from some nerve damage in his left arm, he was nearly as strong and limber as he had been before the ambush. But if it were not for his faith in God and the presence of his wife and his daughter, he had doubts that he would have ever recovered mentally.
4. Fujian Tulou
Moving to the ranch had been his wife Lisbeth’s idea. Laine had inherited the ranch two miles east of Bloomfield, New Mexico, from his father, Robie Laine, a retired lieutenant colonel. The elder Laine had spent the last four years of his life as a widower. He had died unexpectedly of a heart attack when Lars was attending the Civil Affairs Officer’s Basic Course and while Andy was still in high school. After Robie Laine’s death, the ranch had been leased out for several years to Tim Rankin, a part-time horse trainer and a full-time alcoholic. Meanwhile, as the beneficiaries of Robie Laine’s $600,000 life insurance policy, his two sons finished their educations and started their own Army careers.
The ranch was in the Four Corners region, where the state lines of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. Beth thought that the activity of running the ranch would occupy Lars and lift his spirits. As it turned out, moving there was the best choice that they could have ever made.
The property was a twenty-acre ranchette that sat just above the south bank of the San Juan River, with a slightly run-down house that had been built in the 1960s. The place had a solid barn, a bunkhouse, a hay barn, a shop building that was built in the 1980s, and a couple of small outbuildings. It was on Road 4990, commonly called the Refinery Road, which paralleled the San Juan River east from Bloomfield. After passing by the refinery, the doglegged road traversed dozens of ranches and hay farms. Lars and Beth moved to the ranch just six months before the Crunch.
In the October following their move to Bloomfield, when he heard that the Dow Jones average had slumped its first 2,000 points, Lars shifted his attention away from fixing up the ranch, to stocking up for what was sure to be a cataclysmic Second Great Depression. Lars and Beth realized that they were, as he put it, way behind the power curve. They made multiple trips to the local Target store and Sam’s Club.
To fund some of their storage food purchases, they asked Andy’s fiancee, Kaylee Schmidt, to rent a room from them. She was self-employed, working at home, and doing substitute teacher scheduling for the San Antonio School District. Her manager was agreeable to the move, so long as she provided her own telephone. With a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone service, she had unlimited calling. Her work transition to Bloomfield went smoothly, but ironically, she was only there for three weeks before the phones went dead and the Internet disintegrated into a few isolated autonomous networks. Since she was firmly engaged to marry Andy, Lars and Beth made it clear that Kaylee was welcome to stay with them indefinitely, even if she couldn’t find work.
Kaylee was of German extraction and grew up near New Braunfels, Texas. She spoke the local German dialect, called “Texas German,” although not as fluently as her parents. She had strong features, dark hair, and a trim figure. Kaylee was twenty-five years old when the Crunch began. She had just recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Texas A&M University. She met Andy during her senior year of college while attending a Christian concert at Victory Church in College Station, Texas. She had dated several members of the Corps of Cadets while at Texas A&M, but had never met a young Christian man who she considered marriage material until she met Andy. They immediately fell in love. But unfortunately Andy was just on a brief stint at Fort Hood, between overseas deployments. They were fated to a long-distance relationship.
One evening, as Lars, Beth, and Kaylee were reorganizing the pantry to make room for their new supplies, Lars mentioned, “My dad was pretty smart. He picked a town out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got agriculture, and its got huge natural-gas fields and some oil wells. He once told me that he picked Bloomfield because it would be a safe place to be, ‘if and when the stuff hits the fan.’ You remember all those right-wing economic newsletters and the Tea Party things he subscribed to-Ron Paul, and all that?”
Beth nodded and said, “Yeah, he always struck me as a bit batty. All of his ‘I don’t trust paper money’ talk. But I gotta admit, it turned out he was right.”
“Well, at least Dad converted Andy and me into goldbugs. If it weren’t for that, we’d be in the same boat as most other folks, with 401(k)s that have turned into ‘Point-01(k)s.’” Lars adjusted the Velcro strap on his prosthetic-something he often did out of habit more than because of discomfort-and went on:
“Anyway, I figure the best place to ride this out is here in the Four Corners. Not a lot of rain or snow, but at least if the main grids go down, there will probably still be power here-since there is local generation-and some agriculture. Most everywhere else in the country will be SOL, but around here we’ve got natural gas, and drip oil, so we can still pump water from the rivers and up out of the aquifer. My dad specially picked this ranch since it is flood-irrigated from the Hammond Irrigation District ditch. Dad even pulled a sneaky and put in a water line to the house up at the ditch head gate, just in case of a power failure. That provides just enough water pressure, although the shower is a bit weak.”
He added, “There are a lot of orchards around, especially west of here, downriver. They grow apples, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, nectarines, and cherries. And they dry prunes and make cider. And everybody and his uncle around here cuts hay-”
Lars was interrupted by the phone ringing. He snatched it up, and answered automatically: “Laine.” Out of habit, he felt like he should add, “This is an unsecure line. How can I help you?”
“Hey, it’s me. How are things going?” Andy asked, his voice sounding remarkably crisp for someone practically on the back side of the globe.
Lars replied, “We’re still not mission ready on logistics, but we’re catching up as best we can. A lot of things are sold out. How about you?”
