Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

In exchange for two Airsoft submachinegun replicas-an Uzi and an H amp;K MP-5-Laine traded a full set of OCP fatigues with matching boonie hat and shemagh scarf, an older but working iPod, and a Chinese multipurpose tool-a knockoff of an American Leatherman tool. Both of the toy SMGs looked and even felt surprisingly realistic, aside from their bright red plastic muzzle caps that identified them as replicas. A few quick blasts from a can of black spray paint soon remedied that.

23 Roll Out

“A retreat is a place you go to live, not to die. Setting up a retreat is, for the most part, practicing the art of the possible. It’s a matter of wisely and shrewdly identifying what you have and turning it into something usable . . . Fight if you must, but try your utmost to orchestrate events so that confrontation is absolutely the remedy of last resort.”

-Ragnar Benson, The Survival Retreat

Buckeye, Arizona December, the First Year

Once the looting in Phoenix started spreading out into the suburbs, Ian and Blanca agreed that it would be very dangerous to stay in Buckeye much longer.

The next morning they wheeled the Larons out of their trailers. Working in the driveway and on the front lawn, they bolted on the wings. Assembly and preflight testing only took fifteen minutes per plane. But then it took nearly an hour to efficiently stow their gear, with the heavier items as close as possible to the planes’ center of gravity. As all this went on, a number of curious neighbors congregated to stare at the strange sight. Soon a few of them pitched in to help with the fueling process.

Ian handed his next-door neighbor the keys and the “pink slip” titles to his vehicles, and the keys to the house. He told him, “We won’t be back, so you can have anything you’d like inside the house. I don’t know what you should do with the trailers for the planes. I guess you can give these pink slips to my landlord, if you ever see him. He can apply that to our rent and keep the difference.”

Just before they started their engines, Ian asked for volunteers to halt any approaching cars on the adjoining avenue. After starting up and doing another radio check, Ian and Blanca taxied off the lawn and down the driveway. They then continued out the court and turned on to Hastings Avenue, with Ian in the lead. Their neighbors gathered to gawk. There was about two thousand feet of the broad avenue available, which was plenty of runway for the Larons, even in their overloaded condition. Blanca keyed her radio and said, “Be careful-light poles on the left.” Several neighbors stood at the ends of the avenue to watch for approaching cars and, if need be, to block traffic.

The planes staggered off the ground and climbed out eastward very slowly, into the smoky haze that hung over the entire Phoenix region. Ian did a 90-degree turn and slid in to form up alongside Blanca’s Laron. She gave him a thumbs-up.

They turned due north, still climbing. Gazing to the east, Blanca could see house fires burning out of control in Phoenix, Glendale, and even as close as Goodyear. She radioed Ian, “Ay, ay, ay, look at all those fires . . . over.”

“Yeah, it looks like we got out of Dodge just in time. After Goodyear, the looters are gonna hit Buckeye sure as anything. Climbing to 7,500, out.”

Ian again looked toward Phoenix. He remembered Charley Gordon and wondered aloud, without pressing the mic switch, “So, what’ll last longer: Charley or the thousand rounds of nine-milly?”

Their eighty-seven-mile flight to Prescott consumed just over seven gallons of avgas for each plane. At the midpoint of their flight, they practiced using Jackrabbit hand pumps in anticipation of longer flights. Refueling their fuel tanks in flight from their fuel bladders took only seven minutes.

After passing over some dramatic yellowish rocky hills on the east shore of Willow Lake, they landed their planes at Love Field, Prescott’s airport. Once on the ground, they taxied to the general aviation area. The fueling area had a large sign spray-painted on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of oriented strand board with a frown face and “No Fuel.” The phones were out, so Ian thought it was best to go directly to Alex’s house.