Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

11. Provisional Beginnings

The situation in Radcliff was out of control. The sound of gunfire punctuated every night. There were an average of eight home invasion robberies per day, and most cases went unsolved. Many were never even investigated. The mayor had left town with no notice, towing a Ryder rental trailer, with no indication of his destination. The chief of police had been shot and killed, and more than half of the police officers were not showing up for work.

It was just after seven a.m. and Maynard Hutchings was sitting in his bathrobe in his den, drinking some of his last remaining jar of instant coffee, alternating between listening to his police scanner and his CB radio. The latest rumor was that Washington, D.C., had burned down-all of it. His wife came into the kitchen and asked expectantly, “Well?”

“Well, what, darlin’?”

“Well, what are you gonna do? Isn’t it time you called a meeting or somethin’? Ain’t you the chairman?”

He nodded. He was chairman of the Hardin County Board of Supervisors. In a city without a mayor or even an acting mayor, and with just an acting police chief, he had more right than anyone to try to sort things out. The utility power was off, but the local phones were still working. Maynard started making calls.

None of the other county board members would agree to meet. They thought that it would be unsafe and that their families would be in danger in their absence. Two of them gave Hutchings their resignations verbally.

Then he started calling some of his golfing friends to serve as stand-ins. He set a meeting time for two o’clock that afternoon at the county courthouse. Almost as an afterthought, he called to invite General Uhlich. Under the Army’s new Streamlined Management system, Major General Clayton Uhlich wore two hats. He was both the post commander of Fort Knox and chief of Armor-the head of the U.S. Army’s tanker school and armor development programs. All that Hutchings knew about Clay Uhlich was that he was a two-star general who drank Scotch before five p.m. and that he cheated at golf.

The Phelps boys were on the trail leading west from the Rio Arriba Youth Center by eight the next morning. The headmaster, obviously embarrassed by the situation, didn’t even come to the stable to say good-bye to the boys. Just as Aguilar had promised, he sent them out heavy with each saddle horse equipped with full-size saddlebags, and sleeping bags carried on the pillions, and smaller saddlebags at their fenders. The packhorses-all large, gentle, “bombproof” geldings-had full loads in bulging alforjas hanging from their packsaddle trees. Each packsaddle was equipped with a fairly new rubberized brown canvas cover secured by diamond hitches. Aguilar had thought through the packing lists very carefully. He even provided each boy separate bills of sale for each of their horses as proof that they were not stolen.

Aguilar closely watched the boys as they packed their loads, adjusted the girth straps, and dogged-down the diamond hitches. Matthew asked him for help, but Aguilar wagged his finger, admonishing, “No, no, no. You won’t have my help out on the trail, so don’t go askin’ for it now. You gotta show me that you can tack this boy up, tu solito.” After a couple of more tries, Matthew finally got the diamond knot centered and the ropes cinched tightly. He gave a big smile when he did. Slapping him on the back, Aguilar exclaimed, “You can be prouda that!”

After the three boys had mounted their horses and straightened out the leads for their packhorses, Diego Aguilar shook their hands. He advised Shadrach, “Ready or not, you’re going out into a man’s world, sink or swim, and I hate to say, it’s a world of hurt in some places right about now. We’re going to be praying for you. You take good care of yourselves and these horses. ?Vaya con Dios!” The boys said thank-yous and then raised their hats and waved them at the headmaster, who was standing outside of his office two hundred yards away. He raised his hand and waved in reply. All three boys tried to hide the fact that they were crying.

When the boys reached a level spot a mile up French Mesa Road, Shad called a halt. They looked back on the patchwork of fields in the valley below. Shad said, “Mr. Aguilar wanted me to wait until we were away from the center to get this out. He didn’t want the headmaster to make a big fuss, since all that he told him about us getting was the .22s.”

Handing his horse’s reins to Reuben, Shad loosened his bedroll bag from behind his saddle and rolled it out, exposing the two halves of a well-worn Marlin Model 1893 takedown rifle. The front half was nestled in a scabbard. With a bit of fumbling, Shad assembled the rifle, just as Aguilar had showed him how to do, and loaded it with seven flat-tipped .30-30 cartridges. He emptied the remainder of the twenty-round box into his jacket pocket and snapped it shut. Then, after attaching the .30-30’s scabbard to his saddle, he stowed his .22 rifle under the hitch ropes on his packhorse. “Okay, now we got us a rifle that can knock down a deer or stop a predator.”

“Yeah, the kind that come on two legs,” Matthew added.

Ian Doyle’s last two days at Luke Field were surreal. As he drove through the Lightning Gate at the corner of Litchfield Road at 0635, he could see that it was completely unmanned. Incongruously, a “Threat Level Orange” warning sign was posted next to the gate. He spent the morning driving around the post, looking for anyone still on duty and doing a visual inventory of the base’s assets. At the NCO housing complex, he saw a group of gang members brazenly loading loot into the back of a pickup truck.

Doyle found that there were no aircraft remaining on the ramp. All of the military vehicles had also disappeared-either “requisitioned” or stolen. This included all of the fuel trucks. The C-21 Learjet used by the general staff and several F-16s were gone.

Ian then spent most of the afternoon searching for fuel containers. He couldn’t find any gas cans. He eventually found dozens of empty two-liter soda pop bottles in the recycling Dumpsters near the BX. He took these to the POL terminal and found that someone had left a small Honda generator there. They had rigged it to energize two of the fuel pumps. One of these pumps dispensed 100LL, a leaded high-octane aviation gasoline. That afternoon he returned to Buckeye with almost 140 gallons of 100LL in the cargo area of his Suburban with the rear seat folded down. A few of the containers had leaking caps, so he spent most of the drive with his head out the window, sucking fresh air. He prayed that he wouldn’t be ambushed, since the slightest spark would surely cause a huge explosion.

Ian waited until after dark, then he and Blanca carried the fuel containers to the backyard and covered them with a tarp.

The next morning he was back on base at 0615. He spent the morning wandering through the largely abandoned 56th Operations Group (OG) and 56th Maintenance Group hangars and buildings. By 0930 he found only a few young pilots and a couple of E-5 NCOs. The rest were lower-rank enlisted airmen. After finding such a pitiful contingent still on base, Doyle was dejected. He went back to the 56th Maintenance Group hangar and office buildings and came upon a lieutenant who was rummaging through closets and wall lockers, vainly looking for something edible. “Lieutentant, spread the word. I want you to announce that there will be an all-hands formation, for all groups, in the main 56th OG hangar at 1100 hours,” he ordered.

By 1100, only twenty-one ground crew and seven pilots had gathered. There was just one other captain. They quizzed each other and found that Doyle’s date of rank was eighteen months earlier, giving Ian seniority. In the distance they could see smoke rising from fires all over Phoenix, and there was an almost constant crackle of gunfire. Some of it sounded nearby, in Glendale. Doyle ordered the assembled gaggle to fall in to a proper formation. He called: “Attention! Stand at… ease!”

He took a deep breath and began, “Gentlemen, this is a sad day for me and a sad day for the Air Force. As a captain, I am the ranking officer on base, so that makes me the de facto commander of all of the Luke facilities. As you know, the rotation to Saudi had our numbers greatly depleted even before the Crunch. And now there’s no grid power, and the backup ATC generators have run out fuel. The water towers are now dry and of course there’s no electricity to refill them. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there were a lot of emergency requisitions of aircraft, some under dubious pretenses. More recently, there have been several aircraft that were without a doubt stolen, with no flight plans filed and without benefit of tower clearance. Those were our last flightworthy aircraft. The local gangs are starting to strip outlying buildings, and there are no more security personnel to maintain any kind of perimeter. We have no unit integrity or any functioning chain of command. I have determined that our position is untenable, and we are incapable of carrying out any useful mission. At this point, even our personal safety is at risk.”

Doyle let that sink in and then continued, “The last straw was this morning, when I was informed that there isn’t so much as a can of beans left in the dining facilities. The bottom line is that we can’t keep you if we can’t feed you. Therefore, I’m hereby releasing all of the personnel on base. As of the end of this formation, your status will be on indefinite leave until either your ETS date or until you hear further orders from any commissioned Air Force officer from any command that is in a bona fide position of authority. Gentlemen, you are hereby released. You will be in my prayers. That is all. Dismissed!”

After the formation, Ian drove to the Air Force Security arms room. He found that the front door’s latch mechanism was missing. It had been cut out with a cutting torch. Inside, he found that the building had been ransacked. The bodies of two dead men in civilian clothes but with short-cropped military haircuts were sprawled on the floor. Between them was an oxyacetylene torch cart. Both of the men had been shot. Their bodies were puffy and smelled putrid. The sight sickened Doyle, who had never seen a human corpse up close before. To Doyle, it was obvious that the men had used the cutting torch to get into the arms room. Nine rifle and pistol racks had been cut open and emptied. What had happened after that was anyone’s guess. Perhaps there had been a double cross. All of the arms racks were empty, save one that was still locked. It held five M16A2 rifles. Doyle muttered to himself, “Well, I can’t leave these unsecured.”

He lit the torch and cut the lock off the remaining rack. Carrying out the five M16s to his Suburban took just one trip with the rifles slung over both shoulders. His search of the building revealed a box of twenty-three loaded M16 magazines that was underneath a duty roster binder in a file cabinet. He also found just one M16 cleaning kit.

When the Texas power grid went down, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth were soon overcome by riots and looting. Once the local radio station reported simultaneous rioting in all of those cities, Garcia declared it was time for La Fuerza to roll.

A total of fifty-three adults and twenty-three children wheeled out of the Anahuac warehouse in a parade of twenty-six vehicles, and they never came back. They poured out of the warehouse like hornets from a nest. Downtown Anahuac was first on their list.