Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

20 THE ZONE ONE GATE

As Claire McGregor was washing the dinner dishes, the Dakota Alert driveway alarm announced, “Alert, zone one, alert, zone one.” She shouted to Alan excitedly, “Mercy! That could be Ray!”

They stepped out on the porch, hoping to see the familiar profile of Ray’s pickup and fifth-wheel trailer, but instead saw the shape of an unfamiliar pickup truck with a camper shell. As the pickup neared the front porch, a motion-sensing security floodlight snapped on.

Claire asked, “Who… ?”

Alan hesitated with his hand resting on the porch rail, wondering whether he should step back inside for his elk rifle.

The unknown man waved, swung open his door, and declared, “Hi! I’m Phil Adams. I trust that Ray let you know that I’d be coming.”

Alan nodded. “Yes, he told us. Come in, come in. Claire can warm you up some dinner.”

As he climbed out of the pickup’s cab Phil asked, “Is Ray here yet?”

Simultaneously, Alan and Claire replied, “No.”

Arriving at the ranch in advance of Ray was awkward. Even though he had known Ray for more than a decade, Phil had never met Ray’s parents face-to-face. And despite the barrage of dramatic news headlines, the whole concept of Phil’s being there to help secure the ranch seemed odd—almost as if it was still in the realm of the hypothetical. It was, after all, a very remote ranch, and the nearest reports of civil unrest were in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. That was 350 miles away, straight-line distance, or roughly 420 miles by sea and road, or 535 miles via the highways. Further complicating the situation, the telephone network was working only sporadically, and the McGregors hadn’t heard from Ray in three days. Their daughters—one living in Florida and the other living in the Philippines—were also out of contact.

Outside of a narrow littoral that benefits from the moderating influence of the Pacific Ocean’s thermal mass, northern British Columbia has a brutal climate. Upon leaving Bella Coola and driving east on Highway 20, the interior climate of British Columbia comes suddenly. The Chilcotin mountain range looms up, and without realizing it, you are entering a radically different climate zone. Nighttime temperatures during winter can reach a low of negative twenty-seven degrees Celsius. And daytime highs average right around freezing in January. The cool summers and cold winters in this region, classified as the “Montane Spruce Zone,” result largely from its position in the rain shadow of the Coast Mountains and the high elevations. The low precipitation, dry air, and clear skies at night often create very frigid overnight temperatures.

The McGregor ranch was at a northern latitude where there were sixteen and a half hours of daylight at the summer solstice but only seven and a half hours at the winter solstice. The ranch was fairly close to the tiny hamlet of Anahim Lake, but the nearest good shopping and the nearest freight terminal were eighty-seven miles away in Bella Coola. To anyone outside the region, they used the shorthand of saying that their ranch was “near Bella Coola” because it took too long to explain that they were in the middle of nowhere. The ranch had 720 deeded acres with 410 acres of that in hay ground. (More than half of that had been muskeg swamp when the property was first staked in the 1930s, and then it had to be laboriously drained and cleared, originally with ditches dug by hand.) The property was off the grid, with a forty-two-year-old Lister diesel generator, and fourteen photovoltaic panels—which were useful for only nine months of each year.

The ranch house had been built in 1975, replacing the property’s original homestead cabin. The house was 2,720 square feet, with four bedrooms. There was also a machine shop/shed, two large hay barns, a calving shed, an infrequently used guest cabin, and several corrals. In recent years, their income had come mainly from selling hay rather than cattle. Some of their hay was trucked to Bella Coola and then loaded on barges and shipped as far away as the Aleutian Islands.

The McGregors heated the ranch house with firewood. There was also an oil-fired backup heater that they used mainly when they had to be away from the ranch house in winter, to keep the pipes from freezing. The big Lister generator was also run on home heating oil, since they found that it burned the heating fuel just as well as diesel and was often less expensive. Their diesel and heating-oil fuel tanks had a combined volume of 2,600 gallons, and they were nearly full when the Crunch occurred. They also had a 250-gallon-capacity tank of unleaded gasoline, but it had only 180 gallons in it when Phil arrived.

A lot of the roads were unmarked, so driving directions were often based on highway kilometer markers. Typical directions would begin with something like: “You take the road going north from Marker 37…” The off-highway road conditions ranged from fair to horrendous, with some notorious mud bogs in the spring and early summer. Surprisingly, some ranches were easier to access in the midwinter months, when the lakes and rivers were frozen, turning them into “snow machine” highways. Winter hospitality was legendary in the region. Because of the short daylight hours and long driving distances, a visit to another ranch was usually at least an overnight stay and might span a full week.

Seven miles from the ranch was the resort town of Anahim Lake, which had only two stores. One was called the Trading Store, but it wasn’t much more than a glorified gas station minimart. The other was McLean Trading, which was a combination grocery store, hardware store, dry goods store, and butcher shop. They also sold fishing tackle and hunting licenses. The store had been run continuously since it was established by the Christensen family in 1898—originally in a much smaller building. At the time of the Crunch, it was three thousand square feet. The McLean family was celebrated for their willingness to “order in” just about anything that their customers requested, which ranged from books and canned ghee to canoes and snowmobiles. They generously made their loading dock available for locals to take delivery on an amazing assortment of trucked-in merchandise—everything from pianos to navy surplus generators, even if they hadn’t been ordered through the store.

For most Anahim Lake locals, “going shopping” meant either a nearly two-hour drive (in good weather) west to the department stores in Bella Coola (population 625) or a three-hour drive southeast to Williams Lake (population 11,000).

In Bella Coola there was a Sears store, Moore’s Organic Market and Nursery, Tru Hardware, the Alexander MacKenzie Comemorative Pharmacy, and a fairly well-stocked Consumers Co-op. But the nearest HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company) and Walmart were in Williams Lake, which was a 206-mile drive from the ranch.