When he had driven ten miles out of Thunder Bay on Highway 17, Ray pulled the pickup and trailer onto the off ramp for a disused provincial highway rest stop, open only in summer months. He looked around and could see no traffic in either direction.

He snapped open the latches on the trumpet case and lifted the lid. The top of the case was crammed full of green plastic twelve-gauge 000 buckshot shells. He began pulling these out and piling them on the truck seat. Beneath them were the two plastic-wrapped halves of a Winchester Model 12 takedown riot shotgun. The barrel had long before been shortened to nineteen inches. He pulled these halves out, and more shotshells tumbled down into the bottom of the case. (He had filled every available space in the case with extra shells.)

After taking another look up and down the road to ensure that he wasn’t being observed, Ray removed the plastic wrapping and pulled the gun’s magazine tube forward. He joined the two halves of the gun together and gave the fore end a half turn, connecting the barrel’s and receiver’s interrupted threads. Then he slid the magazine tube back into the receiver, gave it a twist, and popped the magazine retainer pin in place. The gun, now assembled, was a handy thirty-three inches long. Holding down the action release, he cycled the action three times to test it. It felt right, so he flipped the gun over and fully loaded the magazine, pumped the action, slid the safety button to the right, and added one more shell to top off the magazine. He draped a poncho over the gun to keep it out of plain sight. Ray let out a sigh of contentment, now feeling properly armed for his road trip west.

Driving around the northern periphery of Lake Superior was uneventful, aside from seeing one spectacular wreck, the victim of a lake-effect snow flurry the previous day, which had brought visibility down to just a couple of car lengths. An Audi had smashed into a guardrail and flipped over. As Ray drove by, a tow truck driver was rigging a line to attempt to extricate the car. Two RCMP officers were standing by, holding C8 carbines. That struck him as odd. Why was there any need to have rifles out at the scene of a car wreck? Had there already been looting this far from Detroit?

The drive west through Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary was tiring but relatively uneventful. The news on the radio was disturbing. The looting was getting worse, and more widespread. Most of it was in the U.S. and in the eastern provinces, but there were also disturbances in Edmonton and Calgary. For Ray, worst of all was the uncertainty about whether he’d be able to buy gasoline. The prospect of being stranded left him feeling tense. Where he was able to buy gas, he made sure that both his truck’s tank and all of his six gas cans were completely full. He also topped off his motorcycle’s gas tank and even the pair of two-gallon plastic gas cans for his chain saw. One service station charged thirty-five dollars per gallon, which he considered larcenous. But he paid the price without comment. His cash was rapidly dwindling.

After leaving Thunder Bay, he drove another three hundred miles, carefully choosing a camping spot where he’d be able to turn around with the trailer, but where the pickup and trailer were not visible from the highway. Rather than sleeping in the trailer, he slept back in the woods with both the shotgun and pistol in his heavy sleeping bag. The truck and trailer were just barely visible to him. He reasoned that if anyone spotted the truck and trailer, they probably wouldn’t spot where he was sleeping.

He drove almost twelve hundred miles the next day. He repeated the same process for camping the next night and again he got only six hours of sleep. That left nearly a thousand miles for the final day of his drive.

Nearing Kamloops, he came upon four burned-out vehicles by the side of the road—two vans and two SUVs—that were so thoroughly shot full of holes that they had obviously been in a recent gun battle. There were no bodies and just a few badly burned remnants of baggage, so he assumed that the RCMP had hauled away the corpses. He didn’t come to a full stop to take a close look, but the charred vehicles gave mute testimony to what had happened. The lack of crime scene tape left him troubled. He wondered out loud, “Have things changed that quickly?”

His final stop for gas was at 100 Mile House. He didn’t have enough cash for all of it, but the attendant seemed content with taking eight silver dimes for the last four gallons of gasoline.

Although FM radio reception got increasingly spotty as he headed west, he was able to catch some news reports. Most of the large cities in the United States were in absolute chaos, and the collapse of the three U.S. power grids was anticipated by one expert. The key issue, he said, was the level of staffing at power plants. So many employees were in fear of leaving their homes because of the rioting that there wouldn’t be enough staff to keep the nuclear power plants running within a few days. And the supply of coal at the coal-fired plants was reaching critical levels because the nation’s rail network was imperiled by the widespread rioting.

17

DEEDS, NOT WORDS

But there will be no justice, there will be no government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as long as the government and its officials permit bribery in any form.

—John Jay Hooker

St. Albans, West Virginia—October, the First Year

Malorie had sat in the passenger seat, leaving the driver’s seat open for Joshua to drive. She secured her folding-stock M1 Carbine and began finding the best westerly route out of town. Megan was buckling up the boys in the back, making conversation with them about their cookie fortune. While both Jean and Leo had been real troupers the whole day, she knew that this was major upheaval for them. Megan stroked their hair and gently applied the long-practiced craft of maternal interrogation to ensure that both boys were indeed okay.

Joshua said his good-byes and thank-yous to the Townsends, as they briskly closed the door, a distinctive sound of breaking glass ringing out from the apartment building behind the church. Joshua picked up a trot across the lawn and with one smooth motion climbed into the seat, secured his long rifle, started the Jeep, shifted into gear, and was off in the direction that Malorie was pointing. Malorie gave him immediate right and left directions as she correlated the map to the unfamiliar terrain they were driving through. Everyone could noticeably feel the difference in tension from being in the city to being on country roads.

Once they were passing farm country again Joshua said, “I feel pretty good to drive. Obviously we all heard what the sheriff’s deputy said about stopping on the side of the road, so I think we need to head west and south as fast as we can.” Malorie had stashed a couple of 5-hour ENERGY drinks in the glove box before they left Kearneysville that morning, and she offered one to Joshua, who accepted it. “Normally I don’t drink these, but this is not a normal day—thank you.”

“I don’t think that we will see or even hear about normal for quite some time yet,” Malorie said. “Okay, look for a right-hand turn coming up.”

Megan, who was confined to the backseat, was starting to feel carsick. She opened the window a crack and tried to sing songs with the boys to take her mind off it. There were noticeably fewer cars on the back roads, and most of the houses that they passed by still had power. The moon was full and the air brisk as Joshua piloted the Jeep down the West Virginia back roads.

In Hamlin, West Virginia, there was a full-blown riot erupting at a local gas station. As Joshua looked to find an alternate route around the bad situation, he noted aloud that it was good that there were still cops responding to the scene. “I wish that I could think of an expedient way to cover those gas cans we have hanging off the back of the Jeep; they would make us a huge target if the wrong crowd spots them.” Malorie asked if her sleeping bag would help, and Megan said that it would irreversibly smell like fuel forever.