Patriots

by James Wesley, Rawles

  When Mary pointed this shortcoming out to Todd, he said, “Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

  Bartering for livestock was put high on the list of priorities for a future time when a barter economy eventually developed. Mary made up a “livestock dream sheet” of the animals that she thought that the group would need and that their forty acres could support. She made up the list as a guide for future barter purchases. It included one Jersey cow, one donkey, and five saddle horses. Mary also wanted to buy a few rabbits, goats, ducks, and sheep, and breed them to eventually provide needed meat, milk, eggs, wool, feathers, down, and hides. She also would have included a pair of draft horses on the list, but she realized that such animals were scarce even before the Crunch.

  Although they would likely be bred in greater numbers in the future, the chances of the group obtaining a pair within the next ten years was remote.

  The bucolic endeavors of that summer were disrupted on the fifteenth of September when Margie injured her forearm. It happened early one morning while she was splitting some kindling for the cook stove, in preparation for the day’s canning operation. Working with a short-handled mine ax to split the kindling, she was momentarily distracted by the sound of the TA-1 field telephone clacking on the C.Q. desk. Taking her eyes off of her work for only an instant, Margie brought the ax down at an angle and it bounced off of the piece of wood that she was attempting to split. The ax blade struck the inside of her left forearm, making a deep, ugly gash. She let out a cry, but waited until it became clear that the call on the TA-1 was just a regular commo check.

  Then, applying direct pressure to the wound, she called for help. The cut only bled a little at first, and Margie was not overly alarmed. By the time Mary was examining it a few minutes later, however, the capillary bleeding had begun to increase. To Mary’s dismay, she also found that Margie had nearly severed two tendons.

  Mary quickly applied a bandage to the wound and had Margie move to the kitchen. Mary put on one of her light green “scrub suit” uniforms and a surgical mask. Then she thoroughly washed her hands and forearms with Phisoderm and put on a pair of sterile surgical rubber gloves. Meanwhile, Rose washed down the kitchen table with rubbing alcohol. Throughout all this, Margie sat patiently at the table, with her arm raised above her head to help control the bleeding. By the time Mary was done scrubbing up, the bandage was soaked, and a thin rivulet of blood began to trickle down to Margie’s armpit. “Please hurry, Mary dear,” she said.

  Mary was finally ready to begin after she had pulled a selection of surgical instruments from her bag and out of their sterile wrappers. She then paused to wash her hands yet again. “It’s starting to really hurt. It’s throbbing,” Margie said with a groan.

  Mary had Margie lay down and elevated her injured arm and her feet, to lessen the risk of going into shock. Soothingly, she said, “Don’t worry. I’m going to give you something for the pain.” Picking up a 20 c.c. hypodermic syringe, Mary quickly filled it with Lidocaine H.C.L. After tapping the sides of the syringe and briefly depressing its plunger to displace a few small air bubbles, Mary inserted the needle subcutaneously to three sites around the wound. She said soothingly, “The pain will start to subside within a few minutes. Just be patient, my patient.” Looking toward Rose, who was by now also wearing a surgical mask, she said, “I’ll need more light. Bring the reading lamp from the living room, and put it here on the edge of the table. There’s an outlet right over there.” A minute later Rose returned with the lamp. Mary chided, “No, no, not so close, that thing’s hardly sterile. Set it up farther down the table, but tip the shade so that I get the light over here. There, that’s it.”

  Mary then picked up a pair of her black handled bandage scissors and cut away the now sodden bandage from the wound. Working with a blunt-tipped probe, she gauged the extent of the wound. For the benefit of Margie and Rose, who was looking over Mary’s shoulder, she said, “The cut is ten or twelve millimeters deep, at its deepest point. There is considerable capillary bleeding and there are four small arterial bleeders. The bluish-looking one here is a vein, not an artery. It’s a pretty big one, and luckily it still has its integrity. If it had gotten cut, there would already be a puddle of blood, so that’s a piece of luck. The bad news is that we’ve got two tendons that have been nearly cut through, and another that’s been nicked.”

  By now, four other militia members were hovering at the far end of the kitchen, whispering to themselves. Looking over her shoulder, she said to them, “You can make yourselves useful if one of you were to go out to the shop and get the electric soldering iron, the small one.” Lon turned from the doorway of the kitchen and dashed in the direction of the shop. “What does she need a soldering iron for?” Della whispered to Doug, who was standing next to her.

  Doug leaned over until his mouth was nearly touching Della’s ear and whispered, “Cauterizing, I think. You don’t have to stay and watch this unless you want to. It could get pretty gross.”

  Della whispered back, “No,I want to stay.I won’t get grossed out.Besides,this is pretty interesting. I might have to do this someday.” Doug nodded in agreement.

  Mary continued on with her monologue. “I’m going to start by stitching up, or at least trying to stitch up, these four little arteries. I’m afraid to say that they are about the same size as the ones that I had trouble with when I worked on your gunshot wound, Rose. I’m going to use the smallest of my absorbable suture material. Anything larger, and I’d probably end up with an artery that was patched together, but that would leak like a sieve.”

  Just then, Lon returned with the soldering iron. Mary tossed her head to gesture toward the lamp. “Plug it in over there,” she said.

  “What about sterilizing it?” Lon asked.

  “We don’t have to concern ourselves with the tip, that will sterilize itself as it heats up. It’s just the handle that I have to worry about. I’ll just do all of the cautery at once, and then change gloves.”

  Mary spent the next twenty-five minutes suturing together the four small, severed arteries, muttering the occasional epithet. It was painstaking, frustrating work. To control the bleeding during this stage of the operation, she had Rose briefly put a sphygmomanometer cuff on Margie’s upper arm, and slowly pump it up to pressure. Once the bleeding had slowed to the point where she could once again see her work, Mary told Rose to stop pumping. Mary had to suture one of the arteries closed because it was badly damaged. She managed to successfully rejoin the other three. After the suturing was done, Mary told Rose to release the pressure in the cuff, for fear of restricting Margie’s blood flow for too long.

  Throughout the operation, Margie remained calm. Mary occasionally asked her if she was feeling pain. She always answered no. Margie could not bear to watch the operation. She kept her head turned toward the wall throughout the procedure.

  When full blood flow was restored, the patched together arteries showed no sign of leakage, but steady capillary bleeding resumed at both sides of the wound. Turning toward the kitchen doorway, Mary said, “Lon, Rose, I’m going to need your help.” The two approached and looked at her expectantly.

  She said, “I need you to hold Margie’s arm in place.”After instructing them on how she wanted the arm held, Mary picked up the soldering iron. She said to Margie, “Now this might hurt, despite the Lidocaine, so try to hold still.”

  Mary rolled the tip of the soldering iron across spots of the flesh that had shown the worst of the capillary bleeding. The soldering iron made a hissing noise throughout this process. Margie said that she couldn’t feel a thing, but that she didn’t like the smell. “It smells like a barbecue,” she said.

  After she was done cauterizing, Mary donned a fresh set of gloves and took another look at the damaged tendons. She said, “I wouldn’t know how to begin to work on these tendons, so we’re going to have to hope that they heal themselves. The best we can do is immobilize your hand, wrist, and lower arm for two months to allow them a chance to hea
l themselves.” Mary then began the slow process of closing the wound with nonabsorbable three-zero silk sutures.

  When she was finally done, Mary daubed the area of the wound with Betadine solution. Then she lightly wrapped Margie’s lower arm in two-inch wide sterile gauze and pulled down her mask. A few minutes of consultation with Lon yielded a plan for making a splint. Lon returned from the shop five minutes later with a pair of heavy pliers and an eight-foot length of one-eighth-inch diameter steel fencing wire. Laying the wire directly against his wife’s arm, Lon eyeballed a measurement for the splint. Then, with the help of the pliers, he began bending the stiff wire. After taking a few more measurements, he had the splint bent into shape within a few minutes. By the time he was done, Lon was sweating profusely from the exertion.

  The finished splint lay on both sides of Margie’s arm. It bent 90 degrees at the elbow, and had looped cross braces at both ends. To pad the splint, Mary used some heavy wadding from an enormous civil defense surplus bandage.

  After the padding was held in place on the framework of the splint by white bandage tape, Mary gingerly lowered Margie’s arm into the confines of the splint. Next, she used almost an entire roll of three-inch wide gauze, securing the arm within the confines of the splint.

  When she had completed the job, she asked Margie if the bandaging felt too tight in any spot. She replied, “I can’t tell, yet. My arm is still pretty numb.”

  “Okay, Margie. Just let me know right away if you feel any discomfort.

  Now here’s the fun part. You are going to have to keep that arm elevated for most of the day for the next two weeks. Also, you are going to have to constantly remind yourself not to flex your wrist or fingers. I know that will be tough, but if those tendons are going to heal properly, you have got to avoid putting any stress on them, okay?”

  “Okay,” Margie answered. After looking down at her heavily padded arm, she said, “Oh fiddlesticks! Why did this have to happen at a time like this? We were planning on putting up sixty jars of applesauce today.”

  Later in the day, Mary tested her supply of tetracycline. She used the standard WHO-approved “titers” test of dissolving a capsule into clear water. She knew a cloudy solution or precipitates would indicate that the capsules weren’t safe and should be discarded. She was happy to see that the test resulted in a clear solution. Due to the age of the tetracycline, she gave Margie a considerably higher than normal dosage. In another year or two, Mary realized, she would have to begin titrating all of the retreat’s supplies of medicines and vitamins.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Northwest Militia

  “…arms… discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property…. Horrid mischief would ensue were (the law-abiding) deprived the use of them.”

  —Thomas Paine

  In June of the second year, a regular long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) from the retreat met a farmer who seemed nervous and distressed. He said, “I’m sure glad to see you. I haven’t been sleeping well for four days now. I don’t have a CB, and I was afraid to leave my wife and babies to go ask for help. There’s a bunch of bikers that took over Princeton. That’s less than a mile north of here. I’m afraid that once they strip those houses clean, they might come down here. What they’ve been doin’ is just terrible. They killed most of the men, and they’ve been raping the women that are still left alive. I also heard that they’ve been torturing the little kids. A couple houses got torched. They’re a wicked bunch.”

  The man looked imploringly at Carlton and asked, “You’ve got those military lookin’ guns and the organization, can’t you do something about it?”

  Doug Carlton, who was leading the patrol asked, “Do you know how many of them there are, and how they’re armed?”

  “I heard that there’s at least twenty, maybe thirty, of that trash. Rumor has it that they got a machinegun.”

  “What kind of machinegun?”

  “A big one, you know, with one of them ammo belts, on tripod legs.”A few more minutes of questioning revealed little else, as all of the man’s information was secondhand.

  Heeding the training that he had received in his ROTC courses, Carlton took the initiative to deal decisively with the situation. After moving the patrol four hundred yards away from the farm into a dense grove of trees, Carlton consulted with the other patrol members. “Okay, here’s the deal. We obviously don’t have the necessary combat power in a seven-member patrol to handle this problem. What I’m going to do is split the patrol in half. Three members of the patrol will go on an extended recon of Princeton, while the other four will return to the retreat. The recon patrol will consist of Jeff, Lisa, and Kevin. The rest of us will get back to the retreat A.S. A.P and report on what we’ve heard.”

  Looking directly at Trasel, Doug ordered, “Jeff, I’m putting you in charge of the recon patrol because you have a lot more experience at reconnaissance than I do. Plan to be back to the retreat no later than dawn on the day after tomorrow. Your job is to observe and report. Period. Do your absolute best to avoid being detected, but try to get close enough to observe the details of what is going on. In particular, we need to know their total numbers, how well they are armed, what building or buildings they are occupying, and if they have any security out. If you spot anyone on security, it’s critical to know where their posts are, or if they’re using roving guards, and the routes they take. Also, we need to know if they change guards at regular times. Take complete notes. Get some accurate sketches of the layout. That’s all. Have any questions?”

  Jeff thought for a moment. “No questions, but I’d like to take both sets of binoculars and one of the five-watt walkie-talkies on the recon. I’d also like all the food out of your packs since you are heading right back and we will be out for an extra twenty-four hours.”

  Doug gave him a thumbs-up and replied, “Okay. Good luck.”

  After redistributing the loads in their rucksacks, Carlton, along with Rose, Lon, and Dan Fong headed back to the retreat. Still in a whisper, Jeff began to brief Lisa and Kevin on how he wanted to conduct the recon.

  As soon as they had returned to the Grays’ farmhouse, Mike and Todd debriefed the first increment of the patrol. Referring to the map board, Todd then gave a description of the area around Princeton. “It is a small town about sixteen miles west and slightly north of Bovill. As I recall, there are only about twenty houses in the town, strung out along this road, which runs east-west.

  There’s a sawmill on the edge of town, and a gas station in the middle of town. Other than that, Princeton has all residential buildings. Most of the area around town is fairly well timbered. If there are indeed twenty-plus bad guys there, we could have a heckuva time taking them out.” After a pause, Margie raised her still bandaged arm and asked, “Well… aren’t they likely to move on soon? Couldn’t we just scare them off or just wait until they leave, and then go in to treat the injured and help to resupply the residents and rebuild whatever has been destroyed?”

  Gesturing with his hand, Todd said, “Look, I realize that an operation like this is extremely dangerous. But as long as we let vermin continue to operate freely, they are going to be a thorn in our side. I’ll never forget one thing that Jeff Cooper once wrote:‘Scaring hostiles away is never very satisfactory, be they mosquitoes, crocodiles, or people, because they will be back later, with friends.’ In my opinion there is only one way to deal with this sort of situation. We have to go in and wipe the brigands out. If we let them slip away, they’ll just keep right on going with their mayhem somewhere else, maybe even here. We also have to remember that we’ve been making promises to provide security to the area, and we are honor-bound to follow through on those promises.”

  “I agree,” Mike declared.

  Todd continued, “Because there are so many of them, we’ll no doubt need the help of the Templars on this operation. Assuming that we are going to go through with this, I plan to call Roger Dunlap right
after this meeting. Could I have a show of hands of all of those in favor of my plan?” Margie was the only dissenter.

  Todd’s conversation with Dunlap over the CB was brief. After going through the prearranged change to an upper sideband frequency, Todd spoke into the handset, “Roger, a security matter of extreme importance and sensitivity has come up, and I’d like to meet with you to discuss it at the usual spot at 11 a.m. on the day after tomorrow.”

  Dunlap replied, “Wilco, out.”

  After he had radioed his message to Dunlap, Todd asked Mike if he could talk with him privately. They stepped outside the front door. Although it was dark, it was still pleasantly warm. Shona padded up to Todd and put her muzzle under his hand, imploring him to pet her. Todd obliged. “Mike, I need your advice. Even with the help of the Templars, are we going to be able to overcome that many people?” Without giving Mike a chance to reply, Todd said, “I mean, I can remember reading military tactics manuals where they say that the normal ratio of attackers to defenders is something like three-to-one. We won’t even be meeting them one-to-one.”

  Mike looked in Todd’s direction, unable to make out the features of his face in the darkness. “The figure you cite is correct, but that applies only to military units engaging other military units that are dug in and expecting an attack. I think that as long as we maintain surprise, we can pull it off. Hopefully, we might even do it without taking any casualties. The main problem will be coordination. Obviously, we can’t mix our forces together with the Templars. That would be a nightmare from a command and control standpoint. We haven’t trained together. Probably the best thing to do is use them for a support team, while we assault the buildings, or vice versa.”

  Todd threw in, “I was thinking the same thing.”After a long interval he added, “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that we do run an assault op on Princeton. We’re talking about a whole bunch of buildings. What’s to stop most of the bikers from slipping away while we are clearing the area house to house?”