Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

19. Gainful

Lars and Beth Laine were cuddled in bed, by the light of a single candle. For the first time in many days, they rested comfortably, knowing that one of the boys would be on guard duty all night long, listening and watching for intruders. Beth asked, “How are we going to make do? Your disability retirement checks are still coming, but they’re a joke. The check for one month might buy a couple of days’ worth of groceries, if we’re lucky. And at the rate things are going, in another couple of weeks a check might just buy one can of beans.”

Lars sighed. “Well, we aren’t going to make a living on twenty acres in this country, especially with seven or eight mouths to feed. If we just barter for food and fuel, our stash of precious metals will eventually get depleted. It’s pretty clear that I need to look for work, putting my military training to use.”

“What? As a mercenary?”

“Not exactly. There are a lot of businesses in town that are doing a pitiful job of securing what they have. Whether it’s a burglary or a robbery at gunpoint, they know that sometime within a few months somebody is going to come and clean them out. It’s only the refinery that seems to have their act together so far, in terms of security. So I think I ought to go hire myself out as a security consultant. I could set them up some rudimentary physical security-maybe I could team up with one of the welding shops on that-and also train their employees on shooting and small-team tactics.” Stroking his wife’s back, he added, “Now that we discovered my dad’s guns and that silver, I also have some leverage in bartering situations. I’d like your blessing to poke around town and see what happens.”

Beth sighed, “That sounds good to me. You just be careful, and proceed with prayer.”

Upgrading the security at the Laines’ ranch went quickly, with the help of the boys. The main task was constructing an observation post (OP) with railroad ties. Lars carefully positioned it on a gentle rise fifty-two yards from the southwest corner of the house. From there, there was a good view of the house, barn, and bunkhouse. The OP measured just six feet square and five feet high. By heaping split pinyon pine rounds over it, they made it look like a nondescript pile of firewood.

After building the OP, they moved on to upgrading the house itself, for defense against looters. Lars was fond of saying, “When it comes to stopping bullets, there’s nothing like mass, and sandbags are cheap mass.” It was clear that they’d need sandbags-a lot of sandbags. There were sixteen empty feed sacks in the barn. These had been made to hold fifty pounds of grain, so they were oversize for their needs. If filled with sand, they would have weighed more than one hundred pounds. So Lars cut each sack in half and restitched the cut off ends to form additional sacks using a large curved upholstery needle. This task was just like the sailcloth stitching that his uncle Aki had taught Lars when he was twelve years old. But this yielded just thirty-two sandbags-not nearly enough for their needs.

They made inquiries all over Farmington and Bloomfield, but found that all of the available feed sacks had already been bought up by others with the same idea. After a few days of searching, they heard that feed sacks were still available from Southwest Seed, sixty miles away, in Dolores, Colorado. Unlike a typical retail feed store, this was a seed-packing and grain elevator operation set up to handle wholesale quantities.

When he arrived, Lars was not surprised to see several armed men guarding the feed and seed complex. They were, after all, guarding something quite valuable.

The sales manager walked Lars around. He pointed out their inventory, which included many pallets of brand-new bundled feed sacks. Most of them were white, but about one-third of the twenty-pound size were tan. It was those that Laine wanted, since they were the right size for sandbags and they’d blend in well in desert country.

Negotiating the sack purchase took a while. This reminded Lars of transactions he’d witnessed several years before, at the bazaar in Basra, Iraq. It started with pleasantries, followed by a few outrageous offers and counteroffers and finally some serious dickering for more realistic prices.

They eventually agreed on $4.50 face value in pre-1965 quarters and two hundred rounds of .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridges in exchange for six hundred empty tan sacks. While he was there, Lars also bought forty more pounds of pasture blend for $1.20 face value in silver dimes. It was more than Laine needed, but he anticipated that it would be good to keep on hand for barter.

Life at the Laines’ ranch was comfortable, at least by post-Crunch standards. Everyone had enough to eat, and the rotating security shifts were just four hours per day from Monday through Saturday, and six hours on Sundays. They soon instituted “L.&L.’s Standing Rules.” These rules were penned on a large piece of card stock by Lisbeth and posted inside the door of the bunkhouse:

Below that, Lisbeth added a quote from her favorite Psalm: