Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

The trip across the Atlantic was surprisingly uneventful. With favorable winds and currents, they averaged 140 miles per day for most the journey. The cramped quarters on the Durobrabis led to a few arguments, but overall everyone got along fairly well. Simone Taft never had much harmony with Andy. She had been born in Paris but raised in London. She had a universally condescending attitude, even toward her husband. One day, in the midst of a disagreement about where and when hand-washed clothes should be hung up to dry, Simone got belligerent with Laine. She chided, “I don’t like you, Andrew, and I don’t like guns. If it weren’t for your, your pistol, you’d still be in England.”

“Correction: If it weren’t for my pistol, we’d all be shark food right now. Ma’am, you need to get used to how the real world operates.”

She shut up after that.

27 Hunkered Down

“Every action is seen to fall into one of three main categories, guarding, hitting, or moving. Here, then, are the elements of combat, whether in war or pugilism.”

-B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (1929)

Bloomfield, New Mexico January, the Second Year

The economy of the Four Corners was in shambles. With the power miraculously still on but the value of the dollar destroyed, the few merchants left in business soon reverted to simple barter or taking pre-1965-mint-date silver coinage for payment. The most commonly accepted currencies were silver dimes, silver quarters, .22 long rifle rimfire cartridges, cigarettes, and boxes of new mason jar lids.

All of the local banks and credit unions soon closed, but one community bank eventually reopened as a warehouse bank, primarily for the use of its vault space, by local merchants who needed a safe place to store their silver coinage. Eventually they bought another disused bank building as a second branch, just for the use of their vault space.

Word quickly spread that there was still gasoline available for sale and the power was still on in Bloomfield and Farmington. Customers drove from as far away as Moab, Utah; Durango, Colorado; Tuba City, Arizona; and Window Rock, New Mexico. Many of them drove “pea cups” that were crammed full with enough gas cans to give a fire marshal a heart attack. The byword was: “Come with silver coin, or don’t come at all.”

The Bloomfield refinery started to do a land office retail business, but L. Roy wanted to work out wholesale deals with gas stations as soon as possible. The steady flow of retail customers coming through the gate represented a security risk. Soon after working the deal with Alan Archer, Martin set up a similar gas-on-credit arrangement with Antonio Jacquez, the owner of a gas station in Bloomfield. Jacquez, who came from one of the early pioneer families in the region, reopened his gas station. He did a brisk business and gradually built quite a pile of silver coins.

Muddy Pond, Tennessee November, the First Year

It was a great place to ride out the Crunch. Ben Fielding believed that he had landed in Muddy Pond, Tennessee, providentially.

Ten years before the economy fell apart, Ben was an associate attorney in a Nashville law firm. He had been hired to defend a Mennonite man who had been charged in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of a tourist killed in a fall from a hay wagon. When he traveled to Overton County to see the scene of the accident and interview the defendant, Ben fell in love with the area. There he met two other Messianic Jewish families like his own, and he developed an affinity for the dozens of Mennonites who would become his neighbors. Although he had differences with them on some points of Christian doctrine and their hyperpacifism, he admired their hard work and clean living.

When he returned home, he described the village to his wife, Rebecca, and they committed the issue to prayer. As Jewish believers in Jesus, they had an active prayer life and believed in heeding God’s guidance in how, when, and where they should live.

Shortly after first seeing Overton County, and after much prayer, Ben felt led to shift to a body of law that would enable him to work from home. He transitioned to wills, trusts, and estates law. A year later he was able to quit the firm and go into practice for himself, working from home. His law practice was ideal for this. His clientele grew by word of mouth, and eventually he had clients from all over the nation. Eight years before the Crunch, he bought a forty-acre farm near Muddy Pond and soon moved Rebecca and their five children there.