Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

34. Reconnaissance

Local commerce gradually began to expand in the Four Corners. For the first few years after the Crunch began, most of the local businesses were closed, due to lack of inventory. Others suffered from what Beth dubbed “buggy-whip syndrome.” In essence, their products or services didn’t translate well into the new economic reality. There was no more Internet. There was no more coffee being imported. And there was little need for weight-loss centers when so many people were going hungry. The few businesses that prospered were ones that specialized in repair and refurbishment.

Just weeks after the Crunch began, an informal open-air flea market started to blossom at the San Juan County Fairgrounds, on Highway 64, between Farmington and Bloomfield. This was where people brought fresh produce, used clothing, toys, and assorted household goods to barter. A large hand-painted banner read: “Flee Market.” At first Beth thought that this was a misspelling, but then she realized that it was intentional.

The fairgrounds worked well as a barter venue. There was plenty of room for vendors to camp, and the stable buildings were available for horses. As this was one of the few regions of the country with an intact power utility and an operating refinery, the local economy was surprisingly resilient, and crime was relatively low. There was merely a shortage of new goods to sell. Meanwhile, most other parts of the country barely had functioning economies. And wherever population densities were high, chaos reigned.

The county fairgrounds were also considered a particularly safe place to conduct business, since there was an adjoining sheriff’s department substation. The vendors were largely self-policing, and they only rarely had to summon the sheriff’s deputies-mostly because of public drunkenness.

When Lars Laine made his first trip to the barter fair, with Reuben Phelps, he was surprised to see one vendor that had two tables full of radio equipment. This included some CB, FRS, GMRS, and MURS-band radios. A large sign read: “Will trade for fresh co-ax wire!” The man behind the tables was a grizzled old retired engineer who lived in a single-wide trailer house out past Cortez. He was displaying some “J-pole” antennas that he had constructed with PVC pipe and scrap wire. He had them already tuned for various bands. Lars asked him about how to mount the antennas.

The man answered: “If you want to talk to everybody, then you mount them vertically. But if you want to have your own private little network, then you mount them horizontally. Most people don’t think about that, but when you use a CB antenna with horizontal polarization, it can attenuate signals transmitted by a vertical antenna by 20 decibels. Every 3 decibels of attenuation cuts the signal by one half, so that would be one sixty-fourth or slightly less signal power! That means very low probability of intercept by anyone outside of your private group that uses a horizontal antenna network.”

Lars was impressed with the old man’s knowledge. He nodded and said, “That’s brilliant. Where do you get all this gear?”

“Oh, I go around to the little towns and ranches that are outside of the utility power grid. Out there, most folks got no juice, so they think of all these old radios as junk. I trade them gasoline, or corn, or charged car batteries for a lot of this.”

With “ballistic wampum”—two hundred rounds of .22 Long Rifle ammo—Lars bought a pair of the J-pole antennas trimmed for the citizens band. Later that same day he and Reuben mounted them on the house-one vertically and one horizontally-so that with an antenna co-ax switch he could select them, at will.

News came to Prescott via the Arizona CB radio relay network that the La Fuerza looter army was about to attack Wickenburg. Ian Doyle volunteered to recon the situation, flying his Star Streak. Just as with several other recon flights in the past few years, assembling, fueling, and preflight checking the plane took less than an hour. They rolled the Laron out to the street, and Blanca gave Ian a hug. Despite the gasoline’s age, the engine started easily. Ian taxied over to the street where he had first landed nearly four years before. It felt good to be back in the air. After several months of being ground-bound, it gave Doyle a rush to feel the sensation of speed and flight.

Flying to Wickenburg took only twenty-five minutes, which made the looters seem uncomfortably close to Prescott. Doyle first made a low pass over the Wickenburg Airport, just west of town. It appeared abandoned. There were four semi truck trailers parked perpendicular across the main runway at wide intervals. That looked very odd to Ian.

Still at low altitude, he approached the town from the west. Ian could see La Fuerza swarming through the town of Wickenburg en masse. He had heard on the CB that he would be seeing many houses that were already abandoned by their owners, who fled after hearing that the looters were coming.

Ian circled the town watching the calamitous events unfold beneath him. Several houses were on fire. The looters moved from house to house, taking anything of value. Ian held the stick with one hand and a pair of binoculars with the other. He did his best to tally and categorize the looters’ vehicles. He was sickened to see women and girls dragged out of houses, kicking and thrashing, only to be beaten, stripped naked, and raped. He felt powerless to stop what he saw.

As he turned northwest on his third low orbit of the town, he was startled to see several tracer bullets flash up past his left wing. Suddenly he no longer felt like just a detached observer. Recognizing his peril, he stomped on the plane’s right rudder pedal, throttled up, and climbed to higher altitude. He departed westward, intentionally choosing a long, circuitous route back to Prescott, to conceal his point of origin.

When he landed at Conley Ranches, his neighbors came running. He gave them a quick summary of what he’d seen and then a dire warning: “We need to get ready, folks. There’s a world of hurt coming our way!”

Ian was thankful that they found no bullet holes in the Laron when they disassembled it.