James Rawles - Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

To fund some of their storage food purchases, they asked Andy’s fiancee, Kaylee Schmidt, to rent a room from them. She was self-employed, working at home, and doing substitute teacher scheduling for the San Antonio School District. Her manager was agreeable to the move, so long as she provided her own telephone. With a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone service, she had unlimited calling. Her work transition to Bloomfield went smoothly, but ironically, she was only there for three weeks before the phones went dead and the Internet disintegrated into a few isolated autonomous networks. Since she was firmly engaged to marry Andy, Lars and Beth made it clear that Kaylee was welcome to stay with them indefinitely, even if she couldn’t find work.

Kaylee was of German extraction and grew up near New Braunfels, Texas. She spoke the local German dialect, called “Texas German,” although not as fluently as her parents. She had strong features, dark hair, and a trim figure. Kaylee was twenty-five years old when the Crunch began. She had just recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Texas A&M University. She met Andy during her senior year of college while attending a Christian concert at Victory Church in College Station, Texas. She had dated several members of the Corps of Cadets while at Texas A&M, but had never met a young Christian man who she considered marriage material until she met Andy. They immediately fell in love. But unfortunately Andy was just on a brief stint at Fort Hood, between overseas deployments. They were fated to a long-distance relationship.

One evening, as Lars, Beth, and Kaylee were reorganizing the pantry to make room for their new supplies, Lars mentioned, “My dad was pretty smart. He picked a town out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got agriculture, and its got huge natural-gas fields and some oil wells. He once told me that he picked Bloomfield because it would be a safe place to be, ‘if and when the stuff hits the fan.’ You remember all those right-wing economic newsletters and the Tea Party things he subscribed to-Ron Paul, and all that?”

Beth nodded and said, “Yeah, he always struck me as a bit batty. All of his ‘I don’t trust paper money’ talk. But I gotta admit, it turned out he was right.”

“Well, at least Dad converted Andy and me into goldbugs. If it weren’t for that, we’d be in the same boat as most other folks, with 401(k)s that have turned into ‘Point-01(k)s.’” Lars adjusted the Velcro strap on his prosthetic-something he often did out of habit more than because of discomfort-and went on:

“Anyway, I figure the best place to ride this out is here in the Four Corners. Not a lot of rain or snow, but at least if the main grids go down, there will probably still be power here-since there is local generation-and some agriculture. Most everywhere else in the country will be SOL, but around here we’ve got natural gas, and drip oil, so we can still pump water from the rivers and up out of the aquifer. My dad specially picked this ranch since it is flood-irrigated from the Hammond Irrigation District ditch. Dad even pulled a sneaky and put in a water line to the house up at the ditch head gate, just in case of a power failure. That provides just enough water pressure, although the shower is a bit weak.”

He added, “There are a lot of orchards around, especially west of here, downriver. They grow apples, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, nectarines, and cherries. And they dry prunes and make cider. And everybody and his uncle around here cuts hay-”

Lars was interrupted by the phone ringing. He snatched it up, and answered automatically: “Laine.” Out of habit, he felt like he should add, “This is an unsecure line. How can I help you?”

“Hey, it’s me. How are things going?” Andy asked, his voice sounding remarkably crisp for someone practically on the back side of the globe.

Lars replied, “We’re still not mission ready on logistics, but we’re catching up as best we can. A lot of things are sold out. How about you?”

“Same-same. It sucks to be me. It sucks to be here. It sucks to not be with Kaylee. The only update is that I got hold of a bring-back, from a local.”

“A good one?”

“Genuine Swiss. Do you remember the Swiss… uhh… watch that your college roommate had?”

“Yeah, of course. That one with the three tritium markings?”

“Right. Think of sorta the same model, only slightly smaller.”

“Oooh, excellent-those are Hotel Sierra. I love their… ‘watches.’” Lars winked at his wife, cupped his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, and whispered to her, “He bought a SIG pistol on the local economy!”

Just then Kaylee came into the room.

Lars continued, “Look, I’m sure you want to yak with Kaylee, so I’ll keep this short, little brother: Get your ass-ets back here as soon as you possibly can. If need be, do something that will torpedo your next officer efficiency report, but just get here ! Remember, if the phones go down, we’ll still have our shortwave contact sked for Tuesdays.”

Andy replied, “Roger that. We stick to the sked. The thirty-meter band rules, now that the sunspot numbers are back up.”

“Okay, here she is.” Lars handed the phone to Kaylee, who was anxiously waiting. The couple conversed animatedly for another twenty minutes, until Andy’s phone card expired. When she hung up the phone, Kaylee was weeping. Beth gave her a hug and said, “You’ve gotta have faith that he’ll make it here, sooner or later. Don’t have doubts. We just ‘trust and obey,’ like it says in the old hymn.”

Growing up on the streets of Houston had made Ignacio Garcia both wary and smart. He never used any drugs other than some occasional marijuana. And he never sold drugs. He realized that was sure to get him arrested eventually, because customers always talked. His only contacts with heavy drug users were some that he hired to work his burglaries. Garcia developed a reputation as a clever burglar who never got caught. His modus operandi was exacting: hit between ten a.m. and two p.m. on weekdays, when nobody was home. Avoid lower-class neighborhoods, where the pickings weren’t worth bothering, and avoid the wealthy neighborhoods where they all had burglar alarms. Instead, he hit middle-class neighborhoods, where there were still things worth stealing, but where they didn’t have their guard up.

Garcia started out by doing burglaries himself, but soon moved on to organizing and equipping teams to do the work for him. To approach middle-class houses surreptitiously, he outfitted his teams to look like plumbers, carpet cleaners, or gardeners. Their vehicles looked very convincing. Garcia then fenced his goods though a network of pawnshops, flea market dealers, and coin dealers who could keep their mouths shut. He had his teams concentrate on jewelry, guns, coin collections, cash, and high-end digital cameras. He made a point of never keeping any stolen merchandise at home. He paid several little old ladies to rent storage spaces for him. Eventually he had almost a dozen places to hide his stolen goods.