Liberators Page 17

  Joshua set about improving the site in small ways, such as digging a slit trench for a solid-waste latrine, improvising an overwatch position, and making a range card for everyone’s use.

  “We’re going to be here awhile, so we need to be able to defend it. It likely goes without saying, but our first defense is passive. That means that we remain unseen. We’re too small a force to ward off anyone, and it won’t take any time at all for the reports from our guns to alert anyone within earshot that there are people up here. People mean possible resources to exploit, which brings me back to the first thing that I said—passive defense.”

  Malorie added, “I can see a real need to go out for water, to forage for food, or to hunt. I’m assuming that our chief liabilities as far as protection would be the children. That being said, one adult is likely enough to stay here and take care of them and ‘hold down the fort,’ but if anyone needs to go out, they should have at least one adult with them.”

  “I like that idea,” Megan said. “What about weapons?”

  “Yeah, about that.” Joshua took off his watch cap and scratched his head. “Handguns mandatory at all times—always within arm’s reach. I’m fine with long weapons slung around your body, but definitely at the ready anytime you’re leaving camp with another adult, like you said, Mal. I’m going to see what I can fashion out of some wood and 550 cord to put the .270 in the cave up off the ground so that it’s accessible and out of the way. I think that your carbines are decent for close targets as are both of the shotguns; we’d only need to use these to defend ourselves, because if someone is out far enough that we would need the .270—”

  Malorie finished his sentence, “Then we’re to be quiet and unseen in a passive defense, right?”

  “Exactly!” Joshua replied. “So for day-to-day storage, the .270 will be in the shelter out of the way. Besides, a shotgun is my preferred weapon anyway.”

  Megan said, “I’ll do a thorough inventory of our food and set a rations schedule for us. We’ll be dependent on fishing, foraging, and hunting for supplementing what we have. I can’t think that we have anyone that we can trade with here, so we’ll have to make what we have last.” Joshua and Malorie nodded in agreement. “There must be houses around, so I think that we should probably set up deliberate two-person patrols to find out if there are others in our AO so that we can steer well clear of them. Anyone with a house nearby is likely going to be very keen on shooting first and asking questions later of anyone approaching their turf.”

  “Joshua, do you have much hunting experience?” Malorie asked.

  “Truthfully, I don’t. I have plenty of trigger time, so if a deer wants to hold the broadside pose I can hit it, but I know that there is more to woodscraft than that.”

  “Megan and I had lots of hunting experience with our papa, so I think that we should set out to hunt/patrol at least three days a week.”

  “Good idea, Mal,” Megan said.

  “We can move slowly, take notes, and report back on what, if anything, we see. And if, I mean when, we take a deer we can quarter it, hang it up, and pack it out in two trips.”

  “After we harvest the deer, we’ll have to find a way to smoke it since we don’t have nearly enough salt to cure the meat in order to preserve it. I’ll start thinking of how we can do that.” Malorie rubbed her fingertips across her eyes and said, “After our meat stock is good, we can certainly switch the patrol schedule around.”

  “I think that any two-person party leaving needs to leave a plan behind: where they’re going, who’s going with them, what’s the intent, when they should be expected back, and what actions are to be taken if they don’t return by that time. This will all be critical since I can’t just take the boys with me to go get you or vice versa,” Joshua said.

  “I agree, let’s do that,” Megan said. “Also, we have all of our eggs in one basket here. What do you think about taking the bug-out bags and stashing them in another cave under a tarp covered with leaves? Perhaps taking the compact valuables as well as the junk silver, my AR-7, or ammo and cache that somewhere else, too? This way, if we do get hit here we can escape and evade without losing everything.”

  “I like it. It spreads out our attack liability,” said Joshua.

  “Since this is ‘home’ for a while, we need to set up a watch around the clock. This is going to mean a lot of boredom and downtime on watch. I don’t mind taking the night shift provided that I can sleep during the day.”

  “I have an idea,” said Malorie. “If everyone takes exactly eight hours with a small pass down at shift change then we’d be pretty much stuck on the same schedule all the time. But if we rotate seven hours or nine hours, then the watch will slowly change over time and no one person gets stuck.”

  “Hmm, Mal, that might just work,” Megan said. “The other fourteen or eighteen hours could be divided up into sleeping or taking care of the camp, cooking, cleaning, looking after the boys, etcetera.”

  “But for us to really make the most of our time here, we’ll need to hunt and do patrols as well. When it comes time to move in the spring, we’ll be familiar with each other enough on the trail to cover the ground to Bradfordsville with the best possible chance of avoiding detection,” Malorie said.

  With the battery slowly running out of power on her phone, Malorie noted the date and devised a way to count tick marks to keep a written calendar on the cave wall so that they would not lose track of time. The group also took turns reading the survival guides out loud with the screen on the lowest brightness setting. They hoped that if everyone read them out loud, perhaps as much as 40 percent of the information could be recalled among the five of them.

  23

  SIGNALS COLLECTION

  While we all benefit in some ways from modern technology, I do wonder what state our world would be in if we suddenly lost the electrical power necessary to keep our communications functioning. Would the younger generations know how to grow crops to feed a family? Would they know how to drop anchor and wait for the catch? Would they know how to survive by the sweat of the brow? New is good. Old is necessary.

  —Reverend Billy Graham

  Olympia State Forest, Kentucky—December, the First Year

  The days continued to get shorter and the nights were colder. It was not common to see other people in the state forest, but when they did see anyone it was usually one or two people hunting for food.

  The long times together in the cave off shift gave Megan and Joshua time to really talk about their spiritual, political, social, and any other kinds of beliefs they held. Joshua joked, “You know, maybe when this whole Crunch blows over, we can start a couples’ wilderness retreat and do premarital counseling—this is great!” The large overlaps were comforting to Megan, and the points where they disagreed were not fundamental orthodox doctrine, so they could be mutually overlooked. Joshua was strict during watch, but on his off time he diligently worked to carve two wedding rings out of the core (or what would be called “quarter sawn” lumber) from an oak branch.

  Jean would often go fishing with his auntie Malorie, and although it was not enough to subsist on, everyone was able to get his or her fill of sushi that winter. Leo and Jean were both becoming quite adept at finding edible plants, although they would stick to the ones that the group could positively identify, using the description from the survival apps on Malorie’s phone until the battery ran out.

  The three adults would train to stay in shape four times a week doing hill sprints and floor exercises. Each adult learned all the parts and the manual-of-arms for every individual firearm, in case someone had to pick up someone else’s weapon to return fire. Jean and Leo were taught the parts of every firearm as well, but were strictly admonished not to touch one if it was loaded—and all weapons were assumed to be and were, in fact, loaded. The group slowly learned how to successfully move over terrain in two-person patrols, staying together and communicating with hand and arm signals. They knew that when they headed west in the s
pring they’d be traveling at night and sleeping during the day.

  The winter had in fact come early, just as the farmer’s almanac had predicted. One cold December morning while Megan and Malorie were out on a deer hunt, Megan left a plan with Joshua that they would head due west to recon the nearest road, gather any information possible, and see if there was still any vehicle traffic. Both Megan and Malorie kissed the boys and headed out to the west. With all of the cold and hunting pressure, it was hard for Megan and Malorie to get a shot at any game. Megan suggested that they make the most of their time and survey Clear Creek Road, which ran parallel to Route 211, to see if there was any traffic.

  “You have to admit, this is boring, Megan.”

  “I freely admit that! I can think of better things I’d rather be doing than lying here on my stomach in the snow looking through Joshua’s scope for signs of life.”

  Malorie asked, “Say, do you mind if I take a spell?”

  Megan answered, “Be my guest. There is a patch of leaves over there that looks a little dry—I’ll be right back.”

  Malorie scanned from south to north up and down the road. At that distance, she would not have been able to successfully pattern any deer by spotting the tracks through the snow, but she held out hope that she might at least see some movement along the narrow valley floor. As Malorie was just about to give up, she noticed what looked like a man sitting back against a tree along the east edge of the road.

  “Pssssst, Megan! Psssssssst. Over here, I see a guy.”

  “I’ve seen one of them before, too.”

  “You’re hilarious, you know that?” Malorie was not in the mood for humor. “He’s sitting up against a tree right down there on the road.”

  Megan reached in the breast pocket of her jacket and got a pad and pencil. “Okay, let’s take a SALT report: size, just the one guy?”

  “It appears to be just him by himself, yes.”

  “Activity, what would you say that he’s doing other than just sitting there?”

  “Tough to tell; with these optics it looks really shadowy, but he has something in his hand that’s flat, a book maybe? I’m really not sure, that would be mere conjecture on my part, but it looks like he also has some kind of handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard up against his leg.”

  “That would make sense if he was hitchhiking, but I can’t imagine that there are too many vehicles looking to pick up people these days. Okay, I got that written down for activity. How about location? Still the east side of the Clear Creek Road?” Megan spread out the map of the state forest. “Can you point to it on the map here?”

  “I would say right here, north of the junction of Leatherwood Road.”

  “Got it. Now the last is time, and I’ll mark that at thirteen-forty-six. We can share this with Joshua later, but for now let’s get back to our primary task; how about we stalk our way back to camp along the south side of this ridge here? We may be able to find a fat doe sunning herself.”

  “Sounds good to me. No four-wheeled or four-legged traffic to be seen here today—that guy down there does give me pause, though.”

  “I’m not so weirded out when it’s a klick or more away and my boys are safely in the other direction.”

  “Gotcha. Okay, put your game face on; Papa would never let us get this chatty on a hunt—zip that lip, sis.”

  The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia—Late October, the First Year

  Phil soon worked into the routine at the McGregor ranch. With all liquid fuels now considered precious, a lot of their formerly mechanized tasks were laboriously performed by hand. So Ray and Phil’s extra manpower were greatly appreciated. With the many chores—including lots of manure and sodden-straw shoveling—there was very little spare time available.

  The precious free time that Phil did have in the evenings was spent listening to shortwave broadcasts on his Grundig G6 Aviator radio, trying to catch news reports. He was troubled that there were fewer and fewer stations operating each week, as the global economic collapse slashed the budgets of most stations, or as power grid failures took them down. But there were still many hams operating in the U.S. and Canada—some of whom had photovoltaic power systems—and he greatly enjoyed listening to their chatter. He even heard some radio amateurs in Japan and Siberia talking in English to hams in Alaska. With his training as an intelligence officer, Phil regularly took down detailed notes about what he heard.

  Whenever he heard a callsign that began with a V or C, then he knew that it was a Canadian ham. A, K, N, or W prefix callsigns meant they were in the United States. The wealth of information that the hams imparted over the course of several months was amazing to Phil. But like all other raw intelligence, their reports ranged from reliable to wild speculation. Piecing together their reports, he was able to establish the severity of power outages and level of societal breakdown in most of the United States and Canada.

  It became clear that the eastern United States had been the hardest hit. With its high population density, there simply were more mouths to feed than there was food, and the chaos was intense. He expected a massive die-off, especially in the frigid Northeast. Canada’s large cities—particularly Toronto and Montreal—had enormous riots that had been quelled only with machine-gun fire. Alaska was completely isolated. Because it had long been dependent on air transport, there were thousands of deaths due to starvation and hypothermia. In Alaska’s larger cities, there was even some cannibalism.

  The McGregors were anxious to hear any news about the conditions of their daughters’ locales in Tavares, Florida, and on Samar Island in the Philippines. The only concrete things that Phil heard about Florida and the Southeast were that the eastern power grid had gone down and stayed down, and that there was uncontrolled looting all along Florida’s southern Atlantic coast from Coral Gables to Delray Beach. There was also continuous looting throughout the Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville metropolitan regions. He heard a secondhand report that the City of Ocala had barricaded itself and was fending off large bands of looters from Orlando. He hoped that Tavares, a slightly smaller town in the same region, had taken the same precautions.

  • • •

  Because they still deemed the threat of looter gangs minimal in the ranch’s remote region, the McGregors didn’t institute twenty-four-hour-a-day security, as they’d heard the families in Kamloops had done. They did take the precaution of doing some target shooting to confirm the point of aim for every rifle and pistol at the ranch—except for the old “flop top” single-shot .577 Snider carbine, for which they had only seven cartridges. Since neither Alan nor Claire had any military experience, Ray and Phil taught them the basics of patrolling, ambushes, and “fire and maneuver” team tactics. They did quite well, considering their age.

  24

  END IN MIND

  By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

  —Hebrews 11:7 (KJV)

  Olympia State Forest, Kentucky—Late December, the First Year

  As the Crunch continued and society devolved, millions of average Americans were forced to go out and “forage” for food. The first targets were restaurants, stores, and food distribution warehouses. As the crisis deepened, not a few “foragers” transitioned to full-scale looting, taking the little that their neighbors had left. Next, they moved on to farms that were in close proximity to the cities. A few looters formed gangs that were highly mobile and well armed, ranging deeper and deeper into farmlands, running their vehicles on surreptitiously siphoned gasoline.

  Once the envy of most nations, the United States quickly plummeted to conditions matching those of many Third World countries. Power failures were followed by municipal water supply failures, followed by major disruptions of food distribution, the collapse of law and order, fires, and full-scale looting. The last phase was a massive and des
perate “Golden Horde” outmigration from all of the major cities, mostly on foot, as food supplies ran out. The loss of life was tremendous.

  By late December, Joshua’s little group had patrolled a sizable swath of the forest in their environs, and in that time they did not see very many people, nor did they see any snowplows on the roads, although there were tire tracks. They heard occasional rifle shots in the distance, usually just one or two shots. But on three different nights they heard firefights, with exchanges of gunfire that ranged from dozens to hundreds of shots. Clearly, someone was taking lives in addition to property. The closest firefight sounded like it was two or three miles away, an uncomfortably close distance.

  When Megan and Malorie returned to the cave after the patrol out to Clear Creek Road, they reported that they had spotted more deer tracks and even fresh deer scat—but were unable to pack out any venison.

  “I’m just glad that you were able to make it back safely,” Joshua said. “The boys have been playing quietly most of the afternoon. When I went down to check on them earlier, Leo had fallen asleep.”

  Malorie slumped down to take the load off her feet and spoke first. “Megan and I did take a SALT report while we were out there. It was rather odd, so I’ll let her tell it.”

  “Well, with a lead-in like that . . .” Megan smirked at her sister. Jean and Leo, who had decided to collectively sit on their mom’s lap, giggled when Malorie returned fire by playfully sticking out her tongue. Megan continued, “We went west as far as Clear Creek Road on our hunt. We stopped to rest and observe on a hill overlooking the road. There were tire tracks, but no vehicles around. The odd thing was that Malorie spotted a man just sitting on the edge of the road by himself.” Megan handed the scrap of paper holding the SALT report to Joshua to read over. “She observed him for a few minutes, but he just sat there. It appeared that he had some kind of cardboard sign with something written on it and something flat in his hand resting on his leg as he sat against the tree.”