TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story (7 page)

Unlike the feudal societies of the Middle Ages the Pease clan, and any other "new hires" the DDL&BSG cared to take on, would be free to move off and create their own enclave someday when starvation and depredation by pillaging bandits was less likely. Until then they were dependent upon the goodwill and charity of the better prepared survival group for safety and the bread of life.

Over the River and Through the Woods to Old Bill's

As prearranged with Doc, Beacon pulled out of the Rich Guys Survival Club convoy shortly after noon the next day as it passed the dirt road he'd pointed out to Doc on the map.

The Peace Humvee had been issued a radio with the call sign "Stinger" on the LLC's radio net and positioned as the convoy's last vehicle. "Tail Gunner" Rick manned the turret. As Trudy drove by she tried to thank Beacon for all he'd done for her family as they passed but most of her words were lost in the dust and rumble of vehicles. Beacon just waved smiled, and nodded.

Once the convoy was out of sight he drove back down the hill to another less obvious turnoff point and headed for Old Bill's log cabin.

At nightfall a day later he turned off the dirt Forestry Service road onto an overgrown two track trace that was Old Bill's winding seventeen mile long driveway. He unlocked Old Bill's four inch tubular steel security gate with his key and relocked it behind him. He was careful to approach Old Bill's cabin with only his parking lights on as he tooted his horn every few yards so Old Bill would know it was him.

"Ya alright, Bill?"

"Yeah. You?"

Had to fight off some Indians on the way up here, but I kept my scalp."

"C'mon inside and tell me about it over some venison stew."

Old Bill had built his log cabin decades ago by hand with an Adze, bucksaw and axe so it looked like something out of the late 1800's both inside and out with wooden shingles on the roof and a hand hewn door hung on leather hinges. Inside the hand carved wooden spoons weren't decorations on the wall, but utensils on the table. A cast iron pot hung beside the fireplace keeping venison stew warm.

Old Bill's weapons made no concessions to time either. He wore two model 1873 Single Action Army 'Peacemaker' revolvers chambered in .45 Colt on his belt in cross draw holsters and carried Model 1894 lever action rifles in .30-30 Winchester caliber when hunting.

As usual Beacon had brought large bags of rice, beans and flour with him. "That's the last we'll see of them for a long time," he said as he set the last bag of flour atop the stack by the fireplace.

Normally Beacon didn't bother bringing news from the "flatlands" to Old Bill, but tonight was different. He finished his stew and his story at the same time, "So everything was so interconnected and interdependent that when one part went down, even for a little while, it had devastating affects on other parts of the system that had nothing to do with it."

"Currency was worth something only as long as people thought it was. When people stopped believing fiat bills had value they went from being legal tender to tinder."

"After the die off everybody left will be living in the 1800's like you Bill."

That night they listened to the BBC and several other foreign English language stations on Beacon's hand cranked shortwave radio. The news readers were basically repeating the same stories Beacon had heard on American AM and FM stations until they'd been replaced by civil defense recordings telling people to "Not panic" and "Remain in your homes" on endless loops.

In the morning they unloaded all of Beacon's stuff, except the gas cans, from the truck. One gas can and some of the guns and ammo went inside the cabin. All of Beacon's first line equipment went into an underground bunker out back and the rest to caches around the mountain top. Beacon left his camo clothing, except the MultiCam boonie hat, in the cabin and donned the leather leggings and fringed leather shirt of a Mountain man.

The following morning they hooked the horse trailer to Beacon's pickup and loaded Old Bill's two horses into it.

Stopping only to hide a chainsaw in some bushes behind the gate, they drove down the mountain and across a valley to a tiny town at the end of a paved road many miles away and announced they'd trade gasoline for ammunition and arthritis medicine.

The tiny town was packed with shortsighted citizens who'd run out of gas or just planed to sit out what they hoped would be a short term emergency by camping out in the woods. The refugees dreamed of a return to normalcy and clamored for gas to run their electric generators, motor homes and cars.

The "Mountain Men" as they were called because of their buckskins, were willing to trade. The gas, even gasoline treated with stabilizing products, was good for at most two maybe three years. Stored in a cool dry place ammo would last for decades. Trading perishable gasoline for virtually nonperishable ammo would give the mountain men ammo and trading goods for decades to come.

Old Bill stood guard with a steely eye, two Colt Single Action Army revolvers in cross draw holsters on his hips and a Winchester lever action model 94 rifle in 30-30 caliber in his crossed arms, as Beacon bartered.

They turned down gold and silver, diamonds and jewelry; holding out for factory ammo and one antique Sheffield Bowie knife Old Bill took a liking to.

It would be a generation, Beacon felt, before the survivors reorganized into any semblance of civilization structured enough to make use of gold and silver.

Once trade could safely be carried out between villages, forts and fiefdoms there would be a need for something small that wouldn't spoil in transit over long distances. Gold and silver coins with their thousands year long history of value would fill the bill nicely.

Being of known weight and karat gold and silver coins would facilitate commerce much better than gold wedding rings and diamonds of uncertain karat. Beacon believed he'd have to live to be an old man to see money of any kind return as medium of exchange and it would be many generations before anyone would be foolish enough to trust fiat paper money again although he had little doubt politicians would lead the gullible into that something for nothing scheme once more.

When all the gas cans was gone they traded the pickup with it's half full gas tank and horse trailer to the town's pharmacist for all the arthritis medicines and pain killers, prescription and nonprescription, he had in stock.

On the way out of town Beacon found a hand lettered flyer posted on the town's bulletin board which announced the formation of a "Sanctuary Settlement" in the next valley.

The mountain men's horses could hardly carry all the ammo back up to their retreat. Beacon had to walk the horses back up the mountain with Old Bill riding the stouter horse his medicines in their backpacks with bedrolls tied on top.

They took a roundabout route back to the cabin backtracking, J hooking to set up ambushes and checking their back trail several times a day for anyone who might be trying to follow them back up onto the mountains. The two cold camped two nights and then, after setting for three hours on one last ambush of their trail, they finally headed for the cabin.

When they got back up to the gate Beacon took the hidden chainsaw and with Old Bill standing guard went up a mile and down a mile felling trees across the Forestry road.

Then they filled the keyhole of the gate's lock with J-B Weld. Beacon and, using the last of the gasoline in the saw, felled every tree that would fall across the Old Bill's driveway for a mile up the hill. At the top of every curve they redirected the drainage ditches along the sides so rain and snow melt would run into the middle of the track hopefully washing it out within the year.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Mountain Men

Old Bill's arthritis had been acting up and they discussed the possibility of joining the Sanctuary Settlement as they wove their way back up the mountain track arriving at Old Bill's cabin just in time to catch a band of bandits looting the place.

Old Bill got two and Beacon got one before the remainder of the gang sought shelter back inside the cabin. At some point during the firefight something inside the cabin caught fire. Despite the looters best efforts the fire kept growing with them trapped inside.

The banditos claimed to want to surrender but both he and Old Bill knew it was a trick. The three of them opened the door to make a run for it firing as they ran out. The resulting influx of air caused the cabin's interior to explode into flames as Beacon put a .223 round through the heart of the first one out the door a split second later Old Bill put a 30-30 round into the chest of the second who fell backwards into the last man. The last desperado was incinerated when the second outlaw fell back knocking him into the inferno.

It took hours for the fire to die down. After checking for anything salvageable among the ashes, aside from some ash covered cast iron pots and pans there wasn't much so they assessed their situation. There was plenty of canned food, guns, ammo and supplies cached in cool dry mini-bunkers all around the mountain, but there was no place left to live and winter was coming quick.

Sanctuary Settlement

They bought their way into the Sanctuary Settlement with the loan of the horses to the settlement for as long as they were there, a freshly killed doe and their good looks; specifically their mountain men appearance which promised a steady flow of venison. But the clincher had been the four cases of plastic solar powered sidewalk yard LED lights shaped like gray softball sized rocks from their trading caché.

Refused admittance to the corral until a group vote in the evening they'd placed two of the gray plastic globular plastic lights in the sun to charge while waiting for nightly meeting.

Summoned before the vetting panel they'd brought their own lights which outshone the group's candles. One man smacked himself on the forehead remembering the solar powered lights he'd left lining his own driveway as he'd bugged out in an overloaded motor home.

When Old Bill announced to the gathered group that they'd be trading the "Light Rocks" for a place to stay three families offered them quarters. Old Bill traded all four cases minus six they kept for themselves for a fifth wheel travel trailer near the gate. Keeping their truck for when "the troubles are over" the couple they'd bought the trailer from moved into the wife's parent's forty-five foot motor home and traded the Light Rocks to other members of the group.

In no time every household in the settlement had at least one Light Rock. Placing the solar powered LED lights in the sun to recharge their batteries every morning became a daily ritual for each household. When people wanted to turn out the lights in their trailer, camper or motor home they simply put a hat over the light or turned its light side down.

Old Bill had gutted the doe while they waited for admittance. He'd hung the corpse to cool and the next day showed some of the women of the settlement how to skin and butcher the deer. Many of the Settlement's women refused to even look at the hanging corpse. But he noticed they didn't seem to mind eating venison that night.

The Sanctuary Settlement had been organized by Maggie's parents, Sam and Virginia Chamberlain, who'd fled the city in a forty foot land yacht with their adult daughter Maggie and two sons; high school senor Bull, and twelve year old Buck. Maggie served as her parent's liaison officer, organizer and general straw boss. Her political prowess eclipsed her age and she was able to persuade people several times her age to do things they didn't really want to do.

The Chamberlains refused to fortify the corral or camp as they insisted on calling it. Saying they would share what they could with the less fortunate who might happen by. The Mountain men figured there'd be a bunch of those and kept quiet about their caches.

It wasn't long before the sanctuary had to stop sharing with outsiders. There were simply too many of them and even with Beacon's hunting, trapping and snaring; too little food to go around.

The Sanctuary Settlement's only concession to security was circling its thirty or so cars, campers, SUV's, vans, trailers and motor homes around an old twenty foot tall deer stand that stood near a spring in the middle of a large valley.

Much to the annoyance of others who stood watch in it Beacon knocked the top sections of the other three walls out of the box blind turning it into a true watchtower with a 360 degree view of the surrounding territory.

They claimed his modifications left them exposed to the wind. Which was true. The mountain men responded that the purpose of the watchtower was observation not comfort. Which was also true.

Beacon began taking the dusk to midnight shifts in the tower freeing up the other men to socialize in the evenings and most of them shut up.

Refugees coming up the trail from the lake told of a horde of outlaws wearing dark blue bandannas calling themselves "Blue Heads" who were pillaging to the south. Sam and Virginia refused to take any additional precautions saying such actions might be viewed as provocative.