Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Andy pressed on, westward. The weather was rainy in the morning, soon soaking his shoes and socks. At times the spray from passing trucks was brutal. There was no good way to avoid riding through the city of Homburg without taking a huge detour. The traffic in the city was surprisingly light. Obviously, Benzin was becoming more precious with each passing day. Other than some long queues at gas stations, the activity in Homburg appeared relatively normal.

Even though the terrain was more mountainous, Laine decided to take the smaller road through Friedrichsthal and Heusweiler, rather than get near Autobahn 6-the major route west that went through Saarbrucken.

The weather started to clear and warm up in the afternoon, and Andy made good time. He stopped at an Eisenwaren store in Heusweiler and bought a can of flat brown spray paint as well as the Falks gas lamp mantles that Lars had requested. He bought the store’s entire inventory: sixty-two mantles. Even if these were more than Lars needed, they’d be a very lightweight and compact yet valuable barter item.

Exhausted after a long day of riding, Andy made camp in some dense woods north of Saarwellingen just before dark. Other than a candy bar, he had skipped lunch, so he was again ravenous. He ate a can of sausages, a packet of crackers, and a package of ramen soaked in cold water.

Laine detached and unpacked the trailer. He then used the full contents of the can of spray paint, covering up the “untactical” bright yellow trailer. He even sprayed the clear plastic front of the trailer, since there was no need to have visibility in or out of it. The trailer now blended in with the forest for his bivouacs.

He was anxious to set up his radios, since it was a Tuesday-one of his scheduled shortwave contact nights. He set up his pocket-size Kaito receiver on a large stump and rolled out its longwire antenna, hanging the far end up on a tree limb. He placed his overseas bag in front of the stump to use for a low chair. Then he put on his headphones and dialed in 10.000 megahertz. The WWV time signal in Colorado had a faintly audible signal, even though there was daylight between him and the United States. “So far, so good,” he whispered to himself.

Andy confirmed that the radio’s clock was set to GMT. In Germany, it was GMT plus one hour, but in New Mexico it was GMT minus seven hours-still not yet noon. Next he programmed the radio’s alarm function to wake him at 0325 GMT-4:25 a.m. local time. Andy heard it announced that it was seventeen minutes after the hour, so he continued listening to WWV for the geophysical data report that always came on eighteen minutes after each hour. They reported a solar activity of K2/K3 (“weak to unsettled”), which was marginal for long-range propagation in the shortwave bands. Andy’s face sank into a frown.

Next, Andy erected the dipole antenna for his transceiver. He lined it up so that the antenna’s broadside would face to the northwest-the “Great Circle” direction from him to Lars in New Mexico. Fortunately, he didn’t need to worry about grounding the radio, since he was using a dipole antenna.

Lars had helped Andy build and test the QRP transceiver four years earlier. It was one of a pair of kits that they ordered from Elecraft, in California. Andy justified the price to Kaylee by telling her that this radio had slightly more output power than a traditional “flea-power” rig (ham slang for a transmitter with less than one watt) but the extra bit of power would really make a difference for DX (long-distance) communications. Shortly before his departure for Afghanistan, Kaylee had decorated the exterior of the transceiver’s Tupperware box with some of her artistry: Andy’s call sign, “K5CLA,” and a humorous stylized cartoon of a flea wearing headphones, with yellow lightning bolts emanating from its hind end. Kaylee had laughingly reminded Andy to pack his “Mighty Flea” as he was preparing to deploy.

Inside the waterproof storage box, the transceiver was so small that there was enough room left over for a small spiral-bound notebook, an external power cord with both car battery clips and a cigarette lighter plug, and several small spools of wire for spare antenna or ground leads. He inserted six batteries into the battery tray and used the radio’s battery voltage monitor to verify that they were good. Andy flipped open his notepad and turned it to a page of notes from when he was explaining radio procedure to Kaylee. He paused to read it again, because Kaylee had annotated it with questions, comments, and her ever-present cartoon doodles. He missed her so much that it hurt. The page read:

Some Common Abbreviations Used in CW (Morse) Transmissions

These are sent as if they were a single character:

AR-End of message. Typically sent on your last transmission, before you send the call signs the final time.

BT-Paragraph break, or just a break in our thoughts.