He also knew that the world was going straight to hell. The Delta Desert Patriots ran their own ham radio repeater, and reports were coming to him outside the control of the Feds and the American oligarchy.
Los Angeles burned, as well as all the rest of the big cities in California. As of this morning, racial tensions had also erupted in the big, rotted-out cities of dying America: Detroit, Chicago, New York City, and Washington D.C. Most of Utah had gone dark, probably because the railroads weren’t moving enough coal to cover Utah power plants. With only natural gas power, Utah couldn’t feed the million air conditioners that flipped on the instant power resumed.
Like an old truck with a bad carburetor, the stock market kept firing up, then getting shut down by the bureaucrats as soon as the Wall Street corporate thieves started selling everything they could. In the last three days, the stock market had spent a grand total of twenty-three minutes up and running.
God only knew what was happening with that bomb over in the sandbox. Short-wave information came through a lot thinner about stuff happening worldwide. The few tidbits they had picked up made it sound like World War III was heating up; Russians, Turks, Iranians, Egyptians, and probably Americans were squaring off, and Dale couldn’t even begin to understand who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Considering the nuke that had hit Los Angeles, Dale figured the whole shebang was just another false flag operation launched by the Soros/Clinton oligarchs trying to gain control of the world.
It all boiled down to this: the world was going to hell, and the only thing that really mattered was home and family.
If Dale let those trucks into Delta, it wasn’t going to change a damned thing. His boys from the plant told him the Intermountain plant wasn’t going to fire back up again, even if they refilled the coal field to overflowing. There were bigger problems in the world than one broken power plant.
More than half of the plant’s staff hadn’t shown up that morning. There were strict policies handed down from the muckety-mucks in California that dictated when the plant could run and when it couldn’t.
The list of “Turbine Spin-up Critical Personnel” included a bunch of engineers, as well as safety monitors, environmental oversight folks and even union monitors. Every single one of those positions had to be staffed before the turbines could turn. All of those positions had back-ups and redundancies, but with half the staff unable to get to work because of road blockages or because they were scared, there was no way in hell that list of critical personnel was getting filled.
Even if Dale let the coal pass, it wasn’t going to matter. He would be allowing strangers into Delta at the worst possible time. He couldn’t save California even if he wanted to, but he could save Delta.
Reynolds Residence
Oakwood, Utah
Tom and Jacquelyn Reynolds had always been true-blue preppers. Being a prepper didn’t mark a person as a freak in Utah, like in many areas of the United States. Thanks to rural living and the Mormon Church, Utah had been chock-full of preppers since Brigham Young fought off the United States Army in the 1850s.
Neither Jacquelyn nor Tom considered themselves Mormon, but both their names appeared on the rolls of the Mormon Church because they had been baptized by their parents when they were eight years old. Jack-Mormons though they were, both inadvertently carried on the pioneer and anti-government sensibilities of Brigham Young, the second Mormon prophet. Pretty much the entire state, outside the urbane neighborhood surrounding the University of Utah, felt the same way.
In 1857, Brigham Young had received word that the United States Army was coming to kick his ass. The Mormons had been practicing polygamy in Utah for decades, much to the chagrin of the rest of America. Also, the threat of rebellion within the U.S. had become a hot topic for President Buchanan, with the southern states teetering on the brink of pre-Civil War secession. Smacking down the Mormons would provide an inexpensive object lesson in the realities of rebelling against the United States government. So Buchanan sent troops to Utah to bring Brigham Young to heel.
But no one on either side relished the thought of a shooting war. Over the next two years, the clever Mormons leveraged their courage and craftiness to harry the approaching troops—running off the Army mules, starving their pack animals, and eventually wearing them down without ever firing a shot. The Mormons won the conflict by stalling and by letting the harsh Rocky Mountain winter erode the Army’s resolve.
The distrust of government had lingered in Utah, even as the memory of the “Utah War” faded. Tom and Jacquelyn hewed to the conventional prepper rhetoric: constitutionalism, local governance, and individualism should stand iron-clad. They would have made Brigham Young proud.
But the couple wanted nothing to do with either Mormonism nor the Christian faith that inspired many preppers. The “prepper movement,” post-Y2K, had split into two factions: those who saw the Apocalypse as an act of divine retribution and those who saw the Apocalypse as a result of bad government. Both sides of prepperdom were companionable enough. They simply arrived at their belief in the Apocalypse from two different angles.
Now that the Apocalypse was upon them, Tom and Jacquelyn didn’t waste time arguing why. Instead, they executed on their plan. They set to work packing the old Chevy truck Tom had restored and got ready to head up to the Ross Homestead.
As Tom cleared out his gun safe, Jacquelyn sat down beside him at his reloading bench. She wanted to talk. Tom wanted to keep working. After twelve years of marriage, they had figured out this dance. She started by perching herself on his bench, wooing him with her short-cut hair and almond eyes. Tom stopped what he was doing.
“I’m worried about my clients,” Jacquelyn began. She worked as an “LMHC,” or Licensed Mental Health Counselor. She had finished her advanced degree two years back when their youngest child went into first grade. She now managed a small client load of twenty people in need of talk therapy, mostly adult women.
Tom knew better than to wade in with solutions this early in the conversation. “How so?”
“How can I just dump them and head to Jason and Jenna’s compound? My clients are going to need me now more than ever.”
Tom made a “hmmm” sound and waited.
“And what about our families? Laura’s in Galveston and they’re not prepared for this.” They both knew that Tom couldn’t do anything about his own family. They had parted ways many years back. But Jacquelyn and her sister were close.
“Jacquelyn,” Tom said. She hated it when people called her “Jackie.” As was often his role, Tom spoke the hard truths they both were thinking. “We knew it would come to this someday and we did everything we could to educate our friends and family. With all we’ve done to support the Homestead over the years, we can request that Laura and Paul be allowed into the community. But they’ll never make it to Salt Lake in time. They probably wouldn’t even agree to come. They’re pretty stubborn about how much they trust the government. Right?”
Jacquelyn sighed heavily, knowing he was right.
“And about your clients… There is not one damned thing you can do. It would have been unprofessional if you’d tried to get them to prepare.”
“I know.” She slumped. “Of course, you’re right. But I’m worried for them.”
“Sure. That’s who you are, but our kids are top priority now.”
She sighed again, getting up off the stool. Tom continued, “That means getting out of here before things get too dangerous in the valley.”
“All right. I’m on it. Thanks for listening.” She grabbed the list the Homestead had sent them. They needed to pack their food storage, guns, medicine, clothing and a hundred little things easily forgotten. The list went on for three tightly packed pages, but the task wasn’t overwhelming. Tom and Jacquelyn had gone over the list half-a-dozen times during their marriage and a lot of the stuff on the list was pre-packed and ready in black plastic totes.