America- The Eagle has Fallen

by Gordon Ballantyne

  AMERICA

  THE EAGLE HAS FALLEN

  Gordon Ballantyne

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by Gordon Ballantyne

  CHAPTER 1

  Just another typical day in the Robertson household. The sun is up early in Western Washington and James Robertson arises to start another work day as a homebuilder in Gig Harbor. He is a tall, distinguished looking, well-built fourty-five-year-old starting to show his age. Streaks of silver are starting to invade his red tinted goatee and gravity is slowly reducing a muscled chest while simultaneously expanding his mid-section; “from a six pack to a pony keg;” he thinks quietly to himself. His full head of hair is fortunately blond so the occasional grey hair is not overly noticeable. His steely blue eyes examine himself in the mirror after his hot shower and determine that the two days of beard growth can go another day without attention. It is the same routine every day, a visit to the bathroom for the three “S’s”, a visit to the kitchen to load up on coffee, a visit to the job site in his pick-up truck to check on progress and an afternoon of annoying paperwork. Home by 6PM for dinner, a short playtime with his four-year-old daughter and a few stories to read at bedtime.

  Nothing much changes in “The Harbor,” the streets are mostly barren at 6 AM with the exception of the fleets of Econoline work trucks making their daily pilgrimage to worksites emblazoned with their representative companies. The bucolic town does not start seeing much activity until 9 AM when the Starbucks drive-through backs up around the block with high-end SUV’s driven by ponytailed moms in yoga pants after the morning school drop off choreography at the various children’s academies that dot the landscape around the Harbor.

  Gig Harbor is an old, sleepy Croatian fishing village just west of the City of Tacoma across the Tacoma Narrows waterway in Washington State. It is accessible by two bridges built side by side to handle the flow, one old; rebuilt after its predecessor “Galloping Gurdy” plunged into the gorge during a severe windstorm and a new one built to meet the demands of the growing rural areas of the Peninsula. Gig Harbor’s primary industry was always commercial fishing and the harbor is still riddled with old purse seiners that used to trek to Alaska for fishing season until the government stepped in to “regulate” the industry, making small family run fishing boats akin to the buggy whip industry. The waterfront promenade is littered with old dilapidated boat sheds and net sheds, there are still commercial fishing boats that operate out of Gig Harbor but the fleet is dwindling as government quotas, licensing requirements and safety regulations are rising faster than the will of the aging local fisherman to keep up or care. There was a time when every young local Gig Harbor teenager spent many a summer season “on the boats” to learn the trade and toughen them up for the realities of life; now helicopter parents would not dream of sending their precious children to sea. The boats are not equipped with wi-fi, cell service or medical personnel to squelch a sniffle. Everyone does not get a trophy on a fishing boat. Gig Harbor is on the Olympic Peninsula right at its fulcrum point, it boasts miles of coastline and hundreds of waterfront homes. The population of Gig Harbor is aging as evidenced by the fleet of Cadillac land yachts, driven by the blue hair crowd, that make the pilgrimage to the post office every day to check for their snail mail, talk to Trudy and Monica, the postal workers about their current medical maladies and speak to each other about local events and how the harbor has changed while waiting for their personal commune with Trudy and Monica. This is all done at top volume due to hearing loss; a rock concert has a similar decibel level. 10 AM is when the post office opens and every sane person under the age of 60 does not go anywhere near downtown at this hour. The entire Gig Harbor police department is scrambled to provide traffic control for the post office at 10 AM to stop the situation from deteriorating into a Cadillac bumper car carnival.

  It is summer time and the air is rank with a smoky haze. Four huge wildfires are running rampant in northern British Columbia and to the east in the Cascade Mountains. The air quality, checked with alacrity every morning by my wife is permanently stuck on red. Our healthy four-year-old daughter spends most of the night coughing with her small respiratory system stung by the acrid smoke. We have air conditioning in our rural home but it is mentally and physically exhausting to keep a four-year-old only child occupied all day in a house. Our house is 4,000 square feet and every room seems like a playroom with trinkets, toys and “kid stuff” strewn everywhere. Grandparents seem to take great delight in purchasing the latest toys for their little “Toots;” I have learned to wear slippers full time in the house as there is nothing quite as painful than stepping on a plastic Lego with bare feet. We have ten acres for the little one to roam with her two furry friends; Caymus, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hunter, a French Bulldog. A Rhodesian Ridgeback is a large dog, red wheaten in color with a distinctive ridge of hair on their spine that grows against the grain of the rest of their coat so it looks like their hackles are permanently up. It is rumored that Rhodesians were originally used as big game lion hunters in Africa; ours, however, must be from a different genetic line since he enthusiastically chases our local bunny population until the rabbit drops a few turds and the dog stops to sample the apparently scrumptious emissions. A French Bulldog is a different sort of genetic hodgepodge and serves little purpose but to sit on laps and wheeze like a 70-year-old after aqua jazzersize at the local YMCA.

  We have experienced a dry spell in “the land of perpetual rain” this summer with over 60 days of hot temperature in a row. This followed the worst wet winter and spring that had previously ever been recorded. It seems like the new normal for weather events starts with “the worst …or... ever recorded,” they say an iceberg the size of Delaware just broke off the Larson Ice Shelf and is floating around the Arctic. The talking heads, ie. Presidents and former Vice Presidents can’t seem to agree whether Global Warming is a hoax generated by China or the end of the world as we know it.

  “It’s going to be a hot one” I think to myself as I back out of the garage and remember to load up some lawn sprinklers and hoses from the overwhelmed shelves of construction supplies I have in the garage. It is a constant struggle to try and keep the lawns green at our model home in a small subdivision we are building close to downtown Gig Harbor. It is a small family enterprise, I build the houses and my wife, a real estate agent, sells them. We have carved out a living within our community while large national, publically traded, housing giants carve the rest of the city into cookie cutter tracts of housing. Fortunately, in the “Harbor,” you are either from here or “not”; my wife is a third generation harborite with Croatian roots so she is always welcome anywhere as the locals are all within three degrees of separation from the rest. Harbor people have a particular carriage and stroll that makes them instantly recognizable and a scowl that can spot an outsider instantaneously. The distrust from the government fishing debacle and any “outsiders” still permeate the citizenry. They would rather buy local than become some lot number and have their money sent to Texas in purchasing a new home.

  I pull into the job site and review the previous day’s progress while setting up for the current day’s activities on the schedule. It is not overly demanding since I have been doing it all my life and all of my subcontractors have worked with me for years. I see that there is a truss boom truck arriving later in the morning so I make sure the area is clear and settle into my first cup of coffee for the day, waiting for the small flock of contractor vans to arrive and their inevitable barrage of questions, issues to be solved and work to be reviewed. I know it is going to be a good morning when I recognize all the vans and people exiting them since they are my usual crews and know the establi
shed program and protocols so reeducation is not going to be on my morning menu.

  The truss truck arrives a little early but we are ready for it. Trusses are the large pre-made roof rafters that are boomed up onto the house structure so they can be assembled into a roof. They are assembled like a jigsaw puzzle. The boom truck sets up its large outriggers and the operator chains up the first large bundle to be lifted into the air. The crane surges under the load and the trusses begin to arc into the air. The large package of trusses is poised over the roof and slowly begins its descent and…STOPS!

  I quickly hop out of my truck and all I hear is silence. No trucks, drills, saws, nail guns or motors running. The sounds of progress on any construction site. I am staring up at the suspended trusses in the sky and all I see is an azure glow in the sky that reminds me of the Northern Lights. All of the workers come out of the houses they are working on and start checking electrical connections and breakers, trying to figure out why their tools have stopped working. Nothing…Lights are out everywhere and even stranger still, all the cars and trucks out on the busy road by my project’s entrance have gone still and silent. I grab my cellphone to call my wife and am greeted with a blank screen. Thinking I have let the battery die I plug it into my truck’s charger and…nothing. I try to start my truck and…nothing. Wow, absolutely nothing works. I stand next to my truck and slowly watch the trusses poised above my house frame start to slowly descend as the hydraulics that hold the boom elevated start to lose their built-up pressure. This is real. The only explanation I can come up with is Solar Flare like the Carrington or some form of EMP; a high altitude nuclear blast sending an influx of electrons to overpower the electrical grid and fry all types of electronic devices. Almost everything today has a microprocessor chip installed in it or runs on electricity. If the grid was fried then we would be in deep trouble.

  All the workers were coming to me asking what was up. As the developer and general contractor, I was the boss and all the workers were looking to me for guidance.

  “What the hell?” asked a plumber named Randy. “It looks like your power is out and my darn work truck won’t start.”

  “Well…” I replied, “It seems like everything electrical or electronic is out.”

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” Many are now asking as they join the conversation.

  “My advice for all of you is to gather all the food and water you have in your trucks and start making your way home,” I answered the crowd. “There has been some kind of electrical event and while I hope it is some type of local power surge, I think this is more widespread. I have a case of water in the back of my truck and you are all welcome to some. Those of you with packs should load them up and I have some plastic garbage bags and duct tape for those of you who don’t. I have a few wheelbarrows on site and a few wheeled carts that you can load up to make the journey easier.”

  “I live 100 miles from here,” Randy the plumber complained. “How the hell am I supposed to get that far?”

  “There is now a limited number of options for transportation,” I replied. “Horsepower now only comes from horses. There might be some older vehicles without electronics in them still running but the bridges will be blocked with stalled cars so that leaves horses. The other most efficient mode of transportation currently available will be bicycles. I will not condone theft so that leaves you with bartering or trading things of value for what you need. The most valuable items in the coming months will be bullets, beans and band-aids. Fortunately, all of you working here have marketable trade skills and the ability to work hard so if you are smart then you will survive what is coming. I will give you some pointers from some things I have read about situations like this…

  “Step 1. Secure a water source. Water is life that covers everything from drinking it to watering crops and livestock. Almost all water is pumped either out of wells to municipal systems or out of wells directly into houses. The large water towers that you see in small cities will go dry or not have enough water in them to provide pressure to the system within days without the pumps working to fill them. Homes that are on wells need power to pump water into houses. That leaves solar power or wind power to pump water out of the earth. You can find emergency supplies in your hot water tanks but I recommend filling every available container, including bathtubs, as soon as possible to retain this valuable resource. Water taken from lakes and streams will need to be filtered, boiled or treated before drinking as there will be no medicine available in the coming months. Water can be harvested from flowing water like streams or springs via a hydraulic ram pump or Archimedes screw to lift the water, those items can be assembled using specialty plumbing parts and fittings.

  “Step 2. Secure a food source. The average house has three days of food on hand and the average grocery store has the same. In three days, people will be hungry, in six they will be starving. You can go up to three weeks without food before dying and three days without water before doing the same. You therefore have six days to get out of any population source larger than ten thousand people and move closer to a source of food and water. City folk have no clue how to grow, hunt or forage for food, they all think it just comes from the grocery store. After three days the strong will start to take from the weak via force.

  “Step 4. Medicine. They are no longer making it. Antibiotics, antipsychotics, insulin, and pain medicine just became life and death commodities. They will literally be worth their weight in gold. People usually have a few left-over antibiotics in their medicine cabinets because they did not take the full course proscribed usually putting themselves at greater risk from the original infection. Over the counter fish antibiotics are made of the same active ingredient so they will work in a pinch. Antibiotic or antibacterial topical creams are also of value since a large cut just became a potential life threatening situation. The hospitals and doctors you rely on just became very hard to find and utilize.

  “Step 5. Defense. Whatever supplies you and your loved ones manage to procure just became commodities and either the desperate or despotic will try and take them from you. Do not trust anyone.”

  All I could think about was my wife and little “toots.” I had to get home. My wife is not a wilting daisy but she is definitely “fancy” and enjoys the finer things in life. I have grudgingly become a “prepper” over the last few years based on my belief that the government has become more and more in control of people’s lives while people have become more dependent on the government in living their lives. The delicate balance of power has swung from independence to dependence. I subscribed to the more Reganesque stance of, “Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.” Whether it be global warming, nuclear bad actors, EMP, pandemic or government debt; the government would be so overwhelmed by the needs of the people in a disaster situation that it could not respond to a mere sliver of disaster. The government response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was a wake-up call for me as I sat watching the anarchy and misery in the “Big Easy” while the government tried ineptly to respond. New Orleans looked like a third world country. Many people or “sheeple,” as they were referred to, died waiting for the government to save them rather than focusing on saving themselves and their loved ones. It made me angry but it was also a personal call to action. I was woefully unprepared to survive a disaster: I only had the standard three days of food in our pantry, my individual house well was grid powered and I did not own a gun or know how to safely operate one. I was basically subordinating my responsibility to myself and my family to the government.

  Some workers at the job site followed my recommendations and began the long trek home. Others elected to stay at the job site and wait for either the power to be restored or someone to come help them. I walked over to my truck and pulled out my “three-day pack” and began getting dressed in my “long walk” gear. I have packed and repacked this VVV emergency three-day bug out bag so many times over the years that I know every piece of equipment in
it, how to use it and when to use it in different situations. The job site is fortunately only ten miles from my home so the journey would not be onerous and hopefully not be dangerous either. I have planned for a situation like this but the reality may be different than I envisioned. Randy the plumber looked over at me and came walking over.

  “Heading home?” he asked somewhat sheepishly.

  “Yes but I’ll take a longer route around to stop at a few stores that probably have some supplies I will need,” I replied evasively.

  “Want company?” he asked with determination.

  “Don’t you need to get home to your family?”

  “I don’t have a family, my wife left me a few years ago and we did not have any kids, so I don’t have much to get back to,” Randy said frankly.

  I looked at Randy closely. He was mid 40ish like myself, a little on the short side and balding on top. He was pretty trim due to the hard work and was always easy to get along with at the job site. I knew I could not survive alone at my homestead but I also knew that additional mouths to feed in the coming months would need to be balanced by the work and defense output of anyone added to my household.

  “I tell you what, let’s get packed up, head over to my place and see how we do,” I said, passing judgement in my mind that Randy’s skills as a plumber would be useful in the future and his positive mental attitude would be a benefit.

  “Do you need anything from the plumbing truck?” asked Randy hopefully.

  I went over to the fully stocked plumbing truck and made Randy a quick diagram of a hydraulic ram pump. He had all the necessary one-way valve parts and fittings to assemble one. He pulled all the pieces together to build a ram pump on the truck’s workbench. “How does it work and how many do you want?” he asked helpfully.

  “As many as you can carry of the critical one-way check valves,” I responded. “Those parts will be invaluable over time since they represent the only way to lift water. I have a spring fed creek on my property and we might need the added water volume for irrigation. The pump works by sending water down a drive pipe where its force and pressure will close a one-way valve creating a hammer effect. The hammer effect creates energy which backflows into the large PVC chamber, building pressure. The second one-way valve stops the water flow into the water line until there is enough pressure in the PVC chamber to open the valve. The elevation drop, length and size of the drive pipe determines how high and far you can move the water depending on the size of the pump.”