CHAPTER 2
Old Friends
“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
The morning following the arrival of Dan and T.K., there was still no sign of Ken and Terry Layton, the last of the group members still in Illinois. Dan said that he was beginning to wonder if they would ever arrive. When Mary voiced the same concern to Todd, he smiled and declared, “Don’t worry, if I know them, they’ll get here even if they have to cover the whole distance in three-to-five second rushes.”
After his conversation with Mary, Todd went to see Mike, who was inventorying his equipment in his wall lockers in the Grays’ basement. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Todd told Mike, “It would be wise to start a round-the-clock guard mount, starting this morning. I’d like you to work up a duty schedule. We’ll use that sked until Ken and Terry arrive, then we’ll set a permanent watch.”
Mike raised an eyebrow and asked, “So you really think that they’ll make it here?You know, if they had a chance to make it out in a car, they’d be here by now. They could be on foot by now, or worse. You saw how Dan’s rig got shot up. That’s pretty strong evidence that we’re in a world of hurt.”
Todd gave Mike Nelson a glum look. “I know Mike, I know. At this point, though, all we can do is hope and pray. Care to join me?” They kneeled and bowed their heads. They prayed aloud, each beseeching protection and travel mercies for the Laytons.
Later that morning, Todd called for a formal debriefing of the Nelsons, Dan, and T.K. Everyone got together in the living room of the house, with the exception of Mary, who was up at the hillside listening post/observation post (LP/OP).
“The drive itself was a piece of cake, really,” Mike began. “Like I told Todd before, the hardest part was loading up all of our gear. We spent half a day putting everything into three heaps: ‘Essentials,’ ‘Second Priority,’ and ‘Nice to Have.’
“We thought that we had pre-positioned most of our gear here at the retreat, but once we started setting out everything that we still had at our house, we realized that we had seriously underestimated the weight and volume.”
Lisa interjected, “I suppose that we should have done a practice load-up a long time ago. It would have made our underestimation immediately apparent, and prevented having to consciously think through what we absolutely needed to take. Anyway, after prioritizing, we started loading. The guns got packed first. Then all of our ammo. Then our ALICE packs. Then twelve five-gallon gas cans. Those went on the rack on the tailgate and just inside it, so we could refuel without having to unload anything to get to the cans.
“Next we loaded our ‘tactical’ food supplies—you know—the MREs and various freeze-dried and retort packaged stuff. We are thankful that we brought most of our MREs here last year. Otherwise, we would have had to leave them behind. This got us through the ‘Essentials’ pile. The real headaches came with the ‘Second Priority’ pile: clothing, bulk foods, field gear, most of our medical supplies, the hand crank generator, and so on. We just didn’t have room to fit it all in, even with both the Bronco and the Mustang. I considered trying to get a rental trailer, but I figured that by then they’d all be long gone.
“The end result was that we had to leave behind half of our wheat, our generator, our kerosene lamps, all of our cans of kerosene, and half of our survival reference books. Before we took off, I left the extra gear along with a goodbye note on our next door neighbor’s back porch. I figured that there was no use in having them go to waste. Besides, I knew that we wouldn’t have the opportunity to come back for another load. The only thing that we took from the ‘Nice to Have’ pile was my old family Geneva Bible. It has been through floods, tornadoes, you name it. I’m glad it’s with us.”
“By the time we got everything packed, it was three a.m. We were going to coordinate, but the phone was dead. As it turned out, leaving in the middle of the night worked out for the best. There was not much traffic. Even still, we saw quite a few cars and pickups towing trailers. Mike drove ahead of me. We talked to each other on the CB. We didn’t chatter. It was just the occasional ‘slow down!’ or ‘watch out for this truck that’s coming up to pass!’ We had the CBs set to channel 27, upper sideband—the Get Out Of Dodge (G.O.O.D.) frequency—so Mike occasionally tried to reach the Laytons, or Dan or T.K., in case they were monitoring, but they either weren’t listening or were out of range. I was really nervous the whole way. I had the doors locked and kept my Colt Gold Cup tucked under my thigh on the seat of the car.”
Mike continued, “We didn’t want to use up any more of the gas in cans than we had to, so we stopped several times to fill up. One station was charging sixty-five dollars per gallon for all grades of fuel.”
Lisa interjected, “That was the station where we met this guy and his family stranded in their minivan. Because the gas station had started to refuse checks and credit cards the day before, they wouldn’t even accept their own franchise card. This guy had every credit card in the world—American Express,VISA, you name it—but only eighteen dollars in cash. Just as the guy was taking off his fancy gold wristwatch to offer the station manager in exchange for a tank of gas, Mike walks up to him and hands him nine one-hundred-dollar bills. He thanked him and offered to send the money back later. Mike said to him ‘No prob, keep it fella. Besides, by the time you’d get a chance to mail me the money, people will be kindling their fires with fifties, and wiping their behinds with hundreds.’”
Mike concluded, “Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we got here, and saw no serious disorder along the way. But, as Lisa told you, there were a lot of determined-looking people with very heavily loaded vehicles on the road.”
Dan and T.K.’s debriefing was next. T.K. began, “I was listening to my Cobra CB base station, set to the primary G.O.O.D. frequency, as I was packing up. All of a sudden, I heard this voice saying:‘Dude, are we getting out of here or what?’ It was the Fong-man. Boy, I was glad to hear him. I ‘rogered’ back, and he told me that he was all packed up and ready to go. I said,‘Great, come on over and help me load up.’ He showed up in about ten minutes. As it turned out, he was on ‘security’ while I packed. I made sure that I had a gun handy throughout the process as well. I had my Colt Commander cocked and locked in the inside pocket of that flyer’s jacket I bought last year.
“Basically, I packed while Dan sat in the cab of his Toyota, holding his old Model ’97 trench gun. I asked him why he wasn’t carrying his Remington 870. He says, ‘This gun is much more ominous….’ Then he whips out this bayonet about a mile long and snaps it on. ‘This oughta make any hungry neighbors think twice,’ he says. By the time I was done loading up, it was nearly midnight. I brought all I could think of, and got the old Bronco pretty well loaded down. Luckily, I just made a caching trip out here last summer, so I didn’t have to leave much behind that I would have wanted aside for some books and bed linens. When we took off, Dan was in the lead.”
Dan stood up and continued, “I started packing up a day before Tom. I couldn’t figure which of my guns to bring along, so I said to myself, ‘Aw shucks, I’ll just take all of them.’ Most of the guns are still wrapped up in blankets at the bottom of everything else in the back end of the Fong-mobile—all twenty-nine of them.