James Rawles - Founders

They were shoveling manure out of the trodden snow in the south corral. Ken asked Carl, “What can you tell me about Belle Fourche?”

Carl chuckled. “Well, Belle Fourche is just a cow town that had a good Ford dealership, a western clothing store called Pete’s, and not much else worth mentioning. It’s the town where John Wayne and his crew of kids drove their cattle to, in that old movie The Cowboys. And did you ever see that series on cable called Deadwood ? The Seth Bullock character in that show was the founder of Belle Fourche. Not much else to tell you. Oh, maybe I should say that the soil there is slowly moving downhill. It’s what they call a ‘soil creek,’ which is what eventually makes all the fence posts point downhill. It is like a landslide, but in extreme slow motion. I sure wouldn’t build a house there.”

After another pause, he carried on, sounding more serious. “The population was about 5,000 before everything went nuts. Based on what I saw happen in Newell, I suppose the population of Belle Fourche must have increased by a few hundred last year, with people taking in their kids and grandkids and cousins, mainly from Rapid City and back east.

“And of course just two weeks before you got here, the population of Belle Fourche dropped by about 200, due to an outbreak of instantaneous lead poisoning. If you think the security is tight in Newell, then you ought to visit Belle Fourche. I’ve heard they’ve got that town locked up tighter than a drum. Any adult they don’t recognize by sight gets stopped and asked for ID. If they don’t have a local address then they’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Same thing for anyone driving a rig who doesn’t have license plates with a ‘15’ prefix—showing that a vehicle is registered in Butte County.”

“How are people getting by?”

“I have no idea about the economy there now. I suppose that the town is squeaking by on barter, just like in Newell. There was a good grain mill at Belle Fourche, which is where I went to get my last bags of cracked corn before the dollar hit the fan. I don’t know if it’s still operating, or even if it could, without power.”

Carl sparingly used his CB radio at night and at noon each day, listening to a local news relay network. One morning at breakfast he summarized what he had been hearing. “Things have changed a lot since the Crunch. There’s been a big die-off. And there are actually fewer problems on the highway than there were six months ago. Up until recently, there was a big problem with people setting up roadblocks and pillaging people that were passing through. But after a while the only people available to be robbed were a bunch of ragtag refugees with nothing left worth stealing. Also, word got out as to where the fixed-location bandit roadblocks were located, so people just started bypassing them.”

After a moment of reflection, he continued, “These days, the big problem is with large mobile looter gangs, since all the small gangs have been wiped out. But now we’re hearing about big, big gangs with 100-plus people and 25-plus vehicles and a real bad attitude. They’re like modern-day Vikings or the Mongol Horde. No town with a population of less than 10,000 is safe from them.”

The Norwood Ranch, Newell, South Dakota

March, the Third Year

In March, after the snow had receded and while the Laytons were making preparations to depart, a stranger came down Parilla Road from the east. Traveling alone, the man carried a large Lowe backpack and an AK-74. He was dressed in OCP camouflage pants with a brown Army button-top sweater, and an OCP boonie hat. As he approached the gate, Terry, who was on guard in the woodshed OP, could see that the stranger was a young man with a dark complexion. She had already radioed Cordelia in the house, alerting her of the man’s approach. Seeing the stranger linger after reading the sign, Ken stepped out the front door, holding his HK at the ready.

Pointing to the sign, the stranger shouted, “Can you give me directions to this church?”

Ken answered, “Sure, but first who are you, and where are you from?”

“My name’s Curt Mehgai. I was working in the oil patch up in Parshall, North Dakota, when everything fell apart. I was doing pipeline and pump maintenance. But I spent the past year with a team guarding a big feed lot and elevator operation.”

Overhearing Ken’s questions and recognizing that this was an unusual solo refugee, Carl stepped out onto the porch to listen better to their conversation.

“Are you prior service?” Ken asked.

“Yeah, I was an 11B. That’s infantry. I got out as a corporal. I was an M240-Bravo machinegunner with Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 48th Infantry BCT—that’s a Brigade Combat Team—from Fort Stewart.”

“Any combat experience?”

“Yeah, two deployments. I’ve seen plenty of lead flying around, and I sent my share of lead downrange.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Anywhere I can find work.”

Ken looked over his shoulder to Carl, who nodded deeply in assent.

Still shouting, Ken asked, “Okay, here is what I want you to do: I want you to clear your weapon, and I’ll come out to the gate and escort you to the house. There might be work for you here.”

Mehgai removed the magazine from his AK, and stuffed it into his trouser’s right cargo pocket. Then, holding the rifle with its muzzle upward, he flipped down its safety lever, and ejected the live round from the chamber into his free hand. He held the cartridge up over his head for Ken to see, and then stuffed it into a pants pocket. Finally, he cycled the rifle’s action twice with large air guitar flourishes, demonstrating that the gun’s chamber was empty.

Ken walked to the gate with his HK clone muzzle down, but with his thumb on the selector switch. As he unlocked the gate and opened it, Curt looked down at Ken’s rifle and said appreciatively, “Oooh, HK-G3!”

They spent the next half hour on the front porch, quizzing Curt.

“I went home to visit my family on Guam, but I couldn’t find any decent kind of job there. I knew I didn’t want to go back on active duty because I’d no doubt get deployed back to A-stan, and I didn’t want to go in the Army Reserve, because I’d no doubt get deployed back to A-stan….” He paused to laugh, then said: “So I was doing some job hunting on the Internet and I read about the oil boom in North Dakota, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ It turned out they were hiring almost anyone with a strong back and who was willing to put up with winters in the Dakotas. And it didn’t hurt that I was a veteran. When the economy went kerflooey, I asked around and found a job at the other end of the county, at a big grain elevator. The place is run by a family that’s been there since the 1890s. They own both the elevator and a feed lot. Again, being prior service helped me get the job.”

“So why’d you leave?”

“The man who owned the company kept having more and more of his relatives arrive after the Crunch. Some of them trickled in pretty late, even as recent as last November—and they told some amazing stories about how they managed to get out of the big cities. Anyways, blood is thicker than water, so I got asked to leave—politely, you know, and with plenty of notice. At least they gave me until the snow was off the roads. Nobody else in town needed a security guy, so off I went.”

The questioning shifted to Carl, who asked, “Do you have any military paperwork?”

“Yeah, I’ve got my DD-214—that’s a discharge document and service record.”

Being cautious, Carl first matched Mehgai’s face to his driver’s license, and then the name on the license to the DD-214. The discharge document told Carl nearly everything he needed to know. Curt Mehgai had been awarded two Army Commendation medals, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.