Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

When he landed at Conley Ranches, his neighbors came running. He gave them a quick summary of what he’d seen and then a dire warning: “We need to get ready, folks. There’s a world of hurt coming our way!”

Ian was thankful that they found no bullet holes in the Laron when they disassembled it.

35 Cut to Size, File to Fit, and Paint to Match

“I fully understand the primary function of guns in the human condition: to protect oneself against the aggression of others. If other people are going to use them for the purpose of aggression, why, that’s all the more reason for me to own one (or in my case, considerably more than one).”

-Kim du Toit

Many years before the Crunch, Ian Doyle was a college senior, majoring in business at the University of Chicago. He was enrolled in the Air Force ROTC program. One day at the cafeteria, as he ate lunch with his friend Todd Gray, Doyle was introduced to Dan Fong, a freshman who was majoring in industrial engineering. Gray mentioned that Ian and Dan shared a common interest in guns. So it wasn’t long before Ian and Dan became shooting buddies. They took frequent trips to local gun ranges, both indoors and outdoors.

Although he did a surprising amount of surreptitious gunsmithing in the Industrial Arts Building’s metal shop, Fong lacked a workshop where he could work on guns with any expectation of privacy. It was 215 miles from Doyle’s home in Plymouth, Michigan, to Chicago, so other than on some occasional weekends spent at home, Doyle was also without a private workshop.

Their need for workshop space was solved by Todd Gray. Todd’s father had owned three hardware stores. Just a year after Phil Gray retired, he died of a heart attack. This was when Todd was a college sophomore. Phil Gray left behind a wonderfully equipped home carpentry and machine shop in a detached garage that sat behind the Grays’ house. Most of the equipment was later willed to Phil’s brother (Todd’s uncle Pete). But while Todd was in college the shop sat idle and available for Todd to use. His father had amassed a large assortment of shop equipment, including a Unimat lathe, a small Bridgeport milling machine, a band saw, a radial arm saw, a power jigsaw, and a huge assortment of hand tools.

One evening Ian was invited to a pizza feed at Dan Fong’s dorm room. Also there were Todd Gray, and his roommate Tom “T.K.” Kennedy. After hearing about the shop, Doyle asked, “Have you got a welding rig?”

“Actually, I’ve got three: A basic oxyacetylene with small tanks, a 220-volt arc welder, and a wire-feed.” He took a bite of pizza and added, “But I’m not very good with them.”

“Well, I’m a welder!” Dan declared. “When I was in high school I spent half my time in the metal shop, faaab-ricating! Mostly it was various Rube Goldberg contraptions and even some metal sculptures. I’m pretty good with a torch. So if you don’t mind, we’d like to come over for a Saturday or two-”

Doyle interrupted: “Or maybe three or four.”

Fong continued: “-and do a couple of welding projects that the BAT-Fags wouldn’t approve of, like . . .”

Todd grinned, but T.K. clamped his palms over his own ears, and half shouted in his Sergeant Schultz voice, “I know noth-think. I hear noth-think!” After a pause, in which he gave the others a stern look, T.K. said, “Look, what you choose to do is up to you guys. But I don’t want to know what you are doing, understand? It’s better that way. You guys can go and play ‘Mad Scientist Takes Up Welding,’ but count me out.”

Ian soon rented a private mailbox at a Ship-It store on the west side of Chicago, using the name of Ian’s cousin, who had died of a congenital heart defect at just two months of age. When he was seventeen years old, Ian had stumbled upon the dead boy’s birth certificate, after having been asked to shred some of his mother’s old papers. Since the deceased cousin was born three years earlier than Ian, Doyle’s plan had been to have a fake ID so that he could buy beer before he turned twenty-one. But eventually it was just used for buying machine gun parts sub rosa.

The owner of the Ship-It shop was a shady character. In exchange for an extra thirty-dollar “processing fee,” he didn’t ask for anything more than the birth certificate and a dance club photo ID as proof of the identity of “Randall Stallings.”