Chapter 29 -- WPOFNRAXSVGVIMRTOS
Ted Sandefeur carefully navigated the narrow road up to the camp. It was one of
only two roads to the place, at least capable of accommodating motor vehicles.
It only usable when the ground had been dry for a few days, due to being
unpaved. They were careful not to use it when wet to avoid making ruts. Even
so it had acquired a few and was rough in places.
That wasn't a major problem as the other road was on higher ground and paved
with the clay gravel which was abundant in the nearby hills. It was also wide
enough to accommodate vehicles passing, and large trucks. Still, he wished
they could improve the other road to facilitate access to another route in and
out of the camp.
He parked the truck at his cabin and went in. Martha was preparing dinner,
the smell of roast beef greeting him as he entered. The cabin was small, but
more than adequate for their needs. Built mostly of salvaged lumber from old
houses he and Frank tore down - their primary source of income - it had cost
little to build but a lot of work. Frank's house, just a couple of hundred
feet away, was similar, having been built the same way. His truck was gone,
so Ted guessed he was still in town.
"Hey honey," Martha greeted him with a hug. "Dinner's about ready."
Though they
had been married for over three years, they still could never get enough of
being together. She spent most of her time gardening and preserving the
produce of their garden. Some of the three hundred or so residents kept
chickens and the they all had gardens, and traded among themselves for most of
their food. The men hunted deer in the thousands of acres surrounding their
settlement, not bothering with the minor details like licenses and limits.
They had little contact with outsiders aside from going into one of the nearby
towns for things they couldn't produce. It was a satisfying life for those
wanting to live away from the chaotic world outside.
The settlement had begun ten or so years earlier when several families seeking
escape from that world acquired a tract of land almost ten miles from the
nearest town. The owner of the two hundred and twenty acres of woodland was
like most owners of land in the area had died and his heirs promptly sold it
to a preacher who had become disenchanted with his church and left with some
family and friends to start a new community. Believing that the end of the
world was not far off, they chose the remote area to live out their lives
undisturbed.
The inhabitants were largely bound by their faith. Most of the early arrivals
had been associated with the preacher and came to join him. Others had come
later, but almost all of them were friends or relatives of some of the others.
Almost all of them attended the church services on Sundays, although there was
no pressure to do so. It was largely a social event with lunch after the
service, brought and shared by the members. Ted and Martha were among the
later arrivals - her best friend from school was married to Frank and had
persuaded Ted to move there. Ted liked it, it was peaceful and cheap to live
there, and he had gone into business with Frank, making more than enough money
for their needs.
Such communities were not uncommon - people had been abandoning the societies
they were born into for centuries - but in the late twentieth century it had
become much more so. Many were motivated by religion, and often avoided
contact with the society they had abandoned.
But in the later part of the century, the elements of survivalism and
opposition to the increasing intrusion of government into their lives, some of
the communities were more militaristic in their preparations. Preparing to
survive disasters and defend against an oppressive government were the primary
motivators. There were quite a few former military personnel among them, and
most had weapons and ammunition in considerable quantities.
One such community had recently been established near where Ted lived, and he
and his neighbors had regarded it with some degree of anxiety. They had heard
of government attacks on such communities, with allegations that they were anti-
government and racist organizations plotting attacks on the government. Ted
had met some of them and visited their place, not long after they began about
a year earlier.
They had seemed normal enough - just people like him and Martha wanting to
live lives as unpolluted by the outside as possible. There were about two
hundred or so of them, according to the first one he met, a man named Grant
Page. He looked to be in his early fifties, fit and healthy, he could shave
and clean up and not be out of place working in an office. He was armed,
though, a large revolver in a belt holster. Looked like maybe a .357, he
thought, from the size. The longer barrel suggested it was woodsman's gear
rather than a for use against people.
It was just a few days after they had noticed the activity down the road from
the camp, other than Grant he saw only one other person, though there could
have been others - along a road that had been built, running about a quarter
of a mile back from the main road and cleared to a distance of perhaps a
couple of hundred yards on each side were half a dozen large portable buildings,
the largest type, probably about forty feet long. They were all same size and
looked new.
"We're using ready-made buildings to save time," Grant had told him. "We'd
like to be ready for winter. We've got a lot of work on the road before then."
In the months since there had been a lot of work. The main road was paved
with loads of crushed rock brought in in large trucks and spread and leveled
by some new-looking tractors. Ted suspected a considerable amount of money
was being spent there. During the following months more land was cleared, but
many trees were left, individually and in small groups. In a large space to
one side of the road several large metal buildings were constructed, while a
number of small houses appeared along several branches of the main road.
Ted stopped to talk to Ted a few times when he saw him near the road as he
passed, and met several more members of the community. It appeared there were
a number of women and children of various ages. He wondered if the children
went to school in the nearby town or were home-schooled as those in his group
were. Grant affirmed that they were.
So the two communities had lived, separated by perhaps a half mile of forest,
not having any interaction beyond an occasional chance meeting. Sometimes
members of the two communities would meet each other in town and introduce
themselves, and as far as anyone could tell there was nothing of a troubling
nature.
One day he met Grant in town, accompanied by another man whom he introduced as
Bill Clayton. Bill was, like Grant, an average-looking middle-aged man.
"In case you hear gunfire from our place," Grant said, "it's just some of our
folks practicing. We built a small range, it's off the road a ways so I don't
know if you can hear or not. We hear a shot now and then, figure maybe you're
hunting."
"We do," Ted replied. "These woods are full of deer - they don't have much of a
season most years so there's a lot of them."
Ted had wondered about the shooting. Other than the inhabitants usually being
armed there seemed nothing else out of the ordinary. And carrying a gun when
going into the woods was a prudent habit. He had learned that the place was
large, four hundred acres. They had only cleared about forty or so, but it
appeared expansion was continuing.
As summer passed into fall the community began to prepare for winter. The
main road seldom became unusable, but it did happen. All the inhabitants
stored sufficient food and other supplies to wait out several weeks if it
necessary. Their neighbor seemed to be doing likewise, as large box trucks
came in at times, presumably delivering cargo.
Ted assumed they had followed his recommendation for a water supply. The
first who came to live there had had a well drilled, and had added a second as
a backup before its capacity was needed. Over time two more larger wells been
added, with large-capacity storage tanks. Almost all the homes now had
running water, and completion of that project was not far off. Their only
dependence on the outside world was electricity, and a number of generators
provided backup for that. They were, he reflected, almost independent of the
outside world.
Further along the road, Grant Page and several of his group were meeting in
the headquarters of their group. The setup of the enclave was nearly complete,
and was quite habitable. They had hired much of the work done in the interest
of speed, and all the buildings had water and electricity, with plenty of
supplies for the winter. Only a few of them had been there the first winter,
and the remainder moving in during the summer as the construction work was
completed.
With him at the table were Bill Clayton, Douglas Stewart, Arthur Mitchell, and
Gerald Duncan, the four other men with whom he managed the community. They
had been elected by the two hundred and thirty-three adult members of what
they called simply the Tribe. The membership comprised a number of middle-
aged men like themselves, most of them married or at least with a partner,
thirty or so children, and about two dozen young couples who were mostly
married.
The three of them, along with several of the older members, had begun forming
the group seven years earlier, initially as a discussion group focused on the
social and political state of the country. Before long they decided that
discussions were not going to accomplish anything, particularly if they were
dead or in prison, which appeared to be the eventual fate of those who did not
get in line and keep their mouths shut.
Their efforts eventually led to the formation of the Tribe, and it was not
long before the need for forming some sort of enclave became evident. Most of
the older members were financially well-off, some of them extremely so. When
they calculated that they could, by selling off their assets and pooling their
resources, fund a self-sustaining community where they could live without
interference from the outside, at least for a while. Most or all of them
believed that a time would come when they would fall prey to the government's
obsession with controlling the lives of every citizen. Once the vast majority
of the population had been herded into the cities, those who remained outside
could be rounded up and forced to comply, if they wished to live.
Those of the Tribe had decided not to accept that fate. Their creed, to the
degree they had one, was to die if the alternative became intolerable, and to
take as many of their enemies with them as they could. To this end they had
equipped themselves to fight, and regularly prepared for that eventuality.
They had not had much contact with the neighboring community thus far, but
they would soon learn they had common goals.