Trace of Survival Trilogy Read online

  TRACE OF SURVIVAL

  Collapse

  By R. deLyndesay

  Pen name of Ron L. Lindsey

  Editing by X. S. Lindsey

  Copyright © 2014

  This is a work of fiction.

  Similarities to real people, places,

  Or events are entirely

  Coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, both past and present, who Honorably served their country and the Constitution.

  The Natchez Trace

  From Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, The Natchez Trace is a historical path that extends roughly 440 miles, linking the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers. It was created and used for centuries by Native Americans, and was later used by early European and American explorers, traders, soldiers and emigrants from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. Today, the trail is commemorated by the 444-mile (715 km) Natchez Trace Parkway, which follows the approximate path of the Trace.

  "The nature of the encroachment upon American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society." --John Adams, to the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1775

  "If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted. ... If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws." --Noah Webster

  Prologue

  The old man and his grandson were dragging the deer through the forest of what had once been the middle of the old state of Tennessee. The sled the deer was on was made of hickory, and was pulled with ropes that were attached to it. It had been a good hunt. Fall was just beginning, and the doe was big and healthy. The young man had made a good shot. The arrow had passed through both lungs, and the doe didn’t run far before she fell. The rut hadn’t kicked in yet, so the bucks hadn’t started their annual doe-chasing ritual. The population of whitetail deer in the area was improving. After the Collapse, when normal food production was curtailed, people decimated the wild game population. Not just the rural folks hunting game. Portions of the surviving cities’ populations fled to the countryside and killed a large percentage of the game. Now that things were balancing out, the game population was increasing.

  “Let’s take a break,” the old man said. “I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

  “Okay, Da,” the young man agreed, and he dropped his side of the deer sled the same time as his grandfather. They both sat on the ground and stretched out their legs.

  “The family will eat good tonight,” stated the young man.

  “Yes, Rand, they will. I love a good venison stew. You made a good shot on the deer. That new bow you made did a nice job. I’m glad to see you youngsters are using your archery skills more and more. The ammo for our firearms won’t last forever. Even so, I’m thinking we need to send a scavenging party into one of the old towns again and see if any can be found. There are still a few of the wild gangs out there, and we could be attacked again.”

  “Ah, come on, Da. It’s been nearly three years since we had to eliminate the last bunch that came through and tried to loot us. All the measures you set in place over the years made sure they couldn’t get to us, and we killed them all and freed the people they were making slave for them. You don’t think there are any more like them out there anymore, do you?”

  “Yes, I do, Rand. There will always be bad seed out there that want to control and have a free ride, no matter what it costs their fellow man. Whether it be a gang of killing thieves, or a government out of control and turning to Socialism so it can take what hard-working people have earned, and give it to the bums that want everything given to them”

  “You know, Da, I’ve heard you talk to the other elders in the village about those times. I understand some of what you’ve had to say, but I don’t understand all that went on and how we got to where we are now.”

  “Tell you what, Rand. Let’s get this deer back to the compound so it can be butchered, and that stew my mouth is watering for can be prepared. Tonight, I’m going to start telling you all the details of what happened to our once great country so you can be prepared.”

  “Prepared! What do you mean?”

  “I’m old, Rand. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this lately. It won’t be long before I’ll be going Home to be with my Savior, Jesus. Someday you or your brother or one of your cousins may be the head of our family and clan chief. You’ve got to be ready! I don’t believe we are through with the thugs yet!”

  1

  I was retired from the military. I spent some time in the Marines after the Vietnam War and a few years later joined the Army. Most of my friends call me Sarge or Isaiah. To family, I’m Dad or Da. That’s because of my Scottish ancestry. I’m also part Indian -- Native American, that is. I lost my first wife after we had been together for about twelve years. She was the mother of my boys. The boys were mostly raised by her aunt. The Army took me away from them too much.

  After the Army I went from job to job. Had one real good one with a federal government agency. You know, one of those agencies with an abbreviation like alphabet soup. Ain’t gonna talk about it, though. It was good because it helped open my eyes to a lot of things.

  There were a number of things that sent our former country, which was known as the United States of America or USA (or just US), into the Meltdown, or Collapse, as I call it.

  To me, the first problem was the change in values from what this country was originally founded upon. Our founding fathers were hard-working, God-fearing, brave men. Back then, there was no such thing as social welfare or political correctness. Abortion was, and still is, a sin. It is murder, pure and simple. Most people worked the land to feed themselves. They didn’t look for the government to feed them. If they were attacked, they fought back without the possibility of being sued. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights was the backbone document of the country.

  The morals of the country declined drastically over nearly two-and-a-half centuries. In the early days of the country, homosexuality, atheism, pornography, adultery, disobedience in children, and liberalism were not tolerated. Religions other than Christianity and Judaism were unheard of. Life was hard, but simple.

  After two centuries, the liberals and socialists were making over our country. Unborn babies were murdered by the millions when abortions were made legal. They tried to take God out of our lives. Legal gun owners were persecuted. Same-sex marriages were legalized. Liberals loved to play the racist card. They wanted conservative groups to always be shown in a bad light. Liberals in power positions would falsely claim racism in the hopes of controlling argumentative situations that would develop, and therefore control the people. People with beliefs like me were watched, and cell phone and internet activity was monitored. The list of the things they were doing or attempting to do went on and on.

  They wanted to subdue and control the American people. They were socializing everything they could, including our medical care. They were determined to make the US a communist country. In fact, many believed that there was another power at work here. Had Russia been faking for the last 20 to 25
years? Was it possible they pretended democracy, but the old communist system was still in charge? They wanted Western aid and technology, while putting their people and programs in place. Did they still want to bring us down? One of their dictators in the past had told us that they would bury us. Maybe that goal was still in place.

  I once read a good definition of liberalism: it is moochers electing looters to steal from producers! It was very fitting of the times.

  I am a white, heterosexual, conservative, Christian man. The liberals and weirdoes had problems with people like me. I believed in the Constitution and The Bill of Rights. I believe the Bible should not have wrong interpretations made of it, or changed to fit different lifestyles.

  To give you an idea of how out of whack the American sense of values had gotten: late in 2013 a former black leader in South Africa died. For days and days, the media and leaders in the US praised and fawned over this man. What they didn’t acknowledge was that in his younger years, he had been a terrorist and a communist. He even did a video about killing whites. Not too long after his death, one of the greatest Christian evangelists in modern times passed away. He had spread the gospel for decades. Did he get all the praise and publicity that the South African got? NO, he did not.

  ********

  Then there was the terrorist problem. It has always been around in one way or another; but in the last half of the Twentieth Century, it grew worldwide by leaps and bounds, and continued into the Twenty-first Century before exploding into a worldwide war. The main culprits were Muslims. Their religion had an agenda to take over the world and convert everyone to their evil ways. Politicians initially tried to tell everyone it was the radical Islamic sect of the Muslim religion, but then because of their infiltration of the American government, the term ‘radical Islamist’ was declared insensitive and politically incorrect. There was a push by some to have Sharia Law made legal for people of the Muslim faith. Look it up sometime. It was very inhumane, especially for women.

  Anyway, back before the turn of the century, their main weapon was the bomb. They had convinced their people that if they committed suicide and killed infidels, meaning Christians or Jews, they would immediately go to heaven and be with their god, Allah, and his prophet Mohammed. They used vest bombs strapped to themselves to blow themselves up in crowds of people. They would load vehicles with explosives and drive into buildings, or park in areas with a lot of people and set these bombs off. They had other tactics they used also, such as kidnapping and beheading journalists and other notables, and setting bombs in roads and blowing them up when the target vehicle drove by. These were known as Indigenous Explosive Devices or IEDs.

  It seemed like they started their war in the Middle East initially. They had dozens of groups with Arabic names. One of the most notable was Al-Qaeda. It was led by a madman by the name of Bin-laden. He had a serious hatred of Americans. The United States was called ‘The Great Satan’ by these Islamic terrorists. Our government was warned during the Clinton Administration that Bin-laden and Al-Qaeda were the most serious threat we had to our national security. Clinton and his cronies ignored it.

  Earlier than that, they had started spreading their attacks into what we called the West, meaning mainly Europe and America. There were also attacks in Asia and Africa. Then they did the most horrific thing they could think of: they conducted a major attack on our country with airplanes. They hijacked our airliners filled with passengers and used them as weapons.

  On September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda operatives boarded four airliners and took control of them. Two they flew into the Twin Towers in New York City. Another was flown into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. In the last airplane they hijacked, brave passengers fought back, and the plane was flown into the ground in Pennsylvania. It was believed they were taking that plane to Washington D.C. to fly it into the Capitol building or the White House. Thousands died, mostly Americans. This attack became commonly known as ‘9/11’.

  What happened then? President George W. Bush had been in office for less than a year. A month after the ‘9/11’ attack he ordered an invasion of Afghanistan. He was going after Bin-laden. He never got him. (Bin-laden was killed a decade later under President Obama.) Later, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq so that Saddam Hussein and his Weapons of Mass Destruction could be removed. Saddam was captured, tried, and executed but his WMDs were not found. It was later determined that they went to Syria, where the president of that country used some of them against his own people in a civil war.

  The war in Afghanistan lasted for well over a decade. Between it and the war in Iraq, thousands of our soldiers and Marines were killed and mutilated. In my opinion, that war was fought needlessly. What gains were made were later destroyed because the Islamists never gave up their goals, and simply bided their time until our troops left and they went back to their old games.

  What do I think should have been done? Nukes! Some well-placed tactical nukes and HEMP (High-Altitude Electro Magnetic Pulse) detonations would have neutralized most of the terrorist threats in the Middle East and then some serious reformation could have taken place. Perhaps we could have avoided most of the attacks they then launched on us.

  You were too young to have noticed, but during that time we were getting thousands of Arabic immigrants into the country. They were building huge mosques and establishing fenced-in compounds around the country. One of those compounds was not too far north of where we are. They also were establishing themselves in many places in our society. They were in our government. They were running what were known as convenience stores, fast food sandwich shops, and kiosks in shopping malls.

  Our Northern and Southern borders became the main points of entry into our country for terrorists that couldn’t get into the country legally. The US-Canada border extended for over 1,500 miles, and there were more than 120 land points of entry -- not to mention vast stretches of open prairie along the border. Our border with Mexico was like a sieve. Thousands of illegals poured through daily.

  Near the end of the second term of the communists’ elected administration, the terrorists’ war inside our country’s boundaries really started. The Islamists were using the compounds to train their people. Bombs started going off in mall kiosks around the country, bombers and thugs attacked public gatherings like concerts and athletic events. They found many ways to kill us, including crashing airplanes again. Our Homeland Security people could not control the situation. They had been too busy trying to intimidate and control the real citizens of the country. The ‘Communist’ had his own agenda. He wanted to be our Dictator. He had his own private army it seemed. It went by the name of FEMA and DHS. Those stood for Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security.

  ********

  Before I get any further let me tell you about the Presidential Executive Orders!

  John F. Kennedy issued eleven orders that allowed the government to take over all forms of transportation, power production, fuel production, food resources, and farms, and put the civilians into government-run work brigades. One of them even allowed the government to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations. Executive Order 11051 gave authorization to put all executive orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

  Five other executive orders under various presidents, mostly liberal Democrats, created the agency known as FEMA, and allowed the government to take over every aspect of an American’s life under the guise of a national emergency. After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush created the DHS, and FEMA was assigned as its most powerful agency.

  The worst was Executive Order 13603 under Barack Obama. Not only did it give the federal government power over everything in a national emergency, it granted the government the power to determine what constituted a national emergency.

  For a number of years before the Collapse, our government had been doing lar
ge-scale spying on its people. Phone calls -- both landline and cell -- were monitored. Internet activity was documented. E-mails were hacked into. Drones and satellites were watching from the sky. It didn’t matter if you were doing illegal or legal activities, if they could watch you, they would. Just more violation of our rights under the Constitution.

  The American people fought a revolution two-and-a-half centuries ago to get out from under British domination. You wouldn’t think they would stand for the type of tyranny that liberal bureaucrats were putting on them, would you? Well, they did. Most of them, anyway. They were busy enjoying their easy life and free stuff.

  Would you believe that just before the Collapse, most of the people in the country got a full or partial free ride because of “Welfare” programs enacted by the government? The country had become a “nanny state”. There were “Food Stamps” to feed people, and “Subsidence Allowances” for utilities and other expenses. There were programs where people could get free housing. Many people realized that they could live free off the working people that were paying for everything. This couldn’t go on forever. Eventually, something had to break.