Fleataxi
Deceased
The Big One
A Short Story
by Fleataxi
A Short Story
by Fleataxi
Chapter 1
Bret Wilson lived near Crystal Spring, Northwest of Mount Wilson in the Angeles National Forrest. He grew up in Glendale, graduated from Glendale High, married his high school sweetheart Maggie, who continued to work as a model for the first 4 years they were married, until they started having kids. Bret’s father was a successful Real Estate Broker, and his Grandfather was a distant cousin of the man that Mount Wilson was named after, so the Wilson family was well connected. Bret graduated High School, and instead of becoming a Lawyer like his dad had hoped, opened a small Auto repair shop in Glendale, and moved into an apartment near the shop with his new bride.
5 years later, his paternal grandfather died, leaving him a half-million dollars. Bret used part of it to buy 10 acres of property in the Angeles National Forrest near Crystal Spring and build a house, and used the rest to buy out his competitors. They were all well-run shops, but were short of the cash needed to upgrade their shops to compete with the dealerships repairing the new heavily computerized vehicles required by California’s draconian smog laws. With the infusion of cash, they quickly took business away from the dealerships, who charged outrageously for out-of-warranty work. Bret was soon what some would call wealthy, but not really rich. He bought a large Pacific Cruising Trimaran that they sailed on weekends when he had time. They made the trip every year to Catalina Island for the Catalina Jazz Festival.
The rest of the money went into his house, which had been dug into the side of a hill, reinforced against any perceivable earthquake risk, and equipped with a full AE system Then he had a deep well sunk into the aquifer, and installed 5,000 gallons of diesel and propane in buried tanks. His final addition was a aquiculture/hydroponic growing system, which produced Tilapia and vegetables year round. Maggie and Bret both had their Ham radio licenses, and a pretty nice ham shack. Bret drove a used Dodge Ramcharger 3500 with the 5.9L Cummins Turbodiesel, and the 4x4 set-up with BFG 33-inch All-Terrain tires, which slightly reduced his carrying and towing capacity over the 275's it came stock with, but he gained a ton of traction needed to get up the fire road which was the only access to his property, and could get very muddy in the spring. He’d pulled out more than 1 neighbor each spring who tried to drive the fire road in less capable vehicles, and got stuck in the mud. The big Ramcharger could easily tow Babe, which was a custom rock crawler he and his friend Steve built as a rare diesel-powered rock crawler just to prove it could be done. They selected a Class 4 roll frame from Chenowith, and picked it up in San Diego. They spent the next 5 years building it, then testing it on the Rubicon Trail, which was supposed to be the toughest 4x4 trail in the US, as far as hard-core rock crawlers were concerned. Bret made Babe street-legal, but preferred to tow it to any rock- crawling events. He’d already driven Rubicon twice, busted a bunch of components, and left sheet metal behind in the Big Sluice. He liked Moab Utah better, since he left less sheet metal behind. Bret built an extension bridge out of pierced planking that stowed on the ladder rack at 10 feet, and extended to 17 feet to bridge any small gaps. Next he built an A-frame so he could use his winch to pick up and move the extension bridge, or other small obstacles. It connected to the bumper with 2 huge pins, and used a come-along attached to the ladder rack to adjust the height and angle of the boom. The whole thing broke down and stored next to the extension bridge on his ladder rack. He had a box full of spare parts, straps, cinches, pulleys, and a cargo net made out of kevlar straps on the rack next to it.
The “bed” was really a sheet metal cover over a hidden storage compartment that still allowed him to carry fuel, spare tires, and other stuff in the bed. He had a Warn 12K electric winch installed, a dual 100-amp alternator set-up, a battery bank with isolator to keep the starter battery from draining the deep-cycle AGM batteries that powered his lights, CB and Ham radio. He had a full light rack on top with Hella off-road driving lights, and a pair of Hella street-legal fog lights on the massive front pipe bumper with a built-in pushbar. The undercarriage was fully skid plated with sliders to protect it from high-centering on a rock, and critical components were protected by diamond plate.
Steve was amazed when they were finished, they had taken a Baja 1000 Class 4 (full-size pickup) frame, and converted it to a very capable diesel-powered rock crawler. Steve knew it was partially due to the innovative transmission/transfer case setup which gave them a 3-speed transfer case, and a 4 speed transmission. Bret installed a Ford 9-inch rear-end with a Lock Right limited slip, and an ARB air locker in the Dana 400 front differential. All 4 corners had Warn locking hubs so it could be flat towed, or if he broke an axle or drive shaft, he could unlock the front or rear hubs and limp home. The granny/crawler gear was so low that they could idle the engine, and get out and walk next to the vehicle and keep up. Bret had climbed boulders that looked impossible between the torque of the diesel, and the huge granny gear. He got good gas mileage in the 2-high position, and could drive in 4-high fast enough to race in Baja if he wanted to.
He had purchased a matching pickup bed trailer with a combination standard/pintle towing setup with off-road tires and re-arched springs to match Baby’s lift. He could only tow an additional 2,000 pounds in the trailer, but he could keep it loaded and ready to go in a moment’s notice if he had to bug out from work. He parked Babe and the trailer in a heavily reinforced Steel building in the parking lot of his main business near Glendale Community College. He drove the Dodge 3500 back and forth to work, because it got better gas mileage than Babe, and was designed as a road vehicle, whereas Babe was a street-legal rock crawler with removable fenders using Dzus fittings to hold the fenders and body panels on. With the fenders off, Babe was a much more capable rock crawler since the fenders interfered with the maximum axle deflection the vehicle was capable of. He thought of going with a PTO winch, until someone pointed out that he could still winch himself out of a predicament with a stalled engine using an electric winch, so despite the advantages of a PTO winch, he went with the rest of the rock crawlers, who he hoped knew what they were talking about, and got a Warn 12K electric winch.
His house was better prepared than most people’s bug-out refuges, so he decided that bugging-in would be the preferred method of surviving an Earthquake or other SHTF scenario. He checked Timebomb 2000, and Frugal Squirrel’s forums weekly, and learned a lot about preparedness. He was royally upset that California had gone so Liberal so fast, and had come up with ingenious work-arounds to their stupid anti-gun laws. Bret was going to purchase an AOW Winchester shotgun until 1 of the Squirrels suggested a Mossberg 590 with a Shotforce collapsible 6-position buttstock, a 6-shot Sidesaddle, and a Ghostring/tritium sight setup. Bret called his friend in Reno, and asked him about what he should buy. Nick offered to purchase a Kel-tec SU-16B with the shorter barrel, and the Mossberg 590 with the Shotforce stock. All he had to do was drive to Reno and pick them up, since he didn’t want to ship them across state lines.
2 weeks later, Nick told him they were in. He had bought 20 20-round AR-15 magazines for the SU-16 since they were difficult or expensive to get in the People’s Republic, as Nick called California. Bret had to agree - the only thing they were missing were the Mao jackets and the pins. Even with the creature comforts of his Dodge Ramcharger 3500, it was a long drive from Glendale to Reno. He decided to get out of the PRC as quickly as possible, and took the 210 east until he got onto I-15N. He switched to US-395N at Hesperia, and followed it North all the way to Reno. He stayed a couple of days to rest and shoot his guns - there weren’t many legal outdoor shooting ranges in his part of California, and they were heavily controlled. Nick drove him out to the desert, and they shot up a bunch of ammo teaching Bert how to shoot the lightweight SU-16. He realized it would take a bunch of luck to hit a man-sized target much past 100 yards with the open sights. Still, the gun fired a .223 round, and folded into a small package that was much smaller than the shotgun. He drove carefully back home the next day, and put the shotgun and the rifle into his secret compartment of Babe. He included 10 loaded 20-rd mags in the LBV, 2 600-round combat packs of 5.56mm NATO surplus ammo on stripper clips, a bandoleer full of Federal Tactical 00 Buck and slug rounds, his E&E kit, a Level IIa vest, and a LBV containing a bunch of stuff that several Squirrels (the resident survival gurus on Frugal Squirrel’s forum) had recommenced. His E&E kit included a butt pack, a SAS drop-leg holster containing a Para-Ordinance Stainless P-14 in 45acp and 2 spare 13-round mags, He liked the Cold Steel LTC Kukhri and had a knife maker re-scale it in black canvas micarta with a finger-groove grip, add a lanyard hole and a thin steel guard. It rode in a Sheath Mechanic custom Kydex sheath with a large pouch mounted piggyback with a mini-survival kit and a Diafold sharpener.
Rick’s passion was cars, and off-roading, especially rock crawling, and indulged his passions whenever possible. Maggie accompanied him once on the Rubicon trail, and told him she was staying home from now on - the views might have been spectacular, but it wasn’t worth getting killed getting there. He guessed the near-rollover scared her more than he knew. He tried to explain that sometimes you had to put a couple of wheels in the air to get around an obstacle, the trick was to keep at least 1 tire on the ground, and avoid rolling. She said she’d rather go trail riding and camping than try to climb some impossible boulder just because it was there. 2 days a week, he taught Automotive Technology at Glendale Community College, and had to leave the house at 6 o’clock to get to Glendale by 8 o’clock, a 28 mile commute. When he was just going to the shop, he left at 10 o’clock, and made it to work between 11 and noon. Half the time he took surface streets, since they were usually quicker, so he became very familiar with the surface streets between work and home, and mapped out several routes that could get him home, and bypassed major bridges and overpasses that might fall down in a major quake.
He was teaching class at Glendale Community College when the earthquake hit, and he got his class evacuated onto the pavement in front of the shop, which was the safest place to be in an earthquake, since there were no surrounding buildings or anything else to fall on them. After several minutes, the shaking stopped, then the aftershocks began. He guessed the San Andreas fault had finally let go, and the aftershocks might be the rest of the major faults following suit. Once the excitement was over, he patched up any students who were injured, and told them that school was canceled, and they should get home before the barricades went up. He gave them several pieces of advice - Stay off the Freeways and away from bridges, and watch out for sinkholes and large cracks in the road that could swallow their vehicles.
With that said, he walked out to his Ramcharger, started the engine, turned on the radios to find out what happened, pulled his Kel-Tec P-11 “glovebox gun” out of the glovebox, and drove slowly and carefully to his shop less than 5 miles away in Glendale. It took over an hour to avoid all the debris and accidents blocking the roads, but he finally made it. His black shop foreman was in the process of shutting down and locking up. They talked things over, and decided the best thing to do was to take Babe and the trailer and head for Bret’s house. Leroy, his shop foreman, was a former member of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, and a Gunnery Sergeant. He was recently divorced, and lived in an apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Except for some clothes and stuff, he had nothing there of value since his ex got everything in the settlement. Bret was glad that Maggie was home with their boys, and knew they were secure for the moment. He didn’t even try the phone or his cell phone when Leroy told him that power and telephone lines were down all over LA County. He handed Leroy the SU-16 and told him he was riding shotgun. Since the SU-16 was similar to the M -16 and the AR-15, he didn’t need much time to figure it out. Bret put on his Level IIa vest with his plates and his E&E kit, and handed the LBV to Leroy since it held the spare mags for the SU-16. Bret took the shotgun out of the case, and mounted it to a bracket on the dash. Following several Squirrel’s advice, he left 1 round out of the magazine so he could quickly switch from buckshot to slugs if needed, and the chamber was empty. Leroy whistled and said “Nice shotgun. Might come in handy!”
As they started heading east, Leroy said “Take the next right - I need to make a quick stop.” When they stopped in front of a self-storage building, Leroy said he had some stuff inside he saved for a rainy day, and it was definitely raining. They pulled up to a door, and Leroy hopped out, took a key off his keychain, and opened the door. Inside were several boxes, and a familiar-sized case. They opened the top box, and Leroy unpacked an old USMC-issue Load Bearing Vest, and took Bret’s off and handed it to him. While Bret put his LBV back on, Leroy kept digging and putting stuff on, including Level IIa vest with plates, his LBV, a pistol belt with a butt pack and a USMC 1911 with the globe and anchor on the right grip panel, and finally a Colt M -4 carbine with a M -203 grenade launcher mounted. He took out a mag, locked and loaded, then pulled out the next box, which contained a case of 40mm HEDP grenades - 72 in total. Bret’s eyes got huge when he saw how many grenades Leroy had and said “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“You know I was in the Marines during Desert Storm #2. I was a Gunnery Sergeant serving in a Marine Recon team with the 1st of the 1st. My best friend went into supply. Over the years, he’s diverted obsolete equipment to his friends for safe keeping just in case we should ever need it. I took out this locker years before my divorce, and never told my ex about it - good thing because that witch got everything else I owned, including a couple of match-grade HBAR AR-15's. I was saving this for an emergency, and this qualifies. Let’s get this loaded, and get you home.”
“Leroy, I want you to stay with us, we’ve got the room, and if things get totally FUBAR, we could use the help defending the place.”
Leroy stuck out his hand, shook Bret’s and said “You’ve got a deal!”
They quickly loaded Babe, and headed East toward home.
Fleataxi