Grid Down The New Reality: Part 1, #3

Prologue

The Chinese had made a serious attempt at conquering the post-EMP United States under the guise of humanitarian aid. They had secretly supported the Rainbow Warriors, a loosely organized militant wacko animal-rights organization, with weapons and strategy. They had also landed troops and supplies at ports along the West Coast in cargo ships. The United States was just too big, and they found protecting Chinese troops and supplies on long inland journeys quickly became unworkable. Bands of American patriots stopped them and their surrogates, with scrounged rifles, hoarded ammunition and donated supplies. Local National Guard armories provided heavy weapons and explosives. It was too much for the Chinese.

China learned what Japan had known in World War II. You cannot invade the mainland of the United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s statement was very descriptive of this conflict. Although the death toll due to the EMP was staggering, the remaining citizens of the US drew together to fight for their right to live free. The 10% of people who survived were predominantly rural, armed, and dangerous. They had their pick of weapons from the homes of those who had died. They also opened up local National Guard armories for heavy weapons. Ex-military and Special Forces survivors trained patriots into effective units, defending their homes, their neighbors and eventually their country.

Admiral Yamamoto also stated, I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. That, too was accurate in the fight against the Chinese. The sleeping giant had awakened and China was forced to retreat. There were too many lone wolf snipers killing Chinese officers and NCOs, homemade IEDs cutting supply lines, and camouflaged men fading away to strike again. The patriot armies drove out the Chinese just as Washington and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, had driven out the British so long ago.

These Americans, explained the Chinese admiral, even with no power and 90% of their population dead, didn’t stop fighting. The admiral knew it was simply not worth it. They fought on using guerrilla tactics—not staying in one place to be defeated. They did not listen to propaganda, they did not fall for traps, and they did not take bribes. The Russians had learned the hard way in Afghanistan that you cannot subdue a country if its people will not lay down their arms. The Chinese admiral didn’t want to make the same mistake, tying China up in a war that would last for years and end in defeat.

The Chinese re-boarded their remaining ships and went home. Let these savages have the land and try to rebuild without our help and direction, was the sour-grapes parting comment.

And the Americans did rebuild. As their forebears had in hammering out the original Constitution of the United States of America, they did their very best to restrict the new federal government by giving it only limited powers, authority and money. It was designed to be small, relatively powerless against the people, and fettered to stay that way. This concept had actually worked for the old federal government until the 16th Amendment created a permanent income tax in 1913. This tax quickly grew, allowing the federal government to obtain the money, and thus the power to control its citizens. The New United States was determined that this would never happen again; this bloated tick would never be reborn.

Ten years after the EMP bomb had knocked out the electrical grid along with all modern electronics, and nine years after the war had ended, Preston and his wife, Amy, had settled down to raise their son, Preston William (Bill) Riley in the sleepy Midwest town of Independence, Nebraska, on the Missouri River.

During those years, South America had rapidly become a major power generation and distribution equipment manufacturer. They had not suffered the devastation of an EMP hit, and with their copper and silver mines, it was a natural expansion. Trading food for tech, the New USA was on its way to becoming electrified again.

For peace keeping, many New USA states initially adopted the Texas Ranger creed—No man in the wrong can stand up to a man in the right who just keeps on a-comin’. The rangers had been paid $1.25 a day in silver. The captain in charge was voted in by his men. Once captain, he could pick the men he rode with. At first there was no written law to enforce, but that was not necessary to the initial chore of stopping the gangs and outlaws. Codified laws were for civilization, and that was not what they began with, that was what they were working towards. Old fashioned peace keeping had returned and made most places safe from the roving gangs which had been such a plague right after the EMP. It was now no longer the Wild West, and the Ranger-style lawman gave way to professional law enforcement once again.

American businessmen were not sitting idle. They, too, started the massive rebuilding of infrastructure and manufacturing plants. After 10 years, most of the cities were again served by a power grid, and the refineries were once again pumping out gasoline, diesel and oil. As electrification, transportation and safety increased, so did commerce. With people once again able to buy food and feel safe in their homes and businesses, the food shortages solved themselves. Commerce could flow and the small farms, which had, of necessity, sprung up everywhere, became bigger and were linked by safe routes to the re-growing towns and cities.

With a hard currency based on gold, silver and copper, and the first words in the New American Constitution saying, in effect, No central bank ever, the country was on a steady path to growth and prosperity. Along with Constitutional checks and balances, the New USA planners had the experience of a long-running success (pre-1913 USA), followed by an ever-expanding failure (post-1913 USA) of government. They were determined that the failure was not going to happen again.

Chapter 1

Escape from Wisconsin

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Did all that really happen? Bill asked his father with a bit of incredulity.

Preston smiled. Yes, those were some dark days in American history. We were lucky to have survived it.

Tell me about the Battle of LaCrosse Bridge, nine-year-old Bill begged, bouncing up and down on a stool next to his dad’s workbench. The problem caused by naming their son Preston had been short-circuited by calling him William or Bill, for his middle name. Preston would be confused with his dad, and Junior would be confused with their friend and frequent visitor, Junior Johnson. And anyway, every child should have his own name, even if it’s really a middle name.

Preston emerged from his hands-busy reverie. Looking down at his son sitting expectantly on a stool next to the workbench, Preston smiled and decided to indulge him, again. Although it was one of little Bill’s favorite stories, it had been a while since he’d heard it. "OK. Well, we were leaving Wisconsin, floating our canoes down the Mississippi River. You see, after the Battle of the Green Bay, Major Charles Windham the third and his men backstabbed Clint slowly over the winter; they turned a lot of people against him. Clint still had the loyalty of most of the troops and the army rapidly started to split into two camps. Instead of waiting for the split to turn into a civil war, Clint decided to leave, and we went with him.

"It was early spring. Jane, Joe, your mother and I, Clint, Kate, Robbie, Gayle, Junior and their baby Dean. To make traveling easier, we decided to canoe down the river. Our plan was to go down south and find an abandoned barge to live on. We would drift it out into the river and anchor it, so we’d have a clear field of fire in case of trouble.

Yes, I know all that. Get to the battle, already! Bill demanded impatiently.

All right, Preston acquiesced. We moved at night so no one could see us. We were about eight hundred yards from the LaCrosse Bridge when we saw this World War II tank fire its big gun at a truck on the bridge. It was night, so the flame from the barrel and the truck exploding really lit up the night.

Wow! That must have been really bright, Bill observed enthusiastically, getting into the story.

Yes, it was very bright. We paddled back up the river a ways, pulled up on the shore and hid the canoes. We were not sure if they’d shoot at us or not, if we tried to pass under the bridge.

I bet that tank would have blown us up into tiny little bits. Bill’s imagination was quite vivid.

It sure could have, Preston continued with a smile. Clint and Joe walked up the river bank, then snuck up very slowly. They got to where they could see, and it was an old Sherman tank, topped by a machine gun, sitting on the bridge. Those Sherman tanks are tough, but they have a few weaknesses that can be exploited. The belly has weak steel and in the rear, over the engine compartment, is another weak spot. Clint remembered a homemade incendiary device you can make out of common metals.

Yeah, Clint is a smart Special Forces guy! Bill was getting excited now.

It’s fairly simple to make. All you need is powdered aluminum and oxidized iron—rust—and a large amount of heat.

"Now I’m confused. I thought this bomb created a large amount of heat!" Bill waited patiently for his dad to explain the troublesome point.

It does, but you need a starter to get the metal burning. The starter has to make lots of hot sparks. Once the ‘bomb’ is burning, it’s impossible to stop. It burns so hot it eats through metal like a hot knife through butter.

Yeah! How do you make the bomb? That was a pattern with Preston and Bill. The boy was always curious, and as he got older he demanded an increasing number of details in every story.

I won’t tell you until you promise me you will never make one. This bomb is very dangerous, Preston said in a dead serious monotone that Bill knew meant his dad wasn’t fooling.

OK, yeah, sure, you know I won’t, which was Bill’s rote answer when his dad got serious about not doing something.

Preston was not convinced. "Listen to me, son. This is very dangerous. If some spilled on you it would burn through your skin, bone, everything. And there’s no fixing it. This is not some toy. Your mother would never forgive me if you got hurt. Nobody better even hear you talking about it or you won’t be able to go hunting ever again."

The boy lowered his eyes to the oil stained floor and then raised his eyes to his father’s. Putting his hand over his heart, he solemnly swore, I promise. Then he grinned. What happened next?

We wanted to make thermite. What it takes is a lot of rust and powdered aluminum. We also needed welding cloth, a heavy metal box, magnets, and a boat flare. You mix three parts ground up rust with one part ground up aluminum. The rust and aluminum have to be ground very fine, then mixed. We used wooden sticks to mix the metals because one spark could be dangerous. Bill was squirming around. Are you listening to me?

Yes, Dad. Every single word.

We then took a metal box used for electrical wiring. That would be our container. We punched a hole in the side to fit the flare. Electrical boxes have pre-weakened knock-outs on the sides to let different sizes of wires out, so that was easy. Then we glued welding cloth on the top of the box and all four sides but not the bottom. We left that bare. Do you know why we left the bottom bare?

’Cause you wanted it to burn straight down, and the welding cloth would keep it from burning sideways.

Good, you’re listening, Preston commended him. Bill was asking a lot more questions now. He was growing up. We put magnets on all four corners of the bottom of the box so they would hold the box securely to the tank.

Where’d you get magnets, Dad? It was the end of the world! There were no stores where you could buy them.

Good, you are thinking as well as listening. Where would you guess? Where can you find magnets?

I don’t know. Maybe a car starter?

That’s a very good guess, but car starters use electromagnets, not permanent magnets. What we actually did was take a couple of computer hard drives apart. They have really strong rare earth permanent magnets called neodymium magnets.

Neo-what?

Nee-oh-DYE-me-um.

Neodime?

Never mind, Preston relented. They are so strong that if you get a finger between two of them, you’ll get a blood blister. That’s the voice of experience talking, by the way, Preston said, holding up his little finger. When I was in school, kids used to dismantle old, dead hard drives out of computers and stick the magnets on their lockers and everything else. After the EMP strike, there were dead computers in every house.

Bill wrinkled up his forehead. So you needed the magnets to hold the box onto the tank, he stated.

Right. In order for it to work, we needed to make sure the powder was burning in only one spot. It must not move or spread out. We used ten pounds of powder because we wanted it to burn through the metal on top of the engine hood and still have plenty of time to burn into the engine itself, disabling the tank.

Bill’s forehead wrinkles got deeper. And the flare was to heat up the metal so it would burn. Didn’t you need a timer, too? So you could get away?

Think about a flare, Preston said. I would rather have had a two minute flare, but one minute boat flares were all we could find. That was our timer.

Got it. Hmmmm . . . I’m still . . . You found the box and the flare and the welding cloth. How did you get the metal?

That was the part that took all the next day. By the time we had filed the rust off the bottom of . . . must have been two dozen cars, and filed the aluminum from the alternators, it was almost night again.

OK. How did you sneak up on the tank to set it off?

"That was the tricky part. Gayle and Jane had snuck down and watched them day and night to figure out their routine while we were filing rust off old cars. The tankers only had two shifts—a day and a night shift. Anyone who’s ever had to stand watch knows that around four in the morning, just before dawn, is the hardest time to stay awake. The night guard was doing a 6 pm to 6 am watch.

As long as nothing happens at night, standing watch is a long, boring chore. We figured it’d take me about an hour to sneak around the back side and up onto the bridge. Amy was pregnant with you, so she stayed with the canoes, but she had climbed a little ways up into a tree to watch. Jane and Gayle took positions as snipers on the downstream bank and Clint and Joe were on the upstream bank to cover my retreat if I was spotted. Sneaking up would have been nearly impossible if the tank crews had cleaned the bridge of shot-up vehicles. They had left them as examples for others to see, but they worked well as cover for my mission, too.

Outside the shop, bending down to pull some weeds, Amy heard Preston say her name and started listening to her husband and son’s conversation. She remembered watching Jane and Gayle sneaking into a brushy area behind a log on the downstream side of the bridge. They had rested their rifles on the log and waited in their camouflaged clothes and striped faces in the dark.

Bill tilted his head. I guess I don’t understand one part. What was the tank doing on the bridge to begin with?

"It was the only remaining bridge into town, so any traders with wagons or trucks had to cross that bridge. They had thoroughly blocked all of the other bridges. At any rate, we had to get past the bridge without putting everyone in our group in danger.

"A new army had formed in that part of Wisconsin under a new warlord. They called themselves ‘Payne’s Pirates’. At least that was the rumor we’d heard before we reached the bridge. They had some old Sherman tanks, WWII trucks, and jeeps that were not affected by the EMP attack. We heard they were about 3,000 men strong. This bridge was on the outer part of the area they controlled; we were not facing the whole army, you understand.

The warlord was a join or die" type of leader. We were not about to join—we simply wanted to leave the area. But at any rate, we had to get past the bridge without putting everyone in our group in danger.

They had just shown that they would shoot to kill. They had a machine gun on top of the tank’s turret with a 360 degree swivel, and we couldn’t take the chance of getting into its range. We had to take the tank out.

Then there was the problem of getting away after we set the charge. We talked about rappelling down to the water, but the current was too strong to hold a canoe under the bridge. We tested climbing under the bridge the first night, but it was too dark and slippery. Remember, this was in early spring and a plunge into that cold, swift water would pretty much mean you were dead. We decided it was safer just to set the charge and run away.

So what did you do? How did it go? The child was engrossed in the story now.

"As I said, we’d positioned Jane and Gayle on the downstream bank, Joe and Clint on the upstream side, as camouflaged, hidden snipers, so they could protect my getaway. Amy was watching from a tree near the canoes on the upstream side. Remember, we had a one minute flare to set off the thermite, so that gave me one minute to get out of range if there was an explosion, and less than a minute to get far enough away that a sleepy, confused, excited sentry wouldn’t succeed in shooting me in the back.

Clint, Joe and I had drawn straws to see who would set the charge; I got the short one. So it was my job to carry the bomb and light the flare. I positioned the electrical box so the flare was on the side away from the sentry. That was all I could do to hide myself and the flare in order to slow down whoever might figure out what was going on. The ‘click’ when the powerful magnets grabbed onto the tank sounded like someone loudly slapping the hood, causing the sentry to straighten up and start looking around. I popped the flare and took off running like a scalded rabbit. The sentry yelled at me to stop, but I ran like hell. I didn’t have to remember to practice broken-field running—twisting and dodging around the cars and trucks on the bridge did that for me.

Amy remembered that click from the magnets, the bright flame from the flare and the sentry yelling. At that point, the snipers had gone from alert to focused, hyper-alert, because they knew what was coming. Gayle aimed her rifle at a spot just above the tank’s hatch in case someone went for the machine gun on top of the tank. She tried to breathe normally as the excitement built. Jane aimed at the now alert sentry who hadn’t raised his rifle yet.

Amy remembered this well. After the sentry yelled, a man popped out of the hatch on top of the turret, grabbed for the machine gun and was swinging it toward Preston. Gayle aimed small, let out her breath and squeezed the trigger. The man snapped backward and lay moaning on the hatch cover.

Preston continued. "While all this was going on, even before the thermite ignited, all of a sudden the tank started up and I heard Jane and Gayle shoot once, almost in unison. I could feel crosshairs climbing up my spine and I kicked it into high gear, running as fast as I could, dodging between the cars.

"The turret of the tank began to swing around toward Gayle and Jane. They split up and both ran for cover just before the tank fired. The blast from the tank shell knocked Jane down and tossed Gayle a few feet onto the ground, too. Just then the engine hood exploded off the back of the tank and the whole rear of the tank was engulfed in flames.

"The gunner popped out of the driver’s hatch and ran for the pickup where the sentry was hiding. Clint and Joe began laying down suppressing fire, covering my escape.

"Meanwhile, Junior, Kate and your mother were supposed to be paddling the canoes quietly under the bridge, taking advantage of the confusion and fireworks, not to mention our snipers, to get safely under the bridge with the children.

"What really happened was that your mother slipped down the river bank and broke her arm. Kaitlin and Junior loaded her into one of the canoes—they couldn’t take the time to splint her arm yet. Robbie took her paddle and did a fine job of following the other canoes quietly under the bridge.

They stopped and waited for us downstream at a small inlet.

By this point in telling the story, Preston had stacked and positioned short pieces of lumber on the workbench, depicting the bridge, the tank, and other vehicles on the bridge. Nuts and bolts became the snipers, and his fingers were running, dodging the boards, heading off the bridge. His other hand was sliding a vaguely canoe-shaped lumber scrap under the bridge to safety downstream.

Preston said, When I got to the end of the bridge, I ran like mad to where Gayle was. Jane had gotten to her first to check for injuries. Gayle was shaken and I helped her run downstream to the canoe.

Amy walked in and tousled her son’s hair. Stop filling Bill’s head full of stories.

Ah, Mom, Bill said, leaning his head back so he could look up at his mom. He was just telling about the Battle of Lacrosse Bridge.

I just got to the part where you broke your arm, Preston grinned.

Amy unconsciously reached for her right arm. I sure remember that! The sound from the blast of the shell hitting the ground unnerved me. I fell and smashed my arm on a fallen tree trunk. THANK GOD Kaitlin was nearby and she knew what to do. Once we had made it downstream, she and Jane set my broken arm.

Amy finished the story. Robbie had to take over my job of paddling after that because I was useless for about four weeks. Now come on, you need to eat dinner and get to bed. Your dad and I have to go to work soon.

Work. I suppose we have to do that, don’t we, Preston said without enthusiasm.

Bill popped off his stool, headed for the workshop door and sprinted toward the house.

Well, if you want to keep the lights on and food on the table, that’s how it works, Amy said with a smile. You’d best get a hurry on or Bill will have eaten your portion by the time you get there.

Preston heard the screen door on the house bang as Bill entered the house. He set down his tools, stood up and raced Amy to the house. Preston wanted his portion.

The power had been restored in town and the long, dark nights were a thing of the past. Amy and Preston’s new job was protecting the food warehouses from rats and other pests. They trapped them and shot them with pellet guns. Joe and Jane lived nearby, and Bill knew he could go there in any emergency while his parents were gone. Amy knew it wasn’t the best arrangement, but you do what you can.

Every night, Preston and Amy patrolled the warehouses and cleaned out the rats in the traps, then reset them. The rest of the night was spent hunting rats with the pellet guns. No matter how many they trapped or shot, there were always more the next night. When they did manage to cut the numbers down, hunting would be slow for about a month, then the next wave would hit. Most people had no idea that even before the collapse, almost every city in America had people doing rat patrol.

Rats are profoundly prolific. If food and shelter are adequate, rats will breed throughout the year, although fewer litters are produced in winter.

A female rat will begin breeding at 40-45 days of age.

Gestation is as short as 21 days, and a litter is 2-14 pups (the average is 7).

Females produce 8 or more litters per year.

Pups are weaned in 3 weeks, and are sexually mature in 3 months. However, male pups must develop sufficiently to challenge an adult male for supremacy.

It’s easy to see why rat populations can grow exponentially. Under ideal conditions, a pair of rats could produce a family of 15,000 in one year. Fortunately, breeding slows markedly as rat populations increase.

Rats have voracious appetites. A rat can eat a third of its body weight each day, and will spoil other food with its droppings.

Preston thought he had great job security. Seven pups on the average. It was a never-ending battle being waged each night. They would work hard, then take their lunch break at 1 am. Then they’d split up and watch high traffic areas, lying on top of crates, looking down on the floor below. When they heard at least three chewing locations from the wooden crates, they would turn on their green lights and start shooting. If they got lucky they could hit three of them before the rats scurried away. Then they’d sit in the darkness, listening, for twenty minutes, and the rats would be back. The part that made the job bad was the morning clean up. All the rats had to be tallied, then burned.

Because rats migrate slowly across land, it took over three hundred years, until 1950, for the first true rats to invade Alberta, Canada, from the East Coast. There