Liberators Read online

  Malorie slowly let out the clutch. “Do they teach everyone the hood-tap maneuver around here, Mrs. Townsend?”

  “It would appear so! The church is not too far up here on your right after you cross the bridge. Will you be on your way, or can you all come inside the parsonage and stay a while?”

  Megan spoke up. “We would love to stay, but I’m afraid we will only have time for a bathroom break and then we must be moving on.”

  They reached the parsonage, and Joshua stayed with the Jeep while Malorie and Megan followed Mrs. Townsend inside with the boys. At this point, it was becoming less strange for Malorie to carry her sidearm and slung weapon with her wherever she went, but carrying it into someone’s house would likely always be strange.

  Megan cycled the boys through the bathroom, and Malorie had a moment to speak with Pastor Townsend about the deteriorating situation in the apartment building next door. Beatrice emerged from her well-stocked pantry with some late-season cabbage and kale. She then asked if she could give the boys some cookies from the batch that she baked before she left to see her grandkids, to which Malorie smiled and answered, “We know better than to tell a grandparent what she can and cannot do with cookies.”

  Megan thanked the Townsends and left her sister to be the cool auntie and broker the cookie deal. She then went outside to relieve Joshua. Megan hugged Joshua while reflecting on the day’s events. “It’s already dark, and we only made it as far as Charleston—but given the current situation across the river we are very blessed to even have gotten this far.”

  Joshua replied, “Indeed, God has extended His grace to us in getting us here.” Joshua looked her in those stunning blue eyes and said, “Watch your six out here, we’ll be rolling very soon.”

  Joshua turned around to walk to the house with the empty water bottles in hand and Megan grabbed his sling across his back, spun him around, and kissed him, saying, “Hurry up in there. By the way, there’s more where that came from.”

  16

  THUNDER BAY

  It’s an edgy place. I mean, in the sense that it still hangs on out there like a rawhide flap of the old frontier, outposted from the swirl of mainstream America. The Upper Peninsula [of Michigan] is a hard place. A person has to want to hurt a lot to live there.

  —John G. Mitchell, Audubon magazine, November 1981

  Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge Plaza—October, the First Year

  Once the Crunch started, Ray McGregor didn’t waste any time leaving Michigan. He just settled up on the cost of the propane that he had used and said his good-byes to his hosts. Long experience with gooseneck trailers made hooking up his nineteen-foot Toy Hauler quick and easy. After testing his trailer lights, he was ready to roll. Even before he got on the highway, he turned on the pickup’s radio. He immediately switched from his usual FM classical music station to WKNW, at 1400 AM. There, he heard a litany of bad news. This was it: the Big One that he and Phil had long talked about. The major whammy. The Great Reset. The end of the world as we know it. Götterdämmerung.

  Ray’s border crossing at Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge an hour and a half later was both slow and stressful. The bumper sticker on the RV immediately ahead of him was emblazoned with SAY YA HAY TO THE UP. He had a lot of time to look at it. Longer than he liked, since he was anxious to cross the border. There were thirty or more trucks, campers, and RVs ahead of his, and none of the usual perfunctory “flash and wave-through” transits going on. As he waited in the queue of vehicles ahead, Ray tried repeatedly to call his parents at their ranch in Canada and his sister in Florida, using his TracFone cell phones. None of the calls were going through. The only good news was that the toll for his pickup with a two-axle trailer was still pegged at six dollars, despite the raging inflation.

  The border crossing at the international bridge was unusual in that it had a separate lower plaza for trucks, RVs, and anyone towing a trailer. Nearly everyone was stopped and questioned at length, and passports were closely scrutinized. Judging by the large number of vehicles directed to the return loop, it was obvious that the border was effectively closed to anyone except returning Canadians. The RV with Michigan plates ahead of him was allowed to pass, but he noticed that the man had passed a mixed bundle of U.S. and Canadian passports (of two noticeably different shades of blue) to the Border Services officer. Ray surmised that the man was a dual citizen or that he had a Canadian wife.

  A series of signs posted by Canada Border Services Agency/Agence des Services Frontaliers du Canada, reading “Border Crossing Ahead,” warned: ALL VEHICLES SUBJECT TO SEARCH and a more friendly: HAVE YOUR PASSPORT READY. When he reached the head of the queue, a young Border Services officer spent a long time looking through the pages of Ray’s passport and scanning it. Ray had been accustomed to border checks taking less than two minutes. The officer quizzed Ray about firearms and Tasers, twice. In recent years, they had begun asking about the amount of cash he was carrying “in excess of one thousand dollars,” but with the recent mass inflation, that question would have seemed laughable to most cross-border travelers.

  When the questioning turned to his final destination, the officer seemed more relaxed and conversational. But then he asked a question that took Ray by surprise: “Do you have sufficient printed currency to buy fuel to reach your destination?” Ray promptly answered “Yes,” but he realized how quickly the concept of cash had been inverted at the border, with the advent of the Crunch. Just a few months earlier, the officer would have been suspicious if Ray was carrying several thousand dollars. Now the officer needed assurances that Ray had a large enough wad of cash to see him home without being stranded. (Gas stations had suspended taking any payments with credit cards.)

  The officer thumbed through the back of the passport, examining the entry and exit stamps. “It looks like you’ve been spending much more time in the States than you have in Canada, for the past two years.”

  Ray nodded, “Yeah. I’ve been researching a book on World War II aviators—doing a lot of interviews. I didn’t bother with a work visa. As you can see, I’ve never exceeded six months for any stay.”

  This was the first time that Ray had ever had his vehicle thoroughly searched. Shining his flashlight around the interior of the trailer and seeing the chain saws and woodsplitter, the Border Services officer said, “You said that you were writing a book.”

  “Well I didn’t say that a publisher was paying me to write a book. I’ve been writing it freelance, and I’ve got to eat, so I cut firewood.”

  “I see. Well, have a safe trip home to BC. Be very cautious, and keep your tank full. Gas is becoming hard to find.”

  • • •

  Just north of the Canadian side of the city on Highway 17 (the Trans-Canada Highway) Ray crossed the boundary of Lake Superior Provincial Park. Watching the kilometer markers closely, he stopped at a pullout just past kilometer post 27. The spot was deserted, with only the occasional car passing by.

  He pulled a folding entrenching tool out from behind his seat and his GPS receiver out of the glove box, and stowed both of them in a rucksack. After locking up his pickup and checking the tires on both the pickup and the trailer—as was his habit each time he stopped on long trips—he walked into the woods following a deer trail. About 120 yards in, he came to a large and familiar stump that had a distinctive protruding splinter that was left standing straight up where the first cut had met the felling cut. Backing up to the stump, he took nine paces south. This brought his feet directly in front of a pie-pan-diameter flat rock—one of just a few rocks that were within view, and the only one of its size. Flipping it over, he began to dig. Just a few inches down, his entrenching tool struck something that made a hollow sound. He pulled a plastic-wrapped ammo can out of the hole. Originally designed to hold flares, the twenty-inch-long steel can had been repainted with brown Rustoleum paint.

  Peeling off the plastic, Ray was pleased to see that the can had acquired just a bit of surface rust in the fourteen mo
nths that had passed since he’d last inspected it. Opening the can, he found a plastic bag containing $640 in Canadian dollars. Beneath that was a translucent white plastic tube containing seventeen one-ounce silver Canadian Maple Leaf coins.

  Wrapped in an oily rag and several layers of plastic bags was an Inglis Mk I* Hi-Power 9mm pistol. The gun’s utilitarian gray phosphate finish was in fine shape, with no sign of corrosion.

  He spent several minutes loading all of the magazines for the pistol with hollowpoint ammunition. He put all but one of them in their pouches. The last magazine—a twenty-rounder—was inserted into the pistol’s grip. He loaded the chamber and, pointing the pistol into the woods, he gently lowered its rowell hammer (since it lacked a modern decocking lever) to quarter cock. He wrapped the pistol up again in the oily rag and tucked it in the large right outer pocket of his jacket. In the opposite pocket, he put a magazine pouch that held three loaded thirteen-round magazines. All of the other items went back into the ammo can, which he resealed. He tossed the plastic wrapping in the hole but kicked in just enough dirt to cover the plastic. He didn’t bother to completely refill or camouflage the hole, because he didn’t intend to return to it.

  His grandfather had left the Inglis Hi-Power mostly unchanged from its wartime service configuration, except that its lanyard ring had been removed, its magazine safety taken off to lighten the trigger pull, and it had been retrofitted with checked rubber Pachmayr grips. Along with it were seven thirteen-round magazines, three twenty-round magazines, several magazine pouches, and a wooden buttstock with an attached leather holster. Both the gun and the magazines were unregistered and therefore considered contraband in Canada.

  He reached Thunder Bay just after 2:00 P.M. By 2:10 he was parked across the street from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch on Hodder Avenue. The bank didn’t close until 4:00 P.M., but there was a long line at the door. He switched into his other coat, which had a hood. After thirty-five chilly minutes he reached the door, where a security guard was enforcing a “one out, one in” policy to prevent overcrowding in the lobby.

  Once he was finally inside, there was another long queue to reach the teller windows. His wait in that line lasted twenty minutes, where he overheard some irate customers attempting to withdraw more than the new thousand-dollar limit. “Today a thousand won’t buy a shopping trolley full of groceries!” one man shouted.

  When he finally reached a teller window, Ray first wrote a check for one thousand dollars, leaving just $126 remaining in his account. He was handed ten one-hundred-dollar Canadian bills. They were all the later post-2011 type, printed on a polymer paper. Then he exchanged the last of his U.S. currency into Canadian dollars. He was surprised to see that it now took nearly two U.S. dollars to buy one Canadian dollar.

  Ray then asked to access his safe-deposit box. He was told that there would be at least a ten-minute wait, and that because of the current banking emergency, no bank accounts could be closed, and no deposit box rental agreements could be terminated. He explained, “I just need to get what’s in my box.”

  At 3:30, after having his box rental card checked against his signature on his passport, he was ushered into the vault room. He handed his key to the custodian, a pimply-faced young man who looked no more than twenty years old. After both his key and the custodian key were turned, the tray of Ray’s oversize deposit box was pulled out.

  The custodian asked, “Would you like a booth?”

  “No.” Ray unlatched the box and swung the lid open. Inside was a black Conn brand trumpet case and nothing else. Ray pulled out the case and gave a nod.

  As he put the box back into its slot, the custodian quipped, “Must be a valuable instrument.”

  Ray nodded. “Yes, it’s quite precious to me.”

  When he got back to the truck, Ray placed the trumpet case in the passenger seat and changed back to his other jacket. The weight of the pistol and the loaded magazines was comforting.

  When he had driven ten miles out of Thunder Bay on Highway 17, Ray pulled the pickup and trailer onto the off ramp for a disused provincial highway rest stop, open only in summer months. He looked around and could see no traffic in either direction.

  He snapped open the latches on the trumpet case and lifted the lid. The top of the case was crammed full of green plastic twelve-gauge 000 buckshot shells. He began pulling these out and piling them on the truck seat. Beneath them were the two plastic-wrapped halves of a Winchester Model 12 takedown riot shotgun. The barrel had long before been shortened to nineteen inches. He pulled these halves out, and more shotshells tumbled down into the bottom of the case. (He had filled every available space in the case with extra shells.)

  After taking another look up and down the road to ensure that he wasn’t being observed, Ray removed the plastic wrapping and pulled the gun’s magazine tube forward. He joined the two halves of the gun together and gave the fore end a half turn, connecting the barrel’s and receiver’s interrupted threads. Then he slid the magazine tube back into the receiver, gave it a twist, and popped the magazine retainer pin in place. The gun, now assembled, was a handy thirty-three inches long. Holding down the action release, he cycled the action three times to test it. It felt right, so he flipped the gun over and fully loaded the magazine, pumped the action, slid the safety button to the right, and added one more shell to top off the magazine. He draped a poncho over the gun to keep it out of plain sight. Ray let out a sigh of contentment, now feeling properly armed for his road trip west.

  Driving around the northern periphery of Lake Superior was uneventful, aside from seeing one spectacular wreck, the victim of a lake-effect snow flurry the previous day, which had brought visibility down to just a couple of car lengths. An Audi had smashed into a guardrail and flipped over. As Ray drove by, a tow truck driver was rigging a line to attempt to extricate the car. Two RCMP officers were standing by, holding C8 carbines. That struck him as odd. Why was there any need to have rifles out at the scene of a car wreck? Had there already been looting this far from Detroit?

  The drive west through Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary was tiring but relatively uneventful. The news on the radio was disturbing. The looting was getting worse, and more widespread. Most of it was in the U.S. and in the eastern provinces, but there were also disturbances in Edmonton and Calgary. For Ray, worst of all was the uncertainty about whether he’d be able to buy gasoline. The prospect of being stranded left him feeling tense. Where he was able to buy gas, he made sure that both his truck’s tank and all of his six gas cans were completely full. He also topped off his motorcycle’s gas tank and even the pair of two-gallon plastic gas cans for his chain saw. One service station charged thirty-five dollars per gallon, which he considered larcenous. But he paid the price without comment. His cash was rapidly dwindling.

  After leaving Thunder Bay, he drove another three hundred miles, carefully choosing a camping spot where he’d be able to turn around with the trailer, but where the pickup and trailer were not visible from the highway. Rather than sleeping in the trailer, he slept back in the woods with both the shotgun and pistol in his heavy sleeping bag. The truck and trailer were just barely visible to him. He reasoned that if anyone spotted the truck and trailer, they probably wouldn’t spot where he was sleeping.

  He drove almost twelve hundred miles the next day. He repeated the same process for camping the next night and again he got only six hours of sleep. That left nearly a thousand miles for the final day of his drive.

  Nearing Kamloops, he came upon four burned-out vehicles by the side of the road—two vans and two SUVs—that were so thoroughly shot full of holes that they had obviously been in a recent gun battle. There were no bodies and just a few badly burned remnants of baggage, so he assumed that the RCMP had hauled away the corpses. He didn’t come to a full stop to take a close look, but the charred vehicles gave mute testimony to what had happened. The lack of crime scene tape left him troubled. He wondered out loud, “Have things changed that quickly?”


  His final stop for gas was at 100 Mile House. He didn’t have enough cash for all of it, but the attendant seemed content with taking eight silver dimes for the last four gallons of gasoline.

  Although FM radio reception got increasingly spotty as he headed west, he was able to catch some news reports. Most of the large cities in the United States were in absolute chaos, and the collapse of the three U.S. power grids was anticipated by one expert. The key issue, he said, was the level of staffing at power plants. So many employees were in fear of leaving their homes because of the rioting that there wouldn’t be enough staff to keep the nuclear power plants running within a few days. And the supply of coal at the coal-fired plants was reaching critical levels because the nation’s rail network was imperiled by the widespread rioting.

  17

  DEEDS, NOT WORDS

  But there will be no justice, there will be no government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as long as the government and its officials permit bribery in any form.

  —John Jay Hooker

  St. Albans, West Virginia—October, the First Year

  Malorie had sat in the passenger seat, leaving the driver’s seat open for Joshua to drive. She secured her folding-stock M1 Carbine and began finding the best westerly route out of town. Megan was buckling up the boys in the back, making conversation with them about their cookie fortune. While both Jean and Leo had been real troupers the whole day, she knew that this was major upheaval for them. Megan stroked their hair and gently applied the long-practiced craft of maternal interrogation to ensure that both boys were indeed okay.

  Joshua said his good-byes and thank-yous to the Townsends, as they briskly closed the door, a distinctive sound of breaking glass ringing out from the apartment building behind the church. Joshua picked up a trot across the lawn and with one smooth motion climbed into the seat, secured his long rifle, started the Jeep, shifted into gear, and was off in the direction that Malorie was pointing. Malorie gave him immediate right and left directions as she correlated the map to the unfamiliar terrain they were driving through. Everyone could noticeably feel the difference in tension from being in the city to being on country roads.