Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Marathon, Texas September, the Third Year

Andy’s journey through Texas and New Mexico went by in a blur. He often pushed Prieto fifty miles in a day. His stops were predicated upon increasingly infrequent sources of feed and water as he progressed into desert country. When riding in open country near Marathon, Texas, Andy saw a group of five men who were standing around two pickup trucks parked on the shoulder of the highway. Since there were no houses nearby, it seemed an odd place for them to be stopped. He didn’t like the feel of the situation. It smelled like an ambush. At a distance of eighty yards, he yanked the reins to the left and reinforced his intent by leaning leftward and applying pressure from his knee to urge Prieto into a tight turn, yelling, “?Andale!” His horse responded by breaking into a full gallop. Glancing over his shoulder, Andy could see one of the men raise a handgun, and two others shouldered M4 carbines.

The situation didn’t look good. There were just a few undulations in the ground-very little to provide good cover. Andy jabbed with his boot heels and alternated jerks on the reins, putting Prieto into some rapid serpentine turns. He could see a small rise about sixty yards ahead. It was no more than three or four feet high. There was no other cover in any direction. Andy grunted to himself, “This’ll have to do!”

He heard the crack of a rifle, followed by the distinctive snap of a bullet going past his ear. As he topped the rise, there was a tug at his sleeve as a bullet passed through. Andy reined Prieto to a halt at the base of the hill, which was thirty yards wide. He did his best to pommel off the saddle, even before Prieto came to a full halt in a cloud of dust. As he hit the ground, the AK jabbed painfully into his chest. There were several more rapid shots.

As he had practiced several times before, Laine ordered the horse down with a shout of “?Bajate!” and a firm tug downward on the reins. Prieto obediently knelt and rolled to the ground. Andy was startled to see one of the reins hanging loose in his hand; it had been shot in half. He dropped to the ground, holding the remaining rein, and tugged Prieto’s nose to the ground. The horse obligingly stayed on its side. The horse was still breathing hard and its nostrils were flaring. Andy lost sight of the men on the other side of the rise, but could still hear shots and bullets flying overhead. He extended the stock of the AK and flipped down its safety to the middle position. He crept slowly forward, low-crawling up the reverse slope of the rise. Once he could just see the tops of the men’s heads and the roofs of the pickup trucks, he lay prone and shouldered the rifle. He could hear Prieto’s heavy breaths behind him and hoped that the horse had the sense to remain prone. Laine took careful aim at a man armed with a rifle. He estimated the range was about 220 yards. He fought to control his breathing, paused, and slowly squeezed the trigger. The AK’s wire stock bucked against his shoulder. The man that he had aimed at went down hard. Seconds later the others also dropped to the ground, out of sight. Andy cradled the AK in his arms and slithered backward down the hillock. He crawled over to Prieto and whispered reassuring words. He took a moment to wrap the remaining rein twice around a large flat rock that was size of a bread loaf. Rubbing the horse’s chin consolingly, he said, “Stay down-quedate abajo, Prieto.”

He high-crawled five yards to his left and again crawled forward to near the crest of the hillock. He could see the pickups but could not see his attackers, who were concealed by some low scrub brush. Andy fired six times, aiming at the side and rear windows of the pickup trucks, doing his best to put the fear of God into the bandits. The windows disintegrated in showers of tempered glass chunks. Andy again backed off the hillock and swapped magazines, inserting a full one. Then he crawled behind Prieto ten yards to his right before gradually working his way back to near the crest of the hillock. He again found that he couldn’t see any of the bandits. There was no more shooting coming from them. He scanned intently. Then he spotted one of the men, armed with a pistol, crawling toward one of the pickups. Taking a deliberate aim, he shot the man twice through the chest.

He could indistinct shouts from the men in the distance. Then, more clearly, he heard, “?Ahora o nunca!” Andy echoed in a whisper, “That’s right, it’s now or never, and it’s you or me. This, boys and girls, is where we divide the quick from the dead.” Andy heard one of the pickup doors slam-on the far side. He caught a glimpse of someone dashing toward the other truck and fired three rounds rapidly before the man disappeared behind the pickup. He heard another truck door slam but couldn’t be sure which one. He could hear the engines being started. Andy began firing in a rapid tempo, concentrating on the driver’s-side doors of the pickups. The two pickup trucks lurched forward, kicking up dust, and they drove away quickly. He fired six more shots in rapid fire at the back windows of the pickups. He stopped shooting when they were four hundred yards away. In his excitement, he shouted, “Concealment is not cover, you dumb mothers!”

Andy crept back down the hill to assess his situation. He again switched the AK’s magazine, then checked himself and the horse for injuries. All that he found was a hole in the right sleeve of his shirt and the severed rein. He muttered, “Thank you, Lord.”

Andy again reassured the horse, patting his neck and repeating, “Superhorse. Excelente caballo. Superhorse.” He decided it was best to wait, just in case the bandits hadn’t all gotten away or the one that he’d shot had not yet bled out. After twenty minutes he pulled his binoculars out of his saddlebags, crept to the top of the hill once more, and spent a half hour with the binoculars, scanning the area where the trucks had been parked. He could see two bodies, one faceup and one facedown. Andy rose to a crouch and walked back to Prieto. He unwrapped the rein from around the rock. Without any urging, the horse stood up and shook off some dust. He led the horse fifty yards farther away to a substantial mesquite bush and tied on the rein.

Laine turned and walked in a wide semicircle, stopping frequently to look through the binoculars. He paused at seventy-five yards, knelt, and shot the two men once more each, both in the head. He then cautiously approached the bodies. He found that they were both black-haired Mexicans in their twenties. One of them wore a fancy black silk shirt and black jeans. The other was in faded blue jeans and a plaid shirt. A Browning Hi-Power pistol lay on the ground next to the hand of the one in the black shirt. There was no gun near the other body, but there were at least eight pieces of fired 5.56mm brass. It was obvious that one of his partners had taken the fallen man’s M4.

Andy carefully examined where the trucks had been parked. There was a lot of blood on the ground, and chunks of broken grass. Then he walked back and more closely examined the two bodies, rolling them over and patting them down. All that he found in their pockets were a loaded thirty-round M16 magazine, two loaded Hi- Power magazines, and a Chinese pocketknife with a broken tip.

Andy pocketed the magazines and then picked up the Hi-Power pistol. He found that there were only three cartridges left in the magazine. He reloaded the gun with one of the full magazines and thumbed up its safety lever. Returning to the horse, he put his binoculars, the captured pistol, and the extra magazines in his saddlebag. He took a minute to redistribute the ammunition and magazines, putting a full magazine in the AK and three full magazines back into his belt pouch.

Before he left, he searched the ground behind the hillock and found the three-foot length of horse rein that had been shot off. He tied it on, rejoining the break with a square knot. “I’ll have to stitch that,” he said to himself. His throat felt parched, and he took a long draw of water from his canteen, taking down nearly half a quart. Finally, he eased himself up into the saddle.

He turned to ride south on the pavement for a half mile, then cut northeast across the desert. His plan was to take a wide roundabout, just in case the bandits were waiting in ambush farther north on the highway. This wide detour cost Andy a full day of riding.

After the excitement near Marathon, the rest of Andy’s ride seemed mundane. Many of the locals were wary. They talked a lot about recent Mexican gang attacks and desperate looters from El Paso. “Watch out for the narcotraficantes,” they warned. Only a few people were willing to trade silver for food. One man even wanted to charge Andy just for letting his horse use his watering trough. Clearly, West Texas was not the land of plenty. But near Valentine, Texas, Andy was able to trade the captured full M16 magazine for nearly a week’s worth of food that included some ground cornmeal fried into bread balls, called dodgers. It was the first time that he’d ever seen or eaten them, but he had heard Kaylee talk about them.

Laine pressed on, noticing that the summer weather was abating. The nights were getting chilly. Approaching the New Mexico state line, he made a wide arc to avoid El Paso. He was jubilant when he was able to turn due north. He paralleled Highway 25, staying away from cities as much as possible. Trees were infrequent and even brushy patches became sparse, so he often had to camp more than a mile from the nearest road to avoid detection. He heard a lot of gunfire as he passed by Socorro. He cut west at Los Lunas to avoid the population in the vicinity of Albuquerque. Highway 550 would take him directly to Farmington.

His next Tuesday night radio contact was unsuccessful. Andy concluded that he failed because he was inside of the HF skip zone. This is the zone that is beyond line of sight (which is limited to about forty-five miles because