America: The Eagle has Fallen

by Gordon Ballantyne

  Randy, Jacob and I went around to the side of the house to the three car garage doors and I pushed the wireless keypad on the exterior of one and the automatic door opener started to whine.

  “What the hell?” Randy exclaimed. “You have power?”

  I pointed up at the solar panels on the roof. I sat on the medium sized lawnmower with an attached bucket and turned the key…Nothing. “Darn,” I said dejectedly then looked down. The tractor was still in gear. I dropped it into neutral and hallelujah the tractor started right up. I pulled the tractor and tow cart out of the garage and said a small prayer thanking the lord for saving my back in the future and motioned for Randy and Jacob to hop on the cart. We travelled down the driveway toward the gate. I pulled out my keyring and unlocked the gate from the control box and swung the gate open. I pulled the tractor up to the truck and started unloading duffel bags onto the tractor’s trailer. One of them was very heavy and I strained to lift it.

  “What does she have in here?” I asked Jacob. “Rocks?”

  “No sir,” answered Jacob. “Those are my dad’s firearms.”

  I unzipped the bag and had a look inside. Good lord. I thought I had some nice firearms but I am a Piker compared to Cindy and her husband. “I think I am going to like your dad,” I said to Jacob.

  We loaded up the tractor as full as we could. I told Randy to stay with the truck and I would unload at the other end and I sat Jacob in the driver’s seat and gave him instructions on how to operate the tractor. Jacob told me that his grandparents had a farm in North Carolina and that he had already been taught. We managed to get all the materials unloaded from Cindy’s truck and I relocked the gate. Randy and I walked back to the house after Jacob had parked the tractor and closed the garage doors.

  “This place is pretty secluded,” Randy said while looking around the property. “You can’t see a single house or road from up here.”

  “Let’s hope it stays undiscovered. We are going to have a lot of work to do in the coming days and months,” I said, thinking of all the defense, food and resource management we would have to prepare for. “Let’s get a shower and some dinner and figure out where to go from here.”

  We went up to the house and my wife and Cindy were already working on dinner, each with an ever present glass of wine in hand. I knew we had a well-stocked wine cellar of “Mommy juice.”

  “OK,” my wife said taking charge. “I have put Cindy in Blair’s room, we will put Randy in the downstairs playroom and the kids will sleep in the bonus room. We will keep the guest room empty for now until my Dad gets here. The ladies will shower in the morning, the kids in the afternoon and you boys get the evenings.”

  We all sat down to dinner and I said Grace. “Thank you Lord for getting us home safe, meeting new friends and the meal we are about to receive together. Please watch over our families who are not here with us now and we pray that they can find their way home to us. Please watch out for our community, our state and America as we persevere through these trying times. Amen.”

  After dinner we enjoyed sharing a bottle of wine, getting to know each other and bone tired, we all went to bed.

  CHAPTER 2

  The morning came quickly. Fortunately everyone, except my wife, were early risers. We started in on breakfast that Cindy prepared and coffee while my wife started her “getting up” process which involved breakfast in bed hand delivered by me. After breakfast and my wife’s appearance I sat everyone down to go over our plan for the day and week.

  “Ok everyone,” I began. “Our first responsibility is safety and defense. Everyone except the kids, from this point forward, needs to be armed at all times. Cindy, I will leave the decision on Jacob to you.”

  Cindy laughed. “Jacob, what are the four rules of firearm safety?”

  Jacob replied by rote. “Treat every gun as if it is loaded. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. Do not point your gun at anything you are not prepared to shoot or kill. Know what is between you and your target and beyond.”

  I laughed back. “OK then. Everyone, including young Mr. Earp here, needs to carry a handgun with them at all times and have a rifle or shotgun nearby. The purpose of your handgun is to be able to fight your way back to your rifle if needed. If anyone shouts out an alarm, Avery and Ellie are to run to the upstairs bathroom, shut the door and lie down in the tub. Jacob is to guard the top of the stairs and loft area covering the stairs and front door. The adults are to run to the rally point where Belle met us at the corner of the house. That area offers us cover from three sides and the ability to get to cover from the fourth vector of attack. We will have a six-hour watch rotation for the adults at night time. One adult will be on the roof by the chimney with a sniper rifle and my night vision monocular while the second will be on the patio area with the dogs. The dogs will alert everyone if danger is approaching and consider the dogs barking as an alarm. If I yell fallback then Jacob will grab Avery and Ellie and take them to our rally point in the woods and the adults will follow giving the kids time to get to the rally point. This is just a house and not worth our lives. Our second priority is food production. It is early June so we need to get our field prepped and planted so we can get the crop in before the late fall monsoons and the first winter frost. We have some winter wheat seeds so if we can get the seeds in the ground in the next few days we will be OK. Our vegetable garden you saw is planted but we will need to make it much bigger for our second vegetable harvest. Once the primary field and garden are planted, we will have to construct a greenhouse with some materials I have so we can grow year round. The chicken coop will need to be expanded after that for the 80 chickens we have. Eggs and poultry will be our primary barter supplies and hopefully we can get some pigs, cows and horses. The chicks won’t mature and start laying eggs for another five to six months. The coop will be Avery and Ellie’s primary responsibility in collecting eggs, cleaning the manure for the garden and feeding the chickens. Now to resources, we have enough food for everyone but it is a finite emergency supply. Our goal needs to be to produce more than we use, nothing gets thrown away. We have a stock of canned goods and anything extra we produce will be canned for winter months. Any food waste will be composted for the garden and paper goods will be burned. The hot water and cooking are currently supplied by our five hundred gallon buried propane tank. That supply is finite so we will install our wood burning stove with hot water coil. We will install it on the patio and hopefully Randy can come up with a plumbing solution for hot water. Our electrical system is solar that powers a battery bank and inverter. In the summer time the battery banks stay full but in the fall and winter there is not enough sunshine to keep the batteries topped up. So we need to conserve energy during those months and we also need to use light discipline in the evenings. No lights on after dark, period. During the winter we will have to use our generator during daylight hours to charge the batteries. We will have to come up with a sound and exhaust solution for the generator. I have around fifty gallons of gas on hand so we will have to either scrounge up more gas from abandoned cars or convert the generator to run on wood gas. Since all cooking and heating will be done with wood, we need to put up around ten cords of wood to see us through the winter. We will start in on the adjoining five acres and hopefully clear a path so our forty-two-foot fifth wheel can be repositioned in the woods as a fallback position. The great thing about trailers is that they are self-sufficient and the major systems run on 9volt DC as well as 110AC. We will set up a fallback position and reposition supplies to that area or can use the second camp to expand our homestead as needed. I need to go look at a girl down the street’s broken arm this morning but first we are going to have a weapon check and target practice.”

  The dishes were cleared and the adults all went to get their firearm gear. I took Randy to my gun safe and outfitted him with a 9MM Glock and Uncle Mike’s hip holster. I also set him up with a Colt M4 AR-15 with red dot sight. “Ever shot before?” I asked.

  “No
t much,” he replied sheepishly.

  I grabbed four targets and set them up at 35 and 100 yards in the field. I lined everyone up and instructed them to pull their handgun, fire three shots at the 35 yard target then run to the rifle stand and fire six shots at the 100 yard target. I demonstrated with my Glock and Daniel Defense AR-15 putting all my shots on paper. Next was my wife. She calmly shot her Glock, putting all her shots in the black and went to the rifle stand, picked up her semi-automatic 12 gauge and shot three loads of buckshot obliterating the target, she reloaded with three shells of deer slugs and shot the frame apart. I cleared the firing line shooting a dirty look at my wife and reset new targets for Cindy. Cindy was a crack shot putting all her sig shots in the money rings, ran over to the rifle line, took up her H&K MP4 and fired six single shots in the money rings as well. Next was Randy. He stood at the firing line and pulled his new Glock and took aim at the target. Before I could yell out, he fired and dropped his pistol, sticking his left thumb in his mouth. I went over to Randy and looked at his thumb. His hands were so calloused that the “Glock bite” only tore off one of his callouses at the webbing between his thumb and index finger.

  “Revolver guy,” I laughed. “Suck it up buttercup, you are lucky you didn’t break your thumb. You have to put both thumbs forward on a semi-automatic pistol, gripping it like this.” As I demonstrated. “Nice and easy on the trigger, not yanking but pulling. Line up the sites putting the ball in the bucket. You will feel the trigger break point but don’t anticipate the bang. Only reset the trigger to the breakpoint for your second shot.” Randy put two out of three on “Paper” and went to the rifle line. He got into a decent firing stance, pulled the trigger and nothing. “Safety Randy,” I said. Randy found the safety and managed to only hit the target two out of six times.

  “You know Randy,” I said after he had safed his weapon. “Some guys are rifle guys and some guys are shotgun guys.”

  I handed him my wife’s shotgun and lo and behold he had the eye. Some people like lining up front and rear sights and some people prefer using their eye as the rear sight like done with a shotgun. Jacob was next. He stepped up to the firing line drew his Sig 9mm, took a half step to the left and fired three shots directly into the bull’s eye. He ran over to the rifle table, picked up his suppressed H&K and put two three shot automatic bursts into the bull’s eye. I’ve tried some competition shooting and never seen anyone be able to do that off hand. Prone or benched maybe but this kid not only has a handgun quick draw technique but can shoot an automatic three shot burst bull’s eye group.

  “Have many trophies?” I asked with a laugh.

  “A few,” he said beaming with pride. “My dad is a Ranger marksman and the father-son Army tournaments are pretty competitive. We won the Army wide competition last year. Dad shot a possible perfect score but I missed two.”

  “Two shots out of fifty?” I asked incredulously.

  “Five hundred,” was the modest reply. “The wind was a little tricky on the third day for the six hundred yard shots.”

  I shook my head in awe. “Well Randy, I have an over-under bird gun shotty you can have. We need to get going on our mission of mercy down the street. Jacob, please strip, clean and reload the firearms. Then all the lawn areas and bank need to stripped of grass and underlying topsoil with the tractor and placed in the lower field so we can till it all in for planting. Leave the raised flower beds so we can use those to fill the greenhouse.”

  “Yes sir,” was the immediate answer. “You know sir, we have a six round tactical semi-automatic shotgun for Mr. Randy; we also have a quick reload bandolier. We use them for three gun competitions but I’m sure Mr. Randy would rather have six shots instead of two before reloading. It looks like he might need a few extra tries at the target.”

  “Thank you Jacob…and Cindy,” I replied. “I’m sure it will be put to good use. Perhaps you could help Mr. Randy with some shooting tips in the future since you seem to be the best gun slinger on the property. I also bet you know how to reload ammunition and since I have the equipment, I’m sure you can be our armorer on top of your tractor chores.”

  Randy and I grabbed our packs and headed toward the neighborhood. One of our cul-de-sac neighbors was at our small creek with a bucket.

  “Hi Mr. Jones,” I said to the fifty year old balding portly man stooped over the creek trying to scoop water with a Home Depot orange five gallon bucket.

  “Hi there,” he replied dejectedly. “Darn electricity is still out and the stupid water is not working. I tried calling the power company and the darn phone is out and there is no cell service. I had to walk home from the office yesterday when my car wouldn’t start. When are they going to get this crap working again?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied evasively. “This is my friend Randy and he’ll be staying with us for a while.”

  “Hi there,” said Mr. Jones while shaking Randy’s hand. “You boys going to war?” he asked looking at our rifles with his nose turned up. “You can’t just go walking around the neighborhood with guns on display.”

  “Well sir,” I replied reasonably. “The Constitution and Washington State law says we can. We are just trying to be safe.”

  “Well, as the Homeowner’s Association President, I will have to bring it up at the next board meeting,” he said with authority. “We can’t have people just walking around with brandished guns scaring people half to death.”

  “Sir, these guns are not only for our own personal safety but potentially yours as well. I’ll overlook the fact that you are on my property and drawing water from my creek but please understand we are all in this boat together and only together will we get through it. Good day sir,” I said dismissively while walking away, purposefully turning my back on him.

  “Dumbass,” said Randy when we were out of earshot. “Doesn’t he know there is at least fifty and probably one hundred gallons of water in his hot water tanks?”

  “Nope,” I replied thoughtfully. “We will just keep our distance from Mr. Jones and his ilk. He doesn’t have an inkling and there are three inklings in a clue. They will sit around on their asses and wait for somebody else to solve their problem for them and will unfortunately be in the third wave to die.”

  “Third wave?” Randy asked with raised bushy eyebrows.

  “The first wave will be those in hospitals and on life saving medications, the second will be through violence as food and water is no longer available and the third will be during the winter when there is no food and the strong will start preying on the weak.”

  “Is there a fourth?” asked Randy in anticipation.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I replied ruefully. “That will be when the strong groups of takers band together to form large gangs that will eliminate any communities that are not sufficiently strong enough to repel and defeat them.”

  “What are we going to do?” Randy asked in distress.

  “We are going to survive,” was my reply.

  We walked down to Miriam’s house and stopped mid driveway as I hailed “Hello the house.” Miriam peeked out the front window and saw it was us.

  “Thank goodness you are here, please come in,” she said with worried eyes. “My husband is still not home and there have been a lot of strangers coming up to our house asking if we had any food or water. Some of the men saw my daughter and were giving her the eye. I told them that my husband was behind me with a shotgun and they need to get off my property. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t worry Miriam, you did the right thing,” I said. “Did you find a doctor for your daughter’s arm?”

  “No,” she replied in anguish. “I gave her a couple of Percocets for the pain and she is pretty out of it. Can you please help her?”

  “Of course. I am not a doctor but have some medical training and know what we need to do,” I said with more reassurance than I felt. I put my pack on the dining room table and pulled out my first aid kit and grabbed a folded metal splint and started strai
ghtening and bending the malleable meshed metal into an arm splint. I covered the inside curve of the splint with gauze and laid out some tensor bandages and asked Miriam to bring her daughter to sit at the table. “What is your name?” I asked gently to the teenage girl.

  “Mary,” was the dopey reply.

  “Well Mary, let’s get your arm looked at,” I said. We sat Mary down and I gently molded the mesh to fit her arm. I demonstrated to Randy how he would have to hold her arm and grab her hand as if shaking it. I gently probed the fracture to find out which way the bones were oriented. “Randy, you are going to have to hold her hand and arm and apply traction by pulling on her hand and holding her upper arm steady, then when I tell you, I want you to rotate her hand to the right to reduce the fracture.” I demonstrated the maneuver on his arm. “She is going to yelp when you apply traction but do not stop pulling until I get the splint and wraps in place. She will feel much better once this is done.”

  We got into position and Mary only jumped a little bit when Randy’s pressure was applied. I felt the bones lining up in her arm then told Randy to turn her hand a few more degrees to the right until they were perfectly aligned. I splinted the arm and wrapped the tensor bandages in place, keeping her arm in the desired position. I pulled a chemical ice pack out of my bag and squeezed and shook the contents to activate it. “Now Miriam,” I said. “One hour on, one hour off for the ice pack. It will reduce the swelling and help with the pain. She is young and will heal in about six to eight weeks. Give her Ibuprofen for the pain if you have it as it is better at reducing swelling than aspirin or acetaminophen.”

  “Thank you so much,” Miriam said thankfully. “I would not know what to do without you.”

  “Do you have a shotgun Miriam?” I asked pointedly.

  “Yes but I don’t know how to use it,” she replied, looking down at the tops of her shoes.

  “Go get it and I will show you.” Miriam grabbed the semi-automatic trap gun from the kitchen with a box of birdshot and handed it to me. I demonstrated how to load the gun and how to operate the safety. “Now, you are loaded with birdshot. The shells are filled with gunpowder and tiny little steel pellets. It won’t do much damage to anyone at the end of your driveway but close up it is pretty devastating. Do you have a neighbor or family close by that you can stay with?”