Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

ducked into the forest and attack him.

He often heard bursts of gunfire in the distance. These shots were too rapid to be just hunters. Obviously there was a big crime problem in the area, and it was being stamped out ballistically.

Near Zempoala, Andy had an amazing conversation with a local teenage boy who spoke good English. The boy was armed with a pump-action .22 rifle slung on his back with a length of white clothesline cord. Andy commented to him about how peaceful things seemed on the coast. The teenager explained, “That’s because it’s open season on los canibales de la ciudad. When anyone sees them, they just shoot them. Then we burn or bury the bodies, so their friends don’t come and eat them. It’s all like something from a zombie movie.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke, senor. There have been hundreds from Mexico City and even some from Xalapa that we’ve had to kill. If you are ever seeing strangers with knives or machetes, and they have the bloodstained clothes, and that look in their eyes, you don’t ask questions. Do not hesitate. You just shoot them.”

“What look in their eyes?” Laine asked.

“That look. The animal look. You know it when you see it. After the first time, you recognize it inmediatamente.”

The boy’s comments made Andy shudder. Laine was dubious about what he’d been told until he heard it corroborated by a policeman in the next town. This made him anxious to get as far away from Mexico City as he could, as quickly as possible.

33. Avtomat Kalashnikov

“Anything that is complex is not useful and anything that is useful is simple. This has been my whole life’s motto.”

— Mikhail Timofeyevitch Kalashnikov

Prieto seemed healthy, and his hooves stayed in good condition. Other than mosquito bites, sand flea bites, and sunburn, Andy was also healthy. After he had gained his saddle muscles, the long days on horseback became more bearable.

After skirting Veracruz, Laine hugged the coast. In a few stretches with hard sand, he rode Prieto right on the beach, finding it less stressful than constantly looking over his shoulder, as he did when riding on the shoulder of the road. Occasionally, when the surf was light, he’d let Prieto walk in the shallow waves as they lapped up the beach. The horse liked having his hooves in the water. The beautiful scenery was distracting and Andy had to try to keep focused at all times. He had to fight to keep himself in at least a “Condition Yellow” frame of mind. As he rode down the beach, he would sing to himself and to Prieto. He often sang Jimmy Driftwood’s bluegrass song “Tennessee Stud” and snippets of Mexican folk songs that he’d picked up. And whenever Prieto broke into a gallop in the shallow surf, he shouted repeatedly, “I’m coming home, Kaylee, I’m coming home!”

The stretch of coast between the towns of Zempoala and Vega de Alatorre had an “Old Mexico” feel to it, and the locals were friendly. Many of them seemed curious about Andy and his horse. There were fewer horses, mules, and donkeys in this region than he’d seen inland, so young children would often run toward Prieto gleefully, wanting to see and touch “el caballo grande.” Prieto seemed to put up with it well. But once he snatched a straw sombrero off a boy’s head and started chewing it before Laine could stop him. Andy apologized for “mi caballo travieso” and gave the boy a silver peso coin. The boys ran off, carrying the mangled hat and the coin, shouting and laughing. Andy was surprised to have the boy’s mother return a few minutes later, with three quarters of the coin. One quarter of it had been neatly chiseled out, explaining, “You have paid of my son too much for his sombrero.”

As he moved up the coast, Laine’s diet shifted toward bananas, coconuts, and dried fish. There were so many coconuts available free for the taking that he cracked open several extra ones each day. After drinking their milk, he scraped out the insides with his pocketknife and gave the pulpy coconut meat to Prieto, who licked it up eagerly.

Not wanting to make a wide detour around some lakes, Andy opted to ride directly through the city of Tampico. Knowing that it would be a full day’s ride to get through Tampico and the many small towns clustered to the north of it, Andy decided to camp earlier than usual. He let Prieto graze an extra long time in a meadow that was a comfortable four hundred yards from the highway. Later, as he set up his camp in the middle of a large grove of coconut trees, Andy remembered an old Stan Kenton big-band tune that he had heard as a child, played on one of his Grandmother Bardgard’s 78 rpm records. It was called “Tampico.” He sang quietly to himself:

Ay, Tampico, Tampico, on the Gulf of Me-hico
Tampico, Tampico, down in Me-hico
You buy a beautiful shawl
A souvenir for Aunt Flo
Authentic Mexican yarn
Made in Idaho, Ohhh…

Hearing Laine singing, Prieto gave him a snort. Andy chided the horse to be quiet: “Callate, Prieto. No resopla.” Andy carried on, but just humming, since he couldn’t recall the rest of the song’s lyrics.

The ride through Tampico the next day was unnerving. By ten a.m. the temperature was already in the nineties. As near as Andy could tell, several gangs controlled the city and the surrounding towns. He saw, individually and in pairs, a few men armed with a diverse assortment of AKs, bolt-action rifles, HK G3s, M16s, M4s, and pump-action shotguns. A few of them had neck tattoos that reminded him of the Guatemalans who had robbed him. This made Andy very nervous. Fortunately, none of the men ever tried to intercept his horse.

Several times while he was riding through Tampico, boys on bicycles would ride up next to Andy and ask one-word color questions, like “?Rojo?” “?Azul?” “?Negro?” At first, Andy didn’t understand them, and shrugged in response. Then he came to realize that they were asking Andy about his gang affiliation. He decided to bluff them by shouting, “El fortisimo. Vayanse, chiquillos!” (“The strongest. Go away, kids!”)

Andy didn’t start to relax that day until he had ridden north of the town of Ricardo Flores Magon, late in the afternoon. He was happy to be away from the Tampico gangland. After passing through several coffee plantations, Laine camped that night in a dense grove of trees a hundred yards up from a river. The hillside was steeper than he liked, but all of the level ground in the area had long since been cleared of trees. The moon was starting to wane but was still nearly full. Andy drifted off to sleep, stuffed full of wild bananas.

He was awakened by a snort from Prieto. Laine sat halfway up in his bivy bag and listened. He could hear something moving through the undergrowth, twenty yards downhill from his camp. In the moonlight Andy could see Prieto standing just ten feet away, with his nose pointing downhill. The horse’s ears were alternating between being perked up and laid back. He was obviously wary about something. Andy’s first thought was that it might be a jaguar. Then Andy heard a cough-a human cough. Laine slowly unzipped his bivy bag’s “no-see-um” netting and pointed his SIG pistol in the direction where he’d heard the noises. Only his head and forearms protruded from the bag. Realizing that making any sound could prove fatal, he decided not to move. He couldn’t further extricate himself from the bag without making noise. Listening intently, he could identify the sounds of two people walking up the hill.

Soon Andy could see that two figures were climbing the hill, coming directly toward Prieto. As they climbed up closer, Andy began to see some details. Both were muscular young men. Both were shaved bald-headed. One of