James Rawles - Founders

The Mad Minute began. By prearrangement, Watanabe’s team first shot up the engine compartments and tires on the rearmost pickup. Then they shifted their fire and systematically shot out the tires on all the other vehicles. Joshua fired sixteen rounds, pausing once every four rounds to flip open the rifle’s bottom-hinged magazine and refill it. When they switched to shooting out the vehicle windows, the occupants panicked and ran. Caught out in open ground in a cross fire, most of them were shot within twenty seconds. A few of the looters tried running east on the road. They, too, were cut down.

Joshua toggled his handheld, ordering the three-man backup from the 341st team to sweep northward.

Confused and not realizing that the shots were coming from two different hills, García and three other men ran northeast, directly toward Joshua and half his team. The last of them dropped before they were within 100 yards of where Joshua and the ranchers lay prone. The firing died down to just a few sporadic shots from Joshua’s men.

Joshua shouted, “Okay, everyone top off your guns! Show me a fist when you’re done.”

He heard the sound of guns being reloaded. He stood and scanned his men. They soon all raised a fist. Joshua then swept his arm forward and shouted, “Shoot anything that moves. Follow me!”

They advanced at a slow walk. As they descended the two hills, there were only two coup de grâce shots fired. Joshua and Francisco then came upon Ignacio García, who was bleeding badly. As García lay bleeding heavily, he began to babble in Spanish. His last words, ending in a shout, were “Dónde? Dónde está mi tesoro? Mi tesoro!” Then his chest stopped heaving.

“What’s that he said?” Joshua asked.

Francisco translated. “He was asking: ‘Where is my treasure?’”

“Well, his worldly treasures won’t help him where he’s gone.”

They continued down to the road and crossed it, checking the bodies of the Force Two gang members for signs of life. Some of the men began to search the shot-up vehicles, which sat in green puddles of radiator water. They shut down the engine of one vehicle that was still sputtering.

The three enlisted men from the 341st trotted up to see what had happened. Joshua said simply, “We covered the rest of it from our positions. Good work on providing the cattle prod, guys. That was a job well done.”

As they passed by the body of García’s wife, who had been shot through the neck, Joshua instructed, “Save anything that looks useful for turn-in. Burn the rest.”

Still standing beside the body of García’s wife, Francisco picked up the collar of a full-length mink coat with the tip of his rifle barrel, and asked, “What about this fur coat, sir?”

“No. It has blood all over it. Burn it.”

North of Williams, Arizona

178 Years After the Crunch

Pastor James Alstoba set the parking brake on his Alliance Motors Elec-Truck. He stepped out and flipped down the side-mounted PV panels on both the truck and the trailer, giving the panels full exposure to the south, and he tilted up the rack on the truck’s roof to a 40-degree angle, giving that set of panels the best possible solar exposure as well. Unless the sky clouded up, the vehicle would be fully recharged by 3 p.m.

He paused to pray as he did before each day of detectoring, asking for God’s providence. James depended on the detector work for his support. He spent five days a week with his church responsibilities at Grace Baptist—which included Sunday services, several Bible studies, outreach, and sermon writing—but just two days on detectoring. That was usually Mondays and Tuesdays, but that could be shifted if there was bad weather. Early on in his ministry, he had decided to work two days a week in detectoring, rather than begging for support. To his mind, begging was bad Christian witness. He’d rather sweat a bit.

His helper that day was twenty-two-year-old Mickey Johnson. Mickey was likable, but his broad facial features, vapid expression, and nasal voice immediately marked him as someone with Down syndrome. He would never surpass the mentality of an eight-year-old. But he was an amiable, cheerful worker. Some of Mickey’s sayings made James laugh. James also appreciated Mickey’s childlike wonder when examining a rock or an insect. And a couple of his observations on human nature were so unknowingly accurate that James had later mentioned them in his sermons.

James had to constantly remind Mickey to drink water and to wear his big sun hat. Mickey helped haul some of the detectoring finds to the trailer—mostly scrap aluminum and steel. But most importantly, Mickey went with him to be ready to radio for help in case of an accident. That was the first thing that Pastor Alstoba had taught him to do when Mickey replaced Alstoba’s son as his helper.

The front of the Elec-Truck was decorated with a painted cross and the words “In Omnia Paratus.” To James, that phrase had a double meaning: both physical preparedness, and spiritual preparedness. The trailer had been hand-built by a member of his congregation. The vehicle itself was ten years old and nearing the end of life for its second set of 6-volt batteries.

James had been in prayer that he’d soon make a big detectoring find and hence have the funds to buy the new set of batteries without having to ask anyone for donations. With new batteries, the old truck would be back to its full potential range, and hence it would open up a wider area available for his detectoring.

James checked his holstered 5-7 and spare magazine. The pistol had been passed down to him from his grandfather. It was a relic from back in the lead bullet days. By the late 2100s, most projectiles were either copper-jacketed steel or all copper. Lead was too valuable for use in batteries to waste it in making bullets. It would be a shame if the projos weren’t recovered for re-cy.

James strapped on the battery pack and then the Steady Harness for his detector. The detector was an expensive new model from Minelab. He had upgraded to the new detector with the proceeds from a providential streak of one-eighth-ounce to one-quarter-ounce gold nuggets that he had found the previous year. The Australians still made the best detectors. This one had a nice backlit display and had great sensitivity and selectivity. The detector’s display could distinguish between various coins, pieces of fired brass, aluminum soda cans, spent bullets, or gold nuggets. Finally, he put on his Clarke headphones. They, too, were state-of-the-art, and even had automatic noise canceling if he ever took a shot at a rabbit or a deer.

James ran the detector’s Built In Test and Calibration “bitsy” sequence. The display indicated green in all segments. He was good to go. Then he consulted his tablet-comp, and used a stylus to mark the next area of the map grid that he planned to search. It zoomed in to display a composite satellite image overlayed with old map data. The tablet comp’s GPS subsystem then kept track of what ground he had covered, and beeped a reminder if he missed a spot.