The Sommerses’ ranch house sat on a bench that had been cut on a shallow slope. The main barn sat on another terrace slightly above and beyond it, and the open-sided hay barn, beyond that. The elevation of the ranch was 6,420 feet at the west end, and nearly 7,000 feet at the heavily timbered east end. They had sixty acres of cultivated hay ground, and the rest was in pasture and timber.

West of the house was a six-hundred-square-foot hand-built greenhouse that had been constructed over a framework that was originally designed for a small pole barn. Ron called their greenhouse the Monstrosity. Ron had built it just after the Crunch began, using dozens of used windows that had come from condemned buildings—mostly old trailer houses. The roof was covered in corrugated translucent roofing plastic. The west, east, and south walls of the building were covered in an odd assortment of old window units with various-color frames. Very few of the window panes matched and they were pieced together like a quilt work, with four-by-fours and scraps of corrugated translucent roofing plastic in between. Only the north wall of the greenhouse was solid and insulated. The greenhouse was drafty and leaked badly whenever the snow and ice melted, but it had kept them well fed since the Crunch. Tracy kept the greenhouse garden going year-round. A rusty old woodstove in the center of the greenhouse was kept burning continuously from November to April of each year.

The water for the house and barn was gravity fed. The only electricity was provided by a pair of fifty-five-watt PV panels, which charged a bank of eight golf-cart batteries, cabled together series-parallel in a system that Ron had crafted after the Crunch. Because it had no proper charge controller, the system had to be watched closely in the summer months to prevent overcharging the batteries and boiling off their distilled water. This battery bank was used primarily for charging smaller batteries, powering the intercom, and charging Ron’s assortment of DeWalt power tools. It also provided power for intermittent use of their CB radio, which was their only link to the outside world.

The Sommers ranch would be Joshua, Megan, Malorie, and the boys’ home for the next one and a half years. With the ProvGov stretching its tentacles westward, they started to feel as if they were living the lives of NOC clandestine agents. Their false IDs were flimsy, since they had no other documentation. Once UNPROFOR troops passed through Driggs for the first time, Megan explained their situation to Ron Sommers, and he was sympathetic. It was decided that henceforth, only Ron or Tracy would make trips into Alta or Driggs.

Their two summers at the ranch were frenetically busy with moving cattle, hay cutting, wood cutting, constructing a henhouse, building a bullpen (with stout cedar posts buried at three-foot intervals), and gardening. Joshua’s party more than earned their keep all through the year. Their main security problems at the ranch were four-legged, rather than two-legged. Their war with the mountain lions, bears, coyotes, and wolves was endless. With the help of Joshua, Megan, and Malorie, only two calves were lost to predators, and none were lost to rustlers.

36

HOOFING IT

We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.

—Karl Hess

Alta, Wyoming—April, the Fourth Year

In early April, Tracy had heard that UNPROFOR Homeland Security investigators were asking questions around Driggs, making lists of “anyone suspicious.” According to Rumor Control, this included anyone with a military service record, anyone who refused to accept ProvGov currency for payments, anyone who had made disparaging comments about the ProvGov, and anyone who was not originally local to the area. Though Megan matched all these criteria, the last category concerned her most.

Megan, Joshua, and Malorie decided that it was time to leave the Sommers ranch, and with the snow off, the timing was good. They had been able to help Ron with some of the most intense work for two summers, so they felt that they had contributed enough labor to justify their upkeep.

On the day of their departure, they had their deer carts packed much more efficiently than when they had arrived. Over the past seventeen months, they had systematically acquired an assortment of gear that was better suited to cross-country travel than what they had arrived with. They also had three carts now—one for each adult. All three carts had been spray-painted in flat green and brown blotches. The heavy canvas tents that they’d inherited from the chaplain had been replaced with a pair of forest-green Fjällräven Singi lightweight nylon three-season backpacking tents. These Swedish-made tents were well used but of very good quality. Ostensibly two-man tents, they had just enough room for the five of them to sleep comfortably. The same retired backpacker in Driggs sold them several small waterproof dry bags to protect their gear from the elements.

Joshua’s party had also upgraded to better-quality sleeping bags for the boys, lighter-weight cooking gear, and four army surplus green foam sleeping pads that Joshua trimmed to match the interior profile of the tents. Their food was mostly beef jerky and freeze-dried Mountain House backpacking foods that they had bought at great expense with some of their pre-1965 silver coins. Anticipating a diet that was heavy on meat, they laid in a supply of Metamucil powder and an acidophilus-blend probiotic powder to maintain digestive regularity.

The boys had new broken-in boots instead of tennis shoes, and everyone had olive-green or woodland-camouflage ponchos.

After making their good-byes to the Sommerses, they headed out on the morning of April 10. The boys were crying. They were going to miss Chad. Their life at the Sommers ranch had hardened them in some ways but softened them in others. They were physically much stronger, given the exertions of wood felling, bucking, hauling, splitting, and stacking as well as hauling hay. (Nearly everyone in the region had switched back to small bales, since they didn’t require the use of tractors.) But they had become accustomed to regular meals and sleeping in warm beds. Roughing it out on the road would be much different and their mental stress level would be much higher.

Their progress through Idaho was slow. They made it to Driggs the first day, but then transitioned to night travel for the sake of stealth. (They were traveling armed, and not only were most of their guns in the ProvGov’s banned categories, none of them were registered.) Their intended route through the Banana Belt and up Highway 95 was 685 miles. After reaching the outskirts of Rexburg and averaging only 4.5 miles a night for the first week, Megan “did the math” and realized that their trip would probably take them five months if it was all done on foot.

Their modus operandi was to sleep during the day in brushy or wooded areas, cook their “breakfast” at dusk, and then be on the road by full dark. From Rexburg all the way to Payette, they were in open, arid country. Since the power grid had gone down, much of this erstwhile farming country had reverted to desert and had become largely depopulated. They looked forward to seeing windmills as their associated stock-watering tanks were often their only source of water after being filtered.

They became experts at dodging off the highway whenever they saw approaching headlights. This happened infrequently, since southern Idaho had just recently been occupied by UNPROFOR troops and fuel was still scarce. Whenever they saw headlights, they just assumed that it would be a UN vehicle. During the day, while the others slept, Joshua would often hunt rabbits and birds with a folding slingshot. He even became adept at stunning or killing trout with large pebbles from the slingshot, once he learned how to aim low, to compensate for the refraction of the water. Starting in Rexburg, they were also able to buy food to resupply their party, paying in silver dimes and quarters.