Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

ravaged city in the eastern United States.

It was while he was at Rhein-Main that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) announced that all commercial flights to the United States had been suspended. Kaylee’s e-mails then took on a frantic tone. In one, she wrote:

Andy:

GET HOME, SOON, DARLING!!! Ship yourself in a big Fed-Ex box if you have to! I am SOOOOO worried about you. I can’t sleep, thinking about this travel mess.

XXOOXX

– Kaylee

Although he was just as concerned as Kaylee, Andy tried to make his replies as upbeat as possible. In one of his last e-mails before checking out of the BOQ, he wrote:

Subject: Re:RE: [U] Outprocessing & Travel Home!

From: Laine Andrew CPT 2SCR (FWD)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

My Darling Kaylee:

I cannot wait to hold you in my arms. Please remain prayerful, and do not worry. All that worrying doesn’t accomplish anything.

Read Philippians 4:6-7 and Psalm 46 and write them on your heart.

The commercial flights may have stopped, but there are still a few MAC flights. I also talked with a gal at the Military Travel Office, and she said that there are still flights going back and forth between Madrid and Mexico City. I will take a bus home from Mexico, if need be!!! Or I’ll get a flight to Havana and rent a row-boat. I mean it. I WILL get home. Trust in the LORD. I’ll get home, Deo Volente, but remember that we are on God’s timetable.

You are in my Constant Thoughts and Prayers,

With My Love,

Andy

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

If this e-mail is marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY it may be exempt from mandatory disclosure under FOIA. DoD 5400.7R, “DoD Freedom of Information Act Program,” DoD Directive 5230.9, “Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release,” and DoD Instruction 5230.29, “Security and Policy Review of DoD Information for Public Release” apply.

While waiting for his flight to Ramstein, Andy discovered that all of the ATMs on base were shut down. He also learned that the BX, commissary, and NAAFI store were all operating on a cash-only basis, with no checks, credit cards, EC Cards, or debit cards accepted. Only the Burger King was still taking credit cards, and because of this, it was deluged with customers.

The second evening that he was stranded, Andy stopped at the Burger King and ordered a Whopper Combo and a beer. The cashier said, “That will be ninety-six dollars, please.” Pulling out his VISA card, Laine muttered “That’s highway robbery.” A faceless voice behind him said, “Get used to it. It will be closer to two hundred bucks tomorrow.” He turned to see an Air Force major, dressed in an olive drab nomex flight suit, with his blue “p-cutter” cap tucked into one of his leg pockets. In a more distinct voice Laine replied, “Signs of the times, I suppose.”

Rio Arriba Youth Center, Gallina, New Mexico October, the First Year

Shadrach Phelps sat on his bunk in the Rio Arriba Youth Center dormitory, looking glum. He was seventeen, but the other two boys were both only sixteen, so that made him the leader. He summed up the situation to them succinctly, “Basically, we’re screwed.”

As the Crunch set in, the boys had been warned that their days at the center were numbered. The school was about to be shut down. The Rio Arriba Youth Center was originally established in the 1940s as The Phelps School for Orphan Boys. It was sixty miles north of Albuquerque, on the edge of the Santa Fe National Forest, just north of the town of Gallina. Donations from churches had dwindled, so both the staff and the number of boys had been pared down substantially since their peaks in the early 1970s. When the Crunch started, there were just nineteen boys and three resident staff members remaining at the sprawling 160-acre center.

The orphans were given a sound education and taught the value of hard work-plenty of hard work. The center included eighty acres of irrigated hay fields, which provided some cash income for the school. It had two dormitories (one of them shuttered in the late 1980s), a classroom and multipurpose building, three staff residence buildings (one of which was unoccupied), a stable, and two large hay barns.

Shadrach Phelps was lanky, and dark-skinned-undoubtedly with at least half African-American blood-but his facial features showed some other, unidentified heritage. Like the other infants that had come to the orphanage without a name, he had been given the surname Phelps in honor of the school’s benefactor, a wealthy widow from Santa Fe. She had passed away in 1962. After her death, the school was supported by church donations from fifteen different churches in New Mexico and West Texas, and the annual sale of hay. The Rio Arriba County road department sporadically filled the school’s walk-in freezer with roadkill deer. All of the boys grew up accustomed to eating venison and learned how to field dress and butcher deer as taught by Diego Aguilar, who served as cook, wrangler, haying boss, and jack of all trades for the center.

Following the announcement of a school budget crisis and the planned closing of the school, fifteen of the nineteen boys had been claimed by family members. As they packed up and left, the remaining boys without any known relatives began to despair. The departures left just Aaron Phelps, who was the headmaster’s favorite student, and the trio of Shad, Reuben, and Matthew. The headmaster made it clear that he would be adopting Aaron, but his stony silence about the other boys was devastating. The evening after Aaron moved into the headmaster’s house, Shad, Reuben, and Matthew gathered to pray and talk.

“The way I see it, everyone’s going to be starving here, inside a few weeks. The deer hunting has gone straight to la mierda since the mountain lion population explosion. And even if they wanted to grow row crops here instead of hay, the irrigation water will go away if the power goes out. This country is going back to a big desert, especially in the lower elevations.”

Reuben chimed in, “Diego says the grid will probably collapse in a few weeks.”

A voice from the hallway startled the boys, “That’s right, it’s going be a cold and hungry winter.” It was Diego Aguilar. Diego walked into the room and sat down on a wooden chair that faced the bunk beds where the boys sat. He folded his hands across his potbelly.

“You Phelps boys are, as they say, ‘in an unenviable position.’ You’ve got no familia. You are maybe just old enough to do a man’s job, but there are no jobs anyhow. You can maybe go beg for a place to stay, maybe with one of the churches that still send the support money. Or maybe you could ask for a job and bed and board on one of the reservations-”

Matthew interrupted. “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got a real last name. But we’re Indians who don’t even know what tribe we belong to! I was a baby that got left in a fruit box on the doorstep of the Lutheran church in Rio Rancho. All that they knew was my first name. ‘Please take good care of Matthew.’ That was all that the note said. Not even signed.”

Aguilar eyed the boys. Reuben Phelps and Matthew were obviously both American Indians, with round, fairly indistinct facial features that did not give a hint of a tribal connection. Hopi? Navajo? Zia? Mescalero? Probably not Apache.

The old Mexican said, “I’m sorry, you’re right. Forget the reservations. They’re practically starving there already. They been taking government handouts for too long.”

After a pause, Aguilar went on, “I talked with the headmaster. He says you are each welcome to take two good saddle-broke horses. Two apiece. I’ll get you all tacked up-each with one vaquero saddle and one pack saddle. The sleeping bags we got here are all cheapies, so you’ll each get two of them. That way you can put one inside the other so you can sleep warm.”

The boys looked at each other nervously and then turned toward Aguilar.