Jim and Hugh remained on the public road for the next couple of miles to see how it went. They made better time on the smooth surface. The snow was already melting as the temperature began to rise. Pavement was already showing through the heavily-traveled sections of the road. Given the early hour and the winter conditions, they hoped people would remain huddled around their fires and allow them to travel in peace.
It was a mile beyond the bridge that they topped a rise and passed a local funeral home. A forty-yard construction dumpster, a steel vessel the size of a shipping container, sat in the parking lot. The green paint was scorched and peeling, fresh rust coating the bare metal. Pallets and fence posts were piled nearby.
“They’re burning the bodies,” Hugh remarked.
Jim nodded but offered no comment. What could be said?
Minutes beyond the funeral home was the vast acreage of the county fairground. There were stages, parking lots, and agricultural buildings scattered throughout the property. Jim had spent many hours there over the years, buying cotton candy, watching his kids on rides, and checking out the demolition derby.
He was in that reverie, remembering his children when they were smaller, and didn’t notice Hugh rein his horse to a stop.
“Jim,” Hugh said.
Jim snapped out of it and stopped. “What?”
“Let’s go left, through the gate, and to the rise in that field.”
“See something?”
“Maybe,” Hugh replied. “We’ll know in a second.”
Hugh took the lead and veered off the road, cutting through the heavily trampled snow of the median. He angled up a road on the opposite shoulder and leaned over to unhook the chain on a red tube gate. He swung it open, then shut it after Jim rode through.
“What is it?” Jim asked.
“I saw cleared snow up ahead, just like at the railyards yesterday. It was piled on the shoulders of the road near the fairground entrance.”
“Shit, I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about taking my kids to the fair.”
“Can’t let your mind wander out here,” Hugh said. “A bullet will seriously fuck up your day.”
Jim knew that. He’d preached that. Yet here he was, doing what he’d warned so many people against. He needed to stay switched on. He needed to stay alert.
In fifty yards or so they rode up a rounded knoll that rose from the pasture. A rotting round bale of hay sat beside a round feeder. There were no cattle tracks anywhere. If the owner of the field was cautious, his cattle were safely stashed elsewhere. If he hadn’t been so cautious, they’d been feeding the locals since the food supply got tight.
Hugh was the first up the rise and he had binoculars out, glassing in the direction of the fairgrounds. Jim fished around in his pack to find his own pair. Even without them, he could tell the fairground had been the scene of a lot of activity. There were cleared roads, massive tents, and temporary troop quarters.
“There’s no railyard,” Hugh said. “I wonder how they got all of that here. They didn’t use the road or we would have seen the tracks.”
“There’s no railyard but the tracks go through a field near here. I guarantee some engineers were able to cobble together an improvised railyard in a couple of hours. A dozer, a loader, and a couple of side-dumping rail cars of crushed stone would be all you needed.”
“What’s the point of this?” Hugh said. “Is this some base providing forward security for the power plants?”
Jim shook his head. “Beats the shit out of me.”
“They’ve clearly been at this a while. There’s a lot going on over there. They have facilities for thousands of people.”
“And animals, apparently,” Jim added.
“You mean the old agricultural buildings?”
“No, those cattle chutes near the entrance are new. They weren’t there the last time I brought the kids to the fair.”
Hugh studied the area Jim pointed out then lowered his binos. “Those aren’t cattle chutes, Jim. Those are for people.”
“Bullshit.”
“Seriously, we used them when I worked in South America. They expedite the processing of large numbers of refugees. Cuts down on riots.”
“Why the fuck would they think they’re going to be processing that many people? People in this area aren’t going to go for something like that.”
“Read the signs, Jim. There are signs at the head of the chutes.”
“Either my eyes or my optics are fucked. I can’t read that.”
The men exchanged binoculars. Jim read the signs and let out a long sigh. There were indeed signs at the mouth of the chutes, directing men toward one area and women toward another, along with instructions to surrender weapons.
“Those draped areas are for searches,” Hugh said. “They’re not letting people in without searching them.”
“This is messed up but how do you fight an army? We don’t have enough people for this. We don’t have the weaponry for this. I’d like nothing more than to run those fuckers out of town and take our power back for our people.”
“That’s why they’re here—for the energy resources. If we didn’t have anything to offer, they’d leave us alone,” Hugh said. “Just our luck.”
Jim lowered his binoculars and stashed them behind the saddle. “You consider that a camp or a prison?”
Hugh shrugged. “Not sure there’s a difference, my friend.”
The pair remained off-road until they were well past the fairground area. When they reached a point where the main road was no longer cleared of snow and few footprints had marred it, they rejoined the road. An hour’s riding brought them to a paved secondary road heading east.
“Let’s go this way,” Jim said. “I need to see a man.”
The temperature may have been up to the low forties. The snow was melting. It was down to around ten inches deep depending on where you were, however, it remained a slimy, nasty mess that made walking difficult for man or horse. Jim and Hugh rode for four more hours, stopping a couple of times to water the horses and let them rest.
They ate MREs in the saddle. The men were not accustomed to such long days in the saddle and both were aching intensely from a second day of it. They bemoaned the world and bemoaned their circumstances. They bemoaned a government that had reduced them to having to ride horseback. In their moaning and bemoaning they hardened their resolve to not let the government deprive them of power generated locally using local coal.
It was nearly dark when Jim and Hugh passed the youth sports complex for their county, not far outside the town limits. There were two baseball diamonds and several tennis courts, as well as a soccer field. The baseball and soccer fields were packed with an assortment of mismatched cattle. The playing fields were turning into a muddy mess from the wandering beasts. A crude log structure sat in the tennis court providing shelter for perhaps fifteen or sixteen hogs that ambled about in the snow, pawing at the clay court and digging futilely for roots and acorns.
"What the hell?" Jim uttered.
“Looks like somebody in the neighborhood started a mini farm."
"You'd think there'd be a guard since they’re this close to town.”
"Maybe there," Hugh said, pointing at the elevated announcer’s booth with its glass windows looking out over each field.
Jim squinted at the booth. "You can see a sentry in there? I can’t see shit.”
Hugh shook his head. "Don't see one but that's where I'd put one."
“You’re probably right. We should just keep moving along and not show any special interest."
"That’s probably best."
A little more than a mile down the road, Jim swung his horse to the right and angled up a steep road. The driveway was steep and the snow contained the tracks of a man and several different animals. Runoff from the melting snow had created a wet track down each lane of the road.
"Is this Kyle's driveway?"
Jim gave a slight nod and Hugh turned his horse, follo
wing along. After topping a rise, a log cabin became visible. It was set back deep on the property, resting on the shore of a scenic fishing pond. Smoke curled from the chimney, barely visible in the sea of varying grays.
Jim nudged his horse in the direction of the cabin.
"How do you know this guy?" Hugh asked.
"We went to high school together. He works for the power company. I want to ask him a few questions."
"You feel comfortable riding up on him like this? I mean, he’s not going to drop a deer round between my eyes is he?”
“I guess he could, but Kyle's not as paranoid as me. He's regular people. A farmer. You ride up to his door and knock on it, I guarantee he’ll come open it to you. He may have a gun in his hand but he will answer the door."
When three Australian cattle dogs came out of nowhere, tearing across the snow at them, both men were startled enough to reflexively bring up a weapon, but Jim caught himself.
“Those are Kyle’s dogs. They won’t bite us. Just hold onto your horse.”
The dogs circled the horses, barking like mad as the pair neared the cabin.
“At least we don’t need to announce ourselves,” Hugh said. “I’m sure they’re on full alert now.”
“Kyle! It’s Jim Powell! Don't shoot!" he called out when they reached the yard.
Jim slid off his horse and walked through the mass of sniffing dogs. He went through a wooden gate in a picket fence and climbed the steps to the cabin, the dogs still letting out low woofing sounds. He barely had one foot on the steps when a stocky man of around six feet opened the door, filling the frame.
He looked at Jim seriously. "You're brave, man. Your chances of getting shot went way up when you announced your name.”
Jim smiled and extended a hand.
Kyle took it and shook. "What the hell brings you out in this mess?"
"I know this will sound crazy but I just wanted to ask you some questions about the power grid," Jim said. "I want to talk somebody in the business who might be able to explain some things to me. This isn’t a bad time, is it?"
Kyle shook his head. “No time is any worse than the other right now."
Jim hooked a thumb to the horses. "That’s my friend Hugh back there. I met him when I worked at the radio station in town. He's a neighbor now, part of a little community of folks that we've got going in the valley."
Kyle waved to Hugh. "Tie those horses up and you folks come in for a while. It's warm inside and we got plenty of food."
“Don’t go to any trouble,” Jim said. “We don’t need to eat any of your food.”
“You going to tell Kim you don’t want her food? Try it and see what happens.”
Kyle’s wife could be a little fiery.
"I’ll play that by ear. Why aren’t you living in the new house? You did build a new one didn’t you?"
"Oh, I was," Kyle said. "Built me a fancy new place a little further back on the mountain. This cabin is where we lived when I first bought this farm. The new house doesn't have any other way to heat other than the heat pump, and I don't have a way to cook inside the house. When it got cold, we decided we’d move back in here. This place has thick log walls and it's easy to heat, and it’s got gravity water so the toilets flush."
Hugh reached the porch and Kyle led the two guests into the living room. Jim knew Kyle's wife, Kim. The two had gone to school together. Jim introduced Hugh to Kim, and then to Kyle’s two sons who were eight and eleven. Kyle directed Jim and Hugh towards a couch covered with a blanket. The cabin was filled with the aroma of beef stew and the two guests soon had bowls in front of them. They tried to protest but Kim would hear nothing of it. She gave them a look that made it clear there was no arguing.
"We've been blessed," Kim said. "We had a good garden, we have plenty of livestock, and we’ve always had plenty to eat.”
"Do you hear much about what’s going on in the world, Kyle?" Jim asked.
Kyle shook his head. "I’ve got over eighty cows to keep up with, thirty-some chickens, nineteen goats, those dogs, three asshole donkeys, and some other oddball critters I’ve picked up. I don’t have time to talk to anybody now that I’m doing it all by hand. God, how I miss tractors.”
“I have an emu,” one of Kyle’s sons said.
“Do you have any animals?” Hugh asked the other.
He looked at his mother.
Kim smiled at Hugh. “He has a gemsbok but he has trouble pronouncing it.”
“A gemsbok?” Jim asked.
Kyle shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d been talked in to buying. “It’s some African critter with long, straight horns. A couple came up at an auction in Tennessee and the next thing you know I’m hauling them home in the cattle trailer.”
Jim laughed. "Back to why we’re here, did you know both power plants are up and running?"
Kyle looked at Jim skeptically. "If the damn plants are up and running, where's the power? Why haven't I been called back to work?"
"That’s why I’m here," Jim said. "We wondered if anyone made contact with you about the power."
"Like I said, haven't heard a damn thing. All I see all day are critters and these knuckleheads here."
“You’re the knucklehead,” one his sons said.
“No, you’re the knucklehead,” Kyle shot back.
Jim finished the last of his stew and sat back on the couch. "That was good, Kim. I haven’t had anything but freeze dried beef stew for a long time. It’s not quite the same.”
“You’re welcome, Jim.”
“So how do you know both plants are up?” Kyle asked.
“The other night Hugh was up on Clinch Mountain where it runs by our valley. He was keeping an eye on some folks camping in the clearing beneath the power lines. When he started back down the mountain, he could see the glow of lights. When we checked it out on the map it was pretty obvious it was the Carbo plant."
Kyle scoffed. "Glowing lights don’t mean the power is back on. It could be a repair crew using diesel-powered tower lights. They could just be working on the plant, trying to get it back up and running."
"That’s why we went there in person. We just got back. I don’t know to what extent they’re generating power because no one would really talk to us, but they’ve been bringing people in on trains and choppers."
Kyle furrowed his brow. "Hell, maybe they fired me and I just haven’t got the email. I guess it could be our people, but you think somebody would have reached out to us local folks. I don’t know shit about plant operation but I have a lot of experience getting it from the plant to the people."
"I’m pretty sure it’s not your people," Jim said. "These were military folks. NATO troops too."
That struck a nerve with Kyle. "NATO troops? Things in this country so bad that our own army can't take care of it? Our cops and military can't?"
Hugh pointed a finger at Kyle. "That’s the problem right there, my friend. My experience tells me that these are problems our people can deal with. So why are foreign troops here? Good question."
“Smells rotten to me,” Kyle said.
"Let me ask you a question," Jim said. "Let's say the power was on over at the plant. You think a crew of linemen could get power to the town here?"
Kyle waved a hand dismissively. "I've been through ice storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes all over this country. A good crew of linemen can do about anything. It ain’t so easy as just flipping a switch though. Are they transmitting power out?"
Jim shook his head. “Not sure. The guard that ran me off said they intended to send most of the power to Northern Virginia and basically no one cared if we got power or not.”
Kyle’s face hardened. “That burns my ass.”
“Mine too,” Hugh agreed.
“If they have power running through their transmission substation to the high voltage lines, it makes our job a little easier. That’s power we can steal.”
“So we can just tap into those lines?” Jim asked.
> “It’s not that easy,” Kyle said. “That’s high voltage. You can’t just send that to houses. We need to run it through a distribution substation and step the voltage down. So if we were, theoretically, planning on tapping a high voltage line, we would need to do it close enough to a substation that we wouldn’t have to run a lot of line. I’ve never run it by hand but I’m sure it’s going to suck bad and take a lot of manpower.”
"Will people at the plant be able to tell we’re stealing power?" Jim asked.
Kyle shrugged. "Depends. If they don’t have a lot of manpower, they might just assume that power loss between here and Northern Virginia is due to some line damage. The biggest risk of getting caught comes from people running lights at night and being seen. We would need to make sure everyone was careful and used the power as sparingly as possible.”
“Then you up for it?” Jim asked. “Or at least to look at what may be involved?”
"We all want power back on. I'd be willing to do my part if it’s logistically possible. Without trucks and equipment, I'm not completely sure how much we could do. It would be hard, backbreaking work.”
"Like I said, I can get you some labor. It won't be all resting on your shoulders. The main thing I need from you is expertise."
"Let me think about it,” Kyle said. “I got some maps here that may tell me where a good jumping off point would be. I need a place where whatever high voltage lines they’re using come close to a distribution substation that I can tie us to."
Jim stood. "That’s all I ask. Give it some thought. And we appreciate the hospitality. The food was delicious."
"You could just spend the night," Kim said. "It’s dark already. It’s not safe out there anyway and after dark is worse."
Hugh stood and shook Kyle’s hand. "We appreciate the offer, Kyle, but we don’t want to impose any more than we already have.”
Switched On Page 15
