A rough, callused hand stained with soap-resistant dirt stroked a trimmed gray beard attached to a face leathered by sun. The hand dropped to a keyboard and typed.
“Got my beans, bullets, and Band-Aids. Thanks for all the advice. Goodbye and good luck to everyone.”
After closing with the nickname he’d used for years, Tequila Jack logged off from the chat room. He was going to miss conversations with his survivalist friends and the Internet’s easy access to information, but he was tired of waiting for the end of the world. It was time to do something about it.
Jack remembered exactly when his vigil began: May 26, 2008, the day gas hit four dollars a gallon at the corner Chevron station. It didn’t matter that the price had fluctuated since then. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, Tequila Jack was a changed man once he learned about Peak Oil. He’d been preparing for the collapse ever since.
He sold his house and built a survivalist cabin in the wild, mountainous Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles. When Barrack Hussein Obama was elected President, he withdrew all the money he had in banks and stocks, including his retirement account, and stashed it in a safe at home. When General Motors failed, he converted his cash into 24-karat Canadian Maple Leaf gold coins. When Obamacare passed the House and Senate, he quit smoking. When the Deepwater Horizon blew, he installed double-glazed argon/krypton gas-filled energy-efficient windows in the cabin, stockpiled iodized salt, started a bee colony, and got a dog. He purchased extra ammunition for his guns.
Until now, only the dog was paying dividends. The Labrador retriever’s heavy black head rested on Tequila Jack’s faded denim-covered knee, waiting for a scratch. Jack obliged, and Manley grunted with pleasure.
“We’re going for a hike, boy,” Jack said, rubbing the ears of his four-legged companion. He felt a kind of glee as he contemplated his mission. He’d been waiting for so long. And he’d sacrificed so much in anticipation.
Summer sunlight filtered through the trees of the canyon where Tequila Jack’s self-sufficient, three-room cabin hid. The computer and refrigerator were the only electricity-dependent features in the house. They were powered by a generator because the cabin was off the main electrical grid. He was prepared to live without any appliances. The cabin was lit by natural light and he cooked in a solar box oven or on a high-efficiency wood-burning stove.
As the crisis in nearby Los Angeles unfolded, chatter among Tequila Jack’s online acquaintances reached an all-time high. Giddily they exchanged their last messages and shared their final tips on home remedies, food preservation, and wilderness survival. Even though most of them owned portable generators or solar panels, they expected the elaborate electronic infrastructure of the World Wide Web to collapse and cut them off from one another. In the struggle for survival in a post-oil world, chaos would quickly overwhelm all complex systems.
Unfortunately, modern civilization was the most complex system of all. Its complexity and total dependence on oil made it a house of cards. Envirowacko’s simple plan would easily bring it down.
Envirowacko had entered the online chat room a few days ago. The chatters were a suspicious, paranoid group; they moved to kick him out. But Preston Cobb vouched for the newcomer, and they let him stay. Envirowacko lived in Los Angeles. As he watched the petroplague strangle the city, he glimpsed an opportunity to change the course of history. Were the Peak Oilers interested?
Unanimously, they were. All of them would play a role in Envirowacko’s plan, but geography dictated that one of them would be the linchpin: Tequila Jack. Jack embraced the leadership role. They agreed on a date: fifteen days from now. Enough time for Jack to hike out of the quarantine zone and for the shipments to arrive. Enough time for the others to get their affairs in order.
Tequila Jack smiled and petted his dog. The years of waiting were almost over.