Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Sheila examined the glass display cases as Combs went on, “The roof was redone just three years ago. The apartment ain’t much, but it’s been repainted since the ‘ATF’ guys moved out. I had a man clean the chimney, and he put a new elbow on the back of the wood stove, since the old one had rusted out. The place was clean, but I’m afraid the mice have made a mess up there.”

Sheila was pleased to see that the store building had plenty of windows that provided light to conduct business in the absence of grid power. Traces of the building’s former use lingered. The back room was still cluttered with empty gun and whiskey boxes, and one of the glass display cabinets still had a distinct tobacco smell. There was an empty twenty-rifle rack on the north wall of the store, behind the counter. The only entrance to the apartment was via an inside staircase that led up from the store’s small windowless back room. The stairs creaked as they walked up. The apartment had two bedrooms, a gas cooking range, a small Jotul wood/coal stove, an electric refrigerator (propped open with a stick of firewood), and a small bathroom with a toilet and a tub-shower.

“Bring me the lease papers. I’ll take it,” Sheila said.

Less than an hour later they had unpacked the car and moved in. Sheila’s packets of seeds filled two of the glass display cases, in neat rows. They put a few other items suitable for trading in another case.

“Not a lot to start with,” Emily remarked.

“Trust in the Lord, Gran, we trust in the Lord.”

Emily warned, “And you know the ten dollars in silver that you gave Mr. Combs was almost all the coins we had. I gots just three silver quarters and one dime left.”

“Trust in the Lord, Gran, trust in the Lord.”

Sheila dug out her tempera paints and soon started painting signs on the inside of the front windows. The signs read: “The Seed Lady,” “Sundry Merchandise,” “Buy-Sell-Trade,” and “Open 8 to 8. Closed Sundays.” She had her first customer walk in even before the paint had dried. He traded a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells for three packets of seeds. In the next few days a steady stream of customers began to arrive, all eager to trade. Eventually, some came from as far as the towns of Lebanon and Campbellsville. Sheila soon developed a reputation as a savvy yet fair storekeeper.

People brought Sheila all sort of things to trade for seeds, or at least to try to trade for them. Most of what they offered was junk, and Sheila got in the habit of saying politely yet forcefully, “Pass.” But she did trade for hard items, like tools, cans of WD-40, batteries, rolls of duct tape, ammunition, and hardware like nails and nuts and bolts. She made it her habit to reject any appliance that required electricity, since the grid power was down, and batteries were in short supply.

Late on the afternoon of the sixth day after they arrived, a slightly drunk man brought in an old Pilot brand vacuum tube table radio that had a wooden case. It had both AM and shortwave bands, and according to the man it worked well, back when utility power was available. He also said that his grandfather put all new capacitors in it, to replace the older, paper-wrapped ones. Sheila was about to reject it when her mother asked: “Look in the back. Has it got a transformer? And how many tubes does it have?”

Puzzled, Sheila did as she was told, which was easy, since the radio’s original back cover was missing: “It’s got no transformer, and it has five tubes.”

“Go ahead and trade for that.”

“But, Gran, it takes AC power. We don’t have a generator.”

Emily insisted, “You go ahead and trade for that radio, and I’ll explain later.”

Sheila drove a hard bargain, trading just one packet of squash seeds for the old radio. After the man had left, Emily gave an explanation: “Sheila girl, that radio is what your late Grandpere-rest his soul-he call an ‘All-American Five’ radio. He used to fix them. With five tubes and no transformer, it can run on AC or on the DC power. Out on the bayou in the old days, where there was no co-op power line, our kin would hook up ten or eleven car batteries in a row. That makes you about 115 volts of DC power. That will run one of them radios for days and days! And what do you see all over the place these days? I tell you what: abandoned cars with no gasoline. But they each got a 12-volt battery, now don’t they? You put out the word that you’ll trade for car batteries that still have a strong charge. We’re gonna listen to the shortwave, maybe even tonight!”

11 Provisional Beginnings