Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

The door closed behind him with a loud click. Just inside the door was another door. To his left was a small window where an armed guard sat. The guard glanced through the window at the boy and the horse.

Andy asked, “Can that boy be trusted?”

The guard grunted: “Si, mi chico es de confiar.”

Andy saw a sign above that warned that weapons had to be checked: “Registrar Todas Las Armas Aqui. ?Sin Excepciones!” He let out a sigh, and muttered: “Okay, your house, your rules.” Under the watchful eye of the man, who was armed with an odd three-barreled antique shotgun, Andy made a show of slowly unholstering his SIG, ejecting its magazine, and clearing its chamber, locking the slide to the rear. He passed the pistol butt-first through the window and stuffed the magazine and loose cartridge into his front pocket. Then he handed the man both his CRKT tanto folding pocketknife and his Leatherman tool from his other pocket.

A second buzzer sounded, and Laine entered the main portion of the coin shop. He was surprised to see the shop was owned by a bald, wrinkled man in a wheelchair. The guard with the shotgun pivoted his stool and closely watched all that transpired.

The store was mainly lit by daylight from the windows, supplemented by some strings of white LED lights-the kind that he had previously seen used on Christmas trees. Andy surmised that the lights and door lock were solar- powered. Clever.

He asked the man in the wheelchair, “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, I do. Can I be of help to you?”

“I’d like to trade this Krugerrand for silver coins. I want to trade for whatever you think would be best for me to barter for food in my travel. Do you have some silver pesos, or maybe Onza de Plata coins? The condition is unimportant to me. My only concern is their silver content.” He handed the storekeeper the Krugerrand.

It made Andy smile when he saw the coin dealer repeat the same steps to verify the authenticity of the coin that he had seen demonstrated in Germany. Some tools of the trade, he realized, were universal.

The man looked up with a smile and declared: “I can give you forty-eight silver five-peso coins of before 1958 minting, in trade for this coin. I’m sure that you know, the five-peso coins from this time is 72 percent silver and has .6431 of the troy ounce of silver.”

Andy worked the math in his head. “Hmmm… how about fifty-five of those? That would be a more fair ratio.”

“The best I can do in the trade is fifty-two.”

Andy nodded and said: “That is acceptable to me, but only if you substitute ten one-peso silver coins instead of two of those five-peso coins.”

“Yes, I can include some of the smaller coins, but they will all be the 1957 silver one-peso Juarez. These are a very common minting but not much wear on them.”

“That is fine. We have a deal.” They shook hands.

The coin dealer counted out the coins in piles of five on a blue felt-covered tray. Andy confirmed the count. The coin dealer placed them in a small canvas sack that was printed: “First Community National Bank, Brownsville, Texas.” Seeing that sack made Andy grin. He was now feeling closer to the United States, and feeling anxious.

Andy wished the dealer well as he set aside a handful of one- and five-peso coins from the sack. This handful went loose into his pants pocket while the rest, in the canvas sack, went into his cargo pocket. After retrieving his knives and pistol, Andy reloaded and holstered the SIG. The guard gave Andy a friendly nod.

He was buzzed out the front door and found the boy standing there dutifully, still holding Prieto’s reins. Laine dug in his pocket and pulled out a silver one-peso coin. He handed it to the boy, and said, “Una moneda de plata, para ti. Gracias por su trabajito.”

The boy grinned, shouted “?Muchas gracias, senor!” and ran off, singing.

There was a pulperia just two blocks farther west. The grocery store was half open-air, with seven rough-hewn tables beneath latticework for shade. Two bored-looking teenage guards with ancient Mexican Mauser carbines stood watch. The grocery had a surprisingly good selection. Andy bought two large bags of beef jerky (carne seca), a dozen apples, five large carrots, eight cans of chili con carne, a dozen sun-dried Spanish mackerel, six cans of chicken noodle soup, eight Big Hunk candy bars, and a sack of hard tack that was the size of two loaves of bread. After a bit of dickering, a price of one and a half silver pesos was agreed. His change was a peso coin that had been cold-chiseled in half. After seeing the prices asked at the pulperia, it was now no wonder that the boy had been so excited to get the silver peso.

It took a while to pack all the groceries into the backpack and saddlebags. As he did, Andy fed Prieto a carrot that he chomped with gusto. He nosed at Andy, hoping for another, but Andy was saving those for the coming days.

His progress through the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche was slow. He did his best to avoid large towns, but he actually did veer toward some small villages. In each he would always ask, “?Saben si mas adelante hay bandidos en el camino?” (“Do you know if bandits await on the road ahead?”)

At the village of La Pita, he got an affirmative response. There, a potbellied man warned Andy that a bandit gang controlled the village of Mamantel, just a few miles beyond. He drew Laine a map, showing him a road that skirted around the west side of the village. Andy thanked the man for the warnings and handed him two silver pesos with the words “Gracias por su advertencia.”

Andy waited until after dark to make his circuitous route around Mamantel. The ride was nerve-wracking but uneventful except for a couple of barking dogs.

His journey northward through Mexico soon got into a rhythm. After twenty to twenty-five miles of riding, Andy would look for some woods or dense brush that would offer a secluded campground. He would scan in all directions, first with his eyes and then with his binoculars, to see if he was observed. If anyone was present, he’d let Prieto graze or he’d pick the horse’s hooves until the strangers had passed well out of his line of sight. He would then quietly lead Prieto into the woods, usually at least two hundred yards, or even farther when the woods weren’t dense. Camping alone caused Andy lots of anxiety. He was often afraid that he might be observed and followed.

Andy’s next shopping excursion was in the small city of Macuspana, in the state of Tabasco. The town was in a broad basin that was mostly agricultural, and he found a profusion of fresh produce at great prices. The thatched-roof Centro Mercado had plenty of flies, but the fruit and vegetables all looked fresh. The best bargain was a large sack of dried fish-enough to last Andy for more than a week. The sack was so large that Andy simply tied it to his saddle horn. Prieto snorted at it at first, but with some gentle correction from Andy, the horse left it alone.

Andy decided that it was best to work his way up the Gulf Coast, sticking to small roads. He had considered traveling a more westerly (and direct) route to New Mexico. But that would mean that water and the opportunities to buy food would be iffy, the terrain more rugged, and the grazing for his horse more uncertain. Traveling cautiously, he averaged only twenty miles per day. He skirted around the larger population centers like Minatitlan and Veracruz. He wanted to stay as far away from Mexico City as possible, since the city of 8.4 million residents was reportedly chaotic. Andy surmised that many of those problems must have been overflowing into its suburbs, and beyond.

On a Tuesday evening, Andy had a successful HF contact with Lars. He was thrilled to be able to use the call sign “4A/K5CLA”-with the “4A” prefix designating that he was transmitting from Mexico. The significance of the prefix was immediately apparent to Lars, but it had to be explained to Beth and Kaylee. As usual for his contacts, Andy gave Kaylee a weekly travelogue, letting her know the sights he had seen, how he was feeling, and, in this instance, a bit about Prieto’s eccentricities.

That same night Andy was awakened by a strange commotion. He soon realized that it was Prieto stomping a pygmy rattlesnake to death just a few feet from Andy’s head. Andy didn’t even bother crawling out of his bivy bag. He just ordered Prieto to back off with, “?Hacia! Hacia atras!” Then he unzipped the bivy bag, picked up the well-trodden snake carcass behind its head, and heaved it as far as he could out of the campground. He zipped the bag back up and said “Good night, Superhorse.”

As Andy passed north of Orizaba, the population density increased noticeably. There was more traffic on the roads, with a surprising number of motorcycles and mopeds. Some of the men looked unsavory. Andy had to be much more selective about where he camped. He was increasingly afraid that someone might see where he had