Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

South of Farmington, New Mexico April, the Second Year

In the April of the year after the Crunch began, Lars was summoned to the NAPI headquarters, seven miles south of Farmington, for some consulting work.

He was told that an isolated NAPI grain elevator had been taken over by an armed gang. One of the employees had been shot during the takeover and had died a day later.

Lars drove to meet the NAPI president at the company headquarters. He was a Navajo in his sixties. With him in the conference room were nine younger men, all tribal members.

Lars queried, “How many men were there?”

One of the employees raised his hand. “Hey. There was a bunch, maybe ten of ’em. They’re Mexicans. The drove up in three pea cups and a minivan. There was just three of us there, and only two of us had guns. They shot Alvin first thing, so we ran. We had to carry Alvin part of the way to our pea cups.”

One of the men asked Laine anxiously, “So, what do we do? Are we going to rush them?”

Lars shook his head. “No, no, no. Why risk taking any more casualties? Tell me, is there any really pressing need for any of that grain in the next few weeks?”

The NAPI president answered, “No, not really. We also got a tribal storehouse in town. Its got enough, I s’pose, even for the rest of the winter.”

“So we wait them out and engage them on our own terms. What is the water situation at the elevator?”

“A cistern, above ground. I think it’s five hundred gallons. We have to haul in the water for that. There’s a flush toilet in the building that we don’t use much, ’cuz it wastes water. Instead, we use a drop toilet about seventy-five yards out back, behind some Gambel oaks. But we don’t dare tell the health department about it: no permit, and it sure don’t meet no code.”

“Is the cistern a metal tank or masonry brick?”

“Neither. It’s one of the new blue poly ones.”

“No other source of water there?”

“Nope. Not for miles.”

Laine laughed and asked, “Who here is a good shot with a deer rifle?” Several men raised their hands. Lars said, “I’ve got a silver dollar for whoever can punch a hole in the side of that tank within three inches of the bottom.”

The men laughed uproariously, realizing that they could simply force the bandits out by depriving them of water.

Lars laid out the plan: “We’ll set up two-man teams with scoped rifles in shallow foxhole positions, 350 yards out. We’ll use three teams, with full coverage of the elevator buildings. We’ll make sure that they each have night-vision scopes or monoculars.”

One of the men protested, “Three hundred and fifty yards? That’s an awful long way to shoot.”

Lars asked the entire assembled group, “Have any of you heard of Simo Hayha?”

They gave him blank looks.

Laine continued, “He was a sniper from Finland in the Second World War. He was the world’s most successful sniper. I read that he had more than five hundred confirmed kills. My dad said that Simo Hayha was quoted as saying, ‘When you are shooting at wild game, never shoot from two hundred meters when you can shoot from twenty meters. But when you are in combat, never shoot from one hundred meters when you can shoot from three hundred meters. You’ll live longer.”

Bradfordsville, Kentucky February, the Second Year

Each day that the Seed Lady store was open, Tyree stood guard in the back room with the shotgun leaning against the wall. He spent most of his days there, absorbed in reading by lantern light. The partition between the two rooms was just a single thickness of horizontal one-by-eight tongue-and-groove knotty pine boards supported by twenty-four studs. The many small knotholes in the pine boards provided ample opportunity for Tyree to peer through the wall. Under Grandmere Emily’s instruction, Tyree gently tapped out three large knots at shoulder level to give him the chance to shoot through the wall if need be. Each of these knots was replaced loosely and labeled with a piece of phosphorescent tape. These knot plugs could be easily popped out from behind the wall with just a forward thrust of the shotgun’s muzzle.

Whenever Tyree heard the bell at the store’s front door ring, he would spy through a knothole to observe the newcoming customer. By prearranged signal, if his mother rested her hands on the counter, that indicated all was well, and he could go back to his studies. But if she stood with arms akimbo or folded across her chest, then that meant that Tyree was to be vigilant and keep the shotgun in hand. And if Tyree ever heard his mother shout: “My husband is watching over me!” then that was the cue for Tyree to rack a shell into the chamber of the Remington. The first year that they were open for business, he had to do that only twice. Both times, that distinctive sound cleared everyone out of the store very rapidly.