Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

21. Up the Creek

Andy’s cold and wet bicycle ride to the coast of France through the northern Departements was grueling, and took him two weeks of hard riding. Many of the nights were miserable, with few opportunities to dry his clothes. The roads were only lightly traveled, and he had no offers of rides, except for one elderly man who was driving a tiny two-seat Renault R5. There would be no room for Andy’s bike or trailer, so he declined.

He camped in the woods most nights. As his stock of food dwindled, his trailer got lighter, and he was able to travel faster. He was only able to find a few bits of food that were still affordable. This included three retort-packaged “bricks” of vegetable soup and a couple of half-kilo plastic packets of instant oatmeal. Eating these cold was unappetizing but nourishing. Buying them expended most of Laine’s remaining euros.

As he passed from Picardie into Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the population density increased. This made Andy nervous about his personal safety. His opportunities to camp unobserved in woodlands got further and further apart. His greatest fear was being attacked while sleeping. He prayed often and as usual kept his pistol handy inside his sleeping bag. While he was near the town of Douai, a large dog came sniffing around his camp at night. Laine half shouted: “Chien! Vas-y! Vas-y! Va-t’en!” That worked, but he had great difficulty getting back to sleep after the dog had left.

Laine was surprised to find the Port of Calais guarded by both police and soldiers. He was able to pass though the outer perimeter without being questioned, but at the inner cordon, he was stopped and asked by a French Army sergeant for his papers and told that the port was closed to civilian traffic. Andy pulled out his Army Reserve ID card and asked to speak with the harbormaster. This turned into a convoluted series of short meetings and interrogations, first with the lieutenant in charge of the cordon, then the harbor security officer, then with the harbormaster’s office, and finally with the harbormaster himself. The harbormaster, Arsene Paquet, seemed distracted by the radio traffic, but he was amiable and sounded sincerely concerned about Laine’s desire to get home to the United States.

Paquet immediately made three phone calls and punched in two SMS messages on his text phone. The resulting word was that there were no French ships that had filed sailing plans to the United States or Mexico. Paquet offered in a conciliatory voice, “I am sorry, monsieur, only from America, not to, for at least months in the future. The insurance companies will not allow it. To be precise, I should say that if they sail, it will be with the knowledge that their insurance is not in effect. Few would take that risk. This insurance situation is uniform for all ships that are European Common Market-flagged, or etranger-flagged but owned by EC-headquartered companies. But I think the situation may be different in England.”

“How so?”

Paquet explained, “They have different insurance laws and procedures. Everything here in the EC has been so normalized. England is not a member of the European Common Market.”

“So you’re saying that to find a ship, I need to get to England.”

“Yes, there is definitely a better chance. You can try to go to England, but with this terror thing the planes are grounded, the ferries are stuck in port, and even the Chunnel trains are not running. Did you see the news about the insulin?”

“No, what was that?”

“The transport is bottled up so tight they are worried that diabetes patients in England and Scotland may run out of insulin.”

“So, any suggestions on how I can get to England? I am desperate to get there, to find a ship. I can pay in gold coin. Genuine or.”

The harbormaster cocked his head.

“Gold coins? Really?”

“Yes, really. I have an old twenty-franc gold Rooster coin—le coq gaulois—that’s about one-fifth of an ounce in gold. I’ll trade that coin to anyone who can get me into England with no fuss.”

“Hmmm…. My wife has a cousin, Joseph, who is the captain of a fishing boat near Boulogne-sur-Mer. Give me a moment and I will make another inquiry.”

Twenty hours later, Andy and his bicycle had been deposited at the fishing docks of Boulogne-sur-Mer. His trip there, expedited by Paquet, was in a truck that smelled of fish. The road traffic was very light.

En route, the truck had made several stops to drop off and pick up cargo. One odd sight was when they made an intermediate stop at the Gare de Boulogne-sur-Mer to drop off some cargo. A Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) high-speed train was sitting on a siding. Normally seen at speeds of up to two hundred kilometers per hour or at just very brief stops, the idle train looked odd.

Andy arrived at the Quai Gambetta with his bike and trailer in the late afternoon. The dock had mainly fishing boats and yachts tied up, but nested among them was a small two-masted sailing ship called La Recouvrance. Andy wondered if it was an historic ship or just a replica.

Joseph Lejeune didn’t speak much English. His fishing boat, named Beau Temps, was smaller than Laine had expected. The captain was also younger than Laine had expected, perhaps in his early thirties. The boat had a crew of just three.

Lejeune met him on the dock. They exchanged names and shook hands. “I seek, passage… uh… en Angleterre?”

“Yes, I am taking you now. You have with you the gold?”

Andy obligingly showed him the coin.

Lejeune smiled. “Bon, bon! Allons-y!”

There was no delay. As the sun was setting, Andy’s bike and trailer were carried on board and covered with a tarpaulin and lashed down. The mooring lines were cast off and Beau Temps pulled away from the dock with a roar. They quickly motored between the Jetee Nord-est and Jetee Sud-ouest and out to sea. A small lighthouse marked the end of the north jetty. The wind was chilly, but the skies were nearly clear.

Andy soon joined Lejeune in the wheelhouse. As a transistor radio blared French rap music, Joseph Lejeune offered him a cup of strong black coffee in an extra-thick mug. As Laine sipped the coffee, Lejeune said haltingly: “We sail for the village of Rye. The tide is good, and our draft, it is shallow. This Rye is a small town of fishes. No questions will be asked. You are in safety in Angleterre in just a few hours.”

Ahead of them, the sky was darkening over fairly calm waters. The boat had a faint smell of diesel fuel and fish. Andy reckoned that that they would arrive after midnight.

He sat in the back of the wheelhouse, feeling the vibration of the engine and the gentle chop striking the boat’s bow. Lejeune regularly checked the GPS receiver. The radio played on, with one rap song after another, interrupted by annoying commercials. The station ID declared that it was “Delta FM 100.7” from Boulogne. The two crewmen popped in for cups of coffee and to rip huge hunks of bread from baguettes. They hardly spoke a word. One of them spent most of his time below, tending the engine.

As they approached the British coastline, Andy was surprised to see one long stretch to the south of them that was completely blacked out. He pointed this out to the captain. “Wow! It’s just dark. It must be another power failure.”

Lejeune wagged his chin in disgust and muttered, “La fin du monde tel que nous le connaissons.”

Laine cocked his head and queried: “Excusez-moi. My French is very poor. What was that you said? Something about ‘the end of the land’?”

“My meaning, Monsieur Andy, was: ‘the end of the world as we’ve known it.’”

Andy retorted, “Oh. Yes, it does seem to be the end.”

The fishing boat quietly pulled up the slough into Rye harbor. It was nearly two a.m. when they pulled up to the dock. Since the water was almost dead calm, the captain didn’t bother to tie up the boat. The tide was high, so Andy was able to simply step off it right onto the dock. The two crewmen handed his bike and then the trailer down to Andy.

Andy handed Joseph Lejeune the twenty-franc coin and said, “Merci beaucoup.”

Pocketing the coin and nodding, he replied, “Que dieu soit avec vous,” and gave Andy a wave.

The throaty growl of the engine increased in tempo as the boat reversed far enough to make a safe turn and head back out to the English Channel.

Laine pedaled down the deserted dock under the yellowish light of sodium vapor lamps. Turning onto Rye’s main street gave him a huge sense of relief. From here on, it was unlikely that he would be stopped and asked for identification.

Getting used to riding on the left side of the road was a quick transition, but it would have seemed more natural if there had been traffic on the road. Other than hearing some trucks in the distance, there was no evidence of vehicles moving. Andy didn’t have a map, and the night was overcast, so he couldn’t tell the direction he was heading. He just had the vague idea of turning right and heading up the coast. After leaving the town of Rye on Folkestone Road, Andy stopped and consulted his compass. He noted that he was headed northeast. That seemed correct and he knew that Folkestone was up the coast from Rye, so that seemed affirmative. He pressed on. The roadway was very quiet. Only two bakery trucks passed him in the first two hours of riding.

A half hour after dawn, Andy passed through the village of Brenzett, and he saw an elderly man with a walking stick who was walking his terrier on a leash. Andy stopped his bike and asked, “I’m sorry, but I’m without a map. Will this road take me up to the White Cliffs of Dover?”

The dog started yapping, and the man hissed, “Hush, you!” Then he looked up and answered Laine, “Yes, indeed it will, but you have to make a few turns to get to Dover. Come with me and I’ll fetch you a map.” Turning on his heel, the man said, “That’s me house, just three down.” Andy dismounted and walked his bike across the street. He walked alongside the man and the dog, talking as they walked. Andy said, “I appreciate your help, sir.”

“Don’t you mention it,” the old man answered. He noticed the man had a bit of a wheeze to his breathing as he walked.

The man turned in a gate, and said over his shoulder: “Wait here, young Yank!” He emerged a minute later carrying a Kent Coastal Cities Ordnance Survey map. “This will show all the smallish roads you’ll need to get to Dover on a bike. You can keep that map-I have a newer one. Safe home!” Andy thanked him and the old man soon popped back in his door. Setting the kickstand, Andy spent a few minutes consulting the map, picking out the roads that would get him to a succession of harbors as he made his way up the coast.

That afternoon, he passed through Folkestone. As the terminus city for the Chunnel, Folkestone had some rough characters, who eyed his bike and trailer with hungry eyes. Andy gave them stern looks in response. To one ruffian who started walking toward him, he shouted “Back off!”

Once he got away from the city on the New Dover Road, Andy felt the most at ease since he had left Vilseck. The economy was a wreck, and there were very few cars and trucks on the road. But at least here he found more shops open than in France, and some friendly faces.

Bicycling through England in the winter wasn’t much different than on the Continent. The weather was just as bad, but at least language wasn’t a barrier, and he encountered more hospitality. His first night in England was outside the town of Church Hougham. Just as he was looking for a secluded copse of woods, he was flagged down by a middle-aged man carrying an umbrella. As soon as the man heard Andy’s accent and learned that he was a stranded American, he often offered him a place to stay for the night. Sleeping in the man’s barn was much preferable to sleeping in the woods in his bivy bag.

One downside was that Andy felt even more self-conscious carrying a pistol in England than he had in France. He decided that he would draw it only in the most dire circumstances. If he was ever arrested, he would undoubtedly be searched. His SIG pistol would land him in a world of hurt. The last place he wanted to end up was in Wormwood Scrubs Prison just as the world was falling apart.

As he was bicycling toward the city of Dover, Laine stopped to repair a flat tire. Just as he was finishing pumping up the tire with the replacement inner tube, a policeman pulled over to observe him. Andy nodded and waved. The policeman, dressed in a black raincoat that was half covered with optic yellow safety patches, strolled over to Laine. Andy clipped the pump back onto the bike’s frame and reattached the trailer. “What do you have in that trailer?” the policeman asked.

It was again Andy’s American accent that quickly changed the situation from a suspicious encounter into a friendly chat. The policeman, who appeared to be in his early thirties, had an acne-scarred face and was tall enough to look Andy eye to eye. Laine introduced himself and gave a one-minute summary of his trip from Germany. His only omission in the story was of the French fishing boat. By that omission and his mention of “arriving in Folkestone,” the policeman assumed that Laine had come by train through the Chunnel. “So you’re all on your lonesome, and you want to pedal up the coast, looking for a ship?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, sir, that’s a very dangerous thing to do at the present time. It’s a good thing that you didn’t get merked right there in Folkestone. There’s a bad lot down there. Yobs, they are. And there’s more of the same in parts of Dover as well. Mind you: Don’t go near the Dover docks. You’ll find no yachtsmen there, just Barney-nothing but trouble.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen their kind before. I had to stare down a couple of them.” After a beat he added, “You know, just coming off active duty, I feel a bit naked, traveling by myself, unarmed.”

“Can’t blame you.” The policemen hesitated and then said, “My name is Michael Lyon. I think you need my help.”

Lyon’s palm brushed the top of his baton, and he gazed at it. He continued in a matter-of-fact voice, “Let me explain the legalities, Captain Laine: You carry one of these, it’s an offense. You carry a knife, it’s an offense. You carry a cricket bat, it’s an offense. You carry pepper spray, it’s an offense…”

“So what am I supposed to stop the bad guys with? Harsh language?”

Lyon laughed. “Well, it’s fortunate that you’re a bicyclist and not just afoot. That gives you a bit of leeway. You see, here in the U.K., on a bike you can legally carry ‘safety equipment,’ and that includes flashlights… and the law doesn’t specify what size flashlight.”

Andy smiled and asked, “What do you recommend?”

Lyon glanced around nervously and said: “Hang on a sec, Yank. I’ve got something in the boot.” He stepped over to his police car and opened its trunk. Unzipping a duffel bag, he pulled out a six-cell Maglite flashlight. It looked like the other turned-aluminum police flashlights Andy had seen before, but slimmer. Then he realized that it held C-cells instead of D-cell-size batteries.

In an even lower voice, Lyon said, “Now, this can be used just like a baton, but you can legally carry it on your bicycle. Not in your hand, mind you, and not on your person when you are walking down the street. But attached to your bicycle or in your pack when bicycling, it’s a fully allowable exception.”

“Is that one for sale, by chance?”

“Huh! I can’t be peddling wares on the street whilst on duty, now, can I? That would be unseemly. But there is nothing that says that I can’t give it to you.”

“Are you kidding?”

Lyon shook his head. “No, sir, just consider it an act of Christian kindness.”

“That is very kind of you! Tell you what: If you are ever in the state of New Mexico, my home will always be open to you and your family.” Laine pulled out his notepad and a pen. He continued as he was writing, “Here’s my address. When the Big Trolley gets back on its tracks, I fully expect to see you on a holiday. Plan on spending a week or two at my home. I’ll take you to see Monument Valley and some of the Indian cliff dwellings. Ever heard of a place called Mesa Verde? From where I live, it’s just across the state line, in Colorado.”

Michael Lyon shook his head from side to side, and Andy continued: “Those are some amazing ruins. Now, again: I fully expect to see you and your family on my doorstep someday. In fact, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”

Andy stuffed the flashlight into the loops on the back of his handlebar bag. He and the policeman shook hands and wished each other well. Lyon waved as Andy pulled out from the curb into the drizzle. As he pedaled away, Andy realized that the Mesa Verde ruins had belonged to a culture that had been erased from existence. In the late 1200s, Mesa Verde was abandoned, and the society was never rebuilt. He wondered about the hopes for his own civilization in the long term.

Heeding the policeman’s warning, Andy avoided central Dover. Instead he skirted around the city. He kept on the Dover Road, which roughly paralleled the A258 highway. Eventually he got to Pegwell Harbor. There, Andy learned that there were no boats headed to the U.S., since the East Coast and Gulf Coast were reportedly in utter chaos. The few yachts and commercial vessels there that might be sailing were all headed to New Zealand. One of the motor yachtsmen kindly spent an hour on his VHF radio on Andy’s behalf, calling yachtsmen and commercial vessels to ask of any boats with planned sailings to the U.S. or Canada that winter. There were none. This was discouraging news. But also hearing that all flights were still grounded, he had no choice but to press on up the coast.

As he was cycling up the Hereson Road, just north of Ramsgate, Andy was confronted by two young toughs on Kawasaki motorcycles. They zoomed up behind him, and one of them turned sharply and braked to a halt right in front of Laine. He was forced to apply his own brakes to avoid hitting the motorcycle. The thug quickly dismounted and shoved a length of hoe handle through the spokes of Laine’s front wheel. It was deja vu of the incident near Homberg. Andy jumped off his bike, simultaneously pulling his newly acquired flashlight from its retaining loops. Taking a high swing, he brought it down hard on the young man’s forearm. The biker screamed and shouted, “My arm!”

Andy immediately turned and delivered a rapid series of baton strikes to the chest and arms of the other motorcyclist, who was slow in dismounting. Overwhelmed, he gunned his engine and sped off. Seeing Andy’s furious show of force, the first biker jumped back aboard his Kawasaki and sped away unsteadily, shouting curses. As he picked up his fallen bicycle and inspected both it and the trailer hitch for damage, Laine muttered to himself, “There must be some international college of thuggery that teaches the bike-spokes technique.”