James Rawles - Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

The boy grinned, shouted “¿Muchas gracias, senor!” and ran off, singing.

There was a pulperia just two blocks farther west. The grocery store was half open-air, with seven rough-hewn tables beneath latticework for shade. Two bored-looking teenage guards with ancient Mexican Mauser carbines stood watch. The grocery had a surprisingly good selection. Andy bought two large bags of beef jerky ( carne seca ), a dozen apples, five large carrots, eight cans of chili con carne, a dozen sun-dried Spanish mackerel, six cans of chicken noodle soup, eight Big Hunk candy bars, and a sack of hard tack that was the size of two loaves of bread. After a bit of dickering, a price of one and a half silver pesos was agreed. His change was a peso coin that had been cold-chiseled in half. After seeing the prices asked at the pulperia , it was now no wonder that the boy had been so excited to get the silver peso.

It took a while to pack all the groceries into the backpack and saddlebags. As he did, Andy fed Prieto a carrot that he chomped with gusto. He nosed at Andy, hoping for another, but Andy was saving those for the coming days.

His progress through the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche was slow. He did his best to avoid large towns, but he actually did veer toward some small villages. In each he would always ask, “¿Saben si mas adelante hay bandidos en el camino?” (“Do you know if bandits await on the road ahead?”)

At the village of La Pita, he got an affirmative response. There, a potbellied man warned Andy that a bandit gang controlled the village of Mamantel, just a few miles beyond. He drew Laine a map, showing him a road that skirted around the west side of the village. Andy thanked the man for the warnings and handed him two silver pesos with the words “Gracias por su advertencia.”

Andy waited until after dark to make his circuitous route around Mamantel. The ride was nerve-wracking but uneventful except for a couple of barking dogs.

His journey northward through Mexico soon got into a rhythm. After twenty to twenty-five miles of riding, Andy would look for some woods or dense brush that would offer a secluded campground. He would scan in all directions, first with his eyes and then with his binoculars, to see if he was observed. If anyone was present, he’d let Prieto graze or he’d pick the horse’s hooves until the strangers had passed well out of his line of sight. He would then quietly lead Prieto into the woods, usually at least two hundred yards, or even farther when the woods weren’t dense. Camping alone caused Andy lots of anxiety. He was often afraid that he might be observed and followed.

Andy’s next shopping excursion was in the small city of Macuspana, in the state of Tabasco. The town was in a broad basin that was mostly agricultural, and he found a profusion of fresh produce at great prices. The thatched-roof Centro Mercado had plenty of flies, but the fruit and vegetables all looked fresh. The best bargain was a large sack of dried fish-enough to last Andy for more than a week. The sack was so large that Andy simply tied it to his saddle horn. Prieto snorted at it at first, but with some gentle correction from Andy, the horse left it alone.

Andy decided that it was best to work his way up the Gulf Coast, sticking to small roads. He had considered traveling a more westerly (and direct) route to New Mexico. But that would mean that water and the opportunities to buy food would be iffy, the terrain more rugged, and the grazing for his horse more uncertain. Traveling cautiously, he averaged only twenty miles per day. He skirted around the larger population centers like Minatitlan and Veracruz. He wanted to stay as far away from Mexico City as possible, since the city of 8.4 million residents was reportedly chaotic. Andy surmised that many of those problems must have been overflowing into its suburbs, and beyond.

On a Tuesday evening, Andy had a successful HF contact with Lars. He was thrilled to be able to use the call sign “4A/K5CLA”-with the “4A” prefix designating that he was transmitting from Mexico. The significance of the prefix was immediately apparent to Lars, but it had to be explained to Beth and Kaylee. As usual for his contacts, Andy gave Kaylee a weekly travelogue, letting her know the sights he had seen, how he was feeling, and, in this instance, a bit about Prieto’s eccentricities.

That same night Andy was awakened by a strange commotion. He soon realized that it was Prieto stomping a pygmy rattlesnake to death just a few feet from Andy’s head. Andy didn’t even bother crawling out of his bivy bag. He just ordered Prieto to back off with, “¿Hacia! Hacia atras!” Then he unzipped the bivy bag, picked up the well-trodden snake carcass behind its head, and heaved it as far as he could out of the campground. He zipped the bag back up and said “Good night, Superhorse.”

As Andy passed north of Orizaba, the population density increased noticeably. There was more traffic on the roads, with a surprising number of motorcycles and mopeds. Some of the men looked unsavory. Andy had to be much more selective about where he camped. He was increasingly afraid that someone might see where he had ducked into the forest and attack him.

He often heard bursts of gunfire in the distance. These shots were too rapid to be just hunters. Obviously there was a big crime problem in the area, and it was being stamped out ballistically.

Near Zempoala, Andy had an amazing conversation with a local teenage boy who spoke good English. The boy was armed with a pump-action .22 rifle slung on his back with a length of white clothesline cord. Andy commented to him about how peaceful things seemed on the coast. The teenager explained, “That’s because it’s open season on los canibales de la ciudad . When anyone sees them, they just shoot them. Then we burn or bury the bodies, so their friends don’t come and eat them. It’s all like something from a zombie movie.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke, senor. There have been hundreds from Mexico City and even some from Xalapa that we’ve had to kill. If you are ever seeing strangers with knives or machetes, and they have the bloodstained clothes, and that look in their eyes, you don’t ask questions. Do not hesitate. You just shoot them.”

“What look in their eyes?” Laine asked.

“ That look. The animal look. You know it when you see it. After the first time, you recognize it inmediatamente .”

The boy’s comments made Andy shudder. Laine was dubious about what he’d been told until he heard it corroborated by a policeman in the next town. This made him anxious to get as far away from Mexico City as he could, as quickly as possible.

Prieto seemed healthy, and his hooves stayed in good condition. Other than mosquito bites, sand flea bites, and sunburn, Andy was also healthy. After he had gained his saddle muscles, the long days on horseback became more bearable.

After skirting Veracruz, Laine hugged the coast. In a few stretches with hard sand, he rode Prieto right on the beach, finding it less stressful than constantly looking over his shoulder, as he did when riding on the shoulder of the road. Occasionally, when the surf was light, he’d let Prieto walk in the shallow waves as they lapped up the beach. The horse liked having his hooves in the water. The beautiful scenery was distracting and Andy had to try to keep focused at all times. He had to fight to keep himself in at least a “Condition Yellow” frame of mind. As he rode down the beach, he would sing to himself and to Prieto. He often sang Jimmy Driftwood’s bluegrass song “Tennessee Stud” and snippets of Mexican folk songs that he’d picked up. And whenever Prieto broke into a gallop in the shallow surf, he shouted repeatedly, “I’m coming home, Kaylee, I’m coming home!”