Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

31. A Bulwark Never Failing

Maynard Hutchings and his cronies laid out their goals like a military campaign. Military bases, food distribution warehouses, power plants, oil fields, and refineries topped their list of sites to be controlled. Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi were the first states to be pacified.

Chambers Clarke was the undersecretary of information for the Hutchings government. He accompanied many of the first convoys that contacted military installations and served as liaison for the ProvGov. Before the Crunch, Clarke had been a fertilizer and pesticide salesman for Monsanto Company. In many ways Clarke was just a bagman for the administration. He literally handed out millions of dollars in the new currency to the owners of mines that were being nationalized. It was Hutchings’s wife who had first suggested the carrot-and-stick approach to nationalizing the industries. Mr. Clarke was the carrot, while General Uhlich provided the stick. Later, it was the UN peacekeepers that provided the whippings, with fewer compunctions than American troops.

One of the Council’s first goals was controlling oil refineries. Hutchings initially dispatched an APC convoy to a small refinery in Pulaski County, Kentucky, near the town of Somerset. It was a very small refinery by twenty-first-century standards, producing just 5,500 barrels per day. But it was online, so Hutchings had a source of fuel to expand his area of influence. They next visited and served papers on the much larger refineries in Calletsburg and Perry, Kentucky, but both were off-line because the power grid was down, and they lacked sufficient cogeneration capacity.

The pacification, reunification, and nationalization campaign’s first large prize was the ConocoPhillips refinery in Ponca City, Oklahoma. It was the largest refinery in the state of Oklahoma and it was still partially online. After Ponca City, the army advanced on the Oklahoma refineries in Ardmore, Tulsa, Wynnewood, and Thomas. Of these, only the Ventura refinery at Thomas was in operation.

In Ohio, all of the refineries that the Fort Knox government “visited” were found to be off-line. The regular pinging of bullets bouncing off their APCs as they advanced served as a reminder that Ohio was still unpacified country. A combination of harsh winter weather and the ravenous gangs had reduced the population by 87 percent. The only people left in Ohio were the gang members and a handful of farmers who had become accustomed to paying the gangs’ so-called fair share crop taxes.

Meanwhile, other convoys were dispatched to electric power plants. These-coal, natural gas, and hydroelectric-were another high priority for the ProvGov. The hydroelectric plants were the easiest to get back online, and in fact a few of them were already operating on isolated mini-grids that had been reestablished soon after the Crunch took down the big power grids.

Because it takes a source of power to start up a gas turbine engine, and because most power plants in the U.S. built after the 1960s didn’t have auxiliary power units for self-starting, the “black start” restarting process took several months to gradually work up the capacity to get the biggest power plants in Kentucky back online. These included the Big Sandy, Ghent, Mill Creek, and Paradise power plants.

Reconstituting the eastern power grid step by step, starting with the smallest power plants, was time-consuming and required a lot of manpower. Some of the manpower had to be procured with a combination of Fort Knox greenbacks and coercion. At first, coal miners refused to accept pay in the new currency. It finally took the promise of relatively high pay and the threat of involuntary servitude to get them back to work.

The ProvGov’s first experience with nuclear power plants came when they nationalized the Watts Bar nuclear plant in Rhea County, Tennessee. The plant had been operating, uninterrupted, since before the Crunch. As with some of the hydro plants, a mini power grid was already in service there, and it merely needed to be expanded and tied back to the new grid. The reconstituted grid was often jokingly called “Maynard’s Bubble Gum and Baling Wire Power Grid.”

The cobbled-together Fort Knox grid was plagued by frequent blackouts and brownouts. Severe conservation measures were the norm. Storm damage often took months to repair. The level of expectation for reliability of service soon was on a par with Third World countries. Meanwhile, the residential rate charged was an average of twenty-five cents per kilowatt hour in the new dollars, which kept consumption low.

Local power distribution co-ops were allowed to be independent and privately owned, but it was mandated that they pay their employees in the new currency.

Dissent from the new administration was rapidly quashed, often with brute-force tactics. Newspapers that printed editorials opposing the nationalization schemes often had their offices burned to the ground. Radio stations that voiced antigovernment views had their transmitters destroyed or their transmitter towers dynamited. Antigovernment banners were torn down. In some cases, activists disappeared, never to be seen again.

The Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina was a difficult challenge. There, they found that the employees were standing guard with an odd assortment of weapons that included homemade flamethrowers. Talking them into opening the gate was difficult, because they had heard rumors that the Provisional Government was engaging in terrorism and had sabotaged another nuclear power plant. It was only through a mixture of threats and bribes that they were able to enter the plant. As with the other nuclear power plants that they had “liberated,” the Provisional Government found that the plant was still capable of going back online but the local power infrastructure was in disarray. There were downed power poles, trees down on power lines, and miles of copper wire that had been stolen.

The military bases fell either very easily, or with great difficulty. In some cases, all that the Provisional Government had to do was wait until their convoys arrived and announce that the base commander either was being given new orders or was being relieved. This worked well at their first destination, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. They found Little Rock Air Force Base and Tinker Air Force Base were both semi-abandoned. The commander at Arnold Air Force Base in Oklahoma simply rolled over and played dead.

Offut Air Force base near Omaha, Nebraska, proved to be one of the toughest nuts to crack. The base commander would not recognize Hutchings’s Provisional Government. Rather than fighting the small Air Force security contingent toe to toe, General Uhlich decided to simply back off and starve them out. They did the same with Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. The Army National Guard general there told Chambers Clarke that in the absence of orders from FORSCOM or the Pentagon, he would take orders only from the Governor of Oklahoma. Surrounding and starving out Offut and Camp Gruber took just six months and resulted in only a few casualties.

There was brief resistance at Fort Riley, Kansas, but the fort’s commander eventually acceded to a combination of threats and a substantial bribe in gold. By the time that Fort Rucker, Alabama, came under the Hutchings government, the latter controlled the majority of the remaining airworthy helicopters in the U.S. Army inventory. Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, yielded a huge number of trained troops that were integrated into the Provisional Government’s army. The army soon earned the moniker “the Federals.”

Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the home of the U.S. Army’s artillery school, was semi-chaotic when the Federals arrived, but its huge store of ammunition was still secure and intact. Fort Gordon, Georgia, was controlled by a corrupt and unstable general who was mistrusted by his own troops. The arrival of the Federals came as a relief to the troops there-mostly signal corps-but they were soon disillusioned to find that the Provisional Government leadership was even more corrupt than that of their former commander.

When the army reached the coast and “pacified” Charleston, South Carolina, the Hutchings government immediately made satcom contact with U.S. Navy logistics ships worldwide, ordering them to return to the U.S. Their remaining cargos, they were told, were needed to resupply the army. The ports of Wilmington and Savannah were opened soon after. And once the army had reached the Gulf Coast, another satcom call went out to the UN, letting them know that several ports were available for ships carrying peacekeeping troops and vehicles. This accelerated the arrival of UN troops, which previously had been just a trickle on aircraft landing at McConnell, Tinker, Charleston, and Pope Air Force bases. The reopening of the seaports allowed huge numbers of UN troops to enter the United States.

Five months after he came to convalesce at the Moras’ house, and just as he was starting to feel that he was fully regaining his strength, Andy became ill after dinner. He had a high fever, sweats, and a stomachache. He had all the signs of a bad flu. But then a rash formed on his chest and his legs. Skin eruptions broke out in his armpits. His wrists started to ache. Andy had never felt so sick in his life. Darci Mora recognized it immediately: “It’s the break bone.”

Andy turned his head to look at Darci and asked, “What? How could a broken bone cause this?”

“No, no, no. Not your broken leg. Nothing to do with that. This is a fever, breakbone fever, the dengue fever. The people call it breakbone fever because it gives you such pain in the joints.”

Andy was very ill. His feverish periods would last for ten hours or more, and he became delirious. The pain in his muscles and joints became intense. Tylenol kept the pain just barely manageable. A few times he was given Tylenol with codeine. He had three days of diarrhea and vomiting.

During one of his lucid periods, Mora explained that dengue fever was caused by a virus transmitted from person to person by the aedes mosquito, and that there was no specific treatment.

Andy asked Darci, “Should I go back to the hospital?”

“No. Unless you get much worse and need an IV, the treatment would be the same there: fluids and rest. I’ll just keep checking your vitals. There is something called dengue shock syndrome. That’s the real killer, but it is not very common. You just have to let your immune system fight this.”

After ten days, the worst of the illness had passed, but Andy still felt miserable. Following Darci’s advice, he drank lots of water. He complained of an odd taste in his mouth, almost as if he were sucking on a zinc lozenge.

His recovery from dengue fever was slow. He spent many hours in bed, feeling weak. He read his Bible a lot. Whenever he felt depressed, he read the book of Job, just to put his own minor troubles in perspective. To improve his limited command of Spanish, Andy would often do parallel readings, verse by verse, from his King James Bible and Mora’s “Santa Biblia” Spanish edition.

Andy would often read his favorite verses aloud, such as a portion of Psalm 119: “Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word. Depart from me, ye evildoers: for I will keep the commandments of my God. Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope. Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually. Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit is falsehood. Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross: therefore I love thy testimonies.”

The Moras’ pet green parrot, named Payasito, kept Andy entertained as he recovered. Andy asked for the bird to be brought to his room so frequently that Gabe eventually moved his cage to Andy’s bedside, saying simply, “You two can keep each other company from now on.”

Laine joked that Payasito was teaching him his Spanish vocabulary: “When I go to restaurants, people will wonder why I always order peanuts.” He added in an imitation of a parrot voice, “Cacahuetes, por favor.”

Eventually, Andy was able to return to his exercise regimen, and began helping Gabe with his work. Gabe still hunted frequently, both to supply his own household with meat and for extra meat to barter. Andy became his skinning and butchering assistant.

Mora mostly hunted the native gibnut, a large guinea-pig-like rodent, more commonly called a paca or tepezcuintle, or more properly the lowland paca. He also hunted peccaries, deer, armadillos, iguanas, and tapirs. Gabriel liked gibnut hunting best. They were good eating and always plentiful. He jokingly called them “the Queen’s Rats,” referring to when Queen Elizabeth famously ate gibnut when she visited Belize. That dinner prompted a British newspaper to run the headline: “Queen Eats Rat.” Mora told Andy that these fast-breeding rodents could be found in large numbers throughout the country. Gabe prided himself on always shooting them in the head, so that he didn’t waste any meat. He rarely missed his mark.

Mora owned two .22 rimfire rifles, a Taurus .22 revolver, a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle that had been “sporterized,” and two shotguns. His better .22 rifle was a scoped Marlin. All of this gun’s metal parts and its scope had been spray-painted green to help protect it from rust in the unrelenting humidity. The paint often flaked and it showed signs of being touched up. This was Mora’s gibnut gun. When Andy asked if his guns were registered, Gabe chortled, and said, “No. No way! I think only about half the guns in the country are in the registry. That registry is a big joke, especially out in the bush. Some of those guys have full-on AKs and old submachineguns from the Second World War that aren’t registered.”

Andy began going on hunts with Mora. On these hikes Gabe tried to teach him the names of the local tree species, but they soon became a confusing blur. The old logger mentioned that there were more than seven hundred species in Belize and that that he knew the names of only half of them. Andy finally said, “Well, it is more important that I know how to buy food and ask directions in Spanish than it is to know the name of every tree.”

Andy often quoted the Bible to Gabe, who had been raised as a Catholic but who was relatively ignorant of the scriptures. He once told Andy, “I haven’t gone to Mass or confessed in years. I worked so much in those back-country camps that I got out of the habit. God wouldn’t want me.” But Andy reassured him, saying, “All you need is faith in Christ Jesus. That’s the way, the only way, to heaven. Believe in Him and repent. It’s just that simple.” Laine regularly encouraged Mora to read his Bible. He also prayed daily that Gabe and Darci would come back into fellowship.

On one of their longer hunting excursions, Gabe showed Andy his secret stash of gasoline, buried in the side of a small ridge at his uncle’s wooded property, three miles west of Sarawiwa. Mora described his fuel storage technique to Laine. When he was working as a back-country logger, he had discovered that gasoline stored in thirty-three-gallon plastic drums with the bungs sealed tight was still usable for up to four years, even without the addition of a stabilizer. Stored the same way, diesel would last much longer if it was treated with an antimicrobial.

The food-grade blue drums that Gabe used for his gasoline had white gaskets in the bungs that swelled slightly but did not deteriorate. These blue plastic drums were stored inside fifty-five-gallon steel drums and shaded from direct sunlight. A dark green tarp was draped over the pair of drums. Mora found that the plastic drums expanded and contracted with the fuel as the temperature changed. With no air venting, the problems of water condensation, evaporation, and other contaminants were solved. And, he surmised, in the event that the thirty-three-gallon drum ever burst unexpectedly, the fuel would be contained within the larger steel drum.

It was on that same trip that Mora bagged the first iguana that Andy had ever seen in the wild. Mora stopped the big lizard with just one shot to the back of its head from his Marlin .22 rifle. This iguana was more than three feet long. It had a fat tail, which Mora said was a sign of good health. Iguana, called “bamboo chicken” by the Mora family, was a favored delicacy. Gabe said that to get his daughter and son-in-law to come visit, all he had to do was tell them that he planned to serve iguana.

During his recovery, Andy continued with his weekly HF radio contacts. More than half of them were successful. It was those Morse code conversations with his brother and fiancee that kept his spirits up.

Gabe Mora had cut back drastically on his driving after the Crunch began. But he would often ride his bicycle to Sarawiwa or even as far away as Dangriga to buy groceries. He would carry his Taurus .22 revolver on those shopping trips. Gabe would frequently spot wild game near the road and bring home some bonus protein.

Lars and Lisbeth Laine spent a lot of time in their “ham shack”—a corner of their bedroom—on more than just Tuesday nights. They became avid shortwave listeners, doing their best to keep track of current events by scanning through the international broadcast bands mainly in the high 9 MHz and high 11 MHz ranges, listening to radio stations such as the BBC, Radio Netherlands, Radio Havana Cuba, Channel Africa, HCJB in Ecuador, and NHK in Japan. They also tuned up to 17.795 MHz to hear Radio Australia. It was disconcerting to hear the litany of very bad economic news, refugee movements, terrorist attacks, and massive riots. It was even more disturbing to notice when some of these radio stations dropped off the air.

The Laines also picked up valuable news listening to amateur radio operators from all over the United States. They had the most success listening to hams in the Rocky Mountain region and just east of the Rockies. But they found that it was more difficult for them to hear hams in the Northeast. At first Lars assumed this was because of poor propagation or weak signal strength. But then he came to realize that the real reason so few hams were heard in the Northeast was because of the tremendous societal disruption and the lack of power. Most of the time Lars merely listened to the conversations of other ham radio operators and never used his own microphone. It was only when Kaylee asked him to contact her family near New Braunfels, Texas, that they actually keyed the mic and made contact with a couple of hams. From them they learned that Kaylee’s family was safe and well. He also checked up on Lisbeth’s family in eastern Colorado. They learned that her mother had died in a diabetic coma but that her father and brother were still alive and working at a grain mill. Lars was never successful at checking up on his relatives on his mother’s side. The Bardgard family lived in Minnesota, one of the places where the population die-off was severe. There, a combination of harsh winters and relatively high population density combined to produce a huge depopulation.