Andy missed his next Tuesday night ham radio contact night with Lars and Kaylee, but he had the strength for the next one. On that Tuesday afternoon, Gabe Mora helped Andy set up the radio. Following Andy’s directions, Gabe strung the antenna up to a tree outside the bedroom window. A cold-water pipe provided a good ground. The propagation was good, so Lars and Kaylee had no difficulty hearing Andy’s Morse tones. Lars, with a much more powerful transmitter, came in “Lima Charlie”—loud and clear. As Andy tapped out his messages, Gabe sat on the bedside chair wiping the sweat from his balding head with a handkerchief and sipping lime water. He was amazed that such a small radio could be used for two-way communication over such a long distance.
Andy was reassured to hear that Kaylee was safe and well, but he felt distressed, realizing that his broken leg would delay him by several months. He spent ten minutes summarizing what had happened since his last contact in stream-of-consciousness Morse code. Kaylee’s reply sounded as if she was overwhelmed. She keyed:
“BK RU AS SAD AS ME? WOE IS ME. WOE IS ME. I MISS YOU TONS ANDY. I WANT TO B THERE TO SIGN UR CAST. XOXOXOXOXOX. BT”
After three months of hobbling around on crutches, Andy finally had his cast cut off. He was horrified to see how the muscles in his right leg had wasted away. Clearly, it would take several more months to fully replenish the muscle mass of the atrophied leg.
He began walking more and more on the pair of crutches, then just one crutch, and eventually just a cane. He walked farther and farther each day, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion. His days started with dozens of sit-ups and push-ups. Eventually the length of the sets and the daily aggregate number of repetitions increased. He also started doing pull-ups, using the horizontal bar that held one end of the Moras’ clothesline in their side yard. Andy’s exercise time started to stretch into the evenings. Watching him do his pull-ups, Darci commented: “You’re a driven man, Andrew.”
Bradfordsville, Kentucky
July, the Second Year
As the first summer that Sheila ran the store began, there were increasing requests for soda pop, mainly from the men who manned the towns’ three roadblocks. Sheila began offering more and more in trade for the dwindling supply of bartered soda in cans and bottles, simply because the men were progressively willing to pay more—even as much as ten cents in silver per can of Coca-Cola or root beer.
As this strange price inflation developed, Grandmère Emily wisely began collecting used beer bottles. She also traded a considerable quantity of ammunition for a bottle-capping tool with a magnetic head and a ten-gross box of fresh bottle crown caps. These came from a maker of home-brewed beer who lived near Ellsburg. By June, she created her first batch of homemade root beer. She used spring water and locally grown birch bark, sarsaparilla root, ginger, burdock root, dandelion root, hops, wintergreen, and molasses, in her secret recipe.
Emily Voisin’s first batch of root beer was uncarbonated and attracted a good number of customers. But her second and subsequent batches were carbonated using a large cylinder of CO2 and a special seltzering apparatus. Hollan Combs had built this for Emily by scaling up the design from an old SodaStream machine and using some hardware from his moribund soil analysis laboratory. These later batches of root beer were a huge success—so much so that Emily eventually had to hire seasonal help to wash bottles and help her brew root beer in the erstwhile butcher room of the Superior Market building. “Grandma Emily’s Ol’ Timey Root Beer” attracted customers from as far away as Springfield and Munfordsville. She offered a discount to anyone who would return their bottles or sell her other brown glass bottles or who could provide fresh crown caps.
Sheila Randall could not believe the first descriptions of the Provisional Government when she heard them. At first she thought that they were wild exaggerations. Hollan Combs warned her: “Whenever you hear of a government agency that declares itself “Legitimate” in its own name, you gotta wonder about its legitimacy. Know what I mean? That gang of fools is about as legitimate as some Hollywood bimbo’s baby.”
More and more customers patronizing her store reported seeing and hearing the same things about the Fort Knox government. In April of the second year, the first of series of “peacekeeping” convoys passed through Bradfordsville. Most of these convoys stopped in town for less than a half hour. The soldiers were all Americans, as were their weapons and most of their vehicles. But something struck Sheila as odd when she overheard a radio conversation between the convoy’s commander and his battalion commander. The latter had a distinctly German accent. Later, there were reports of entire battalion-size foreign units deployed inside the ProvGov’s area of operations.
Other than their control of key industries, the Provisional Government’s authority seemed relatively benign in the first year. Then a new currency was issued. The small lime-green watermarked bills soon reached general circulation and by law had to be accepted for all transactions. But the full weight of the Provisional Government and the “guest” UN peacekeepers wasn’t felt until the third year after the crash, when firearms restrictions were enacted.
Sheila Randall’s first word of the new gun laws came when Brian Tompkins, an Armor Corps lieutenant, visited her store. One of the first things he said to her was “You gotta make that gun disappear or it’ll get confiscated as contraband.”
“Contraband?”
Tompkins answered, “Yeah, haven’t you heard? It sucks, but handguns have been banned for civilians, though you can still own some rifles and shotguns. It’ll all be explained in the poster that we’ll put up at your sheriff’s office and in some flyers the Civil Affairs guys will be handing out in town today.”
The next day Sheila saw two posters nailed up side by side on the wall in the main hall of the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. A table beneath held a pile of flyers that duplicated the posters in a smaller format, printed on their front and back sides. As she stood reading the posters, Deputy Hodges walked up behind her and said softly, “Hi, Sheila.”
The poster on the left was a brief summary of the formation of the Provisional Government, a declaration of martial law, activation of the UN peacekeeping force, and nationalization of mass transportation and critical industries. The poster on the right read:
B-A-N-N-E-D
Effective Upon Posting in a prominent place in each County or Parish, and in effect until further notice, the following items are hereby banned from private possession by the recently enacted Amplified United Nations Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Normalization Accord:
1.All fully automatic or short-barreled rifles and shotguns (regardless of prior registration under the National Firearms Act of 1934).
2.Any rifle over thirty (.30) caliber, any shotgun or weapon of any description over twelve (12) gauge in diameter.
3.All semiautomatic rifles and shotguns; all rifles and shotguns capable of accepting a detachable magazine.
4.Any detachable magazines, regardless of capacity.
5.Any weapon with a fixed magazine that has a capacity of more than four (4) cartridges (or shells).
6.All grenades and grenade launchers; all explosives, detonating cord, and blasting caps (regardless of prior registration under the Gun Control Act of 1968 or state or local blasting permits).
7.All explosives precursor chemicals.
8.All firearms, regardless of type, that are chambered for military cartridges (including but not limited to 7.62mm NATO, 5.56 mm NATO, .45 ACP, and 9mm parabellum).
9.All silencers (regardless of prior registration under the National Firearms Act of 1934).
10.All night vision equipment including but not limited to infrared, light amplification, or thermal, all telescopic sights, and all laser aiming devices.
11.All handguns—regardless of type or caliber.
12.Other distinctly military equipment, including, b
ut not limited to, armored vehicles, bayonets, gas masks, helmets and bulletproof vests.
13.Encryption software or devices.
14.All radio transmitters (other than baby monitors, cordless phones, or cell phones).
15.Full metal jacket, tracer, incendiary, and armor-piercing ammunition.
16.All ammunition in military calibers.
17.Irritant or lethal (toxin) chemical agents including but not limited to CS and CN tear gas, and OC “pepper spray.”
18.All military-type pyrotechnics and flare launchers.
Exceptions only for properly trained and sworn police and the military forces of the UN and The Sole and Legitimate Provisional Government of the United States of America and Possessions.
Any firearm or other item not meeting the new criteria and all other contraband listed herein must be turned in within the ten (10) day amnesty period after the UN Regional Administrator or sub-administrator, or their delegates arrive on site. Alternatively, if Federal or UN troops arrive within any state to pacify it, a thirty (30) day amnesty period will begin the day the first forces cross the state boundary. All other post-1898 production firearms of any description, air rifles, archery equipment, and edged weapons over six inches long must be registered during the same period.
Anyone found with an unregistered weapon, or any weapon, accessory, or ammunition that has been declared contraband after the amnesty period ends will be summarily executed.
As ordered under my hand, Maynard Hutchings, President (pro tem) of The Sole and Legitimate Provisional Government of the United States of America and Possessions.
Sheila asked, “So what does that leave us?”
Deputy Hodges answered, “Not very much. I ’spose .22s, and antiques, and maybe thirty-thirty lever actions. But even those have gotta get registered. You know, that list won’t do diddly in stopping crime, since of course criminals never obey any laws. But it’s worded just right for squelching resistance. Notice how radio transmitters, military calibers, and night-vision scopes are banned? Maynard’s list would make Hitler or Stalin proud. This whole thing stinks.” Gesturing to the SIG 556 rifle on his shoulder, he pressed on, “Now, why is it legal for me to have this as a deputy but not you? That’s just plain unconstitutional. If and when they come into Marion County and try to enforce that load of hogwallop, they’d better be ready for one mighty big gunfight.”
That evening Sheila hid her revolver, ammo, and holster inside the bin of a hand-crank seed broadcaster. She hung it up on the wall near the ceiling, amidst the profusion of overstock items in the store’s back room. She explained to Tyree, “Sometimes its best to just hide things in plain sight. I want to be able to get to that in a hurry too.”
31
A Bulwark Never Failing
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Tse-tung
Fort Knox, Kentucky
August, the Second Year
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.”
Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse Page 26
