The Battles of Rock Harbor

by J. B. Craig

  “I saw what they were doing from my upstairs guest room window. They would take turns with the women on the front lawns, often with their husbands tied to the trees, being forced to watch. When they got bored, or the women went catatonic, they’d shoot both of the couple, and move to another group. I emptied my M1 on a few of them, and I think I killed everyone that I sent a bullet to, but the rest of them came out of the houses like cockroaches and zeroed in on where I was. So, I ran.” Tears ran down Les’s face as he told Greg the story.

  “There’s no shame in living to fight another day, Les. Here. A toast to the heroism of your wife. She went down fighting. God bless her, and God bless you killing those animals.”

  “I don’t know if God has anything to do with it, Greg. I’m starting to wonder. Anyway, I ran out the back door, and jumped in the water, hiding under my dock. It was high tide, so they couldn’t see me from the side, but I had breathing room between the dock stringers. They made a fuss, and I heard the leader call for someone. He asked where the gate guard was, and upon visiting my position, they saw that I wasn’t there. The leader shot that scout in the guts, right there in my back yard, and threw him in the water about 12 feet from me. It took the guy a long time to drown, and he saw me just before he went. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “The water is still pretty cold, but I waited there, under that dock, until night fell. I held that Garand on my shoulder the whole time. I heard the motorcycles fire up, and heard a few women scream. The bad guys drove off with their loot, and I assume they went back to their home base. When things settled down, I gathered up a few things from the house, including an ammo can full of .30-06. Then I buried my wife in her rose garden. After that I paddled my ass over to Captain’s point in my canoe. I ran into Angel there, guarding the entrance to the harbor by road. He was very polite, despite being approached from inside the wire by an armed guy. Then I saw this Giant of a dude following me, with his gun on me. Did you know that big guy can move so quietly?”

  “Yeah, Esteban is a freak of nature. I often call him Shrek, for his ability to own the forest. I’m glad he’s on our side.”

  “Yeah, Me too!” Les agreed. “He doesn’t talk much, he just asked me politely to hand my gun over and put my hands up while he searched me. Then he handed me off to Angel and disappeared into the pine forest. I mean, how does someone that big disappear into a bunch of trees?”

  Defend

  Over the next few days the security team all heard about the fall of Les’s community. They spent more time coming up with strategies for how to defend against the same.

  First, they agreed that 2 men needed to be on point at all times, with a scout like Este wandering the forest on both sides of the community entrance. They needed to be able to see each other and communicate with sign language.

  Next, they needed to be able to defend against an attack from dozens of bikers. Greg had some solutions to that problem.

  Back in his Army days, Greg was trained in land mine warfare. Specifically, he spent 5 weeks after his 8 weeks of BASIC training learning how to emplace obstacles to deter the enemy from advancing and kill those that did. Those obstacles might be tank ditches, concertina wire fences, or mine fields. One of his instructors went off-curriculum and spent half a day talking about how to improvise mines and explosives when you’re not issued an Army-Grade anti-personnel or anti-tank mine. The instructor did this because for the first time in his career, he was preparing troops to go to an actual war, as Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and was building heavy defenses at the borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in addition to the borders that were already defended against Iran.

  The most basic, and that means least-lethal, anti-personnel mine is called a “toe popper”. It has a purpose, and that purpose is NOT to kill the victim. The military version of these are small, racquet-ball sized mines that are flat, with a pressure plate on the top. When stepped on, they do what the name says – pop off toes. The purpose of these is to make it so that 1, or even 2 able-bodied soldiers must remove themselves from battle and drag a wounded soldier off. If the mine killed the victim, then the healthy soldiers would just move on. In this way, a mine field, which should always be guarded by soldiers on over watch, has removed 3 bad guys out of the immediate fight, instead of one.

  Mine fields are not the answer to stop an invading enemy. They are there to slow them down and bunch them up, so that they can be picked off by artillery, snipers, and other concentrated fire. This reasoning means that it’s sometimes smarter to “surface lay” land mines. Vehicles coming can see them and must stop. It also means that not all of them need to be live mines, just the first few that blow up an advancing army.

  After getting together most of the residents of Rock peninsula at one of the HOA committee meetings, and having Les tell his story, Greg convinced them that they needed to defend the peninsula with obstacles. The first thing the group did was round up a few working chain saws, and they cut the trees at the community entrance, a natural choke-point, in such a way that they fell, and overlapped over the one road into Rock Harbor. The trees were notched, and “persuaded” to fall at a 45-degree angle away from the peninsula, towards any bad guys driving towards Rock. The trees were not cut off at the stump, just cut about 3/4 of the way through, and then felled into the road in front of and behind the masonry community gates. This obstacle was not only a vehicle stopper, but couldn’t be dragged away, as the trees were still attached at the stump.

  Consecutive pine trees (the predominant species in Rock) were cut on each side of the road, and farther back from the first few. This created a thatched-tree defense, which would stop any vehicle up to a bulldozer, or a tank. If tanks were employed against the citizens of Rock, they’d have bigger problems than staying in place and defending. Survival would be job one, and the navy would be their means of evacuation.

  Greg surveyed the fallen tree obstacle and was very pleased with the way it looked. He asked a few of the neighbors to round up several of the ever-present “pricker bushes” (Greg’s Upstate NY term for anything that had thorns on it). He recognized a few as probably Hawthorns, but others weren’t straight thorns. Others were curved back towards the stem, and really a pain to get un-tangled from. He didn’t know what they really were, other the perfect supplement to the obstacle they were building. Neighbors gathered them from around the harbor, with more than a few curses and bloody arms, despite the gloves. They brought those thorny nightmares to the tree obstacle. Greg had had clothes, crashed kites, and feet savaged by these beasts, so he knew that they would be very effective in slowing down anyone who decided to sneak OVER the tree obstacle. He had the residents put them well into the forest around the obstacle, so that it could not be bypassed easily.

  Next, Greg found the most obvious paths around the thorny tree nightmare. This would be the most obvious approach to anyone who wanted to march infantry, or a walking group of bad guys onto the peninsula. Greg asked some of the younger kids to get some plastic bottles and other weatherproof items, and decorate them with “BEWARE”, Skeletons, and other scary warnings to anyone attempting to come through. This deer path would be the one heavily-guarded path onto the peninsula, and anyone trying to approach through without an escort would be in for a painful surprise. On the other hand, he didn’t want his wife or daughter to travel hundreds of miles, only to be blown up by his “toys”. As he put the warning signs out, he was sure to put his initials on them with a Sharpie.

  Greg pulled out his backpack, and loaded his field expedient toe poppers, very carefully, and one at a time. These consisted of a length of copper pipe he cut into 2-3-inch sections. Onto the bottom of each one, he soldered rigged a firing pin as his instructors had taught him. Over these firing pins, Greg placed any sort of spring he could find that would hold the weight of a 12-gauge shell (preferably buckshot, but he had assorted ammo from the community, and beggars could not be choosers). A lot of click pens lost their utility that day, as he raided all of the sm
all springs from them.

  Into these tubes, Greg GENTLY slid the 12-gauge rounds onto the spring, such that it would rest over the thumb tack/firing pin. He then dug small holes in various places around the path around the obstacle, and just as gently put anything waterproof he could over the improvised toe popper. Often, this would be a PVC cap that buck shot could go through, but rain water could not. Then he would place a few leaves over the whole thing, such that uninvited guests would step on the hidden shell, push it down on the firing pin, and be down a few toes (if lucky) and eviscerated if not so lucky. He marked each one with a particular type of quartz rock, agreed upon by the security team to be both innocuous and, for those looking, conspicuous.

  On the harbor side of the paths, Greg made sure that the kids made VERY SCARY signs, letting all of the residents know that these were not paths that they should walk upon. This was also made clear during the now-weekly happy-hour meetings, as well as the more informal shift-change meals, at 6pm and 6am.

  In the back of the V-shaped road obstacle, Greg was able to round up a tree stand from one of the farm fields outside of the harbor. This was someone’s covered deer stand, and was anchored at the far back side of the V. Up close, the trees had fallen in such a way that one could sit on a lower tree near the front of the V and be covered by the trees in front of them. This gave them a forward observer, who could see the front of the mined alley, and over-watch in the rear of the defensive formation.

  The plan was to have at least two guards on duty always, with one high and low, plus a roving scout that would double as a runner after they scouted a threat. Greg needed to come up with some system of calling in the other able-bodied men and women in the harbor to come to the defense pretty quickly. The front guard’s job was to stop anyone from going on the paths, by warning them to stop. If they did not listen, it was up to the toe poppers to further deter the invaders while the rest of the community got into position in their firing holes set back from the trees.

  Building Obstacles

  For a week after the road obstacles were built, the gunshots at night were more and more frequent. Most often, it was the lonely sound of one bullet – either a hunter, or more likely someone who didn’t want to live in TEOTWAWKI any longer. A few nights, though, there were barrages of different calibers echoing over the water. People out there were getting more desperate and were willing to take supplies by force.

  Greg was checking out the security team one morning, when one of the toe poppers went off. Greg and the security detachment carefully negotiated the mined lane, only to find a deer crumpled in the woods a few yards from the toe popper. Greg put the deer out of its misery, gutted it, took the heart and liver, and carried the rest of the viscera to a nearby crab trap staging area. He and Este carried the gutted deer to Ethyl, who kissed Greg, and said venison was on the night’s menu!

  That night, venison steaks with greens and some canned corn were a wonderful meal. Greg told all shooters that they should take these targets of opportunity, even if on guard duty. Protein that wasn’t from the harbor was getting rare, and Venison really hit the spot. They worked out an all-clear signal after a hunting kill, which was to bang 2 sticks together, 3 times, as sort of an “all clear” signal, which could be repeated until all citizens would know that meat might be on the menu. Greg laughed, knowing that he or Jennifer would literally be ringing the dinner “bell”. He laughed at the Pavlov’s dog reference, as it would be likely that more than a few citizens would be salivating at the 3 knocks, when they happened. The community knew that those bells would be too loud and didn’t want to confuse their “incoming bad guys” signal with “incoming venison” signal.

  After his arrival, Les had moved in next door to Greg, and joined Samuel’s Navy, harvesting food from the bay for the community. He also volunteered to rotate on and off watch, as needed, with his trusty M1 Garand being more than enough to either stop a Meth-Head biker or a deer.

  July

  Rain had come and gone several times this Spring. Now that Summer was here, it was less frequent, but the community had unearthed the filled-in Rock Harbor Mansion’s well from the late 1800’s. With some digging, they found a supply of fresh, if muddy water. They would have to eventually dig it deeper, so that the water coming out wasn’t so silty, but it was good to know that there was a plan B.

  After an uneventful night on guard duty, Greg was sitting in his favorite chair, overlooking the dock and harbor after he returned from breakfast. He was amazed that, to the fish and birds, nothing had changed. He watched a blue heron wading in the water, eating mouthfuls of minnows. In another part of the harbor, a school of minnows was being hunted by something below the surface, causing them to make patterns on the otherwise glassy surface of the harbor as hundreds of them at a time jumped free of the water, trying to evade whatever was chasing them. Greg figured it was a big perch or a small striper. He watched its progress by the furor it was creating with the minnows. It swam back-and-forth around the dock, creating beautiful patterns on the surface.

  Not able to contain himself, Greg, who should have been sleeping now, grabbed his spinning reel, and wandered down to the dock. Knowing where the fish was going based on the minnow action was helpful. He cast his black fury in front of the carnage, and jerked the tip of the rod while slowly reeling in. To entertain himself, as he often did, he started talking to himself. This time it was his bad impression of the groundskeeper in that old movie about golf. He had one half of his mouth shut, like he had a stroke, and said, “Here, fishy fishy. I’m just a harmless little wounded minnow, swimming along in front of you. Pay no attention to the line coming out of my face. Here, fishy-fishy.”

  He tried to cast about 3 times in front of the flurry of minnow movement and couldn’t convince the predator to take the bait. On the fourth cast, he was sure that it had passed him up again when the fish struck the spinner right at the dock… and then decided to weave between the pilings as it streamed out his line.

  As the line got farther from the rod tip, the rod couldn’t do its job, and absorb the bursts of speed. Fishing rods allow good fishermen to catch a 30 lb fish with 10 lb line, if they use the physics of the rod to absorb the fast bursts of speed from the much larger fish. Greg knew that the fish would break off if he didn’t do something radical. “Shit. Well, here goes!” Greg jumped into the harbor and walked his rod around the 2 pilings under the dock, scraping himself on some tiny mussels living on the pilings. The mud between his toes was squishy, and sucked at his feet, but he got clear from the tangle, and stood in chest-deep water with his rod high over his head. Whatever it was, the beast was running toward the sand bar and inlet. Now that he had the fulcrum and tension afforded by the rod tip, he was able to do some serious fishing.

  Greg was pumping and pulling in the rod tip, while walking into deeper water, because the fish was now trying to tie itself up on the dock of Les’s adopted house. He had his rod high up over his head as the water was getting to neck height. He stepped on several questionable obstacles under water, and at least one old crab trap poked him in the leg. Soon, he was in over his head, and floating on his back, reeling in the fish, which wasn’t giving him any breaks. Greg kicked his feet, holding his breath so that he mostly floated, trying to bring himself and the fish to shore. He was making decent progress, as he saw that the line on his spool was gaining in size. He finally landed himself back in water shallow enough to stand in. By now, he was at the other neighbor’s house. He knew this because his head hit the bottom of their dock, as he was focused on getting the fish in. Because the neighbors had built stairs down to the surface, for their old Labrador who couldn’t help but go swimming at every opportunity, he was able to walk backwards up the stairs as the fish got close. A last effort with the rod tip, and Greg reached down to grab the tail of a Striped Bass, well over 2 feet long, and tossed it up on the overgrown grass of the neighbor’s yard.

  Greg caught his breath, which would have been harder months ago, and bent ov
er to grab the striper by its gills. Standing up out of the tall grass, he looked around, like any fisherman does after a good fight with a “Did anyone see that?” expression on his face. Up on his porch, Jen had her hands on her curvy hips, and was smiling at him. When they locked eyes, she clapped her hands and said, “My Hero! That was right out of ‘A river runs through it!’ Color me impressed, but I bet you stink now.”

  Greg smiled, looked at the fish, and said, “Nope. He’s the one that smells like fish. I just smell like Testosterone!” As he was standing in the neighbor’s yard, he heard and saw the sound of the water delivery team making its rounds on the circle. He carried the fish towards them.

  In the last few weeks, the community gathered up all of the propane tanks in the community and had a couple of outdoor gas stoves made for frying turkeys, or boiling crabs. Ethel would have her team of helpers go from house to house and gather the rain water from cisterns in a big plastic fertilizer sprayer on a trailer that was rigged to be towed behind the tractor. Also on the trailer were 5 gallon buckets of clean water. Ethyl’s team would filter the rainwater, and then bring it to a rolling boil, adding a few drops of bleach to each container. These would be dropped off at the homes where residents lived, much like a milk delivery in the past.