Rebecca gave a nod and gently urged, "So what exactly are you asking?"

"You are a gift from the Lord, Rebecca. You've become my best friend. I find myself constantly thinking about you. I have thoroughly enjoyed working beside you with the Youth Group and the service projects that we've done. I love the way you think! I love communicating with you and can't wait to ask you questions, getting your opinion and hearing your insights. I have come to love you with all my heart and soul. I would be incredibly blessed if you would become my wife. I believe that the two of us together will be a strong team for furthering Adonai's Kingdom."

Ben then reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring, saying deliberately, "I want to give you something that I found on the beach this morning during my quiet time. I have been praying for you and about you for more than a year now. I've been asking Adonai for the timing and the confirmation. And seeing how much you love G.o.d's creation and enjoy finding perfectly created natural objects, I believe this find is a gift to us, a gift to you from the Lord. It is His confirmation for us to marry."

He held out the seash.e.l.l, clutched between his thumb and forefinger.

Unexpectedly, Rebecca extended her ring finger, and Ben slid it on. She gave a gentle laugh, as she carefully turned the ring around on her finger and murmured, "It's beautiful, Ben! So perfectly shaped and such a pure unblemished white! You really just found this on the beach this morning? It's a miracle. I believe it is confirmation and I say 'Yes.' Yes, Benjamin, I will be your wife! I love you and I've been praying and hoping, too, that you were the one and that you would choose me!" She smiled and laughed out loud, shouting "Hallelujah," and began dancing around. Ben stood up and Rebecca ran into his arms and gave him a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. Ben lifted Rebecca and swung her around, laughing, praising Adonai and telling of his love for her.

They stopped dancing and Ben took both of Rebecca's hands in his and facing her he said, "I will always protect you."

Rebecca replied: "Ben, I will respect you, and I will honor you. I will listen to you. I will pray for you."

Then and there he prayed that G.o.d would orchestrate the timing of the wedding and that he would give them much self-control and that he would train them and use them for His kingdom.

They slowly retraced their steps back to Beit Immanuel, talking the whole way about their dreams for their future. They married eighteen months after their first meeting, just shortly after Ben took the Tennessee State Bar exam. The wedding band that he then slipped on her finger was a platinum casting of the seash.e.l.l that he had found on the beach in Israel. Rebecca often wore the fragile original seash.e.l.l as a necklace, on a light gold chain.

Following law school, Ben's first job was with a firm in Nashville. In Nashville, Ben and Rebecca found Beth Israel, a small Messianic Jewish congregation. A few of the members of the congregation were standoffish and a.s.sociated only with other Jewish Believers. They thought of Ben and Rebecca as a "mixed" couple. But most of the congregation was friendly.

Discouraged to find that a small, vocal minority of members of Beth Israel were over-legalistic and some too rabbinical, Ben and Rebecca were happy to find a new congregation when they eventually moved to rural Muddy Pond, Tennessee.

Rebecca had grown up in Richmond, but many of her childhood friends in her homeschooling co-op group had lived in the country outside town. This made Rebecca long for a home in the country, a large garden, and livestock. It was not until the Fieldings moved to Muddy Pond that her dream came true. Drawing on the wisdom and experience of Dorris, a widowed "ex-hippie" grandmother who lived just a quarter mile away, Rebecca gradually acc.u.mulated a useful a.s.sortment of livestock. She had a Guernsey cow named Matilda, dozens of chickens, a few ducks, some sheep, and a few barn cats. When Rebecca would go out to milk Matilda she would dance out the kitchen door with her milking bucket singing "Milking Matilda" to the tune of the Australian folk song "Waltzing Matilda." Rebecca loved drinking their own fresh raw milk, making their own b.u.t.ter, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream; and growing, canning, freezing, and drying her own homegrown fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Although he was a city boy, Ben learned to love their place in the boonies. The wild game was abundant, and the fishing was good, both in ponds and in the local streams and rivers. Under the tutelage of a retired neighbor, Ben learned how to shoot, and he in turn started teaching his son to shoot when he was just six years old.

Later, after the Crunch, when Ben and Rebecca's oldest son, Joseph, had turned thirteen, he was trusted to hunt on his own. He hunted on the Fieldings' own property and the 320 acres of adjoining timber company land. Joseph dearly loved fishing and hunting. After his homeschooling was completed each day, if the weather was pa.s.sable, the thirteen-year-old would go out with either his fishing pole or his Mossberg single-shot .22 rimfire rifle. He was proud that he could help feed the family in a substantial way, and his parents were appreciative of his efforts. Joseph was a patient, self-taught hunter, and was famous for rarely missing a shot. (His .22 rimfire cartridges were strictly rationed, and the use of every one had to be accounted for.) He often brought home bullfrogs, grouse, opossums, quail, rabbits, racc.o.o.ns, and even armadillos. (The latter they called "possum on the half sh.e.l.l.") Less frequently, he would bag wild turkeys and deer with head shots. In all, Joseph made a substantial contribution to the family's food needs.

Ben preferred trapping and snaring to hunting. As he explained it, "A trap is hunting twenty-four hours a day." He used wire snares in various sizes ranging from squirrel size to deer size. Most of his success around the house was with rabbits. He also used Conibear #110 traps for squirrels. Between Joseph's hunting, Ben's trapping, milk from Matilda, and Rebecca's big vegetable garden, the Fielding family ate much better than most other families in Tennessee in the aftermath of the Crunch.

4.

Rushes.

"A nuclear-missile silo is one of the quintessential Great Plains objects: to the eye, it is almost nothing, just one or two acres of ground with a concrete slab in the middle and some posts and poles sticking up behind an eight-foot-high Cyclone fence; but to the imagination, it is the end of the world."

-Ian Frazier, Great Plains, 1989.

The Monroe Ranch, Raynesford, Montana.

October, the First Year.

Joshua and Kelly's wedding was at the outset of a socioeconomic collapse that made the Great Depression of the 1930s seem mild by comparison. The Crunch was a devastating global banking and currency collapse without precedent. Seemingly overnight, stock and bond markets fell into turmoil, the U.S. dollar was declared "trash" by foreign investors, and ma.s.s inflation ensued. The price of gasoline vaulted to $6 per gallon, then $10, and finally $25 before becoming virtually un.o.btainable. The price of groceries followed a similar trajectory. Nationwide, there was a mad scramble to convert paper dollars into practical, tangible items. People stocked up on anything and everything they could find. The gas stations, grocery stores, gun shops, and pharmacies were the first stores to have their shelves cleaned out. Toward the end, even sacks of livestock feed, bundles of rags, and thrift store castoffs were eagerly sought. Ultimately, those who foolishly held on to their dollars saw their value melt away in the blast furnace of hyperinflation.

Kelly's diamond wedding ring was a gift from her mother, Rhonda. It had been her grandmother's wedding ring. For many years, Rhonda had hoped that Kelly would someday wear it. The rushed circ.u.mstances didn't leave much time for the usual bridal shower. But a visiting neighbor did ask, "What would you like for wedding gifts?"

Kelly answered without hesitation, "We need .30-06, .243 Winchester, and .22 Magnum ammo. We could also use a good pair of binoculars."

They could have been married in Great Falls-which was closer-but Kelly had the idea of getting married at the county courthouse in Stanford. After seeing the store shelves in Great Falls devastated, she was hoping that the hardware stores, sporting goods stores, and ranch supply stores in Stanford would still have some inventory since it was a smaller town. Unfortunately, she was wrong. In visiting seven stores in the towns of Geyser and Stanford the only useful items that they bought were a few pieces of horse tack, two grain buckets, one can of Coleman white gas, and three bottles of Hoppe's #9 rifle bore cleaner. The store shelves looked like those they had seen at grocery stores in news footage from the Gulf Coast just before a hurricane hit.

The county courthouse in Stanford was uncharacteristically crowded. Not only were there several other "hurry up" weddings like Joshua Watanabe's, but there was also a flurry of mortgage settlement filings-as people had just recently taken advantage of the hyperinflation to pay off their home and ranch loans. Simultaneously, there were also a large number of land subdivisions, swaps, and grants that resulted in deeds being filed. Many of these were "In Exchange for $1 . . ."-quit claim deeds, caused by families "doubling up" or otherwise co-locating for mutual security. Under a quit claim deed, t.i.tle was conveyed without any significant amount of cash changing hands. The grantee would then a.s.sume responsibility for any claims against the property.

The civil ceremony was rushed and informal. Rhonda came with them to sign as a witness. She consoled Kelly, saying, "Don't let it bother you, Kel. You'll have a big church wedding after all this economic mess blows over."

Another exigency of the Crunch was that it went without saying that Joshua would move into the Monroes' ranch house, rather than Kelly moving into Joshua's rental. In the new paradigm, safety in numbers trumped all. Moving to the Monroe ranch took only a few hours, accomplished the same day and evening as the wedding. Like many young men in the Air Force, Joshua didn't have many possessions. His pickup and horse trailer made the move easy. By 11 p.m. he had his horse and tack in the barn and his uniforms, civilian clothes, and camping gear piled in Kelly's room.

Kelly said, "We'll go back and get the straw and hay bales tomorrow. And speaking of hay, how about our consummating roll in the hay?" She locked the door.

Chicago, Illinois.

October, the First Year.

Ken and Terry Layton were nervous and they chattered anxiously on their two-way radios as they drove through the blacked-out streets. "I can't believe we just walked away from our house."

"You gotta do what you gotta do," Ken radioed back.

Over the sound of their engines, they could hear the low staccato of numerous gunfights. One of them was close enough that they saw muzzle flashes. There were no streetlights, no traffic lights, and no house lights. Just a bit of candlelight visible in a few windows.

Ken was disappointed when they had to diverge from their planned route. Terry touched her microphone b.u.t.ton. "We can't take the Eisenhower Expressway. Just look at it: It's jammed up, b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper. Let's head west on the surface streets."

"Okay, how about we head out West Fillmore?"

"Roger that."

Shortly after they got on West Fillmore Street the cars ahead came to a stop. Apparently there was a stalled vehicle ahead. They backed up slightly and turned south on Ayers Avenue. Then Terry led them west on West 14th Avenue. Ken didn't like the look of the neighborhood. There were a lot of run-down houses. Ken was also apprehensive that now their car was the only one moving on the street.

They had driven just another five blocks west when suddenly from the right side a trash dumpster was pushed out into the street in front of the Mustang. Immediately after, a seven-foot-tall cable spool-one that had originally held large-diameter telephone wire-was rolled in from the left. Ken and Terry slammed on the brakes.

Just as they came to a full stop, gunfire erupted around them. All of the side and back windows on both the Bronco and Mustang collapsed. Their front windshields each also took several hits, but remained intact. The pa.s.senger-side tires on the Bronco burst, and Ken felt the vehicle list to that side. He bruised his ribs on the Hurst floor shifter lever as he rapidly bent down to avoid the gunfire.

Also p.r.o.ne on the front seat of the Mustang, Terry flipped the selector lever of the car's automatic transmission into reverse. She stepped on the gas, trying to back out of the roadblock. The back end of the Mustang collided with the front of the Bronco with a sickening crunch.

Ken shouted over his TRC headset walkie-talkie: "If you can, bail!"

The gunfire continued, though less rapidly. Ken and Terry both grabbed their rifles and backpacks. They then almost simultaneously crawled out of their cars and hastily shouldered their packs.

Without even thinking about it, Terry's field training under the tutelage of Jeff Trasel from Todd Gray's group kicked in. She keyed her TRC-500 and said, "By bounds, follow me. I'll fire, you move."

She thumbed her AR's selector switch, and aimed at the muzzle flashes of their attackers, firing five rounds.

Ken scrambled to the side of the street and squatted down behind a parked car. He radioed: "Okay, Joe, I'll fire, you move." (In their "bounding by pairs" training, all the partic.i.p.ants referred to each other as "Joe," and that stuck.) Just before Terry started her bound, Ken started firing. Compared to his wife's AR-15, his larger-caliber HK clone made a much louder boom, and had a larger muzzle flash.

She replied in a singsong, again from their training. "Okay, Joe, I'll fire, you move."

Taking turns, they made five bounding rushes, using parked cars for cover. After the fourth bound, all return fire had ceased. At the end of the block, they knelt down behind a raised brick hedge and checked each other over for wounds. They found only that Ken had one bullet hole through the armpit of his shirt and jacket. The bullet hadn't touched his skin. Terry had scratches on her right hand and right cheek from broken gla.s.s, but they weren't bleeding. They reloaded their rifles with fresh magazines. Altogether, they had fired ninety rounds while executing their withdrawal.

Terry had accidentally dropped the magazine that she had expended between her bounding rushes, but Ken still had an empty magazine that he'd tucked into one of the cargo pockets on his trouser leg.

Ken whispered, "Not bad for 'withdraw by fire.'"

"Yeah, Jeff Trasel would be proud."

A moment later, a road flare was ignited near the Bronco and Mustang. The night was so dark that the flare seemed quite bright. Ken and Terry watched with a mixture of fascination and horror a bonfire of wooden pallets, accelerated by a small bucket of gasoline.

By the light of the bonfire, the dozen gang members who had ambushed the Laytons began pillaging the contents of their car and truck. There were loud exclamations as each item was extracted from the vehicles. There were repeated shouts of "Oh yeah!" and "Check it out!" and "This is sick!" One of them hoisted Ken's Remington riotgun in the air and gave a "Woot-woot" shout.

Seeing and hearing this, Ken and Terry were seething. "Those heathen b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! They're taking all our stuff," Terry muttered.

Ken suggested, "What do you say we make 'em pay for it?"

"I don't know. Do you think that's right?"

Ken nodded and answered, "It's as right as anything could be. Hey, they just did their best to kill us, and they're taking almost everything in the world we have that's worth anything. I say make 'em pay for it, with interest."

Terry reached out to tightly grasp Ken's hand, in affirmation.

They dropped down on the sidewalk to the right of a hedge, and got into good p.r.o.ne shooting positions, side by side.

Terry said, "I've got the guys to the right of the bonfire, you take the ones on the left."

"Give me a sec," Ken answered. He shifted his position slightly, and thumbed the HK's safety to the "E" position.

His first target was the man who held the Remington riotgun. By now, he was shouting, "I got the power! I got the power!" Ken waited until he had several other targets close to the bonfire. Then he whispered: "One, two, three!"

They each fired a full magazine. The man with the riotgun went down hard. They killed or wounded at least five others.

After there were no more distinct targets standing, they expended the rest of their magazines shooting at likely places where the looters might have taken cover. They rose to their feet and ran around the corner, reloading their guns as they ran.

Halfway down the block they stopped to check each other for injuries and to talk. They decided that to get around the riffraff that ambushed them, they would walk another two blocks south, and then turn to resume traveling west.

They moved in tactical bounds for seven blocks, constantly watching for threats. The sound of gunfire and sirens was almost continuous in all directions. Some of it sounded as if it was within a couple of blocks, but most of it had to be farther off. With their movement in buddy rushes, they were soon feeling exhausted.

Ken trotted up to Terry and whispered, "There's got to be a better way. We'll never get out of town by dawn doing it this way." They crawled behind the concealment of some large bushes next to a Lutheran church, and draped a poncho over themselves to consult a street map with a subdued flashlight.

Terry pointed out their location on the map. "It's ten-plus miles to even get out of Chicago itself, and then there's suburbs," she whispered.

"So, shall I call for a cab?" Ken joked.

Then, more seriously, he added, "Our chances of walking out of this without getting ventilated are about one percent."

He gazed down at the map again, and prayed silently. The map showed no parks or other breaks in successive city blocks for miles ahead.

Terry said, still in a whisper, "Why not go underground, down in the storm drains, just like we talked about for nuke scenarios?"

Ken beamed. "Oh, I love you! That sure beats staying up here in the free-fire zone."

Terry looked up at Ken and asked, "How are we going to get down there?"

"Remember that ill.u.s.tration in T.K.'s book Life After Doomsday, where you take two big bolts and join them with a piece of wire? Then you stick one of them down into the pry hole on a manhole cover, and pull up."

Terry nodded.

He opened the top flap of his backpack and started to dig though its contents. He soon found a coil of wire. After some more searching, he pulled out a 1970s-vintage Boy Scout knife-fork-spoon kit that had belonged to his father. He twisted two thicknesses of the wire around the spoon and then the same for the knife, with one foot of wire between them.

The knife ended up working well as a toggle, because it had a bottle-opening notch in the middle. That held the wire in place perfectly.

Ken rea.s.sembled the contents of his pack and reshouldered it. He then began searching the block, looking for a manhole cover. It took a few minutes to find one marked "Storm Sewer," visible by the dim light of Terry's tiny single-LED flashlight.

Ken handed his rifle to his wife. After inserting the knife into the manhole cover's one-inch aperture, he pulled up on the spoon connected by the wire. The knife had toggled over and held firm. Ken squatted, beefed the manhole cover up, and slid it aside with a clank that sounded uncomfortably loud. He then retrieved his utensils and wire and stuffed them into one of his pants cargo pockets.

Terry descended first. She said quietly, "Okay, it looks doable. There's just a trickle in the bottom. Hand me my gear."

Ken handed down her carbine, then her pack, then his pack, and then his rifle. He lingered at the uppermost ladder rungs to slide the lid back in place over his head. It closed with a reverberating thud.

5.

Trogs.

"'It has never happened!' cannot be construed to mean, 'It can never happen!'-might as well say, 'Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable,' or 'Because I've never died, I am immortal.' One thinks first of some great plague of insects-locusts or gra.s.shoppers-when the species suddenly increases out of all proportion, and then just as dramatically sinks to a tiny fraction of what it has recently been. The higher animals also fluctuate. During most of the nineteenth century the African buffalo was a common creature on the veldt. It was a powerful beast with few natural enemies, and if its census could have been taken by decades, it would have proved to be increasing steadily. Then toward the century's end it reached its climax, and was suddenly struck by a plague of rinderpest. Afterwards the buffalo was almost a curiosity, extinct in many parts of its range. In the last fifty years it has again slowly built up its numbers. As for man, there is little reason to think that he can, in the long run, escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilence, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens."

-George R. Stewart, Earth Abides (1949).