Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Mora mostly hunted the native gibnut, a large guinea-pig-like rodent, more commonly called a paca or tepezcuintle, or more properly the lowland paca. He also hunted peccaries, deer, armadillos, iguanas, and tapirs. Gabriel liked gibnut hunting best. They were good eating and always plentiful. He jokingly called them “the Queen’s Rats,” referring to when Queen Elizabeth famously ate gibnut when she visited Belize. That dinner prompted a British newspaper to run the headline: “Queen Eats Rat.” Mora told Andy that these fast-breeding rodents could be found in large numbers throughout the country. Gabe prided himself on always shooting them in the head, so that he didn’t waste any meat. He rarely missed his mark.

Mora owned two .22 rimfire rifles, a Taurus .22 revolver, a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle that had been “sporterized,” and two shotguns. His better .22 rifle was a scoped Marlin. All of this gun’s metal parts and its scope had been spray-painted green to help protect it from rust in the unrelenting humidity. The paint often flaked and it showed signs of being touched up. This was Mora’s gibnut gun. When Andy asked if his guns were registered, Gabe chortled, and said, “No. No way! I think only about half the guns in the country are in the registry. That registry is a big joke, especially out in the bush. Some of those guys have full-on AKs and old submachineguns from the Second World War that aren’t registered.”

Andy began going on hunts with Mora. On these hikes Gabe tried to teach him the names of the local tree species, but they soon became a confusing blur. The old logger mentioned that there were more than seven hundred species in Belize and that that he knew the names of only half of them. Andy finally said, “Well, it is more important that I know how to buy food and ask directions in Spanish than it is to know the name of every tree.”

Andy often quoted the Bible to Gabe, who had been raised as a Catholic but who was relatively ignorant of the scriptures. He once told Andy, “I haven’t gone to Mass or confessed in years. I worked so much in those back-country camps that I got out of the habit. God wouldn’t want me.” But Andy reassured him, saying, “All you need is faith in Christ Jesus. That’s the way, the only way, to heaven. Believe in Him and repent. It’s just that simple.” Laine regularly encouraged Mora to read his Bible. He also prayed daily that Gabe and Darci would come back into fellowship.

On one of their longer hunting excursions, Gabe showed Andy his secret stash of gasoline, buried in the side of a small ridge at his uncle’s wooded property, three miles west of Sarawiwa. Mora described his fuel storage technique to Laine. When he was working as a back-country logger, he had discovered that gasoline stored in thirty-three-gallon plastic drums with the bungs sealed tight was still usable for up to four years, even without the addition of a stabilizer. Stored the same way, diesel would last much longer if it was treated with an antimicrobial.

The food-grade blue drums that Gabe used for his gasoline had white gaskets in the bungs that swelled slightly but did not deteriorate. These blue plastic drums were stored inside fifty-five-gallon steel drums and shaded from direct sunlight. A dark green tarp was draped over the pair of drums. Mora found that the plastic drums expanded and contracted with the fuel as the temperature changed. With no air venting, the problems of water condensation, evaporation, and other contaminants were solved. And, he surmised, in the event that the thirty-three-gallon drum ever burst unexpectedly, the fuel would be contained within the larger steel drum.

It was on that same trip that Mora bagged the first iguana that Andy had ever seen in the wild. Mora stopped the big lizard with just one shot to the back of its head from his Marlin .22 rifle. This iguana was more than three feet long. It had a fat tail, which Mora said was a sign of good health. Iguana, called “bamboo chicken” by the Mora family, was a favored delicacy. Gabe said that to get his daughter and son-in-law to come visit, all he had to do was tell them that he planned to serve iguana.

During his recovery, Andy continued with his weekly HF radio contacts. More than half of them were successful. It was those Morse code conversations with his brother and fiancee that kept his spirits up.

Gabe Mora had cut back drastically on his driving after the Crunch began. But he would often ride his bicycle to Sarawiwa or even as far away as Dangriga to buy groceries. He would carry his Taurus .22 revolver on those shopping trips. Gabe would frequently spot wild game near the road and bring home some bonus protein.

Bloomfield, New Mexico April, the Second Year