternoon. Beacon didn't want to attract attention by firing their guns at game which is why he passed up several deer. Jackie seemed to look up to Gale as an older sister.

  Once one of the caches had been dug up and loaded on the horses the main party started back to the Settlement this time with Beacon's horse loaded with supplies instead of him. Taking only his scoped Ruger 10/22, a surplus M1949 Mountain sleeping bag from the cache and some food in a small camo backpack he planned to travel light and fast.

  The shortcut he planed to take would cut across two densely wooded steep sided mountain valleys as he cut around the base of the snow capped mountain. He knew at least the first valley to be crisscrossed was filled with fallen timber making horse travel virtually impossible. He had to assume the second valley would be littered with downed trees as well.

  The detours he'd have to make to take a horse through that territory would eat up any time that might be saved by riding it. Also even at a walk a horse made more noise on rocky ground than his moccasins. More to the point, a shod horse left tracks even on solid rock.

  He cold camped investing the time that would have been wasted collecting wood, making fires and cooking food in walking a little further each day. By getting up before dawn and traveling till dark his moccasins cut a quick, silent, nearly trackless trail.

  Cutting across a relatively flat area of the second valley floor he came across the river the Blue Head woman had spoken of and the skeleton of a violently aborted attempt at the rebirth of civilization.

  If there'd been still living souls about he'd have heard the buzz of people, seen or smelled the smoke of them and their fires. He'd have noted the hundred other little signs that people inevitably left about when they occupied an area for any length of time.

  So he almost stepped into the ruins before realizing what he'd stumbled upon. The fires had burned the paint off of the vehicles allowing the metal to rust to a golden brown. The Blowup had been a universal leveler; Volkswagens, BMW's and F-150's were intermingled with Chevys and Cadillacs.

  Whoever the refugees had been they hadn't even arranged the vehicles in a defensive circle, just parked on both sides of an old logging road next to the small river. Perhaps they'd thought the remoteness would hide them until order was restored.

  There were signs that the camp had been occupied for a few days; awnings had been extended from RV's, rock campfire rings built and tents pitched. He could see pots, pans, skillets and skulls scattered among the two columns of vehicles. The booty left behind showed the land pirates hadn't been interested in rebuilding civilization just pillaging for food, weapons and women.

  Whatever had happened must have occurred shortly after The Blowup. The next day Beacon found Colonel Darkin's rogue unit.

  Howitzer

  Beacon hunched down in the shade under the bottom branches of a large pine tree on a hillside while he waited for the rogue reservists to haul the cannon to him.

  He'd deliberately cut low around the mountainside to be sure he'd find their trail. It hadn't been hard, a blind man could have found the sign they'd left. Crushed trees and brush, campfire pits and trash stood out like signposts. Once he'd found their trail it was easy to go back up on the ridgeline to get ahead of them and wait.

  While his eyes watched the valley his thoughts drifted to a warm summer night before The Blowup when he'd debated the pros and cons of bugging in versus bugging out with Prepper Pete over their mutual back fence.

  Beacon was the only person beside Pete, his wife and their two sons who knew that Pete's house had a year's supply of canned food for the four of them stored in their garage and basement. Regular store bought canned food, stored in a cool dry place, is good for fifty years or more past the expiration dates printed on the cans so Pete hadn't bothered buying expensive freeze dried, vacuum and nitrogen packed foods except for grains, pastas and specialty items like candy he couldn't find in a can.

  Having spent his money on their house Pete couldn't afford to buy up the surrounding farmland so a major housing development, and Beacon, had moved in next door.

  Pete claimed his two story concrete walled home with brick facing, so it wouldn't look like the fortress that it was, would be sufficient to hold off marauders with small arms which was all he expected. Metal rafters under a tile roof topped off the Molotov cocktail proof building combining with loopholed metal shutters to make the place invulnerable for the duration of any SHTF scenario in his opinion.

  Beacon pointed out that although bazookas were currently out of fashion, people had been making petards since the sixteenth century and anyone who could pour enough gunpowder into a tin can could make a weapon capable of breaching his front door.

  "If they do they'll be hoist by their own petard so to speak," Pete said, "behind that front door is a hallway with a loophole in the wall at the end, and if they somehow get to the end of the hallway they'll find a recessed door on the side every bit as strong as the one they just blasted through and, he smiled, "another loophole behind them when they knock on the door."

  "But, Pete, wouldn't that be considered murder after TSHTF and order is restored?"

  "Nope, self-defense, they had to blast their way in to get shot." Then Pete told Beacon about a fellow prepper in a regular house who couldn't afford the preparations Pete and his family were making.

  "The guy's got burglar bars on all his windows and iron gates on the doors but the gate on the front door leading into a hallway is just weak enough that someone willing to make a little effort, and noise, could break in. That'll channel the marauders to one point so it'll be less likely he'll have to defend in all directions at once."

  "Too risky," said Beacon, "but y'all can use my back yard for your garden if the SHTF turns out to be TEOTWAWKI."

  Beacon's thoughts came back to the present as the cannon came into view in the valley below. Sneaking along the hillside to where he thought he'd get a better view Beacon made a mistake.

  As he weaved between trees so as not to skyline himself while working his way diagonally up to a hillcrest he looked over a large boulder and was surprised to see a soldier looking back at him from about a hundred yards away.

  The scouting party in Woodland camouflage had stopped to rest and the guy just happened to be seated in a clearing looking up the hillside when Beacon's head popped over the top of the boulder. With only bush behind him to break up his outline Beacon felt exposed.

  Both men froze. Beacon knew what he was looking at, the soldier and several of his companions were in plain view. But only Beacon's head was showing above the rock.

  The soldier stood up to get a better look. Resisting the urge to duck, which would have created movement that would have reinforced the soldier's suspicion that someone was up there, Beacon slowly lowered his chin to the rock leaving only the top of his MultiCam boonie hat showing with a tiny gap under the hat's brim for him to look out over the rock to see what the soldier did next.