Undaunted, Mike continued his task, taking off the bungee cords one at a time. “They’ve got a lot of canned food.” Mike stacked the cans into a growing pile on the ground. He described:“Beef stew, chili, peas, pork and beans, string beans, and some dog food.”
Todd joked with Mary, “I wonder if it’s Dinki Dee?”
Mary gave him a puzzled look.
“Don’t you remember, Max and his dog from The Road Warrior?”
Mary flashed a grin of recognition, and then giggled, “Oh yeah, now I remember. All that he had to eat was cases of dog food.”
Mike spoke again, “What, did you sweet guys shoot a poor little Bambi?” he queried, holding up a plastic bag of raw meat. “Or did you just pick out some farmer’s fat little calf to shoot?”
Larry started to cry.
Nelson continued unloading the cart, pulling out a large sack of potatoes.
“It’s a good thing that it’s so cold, otherwise all your fresh meat would have spoiled in a heartbeat.” Mike stopped talking abruptly, and doubled-over, vomiting uncontrollably.
“What the…?” T.K. exclaimed. He got up from his crouch, and walked toward Mike and the cart. Mike could not talk while retching. T.K. looked puzzled, and then glanced into the bottom of the cart. There, he saw that Mike had just uncovered a clear plastic bag containing three small human legs and four small human arms. He turned back toward the two strangers with an iron look on his face and walked toward them. T.K. flipped the selector switch of his CAR-15 past the semiautomatic position and around to the full-auto position. Still walking toward them, he fired two long bursts, emptying the magazine in his weapon. Both men toppled to the ground, stitched with bullets.
With a glazed look in his eyes, T.K. punched the magazine release on his carbine, dropping the duplexed pair of magazines from the magazine well into his waiting hand. Shifting the magazines to the left, he inserted the still-loaded magazine of the pair, and slapped the bolt carrier release with the base of his left palm. He took two steps forward, and again fired another entire magazine on full auto in long bursts, the muzzle pointed almost straight downward.
“Save your ammo, Tom, they’re already very dead!” yelled Mike.
Kennedy replied with his lower lip quivering, “They’ll never be dead enough, damned murdering cannibal looters.”With that, he turned and began walking unsteadily back up the hill to the house, leaving the others in stunned silence. Instinctively, T.K. reloaded his now smoking carbine from one of the thirty-round magazine pouches on his web gear as he walked. Mary was the most startled of them all. Even with all of her experience in the medical field, she had never actually watched anyone die, much less blasted into oblivion only a few yards away. It was also the first time that she had ever heard T.K. curse.
The members of the group drew lots to determine who was going to clean up the mess. The unlucky pair of short dowels were drawn by Jeff Trasel and Kevin Lendel. They spent most of the afternoon hauling the dead strangers’ gear up the hill, inventorying it, and cleaning and oiling the captured weapons.
The looters’ equipment, with the exception of the garden cart, fit into one wall locker that Todd and Mary emptied out.
Kevin volunteered to dig a hole and bury the looters’ cargo of “meat.” He felt queasy when handling it, but managed not to vomit. With Todd’s okay, Jeff and Kevin went ahead with their idea of displaying the bodies. With considerable effort, they used a come-along to hoist the bodies onto two adjacent power poles, securing them with wraps of WD-1 commo wire. They wore surgical gloves when handling the bodies and the “meat.” Mary painted signs on scraps of plywood to hang around their necks. The signs read, “Murdering Cannibal Looter.” They left the frozen bodies up for five weeks before cutting them down and burying them beneath the garden plot.
In a meeting that evening, the Group first said prayers for the victims of the cannibals. Then they were confronted with the dilemma of what to do with the dead men’s equipment. Lisa Nelson pointed out the fact that much or nearly all of it was probably stolen. The options suggested were: one, keep the gear and divide it equally among the group; two, wait until order was restored and donate it to a charity, preferably one dedicated to refugees; and three, distribute it as charity to refugees as they passed through the area, based on legitimate need. Todd called for a vote. T.K made an objection to a voice vote or a show of hands. He called for an “Australian ballot,” the term typically used by the Group when referring to a secret, written ballot.
When the vote was tallied, it came in overwhelmingly for donating the gear and booty to charity after some order was restored. A second vote, this one with a show of hands, was taken to make an exception of the Mini-14 carbine, its ammo, and accessories. Dan Fong had made the motion, suggesting that it would make a good weapon for Rose.
The motion was voted down after Lisa mentioned that she felt that to take something from a looter for one’s own use was only one notch above the act of looting itself. Dan was visibly upset. “It’s a perfectly good weapon. Do you think that it’s somehow been jinxed? It’s an inanimate piece of steel. It’s incapable of being good or evil. It’s just like any other tool. Any good or bad intentions are up to its owner. You can use a hammer to build a house—or to bash in someone’s skull. The hammer doesn’t decide that. The man who owns the hammer does.”
T.K. settled the issue by offering to give Rose his CAR-15. He would instead begin carrying his other .223, an AR-15 that he had “parted up”
himself for rifle matches. This weapon was by far the most expensive AR-15 in the group. T.K. built it using a commercial Eagle Arms lower-receiver, a Colt flat-top M16A2 upper receiver with a A.R.M.S. “Swan Sleeve” rear sight, and a heavy air-gauged Krieger match barrel. He also had two scope bases for the rifle. One mounted a Zeiss 4-12x scope. The other was equipped with an Armson O.E.G. reflex sight.
After the meeting, Dan apologized to T.K. for losing his temper. Before he left, he handed Kennedy a Ziploc bag containing his spare set of M16 lower-receiver parts and auto-sear. He put in with a smile, “In the future, try to keep it to nice controlled, short three-to-five-round bursts. It sounded like a rerun of The Untouchables down there this morning.”
• • •
On March twentieth, Jeff announced that he and Rose wanted to get married. He said forthrightly, “We’ve been living in sin, and we’ve repented.”
Later that same day, the entire Group gathered in the living room. Tom Kennedy led the service. He began with a long opening prayer. He asked for God’s guidance for Jeff and Rose, for God as the Great Physician to restore Rose’s strength, and as usual, for God’s protection of everyone at the retreat.
Then Rose and Jeff joined hands. Addressing them by their Christian names, he asked them to exchange their vows. Jeff promised to “love, honor, cherish, provide for, and protect” Rose, and she in turn promised to “love, honor, cherish, and obey” Jeff.
Tom then mentioned the lack of a marriage license, but explained, “I don’t know how the states ever got involved in the marriage business to begin with.
A piece of paper doesn’t make you married. It doesn’t truly grant rights or privileges. The covenant that we have all just witnessed is what matters. That’s the marriage. Marriage is a holy covenant between a man and a woman, in obedience to God’s law. You are now, in the sight of God and those gathered here, and under the Common Law, man and wife.”
• • •
Soon after Todd and Mary bought their house in Idaho, they started making some changes. First, they installed a metal firewood chute that fed into the basement. It put the wood supply in close proximity to the stove.
The next upgrade was the construction of a new wood storage house. It was big enough to store three full cords of wood. Todd opted for an open-sided wood house of pole frame construction with a corrugated metal shed type roof. When combined with the wood storage capacity of the basement, the Grays would have enough wood for at least three winters.
/> At Mary’s insistence, the Grays got a dog soon after moving in. Mary had always wanted a dog, but with their former house lot measured in square feet rather than acres, they didn’t think it would be a humane way to treat a dog.
After long deliberation, they decided to get a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Their decision-making process on selecting a dog breed first narrowed the field to the hound family. From Mary’s research, they learned that nearly all the members of the hound family make good watchdogs. Most of them also have good noses for scent trailing. Based on individual breed’s attributes, the selection was narrowed to either a Black and Tan coonhound, Redbone coonhound, or Rhodesian Ridgeback. Todd and Mary finally selected the Ridgeback because it was more aggressive than the other breeds. Rhodesian Ridgebacks, first bred in Africa for lion hunting, have a few odd features. First, and most noticeably, they have a crest of fur along their backbones that lays down in the opposite direction than the rest of their fur, “against the grain,” as Todd put it.
This was how the breed got the name Ridgeback. Secondly, Ridgebacks have an odd habit of climbing trees. Lastly, and as Todd and Mary were to find out after they bought their puppy, Ridgebacks tend to be strong willed, if not downright stubborn. Luckily, with both Todd and Mary around the farm at all times, they could give their puppy constant supervision until it was fully grown and had gained emotional maturity.
Their puppy, a bitch, came from a breeder near Boise. The pup was a reddish-brown color, with a small white patch on her chest, and one white paw. The white paw constituted a flaw that put the pup in the “pet” category, rather than the “show” category. It also meant that the pup cost three hundred dollars rather than the normal thousand dollars or more. Mary picked the name “Shona” for the pup. Shona was a reference to the language of the Mashona tribe in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia.
Although Shona was strictly an “outdoor” bitch, she was affectionate and very much a part of the family. She was also a vigilant watchdog. To the Grays’ dismay, Shona’s concept of protecting the farm included running off any wild game that ventured onto the property. This included deer, elk, pheasants, grouse, quail, chuckars, and occasionally, bears. Eventually, Shona’s bad habit was broken. An exception was made for bears. Todd and Mary praised Shona liberally when she scared off her first bear. Luckily, Shona was bright enough to distinguish between wanted and unwanted creatures.
To make Shona comfortable during Bovill’s cold winters, Todd spent a day and a half building a doghouse. The doghouse had an unusual design. Todd made it with double walls, with two thicknesses of foam insulation between the inner and outer plywood walls. This insulation went in all four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The doghouse was built on foot-long cedar stilts to keep it up off the ground. This prevented rotting and kept it warm. For a door, Todd made a flap from a scrap of carpet. An old blanket was folded up inside for Shona to sleep on. Shona appeared to like her house, but she seemed to spend more time on top of the house’s gently sloping roof than she did inside it. As expected, this phenomenon changed radically when the first cold snap arrived.
Todd and Mary continued their “upgrades” throughout their first summer at the house. The next improvements, which were both expensive and time consuming, all involved security. When Dan was visiting, he pointed out the fact that the existing doors on the house were both very well weathered, and although of solid core construction, not particularly stout. He suggested, “You should build doors that match the ballistic resistance of your house, otherwise they will turn out to be your proverbial weak link. The house itself will stop repeated hits from a .460 Weatherby, but your doors probably wouldn’t stop a .22 magnum. You should build some totally mondo doors. While you are at it, you should build shutters for your windows to match.”Although it turned out to be far more work and a lot more money than he had expected, Todd took Dan’s advice, and went ahead with the project the next summer.
First, they removed the old doors and doorframes. They replaced the original doorframes with metal frames. The frames were mounted using six-inch-long, half-inch diameter anchor bolts installed at eight-inch intervals into the surrounding brick. To do this, Todd had to rent a heavy-duty three-quarter-horsepower hammer action drill and buy special masonry bits. Even with the hammer action drill, the job took several hours. Next, Todd had a local cabinetmaker build him custom doors out of three-and-one-half-inch thick maple wood. The doors were hung on not three, but five extra-heavy hinges. Before he left, the cabinetmaker commented, “No one will ever kick these doors in.” Little did he know that the Grays weren’t even halfway done building their doors.
With prior coordination, Todd and Mary had the help of Dan Fong, the Nelsons, and the Laytons for the next phase of the project. As it turned out, they needed all of them to complete the job. They started by drilling a row of half-inch diameter holes around the perimeter of the doors. Next, with the oxyacetylene torch welding expertise of “The Fong Man,” they cut corresponding holes in the steel plates that he had special ordered from Haskins Steel Company in Spokane. At the same time, Dan cut holes for the positions of the doorknob lock set and the dead bolt lock set.
Originally, Dan had suggested either one-inch thick mild plate steel, or half-inch thick hardened steel to go over the windows and doors. That was before he realized how much they would weigh. When he got back to Chicago, he consulted one of his books of engineering tables and found the formula for figuring the weight of plate steel: Length (in inches) x width (inches) x thickness (inches) x .2560 = weight (pounds) To cover the larger of the two varieties of windows on the house, they would need plate steel measuring thirty inches by fifty inches. If they were to be made out of one-inch plate steel, these pieces would each weigh 384 pounds. Clearly, such plates could not be put in place with anything but a crew with a special hoist. To Todd, this was unacceptable, because he wanted to keep the “Harder Homes and Gardens” portion of his preparations very low profile. The last thing that he needed was to be labeled as the local paranoid survivalist.
The solution to the weight problem also came from Fong: stacking thinner steel plates to build up the same thickness. Hardened plate steel was both more expensive than mild steel and very hard to drill. It was also hard to find hardened steel in the dimensions required. So Todd opted for thicker mild steel.
Although four quarter-inch plates stacked together would not provide quite the same protection as a single homogeneous plate, it would still be a formidable barrier. To go a step better, Mary suggested that they mount five thicknesses of quarter-inch steel plates, rather than just four. This would provide a comparable or even slightly better level of ballistic protection than a one-inch homogeneous plate.
The stacks of five plates for each door were bolted together with half-inch diameter carriage bolts six inches long. To provide even greater security, the ends of the bolts were welded in place, so they could not be unbolted. Next, the outermost steel plates and the exposed edges and hardware were given two coats of Rust-Oleum paint. Finally, a quarter-inch veneer of walnut was glued over the top of the steel plating. This was stained and then received three coats of Varathane marine-grade varnish.
Todd had a difficult time finding a supplier for locksets and dead bolts that would fit doors this thick, but he finally found one in Seattle. They shipped the locks out via UPS “second day air” service. Inside, Dan Fong again put his welding rig to use, and fabricated four sets of massive bars—two for each of the doors. The brackets for these bars were made from three-inch wide, half-inch thick stock. The bars themselves were two-inch wide I beams. In a nifty arrangement again designed by Dan, the bars pivoted on a bolt at one end, and then could be locked in place with a three-eighths-inch bolt that slid through the bracket as a cross pin.
To the casual observer, the doors appeared to be typical residential doors, thanks to the wood veneer. Only when they were swung open did it become obvious how heavily they were constructed.
All of the house’s window openings
got a similar treatment. First, each of the metal plates to be mounted was slotted in a cross pattern. The cross slots had openings two inches wide, and were eight inches high and ten inches wide. These slots would make it possible to aim and fire guns from behind the protection of the plating. While Dan was busy at work with his cutting torch, Mike Nelson approached him and asked if he had gotten the idea for the cross slots out of one of his collection of Kurt Saxon books. Dan turned off his torch with loud pop and pulled up his face mask. Sweat was rolling down his face.
He replied with a broad grin, “Oops! Oxy first. My bad. No, Mikey, the idea for the plates themselves came from Kurt Saxon’s The Survivor compendium, all right, but the cross slotting idea came from the Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.” Nelson just shook his head and walked away.
Throughout the shutter-making process, Dan took the time to teach the others present the basics of cutting and welding. Ken Layton had used a torch many times before, but did pick up a few new tricks from Dan. To the others, it was a new experience. Lisa Nelson seemed to develop the knack of welding a smooth bead faster than any of the others, so along with Ken Layton, she became a “relief welder” to help out Dan. She was very proud of her newfound skill, and this became immediately apparent to Mike. “When we get home, I’m calling your office and telling them that you are quitting your job as an arteeest to become a precision welder.” She replied with a smile, “You’re just jealous, you dumb, uncoordinated flatfoot.”
The next phase of the job was even more time consuming than laying out and cutting the cross slots in the dozens of steel plates. They began by mounting extra heavy-duty hinges on anchor bolts installed in holes drilled in the brickwork at eight-inch intervals. Next, the first of five steel plates was welded directly onto the free hanging half of each hinge. Rather than cutting holes in each plate as they had for the carriage bolts for the doors, it was decided to simply weld each successive plate to the one beneath it.
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