James Rawles - Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

I hope and pray that you keep investing in silver. You should acquire much more than this little nestegg.

In my opinion, you can trust tangibles (like silver and guns), but you shouldn’t put much trust in paper currency in the long term. To safeguard your net worth in the inflationary days to come, always remember: Don’t leave your earnings in paper money for long. As quickly as possible, convert it into tangibles, to protect your savings from the ravages of inflation. Consumer price inflation is mild now, but that probably won’t be the case in the near future. So adjust your way of thinking and doing business, accordingly.

Never forget: Inflation is a hidden form of taxation!

Divide these coins equally between you. Spend them wisely, and up until the day that the balloon goes up, spend them only as a last resort. And never forget their REAL worth.

As Andy tucked the letter back into the envelope, he said resolutely, “Yeah, Dad, you were right.”

Each of the Phelps boys was given one of the M39 bolt-action rifles in lieu of their first two months’ wages. The next day a few precious rounds of the hard-kicking 7.62x54R were used to sight in each of their rifles. Because that ammo was corrosively primed, Laine showed the boys how to carefully clean the rifles’ bores and bolt faces, making sure that they cleaned their barrels for several successive days, to be sure that all traces of corrosive priming salts had been removed.

The bunkhouse was soon decorated with a Monument Valley poster and maps from National Geographic magazines. The boys settled into a routine of guard shifts, caring for their horses, some house chores, and reading-lots of reading.

Having the Phelps Boys at the ranch was a great relief to Lars, Beth, and Kaylee, who up until then were starting to feel the strain of guarding the ranch by themselves.

Lars’s morning routine was to first pray at dawn silently and then cuddle with his wife. Then he would sit up and put on his eye patch and his prosthetic hand. As needed, he’d put some silicone cream on the stump first. Lars had learned that the size of his residual limb changed during each day. Fluid pooled in the limb at night when the prosthesis was off, and was pushed back out when “Mr. President” was strapped on. Thus, the fit was slightly tighter in the morning than in the afternoon or evening.

Still in his pajamas, Lars did twenty rapid push-ups and forty sit-ups. Then he’d shower and get dressed. Before the Crunch, he would also read his e-mail and have a cup of coffee with breakfast. But both of those diversions soon became just memories. In recent days he would eat at the kitchen table with Matthew Phelps, who was the early riser of the Phelps trio.

Lars and Beth Laine were cuddled in bed, by the light of a single candle. For the first time in many days, they rested comfortably, knowing that one of the boys would be on guard duty all night long, listening and watching for intruders. Beth asked, “How are we going to make do? Your disability retirement checks are still coming, but they’re a joke. The check for one month might buy a couple of days’ worth of groceries, if we’re lucky. And at the rate things are going, in another couple of weeks a check might just buy one can of beans.”

Lars sighed. “Well, we aren’t going to make a living on twenty acres in this country, especially with seven or eight mouths to feed. If we just barter for food and fuel, our stash of precious metals will eventually get depleted. It’s pretty clear that I need to look for work, putting my military training to use.”

“What? As a mercenary?”

“Not exactly. There are a lot of businesses in town that are doing a pitiful job of securing what they have. Whether it’s a burglary or a robbery at gunpoint, they know that sometime within a few months somebody is going to come and clean them out. It’s only the refinery that seems to have their act together so far, in terms of security. So I think I ought to go hire myself out as a security consultant. I could set them up some rudimentary physical security-maybe I could team up with one of the welding shops on that-and also train their employees on shooting and small-team tactics.” Stroking his wife’s back, he added, “Now that we discovered my dad’s guns and that silver, I also have some leverage in bartering situations. I’d like your blessing to poke around town and see what happens.”

Beth sighed, “That sounds good to me. You just be careful, and proceed with prayer.”

Upgrading the security at the Laines’ ranch went quickly, with the help of the boys. The main task was constructing an observation post (OP) with railroad ties. Lars carefully positioned it on a gentle rise fifty-two yards from the southwest corner of the house. From there, there was a good view of the house, barn, and bunkhouse. The OP measured just six feet square and five feet high. By heaping split pinyon pine rounds over it, they made it look like a nondescript pile of firewood.

After building the OP, they moved on to upgrading the house itself, for defense against looters. Lars was fond of saying, “When it comes to stopping bullets, there’s nothing like mass, and sandbags are cheap mass.” It was clear that they’d need sandbags-a lot of sandbags. There were sixteen empty feed sacks in the barn. These had been made to hold fifty pounds of grain, so they were oversize for their needs. If filled with sand, they would have weighed more than one hundred pounds. So Lars cut each sack in half and restitched the cut off ends to form additional sacks using a large curved upholstery needle. This task was just like the sailcloth stitching that his uncle Aki had taught Lars when he was twelve years old. But this yielded just thirty-two sandbags-not nearly enough for their needs.

They made inquiries all over Farmington and Bloomfield, but found that all of the available feed sacks had already been bought up by others with the same idea. After a few days of searching, they heard that feed sacks were still available from Southwest Seed, sixty miles away, in Dolores, Colorado. Unlike a typical retail feed store, this was a seed-packing and grain elevator operation set up to handle wholesale quantities.

When he arrived, Lars was not surprised to see several armed men guarding the feed and seed complex. They were, after all, guarding something quite valuable.

The sales manager walked Lars around. He pointed out their inventory, which included many pallets of brand-new bundled feed sacks. Most of them were white, but about one-third of the twenty-pound size were tan. It was those that Laine wanted, since they were the right size for sandbags and they’d blend in well in desert country.