by Pete Thorsen
When Art guessed everything was ready and it looked like it might stay dry for a few days he started cutting hay. It turned out he had picked a good time and it remained cloudless the whole week. Putting up the hay went very smooth with the four men to share the work and even the gals volunteered to drive the tractor a time or two.
Often Art would ship the hay out soon after it was put up but this year he would obviously not be doing that. The ranch had many huge tarps on hand for the purpose of covering the hay for storage which they had used before and all the hay was soon stacked and covered.
With the haying done for now there were only the normal daily chores and the garden to tend to. By this time the garden was producing more and the ladies were starting to can the excess. Each household had their own pressure canner and they often used two or three at the same time to make the work of canning go faster.
The rabbits were producing and they also culled a few of their chickens to get fresh meat. They did still have some meat left in the freezers and used it as needed. Joy had kept close track of how much meat they used every week in the fall and winter so she could let the guys know how much wild game to bring home so it would last at least close to the next hunting season.
The chickens and rabbits they raised helped to stretch the frozen meat into lasting longer. They also had plenty of eggs and milk for additional protein in their diet which again stretched their meat supply.
Chapter Thirteen
Finally one evening when they turned the TV on to check if they were broadcasting they got some surprising news. The TV station was finally receiving a satellite signal from a national station. It was great to finally get some national news which they had not received for many months but mostly the news was anything but good.
The nation was still reeling from the effects of the dollar collapse and the resulting turmoil. The riots were long since done but the aftermath of those riots remained with many cities having large areas that were totally burned down and other areas that had been all but destroyed by the rioting mobs. Millions in the cities were dead and the numbers could only be vaguely guessed at this point and might never be totally known.
Many had fled the cities or had at least tried to flee. Only a few of those fleeing had viable destinations that had any hope of sustaining them. Many just stopped wherever they were when they ran out of gas.
This was doubly bad because small towns ended up with way larger populations than they did have and though the locals often tried to find housing and food for the influx of people it only ended badly for both the newcomers and the local residents. Food supplies were depleted and food shipments that many were sure to arrive never materialized leading to mass starvation in a few areas.
Sometimes the bad elements of society in the large cities were among the first to leave to seek greener pastures much to the detriment of those areas the bad bunch moved into. There were many horror stories across the nation. The winter was rather normal but proved too much for many citizens in the northern climates with many freezing to death during the winter months.
Many people had been totally snowed in the whole winter. Some lost electrical power due to winter storms that could not be repaired due the snowed in roads and lack of linemen. Those that used liquid fuels usually received several refills throughout the winter months and with the lack of workers, the lack of fuels, and the snowed in roads it led to them running out of heat early on in the winter.
There were success stories also where families and neighbors would move in together and pool their resources of food and fuel to make it through the long winter.
Then the station talked about the near civil war caused by the atrocities committed by the Federal government following the Presidential Executive Orders. This had led to bloody fights between citizens and members of the government’s Homeland Security Department.
The announcer said that department had now been totally disbanded. When things were at there worst many citizens had advanced on the nation’s capital to put an end to the corrupt government. Troops had been called up to surround and protect the White House but there were no clashes between those troops and the advancing citizens.
It seems even though the President had fired many of those in the Armed Forces that did not share his beliefs before any of this collapse happened there were still many that were true to the oath they had taken to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The President and the Vice President were forcibly removed from office, an event the two politicians did not survive.
Every appointee of the President was fired and removed. The Speaker of the House of Representatives was approached to take the office of President but he refused to do so. After some discussion he finally did accept the position with the stipulation that in November a new President would be elected through a special election even if it was not a presidential election year.
One of the first orders of the new President was to put Congress in a special session to work out all the problems of the nation. Every Congressman still alive was found and returned to the Capital. There would be no recesses or vacations of Congress until the nation was back on its feet and had at least some measure of normalcy.
He ordered a ring of armed troops around the Capitol building to ‘protect’ the Congressmen but with the real reason blatantly obvious that they stay there and do their jobs to fix their country. The President then asked Congress to repeal the Posse Comitatus Act so he could send US troops around the country to help wherever they were needed.
This Congress did with a leap of faith that the new President would not use them against the citizens and the President signed it into law. He then ordered many troops back from overseas locations and with the help of many people tried to send the troops around the nation wherever they could do the most good.
The President could not control Congress but he did stand on the floor of Congress and addressed both the members of the House and the Senate.
“The time of any partisanship is over. You are no longer Democrat or Republican. Every one of you is an American and millions of your countrymen are dead and many more are dying every single day.
You have one chance to rebuild America and if you fail it is very likely there will not be a second chance. Make new laws, repeal old laws, start with a clean slate, do whatever you have to do to bring this country back from the brink that it is now standing next to.
Every one of you knows the truth of the power grab that the former President made. I and all of you made that possible because we allowed it to happen. It was the same with the collapse itself; we did that by bloating this government into the huge behemoth that brought the whole country down to its knees.
This country has fallen and it is too fat to get up. Get this country back to what the founding Father’s envisioned with a lean and nimble Federal Government with most of the power in the hands of the States. The Federal Government and the office of the President have taken way too much power and it almost crushed us.
That power does not belong to you or I but to the States and the People. All of you have a choice. You can still be a hero or you can remain self-centered like we all were that led directly to the deaths of millions of Americans.
Those Americans that are still alive are very tough and have proved that. They are ready to rebuild this great country and only ask for the freedom to do so and a little direction. God once blessed this Nation before we kicked him out and I humbly ask him for his forgiveness and to return to help us now.”
The President walked out of the Capital building with the hopes that those inside would now be vastly different than they were before the collapse and everyone would soon know if they changed or not. In the mean time he ordered the military to make sure all the hundreds of electric power generating plants continued in operation. He sent them to every town in America to see what was needed and to try to provide that help if at all possible.
He went himself to coal mining towns to ask the miners to please go b
ack to work to provide the coal to feed the power plants. He told them there might be money later but the whole country needed to run on faith right now. He said that’s right faith. Faith in God and also faith in our fellow Americans.
He made the same plea over radio stations and TV stations asking truckers, farmers, and every American to please work. He told them that some military would be stationed everywhere. Go to them, tell them what you need and how you and them can work together to help the country as a whole.
He said it will only work if everyone has faith and trust so it is up to every single American to provide that faith and trust to get this country up and running. The new President stopped in small towns around the country with his message. And the people saw the honesty in his face and felt the faith in his words. The people realized they were the only ones who could fix the country and get it up and running again. There would be no white knight coming to help.
On the ranch they decided as a whole that none of them had even remotely critical jobs other than maybe Ann being a nurse but there was no way she could go back halfway across the country right now so all of them just thought the best bet would be to just continue as they were.
They could maybe help others from time to time like they did with the town and by providing hay to other ranchers so they could grow more cattle. That was their real job anyway and they were doing that already. The best way for them to help the nation was to grow hay and their own food so they would not be a burden on the resources of the nation while at the same time providing a necessary product.
Chapter Fourteen
As the spring turned into mid-summer more services in the nation came back online. The phones finally started working so those at the ranch could call their friends to see how they were. There was a lot of bad news passed during the phone calls when they discovered several of their friends had perished. This had been expected but that did not make the news of their friend’s deaths any easier to bear. Eventually the internet was again available though not quite as robust as it once was, mostly due to all the destruction, fewer people, and closed businesses in the still struggling United States and abroad.
The nation was rebuilding and the news shows could now show some good news once in awhile for a change instead of just the bad. With more and more of the infrastructure coming back shipments of goods were also happening across the nation. Fuel of all kinds was one of the first priorities and once there was fuel available everything else started moving faster and food was again being grown, processed, packaged, and delivered.
The Congress had actually set aside their petty differences for the first time and worked as a whole to get many things done. There was now a ‘new’ US dollar to replace the old and all money in accounts in the banks were automatically converted to the new currency.
These ‘new’ dollars were not ‘Federal Reserve Notes’ as the Federal Reserve bank was disbanded. There were still some financial problems being worked out but things were moving forward at a now brisk pace. Congress took the new President’s warnings to heart and the federal government was being slimmed way down and hardly a day went by without a department or agency being cut way back or often totally eliminated.
States were doing much the same as the federal government. Congress passed a national firearm concealed carry law, sometimes called Constitutional carry because no permit was needed to carry a gun any way you wanted. Which everyone was doing anyway so that law made very little difference.
Congress did away with the Individual income tax and instead went to a very small national sales tax that would start on January first. There would be no taxes of any kind imposed until the first of January. Any money that people or businesses had overseas could be brought back and no taxes would be imposed on it but said this may well be a one time offer.
They would be imposing import taxes on any items made elsewhere and shipped into the United States to promote manufacturing to again start up in the USA. Almost all government grants and all subsidies were ending. The future grants would only be given after a substantial advancement was made. The government would not pay for failures only new innovations that could be proven and would benefit the United States.
All foreign aid was stopped totally but United States citizens as individuals could still give if they wanted, there would just be no taxpayer dollars sent out. The United States dropped out of the United Nations and reclaimed the UN building in New York. The UN would have to use one of its buildings in other countries (if they remained a viable entity without the USA).
Many US military bases in foreign countries were being closed unless they were deemed vital to national security. With the whole world in turmoil some US Navy assets were brought back to patrol closer to the US shores. All the US Armed Forces worked together to totally seal the borders and coastal waters of the nation. Extreme force was used a few times until foreigners realized they were not going to enter the United States again without an invitation to do so.
Businesses were again opening their doors as new shipments were arriving though most of those items were coming from warehouses because shipments from other countries were still mostly stopped. Some US manufacturing plants were opening up for operation and other plants were being built or rebuilt.
Many oil drilling restrictions were lifted and soon new oil drilling on US soil and coastal areas would begin. With the large drop in the population of the United States domestic oil production would easily meet all our needs. New pipelines were being carefully planned to meet future needs. With all the rebuilding in the cities and many towns new natural gas lines were being run to take advantage of this very plentiful domestic fuel.
Most other countries were as bad off as or worse than the United States. In very poor countries the lack of any aid caused the starvation of thousands. Small wars were being fought in many parts of Africa and some in the Middle East. The drug trade had pretty much ended and caused large problems in the drug growing countries.
First world countries were all in financial collapse, when the dollar went down it dragged many currencies down with it. Plus without tourists from the United States or any sales to the United States those foreign economies fell even more.
In many countries a large chunk of their whole economy centered on America and when the dollars stopped the economy basically stopped too. China had built their whole country around exports and those exports stopped, both to the United States and to almost all other countries causing untold problems for that country.
The world was on the very brink of a global war as counties thought they had very little to lose with their nations already falling apart. The only thing that stopped the war from happening was everyone knowing that if a major war broke out it would go nuclear immediately and likely lead to the total destruction of all mankind. No country had the resources left for a conventional war but many still had stockpiles of nukes that could be fired with just a push of a button. So once again because there could be no winner in it nuclear war was averted.
Chapter Fifteen
With the United States getting back on its feet and with all the building going on Al was not surprised when he got a phone call asking him to return to work. His company said they had a lot of work lined up but would no longer be in Atlanta because the city was in total ruins.
They would now be operating in Sioux Falls, South Dakota instead because it was in relatively good shape for a larger city and was more centrally located in the United States. As soon as they had offices lined up there they would call Al with the address and when he could start work.
Dean and Amy both received calls from their companies and could return to work in two to three weeks with follow up calls to come with more details. When Ann never received a call from the hospital she tried calling in but got no response so she called the Boston police department switchboard number.
There she did get an answer and found out the hospital she worked at had been destroyed and would not be rebuilt. Bob tried calling
in to his old job and had no response there either. Boston had suffered greatly during the collapse as had many large cities. Though Art said they were sure welcome to stay at the ranch, Bob and Ann drove to Oklahoma City and both found employment there so they would be much closer to the ranch and could come often to stay.
Al and Liz went to Sioux Falls after Al got the address of his new office. They then found an apartment close by and Liz also got a job within walking distance of their new home. By the beginning of the new year both Al and Liz had settled into their new life and new jobs though neither liked the very cold winter in their new environment. They were soon both thinking of getting jobs and moving to Texas or Arizona where the winters were more to their liking. The following year they moved to Lubbock, Texas and were much happier and much closer to the ranch.
Art and Joy found themselves rather lonely out at the ranch with everyone now gone. Plus for a long time Art had a tough time whenever he went to town because everyone remembered how he had helped them in there time of need and surrounded him just about everywhere he went to again thank him for the hundredth time.
The End
Thank you for reading this compilation of some of my early short stories and I hope you found them enjoyable. If they were something you liked please watch for more of my stories to follow. Below are some of my already published stories that you might also enjoy. So far I have over 40 stories published on Kindle with many in print also. My success is totally the result of you, my readers, and you have my most deep felt Thank You!