Founders. Part 11

Carl answered, "We're in the worst shape on rimfire ammo-less than 300 rounds, including just two boxes for my .17 HMR. My only excuse is that it's such a long drive from here to any of the big sporting goods stores down in Rapid City that I didn't have the chance to stock up. That's a major regret, a huge regret. When the Crunch hit, I got fixated on finding grain and salt for our stock, and propane cylinders for our lanterns. Instead, I should've bought ammo first, before it all disappeared off the shelves. I never thought that I'd see the day when el-cheapo .22 rimfire ammo was like gold.

"Oh, I've also got several boxes of .30-30 ammo that's left over from a Marlin lever-action that I traded for a saddle a few years back. I figure that ammo will always be good to trade."

"Well, with cold weather coming and people wanting to get deer, maybe you can trade that .30-30 ammo for some more .22 Long Rifle ammo," Terry offered.

Cordelia said cheerfully, "That's a great idea."

Ken raised a finger and asked, "How old is your son, and how does he fit into the security arrangements?"

Cordelia answered, "Graham is sixteen going on twenty-six. He's been homeschooled and he's really sharp and very levelheaded. He's shot two deer in the past two hunting seasons: one in the neck and one in the head. Just one shot each. I expect that he'd be up to it, if it ever comes to a real us-or-them kind of shooting situation. His one drawback is that he only weighs 140 pounds. He just needs to fill in so that he can help with the heavy ch.o.r.es."

Ken asked, "How are you set for handguns?"

"We've got only three: my Glock 21, Cordy's Glock 19, and Graham's .45 revolver," Carl answered. "His is an old Smith Model 1917 that belonged to my dad. It shoots .45 ACP just like my Glock."

Terry interjected again, "So two of your guns also have commonality with our Colt 1911s."

Norwood nodded.

Terry turned to Carl and asked, "So what's your worst-case scenario?

He answered with a sigh, "That would be if the bikers that hit Belle Fourche decide to pick on us." After a pause, he added, "I don't expect you to stop an army, but I do want to be able to maintain round-the-clock security."

Ken said quietly, "Understood."

"We don't heat any of the outbuildings," Cordelia told them, "but we have a spare bed that we use out in the barn during calving season we'll bring in and put in Carl's office. The computer and phone and fax machine can't be used these days, anyway."

Carl added with a grin, "No more tax paperwork to do, either."

They all shared a laugh.

Only a few days after they had arrived at the Norwoods' ranch, Ken and Terry were like part of the family. The guard schedule was broken into three eight-hour shifts. Ken, Terry, and Graham took most of the shifts, with Carl helping as needed.

Their main security upgrade was to reorganize the woodshed, stacking the split wood for better ballistic protection. They also cut more advantageous gun ports. The firewood itself provided most of the ballistic protection, but they supplemented it with sc.r.a.p steel and five 30-gallon drums that were filled with fist-sized rocks and gravel. There was no shortage of rocks on the property.

There was already a bridge across the creek that was intended for the cattle. It had been in place for decades but it sat 100 yards south of the house, which was too far for their current purposes. To provide a safe and convenient way to draw water in buckets from the creek, Carl had constructed a new bridge shortly after the Crunch set in. It was a footbridge thirty yards from the house, and was constructed mainly with 4x4s and 2x6 planks. At the center of the span, Carl had built an extended platform with a notched railing so that whoever went to the bridge to draw water would have a safe place to stand.

Typically, they put the water in four 5-gallon plastic water cans and wheeled them back and forth to the house in a twelve-cubic-foot EZ-Haul garden cart.

The next day, Graham showed them the cattle facilities. There were two large connected corrals, each sixty yards square. There was a pair of small bullpens, also adjoining. There was also a tall connecting alley built of planks, with a veterinary squeeze chute and cattle truck-loading ramp at one end. It had a swinging Y gate panel that could shunt cattle to either a high ramp or a low ramp, depending on the deck height of the arriving vehicle or trailer. The ramps themselves were inexpensively built with earth and used railroad ties. Graham mentioned that the entire property was cross-fenced, allowing for efficient grazing. This also kept the cattle out of the hay fields until after the last cutting.

"We got two hay cuttings last summer, which is unusual for here without irrigation, so we have more than enough hay for this winter," Carl told them.

"How do you deal with all the manure?" Terry asked.

Pointing his thumb at the barn, Graham answered, "We rig Andre up with a horse collar and an old road sc.r.a.per. Anything in the corners of the corrals, and in the bullpens, we get by hand with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Before the Crunch, we used the tractor for most of it, and it was a breeze. But nowadays we can't spare the fuel."

Terry sighed. "Sounds like countless hours of fun."

"Yeah, the manure sc.r.a.ping and hauling takes up a lot of our time. Especially now that we're penning all the stock up every night, year-round, to prevent rustling, there's a lot more manure to deal with. Between that and hauling water to the house and doing laundry by hand, the manual labor takes up several hours of our time every day. When the grid went down, it put us back in the nineteenth century."

As they walked toward the pair of bullpens, Graham asked, "You folks been around bulls before?"

Ken answered, "Yeah. We know to never turn our backs on a bull. Like they say, a bull is a bull."

"Yes, please do be careful, sir. You pour just a smidgen of grain in either feed trough, and you can get Earl to move where you want him, without any prodding. Just make sure that the connecting gate is latched before you start to shovel manure."

"Understood."

Pointing to a large manure pile just south of the larger corrals, Graham said, "There's no market for our manure these days. Even though we offer it cheap, n.o.body wants to burn the fuel to come this far out of town to haul it."

Terry nodded, agreeing. "Fuel is precious, and that's changed the way people do business. It has changed a lot of things."

Looking at the enormous black bull in the pen, Ken asked, "What can you tell me about your bull?"

"He's registered Angus. His name is Earl, which is short for Earl of Aberdeen. He cost Dad $24,000, and that was two years before the inflation kicked in."

Ken let out a whistle. "Wow."

Terry chimed in, quoting something that Durward Perkins had told her. "Well, they say that genetically your bull is half of your herd."

Graham said, "That's right, ma'am. But pretty soon we'll be line breeding, using Earl to cover, at least with our next batch of heifers that are coming up. He sired them. So Dad has made arrangements to swap Earl for a dis-related bull that belongs to a man over near St. Ogne. His bull's genetics aren't quite as good as Earl's, but at least his bull has a ring in his nose, and he's broken to lead. They say he'll follow you around like a pup. That's quite an improvement over Earl, who is the cla.s.sic range bull."

Terry nodded. "Enough said. We'll be careful."

Graham continued, "The only problem is finding a way to transport the bulls, to do the swap. We're out of gas, and so is the man with the other bull. Oh well, we still have about six months to figure that out."

Terry asked, "So how are you going to get the cattle to come into the pens when the gra.s.s is up, after you've run out of grain?"

"Well, we don't need to use much grain. They come into the corral each night, pretty much like clockwork. It was Mom's idea to remove the salt blocks from all the pastures, and only give them salt in the corrals. So they have an inducement to come in every night. The cattle have gotten into a habit. Also, our dogs know the routine. They help herd any stragglers in each night. After we run out of grain, we can always use sugar beets. Those work just as well as grain does."

With the relative luxury of just eight-hour guard shifts, Ken and Terry had more time available than they had the winter before when they were working for the Perkinses.

With several common interests, Terry and Cordelia became fast friends. Terry demonstrated to the Norwoods the method that she'd seen the Perkinses use for ma.s.s production of beef jerky. Because the Norwoods had nearly run out of granulated salt, they simply placed a new fifty-pound white livestock salt block in a six-gallon food-grade plastic bucket and added water to form a salt brine. To support the drying rack suspension wires, Ken and Graham used drywall power screws, driven by hand with a Phillips screwdriver.

The Laytons were taught how to tack up and ride horses. They became good riders, but both had trouble learning how to throw a lariat. They also learned how to trim and rasp hooves, and the basics of horseshoeing.

Ken and Terry also spent many hours with the Norwoods, pa.s.sing along some of the training that they had received from Todd Gray's retreat group. This included a lot of gun handling, small unit tactics, range and wind estimation for long-range shooting, and immediate action drills. Ken particularly enjoyed mentoring Graham in handgun shooting. Because ammunition was in short supply, most of their training was dry practice. For safety, this instruction was done beside the woodshed with the woodpile providing a backstop.

Graham's revolver, a Smith & Wesson Model 1917, was a veritable antique but still serviceable. Graham carried the gun in an old cavalry holster that had long before had its original full flap narrowed to just a retention strap. The holster's b.u.t.t-forward configuration-originally designed to accommodate cavalrymen carrying both a saber and a revolver-was awkward, but Graham made up for this with plenty of practice. He became lightning fast at reloading the revolver, using spring steel full-moon clips that each held six cartridges. Ken observed that these were faster than any mechanical speed loader that he had ever seen used.

In his years of high-power rifle compet.i.tion, Ken had considerable exposure to M1 Garand and M1A rifles. So in addition to long-range marksmanship with iron sights, Ken was able to teach Graham some of the intricacies of M1 Garand bore cleaning, gas system maintenance, and greasing of the rifle's bolt camming surfaces and the hammer.

Ken particularly stressed the importance of repeated cleanings when using U.S. military surplus .30-06 full metal jacket ball and AP ammunition from the 1940s and early 1950s. Much of this ammunition, he warned Graham, was corrosively primed. Ken also took the opportunity to cross-train the Norwoods on handling and fieldstripping their HK, CAR-15, and Colt Model 1911 pistols. The Norwoods reciprocated, teaching the Laytons how to fieldstrip all the guns in their collection.

As winter set in, they got into a regular routine for manning the OP at the woodshed. Remembering the brazier that they had used at the farm in Iowa, Ken, with Carl's help, constructed a comparable one. The base was a six-foot length of sc.r.a.p six-inch-diameter well casing pipe. Rather than laboriously cutting off the pipe with a hacksaw, they simply dug a hole with a posthole digger and buried fifty inches of the pipe. This also had the advantage of creating a brazier that they knew would never accidentally tip over. The brazier itself was a mini grill that had been designed for backyard barbeques. It was brazed onto the top of the well casing pipe using a torch from the workshop of a friend who lived nearby, on KLT Road.

Several times that winter they had encounters with refugees. Thankfully, Parilla Road was a side road that received little traffic. The refugees were often seen pushing or pulling a variety of handcarts. These included garden carts, wheelbarrows, perambulators, deer hauling carts, toy wagons, and even a wheeled golf bag. Some of the refugees were persistent beggars, and a few were even stridently antagonistic.

After the first such encounter, Ken mentioned the "safety through anonymous giving" technique that Durward Perkins had used in Iowa. The Norwoods weren't Christians, but they were moral, and they could see the need for charitable giving. In December, Ken contacted the bishop at St. Mary's Church in Newell. Two days later, with the help of three men from the church who came in a pickup, they butchered an older cow, a steer, and a steer calf. The latter had been born partially lame the previous spring.

The three men from the Catholic church arrived in a ubiquitous "mobile butcher" pickup with a small boom hoist arm mounted on the back. This arm had a hand-cranked cable hoist. Not wanting to waste any ammunition, they stunned the cattle with a pneumatic captive bolt pistol that was administered to the cows' skulls, just as they pa.s.sed through a mechanical squeeze chute. They were then dumped from the chute and quickly "stuck" to bleed out. The oldest man in the group was an experienced butcher, so they made quick work of gutting the cattle and using a meat saw to remove their heads. The hearts and livers went into an ice chest. The guts, lungs, forelegs, and heads went into the manure sc.r.a.per, to be hauled to the garbage pit for burial. The carca.s.ses were hoisted onto the truck and hauled into Newell with their hides still on.

That afternoon, the meat was butchered into small cuts and hauled to the church and stored outdoors in several old chest freezers that would soon be buried in a s...o...b..nk that was formed each year by snow sliding off the church roof. Carl also donated 300 pounds of corn-oat-barley blend cattle feed to the church. When soaked in water and cooked, it made palatable breakfast mush.

Carl painted a sign for his gatepost that directed refugees to the Catholic church, which was located on 6th Street in Newell.

For handling bands of refugees, the Norwoods developed an SOP: Using the Motorola FRS walkie-talkies, whoever was on OP duty at the woodshed would alert those in the house that strangers were approaching. They would then be greeted at shouting distance from behind the small firewood pile on the ranch house's front porch. Meanwhile, the OP sentry would remain hidden and quiet. In case there was any trouble, the OP sentry would then be the ace in the hole-standing ready to engage anyone at the gate in a close ambush.

After they put up the sign directing refugees to St. Mary's Church, their interaction with them became more brief and blunt. Usually, Ken or Carl would simply shout, "Read the sign. . . . May G.o.d bless you. Now move on!"

On December 22, Graham rode his horse into town to attend a Christmas party hosted by some of his homeschooling friends. When he returned the next day, Graham gave an update on the security situation in Newell. "There's a concrete company at the south end of town that used to make pre-cast septic tanks and outhouses for the State Park Department and the Forest Service. n.o.body's heard anything from the owners of the company. I heard that they went to go double up with some relatives in Montana. Anyway, there's all these vault toilet buildings sitting around, unused. So an extelephone lineman with the Vigilance Committee figured out a way to turn them into pillboxes. They set up a generator and used a wet diamond saw to cut gun ports. They hauled two of the vault toilets on trucks to each of the three roadblocks, and set them up on either side of the road. I saw the setup on Highway 212. They have it just east of the KLT Road junction. It is so sweet. They used a bunch of those modular highway concrete center divider things, and laid them out to constrict the road into three S-curves. Cars have to take the new S-turns really slowly. And all the time, they're in the line of fire of the pillboxes. It's devastating."

17.

From the Oil Patch.

"Never, under any circ.u.mstances, ever become a refugee. . . . Die if you must, but die on your home turf with your face to the wind, not in some stinking h.e.l.lhole 2,000 kilometers away, among people you neither know nor care about."

-Ragnar Benson, Ragnar's Urban Survival (2000).

Waterville, Vermont.

December, the First Year.

Brent Danley had known the Crunch was going to be bad. He had been following the posts on a variety of survivalist blogs and forums for several years. He would have liked to be better prepared, but his tight budget kept him from working up his pantry to more than a three-month supply. Brent also saw the need to be better armed, but again cash was the constraint. He owned an older bolt-action Winchester .30-06 that had belonged to his father-in-law, a Remington 870 shotgun with a thirty-inch barrel, and two .22 rifles.

Brent worked as an emergency room trauma nurse at Copley Hospital in Morrisville, Vermont. But he lived fifteen miles away in his hometown of Waterville. He and his wife, Jennifer, owned a modest three-bedroom house on Lapland Road that was built in the 1970s. With six kids ranging from four to thirteen years old, the house was a tight squeeze. They were on well water and a creek ran through the property year-round.

Before the Crunch began, Brent made some extra money each year "sugaring"-making maple syrup, which was a family tradition. He sold most of his syrup wholesale. But he saved the best to sell retail, marketed under the trade name Northern Comfort. He was once threatened with a trademark infringement lawsuit by a company using the same name, until he mailed a photocopy of a newspaper clipping from 1946 showing that his grandfather had used the trade name Northern Comfort at least that far back. His short note hinted at a countersuit. That was the last that he heard about lawsuits.

After times got hard, Brent reanimated another one of his grandfather's ventures: an alcohol still that was built in 1931. At the same time that Brent's grandfather first operated the still, his great-uncle ran a small pharmacy in Johnson, Vermont. He sold both moonshine from his brother's still and whiskey smuggled in from Canada. Both products were sold surrept.i.tiously to trusted customers out the back door. The extra income from the booze helped the pharmacy survive the Great Depression. It also allowed grandfather Danley to extend credit to many of his customers for many years. Later, during the Second World War, these customers gradually paid off their bills, and they expressed their grat.i.tude.

The Norwood Ranch, Newell, South Dakota.

January, the Third Year.

In January, Ken caught up with some maintenance on their guns. Terry's CAR-15 had a metal rail fore-end with an Israeli folding foregrip and rubber rail covers. These covers had gradually gotten lost in their travels, with constant handling. By the time they reached the Norwoods' ranch, there were six of the gun's twelve short rubber rail covers missing. With some inquiries via the CB network, they found a man on the south side of Newell who had some spares. In exchange for two silver dimes, they got eight UTG rail covers in a mix of green, tan, and flat dark earth colors. Terry actually grew to like the odd a.s.sortment when she realized that it made her carbine blend in more than it had when the rail covers were all black. At the same time, Ken did some touch-up painting on both rifles. After more than a year of daily use, they had both lost some of their finish, mainly on their sights, muzzles, and charging handles. To remedy this, Ken was given a small bottle of flat black lacquer and a tiny brush from Durward's collection of model-making supplies that had languished since his teenage years.

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 b.u.t.te 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 pa.s.sing 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 bypa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude. 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 b.u.t.ton-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."