Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

“Then that can’t be him. Please be patient. With the phones down, he could be most anywhere and just unable to contact you. Maybe he caught a ride somewhere to make a trade and couldn’t get a ride back. It takes a long time to cover thirty or forty miles on foot. Your report said that he was a faithful husband-”

“I’m sure of that!”

“Okay, well, if we hear of anything, we’ll send an officer to your house.”

The following morning the same detective knocked at the Randalls’ door.

“Could we sit down and talk for a minute?” he asked.

Sheila felt a knot in her stomach when he mentioned sitting down.

After they were seated, the detective said, “Something was bothering me last night, so I double-checked with the county coroner this morning.

“It turns out that the body of the, uhh black male with no shoes, no shirt or pants, and no identification, who had been shot . . . it turns out that he had just recently lost two fingers, either just before or just after he died.” Grasping together the two smallest fingers on his own left hand to illustrate, he added: “The coroner said that it looked like they had been cut off with an axe or a hatchet.”

“His left hand?”

“Yes, it was his left.”

Sheila turned pale, and she whispered, “His wedding ring always was a tight fit. He had to put butter or oil on his finger and pull it hard to get it off.”

7 Paperwork

“A commander can delegate authority, but not responsibility.”

-American military axiom

Bloomfield, New Mexico March, the First Year

L. Roy Martin had purchased his Bloomfield, New Mexico, plant just eight months before the Crunch. His reputation as a maverick Texas oilman meant that the purchase of the troubled refinery for cash and stock didn’t raise many eyebrows. The plant had been temporarily shut down by Western Refining in 2010, mostly because of insufficient feedstock in the vicinity of Bloomfield. Since then, under new ownership by a “green energy” consortium, it had been reopened, but was operating at less than half of its full capacity, with frequent layoffs and rumors of a permanent shutdown. Martin bought the moribund plant for pennies on the dollar. Most industry analysts surmised that he planned to bring it back to full operation with a couple of long-distance pipelines. The purchase announcement also made just passing mention that Martin Holdings planned to increase the refinery’s co-generation capacity.

But the news that did start rumors in Bloomfield was that the Martin family had purchased a 120-acre cattle ranch and three 20-acre ranchettes, each with modest homes. All four of these properties were on the same road as the 285-acre refining plant. A 3,000-square-foot tan metal shop building was added to the 120-acre place, which by then had been nicknamed “Martin’s Mystery Ranch” by the locals. It was a mystery why Martin would sell his 8,000-square-foot home in a fashionable Houston neighborhood and move his family to a 1,500-square-foot 1950s-era ranch house. One of the rumors was that the house had been quickly transformed to nearly 3,000 square feet after remodeling.

The ranch was better known for its natural gas output than its beef production. There were three low-production gas wellheads dotted across the place. From the S-Bar-L ranch house, the view of the San Juan Mountains far in the distance (across the state line, in Colorado) was overwhelmed by the view of the Bloomfield plant’s cracking towers and holding tanks only a half mile away. At night, the sky glowed from the light of the excess fractions being burned off.

To explain his family’s relocation, L. Roy said that he was winding down to retirement, that he wanted a slower pace of life, and that he wanted to personally oversee the operation of the Bloomfield plant, especially since this was his first refinery. (All of his previous experience had been in drilling and oil field development.) Despite these low-key public statements, there were rumors buzzing of L. Roy Martin opening up new oil fields in various parts of the Four Corners. Why else would a famed Texas oilman with a background in oil exploration move his family bag and baggage to the middle of nowhere? And why would he buy a dumpy old house out in the sagebrush when he could afford to build a mansion on the south bank of the San Juan River? It just didn’t match the public’s expectations of a Texas oilman who owned a Cessna Citation private jet, a pair of Hummer H1s, a Shelby Cobra, a restored 1963 Corvette, and a dozen motorcycles.