Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Then he looked down at the bike’s pannier and trailer and asked, “Alles fur mich?” He set the bicycle’s kickstand and then closed the knife and put it in his pocket. The third man loosened his grasp on the handlebars and began to walk around to Andy’s side of the bike.

Laine took two more steps backward. Then, in one smooth motion, he pulled back his jacket, drew the SIG pistol, leveled it, and took up the slack on its trigger. He took yet another two steps backward.

He commanded them to leave: “Haut ab! Verschwindet!”

The skinhead in the Bundeswehr jacket shook his head and hissed, “Nein, Pilgergeiger. Deine Pistole ist nicht echt!” (No, Pilgrim fiddler, your pistol is not real.”)

“Sorry, boys, but it’s echt. Now, verschwindet, macht schnell und zwar schnell!”

The one that had used the tree branch pulled it from the spokes, raised it over his head, and shouted “Lugner!” He took a step forward.

Andy aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger twice. The second shot hit the tree branch, ripping it from the man’s hand. He looked startled. The one in Flecktarn shouted, “Lass uns gehen!” All three of the skinheads ran off into the woods, shouting and cursing loudly.

After seeing them top a hillock seventy-five yards away, still running at full speed, Andy thumbed the SIG’s de-cocking lever. He switched magazines with one of the full spares on his belt, and reholstered the gun. It was only then that he noticed that his hands were shaking and his ears were ringing.

Back astride the bike and again starting to pedal uphill, Andy’s nerves calmed a bit and he started to chuckle. Pumping his legs in cadence, he repeated to himself, like a running Jodie, “Schweizer Qualitat. Swiss quality. Schweizer Qualitat. Swiss quality.”

He spent the first night just over a mile farther down the road. It was getting dark, and he could see the lights of the village of Bruchhof in the distance. According to his map there would be at least five miles of urban area beyond that. So he turned left onto a farm road, and then again onto a smaller lane that ran into the woods. Now that it was almost full dark, he pulled his bicycle off the road and into the woods. There were just a few scattered lights from farmhouses. Unlike a typical American forest that was choked with fallen trees, this forest was of the orderly German model: it looked more like a park than a woodlot. He had no trouble wheeling his bike and trailer two hundred yards into the timber.

Finding a brushy patch, Andy disconnected the trailer and laid his bike down. Then he backed the trailer into a clump of brush. The ground here was fairly level. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining. It took him just a couple of minutes to set up his camp. His sleeping bag was kept stowed inside his bivouac bag. All that he had to do was lay it out on top of his ground pad.

After rolling back a large rock and relieving himself, he returned to his bike trailer and washed his hands with a water bottle.

Andy sat and prayed. He had a lot to be thankful for. He pulled out an MRE at random. He was ravenous, and wolfed down nearly all of its contents in just a few minutes, not bothering with the niceties of the heating packet and the drink mixes. After eating the chicken and rice entree, he gobbled down the entire packet of crackers, followed by several slugs of water. Then he tore off the corner of the peanut butter pouch and began squirting it directly into his mouth. Finally, he put all of the candies into his shirt pocket.

After zipping closed the clear plastic front of the bike trailer, Andy sat down and kicked off his sneakers. They were still wet from an earlier rain shower. He realized that he would have to alternate between his two sets of sneakers on this trip: this pair that would only rarely dry out, and the pair that he’d keep dry. The latter he would wear only on days when there was no threat of rain. He put the shoes into a plastic bag and tucked it into the foot end of his bivy bag. He draped his rain gear over the sides of the trailer to help camouflage it. He’d have to do something about the bright yellow color. Before crawling into his bag, he rolled up his coat inside out to use as a pillow, and tucked the SIG under it. He took off his damp socks and put them between his outer shirt and T-shirt to dry overnight.

It took Andy several hours to get to sleep. The stress of the incident with skinhead robbers still had him cranked up. His mind was racing with a thousand questions: What could he have done differently? Probably not much. Had they reported him to the local Polizeistation? Probably not. Had they wet their pants? Probably. Andy chuckled. He was worried about his prospects for getting back to the United States. He was worried about his fiancee. He was even worried about the chain and derailleur on his bicycle.

Unable to sleep, he nibbled on the leftover candy and listened to the breeze and the sound of the raindrops dripping off of the tree branches. He whispered to himself: “Dang, I forgot to brush my teeth. Oh, well, starting tomorrow.” As he finally drifted off to sleep, Andy worked on a mental checklist for the next day: “I need to get more calories. I need to keep fully hydrated. I need to watch my gear settings well in advance for hills. I need to reorganize the trailer so that the gear that I need most frequently will be closest at hand. I need to check my six more often. I need to find a way to keep my socks dry. I need to take smaller snacks rather than just three large meals. I need to reposition the magazine pouch so that it won’t dig into my side. . . .”

He awoke just before dawn the next morning, feeling sore in his buttocks, thighs, and lower back. Obviously, bicycling used different muscles than he had been using with his regular PT regimen. There would be some inevitable adjustments to this mode of travel.

After the eastern horizon started to lighten, he shook the water droplets off his bivy bag and rolled it up. In the distance, a cow was mooing for its calf. He could hear but not see just one car or light truck drive by on the nearby road.

He took ten minutes to clean and oil the pistol and to top off the magazine that had two rounds expended. Between the boxes and what was already loaded in the magazines, he still had almost 450 rounds of 9mm ball ammunition available-about nine pounds of ammunition and magazines. He was willing to shed weight from his load in water and food, but not ammunition. That was a priority.

His breakfast was a small can of peaches, a half-crushed breakfast roll that was left over from the previous morning at the BOQ Fruhstuck room, and a bit of jerky.

Out of habit, he buried his empty food wrappers and the dirty pistol cleaning patches. That was what he had always told his troops was good litter discipline for the field.

Andy stowed his gear and, in the process, shifted a few items between his various bags and compartments to put things within closer reach. He checked the pressure of the bike’s tires, then hooked up the trailer. Looking around his campsite, he was satisfied to see that the only signs of his presence would be some crushed grass.

He quietly walked the bike back down to the road. It was starting to rain again.

Andy pressed on, westward. The weather was rainy in the morning, soon soaking his shoes and socks. At times the spray from passing trucks was brutal. There was no good way to avoid riding through the city of Homburg without taking a huge detour. The traffic in the city was surprisingly light. Obviously, Benzin was becoming more precious with each passing day. Other than some long queues at gas stations, the activity in Homburg appeared relatively normal.

Even though the terrain was more mountainous, Laine decided to take the smaller road through Friedrichsthal and Heusweiler, rather than get near Autobahn 6-the major route west that went through Saarbrucken.

The weather started to clear and warm up in the afternoon, and Andy made good time. He stopped at an Eisenwaren store in Heusweiler and bought a can of flat brown spray paint as well as the Falks gas lamp mantles that Lars had requested. He bought the store’s entire inventory: sixty-two mantles. Even if these were more than Lars needed, they’d be a very lightweight and compact yet valuable barter item.

Exhausted after a long day of riding, Andy made camp in some dense woods north of Saarwellingen just before dark. Other than a candy bar, he had skipped lunch, so he was again ravenous. He ate a can of sausages, a packet of crackers, and a package of ramen soaked in cold water.

Laine detached and unpacked the trailer. He then used the full contents of the can of spray paint, covering up the “untactical” bright yellow trailer. He even sprayed the clear plastic front of the trailer, since there was no need to have visibility in or out of it. The trailer now blended in with the forest for his bivouacs.

He was anxious to set up his radios, since it was a Tuesday-one of his scheduled shortwave contact nights. He set up his pocket-size Kaito receiver on a large stump and rolled out its longwire antenna, hanging the far end up on a tree limb. He placed his overseas bag in front of the stump to use for a low chair. Then he put on his headphones and dialed in 10.000 megahertz. The WWV time signal in Colorado had a faintly audible signal, even